Demolition Angel

by Robert Crais

  “I put myself at risk for this guy, and I don’t even know him.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you had to guess.”

  “Nobody likes a rat.”

  “But he violated the law, Carol. You said so yourself. He laid hands on this prisoner, and now you are in jeopardy for not reporting him. You clearly don’t approve of what he did, yet you are conflicted about what to do.”

  Starkey lost track of Dana’s voice. She stood at the window, watching the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, smoking. A cluster of women waited at the crosswalk below, anxiously watching their bus idle on the other side of six lanes of bumper-to-bumper morning rush hour traffic. From their squat Central American builds and plastic shopping bags, Starkey made them for housekeepers on their way to work in the exclusive homes north of Montana. When the light changed, the bus began to rumble away. The women panicked, charging across the street even as cars continued through the red. Horns blew, a black Nissan swerving, almost nailing two of the women, who never once looked at the car as it passed. They ignored it in their need to catch the bus, giving themselves up to chance. Starkey knew she could never do that.

  “Carol?”

  Starkey didn’t want to talk about Pell anymore or watch a bunch of women with nothing more on their minds than catching a goddamned bus.

  She went back to her seat and crushed out her cigarette.

  “I want to ask you a question.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m not sure if I want to do this or not.”

  “Do what, Carol? Ask me the question?”

  “No, do what I’m about to tell you about. I got these tapes of what happened to Charlie Riggio, the news video that the TV stations took. You know what I realized? The TV station has tapes of me, too. They have videotape of what happened to me and Sugar. Now I can’t stop thinking about it, that it’s out there right now, trapped on a tape, and I could see it.”

  Dana wrote something on her pad.

  “When and if you decide that you’re ready for something like that, I think it would be a good idea.”

  Starkey’s stomach went cold. Part of her had wanted Dana’s permission; part of her had wanted to be let off the hook.

  “I don’t know.”

  Dana put her pad aside. Starkey didn’t know whether to be frightened by that or not. She had never known Dana to put aside the pad.

  “How long have you had the dreams, now, Carol?”

  “Almost three years.”

  “So you see Sugar’s death, and your own, almost every night for three years. I had a thought about this the other day. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but I want to share it with you.”

  Starkey eyed her suspiciously. She hated the word “share.”

  “Do you know what a perception illusion is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a drawing. You look at it, and you see a vase. But if you look at it with a different mind-set, you see two women facing each other. It’s like a picture hidden within a picture. Which you see depends upon the perceptions and predispositions you bring to the viewing. When a person looks at a picture over and over again, maybe they’re trying to find that hidden picture. They keep looking, hoping that they’ll see it, but they can’t.”

  Starkey thought this was all bullshit.

  “You’re saying that I’m having the dream because I’m trying to make sense of what happened?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I think that if you don’t know, I sure as hell don’t. You’re the one with a Ph.D.”

  “Fair enough. Okay, the Ph.D. suggests that we have to deal with the past in order to heal the present.”

  “I do that. I try to do that. Christ, I think about that goddamned day so much I’m sick of it.” Starkey raised a hand. “And, yes, I know that thinking about it isn’t the same as dealing with it.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Right.”

  “This isn’t a criticism, Carol. It’s an exploration.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Let’s get back to the perception illusion. The notion I had is that your dream is the first picture. You return to it because you haven’t found the second picture, the hidden picture. You can only see the vase. You’re looking for the two women, you suspect that they’re there, but you haven’t been able to find them. It occurred to me that maybe this is because what you’re seeing isn’t what really happened. It’s what you imagined happening.”

  Starkey felt her irritation turning to anger.

  “Of course it’s what I imagined. I was fucking dead, for Christ’s sake.”

  “The tape would show what really happened.”

  Starkey drew a deep breath.

  “Then, if there are two women to be found, you might be able to find them. Maybe what you would discover is that there is only the vase. Whichever you find, maybe that knowledge would help you put this behind you.”

  Starkey looked past Dana to the window again. She pushed to her feet and went back to the window.

  “Please come back to your seat.”

  Starkey shook out a cigarette, lit up. Dana wasn’t looking at her. Dana faced the empty seat as if Starkey were still there.

  “Carol, please come back to your seat.”

  Starkey blew out a huge screen of smoke. She sucked deep, filled the air with more.

  “I’m okay over here.”

  “Have you realized that whenever we come to something that you don’t want to hear or that you want to avoid, you escape through that window?”

  Starkey stalked back to the chair.

  “The dream changed.”

  “How so?”

  Starkey crossed her legs, realized what she was doing, uncrossed them.

  “Pell was in the dream. They took off Sugar’s helmet, and it was that bastard Pell.”

  Dana nodded.

  “You’re attracted to him.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A little while ago, you told me that he scared you. Maybe this is the true reason why.”

  “The two faces?”

  “Yes. The hidden picture.”

  Starkey tried to make a joke of it.

  “Maybe I’m just a freak who likes to put herself at risk. Why else would I work the Bomb Squad?”

