Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Read online

  It took me a couple attempts to spell atlanto-occipital dislocation correctly so that I could search for it on Google. Several hits came up, most on medical sites that explained it was usually seen in traumatic vehicle accidents involving high-speed collisions.

  The Wikipedia citation summed it up best:

  Atlanto-occipitaldislocation(AOD), orthopedicdecapitation, or internal decapitation describes ligamentous separation of the spinal column from the skull base. It is possible for a human to survive such an injury; however, only 30% of cases do not result in immediate death. Common etiology for such injuries is sudden and severe deceleration leading to a whiplash-like mechanism.

  The word mechanism in that description began to haunt me. Someone strong or with some kind of tool had powerfully twisted Tina Portrero’s neck. I now wondered if there had been any markings on her head or body that indicated a tool had been used.

  The Google search brought up a few citations of AOD as the cause of death in auto accidents. One in Atlanta and another in Dallas. The most recent in Seattle. All were deemed accident-related, and there was no reference to AOD being the cause of death in a murder case.

  I needed to do a deeper dive. When I was working for the Velvet Coffin, I had once drawn an assignment to write a story about a convention of coroners from around the world. They had all met in downtown Los Angeles, and my editor wanted a feature on what coroners talk about at these events. The editor who assigned me the piece wanted war stories and the gallows humor exhibited by people who deal in death and dead bodies day in and day out. I wrote the story and in reporting it learned of a website primarily used by medical examiners as a resource for posing questions to other coroners when faced with unusual circumstances involving a death.

  The site was called causesofdeath.net and it was password protected, but because it was available to coroners around the world, the password was mentioned in much of the literature handed out at the convention. I had visited the site a few times over the years since attending the convention just to poke around and see what was of current interest on the discussion board. But I had never posted anything until now. I worded my post so that I was not falsely portraying myself as a medical examiner, but I wasn’t exactly saying that I wasn’t, either.

  Hey all. We have a homicide case here at LA with atlanto-occipital dislocation—female victim, 44 yoa. Anybody seen AOD before in homicide? Looking for etiology, tool marks, derma marks, etc. Any help is welcome. Hope to see all at next IAME con. Have not been since it was here in the City of Angels. Cheers, @MELA

  The shorthand in my post suggested expertise. YOA for years of age, AOD the abbreviation for atlanto-occipital dislocation. The mention of the International Association of Medical Examiners convention was legit because I was there. But it would also help readers of the post believe I was a working coroner. I knew it skirted ethical considerations but I wasn’t acting on this as a reporter. At least not yet. I was acting as an interested party. The cops had all but said I was a suspect. They had come and collected my DNA and studied my arms and upper torso. I needed information and this was one means of getting it. I knew it was a shot in the dark but it was one worth taking. I would check the site in a day or two to see if I had any responses.

  Next on my list was Lisa Hill. She was quoted in the Times story as a close friend of Portrero’s. For her, I switched hats—from potential suspect to journalist. After the routine efforts to get a phone number for her turned up nothing, I reached out to her—or at least who I thought was her—with private messages to her Facebook page, which appeared dormant, and to her Instagram account as well.

  Hi, I am a journalist working on something on the Tina Portrero case. I saw your name in the Times story. I am sorry for your loss. I would like to talk to you. Are you willing to talk about your friend?

  I included my name and cell number on each message but also knew that Hill could reach back to me through those social-media outlets as well. Like the message on the IAME board, it would be a waiting game.

  Before shutting down my efforts, I checked back on causesofdeath.net to see if my fishing expedition had attracted any bites. It had not. I then went back into Google and started reading up on digital stalking (or cyberstalking, as it was more commonly called). Most of what was out there didn’t jibe with what Mattson had described. Cyberstalking most often involved victims being harassed by someone they knew in at least a peripheral way. But Mattson had specifically said that Tina Portrero had complained to a friend—most likely Lisa Hill—that she had randomly met a man in a bar who seemed to know things about her he shouldn’t have known.

  With that in mind, I set out to learn all I could about Tina Portrero. I quickly realized I might already have an advantage over the mystery man who had set off alarms with her. When I went down the usual checklist of social-media apps, I remembered that I was already her friend on Facebook and a follower on Instagram. We had exchanged these connections the night we met. Then afterward, when no second date grew out of the initial meeting, neither of us had bothered to unfriend or block the other. This I had to admit was vanity—everybody likes to pad their numbers, not subtract from them.

  Tina’s Facebook page had not been very active and appeared to be used primarily to keep in touch with family. I remembered that when we had met she said her family was from Chicago. There were several posts spread over the last year from people with her last name. These were routine messages and photos. There were also several cat and dog videos posted by her or to her.

  I moved on to Instagram and saw that Tina was far more active there, routinely posting photos of herself engaged in various activities with friends or alone. Many had captions that identified the locations and people in the shot. I went back through the feed several months. Tina had been to Maui once and Las Vegas twice during that time. There were shots of her with various men and women, and multiple photos of her at clubs, bars, and house parties. It was clear from these that her drink of choice was a Cosmo. I remembered that that was the drink she held in her hand when she came down the bar to me at Mistral the night we met.

