Body on the Backlot Read online

  “To tell you the truth, I have to thank you because today I collect fifty bucks. I told them you didn’t crack. You’re a tough guy.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d had odds laid on me. I was beginning to feel like a racehorse. When I went on board with Pacific Homicide, everybody in my unit said I wouldn’t last long, that I cared too much. Bets were laid down that I wouldn’t make it six months. But here I was, higher in the ranks than many of those who’d wagered against me.

  “I appreciate your vote of confidence, but tough ain’t always the answer,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, tell that to the bad guys.”

  “Really, huh.” I agreed. “What do we got today, anyway?”

  “Dead girl. Not from around here. St. Louis. Looks like a sex fest in there.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Gadgets, dungeon stuff?”

  “No, cozy. A real love nest.”

  “Like you would know.”

  A pained expression shot across his face but then he recovered, back to business.

  “This one don’t even seem dead. It’s like lookin’ at a big doll. A big pretty doll, no kiddin’.”

  “Who does that black dog belong to?” I asked.

  “What black dog?”

  I looked around, but the dog was out of sight. I shrugged and gave him a feeble smile.

  “It doesn’t even look like a homicide to me,” he continued.

  “No? Then what is it?”

  “Recreational drug overdose, some lethal cocktail. Kids these days are into ecstasy and all that designer shit. It’s not like we need Specials to come crashing in to figure it out.”

  “Maybe they just decided to give me an easy one. You know, my first day back and all, and maybe it didn’t hurt that I’m from St. Louis. Her parents are heavy hitters, so don’t take it personal. We’ll make a big deal over the tragic death of their daughter and everybody can go home with a job well done.”

  “Okay. Right. Make your stats look good.”

  “Later,” I said, immediately unhappy about how I had framed it. Why was I so quick to respond to his peevish complaints? Why did I feel I had to care for his precious ego? I made my move away from him and toward the crime scene.

  “You’ve heard that there’s three types of female detective?”

  I turned back to him with exaggerated reluctance, or maybe it wasn’t exaggerated.

  “Your morning joke?”

  “Nope, no joke.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the three types of female detective?”

  “Nympho, lesbo, and psycho.”

  “Very clever.”

  “Which one are you?”

  I snorted and considered. “I think I’ll have to go with psycho.”

  “It’s not as interesting as the other two, but I see your point.” He grinned his big teeth at me. “Welcome back,” he said.

  “Yeah. Is Van Chek in there?”

  He nodded. “We already filled him in on all the details.”

  A breeze blew off the ocean as I followed a stone path through the sand to the front of the house and breathed in the smell of sea air. Once in front of the house, I stopped for a moment and took in the expanse of ocean. I spotted the black dog making its way down the beach. A wave slammed against a big rock beside the house and sprayed me in the face and shoulder. It was oddly invigorating.

  Another one of LAPD’s finest was putting up the yellow crime tape. Heavy in the middle, with rosy red cheeks, he looked like a young W. C. Fields. The tape slipped out of his grip and the yellow ribbon blew up in the air. It flew and dipped, snapping over my head. I grabbed it and handed the plastic strip back to the detective and held up my badge, and he waved me in.

  “McKenna,” he said.

  “Joan Lambert,” I answered.

  I wiped my sunglasses dry on my shirt and pressed sea-wet curls behind my ear as I pushed open the front door. It was a golden wood, carved in geometric shapes that fit together. One of a kind, custom living. You see it a lot in Special Section.

  I entered the foyer and immediately got the “love nest” feeling Trevor conveyed. The place had a pleasant smell of incense. The decor was hip, sexy, with textured satins and silks amid jungle patterns and tropical plants. The constant crashing of the surf against the foundation pilings was unnerving. Yet the overall feeling of the place was “hideaway.”

  My partner, Gus Van Chek, Detective, third level, was tall and not a bad looker. I’d known him for a good ten years. In his late forties, the women were still major crazy for him. He strode toward me into the foyer from the living room on long legs like a big gray panther.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  I nodded, glad to see his thin rugged face and pepper-gray hair.

