City of Fire (10 page)

Lena took another sip of hot coffee, trying not to burn her tongue or think about how much time it might take to exit a building from the third floor. The brew was rich and strong and seemed to revive her. She was sitting at her desk, alone on the floor, but grateful for a seat by the window at the back of the room. It was less noisy here and she appreciated the view. RHD was composed of twenty-four desks pushed together in four groups of six. The captain’s office was off the alcove down the center aisle behind her. Lieutenant Barrera’s desk was at the head of the floor facing the entrance and separated by a partition and two sets of three more desks. It was overcrowded. The furniture was fifty years old. Asbestos had been found in the basement down the hall from the Property Room. Three people who’d worked in the building for more than fifteen years had come down with a rare form of cancer.

Lena looked at the preliminary reports on her desk but started thinking about that idiotic woman on the city council again. When the phone rang, she shook off the bad vibes and picked it up, recognizing the voice at the other end. It was Jimmy Kim, her contact at the phone company. Lieutenant Barrera had come through with the warrant for the Brants’ phone records, and she’d spoken with Kim fifteen minutes ago from the Blackbird using her cell.

“I’ve got the list,” he said. “You want me to fax it over, or would you rather use e-mail?”

“E-mail,” Lena said. “How much activity was there?”

“They’ve got two numbers. One for voice and another for data. A call came into the Brants’ primary line at nine forty-five last night, only lasting about eight minutes.”

“Where from?”

“The number you gave me. Brant’s office.”

“What about the rest of the night?”

“That’s it for the primary line. Just the one call. Nothing else went in or out. I’ll send you a hard copy by mail.”

“What about the second line?”

“You’re in luck,” he said. “It’s used for data, and it’s low-tech. They don’t have a DSL line or a cable modem.”

Lena had been hoping for this. If the Brants accessed the Internet with either a DSL line or through their cable company, the connection to the Web would always be on. In order to establish the time the computer was used, Lena would have to rely on the Computer Crime Section, which wouldn’t reopen until Monday morning.

“It’s a dial-up connection,” Kim said. “Someone went online at three a.m. last night and didn’t shut down until five in the morning.”

An e-mail appeared on Lena’s computer monitor. When she clicked it open, she saw Jimmy Kim’s report. She reached for her coffee and took another sip, unsure if the buzz she felt came from the high dose of caffeine coursing through her body or the shot of adrenaline she picked up from the report. The medical examiner had confirmed what they’d learned in the field, narrowing Nikki Brant’s time of death down to 2:00 a.m. The idea that a third-party intruder had spent two hours in the den surfing the Internet after committing the murder seemed ludicrous.

“Thanks, Jimmy,” she said. “I’ve got the report. I owe you one.”

“You sure do. It’s Friday night, Lena. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going home.”

She hung up, leaning back in her chair and wondering how her initial instincts could have been so wrong. The first suspect to be cleared in any homicide case was always the spouse. The first reason, a result of domestic violence. Why hadn’t she seen it? Why hadn’t Novak or Rhodes?

There was the Simpson case, she thought, but there were others. Too many others.

A case in northern California had been making headlines a little over a year ago. A man stood accused of murdering his pregnant wife and dumping her into the San Francisco Bay on Christmas Day. When the bodies of his wife and unborn child washed up onshore, the case went to trial and a jury found the man guilty. Lena had followed the story from beginning to end, along with just about everyone else in the country. Odds were that Brant was watching, too.

She thought about the Teresa Lopez murder and wondered if Brant got any ideas from that case as well. But there were others. A list so long it seemed unimaginable. Last year in Los Angeles a man had been arrested for an even more grisly night’s work. He’d noticed on his phone bill that his wife had made several toll calls to a number outside Oxnard that she couldn’t explain. When she told him that she needed to take a business trip and wouldn’t return until late Saturday night, he grew suspicious and decided to follow her. Although she checked into a hotel, he tailed her to a ranch and, over two days, witnessed her riding horses with another man. The husband drove home and waited. By the time his wife returned, his rage had worked itself into a red-hot flame and he exploded. He used the bathtub and worked on the body with a carving knife for most of the next day. His plan was to flush her down the toilet. His mistake came when the toilet backed up and he called a plumber. The following day a pickup truck arrived at the crime scene towing a horse trailer. After interviewing the driver, detectives realized that it was the same guy the husband had seen riding horses with his wife. She had been planning to give her husband a special present for his fiftieth birthday, a palomino named Freddie. Rather than having an affair, she had been a savvy customer and wanted to spend two days getting to know the horse.

