Cut to the Quick (15 page)

Holding his eyes on Vining and the necklace she held between her fingers, he climbed to his feet.

“Looks like he understands to me,” Kissick observed.

Kurosky put the bed coverings back in place while Nitro kept his eyes on Vining’s. He didn’t cower or act afraid.

Vining stepped inside the pod and moved close to him. Too close. One swift move and he could have embedded his teeth in her face. She was close enough to smell his sweat. The nearness of him sent electricity through her.

It was him, but it was not him.

Kissick and Folke moved near the open door.

“Nan,” Kissick warned.

Vining quickly raised her hand that held the necklace.

That startled Nitro. He scurried to the wall.

“Why do you want me to wear this?” She came after him, holding the necklace, raising it higher. “This isn’t
my
necklace.” She punched out with her arm and the
necklace hit his face. It then swung, like a hypnotist’s charm.

He pressed against the wall but there was nowhere for him to go. His lips trembled. She recognized the fear in his eyes. She knew he wasn’t faking it. She relished it. She loved it. She could have killed him or kissed him, they were that close.

“It’s
yours
,” she said, dropping the necklace inside the plastic bag and drawing her fingers along the seal. She handed it to Kurosky, and said, “Put it back with his personal possessions.”

Before Vining left the cell, she gave Nitro a look and mentally sent him a message:
I’ll see you again
.

Kissick tensely joked, “I know the necklace didn’t match your outfit, Nan, but …”

As she passed the others, Vining said, “I’ll teach that clown to draw pictures of me.”

THIRTEEN

M
ark Scoville
mentally toted up his losses. After the first weekend of college football, he was down fifteen large. While he’d won on Ohio State over Northern Illinois with a ten-point spread, and the UCLA Bruins with twenty-one over Utah, he’d taken a bath on the USC Trojans in their preseason game against Arkansas. He’d called Oliver Mercer after the game on Saturday to ride his ass over the Trojans’ poor showing. They’d exchanged playful barbs that were only superficially in
jest. Their brief relationship had soured big-time over the proposed merger with Drive By Media. It all came down to money and power. Scoville doubted that even a struggle over a woman could create such animosity between men. Ultimately, the hand would come down on the side of money over the broad any day. All that Iliad and Odyssey fighting over Helen of Troy … That was a myth.

Later that same Saturday evening, Mercer would be murdered. His girlfriend too, which was a shame. Just like that, the problems Scoville was having with Mercer were over. The likelihood that Scoville would be tossed from the business his father had built from scruffy patches of dirt along the freeway to LAX was now as unforeseeable as Los Angelenos abandoning their cars for mass transportation. Wasn’t gonna happen.

Granted, the police coming around had been unsettling. But that would pass. They had nothing to link him to the murders. They were just fishing. Just doing their job. Just asking routine questions, as they had reminded him a million times.

Scoville snapped open the flip-top on another canned margarita, poured it into a take-out cup of lemon-lime Slurpee, and stirred it with a straw. A frozen margarita was his favorite hangover remedy. The old hair of the dog with shaved ice to cool him down and hydrate. He’d bought the cocktail makings at the liquor store down the street from the Marquis Outdoor Advertising offices on the Sunset Strip.

After his father’s death, he’d taken over the big corner office. It was much the same as the old man had left it. The desk had belonged to his father, as had the furniture and the books and the trinkets in the bookcases. The only things his father hadn’t touched were the computer equipment, some of the photographs, and the framed
sports memorabilia on the walls: photographs, jerseys, bats, baseballs, mitts, footballs, basketballs, and a hockey stick, all signed.

Scoville had a raging hangover after last night. The interview with the detectives had gone just fine until their needling had dislodged a small detail, nothing more than a black joke that he had forgotten as soon as it had happened. He wasn’t really sure what had happened, as he’d been sort of blasted then too. Stupid of him to have overreacted like that in front of the police.

He went out the door that led to the rooftop patio. The executive offices were in the penthouse of the three-story building, constructed above the second floor like the top tier of a wedding cake. Doors opened onto the roof, where there were patio tables and chairs beneath an awning. Surrounding the roof was a four-foot wall from which there was a spectacular view up and down the Strip. Straight ahead, there was an unobstructed view across West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Century City, and West L.A.—all the way to the ocean on a clear day. The old man had always had the touch when it came to real estate. He might not have been much of a father, but he knew property.

