Suspect

by Robert Crais

  She stopped with one leg out the door, and stared at him.

  “One of the shooters called another by name. Snell.”

  “Are you holding back anything else?”

  “No. That’s it. Snell.”

  “Snell.”

  She got out, closed the door, and started away.

  “Stay clear of the I-Man, Joyce. Please. Don’t trust anyone.”

  Cowly stopped, and looked back through the window.

  “Too late. I’m trusting you.”

  Scott watched her walk across the parking lot, and felt his heart breaking.

  “You shouldn’t.”

  He had pinned a target on Cowly’s back now, and knew he could not protect her.

  37.

  Joyce Cowly

  Cowly brushed at the last of the dog hair stuck to her pants, and stepped off the elevator. She stared down a hall she had walked for over three years, only now the hall loomed taller and wider and went on forever, and everyone in it watched her. A sharp pain stabbed behind her right eye. She heard her mother’s voice, I warned you not to watch so much TV, it must be a brain tumor. If only. Maybe her mother was right, and the tumor had made her as crazy as Scott. Only Scott wasn’t crazy. Scott had the disc and the diamonds.

  She pushed one foot forward and the next and after a while she entered the squad room. Orso was in his cubicle. Topping’s door was open, but now her office was empty. Meeks checked the time like he was anxious to leave. Men and women she had known for three years worked and talked and got coffee.

  Are you part of it?

  Can I trust you?

  Cowly went to the conference room, and sat down with the murder book. She sat facing the door so she could see if someone was coming.

  Cowly had spent most of her walk back from the Stanley Mosk Courthouse figuring out how to find out who opened the original Danzer case file at West Los Angeles Robbery. She couldn’t ask Ian or anyone who worked with Ian, and she couldn’t call West L.A. Robbery. If Scott was right, and these guys were bad, any question about Danzer would be a warning.

  Cowly had read the murder book twice and the complete case file once. She had only skimmed the sections referencing Beloit, Arnaud Clouzot, and Danzer. Knowing the Clouzot connection had been discounted by Robbery Special months earlier, she had seen no point in wasting time on a blind alley. She flipped through now, searching for the Danzer case number.

  Cowly quickly found the number, and took it back to her cubicle.

  She brought up the LAPD File Storage page, and was typing in the number when Orso surprised her.

  “Have you heard from Scott?”

  She swiveled to face him, trying to draw his eye from her computer. He glanced at her screen before he looked at her.

  “No. Is he still in the wind?”

  Orso’s face was pinched.

  “Would you mind calling him?”

  “Why would I call him?”

  “Because I’m asking. I left a message, but nothing. Maybe he’ll call you back.”

  “I don’t have his number.”

  “I’ll give it to you. If you reach him, try to talk sense to him. This thing is getting out of hand.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  He glanced at her computer again, and turned away.

  “Bud. You think he killed those people?”

  Orso made a face.

  “Of course not. I’ll get his number.”

  Cowly cleared her screen, and fidgeted until Orso returned. She typed in her file request as soon as he was gone. Officers were only allowed to request materials relevant to a case they were working on, so Cowly provided the number for an unsolved homicide that had been on her table for two years.

  Case #WL-166491 appeared as a PDF. The first document was a closure form filled out and signed by Ian Mills, along with a three-page statement describing how Dean Trent, Maxwell Gibbons, and Kim Leon Jones, all deceased, were found and identified as the perpetrators of the Danzer Armored Car robbery. Mills cited and referenced SID and San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department reports tying a weapon found as having been a weapon used in the Danzer robbery, as well as Transnational Insurance Corporation documents affirming that the two diamonds found were among those stolen in the robbery. He concluded that the three perpetrators of the robbery were now dead, and as such, the case was rightfully being closed.

  Boilerplate bullshit.

  Cowly skimmed the documents Ian attached, until she found the beginning of the original West L.A. file. It opened with a couple of form documents filled in and signed by the detectives who caught the case, followed by a scene report describing how the detectives received their orders to report to the scene, and what they found when they arrived. Cowly didn’t bother reading it. She skipped to the end. The report was signed by Detective George Evers and Detective David Snell.

  Cowly blanked her screen.

  Orso was in his cubicle, talking on the phone. Topping’s door was closed. She stood, took in the room, then sat and stared at the screen.

  She said, “You sonofabitch.”

  Cowly abruptly stood, and walked down the hall to the Robbery squad room. Same cubicles, same carpet, same everything. A Robbery detective named Amy Linh was in the first cubicle.

  “Is Ian here?”

  “I think so. I just saw him.”

  Cowly walked back to Ian’s office. The I-Man was scribbling something on a report when Cowly walked in. He looked surprised when he saw her, and maybe a little watchful.

  “Ian, you have more names to go with those white sideburns? We gotta bust these low-life, scumbag pieces of shit. We gotta fuck’m up.”

  She wanted to see him. She wanted to say it.

  “I hear ya. I’ll get you those names as soon as I can.”

  Cowly stalked back to her desk.

  George Evers.

