by Robert Crais
Sarah nodded again, looking lonely and lost.
Cole tried to read her, and thought he understood what she was feeling, both then and now.
He said, “Hey.”
She glanced over, then quickly away.
“Sounds like Rina was trying to protect her. I think you were trying to protect her, too.”
She didn’t look at him, but he could see her pink eyes fill.
“I should’ve told someone. We should have told.”
“You didn’t know, Sarah. None of us ever know. We just try to do our best.”
“She might be alive.”
Sarah Manning stood and walked away without looking back. Cole watched her go, hoping, for her sake, that she was wrong.
21
Pike watched the two latin cops. They stayed in the street, one making a short phone call while the other spoke with a dep. They did not approach Pike or acknowledge him, though the shorter of the two circled Pike’s Jeep before rejoining his friend. They left the scene while Pike was being searched.
The senior dep was named McKerrick. While his officers spread through the trailers, McKerrick placed Pike under arrest, cuffed him, and went through his pockets.
McKerrick said, “Christ, man, you’re an arsenal.”
He placed the things he found in a green evidence bag. These included Pike’s watch, wallet, weapons, and cell phone, but not the baby’s bib. McKerrick probably thought this was Pike’s handkerchief, and the stains were snot.
At no time did McKerrick Mirandize Pike, or question him. Nothing about the bodies, or why Pike was there, or anything else. Pike found this curious. He also wondered how the two Latin guys had followed him since he left Yanni’s apartment. Even if they had run a split-team tail, Pike was certain he hadn’t been followed. He found this curious, too.
When the search was complete, McKerrick walked Pike to a sheriff’s car, placed him in the backseat, then climbed in behind the wheel.
As they drove away, Pike looked back at the dog. The dog watched him go.
Willowbrook was not technically part of Los Angeles. It was an unincorporated area, and used the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as its policing agent. Pike expected McKerrick to bring him to the nearest sheriff’s station, which was the Century Station just off the Century Freeway in Lynwood, but when they climbed onto the freeway, McKerrick headed away from the station. Pike found this curious, too.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled off the freeway into downtown L.A., and Pike knew where they were going.
McKerrick reached for his radio mike, and spoke two words.
“Three minutes.”
McKerrick brought him to Parker Center, the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters. They drove around the side of the building to the processing entrance, where three uniformed LAPD officers were waiting. Two men and a woman, all in their late twenties, with short hair and freshly polished shoes. The female officer opened the door, and gave him two more words.
“Get out.”
The lead officer was a rangy, athletic guy with spiky blond hair and buff shoulders. He steered Pike by the upper arm. They brought Pike inside without processing him, directed him onto an elevator, then up to the fourth floor. The fourth floor was special. Robbery Special. Rape Special. Homicide Special. The three divisions of the Robbery-Homicide Division. Terrio and his task force would live on the fourth floor.
“Gotta pee?”
“No.”
When the elevator opened, the officer carrying the evidence bag split off, and the other two steered Pike along an ugly beige hall to an interview room. Pike had been on the fourth floor before, and in their interview rooms. It was one of the smaller rooms, sporting the same bad paint, bad flooring, and cruddy walls as the rest of the building. A small table jutted from the wall, with a cheap plastic chair on either side.
The lead officer uncuffed Pike, then re-cuffed his right hand to a steel bar built into the table. When he had Pike locked down, he stepped back, but didn’t leave. The female officer waited in the door.
He said, “Joe Pike.”
Pike looked at him.
“I’ve been hearing stories about you since I came on the job. You don’t look like so much.”
A video camera was bolted to the wall in the corner up by the ceiling. The interview room didn’t have a two-way mirror; just the camera with its microphone.
Pike studied the officer for a moment, then tipped his head toward the camera. The two officers followed his gaze. When the male officer saw the camera, he turned red, realizing a senior officer might be watching him act like an ass. They stepped out, and closed the door.
Pike looked around. The interview room smelled of cigarettes. Even though smoking was not allowed in city buildings, the last suspect had probably been a smoker, or the last detective. The table and the wall beside the table were covered with a jigsaw of scribbles, drawings, gouges, stains, and jailhouse slogans, most of it cut so deep into the Formica it could not be erased. Biggie. ThugLife. LAPD187. OJWUZHERE.
Pike considered the camera, and wondered if Terrio was watching. They would probably let him wait for a while, but Pike didn’t mind. He took a slow, deep breath, paused, then emptied his lungs, taking exactly as long to exhale as to inhale. He focused on the camera. He emptied his mind of everything except the camera, and breathed. There was just Pike and the camera and whoever was on the other side of the camera. Then there was just Pike and the camera. And then only Pike. After a few breaths, he felt himself float, his chest expanding and contracting with the rhythm of the sea. His heart rate slowed. Time slowed. Then Pike simply was. Pike had spent days like this, waiting for the perfect shot in places that were not as comfortable as an LAPD interview room.
Pike pondered why they had pulled him in, and what they expected to learn. He knew they weren’t going to charge him with anything because they had not Mirandized him, and had bypassed the normal booking procedure. Hence, they wanted to talk, but the question was why? He also wondered why they bounced him at Williams’s home. If they were on him all day, they could have bounced him at any time, yet they waited until he found Williams.
