Trail of Echoes E-Book

Rachel Howzell Hall

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 470

Beschreibung

Detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called to Bonner Park where the body of thirteen-year-old Chanita Lords has been found. Lou discovers that the victim lived in the same building where she grew up and Chanita was clearly exceptional destined to leave the housing projects behind. Not only that but other talented girls have gone missing. When she receives taunting clues that arrive too late to prevent another death Lou knows that it's only a matter of time before the killer comes after her…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Rachel Howzell Hall

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Wednesday, March 19

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Thursday, March 20

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Friday, March 21

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Saturday, March 22

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Sunday, March 23

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Monday, March 24

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Coming Soon from Titan Books

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM RACHEL HOWZELL HALL AND TITAN BOOKS

Land of Shadows

Skies of Ash

City of Saviors (May 2017)

TRAIL OF ECHOESPrint edition ISBN: 9781783296613E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296620

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 20161 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Howzell Hall. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For my mother, Jacqueline, who kept us from being lost

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19

1

AT TWELVE THIRTY ON A RAINY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, I WAS BREAKING ONE OF my cardinal rules as a homicide detective: Never eat lunch with civilians. But on that Wednesday in March, I sat at a Formica-topped table in Johnny’s Pastrami with no ordinary citizen.

Assistant District Attorney Sam Seward had eyes the color of mint leaves, hands that could palm Jupiter, and a mind agile enough to grasp the story arc of Game of Thrones.

I had a crush on Sam.

He liked me, too, even though I associated “bracelets” with “handcuffs” and smelled of gun oil more than lavender. And so when he had asked if I wanted to grab a pastrami with him, I had immediately chirped, “Sure. Why not?” I wanted to have Normal People Lunch with ketchup that squirted from bottles and conversations about March Madness instead of murders, bodies, and blood. More than that, I wanted to have Normal People Lunch with Sam.

And now he smiled at me like the secret goof he was. And I futzed with the belt of my cowl-necked sweater like the nervous virgin I hadn’t been in twenty years.

Outside, clouds the color of Tahitian black pearls and drizzle softened the crimson glare of car brake lights. Inside, the diner smelled of meat and onions, and George Harrison crooned from hidden speakers about the way she moves.

“Elouise Norton,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I cannot believe it.”

I nibbled a sliver of pastrami. “Why not? I do violence all day.”

“Which is why I can’t believe you’d watch a show on your downtime that’s all decapitations and grit for an hour and three minutes.”

I gasped. “You made me watch it.”

He smoothed his slate-blue tie. “Couldn’t talk to you about the Darson case forever.”

Sam was prosecuting Max Crase, the man who had murdered high school cheerleader Monique Darson, her sister Macie, and my sister Victoria. Now recovering from a brain tumor, Max Crase had pled insanity. And well … “insane” was just one word I’d use to describe him.

“Nor do I want to talk about the Darson case now.” I smiled at Sam, then pointed at his face. “You have mustard …”

He squinted at me. “Get it off, then.”

My heart pounded—I loved challenges.

I waited a moment … then leaned forward.

He moved aside sandwich baskets and almost-full glasses of Diet Coke, then leaned forward but only a little. “Closer,” he demanded.

I waited … then obeyed.

His butterscotch-colored cheeks flushed.

With his face an inch away from mine, I parted my lips.

And the bell tower tolled: the ringtone for Lieutenant Zak Rodriguez.

Sam crooked his neck, going for the kiss.

But the bell tower tolled again—louder and crankier this time.

“Sounds official,” Sam whispered.

Going cold, I sank into my seat. “It’s my boss.” I reached for Sam’s hand as my other hand grabbed the phone from my purse.

“Where you at?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked.

“Having pastrami and soda pop.”

“With Taggert?”

Sam kissed my hand before he let go.

“Nope.”

“Pepe and Luke?”

I pushed my bangs off my flushed forehead. “Nuh uh.”

Lieutenant Rodriguez sighed. “Please say you’re not with your ex.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not.”

“Hate to break it up, but you’re on deck. Some joggers found a body up in Bonner Park.”

My ankle holster, stuffed now with my lunch gun, pinched my skin—death had a way of yanking you from Wonderland. “Really? This early in the day?”

“And whoever left it there is one cold son of a bitch.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“He put it in one of those large duffel bags, the kind soldiers carry. And he left it there on the trail. In this weather.”

Outside our window, the wind had picked up, making palm fronds frantic and street signs swing. Back in the calm mustiness of Johnny’s, someone had dropped a quarter into the tabletop jukebox and had pressed E6: Olivia Newton-John asking if I’ve ever been mellow.

“Yeah,” Lieutenant Rodriguez was saying, “and where he left it? Up on that trail? It ain’t the typical boneyard. Anyway, I’ll call Taggert and we’ll meet you over there. Maybe you shoulda had one of your salads today. Edamame and shit instead of all that meat.”

Martha Bonner Park. Hills, trees, valleys—a beautiful jewel in the city’s crown. I jogged, hiked, and fed ducks there whenever I wasn’t watching divers pull guns and bodies out of its murky-green fake lake.

“Gotta go?” Sam asked, eyes on his iPhone.

“Yep.”

“Same here. I’m helping to plan Congresswoman Fortier’s jazz funeral.”

“Saturday, right?”

He nodded. “A second line down Crenshaw. A horse, a brass band, all of it.”

I dug in my purse for the car keys. “How many permits did you all have to pull for a New Orleans homegoing in the middle of Los Angeles?”

He rubbed his face. “You have no idea. And I hear all of NOLA is coming to usher her into the great beyond.” He emerged from behind his hands with a smile. “But I’m glad we had a moment to ourselves.”

I blushed. “Me too.”

Even though this was our first date, nothing else needed to be said or explained. I gotta go. No apology, no weird hostility. He, too, had to keep LA from exploding.

Oh, how I liked Sam.

Hand in hand, we walked to the parking lot, stopping at the light-blue Crown Vic that would stink of mildew until August.

“So you owe me.” Towering over me, Sam rested his hands on my waist.

I tensed, aware of my bulky ballistics vest, hoping that he didn’t think that was all … me. “Owe you? For what?”

