Keeper of the Shadows (The Keepers: L.A.) Read online

  Barrie knew how to scan for potentially Other-related crimes; you developed a kind of sixth sense about it. But tonight it didn’t take any special skill to find the case that she would need to look into; it jumped out at her from the reports as if it were lit up in neon:

  Dead body in alley off Hollywood and Gower.

  Mixed race, late teens, street name Tiger. Suspected OD.

  Barrie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

  She knew Tiger. Had known him. He was a street kid, a runaway, one of the eternal hopefuls who left their small towns and got on buses to Hollywood with big dreams of fame, fortune, love—and ended up turning tricks on the Boulevard instead.

  Boulevard of Broken Dreams, they called it. You got that right, she thought, feeling a flare of anger and grief.

  The Boulevard was part of her Keeper jurisdiction, so she spent a lot of time with the street kids. She was drawn to them, she ached for them, most of them running away from exploitation at home only to fall into the hands of the same kind of predator on the streets.

  Tiger was a shape-shifter, and like so many others, he’d thought he could use that talent to make his fortune.

  But it was a sad fact that despite their incredible talents, shifters were rarely productive members of society. Their sense of self was too amorphous. After all, they could and would subtly alter their physical form to match other people’s fantasies. And because of that inconstancy and lack of center, they tended toward indulgence of all kinds, which too often turned to addiction.

  Along with that ability to create fantasy, they were also some of the most manipulative creatures on the planet. And they far too often got caught in their own manipulative traps.

  Tiger was smart, and he was manipulative. Just sixteen or seventeen years old—Barrie had never been able to pin him down about his age—but already he was an expert hustler. He had been using his shifter talents to attract an upscale clientele. She had been sure he was also stealing as well as conducting any number of other illicit activities.

  It had taken some time for him to trust her, but Barrie blended in well with the street waifs; at her height and weight she could easily look like no more than a kid herself.

  She’d worked on Tiger, bought him meals, flattered him, joked with him, chided him, and time after time had hammered him that he could be using his talents for anything he chose, no dream too big. And she’d thought she’d gotten through to him. She’d persuaded him to check in to a local shelter, Out of the Shadows, that specialized in getting young prostitutes off the street and out of the life.

  Not out far enough, as it turned out.

  “Damn it,” she said softly.

  Someone spoke behind her, startling her. “Gryffald?”

  She whirled in her chair—and saw Mick Townsend looking down at her with an odd expression. She suddenly realized she was crying.

  Townsend was staring at the tears running down her cheeks. “What is it?” he asked gruffly.

  She swiped at her face. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  He was about to speak again when she pushed her chair back, stood abruptly and walked out past him, willing herself not to break into tears again.

  She made it across the newsroom and out without crying, but broke down again in the elevator.

  Damn Townsend, anyway; he seemed to have a radar for every vulnerability. She hit the side of the elevator with her fist, pounding in frustration, and the concrete pain of it brought her back to herself. Somewhat.

  She wasn’t being fair, she knew. Townsend couldn’t help the way he looked. Maybe he had come to L.A. to be an actor, as so many people did. And most came to their senses and realized the competition was hopeless and the ruthlessness required to act soul-killing, and wisely chose other professions.

  But some were not so wise or so lucky. Those were the ones who clung to the desperate delusion that they would “make it,” that stardom was just around that next corner. Instead they ended up used-up in their twenties...

  Or like Tiger. Dead.

  And most likely with no one even to claim his body.

  She could do that for him, at least. So she swiped away her tears and stood straighter, resolved.

  Chapter 2

  Barrie wasn’t exactly dressed for the morgue, so she changed in the car in the parking lot. She never knew where the job would take her, so she always carried several changes of clothes in her trunk. She chose old jeans and a tank top and hoodie, washable and discardable in case she got into an autopsy room. You never could quite get out the smell of the morgue.

  Then she drove east, toward the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, just minutes from downtown in Boyle Heights.

