City of Echoes (2 page)

“Okay. We’ll touch base later.”

“Thanks,” Grace said. “And I’ll make this up to you. I promise. Now keep your eyes open and be safe.”

Matt ended the call. As he hurried out the front door, he sent a quick text message to Hughes. All it said was:
Dinner off. Call me
. His fingers were trembling. He felt that cold breeze working the back of his neck again. Halfway across the sidewalk, he realized that he’d just stepped out of the warmth and into the wind.

CHAPTER 2

You’ll see why it’s so fucked up when you get there
. . .

Matt kept replaying the words in his head. He should have asked Grace what the hell he meant, but his head had been spinning through most of the conversation. By the time he thought about it, he was already out the door hustling over to his car, parked at the curb. Now his stomach was churning and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

He popped open the trunk, pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his head, and got into his windbreaker. Starting down the sidewalk, he tried to keep a measured pace, which was difficult because he could see the flashing lights from the first-response units beating against the side of a building on North Cherokee Avenue. He lowered his gaze, passing a souvenir shop on the corner. Inside the store he could see a middle-aged couple standing before the window display filled with hundreds of fake Oscar statuettes. Ordinarily, the sight of tourists picking out their Oscar would have given him a lift, but tonight no longer seemed very ordinary.

You’ll see why it’s so fucked up when you get there
 
.
 
.
 
.

The truth was that Matt didn’t understand why he felt so anxious, no matter what his supervisor may have had in mind. It was something about being on a homicide investigation. Some odd combination of excitement and terror that didn’t make any sense but kept following him, just as it did a few years back when he left his uniform behind and started working narcotics.

He turned the corner and gazed up the tree-lined street. It looked like the murder had occurred in the middle of the block in what appeared to be a near-empty parking lot. Four patrol units had barricaded the street with their cars. While two cops were stringing crime-scene tape from tree to tree, another five were asking onlookers to back down and move to the corner on Hollywood Boulevard.

You’ll see why it’s so fucked up when you get there
 
.
 
.
 
.

It seemed more than odd that so many cops had arrived on foot this quickly. The number of bicycles parked on the sidewalk didn’t fit either. But as Matt cleared the trees and glanced across the street, he caught the sign in the storefront and knew in an instant why Grace had been so rattled.

It was an LAPD community station.

The murder had been committed in a parking lot directly across the street and within fifty yards of the station’s glass doors. The only barrier between the two locations was a wrought-iron fence about six feet high and a hedge bordering the parking lot. Matt read the sign painted beneath the LAPD logo on the storefront window.

Because We Care
.

If you couldn’t find a safe spot outside a police station in Los Angeles, where could you?

He tried to let the thought go, but still, this was the City of Angels, and the answer had a certain sting to it. One that he knew would make the late-night news and embarrass the department.

He turned away and spotted a cop with a clipboard standing by the entrance to the parking lot. Digging his badge out of his pocket, he signed in, then ducked beneath the yellow crime-scene tape. A photographer was already on scene, ripping off rapid-fire shots of a black SUV, the white-hot light from his flash unit pulsating all over the vehicle and what was obviously ground zero. The truck from the Scientific Investigation Division was already here as well. Large blue tarps were being stretched across the perimeter to block the scene from the television cameras that were beginning to assemble on the corner.

When Matt heard someone call out his name, he turned back and saw his new partner hurrying toward him.

“You think it’s him?” Cabrera said with his eyes locked on the SUV.

Matt shrugged. “Who?”

“The stickup guy. The three-piece bandit. You think he finally shot somebody?”

“It’s a little soon, isn’t it?”

“I’m just saying . . .”

Matt gave him a look. “I know exactly what you’re saying. We just got here, Cabrera. Who the hell knows?”

