Chapter Text
“Knight! Get in here!”
Rolling his eyes, Kendall got up from his desk and crossed the bull pen over to the lieutenant's office and leaned in the doorway. Funny, if anyone had told him at sixteen that he'd be doing this now, he never would have believed them. His idea of a career had been a hell of a lot different back then. A lot changed in ten years. “What now?”
Some of it seemed familiar, though. He could see the parallels every time he walked into this office. No, it was nothing like Rocque Records, and other than the yelling and general size, the men in question were nothing alike.
The balding man behind the desk wiped at his tie with a napkin. It was ketchup today. Yesterday it had been barbecue sauce. The day before that, mustard. The man was always covered in some sauce from his lunch. The new spots fell right on top of old stains, and somehow that never seemed to matter to him. “Murder in north Hollywood. One of those rich and famous types. It's yours.”
“Come on, LT," he protested. He was always getting shuffled off what he was doing to handle some Hollywood case only to get bounced right off it again. "Why do I always get these cases?”
“Because you know how to deal with them.”
Kendall shook his head in disbelief. “If you call dealing with them putting up with having them call me a has-been for thirty minutes before they answer a simple question, then sure, I know how to deal with them.”
Better a has-been than a never was, James' voice said in the back of his head, and Kendall sighed. He was sick of hearing them, and if anyone knew he still did, they'd probably think he was crazy. He rubbed his forehead for a second, waiting to be sure that nothing else was coming. He occasionally forgot that they weren't real, and he was also sick of the looks he got when he answered them or told them to shut up. He'd have to ask, but he seemed to remember Logan mentioning a while back that schizophrenia started around this time, usually in men. It was something to consider.
“You still alive over there, Knight?”
“Last I checked, unfortunately,” Kendall agreed. He knew there was no point in asking where his partner was. Home sick, with “food poisoning” again. It was how the man spent every other week. All those cop shows with the partner is your best friend for life thing had been completely misleading, not that Kendall needed or wanted another best friend. Roberts could stay home and drown in his whiskey for all he cared.
“Good. Then get out there and assist Bennett. She's got lead on this one. You're there to tell her what she needs to know and get her coffee if she asks,” the lieutenant added, and Kendall ignored him as he walked away. He didn't mind working with Bennett. She was good at what she did, didn't ask too many personal questions, and wasn't a fall down drunk like Roberts. Her partner, Martinez, must have been hung up in court or having another family crisis—it was a big family he had, and Kendall had heard more about them than he ever cared to know—to leave her on her own again.
He grabbed his sweatshirt from the back of his chair and pulled it on as he dug out his keys. The lieutenant hadn't told him where to go, but that wasn't unusual. He never did. He just assumed that Kendall would find his way there someway or another and didn't give a damn unless the job didn't get done. That was the way it worked. Simple enough, really.
Kendall took out his phone as he reached the parking lot. “Bennett, you drew the short stick again.”
She laughed. “Come on, Knight. You've got to be the tall stick, since you're a foot over my head, at least. I take it he's sending you up to me?”
“The wonderful joy of being the youngest detective in the division with a partner who can't stay sober to save his life,” Kendall agreed. He got shuffled around a lot, never had lead on any case since even the ones Roberts caught usually ended up shifted to someone else. It was better if Bennett and Martinez took it, because they'd let him keep working it. If it was one of the others, they tended to get stupidly territorial, telling him to back off even though they were too busy to work the case in the first place. “I'm your coffee delivery guy, pen holder, you know the drill.”
“Like hell you are. Show up with a coffee, and I'm dumping it on you. You're taking half of these interviews. It was one of those dumb parties, and everyone's thinks they're more important than they are, and none of them saw a thing.”
“My favorite,” Kendall muttered, pulling out of the parking lot.
It never failed to amuse him that he had to show his badge to the unis doing the crowd control. The press had already descended like vultures, and they weren't the only ones. A celebrity murder always pulled everyone out of the woodwork, anyone passing on the street had to stop by and see what they could see, and then there were other celebrities that came out to comfort the others. A never ending circus, and Kendall didn't look like he belonged on the other side of the police tape. Since he still looked younger than he was, vice had wanted him for undercover work, but his past got in the way of that. He'd been in the middle of his first case when someone decided to do a where are they now special and his cover was blown. He'd argued that he could still do narcotics because people would think a former star would be an addict, but the higher ups disagreed, and he ended up over in homicide, of all places.
