Crime Rave (10 page)

8:20 AM The Wreckage

J
ust four miles from where Ripper Ransom sits in the Roswell Institute, the sun has risen over Charles Wallace Crane’s now-flattened Hollywood hill. It’s clear to the crime scene investigators that nothing else remains but dirt and ash. That there were thousands on this very site just hours before is almost impossible to believe. There is no more to be done, nothing left to find in the swirls of dust that rise from barren earth.

As the CSI techs leave the scene, the police detail follow, needed at the Beverly Center DNA collection lab where a riot brews, fueled by sleep-deprived parents and clashing socio-economic backgrounds. Patrolmen pass dozens on foot headed to the site, carrying votive candles, flowers, photos and the crosses people put by the road at scenes of drunk driving deaths.

The crime tape ringing the site makes a slapping sound against the trees as it starts to come undone. Whatever Los Angeles decides to do with the wreckage, for now it will serve as a cenotaph. A living memorial.

8:30 AM Spruce-Musa Hospital

T
he security detail’s unlike anything the staff has ever seen. The fourth floor is now the exclusive property of the LAPD, with policemen stationed at every entrance and exit, emergency or otherwise. Likewise, the floors above and below, as well as the lobby are locked down. The back hospital entrances are locked, with specific orders that nobody is to come and go from anywhere but the designated spots. Anyone who’s not LAPD or hospital must all but offer up their firstborn to get in; they’re asking for so much paperwork, it’s not even worth trying.

Still, the paparazzi flock every which way, a neverending horde of photo-hungry zombies, rather than the flesh-eating variety.

Clearing the fourth floor in anticipation of the twelve new patients was a feat itself. Some of those patients, like Mr. Barryman, whose triple bypass led to a stroke and then some, existed on only the most tenuous of links to life, and moving them is a dangerous business. Spruce-Musa is doing LAPD a favor, they don’t need a lawsuit for their trouble.

Today ages Nurse Pratchett a decade, and all because Chrissie Klein got herself knocked up and has her morning sickness all day long.
I should have taken that early retirement when they offered it last year.
Twenty-twenty hindsight. Pratchett sighs as a policeman knocks into her again. Next time she’s going to stick him with a needle just because. Not a china shop. A hospital, dammit.

Red Feather is on the phone with CSI Mazzotti. Hangs up, turns to Günn. “Stacey Chang’s on her way over with the lab results on survivors’ DNA. She should be here any minute.”

“Let’s see what she says and then figure out who to start interviewing.” Günn flashes Red Feather the second smile he’s seen in weeks. He’s taken aback, but accepts it.

“Sounds like a plan.” Red Feather closes his eyes and has a flash of the vision that overcame him during The Event: the stone circle of beings, chanting in a language that seemed older than sound, the unreal blue that must have been heaven. He’ll never look at the sky the same way again. He opens his eyes and Günn is staring at him with a raised eyebrow. Red Feather shakes his head.
It’s nothing.

Günn shrugs in response.
I could care less, weirdo
.

Behind the detectives, a stack of VHS tapes and camera on a tripod wait for them to begin, free space for answers. The elevator opens. Stacey Chang flashes her laminate and tries to walk past the cop on duty. He puts out his arm, holding her back and grabs the ID, studies it like it’s a lost teaching of Jesus.

Detective Red Feather walks over. “Bruce, man, chill. She’s LAPD, here to see us.”

“She’s not a badge, sir. Just doing my job.” Patrolman Bruce resumes the position, arms crossed over his sizable chest, scowl fixed back in place. He’s missing his kid’s baseball game for this bullshit. Bunch of rich white kids get themselves killed and everyone jumps.

Chang walks into the nurse’s station, the satchel at her side banging against her left thigh. “There a quiet place we can talk?”

Günn looks over at Nurse Pratchett, who nods and gestures for them to follow. “The waiting room is empty now that all the patients have been moved. It’s soundproof.”

