Cold Hit (2005)

by Stephen - Scully 05 Cannell

  “You want my opinion, Shane?”

  “Of course. It’s why I’m telling you all this.” “Okay, let’s take your points one at a time.”

  She looked down at her notes. ” ‘Re-interview VR’ could stand for re-interview victim’s relatives as you suggested, and Zack was so drunk, he simply forgot. But it could also stand for half a dozen other things. To name a few, it could mean ‘Re-interview victim’s Realtor,’ or ‘victim’s rapist’ if she had a prior sexual assault. You’ve still got some back-checking to do on that.”

  She kept her eyes on her notes. “Forgetting for a moment that huge leap you just made that Zack’s dad was a corpsman in Nam, let’s just deal with natural probabilities.” She paused, then asked, “How many of the homeless men in the West Valley would be Vietnam vets?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ten percent?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That makes the odds of our unsub killing a vet about ten to one. So far, we’ve only identified three. It’s not impossible that it’s a coincidence they’re all vets.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s a coincidence. How could that be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just playing defense here. Putting in the exculpatory evidence.” She consulted her notes again. “If Zack was planning on stealing Arden Rolaine’s money, why would he include the fact that it was missing in his case notes? Wouldn’t it be smarter to just leave out that fact all together?”

  “Van Kelsey was his partner. How could he leave it out?”

  “Yeah, but Van Kelsey retired well before Vaughn Rolaine was murdered. Zack could have easily gone back and removed that material from the Arden Rolaine case files. But he didn’t. Why?”

  She had a point.

  “Then there’s the whole question of Davide Andrazack,” she continued. “You don’t really believe Zack killed Andrazack, right?”

  “That’s right. It was a political assassination.”

  “We’ve completed our computer sweep of the Glass House and none of the bugs we found in the police department was on computers that included Fingertip case information or a description of the chest mutilation. That means it’s still possible that Andrazack was killed by the Fingertip unsub and that it wasn’t a political assassination. So, which is it?”

  I didn’t know. “What about the polygraphs the chief was doing on the ESD techs?” I said. “If we could find out who planted those bugs, maybe we could roll him.”

  “Nothing yet,” she said.

  “What about the medical examiner’s computers?” “Still checking, but so far they’re clean.”

  Alexa was slowly shooting down my entire framework.

  “So you think I’m nuts.”

  “No, I’m just showing you some holes in your theory. So far, you have nothing that directly ties Zack to any of these murders. It’s just intriguing speculation. You better find some evidence if you want a municipal judge to write an arrest warrant.”

  “Alexa, believe me, I don’t want this to be true. It might just be a lot of coincidences, but don’t we need to find out?”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Zack lived in Tampa as a kid. Contact the police department there and find out if they have a record on him. You might have to get somebody to unseal a juvenile record if he had one. Next, we need to find out, Was he a loner? Did he beat up younger kids? Did he kill or torture pets? Was his father a medic in Vietnam? You know the questions to ask, but we have to keep this strictly to ourselves. If we’re wrong and it gets out, it could destroy what’s left of him.”

  Alexa closed her book and frowned. “Of course, you know, either way this turns out, we’re gonna end up being wrong.”

  Chapter 43

  After Alexa left I began to feel cooped up. It was impossible for me to be officially released until ten o’clock the next morning, so I pulled a Zack, got my clothes out of the closet, and just split.

  The Acura was still in the visitor’s lot where I’d left it. Now that I was moving around, I could see how much damage Zack had done. I hurt like hell. My body ached and when I bent down to check under the car for new bugs, I almost passed out. I got behind the wheel, waited for my head to clear, and then dialed Emdee on the SAT phone. After three rings, he picked up.

  “Howdy.” His voice coming from outer space, and sounding like it.

  “It’s me. Number two or three. Whatever I am.” “You’re three.”

  There was a long delay after I spoke and before he answered. The scramblers were doing their work.

  “I’m outta the hospital.”

  “Good goin’, Joe Bob. Next time ya pick a partner, get one who won’t kick the caddie-wampuss outta ya when he gets spiky.”

