by Jeff Shelby
“Bullshit,” Carter said. “You got an ID, you’d arrest us now.”
“Contrary to the opinion of the rest of this city, I’m not looking to lock you up,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, one of Costilla’s guys biting it isn’t such a bad thing. But I can sit you both in a cell if I need to. Those pain-in-the-ass twins you call friends, too, if I want.”
“So if I say no,” I said, “then you’re going to arrest us right now.”
She nodded.
I looked at Carter. He shrugged.
I looked back at Liz. “No.”
We all sat there. No one came rushing in with handcuffs and jumpsuits. I turned around to make sure. Nobody came in. They wouldn’t have fit in the room anyway.
Liz shifted uncomfortably in her comfortable chair and leaned back into it again. “He’s Federal, Noah.”
“So?”
“He’s Federal with our cooperation. Specifically, my cooperation.”
“So?”
She slapped her hand on the desk. “Goddammit, Noah. Don’t fuck around with me on this. He is off-limits. The Feds are on him, I am assisting, and they don’t want to see you near him. So keep your fucking ass far, far away from him.”
Carter looked at me. “Couldn’t she have left this on the machine?”
I ignored him, because I knew Liz was serious. The flames coming out her ears were my first clue.
“Okay,” I said to her. “Off-limits.”
She watched me, suspicion shooting out her eyes.
With good reason.
“But only if you answer me one thing,” I said.
Her mouth twitched. “What?”
“Were the Feds looking at Kate, too?”
She blinked once, shifted her neck like there was a kink in it. “You won’t get within a hundred miles of him?”
“Two hundred.”
She paused, staring at me like she was trying to decide if I was telling her the truth. “Kate was working for them.”
“The FBI?” I asked.
She let out a deep breath. “No. It’s DEA.”
If she had jumped over the desk and kissed Carter, it would’ve surprised me less. “No way.”
“She was inside.”
“Then how did she die?” Carter asked.
She set her elbow on the desk, made a fist, and leaned her chin on it, her face drawn. “They screwed up.”
Her words hung in the air like a neon sign. I knew by the way that she said it, that whoever had screwed up, whoever had let Kate die, wouldn’t admit to it. Collateral damage in a bigger operation.
I felt my chest tighten. “Back up. What the hell was she doing inside?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“The fuck you can’t,” I said, louder than I’d intended.
Her eyes widened, and she lifted her head off of her chin. “Beg your pardon?”
“You drop that cannonball on me and then tell me you can’t explain?” I said. “Like I’m just supposed to accept it, not be surprised by it? You give me more, or any promise I made to you is off the table.”
Liz shrugged. “Then I’ll arrest you both.” She looked at Carter. “Are you really dumb enough to think that someone wouldn’t notice that shitpiece you drive?” She turned back to me. “You don’t believe me? Try me.”
I wanted to reach across the desk and grab her by the throat. Maybe throw something at the wall behind her, something to let her know how badly she was pissing me off.
But none of that would get me closer to the reason for Kate’s death.
“So, you’ll tell me that she got killed because someone screwed up somewhere, but you won’t tell me anything about what she was doing?” I asked quietly. “Not even off the record?”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t, Noah.”
“Then you know I won’t leave it alone.”
She thought about that, then nodded.
“And if you catch me near Costilla, you’ll toss on the cuffs,” I said.
She nodded again.
I stood up, and Carter did the same.
“Then catch me if you can,” I said and we left.
25
“Married to an asshole, a drug user, and working for the G-men. Not exactly the old Kate,” Carter said.
“No, not exactly,” I mumbled back to him.
We were headed north on the 5, Sea World and Mission Bay on the west side, beckoning the tourists that flocked to America’s Finest City. Traffic was moving smoothly for once but it didn’t improve my mood. Nothing was making sense, and I was getting angrier with each new revelation. I felt like the more I discovered about Kate, the further I got from the truth.
“Would they really use someone like Kate inside a world like Costilla’s?” I asked, unable to shake the question from my brain.
Carter shifted in his seat and tugged at the seat belt. “They’d use whoever they could to get what they need. Male, female, young, old. Doesn’t matter to them.”
I nodded absently.
“The ME said Kate was using drugs, right? DEA was using her for something in connection with Costilla. That says to me she got caught in something,” Carter said. “An immunity deal maybe?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. Just seems odd. What did they catch her with that would justify putting her under the gun like that?”
“It had to have been some heavy shit,” Carter said. “But I can’t imagine why the law enforcement geniuses would think she’d make a great undercover candidate. All of a sudden, some upper-crust white woman shows up and tries to secretly fit in? Fucking brilliant.”
The wind from the open windows whipped through my hair as I turned everything over in my mind. If Kate was involved in drugs and got caught, it would make sense that there might be some sort of a deal made. But I thought a court testimonial would make a lot more sense than sending her into the lion’s den.
“Yeah. Why would you put someone like her in a position like that?” I said. “How the hell would she know what she was doing?”
“If a deal was set up,” Carter said, “someone would’ve needed to do some string pulling.”