It was a bad exchange for a first exchange with a new partner, and Matt knew it. He turned back to the SUV, his heart pounding in his chest as he stepped around the shell casings littering the asphalt. There was something unusual about them but it didn’t cut through, the condition of the SUV too mesmerizing. It looked like every window in the vehicle had been shot out. Three rounds had pierced the driver’s-side door. Still, he couldn’t see who was inside the car. When he finally got close enough to ease his head through the window, he got the view he had been looking for in all its harshness, then flinched before he could catch himself.

What was left of the victim appeared to be stretched across the front seats on its back. In spite of the multiple gunshot wounds to the face, chest, and shoulders, in spite of the blood splashed all over the body and interior of the car, in spite of the blanket of shattered glass the corpse was wearing from head to toe, Matt’s best guess was that the victim underneath was male. Still, it was only a guess.

He felt Cabrera move in beside him and thought he heard his partner sigh as he got his look and took the blow.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said in a low voice.

Cabrera glanced at him, then back at the dead body. “Sorry for what?”

“What I did back there. What I said.”

“Forget it,” Cabrera said.

Matt nodded, his eyes fixed on the corpse. “You think it’s a man or a woman?”

“I’ve got no idea. These shitheads don’t take time to aim anymore. They watch too much TV. They fly sideways. They pull the trigger and spray, then it’s done and run.”

Matt didn’t say anything, watching the photographer frame his camera from the passenger-side window. As the man burst through another series of rapid-fire shots, the corpse appeared to be vibrating in the light. Matt found the simulated animation of the body extraordinarily unnerving. For a half second he thought it might really be moving. That everything he was seeing had been staged for his benefit as some kind of sick initiation by the department.

Welcome to Hollywood Homicide. The dead body in the shot-up SUV was just about to sit up and say boo.

He wished for it, hoped for it, but knew that it was only a fantasy.

Cabrera gave him a nudge and pointed to the victim’s left arm. “Maybe it really was a holdup.”

Matt didn’t get it until he tilted his head to the right and spotted the gunshot wound on the inside of the victim’s left forearm. He understood that he was staring at an entrance wound, and that whoever this was had most likely been holding their arms up at the time of the shooting. But even more, it was a big wound. Way too big to have been made by a 9 mm pistol. He remembered those shell casings on the pavement. At a glance they had appeared longer than most. But just as he turned to look, he noticed a pair of cops standing off to the side and realized that they were waiting for him.

“You guys get here first?” he said.

They nodded at him and stepped out of the shadows, the older of the two introducing himself as Hank Andrews, with his partner, Travis Green.

Matt moved closer to shake hands. “You run the plates?”

Andrews nodded. “A GM dealership over at the auto mall on Brand. They’re closed. We’re trying to track down the manager, but he’s not answering his cell.”

“How’d you get his cell number?”

“Glendale PD gave us his home number. He’s got a live-in girlfriend. She doesn’t know where he is. She’s worried about him.”

“Did she give you a description?”

Andrews nodded again.

“Does it match?”

The cop fought off a grimace. “You looked inside that window just the same as we did, Detective. Who could tell?”

A cell phone began chirping from the SUV.

Matt rushed back to the driver’s-side window and gazed inside with Cabrera. The phone was set in the ashtray, blinking on and off and lighting up the dash. Matt turned to the photographer in the passenger-side window as he dug a pair of vinyl gloves out of his pocket and slipped them on.

“You got a shot of the phone?” he said.

The photographer pulled his eye away from the camera and nodded. “From every angle. Go ahead, pal. Take the call.”

The phone stopped chirping and went dark. Matt glanced back at Cabrera, then reached inside and carefully lifted it up and out of the SUV. He could feel the weight of everyone’s gaze on him as he flipped it over and slid the lock open with his thumb.

The phone lit up, indicating that the caller had left a message. A long moment passed as Matt gazed at the display and noticed that the usual banter that makes up a crime scene had been overwhelmed by a wave of absolute silence. His eyes made a second sweep across the display; then he clicked through to the next screen. The murder victim had just received a text message. It was short and to the point. All it said was:
Dinner off. Call me.

