Sunset Express Read online

  Sunset Express

  An Elvis Cole Novel

  Robert Crais

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  For Leonard Isaacs,

  who opened the door,

  and

  for Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight,

  who invited me in.

  Prologue

  The sky above the San Fernando Valley that Saturday morning was a deep blue, washed clean of the dirt and chemical particulates that typically color L.A. air by a breeze that burbled out of the San Gabriel Mountains and over the flat valley floor and across the high ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains. Mulholland Drive snakes along the crest of the Santa Monicas, and, if you were walking along Mulholland as Sandra Bernson and her father were doing that morning, you would have been able to look south almost forty miles across the Los Angeles basin to the tip of the Long Beach Peninsula or north some thirty-five miles across the San Fernando Valley and through the Newhall Pass to the deep purples of the Santa Susana Mountains and the peaks surrounding Lake Castaic. It was a day of unusual clarity, the far horizons magnified as if by some rare trick of optical law that might even allow you to see into the lives of the sleeping millions in the valleys below. Sandra Bernson later said that as she watched the small private airplanes floating into and out of Van Nuys Airport in the center of the valley that morning, she imagined them to be flying carpets. On mornings like these, she also said, it was easy to believe in magic.

  Sandra was a fifteen-year-old honor student at the prestigious Harvard-Westlake School, and her father, Dave Bernson, was a television writer and producer of moderate success, then working as the supervising producer of a popular series on the Fox Television network. The Bernsons lived in a contemporary home on a small private road off Mulholland Drive in Sherman Oaks, approximately one mile west of Beverly Glen, and they left their home at exactly 6:42 that morning. Both Sandra and Dave were able to tell investigators their exact departure time because it was Dave’s habit to call out when their walks began so that they could time themselves. They intended to walk east along Mulholland to Warren Beatty’s home approximately one mile east of Beverly Glen, where they planned to reverse course and return. Their typical walk would cover four miles round-trip and take almost exactly fifty minutes. On this particular Saturday, however, they never made it to Beatty’s and they didn’t complete the walk.

  On this Saturday, Sandra Bernson saw the deer.

  They proceeded east from their home, climbing one of Mulholland’s steeper grades to a high, flat stretch of road abreast Stone Canyon Reservoir. That was Sandra’s favorite part of the walk because she could see the valley to the north and the reservoir to the south, and just before they came to Beverly Glen Canyon they would reach the Stone Canyon overlook. The overlook is built into the top of a little knoll there beside Mulholland, with manicured walks and observation points and benches if you want to sit and admire what realtors like to call a 360-degree jetliner view. Sandra remembers that as she and her father reached the top of the overlook she saw the deer creeping up from the valley side of Mulholland, sniffing and listening, and she whispered to her father, “Look, Dad!”

  “Mule deer. See the size of his ears? It’s a buck, but he’s already shed his horns. See the knobs above his eyes?”

  The deer heard them. It looked in their direction, its huge ears cocked forward, and then it bounded across Mulholland and the overlook’s little parking lot and disappeared. Sandra said, “I wanna see where he goes!”

  She slid across the overlook’s low wall and ran to the edge of the knoll just as the buck vanished near a cut in the slope that had caught a lot of dead brush and beer cans and newspapers and brown plastic garbage bags. Dave arrived at her side a moment later. Everything caught by the cut looked old and dusty and weathered as if it had been there for a very long time, except for the garbage bags. They looked shiny and new, and Sandra was using them as a landmark to point out to Dave where she had last seen the mule deer when she saw the hand sticking out of the bags. The nail polish was very red and seemed to gleam in the breathtakingly clear morning sun.

