Zero to the Bone Read online

  She showed her teeth again, waited for my submissive nod, and left.

  When I walked the Rott to the Cadillac later that morning I wasn’t particularly surprised to see someone had slashed my ragtop. Angry and depressed, but not surprised. My apartment bordered gang turf held by the Venice Shoreline Crips of Oakwood. Someone had tagged the right rear fender months before, a compressed black scribble left by the same moron with a spray-paint canister who tagged every neighborhood surface in reach. For a brief moment I was thankful the Caddy’s money-green paint job hadn’t been tagged. It would be easy enough to mend the ragtop with a sail needle and some canvas thread, then reinforce it with duct tape. I reached for the door, peering through the driver’s-side window as I pressed the thumb-latch. A copy of the current issue of Scandal Times lay on the driver’s seat, front page facing up. I didn’t remember leaving it there. The Rott sprang forward as the door swung open, intent on leaping over the frame and onto the shotgun seat. I lurched to grab his collar and kneed his shoulder to keep him out. He barked and strained forward, trying to sniff beneath the newspaper. I gave him a sharply voiced command to sit and he obeyed, a single bark of protest to signal his reluctance.

  I pulled the door open until the hinge caught and then kneeled on the pavement beside the door frame. The video image of Christine in a bondage hood ran on the front page of that issue, in the lower right-hand corner, prime real estate by tabloid standards because it encourages the reader to turn the page to read the story, or, if that’s above their particular skill level, to look at more pictures. The issue didn’t lay flat or follow the contours of the seat. Instead, it mounded upward. I glanced at the Rott, who licked his snout, something he did when excited about something, usually food. I turned back to the driver’s seat and carefully lifted the corner of the paper to reveal a long, black tail, then the gray, short-haired hindquarters of a rat.

  I lost my temper and shouted. The Rott broke out of his command to sit and stuttered back on all four paws. I told him to sit again and leaned into the passenger compartment. A yellow packet lay on the passenger floorboard, bearing the illustrated image of a rat and the skull and crossbones. Rat poison. I broke out my cell phone to call the police, then Frank, and last of all Christine’s roommate, Tamara, to postpone our breakfast date. I didn’t figure a neighbor was expressing his displeasure over the loudness of my stereo. I didn’t have a stereo. The rat had to connect to our story about Christine’s murder. Whoever left it thought the rat and poison would serve as a warning. But a warning against what? If the killer sent me the video, why would he drop a dead rat in my car after the story ran?

  I locked the Rott in the apartment and shot a series of digital images of the slash in the convertible top and the objects left on the front seat, fudging the position of the rat for greater dramatic impact. When I got the shots I needed, I sat on the curb and found myself wishing someone would invent a fast-forward drug, something I could take in the morning to get the bad days over with fast, because this was showing all the symptoms of being a real tit-trampler of a day.

  An LAPD squad car rolled up to the Cadillac’s rear bumper a little more than a half hour after I called, the two black-uniformed officers inside taking last sips of take-out coffee before cranking out another call response. The dispatcher had probably reported a code 594, vandalism of a motor vehicle. The officers—a baby-faced Latino and a husky white woman with curly blonde hair—expected to verify the damage and tell me to contact my insurance company. When I told them someone had left a dead rat on the seat of my car, the Latino looked at the female officer as though either I was nuts or this was going to be one of those days. He wedged his hands into a pair of latex gloves, lifted the corner of the newspaper, and verified that it was indeed going to be one of those days. I explained that my name was mentioned on the front page of the paper draping the dead rat and suspected it had been left as a threat. They absorbed the information slowly, then the Latino poked around the interior of the car looking for other items of evidence while the curly-haired blonde spent her time in the squad car, working the computer.

