Blood and Sand Read online

  Men are so weird. The perk of it is, none of them notice me walking through their desks toward the offices at the back. I look for a bunch of evidence boxes. I find them on my second try. They’re piled on the table of a conference room. It’s a little small, but as temporary offices go, not bad. I dump my helmet, my jacket and my bike keys and I’m about to dive in when a hard voice says, “Who the hell are you?”

  He’s six-five and dressed in a detective’s ill-fitting suit. He’s on crutches. I try not to picture his foot punching through the staircase in Polly’s building, because I might hurt myself laughing.

  “I’m Fell,” I say. “They told you I was coming. Are you primary on this?”

  He makes that offended teenage girl gargle sound.

  “That would make you —” I pop a file, get the name. “— Laughlin, right?”

  “You were supposed to check in,” Laughlin says.

  “She did.” Tuttle appears at his elbow. “She checked in with me five minutes ago. I told her to head over and I’d find you, make the introductions. But I guess you beat me to it.” He holds up a coffee mug in offering. “It’s amaretto.”

  Laughlin glares, taking the coffee anyway. He sips and tries to hide how amazing it tastes. Not that Tuttle would see, since he’s inched his way in to offer me the other cup. “Getting settled okay?”

  I wave off the mug. “Yeah, great.”

  “Tell me,” Laughlin says, “how much is the lottery paying you to be here?”

  I’m stacking statements, photos and other evidence in sequential piles. I’d much rather be doing it alone, but Laughlin’s the kind of guy who has to see if you’ll kiss the ring when you show up in his court. Best to teach him early that I’m not that kind of girl. “The lottery didn’t hire me. The insurance company that underwrote the jackpot did. They have to verify that both the winner and the next of kin are dead before they can legally avoid paying out.”

  “So you’re here to make some money while protecting theirs. Nice.”

  “Yep.”

  He makes that noise again — “Cugh!” His size fifteen shoes make a galloping racket down the hallway, his crutches supplying an echo.

  “That was a record,” Tuttle says. “The quickest I’ve ever seen him give up on bullying someone was five minutes. You did it in three.”

  I pause, gather my patience, and turn to him. He’s got a porn ‘stache that absolutely should not work but somehow does, and he’s looking at me with a friendly, mild interest that I absolutely don’t have time for. “Tuttle, right? How quick I can shake a yappy dog off my ankle isn’t the most important clock I’m on here. Okay?”

  I pull another file open — Polly’s school photo smiles up from the gloss.

  “Pretty passionate,” he says, backing out of the room, “for someone who says she’s just cashing in.” He leaves, soundless in the hall.

  I lock the door, pull the blinds, and get to work.

  Chapter 3

  Hattie Turner’s body washed up on the southmost tip of Zuma Beach around six o’clock this morning. A lifeguard coming into work found her and called it in. This was almost simultaneous with Hattie’s neighbor discovering the bloody state of the apartment.

  I don’t know how the lottery got notified so fast, but it was six-thirty when the insurance company called me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Not that I was inclined to refuse. It seemed like the kind of mystery that would only get odder if I had access to the investigation.

  Now that I’m neck-deep in it, it doesn’t disappoint.

  Hattie won the jackpot a week ago. God only knows what went through her head as she listened to the Powerball numbers and matched them, one at a time, to the ticket she’d bought a day before. The police found the gas station where the transaction took place and got footage of Hattie at the counter. I watch it on the laptop provided for me here, then I hook it up to the conference room’s projection screen and watch it again.

  Hattie was a fearsome creature. I can tell that much at a glance. Big white perm, pink talon fingernails, eyebrows drawn on in long black lines that are severe even as she’s smiling. Which she is, in the footage. There’s not much resemblance to Polly, except in the smile.

  So she buys, she wins, she tells her granddaughter the next morning and she mails in everything the lotto needs to award the money. I’m guessing Polly was under strict orders not to share the good news. Anonymity’s at a premium when you’re suddenly rich. You don’t want phone calls pouring in from seven hundred strangers asking you for a hand-out.

