by Zoe Sharp
‘I’ve already given your guys a statement.’
‘Humour me,’ she said. The same words she’d spoken to Randall Bane in that interview room – was it only yesterday afternoon? A chill passed across my shoulder blades and I twitched it away.
Voice as level as I could manage, I delivered a clear, concise run-through of events, from the moment I’d first spotted the Chevy, to Sean’s arrival, less than six minutes after I’d called him. And while I was talking, I clamped down hard on my emotions, not giving them a crack to slither through.
Gardner listened without interruption until I’d finished, occasionally jotting down comments in a slim black notebook.
‘Why d’you call him first?’ she asked then, nodding towards Sean.
‘Because I knew he’d get here faster, and I was concerned about keeping three of them contained on my own unless I shot them again,’ I said candidly. ‘Just to be sure.’
She ignored my poor attempt at humour. ‘You know these guys claim they were driving along, minding their own business, when you jumped out and attempted to hijack their vehicle at gunpoint?’
‘Of course,’ I echoed. ‘We went out for a run and simply got too tired to walk back, is that it?’
‘And how fortunate,’ Sean added blandly, ‘that they’d all taken the precaution of wearing body armour this morning, just in case of such an eventuality.’
I tensed. Jesus, Sean! Did you have to remind her?
But Gardner, still making notes, didn’t outwardly react. She smiled almost in spite of herself, shrugged a shoulder. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, wry. ‘I think it’s safe to say they’re not the brains of the operation. And if it’s any consolation, Charlie, looking at the evidence, I reckon it probably all went down pretty much how you say.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, without irony.
‘But, what I still don’t know is why.’ Her expression hardened. ‘And unless you people stop jerking my chain with all this, I’m gonna run you all in and sweat you ’til you drown in it.’
I resisted the urge to glance at Sean, kept my eyes focused on Gardner’s, emptied my mind of anything approaching guilt.
‘I have no idea why,’ I said, which was pretty much the truth of it anyway. I shrugged. ‘The rest of our team has pulled out. We’re just waiting to go home.’
Gardner favoured us with her best cop stare a little longer, then sighed and shook her head, as though she’d given us our chance and we’d blown it.
‘It wasn’t a hit,’ Sean said as she began to turn away.
Gardner stopped. ‘How d’you work that out?’
Sean leant back against the Suburban’s bodywork and folded his arms casually, as if we were discussing some utterly mundane subject. ‘If that had been the case – and if it had been a serious attempt – both Charlie and Sagar would be dead.’ Those expressionless eyes skimmed over me, even if something twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘No offence intended, of course.’
‘None taken,’ I said, equally grave. ‘To be honest, I’d already come to the same conclusion. They should never have stopped moving. Just open up the side door as they came past and let rip with a couple of Uzis. They wouldn’t even have to be decent shots. Just point and spray. No fuss…plenty of mess.’
Gardner’s eyes drifted over to the squad car where the two men were sitting in the rear seats, bodies rucked forwards awkwardly from the restraints. I followed her gaze and remembered suddenly the way Thomas Witney’s hands had been wired tight behind him. I blinked slowly, trying to clear the image. It proved stubborn.
Gardner’s attention came back to me, sober. ‘Lucky for you they weren’t going for a hit, then, huh?’ she said and frowned. ‘But in that case…’
‘It was a snatch,’ I said. ‘Hence the TASERs and the baton. They came prepared to subdue, not kill.’
Sean’s eyes flicked to mine. Not yet, anyway. Not here.
You think I don’t know?
Gardner gave that cool consideration for a moment, then nodded, closed the notebook and slipped it back into her pocket. ‘We’ll find that out once I get these jokers into Interview,’ she said grimly, and gave me a final assessing stare. ‘Like I said, Sagar was lucky he—’
Whatever she’d been about to say next was lost as her eyes moved past us, to a point further up the canyon road. Sean and I both turned to see a group of Suburbans bearing down on us at speed. Discreet black, with limo tint on the windows, they had government issue written all over them.
‘What the hell are the Feds doing here?’ Gardner muttered under her breath. She glanced at us sharply. ‘Did you call them?’
