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’sMadame 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.
