Demolition Angel (32 page)

“I’ve got a favor to ask, Sergeant. I have a photograph that I want you to show the old man who lives in Tennant’s duplex.”

“Is it the guy in the hat?”

“It could be. Here’s the thing, I don’t want anyone else to see the picture. I want this kept between me and you.”

Mueller hesitated.

“I’m not liking the way this sounds.”

“It’s about tracing Tennant’s RDX. I don’t want to tell you any more than that, and I am asking you not to ask.”

“All this makes me wonder who’s in your picture.”

“Look, Mueller, if this is too hard, I’ll drive up there and do it myself.”

“Now, hold on.”

“It’s someone who would be hurt badly by this if I’m wrong, and I might be wrong. I’m asking you for a favor here, goddamnit, so what’s it going to be?”

“This guy in your picture, he’s LAPD, isn’t he?”

Starkey couldn’t bring herself to speak.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll take care of it. You know what you’re doing down there, Starkey? You gonna be okay with this?”

“I’m okay.”

“All right. You fax up your picture. I’ll go wait by the machine. If you’re expecting to use this ID in court, I’m gonna have to make up a six-pack.”

The suspect picture was never shown to witnesses by itself; the courts ruled this to be leading. Detectives were required to show a spread of pictures, hoping that the witness would identify the right one.

“That’s fine. Now, one more thing. If we get a confirmation from your wit, I’m going to want to see Tennant about this. I’d like to do that tomorrow.”

Mueller cleared his throat, hesitating.

“Hell, Starkey, I guess you didn’t hear. Tennant’s dead. I called Atascadero today to set up a little interview about his shop, you know? The silly sonofabitch blew his damned arms off and bled to death.”

Starkey didn’t know what to say.

“He blew off his arms? His arms were separated?”

The energy it took to do that was tremendous.

“Yeah. Man I talked to over there said it was a real mess.”

“What did he use, Mueller? Christ, you can’t make anything like that out of cleaning products.”

“Sheriff’s EOD is running the analysis. Guess we’ll know in a day or two. Whatever the case, you can forget about getting anything from Tennant. He’s a memory.”

Starkey was slow to answer.

“I’ll fax that picture now. If it doesn’t come through clear, call back and I’ll try again.

She gave him her home phone.

“Owe you one, Sergeant. Thanks.”

“I’ll collect. You can bet your split-tail bottom on that.”

“Mueller, you’re the most charming man I know.”

“Kinda grows on you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Like anal warts.”

Starkey gave Mueller a minute, then put the photocopy of Leyton through her fax. She waited for his call, but after a few silent minutes had passed, she figured that the photo had gone through okay.

She didn’t know what else to do. She could take the photo
to Lester Ybarra, but if he told Marzik she would have to explain. She needed to put Leyton in Silver Lake at the time of the detonation, but that meant questioning more people who she couldn’t question. She knew that Leyton was at the scene when she arrived, but had he been there in the moment when someone had triggered the device?

Starkey’s eye kept going to the computer, waiting silently on her dining room table. She had not turned it on since she turned it off last night. Now it seemed to watch her.

I did not kill Charles Riggio
.

I know who did
.

Starkey lit a cigarette, then went into the kitchen and made herself another drink. Sobriety had lasted all of two days. She went back into the dining room, turned on the computer, and signed on to Claudius.

Mr. Red did not jump out at her. The chat room was empty. She sipped her drink, smoked, and read through the boards. There were new posts, but nothing beyond the mundane chitchat of defective personalities. She finished her second drink, then made another. She left the computer on with Claudius’s flaming head like a painting on her wall. She smoked a second cigarette. Starkey walked through her house, once stepping out the back door, twice stepping out the front. She thought about Pell, and she thought that she might one day like a persimmon tree. She didn’t know what persimmons were like, but that didn’t stop her from wanting the tree. Outside, the eastern sky purpled and time passed.

Starkey floated like that for almost two hours as the purple dimmed to black, and then she was rewarded.

WILL YOU ACCEPT A MESSAGE FROM MR. RED?

She opened the window.

She stared at the line, then typed her answer.

Red’s hesitation left her with a grim satisfaction.

She did. She drew deep on the cigarette, then typed her question.

Starkey laughed at the way he wrapped the conversation around to force her admission.

He hesitated again, and she felt a stab of hope that he might actually tell her.

She waited, but nothing came back. She thought he might be typing a long reply, but the minutes stretched until she finally realized that he wanted her to beg. His need to manipulate and control was textbook.

He paused again, and then his message appeared.

The statement struck her like a board. It came from nowhere, jolting her like a head-on collision.

He didn’t answer.

No answer.

Nothing.

No answers came back. The window hung there, unchanging. His statement that Pell was not who he seemed haunted her. Her first impulse was to phone Pell, but she felt caught between them like a ship between the ocean and a storm, Mr. Red on one side, Pell the other.

During the days when Starkey served on the Bomb Squad, the ATF had maintained a liaison agent with LAPD in an office housed with CCS. Three weeks after Starkey returned from Bomb School in Alabama, Sugar had introduced her to Regal Phillips, the ATF liaison agent. Phillips was an overweight man with a friendly smile, who had retired near the end of Starkey’s first year; they had worked together only occasionally during that year, but Sugar loved the older man, and Starkey sensed then that the feelings had run deep both ways. Phillips had visited Starkey twice during her time in the hospital, both visits ending with Phillips weeping after recounting stories about Sugar’s exploits on the squad.

