Night Passenger

by David Stanley

  “I guess we’ll see,” Cabot said. “The mask could easily hold both sets of fingerprints if one passed the mask to the other to put on.”

  The sheriff smiled thinly, his head nodding. It seemed like a less than enthusiastic response, sarcastic even. Not for the first time, he wondered if Carson wanted this investigation to fail in order to damage his reputation ahead of any bid he might make for sheriff when the post was up for re-election. This didn’t seem like much of a stretch considering Carson’s narrow victory over the previous incumbent and the animosity of the campaign that preceded it.

  “Well done, Victor. Good work.”

  “Actually, sir, credit goes to Summersby and Liu here.”

  Carson bristled, clearly irritated by his public generosity.

  “That’s very fair of you, Victor. An investigation is a team effort of course.”

  The sheriff turned and pushed his way through deputies that stood around him. He seemed to do this a lot, Cabot thought, suddenly leaving a room like he had better places to be. Most likely, this was because he knew little of real police work, and feared being discovered by those under his command. Cabot looked back and saw Summersby grinning from ear to ear while, beside him, Barnes looked decidedly irritated. It appeared the golden boy didn’t much like being sidelined.

  His cell phone began to ring in his pocket.

  “All right people, show’s over,” he said, already standing. “Summersby, get this mask tested. Put a rush on it, this is important.”

  He pulled out his cell as he walked back to his office.

  “Cabot.”

  “This is Robert Brookridge at First National. I received your request this morning for financial statements belonging to one of our customers; Mr Christopher Thorne of Ocean Park Boulevard, Santa Monica.”

  He was in his office now. Instead of sitting at his desk he stood facing the wall. There was a tone to the man’s voice that he didn’t like and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to enjoy the remainder of their conversation.

  “That’s right.”

  “There was no warrant attached to this request and the subject is still alive. Am I right to assume that this is a fishing trip and you don’t have enough evidence to convince a judge?”

  “Now wait just a minute,” he said, his voice rising.

  “No, you wait, Cabot. I ran this past our legal department and their advice was clear. If I give you what you want, I’d be breaking the law. Mr Thorne has rights, which as a police lieutenant I assume you know. Either re-apply when you have enough evidence for a warrant, or forget it.”

  He thought about knocking it back and forth with Brookridge for a couple of minutes to soothe his damaged pride, but he could tell that the banker was smart enough to see through that. Since he was likely to lose the argument anyway, the only way forward was to admit it and hope that this created a positive room for movement. People were more forgiving if you treated them with respect and were gracious in defeat. It was a lesson that had taken him most of his life to learn, and still occasionally forgot.

  “All right, look, you got me. What you’re saying is true, I apologize for not being straight with you. That said, I have a single question that I don’t believe will invalidate Mr Thorne’s rights. If you answer the way I expect, I’ll be able to discount him as a suspect and avoid any awkward publicity for either your bank, or your customer. Now, I’m sure you’re aware from media coverage that the case I’m working on involves the attempted abduction of a US Senator and his wife. I know we both want the same thing, Mr Brookridge.”

  There was a pause on the line and he wondered if he’d laid it on too thick.

  “What’s the question?”

  “In the last six months, has Mr Thorne received any irregular large sums of money or series of sums below the reporting threshold? A yes or no will be sufficient.”

  “I still have to run this past legal.”

  The line went dead. He returned the phone to his pocket, fury building in his chest. There was a time when people would sign off in some manner before disconnecting. A simple curtesy that didn’t cost a dime, and allowed both parties to know the conversation was at an end. Now, one person seemed to always get boned, and that person always seemed to be him.

  “That didn’t sound good,” Barnes said.

  Cabot turned and saw him standing in the doorway.

  “Not great, no.”

  “Did he answer your question?”

  “He’s going to ask a lawyer first.”

  Barnes snorted. “Of course.”

