Hollywood Homicide: A Hollywood Alphabet Series Thriller Read online

  Bernie and I found Harvey cleaning out his desk when I stopped at my work station to pick up my briefcase. My former partner met my eyes briefly, looked away, and said, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with us.”

  I remembered Jessica telling me that Harvey had requested her as his new partner. “Let me ask you something.” His eyes found me. “Why Jessica? The only time I’ve ever seen you two together you were arguing and calling each other names.” What I didn’t say is that Jessica had made disparaging remarks about Harvey’s propensity to “loose his lunch” around homicide victims.

  “We had a talk and reached a mutual understanding. I think we can work things out.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “Good luck with that.”

  I turned and saw that Jessica had slithered up next to me. My nemesis made a habit of dressing well, but even Versace couldn’t compensate for something with a forked tongue and a rattle.

  “I heard you’re taking the job with Section One,” Jessica said to me.

  I thumbed through some papers on my desk, not looking at her. “Word travels fast.”

  “I don’t know why they want you.”

  I put the paperwork in my briefcase and shot daggers at her. “Maybe they wanted someone who has homicidal thoughts.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I motioned to Harvey and said, “You two have fun together.”

  Jessica smiled, now looking like a serpent with shark teeth. “I think we’re going to become best of friends.”

  “Really?” I looked over at Harvey and said, “Congratulations. You’re Jessica’s first and only friend.”

  Bernie and I met up with Ted in the hallway as Jessica went on a rant, telling me that I’d better stay away from her and her new partner.

  “Problems?” Ted asked.

  I glanced over at Harvey who had gone pale while Jessica continued to disparage me. “Not at all. I’m ready to begin the new job.”

  The big detective smiled and smoothed out his tie. “Good. Then let’s go solve a homicide.”

  ***

  On the way to our crime scene Ted filled me in on Section One. “Dembowski is hoping to have space carved out at Hollywood Station later today. As he mentioned, we’re supposed to eventually have a total of six detectives in the unit along with a secretary, not to mention Selfie.”

  “Selfie?”

  He glanced over at me as he drove. “Our crime analyst. She’s going to meet us at The Gardens.”

  He continued to smile. I had a sense that he was holding something back but decided to let it go. As we approached the hotel my fears about the press finding out about the murder had already come true. There was a parade of satellite vans on Sunset, turning into the hotel parking lot.

  “I’ll call dispatch, get some additional units for traffic control,” I said.

  Ted’s caramel eyes lifted as he leaned forward in his seat and looked skyward. “Better also call air traffic control. The buzzards are swarming.”

  I saw three helicopters in the air but knew there were probably more. Every TV station in town had their own bird to cover traffic accidents, car chases, and the occasional drunken celebrity.

  “What do you know about Scarlett Endicott?” I asked after I made the call and we waited for the traffic to clear ahead of us.

  “She hit it big a few years back in one of those teen movies where she played the nice girl trying to deal with some school bullies—not sure about the name. I read something about her currently filming a movie with Zig Steinberg.”

  “The director?”

  He nodded. “Some big budget blockbuster—not sure about the title, either.”

  “I’ll have to ask Harvey about it, if he’s still speaking to me. He’s big on Hollywood stuff.”

  “Heard your ex-partner has a few issues.”

  “He’s got a bigger issue now—working with Jessica Barlow.”

  We were waved through the parking lot by a uniformed cop and got directions to the crime scene. Ted stopped the car near one of the hotel’s bungalows with a sign out front that read, Rosewood Cottage. The small house overlooked a rose garden at the back of the property. I’d heard somewhere that rooms at The Gardens started at about five hundred a night and imagined that a night in the Rosewood was a couple thousand dollars north of that.

  We passed through the crime scene tape and were met at the front door by a young officer. He looked like he was barely out of high school as he explained, “Dispatch got an anonymous call about a dead body here early this morning. We arrived and found the actress in the bedroom. It looks like somebody was…”

  “I’ll fill them in,” a young woman said, appearing behind the cop from inside the cottage. The woman was probably in her late twenties, slender, and full of nervous energy.

