Furyk sat in a stiff metal chair in one of the data rooms at the station where Prole’s homicide squad worked a 12-hour shift upstairs. A couple of detectives and one uniformed officer were at other consoles, leaving at least half a dozen more open. Even in the handful of years since Prole’s abrupt departure from the cop’s life, the critical role of technology had grown exponentially. Every cop knew about running database queries, whether they knew the lingo or not, and the old days of relying on some geek to do the most basic forensic or investigative work using powerful centralized computers were over. There was still an art to it, and specialists had the subtle, nuanced skills to tease apart complex, interwoven data that could reveal a pattern or find a mote of information in a vast cloud of data. But most of the time, common sense and a lack of Luddite stupidity were enough for the job. Furyk was a hunt-and-peck typist, but he’d been involved in enough freelance projects in the last few years to have picked up a rhythm for sifting through records. Now, he had a half-inch thick folder sitting to his left while he typed on the keyboard. Small partitions separated the computer users, like in a college library, and if anyone in the room recognized him they didn’t try peering around the edges to confirm it or give him a hard time.
Ching’s sheet was impressive. All the things Prole had mentioned plus a few catch-and-release arrests for battery, assault, and busting up a couple of apartments. Not much seemed to stick to him, but the rap that had him in jail until the day before he started shooting at Furyk seemed more substantial. Apparently, the dead gangster had been in an alley behind a 7-Eleven smashing a guy’s head into the white paint on the brick wall. It had been dripping red with blood when the patrol officers arrived after a 911 call from the kid in the store who’d been crouched behind the counter doing Hail Marys and hoping the guy doing the bashing wouldn’t be hungry after all that work and need a burrito. Ching had been irritated at being interrupted by the cops and kicked the first officer in the nuts hard enough to send him to the hospital. The second cop would have shot, or at least beaten his partner’s assailant, but Ching had turned back to the bloodied man he’d been working over. The cop decided to Taser him instead.
The attempted murder charge, likely to turn into a full-on homicide case since the victim was on a respirator and both pupils were fixed and dilated within hours of getting to the hospital, seemed open and shut. Until a witness appeared to say Ching had been defending himself. A gun on the scene had the comatose victim’s fingerprints on it and the witness – ironically, the fearful teenaged cashier at the 7-Eleven who lived in the neighborhood and didn’t have enough money to move to a safer part of town – swore up and down it was self defense. One thing stood out. The investigating officer’s name was familiar. Cordoza. That part was in the computer, not the paper record. Furyk searched through all the details. Checking the badge number, it was what he’d figured. Rafael Cordoza, who still had a bone chip floating in his left cheek from the night Furyk had involuntarily left the force. Two inches taller than Furyk, at least as strong, and ugly in a way that made women look twice and then want to sleep with him. Cordoza was a prick, and a dangerous one. He and Ching could trade places and no one would think twice. It made Furyk’s stomach tighten just to see the name on the screen.
Brant sat with Margolin standing slightly behind him, the laptop on the Sheriff’s desk. The copy of Wick’s patient data was three weeks out of date. The most current version was kept on Wick’s personal computer, which sat not far from Furyk in the evidence room at the police station. Once a month, Wick had emailed a clean, current copy to Margolin. He also emailed a copy of the files to himself, at a web-based email address where you could store half a dozen gigabytes of information for free. Hundreds of massive servers located in Arlington, Virginia held the emails, pictures, and random data of fifty million people who would rather store it there than on their personal computers at home or the office. All it took was an internet connection to be able to read whatever was in your mailbox from anywhere in the world. Safer than stacks of paper in a filing cabinet.
Wick’s penchant for keeping photographs of all his patients made this much easier. When Prole had been skimming through the records a few days earlier, she hadn’t known why the pictures were there. Brant and Margolin did. Margolin clicked the mouse a few times on some buttons near the top of the open program on the screen, then reached around Brant to type a few keystrokes. He didn’t like being so close to Brant, though better under these circumstances than the experiences last night and in the park. The records on the screen quickly sorted by age and gender and the results narrowed. Thirty-seven lines with names and small thumbnail images next to each one. About twenty showed on the screen, the rest visible only when they scrolled down.
