Killer Swell (10 page)

“Let me see the key.”

An hour later, we were in my living room, both in dry clothes, and Carter was sitting on the couch.

I grabbed the key off the counter and tossed it to him.

He held it in his palm and flipped it over a couple of times. “You sure it doesn't belong to Emily's heart?”

“You sure you don't want me to kick you in the ear?”

He snorted. “She knows it was Kate's?”

“No. She knows Kate left it at her place before she went to the hotel.”

“Can I hang on to it? I know a guy who might be able to get you something on it.”

I looked at him. “You know an expert on keys?”

“Something like that.”

I shook my head, surprised that I was surprised. “Yeah. Have at it.”

He closed it in his palm and nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “Message on the machine for you.”

“Did you listen to it?”

“Of course. I had to come in and get something to eat before I hit the water. I saw the blinking light and couldn't resist.”

“Then tell me what the message is.”

He made a face. “But then I'd feel like your secretary or something.”

“You need to do something to earn your keep.”

“I don't live here.”

“Fooled me.”

He pointed at the machine. “It's that cop you used to sleep with.”

Or, as her colleagues called her, Detective Santangelo.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“Wants you to call her.”

I looked at the phone, hoping it didn't work. “Right away?”

“As always.”

I went over and picked up the phone, frowned when I got a dial tone. I hit the machine, listened to Liz's very serious voice, and dialed the number she'd left.

She answered on the first ring. “Santangelo.”

“Braddock,” I fired back.

She paused for a moment, maybe trying to figure out who it was or maybe not finding me funny. Hard to tell.

“I need you to come in,” she said.

“From out of the rain?”

She sighed heavily. “Noah. I'm not screwing around. Will you come down?”

“Depends. What happens if I don't?”

“Then I'll send someone with cuffs to get you.”

The neighbors had probably grown weary of seeing me with the police, and I didn't want to rattle them so early in the morning.

“I'll come.”

“Carter with you?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Bring him, too.”

“I'm not his chaperone,” I told her.

“No, you're more like his mother. Bring him.” She hung up.

“Detective Santangelo wishes to see us,” I told Carter, grabbing my car keys off the table.

He stood up and stretched like a cat, his hands nearly touching the ceiling. “What if I don't wish to be seen?”

“She didn't give me that option,” I said, heading for the door.

He groaned. “Well, that's not fair.”

“Come on. You can tell her to her face.”

He grinned. “Ah. A challenge.”

San Diego Police headquarters is located in the heart of downtown on Broadway, a couple blocks from the courts and jail and right near the Michael Graves–designed Horton Plaza. San Diegans liked to point out the strange shopping mall as a defining image of the city, but I could never get past the fact that the biggest obstacle in building the structure had been figuring out where to move the homeless folks so they wouldn't be hovering around a major tourist attraction.

Square, bland, and unimaginative, headquarters could not look any more governmental. Liz's office occupied a spot at the end of the hall on the third floor. Her head was down, staring at some paperwork on her desk.

“We're looking for the Pirates of the Caribbean,” I said. “Can you point us in the right direction?”

She glanced up, pulling her dark hair away from her face and over her shoulder. “Shut the door behind you.”

Her office was small. A perfect square, with cheap cabinets in each of the four corners, her metal desk in the middle so that she could see anyone coming in. No pictures on the walls, only a city-issued calendar, with pictures of the zoo.

Carter and I sat in the two chairs facing her desk. Her chair looked considerably more comfortable.

“You need to back off,” she said, her eyes on me.

I scooted my chair back a couple of inches. “That good enough?”

Her mouth screwed into a tight circle, a clear sign that whatever patience she had allotted for me was now gone. Same old, same old.

She unscrewed her mouth. “Noah, Costilla is off-limits to you.”

“Officially?”

“Officially, unofficially, on the record, off the record,” she said. “Any way you want it. You go near him again, you're done.”

She looked at Carter. “And before you open that sinkhole you call a mouth, that means you, too.”

Carter stared back at her with no expression.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because.”

“Gee, Mommy, I need something better than that,” I said.

She leaned forward on the desk, the silver bracelets on her wrists jingling softly. “Because I've got an ID on you both in San Ysidro and I'll arrest you if you so much as wink at him.”

“Bullshit,” Carter said. “You got an ID, you'd arrest us now.”

“Contrary to the opinion of the rest of this city, I'm not looking to lock you up,” she said. “As far as I'm concerned, one of Costilla's guys biting it isn't such a bad thing. But I can sit you both in a cell if I need to. Those pain-in-the-ass twins you call friends, too, if I want.”

