“We were wondering the same thing. Denny didn’t come in today.”
Lena felt her heart sink. “Does he still live in Silver Lake?”
“As far as I know. Why?”
Lena snapped her cell shut without answering the woman. Pulling back onto the road, she brought the car up to speed, blew through a red light, and jumped onto the 5 Freeway. It was 4:30 p.m. with just enough traffic to spike her blood pressure. She worked the road hard and fast and dipped onto the shoulder when she needed it. By the time she reached the reservoir and found Ramira’s house off Edgewater Terrace, the sun had set and every house on the block had its lights on.
Except for Ramira’s. Even worse, his car was in the drive.
She grabbed a pair of gloves, found a small flashlight in the glove compartment and walked up the drive. It was a California Craftsman with a long front porch and large windows. When she reached the steps and got picked up by the motion detectors, the sudden wash of bright light spooked her.
She could feel the tension, the heat in the cold air. And when she moved to the window and peered through the glass, she could feel the terror.
Something was swaying from the banister on the second floor. After a moment, she realized that it was Ramira’s Chihuahua, Freddie. She had met the dog eight months ago when she gave the reporter her account of the Romeo murder case. She hadn’t been to the house since, but remembered that his dog barked a lot and had plenty of attitude. It looked like someone had tied the leash to the banister and let the choke chain do the rest.
She backed away from the window, digging her cell phone out and hoping she wouldn’t remember what she had just seen. Rhodes picked up before she heard a ring.
“Where are you?” she asked.
He must have sensed something from her voice. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Give me the address.”
“Ramira’s house. You remember. We were here last spring.”
“See you in twenty minutes.”
“Don’t say anything, Stan. Everything’s different now.”
He paused a beat. “See you in twenty minutes,” he repeated.
She closed the phone, then tried the front door. When she found it locked, she moved around the house looking for a breach. There was no sign of a break-in. Every window and door appeared undisturbed. She glanced at her watch, then returned to the backyard. She had noticed a small window the first time around and seemed to remember that it opened to a powder room. Removing her jacket, she wrapped it around her arm and drew her gun. Then she punched out the glass with her.45, reached inside for the lock and raised the window.
She climbed in and froze, listening to the silence and getting a feel for the house. She could hear the fan from the heater running. The ice maker filling with water. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw Ramira’s dog hanging from the stairs and felt the chills hit the back of her neck again and coil around her spine. Below the dead dog she could see blood pooling on the floor.
She shook it off and stepped into the hall. Moving silently past the dog, she checked the living room but didn’t see anything. Same with the dining room. When she entered the kitchen, she noticed the long shadows on the floor and switched on her flashlight.
Ramira’s body was here, lying beside a fallen bag of groceries. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she ran toward him. His eyes were pinned to the ceiling in a thousand-yard stare, his mouth, still open as well. As Lena struggled to hold the light steady, it seemed obvious from the wounds on his face that the reporter had been beaten to death with a blunt instrument. That the end had been painful and difficult. She panned the light across his body. When she spotted the meat thermometer buried in his chest, the chills got worse and she shuddered.
She tried to pull herself together. Tried to picture Jennifer Bloom’s mysterious journey and courage. Tried to draw on her reserves even though it felt like she didn’t have anything left.
No matter what the reason may have been for Ramira holding back on her, he had been a good man. It had been Denny Ramira who wrote the story about her brother’s murder, forcing the brass on the sixth floor at Parker Center to walk a straight line and tell the truth. It had been Ramira who stepped forward when she needed him. As the memories rose to the surface, she wondered why he hadn’t called 911 this morning. She hoped that he hadn’t been waiting for her. Counting on her.
She knelt down beside him, pushing her thoughts away. She could take it, she repeated to herself. She could handle this.
She looked back at the meat thermometer that had penetrated Ramira’s heart, noted the lack of blood, and realized that it had been an afterthought. He was dead before the stabbing, so she ignored it and pressed forward.
Lena understood from her work with Art Madina that there was no way to tell the time of death by studying the core temperature of a dead body. That probing the liver with an instant read thermometer much like the one in Ramira’s heart looked good on TV, but was essentially ridiculous. There were too many variables. How much clothing was Ramira wearing? How much body fat? What was the temperature of the room? Or, Ramira’s body temperature when he was beaten to death? Was he feeling well or was he ill with a temperature of more than 100 degrees?
She knew that she had talked to Ramira early this morning, so the murder went down sometime within the last eight hours. Digging the receipt out of the grocery bag, she tilted it into the light and found the date/time stamp. Ramira had checked out his groceries three and a half hours ago at one-thirty-seven this afternoon. Although the market was only five minutes away, that didn’t mean that he had come straight home.
She moved back to the body. Ramira’s left fist was clenched in a death grip. She noted the defensive wounds on his knuckles, the cuts and scratches, then tried to pry his fingers open but couldn’t. She knew full well that this was a chemical reaction and not a result of rigor mortis. That when rigor mortis finally came and went, his hand would relax. Still, she needed a better sense of timing.
She smoothed her gloved hands over his wrists and arms. They were still loose and free. Moving up his body to his shoulders and neck, she could feel the tightness beginning to set in. When she tried working his jaw, the muscles were frozen in place.
She took a deep breath and exhaled as she thought it through. Ramira spent most of his time sitting in front of a computer, not working out at the gym. Rigor mortis was just beginning to set in. Because of his physical condition, the murder had to have occurred sometime within the past hour or two. It was close. Real close.
The fan to the heater shut down. As the sound dissipated, the house began to take on that special kind of silence that only seemed to come when a dead body was around.
Lena picked up the flashlight and exited the kitchen. Moving down the back hall, she passed a spare bedroom and stopped in the doorway to Ramira’s study. She shined her light into the darkness. The room had been trashed. Every drawer in his desk had been dumped on the floor. The closet was open, the shelves tossed.
She moved to the desk, sidestepping the debris. When she switched on the lamp, she noticed a file on the chair. Inside she found transcripts that Ramira had made from interviews he had recorded for his book. But as she skimmed through them, she began to sense that something was wrong. This file shouldn’t have been here. The interviews were with the key players in the case. She saw Senator Alan West’s name. Jennifer Bloom was here as well, identified as Jennifer McBride. When Lena found Joseph Fontaine’s interview, she realized that her hunch had been correct. The Beverly Hills doctor was an expert in treating asthmatic children and had served as Ramira’s primary contact. It had been Fontaine who managed the clinical trials for Dean Tremell and Anders Dahl Pharmaceuticals. At the time the drug’s name hadn’t been tested by focus groups and was simply known as Formula D.