Gridlock: A Ryan Lock Novel (3 page)

She could have waited outside on the patch of front lawn, she guessed, but she was sure that no one was inside the house. There were no signs of anyone having broken in – no forced locks or smashed windows. Nothing out of the ordinary – apart from the decapitated body in the trunk of her car.

She reached over and turned on the tap, extinguishing the burning red tip of the second cigarette with the jet of water, then rinsing the flecks of wet black ash down the drain, jamming the stub into the waste-disposal unit and turning it on. Then she walked to the front door to wait for the cops.

Another minute passed. A long minute. She rubbed under her eyes, staining her fingers with mascara.

A flashlight swept across the glass pane in the front door, and she started. Then the bell rang. Raven took a couple of deep breaths and opened the door. A lone female patrol officer stood on the threshold. A cruiser was parked at the kerb, its lights dappling the neighbors’ lawns and splashing red over the gaudy Halloween decorations that sat in people’s front windows.

‘Ma’am, you called to report finding a body?’ the patrol officer asked, as her partner came into view from the side of the house.

Raven pulled the door wide so they could come in, noticing as she did so that her hands were still shaking. Suddenly everything tunneled in on her. The red and blue lawn seemed to suck itself up from the ground and race towards her, the silhouetted paper cutouts of spiders, witches and goblins to start dancing at windows. She felt the strength disappear from her legs, and heard, from far away, a woman’s voice: ‘Ma’am? Are you okay? Ma’am?’

Raven was sitting in the back of an ambulance, an oxygen mask covering her mouth and nose. A paramedic crouched next to her. ‘Take it easy. You had a shock,’ he said.

Behind him, the street she lived on had magically transformed into a carnival of flashing lights and uniforms. Neighbors stood on the edges of their perfectly manicured front yards in their robes and slippers watching the show. The Hallowe’en decorations were still there but they seemed more festive than frightening. At the centre of the carnival, the main attraction was Raven’s house. People in paper suits walked in and out of the front door and yellow crime-scene tape was festooned around it like bunting.

For a second Raven wondered what they were all doing there and then the events of the last few hours came back to her in a series of flashes that made her feel lightheaded all over again. She closed her eyes, and sucked hard at the oxygen.

‘She good to talk to us?’

This time when she opened her eyes a man and a woman, both dressed in business attire, were standing next to the ambulance. The guy was African-American, mid-fifties, and had a face that wasn’t so much lived in as forcibly occupied: heavy, hooded eyelids gave way to a wide boxer’s nose, which was offset either side by sports-trophy ears. The woman was a little younger, late forties maybe, her blonde hair cut in a short bob. She had bright blue eyes.

‘This is Detective Brogan,’ said the man, ‘and I’m Detective Wilkins.’

‘We’re from Van Nuys Division of the Los Angeles Police Department,’ said Brogan, finishing off what seemed like a well-rehearsed introduction.

‘Where’s Officer Stanner?’ Raven asked.

The two detectives looked at each other, puzzled.

‘Stanner?’ Wilkins asked.

‘From the Threat Management Unit? Someone’s been stalking me. He’s the one I’ve been talking to.’

Another look passed between Wilkins and Brogan, then Brogan turned away. ‘Just going to speak to the watch commander. Be right back,’ she said, her hands dipping into her pockets as she walked off.

Wilkins watched his partner’s departure, then turned his car-crash face back to Raven. ‘You feel ready to take me through what just happened?’

‘Where do you want me to start? Finding it in my trunk or before that?’

Wilkins cocked his head very slightly to one side. ‘Something happened before you found the body?’

‘Kind of, although I don’t know if it’s connected,’ she said.

She took him back through events at the club. When she said she was stripping, he didn’t react at all. Normally guys, regardless of their profession or in what capacity they were talking to her, showed something. Apparent disgust. Discomfort. A barely concealed excitement. But all Wilkins had said was ‘Uh-huh’, like she’d told him she was a waitress in a diner, then moved her on to the next part of the story. She’d liked him for his lack of reaction, even though the whole time she was speaking he seemed to be studying her, like she was a specimen under a microscope.

