Blood Work

23

THE DETECTIVE BUREAU at the Sheriff’s Department’s Star Center was crowded with detectives when McCaleb entered at eight o’clock on Monday morning. However, the receptionist who had let him walk back to homicide on his own just three days earlier told him he had to wait for the captain. This puzzled McCaleb but before he could ask about it, the receptionist was on the phone making a call. As soon as she hung up, McCaleb saw Captain Hitchens emerge from the meeting room he had sat in with Jaye Winston on Friday. He closed the door behind him and headed toward McCaleb. Terry noticed that the blinds over the meeting room’s glass window were drawn and closed. Hitchens beckoned him to follow.

“Terry, come on back with me.”

McCaleb followed him to his office and Hitchens told him to have a seat. McCaleb was getting a bad feeling about the overly cordial treatment. Hitchens sat behind his desk, folded his arms and leaned forward on the calendar blotter with a smile on his face.

“So, where have you been?”

McCaleb looked at his watch.

“What do you mean? Jaye Winston set the meeting for eight. It’s two minutes after.”

“I mean Sunday, Saturday. Jaye’s been calling.”

McCaleb immediately knew what had happened. On Saturday, when he had been cleaning up the boat, he had taken the phone and the answer machine and placed them in a cabinet next to the chart table. He had then forgotten about it. Calls to the boat and messages left while they had been out on the jetty fishing both days would have been missed. The phone and machine were still in the cabinet.

“Damn,” he now said to Hitchens. “I haven’t checked my machine.”

“Well, we were calling. Could’ve saved you a trip out.”

“The meeting’s been canceled? I thought Jaye wanted-”

“The meeting isn’t canceled, Terry. It’s just that some things have come up and we feel it’s better if we conduct the investigation without outside complications.”

McCaleb studied him for a long moment.

“Complications? Is this because of the heart transplant? Jaye told you?”

“She didn’t have to tell me. But it’s because of a number of things. Look, you came in here and shook things up. Gave us a number of things-good hard leads-to follow. We’re going to do that and we’re going to be very diligent in our investigation, but at this point I have to draw the line on your involvement. I’m sorry.”

There was something not said, McCaleb thought as the captain spoke. Something was going on he didn’t understand or at least know about it. Good hard leads, Hitchens had said. Suddenly, McCaleb understood. If Winston couldn’t get through to him during the weekend, then neither could Vernon Carruthers in Washington, D.C.

“My FAT guy found something?”

“Fat guy?”

“Firearms and Toolmarks. What did he get, Captain?”

Hitchens raised his hands palm out.

“We’re not going to talk about that. I told you, we thank you very much for the jump start. But let us handle it from here. We will let you know what happens and if good things happen, you will be properly credited in our records and with the media.”

“I don’t need to be credited. I just need to be part of this.”

“I’m sorry. But we’ll take it from here.”

“And Jaye agrees with this?”

“It doesn’t matter if she agrees or doesn’t agree. Last I checked, I was running the detective bureau here, not Jaye Winston.”

There was enough annoyance in his tone for McCaleb to conclude that Winston had not been in agreement with Hitchens. That was good to know. He might need her. Staring at Hitchens, McCaleb knew he wasn’t going to go quietly back to his boat and drop it. No way. The captain had to be smart enough to realize it as well.

“I know what you’re thinking. And all I’m saying is don’t get yourself in a jam. If we come across you in the field, there’s going to be a problem.”

McCaleb nodded.

“Fair enough.”

“You’ve been warned.”

McCaleb told Lockridge to cruise around the visitor’s lot. He wanted to get to a phone quickly but first he wanted to see if he could get an idea who had been in the meeting room Hitchens had come out of. He knew Jaye Winston was obviously in there and probably Arrango and Walters. But following his hunch that Vernon Carruthers had come up with a ballistics match with the DRUGFIRE laser program, he also suspected that someone from the bureau besides Maggie Griffin was in the meeting room.

