by Cross, Mason
“The Peterson lead looks good, right?”
“The FBI’s including it,” he admitted, then glanced over at her. “Maybe they ought to include Blake, too.”
She told him about her attempts to look into his background last night and that she’d managed to confirm he’d flown into LA only after Boden was killed and from far enough away that it was unlikely he could have been here on the Saturday night. Mazzucco said nothing.
They arrived at the address in Long Beach a couple of minutes later. It was an auto-repair shop. A sign out front told them it was O’Grady’s Complete Auto Service and that they worked on foreign and domestic. They went inside and found two uniformed LBPD officers with one of the mechanics: a hulking black guy crammed into blue overalls. Sarah Dutton’s Porsche Carrera was up on a hydraulic jack, the tasteful curves of the vehicle obvious under the sheets that had been draped over it.
Allen took her badge out and introduced herself and Mazzucco to the two officers—one male and one female—and the guy in the overalls.
“We got a tipoff this guy had a stolen Porsche,” the male cop explained. “We ran the vehicle number from the chassis and it turns out it’s the one you people are looking for.”
“Whoa,” the mechanic interjected, his hands outstretched. “I told you. I don’t know nothin’ about this being stolen.”
The female cop, Officer Danniker, glanced at her notes and back up at the man. “That’s right. You said you, uh . . . found it,” she deadpanned.
The mechanic had a foot in height and at least one fifty in weight on the cop, but he still withered under her direct stare after only a couple of seconds.
“Yeah, I mean, I know a guy who found it. He brought it in. I was just about to call you guys when . . .”
He tailed off. Allen and Mazzucco exchanged a look, stood back, and let the officer continue embarrassing the guy. They just needed to tie up one piece of information, anyway.
“And this guy you know. Does he make a habit of . . . finding vehicles?”
The guy opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, as though calculating the minimum amount of help he could get away with giving. Allen shot Mazzucco a glance and he obliged.
“Maybe you didn’t catch it before, but this is a homicide investigation. We’re sure you wouldn’t want to impede us in any way. I mean, I can tell you’re an upstanding member of the community.”
The mechanic looked from Mazzucco to the uniformed officer, his eyes those of a cornered animal. He sighed and nodded reluctantly. “His name is Luis Herrera. You didn’t get it from me. He told me some white guy parked it in Watts, got out, and left the keys in and the engine running.” He glanced around his interrogators, as though expecting them to laugh at the idea of somebody walking away from an unlocked Porsche in a rough neighborhood, practically inviting it to be stolen.
If Allen hadn’t known the provenance of the car, she would indeed have found the idea ridiculous, but it made a certain amount of sense. How much easier to outsource the disposal of the vehicle. If the Samaritan had done the same thing with the other cars, chances were excellent they had been stripped down for parts or resprayed and sold on. Either way, it would be much more difficult to find them, and even if they did, the best information they could hope to get was where the cars were abandoned.
“We’ll need an address for this guy Herrera,” Allen said. “I don’t suppose he said what this vehicular philanthropist looked like?”
The mechanic drooped his head and looked up at her, playing dumb.
“The white guy who left the keys in the Porsche,” she said slowly.
He shook his head. “Nah. Said he was a creepy sumbitch, though.”
“Creepy how?”
The mechanic shrugged. “I don’t know. Crazy-looking, I guess. I told him you’d have to be.” He grinned and then looked at the covered-up Porsche, the grin fading as he remembered that finders wasn’t going to mean keepers.
They called in a forensic unit to impound the Porsche. The two LBPD officers were only too happy to pick up Luis Herrera and bring him down to the PAB for Allen to interview. The hunt for the Samaritan was a big deal, and Allen wasn’t surprised they wanted a piece of the action, however tenuous. She didn’t think it would be difficult to lever some cooperation out of Herrera. It was more than likely he’d have a record long enough that a deal on a charge relating to the theft of the Porsche would look very attractive. She doubted they’d get anything of much use, but it might help to confirm some of the physical attributes suggested by Dr. Trent.
Five minutes later, Mazzucco and Allen were in the car, headed back downtown.
“Dead end,” Mazzucco said.
“Huh?”
“If he left the Porsche on the street, you can bet it was sanitized first. We’re not gonna find anything.”
Sanitized. Allen caught that Mazzucco had used military terminology, perhaps unconsciously.
“So what about Blake?”
Mazzucco kept his eyes on the road. Didn’t say anything for a minute. “I have to check something out. I think it’ll take me a couple of hours. I’ll drop you off.”
41
They made a short detour to pick up lunch at a place Allen liked: In-N-Out Burger. She’d discovered the place not long after transferring, and was proud of her find. She ordered two cheeseburgers and asked for them “animal style”—lots of grilled onions and extra special sauce.
They ate in the car without much in the way of conversation, and then headed straight to the PAB. Mazzucco was cagey about exactly where he was going when he dropped Allen off on West First Street, but that suited her just fine. She promised to check in with him by phone soon and got out of the car, heading toward the entrance doors across the open, triangular plaza out front.
