Chasing Darkness (5 page)

ANGEL TOMASO
had been alone when he saw Yvonne Bennett disappear into the alley. There had been no way to double-check his version of events, but he had seemed like a good kid with a steady job, and was well-liked by his co-workers. Crimmens had believed his story was solid, too. The time window was the one thing we all agreed on, but now the police didn't seem to feel it was important. Maybe they had talked to him, and maybe he had changed his story. I decided to ask Bastilla.

I worked my way back across the city, climbed the stairs to my office, and let myself in. The message light was blinking and the counter showed four new messages. I opened a bottle of water, dropped into place at my desk, and played back the messages.

The first message was straightforward and direct. An anonymous male voice told me to fuck myself. Great. The incoming ID log registered his number as private. The second message was a hang-up, but the third was from the pest control service that sprays my house for spiders and ants. They had found a termite infestation under my deck. Could today get any better? The fourth message was similar to the first, but left by a different male caller.

“We're going to
kill
you.”

He screamed “
kill
” as loud as he could.

This voice was younger than the earlier voice and shaking with rage. One threat would have been easy to write off as a crank, but this made three. Maybe something was going around.

I deleted the messages, then found Bastilla's card on the edge of my desk and called her.

“Bastilla.”

“This is Elvis Cole. I have a question for you.”

“When can I have your files?”

“Take it easy, Bastilla. That isn't why I'm calling.”

“We don't have anything else to talk about.”

“I didn't call to argue. I'm here in my office to get the papers together. I'm seeing Levy about it tomorrow morning. He doesn't think there will be a problem.”

She hesitated, then sounded mollified.

“All right. What?”

“Did Angel Tomaso change his story?”

“Tomaso.”

Like she had so much on her plate she couldn't remember.

“Tomaso was the last person to see Yvonne Bennett alive, or don't you know that? He was Crimmens's witness.”

“Right. We couldn't find him.”

“Tomaso was a major element in establishing the time frame. How can you ignore him?”

“We didn't ignore him. We just couldn't find him. That happens. Either way, the evidence we have is overwhelming.”

“One more thing—”

“Cole, you're not a participant in this.”

“Was Byrd a suspect in any of the seven cases?”

“Only yours.”

Mine. I now owned Yvonne Bennett.

“Besides Bennett.”

“That's how good this guy was, Cole—there were no suspects in any of the cases except Bennett. That was the only time he fucked up. Now if you want to know anything else, you can read about it in the paper tomorrow.”

Bastilla hung up.

Bitch.

I decided to make a copy of the Lionel Byrd file. I would keep the original, but bring the copy to Levy. If he gave me the okay, I would give the copy to Bastilla.

I reread the pages and the notes as I fed them through the machine until I came to the witness list. The list showed a work number for Tomaso at the Braziliana Coffee Shop and a cell number. It had been three years, but I decided to give them a try. The cell number brought me to a bright young woman named Carly, who told me the number had been hers for almost a year. When I asked if she knew Tomaso, she told me she didn't, but offered that I was the second call she'd received from people trying to find him. The police had called, too.

I said, “When was that, Carly?”

“A couple days ago. No, wait—three days.”

“Uh-huh. You remember who called?”

“Ah, a detective, he said. Timmons?”

“Crimmens?”

“That's it.”

At least Crimmens had done his due diligence.

I tried the coffee shop next and heard exactly the same thing. Crimmens had called for Tomaso, but the current manager had never met Angel, had no idea how to reach him, and was pretty sure Tomaso had left the job more than two years ago because that was how long she had worked there. I hung up and went back to copying the file.

Angel Tomaso had not been my witness. Crimmens had located and interviewed him two days after Yvonne Bennett's murder, but I didn't begin working on the case until almost ten weeks later. The prosecution had been required to share their witness list with Levy under the rules of discovery, along with all the necessary contact information for those witnesses. I came to these pages as I copied the file, and found a handwritten note I had made with a different name and number for Tomaso.