  He knew the detective didn’t share his suspicions about Thorne, but he appreciated his support nevertheless. Cabot supposed that if he was wrong about Thorne, then Mason Barnes stood to benefit from his disgrace as the most likely candidate to replace him as lieutenant. On the other hand, if he was right about Thorne then Barnes could claim to be a key member in the investigation that brought him down. Whichever way it went, Barnes would somehow come out the other side covered in glory.

  “Was there something else, Detective?”

  Focus seemed to return to Barnes’ face.

  “Right. I sent you an email, I figured you hadn’t seen it yet.”

  This, he knew, was the younger man’s way of reminding him that evidence no longer needed to be transported in file folders. It was well known in the department that he had yet to fully engage with the electronic medium and sometimes needed to be prompted. He sat down at his computer and opened his email. While he did this, he noticed with displeasure that Barnes came around the desk and stood behind him so that he could see the screen. It annoyed him, not because he had personal or embarrassing emails that might appear in his inbox, but because close to 50 unread emails then appeared which would only help cement the idea that he was out of touch.

  It took him several seconds to locate Mason Barnes’ name in the long list and punch it up. The email had no text and consisted of three attached photographs which he recognized as coming from the mall’s security system, before the gang put on their masks. The pictures were zoomed in on the man known as Morrison.

  He glanced up at the detective for an explanation.

  “I’ve been going through the mall footage again and decided to try and enhance some stills of this guy using Photoshop. It was mostly a waste of time because the quality is so low and we have to magnify it, but something did come out of it as you can see.”

  Cabot flipped between each picture. He didn’t see anything.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “There’s something on his face. A scar maybe.”

  Cabot saw it then, like half a circle.

  “You’re sure that’s not a reflection? It’s very regular.”

  “I don’t think so,” Barnes said. “Once I knew what I was looking for I went back to the footage again. It’s faint, but it’s there. Moves with him as he turns his head. A reflection would move somewhere else.”

  Cabot nodded. “Looks old. A broken bottle wound maybe?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or shrapnel.”

  “Can you feed this into AFIS for an ID?”

  “NGI.”

  “Whatever. Can you use it?”

  “This picture is too noisy, we’d need something sharper. Something closer to a mug shot, not this high angle. Even then, I don’t know. It’s not like fingerprints or retinas that stay the same. This guy Morrison could be on the database from before he got this injury. You’d get no matches. Equally, you could get over fifty partial matches of random people.”

  Cabot nodded. Technology could only get you so far, eventually it always came down to bashing heads and kicking down doors. Somehow, he found this reassuring.

  “All right, update the composite sketch for Morrison to include this scar and print it out. A dozen copies, so we can show it around. Send a digital version to the press. Who knows, it might ring a bell with someone and flush these jokers out into the open.”

  After the detective left his office, Cabot sat back in h
is chair and put his feet on his desk. He began to slowly peel an orange. The skin kept breaking off in chunks but he didn’t mind, he was used to it. Oranges had become a strange part of his process over the years, his mind was able to drift away while his hands were busy removing first skin, then individual sections of the fruit. Despite the fragile skin, the flesh inside was juicy and delicious.

  At the back of his mind he was getting an uneasy feeling about the C-shaped scar that Barnes had identified. It resonated with him as something he’d seen before and he couldn’t think from where. He tossed another section of orange into his mouth and chewed down on it. It was somewhere recent, not an old case. He reached up and fished a stone out his mouth, then pinched it between thumb and forefinger, firing it across the room.

  It would come to him eventually, it always did.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  As he drove past the Live Oak on ramp, Blake was astonished to see Ashcroft’s cobalt-blue Maserati merge into traffic right in front of him. The car was a distinctive vehicle, there was no mistaking it. On impulse, he began to follow it, slowing his pace to match the senator’s careful driving. He checked his mirrors to see if anyone else was following the senator. After what happened at the mall, he would’ve expected Ashcroft to hire some kind of security detail. Remarkably, that didn’t seem to have happened and he wondered if Thorne had dissuaded the senator from taking further steps as part of his plan to steal the painting.

