Bad Memory Read online

  Pryce said, “Jayden Schultz? How’re you spelling that?”

  “Daddy! Don’t even think about running a check on Jayden at work.”

  Jessica laughed. Despite Angie’s concerns, it was one of the most enjoyable evenings she’d had in a long time. She realized just how much she missed being part of a normal family. How much she missed her own father and all the silly quarrels they used to have over inappropriate boyfriends and bad language at the dinner table.

  Angie cleared the table and then retreated to the kitchen with Dionne to wash the dishes, leaving Pryce and Jessica to talk shop. Pryce scraped back his chair and picked up the bottle of red.

  “Let’s finish this out on the deck. It’s a beautiful night.”

  Jessica collected her half-filled glass and sipped the wine as she followed him through the living room. She felt a little woozy from the booze and remembered she hadn’t slept much before making the early-morning trip to Chowchilla. Pryce pulled back the slider, and they stepped out into a balmy evening.

  Los Feliz Towers was a condo community northwest of downtown and practically on the doorstep of Griffith Park, nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains. Jessica was struck, as always, by how spectacular the view was this high up. But it was a view she was willing to enjoy only from the safe distance of the rear of the deck. She wasn’t good with heights. On her first visit to Pryce’s place, she’d looked over the ledge to the sidewalk below, and her stomach had dropped faster than the condo’s elevator.

  The sky blazed shades of coral and peach now as the sun set over the City of Angels. Shadows crawled across the sprawling chaparral terrain of the park, and the Griffith Observatory glistened like a pearl brooch pinned to thick dusky velvet. A warm wind whipped Jessica’s hair around her face. She drained what was left of the wine. As Pryce provided a generous refill and topped off his own drink, Jessica stifled a yawn.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Late night at work and an early start this morning.”

  “Oh yeah? How come?”

  “Long drive north to Chowchilla for this case I’m working.”

  Pryce frowned. “Chowchilla? Not much there other than a prison.”

  “Exactly. I was visiting an inmate.”

  “I assumed it was a Hundred Acres investigation.”

  “It is,” she said. “A woman by the name of Rose Dalton wants me to look into her sister’s case. Thinks she might be innocent, even though the sister confessed to a double murder years ago. Took place in Hundred Acres back in ’87. Pretty exciting, huh?”

  Pryce said nothing, and Jessica glanced at him. His jaw was clenched, and his eyes were as dark as Griffith Park in the distance. He walked over to the ledge and stood there, his back to her. She could tell from the rise and fall of his shoulders that he was breathing hard.

  “Pryce? You okay?”

  “Please tell me Rue Hunter isn’t your client.”

  “Well, technically, her sister is my client. I take it you know the case?”

  Pryce finished what was left of his wine. Turned to face her.

  “Oh yeah, I know it all right.” His voice was low and furious. “And I want you to stay the fuck away from the case—and from Rue Hunter. You hear me, Jessica?”

  Jessica was stunned. She’d never heard Pryce use such profanity before. Never seen him this angry.

  “I appreciate the concern, but I’m a big girl, okay? I can handle it. Whether she’s guilty or not, it’s something interesting to get my teeth into.”

  “She’s guilty as hell.”

  “Maybe she is, but Rose Dalton is offering a lot of cash to find out for sure. You know money’s been tight at the agency for a while. I’m not going to turn it down.”

  “I’m not asking, Jessica. I’m telling you. Drop the case.”

  Jessica’s own temper flared.

  “Why the hell should I?” she demanded. “I’m not Dionne. You don’t get to tell me what to do. What’s it to you if I work the case or not anyway? Why’s it such a big deal?”

  “The guy who put Rue Hunter away was my old partner. That’s why it’s a big deal.”

  “What? Charlie Holten was your partner?”

  Pryce nodded. “Before I partnered with Medina, and after Charlie left Hundred Acres. I was a rookie at the time, not long out of the academy. Charlie taught me a lot, what it meant to be a good cop. And he was one of the best, Jessica. Digging up the past, trying to throw doubt on his investigation? It’s like questioning a cop’s integrity. Questioning his entire career.”

  “Shit, Pryce. I had no idea.”

