Kill the Messenger

26

Goddammit,” Parker said on a long sigh. He felt the strength and energy drain from him with his breath. “Goddammit,” he whispered.

A spotlight from Chewalski’s radio car illuminated the scene in harsh white light, like the stage of some avant-garde performance artist.

Eta Fitzgerald lay in a heap on the wet, cracked pavement behind the Speed office. Or rather, her body lay there. There was no sense of the big personality Parker had met that morning. The force she had been was gone. What he was staring at now was just a shell, a carcass. Parker squatted down beside the body. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear.

“That’s a whole lotta woman,” Jimmy Chew said.

“Don’t,” Parker said quietly. “Don’t. Not this time.”

“You know her, Kev?”

“Yeah, Jimmy, I knew her.”

Which was a problem now. One of the first things he drilled into his trainees was not to attach emotionally to victims. Therein lay the road to madness. They couldn’t make every case personal. It was too hard, too destructive. Easier said than done when you’d met the victim before the crime.

“Geez, I’m sorry,” Chew said. “She a friend?”

“No,” Parker said. “But she could have been, in another time, another place.”

“She’s got no ID on her. No pocketbook. I’m sure her cash is running all over town by now, buying rock cocaine and fifty-buck blowjobs. We found keys on the ground near the body. They fit the minivan. The van is registered to Evangeline Fitzgerald.”

“Eta,” Parker said. “She called herself Eta. She was the dispatcher here. Ruiz and I spoke with her this morning.”

“That bike messenger, the one from last night, he worked here?”

“Yeah.”

“Guess he’s our guy, huh? The lawyer. The dispatcher. What they got in common is him.”

Parker didn’t say anything, but he didn’t buy it. Why would Damon wait until the end of the day to kill her? He had to know the cops would have been on the messenger services first thing. The damage would have been done before the end of the workday—if Eta had chosen to give them any information. If Damon wanted to silence her, he would have killed her before she got to work, not as she was leaving.

Maybe he could have come back to rob her, but Parker doubted that too. Why would the kid risk coming back here at all? For all he knew, the place could have been under surveillance. And he supposedly had a large amount of cash from Lenny Lowell’s safe. What would he want with the contents of the woman’s wallet?

“She’s got a family, kids,” he said.

“The only people who deserve it are usually on the other end of the knife, I’ve found,” Jimmy Chew said.

Parker stood and looked around. “Where’s Ruiz? This is her call.”

“She’s not here yet. Probably taking extra time to sharpen her claws. You’ve got a real peach there, Kev.”

“I don’t have to like them, Jimmy,” Parker said, walking away. “I just have to teach them something.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Anything for the press, Detective?” Kelly asked from behind the yellow tape.

Parker jammed his hands in his coat pockets and walked over. “It’s not my case.”

“And the detective in charge?”

“Isn’t here yet.” Parker glanced around to make sure Jimmy Chew wasn’t in earshot. “Where’s Caldrovics?”

Kelly shrugged. “Took a pass. Maybe he’s busy reporting you to the authorities.”

“He doesn’t have a mark on him, except where you kicked him,” Parker said. “And, by the way, thanks for the help.”

“He deserved that, and you’re welcome. Glad to do my civic duty by helping a policeman.”

“I tried to impress that idea on Caldrovics, but he wasn’t receptive.”

Kelly made a face. “Kids these days. It’s all me, me, me.” She barely paused for a breath. “So what have you got for me, Parker? Big scoop?”

“The vic was a dispatcher for Speed Couriers. Apparent robbery. Her purse is gone.”

Kelly scribbled in a notebook. “Does she have a name?”

“Pending notification of relatives.” Parker took a breath of damp air that smelled of garbage, and let it out again, thinking of Eta’s family, how they would take the news, how they would get along without her. He couldn’t let Ruiz deliver the bad news. He could hear her now: “So, she’s dead. Get over it.”

“Kev?” Kelly was looking at him with concern.

“Lenny Lowell was waiting for a messenger last night. The messenger came from Speed Couriers. No one has seen him since.”

