The Renegades ch-2

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He set the murder book on the hood of his car and found the ballistics pages, which established the shooter’s positions through angles-of-entry drawings and victim body positions. All four shots had been fired through the passenger-side window. Eichrodt had used a Taurus nine-millimeter automatic-a budget gun, unregistered. He’d shot Angel Lopes, the man closest to him, first. Lopes had crumpled and turned partially away when the second shot struck him in the right temple. Meanwhile, Vasquez was apparently trying to get out. The first shot hit the back of his head, the second entered through the right ear.

  Hood compared the line-of-fire sketches with the crime scene photographs. It all made sense. Through all the gore and ugliness emerged a clear picture.

  “But these were Eme runners,” he told the voice recorder. “Where were their weapons? Why didn’t they use them? Were they surprised? Did they know Eichrodt? Were they expecting him?”

  He found photographs of the guns that had been recovered from the van. There were two, both within easy reach. But neither man had so much as gotten a hand on a weapon, in spite of the shooter at their window.

  Hood carried the book back to where the van had been parked.

  It was hard for him to imagine that these guys had been surprised, unless they were both very drunk or exhausted. He found their autopsy reports and checked blood alcohol. None at all. They had both ingested amphetamines in moderate amounts. A long night ahead, he thought. A long drive? They were chemically enhanced. Were they surprised by a six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound gunman as they sat exposed on an off-ramp, windows down in the heat? There was no place at all for Eichrodt to hide. The night was dark, but a jackrabbit couldn’t have hidden where Hood now stood.

  No. They weren’t surprised, he thought. They just didn’t react. Why?

  Freeman had concluded that Eichrodt and the two couriers did not know each other. Freeman had asked that same question that Hood was asking: why hadn’t they reacted? And he never answered it.

  Hood leafed through the murder book, prospecting. He looked at the graphics and read the words and let his mind wander as his hands turned the pages.

  A few minutes later he was struck by another anomaly. It was looking back at him from an evidence photograph of the brass casings that had been found in Eichrodt’s truck. It took Hood a long quiet minute of staring to find it. The casings had been tossed into the same locking toolbox where the gun and money had been found. There were four of them. They were heavily smeared with blood. He pictured the scene, the order of shooting, the distances to the targets. He pictured Eichrodt collecting his casings. And it made no sense that the brass would be heavily smeared. Touched with blood? Sure, he thought. Dotted with blowback from Lopes, the closer victim, to Eichrodt’s fingers? Possibly. But all four casings, smeared heavily? No.

  So he turned to the lab reports and found what he expected: the fingerprints lifted from all four casings were Eichrodt’s. But he couldn’t find anything about the blood itself. Whose was it? And, more important, why was there so much of it?

  He sat in his car with the windows down in the cool desert breeze. It took him a while to get through to the crime lab technician who had lifted the prints from the casings. Keith Franks spoke in a soft, high-pitched voice that sounded young. He told Hood that the prints had come off the brass clearly and cleanly. They were Eichrodt’s. He said he hadn’t run the blood on the casings because his superior said there was no reason to-Eichrodt’s prints and Lopes’s blood were on the Taurus nine-millimeter and that was all the DA needed. It was beyond reasonable doubt that Eichrodt had fired the gun. And of course, the lab was overloaded with work.

  Hood flipped to the photographs of the Taurus and saw that it, too, was heavily marked by blood. There was a misting on the muzzle, as you’d expect-Mr. Lopes again. But down on the handle and the trigger and the trigger guard the smears were heavier. There was no positive identification on the lower, heavier traces.

  “I want you to type the blood on the casings,” he said. “And on the handle, trigger, and guard of the Taurus.”

  “Detective, the case is closed.”

  “I’ll get the DA to reopen it.”

  “You know they won’t. It was an open-and-shut case.”

