Mortal Faults

by Michael Prescott

  “You’re in a hell of a mood.”

  “Getting my hair parted by flying ammo has a way of doing that to me. What were they shooting, anyhow?”

  “Forty-five caliber ACP plus-Ps.”

  “Hot load. Serious stopping power. Get nailed with one of those, and it could ruin a girl’s whole day. Luckily I found a way to even the odds.”

  “Three against one isn’t evening the odds.”

  “It is when the one in question is me.” Abby shrugged. “What can I say? I believe in myself.”

  “There’s a fine line between self-esteem and self-delusion.”

  Abby shifted in her seat, kicking her shoes together beneath the table. “Self-delusion is a greatly underrated quality. Personally I’m in favor of it. People who have no illusions are dangerous. It’s our fantasies that keep us grounded. It’s our craziness that keeps us sane.”

  Tess shook her head. “Now I know I’m in L.A.”

  “Seriously, think about it. You have a couple who are married ten years, fight all the time but always kiss and make up, because that’s what lovers do. And they’re in love. That’s their fantasy. That’s the story they tell themselves. And then one day the fantasy dies, and they realize they’re not in love anymore and maybe they never were. No more illusions. No more kiss and make up. So one of them bludgeons the other one to death with a broom handle.”

  “They were better off lying to themselves?”

  “Absolutely. Lying to ourselves is the only way most of us can get through the day.”

  The waitress returned with an offer of dessert. They both passed, then remained silent until she had dropped off the check and left.

  “You’re a strange person, Abby,” Tess said finally.

  “I just have a penchant for conversational detours.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t as much of a detour as you think. Lovers who fall out of love—that’s quite relevant to the present situation.”

  “Let me guess. Andrea Lowry and Jack Reynolds.”

  “She was Bethany back then.”

  “But they were together? They were a couple?”

  “We think so.”

  “When?”

  “Twenty years ago. I assume you know that Jack Reynolds used to be the Orange County D.A. At that time, Bethany was his mistress. She got pregnant and gave birth to twin boys.”

  Abby shut her eyes briefly. “Reynolds’ boys.”

  Tess nodded. “Not that he ever publicly admitted to being the father. He was already married and raising a family of his own. He was planning a run for political office. Obviously he hadn’t wanted Bethany to get pregnant at all. She’d told him she was on the pill. It was a lie. She wanted to get pregnant, because she was convinced that if she bore his children, he would leave his wife for her.”

  “Naive.”

  “Extremely. Reynolds, though, was a smooth talker. He’d met Bethany in the courthouse—she was a legal secretary. He convinced her that his marriage wasn’t working, that he meant to get a divorce. She fell for it. They were together for a year or so, and she began to suspect he wasn’t going to hold up his end of the deal. Having children was her way of forcing his hand.”

  “But it didn’t work out the way she planned.”

  “Reynolds understood that Bethany had been trying to trap him. He’s not the sort of man who likes feeling trapped.”

  “Not many are. How old were the twins when Bethany figured out that it was over?”

  “Ten months.”

  “She shot them,” Abby said, “when they were ten months old.”

  “Yes. The breakup is what precipitated the double murder and the attempted suicide. Admittedly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. She’s mad at him, so she takes it out on her own kids.”

  Abby waved off this objection. “She wasn’t thinking of them as her kids. To her, they were his kids—his flesh and blood. She wanted to make him suffer. She wanted to take something away from him.”

  “So she punishes him by killing her own children?”

  “Something like that. It’s what Medea did, right?”

  “I think so. Whatever her intention, she ended up punishing herself. She survived her suicide attempt, but it might have been better for her if she hadn’t.”

  “I’m missing something here. After she woke up from surgery and realized she was going to live, why didn’t she tell the world about Reynolds? She could’ve ruined his career.”

  “He got to her first. As D.A., he had access to her while she was in the hospital, under police protection. He must have intimidated her into silence.”

  “How do you intimidate somebody who’s killed her kids and tried to kill herself? She had nothing left to lose.”

  “I don’t know. But she kept quiet, so Reynolds must have managed it. He also had her declared incompetent to stand trial.”

  Abby nodded. “Convenient. No testimony, no embarrassing questions.”

  “Exactly. She was shipped off to a mental hospital. And Reynolds continued his illustrious career, which led him to Capitol Hill a few years later.”

  “This is all very interesting.” Abby took out her purse and removed some cash, which she counted and left on the table. “But since she’s not talking to the authorities, Andrea didn’t give you this info. I doubt Reynolds did, either. So are we dealing with hard facts, or just supposition?”

  “What we’re dealing with is the story Bethany told one of her doctors while she was in the psychiatric hospital. She doesn’t even know she told him. She was heavily medicated at the time.”

  “And how did the FBI find out about it?”

  “A walk-in. Two weeks ago this doctor came to the Bureau and reported what he’d been told.”

  “Just two weeks ago? She’s been out of the hospital for eight years. You’re saying the doc kept the secret all that time?”

  “He had no idea whether or not it was true. It could have been the babbling of a delusional patient. He wasn’t going to get involved in some political mess on the basis of something a patient told him in confidence and under medication.”

