The Renegades (16 page)

He tried again. “No reason…”

He looked down at Hood, growled, then shook his head violently and banged it against the window again.

Then Hood got it.

“No reason
for
the fight,” he said.

He stared at Hood for a long beat, then very slowly nodded. His mouth hung open and he slumped back into the chair. Again Hood could see the wheels of Shay Eichrodt’s mind slow. Again he turned to the wall and stared. Minutes passed and Hood waited. He believed that Eichrodt wanted him to wait.

“Cuffed. Then clubs.”

“Cuffed, then clubs? What, you were cuffed when they beat you?”

He nodded again.

“That’s not in the transcript,” Hood said. “Did you tell your lawyer that?”

Eichrodt stared off at nothing for a moment. Then at Hood. “I couldn’t remember that, back then. It comes back. The words come back. The worst is when I have a memory but no words to describe it. But I used to have the words.”

“You had no memory, then.”

He shook his head, looking down at the steel counter before him. It took Hood a minute to fully absorb what Eichrodt was claiming. Of course it was his word against that of a sworn deputy and a sworn reserve, Hood thought. And Eichrodt could be faking a memory, and lying.

Then Hood realized something.

“Shay, did you hide some money?”

Eichrodt stared at him with a blankness that looked eternal. But then he blinked and frowned and his dramatically refurbished mouth hung open again and Hood could see him straining to get at another memory.

“There was no money.”

“You took money from the men in the van. Vasquez and Lopes. You had four thousand in the toolbox of your truck. But they were carrying more, weren’t they?”

His breath came fast again and he struggled to slow it down, inhaling and exhaling as he stared at Hood.

“No van. No men except cops. No money.”

“You never saw a van, or Vasquez and Lopes, or any money?”

He looked at Hood with fury.
“No.”

Hood remembered the court transcript. Eichrodt had been unable to remember a van, or murder victims, or money.

But now, Hood realized, he was saying that he never
saw
them.

Hood sat for a moment, listening to the restless thump of his heart. He took a deep breath and told it to slow down but it didn’t.

He had the black thought that Laws and Draper had killed the two couriers and taken the real money. Eichrodt was the fall guy. All they had to do was cuff him, beat him back into the dark ages of his own consciousness, plant some evidence and cover the rest in their official report.

It would account for Laws and Draper not calling backup.

It would account for Vasquez and Lopes pulling over on the shoulder of the off-ramp, right out in the open—they’d seen the law enforcement car behind them and done what anybody would do.

It would account for the fact that they had not drawn the weapons that were so close at hand.

It would account for Terry Laws’s sudden fortune.

It would account for the something that had died inside him after the arrest.

“Shay, do you understand that if you tell this story to your doctors, and to the court, that you can be tried for murder?”

He looked at Hood blankly. Then his expression changed to curiosity. He smiled at Hood with his large, perfectly white teeth.

“Let them.”

HOOD HAD just come back upstairs when Dr. Rosen pulled him back into his office.

Rosen closed the door behind them, but he didn’t sit. His expression was intense and his words came fast. “I’m very encouraged by what I saw. He broke through to things he couldn’t recall—right before our eyes. It’s very unusual. We rarely see such recovery after so long a time. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”

“I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that,” Hood said.

The doctor looked at him. “That’s a big accusation he’s making.”

“You don’t know how big.”

“Do you hope he’s lying?”

“What does my hope have to do with anything?”

“No. I apologize.” He went to his desk and sat. “I’m tempted to move the evaluation up to next week. I want to run a CAT scan and an MRI. See what’s really going on in that brain of his.”

“I’d like to know, too.”

“It would be a capital case, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t he be eligible for a death penalty?”

“Very eligible.”

“Did you believe what he said?”

“I believe that he did.”

The doctor nodded. “Truth can be a powerful weapon. But first you have to find it.”

Hood was half an hour down the road to L.A. when Keith Franks called.

“The heavy blood on the casings didn’t come from Vasquez or Lopes. It was Eichrodt’s. So was the blood on the grip, the trigger, and the guard of the murder gun.”