Brant squinted. “Make ‘em bigger. I can’t see shit.”
“I can’t do that. If I select one, then it will go to that record and fill the screen. You’d have to look at them one at a time that way.”
Brant turned his face up to Margolin, who was standing and still leaning in close to the Sheriff. “Well that’s exactly what the fuck I wanna do, counselor. You got someplace you need to be?”
Margolin backed off, still able to see the screen but no longer so close he could see each individual piece of stubble on the Sheriff’s face. “Just click the first picture, and there will be a “Next” button to get to the…next one.”
Brant shook his head and took the mouse. Clicking hard on the button, he brought up the image of the first girl. Plump face, light hair, bad skin. He snorted and clicked the Next button. Thin, orange hair, smooth skin and nice breasts. Next. Brown hair, long and dirty, great neck. Next. Fifteen more times. Different looks, similar looks, some cocky, others coy or a little scared.
The ninth one was it. “That’s the little bitch. Dirtier and more scared last night, but that’s her.” Margolin leaned back in and looked at the half-smiling face of Felicia. There was, in fact, a strong resemblance to Cheyenne, but maybe no more than the rest of the girls.
“I recognize her. Wick introduced her, a couple months ago. She was new.” Margolin pointed to another button on the screen, labeled History. Brant clicked it and a page of text replaced the picture of Felicia. Full name, referring agency, a comment about it being pro bono work, and then notes from sessions with the girl. There were three screens full, dates separating the handful of paragraphs from each session. Wick’s writing style was terse. Incomplete sentences describing a downtrodden girl subjected to abuse at home. A runaway. No family in the area. The last entry was dated a week ago and it had an asterisk next to it. At the bottom was a series of initials and a date that indicated a time three days after these final notes. Margolin and Brant both recognized the three-letter initials of the Los Angeles City Councilman who had been in Wick’s office the previous day.
Both men sat silently for a moment, Brant’s heavy breathing filling the tight space.
“Why would she be outside my house? What was she doing?” Margolin didn’t make the connection that was obvious to Brant. The Sheriff went back to the picture and hit Print. While the soft whir of the laser printer began, he pulled up the notes and printed them too. He needed to find the girl. She’d been drawn to the neighborhood, enough to stand in the damp night air and peer into Margolin’s house. Where else had she been visiting, in that part of Brentwood?
“Get out. Go to work and keep your mouth shut.” Brant didn’t turn around as Margolin started to answer, but instead closed his half-open mouth and quietly went around the Sheriff’s desk and out the door.
Brant hit some more keys and brought up a blank email window. He typed in an address that would send the email straight to the handheld device he knew Cordoza carried. Attaching Felicia’s picture, he hit Send without adding a subject line or any other information. He’d do that by phone. He pulled open the top drawer in his desk and took out a new disposable cell phone. Fifty bucks for a thousand minutes, then you tossed it in the trash. No account, no long term calling
plan – and no credit card records. The drug dealers loved them. Brant dialed a number that went straight into voicemail and left an address and brief instructions. When he was done, his thick hands broke the flimsy flip phone in two with a twist and he dropped the pieces into his pocket to throw away later. Less than one minute used out of the thousand. Seemed a waste.
