Макс Коллинз - No One Will Hear You

“See you at UBC,” he said and clicked off. He turned to Carmen. “Okay if I ride with you?”

“Sure.”

“You okay driving?”

“No problem.”

As they went out the door and he set the alarm, he noticed Carmen giving him an odd look.

“What?” he asked.

“Had you talked to Anna since she got back from Ohio?”

“Not a subject for discussion,” he said.

And that ended it.

He looked at Carmen at the wheel in the darkened car as they hit the freeway, the lights on the ramp illuminating her for a moment. A beautiful young woman, in every way. If he and Ellen had ever had a daughter...

She glanced at him. “I know why I’m driving.”

“Why?”

“That was Scotch in that glass, wasn’t it?”

“We’ll make a detective out of you yet.”

His cell vibrated.

Caller ID: DENNIS BYRNES.

How the hell had Byrnes heard about the Don Juan video already?

“Harrow.”

“Goddamn son of a bitch!”

“Whoa, Dennis, I was going to call you next—”

“Call me? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Uh... after you.”

“Do you have any idea what that son of a bitch Don Juan has pulled this time?”

“Actually, I—”

“Goddamn maniac made a deposit! Left one right at our goddamn front door !”

“One what?”

“A girl! A woman! A victim! What the shit do you think I’m talking about?”

Harrow knew at once.

The body of the woman in the latest video had been dumped somewhere at UBC.

“We just got another video, Dennis. Came in on Carmen’s home e-mail. She and I and the team are all heading for UBC right now. Your ‘deposit’ must be the woman in this new video.”

“Bad enough he kills and dumps her on our doorstep! Bastard goes and calls every TV station, every other network in LA, to announce what he’s done. Of course, he doesn’t give us the courtesy of a call!”

“Settle down, Dennis. This isn’t about UBC—”

“What the hell is it about, then?”

“It’s about young women being slaughtered. Get a damn grip, man. This is a police matter.”

“You’re telling me. There are cops all over the place. But not that Amari woman.”

“She’s on her way. I called her about the video.”

“You called her , but not me? First her, then your boss?”

“Settle the hell down. Yes, I call the police about murder evidence before I call a network executive. Learn to live with it. Listen — do you mean literal front doorstep?”

“Yes! Right in front — the lobby doorway. Know how we found out about a story every other network and news service already had? One of our security guards noticed CNN shooting out there! Thank Christ the cops have cordoned off the place and pushed these vultures back.”

There was an easy irony there that Harrow was in no mood to pursue.

“Dennis, make sure the police know to allow me and my team in.”

“Okay. All right. Will do.”

Harrow clicked off.

Carmen had gathered most of it from Harrow’s half of the conversation, but he filled her in on the rest.

“Is this what they mean,” she asked, “when they say this shit is getting deep?”

“It’s exactly what they mean,” he said.

They were almost there now, and blocks ahead, Harrow could see the flashing lights of the police and, on either side of the UBC building, the raised antennas of a dozen news vans.

“Damn it,” Harrow said, sitting forward, red and blue blushing his face.

“What?”

“A young woman’s murder is going into homes all over America — very possibly the home of family members.”

“It sucks.”

“Yeah. And we’re vultures, too.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. They won’t let this vehicle in — park around the corner, Carmen. We’ll walk.”

Los Angeles averaged about five hundred murders a year, roughly twice the number of the state of Mississippi, which was where Chris Anderson would have long since returned, if it weren’t for Jenny Blake.

Shaw and Associates back home was the largest private-sector crime lab in the United States, so Chris already knew people might kill each other at the slightest provocation. He just hadn’t had to live in the thick of it until now.

A lab rat by nature, he found TV stardom nerveracking, especially having his budding relationship with Jenny splashed across the media. His mother had practically had a conniption fit when a supermarket tabloid ran a story alleging her baby boy was cheating on Jenny with Jessica Simpson.

First of all, was it cheating if you hadn’t ever slept with the girl you were going with? Second of all, he’d never met Jessica Simpson.

Still, the Crime Seen money was good (but the cost of living in LA high) and his house in Glendale was nice (if a nasty commute to the office).

Having Jenny make him her first call tonight was a help. He’d thrown on a Killer TV polo, khakis, and running shoes, and soon was heading for UBC in his brand-new Dodge Ram. Made good time only to find the whole blessed block closed off, with a mess of news crews massed on the periphery.

Driving a pickup didn’t make parking downtown easy, even on a Sunday night, and with the UBC ramp inside the cordons, he parked three blocks away on a side street. Hoofing it really wasn’t bad, though, not on this breezy spring evening, under a clear sky and a scattering of stars.

Then rounding a corner, he ran smack into a local news crew — an affiliate of a rival network.

Like an escaping prisoner, he got hit with flood lights, and the red eye of a camera tracked him like a sniper scope.

A striking, well-dressed, dark-haired woman blocked his path. She spoke to another camera that had positioned itself just behind him.

“This is Renee Oxley reporting live for KDLA News outside UBC Broadcast Center. Chris Anderson from Crime Seen is here with us. Mr. Anderson, what can you tell about the dead woman found outside the UBC lobby?”

What dead woman outside the UBC lobby?

“Excuse me,” he said, a hand over his face in murder-suspect fashion, and brushed past the reporter.

He damn near jogged, the news team trying to keep up. If he stopped, he’d be the limping zebra when a pride of lions was chasing the herd. First sign of weakness and they would eat him alive.

“Can’t you give us some comment, Mr. Anderson?”

Having no idea what the woman was talking about, he stayed tight-lipped and kept going, but even with their cameras and microphones, they were keeping up.

He patted his pocket for his cell phone — the reporter wasn’t asking about the new Don Juan tape. This was something else, and Harrow or Jenny would surely have called... Finally he realized he’d forgotten to grab the thing on his way out the door.

“Mr. Anderson, please!”

Then he was up against a barrier of yellow crime-scene tape behind which a bored-looking cop stood watch, and the attractive reporter was on him, thrusting the mic at him, demanding just one comment...

“I’m sorry. I have no information you don’t already have.”

In fact, he had less...

The reporter turned to her cameraman and said, “It seems even UBC’s own highly touted Crime Seen forensics team remains clueless about this bizarre tragedy.”

Ignoring this distortion, Chris stood at the barrier and sent his eyes on a desperate search for a friendly face. He spotted Lt. Amari, in a gray blouse and dark slacks with her badge necklaced, and called out.