Outside the Wire

by Patricia Smiley

  She ignored his smartass remark. Cops dealt with all kinds of posturing, mostly from people who conned themselves into believing they had the upper hand.

  “Maybe it’s because they’re all equal, all fighting for the same cause,” she said. “Did you serve in the military?”

  Brink pounded the nail into the wall with more force than needed. “No.”

  “Who’s the client Mr. Woodrow went to see in Hong Kong?”

  Brink hung the diploma on the nail and then rocked it back and forth until it was level. “Why should I jeopardize my future with the company by divulging confidential information?”

  “Consider what you could jeopardize if you don’t talk to me.”

  He glared at Davie. “I’m not sure what you mean. Is that some sort a threat?”

  Davie studied the diploma’s placement. It was still crooked. “Why would you think that, Mr. Brink?”

  “In case it’s not already apparent to you, Detective, TidePool sells security. A lot of what our clients do is proprietary. They don’t want their competitors or the public to know their business.”

  “You think the LAPD is going to use the info to horn in on your deals?”

  He rolled his eyes, making it clear he thought her comment was ridiculous. “Of course not.”

  “I’m going to find out who killed Zeke Woodrow and Juno Karst,” she said. “As a company employee, I’d think you’d want to help me.”

  Alden Brink seemed to bristle at “employee,” as if the word devalued his importance. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the floor like he was weighing the pros and cons of giving up the information. He held that pose for several moments before finally looking up. “Guardian Advanced Technologies is a multinational defense contractor based in Hong Kong, but they also have offices in other places—London, Berlin, Istanbul.”

  “What do they make?”

  He looked past her out the window at the cemetery in the distance. “Weapons systems, military satellites, other products I can’t mention.”

  “Who else went on that Hong Kong trip?”

  “A couple of executives from our Langley office. Zeke and Juno represented our training division. Both were former Rangers—poster boys for tough and smart. We always hauled them out for clients to see because they were impressive even in their sixties.”

  She guessed her boss Detective Giordano wouldn’t appreciate the ageism crack. “Do you know a man named Harlan Cormack?”

  He made a pretense of examining a pen he’d pulled from the box. Its clip was an angular winglike decal that reminded her of a vintage hood ornament. “He used to work for us. He was injured about six months back. We had to let him go.”

  “Injured on the job?”

  Brink set the pen on the desk. “In a motorcycle accident—on his own time.”

  “I’ll need his address.”

  “I don’t know where he is. He was living in a TidePool condo in San Pedro. When he left the company, he moved out.”

  “What about Dag Lunds?”

  “He’s on the payroll, but he wasn’t on the Hong Kong trip. He won’t go to Asia, so we only send him to other arenas like South America, the Middle East, and Europe.”

  Davie sensed movement. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Fern hovering near the doorway, listening. “I need to contact Lunds.”

  Brink shrugged. “I’ll give him your telephone number. If he wants to speak with you, he’s free to do so. I assume you’ll find him before I do.”

  Davie stared at Brink. “Just one last question. You told me on the phone that Mr. Woodrow broke his lease. When did he tell you he was moving?”

  He seemed to grow uncomfortable with her scrutiny and looked away. “The day he dropped by. He’d decided to retire. Normally he’d fill out the paperwork and send it to our HR department back in Virginia, but since I manage all the company’s real estate, he wanted to give me the key to the house. He said he didn’t plan to go back there.”

  “Seems odd,” she said. “If Mr. Woodrow moved out, why didn’t he take his cat?”

  Brink’s eyes darted toward the door, but Fern was no longer there. “I’m sure it was inadvertent. No need to read anything sinister into it.”

  There was no way Zeke forgot about Hootch. She kept her tone even and calm. “Recognizing sinister is why I’m good at my job, Mr. Brink.”

  16

  It was after three p.m. when Davie left Alden Brink’s office. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d eaten a real meal. Instead of returning to the station, she detoured to Tia Juana’s. Law enforcement personnel were discouraged from eating at restaurants outside their division while on duty in case there was a tactical alert that required a quick response. Tia’s was always her go-to place. It was a small family-owned operation run by Guillermo and Maria Sanchez with help from their four children who waited tables and worked in the kitchen on the weekends. They were a model family in Davie’s view, unlike her own, and she felt welcome whenever she walked through the door.

  Guillermo Sanchez greeted her in a green apron embroidered with the restaurant’s name and logo—a smiling cartoon tortilla with grates of cheesy hair sprouting beneath its sombrero. Mr. Sanchez was short and stocky with gray hair combed back and held in place with some kind of beauty product. His wife, Maria, was hunched over a hot grill in the front of the store, making fresh tortillas by hand. The fragrance was familiar and comforting.

  Mrs. Sanchez nodded hello as her husband ushered Davie to a back table in the dining room. He held out a menu. “What can I get for you today, Detective?”

  The restaurant was scrupulously clean, but Davie didn’t like to touch menus. The plastic covers always seemed greasy. “Huevos Rancheros.”

  “With flour or corn?”

  “Flour.”