As they moved slowly through the parking lot, McCaleb checked the rear driver’s-side window of each parked car they passed. Finally, in the third lane, he saw what he was looking for.

“Hold it here, Bud,” he said.

They stopped behind a metallic blue Ford LTD. On the rear driver’s-side window was the telltale bar-code sticker. It was a bureau car. A laser reader at the garage entrance of the federal building in Westwood scanned the bar code and raised the steel gate to permit entrance after hours.

McCaleb got out and walked up to the car. There were no other exterior markings to help him identify the agent who had driven it. But whoever had been driving the car made it easy for him. Driving east to the meeting against a rising sun, the driver had turned down the windshield visor and left it down. All the FBI agents McCaleb had ever known kept the government gas card assigned to their car clipped to the visor for easy access. This driver was no exception.

McCaleb looked at the gas card and got the serial number off it. He went back to Lockridge’s car.

“What’s with the car?” Buddy asked.

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Find a phone.”

“Shoulda guessed.”

Five minutes later they were at a service station with a bank of phones on the side wall. Lockridge pulled up to the phones, lowered his window so he would be able to eavesdrop and shut off the car. Before getting out, McCaleb opened his wallet and gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

“Go fill it up. We’re going back up to the desert, I think.”

“Shit.”

“You said you were free all day.”

“I am, but who wants to go to the desert? Don’t any clues point to the beach, for cryin’ out loud?”

McCaleb just laughed at him and got out of the car with his phone book.

At the phone, McCaleb called the field office in Westwood and asked to be transferred to the garage. The call was picked up after twelve rings.

“G’age.”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Roofs.”

“Oh, okay,” McCaleb said, remembering the man. “Rufus, this is Convey up on fifteen. I’ve got a question you might be able to answer for me.”

“Shoot, man.”

The familiarity McCaleb had put in his voice had apparently worked. He remembered Rufus and had never been much impressed with his intelligence. This was reflected in the poor upkeep of the federal fleet.

“I found a gas card on the floor up here and it’s supposed to be in somebody’s car down there. Who’s got card eighty-one? Can you look it up?”

“Uh… etty-one?”

“Yes, Roof, eight-one.”

There was a spell of silence while the garage man apparently looked through a log.

“Well, that’s Misser Spence. He got that one.”

McCaleb didn’t respond. Gilbert Spencer was the second-highest-ranking agent in Los Angeles. Rank notwithstanding, McCaleb had never thought much of him as an investigative team leader. But the fact that he was meeting with Jaye Winston and her captain and who knew who else at the Star Center came as a shock. He began to get a better idea why he had been kicked off the case.

“ ’Lo?”

“Uh, yeah, Rufus, thanks a lot. That was eighty-one, right?”

“Yuh. Tha’s Agent Spence cah.”

“Okay, I’ll get him the card.”

“I don’t know. I see his car ain’ here right now.”

“Okay, don’t worry about it. Thanks, Roof.”

McCaleb hung up the phone and immediately picked it up again. Using his calling card number, he called Vernon Carruthers in Washington. It was just about lunchtime there and he hoped he had not missed him.

“This is Vernon.”

McCaleb blew out a sigh.

“It’s Terry.”

“Man, where the hell you been? I tried to give you a damn heads-up on Saturday and you wait two days to call me back.”

“I know, I know. I fucked up. But I hear you got something.”

“Damn tootin’.”

“What, Vernon, what?”

“I gotta be careful. I get the feeling there’s a need-to-know list on this and your name’s-”

“-not on it. Yeah, I know. I already found that out. But this is my car, Vernon, and nobody’s going to drive away without me. So you’re going to tell me, what did you find that would bring the assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office out of his little room and into the field, probably for the first time this year?”

“ ’Course I’m going to tell you. I got my twenty-five in. What are they going to do to me? Kick me out and then have to pay me double-time witness fees to testify in all the cases I got lined up?”

“So give it to me then.”

