NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  Unfortunately, Daggut thought, it was also a day when he’d found himself out three thousand bucks thanks to that compulsive bullshitter Isaak Dorani, and those federal agents who’d come through his door a few minutes after Isaak left the shop.

  He scratched the snake and skull tat on his arm, a recent addition that itched like hell.

  The bell rang a third time.

  Daggut frowned. Three thou was a huge goddamn number in the minus column. Sickeningly huge, in fact. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see what that clown outside wanted. If the guy started in with a cheapskate show-and-tell routine, he would tell him to come back another day.

  Sighing, he went to the front door, turned the latch, and moved aside to let him in.

  “How you doin’?” he asked. “Need some help?”

  Little Mephistopheles stood there a second as the door swung heavily shut, its chimes tinkling behind him.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said, his gaze going past Daggut to the back counter. “Would you be kind enough to let me see your jewelry case?”

  Daggut almost burst out laughing. Nobody could ever say he didn’t know his customers.

  “Sure,” he said. “Follow me.”

  He led him toward the display case, went around behind it. “You looking for something special?”

  The guy leaned over the counter, not even glancing inside. He flicked his eyes quickly left and right, as if to see if there were any other customers in the shop with him. Then he lifted them up to Daggut’s.

  “Yes, Mr. Daggut,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve come here for the Edison cylinders.”

  Daggut looked at him.

  “Cylinders?” he said, struggling to cover up his surprise. “I dunno what you’re talking ab—”

  The little man drew the gun from under his jacket before he could finish his sentence, pointing it straight across the counter.

  His eyes widening in dismay, Daggut saw it was a Glock 41 longbarrel, a cannon that fired forty-five caliber slugs and would blow a hole in him so wide you could drive a moving van through it.

  “Sir, I don’t intend to play games,” the man said, angling the gun up at his chest. “Sometime earlier today, a common thief named Isaak Dorani brought you a box—a rather large box—of thirty or forty rare cylinder records. I will not ask if you knew they were stolen property. Indeed, I will ask no questions whatsoever. I will simply, and politely, request that you turn them over to me right now. And then I will leave here without further disruptions.”

  Daggut returned his stare. He’d had guys come in and stick him up plenty of times. Never anyone dressed like Little Mephistopheles here—most were junkie gangbangers with colored rags hanging off them and so many piercings in their faces they looked like human pincushions. But that happened enough, you knew the ones who’d hesitate before pulling the trigger. When somebody seemed even the slightest bit indecisive, he would get the tire iron from under the counter and turn his head into brain pudding.

  This guy’s eyes were telling him he was a stone cold killer. He needed to be straight with him.

  “Listen,” he said, unconsciously scratching his arm. “I’d give you the records in a second. But I don’t have them.”

  Little Mephisto stared at him. The gun looked outrageously large in his thin, almost dainty hand.

  It also looked very steady there.

  “Mr. Daggut, are you claiming you did not receive the cylinders?” he asked.

  Daggut shook his head, trying not to look stunned. How did the guy know his name?

  “I bought them,” he said. “Set myself back three thou. But Isaak isn’t gone twenty minutes when this guy comes in here flashing his ID, says he’s a federal agent—”

  “What do you mean ‘agent’? Was he with the FBI?”

  Daggut shook his head.

  “That’s what I wondered,” he said. “He smelled ripe, let me tell you. Like he wouldn’ve known a shower stall from an outhouse. I didn’t believe the agent line, figured he might be mental, you get all kinds around here. But when I asked, he explained he was Naval Intelligence. And that’s what his card said. NCIS.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He asked about the cylinders, same as you. Asked what I knew about ’em.”

  “And then?”

  “I told the truth. That I got them from Isaak. And that Isaak said he inherited ’em from his loco grandma. Or somebody else’s fruitcake grannie. Something like that.”

  “Go on.”

  “He told me I had to turn them over to him. That they were evidence in an investigation.”

  “And?”

  “That’s exactly what I did,” Daggut said. “Went into my back room for the carton and put it in his hands.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it,” Daggut said. “He tells me he’ll probably have some more questions later on, and then leaves here with the box.”

  The man angled his chin up slightly. An instant later, Daggut saw an even slighter twitch at the hinge of his jaw.

  “Questions,” he said.

  Daggut was suddenly thinking he’d made a stupid mistake. That he should have kept that particular detail to himself.

  “I told him everything I know… just about Isaak and his grandma,” he said. Then added, “He can talk to me another ten times, a hundred, I got nothing more for him.”

  Little Mephistopheles stared over the top of the gun.

  “That’s all? You’re certain no more was said between you?”

  “Not a word,” Daggut said. “Agent Stinkbomb takes the box from my hands, and two seconds later he’s out the door. And I’m out my Edison swag and the three thou.”

  The man looked at him for a long moment, his jaw muscle again moving almost imperceptibly.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  Daggut felt a speck of relief. He inhaled and stopped scratching.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” he said.

  Little Mephistopheles shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “There will be no more questions, Mr. Daggut.”

  Daggut furrowed his broad forehead, wondering if he’d heard an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  Then the gun roared hotly in his face, giving a loud and clear answer.

