Deadline Read online

  Deadline

  A Sam Perry Mystery

  K.A. Tracy

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 by K.A. Tracy

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition September 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-716-6

  Prologue

  It was an unseasonably hot night, even for the desert. A storm front passing through the mountains saturated the air with humidity, turning the foothills into a steaming swamp. The man shuffled across the sand as if he were wading through mud, his shirt soaked from exertion and fear.

  The moon hung directly overhead, casting sharp shadows off the rocky cliffs that tricked the eyes, causing the man to slip and stumble. He heard the whoosh of a car passing in the distance. He needed to get to the road and flag someone down. But that would mean leaving the safety of the rocks and risking the long, open expanse of desert that lay between him and Highway 111. He backed up against a large boulder, needing to rest. His legs were rubbery from exhaustion and his battered body throbbed. He cradled his shattered right hand gingerly against his stomach and listened so hard for any sounds that his head ached. But except for his pounding heart and wheezing lungs, the desert night was eerily silent.

  Sliding to his knees, he angled his body toward the rock. The stone felt cool and comforting against his cheek. Above him, a triangular shelf of stone jutted out, casting a protective shadow and for a moment he considered staying there, curled against the boulder. He closed his eyes…

  The man jerked his head back, shocked to realize he had dozed off. His heart was racing and he tried to push down the panic. He knelt motionless a few minutes then reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope, damp from his sweat. It was folded in half, and he ran his thumb along the frayed crease, aware he risked much worse than a beating by keeping this.

  Using the envelope as a makeshift scoop, he dug a shallow hole in the sand. He smoothed the envelope flat and buried it, patting the loose sand down into a nondescript mound. The jutting rock overhead would be an easy marker to find it later. He stood slowly, leaning against the rock until the dizziness passed.

  He closed his eyes again, visualizing the map he’d bought his first day in town. On the other side of the next ridge should be a small trailer park beside a rental shop. He prayed someone would answer their door to a stranger in the middle of the night.

  He sidestepped slowly along the rocks, careful to move silently. Clouds had gathered over the mountains casting the night into shadowy darkness. He squinted and listened for any sign of movement.

  A few yards beyond him a deep crevice snaked up the mountainside, eroded rocks forming a natural, if precarious, ladder. Going straight up and over would be harder and longer but safer than trying for the road. He sucked in several deep breaths to steel himself for the long climb, wishing he’d never come to this hellish place.

  The sound of cascading sand sent a shard of fear through his gut and he struggled not to vomit. It was impossible to say for sure what direction it came from. He stood clinging to the rock face, immobilized. The full moon glided through a break in the clouds, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar face striding toward him. A rush of adrenaline gave him a second wind, and he turned to scramble up the crevice. Instinctively, he reached out with both hands, but his mangled right fingers lost their grip, and he fell backward onto the sand. The man rolled onto his knees, shivering uncontrollably in the hot, humid night. “Please…”

  His last thought before the pain turned to nothingness was of rolling green hills he’d never see again.

  Chapter One

  “Dry heat, my ass.”

  Samantha Perry wiped the sweat off her face with the sleeve of her damp T-shirt. At just a little past 7:00 a.m. it was already ninety-five degrees, the air thick and sticky. The most humid summer in local memory was making a mockery of Palm Springs’ touted year-round arid climate. But not even the swelling heat index dampened Sam’s spirits after an invigorating five-mile Sunday morning walk. She loved the desert, especially the sight of the nearby mountains suspended against a crystal blue sky, every rock and crevice etched in sharp detail. It looked like the backdrop of a Hollywood Western, too perfect to be real.

  Sam jogged up the back stairs of her condo building to the third floor. Hers was the corner unit at the end of the hallway. She walked in, turned up the central air and shut the door in one continuous motion, and headed directly to the kitchen, followed by two small, prancing balls of white fluff. She was finishing a second glass of iced tea when her cell phone’s message alert sounded, playing Dragnet’s theme song.

  “Ok, girls, hopefully duty calls.”

  Sidestepping the dogs crowding her ankles, Sam grabbed the phone off her desk and went onto the balcony, flipping the switch for the overhead fan. She dropped into one of the swivel rockers and put the cell on speakerphone while Alpha and Omega jostled for position on her lap, cotton candy fur blowing in the swirling breeze.

  Sam, it’s Marlene. Sorry to bother you, but we got a tip I need checked out and I think you’re the best person to look into it—

  “That’s it, play to my ego.” Sam held Alpha up by her front legs and made her do a little dance.

  …Call me as soon as you get in, and I’ll give you the details.

  “Great. Probably another bingo bilking ring.”

  At home, Sam routinely talked to her pets. The African Grey, named Dorian, occasionally talked back.

  Sam decided to take a quick shower before checking in with her editor. Not feeling compelled to jump every time a story loomed was just one of the ways her life had changed since moving to Palm Springs a few months earlier from Los Angeles.

