by Allan Folsom
67
3:33 A.M.
Barron backed the Mustang out of the carport, then drove down the driveway to stop at the overgrowth of bougainvillea at the street. Raymond was on the floor in the back directly behind him, and Barron was certain the Colt or the Beretta or both were in his hands.
Up the street to his left, he could see the Grimsley/VerMeer surveillance car. By now they would have seen his headlights and be wondering what was going on.
He accelerated toward them, then slowed and stopped.
“Couldn’t sleep.” He followed Raymond’s instructions to the letter. “Too much on my mind, I’m going in to work. Why don’t you guys sign off and go home?”
“Whatever you say.” Grimsley yawned.
“Thanks again,” Barron said, then put the Mustang in gear and drove off.
“Good,” Raymond said from the backseat. “So far.”
A minute later Barron turned onto Los Feliz Boulevard and then onto the Golden State Freeway, heading north toward Burbank Airport.
Raymond had said the real threat to Barron was not a gun but his own conscience. Then Raymond had protected himself even further, or at least said he had. The safeguard was in the form of delayed e-mails, to be automatically sent at a certain time to the district attorney of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CNN headquarters in Atlanta, and the governor of California.
The e-mails explained who he was and told what he believed had happened to Frank Donlan while he was in police custody, adding that he had been with Donlan for some time as a hostage and during that time the only gun he had seen had been the one used to kill the people on the train—a gun Donlan had ultimately thrown out to the police in the parking garage, before stepping out naked in surrender to show he was unarmed. These delayed e-mails, Raymond promised, he would recall later—“unsend,” as he put it—once he was on the plane and safely away.
In Raymond’s view he was simply sparing Barron the ordeal of being called before a grand jury trying to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to try him and the other detectives for the murder of Frank Donlan. And in that he was right, because no matter what the others said or did to protect themselves and the squad, under oath it would be impossible for Barron not to tell the truth. He knew it and Raymond knew it.
On the other hand, if Raymond did escape, what then? The man who had killed Red McClatchy, five law enforcement officers, a New Jersey consultant, and a kid from Germany in cold blood would be free to continue his murderous storm for whatever twisted reasons he had begun it in the first place. How many more innocent people would die before he was done? And would one of them be Alfred Neuss?
So Raymond had been right. It was a matter of conscience. That was why, minutes earlier in his telephone conversation with Dan Ford, he had called him Danny. The last time he’d done it they were nine years old and Ford had told him outright that he hated being called Danny and wanted to be called Dan. Barron had laughed and told him he was full of himself and called him Danny again. As a result Dan Ford had punched him squarely in the nose, sending him running home, crying for his mother. Ever since, he had wisely called Dan, Dan—until moments ago when he’d called him Danny, hoping Ford would realize Barron was in trouble and was trying to tell him so.
68
BOB HOPE AIRPORT. 3:55 A.M.
Raymond eased up in the backseat just enough to see them pass the western end of the airport’s runway, then turn right along Sherman Way toward the Mercury Air terminal building, a freestanding modern structure across from the main terminal.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, and Barron reached up and flicked on the Mustang’s windshield wipers. Through them Raymond could see a number of private aircraft parked behind the chain-link fence separating the tarmac from the street. All were dark.
The drizzle, the chain-link fence, and the rows of vapor lamps lighting the street and the taxiways brought an eeriness to the whole area, making the Mercury Air terminal and its commercial buildings farther down feel like part of an elite high-security complex guarded not by men but by technology.
“We’re here.” Barron’s words were the first he’d spoken since they’d left the detectives in the surveillance car. He slowed, then turned the Mustang off the street and stopped in front of a steel gate. A call box was just to the side, and on it was a sign asking after-hours customers to contact the front desk by pressing the intercom button.
“What do you want me to do now?” Barron asked.
“Ring the bell, as it says. Tell them you are here to meet the West Charter Air Gulfstream due in at four o’clock.”
Barron rolled down the window and pressed the button. A voice answered and Barron did as he had been directed. A moment later the gate slid back and he drove in.
Three cars were in the parking lot to the left as he swung in. They were wet, their windows covered with moisture. It meant they’d been there for some time, most likely all night. Barron drove on.
Five seconds more and they were nearing the terminal’s main entrance. Beside it, to the right, were two Burbank police cars. Three uniformed officers stood inside the terminal doorway watching them approach.
“The police are here.”
“Look for Mr. Ford.”
“I don’t see him. Maybe he didn’t come.”
“He will be here,” Raymond said, with calm assurance. “Because you asked him.”
Then Barron saw Dan Ford’s dark green Jeep Liberty parked in front of a lighted gate leading out to the tarmac and the parked planes beyond it. A Burbank police car was parked to the left of it with two uniformed policemen inside.
Suddenly Barron’s stomach turned. What if the “Danny” hadn’t worked? What if Ford had been too tired or was too numbed from painkillers taken for his broken nose to have even noticed? What if he was here, naively, only because Barron had asked him to come, as Raymond said? If so, it added another level of horror because if something went wrong Raymond would have no hesitation whatsoever in killing Ford. He’d do it in an instant.