  11

  It was nine o’clock at night in the Boatshed, where two Navy masters-at-arms were guarding an increasingly irate and impatient Isaak Dorani, who was still awaiting the arrival of his attorney from the Public Defender’s Office. As for the lawyer, a woman named Lauren Scardella, she was inexplicably missing in action, having last phoned in over an hour ago from the thick of a freeway traffic jam somewhere near the downtown area. At the time, she’d optimistically given her assurances that she was no more than fifteen minutes away.

  Not far away at OSP headquarters, meanwhile, Kensi Blye and Nell Jones were about to give Dorani’s highly unusual ghost gun a workout in the forensic shooting range. Both were at the firing line, their earmuffs down around their necks. Its steel walls covered with ballistic rubber tiles, the long, sound-baffled room was quiet except for the murmur of sterile HEPA-filtered air flowing from the vents.

  Kensi inspected the gun’s loaded fifteen-round magazine, slapping it into the well with her palm, then racking the slide to chamber a round.

  “Thanks for hanging out late to meet me,” Kensi said. “I wanted to get this done before Dorani’s lawyer shows. Assuming that happens.”

  Nell smiled.

  “Technically, I stuck around with Eric,” she said, “to make artichoke pizza.”

  “Oh?”

  Nell nodded. “We’re experimenting,” she said. “When you called, I just went up and got the gun up from Evidence. And here you were.”

  Kensi looked at her, intent on a little mischief, being that nobody was exactly sure what was going on between the two techs after hours.

  “So… how’d your experimentation go?” she asked.

  “You mean w
ith the pizza?”

  Kensi shrugged. “Pizza, Eric, whatever.”

  Nell looked slightly flustered.

  “I’d suppose I’d call it, uh… delightful,” she said.

  Kensi decided to press a little. “And by that you mean…?”

  “Well, I’m crazy about artichokes,” she said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Eric is too.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “We can’t resist them when we’re together,” Nell said, a suddenly distant look in her eyes. “They’re so very hard on the outside…”

  Kensi felt her cheeks flush with warmth, thinking she regretted having gotten this whole thing started.

  “Ah, Nell—”

  “So succulent inside…”

  “Nell.”

  “I love sliding the fleshy part over the edge of my teeth,” she said, still staring off into space. “Then onto my tongue and—”

  “Nell!”

  The tech blinked as if abruptly shaken from a trance.

  “Oh,” she said, clearing her throat. “Sorry.”

  Kensi took a deep breath.

  “The gun,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “I want to see how it fires.”

  “Right.” Clearing her throat again. “So do I.” Smoothing her purple floral dress. “I mean, what makes it extraordinary is that it has no metal components.” She formed an O with her thumb and forefinger. “I mean, zero.”

  Kensi nodded, raising the muffs over her ears.

  “Typically on printed plastic guns the lower receiver is still metal,” Nell said, doing the same with her ear protectors. “Other parts too. Like the trigger assembly.”

  Kensi turned to face the target downrange, getting into her stance. Her fingers wrapped around the weapon, legs slightly spread for balance.

  “The only printed plastic guns that ever worked effectively were single shot models,” Nell said. “On a semiautomatic pistol or carbine set for burst fire, the heat and pressure of the powder gas, and the kinetic force of the explosion, would melt the muzzle and break the rest of a gun apart.”

  Kensi sighted over the nub at the end of the gun barrel and repeatedly squeezed its trigger, the weapon jolting in her hands as she ran off its clip into the target’s chest area. Then she pulled the muffs from her ears and looked it over, turning it from side to side.

  “There’s no damage,” she said, holding it out. “How’s that possible?”

  Nell took the gun for a closer look.

  “My lab work tells us it’s made of a superpolymer-ceramic composite material we’ve never seen before. It’s much stronger than either one separately,” she said, hefting it in her hand. “And really light.”

  “And this new composite first turns up in the hands of a hopeless schnook like Isaak Dorani?” Kensi said. “That seems kind of odd to m—”

  She looked up, seeing hallway light spill into the room as the door unexpectedly opened.

  An instant later Henrietta Lange stepped through.

  “Hetty,” Kensi said. “I didn’t realize you were here this late.”

  “I wasn’t,” Hetty said soberly. “But it’s turning into an eventful night.”

  “What’s going on?” Kensi asked.

  Hetty frowned.

  “Murders,” she said. “Two of them.”

  * * *

  The hundred mile drive from Carpinteria to Big Santa Anita Canyon took Callen and Sam over two hours on the Foothill Freeway, most of it over dark, rolling stretches of blacktop with scant town lights along the way, intermittent reflective lane dividers, and the tree-clad mountain shoulders pressing in on both sides.

  Now Callen turned a bend in the road and saw the rectangular outline of a hand-carved wooden sign up ahead. He leaned forward as his highbeams splashed it:

  Tanly Flat

  RECREATION AREA

  ANGELES

  National Forest

  “Oh, my stars and garters,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

  Sam stretched beside him. “Finally, man,” he said. “My body aches in places I didn’t know could ache.”

  Callen pulled a face.

