by Jason Dean
Shaw leaned in again and said, ‘We already know you got a history of violence, Bishop. With your background, you could probably break the guy’s neck in your sleep. So that’s means taken care of. You believe Hewitt was behind this girl’s death or disappearance and you wanted to make him pay. So that’s motive. And let’s face it, with that car of yours on the scene and no alibi, you sure got the opportunity. So that’s three for three in anyone’s book. Care to comment?’
Bishop looked at the one-way mirror. Then at the camera. Then at the two detectives. Nothing had changed. He still had nothing to say. Not yet, anyway.
Levine pushed off from the wall. ‘This is your chance to set the record straight, Bishop. We know you did it, we just don’t know all the reasons behind it. If you told us what those reasons are, it might make a difference when it comes to trial. So we’ll leave you alone so you can think on it for a while.’ He caught Shaw’s eye and motioned for the door.
Shaw got off the desk. ‘That’s right. Give it some serious thought. We’ll be back real soon, okay?’
Levine opened the door and both men left the room.
Bishop sat back and stared at a spot on the wall, grateful for the silence again. Those two had given him an earache. But at least now he knew how much they knew.
He turned his thoughts back to the hard drive he’d hidden, and how he didn’t want to use it unless it was absolutely necessary. At the moment, it was his only connection to the people who’d taken Selina. If he turned it over to the police, he’d have nothing. But it was also the only way he could put himself in the clear. Assuming it held footage of the people who’d grabbed him, that is.
But one thing was for sure, he couldn’t stay locked up in here. Selina’s trail was cold enough as it was. The only evidence they had on him at the moment was circumstantial, but it would be enough to hold him for forty-eight hours, at least. And that was forty-seven hours too long. He needed to get out on the streets again. He considered getting himself a lawyer, then have him get word to Vallejo to pick up the hard drive, copy everything onto a duplicate and hand the original to the cops. Not an ideal solution, as it would refocus the police’s attention onto the real killers and he didn’t want that. No telling how they might react if they thought they’d been exposed. But right now, it was the best he could come up with.
He also thought about how fast they’d placed him at the break-in at the Garrick hospital. And the way they were waiting for him this morning. Who’d made that connection? It wasn’t exactly obvious. Unless somebody in the police department was involved. That was always a possibility. One of those orderlies from last night could have called their police contact and filled him in when it became obvious Bishop hadn’t been killed in the fire. But in that case, why involve the uniforms, when it would be a lot easier to finish the job and kill Bishop outright?
He kept himself occupied by running through a variety of different scenarios, none of them particularly satisfying, until Shaw opened the door seventy-seven minutes later. He was alone this time and the smirk was absent from his face.
‘On your feet, Bishop,’ he said. ‘Your alibi showed up.’
FORTY
Shaw nudged Bishop back down the hallway towards the front desk without another word. Probably didn’t trust himself. He waited until Bishop had reached the lobby before unlocking the cuffs, his upper lip curled into a sneer.
‘I’ll be seeing you again, Bishop,’ he said, then moved off down the hallway without looking back.
Maybe you will, Bishop thought. He turned and saw Vallejo sitting in one of the visitors’ chairs. She stood up and gave him a big smile when she saw him. He noticed the desk sergeant watching them both and immediately got it. She was here as the concerned ‘girlfriend’, looking out for her man. Bishop wondered how much that must have stung. He smiled back and she came over and wrapped him in a lover’s embrace. Feigned though it was, Bishop found himself enjoying it. Being held by attractive women never got old.
‘You can hug back,’ she whispered, ‘but if you go anywhere near my ass, you die.’
‘That’s a shame,’ he whispered back, holding her round the waist. ‘And you got such a nice one, too.’
For appearances’ sake, they squeezed each other for a few more seconds until Bishop pushed himself away from her. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
‘You read my mind. I’ll meet you outside.’
Bishop went to the desk and handed the sergeant the receipt for his few possessions. After pocketing his cell phone, keys and wallet, he joined Vallejo on the steps outside. Then they walked into the visitors’ car park, passing a number of vehicles until they reached the familiar Ford Fusion. Vallejo unlocked it and they both got in.
She turned to him and sighed. ‘I just falsified a police statement for you, Bishop. That’s the first time I’ve ever committed a felony. Didn’t I say you were going to get me into trouble?’
‘Better watch out,’ he said, removing the back of his cell phone. ‘I’ll have you robbing banks next.’
She grimaced. ‘Don’t joke. You know, I was getting concerned. They kept me waiting for over an hour before bringing you out.’
He paused and looked at her. ‘That’s interesting. I wonder what they were doing.’ After a moment, he went back to dismantling his phone. ‘So what did you tell them?’
‘Well, I said I followed you back from the hospital and wanted to know why you’d been arrested. When the desk sergeant said it was about that fire last night, I told him you couldn’t have had anything to do with it since you were in bed with me all night.’
‘Oh, yeah, I forgot all about that,’ Bishop said as he closely inspected the phone’s inner workings. ‘How was I, by the way?’
‘Unbelievable, as usual. Just a pity you’re not my type. What the hell are you doing?’
‘Seeing if they put a GPS tracker in here.’
‘That’s illegal without a warrant, and they wouldn’t have had time.’
‘You’re forgetting not everyone’s as upstanding as you,’ he said. But there was nothing in there. He was sure of it. Bishop began reassembling the phone again. ‘So how did you explain my Chevy being at the scene?’
‘I said you’d taken it in when the front brakes started giving you problems. I brought you back to the motel in mine and then we retired for the night. I kept it simple.’
