City of Echoes (22 page)

Grace laughed, then leaned closer and lowered his voice. “For the record, that works for me. There’s no way in this world that you killed Millie Brown, because the murder weapon was found in Ron Harris’s house. For the record, Ron Harris killed the girl and we got our man. But between friends like you and me, Jamie—man-to-man so to speak—we both know what really happened to Millie Brown. It’s our secret what you did to her. Secrets are best kept between friends, don’t you think?”

The room fell silent. Heavy. Corrosive. Dead.

“Why are you doing this?” Taladyne whispered in a shaky voice. “If you’re here to arrest me, why don’t you just get it over with?”

Orlando struck him again. Harder this time.

Grace sat and watched, his gaunt face showing patience, his eyes smoldering above those high cheekbones. “We’re not here to make an arrest, Jamie. And there’s no good cop, bad cop tonight. Everybody here is all in. You murdered Brown, but you didn’t murder Brown. That’s the irony. Ron Harris killed the girl, because the newspapers said he did, and we still have to account for that murder weapon winding up in the man’s house. But now the story has new life and a new direction. Now it’s all about you becoming infatuated with both the girl and Harris and what everybody thinks he did to her. You knew Millie. You talked to her. She got off on teasing you and tried to seduce you. A girl who looked like that. A beautiful girl. So after her murder, after you were released as a suspect, you read the papers and watched the news of Harris’s arrest with a peculiar kind of interest. You waited anxiously for his trial. The people who found the girl’s body ended up talking to one of the tabloids and described the condition she had been left in. You didn’t have much to go on, but after doing a little research on the Internet, you figured it out and started dreaming about committing a murder just like Millie Brown’s. I’ll bet you dug it so much that it got you hard. It was already in your blood, Jamie. You’d spent a night with Leah Reynolds. She was young and hot, and you couldn’t get her out of your sick fucking mind. You tied her up and cut off her clothes with a box cutter. A razor blade. You fucked her over and over and over again. You rode her like an animal all night long. It was already in your blood, Jamie. You were a natural. You were ready to take the next step. So when you saw Faith Novakoff walk out of that bar in the Valley, that’s all it took. You knew exactly what you wanted and what you needed. You knew exactly what you were gonna do to that girl’s face, and you succeeded. You pulled it off. She ended up looking exactly like Millie Brown.”

“I didn’t,” he said, stammering. “I wasn’t even here.”

Taladyne jumped to his feet, but Orlando grabbed him by the neck and yanked him back down. Moments passed. Another vicious beating, with blood dripping out of his nose, then more of that hard-core silence.

“Are you saying that you’ve got an alibi?” Grace said, measuring the man.

Taladyne nodded, the sweat dripping down his face. “I told Detective Lane everything.”

“You told him what?”

“Two weeks ago,” he said. “Two weeks ago I was up in Mint Canyon. The night the girl got killed I’d checked into a Motel 6. I had a job interview early the next morning.”

“A job interview where?”

“At a car lot. I’m good with tools, and I like cars. I really needed a job. I still do.”

“How’d you pay for the room?”

“Cash. My sister gave it to me.”

“Did you use your real name?”

Taladyne paused again, then shook his head. “That name’s no good anymore. People remember it from the news and my trial.”

“Did you see anyone that night? Did you talk to anyone?”

Taladyne remained silent. Matt felt a wave of dread roll over his spine as he thought it over. A job interview at a Ford dealership. Frankie had been trying to verify Taladyne’s alibi but never made it. Even worse, Taladyne couldn’t answer Grace’s question. He’d hesitated.

Matt looked back at the man with the striking blue eyes and realized that he was going to die tonight.

He could tell from the look on Grace’s face that he didn’t believe anything he’d just heard. But even more, there was no way Grace could let Taladyne walk out of the room. There was no way Grace could let any doubt be cast on his arrest of Ron Harris. Too many people were dead. Too many people had been murdered. Enough to fill a graveyard.

Grace laughed like an executioner who enjoys listening to a tall tale every once in a while. “How’d you make out in the interview?” he asked.

Taladyne didn’t reply, his eyes burning.

“I thought so,” Grace said. “Why don’t you just admit what you did? Why don’t you just say it?”

Taladyne leaned back and switched off.