  Frank pulled his Honda to the curb some minutes later and emerged from behind the wheel proffering a business card between two sausage-sized fingers. He made a joke about the dead rat that the Latino officer did not find particularly funny, and it took a minute of careful explanation to convince him that Frank belonged on the scene because he’d written the article that featured my name. The offense was no longer considered an act of vandalism but a death threat, the officer said, and they needed to secure the crime scene. In a few minutes someone from the detective bureau would be out to interview me. When Frank tried to interrupt him, he said, “Why don’t you wait over by your car until someone asks to talk to you?” He was polite but firm. Like most cops, he was accustomed to dealing with assholes.

  “I called the investigator assigned to Christine’s death,” Frank said as we walked to his car. “A detective out of Robbery-Homicide named Robert Logan. He’s coming over from Parker Center, though I can’t say he sounded very happy about it. You get photos of the rat?”

  “While I was waiting. Couldn’t get him to smile, though.” I lifted my camera bag onto the hood of Frank’s car and slid an eight-by-ten from an envelope containing photographs I’d taken at Christine’s funeral, printed from a flash card hooked directly into a printer. The image of the Hyundai Sonata’s back bumper was awkwardly framed but clear enough to make out the plate numbers. I asked him if he knew someone who could trace the owner.

  “It costs money to trace a plate. Who’s paying?”

  I pulled a photo of the young man in the black suit from the envelope, told Frank that he’d attended Christine’s funeral looking like he didn’t know anybody, then gave it a little extra spin by mentioning the police seemed as interested in him as I was.

  Frank turned the print toward the sun, said, “He’s the right age group, isn’t he? We should show this to the woman up in Palmdale, see if she recognizes him. He doesn’t look like the guy from the video, though. Too short.”

  “Three people were in that room, plus Christine,” I said.

  “Three?” Frank puffed his cheeks, thinking about it. “Where did you learn to count, the school for the mathematically impaired?”

  “The latex suit, the shadow that passes through the frame—”

  “That’s two,” he said, flashing two fingers.

  “—and the person behind the video camera,” I said, rolling right over him.

  “You don’t know that.” He looked at me like I was cheating.

  “Maybe not, but I’ve spent most of my life behind a camera so I know how the world looks through the lens. The guy in the latex suit did not set up that camera. From the way he glanced at the lens it looked to me like he was taking directions. And not from the shadow, because when you shoot anything, you stand behind the camera, not way off to the side of the frame.”

  A beige Crown Victoria slid behind the squad car. I sheathed the photos in the envelope. Frank turned, cued by my glance, and waved to the figure stepping out of the Crown Vic, a mid-forties man with side-parted hair and a dark mustache that gave him a retro, 1970s look. The detective buttoned his dark blue blazer and strode toward the officer taking prints off the glass of the Cadillac’s side window. Frank gave a friendly shout of his name and ambled forward, hoping to get a quote, until the detective leveled his finger like a sidearm and ordered him to return to his vehicle.

  “Hard-ass?” I asked.

  “That’s the one place he doesn’t need body armor, that’s for sure.” Frank took the envelope, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and lit a cigarette, making the most out of the wait. “They could take a skin graft off Logan’s ass and use it to grow Kevlar vests.”

  The detective spoke with the uniformed officers at length, then broke huddle to strap on a pair of gloves and stoop beside the driver’s seat. He examined the evidence with quick, efficient gestures and craned his neck to an awkward an
gle to read the text of the front page of the paper blanketing the rat. The way he shook his head, I don’t think he liked the article. He stripped off the gloves and walked toward me.

  “Your car?”

  I contemplated a half dozen smart-ass replies to such an obvious question but kept my mouth shut and nodded. He slipped the gloves into his jacket pocket and leaned one hand against the roof of Frank’s Honda, subtly trapping me against the side panel. “I gotta tell you, if this is some kind of publicity stunt, I’m gonna be really ticked off.”

