Monday morning
“I thought it was a dummy—I mean, a mannequin. You know, ones they use in store windows. I mean...oh, my God! There’s no blood... There’s red around the...around the places where she’s all chopped up. But still, I mean, this is Hollywood. I thought that someone was making a movie and...then the dog started barking, and I didn’t see any movie trailers or signs or...oh, God! She was real. She was once...she still is...like flesh and blood and bone...just...oh, God!”
Detective Sophie Manning could imagine that the woman had thought the corpse was a mannequin, or at the very least, something unreal.
But the dead girl was real. It was only the extreme brutality of her death that made her appear as if she were not, as if she were some creation of the most brilliant and lurid mind working in a Hollywood special effects studio.
Stripped naked. Sliced in half. Slashed. Chunks of flesh...gone. Intestines...under the buttocks.
The woman who had discovered the body—pieces—on South Norton Avenue wavered suddenly, as if she were about to pass out and fall.
The witness was a heavyset woman who was nearly six feet tall; Sophie prided herself on having achieved a full five feet four inches. Luckily, she spent half her life in the gym. Size-wise, she just met police requirements. She didn’t have a Napoleon complex—she was simply aware of her size, aware she had to keep up with “the big boys,” and was dedicated to her job, determined to be her best.
The woman began to keel over.
Sophie quickly caught her—bracing herself—and steadied her.
“I’m so sorry!” the woman apologized.
The witness was Claudia Cooper, and she lived around the block. Her dog was a teacup Yorkie, and Sophie had to hand it to the little creature—he was small, but he knew a dead body from a mannequin. The Yorkie’s name was Tsum-Tsum, and a crime scene tech was checking his tiny paws for blood.
“It’s all right. I understand completely,” Sophie assured her.
“You must see things like this all the time.”
“Not quite like this,” Sophie assured her. “You’re human. So am I. And this is truly horrible and cruel and tragic. Let’s have you sit. Do you mind? There’s a patrol car right over there,” Sophie said.
As she tried to help the woman, Sophie glanced across the bit of sidewalk and grass. Her partner, Grant Vining, was hunkered down by the body with the medical examiner.
Vining was one of the finest detectives in LA—or anywhere, she thought. She was lucky to be his partner. Captain Lorne Chagall, the supervising officer for their team—an elite unit as it was, handling the most vicious and sometimes strangest cases in Tinseltown—had announced Grant Vining as lead detective, with her assisting, from the moment the call had come in. They’d been specifically handed the case because of their recent involvement in a case where the cast of a cult TV show had been targeted by a killer; Sophie figured they’d handled the high-profile murder without any major gaffes, and this new one was sure to draw media attention. The discovery of the corpse had been a little more than two hours ago, and somehow, reporters were all over it already.
Naturally. The way the body had been found was gruesome, to say the least.
Similarities to the old unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short—aka the Black Dahlia—were obviously intentional. The woman found dead this morning was discovered on South Norton Avenue near the place where the Black Dahlia had been found in a vacant lot. Just like Elizabeth Short, she had been killed elsewhere; she was all but drained of blood. She’d been severed in half, and remained in situ now as the investigation into her death got under way.
Another eerie detail had been included.
The victim’s face had been slashed on both sides from the corners of her mouth to the ears—creating a monstrous, Joker-like grin on the dead woman.
It was a case Sophie had studied. Her dad had been a cop; she’d always known that she was going to join the force, too. Cold cases had been bedtime reading.
Even so, the horrible murder of Elizabeth Short was still being pondered and mused on by the best of them—law enforcement and armchair sleuths. While there had been confessions galore, most were easily dismissed as false. No one had ever been able to prove who Elizabeth Short’s killer might be.
“Are you all right now? Do you think that you can give your statement to the officer?” Sophie asked Claudia Cooper.
The woman nodded vigorously. “You must catch him—whoever did this!”
“Ma’am, I promise you, we—and every officer in LA—will be doing our best to capture this killer.”
No way out of it—this was going to be sensational. Most likely, the killer assumed that he—or she—would get away with the murder. Just as they did back in the 1940s.
Times were different now, Sophie thought. Forensic science had come a long way, for one.
The Yorkie whined suddenly, as if aware of the terrible situation. Afraid. He hadn’t minded at all that his paws were under serious scrutiny. He seemed worried about his mistress.
