Hollywood Hills (13 page)

He opened the door and began babbling. When he became intelligible, he said, "I heard her scream once and I called you right away! But you got here so fast, somebody on the third floor must've called first! And a few minutes later I heard her screaming again but this time it sounded like she was coming down the stairs and a man was also screaming curses and he was coming down and I got scared and locked my door!"

Georgie Adams shined his streamlight onto Louis Dryden's face and saw the entry wound clearly. He holstered his pistol and grabbed his rover, calling for a rescue ambulance for Cindy Kroll. He also reported the officer-involved shooting that would bring dozens of people to the apartment building before the night ended.

Viv Daley turned Cindy Kroll onto her back in case CPR was possible. But the young woman's chest was slashed wide open, exposing her breastbone. When Viv saw that Cindy Kroll's eyes were open and her mouth was twisted into a rictus of violent death, she didn't bother to feel for a pulse.

Viv looked at her partner, who averted his eyes from hers, and he said to her, "You better check on the babies. I'll secure the scene here."

Viv's heart was hammering when she got to the landing of the third floor. She felt dry-mouthed and light-headed, and she could hardly believe that she had just fired her weapon outside the police pistol range. Though it was her first time, it had happened so fas
t a
nd there had been such an adrenaline surge that she hadn't had time to feel much fright. But she was feeling it now.

She held up her hand, and in the light from the third-floor hallway the hand looked palsied. She had a streamlight in her other hand, and when she got to the door, she found it wide open. There was no sound from within and she was suddenly more afraid than she'd ever been in her life.

Viv put her hand on her pistol grip, but it wasn't for personal safety. The hand was acting reflexively, doing what a cop's hand does in moments of fear. Any personal threat to her was past, yet she was weak and feeling nausea from the overwhelming fright sweeping over her, from dread of what she might find in there.

Viv Daley crept into the apartment. She stepped gingerly into the cluttered living room and was so instantly relieved that her legs almost buckled. The thirteen-month-old was safe in her playpen, her face tear-streaked but she wasn't crying now. She wore a white jersey with a pink duck on the front, and a diaper, and she was sitting and staring at a brown teddy bear on the floor of the playpen as though in a daze.

"Hello, sweetie," Viv said to the little girl, who turned and looked at her in confusion.

Then Viv rushed hopefully into the bedroom and found the baby boy. He was wearing only a diaper and was dangling from the upper rail of the crib from a cord to a cell phone charger that had been tied around his neck. His face was purple and his eyes were shut tight.

"No!" Viv shouted, not even aware that she'd spoken.

She jerked the cord from the crib and her fingers slipped twice before she untied it from where it was digging into the soft flesh of the infant's neck, and she said, "I knew it! I knew it!"

And then she thought, This baby's dead. What am I doing? This is a crime scene and this baby's dead!

Still, she lifted the infant, thinking, He's so light. He's so small. She put the baby into the crib, and for no reason she could late
r f
athom, she covered him to his wounded neck with his cotton blanket.

Viv stared at the dead baby and thought, All evening I imagined this. I knew Dryden could get in from the roof. I knew it. Why didn't I act on it? Why didn't I push the boss for a stakeout? What kind of cop am I?

The baby girl in the next room started crying then and was standing, holding on to the playpen rail. Viv went to her and picked her up, and she looked at Viv in shock and confusion and said, "Mommy."

The toddler wrapped her arms around Viv's neck, and Viv felt the silky blond hair against her cheek, and the child said it again: "Mommy."

Viv said, "Hush, baby, hush." And she began rocking her back and forth and didn't hear Sergeant Murillo, who appeared behind her along with Snuffy Salcedo and Hollywood Nate, who remained in the hallway, looking in through the open door.

Viv was a lot calmer now and she said in a monotone to her sergeant, "In there. I found the baby hanging by the neck from the crib rail. I hoped he might still be alive so I took him down. But of course he wasn't. I put him to bed."

Sergeant Murillo looked at her and entered the bedroom for only a moment before he returned.