Pike was still pondering these things two hours later when Terrio and Deets came in. Pike saw them as if he were hovering at the bottom of a deep, clear pond, and rose through the water to join them. Maybe now he would get answers.
Terrio unlocked the cuff from the metal bar, then from Pike’s wrist. He pocketed the handcuffs, then took the remaining chair. Deets leaned into the corner and crossed his arms. There was a carefulness to his expression that Pike thought was composed.
Terrio said, “Okay, listen. You are not under arrest. You don’t have to talk to us. I’m hoping you will, but you don’t have to. If you want a lawyer, here-”
Terrio took out a cell phone, slid it across the table-
“-you can use this. We’ll wait.”
Pike flicked it back.
“I’m good.”
Deets in his corner, chin down, looked up from under his brow.
“Did you kill those people?”
“No.”
“You know who did?”
“Not yet.”
Terrio pushed closer to the table.
“What were you doing down there?”
Down there. As if Willowbrook was another world.
“I was looking for a two-time felon named Earvin Williams. Williams might have participated in or had knowledge of Frank’s murder.”
“Why did you think Williams was involved?”
“Williams was a D-Block Crip. He put together a crew of his homies, some of whom have shown a sudden increase in personal wealth.”
Terrio arched his eyebrows.
“You know other D-Blocks who were involved?”
“Jamal Johnson.”
Terrio turned white, and Deets snapped a glance as fast as a nail gun.
“How do you know about Jamal Johnson?”
“His cousin, Rahmi.”
<
br /> “No way. SIS is on Rahmi Johnson. They’re on him right now. You couldn’t have spoken with him.”
Pike shrugged, believe what you want.
“Williams and Johnson were both D-Block. I don’t know about the other guy. Was Johnson one of the vics?”
Deets said, “Screw that, Pike. We ask, you answer. This isn’t a conversation.”
Terrio held up a hand, cutting him off.
“Johnson was confirmed as one of the vics.”
“Who was the third male?”
“Samuel ‘Lil Tai’ Renfro. He goes back to the D-Block with Williams and Johnson. How was it you came to believe this is the crew who hit Meyer’s home?”
Terrio was staring at Pike so intently that he looked as if he might tip out of the chair. That’s when Pike realized that Jamal Johnson had still been only a suspect, and Williams hadn’t even been on their radar. They had not asked how Williams was involved, but why Pike thought he was involved. They hadn’t brought Pike in to find out what he knew-they wanted to know how he knew it.
Pike said, “I came to believe Williams was running the crew. We’ll know for sure after you run their guns.”
Deets shook his head.
“There is no we here. No we.”
The hand again.
Terrio said, “We have no physical evidence tying these people with what happened to Meyer or the earlier six robberies.”
“You do now. Run their guns.”
“How did you come to identify Williams as a person of interest?”
“Sources.”
Deets glared at the camera.
‘This is bullshit.”
Terrio slipped a spiral notepad from his pocket, and read an address.
“One of these sources live in Studio City?”
Pike didn’t respond. He was at Yanni’s apartment building in Studio City when he first saw the Sentra.
“How about on La Brea just south of Melrose? Maybe we’ll find one of your sources there, too.”
Terrio slipped the pad back into his pocket, then leaned forward again.
“Who killed these people?”
“ Don’t know.”
“Do you care?”
“No.”
Deets made a “ha,” then pushed from the corner.
“You would have popped them yourself, Pike. If you’d found those dudes alive, you would have fed them to the dogs just like the sonofabitch who left them there.”
Pike shifted his gaze to Deets.
“Not the lady.”
Terrio leaned back in his chair, studying Pike as he tapped the table.
“These three idiots-Williams, Johnson, and Renfro-they weren’t in this alone. Someone was pointing them in the right direction. You and I on the same page with that?”
“Yes.”
“Your sources tell you who they were working for?”
Pike studied Terrio for a moment, then glanced at the camera. Something about Terrio’s inflection suggested he already knew, and wanted to find out if Pike knew as well.
“Williams was working for a Serbian OC gangster named Michael Darko. Darko or someone working for Darko probably killed Williams and his crew.”
Terrio and Deets stared at him, and for a few seconds the interview room was quiet. Then a large, balding deputy chief opened the door. Darko was the magic word.
“Jack, let’s clear the room, please.”
Terrio and Deets left without a word. The chief followed them, and the woman Pike had seen in the backseat of Terrio’s car on the day they told him about Frank entered and closed the door. Blue blazer over a white shirt. Dark gray slacks. An angry slash for a mouth.
She studied Pike as if he were a lab specimen, then glanced up at the camera, hanging patiently from the ceiling. She went to the camera, unplugged it, then turned back to Pike.
She held up a federal badge.
“Kelly Walsh. I’m with the ATF. Do you remember me?”
Pike nodded.
“Good. Now that we’ve met, you’re going to do exactly what I say.”
As if she had no doubt it was so.