As they move toward the room Stacey Chang starts taking out sheaves of papers from her bag, leaving it deflated in the process. Nurse Pratchett shows them to the door and turns to leave.

“Nurse,” Red Feather asks once his partner and Chang enter the room and sit down. “How’s the bird girl?”

Pratchett smiles. “She’s writing away in there. I had to bring her a second legal pad.”

Red Feather returns the smile. “Did she eat?”

Pratchett nods. “She asked for thirds.” Pause. “Don’t wait too long to go see her. She won’t ‘talk’ to anyone else but you. So she said in one of the notes she passed me for more gummy worms.”

Red Feather pats Nurse Pratchett on the hand and nods a goodbye; Nurse Pratchett goes to call her son’s caregiver to check in.

Red Feather sits opposite Günn and Chang, leaning forward. “So, Chang. Hit us.”

“This is some nutty stuff I’ve got here.” Chang looks embarrassed. She clears her throat and begins. “One of the survivor’s DNA sample led to a Karma Devi, person of interest in the death of Kevin Danville.”

Günn frowns. Chang continues, “He went to the ER where it turned out he’d been castrated, they estimated about six to seven days before. Too embarrassed to call the police. He died shortly after of sepsis. Karma Devi’s was one of fifteen samples found in his apartment, including blood. You could have seen that apartment from space after we Luminoled, a whole hell of a lot of blood and semen. Danville had a history of sexual assault priors, but no convictions. The women in question withdrew their charges and a good number of them left LA after reporting the assaults.”

“Okay,” Red Feather says, making some notes in his black pad. “What else?”

“We got another hit on family members of a Lily Green, the—” Chang coughs, “one-eyed girl. Mother Rosemary Green deceased of cancer, father in San Quentin for the rape and battery of the mother along with dozens of others. Xavier Marsh. The Parking Lot Rapist. He waited for her by her car, knocked her out, raped her inside her own vehicle, and left her preggers.”

“Jesus,” Red Feather breathes, his old partner was the one who’d closed that case a dozen years ago, collaring the guy as he attempted to assault an undercover police officer in the parking lot of the Glendale Galleria. Red Feather remembers it well; he was dating that undercover officer at the time. She was a mess after. Got off the beat, happier behind a desk pushing paper. Last he heard she was married and had a couple kids.

“With the damage he did to Lily’s mother, it’s amazing she was able to conceive at all. The rape kit details are brutal, man.” Chang hates these kinds of cases. She often delegates them to others. The kind of things that make her wish she’d never gotten into forensics at all. Men who hate women. Makes her sick.

“What a way to come into the world,” Red Feather winces.

“To end up with one eye to boot. Strange.” Günn shakes her head.

“As Mazzotti mentioned,” Chang continues, “either the mom was into herbalism or she was poisoned during her pregnancy. This isn’t a naturally occurring birth defect. And it doesn’t end there: Lily Green is also a person of interest in a murder.”

“No shit. But she’s just a kid. How old, fifteen?”

Chang nods. “She was at an orphanage and they say that she killed the night-shift supervisor.” Chang clears her throat. “They say she, um, turned him to stone.”

Günn laughs, an awkward barking sound. “Nice one, Chang. One point for you. Now what really happened?”

“Look, ma’am, that’s what they told me. Analysis of his, um, cremains indicate that they were the supervisor. Teeth and bone fragments. She escaped from the orphanage right after and nobody had seen her since. They had an APB out on her but no hits.”

“So what, she killed him with her magic ray gun? What kind of freakshow are they running over there? And don’t ever call me ma’am.” Günn and her temper.

“Look Detective, I don’t conduct the events, I analyze the evidence, ok, and the evidence is solid. We just don’t know how she managed it.”

“Fucking hell.” Günn runs her hands through her pixie hair, mussing it totally and then smoothing it back down. “What else?”

