The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

  Phelps walked back in, clearing his throat ostentatiously to announce his presence. Strangeland looked up. “What do you got, Phil?”

  “More questions.”

  “No, I mean what have you found?”

  “Come on, Donna, you know—”

  “Listen, either Livia gunned down two innocent people here tonight, or this was a righteous shoot. Your offering her a touch of professional courtesy won’t change what happened. Or the result. But it might help an officer subject to a FIT investigation sleep a little better while this thing plays out. The video show anything?”

  Phelps looked at Strangeland for a moment, maybe caught between some innate stubbornness and the desire to offer a little comfort to a fellow cop. Then he sighed and looked at Livia. “The video looks good for you.”

  Livia felt a surge of relief. Not that a video would have contradicted her account. But with that steam vent, it might have shown nothing at all.

  “We’ve got officers searching for other cameras in the neighborhood,” he went on. “It’s mostly residential, so let’s not get our hopes up. On the other hand, more and more homeowners are installing video doorbells and other video security, and half the time they’ve got the units pointed straight at the street. Which is technically illegal, but it helps with police work, so we tend not to complain. Maybe we’ll get lucky there.”

  Strangeland reached out and squeezed Livia’s shoulder. “Anything else?”

  Phelps shrugged. “The woman had a tattoo on her arm.”

  Livia nodded. “I saw it when we were talking. Trash polka style. A wolf.”

  Phelps nodded. “Here’s the thing. It’s a fake. Temporary.”

  Strangeland looked at Livia, then back to Phelps. “What do you make of that?”

  “You said the woman was there for a while, Livia, is that correct?”

  “The whole hour I was teaching. And we were the last two to leave.”

  Phelps looked at his notes. “So she was seen by, what, twenty people? Thirty?”

  “At least.”

  “I had to guess, I’d say the tattoo was just to give all the witnesses something big and shiny and obvious to identify after you were killed. And give us something nonexistent to waste our time looking for.”

  Strangeland nodded. “Any way to ID the two of them?”

  Livia noted that the lieutenant didn’t call the man and the woman victims, which would have been the usual reference.

  “Not yet,” Phelps said. “Neither of them was carrying ID. Or anything else. Not even a car key.”

  “Jeez,” Strangeland said. “It’s almost like they went out intending to commit a murder or something.”

  “Certainly appears that way.”

  “Okay, then,” Strangeland said. “So you agree this was meant to be a hit. Someone trying to take out a cop.”

  Phelps shrugged. “That’s my working theory, yes. But not just any cop. They wanted that, they could have done another Lakewood.”

  The reference was to the 2009 execution of four Lakewood officers eating in a coffee shop before their morning shift. The gunman had seen their cruisers, stopped, and walked in solely to murder whatever cops he found.

  “So, Livia,” he went on. “It’s time for you and me to talk about what enemies you have.”

  Livia glanced at Strangeland. “That’s going to be a long talk.”

  “Well, we should be getting to the FIT office anyway. There’s plenty of coffee there. At this point, I’ll tell you my personal priority is to wrap up the officer-involved aspect of this investigation and focus on the likelihood that two people just tried to assassinate an off-duty Seattle cop. And might have gotten away with it, too, if the cop in question hadn’t been so tough and resourceful.”

  Livia was surprised and a little touched. “Thanks for that, Detective Phelps.”

  “Call me Phil. Now let’s figure out who’s out there with reason to want you dead.”

  As Livia predicted, the conversation about her possible enemies took a long time. She and Phelps started with felons she’d had convicted who had since been freed from prison. Then convicted gang members still incarcerated, because even from prison, gang members could direct crimes outside. And finally, arrests that didn’t lead to convictions but had caused social embarrassment or other difficulties for the individuals in question. By the time they were done with just the preliminary review, it was four in the morning. If they’d been at headquarters, the morning shift would already have started.

  “This Child’s Play thing,” Phelps said. “Tell me more about that.”

  Livia rubbed the back of her neck. She was tired now but still amped from the attack, which in this windowless, fluorescent-lit room was beginning to feel surreal. She’d interrogated plenty of suspects in rooms like this one, asking them the same questions different ways, gradually teasing out the lies. She didn’t know Phelps. Maybe what he’d told her about believing she’d defended herself against an assassination attempt was the truth. Or maybe it had been intended to lull her. After all, whatever semantics the PR people came up with, in the end Phelps was in charge of investigating Livia for a possible homicide. That would be bad enough under any circumstances. For Livia, though, the scrutiny felt worse than uncomfortable. It felt dangerous. She kept her activities compartmentalized—sealed off and far from her everyday life. But she’d read an article somewhere, something about how undersea mountains and trenches exert a gravitational force on the water thousands of feet above them, a detectable force that enabled scientists to map the contours of the deepest seabeds by measuring their effects on the surface. She’d always assumed that what she kept buried down deep was imperceptible to the people around her. But she hadn’t ever pressure checked the notion the way it might be pressure checked now.

  She reminded herself that it was natural, unavoidable, for a cop in her position to be anxious. It wouldn’t come across as anomalous or incriminating or anything else.

