No One Will Hear You

Chapter Twenty-one

Los Angeles averaged about five hundred murders a year, roughly twice the number of the state of Mississippi, which was where Chris Anderson would have long since returned, if it weren’t for Jenny Blake.

Shaw and Associates back home was the largest private-sector crime lab in the United States, so Chris already knew people might kill each other at the slightest provocation. He just hadn’t had to live in the thick of it until now.

A lab rat by nature, he found TV stardom nerveracking, especially having his budding relationship with Jenny splashed across the media. His mother had practically had a conniption fit when a supermarket tabloid ran a story alleging her baby boy was cheating on Jenny with Jessica Simpson.

First of all, was it cheating if you hadn’t ever slept with the girl you were going with? Second of all, he’d never met Jessica Simpson.

Still, the Crime Seen money was good (but the cost of living in LA high) and his house in Glendale was nice (if a nasty commute to the office).

Having Jenny make him her first call tonight was a help. He’d thrown on a Killer TV polo, khakis, and running shoes, and soon was heading for UBC in his brand-new Dodge Ram. Made good time only to find the whole blessed block closed off, with a mess of news crews massed on the periphery.

Driving a pickup didn’t make parking downtown easy, even on a Sunday night, and with the UBC ramp inside the cordons, he parked three blocks away on a side street. Hoofing it really wasn’t bad, though, not on this breezy spring evening, under a clear sky and a scattering of stars.

Then rounding a corner, he ran smack into a local news crew — an affiliate of a rival network.

Like an escaping prisoner, he got hit with flood lights, and the red eye of a camera tracked him like a sniper scope.

A striking, well-dressed, dark-haired woman blocked his path. She spoke to another camera that had positioned itself just behind him.

“This is Renee Oxley reporting live for KDLA News outside UBC Broadcast Center. Chris Anderson from Crime Seen is here with us. Mr. Anderson, what can you tell about the dead woman found outside the UBC lobby?”

What dead woman outside the UBC lobby?

“Excuse me,” he said, a hand over his face in murder-suspect fashion, and brushed past the reporter.

He damn near jogged, the news team trying to keep up. If he stopped, he’d be the limping zebra when a pride of lions was chasing the herd. First sign of weakness and they would eat him alive.

“Can’t you give us some comment, Mr. Anderson?”

Having no idea what the woman was talking about, he stayed tight-lipped and kept going, but even with their cameras and microphones, they were keeping up.

He patted his pocket for his cell phone — the reporter wasn’t asking about the new Don Juan tape. This was something else, and Harrow or Jenny would surely have called... Finally he realized he’d forgotten to grab the thing on his way out the door.

“Mr. Anderson, please!”

Then he was up against a barrier of yellow crime-scene tape behind which a bored-looking cop stood watch, and the attractive reporter was on him, thrusting the mic at him, demanding just one comment...

“I’m sorry. I have no information you don’t already have.”

In fact, he had less...

The reporter turned to her cameraman and said, “It seems even UBC’s own highly touted Crime Seen forensics team remains clueless about this bizarre tragedy.”

Ignoring this distortion, Chris stood at the barrier and sent his eyes on a desperate search for a friendly face. He spotted Lt. Amari, in a gray blouse and dark slacks with her badge necklaced, and called out.

She came right over. When only the yellow-and-black barrier separated them, she smiled and said, “Mr. Anderson, good evening.”

“Am I glad to see you, ma’am.”

The “ma’am” seemed to amuse her. “All you had to do, son, was tell the officer who you were, show some ID, and step on over. We have clearance for your entire Killer TV team.”

“No kidding?”

He glanced behind him, hoping that darn TV crew was catching this, but they had moved on.

Chris ducked under the tape, asking Amari, “What’s this about a body dumped at UBC?”

“Don Juan. He left a victim here. Follow me.”

He did, saying, “We just got a tape from that creep. That’s why Mr. Harrow called us in, but nobody said anything about this.”

“Don’t you have cell phones in Georgia?”

“It’s Mississippi, and of course we have cell phones.”

“Well, where’s yours? I know your boss tried to call you with the update.”

“Uh, it’s back at the house.”

“You see, you need to take these newfangled gadgets along with you, Mr. Anderson.”

