NOT EDITED
Chapter Two
8:45 AM; LOS ANGELES, THE ATLANTIS HOTEL, PARKING LOT
Bo had bought breakfast for Lyle before taking him back to his hotel. It felt a little crazy, really, to be on edge about being watched but inviting a stranger to the hotel he’d been calling home for the last month. Of course, once Lyle had excused himself to the bathroom, he had accessed the diner’s security cameras to pull a photo of Lyle’s face and run it through his phone to confirm that was at least his name. His arrest record indicated it was. Lyle Davis, twenty-two years old. He’d seemingly been on the streets since he was fourteen or fifteen, if his prostitution arrests were anything to go by.
“I’d like to ask you a question about your criminal record,” Bo said as they reached the door.
Lyle snorted, resting a hand on the grab bar as he looked down at Bo, one eyebrow raised. “Stereotypical to assume I have one, you know.”
Bo offered a nearly embarrassed smile. “I may have checked to confirm you do.”
“Ah, and to think you said you totally don’t do this anymore.”
“I just needed to make sure you were who you said you were.”
“Paranoid, are we?”
Bo tilted his head to the left, to the right, and nodded. “One could say that, yes.”
“Okay,” Lyle said after a moment. “What do you want to know?”
“Your last arrest didn’t lead to a court case, and you were only in a holding cell for a couple hours. You didn’t… make a deal with Pitman, right? Th-that’s not why you’re here? To report back to him on me?”
“Pitman like the police chief?”
“Yes.”
Lyle shook his head. “That last arrest was bullshit and they knew it. They knew that I knew it too. I’m a lot of things, but a spy isn’t one of them.” He snorted. “Especially a spy for the Five-O.”
“Thank you.”
“Mmhmm. Ready to go in?” Bo forced himself to nod. There was a little part of his brain that worried this was some elaborate sting operation, despite the fact he absolutely was not interested in sex, even less interested in paying for it. But he wouldn’t exactly put it past Jamal to arrest him as a way to get him back into the station, even if it was in a holding cell instead of his office or the basement lab.
Bo followed Lyle into the hotel. He usually took the stairs up to the second floor to guarantee he couldn’t get stuck in a metal box with his parking lot stalker, but when Lyle headed for the elevator, he simply followed. At least if his ‘friend’ was waiting for him there, Lyle would probably be enough of a buffer to keep him from following Bo to his room.
An uneventful elevator ride and a walk down a too quiet hallway later, Bo opened the door to his room and let a sex worker inside. It was… certainly a first for him.
“Nervous?” Lyle asked as Bo closed the door.
“A little, which… I know is rather silly.”
Lyle chuckled. “I don’t bite, I promise.” A pause. “Mind if I sit down?”
Bo shook his head. “Make yourself at home.”
Lyle sat down on the edge of the bed, eyes scanning the room. “Took me forever to track you down, you know. The ‘for sale’ sign at your place really threw me.”
“How… long have you been working at that?”
“After Rosa went missing. She was the second of my friends to just… vanish.”
Bo tentatively sat down beside him, setting the folder down between them, as if that somehow made the sting operation possibility quieter in his head. He folded his hands in his lap, hooking two fingers through the blue rubber band around his wrist, twisting it back and forth. “Your first friend to vanish… She’s in the folder too?”
Lyle nodded. “Yeah. I mean, just… just photos of her, some accounts from me and some of the others on when we last saw her and stuff like that.”
“That’s very helpful. You put in quite a bit of legwork there, Detective.”
He chuckled. “I wanted to be thorough. Like I said, I was worried you’d shoot me down if I didn’t have enough information.”
“You’ll recall that I did shoot you down. More than once.”
“Yeah, my old man always said I couldn’t listen for shit. Guess that’s true, huh?”
“It’s a good quality in this aspect. I still can’t promise I’ll be able to find anything. I’m not a cop, you know? Not a detective. I just… I worked in the basement, Lyle. That was my job.”