“So if I say no,” I said, “then you're going to arrest us right now.”

She nodded.

I looked at Carter. He shrugged.

I looked back at Liz. “No.”

We all sat there. No one came rushing in with handcuffs and jumpsuits. I turned around to make sure. Nobody came in. They wouldn't have fit in the room anyway.

Liz shifted uncomfortably in her comfortable chair and leaned back into it again. “He's Federal, Noah.”

“So?”

“He's Federal with our cooperation. Specifically, my cooperation.”

“So?”

She slapped her hand on the desk. “Goddammit, Noah. Don't fuck around with me on this. He is off-limits. The Feds are on him, I am assisting, and they don't want to see you near him. So keep your fucking ass far, far away from him.”

Carter looked at me. “Couldn't she have left this on the machine?”

I ignored him, because I knew Liz was serious. The flames coming out her ears were my first clue.

“Okay,” I said to her. “Off-limits.”

She watched me, suspicion shooting out her eyes.

With good reason.

“But only if you answer me one thing,” I said.

Her mouth twitched. “What?”

“Were the Feds looking at Kate, too?”

She blinked once, shifted her neck like there was a kink in it. “You won't get within a hundred miles of him?”

“Two hundred.”

She paused, staring at me like she was trying to decide if I was telling her the truth. “Kate was working for them.”

“The FBI?” I asked.

She let out a deep breath. “No. It's DEA.”

If she had jumped over the desk and kissed Carter, it would've surprised me less. “No way.”

“She was inside.”

“Then how did she die?” Carter asked.

She set her elbow on the desk, made a fist, and leaned her chin on it, her face drawn. “They screwed up.”

Her words hung in the air like a neon sign. I knew by the way that she said it, that whoever had screwed up, whoever had let Kate die, wouldn't admit to it. Collateral damage in a bigger operation.

I felt my chest tighten. “Back up. What the hell was she doing inside?”

“I can't tell you.”

“The fuck you can't,” I said, louder than I'd intended.

Her eyes widened, and she lifted her head off of her chin. “Beg your pardon?”

“You drop that cannonball on me and then tell me you can't explain?” I said. “Like I'm just supposed to accept it, not be surprised by it? You give me more, or any promise I made to you is off the table.”

Liz shrugged. “Then I'll arrest you both.” She looked at Carter. “Are you really dumb enough to think that someone wouldn't notice that shitpiece you drive?” She turned back to me. “You don't believe me? Try me.”

I wanted to reach across the desk and grab her by the throat. Maybe throw something at the wall behind her, something to let her know how badly she was pissing me off.

But none of that would get me closer to the reason for Kate's death.

“So, you'll tell me that she got killed because someone screwed up somewhere, but you won't tell me anything about what she was doing?” I asked quietly. “Not even off the record?”

She shook her head slowly. “I can't, Noah.”

“Then you know I won't leave it alone.”

She thought about that, then nodded.

“And if you catch me near Costilla, you'll toss on the cuffs,” I said.

She nodded again.

I stood up, and Carter did the same.

“Then catch me if you can,” I said and we left.

“Married to an asshole, a drug user, and working for the G-men. Not exactly the old Kate,” Carter said.

“No, not exactly,” I mumbled back to him.

We were headed north on the 5, Sea World and Mission Bay on the west side, beckoning the tourists that flocked to America's Finest City. Traffic was moving smoothly for once but it didn't improve my mood. Nothing was making sense, and I was getting angrier with each new revelation. I felt like the more I discovered about Kate, the further I got from the truth.

“Would they really use someone like Kate inside a world like Costilla's?” I asked, unable to shake the question from my brain.

Carter shifted in his seat and tugged at the seat belt. “They'd use whoever they could to get what they need. Male, female, young, old. Doesn't matter to them.”

I nodded absently.

“The ME said Kate was using drugs, right? DEA was using her for something in connection with Costilla. That says to me she got caught in something,” Carter said. “An immunity deal maybe?”

I thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. Just seems odd. What did they catch her with that would justify putting her under the gun like that?”

“It had to have been some heavy shit,” Carter said. “But I can't imagine why the law enforcement geniuses would think she'd make a great undercover candidate. All of a sudden, some upper-crust white woman shows up and tries to secretly fit in? Fucking brilliant.”

