Kill the Messenger

student at Southwestern Law), bludgeoned to death in his office, blah, blah, blah.

Parker stopped breathing for a moment as he called up his memory of the night before. Abby Lowell arriving on the scene, carefully controlled. Jimmy Chew had said the call had been phoned in by an anonymous citizen. Abby Lowell said she’d received a call from an LAPD officer notifying her of her father’s death while she was waiting for him at Cicada.

It was too early to call the restaurant to check her alibi.

The byline on the story was “Staff Reporter.”

Ruiz was paying no attention, too busy sipping her extra-hot double venti half-caf no-whip vanilla mocha with one pink and one blue sweetener, and making eyes at the hunky barista.

“Ruiz.” Parker leaned across the table and snapped his fingers at her. “Did you get a name for that phone number I gave you to check out? The number from Abby Lowell’s cell phone call list?”

“Not yet.”

“Do it. Now.”

She started to object. Parker slid the paper across the table and tapped a finger on the piece. He got up from his chair, dug his phone out of his pocket, and scrolled through the address book as he went out the side door into the damp cold.

“Kelly.” Andi Kelly, investigative reporter for the LA Times. A fireball in a small red-haired package. Tenacious, wry, and a lover of single malt scotch.

“Andi. Kev Parker.”

There was a heavy silence. He pictured confusion then recognition dawning on her face.

“Wow,” she said at last. “I used to know a Kev Parker.”

“Back when I was good for a headline,” Parker remarked dryly. “Now you never call, you never write. I feel so used.”

“You changed your phone number, and I don’t know where you live. I thought maybe you’d gone to live in a commune in Idaho with Mark Fuhrman. What happened? They didn’t approve of your smoking, drinking, womanizing, arrogant ways?”

“I repented, gave all that up, joined the priesthood.”

“No way. Cool Kev Parker? Next you’ll be telling me you’ve taken up yoga.”

“Tai chi.”

“Fuck me. Where have all the icons gone?”

“This one crumbled a while ago.”

“Yeah,” Kelly said soberly. “I read that in the papers.”

Nothing like a public flameout to win friends and influence people. The cocky, arrogant Robbery-Homicide hotshot Parker had been made the whipping boy by an equally cocky, arrogant defense attorney in a high-profile murder trial.

The DA’s case had been good, not watertight, but good, solid. A mountain of circumstantial evidence had been gathered against a wealthy, preppie UCLA med student accused of the brutal murder of a young female undergrad.

Parker was second on the team of detectives sent to the crime scene, second lead in the investigation. He had a reputation for shooting his mouth off, for riding the edge of the rules, loving the spotlight, but he was a damn good detective. That was the truth he had held on to during the trial while the big-bucks defense team shredded his character with half-truths, irrelevant facts, and outright lies. They had impugned his integrity, accused him of tampering with evidence. They couldn’t prove any of it, but they didn’t need to. People were always eager to believe the worst.

Anthony Giradello, the ADA set to make his career on the case, had seen Parker dragging down his ship, and had done the cruel and certain thing any ADA would have done: He took up his own whip and joined in the beating.

Giradello had done everything he could to distance his case from Parker, to downplay Parker’s role in the investigation. Sure, Parker was an asshole, but he was an unimportant asshole who hadn’t really had anything much to do with the investigation or the gathering or handling of evidence. The liberal LA press had joined in the feeding frenzy, always happy to eviscerate a cop doing his job.

Andi Kelly had been a single voice against the mob, pointing out the defense was employing the shopworn but tried-and-true “When All Else Fails, Blame a Cop” strategy. A shell game devised to draw attention away from overwhelming forensic evidence, to plant a seed of doubt in the minds of the jury. All they needed was to convince one juror that Parker was some kind of rogue, that he wouldn’t think twice about planting evidence, that he had some kind of racial or socioeconomic bias against the defendant. One juror, and they would hang the jury.

They managed to convince all twelve. A murderer walked free.

The political fallout had been ugly. The DA’s office had pressed for Parker to be fired, to continue to deflect the spotlight away from the fact that they had lost and a killer had walked free. The chief of police, who loathed the DA and feared the police union, had refused to get rid of Parker, despite the fact that every brass badge in the department wanted him gone. He had been painted as a problem, a loose cannon, insubordinate. The public spotlight was on him. He was a black eye on a department that couldn’t take another scandal.

The only interview Parker had granted during all of it was to Andi Kelly.

“So how you doing, Kev?” Kelly asked.

“Older, wiser, like everybody,” Parker said, slowly pacing the sidewalk.

“Know anything going on in the Cole case?”

“You’d know more than I would. You’re the one at the courthouse every day. I’m just a peon now, you know. Training the next crop of wolf cubs,” Parker said. “For what it’s worth, I have it on good authority Cole is an asshole.”

“That’s news? He beat his wife’s head in with a sculpture worth three-quarters of a million dollars.”

“He came on to a friend of mine with the missus standing right there.”

“Everybody knows he cheated on her. Robbie’s not smart enough to pull off total discretion, despite his best efforts. Everything Tricia Crowne put up with with that clown, it’s hard to believe she didn’t pull a Bobbitt on him years ago,” Kelly said. She released a big sigh. “Well, if you don’t have a scoop for me, Parker, to hell with you.”

“That’s harsh. Now that I’m down on my luck, living in the gutter, eating out of garbage cans, can’t you do an old friend a favor?”

“If you’re such a good old friend, why didn’t you stop me from marrying Goran?”

“You married a guy named Goran?”

“I believe you just made my point,” she said. “But never mind. I managed to divorce him without you too. What do you want, Man-I-Haven’t-Heard-From-In-Years?”

“It’s nothing much,” Parker said. “I’m working a homicide. Happened last night. There’s a couple of lines in the Times this morning. I’m curious who wrote it. Can you find out?”

“Why?” Like every good reporter, Kelly was always keen for the scent of a story. If she’d been a hunting dog, she would have been on point.

“It just struck me as odd,” Parker said casually. “No one spoke to me. I was on the scene half the night, and I didn’t see any reporter.”

“Probably some staff flunky picked it up off the scanner. Who’s the vic?”

“Low-end defense attorney. I’m surprised the Times wasted the space.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And why do you care it was in the paper if the guy’s a nobody?” Kelly asked.

“They got a couple of details wrong.”

“So?”

Parker sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Christ, I don’t remember you being such a pain in the ass.”

“Well, I always have been.”

“It’s a wonder your mother didn’t put you in a sack and drown you when you were two years old.”

“I think she tried,” Kelly said. “I have issues.”