the driveway and the hedges, but seeing none of it. We left her at the top of the stairs and followed Ed Vargas into the house. We stepped into a massive great room with twenty-foot ceilings and a Mexican tile floor. The far end of the room was all windows that looked out over the city. It was a clear day, and you could see all the way to Orange County, if you were interested in looking at it.
The house, still littered with the remains of a large party, had the aura of a hurricane about it. There were cups and ashtrays and bowls of food on the coffee table in the center of the room and along the bar that stood to one side. The obviously expensive rugs were littered with stains and paper. Near my feet was a devil mask with a footprint on it. A loft space overlooked the main room, but the air was heavy despite the open layout.
Ed Vargas stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the area. “It happened about 11:00. This place was packed. The party was really going.” He shook his head. Anger flushed his face. “There were cars everywhere outside. It was obvious there was a party going on. We’re gonna sue the shit out of these people. I want to bankrupt the city. What the fuck were these guys thinking? Getting called on a noise disturbance? Going around the side of the house instead of just coming to the door? What kind of bullshit is that?”
Jendrek and I stood and listened. Neither of us tried to answer the question. Ed’s words echoed in the large room, bouncing off the tile floor and lingering in the air. It was the first hint of emotion I’d gotten from him. He caught himself and stifled it, trying to keep himself under control.
Then he turned and went through an entryway that led into a wide corridor. “You might as well see where it happened,” he said. We followed.
As I left the great room, I noticed for the first time that a young woman had appeared at the rail of the loft and was staring down at me. She wore black gym shorts and a T-shirt that hung over her large breasts like a sheet draped over furniture. She smiled down at me with a glow much like the young widow’s. It was as if beautiful women were being cloned somewhere in the house. But her expression was strained, the smile forced, like she didn’t know how else to look, even with the tragedy still fresh in the room. Her eyes followed me. I felt something tug inside me as I followed Jendrek down the hall.
Ed stepped into a room on his left and said, “This is where they were.”
“Who’s they?” Jendrek asked.
“My dad and Pete Stick, a costume guy we work with. Pete’s an old friend of my dad’s.”
I looked down and took a quick step back. My right foot had been on the chalk outline on the floor. It seemed like a desecration of some kind and a wave of panic and disgust went through me. Ed hadn’t seemed to notice. He was standing with his back to us, staring out the wide bay window. He pointed to a hole in the glass ringed by a spider web of cracks. It was low to the floor.
“You can see they were standing right outside. The shot came through here and, well, you can see where the body was. Pete said he collapsed right where he was standing.”
I surveyed the rest of the room. It was nearly empty. There was a desk on one side of the room and a bookshelf and leather chair on the other side. Other than that, the room was bare. It would have been a clear shot, and the shooter would have had a clear view of what was going on inside the room.
I asked, “So the cops were just standing outside the window and shot into the house?” I could hear a tone of incredulity in my voice. Ed heard it too and smiled.
“Yeah. Pretty fucking amazing, huh?” He turned back toward the window with the outrage starting to spill from him again. “I mean, what the fuck? They get called to investigate a noise disturbance. They show up at a house where there’s obviously a Halloween party going on. They go around the side of the house, look in through a window, and see two guys