Kill the Messenger

55

I think the unemployment office is in a different building,” Andi Kelly said, as Parker walked toward her through the waiting mob outside the Criminal Courts Building, where Rob Cole and his dream team would be emerging shortly to tell the world he was a free man.

Parker had taken off his tie and opened the collar of his shirt. His suit was rumpled from sitting in a Parker Center conference room for two hours. “Suspended,” he said. “Thirty days without pay.”

“Never mind that you cleared about three cases for them in one fell swoop.”

“I didn’t ask pretty please if I could.”

Actually, the words that had been tossed around the conference room by the chief of detectives, the head of Robbery-Homicide, and Bradley Kyle (who had a raccoon’s mask of bruising from Parker breaking his nose at the Olvera Street Plaza), among others, had been words like insubordinate, dangerous, rogue.

Parker had brought up the subject of Robbery-Homicide’s shadowy involvement in the Lowell homicide investigation, and had been brushed off. He had pointed out that a lot of people could have been killed at Pershing Square. No one wanted to hear it. He mentioned that Kyle had shot a woman in the back. Internal Affairs would investigate the shooting. Kyle would be on desk duty pending the outcome and would likely be suspended afterward.

At least Parker had the satisfaction of knowing Bradley Kyle would not be advancing his career. He would probably be sent down from Robbery-Homicide, or fired if the brass could get around the union. And then the lawsuits would come rolling in from Abby Lowell, from any civilian standing in Pershing Square when the shooting had started.

When Parker’s sentence had been pronounced, the chief of detectives had asked him if he had anything he wanted to say. Parker stood up and asked Bradley Kyle directly, why, if Giradello had been given a reason to suspect Eddie Davis for the Crowne homicide, had he not had them pull Davis in for questioning before he killed someone else.

They had all looked at one another like they were trying to pass a hot potato with telekinesis.

They hadn’t taken the threat of Eddie Davis seriously enough on the weight of an anonymous tip. And certainly, Tony Giradello wouldn’t have wanted it to get out that another suspect was being questioned practically on the eve of his making his opening statement to the jury, telling them Rob Cole was, without a doubt, a brutal murderer.

So Kyle and Roddick had dragged their feet, and a lot of people had paid a terrible price for it.

“I quit,” he told Andi. “I took off my service weapon, took out my ID, left it all on the table, and walked.”

Kelly was wide-eyed. “Whoa. Intense.”

“Yeah.”

“But you worked so hard to make it back, Kev. And after they get done being pissed off, they’re going to see—”

“I don’t need them to see anything, Andi,” he said, shaking his head. “They don’t matter. I thought I had to prove something, and I did, to myself. There’s nothing left for me to prove. I can move on with my life.”

“Wow,” she said. “That’s one of the most mentally healthy things I’ve ever heard anyone say.”

The commotion began at the courthouse doors and rolled through the crowd on a wave. The doors swung open and Good Man Wrongly Accused emerged with his entourage. Parker wanted to slap the smirk off his face.

Rob Cole was as deserving of punishment as any felon in the system, but the press, who had vilified him from his arrest to this day, would now hail him as some kind of accidental hero. Cole was no more a hero than any idiot who fell down a well and had to be rescued by a huge team of county workers, at taxpayers’ expense. In both cases, the fool would be the one to do all the morning news and late-night talk shows. He’d be a guest on Larry King, and be asked to judge the Miss America Pageant.

What a country.

The press conference was brief and nauseating. Parker stood behind Andi, in a prime spot just behind a knot of television news talent. Then Cole moved to one side of the podium to greet his adoring public and sign autographs.

Parker stood at the edge of the madness, watching women hurl themselves at Cole, screaming his name. It turned his stomach.

He glanced to his right. There was a tall, striking woman with short sandy hair standing just a few feet away, waiting her turn, but not screaming. Not screaming, not smiling, just staring at Rob Cole with pale gray eyes as cold as ice. A sense of unease scratched at the back of Parker’s neck.

To his left, Andi made a comment, and he had to lean over and have her repeat it.

In that split second, the woman with the gray eyes pulled a gun from her handbag, pointed it at Rob Cole’s chest, and started shooting.

The surprise on Cole’s face was the thing that would stick with Parker most. Robbie’s shining moment of victory, snatched away from him, just like that.

The scene was chaos. People screaming, people running. From the corner of his eye Parker could see a couple of sheriff’s deputies coming, weapons drawn. Everyone immediately surrounding the shooter had dropped to the ground.

The woman just stood there, gun in hand.

Parker launched himself at her a split second before one of the deputies discharged his weapon. He knocked her flat to the ground. The gun flew out of her hand. She was sobbing now, saying over and over, “Look what he did to me!”

A subsequent search of the home of Rob Cole and Tricia Crowne-Cole yielded a treasure trove of X-rated videotapes. Most of Cole with other women—Diane and the brunette among them—having sex with them, having dinner with them, telling each of them she was his soul mate, that no one had ever made him feel the way she made him feel. Making promises he never intended to keep to vulnerable, needy women.

And there were the tapes of Cole and Tricia, shot in their bedroom. Cole naked, Tricia looking grotesque in lingerie intended for a younger, trimmer woman. Tricia mocking the current other woman, begging him to love her, begging him to stay. The two of them laughing like a pair of jackals.

And a fresh scandal was born.

The press demanded to know why the tapes hadn’t turned up during the initial investigation of Tricia’s murder, but there had been no reason to look for them. Contrary to what television dramas teach the American public, search warrants are specific as to what is being looked for. In the investigation of Tricia Crowne-Cole’s death, there had been no reason to search for anything. They had the victim, the prime suspect in the house with the victim. Rob Cole had motive, means, and opportunity. And the murder weapon had been left on the remains of the victim’s face. What more could Robbery-Homicide have asked for?

Parker watched the news reports and thought maybe there was a God after all, though nothing could ever mend the damage that had been done, the lives that had been ruined. He hired Harlan Braun, attorney to the stars, to represent Diane. One of the other women who had been victimized was filing a class-action civil suit on behalf of all the victims, suing the estate of Tricia Crowne-Cole for suffering and extreme emotional distress.

She was doing all the talk shows too.

On Sundays, Parker would go visit Diane in jail.

Andi Kelly was writing a book.

The laws of nature dictate nothing go to waste when an animal is killed. Rob Cole was feeding the scavengers, all eager to pick their teeth with his bones.

In the end, there would be nothing left of Cole but his infamy. He deserved nothing better.