The Reckless

by David Putnam

  Whitney said, “Cut him loose. I’m done with all of this. It’s not working anyway. Cut him loose.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Do it. I don’t think he knows where she is. And now I don’t think he’s a part of it either.”

  “You can tell just like that?”

  “I said cut him loose. This was a stupid move, and I should never have gone along with it.”

  Turner stepped behind the chair, opened a knife, and cut the zip ties. I rubbed my wrists and noticed they’d taken my duty weapon. “My gun, I want it back.”

  Whitney nodded. Turner shook his head, pulled it from the waistband at the small of his back. He opened the cylinder, kicked out the bullets, closed it, and handed it to me. He kept the bullets. I took the gun, extended my hand, and waited. He hesitated and then gave me the ammunition. I reloaded and holstered. “I’m just as worried about her as you are.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” Whitney asked.

  “Out in front of Lucy’s on Long Beach Boulevard about four hours ago.”

  Whitney looked up at Turner.

  “What?” I asked.

  Whitney said, “That’s when we lost her.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you following Chelsea? Why? What did you mean by you didn’t think I was involved? Involved in what?”

  Turner said, “That’s on a need-to-know basis, and, friend, you don’t have a need to know.”

  I looked at Whitney. “You two buffoons crashed into my truck, tied me up, and brought me to this sleazebag motel.” I looked around at the broken-down and scarred furniture, the tired and worn carpeting. “Now you’re saying I don’t have a need to know?” I shifted my gaze to Turner. “And for the record, I’m not your friend.”

  Whitney stood, turned his back, and moved a couple steps away in the small motel room. He put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. “We made a mistake and then compounded it.” He couldn’t face me while admitting guilt. He continued, “It’s time to contain this as best we can. I’m afraid we’re all going to be in trouble on this one.” He turned. “I’m going to trust you and tell you what’s going on.”

  “Tell me what? What did you two do?”

  Turner said, “Not all of it. Don’t tell him all of it.”

  “Shut up.” Whitney turned back to me. “It’s not what we’ve done. It’s what Chelsea’s done.”

  “She hasn’t done a damn thing wrong. The only thing she did was save my life two years ago by ramming her car through the wall. And you guys crucified her for it. Sent her to Bismarck on a midnight transfer when she should’ve been given a medal.”

  Whitney stepped back and sat in the chair. “I don’t disagree with you, Deputy Johnson, but we’ve lost her and we need to find her as fast as we can, so I’m going to trust you.”

  Turner said, “I’m telling you, don’t do this, sir.”

  Whitney shook his head. “I said, shut up.”

  I asked, “What is it you think Chelsea’s done?”

   CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  WHITNEY IGNORED MY question and asked, “What did she tell you about what happened in North Dakota?”

  Turner, more contemptuous now, said, “We know about you and Chelsea, so don’t try and pretend she didn’t tell you during your pillow talk.”

  Whitney scowled at him.

  I directed my answer to Whitney, ignoring Turner or I’d lose it and end up pistol-whipping him. I thought about doing it anyway. He couldn’t report it, not after what he had just done to me. “She told me an agent by the name of Mac got sideways with an informant that he used on a dope deal. Mac was supposed to pay this informant—I think his name was Beals—a million-dollar commission on a ten-million-dollar asset forfeiture. This Mac held back 200k. So when the informant got his 1099, he saw the discrepancy and called to blow the whistle on Mac. How am I doing?”

  “You have a good memory, Deputy,” Whitney said. “Keep going.”

  “Is that all correct? Is that the way it happened?”

  “Keep going.”

  She’d been emotional when she’d told me, her face resting on my chest as she cried warm tears that wet my skin. I didn’t tell them that part. They didn’t have a need to know. “She said she took the call as the Officer of the Day and went to alert Mac of the impending disaster. Her thinking was that if Mac gave the money back before anyone discovered the crime, he might at least avoid some jail time. Anyway, she told him and left. He was really drunk. When she got down to the car, she realized she’d made a mistake and went back, but it was too late. Mac had shot himself. She felt terrible about what happened and blamed herself.” I swallowed hard, afraid of what Whitney would say next and cringed a little when he spoke.

