City of Fire (29 page)

LENA spotted the gated drive and pulled over. Cutting the engine, she noticed the roadie-turned-security-guard staring at her through a pair of dark shades from the other side of the guard shack. He was sitting on a lawn chair with a magazine, shaking his head and scratching his long beard as if her presence just wrecked his day.

Lena ignored the attitude and looked past the gate. The drive wove through the trees, circling before a house with columns and porches and a slate roof that reminded her of a miniature version of the plantation in
Gone with the Wind.
But this wasn’t a movie, and the location wasn’t set in the deep South. Lena had made the short drive from Okolski’s office to the hills overlooking the Strip on Sunset because she was curious and needed time to think before she drove home.

Something Okolski had said was troubling her. A loose end that wouldn’t go away. If Tim Holt committed suicide as a result of his love for a woman, why hadn’t he told Okolski about her?

Before she left his office, Okolski told her that he had been in contact with Holt and his doctors during his entire stay at the clinic. That his name and number were on record with the facility rather than Holt’s own family in Austin. Okolski had even found the house off Mulholland and held it for Holt until he returned. They were more than business partners. They had become close friends. If Holt had a woman in his life, Lena felt certain that he would have mentioned it. Even worse, if the woman found in Holt’s bed had been someone
he’d picked up or just a friend he fooled around with, then Holt wouldn’t have been brought to the emotional brink and committed suicide after finding her body.

She saw a flash of color and looked past the fountain before the house. She could see Zelda Clemens in the distance, cutting flowers from a garden on the far side of the yard. Her golden brown hair was frizzed out, and she wore a denim dress and leather flight jacket. Although her back was to the gate, she turned suddenly and met Lena’s eyes as if she felt her presence and knew that she was there.

The security guard groaned like a walrus protecting his beachfront property. Tossing his magazine on the lawn, he stood up and sauntered toward the gate.

“This is private property,” he said in a gruff voice. “You can’t park there, lady. Snap your picture and scat.”

The man looked more like an aging biker than anything else. Rough and ready and designed to scare. Lena knew the type and was immune. She also knew that the house belonged to a rocker who’d peaked in the late eighties. Because he’d hooked up with Zelda Clemens, the media returned and his music was no longer hard to find on the radio.

“I’m not fooling around,” the guard said. “Now move out, lady. Time to go.”

He opened the gate and jerked his thumb down the hill. When he stopped at the curb, she glanced beneath his jacket and caught the semiautomatic clipped to his belt. A shiny new 9 mm Glock, right out of the box.

“You got a permit to carry that?”

“Who the fuck is asking?”

She pulled her badge out. “I am.”

His eyes lit up and then narrowed down some, still locked on the badge. “That thing’s a phony. You’re just trying to mess with my head.”

“Let’s see the permit.”

His wallet was chained to his belt. As he unfastened the clip, he sighed and wallowed across the street. Sifting through his credit cards, he found the permit and handed it to her. Lena
glanced at the name, Dennis Miller, then checked the date and passed it back.

“You don’t look much like a comedian,” she said.

“I’m way more funny once you get to know me.”

“I’ll bet you are, Dennis. Where you from?”

“Memphis. Lots of funny people get their start there. You want a head shot, call my agent. He’s listed in the yellow pages under
bullshit.”

At least the goon had a sense of humor. Lena watched him slip his wallet into his pocket, then turned back to the open gate. Zelda was standing at the end of the drive staring at her as if a ghost. Although she hadn’t lost her looks, she didn’t appear to be aging well. Her legs were stick thin. Her eyes seemed lifeless, her face devoid of any emotion.

“Hello, Lena,” she said in a low voice.

Lena nodded evenly. “It’s been a long time, Zelda.”

“Why are you here?”

Lena paused a moment. “Just taking a trip down memory lane.”

“You got a lot of good memories, Lena?”

David’s ex-girlfriend was a strung-out ice bitch. “Yeah, Zelda. I’ve got tons.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Wouldn’t change a thing.”

THE pain was gone. She could thank Zelda Clemens for that. Seeing her. Listening to the woman’s vicious bullshit. Somehow that trip down memory lane revived her.

Lena slid the chest drawer open, searching for the guitar pick amongst her brother’s coins and rings. She was in the bedroom at the top of the stairs. Her bedroom when they first moved into the house. One year after David’s murder, she left the furniture intact, but switched rooms with her brother to clear the air and chase the blues away. She had searched the house for the pick when she moved her brother’s things upstairs. She even braved an entire day in the studio, scouring through all forty-three guitar cases without success.

Although it was possible that her brother hid the pick in a secret place that became lost with his death, she guessed that it had probably been ripped off a long time ago. At one level it was merely a guitar pick with a certain history no one could really document. At another, the heart-shaped disk had been forged out of fourteen-karat gold. Something small and rare enough that someone could easily have slipped it into their pocket if they had a mind to.

Lena remembered the first time she’d set eyes on it. She could still see David holding the pick in the palm of his hand. It had been a gift from an admirer in the business, a legend who showed up one night at a concert and liked what he heard. Over drinks the piece of gold changed hands. The edges were worn, the surface scratched. But what made the pick so exquisite was the work of the artist who had engraved
it. Etched into the gold was an image of the moon, rising majestically from a bed of grapelike clouds. According to David, the moon’s face had been inspired by Georges Méliès and a film made in 1902 entitled
Voyage dans la lune.
As in the film, the man in the moon was smoking a rocket ship the way one would smoke a cigar.

Lena closed the drawer and opened the next.

At first she thought that the housekeeper David had hired stole it when Lena told her she could no longer afford her salary and would have to let her go. It was also possible that Holt took the pick in memory of their partnership. But the more Lena thought it over, the more convinced she became that the thief was Zelda Clemens. Zelda had seen the pick. She would have understood that its value was derived from its past.

