The investigator from the coroner’s office hadn’t arrived yet and the bodies were still laid out the way they fell. Justin Tremell was too far off to really make out, his corpse muted by the fog. But she could see Dobbs and Ragetti clear enough. One face up, the other, face down.
She took another drag on the cigarette, the body count preying on her mind. As she got to her feet and looked up the hill, she saw the coroner’s van backing into position at the edge of the parking lot. Ed Gainer hopped out and spotted her in the haze, then motioned her up to the van.
“What’s with your cell, Lena?”
She pulled the phone out of her pocket and checked it. The battery was dead.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Madina was trying to reach you,” he said. “He had something he wanted you to see.”
She followed Gainer to the back of the van and watched him open up. It looked like he had made a stop before this one. A single body bag was already onboard.
“What’s he want me to see?”
Gainer shrugged. “I don’t know. He said that when you saw it, you’d understand what it meant. You know what Madina’s like, Lena. Sometimes he goes cryptic on you like just maybe he did one too many autopsies that day. After a while it would have to get to anyone. All those dead bodies. It sure as hell gets to me.”
He laughed, then rolled the body bag closer to the rear doors.
“What are you doing, Ed?”
He turned and gave her a look. “He wants you to see this. It’s Denny Ramira. He got started on the autopsy, then stopped and said you needed to take a look first.”
Lena tried to pull herself together. She had already seen enough. She needed the day to end and needed it bad. Taking another look at Denny Ramira’s corpse felt like it was pushing her over some psychological edge. She watched Gainer unzip the bag, then pull the plastic open. Saw Denny’s battered face and eyes. That meat thermometer still in his chest. But even worse, she caught the odor venting out of the plastic and thought that she might lose it.
Gainer reached inside the bag and fished out Denny’s left arm. Then he switched on his flashlight and turned over the dead reporter’s hand. All of a sudden, Lena was wide awake. Her mind, clear as a day with the man in the moon.
“Do you know if they took a picture, Ed?”
Gainer nodded. “It’s documented. It’s a matter of record. After they got the shot, Madina stopped the autopsy and loaded him in my van. What is it?”
Lena zeroed in on the pin stuck in Denny Ramira’s left palm. The palm that she couldn’t see when she found his body in the kitchen because he had clenched his fist in a death grip. Denny had been a crime-beat reporter and a good one. He would have known from experience that by clenching his fist at the time of his death he was unleashing a chemical reaction in his body. That his fingers would be locked like a bank vault until rigor mortis set his body and finally released it. That he could keep his secret for more than a day. And that he could buy enough time to tell Lena exactly who murdered him by jabbing the pin into his own palm and holding on to it for the rest of his life.
Just the sight of it cut to the bone.
She parted the body bag and gazed at Ramira’s face for a long time. Her doubts about his murder had begun the moment she set eyes on that meat thermometer. She had known from the lack of blood that it had been an afterthought. A play that followed the murder but had nothing to do with it. Ever since that moment she had suspected that Cava probably wasn’t good for it any more than Klinger could have been. Over the past hour she had come to the conclusion that Dobbs and Ragetti made the kill. The two bruisers seemed to fit the bill. The two ex-cops with a history of physical violence. The two thugs whom Tremell had said were listening to Ramira’s phone calls.
But now she knew with certainty that it was none of the above. That the play had been a weak attempt to link Ramira’s murder to the rest and let Cava take the fall for everything. After all, the play explained why Cava spent so much time staring at the picture of Ramira’s dead dog during their interview. He was looking at the photograph the same way anyone would have if they were seeing it for the first time. But even more, it explained why Cava had needed time to think her offer over. And it explained why he had called her on the phone. The things he had said to her and his reasons for saying them.
Nathan G. Cava had seen it, too.
52
She caught the flashing lights as she made the turn off Sunset and looped up and around the hill. Ten patrol cars from the Sheriff’s Department in West Hollywood were lined up in front of Senator Alan West’s house. A Chevy Suburban with tinted windows was backed into the drive with its rear gate open. Every window in the house was lit up, and the front door stood open. As Lena got out of the car, she counted five uniforms standing around on the porch and wondered if she wasn’t too late. She hustled up the front steps. When the five uniforms stopped talking, she clipped her badge to her jacket and picked out the deputy who looked like he was in charge.
“Is the senator around?”
“Is he expecting you?”
“We’re friends,” she said. “What’s up tonight?”
The deputy shrugged. “We’re making an airport run. We were supposed to leave ten minutes ago.”
Lena entered the house. One of West’s bodyguards was rushing down the stairs with a suitcase. When she turned, she saw West exiting his study with his second bodyguard in tow. West smiled at her. The two bodyguards didn’t.
“What are you doing here, Detective?” West said.
“Just stopped by to talk. Where are you headed?”
“Washington,” he said. “It’s just for a week. Can it wait?”
Lena glanced at West’s bodyguards. The two heavyweights with rough faces and dark suits who appeared utterly calm and heavily armed. She turned back to West.
“I don’t think it can, Senator.”
West slipped into his suit jacket. “We’re gonna miss our plane. You’ll have to ride with us over to Burbank.”
Lena followed them out the door. West hurried toward the Suburban with his bodyguards. The deputies from the Sheriff’s Department were climbing into their patrol cars. When the last suitcase was tossed into the SUV, Lena got a look at the driver before he closed the gate. He was young and thin and Latino, no older than twenty with shy eyes. And there were a lot of bags. A lot for a week in D.C.
She walked around the Suburban and was ushered into the rear seat. One of the bodyguards sat beside her without saying anything. Then West took the seat in front of her, and the second bodyguard sat down beside him. The Suburban was linked to the patrol cars with a temporary radio sitting on the dash. As the driver adjusted the volume, Lena could hear the deputies discussing their route. Laurel Canyon over the hill to Sherman Way Once they received confirmation, the caravan started rolling. Five patrol cars led the way. The remaining five covered their backs.
Lena turned to West. “I see you took my advice.”
The senator smiled. “The cavalry? Yeah, I made the call. Can’t be too careful. And I was losing too much sleep.”
“Over Denny,” she said.
He turned to her and nodded. His blue eyes glistened from the ten sets of flashing lights. He looked better than the last time she had seen him. His face had regained its color. He seemed fresh and relaxed, even relieved.
Lena kept her eyes on him. “His murder upset you, didn’t it, Senator.”
“Denny didn’t start out as a crime reporter. He covered politics. I bet we went back ten years.”
“I bet you did.”
“Is everything okay, Detective?”
Lena glanced at his jacket. “Where’s your nine-eleven pin? I don’t see it on your lapel.”
West stared back at her as if he hadn’t heard her over the sound of the SUV.
“Your gold pin,” she said. “The one the fire department gave you for being such a great guy. The one that you said you wore every day. What happened to it?”