The Dark Halo, page 14
The security office was in a semi-public space. In order not to stand out, the Ferryman might have avoided wearing gloves. He’d have a limited window to get in the office, print the card, and get out before Lawson returned. On tight timelines, mistakes were made, fingerprints were left behind. Coombes smiled to himself.
It felt right.
He looked through the glass in the lobby at the evening traffic outside. Long lines of light in all directions. It would be solid for the next two hours, minimum. He had a good feeling about the box, and he decided to stop in the bar to celebrate.
20
It was after ten when he parked up in front of his home and it depressed him to see it was all lit up and Julie’s car was parked at the door. Days when he needed her to be there, she was gone, days when he didn’t, she was there. They just couldn’t catch a break. He went inside and heard music playing at the back of the house. Thump, thump, thump. She thought it was music at any rate. He didn’t know what it was, some kind of Euro pop, or techno. The month before she’d gone through a death metal phase where it sounded like singers had the microphone lodged in the back of their throat and were choking on it.
Because of the music, she didn’t hear him come in and he was able to walk right into the bathroom where she was having a bath, her right leg hanging over the edge, dripping water and foam onto the mat beneath. Her eyes were closed and she was smoking the end of a joint like her life depended on it. He turned and looked at the music player that sat on the closed lid of the toilet. It was plugged into an extension lead that ran in through the open door to an outlet in the hall. He turned and looked back at her face and saw that her eyes were open.
“Do it,” she said. “Throw it in the water. Maybe I’ll feel something.”
“It’s a stereo, Julie, not a time machine.”
She sniggered. Whatever she was smoking, it was good.
“I guess I should congratulate you on your big break. It’s good to know our marriage isn’t being destroyed for nothing. Maybe soon we’ll be able to move out of this shit hole and into a place where the air conditioning works.”
Most of the foam had gone from her bath and he could see her naked body beneath the water. It was the first time he’d seen her naked in three months. He frowned.
“What big break?”
“The film director, the one killing all these people.”
Coombes felt the blood go out of his face.
“You mean screenwriter?”
“Shit, Johnny, he’s your suspect. Jake something. The one that likes little girls.”
“It was on TV?”
“You think I started buying a newspaper? Of course, on TV. It’s been on all night. Why, did I get it wrong? Is he not a suspect?”
The pounding music stopped and Coombes turned to the stereo, surprised. The music started up again. A different track, but somehow identical to the last. Thump, thump, thump. On another day, when he hadn’t seen a man melted with chemicals, he might have laughed. It was like listening to one of those TV stations that showed nothing but home renovation shows. Someone was taking out a wall with a jackhammer, in his bathroom.
He looked at his wife sadly.
“I miss the days when you listened to The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac.”
“That’s old people music, you got to update. You want one of these?”
He saw that she had a whole line of joints set up on an abalone shell next to the bathtub. For a second, he wondered if it might not be such a bad idea, what with the image of Anthony Price still burned into his brain. Then he remembered what she’d said about the news and Jake Curtis. He might need to be sharp.
“Thanks, but I’ll take a pass.”
He turned for the door and she spoke again.
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“What?”
“The stereo. Why didn’t you throw it in?”
He shrugged. “The house has a circuit breaker.”
“Wow,” she said. “I thought it was because you loved me.”
Coombes nodded slowly, then left without saying anything. In the living room, he switched on the TV and changed it to a news channel. A mafia man who’d been murdered several days earlier in Marina Del Rey was still getting coverage and the news anchor was trying to pretend like she cared without causing lines to form on her perfect face.
Finally, it cut to a piece about Jake Curtis. Coombes stood and watched, his suit jacket still on, his hand with the remote frozen in front of him. A caption filled the screen from one side to the other in capital letters.
DISGRACED HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER JAKE CURTIS LEAD SUSPECT IN ‘FERRYMAN’ SLAYINGS.
Another beautiful woman stood across the street from the PAB, like a twin of the news anchor, talking about his case.
“My sources have confirmed that the shocking details of Jake Curtis’ sexual exploits with seventeen-year-old Tammy Watkins came to light as a direct result of the investigation into the so-called Ferryman killer. When asked what link there was between Curtis and the killer, my source said simply none, they’re the same person. Andrea, my head is exploding. This is a huge break in what was otherwise seen as a stalled investigation. I have tried to speak with the lead detective, John Coombes, but with no success. Clearly, a very busy man tonight.”
He frowned and took out his cell phone.
There were 86 missed calls. He muted the TV and called his lieutenant’s cell. She answered immediately.
“What’s going on, John? All hell is breaking lose.”
“I’ve no idea, I just got home and saw the news.”
“Block’s been riding my ass all night, you got to give me more than that.”
“That’s some visual, Ellen, but I don’t know what to tell you. Curtis alibied out. We are not looking at him at all, not even for Tammy Watkins.”
“Block’s talking about putting Wallfisch in charge.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“He thinks you are the source, Johnny, and that you leaked the previous story about the girl to that Times reporter.”
Coombes sighed.