That wasn’t exactly true, but Kelly didn’t need to hear every detail, and Parker still wasn’t sure about Abby Lowell and her alleged encounter with Damon.

“Ruiz and I were here this morning trying to get information,” he said. “None was forthcoming. His name is probably an alias. The address they had on file wasn’t a residence.”

“This messenger is your suspect? For both murders?”

“He’s a person of interest.”

A car roared down the alley, skidded to a halt behind Chewalski’s radio car, stopping short of the rear bumper by three inches. The driver’s door opened and Ruiz climbed out in head-to-toe skintight black leather.

“Where have you been?” Parker snapped. “Moonlighting as a dominatrix? You called me half an hour ago.”

“Well, excuse me. I don’t live in some trendy downtown loft. I live in the Valley.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Kelly muttered just loud enough for Parker to hear.

“Traffic on the 101 sucks,” Ruiz went on. “Some moron dropped a dining room table off his truck. And then—”

Parker held up a hand. “Enough. You’re here now. You don’t need to torment us any more than that.

“Ruiz, this is Andi Kelly,” he said, tipping his head toward the reporter. “She writes for the Times.”

Ruiz looked offended. “What’s she doing here?”

Kelly pumped up the attitude and gave her the Valley Girl sneer. “Reporter, crime, story. Duh.”

“Ladies, no catfights at the murder scene,” Parker said. “It’s your case, Ruiz. It’s up to you to decide what you want the press to know. Try to remember they have their uses. In this case, I want you to run everything past me first. This murder could be related to my murder last night. We need to be on the same page. Do you know who the vic is?”

“The dispatcher.”

The coroner’s investigator had arrived and was walking slowly around Eta Fitzgerald’s body, as if he couldn’t decide where to start.

“It’s your crime scene,” Parker said. “Take it. Don’t screw up, and try not to alienate more than three or four people. And remember, I’m watching you like a hawk. One wrong move and you’re a meter maid.”

Ruiz flipped him off and walked away.

“Yikes,” Kelly said. “Someone at Parker Center really hates you.”

“Honey, everybody at Parker Center really hates me.” He flipped up the collar of his coat and resettled his hat. “I’ll call you.”

He started toward the scene.

“Hey, Parker,” Kelly called before he’d gone ten feet. He looked at her over his shoulder. “Do you really live in a trendy downtown loft?”

“Good night, Andi,” he said, and kept walking.

The coroner’s investigator was going about his business of robbing the victim of the last of her dignity, cutting away her clothing to examine her body for wounds, marks, bruises, lividity.

“How long has she been dead, Stan?” Parker asked.

“Two or three hours.”

The man groaned and strained to turn Eta Fitzgerald’s body over. Two-hundred-plus pounds of literally dead weight. When she toppled, she knocked the investigator on his ass. Her throat had been severed nearly to her spine, and when she was rolled onto her back, her head almost didn’t come with her.

Ruiz cringed and muttered, “Madre de Dios.”

She turned milk white and came backward a step. Parker put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Your first cut throat?”

Ruiz nodded.

“You getting sick, doll?”

She nodded again, and Parker turned her and pointed her away from the immediate scene. “Don’t puke on any evidence.”

This was death at its most brutal. Parker knew plenty of seasoned veterans who tossed their dinner over a slit throat or a mutilation. There was nothing shameful in that. It was a horrific thing to see. That he had hardened himself to such sights sometimes made Parker wonder what it said about him. That he had learned to take his own advice and not make it personal, he supposed. That over time he’d developed the invaluable skill to disconnect the victim as a living person from the victim’s corpse.

Even so, this one rocked him more than average. Hours ago he had heard one wisecrack after another come out of this big, vibrant woman. Now there was no voice, only an anatomy lesson on the inner workings of the human throat.

The edges of the gaping wound had peeled back like delicate layers of lace trim, revealing a lot of bright yellow adipose tissue, the connective tissue where fat is stored. It looked like fluorescent chicken fat under the harsh white light.

