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  There were neighboring houses on either side but they were newer and sat a little farther back from the point, allowing them views in only one direction or the other. This property was obviously the first estate up here and, as a result, was in the prime location.

  There was a pool house with Spanish arches that matched the old architecture of the estate, but newer plate-glass windows indicated it was a more recent addition. It looked empty but was ablaze with lights. The Christmas music seemed to originate from a sound system located inside.

  We kept our backs to the wall and edged around the corner to get a better look at the layout.

  It was then that I saw two female bodies floating facedown in the rectangular, Olympic-sized pool. Their tangled hair and colorful dresses were illuminated by the powerful underwater lights. Both appeared to be Caucasian, their inert bodies leaking large amounts of dark arterial blood into the turquoise water.

  Alexa and I continued to stand with our backs to the wall of the house, surveying the terrain for any sign of movement. In addition to the two women floating in the pool, I could now see a third person. There was a man bent over the back of a pool chaise with his ass poking up in the air. His face was looking down at the green canvas chair pad as if it contained something of great interest to him.

  "Police! Stay where you are! Put your hands in the air!" I shouted.

  He didn't move didn't twitch. In that instant, changing categories, going from potential adversary to victim number three.

  "Go," Alexa directed.

  While she covered me, I ducked through the gate into the backyard and sprinted across the deck to the side of the pool house, throwing my back to the wall. From where I now stood, I could see the rest of the backyard. It looked deserted.

  "Backyard looks clear," I called as I raised my gun into a firing position to cover Alexa. "Go!" I shouted and she sprinted across the lawn, past my position and into the pool house. I followed behind her and covered her as she threw open changing room doors, checking both bathrooms.

  "Clear," she called.

  I left her and sprinted to the far side of the house to check the north side of the property and the path that led back to the street. It was also empty, the pathway lit by an old rusting Spanish-style carriage lamp.

  "North side clear!" I shouted, then checked the back door of the house. It was fastened securely by a heavy commercial-sized Yale padlock. The bracket was bolted to the side of the house and attached to the door with two-inch bolts that went all the way through the solid oak.

  I looked through the kitchen windows into a pantry. The house was dark and appeared deserted more than deserted, it looked to be in terrible disrepair. For some reason only the backyard and pool house of this estate had been maintained.

  Next Alexa and I checked the mammoth garage. All eight pull-up doors and the side entrances were securely padlocked.

  Once we were finished we returned to the man who was still bent over the pool chaise, obviously very dead. He was a middle-aged Caucasian, and had three huge grapefruit-sized exit wounds in his back. All of them were oozing thick blood the consistency of ketchup but the deep purple-reddish color of eggplant. He'd been shot with some kind of large-bore weapon.

  "I'll check on the others," Alexa said, moving toward the two women floating in the pool.

  They looked young and fit, both in colorful strapless party dresses, which in death had floated up around shapely thighs. Their leaking wounds were now beginning to turn the Olympic-sized pool a weird greenish pink.

  Alexa grabbed the nearest one by the arm, pulled her over, and checked for a pulse. Then she repeated the process with the second body.

  "Both dead," she said, but made no attempt to pull them out of the water. We had to leave the scene pretty much as we found it for the homicide tech teams and photographers because our 415 with shots fired had just morphed into a triple 187.

  As I studied the bloodstained man bent over the pool chaise, I noticed a wallet in his back pants pocket. I carefully fished it out using my thumb and index finger, then dropped it onto a nearby glass-top table and took a pen from my jacket.

  I flipped the wallet open, revealing a driver's license encased in a plastic sleeve. The picture of a tanned, good-looking man smiled out from under the State of California seal. The date of birth on the license revealed that he was fifty-five. Then I read the name.

  "You won't believe who we have here," I called over to Alexa, who was still by the pool. "This vie is Scott Berman."

  Alexa stood, her face now drawn. "Then we're sitting on a fullblown disaster," she said.