  “What changed his mind?”

  “Someone called the hospital two weeks ago, making inquiries about Bethany Willett.”

  “What kind of inquiries?”

  “He was trying to find out Bethany’s current address. The doctor, who runs the hospital now, thought it might be a journalist. But when he checked the call’s origin, he found it had been made from a pay phone in the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C.”

  “I’m guessing Reynolds works out of Rayburn.”

  “He has an office there. And Congress was in session at the time. The doctor decided it was pretty good confirmation of Bethany’s story. He also decided that Reynolds probably wasn’t just trying to get back in touch with an old friend.”

  Abby smiled. “I’ll bet the Bureau was none too thrilled to get hold of that information.”

  “We investigate everything. We’re nonpolitical.”

  “Right.”

  “It was dicey,” Tess admitted. “Reynolds is a powerful congressman. He’s not the sort of person you can haul in for interrogation. The situation had to be handled with care. MEDEA was reactivated, and an investigative squad was set up. They located Bethany Willett under her new identity, and learned she’s visited at least one of Reynolds’ campaign events.”

  “She’s visited a lot of them. She’s his number one fan.”

  “Which is why Reynolds hired you, I assume. He was being stalked by the woman he’d broken up with twenty years ago—a woman who’s already proven herself to be psychologically unstable.”

  “Isn’t it nice how all the pieces of our story are coming together in such a rich, satisfying mosaic?”

  Tess ignored her. “Now that we’ve tightened our surveillance, there’s no way you can contact her again. If you continue your involvement in the case, you’ll be seen by surveillance. Someone will remember you from the Rain Man case. And we’ll both be in a lot
of trouble.”

  “So you’re saying ...?”

  “I’d like you to walk away.”

  “Disappear, get lost. Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m hurt, Tess. You don’t want us to work together, side by side? It was fun last time. You, all staid and bureaucratic, and me, your reckless, fun-loving sidekick. It was a regular buddy picture.”

  “I remember that movie. I’m not interested in a sequel.”

  “There’s rarely any artistic justification for doing one,” Abby conceded. “Okay, I’ll back off.”

  Tess eyed her suspiciously. “You agreed to that a little too easily.”

  “Why wouldn’t I agree? I don’t want to be ID’d by the Bureau, either. And it’s not like I have a client in this case. I quit on Reynolds even before his goons almost killed me.”

  “Did you tell him where to find Andrea?”

  “Nope. At least not intentionally. But I must’ve screwed up somehow, given him more info than I realized.”

  Tess thought about it. “He could’ve had you followed.”

  “I would have spotted a tail. It’s something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. He’s smarter than I thought, apparently. I led him to Andrea. I just don’t see how.”

  “Regardless of that, you’re willing to leave it alone?”

  “Yeah. I’ll walk. It’s not like I have a choice. “

  Abby got up. Tess remained seated, watching her. “I’ve been straight with you, Abby. Are you being straight with me?”

  “Honest Injun. Cross my heart. Come on, don’t you trust me?”

  “I don’t trust anybody.” Tess looked away, feeling suddenly tired. “Not even myself. And I have you to thank for it.”

  “Moi?”

  “You got me into this clandestine stuff. You brought me to the point where I am now, where I have to lie and cover up in front of everybody, all the time.”

  Abby slung her purse over her shoulder. “Welcome to my world.”

  “I never wanted to be in your world. I never wanted to live your life.”

  “Yeah, well, I never asked you to get directly involved in this case, either.”

  “I was keeping secrets even before I got involved this time.”

  “You’re a government agent. Keeping secrets is your job.”

  “Not when I’m keeping them from my superiors.”

  “That’s where I’m lucky.” Abby smiled. “I don’t have any superiors.”

  “Which means you don’t have anybody to keep you in line.”

  “My conscience keeps me in line.”

  “Does it?”

  Abby didn’t answer that. “Bye, Tess. Nice running into you again. If I’m ever in Denver, I’ll look you up.”

  She walked away. Tess looked after her, then at the plate across the table, the bloody carvings of gristle and fat in a thin red pool.

  23

  Abby did not, in fact, have plans to spend the evening in a warm bath, with or without the accompaniment of Jim Nabors’ dulcet baritone. She was way too keyed up for that.

  She headed into Hollywood and parked outside the LAPD divisional station on Wilcox. The front of the building was an unprepossessing brick façade adorned with a banner inviting passersby to sign up for the police reserves. She wondered if the department ever got any takers.

  Having left her gun in the car, she got through the metal detector without any fuss. At the front desk she asked for Sergeant Wyatt, identifying herself as Charlene, the code name they’d agreed on. The desk officer called Wyatt, got an okay, and directed her to his office.

  She walked through a maze of corridors, past bulletin boards crowded with actual bulletins, past squad rooms where the desks were jammed together into communal work spaces littered with in-basket debris, past an echoing stairwell and a grimy coffee nook, and finally found the office, located near the rear door of the building—convenient for the cops who parked out back in the fenced lot.

