by Alan Russell
“It is a dog-friendly restaurant.”
“Why is it that you were dining at a dog-friendly restaurant in Burbank instead of one in your neck of the woods?”
“You want to talk about dogs, or see if Heather Moreland’s cell phone holds a clue as to where she might be?”
He answered by pulling the phone out of his shirt pocket and sliding it across the table so that it rested between us.
“Talk,” he said.
“Heather Moreland was worried about her dog running away. That’s why she got a collar with a GPS tracker. The collar you gave me didn’t have that tracker on it. I think there’s a chance Heather unhooked it from the collar right before she was abducted. I’m hoping she still has it on her person and that the tracker will tell us where she is.”
Reyes suddenly looked interested. “The stage is yours,” he said, gesturing to the phone. “I’m hoping you can pull a rabbit out of the hat, Gideon.”
My adrenaline was pumping as I turned on the phone and called up the Doggone app. Then I read the instructions aloud; everything on the phone seemed operational. From what I was seeing, the GPS function was installed, outfitted, and ready to go. According to the Doggone website, the readout would indicate within ten feet where the tracker currently was. I tapped the search function. Almost instantly a flashing red X marked a spot on a map.
“West L.A.,” I said, and looked at the readout. “If this thing is accurate, our target is on West Pico Boulevard and the corner of South Genessee Avenue.”
“You drive,” said Reyes, “and I’ll hold on to the phone.”
“Geez,” said Reyes, rolling down a window, “what’d you feed that dog?”
Maybe the bran muffin hadn’t been such a good idea. Sirius could tell that Reyes was talking about him, and looked chastened.
“My partner’s not the one with gout,” I said.
“I think his gas is worse than my gout.” Reyes shifted in his seat. The movement caused him to wince and mutter under his breath, “Pinche madre.”
We had about a twenty-mile drive, but from Burbank there’s no fast route to West L.A. Reyes kept watching the phone. The tracker didn’t show any movement.
I kept racking my brain trying to remember what kind of businesses were operating along West Pico and South Genessee. As far as I recalled, there was the usual L.A. hodgepodge of fast food eateries, flooring stores, auto-repair shops, and strip malls. I remembered seeing some kind of new TV studio on West Pico at roughly that location, but there was no guarantee it was still in business. It’s rare to find anyone in L.A. without a business card identifying them as a producer.
As we drew closer to the location, it felt increasingly wrong to me. I wanted to say that out loud, but I didn’t, afraid of jinxing our operation. When we were right on top of where the tracker was broadcasting, I pulled up to the curb and cursed.
“What is it?” asked Reyes.
“The tracker must have been dumped.”
Reyes looked at what he thought was an office building. “Maybe she’s somewhere in that building,” he said.
I shook my head and said, “There’s no chance of that.”
“Why?”
“For one, we’re right on top of where the tracker says we should be, and it’s supposed to be accurate within ten feet. But there’s the other more pertinent reason. She’s not inside the building because that isn’t a building. It’s a veneer. It’s a fourteen-story facade that hides a working oil field with all sorts of derricks and pumps.”
Reyes looked at me as if I was crazy.
Most L.A. natives aren’t aware that much of the city is built atop scores of oil fields. Early pictures showed operating oil wells lining the streets—wells that at one time supplied half the world’s oil. Those wells still exist, but many have gone underground. There are still more than thirty thousand active wells producing a couple hundred million barrels of oil a year, but a lot of those wells are hidden. The ritzy Beverly Center mall houses such stores as Bloomingdale’s, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton; out of sight on the western periphery of the mall, you can find oil wells actively drilling.
Reyes, Sirius, and I got out of the car and approached the pale-yellow building. Up close you could see it was windowless; driving by you might never notice the building doesn’t even have a roof.
The three of us approached a six-foot wrought iron fence. Sirius stopped to lift his leg while Reyes kept limping along the fence line. Behind the fence was a nicely landscaped area with trees, a lawn, and shrubbery. Anyone expecting fumes and noise had to be pleasantly surprised by very little of either.
Reyes looked at the building and shook his head, then went back to trying to locate the tracker through the readout on Heather’s cell phone. He walked east along the fence, extending his phone like it was a Geiger counter. “It should be right here,” he said.
We both started searching around the area. I wondered whether I would have to jump the fence to see if the tracker had been thrown inside the enclosure. It was something I would have to do gingerly; the pickets came with points. Then I noticed something that looked a little off. A growth of sorts rested between a picket and the top rail. Closer inspection showed that what I was seeing was a swatch of black duct tape that blended in with the wrought iron.
I pulled out my phone and snapped some shots. Reyes thought that was a good idea and did the same thing. Then I slipped on latex gloves and carefully removed the duct tape. Inside was the Doggone tracker.
“I’ll take that,” said Reyes.
I shook my head and said, “We’re not in Burbank.” Then I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket and dropped the tracker and duct tape inside.
Reyes’s face reddened. “What happened to me having the missing-person case, and you having the lost-dog case?”
“It’s hard to tell where the lost-dog case ends and where the lost-human case begins.”
