Charlie called me as we blasted through the gates onto Donovan’s estate.
“I’m on my way, Kate, but I just heard dispatch say the first responding unit was in an accident, broadsided in an intersection. You’re on your own until the other units get there.”
Bernie’s whine of concern turned into a harsh growl as I ended the call. We raced up the driveway toward the residence.
In the distance, we could see a black Mercedes stopped ahead. The driver opened the rear door and Wolf Donovan began ambling toward the cavern. He turned back for an instant, probably seeing our headlights. His blue-green eyes shone in the light like an animal’s. I saw there was a gun in his hand as he slipped away, disappearing inside the cave.
“The fat piece of sludge is heading for the shit bog,” Natalie said.
Pearl slammed on his brakes a few feet from Donovan’s car. We brought our guns out as we ran toward Donovan’s chauffeur. The man’s eyes were fixed on Bernie who was now barking and straining on his leash—my big dog in attack mode.
“He’s in the cave,” the driver said, jumping on the hood of the car. “I don’t want any trouble.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Natalie reach into her purse and bring out something shiny. She waved a pistol at the driver.
“Run for your life and don’t leave a slime trail behind you,” she shouted.
The man sprinted down the driveway. Natalie had gotten at least part of her message across.
I thought about telling Natalie to put the gun away and wait in the car, but it was too late. We heard the music and saw the flash of lights coming up from somewhere inside the cave.
I knew it wasn’t just strobe lights we were seeing. The flashes of light were accompanied by a muffled popping sound. Someone was shooting.
We moved into the cave, following a trail that snaked along the river. Music rose up, a loud, pulsing beat. Strobes and flashes of gunfire illuminated the interior ahead of us.
I felt like I was on some crazy nightclub dance floor. Pearl was in front of me, his body moving in the flashing lights, creating a series of still images that burned into my retina.
I caught sight of Natalie behind me for an instant when the path turned and I was struggling to control Bernie. She was holding what I guessed was Clyde’s pistol in both hands, swinging it from side to side, probably imitating something she’d seen in a movie. I prayed that she wouldn’t shoot me in the back. I heard her shouting, but only made out something that sounded like “motherfucker” and “blubber.”
A few yards from a large pool of water, we stopped. The strobe and gunfire flashes illuminated something out of a nightmare.
Nathan Kane was in the back of the pool, his body halfway out of the water as he casually fired at the naked bodies writhing in front of him. Between the beats of blaring music and gunfire, I heard screaming. I made out two of the victims, Donovan’s son and Zen.
We crouched low behind some boulders and saw Donovan moving forward, down a separate passageway. He entered a glass booth.
The music suddenly stopped and the cave went dark. The shooting also stopped. The Cavern was deathly silent—except for the screaming and Bernie’s barking.
“I can’t see anything,” Pearl whispered.
I was about to answer him when something fell on top of me.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Natalie said. “Lost me footin’. Think I stepped in some kinda bat shit.”
A dim set of overhead lights flickered on. Natalie was trying to pull herself off me. I realized that she had stepped on a dead body. My hands were slippery, covered in something sticky. I felt Bernie’s leash begin slipping away from me.
“Bernie, blieb!”
The German command was lost in the screaming. My partner sprang into the water, heading straight for Kane.
I dove in after him and began swimming frantically. My hand hit something in the water, probably a dead body, and my gun slipped away from me.
I grabbed for Bernie’s leash, turned and saw Donovan standing at the side of the pool. He was staring at me, grinning as he pointed his gun at me. He was about to fire when the actor’s giant head exploded. It flew apart and snapped back, blood spurting, the head almost served from his body.
I turned and saw Nathan Kane swinging his gun around, moving it from Donovan to me. We locked eyes. Then the shooting began from somewhere behind me. I realized it must be Pearl—and Natalie! I held Bernie’s leash and pulled him down as I dove toward the bottom of the pool.
Above us, I heard bullets slicing through the dark water. When I couldn’t hold my breath a moment longer, I surfaced, also pulling Bernie up.
I saw Nathan Kane moving back, his huge naked body slipping over the waterfall as the river washed down into another pool, deeper into the cave.
I swam forward, reaching out and touching something floating through the water. It was huge and bloody. Wolf Donovan’s gigantic body rolled over like an enormous log, water gurgling from what was left of his face. His body then floated away from me.