  “So you’ll drop the case?”

  “I can’t. I already signed the contract.”

  Pryce closed his eyes and massaged his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Fuck,” he whispered. He looked at Jessica. “What’s Crozier saying about all this? I can’t believe he’s happy to let you shit all over Charlie’s reputation.”

  Realization dawned on Jessica.

  “That’s the Hundred Acres connection,” she said. “Holten is the reason you know Ed. He’s the friend of a friend.”

  “That’s right,” Pryce said. “Crozier and I met at the funeral. We’ve kept in touch ever since.”

  “The funeral?”

  Ten stories below, Jessica could hear the hiss of the evening traffic cruising along Hillhurst. An engine idling, a car door slamming, a burst of laughter from somewhere down on the sidewalk. Folks enjoying their Saturday night.

  “Charlie Holten is dead,” Pryce said. “My partner was murdered.”

  9

  HOLTEN

  1987

  Charlie Holten whacked the plastic ice tray hard against the tiny kitchenette counter and emptied the cubes onto the dish towel he’d spread out on top. He bunched the towel together, the ice snapping and cracking inside, and twisted the top tight. Held the makeshift ice pack gingerly against his right cheek with a wince as he made his way back to his desk.

  The desk’s surface was covered with wobbly stacks of case files; a couple photos of his wife, Maggie, in decorative pewter frames; and a large blotter filled with notes and doodles and ink splotches. There was also an open bottle of Jim Beam and a chubby tumbler with a tiny pool of amber in the bottom, the remnants of the double he’d insisted his deputy, Pat McDonagh, drink before sending him home.

  Holten removed a couple ice cubes from the towel and dropped them in the tumbler. Poured himself a generous measure. More generous than the one he’d thrust into McDonagh’s hands. Two-thirds of the bottle was gone, the bourbon purchased around four months ago and kept in his drawer to toast making arrests and closing cases or to take the edge off a particularly tough day. Today, or yesterday as it was now, had been the toughest day he had experienced in his career. Holten knew there would be more to come before this was all over.

  He swallowed back some of the liquor and felt the burn in his throat and the fire in his belly, the warmth spreading through bones that had been chilled since he had first received the call from McDonagh. The bourbon would either kill him or cure him, and, the way he was feeling right now, he wasn’t sure which option he preferred most.

  He took another drink and held the towel against his cheek again. Some of the ice had begun to melt, and it felt wet against his skin. There was a mustiness, too, like the towel hadn’t been washed properly in a while, but he was willing to tolerate the smell to savor the damp coolness. The ice pack wasn’t because of the heat. At this hour, the temperature outside had dropped by at least ten degrees, the dry humidity of the day replaced by cold desert night. The ice was because he’d noticed his cheekbone was now purple and blue and swollen when he’d looked at himself in the restroom mirror.

  Barb Hunter had shown up at the sheriff’s station midafternoon. Drunk and outraged, having just been told about her youngest daughter’s arrest by her eldest daughter when she’d finally returned home from her latest lover’s place in last night’s clothes. The clothes might even have been from the night
before that, Holten thought.

  Barb had been ripe with stale body odor and old perfume. Her breath sour from vodka and God knows what else when she had gotten right in his face and screamed at him. The woman had been like a wild animal, snarling and scratching and biting and spitting. Holten was a big guy, and Barb Hunter was a small woman, but she’d managed to land a surprisingly hard punch with her left hand that any amateur southpaw this side of the Vegas rings would’ve been proud of before McDonagh had dragged her off him.

  Right now, the quiet stillness of the office was being disturbed by the sound of Barb Hunter’s snoring drifting along the hallway from the detox cell, which was just a fancy way of saying the drunk tank. Holten reckoned she must’ve spent as many nights sleeping it off in that cell as she had getting it on in the beds of strangers she picked up in bars in neighboring towns.

  The snoring was really pissing him off. It was loud and wet, with a rhythmic rattle that set his teeth on edge. The deep sleep of the intoxicated. Holten wasn’t even close to being drunk enough for slumber to claim him tonight, even though he had been awake for—he glanced at his watch—twenty-one hours now. At least the snoring meant Barb Hunter hadn’t choked on her own vomit. She’d thrown up in the tank’s toilet bowl twice before passing out.