  He nodded and disappeared around the corner to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of ice water and a basket of chips and salsa. Canned mariachi music flowed from speakers strategically placed around the room. As she waited for her food to arrive, her cell phone pinged with an incoming text. It was from her partner.

  Where are you?

  Tia’s.

  Stay put. I’ll be there in 5.

  It was more like ten minutes before Jason Vaughn arrived. Her food had just been placed on the table in front of her when he barreled through the door and hurried toward her. Mr. Sanchez followed him with a menu.

  Vaughn brushed it aside. “No thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “I finally got Juno Karst’s death report from Nevada. You’re not going to believe what’s on it.”

  He handed it to her. It was only two pages. She’d written longer grocery lists than that. She read the narrative and then looked at her partner.

  “There was a suicide note?” she said.

  “That’s what it says. And it was short and sweet—‘Sorry.’”

  Sorry to whom and for what? she wondered.

  “Did anybody verify that the handwriting was Karst’s?”

  “Nope. And they didn’t test his hands for GSR, either.”

  Preserving gunshot residue on the victim’s hands would have been a simple procedure to follow as long as they were tested within six hours of death. After that, it was almost impossible to get a reading. All first responders would have had to do was slip clean evidence bags over Karst’s hands and secure them with flex-cuffs for testing later. Davie examined the report again. The gun that killed Karst was a Glock 19, 9mm—a typical weapon used by law enforcement and thousands of other people.

  “So the sheriff found a gun, a note, and a body and didn’t bother to look any further,” she said. “You think Karst killed himself?”

  Vaughn unfolded the napkin covering the fresh tortillas and pulled one out. “If somebody murd
ered Karst, they knew how to set up the scene to confuse law enforcement. The hit happened in a remote area. The killer must have known that would delay first responders.”

  “Who found the body?”

  Vaughn reached across the table and picked up Davie’s knife. “The report says they got an anonymous call at the sheriff’s office.” He swiped a pat of butter across the warm tortilla. “It was a man’s voice but he wouldn’t leave his name. Just said he was driving by and saw the car parked along the shoulder. He stopped to see if Karst was having car trouble, saw the blood, and called it in. The sheriff didn’t consider that odd. Not everybody wants to get involved.”

  A disquieting calm settled into her chest. “The man called the sheriff’s office directly?”

  Vaughn used Davie’s spoon to scoop a load of refried beans from her plate and dump it on the tortilla in his hand. “That’s what the report says.”

  “So how did the guy get the number? He was out in the middle of nowhere. He would have to know what county and law enforcement jurisdiction he was in, and then look up the number on his cell or call information. That’s a lot of effort for a guy who just happened on a dead body. Why not just call 911?”

  “I thought it might be a local guy who already knew the number,” he said, “but I contacted the sheriff’s office to see if they could find him through the call history. I got a civilian employee who checked for me.”

  “And … ”

  Vaughn seemed introspective as he studied his handmade burrito. “And … I called the number. A man answered. Turns out he owns a gas station a few miles up the road from where the body was found. The call was made from a pay phone a few feet from the pumps.”

  “I didn’t know they still had pay phones. Did the owner see who made the call?”

  Vaughn bit into the burrito. His words were muffled as he chewed. “Seems like business is slow in his neck of the woods. He spends a lot of time sitting outside on a chair, watching cars go by. He claims a man used the pay phone the day the sheriff’s office got that call.”

  Davie pulled a tortilla chip from the basket. “Did he give a description?”

  Vaughn had finished the burrito and was eyeing the basket again. “Yeah, but it was too vague to be useful—medium height and in good shape. The guy was wearing a ball cap so the owner couldn’t see his face. But he’s seen a lot of license plates in his day and he noticed these were from Washington State. He didn’t pay attention to the numbers but he remembered the make and model of the car.”

  Davie nibbled on a chip as her partner pulled a second tortilla from the basket. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry?”

  “You’ve hardly touched the food. I hate to see it go to waste.”

  Davie pushed her plate to his side of the table. “So, the car?”

  Vaughn tucked into the eggs with Davie’s fork. “The guy was driving a black BMW 740i. Sound familiar?”

  She felt the skin on her neck tingle. That was the same model car they’d seen on the surveillance video, speeding out of the LAX parking garage just before Zeke Woodrow’s body was found.

  “So there’s our link between the two deaths,” she said.

  Vaughn nodded. “The area where Karst died is remote. We’re probably not going to find any actual witnesses to the murder.”

  “We’re not sure Juno was killed at that location,” Davie said. “Why was he out there in the middle of nowhere, and why did he stop along that particular stretch of highway? What happened to the car?”

  “I asked the civilian employee. She said Alden Brink had somebody from the rental agency pick up the car at impound. The woman said it was a mess. She was sure the front seat, carpet, and side window all had to be replaced. I’m guessing since TidePool paid for Karst’s cremation, their insurance company also paid for repairs to his rental car.”

  Davie sat up straight in her chair, as she focused on Vaughn’s words. “The side window?”

  “Yeah, I guess the shot blew it out.”

  She put her elbows on the table and leaned toward her partner. “But nobody analyzed the direction of the flying glass.”

  “If you mean, did anybody check to see if the gun was fired from inside or outside of the car, the answer is no, but I asked the sheriff to send us all his photos.”

