Crime Rave Read online

  “Wasn’t it a Halloween theme rave, Boss?” Günn’s social skills leave much to be desired. She holds up the orange and black flyer that features a menacing haunted house surrounded by flying bats and a set of speakers adorned with a grinning skull.

  Captain Anderson’s face flashes with annoyance, the kind that results in a write-up for insubordination.

  Red Feather intervenes, shooting Günn his now-patented shut the motherfuck up look. She puts her hands up and takes a step back.

  The captain takes a deep, composing breath. “About twenty minutes after the explosion we received a video at Hollywood PD from a group calling themselves the Bad Vibe Kids. They claim responsibility for the explosion. We’ve got ’em on the surveillance tapes, but they covered up their license plate. In the confession they said, I quote, ‘We did it for their own good.’”

  Red Feather fills his mouth with air and expels it fast. “Fuuuuck.”

  “Prints all over the video and the envelope, all with priors, drug dealing, DUI, arson, reckless endangerment. Patrol’s on the way to pick them up at their last-knowns.” Günn and Red Feather nod.

  “We got four survivors, one male and three females. One female in a werewolf costume badly wounded, her leg’s been severed. Male, shaken up but otherwise unharmed. Hysterical middle-aged woman—she’s the one whose screaming damn near shorted out all our equipment—and I’ve got no fucking idea what she’d be doing at a ‘rave’ party.” He does the air quotes again. “Another female who looks more like a bird than a human, but I leave that for the hospital to sort out. Witnesses to the explosion from around the city said they saw a bright flash and then the boom went up into the sky, like a reverse tornado.”

  “A what?” Günn cannot keep the annoyance from her voice. “That’s not even possible.”

  Anderson shrugs. “Multiples corroborated that the explosion—well—imploded into the sky. They saw the debris flying upward, every last bit of the hill with it.”

  Red Feather looks up, thinking of the Sky Gods his father told him about as a child.

  “I’m not the religious type, but fuck me if survivors at all isn’t some kind of miracle.” Captain Anderson runs his hand through his thick batch of hair.

  Günn scoffs. “I don’t believe in miracles. I believe in evidence.”

  “Then you’d better take a hard look around here, Detective. And we’re just getting started.”

  Anderson, Red Feather and Günn eye the acreage that just yesterday housed one of Los Angeles’s strangest landmarks. The Crane Mansion and the hill upon which it rested had been man-made. The gonzo Crane and his billions from a global motel industry went toward constructing the eyesore of a hill and its nonsensical mansion atop. Angelenos protested, arguing that the structure would ruin their iconic skyline. Crane’s money won and ten years later the “Motel Chain Mansion”—as it became known around town—was complete, jutting through the heart of Hollywood. A thorn in the side of a concrete city.

  “Anything else, Boss?” Red Feather looks back at Anderson as Governor Bernard Brooks arrives with his entourage. The captain’s cue for publicity hour.

  “Keep an eye on the CSIs for now, make sure they bag whatever body parts are still here. When you’re done, head to Spruce-Musa Hospital, I want witness statements from the survivors before the Feds take over. You get every last drop on what they remember, I don’t care if they are traumatized or what, you grill ’em. Then get back to the station. We’ll have those Bad Vibe goons in custody by the time you do.”

  “You got it, Boss.”

  Captain Anderson hitches up his pants, fixes his tie. “Ok then, time for my close-up.” Günn brushes the smudge of ash from his sleeve in a rare gesture of kindness. Anderson nods in thanks and strides to the mass of paparazzi craning their way for a peek around the cordon of police officers.

  The detectives watch as Pete Mazzotti, head of Hollywood PD forensics, extracts the four-foot remnant of a lizard tail costume from under a layer of ash and calls to Detective Red Feather. Mazzotti photographs it in situ with a Polaroid camera. The machine hums and haws before spitting out the image. Mazzotti holds the photo like it’s glass, waits for the image to develop. He’s satisfied, puts the photo with the growing pile of crime scene snaps and turns to Red Feather, showing him the piece.

