The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel

by Robert Crais

“Undercover coppers are like that, Hannah. That’s why he makes me drive this crappy car.”

  Hannah.

  “Thank the lady, Maggie. Shake.”

  Hannah beamed when the dog lifted its paw.

  “She’s such a sweet girl.”

  Scott dimpled like a poster boy.

  “If you’re one of the good guys.”

  Hannah giggled and returned to her office. The dog jumped in beside me, and Scott slid in behind the wheel.

  “I asked if we could use the place to train.”

  “And just like that, she went for it?”

  Scott glanced in the mirror.

  “People love dogs.”

  We rolled through the gate and took a quick tour.

  Safety Plus Storage was laid out along a grid of alleys like a rectangle cut down the center and across the middle. The alleys were lined with dusty, beige sheds, which were partitioned into different-size units. Customers provided their own locks to ensure their security.

  Scott decided to follow a clockwise search pattern and parked near the gate. Hannah watched from the office door and waved. Scott and I waved back. Pike didn’t.

  Scott said, “I’m going to work Maggie off leash, so stay a few steps behind us. If she sniffs you or bumps you, don’t pet her.”

  “You said she doesn’t bite.”

  “When we work, she’s all business. Right, Maggie? Am I right, pretty girl?”

  Scott spoke to the dog in a little kid’s voice, and something between them changed. She dropped to her chest with her butt in the air, as if she knew what was coming and desperately wanted to play.

  He unclipped her leash and pointed at the nearest shed.

  “Find it, girl. Maggie, seek!”

  She swirled away with effortless power, and followed his point. The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched.

  “Marine.”

  Scott let the dog range ahead. She sniffed along the base of five or six units, then he crossed her to the opposite side. Pike and I followed, contributing nothing.

  We reached the first corner, and turned. A camera tree stood overhead, sprouting a bloom of cameras. I wondered if Hannah was watching. Her movie had to be more interesting than three men following a dog, but the movie hadn’t shaken her hand.

  We reached the far back corner, and turned again. The dog crossed, and re-crossed, and was approaching the central intersection when she backtracked, and grew agitated. Her head swung low to the ground, and her pace quickened. She reversed herself, reversed again, and abruptly lay down, facing a door.

  Scott said, “Damn.”

  “She found it?”

  “This is what she did at my car and the house. That’s her alert.”

  The dog gave Scott a sloppy, German shepherd grin, and Scott called her away.

  The nearest camera watched from the corner behind us, and another watched from the far corner. The ax had an unobstructed view, but we would be small in the frame, and far away.

  Pike moved close to block the camera.

  The lock was a beast, with a shrouded shackle, a drill plate protecting the core, and a security rating too high for my pick gun. Scott fidgeted when I took out my tools.

  “Dude. That’s a four-fifty-nine. Burglary.”

  “Watch the office. If she comes out, let us know.”

  Scott didn’t move.

  “What if you can’t open it?”

  Pike said, “Keep watch.”

  Scott clipped up his dog, and hurried away.

  I inserted the tension bar, and went to work with the rack pick. The lock opened three minutes later.

  Amy’s unit was the size of a small room, with a table in the center set up as a workbench. Scissors, spools of thread, and a roll of black fabric covered the table, along with two battery-powered lamps. Inexpensive shelving units hugged the wall behind the table, and were crowded with boxes, bags, and white plastic bottles. A tailor’s dummy wore a fringed leather jacket in the corner, admiring itself in a mirror propped against the wall. Amy’s unit was more like a tailor’s shop than a cache of explosives.

  Pike and I quickly moved to the shelves. The explosives could be in a single box, or cut into pieces for easier storage.

  A shopping bag from a local hobby store contained kits for making buzzers and doorbells. Jugs of liquid resin and rolls of plastic food wrap sat beside the bag, and a mini-loaf baking pan was wedged between the jugs. Plastic sewing kits were stacked next to X-Acto knives, and so many arts and crafts supplies Amy could open a hobby shop.

