Crime Rave Read Online Free PDF Page A

unfortunate side effect of puberty that you could smell lies. Not a metaphor: Lies scent the air around you and often make you ill. Until the arrival of this new talent, you had never realized how many of the people in the commune not only compulsively lied to others, but to themselves as well. Not just about small things either. You’re sure several members are criminals on the lam from the law. Every time they said their own names you could smell the dishonesty, like old sweat that’s baked into fabric, no soap able to get it out. The place stunk to high heaven.
    And to make matters worse, some of the men in Nirvana started to ogle your filling-out teenage figure. The portrait of your mom at your age. You couldn’t even meet their eyes, any of them could be your dad. You couldn’t date the commune boys, who knew if they’re your half brothers. This wasn’t a life that was working for you.
    Your mother favored several of the men over the others, so you started with them. You collected DNA and hair samples for paternity tests. You pitched a fit until your mom finally let you work part-time at the ice cream shop in town. You had your first boyfriend. A townie who worked at the video store. He was cute and down to earth, not like the pretentious hippies who surround you. You lost your virginity to him in his basement rec room, with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon playing in the background. You felt safe with him, but you knew there was no future.
    All the while you saved and saved and saved to pay for each blood test, picking up overtime and extra shifts at the I Scream Shoppe whenever possible. The one benefit of homeschooling: flexibility. In the end, you never found out who your father was. He was probably one of the many drifters who passed through the commune, only staying for a season or two.
    That ache of not knowing drives you toward forensics. You run a DNA test on every man you date. You take no chances. Your compulsion toward structure leads you straight to law enforcement. But not the easy way.
    The early nineties. There were no female detectives in the LAPD. You’d been stuck in vice, standing on street corners, your trim frame half naked in sparkling tops and too-short skirts, hoping for petty john busts. You wanted more, but crime scene investigators didn’t have any women lab techs either. Boys clubs, everywhere you turned.
    Your sergeant gave you a break: infiltrate a meth ring out in San Dimas and he’ll think of recommending you for homicide. Only problem was, to get in the circle you have to use, and soon you’re not using, the rock is using you. You got the bust, though. Paid with the price of addiction. The review board almost passed you over for homicide after your stint in rehab. But Sarge stuck by you, the father you never had, and recommended the hell out of you.
    In 1998 you become the LAPD’s first woman homicide detective. You’ve hardened. Granite woman now encased in petrified soul amber. How else would you have survived?

3:45 AM Spruce-Musa Hospital
    T he closest to the wreckage is Los Angeles’s premier hospital to the stars, an ultra modern, über luxurious structure that looks more like a spa than a place of blood and birth and the occasional celebrity death. With eight floors and only a few hundred rooms, the hospital would never have been able to handle the inflow of survivors had there been more than the handful there were. For that, the hospital administrators are thankful. They have a reputation to uphold, after all.
    Spruce-Musa is almost business as usual when Detectives Red Feather and Günn pull into the parking lot. With the exception of a few crazed parents looking for their partygoing children in spite of instructions to convene at the designated LAPD recovery site of Beverly Center, there’s nothing to hint that just a few hours ago almost thirty-five thousand people were murdered. Detective Red Feather visualizes the bizarre reverse funnel that witnesses claim