“Well, you really stuck your dick in it this time. I lasered the slug this Winston gal sent me and got an eighty-three percent match on a good-sized frag they dug out of the head of one Donald Kenyon back in November. That’s why you got the A-SAC’s nuts in an uproar out there.”

McCaleb whistled.

“Damn, not in my ear, man,” Carruthers protested.

“Sorry. Was it a Federal FMJ-the one from Kenyon?”

“No, actually, it was a frangible. A Devastator. You know what that is?”

“That’s what Reagan got nailed with at the Hilton, right?”

“Right. Little charge in the tip. Bullet is supposed to fragment. But it didn’t with Ronnie. He got lucky. Kenyon wasn’t lucky.”

McCaleb tried to think about what this might mean. The same gun, the HK P7, had been used in the three murders, Kenyon, Cordell and Torres. But between Kenyon and Cordell the ammunition had changed from a frangible to a hardball. Why?

“Now, remember,” Carruthers was saying, “you didn’t hear this stuff from me.”

“I know. But tell me something. After you got the match, what did you do, go to Lewin or do some checking first?”

Joel Lewin was Carruthers’s by-the-book boss.

“What you’re asking is if I got anything to send you, am I right?”

“You’re right. I need what you can send me.”

“Already on the way. Put it in priority mail on Saturday before the shit hit the fan around here. I printed out what was on the computer. You got all the internals coming. Should be there t’day or t’morrow. You are going to take me on one hell of a fishing trip for this, man.”

“Absolutely.”

“And you didn’t get any of that stuff from me.”

“You’re cool, Vernon. You don’t even have to say it.”

“I know but it makes me feel better.”

“What else can you tell me?”

“That’s about it. It was taken out of my hands. Lewin took over everything and it went high-level from there. I did have to tell them why I put the push on it. So they know you were looking into it. I didn’t tell them why.”

McCaleb silently chastised himself for losing his temper and control with Arrango after the hypnotism session. If he hadn’t revealed the real motivation behind his investigation, he might still be a part of it. Carruthers had not revealed the secret, but Arrango certainly had.

“You there, Terry?”

“Yeah. Listen, if you pick up anything else about this, give me the heads-up.”

“You got it, man. But answer your fuckin’ phone. And watch yourself on this.”

“All the time.”

After McCaleb hung up he turned around and almost walked into Buddy Lockridge.

“Buddy, come on, you gotta give me room. Let’s get going.”

They started walking to the car, which was still parked at one of the pumps.

“The desert?”

“Yeah. We go back up and I see Mrs. Cordell again. See if she’s still talking to me.”

“Why wouldn’t-never mind, don’t answer that. I’m just the driver.”

“Now you got it.”

On the way up to the desert, Buddy warbled on a B flat harmonica while McCaleb used some self-hypnosis techniques to relax his mind so that he would better recall what he knew of the Donald Kenyon case. It had been the latest in what had seemingly been a long line of embarrassments to the bureau in recent years.

Kenyon had been president of Washington Guaranty, a federally insured savings and loan bank with branches in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties. Kenyon was a golden-haired and silver-tongued climber who curried favor with deep-pocketed investors through insider stock tips until he ascended to the president’s office by the shockingly young age of twenty-nine. He was profiled in every business magazine. He was a man who instilled confidence and trust in his investors and employees and the media. So much so that over the period of three years that he was president, he was able to siphon a staggering $35 million from the institution through bogus loans to bogus companies without so much as raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t until Washington Guaranty collapsed after being thoroughly hollowed out and Kenyon disappeared that anyone, including federal auditors and watchdogs, realized what had happened.

The story played in the media for months, if not years, McCaleb remembered. Stories on retirees left with nothing, stories on the ripple effect of businesses failing, stories on alleged sightings of Kenyon in Paris, Zurich, Tahiti and other places.

After five years on the run Kenyon was found by the bureau’s fugitive unit in Costa Rica, where he had been living in an opulent compound that included two pools, two tennis courts, a live-in personal trainer and horse-breeding facilities. The thief, now thirty-six, was extradited to Los Angeles to face charges in federal court.