Yes, the whole city would live in fear. Women would be on extra high alert, wondering what they could possibly do to avoid the same horrible fate.
Sophie led Claudia Cooper and her tiny Yorkie over to one of the patrol cars. The young officer quickly leaped to his feet to open the door to the rear for Claudia. He had his work sheet out; he nodded gravely to Sophie. He was ready to take the full statement.
Sophie walked back over to where the pieces of the corpse remained in situ. Henry Atkins, police photographer, looked at her as she approached and shook his head, wincing.
It was one of the worst crime scenes they’d ever seen, and they all knew it.
“Finished. For now,” he told her bleakly. Henry had a basset hound look about him. Long jowls, pale blue eyes. He was in his early fifties, and she’d heard he was close to retirement.
She nodded and looked around. Police officers were canvassing the neighborhood. Crime scene techs were busy gathering anything that might be evidence. A lot of what they would find would be chewed gum, bottle caps and smashed fast-food cups, but all of it would be collected. Any tiny piece might be of tremendous help in the investigation.
She almost bumped into one tech, Lee Underwood. Young, blond, handsome and wire-muscled, he looked more like a surfer dude than a crime scene investigator.
“Sorry,” he apologized.
“My fault,” she told him.
“I was just getting that butt,” he told her, pointing to what remained of someone’s cigarette—not more than the filter. “Cigarette butt,” he added quickly, as if his intentions might be questioned, even at such a scene. “I don’t think that any of this garbage will belong to the killer,” he said glumly. “This guy...” He paused, looking over at the body. “This guy went by the book—the Black Dahlia book. And, I think, some kind of forensic book. He won’t have made mistakes.”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Sophie said.
He shook his head. “Yeah, so we say. But we’ll need good luck to find this guy’s.”
He collected the butt with a gloved hand, smiled grimly, and moved on.
Sophie hunkered down between Vining and Dr. Thompson.
It was a difficult place to be.
The corpse was simply so horrifically displayed.
Just as she had been killed.
Sophie couldn’t begin to imagine the terror the woman must have felt as the knife came toward her face. They weren’t scratches that created the Joker grin; they were deep gashes. There were so many other cuts on the body, as if chunks of flesh had been cut away.
“Blunt force trauma?” she asked, looking up.
Dr. Chuck Thompson—a big man with iron gray hair and a square ruddy face—nodded gravely. “I’ll have to get her to autopsy, of course. She wasn’t killed here—that’s pretty obvious. I’d say, though, that her head took a good beating. Enough to kill. And the knife wounds...they could have done it, too. I mean, obviously, she’s been bisected, but death—mercifully—came first.”
Thompson was a dedicated man. He’d never married, and he was always ready to take on a case when others were begging out for one reason or another. He’d been in the county a long time, and stayed stalwart despite the work load. He’d seen a lot, she knew.
He grimaced. “She was alive when the gashes were made,” Thompson said quietly.
Death could often be cruel, but this woman had been brutally tortured.
Grant Vining looked resolute. Like Dr. Thompson, he’d been in his job for a long time. Despite the difference in their tenure, Vining always mentored instead of being impatient with Sophie’s comparative lack of experience. He also had a great capacity for listening. When other officers discovered something, he was grateful. He worked well with other cops, and with law enforcement officials from other agencies.
“Whatever gets it closed,” he often told Sophie.
Right now, he was pensive, and he shook his head and stated the obvious.
“Black Dahlia,” he said. “Our officers are canvassing the neighborhood, but until we get something from them or from the forensic team, we’re just waving our stuff in the air.”
He was right; Sophie knew it.
As she listened to him, she noted that a good-sized crowd had grown around the crime scene tape.
Many of those people were journalists. Some had out notepads; some were with network or cable stations, their microphones and cameras visible. Bystanders were taking pictures with their phones, too.
“Sophie,” Vining said, just as the thought came to her that they’d need to make a statement soon. “They like a young pretty face better than they like mine. Tell them—tell them nothing.”
“Gotcha,” she murmured, rising. She’d rather be with the press right now than with the corpse. She couldn’t help glancing again at the woman’s face, at the bizarre grin slashed into it. Once, she thought, judging by her youth and the handsome angles that remained of the face, their victim had been beautiful. Not so long ago, she would have laughed, and her eyes would have sparkled. But now she lay like a broken doll torn apart by a disgruntled and sadistic child.
Did that actually describe the killer?
