Nine

41

LASD Homicide Bureau

Commerce, California

Thursday, May 22, 9:00 A.M.

“Alex!” Hogan called to him as soon as he came through the front door. “Just getting ready to page you. Captain wants to meet with us-now.”

Alex had just spent more than a hundred dollars on Chase’s free dog and dropped off a dog bed, leash, collar, food, dishes, brush, biscuits, and more at home before heading out for work. He had taken his climbing equipment and put it in the trunk of the car-out of canine reach. Although no one would have expected him in too early after his long night, he still hoped Hogan didn’t want to know what he had been doing this morning. “What’s up?” he asked.

“All kinds of craziness. You know where Ciara is?”

“Home, I assume. Or on her way in. You call her?”

“I called her home, her cell, and her pager-didn’t get an answer.”

“I’ll try her pager again,” he said, and used his cell phone to dial it as he walked with Hogan toward Nelson’s office.

“By the way,” Hogan said, “we located the Whitfields. They’re in Italy now, as it turns out. They didn’t seem too broken up. Asked us to have their son’s lawyer call them about his estate. Can you believe it?”

Just as they reached Captain Nelson’s door, Alex’s phone rang and he saw Ciara’s name on the caller ID display. “Meet you inside,” he said to Hogan, who didn’t seem pleased but moved on.

“Alex? God…a morning…having.” There was a static hum between words. He could hear traffic in the background.

“We’ve got a bad connection, Ciara.”

“Sorry…know…Hogan wants?”

“A meeting with Nelson.”

“Shit.”

“Well, that came through nice and clear. Must have reached a new cell. What’s going on?”

There was a long silence, and for a moment, he thought he might have lost the connection. But then, in a strained voice, she said, “Laney had some kind of seizure last night.”

He thought she might be crying. Fearing the answer, he asked, “Is she okay?”

She seemed to regain her composure. “I think so, but I want to be sure. She hasn’t had one in over two years, so I’m worried. I’m taking her to the doctor now-he promised to see her right away. Can you cover for me there?”

“I’ll do what I can. Mind if I tell them you’ve had a family emergency?”

She hesitated, then said, “No, I guess not. I probably should have told them about my situation a long time ago, but…” Again, she seemed to struggle for control. After a moment, she said, “I just didn’t want to seem like a whiner, you know what I mean?”

“They aren’t as heartless a bunch of SOBs as they pretend to be around here, Ciara. Call me and let me know how she’s doing, okay?”

“Thanks, Alex.”

When he walked into Nelson’s office, though, there was a pale, thin stranger seated in the chair next to Lieutenant Hogan. He was a man of medium height with sandy hair and a long head that made his face a nearly perfect oval. Within that oval his features were plain, with the exception of a pair of eyebrows that sat bristling and white above blue eyes. He was dressed in a cheap suit that didn’t hang well on his bony shoulders. He was sitting with his arms folded over his chest, and his untamed brows were drawn together as he studied Alex with apparent disfavor.

“Alex,” Captain Nelson said, “this is Agent Hayden Moore of the FBI. He’s replacing David Hamilton on the task force.” Listening to Nelson’s tone, watching his expression, Alex heard the unspoken message: Don’t ask.

Alex noticed that Moore kept his arms folded, so he didn’t extend his own hand.

“I understand the suspects have taken themselves out of commission,” Moore said. “And that this is all basically wrapped up. Until we were brought in and could provide you with that New Mexico connection, you seem to have always been more than a few steps behind them-so they’ve probably saved us all an inordinate amount of trouble and expense.”

Alex said, “We’re still not sure-”

“Good point, Alex,” Nelson interrupted. “We’re still not sure how much of your fugitives list is dead, but if they’ve left them in our jurisdiction, I guess that will be our work, not yours.”

Moore’s face settled back into a frown.

“So,” Nelson said, standing and extending his hand in a clear signal that the meeting was over, “we want to thank the FBI for their cooperation and help, and we’ll make sure any reports are sent to your attention. Please give our best regards to Agent Hamilton. We enjoyed working with him.”

Moore turned a pink color. Whether it was due to the fact that he was getting the bum’s rush or the captain’s slight emphasis on the word him, Alex didn’t know.

“Hold on!” he said. “If anyone else on that fugitives list shows up murdered-”

“Detective Brandon will notify you immediately. Stay a moment, please, Alex. Dan, on the way out, will you please make sure Agent Moore is given copies of the lab’s reports from Catalina and Lakewood? I don’t think we had enough time to get those to Agent Hamilton.”

Moore gave in at that point and left with the lieutenant.

Nelson invited Alex to take a seat, then said, “We were informed this morning that Agent Hamilton has taken a leave of absence-for reasons unspecified. Back to our usual cordial relations with the FBI-they aren’t telling us anything. But judging from the amount of bluster I got off of Moore this morning, something about Hamilton’s leave obviously makes them extremely uncomfortable. How well did you get to know him?”

“Not all that well. He’s from here originally, went to USC, and probably has money that isn’t coming from his FBI paycheck.”

“On the take?”