Reyes wasn’t pleased. Under his breath I heard him muttering culero and pendejo. You don’t need to work as a cop in Los Angeles for very long to know that both were Spanish variants for asshole. Reyes’s temper didn’t improve when I called SID and asked them to join us. It was probably overkill bringing in the Scientific Investigations Division, but I wanted them to make sure there were no fingerprints or trace evidence.
While we waited I looked around for security cameras, but didn’t see any. Management probably didn’t care what went on outside a fake building. They would be more concerned about all those oil wells operating inside the four faux walls. Still, in the hopes that there were hidden cameras, I found an informational number for the Packard Well Site and wrote it down.
Reyes was chafing at the wait for SID. It was no cakewalk for him with his gout. “Estába picándo los ojos,” he muttered.
It must have been apparent that I was struggling to figure out the meaning. Reyes decided to give me a Spanish lesson, or at least a Mexican-Spanish lesson. “It’s a way of saying we’re wasting time,” he said. “What it translates to is ‘I’m poking my eyes.’”
“You’re probably right,” I admitted. “But this is as close as we’ve been to Heather Moreland’s abductor. I’m guessing he found the tracker on her and this is where he decided to dispose of it.”
“He played us. And the longer we stay here, the longer he keeps playing us.”
“If SID isn’t here in the next half an hour, we’ll take off.”
The offer seemed to mollify him. He looked at his watch, noted the time, and then nodded.
“I’m hoping this tracker has some kind of memory,” I said. “I doubt whether Heather’s kidnapper discovered it right away. Maybe the tracker can tell us where it’s been before it was brought here. I’ll call the manufacturer and check on that.”
“We could use a break,” he said.
I nodded.
“If you’re right about our lady’s pulling the tracking device off of the collar,” Reyes said, “that was fast thinking on her part.”
“She
’s always refused to be a victim.”
He nodded. One thing we could agree upon was that Heather Moreland had always shown lots of guts. I hoped she was still alive.
CHAPTER 20
AULD LANG SYNE
While waiting for SID to show up, I was able to contact technical support for Doggone. My hopes that the tracker had a memory were quickly dashed. A man who identified himself as “Roger” told me with a pronounced Indian accent, “The tracker can only tell you where it is now, not where it has been.”
It was a disappointment, but at the same time, Reyes and I were now that much more convinced Heather had been abducted. This wasn’t depressive disorder, or someone running away from her problems.
SID showed up right after I got off the phone with Roger. I didn’t know the tech, a young woman who identified herself as Linda Handler. She was new to LAPD, she told me. Her enthusiasm was refreshing, and she didn’t make me feel as if I was wasting her time.
“You can always tell the new hires,” said Reyes on our drive back to Burbank. “They’re so damn rude.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She kept saying, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’ to me. It made me feel damn old.”
“I’m sure her politeness won’t last.”
“That will be a relief.”
The two of us began discussing what we had, or what we didn’t have.
“Why didn’t he just smash the tracker to pieces?” said Reyes.
I shrugged. “Maybe he planted it for misdirection. It’s probably nowhere near his home or business.”
“Or maybe he just wanted to send us on a wild-goose chase.”
No one likes to be played for a fool, but . . . “That’s possible. If so, the spot he picked makes for a good commentary.”
“What do you mean?”
“He left his tracker at the site of the city’s biggest false front. Maybe he was saying welcome to my hidden world.”
“You think he was sending us a message?”
“I hope not. If he’s gaming us, he’s probably gaming Heather. My hope is that Emilio has locked Heather in a shed somewhere. This year a woman in Missouri was imprisoned in a wooden box for four months. Her boyfriend put her there after she threatened to break up with him. Luckily for her, she was able to free herself. That’s our best-case scenario.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario?”
“I’ve crossed paths with one serial murderer,” I said. “I’m hoping that this isn’t a case of encountering a second.”
“Why would you even think that’s a possibility?”
“For the last two years, I’ve been working with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, and one of the profilers there told me that at any given time, there are upward of forty active serial murderers doing their stalking around the country.”
“That’s not something I’ve been looking at.”
“I think we’re going to have to take a hard look at break-ins in the Southland. Serial murderers usually don’t begin by going all-in. Their fantasies set them on a slippery slope. It’s a learning curve for killers. We need to look at women who were threatened in their homes or apartments, and red-flag anything that resembles a potential abduction.”
“What kind of time frame?”
“Let’s narrow it to the last year. And while we’re at it, let’s also look at recent crime scenes that were staged so as to thumb their nose at law enforcement.”
“You think that’s what this is?”
I shrugged. “It’s more likely I’m grasping at straws.”
“Maybe the tracker was just left where it was for the sake of convenience,” said Reyes. “Like my old man used to say, ‘Location, location, location.’”
“Was your father a real estate agent?”
Reyes shook his head. “Septic tank cleaner. He liked to say he knew his shit.”
The one good thing about spending time with Reyes was that the two of us had come to a better working arrangement. Our border wars felt like a thing of the past, put aside for the greater good of finding Heather Moreland.
“Another suck day,” said Reyes as he exited my car.
“Another suck day,” I agreed.
