Jet Sweep

by David Chill

  “You could have earned it,” he pointed out. “Why not?”

  “Not like this,” she said, keeping her arms spread out. “This is beyond what I could get. You got this at what? Age twenty-five? You already have millions. Your path just opened right up and led you down the yellow brick road. For you, a place like this is a starting point. For me, this is probably beyond where I could ever end up.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to me?” he asked.

  “I did. You weren’t listening. This business was all about you and Ryan and Sean. You were the three founders, the three amigos, the three guys who got the lion’s share of the stock. And to you guys, this was a game, a lark, something fun to do while you raked in a pot of gold. It all comes so easy to you. People like me were trying to make this into a real business. I was getting peanuts in return. Everyone at WAVE was.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  “You should have.”

  Cody turned to me. “What about the shooting the other night? The shooting was related to all this?”

  I told him it was. “Yet another bad idea in a series of bad ideas. That one really did start out as a murder scheme. Yes, your sister and Joe Hartwick, her knucklehead whatever, boyfriend, husband, were going to try and kill you, and then she would inherit your share of the company. Since she was walking out of the building with you that night, she figured nothing could be tied back to her. That plot got derailed when they tried to rope me in as the fall guy. But you know, criminals always make one mistake, and theirs was looping me in. In point of fact, though, they made quite a few mistakes here, not to mention thinking they could actually get away with these crazy schemes.”

  “You were thinking of having me killed?” he asked incredulously.

  “I never liked you,” she said dismissively. “It’s nothing personal.”

  The last comment cast an eerie lull over the conversation, as the three of us sat silently, pondering what Kristy had just said. The look on Cody’s face went beyond confusion or shock, it was an utter disbelief at the now-stark reality of an astonishing situation. I began to think about what Cody must have gone through when his parents were killed. He lost his two important family members. Now he was losing another, but for starkly different and much darker reasons.

  He looked at me. “Did you find out why our scooters have been disappearing?”

  I shook my head at the quick change of topic. “Zander Foley had nothing to do with this. Another setup. But I think you may have some larger issues with your company. Between the city about to start requiring payments from scooter companies to larger firms coming in and taking over the market, you might want to think about getting out of this business yourself,” I said. Burnside, the expert businessman.

  Cody rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. I’m aware of all that. Startups are challenging. A lot of them don’t make it. But running a company is a pretty cool experience.”

  I looked around. “I assume the pay is good.”

  He shrugged. “This is mostly paid for with my NFL bonus. But yeah, the money I get at WAVE isn’t bad. What did you mean about my friends that just want to play golf all day?”

  “Your partners. Ryan and Sean. I’m sure I don’t understand every facet of what goes into running a business, but I can tell when some people are working and some are not. Your two pals don’t strike me as hard workers. But that’s your issue.”

  “They’re co-founders,” he said. “Not much I’m going to do about that.”

  I shrugged. “You’re the CEO. You get to decide.”

  Cody took a breath. “What happens next?” he asked.

  “Joe Hartwick is going to be arrested,” I said. “In cleaning up some of the loose ends, he murdered the guy who did the shooting down at WAVE the other night. His name was Ted Stoner, and he was the one Hartwick hired to take some shots at you the other night. There’s physical evidence proving Hartwick killed him. We’ve got the murder weapon, and his fingerprints are on it.”

  Cody’s mouth hung open. “Man, I could never have imagined something like this happening,” he said, pointing at Kristy. “And what about her?”

  Taking a long look at her, I decided there was nothing more to gain from the charade of pretending I would help Kristy Groh go free. I had all the information I needed, and this had now been shared with Cody. There was only one thing left to do.

  “She’ll be looking at a long stretch in prison,” I said quietly.

  “So she’ll be arrested?” he asked.

  I nodded. “What I’ll do now is hand Kristy over to the LAPD. She’ll blame everything on Hartwick, he’ll blame everything on her. If that happens, the issue of testifying against your spouse will go out the window. We’ll let law enforcement sort out the details. My guess is she’ll be charged with conspiracy to commit murder at the very least. If not Stoner’s, then certainly yours.”