When she’d told him about the man who’d banged on her window in the parking lot he’d asked a lot of questions. How tall was the guy? What weight? Any tattoos? Once he was satisfied that she’d given him everything she could remember he’d moved her back on, skipping the trip home and getting to the moment when she’d popped the trunk.

By then the female detective, Brogan, was back and they went into a huddle before pulling in a couple of uniformed cops. Then they wandered over to the house where they stood outside talking.

Raven took a deep breath. She reached up and massaged her temples with the tips of her index fingers. At least Kevin hadn’t had to witness any of this. For that one small mercy she was grateful.

Brogan and Wilkins traded a look. They’d been partners for five years, long enough to develop a shorthand that didn’t require words. They called themselves Minority Report after the science-fiction film. It was a running joke because, between their race, gender and, in Brogan’s case, sexual preference, they’d figured they ticked just about every diversity box the LAPD had.

Finally Brogan spoke, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her right ear. ‘You buying any of this?’ she asked Wilkins.

He looked skywards for a second. ‘Nope, but I don’t see why she would make the call herself if she’d killed the vic. Why not just dump the body somewhere? Drive down to Baja and stick it in a culvert.’

Brogan thought about it for a second. ‘How many of the assholes that we deal with do stuff that actually makes sense?’

Wilkins smiled. ‘Expressed as a percentage?’

Brogan nodded.

‘Between zero and none.’

‘Probably too early to be jumping to conclusions anyway. At least, before we speak to this guy from TMU,’ Brogan said.

‘Gotta work out who the vic is too,’ Wilkins added. ‘And what happened to her head.’

Brogan glanced across to the garage as a camera flash went off from one of the forensics photographers. ‘Think I can answer that one. Buddy of mine from Central told me they had a caper yesterday morning where they found a woman’s head stuffed into a newspaper vending machine down near the Federal building. They thought it was maybe some Islamist shit but it turns out the vic was a porn star. I’ll give him a call, let him know we found the rest of her.’

Wilkins gave his partner a grim smile. ‘This buddy down in Central tell you the vic’s hair colour?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Well, if the carpets match the drapes then we know for sure it’s the same broad.’

Brogan grimaced. ‘I doubt her carpet would help us much. Those gals are usually clean as a whistle down there.’ She paused for a second. ‘Were you on the force for the “Four On the Floor” case?’ she asked.

‘That was the caper with the porn-star guy, right?’

‘Yeah, John Holmes was the dude’s name. He was working as a porn actor, doing well, but word on the street was he got into some heavy drugs. Ended up with him and three of his buddies dead in an apartment. Then there was that whole machete-attack deal a year or two back. Those were porn people too.’

‘What’s that got to do with this?’ Wilkins asked.

‘Nothing directly, but it’s one messed up way of making a living. Drugs, disease, a lot of lowlifes. You survive in that world you ain’t no innocent,’ Brogan said.

Wilkins’s eyes narrowed as he glanced back towards Raven. ‘Which means that she knows a whole lot more than she’s telling us.’

‘I wouldn’t sweat it either way,’ said Brogan.

‘Why’s that?’ Wilkins asked.

Brogan gave another little shrug. ‘Body falls in Van Nuys, head falls in Central. That means the whole package is probably going to land on someone’s desk down at the Police Administration Building. That means this whole caper is NOP.’

‘NOP?’

Brogan smiled at her partner. ‘Not our problem.’

4

Stanner arrived almost a full hour later, his broad shoulders and mass of tightly curled hair visible over the crowd. Raven had met with him twice before, once here at her house and once when she’d taken some of the letters into his office at the Threat Management Unit. She’d liked him. He didn’t look at her like she was a piece of meat or like she didn’t warrant protection because of what she did for a living.

And as the letters had piled up and the phone calls had started, when no one spoke, he’d done more than she’d expected. He’d organized for a panic alarm to be fitted in her home (although she’d had to pay for it), extra patrols to run by at night, and he’d added the address as a ‘special location’ to the dispatch system. They’d come up against one problem, though. Unlike the vast majority of these cases, he’d explained, Raven had no idea who the person stalking her was, and neither, even after months of investigation, did Stanner or the LAPD. The letters and silent phone calls had become the criminal equivalent of chronic back pain, something that wore you down and was always in the background. They were also, however, something you learned to live with. Raven had learned to live with a lot of things.