I was getting around to that thought. “Like Daddy Crier.”
We drove in silence for a moment, cutting under the twisting curl of concrete that jutted off the freeway and up to the bluffs of La Jolla.
“You think Costilla found out what Kate was doing?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Carter said.
“But…”
“But don’t you think he would’ve left a message?”
“Like?”
Carter waved a hand in the air. “A message that said ‘I know who she was and what she was doing.’ She was in a trunk, strangled. That’s not exactly a Colombian necktie.”
I considered that. No murder was mundane or ordinary, but Carter had a point. Now that we knew that the twists in Kate’s life were more severe, the way she had died, the way I’d found her, didn’t seem that dramatic.
“Not to change the subject or anything,” Carter said, interrupting my thoughts. “But that Cadillac has been with us for a while, dude.” He reached under his seat and retrieved my gun, a 9mm Glock 17, setting it in his lap.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. A white Cadillac was two cars back, in our lane. “How long?”
“Long enough to be a problem.” He opened the glove box and pulled his gun out. He held the .45 HK Mark 23 low against the door.
I moved over into the fast lane. The Cadillac sped up and moved into our blind spot, trying to hide.
I was trying to figure out what to do when the blue van in front of us hit its brakes.
Jamming my foot on the brakes, I turned the wheel to the left, sliding onto the shoulder and next to the median. The van moved left in the same direction, anticipating where I’d go, blocking us in the front. The rear doors opened slightly and two gun barrels emerged in the tight space.
The Cadillac cut over and screeched to a halt diagonall
y behind us.
Trapped.
Carter tossed my gun at me. I rolled out of the door, staying close to the car and the ground. The windshield of my Jeep shattered in seconds, the bullets flying like irritated hornets from both directions, the shards of glass spilling into the front seat.
Carter followed me out the driver’s-side door, a small streak of blood making its way down his neck. We had about three feet to maneuver in between my car and the concrete median.
I rose up quickly into the open window of the door and fired into the van. Carter swiveled and fired into the Cadillac behind us. I ducked down, and we both stayed close to the car, bullets flying over us.
“We gotta move,” I said. “We’re fish in a bowl right here.”
More bullets crackled against the pavement behind my car, and we both flinched. Carter looked at the median.
“I’ll cover,” he said. “You get over this and move backward toward the Cadillac. Come at them from behind.”
I nodded. He rose up and started firing, first at the van, then the Cadillac. I took one short step and flung myself over the median, praying that I wouldn’t spill out into the southbound fast lane.
Cars were stopping on both sides of the freeway, watching our little ambush. I heard metal on metal from a distance and knew someone had been following too closely. Voices were yelling but they sounded far away and unintelligible.
I crab-crawled about fifty feet on the pavement, my eyes on the top of the median. I spun when I knew I was well past the Cadillac and rose up over the edge.
Two teenagers, clad in white T-shirts, baggy chinos, and blue bandanas around their heads, were behind the open doors of the Cadillac, automatic weapons pointed in Carter’s direction. I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. The one on the driver’s side dropped to the ground, clutching his leg. His partner looked in my direction from the other side of the car.
I saw Carter’s head come up briefly, then go down when more shots from the van were gunned in his direction. I fired through the Cadillac at the passenger. He returned the fire, then sidestepped toward the van, staying low on the passenger side of the Cadillac, then my Jeep. A few more shots flew from the back windows of the van, the rear doors opened more, and the shooter from the Cadillac dove in. The doors shut and the van screeched away, whizzing between the stopped cars on our side of the freeway, smoke flowing from the tires. They maneuvered to the far right lane, gunned the engine again, and sped north.
All lanes of traffic on both sides of the freeway were blocked now, cars pointed in every possible direction, people’s eyes wild with fear. The air was heavy with the smell of burnt rubber and cordite. Sweat was pouring down my back. I hopped the median and kicked the gun away from the kid I’d shot as he writhed in pain, his thigh leaking blood rapidly. I looked at his face but didn’t recognize him.
“Carter, it’s clear,” I yelled.
I expected some wiseass line about taking so long or my driving getting us into this.
But the only response I got was the sound of sirens in the distance.
26
Four bullets had hit Carter, two in the chest and two in the stomach. I blanched at the red puddle spilling out from beneath his body on the concrete of the freeway, his skin already a light gray as his system went into shock. He mumbled incoherently for a minute as I pressed on the bloody holes in his chest, before he shut his eyes and passed out.
Police and ambulances arrived in bunches. Traffic was rerouted. People were yelling and screaming. A helicopter grew larger above us, finally landing on the southbound side of the highway. The paramedics loaded Carter onto a backboard, passed him over the median to another set of paramedics. I followed them into the helicopter before anyone could suggest otherwise.
LifeFlight flew us to the UCSD Trauma Unit, a team of technicians working feverishly over his body in the cramped aircraft. I grabbed a towel off the floor of the helicopter and wiped the blood off my hands. Then I grabbed a handle suspended from the roof and tried not to throw up.
