With my back turned to him, I offered a noncommittal wave. If he’d known anything about baby Rose, I would have lingered, but I could do without another conversation about Ellis Haines. That was a trip down memory lane I didn’t need this morning.
The sound of music called to me from my cell, the opening notes to “Hail to the Chief.” The chief is the only person in my cell phone’s contact list to whom I’ve assigned a ringtone.
“Gideon,” I said.
“This is Gwen from Chief Ehrlich’s office calling, Detective. Are you available to talk to the chief?”
“I’m all ears.”
“Thank you,” Gwen said. “Please hold for a moment.”
For some reason the chief never calls me directly. I don’t know if it’s an LA thing or if it’s standard practice among the ruling class to have someone else do the dialing for them. I do know this is the town that invented the phrase “I’ll have my person call your person.”
As I waited for the chief I asked Sirius, “Are you my person?”
I heard the wind tunnel effect that accompanies speaker phones and then Ehrlich’s voice: “Good morning, Detective.”
I resisted the urge to put my cell on speaker phone to return the effect. “Morning, Chief.”
“I have a new case for you, one that I’ll want you to run point on, even though for media purposes it will be handled through Robbery-Homicide. A young man’s body was found in Runyon Canyon Park. I want you to get over there before the story breaks and the media shit storm hits.”
Most of the city’s homicides involve young men, and usually such deaths aren’t considered very newsworthy. The chief hadn’t yet told me what was special about this case.
“What is it that will be attracting the vultures?”
“The young man was crucified.”
I had seen too many forms of death on display, but this would be my first crucifixion. Ancient Rome suddenly didn’t seem so ancient. Given a choice, I could have done without this history lesson.
“I’m on the way.”
“Captain Brown will coordinate with you on this. He’ll be contacting you shortly.”
Brown was the chief’s liaison. Behind his back he was called Radar, after the character made famous from
“Let’s hit it,” I told Sirius.
The two of us jogged back to the car. For now, the baby Rose case would have to be put on the back burner. Police work is nothing if not a series of interruptions.
The morning commute had already started; it was a good thing I had a cherry topper. I flashed my light and siren and surprised commuters as I passed by on the shoulder. A lot of conversations were interrupted as cell phones were tossed aside and drivers suddenly became law abiding. I was two minutes from the park when Radar called.
“Are you there yet?” he asked.
“Golgotha is almost within sight.”
“That’s the kind of comment the media better never hear.”
“Afraid it might upset the money changers?”
Radar decided to ignore me. “A Parks and Recreation worker discovered the body, and the park was immediately secured and closed. The media has not yet caught on to what occurred.”
I knew that wouldn’t last more than an hour or two. Word always leaks out.
“The chief wants you to keep him up to date on this one. He expects there will be lots of scrutiny.”
“You think?”
Crucifixions aren’t everyday events, even in Los Angeles.
“I’m at the scene,” I announced.
I clicked off in the middle of him saying “Call me when…”
A uniform was standing at the park’s palm tree-lined southern entrance at Vista Street and Fuller Avenue. Sirius was pacing back and forth in the backseat, his tail wagging furiously. Runyon Canyon was a favorite park of his. Usually it was full of gamboling dogs.
I offered up my ID to the uniform, and after looking at it he said, “You’ll want to park up the hill as far as you can, but even then you’ll have a walk.”
He looked around to make sure no one was listening in and said, “The body is way up the trail at a place called Clouds Rest. You’ll see signs along the path directing you there.”
“Thanks, I know where it is.”
There were half a dozen cars parked in a ragged line near the trailhead, including the forensics van and the coroner’s wagon. The parking lot wasn’t far away, but something in most cops’ DNA compels them to do almost anything to avoid walking any farther than necessary. I passed by the parked cars, but not out of nobility. Most visitors to the park enter through the southern entrance at the bottom of the canyon, and from there they choose one of two walking trails. The clockwise route is the shorter and less strenuous route to the back of the canyon and the eastern ridge, which is Clouds Rest. The counterclockwise trail is longer and harder, with more ups and downs.
What the other cops didn’t know was that there was a third and shorter route to Clouds Rest that started from the lower fire road. Their way would have taken them half an hour of walking; my route would cut that time in half. I parked along the bend in the lower fire road, and Sirius and I began our hike. The 130-acre park is designated as “urban wilderness.” It might not be Yosemite, but you don’t have to venture far into the canyon before you feel as if you’ve escaped from LA. The park’s southern entrance is just two blocks from Hollywood Boulevard, making it a popular getaway for Angelenos.
We followed an upward path that went along a dry riverbed. Before bulldozers and development, LA was chaparral country and the park is a natural museum to LA’s former terrain. We made our way through sagebrush, flattop buckwheat, and laurel sumac. The muted greenery was typical of most drought-resistant plants, although occasionally we passed by some red-berried toyon, which all the locals call California holly.
The last part of the hike was the hardest, a steep rise that had me using my hands in a few spots to steady myself. All the climbs throughout Runyon Park are worth it. Depending on your vantage point and the smog, you can see everything from Catalina Island to Griffith Observatory to the Capitol Records building, but today I didn’t stop to take in the view. I was thinking about what awaited me at Clouds Rest.
“Why would you pick this spot to crucify someone?” I asked.
It was out of the way but not that out of the way. Lots of people walked the trails every day. For some, it was part of a regular exercise regimen. The murderer wouldn’t have been able to get in or out easily. And if you dragged a cross up a hill, someone was likely to notice. No, it wasn’t the first spot I would pick for crucifying someone.
Sirius’s ears perked up and his body went on the alert. He sniffed the air and got a preview of what was ahead. It was another half a minute before I saw the activity. A handful of people-forensics techs and the coroner’s people-were clustered around a coast live oak. The tree was typical of its kind: it had a gnarled trunk and contorted branches and was rather compact, at least as oaks went, but it was large enough to be supporting a body.
The young man’s arms were spread out along two branches, and his torso was backed up by the trunk. As I came closer, I could see the odd angle of the victim’s toes. Because his ankles had been nailed into the tree, he looked as if he was pigeon-toed and walking on air. The victim wasn’t wearing the loincloth associated with every crucifixion tableau I had ever seen. He had on running clothes, with lightweight Speedo shorts and a tank top that said BHHS.
I kept enough distance from the tree to not impact the lighting. Techs from Scientific Investigation Division were busy using digital and video cameras to record the scene. Everyone working the crime scene offered some form of acknowledgment to Sirius and me except for the two detectives from Robbery-Homicide. The detectives continued talking to each other and studiously avoided me. Normally it was RHD that took over any high-profile cases from other detectives, something known as “bigfooting.” They were used to having the shoe on the other foot-or bigfoot. In this instance, I was the perceived bigfoot.
I knew one of the detectives, a longtime veteran named Worsley that everyone called Gump. The nickname