“For ending our lunch so soon.”

I shivered—not because of the forty-degree weather. “Bullshit. We were basically done.”

“I wanted pie.”

I straightened the collar of his black wool overcoat. “Fine. You’ll get your pie.”

Then, my freakin’ iPhone caw-cawed from my pocket: the ringtone for Colin Taggert, my partner of nine months.

Sam dropped his hands and backed away from me. “If your case is a dunker, come over tonight and watch something other than a basketball game. You could bring pie.”

“Maybe.”

“You’ll call me?”

“Yes.”

And the eagle caw-cawed again: America was calling.

I plucked the phone from my pocket. “I’m on my way,” I told Colin, slipping behind the Ford’s steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, I watched Sam climb into his black Bimmer.

“The body in the—” Colin sneezed, then sneezed again. “The body in the park. Prepare yourself: it’s a girl.”

Just when you’re trying to be mellow.

2

I HAD ONLY WANTED TO HAVE NORMAL PEOPLE LUNCH WITH A HANDSOME MAN—the first lunch of its kind since divorcing Greg Norton.

“But then you’ve always been a bit of a diva,” Lena Meadows said. She and my other sorority sister, Syeeda McKay, had crammed their heads together to fit in the iPad’s shot.

I had found a parking space close to the park’s fake lake. The millions of raindrops pebbling the Ford’s windows softened the glares of the blue and red lights from patrol cars and fire engines. “Lunch was really … Sam’s so … so effin’ …”

“Say it!” Syeeda shouted. “Hot. He’s so effin’ hot.”

Lena moved her face closer to the iPad’s camera. “So have we broken our three-month dry spell?”

I gave them an exaggerated frown. “No, we have not.”

Lena shouted, “Boo!”

“Pastrami is supposed to be the gateway meat,” Syeeda screamed.

I threw my head back and laughed, long and hard.

“It’s cuz she’s dressed like an Amish settler,” Lena said. “A big-ass sweater, Lou?”

“It’s raining, Lena,” I said. “I could catch cold.”

“But the ex is out of the picture, right?” Syeeda asked.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Sam’s or mine?”

“Both.”

“Yes, for me. As for Mr. Seward, he told me that they only talk about the dog. She has custody, not that she even likes the dog. Or Sam.”

“He’s not ambitious enough?” Syeeda asked.

“He likes being a DA for now. But Rishma wanted to be the mayor’s wife yesterday.”

Syeeda smiled. “You’re seeing him tonight, yes?”

“Maybe. He wants … pie. Hope you don’t mind me missing DVR Wednesday.”

“Only want to see you laughing in the purple rain,” Syeeda said.

“Then I’ll come home really, really late,” I said, skin flushed.

A minute later, I stood near the Japanese bridge in Martha Bonner Park, my heeled boots sinking in mud thick with candy wrappers and cigarette butts, surrounded by cops, firefighters, and paramedics.

“Where you at?” I growled into my Motorola radio.

“Don’t move,” Colin said. “The White Knight’s comin’ to get you.”

I slipped my messenger bag across my chest. “Doesn’t look like a Wednesday, does it?”

No kids swinging from monkey bars or retirees walking the trails. No personal trainers leading small classes of round housewives on a patch of grass. The ducks on the lake had remained, but no preschoolers threw crumbs of stale bread.

“Cuz it’s raining,” Colin pointed out. “You Angelenos don’t do rain.”

A handful of civilians had gathered behind a barrier made of rope, canary-yellow crime-scene tape, and six thousand of LA’s bravest.

Just three miles from my division, and located in Baldwin Hills, Martha Bonner Park was home to gray foxes, raccoons, skunks, possums, and forty-one species of birds. And they weren’t stupid enough to scamper around in this weather. Just us smarter creatures. The 380 acres of land boasted playgrounds, picnic areas, seven miles of hiking trails, and the man-made fishing lake. The park also sat in the middle of the highest concentration of black wealth in the nation. The homes on the park’s perimeter cost thousands of dollars less than their equivalents in Brentwood and Santa Monica—here, you got more house, more land, and maybe even an orange tree. Ah, segregation.

“Lou! Up this way.” Colin Taggert strode toward me. His blond hair lay flat on his head, and his Nikes and the hems of his nylon track pants were caked in red mud. His tanned skin looked pea-green, as though he had been bobbing on a dinghy for three hours.

He pointed at my trench coat, sweater, and heeled combat boots (if Doc Marten and Salvatore Ferragamo had a baby …). “You almost got those right,” he said, pointing to the boots.

“I’m in a good mood,” I said. “Wanna take a chance?”

He blew his nose into a bouquet of tissue. “I was supposed to go boardin’ up in Mammoth tomorrow.”

“A warm cabin sounds really good right now.”

“I invited you,” he said. “We could’ve grilled some steaks. Snuggled in front of the fireplace. Guzzled cases of beer.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Why? So you could give me your cold?”

“Oh, I’d give you something—” He sneezed, then shoved his nose into the tissue.

I grinned. “If this is you seducing me …”

He started back to the trail still wiping his nose.

“Ooh, baby,” I said, following him. “The way you sneeze, and all that snot. Ooh, Colin, you give me fever. I’m getting hot from just being around you.”

Without looking back, he threw me the bird.

We traveled a well-developed gravel road lined with parked earthmovers and green park services pickup trucks. We veered right and onto a red-dirt trail that ran between large overgrowths of coastal sage, eucalyptus, and cypress trees.

I stopped at the large trail marker. “Where we going?”

Colin pointed to trail 5, northwest of the red “You Are Here” dot. “A mile and a half up.”

Dread knotted in my stomach. “Who’d dump a body that far from the parking lot?”

A police helicopter roared across a sky now the color of tarnished silverware. The rain had stopped, but fog rolled in from the Pacific Ocean four miles away. Up ahead, through the brush, forensic lights burned like supernovas. Clumps of patrol cops dotted the trail, and a few uniforms gave Colin and me a “what’s up” and a “good luck.”

“Before I drove over,” Colin said, glancing back at me, “a man stopped by lookin’ for you. Tall, black, older. Didn’t leave his name.”

