The Lost Witness (3 page)

It was the murder rate. He didn’t want it to reach five hundred on his watch. He didn’t want the black mark on his reputation. Yesterday they had been thirteen bodies away from the
gold ring. Now they were only twelve.

It was spin.

The thought of it made her sick and she wanted to end the call. This was about appearances, not people. Numbers instead of lives. The chief and his adjutant weren’t thinking about the
victim at all. They wanted the case closed quickly so that they could shift the focus with the press. If the chief was asked about the murder rate, he could point out that the number of cases
solved had risen. He could manipulate the dialogue, and sweep the murder rate and the victims that went with it under the rug.

“Anything else, Lieutenant?” she said.

“Just one thing, Gamble. You’re a Los Angeles police officer. Act like it. Live the part.”

She heard the phone click. Klinger had hung up on her.

A moment passed. She closed the phone, gazing across the drive at her house. A light breeze was pushing east and she could hear the palm trees rustling over the sound of the engine. She thought
about why she wanted to be a cop. All the reasons she had signed up. She knew that she could handle this. No matter what she was feeling right now, she could handle this.

She switched off the radio, pulled out of the drive, and started down the twisting hill toward Hollywood. Opening the windows, she let the cold wind beat against the seats until the rhythm
finally changed and any thought of Klinger dissipated in the rearview mirror. She could feel the anticipation of working a real case again. But she could also feel the fear.

The road straightened out when she hit Gower Street. As she passed the Monastery of the Angels, she glanced at the statue of the Virgin Mary on the hill, then grit her teeth and floored it all
the way to Franklin. A few minutes later, she was rolling down Hollywood Boulevard and making the turn onto Ivar Avenue.

She could see the coroner’s van pulling behind a row of black-and-white cruisers parked in the middle of the street. Yellow crime scene tape had been stretched across the sidewalk from the
corner on Hollywood all the way up Ivar to Yucca Street. The Scientific Investigation Division truck was already here, backed into the alley and blocking the entrance. When Lena glanced across the
street and spotted a news van and the video camera that came with it, she understood why. The SID truck had been placed strategically to hide the view.

She turned back to the road. It looked like the lot across from the Knickerbocker Hotel had been taken over by the investigation. When she spotted a cop with a clipboard at the entrance, she
signed in and found a place to park.

That feeling in her chest was back, along with a moment of self-doubt that flickered off and on like a lightbulb ready to blow As she started down the sidewalk with her briefcase, she glanced at
the hotel. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio had spent their honeymoon at the Knickerbocker. Elvis Presley had stayed there while shooting
Love Me Tender.
But that was a long time ago. Now it
was a senior-citizen residence for Russian immigrants in a neighborhood that had hit the skids and needed a shot in the arm.

Someone called out her name. When she looked across the street she noticed that another news van had arrived. A third was waiting for the light to change at the corner. She looked for a familiar
face, but didn’t see one. As she turned back, she realized that it had been Ed Gainer, the lead investigator from the coroner’s office. He was waving at her from inside the van.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. “You hear anything?”

“Just the word
Go.
”

He nodded, acknowledging the media. “The chief’s office made the call over the radio. Can’t believe they didn’t use a land line. They should know better.”

Lena shrugged. Of course they knew better. Everyone who carried a badge did. If a radio was used, then the newsrooms were listening.

She swept past the SID truck, wondering why the chief and his adjutant wanted the press here and thinking about the word
trap
again. But as she entered the alley, it almost seemed like
someone had turned off the lights. The entire space was cast in a deep blue shade, the air thick with fragrant smoke from the grill at Tiny’s. Waving the smoke away, she spotted her old
partner, Pete Sweeney, standing with Terry Banks halfway up. A handful of criminalists from SID were waiting off to the side as a burly figure with coffee-and-cream skin worked the crime scene with
his Nikon and a motor drive. The photographer was Lamar Newton, another friend and ally she knew she could count on.

