MOSAICS: A Thriller

by E. E. Giorgi

  * * *

  Pacific Station is the artsy station. There are roses in the parking lot, pretty murals in the hallway, and a mosaic along the perimeter wall outside. Built in 2008, the mosaic says, “Through these gates pass great officers.”

  Two of those great officers escorted me to the squad room and had me sit at one of their desks. An officer with a “Hell, it’s Sunday” face came to take my guns for fire testing. The squad room was quiet except for the intermittent ticking of an electric typewriter. A hefty detective was sitting behind it, at an equally hefty desk. He gave me a quick once-over and then went back to his typing. At the end of the room a door with the plate “S.A. Zoltak, Captain III” stood ajar. A quick glimpse of a movement told me somebody was in there, probably keeping an ear on us.

  My hosts confabulated while I sat and twiddled my thumbs. They decided on a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine in the lobby. Sakovich gave Lang a dollar bill and asked me if I wanted one too. I replied I had plenty of dollar bills, I wanted a c-note instead. He didn’t look amused. Lang scuttled off, Sakovich slumped in his chair and stared at the papers on his desk with a face hung somewhere between boredom and annoyance.

  My thoughts reeled back to the events of Saturday, searching for a detail I could’ve missed.

  I’d seen David Lebeaux in Silver Lake in the morning. He’d given me an enigmatic photo of Charlie Callahan, which had an even more enigmatic story attached to it. The photo was fairly normal—the guy sitting on somebody’s couch and smiling—but what he’d said when he’d given it to David—“In case something happens”—puzzled me.

  From Silver Lake I’d gone to Venice to see Henkins. Venice was the usual chaos of people coming and going. Anybody could’ve followed me, anybody could’ve gone up to Henkins’s apartment, anybody could’ve shot her and left unnoticed because that’s what anybodies are—unnoticeable. Sakovich had probably already knocked at every door in the building and come out blank.

  The most disturbing part was what I’d learned from my chat with Henkins—likely the reason why she’d been shot. Somebody wanted the Callahan case closed, and closed quickly. How did the Byzantine Strangler fit into this? Was Callahan his first victim, and if so, why the pressure to close the case? Callahan must’ve been a very inconvenient victim, one that was bound to open up an old can of worms. Amy requested autopsy samples from Callahan’s postmortem, and now the request, according to Henkins, had vanished—the only link between Amy Liu and Callahan. So Henkins had thought of reproducing the connection in the form of a faked prescription bottle. She had succeeded, in a way, but it had also cost her life.

  I’d despised her actions and now I felt sorry for her.

  Lang came back with the Dr. Pepper, dragged a chair closer, uncapped the bottle with a hiss and brought it to his mouth. “So,” he said. “Where do we start from?”

  The question seemed to awaken Sakovich from his momentary daydreaming. He rapped a hand on the desk. “From the beginning.” He opened a drawer, retrieved a brand new pack of Kool Blues and unwrapped it, oblivious of the “No Smoking” sign hanging behind his head. “According to the conversation you had with the watch commander, you asked for Henkins’s address on Saturday July eighteen at 1:05 p.m. You said your current location was in Silver Lake. So, assuming Saturday traffic and all that, you should’ve gotten to Henkins’s place between 2:30 and 3:30.”

  “Quarter to three,” I said.

  He tore the wrap open and tapped the packet on his wrist to produce a cig. “How long were you there?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  Sakovich reached for the lighter in his breast pocket. “What did you talk about?”

  I looked at the pillar behind him. “There’s a sign behind you that forbids you to smoke.”

  He grinned around the cigarette butt. “It’s Sunday,” he said, clicking the lighter. “We don’t follow rules on Sundays. Go on, we’re all ears.”

  “You already know why I wanted to talk to Henkins. It’s been all over the news.”

  Sakovich held the cigarette between two fingers with the grace of an Adonis. He blew smoke at me and I held my breath and kept my face straight and pretended I was inhaling Diane’s hair instead. “The Callahan case,” he said.

  “Correct.”

  “Share that conversation, if you please.”