That visitor had been Victor Starr, the man who had contributed sperm toward my existence and then abandoned the results eight years later. Back in December, he had spent the night wrestling with angels or some crap like that because, after being MIA for almost thirty years, he had showed up on my front porch, expecting hugs, tears, and a heartfelt chat over cups of International Foods coffee.

Yeah. That didn’t happen. I had better shit to do that day, and the next day and the next day and today and tomorrow.

“Second time this week he’s dropped in,” Colin said. “Some dude you meet outside AARP headquarters?”

“Ha,” I said.

“So who is he?”

A nerve near my left eye twitched. “Victor Starr.”

Colin looked back at me again, eyebrows high this time.

“Yeah,” I said. “Really.”

He chuckled. “He’s just like you: he doesn’t know when to give up. You’re Little Lockjaw and he’s Daddy Lockjaw. So sweet—I think I’m gonna cry.”

“And I think I’m gonna vomit,” I said. “Anyway: you said ‘girl.’ Do you mean that in its colloquial, sexist usage? Or do you mean ‘girl’ as in ‘girl’?”

“As in ‘girl.’ Teenager, if you really wanna get technical. Could be the one who went missing last week.”

“Yeah, that narrows it down.” Not.

Just last week, over in Inglewood, a teen girl had been abducted from her driveway; and in Gardena, another teen had been kidnapped by her stepfather. And then there was Trina Porter, the fourteen-year-old stolen earlier this month from a bookstore near my old neighborhood. We had no clue where Trina was or if she was even alive. So again: which girl?

Guess I’d find out soon.

3

WE CAME TO A CLEARING OF LOW GRASS AND MUD WHERE TWELVE CIVILIANS stood around as two patrol cops interviewed each person one at a time. Detective Luke Gomez, plump and short-legged, was snapping pictures of the group.

“Think the monster’s still hanging around?” Colin asked.

“Now that we’re here with our questions and suspicions and nosiness?” I shook my head.

Detective Peter “Pepe” Kim, Luke’s partner, was talking to a light-skinned, middle-aged black man dressed in a khaki-shorts park ranger’s uniform. The ranger resembled Smokey Robinson with his café au lait complexion, short curly hair more gray than brown, and fine nose butched-up with a mustache. He was muscular for an older guy, and, like me, he wasn’t dressed for this weather.

Colin sneezed.

I frowned. “Thought you were going home.”

“L.T. caught me at the door. How was lunch with Seward?”

“Fine.”

“I was picturing you going out with some muscle-head. The opposite of your ex.”

“I did—Lena fixed me up with the Dodger, remember?”

He laughed, then nodded. “Oh yeah. Angry Pitcher.”

I sighed. “Dude needed a Zoloft and a bubble—” My step faltered, and I covered my nose with my hand. “Oh shit.”

Colin reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a little tub of Noxzema. “Since I can’t smell a thing.” He offered me the jar.

The pastrami in my gut soured as I swiped cream beneath my nostrils.

Colin made a sad face. “And you’re wearing such a nice sweater, too.”

We reached the tarp and the victim now hidden beneath a yellow plastic sheet—and guarded by one big man in a wet trench coat.

“Good lunch?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked, his gray eyes squinting at my muddy boots.

“The best lunch I’ve had in a very long time.” I pulled latex gloves from my bag and plucked a flashlight from my coat pocket. I stepped beneath the tarp, then lifted the plastic to find a large, unzipped, green canvas duffel bag. The earth beneath the bag looked different, wet and moist but not from rain. A few maggots wriggled in that strange-colored earth, and some flies buzzed around me. But not a lot of flies. Not enough flies.

Jane Doe’s left leg and foot—size 6 maybe, pink nail polish—were sticking out from the bag and had settled on the dirt. Bare calf … Bare thigh …

I ducked from beneath the tarp. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said.

As I took out my binder, I glanced back at Smokey Robinson the Park Ranger—he was still speaking with Pepe, but now he was also gazing at me.

What did he see? Did he find her?

The man winked at me.

My scalp crawled, and something inside of me shuddered.

“The first responder,” Lieutenant Rodriguez was saying, “tried to protect any evidence from contamination, but in this weather …” He looked up to the wet, gray sky, then pointed his flashlight beam down to the mishmash of shoe prints and trash left in the mud. “And we won’t get any good shoe prints since thousands of people run this trail every year.”

“Maybe that’s why he chose this spot,” I said. “It’s private but still a little busy.”

“Evidence destroyed by the constant flow of traffic?”

“Yep. Where’s Zucca?”

“On his way.”

“You tell him to bring a plant guy and a bug guy?”

My boss nodded.

“The responding officer?” I asked.

“He’s interviewing witnesses,” Colin said, wiping his nose. “So now?”

“So now we grab everybody we can and we walk.” I glanced at my partner. “But you—”

“I’m cool,” Colin said, wanting to blow his nose again but not daring to.

“You have a cold at a scene.”

“I won’t sneeze no more,” Colin promised, wide-eyed and panicky.

I turned to Lieutenant Rodriguez with pleading eyes.

“Taggert, don’t touch nothing,” the big man ordered. “You gotta sneeze or cough or breathe heavy, do it away from the scene.” He regarded me. Satisfied?

My scowl said, Not at all. I pointed at Colin. “Don’t fuck this up. Not this one.”

He blanched. “I won’t. I promise. I’m good. Okay?”

Even if you solved them, child cases—abuse, assault, neglect, murder—snatched pieces of your soul. Some cops, some pediatricians, and some social workers filled those holes with booze and blow. And for those of us totally hollowed out? The barrel of a gun.

So today, if I had to lose parts of myself because some monster committed an act of horrific violence, I refused to have that monster freed from life in prison or the stainless steel table all because Colin’s mucus had tainted Monster DNA.

“If I see one drop of snot from you, I will kick you to the curb,” I warned my partner.

Colin rolled his eyes. “I’m not stupid, Mom. I heard you, all right?”

I glanced back at the park ranger—he knew these trails, the life of the park, peak visiting hours, which areas were more populated and at what times.

And that wink he gave me …

Who the hell winked thirty yards away from a dead girl?