  After drying her hair and pouring another glass of iced tea, Sam sat down at her desk and called Marlene, who picked up after the first ring.

  “Hi, it’s me. You called?”

  “There you are,” editor-speak for It’s about goddam time. “I got a tip from a cop friend of mine. They found a body off Highway 111. Apparently some guy got himself murdered.”

  Sam automatically grabbed her notebook then caught herself and carefully set it down, “And?”

  “And I was hoping you’d go check it out.”

  Sam moved to Palm Springs adamant she was finished with dead bodies and the tragic stories behind their untimely deaths. She made it unequivocally clear she didn’t want any more blood on her shoes or in her dreams and resolutely insisted that murder no longer held any fascination or interest for her. Apparently her editor remained unconvinced.

  “Marlene, I’m officially retired from the murder beat, remember?”

  “I’m asking as a favor. You don’t have to inspect the corpse,” she reasoned. “You can keep your distance, you know.”

  Sam’s mind stirred. The reality was, covering civic stories and “clean” white-collar mischief was more than a bit dull. It was, in a word, numbing. Even so…

  “I just don’t know.”

  “Sam, I wouldn’t ask if there was anyone else with your experience reading a scene. You know what to look for and what to ask. Just get me the basic facts and I’ll assign it to someone else tomorrow. No pressure.”

 
Sam hated to admit it, but the familiar rush of adrenaline easily eclipsed any lingering anxiety. For the first time in months, the old hunger warmed her gut, and Sam realized she had missed it. A lot. Feeling like a junkie about to lose their sobriety, she reached for her notebook. “All right, how long ago did they find the body?”

  “Maybe an hour. I don’t know for sure.”

  “I better get out there before they take it away. I’ll call you later.”

  Sam hung up and stepped outside to turn off the balcony fan. She leaned against the patio table, staring out at the mountains for several minutes. The fable about the scorpion and the frog ran through her mind and she saw herself in both roles. Had it been misguided self-indulgence or simple ignorance to think she could change her nature? She hugged the dogs goodbye, grabbed her backpack, and was out the door aware she was walking into a past life.

  • • •

  Palm Springs was Sunday morning quiet as Sam drove through on Indian Drive, the four-lane northbound thoroughfare through downtown. Located in the Coachella Valley at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains, Palm Springs first attracted people because of its mineral springs. It later developed into a winter refuge for those wealthy enough to flee the East Coast’s cold and snow. Now the resort was a year-round haven for athletes looking for a golf fix, Hollywood types seeking a weekend getaway, and Fortune 500 executives attracted by the climate and relatively cheap real estate. Despite its sophistication, Palm Springs retained a small town pace and attitude that she found therapeutic.

  Sam had been a crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times for ten years. Her first job out of UCLA was at a glossy magazine called SoCal, which broke up the relentless pages of advertising with an occasional story. Her specialty there was local crime features. On a whim, she applied at the Times and to her surprise was hired. Armed with a natural instinct regarding criminal behavior and a blue-collar mentality that took sixty-hour workweeks in stride, Sam soon became one of the city’s top investigative journalists. In her spare time, she’d churn out books on some of the more unique cases she covered.

  The turning point came when Sam covered a particularly savage slaughter of a family by some drug lieutenants. So when a film studio paid a staggering amount of money for the rights to her latest book about a local serial killer, Sam took it and ran—but not too far. She decided to live full-time in her Palm Springs condo, bought with the advance from her first book years earlier, and see if the change of scenery would improve her outlook on life. Over the last few months she realized the move had been less about running away from her past than it was running toward the hope of a new beginning.

  At Alejo Road she swung over to Palm Canyon Drive, which morphed into Highway 111 by the Aerial Tramway turnoff. The Tram, which ferried people to the top of Mt. San Jacinto, was touted to have the steepest vertical cable rise in the United States; second in the world. Sam remembered reading that during the summer it was up to forty degrees cooler at the top of the mountain that loomed 8,500 feet above the valley floor.

  “And yet, here I am headed deeper into the desert.”

  It occurred to Sam this was the first time she’d worked on a weekend since leaving LA and she welcomed the change of pace. Her old SoCal editor, Marlene Ryan, now ran the Weekender, Palm Springs’ alternative paper that only published a coupon- and advertising-laden paper version Friday through Sunday. Unlike major newspapers that bled both readers and revenue as the Internet exploded, the Weekender’s spare print model served it well as papers entered into the digital age, and the publication’s readership actually expanded once it started providing daily digital editions that concentrated on local news. When other papers were slashing editorial staffs, the Weekender found itself shorthanded.

  Marlene offered Sam a job with a promise to respect her request for assignments that only covered the living. That was four months ago and while not exactly wishing for carnage, Sam itched for a story with some meat on it. Her biggest investigative report to date was an exposé about weighted bingo balls, with her thoughtful human interest piece on the sudden rise of fleas a close second. She suspected Marlene intentionally fed her bland assignments to make a journalistic point. If so, it was working beautifully.