  We moved past the youthful cop as she smacked her gum and continued, “Our victim is Scarlett Endicott, age twenty-four, an actress whose real name is Scarlett Lee Dorsey. She lives alone in a small house near Melrose. Her parents are divorced. The body’s in the bedroom. There’s black plastic nearby and enough bleach on the floor to kill half the germs in Hollywood. It looks like someone was interrupted by the responding officers. The patio door was open. Our suspect must have slipped away when our guys arrived.”

  “Cause of death?” Ted asked as we gloved up and put on paper booties in the living room. He turned to me, apparently realizing that I hadn’t met the woman. “This is Selfie, our crime analyst.”

  “Knife to the throat.” Selfie’s gaze came over to me as she brushed magenta-colored hair from her eyes. “Pleasure.” She chewed, her dark eyes moving between Ted and me as she went on. “The body’s nude, posed with the arms out, and feet crossed at the ankles.” She shrugged. “Maybe there’s a religious significance. There’s also lots of other cuts on the body, so somebody took their time with her. No murder weapon was left.”

  We found the nude body of Scarlett Endicott on the bed. There was lots of congealed blood. The slashing wound to her neck was severe, severing the arteries and tendons, in addition to the numerous small cuts that Selfie had referenced. There were a couple of gallon containers of beach on the floor near the body, along with the black plastic.

  As Ted continued examining the body I went over to the closet. There was a single suitcase with just one change of clothing, some makeup, hair supplies, and an empty notebook. Nothing else looked remarkable.

  I went back over to the body where Ted was saying to Selfie, “Just looking at the victim, I think she’s been dead for several hours. Why do you suppose he waited so long to clean up the scene, try and dispose of the body?”

  Our crime analyst’s metal eyebrow piercings knitted together. “It’s hard to say.” She chewed. “Maybe the killer had help.”

  “You mean as in a second party being involved?” I asked. “That still wouldn’t explain why they waited several hours to try and get rid of things.”

  Selfie worked the gum back and forth in her mouth again as she apparently considered the possibilities. “It could be that another party was called in to get rid of the body and he had to wait.”

  “A cleaner,” Ted said.

  Selfie nodded. “I’ve got a database of fixers. Let me take a look.”

  Ted looked at me as she wandered off. “Any sign of a cell phone?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure our suspect made it a priority to take it along with her clothes. She had a single change of clothing in her suitcase, so it looks like she was planning to just stay the night.”

  A small army of SID, or Scientific Investigation Division, analysts began arriving and setting up. They were met by the deputy coroner, Brie Henner, a friend of mine. Brie had recently split from her husband and was renting out the carriage house at Ravenswood Manor with my friends.

  “How are things with your mother?” Brie asked as she set her equipment bag on the kitchen table. My friend was my age, a tall African-American doctor who was
beautiful both on the outside and the inside. She was kind, compassionate, and a great mother to her five-year old daughter, Lily.

  “Things are…” I saw no reason to be diplomatic, since my friend knew all about my family problems. “Not so good. I think Mom’s got some mental health issues, in addition to her depression.”

  Brie smiled, nodded. She motioned to the dead body. “Let me take a look and then we’ll talk.”

  While the coroner and crime techies took over, Selfie discussed what she’d found in the database on her phone. “I have a list of nine subjects in the area who are known to be active fixers, four of them with some likely past involvement in removing evidence from a crime scene. There’s another seven individuals who engage in lower level assistance to celebs, including a few who look like they’re just bodyguards.”

  “Let’s wait until we get a few more facts and a TOD from the coroner,” Ted suggested. “I think it’s too early to say whether this was a professional at work or somebody who just took their time and got interrupted by the police.”