While Kenyon sat in the federal holding facility awaiting trial, an asset and forfeiture squad descended on his trail and worked for six months looking for the money. But less than $2 million was found.

This was the puzzle. Kenyon’s defense was that he did not have the money because he didn’t take it, he only passed it on under threat of death-his and his entire family’s. Through his attorneys he averred that he was blackmailed into setting up corporations, loaning them millions from his S amp;L and then turning the money over to the blackmailer. But even though he faced the potential of years in a federal penitentiary, Kenyon refused to name the extortionist who had taken the money.

Federal investigators and prosecutors chose not to believe him. Citing his high-flying lifestyle both while running the S amp;L and on the run, and the fact that he clearly had some of the money-albeit a fraction of the whole-with him in Costa Rica, they settled for prosecuting only Kenyon.

After a four-month trial in a federal courtroom packed each day with a gallery of victims who had lost their life savings in the S amp;L collapse, Kenyon was convicted of the massive fraud and U.S. District Judge Dorothy Windsor sentenced him to forty-eight years in prison.

What happened next would result in one more bludgeoning of the reputation of the FBI.

After passing sentence, Windsor agreed to a defense request to allow Kenyon time at home with his family to prepare for prison while his attorneys prepared appeal motions. Over the prosecutor’s strenuous objection, Windsor gave Kenyon sixty days to get his house in order. He then had to report to prison forthwith, whether an appeal was filed or not. Windsor further ordered that Kenyon wear a monitor bracelet around his ankle to ensure he did not attempt another flight from justice.

Such an order following conviction is not unusual. However, it is unusual when the convict has already shown his willingness to flee authorities and the country.

But whether Kenyon had somehow been able to influence a federal judge to get such a ruling and planned to flee once more would never be known. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, while Kenyon was enjoying the twenty-first day of his two-month reprieve, someone entered the Beverly Hills home he was renting on Maple Drive. Kenyon was alone, his wife having left to take their two children to school. The intruder confronted Kenyon in the kitchen and marched him at gunpoint into the marble-tiled entry of the house. He then shot Kenyon to death just as his wife’s car was pulling into the circular drive out front. The intruder escaped out a back door and through the alley running behind the row of mansions on Maple Drive.

Except for the investigation and pursuit of the killer, the story might have ended there or at least taken on the mundane boredom of a cold trail. But the FBI had Lojacked Kenyon-bureau-speak for having placed him under an illegal surveillance that included listening devices planted in his home, cars and attorney’s office. At the moment he was shot, a tech van with four agents in it was parked two blocks away. The murder had been recorded.

The agents, aware of their illegal standing, nevertheless raced to the home and gave pursuit to the intruder. But the gunman escaped while Kenyon was being rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, only to be declared dead on arrival.

The missing millions Kenyon was convicted of looting from Washington Guaranty were never recovered. But that detail was eclipsed when the actions of the FBI were revealed. Not only was the bureau vilified for undertaking such an illegal operation, it was also publicly castigated for allowing a murder to happen right under its nose, for bumbling the chance to intervene and stop the assassination of Kenyon, not to mention capture the gunman.

McCaleb had viewed all of this from afar. He was already out of the bureau and at the time of Kenyon’s murder was preparing himself for his own death. But he remembered reading the Times, which was at the forefront of the story. He recalled that the newspaper reported that there were demotions all around for the agents involved and calls from politicians in Washington, D.C., for congressional hearings on illegal activities by the bureau. To add insult to injury, he also remembered, Kenyon’s widow filed an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the bureau, seeking millions in damages.

The question McCaleb now had to answer was whether the intruder who killed Kenyon in November was the man who killed Cordell and Torres two and three months later. And if it was the same man, what could possibly be the connection linking a failed savings and loan president with an aqueduct engineer and a newspaper pressroom worker?

He finally looked around and noticed his surroundings. They were well past Vasquez Rocks now. In a few more minutes they would be at Amelia Cordell’s house.