  Vic Wyatt was alone in the office, which meant he could risk a kiss—a quick kiss, almost furtive. He might be afraid of someone walking in on them, or he might just be feeling a little standoffish. He got that way sometimes. He had always wanted more out of their relationship than she had been willing to give.

  “You running the show tonight?” she asked. Normally a lieutenant served as watch commander, but a sergeant took the helm sometimes. It was no big stretch for Wyatt. He was due for a promotion to lieutenant any day now.

  “It’s all me,” he said, running a hand through his sandy crew cut. “What brings you here?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “I’d say so. Showing up at the station isn’t your usual M.O.”

  She put on a pouty face. “You talk about me like I’m a criminal. I could take offense.”

  “You’re too dangerous to be a criminal. Besides, criminals are stupid.”

  “Only the ones who get caught.”

  “They all get caught eventually.”

  “Spoken like a true officer of the law. Okay, what brings me here is this.” She reached into her purse and removed her sketch of the tattoo, smoothing it out.

  Wyatt studied it. “Very artistic. You entering a contest or something?”

  “It’s a tat I saw on a man’s neck. I think it’s a—”

  “Scorpion,” Wyatt said, frowning.

  “Hey, you got it right on the first try. Am I a good artist or what?”

  “You’ve definitely captured the subject. Where’d you see this guy, anyway?”

  “Around.”

  “Around where?”

  She didn’t want to tell him, but she knew he would get it out of her sooner or later. “I had a little encounter this afternoon.”

  “What kind of encounter?”

  “The kind where people are shooting at me, and I’m shooting back.”

  He set down the sketch and stared at her. “Are you okay?”

  “Not a nick on me. It was no fun, though—as I guess you know. You been in many shootouts?”

  He frowned at the question. He was doing a lot of frowning all of a sudden. “I’ve been in zero shootouts.”

  She found this hard to believe. Wyatt had worked out of Hollywood for years, and despite extensive efforts at renovation, much of the area still wasn’t safe after dark. “None?”

  “I’ve never fired a shot in the field. I’ve hardly ever had to draw my piece. Which makes me no different from about ninety-eight percent of the cops in this town.”

  “Huh.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that. Now you’re looking at me like I wear a skirt.”

  “No, I’m not.” She considered it. “Maybe a little.”

  “Thanks. So how serious was this situation?”

  “It was nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “That’s not exactly an answer.”

  “Minor dust-up. No big deal.”

  He grunted skeptically. “Which division is covering it?”

  “LAPD isn’t involved. It was in San Fernando.”

  “I can’t help you there.”

  “You couldn’t help anyway. The FBI took the case.”

  “The FBI? How the hell did they get involved?”

  “Hey, you know the federales, always horning in on the action.”

  Wyatt stepped closer to her and put his arms around her waist. His touch was unexpectedly gentle. “These days the feds are more concerned with terrorists than street criminals. You weren’t shooting it out with Al Qaeda, were you?”

  “Nothing that dramatic.” She was surprised at how good it felt to be embraced, how much she needed it. “They were pros, though. One of them was wearing the body art. I was hoping it might mean something to you.”

  “It does. It’s the logo of the Scorpions.”

  “The Scorpions. Scary name.”

  “Scary guys. You sure you’re okay?”

  She slipped free of his grasp and let him stu
dy her from head to toe. “Do I look incapacitated?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. So who exactly are the Scorpions?”

  “Biker club out of Santa Ana. They all have tats like this.”

  “If they’re in Santa Ana, how did they come to your attention?”

  “They get around. Santa Ana is where they started. They have a few satellite clubs in L.A. If you got into it in San Fernando, you’re probably dealing with someone local.”

  Abby thought about Reynolds’ trip to the barrio. “No, I don’t think so. I think Orange County is a better bet. You wouldn’t happen to know where in Santa Ana these gentlemen can be found?”

  “I don’t, but I can talk to somebody who does. If you give me a reason why I should.”

  “They fired bullets at my head.”

  “That’s what concerns me.”

  “It concerned me, too.”

  “I mean, it concerns me that you might be thinking about revenge.”

  “What I’m thinking of is bringing these folks to justice.”

  “Street justice? Or the regular kind?”

  “The regular kind. Trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty, Miranda warnings, the whole nine yards.”

  Wyatt reached out and stroked her hair thoughtfully. “I know I ought to believe you.”

  “Come on, Vic, what do you think I’m gonna do? Track down these guys and get into another pissing match?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

  “A pissing match is one contest I know I can’t win. Besides, although I may be occasionally a tad reckless, I’m not suicidal.”

  “Not normally. But you seem pretty jazzed, Abby. Kind of...”

  “Hopped up? Like I’m on speed?”

  Wyatt squinted at her. “Well, yeah.”

  “Someone else made the same observation. So I guess it must be true. I mean, not the speed part. But I am a little jumpy. Can you blame me?”

  “Not at all. But you know, there’s a reason police officers aren’t sent back into the field right after a shooting incident. The aftereffects—”

  “I studied psychology, Vic. I know all about posttraumatic stress.”

  “Then you’re aware that you’re showing some of the symptoms. You’re on an adrenaline high. At some point you’re going to come down. You could come down hard.”