“I did speak to Sullivan, but not about this.”
Gantz’ voice became tight. “Go on.”
“She knew about the coins. I don’t know where she got it from, but she was going to publish it anyway. I told her the killer puts them on the victims’ eyes.”
“John!”
“I know, but it worked. Think about it. Every person that walks in off the street claiming they did it, they all talk about putting the coins on the eyes. Remember Walter Ford, the big giant? They all swallowed it. Only us and the killer know the truth.”
Gantz was silent for a moment, thinking it over.
“You didn’t leak anything else?”
“I didn’t leak anything at all. I diverted something that was coming out anyway. You think I would bust my ass on a case, then at the same time, potentially destroy it? Come on, you know me. I grind ’til nothing’s left. I hate the press. I’m a cop’s cop.”
“Yeah, I know that. Sorry, Johnny.”
It was the first time in a long time she’d called him Johnny. He walked from his living room to his kitchenette diner. He was hungry, he’d eaten nothing since lunch. He opened the fridge and looked at its contents grim-faced.
“I don’t know who’s leaking information about Curtis, but their information seems to be a little out of date so it’s probably not someone on the task force. That lawyer that came with Curtis, I got the feeling that he didn’t like representing someone that had sex with a minor. Killers are one thing, but that’s something else. That crosses a line.”
“You can’t be serious, his own lawyer?”
Coombes took out a quart of milk and closed the fridge door.
“I don’t know, he was definitely uneasy. He had possession of the footage. But you know what it’s like, a juicy tip like this might pay for someone in the department to get a new cell phone or a tablet. Money’s tight.”
Again, Gantz was silent.
“You think you can hold off Block?”
“Already done.”
The call disconnected.
Coombes pulled down a bowl and poured out some Cheerios. He could think of someone else who would gladly throw Curtis under the bus, someone that would contact the press if that’s what it took. She lived in Miami, Florida, and she was a lieutenant.
He carried his bowl of cereal through to the living room and sat down. Using his tablet, he searched for Gale online and soon found a photograph and a first name, which was Alisha. The picture was a group shot and he pinched-zoomed tight on her head and shoulders. She was attractive but the resolution of the picture was low and it degraded badly with enlargement. He switched to Facebook and found her in a couple of clicks. There were many more pictures of her, and his first assessment did not change.
He pulled up a picture of her on a yacht. She was smiling, long blonde hair blowing behind her. He ate his cereal, eyes fixed on Alisha Gale. It wasn’t a chore. By the time his bowl was empty, he had decided that he didn’t much care if she had thrown Curtis under the bus. It was where he deserved to be.
21
Coombes craned his neck, looking up at the smashed window on the 13th floor of the Capitol Records Building. He could make out a small dark space below one of the sun shades that projected out from the side of the building. He then zipped his eyes down fast, as if he’d been there at the time, to where Steve Ellis lay crumpled on the sidewalk.
It wasn’t how he’d choose to go; it didn’t even make the shortlist. Sure, you might not have long to think about what you’d done, but time had a way of drawing out when you least wanted it to. Plenty of time to change your mind as the sidewalk approached. He shook his head as if to clear the idea and walked across the street.
Hollywood Division SUVs had closed Vine between Yucca and Hollywood Boulevard and, closer in, a secondary police line had been erected to keep pedestrians at bay. A sizable crowd had assembled and more seemed to be arriving all the time. He knew social media spread news fast, but this was ridiculous. Coombes and Sato approached the body together in silence, hands up near their mouths, just in case.
Ellis had landed flat on his back, his feet toward the building. The impact had forced his brain to partially liquify and push out through his eye sockets, his nose and his mouth. It was bad. Splats were always bad. It was like he had sneezed a strawberry milkshake all over his own face.
Coombes glanced down the length of the man’s body. Ellis was naked and there was a lot of it. Alive, the man had been larger than life, in death, this continued. His skin had stretched out on the sidewalk, melting in. They’d need a high-pressure washer to get him off the asphalt was his guess.
An autopsy of Ellis would be hard to read. Organs got distorted or mashed together, and he knew that some parts would simply not be found. It didn’t matter much from an evidentiary point of view, it was clear what killed him.
“I think he landed on Garth Brooks.”
He looked up and saw Billy Lass standing there, a big cheesy smile on his face. Billy had been his partner when he’d worked Hollywood.
It took him a moment to understand: The Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“Still with the laughing and the joking, eh?”
“You got it. They told me you guys wanted to take a look as part of your Ferryman case that’s all over the news. I gotta say, I think this one is definitely a candidate.”
Coombes realized he could smell Ellis and took a step back. His stomach clenched, and for a second, he felt his breakfast start to come back up.
“What makes you say that?”
Lass glanced briefly at the building, at the exit point.
“We’re too far out. It’s not physics that made him land there. Not gravity alone in any case. You have to see inside, it’s going to blow your mind.”
“Like this guy?”
His old partner laughed. The problem with a guy like Lass, he reflected, was that he had a way of quickly lowering you to his own level. Being partnered with Sato had made him a more professional cop, not to mention a nicer person. A change that was, apparently, not permanent.
