The Lost Witness

by Robert Ellis

  “You think I haven’t sat in your chair before and done the same thing? You think that I’m really gonna talk to you? You think that I’m that stupid?”

  He was nervous. She could see it. And he was spent. His eyes were glassy. Like a window in a gutted house, she could see the damage on the other side.

  “How did you find me?” he asked.

  Lena ignored the question and stared at him for a moment. “You’re not a real doctor, are you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sure, you went to med school, Cava. But you almost flunked out. You’ve never worked at a hospital and you’ve never had any patients. You’re a loser, Cava. And I’ve seen your military file. You’re not even a real spook. You’re only half a spook. The only reason the army took you into the medical corps is because no one else signed up. They were desperate. After they ran out of good guys, they came to you. They took one look and knew that you’d do their dirty work for them.”

  Cava laughed. “Nice try, but it won’t fly. No matter how strung out I am, you will never break me down. Never ever, bitch. I’m gonna walk on this. You’ll see.”

  “You’re too sloppy to walk, Cava. You do too many drugs and you’re too far in. You only see what you want to see.”

  “I’m connected. And I’m gonna walk out of here in these lousy shoes. I’ll drop you a line from paradise when I get there.”

  Lena pushed her coffee aside. She didn’t need it.

  “But you don’t live in paradise, Cava. You live in a world where it’s cloudy every day. I went through your medications. You need pills to do everything that you do in this world. You take a pill to get up and another one to go to sleep. You need medication to eat, take a leak, get it up, or turn your stupid iPod on. You even take something because you can’t blink your eyes on your own. You’re a parasite. A follower. A scavenger and a user. You see a situation and you take advantage of it. You work it, exploit it. You don’t mend things, you kill them. And I can see it in your eyes, Cava. Your dead fucking eyes. You dig it. Killing turns you on.”

  Cava leaned back in the chair, stunned by the barrage. “That’s not true. Now tell me how you found me?”

  Lena ignored the question again. It was time to walk the murderer down Memory Lane. She sifted through the pictures she had selected with Barrera and Rhodes and began setting them down on the table. First up were snapshots of the Taser they recovered and the Cock-a-doodle-do.

  “You don’t even need to talk,” she said. “Just sit back and relax.”

  “Fuck you.”

  She set down a series of pictures from the crime scene inside the garage on Barton Avenue, and the alley behind Tiny’s a half block north of Hollywood Boulevard. Jennifer Bloom was finally on the table, stuffed inside a garbage bag with her lost eyes squared up to the lens. Everything was here: the makeshift operating table, the buckets filled with the victim’s blood.

  “We know that you shot her five times with the Taser. Twice in the parking lot, then three more times in the garage you rented. We know that you bled her out, cut her up and dumped her body in Hollywood.”

  “Could have been anyone.”

  “Like I said, Cava, you’re a loser. You’re sloppy. You’re in over your head.”

  She laid down two additional snapshots. The first was taken at Cava’s apartment at the time of his arrest. A close-up view of the shoes he had been wearing that included the Phillips head screw still embedded in his right heel. The second, the footprint SID picked up from the garage that made it a perfect match. Then she added three more. Joseph Fontaine slumped over his chair with a bullet in his head. Greta Dietrich sliced and diced and packed up in the basement freezer. And finally, Denny Ramira, an award-winning journalist, sprawled out on his kitchen floor beside a bag of groceries with a meat thermometer puncturing his heart. When she remembered the shot of Ramira’s dog, Freddie, hanging from the stairway, she threw that on the table, too.

  A moment passed. A long stretch of silence.

  Four people. Four murders. Four corpses and a small dead dog.

  The scope of the crime, the photographs, cut to the bone.

  Lena returned to her chair and sat down, watching Cava examine the photos. “Do you really think that you’re gonna walk, Cava? Are you so deluded that you think there’s a way out of this? That somehow your friends can explain this away and get you off the hook? You’re the only one who’s expendable. The only one without power or standing. You know what’s gonna happen better than I do. You’re a soldier and they’re gonna throw you into the wind and run for cover. Look at these pictures. Think about the story they tell. What’s a jury gonna say when they see them?”

  His dead blue eyes rocked back and forth over the photos, then rose up from the table and found her in the room.

  “The question isn’t how long you’ll be in prison,” she said. “It’s the circumstances that you need to worry about. They’re special. You’re gonna die, Cava. They’re gonna stick the needle in your arm and you’re gonna die. The last execution I witnessed didn’t go very well. Someone screwed up and it took half an hour for the guy to die. It looked like it hurt.”

  He was still staring at her with those bloodshot eyes. His face had lost its color and he was perspiring. When he spoke, his voice was so hoarse she could barely hear him.

  “You’re good at this,” he said. “Now tell me what you want.”

  “The man who’s writing the checks. Dean Tremell and everyone else who’s in on it.”

  “What do I get in return?”

  “Have I shot straight with you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’d say you’re a straight shooter. Do you have the authority to make the deal?”

  “Everything’s been approved.”

  “What do I get?”

  “Life in prison without the possibility of parole. Any place in the federal system you choose within the continental United States. A guarantee from the governor of the State of California that you will be looked after by the medical staff and receive any medications that you require.”