‘Not guilty,’ Sean said quickly.
Sure enough, when the lead vehicle in the little convoy came to a halt alongside our own Suburban, it was Conrad Epps who stepped down onto the cracked asphalt, looking around him with supercilious expectancy. A general surveying the field where he’s just decided a battle will be fought.
‘Detective Gardner,’ he greeted, his men fanning out behind him. He flashed some kind of official ID, fast like sleight of hand, and folded it back into his inside pocket, not bothering to look at her directly. ‘Thank you, Detective. We’ll take it from here.’
‘The hell you will.’ Gardner’s voice was flat with outrage. ‘On whose authority?’
‘Mr Armstrong’s people have been working for the federal government on this matter.’ Epps’s head swung very slowly in her direction. To her credit, she didn’t back down. ‘If I have to, I will get your chief on the line, right now, to quote the relevant sections of the Patriot Act to you, in words of one syllable,’ he grated, ‘but forcing me to do that will not have a beneficial effect on your long-term career prospects, Detective. That enough authority for you?’
Gardner paled. ‘Yes, sir!’ she said, lip curling. She turned back to us. ‘Don’t leave town, either of you.’
‘On the contrary,’ Epps cut in. ‘I believe Mr Meyer has reservations out of LAX this evening.’ He paused. ‘I would strongly advise you and Ms Fox not to miss your flight.’
Behind us, Chris Sagar opened the door and slipped down onto the road.
‘And what about him?’ I demanded. ‘Still planning to put him on a Greyhound bus?’
A muscle twitched in the side of Epps’s jaw. ‘Arrangements have been made for Mr Sagar to enjoy more…secure transport,’ he said.
From Epps, that could have meant anything from a private jet to a sealed casket, and Sagar paled accordingly.
‘I-I…um…what about my stuff?’
‘I’m sure you can detour to collect your gear on the way to Van Nuys, Mr Sagar,’ Epps said. He turned slightly and the driver of one of the Suburbans jumped out and held the rear door open. Sagar didn’t need telling twice, but he hesitated awkwardly in front of me, hardly able to meet my eyes.
‘I…’ he began again, swallowed. ‘Thanks, Charlie. You… um…saved my life, y’know?’ And with that he scurried over to it, keeping his face averted as if trying to avoid eye contact with any of the men from the beige Chevy van. The Suburban did a multipoint turn in the narrow road and sped away.
Epps, meanwhile, had been taking in the spent brass and the bloodstains. When he was done he glanced at me fully for the first time.
‘Good job this wasn’t a professional crew,’ he said, and strode away before I could think of a suitably cutting retort.
‘Well, I’m kinda glad to know he has a problem with all women,’ Detective Gardner said wryly, watching him go, ‘and it’s not just me he’s pissed at.’
‘Not exactly a people person, is he?’ I murmured.
Gardner gave a snort, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. She clicked her pen and scrawled something on the back of it.
‘Here’s my cell. You think of anything else you wanna tell me about this…’ Her voice trailed off as she handed the card over, but when I tucked it straight into the side pocket of my hooded top, her gaze lingered meaningfully.
&n
bsp; ‘… We’ll call you,’ Sean said.
We climbed into the Suburban and Sean started the engine. Epps’s people were already transferring the prisoners to their own vehicles. The men who’d attacked us didn’t look too happy about that but, I reasoned, if they were the ones responsible for grabbing Witney – and killing two of Epps’s men in the process – they had every right to be anxious for their immediate future and personal well-being.
As Sean backed up and turned the Suburban around, I pulled the card Gardner had given me out of my pocket again and looked at it. On the front it simply said ‘B. Gardner’ and listed two phone numbers designated ‘office’ and ‘cell’.
Frowning, I turned the card over. On the back, in an untidy hand, she’d written, ‘Malibu Seafood. PCH. One hour.’
‘Gardner wants a meet,’ I told Sean, showing him the card. ‘Any idea why?’
But part of me wondered if she’d finally get round to asking the question I’d been dreading. The one I’d been waiting for ever since I fired the first shots into the guy behind the sliding door. The question I’d asked myself, with various stages of recrimination.