I turned and saw Bernie. He was paddling, desperately trying to stay afloat. He was no longer barking and moving toward Kane. He seemed to be in some kind of distress. That’s when I saw the red stain flowing into the water.
Nathan Kane had shot my dog!
I grabbed for Bernie, snagging his collar just before he went under. I swam toward the edge of the pool, pulling him along as I went.
From somewhere above us near the entrance to the cave, I heard voices shouting commands and making radio calls. I knew it was the responding officers, but I also knew they were too late to help.
I pushed Bernie up and out of the pool at the same time I saw fingers with perfectly manicured nails coming down into the water.
“I’ve got him,” Natalie said. She pulled Bernie up, removed her blouse, and used it as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. She pushed her pistol into my hand, motioned toward the flowing river of water, and said, “I’ll take care of Bernie. No more faffing about. Stick this down the asswipe’s throat and blow his gob off.”
I took the gun, swam back into the pool, and found Pearl. We made eye contact and then pushed off, moving farther back into The Cavern.
The overhead lights faded as we were washed into the flowing water. The Cavern became a black pit. We swirled down before we were spit out into the final churning pool of dark water.
We tried to orient ourselves, but the cave was silent and dark. The only sound we heard was coming from the upper pool. It was the sound of voices, shouting in agony as the uniforms arrived.
I treaded water and felt Pearl push up against me. Kane seemed to have disappeared. Maybe he had been hit? Maybe he had drowned? Maybe not.
I felt Pearl’s hand on my arm. Then I realized it wasn’t Pearl. Something knocked my gun away and pulled me down, deep into the bottom of the swirling water.
I couldn’t see him, but I knew Nathan Kane had ahold of me. He had clamped onto me and was pulling me down. I was drowning. I fought back, pushing and kicking, but I was no match for the muscular madman who was sweeping me down to my death.
Water seeped into my lungs. Panic set in. The world began to spin. My consciousness began slipping away. I was choking, swirling deeper into the abyss.
I reached out as I was pushed to the bottom of the pool, my hands momentarily brushing against something. It was sharp and long. Then I felt the handle. I had ahold of a knife that Kane must have dropped.
My strength was almost gone but I willed myself to sweep the knife up in a slicing motion. It hit nothing but water. Then I swung it again and again and again. The blade struck something solid. I felt resistance and pushed harder. There was a gurgling, screaming sound in my ears.
Above me I saw lights moving over the surface of the water. I said a silent prayer that I hadn’t stabbed Pearl. I found the last bit of energy somewhere in the deepest cells of my body and pushed off, madly swimming toward the surface.
It seemed forever before I finally broke through the water. I came up, choking and gasping for breath.
Light moved over my face.
I was blinded for an instant. The light moved off and swept across the water. I realized it was a flashlight being held by one of the responding officers. I frantically looked around, again searching for the madman, and praying Pearl was still alive. Then I saw it.
Nathan Kane’s body was floating face down in the pool of water. I moved forward and found Pearl. With his help we rolled the killer over. His body was slack, the life force flowing out as blood streamed into the pool of water.
I turned to Pearl who reached out for my hand. He helped me as I used my last bit of strength to swim over to the edge of the pool.
I looked up into the beautiful face of Natalie who was cradling Bernie in her arms.
“Nice work, sistah,” Natalie said as Bernie licked my face. “The ugly gump is tits up.”
A week after the slaughter at Donovan’s estate I was back on duty. It took a dozen stiches to close the wound in Bernie’s hind quarters. The vet said the bullet had just missed an artery, but that he would fully recover, leaving my partner with a lengthy scar and enough bragging rights to end up with a Medal of Valor.
I’d left Bernie at home with Natalie the first few days after I’d returned to work. She was nursing him back to health on a steady diet of bones.
After sorting out the killing cave at Donovan’s estate, it was determined that twelve people, including Kane and the famous actor, had lost their lives in The Cavern, along with six others inside the residence.
Bon Bon had been wounded but had survived the slaughter. Zen wasn’t as lucky. The bodyguard had been killed in the shooting spree.
Donovan’s son was singing like a fat canary about the drug and sex trade his father had been involved in with Conrad Harper and Nathan Kane over the years. As we’d already figured out, Diamond was cooking the books and laundering the drug money through the porn business.
Bon Bon admitted that he had Zen put drugs in Robin’s car and called the police because he was jealous that Clark said he still had feelings for Robin. He also told us that Clark had been cheating on him with his father. It seems the famous actor’s appetite for all things both edible and sexual was voracious.
