The Pain Scale

by Tyler Dilts

  “Goodman?” I said, moving across the room and around the king-size bed.

  He wasn’t there. The closet, across from a sink and mirror, flanked the entryway to the bathroom. Jen moved aside to let me in first.

  I said his name again as I tried the knob. It wouldn’t turn. “Locked,” I said.

  We backed out of the room into the hallway.

  “Sarge,” I said, “the bathroom’s locked. You have anything we can use on it?”

  “You hear anything from inside?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Just kick it. It won’t take much. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait five minutes for maintenance.”

  Back inside, I lifted my knee and drove my heel into the door just below the knob. The latch popped open and the door recoiled hard against the wall, giving me a brief glimpse of Goodman’s brain matter and blood spattered on the wall over the toilet before it bounced back and swung back into the jamb again.

  I nudged it with my toe to reveal the scene again. Goodman’s body was leaning back over the toilet tank, with his head tilted toward the wall in way that didn’t allow us to see the worst of the damage. Only a small red hole under his chin was visible. If not for the spray of blood and viscera fanned on the eggshell wallpaper, it might be possible he suffered nothing worse than a particularly nasty shaving wound. Although, there were a few bits of fluffy white material clinging to his jaw.

  On the floor next to the toilet I saw his Sig service pistol and a pillow from the bed, and I realized how he’d done it.

  “He put the pillow under his chin,” I said to Jen, who was looking around me into the bathroom.

  She finished my thought. “And pressed the muzzle into it. That’s why the guard didn’t hear.”

  We backed out of the room and asked one of the uniforms to call the Crime Scene Detail and the ME.

  She gave a nod and started talking into the radio mic clipped to her shoulder.

  “Sarge?”

  “Yeah, Danny?”

  “You get a lot of noise complaints?”

  “Almost none. Great soundproofing. Best in Long Beach.”

  We didn’t have much to investigate at the scene. We bagged Goodman’s phone, his laptop, and all of his other personal effects. It seemed, unlike most of what we’d been investigating, completely clear what had happened. The call from the front desk had tipped him, and that was all he’d needed.

  Carter, the ME, had the body laid out and ready to be put into the body bag when I asked him to wait. “Can you roll him over?”

  “Sure. What are you looking for?”

  “I need to look at his ass.”

  Goodman had been wearing a T-shirt and his suit pants. No shoes or belt. Carter tugged down on the waist of his gray wool slacks and exposed his cheeks. On the right one were two green footprints. No apparent aesthetic value.

  “Does his partner, Young, have a room here, too?” I asked the sergeant.

  “Not that I know of. Goodman checked in with me as a courtesy. Imagine he would have mentioned another agent staying in the hotel.”

  “Thanks,” I said, leaving him. Jen was just down the hall. “What should we do about the other one?”

  “Young?”

  “Yeah. Don’t know where he’s staying.”

  “Think he was in it with his partner?”

  “No sign of him on any of the video. You’d think if he were involved, he’d be there for backup.”

  “You’d think.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I’m worried he knows something. We give him a heads-up, he might spook.”

  “You have an idea, don’t you?”

  “Where’s the evidence we booked?”

  Twenty minutes later, Special Agent Young was downstairs in the lobby bar looking for Goodman. He was green, but he was sharp enough to realize something was wrong when he saw us approaching him instead.

  “Detectives, hello.”

  We nodded our greetings.

  “Are you meeting Agent Goodman here as well?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Must be a coincidence, then.”

  Jen said, “No, it’s not. We sent you the text message.”

  The small amount of cordiality that had been lightening his expression disappeared. “Where?” he said.

  “Back at the station.”

  “Should I get my car?”

  “We’ll give you a ride.”

  None of us said another word until we were seated at the table in the Homicide interview room. We pulled a third chair in from next door so we could all sit. There wasn’t much point in trying anything tricky with Special Agent Young. The FBI had made sure he had even better interrogation training than we did.

  Jen started. “Would you like to have someone from the LA office here for this?”

  “No,” Young said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  We did. In detail. Starting with Patrick’s attack and finishing with Goodman on the toilet.

  “Why do you suppose he killed himself?” I asked.

  “Why?” he said indignantly. “You really need to ask? He assaulted a police officer. His career was over and he was going to jail. The real question is why did he throw a twenty-five-year career away? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “Nothing specific. He hated that we were here. Hated everything we were doing for the congressman. They went back a long way. Someone had to pull some strings to get us here, and Goodman wasn’t happy about it. There was some serious resentment there, but he did it anyway. That’s all I know. I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on, too. I’m just spending every day in the Federal Building going through old case files.”

  “For Goodman?” I asked. “Did he have you looking for something specific?”

  “No, for the LA special agent in charge. Different stuff every day. Just busywork to keep me out of Goodman’s way.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I have a sister who lives nearby.”

  “Didn’t like the Westin?”

  “No. Looks great. Too great. They usually put us at the Courtyard, someplace like that. Goodman was, I don’t know, overreaching? Said just because he had to do a shit job, it didn’t mean he had to stay in a shithole.”

