City of Fire (46 page)

IF Lena was certain about one thing, it was that she hadn’t been raped. Martin Fellows could take all the pictures he wanted, but when he touched a victim, she knew. Every one of them woke up and knew.

How they handled the terror was a different matter. Some victims would play along to survive. Others might fight back in a futile attempt to beat a monster hyped up on steroids. When the ordeal was finally over, it went down like every other sexual assault. Some victims would report it, while others would keep it buried. And if the victims were anything like the woman claiming an immaculate conception, then they were lost in denial and couldn’t even admit that the crime occurred to themselves.

It was 8:30 p.m. Novak sat beside her at his desk, sifting through three of the six evidence boxes they’d carted out of Martin Fellows’s house in Venice. Five years’ worth of tax returns, bank statements, and utility bills. Anything, no matter how small or difficult to see, that might give them a lead on that second house. Sanchez and Rhodes were on the other side of the floor, rummaging through the three remaining cartons in silence, but with plenty of attitude. Lieutenant Barrera had sent everybody else home and locked himself in the captain’s office with Dr. Bernhardt from the Behavioral Science Section. They had been in the glass room for a couple of hours. Ever since they’d returned from the crime scene at the mall where two SIS detectives were found with their throats slashed.

Two cops were dead, and Martin Fellows had vanished. TV cameras littered the entrance to Parker Center while reporters stood in the Santa Ana winds, braving the smoke from the fires still burning in the hills north of the city. When Lena glanced at the TV on Barrera’s desk, she noticed Tito Sanchez exiting the room with his cell phone and guessed that he was making another call to his wife. When she glanced at Rhodes, she caught him staring at her and turned away. He still had that faraway look in his eyes that gave her the creeps.

She shook it off because she knew she had to. She felt uneasy about their background check on Fellows. Rhodes had uncovered pieces of superficial information—an argument with a restaurant manager, a road-rage incident from two years ago—but nothing that steered them any closer to the whole of the man. Nothing that even hinted at his essence. Yet it had to be there. And it had to be in the system. Martin Fellows didn’t evolve overnight.

She reached for the phone. Because Fellows lived in Venice, Pacific Division was already assisting them with the case. On the drive back from West Hollywood, she had called Matt Kline, a detective she went through the academy with. But that was more than two hours ago and she hadn’t heard from him. Kline picked up on the second ring.

“Sorry, Lena. I was just about to give you a call.”

“Then you’ve got something on Fellows.”

“No,” he said. “On his sister, but I think it’ll help.”

The investigation of Martin Fellows was less than nine hours old. No one involved knew or talked about Fellows having a sister.

“What did she do?”

“She got killed, Lena. Her name’s on a murder book. Tilly Fellows. It took me a while to hunt down, but I’m looking at it right now.”

Lena turned to Novak and hit the speaker button.

“You’re on speaker,” she said to Kline. “Who murdered Fellows’s sister?”

Novak’s eyes lit up. Kline cleared his throat.

“The case is still open, but it’s ice-cold. She was only fourteen years old when it happened. She was two years younger than her brother, so I guess that makes it twenty-three years ago. I thought the murder book would be at Piper Tech collecting dust. When they couldn’t locate it, I tore the office apart and found the binder in the lieutenant’s desk.”

“We need to see it,” Lena said.

“You’ll have everything in less than an hour.”

“What do we need to know before it gets here?”

“Tilly Fellows was raped and bludgeoned to death. There was evidence of longtime sexual abuse. Their father was killed in Vietnam. Their mother ran off after that. Both kids were raised by their grandparents, Maurice and Alma Fellows. From what I can tell, Maurice was more than a person of interest. He was the only suspect. But DNA evidence was only a wet dream back then and nothing could be proved.”

“What about now?” Novak whispered.

Lena repeated the question, adding, “Was anything saved that we can get to the lab?”

“I haven’t had time to check,” Kline said. “Maurice died two years after his granddaughter, so I’m not sure it makes much difference. But here’s where it gets interesting. Maurice and Alma died on the same day. The autopsy report is in the murder book because the circumstances were suspicious and probably related.”