  It was almost noon by the time the crime techies and Brie had processed the scene. Bob Woodley, a SID supervisor summarized his findings. “No prints, no trace, probably nothing in the way of DNA. Not much of anything to go on really. It looks like she was killed on the bed and lots of bleach was used to try and clean up. We’ll go through what little we have when we get back to the lab but I’m not very hopeful.”

  Brie then took over. “Based on the liver temp, I’d place the TOD sometime yesterday between four and eight in the evening. There’s evidence of recent vaginal penetration but no semen. It could be that the killer had forced sexual relations with the victim but wore a condom.

  “As I’m sure you already know, the cause of death was the severing of the carotid artery in the neck. She bled out and died quickly. There are lots of cuts and piercings on other parts of the body, including on the breast, buttocks, arms and legs. They were all made premortem. There are some defensive wounds, so she fought back before…” Brie looked away, swallowed. “Before the fatal wound.” She drew in some air, looked over at the body, and then back at us. “Of course, we’ll look for any DNA when we get her to the shop.”

  While Brie and the others continued processing the scene, I met up with Ted and Selfie on the patio of the cottage. Despite it being winter, the afternoon was warm and clear, a typical day in Hollywood.

  Ted began summarizing what we knew. “According to the hotel staff, Scarlett Endicott checked in at two-seventeen yesterday afternoon. She was alone and when she inquired about rates was told that the Rosewood was available. She paid $2,400 and change for the room for one night using a credit card. She declined using a bellman to bring her bags, or I should say bag, to the room. No one saw her or anyone else around her cottage after she checked-in.”

  I took over, added, “At some point Scarlett was joined by another party or parties who likely had forced sexual relations. She was tortured, probably for several hours, before the fatal wound to her throat. She bled out in bed and was then posed.

  “Several hours later, the killer or killers, began cleaning the crime scene. They removed any clothing that might contain evidence, along with the bedding, except for the sheet beneath the body. The room was washed down with bleach. It looks like they were preparing to remove her body, when the police arrived.”

  Selfie twisted her mouth back and forth like before, then said, “My money’s still on a fixer, somebody who took his time to clean up but got interrupted.”

  “What about Scarlett’s personal life?” Ted asked her. “Do we know if she was involved with anyone?”

  “According to a couple of preliminary inquiries I made, she’d been seeing a guy named Donny Kessler, a script writer. He lives in the area. I have his address, along with Scarlett’s parents for the death notification.” She paused, her gaze moving up. We all heard rotor blades overhead. “But they probably already know, thanks to the press.

  “Siblings?” I asked.

  “Only child.”

  I breathed. Losing a child was one thing, losing an only child was… I regarded Ted for a moment, looked away. There were no words to describe that loss. I remembered doing a couple of death notifications in similar situations that were heart wrenching.

  “Let’s talk to the parents, the boyfriend, and go from there,” Ted said to me.

  Before leaving the cottage, I took a few minutes and walked through the garden with Brie Henner. Even though it was winter, the grounds were a magnificent bouquet of flowering roses and vines, interspersed with ponds. As we walked, there were birds singing somewhere in the trees. It gave me the impression of walking through the garden of Eden, in contrast to the nearby cottage where a beautiful young woman had been senselessly slaughtered.

  We stopped and took a seat on a bench as Brie said, “How are you doing with everything?”

  I smiled. “A little better. My new partner, Ted Grady, helped put a few things into perspective for me. I think I’ll survive.”

  “That’s good. Phyllis and I have been a little worried about you.”

  My smile grew wider. “You two sound like you’re getting pretty chummy.”

  Brie had been dating a young man named, Phyllis—yes Phyllis. His name had something to do with his mother expecting a girl when she was pregnant and being disappointed. Her post-partum depression had resulted in her giving the baby the girl’s name she’d already chosen. If Phyllis’ mother were still alive, she’d realize that her baby boy was now over three hundred pounds, most of it muscle.