Sophie walked toward the crowd. People began to bristle like a school of fish eager when a morsel of krill moved by.
She kept her expression neutral.
The press surged forward—with a talent for making their way through the more casual bystanders.
Then Sophie noticed one man.
He was different. It might have been in his curious and determined but unhurried manner, but it was mainly his dress. He was wearing a suit, but it wasn’t something many men would have on today—unless they were actors filming a period piece. It was a zoot suit, she thought. The slant of his hat, the cut of his jacket...he appeared to be out of time and out of place. He was in his mid to late thirties, she thought, dark-haired, and with a lean face that was both handsome and engaging.
Argh! she thought. A new guy. Maybe he thinks he’s going to be quirky and charming and get some kind of scoop from the cops not available to others.
“Hello,” Sophie said, addressing the crowd. “I know that rumors are running wild right now, and I can’t blame you or anyone for speculating over what you have gleaned about this terrible crime. At this moment, we know that we have a victim who was cruelly murdered. We don’t have an identity for the young woman. It will take time for an autopsy. Until then, we ask you to respect—”
“Black Dahlia!”
Sophie broke off. It was the guy in the zoot suit, with his pen raised over his notepad.
“We’re not giving this murder any kind of a moniker at this time,” she said.
She was surprised when the rest of the people in the crowd looked around at one another—and then at her. They seemed confused.
“As we have information, we’ll make sure we get it to you,” she said. “We depend on the people of Los Angeles to help us. We are a massive community, a united community in caring for others, and—”
“Black Dahlia!”
The man in the zoot suit had spoken again, cutting Sophie off. The crowd shuffled uneasily. But they weren’t looking at him; they were watching Sophie, waiting.
A man in front cleared his throat. “Detective, we heard that she was...displayed. There’s been talk. Is this murder reminiscent of that of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia?”
“Yes, of course, you idiot,” the man in the zoot suit said.
“There’s no need, sir,” Sophie said.
“Pardon?” the reporter closest to her said curiously. People were really staring at her now.
She looked back. Even Vining was watching; he seemed concerned that he had given her the responsibility of talking to the press.
But what the hell...?
When she turned back, it was just in time to see him—the man in the zoot suit—walk toward her, right through the crime scene tape, as if it was nonexistent.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and prayed silently.
Not again!
It had happened when she’d been in college, when a fellow student, a wonderful young man with an addiction problem, had died from an overdose. He’d come to her—after his death—and she had nearly had a heart attack herself, and then he’d talked to her and asked her for help with his family.
Not again, not again, not again!
After it all, her father had insisted she go into therapy. The doctor had convinced her that she’d had the information his family needed, somewhere locked inside her, but in order to see that they received it, she’d had to invent his ghost speaking to her so that she could do what she needed to do.
She’d nearly fallen apart. Doubting herself, her senses, in that way had been hard.
But back then, she’d been twenty. She’d been young and impressionable and easily swayed and confused and hurt.
Now...
She was an LAPD detective. Hard-won.
And she was going to solve the murder of the woman who lay so broken on the ground, come hell or high water.
So she ignored the man in the suit.
The instrument of her imagination—or a long dead ghost.
“Please, whatever you’re hearing, we ask that you respect the victim. These are the facts that I can give you. At ten this morning, a neighbor here discovered the body of a young woman.”
The figment of her imagination was now standing by her side.
“Pieces of her body,” he said.
She went on, “At this moment, she has not been identified. When we do know her identity—pending notification of her next of kin—we will let you all know. I can’t share details with you right now as we are just beginning our investigation. Thank you for allowing the police to do their work, and thank you for your help. We’ll have more information forthcoming soon. Thank you,” she said with finality.
She turned around, ready to head back to Vining.
“Ah, ignore me, will you? Good call. But I can help you, I swear.”
She lowered her head. She couldn’t help asking, “You know who did this?”
“No, but I’m telling you, if you give me a chance—”
“You do not exist,” she muttered. “You’re in my head, and you’re just here because I’ve gone through a loss of my own, and now...this.”
She took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to have Grant Vining think that she needed time off. Not now.
“That was fine, Sophie, thank you,” Vining said. He was looking at her, though, as if he was worried about her. “A little rocky at the start, but fine.”
“We’re going to get her out of here now,” Chuck Thompson said. “You can meet me at the morgue. Autopsy tomorrow morning, eight o’clock sharp? The mayor...everyone is going to want this done ASAP.”