“What was the COD?” Lena said.

“Food poisoning. Both of them went down from food poisoning.”

“Anything significant about the date?”

“That’s what took it over the top,” Kline said. “They died on Martin’s eighteenth birthday.”

The words hung there. Bright and hot as napalm burning a village down.

She met Novak’s eyes. Caught the glint. The smoke. And for the next forty-five minutes, paced up and down the floor trying to bridle her nerves. When the courier finally arrived, a retired cop, she thanked him for his help and raced to her desk with the three-ring binder.

They had Martin Fellows’s essence. The spring that made the man tick.

Novak rolled his chair closer as she tore the book open and began reading. Tilly Fellows had been raped and murdered in an abandoned house at the end of the street. Martin found his sister’s body. He was sixteen at the time and, according to the detective who took his statement, so distressed that he required medical attention. It had been Martin who made the frantic call to the police. And it had been Martin who pointed the finger at his grandfather.

Lena quickly paged forward to Section 12 for a look at Fellows’s actual statement. It was difficult to read for a variety of reasons. First and foremost was that he was only sixteen, caught in a situation he couldn’t handle and crying out for help. He told detectives what he saw, then ripped through a list of darker things his sister had told him in confidence. According to Fellows, his grandfather liked to put Tilly to bed at night with the door closed. He had been doing it every night for five years. And now with her murder, the sixteen-year-old blamed himself.

A picture was attached of a skinny boy with long hair and a crooked smile. Lena stared at it for a long time, then flipped the page to a picture of an unshaven man with gray hair and dark circles under his eyes. Maurice Fellows sitting on the couch with his weather-beaten wife, Alma, in a cheap housedress. The photograph of the couple was so bizarre, so telling, that Lena instantly thought of Diane Arbus, a photographer working in the 1960s she admired.

“Let’s take a look at the crime scene photos,” Novak said.

She turned back to the previous section. The first picture said it all. Tilly Fellows was on the floor. She looked more like a broken doll than a fourteen-year-old girl. Her eyes remained open, blue and toylike and staring just off camera as if they were made of plastic. Her clothing had been ripped away from her small body, and a baseball bat was leaning against the wall. But it was the girl’s face that gave Lena pause.

Her face hadn’t been touched. And Tilly Fellows was
almost an exact replica of Harriet Wilson. The color of her hair. The shape of her cheeks and chin. The gentle slope and grace of her nose and forehead.

Lena glanced at the dividers in the notebook and found the Related Crime Reports. Martin Fellows spent the next two years living in isolation with his grandparents. And the help the boy needed never came.

He told the police everything that happened, yet nothing tied his grandfather to the murder. Even worse, Alma was standing by her man with an alibi. The detectives working the case didn’t buy it. From what Lena could tell, they interviewed Maurice without an attorney. The sessions were extensive and included sleep deprivation, but the man wouldn’t turn. No evidence could be found linking Maurice to the sexual abuse of his granddaughter or the murder. Just the word of Martin Fellows, who one week after the murder didn’t want to talk anymore and had a black eye.

Two years later Maurice and Alma Fellows were dead. And from the way the reports were written, it seemed as if Martin Fellows had pulled it off.

The source of the food poisoning turned out to be a salad bar at a restaurant on Sunset. Although Martin admitted to detectives that he was there with his grandparents celebrating his eighteenth birthday, he pointed out that he became mildly sick as well, along with three other patrons. SID confirmed that bits of rat poison were found on the floor, with heavier concentrations around the buffet tables. While the manager denied any knowledge of the poison, the restaurant had been cited for several violations and was the primary subject of a health-watch series broadcast on TV. Detectives believed that Fellows watched the news program, knew about the violations, and picked the place out. But given the circumstances, nothing could be proven.

Lena sat back in her chair, thinking about Maurice’s and Alma’s ashes collecting dust for twenty-one years. She could still see the sealed boxes from the crematorium lying on the bed. Fellows waited until he was eighteen, so the need for a guardian was pointless. He could live his life on his
own, turning his skinny body into a machine while pursuing his interests in biology and chemistry.