Scoville leaned against the wall and sipped the sludgy cocktail through a wide straw. An inversion layer was keeping the heat and smog trapped in the Los Angeles basin. The air was a putrid brownish-gray color. All this weather was good for was perspiring. And coughing.

He liked coming to the office when there was no one else there. It was his last refuge. Even his meandering Hancock Park home had come to feel crowded with Dena and her pain-in-the-ass daughter, Dahlia. Sometimes he even resented the intrusions of Luddy, the love of his life, whom Dena overscheduled with lessons, sports, school, and social events, in his view. The bad
vibes were crowding him out more than the people. Eight years of marriage … his first. He’d learned something: Nothing was as soul-sucking as a marriage gone sour.

It was early afternoon on Labor Day, and the Strip was busy on this last official weekend of summer. The nightclubs—the Whisky a-Go-Go, the Roxy, the Viper Room—were shuttered until the sun went down. The sidewalk restaurants along Sunset Plaza were full. People were shopping at the high-end boutiques. Scoville could see the big bright yellow building where his favorite record store used to be. He used to spend aimless hours there as a teenager. It seemed incredible that the store had gone out of business. The times were a-changin’.

A posse of young women in low-cut jeans and midriff-baring tops strolling down the boulevard entered Scoville’s field of vision, but he paid them little attention. He was ogling one of his most profitable billboard faces, which had just been fitted with an ad for a blockbuster movie. Down the street was another of his faces and another and another. There were even billboards on top of the Marquis building. Each post supported two faces that were angled so drivers coming in either direction would be exposed to an image. Some advertised movies, but most were for designer clothing and accessories, featuring thin, scantily clad models in provocative poses. The message was always the same: “Be like me. Buy Fendi sunglasses.”

Scoville heard the cash register “ka-ching” in his head as he calculated the revenue that he sorely needed now. Best of all, the dough was all his again. The owner of Drive By Media had called when he’d heard about the murders. Scoville had had the distinct pleasure of telling him that Mercer’s share of Marquis had reverted to
him, as per their partnership contract, and the merger was off.

“How convenient for you,” the dickwad had told him. “Your partner getting deep-sixed before he can ink a deal that you didn’t want.”

Scoville had been glib. “Make sure you tell the cops that.”

“Detectives Kissick and Vining. I already did.”

Whatever. Marquis Outdoor Advertising was his. Well, more or less. And he had to answer to no one except his accountant. He’d worked around that wrinkle before. As for the cops, they had nothing on him, as he had had nothing to do with Mercer’s murder. Scoville had heard on the news that an unnamed source at the Pasadena Police had revealed that they had a suspect—some weirdo who’d been stalking Lauren Richards. Guys like that commit crazy-ass murders. Not guys like him. Murder or overt aggressiveness wasn’t his style at all. No way.

His father’s words still rang in his head.
Stop being a pussy, Mark
.

He had been a tough guy, old Ludlow. A spit-in-your-eye, balls-to-the-wall tough guy. Only when his father got old and sick did he have a change of heart and seek to bring his prodigal son back into the fold, even showing a scintilla of contrition that was so gratifying.

Scoville used to hate being Ludlow’s only remaining child. More than three decades ago, after a high school football game, Ludlow Jr. had been thrown from the open bed of the pickup truck in which he’d been riding to a party with some buddies. The driver, the running back on Luddy’s team, hadn’t been drinking. He’d lost control of the truck when he’d swerved to avoid a skunk, ejecting the five kids riding in the bed. Luddy Jr.
was the only one gravely injured, sailing headfirst into a tree.

Mark was thirteen and already growing into the pet name his father had bestowed early: Fuckup.

Ludlow Jr. was everything the old man had wanted in a son. Everything any man would want in a son: smart, athletic, disciplined, charming, well-mannered, good-looking, and good-hearted. Of course, such a child was too good for this world, Mark’s mother had lamented.

