by Rainer, Marc
“That should be a sight,” Trask said, laughing. “See you in thirty.” He smiled. Congratulations, Dix. Looks like you have a new partner.
He returned the phone to its holster. He paused and took a last look at the entryway before heading back to his car. No signs of force at all. They either knew the killers or just weren’t careful enough in opening the door. But this doesn’t tell me who they were. Scenes are like witnesses, Bob. Some talk, some don’t.
He started the drive back when the phone went off again. He hit the Bluetooth control on the steering wheel.
“Trask.”
“Mr. Trask, it’s Mitchell Clark, on the Vincente Santos matter.”
“What’s up, Mitchell?”
“I think Mr. Santos is close to cooperating on your case, but he wanted me to ask what assurances you could give him that he would not be incarcerated with other MS-13 members. He’s concerned for his safety while serving his time.”
“As he should be. Tell him that in every case I get an email from BOP—the Bureau of Prisons—asking about any separations from other inmates that are required. BOP doesn’t like having to break up gang fights in their facilities, or having to clean up murder sites in their showers or cafeterias. If they have a non-Mara facility in general population, we’ll request that for him. If not, we could sponsor him into one of the witness security program pens. Everyone in those facilities has cooperated. They’re more restrictive, however, and most inmates don’t want to be there unless they have to. Less visitation, even from family members. General pop is actually a little easier time.”
“Thanks. I’ll talk with him again and get back to you.”
“One more thing, Mitch. Get your guy to give you some piece of information that will let me know he’s actually willing to do something for us. At this point it’s not for attribution; he tells you and you pass it on to me. His name never gets attached to that information unless we agree to pursue this. I need something to know he’s with us for real and not just wasting my time. I don’t have any to waste right now.
“OK. I’ll see what I can do.”
“No problem. Later.”
Trask checked his watch. It’s the thirteenth. Five whole days left. Not much time at all. Stevie Ray’s “Tightrope” started playing in his head.
When he reached the squad room, Trask was surprised to find Willie Sivella in a very upbeat mood, even though he was sitting between detectives Carter and Wisniewski, both of whom were still wearing sunglasses and looked to be in substantial need of headache medication. Doroz, Lynn, and Crawford were also seated at the table, as was Frank Wilkes.
“Commander,” Trask nodded to Sivella. “You’re looking very chipper today.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Sivella grinned and leaned back in his chair, slapping Carter and Wisniewski on the back. The detectives each winced in pain. “My boys here withstood an onslaught from a federal bully last night, taught him a lesson, and between them and another Metropolitan Police Department employee,” he nodded in the direction of Frank Wilkes, “I believe we have some major contributions to make to your federal investigation. Real police officers at work. I might have even brought you some decent evidence myself.”
“Excellent,” Trask said. “We could use some good news, even though we had a major breakthrough yesterday.” He smiled at Lynn. “Who wants to start?”
“That would be me,” Wilkes said, standing as he passed copies of a report around the table. “Two major developments from the shooting of the Barrio 18 gang member in that apartment off Rhode Island Avenue. The first one actually came from Commander Sivella, or more accurately, from Kathy at the medical examiner’s office.”
“I did drive it over here,” Sivella noted.
“Anyway,” Wilkes continued, “as you all know, the ME routinely runs a toxicology screen on the blood from any homicide victim. It takes a while for those to come back from the lab. It’s not CSI around here.”
Trask and Doroz exchanged glances and grins.
If you want a tirade, just mention CSI to Frank Wilkes, Trask thought. The real world here. No instant lab results with five-minute turnarounds.
“The lab found a pretty high concentration of zolpidem in the blood taken from Armando Lopez-Mendez,” Wilkes continued. “The usual brand name for zolpidem is Ambien. It’s a sleep-aid, but we’ve seen it used as a date-rape drug in the past. Slip it into someone’s drink, and bedtime. Especially if the victim has had a couple of shots of alcohol.”