4

NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE WALKING THROUGH HIGH GRASS AND CLOMPING THROUGH mud on a March day boasting forty-degree weather and threatening clouds. But there I was, one woman in a long east-west line of uniforms, detectives, any free hand with a badge, slowly walking together, arm’s length apart, flashlights bright, jaws clamped tight, hoping to find something and expecting to find the worst—nothing at all.

Each man and woman, positioned from the trail to the hillside, had their eyes on the ground. Searching. For a girl’s shoe, a monster’s footprint, a gun, a bloody something that would tell us who she was or who the monster was. Behind us, a bearded videographer recorded the search, and ahead of us a tall black man carried a metal detector. No clicks or chirps emitted from his contraption: No bullets or bullet casings. No calls out. No whistles blown.

It was the cleanest city park in the history of city parks.

We strip-searched down to the large clearing that separated Bonner Park from those million-dollar homes. Then, we returned to the blue tarp, empty-handed and drenched from rain now falling from battleship-colored clouds.

“Well?” Colin asked me.

“He got here,” I said. “And then he left the girl, which means he left something behind. They always leave something behind.”

“Zucca and his crew are almost done taking pictures of the girl for now,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said. “Nothing obvious so far.”

“And the coroner?” I asked.

“En route.”

I sighed. “The monster gets luckier every time we’re en route.”

I wandered toward the tarp, stopping now and then to peer at the hillside and then down at strange whorls left in the mud there … and there, just five steps away from the tarp. I stooped near those whorls, and, since I had no evidence tents with me, I left one of my business cards by each whorl to mark the spot. Then, radio to my mouth, I called Arturo Zucca, my favorite forensics tech, and told him of my discovery. “Could be nothing. Could be everything.”

“I’ll send Bruce and Leslie over to take pictures and imprints,” Zucca said. “And I’ll have ’em take pics of the personnel’s shoes, too. Could be ours.”

It was almost three o’clock, and wetter and colder than it had been all year in this drought-stricken state. Two hours in and we’d only collected a Bazooka gum wrapper, two burned matches, a smashed plastic water bottle, and an orange peel. The duffel bag, Jane Doe, and now these whorls in the mud were my only hopes.

I noted the current temperature—forty-three degrees—then sketched the scene in my damp notebook. Weather-water snuck past the barrier of my cowl-necked sweater and pebbled between my shoulder blades. Those drops became rivulets, trickling down my spine to soak my ballistics vest, sports bra, and, for the most ambitious trickles, the waistband of my wool slacks.

Colin, shivering with fever, sneezed.

“You okay?” I asked, looking up from my sketch. “Shouldn’t you be used to cold, wet weather, being from the Springs? All that snow and ice and Pike’s Peak and whatnot?”

His eyes looked like he was underwater. “I’m not going home, so don’t ask.”

“Just don’t get snot on my scene,” I said. “But if you really start looking like crap, I get to send you home. Deal?”

“Uh huh,” Colin said.

“Lou!” Zucca was calling from beneath the tarp.

I dropped my mask back over my nose and mouth and returned to the tarp.

“How old do you think she is?” Zucca asked.

I clicked on my flashlight and stared at Jane Doe’s half-mast eyes, at the black T-shirt—Abercrombie & Fitch—and at the corn-kernel-shaped birthmark on her right hip. “Thirteen, fourteen,” I said, swiping at the few buzzing blowflies.

“Where are the bugs?” Colin asked.

“These aren’t enough for you?” Zucca snarked. “Good question, though. Anyway, look what I found.” He opened the duffel bag wider.

Green leaves and shiny black berries the size of cherries were scattered around the girl.

“A clue,” I said, a prick of hope in my chest. “Hooray.”

“What kind of plant is that?” Colin asked.

“According to my plant lady,” Zucca said, “it doesn’t grow in this park. She has an idea, but she’s not saying until she’s sure.”

“Her unofficial answer?” I asked.

“Bad-shit berries,” Zucca quipped.

I frowned. “So the monster did her somewhere else then.”

“Yep.”

Colin and I wandered back to the trail to gaze at that east-facing hillside. The dirt, mud, and plants looked flatter, recently disturbed. Chunks of that hillside had collapsed because of the rain, and now gnarled brown roots from sage and other plants were exposed. I pointed to the high grass. “What if he dumped her up there, on the higher slope, in thicker brush. Then, when it started to rain …” My finger traced the route in the air, dropping down to the tarp. “She slid down over there.”

“But how did she get up there?” Colin wondered. “I’m no geometry wiz, and I sucked at physics and the metric system, but that incline seems steep, close to vertical.”

I shrugged. The monster expects me to fail. So many obstacles—from the outdoor setting to the crappy weather. He knew that his tracks were literally covered by rain and mud. Except for those whorls. He had left those behind.

Moments later, a crime tech wearing a Tyvek suit stuck into the mud little yellow flags that led from the tarp, over to Bruce and Leslie huddling over those suspicious whorls left in the mud, and, finally, up the slope.

“When we talk to witnesses,” I said to Colin, “we’ll ask if they saw a man hoisting a duffel bag. And let’s also get pictures of their shoe bottoms.”

I gazed at the homes peppering the other side of the bluff—the residents there enjoyed views of the basin, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Hollywood sign, each nearly invisible in the drizzle. Century City sat to the west, and downtown skyscrapers sat to the east. Down below, cars on La Brea Avenue sat bumper-to-bumper because of the rain and the mysterious curiosity on the hillside involving a police helicopter.

I could also see the Jungle, that dense collection of low-to-no-income apartments that, once upon a time, had been my home. One day, I planned to tell my daughter Natalie about growing up in that ghetto, about gun battles in the alleys that made Auntie Tori, Nana, and me lunge beneath our beds. I planned to drive her past that concertina wire and those iron fences. “See?” I’d say with pride. “That’s where Mommy grew up.”

But I didn’t have a daughter named Natalie. I was a month away from my thirty-eighth birthday, and Natalie was as real as Snow White, and the man that I thought I had loved, was pretty sure that I had loved, but what is love really? was now selling our dream house as part of our divorce settlement.

My stomach cramped—bad memories, too much pastrami.