Hood tried to speculate why Eichrodt was bleeding so generously as he gunned down the couriers and picked up the brass. He couldn’t make the scene play right, because Eichrodt’s bleeding came later, at the hands of Draper and Laws. But there was one way it could make sense: the murder weapon never touched Eichrodt’s hands until after he’d been knocked unconscious by two LASD deputies.

“What do you think?” asked Franks.

“I’m afraid to think what I think.”

Hood called Warren before he made L.A. and asked him to get Coleman Draper’s package.

And a copy of the anonymous 911 call reporting the red pickup truck leaving the murder scene.

Warren told him to consider it done.

18

Hood got to
the Pomona Raceway early, bought a pit pass and walked down among the dragsters and the drivers and the crews. It was Saturday and more rain was on the way. The air smelled of burnt racing fuel from the early elimination runs. Hood liked the smell, the unmistakable scent of power and speed and internal combustion.

The event was sponsored by DRAW—the Drag Racing Association of Women—and its purpose was to raise money to help people hurt in drag races at a track.

The pit was congested with brilliantly painted dragsters and funny cars. The hoods were propped up so people could appreciate the lavishly chromed engines. The drivers and mechanics were dressed in the same bright colors as their cars. They answered questions and let themselves be photographed. During lulls Hood heard them talking with quiet specificity about what needed to be done to their cars before the racing began.

Ariel Reed stood with a group of fans, autographing photos and programs. She was wearing red leathers with gold trim and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her car stood behind her, a sleek red AA alcohol dragster with a mountainous engine. A teenaged boy stared at her while she signed a photo, then he croaked his thanks and stood there smiling at her. She looked up at Hood and winked, then went back to signing.

He joined the little crowd around her and listened as she related dragster facts: top fuel diggers can put out more than 6,000 horse, hit 330 miles per hour and cover a quarter mile in less than five seconds. She said that a vehicle going 200 miles per hour as it crosses the starting line will lose to a top fuel dragster starting from a dead stop at the same time. She said that the noise outputs have been measured at 3.9 on the Richter scale and the G force exerted on the driver is enough to detach her retina.

Someone asked about fuel efficiency and Ariel said she got more than five hundred feet per gallon out of this puppy.

Someone asked if she was afraid when she raced and she said don’t be silly, she was too scared to be afraid.

A few minutes later the fans had drifted away to the next car.

“I love my molecule. It’s on my desk at work. I can split atoms anytime I want!”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Thanks for coming.

“I like the drags.”

“You’re a fan?”

“Since I was a kid. Dad would drive us down from Bakersfield.”

“I learned here. Raced for the first time when I was eighteen. Ran twelve seconds in a borrowed Dodge. How’s our friend Shay Eichrodt?”

She looked at Hood with her level, opinionless gaze. He thought it would have been unsettling from across a poker table.

“Better,” he said. “The doctor was surprised.”

“So we may be trying him for murder after all.”

“You might be.”

She shrugged. “Stick around after the race and I’ll buy you a beer.”

Hood got a good seat, up top in the bleachers with a touch of sunshine on his back. The northern sky had darkened more and the Pomona foothills were green. The first two drivers rode their cars to the start line, gunned their engines into ear-shocking roars of rpm and took their burnouts to heat the tires and make them sticky. Then the racers lined up for the real thing. The Christmas tree lit up yellow and red. The sound of gunning nitro engines was thunderous. The cars growled like beasts that knew they were about to be unleashed for just a few seconds. Then the bottom lights went green and the world roared with torque and fury. The dragsters shot forward. Hood watched the bodies shudder and the tires dig for traction in the blast of speed. One second they were coming at him, then they were racing away. He saw how close the drivers were to losing control but how skillfully they maintained it. Then the roar lessened and the parachutes blew into shape behind the cars and the finish line light gave victory to the winner. The crowd clapped and cheered but the totaled response of thirty thousand spectators was little more than a gesture compared to the spectacle of sound and motion that Hood had just witnessed.