  “Then how come Vasquez and Lopes used two big pieces of luggage for only seven grand plus change? How did they get all those clothes and the money into two bags? Why did they pull over in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night, then park in plain sight? Why didn’t they defend themselves? How come Eichrodt’s brass was thick with blood? And his gun? There’s too much. The blood is wrong and you know it.”

  For a moment Hood thought Franks had hung up on him. The cool breeze hissed against the phone and he turned his back to it.

  “What’s your name, again?” Franks asked.

  “Charlie Hood. I’m young, like you, and we need to help each other because we’re the future. At least that’s what they say.”

  Franks went quiet for a long moment. “I’m sixty-four years old. Give me your numbers.”

  14

  A few minutes later Hood parked off the Pearblossom Highway where Laws and Draper had battled Shay Eichrodt beside the ruins of the Llano del Rio utopia. The stone columns of the old assembly hall rose from the hard ground. The highway was bleached pale gray by the sun and there was a raven blown by the wind onto the nearest Joshua tree, outstretched wings and body crucified on the long spines.

  He walked the area where Eichrodt’s truck had been pulled over. Big rigs thundered down the highway and he could feel their vibrations in his chest. Hood sat on an old river-rock wall and read Laws’s arrest report. Laws wrote in the plodding, jargon-heavy style of most cops:… at approx. 4:20 a.m. we observed a pickup truck, red, with plate numbers partially matching…the apparently unconscious suspect then suddenly extended one leg, which caused me to lose balance and fall…the suspect appeared to be under the influence of a stimulant…the suspect was eventually subdued…

  Hood imagined the bloody fight between two strong men with batons, and one huge and very strong man who had just taken two lives, jacked up on crystal meth and fighting for his own.

  After reading the report, he wondered if that brutal fight had taken something out of Terry Laws, the thing that Carla Vise said had vanished and never returned, even after the stitches were removed and the bruises healed.

  Hood left the murder book on the wall and walked among the Llano del Rio ruins. He’d read about this socialist utopia in school. He had always liked stories that began with good intentions, then became complicated. The utopia was founded in 1914 and it survived three years. There were pear orchards and alfalfa fields and a modern dairy-all made possible by a clever irrigation system that distributed water from the snow-fed Llano del Rio. The utopians grew 90 percent of the food they needed. There were workshops for canning fruit, cobbling shoes, cleaning clothes and cutting hair. A Montessori school sprouted up, Southern California’s first. All this was done by cooperation-no one made money. Detailed drawings for the Llano of the future depicted a city of ten thousand people living in craftsman-style apartments with shared laundry and kitchen facilities, surrounded by a road that would double as a drag strip for car races. There would even be grandstands for viewing. Being a car guy, Hood had always liked the racing idea. He wondered what Ariel Reed would think of it. But Llano lost its credit and water rights, and its leaders began to fight. They got no help from powerful Angelenos made uneasy by Llano’s goofy success. Hood looked at it now: no sign or historical marker, just a ruin that the desert bums and migrant workers sometimes used for a temporary shelter in this relentlessly hostile desert.

  Looking at these ruins, Hood thought about the utopian ideals of shared labor and shared prosperity. He thought about Terry Laws using the ideals of charity to feather his own impressive nest. The settlers of Llano were partially done in by their own squabbling and the distrust of others. Terry Laws was done in by a man with a machine gun who wanted
something that Terry had.

  But before that, something good in him had already died-just as Carla Vise had observed.

  Hood wondered if it wasn’t the arrest at all, but something else that had changed Terry Laws forever. Something he did. Something Mr. Wonderful couldn’t live with. Something that earned him seven to eight grand a month and cost him his soul.

  On his way back to the prison, Hood called an acquaintance in narco and asked him why some drug money was weighed, pressed and stacked, and some wasn’t.

  “Transport,” he said. “Big cash takes too much time to count and too much space to pack, so they weigh and press it.” His name was Askew and he’d worked narcotics for his entire career, starting as a baby-faced twenty-two-year-old posing undercover as a high school student/dealer.