Lena sensed someone entering the floor and turned away from the window.

James Brant was staring at her as he walked down the center aisle with Sanchez and Rhodes. The interview rooms were off the alcove directly across from the captain’s office. As they passed her desk, she tried to read Brant’s face and noted his ghostlike appearance. His tears must have evaporated over the day. His eyes had that zombie look—lost and hollow and ice-cold. His mouth was clamped shut, producing a faint sneer.

For some reason Lena remembered the words Novak had used at the crime scene when she’d asked about notifying Nikki Brant’s next of kin.

Other than us, he’s the only one she’s got.

James Brant didn’t carry himself much like a family member of a victim anymore. Instead, he looked more like an actor, carrying a pocketful of memories in his wrinkled suit to be used as triggers just in case he needed to perform.

KRISTIN Novak stopped before Lena’s desk, handed her the Styrofoam box from the steak house, and flashed a shy, anxious smile.

“You’ve brought me dinner,” Lena said. “Thanks.”

She opened the lid, eyed the steak and salad, and felt that crease working through her stomach again. She was hungry.

“It’s a New York,” the girl said. “We had the same thing and liked it, so Dad ordered you one without a baked potato.”

Novak’s desk was right beside Lena’s. Slipping his jacket on the back of his chair, he remained on his feet and beckoned her for an update on what he’d missed.

“They’re in room two,” she said. “Tape’s rolling.”

“He ask for a lawyer?”

“Not yet.”

“Then he hasn’t figured it out.”

“Maybe,” Lena said. “Or he thinks he’s smarter than us.”

“You’ve been watching?”

She nodded, glancing at the blue, three-ring binder on her desk with Nikki Brant’s name on it. It was the murder book she’d started compiling, sometimes called a blue book. Between bringing a deputy district attorney up to speed over the phone, updating the chronological record, and completing her preliminary reports, she’d slipped up to SID on the fourth floor and taken a look at the monitor. Unfortunately, the interview rooms were not equipped with observation rooms or mirrored glass, so often depicted in the movies or on TV. Once the door closed, the only way to observe an
interview in progress was from the camera and mike hidden in the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling.

“What about DNA?” Novak asked.

“Hairs were found in his comb, but Tito got him that coffee this morning and kept the cup. Samples reached the lab before we got to Pasadena. I called to double-check. Barrera made sure everybody at Piper Tech knows it’s a rush. We should have the results by Monday afternoon.”

Novak seemed pleased by Barrera’s assistance. The lab was overwhelmed with work and seriously understaffed. It took months to get results, not days. Lena could remember working a case out of Hollywood in which she’d sent a request for blood samples to be analyzed but didn’t receive the results until one year after the suspect’s conviction.

“Did you run him through the computer?” Novak asked.

“Two hits for drunk driving while he was a student. Nothing since.”

Novak paused a moment, looking at his daughter, then at Lena. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He walked off, leaving her with the girl and heading for that monitor on the fourth floor. Ordinarily, Lena wouldn’t have minded taking a break and holding the girl’s hand. She knew it would be a long night and that she needed to eat something to keep up her strength. Sanchez and Rhodes had been at it for more than an hour. At a certain point, she and Novak would take over, the teams switching back and forth until Brant either wore down or lawyered up. She also knew that for some reason Novak liked seeing her and Kristin together. That he thought it was important for his daughter to connect with others.

