Kill the Messenger

30

Ruiz sat at her desk with her head in her hand, her expression a mix of exhaustion, disgust, testiness, and fading hope. She had put her aromatic witness in Parker’s chair, at Parker’s desk, willing to suffer the stench in the name of revenge.

Obidia Jones appeared to have had a fine night’s sleep in a holding cell. A late dinner from Domino’s, coffee and pastry from Starbucks for breakfast. He paged through the mug books as if he were reading a magazine, occasionally remarking when he saw someone he knew.

“Personally, I prefer a heartier breakfast,” he said, as he tore off a delicate piece of his danish. “Something substantiated to stick to a person’s ribs. Something representing all your major food groups. A good big breakfast burrito.”

Ruiz rolled her eyes.

Kray walked past with a sour look on his face. “Can’t you take that somewhere else, Ruiz? Why should the rest of us have to put up with that filthy stink?”

Ruiz looked at him. “As much time as you spend with your head up your ass, Kray, I’d think you’d be used to the smell by now.”

Yamoto, standing by the coffeemaker, choked back a laugh and dodged the snake eyes his partner shot him.

“Bitch,” Kray muttered under his breath.

“Say that a little louder,” Ruiz taunted. “So I can file a harassment complaint against you. You can go through sensitivity training again. How many times would that be?”

Kray made a face and mimicked her like he was a five-year-old child.

Parker came into the squad, took three strides into the room, and was knocked back by the smell. When he saw Mr. Jones sitting in his chair, he turned a piercing look on Ruiz.

She smiled like a sly cat and said, “Touché.”

“I think I’ve got the car,” Parker said, ignoring her. “I’ve got to call an ADA for a warrant. If we’re lucky, we’ll have prints by noon.”

“Where was it?” Ruiz asked.

“Chinatown. Doesn’t make any sense now, but it’s going to. I can feel it.”

The anticipation was like a coffee buzz, like speed. He was moving faster, talking faster, thinking faster. The building high was almost better than sex.

“I love it when it all comes together,” he said. He had run home from his encounter at Chen’s Fish Market and changed suits. He wasn’t about to put his ass in his own chair now. He went to Kray’s desk and used the phone without asking, as if Kray weren’t sitting right there.

“How’s it going, Mr. Jones?” he asked as he waited for someone to pick up on the other end of his call.

“I’m very happy. You all are extremely magnimonious with your hospitality.”

“Ms. Ruiz there treating you well?”

“She was kind enough to bring me coffee.”

“We’ll have to mark that on the calendar,” Parker said. “She’s never that nice to me.”

“Must be your cologne,” Kray grumbled.

“I don’t need cologne,” Parker said. “I smell like a fresh spring morning. But you could change that ugly shirt, cracker. How many days you been stewing in that thing? Yamoto, how many days has he been wearing that shirt?”

“Too many.”

Scowling, Kray made a swipe at the telephone receiver. “Get off my goddam phone, Parker.”

“Fuck you— No! Not you, sweetheart!” He reached out and knocked one of Kray’s messy piles of unfinished paperwork over the edge of the desk and mouthed the word “asshole” at Kray. “It’s Kev Parker. Is this the astoundingly lovely Mavis Graves?”

Mavis Graves was sixty-three with upper arms the size of canned hams, but every lady loved a compliment.

“Mavis, doll, I need to speak to Langfield about a warrant. Is he in yet?”

Stevie Wonder came over the phone line. “My Cherie Amour.”

Parker pointed a finger at Ruiz. “Did my court order for Lowell’s safe-deposit box come through?”

“Not yet.”

“Langfield. What do you need, Parker?”

“I need a warrant to search a car I believe may have been used to flee an assault.”

“You believe?”

“A car matching the description was used for a getaway. I have a partial plate from a witness, and new damage to a taillight. The car leaving the scene got clipped by a van and broke a taillight.”

“Where’s the car? Did you find it abandoned?”

“No. The car’s in Chinatown. It belongs to one pissed-off lady who isn’t being very forthcoming with me.”

“What does she say about the car?”

“That the car was never used yesterday, and the taillight got broken in a parking lot in Beverly Hills.”

“You have a suspect? Is she a suspect?”