Sean glanced across, his expression unreadable. ‘One way to find out.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Back at the house in Calabasas, a quick Google search revealed that ‘Malibu Seafood’ was a local fish restaurant, and ‘PCH’ was shorthand for its location on the Pacific Coast Highway – Highway 1 – which followed the twisting coastline all the way up to San Francisco. ‘One hour’ needed no translation.
Chris Sagar had already been and gone by the time we arrived back. I suppose the chance of another ride aboard that Gulfstream was too good to miss. Sean and I quickly finished our own packing, not that there was much to pack. The letting agent arrived for her walk-through just as we were leaving. I tuned out Sean’s smooth excuses as I stowed our gear in the Suburban.
As he climbed behind the wheel, though, he was smiling.
‘What?’
He unhooked his sunglasses from the rear-view mirror. ‘I thought I’d take advantage of the lady’s local knowledge and ask her about Malibu Seafood,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘Best place for seafood for miles.’ He put the Suburban into gear. ‘She recommends the red snapper or the ahi tuna burger.’
‘Well, at least if this meeting with Gardner is a washout, we can still get a decent lunch,’ I said lightly, although the thought of food made me slightly queasy. I paused. ‘Why exactly are we meeting her, by the way?’
He shrugged. ‘Does no harm to extend an olive branch when our paths are bound to cross again sometime,’ he said. ‘Better, in that case, to have the local cops thinking of us in friendly terms.’
Yeah, Sean, but she’s not just a local cop. She’s Homicide…
Malibu Seafood didn’t look like much from the outside. In the UK it would have been in a pass-by lay-by on the A1 somewhere north of Doncaster, with the wheels removed in a thin attempt at permanency and sophistication.
But out here it had an allure all of its own. Being right across the highway from the beach did it no harm, either. A sign outside the unprepossessing single-storey building boasted a fresh-fish market as well as takeaway and the Patio Café, which turned out to be little more than a raised decking area to one side, with a fabulous view of the ocean. Ordering a meal involved queuing up at the counter inside and collecting a number, which was then squawked through an external speaker when your food was ready. The restrooms were a hike up the parking lot.
I let Sean handle the food while I climbed the short flight of weather-bleached steps to the patio deck, partly sun-shaded by climbing vegetation. I’d grabbed a fast shower back at the house and my hair was still damp. I couldn’t think of a better way to dry it than with the warm breeze coming up off the Pacific.
Detective Gardner – presumably ‘B’ to her friends – was the sole occupant at one of the rough picnic-style tables, tucking into a voluminous green salad, liberally draped with some of the biggest king prawns I’d ever seen, although I knew they were called shrimp over here. To me, shrimp were tiny pink crescents, usually served suspended in solidified butter, like prehistoric insects captured in amber.
I slid sideways onto the fixed bench opposite Gardner with my back to the trellis, and nodded to her plate.
‘Looks good.’
She paused long enough to swallow and wipe her fingers delicately on a paper napkin. ‘Is good,’ she said then, well brought up enough to cover her mouth with her hand as she spoke. ‘You find the place OK?’
‘Why, were you hoping we wouldn’t make it?’
She put down her fork and took a slurp of her drink. ‘Depends,’ she said, then, ‘if you’re planning to keep bullshitting me or not.’
‘In that case, why don’t you ask what you want to,’ I said sedately, ‘and we’ll see if it stinks?’
As I spoke, I kept my eyes moving. Along the opposite shoulder of the road, a lone female jogger ran, eyes on the ground in front of her feet. I watched the passing vehicles, particularly vans or minivans with opening side-doors, or anything with the glass dropped towards the restaurant. Just because our attackers bungled things this morning, didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a second – altogether more serious – attempt.
I felt footsteps on the planking and Sean came up the steps and slid onto the bench alongside Gardner. She frowned at that, but he smiled blandly, not putting out any overt threat. We were early for lunch and, for the moment, we had the place to ourselves.
‘How’re we doing?’ Sean asked me.
‘I was just about to find that out.’