69
Barron was about to turn away and tell Raymond Ford wasn’t there and probably wasn’t coming when the Liberty’s door opened and Ford stepped out. Blue blazer, khakis, horn-rimmed glasses resting over his bandaged nose, everything, except that now he wore a golf hat against the drizzle.
Raymond suddenly hunched forward, peering over the top of the seat. “Stop here.”
Barron slowed and stopped a good twenty yards from where Ford stood at the entry gate.
“Call his cell phone. Tell him you are going to pick him up, and then drive out to the tarmac to meet an incoming flight. Tell him you will talk to the police.”
Barron looked at the parked and darkened aircraft on the far side of the fence. There was no sign of a ground crew or mechanics. Not a person visible anywhere. The clock on the dashboard read nearly 4:10. Maybe there was no plane coming at all. Maybe Raymond was doing something else entirely.
“Your Gulfstream is late, Raymond. What happens if it doesn’t come?”
“It will be here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there it is.” Raymond nodded toward the runway as the landing lights of a plane appeared through the drizzle at the far end of the runway. Seconds later a Gulfstream IV touched down.
They could hear the shrill reverse of the jet engines as the pilot slowed, turned at the end of the runway, then taxied back toward the terminal, its lights cutting a sharp swath through misty darkness.
Raymond moved lower in the seat as the plane approached, the whine of its engines deafening, its lights illuminating the Mustang like million-watt torches. Then abruptly the lights swung off as the charter jet turned in and stopped on the far side of the gate. The pilot shut the engines down and the roar faded.
“Call Mr. Ford and do exactly as I have said.”
“Alr
ight.” Barron picked up his cell phone and dialed.
They could see Dan Ford put a hand to his mouth and cough as he pulled the phone from his blazer and clicked on.
“Here, John.” Ford coughed again.
“Danny—” Barron’s voice hung in the air, again calling Ford the name he hated, trying to tell him something was wrong and give him the chance to get out of there.
“Remember the waiting e-mails, John. Tell him,” Raymond said.
“I—” Barron hesitated.
“Tell him.”
Barron felt the cold steel of the Colt touch his ear.
“Danny, you and I are going out to meet the Gulfstream that just came in. I’m going to pull up beside you. When I do, just open the door and get in. I’ll talk to the uniforms.”
Ford clicked off and motioned them forward.
“Go ahead,” Raymond urged.
Barron didn’t move. “You’ve got the e-mails in the pipeline, Raymond. Why do we need him?”
“So the policeman in you doesn’t suddenly rise and make you say something to your friends when you ask them to open the gate.”
Dan Ford waved them forward again. At the same time, the doors to the police car opened and both uniforms stepped out. They were looking at the Mustang, apparently wondering what the driver was doing, why it had been stopped for so long.
“Time to go, John,” Raymond said quietly.
Barron hesitated a moment longer, then eased the Mustang forward.
Barron could see Dan Ford clearly in his headlights as he approached the gate. The reporter took a step toward them, then stopped and said something to the policemen, gesturing toward the car.
They were almost there, ten yards to go at most.
“When you reach the gate,” Raymond instructed, “roll down your window just enough for the police to see you clearly. Tell them who you are and who Mr. Ford is. Tell them you are there to meet the Gulfstream that just landed. You can say that it has to do with the investigation of Raymond Oliver Thorne.”
Barron slowed and stopped, watching the uniforms come in from the left and Dan Ford from the right. Ford was a step ahead of them, maybe two, head down against the rain.
Then Ford was there and opened the passenger door. At the same moment, the nearest uniform rushed the driver’s door. Barron heard Raymond yell in alarm. In the same instant, his own door was jerked open. For the briefest moment he saw Halliday’s face, and then came a thundering explosion and the brightest flash he’d ever seen.
70
4:20 A.M.
His ears ringing, half blinded, Barron felt hands drag him from the car. Somewhere, he thought he heard Raymond shouting. The rest was a dream.
Vaguely, he remembered seeing Lee pulling up in an unmarked car and an alert but obviously still hungover Polchak, dressed as Dan Ford, handcuffing a stunned Raymond and hustling him into the back of it. Then there was another car, and Halliday in the blue uniform of a patrol cop was helping him into the front passenger seat and asking if he was okay. Then came the sound of doors slamming, and the car he was in was moving off with Halliday at the wheel.
How much time passed, Barron wasn’t sure, but little by little the ringing in his ears lessened and the searing afterglow from the flash-bang grenade diminished in his eyes. “Dan called you,” he heard himself mumble.
“As soon as he got off the phone with you he called Marty at home.” Halliday kept his eyes on the road. “You didn’t give us a lot of time.”
“I wasn’t exactly making the schedule.” Barron shook his head, trying to clear it, make his thoughts come together. “That was Dan’s car. Where is he?”
“In the terminal probably talking to SWAT. We brought them in for backup. If it was Raymond we weren’t going to let him get away again.”
“No.” Barron looked off. It was still pitch-dark, and the two cars were traveling bumper to bumper through a quiet residential area just east of the airport.
