Skies of Ash Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for the Elouise Norton Novels

  Also by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  PRAISE FOR THE ELOUISE NORTON NOVELS

  “Readers have met with gimlet-eyed gumshoes, dead-eyed tough guys and doe-eyed femme fatales. But they’ve never met anybody quite like Hall.”

  The Times

  “Lou Norton is a black female cop worthy of following in Philip Marlowe’s footsteps down the mean streets of LA.”

  The Telegraph

  “A racially explosive Los Angeles provides the backdrop for this exceptional crime novel… Dead-on dialogue and atmospheric details.”

  Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A riveting exploration of crime and its repercussions in the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles… Land of Shadows proves that Hall is a star at weaving fast-paced, layered, and gripping stories.”

  Huffington Post

  “Lou is a good cop and fun to watch—great instincts, a no-nonsense interviewing style, and uncompromising in her efforts to catch the bad guy. She’s a well-rounded character who can keep her sense of humor even when her work hits painfully close to home.”

  Booklist

  “The story shines… a welcome addition for collections seeking more diverse characters in the mystery genre.”

  Library Journal

  “Explosive debut thriller… it will blow your socks off! Racks up the tension right from the off and simply doesn’t slow down.”

  Books Monthly

  “A fresh voice in crime fiction. Fast, funny, heartbreaking and wise… Elouise Norton is the best new character you’ll meet this year.”

  Lee Child,

  New York Times bestselling author

  “Spellbinding. Gritty. Original, complex, profound, and riveting. This is a voice you have never heard—and will be unable to forget. Prepare to be blown away.”

  Hank Phillippi Ryan,

  Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author

  “Intense, gritty and absolutely riveting, Land of Shadows took my breath away. A phenomenal book I’m recommending far and wide.”

  Hilary Davidson,

  Anthony Award-winning author

  “A hardhitting tale of a modern, complex Los Angeles. Well-written and deftly paced.”

  Gary Phillips, author of Warlord of Willow Ridge

  “Hall has written a first class police procedural which has the potential to shoot up the bestseller lists.”

  Crime Fiction Lover

  “[Hall] writes with skill and flair. Her first novel exhibits a keen sense of pace and place, and an equally keen sense of what makes her wide and varied cast of characters tick.”

  Mystery Scene Magazine

  “It’s the most addictive book I’ve read this year, and I’m already viewing it as a likely contender for my best books of the year, it’s simply that good… an amazing novel.”

  Life of Crime

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM RACHEL HOWZELL HALL AND TITAN BOOKS

  Land of Shadows

  Trail of Echoes (May 2016)

  SKIES OF ASH

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783292745

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783292752

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2015

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2015 by Rachel Howzell Hall. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers.

  Please email us at [email protected] or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

  To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website: TITANBOOKS.COM

  For Maya, my blue-sky girl

  I’m all done with hating you. It’s all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don’t hate them very long.

  RAYMOND CHANDLER, The Lady in the Lake

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11

  1

  I TOOK GREG BACK THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE HE SAID HE LOVED ME.

  I took Greg back the second time because my heart still ring-a-dinged every time he touched me.

  I took Greg back the last time because my sister’s bones had been discovered after twenty-five years and my heart and head had become tangled messes and I needed him to fix me.

  And so, on this Tuesday morning, with my blood racing and my heart pounding, I was ready to take him back in every way.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled out that rubber.

  Copper-colored sunlight crawled across our bed as my beloved of eleven years gawked at me. His pecan-colored eyes, the color of that copper sunlight in happy times, now darkened into skies of tornado and flash-flood warnings. He went stiff with my touch (and not the good stiff) and gaped at the silver-foil square between my fingers. “It’s been six months, Lou. You st
ill don’t…?” His voice softened like the rest of him.

  I flinched and opened my mouth to say, “Hell no, I don’t trust you. You just ended your fling with what’s-her-face six months ago, so are you kidding me with that question?”

  But I didn’t say that. Instead, I waggled the condom as playfully as a woman could waggle a condom at her husband. “Yes or no?” Then, I kissed his lips. “Yes?”

  His jaw clenched.

  So… not a yes.

  The telephone rang from the nightstand. Caller ID droned, “Rodriguez, Zak Rodriguez.” Another man was calling me.

  “Lou,” Greg barked, “ignore it.”

  “Can’t,” I choked. “I’m back on call.”

  Greg rolled away from me and clenched his body into a tight bronze ball.