A low growl rumbled from above—far-off thunder. The northwestern sky over Pacific Palisades flashed with white light.

“Storm’s almost here,” Colin said.

“He left her with the best view of the city,” I whispered. “A place where she’d certainly be found. Why?” I swallowed hard, uneasy now. “I’ll handle the autopsy.”

“Bless you,” Colin said, then sneezed.

Pepe joined us, notebook in hand. His shellacked black hair still hadn’t moved. “How ya feelin’, Taggert?” He didn’t wait for Colin’s response before turning to me. “So Mr. Park Ranger says he didn’t see anyone on the trail except for a few joggers.”

“You take pics of his boots?” I asked.

Pepe reddened. “Did not.”

I sighed. “Anything else?”

He cleared his throat, then said, “The ranger also said that gang-bangers have been hanging around. Smoking, gettin’ high—”

Colin sneezed.

“Dude,” I said to him, “go home. Please? Weather’s only gonna get worse.”

He shook his head. “But what about witnesses—?”

The sky opened up then, sending wanton raindrops that fell without hesitation or modesty. Standing on the highest natural point in the LA basin was the last place I wanted to be during a storm.

“Go,” I shouted at Colin over the roar of rain now pounding the tarp. “We’ll finish up here and wait for the medical examiner to arrive and take possession of the girl. Since I don’t want you dead, I’m ordering you to go home, get some rest, watch TV, then come back in tomorrow. You’ll help catch him. I promise. Cross my heart.”

After a sneeze and a wave, Colin trundled back down the trail.

We would catch this monster.

I knew that like I knew light could not exist without dark.

“So,” Pepe said. A lock of hair finally surrendered and draped across his forehead. “These women said they saw a man.”

5

OTHER THAN THE BUZZ FROM THE CHOPPERS, THE CLEARING SOUTH OF THE CRIME scene was especially quiet for a homicide. No wailing from a distraught mother or shouting from an angry uncle, This ain’t right! This ain’t right! No calls to Jesus. No grumblings about the cops not caring and not doing shit.

The two women who “saw a man” shivered in their wet sweat suits and faux Pucci head scarves. They huddled together beneath a tired pink umbrella that threatened to collapse from this phenomenon called rain. They peered at my head—Lieutenant Rodriguez had yanked off some guy’s LAPD baseball cap and had given it to me to wear.

The thick, dark-skinned woman with the eyebrow stud was Heather Artest.

The other woman was also thick and mixed with some type of Asian. And because she had watched too many episodes of Law & Order, she would only tell me that her name was Cynthia. “Why do you need my last name? I don’t wanna give my last name.”

“Give me a last initial, then,” I said.

“Q.”

“Great. So who saw what?”

“We was walking right over there.” Heather pointed to the trail south of the tarp that ran beneath a canopy of eucalyptus trees.

“And we smelled something dead,” Cynthia said. “But I’m in the forest, so I’m like, ‘whatever, it stank in the forest.’”

“So we kept walking,” Heather continued. “And the more we walked, the worse that smell got.”

Cynthia nodded. “That’s when our girl Vanessa said—”

“Who’s Vanessa?” I interrupted.

“She was walking with us,” Heather said. “She saw the bag first.”

Cynthia took hold of the umbrella. “She’s the one who said, ‘That looks like a person’s leg comin’ out that bag.’ Then, she took some pictures with her phone.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And where is Vanessa?”

“She freaked out,” Cynthia said. “When we found the park ranger, he had one of the other rangers take her down to the community center. She may still be down there.”

“So what happened next?” I asked.

“We kept walking,” Heather continued, “and we got close enough to see—” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand.

“The black girl from the Jungle,” Cynthia said. “Is it her? Is it Trina?”

“We don’t know much yet,” I admitted. “May I ask the obvious question?”

“Why were we walking in the rain?” Heather asked.

“Diabetes and New Year’s resolution,” Cynthia explained.

“And it’s rain, not lava,” Heather said, rolling her eyes.

“She’s from Seattle,” Cynthia announced.

I nodded. “May I see the bottoms of your tennis shoes?”

Cynthia lifted her left foot.

No whorls.

Still, I took a picture with my camera phone.

Heather lifted her foot.

Lines, squares, no whorls.

I snapped another picture.

“Why you takin’ picture of our shoes?” Cynthia asked.

“We ain’t done nothing,” Heather complained.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Just procedure. You were close to the body and I just wanna make sure that any shoe prints we find aren’t yours.”

“Why it seem like a lotta black girls gettin’ kidnapped this year?” Heather asked.

“Don’t know,” I said.

Even though Poor, Black, and Female was my Everyday, this case worried me. One thing, however, did not worry me. I knew for sure that Jane Doe was not my sister. Because Victoria had been found. Finally.

“What about the guy you saw?” I asked the couple. “Tell me about him.”

“He was coming from that direction.” Cynthia pointed toward the tarp.

“Was he carrying anything?” I asked.

“His hands were in his pockets,” Heather said.

“Can you describe him?”

“He was tall,” Cynthia said.

“No, he wasn’t,” Heather countered with a frustrated head shake. “He was, like, five eleven.”

“That’s tall.”

“To Mini-Me.”

“Anyway, he was black.”

“Girl, you need glasses,” Heather said. “You couldn’t even tell what he was cuz he was wearing a baseball cap and this big jacket with a turned-up collar. Black jacket, blue cap.”

“No,” Cynthia said, “it was a black jacket, and a black cap.”

“No, the cap was wet from the rain so it just looked black.”

Cynthia shrugged. “You probably right.”

Then the women looked at me.

“Did the cap have a team name on it?” I asked. “Any kind of marking?”

“Umm …,” Cynthia said.

Heather shrugged. “Can we go now?”

I blinked. “That’s all you can tell me?”

“We gave you specifics,” Heather snapped.

“Right. A not-too-tall, tall man of indeterminate ethnicity wearing a black jacket and a dark baseball cap.” They had described every man in Los Angeles County—but not the park ranger in khaki. “What time did you start walking the trail?”

“A little after eleven,” Heather recalled, “and I know it was a little after eleven cuz my mom had just texted me, telling me that she had picked up my son from kindergarten.”