Valparaiso had been the other uniform at the security gate. And in blue blazer, khakis, bandaged nose, horn-rimmed glasses, and rain hat, Polchak had looked enough like Dan Ford to pass for him in the dark and drizzle. Barron knew that was why he had coughed over the phone. If Barron had recognized his voice he might have reacted, and who knew what Raymond might have done then. In the end they’d done what the 5-2 had always done, taken a fast, wild, and decisive chance. And, despite all Raymond’s intelligence and cunning, it had worked.
“Jimmy.” Valparaiso’s voice suddenly came over Halliday’s radio.
Halliday picked up the radio from the seat beside him. “Go ahead, Marty.”
“We’re gonna stop for coffee.”
“Right.”
“Coffee?” Barron looked at Halliday.
“It’s been a long day already.” Halliday clicked off. “Besides, Raymond’s not going anywhere.”
STILL FRIDAY, MARCH 15. 4:35 A.M.
Jerry’s 24-Hour Coffee Shack was on a corner in an industrial area near the Golden State Freeway close enough to the airport that the glow of its lights could still be seen. Halliday pulled in first, and Valparaiso stopped beside him. Then the two got out and went inside.
Barron watched them go and then looked at the other car. Raymond sat in the backseat locked between Lee and Polchak. It was the first time Barron had seen him since the grenade went off. He looked tired and still shocked, as if he weren’t exactly sure where he was or what had happened. It was the first time he’d seen Polchak, too, since the incident outside Red’s house. He turned back, not wanting to think about it. Inside the coffee shop he could see Halliday and Valparaiso at the counter, talking and waiting for the coffee.
Suddenly there was a rap on the window beside him, and he started. Polchak stood there, motioning for him to roll down the window. Barron hesitated, then cranked it down. The two men looked at each other.
“Sorry about what happened,” Polchak said quietly. “I was drunk.”
“I know. Forget it.”
“I mean it. I apologized to Dan Ford, too, okay?” Polchak put out his hand. Barron looked at it and then took it. Maybe Polchak was no longer drunk, and maybe he was apologetic, but his eyes hadn’t changed. Whatever had so troubled him before was still there.
“Good,” Polchak said, looking up as Halliday and Valparaiso came back carrying cardboard trays holding coffee cups capped with plastic lids. Valparaiso had four of the containers, Halliday two.
Polchak looked at Valparaiso. “Ready?”
“Wait,” Barron said. They needed to know. “Raymond knows what happened to Donlan.”
“How?” Valparaiso’s eyes hardened.
“He figured it out.”
“You mean you told him,” Polchak growled without thinking. Barron could see his fists tighten as he glared at him. The demons were back, full force.
“No, Len, I didn’t tell him, he guessed. That was why he wanted Dan there, in case I started to say something to the uniforms at the gate. He was going to tell Ford.”
“Dan Ford’s not here now and he’s not going to be.” Halliday looked at Valparaiso. “Let’s go, huh?”
“Wait,” Barron said sharply. “There’s more. Raymond sent out delayed e-mails, that he told me he’d ‘unsend’ once he got away safely. To the DA, the FBI, the ACLU, Dan Ford, a lot of others. According to him, he spelled out the whole thing. It’s no proof, but it’s enough to start people asking questions.”
“John,” Halliday said quietly. “He’s a cop killer, nobody’s going to believe him.”
“What if they do?”
“So what?” Polchak sneered. “It’s his word against ours.” Suddenly he looked at Valparaiso. “Coffee’s gettin’ cold, Marty.”
4:44 A.M.
The slam of car doors clapped across the early morning quiet and the vehicles moved off the way they had before, Halliday leading, Valparaiso close behind.
They turned out of the industrial area and drove past the Burbank Airport Hilton, then crossed ov
er the tracks of the Metrolink commuter rail line. Halliday said nothing, just drove, the two coffee containers on the seat between them unopened and untouched.
It’s his word against ours.
Barron could hear Polchak’s words and see his sneer. But it wasn’t “ours,” it was “theirs.” The airport heroics aside, he was no more a part of them now than he’d been since Donlan’s murder. If Polchak had demons, if they all did, they were the 5-2’s alone, entangled in the makeup and history of the squad. No matter what he had thought or felt after Red’s death—that he had come close to becoming one of them—he knew again that he wasn’t part of the 5-2 the way the others were. It was what he’d known all along. He was different from them and would always be. The barbs of his own conscience clung to him like talons.
A sudden shriek of tires and the sharp lean of the car as Halliday turned down a side street snapped Barron from his thoughts. Abruptly Halliday swung the car again, this time turning into a dimly lit alley of cheap automotive repair shops, and stopped in front of a darkened, ramshackle auto body paint shop. A second later Valparaiso pulled up behind them, and for an instant his headlights bathed them in a bright glare, then the lights went out. Instinctively Barron glanced around. The entire area was dark, run-down, and isolated. Aside from a lone streetlamp at the end of the alley the only lights he could see came from Jerry’s 24-Hour Coffee Shack where they’d stopped, maybe a quarter of a mile away.
Barron heard the thump of car doors closing behind them, then saw Polchak and Lee take Raymond fast across the alley toward the auto body shop. Valparaiso, carrying something, stepped ahead of them and kicked open a door, and the four disappeared inside.