  “What I want to know,” he said, “is how can people live with that water slapping back and forth all day and night.”

  “I guess they must have a thing for the ocean.”

  My eyes were drawn to an African mask on the wall. I liked it. Gus followed my gaze.

  “It’s a Moon Goddess dance mask,” he offered. “Probably from Upper Volta.”

  “Moon Goddess?” There were several carved circles and white paint around brown and black saucer eyes. “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody told me, Joan. I know. Maybe you should go to a museum sometime.”

  “You mean one of those world culture digs you frequent?”

  “Couldn’t hurt. I’ll invite you next time I go.”

  He gestured toward the living room as if he were the host in his own home.

  My eyes took in a clean hardwood floor and came up the side of a maroon velvet couch and settled on the pale flesh of a young woman. The short skirt of her green cocktail dress was hiked up around her hips. She wore no underpants. The position of her body was sensual, one arm above her, beckoning. Her long red hair triggered a reaction in me. I almost hesitated to approach. It was as though I might disturb and awaken her. Gus was right behind me.

  “‘He saw therein a maiden of the greatest beauty. She lay as if asleep and was wrapped in her long hair as in a precious mantle.’”

  “Brothers Grimm,” I said. “Never known you to quote fairy tales.”

  “I still have a few in me.”

  We shared a moment of remorse for the girl we didn’t know.

  A dead body usually looks dead, the life energy gone. In this case, like Gus had said, it was as though this one would wake up with the right kiss. Maybe she’d been dreaming and had stretched her arm up above her. Except for her dress being hiked up, it was the pose of a glamorous forties film star. “Looks like she’ll wake up, sashay out to the sand, and take a stroll,” said Gus. “Her name is Autumn Riley.”

  Even dead, Autumn Riley was a breathtaking woman. I bent over and gently opened one of Autumn’s eyes. She was wearing colored contact lenses and her bright emerald gaze stared back at me.

  “Paramedics pronounce her?” I asked.

  “Yes, a young guy. He just left, got another call, an accident on PCH.”

  “Did he seem pretty sure about that?” I asked.

  “About what?”

  “About her being dead, Gus.”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s dead, all right. The coroner will be here any moment.”

  There was still sand on her bare feet from her last walk on the beach. I did a cursory survey of the room, too peaceful for a crime scene.

  “So, who called it in?” I asked.

  Gus sighed. “Pacific got an anonymous call. Somebody screaming Autumn Riley’s been murdered, then they gave this address.”

  “Did you find a goodbye note?” I asked.

  “Nope. No drug paraphernalia, no alcohol, no pills, no weapon, no sign of forced entry, no indication of robbery or struggle.”

  “Hmmph, curious.” I moved toward the kitchen as Gus continued his report. The garage door that connected to the kitchen was open and I could see a brand-new silver Audi T. It looked like a high-tech bug.


  “Anything in the car?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Gus. “She just bought it a week ago. Maybe she didn’t like it and was so upset she committed suicide.”

  I shot him a disapproving glance. “How much mileage on the car?” I asked.

  “Eight hundred miles.”

  “Was there any indication that she was emotionally distraught about anything?”

  “Nope. She was one lucky little girl from the looks of things. There was an empty bottle of wine and two recently used wineglasses. No food whatsoever in the icebox, just condiments, diet soda, and nail polish.”

  Gus held out a box of latex gloves and I pulled on a pair as I browsed the kitchen, noticed the red sediment of the wine still in the wineglasses, opened several cabinet doors, and looked for dog food but found none. No bowls on the kitchen floor for water or food either, so the black dog was definitely not hers. The sink, icebox, and dishwasher were all stainless steel. A matching blue designer microwave, toaster, and blender accented the blue tile.

  In the bathroom, a package of NoDoze was opened on the counter, but there were no other drugs or prescriptions. A still-damp green bikini was draped on a towel rack. A makeup bag had a powder compact, blood-red lipstick, liquid eyeliner, and mascara. Autumn Riley must have had a charmed life because she didn’t even have aspirins.