He showed his badge again to the officer by the door and stepped inside. This place was somewhat familiar, and it wasn't entirely impossible that he'd been here before. The foyer was an open room with white floors and walls, a double staircase of plastic looking white planks and clear glass panes along the side, tall and open and apparently where the death had happened. The one bit of color in the room was the red peeking out from underneath the sheet.
“You left this for me? Bennett, you shouldn't have,” Kendall muttered, and she rolled her eyes at him. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and her suit was rumpled. She'd been here for a while, had probably just rolled out of bed to come.
“Crime scene unit is still processing and the coroner's backed up, unless you want to do his job for him,” she suggested, and he shrugged. He'd considered doing that, and he had more of a background than a lot of cops since he'd grown up with a future doctor. “Best guess at this point is that she fell from the landing up there, but that shouldn't necessarily have been fatal.”
“Guess it depends on the angles,” Kendall said. It's not a question of the angle; it's a question of velocity. At the current speed, we'd never survive it. Logan this time. Figured. Kendall reached over to lift the sheet. He cursed when he recognized the face despite the injuries. He could almost hear the music and feel the fans, too. “Bennett, I hate to look and run, but I know her. Conflict of interest.”
“What? How do you—Right. I keep forgetting you were one of these people once,” she said, shaking her head. That was another reason he liked her. She didn't know who Kendall Knight was other than a cop she worked with, and she never cared to change that, either. “At least you have a name for her, right?”
“A first one. She was one of the Jennifers.”
“Jennifers?”
“Three girls. All the same name,” he explained. They had made quite the entrance on his first day at the Palm Woods. He'd been completely unprepared for LA, and the girls were the least of it. “Walked around like they owned the place. Actresses, singers. I don't think I ever knew any of their last names. They were always together.”
“When is the last time you actually saw this girl?”
“While eight years is a long time and I would have assumed there'd be plastic surgery in between then and now, she looks about the same,” he said. She was one of the lucky ones that didn't age, not much. Now she'd never grow old. “Unless she's got a younger sister or something. Speaking of younger sisters, there's conflict of interest number two. I think my sister represents her.”
Bennett frowned, and Kendall figured that she probably hadn't connected him to Kate Knight, the head of the leading talent management company in LA these days. People went to Katie or they didn't get jobs. It was that simple. Bennett sighed. “Then you can at least get me a name, right?”
He shrugged and took out his phone again. “Hey, Katie. No, I have not come to my senses. I never lost them in the first place, and I am never going on a come back tour. Now that we've got that out of the way, can I ask a question?”
She sighed loudly over the line. “You should try it, Kendall. You were a whole lot happier when you were singing.”
“I was a whole lot happier when I played hockey,” he corrected. Singing had never been his dream, not really. He had gone along with it for so many reasons that fell apart the moment he asked himself what he really wanted, and so he'd stopped asking that question a long time ago. “When's the last time you heard from blonde Jennifer?”
“Last night. Big party she was planning on using for all it was worth. Why?”
He frowned, looking back at the form under the sheet. “Well, maybe someone didn't like how aggressive she was about whatever part she was after because she's definitely not going to get it.”
He could hear the eye roll on the other end. “That is such a nice way to break it to me that my client is dead.”
“Katie, you're the most ruthless agent in Hollywood, and you earned that title before you were eighteen. I find it hard to believe that anything can shock you.”
“Only you saying you'd actually come to your senses,” she agreed. She'd been pushing for him to change his mind for eight years now, and it wasn't going to happen. “What do you need to know?”
“Whatever you've got, and the real version, not the edited for press release one,” he answered.
“Fine. It's on its way. And... next time call me for something other than a case.”
“Don't count on it.” He hung up and messed with his phone until he had the information she'd sent up on the screen. He tried to show it to Bennett, but his screen was too small for her to read, as always. Bennett sighed and relinquished her phone. He managed to sync them and passed hers back. She grunted, not big on technology. He had to show her how to find it on her own phone, and he'd just finished when one of the celebrities pushed past the uniforms trying to keep them in the other room.
“How much longer do we have to wait? Some of us are scheduled to be places,” the big time pop star said as he came up the stairs. He glanced at the body, momentarily put off, backing away a little. He pulled himself together, adjusting his suit and fixing his hair, and then Kendall caught his eye. They stared each other down for a moment before Kendall tapped the badge on his belt. James turned around and walked back into the other room without a word.
Kendall shook his head. “And that would be conflict of interest number three. I'm out of here.”