  David Snell.

  She wanted to find out everything about them, and she knew how to do it.

  38.

  Ian Mills

  Robbery Special Section kept extensive files on people who stole for a living, whether they were actively being sought on warrant or not. Not chickenshit perps like teenage car thieves or the clowns who knocked over an occasional gas station, but hard-core professional thieves. Fifty minutes after Cowly left his office, Ian was searching this database for likely white-haired drivers when his email chimed, and he saw the note.

  His shoulders tightened when he saw it was an auto-notification from the Storage Bureau. Such notifications were available at the option of the commanding bureau, unit, or closing officer, and Ian had opted to be notified when any of his closed cases were requested. He did this for every case he closed, but he only cared about four. The others were only a cover story.

  Ian got up, closed his door, and returned to his desk. He had only received three notifications since the LAPD adopted the new system. Each time, he was afraid to open them, but all three had turned out to reference meaningless cases. It took him a full thirty seconds to work up his nut before opening it now. Then his belly flushed with acid.

  Danzer.

  The information provided by the notification was slight. It did not include the name of the requesting officer or agency, only the date and time of request, and the requesting officer’s active case number.

  The case number told him plenty, and he didn’t like what it told him.

  The number bore an HSS designator, which meant it was a Homicide Special Section case. Any dick on the Homicide side could walk forty feet, and ask whatever they wanted about Danzer, but someone had chosen to keep him out of the loop. This wasn’t good. An active case number was required to process the retrieval, which meant their case file was locked, but Ian had a work-around.

  He phoned down the hal
l, calling Nan Riley. Nan was a civilian employee, and Carol Topping’s office assistant.

  “Hey, Nanny, it’s Ian. Are you as beautiful now as you were ten minutes ago?”

  Nan laughed, as she always did. They had flirted for years.

  “Only for you, baby. You want the boss?”

  “Just a quick answer. You guys have an active down there—”

  Ian read off the number.

  “Who’s on it?”

  “Hang on. Let’s see here—”

  He waited while Nan typed in the number.

  “That’s Detective Cowly. Joyce Cowly.”

  “Thanks, babe. You’re the best.”

  Ian put down his phone, and liked this even less. If Cowly was interested in Danzer, he wondered why she didn’t mention it when she came to his office. Instead, she had shoveled up some bullshit about nailing the shooters in the Pahlasian case. He mulled over what this might mean, then gathered his things and walked down the hall to Homicide Special.

  Cowly was in her cubicle. She was hunched over her computer, and appeared to be on the phone.

  He walked up behind her. He tried to see what she was reading, but her head blocked the screen. She spoke so quietly he couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “Detective.”

  She jerked at his voice, and visibly paled when she turned. She pressed the phone to her chest, and leaned sideways to cover the screen. This wasn’t a good sign.

  Ian held out the list of names.

  “The names you wanted.”

  She took the page.

  “Thanks. I didn’t expect it so soon.”

  He watched shadows move in her eyes. She was afraid. This left him wondering how much the Ishi kid had told Scott James, and how much James told Cowly.

  “Happy to help. You going to be here a while?”

  “Ah, yeah. Why?”

  “I’ll try to come up with some others.”

  Ian returned to his office, closed the door, and used his cell phone to call George Evers.

  “We have a problem.”

  Ian told Evers what he wanted him to do.

  39.

  Three hours after their earlier meeting, Cowly texted Scott that she had the information about Danzer. They agreed to meet in the Stanley Mosk parking lot, same as before. Scott thought she looked tight and compressed when she got into his car.

  “I talked to a friend at Bureau Personnel about Evers and Snell, strictly on the down low. I told her I was thinking about using them on a task force, and needed top people. She understands. This woman was my first supervisor.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “They suck.”

  Scott wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that.

  “Snell has a rep for smart, efficient case work, but he’s sketchy. He likes to take chances and cut corners. He has no history with Ian, but Evers and Ian are hooked through the ass. Jesus, I’m already covered with fur. Look at this.”

  Maggie was laid out across the back seat.

  “I haven’t had time to brush. What about Evers?”

  Cowly brushed uselessly at her pants, and went on with her report.

  “Evers and Ian were partners for four years in Hollenbeck. Evers was the lead, but it was common knowledge Ian carried him. Evers got himself in the tall grass and made a mess of his life. He was drinking, the wife left him, all the usual blue nonsense. Ian covered for him and kept him going, but too many complaints were filed. When Ian jumped to Special, Evers was sent to West L.A.”

  “What kind of charges are we talking about?”

  “Deep-shit charges. You know finders keepers?”

  It was cop slang officers joked about, only for bad cops it wasn’t a joke. If they found a bag of cash when they made a bust, they left enough to meet the felony statute, and took the rest for themselves. Finders keepers.

  “I know. Did any of the dirt stick to the I-Man?”

  “Ian came out like a rose. He propped Evers up until Evers got his shit together.”

  Scott looked at Maggie, and touched her. She opened her eyes.

  “It flows both ways.”

