The Samaritan

by Cross, Mason

  “Tall, about your height, I guess. Dark hair, tanned. In decent shape.”

  “Has he been working for you long?” Allen asked.

  He hadn’t been. About a month, and no, Letta hadn’t bothered following up on the references. There were a couple of dozen drivers working at any given time, and beyond a small core of longtime employees, the lineup fluctuated constantly. Gryski’s work ethic and general attitude meant he would probably be leaving sooner rather than later. Letta provided us with a printout of Gryski’s scanned application form, which showed his current address in Arlington Heights, date of birth, previous employment, and social security number. His most recent employer had apparently been a gas station not far from Patriot Auto Repairs.

  Mazzucco had one last question—did Patriot receive referrals for jobs from AAA? If so, it meant the same person might have access to the details of both the Morrow and Burnett breakdowns and might even have been able to beat the AAA man to the scene on the Burnett callout. Letta looked puzzled again. “That’s right. Sometimes they throw business our way.”

  We thanked him and headed straight for the address in Arlington Heights. Before we left, Mazzucco called in the social security number—it drew a blank, meaning it was fake. It didn’t necessarily mean that Tommy Gryski was the Samaritan, of course, but it meant he had something to hide.

  We headed west in a three-car convoy: Mazzucco, then Allen, then me, taking the 10. The sun was setting into the Pacific ahead of us, the rays bouncing off smog particles to create Los Angeles’s own version of the aurora borealis.

  I had the printed scan of the job application on the passenger seat and took advantage of the pauses in motion to scan it. There was no photo, of course, but the date of birth meant Gryski was an age that Crozier could certainly pass for. Same with Letta’s description. Didn’t mean it was him; didn’t mean it wasn’t. I took my phone out and Googled the zip code of the address in Arlington Heights. It was an apartment complex, lots of rooms for rent, probably a high-turnover place. I wondered if we’d find anything at the address. If the social security number was an invention, there was a good chance the address was, too. I switched to maps and brought up a satellite image of the location. I zoomed in and swiped the image around on the screen to get a feel for the territory.

  The apartment building was located on West Adams Boulevard. The sun was all the way down as we arrived, the streetlights bathing everything in a yellow sodium wash. The building looked played-out, with a patch of dead grass out front and railings covered with damp clothes left out to dry. Mazzucco had beaten us to the address, getting lucky with the lights on the way. He was waiting for us in the car again. Allen and I parked nose to tail and got out. From close by, I heard an outburst of barking in response to the noise of our car doors.

  “Blake,” Mazzucco said, reluctantly looking at me for the first time since outside Patriot Auto Repairs. “We’d like you to wait here. We’ve bent regs enough, allowing you to come in when we were speaking to the manager, but it’s not appropriate for you to be knocking on a suspect’s door with us. I’m sure you understand.”

  Allen didn’t say anything, just gave me an apologetic glance. She understood that now would not be the time to be crossing any more lines with her partner. I understood, too. It was exactly what I’d expected Mazzucco to do.

  “Not a problem,” I said. “I’ll wait in the car.”

  “I’m not expecting trouble,” Allen said. “If this guy actually does have something to do with the abductions—which is a long shot—there’s no way he gave his real address. We’re probably about to wake up some old lady.”

  I nodded, thinking her logic on that was sound. “But at least it means we have a place to start looking for him. And if he doesn’t have anything to do with this, he might have seen something we can use on the night he went out to Morrow’s car.”

  Allen’s eyes stayed on me a fraction of a second longer than Mazzucco’s as they turned to walk into the building. I got back in the car and watched as the two detectives entered the foyer and hit the button for the elevator. Gryski’s apartment—if it was really his apartment—was on the third floor. I waited until the doors of the elevator closed; then I got out and walked down the narrow passageway at the side of the apartment building that led around to the back.