  Kristy’s eyes narrowed and her mouth dropped. “Wait … what? That wasn’t part of our deal.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said, rising and walking over to her. Grabbing her left arm, I twisted it behind her back, and she let out a painful yelp. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pair of plastic zip-tie handcuffs, jerked her other arm behind her back, and snapped the cuffs on her.

  “Wait! We had a deal! You said there was a way out of this for me!”

  “You’re right,” I said, dragging her toward the door. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “That confession you wrote out says differently.”

  “Then that was a trick?!”

  “Yeah, about that. Did you honestly think I was going to let you get away with a crime this serious? To let you just walk away as if nothing happened?”

  “This is about you, isn’t it?” she hissed. “Because we tried to set you up as the fall guy!”

  “You tried to mess with my family,” I snapped at her. “Some things you just don’t get away with.”

  “You lied to me! You fucker!”

  “I did say you’d need to trust me,” I pointed out.

  “I did trust you! Look where it got me!”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Look at where it got you. At the very least, one could say you’re not a very good judge of character.”

  *

  It was a twelve-minute drive from Cody’s Marina apartment to the LAPD’s Pacific Division. I parked on the street and marched Kristy into a police station abuzz with activity. People were hustling across the office, a number of people shouting here and there, and a few groups were huddled, speaking in low tones and looking serious. In short, there was a lot of commotion. I approached the receptionist.

  “Hi there,” I said politely.

  The receptionist was a slender young woman with long curly hair, and her facial expression was as frazzled as her hairdo. She glanced up at me, and just as quickly, she glanced away.

  “I’d like to speak with Detective Rainey,” I said pleasantly.

  “He’s busy,” she said, without looking up again.

  “Maybe you can tell him to un-busy himself,” I replied.

  She gave a sigh of exasperation. “What’s the issue?”

  “My name’s Burnside. The issue is I found a dead body he’s been looking for.”

  “A what?” she exclaimed.

  I pointed at Kristy. “This woman is Kristy Groh. She was killed in a car accident down in San Pedro a few nights ago. You may have heard about it if you watch the news.”

  “You say this woman was killed?” she repeated, confused.

  “That’s what I said.”

  The receptionist gave both of us long looks before finally responding. “She doesn’t look all that dead to me.”

  “Neither do you,” I retorted, suddenly feeling more testy than polite. “So go do your damn job, pick up the phone and tell Detective Rainey I need to see him. Now!”

  Her expression quickly changed from somewhat frazzled to mildly intimi
dated, but she did reach over and punch a couple of numbers into the phone. A few seconds later she spoke. “There’s a Burnside here to see you. He says he’s bringing you a dead body.”

  I looked at her as she hung up. She looked back. Neither of us said anything more, but about thirty seconds later, Paul Rainey walked up to us, tie loose, sleeves rolled up. The sneer that had seemingly been tattooed upon his face had changed to one of exhaustion. He looked like he was having a bad day.

  “Just who I didn’t want to see today,” he said.

  “I get that a lot.”

  “What’s this about another dead body?”

  I pointed at Kristy. “This is the famous Kristy Groh. Apparently, she wasn’t in the Audi when it crashed down onto the beach in San Pedro. It was just made to seem that way.”

  He stared at her. “This true?”

  “This man has kidnapped me,” she moaned.

  “Let’s call it a citizen’s arrest,” I clarified.

  “Why’s she in cuffs?” Rainey asked.

  “Conspiracy to commit murder,” I said, reaching into my pocket and handing him Kristy’s confession. “She and Hartwick were in on the whole sordid caper. You can read all about it here. In her own words.”

  “He forced me to write it,” she insisted. “It was under duress.”

  I looked at her. “That’s a serious accusation.”

  Rainey wiped his face with his hand. “You’re connected with my partner? Joe Hartwick? Or maybe it’s my former partner by now.”