  “What flows?”

  “If Ian cleaned up after Evers, there were times Evers cleaned up after Ian.”

  “Whatever. So now Evers is in West L.A., and his partner is Snell. They had Danzer for all of four days, then Ian sucked it up, and made them his front men. The very next day, that’s six days after the robbery, Evers obtained wiretap warrants on Dean Trent and William F. Wu.”

  Scott had no idea who these people were, but Cowly rolled on like an express train.

  “Two months later, Dean Trent, Maxwell Gibbons, and Kim Leon Jones were found murdered in the San Bernardino Mountains.”

  Scott remembered this from Melon.

  “The crew who took Danzer.”

  “So it’s believed, and it’s probably true.”

  Also what Melon said.

  “Who’s Wu?”

  “A fence in San Marino. He deals jewelry and art to rich people in China, but he’s hooked up in Europe, too. What makes this telling is Dean Trent and Wu are known to have a long relationship. If Dean Trent steals jewelry or art, you can bet he’s going to Wu.”

  Scott realized where she was going.

  “Evers and Snell knew Trent had the diamonds.”

  “Had to. Maybe one of Ian’s informants tipped him. It was only six days after the robbery, and they knew or suspected Dean Trent’s crew took the score. So they wired up Trent and Wu, and listened to these guys for the next three weeks. The case file contains no transcripts. None. Zero.”

  Scott felt numb.

  “They heard Wu make the deal with Clouzot. They knew Beloit was arriving, and when and where he would pick up the diamonds. They wanted to steal the diamonds.”

  Scott looked at Maggie. He touched the tip of her nose, and she play-bit his finger.

  “Is this enough to make our case?”

  Cowly shook her head.

  “No. I wish it was, but it isn’t.”

  “It sounds like enough to me. You can connect the dots from start to finish.”

  “Here’s what Ian would say, we received information from three independent reliable sources Trent was attempting to move the diamonds through Mr. Wu, who we know to have an established history with Mr. Trent. Acting on this reliable information, we obtained the required judicial warrant for wiretap service, but failed in our efforts to obtain incriminating information. We are left to believe Mr. Trent or Mr. Wu communicated only in person or using disposable phones. You see? Nothing here hurts him.”

  Scott felt himself growing angry.

  “Evers, Snell, and Mills make three. Five men hit Beloit.”

  “No one in what I’ve seen jumped out at me. Let’s focus on who we have. If we can bust these guys, they’ll give us the other two.”

  Scott knew she was right.

  “Okay. Are Evers and Snell still on the job?”

  “Snell is on the job, but Evers retired six days after the murders.”

  “That isn’t smart.”

  “I don’t know. He had the years. He’s older than Ian, so it’s not out of line.”

  “Old enough to have white hair?”

  “Jesus. I don’t know. I’ve never seen either one of these people.”

  Scott thought if Evers was old enough to retire, maybe he was the white-haired, blue-eyed driver, and his DNA would match with the hair follicles recovered from the getaway car.

  “Evers is the point man here. You have his address?”

  Cowly leaned back.

  “What do you think you’ll find, the diamonds? The diamonds are gone. The guns are gone. Every piece of t
hat night is gone.”

  “We need a direct connection between these people and the robbery, something that puts Evers or Snell or the I-Man there on the scene, right?”

  “Yes. If you want this so-called slam-dunk case, that’s what we need.”

  “Okay, I’ll nose around. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  “Weren’t you paying attention when we lectured you about the watchband? Nothing you find will be admissible. Your testimony about whatever you find will not be admissible. It will do us no good.”

  “I heard you. I won’t take anything. If I find something useful, you’ll come up with a work-around.”

  Cowly looked disgusted, but dug through her papers, and found George Evers’ address.

  “I should have my head examined.”

  “Have faith.”

  Cowly rolled her eyes, pushed open the door, and hesitated. She looked concerned.

  “You have a safe place to stay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  Scott watched her get out of the car, and wanted to say more.

  “Can I drive you back?”

  “I’ll walk. It gives me time to pick off the fur.”

  Scott smiled as she walked away, and pulled out of the parking lot. He went to find George Evers.

  40.

  Joyce Cowly

  Cowly cut through the Stanley Mosk parking lot, making her way toward the Boat. She picked away dog hair and brushed at her pants as she walked. That German shepherd was a beauty, but she was also a fur machine.

  Cowly reached the end of the parking lot, and stepped over a low chain barrier onto the sidewalk. She didn’t think they were doing this the right way, and now she worried Scott would contaminate the case. Cowly absolutely believed a conspiracy linked Danzer and the murders of Beloit and Pahlasian, and, by extension, Stephanie Anders, but she and Scott weren’t playing it the right way. She knew better, even if he didn’t, and she was irritated with herself for going along.

  Criminal police conspiracies had always existed, and always would, even within the finest police department in the world. There were protocols for dealing with such investigations, which often had to be conducted in total secrecy until charges were levied. Cowly had a friend who once worked with the Special Operations Division, and planned to ask her advice.