The Devil's Elixir

29

It was under another impeccable blue sky that I drove to La Mesa to interview Karen Walker.

We arranged to see her there, at the local police department’s brand-new digs on University Avenue, since it was closer to the Eagles’ clubhouse and to where she lived. My thinking was that given what she’d just been through, it would be more courteous than to have her drive all the way out to Villaverde’s federal offices out by Montgomery Field. To her credit, she arrived on time, and although she looked shaken up and on edge, she seemed to be holding up reasonably well. She didn’t bring a lawyer with her either.

I greeted her along with Villaverde and Jesse Munro, who’d driven down from LA that morning. After I’d left him, Villaverde had called Corliss to fill him in on yesterday’s developments, and Corliss had offered to send Munro so we’d have direct access to DEA resources now that the investigation was ramping up. The four of us were in a conference room on the second floor, which I figured would be more conducive than one of the smaller, and windowless, interview rooms downstairs, where the club’s prospects were to be questioned.

ATF records showed that she and Walker got married in 2003, shortly before Walker had been shipped out to Iraq. They had two kids, an eight-year-old boy and a girl of three. Karen ran a nail bar in La Mesa. She also had a prison record, a brief stint for aggravated assault, which didn’t really mesh with the more composed woman before me, but then again, maybe there was something to be said for prisoner rehabilitation.

We’d barely sat down when she asked about Scrape and whether or not we’d found him. The deputy’s murder had been on the news, but we hadn’t released details of why he was there to the press. Karen had put two and two together given the location of the shooting, and I decided telling her something the press hadn’t been privy to would help establish some kind of rapport between us.

“They have him,” I told her. “They shot the deputy and took him with them. We don’t know where they are and we don’t have any leads on that either.”

Her eyes darted around each of us. They were brimming with confusion and unease. I could see fear there, too.

“You don’t have anything?”

“That’s why you’re here, Mrs. Walker—”

“Karen,” she interrupted brusquely, without a smile.

I took a breath and nodded. “Okay, Karen. Here’s the situation. Your husband and his buddies were doing some work for someone. I’m not talking about building custom rides here. I’m talking about armed kidnappings that go back several months. I’m talking about shoot-outs that have left several people dead. But that’s not why we’re here right now. We’re not here to try to tie you to any of those events. We’re here because of what happened at the clubhouse. We’re here because we need to find the guys responsible and take them off the streets. Okay?”

I waited for her to give me a little nod, then pressed on.

“Now, you saw what these people are capable of. We don’t know who they are or what they’re after, but it looks like whatever it is, it’s still in play. Which means that as long as they’re out there, anyone who was close to the club is potentially at risk. And that means you, Karen. More than anyone.”

I paused, letting my warning sink in. For the record, I wasn’t pulling her chain. I genuinely did feel that she was at risk. But whether I really cared or not right now, given what her husband’s gang had done to Michelle and all the others—that was open to debate. Maybe deep down, I wasn’t as ambivalent about her as I thought. She didn’t inspire a gut dislike inside me, and yet, although I didn’t know how much she knew about her husband’s activities, I assumed she knew enough. But I also knew from experience that partners of violent criminals are often also victims in their own way.

“We need to know who the Eagles were working for and what they were doing,” I added.

Her gaze bounced around us again, like she was being pulled in opposite directions. I knew she was uncomfortable just being inside this building. I’d seen her sheet, and she’d spent some time behind bars. She was no fan of law enforcement. She pulled out a pack of Winstons from her handbag, fished out a cigarette, and held it tightly between her fingers, then started tapping it against the table. She wore big silver rings on strong, well-manicured fingers. I also noticed she had tattoos on her wrists, though I couldn’t see how far up they went.

“You do want us to nail whoever did this to your husband, don’t you, Karen?” I pressed.

“Of course I do,” she shot back.

“Then help us.”

The tapping intensified, then she blew out a long, frustrated breath and looked away before letting her gaze settle back on me.

“I want immunity.”

“Immunity? From what?” I asked.

“From prosecution. Look, I’m not new at this, okay? Assuming I did know something and I tell you about it, I’m an accessory. At best. And while I really want you to get the sick fucks that did that to Wook, doing time isn’t high on my bucket list.”

She stopped there and just stared at me, then at the others, then back at me. She was trying to project indifference and defiance, but I had been around enough people in her situation to know that behind the tough biker-chick façade, she was shaking. Still, what she was asking for made sense, from her point of view. And as pissed off as I was about what her husband and his gang had done, I couldn’t be sure she knew every detail about what they were up to, nor that we’d ever be able to successfully prosecute her even if she did. More to the point, there was a strong chance she could help us figure out who was behind it all, and right now, ending this black run and getting my hands on whoever had sent the bikers after Michelle was worth making a deal that kept Karen Walker’s tattooed wrists out of prison.