“The woman isn’t a suspect, but I think she knows more than she’s saying. If I can get prints and put my suspect in the car . . .”

“So you’re fishing?”

“It’s the car.”

“There aren’t any other cars that match that description in LA?”

Parker heaved a sigh. “Whose side are you on, Langfield?”

“Mine. I’m not getting you a warrant you can only justify after you’ve done the search. The evidence will never make it past a judge. Can you connect your perp to this woman?”

“Not yet.”

“So you’re nowhere.”

“I have the car, the damage to the car, the partial plate—”

“You’ve got nothing. You can’t even sit and look at the car with what you’ve got.”

“Well, thanks for pissing all over my parade,” Parker said, rubbing at his temple. “You could have come through on this, Langfield. Judge Weitz would have signed off—”

“Judge Weitz is senile. I’m not bending rules for you, Parker. You’re the poster boy for what happens when cops cut corners. I won’t be a party—”

Parker tossed the receiver down on Kray’s desk. Langfield was still preaching.

“Prick,” Parker muttered, walking away, working to gather himself. He had to keep his eyes on the prize. He turned back, picked the receiver back up. “There’s paint marks on the damage to this car. If I can match the paint to the van that hit it—”

“You will have solved a traffic mishap. There’s still no reason to get inside the car.”

“That’s bullshit. It was leaving the scene of the crime!”

“Do this ass-backward and anything you find that could lead you to your perp is going to get thrown out because the search was no good. You want another one to take a walk because you—”

Parker threw the receiver down again. He walked out of the squad, went into the men’s room, and washed his face in cold water, then stood there holding his wrists under the faucet.

He stared at himself in the mirror, but he didn’t ask himself how long he was going to be made to pay for the crime of arrogance. He didn’t bother to go over the old ground that he’d been singled out as a scapegoat, and that it wasn’t fair.

He never offered excuses. What had happened had happened. Even if other people wouldn’t, he had to leave it in the past and own his present. He would find a way to get the car. He couldn’t waste time and energy being angry that it wasn’t a walk in the spring rain.

When he went back into the squad, Kray’s phone was still off the hook, and playing “Isn’t She Lovely.”

Captain Fuentes came out of his office and crooked a finger. “Kev? Can I see you in here?”

Parker followed him and closed the door behind him. “I didn’t do it. It’s not mine. And I swear she was nineteen.”

Fuentes, who was a good guy and had an easy sense of humor, didn’t laugh. He had soulful black eyes that seemed to carry the sorrows of the world when he was serious like this.

“You look like you’re about to tell me I have six weeks to live,” Parker said.

“I got a call a little while ago. RHD is taking your homicide.”

Parker shook his head. The rage seemed to start boiling in his feet and pushed its way upward. This was worse than being told he had six weeks to live. In six weeks’ time he at least had the chance to try to save himself. He was losing his case, today, now, not six weeks from today. The first case he’d had in years that smelled big. The kind of case a detective made his chops on—or rode back out of purgatory.

“No,” he said. “Not Lowell.”

“There’s nothing I can do, Kev.”

“Did they give any explanation?” In his mind’s eye he could picture the scene Diane had described to him over the phone. Bradley Kyle and his partner, Moose Roddick, and Tony Giradello with their heads together.

“Captain Florek told me they thought it might tie into something they already have.”

I just overheard your name in a conversation. . . .

“That’s all he said,” Fuentes told him. “You know as well as I do, they don’t need a reason. He could have said, ‘Because the sky is blue,’ and what could I do about it? I’m sorry, Kev.”

No, not now, Parker thought. Not when it was all right there just beneath the surface. All he needed was to dig just a little harder, just a little longer.

“You can pretend we haven’t had this conversation yet,” he said.

“Kev—”

“I’m not here. You haven’t seen me. I’m not on the radio. My cell phone isn’t working.”

“Kev, you’re not going to close the case in the next three hours, are you?”

Parker said nothing.

“They want everything you’ve got,” Fuentes said. “Pull it together and take it over to Parker Center.”

“No.”

“Kev—”

“I won’t do it. I won’t go over there. If Bradley Kyle wants this case, the little prick can come here and get it. I’m not going over there like some, some—”

Parker put a hand over his mouth and stopped himself before his control slipped any further. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He looked at Fuentes, willing him to say what he wanted to hear. Fuentes just looked at him with something much too close to pity in his eyes.