  “Sounds like paradise,” he said.

  “Beats tying a sheet around your neck and ending up in a hole in the ground.”

  He paused a moment, reviewing the photos as he considered her proposition. His eyes lingered on the shot of Ramira. Then he found the reporter’s dog in the pile and looked at it for a long time. Most juries liked dogs.

  “I’m gonna need to think this over,” he said.

  Lena nodded. “You’ll be taken to Men’s Central Jail for the night and placed in isolation. You can think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow morning. The offer’s good until then.”

  Lena gathered the photos, returning them to her files. As she got up to leave, Cava tried a third time.

  “It’s not like I was hiding,” he said. “But it had to start somewhere. How did you find me?”

  She turned from the door and looked at him, thinking about Denny Ramira and the investigation that had cost him his life.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said.

  45

  Maybe it was the stars, the planets, or even some weird moon thing that crazy people talk about. Some sort of perfect astrological alignment that he didn’t understand and couldn’t see because the clouds covered the sky. Maybe he had an angel looking over his shoulder. A halfwit angel who took him on as a test case or lost a bet. After all, there had to be a reason why they called this place the City of Angels.

  Or maybe this was the moment. The big one when the door opened and the rest of your life winked at you from the other side.

  Nathan G. Cava watched Parker Center fade into the night, then turned to the two cops sitting in the front seat. He hadn’t caught their names when they cuffed his wrists behind his back. And he hadn’t bothered to ask who they were as they led him out of the building to an unmarked car for what everyone believed would be his last ride as a free man.

  They were older guys. Seasoned veterans. At
the end of their shift and making the trip before they went home. Cava didn’t want to know their names because they were part of the moment, too.

  The car stopped at a red light on North Alameda Street. Men’s Central Jail was a brief five-minute drive somewhere up the road. The cops weren’t talking to each other, so Cava had to become still.

  Maybe it was just the morphine, he thought—some small amount that remained in his system, relaxing his muscles and joints and making his body extraordinarily pliable tonight. Maybe it was his will to live. His will to spend the rest of his days as a free man under the sun. Or, the secret that he had kept from Lena Gamble and every other cop that he wasn’t as stupid as they thought. That all his money was safe and secure because he never kept it anywhere near his apartment.

  Cava didn’t care either way. All he knew was that he had a chance. One last chance to squirm through the door before it slammed shut.

  The car started moving again. Cava had managed to slip his bound wrists underneath his body and work the handcuffs behind his knees. Leaning forward slightly, he strained to lower his hands to the floor. If he could just step through them. If he could just manage to bring his arms forward—

  A thought surfaced. The sound of a jail cell door reverberating in his skull.

  Cava bent his legs and pushed his wrists lower until he reached his heels. All he needed was another half inch. It suddenly occurred to him that he wasn’t wearing his Bruno Maglis. That he had been given a cheap pair of slip-on sneakers. He looked back at the cops as he slid them off his feet, then pushed down as hard as he could. His socks were sweaty and he could feel the chain between the handcuffs begin rolling over the moist cotton until—

  He’d made it.

  He leaned back in the seat, masking his smile with a darting look out the window. His mind was a jumbled blur. Everything crazy. He slipped his feet back into those twenty-three-dollar shoes and felt his stomach get hot.

  They had just crossed over the Santa Ana Freeway and were passing Union Station on the right. Up ahead he could see a series of industrial buildings marring the landscape. The street looked darker there. One empty parking lot after the next. He turned back to the cop sitting in the passenger seat, trying to remember how the man’s gun sat on his belt. Cava knew that he would only get one chance. That although he would have the element of surprise on his side, his move would have to be decisive and smooth. But even more important, the car would have to be moving fast enough that the driver couldn’t let go of the wheel and interfere. Cava estimated that he needed three seconds at over 30 mph, no more and no less.

  The car stopped before another red light. The cop behind the wheel gave him a hard look through the rearview mirror.

  “Everything okay back there?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m making my list and checking it twice.”

  The cop kept staring at him. Giving him the evil fucking eye. Cava looked away for fear the man might read his mind. When the light turned green and they started moving again, he watched the speedometer begin to rise and worked on controlling his breathing. He slid behind the cop in the passenger seat, his eyes still on the dash. The car continued to accelerate forward into the barren cityscape. Ten mph turned into 20, then became 30 and 40, until they topped out at 50 mph.

  Kill speed.

  Cava grit his teeth and reached deep down in his rotten gut for the courage. And then he burst through the cosmic door, swinging his arms over the man’s head, grasping the gun at his waist and pulling up until he found his prey’s neck and drew the chain between the handcuffs tight.

  The cop struggled beneath the chain, kicking his legs into the windshield. The car started swerving, the cop behind the wheel slamming on the brakes. Cava jacked the slide on the semiautomatic, saw his own face in the rearview mirror and didn’t know who he was. He jerked the gun up and to the side, pulling the trigger on the driver as he throttled the cop in the passenger seat. The gun roared, loud as a jackhammer inside the tight space. One shot after another, cut against the sounds of both men screaming. Cava could feel his arms shaking. His entire fucking body. He could see the rounds moving to the left—breaking through the windshield, the door, and then finally, exploding into the driver’s face.