She glanced at the TV. The eleven-o’clock news was just getting started. Novak found the remote and turned on the sound. The hotline number was up. For the first fifteen minutes, the coverage ignored the fires threatening the Valley and concentrated on what they were still calling the Romeo Love Murders, with live feeds bouncing all over town.

There was a chance, Lena thought. A chance they could catch a break. When the program ended, she heard a phone ring in the captain’s office and hoped the call was coming from the sixth floor. Five minutes later, Barrera walked out of the glass room. But from the look on his waxen face, there was no real need to listen. She could see the decimation. The blowback from his decision not to grab Fellows when they could.

“Nothing,” he said. “The hotline didn’t receive a single legit call.”

No one said anything. Barrera’s hands were trembling and he slipped them into his pockets.

“It’s late,” he said. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day. I want everybody to pack up and go home.”

“What about Harriet Wilson?” Novak said.

Barrera met his eyes, remaining quiet for several moments before speaking again.

“You said it yourself more than six hours ago, Hank. The girl’s dead. There’s nothing we can do for her now.”

Novak shook his head, aghast. “But I could be wrong. I want to be wrong.”

“You’re not wrong. I was, and two cops are dead. Let’s leave it at that. Now go home, and that’s an order from the top. They’ve lost control of the fires, and there’s a chance the freeways will be shut down. If you don’t leave now, you might get stranded.” Barrera took a step forward, then paused as if remembering something. “Lena, Dr. Bernhardt wants to see you before you go.”

Barrera pulled his keys out of his pocket and walked out.
Lena listened to his footsteps shuffling down the hall. The sound of the elevator as the bell rang and the doors closed.

“Lena, can I see you for a minute?”

She turned and saw Dr. Bernhardt standing behind them. Glancing at Novak, she followed the psychiatrist into the glass room.

“Have a seat,” Bernhardt said. “We won’t be long.”

She gave him a look, dumbfounded. She couldn’t comprehend what Bernhardt wanted or why Barrera and the sixth floor were pulling the plug. She noted the cartons of Chinese food on the conference table and watched the burly man take a seat. Was he here because of his work as a psychiatrist for the Behavioral Science Section? Or was it his connection to the Professional Standards Bureau, the new name for Internal Affairs?

She sat down, her back straight.

“Relax,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you if you needed medical attention.”

She shook her head. The question was insane.

“Why would I need medical attention?”

He shrugged and seemed embarrassed. “I saw those pictures Fellows took.”

It was late. They were in the hunt. She didn’t have time for this.

“I’m fine.”

He nodded, thinking it over. “There’s nothing you want to talk about? Nothing you want to get off your chest?”

“This is the wrong time and place for this.”

“I’m wondering if you’re not suffering from denial, Lena, like that woman in the papers. We talked about denial when you had trouble dealing with your brother’s death.”

She felt something burst inside her. Anger igniting into rage. She got up and closed the door. She pushed the chair away and leaned over the table.

“I’ve got a question,” she said in a low voice. “Something only you can help me with.”

“What is it?”

“When Rhodes went on stress leave, was it before or after my brother’s murder?”

“What’s this got to do with anything?”

“Answer the question, Doctor.”

“After,” he said, placating her.

“How much time did you spend talking about the murder?”

Bernhardt hesitated. He shouldn’t have hesitated, but he did. “You know everything that’s said in my office is confidential. I can’t answer that.”

“You already did. I can see it on your face. If Rhodes talked about the murder, then you’re withholding evidence in a homicide investigation. And you couldn’t possibly be familiar enough with the case to know what’s relevant and what’s not.”

Bernhardt narrowed his eyes. “You need to change your tone of voice, Detective. You’re headed in the wrong direction. What you’re insinuating is ludicrous.”

“I’m not hinting at anything. And this isn’t a game anymore or some theoretical puzzle. Martin Fellows didn’t know Molly McKenna. No matter what the lab says, he couldn’t have killed her. And Holt didn’t know her either, so the suicide’s bogus. He didn’t murder my brother. Everything about that crime scene is bogus.”