“There’s something on his property. Terrance is protecting something back there. Maybe he’s kept Kevin’s black book at his house, or maybe it’s the CCTV footage of the park, but whatever is there might be our only chance to convince him of testifying.” He kept looking upwards. “If we find the notes, or if we find the footage, then not only will we send Kevin Wu to prison, but we can also convince Terrance to testify. If Kevin finds out that Terrance kept the notes after asking him to destroy them, then Kevin will come at him regardless of testimony or not.”
Kate looked up. “You got that idea from the roof?”
“We need to find the evidence. If Terrance has kept it, the fear of what Kevin will do will be enough to make him testify in the civil case.”
“And where will you find the evidence?”
“In the most obvious place.” Harvey smiled. “I’ll get Jack to stake out Terrance’s house and study his movements. Once he’s out of the house, I’m going to search it. I don’t want to have to blackmail him, but that might be my only chance to win this case.”
“Good. I’m coming.”
“Not a chance. Terrance is big, he’s mean, and he’s still very dangerous. There’s no way that I can allow you to do this.”
“I’m a grown woman; I can look after myself.”
“Not against a man twice the size of you.”
Kate raised her eyebrows and stared at Harvey, a clear statement that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Alright.” Harvey sighed. “But you have to stay out of trouble.”
“You got it, boss. So, what’s the plan?”
“Jack will scope the place, and when we have the chance, I’ll go in and search his house, but I’ll need plastic gloves.”
“For fingerprints?”
“No. Because the place is filthy.”
He picked up the mobile phone lying on the table and dialed.
“Jack. You’re on. There’s something at Terrance Marshall’s place, and we’re going to find it. And then, we might have a chance to save our jobs.”
Chapter 24
Sitting in the back of Jack’s Ford pickup truck, Harvey and Kate watched as Terrance left the old, gray house, built in a time when plain was considered value for money. Nestled in the trees, backing onto the reserve, the house was not the place where you would expect to find a hardened criminal. It looked more like the place where a family of four, with two cats and a dog, spent their downtime.
The piles of trash sitting next to the front door dispelled that thought.
Known as the ‘Wilderness in the City’, Montecito Heights was home to many long-term residents, who wanted to see out their final days in their piece of paradise. The Ernest E. Debs Regional Park that backed onto the suburb was 280 acres of mostly low-lying scrub, scattered trees, and dusty hills, but it was enough to feel like you’re a hundred miles from Downtown L.A, when in fact, it was only a thirty-minute drive.
Terrance Marshall limped to his car, lugged his heavy frame into the front seat, roared the engine of his Chevy in park, indicated for at least one minute, checked all his mirrors twice, and then slowly drives away.
“At least he’s a safe driver. Can’t fault him for that,” Kate said from behind the tinted window of Jack’s truck, taking a photo of the number plate as Terrance left.
“Your job is to watch two things,” Jack said firmly. “You need to watch the street for Terrance’s black Chevy returning, and you need to watch that entrance to the street for any sign of people coming in and out. If you see anything unusual, you need to call us straight away. Don’t hesitate. If you hesitate, we die. Is that clear?”
“I think so.” Kate’s voice shook with the responsibility. “But how do I know if it’s unusual? I haven’t spent much time in Montecito Heights, but from what I have heard, all sorts of things happen out here. We’re right next to the reserve. Anything could happen.”
“You’re looking for groups of serious people. Any of them. If two or more people walk onto the street, and they’re not a family, call us. Any car that looks out of place, either too rich or too poor, call us. Any sudden movements in the shadows, call us. If anything changes, call us. We’ll make the decision after your call. It’s better safe than sorry. Call us if anything happens.”
“Got it.” Kate nodded, focused on her task. Excited to be on her first stakeout, Kate had spent the afternoon Googling ‘How to stay focused on a stakeout’. Next to her sat two cans of energy drinks, four bags of candy, and a box of matchsticks.
“And lock the doors,” Harvey added, wanting nothing more than to keep Kate safe. “If there’s any danger, you’re to drive away. We can look after ourselves. Do not put yourself in danger. Keep yourself safe first.”
“On it,” she replied as the two men climbed out of the car.
Dressed in a white business shirt and suit pants, Harvey stood out in this place. Most people in this suburb would assume he was a detective, and in this area, that was dangerous. Luckily, he had Jack Grayson by his side. Dressed in his usual work uniform of a tight black shirt and slick jeans, Jack looked more at home on these streets than he did inside a courthouse.
Trained in the brutal martial art of Krav Maga, Jack was confident he could defend himself in most dangerous situations in this part of the city. The Glock pistol resting under his shirt also helped.
With as little noise as possible, the men walked across the front yard, past the overgrown bushes, and to the door of Terrance Marshall’s house. Gently, Harvey knocked on it. When there was no answer, he nodded at Jack.
Without a word between them, Jack leaned down to the door handle, jiggled it, and slid a card into the gap between the door and the frame. It was a skill that his next-door neighbor taught him when he was a teenager, and those skills had come in handy more times than he cared to remember.