  “Don’t get graphic,” he said, reaching for the coffee in his cup holder. “I’m too whacked from driving all day to handle it.”

  “Hey,” Sam said. “Didn’t I offer to take over?”

  Callen drank some coffee, frowned. It was already tepid when he’d picked it up at a gas station about fifty miles down the road.

  “Your eyes being shut made it kind of hard to take you seriously,” he said.

  Sam yawned and held a hand out.

  “Fusspot,” he said, taking the cup from him. “Let’s just hope Karyn guessed right about hubby coming here.”

  Callen rode his brakes, peering out the windshield. After a minute or two he saw a low, wood-frame structure about a hundred yards up the road to the left. There were saddles, leather harnesses, and thick coils of rope hanging from its wide front porch.

  “That’s the pack station,” he said, pointing to a window. “See the nice donkey?”

  Sam looked out and saw a long, horse-like head framed inside it.

  “Wonder if he smells anything like Deeks?” he said, puckering his face as he sipped from the coffee cup. “This wastewater just took a year off my life, by the way.”

  Callen pulled behind the building into its gravel-and-dirt parking area. It was large, pitch dark and surrounded by soaring alders and pines. Cruising slowly around its uneven borders, they could make out eight or ten vehicles—mostly pickups and SUVs—in the spill of the Benz’s headlights.

  Sam suddenly pointed out his window.

  “Stop the show,” he said. “Look over there.”

  Callen did. Parked under a shelf of overhanging branches, the BMW sedan was a conspicuous sight in the backcountry lot.

  He came to a halt behind it, leaving his headlights on. Then he took a Maglite from his glove box and they both got out.

  Sam was walking toward the rear of the BMW when he abruptly stopped in his tracks.

  “G,” he said. “Don’t step on the rattlesnake.”

  Callen made a disbelieving face. “You seriously think I’m falling for that?”

  “Falling for what?”

  “For a stunt that wouldn’t sucker a gullible nine year old.”

  Sam spread his hands. “Listen, man, I’m just trying to—”

  The rattling noise silenced him at once.

  Callen looked at Sam’s face a second, then glanced down.

  The snake was coiled in a loose S between them and the rear of the BMW, its wedge-shaped head rearing off the ground, its tail pointed straight up and quivering in the air.

  “Okay,” he said, looking back up at Sam. “I believe you.”

  Sam frowned. “Some people can’t find it in their hearts to trust.”

  The snake shook its tail again.

  “Hey, I said I believed him,” he said, staring at it.

  “They like sleeping on rocks and gravel during the day,” Sam said. “Night’s when they hunt for prey.”

  “Fascinating,” Callen said. “So now what?”

  “Move off its turf… slow,” Sam said in a quiet voice. “Rattlers are shy. He doesn’t want to mess with you any more than you want to mess with him.”

  Callen took a measured step away from it, another, then stopped, Sam doing the same on the opposite side. After a few seconds the rattler went slithering off into the darkness.

  “Next time, warn me,” Callen said.

  “I’ll try to remember,” Sam said.

  They turned back to the sedan. Callen knelt to shine his flash directly on its license plate, Sam checking his smartphone to confirm the obvious.

  “The tag number matches Sutton’s,” he said. “This is his BMW.”

  Callen stood up. Looking around the parking area, he spotted the trailhead off to his right amid the trees. Barely discernible in the pale yellow throw of his head
lights, it was wide enough for a loaded pack mule to negotiate.

  “Ready for a moonlight hike?” he said.

  Sam glanced up at the pitch-black sky. “There’s no moon,” he said.

  “So what’s wrong with using your imagination?”

  Sam made a face. “All right, Boy Scout,” he said. “But try not to wake any more wildlife.”

  Callen grinned.

  “Valli-deri, Valli-dera,” he said, turning toward the trail.

  * * *

  The mule trail wound downhill at a gradual pitch, leading Sam and Callen under dense stands of juniper, alder, and other forest brush. It was a dry, pleasant night, the air sweet with leafy, resinous smells.

  They had walked for about twenty minutes when they emerged from the trees into a level, shallow basin. A crisp breeze blew in their direction, pushing off the heat of the day.

  Callen stopped, his feet planted on the trail. Only the chirping of the crickets could be heard in the stillness of the night. To his left and right, patches of curling mountain fern rose waist-high from the bare rocks, rustling softly in the steady breeze.

  He could see the glow of electric lights on the far side of the depression.

  “That’s gotta be the cabin,” he said quietly. “According to Karyn there’s nothing else close by.”

  Sam stood close beside him.

  “What next?” he said. “If Valli sees us coming he’s bound to take off.”

  “Plan A,” Callen said, “we don’t let him see us coming.”

  “This is why I insist on you as my partner,” Sam said.

  They stepped off the trail into the screening ferns. Soon they could make out the log cabin’s dark, squat outline against the hillside. The light pouring from its front windows showed nothing outside but a small attached toolshed, and a woodpile with a plastic tarpaulin over it.

  They inched closer, coming within fifteen or twenty yards of the place. Sam peered up ahead and tapped Callen’s shoulder. The window blinds were raised, and he’d spotted someone moving around inside.