by Robert Crais
I shook my head.
“You don’t share something like this. You do it yourself. If the pictures came from Levy, then Levy took the pictures.”
Marx looked at Jonna, still spinning the cap.
“What’s the last contact you had with him?”
“We spoke earlier this afternoon. He was pushing me to find her.”
“Okay. Before that?”
“Yesterday. He came to my house. He was feeling me out about what you guys were doing and asking about the girl.”
Munson grunted.
“Using you.”
“Yeah, Munson, how about that?”
“I wasn’t criticizing.”
I turned back to Marx.
“My guess, he’s looking to kill her. She hasn’t been returning his calls, so she’s probably thinking the same thing. That’s probably why she went back to Sylmar.”
Munson sighed.
“We should bag this guy, Tommy. Let’s get him off the street.”
“How? He could be halfway to China by now.”
Pike shifted in the corner.
“No. He wants her. She’s the loose end.”
Marx didn’t look convinced.
“If we make a play for him before she talks, all we’ll do is warn him. We don’t have anything. Even if this girl tells us everything she knows, unless she has something hard, it’s her word against his. You know what Alan Levy would do with that.”
Munson crossed his arms, looking sullen.
“He’ll say she’s harassing him because he defended the man who murdered her sister.”
“That’s it.”
“That could be what we’re looking at, anyway. We have her for forty-eight hours, then we arraign her or cut her loose. Either way, that’s when Levy gets the word. We pick him up now, at least we catch him off guard.”
“Pick him up where? He’s not at the office. Cole says he isn’t home. You think he’s going to come in, we call him and ask?”
“Have Barshop, Barshop call him. Maybe someone at the firm.”
Pike said, “He’ll read it. He’ll walk away from the phone, and you’ll never see him again.”
I was watching Jonna. On the other side of the glass, she was spinning the cap. The water bottle was empty, which meant pretty soon she would have to pee, but for now she spun the cap. I was watching the cap when she looked up as if she had felt the pressure of my gaze. She smiled as if she saw me, and I smiled back.
I said, “Levy thinks I’m looking for her. He wants me to find her and he’s hoping I’ll call. Let me call him.”
“Where does that get us?”
“I can tell him I found her. I tell him where she is, he’s going to show up.”
“So we bag him. We still don’t have a case.”
“If she cooperated, we might be able to get him to incriminate himself. We get him on tape, you’ll have the case.”
Munson laughed, and swung his hands again. Pike stepped to the side.
“Wake up, Cole. Look at her. That girl is cold.”
“Right now, she believes Byrd killed her sister. If we convince her it was Levy, she might change her mind.”
Marx considered me for a moment, then looked at Jonna. She spun the cap. It skittered across the table, then arced into space.
Marx turned back to me.
“Let’s figure this out.”
42
I WAITED alone outside the interview room, sipping a thirty-five-cent cup of coffee I bought from a machine at the end of the hall. The coffee was bitter and so hot it blistered my tongue. I drank it anyway. The pain was a pleasant distraction.
Coins clattered into the machine and drew my attention. Marx fed in the money, then noticed me while he waited for the cup to fill. When he had the coffee, he walked over. He took a sip, then made a face.
“This is terrible.”
“Pretty bad.”
“I don’t understand it. We have a machine at Central, makes the best cup of coffee in the world. Same machine, same thirty-five cents, that one’s great, this is awful.”
He had more of the coffee anyway. Like me, maybe he needed the distraction.
“We’re on his house. No sign of him, like you said, but the boys are watching. We’ll keep her mother at Foothill Station for the night, then we’ll have to put her up somewhere, a motel, I guess. We’ll get the bastard.”
He was just talking, but part of me needed it. Maybe he sensed why I was boiling my tongue. Marx suddenly lowered his voice.
“You weren’t the only one. Imagine how all those hotshots at Barshop, Barshop are going to feel.”
I laughed at his joke, and Marx’s big face split into a grin. I had never seen him smile before and would have bet the two of us would never share a laugh.
I said, “You know what gets me the worst?”
“I can guess.”
“Levy made me part of his play. Like his accomplice.”
“You want to look at it that way, so was the judge, Crimmens, and everyone else, but that’s bullshit. You were doing your jobs. Levy saw his opportunity and took it. This is one smart sonofabitch we’re dealing with here. I’ll bet you he’s been planning this from the moment he heard someone was busted for Yvonne Bennett’s murder.”
“I hope we get the chance to ask him.”
Marx was probably right. Yvonne Bennett was the fifth victim. Alan Levy had committed murder four prior times under circumstances where no arrests had been made, no one was charged, and where he was not a suspect. He must have have been pleased with himself. He almost certainly searched for news of the murders he committed, and probably made discreet inquiries from time to time as to the status of the various investigations. It made perfect sense—as a prominent defense attorney, Levy had contacts throughout the system. He was probably surprised when he learned someone named Lionel Byrd had been arrested. I wondered if he was amused someone else had taken the pop or pissed off because someone else was getting the credit. Maybe I would get a chance to ask him this, too. He probably first realized Lionel Byrd would make the perfect get-out-of-jail-free card when he examined Byrd’s history and the shabby case Crimmens had filed. Once freed, Byrd would remain a suspected murderer—the man who had been charged with killing Yvonne Bennett and a potential ace up Alan Levy’s sleeve. After all, if Byrd could be suspected once, he could be suspected again.