  Okay. She leaned back in the plastic desk chair and looked at Phelps. “You ever get tired?”

  “Not when I think someone just tried to assassinate a cop. How about you?”

  She had to give him a grudging smile for that. She actually wanted to believe he was sincere. Which of course was exactly what a good interrogator tries to get a suspect to feel.

  “Look,” she said. “I want to be clear. I’m not saying the Child’s Play op shutdown had anything to do with tonight, all right? I know there’s a mandatory psych eval after an officer-involved. I’d rather not go into that with people thinking I wear a tinfoil hat.”

  Phelps laughed. “I get it. Probably just a coincidence.”

  “Exactly.” She was aware that he had fed her the very word she’d used when briefing him earlier. It was that same interrogator’s technique—a way of establishing rapport and eliciting more information. No wonder so many cop marriages failed. Probably every little thing started to feel like a manipulation.

  “Still,” Phelps said, “the notion is that, what, there’s a child-porn ring inside the Secret Service, and the FBI contract hacker you were working with”—he consulted his notes—“Trahan, right. And Trahan spotted it because they were using his custom-developed encryption software. And then the Secret Service tried to have you killed as part of a cover-up. Is that it?”

  “Those are your words,” Livia said. “All I said was that the timing is odd.”

  Phelps nodded. “I think it’ll be more productive to stay focused on rapists you’ve sent away. Scumbags with a grudge.”

  Livia tended to agree, but saw nothing to be gained by saying so. “It’s your investigation.”

  Phelps’s cellphone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. “It’s the lieutenant.”

  “Strangeland?”

  He smiled. “Probably checking in to make sure I’m not sweating you too much. Don’t worry, she’s calling me because she knows she shouldn’t be calling you, and this is her way around it. I’ve known Donna a long time. She’d d
eny it, but she can be quite the mother hen.”

  He clicked the “Answer” key and raised the phone to his ear. “Hey, Donna. We’re still at it.” A pause, then, “Look, I broke protocol earlier as a courtesy, but for the rest of the interview, you know I’m supposed to keep the subject sequest—”

  Another pause, longer this time. Phelps frowned. “Hey, now, there’s no need for that kind of language. We’re on the same team, even if we have to play different positions. But fine, you win. Hold on.”

  He put the phone on the table and pressed the speakerphone key. “Can you hear us? It’s Phil and Livia.”

  Livia said, “Hey, LT.”

  “Turn on the news,” Strangeland said. “That flight Trahan and Special Agent Smith were on. The red-eye to DC. It went down in Lake Michigan.”

  chapter

  eleven

  RAIN

  I met Larison in the arrivals lounge at Dulles Airport in Virginia. He was coming in from Costa Rica. Narita would have been the most convenient departure point for me, but given my mystery caller’s mention of nearby Tokyo, I decided that Nagoya, though less convenient, would be a more comfortable way to begin my trip.

  Security was heavy—a plane had gone down that morning in Lake Michigan, and the chatter on cable news was all about ISIS. The politicians were outdoing themselves to propose retaliation—with Senator Walter Barkley, the front-runner in the presidential election, apparently increasing his lead in spot polls by promising to kill the families, including children, of ISIS members, and blaming the incumbent for the downed plane because “he was soft on ISIS.” And the head of America’s biggest private military contractor, Oliver Graham, was using the incident to argue for the abolition of the Transportation Security Administration and the handover of its responsibilities to Graham’s company, Oliver Graham Enterprises. It was all such an obvious racket—Graham wanted the Pentagon to turn over the entire fight against ISIS, and all the Middle Eastern wars as well—I was amazed anyone took it seriously. But apparently, people did.

  Despite the hysteria, though, I cleared customs easily enough. Taro Watanabe hadn’t visited the United States in several years, but his passport was current, and all his affairs were in order. Besides which, meek-looking, middle-aged Japanese salaryman types hardly fit the profile that occupies the mind of your average ICE or other federal agent.

  Larison stood when he saw me and gave me the familiar shark’s smile, albeit one with some incongruous warmth in it. He hadn’t changed much—the same brown hair, olive skin, and weightlifter’s physique. And the same undeniable aura of danger. Having lived uneventfully for several years in the quiet of Kamakura, I had learned to relax a little about watching my back. But one look at Larison had me checking my perimeter, even in the middle of a crowded airport.

  He walked over and we shook. Larison had large hands and an overly aggressive grip, but back in the day I’d trained to the point where I could crush an apple one-handed. Grip strength was a huge advantage in judo randori, and not a bad asset if you found yourself fighting for your life at close quarters, as well. If Larison thought of a handshake as some sort of contest, he was lucky I was past the age where those sorts of games interested me. Otherwise, he might have found himself with a fractured metacarpal.

  “Checking your six?” he said, still smiling. “I thought you wanted an airport because they’re safe. What is it about me that scares people so much?”

  I couldn’t help returning the smile—I didn’t have many acquaintances, and it had been years since I’d gotten together with one. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yeah, I suppose it has its advantages. But sometimes I wouldn’t mind being able to do it your way. Nobody ever notices you, unless you want them to. I almost overlooked you coming out of customs just now.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t tried to teach you.”