CHAPTER 3

Matthew Trevor Jones. Matthew Trevor Jones. I’m jonesing for Jones. Ya hear that, Jones? Everybody here’s jonesing for Jones. Now cut the shit and wake the fuck up. We got your ass, ya know what I’m sayin’, Jones? We got your sorry ass outta that desert shithole and brought it the fuck back to—

The dream had a roll to it. Movement, but no definition. Matt wasn’t really sure what had happened.

He could see a blanket draped over his body and feel the rails of a rescue stretcher below his waist. An EMT was leaning against the open rear door of an ambulance but had turned away to wave at someone just as their eyes met. When Matt thought he heard the rotors from a chopper, he looked toward the sound, but all he saw was a bus lumbering through an intersection on a busy street.

A busy street in the US.

He filled his lungs with air and, as he exhaled, tried to break through the fog. He could see a parking attendant’s shack on the other side of the lot, a billboard, and the rear entrance to a restaurant called Musso & Frank, but nothing about the place registered. Squinting at the bright work lights mounted on stands to his right, he noticed that they were pointed at a black SUV. A handful of people were here—some wearing police uniforms, others dressed in street clothes—yet every one of them seemed infatuated by that SUV.

He turned back to the ambulance. A man with a badge clipped to his leather jacket had joined the EMT, and it looked like they were whispering.

Something about the cop’s face seemed familiar, but as he sized him up, he couldn’t find the memory. He was dressed casually and wore a heavy sweater beneath his jacket. Matt guessed that he stood just short of six feet tall and was about thirty years old. His black wiry hair was cropped so close to his skull that it looked more like a three-day beard against his dark complexion. When he finally stopped whispering to the EMT and turned to him, Matt noticed that his eyes were glazed. It seemed more than obvious that he was deeply troubled about something.

Matt heaved his body forward and struggled to sit up. Both men rushed over, but he pushed them away, rubbing his fingers back and forth over his eyes and forehead. He could hear the cop jabbering in his ear through the haze.

Matt, are you okay? You blacked out, man. Are you okay, Matt? Are you okay?

The wind picked up. A cup of piping hot coffee came out of nowhere. Matt took a short first sip, then another, until he looked up at the cop’s chiseled face and something changed. Maybe it was what he still saw in his eyes, the spark and worry reflecting back at him. Maybe it was something else. Either way, Matt could feel himself breaking the surface hard. He could feel the push of reality, no longer scrambled, in all its starkness.

Something horrible had happened tonight.

Something worse than that.

Matt searched for his voice, the words coming out low and rough. “Tell me what happened? How long have I been out?”

Cabrera leaned closer, resting his hand on his shoulder. “You blacked out, man. You were standing over there by the SUV. You were looking at something on the cell phone. Then all of a sudden you went down like you took one on the chin.”

“Where’s the phone?”

“It broke when it hit the ground. SID says they can recover whatever was on it, but they’ll have to do it in the lab.”

Dinner off. Call me.

Matt shook his head at the memory. “Is the body still here?”

Cabrera gave him a look and nodded. “They’re bagging it up right now.”

“Give me a hand. I need to see it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Denny. I’m sure.”

Matt reached out for Cabrera’s arm, holding on until he found his balance. After a few moments they made their way over to the SUV and watched as the investigator from the coroner’s office gave the nod. Then the corpse was hoisted out of the vehicle and into a blue body bag set atop another stretcher. Matt could hear shards of broken glass raining onto the pavement as the body was moved. He could smell the blood, the meat. When someone tried to zip up the bag, he grabbed their hand and pushed it away.

He needed to take a look at the murder victim. A long last look, no matter how deep it cut.

Cabrera switched on his flashlight, shining it on the corpse. “It’s like this, Matt. We haven’t been able to reach the manager at that GM dealership in Glendale. But the victim’s a male and, according to Gainer here, about the right age. The driver’s-side window was down, like he was talking to somebody. His wallet’s missing, and we haven’t found a watch or any jewelry. Glendale PD has agreed to pick up his girlfriend and bring her down to the coroner’s office for a possible ID.”