“Wait a sec, Frank,” Doroz said. “You said that was for the blood from the ambassador’s kid. I thought we were talking about the 18er from Rhode Island Avenue.”
“We are,” Wilkes said. “In my opinion, he’s your killer on Incident One here.” Wilkes pointed to the sheets of paper on the wall summarizing the murder of the ambassador’s son.
“How do you figure that?” Lynn asked.
“Quite a leap, Frank,” Trask nodded, agreeing with the skeptical tone in his wife’s voice.
“I arrive at that conclusion from the fact that blood found in the dead 18er’s room, more specifically, in the grooves of a chair in that room, is a conclusive DNA match for the blood taken from the body of Armando Lopez-Mendez at autopsy.”
“Are you sure about that?” Lynn was still defending her theory.
“Virtually certain,” Wilkes responded. “In addition to the DNA evidence, the autopsy report for Armando indicated that he’d been tied up in a chair, with his hands bound behind him. The vertical bruising on the inside of his arms is almost a perfect match to the chair from your Rhode Island Avenue 18er’s apartment.”
Trask looked at Lynn and shrugged. She tossed her hands up in the air.
“How’d you find the blood on the chair, Frank?” Carter asked quietly. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t speak too loudly.”
“Blacklighted the room after I sprayed the luminol,” Wilkes answered. “It was obvious that someone had wiped the chair down to an extent. It was clean except for the joints where the chair back met the seat. Those joints lit up pretty brightly.”
“If that’s your first bombshell, what’s your second?” Doroz asked.
“I gave you two already,” Wilkes stated flatly. “First, it was Armando’s blood on the chair, and second, the lab found that he had been sedated before he was killed.”
“Sorry. I miscounted,” Doroz said, rolling his eyes.
“There is more, however,” Wilkes said. “The ballistics are back on the projectiles and weapon used to kill the Rhode Island Avenue 18er.”
“I didn’t know we had the weapon,” Trask said, puzzled.
“You’ve had it since Tuesday night, Jeff,” Wilkes said. “I mean you, literally. It was left in your house by whoever it was who tried to kill Lynn. It was also the same gun that was used to kill the defense attorneys. We test-fired it and the slugs from the victims were a match. No question at all.”
Doroz shook his head and started a low, slow whistle. “What the hell?”
“I’m still on Armando,” Lynn protested. “Why would one 18er whack another one? Didn’t Armando have an 18 tattooed on his shoulder?”
“He did,” Wilkes confirmed. “I can’t speak to the motive. I can only say that a chair in the one victim’s room had the blood of the other victim on it.”
“So someone else could have killed Armando in that room, or for that matter, in that chair, and the chair could have been moved into the apartment after Armando’s murder,” she said.
“That is certainly possible,” Wilkes said.
“But not likely, Lynn,” Carter said. “We’re stretching now. Besides, Tim and I have something else to throw on this little fire.”
Wisniewski flipped open the top of a laptop computer, and the forty-inch LED screen on the conference room wall came to life.
“This is from the red-light camera at the intersection on Rhode Island Avenue just east of the apartment building where the 18er took the bullet to his forehead,” Carter
said. “You can see the date and time in the lower right-hand corner. August twenty-third, 3:07 p.m. It’s consistent with what the ME found to be an approximate time of death for the victim. Watch.”
The digital video began to run and showed a large, dark sedan running the stoplight and turning left through the intersection.
“Go back and freeze it.” Trask was out of his chair and next to the screen. The screen froze, revealing the red and white and blue license plates on the front of the car. “STL-467. Those plates were on the car that Rios—I mean Moreno—had at the dog park.”
“Watch the rest of this,” Carter said.
They fixed their stares on the screen. The sedan ran the light again, turned left again, and then—after a moment or two—reappeared at the same light, traveling in the same direction as when it first appeared on the screen.
“He made the block,” Wisniewski said. “He’s at the building at about the same time our vic gets shot, and he makes the block around the building.”
