Kill the Messenger

derogatory ways to describe me.”

“I can assure you, we treat every homicide the same, Ms. Lowell. Regardless of who or what the victim was.”

“That doesn’t instill much confidence, Detective.”

“I have an eighty-six-percent clearance rate.”

“And what happened to the other fourteen percent?”

“I’m still working them. I’ll work them ’til they’re cleared. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if by the time I close those cases the perps are hunchbacked old men and I have to chase them down with a walker,” Parker said. “There’s not a homicide cop in this town better than me.”

“Then why aren’t you working with us, Parker?”

Bradley Kyle, Detective 2 with Robbery-Homicide—LAPD’s glamour squad, bastion of hotshots and arrogant assholes. Parker knew this firsthand because he had once been one of them, and a more arrogant, hotshot jerk had never walked the halls of Parker Center. In those days he had been fond of saying the building had been named for him. Stardom was his destiny. The memory bubbled up inside him now like a case of acid reflux, burning and bitter.

Parker scowled at Kyle moving toward him. “What is this? A party? And how did your name get on the guest list, Bradley? Or are you just out slumming?”

Kyle ignored him and started looking around the crime scene. His partner, a big guy with no neck, a blond flattop, and horn-rimmed glasses, spoke to no one as he made notes. Parker watched them for a moment, a bad feeling coiling in his gut. Robbery-Homicide didn’t just show up at a murder out of curiosity. They worked the high- profile cases, like O.J., like Robert Blake, like Rob Cole—LA’s celebrity killer du jour.

“Don’t piss on my crime scene, Bradley.” Parker emphasized the name, dragged it out, knowing Kyle hated it. He wanted to be called Kyle—or at the worst, Brad. Bradley was a name for an interior decorator or a hairstylist, not a kick-ass detective.

Kyle glanced at him. “Who says it’s yours?”

“My beat, my call, my murder,” Parker said, moving toward the younger detective.

Kyle ignored him and squatted down to look at the apparent murder weapon—an old bowling trophy, now encrusted in blood and decorated with Lenny Lowell’s hair and a piece of his scalp.

Kyle had been on his way up in Robbery-Homicide while Parker was being driven out. He was at the top of his game now and eating up the spotlight every time he got the chance, which was too often.

He was a good-looking guy, good face for television, a tan so perfect it had to have been airbrushed on him. He had an athletic build, but he was on the slight side, and touchy about it. Made a point of telling people he was five eleven and a half, like he’d knock anyone on their ass for making something of it. Parker, who was himself a hair under six feet, figured Kyle for five nine and not a fraction more.

Parker squatted down beside him. “What are you doing here?” he asked quietly. “What’s Robbery-Homicide doing cruising the murder of a low-rent mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell?”

“We go where they send us. Isn’t that right, Moosie?” Kyle tossed a look at his partner. Moose grunted and kept on making notes.

“What are you saying?” Parker asked. “Are you saying you’re taking this? Why? It won’t even make the paper. This guy’s clients were scumbags and dirtballs.”

Kyle pretended not to have heard him, and stood up. Ruiz stood a scant few inches away from him. In her ridiculous heels she was almost at eye level with him.

“Detective Kyle,” she purred in a hot phone-sex voice as she offered her hand. “Detective Renee Ruiz. I want your job.”

This in the same tone she might have used to say “I want you inside me,” not that Parker had any desire to find out. He stood up and gave the dead eyes to his partner. “Trainee Ruiz, have you finished diagramming the crime scene?”

She huffed a petulant sigh at Parker, then tossed a sexy look at Kyle and walked away like a woman who knew a guy was watching her ass.

“Forget it, Kyle,” Parker said. “She’d grind you up like lunch meat. Besides, she’s too tall for you.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Abby Lowell joined them. “If I might intrude on your little game of who has the biggest dick—” She offered her hand to Kyle, all business. “Abby Lowell. The victim is—was—my father.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Lowell.”

“You’re with Robbery-Homicide,” she said. “I recognize you from the news.”

“Yes.” Kyle looked as pleased as a second-rate dinner-theater actor thinking he was about to be asked for his autograph.

Parker expected Abby Lowell to say “Thank God you’re here.” Instead, she looked Kyle square in the eyes and said: “Why are you here?”

Kyle gave her the poker face. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, Detective. I’ve been around my father’s business all my life. His clients and their accused crimes should be way below your radar. What do you think happened here? Do you know something I don’t?”

“A man was murdered. We’re homicide cops. Do you know something I don’t? What do you think happened here?”

Abby Lowell took in the mess as if seeing it for the first time since she had entered the room: the files and paperwork everywhere, the overturned chair, maybe from a struggle, maybe from a ransacking after the murder.

Parker watched her carefully, thinking there was a whole lot stirring beneath the thin facade of calm. He could see it in her eyes, in the slight tremor of her lips. Fear, shock, the struggle to control her emotions. She kept her arms crossed tight, holding herself, keeping her hands from shaking. She was very careful not to look at the floor in front of her.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe a disgruntled client, maybe a family member of a victim in a case Lenny won. Maybe someone wanted something here Lenny didn’t want to give up.”

Her gaze landed on a credenza at the far side of her father’s desk. A cube-shaped black safe that was maybe two feet square squatted in the cabinet, the door open. “He kept cash in that safe.”

“Did you check the safe, Parker?” Kyle asked, the Man In Charge.

Parker turned to Jimmy Chew. “Jimmy, did you look in that safe when you got here?”

“Why, yes, Detective Parker, I did,” Chew said with false formality. He didn’t so much as glance at Kyle. “When my partner and I arrived at nineteen hundred hours and fourteen minutes, we first secured the scene and called in Homicide. While looking around the office, my partner observed the safe was open and that it appeared to contain only documents, which we did not examine.”

“No cash?” Parker asked.

“No, sir. No money. Not in plain sight anyway.”

“I know there was money,” Abby Lowell said with an edge in her voice. “A lot of Lenny’s clients preferred to pay him in cash.”

“There’s a surprise,” Jimmy Chew muttered, retreating.

“He never had less than five thousand dollars in that safe—usually more. He kept it in a bank bag.”

“Was your father having problems with any of his clients?” Kyle asked.

“He didn’t talk to me about his clients, Detective Kyle. Even scum-sucking dirtbag attorneys have their ethics.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, Ms. Lowell. I apologize on behalf of the department if anyone here may have given you that impression. I’m sure your father had ethics.”

And he probably kept them in a jar at the back of a cupboard, next to the pickled onions and some ten-year- old canned salmon, never to be opened, Parker thought. He’d seen Lenny Lowell at work in the courtroom. Short on scruples and ethics, Lowell would have impugned the testimony of his own mother if it meant getting an acquittal.

“We’ll need to see his client records,” Kyle said.

“Sure. As soon as someone rewrites the Constitution,” Abby Lowell returned. “That information is privileged.”

“A list of his clients, then.”