  On the other hand, Thorne had gone dark again. There’d been no response to any of his recent texts and his cell phone never seemed to be on when he called. Blake couldn’t help think his old friend was playing for time. Perhaps Thorne would tell him the job was more difficult than he’d foreseen, that he wanted more of the payout. It was a theory that made a lot of sense. The more time that passed, the closer they got to the end of their window for stealing the painting, and the more leverage Thorne had over him. Once it was returned to the gallery, it was game over. There’d be no time to get another team together to have a second run at the painting there; he’d have to agree to any terms Thorne wanted.

  It was unfortunate they needed him at all, but his own knowledge of electronics was pitiful. Even knowing the answer lay, somehow, with the stolen defibrillators, he didn’t have the first clue how to take the plan forward and Thorne was keeping his cards close to his chest.

  Ashcroft took the Santa Cruz fork and the highway looped around in a tight loop. Blake fell back, his eyes fixed on the Maserati in the distance. The posted speed limit was twenty miles per hour and the traffic around him was obeying the limit. He felt strangely exposed on the motorcycle at the slower speed. Motorcycles were Sara’s thing, not his. After the endless northerly curve, the road twisted around to the southwest. The senator kept to the right, the lanes marked Half Moon Bay, and Blake fell in behind him. After several minutes, Ashcroft turned south onto River Street, which had a clot of slow moving traffic on it. He made the turn and maintained a constant two car gap to the senator.

  He had no idea what he was going to do once they reached their destination. Most likely, nothing at all. It didn’t benefit him if the target was constantly afraid of another attack. It was always better to catch someone by surprise, assuming that was still possible. He was just taking advantage of a situation to find out all he could about his mark to avoid any surprises later. The slower speed allowed him to glance to either side and take in more of the location. On the opposite sidewalk, a sign read Do you have a pinched nerve? He frowned. There was something about this that didn’t feel right, and pinched nerves had nothing to do with it. The cars between them turned off together, leaving him directly behind the Maserati with no screen. The small car shot forward, and Blake had to struggle to keep up. He’d lost his focus and had been made. Logic told him to abandon his tail, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The change in the way the car was being driven was incredible, and he hated the thought of being out-driven by the senator.

  Up ahead, the traffic light changed, forcing Ashcroft to stop and wait for the intersection to clear. Blake smiled to himself. He had him. As he drew close, he flipped up his visor so he’d be able to see the senator more clearly through the car’s tinted glass. He rode slowly down the left turn lane, next to the driver’s side of the car. The side window powered open and he looked into the shaded interior of the car. He blinked. From his high position, the first thing he saw was a tanned, muscular arm and the carefully rolled cuff of a shirt. It wasn’t Ashcroft. There was an explosion of movement and Thorne shot out through the open window, a long hunting knife clutched in his fist. Before he could do anything, Thorne slammed the blade down, deep into his thigh. He felt the metal jolt against the bone. He stared at the half-submerged knife for a second before screaming. A thick red tide rose up around the steel as Thorne pulled it out, and he felt the jagged edge of the blade tearing his muscle as it left his body. The pain was unbelievable, and his breath caught in his throat. He clamped his right hand over the open wound, while his left hand flailed behind him for the Glock stuffed into the back of his jeans.

  It was too far around; it was set for a right-handed draw.

  The blade was between their bodies now, an inch below his ribcage and angled up toward his heart. Thorne’s eyes were wide and fixed, his teeth visible through peeled back lips. He’d flipped. With one more push, Thorne could finish him. Blake attempted to grab the knife with his right hand and felt the hot flow of blood pour from the open wound and down his leg. It was a weak gesture and he knew it, but Thorne drew the weapon back out of reach. Playing it safe, not taking any risks. Some things never changed. Behind them, a horn sounded: the stop light had changed. Thorne smiled at him playfully, then shrank back into the car and hit the gas. The Maserati raced forward, tires screeching, crossed over his lane, then turned hard left across the Water Street bridge.