Hood thought of his family, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on these same bleachers, soft drinks in their hands and plugs in their ears while the top fuel eliminators and funny cars rocketed past. He was five. They would stay with an uncle in Pasadena and make the drive to Pomona for the races. Hood loved then what he loved now: the smell of the fuel and the sound of the engines and the impossible velocity shaped by human skill into a straight line. And he had always liked the way you could get a pit pass and meet the drivers and the crew and see the cars up close.

Ariel was matched up against Walt Bledsoe in the fifth race. Bledsoe’s AA methane rail was black and cobalt blue—a stallion with major attitude. According to Hood’s program, Bledsoe was tenth in the states in the NHRA Sportsman Top Alcohol Dragster Class. Ariel was forty-first. When her red-and-gold rail came onto the launching pad burping fire and smoke Hood was impressed and proud. He looked down at her in the cockpit, harnessed in, her helmet soon to be pushed back against the seat in an explosion of power. The two rivals did their burnouts, jockeying and bellowing at each other. Then they rumbled up to the starting line and the lights on the Christmas tree illuminated downward.

Flames belched from the chrome pipes and the dragsters were off. Both drivers were a little eager on the throttle and Hood saw the faint rise of their front ends, then the corrections—a shimmy as weight moved downward—followed by a surge of speed and a howling sprint to the finish line. The parachutes deployed and filled and the finish light gave the win to Bledsoe: 215 mph in 6.64 seconds.

Hood stood and clapped as Ariel guided her car off the track. She won her next race and lost her last. By then it was dark and the starless sky above was heavy with the gathering storm.

Hood found her in the pit, helping get the car onto its trailer behind a big silver pickup truck. Her crew of three ignored him. When the dragster was fastened down Ariel shook hands with each one; then the crew climbed into the truck and eased it out of the pit and toward the exit. She watched the truck and trailer amble slowly into the darkness.

“Didn’t exactly set any records,” she said.

“You’ve got a steady foot, young lady.”

She leaned into the bed of a shiny black El Camino and brought two beers from a cooler.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

The pit was almost empty of fans now but Ariel stopped and talked with a few other drivers. They congratulated each other with easy fraternity.

Then Hood and Ariel walked down the track, beers in hand, she in one lane and he in the other. The lights were still on above the bleachers and the safety railing shone softly.

“My mom and grandmother raced,” she said. “And my daddy and granddad—that’d be Bill and Frank. Frank died eight years ago but Dad’s still going strong.”

“My dad’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s just a fact.”

Ariel sipped her beer, then reached out the bottle and tapped it against the finish light stanchion.

“It’s a family thing. Generation after generation, speeding down the track. But I’ll let you in on a little secret—I don’t care if I win or not. I don’t do it for history. I do it because it thrills me.”

“To thrills,” said Hood. They touched bottles.

Some time passed and Hood sensed that Ariel was brooding in her silence.

“You think thrills are a sign of immaturity,” she said. “Because you were a soldier. Because you enforce the law on the street. Because your partner got shot to death right in front of you.”

“Nothing about you is immature, Ms. Reed.”

“I said you think thrills are overrated.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

“Then tell me.”

“I like it that you put bad guys in jail. I like it that you drag race. I like your smile.”

She pulled the band off her ponytail and shook out her hair. “I’m wound tight as a golf ball, Charlie.”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t that make you want to walk away?”

“It makes me wonder what makes you tick.”

“You found out what made Allison Murrieta tick. An armed robber.”

“Thrills,” Hood said. “Gain. Fame. Vengeance. History. It was complicated.”

“There must be something in the thrill seeker that attracts you.”

“She loved fast cars, like you do.”

“It’s not really my business, but you and her were about all the DA’s office talked about for most of that week.”

They walked into the grandstands and up the rows of empty seats. When they got to the top it started to rain and Hood could hear the patter on the sunscreen over their heads. The drops came faster and heavier and the racetrack looked like it was coming to a boil. They sat and looked out at the track and watched the rain slant down through the lights.