It was already getting dark, and I decided to give up for the day. Sirius and I drove home in silence. My partner didn’t like that and gave me a nudge with his muzzle.
“I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up,” I said. “It was a long shot to begin with.”
Heather Moreland was still out there—I hoped.
Sirius nudged me again. “No, we’re not stopping at a restaurant,” I said. “You’re getting too used to eating out. Uncle Seth said he’d be making you a nice meal tonight.”
Only a few nights before, Sirius had been getting handouts from both me and Langston Walker. Thinking about Walker, I asked the car system synced to my cell to dial up Dave Holt, a detective in Robbery-Homicide.
“Make it fast, Gideon,” he said. “It’s almost time for the Final Jeopardy question.”
“I’m calling about Langston Walker’s death,” I said. “Did you know him, and what can you tell me about what happened?”
“I knew him, but not all that well. And I don’t know much about his death other than that he died like Jack.”
“Jack who?”
“Jack fell down and broke his crown.”
“I take it you’re not reading the eulogy, or that poem, at his funeral?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know him very well. But every year I pay close attention to the Darwin Awards. What’s a sixtysomething guy doing climbing a mountain?”
“If you really want to know, he was keeping a promise to his murdered son. The two of them had planned on doing the Cactus to Clouds Trail together four years ago. So every year since, Walker has remembered him by doing a hike on the anniversary of his death.”
“I didn’t know that.” Holt sounded a little chastened, but his conscience didn’t trouble him for long.
“Hold on,” he said. “Here’s the Final Jeopardy question: ‘He was prime minister of the UK from 1945 to 1951.’”
I didn’t say anything.
“The category is World Leaders,” Holt said, apparently thinking he was helping me to the answer.
“That stands to reason, but I still can’t help you.”
“A lot of good you are, Gideon. I think it’s a trick question. Everyone is going to say it was Winston Churchill. But I happen to know that right after World War II, the Brits showed their gratitude to Winnie by booting him out of office. I can’t remember who the hell replaced him, though, so I’m going to be forced to look at Trebek preening. He thinks he’s so goddamn smart. Of course you’re smart if you’ve got the answers written down in front of you. You know what I’d do if I didn’t know the answer? I’d write down: Who is Jack Mehoff? And I’d be the one smiling when that smug prick Trebek read what I wrote.”
Before I could comment, Holt said, “Neville Chamberlain? What’s that lady thinking? What an idiot. Neville was the PM who bent over for Hitler and dropped trou. She might as well have guessed ‘Wilt the Stilt’ Chamberlain. Churchill replaced Chamberlain as PM. Everyone knows that.”
I tried to get back to the subject of Langston Walker. “Who’s still working in RHD who’d know Walker best?”
“Clement Attlee,” said Holt.
I was trying to think if I knew a detective named Clement Attlee when Holt said, “Who the hell is Clement Attlee? And look at Trebek. He’s acting like Clement Attlee is a personal friend of his. What a self-righteous SOB. Yeah, you know Clement Attlee, Trebek. He probably buggered you.”
Clement Attlee, I deduced, had been the prime minister of England from 1945 to 1951. I decided that I’d heard enough about buggery, Alex Trebek, and Clement Attlee, and ended the call.
And then I was forced to think about the real Final Jeopardy question and Langston Walker, and wished that it wasn’t so.
Seth opened his door and said, “I’m
sorry about what happened to your friend, Michael.”
“I won’t pretend he was a friend,” I said, “but in the short time we spent together, I grew to respect him, and I couldn’t help but think he was a real stand-up guy.”
I found a seat in my usual chair, while Sirius took to his hemp doggie bed. My partner sensed the seriousness of the situation and wasn’t as buoyant as usual, even when Seth brought him his dinner.
Seth went to the bar to get us our drinks. Before he began his pour, I asked, “Do you happen to have Hennessys?”
“I do,” he said.
“If you don’t mind, barkeep, I think I’ll have that.”
Seth replaced my usual bourbon rocks glass with a snifter and poured two fingers of cognac. Then he chose his drink, filling a wineglass with cabernet sauvignon.
He handed me my cognac, then tilted his glass my way. “Auld lang syne,” he said. I echoed his words, and we clinked glasses and sipped.
“His choice of drink?” asked Seth.
“It was on the night we had dinner.”
I took another sip. Even though I’m not much of a cognac drinker, the drink was certainly smooth.
“I printed out a few articles on Walker and his death,” said Seth. “They’re on the table.”
“I appreciate that. I meant to catch up on that today, but my lost-dog, lost-human case kept me running. I did call a detective in Robbery-Homicide hoping to get an up-to-date account of how Walker died, but he didn’t know much.”
“From what I read, Walker was by no means the first to die on that trail. Apparently half a dozen other hikers have died from a variety of causes.”
I nodded. “The night we dined, Langston told me how difficult the hike was, but he did it as his way of spending time with his dead son.”
“What’s going to happen to his club?”
I shook my head. “His nickname was ‘The Speaker for the Dead.’ I don’t know who’s going to speak, or advocate, for them now.”
“He must have had an assistant.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I said. “During my visit it looked as if he was the club’s glue, organizer, and motivator. It will be a real loss if the club falls apart.”