Chapter Seventy
Nothing connected Furyk to Ching except Cordoza. And that was probably coincidence. Except Furyk didn’t believe in coincidence when someone was shooting at him. Cordoza collars an ugly prick like Ching, a few days later the guy walks and within twenty-four hours Furyk is in a death lock and gut-stabbing him. The problem was that if Cordoza wanted to do Furyk, he’d find a way to make it happen himself, up close and personal. The only time Furyk had seen him since leaving the force was at a trial a few months after where Furyk had to testify against a perp he’d caught when he still had a badge. Outside the dingy courtroom, Cordoza had crossed the hall and pushed half a dozen people out of his way to get to him, including a couple of uniformed cops and at least one captain. Furyk didn’t move an inch, except to take his hands out of his pockets. Only the appearance of the clerk who called Furyk in to testify – from an open door that gave the judge on the bench a clear view of the hallway – kept Cordoza from taking a swing. He got as close as six inches, his leering face bent down toward Furyk’s. The tight bandage covering his left cheek held the bone taut until it healed and was an ugly reminder of the last time he got this close to Furyk a few months earlier. Furyk blinked, more to block the foul breath coming from Cordoza than to show any concern. Low and angry, Cordoza growled a threat that contained more expletives than useful verbs, but Furyk got the meaning. No, Cordoza wouldn’t send a lackey.
Whoever kicked Ching from jail, or pulled the strings to make it happen, instigated the attack. That should have been a short list, but wasn’t. Crooks with a lot of money had plenty of influence in L.A. Any powerful or rich guy with a friend in the DA’s office, or LAPD, or Sheriff’s department could find the levers to get someone out if they were really motivated. Furyk had to think about who he’d pissed off lately. That list was also pretty long, but without a lot of recent additions. Most of the people he irritated now didn’t have the contacts or the balls to get a jail cell opened for a guy like Ching. Could be an old grudge, but it would have to be someone patient, someone who didn’t cool down over time. That happened in the movies, but not in real life – people who were pissed off enough to want to kill you either tried or their anger faded. Cordoza was an exception. He’d stay pissed off forever. But something would have to trigger him or someone else to suddenly act on it. And there was nothing.
Furyk leaned back in the chair, tilting it precariously and keeping himself balanced by putting a foot on the console where the computer screen still showed Ching’s sheet. His shoulders were stiff and he needed a workout or a pill. Kneading the sorest part near his neck, he decided on a workout later that morning. After that he needed to get his mind off of Ching and back to helping Merrill. There was no way she had stabbed her husband, watched some Home Shopping Network, ordered a few expensive but fake diamond earrings, and then gone back down to watch him die. He’d need more than just that, but it was a good start.
With a jerk of the leg, Furyk pulled his foot off the desk and the chair slammed to the ground with a loud retort that caused two of the cops in the computer room to turn their heads instinctively. He ignored them and hunched over the keyboard. Carl Wick’s death. How goddamned stupid and out of practice did Furyk have to be? High profile case, and Furyk poking his nose around. Maybe he’d stepped on some toes. He started typing to try to find out who he was pissing off.
Chapter Seventy-One
Once she stopped running and caught her breath, Felicia made it back to Wick’s street in about ten minutes. The mid-morning chill was beginning to burn off and the emerging heat of the sun was on her back as she headed west. Her head repeatedly swiveled around, checking for the crazed woman or the car that seemed to have been following her last night, but the blinding glare from the sun would have covered the approach of either. Emboldened by her decision to confront Merrill, she stayed on the sidewalks and grassways of the houses she passed. The slap of her torn sneakers on cement was louder as she passed lawns with no sprinklers yet awake and faded against the thup-thup of water being sprayed across vast green expanses of the others. The Wick house had run their sprinklers the night before and the grass was dewy from the cool night instead. She marched up the gravel walkway and didn’t hesitate until she was at the top of the two slate steps. Finger poised over the doorbell, she stopped. She knew what she wanted to accomplish, but hadn’t given a thought to what exactly she would say. Like a child practicing lines before a high school play, she moved her lips and tested out a few words.
“Hello, Mrs. Wick. You don’t know me, but I know you didn’t kill Dr. Wick. I did.” She pushed the doorbell and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her other arm.
Chapter Seventy-Two
The records in the computer on the Wick murder were scanty. Not surprising, since Prole wasn’t as diligent in her paperwork as in her police skills. The notes all existed – she was meticulous in gathering information and getting all her ducks in a row – but typing it into the database or scanning her reports into the computer were low on her list. He’d have to get the working case file. Heading upstairs, walking through the halls and offices where the uniformed and plainclothes cops shuttled between desks and labs and the bathroom, wasn’t at the top of Furyk’s list of ways to spend the morning. He didn’t have a lot of fans in the building.
