City of Echoes by Robert Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

Congressman Jack Brown. A popular girl of uncommon beauty with natural blond hair, refined features, and friends and family who loved her. A girl with a bright future who had been raped and murdered and had met a particularly gruesome end that was never described in any detail. Ron Harris was married with two young children, denied any involvement in Brown’s death, but claimed to have had “a secret but consensual affair” with the girl, his student, over the last three months of her life. His claim had come late and only after Grace and his partner, Leo Rodriguez, plus a second team of detectives confronted him with overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
    The public was expecting another big-city murder trial, as well as the media circus that went with it. The kind of trial LA seemed to have made its own over the past few decades. The public needed it for closure. The breadth and weight of the crime demanded it. Public opinion polls were crystal clear: most of the angels living in the City of Angels wanted to see Ron Harris burn. But Harris had other ideas, and after the first day of trial, after the prosecution had presented its opening statement, he returned to his cell and denied the public the revenge they sought and the justice they needed. Harris had a plan, a way out, tying a bedsheet around his neck and leaping into the void.
    Coward that he was.
    Matt’s mind surfaced. He noticed that Cabrera had moved in behind him and was gazing over his shoulder at the photographs. He wasn’t sure how long his partner had been there and paused a moment to give him more time. He could see Lane just a few feet away holding his place in the second murder book with his finger. Lane was staring back at them, waiting and trying to keep still, without much success.
    “Okay, Frankie,” Matt said after a while. “We’ve had our look.”
    Lane opened the second murder book and traded it for the first. The place he had been holding turned out to be another set of four crime-scene photographs slipped into a plastic sleeve. Matt studied each image with great care, adjusting the binder so that Cabrera would have a better view. Like Millie Brown, Faith Novakoff had been stripped of her clothing and staked to the ground with her nose and forehead resting on a mirror. Like Brown, the only wounds on her body appeared to be confined to her face, which was unrecognizable because of the profuse bleeding.
    Matt looked up from the binder at Lane. “What were they shot with?”
    “They weren’t shot, Matt. They were slashed.”
    A moment passed. “Just their faces?”
    Lane met his eyes, then nodded and took a deep pull on his smoke. “With a box cutter. A razor blade.”
    Matt returned to the photographs, ignoring the chill wriggling up his spine. The heavy bleeding indicated that both victims had been alive when they were slashed. Death hadn’t been easy for either one of them, nor would it have been quick. He looked back at Lane.
    “You said nothing was ever made public, Frankie. Who made the connection?”
    “The photographer here at the crime scene. A criminalist and an SID supervisor out at the crime lab. All three had worked the Millie Brown case. After that, Hughes and I requested the same medical examiner. Art Madina performed the autopsy. He saw it, too.”
    “But Harris is dead,” Matt said.
    Lane shrugged. “Copycat.”
    “What did Grace say?”
    “The same thing.”
    Cabrera grimaced. “How?”
    “We’re living in the age of the Internet,” Lane said. “It’s been eighteen months since Brown was murdered. The dam could’ve sprung a hundred leaks. I think that’s the way Grace put it.”
    “The way he put it,” Cabrera said, shaking his head. “What’s this gotta do with what we’ve gotta do?”
    Lane took another pull on his smoke, remaining quiet for several moments as he wrestled with something in his head. When he finally spoke, his voice had a frenzied shake to it.
    “I don’t think Hughes was killed by