  Her purpose was layered. She had to make sure the right medical examiner got assigned Tiger’s autopsy; it wouldn’t do to have a mortal cutting into a shifter. Too many questions could come up that were better avoided. Then she needed to see if there was anything unusual about the death, and whether there might be some danger for other shifters: a bad batch of meth, for example. Also with the recent scare of a blood disease affecting one species, she had to make sure there was nothing just plain bizarre going on. But mostly, she wanted to make arrangements for Tiger’s funeral.

  The coroner’s office was in a gorgeous Baroque building, red with cream trim, dramatic steep front steps lit by streetlamps that cast eerie shadows as Barrie climbed the stairs toward the House of Death.

  She signed in with the attendant on duty, telling him she had an appointment with Dr. Antony Brandt, and proceeded down the chilly hallways, trying not to look in through the doors where dozens of bodies in various stages of investigation and storage were laid out.

  She reached an office with a plate on the door reading Dr. Antony Brandt, Senior Pathologist. Almost as soon as she’d knocked, Brandt was opening it. Tony Brandt looked every bit the werewolf, even if you didn’t know he actually was one. He had a head full of thick, bushy hair, a powerful barrel torso, shaggy eyebrows over watchful eyes and an ever-present five-o’clock shadow.

  He acknowledged Barrie with an ambiguous smile. “I knew you’d be here. Everyone else is lining up for a look-see at the Prince of Darkness.”

  Exactly what Mick Townsend had called him, Barrie thought. And, of course, it made sense that the coroner’s office would be expediting Mayo’s autopsy. In death, as in life, celebrities got the spotlight in Hollywood.

  “Just as well,” Brandt continued. “No one will bother with this kid.”

  So, already a main part of her mission was taken care of. Brandt was taking Tiger’s autopsy, and he was not about to reveal that Tiger had been a shifter. Any Others who worked in criminal justice were experts at hiding the existence of their fellows.

  “Can I see him?” she asked.

  Brandt led the way down the hall to one of the autopsy suites. In the observation room he handed her a white gown, mask and gloves, which she slipped on before they entered the cutting room.

  It was a large space; several procedures could take place at one time. Now, however, the room was quiet and dim, and a single body lay on a single gurney on the far left.

  Barrie was startled to see that Tiger was already laid out, not to mention that he had the room to himself. L.A.’s crime rate being what it was, it was about as hard to get a table at the morgue as it was to get one at the town’s latest, hippest restaurant. But Brandt had his own priorities, and they were much like hers, namely to keep the existence of the Otherworld community a secret from the mortal one.

  Brandt spoke, as if in answer to her silent thoughts. “Moved him to the head of the list. No one’s going to notice while Mayo is lying in state.”

  Barrie thought that a revealingly cynical remark. Even for a studio head, Mayo had a lot of ill will swirling around him.

  She approached the table and looked down at the young shifter, so pale on the slab. They always looked so much smaller in death. She felt tears prickling her eyes again. Such a smart, cheeky kid. Such a waste
. Such a crime.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him, and touched his hand. It was cold, and she shivered. If she’d only tried harder, followed up sooner...

  Brandt was watching her. “You knew him, then.”

  She set her jaw, trying to compose herself. She wasn’t going to do Tiger any good by falling apart now.

  “Who caught the call?” she asked Brandt.

  He named a couple of homicide detectives in the Hollywood Division. “They didn’t think it was important enough to involve Robbery Homicide,” he added.

  Robbery Homicide was a special division in the LAPD, the most coveted assignment. It handled the highest-profile murders. Certainly Mayo would have been moved there instantly. The haves and have-nots again.

  “Is there any chance it was suicide?” Barrie didn’t think so, but she had to ask.

  “Oh, this was no suicide.”

  She tensed up in every muscle. “Why?”

  “He didn’t die in that alley. The body was moved. That’s clear from the patterns of livor mortis.”

  Barrie knew that livor mortis meant the settling of the blood after death due to gravity. It appeared as bluish, blotchy discoloration of the skin where the blood had pooled. She listened closely as Brandt continued, indicating regions of Tiger’s body with a short metal pointer as he spoke.