“You having a little fun with me, Lieutenant?”

“Just a little. It’s a night that could stand some levity.”

She led him over to the front of the building, where walls of canvas, held in place by steel poles, gave the police and coroner’s people a place to work in privacy.

“Can’t let you in there,” Amari said. “I know you’re an expert, but you’re not LAPD, and that’s an active crime scene.”

“Understood.”

But he could see inside, the work lights giving plenty of illumination to the corpse as various techs moved around in there.

He’d been to his share of crime scenes and seen hundreds of photos of others, but the tableau on the sidewalk outside his workplace made his gut tighten.

Not that it was gory — barely any blood. The shapely naked blonde on the sidewalk looked impossibly white against concrete gray and the red of the bouquet of roses arranged beside her. Her face was turned away, but Chris just knew she’d be pretty, like the last victim.

Don Juan had made sure he could no longer be ignored, leaving this one on their doorstep and alerting the media.

Amari asked, “You okay, son?”

“Yeah. It’s just so sad. Feel kind of... embarrassed for her.”

“She’s past that. Past any suffering, too, remember. Nothing left to do for her but solve this.”

“I hear that, Lieutenant.”

He followed Amari inside, the quiet of the lobby a welcome sanctuary from the bustling surrealistic scene behind the tinted glass.

At the elevator, Amari said, “Rest of your team is already here, except for you and Jenny.”

Chris stopped cold. Jenny might need help getting through that zoo out there.

“Can I use your cell, Lieutenant?”

“Sure...”

Soon Jenny was in his ear, saying, “Lieutenant Amari, I just got here...”

“It’s not the lieutenant,” he said. “I’m using her cell. Left mine at home.” “Ah.”

This single word meant she had tried to call him perhaps a dozen times.

“Just got here myself,” he said.

“You made good time,” she said, but not on the phone. Right behind him.

He whirled and there she was, laptop in a bag slung over her shoulder.

In short order, they were upstairs, joining the rest of the team at the conference room table.

Jenny was in her usual jeans and T-shirt, everybody else casually attired, dragged away from their Sunday evening. Only the normally extra-casual Choi seemed overdressed, in a black sport coat and dress shirt, new-looking jeans, and Italian loafers (no socks).

Choi noticed Chris staring, and said with a glower, “Don Juan ruined a perfectly good date. This time it’s personal.”

Chris took the chair next to Jenny while Amari took a waiting seat next to Harrow at the head of the table. Choi, Pall, and Chase were opposite Jenny and Chris. Carmen had taken a seat at the far end, off by herself.

When Harrow explained that the Don Juan video had come in over Carmen’s e-mail, Chris understood why the young woman looked so shell-shocked and pale.

As Harrow was addressing the group, network president Dennis Byrnes — in a dark brown suit, looking sharp as to attire but otherwise ragged — slipped in a door toward the back and, leaving a seat between them, deposited himself near Carmen.

Harrow said, “Thanks for joining us, Dennis.”

The executive nodded, but said nothing.

“I’ll get the lights,” Harrow said.

He did.

Carmen averted her eyes as Harrow showed the video of the second Don Juan murder, uncomfortably large on the wall screen behind him and Amari.

The rest watched with cold, clinical eyes, and if any emotions showed among these seasoned investigators, shock or horror weren’t among them — only controlled anger and resolute purpose.

Lights up again, Harrow said, “Lieutenant Amari understands that this crime has come to our doorstep. Literally and figuratively. She is willing to work with us.”

Quiet expressions of thanks all around the table were accepted by Amari with a single nod.

Chase said, “So we get to work?”

“We get to work,” Harrow said. “Billy, go down to security. You’ll find Detective Polk waiting there for you. Get all the security footage. No way this maniac got this close carting a dead body and those roses without getting snagged on video.”

Choi nodded and went.

Harrow said, “Michael, you’re our profiler. What’s your read?”

“He’s going to kill again,” Pall said with a matter-of-fact shrug.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. It’ll be soon.”

Chase said, “Then we need to find something fast. This guy has us chasing shadows and smoke. Maybe at least this grandstand stunt will give us some real clues to work with.”

Harrow asked, “What about Wendi Erskine’s finances?”

Jenny said, “Money’s gone. Not in the Caymans anymore either. And the trail is cold.”