  “The big dollars go to Mexico,” he said. “Before 9/11 they’d fly it across from Phoenix or San Diego or L.A. After that, airline security got a lot tougher, so now they just drive it in. About a million dollars a day-three hundred and fifty sweet million a year. U.S. Customs intercepts maybe two percent of it. Mexican Customs welcomes it. Even the Colombian money goes through Mexico.”

  “What’s big enough for a run south?”

  “Who knows? Say a hundred grand.”

  “What about seventy-two hundred?”

  He laughed. “No.”

  “How often?”

  “Different cartels, different schedules, different routes. They have to change things up. But at least once a week. Couriers make good money but the price of being late or short is extremely high. You know-wives, children, that kind of high.”

  “North Baja Cartel,” said Hood. “What’s an average weekly run?”

  “Oh, big stuff. Three, maybe four hundred grand. Since the Arellanos, it’s been Herredia all the way. Are you looking at Vasquez and Lopes?”

  “The book’s on the seat beside me.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s come back to that,” Hood said.

  “Don’t tell me you have problems with Eichrodt.”

  Hood thought about that a moment. “I’m starting to.”

  “You know why? Because he wasn’t enough. Tweaker, loser. Vasquez and Lopes were pros. They knew what they were doing. They should have made short work of Shay Eichrodt.”

  “Talk to me, Lieutenant,” said Hood.

  “I think they were starting a run that night. The evidence was there-they were high on amphetamines for the drive. They were armed. They’d hidden cash-weighed and pressed-in suitcases full of clothes. They had a full tank of gas and they were heading south. None of this mattered to the DA, who got fingerprints, blood, stolen cash, and an Aryan Brother with the murder gun. Pretty good chance that Eichrodt did the shooting, but I don’t think he was alone. I didn’t make any waves. I’m narco, you know? Let the Bulldogs and the lawyers do their thing. But if I’m right, you’ve got an accomplice and three hundred something grand unaccounted for. Maybe less; maybe more. What’s your interest, Charlie? Your turn to make nice.”

  “Laws busted Eichrodt. I’m looking for enemies.”

  Hood didn’t say that he’d also been looking for a way that Terry Laws could have gotten his hands on a few hundred grand, and had just found one.

  He got an idea.

  Back in the Hole, Hood turned on the lights. In the cold cubicle he put one stack of Terry Laws’s time cards on his desk, and another on the desk that Warren had used. The stack on Hood’s desk were pre-arrest and the cards on Warren’s desk were post-arrest.

  Hood examined Terry’s pre-arrest time cards and looked for patterns. He looked for anomalies. He saw his breath condense.

  He found nothing.

  But at Warren’s desk now, looking through the post-arrest time cards, Hood found a pattern: Terry had not worked a Friday in twenty straight months.

  Hood remembered that Terry always made his Build a Dream contributions on Mondays unless the bank was closed.

  Fridays, Terry had all day to work a second job, thought Hood. Three days later, he deposited his earnings from it.

  After work Hood drove to a Museum Store in an L.A. mall and found what he had seen there last holiday season, a giant-sized plastic H 2 O molecule. It sat on a stand that housed two AAA batteries and when you turned it on, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms careened through clear plastic tubing and changed colors. It was recommended for ages seven and up. Hood bought it and some batteries and had them wrapped. He also bought a card with a close-up picture of a Ferrari grille, and wrote in it: A week from Saturday is a long way off. Will it get here quicker if I drive fast? CH.

  Ariel wasn’t in her office but Hood and his sheriff’s badge convinced the lobby guard to deliver it upstairs to her.

  He drove L.A. for a few hours before heading home.

  15

  The late dinner arrives and we eat in silence. I can tell that the boy is trying to process my story without seeming to. More than that, he’s trying to process me. But you know how important it is for the young to be cool. I order another round of drinks. He’s plenty high by now and working hard not to show it. He downs the miso soup, eats his way through ten slabs of wild-caught salmon, downs a bowl of rice drenched in soy sauce. Nothing left on his plate, so he relights his second cigar.