When Crimmens first identified Tomaso as a witness, Tomaso was living with his girlfriend in Silver Lake. By the time I contacted him at the coffee shop ten weeks later, Tomaso had split with his girlfriend and was bunking in Los Feliz with a friend of his named Jack Eisley. Though Tomaso's work and cell phone numbers were good at the time, I had interviewed him at Eisley's apartment and still had Eisley's address and number. I finished copying the file, separated the original from the copy, then brought Eisley's number to my desk.

Three years after the fact, the odds were slim, but I called Eisley's number. His phone rang five times, then was answered by a recording.

“This is Jack. Leave it after the beep.”

“Mr. Eisley, this is Elvis Cole. You might remember me from three years ago when I came to see Angel Tomaso. I'm trying to locate Angel, but I don't have a current number. Could you give me a call back, please?”

I left my cell and office numbers.

Progress.

Maybe.

Doing something left me feeling better about things, though not a whole lot. I was heading for the door with Levy's copy of the file when the phone rang. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but the ringing seemed unnaturally loud.

I returned to the desk.

The phone rang again.

I hesitated, then felt stupid for waiting.

“Elvis Cole Detective Agency.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

All I heard was breathing.

“Hello?”

The caller hung up.

I waited for the phone to ring again, but the silence remained. I went home to watch the news.

THE SUN
was lowering as I traced the winding streets off Mulholland Drive toward home. I live in a house held fast to the steep slopes overlooking Los Angeles. It is a small house on the lip of a canyon I share with coyotes and hawks, skunks and black-tailed deer, and opossums and rattlesnakes. More rural than not, coming home has always felt like leaving the city, even though some things cannot be left behind.

My house did not come with a yard the way flatland houses have yards. It came with a deck that hangs over the canyon and a nameless cat who bites. I like the deck and the cat a lot, and the way the lowering sun will paint the ridges and ravines in a palette of purple and brass. The termites, I can do without.

When I rounded the final curve toward home, Carol Starkey's Taurus was at my front door, but Starkey wasn't behind the wheel. I let myself in through the kitchen, then on into the living room, where sliding glass doors open onto my deck. Starkey was outside, smoking, the hot wind pushing her hair. She raised her hand when she saw me. Starkey never just dropped around.

I opened the sliders and stepped out. “What are you doing here?”

“You say that like I'm stalking you. I wanted to see how it went with Lindo.”

She snapped her cigarette over the rail. The wind caught it, and carried it out into the canyon.

“We're in the hills, Starkey. This is a tinderbox up here.”

I studied the slope long enough to make sure we weren't going to be engulfed by an inferno. She was watching me when I looked up.

“What?”

“So how did it go?”

“The leading theory seems to be I misread the time frame when Bennett was murdered. Not only me, but the original investigating detectives.”

“Uh-huh. That possible?”

“It's always possible, but these guys don't think it's important enough to double-check the key witness. They decided it doesn't matter.”

“Maybe it doesn't. What Lindo told me sounds pretty good.”

“That doesn't excuse the loose ends. These guys are in such a hurry to close the case they're not even waiting for all the forensics to come back.”

We lapsed into silence for a moment, then Starkey cleared her throat.

“Listen, Marx might be a jackass, but Lindo's good. A lot of the people working on this thing are good. Either way, that old man had the book. He was all over that book. You can't forget that.”

She was right. Either way, Lionel Byrd had an album of photographs that could only have been taken by a person or persons at the scene when the murders were committed. A book and pictures Byrd and only Byrd had touched.

“Starkey, let me ask you something. What do you make of the pictures?”

“As in, what do I think the pictures mean or why do I think he took them?”

“Both, I guess. What kind of person takes pictures like this?”

She leaned on the rail, staring out at the canyon. Starkey wasn't a trained psychologist, but she had spent a large part of her time at CCS profiling bomb cranks. The people who built improvised explosive devices tended to be serial offenders. Understanding their compulsions had helped her build cases.

She said, “Most of these guys, they'll take hair or a piece of jewelry or maybe some clothes as a way of reliving the rush. But pictures are a deeper commitment.”

“What do you mean?”

“These women were murdered in semi-public places. He didn't take them into the desert or some soundproof basement somewhere. They were killed in parking lots or near busy streets or in parks where someone could happen by. Grabbing an earring or a handful of hair is easy—you grab it and run—but he had to stick around to take the pictures. He chose high-risk locations to make his kills, then increased the risk by staying to take a picture when someone might see the flash.”