  47

  Allen patted the left side of her jacket as the elevator doors bumped shut, just to reassure herself that her Beretta was still strapped there, ready if she needed it. The apartment building was old, and it had an old, slow elevator to match. She glanced at Mazzucco, who was watching the floors gradually light up on the display.

  “I’m sorry, okay?”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “He can help us. He’s the real deal—look at the North Carolina thing. The feds hadn’t even found that one yet.”

  “I told you, that’s what worries me.”

  “And this is a good lead. We wouldn’t be here without—”

  “It might not be anything. Even if this Gryski guy knew about Morrow’s breakdown, there’s no way to tie him to the Boden abduction, for a start, because she had no way of making a call. There are a hundred reasons why people lie to their employers. And, anyway, we’d have found him ourselves soon enough.”

  Allen said nothing, let him vent without chipping in her two cents for a change.

  It seemed to work. After a moment, Mazzucco sighed. “I found the leak. Ed Federmeyer over in West division.”

  “The guy who knew you from before?”

  Mazzucco nodded. “The same. And it’s my fault, really. I should have known not to say anything important within his earshot.”

  Allen was happy. Mazzucco’s change of subject meant he was probably ready to draw a line under the issue of her freezing him out of the decision to bring in Blake, for now. She knew him well enough to know he didn’t let things go that easily if he was genuinely pissed.

  “That fucking asshole,” she said quickly. “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yeah, told him I’m reporting him to his watch commander.”

  Allen raised an eyebrow.

  “You got a problem with that, Allen?”

  “No problem.”

  Mazzucco sighed. “He’ll probably get off with some bullshit conditional reprimand, anyway.”

  The elevator pinged and the doors began to open.

  “Address is 3E, right?” she asked as they stepped out.

  Mazzucco didn’t answer. He just slammed her back into the elevator as a figure at the far end of the corridor opened fire on them, the gunshots deafening as they exploded in the cinder-block hallway.

  48

  I saw the muzzle flare on the third-floor balcony before I heard the shots. I didn’t think Allen and Mazzucco would have had time to make it to the apartment door itself, so it looked like this was a preemptive attack. That removed all doubt that Gryski had something serious to hide.

  I counted five shots. I was already halfway to the foot of the fire escape I’d seen on the satellite images, and I covered the rest of the ground quickly, staying low. The building’s street level was mostly parking space, open ground interspersed with concrete support pillars. In the space on either side, between the building and its neighbors, stands of banana plants blocked out the streetlight with their wide, rubbery leaves. I moved to the blind side of the pillar nearest the bottom step of the fire escape and waited, cursing the fact I hadn’t been able to bring a weapon. I heard footsteps above on concrete and rapid breathing. Then I heard Allen’s voice from above yelling out a warning. The footsteps paused for a second, and I heard another, closer gunshot, followed by two answering shots from higher up. I saw concrete and dust kick up as one of the slugs embedded itself in the paving at the foot of the fire escape, and then a tall figure hurled himself down the last three steps.

  I was ready, coordinated my lunge so that I caught him straight across the middle, bringing him down to the ground. He fell down face first, me on his back,
and brought the gun around. I was ready and caught it at the wrist. I added my other hand to the struggle and began trying to wrest the gun out of his hand. I tried to look at his face, but it was too dark to see.

  I started to pull the gun away and then I was knocked off of him by something big and dark. It was a dog. A big dog: a pit bull, I guessed. I rolled out of the path of its jaws as it tried to gore me, and saw Gryski take off in the corner of my peripheral vision. Seeing the fleeing prey and deciding it was more enticing, the dog went after Gryski, or whoever he was.

  “Are you okay?” Allen, suddenly at my side, her gun drawn. I turned and saw Mazzucco following down the stairs.

  I nodded. “Are you?”

  “Yeah, but only just.”