As Lena approached, she followed the path of the camera lens until it became blocked by a trash Dumpster. Picking up her pace, she looked back at the two homicide detectives from Hollywood.
Although Sweeney was a big, wide man with an extra-easy manner, he appeared extra pale and unable to stand still. Terry Banks seemed just as uneasy, the rich color of his ebony skin and buffed head
misted with perspiration in spite of the cool breeze.

Sweeney waved her closer. But when her view finally cleared the Dumpster, she didn’t see a dead body on the ground. Just five green trash bags, the one up front ripped open.

“I’m sorry you caught this one, Lena. Real sorry.”

Sweeney’s voice was barely audible. All she could hear was the din of the city, cut against the rhythm of that motor drive.

She looked back at the trash bag. It didn’t take much to figure out what was inside. Something horrific. Something so horrific the case was bouncing up to RHD.

Sweeney gave her a nudge and pointed to the black-and-white cruiser parked just behind them. A teenager was sitting in the backseat. The door was open, the boy handcuffed. His hair was long and
brown, and Lena could tell from his soiled clothes and worn-out shoes that he was homeless. When he turned to look at her, she caught the zombie eyes and guessed that he was either a religious
fanatic or a drug addict. When she saw his teeth rotting to the gum line, she knew that his drug of choice wasn’t Jesus. It was crystal meth.

“The kid spent the day on planet X and worked up a real good appetite,” Sweeney said. “Best we can figure, he went Dumpster diving about an hour ago—fished these bags out
and thought he’d landed his next meal deal.”

“Merry Christmas,” Banks said. “Enough food to last the week.”

“Who is he?” Lena asked.

Sweeney glanced at the cruiser. “Danny Bartlett, sixteen years old from Little Rock, Arkansas. Ran away last August and ended up here. Only when he opened the first bag he was still fucked
up. No meal deal and no nirvana.”

“Just his own demons,” Banks said. “The fucker freaked out.”

Sweeney nodded. “The guy who runs the kitchen over at Tiny’s heard the kid lose it and made the call. That’s as far as we got.”

Lena turned back to the Dumpster. As Sweeney pulled a bottle of water out of his pocket and took a shaky swig, Ed Gainer from the coroner’s office finally arrived. Lena reached into her
briefcase for a clean pair of vinyl gloves.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

They stepped forward as a group. Slowly, but with determination. When they finally reached the green trash bag, Lena pulled open the plastic, spotted the long blond hair, and tried not to
flinch.

It took a moment for the horror to register. Another moment to catch her breath.

The demons were all here. A young woman in her early twenties. Her body had been dismembered. Everything cut up. Even though her face had been damaged, her eyes were wide open. A bright golden
brown.

Sweeney and Banks stepped away. Lena could hear her old partner taking another swig of spring water like it was a hundred proof. Someone lit a cigarette. As she heard Gainer murmur something to
his maker, Lena turned back to the victim and let it sink in. She understood that this was another look at a place where evolution had reversed course. She wouldn’t find humanity here. This
case would be another walk beyond the last outpost of civilization. And she was without a partner. Flying solo and on her own.

H
er first impression had been the right one.

This was not a crime scene. The alley between Ivar and Cahuenga off Hollywood Boulevard was nothing more than the location for a body dump. A convenient location just three blocks from two
separate entrances to the Hollywood Freeway. They could search every inch of the alley and find no evidence. Not a wallet, a purse, or anything that might resemble a murder weapon.

Lena glanced at a criminalist from SID packing up his kit as she thought it over.

There was no linkage. Nothing found here would point to the perpetrator because the victim hadn’t been murdered here. Instead, this was the place where she had been thrown out with the
trash.

Lena could feel the anger in her bones.

If the perpetrator had made a mistake, she only counted one. The plastic bag the victim had been placed in didn’t match any other bag found in any Dumpster within five blocks. The plastic
was a commercial grade, thicker than any normal trash bag and a good 30 percent larger. Lena’s father had been a welder. The Denver skyline bore its shape and beauty from his work. She knew
from experience that bags like this were common on construction sites. The extra-thick plastic held more weight and was less likely to rip open if the bag contained sharp objects like glass and
nails, or in this case, a young woman’s jagged bones.