  Holten refilled his glass and considered whether he was drinking only because of a particularly tough day or partly because he was also celebrating making an arrest. He thought of the scene up at Devil’s Drop and shook his head. Definitely not a celebration. There would be no winners in this case.

  He thought back to when he’d first been told about the murders—a matter of hours ago, but it felt like a lifetime now. Holten had been asleep in bed when McDonagh radioed in the news; he hadn’t heard the static hiss and crackle of the police scanner he kept at home.

  After his shift had finished at ten, he’d joined Maggie at the Donaldsons’ place two doors down. They’d hosted a barbecue earlier in the evening for a bunch of couples in the neighborhood, and by the time Holten had arrived, the charcoal had been smoldering for hours, thin wisps of smoke drifting through the grill. Leftover chicken thighs and corn dogs and potato salad were congealing on paper plates; a faint aroma of grease and charred meat hung in the air. But there were still plenty of beers in the coolers, and chilled chardonnay for the ladies, and then the whiskey came out, and it was after one a.m. before Holten and Maggie, and Steve and Heather James, called it a night.

  Holten had hit the sack straightaway, out for the count as soon as his head was on the pillow. The deep sleep of the intoxicated. Unaware that he would soon be breaking the news to Steve and Heather James that their youngest boy was dead.

  Maggie had gently roused him, a soft hand on his shoulder, a worried expression on her face, as she’d handed over the police scanner.

  “It’s Pat,” she’d said. “It’s almost three. Something must have happened, Charlie.”

  He’d listened in disbelief as McDonagh described the scene at Devil’s Drop. Then the numbness had subsided, and Holten had jumped out of bed, pulling on clothes and shoes as he’d headed for the front door and the car parked in the driveway.

  He was undoubtedly well over the legal limit for driving, but it was the middle of the night in Hundred Acres, and the streets were dark, empty ribbons. So still and quiet that he could have been the only person on earth. Who was going to pull him over anyway? The only cop in town on duty was at Devil’s Drop protecting a murder scene. And what he saw there sobered up Holten pretty damn fast in any case.

  Both kids were in the back seat of Lucas James’s burgundy Toyota Cressida.

  Lucas was sitting upright, head back against the padded headrest, eyes wide open and unseeing. One stab wound in the groin area and three to the back between the shoulder blades. Megan Meeks, whose mother, Patty, had made the initial call to the station house, was hanging halfway out the rear door on the passenger side. Head upside down, her long, dark hair tickling the dirt, blood smeared around her mouth like a child who had badly applied her mom’s lipstick. One fatal stab wound to the heart.

  The medical examiner, the police photographer, and the rest of the crime scene unit would take at least an hour to reach Hundred Acres. Holiday weekend. Holten had waited in McDonagh’s cruiser with his deputy. They both sat up front, McDonagh behind the wheel, Holten in the passenger seat, engine off, not talking. The black-and-white Crown Vic pointing in the direction of the hundred-foot drop that provided the make-out spot with its alliterative name. Like a couple on a date at a drive-in movie, only there was no big screen, and no popcorn and soda, and no box office picture. Only inky blackness straight ahead and the grisly horror show thirty yards to their right that neither of them wanted a repeat viewing of.

  Now, sitting in his office, Holten swallowed what was left of the bourbon, eased himself wearily out of the chair, and followed the sound of the snoring down the hallway. There were three cells, each with a white plastic sign screwed above the welded steel doors: DETOX, FEMALE, MALE.

  He stopped in front of the detox cell, pulled down the hatch cover, and peered inside. Barb Hunter was on the cot, on her back, one arm thrown carelessly behind her head, sharp collarbones vibrating with each almighty snore. She was skinny, with loose, wrinkled flesh hanging off the bones of her upper arms. Her short dress had ridden up above dimpled thighs; one of her legs flopped over the side of the cot. Holten noticed the woman wasn’t wearing any underwear. He quickly closed the hatch cover and latched it. Moved along to the next cell door, this one marked FEMALE.