  The next bag held a heavy, two-quart plastic food container filled with a white material like modeling clay. I pressed my thumb into the surface, and left a depression.

  “Joe.”

  Pike looked, and tossed me a smooth, white block. The putty I’d found was heavy and pliable, but the block was light, and hard.

  Pike said, “Resin?”

  The shape and size reminded me of the baking pan. It was cut into six cavities, each about an inch deep, three inches wide, and seven long. The resin block fit perfectly.

  “Yeah. She made it.”

  I flashed on a snapshot I’d seen in her home. Amy with Jacob and his high school newspaper friends, holding a tray heaped with dark rectangles. The cakes could have come from this pan, and probably had. Maybe Amy was still making cakes for her son, only now with a less happy intent.

  I was searching the shelves again when Scott ran up to the door.

  “Hannah came out. Did you find it?”

  “A few pounds. We’re looking.”

  “Look faster. If she sees what we’re doing, we’re screwed.”

  “Stall. Buy us five minutes.”

  Scott hurried away.

  The next shelf brimmed with more rolls of cloth, crayon-colored spools of insulated wire, and a tool kit with all the tools necessary for do-it-yourself appliance repair.

  Pike said, “Look.”

  He held out another resin block, as smooth and white as the first until he turned it over.

  Faint steel eyes peered from the resin. I knew what they were even before Pike showed me the bag of ball bearings.

  Ball bearings had been layered in the mold before the resin was poured. The steel eyes were as cold and merciless as the eyes of a crab, but a bag I found on the bottom shelf frightened me more.

  Silver tubes bulged in a Ziploc bag. Each was the size of a short pencil, and twin wires sprouted from an end. I knew what they were from my Army days, only the wires back then were longer. These had been cut and stripped, and were ready for use. I looked under the Ziploc, and lifted the bag to the table.

  “Electric detonators, and more explosives.”

  Neatly wrapped bricks of plastic explosive were stacked beneath the detonators. Each was identical in size and shape to the resin block.

  Pike came closer.

  “How much?”

  “Thirty or forty pounds. More like forty.”

  I took a block from the bag, and turned it over. Eyes. I checked another. Eyes. A third. Eyes. Pike and I glanced at each other, and turned to the jacket.

  The lovely leather jacket with its generous fringe was large for Amy, but otherwise identical to the jacket she wore.

  Scott pounded up with the dog at his side.

  “Did you find the rest?”

  I touched the fine leather. It was soft, and the fringe was as light as air.

  Pike said, “Just the two bags. Get your car.”

  Scott moved closer.

  “This isn’t four hundred pounds.”

  “Get the car.”

  Scott cursed, and pounded away.

  I opened the jacket. Rows of pockets were sewn under the arms, down the sides, and across the lining, each joined to the next by neatly stitched lines of brightly colored
wire. The resin block with its ugly steel eyes fit the pockets perfectly.

  My head filled with a steady hum, like a fluorescent light beginning to fail. I saw Amy, past and future, what she intended and what she had done, as if her ghost were beside me.

  Amy had shaped her putty in the mini-loaf pan. She wrapped each block carefully, and taped the seams as neat as a birthday surprise. The wrapping would make them easier to handle, and use. I didn’t count the bricks or the pouches, but their number would be the same, and the weight of their special surprise would be about forty pounds, same as a four-year-old boy. Amy probably swung Jacob in circles when he was four. She knew she could carry the weight, and would carry it again, with just as much love.

  Once the blocks were in their pockets, she’d press a tube into each, and daisy chain them together with crayon-colored wire, making for a festive display. These rainbow wires would twine to a switch, a switch she, herself, had built, which would send an electric kiss to each silver tube, instantly, simultaneously, causing everything thereafter to happen so fast Amy would not feel the furious explosion, as it shattered the air and the people around her with an agonized mother’s roar.

  I said, “Oh, Amy.”

