Demolition Angel

by Robert Crais

  She brought the box back out to the squad room and stowed it beneath the now empty desk.

  Russ Daigle nodded at her, his face tired.

  “Pretty sad, isn’t it?”

  “Always, Russ. Has the family set a date for the funeral yet?”

  “Well, you know, the coroner hasn’t released the body.”

  She hadn’t known. She’d been so busy with the investigation that she hadn’t paid attention.

  Daigle had turned back to his paperwork, his heavy shoulders hunched over the black desk. His gray hair was cropped short, the back of his neck was creased and stubbled. The oldest of the sergeant-supervisors, he had been on the squad longer than anyone. Last year an officer named Tim Whithers had transferred in from Metro, the elite uniform division. Whithers was a tough, cocky young guy, who insisted on calling Russ “Dad” even though Russ repeatedly asked him to stop. Whithers called him Dad until Russ Daigle coldcocked him one morning out in the parking lot. One punch below the ear. Knocked him out. Whithers went back to Metro.

  “Hey, Russ?”

  He glanced over.

  “Were you at Silver Lake when it happened?”

  “I was at home. Something like this happens, you always wish you had been there, though. You think you maybe could have done something. You feel that, too?”

  “Yeah. I feel like that, too.”

  “Are you okay, Carol? You look like something’s on your mind.”

  Starkey walked away without answering, feeling a sudden swell of panic as if she were trapped in a den of killers, and hated herself for it. Russ Daigle was happily married, had four adult children and nine grandchildren. Their pictures were a forest on his desk. To think he might have killed Charlie Riggio was absurd.

  “Carol?”

  She didn’t look back.

  14

  • • •

  Starkey left Glendale without knowing where she would go or what she would do. That was bad. Working an investigation was like working a bomb. You had to keep your focus. You had to have a clear objective and work to that end, even when you were drinking sweat and pissing blood.

  If this were a normal investigation, Starkey would have questioned Riggio’s coworkers about his friends and relationships, but now she couldn’t do that. She considered contacting his two SWAT hunting buddies, but worried that word of it might get back to the Bomb Squad.

  Leyton had said that Riggio had two sisters. Starkey decided to start there.

  Every casebook included a page on the victim. Name, address, physical description, that kind of thing. On the night of Riggio’s death, Starkey had assigned Hooker the task of gathering this information, and he had done his usual thorough job. She looked up the page and saw that Riggio was the middle child between two sisters, Angela Wellow and Marie Riggio. The older of the sisters, Angela, lived in Northridge, which wasn’t far from Charlie’s apartment in Canoga Park. The other sister lived south of Los Angeles in Torrance.

  Starkey phoned Angela Wellow, identified herself, and expressed her condolences.

  Angela’s voice was clear, but tired. Jorge had listed her age as thirty-two.

  “You worked with Charlie?”

  Starkey explained that she had, but that now she was a bomb investigator with the Criminal Conspiracy Section.

  “Ms. Wellow, there are some—”

  “Angela. Please, I get enough of that missus from the kids. If you were a friend of Charlie’s, I don’t want you calling me missus.”

  “You live near Charlie’s apartment, don’t you, Angela?”

  “That’s right. It’s just over here.”

  “Has anyone from the department talked to you?”

  “No, not to me. Someone called our parents about Charlie, then Mom and Dad called me. They live in Scottsdale. I had to call my sister.”

  “Reason I’m calling now is because you live so close to Charlie’s. We think that Charlie had some files that we need on two other cases. We think he brought them home. Now we need them back. Could you meet me at his apartment, and let me see if I can find them?”

  “Charlie had files?”

  “Bomb reports on older cases. Nothing to do with Silver Lake. Now we need them back.”

  A note of irritation crept into Angela’s voice.

  “I was already there. I’ve been there every day, trying to get his things packed. Oh, for God’s sake.”

  Starkey made herself hard and detached, even though she felt like a dog for lying.

  “I appreciate your feelings, Angela, but we really need those files.”

  “When do you have to do this?”

  “I’m available right now. The sooner the better from our end.”

  They agreed to meet in an hour.

  With the traffic, it took Starkey almost that long to get to Northridge, high in the San Fernando Valley. Riggio’s apartment building was on a busy street three blocks south of the Cal State campus. It was a great cave of a building, an upscale stucco monster that had probably been rebuilt after the big earthquake in ’94. Starkey left her car in a red zone, then went to the glass security doors where she and Angela had agreed to meet. Two young women on their way out with book bags held the door, but Starkey waved them off, telling them that she was meeting someone. Starkey watched them heading toward the campus and smiled. This was just the kind of place where Charlie Riggio would live. Inside, there would be a pool and Jacuzzi, probably a game room with a pool table, cookouts every night, and plenty of young women.

  Now, a thin young woman with the harried look of a mother opened the glass door and looked out. She was carrying a little boy who couldn’t have been more than four.

  “Are you Detective Starkey?”