  We spent another forty-five minutes with him, and when we were done, both Jen and I were convinced he didn’t have any idea what Goodman had been doing.

  Young was on his way back to his sister’s house, and Jen and I had just sat down at our desks when Ruiz came out of his office and said, “Patrick’s awake.”

  Two

  BY THE TIME we got to Long Beach Memorial, Patrick had been conscious for more than two hours. They let Jen in for a few minutes, but the rest of us had to wait until morning. When she came out, she told me he wasn’t able to do much but nod and blink before he fell asleep. Then she hugged me and we both went home. I knew it would be the first good night of rest she’d had since Patrick had been in there. I didn’t bother hoping for the same for myself.

  “Hey, guys,” he said when we came in early the next day. The morning sun was angling in through the window of his room. There were two other beds, but they were both empty. “The doctor told me what happened to my head. You know who did it?” His voice sounded a bit ragged, and he looked tired, but he seemed like himself. I hoped that was a good sign.

  We told him.

  “Goodman? Really?”

  “For what it’s worth, it didn’t look like he wanted to hurt you. Your head hit the table on the way down.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “The motherfucker just wanted to Taser me and remove my eyebrows with duct tape.”

  “They’re not entirely gone,” Jen said.

  “Not entirely? That’s not making me feel much better.”

  “We only got him because of your surveillance system,” I said.

  “Good thing I put it in, then.”

  “Wh
en did you install it?” Jen asked.

  “Soon as I moved in. Remember I had that break-in at my old place?”

  I didn’t, but Jen nodded.

  “Figured better safe than sorry.”

  “Too bad we lost all the data,” I said.

  “What do you mean? We didn’t lose any data. Only about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of hardware,” he said, with enough dejection in his voice to bring the mood in the room almost as low as had been when he was comatose.

  “Wait,” I said. “What do you mean we didn’t lose any data? Goodman took all your hard drives and storage devices. We don’t know what he did with them. We definitely lost it.”

  “Oh my god,” Patrick said, “when was the last time you backed up your computer?”

  I was taken by surprise and didn’t know how to answer. “What? Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Jen, when was the last time you backed up?”

  “Last time I used it. Backed up automatically. Just like you showed me.” She clearly enjoyed ganging up on me.

  “Wait,” I said, too caught up in my thoughts to enjoy the fun they were having at my expense. “They didn’t get the data?”

  “No, they got it, so they’ll know what we know. But we have it, too. Everything on my system backed up automatically every thirty minutes to multiple remote servers.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “So we’ve got everything up until the time of the attack?”

  “And everything since,” Patrick said. “Haven’t you ever heard of the cloud?”

  I had, so I assumed he meant that he had the surveillance programs running on systems other than the one that Goodman had trashed.

  “How can we access it?”

  “Got a laptop?”

  I went out to the car and got mine for him. He’d only been on it a few minutes before a nurse came in and told us to leave because Patrick needed to rest. He’d already opened and bookmarked two sites in Firefox for me. The first was one I recognized. It kept a real-time record of phone calls, text messages, and e-mails we were tracking. The other was unfamiliar. It looked like a Google Maps page.

  “What’s this?”

  “My MacBook has GPS. The marker there on the map? That’s where it is.” He tapped a red marker just above Ocean Boulevard.

  I looked more closely. “That looks like the Westin.” I turned to Jen. “Think it’s in his car?”

  The nurse had had enough. “I’m serious,” she said. “He needs to rest.”

  “I’ve been asleep for days,” Patrick said, but she wouldn’t budge. If we wanted to stay, it looked like we’d have to draw our weapons.

  I closed the MacBook and tucked it under my arm.

  Patrick didn’t look like he wanted to let it go.

  “We’ll bring one of yours as soon as we can,” Jen said.

  “Does that work?” he said, looking at the clock radio on the table next to his bed.

  I said, “Sure. You want me to put on Morning Becomes Eclectic?”

  “I’m not a hipster.”

  Most of the activity at the hotel crime scene had passed, but there were still two technicians and a few uniforms tying up the loose ends. Nichols was still there. Watching. Waiting until he could clear everything out and get back to business as usual.

  “Hey, Sarge,” I said.

  “Danny.” He gave me half a nod. “What did you forget?”

  “Anybody been down to the garage to check out his car yet?”

  “We took one of the uniforms down to tag it for a tow to the impound.”

  “The truck come yet?”

  “I don’t think so.” He took his cell phone out of the pocket of his dark-blue suit and hit a speed-dial number.

  “Anybody pick up the fed’s car yet?” He listened. “Well, if they show up before we get there, don’t let them hook it up.” He turned back to us. “Let’s go.”

  In the elevator on the way down, he said, “What’s this all about?”

  “Can’t say much,” I replied.

  “What can you say?”

  “We think he was dirty,” Jen said. “Deep into some bad shit.”

  “The Seal Beach thing or the congressman’s family?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Jen frowned at me.