  Scott’s car pulled up fast, and he ran to the door.

  “Tell me you found it. Tell me we got the stuff.”

  Pike said, “Just the bags.”

  I stroked the soft leather, and loved Amy Breslyn so much my heart broke. Everything Charles and Janet Hess and I believed about her was wrong. Amy outsmarted us.

  Scott came closer, looking angrily from me to the jacket.

  “What is this? What’s she doing in here?”

  Pike closed the jacket, and picked up the bags.

  “A suicide coat. The woman’s.”

  I said, “She plans to wear it, Scott.”

  Pike pushed me toward the door.

  “Go now. Move.”

  I wanted to burn the unit. I wanted to torch the fine leather jacket and the wire and scissors and thread, and cloud the sky with smoke, but we didn’t. I slipped the jacket off the mannequin, and folded it over my arm.

  We locked Amy’s unit, and quietly drove away.

  49

  WE SWUNG IN behind Pike’s Jeep. Pike and Scott got out, and I climbed over the seat while Pike stowed the bags and jacket in his Jeep. Scott met me on the sidewalk.

  “Okay, it isn’t here. Now what?”

  I wasn’t sure what. The only thing I knew was that quitting on Amy wasn’t an option.

  “Keep pushing. Jon’s on her. She’ll lead us to it today or tomorrow.”

  “Cole, let’s think it through. This poor woman isn’t looking for answers. She wants to kill these people, and she’ll kill herself to do it. She’s a fifty-one-fifty.”

  Fifty-one-fifty was the LAPD code for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold.

  “This is called helping her. She’s safe for now. We still have time to figure out what Hess is doing, and take down Charles and Colinski.”

  “Maybe we don’t need to wait. She’s a middle-aged, middle-class lady who lost her son. She’ll give up Charles and Colinski and the rest of it the second we grab her.”

  Pike said, “Won’t happen.”

  “Meaning what?”

  I picked up the answer.

  “Meaning that person died between here and Nigeria. Amy’s smart, and stronger than anyone knows. If she lawyers up, even for only a day, the deal will fold, and Colinski and Charles will vanish.”

  I took out my phone and called Jon Stone.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “We bought gas, hit the drive-thru at In-N-Out, and bought some flowers. Now we’re at Forest Lawn.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “Jacob. She’s been at his grave for about twenty minutes.”

  Saying good-bye. Or confessing.

  I told him what we’d found.

  “She never intended to sell to these people. That’s why she’s pushing to meet the buyers. The explosives are bait to get them into the kill zone.”

  Jon was silent a half second too long.

  “She’s making it for someone else.”

  “It’s for her. It looks like the jacket she’s wearing now, the same jacket she wore last night. Identical. She probably wears the twin so they get used to it.”

  Jon made a long hiss.

  “Tell me you got the putty.”

  “Forty pounds and the detonators. The rest isn’t here.”

  “It’s not in her car, bro. I looked when she bought the flowers.”

  “If she comes back to the storage unit, we’re done. If she comes back—”

  His voice cracked like a whip when he answered.

  “I know what to do.”

  I put away the phone, and turned back to Scott.

  “Maybe she’s crazy, and maybe she’s a fifty-one-fifty, but this woman has been through enough. They took her son, the government can’t tell her squat, and here’s Hess, the big federal agent, doing what? Maybe this is all some Top Secret, deep-cover, high-level operation, but I don’t care. My interest is Amy. I’m going to take care of this woman. I’m going to find out what Hess is doing, and if I don’t like it, I’m going to take her down just like Charles and Colinski.”

  I rattled to a stop, and found them both staring.

  Pike said, “He gets on a roll.”

  Scott seemed tired and sad.

  “So how’s it play out?”

  “Sometime tomorrow, they’re supposed to wire-transfer money. When Amy gets the confirmation, she’ll take Charles to the explosives, and the two of them will deliver the material to the buyer. The way it sounded on the phone, Colinski will be with the buyers.”