  I have to admit that even though I knew she was dead, I felt envious as I reviewed photos of her recent life and saw how full and active it was. My life was not nearly as exciting in comparison and I fell into morbid thoughts about her upcoming funeral, where invariably her friends and others would say she had lived life to the fullest. The same could not be said about me.

  I tried to shake off the feelings of inadequacy, reminding myself that social media was not a reflection of real life. It was life exaggerated. I moved on and the only post I found of real interest was a photo and caption from four months earlier that showed Tina and another woman about the same age or slightly older. They had their arms around each other. The caption Tina had written said: “Finally tracked down my half sis Taylor. She’s a blast and a half!!!!!”

  It was hard to tell from the post whether Taylor was a half sister who had fallen out of touch and therefore had to be tracked down, or whether Taylor had been previously unknown to Tina. What was clear was that the two women definitely looked related. Both had the same high forehead and high cheekbones, dark eyes, and dark hair.

  I searched to see if there was a Taylor Portrero on Instagram or Facebook but drew a blank. It appeared that if Tina and Taylor were half sisters, they had different last names.

  After my survey of social media ended, I went into full reporter mode and used a variety of search engines to look for other references to Christina Portrero. I was soon able to find the side of her not celebrated on social media. She had a DUI arrest on her record as well as an arrest for possession of a controlled substance—that being MDMA, more commonly referred to as Ecstasy or Molly, a party drug with mood-elevating effects. The arrests resulted in two stints in court-ordered rehab and probation, which she completed in order to have the judge expunge her record of convictions. Both arrests had occurred more than five years before.

  I was still online,
looking for more details about the dead woman, when my phone buzzed and the screen showed a blocked number.

  I took the call.

  “This is Lisa Hill.”

  “Oh, good. Thank you for calling me.”

  “You said you wanted to do a story. For who?”

  “Well, I work for an online publication called FairWarning. You might not have heard of it but our stories are often picked up by newspapers like the Washington Post and the L.A. Times. We have a first-look agreement with NBC News as well.”

  I heard her typing on a keyboard and knew she was going to the site. It made me think she was smart and nobody’s fool. There was silence for a moment as I guessed she was looking at the FairWarning home page.

  “And you’re on here?” she finally said.

  “Yes,” I said. “You can click on the link where it says our staff in that black header and it will take you to our profiles. I’m the last one. The most recent hire.”

  I heard the click while I was giving directions. More silence followed.

  “How old are you?” she asked. “You look older than everybody but the owner.”

  “You mean the editor,” I said. “Well, I worked with him at the L.A. Times and then joined him here after he set it up.”

  “And you’re here in L.A.?”

  “Yes, we are based here. Studio City.”

  “I don’t get it. Why does a site like this for consumers care about Tina getting murdered?”

  That was the question I was ready for.

  “Part of my beat is cybersecurity,” I said. “And I have sources in the LAPD and they know I’m interested in cyberstalking because that gets into the area of consumer security. That’s how I heard about Tina. I talked to the detectives on the case—Mattson and Sakai—and they told me that she had complained to friends that she felt some guy she had dated or met was digitally stalking her—that was the phrase the detectives used.”

  “They gave you my name?” Hill asked.

  “No, they wouldn’t give out a witness’s name. I—”

  “I’m not a witness. I didn’t see anything.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. From the investigation standpoint, they consider anybody they talk to in the case a witness. I know you don’t have any immediate knowledge of the case. I saw your name in the Times story and that’s why I reached out.”

  I heard more typing before she responded. I wondered if she was checking on me further by typing an email to Myron, who was at the top of the FairWarning staff page and listed as founder and executive director.

  “Did you use to work for something called Velvet Coffin?” she asked.

  “Yes, before I came to FairWarning,” I said. “It was locally based investigative reporting.”

  “It says you went to jail for sixty-three days.”

  “I was protecting a source. The federal government wanted it, but I wouldn’t give up the name.”

  “What happened?”

  “After two months the source came forward on her own and I was released because the feds got what they wanted.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She was fired for leaking information to me.”

  “Oh, man.”

  “Yeah. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m curious. How did the Times find you?”

  “I once dated someone who works there in the Sports section. He’s on my Instagram and saw the photo I posted after Tina died, and he told the reporter that he knew somebody who knew the dead girl.”

  Sometimes it takes a break like that. I’d had more than a few of those in my career.

  “Got it,” I said. “So, can I ask you, then, are you the one who told the detectives about the cyberstalking?”

  “They asked me about anything unusual with her lately and I couldn’t really think of anything except some asshole she hooked up with in a bar a few months ago seemed like he knew too much about her, you know? It freaked her out a little bit.”

  “Knew too much how?”

  “Well, she didn’t really say a lot. She just said she met this guy at a bar and it was supposed to be some rando hookup but that it felt like a setup. Like they were having drinks and he said stuff that made her realize he already knew who she was and things about her and it was really fucking creepy and she just got the hell out of there.”