  17

  Davie left Vaughn at the restaurant and returned to the station. She was disappointed to see that Cormack hadn’t responded to the letter she’d sent the day before. While she waited to hear from him, she continued her efforts to locate Dag Lunds, the fourth man in Zeke’s band of brothers.

  Woodrow’s ex-wife had told her one of his three friends was from somewhere in the South. That was Karst, whose obituary confirmed he came from Georgia. Another was a Midwesterner. The fourth was from Oregon. The Midwest encompassed a lot of territory but Oregon was manageable. For the next few hours, Davie searched every database at her disposal, including out-of-state vehicle, firearms, and drivers license registrations, arrest warrants, criminal history, and data from the National Crime Information Center, specifically targeting Oregon. Lunds’s name was unusual, so she couldn’t understand why it didn’t come up in any search she attempted. It appeared the guy was living off the grid.

  Frustrated from so many dead ends, she walked toward the vending machine in the hallway near the kit room to buy some water. The drinking fountain wasn’t an option. The city claimed the water was safe to drink, but until they vouched for the ancient pipes that carried it into the building, she’d stick with bottled.

  Everything was quiet in the station except for the sound of her coins jangling down the slot of the vending machine. Davie thought about the four men who had served and sacrificed for their country for so many years and the toll it had taken on their personal lives—Zeke Woodrow, divorced, and Juno Karst with no close family to even take possession of his remains. She wondered if Dag Lunds also had an angry ex-wife.

  Davie punched in the vending machine code and watched as an arm grabbed the water bottle. She remembered listening to Lynda Morrow’s tortured memories about Zeke’s absence, caring for their child alone, and her ex’s emotional remoteness. Those issues weren’t limited to military families. Plenty of cops had marriages that fell apart because of irregular work hours and the stress of the job. Spencer Hall was one of them. Her father was another.

  The bottle thudded into the tray. She grabbed it and returned to her desk to continue her search. After another fifteen minutes online, she stumbled across a site of archived Oregon State marriage and divorce records from 1965 and after. The listings were by county, so she had to search each one. It seemed to take forever but when she finally got to the Washington County file, she found a divorce decree for Dag and Christina Lunds that had been finalized in 2010. Unlike her ex-husband, Christina Lunds was easy to find. Within minutes Davie had the woman’s telephone number and an address in the city of Beaverton.

  She called Christina from her desk phone, not expecting to reach the woman on the first try. To her surprise, Christina answered.

  Davie introduced herself before firing off the first question. “I see you two are divorced, but are you still in touch with Dag?”

  “Not often, but yes. We have a son together, so we’ve stayed on friendly terms for his sake. Is anything wrong?”

  Davie cradled the receiver against her shoulder as she twisted off the cap on the water bottle. “I need to ask him a few questions about a homicide case I’m working.”

  Christina’s tone now sounded curious. “You think it was somebody Dag knew? Who is it?”

  Davie didn’t want to tell her about Juno Karst. That wasn’t her case and she didn’t want to alarm the woman more than necessary, especially since the cause of Karst’s death was still just a theory. “His name is Zeke Woodrow.”

  Christina’s sharp intake of air was audible. Then words started spilling out. “Zeke? Oh
my god, that’s horrible. He was like family. Dag will be devastated. What happened?” Her voice was husky, like she was fighting back emotions. “Would you like me to break the news to Dag? He was a mess after the first Gulf War—PTSD. I’m concerned how he’ll react.”

  Davie preferred to tell Lunds about Zeke’s death to judge his reaction firsthand, because until he was cleared, he was a suspect. On the other hand, if Lunds was innocent, the humane thing to do was let Christina handle it. “You can but I still need to speak with him.”

  Christina must have found a tissue nearby because she blew her nose. “Before I call, maybe you could just give me a little more information.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t discuss the details of an open case.”

  “Of course, Detective,” she said. “Dag lives in a condo in California, in San Pedro. But you should call before you go there. He travels a lot on business and may not be home.”

  “Are there any other places he hangs out, like at a bar or gym?”

  “He’s not the gym type. As for bars, he prefers to drink at home. There’s another place you might check. We used to own a cabin in Kern County by the Kings River. It was his retreat from the world. When we divorced, I moved back to Oregon but he kept the cabin. I’m not sure if he still uses it, but if he’s there, the cell service is iffy. And as I said, he travels a lot, so if he’s in a place where reception isn’t great, you’ll have to leave a message. He’ll call you when he can.”

  Davie wrote down Dag Lunds’s contact information in her notebook. San Pedro was only twenty-five miles from the station so going there to interview him wouldn’t be a problem. If she and Vaughn had to drive to a cabin in Kern County, however, it would be a major time commitment. She hoped Lunds would be available to meet her at the station.

  “Does Lynda know about Zeke?” Christina’s tone seemed tentative.

  “Zeke Woodrow’s ex? Yes, she knows.”

  “How did she take it?” She didn’t wait for Davie’s response. “Not exactly devastated, I’d guess. Such a shame she’s still so angry. Will there be a service for Zeke? I’d like to be there.”