Eight years ago, his boss earned the nickname Harley after infiltrating the outlaw motorcycle gang Sons of Secrecy as a biker-gun dealer. At ATF he was a legend for being the first agent to be “patched in,” or made a member, in an outlaw motorcycle gang, a distinction similar to being a “made man” in the Mafia. While working deep undercover with the Sons, Harley gathered enough evidence about its gun- and drug-trafficking network for the Department of Justice to file charges.
Soon after Harley and his ATF partner, Max Dakin, were ambushed in a drive-by shooting. Dakin died at the scene. Harley took six bullets, resulting in permanent nerve damage from severed tendons in his left leg and hand. After that, ATF took him off the streets. Some agents damn near begged to get out of field work, but busting bad guys was Harley’s calling. Sticking him behind a desk, even with a promotion, was like sticking Clint Eastwood behind a snow-cone stand.
Maybe he hated the desk, but he kept it clean as a neat-freak’s wet dream. Reports in color-coded folders, a carved six-hole pen holder, a compact scanner aligned just so with his desktop computer that currently scrolled the news. The star of the show was a sparkling crystal bowl filled with wrapped hard candies, his only vice. Pissed him off when people helped themselves without asking.
A cup of steaming tea scented the air with peppermint, suggested by Harley’s doctor to ease his stress levels. From this angle, Mike saw how carefully his boss had combed his thinning dark hair over an emerging bald spot.
"You look like Mister America," he said, gesturing at Harley’s dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie.
"Gave expert witness testimony in a Sons of Secrecy case this morning.” He put aside the papers and checked out Mike’s cargo shorts and Hawaiian-print shirt. “What’d you do, infiltrate a group of surfers to get evidence?”
ATF agents often worked with other law enforcement agencies, both locally and nationally, on investigations. For the last month, Mike had worked an arson case with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in the southern California seaside town of San Clemente.
He dragged a hand through his longish hair as he sat in a hard guest chair. “Nah, just hung out on the beach and waited for them to come to me. The fire at the beachfront property started at the crack of dawn, a prime time for surfers to hit the waves. Figured one of them might have seen suspicious activity the morning of the fire. As you know from my report, one had.”
As a surfer headed out to the beach, he had noticed a thirtyish, dark-haired woman sitting alone in a silver Honda SUV, staring at the building across the street. Mike searched motor vehicle records and learned the SUV was registered to Victoria LeHane, who matched the surfer’s description. Further research revealed LeHane was one of the owners of the burned building and stood to receive a sizable share of the insurance money.
“Read it. Good job. You’re one of the top ten arson investigators we have.” Harley took a sip of his tea.
“Uh, I believe that article said top three,” Mike responded, referring to a recent article about ATF arson investigators in the LA Times that named the top three agents with Mike as number one.
The article was flattering, sure, but he figured the reporter based that ranking on some kind of algorithm—number of fires investigated, years experienced, commendations, blah blah.
“Oh, that’s right. Three.” Harley picked up a ballpoint pen and carefully set it in the pen holder. “Interested in working a gun case?”
“Is that why you wanted to see me?” Mike snorted a laugh. “C’mon, Harley, I haven’t worked a firearms case in over a decade.’
“I lied.” Harley cracked a half-grin. “Big boys upstairs want me to invite that know-nothing numbnut Reed to work a gun case. Can’t stand the guy, but have to play nice. Wanted to see if my fake sincerity could pass a Truth Wizard’s test.”
Starting as recruits, all federal agents—FBI, CIA, ATF, others—studied the meaning of people’s expressions, with an emphasis on identifying deceit. In a battery of lie detection tests, Mike was the only agent to consistently rank in the ninety-plus percentile, leading to more tests where he deciphered lies about crimes, beliefs and emotions, the latter being the most difficult to recognize. Again, his hit rate was in the ninety-plus percentile. A panel of two psychologists and a social intelligence scientist labeled him a “truth wizard,” a person with an innate ability to decode others’ emotions and lies.