  “This must have been some wild party.” Mazzotti studies the prosthetic detail that went into this lizard tail. It looks almost real, a prehistoric relic.

  Red Feather shakes his head. “What a fucking mess.”

  “Royal.” Pete makes a note on his clipboard and places the tail in a body bag.

  “You find anymore costume bits you let us know. DNA’ll take forever but if we got descriptions we can make public…gonna be a hell of a time putting names to what’s left. Tell your team.”

  “You got it, Detective.”

  Red Feather looks at Günn. “I just don’t get how anyone managed to walk away from this.”

  Günn tilts her head and frowns. “I guess we’ll find out when we interview them. Maybe they were, I dunno, somewhere else when it all went down.” There has to be a reasonable explanation.

  “She was missing her leg,” Red Feather reminds the pedantic-to-a-fault Günn.

  “I know. Aren’t we lucky we caught the night shift?” Günn flashes an uncharacteristic smile.

  A yell from one of the CSIs gets everyone running over to the far side of the site.

  “You’re fucking kidding me!” Mazzotti wonders if he’s still sleeping.

  An investigator holds up a decapitated head, purple hair, one eye. Not a costume.

  “A cyclops?” Red Feather’s brow furrows.

  Mazzotti pries open the eye, bloodshot, bright green iris. “Birth defect, I’m guessing. There’s herbs that’ll stop the brain from splitting into two lobes in uteri. The mom must’ve been big on alternative meds and didn’t realize until it was too late.” Mazzotti shrugs. “Or she could have been poisoned.”

  “Well,” Günn says, “her mistake, our gain. A one-eyed girl is gonna be a piece of cake to ID.”

  “Always the pragmatist, huh Günn.”

  Günn scowls. Mazzotti places the head into a plastic baggie. Tags the location, scribbles on his clipboard. “Rave parties. What a bunch of freaks.”

  “What about Charles Wallace Crane? Weirdo recluse living on his homemade hill goes and actually throws a rave, God knows why, that gets blown all to hell?” Entitled Richie Riches like him get Günn’s blood boiling something awful.

  Red Feather feels a tinge of sadness as he looks at the one-eyed girl, her skin made opaque by the plastic bag. She looks so young, too young to be at a rave. Now dead.

  Mazzotti places the head in the growing pile of bagged body parts recovered from the wreckage. “It’s strange that we have body parts at all, truth be told. Taking into account the state of vaporization on the hill, I can’t even begin to explain how these bits and bobs made it.” He’s going to win Criminalist of the Year after he publishes on all this. Maybe he’ll get that raise he’s been promised, even before the salary freeze ends.

  “And the four survivors?” Günn added.

  Mazzotti shakes his head. “Yeah, I got nothing. Except maybe divine intervention, but that ain’t gonna fly when this all goes to court.”

  Red Feather’s cell phone rings. He walks away from Günn and Mazzotti. Talks. Hangs up. “HQ. They’ve got three of the perps in custody. Captain says two are brothers, other’s a friend. Oldest one is twenty-five, youngest is eighteen-flipping-years old.” Red Feather feels that same sadness steal over him. What happened to these kids to drive them to mass murder?

  Günn wishes she’d be the one to interrogate the little shits.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Mazzotti says. “They on drugs?”

  “
Guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Red Feather does a three-sixty of the site.

  Günn snorts. “Not with the Feebs on the job. Those tools couldn’t get a call girl to talk if they paid her.”

  Red Feather and Mazzotti laugh, but it’s a hollow sound. There is too much death around them as they breathe in the ash of what was once people, scattering to the wind.

  “Pete, you got any other notable pieces here?” Red Feather looks at the nearby stack of plastic baggies.

  “Actually, yes. Take a look at this one.” Mazzotti shows them a half a head with neck and shoulder attached. The eye is open and shines metallic through the plastic. “I thought it was some kind of paint or contact lenses at first, but it’s not. Her eyes are silver.”

  “No way,” Günn says, taking the bag to examine it. “You’ll test it at the lab to make sure.” It can’t be silver, she thinks, not possible.

