Kill the Messenger by Tami Hoag

Author:Tami Hoag
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Los Angeles (Calif.), Lawyers, Brothers, California, Crimes against, Fiction, Bicycle messengers, Suspense, Los Angeles, Thrillers, Police
ISBN: 9780553801958
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 2004-06-29T04:40:31+00:00

26

Goddammit,” Parker said on a long sigh. He felt the strength and energy drain from him with his breath. “Goddammit,” he whispered.

A spotlight from Chewalski’s radio car illuminated the scene in harsh white light, like the stage of some avant-garde performance artist.

Eta Fitzgerald lay in a heap on the wet, cracked pavement behind the Speed office. Or rather, her body lay there. There was no sense of the big personality Parker had met that morning. The force she had been was gone. What he was staring at now was just a shell, a carcass. Parker squatted down beside the body. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear.

“That’s a whole lotta woman,” Jimmy Chew said.

“Don’t,” Parker said quietly. “Don’t. Not this time.”

“You know her, Kev?”

“Yeah, Jimmy, I knew her.”

Which was a problem now. One of the first things he drilled into his trainees was not to attach emotionally to victims. Therein lay the road to madness. They couldn’t make every case personal. It was too hard, too destructive. Easier said than done when you’d met the victim before the crime.

“Geez, I’m sorry,” Chew said. “She a friend?”

“No,” Parker said. “But she could have been, in another time, another place.”

“She’s got no ID on her. No pocketbook. I’m sure her cash is running all over town by now, buying rock cocaine and fifty-buck blowjobs. We found keys on the ground near the body. They fit the minivan. The van is registered to Evangeline Fitzgerald.”

“Eta,” Parker said. “She called herself Eta. She was the dispatcher here. Ruiz and I spoke with her this morning.”

“That bike messenger, the one from last night, he worked here?”

“Yeah.”

“Guess he’s our guy, huh? The lawyer. The dispatcher. What they got in common is him.”

Parker didn’t say anything, but he didn’t buy it. Why would Damon wait until the end of the day to kill her? He had to know the cops would have been on the messenger services first thing. The damage would have been done before the end of the workday—if Eta had chosen to give them any information. If Damon wanted to silence her, he would have killed her before she got to work, not as she was leaving.

Maybe he could have come back to rob her, but Parker doubted that too. Why would the kid risk coming back here at all? For all he knew, the place could have been under surveillance. And he supposedly had a large amount of cash from Lenny Lowell’s safe. What would he want with the contents of the woman’s wallet?

“She’s got a family, kids,” he said.

“The only people who deserve it are usually on the other end of the knife, I’ve found,” Jimmy Chew said.

Parker stood and looked around. “Where’s Ruiz? This is her call.”

“She’s not here yet. Probably taking extra time to sharpen her claws. You’ve got a real peach there, Kev.”

“I don’t have to like them, Jimmy,” Parker said, walking away. “I just have to teach them something.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Anything for the press, Detective?” Kelly asked from behind the yellow tape.

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