As far back as Mike could remember, he had a knack for reading people, even in photographs, which upset Nonna, his Sicilian grandmother. She called it the “evil eye,” an old Italian superstition that a person, through a look, was casting a bad spell on another. Grabbing his hands, she would repeat a prayer in Italian three times to ward off the evil eye.
Her daughter, his mom Catarina Day, didn’t believe in the evil eye, but occasionally asked if he could read people’s minds, a nervous look on her face as if her son knew her every thought. He assured her he didn’t “hear” what people were thinking...more like he got hunches. Years later, an ATF psychologist said studies showed sixty percent of truth wizards were raised in adverse homes where they constantly observed others, especially their expressions.
He was in that sixty percent. Hell of a way to become a truth wizard.
Mike’s brain clicked back into the conversation. “You know I don’t read friends. Or try to, anyway.”
“Hey, cut me some slack...it’s not easy hanging out with a wizard, for crap’s sake. I live in fear you’ll wave a wand and turn me into a frog.”
Mike laughed. “Like it’s so easy living in the shadow of an ATF legend? I need to take beach cases to get a tan.” He reached for the bowl. “May I?”
His friend nodded yes.
The cellophane crackled as he unwrapped it. “So why’d you want to see me?”
“Well, your vacation starts tomorrow…”
“Uh-huh.” He popped the candy in his mouth. Liked its tart lemon taste.
“Driving up the coast, right?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t miss Castroville, the Artichoke Center of the World.”
“On my bucket list.”
Harley grew serious. “I asked you to drop by because I didn’t want you to hear this through the grapevine. ATF wants your partner Maggie to take early retirement.”
He looked out at the window at the hazy blue sky, cracking the candy with his molars. After a few moments, he muttered, “Wish to hell this place would get its head on straight.”
“I’m sorry, Mike.”
“Last week we got that memo about expired bulletproof vests no longer being replaced. Now ATF is dumping an excellent agent before her time’s up.”
“I’ve always respected Maggie’s work,” Harley said. “If I were king, she’d stay.”
He met his friend’s gaze. “When?”
“Next week.”
He snorted in disgust. “Just in time for Christmas. Did some muckety-muck not like her misreading evidence in the Humphreys case? Slowed things down a bit, but didn’t undermine the case. Like reporters would find that to be breaking news.” He sat taller, easing the pressure of the chair against his sunburned back.
“If it makes you feel any better, they’re letting go of others close to mandatory retirement age.”
“A year-plus away isn’t close. This is about age discrimination and harassment.”
He held up his palms. “Take it easy, Mike. I know it’s tough to lose a partner. At least she’s alive...she’ll still be around…”
They sat without talking, listening to the faint buzz of traffic below on Brand Avenue.
“Next week, huh?” Mike asked.
“That’s the word.”
He nodded, wishing he wasn’t going on vacation. But he didn’t have a choice. Vacations were mandatory, another of the agency’s new policies after an LA Times reporter blamed an ATF gun-tracking snafu on its agents being like cowboys on the range, working on little sleep that resulted in bad judgments.
“Know
who I’ll be paired with next?”
Harley cracked his knuckles, his features tightening. “This is as hard on me as it is on you, so can we end the Q and A session?”
Mike idly watched the news scrolling on the computer screen. Tension ran high these days inside the offices, made him glad he mostly worked in the field.
“Spending all three weeks of your vacation traveling up the coast?” Harley asked, tacking on a good-ole-boy smile.
But Mike saw the tension in his eyes. He hoped that peppermint tea did the trick, otherwise Harley would be popping tranquilizers next.
"Yes. Planning to leave Sunday, drive up to Santa Barbara...”
As he rambled on about his trip, a headline on the computer screen snagged his attention. Judge Finds Sufficient Evidence to Try Accused in Arson Triggered by Watch Device.
Mike pointed at the computer. “Freeze the screen.”