The charges against Robin had been dropped. My brother was back at work, trying to mend a broken heart.
I called Jack Bautista the day after our confrontation at Donovan’s estate and filled him in on everything. The DA had dismissed all charges against him.
Jack said that he planned to return to work as soon as he was medically cleared. He had asked me to dinner after he recuperated, but I was noncommittal. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the detective and needed some time to sort through my feelings.
After reviewing the scenes from Donovan’s film, we confirmed that the burial vault showing Carmichael’s date of birth and death was in the recently released director’s cut of the film. The scene had not been in the original movie. We could only speculate that Donovan had inserted the scene in a moment of crazed inspiration.
The forensics team was scheduled to meet with us at the cemetery the next day to look for John Carmichael’s body, even though we didn’t officially know who murdered him. Unofficially, I thought I had a pretty good idea.
Pearl was allowed to sit in with Charlie and me as we interviewed Gloria Stallings. Cassie Reynolds’s mother had been picked up by the Pima County Sheriff’s Office at a homeless shelter and held in custody until we transported her to Los Angeles on a decades old warrant we found in the system for embezzlement. She had worked for a dentist in San Diego for a few months before Cassie was born, and a creative accounting system had allowed her to keep half the monthly receipts.
The RHD detectives assigned to the Cassie Reynolds investigation were behind the one way mirror outside the interview room. Baker and Kennedy were none too happy about getting second crack at Stallings, but Jankowitz had called in some favors for us.
As we settled in, I resisted the urge to smile at the glass and give the dragnet brothers the solo sausage salute as Natalie called it. I went into the room determined to close the case.
“Gloria, I’d like to begin,” I said, “by asking about the early years of Cassie’s life. You told us when we interviewed you before that Cassie went to live with your sister. How did that come about?”
Watery blue eyes darted in my direction before her gaze swept away. “I left John before Cassie was born. I was unemployed for several months, but got a job with Dr. Carson in San Diego.”
“The dentist?” Charlie asked.
Stallings nodded. “I worked as his receptionist and took payments.” She clutched her sides. A tremor ran through her body. “You know the rest.”
“I can understand how a single mother could give into temptation,” I said. “Is that why you embezzled the money?”
“Yes. But after I got fired, I started drinking too much. I decided Cassie was better off living with my sister. That’s when I moved to Arizona.”
“But you kept in touch with Cassie over the years?”
“I tried.” She looked at me, her eyes filling. “She was my only child.”
“What about Mr. Donovan?” Pearl asked. “According to the woman Cassie was staying with before she died, Cassie spent a lot of time at his estate.”
Stallings’s eyes drifted to the mirror, they were unfocused like she was looking through a window.
“My sister did some catering work. She took Cassie with her when she did parties up on the hill. I think over the years Donovan took an interest in her. He allowed Cassie to stay at his estate from time to time. After my sister died, she needed a place to live and Donovan helped her out.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about Cassie’s relationship with Donovan when we talked to you in Arizona?” I asked, my anger surfacing.
“He’s a very powerful man. I didn’t want to stir up any trouble.”
I leaned closer to Stallings and lowered my voice. My patience evaporated. “I’ve had it with the lies, Gloria. I want the truth. That includes everything you know about what happened to your daughter.”
Stallings’s head slumped forward. She sobbed. I gave her a moment, bringing her some tissues and then water. She blew her nose and swept her thin red-orange hair away from her eyes, finally regaining some composure.
“Cassie called me a few days before she sent me the envelope I gave you. She said she found out who murdered her father from Conrad Harper when he was on drugs and drunk. He showed Cassie and Roger Diamond the movie.”
“Valentino?”
“They saw it in Harper’s screening room. Cassie said that Roger had also gotten the information about the past corporations that Harper and Kane formed. He was planning to blackmail Harper. Cassie wanted me to have a copy of the information, thinking it might offer her some protection. Her watery gaze drifted away. “She was wrong. I think that’s why they were both killed.”
Pearl asked, “What sort of relationship did Cassie have with Mr. Diamond?”
“He was sort of a boyfriend, but Cassie knew he was involved in drugs with the others. He was no good. When she found out about the kind of movies he wanted her to make, she left him.”
More tears flowed. I gave Stallings a moment. She had finally told us some of what she knew, but I was sure there was more—much more.