“Yeah, and you were never really any good at staying in the basement, far as I’ve read and watched. How many times have you thrown yourself into harm’s way to give a victim justice?” Lyle asked. “I’ll take a lab geek that can’t follow the rules over a detective that doesn’t give a shit about a woman going missing just because she does sex work. Out of the two options, Bo, you’re the one that’s going to give Rosa a chance at justice. You’re the one whose gonna give all the other girls a chance to not get their fucking heads cut off. And I’ll take that over any other option any day of the week.”
5:00 PM; WEST LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT, DETECTIVE DAVID QUINN’S DESK
David lifted his head as Travis tossed a thin stack of papers onto his keyboard. “So I’m guessing nothing helpful?”
“No, nothing more than what we already assumed, honestly. Marks match the incised wounds on the first victim to a T. Same kind of ax. Fingerprints didn’t pull up any matches, and neither did her blood. Blood work itself is pretty standard. No drugs, no booze. No food in the stomach or small intestine, so she likely hadn’t eaten in at least eight hours. She’d been dead about two hours when we found her. The head was removed pretty much the same way as the first victim. He just swung, hacked up several of the vertebrae until he got through one of them enough to actually detach the head. Not exactly doing anything precise or surgical with it. He’s sloppy.”
“But not sloppy enough to screw up and leave behind some tangible evidence for us,” David said.
“No, but he will eventually. They always do.”
“Almost always.”
“Semantics.”
“Right.” David cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
“Mmhmm.”
David shifted his weight in his chair. Much as he didn’t want to apologize to the bastard, he did generally believe in being the bigger person when the situation allowed it. This one unfortunately did. “Hey, uh, sorry for getting on your case about Bo today. As long as you’re doing your job and doing it well, it doesn’t really matter if you like Bo or not.”
Travis shrugged. “It’s whatever, man. If you wanna suck the guy’s dick and act like he’s God’s gift to the forensic world, that’s your business. I don’t give a shit either way.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, dude. I’m trying to be civil. The absolute bare minimum for you here is to return the favor.”
“When it comes to Bo’s little fan club, this is me being civil. Couldn’t care less how you feel about the guy or how you think he’s so amazing or how you all worship the ground he walks on. Just don’t wanna hear about any of it.”
“You’re… Christ, you’re a real piece of work, Travis. I genuinely cannot believe how many years he put up with working alongside you.”
“Yeah, it’s crazy what people like Bo will put up with just so they can get told what a good little worker they are, isn’t it? It’s a lot like how the rest of you treat him, just hoping he’ll throw you one little bone, come back, and solve the big case for you.” Travis rolled his eyes. “We solved cases long before Bo moved to West. We’ve solved cases the million times he’s been gone. And when he finally drinks himself to death, we’ll keep solving cases. He’s not the genius you all make him out to be. He’s just a self-deprecating little shit with an ever-looming little pity party, and you all play into it because it makes you feel all warm and gooey inside to cheer on the underdog or what the fuck ever.
“So while the rest of us are here doing our damn jobs every day, you go on home and hold his little hand, tell him how amazing he is, tell him how L.A. just can’t survive without him, get on your hands and knees to beg him to come back. But don’t make me hear about it.”
“God, you are bitter,” David whispered. “How the hell are you surviving even being in this damn station with that big of a chip on your shoulder?”
Travis raised an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. “The lights in my office are turned on, David. His aren’t. Doesn’t matter how many of his little achievements Jamal hangs up on the walls. I’m here, and he’s not. I walk around in this station just fine with that knowledge.”
“How did I not realize what an insufferable dick you were?”
“Because like all of his groupies, you only work cases your perfect little boy is on.”
Although Bo had definitely worked most of David’s cases with him, he sure as hell hadn’t worked every single one. So David offered a roll of his eyes and a dismissive wave of his hand. “Get the hell away from my desk, man.”
Travis chuckled. “Gladly. But, hey, pro-tip, if you want your little blonde back? Don’t tell him how great he is and how he saves the world and shit. Just tell him a dead woman needs him. Has more respect and grace for the dead than he ever has for the living.”