Some said that Jimi Hendrix designed the piece and gave it to Muddy Waters as a gift to his legacy. Others said Waters gave it to Hendrix, thanking him for introducing the blues to a middle-class audience so that he could finally make a decent wage playing music. But that was only the beginning. There were rumors that Buddy Guy used the pick for a time before passing it on to Eric Clapton. That B. B. King gave it to David Gilmour, who passed it to Mark Knopfler. That Keith Richards slipped it to Kurt Cobain and somehow the gold piece wound up in Neil Young’s hands. None of the stories were documented. Lena had never heard any musician talk about it in public. Still, if the pick had been stolen, Zelda Clemens was probably the one.

A stray sound skipped off the ceiling and her mind surfaced. Someone was tapping their feet on the pavement outside. Lena moved to the window and saw a Crown Vic in the drive with the trunk open. Novak was sitting on the front steps. His tie was loosened, his dark gray suit crumpled like an empty pack of cigarettes.

She gave the window a knock. When he didn’t move, she hurried downstairs, flipped the dead bolt, and opened the door.

“Why didn’t you ring the bell?”

Novak turned and looked up at her. “I needed a break and
the view from here seemed just about right. The cooler in the trunk’s hot enough to boil dogs in. You got anything to drink?”

She nodded. His eyes were as shaky as his voice. His face so pale that she thought he might be ill. She watched as he rose to his feet and stretched his legs.

“Where’s Rhodes?”

“Glendale,” he said. “We pulled the slug out of the wall at Holt’s place. Tomorrow’s walk-in Wednesday and he wanted to get a head start.”

SID was spread out all over the county. The firearms unit was housed in a building adjacent to the Northeast Division on San Fernando Road. Like every other unit, it was back-logged, at over two thousand cases. Ballistic results might not come for months, even years, and cases were prioritized based on trial dates. Any new case automatically went to the back of the line. In an attempt to cut through the red tape, the lab supervisor designated one day a week when any detective could bring evidence over and work with a ballistic analyst, no questions asked. Since the program had been instituted, the lab had scored more hits on the ATF’s database than any other firearms unit in the country.

“What about Sanchez?” she asked.

“He’s working with a sketch artist,” Novak said. “We can’t ID the fucking girl.”

His eyes glazed over and he headed for the kitchen. Lena had kept a six-pack of Diet Coke on hand ever since she’d learned that he didn’t like coffee and no longer drank beer. She watched him pop the can open and take a long swig. He was unusually quiet and seemed extraordinarily troubled. When he noticed the map on the table, he walked over for a look. Moments passed as he studied her notations and thumbed through the case summaries she’d set aside. She could see him putting it together.

“The murder went down around midnight,” he said without turning. “Same time you made that call over there and no one answered. The temps on both bodies are nearly identical. Gainer says the suicide had to happen within an hour after the girl was killed.”

He was calling Holt’s death a suicide. Lena remained silent, keeping her thoughts to herself as she moved to the couch and sat down.

“The knife used on the girl was found in the dishwasher,” he said. “The autopsy’s scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Barrera wants the same ME that cut open Nikki Brant, and Art Madina’s at a conference in Vegas he can’t get out of. But like I said, Lena, this one’s a Jane Doe. We went through the boxes. No shoes and no clothing. She didn’t live there.”

“What about her purse?”

“We checked her driver’s license. Her ID’s phony.”

“What about credit cards?”

“She didn’t have any.”

His voice trailed off. When he turned to look at her, he couldn’t hold the glance. Instead, he set his Diet Coke on the coffee table and found a chair. When he finally spoke, his voice was extremely gentle.

“What you’re thinking, you can’t think, Lena.”

She kept her eyes on her partner as she mulled it over. Her gut instinct that Holt didn’t commit suicide seemed to have been confirmed. Holt had never mentioned the woman to his friend, and none of her clothing could be found at the house. Whatever Holt’s relationship might have been with a woman carrying fake ID, it didn’t strike Lena that it could be very close. Odds were that Romeo didn’t make this kill. That Jane Doe and Tim Holt were murdered by someone who knew Romeo’s MO. Someone who was trying to bury his motive by writing a double homicide off to a serial killer. She took a deep breath as the possibilities surfaced. She tried to remain calm and control her anger. The list of people who knew Romeo’s MO was short because the keys were never made public. She knew that Novak was smart enough to see this. She also knew that, beyond their friendship, this was the real reason why he’d stopped by. Yet he seemed to be keeping it buried. He was wrestling with it. Fighting it.

“You’re thinking about your brother,” he was saying. “The irony that both he and Holt are dead. If I were you, I’d
be doing exactly the same thing. I’d be looking for the connection. And this gets back to why, at least for now, you shouldn’t be thinking it. You’re looking at Holt, Lena. But Romeo would have been following the girl.”

It hung there. Something to be carefully weighed along with everything else. Romeo following the girl. The possibility that Holt was only a secondary issue, and for Romeo, a surprise that most likely delighted him. The chance, however slight, that Holt’s death wasn’t a coincidence at all. Just bad timing mixed with a heavy dose of bad luck.

“Did you find a note?” she asked.

Their eyes met, but only briefly. Just long enough for Lena to know that she’d struck a nerve. Then Novak got out of the chair, crossing the room to the slider for a look outside.

“Holt was a writer,” she said. “Did he leave a note?”

Novak shook his head. “No. If he did, we couldn’t find it, and we tore the place apart.”

A heavy silence filled the room. She could see her partner thinking it over. She could see the possibilities gnawing at him. He cracked the door open, the breeze striking his face.