Chapter 6
Chapter
6
Detective III Petra Connor had a cool, confident voice and told the story with her usual economy.
Just after twelve noon, Oleg Karkovsky, an off-site manager for a real estate conglomerate headquartered in Las Vegas, had entered one of the eighteen buildings he oversaw in L.A. County. This one sat on Selma Avenue between Sunset and Hollywood, two blocks short of the street’s termination at Highland.
Karkovsky’s destination was a third-floor one-bedroom unit scheduled for inspection of a faulty water heater. The tenant had demanded immediate repair, irate and foulmouthed because of lukewarm showers. Despite being three months behind in his rent.
Karkovsky had knocked, received silence, used his master key to get in. Calling out and receiving no reply, he’d headed for a utility closet off the kitchen. Before he got there, something out on the unit’s narrow balcony caught his eye.
Petra said, “I’m quoting verbatim, you add the Russian accent. ‘The guy’s lying there, I think idiot fell sleep, maybe out there all night. The fools I deal with in Hollywood are worse than in Moscow.’ Anyway Karkovsky opens the slider ready to do a wakey-wake and sees the blood.”
—
Paul Allan O’Brien, forty-three, had been shot once through the neck, the bullet nicking his carotid artery and his jugular vein before passing through cleanly and exiting through the back. Bouncing off an external wall behind him, it had landed on the floor and settled beside a long-dead potted palm.
Petra said, “Full metal jacket, .308, don’t see those often. The techs confirmed it but I could see it myself, the cartridge was pretty much intact. I’m figuring the pass-through was due to the jacket being unmodified because something military—hollow point, a custom job—would’ve exploded inside him. Hopefully, the fact that it didn’t go deep into the wall will tell us about distance and trajectory. The most likely origin—the only thing I can see—is it came from somewhere in the building next door. We’re talking fifty or more units and two stories higher. But it’s got a security door, no one answers my button-pushes, and I haven’t had time to seriously look for access yet. So why am I calling you? Because on the floor of O’Brien’s bedroom is a skimpy red rayon dress with cutouts, lacy thong panties, five-inch-heel shoes, and a purse. Inside the purse is the I.D. of a Marissa French, a wallet with money and cards but no phone and no Marissa. I look her up and she’s brand new on the murder list as one of yours. So here we are again, sir, pooling our talents. What’s Marissa’s story?”
Milo told her. “Does O’Brien fit my bad guy?”
“To a T. Big and muscular, one sleeved arm, soul patch, the Pink Floyd tee. Karkovsky knew nothing about him other than he owed rent and was a jerk. So looks like he took her home, overdosed her, did whatever he did to her, then dumped her over by you and came back here. Then someone shoots him. Beyond weird.”
Milo said, “You gonna be there for a while?”
“Oh yeah.”
“How about I come over and have a look.”
“Great.”
“Alex is with me.”
“Even better.”
—
We got to Hollywood just after five. Lots of traffic, lots of tourists on foot looking for something that didn’t exist. The sky was graying irregularly now, sunlight putting up a brave struggle with insistent clouds as we made our way to Selma Avenue.
Petra was easy to spot in the crowd of uniforms and official vehicles blocking the front of a shabby, plain-wrap, five-story apartment building.
Young, athletically slender and pretty, dressed as always in a perfectly tailored pantsuit, Petra looks like anything but the senior detective she is. Her clean-jawed ivory face and black bob bring to mind Singer Sargent’s Madame X. Everything about her suggests cool efficiency, confidence, elegance. A senior executive at some corporate unicorn.
Despite her relative youth, she’d worked Hollywood murders for most of her career, fast-tracked every step of the way, initially because the department wanted more female D’s but soon after by earning it.
Hollywood Division stays busy even during low-crime periods but this wasn’t one of them. Violence had risen all over the city courtesy of a district attorney allergic to prosecution. Morale at the D.A.’s office and among cops was low as too many crimes were brushed off as minor-league. But murders were still getting worked and homicide detectives are accustomed to intensely focusing and shutting out noise, so aces like Milo and Petra continue going about their business with a single-mindedness that borders on obsession.