  “Yeah, and Dox, too, that goofball sidekick of yours. Biggest guy I’ve ever seen who could ghost like that.” He glanced around. “Hey, he’s not here with you now, is he?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. “No, he’s not. And don’t call him my sidekick. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “You know what I mean. I told you, he’s as protective of you as a goddamned dog.”

  “Yeah. A rottweiler.”

  He laughed. “I have to admit. By the end of the whole thing? He’d really grown on me. I don’t meet that many people I don’t spook. Hell, once or twice, he actually spooked me. It was refreshing.”

  We rented a car. Larison knew Horton’s address, naturally, though it wouldn’t have been difficult to find the place regardless, considering the detailed description Horton had given me. I offered to drive first, knowing Larison would understand that by first I meant the entire way. One of the things he’d picked up on when we worked together was that I had a hard time not being in control. Always anticipating an ambush can lead to an abhorrence of passenger seats, literal and metaphorical. Not that Larison was any different, of course, so his willingness to ride shotgun showed more than just courtesy—it showed trust, too.

  During the four-hour drive to Horton’s place in Coleman Falls, we caught up. We started by reminiscing about the hairier aspects of working with Horton to thwart that coup—ambushes by gunmen in hotel corridors; a nonstop cross-country ride in the back of a sweltering U-Haul truck while half the government’s antiterror apparatus tried to hunt us down; kidnapping Horton’s daughter, a sweet college kid named Mimi Kei, to make him back off when he was trying to fuck us.

  “You want to know why I’ve got a soft spot for your buddy, that’s the biggest reason,” Larison said. “I was in a bad place at the time. A really bad place. Hort’s people had threatened to have Nico’s nieces and nephews raped and his parents and sisters and brothers-in-law mutilated and maimed. Then they were going to tell Nico how it had been my fault, because I crossed them. Turn the one person in the world I . . . care about against me. And I was going to do Hort’s daughter in revenge. Send him her fucking head in a UPS box. I didn’t just grab her to get leverage. I wanted to punish him. But that Dox with his chivalry or whatever wouldn’t let me. If he hadn’t stopped me . . . I’ve done some dark things, I think you know that, but that would have been too much. It would have ruined me. It would have ruined . . . what I have with Nico.”

  It was strange, how time and distance could make people closer. When we were part of the detachment, Larison was barely keeping it together, radiating so much danger and pent-up violence that we were all heading toward an outcome where either he killed us or we killed him. But somehow we’d gotten past it. Not that he wasn’t still a formidable piece of real estate, but for him to talk like this about potential regrets, and about the man he loved, who represented probably his only vulnerability . . . it was a remarkable change.

  Beyond Lynchburg, the road narrowed to two winding gray lanes; the foliage grew thicker and older, sometimes forming a canopy overhead in the reds and yellows of autumn, and the houses became increasingly sparse and secluded. For a while it rained, but then the sun broke through, casting misty streaks through the tree branches. I could see why Horton liked it out here. It felt a million miles from DC.

  “I’m going to give him a call,” I said. “Let him know to expect us.”

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that. Come on. Don’t you want to see him crap himself when we show up?”

  “He’s not going to crap himself. But he might just grab a shotgun. We’re here for a talk, not a shootout.”

  Larison reached down to the soft carry-on between his feet. When he leaned back a moment later, he was holding a Glock with an exceptionally long magazine. “I could use another shotgun,” he said. “Make a good souvenir.”

  It hadn’t been so long before that Larison wouldn’t have been able to surprise me with a weapon—because I would have searched him before getting in a car with him. As it was, I was more surprised than disconcerted.
r />   “Is that the 18?” I said.

  “Machine pistol, yeah. Thirty-round mag, twelve hundred rounds a minute. Like the commercial says, don’t leave home without it.”

  “How the hell did you get that through customs?”

  He laughed. “I came through customs with nothing more suspicious than my underwear. I keep stashes all over the DC area. I got in ahead of you and stopped by one of them.”

  It was the kind of thing I would have done, and I realized I should have anticipated it. I wondered if my oversight was because I trusted Larison, or because I was getting old.

  Or maybe those were the same thing.

  “Well, it’s good you have it. But let’s try to do things so that you don’t have to use it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I knew you’d want to warn him. Go ahead.”

  I fished the burner I was carrying out of a pocket.

  “I’ve got a sat phone,” Larison said. “Harder to track. Why don’t I power it up?”

  “No, use the burner. It’s not associated with Horton or anything else.”

  “Okay by me.”

  I handed it to him. “You mind dialing?”

  He laughed.

  “What?”

  “Just the juxtaposition. Your high-risk lifestyle, and your care about not using a cellphone while driving. It’s endearing.”

  I didn’t mind being made fun of. I’d known plenty of people along the way who adopted an attitude of If I can survive the Valley of Death, why the hell should I worry about something like a seat belt? I understood the bravado. But most of the people I’d known who lived it also died from it.

  He powered up the phone and input the number. I heard a ring—he’d put it on speakerphone.

  A moment later, that unmistakable Delta baritone. “Hello.”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “I had a feeling you might be calling.”