He never trusted the old man next door, but when he was twelve, he had locked himself out of the house. The man in his seventies, a loner, walked across to him, didn’t say a word, jiggled the door with a pin, and popped the door open. It turned out the man had served in the Second World War and had learned those skills during the German occupation of France when he served as a spy.
And so was born one of the closest connections Jack had during his childhood. He would spend long hours during his summer holidays listening to the man tell stories of a bygone era, hearing about the war, and learning skills as a spy.
With two forceful pushes and one right turn, the door opened. “Can’t do that with the new doors. Luckily, most of my clients live in old areas with old doors that have old locks.” As Jack stepped into the house, the wall of smell hit him first. “Whoa. What does this guy do all day?”
“He certainly doesn’t clean,” Harvey stated as he followed Jack inside, shutting the door behind him.
“Alright, boss. Where to start?”
“Anywhere. When I talked to Terrance, he was evasive about something in here. We’ll search anywhere where he could be hiding anything valuable.”
Starting with the hallway cupboards, Harvey went through old paperwork, dating back twenty years, searching for anything of use. Jack started in the bedroom, wincing as he lifted unwashed clothes off the floor to check underneath them. He checked under the bed, in the bathroom, and in the kitchen cupboards.
“Nothing, Harvey,” he concluded within ten minutes. “The place is fairly sparse. Apart from a collection of photos from his army days, I’ve got nothing.”
In the hall, Harvey had an equal amount of success. “I’m the same—nothing. No USB footage, no black book.”
“There’s no sign of any hidden cupboards, safes, or trapdoors.” Jack tapped his knuckles along the walls, listening for any hollow sound. “He would have to be stupid to leave anything of value here. Wu and his boys would find it too easily if he did. I don’t think he would have left anything here. If he kept them, he would have hidden them somewhere else.”
“His car?”
“That would have been even stupider. No. Maybe a deposit box, or a warehouse. Somewhere secure, but hidden.”
Rubbing his chin, Harvey nodded. “There must be some evidence of it here. Maybe a receipt for the deposit box, or a Harvey from the storage place.”
Harvey returns to the cupboard, searching through the old paperwork again. Heading back to the bedrooms, Jack spent the next ten minutes searching for any clues.
“Harvey.” Jack came back into the hallway. Harvey turned from the paperwork he’s looking through. “There’s a lot of camping gear in his bedroom. And it’s all relatively new. It seems unusual that a man like Terrance would be spending much time in the forest, or sleeping outside. He really doesn’t seem like the naturist type.”
“I agree.” Harvey placed the last receipt back in the cupboard.
“He’s got torches, a sleeping bag, bug spray, and an old pair of well-worn boots.” Jack shook his head. “What would a man like Terrance be doing in the forest?”
“What do you think?”
“Judging by all this gear, I’d say he’s looking for something.”
“Or someone.” The thoughts flooded Harvey’s head. “He said he was looking for Monty Lee in the hills. These men have an old score that still isn’t settled.”
As Harvey thought, his mobile buzzed in his pocket. He answered it.
“Terrance’s car has turned into the street.” Kate’s voice was panicked.
He looked at Jack. “We have to go.”
Jack’s focus instantly kicked into action. “Back door. This way.”
As they scurried, the headlights of the Chevy shone through the living room window.
With adrenalin pumping through their veins, the men moved out the back door, Jack closing it behind him, pulling it shut with the gentlest of tugs.
It was only two stepped into the yard when Harvey spotted it.
“Jack,” he whispered, “what’s that?”
Turning, Jack winced as he stared at the small trapdoor on this side of the yard. “It’s a door. Probably a small basement.”
“Here? Terrance said he didn’t have a basement.”
As Harvey started to step towards it, Jack grabbed his arm. “No, Harvey. Not now. It’s probably nothing at all. We have to go. This guy won’t appreciate finding us in his yard.”
As Harvey stared at his friend, the light in the house turned on, following by the dulled mumbling of the television.
“C’mon, Harvey.” Jack tugged at his friend’s arm, desperate to sneak through the broken fence and get out of the yard. “We have to move.”
Harvey stared at the bunker door for another moment. “That’s it, Jack. In there is where he’s hiding the footage.”
“Not now. We have to go.”
Another light went on in the house, and Harvey reacted.
He scampered through the yard, through the fence; moving away from the house.
And away from the basement.
Chapter 25
The smell of bacon filled Bill Harvey’s nostrils as soon as he stepped into the old diner on Wilshire Boulevard. That smell always brought a smile to his face.
His favorite diner had remained oblivious to the passing of time, a time warp on the busy street. The eatery was almost full—most of the crowd were locals looking for a reason not to eat breakfast at home, whether that be because of a persistent nagging partner, a need for interaction, or a complete lack of culinary skills. Over the past decade, the rise of the hip café had dwindled the regular crowd for most diners, but not this one.
People came from all over Downtown for the diner’s simple, delicious, and very reliable bacon and eggs. It was a recipe that they’d been cooking for decades, and the cook, a Hungarian immigrant now in his seventies, wouldn’t stop until his body prevented him from doing so. Hardworking, focused and dedicated, Hans Horvath could be the poster boy for what America could provide for those that were willing to toil for success. He worked hard, lived in a nice house, had a loving family, loved his customers, and was loved by the community.