The wind from the open windows whipped through my hair as I turned everything over in my mind. If Kate was involved in drugs and got caught, it would make sense that there might be some sort of a deal made. But I thought a court testimonial would make a lot more sense than sending her into the lion's den.

“Yeah. Why would you put someone like her in a position like that?” I said. “How the hell would she know what she was doing?”

“If a deal was set up,” Carter said, “someone would've needed to do some string pulling.”

I was getting around to that thought. “Like Daddy Crier.”

We drove in silence for a moment, cutting under the twisting curl of concrete that jutted off the freeway and up to the bluffs of La Jolla.

“You think Costilla found out what Kate was doing?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Carter said.

“But…”

“But don't you think he would've left a message?”

“Like?”

Carter waved a hand in the air. “A message that said ‘I know who she was and what she was doing.' She was in a trunk, strangled. That's not exactly a Colombian necktie.”

I considered that. No murder was mundane or ordinary, but Carter had a point. Now that we knew that the twists in Kate's life were more severe, the way she had died, the way I'd found her, didn't seem that dramatic.

“Not to change the subject or anything,” Carter said, interrupting my thoughts. “But that Cadillac has been with us for a while, dude.” He reached under his seat and retrieved my gun, a 9mm Glock 17, setting it in his lap.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. A white Cadillac was two cars back, in our lane. “How long?”

“Long enough to be a problem.” He opened the glove box and pulled his gun out. He held the .45 HK Mark 23 low against the door.

I moved over into the fast lane. The Cadillac sped up and moved into our blind spot, trying to hide.

I was trying to figure out what to do when the blue van in front of us hit its brakes.

Jamming my foot on the brakes, I turned the wheel to the left, sliding onto the shoulder and next to the median. The van moved left in the same direction, anticipating where I'd go, blocking us in the front. The rear doors opened slightly and two gun barrels emerged in the tight space.

The Cadillac cut over and screeched to a halt diagonally behind us.

Trapped.

Carter tossed my gun at me. I rolled out of the door, staying close to the car and the ground. The windshield of my Jeep shattered in seconds, the bullets flying like irritated hornets from both directions, the shards of glass spilling into the front seat.

Carter followed me out the driver's-side door, a small streak of blood making its way down his neck. We had about three feet to maneuver in between my car and the concrete median.

I rose up quickly into the open window of the door and fired into the van. Carter swiveled and fired into the Cadillac behind us. I ducked down, and we both stayed close to the car, bullets flying over us.

“We gotta move,” I said. “We're fish in a bowl right here.”

More bullets crackled against the pavement behind my car, and we both flinched. Carter looked at the median.

“I'll cover,” he said. “You get over this and move backward toward the Cadillac. Come at them from behind.”

I nodded. He rose up and started firing, first at the van, then the Cadillac. I took one short step and flung myself over the median, praying that I wouldn't spill out into the southbound fast lane.

Cars were stopping on both sides of the freeway, watching our little ambush. I heard metal on metal from a distance and knew someone had been following too closely. Voices were yelling but they sounded far away and unintelligible.

I crab-crawled about fifty feet on the pavement, my eyes on the top of the median. I spun when I knew I was well past the Cadillac and rose up over the edge.

Two teenagers, clad in white T-shirts, baggy chinos, and blue bandanas around their heads, were behind the open doors of the Cadillac, automatic weapons pointed in Carter's direction. I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. The one on the driver's side dropped to the ground, clutching his leg. His partner looked in my direction from the other side of the car.

I saw Carter's head come up briefly, then go down when more shots from the van were gunned in his direction. I fired through the Cadillac at the passenger. He returned the fire, then sidestepped toward the van, staying low on the passenger side of the Cadillac, then my Jeep. A few more shots flew from the back windows of the van, the rear doors opened more, and the shooter from the Cadillac dove in. The doors shut and the van screeched away, whizzing between the stopped cars on our side of the freeway, smoke flowing from the tires. They maneuvered to the far right lane, gunned the engine again, and sped north.

All lanes of traffic on both sides of the freeway were blocked now, cars pointed in every possible direction, people's eyes wild with fear. The air was heavy with the smell of burnt rubber and cordite. Sweat was pouring down my back. I hopped the median and kicked the gun away from the kid I'd shot as he writhed in pain, his thigh leaking blood rapidly. I looked at his face but didn't recognize him.

“Carter, it's clear,” I yelled.

I expected some wiseass line about taking so long or my driving getting us into this.

But the only response I got was the sound of sirens in the distance.