“Yeah, I can see why.”
Travis snorted, threw up a little wave, and headed for the door. David let his annoyance simmer for quite some time before standing and marching his ass to Jamal’s office. He opened the door, crossing his arms over his chest as Jamal lifted his head to meet his gaze.
The man stared at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised. “I’m going to have to call you back, Alessi. Excuse me.” Jamal cleared his throat as he set his phone in its cradle. “What can I do for you, David?”
“If that miserable piece of shit continues to work on this case, I cannot work it any longer. You gotta reassign me, or you gotta reassign him.”
“Miserable piece of… Travis?”
“Yes, Travis.”
“What did he do?”
“I don’t even know where to start with that, Jamal.”
“Well, unfortunately, I’m going to need something if you want me to do anything about it. There’s a reason he still works here. Bo would never give me anything to do something about it.”
“Yeah, because that’s stopped you before?”
Jamal sighed. “These… assumptions of yours bore me so incredibly quickly, Detective. I don’t illegally fire my employees because someone’s got their panties in a bunch.”
“You quite literally fired Bo for refusing to testify again Kathy and Dallas.”
“I fired Bo for repeated insubordination. Pardon my French, but I don’t fuck with the livelihood of my employees just because one of them is a little grating or a bit of an ass now and then.”
David grunted his response.
“Would you like to tell me anything, or may I get back to my phone call?” Jamal asked, gesturing to his phone with a near elegant flair of his hand.
Much as he hated the way Travis existed in that very moment, he still didn’t necessarily believe in taking a man’s job from him. Not yet, anyway. “Why the hell does he hate Bo so much? I mean, did they have some sort of life-long forensic battle before I got here?”
“The year Bo took his apprenticeship with the force is the same year Travis applied for the first time. He was also fresh out of college. Just… at a more standard age. Bo was chosen over him, and I suppose it pissed him off. Greatly. Bo had absolutely nothing to do with Travis not getting chosen other than the fact that he was a better candidate, but like most most people who grow bitter over something, the blame is inherently placed on the wrong party. That has unfortunately not changed for Travis as the years have gone by.”
“Dude, you hired the guy you passed over for a teenager and thought things would go well?”
“First, don’t… call me dude,” Jamal said, holding his hands up as he leaned back in his chair. “I get enough of that from one of my boys. Second, to be fair, I didn’t know he knew he lost to Bo. Nor did I know he’d be such a vindictive little asshole about it.”
Franklin, Jamal’s personal body guard, chuckled from his seat near the corner of Jamal’s desk.
Mid reach for the pop on his desk, Jamal glared at the ceiling. “What?”
“Nothing. Just… this is the most normal conversation I have seen you have in any recent history.” He shrugged before his gaze fell back to the book in his hand. “It’s nice, is all. Despite the topic, it’s nice.”
Jamal rolled his eyes, smacking the air in Franklin’s direction. He grabbed his pop and twisted off the cap. “What would you like me to do about it, David?”
“I… I just can’t work with him.”
“Dylan will be back in a few days. Unless another headless woman turns up dead before then, I won’t send you anywhere Travis goes, and I won’t send Travis anywhere you go. Does that sound all right?”
“Yeah. Umm… thank you.”
“Mmhmm.” Jamal took a sip of his Coke, clearing his throat as he set it back down. “I know your opinions of me are mixed, at best, and that’s my fault. But I still try to do what’s best for my employees. The way I treated Bo to try and push him away and bury my own shame and guilt and God only knows what else… It was cruel and unnecessary. I don’t expect you to ever forget that or forgive me for what I did to him, how I made him feel, but I’m still going to try to make you both know that I’m trying to undo the damage I have done. So… this thing with Travis. If it gets worse, I need you to tell me so something can be done about it. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Chief.”
Jamal nodded. “Let me know how things go with Bo.”
“I’ll do my best to keep you posted. Night, Pitman, Frank.”
“Mm. See you tomorrow, Quinn.”
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