“You’re blaming us, Jamie? We didn’t make you—you did. Let’s hear what you’ve got for two nights ago when the girl was killed up by the Hollywood sign.”

Taladyne pursed his lips and shook his head. Orlando hit him with a vicious chop to the stomach.

The man buckled over and let out a gasp, struggling to catch his breath. When Grace gave him a second poke with the muzzle of the shotgun, it looked like Taladyne could see his fate. He started to sob, his hands trembling as he covered his bloody face.

“Come on, Jamie. Answer the question. Where were you two nights ago? Admit it. Say it so we can all go home.”

Taladyne’s eyes rocked back and forth, as if he’d just spotted the finish line. “Here,” he said after a while. “I was here.”

“That’s the best you can do? Where was your sister?”

Taladyne shivered, his gaze losing its focus and dropping to the floor. “In Seattle,” he whispered. “I was alone.”

Grace traded a dark look with Orlando, who fished a black hood out of his pocket and pulled it over Taladyne’s head. Taladyne whimpered in fear and started shaking.

“Please,” he said. “Please. Why don’t you just arrest me?”

Orlando punched Taladyne in the face with his gloved fists. Then Grace prodded him with the shotgun again.

“Admit it, Jamie. Say it.”

“Please. I want to go back to prison. I’ll do it. I’ll go back.”

Orlando smashed him in the face again. Taladyne couldn’t see the punches coming and made a feeble attempt to protect himself by bobbing his head and blocking his face with his cuffed hands.

Grace leaned closer. “Admit it, Jamie. Say it.”

Orlando beat him again. Then again and again, until the man tumbled off the couch onto the floor.

“Okay, okay, okay. Please stop. Please. I’ll say it. I’ll say it.”

Grace nodded at Orlando, who pulled Taladyne up and yanked the hood off of his head. His face was a mess.

“Admit it,” Grace said. “Say it, and make sure you’re telling the truth. I need to believe you.”

Taladyne looked terrified, his entire body shuddering. “I did it,” he said quickly. “I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Cut them. Killed them. Left them there to die. Now take me back to prison. I belong in jail.”

A moment passed. Then, to Taladyne’s horror, Orlando removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and grabbed the .38 revolver he’d set down on the table. A grin spread across Grace’s face, like he could read Taladyne’s mind and enjoyed it. As Matt watched, he thought about the things Lieutenant McKensie had said to him in his office earlier in the day.

I never liked that guy. I never liked anybody who liked that guy. I always thought Bob Grace was a piece of shit.

McKensie’s take didn’t even begin to cover it.

Matt moved closer to the window screen, drawing his .45 and gently pulling back the slide to chamber the first of eight rounds. He wasn’t sure why, really. He was just as outmatched as Taladyne. If he made a move, if he did anything at all, Taladyne would be the first one to die. Either Orlando would shoot him in the head with the revolver, or Grace would get him in the chest with the shotgun. Either way, Taladyne was circling the drain, and Matt couldn’t do anything but watch.

The next few minutes seemed to unfold in slow motion, just like the images he had in his head of an unconscious Frankie driving his car off the cliff with his eyes closed. He watched Grace get up and step away from the couch. Then Orlando pushed Taladyne’s forehead back, jammed the revolver into his mouth, and kept repeating the words “Fuck you, you sick motherfucker” through clenched teeth. Taladyne was weeping now, the tremors quaking through his entire body at a more frantic pace. He reached up and clasped Orlando’s gloved hand with both of his own, almost as if in prayer. He tried to pull the gun out of his mouth. He tried to yank the thing out with his fingers still quivering, any strength he might have had eaten away by the terror. And Matt could tell that this was exactly what Orlando wanted: Taladyne’s hands close enough to the gun to be painted with blood spatter.

CHAPTER 42

Orlando pulled the trigger. The sound of the single shot in the small room was deafening.