  I sat up in bed. “We spent all Sunday and yesterday together. No dead bodies. No zombies. Nobody but us for two days. That’s a record, right?”

  No response from him—which was a response.

  The phone rang.

  And Greg pouted.

  And whatever murder my boss had chosen for me kept going unsolved.

  I slung the condom toward the bathroom, then grabbed the receiver. “Morning, L.T.”

  Greg climbed out of bed with his wide shoulders hunched high and his bare ass tight as a clam. He muttered, “Fuck this,” then stomped to the bathroom and slammed the door.

  “Am I interrupting anything?” Lieutenant Rodriguez cracked.

  I tugged at my earlobe. “Same as it ever was.”

  “So,” he said, “there’s been a house fire in Baldwin Hills.”

  “Been a lot of house fires in Baldwin Hills.”

  “This one has bodies.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Strange circumstances surrounding those bodies,” he added. “In the 911 call, a female occupant’s heard saying, ‘Something, something kill me.’ And then, there’s a cough. And then, there’s nothin’.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Kill me? You win. Strange circumstances. Hence your call to me on this beautiful Tuesday morning.”

  “And with all the fires in the neighborhood lately,” he said, “and budget cuts, Arson is happy to throw us a bone.”

  Just moments ago, I’d had a bone in my possession but had gambled it away because of my silly fear of herpes.

  As soon as I hung up with my boss, the phone rang again.

  Caller ID said, “Taggert, Colin Taggert.”

  Another man calling.

  “So you startin’ fires just to see me again?” Colin said.

  “Yep. I’m hoping a beam drops on your head. Maybe then I’ll get a good partner.”

  “Brought you coffee,” he said, “but you need to bust your ass.”

  I threw off the comforter and hopped out of bed. “Getting dressed now.”

  As my partner talked about a woman he had picked up in the coffee shop, I pushed aside the gauzy window curtain and peeked out.

  The wet asphalt twinkled with sunlight. The silver collar on the beagle in the yard across the street twinkled with sunlight. The chrome on the neighbor’s VW Bug twinkled with sunlight. Everything and its mother twinkled with sunlight except for the crap in my frigid bedroom.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled out that rubber.

  The bathroom door opened.

  Greg stepped out wearing black boxer briefs. Even in his midthirties, he still rocked hard abs, that firm ass, and those eyes—how I loved those eyes.

  “…thinks possible murder, with the arson to cover it up,” Colin was saying. “You’re not talking. Mr. Norton hoverin’ and glarin’ at me through the phone?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “See you over there.” I tossed the phone on the bed.

  Greg, arms crossed, leaned against the dresser. “That Colin?”

  I found my nightshirt in the sheets and slipped it over my head.

  Greg plucked the rubber from the carpet. “This is crazy, Lou. But I get it. I messed up. Again. And I can’t apologize enough for that.” He forced himself to meet my eyes. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go to the doctor and have myself checked out.” He dropped the condom on the dresser. “No problem. It’s all good.”

  A kiss, a hug, and ten minutes later I was dressed in heavy work boots, a blue long-sleeved department T-shirt and jeans. And from the closet shelf, I retrieved my Glock from its gun case.

  Downstairs, our living room smelled of forest—we had purchased a Christmas tree on Sunday, but the seven-foot noble pine still sat there, naked.

  “Maybe we can decorate the tree tonight,” I suggested.

  “Probably have to work late,” Greg said. “You can start, though.”

  I froze—who decorates a tree alone?—then grabbed my bag from the couch.

  On the way to the garage, we walked past his home office, a grotto filled with video-game boxes piled atop art books perched against tubs of markers, pencils, and empty Gatorade bottles. I noticed on his drawing table a charcoal sketch of a busty, brown-skinned female with long, windswept hair, a badge on her giant left boob, and a big-ass cannon on her ultracurvy hip.

  “Look familiar?” Greg asked, standing behind me. “Pretty good, huh?”

  My skin flushed—I was staring at me, reimagined and hypersexualized for teenage boys and their gamer dads. The complexity of Lou had been rendered to boobs, hair, and gun. “New character?” I asked as my inner June Jordan wept.

  He gave me a lopsided smile. “Maybe.”

  This drawing of Sexy Cop would soon join drawings of Sexy She-Elf and Sexy Marine on our walls. Yay?