“Maybe he was just stupid.”

Starkey laughed.

“I think he got off on the complexity. He was tempting fate by taking the pictures, and each time he got away with it he probably felt omnipotent, the same way bomb cranks feel strong through their bombs. The rush isn't so much the actual killing—it's the getting away with it.”

“Okay.”

“Did Lindo talk to you about the composition?”

I shook my head. Lindo hadn't mentioned the composition, and I hadn't thought about it. The pictures had all looked pretty much the same to me.

“A picture isn't a part of the experience like a more traditional trophy—it's a composition outside of the experience. The photographer chooses the angle. He chooses what will be in the picture, and what won't. If the picture is a world, then the photographer is the god of that world. This dude got off by being God. He needed to take the pictures because he needed to be God.”

I couldn't see Lionel Byrd feeling like a god, but maybe that was the point. I tried to imagine him stalking these women with the clunky, out-of-date camera, but I couldn't picture him with the camera, either.

“I don't know, Starkey. That doesn't sound like Byrd.”

Starkey shrugged, then looked at the canyon again.

“I'm just sayin', is all. I'm not trying to convince you.”

“I know. I didn't take it that way.

“Whatever this jackhole did or however he was involved, you need to understand you aren't responsible for his crimes. You played it straight up and did your job. Don't eat yourself up about it.”

I met Carol Starkey when Lou Poitras brought her to my house because a boy named Ben Chenier was missing. Starkey helped find him, and the friendship we developed during the search grew. A few months later, a man named Frederick Reinnike shot me, and Starkey visited me regularly at the hospital. We had been building a history, and the friendship that grew with it made me smile.

“I ever thank you for coming to the hospital all those times?”

She flushed.

“I was just trying to score with Pike.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

She kept her eyes on the canyon.

“Hear much from the lawyer?”

The lawyer. Now I turned toward the canyon, too. Once upon a time I shared my life with a lawyer from Louisiana named Lucy Chenier. Ben was her son. Lucy and Ben had moved to L.A., but after what happened to Ben they returned to Louisiana and now we lived apart. I wondered what Lucy would think of Lionel Byrd, and was glad she didn't know.

I said, “Not so much. They're getting on with their lives.”

“How's the boy?”

“He's good. Growing. He sends me these letters.”

Starkey suddenly pushed from the rail.

“How about we go somewhere? Let's hit the Dresden for a few drinks.”

“You don't drink.”

“I can watch. I'll watch you drink while you watch me smoke. How about it?”

“Maybe another time. I want to catch the news about Byrd.”

She stepped back again and raised her hands.

“Okay. I got it.”

We stood like that for a moment before she smiled.

“I gotta get outta here anyway. Hot date and all.”

“Sure.”

“Listen—”

Her face softened, then she lifted my hand, turned it palm up, and touched the hard line of tissue that ran across four fingers and most of the palm, cut when I was fighting to save Ben Chenier's life.

“You think you have scars, mister?”

She touched the side of my chest where Reinnike put me in the hospital with a 12-gauge shotgun. Number-four buckshot and two surgeries later.

Starkey smiled.

“You oughta see my fuckin' scars, Cole. I got you beat all to hell.”

The bomb that killed her in a trailer park.

She dropped my hand.

“Don't watch the news, man. Just forget it.”

“Sure.”

“You're not going to forget it.”

“No.”

“Maybe that's why I love you.”

She punched me in the chest and walked out of my house.

That Starkey is something.

I put on the TV to get ready for the news, then took out a pork chop to thaw. Service for one. I drank a beer standing in the kitchen, offered myself another, then returned to the television when the news hour rolled around. Earnest news-jock Jerry Ward looked Los Angeles in the eye and intoned in his best understated delivery:
Murders solved by bizarre discovery in Laurel Canyon
.

Then Jerry arched his eyebrows.

When Jerry arches his eyebrows, you know you're in for something bizarre.