  “You haven’t seen anyone since it happened?”

  Starkey felt herself flush. She averted her eyes, hoping she looked thoughtful instead of sick to her stomach with fear.

  “No. No one.”

  “Are you going to act on this attraction?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They sat quietly until Dana glanced at her clock.

  “Looks like our time is almost up. I’d like to leave you with something else to think about for next time.”

  “Like I don’t have enough?”

  Dana smiled as she picked up the pad, laying it across her legs as if she was already considering the notes she would write.

  “You made a joke about working on the Bomb Squad because you enjoyed the risk. I remember something that you said when we were first seeing each other. I had said that being a bomb technician seemed like a very dangerous profession.”

  “Yeah?”

  Starkey didn’t remember.

  “You told me that it wasn’t. You told me that you never thought of bombs as dangerous, that a bomb was just a puzzle that you had to solve, all neat and contained and predictable. I think you feel safe with bombs, Carol. It’s people who scare you. Do you think that’s why you enjoyed the Bomb Squad so much?”

  Starkey glanced at the clock.

  “Looks like you were right. Time’s up.”

  After leaving Dana, Starkey worked her way through the crosstown traffic toward Spring Street with a growing sense of inevitability. She told herself it was resolve, but she kne
w it was as much about resolve as a drunk falling down stairs. He was going to hit the bottom whether he resolved to or not. She was on the stairs. She was falling. She was going to see herself die.

  By the time Starkey reached CCS, she felt numb and fuzzy, as if she were a ghost come back to haunt a house, but was now separate from it, unseen and weightless.

  Across the squad room, Hooker was screwing around with the coffee machine. She watched him, thinking that Hooker had the phone numbers for the TV news departments. She told herself to get the numbers, start calling, and find the goddamned tapes of herself. Do it now, before she chickened out.

  She marched to the coffee machine.

  “Jorge, did you set it up to have those tapes enhanced?”

  “Yeah. I told you I’d take care of it, remember?”

  “Mm. I just wanted to be sure.”

  “It’s a postproduction company in Hollywood that the department uses. We should have them in two or three days.”

  “Right. I remember. Listen, did we get any of those tapes from channel eight?”

  “Yeah. You took one of them home, Carol. Don’t you remember?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jorge, I took a shitload of tapes home. Can I remember where they all came from?”

  Hooker was staring at her.

  “No. I guess not.”

  “Who’d you talk to over there at channel eight? To get the tapes?”

  “Sue Borman. She’s the news director.”

  “Lemme have her phone, okay? Something I want to ask her about.”

  “Maybe I can help. What do you want to know?”

  Nothing was easy. He couldn’t just say, sure, and go get the goddamned number.

  “I want to talk to her about the tapes, Jorge. Now, could I please have her number?”

  Starkey followed Hooker back to his desk for the number, then went directly to her phone where she called channel eight. She punched the number mechanically, without thought of what she would say or how she would say it. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to give herself time to not do it.

  Channel eight was the only television station that she recalled at the trailer park. She knew that others had been there, but she did not remember which others and didn’t want to call around, asking. Channel eight she remembered because of their station ID letters. KROK. The bomb techs used to call the KROK remote vehicle the shitmobile.

  “This is Detective Carol Starkey with LAPD. I’d like Sue Borman, please.”

  When Borman came on, she sounded harried. Starkey guessed that probably went with the job.

  “We sent tapes over there. Is everything all right with them? You don’t have a playback problem, do you?”

  “No, ma’am. The tapes are fine. We appreciate your cooperation. I’m calling about another set of tapes.”

  “What you got are the only tapes we have. We sent you everything.”

  “These are older tapes. They’d probably be in your library. Three years ago, an officer was killed at a trailer park in Chatsworth, and another officer was injured. Do you remember that?”

  “No. Was that another bomb thing?”

  Starkey closed her eyes.

  “Yes. It was a bomb thing.”

  “Waitaminute. It wasn’t just one guy; both guys were killed, but they brought back one of them at the scene, right?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I was a news writer back then. I think I wrote the story.”

  “It’s been three years. Maybe you don’t keep the tapes.”

  “We keep everything. Listen, what did you say your name is?”

  “Detective Starkey.”

  “You’re not who I talked to about the Silver Lake thing, right?”

  “No, that was Detective Santos.”

  “Okay, what I’ll have to do is check our library. I’ll do that and get back to you. Gimme the date of the incident and your phone number.”

  Starkey gave her the date and phone number.

  “You want the tape if we have it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is this connected to what happened in Silver Lake?”

  Starkey didn’t want to tell this woman that she was one of the officers on the tape.

  “We don’t believe that they’re connected, but we’re checking. It’s just something we have to follow up.”

  “If there’s a story here, I want in.”

  “If there’s a story, you can have it.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Starkey.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Starkey was shaking when she put down the phone. She put her hands flat on the desk and tried to still them. She couldn’t. She thought she should feel elated or proud of herself for taking this step, but all she felt was sick to her stomach.