That final visit had been the last time Starkey had seen Regal Phillips, almost three years ago. She hadn’t phoned him after the hospital because she couldn’t be with Regal without being with Sugar, and that hurt too much.

Now, after all this time, she felt embarrassed as she listened to his phone ring.

When Regal answered, she said, “Reege, it’s Carol Starkey.”

“Lord, girl, how are you? I had it in my head that you didn’t talk to black people anymore.”

He sounded like the same old Reege, the warm voice revealing only a hint of surprise.

“Pretty good. Working. I’m on with CCS now.”

“I heard that. I still got friends over there. I’m keeping tabs on you.”

He laughed softly when he said it, his voice so full of affection that she felt ashamed of herself.

“Reege, ah, listen, I’m really sorry I haven’t stayed in touch. It’s hard for me that way.”

“Don’t worry about it, Carol. Things changed for a lot of people that day in the trailer park.”

“You know about Charlie Riggio?”

“What I see on the news. You working on that?”

“That’s right. Reege, this is an awkward thing for me to ask.”

“Ask it.”

“I’m working with an ATF agent that I, ah, have my doubts about. I was wondering if you could look into him for me. You know what I mean?”

“No, Carol, I don’t think that I do.”

“I want to know who he is, Reege. I guess I’m asking you if I can trust him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack Pell.”

Phillips told her that it might take a day or two, but that he would call back soon. Starkey thanked him, then hung up and doused the lights. She did not sleep. She didn’t even get into bed. Starkey stayed on the couch in the dim light, waiting until morning, wondering how a man she now trusted so little could mean so much to her.

Earlier that day, when Pell left Barrigan’s, he squinted against the nuclear California sun. The light was so bright
that it felt like an ax blade wedged between his eyes. Even the sunglasses didn’t help.

Pell sat in his car, trying to figure out what to do. The look of hurt on her face had left him feeling like a dog. He knew that she was right: He was so obsessed by Mr. Red that he couldn’t see anything else, but he had the fragment with her name on it. He had wanted to reach across the table and tell her everything, tell her the truth. He had wanted to open himself, because he had also been closed, and thought that she might be the only one who could understand, but he couldn’t be sure. He had wanted to tell her of his growing feelings for her, but there was only Mr. Red. He no longer knew where Red ended and he began.

His head began to throb.

“Jesus. Not again.”

Soft gray shapes floated up from the dashboard, from the windows, from the hood of his car.

It was happening more frequently now. It would only get worse.

Starkey left her house well before dawn. She had had it with the emptiness of the quiet rooms, the conflicting thoughts about Pell and Dick Leyton and her shitty life. She told herself to get her head in the case, so she left the thoughts and emptiness, and made her way across town.

She needed to determine Dick Leyton’s whereabouts at the time of the blast and thought that Hooker might have noted Leyton’s TOA in the casebook. Starkey didn’t bother to shower. She changed clothes, lit a fresh cigarette, and drove.

Spring Street was a tomb. Hers was the only car on the parking level. Not even the Fugitive Section had shown for work.

Starkey said fuck it and brought her cigarette into the office. She could always blame the cleaning crew.

The casebook was on Marzik’s desk where she remembered it, but Hooker had made no note of Leyton’s arrival time, just that he was present. Starkey pulled the box of videotapes from under Hooker’s desk. She found the copy of the enhanced tape that Bennell had made for them, along with the news tape she remembered as having the widest angles, and brought them upstairs to the video room. She had watched those damned tapes so many times she knew them by heart, but she had always been looking for the man in the baseball cap; she had never looked at the cops.

The image quality of the enhanced tape was crappy on the VCR just as Bennell had warned, but she watched it anyway,
searching the perimeter of the cordon for Dick Leyton. She remembered that he was wearing a polo shirt, that he looked as if he’d just come from home.

She watched the tape, then watched it again, but it was always the same: Riggio approached the box, the explosion, then Buck ran forward to strip away his partner’s helmet. Starkey gave up trying to find Leyton in the moments prior to the explosion because the clips were too short and indistinct. She concentrated on that time after the blast figuring that if Leyton were at the scene, he would have run forward to see about his man. She keyed the tape to the explosion, and watched again.
Bang!
For almost twelve seconds of real time after the blast, Buck and Charlie were alone in the frame. Then the paramedics’ ambulance raced up beside them from the bottom of the picture. Two LAFD paramedics jumped out, taking Buck’s place. Four seconds later, a single uniformed officer ran forward from the left side of the frame, and two more uniformed officers entered from the right. The officer from the left appeared to be trying to get Buck to sit down or move away, but Buck shook him off. Three more officers entered the frame from the bottom, turning back almost at once to head off two men in street clothes. Other men in street clothes entered from the right. Now a second ambulance moved into the frame, followed by more people on foot. Two of the figures appeared to be wearing polo shirts, but she didn’t recognize them. Then the tape ended.

“Shit!”

Something about the tape bothered her, but she wasn’t sure what. She was seeing something, yet not seeing it. The answer was in the tape. Starkey cursed the news station for not running the camera longer, then went back to CCS.

Starkey decided to ask Buck. She left CCS before the other detectives arrived and made her way to Glendale. She didn’t know whether or not Buck had duty that day, so she stopped at a diner to wait until seven when the Bomb Squad receptionist,
Louise Mendoza, arrived. Mendoza, who would know the duty roster, usually arrived before the bomb techs.