He turned to her.
“Grace, this degenerate is Billy Lass, my old partner. I took the credit for all his work and moved to RHD and left him here to rot.”
She nodded as Lass laughed, her face frozen with disgust.
“Seen enough?”
“More than,” she said.
Her face was pale, her eyes wide. He guessed his own face looked much the same. Sometimes experience was no protection. They walked around the body, toward the entrance. When you walked around a splat, you gave it plenty of space. Before he entered the building, he looked at the crowd of people watching, cell phones recording. Capturing this moment of history.
Two men, in effect, lay on the sidewalk behind them. Steve Ellis, father of four; and Helmut Grady, soft rock singer of power ballads and occasional actor. Without the police line, Coombes was certain the crowd would encircle their hero and photograph his smashed body.
When you were a celebrity, death was your final performance.
He’d never been in the Capitol Records Building before and the architecture was something to see. The circular shape had defined everything inside it. Lass led them across to an executive elevator and they rode up to the top floor. Lass changed his posture, and it seemed like a different person appeared.
“You hear I have a kid now? A little boy.”
“Billy, that’s fantastic! What’s his name?”
His old partner’s eyes sharpened again.
“John. Just like you.”
“That’s…great.”
The elevator doors opened and Coombes got out.
Their partnership had been tight before he moved to the elite Robbery Homicide Division. At the time, Lass had been upset about being left behind, but now he realized it had nothing to do with the job. Lass was upset that he was losing a friend. He felt awkward. After the first week at RHD, his thoughts had never returned to Lass, or any of his other coworkers. His final case at Hollywood had been mired down by the acrimony of his colleagues and he’d decided it was easier to cut ties altogether. His old partner was crude, but he was as loyal as a Labrador and had clearly never forgotten him.
They walked in silence down the heavily curved hallway to where a uniformed officer stood guarding a door. Coombes kept the pace fast, fearing that if he slowed Lass might ask if he had any kids of his own yet, and how things were between him and Julie. The second question would’ve answered the first question, and for sure he didn’t want to get into that with a clown like Lass.
Inside the room, a long table had been turned sideways, filling it from side to side. The end went right up to the space where the window had been, like a runway. Next to it, sat a chair with a neatly folded stack of clothes on top, and a pair of dress shoes next to it on the floor. There was a fussiness to the precision of the folding that made him pause. He’d never seen a man fold clothes so neatly.
A fabric of some kind hung down on either side of the window and rested on the surface of the table. Coombes frowned and walked over to examine it more closely, prodding it with gloveless fingers. It was some kind of elastic, a bungee cord. It was anchored top and bottom on either side of the window by industrial bolts. He turned toward Lass, still standing in the doorway.
The big grinning face was back.
Coombes shook his head in disbelief.
“It’s a fucking catapult.”
“I knew you’d like it. There was an office chair in the middle of the street when I arrived, it didn’t make any sense until I saw this. This guy of yours fired Ellis’ fat ass out the window like a cannonball. I’m certain he was aiming at the Walk of Fame. It’s a statement, isn’t it?”
Coombes said nothing.
There was another bolt at the other end of the table, with some kind of ratchet attached. This would be to pull Ellis back against the force of the bungee cord.
“He’s escalating,” Grace said. “This is out in the open now, he’s not even pretending that Ellis did this to himself.”
He nodded. It was exactly what he was thinking.
“I think he’s pleased with himself. He wants us to know how he did it.”
“Why do you think Ellis was naked?” Lass asked.
“A lot of splats take off their clothes, it’s like they’re going out of the world the same way they came into it. I’m guessing the killer was keeping it real, showing us his insight.”
“Splats?” Grace said.
“Yeah. Jumpers…splats. We hardly ever see the jump-”
She held up her hand to stop him.
“All right, I see that,” Lass said. “What’s your take on why Ellis sat in that seat as it was being pulled back toward the wall. He had to see what was coming, right?”
Coombes nodded. “There’s only one explanation. He had no choice. The way I see it, Ellis was forced to climb up on the table then into the chair at the end of a gun, and our guy gave him some kind of tranquilizer like an epidural to stop him escaping. Probably did it right through the back of the chair.”
“You think Ellis was conscious?” Grace said.
“Of course. All this set-up? The killer was drawing it out. If he wanted, he probably could’ve just pushed him out the window but that would have been too quick.”
Nobody said anything for a moment. Lass stared at him like a screensaver had come on behind his eyes. His old partner had lost a lot of weight but gained some gray hair. Fatherhood, he supposed. Lack of sleep.
John. Just like you.
“What about the bolts?”
“Installed yesterday by someone wearing a high-visibility vest and hard hat. Nobody could provide a description. It’s a dead end.”
This was something he’d come across many times before. The more someone looked like they were meant to be doing something, the less they were questioned about it. Among certain trades, including his own, they fell so far below the radar that they were effectively invisible. Coombes sighed, guessing what was coming.