  Scott nodded, and looked at his dog.

  “One more night.”

  Scott took a plastic bag from his pants, squeezed out a greasy cube, and offered it to the dog. Her delicate care surprised me. She picked the meat from his fingers as gently as a girl would touch a butterfly.

  “He knows where I live. He tried to kill her last night.”

  I didn’t understand what he was saying, and then I did.

  “Colinski?”

  “We found a dead raccoon in the yard, and poisoned meatballs. Raw hamburger, loaded with poison.”

  He tucked away the bag.

  “They couldn’t get close with the barking, I guess. That means they were trying. We have to stay somewhere else tonight.”

  “You’re welcome to stay with me. Both of you.”

  He laughed.

  “Carter would love it. Me bunking with you would make his day.”

  “Carter didn’t find poison in his yard. I’m serious.”

  “I’ll stay with my girlfriend, or one of the handlers.”

  He petted the dog, and shook his head.

  “Al-Qaeda. Your garden-variety American killer isn’t enough.”

  I wondered if Scott was scared. I had been hunted by dangerous men. They scared me every time.

  “If we keep the deal alive, everything ends tomorrow. You won’t have to worry about Colinski, and I’ll make sure Amy gets proper help.”

  “I’ll keep Carter out of it, Cole. I gave you my word.”

  He considered me for a moment, as if he were having second thoughts.

  “Are you going to bring in the police, or is this strictly DIY?”

  “When she’s safe. Might even call Carter.”

  Scott’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. He frowned at the message, and tapped out a quick reply.

  “Speak of the devil. They want me downtown. Mug shots.”

  I put out my hand.

  “Thanks for the help, and for keeping your word.”

  We shook.

  “You’re a strange dude, Cole
. Not as strange as Pike, but strange.”

  Scott slid into his car, and drove away. I looked at Pike.

  “Are we strange?”

  Pike went to his Jeep without answering, and brought me back to my car.

  50

  Scott James

  SCOTT DROPPED MAGGIE at Glendale before he rolled to the Boat. The parking lot was empty except for a single K-9 car, but this was typical. Most handlers worked out at the Academy gym before their shift. Since everyone was together, Leland held roll call in the parking lot, after which everyone drove a couple hundred yards to an ex-SWAT training field behind Dodger Stadium nicknamed the Mesa.

  Scott parked beside the K-9 car, let Maggie do her business, and got her squared away in one of the runs. He gave her his last chunk of baloney, told her he’d be back as quick as he could, and went to the office.

  Mace Styrik, the senior sergeant-supervisor, was kicked back at Leland’s desk, poring over training logs.

  “Hey, Sergeant. I’m leaving Maggie. Back in an hour or so.”

  Styrik waved without looking up.

  Scott left through the kennel to give Maggie a scratch, and went to his car. He hesitated when he reached his car, and studied the distant surroundings. Colinski had watched for him here. This was where they found him, and followed him to Runyon Canyon. Scott wondered if Colinski was watching him. The man might have a high-power rifle, with the crosshairs centered on his chest. Scott raised his middle finger.

  Eighteen minutes later, Scott parked at the Boat, and rode the elevator up to Major Crimes. Stiles met him at the door, but her usual smile was missing.

  “Did you find a place for tonight?”

  “Yeah. It’s going to work out.”

  Scott followed her toward the conference room. Ignacio, Carter, and a uniformed lieutenant were waiting inside. He was surprised, but the surprise turned to worry when he saw Mitchell and Kemp. They looked as grim as five funeral directors. Kemp’s eye ticked, the way it did when he was trying to control his anger.

  Stiles held the door until he was inside, then closed it and stepped to the side. Scott looked at Kemp, trying to get a read, and knew it was bad.

  Ignacio gestured at a chair.

  “Have a seat. You know everyone here except Lieutenant VanMeter. Lieutenant VanMeter is with Internal Affairs.”