He said quietly to Viv, "Don't touch anything else. A homicide team and SID will be here very soon to process the scene, and FID's also on the way. They'll separate you and Adams and it'll be a very long night of questions, from FID especially, but this is obviously an in-policy shooting, so I don't want you to stress over it. Just tell them exactly how it went down."

"I knew this might happen," Viv said quietly to Sergeant Murillo. "It's almost like I could see him coming in from the roof."

After hesitating, Sergeant Murillo looked at his officer and said in an even quieter voice, "Adams told me all about that, and yes
,
the ladder's still in place on the carport roof where the dead man left it. But you didn't know this would happen. It was just what-if speculation on your part. The place looked perfectly secure. You don't have a crystal ball. Nobody could've anticipated this, Viv. You can't blame yourself. The dead guy's to blame. Nobody else."

Viv Daley put the tot in the playpen and she immediately began crying and held her arms out to Viv saying, "Mommy, Mommy."

"She thinks you're her mommy," Sergeant Murillo said. "Dear lord."

Snuffy Salcedo, still in the common hallway with Hollywood Nate, said, "Jesus Christ. This is too awful."

Nate said nothing and Snuffy turned and went downstairs. "I gotta get outta here," Viv said to Sergeant Murillo.

"Viv," he said. "You and your partner will have to be separate
d w
hile you wait for FID. We're gonna see a lot of people around her
e i
n a little while. We'll transport the little girl."

/When Viv got to the doorway, Hollywood Nate stood aside for her. She turned once to look back at the child in the playpen who held out her arms to Viv and between sobs said more urgently, "Mommy!"

Viv descended the stairwell to the lobby floor and found four cops from Watch 3 keeping neighbors away from the crime scene tape. Snuffy Salcedo was talking to Flotsam and Jetsam, who were in the street directing traffic and waving the criminalists' van from SID into a parking space. Several of the uniformed cops whispered to one another, an indication that word had spread quickly about what Viv Daley had found in the third-floor apartment.

Flotsam said somberly to Jetsam, "Dude, remember how the Oracle always told us that doing good police work was the most fun we'd ever have in our entire lives?"

Jetsam said, "Yeah, and Viv and Georgie did real good police work when they lit up that fucking maniac."

"True," Flotsam said, "but I don't think this night's going on their desktop in the category of fun."

Georgie was standing on the sidewalk outside the tape with the watch commander, Lieutenant O'Reilly, who was awaiting the imminent arrival of homicide detectives and the administrative team from Force Investigation Division, as well as the coroner's body snatchers. But when he saw Viv emerge from the building, he left the lieutenant and approached her.

She looked at her partner, at the anxiety in his eyes, and Georgie said to her, "I never thought it could happen, sis. Honest to god, I never thought for a second that anything like this could happen."

"Please, Gypsy, shut the fuck up," Viv Daley said.

Chapter
Nine.

RALEIGH DIBBLE WENT to work for the Bruegers two weeks after his employment interview, and Leona Brueger was so pleased with him that she decided to leave with Rudy Ressler for Tuscany the following week. Julius Hampton did not attempt to sabotage the job for his employee despite his disappointment and irritation at losing Raleigh on such short notice. When Leona's attorney phoned Julius Hampton for a reference, the old man truthfully said that Raleigh had been a splendid butler, cook, driver, and companion. He added that he hated to lose Raleigh but he could not compete with the money that Leona was offering.

The thing that clinched it with Leona Brueger was Raleigh's work in the kitchen. He demonstrated what he could do during an impromptu luncheon for Leona and a few friends, including Rudy Ressler. Raleigh prepared a simple coq au vin, minus the diced pork in case anyone had religious dietary issues. Leona Brueger's Guatemalan housekeeper and cook, Marta Sandoval, was sixty-six years old and planning to retire anyway, since the house was going to be put on the market. She told Leona Brueger that she was not jealous of the new man and was delighted to receive three months' severance pay. She planned on moving to the home of her eldest daughter in East Los Angeles.

Raleigh decided during that impromptu luncheon that Julius
Hampton had been right about Rudy Ressler. The schmuck actually complained that Raleigh's quiche appetizer had a "pinch" too much salt in it.