  “Good advice. Where are you guys?”

  “Market. House ain’t got no protein, ‘less you eat roaches.”

  “I’m on my way over. Where’s the key?”

  “Under the pot.”

  “Under the pot? Why not over the doorjamb?” “Before y’start complaining, wait’ll y’hear which pot.”

  The pot was on the front porch of a vacant house across the street. Okay. Not bad.

  I put the car in gear and headed toward the safe house. The dull pressure behind my eyes was spreading, morphing into a throbbing headache. I stopped at a 7-Eleven for a bottle of water and some Excedrin. As I walked down the aisle, the unexpected shadow of last night’s crazy dream flew over me. I remembered walking down the aisle of Yuri’s market with Marty Kobb at my side, buying forty-weight oil and windshield wiper blades for a salad. Nuts.

  I paid at the counter, got back into my car, and swallowed three pills. Then I drove onto the freeway, still thinking about Zack. After Alexa shredded my murder theories, I was no longer happy with the dumb-ass criminal profile I’d done. As I drove, I came up with even more exculpatory information.

  According to another chapter in Underwood’s book, serial killers were fractured personalities who were marginalized by their early upbringing and subsequent life experiences. For this reason, they often had difficulty holding jobs. Yet Zack was a veteran on the LAPD. Was it possible that he could have existed in a stress-filled environment like police work and moved up the ranks to Detective II while still being a dissociative personality? I doubted it.

  I rode with him for two years in the Valley. Wouldn’t I have known if he was some kind of monster in training? Instead of a disassociative personality I had seen a savior. He’d protected me from that bunch of tail gunners at Internal Affairs for the better part of a year. I believed I had a true friend in Zack Farrell. How could I feel that way about a disassociative, narcissistic personality?

  I reached for my satellite phone to call Alexa and tell her to forget that background search in Tampa, when a random thought hit me. If you were a cognitive disassociative narcissist; if you were prone to fits of rage and excessive violence; who would you want as a partner? How about good old, drunk-as-a-skunk, throw-up-in-the-backseat, Shane Scully? Passed out most of the time, unable to observe anything except my own belt buckle, so self involved and depressed that I wasn’t focused on anything. The perfect partner for a murderous sociopath. I put the phone back on the seat beside me and took the Coldwater off-ramp.

  The asset-seizure house on Rainwood looked small and unimpressive from the street. The LAPD wasn’t wasting any money on maintenance and the yard was overgrown. I pulled past and parked half a block away, then got out of the car and walked slowly toward the vacant house opposite the one we were using. There was a big, potted rhododendron on the front porch. I leaned down, my vision going gray for a moment as I bent to retrieve the key. I had to pause to let my head clear before walking across the street.

  I opened the front door of the safe house and entered a one-story, cheaply constructed California A-frame. Broadway and Perry had left a few lights on and I walked through the exposed beam, lightly furnished living room and out the back door onto a l
arge wooden deck, which was cantilevered on long metal poles hanging precariously over the canyon.

  The view was the money with this place. To my right, a million twinkling lights spread across the San Fernando Valley. A soft wind blew through the canyon carrying with it the sweet, peppery smell of lilac, eucalyptus, and sage. I sat in one of the canvas deck chairs and looked down at the valley.

  I needed to get my mind off of Zack Farrell and Vaughn Rolaine, and back on Davide Andrazack and Martin Kobb. Right now there was nothing I could do for Zack. I tried to tell myself it was out of my hands.

  I smiled as my Kafkaesque dream resurfaced. Forty-weight motor oil for God’s sake, tram-fluid, and antifreeze? Some gagger of a salad that would have been. What the hell was that all about?

  And then, just like that, I knew. A series of memories tumbled over each other. I took a minute to calm down then tried to put them in some kind of order.

  I started with Cindy Blackman’s notes and our brief discussion at Denny’s. Cindy didn’t think an experienced cook would buy fresh groceries five days in advance. Yuri Yakovitch said he was on the back loading dock of the market, supervising the vegetable delivery. He had a good view of the cash register but in his statement, said he somehow missed seeing the burglar, as well as Kobb, when they entered the store. Marty Kobb was supposed to have pulled his gun, and chased the robber out into the parking lot, where he was shot to death. But the money was, for some unknown reason, left behind in the cash register. Nobody saw a getaway car.