One of the reasons I like working with them.
She saw us right away, came forward and lifted the yellow tape. Today’s suit was charcoal with black velvet lapels.
She and Milo hugged then she shook my hand. “Any thoughts on the way over?”
Milo said, “Just that life seems to be getting stranger.”
The coroner’s van was still in place. I said, “Can we see the body?”
“You bet. There’s an elevator but it makes too much noise for my taste. You okay with the stairs?”
“Sure,” said Milo, touching his gut.
Petra held the front door open for us. No entry hall, just a corridor carpeted in dishwater-colored poly with walls painted an awful green. A single lift with a brown metal door to the left, stairs to the right.
I’ve seen Petra sprint several flights. This time she gave Milo a glance and took it slow.
The stairwell reeked, roach-cakes placed on each landing fuming camphor, mixing with rancid cooking grease and stale tobacco smoke.
Had Marissa French wondered about an audition in a place like this? Or had she been too far gone by the time she arrived?
We exited onto the ground-floor corridor’s twin.
Milo said, “What did O’Brien do for a living?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Petra. “Obviously nothing lucrative.”
A uniform guarding the entrance to Unit 305 moved aside to let us in. We followed Petra across a living-area- cum -kitchenette not radically different from the one in Beth Halperin and Yoli Echeverria’s Reseda rental.
The sliding glass door to the balcony was open, letting in ethane-flavored breeze. The balcony floor was grubby concrete. A rusting metal railing ended at least a foot below current safety standards.
Paul O’Brien lay tucked in the left-hand corner, flat on his back, eyes open and matte, slack mouth affording a view of tooth-rimmed gullet. His left arm was curled up against his body, his right had been flung upward by impact and landed in a way that suggested a grotesque farewell wave. Blood glistened on the black T-shirt, splotching it maroon. A greater volume of blood spread around O’Brien’s sizable body.
Neat hole just right of his Adam’s apple, the edges blackening and curling.
Petra said, “No decomp, a bit of livor, rigor’s come and gone, and he’s cold. Given liver temp and cool weather until an hour after sunrise, C.I.’s guessing sometime in the early morning. When was he seen dumping poor Marissa?”
“Just before three a.m.”
“Perfect fit,” she said. “He goes home to celebrate getting away with it but someone has a different idea.”
She pointed to the other end of the balcony where a hibachi with a grill that needed cleaning squatted. Just left of that were a pair of yellow plastic chairs and a matching table. On the table was a bottle of Casamigos Tequila. On the floor, a pair of unlaced black-and-orange basketball shoes.
“There was also half a hand-rolled joint near his body, techs took it, along with his glass.”
Milo said, “No blood trail or drag marks so he was shot near where he fell.”
Petra nodded.
Milo said, “So what, he kicks off his shoes, toasts himself near the table, then gets up to stretch or goes to the head, comes back and gets nailed?”
“That’s exactly how I see it.” Her eyes swiveled to the neighboring building. Separated from O’Brien’s by a driveway leading to its sub-garage and a chain-link fence laced with struggling clematis.
Newer than O’Brien’s sixties-era structure. Probably from the nineties when faith in large-scale Hollywood renewal hadn’t yet ceded to reality. The charmless block-like design that goes with exploiting every inch of land. Someone paying off a city council member or a municipal pencil pusher in order to violate setbacks.
No balconies, just windows. Row after row of identically sized squares.
Milo said, “Who’s the warden?”
Petra said, “Exactly. Hopefully we can narrow down the origin of the shot. One of the techies went to get one of those laser dealies. Knowing O’Brien’s height should help us get a trajectory. Meanwhile, I’ll be trying to get hold of the owners and convince them to give us entry. Raul’s on his way. When he gets here, we’ll assemble a battalion of uniforms and start door-knocking.”
“Did you have time to check if anyone 911’d a gunshot?”
“I did and they didn’t,” she said. “I’m figuring a single pop wouldn’t have made an impression, especially from up here. Ready to see your crime scene?”