Pinch this, you phony, Raleigh thought, but replied, "I'm so sorry, sir. Can I get you anything else? A fruit and cheese plate, perhaps? A few sips of delicate Chablis with a hint of strawberry will cleanse any salt from your palate. May I get you a glass?"

Raleigh went to the butler's pantry and poured the director a glass of screw-top Chardonnay that he used for cooking and placed it before the director, saying, "It's an amusing little Chablis, sir. The hint of strawberry is balanced by an essence of mint, I believe."

Rudy Ressler passed the glass under his nose, sampled a tiny sip, and said, "Yes, I can taste the strawberry and the mint, but it's not overpowering." He sipped again and said, "That's a fine choice, Raleigh. Thank you."

Raleigh Dibble was willing to put up with just about anything in that house, especially after Leona. Breuger promised him an unspecified bonus when she returned from Tuscany. She told him that she would then begin preparing the house for what she called "the big fall sale of Casa Brueger." Nigel Wickland told Raleigh that when she felt the urge, Leona Brueger could be "crazily generous" and that the bonus might be substantial.

Raleigh didn't even mind Leona Brueger's eighty-seven-year-old brother-in-law, Marty Brueger, who stayed in the guest cottage almost all of the time, watching the E! network with his dentures in a glass beside his chair grinning at him. The wizened old coot never so much as entered the main house unless he was looking for whiskey, so Raleigh tried to make sure that the liquor cabinet in the cottage was well stocked.

Marty Brueger was shrunken from age and spinal stenosis, and he spent most of his time in his chair with his legs elevated on a pillow. Marty had a nest of wiry hair with some surprising sprouts of black growing among the dull gray strands. He wore thick glasse
s t
hat made his brown eyes appear enormous and he looked like an ancient frazzled parrot. Leona Brueger told Raleigh that her brother-in-law had been an energetic skirt chaser until recent years, and his uncontrolled libido had been the cause of expensive paternity lawsuits when he was a young man, and sexual harassment lawsuits when he got old.

She said to Raleigh, "Just make sure Marty has some T and A videos to look at and good whiskey to drink, and he'll be no trouble."

One of the first things the old man said to Raleigh was "Can you make good chili? Since Chasen's closed down, nobody in this goddamn town can make a decent bowl of chili. I miss Dave and Maud Chasen like I miss my prostate."

"Mr. Brueger," Raleigh said, "you're in luck. Back when I was in college, I worked one summer as a busboy at Chasen's. I kept my eyes open and my palate on high alert. My chili won't disappoint you."

Of course it was a complete lie, but Raleigh had made enough chili in his day that he figured he could please the geezer, and he did.

Raleigh had everything well under control by the time Leona Brueger and Rudy Ressler actually left for Italy. Marta Sandoval stayed on for only two days after her employer was gone, which was just long enough to tidy up the house and change all the towels and bed linens. With the help of two grandsons, she moved all of her clothes and belongings from the housekeeper's quarters to a rented van, and she was gone. And then, with Marty Brueger tucked away in the cottage most of the time, Raleigh Dibble had the entire Brueger estate to himself, and it was sweet.

The security system was sophisticated but Raleigh learned it easily enough. The outside lights and video cameras were elaborate and took a bit of practice. He only had to take Marty Brueger to dinner two times in the first two weeks, once to Musso and Frank
,
of course, and then to the Formosa Cafe. The elderly Hollywood rich still loved the few old hangouts remaining. Raleigh was sure that the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel would be on the itinerary as soon as the old boy remembered clearly that he'd once loved their Neil McCarthy salad.

Marty bored Raleigh with personal anecdotes about all the celebrities in the caricature drawings on the walls of the Formosa Cafe, but Raleigh figured they were lies. He deduced that Marty Brueger was just the slacker sibling of an older brother who had made sure his kid brother was taken care of in old age. Still, Marty Brueger was even less trouble to care for than Julius Hampton had been, so Raleigh had no complaints, and he indulged the old man as much as possible.