As she neared the main doors of the building, she saw a familiar figure sitting on one of the flat stone benches on the opposite side of the plaza from her. The figure raised one arm in acknowledgment and smiled behind his sunglasses. Allen looked away and at first intended to keep walking but had to stop when she heard her name called.
The tall male jogged across the space toward her, smiling. She kept her expression carefully neutral.
“Hey,” he said as he caught up with her.
“What are you doing here?”
“You haven’t been answering my calls,” he said. As though that answered everything.
“You ever think there might be a reason for that, Denny?”
Denny tried on a confused expression that looked entirely fake. “Is this about the other night?”
Allen sighed. “No. It’s about every night. I thought you got the message.”
He looked genuinely confused now. “You sent me a message?”
Jesus. Had she ever been attracted to this guy? She was amazed he had the wherewithal to dress himself in the morning.
“Denny . . .” Allen was actually grateful when she was interrupted by her cell phone buzzing. She excused herself and turned her back to him as she took the phone out. She half expected—or maybe just wanted—it to be Blake, but it was a land number with an LA area code. Which meant it had to be work because, unfortunately, everyone else she knew in LA was right here.
“Allen here.”
It was Danniker, the female LBPD officer from the garage earlier.
“We picked up Luis Herrera. We’re with him at the PAB if you can get down here.”
“Great job. I’m right outside, actually. Where are you?”
Danniker told Allen which floor and which interview room, and Allen thanked her again and hung up, turning back to Denny. He was waiting expectantly, displaying the soulful puppy-dog look that she’d mistaken for depth for too long.
“I gotta go.”
“Can I call you?”
“No, you can’t. Goodbye, Denny.”
She turned and strode toward the doors and didn’t look back.
Twenty minutes later, she was sitting down across an interview room ta
ble from Luis Herrera. Officer Danniker had remained in the room at Allen’s invitation, but was standing back against one wall, leaving plenty of space for Allen to work.
Herrera was tall and solidly built, with tattoos all over his arms. So far, he hadn’t been a lot of help, even though he’d rolled over every bit as easily as Allen had hoped when she dangled leniency on the grand theft auto charge in front of him.
“I swear, man, the dude just left it there. Keys in the fuckin’ ignition. We didn’t even do nothin’ to him.” Herrera’s eyes were wide, his voice imploring, as though he worried they’d never believe that someone would just walk away from a hundred-thousand-dollar car.
Allen reminded him that, just because somebody leaves their car unlocked, it isn’t necessarily an invitation to take it—although privately she knew that in this case it absolutely was—and then pressed him for a description of the driver.
Herrera had looked sheepish. “It was a . . . white guy?”
“You don’t sound sure,” Allen suggested.
“I’d, uh . . . I’d had a little to drink and . . .” Herrera had screwed up his face. “Hat, maybe? A ball cap?”
“Color?” she prompted. “Was there a team logo on it? Lakers? Kings?”
Herrera wriggled for a few more seconds before asking them straight out: “What kind of guy do you want me to have seen?”
Bar the formalities, that was the end of that.
She left the interview room and walked down the corridor to an adjacent room, which was empty. The windows on this side looked out on the LA Times building across the street. She stepped inside, took her phone out, and scrolled through her directory until she found a number she’d added very recently. She paused for a second, her thumb over the little telephone icon, thinking the next action through. And then she pressed it.
The call took a couple of seconds to engage; there were three rings of the electronic dial tone, and then a male voice answered.
“Detective Allen.”
“Why don’t you come on in, Mr. Blake? I think we can find some things to talk about.”
42
The new headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department on West First Street was a shiny mission statement that the department had moved past its historical problems and into a bright, new twenty-first-century future. The angular ten-story building looked almost inviting, with its wide expanses of glass and the open plaza out front.
I checked in at the desk and was escorted through a metal detector and into the building proper. The elevator took me to the fourth floor, and I was led across the expansive Robbery Homicide squad room. A few faces looked up at me with suspicion as I passed through their inner sanctum. My escort pointed out Detective Allen’s position in the maze of desks and cubicles. She was at the far end of the room, standing with her arms folded. She had on a similar outfit to the one she’d worn yesterday: a gray suit with a lavender blouse; but today she’d swept her shoulder-length blond hair back into a ponytail. From our brief meeting earlier, and the other information I’d gleaned on her, I didn’t think she was the type of person to waste a lot of time fixing her hair in the course of the day.
We shook hands. She smiled, but without warmth.
“Mr. Blake, thanks for coming in.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “You made it here fast.”
“I was close by,” I said.
She told me to follow her, and we walked through a set of doors and down a corridor with doors down one side. We stopped at one of the doors, and she put her hand on the door knob to open it, stopping at the sound of a loud voice from down the corridor.
“Allen.”
We both turned to see a tall, solidly built guy in his mid-forties approach. I heard Allen sigh, loud enough that I could tell she didn’t care if he heard it. He wore a gray suit and tie, but just from the way he moved, I got the feeling he’d be more at home in fatigues of some kind. I guessed SWAT.