But tonight it felt like an imposition. Lena wanted to finish reading SID’s preliminary report and think through what their findings implied. In spite of the soft ground, no tracks were found in the garden below the open bedroom window. A study of the parking lot at Rustic Canyon Park yielded no new information. Based on the physical evidence, no obvious point of entry or exit from the crime scene could be determined. From what she’d read so far, SID’s conclusion seemed to mirror
their own. Either the perpetrator flew through the open bedroom window like a vampire, or he gained access to the house using his keys.

Lena tore open the bag containing a set of plastic utensils and sliced into the steak as the girl watched.

“It looks like they burned it,” Kristin said.

“Only on the outside. It’s just the way I like it.”

Lena took the first bite, the meat so tender she barely needed to chew. As she tasted the salad, the girl leaned against her father’s desk. Her movements seemed awkward, her mind visibly racing as if she had something to say but was working from a list.

“Dad said you’re busy and I can’t stay very long.”

“Sounds like a dad to me.”

The girl smiled, still nervous, and Lena could feel her measuring her. Kristin had Novak’s blue eyes and sandy blond hair. But any physical resemblance to her father ended there. Her face was angular, striking yet innocent. From the few times they’d met, Lena sensed that she’d inherited her father’s natural curiosity and intelligence but hadn’t had time to refine it. If she could get past her problems with drugs and alcohol, get through her twenties and beyond her parents’ divorce, she would probably end up okay.

The girl checked out the room, then turned back. The bureau remained empty and they were alone.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Lena nodded, taking another bite of steak. The girl grabbed her father’s chair, wheeled it closer, and sat down.

“How come you work here?”

Lena grinned. “That’s a long story.”

“I mean what made someone like you want to be a cop?”

“That’s even longer. Sometimes things just happen.”

“When I was growing up, all my friends hated cops. I was embarrassed about what Dad did.”

“When I was growing up,” Lena said, “I didn’t like anyone I thought might tell me what to do. That’s not necessarily bad, you know. And by the way, no one’s here to tell you what to do.”

“Dad keeps saying that it’s better to get it out of your system early. That people who revolt late in life really get screwed.”

Lena laughed, guessing that what the girl had just said was a direct quote. “I’ve never really heard it put that way. But now that you mention it, he’s probably right.”

The girl fell silent, thinking something over. Lena cut another slice of meat away from the steak, realizing she was almost halfway through. Either the slab of raw meat was smaller than she’d first thought or she was inhaling it.

“Was your brother embarrassed?” Kristin whispered.

The question had a certain sting to it. Lena lowered her plastic fork, the thought of her brother prodding a nerve with deeper roots than hunger.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said. “I shouldn’t have asked. I was just wondering.”

“That’s okay.” Lena turned to the girl, saw her staring back at her. She was leaning forward with her elbows on the desk, poised for Lena’s answer. The question had been an honest one, asked by a curious twenty-one-year-old.

“He thought it was funny,” Lena said after a moment. “He used to tease me and call me his personal bodyguard.”

“But he was a musician. I have every one of his CDs. I read the story in
Rolling Stone.”

Lena knew what the girl was straining to get to. Her brother’s bohemian lifestyle. His use of drugs. But she wasn’t listening anymore. She was thinking about the first day she came home dressed in her uniform. How David laughed when he saw her and hugged her. She found him out by the pool, lounging in a chair with a book and a beer and wearing a tattered pair of jeans. He must have just taken a shower, and she could remember the clean smell of his skin as she held on to him. How he told her that she should take notes and write crime novels the way Joseph Wambaugh, another LAPD cop, had. Her brother had been an avid reader of crime fiction his entire life and named three more cop-turned-mystery-writers he admired. But after an hour, David’s imagination kicked in and he suggested they were the perfect brother-rock/sister-cop
team to rob banks. For the next three days he ran wild scenarios by her, and all they did was laugh. Then he came up with an idea for the movie version of their exploits that he thought might go over well in France. In the end, like everything else in her brother’s life, the story became a song. One of his few ballads. One of his best. Three and a half minutes of music she could no longer listen to.