  “I don’t.”

  Lang tossed the empty bottle of Dr. Pepper into the bin. “You don’t what?”

  “I don’t please.”

  Sakovich’s smile was as heartfelt as the welcome greeting on an ATM screen. He made a high-pitched sound to go with it, something between the screech of a jay and the whistle of a parakeet. When he was done, he popped the cig out of his lips and said, “Presius, you do realize that you’re withholding information relevant to a murder investigation and your refusal translates into insubordination—a firing offense.”

  A plume of menthol smoke curled up from his cigarette.

  “I do realize,” I said. “I also realize that my conversation with Henkins did not pertain to your murder investigation, it pertained to mine.”

  “Until I hear it I’m not sure I believe it.”

  Lang slid forward in his chair and crossed his arms. The tight sleeves of his polo strangled his bulging biceps. “Why did you go to her house on a Saturday? Why not talk to her at the station? Why not go with your partner? You better have a very good answer each of these questions.”

  Sakovich sucked wistfully on his cig. “You have two options, Presius,” he said. “You can stand by the Fifth Amendment and go find yourself another job, or you can take the Lybarger admonishment and run with it. Me, I’d have no second thoughts.”

  The Lybarger rule was a California State ruling from the Michael Lybarger case, an officer with the Vice Unit who, under investigation for false arrest and bribery, refused to cooperate and was fired for insubordination. It boiled down to what Sakovich had just told me: I could choose to keep my mouth shut, in which case I’d face insubordination charges and lose my badge. Or, I could spill the beans and, under the Lybarger rule anything I’d say would not be used to incriminate me. Which is bullshit because any cop with a bit of gray matter in his mind knows that if the brass decides he has to go down, they will simply find some other ballast to make him go down.

  Given the circumstances, I decided to spill some of the beans, choosing my beans very carefully. By the time I was done, Sakovich had smoked two cigarettes and was tapping a third one, still unlit, on the chair armrest. “You think Callahan was killed by the same person who killed Amy Liu and Laura Lyons?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Did you ask Henkins?”

  “Henkins told me I was nuts to still be looking into this. She said to give it a rest because Olsen whacked Callahan and we were all wasting our time.”

  I stared at him. If somebody overheard my conversation with Henkins, my lie was out. But here’s the thing. There was only one person who could’ve overheard our conversation—the killer. Sometimes it’s a good thing to share a secret with a killer.

  The officer who’d done the ballistics returned my guns and declared them clean. I tucked them back into my holsters without a word.

  Lang got up from his chair and stretched his legs. Sakovich curled his lips and pondered. I stared at the wall clock. It was close to four p.m. The hefty detective in the corner had long stopped typing. The door to the captain’s office was still ajar. I pushed my chair backwards and got up.

  “I’m not convinced, Presius,” Sakovich said.

  “That’s my statement,” I replied. “You’ve got a fellow detective dead and a cop killer on the loose, Sakovich. I suggest you start working on this case.” I turned around and walked to the Captain’s office.

  Lang shot to his feet. “Where the hell d’you think you’re going?”

  I sprang the Captain’s door open without knocking. A sad little man looked at me with sad little eyes. He stood up and was
no longer little and his eyes weren’t that sad either. They glared from above the rim of red reading glasses.

  He took the glasses off, rested them on the table, and asked, “And you are…?” His gesture had purpose, his voice entitlement. The frames on the wall behind him told me he was a family man and a decorated officer. The look on his face told me I wasn’t welcome.

  I walked to his desk and offered my hand. “Presius,” I said, as if he didn’t know already. “My sincere condolences. You lost one of your best officers.”

  We shook hands. His were knotty and cold despite the room temperature. He smelled of nicotine, a different brand than Sakovich. Dunhill, I guessed.

  He let go of my hand and dropped back in his chair. “Thank you,” he said, in a dismissive way. He picked up the reading glasses he’d left on the desk and perched them back on his nose. A famous logo at the side of the frames had the only function to let me know that those glasses alone cost as much as my weekly salary.