  Bing Crosby didn't seem to get it. "Have yourself a merry little Christmas," he sang happily.

  This incident, I later learned, was something screenwriters call the inciting story event. But for me, it was the beginning of two weeks I'm going to call "Shane's Midlife Crisis."

  *

  ACT ONE

  Chapter 5

  Scott Berman had produced some of the biggest movies in the history of Hollywood. Until tonight, he'd sat atop a massive production empire located at Paramount Studios, where I'd read he had just made an overall deal. His last three blockbuster hits had been produced there. Berman was an A-list Hollywood player, one of the few world-famous producers whose name was as important as those of the stars who worked for him.

  I was already the primary responder on this 187, being first on the scene. Because I was also assigned to Homicide Special, which handled high-profile celebrity murder cases, I knew Jeb Calloway would probably assign this one to me.

  We turned off the music and marked a predetermined access and egress path on the grass at the far side of the driveway for the patrol cops who would soon arrive. We didn't want them blundering in, disturbing any trace evidence that might exist. By the time the first black-and-white had pulled up, the crime scene was basically locked down. Seconds later two more X-cars chirped in.

  "We're Code Four," Alexa called to the six armed cops who were running up the drive with their safeties off.

  Alexa got on the phone to Jeb Calloway to notify him we had a department red ball, slang for a big media case. Next she dialed the district attorney's twenty-four-hour desk to start the process of getting a judge to write us a warrant that would allow CSI to do a search of the property at 3151 Skyline Drive.

  I organized the patrol guys, got them stringing tape, and expanded the initial area that Alexa and I had secured. I had them block off Skyline Drive all the way down to Mulholland. I like to start with a big campus, because I've learned it's easy to shrink a crime scene but almost impossible to grow it.

  I nabbed one of the patrolmen and told him to keep the crime scene attendance log, cataloging the names and times of arrival for everyone. Then I walked down and retrieved my crime scene notepad out of the car, returned to the pool area, and began sketching the positions of the three dead bodies in the large backyard. I walked around the main house checking every opening. Every door on the ground floor of the old mansion had been securely padlocked, every window locked.

  We didn't find any IDs for the two dead women in the pool. One of the people escaping in those fancy cars must have stopped to gather up their purses so we couldn't identify them, making me wonder why they'd taken the time to do that but had left Scott Berman's wallet in his pocket where it was sure to be found.

  Besides sketching the physical layout, noting first impressions, and making a list of vehicles we'd passed coming up the hill, along with that one partial plate on the black Mercedes, there wasn't much I could do until the warrant, ME, and CSIs arrived.

  While I waited for forensics and the medical examiner, I decided to go next door to see if anybody had witnessed the shooting. My best bet was the house on the Hollywood side of the property because it sat slightly above, although a little back from the promontory point. There were a few dark windows on the north wall that looked like they had a decent view of this backyard.

  As I headed away from the pool area I ag
ain studied the landscaping. Unlike the paint-starved, weed-choked mansion that fronted it, the backyard had been scrupulously cared for. Newly planted winter cyclamens showed bright red and white faces as they peeked over low hedges in freshly manicured flower beds. The pool house looked recently painted.

  Again, I wondered why the mansion was such a wreck, while the backyard could have been a photo spread for Better Homes and Gardens.

  Arleen and Cecil Prentiss lived next door and they supplied the answer.

  "Nobody's lived over there since way before we moved in ten years ago," Cecil said.

  He was a tall, gaunt, fifty-year-old character with a chin patch and frizzy hair that was growing in a Bozo the Clown half-moon shape. His wife, Arleen, was one of those thirty-five-year-old Hollywood health club exhibits too thin, too buff, too tan, with bleached-blond hair and the required silicone enhancements.

  "Did you hear the shots?" I asked them after we'd exchanged introductions.

  "We were the ones who called it in," Cecil said. "We heard it, but didn't see it because it was getting pretty racy over there. We have a ten-year-old, so once they started groping each other, we pulled the blinds down on the back windows."