“And so you’re walking,” I said, “and you got where when you first spotted the bag?”

The two women led me to the slight bend in the trail, right before the canopy of trees.

“And you kept walking?” I asked.

They nodded.

“Let’s walk now.”

And we walked.

“When did you see the guy in the cap?” I asked.

“Right … about … now.” Cynthia stopped in her step.

We had walked eleven paces—and had a clear view of the blue tarp and the trail. There were no trees above to create shadow.

“His shoes were really muddy,” Cynthia said.

“So what?” Heather said with a frown. “It’s raining. They supposed to be muddy.”

“Was he walking fast or slow?” I asked.

“Kinda hurrying but not running,” Cynthia said. “He had his head down and his chin was kinda tucked into his collar cuz of the rain.”

Or because he didn’t want them to see his face.

“And what time was that when you saw him?” I asked.

“A minute or two after I got the text from my mom,” Heather said.

“Did he say anything to you?” I asked. “Speak to you at all?”

Heather shook her head. “He ain’t said a word.”

“Where did he go once he passed you? Did he stay on the dirt trail or did he take that gravel service road?”

The women shrugged.

“Who called 911?”

“I tried to, but my call kept dropping,” Cynthia said.

“So we ran to that road and waved down the park service truck,” Heather added.

“And we told that park ranger what we saw,” Cynthia said.

“And then he called 911,” Heather finished.

“Your girl Vanessa,” I said. “Can you describe her for me? I need to talk to her, too.”

Heather pulled out a phone from her sweat-pants pocket and found a picture of Vanessa: round face, caramel complexion, nose ring, black and pink dreads.

“And her phone number?” I asked.

“Why you need her number?” Cynthia asked.

I sighed and stopped myself from rolling my eyes. “Cuz she may have pictures of this guy. I can keep calling you to reach her, or I can call her directly. Ladies’ choice.”

Cynthia groaned, then sucked her teeth.

Heather rattled off a number.

I thanked them both, then gave each my business card. “And if you see Vanessa before I reach her, please tell her to call me ASAP.”

As Luke took Heather’s and Cynthia’s official witness statements, I headed down to the base of the trail. My feet felt thick and numb in my fancy combat boots, and I’m sure the burning on my chest was a rash caused by my wet sweater. But I couldn’t stop.

I needed to find Vanessa. And I needed to find the man in the baseball cap.

6

VANESSA WITH THE CAMERA WOULDN’T ANSWER HER PHONE NO MATTER HOW many times I called. When I wasn’t calling Vanessa, Victor Starr texted.

I only need 10 minuites.

Hello you are there?

I’m am not a bad man.

I ignored his messages, but texted Sam—sorry, no pie tonight.

By the time I reached the bottom of the trail, the rain had changed directions. Didn’t matter to the crowd now gathered near the trail’s start.

Angelenos retreated indoors when it rained—we melted, Wicked Witch of the West–style, if more than six raindrops touched our skin. On this day, though, we possessed the physiology of gremlins—the crowd grew every five minutes, all, “What’s this about a dead body?”

At least sixty people now stood behind yellow tape guarded by three female patrol cops. Wearing track pants and jogging shorts, the gawkers had already been at the park taking a prestorm jog. But then they had stumbled upon the dinnertime story to tell, and they now hoisted their cell phones high above or before them.

Reporters that knew me shouted questions in my direction, questions that our public information officer would soon answer.

Is it Trina Porter?

Have you notified the family?

Is it gang-related? A drug deal gone bad?

I scanned the crowd in search of Vanessa but didn’t see a black chick with pink dreads. Nor did I spot a not-tall, tall man wearing a dark baseball cap.

Amber Andersen, a field reporter from Channel Five News, was interviewing a portly black man who wore a clingy, suck-you-thin exercise suit. The man kept pointing at the hill and turning away from the camera, and Amber kept turning him back.

What is he telling her? What did he see?

I pulled the radio from my bag and called Pepe. “There’s a guy down here talking to a reporter. Have a word with him, why don’t you?” I gave him the guy’s description. “He’s pointing up the hill as though he was there. Ask him if he saw anyone carrying a big bag. And please remember to get pics of his shoes.”

A brown, one-story building sat fifty yards to my left—the park’s community center. Maybe Smokey Robinson the Ranger had returned to his office. Maybe Vanessa still needed quiet after coming upon a body in a bag and was now sipping cool water from a tiny paper cup.

The downpour intensified as I quickstepped toward the community center. The muck made my boots burp. I took one step too quick, and my legs flew from beneath me. I landed on my ass, and my hands sank into gooey, wet earth thick with dying insects. My anal-retentive gene activated, and before I even thought of standing, I swiped my muddy palms on my pants and trench coat, get it off get it off.

A man’s hand—tanned, strong—reached down from behind me. “At least all of you is covered in mud now.”

Nerves jangled, I said, “Ha, yeah.” I looked over my shoulder to see his face.

“Hi, there.” He smiled to show off perfect white teeth. His. Not purchased. He had olive-colored skin—Black Irish, Spanish, or French—a day’s-growth beard, cocker spaniel–brown eyes, and thick brows that a vain man would have waxed. He was muscular but not meat-head muscular like the Angry Pitcher. He was thisclose to being average-looking for Los Angeles, but attractive enough that I wouldn’t vote him off the island.

On the other hand, he would’ve voted me off immediately—I looked as though I’d pulled an all-nighter at the local pig and crawfish farm.

“Other than the baseball cap,” he said, “you’re not really dressed for recreation. Kick-ass boots, though.”

I accepted his hand to stand and winced as pain sparked up and down my left arm. “I try to slip in the mud at least once a month. Keeps me humble. Close to the ground. Like Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web.”

He retrieved my bag, which had landed in grass, then pointed at my badge hanging on a lanyard around my neck. “You’re a detective.”

“That’s what it says, yeah. Thanks for helping me out.” I took my bag from him, then limped toward the community center.

Kind Stranger walked beside me. “I saw you storming down that trail. You okay? You’re holding your arm.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

He smiled. “I’m a doctor. Hence my concern.”