“I doubt it. He was too open about it-wore expensive clothing, drove a Jag.” He paused, then added, “He spent more time with Ciara. They got along well. If he confided anything to anyone in the department, it was to her.”

“Where is Ciara this morning?”

Alex hesitated. Even though Ciara had agreed that the captain should be told about Laney, he felt that it was her place, not his, to do so. Thinking of her fear of being pitied, though, he decided that perhaps it would be easier on both Ciara and the captain if he did the telling. And much better to face the awkwardness of talking about Ciara’s difficulties, than to have Nelson think she was shirking her duties or having problems with Alex. So he told the captain about Ciara’s sister and Ciara’s dedication to her.

Nelson considered this in silence for a time, then said, “I wish I had known this a year or two ago. I should have suspected there was some stress on her from outside the job. But other than the problems she had in getting along with her partners, she’s been one of the best we’ve had. Her clearance rate is above average. I had no idea that she was also coping with these personal pressures all this time.”

“For the most part, I don’t think she sees it as pressure. I think it demands a lot of her energy, but I don’t think she sees her care of Laney as a burden. There are just going to be times, like this morning, when she might need the department to cut her a little slack. She was reluctant to have me mention it even then.”

“I’ll talk to her more about it when she comes in. Are you going to be able to handle winding this up if she ends up needing a few days off?”

“I’m not so sure it is winding up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not sure all the participants ended up dead on Mulholland Highway last night. I think we need to do a lot more work before we know with any certainty that those two were the only ones involved. And I hope the department will be careful not to book a band for the victory dance just yet.”

“Temper our remarks to the public, you mean?” Nelson said. “Sheriff Dwyer is anxious to issue a statement, you know.”

“What will it cost us to be cautious?”

“Public confidence.”

“Think we’ll recover that confidence if he announces this is all over and it’s not?”

“True…”

“Think of it this way. If any of the remaining fugitives are still alive, they must feel they are in danger, and may surrender, believing themselves safer with us than in the hands of the so-called Exterminators.”

“That reporter has a lot to answer for, doesn’t she?”

Alex shrugged. “If Ontora hadn’t made them out to be heroes, someone else would have.”

“Hmm. I suppose so. I’ll talk to the sheriff. What do you have in mind for the task force now?”

“We need to find out more about the two men in the Maserati-Whitfield and Addison. We need the lab to take a careful look at that suicide scene, because not everything adds up. I’m not ready to definitely say it was suicide. Even if it is what it appears to be, how are the two of them connected to each other? Where did they meet, how did they plan this? Can we link them to the crime scenes? Who paid to have that special cell built in Del Aire? What was Whitfield doing in New Mexico?”

“Okay-”

“That’s not all. We need to know what made Hamilton stop having fun after we found Frederick Whitfield IV’s wallet-”

“You’re right,” Nelson said. “He got kind of quiet after that, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Never showed up at the suicide scene, either. I want to figure out who our benefactor is, too. If we hadn’t received that wallet yesterday, in all likelihood, we wouldn’t have connected Whitfield with these cases. So who helped us out, and why?”

“All right,” Nelson said. “The full task force is still active, then-but keep me informed all along the way.” He paused, then said, “I have a friend at USC. Maybe I’ll give him a call, see if he can tell me anything about Hamilton.”

“Thanks. Anything would be helpful, but especially anything that connects him to Whitfield. I’ve wondered all along how they learned certain things about investigations-just in terms of not leaving evidence, for starters. But also how they narrowed down the locations of the fugitives. They could have done some of that narrowing by working with what Whitfield learned from the Crimesolvers show, but shows like that get hundreds of tips, so I can’t help thinking that someone with investigative experience looked at the possibilities and showed them which tips were most likely to pan out.”

Hogan returned then, looking more excited than Alex thought he would after spending time with Moore. “Frederick Whitfield IV’s attorney just called-a Mr. Blaine. Wanted to make sure the news reports were true, because Whitfield insisted on making out a new will yesterday.”

Nelson looked at Alex. “A twenty-five-year-old thinking he might die? Sounds like he was planning to end his own life after all, Alex.”

“Or knew that someone else might end it. Maybe he had a near-miss with one of the fugitives. Maybe he thought we might catch him. We’ve had information leaks on these cases-to the Times and others. If he learned that we were looking for someone using Eric Grady’s ID, maybe he was worried that his days were numbered.” He turned to Hogan. “Did this lawyer give you any other details?”

“Yes,” Hogan said. “Whitfield was filthy rich-inherited a bundle from his grandmother. Remember the parents in Italy? Guess they are really steamed. The will leaves it all to a woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico.” He looked at his notes. “Vanessa…P-r-z-b-y-s-l-a-w. No relation to Whitfield. He told the lawyer that she was his…I think the word the lawyer said was something like ‘boyakina.’ He said he didn’t know what it meant, but he thought it might be some new slang term for ‘girlfriend.’ He contacted her early this morning, and said she was pretty upset. You want her number?”

“Yes, thanks. I’ll try to get in touch with her,” Alex said. He wrote the number, frowning as Hogan read it off. It seemed familiar-then he remembered why. “I think this is the one that we found in his wallet.”