  The three of us took off after Gryski. He’d run back down the side passageway toward the street. The dog clamped its jaws around the fabric of his pant leg, but he aimed down and put a bullet in its skull at point-blank range, almost without breaking stride. Allen yelled at him that she was going to fire as we followed, but I knew it was a hollow threat. She couldn’t fire blind toward a busy street. I don’t know if he knew that, too, but either way he paid no heed to the warnings. We passed the dog, lying dead on the ground as Gryski made it to the street. I remembered its jaws snapping for my face and found it hard to locate my reserves of sympathy.

  Gryski plunged headlong across the road, causing a dark-colored SUV to swerve into the opposite lane to avoid hitting him. He made the opposite sidewalk as the horn blasted out and ducked into another alley across the street. A screech of brakes followed by a crumple of steel followed as the SUV slewed into a stationary bus in the other lane.

  “Shit!” Mazzucco yelled as we crossed the street. “Go,” he yelled at Allen. He made for the driver’s side of the SUV, where I could see a woman’s head lying against the glass at an unnatural angle.

  Allen and I tore past the wreckage and into the alley. It opened out into a courtyard, more apartment buildings facing onto the space on all sides. There were two other entrances on the north and east of the courtyard. Gryski could have taken either. Not speaking, she pointed to indicate that I should take the east route, the one closest to me.

  I ran through the arched tunnel beneath the building and came out on a main road. I looked left and right, saw only cars. No one on foot, which made the task easier. There was another row of buildings and the mouth of another alleyway across the street. I started moving across the road when I heard Allen’s voice, muffled by distance and obstructions, behind me. She was yelling at somebody, telling them to drop something. I turned on my heel and ran back the way I’d come. As I emerged from the archway into the courtyard, I heard two gunshots in quick succession from the opposite tunnel and ran toward the sound.

  “It’s okay,” Allen’s voice called out. “Clear.”

  I passed through the tunnel and out into another alleyway. Gryski was sitting with his legs drawn up in the corner. His head was bowed, his left hand clutching a bloody wound on his left arm, and his weapon lying on the ground.

  “He shot first,” Allen said, as she took a couple of steps forward and kicked Gryski’s gun farther away. She looked like she was in a little bit of shock, but I knew she’d snap out of it in a few moments.

  I knelt down beside Gryski and he looked up at me, seething.

  “Pieprzyc´ twoja˛ matke˛!”

  I ignored the suggestion—my mother’s not around anymore, anyway—and examined his features. Pockmarked skin, a hook nose, bushy eyebrows. Blue eyes. Definitely not Dean Crozier. Definitely not the Samaritan.

  49

  “What did he say?” Allen asked, watching as Blake examined the wounded suspect.

  “Nothing important.” Blake looked up at her. There was consternation in his expression, as though he hadn’t found what he’d expected to. Allen was still optimistic. If Gryski was the Samaritan, they might find evidence in his apartment.

  “I know you speak English,” Blake said, addressing Gryski. “Why did you run?”

  Gryski turned his face away from them both. “I want a lawyer.”

  Blake shook his head and stood up. “Are you okay?” he said, his eyes gliding over the length of Allen’s body, looking for evidence of injury.

  “I’m fine. I guess he decided it would be safer to try to shoot me than to try to outrun me.” She pointed at Gryski’s left leg. The fabric of his jeans was torn and there was quite a lot of blood. It looked like the dog had taken a good chunk out of him. When she’d emerged from the tunnel beneath the apartment building, he’d been waiting and had opened fire. The second time he’d tried to kill a cop in as many minutes, and thankfully, his aim hadn’t improved any. She was glad she hadn’t had to kill him, if only because it meant they would have the opportunity to interrogate him.

  “His mistake,” Blake said.

  He got up and paced around the space, ignoring more insults in Polish and some in English as Allen called in the shooting. As she expected, they told her to stay put and that they’d have uniforms on the scene ASAP. She glanced back down the corridor, wondering what was keeping Mazzucco. Surely he’d have handed over the road accident to paramedics by now. It had been several minutes.