I was probably the extra added attraction, brought on because it made sense and looked right.
Marx said, “What are you smiling about?”
“I was wondering what Levy would have done if I had found out the truth when I was working on Bennett.”
“He would have killed you. He probably had that part of it figured out, too.”
I nodded, thinking if it had broken that way three years ago, both Lupe Escondido and Debra Repko would still be alive. Or maybe I would be dead.
Marx said, “It was the bomb tech, wasn’t it?”
He was staring at me.
“What bomb tech? You mean Starkey?”
“Yeah. It was her helping you, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Starkey didn’t help me. Neither did Poitras. I had some inside help, yes, but not them.”
“Starkey was pissed off we cut her out, so she helped you. I hear things, Cole. Just like you.”
“Think what you want, but Starkey didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Marx started to say something more when his cell phone rang. He checked the incoming number, then raised a silencing finger.
“My guy at Barshop—”
Their conversation lasted less than a minute, then Marx put away his phone. He appeared pale in the harsh fluorescent light.
“Was Levy at the dinner?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t expected, but he showed up early. Wasn’t there more than fifteen or twenty minutes, then left before it got started. He appeared agitated.”
“He wanted to see Debra.”
�
�That’s three for three, Cole. This thing is coming together.”
Levy had probably been working himself up to kill her, but only Levy could tell us that now. Why had he chosen Debra Repko, and why all the others? What had compelled him to murder her that night, three months ahead of his typical schedule, when he had been so very careful in the past? I wanted to know. The case against Levy might be coming together, but only if Jonna Hill went along.
Bastilla came around the corner with the pictures she had been preparing. Pike and Munson would be watching from the observation room.
Bastilla seemed taken aback when she saw Marx and me together, but then she focused on Marx.
“Ready when you are, Chief.”
“Let’s do it.”
Bastilla stepped into the interview room. Marx started after her, then hesitated and turned back to me.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t back off, Cole.”
“Thanks, Chief. Me, too.”
“Or Starkey. Tell her I said that.”
I nodded, and Marx pushed into the room.
43
JONNA LEANED back when we entered, and laced her fingers. She seemed completely at ease—not relaxed the way you’re relaxed when you’re just hanging around, but comfortable like an experienced athlete. Marx and Bastilla had agreed to let Bastilla do the talking, woman to woman. They wanted me in the room because Jonna and I had something in common. Her sister.
Bastilla and I sat, but Marx stood in the corner. Bastilla placed a brown manila envelope on the table, but did not open it.
Bastilla said, “How you doing?”
“Pretty well, considering.”
“All right. You know Mr. Cole?”
“Yeah. He’s the one who started all this.”
“And Chief Marx?”
She nodded.
“You know this is being recorded?”
“I don’t care. I didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bastilla rested her palms on the envelope.
“Here you are, Yvonne Bennett’s sister, and you just happened to get tight with the man who was accused of murdering her, just happened to use a false name while doing so, and just happened to do all this in the days immediately preceding his death. What are we supposed to think?”
“I can’t help it if I knew the guy. I thought he was someone named Lonnie Jones.”
Marx moved in the corner.
“You knew he was Lionel Byrd because Alan Levy told you.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You hated Levy. Your mother told us you used to call his office and send him hate mail.”
“She’s old.”
“So you were probably surprised when Levy contacted you. I’m thinking that’s what happened, isn’t it, Jonna? He probably told you how guilty he felt, how sorry he was, some bullshit like that—”
Jonna’s face darkened, but the darkness was her only reaction.
“—how Byrd had fooled him back then, but now Byrd was out there killing people and he wanted to do something about it. Am I getting close here? Ten ring? The eight?”
Bastilla said, “Take it easy, Chief. C’mon.”
Good cop, bad cop.
Bastilla took the pictures from the envelope. Each picture was in a sealed plastic sleeve. They were the actual pictures from the album, still smudged from the SID work. Bastilla dealt them out one by one. Sondra Frostokovich. Janice Evansfield. Every victim except Yvonne Bennett.
Jonna barely glanced at them as Bastilla dealt them out.
“You know Byrd didn’t take them because you gave them to him. You know the absolute truth about that. These pictures were taken by the person who murdered them. It couldn’t have been any other way.”
“You don’t know. The police took them. They take pictures like this when people are murdered.”
“Is that what Levy told you? Is that how he explained where he got them?”
Bastilla took a stapled report from the envelope and placed it in front of Jonna.
