“What about it, Sirius?” Lisbet asked.
At the mention of his name, Sirius came over to her and put his head in her lap, prompting me to say, “Hey, that’s my gal.”
“He tells me he likes roast beef,” Lisbet said.
“I do, too, in case you were wondering.”
She stood up. “Seven o’clock?”
“Count us in.”
We sealed that deal with a long kiss. And then I walked Lisbet to her car, where we kissed again.
I hadn’t been to the arboretum in close to a decade. Naturally, it was Jen that had arranged our first and only visit. I hadn’t wanted to go, but she told me it would be fun, and she was right. There had been waterfalls, I remembered, and a turtle pond, and trees and plants indigenous to the featured continents (“What? No Antarctica?” I’d asked Jen). During our visit, one particular peacock had acted as if he was in love with Jenny and had kept following her around while displaying his plumage and trumpeting his unearthly call. For years afterward she had laughed whenever I attempted my peacock imitation.
That had been a long time ago.
There were police barricades up on Baldwin Avenue, and I had to flash my wallet badge to several officers while I made my way to Australia. Lights had been set up to illuminate a spot not far from Colorado Street. There were police cars on both sides of the street. I found a parking spot and, like a good moth, followed the brightest lights.
It wasn’t cold, but the wind was whipping around, and I hugged my jacket close to me. The arboretum trees and plants were being stirred up by the wind, and the shaking branches sounded like a thousand threatening rattlesnakes. The high grass just off the road whipped at me as I made my way forward. Fronds moved in front of the light and offered the illusion that the dead were dancing. The three bodies had been dumped in a spot not far from the road, one right next to the other. Their legs and hands were still bound with duct tape.
Nguyen moved away from the lights and came up to me. She was holding her blazer with both her hands. “Welcome to the land down under,” she said.
My guess was that the attractive detective was first-generation American, but that hadn’t stopped her from picking up on cop humor. Her parents were probably still in mourning that she had chosen law enforcement for a career.
“Down under the earth is where these guys are going,” I said, looking at the bodies.
Nguyen raised the crime scene tape and I did the limbo to get under it. We walked over to the bodies. Nguyen shone her flashlight on the man nearest us.
“Even though his hands are bound, you can still see most of his tattoo,” she said. “If you want, I can have the duct tape cut.”
“That’s not necessary.” I could see the red
Nguyen turned her beam on the other victims. I could see where all the men had been shot in the head. One of the victims showed extensive bruising to his face and neck; the other had visible bite marks.
“That bruising is consistent with where I was striking one of my attackers with an animal-control pole. And I’m sure those bites were delivered by my big, bad wolf. He’s in the car if you want to take his DNA.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Nguyen said.
“I suppose you haven’t had time to ID the victims.”
“Actually, we have. The killer was cooperative. All three of them had their wallets and licenses.”
“Do you know anything about them?”
“The preliminary information I have is that all of them lived together in some kind of ranch in Antelope Valley. It sounds like it’s some kind of commune or sect.”
“Sect?”
She nodded. “The person I contacted said they had some strange beliefs. We have a team that will be going out there tonight to check them out.”
I was certain they wouldn’t find anything. If Ellis Haines was behind the murders, he would make sure of that.
I offered up the punch line to the joke about the visitor to the monastery who grew tired of all the monks’ shop talk and voiced his disgust by saying, “Sects, sects, sects, is that all you talk about?”
Nguyen didn’t know the joke, and I didn’t bother to explain.
CHAPTER 20:
I fought against the gusting wind. It was resisting my efforts to open the front door to my house. If I’d been superstitious, I might have imagined something was trying to prevent me from getting inside, but I was too tired to be paranoid.
The three men that had attacked me were now dead. I suspected Ellis Haines had somehow reached out from San Quentin and had the men killed. What I didn’t know was if Haines had acted to protect himself, or whether he had been looking out for me.
A blinking message light was casting its red glow on the living room wall. I walked over to the machine and hit Play.
“Hey, Mighty Dog,” Martinez said. He sounded upbeat, a tone that had been noticeably absent for days. “I heard about your triple at the arboretum, so that’s why I’m not calling your cell. Anyway, we might have something on one of the poison-pen writers, a kid Computer Crimes identified as Jeremy Levitt. He’s the joker that tried to post on Paul Klein’s memorial wall that Klein’s death was karma. As it turns out, Levitt’s a senior at good old Beverly Hills High School. What do you want to bet he’s the one that’s also guilty of leaving that other bad-mouthing note at Klein’s wailing wall? Anyway, I didn’t get to talk with Levitt for long-his parents made sure of that-but he and his mouthpiece are coming in for questioning tomorrow. Levitt tried to justify his attempt at memorial wall backstabbing by saying that Klein didn’t deserve this outpouring of adoration. He said Klein was anything but a good kid.
“And then Levitt started telling me about his being friends with an older boy that overdosed two years ago. He said his friend was harassed by Klein and his wolf pack. Levitt didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the feeling he and this other guy had a thing going on between them, and Klein and his friends caught wind of it and weren’t exactly supportive of the gay lifestyle. Tomorrow Levitt is set to come in at ten o’clock. Gump and I are meeting at seven to prepare for the interview. If you can make it then, we’ll all brainstorm.”
I played the message back several times. If it hadn’t been after midnight, I would have called Martinez back, but I’d be seeing him soon enough anyway. It was also too late to call Assistant Principal Durand. I wanted to know more about this kid that had overdosed.
A handful of empty beer bottles were on the kitchen counter. I was glad that I’d told Lisbet not to wait for me. The last week-no, the last three years-seemed to have caught up with me, and I was dead on my feet. I gathered the empties and put them in the recycle bin and then decided to add one more to their number. I flipped a cap, grabbed a piece of cold pizza, and planted myself in the easy chair. Sirius took his place on a throw rug next to me.
I bit into the pizza, felt eyes following my movements, and tore off a chunk for Sirius. I tossed, he caught, and we chewed. We were like an old married couple. Outside, the banshees were screaming. I thought about SID still working the crime scene at the arboretum. The conditions had been bad all the while I was there; now they would be even worse. That fucking Ellis Haines was right. It sounded like all hell was breaking loose.
I took a pull on the beer and with a backhand toss sent another piece of pizza flying. Sirius didn’t disappoint. He caught and then inhaled.
By the sound of Martinez’s voice, it was clear he thought this Levitt kid might have had something to do with