  He looked inside. Rue Hunter was awake, sitting on the cot, back against the wall, pressed tight into the corner. Hands clasped tightly around bony knees pulled up to her chin. Watching him, watching her. She didn’t move or say anything or show any emotion on that pale face framed with stringy, dirty blonde hair. Just looked at him with those brown eyes in a way that gave Holten the unnerving feeling that she could see right inside him, knew exactly what he was thinking.

  And what he was thinking of was a late summer’s day about seven or eight years ago. Not long after he’d moved to Hundred Acres from Hollywood, swapping seedy, neon-soaked nights with LAPD Vice, and its whores and dealers and meth addicts, for the sheriff’s gig in a sleepy town where nothing bad was ever supposed to happen.

  Holten and Maggie were both almost forty when they’d met, and they had married quickly. Back then, they were still hopeful of conceiving, and Hundred Acres seemed like a better place to raise a child than the city. A year into their marriage, just the sight of babies and kids could turn Holten’s insides to mush, fantasizing that would be him and Maggie one day—pushing a stroller down Main Street while grocery shopping, family days in the park, Little League games and school shows. So when he’d spotted the girl on her own by the side of the road, he’d parked the cruiser, wanting to make sure she was okay.

  She was about ten years old, maybe a shade older. Sitting cross-legged on the dry, baked mud, around fifty yards from her front porch, gazing down at something cradled in slim arms burned pink by the blazing sun. The position of her body meant Holten’s view of what she was hugging to her chest was blocked, and he’d assumed it was a baby doll, even though she was a little old for such toys.

  He’d gotten out of the cruiser and walked toward her, and she’d tilted up her face enough to show him empty brown eyes and sharp features framed by sun-bleached blonde hair. He’d glanced down and saw that she wasn’t holding a baby doll, and he’d almost thrown up, right there, onto the packed-dirt sidewalk.

  In her arms was some kind of roadkill. A raccoon or a squirrel maybe. It was hard to tell for sure. All he could see was a mangled crush of light fur and dark flesh and pale bone and wet blood. She was caressing the carcass tenderly, like a new mom trying to soothe an irate infant. Then she’d put a bloodied hand to her forehead to block out the sun, a carmine smear scarring an eyebrow, and she’d looked up at Holten and said, “Why is there always so much blood?”

  Later, H
olten had found out all about the Hunters. How the daddy split town years ago and the mother was a lush, and the youngest kid had been sweet once but was now just plain odd. And he’d felt sorry for the oldest girl, a teenager who, by all accounts, was the only normal one in the family.

  The same dead brown eyes stared back at him now. Holten fixed the hatch cover back in place and stood with his back against the cell door, breathing heavily. He was still waiting for an out-of-town latents unit to match the prints on the knife with the ones they’d taken earlier from Rue Hunter when she’d been arrested.

  But Charlie Holten knew in his heart the girl was a killer. Didn’t need tests to prove it to him. He could see it in her eyes, feel it in his gut. He didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  He also didn’t doubt that she knew that he knew what she was.

  And, for some reason, it was a thought that terrified him.

  10

  JESSICA

  Jessica had slept in her truck in the Los Feliz Towers underground parking lot after the heated exchange with Pryce. A sleepover at the detective’s apartment was out of the question following their argument, and she’d not felt sober enough to get behind the wheel.

  After a rough night, she faced the drive back to the Antelope Valley with a takeout coffee and a cigarette, the light Sunday-morning traffic at least making the journey more bearable. The smog gradually burned off to reveal a gorgeous, cloudless day, but not even the free-moving freeways and California sunshine could brighten her dark mood as she thought about the pain in Pryce’s eyes when he’d spoken about Charlie Holten’s murder.

  A bullet to the head.

  No witnesses.

  Still unsolved.

  Upsetting the Hundred Acres locals by digging up the past was one thing, but she was pissed at herself for ripping open painful old wounds for Pryce.

  As she drove, she felt the patch of bare skin on the inside of her right wrist pulse and throb. After her father had died, Jessica had found a strange sort of comfort in the tattoo artist’s needle. The sharp sting had pierced through the numbness that had followed Tony’s death. The physical pain, a pain that she was in control of, had been an almost addictive distraction from the hollow feeling of loss that still hadn’t faded almost three years later.