“Who’s this guy?” His tone was confrontational, and he was looking at me even though the question was addressed to Allen.
“This is Carter Blake. He’s helping us on the Samaritan. Blake, this is Captain Don McCall of our Special Investigation Section.”
I held out my hand, which was ignored. I hadn’t been far off when I guessed McCall was SWAT. I knew a little about the LAPD’s SIS team, mostly from reading news stories about accusations of excessive force. SIS was the department’s tactical surveillance unit, and they had a reputation for justifying their controversial methods by getting results on tough cases. Sometimes fatal results, for the suspect.
“So who is he? You’re not FBI.”
“I’m not FBI.”
“He’s freelance. You got a problem with that, McCall?”
McCall stared at me for a few seconds, but I didn’t react. He turned back to Allen, dismissing me. “I wanted to catch you, Allen. When you get a suspect on this thing, you come to me first, before the feds, okay? We can keep our own house in order.” He glanced at me again as he said that.
“You’ll be the first to know, McCall.” Allen’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. She really wasn’t attempting to hide her feelings.
McCall moved his head sharply toward her, aggressively invading her personal space. I had to fight an urge to put a hand on his chest and push him back, but Allen didn’t flinch.
McCall smiled and shook his head. “Whatever you say, Fixer.”
He glanced at me again and shook his head before moving on down the corridor.
“Sorry about that,” Allen said when he’d gone. “He gets grumpy when he hasn’t shot anyone in a while.”
Allen opened the door and showed me into a small meeting room with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on Spring Street. There was a boardroom table that was slightly too big for the space. There was an iPad and an open laptop on the table—no paper. She walked around the table and sat down with her back to the window. I took the seat opposite.
“I take it your partner doesn’t approve of this idea, either?”
“He’s looking into something else right now. But I don’t know if either of us is entirely comfortable with this.”
“I just want to help. I take it you looked into my references?”
She nodded. “I talked to your FBI contact. Detective Mazzucco had a look at the North Carolina connection.”
“And?”
“And we’re looking into it.”
I got the point. I had my foot in the door, but genuine cooperation was going to take a lot more work.
Allen continued. “We also had a look elsewhere. Due diligence and all that. Not that you gave us much to go on. Your cell number is unregistered, no contract. I kind of expected that. There’s not a lot else to go on, though, which is funny. You don’t seem to leave much of a footprint.”
I shrugged as though there were nothing to it. “I value my privacy.”
“So it would seem,” she said. “The driver’s license is genuine, but there’s nothing else behind it. No employment or medical history. The address is in New York City; looks like an office building.”
She paused, giving me an opportunity to confirm or deny. I said nothing and waited for her to continue, to get this dance out of the way.
“I guess you only have a license because you absolutely have to, these days,” she said after a minute. “Not just to drive, but for photographic ID. Difficult to fly or rent a car without that. That’s how I knew I could expect to find your name on passenger manifests on inbound flights to LA.”
I couldn’t help but smile, impressed. Also because this helped to resolve a potential problem for us both.
“It took a little time, but I eventually got a Carter Blake flying into LAX on Sunday night from Fort Lauderdale. I was pleased to find that piece of information.”
“I’m glad you did,” I said. A look passed between us, and I knew we didn’t have to spell it out. The flight records meant that she now had a fair degree of certainty that I had been three thousand
miles from LA on the night the Samaritan had last struck. It meant we were getting off to a good start.
Allen moved the laptop to one side and put her hands on the table. “Okay. Before we go any further, I just want to know one thing.”
“That sounds fair,” I said.
“Why are you offering your services for free?”
I had anticipated the question, of course. The simple answer—because I wanted to catch him—wouldn’t satisfy a cop with an inquiring mind, which was to say any cop worth his or her salt. The complex answer, the answer that explained not just why I wanted to catch him, but how I was in a unique position to do so, was out of the question. With that in mind, I had a couple of different rationales for my apparent generosity. Depending on how suspicious Detective Allen was, the first one might be enough. It wasn’t even a distortion of the truth, not really. If Allen wanted to, she’d be able to check it out easily enough.
“Bottom line, I’m interested in the case,” I said. “Interested enough to come over here and find out more. And yes, I’ll be honest with you. I did think about offering my services on a professional basis.”
“What changed?” she prompted, watching me carefully.
I hesitated, as though I didn’t want to go further. “I drove out to the graves yesterday, just to take a look around. I ran into somebody there. Richard Boden, father of one of the victims. You know that, of course.”
Allen didn’t say anything. Her face gave nothing away.
I continued. “He was hostile at first, thought maybe I was a reporter, or maybe just a rubbernecker. We talked a while and I explained why I was there. He offered to hire me. I turned him down. I told him this one was pro bono.”
Allen smiled, and immediately I knew I’d need to exploit the other angle. “So you’re offering to provide your services for nothing, because you wanted to help. Heartwarming.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe anybody would fly across the country to pitch for business and then do the job for free. Not without a better reason than that.”