  I ran it over in my mind and marveled at the simplicity of it. How had we all been so stupid?

  An hour later, Emdee Perry and Roger Broadway returned, carrying groceries. They must have been in full Bubba mode when they shopped because their market bags were full of beer and chips. They left everything in the kitchen and we walked back out onto the deck. I returned my aching ass to the sagging canvas-backed chair.

  “‘Bout time for us to all snap on our garters and get this case movin’,” Perry drawled.

  “You come up with anything new since we seen you last?” Broadway asked. I took a moment and then nodded.

  “What if Marty Kobb wasn’t buying food at the Russian market?” I said, giving voice to my new idea. “What if he was buying gas at the Texaco station?”

  We sat on the back deck of the Coldwater house drinking beer and talking it over. If Martin Kobb had been at the Texaco station when he was shot, it was a major shift in case dynamics that could change everything. But it still didn’t mean we could solve his murder. On the other hand, if the killer was doing a gas station holdup instead of ripping the market, there could be witnesses we’d completely missed.

  One looming question doused some of my enthusiasm. If the shooting happened at the station, why hadn’t the manager or a customer come forward to clear up the misunderstanding?. Still, it was a promising new direction.

  “If this turns out to be right, then the department just spent ten years paintin’ the wrong house,” Emdee observed.

  “First thing in the morning I’m gonna call Texaco’s executive offices,” I said. “See who used to own that station, see if I can get the employee list, and if there’s a record of credit card sales receipts from back then so we can start making up a new wit list.”

  “Good thinking,” Roger said, as his cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and put it on the table in front of him without opening it.

  “What do I do now?” he said. “If I answer it and they have a satellite track on there, will the feds know where we are?”

  “Ya ask me, there’s a big difference between being careful and just bein’ a pussy,” Emdee drawled.

  Roger frowned, snapped up the phone and answered it. “Yeah?” He listened for a moment, and then gave us a thumbs up. “Good. No, that’s okay. No problem. Now’s as good a time as any. See ya in twenty minutes.” He disconnected and smiled.

  “Good thing we bought you some deodorant,” he said to Emdee. “Bimini Wright returned my call. We’re invited to midnight tea with the CIA.”

  Ten minutes later we were in Broadway’s blue Caprice heading down Coldwater Canyon on our way to the CIA offices on Miracle Mile, a favored location for U. S. intelligence agencies.

  “She ain’t gonna be easy,” Broadway said as he drove.

  “Long as you don’t plow too close to the cotton we’ll do fine,” Emdee answered.

  “She doesn’t like you, so let me do the talking,” Broadway cautioned.

  “Lay some Ebonics on the woman. That oughta light her fire.”

  The CIA building was actually called the Americas Plaza. I wondered if that meant it was owned by some foreign government. We parked in the basement. Zack had my badge, so Broadway and Perry vouched for me and signed me in. We took a secure elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor and exited into another beautifully decorated hallway. Our tax dollars were certainly getting a good workout in the Los Angeles counterintelligence community. Lion claw feet held up polished Queen Anne tables with tapered legs.

  But the best tapered legs in the joint belonged to Agent Wright, who was standing on the ivory cut-pile carpet wearing three-inch heels and a short, tan skirt. Her Icelandic blonde hair was done in a graceful cut that curled in just under her chin. Blue eyes the color of reefwater gunned out of an ivory complexion, clocking us. If I worked on this floor, I’d never get anything done.

  “Let’s go,” she said, without even waiting to be introduced to me. Of course, after the funeral she’d probably run a full profile.

  Agent Wright led us through a door marked Fire Exit, up a flight of stairs, and out onto the roof, which had a flat, tarred surface. We followed her to a spot between two huge, boxy air-conditioning units, which were roaring even though it was midnight. The hot Santa Ana weather had the cooling system working overtime.