I slid a glance at Villaverde. Given her record, we’d anticipated her demand. We’d also agreed that we couldn’t afford to refuse it.

“Okay,” I told her.

Her face flooded with surprise, like she was not sure how to take that. “What, just like that? You don’t have that authority. Don’t you need to get it approved by the DA or something?”

“It’s already done. We’ve already discussed it with the San Diego County DA’s Office. They’re on board. LA County won’t be a problem either.” I indicated Munro with a nod, and he gave her a small confirmation nod back. “The paperwork’s being done as we speak.” I leaned in. “This isn’t about you, Karen. You have my word as a federal agent that nothing you say in here will be used against you in any way. But if we’re going to get these guys, we need to act fast. They could be making a run for it. So if you know anything, now’s the time to speak up.”

I saw her jaw muscles clench, and she resumed the tapping while debating what to do.

“How long for that piece of paper to get here?” she asked.

“Not long, but it might be more time than we have.”

She exhaled again, her eyes narrowing. Then she sat back, threw a glance out the window for a long second, and turned to face us again. She nodded to herself, short quick nods, like she was convincing herself that she was making the right move.

“They were working for some Mexican scumbag,” she told us. “I don’t know his name. Wook just called him ‘the wetback.’ ”

I felt my synapses perk up. We were rolling.

“What were they doing for him?”

“It started about six, seven months ago or so. He hired them to grab a couple of guys.”

“The scientists up by Santa Barbara?” Munro asked.

She nodded. “I didn’t hear anything else about that for a while. Which was good, given how badly it had turned out. Then a few weeks ago, he came back with some other jobs. More grabs.”

“Who was it this time?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. The first one wasn’t a local job either.”

“Where was it?”

“Up the coast. Somewhere around San Francisco, I think. Look, Wook didn’t tell me everything. Sometimes he didn’t tell me anything at all, not up front anyway. I’d hear about them because things got ugly and he’d get all worked up about that.”

I wondered what Wook did when he got all worked up about something.

“You don’t know anything else about who they went after?” I pressed.

“No,” she insisted. “Only that it was another brainbox. Then a few days ago, they went after someone else and it all went bad again.”

I felt my face flare up and my muscles stiffen. She was talking about Michelle. “Who did they go after?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But from what I heard, I think it was a woman.”

I was studying every pore in her face looking for a tell about how much of this was true, but I couldn’t say for sure, either way. More importantly, I didn’t need to hear the rest of that story, not right now anyway, so I asked her the more pertinent question.

“This Mexican. What else do you know about him?”

She opened out her palms, and her voice ebbed. “Nothing. Wook didn’t tell me anything else, I swear.”

Something still didn’t compute. “So your husband and his boys, they just met him six, seven months ago? And just like that, they agree to do some pretty high-risk stuff for him? Doesn’t seem like the wise course of action, does it?”

“Wook said they’d worked together before. Years ago.”

“Where?”

She sighed, like she was annoyed at herself at having to give it all up. “A few years ago, Wook and the boys used to run shipment security on this side of the border for a Mexican drug baron. This new guy was one of the head honcho’s lieutenants. Wook didn’t remember him, but he said the guy knew stuff, stuff that only someone who was there would have remembered.”

“Like what?”

She stared at me for a moment, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “The Mexican suspected one of his crew was working for a rival cartel. Plotting to take over their turf. Wook was there that day. So was Guru.”

“ Guru?”

“Gary. Gary Pennebaker. He and Wook founded the Eagles when they got back from Iraq.”

I thought back to the two faces on the clubhouse wall that weren’t among the dead.

“Anyway, they’re there and the Mexican starts cutting the guy up to get him to talk. I don’t know the details, but it was bad. Hannibal Lecter bad. Wook said the guy was a real sicko. And Guru and Wook are watching this, and Guru pukes his guts out in front of everybody. Wook couldn’t stop laughing.” Her expression darkened with what I read as embarrassment, that this upstanding citizen was her man. “Anyway, this new guy, he was there that day. He was one of the head honcho’s enforcers. Wook said the way he described it to him, he had to be there. Which was enough to get them started.”

She’d already told us she didn’t know the new Mexican’s name. “Did Wook mention the honcho’s name to you?”

She shook her head ruefully. “No.”

“What about Pennebaker? Where is he? How come he wasn’t at the clubhouse?”

Villaverde was already deep into the ATF file on the Eagles. “It says here he left the club after a stint in prison?”

He looked up at Karen for confirmation.

“That’s right.”

I was buzzed. This Guru could be the key to ID’ing our bad guy. If he was still alive.

“Where can we find him?”

She just shrugged and said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”