  “You have everything correct except the numbers—they’re reversed. Agent MacDonald paid the informant two hundred thousand and skimmed the other eight hundred for himself.”

  I let that sink in and tried to make it work. “That can’t be all of it. Give me the rest,” I said, as my jaw tightened.

  Turner interjected. “The money’s missing. And she’s in violation now for telling you. She signed a nondisclosure agreement regarding our internal investigation into the matter.”

  “If the money is missing,” I said, “it doesn’t mean a thing. Mac was a Special Agent for the FBI. He’d know how and where to hide it, how to launder it.” I ignored the part about the nondisclosure agreement; that wasn’t a criminal violation. She could deal with a black mark in her file, but not prison.

  Whitney stared at me, his eyes old and bleary.

  “Come on,” I said. “You can’t possibly think she took the money? You know her. She’s very good at her job. One of the best I’ve seen and … she … she saved my life. Put her whole career at risk doing it. Does that sound like a thief with a skewed moral compass? No, sir.” I shook my head. “You’re wrong about her. Did you pull her in and ask her? I’m sure she can clear it all up if you’d just give her a chance and ask her.”

  “I know how you must feel,” Whitney said. “But here’s the rest of it. Under the circumstances, the Bureau decided to transfer her out for the betterment of the Bureau and everyone involved.”

  “She told me that, too, said they tossed her a bone to keep her quiet. The fact that you gave her a nondisclosure backs that up. She said the press never found out about it.”

  Whitney held up his hand. “Wait, just listen to me. We jumped the gun transferring her. The forensics came back on the shooting of MacDonald.”

  I jumped up and paced. “No. No. No. She didn’t shoot MacDonald. For sure you got that part all wrong.”

  “Please sit. I never said she shot MacDonald.”

  I paced a few more times and then sat.

  Whitney spoke, calm and controlled. “The TOD—the time of death—does not match her statement as far as how it went down. She said she heard the shot and went right back in and found him with no time lapse in between.”

  “How long?” I asked, too loud and with contempt.

  “Close to four hours.”

  I leaned over and put my face in my hands. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes, even an hour and a half could be within the margin of error for the TOD, but four hours? That gave her plenty of time to hide—

  I suddenly sat back in the chair, my mouth sagging open.

  “What?” Whitney asked. “You just thought of something important. What is it?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m just trying to rectify every part of this in my mind.”

  But that was a lie. I’d just remembered what she’d said not hours earlier: “We don’t ever have to come back. Just you and me, white sand beaches and piña coladas forever.” She wanted to go to the Grand Caymans, a place well known for keeping offshore money hidden from the US Government.

  Whitney said, “The cause of death was also in question. The angle of the entry wound wasn’t normal for most suicides. A very low per
centage for them, anyway.” He shrugged. “Which doesn’t make a big difference, not in and of itself.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I swallowed hard. “Okay. Then I’m still missing something here. Why am I here if you know all of this?” My mind came up to speed just as I said it and I answered the question myself in a whisper. “She’s working Bank Robbery. You think that if she were already dirty in Dakota … that … that she’s taken this opportunity to seize money to … to keep recovered bank money from robberies. That’s why you were following her. Oh my God, that’s why you asked to have our team folded in with yours. But … but that still doesn’t make any sense; you didn’t bring me into it to watch her. So there wouldn’t be any reason to …” I looked at Whitney for him to help in my confusion.

  He waited for me to work it out all on my own. Only I couldn’t. The answer floated in the back of my brain, refusing to come forward. Refusing to believe the truth.

  Whitney whispered, “Sergeant Ned Kiefer from your Internal Affairs was a plant, and now he’s dead.”

   CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  SERGEANT?

  Ned? Ned was a sergeant?

  “Ned was a sergeant with Internal Affairs? What are you talking about? You mean Ned was—”

  Turner leaned against the dresser with his arms crossed. “As it turns out, Ned Kiefer was a poor choice. He had too many personal problems that got in the way of doing his job.”

  “I don’t believe you. He would’ve told me. He would’ve told—” Then I remembered my first undercover assignment, the number one rule: “Tell no one.”

  I’d violated that rule and it almost killed me. When I made that terrible mistake, Chelsea had come to my rescue and saved me. Now with the Gadd investigation I’d again been thrust into a similar situation. Only this time I was one of the people on the inside who didn’t know the game and wasn’t told the rules. Ned had not violated the first rule, he’d not told his best friend what was going on. The consummate professional. The sadness that he didn’t trust me took hold and dragged me down further.

  Had it contributed to his death? If he had told me, would it have made a difference? Would things have changed going through that door?

  After my mind put all the pieces together, I looked at Whitney. “There’s only one reason you’d put an undercover on the team. You thought Chelsea was somehow linked to the bank robbers. Is that right? Am I right?” I raised my voice. “You think she’s aligned herself with that asshole, Gadd? You’re out of your ever lovin’ mind.”

  Whitney didn’t verbally answer; he didn’t have to. I read it in his eyes. I shot a hand out and grabbed a handful of his dress shirt and tie. “So that means … that means, because Chelsea and I were involved on a personal level, you didn’t know whether or not I had agreed to come into her little game. Is that it? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why it was appropriate to use our department’s Internal Affairs division. Right?”

  Turner tried to intervene and grabbed onto me. Whitney held up his hand and stopped him. Turner let go.

  I let go of Whitney. I said, “No, that’s not enough to prove a thing. You have to have more. You have to have something that implicates her with Gadd. It can’t just be supposition, or circumstantial. You have to have something solid. What is it? Wait. Let me guess, you’re up on her phone and you have conversation. Right? Is that it?”

  Turner looked at Whitney and said, “This bonehead is too smart for his own good.”

  “What is it? What do you have? What did she say?”

  Whitney stood and straightened his tie. “We didn’t have enough for the tap.”

  “So a pin register then?” I said. “You trapped and traced all of the phone numbers she used coming in and going out. So what? So she called Gadd’s phone number. That doesn’t mean a damn thing. Anybody could’ve answered. You don’t know for sure. For all you know, she could have an informant inside his crew.”

  Turner said, “According to our policy, she would have had to notify her supervisor if she did and also have an informant file with a registered number. She made no such notification and there isn’t a file or number.”

  “That’s a policy violation. That doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy that would get a judge to agree to a pin register.”

  Whitney said nothing.

  I said, “That ain’t shit. That could mean anything and you know it.”

  Whitney shook his head. “Don’t be a fool. You’re looking at this as someone emotionally involved and not thinking objectively. Look at the totality of the circumstances.”

  “There’s not enough. There’s not.”

  Whitney said to Turner, “Show him.”

  I looked at Turner. “Yeah, show me.” But I really didn’t want to see what they had. I loved her too much. I’d lost Ned. Now they wanted me to think I’d lost Chelsea, too.

  Turner went over to the scarred bureau, reached into a black nylon field case, and pulled out a manila file folder. He came over and handed it to me. My hands quivered as I opened the file to 8”×10” black-and-white photos.

  Turner said, “Don’t feel too bad, she’s made fools out of all of us as well.”

  From a distance, the photo depicted a large black man with his back to the camera, who could or could not have been the Darkman. He leaned into a maroon Crown Victoria handing over a package, a folded paper bag in the size and shape that could’ve been a stack of US currency. I recognized the location—the parking lot of Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles.

  I also recognized Chelsea as the driver of the Crown Vic.

  My stomach turned sick. How could she do it?