Taladyne’s head snapped back, his body wilting onto the couch. But then, after the house had absorbed the echo from the gunshot, Jamie Taladyne’s body started moving again. His eyes were wide open and fixed in a grotesque thousand-yard stare, his body twisting and convulsing, with blood spewing everywhere. Orlando didn’t seem to know what to do and started to panic. He tried holding him still with his knee. He grabbed his chest and pushed down. All Matt could hear were the springs from the cushions clinking as Taladyne bounced up and down, his shoes banging against the table and skidding on the hardwood floor. Grace stepped closer to watch. The horror seemed to go on forever, the corpse staring back at them from the other side. Matt looked at Orlando and knew that he was scared shitless. On and on and on, Taladyne’s bones rattled in the dark and dingy room. On and on, until Grace had seen enough and gave Taladyne a vicious kick in the head with his heel.

And then it was over. Then Taladyne’s body quieted and finally came to rest. Orlando didn’t seem to trust it at first but eventually let go of the corpse, his chest heaving. Grace took a step back, still staring at Taladyne’s ruined face while chewing a piece of gum.

“We need to get out of here,” he said in a quiet voice. “Now pull yourself together and make it look right.”

“What about a note?”

“We don’t need one. He was broke. Find his checkbook and a stack of bills.”

Orlando nodded anxiously. “The piece of shit couldn’t even die right.”

Grace gave him a look, then started down the hall toward Taladyne’s bedroom. Backing into the darkness, Matt rushed to the other end of the house with his gun still drawn. When he reached the lighted window, he lowered his body and peered over the sill. Plank had spread the contents of the cardboard box across Taladyne’s bed. They were clippings from newspaper articles, and he was taping them to the wall above a small desk. Matt guessed that there were more than a hundred pictures of Ron Harris and Millie Brown, Faith Novakoff and Brooke Anderson. Even from across the room he could read the headlines, which announced Harris’s suicide and Taladyne’s arrest and eventual release as a suspect.

When you added them all up, the press clippings taped to a wall in a run-down house told the story of a man obsessed with a killer and his victim. When you added them up, they told the story of a convicted rapist who had done time, a
nobody
who wanted to be a
somebody
. They told the story of a man watching a killer, studying a killer, and finally becoming a killer in his own right. A man who blamed the LAPD for his plight. A man who had lived in hiding and became a copycat.

When you added it all up, this was just the way Grace needed the story to be told. Just the way he’d framed it out for Taladyne a few minutes ago. The day wasn’t even over and he had his scapegoat, his chump, a new dupe wrapped and ready to go.

Matt watched him enter the room and gaze at the wall. A certain glow was showing on his face.

“I’ve got a few more to put up,” Plank said.

Grace lowered the shotgun to the floor and leaned it against the wall. “I think we’re good, Edward. I think that’s enough. Put the rest in one of his desk drawers. He’s a collector, you know what I mean? He saves things. He collects.”

Plank shrugged, then gathered the remaining press clippings. When Orlando walked in, Grace unlocked his phone, appeared to sort through two or three windows, and held out the screen.

“Here’s his cell number,” he said. “Now call Jones and tell him that we’ve got a lead on Taladyne. Give him the address.”

Orlando dug into his pocket for his phone. “You’re gonna let him find Taladyne?”

“We’re gonna let him find everything and call it in. We’re gonna let him close the case. He’ll be the city’s next hero, his first case, and we got our man. We’ll be in the clear.”

“But what about Taladyne’s sister? What’s she gonna say about this?”

Plank dumped the remaining press clippings into the top desk drawer and grabbed the shotgun. “She’s gonna say the same thing any sister would say when they find out their brother’s a mad dog fuck killer. He was a good man. I never saw any of this crap. He didn’t do it.”

Grace smiled again. “And she can say it all she wants.”

Orlando nodded, entering the number and lifting the phone to his ear.

And then time stopped.

Life stopped.

Everything started spinning into the black, and on this night, it couldn’t be written off as a dream.

Matt’s cell phone was ringing.

He could see their faces through the window. They were staring at him, their eyes big and wild and panicky. He could see Plank raising the shotgun just as he started to turn away and lost his footing. He could hear the blast as his body tumbled down the hill. The sound of glass shattering and gunshots from the semiautomatic that he’d seen holstered to Orlando’s belt.

Everything was rushing by in a jumbled blur—until the moment the world went chemical.

He could feel the sudden pain cutting into his upper chest and left shoulder. The agony mixed with terror and disbelief as he rolled to the bottom of the hill, slammed against a tree, and came to a stop.

He’d been hit.

CHAPTER 43