‘How you feeling?’ Stanner asked.

Raven studied her feet. ‘Tired. Shook up. I’ve had a hell of a night.’

Stanner squeezed a smile. ‘Listen, the SID people will be here for a while.’

‘SID?’ Raven asked him.

‘Scientific Investigation Division. Forensics.’

Raven glanced back to her house. Most of the neighbors on either side had retreated into their homes. ‘Then what happens?’ she asked.

‘There’ll be a homicide investigation, because we believe the body in the trunk of your car is linked to another discovery in Central Division, which makes it more likely that the case will be passed over to the Homicide Special Section of Robbery Homicide to investigate. There’ll be more questions for you.’ He sighed, and rubbed his head. ‘Sucks, I know, but it’s the way it goes.’

‘What about me? Do I go into witness protection or something?’

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t really work like that.’

‘But I’m being stalked. I mean, this is more than some creepy letters.’

‘It certainly is, but the Threat Management Unit doesn’t operate a witness protection programme.’

‘So what are you going to do to protect me?’

‘You have an alarm. We can up the patrols. Your address is on our dispatch system.’

Raven felt her face flush with anger. Why did no one seem to understand that her life was at risk here? ‘You’re doing all those things anyway,’ she said.

‘We can do more patrols.’

‘Some woman is dead in the trunk of my car and you’re going to do more patrols?’

Stanner sighed again. ‘I know it seems inadequate, but we’ve been through this already. The Threat Management Unit can’t offer you close-protection security, or someone to watch over you twenty-four hours a day. We simply don’t have the budget for it.’

Raven thought of being on stage, and the predatory way the men she was dancing for stared at her; she thought of the house and how exposed it now felt; and she thought of Kevin and how she’d do anything to protect him.

The garage door was open and she could see her car, the trunk open, men and women huddled around it, one of them taking pictures, the flash from the camera bringing back the full horror of the body and what had been done to it. She looked at Stanner, who shrugged apologetically.

‘I don’t need more patrols,’ Raven said, her voice rising. ‘I need protection.’

‘I’m sorry. I wish there was more we could do.’

‘Well, if you can’t help me, then who can?’

‘There are lots of private individuals and companies who provide security. The good ones aren’t exactly cheap so I’m not sure how much that would help you.’

Raven bit down on her lip. ‘I have money. But how do I know which the good ones are?’

Stanner looked around nervously. ‘Listen, we’re not supposed to hand out recommendations.’

‘But you know of someone?’

‘He’s from back east, but he’s been out here working. I don’t even know if he’s still around, but if I was in your position, he’d be the guy I’d want to talk to.’

Finally Raven felt she was getting somewhere. ‘So does this person have a name?’

5

Ryan Lock lay in bed, listening to the sound of rocks heaving against the giant wooden supports that held the rented beach house suspended in mid-air above the Pacific Ocean. In his first few weeks in the house with his fiancee, Carrie, the fact that the ocean ran directly underneath the house at high tide hadn’t bothered him. It was only with the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, and the way that the tides now sucked sand from the beach to expose the jagged black rocks, that he had become unsettled.

There was some small consolation in knowing that he wasn’t alone. The dry, hot winds unsettled everything, leaving wild fires in their wake as well as giving rise to the vicious rip tides that clawed away at the sand, dragging it back into the water.

The seasonal winds took their toll on human beings as well. Back in ’84 the howl of the Santa Anas had been pierced by the screams of the victims of Richard Ramirez, the serial killer dubbed the Night Stalker, as he carved a bloody trail across the city. This kind of nightmare manifestation made flesh was rare but still every year the winds brought a sharp, sudden spike in violent crime. Perhaps this was why the original settlers had dubbed the Santa Anas ‘the devil’s winds’.

As the rocks continued to pound against the wood, Lock glanced over to the red digits that burned next to him. It was close to five in the morning. Too early, really, to get up but too late to stay in bed awake.