“Do we have anything?”

Nobody offered a response.

“Do we think there’s a connection between Don Juan and Billy Shears?”

Chase shook her head, but nobody else responded.

Then Pall said, “I grant you there are similarities — the sexual aspect, chiefly. But remember Don Juan was self-named and the cops came up with Billy Shears. Two serial killers of this stripe turning up simultaneously strains credulity, I admit, but the signatures are decidedly, distinctly different.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Amari said, “we’ll be looking into the second Shears victim, the off-duty Santa Monica officer, Danny Terrant.”

Chase said, “You’ll have to talk to his cop buddies. That’ll be touchy. They may have payback on the brain.”

“We could interview them,” Carmen said, way down the table. “Might take the edge off any cop-to-cop strain.”

“No, Detective Polk and I will handle that,” Amari said. “You’d just be media to them.”

Carmen raised her eyebrows and nodded.

Byrnes was just sitting there, taking it all in.

Harrow said, “I understand Vicker’s family and friends insist he was straight.”

“Supposedly a regular... Casanova,” Chase said.

Chris wondered if she’d almost said Don Juan.

Harrow asked, “Do we know Officer Terrant’s sexual proclivities?”

“Haven’t got that far,” Amari admitted.

“Okay,” Harrow said, took in air, let it out. “Let’s look hard at Officer Terrant... You don’t mind, Lieutenant Amari?”

Amari answered by asking a question — of Chris. “Do you guys have a mass spectrometer?”

“Yeah, we got a mass spec,” Chris said. “Mr. Harrow got us all kinds of toys last year, and it wasn’t even Christmas. Whatever lab equipment you need, we should have.”

“So... if I were to bring you, say, a hair from a crime scene...?”

Chris frowned at her. “But wouldn’t bringing us evidence from a homicide break your chain of custody?”

She smiled at Chris in a tight, businesslike fashion. “The chief himself has given us permission to utilize whatever resources your show can provide.”

Jenny said, “Cool.”

Still not wholly on board, Chris said, “Ma’am, that doesn’t answer my question about chain of custody.”

Amari arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you, technically at least, still on leave from Shaw and Associates?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, handing evidence to an employee of a certified lab wouldn’t be breaking chain of custody, would it?”

“No. No, it wouldn’t.”

Harrow assigned several other duties to various team members, then said to the group, “We have two homicidal maniacs preying on innocent citizens of this city. Let’s nail these bastards before either of them kills again.”

They were about to break up when Byrnes cleared his throat and all eyes went to him; a few people who were getting up sat back down.

“I’m pleased to see Crime Seen and the LAPD working together,” the network president said. His voice had an unsettling surface calm. “But we need to discuss the network’s response — and your show’s response.”

Harrow said, “The priority here is stopping these—”

“Fine! Yes, of course. But we have a madman who has dumped his grotesque handiwork, as has been noted, on our very doorstep. So I want you, J.C., to record a video that can go out immediately to every national news outlet, network and cable, stating simply that all the resources of Crime Seen’s superstar forensics team will be brought to bear upon the serial killer calling himself Don Juan.”

Raising a finger, Chris said, “Uh, sir — the FBI won’t consider Don Juan a serial killer until he has accumulated three victims, and—”

“Mr. Anderson,” Byrnes said acidly, “I don’t believe semantics is our concern right now. And this is not a request or a suggestion. J.C. — I don’t often say this, but this is an order.“

All eyes went to Harrow.

“Fine,” Harrow said.

All eyes went to Byrnes.

“What?” Byrnes said.

All eyes went to Harrow.

“You’re right, Dennis. Give him a little attention, and maybe we can save a life, or at least slow him down a little.”

Amari said firmly, “You’re not broadcasting any Don Juan videos.”

Harrow said, “Not suggesting that. If we appear to be conceding, he might demand even more.”

“Such as?” Byrnes asked.

“He wants to be a regular segment on our show, doesn’t he, Dennis? And what does Crime Seen do, during a sweeps week? To generate our top ratings? Our biggest audience?”

“Oh Christ,” Byrnes said.

“Right,” Harrow said. “Show that video, and we’re on the path to Don Juan demanding we broadcast his next kill live.”