He was on his way back to his desk when a call came through saying that two bodies had been discovered in a warehouse in Palmdale-one of the victims appeared to be Farid Atvar, another name on the fugitives list. There were similarities to the scene in Del Aire.

“Check to see if the other victim matches a description for Julio Santos,” Alex said. “He was another of Bernardo Adrianos’s bodyguards-worked in a team with the man we found in Del Aire last night.”

Alex was talking to Hogan about whether or not he should drive out there himself or send another team when another call came in-two more semi-frozen bodies had been found-not far from Seminole Hot Springs.

“I thought it was weird before,” Enrique Marquez said. “This time, it’s downright freaky. One body belongs to Todd Vicker.”

“The arsonist. Killed seventy-three people when he set a nightclub on fire.”

“Yes, because his girlfriend was in there dancing with another man. Apparently our Exterminators didn’t think that was such a bad thing to do, because there’s hardly a scratch on him, if you look below his neck. The neck isn’t as pretty-he was garroted. The number two has been drawn on his chest-with a black felt-tip pen, from the looks of things. He’s really frozen stiff, as if he’s been in cold storage for a while.”

“And the other one?”

“Just fucking bizarre, Alex. Wait until you hear the difference. I’ll start with the easy part-not fully frozen. Mr. Defrost here is believed to be Jerry Knox, a.k.a. Gerald Majors and half a dozen other aliases.”

“Producer of snuff films with young boys,” Alex said.

“Yeah, well, first time I heard about this bastard I hoped his life was short, but it looks as if old Jerry here might have been wishing the same thing for himself at the end. He has a huge number five tattooed on his chest-tattooed, not just drawn on him. That had to take some time. They obviously tortured him-and it looks as if they took their time there, too.”

“Beyond what we’ve seen so far?”

“Oh yes. But let me finish, because there’s more. Or in his case, less. He’s missing his tackle. Totally cut off, and not with the body. So even if he comes back as a zombie, he won’t be raping any more little boys. And unless he was already dead when they shoved the critters up his nose and mouth, we may have L.A. County’s first death by grasshopper asphyxiation.”

“By what?”

“Grasshoppers. Little ones. I don’t want to guess how many. Got the forensic entomologist on his way. Should make a nice change for him from studying maggots, but better him than me.”

“Jesus. Make sure Shay Wilder sees the photos from this one,” Alex said. “Get a messenger to take them down to him today.”

“Wait-I’m not done. There’s something for you here.”

Alex felt the hair on his neck rise. “For me?”

“A videotape. Label on it says ‘Deliver Immediately to Detective Alex Brandon, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau.’”

Alex found himself unsettled by the news that the killers had singled him out as the one to receive the tape. He tried to force himself to consider everything he had learned this morning in a dispassionate, logical way, but his thoughts kept returning to Shay Wilder’s warnings that the killers had a personal score to settle with him. After almost twenty years in law enforcement, he knew he had made some formidable enemies. But who would choose to come after him in this particular way?

Before he could leave for Seminole Hot Springs, he got a call from the firearms evidence lab, telling him that they had a match-the gun found in Frederick Whitfield IV’s hand had fired the bullets that killed the two victims in Del Aire.

“You don’t sound as happy about it as I thought you would,” Alex said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is easy about these cases. The pathologist wants you to give her a call. I’ll let her explain it.”

He called the pathologist.

“Don’t think we’re looking at a suicide here,” she said, “unless dead men can take their gloves off.”

“What do you mean?”

“The victim had a pair of black leather gloves in his pocket. The lab found GSR-gunshot residue-on one of them, but we didn’t find a thing on the hands. Since you say the firearms guys found a match with your Del Aire scene, I’d say Whitfield was the shooter there, then someone else used that same weapon to shoot him up on Mulholland. Sorry if I’ve ruined your day.”

“No, I’ve had doubts about that scene, so you’ve just confirmed some suspicions. What about the other one-Morgan Addison?”

“Another problem with the suicide theory there,” she said, “but not one that’s impossible to explain away. He had minute traces of GSR on the surfaces of both hands. Looked to me as if he might have been wringing his hands after he fired a weapon. If he had been the only victim, you might have been able to say he shot someone, did the hand-wringing, and then shot himself. So, it’s not as clear-cut there-except Addison wasn’t the shooter in Del Aire, so we don’t know if he was out at a shooting range doing target practice or involved in a crime.”

“We’ve got two victims in Palmdale this morning,” Alex said. “I have a feeling that when you examine them, some of these questions will be resolved.”

“There’s a real boom in corpses in this county lately.”

“Wait until you hear about what’s on its way from Seminole Hot Springs.”

“I’ve heard. With any luck, they’ll give me the Palmdale cases and let someone else work with the grasshopper man.”

He set the phone at his desk to forward calls to his cell phone, then stopped by Nelson’s office to give him an update. When he had finished, Nelson said, “My friend at USC tells me Hamilton grew up in Malibu. You did, too, right?”

“For the most part.”

“Did you know his family?”

“No, I can’t say that I remember anyone by that name, but he’s younger than I am, so we wouldn’t have been in school at the same time.”

Nelson looked at his notes. “He went to Sedgewick.”