  But if you’re Hattie Turner, phone calls aren’t a problem. She didn’t have a phone, couldn’t afford one. I digitize the layout of their apartment building and blow that up on the big screen. There’s the phone — a public landline in the front hallway.

  The building does point quite nicely to Hattie’s real problem, though. If I lived in a hovel like that, I’d be tempted to kill an old lady upstairs for eighty-million.

  I pace. Yeah, it’s a slum full of desperate people, but if the other tenants in this building hear I’ve got that kind of check coming in the mail, they probably assume my dementia is kicking in.

  But maybe there’s somebody in the building who’s so desperate they have to believe it. Someone there’s good reason to be scared of.

  I run the tenant statements through the scanner and click through them one at a time. I’m loading everything into my phone for good measure, kicked back in a chair, my stomach growling, my fingers getting stabby on the mouse. I must look like a moody housewife searching for a good soap opera on TV.

  A lot of Hattie’s neighbors had records, but it’s petty stuff. One assault and battery, except it’s a domestic thirty years gone and the guy’s on an oxygen tank now.

  I put the layout back on the screen. There’s a unit near the stairs labeled “Bldg. Sntdt.”

  I dig and dig and dig. I can’t find the building superintendent’s file anywhere. That’s odd, but I’ll think about the oddness later. Right now, it’s merely frustrating. He’s a live-in super, I remember that. He’s got his own apartment on the first floor. It takes another twenty minutes to find a mention of him — Gus Speer. I log in to the criminal database. I’ve still got the laptop linked to the big screen, and when his record lights it up, my face lights up with it.

  Gus Speer is one of those guys who should get business cards printed listing his job title as Professional Lowlife. His history of fines, citations, and arrests has me scrolling down ’til my mouse hand cramps. His history of criminal convictions, though, is pretty spare. That can be a sign that the criminal is smart, but the mug shot I’m looking at seriously refutes that theory.

  When I hit his list of known associates, it makes a little more sense. It’s a who’s-who of the LA underworld. Bit players most of them, but not all of them. Mob ties are a slick way to get out of smaller charges. Those guys don’t go cheap on their lawyers. A beef like this, though — child abduction, granny murder, conspiracy, larceny, and a partridge in a pear tree — I highly doubt Gus is going to be guest of honor at a mob safe-house for long.

  In fact, they might be asking him a few pointed questions right now. Questions like: Where’d you get the idea, Gus?

  I jump to my feet, smear photos across the table, and find one of Polly sitting on the building’s front stoop with another girl her age. Yolanda Ruiz. I get back in the tenant files, match the last name, and snap a photo.

  I’m tearing open the conference room door when I hear, “Son of a biscuit!” followed by the rush of spilling soda.

  Tuttle’s in the hall. He’s got a couple of bags in one hand and an empty cup caddy in the other. Two twenty-ouncers are at his feet. The soda and crushed ice they contained is dripping down the front of his uniform.

  I would just blow by him, but I have to know: “Son of a biscuit?”

  Tuttle uses the cup caddy to swipe ice out of his waistband. “I’ve got a nephew. He’s two, and he repeats everything the grown-ups say.”
He holds up the bags. “You’ve been in there for four hours. I thought you might —”

  “I’m good,” I say, already moving.

  “You’re welcome!” he shouts after me.

  Chapter 4

  Talia Ruiz works at a dress factory. Nice place, upscale — they might actually pay their workers minimum wage. I trace the outline of the building ’til I find the cigarette butts. Then I verify Talia’s number on my phone, send her a text, and wait. It’s less than five minutes.

  “What do you want?” Talia says. She’s pretty in a frayed way. Exhaustion or guilt or both.

  I smile. Big smile, good friends shooting the breeze. I say in Spanish, “You need to pretend we like each other. Laugh like I said something funny.”

  There’s a beat when I think she might not cooperate. Then she laughs. It’s perfect, not too much and not too little. She switches to Spanish, too. “What’s happening?”

  “You’re afraid of Gus, aren’t you? Keep smiling.”

  “Is he watching?”

