by Cross, Mason
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.
“One more digit, Blake. I press it, and time’s up.”
“Wait.”
She held a finger poised on the last button, turned her face to me expectantly.
“What gave me away?” I asked.
Allen didn’t put the phone down, but she did move her finger away from the button. “I never really bought the idea you’d come all the way out here on a whim. You showed up within hours of the story hitting the news. That tells me you wanted in on this badly.”
I kept my mouth shut. The first rule when you’re in a hole: stop digging.
“I parked my suspicions, though, because it seemed like you were on the level about doing this for a living, and your references checked out. I thought you could help us. The clincher was last night.”
“The tow truck driver?” I asked.
She nodded. “You knew Gryski wasn’t the Samaritan the second you looked at him. How did you know that? He fit the profile and he resisted arrest using deadly force. Exactly like a cornered killer would behave. But you knew it wasn’t him as soon as you saw his face. Call it a cop’s instinct, but I knew right away—your body language changed as soon as you didn’t see the face you were looking for. Which means you know who we’re looking for, don’t you?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Make it simple.”
I felt like smacking myself in the head in the hope it might knock some sense into me. Twice in the last twenty-four hours I had painfully underestimated the people I was dealing with. Crozier first, and now Allen. Brute force and luck had gotten me out of the first tight spot, but I didn’t think either could rescue me from this situation. Only some level of mutual trust could do that.
“You said you checked me out after we first spoke,” I said.
“I tried to. I didn’t come up with a whole lot, besides your FBI friend.”
“That’s right. And no offense, but you could have a lot higher clearance than you do and you’d get the same results. I’m a free agent now, but that wasn’t always the case.”
“I figured,” she said. “So what? CIA, NSA, something like that?”
I shook my head. “Smaller than that. I worked for a very secret, very well-funded group that carried out difficult work in places the United States wasn’t always supposed to be.”
“You mean some kind of black ops? Deniable assassinations, that kind of thing?”
I didn’t say anything.
“It fits with the blank slate, I guess. Is Blake even your real name?”
“It is now.”
“Don’t get cute.” She hit the cancel button on the phone and replaced it on the shelf, lowering the gun again. “So what’s your connection with our mystery man? You obviously know his face and his methods. Was he on some kind of kill list? Was he the one that got away?”
“Nobody got away, Allen. And I’m afraid it’s much worse than that.”
She looked puzzled for a moment, and then she understood. “He was one of yours.”
“His name was Dean Crozier. I don’t know what he’s calling himself now, obviously. He tended to work at the business end of our operation. He enjoyed his work a little too much.”
“Do I want to know the details?”
“Probably not. He wasn’t the only one who enjoyed killing, but he was the one who seemed to want it more than anything else in the world. You want to know what brought me into this, Allen? The same thing that brought you in. I recognized his signature: the torture marks, the ragged wounds.”
“He was using the same knife back then?”
“Yeah. It’s called a Kris. Your people would have found one in the warehouse. I don’t think it’s his only one.”
Allen put the gun down on the coffee table and sat down next to me. “Anything else?”
“He’s from LA originally. That was the other reason I knew it was him. His family was murdered back in the mid-nineties. The case was never closed. He used a plain old hunting knife for that one. He joined the army after that and found his way into our little club a few years later. By the time he was cut loose, he’d served his apprenticeship. That’s when the killings started stateside.”
“What was the first one?”
“Fort Bragg. The very first murder was a sergeant who’d pissed him off in basic training.”
“Peterson, right?” Allen asked. “The name you gave us. That matches up. The feds identified a couple of cases earlier than that, which they thought could be connected, but Fort Bragg is the first one with the ragged wounds, on the body they did find. Maybe he was worried the sergeant could be traced back to him, so he killed the other guy to make it look more random.”
I shook my head. “He couldn’t be traced. He wasn’t worried about that. Crozier wants to kill, period. Peterson just gave him a place to start that was as good as any.”
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes before another question occurred to me—one I’d been thinking about earlier. “Did you identify the second victim from last night? The one at the warehouse?”
Mazzucco had brought her up to speed back at the house. They’d ID’d the victim after her roommate had reported her missing and her car had been found parked near the warehouse. “Yeah. Erica Dane, she lived half a mile from the warehouse. She worked nearby, never made it home last night.” Allen stopped and thought something over. “Three bodies out in the hills: Boden, Morrow, and Burnett. Two last night: Castillo in the alley and Dane in the warehouse. That makes five killings in this cycle.”
“Five that we know of.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m worried about. What if he’s done with LA, Blake? You’ve read the report from the feds on the other ones. Hell, you probably knew most if it before they did. The average victim total in each area was usually five or six.”
The thought had crossed my mind. If we were judging the Samaritan’s behavior purely on his track record to date, it would be a concern: that he’d vanish once again, only to pop up someplace else six months or a year from now, probably being cautious enough that no one would know it was him until he’d moved on again. But this wasn’t like the other cases: there were a couple of key differences.
“He’ll stay a while longer. He’s not done yet.”
“Is this your observer principle thing again?”
“Yes, it is. By observing his methods, the ways he operates, we’ve changed them. He might have stopped, moved on, but he’s gone the other way. He’s stepped up the intensity. And now you know about the other thing: his
connection with me. His plan last night worked pretty well, on the face of it—he has everybody looking for me instead of anywhere that might lead to him. But that won’t be enough for him, because he wanted me beaten and contained, and he didn’t quite manage either. He won’t leave until he resolves things between him and me. He knows I’m too dangerous to leave in the game. He’s been operating with impunity up until now. If he walks away from LA, he’ll be looking over his shoulder for me until I find him again. And I would find him again.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“There’s one other thing, too.”
“What’s that?”
“I think LA was different even before those bodies were discovered. I think he came back here for a reason. And I think the murders last night were meant to distract us from that.”
68
Allen thought about it for a second. “This is about what you said earlier, right? About this Crozier guy being from LA originally. You think there’s some kind of personal connection.”
“I’m sure of it,” I said. “Something—or someone—brought him back here after all this time.” I saw a flicker in her eyes that told me she was matching what I was saying with some other information. She knew something I didn’t. “What is it?”
She hesitated, and I thought she was going to hold it back, whatever it was. But then she changed her mind, maybe coming to the same conclusion I had a few minutes before: that we could get further by sharing what we knew.
“We found the owner of the warehouse. His alibi checked out, but he told us he remembered a guy looking the place over a few months ago. First potential buyer in a long time, so it stuck out for him. We went to talk to the guy, but he hightailed it when he saw us. The house was a foreclosure, but someone had been living there. Someone who kept a spare torture kit and some high-tech tracking equipment.”