Bennett 06 - Gone (15 page)

“The troops can wait for now, General Bennett,” Parker said. “How about pretending to be a cop again for a couple more days? Last time I checked, you were pretty good at it.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” I said, finally putting the phone back down on the shelf. “When can you get here?”

“I already am,” Parker said from the open doorway of the bathroom behind me.

I spun around, blushing, as I gripped my towel, but she was already turned, laughing as she hurried away.

“Not funny, Parker!” I yelled. “No girls allowed in the boys’ room!”

A FEW HOURS LATER
, after I was allowed to put on some pants and we’d grabbed some breakfast, we were on Interstate 10, speeding west toward LA.

It was a long, strange sort of trip from the air base to the city. First, we went through the edge of the Mojave Desert, then up and down through the San Gabriel Mountains. I didn’t spot one yellow cab or dirty-water-dog/tube-steak cart on any of the blocks. Actually, there weren’t even any blocks.

As we neared the LA city limits, Parker pointed out the spot in El Monte where the two LA County detectives had been gunned down with automatic fire.

I couldn’t believe it. There was a Burger King on the corner, beside a furniture store, and a car dealership across the street. It looked like your typical suburban strip. It definitely didn’t look like a war zone.

As we drove closer to downtown LA, I sat looking out at the blue sky and palm trees, the San Gabriel mountain range now in the hazy distance off to my right. I had actually been to LA once, the summer before college. After watching a bunch of Stanley Kubrick films, me and a buddy of mine had gotten it into our heads that we would come out here, find work, and become either screenwriters or directors.

What happened instead was that we got depressingly drunk for three days in a row in a crummy, run-down motel near Hollywood Boulevard, found no work, and eventually had to have our parents wire us money for a ticket home. Aren’t eighteen-year-olds brilliant?

Watching the glittering downtown LA skyline come into view in the forward distance, I just hoped my second visit to La-La Land would prove more successful.

The task force HQ was set up at the LAPD’s Olympic Station, a new glass, metal, and brick building located on South Vermont Avenue, in the Wilshire neighborhood business district. The multi-agency squad had originally been housed at the LAPD’s Hollywood Station, but the paparazzi and media, who had camped out after the deaths of the rap mogul King Killa Leonard and pop singer Alexa Gia, had been such a nuisance, they had decided to move.

Upstairs, in a conference room, Parker introduced me to FBI agents Bob Milton and Joe Rothkopf. The veteran agents couldn’t have been more welcoming or accommodating in setting us up. They’d already dragged in some desks from somewhere and placed them in the corner, with a couple of computer monitors.

Agent Rothkopf was placing a file about the Mob-boss killing in Malibu on my desk when a group of burly LAPD detectives swaggered in.
Coming in from a late lunch
, I thought, checking my watch. A semiliquid one from the looks on their red faces.

Parker had already given me the rundown on the task force. There was a large federal presence. DEA, ICE, and even the ATF, but senior detectives from LAPD’s Major Crimes and Robbery-Homicide divisions were running the show. And didn’t let anyone forget it, apparently.

The tallest of the detectives eyed me coldly, then suddenly smiled as he broke off from his buddies and walked over.

“Here we go,” Agent Rothkopf said to me, under his breath. “Hope you’re wearing a cup.”

“I’m Terry. Terry Bassman,” the large thirty-something detective said, shaking my hand too hard. “You’re Bennett, right? Your federal friends here were telling me all about you. They said they were bringing in some more help, and what do you know? Here you are. The guy who lost Perrine in the flesh.”

The cop grinned back like a fool at his giggling buddies as I broke his grip. He was six foot four, about two-fifty, broad shouldered, in good shape. He popped a piece of gum into his mouth, the expression on his lean face that of a man who didn’t take too much shit from anyone. Which was pretty convenient, since he was so big that he probably rarely had to.

But what the hell? I decided to give him some shit anyway.

“It’s true, Terry,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the crowded room to hear. “I lost Perrine. But you know what? I figure it’s better to have caught him and lost him than to never have caught him at all. You know, like you crackerjack LAPD guys so far.”

That stopped the giggling pretty quick. In fact, it got so quiet, you could have heard a firing pin drop. I glanced at Rothkopf, who was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from cracking up.