Gardner sighed. ‘That bastard Epps has shut me down,’ she said, rolling her shoulders. ‘Totally. Bunch of his guys showed up and took everything related to the Witney crime scene – files, forensics, photos, even my notes. You name it, they boxed it up and carted it out of there.’
‘What about this morning’s little incident?’ I asked.
She grunted. ‘Won’t even get as far as an official report,’ she said. ‘I’ve already gotten hauled in by my captain and told to hand everything over to the Feds and forget I ever heard about it.’
‘So, Detective,’ Sean said, linking his hands together on the tabletop and regarding her levelly, ‘I assume from that – and the fact we’re all here and not in your office – that you’re off the books on this one?’
She gave him a cool stare that was probably inherited from her mother, but was all cop.
‘What about those four hundred other murders you mentioned?’ I asked. ‘I thought you said you’d be glad to have the Witney case taken off your hands.’
‘There’s a big difference between giving something away and having it stolen,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t like being told how to run an investigation, and I especially don’t like being told to stop running it. So…what gives?’
Sean and I exchanged a long silent look across the table.
Does it gain us anything to tell her?
I don’t know. Does it gain us anything not to?
‘OK,’ Sean said at last. ‘We can understand your frustration.’
And so we told her, carefully and with judicious editing, almost the whole story, from going into Fourth Day to extract Witney, to my 911 call after the ambush that morning. We admitted that Parker had kept his previous involvement with Thomas Witney quiet, even from us. That we hadn’t known he was Witney’s safety net, could shed no light on why Parker had chosen to leave the schoolteacher in the cult’s clutches. Maybe that explained his delayed determination to retrieve him now.
In the middle of all that, our number came over the speaker and I made two trips to the little serving hatch to collect our food. Sean had ordered enough for an army and, I noted, had gone with the letting agent’s recommendation of the Pacific red snapper. Without appetite, I’d picked fish tacos, assuming from the modest price that they’d be less substantial. I’d been wrong on that one.
‘S
o that’s why your pal Epps was so desperate to get those three guys away from us,’ Gardner was saying when I returned with the second tray. She looked away sharply, anger plain on her face. ‘Son of a bitch,’ she murmured. ‘He screwed up and he’s covering his ass. What’s the betting he’ll have those guys on the first transport to Gitmo, just so’s it never gets out that he lost two of his own?’
‘I should imagine they’re already on their way,’ Sean said.
‘Thing I can’t work out,’ Gardner said, ‘is why they tried to abduct this Chris Sagar guy? I mean, if he’s been outta Fourth Day for as long as you say, any information he coulda given you would be real out of date. OK, so whack him, yeah, that I can see. But kidnap? Why the risk? And what could he tell them?’ She absently picked up a remaining shrimp from her plate, bit it in half and shook her head. ‘Makes no sense.’
Sean sliced open his fish. ‘What makes you think,’ he asked calmly, ‘that they were after Sagar?’
Gardner glanced between us and then went very still as that processed. ‘You think they were after Charlie?’ she demanded, not quite incredulous, but not far from it. Her gaze lingered on me. ‘What makes you so special?’
I unwrapped my knife and fork. ‘Thanks for that,’ I said dryly. ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question.’
‘We know they aren’t afraid to kill – Witney or Epps’s boys,’ Sean said. ‘And yet, this morning they failed to adhere to the first most basic rule of attack.’
‘Which is?’
‘First kill the bodyguard,’ I said, picking up one of the tacos and trying to work out how to get it into my mouth without ending up wearing most of it.
‘Maybe they were doing their best,’ she said, laconic. When I simply grinned at her, she added, ‘Or maybe they were after both of you and never made it past first base.’
Sean shook his head. ‘They didn’t have the manpower. Not for a double snatch on a target with a professional bodyguard. Three men – including a driver – just isn’t enough.’
‘If Sagar hadn’t tripped over his own feet when I told him to make a run for it, then as soon as we separated they’d have been stuffed – even with the TASERs,’ I agreed. ‘If it had been my op, I’d have wanted two mobile teams. Six men at the very least.’