  The car veered off the road, smashed into something, and flipped over. Skidding across a parking lot, Cava rode it out as best he could watching the roof beneath his feet collapse in slow motion. When the car finally ground to a stop, he took a deep breath and shuddered.

  He could smell gasoline in the air. A lot of it. From the glow outside the window, he guessed that the back of the car was burning but couldn’t see the flames. He looked under the front seat, everything still upside down. Both cops were strapped in with their feet up in the air like a pair of dead astronauts all set for their rocket launch to heaven. Cava could hear the flames now and scurried into the front compartment. Once he found the keys to the handcuffs, he grabbed the gun and crawled underneath the cop in the passenger seat out the window.

  He was hyperventilating. The flames were beginning to engulf the car. He could hear sirens breaking through the night. But as he worked his way out of the handcuffs, he heard something else. He turned to the car and looked in the window. The cop in the passenger seat was staring back at him. He was reaching out the window and moaning, his face awash in blood.

  Cava checked the progress of the fire, then looked back at the cop. The sirens were getting closer, but help probably wouldn’t make it in time.

  He shook his head, thinking about the guilt that was piling up. The idea that once the killing started, it took on a life of its own and was hard to stop. He could feel the cosmic door closing on him and knew that he needed to find a new set of wheels and bolt. He picked up the gun with a jittery hand and put two rounds in the cop’s head. Then he ran off.

  46

  The king was dead.

  Cava gazed up at the ceiling in the garage and watched Vinny Bing’s knuckle dragging corpse sway from a rope as the heat switched on and the vents in the rafters blew out hot air. Remarkably, it looked like the king was still wearing that TV smile beneath his crown. His mouth was thrust open and he could see his yellow teeth.

  Cava had been freezing his ass off outside the dealership for more than hour. Following the king’s movements through the plate glass windows as he closed up for the night. It turned out that Vinny had a thing for Frank Sinatra CDs, microwaved popcorn, and glasses of bourbon. That he liked to prance around the showroom in his costume, listening to music and peeking in his employee’s desks when no one was around.

  Cava had caught up with him as he walked out the front door. Although the king acted surprised and things got dramatic for five or ten minutes, although the king had repeatedly bitten him like a rabid dog during the struggle, it was over now. The king and his cable TV show would wind up buried in the metro section of the paper and fade into oblivion as a rerun.

  Cava looked at the cell he had removed from the man’s pocket. It was encrusted with diamonds in the shape of a crown. Below the crown was his first name, Vinny. When he flipped the phone open, it played a jingle. Cava recognized the tune, but couldn’t place it. Once he finally did, he almost wished that he hadn’t killed the slob. It was from the Miss America beauty pageant that used to be on TV. The jingle they played at the end of the show when the winner received her crown and started to cry.

  Cava shrugged it off and entered a phone number from memory. After three rings he heard her voice. Heard her say hello.

  “Lena?” he asked.

  She didn’t say anything right away. He could see her face in his mind’s eye. He could feel the shock through the radio waves in the air.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “Free and clear and heading for paradise in a magic pair of cheap shoes. I told you that I’d walk.”

  “You’re a cop killer, Cava.”

  “Does that mean our deal’s off?”

  She paused again. And he could see her face ag
ain. He liked having the image in his head and hoped that it wouldn’t wear off over time.

  “How’d you get this number?” she said finally.

  “I saw it on the screen when you opened your cell and turned it off.”

  “You need to turn yourself in, Cava. Believe me. It’s your best chance at surviving this.”

  “Stop talking and listen,” he said. “I called for a reason.”

  “What reason?”

  “My end of our deal and a rare moment of clarity. Tremell’s kid didn’t know anything about the murder. The old man used him as bait to get the girl out to that whorehouse. All the kid knew was that his father wanted to dirty her up and make her look like a whore.”

  Another run of silence. Cava thought he could hear traffic in the background. She was in her car.

  “He’s covering for his father,” she said.

  “Most sons would. But he didn’t know about the murder.”

  “What else?”

  The king’s shadow drifted over the key rack on the wall. Cava noticed it and glanced at the tags. He could have any car on the lot he wanted. It was free car night.

  “The reason I called,” he said. “You’ve missed something.”

  “Missed what?”

  “A piece of the puzzle. You’ve missed it. And it’s a big piece.”

  “What is it?”

  He paused a moment, thinking it over. “I’ll leave that to you,” he said. “I’ve got your number. I’ll check in when I get to paradise.”

  He shut down the phone and slipped it into his pocket. Then he skimmed through the key tags and picked out another SRX Crossover. Walking to the door, he turned back for one last look at Vinny Bing the Cadillac King and caught the man’s horrific smile from above.

  “Hang in there,” he said.

  47

  Lena sat in her car, still parked on the shoulder of the Hollywood Freeway in Echo Park. She had pulled over as soon as she realized that it was Cava on the phone. Not because of the shock. She could handle that. She had pulled over because she wanted to hear his voice. Wanted to listen to him and concentrate on the moment.