by Cross, Mason
So perhaps Channing’s idea of an accomplice was on the money. Two men carrying out the murders, allowing Blake to be in Florida while his colleague murdered Boden. It wouldn’t be the first such setup.
And yet it felt wrong. It was ridiculous, but she felt as though she knew Blake already. Even more ridiculous, she trusted him.
She cast around for something else to occupy her mind and alighted on the picture she’d found at the house. She waited until the traffic inevitably bunched up and took advantage of the pause to look at the copy she’d taken on her phone. A boy and a girl and a building. Somewhere warm, a desert climate. Maybe LA, maybe the surface of Mars. What was the nagging feeling of familiarity about the picture, then? She looked again at the faces. Young, fresh-faced. Although the hair color was different, there was a mild similarity about the features, as though they could be related—brother and sister, cousins perhaps. Her smiling, him looking serious.
It was no use. Given the vintage of the image, there was no way the two people in this photograph still looked much like they did here. If they were even still alive. Given her physical similarity to the Samaritan’s first three LA victims, Allen thought that was particularly unlikely in her case.
A chorus of angry horns erupted behind her and she looked up to see the traffic had started to move again. She flipped the bird to the closest car almost automatically and put her foot down on the gas pedal again.
By the time she reached her apartment, she decided a hot shower would be more beneficial than the cup of coffee. First, though, she went into the bedroom and took the box containing her personal gun out from the drawer beside the bed. It was a Beretta 92FS, the same model as her department-issue weapon. She loaded it and slid it into the holster. That matter taken care of, she undressed, tossing her clothes carelessly on the bed, and walked back down the hall to the bathroom. She stepped into the shower cubicle, turned the water on, and stepped under the stream.
She closed her eyes and let the jets of water bounce off her face and cascade down her body. She saw the photograph again, as though it were projected against the backs of her eyelids. Where did the weird sense of familiarity originate? She was almost positive she’d never seen either of the kids in the picture before.
And then it hit her. It wasn’t the people; it was the building in the background. The neon sign that was switched off, or maybe broken: S-T-E something. She opened her eyes and wiped the water out of them with the thumb and index finger of her right hand. The rest of the word spelled out in the neon tubing did not read Steve’s Place or Steve’s Diner or Steve’s anything. It read Stewarton’s.
She knew this even though she’d never seen the building with her own eyes. She felt a twinge of doubt, wondering if this was a trick of memory, something she’d remembered almost correctly but subconsciously twisted to fit the sign in the photograph. No, she was 99 percent certain. And there was an easy way to make that a hundred.
Allen turned the shower off and stepped out of the cubicle, grabbing a towel and briskly wiping the moisture from her skin and hair. She wrapped it around herself and walked through the open bathroom door into the hallway. As she turned in the direction of the living room, she happened to glance at the front door.
Something wasn’t right.
She froze mid-stride and looked at the door until she worked out what it was: the lock. When she’d come in, she’d let the door close again on the latch, the way she always did. But she could see from the position of the handle on the latch that it hadn’t just clicked into place and stayed that way. The handle had been twisted around and, when she looked closely, she could see that the second dead bolt had been engaged. The door was double locked, and she hadn’t done it. She never double locked during the day, only at nighttime.
Her breath caught in her throat as she stood in the hallway, occasional drips of water from her still-wet body tapping softly on the wood flooring.
Someone had unlocked the door, entered the apartment, and then double locked the door again. You couldn’t engage the dead bolt from outside, so that meant that someone was still in the apartment, with Allen. And that someone would have known she was in the shower and would know she’d just turned the shower off.
She listened. There was no sound but the occasional drips on the floor and from within the shower cubicle. She glanced left and right down the hall. On her left was ten feet of hall and then the door to the bedroom. On the right, the kitchen on one side and the living room at the far end. She made her mind up quickly to head for the bedroom, for one very good reason: it was where she’d left her clothes, and with them, her gun.
She moved slowly. One foot and then another, alternating between looking straight ahead and casting furtive glances over her shoulder. She resisted the temptation to run, because she didn’t know if she’d be running into the arms of the intruder, if he’d decided to wait in the bedroom. A shiver traveled along the still-moist and suddenly cold flesh of her back as she thought about the implications of that: of the choice to lie in wait in her bedroom.
She wondered how long it had been since she’d stepped into the hall and noticed the dead bolt. Realistically, she knew it could not have been more than a minute or so, but it felt like an hour. Whoever was in here would have noticed the hesitation and that she hadn’t made any noise since.
Allen realized she was still holding her breath as she approached the bedroom door, which was open. Had she left it that way? She couldn’t remember. She got within a foot of the door and stopped to see how much of the room she could see in the gap between the door and the jamb. A frustratingly small field of vision, was what. There was no one in her line of sight, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be someone standing by the window, or standing on the blind side of the door.