  It never entered Dave’s mind that the hand might be a movie prop or belong to a mannequin; the moment he saw it he knew it was real. It looked real, and it also looked dead. Dave recalls that he considered working his way down to the body, but then says that he remembered things like clues and evidence, and so he led his daughter back to Mulholland where they flagged down a passing Westec private security car. The security cop, a twenty-eight-year-old ex-Marine named Chris Bell, parked his unit and went to see for himself, then returned to his car and reported the find to the Westec offices. In less than eight minutes, two LAPD patrol units arrived on the scene. The uniforms observed the hand protruding from the plastic, but, as had Dave Bernson, decided not to venture down the slope. The uniforms relayed their observations in code by radio, then secured the area to await the arrival of the detectives.

  Dave Bernson offered to wait also, but by that time Sandra had to pee really bad, so one of the uniforms drove them home. Forty minutes after Sandra Bernson and her father were returned to their home, and thirty-nine minutes after Sandra began calling her friends just as quickly as she could to tell them about this incredibly gross thing that had just happened, the first detective unit arrived on the scene.

  Detective Sergeant Dan “Tommy” Tomsic and Detective-two Angela Rossi were in the first car. Tomsic was a powerfully built man who’d spent a dozen years on the street before making the transfer to detectives. He had almost thirty years on the job, and he viewed the world through suspicious, unblinking eyes. Angela Rossi was thirty-four years old, with twelve years on the job, and had been Tomsic’s partner for only five weeks. Rossi spoke her mind, was entirely too confrontational, and, because of this, she had trouble keeping partners. So far Tomsic didn’t seem bothered, but that was probably because he ignored her.

  Eleven minutes after the first car, the senior detectives arrived on the scene. Detective Sergeant Lincoln Gibbs was a tall, thin African-American with mocha-colored skin, a profoundly receding hairline, and tortoiseshell spectacles. He looked like a college professor, which was a look he cultivated. He had twenty-eight years on the job, less than Tomsic, but more time in grade as a detective sergeant, so Linc Gibbs would be in charge. He arrived with Detective-three Pete Bishop, a twenty-two-year veteran with an M.A. in psychology and five divorces. Bishop rarely spoke, but was known to make copious notes, which he referred to often. He had a measured IQ of 178 and a drinking problem. He was currently in twelve-step.

  The four detectives got the story from the uniforms and the Westec cop, then went to the edge of the overlook and stared down at the hand. Gibbs said, “Anybody been down there?”

  One of the uniforms said, “No, sir. It’s undisturbed.”

  The detectives searched the ground for anything that might present itself as evidence—scuff marks, drops of blood, footprints, that kind of thing. There were none. They could see the path that the body had followed as it slid down the slope. Scuffs on the soil, broken and bent plants, dislodged rocks. Linc followed the trail with his eyes and figured that the body had been dumped from a point just at the rear of the parking lot. The body was between twelve and fifteen yards
down a damned steep slope. Someone would have to go down, and that presented certain problems. You wouldn’t want to follow the same path as the body because that might disturb evidence. That meant they’d have to find another route, only everything else was steeper and the drop-off more pronounced. Linc was thinking that it might take mountaineering gear when Angela Rossi said, “I can get down there.”

  The three male detectives looked at her.

  “I’ve done some rock climbing in Chatsworth and I work terrain like this all the time when I’m backpacking.” She pointed out her route. “I can work my way down the slide over there, then traverse back and come up under the body. No sweat.”

  Dan Tomsic said, “That goddamned soil is like sand. It won’t hold your weight.”

  “It’s no sweat, Dan. Really.”

  Rossi looked like the athletic type, and Gibbs knew that she had run in the last two L.A. marathons. Tomsic sucked down three packs a day and Bishop had the muscle tone of Jell-O. Rossi was also fifteen years younger than the rest of them, and she wanted to go. Gibbs gave his permission, told her to take the camera, and Angela Rossi went back to the car to trade her Max Avante pumps for a busted-out pair of New Balance running shoes. She reappeared a minute later, and Gibbs, Tomsic, and the others watched as she worked her way down to the body. Tomsic frowned as he watched, but Gibbs nodded in approval—Rossi seemed graceful and confident in her movements. Tomsic was praying that she wouldn’t lose her balance and break her damned neck—one slip and she’d flop ass over teapot another sixty or eighty yards down the slope.