  “Goes without saying. And here, this one.” Mazzotti rifles through the pile and pulls up a piece of torso bagged in clear plastic. “When Miller handled it he got real sick, puking and then he passed out. I took a swab, but my guess it’s got some kind of poison on it.”

  “Wasn’t he wearing gloves?” Günn asks. “Idiot.”

  Mazzotti leans over and picks up another bag. “Check it out. Whatever’s on this body ate right through the gloves.” Red Feather sees the gloves are full of holes, moths gone wild.

  “How’s it not eating through that baggie then?” Günn feels a familiar sense of anger arise when things don’t make logical sense.

  “I thought of that, too. Must be a reaction to the sweat from his hands inside the glove. Reacted with whatever is on this woman’s skin.” Mazzotti shows them.

  “Woman?”

  “See here? That’s the top of her uterus.”

  Red Feather and Günn’s eyes widen.

  Mazzotti bends down and picks up another bag. “Another strange one. Look.” Mazzotti pulls the plastic tight over the kneecap of a whole lower leg and foot. “It appears her bones are made of metal.”

  “Surgery? Implant, maybe?” Red Feather asks, turning the bag over.

  “Nope, it appears to run all the way through and look at the vessels around the bone—also metal. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is some kind of cyborg.” Mazzotti raises his left eyebrow and sighs.

  “What, like The Terminator?” Günn wishes she still smoked. Then again, the day’s still young.

  “Exactamundo, Detective. But that’s not possible. We’re years from that kind of tech.” Mazzotti rifles and picks out a bag that could either be a thigh or a fleshy arm. “Last strange one. Check it out.” Mazzotti squeezes and blood seeps from each amputated end.

  Red Feather and Günn are speechless, a unison gasp.

  “Yeah, I barely believe it and I’m looking right at it.” Mazzotti clears his throat, giving the dumbfound a moment to clear. “So, anyway, Detectives, I let you know when I get this all back to the lab and we do our tests. In the meantime, we’ll keep sifting through all this and see what else we got under all this dust.”

  “Thanks, Pete,” Red Feather says, his voice returning, “we’ll check back in later.” He nods, Günn follows suit and they head back to the car.

  Mazzotti turns and surveys the strange pile of body parts that should not exist. He sees a hand with long acrylic nails about to burst from its bag. “Goddamn rookies,” he mutters, taking note of whom originally processed the item and puts it in a larger bag. Mazzotti checks the rest of the baggies, sees that many of the body parts look like they’ve been forced into too-small receptacles. He growls, striding off to give his team a what-for.

  Kaleanathi, the Smog Goddess

  You are the daughter of Kali and Athena, banished from the heavens by your angry grandfather Zeus, and Kali’s jealous husband, Shiva. In the pantheon of Ethereals and Elementals, you are a hybrid, a goddess between the ephemeral and the actual. A borderdweller with no place. A new goddess with no value to the old ones, left to your own devices without a thought.

  You made your home in the smog above Los Angeles as the eater of souls. So many to choose from here. Gang violence, gun violence, car crashes, drug overdoses. You eat them all, trapping them in a limbo of your own creation, drawing power from their pain. Oh, the feast you had tonight over the Charles Wallace Crane mansion. Thousands upon thousands of oblations, screaming into your poison womb. The first night of its kind. You’re already hungry for more. Your goal is to surpass Kali and Athena’s powers. Maybe even Mother, The Ancient One’s. You’re almost there already.

  However, The Ethereals have stolen some of your tribute. Four souls who walked away from your night. You will have these offerings back. They’re marked by your stain. Their lives belong to you, and only you. Finally, you have the power to match the pantheon of your ancestors as you manipulate human fear in a toxic alchemy.

  Double, bubble, toil and trouble. Your black skies percolate over the city in anticipation of your next bold move. The dozens of thousands of souls in you wail in protest as you feed on their sadness, savoring every drop of misery.

