False Prophet

Synopsis:

Lilah Brecht, daughter of Hollywood movie queen, is brutally raped. Blindfolded during the attack, her description of the attacker comes from her gift of second sight and she proclaims that Detective Sergeant Pete Decker is the only policeman who can truly understand and help her.

As usual for my family

And for Liza Dawson, Leona Nevler, and Ann Harris

—thank you

Working off duty
meant doing the same job without pay. But since the call’s location was only twelve blocks away and the case would wind up in his detail anyway, Decker figured he might as well jump the uniforms. Cordon off the scene before the blues could trample evidence, making his on-duty tasks that much easier. He unhooked the mike, answered the radio transmitting officer — and turned on the computer screen in the unmarked Plymouth. A few moments later, green LCD lines snaked across the monitor.

A female assault victim — suspected sexual trauma — no given name or age. The Party Reporting had been female and Spanish speaking. The victim had been found by the PR in a ransacked bedroom. Paramedics had been called down.

Decker made a sharp right turn and headed for the address.

The interior of the Plymouth was rich with the aroma of newly baked breads — a corn rye loaded with caraway seeds, two crisp onion boards, a dozen poppy-seeded kaiser and crescent rolls, and assorted Danishes. Goodies just pulled from the oven, so hot the bakery lady didn’t dare put them in plastic. They sat in open white wax-lined bags, exhaling their yeasty breath, making his mouth water.

Fresh bakery treats seemed to be Rina’s only craving during the pregnancy and Decker didn’t mind indulging her. The nearest kosher bakery was a twelve-mile round trip of peace and quiet. He enjoyed the early-morning stillness, cruising the stretch of open freeway, witnessing the fireworks on the eastern horizon. He reveled in the forty minutes of solitude and resented the intrusion of the call, the location so close he couldn’t ignore it, his mind forced to snap into work-mode.

He turned left onto Valley Canyon Drive, the roadside cutting through wide-open areas of ranchland. In the distance was the renowned Valley Canyon Spa Resort — a two-story pink-stucco monolith carved into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. It looked like a giant boil on the sandy-colored face of the rocks. The guys in the squad room had shortened the spa’s name to VALCAN, which in turn had been bastardized to VULCAN. The running joke was that VULCAN’s clientele were secret relatives of Mr. Spock beamed down to get ear jobs. VULCAN had hosted more stars than the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard, its facilities among the most exclusive in the United States. That, and the fact that the place was run by Davida Eversong’s daughter, made it a national draw for rich anorexic women wanting to exercise themselves skeletal.

Davida Eversong was one of those self-proclaimed
grandes dames
of Old Hollywood. Scuttlebutt had it that she had burrowed herself into a bungalow on the spa’s acreage. Once Decker had spotted her at a local mom-and-pop market. Her features had been hidden by sunglasses and a black turban that wrapped around her cheeks and tied under her chin. It had been her getup that had attracted his attention. Who dressed like that at night except someone wanting to be noticed? But only he had given her a second glance. To the rest of the shoppers, she had been just another L.A. eccentric.

Decker was barely old enough to remember the latter part of her long film career — the last three or four movies where she’d been thrown some bones — courtesy parts. Then came the talk-show circuit promoting the autobiography. The book had been a best seller. That had been about fifteen years ago and nothing public since. Still, the name Eversong conjured up images of studio Movie Queens and Hollywood glamour. Eversong’s daughter was certainly not inhibited about using the connection. Maybe she was genuinely proud of Mama. Or maybe it just made good business sense.

Scoring the base of the spa’s mountain was a single file of multicolored sweatsuits; the ladies coming back from their morning aerobic hike. From Decker’s perspective, they looked like Day-Glo ants encircling a giant hill.

He reached inside one of the paper bags, broke off a piece of warm cherry Danish, and stuffed it into his mouth. Chewing, he called Rina on his radio, telling her why he wouldn’t make it for breakfast. She sounded disappointed but he couldn’t tell what bothered her more — his absence or the absence of her morning kaiser roll.

Not that she didn’t enjoy his company, but she was more preoccupied than usual. That was to be expected. Though he kept hoping her self-absorption would pass, he’d come to realize it was wishful thinking.

El honeymoon was
finito
. Time to get down to the business of
living
.

He remembered the physical exhaustion that accompanied a newborn — long nights of interrupted sleep, the bickering, the tension. His ex-wife had looked like a zombie in the morning. Acted like one, too. He also remembered the joy of Cynthia’s first smile, her first steps and words. He supposed it would be easier the second time around because he knew what to expect. But damned if he wasn’t going to miss being the center of Rina’s attention.

He bit off another piece of Danish, wiped crumbs off his ginger-colored mustache.

Well, that’s just life in the big city, bud.

He pushed the pedal of the unmarked, the car chugalugging its way up the curvy mountain road. The address on the computer screen corresponded to a ranch adjacent to the spa. The pink blob and its next-door neighbor were separated by ten acres of undeveloped scrubland, but he couldn’t find any definitive line dividing the two properties.

He found the numbers posted on a freestanding mailbox at the driveway’s entrance. Turning left down a winding strip of blacktop, he parked the unmarked in front of the ranch house. It was a white, wood-sided, one-story structure sitting on a patch of newly planted rye grass. Bordering the house were rows of fruit trees — citrus on the left, apricot, plum, and peach on the right. Between the trees, he could make out crabgrass and scrub, the foliage gradually thickening to gray-green shrubs and chaparral as the land bled into the base of the mountains.

He punched his arrival into the computer — a whopping two minutes, twenty-two seconds response time. Nothing like being blocks away to skew the stats in LAPD’s favor. He stepped out of the unmarked and gave the place a quick glance. Although the house was modest in size, there was something off about it.