Harley paused, a surprised look on his face, then pressed a button on the keyboard and scanned the news item.
“Buddy, you gotta let go. Let Paula rest in peace.”
Mike leaned across the desk and read the photo caption aloud. “Alleged Timepiece Arsonist Dita Randisi, left, leaves court with her defense attorney, Joanne Galvin.”
In the photo the two women walked down the courthouse steps, heads dipped close, a gentle wind rippling their clothes. The lawyer, late twenties he guessed, wore a short jacket over a long, red polka-dot dress. Her crazy red hair reminded him of Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus, a film his kid sisters still watched every Halloween.
Dita, her face curtained by straight, dark chin-length hair, looked like a depraved schoolgirl in a baggy black jacket, plaid mini-skirt, and stiletto boots.
He scanned the article. “Says Dita is twenty-six…she would have been twenty-two when Paula died.”
Almost five years ago, Mike ended his engagement to Paula Bishop, a graphic designer who started pushing for them to start their family right away, not wait until they were married. Her intensity forced him to face some hard truths from his past. He told her, as gently as possible, it would be a mistake for them to marry, that she deserved a better man who could be a loving husband and a good father, and that Mike could be one, but never the other.
Hurt and angry, she barraged him with texts, emails, and phone calls. At first he responded, but his explanations only upset her more, so he quit communicating, realizing neither of them could heal or move on until they stopped tearing apart the past.
But they never got that chance. Six months later she died in a fire at her condo, traced to faulty wiring of a kitchen toaster.
Over beers one night, a deputy coroner pal who’d been at the autopsy mentioned there were indications of head trauma at the onset of the fire, apparently from a large ceramic vase falling on Paula. Made no sense to Mike. She had collected ceramic floor vases, but took great care to anchor them to the ground with putty to prevent their toppling over in an earthquake. She placed them in her garden or on the tiled living room floor. Never on the hardwood floor of her bedroom, where her body was found.
Even if she wanted to display the vases higher, she couldn’t do it alone because of her chronic lower back pain.
He had evaluated every possible scenario, but the only plausible conclusion was someone had picked up one of those heavy vases, knocked her unconscious, then set the fire. In talks with Paula’s friends and family, no one noticed anything unusual going on in her life, although her former boss, Dana Isaacs, said Paula seemed worried the week before she died.
Based on his analysis and her boss’s observations, Mike had asked the police to re-open her case as a homicide investigation, but they declined. “You hadn’t seen her in months,” said a crusty, but well-meaning detective. “Could be she asked someone to set it on her dresser. You can weigh those things down by filling them with heavy items...rocks, books...lotta books on her bedroom floor. Sorry, need more physical evidence to indicate foul play, but you know that.”
Paula had liked to read at night, then stack the books next to her bed, which explained books found on her bedroom floor. She treasured her mahogany bedroom furniture, a wedding gift to her great-grand aunt and uncle, and regularly inspected it for scratches and marks. Only a few items sat on the dresser: Paula’s jewelry box, her great-grand-aunt’s silver brush and mirror set, and her great-grand-uncle’s 14K gold pocket watch. No way Paula would ask someone to set a heavy, bulky object on there.
He’d needed to find that physical evidence.
Since the fire, the condo owner had filed for bankruptcy, which left the condo in its burned, gutted state, surrounded by a paneled chain-link fence that Mike easily slipped past. After several visits, he found a men’s wind-up, wristwatch face, its melded hour and minute hands indicating they connected wires that ignited the accelerant, but he never found remnants of the rest of the device—accelerant container, wires—that would prove the watch had been the incendiary device.
Over the next few years, he requested ATF assignments to several southern California arson scenes set by similar watch devices. The arsonist—pegged the “Timepiece Arsonist” by the media—selected locations similar to Paula’s, small condos and businesses, but there didn’t appear to be a common motive. Did the Timepiece Arsonist seek revenge? Conceal a robbery? Whacked-out firebugs sometimes selected victims based on physical characteristics, but none of the other victims were slim and blonde like Paula.