After I’d waited an hour outside the surgical unit, a doctor emerged and told me that Carter was a mess. Lots of internal damage, lots of bleeding. They were going to watch him in the critical care unit and see what happened.
I sat in a waiting room and tried to quell the nausea in my gut. I kept glancing at the dried blood under my fingernails, trying not to think about who it belonged to or why it was there. There is a certain uselessness that accompanies sitting quietly in a waiting area, and I was settling into it awkwardly when Liz got off the elevator.
She wore a dark green sweater and black jeans, black framed glasses on her face. I used to accuse her of wearing them to appear smarter, but they did look good on her.
A thick, short black man dressed in tan slacks, a white T-shirt, and a navy blazer trailed her. A T-shirt that read I’M A COP! would’ve been less conspicuous.
“Noah,” Liz said, sitting down across from me. “How is he?”
“Not good.”
She gestured at her guest. “This is my partner, Detective John Wellton. He’s working Kate’s case with me.”
We shook hands. Cool blue eyes stared out at me from skin the color of a Hershey bar, the contrast startling.
The fact that he couldn’t have been over five feet tall didn’t help.
“Good to meet you,” he said, not meaning it, his expression dour. “Sorry about your friend.”
He stood up straight and puffed out his chest. Almost made up for the fact that his feet wouldn’t touch the ground if he sat on the chair next to Liz.
“He still in surgery?” Liz asked.
I shook my head. “Came out about an hour ago. They need him to stabilize before they can do more. He’s in the CCU.”
She thought about it. “He’s tough. He’ll make it.”
“I know,” I said, hoping she was right.
“Mr. Braddock,” Wellton said, pulling a notebook from his pocket. “Did you get plates on the van that left the scene?”
“No, it happened too fast.”
He nodded, scribbling quickly. “How about the assailants? Recognize them?”
“No,” I said, glancing at Liz. “Looked like gangbangers, though. Teenagers. They were in the Cadillac. I couldn’t see the faces of the guys from the van.”
“Probably Costilla,” Liz said, leaning forward. “He’s used them as his little soldiers before. Cheap and nasty.”
I nodded absently. A gurney emerged from the elevator, surrounded by people shouting at one another. They disappeared quickly through the swinging doors.
“Can you give me descriptions?” Wellton asked, peering over the notepad at me.
I shrugged. “Teen, male, Hispanic. That’s about it.”
He looked at me, the chest puffing out again, annoyed. “That’s it?”
I glared at him, not wanting to relive the afternoon. “Take the kid I hit. Draw a picture. Make three copies. That’s what I saw.”
“How’d your buddy get hit?” he asked, scribbling again.
I looked at Liz. “Some bullets flew into him.”
Liz covered her mouth with her hand and avoided my eyes.
Wellton took a step in my direction. “Hey, wiseass, you left a crime scene to ride with your friend. Nobody hassled you about that. But now you owe us. I need some information from you. You can either talk to me here or I can take you downtown.”
I stood up. “You and what step stool?”
The notepad slipped from his hand to the floor and he put a finger in my gut. Probably aiming for my chest. I slapped it away.
Liz jumped up. “Alright, knock it off.” She looked at Wellton. “Give us a minute, John?”
He stared up at me, holding his ground. If I’d had a drink, I would’ve set it on his head. He took a step back, picked up his notepad, and walked down the hallway.
I pointed in his direction. “I will kick Gary Cole-man’s ass if I get peppered with any more questions tonight.”
; “He’s wired a little tight,” Liz admitted. “He’s a good guy, though. He can help.”
I sat back down in the chair. “Whatever.”
She sat across from me. “Definitely gangbangers?”
I took a deep breath. “Looked like it.”
“What kind of guns?”
I pictured the ambush. “Automatics. Hung over the shoulder. They were just spraying. They weren’t good shooters.”
She nodded. “Sounds right.”
“You have the one I shot?”
“Yeah, but he’s in surgery,” she said. “You gave him a permanent limp. We have to wait.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, looking at everything but one another. I never would’ve said it, but her company helped.
“They lost her,” she said finally.
I looked at her. “What?”
“Kate was in the car with two of Costilla’s men in Tijuana,” she said, her eyes staring me down from behind the glasses. “Since they were on the Mexican side of the border, DEA took the coverage. We had her on the U.S. side.”
She shifted in her seat and folded her hands in her lap. “Costilla’s men must’ve nailed the tail. They shook them off somewhere in the downtown area and she was gone for three days.” She paused. “Until you found her. We were searching in Mexico when she was right here under our noses.”
I let that sink in. It hurt.
“Why was she there, Liz?” I asked.
She stood up. “I gave you all I’m giving you.”
I thought about it and nodded slowly. She’d said more than she’d needed to, especially when I had been a jerk in her office earlier. “Okay. Thanks.”
“We had to tow your car down to impound for investigation. I can have someone take you to a rental agency,” she said. “Come down to the station tomorrow. We’ll do the report then, alright?”
“Yeah.” I watched her walk toward the elevator. “Liz?”
She turned back to me. “What?”
“Thanks for coming,” I told her. “Carter would appreciate it.”