  “He was my husband,” she said, tears starting to stream down her face. “He totally manipulated me. He manipulated everything.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, stepping forward and taking her by the arm. He started leading her inside the station, but turned back to me and ordered me to not go anywhere.

  After he and Kristy were inside, I walked back outside, braving the scorching heat. I went back to my Pathfinder and opened the trunk. I took out a small bottle of bleach, went over to the driver’s side, climbed in, and shut the door. I quickly turned over the engine and switched on the A/C, but the only air coming out of the vents was as hot as the air inside. Removing my handgun from the ankle holster, and keeping it down, so as to avoid being viewed by anyone outside the vehicle, I wet a tissue with the bleach and wiped down the muzzle carefully. I wasn’t sure how much, if any, of Kristy’s DNA had stayed on my .357, but it pays to be careful. What I had done to coerce Kristy into writing her confession was blatantly illegal, as was the simple act of pointing a gun at someone. While not quite the same as conspiring to have someone murdered, this was a felony, too; technically it was assault.

  After I was finished, I stowed the gun under the seat of my Pathfinder, returned the bleach to the trunk, and walked back into the station. As hot as it was outside, it felt momentarily refreshing to be out of my Pathfinder. I called Adam Lazar and let him know about a breaking story today involving a crooked cop in the Pacific Division who had been arrested in connection with a murder in Culver City. He asked question after question, and I could hear the growing excitement in his voice. I told him he owed me a lunch, and it better be an upgrade from sandwiches and tacos. Finally, I said I should be considered an anonymous source, as I would surely need to work with the LAPD again, and didn’t want to publicly soil my name any more than it already was. A few minutes after I ended my call with Lazar, Paul Rainey came back out and approached.

  “You want to tell me how you wound up finding her?”

  I shrugged. “I learned Kristy had a boyfriend in San Pedro. So I started checking property owners near the accident site. Turns out Joe Hartwick inherited a house a few blocks from where Kristy’s car went over the cliff. It also turned out Kristy listed Joe as the beneficiary on her life insurance policy. Took two and two and added them up. Sometimes the answer comes out four.”

  “And then you found Kristy. In Joe’s house in San Pedro?”

  “Yeah. Apparently, she wasn’t as dead as everyone thought. Or maybe she just rose up.”

  “Then she was in on all this?” he asked. “That confession is real?”

  “Real as you can hope for,” I said as evasively as I could. “She’ll probably plead amnesia. Don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to remember an episode like this, either.”

  “A lot of things about this are pretty shaky.”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  “And the shooting over at the Tattle Tale?” he continues. “That happened right after you left. Right after you beat up the guy that got killed, what’s his name, Ted Stoner? Again, you always seem to be around. What am I supposed to make of all this?”

  “I’d say it was an interesting sequence of events. I learned that Joe and Kristy and Ted Stoner had put together a plan together to kill Cody Groh down at WAVE. The plan went south.”

  Rainey shook his head. “It’s pretty sad that a cop gets arrested in his own police station. The whole division gets sullied. I hate Internal Affairs. I don’t like the Culver PD much either.”

  “Anyone you do like?” I asked pleasantly.

  He stared at me for a long minute. “This is the most messed up case I’ve ever been on.”

  “Copy that.”

  “I heard Joe’s claiming this Stoner guy attacked him,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Hard to believe when you take off on a dead run after shooting someone. And then dump the murder weapon down a storm drain.”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Rainey said.

  “There were too many loose ends. Including me. The video surveillance in the alley behind the bar was mysteriously disabled. Probably by someone good with technology. Like Hartwick.”

  “If Joe was really this devious, then why wouldn’t he just shoot Stoner and stick around? It wouldn’t be that hard to believe a cop was being attacked and he fired in self-defense.”

  “I can’t say for sure. Maybe he knew I had gotten into an altercation with Stoner,” I shrugged. “This way he could dispose of me, too.”