I had plenty of time to grab another beer. The lead story was a visit by the president, who had arrived in town to survey the recent fire damage. The second story reported on rebuilding efforts and the decreasing chance of more fires in the coming days. News of the fires segued nicely to the bizarre discovery of Lionel Byrd. I was probably on my third beer by then. Or fourth.

Jerry gave the story almost three minutes, intercut with a clip of Marx at his press conference. During the clip, Marx held up a clear plastic evidence bag containing what appeared to be the actual album, and described the “portraits of death” as “trophies taken by a deranged mind.” The only victims mentioned by name were the most recent victim, a twenty-six-year-old Pasadena native named Debra Repko, and Yvonne Bennett. My stomach tightened when I heard her name.

The Bennett mention was a simple statement that Byrd had been charged at the time of her murder, but the charges were dropped when conflicting evidence surfaced that apparently cleared Mr. Byrd. Neither I nor Alan Levy was mentioned. I guess I should have been thankful.

Marx looked pretty good with his full-dress uniform and his finger in the air, proclaiming the city safer, as if he had personally rescued another victim instead of finding a rotting corpse. He declared he was personally offended by Byrd's release when he had been brought before the altar of justice in the Bennett case, and promised to do everything in his power to ensure such outrages never happened again.

I said, “Wow. Altar of justice.”

Marx was flanked by a city councilman named Nobel Wilts, who congratulated Marx on the fine police work. The woman I had seen across the street from Byrd's house was interviewed in a ten-second clip, saying she would sleep easier tonight; and the mother of Chelsea Ann Morrow, the third victim, was interviewed at her Compton home. I wondered how the cameras had gotten to the mother and the neighbor so quickly, since the press conference had happened within the past hour or so. Marx or Wilts had probably tipped the media so they could set up for the prime-time coverage.

When the story changed to a toy recall, I brought the remains of my beer out to the deck.

The winds blow fiercest at sundown in a last furious rush to the sea, and now the trees filling the canyon below me whipped and shivered. Grey eucalyptus; scrub oak and walnuts; olive trees that looked like dusky green beach balls. Their branches rattled like antlers, and their brittle leaves fluttered like rice paper. I listened and drank. Maybe Marx and his task force were right about Tomaso. Tomaso had seemed like a bright, conscientious kid who wanted to help, but maybe he had tried too hard to be helpful. Change his answer by half an hour, and everything changed. Make a mistake by thirty minutes, and suddenly Lionel Byrd had the time to kill Yvonne Bennett, drive back to Hollywood, and stop for a fast one before heading home. Nothing like a double shot of Jack after crushing a woman's skull.

I was still listening to the trees when the phone rang, and a quiet female voice came from two thousand miles away.

“Is this the World's Greatest Detective?”

I immediately felt better. I felt warm, and at peace.

“It was. How're you doing?”

Lucy said, “Was?”

“Long story.”

“I think I know part of it. Joe called.”

“Pike called you?”

“He said you could use an ear.”

“Did Joe really call?”

“Tell me about Lionel Byrd.”

The canyon grew dark as I told her. As the outside darkness deepened, the houses dotting the banks and ridges of the canyon glowed with flickering lights.

When I finished, she said, “So what do you think?”

“It's just the thought of it, I guess. Sometimes you can't duck the blame even when you do everything straight up and by the book.”

“Do you believe Byrd killed those seven people?”

“Looks that way, but I don't know. The facts appear to be on their side.”

“It might look that way, but do you believe it?”

I hesitated, thinking back through everything Lindo and Starkey had told me, and also everything I had learned three years ago on my own.

“No. Maybe I should, but I don't. I know Byrd. Not the way someone who knows him would know him, but I put everything I had into reconstructing his life on the night Yvonne Bennett was murdered. That night, I owned him. I had him by the places he went, the people he met, what he said to them, and how he said it. I knew how loud he talked, how little he tipped, where he sat, and how long he stayed before moving on. An A-list predator would have blended into the background, but Byrd was loud, crude, obvious, and drunk. I knew him on that night better than anyone, and I do not believe he killed Yvonne Bennett. Maybe he knew the murderer, I guess that's possible, but he did not kill Yvonne Bennett. I do not believe it. I can't.”