  “Ms. Wellow? Sorry, Angela?”

  “That’s right.”

  Angela Wellow must have parked beneath the building and entered through the inside. Starkey showed her badge, then followed Angela through the central courtyard and up a flight of stairs to a second-floor apartment. The little boy’s name was Todd.

  “I hope this won’t take long. My older boy gets home from school at three.”

  “It shouldn’t, Angela. I appreciate your going to this trouble.”

  Riggio’s apartment was nice, a two-bedroom loft with a high arched ceiling and an expensive big-screen television. A mounted deer head stared down at her from the wall. Starkey wondered if it was the same deer she’d seen in the pictures. The couch was lined with large boxes, and more boxes were in the kitchen. It would be a sad job, packing the belongings of the dead.

  Angela put down her little boy, who ran to the television like it was a close and trusted friend.

  “What do your files look like? Maybe I’ve seen them.”

  Starkey cringed at the lie.

  “They look like three-ring binders. They’re probably black.”

  Angela stared at the boxes as if she were trying to remember what was in them.

  “Well, I don’t think so. These are his clothes, mostly, and things from the kitchen. Charlie didn’t keep anything like an office. There’s his bedroom upstairs. He has one of those weight machines in the other bedroom.”

  “Do you mind if I look?”

  “No, but I really don’t have very long.”

  Starkey hoped that she would have Riggio’s bedroom to herself, but Angela picked up the little boy and showed her up the stairs.

  “It’s this way, Detective.”

  “Were you and Charlie close?”

  “He was probably closer to Marie, she’s the youngest, but our family was a good one. Did you know him well?”

  “Not as well as I would have liked. Something like this happens, you always wish you’d taken the time.”

  Angela didn’t answer until they reached the top of the stairs.

  “He was a good guy. He had a stupid sense of humor, but he was a good brother.”

  The bed had already been stripped of linen. More boxes waited on the floor, some empty, others partially fille
d. A dresser stood against one wall, a jumble of pictures wedged into the mirror frame. Most of the pictures were of an older couple that Starkey took to be his parents.

  “Is this your sister?”

  “That’s Marie, yes. These here are our parents. We haven’t taken down the pictures yet. It’s just too hard.”

  The little boy upended a box and climbed inside. Angela sat on the bed, watching him.

  “I guess you can look through these boxes. They’re mostly clothes, but I remember some papers and books and things.”

  Starkey used her body to block Angela’s view as she went through the boxes. Having Riggio’s sister three feet behind her left her with the feeling that even if something was here, she would not find it. There was a heavy photo album that she wanted to look through, and a notepad, and, in the corner of the room, a Macintosh computer that might contain anything at all. There was too much, and here she was, going through it under false pretenses with the dead man’s sister staring at her back. What a half-assed, pathetic way to conduct an investigation.

  Angela said, “You were a bomb technician like Charlie?”

  “I used to be. Now I’m a bomb investigator.”

  “Could I ask you something about that?”

  Starkey said that she could.

  “They won’t release Charlie’s body. They haven’t even let us go see him. I keep seeing these pictures in my head, you see? About why they won’t let us have him.”

  Starkey turned, feeling awkward with this woman’s discomfort.

  “Is Charlie, you know, in pieces?”

  “It’s not like that. You don’t have to worry about Charlie being like that.”

  Angela nodded, then looked away.

  “You think about these things, you know? They don’t tell you anything, and you imagine all this stuff.”

  Starkey changed the subject.

  “Did Charlie talk about his job?”

  She laughed and wiped at her eyes.

  “Oh, God, when didn’t he talk about it? You couldn’t shut him up. Every call-out was either an atom bomb or a practical joke. He liked to tell about the time they rolled out on a suspicious package that someone had left outside a barber shop. Charlie looked inside and he sees that it’s a human head, just this head. When Charlie’s supervisor asks what’s in the box, Charlie tells him it looks like the barber took too much off the top.”

  Starkey smiled. She had never heard that story, and thought that Riggio had probably made it up.

  “Charlie loved working with the Bomb Squad. He loved the people. They were like a family, he said.”

  Starkey nodded, remembered that feeling, and the pang of loss that came with losing it. And now she suspected that family of murder.

  Starkey finished with the boxes, then went through the dresser and the closet without finding anything helpful. She had lost confidence that, working alone, she could discover something that would suggest a motive for Riggio’s death. Maybe there was nothing to be found, and never had been.

  “Well, maybe I was wrong about those reports. It doesn’t look like Charlie brought them home after all.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Starkey couldn’t think of anything else to say or ask and was ready to leave. Angela had been saying how she was in a hurry to get home for her son, but now she lingered on the bed.

  “Detective, could I ask you something else?”

  “Of course.”

  “Were you and Charlie girlfriend and boyfriend?”

  “No. I didn’t know Charlie had a girlfriend.”