  “His friends might be.” I’m being paranoid, and what’s more, I’m passing it on. But when the mob might be involved, it pays to be paranoid. Especially LA mob; they’re mostly expats from New York’s organized crime rings, and the heat does something to them, makes them meaner.

  “Who are you?” Talia says.

  “I’m nobody. I’m not even here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Did your daughter tell you that Hattie Turner won the lottery?”

  “Polly told Yolanda at school. Yolanda told me.”

  “And who’d you tell?”

  Her eyes are big and teary. Her smile is an unborn scream. “I thought it wasn’t true. I thought it was one of those stories little girls tell.”

  “Don’t cry, Talia. This is all I need to know: who did you tell and when?”

  “I told — I told two people. In the laundry room. I do laundry for the extra money.”

  “Which people, and what time?”

  “It was after dinner. Seven? I told Minnie, Minnie Adler. I told Mrs. Spalding, and Mrs. Spalding laughed. She said Hattie would spend the whole prize on wigs. That was all.”

  Bullshit it was. “Listen to me. I’m not going to get you in trouble. I’m not a cop, I’m not FBI. Think of me like a ghost. Okay?”

  “Gus is — he is very bad. He comes in to make repairs while we shower.”

  I change my smile. It’s very sweet but very stern. It’s the beauty queen contestant who’s going to win no matter what. “Then he sounds like my kind of guy. Where was he? While you were telling Minnie and Mrs. Spalding?”

  Talia shivers, though it’s a sunny SoCal afternoon. “He was fixing a door. Mr. Popovic, his lock sticks. They all stick.”

  I think back. “Popovic is in 1C, right?”

  “Yes. Near the laundry room.”

  “Give me a hug. Quick one, old friends saying goodbye.” She folds around me hesitantly, and I say in her ear, “Do you have somewhere you can go for a few days?”

  “My sister is in San Diego.”

  “Finish your shift, pick up Yolanda and go. Keep an eye on the news.”

  She hams it a little too hard, waving goodbye. I hope she was listening about finishing the workday.

  I’m retracing my steps back to the front of the factory, noting warehouses, garages, wide streets and the ubiquitous cars, cars, cars. I’m probably being over-cautious, not to mention over-imaginative, but one name from Gus’s known associates keeps screaming through my head. I can’t seem to get it to stop.

  My bike drowns it out at first. The traffic is hellish, but I slip n’ slide through the cracks, arriving at Zuma in record time. I hit up another taco truck, use some hot sauce I keep in a coat pocket, and while I’m in there, I get my sunglasses. I head south, eyeing beachcombers, surfbums, leathery sun-worshippers. And my own tail. The sunglasses are huge and round and perfect for checking to see if I’m being followed. I’m not. Not yet.

  Mr. Jones.

  The name’s a joke; we don’t know his real one. The feds who originally tied the murders together said this guy got around so much he was like that dude in the Dylan song, Mr. Jones. There are a few grainy photos that suggest Jones’s face, but that’s all, except for this: he wears a fedora. Always. Black, with a sharp brim. It hides his face, but that can’t be why he wears it; plenty of things hide your face. It’s the one piece of personhood that we’ve been able to pin to him.

  His MO isn’t exotic. He does two to the chest and one to the head. He’s not a bragger; he doesn’t sign his crimes to heckle the authorities. What sets him apart is his efficiency. Numerous informants have said he’ll deliver on contracts in as little as twelve hours. So there’s that, but there’s also his targets. He’ll kill anybody. He made a real name for himself in New York that way. He was hired by one crime family to bump off the under-boss of another. A month later, the family he’d recently bereaved hired him to bump off the boss-boss of the family that hired him first. That’s basically suicide — for anybody; even a hitman, even a great one — but Jones got away clean.

  He’ll also kill kids. I’m in a position to know. I was tracking the son of a Saudi oil tycoon who’d been kidnapped from his private school a few years back. I was getting close, but then the kid’s dad did what I said not to do and paid the ransom. He had professional negotiators in his ear, assuring him it was a matter of time before his boy turned up, shaken but otherwise fine.