After Ludlow Jr.’s accident, there were tense, sad days before the decision to discontinue life support and allow his perfect organs to be harvested—the young man’s final heroic act. The lives of a bunch of strangers were thereby saved or strengthened.

Then the Scovilles were three.

Funny how things had turned out.

Funny too about Mercer. A coincidence that Scoville had wished Mercer dead and now he was. Coincidences happened every day. Babies were switched at birth. Accident victims were misidentified and buried in the wrong graves. People switch flights at the last minute, only to learn that the plane later crashed. Look at all the stories about people who escaped being victims in the Twin Towers on 9/11 because they stopped to change mismatched socks or went around the corner for a doughnut. Coincidence. That’s all Mercer’s murder was. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that drunken black joke.

Things were good once again. He had Mercer’s cash and didn’t have to deal with Mercer. He was sorry Mercer was dead. He guessed one could be sorry and happy about such a thing at the same time. He wondered how they were killed. The detectives hadn’t offered details. Scoville hoped it had been fast and they hadn’t suffered.

He had a fleeting thought about Dena, wondering if
she would leave him. He decided that she wouldn’t. She’d made too big a deal about the importance of her family on her TV show, trotting out the kids like trained ponies. Surveys showed her fans liked her homebody aspect. That drunken car crash had nearly destroyed her career. She couldn’t count on the phoenix rising from the ashes twice. No, she wouldn’t leave him.

Scoville loudly sucked the last of his margarita through the straw. All was well. He decided to do a little Internet gambling before heading home to take a nap.

At a sidewalk table in front of Chin Chin on the sunset strip, a man with a prominent Adam’s apple, wearing a sundress that showed his muscular, tattooed upper body, ordered another mango iced tea. From his purse he took a collapsible rice paper fan he’d purchased in one of the few remaining old-style tourist shops in downtown L.A.’s Chinatown, the type of store packed to the rafters with painted parasols, silk slippers, and carved jade. He’d bought his mother a silk robe, knowing she’d complain bitterly about the extravagance, but it wasn’t expensive and it was so pretty, decorated with embroidered butterflies. He’d bought one for himself too, crimson, embroidered with a design of a Chinese footbridge. What the hell? It was fun. Everyone had to live a little. He didn’t get into L.A. that often.

He snapped open the fan and began fanning himself, running fingertips beneath the neckline of the white dress, frowning at a small patch of hair missed during a home waxing job.

Tracing fingers around the spit curls on the perky brunette wig from the Raquel Welch collection, he caught two women staring from a nearby table. People could be so ignorant. He crossed his legs beneath the full-skirted dress and admired his ankle-wrapped sandals, which set
off the French pedicure. He held up his hand, palm out, to see how his manicure was holding up. It was in need of attention. The Saturday night party at Oliver Mercer’s house had wrecked havoc with it. He straightened Mercer’s class ring. It was masculine, but he liked it. He had Mercer’s severed right hand wrapped in plastic in the freezer at home, tucked away to use for incriminating or merely bewildering fingerprints. He liked messing with people for sport, especially cops.

Picking up his field glasses, he saw that Mark Scoville had not returned to lean against the wall on top of the Marquis office building. The drink cup he had set there was now gone.

Catching one of the two rude women again staring, he pulled away the field glasses and said, “There are hawks’ nests on top of those buildings. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” She gave her friend a tense smile.

“Fascinating, isn’t it, that wildlife can thrive in the middle of a big city? Shows how powerful the life force is and how adaptable living creatures are to their environment.”

“I guess animals do what they need to to survive.”

“Indeed they do. I’m Jill, by the way.” He extended his hand.

The woman tittered, offering her hand. “I’m Abby Gilmore. This is my friend Trish.”

“Nice to meet you, Abby and Trish.” He pegged them as in their late twenties and not from around here. They had sunburns over light tans, trying too hard at the beach. One of them carried a big straw carryall, likely purchased in Tijuana. The other wore a tank top printed with a photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger in sunglasses and leather, carrying a huge automatic weapon, with the slogan “The Governator.” Plus no L.A. woman in her
right mind would walk around with an open tote bag that almost shouted, “Steal from me.” He could see the gal’s wallet sitting right on top.