Danny Bartlett, the runaway from Little Rock, had stoked up his crank pipe and just hit liftoff when he fished the five green bags out of the Dumpster. Lena had gone through the four remaining
bags with a criminalist, then again with the kitchen manager at Tiny’s. The contents were from the bar and had gone out at 2:00 a.m. last night. According to the employee who tossed the bags,
the trash had been picked up the night before, the Dumpster completely empty. None of the tenants sharing the alley had seen anyone drive through since they arrived at work this morning. So, it was
a safe bet that the perpetrator got rid of the body between 2:00 a.m. and sunrise, then made the short drive north and vanished into the freeway system.

Lena shook it off, stepping aside when she heard the coroner’s van backing toward the Dumpster. Gainer’s assistants had placed the trash bag inside a blue body bag and were zipping
it up. Once the victim was loaded into the van, Gainer handed Lena a receipt for the girl’s corpse. The name of the victim was listed as “Jane Doe No. 99.” Gainer included the
date, time, and address, but nothing else to distinguish her identity. Lena was surprised by the high number, but didn’t say anything. Like the murder rate, the number of unidentified victims
would reset to zero with the new year. Still, the slate would never be clean.

“You’re in luck,” Gainer said. “I just spoke with Madina. He’s changed his schedule. His plane lands at noon in Burbank. You’re in tomorrow afternoon despite
the backup.”

She had been hoping for this. She wanted Art Madina to perform the autopsy, but knew that he was attending a medical conference in New Haven. Because the victim had been dismembered, she was
counting on the pathologist’s expertise.

“Did you bring him up to speed?”

Gainer nodded. “I told him that we left her the way we found her. That what’s left of her is still inside the bag.”

Gainer’s voice trailed off. He had been on the job as a coroner’s investigator for at least a decade. Lena figured that in those ten years he had seen all there was to ever see. Yet,
she sensed something in his voice as he spoke about Jane Doe No. 99 tonight. Something different in his eyes. Something she respected and admired in the man.

“We have to start at the beginning,” she said.

“Madina knows that she’s a Jane Doe. You’re in good hands. It’s all set.”

“Thanks, Ed. And thanks for hanging in this long.”

“No problem. You know that, Lena. What happened to Sweeney and Banks?”

“They took off with the kid. We’re opening the streets and shutting down.”

They shook hands, then she watched him climb into the van and drive off with the corpse. As she turned back to the alley, she shivered in the cold night air and reached inside her jacket for the
chief’s itinerary. This was the first time in the past six hours that she had thought about the chief or his adjutant. For six hours she had been working for the victim, free of the weight of
department politics. She unfolded the paper and moved beneath a street light. According to the schedule, Chief Logan was still at Parker Center. The Police Commission was holding another emergency
meeting on gang violence. Lena remembered seeing a flyer posted outside the captain’s office. A proposal was on the table that called for the appointment of a gang czar, with $1 billion to be
spent on a Marshall-like plan that included gang intervention programs and economic development. Because half the homicides in Los Angeles were now attributable to gang violence, and that violence
was spilling into the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, this was a serious meeting and the chief would be tied up until ten or eleven. If she left now and lucked out with traffic, she might be
able to catch him before the meeting ended.

She slung her briefcase over her shoulder and started down the alley. As she stepped around the SID truck, she heard the press shouting questions at her from across the street but ignored them.
The air felt raw and she couldn’t wait to get the heat on. When she finally reached her car and lit up the engine, her cell phone started vibrating and she checked the display.

The call was from Denny Ramira, the one and only reporter who knew her cell number. Ramira worked the crime beat for
The Times.
Even though they shared a certain history, she was
reluctant to take the call. She stared at the phone for a while, then changed her mind and flipped it open.

“I know this is out of line,” he said. “But I’m freezing my balls off out here and it looks like you guys are packing up. You’ve got nothing to say,
right?”