“Three of the samples, the lizard woman with the tail, the cyborg chick with the metal bones, and the girl with poison skin who smells like oleander came up as classified files but I have never seen or heard of the department before.” Chang hands over the screenshot of the logo, a pyramid with one eye adorning the top.

“This pyramid is on dollar bills.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s gotta be some government agency because they are linked to our database. But when I had the tech guys try trace it, we came up with nothing.”

“Send copies of this to Pete and have him disseminate up the ranks.” Red Feather hands back the printout.

“Already taken care of, sir.”

“Any other hits?”

“The middle-aged lady, the screaming one we found whole at the scene? She was also a person of interest in a murder.”

“Are you shitting me?” Günn wants this day to be over. Now.

Chang shakes her head. “She is one Teresa Chalmers.” Pause as she shakes her again, feeling like a bobbly-head doll. “So weird. Okay, so her husband, Bob Chalmers, was molesting her seventeen-year-old daughter, Lara, for what seems to be a long time. The girl had evidence of two abortions—we don’t know if they were the father’s or not—but file says she was wild, promiscuous.”

The detectives look on, eyebrows raised.

“One night apparently the husband drugged Teresa Chalmers. Sedative in her milk. She slept through the whole thing. Her husband had some kind of stroke, possibly while raping his daughter, and died. Daughter killed herself in the bathtub shortly after. Razorblades.”

“Oh my God.” Günn pauses. “Why was she considered a person of interest?”

“Bob Chalmers had no health problems, local PD found it strange that she slept through the whole thing. No idea why those yokels found that strange: Teresa Chalmers’s tox screen came back with ten times the suggested dosage of Valium. It’s a wonder she didn’t go into heart failure from that alone. They thought maybe she killed them both once she found out about the, um, sexual relationship. Set it up to look like his accidental death and daughter’s suicide.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Red Feather muses.

Günn’s nose for lies smells absolutely nothing.
It can’t be. It just can’t.
Her own desperation, now that she can smell.

“I always wanted to write a book. I think I’ve got everything I need for a bestseller.” Chang smiles, a sad smile that tells Red Feather she’s had some bad sex in her past too.

“Any other bombshells?”

“We IDed the DJ, but not from the DNA. He’s got no record. Visual ID, his poster is all over the city that he was headlining the party. Key slot right at midnight.”

“No ‘person of interest’ in his file?”

“Not exactly, but his girlfriend Liria Fairchild did go missing last year. In his statement on file he said she broke up with him and took off with another guy. Didn’t know who. Her parents are convinced he’s lying, but no evidence to back anything up.”

“Fairchild as in
the
Fairchilds?” They own most of Pasadena.

“One and the same.” Chang puts the files in order and hands them over to the detectives. “Here’s all my reports.”

Red Feather hands her his card. “You hear anything about that logo you call me right away.”

“Last thing.” Chang looks back and forth at Günn and Red Feather. “Before I got locked out of those three encrypted files I caught a glimpse of their DNA results and I tell you what—those three are decidedly not human. Couldn’t put it in the report because I’ve got no proof. But I tell you, when I saw their cell structures,” Chang purses her lips, “I almost peed myself. In theory, there is nothing in our known universe that looks like that. If I were you, I’d start by interviewing those three because I’ve got a feeling they aren’t gonna be in your custody for much longer. Someone was notified when their DNA showed up in our system. My spidey sense tells me whoever is behind that pyramid logo is already on their way to collect them.”

Red Feather and Günn exchange a glance. “Good tip, Stacey. Thanks again for all the help.” The detectives rise in a collective sigh and Chang nods. Too much has happened already and it’s only just revving up.

Red Feather has another memory surge—the vision of the heavenly circle of chanting beings.
Maybe Chang is right,
Red Feather thinks,
there is a bestseller in here somewhere.

Günn clears her throat. She wastes no time on feelings, especially for potential murderers, no matter their age or circumstances. What she can think is:
Potential alien life forms in our custody
. In spite of her pragmatic and scientific worldview, the truth about aliens has always been Günn’s most secret passion. For the first time today, she feels a flickering of excitement as the world changes.