  I agreed that was no place for me and left. I bumped into Lang’s biceps on my way out of the Captain’s office.

  “We’ve got your prints in her apartment.”

  I smiled and walked away.

  “You can’t leave,” Sakovich yelled after me.

  “Of course I can,” I replied. “It’s Sunday. We don’t follow rules on Sundays, remember?”

  They didn’t stop me. They didn’t offer the ride back they’d promised either. I didn’t care. I had enough of their company. I walked through the exit gate and read once more the writing on the mosaic. “Through these gates pass great officers.”

  I shoved both hand in my pockets, walked through, and whistled. I’d just been promoted to great officer.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ____________

  Monday, July 20

  “Hmm. That would explain the smell,” Satish said.

  “What smell?”

  “All the shit you’ve been wading through. I mean, shit happens, but somehow it seems to happen to you more.”

  We exited the restaurant on Ramirez Street. A couple of black and white Crown Vics were parked in the lot across the street, the flyover from the One-Oh-One swooping above with its steady flow of vehicles. Downtown loomed on the right, wrapped in a blanket of haze.

  Over lunch, I’d recounted the highlights of my conceited week-end: the meeting with David Lebeaux and the photograph of Charlie Callahan he’d given me, my conversation with Courtney Henkins and the planted prescription bottle, the piece of information on Amy Liu’s request of Callahan postmortem samples and how the request had vanished, and finally my lovely acquaintance with John Sakovich and Chris Lang from Pacific Station.

  On Saturday I’d despised Henkins for resolving to subtle means to send us a message instead of stepping forward. Now that she was dead, she’d suddenly turned into a hero. Death can do things like that.

  “How did you get home from Venice?”

  “I flagged a patrol car and had them drop me off at Diane’s—my Charger was still there. When I finally got home, I found my house ramped. Will was at the neighbor’s, unharmed. My neighbor feeds the mutt every time I don’t show up at night.”

  We crossed the street and waved our badges at the guard behind the entrance booth of Piper Tech, a red and gray building made of brick and cement. It housed the Electronics Unit and the Hooper Memorial Heliport. To access the labs you had to walk to the back of the building through the loading docks. I wasn’t quite done recounting the events of the weekend, so we sat in the shade, over yellow metal stairs, behind a pillar where somebody had painted he words “Loading only”.

  “So they searched your place,” Satish said. “That’s to be expected. They’re not gonna trust you and you shouldn’t trust them. Are you sure they didn’t plant anything while they were there?”

  “Unless they’re stupid, if they want to fuck me that bad they won’t plant anything in my house. Too obvious, somebody would smell a rat. They checked my vehicle when they picked me up. They wanted to nose into Diane’s house, too, but she told them to fuck off.”

  A helicopter—the third in the last hour—took off from the roof of the building. The swooshing roared in our ears and then ebbed off.

  “Did you tell Gomez everything?”

  “No. I told him what I told Sakovich and Lang.”

  Satish regarded me with small chocolate eyes. “That means you won’t even try to make Henkins’s case.”

  I fiddled with the restaurant receipt. “Look,” I said. “This is a jam.”

  “It’s called shit.”

  “Fine. Let’s call it shit. We’re sinking deeper and deeper in it. If the brass comes down to tell Henkins the Callahan case is closed, some big fish is dipping. Big fishes and serial killers don’t usually go hand in hand, so I’m starting to think the serial killer thing is all bullshit shoved in our face to cover somebody’s ass.”

  “Just to remain within topic.”

  I sighed. A truck turned into the driveway, stopped, and then backed into the loading deck. The beep hammered in my ears. We got up and shuffled to the elevators, hands in our pockets, shoulders slouching, and hearts as heavy as a morning hangover.

  * * *

  “What the hell happened in here?” The blades of a standing fan swallowed my voice and digested it. The fan was swooshing, the AC was hissing, and the computers were whirring. I counted three on Viktor’s desk alone, with monitors lined up one next to the other. There were more on the floor. Even the tiny spot for my folding chair was taken. We had to crowd around the monitors and stand.