There wasn’t much blood on or around the wound itself. A lot of it would have gone directly down the now partially exposed trachea into her lungs, drowning her. The carotid artery would have been spraying like a geyser. If it hadn’t been washed away by the intermittent showers, the crime-scene people would find spatter maybe six to eight feet from the body. A lot of blood had pooled under her as she lay on the broken pavement exsanguinating. Her chest was stained with it where it had soaked through her clothes, partially obscuring the small tattoo of a flame-haloed red heart just above her left breast.

All that blood, and depending on where the killer had been standing, he might have walked away with not a drop on him.

Ruiz came back with an expression daring Parker to make a joke.

“Have you got uniforms checking these other buildings?” he asked. “Someone might have seen something.”

She nodded.

“Who called it in?”

“I don’t know.”

Parker turned to Chewalski. “Jimmy?”

“One of our fine citizens,” the officer said, nodding for them to follow him across the alley.

As they approached the loading area of a furniture store called Fiorenza, a dark, huddled figure emerged from inside a large discarded cardboard box. As the figure unfolded, he became a tall, thin black man with long, matted gray hair and layers of ragged clothes. His aroma preceded him. He smelled like he’d been in a sewer for a very long time.

“Detectives, this is Obidia Jones. Obi, Detectives Parker and Ruiz.”

“I founded that poor woman!” Jones said, pointing across the alley. “I woulda tried to recirculate her, but I couldn’t turn her over. As you can see, she’s pacidermical in size. Poor creature, I axed her and axed her not to be dead, but she be dead anyway.”

“And you called the police?” Ruiz said, dubious.

“It don’t cost nothing to call 911. I do it every once in a while. There’s a phone on the corner.”

“Did you see what happened, Mr. Jones?” Ruiz asked, her face pinched against the smell of him.

“No, ma’am, I did not. I was indisposed of at the time of the hyenious act. I believe I’m consumptionating too much fiber in my diet.”

“I didn’t need to know that,” Ruiz said.

The old man squinted at her, leaning down into her face. “I believe perhaps you might be lacking in fiber. This could account for your expression.”

He looked at Parker for a second opinion.

“If it were only that simple,” Parker said. “How did you come across the dead woman, Mr. Jones?”

“I came back to my habitat, and I seen her laying right there after that car pulled away.”

“What car?”

“Big black car.”

“And did you happen to see who was driving that car?” Parker asked.

“Not this time.”

Ruiz rubbed her forehead. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, I seen him before,” Jones said matter-of-factly. “He came by earlier.”

“Would you know this guy if you saw him again?” Parker asked.

“He look like a pit bull dog,” Jones said. “Square head, beady-eyed. Undoubtedly of white trash hermitage.”

“We’ll want you to take a look at some pictures,” Parker said.

Jones arched a thick gray eyebrow. “At your station house?”

“Yeah.”

“Tonight,” he specified. “Whilst it’s cold and wet out here?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind much,” he said. “Do you all get pizza in there?”

“Sure.”

“Can I bring my bags along with me? All my accoutrementionables are in my bags.”

“Absolutely,” Parker said. “Detective Ruiz here will bring them for you in her car.”

Jones looked at her. “There might be some fiberous foodstuffs in there for you. You’re welcome to help yourself.”

“Yeah, great,” Ruiz said, glaring at Parker. “And Detective Parker can give you a ride.”

“No,” Parker said. “Mr. Jones would prefer to be chauffeured in the official police vehicle, I’m sure. Officer Chewalski might even run the lights for you,” he said to Jones.

“That would be very classy,” Jones said. “Indeed.”

“Let’s get your bags, Obi,” Chewalski said. “We’ll put them in the detective’s trunk.”

Ruiz looked up at Parker and mouthed, “I hate you.”

Parker ignored her. “One last thing, Mr. Jones. Around the time of the murder, did you see anyone back here on a bicycle?”

“No, sir. All them bicycle boys was long gone before that.”

“What about a small, boxy black car?”

“No, sir. Big car. Long and black as the grim reaper himself.”

“Thank you.”

“You are such an asshole,” Ruiz said as they walked back toward the scene.

“Consider it your penance,” Parker said.

“For being late?”

“For being you.”