“We’ll meet you there,” Vining said.
“Yes, we’ll meet you there,” Sophie said firmly.
Vining looked at her. “It’s going to be a hell of a long day,” he said. “You all right?”
“Just fine,” she assured him, hating the way he was looking at her. “Where do you want me to start?”
* * *
Bruce McFadden happened to be at home—his parents’ old house in Alexandria—when the news came on covering the murder in Los Angeles.
“Oh, my God,” Marnie Davante, his brother Bryan’s brand-new fiancée, cried out. Something on the TV had caught her attention.
Bruce and his older brother, Bryan, had been deep in conversation along with their younger brother, Brodie, regarding their futures.
Bryan had made the definite decision to enter the FBI academy. He’d been invited to join what had just been given the official moniker of “FBI Special Assistance Unit” but was known throughout the academy and beyond as the Krewe of Hunters, because of the first case it had taken on in New Orleans, Louisiana. While the unit and the agency never acknowledged that they were also known as the “Ghost-busters,” those involved knew the truth: every agent of the group could communicate with the dead. In their recent discussions, the plan between the McFadden brothers had been to create a private investigation firm. To that end, on their exit from the military, each had become licensed as PIs. Bryan had recently been embroiled in a murder case out in Los Angeles—on the request of their mother. An actress, Cara Barton—who was an old friend of their parents—had been killed in a sensational case.
Such things happened. Sons did things for their parents. In their situation, however, it was a bit different. Maeve and Hamish McFadden were dead.
Now discussion stopped. They all stared at the news.
Bryan had risen to walk closer to the wide-screen television on the wall. “Hard to tell much from what the media has so far,” he said, “but you can see Vining and Manning caught this.”
“Sophie is coming forward to talk to the press,” Marnie murmured.
Bruce glanced at Brodie, who gave him a shrug and a look that silently said, “We’ll have to wait and see what they’re talking about.”
Marnie’s home had been LA until recently. She and Bryan had met because Marnie had been targeted by the man who’d killed Cara Barton—and despite the short time of their relationship, it did appear as if they were destined for one another.
“Sophie is behaving so oddly, isn’t she?” Marnie said. “Almost as if she’s talking to someone else. Ah, she’s in control again.” Marnie sounded a bit proud—she evidently liked Sophie, who was—Bruce presumed, from her speech and position at the crime scene—a detective with the LAPD.
He realized that he and Brodie had both risen as well, drawing closer to the TV. It was a large set—they could have all seen it just fine from where they’d been. But maybe there was more to their sixth sense. Because he realized that they all knew now that this wasn’t a simple case. The body itself was shielded from view, but the questions and the murmurs told them what they needed to know.
A killer had re-created a crime. A horrible and gruesome crime from days gone past.
“There! Look,” Marnie said, moving forward to point at the set.
“I see it,” Bruce told her, moving forward to point, as well. “As if a little white cloud is next to her.”
“Human-shaped,” Bryan said.
“She reacted to it—and now she’s ignoring it,” Marnie noted. “Ah, she’s not going to be deterred.”
“Where’s Vining?” Bryan asked, frowning.
“There, back with the body,” Marnie said.
No matter how they might try, no photographer, videographer or cameraman of any kind was going to get a real shot of the body.
But you could see the police and forensic people working the scene.
And then, the entire scene itself was gone. They were looking at an anchor in a news station.
“That’s a smart TV—let’s roll back,” Bruce suggested.
Bryan picked up the remote control. The TV obediently went back to replay the footage they had been watching.
It was strange, what a camera could catch.
There was something there—a shift like fog or misty clouds. It moved. It joined the young woman speaking. And while most people might not have understood her reaction, everyone in that room did.
“There’s a ghost there—and she knows it,” Brodie said. He might be the youngest in their trio, but he was quickest to state aloud what they were thinking—or fearing.
After their parents’ death, when Maeve and Hamish had first begun to visit them, they’d each pretended that they didn’t see the ghosts. Until finally Brodie had just shouted it out—they were there! Talking to them. Yes, their parents were dead. But their spirits were there now, and they’d all loved one another, so they needed to embrace this new reality.
Sophie the detective wasn’t loving whatever was going on. She was hiding the fact that she was distressed and doing a damned good job of it.