Part Three. It’s Personal
22
Kelly Walsh stood twelve inches from the table, close enough so he was forced to look up, but not so close as to touch the table. Pike recognized this as a controlling technique. By assuming a superior position she hoped to create a sense of authority. Like unplugging the camera. She was demonstrating she had the power to do as she wished, even at Parker Center.
Pike thought it was all a bit obvious.
Then she said, “Was Frank Meyer smuggling guns?”
This was the first time one of them asked a question that surprised him.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Sure sure? Or you just want to believe he wasn’t?”
Pike didn’t like this business about guns. He studied her face, trying to read her. Her eyes were light brown, almost hazel, but not. A vertical line cut the skin between her eyebrows, matched by a scar on her upper lip. No laugh lines, but no frown lines, either. Pike didn’t like her certainty.
“How did you find me?”
She made an offhand shrug, her face as flat as a Texas highway, ignoring his question.
“Okay, you’re sure. Personally, I don’t know, but I need a reason Darko killed him, and that one makes sense.”
“Guns.”
She pointed at herself.
“ATF. The F is for firearms.”
She studied him a moment longer, then cocked her head.
“You don’t know about the guns. You’re just in this to get some payback. Okay, I get it. That’s who you are.”
Pike knew she was trying to decide what to tell him, and how to play him. Same things he was thinking about her.
“Terrio lied about our not having anything that ties Williams to the earlier six invasions. We found a woman’s bracelet in his grandmother’s trailer that puts him with the Escalante invasion, and an antique Japanese sword that puts him with the Gelber invasion. We’ll probably find something in Renfro’s crib, too. The gun comps will be the icing, but these boys are our killers.”
Pike knew that Escalante was the second of the six previous home invasion/homicides. Gelber was the fifth.
“If you found these things only now, then you didn’t know Williams was involved.”
“No. Turns out Johnson was living with Renfro. That’s why no one could find him. Except for you. You did a good job there, Pike, finding these guys so fast. We hadn’t even come up with names for these guys, but you found them. I like that a lot.”
She reached into her inside jacket pocket, and fingered out a four-by-six-inch photograph. Pike saw a clean-cut African-American man, early thirties, high and tight hair, and a tasteful gold stud in his left ear.
“Special Agent Jordan Brant. Jordie was one of my undercovers. He was murdered twenty-three days ago trying to identify a takeover crew employed by one Michael Darko. This is Darko.”
She produced a second picture, this one showing a big man in his late thirties with wide-set eyes in a round face. He had black hair pulled into a short ponytail, a thick mustache, and long, thin sideburns. The man who would not let himself be photographed had been captured on a security camera at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.
Pike stared at the picture, and Walsh read the stare. Walsh smiled for the first time, but it was nasty and mean.
“Yeah, baby, that’s him. Killed your boy, Frank. Killed those little kids. The young one, Joey? Was he named after you?”
Pike sat back, and said nothing.
“You know where he is?”
“Not yet.”
“Jordie was found behind an abandoned Chevron station in Willowbrook. They used a box cutter on him. Wife and a child. You can relate to that, right? Me losing my guy. You losing your guy.”
“You believe Williams killed him?”
“Considering that Williams and his cre
w were Willowbrook homies, I’d say yes, but all we knew at the time is that a Crip set was involved. Jordie was trying to identify them.”
She returned the pictures to her pocket.
“What does this have to do with guns?”
“Darko works for a man named Milos Jakovich. Also known as Mickey Jack and Jack Mills.”
She arched her eyebrows, the arch asking if he recognized the names. Pike shook his head, so she explained.
“Jakovich heads up the original Serb set here in L.A.-the first of the old bosses to come over in the nineties. Think Don Corleone in his later years, but meaner. Jakovich is bringing in three thousand Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles.”
The number stopped Pike. He tried to read if she was lying, but decided she was telling the truth.
“Three thousand.”
“Full-auto combat rigs that pirates stole from the North Koreans. So if Darko sends his killers to murder a man who used to be a professional mercenary, and who probably knows how to buy and sell weapons anywhere in the world, pardon me if I see a connection.”
Pike took a breath. A new element had entered the field, and now Pike felt a stab of doubt. He felt bad for having it, as if he were betraying Frank’s memory.
“Frank wouldn’t do that.”
“Tell you what? Let me figure out whether he would, since that happens to be my job. Here’s what’s more important-you’re going to help me get those guns.”
Walsh moved for the first time. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the table.
“Darko works for Jakovich, but he’s trying to take over the deal, pick his own buyer, and force a regime change. Old school out, new school in. That buys me time to find the guns, but if you keep dogging this guy, and he feels the heat-”
She snapped her fingers.
“Poof! The guns disappear, and they could be anywhere-Miami, Chi cago, Brooklyn. So-first-you’re going to drop your search-and-destroy.”
She didn’t give Pike time to respond, but pushed on, leaning even closer.
“These East European sets, if these bastards didn’t know you in the old country, they don’t talk to you, and they haven’t been in this country long enough for us to develop informants. My guy died trying to bust that lock, Pike, but you-I think you have someone inside with the Serbs. So-second-I want your contact.”