What she could see was part of her unmade bed. She could also see her coat discarded on top of the duvet, a bump showing where she’d tossed her shoulder holster before dropping the jacket on top of it. She reminded herself not to start feeling too relieved—there might still be someone standing between her and the gun. She glanced behind her and let the held breath out slowly and silently. Another breath and she opened the door, eyes scanning the room even as her hands made straight for the bulge under the jacket. She ripped the jacket off the bed as her eyes swept the room to confirm it was empty.
But then she heard the hard click of a shoe stepping onto the wood floor of the hall behind her, joined a second later by another. She looked down at the holster, guessing she probably had time to get the gun out, disengage the safety, and be covering the door before—
Allen stared down at the bed in disbelief. The leather holster and shoulder strap was still there, approximately where it had landed ten minutes ago.
But the gun had vanished.
66
“Afternoon, Agent.”
Agent Jim Channing looked back at the doorway of the house that was being virtually taken apart by his agents and saw Detective Mazzucco standing there, cradling a sandwich bag in one hand and two cups of coffee in a cardboard drinks holder in the other.
“Looking for Allen?”
Mazzucco hesitated before answering. “Allen’s on suspension.”
Channing smiled. “She happened to stop by. You just missed her, in fact. She said she had someplace to be.”
Mazzucco said nothing. His eyes flickered to either side of Channing, as though not entirely sure whether to believe him. Then he shrugged and nodded at the cups of coffee. “I guess I have some going spare, then,” he said, holding the tray out for Channing to take one. He accepted the offering with a nod.
“How we doing here?” Mazzucco asked as Channing sipped the coffee.
Channing suppressed a grimace as he realized the latte had at least three sugars in it, but swallowed anyway. “Not a lot to find,” he said, casting his gaze around the hallway and into the bedroom. “Besides the torture kit—which, of course, could be explained away by any halfway-decent defense attorney, if it ever get
s that far—all we know is that somebody’s been living here for a while and that they seem to lead a pretty spartan existence. A couple days’ worth of food in the refrigerator, nothing fancy. A few books, including the Bible, some clothes and some electronic odds and ends. Nothing to suggest anybody was ever held here against their will—no blood, no female personal effects, nothing like that. We looked up the name on the lease and found out there wasn’t one. This place was repossessed by the bank in 2009 and hasn’t been inhabited since. I guess there are enough of these empty places these days that the banks don’t notice a few squatters, huh?”
Mazzucco took a sip of his coffee and said nothing, waiting for Channing to continue. A classic interrogation technique. Channing dry-swallowed to try to get the sugary aftertaste out of his mouth and depressed the raised buttons in the plastic lid, as he habitually did. He decided to take the same tack as he had with Allen, see how it went down with her partner.
“Tell you the truth, Detective Mazzucco . . . Jon, is it?”
Mazzucco nodded slowly, as if reluctant to confirm or deny.
“I’m not sure this lead is going to take us anyplace. I mean, sure, the connection with the warehouse down in Inglewood is interesting, if it was the same guy . . .”
Mazzucco cut in sharply. “And what about the guy in the green Dodge, hightailing it as soon as he sniffed cop?”
Channing shrugged as though he didn’t have a particular dog in this fight. “It’s a good point. Definitely worth investigating. But if the guy’s living here illegally, that’s reason enough for him to pull a fade, isn’t it?”
Mazzucco had opened his mouth to reply when Channing felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw it was Agent Moreno, a tall, twentysomething woman in her first year out of the academy. She looked serious, as though something had caught her by surprise for the first time on this job.
“What have you got for me, Isabella?”
Moreno looked uncomfortable, glanced at Mazzucco, who was watching with fresh interest.
“It’s about the prints, sir. We heard back from the lab.” She inclined her head toward the living room of the house, suggesting that Channing might want to speak in privacy. He was intrigued, but he didn’t want to break the moment with Mazzucco by overtly freezing him out. He nodded at the detective and smiled at Moreno.
“It’s okay. You can go ahead. We’re all on the same team here, right?”
Moreno’s discomfort seemed to heighten. She stared at Channing for a moment longer before relenting. “The lab followed what they tell me is the standard procedure, albeit with a rush. They ran the prints through the local databases first, checked out anything held by local law enforcement.” She glanced at Mazzucco as she said this.
“And?”
“And the search triggered a DR17.”
“A DR17?”
“It’s a flag, in this case from Homeland Security. It means forget you asked.”
Channing’s eyes narrowed. All of a sudden, he was starting to regret having this conversation in front of Mazzucco, but it was too late now.
“Okay,” he said, making sure to keep his voice even and unrattled. “So what happened when we ran them using the national database?”
“That’s the weird thing, sir. They put the prints through the VICAP database next.” The acronym stood for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—a nationwide database used to map similarities between violent crimes crossing state lines, available only to the Bureau and cops who put their request in writing and ask nicely.
Moreno continued. “We got a hit on the prints there and a little more information. But I’m told we can expect a call from somebody in DHS.”