  The bedroom was decorated in reds and purples, in the middle of which there was a tussled bed but nothing to imply foul play. Her pillow was scrunched on the side, which might mean she liked to hug it when she slept. I do. Or maybe she had clutched the pillow during an ecstatic moment of lovemaking, which seemed more likely somehow. A large round mirror was framed in the same golden wood as the front door. A fierce dragon was carved into the top, a forked tongue licked through long teeth, its eyes huge, round, and all-seeing. A matching wooden dresser with a similar carved dragon had several stacks of eight-by-ten glossies on it, each a different professional photo of the vic. Most of the shots were sensual and elegant images, except for one in which Autumn posed in leather and wore dark makeup.

  A primitive doll constructed of cloth and wood sat beside the stack of photos. Hand sewn, the eyes were blue buttons from an old peacoat and a red ribbon was tied around the doll’s waist like a belt. The black-and-white fabric of the doll’s dress was an African print. I’d always heard that people stuck pins in voodoo dolls, but I didn’t find any.

  Next to the doll was a jewelry box carved out of soapstone. When I opened it, I found a wide assortment of different styles of jewelry: an elephant hair bracelet from Africa, an antique ring with a large square ruby, a necklace with a symbol scratched in pewter, and an ankle bracelet of wooden beads.

  An address book on the dresser still had the price sticker on it. There were only a few numbers in it. I bagged it and checked the shelves of the closet, reaching into the corners, then searched through the dresser drawers. In the bra drawer, I came across a flyer promoting what I assumed were musical bands. DE SADE’S CAGE was printed in bold red across the top, but there was no address or phone number. Finally, I went back in the front room to find Gus.

  “Why are we calling this a murder, exactly?” I asked.

  “Because of the nine-one-one call, that’s it. That’s why,” he said.

  “I want to hear the tape,” I said.

  “It’s being sent over to Parker Center. By the time we get back it should be on my desk.”

  “Male or female?”

  “The caller? Male, at least as far as they could tell.”

  “I want to go out on the roof.”

  “You still do that?” asked Gus.

  “Why not? Doesn’t hurt anything.”

  On the roof, you have a perspective you can’t get inside. You can see a layout of the area, escape routes. Once, I spotted a system of paths created by neighborhood kids over the years. We followed the path and found traces from our crime scene. Turned out, our main witness was a thirteen-year-old girl who grew up in the neighborhood. “You go ahead,” said Gus.

  I didn’t know if a designer put the big rock right next to the house or if the architect had planned the house to sit beside it that way, but I was grateful in either case. I scrambled up the rock and carefully stepped onto the Spanish tile roof. I stood there looking out over the tops of the houses in the Venice Canals and considered all the other people in the neighborhood inside their homes, drinking coffee, eating breakfast, untouched by murder. Even up here, the surf pounded, insistent, right up through my feet.

  The image of Autumn Riley’s fairy-tale face, pale white skin, and vibrant red hair stayed in my mind’s eye as I looked toward downtown and saw the city skyscrapers emerging from a blue-gray fog. It was one of those days when the city of Los Angeles was a mirage. There were no earth-shattering clues on the roof, but, up here, I made a pact with Autumn Riley that I’d solve this crime wherever it took me. Commitment is an important aspect of Special Section because often the obstacles seem insurmountable. I made my way down the big rock.

  Once inside, I went directly to the body. I took Autumn’s outstretched hand in mine for a moment and regretted it immediately. Her cool fingers evoked a long-unforgotten sorrow within me. My mind wandered back to my mother and an antique hand-wringer washing machine.

  I held the dead girl’s hand tenderly, as if I could comfort her. But it was too late. The beast had got her. Like it had got Mama. I shook it off, forcing myself to focus on where I was and the specifics of this crime.