  I thumbed through the other photos looking for one that confirmed the guy as the Darkman and didn’t find it. “Who’s the dude?”

  Turner jumped forward, pointed his finger, and raised his voice. “That’s Gadd and you damn well know it. That happened right after one of the bank jobs four weeks ago, before you came into this thing. Before we put your team on him.”

  “Before you put Ned on her, you mean.” I closed the file and handed it back. “I can’t confirm that it’s Gadd, not by those. Whoever took these really screwed up and ought to be fired.”

  Turner yelled, “I took them. It was the best I could get. It was almost like the dude knew someone was on him.”

  “If you were involved, I bet he did.”

  He let the file drop and clenched his fists.

  Whitney yelled, “Stop it, the both of you!”

  He came over to me. “This thing has gone off the rails. We’re asking you nice to help us get it back on track.”

  “Not only no, but hell no.” I headed for the door.

  Whitney said, “Where are you going?”

  “You want me to wear a wire to trap Chelsea. I won’t do it. Make your case any way you want, but not with me. I’m going to prove you two assholes are wrong.”

  “It wouldn’t be prudent to do that alone, Deputy Johnson. Let us go with you.”

  At the motel room door, I looked back at them. “Not a chance, pal.” I stepped back over to the file on the floor and grabbed one of the photos with Chelsea and Gadd. I folded it twice into a square and stuck it in my back pocket. I slammed the door on my way out and took off running.

  And kept running.

  After fifteen minutes of weaving in and out for five blocks, I got my bearings. They’d driven me into the city of Compton off of Rosecrans. I found a pay phone and paged Chelsea once more but this time with a “911. 911. 911.”

  I stepped back into the shadows and waited, watching the street. No way did I want members from the Sheriff’s Department or the FBI following along.

  I checked my watch. Checked it again. At eleven minutes the pay phone rang. I stepped back into the halo of illumination cast by the streetlight, visibly vulnerable for far too long, and jerked up the phone. “Chelsea?”

  “Bruno, where are you?”

  “What happened? You were supposed to follow Olli
e. Never mind, come pick me up. I’ll be at the corner of Spring and Elm in Compton. Hurry.” I hung up so she couldn’t object. I stepped back into the shadows one more time and watched. They would have at least tried to follow me from the motel. I know I would’ve. I turned and jumped the fence heading south through the yards, crossing more streets. The black-and-white photos of Chelsea with Gadd wouldn’t leave me alone and scraped on my soul like fingernails on a chalkboard. Not Gadd, Jesus, not with Gadd.

  I cut over to Spring Street, traveled west through the alley and back into the yards. Without a helicopter, they wouldn’t know that I’d left the shadows by the phone, if they’d even been with me up to that point. I zigzagged a few more times until I came out onto Elm just as a white Toyota Celica pulled up and shut off its lights. I tried to peer in through the tinted glass. The driver’s window came down. I put my hand on my gun butt.

  “Bruno, quit messing around and get in.”

  Chelsea.

  I ran around and got in. She took off.

   CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  AFTER TWO LONG blocks, she pulled over and stopped. She leaned over for a kiss. I wanted that kiss and put everything else aside, closed my eyes and kissed her like I’d never kissed her before. Kissed her like it would be the last. I wound my fingers in her hair and pulled her in.

  She tasted of warm, wet peppermint. And for a second, the briefest of moments, I didn’t care if she did do what they accused her of, I’d still follow her to the dark side of the moon.

  She chuffed when we broke, but she held on to my head looking into my eyes. “Well, hello, cowboy, where have you been all of my life?”

  After all that had happened, holding her felt like holding a live grenade and not being able to let go.

  Her eyes were alive, ready to handle anything that came along. Ready to drive a car through a wall to get to me. I didn’t see any deception, or any form of the evil Whitney and his flunky had described. They were out of their minds.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go.”

  “All right. But why are you out here on foot? Where’s your car? Is Gadd around here someplace?”