“Thank you for telling us the truth, Gloria,” I said. “I have just a few more questions. When we talked to you a few days ago, we told you there was a police officer who was arguing with John Carmichael the night before he disappeared. Do you know if that man was Marvin Drake?”
Her voice took on more resolve. “I doubt it. Drake sometimes hung out with John and the others, but he wasn’t part of their group. There was someone else.”
“Someone who was in law enforcement?” Charlie asked.
Stallings nodded. “A man named Carl Brasher.”
I looked at Charlie and then back at Stallings. I remembered seeing Drake and the deputy chief together at the police administration building. “What was Brasher’s role in everything?” I asked.
“He helped Harper and Kane take care of anyone who was a problem.”
“Like John?”
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath and stood up. I glanced at the mirror but my thoughts weren’t on the RHD detectives on the other side of the glass. I saw the reflection of a broken, empty woman next to me who was at least partially responsible for the death of her only daughter.
I turned back to Stallings. “But Carl Brasher didn’t kill John, did he Gloria?”
She didn’t look at me. Her head shook.
“I need the truth now,” I said, my voice resolute. “All of it. Tell me about Cassie’s father.”
Her eyes slowly came up to me. I sensed in that moment she knew what I’d already pieced together. Her head fell back onto the table and she wept. When she finally recovered, Gloria Stallings whispered a secret that she had kept for thirty years.
“I was…raped.”
I was sure I knew the answer, but asked anyway. “By who?”
Her head came up slowly and she exhaled, maybe relieved that the dark secret was finally being spoken. She looked at me and said, “Wolf Donovan.”
I nodded, now giving up what I had already determined. “They had the same eyes—cobalt blue with a hint of green. Donovan was Cassie’s father and he knew it.”
The truth whispered from her quivering lips, “Yes. When my sister began catering his parties...he began asking questions...figured it out.”
“And John Carmichael knew you were raped?”
She nodded, brushing away her heavy tears. “John and I had grown apart. We were no longer...intimate, but he let me stay at his house sometimes because I had nowhere else to live. I told him that Donovan attacked me one night when he came by the house and I was home alone. John was angry and planned to go to the police.”
“Did he talk to Carl Brasher?” Charlie asked.
Stallings nodded. “Brasher tried to convince John not to file a complaint. He said that if he went to the police they would close down the production of his film.”
“
Days of Destiny
?”
“Yes. He said they would see to it that John never worked again. When he couldn’t talk him out of it, Donovan and Kane came to see John before he could file a formal complaint.”
Stallings’ tears came again, harder now. She finally regained some composure and went on, “I was upstairs, hiding. I heard the gunshot...saw them drive away...John’s body was wrapped in a blanket.”
“And that’s why you left Hollywood?” I asked.
She nodded. “I knew if they ever found me I would also be killed.”
“Do you know where John is buried?” Pearl asked.
Stallings shook her head. “Maybe in the cemetery like Cassie thought after seeing the movie. I don’t know for sure.”
I bent over the table and waited. Stallings finally looked up at me.
“Cassie’s relationship with Wolf Donovan,” I said. “It’s time you told us everything, Gloria.”
A torrent of tears flooded down her face again. When they finally stopped, Cassie Reynolds’s mother gave up the last of her dirty secrets.
“He molested Cassie.”
“From the time she was a little girl?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I leaned in closer to her. “And you knew about it?”
Stallings pounded a clenched fist on the table, tears gushing. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.”
“And Donovan and Kane had Marvin Drake kill her,” I said.
Stallings broke down again, losing all control of her emotions.
I pushed away from the table, took a deep breath. While Drake had pulled the trigger, I knew who had really killed Cassie Reynolds. I was looking at her. I was disgusted and couldn’t hold back. I moved back to the prisoner and leaned forward, my gaze narrowing.
“You said it before, Gloria,” I spat. “Cassie was your only child. She deserved her mother’s protection. You gave her nothing.”
Stallings’s body shuddered in waves of deep, racking sobs that seemed to come from the center of her being. I shook my head as I walked away. Before closing the door on her, I stopped and looked back at her for a final time. I felt nothing but revulsion.
I joined Charlie and Pearl in the hallway outside the interview room. My partner’s gaze came over to me.
Charlie said, “You mean the son of a bitch not only molested his only daughter but he had her killed?”
I nodded, trying to find the words to respond to what he’d said. I realized that I had nothing left. I walked away and felt something on my cheeks.