I stopped in my step. “It hurts when I do this.” Then, I waved my arm as though I was flagging down the last bus out of Compton.

His forehead wrinkled with concern. “Then, don’t do that. Smaller circles.”

“You go up that trail today?” I asked, resuming my journey to the community center.

“Too iffy, with all the mud. On my days off, like today, I jog around the lake. But I saw all the squad cars and ambulances, so I rushed up to see if I could help.”

“The proverbial doctor in the house?”

“Doctor and former EMT.” He blushed, then added, “I did the same after Katrina. And 9/11 and … Haiti. Just dropped everything and … Not by myself. Doctors Without Borders.” He shrugged and offered me a shy grin.

My face warmed. “We have it under control. Thank you again for rescuing me.”

“So is it true?” he asked. “What you guys found?”

I gave him a slow smile. “Found?”

He gave me the same smile. “Lemme guess: no comment on an ongoing investigation.”

I pulled at the center’s door. Locked. I knocked, wincing as my left wrist sparked again.

He frowned. “You should probably get that checked out. Just my humble, professional, Emory School of Medicine–trained opinion.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I will.” A lie. Was I bleeding? Lame? Dead? Cops didn’t do doctors. At least, not in that way.

“Do you know who they found up there?” he asked. “Yes, I’m asking anyway.”

“Don’t know who she is. But at least she’s been found.” I peered past the center’s iron-grated windows. No Vanessa. No Smokey Robinson the Ranger.

“This park seemed so safe,” he said, shaking his head. “And it’s always crowded. Somebody must’ve seen what happened.”

I held out my healthy right hand and we shook. “Thank you for offering free medical advice that will go unheeded until it’s too late.”

“Anytime. So if I have anything to add to your investigation—?”

“You know something?”

He smiled, then said, “How would I reach you, Detective …?”

“Norton. And you’re …?”

“Zach. Is there a law against making shit up just to see a pretty detective again?”

I tapped the puddle beneath my boot. “False reporting. A misdemeanor. Look, I really—”

“What if I wanted to ask the pretty detective out for coffee and conversation? You do like coffee and conversation, right?”

My left arm tingled, and I glanced back at the crumbling hill where my team huddled over a dead girl. Getting picked up a half mile away seemed like laughing at a funeral. Yes, life continued, but damn, could Jane Doe get a moment? And could Vanessa freakin’ call me?

“Thank you for the offer,” I said, “but I really don’t have—”

“Detective Norton!” Amber Andersen had snuck beneath the yellow tape and was now standing a few feet away. “Detective, could I have a moment?”

I frowned, then said to Zach, “Thanks, again.”

“How do I get in touch with you?” he asked. “Seriously: in the clinics, I hear all kinds of random neighborhood gossip.”

I reached into my pocket for a business card. “If you hear anything.”

He studied the card as I tromped back to the trail.

“Good luck,” he shouted.

I gave him a thumbs-up—I’d need all the luck in the world.

7

AT ALMOST SIX O’CLOCK, MY TEAM AND I HAD WORKED THE SCENE FOR FIVE HOURS, and our mood matched the weather: cold, wet, and bitter. The rain had stopped, but another storm front still charged toward us.

“What the hell’s taking so long?” Pepe groused as he lit his third cigarette in twenty minutes. He stood with Luke and me at the lip of the bluff, waiting for deputy medical examiner Dr. Spencer Brooks to finish with the girl.

We scowled at Brooks’s team.

They scowled back at us.

Zucca and his crew had drawn the shortest stick—they had to wait until after Brooks moved Jane Doe to gather any evidence hidden beneath her.

My feet and wrist hurt, and my body ached from wearing a miniholster stuffed with a G42, a ballistics vest beneath a muddy sweater, and a drenched trench coat.

Brooks didn’t care about my aching feet or Pepe’s chain-smoking. He had a job to do, and as an old friend of mine at the coroner’s office said: it’s the best of jobs, it’s the worst of jobs, and it’s the most important job.

Important job or not, a storm was still barreling upon us, and each inch of rain hampered our ability to see the toes of our shoes. A bank of halogen lamps bathed the trail and hillside with pure light and kept the darkness at bay. Those yellow evidence flags noting the girl’s descent onto the trail barely stood upright in the mud and grass.

“We need to get her out of here,” I muttered, still glaring at Brooks’s team.

“I tried scowling. Doesn’t work.” Luke opened a packet of saladitos, then offered me one. “The doc ain’t comin’ out, not now, not ever.”

I popped a salted apricot in my mouth, then checked my phone—nothing from Vanessa.

“I wonder who she is,” Pepe said. “And why the hell is she here?”

“I wanna see that duffel bag.” I reached again into Luke’s packet of saladitos. “Maybe there’s a name or a tag or a company …”

“Think it’s a random drop?” Luke asked.

I readjusted the baseball cap, bristling from the combined stink of my wet hair and the sweat from the cap’s original owner. “Doubt it.”

Truly random crimes were rare. John Wayne Gacy, for instance, had hired many of his victims to work for his construction company. And some of Wayne Williams’s kills had been prostitutes he’d known.

“This monster knows her,” I said. “And I need to find him before L.T. makes me push her to the back burner. Anyway. Pepe, what’s up with the guy in the suck-you-thin suit?”

“A bullshitter. He nearly pissed his pants when I badged him. He was nowhere near this trail. Just wanted his fifteen minutes. And the park ranger—name’s Jimmy Boulard—he’s coming in to give an official—”

“Lou!” Brooks was calling.

Dread settled on my heart like a raven on a bare tree limb.

“Here we go,” Pepe said, killing his cigarette between his fingers.

Brooks swiped at his cinnamon-colored nose with the sleeve of his Tyvek suit. His eyes had disappeared behind the fogged lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Well?” I asked.

“She’s cold but not stiff,” Brooks said. “Dead maybe forty-eight hours. The cold weather and the low number of bugs makes it hard to tell right now.” He gazed at the girl who was decomposing even as we stood over her. He pointed at her darkened left side. “See that?” Then, he pointed to the tops of her thighs, which were darker than her side. “And there? And that?” The right side of her face was mottled. “Differing lividity.”