  When he said, “Well, which one?” I knew I hadn’t said too much.

  The doors opened and the three of us stepped out into the dank concrete emptiness of the underground parking structure.

  “You have his keys?” he asked.

  We didn’t, so he stopped by a small office filled with video monitors displaying a dozen views of the garage. Every few seconds, the feeds would switch to different cameras, but the shots looked so similar that if I hadn’t been paying close attention, I wouldn’t have noticed the change. There was an empty chair facing the screens.

  “This the place you have to come when you screw up?” I asked.

  “One of them, but this isn’t even close to the worst,” the sergeant said. “Remind me when we’re done. I’ll take you down to check out the boilers and the laundry. It’s just like hell, but with more humidity and a bleach-scented air freshener.” He opened an equipment locker and took out a slim jim, then closed the door and led us out into the mostly empty rows of parking spaces.

  “Slow day?” I asked.

  “Slow year,” he said.

  We walked eight rows over and halfway down the ramp to the next level, where we found a black Crown Vic parked by itself in a corner, with a giant Pacific Islander standing next to it. He wore what must have been a sixty long navy-blue blazer with the Westin insignia over the breast pocket and name badge that read, Manuia. He looked unhappy.

  Nichols nodded at him and slipped the slim jim in between the driver’s side window and top edge of the door trim. With a few practiced pulls, he popped the door open, reached inside, and released the trunk latch. “We’ll give you two a little space,” he said and led the guard a few yards away.

  Jen lifted the trunk lid and said, “Danny?”

  I stepped around to the back of the vehicle and saw a standard-issue Rubbermaid Roughneck fourteen-gallon storage box, not at all unlike those we use every day for evidence. Jen snapped the lid off the container. The innards of Patrick’s computers, including his apparently undamaged MacBook Pro, were there waiting for us.

  Special Agent Young’s sister lived in Rossmoor, just across the Orange County line, in a nice suburban split-level four bedroom. She had two kids, who were off in another part of the house playing a video game that sounded like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I couldn’t tell which.

  “I’m not sure,” Young said.

  “Goodman’s stink is going to come off,” I said. “This is the best thing you can do to try to get it off of you.”

  “It’s a just a phone call,” Jen said.

  He thought about it some more. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans and drinking a Heineken. It was still obvious he was an FBI agent. He might as well have had it branded on his forehead.

  “I think I should run it by the LA SAC,” he said.

  “You really want to do that?” Jen asked, her voice thick with concern.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” It was clear he wasn’t used to situations that didn’t follow the playbook clearly and closely. Sure, Goodman was an asshole, but he certainly understood the real world a great deal better than his junior partner. On the other hand, the people at the Westin were still trying to remove the stains Goodman’s brains had left on the toilet wall.

  “He might say no, and then you won’t have any way to mitigate the circumstances with Goodman.”

  I backed her play. “I know we’re not feds. But bureaucracies are bureaucracies, and law enforcement’s law enforcement. The brass is going to be looking for ways to cover their asses and cut their losses. Either you come up with a way to get in front of this thing or you’re going to find yourself in the Bismarck field office.”

  Jen raised an
eyebrow at me. I’d just thrown down more clichés in one sentence than she heard all month. But Young was green enough for it to work. We could both see he was starting to come around.

  “You really think it will do some good?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” Jen said. “It’s not just about squaring what Goodman did. There are six people dead, here. If this works, we’ll close half a dozen open murders and nail the people responsible.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll do it.”

  In the car on the way back to the station, I said, “Isn’t it seven?”

  When we realized we had to count the victims on our fingers to get the number right, the heaviness between us seemed powerful enough to pull us down into some deep and unfathomable darkness.

  “Who’d you talk to in SWAT?” Ruiz asked. “Phillips?”

  I nodded. “He said go to the house first, set up, then make the call. Be sure there’s no possible way to let them get there ahead of us.”

  “And Young’ll do it from there?”

  “Yeah. Then he’ll leave his phone and clear out, just in case they’ve got a way to track it.”

  “Think they do?”

  “Patrick was able to.”

  He thought it over. “When? Tomorrow?”

  “That’s what we’re thinking,” Jen said. “Makes sense with the story we’re selling.”

  “Plus, it gives us tonight to get the whole surveillance package set up,” I added.

  “Tell Phillips it’s a go,” he said.

  We were in the den of the Benton house, and I kept looking back at the wall with too many photos of Bradley and not enough of Sara and Bailey and Jacob.

  “Why didn’t he have more pictures of his family?” Young asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve been wondering about that from the beginning.”

  Phillips and two other SWAT officers were in the house with us. They’d wired the place for pictures and sound. The two officers would stay there with us. There were also spotters on the street and in the alley. Phillips and the rest of the team would be set up across the street and two doors down in a bank-owned vacant house that had been on the market for months. Two empty houses on a street in a neighborhood like this one is a rarity. The residents must have been mortified by the hits their property values must have been taking. Multiple murders were even worse.