‘I’m going to have to take this higher,’ Narey told them. ‘There are seemingly solid convictions against some of those names and there’s a lot of people going to be very unhappy when I tell them they might have been done by someone that I can’t identify.’
‘Join the club.’ Salgado laughed. ‘We ain’t too popular in some circles either right now. We’re chasing Garland’s victims in the hope they show us a pattern and give us a lead on possible dump sites so that we might find this kid alive. Your guy Marr is a different problem – he’s still on the loose.’
‘And he knows we’re on to him.’ O’Neill piled on the unnecessary pressure. ‘He’s going to go one of two ways. He’ll either—’
‘Shut it down, meaning there’s a very good chance we’ll never find him. Or he’ll step it up while he still can.’
‘These guys can’t shut it down,’ Salgado said firmly. ‘It’s who they are. If Marr, or whoever he is, has killed as many times as we think he has then he’ll kill again. And chances are he’s going to do it as quickly as he can.’
CHAPTER 21
Marianne Ziegler told them that she fled from Ethan Garland on 14 April 2012. She’d no doubt at all that was the date. Engraved on her heart.
Salgado had a contact at KABC-TV, a buddy from college, and a quick phone call had them en route to the studios in Glendale at GC3, Disney’s Grand Central Creative Campus. Everything was digitally stored and Salgado’s contact said he’d get them access.
Marianne hadn’t been sure which show Garland had been watching so intently when he exploded at her but she said his favourite was Channel 7’s Eyewitness News. Even if he’d been viewing another channel, Eyewitness was likely to have covered the same event.
The tech had left them the remote and the tape was good to go. They made themselves comfortable and got it started.
‘Coming up on Eyewitness News tonight . . .’
A slightly younger Marc Brown was anchoring the show, promising forest fires, a double homicide, a father–child abduction, a multi-vehicle collision and video of a robbery of a taco truck.
‘The double 187 sounds promising,’ Salgado suggested.
‘Really, Columbo? You think the homicide rather than the taco truck heist?’
‘Will you ever cut me a break?’
‘Never. And you know it.’
The schedule kicked off with an early season fire that was raging in the San Jacinto Mountains, burning its way through twenty thousand acres on the back of a dry winter. From there it trailed the double murder before hitting an ad break.
‘I can’t stand the sound of commercials,’ O’Neill moaned. ‘Can you fast-forward it?’
‘I’m looking for a new grill, one with a built-in smoker. I don’t want to miss the chance of a bargain. And I don’t trust this remote not to miss part of the show once it kicks off again.’
‘Sweet Jesus. Kill me now.’
When Marc Brown re-emerged from safety after the commercials, he didn’t go to the promised murders but to some breaking news instead. A car chase was underway in Santa Monica and Channel 7 had an eye in the sky following it.
‘You gotta be kidding me!’ Salgado shouted. ‘What the hell is this obsession with chases? They could fill an hour with this shit every night. It just lets some asshole get his fifteen minutes and a few traffic cops get to tell their kids they’re on the news.’
It was the world’s slowest car chase. A drunk driver in a red Nissan being tailed at distance by one black and white and then another, all being filmed live from the helicopter. The Nissan was swerving, driving on the other side of the road, ignoring red lights and stop signs as it sped best it could along Lincoln. The cops had to stay back and play it safe, just blasting out lights and sirens to try to keep the civilians safe. It was oddly addictive while also being mind-numbingly boring.
‘Now can we fast forward?’
‘It might end at any minute. I don’t want to scroll beyond it and miss anything we need.’
It didn’t end at any minute. It ended after thirty-five minutes with a bunch of commercial breaks in between. The car got out of Santa Monica and onto PCH making for Malibu, doing no more than forty or fifty, on towards Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Woodland Hills.
‘Come on suckers, spike strip,’ Salgado implored. ‘This is killing me. Time for a spike strip.’
Sure enough, just before the Nissan got to Ventura Boulevard, two cops were seen by the side of the road and moments later, the car ground to a halt, at least one of its tyres shredded. There was a further five minutes of half-hearted drama while the drunk got out of the car and finally got himself arrested. The news anchor reappeared, clearly as bored by the chase as anyone else.
‘Next up, neighbours shocked by a double homicide in Culver City. Back after this.’
‘Finally.’ O’Neill was so ready to hear about the killings she was prepared to overlook the commercials this time.
‘Chilling screams. Police sirens. A double murder. All of it rocked La Salle Avenue in Culver City this morning. Authorities have a man in custody accused of murdering homeowners Bill and Janetta Coulson in the early hours. Eyewitness News reporter Andrea Wills joins us now live outside the Coulsons’ home, where those murders took place. Andrea?’
‘Feel right?’ O’Neill asked.
‘Nope. Not yet anyhow.’
‘Nor me.’
‘Marc, I spoke to a neighbour just across the street and they told me they heard two gunshots around five this morning.’
‘Gunshots? Not our guy. Shit. Shit.’
‘Unless he cut them after shooting them?’
He hadn’t. The Culver City killings were a robbery gone wrong. Two shots, two dead, no cutting. Cut to commercials.
They’d been watching for nearly an hour, sitting through an amber alert after a father from Inglewood had abducted his son, two deaths and four injured in a pile-up on the 110, and the long-awaited taco truck robbery in Park Mesa Heights. They were close to giving up when Marc Brown changed the narrative.
‘Just in on Eyewitness News tonight, a twenty-five-year-old man from Reseda is given a life sentence for the brutal murder of a doctor’s son in North Hills. Phil Reid is at Van Nuys Courthouse East where he has been covering the trial for us. Phil, tell us about this case.’
Both detectives sat upright and inched closer to the screen. This was much more promising.
‘Marc, this has been a harrowing trial for the twelve jurors who had to endure it. For the Los Angeles Police Department it represents the end of a particularly difficult investigation. For the parents of twenty-three-year-old Adrian Mercado it means justice for their son. For twenty-five-year-old Jamarco Freeman it means life in prison.’
‘You remember this?’ Salgado interrupted.
‘Vaguely. Kid’s body was found in a dumpster behind a cinema. Mutilated.’
‘I’m interested.’
‘Me too.’
The reporter told how an early morning garbage truck found the young man in the alley behind the Vista Theater on Sunset. Phil made great play of how the truck’s crew were horrified and traumatised by what they found. He suggested that the sight of what had been done to the victim’s body was so distressing that at least one of them vomited at the scene.