“Well, who is he?” Channing prompted, careful not to betray how impatient she was making him. He expected she was about to tell him that the prints matched one of the murders in another state. He was not prepared for what she actually said.
“He’s a dead man, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dean Crozier, born right here in LA in 1980, signed up for the army in ninety-eight, KIA 2004 in Afghanistan. He’s been dead for over a decade.”
Channing glanced in Mazzucco’s direction, wishing he could erase the cop’s memory of the previous three minutes. Mazzucco’s face was impassive. He took another sip of his coffee as he watched the show.
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Those prints come from this house. They’re all over this house, the same prints. They were left here by somebody recently.”
Moreno stared back at him wide-eyed, as though worried that he wanted her to explain this apparent impossibility on the spot.
“Thank you, Agent,” Channing said, dismissing her with a strained smile. Moreno gratefully turned away and headed outside.
Mazzucco watched her as she went. He raised his eyebrows at Channing. “First time I heard of a legally dead squatter.”
Channing put the sugary coffee down on the floor and approached Mazzucco. Mazzucco didn’t move, didn’t back off, just returned his gaze and let the hint of a smile play over his lips.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Detective. Meantime, our number one priority is still tracking down Carter Blake.”
“Let me guess. No progress on that, either?”
Channing let the implied insult go. “Your partner seems to have gotten quite attached to this guy.”
“She tell you that?”
“She has a habit of doing her own thing. Isn’t that right?”
Mazzucco said nothing for a minute, then looked away. “I think I’ll head back down to headquarters. I need to check in with the lieutenant.”
Channing smiled. “Be careful, Detective. It’s easy to be led astray, particularly when it’s your partner who’s doing the leading.”
Mazzucco nodded and turned back toward the doorway.
“Enjoy the coffee, Agent.”
Channing watched Mazzucco’s back as he walked down the path toward the sidewalk and waited until he’d vanished from view. Then he took his cell phone out and dialed a number that he’d added very recently. There were a couple of rings, and then a gruff, harried voice answered.
“McCall.”
“Captain McCall, it’s Agent Jim Channing, FBI.”
“Oh yeah?” The voice betrayed surprise, along with immediate suspicion.
“How’s your guy doing, the one Blake assaulted?”
“He’ll live. You make a habit of expressing your concern for on-the-job injuries, or is this a social call?”
Channing smiled. “Actually, I wanted to get your opinion on one of your colleagues. Jessica Allen.”
67
I sat back on Allen’s leather couch, trying to rub some sensation back into the left side of my jaw while I waited for her to come back through.
After a minute, she appeared at the door, having wrapped a hand towel around her wet hair and quickly dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She didn’t look any less pissed off than she had a couple of minutes before.
“You want some ice or something for that?” she asked curtly.
I shook my head. I’d let her take the swing at me; figured she deserved it.
“What the hell are you doing breaking into my apartment, Blake? I thought you were him.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around.”
“Where’s my gun?”
I nodded at the television table, on top of which I’d left her gun after taking the precaution of moving it from where she’d expected it to be. Given her violent reaction to seeing me, I decided it had been a sensible precaution.
“I was worried you might not give me a chance to explain.”
Allen kept her eyes fixed on me as she crossed the room and picked the gun up. She ejected the magazine and checked the load, then clicked it back into place. She didn’t point it at me or anything, but I noticed that she didn’t put it down again either.
“So explain.”
“You want to sit down, or—?”
“I�
��m fine.”
“I didn’t kill the girl in the warehouse. I got there ten minutes before the cops did—it was a setup. That must have crossed your mind, right? The guy you’re looking for isn’t that sloppy.”
“Let’s say I thought there might be more than meets the eye. Keep going.”
“Somehow he found the hotel where I was staying. He called me up last night, wanted to talk.”
“He called you. The Samaritan called you.”
“Yeah. I think he tailed me from the scene of the first murder last night, the one in the alley.”
“Wait a second. Why would he be interested in you? You’re not even an official part of this investigation.”
I’d been hoping she might not pick up on that.
“I think he noticed I was helping you. He decided to check me out and then decided I was a nice, expendable individual who wasn’t any kind of cop and wouldn’t be believed if I was found in a warehouse with the latest victim.”
Allen waited to see if I was going to say anything further. When I didn’t, she brought the gun up to cover me and moved over to where she’d left her cordless phone on a shelf of the bookcase. She picked it up, eyes still on me, and began to dial a number.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling it in. I’m going to tell them I’m holding Carter Blake at gunpoint and I’d like them to come get him.”
“Wait a second. I thought you believed me.”
“I didn’t say that. I had some doubts about the way things went down at the warehouse. But I don’t believe a goddamn word of what you just said.”
“It’s the truth, Allen. He tracked me down, called me up, and led me to the warehouse like an idiot. I was so eager to nail him I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“That’s not the part I’m talking about, and you know it. Whoever set you up didn’t pick you at random. And you didn’t pick this case at random either, did you, Blake?”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. And then she dialed three more digits, the tones sounding like a discordant advertising jingle.