  “My name’s Nina Zero.” I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  He looked at my hand, then at my face, and cracked his mouth in a smile that looked like he’d trapped a piece of beef jerky in his back molars. “Bob Logan, Robbery-Homicide Division.” He grazed my hand so briefly I suspected he wished he’d kept on the gloves. “I don’t mean to be rude, but that rat isn’t the only thing that smells here, so if either of you planted the damn thing you’d better tell me now before you face criminal charges. How many years are you looking at if you violate parole? I know I saw it in the file but I forgot.”

  “Oh please, if you’re not going to take this seriously, bag the rat and let me get on with my day.”

  “Bag the rat! I like that.” He bared his teeth to a sharp exhalation of breath that might have been a laugh and shifted his shoulders toward Frank. “You didn’t get an idea to play a funny prank on your photographer pal here? Except she doesn’t get the prank, instead she gets hysterical and calls the cops. Is that what happened?”

  Frank shook a cigarette out of his pack and stuck it into the corner of his mouth, trying to figure out where Logan was going with this. “Don’t forget I called you, suggested you come down and take a look at this. I don’t know what your criminal profiling textbooks tell you but that doesn’t sound like a prankster to me.”

  “Sure it does. If you get me to fall for your prank, it becomes news, just the kind of so-called news you like to print.”

  “Why don’t you give us a little respect here?”

  “Because your paper isn’t fit to wipe my ass.”

  “What exactly don’t you like about our coverage?” Frank thumbed open his silver Zippo but didn’t strike the flint. “We played by the rules. We handed over the disk the same day we got it. We didn’t print anything you told us we couldn’t print. Hell, I even tithe my income to official LAPD charities. I don’t see why we have a problem here.”

  Logan stared at Frank, no less angry than when he first approached us but curious about something. “Were you aware Charlotte McGregor was arrested at a rave in the desert this spring, five tabs of ecstasy in her purse?”

  “Why should I be?” Frank asked. It was a legitimate question but it sounded too glib, even to my partisan ears.

  “Because you just printed a story suggesting McGregor and Christine Myers were assaulted by the same party.” Logan leaned in so close to Frank’s face he could have bitten his cheek. “Have you met Ms. McGregor’s sometime boyfriend?”

  “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Frank said.

  “A twenty-six-year-old repeat offender convicted four years ago on charges of assault and battery. Guess the sex of the victim.”

  “Female?”

  “That was easy, wasn’t it? Care to guess the nature of the assault?”

  Frank clicked his Zippo, said, “No idea.”

  “He throttled her. And if we get enough evidence to arrest him, your article is going to be presented as the Holy Bible in court, because he has an alibi for Myers. Investigative reporter, my ass. If you were a cop, I’d bust you down to meter maid.” He pulled a black leather notepad from the inside pocket of his blazer and leaned forward to get in my face like he had Frank’s. “I’ll take your statement now, if you still care to give it.”

  11

  CHRISTINE’S ROOMMATE, TAMARA, sat hunched over our sidewalk table at the Fig Tree Café, her long blonde hair tenting the mug of green tea she cupped in both hands as she stared at the sea. The fog had burned off early that morning, leaving bright sunshine and the smell of salt water in the air. A beautiful late spring day brings out the crowds no matter what day of the week, and a parade of bicyclists, Rollerbladers, power walkers, and joggers plied the bike path just beyond our table. With a fresh cup of coffee and the prospect of good food, the bad start to my day had started to burn off with the fog until Tamara looked at me for a brief moment and said, “I don’t know if this is such a good idea, talking to you.”

  I resisted the impulse to remind her that she’d suggested we meet. If she really didn’t want to talk, she wouldn’t, but I suspected she just needed a little gentle prodding. “So don’t say anything. We’ll have a nice brunch together, maybe take a walk on the beach.” I caught the attention of a passing waitress, a young retro-hippie in a flowing skirt who held her notepad six inches from her face while she took down our order.