“You haven’t seen me,” Parker said quietly. “We haven’t spoken.”

“I can’t put them off for long.”

“I know.” Parker nodded. “Whatever you can do. I appreciate it, Captain.”

“Get out of here,” Fuentes said, sitting down behind his desk. He settled a pair of reading glasses on the high bridge of his nose, and reached for some paperwork. “I haven’t seen you. We haven’t spoken.”

Parker stepped out of Fuentes’ office, closing the door behind him. Ruiz was watching him like a hawk. Good instincts, when she wanted to get out of her own way and use them, Parker thought.

She had Eta Fitzgerald’s murder. Fitzgerald’s murder was tied to Lowell’s murder. He would stay in that way. Bradley Kyle wasn’t going to be rid of him so easily.

Ruiz got out of her chair and came to him. “You’ve got your court order,” she said quietly. “What’s going on?”

“Robbery-Homicide is taking Lowell.”

“Why?”

“Because they can.”

Parker felt like he had bees in his head. He needed a strategy, had to move fast, had to make a break happen. He only had a few hours to live, in relation to this case.

“What are you going to do?” Ruiz asked.

Before Parker could formulate an answer, Obidia Jones let out a little yelp of excitement.

“That’s him! That’s your perpetuator, right there!” he said, poking a long, gnarled finger at a photograph in the book before him.

Parker and Ruiz both went to him, Ruiz pinching her nose closed with thumb and forefinger.

“Who’ve you got there, Mr. Jones?” Parker asked.

The old man slid his finger down from the face in the photograph, revealing exactly what Jones had told them: a head like a cinder block; small, mean eyes; five o’clock shadow. Eddie Boyd Davis.

“Only he had a piece of tape across his nose,” Jones said. “Like someone maybe busted it for him.”

“Mr. Jones, you are a fine citizen,” Parker said. “I think Ms. Ruiz should kiss you full on the mouth.”

Jones looked both scandalized and hopeful.

“But that would be against regulations,” Ruiz said.

Parker looked again at the face of the man who had murdered Eta Fitzgerald in cold blood. He tapped his finger under the name, and spoke to Ruiz in a low voice.

“Dig up everything you can find on this mutt. I want to know if he has any connection to Lenny Lowell. And if Bradley Kyle comes in here, you don’t know anything, and you haven’t seen me.”

“Wishful thinking,” she muttered.

Parker’s mind was already engaged elsewhere. “You’re a doll,” he said, patting her cheek.

He went through a couple of desk drawers, took out a file, pulled some papers from a wire tray on top of his desk. He grabbed the binder that was the murder book on the Lowell case, containing reports and official notes, sketches of the scene, Polaroids—everything to do with the homicide except for his personal notes. He put it all in a plastic mail carton he kept under his desk for just this purpose, then went around to Ruiz’s desk to use her phone.

“You’re not going to have seen me walk out of here with that container,” he told Ruiz as he dialed Hollywood Division. “Right?”

“Right,” she said, but there was a hesitation first.

“It’s your case too,” Parker said. “Lowell and Fitzgerald: If they take one, they take the other. Is that what you want?”

“It’s Robbery-Homicide. They’ll do whatever they want to do. We can’t stop them.”

Parker gave her the hard stare. “You sell me out to Bradley Kyle and you’ll make an enemy you’ll wish you didn’t have.”

“Jesus, I said all right,” she said grudgingly. “Don’t threaten me.”

“What are you going to do?” he sneered. “Call Internal Affairs?”

“Fuck you, Parker. Just leave me out of it.”

She would sell him out in a heartbeat, Parker thought, remembering what Diane had predicted. She would sell him out to Kyle because Kyle could get her noticed by the right people in RHD.

“LAPD, Hollywood Division. How may I direct your call?”

Parker said nothing and hung up the phone. He reached across the desktop, grabbed his dictionary, and dropped it on Ruiz’s blotter.

“Your lesson for today,” he said. “Look up the word partner. I’ll call you later.”

He grabbed the plastic box and left the room, then the building. He had only a few hours to live. He couldn’t waste a minute.