Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,33
urban fold in Los Angeles’s diverse economic landscape. In a lot of ways, the City of Angels was an oddly constructed, sometimes badly made burrito. You could take a bite at one end and get a mouthful of rich carnitas spiced with a chipotle sauce and then a few inches over, discover the guy who made it also added cold french fries and a bit of gravel. If you knew where to bite in, Los Angeles was rich and fulfilling, but there were also bits of broken glass and shrapnel hidden in its delectable, aromatic plumpness.
And sometimes, even as careful as you are, you get a mouthful potent enough to kill you.
The front door was boarded up, sealing off the shot-through glass window, but it was still functional. Surprisingly, the gunman missed the doorknob and the deadbolt. The sash windows along the front also sported a new plywood coat, and ribbons of crime scene warnings fluttered in the light breeze, anchored with pieces of duct tape to the columns framing the stoop. Bobby walked straight through. I had to battle the yellow-and-black kraken before I was allowed entrance into the crime scene. After unwrapping my face for the third time, I tied off the end to the post while Bobby bitched at me for fucking around.
“I swear to God, you can’t even walk up a flight of stairs without something happening to you,” he groused. “How have you even survived this long? I’m surprised you didn’t stab yourself to death the first time you used a fork. Or did they only give you spoons until you turned eighteen, and then after that they figured, fuck it, he’s on his own?”
“And you’re my best friend,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder as I went by. It stung my hand. Probably not his shoulder, but I did my best. “O’Byrne’s inside. She said I could look around if I wanted to. Mostly I want to find out what she’s dug up. Maybe she’s got some piece of information that will give us somewhere to start.”
“You know you’re not a cop, right?” Bobby walked in behind me, enveloped in the cool shadows draped through the front foyer. “It’s O’Byrne’s job to find the murderer. Not yours.”
“He’s a paid consultant,” O’Byrne interjected dryly from the living room. “I’ve got a lean budget for payroll but a slush fund for private investigators I can use to hunt down bits and pieces of the case. Mac here does a little digging for me, maybe helps close a file or two, and I cut him a check off of LAPD’s treasure chest. That’s how it works, Dawson.”
“I get paid?” I stopped short, mired in a stack of throw pillows and hardback novels missing their dust jackets. “Really?”
“If somebody doesn’t shoot you in the next week, Princess, I’m going to,” Bobby promised with a snarl. “Why don’t we all catch each other up on how much we haven’t found. Then we can go digging through the house to find jack shit.”
“Is he always this pleasant?” O’Byrne jerked a thumb toward Bobby, who’d settled down on the thick arm of a plaid-covered couch.
“Oh, this is him happy,” I informed her, ignoring the bird Bobby flipped me behind her back. “Did they find anything? I’m guessing nobody tripped over a box of priceless gems and pearls while they were taking fingerprints.”
“We should be so lucky. The diamonds found on Brinkerhoff were man-made—flawless, but they do something to distinguish them from natural diamonds. The expert we brought in spotted that within seconds of looking at them.” She extracted a wooden chair from a pile of papers, straddling it after setting it down on the living room floor. “Dawson’s right. Let’s go over what we know and see if we can make a game plan. I assume you met the granddaughter?”
“The assistant district attorney?” Bobby piped up. “Did you have somebody validate that? I mean, anybody can say they’re something. This asshole over here introduces himself as a private investigator, and that’s only because he hopes to get free coffee.”
“Once again, my best friend,” I said with a shake of my head. There was another wooden chair, but it creaked when I picked it up, so I opted for a velvet wing chair instead. “How much have you learned about the Brinkerhoffs? Marlena was pretty forthcoming up until the moment her grandfather woke up. I didn’t get a lot out of her except that Grandma and Grandpa apparently were pretty hard-core