  Bimini Wright stopped between the A/C units and spoke, just over the roar. “This is far enough.” Her voice mixed with the loud, growling exhaust. It was the rough equivalent of turning on faucets in a bathroom before a covert meeting.

  Broadway introduced me. “This is Detective Scully.”

  We shook hands. She had a surprisingly strong grip, as if she’d been taught by some butch station chief that, if you want to make it in a man’s world, you better shake hands like a trucker.

  “Okay, guys. Your call. What’s the deal?”

  “It’s the Davide Andrazack murder,” Broadway said, not giving her much. She shrugged, so he dribbled out a little more. “It was in Shane’s serial murder case, but now it’s been stripped away from us by Homeland. The Andrazack hit is involved with another investigation we’re still working. We were hoping you could give us some background.”

  “Davide Andrazack was never one of your serial murders,” she said, looking over at me. “He wasn’t a homeless bum. He was killed by Red Shirts.”

  “Company speak for enemy spooks,” Emdee explained.

  “You three need a Come to Jesus meeting,” Bimini said. “So here it is. If you don’t back off, you’re gonna get spun and hung. You need to do exactly as Mr. Virtue instructs and leave the Andrazack thing alone. Robert Virtue lacks humor, and there’s lots of heat coming down on that situation. You work it without portfolio against his wishes, and you’re gonna be swept so far out into the bush we’ll never find the hole you’re buried in. That’s the best advice I have.”

  “What about my murder case?” I asked.

  “Believe me, they’re all over it,” Bimini said. “R. A. Virtue and the FBI come off a little headstrong, but they’ve got huge national security concerns to deal with so I try to cut them a little slack. Take it on down the road and leave this to us.”

  ” ‘Cept, somebody’s planting bugs all over town,” Emdee said. “We pulled a basketful outta the police administration building yesterday. It’s not hard to guess that Davide Andrazack was over here trying to find out who was bugging the Israelis. I’m also guess’n we’re not all standing up here on this roof, ‘cause yo
u like the smell of L. A. smog. You ain’t all that sure about your shop either.”

  Just then, the air filtration system switched off, banging loudly as the spinning fans stopped. It was suddenly very quiet.

  “We know you met with Eddie Ringerman at the Russian Roulette last night. We were in the next booth and got it on tape,” Broadway said.

  She smiled. “You’re really gonna try and bluff me with no face cards showing? You’ve gotta do better than that, Roger.”

  “Are we just completely forgetting about the Lincoln Avenue shooting?” Broadway countered. “I thought you were good for your old debts.”

  “That’s five levels below this on the threat assessment board.”

  “Then why don’t you tell us about the ‘Eighty-five Problem?” I ventured, and saw immediately that I’d hit a nerve.

  She looked at me sharply. “I guess you were in the restaurant listening,” she said, coloring slightly, not enjoying being busted. After a moment she added, “Okay, since it’s only history, I guess I can tell you a little about that.”

  “We’re waiting,” Broadway said, frustration showing in his strained voice.

  “Back in the eighties, I was stationed at our embassy in Moscow,” she began. “It was the Cold War, and we were mixing it up pretty good with the Reds.” She looked over at me. “I know you’re probably interested in Stanislov Bambarak since he also came to your funeral. Back in the Cold War days, Bam-Bam Stan was a KGB legend. Our paths crossed a lot when I was in Moscow. We never hit it off, because I managed to recruit quite a few of his frontline officers as double agents. It really pissed him off. He got so jacked he ran me in four times and questioned me at the Moscow Motel, which was an interrogation center the KGB had under the Kremlin. Stan couldn’t understand how I kept infiltrating his Apparat. But I was young, pretty, and flirtatious, and his station officers were lonely, horny, and alcoholic. A perfect recipe for defection. The trick was to cook up their emotions, get them half in the bag and see how scared they were that Soviet Union was about to collapse. The Cold War was winding down and it looked to everybody like we were winning. A good many of these KGB officers were willing to give me covert information in return for a promise that I would arrange for them to come to the States after the Cold War was over. Once the Berlin Wall came down, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Block fell apart.”