  Down below, Rossi never once entertained the notion that she might fall. She was feeling absolutely confident and more than a little jazzed that it was she who had taken the lead in recovering the body. If you took the lead you got the promotions, and Rossi made no secret that she wanted to become LAPD’s first female chief of detectives. It was a goal she had aggressively pursued since her days at the academy and, though there had been what she called her Big Setback, she still hoped that she could get her career back on track and pull it off.

  When Rossi reached the body, she could smell it. The sun was rising and the dark plastic was heating quickly and holding the heat. As water evaporated from the body it collected on the plastic’s inner surface, and, Rossi knew, it would be humid and damp inside the bag. The victim’s abdomen would swell and the gases of decay would vent. Decomposition had begun.

  Linc called down to her, “Try not to move the body. Just take the snaps and peel back the bags.”

  Rossi used the Polaroid to fix the body’s position for the record, then pulled on rubber surgical gloves and touched the wrist, checking for a pulse. She knew that there would be none, but she had to check anyway. The skin was pliant but the muscles beneath were stiff. Rigor.

  Rossi couldn’t see much, as yet, but the body appeared intact and double-bagged in two dark brown plastic garbage bags. The bags were secured around the body with silver duct tape, but the job appeared to have been done hastily. The bags had parted and the hand had plopped out. Angela Rossi peeled the bags apart to expose the shoulder and head of a blonde Caucasian woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. The woman was clothed in what looked like a pale blue Banana Republic T-shirt that was splattered with blood. The woman’s left eye was open but her right eye was closed, and the tip of her tongue protruded between small, perfect teeth. The hair on the back and right side of her head was ropey and matted with blood. Much of the blood was dried, but there was a shiny, wet quality to much of it, also. The skull at that portion of the hair appeared depressed and dark, and brain matter and ridges of white skull were obvious. The woman’s nose was straight and her features rectangular and contoured. In life, she would’ve been pretty. Angela Rossi had an immediate sense that the woman looked familiar.

  Tomsic yelled down, “Don’t pitch a goddamned tent down there. What’s the deal?”

  Rossi hated it when he spoke to her that way, but she clenched her jaw and took it. She’d been taking it more and smarting off less since the Big Setback. Anything to resurrect the career. She called back without looking at them. “Caucasian female. Early thirties. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head.” She pushed the garbage bag back farther, exposing the victim’s head and shoulders. She saw no additional injuries and wanted to peel back the bags even farther, but was concerned that the body would dislodge and tumble down the slope, possibly taking her with it. She took more pictures, then said, “The blood around the wound appears to be tacky, and it’s wet in some spots. She hasn’t been here long.”

  Bishop said, “Lividity?”

  “A little, but it could be bruising.”

  Above her, Linc Gibbs was growing impatient with all the conversation. He didn’t like Rossi perched on such a steep slope, and he wanted to call in the criminalist. He said, “What about a weapon?” Murderers almost always dumped the murder weapon with the body.

  He watched Rossi lean across the body and feel around the bags. She moved out of sight twice, and each time he tasted acid because he thought she’d fallen. Another Tagamet day. He remembers that he was just getting ready to ask her what in hell was taking so long when she said, “Don’t see anything, but it could be under the body or in the bag.”

  Gibbs nodded. “Leave it for the criminalist. Take some more pix and get back up here.”

  Rossi took the remainder of the roll, then worked her way back up the slope. When she reached the top, the others crowded around to see the pictures. All of the male detectives pulled out reading glasses except for Gibbs, who wore bifocals.

  One of the uniformed cops said, “Hey. She looks like somebody.”

  Rossi said, “I thought so, too.”

  She didn’t look like anyone to Gibbs. “You guys recognize her?”

  Bishop was turning the pictures round and round, as if seeing the victim from every possible view was important. All the turning was making Tomsic nauseated. Bishop said, “Her name is Susan Martin.”