  “I have to wait here,” she said to Blake. “You should go, check out the apartment with Mazzucco. Maybe—”

  Blake was shaking his head. He pulled her a few steps away from Gryski and lowered his voice “I don’t think this is our guy, Allen.”

  “How do—” Allen stopped mid-sentence as she heard footsteps approaching from behind them. She turned to see Mazzucco, a grim look on his face, the phone in his right hand.

  He took in the scene, glanced at Allen to check she was okay, then looked at Blake. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  “It was me,” Allen said. “He shot first.”

  “Jesus,” Mazzucco said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Well, at least that’s one piece of good news.”

  “What do you mean?” Blake asked.

  “I just took a call from Lawrence. They found an abandoned car downtown. Blood on the seats.”

  Allen took a second to register what her partner meant. “Burnett’s car? Or Morrow’s?”

  “Neither. This happened tonight.”

  50

  It didn’t take long for some uniformed officers and an ambulance to show up and take Gryski off our hands. The paramedics treated Gryski’s shoulder while the uniforms took statements from Allen and Mazzucco. The chain of events was easy to relay and for them to confirm. Allen and Mazzucco directed them to the secondary crime scene in the corridor outside Gryski’s apartment. The officers checked Allen out and told her the Force Investigation Division would have to speak to her in the morning, which was routine for an officer-involved shooting, but that it would likely be a formality, given the circumstances. The ambulance took Gryski to the hospital, where the cops could read him his rights and start to figure out who he was and why he’d run.

  We were all set to drive to the scene of the abandoned car when Allen took another call that made that journey redundant: the body of the vehicle’s owner had been found dumped in an alley not far from where her bloodstained car was reported.

  Forty minutes later, we were at the scene of the Samaritan’s latest killing: an anonymous alleyway running between two buildings a couple of blocks from the Staples Center. All of the standard players had moved quickly, according to their designated roles. FBI forensics were on the scene, their work well underway. Uniformed LAPD officers had blocked off a perimeter at both ends of the alley. Traditional media and the paparazzi were jostling for attention. Their airborne corps hung overhead in at least two helicopters that I spotted. Such was the speed of twenty-first century media that I found out the victim’s name—unconfirmed as yet—before Allen or Mazzucco, by browsing local news websites. The car had been found abandoned in Valencia Street, a secondary road running between West Pico and Venice Boulevards. A jogger had reported a parked car with the door partially
open so the illumination from the dome light revealed bloodstains on the upholstery. The LAPD had locked that scene down quickly, too, but they hadn’t been able to prevent the license plate being grabbed by long-lens cameras, illegally checked and matched to one Alejandra Castillo, a clerk from Silver Lake.

  We were escorted by one of the uniforms past the barriers and into the alley. Thirty yards in, there was a cluster of activity around the body. There were no surprises based on the information I’d already heard. The victim was a young Hispanic woman. She wore a dark skirt and a white blouse—work-wear, as though she’d been on her way home from the office. She was in a sitting position, propped up against one wall of the alley, as though asleep or drunk. Not that someone would make that mistake with even a cursory glance.

  A waterfall of crimson had stained the front of her clothes below her head, which rested on her chest. It didn’t look like there were any other marks on the body, though it was impossible to tell for sure. The blood had pooled on the ground, meaning this wasn’t just the disposal site, but the primary murder scene. I counted the points of difference: three significant deviations from the previous LA killings already, just on a first look.

  Allen and I hung back on the fringes of the small crowd and let Mazzucco move in close as the representative of the latest contingent to arrive. He glanced under the dead woman’s chin and nodded. He turned his head to look at one of the FBI forensics. “Silly question, but preliminary COD?”

  “Bets are closed on this one, Detective. Massive exsanguination from the jugular artery. Looks like one cut, left to right. Perpetrator was probably behind the victim at the time, or he was a lefty. We’ll confirm soon enough.”

  “Any signs of torture? Strangulation or anything?”

  “Not so far, but you know the routine: wait for the autopsy.”