  “This is what I’d call a cyber warfare,” Satish said.

  Viktor’s desk looked like a Tower of Hanoi of computer screens, each displaying its different jargon of white code over a black background. Hunched over the laptop, Viktor waved a busy hand. “Never mind the mess. Just watch your step. Some bogus Internet business in Orange County got pinched for Internet fraud. The bunco squad delivered the hardware this morning.”

  I tried to watch my step but the cables were in the way.

  The birthmark on Viktor’s face looked more ominous today. “So,” he said.

  “Let me guess,” I ventured, looking over my shoulder to make sure that whatever I was leaning against wasn’t going to cause a domino fall of computer towers. “You’ve got short answers and long answers and neither will make any sense to us.”

  Viktor’s gray eyes looked at me vacantly.

  Satish leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. “In which case, let’s hear the short answer first.”

  Viktor swiveled his chair around and surveyed all computer screens at once. “The code at the back of the tiles are snippets in a language called XYPlot. It’s a graphing program, no longer supported.”

  Satish smiled nice and wide. “And what exactly are we talking about?”

  Viktor grabbed the laptop, set it on his lap, and swiveled next to Satish moving his legs like oars. Funny how easily we forget we can walk once we’re on wheels. “XYPlot is a source language. People use it to create graphs. It’s an old generation tool, so our guy is either not fresh out of college or not up to date with his software.”

  “Or maybe he just likes to muddle things up,” I added. I kicked away the cables on the floor, unfolded an old metal chair that stood abandoned against the wall, and saddled it.

  “Killers tend to do that,” Satish said. “What’s the long answer?”

  Viktor scratched the back of his shaved head. “Well,” he said, dragging the word a second longer. “As soon as I posted the inquiry on the board, the answers came in pretty quickly.” He typed the URL on the laptop and pressed enter. I noticed then that the keyboard on his laptop had no letters.

  “What happened to your letters?”

  “What letters?”

  “The ones usually found on keyboards?”

  He shrugged. “They distract me. Had to make a special order to get a blank keyboard. They charged me extra.”

  How incons
iderate.

  He pointed to the screen. “See this? That’s my post, right there, and you can see all the replies in the order they were posted.” He scrolled down the screen. “This couple of guys here, linux_nerd and MacWiz are everywhere, even in forums they know nothing about. The usual big-mouthed egos—after a while on a board you learn to ignore them.”

  “Wait. We shouldn’t be ignoring anybody here—”

  “Relax. I’m tracking everybody, just ignoring the answers. I’m also tracking the page loads and keeping an eye on the rubberneckers. All dynamic IPs, but their providers, routers, and locations came in loud and clear. Comcast, Rogers Cable, Road Runner… A few from India, Singapore, Russia. Many from Europe. I store the IPs as they come in, here, see?” He clicked on an Excel sheet and showed us the table.

  “We’re interested in California providers.”

  “Assuming the one we’re after doesn’t use a proxy, that is. I got a few, mostly the lurkers. Let me show you the posters first. A lot of dudes love to fly by and sell smoke, so I had to filter the right answer from all the junk. Now, this guy here—he’s got the first crack at it, see? Here’s what he says: ‘Is this a full code? The way you wrote it makes no sense to me. Looks like XYPlot source code. It’s nearly extinct but a few dinosaurs still use it.’ I clicked on the link he added and it checked. These other users posted a few minutes later and confirmed it.”

  I leaned forward and squinted at the screen. There were acronyms I did not understand, and a lot of the jargon only Viktor could understand. Some of it seemed to have sparked a flurry of aggressive responses. “Are they always this friendly?”

  Viktor sneered. “This particular board tends to be a little testosterone-driven. A lot of trolls lurking. Some of the threads get so heated they turn into cock-fighting pits. There are moderators, but you never see them.”

  Satish said, “I would assume our guy—if he ever got into the discussion—would keep a low profile.”

  Viktor nodded. “Right. Which is why, frankly, I don’t think any of these guys fits the bill. I’ve analyzed most of the IPs and only a couple track back to L.A. county.”