  Brie went on, “We’re actually looking for a place together. He’s…” Her smile came back. “He’s such a good person and he’s so good with Lily.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “What about you and Buck?”

  I took a moment and filled her in. “Things are pretty much up in the air between us. His ex is mentally ill and I’ve already got enough problems with my mother. I don’t need a stalker in my life.”

  Brie nodded and her gaze moved off. After a moment she looked back at me. “I know a therapist. Her name is Beverly Chan. She’s very good at what she does. Maybe you should give her a call about your mom.” She reached into her purse and handed me a business card.

  I took the card, looked at Brie, and said, “How does she handle women who are having sex with ex-presidents?”

  THIRTEEN

  After circling the block a couple of times to make sure no one was following him, Pearce Landon parked his car in the lot at Biogent Pharmaceuticals, about an hour north of Hollywood. He made his way inside the corporate offices and used a cover story, giving a false name and explaining to the receptionist that he needed to see Mark Dorsey, Scarlett Endicott’s father. He told her that he was a representative for several hospitals that had an interest in seeing that one of the company’s new designer drugs that treated leukemia, was widely marketed to their clinics and medical facilities. The secretary wasted no time in calling the vice president of Biogent while Landon waited.

  As he walked around the reception area, looking at photographs of the drug company with accompanying descriptions of how Biogent had become a leader in the development and distribution of designer drugs for all sorts of diseases throughout the world, Landon had trouble concentrating. He’d spent the morning trying to retrieve evidence that he’d removed from Scarlett Endicott’s cottage, only to find that the bins where he’d dumped her clothing had already been emptied by the local rubbish service. That left him with only two items of evidence: the bloody knife found on the bed where Scarlett was slain and the unfinished letter he’d found in her notebook.

  The more he thought about the crime, the more Landon decided it was unlikely that there were any prints on the knife or other significant evidence. Whoever had committed the crime had set him up and the killer knew that any physical evidence had to be removed before he arrived. He was angry with himself for not having been more vigilant. He knew it was probably only a matt
er of time before the police came knocking on his door.

  “Pearce, it’s been what, two, maybe three years,” Mark Dorsey said, seeing him as he came out into the reception area from an inner office. His eyes scanned the waiting room, no doubt looking for the false persona Landon had given the receptionist.

  The scientist turned pharmaceutical entrepreneur took Landon’s hand. Mark Dorsey looked older than the last time he’d seen him. At five-nine, maybe one-eighty, the VP of Biogent was a good six inches shorter than Landon, pudgy, with a ruddy complexion, maybe brought on by using alcohol to deal with the stress of one of the most high-profile jobs in America.

  “I’d say almost four years,” Landon said, glancing around the office, at the same time praying that the police wouldn’t walk in. He looked back at Dorsey, lowering his voice. “By the way, there’s no one here from a hospital. I made the story up.”

  Scarlett’s father squinted, meeting Landon’s eyes. “I don’t understand. My receptionist said…”

  “Let’s take a walk and I’ll explain. I’ve got some news and it would be better if we’re alone.”

  Dorsey’s brows came together and he slowly nodded. He pulled out his phone. “Let me just tell my assistant.”

  Five minutes later Landon and Dorsey were strolling through the campus of the pharmaceutical company. Dorsey made small talk, telling him that Biogent was set on twenty-three acres of prime real estate in a canyon less than a mile from the Malibu coast. Landon saw that it was a beautiful area, with lush landscaping that gave the grounds a peaceful Zen-like feel.

  The two men had both attended Stanford over two decades earlier. While Mark Dorsey had majored in chemical engineering, Landon had changed majors several times before finally dropping out of his classes. They’d met at a fraternity party and had shared some common interests, including pursuing a couple of women who were friends. Dorsey had eventually married Susan, while Landon’s relationship with the other woman hadn’t gone anywhere. Despite that, they’d remained friends, their daughters spending time together, especially when they were younger. That all seemed a lifetime ago.