The wood siding sparkled like sun-drenched snow — not a flake of paint dared to mar the surface. The flagstone walkway held nary a crack, and the wood shingles on the roof were ruler aligned. The porch was also freshly painted. It didn’t creak and held a caned rocking chair decorated with crocheted doilies draped over curved arms. The place was a perfect ranch house.
Too
perfect. It looked like a movie set.

Decker banged on the door and identified himself in Spanish as a police officer. The woman who let him in was frazzled and babbling incoherently, evoking
Dios
between hysterical sobs. She was around forty, her soft plumpish body squeezed into a starched-white servant’s uniform. Her dark eyes were full of fear and her fingers were clutching the roots of her hair. She led him into a trashed bedroom. The bed was a heap of jumbled sheets and broken glass. Drawers had been opened and emptied of their contents. But Decker’s eyes focused on the center of the floor.

She lay crumpled like a discarded article of clothing, blindfolded, partially nude, her skin bruised and clay-cold. Immediately, he knelt beside her, checked her pulse and respiration. Though her breathing was shallow, her heartbeat was palpable. Quickly, Decker eyeballed the body for hemorrhage — nothing overt. Though the floor was hard and chilled, Decker didn’t dare move her in case there were spinal injuries. He ordered the maid to bring him a blanket, then carefully removed the blindfold and gasped when he saw who it was.

Davida Eversong’s daughter — VULCAN’s owner. He’d seen her picture dozens of times in the local throwaways. Human Interest stories: the spa hosting a Save the Whales weekend extravaganza or a special two-for-one rate to benefit the homeless. Her stunning face gracing the front page of
The Deep Canyon, Bellringer
, arm in arm with a different star every week.

What the hell was
her
name? Everybody always called her Davida’s daughter. Even the local papers constantly referred to her as so-and-so, daughter of Davida Eversong. Her name was something exotic. Lara? Not Lara,
Lilah
. That was it. Lilah. Lilah B-something. So she lived next door to her spa. That made sense.

He could make out her beauty even in her current state. Her eyelids were puffy, her lower lip swollen and cracked. Her neck was imprinted with red indentations, but there were no deep ligature marks around her throat. She had welts over her upper torso as if someone had whipped her.

Decker took out his pocket spiral and started noting the injuries he saw. If she remained unconscious, unable to give consent to be photographed, his record of specific marks would be valuable evidence of the crime.

The poor woman. Her nightdress had been hiked over her pelvis. Some sexual activity had occurred. Decker smelled the musky odor of semen in the room. He finished some cursory notes, then lowered her gown and covered her as soon as the maid returned with the comforter. Smoothing blond wisps off her clammy forehead, he gently touched her cheeks, hoping the heat from his hands would warm her face. Streams of gentle breath flowed across his hands.

He whispered “Lilah,” but got no response. As the seconds passed, her cheeks seemed to take on color. Decker turned to the maid, told her not to touch anything, asked her to wait outside and direct the paramedics. In the background, he could hear approaching sirens.

Brecht! That was her name. Lilah Brecht. Her father had been an artsy German director, his name often bandied about in magazine and newspaper articles dealing with foreign films. With an actress mother and a director father, Decker briefly wondered why she hadn’t pursued a career in the performing arts.

His eyes went back to Lilah’s visage. At least the injuries seemed superficial, her facial bones appeared to be intact. Lucky, because her features were delicate and would have easily shattered under a well-placed blow. She had an oval face, a thin straight nose, high cheekbones leading to an angular jawline that tapered to a soft mound of chin. Making allowances for the swelling, Decker imagined her eyes to be deep-set and almond-shaped.

He heard footsteps approaching, pivoted around, and saw the paramedics cross the threshold. Two of them — a man and a woman, both wearing short-sleeved blue doctor’s jackets. Decker started to rise, but something immediately jerked him back down. A hand.
Her
hand! It had shot out of nowhere, clutching his arm with surprising strength. Grimacing in pain, he knelt down again, trying to ease the pressure. She was grasping his left arm — the one still recovering from a gunshot wound. As he tried to gently pry the fingers off, she increased her vise grip, forcing him to use some muscle to pull her hand away. Then he took it and cradled it in his own.

“Do you hear me, Lilah?” he whispered.

There was no response.

The female paramedic knelt beside Decker. She was young and had short, brown curly hair that accentuated the roundness of her moon face. Her name tag said Gomez.

Decker attempted to free himself from Lilah’s grip, but she wouldn’t let go.

“You seem to have made a friend,” Gomez said, as she shone a light on Lilah’s pupils. Then she checked her pulse and respiration.

“She must be conscious at some level,” Decker said. “She’s just not responding verbally.”

“You put the blanket over her?”

“Yeah,” Decker said. “She was cold and gray when I found her.”

“Shock.” Gomez pocketed the light. “Her pupillary response is normal. Her pulse is weak but steady.” She stared at the face. “Isn’t this… you know… the movie star’s daughter? The one who runs the spa?”

“Lilah Brecht.” Again, Decker tried to pull his hand away, but cold fingers had locked around his palm.

“I think she’s trying to tell you something.” Gomez pulled back the blanket, gave the blond woman’s body a quick check-over. “Lilah, can you hear me? Squeeze…” She looked at Decker.

“Sergeant Decker,” he said.

“Squeeze Sergeant Decker’s hand if you hear me.”

No response.

“Maybe it’s something primal,” Gomez said.

Her partner — a skinny kid with sloping shoulders — came in with the stretcher.

“Can you stay with her?” Gomez said to Decker. “I’m going to help Eddie with the gurney.”

“Yeah. Try not to mess things up for me.”