  With Palm Springs shrinking in the rearview mirror, Sam passed a group of kids riding their all-terrain vehicles in the sand dunes. Just over the next rise were two patrol cars, an unmarked detective’s sedan, and the coroner’s van parked on the shoulder of the incoming southbound lanes. A natural median of scrub brush separated the north and south lanes of the highway and Sam drove another half-mile before finding a turnaround. She parked ten yards behind one of the black-and-whites under the sparse shade offered by a few windblown trees.

  Far off to her right, in the womb of Mojave desolation, she spotted a group of people hovering near some large boulders. Although the shelf of rocks looked fairly close, the lack of a reference point made it hard to estimate the distance.

  “Ten minutes tops,” she decided with optimism.

  It took twenty-five. The ground was a mixture of gravel and soft packed sand with occasional patches of dehydrated underbrush. Sam walked at a steady pace. By the time she got to within hearing distance of the cops even her elbows were sweating.

  One of the uniformed officers walked over and held out his hand like a traffic cop, directing her to stop. He looked barely out of high school. Sam handed him her Riverside County police press badge. Before moving to the desert, she called in a few favors to get the credential, which allowed special access at crime scenes. Normally, only selected reporters and photographers from dailies or wire services were granted the coveted passes, but she couldn’t imagine leaving home without one.

  The young cop studied the badge as if examining a potentially counterfeit bill. After making sure she was the brown-haired, brown-eyed, 135 lb., 5ʹ9″ unsmiling individual depicted in the photo, he gave the ID back without a word and moved to let her pass. Instead she opened her notebook, the pages damp and stuck together.

  So professional, she sighed. “Officer Powell, do you know who found the body?”

  He hesitated. “Do I know you?”

  She pointed her pen at his name badge.

  “Sorry.” His smooth cheeks turned crimson. “You really need to ask Detective Larson.” He gestured in the direction of a slender man wearing a white short-sleeve shirt, blue slacks, and clunky black shoes.

  Sam trudged over to Larson, thinking his feet had to be steaming. Up close he looked more like an accountant than a detective with his wire rim glasses and slight frame. But his body language and darting eyes screamed cop. He watched Sam approach, his confrontational arms akimbo stance making it clear she wasn’t a welcome sight.

  “Detective Larson, can I ask you a few questions?”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Samantha Perry. I’m a reporter—”

  “You’re not from the Tribune.”

  “Correct. I’m from the Weekender. I’ve been recruited to be their crime reporter.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “You mean you missed my exposé on the weighted bingo balls?” Sam asked. “It was the talk of the desert.”

  She couldn’t tell whether he actually smiled or just suffered from a twitch. “What’s your name again?”

  “Samantha Perry.”

  “Frank Larson.” They shook hands. “Why does your name sound familiar?”

  “I used to write for the Times in LA—”

  “You did a series on the Surfside Killer,” he interrupted again, remembering. “We had a copycat down here, so I read up on him and saw your stuff.”

  “You had a copycat to the Surfside serial killer down here,” Sam repeated skeptically. “I find that odd since you don’t have a surf.”

  “The guy improvised. He tried to drown two women in their pools, but both times they escaped. Anyway, we finally caught him.” Larson took off his glasses and wiped under his eyes. “I heard you helped cat
ch the guy. That true?”

  Sam shrugged. “A lot of people aren’t comfortable talking to the police so sometimes I’m in a better position to find things out. If I came across information material to the Surfside investigation, I passed it on, as long as it didn’t compromise a source. I learned fairly early it’s not good business to scoop cops in print—gets them cranky. And cranky cops are not helpful cops.”

  Larson nodded and put his glasses back on. “So what do you want to know from this cranky cop?”

  “Do you know who the victim is?”

  The body was partially covered with a yellow tarp. The medical examiner knelt in the sand taking notes while a crime lab technician scoured the area for physical evidence.

  “No, we haven’t made a positive ID yet.”

  “Was there anything found on the body to indicate whether he’s local or a visitor?”

  Larson hesitated. “Based on some receipts in his wallet, it appears he’s either from town or was spending some extended time here.”

  “So robbery doesn’t appear to be the motive.”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  “Because he still had his wallet.”

  Larson looked at the body. “No, we don’t think it was robbery. He still had twenty bucks on him. But that was the only thing in his wallet. No driver’s license, no pictures, no credit cards.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “A lot.”

  “Can you please be more specific?” she asked politely, hiding her impatience.

  Larson drummed his fingers on his thigh, debating. They both knew the autopsy report would eventually be made public; death was not a private matter.

  “Off the record, Ham—Hamilton Newman, our deputy coroner—says the victim had a couple broken fingers, burns, a busted nose, split lip, and at least a dozen knife wounds but none fatal on their own. Cause of death was the head wound. Looks like somebody dropped a bowling ball on his forehead.”