  Blake gritted his teeth.

  He was in no position to pursue Thorne to exact revenge, he had to deal with his leg as soon as possible. He u-turned and pulled into a parking lot behind Bank of America. Without dismounting, he unfastened his belt and looped it around his thigh to slow the bleeding. He didn’t need to stop blood flow, just hold the sides of his wound closed until he could do something about it. He tied the belt as tight as he could bear. There was a burning void in his leg. It felt like a huge yellowjacket had stung him and the stinger had broken off inside.

  In his mind, he replayed his ride down River Street trying to remember stores that could help him. The selection he remembered were of little use. Auto body repair shops, lumber specialists, furniture stores, beauty salons…nothing jumped out at him. There was no denying it, Thorne had stabbed him in a really inconvenient part of town. He’d laugh at this thought if his situation wasn’t so serious. Blake considered calling for proper medical attention. He couldn’t afford to spend time driving around looking for something that he could use to patch himself up. The way his luck was going, it would be one of the ambulance crews he’d jacked. Would they recognize him without the mask?

  He’d feel the blood loss in his fingers and toes first, as his body shut down to preserve his core; then his vision would begin to suffer. These two together would make riding Sara’s motorcycle incredibly difficult. If he was going to call for help, he had to do so while his body was still able, and soon enough that he wasn’t too far gone when they arrived.

  He cranked the helmet visor full open to get more air.

  Blake was getting lightheaded. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Deep and slow. It helped him focus and would help manage pain. They didn’t tell pregnant women to breathe like this for nothing. It took nearly a minute, but he could feel his body begin to relax, the extra oxygen easing his symptoms. River Street, there was something, he was sure there was. Yes. There’d been a red rectangle on one of those multi store listing posts. OfficeMax. He’d been in one of those stores before, he’d get most of what he needed there. Some tape, bandages, general first aid supplies. Someh
ow, people in offices were getting seriously injured and they were going to the stationery store to get themselves fixed up.

  He put the motorcycle in gear and pulled out of the bank’s lot.

  It felt good to be back underway. He knew roughly where the store was but it took longer than he expected to get there when he wasn’t being distracted by his pursuit of Ashcroft. He corrected himself: his pursuit of Thorne. For the first time, it dawned on him that his arrangement with Thorne to steal the painting was over. Had the actor already made up his mind not to go through with the plan, or had he simply reacted to the tail? He might not have liked being followed himself, but he wouldn’t have put two million dollars at stake over something so trivial.

  OfficeMax was around the back of another store, an island in a sea of asphalt. He drove around until he found a parking spot that was shielded on two sides by two flat bed trucks and on a third by the store wall.

  It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

  The store more than matched his expectations. Painkillers, wound wash, tape, bandages. Aside from antibiotics, it had everything he needed. He filled a basket with over a hundred dollars’ worth of products. Rather than compare items he chose to grab anything that looked good, even if it duplicated a product he already had. He noticed he had a pronounced limp and it was so cold inside the air-conditioned building that he had begun to shake. He bit his teeth together to stop them clattering together.

  At the checkout, a bored-looking girl rang it all up and put it in a bag with barely a glance at his leg. The only thing she said was the price, delivered in a flat monotone. He paid cash and it nearly cleared him out. She didn’t bother to wish him a good day, perhaps sensing that that ship had already sailed.

  Back outside, he sat heavily on the asphalt and leaned back against the wall with his legs straight out in front of him. He felt dizzy and tired. Despite a cool sea breeze coming up from the south, beads of sweat covered his face. He stared grimly down. The right leg of his jeans was soaked in blood from mid-thigh to mid-calf. He could feel the extra weight of it in the fabric and it had already hardened at the edges to form a blackish tide mark. It looked bad, it looked real bad. He’d lost a pint of blood, maybe more.