  My favorite LAPD unmarked Crown Vic, a light blue beauty that reeked of sweat, Drakkar Noir cologne, and dill pickles, awaited my arrival. It was parked next to Greg’s red and black motorbike and my silver Porsche Cayenne SUV, the automotive equivalent of a decathlon-competing supermodel who built rockets in her spare time.

  Greg hit the switch on the wall and the garage door rumbled up and away.

  The sky was bright blue and the sun was as high and white as a crank head in San Bernardino. Little clouds puffed from my mouth as my skin tightened. No breeze wafted from the west—no salty, decaying smells from the Ballona Wetlands at the end of our block or from the Pacific Ocean just a mile away.

  “What are you doing today?” I asked, watching him amble to the driveway. My mind ran that query again to ensure that it didn’t sound as suspicious as I had meant.

  He grabbed the newspaper from the pavement. “A stand-up at ten to see where we are on Last Days and then over to the mall for surveillance.”

  Even though he was now vice president of creative development for M80 Games, Greg still enjoyed watching customers play the titles he had designed. He had spent a month in Tokyo working on the art for his new “zombies meet the Book of Revelation” series. Between meetings, he had also worked on a purse designer named Michiko Yurikami. Greg was a master multitasker, an unfortunate result of my soft-gloved management style.

  For this last transgression, I had won a “baby, I’m sorry, maybe I have an addiction” diamond-platinum cross pendant. Even though I’m not religious enough to buy or wear a cross. I wore it, though, and ignored the frothy anger in my stomach, just like I drove the “please, baby, please” Porsche with whitened knuckles.

  “This you?” Greg held out his phone to show the Times’s Web site and its picture of a two-story, Spanish-style house engulfed in flames. The headline screamed, FIERY BLAZE IN THE HILLS.

  I startled seeing that house on fire, knowing that someone had died in one of its rooms. “Think so.” I stopped reading—I needed to see the mess firsthand to make my own calls.

  “How does Rodriguez know this is a homicide and not an accident?” Greg asked. “People die in house fires all the time.”

  I shrugged. “There was this strange 911 call. Guess I’ll soon find out.”

  He slipped his arms around my waist. This time, he melted against me, and we kissed slowly… deeply… “And you will solve the
case,” he said. “A winner is you.”

  “Totally.”

  “Your ass looks great in those jeans.”

  “Not intentional.”

  “Never is. Where’s your jacket? It’s cold out here.”

  “In the car,” I said, certain he didn’t want me covered up cuz of the weather, not really.

  After one last kiss, I slipped behind the Crown Vic’s steering wheel. After a whinny and a cough, the giant Ford rattled to life.

  Greg smiled and waved at me as I backed the beast out of the garage. Strange (but not infrequent) rigidity filled me again.

  Because of his smile…

  What was he hiding?

  2

  THE CHATTER AND BURSTS OF STATIC FROM THE CROWN VIC’S POLICE RADIO pulled me from lingering unease about Greg’s smile, and I loosened my grip on the steering wheel.

  “…requires additional units…”

  “…still in the house, one may be a Hispanic male…”

  “…4893 Crenshaw… Stand by… Shots fired…”

  All of this as the city sipped its first cup of coffee.

  I raced toward the sun, toward Baldwin Hills, a neighborhood just three miles east of mine. Stark columns of black-and-white smoke hung over upper-middle-class homes, waiting for me to see them before they smeared like paint and pencil across the sky. I passed La Brea Avenue, where I should’ve turned right but didn’t. I kept east and passed the McDonald’s, the ghetto Ralphs supermarket, and the KFC that always forgot to put in your biscuits. I glanced to my right at the perimeters of the Jungle, my childhood home.

  Moldy, cramped apartments surrounded by prison-yard wire. Check.

  Red spray-painted tags of BPS JUNGLES and BFL dripping like blood on walls. Check.

  Plaster and glass and telephone poles shot to shit by bullets and poverty. Stumbling crackheads. Gangbanging drug dealers. Storefront payday check-advance scams. Still too early for that, but “check” in advance.

  I worked this part of Los Angeles and visited here more than my own home. Twenty-five years ago, a man named Max Crase had murdered my big sister, Victoria, at a liquor store right down that street. Crase had later helped build fancy condominiums on that street over there. Six months ago, he murdered another seventeen-year-old girl as well as her sister, a case—my case—that still haunted me. And as I passed Crase Parc and Promenade (Units Still Available!), I lifted my middle finger and then controlled the urge to ram the car into the condo’s terra-cotta lobby. Later, Lou. Not today.