  “Tough to think Joe was that devious.”

  “The more I learn about your ex-partner, the more I’m convinced he was.”

  “But here’s another funny thing,” Rainey mused. “I checked something out. The license plate readers didn’t pick up his Blazer anywhere in Culver City the other night.”

  I thought about this. “There’s a Toyota rental sitting in his driveway in San Pedro. From Enterprise. I would imagine those plates got picked up by the readers.”

  Rainey looked at me. “I really ought to book you right now for assault and battery. I heard all about what happened at the Tattle Tale. I warned you the other day about not interfering with a police investigation.”

  “Yeah, but the victim of that assault is dead, so he won’t be testifying against me. And I think you have enough problems,” I said. “Stoner is dead from someone else’s hand. Your partner’s hand. And there are also no eyewitnesses at the beginning of my, er, physical disagreement with Stoner in the alley. A few guys from the bar came in at the end to break it up. And interfering with a police investigation? That would just shine a light on why a private investigator cracked this case while you were riding with a partner who’s likely to be doing a long stretch in prison for a capital crime. You’re going to go through a public ordeal. You honestly want to make it worse?”

  His mouth tightened, and he got a faraway look in his eyes. “This is a good division. The cops here are straight shooters. But this is going to give us a big black eye for a big long time.”

  I shrugged. “Well, you have good days and you have bad days.”

  Chapter 12

  It was still plenty hot when I arrived home around six. The automatic sprinklers had turned themselves on, and Marcus was taking full advantage by running back and forth across the front lawn. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and didn’t care at all that his clothes were now sopping wet. Gail sat on the front steps watching him, far enough away from the spiraling shots of water, close enough to j
ump in if he slipped and fell.

  “It looks like Marcus has found a way to beat the heat,” I said, sitting down next to her and planting a kiss on her cheek.

  “Leave it to youth to find innovative solutions to life’s challenges,” she smiled.

  “How was your day?” I asked.

  “Fine. And yours? You’ve been out and about lately.”

  I told her the whole story of Cody and Kristy. And Ted Stoner and Joe Hartwick. The cliff in San Pedro, and the alley behind the Tattle Tale Room. The full reason for why we had to go to the Miramar the other night, and the reason we were no longer in jeopardy. I told it matter-of-factly, and she listened intently, at one point reaching over to grasp my hand. She squeezed it softly.

  “There are so many times I wish you didn’t do what you do.”

  I took a breath. “But then I wouldn’t be me.”

  “You’d be you. Just a safer version of you.”

  “I only do a few things well. This is one of them.”

  “And you do it because you think you’re making the world a better place,” she said.

  “Yeah, but there are times I’m not so sure I really am. I’m not so sure anyone can. I can’t change the world.”

  “I know. But you can change a small corner of it. I’m proud of you. But I’m also scared for you. And for Marcus. He needs a dad. And he idolizes you so much. That’s not a bad thing. But it would devastate him if anything happened to you. It would break my heart, of course, but it would break his heart worse.”

  “I have another appointment with Dr. Rosenbloom on Monday morning. Seems like we’re going to have a lot to discuss.”

  She smiled. “Sounds like you’re getting your money’s worth.”

  The next day was the Fourth of July, and we had planned a late afternoon barbecue. Fortunately, it had cooled down a bit. Gail had some errands to do, and I suggested to Marcus that we take a drive down to Laguna Beach, because I wanted to show him something interesting. I downloaded a Disney movie to occupy him on the way down, it would help minimize his questions about where we were going; I simply told him it would be a nice surprise. It was indeed a surprise for him when we pulled up in front of the Paradiso Gelato shop. I said I had heard the gelato here was as good as in Italy. The teenager standing in front of us in line, wearing only a swimsuit and looking as if he had spent the morning surfing, ordered a cup loaded with chocolate, strawberry, and pistachio. Marcus said he’d have the same thing, and I did, too. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. The gelato was indeed terrific.