Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

long stride and she didn’t look happy. I knew she’d been having some troubles over there with noise.”

Harbour had indeed been having trouble with the couple at number 1107 and their noise for a period of thirteen months. In that time there had been three complaints made to police from the Harbour residence about music coming from 1107, synthesized dance tracks that had heavy bass and were played after 10 p.m. and before 7 a.m. above the allowed forty-decibel limit set by the Los Angeles Municipal Code. The couple at the residence, Adrian Orlov, the property owner, and his girlfriend, Kristi Zea, had been confronted by LAPD noise enforcement officers in response to each complaint. Harbour had complained to two other witnesses in the street about the music at 1107 within the thirteen-month period. She was pregnant, lived alone, and had described experiencing difficulties sleeping due to the unborn child and the noise activity at the adjacent property.

According to Zea’s witness statement, Zea had consumed approximately three to four standard alcoholic beverages throughout the night while Orlov had consumed five to seven standard alcoholic beverages. The two had taken what Zea described as a “small amount” of cocaine. They were dancing on the second floor mezzanine of the property when Harbour opened the front door, which had been unlocked and was in full view of the mezzanine. Zea testified that Harbour shouted for the pair to come downstairs and turn off the music. It was obvious to Zea that Harbour was hostile, due to her aggressive stance and a threat she issued to call the police if the couple did not comply with her demands. In her haste to get downstairs to acquiesce Harbour, Zea lost her footing on the stairs and fell, causing minor injuries to her leg and upper arm. Orlov became agitated that Zea had injured herself in her attempt to appease Harbour and shouted angrily at Harbour. In response, Harbour raised her fist and struck Zea twice in the face. Orlov came down the stairs and the three became engaged in a physical struggle.

On the dining room table in the next room, approximately fifteen feet from where the trio fought, lay Orlov’s registered Smith & Wesson 625 revolver, which Orlov had been cleaning that afternoon and had not returned to its case in the upstairs bedroom. According to Zea’s statement, Harbour disengaged from the fight in the foyer and ran to the dining room, where she took up the pistol and pointed it at the pair. Zea’s statement said of the incident:

She was crazy. Like, wild, crazy eyes. She told us she hadn’t slept in days and started rambling about all this stuff she thought had been done to her, like we’d stolen from her and scratched her car. I thought she might have been high but I wasn’t sure. She said she knew we had been poisoning her and, like, trying to drive her insane. I think she thought we were sneaking into her house and putting stuff in her food. She told us to get on our knees. Adrian made a grab for the gun but she cocked the hammer and backed away. We got on our knees saying we were sorry and we wouldn’t do it again, you know, with the music. She wouldn’t listen.

According to Zea, Harbour shot Orlov in the chest at a distance of approximately five feet. Zea took refuge under the dining room table, and while she hid there, Harbour stood silently over the body of Orlov for an unknown period of time. Harbour then went to the kitchen with the gun and proceeded to wash her hands and the weapon in the kitchen sink. At no time while at the 1107 property did Harbour attempt to call 9–1–1 or instruct Zea to do so. It appeared to Zea that Orlov had died instantly, and though she wanted to render assistance to her boyfriend, she was too afraid of Harbour to come out from cover. Zea, in distress, watched Harbour construct a cheese sandwich from supplies she found in the couple’s refrigerator, which she partly consumed before leaving the premises through the front door, closing it behind her.

Jessica scraped the oily red clumps of rice from the bottom of her Poquito Mas takeout container as she browsed the reports on the Harbour/Orlov case that lay on her lap. A crimson sunset loomed overhead, making purple flickers on the surface of the pool. The pool filter at Stan Beauvoir’s home hummed gently by her side, her feet and ankles cooling in the water.

It was in sheer, petty defiance that she had returned to the Brentwood property after leaving Goren’s house. If she had been even pettier, she’d have taken up residence on the expansive front porch to read the file she’d retrieved from the station that day, so that street crews doing drive-bys would see her. She thought about flipping them the bird as they went. What pissed her off most about the Beauvoir inheritance was the assumption by her LAPD “family” that she would take the reward. It was seven million dollars. She’d never make that kind of money as an LAPD officer, not even if she made it to chief of police and became the most corrupt person to ever hold that seat. From the moment Wally had heard about the inheritance, he’d assumed she would cut him out, make a fool of him for slacking on the Silver Lake case, walk out the front doors of the West Los Angeles office triumphantly, leaving him to wallow, to dream. Now deadbeat patrol cops she didn’t even know were checking in on her, trying to catch a moving van in the driveway, Jessica herself visible through the huge windows, instructing decorators. Only Captain Whitton had bothered to ask her directly if she was going to take the reward or refuse it. The crazed drug addict who had attacked her and almost eaten her alive, a man she’d only