“Ah, Bill!” Hans shouted as Harvey walked in the door. “Good to see you, my friend! Sit, sit!”
Harvey smiled as he walked to his booth, the same process he had done for more than ten years, but this time he wasn’t alone. This time he’s joined by the only family he had left, waiting patiently for his arrival.
“Bill.” Jonathon Harvey, as tall as his brother, greeted him with a handshake.
“Morning, Sunshine.” Ella Townsend, the youngest of the three siblings, offered her brother a kiss on the cheek before sliding across the vinyl seat in the booth. “It’s good to see you.”
Harvey sat down, barely saying a word, slightly overwhelmed that his siblings were joining him for breakfast. The three of them hadn’t shared a breakfast for decades. After they grew up in a small farming community outside of L.A., their lives took very different turned once they reached their teens.
Ella Townsend watched her family fall apart through the eyes of a young girl. It shaped her, impacting her more than she could ever realize. Struggling through years of depression, she walked away from contact with Harvey after their parents died.
Their father’s suicide hit her hard. At a time when she was at her most vulnerable, she lost the person that she respected the most. She couldn’t understand why her father would abandon her, why such a hard man would choose the easy way out. For many years, she blamed herself for his death, crying over his gravestone time and time again. Maybe she wasn’t enough for him? Maybe she wasn’t enough to keep him around?
Instead of turning to her brother for help, she shut him out and tried to start another life elsewhere. Luckily, she found a stable husband, a stable job, and stable friends.
‘Stability is the enemy of anxiety,’ became her life motto.
But now that her mental state was stable, she was finding that stability was also the best friend of boredom.
“We haven’t done this for a very long time.” Ella tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Dressed casually, her appearance still spoke of class and money. Her effortless beauty meant she had a hard time convincing people she was unwell; most people refused to believe that attractive people could not be in love with their lives.
“You must have been only this tall.” Jonathon laughed, holding his hand at table height. With his thinning hair slicked back and a tie-dye T-shirt, he looked like a man stuck in 90’s fashion. But that was what happened when a person had to survive off donated clothes.
“She isn’t much taller now,” Harvey joked, and his little sister playfully punched his arm.
“Thanks for letting me join you here, Bill.” Jonathon’s head dropped. “I have to say that I’m sorry for what happened. I can’t apologize enough. I’m fighting the addiction, but sometimes it’s really hard. Ella’s been so good to me.”
Harvey nodded his response. In a courtroom, words were his weapon, but in a heightened emotional situation, he drew a blank. For all his skills, for all his talents, dealing with his own emotions still made his shoulder’s tense.
“Jonathon has something to tell you about his job.” Ella smiled, eager to move the conversation past what happened one week ago.
Over the past seven days, she had been by her brother’s side, helping him in the comedown, sleeping in his tiny apartment to ensure that he hasn’t had another midnight heroin craving. It was what he always needed; a loving, non-judgmental person that was willing to stick by him, no matter what.
“Did you manage to hold onto it?” Harvey questioned.
“I did.” Jonathon nodded. “Luckily, they didn’t need me for a few days, so I kept my mistake quiet. When they drug-tested me yesterday, I was clean. I was lucky.”
“This time.” Ella added. “You probably won’t be that lucky next time.”
“Then let’s make sure there isn’t a next time.” Jonathon smiled. “And I tell you, I’m glad I was clean. Yesterday was such a hard day work. I could never ha
ve done that high on drugs.”
“What did you do yesterday?”
“I had a moving job for the Whitehall family. Their grandfather had died, so the place was a deceased estate, and we had to clean the whole house out. The family had to sell the house to pay for his medical bills, but weren’t sure what to do with all the belongings, so everything had to go. We had to pack, pick up, and take it all out to a storage facility, where the family will go through everything later.”
“Going through a dead person’s estate must have been weird.” Ella sipped her coffee.
“The house was alright, but the weirdest thing was the hidden basement. It was deliberately hidden, but apparently that’s quite common in those parts.”
“A hidden basement?”
“That’s right. Apparently there’s a few of them in L.A. We had to walk out into the yard and there was this little manhole down in the ground. The guys said it was a Cold War basement, built when people thought that Los Angeles was going to be the target of a Russian bombing. It was all concrete, a few inches thick. He had all this stuff down there that we had to move up a ladder—old boxes full of paperwork, old bottles of wine, even an old bed. It was like another house down there—a cold, concrete one-bedroom basement. The guy could have had a whole different family sleeping down there.”
The younger brother smiled broadly. In the depths of his addiction, he could never imagine that his life would get back on track. He could never imagine that he could feel happy again. And he certainly never thought that he would feel proud of himself again.
“I thought the Cold War bunkers were the stuff of rumors?”
Three hearty plates of bacon and eggs were placed on the table in front of them. It was a beautiful smell, full of European spices and absorbing aromas.
“It was real.” Jonathon paused to swallow a mouthful of eggs, digging straight into the breakfast. “Saw it with my own two eyes. Definitely not a rumor. And trust me, after having to lift all that stuff out of that basement bunker, my back will tell you that it was real.”
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