8:45 AM LAPD Headquarters

P
olice Captain Ward Anderson is in the eye of a shitstorm. Conjunctivitis here he comes.

“How could you have let an incompetent like Detective Murphy, without ONE SINGLE commendation under his belt, even go near the perpetrators of the biggest terrorist act our nation has ever seen?!” Agent Dilbert Linus from the FBI’s elite Red Team—the group called in during emergency situations that answers directly to the FBI head—feels like he’s about to have a heart attack. Or stroke. Or embolism. Or all of the above. He takes a deep breath pushing his hypochondria to the side and continues shouting. “I mean, my God, man! This is the fucking Los Angeles Police Department, not the sheriff’s office of Deliverance, Idaho! How how HOW can I be dealing with this level of…” Linus stops, not wanting to say the word incompetent again. Loses his train of thought.

“Listen, Special Agent—” Anderson says, meek as a lamb belying his physical stature, which towers over the slight Linus. Linus raises a finger up for silence. Train of thought still lost. He exhales with a boom.

“What, then? What have you to say for yourself,
Captain Anderson
?” As if it’s his alleged name.

“Look, sir. I did not give him the go-ahead to interview that suspect.” Anderson’s voice raises a decibel level, the pounding in his chest makes his eyes water. His jaw aches.

“Come again?” Linus cannot fucking believe what he’s hearing.

Anderson sees his job security, pension, his entire life going up in smoke. Numbness trickles down his left arm. “He went in there of his own volition! Christ on the cross, I would never have let that half-wit even near those guys. I
specifically
told him to stay away, that he wasn’t even on the Crane Massacre task force. The asshole went all John Wayne.”

Linus is floored. Add seizure to the list of things happening inside his body. “Are you so blissfully unaware of the reality of this situation, living in your LA bubble?!”

Anderson looks down, his head throbbing. “Agent Linus, you have my deepest apologies. You can’t imagine the morning this has been, the things I’ve seen. The moment I heard what he’d done I put him under arrest for obstruction of justice. He’s waiting for you in lock-up.”

“And why was nobody guarding the suspects?” Linus’s heart pounds so hard he can barely hear himself think.

Anderson loses his cool. “They
were
guarded! But Murphy is a homicide detective! Nobody told them not to let anyone in because who the hell would have thought anyone
would
go in there without consulting with the FBI, CIA, the goddamn president of the United States?” Anderson starts seeing flashes of lights.

“Almost thirty-five thousand people lost their lives last night,” Agent Linus also continues reeling from the news. “That means there are close to seventy THOUSAND parents out there mourning their loss. Double that and you get all the others affected. This is the single most horrifying thing that has happened to our nation and what is your response? To send in a half-retarded nepotistic shit to interview one of the suspects, allowing him to lawyer up in the process? STAGGERING!” Now Special Agent Linus starts seeing spots, too.

“For the record, I repeat I did not, DID NOT give Detective Murphy the go-ahead to interview the suspects.” Anderson slams his fist on the table.

Linus jumps, his eyes slits as he glares at Anderson. Linus takes a deep breath. “Effective immediately, this is a federal case. And you are under unpaid suspension pending an Internal Affairs inquiry. Your security escort is on its way.”

Captain Anderson feels a grotesque pain in his chest, an explosion. His face pales as he grabs for the desk that falls away from him. He collapses on the floor.

Linus feels his imaginary embolism, stroke, blindness, fading. “Oh fuck.” He drops to the ground, checking Captain Anderson’s weak pulse. “I need an ambulance!” Linus shouts as his cell phone rings. “He’s had a goddamn heart attack!”

“This better be fucking good!” Linus barks into the phone as he undoes Anderson’s tie and loosens his collar.

“Special Agent Quatro, the CIA interrogator, is en route,” says the voice on the other end of the line. Agent Dilbert Linus’s embolism, stroke, seizure returns.