  I decided that she could have done hand commercials. Or more likely hair commercials. That would explain my feeling that I had seen her before but couldn’t really place her. I noted the green color of her nail polish. There were no needle marks between the delicate fingers or between her toes. Trevor and McKenna came into the room and stood in the back, careful not to get in the way. Their presence annoyed me and I found myself consumed with a protective feeling toward the body. I lifted Autumn’s long hair away from her face and checked behind her ears.

  “That hair alone could drive a man gonzo,” Trevor said hoarsely.

  Since he was standing there like a big goon, he might as well be useful.

  “What was the temperature?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?” said Trevor.

  “The temperature of the body?”

  “Paramedic said ninety-two degrees,” said Trevor. “She’s been dead for an hour, maybe.”

  “And what time did the call come in?”

  “Five forty-five a.m.”

  I checked my watch, but since I forgot to strap it on that morning, I merely glanced at three beauty marks that dance upon my wrist. I cursed myself.

  “And what time is it, Gus?”

  “Seven.”

  “So, the call came in before she died?”

  Trevor gave me a look and said, “The tests can be off by a half hour or so. You know that.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “We’re going to have quite a few visitors,” Gus said to Trevor and McKenna. “Since Media Relations hasn’t shown, we’ll need you both to handle the front line, okay?”

  Trevor turned and walked out. McKenna mock saluted us and followed suit.

  A police photographer entered the room. Craig Jones. He’s a black guy, slight of build, kinda shy and quiet. He nodded at Gus and me, saw the body, and started snapping pictures.

  Rose Torres, a Filipino woman from the crime lab, showed up just then as well. I was so happy to see her I could have given her a big hug, but touchy-feely emotions are frowned on in my position. After a quick handshake and a hello, she gazed at Autumn for a moment, then turned her inscrutable face to me. I’m used to being taller than most women, but I tower over Rose.

  “Make sure we get the wineglasses in the kitchen,” I said.

  Her eyes went to the hardwood floor. Rose doesn’t waste much energy on words.

  “Usual search for fibers,” I said. “I need to know where the doll in the bedroom came from. Take it apart, whatever you find insid
e, I want to know all about it.”

  She nodded and moved her short thick body into efficiency mode.

  Gus pulled out a cigarette but didn’t light it.

  “What do you think of that voodoo doll?” he asked.

  “Maybe she’s got a tourist’s fascination with that culture. Could be she meant to take some sort of Shaman’s trip, downed a bad mix of hallucinogens, and never made it back.”

  “A Shaman’s trip?” asked Gus. “Like a spiritual quest?”

  “Could be. I knew this guy who worked bunko squad. Arrested an urban shaman, a woman. She nearly killed four wealthy Brentwood babes with some sort of vision quest potion. They went into a collective coma, so to speak.”

  “You mean like a group thing.”

  “Yeah, when they found them they were conked out on the floor, holding hands. At first they thought it was a cult death exit.”

  Rose was in the kitchen inspecting the wineglasses, holding them up to the light. The bedroom lit up from the flash of Craig’s camera. These morose activities of investigation were a strange kind of comfort and yet, something was different for me this time.

  “What kind of drug?” asked Gus.

  “I think…barbiturates mixed with peyote or something from South America.”

  “What happened?”

  “When they finally woke up from their comas, their money market accounts were empty.”

  “Good con.”

  “At least they were still alive.”

  “This one is dead, Joan. It’s a damn shame. But she’s gone.”

  I went to the window and spotted the newly arrived news crews, all microphones, cameras, and notepads. Each team raced against the others to the crime scene yet landed ensemble, a small riot making its way toward the bungalow just as the blue Coroner’s truck pulled up.

  “And here comes her ride with the first group of mourners.” Gus shook his head.

  Outside, the wind had picked up, handing out bad hair days to the media birds that scrambled and buzzed around the Coroner’s truck. McKenna and Trevor had to hold back the pressing crowd to allow the coroner’s staff out of the truck. Looky-loos gathered on the beach and around the perimeter of the house. The tumult of the reporters as they fired questions was an aggravating sound-mix.