He pulled out his cell as he logged off the terminal and headed to the door of the computer room. Prole didn’t answer. He left a message telling her what he needed and headed down the wide stairs to the entrance of the station. He didn’t recognize any of the faces of the cops who were headed up the other side of the steps, though one kid in his late twenties seemed to give Furyk a long once-over as they passed. That still happened a lot, sometimes on the street. Maybe stories got passed down, one generation to the next. Furyk ignored it and made his way through the heavy glass doors and around the corner to where he’d parked the Honda in a lot that charged $11.99 for all-day parking. The drive to Brentwood would take about thirty-five minutes, the official rush hour having ended a little while ago and the traffic subsiding from a stand-still to a miserable crawl.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Merrill Wick opened the door and her curiosity was overwhelmed by an instant sadness at the sight of the girl standing on the soaking welcome mat. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a bed for a week and smelled as though a shower were at least that long in the past. Merrill looked into the street for the car that must have driven the girl to the neighborhood. The pimp or the handler, like in the news stories she’d seen on television about homeless kids scooped up from the street and taken to expensive areas where they sold magazine subscriptions or chocolates or just asked for donations, all in the name of some false charity that would help them get their lives back together again. There was no car and the girl wasn’t carrying any box with candies or a clipboard to take Merrill’s order for Time or Vogue. She just stood, shoulders drooping, looking as though she wanted to bolt but resigned to keeping herself on this spot until lightning struck or she was invited in.
“You poor dear. Are you lost?” It was a foolish question, but it was instinctive and Merrill felt the answer was somehow “yes.”
Felicia opened her mouth but nothing came out. Her eyes flicked toward Merrill’s face, then away. Suddenly very interested in the tops of her shoes, she thought hard about how to start. There was no right way.
“I’m cold.”
Merrill stood away from the door, hugging the handle, inviting the girl in. She was no older than Cheyenne, maybe a year younger. And she needed help. A girl who needed help. An ache in her heart made her clutch her hand to her chest.
“I have som
e hot cocoa. In the kitchen. Come in.”
Felicia looked back at her feet and kept her gaze down as she walked through the door, not looking up as she found her way to the kitchen and across the tiled floor to the sink past the island countertop. Merrill didn’t register how easily the girl found the kitchen without looking up.
She followed the girl in and didn’t tell her to sit down or take off her wet shoes. Merrill busied herself taking one of the copper pots from above the island and pouring milk to heat on one of the burners. Felicia turned away from the window and watched Merrill slowly stirring the milk with a wooden spoon, adding chocolate syrup as the steam began to rise. Not a word was spoken during the five minutes. Merrill knew she should have been uncomfortable, but wasn’t. The girl needed her.
Taking two heavy mugs with pictures of smiling cows out of the cupboard, she poured both full of hot chocolate, the sound distinctive and soothing as the mugs filled. She handed one to the girl who silently accepted it, mimicking Merrill who blew gently across the surface of her own and watched the steam swirl away. But Felicia didn’t take a sip when Merrill did. Instead, she held the mug near her face and let the heat make her eyes run. Standing just a few feet from Merrill, finally noticing that the woman’s face was heavy from sleep and the eyes groggy and not completely focused, Felicia found the courage.
“I’ve been seeing the news. I know what they say you did. But…” Merrill’s eyes widened, not expecting to be discussing her husband’s murder instead of being asked to find a $20 bill to help the girl buy a meal or take a taxi home. She took another small sip of cocoa and the girl’s hesitation ended. “But…I know you didn’t do it. I know, because, because I was…” Felicia knew what she wanted to say, could feel the words forming in her mouth, but couldn’t make them come out. Merrill’s eyes seemed to sharpen their focus.
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