Bruce observed the woman, wondering if she ever had a difficult time being so attractive and garnering respect. She was small, too—maybe five-four, tops, and possibly a hundred-and-ten. She had dark blond hair, reasonably cut to fall around but not into her face. Her features were both delicate and strong, broad cheekbones, wide-set brown eyes, strong jaw.
No doubt, she would have worked hard to get where she was, detective—first grade, he imagined, if she was part of this high-profile situation.
“She never said a word when we were out there,” Marnie said softly.
“Maybe she never saw Cara. Remember, none of us can ever explain exactly why we see or hear or sometimes even just feel the dead,” Bryan told her.
There was so much affection in Bryan’s eyes when he looked at Marnie. Almost more intimate than if he was kissing the hell out of her, right there, in front of them all.
“I’m going to call her,” Marnie said. “She was wonderful to me, Bryan. I want to make sure she’s all right. I want to see if there’s something I can do. A way I can help.”
“I’ll go back to LA,” Bryan told her.
“You can’t—you’re starting the academy.”
“It can wait.”
Bruce had no idea whatsoever what suddenly compelled him. Maybe he was curious.
The Black Dahlia. A crime re-created. The ghost of someone—the victim? A victim from the past? Someone else entirely—there, and haunting a detective on the case.
“I’ll go,” Bruce said.
Bryan, Marnie and Brodie turned to stare at him.
“What?” he said with a shrug. “We’re not starting up an agency now. Bryan, you’re going to be in the academy, and honestly, I can be just as effective. I’ll go,” he offered.
Marnie looked at her fiancé, her eyes questioning and anxious.
“He’s good,” Bryan told her. “He is ‘just as effective,’” he added drily.
“Whatever,” Brodie said. He shrugged. “I’ll go, too.”
“You can’t go—at least, not just yet. You said that you were going to look into the death of the maintenance man at the theater Adam Harrison owns,” Marnie reminded him.
“As head of the Krewe, Adam has a whole crew of agents available to him,” Brodie said.
Marnie offered him a beautiful and wry smile. “Yes, but you promised your mother.”
Brodie groaned and looked at Bruce. “You’re going alone,” he said flatly.
Bruce grinned at his youngest brother. Many adults were plagued by their parents—which was okay. Having loving parents—at any age—was a great thing. Not many, however, were plagued and haunted.
“I’ll be fine,” Bruce said. He tried to give Marnie his best reassuring look. “Whoever finishes up first can go and help the other. Besides, it’s a cop you’re worried about. She’s probably pretty tough.”
“She is—she helped me out incredibly,” Marnie said. “But I didn’t know she saw the dead,” she added softly. “If it’s a new thing to her...well, it can be a weird time.”
“I’ll watch out for your friend, Marnie.” He looked at Bryan questioningly. “If she’ll let me. I’ll try to get out there as quickly as possible—”
“They’re just about magic at Krewe headquarters,” Bryan told him. “If you can be packed in fifteen minutes, I’ll bet we can have you on a plane in two hours.”
“I can be ready.”
It suddenly seemed as if a door opened and slammed; it didn’t, but it might have. Maeve McFadden—or the ghost thereof—burst into the room, followed by the ghost of their weary-but-forever-patient-and-tolerant father, Hamish. Both had been actors—on stage and screen—in life, and they still carried their charisma and drama with them.
“Hey, Dad,” Bruce said. “Oh, hey, Mom, you’re here, too!”
“Don’t be a wiseass, my dear boy,” his mother said. “Bryan, Marnie, did you see—”
“We all saw, Mom,” Bryan assured her.
“Well, then, you must—”
“We’re on it, Mom,” Bruce told her. He walked over and kissed the cold air where her cheek appeared. “I’m heading out right away. Just as soon as I can get a flight.”
“What about...oh, Brodie! You can’t go with him now—you promised you’d help me. I knew Justin Westinghouse for years and years. I know he was no spring chicken. But... I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. Bryan is going to be busy running or jumping or learning to shoot—”
“I think he knows how to shoot, Mom,” Bruce murmured.
She waved a ghostly hand in the air. “Yes, yes, but he’ll be in the academy. Anyway, what matters, Bruce, is that you must go. You must help that poor lovely young woman. Why, she helped watch over Marnie.”
“Mom, yeah, I know. I’m going,” Bruce said.
He felt the soft, misty touch of her hand.
“I do love you boys,” she said, and smiled. “More than life and death,” she added.
Maeve could definitely be a bit of a wiseass herself.