  A week later, I got a box in the mail. The kid was fine, in a manner of speaking. Each piece of him was wrapped carefully, packed in dry ice. His head was at the bottom.

  I’d kept searching even after the ransom was paid; I’m funny like that. But the trail went so ice cold that I sensed I was chasing a ghost. I stayed motivated by imagining his little arms slung around my neck as I lifted him and carried him out of wherever he was, my voice a private whisper saying this was nothing but a bad dream and he could wake up now.

  That’s the first thing I tell the kids I find alive. That it was all a bad dream and they can wake up now.

  When Interpol came to collect the box, one of the agents confided in me that this was the first time Jones had ever strayed from his usual method of execution-style shooting. It was also the first time he’d ever delivered a personal taunt to one of his pursuers. The agent said it must be a mark of respect. From Jones to me, with love.

  I said, “Awesome.”

  I say it again now. The cops didn’t take down their crime scene tape from the spot where Hattie’s body was discovered. Half of its yellow plastic tongue is buried in the sand, the other half is trailing into the water with the tide. I reel it back in, find a trash, and toss it.

  The blood’s gone, whatever Hattie had left to bleed. Sand does that, just drinks the blood down. I wonder where it goes. I wonder if there’s some monster down there that’s licking his chops for more. I wonder if that’s what I’ve really been fighting for so long, if it’s something not human, because the human monsters never seem to run out, so they must be in the service of some master. I wonder what created it, and what created me to fight it, and whether this is all some game the creator’s watching like it’s really bad reality TV.

  “Ma’am?”

  My hand’s most of the way to the good pocket, the easy-reach pocket, the one whose dimensions I specified when I had my jacket custom-made. But I relax as I turn around. However it goes down when Jones and I finally meet, I doubt he’ll call me ma’am.

  The boy is in his early twenties, sandy-haired. “Are you with the police? Do you have more questions for me?”

  “You found her?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  If I had a rubber band around my wrist, I’d snap it. He’s wearing those little lifeguard trunks. I could do laundry on his abs. My sex drive can be such an annoying distraction.

  “I don’t know what else I can tell you,” he says. “I was at my tower opening up for the morning, and I saw — I
thought it was driftwood, y’know? Except, then I saw it had on clothes.” He puts his face in his hands. “Not it, her. I saw she had on clothes. I saw her — her eyebrows, those drawn-on eyebrows. God. Oh, my God.”

  I don’t comfort him. Not my strong suit. I look around while he’s weeping, and I notice a toddler about fifteen feet away, plastic shovel in hand, wearing a Swimmie. She waves at me, chortling. Her mother is farther inland than I’d like, sunning herself on a towel. If the girl gets curious about the water, she’ll — “She’ll get sucked out to sea.”

  “What?” the lifeguard says.

  “What time did you find the body?”

  “Six. I’m here by six.”

  “And you weren’t late?”

  “No.”

  “Not early, not late. Exactly six.”

  “Yeah. Or — maybe a minute on either side, but yeah. Six.”

  “Was she wet? Was all of her wet?”

  He winces and squints, fighting the memory.

  “No, no,” I say, grasping his shoulder and leaning so he’ll look at me. “Dial it in here. This is important. Answer me this, and you won’t have to think about it ever again. Close your eyes and go back. Go back to this morning. You go over, you see her. Tell me everything you see.”

  He glances at the ocean. “Can you watch my water?”

  “Yes. You talk, I’ll watch.” And I do. It’s a beautiful day. I’m surprised there aren’t more people here. The Pacific is big and blue and calm, taking light from the sun and giving it right back. “Go ahead,” I say. “Everything you saw.”

  “Her hair’s dry. Her eyebrows, they look like they’re fake. These big, dark lines, y’know? She’s — I can see a hole in —” He touches his throat. “It’s purple all around, and — and —”

  “And you’re done,” I say, welcoming him back with a pat to the arm. “You did great.”

  I’m already leaving, but I hear him ask, “Are you going to catch whoever did that to her?”

  “Yeah, I am.”