I stared back at Bassman innocently. I don’t like to bang heads, but, like any cop worth his salt, I can when I have to. With the best of them, actually.

Bassman stared levelly at me, his square jaw working as he chewed his gum. Then he clapped a hand painfully on my shoulder as he smiled again.

“Well, if you need anything, Mr. Bennett—directions to Disneyland, star maps, anything at all—remember, the LAPD is here to protect and serve,” he said.

AFTER THAT ROUSING ENCOUNTER
with the welcome wagon, I pored over the case files on all the murders.

The most disturbing photos by far were of the crime scenes at the Licata home and at rap mogul Alan Leonard’s house. The pale and naked bled-out bodies were so chilling, like something out of a documentary about Nazi human experimentation. And we had no idea what had killed them. The FBI lab was still working on the toxicology of the lethal substance.

Parker stared at the horror-movie stills with me.

“I wonder if shock value is the point,” she said, letting out a frustrated breath.

“Probably,” I said. “Things have gotten so bizarre of late that Perrine has to get creative in order to grab people’s attention.”

“He certainly has mine,” Emily said. “I mean, this is simply incredible. I’ve read reports that indicate the cartels turned to all these horrors, like beheadings and body mutilations, after seeing them performed by Islamic terrorists on the Internet.”

“Bull,” I said, turning over a photograph. “Narco traffickers south of the border have always been famous for incredibly brutal killings. Where does the Colombian necktie come from? My pet theory is that this recent, really sick garbage has more than a little to do with Santa Muerte, the spooky quasi-religious death cult that many of the cartel soldiers adhere to.”

“So you’re saying it’s like a cycle,” she said. “The more the cartels rise in power, the more and more its members want to satisfy Santa Muerte’s thirst for blood?”

I nodded.

“That’s a little out there, Mike. Isn’t this about money and drug trafficking, not Perrine’s evil cult?”

“If it’s about just money and drug trafficking, what’s up with all the bodies, Parker?” I said. “Twenty-nine dumped in Nuevo Laredo. Forty-nine in Juarez. They’re hung from bridges. Bags of heads are found along highways. The victims aren’t even cartel members. They’re innocent migrant workers or people trying to cross the border into the US. To kill a mule for stealing a load is one thing, or to go after a witness. I’m telling you, this is new. Or, more accurately, old.”

“Old?” Emily asked.

“Have you ever heard of the Thuggee cult?”

Parker rolled her eyes. “Had a lot of reading time on our hands up there on the prairie, Detective?”

“A little, Parker. Anyway, in India there used to be this criminal cult called the Thuggees. They were a secretive organization of robber-murderers. They’d strangle their victims and then bleed them, offering their blood to Kali, the goddess of death. Some say Santa Muerte is a modern incarnation of Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death.”

“So what are you saying? It’s us versus the goddess of death?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“You’ve been watching too much History Channel,” she said.

“Have I?” I said. “These cartel people are engaging in the kind of unhinged, deranged behavior usually reserved for serial killers. Is it that crazy to believe that there’s some sort of ideology behind it? I think we have to at least consider it. We have to stop thinking that this is just about a bunch of greedy dope dealers.”

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER
, on our way to get a bite to eat, I knocked on the dash of Parker’s metallic-brown Crown Victoria as we pulled out of the Olympic Station lot.

“What’s up with this ride, Parker?” I complained. “As my preteen daughters would say, this car is ‘so not cool.’ You’d think, this being LA, that they’d assign you some kind of convertible, at least.”

Parker smirked at me from behind her Ray-Bans.

“Tell you what, Mike,” she said. “You bag Perrine, I’ll see to it you get first bid on his Bentley at the government auction.”

“Bentley, huh?” I said, scratching my chin. “How many passengers can a Bentley fit? I need seating for a dozen, two of them car seats.”

Parker laughed.

“Just a dozen? Aren’t you leaving someone out? What about Seamus?”

“We usually put him in the trunk, or on the roof with the cat.”

Parker shook her head, sighing.

My chop busting was, of course, just show. I actually loved the Crown Vic, the FBI radio crackling beneath its dash, even the bad gas-station coffee in the holder beside me. In fact, it felt fantastic to be back at work.