  “So, Laws and I have a nice arrangement,” I say. “We’re talking roughly seven grand a week each. We drive a few hours to get what we need. We weigh and package it. We drive a few more hours to deliver it. Then we party down with Herredia. Months go by, but trouble is coming. Trouble always comes. Something is going wrong with Terry. The Mexicans have a word for it, gusano, which means worm, but it also means something inside a person that is eating them. So, what is it? What’s eating him?”

  I look at the boy and he’s studying me hard. He puffs the cigar and blows out the smoke but I can tell his full attention is on me and the question before him.

  “I can’t know,” he says. “Because you’ve left something out of the story. You haven’t given me all the information.”

  “What have I left out?”

  “Things don’t add up with your story about the couriers and Eichrodt. How can a stoned tweaker execute two veteranos, two tough-ass cartel runners? I don’t see why the couriers pulled over that night and parked on the off-ramp. They were right out in the open. Where were their guns? How could Eichrodt possibly disguise himself as anything but a three-hundred-pound man? Did they know him? The papers never said that. And something else that bothers me-how did you and Laws get so lucky that night? How did you find the van and the truck so easily? How come some other unit didn’t find at least one of them before you did? And also, why didn’t you call for backup when you pulled over Eichrodt? He was cooperative. That doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. And also, what about this tipster? How come he sees everything and calls it all in, but won’t give his name? That’s very convenient. I don’t trust him. I think he’s involved in a big way.”

  “You think like a cop.”

  “It’s just common sense.”

  I understand that I’ve come to a crossroads. I’ve only met with this boy a few times over a few weeks, but we’ve already arrived at a moment of truth. Only truth can support the great weight of the future.

  As I said before, I almost believe in him. I think he has what I’m looking for. One man can accomplish much, but two men? Then three, then more? The sky is the limit. It takes a team. There were some forward-thinking deputies at my department back in the eighties. They gave themselves names and they got respect. There were the Renegades and the Vikings and the Saxons and the Reapers. They understood the power of working together. I’ve never met one of them. But I can tell you that they had the right idea.

  I lean in close and lower my voice.

  “Actually, when we first see the van, it’s headed southbound on Highway Fourteen near Avenue M. We flash it. At this point, Lopes and Vasquez are very much alive and well.”

  He looks at me with an expression I’ve never s
een on him. Time passes before he speaks. “Oh, man.”

  “Oh, man is right, son. Do you want me to go on? You can say no but it has to be now. In life there are no retractions and in this story there will be none either. Once it is told, it is told.”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “You’re sure? I’m offering you a way out.”

  “I need to know.”

  “You cannot unhear.”

  “I want to hear.”

  I lean in close and I whisper. “Good. Terry goes to the driver’s side and I take the passenger side. The couriers roll down their windows. We talk. They’re eating strawberries out of a basket on the console between them. In the back of the van there are shapes covered by blankets. Flats of strawberries holding them down. We know what is under those blankets. I shoot Vasquez. Terry is supposed to shoot Lopes but Terry can’t pull the trigger. So I do. I give them both the new look. We take the money. I can’t explain to you the thrill of killing two criminals and driving away in a law enforcement vehicle with their money in the trunk. It’s the essence of life as I know it. I call in the tip and we arrange some things for evidence. Then we drive out Pearblossom Highway and wait for Shay Eichrodt to come home from the bars.”

  He can’t hide the shock. He also looks disappointed, confused and afraid. It’s a storm of emotions and I can read every one of them. He looks as if he’s witnessed something that has changed his life.

  Which, of course, he has.

  His face looks older now. He can’t see it but I can. “So,” he says.

  “So.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what to think or say.”

  “It’s been thought and said before.”

  “Except that I…face a similar situation.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Where I will have to decide.”

  “Yes. And I want to hear all about it. It’s a complex circumstance. There is little simplicity in any life worth living.”