  After the waitress hustled to the kitchen, Tamara said, “The police interviewed me, you know, when I got back from the funeral.” She wore sunglasses to shield her eyes from the glare of the late-morning sun, the color of the frames matching the blue of her cling-wrap jeans. “Talking to the police about the death of a friend, that’s a scene I never thought I’d have to play.”

  “Did they tell you not to talk to me?”

  She shrugged, said, “I don’t think they like tabloid reporters.”

  “Some do, some don’t. Depends on the cop. No different than some actresses. You, for example, when I met you at the funeral, I thought you were the type to want a little free press.”

  She turned to me as though I’d just kicked her under the table. “I’m not going to profit from Christine’s death, okay? What happened to her was horrible. I don’t want my name mentioned in the paper. I want to see the person responsible suffer.”

  Actors are ciphers by profession, and the sunglasses made her even more difficult to read. I slipped my napkin from beneath the flatware and worried it between my fingers, trying to balance Tamara’s reluctance to talk with the idea that she had approached me. “Then why do you want to talk to me if you don’t want to talk to me?”

  “I do want to talk to you, that’s the point. But I don’t want to talk to the tabloid photographer. I want to talk to the person who knew Christine and cares about what might have happened to her.”

  “If you want to talk off the record, that’s fine with me. But you have to understand I’ll probably use whatever you tell me. I’m not going to hold your hand and tell you how terrible it is, because I’m past that point.”

  “So it’s just a story to you,” she said.

  I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved.

  “More like a quest.”

  She cocked her head to the side. It wasn’t the answer she expected. “What kind of quest?”

  “It’s the way I approach things. If all I wanted was to take pictures of movie stars, I’d get myself certified to work the red carpet at events like the Oscars. That doesn’t interest me. I think truth has a private face. And the only way to capture that private face on film is to wait long enough for the subject to give it to you, to catch it by accident, or to hunt it down and take it. The photographs I took of Christine were consensual. She trusted me enough to give a little bit of her true self, in the disguise of the role she played. To see the true face of whoever killed her, that’s something I have to hunt down and take.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do? Try to find out who killed her?”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said. “I can’t arrest anybody. But whoever killed Christine has already involved me.”

  “It involves me, too. It involves everyone who knew her.”

  “It’s more than that.” I looked down at my hands, saw that I’d torn my napkin to shreds. “What happened would be bad enough if her murder was some random event. But what burns me is that somebody sent me a video they’d shot of her, moments before her death, and ever since, I
haven’t been able to figure out why. Were they playing me for the publicity? Or was it a taunt?” I sat back in my chair, thinking I talked too much.

  “What kind of video?” Tamara asked.

  “You didn’t see the paper?”

  “You mean the one you work for?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t gone grocery shopping yet.”

  “It involved Christine chained to a rack.”

  I shut up when the hippie waitress arrived. She set a salad and more hot water in front of Tamara and slid a three-egg omelet and whole-wheat toast onto my half of the table.

  “How can you eat that and not get fat?” she asked, like I’d just gotten away with robbing a bank.

  “Easy,” I said. “I’ll just go into the bathroom twenty minutes from now and throw up.” When she looked ill I assured her I was kidding and we talked about dieting for a while, or rather, she talked about dieting and I talked about running and weight lifting. She asked me to show her my muscles so I did, pulling my arm from my jacket to flex a biceps that wasn’t bad for a girl. She thought that was impressive and funny at the same time and asked if I was gay. I told her I preferred men but most of the time I wasn’t anything.

  She looked at me for several seconds, sucking on her lower lip as though she wanted a more definitive answer, but when she spoke again, it was about something else. “It was a bondage video, wasn’t it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Who else was in it?”

  “Hard to tell,” I said.

  She picked at her salad, head down, and shrugged. She thought I knew and wasn’t willing to say. I thought she knew and wasn’t willing to say either.

  “They wore latex suits and hoods,” I said. “I didn’t even know it was Christine until the back of the suit got unzipped and I saw her tattoo.”