Nine months ago, Harley refused to assign him to any more arson scenes attributed to the Timepiece Arsonist. When he learned Mike went to one anyway, they had a talk that almost came to blows. That’s when he realized his need to find Paula’s killer was undermining his life, friendships and career. He promised Harley he’d stop being a rogue, an agent working cases without authorization, and kept his word.
Then a few weeks ago his younger sister Beatrice confided that shortly before Paula’s death, she saw a text message pop up on Mike’s cell phone, left unattended on a table at a family dinner. Knowing about Paula’s spiteful messages, Beatrice thought she’d do Mike a favor and deleted the text.
That message, which apparently had an attachment, haunted him. Paula had sent it nearly six months after their breakup, after being incommunicado the last four. Paula appeared worried the week before her death...had she reached out to him, the one person she could trust, and who had the skills, to protect her? He lost access to that cell phone three years ago when ATF confiscated agents’ cell phones as a cost-saving measure. Agents now purchased their own devices for which ATF offered pitiful reimbursements.
But his old cell phone records still existed with that carrier. Not the text messages as that technology did not exist, but attachments were savable. There was only one person who could help him see that attachment: Harley.
Wasn’t the easiest conversation, but eventually Mike had convinced Harley, as a one-time favor, to request ATF’s legal department to subpoena the carrier for Mike’s old phone records.
“Let Paula rest in peace,” Harley repeated, his face tight with concern.
“I...want to,” Mike mumbled, sitting back. “That article...” He nudged his chin toward the computer screen. “First one I’ve read in months about the Timepiece Arsonist.”
“Alleged Timepiece Arsonist.”
“Point is, I’ve kept my word, haven’t gone rogue, stayed focused on my job.” He paused. “For a bottle of Lagavulin single malt, can we re-open the Q and A?”
After a few beats, Harley dredged up a grin. “Make it two bottles, and you’ve got a deal.”
“Any word on my old phone records?”
The grin fell. “Wanted to wait until you got back from vacation to talk about this....your sister messed things up. She contacted the carrier and tried to order those phone records on your behalf. Carrier alerted ATF legal, who must’ve flagged your name because minutes after I emailed my request, some gal in legal—Marilyn Doyle, I think—called, asking if my request had anything to do with Paula Bishop.”<
br />
Mike loved his sister, but Beatrice seemed to think her duty in life was to fix other people’s lives. “What did you say?”
“I said it related to the Thomas case, which is what I wrote on my request, but Marilyn probably smelled my bullshit all the way across the building.”
“Sorry I put you in that position.”
Harley nodded slowly, his jaw working. “I waited a few hours and called her back, cancelled my request...said I found the information I needed in an old report. Hopefully it stops there. Just as tracking Paula’s ghost stops here. Hate to be a hardass, but if I get another call about your sister, you, your grandmother trying to get those records, or pulling some other crazy stunt linked to Paula, I will report you to ATF.”
The threat took Mike by surprise, but then not. With paranoia running high at ATF, Harley was protecting both their careers by drawing a line in the sand. Mike should have respected that line and not asked his friend to cross it.
“I understand. I’ll talk to Beatrice. My grandmother, too.”
Harley picked up his tea, muttering something about everybody being a joker. He looked over the top of the mug for a long moment, his gray eyes shiny like pewter.
“I wanted to help you find the answer,” he said quietly.
Harley had never been one to show his emotions, the sensitive ones anyway, so Mike got why his friend needed the shield of a cup. Probably the way he hid his head behind boxing gloves years ago as a moderately successful boxer, enough to pay his way through the University of Arizona, anyway.
“I know,” Mike said. “Thank you.”
After taking a sip, Harley set down the cup on a ceramic square decorated with the words “Enjoy the Little Things” and leaned back in his chair. He kicked a black dress shoed foot onto the edge of the desk, a corner kept clear for moments like this.
Mistletoe and Murder in Las Vegas Page 4