  “Lividity does not appear anywhere that the body has been in direct contact with the ground. He was found sitting up, slumped against a wall, but if you look at the pattern here, you’ll see there is no lividity in the relevant parts of his legs. He died lying down on his back. He was positioned sitting up at some later time.”

  Brandt loved to expound, and she was grateful for it; she picked up all kinds of useful information from his mini-lectures.

  “Now ask me what else is interesting about this,” he said.

  Barrie tensed up. “What else is interesting about this?” she asked softly.

  He held her eyes with his piercing ones. “I’m not entirely sure, but it looks to me like the unfortunate young man may have had some help.”

  “Some help dying?” Barrie stammered. “So, he was murdered?”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, fair Rosalind.” There weren’t many people Barrie allowed to call her by her real name, but Brandt was one. It was his Shakespearean quality; everything he said sounded vaguely Elizabethan. “But these bother me.” He aimed the pointer at some faint purple circles at the top of Tiger’s arm. They looked almost like—

  “Fingerprints?” she asked, feeling a prickling at the back of her neck. “You think he was held? Forced?”

  “Could be. On the other hand, it’s common for addicts to help each other shoot up. And an addict bruises easily, so it may mean nothing. I am merely pointing it out as an anomaly, and in fact...I never said it. But it’s something to keep in mind.”

  “Now, moving a body is a crime, but it’s not necessarily murder. If he was shooting up in a gallery and someone didn’t want the cops around, they may just have dumped him. But I don’t think so. I think someone wanted this kid dead. He definitely didn’t stick that needle in his own arm.”

  “Murder...” Barrie said, her thoughts far away. And she knew exactly where to go to find out what she needed to know. “I have to go,” she mumbled.

  Brandt raised his impressive eyebrows. “I’m cutting him in a half hour. You don’t want to stay?”

  Barrie shuddered. True, she regularly worked with the undead, but the actual dead were a different story. And she had no desire at all to see Brandt slice into Tiger.

  “I need to get out to Hollywood to see someone. Can I check back with you about the tox screen and whatever else you find?”

  “Of course. And I’ll make sure your soon-to-be-cousin knows.”

  Barrie had to blink to understand that Brandt was referring to Brodie McKay.

  “Thanks. And, Tony...” She had to swallow to get the words out. “I’ll claim the body if no one else does. I’ll make sure the Council gives him a proper burial.”

  He smiled at her sadly. “You’re a good kid, kid.”

  * * *

  Barrie was both buzzed and depressed as she left the coroner’s building. She could feel the adrenaline rush of a mystery, the thrill of the hunt; at the same time she was grieving Tiger’s death and the possibility of evil intent behind it, which kicked her protective Keeper instincts into high gear.

  If a shifter had been murdered on her turf, there was going to be hell to pay.

  Chapter 3

  There were two main east-west boulevards that ran through the district called Hollywood: Sunset Boulevard and iconic Hollywood Boulevard itself. Despite the tourist trappings of the day, at night the Boulevards had a shadowy, sleazy side. Between those thoroughfares every conceivable taste could be serviced: girls, boys, top, bottom, pain, pleasure...and some tastes inconceivable to most human beings.

  This no-man’s-land was where Tiger’s body had been found, and where Barrie was headed next. She knew Tiger ran with another young prostitute who called himself Phoenix, and he would be her best bet for information. The street kids often banded together for protection and community; Tiger and Phoenix had cribbed together, sometimes in one of the appalling motels that lined the side streets of Hollywood, sometimes on the stoops of shops or warehouses late at night. Whether the boys’ intimacy translated to actual sex was an open question; Barrie suspected the two had been lovers as well, in some ambiguous way, but drugs often killed any real sex drive. Phoenix was a shifter, too, but nowhere near as skilled as Tiger was. She reflected that it was a talent a bit like acting, in a way. Some had a little; only a very few were stars. Tiger had been a star. Not that it had helped him, apparently.

