Blood Defense | страница 14

It’d been a grind of a week, and by Friday afternoon I was dragging like a dog on its way to the groomer. My last appearance of the day was a misdemeanor vandalism case. My client, Naille Tarickman, an eighteen-year-old “street artist,” had been busted for “enhancing” the side of a liquor store. I wouldn’t ordinarily have taken a case that picayune, but his mother, Harriet (we call her Hank), was one of the few-okay, the only-cop I actually liked, and she’d asked me to step in. She’d insisted on paying my retainer, but I planned to tear up the check when I finished the case.

I’d managed to get declarations from the store owner and a couple of neighbors saying they’d pay Naille to paint the whole ’hood if they could-and they’d be glad to come in and testify. When I showed them to the prosecutor, he folded like a cheap card table and dismissed the case.

Naille took off to celebrate with his friends, and Hank and I talked in the hallway for a few minutes. I asked her if they were zeroing in on the burglar who killed Chloe and Paige yet.

Hank looked around, then leaned in. “Don’t say anything, okay?” I nodded. “It wasn’t the burglar.”

“Then who?”

“A cop. A detective in the Hollywood Division.”

I’ve got to admit, I did not see that coming.

I wasn’t necessarily any more interested in taking the case, but the sheer oddity of a detective being the bad guy got my attention. All day Saturday I kept an ear tuned to the news while I ran the million errands and chores that’d piled up all week.

Michelle had called in the morning and left me a message saying, “Call me back, we have to talk,” but I didn’t have time until almost eight o’clock that night. Doing laundry at the local Fluff ’n’ Fold takes forever on a Saturday. Between that, grocery shopping, the dry cleaners, and giving Beulah a bath, my whole day had been shot. And now I was starving. I hoped Michy might be, too. “Hey, sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. I’ve been running my ass off all-”

“We’ve got to talk.”

“But first we’ve got to eat.”

I told her to meet me at Barney’s Beanery, kind of a roadhouse diner. It’s close, cheap, and funky. And I love the history. It’s where famous rockers like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison used to go. It also used to be a redneck haven. Less so now that it’s situated in the heart of Boys’ Town, AKA West Hollywood.

When I got there, I found Michy already seated near the window, with a basket of fries and chicken fingers on the table in front of her. I barely had a chance to sit down before she leaned in and spoke, her voice low but intense. “You heard about the Canyon Killer being that cop, Dale Pearson, right?” I nodded. “You ever run into him in court?”