  Starkey glanced at the pictures in the mirror: Riggio and his parents, Riggio with his sisters and nieces and nephews.

  “He had a girlfriend, but he never brought her to meet us. Here’s this nice Italian boy, you’re supposed to be married and have a million kids. My parents were always after him, you know, when are you going to get married, when are you going to settle down, when do we get to meet this girl?”

  “What did Charlie say?”

  Angela seemed embarrassed again.

  “Well, some of the things he said, I got the impression she was married.”

  “Oh.”

  Angela nodded.

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No, I understand. But it happens, right? I think it was hard for Charlie. Here’s this young, good-looking guy, but he was heartfelt. I think she was married to someone Charlie worked with.”

  Angela met Starkey’s eyes as if she was waiting for a reaction, but then she looked away.

  “I probably shouldn’t have said that, but if it’s not you, I thought you might know her. I’d like to talk to her. I wouldn’t make a problem with her husband or anything like that. I just thought we could talk about Charlie. It might be good.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about that.”

  Starkey wondered if the photo album held pictures that Riggio had wanted to keep hidden, pictures of a woman who was married to someone else that he couldn’t keep out on the mirror.

  Angela suddenly glanced at her watch and jumped up.

  “Oh, shit. Now I really am late. I’m sorry, but I have to go. My son will be home soon.”

  “It’s all right. I understand.”

  Starkey followed Angela down, but now her mind was racing for a way to get a view of Riggio’s photo album.

  By the time they reached the door, Todd was squirming in his mother’s arms. He was tired and cranky and overdue for his nap. When Starkey saw the time Angela was having with him at the door, Starkey took her keys.

  “Here, I’ll get the door. That boy’s a handful.”

  “It’s like trying to hold a fish.”

  Starkey held the door to let Angela through. She pretended to lock the door, but unlocked it, instead. She closed it, then rattled the knob as if checking to make sure it was secure. Angela’s arms still filled with squirming child, Starkey placed the keys in Angela’s purse.

  “Thanks again for trying to help, Angela. I feel a little silly that I got you out here and couldn’t find the files. I was sure Charlie brought them home.”

  “If they turn up, I’ll call.”

  Angela saw Starkey to the glass doors and let her out. Starkey walked out to her car, climbed behind the wheel, but did not start her car. Her heart was hammering. She told herself that what she was about to do was insane. Worse, it was illegal. A D.A. out to make an example of her could press for breaking and entering.

  Five minutes later, Angela Wellow appeared on the service drive at the side of the apartment building in a white Honda Accord, turned south, and drove away. Starkey flicked her cigarette out the window, then crossed back to the apartment building just as a young man with a book bag was wrestling a mountain bike through the glass door. Starkey held the door for him.

  “Don’t be late for class.”

  “I’m always late. I was born late.”

  Starkey walked calmly to the second floor, where she let herself into Charlie Riggio’s apartment. She took the stairs two at a time, going directly to the box with the photo album. Now that she was thinking in terms of an illicit affair, she wanted Riggio’s phone bills and charge receipts, but had no idea which box held those things and was too frightened to take the time to find them. Starkey smiled grimly; she might have been a fearless bomb technician, but she was a chickenshit crook. She found the photo album, but didn’t dare look at it there. It was too thick, and held too many photographs.

  She took the book, this time locking the door behind herself, and hurried down to her car. She drove straight home and brought the photo album inside under her jacket as if it were pornography.

  She sat with the album at the dining room table, turning the pages slowly, telling herself that the odds were so long as to be unimaginable, that Angela Wellow was probably wrong, and that tomorrow she would be back to square one, all alone in her belief that someone other than Mr. Red was behind Charlie’s deat
h.

  Page after page were pictures that charted Charlie Riggio’s life: Charlie playing high school football, Charlie with his buddies, Charlie with pretty young girls who looked anything but like the wives of cops, Charlie hunting, Charlie at the Police Academy, Charlie with his family. They were happy pictures; the type of pictures that a man kept because they made him smile.

  It was near the end of the book where she found a picture taken at last year’s Bomb Squad Chili Cookoff. She found the second like it taken at the Christmas party, and then, two pages later, a third which had been taken at a CCS barbeque that Kelso had thrown on the Fourth of July.

  Starkey peeled the pictures from the album and put them on the table side by side, asking herself if they could really mean what she thought they meant. She told herself they couldn’t; she told herself she was wrong, and reading too much into them, but what Angela Wellow had said hung over her like an ax.

  … she’s married to someone he works with.

  The pictures were all the same, a man and a woman, arms around each other, smiling, a little too close, a little too familiar, a little too friendly.

  Charlie Riggio and Suzie Leyton.

  Dick Leyton’s wife.

  Starkey poured a tall gin and tonic, drank most of it. She felt angry, and betrayed. Leyton being a suspect was too big to get her arms around. Just thinking about it wore her down. Starkey decided to deal with it as if Leyton were just another part of the investigation. There was no other way to see it.