The second floor was just as empty as the first, big surprise. Stopping to rub his knee and take in the western treetop view, he continued toward the rear, stopped again, kneaded some more but it didn’t do much good. Continuing to the back, he reached the smaller staircase, thirteen steps but real curvy, a killer, tucked behind a narrow wall, you had to know where to find it.

Whoever had paid for all this was some rich idiot who didn’t appreciate what he had. If Doyle had a hundredth—a two-hundredth of something like this, he’d thank God every day.

He’d asked the company who the owner was. They said, “Don’t pry.”

Climbing the curvy staircase, every step crunching his knee, the pain riding up to his hip, he began counting out the thirteen stairs like he always did, trying to take his mind off the burning in his leg.

When he called out “Nine,” he saw it.

Oh Jesus.

Heart thumping, mouth suddenly dry as tissue paper, he backed down two steps, reached along the right side of his gear belt.

Touching air.

Now he was the idiot, there’d been no gun for a long time, not since he stopped guarding jewelry stores downtown.

Company gave him a flashlight, period, and it was in the trunk of the Taurus.

He forced himself to look.

Two of them.

No one else, one good thing about the turret, it was round, mostly open to the sky, nowhere to hide.

Doyle kept looking, felt his guts heave.

The way they were lying, him on top of her, her legs up, one hooked around his back, it was pretty clear what they’d been doing.

Before …

Doyle felt short of breath, like someone was choking him. Struggling to regain his air, he finally succeeded. Reached for his phone.

Right in his pocket. At least something was going okay.

CHAPTER

2

Milo calls me in when the murder’s “interesting.”

Sometimes by the time I get involved, the body’s gone. If the crime scene photos are thorough, that helps. If not, it can get even more interesting.

This scene was a three-minute drive from my house and intact.

Two bodies, wrapped around each other in a sick parody of passion. Milo stood to the side as a coroner’s investigator clicked off shots.

We exchanged quiet “Heys.” Milo’s black hair was slicked down haphazardly and his green eyes were sharp. His clothes looked slept-in, his pallid, pitted complexion matched the smog-gray sky.

June gloom in L.A. Sometimes we pretend it’s ocean mist.

I studied the bodies from a distance, stepping as far back as I could, careful not to touch the curving plywood wall. “How long have you been here?”

“An hour.”

“You don’t get to this zip code too often, Big Guy.”

“Location, location, location.”