  The Westec cop said, “Holy Christ, you’re right. Teddy Martin’s wife.”

  All four detectives looked at him.

  The Westec cop said, “They live right over here in Benedict Canyon. It’s on my route.” Benedict Canyon was less than one mile from the overlook.

  Gibbs said, “I’ll be damned.”

  The four detectives later testified that they thought pretty much the same thing at the same time. Teddy Martin meant money and, more important than money, political power, and that meant the case would require special handling. Dan Tomsic remembers thinking that he wished he had called in sick that day so some other asshole would’ve answered the call. Special cases always meant special trouble, and investigating officers almost always caught the short end of the deal. Teddy Martin was a rich boy who’d made himself even richer; a successful restaurateur and businessman who used his wealth to cultivate friends and social position and notoriety. He was always having dinner with city councilmen and movie stars, and he was always in the newspaper for giving millions of dollars to all the right causes. Tomsic knew the name because Teddy Martin had opened a new theme restaurant with a couple of movie star partners that his wife had been nagging him to take her to. He’d been foot-dragging because he knew it’d cost sixty bucks for a couple of pieces of fish just so the wife could eyeball some second-rate movie props and maybe some closet-fag actor. Tomsic hated guys like Teddy Martin, but he kept it to himself. Guys like Teddy Martin were headline grabbers and almost always phonies, but a phony with the right connections could end your career.

  Pete Bishop said, “It’s gonna be a headliner. We’d better call the boss.”

  Gibbs said, “Use your cell phone. You put it on the radio, we’ll have media all over us. Tommy, see if there’s anything on the wire.”

  Angela Rossi walked with Tomsic and Bishop back to their units. Fine soil and foxtails had worked down into her running shoes and between her toes, so she sat in the backseat of her radio car and cleaned her feet with a Handiw
ipe before changing back into her Max Avantes. While she sat in the car, Tomsic and Bishop stood apart from each other in the overlook’s parking lot, each talking into their respective cell phones.

  By the time Rossi finished cleaning her feet and had rejoined Gibbs at the top of the slope, both Tomsic and Bishop were off their phones. Tomsic said, “Nothing on the board about a Susan Martin.”

  Bishop said, “I called the boss and notified the coroner. Criminalists are on the way, and the boss is coming out.” The boss was the detective captain who oversaw the Westside detectives. When he reached the scene, everyone knew he’d decide whether Gibbs would keep the case or it would be reassigned to someone else. Gibbs knew that because of Mr. Martin’s stature, the case would almost certainly be assigned to one of the elite robbery-homicide units downtown. He had no problem with that.

  Gibbs said, “Okay, we’d better notify Mr. Martin and see what he says.” He looked at the Westec guy. “You know where they live?”

  “Sure. I’ll take you over, you want.”

  Gibbs started for his car. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Bishop was shaking his head. “We’d better stick around for the boss, Linc.”

  Tomsic said, “Angie and I’ll go.”

  Angela Rossi later said that if she’d known where it was going to lead, she would have shot Tomsic right there.

  Dan Tomsic and Angela Rossi followed the Westec guy east along Mulholland to Benedict, then south down through the canyon into a lush winding world of million-dollar homes and Mercedes convertibles. Most of the homes were new and modern, but the Westec guy pulled off the road in front of a Mediterranean mansion that could have been a hundred years old. A big mortar wall with an ornate iron gate protected the mansion from the street, the wall laced by delicate ivy with tiny, blood-red leaves. The wall was cracked and crumbling beneath the ivy, but you could see the cracks only if you took your time and looked between the vines. A gate phone stood to the left of the drive so you could identify yourself before being buzzed in. Tomsic figured the grounds for four or five acres, and the house beyond for maybe twenty thousand square feet. Tomsic and his wife and four children were squeezed into a twenty-two-hundred-square-foot cracker box in Simi Valley, but those were the breaks. Anyone could be a cop, but it took real talent to serve bad food in an overpriced restaurant.