“Which means what to us?” Luke asked.

“When she died,” Brooks said, “the blood pooled in different patterns. If she had died on her back and had been left in that position—”

“The blood would’ve settled in her back,” I said. “She was moved.”

“A couple of times,” Brooks said.

Didn’t want to hear that. Processing one crime scene was difficult enough, but another scene that you didn’t even know about?

A crack of thunder boomed.

Pepe and Luke glanced at the sky.

My breathing had already quickened. Where did she die? If not here, where?

Brooks aimed his flashlight beam at the girl’s left hand, assaulted now by blowflies. “Flies are here now when they weren’t just an hour ago.”

And more flies, in just that moment, found the girl. The tarp now buzzed.

Brooks pointed to abrasions on her arms and cuts on her leg. “Don’t know yet who or what made those.”

“He didn’t bury her,” Luke said. “How come?”

“No time,” I said. “Digging a grave is hard work. And in this case, the shrubs and leaves worked just as well.”

“Until the rain came,” Brooks added.

Another crack of thunder.

My scalp crawled as I counted. One … two … three … four … And the sky flashed.

“As far as getting latent prints off of her …” Brooks shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have a better chance in a controlled environment.”

“And the probability that we’ll find the monster’s prints on her body?” I asked.

He gave a one-shouldered shrug, then clicked off his flashlight. “We should get going before we’re caught in a landslide. Before any evidence she has left on her washes away, making your job all that more difficult.”

Usually, we spent three days at a crime scene. This park was the worst crime scene possible. Clues were now washing away and dissolving because of rain and wind, while the rest of it was being buried in mud or had been stolen by animals. Bits of evidence, from Jane Doe, from the monster, were being lost every second, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Had it been only six hours since eating pastrami with Sam? Six hours since we lingered at that table, George Harrison and Olivia Newton-John serenading us?

Another crack of thunder … One … two … three … A flash of lightning.

I turned to Pepe. “Pull all the missing persons reports from the last month. She’s a kid—somebody’s missing her.”

“What about the paperwork?” Luke asked with a cocked eyebrow.

Colin usually handled the bulk of incident reports and warrant requests. He was the Mark Spitz of Paperwork. But since he was now collapsed in bed with a temperature of 133, someone else had to do the job … and Luke could barely spell “homicide.”

I groaned. “I’ll handle the reports while I’m waiting for the autopsy to—”

Boom!

Thunder.

One … two …

A light whiter and far more dangerous than the halogens filled the sky.

As a three-person team maneuvered the girl into a protective bag, Brooks came to stand beside me. “I know this took longer than what you wanted, but I needed to take my time.”

“You think it’s Trina?”

He let out a long breath, then shrugged. “I’ll be working on her. Whoever she is.”

“Good cuz this could turn—”

“Political? Don’t most homicides turn political?”

“But we have an especially shitty record right now serving and protecting young black females. And speaking on behalf of young black females, I’m sick to hell of it and when are the fucking cops gonna do something about it?”

“How many missing kids this year?” he asked.

“Stranger, family, suspicious, or unknown missing?”

Brooks said, “Surprise me.”

“Right now,” I said, “there are about 450 kids missing in LA County.”

“And murders?”

“About forty. Only six females, but four of those six were black.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad in a city of 9.9 million people.”

“Six is too many.”

“But how many of those missing children will be found alive?” he asked. “And how many girls get home safely after school each day and live happily ever after?”

Optimism. For cutters like Brooks and murder police like me, optimism was a condition as rare as hens’ teeth. Happy endings? What were those? If I was standing anywhere near you, that meant shit had just gone left, your life had changed forever, and there’d be no happy ending.

8

HAPPY ENDINGS. THAT MYTH STAYED WITH ME AS I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH “LA in the Rain” traffic. Accidents—cars against cars, cars against bikes, cars wrapped around light poles—peppered every third mile, and so it took an hour to reach Syeeda’s Miracle Mile neighborhood. Since the divorce, I had squatted here, walking distance from the Farmers’ Market, the Grove outdoor mall, and CBS Studios. I finally pulled into the driveway next to Lena’s Range Rover and climbed out of my SUV. Rain fell like liquid silk on my face.

Lena snored in the armchair as Syeeda, on the couch, played Mass Effect on the Xbox. Crust from brie-filled sourdough bread sat beside wineglasses stained from Cabernet Sauvignon.

“Looks like you and your herd of goats just crawled from beneath a bridge,” Syeeda said, pausing the game. “Either you and Sam hit it in the backseat of the Porsche, or …”

I clomped over to the love seat and collapsed into the deep cushions. “I feel like sunshine.” I reached for the wine bottle, then took a long pull. I plucked Midnight Rendezvous, my latest bad romance, from between two sofa cushions. On the book’s cover, a woman with long blond tresses rode a dark-haired centaur wielding his giant … wand.

“I can’t believe you like that shit,” Syeeda said.

I found a page, then read, “Daemon sought to quench their loving lusts on that eve, nay that dark, dark night. It was clear that she was just a virgin, a perfect goddess to carry his centaur seed.” I whooped and kicked my feet in the air. “Centaur seed! C’mon, that’s awesome.”

Lena groaned, then turned over in the chair. “Must you cackle so loudly as I lay here, passed out?” Mascara and eyeliner ringed her eyes, but the diamonds in her ears gleamed as bright as Venus.

“So, what did I miss?” I asked, shoving the book back between the cushions.

Syeeda turned her attention back to the game. “Fitz or Jake? Huck be crazy. Melly be schemin’. And Olivia wore this bad-ass coat I want to buy, like, yesterday. And …” She paused the game again, and this time, she placed the controller on the cushion beside her.

“Uh oh,” I said. “Gimme a minute.” In one last pull, I finished the wine. “Tell me.”

“Who gave him my address?” Syeeda asked, eyebrow cocked.

I frowned. “He showed up here?”

“Yep,” Lena said. “He didn’t believe us when we told him you weren’t here.”

My face burned. “I’m sorry, Sy. Maybe Mom gave him … or Greg … Shit.”

Syeeda stared at me, then said, “You need to figure this Victor Starr thing out.”