  "Lets start with what you saw before you pulled the shades," I suggested. "Did you recognize anyone?"

  "Nobody," Arleen said. "But whoever they were, they had money. The girls were beautiful, at least from a distance. Looked like actresses. The guys seemed older. Bunch of fancy cars parked on the street. There's a foundation that owns that place. They only rent out the backyard. Mostly it's for charity events and parties but we've heard the house is completely off-limits."

  "Yeah, it's all padlocked," I told them.

  "During the holiday season, there's something going on over at that pool house all the time," Arleen continued. "We complain, but the city-use ordinances in this sector are pretty loose, so we can't get them to stop. If it gets too noisy, then Cecil has the number to the pool house, which has its own line. He phones over and if we threaten to call the cops, that usually quiets things down."

  "Who got killed?" Cecil asked, as he craned his skinny neck forward and began wringing bony hands, taking him out of his friendlier Bozo persona and into a less attractive praying mantis mode.

  "Not sure, yet," I told him noncommittally. "You get any license plates for the cars parked out front?"

  "No," Arleen said. "A year or two ago we might have, but it's sort of become like a normal thing, so we're just trying to deal with it now."

  "What did the gunshots sound like?" I asked.

  "Like some kind of machine gun. BLAPBLAPBLAPBLAPBLAP! Like that," Cecil said, mimicking the sound of the weapon.

  "And you didn't look out?"

  "Yeah. After we heard the shots. But by then, everybody was running like crazy. I couldn't pick out the person with the gun. They were gone in seconds. Car doors slamming, engines starting, tires squealing."

  It turned out Cecil was a TV producer. Arleen had just started working with him and was, as the saying goes, learning the biz. They had offices at the old MGM studio, which is now Sony.

  "Maybe this will finally end all of this," Cecil said, more concerned with the areas use and noise regs than the three dead strangers in the neighboring backyard. "We've been talking about getting the City Council to pass a number of night location rules, like they have over in Pasadena. Maybe this will finally get somebody's attention."

  "You never know. Could happen," I said.

  After we exchanged cards, I walked out their front gate and saw Captain Jeb Calloway pulling up in a brown Crown Vic Interceptor. His D-car was followed closely by a new, top down, midnight blue Porsche Carrera Cabriolet with a tan interior.

  "Shit," I muttered as the Carrera pulled in and shut off its lights.

  Sumner Hitchens unhooked his seat belt and exited the hundred-thousand-dollar sports car. He paused for a moment to straighten the creases on his expensive pleated trousers.

  As usual, Hitch was dressed like a runway model. This evening it was a dark rust-colored suit, purple shirt, black silk tie with matching pocket square. His shoes were glittering Spanish leather. An oversized thirty-thousand-dollar special-edition Corum wristwatch flashed rose gold from under French cuffs with diamond links. His neatly trimmed mustache and handsome coffee-colored face were lit by his standard devilish grin.

  Hollywood Hitch, mean and lean, had made the scene.

  "Hang on, Skipper," he called to Jeb Calloway, hurrying after our captain, who was heading up the drive toward the crime scene.

  I've been a cop for almost half my life and other than Sumner Hitchens, I've never heard anyone on the job call a police captain "Skipper." That only happened on TV, in the movies, and in Hitch World, which I had come to learn had a very large zip code.

  The way the story went, Sumner Hitchens had sold one of his big homicide cases to the movies. That happened just a year before he was transferred to Homicide Special. Back then Hitch was a detective in the Metro Division downtown. He and his homicide table had busted a dangerous serial killer, a nutcase who thought the only way he could nourish himself and stay alive was to drink the blood of his victims.