“This is the forensic analysis of the pictures. It explains how we determined when the pictures were taken. You can read it, if you want. If you don’t understand it, we can have the SID people explain what it means. We’re not lying to you about this.”
Bastilla touched the picture of Janice Evansfield and pointed out the streamer of blood. She touched the drops that had fallen from Sondra Frostokovich’s nose, then produced the coroner investigator’s photograph showing a much larger puddle. While Bastilla was explaining these things, I slipped the CI’s picture of Yvonne Bennett from the envelope and waited my turn.
Then I pushed aside the other pictures and put the Polaroid of Yvonne on the table. Jonna leaned forward when she saw her sister.
“Do you see this?”
I touched the blood bubble, then placed the CI’s picture of Yvonne beside the Polaroid so she could see the difference.
“It was a bubble made in her blood. It formed as she died. It popped a few seconds later.”
Jonna stared at the pictures, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing them.
“You know I worked for Levy on behalf of Lionel Byrd?”
Her eyes came up, but they might have been focused on something a thousand yards away.
“Uh-huh.”
Bastilla touched me under the table, and Marx smiled from the corner.
“Levy told you about me, didn’t he?”
She shook her head vaguely, then went back to the pictures.
Bastilla said, “Cole’s involvement was never mentioned on TV or in the papers. He never personally mentioned it to you, and we haven’t talked about it with you or in your presence. You would have no other way to know that he worked for Alan Levy.”
I said, “Jonna, look at me.”
Her eyes came up again, but now they seemed dull and opaque.
“Levy used me the same way he used you, and I never saw it coming. I worked with him, talked to him almost every day, and he totally played me. That’s how good he is. Lionel Byrd didn’t kill your sister. I know you believe he killed her, but he didn’t. If Levy gave you the pictures, then Levy killed her, and now we have to prove it.”
Jonna said, “Levy.”
“Levy’s been using me to find out what the police know. He’s also been pushing me to find you. I believe he intends to kill you. We know from your phone he’s been calling you a lot. We also know you haven’t been answering his calls or calling him back. I think this is because you sense something is wrong with the guy.”
Marx stepped out of the corner.
“We see you as a victim here, too. We want to handle it that way. I can’t promise you won’t pull some time, but we’ll cut a good deal. Get you a reduced sentence and early parole if you cooperate.”
She looked at Yvonne’s picture again, the close-up showing the ugly red bubble of blood. She touched it, and her face settled into the same humorless, determined lines I had seen in her high school portrait. She picked up the picture, kissed it, then dropped it with the others. She once more seemed at ease.
“What do you want?”
“A recorded admission of guilt.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
Bastilla shook her head.
“Not you. Levy. Your testimony won’t be enough. We need him to acknowledge he gave you the pictures or helped plan the murder. All he has to do is indicate he had knowledge of these things, and that would be enough.”
“You want me to call him?”
“Levy’s too smart to make an incriminating statement over the phone, but we think Cole can bring him out.”
I said, “If I find you, I’m supposed to call him.”
“So he can kill me.”
“That would be my guess. He will probably try to kill me, too.”
Bastilla said, “We would pick a secure location. We would have plenty of protection, and—”
Jonna cut her off.
“
I don’t care. I want to go get him.”
She said it without hesitation or remorse. Munson had been right. She was totally cold.
44
MARX COMMANDEERED a conference room, then called out an elite SWAT tactical team with supervisors and plus-one team leaders to plan the mission. They let me participate because my role was key—the task was not simply to capture Alan Levy, but to elicit a confession. They broke down a plan, selected a location, and deployed surveillance and tactical teams even before I made the call. We didn’t know if Levy would agree to meet, but the SWAT boys wanted everyone in place asap. If the plan changed, they would roll with it. They were the best in the business.
A surveillance technician named Frank Kilane stuck his head into the room and gave us the thumbs-up. Marx patted me on the back.
“Ready to make the call?”
I grinned, but my grin was too large and strained.
“I live for making calls like this.”
“Want some more of that coffee?”
“You trying to kill me?”
Marx grinned back with the same fractured leer.
“Not until after we get this bastard.”
Nervous humor.
Pike and Munson were waiting in the interview room, but Bastilla had moved Jonna so they could continue the interview. Frank Kilane had wired my personal cell phone into a recording monitor through a hands-free jack. We were using my phone so Levy would recognize my incoming number.
Kilane gave me the phone.
“All you have to do is use the hands-free like you normally would. Don’t worry about losing the signal. We have a pretty good signal here anyway, but I hooked you in with a booster.”
Marx waved toward the two-way glass.
“Okay, then. Everybody out. Let’s clear the room.”
They left me alone to minimize background noise.
I took Jonna’s seat. A yellow legal pad with Levy’s number and the address of the location was on the table. I was glad they thought of it.
Marx’s voice came over a hidden loudspeaker.
“Go when you’re ready.”
I dialed, and listened to the soft burring ring tone. The silence between each ring felt longer than usual, but Levy answered on the seventh ring. He sounded normal in every way.