“Picking up the shooter?” Trask asked.
Carter nodded. “That’s my guess. And just in case there’s any doubt about whose car it was, we blew up the best still-shot of the driver.”
Wisniewski hit some buttons on the laptop, and the screen showed the photograph. The driver was wearing an eye patch. “The 18er’s neighbor said he was afraid of someone he called the ‘one-eyed shadow.’”
“He’s got a motive, working for the ambassador. Avenging the murder of the ambassador’s kid,” Lynn said.
That’s my girl, Trask said. Open mind, no tunnel vision. She knows not to try and cram every round fact into a square hole, even if her initial theory made all the sense in the world.
“But how did he know that? How’d he find this guy?” Carter asked. “Why suspect that an 18er did it instead of one of the MS-13 punks? Your question there was very valid, Lynn.”
“Great,” she said. “At least my questions are valid even if my answers aren’t.”
“Lynn, if we had all the answers, we’d have all these mopes locked down already,” Doroz said. “Your first shot was a good one.”
“It was.” Trask agreed. “But now we’ve confirmed our other problem. Our friend Moreno is now the acting ambassador. If he didn’t have complete diplomatic immunity before—and he probably did—he’s certainly got it now. We’ve just solved some of our murders and run into a brick wall at the same time.” His cell phone rang again. “Excuse me.” He hit the answer icon on the touch screen.
“Trask.”
“It’s Mitchell Clark again, Mr. Trask. Mr. Santos asked me to pass along what I believe may qualify as your requested indicator of his good faith. He told me that he heard from other members of his gang that the rival gang member whose body was dumped at the FBI office was killed by Esteban Ortega at the car wash. He also said that if we can agree on a plea, he can provide you with the whereabouts of Mr. Ortega. He said you’d know what that meant.”
“I do. Thanks, Mitch. We’ll get back to you shortly.” Trask looked at Wilkes. “Feel like doing some more work on our case today, Frank?”
“Of course.”
“Great,” Trask said. “Who has the keys to the car wash?”
“Our forfeiture guys have ’em,” Doroz said. “The property was subject to becoming the property of the government since it was used to facilitate the marijuana grow. I’ll get the keys and meet you in the parking garage.”
“Call our DEA and CIA friends and tell ’em we’ll see them tomorrow morning, Bear,” Trask said. “We need to get to that crime scene now, before what evidence may be left disappears, and I need a little quiet time to think about what we can do with Moreno.”
“Sure. Any ideas for now?”
Trask shook his head. “Not a damned one.”
He followed Doroz to the squad supervisor’s office. “Santos’ attorney said that his guy can tell us where Ortega is holed up,” Trask said. “I’ll try and get some plea terms approved and then we’ll roll on that. If Frank Wilkes can do his magic at the car wash, we may have a homicide we can actually prosecute.”
“Just give me some lead time to write the arrest plan. You know how detailed the Bureau wants its operations plans these days. You’d think we were planning D-Day the way they want everything triple-checked in advance. I’ll have to get the SAC and ASAC on board.”
“Sure. Maybe we can give Ortega a nice heads-up so he won’t move in the meantime. You know, an invitation to remain in place, awaiting arrest.”
Doroz shot him a warning glance. “It’s not my FBI anymore, Jeff. We’ve forgotten how to do crim work. Everybody just sits at computers and chases terrorism ghosts now. We have a War on Terror, in case you haven’t heard.”
“Sorry. I know it’s not your call. We’ll give you as much lead time as possible. See you downstairs.”
Trask and Doroz watched as Wilkes walked the length of the car wash floor, spraying luminol, then waving his UV light over the areas he’d sprayed.
“Who was that old Greek guy, the one with the lamp?” whispered Doroz.
“I heard that.” Wilkes didn’t even look up from his work.
“Diogenes of Sinope,” Trask said. “The original Stoic. He carried a lantern in the daytime, looking for an honest man.”