  3:00 AM Hollywood Police Department

  The Hollywood PD station is a squat brown frog of a building set back from the street, demarcated by a line of trees, and back-up cop cars. The station’s a ten-minute drive from the site of the Crane Mansion Massacre without traffic. And there’s no traffic today. Inside, Detective Finian Murphy, also squat and frog-like with a wide jowly face, watches as patrolmen cart Preston Reid, and Frank and Tommy Cullen in through the back, press vultures already gotten wind that the punks are here. The “Bad Vibe Kids” they called themselves in their initial statement to the press before they were arrested on charges of mass murder and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Their response? Some nonsense about wanting to purify the party scene, whatever the hell that means. Murphy had been waiting to see a bunch of leather-clad black-coat goth weirdos courtesy of Columbine, not these three fresh-faced and colorfully bedecked youngsters. If he didn’t know better “All American” would be the description that sprang to mind. But he knows better.

  Captain Anderson, back at the station after his interview, gives Murphy a cursory glance. With two complaints for sexually inappropriate and racist comments already under Murphy’s belt, he’s the last person Anderson wants anywhere near this case, what with his scarily low IQ and general sense of entitlement. The slightest fuck-up from this end and Anderson imagines every single person under his watch will have a compromised job. Anderson prays for the day Murph’ll screw the pooch ‘til Sunday and he’ll finally have an excuse to park him behind a desk for good, or better yet, give him a nice early retirement package. Captain Anderson sighs. If only Murphy’s dad hadn’t been the one to save his life in the cartel shoot-out that earned them both medals of honor.

  “When do I get to interrogate ’em, Boss? I passed my cert with flying colors, you saw.” Eagerness drips from Murphy’s too-high voice.

  “Murphy. You listen and you listen good.” Captain Anderson pokes a finger in Murphy’s chest and speaks slowly to make sure the mental deficient gets it. “You are not to go near those suspects. This is a terrorist case. Means the FBI will come in with their best confession-wrangler. You are not even assigned to this case. I’m still waiting for your report on those break-ins in Silver Lake. You make that your priority. Have it on my desk by the end of the day.”

  Murphy puffs up. “No way, Boss. Not if you’ve given Tonto and Tweaker first dibs on the Crane Massacre. No way, nuh uh.”

  Captain Anderson gets right in Murphy’s grille. “You cut that shit out, you hear me. The next complaint you get is gonna bring you back a pay grade. I won’t care who your father is. Got it?” Murphy deflates, looks to the floor. Captain Anderson nudges him in the chest again. “Detectives Red Feather and Günn are on site. I repeat: You have not a goddamn thing t
o do with the Crane case. Got it?” Anderson has to work not to yell.

  “Yes, Boss.” Nothing gets through to Murphy like threatening his cash flow. How else would he keep himself in noir-inspired custom tailored suits and video box sets of black and white detective films? Anderson shakes his head and walks to his office, leaving Murphy to pull himself together.

  “Fuck that,” Murphy whispers, thinking of all the times he’s heard his colleagues and patrolman snickering about him behind his back. How they call him half-wit. Retard. Dumbo. How his daddy pulled so many strings to get him into the academy he should be a puppeteer for a second career. Murphy’s gonna show ’em, and show ’em good. He’s gonna crack those kids open like Christmas chestnuts. “Ok, punks,” he sneers as he turns up his collar, thinking he looks like Humphrey Bogart but looking more like an Irish Joe Pesci. “Here comes papa.”

  3:15 AM The Wreckage

  CSI Mazzotti is in a state and a half at the site of the Crane Massacre. He waves baggies of body parts in the faces of his team. “What the hell is wrong with you people? Your eyes don’t work? You can’t fucking manage to bag these pieces in appropriately-sized receptacles?”

  Tina Vasco, slight, long dark hair pulled back into a bun, vintage cat’s eye glasses with gems in the sides, steps up. “Calm down. This isn’t our bad!”

  Mazzotti, red-faced furious, picks up a bag with Tina’s initials on it. “Look here, you bagged this one, Tina. How the hell are you gonna tell me this isn’t your bad?”

  “Mazzotti, when I put that hand in there it fit and there were three inches of space on the top. I photographed it. Just check. Why would any of us shove these parts in there like that?” Tina’s heart pounds.