I was even more excited about our dinner plans. Parker had spoken to Agent Rothkopf, who, with the help of a cousin or something, got us reservations at some hip restaurant called Cut, in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It was a Wolfgang Puck steak house where Tom Cruise supposedly ate from time to time. I couldn’t wait.

It was our LAPD hosts who had been less than accommodating. As I’d watched them read reports and brood about them, it’d become painfully obvious to me that the cops in this clique of LAPD heavy hitters were doing their own thing, working their own leads, their own contacts, while completely leaving the feds in the dark.

Though I’d been pretty tribal myself about my home turf back in NYC, the fact that I was now among the feds being boxed out kind of pissed me off. I didn’t come in off the farm to be a benchwarmer.

Parker’s phone rang.

“One second,” she said. “I’m driving. Let me hand you to Detective Bennett.”

“Who is it?” I asked, holding her BlackBerry against my thigh.

“Bassman.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, lifting the phone. “Bennett here. What’s up, Detective?”

“Hey, where’d you guys go?” Bassman asked. “I’ve been looking all around for you.”

Yeah, right
, I thought. We’d been sitting there for hours, twiddling our thumbs. My guess was that he’d somehow heard about our reservation and had finally come up with a way to ruin it. A goose chase, no doubt. The cartels were blowing people away, and the only thing Bassman was interested in was more chop busting. This guy was the full package, a complete ass.

“I don’t know how they do things in New York, Bennett, but this task force is a team. Anyway, I have a lead for you and Parker. A guy arrested for DUI involving a fatality swears he saw Perrine this morning. How about you guys run down to the hospital and talk to him.”

“Hospital?”

“Yeah, he’s in the psycho wing at the Metro State Hospital in Norwalk. Apparently, this guy is on speed or ecstasy or something.”

I knew it. The task force was getting thousands of useless calls a day about Perrine’s locale, and here Bassman was sending us to talk to some guy who was drugged out of his mind.
Sure, he saw Perrine. Riding a giant green velvet bumblebee over a rainbow, no doubt.

Whatever
, I thought. Tom Cruise would have to eat his Kobe fillet without us. We had to start somewhere.

“No problem. Hit me with the address.”

Bassman harrumphed. He seemed upset that I wasn’t complaining. As if I’d actually give him the satisfaction of squirming.

“Here you go, Bennett. Ready? I’ll make sure and go real slow so you can type it clearly into the GPS.”

THE METROPOLITAN STATE HOSPITAL
in Norwalk was due southeast from our location, a full forty-minute ride down Interstate 5.

As we rolled along haltingly on the traffic-filled six-lane superhighway, it wasn’t really the traffic but the immense sprawl of the city that made me stare in astonishment. Back east, as an NYPD cop, I only had to worry about five measly, cramped boroughs. Here in LA, they had to cover five
counties.

The state mental hospital was housed on a large, leafy, wooded piece of land that might have resembled a college campus if college campuses had ten-foot chain-link, barbed-wire-topped fences running their perimeter.

“Didn’t they film
The Silence of the Lambs
here?” I asked as we pulled into the driveway. “Or
Terminator Two
? No, wait. It was
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
”

“I’d advise you at this point in to keep a lid on it, Bennett, or they might not let you back out when we’re done,” my trusty partner said.

After calling ahead, we badged our way through the gate and met California Highway Patrol Sergeant Joe Rodbourne in the front vestibule of the new administration building. The burly, bald sergeant got right to it. He slipped on a pair of granny reading glasses as he freed his notepad from the bulging breast pocket of his khaki uniform shirt.

“OK, here’s what we got. At four twenty-five or there-abouts this afternoon, a BMW tried to make an illegal U-turn at a highway patrol turnaround on the Seven Ten near the Santa Ana Freeway in East LA. As the car made the turn, a southbound Peterbilt hauling a trailer ran right over the top of the Beemer, killing the female passenger instantly. Witnesses say the truck and the tanker rode the median for a quarter mile, throwing sparks, but luckily came back down without going over and killing God knows how many other people driving home from work in the middle of rush hour.”