“Yeah, him.” Doroz looked at Trask and shook his head in disbelief.
“I’m looking for an honest clue in the dark,” Wilkes shot back. “I didn’t actually expect to find much here in the middle of the track, even though it’s a great place to cut somebody up. You run the wash after you’re done, and there are torrents of soap and water to wash everything down the drain. The more washes, the fewer clues.” He stood up, looking around the building.
“Quiet, genius at work,” Doroz said, smiling.
“Only if I find something, Mister Special Agent.” He pointed toward the door where cars would enter the wash. “There, I believe.”
“Because?” Doroz asked.
“Because they needed to load the body in a vehicle to dump it. The corpse thrown in front of your building had been used as a cutting board. It would have been leaking like a colander. If you are a functioning, thinking criminal, and you’re using a pickup, you can wash the blood off the side of the truck by running it through the wash after you’ve dragged the bleeding corpse down there and thrown it into the truck bed. You don’t want to do that in the middle of the wash while it’s running. You’d get yourself soaked. There may be some dried blood in the concrete seams at that end. If they didn’t hose it down well enough, we might get lucky.”
Trask watched Wilkes get down on all fours, crawling the length and width of the entrance to the wash. Spraying, lighting, spraying, lighting. I wonder if obsessive compulsive disorder is a prerequisite to being good at that job, he thought. Then he smiled. Or to my job.
“Bingo!” Wilkes pointed to a corner of the wash where the walls met the floor. “Looks like they hosed it down some, but just shot the blood into this corner. They didn’t think to hose the corner out.” He pulled a swab from a small plastic bag, ran it along the joint, and returned it to the bag, marking it with a number and his initials. He then stood up and took a series of photographs of the area.
“Enough for some DNA, Frank?” Trask asked.
“I think so. Hope so,” Wilkes said. “It’ll take a while. It’s not a TV show. I’ll let you know.”
Trask nodded. “Thanks, Frank.”
7:15 p.m.
Crawford handed her the wine bottle as she answered her door. She was cooking for them this evening.
He sniffed the aroma as he walked in. Another gourmet meal from the most beautiful girl on the planet. I should pinch myself, but I can’t. “That smells wonderful, as usual,” he said.
She smiled, turned and kissed him long and hard. “I have many more dishes from my country to share with you,” she said. “And many more days and nights, if you will let me.”
“I’d love all of that, and all of you.”
She smiled, kissed him again, then pulled back a little. “Have you ever thought of living in another country?”
“Not really, why?”
“I love you and your country, but I love mine, too. I don’t know that I can keep this job forever. I may have to go home soon, depending on the situation at the embassy. I’m sure the government will name a new permanent ambassador, and he may want to bring a new staff with him.”
He nodded, frowning.
“You could come with me, Michael,” she said. “We—my family—have connections. You could be a permanent resident, and someone with your background would have no trouble finding work. The cost of living is very cheap compared to America. We could be together.”
“There’s nothing that means more to me than being with you, Marissa. But that would mean the end of my career here, and leaving my country is a lot to think about.”
“You could have a similar career in El Salvador. We know many people there. I will help you with the language.” She smiled at him and kissed him again, pulling herself tightly against him, her head on his shoulder. “I love you, Michael,” she whispered. “We are so much alike. We love each other, like the same things.” She looked into his eyes. “We even hate the same things, like criminals and murderous gangs who have no respect for order or society.”
A timer on the stove went off.
“Dinner is ready. Will you at least think about it?”
“I already am,” he said.
“Good!” She kissed him again. “Don’t wait too long to give me your answer.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she walked toward the kitchen.
Luis Moreno-Montillo, also known as Jorge Rios-Garcia, also known as His Excellency, the acting ambassador of El Salvador to the United States of America, sat cleaning his sniper rifle at the desk formerly occupied by the late Juan Carlos Lopez-Portillo. He looked up as the big man entered the office.