  She dry-swallowed a Tagamet and was waiting for the nausea to pass when Pell called.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yes, I can talk.”

  “I wanted to apologize again about yesterday, up there with Tennant. I hope that what happened hasn’t created a problem for you.”

  “I haven’t been marched upstairs to Internal Affairs yet, if that’s what you mean. Tennant could still change his mind and destroy my career, but so far I’m safe.”

  “Did you report me?”

  “Not my style, babe. Forget it.”

  “Okay. Well, like I said yesterday, if it comes to that, I’ll take the hits.”

  She felt herself flush with an anger that seemed more aimed at herself than him.

  “You can’t take the hits, Pell. I guess you’re being noble or something, but I’m fucked for not reporting you whether you take the hits or not. That’s the way it works here on the local level.”

  “Okay. Listen, there’s another reason I called. I’ve got someone who can help us with this Claudius thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If it’s true what Tennant said, that Mr. Red goes there, I’m thinking we can use that. The ATF has a guy at Cal Tech who knows about this stuff. I’ve set it up, if you’re game.”

  “You’re damn right I am.”

  “Great. Can you pick me up?”

  The card from Pell’s hotel was on her desk. She looked at it and saw that he was staying in Culver City near LAX. A place called the Islander Palms.

  “You mean you want me to come get you? Why don’t we just meet there? You’re way the hell in the wrong direction.”

  “I’m having trouble with my damned rental car. If you don’t want to pick me up, I’ll take a cab.”

  “Take it easy, Pell. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

  The Islander Palms was a low-slung motel just off Pico Boulevard, a couple of blocks west of the old MGM Studio. It was two floors, with neon palm trees on a large sign overlooking the parking lot, sea-green trim, and an ugly stucco exterior. Starkey was surprised that Pell was staying in such a dump and thought he’d probably picked it out of a low-end tour book. It was the kind of place that screamed “family rates.”

  Pell stepped out of the lobby when she turned into the parking lot. He looked pale and tired. The dark rings under his eyes made her think that the trouble wasn’t with his car; he was probably still shaken from whatever had rocked him up at Atascadero.

  He got in without waiting for her to shut the engine.

  “Jesus, Pell, is the ATF on a budget? LAPD would put me up in a better place than this.”

  “I’ll call the director and tell him you said to shape up. You know how to get there?”

  “I was born in L.A. I got freeways in my blood.”

  As they drove back across the city, Pell explained that they were meeting a man named Donald Bergen, who was a graduate student in physics. Bergen was one of several computer experts employed by the government to identify and monitor potential presidential assassins, militia cranks, pedophiles, terrorists, and others who used the Internet as a source of communication, planning, and executio
n of illegal activity. This was a gray area of law enforcement, and getting darker every day. The Internet wasn’t the U.S. Postal Service, and chat rooms weren’t private phone calls, yet law enforcement agencies were increasingly limited as to what they could and could not do on the Internet.

  “Is this guy some kind of spook?”

  “He’s just a guy. Do me a favor, okay, and don’t ask him about what he does, and don’t tell him too much about what we’re doing. It’s better that way.”

  “Listen, I’m telling you right now that I’m not going to do anything that’s illegal.”

  “This isn’t illegal. Bergen knows why we’re coming, and he knows about Claudius. His job is to get us there. After that, it’s up to us.”

  Starkey considered Pell, but didn’t say any more. If Bergen and Claudius could help close her case, then that’s what she wanted.

  Twenty minutes later, they found a spot in visitors’ parking and entered the Cal Tech campus. Even though Starkey had spent her life in L.A., she’d never been there. It was pretty; earth-colored buildings nestled in the flats of Pasadena. They passed young men and women who looked normal, but, she thought, were probably geniuses. Not many of the kids here would choose to be cops. Starkey thought that if she were smarter, neither would she.

  They found the Computer Sciences building, went down a flight of stairs, and walked along a sterile hall until they found Bergen’s office. The man who opened the door was short and hugely muscular, like a bodybuilder. He smelled, faintly, of body odor.

  “Are you Jack Pell?”

  “That’s right. Mr. Bergen?”

  Bergen peered at Starkey.

  “Who’s she?”

  Starkey badged him, already irritated.

  “She is Detective Carol Starkey, LAPD.”

  Bergen looked back at Pell, suspicious.

  “Jerry didn’t say anything about this. What’s the deal with her?”

  “We’re a matched set, Bergen. That’s all you need to know. Now open the door.”

  Bergen leaned out to see if anyone else was in the hall, then let them in, locking the door after them. Starkey smelled marijuana.

  “You can call me Donnie. I’m all set up for you.”

  Bergen’s office was cluttered with books, software manuals, computers, and pinups of female bodybuilders. Bergen told them to sit where two chairs had been set up in front of a slim laptop computer. Starkey was uncomfortable, sitting so close to Pell that their arms touched, but there wasn’t room to move away. Bergen pulled up a tiny swivel chair to sit on the other side of Pell, the three of them hunched in front of the small computer as if it were a window into another world.