  Paramount produced the film and Jamie Foxx ended up playing the starring role of Detective Sumner Hitchens. The movie was entitled Mosquito, and the damn thing grossed over six hundred million dollars worldwide. Hitch had two back-end profit points hence the hundred-thousand-dollar Carrera, the pricey watch and wardrobe, as well as his new multimillion-dollar house in the Hollywood Hills, all of which he never tired of bragging about. His Hollywood representatives were a gang of sharks at United Talent Agency.

  In my opinion, Sumner Hitchens was the ultimate pretender so there was no way I was going to let that hairbag end up as my partner.

  He spotted me standing on the neighbors' steps ten yards away.

  I must have been frowning because he waved and shouted, "Hey, dawg, cheer up. Its you and me now, brother."

  Chapter 6

  Patrol had already taped off a media control area in a vacant lot half a block away. It was currently empty, but we all knew before long this would get phoned in by a neighbor and once the press got wind of the fact that Scott Berman was one of our vies, they would be covering this place like a red carpet awards show.

  Crime techs were arriving down by the main gate, talking in low voices while they waited for an ADA to show up with a search warrant so they could start collecting evidence. Until then there wasn't much anybody could do.

  Hitch tried to approach me once or twice, but I gave him the slip by saying, "Just a minute, Hitch. Be right with you." I didn't want to give our new partnership even six seconds of emotional currency.

  As the primary along with Alexa, I was one of the few people who were permitted to stay on the scene before the warrants arrived. Another exception was my immediate supervisor. I was looking to pull Jeb aside and start with my list of complaints. I'd paid my dues and like Sally said, I deserved better. No way I was going to work with Hollywood Hitchens. Jeb was just going to have to see this my way. I was rehearsed and ready to make my case when I finally caught him alone. He was standing at the side of the house, out of the immediate area of interest, talking on his cell.

  "Captain," I said as I approached, but he held up a hand to silence me.

  "I don't care who's in the regular rotation," he said into his Black-Berry. "I want you to handle it personally, Meyer. We're gonna need a pile of cover on this."

  Meyer was Bert Meyer, better known in police circles as Meyer the Liar, head of our Media Relations Department.

  "We're gonna need a media war room with daily press briefings and handouts," Jeb continued into his cell. "This is gonna be everybody's lead story. Matt Lauer will probably be out from New York tomorrow, doing stand-ups in front of this place."

  I looked down and saw an old paint-peeled Prime Properties Real Estate sign that had been ditched back here years ago. Underneath, hanging from a chain, was a dirt-s
meared placard that read: A BEVERLY BARTINELLI LISTING. I wrote it down.

  Jeb finally hung up and turned to me. "I don't wanta hear it, Shane," he said before I could even get started.

  "But Captain…"

  "You're gonna work with him. It's my call and it's already settled. That's all there is to it."

  "Captain, can I at least make my case?"

  Jeb Calloway was originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and still spoke with a slight French accent. He was marble hard, black ebony with a torpedo-shaped head and Mighty Mouse build. We sometimes called him the Haitian Sensation because of his comic-book proportions. He was a good guy but when he got pissed he could really break your balls. The whole package, every ounce and fiber, now looked extremely menacing. He glanced down at his watch impatiently.

  "Go! You've got forty seconds."

  "I only need five. Hitchens is a total waste of space and a raging asshole. I won't work with him."

  A uniformed patrolman started down the path by the side of the house, stringing perimeter tape.

  "Can you give us a minute?" Jeb said, and the cop abruptly spun and left us there. Jeb turned back to me.

  "Shane, I try to be fair to everyone. You know I've got a three-strike rule. He's down to his last swing and, like it or not, you're it."

  "Three strikes? He's already had em, Captain. Dick Parsons dumped him over that evidence-tampering thing that went to IA, Chris Molina for being a total dickhead and crashing their unit twice. Barbara Palma last week for seducing her twin sister after the police academy picnic. That's three."

  "The Barbara Palma thing was a foul tip. Some people misunderstand what Hitch calls personal charm. He and Babs were chemically incompatible. It was my idea to split em up, so that one doesn't count."