  She found Phoenix in a foul but atmospherically lit alley where she knew a lot of the street kids congregated in between tricks to recover, dose and socialize. He was sitting on a dirty stoop, smoke from a cigarette curling around his head. A perfectly cinematic shot, if not for his obvious agony. He was ravaged with weeping, and broke down again when he saw Barrie. All he managed was “You heard,” before his words dissolved in tears.

  She had delivered Phoenix to the Out of the Shadows shelter at the same time as she’d taken Tiger there; the two youths were joined at the hip, so to speak. She’d suspected at the time that Phoenix, by far the weaker of the two, would be back on the street in no time. She’d had higher hopes for Tiger.

  She sat beside him and rubbed his back lightly as he cried, careful not to touch too hard, too much.

  “He was working again?”

  “Not the street!” Phoenix said defiantly. “He was moving up. Building a real list.”

  Barrie bit her lip to suppress an outburst, considering that a “list” was basically a collection of sexual predators. What there was about prostitution that could be considered “moving up” in any way was so far beyond her that she couldn’t even begin to process it, but she didn’t want to insult or alienate Phoenix. She wasn’t about to denigrate any bit of pride the boy could take in his profession. And pride was what Phoenix was expressing, as his words spilled out about his friend.

  “Tiger was good. He could do anyone. Jimmy, Kurt, Jim, Heath, Johnny. He was goin’ places.”

  Phoenix meant that Tiger could change his appearance to look like the dead stars Phoenix named. Barrie realized with a shiver that they were all stars who’d died tragically young, either from addiction or their own reckless behavior, shooting stars who burned out too fast on their talent and lifestyles: James Dean in a car wreck at twenty-four, Kurt Cobain a suicide at twenty-seven, Jim Morrison of a heroin overdose (hotly disputed) at twenty-seven, and the youngest of all of them, Johnny Love, a sixteen-year-old movie idol who in the 1990s had burned up the screen in cult classics like Race the Night and Youngbloods and then died shooting up a lethal speedball at sixteen, just after the huge success of his last movie, Otherworld.

  Barrie thought uncomfortably, and not for the first time, how chil
lingly easy it was to become what you pretended to be. Now Tiger had joined the list of his dead idols.

  She shook her head and tried to focus on the boy beside her. “Was he working for someone?” She avoided the word “pimp.”

  Phoenix straightened his shoulders, clearly proud of his dead friend. “He was doin’ it himself. He hooked up with someone big. Real big. He had a regular date with someone in the movies, really connected, who was into shifters big-time. And he was paying big money for Tiger to shift.”

  Barrie’s heart started beating faster. “Someone in the movies? Do you know who?”

  Phoenix shook his head. “Someone who was going to do things for him. Get him parts. Tiger was really high about it.”

  Could it be? A connection between Tiger and Saul Mayo? Barrie had the strongest feeling, an almost psychic hit, that she was on to something. Maybe something huge.

  “A producer? Director? Actor?” she asked, trying to be casual.

  “Tiger didn’t say much.”

  “Did you ever actually see this guy?”

  Phoenix shook his head. “I saw his car once. A limo.”

  Not helpful. Every third car in this town was a limo.

  “If that person—or anyone—comes around looking for Tiger, can you let me know?” She gave Phoenix a card; he looked down at it listlessly and shrugged. Her heart tore. “Phoenix, I can drop you at Out of the Shadows. You know Lara would be glad to have you.”

  His eyes grew hooded. “Maybe I’ll cruise over later.”

  She sighed. It was so hard to get the kids out of the life. It was abuse, but for them it was abuse on their own terms. She touched his arm.

  “You call me if you need anything, Phoenix. I’m so very sorry about Tiger.”

  * * *

  Mayo’s body had been discovered at the Chateau Marmont. The hotel was a Hollywood institution, built in the 1920s and modeled after a French castle, with one elegant old main building towering over a spread of luxury bungalows that fairly dripped old film studio elegance. It was known for its beautiful views, ornate turrets and tiny wooden elevators, the junglelike pool area, and the young celebrity clientele populating the hopping cocktail bar.