  I was having trouble tracking the steps of the story so I tried to break it down into pieces.

  “Okay, so what was the name of the place where they met?” I asked.

  “I don’t know but she liked to go to places up in the Valley,” Hill said. “Places on Ventura. She said the men up there weren’t so pushy. And I think it had something to do with her age.”

  “How so?”

  “She was getting older. The guys in the clubs in Hollywood, West Hollywood, they’re all younger or looking for younger.”

  “Right. Did you tell the police about her preferring the Valley?”

  “Yeah.”

  I had met Tina in a restaurant bar on Ventura. I was beginning to understand Mattson and Sakai’s interest in me.

  “She lived near the Sunset Strip, right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Hill said. “Just up the hill. Near the old Spago’s.”

  “So would she drive over the hill to the Valley?”

  “No, never. She got a DUI a while back and she stopped driving when she went out. She used Uber and Lyft.”

  I assumed that Mattson and Sakai had gotten Tina’s Uber and Lyft records. They would help identify the bars she frequented and determine her other movements.

  “And so, getting back to the stalking thing,” I said. “She just went to the club on her own and met this guy, or was it prearranged like through a dating app or something?”

  “No, she was doing her thing,” Hill said. “She just went there to get a buzz on and hear music, maybe meet a guy. Then she sort of bumped into this guy at the bar. From her standpoint it was random, or it was supposed to be.”

  It seemed that what had happened between Tina and me wasn’t a one-off. Tina had a habit of going alone to bars to maybe meet a guy. I held no old-fashioned beliefs about women. They were free to go wherever and do whatever they wanted, and I did not believe that a victim was responsible for what happens to her. But along with the DUI and prior drug possession, I did have an angle on Tina now as a risk-taker. Going to bars where men were less pushy was not enough of a safety edge. Not by a long shot.

  “Okay, so they meet at the place and start talking and having drinks at the bar,” I said. “And she had never seen him before?”

  “Exactly,” Hill said.

  “And did she tell you what he specifically said that creeped her out?”

  “Not really. She just said, ‘He knew me. He knew me.’ It was like he somehow let something slip and it wasn’t random at all.”

  “Did she say whether he was already there when she got to the club or came in after?”

  “She didn’t say. Hold on, I have another call.”

  She didn’t wait for my response. She clicked over to the other call and I waited, thinking about the incident in the club. When Hill came back on the line her tone and words were completely different. She was harsh and angry.

  “You motherfucker. You scumbag. You’re the guy.”

  “What? What are you—”

  “That was Detective Mattson. I emailed him. He said you’re not working a story and I should stay away from you. You knew her. You knew Tina and now you’re a suspect. You fucking asshole.”

  “No, wait. I’m not a suspect and I am working on a story. Yes, I met Tina once but I’m not the guy from the—”

  “Don’t fucking come near me!”

  She disconnected the call.

  “Shit!”

  I felt like I had been punched in the gut, and my face burned with humiliation over the subterfuge I had used. I had lied to Lisa Hill. I wasn’t even sure why, or what I was doing. The visit f
rom the detectives had tipped me into a rabbit hole and I wasn’t sure of my motives. Was it about Christina Portrero and me, or was it about the case and the story I might write about it?

  Christina and I were one and done. That night she had ordered a car and left. I had asked for another date and she had said no.

  “I think you’re too straight for me,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “That it wouldn’t work.”

  “Why?”

  “Nothing personal. I just don’t think you’re my type. Tonight was great, but for the long haul, I mean.”

  “Well, then, what is your type?”

  It was such a lame response. She just smiled and said her car was arriving. She went out the door and I never saw her again.

  Now she was dead and I couldn’t leave it alone. My life had somehow changed since the moment the two detectives had approached me in the garage. I was down the rabbit hole now and I sensed that what was ahead of me in this place was only darkness and trouble. But I also sensed that it was a story. A good story. My kind of story.

  Four years ago I had lost everything because of a story. My job and the woman I loved. I had blown it. I had not taken care of the most precious thing I had. I had put myself and the story ahead of everything else. True, I had come through dark waters. I had killed a man once and nearly been killed. I had ended up in jail because of a commitment to my job and its principles, and because deep down I knew the woman would sacrifice herself to save me. When it all fell apart, my self-imposed penance was to leave everything behind and turn myself in a different direction. For a long time before, I had said death was my beat. Now, with Christina Portrero, I knew it still was.

  4

  Myron was waiting for me when I came into the office the next morning. The newsroom where we worked followed an egalitarian open-floor design—individual cubicles in a cluster. Everybody from editor in chief to most recent hire (me) had the same amount of work space. Up-lighting bounced off the ceiling tiles and came down gently on each of our spaces. Our desktop computers had silent-touch keyboards. Some days the place was as silent as a church on Monday, unless somebody was working the phones, and even then they might move into the conference room at the back of the office so as not to disturb anyone. It was nothing like the newsrooms I had worked in earlier in my career, where the cacophony of clacking keyboards alone could make you lose focus on what you were doing.