‘That’s usually the best way,’ he said. Except it now meant he couldn’t give the hard drive to the police even if he wanted to. Once they saw Vallejo had given a false statement, she’d be in even worse trouble. And Bishop wasn’t about to allow that to happen. Not after what she’d done for him.
‘Thanks for the alibi, Vallejo. I mean that.’
She shrugged and said, ‘You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, I would now.’
Her eyes turned to slits. ‘Hijo de puta.’
‘That’s not nice, Vallejo.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be. So where to next?’
Bishop put on his seat belt. ‘Back to the same spot where you picked me up last night. I left something there I need to pick up.’
FORTY-ONE
Just over an hour later, after having retrieved the hard drive from its hiding place and gotten some late breakfast at a Denny’s, they both returned to Vallejo’s motel room. Bishop made a brief trip to the bathroom to splash some water on his face and came out to see Vallejo placing her laptop upon the table.
Bishop moved the other chair next to hers and sat down as Vallejo opened up the computer. The wallpaper that greeted them showed a version of the famous Jaws movie poster, but with Alfred E. Neuman in place of the female swimmer.
Bishop turned to look at Vallejo. ‘I didn’t expect that.’
She shrugged. ‘My dad kept a big collection of old Mad magazines in the attic when I was a kid, okay? Let’s not make a big deal out of it. So why didn’t you tell me about this hard drive before?’
Bishop placed th
e device on the table. ‘I didn’t know if I could trust you, did I?’
‘And now you do?’
He smiled at her. ‘For a cop, you’re okay, Vallejo.’
‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
‘If you knew me better, you wouldn’t need to ask.’ Bishop took the USB lead she’d brought over and connected one end to the laptop and the other to the black box. A second later, a hard drive icon showed up and he used the touchpad to open it up. The folder listed hundreds of .mpeg files going back a week. The newest was from this morning. From the looks of things, Bishop guessed the camera software automatically saved the footage in one hour increments. That made things a little easier. He counted down the files with yesterday’s date and double-clicked on the seventeenth one.
The QuickTime player opened up and then the screen was filled with a wide-angle aerial view of the garage forecourt at 16.00 yesterday. There was no sound and the colours looked muted. Bishop could see the line of parked vehicles out front, as well as a segment of East Richards Avenue. In the lower right corner was yesterday’s date and a running time counter, which was about the only way to tell this was actual footage rather than a still shot.
‘Exciting stuff,’ Vallejo said.
‘Isn’t it.’ Bishop moved the cursor to the timeline at the bottom, clicked on the playhead and began slowly dragging it to the right. Still nothing happened, just at a faster speed. Then at 16.08.42, Bishop came into view from the right. He went back a few seconds and then let it play in real time.
‘The image quality could be better,’ Vallejo said. ‘If I didn’t already know that was you, I might not have guessed.’
‘Probably Bannings counting his pennies,’ he said. ‘High-definition video on these things isn’t cheap.’ Soon Bishop’s digital alter ego disappeared offscreen. He thought for a moment, then leaned forward and dragged the playhead to 16.18.00.
Vallejo looked at him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It was around this point that somebody turned the radio back on inside.’
‘You’re speaking in riddles again, Bishop. What are you talking about?’
‘Let’s just watch and see.’
They viewed the footage in silence. A minute passed. Then two. At 16.20.53, a figure emerged from the lower-left of the screen. From the direction of the car lifts. Bishop recognized him as the skinny mechanic who’d been working on the same car as Waxworks. He held a cell phone to his ear and was walking around in circles, listening and talking. Then at 16.21.42, he put the phone in his pocket and went back inside.
‘I don’t get it,’ Vallejo said. ‘What just happened? And what’s it got to do with the radio?’
Bishop ran his palm across his scalp and told her about turning off the radio when he’d first talked to Hewitt. ‘But somebody switched it back on shortly after we went outside. Really loud heavy metal, or whatever they call it nowadays. Thing is, one of my interrogators at the station said a witness heard part of my conversation with Hewitt. That could only have been the lookout you and I hypothesized about last night. Nobody else would have cared. He probably crept up to the side shutter and listened in as best he could. But when the radio came back on the racket must have drowned out the rest of our conversation. At which point, I figure he would have given up and called his contact. Telling him about my showing up on the scene, asking Hewitt questions about some woman.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’ Vallejo rewound the footage and watched the mechanic talk on the cell phone again. ‘You know his name?’
‘Maybe. Let me think.’ Bishop closed his eyes and thought back to those Employee of the Month pictures he’d seen for a few seconds in the front office. There’d been five of them in a row. All with head shots above the names. The glum face of the skinny mechanic had been on the fourth one along. It was clear in his mind. But what was the name underneath? Joe something. Or maybe John.
Concentrate, dammit. The name’s right there. All you need to do is focus.
Twenty seconds later, he opened his eyes and smiled at Vallejo. ‘Rutherford. John or Joe Rutherford.’
‘Hey, not bad. So, what, you think he was involved in the fire?’
Bishop shook his head. ‘I think he’s just a guy who was offered some easy money to perform a simple task. Nothing more than that. But he’s another connection to the people we’re after. And there’ll be a number on his cell phone I’d really like to see. But that’s for later.’
He closed the .mpeg file and opened up the first of today’s. ‘Right now, I’m more interested in seeing who tried to kill me.’
FORTY-TWO
It opened with the same view as before, except it was obviously night-time and there were no vehicles parked outside. Illumination was provided by a spotlight at roof level. Something about the starkness of the scene reminded Bishop of those old Bogart movies from the forties he used to love watching. And still did, come to think of it.
He reached for the controls and speeded things up a little. He was almost halfway across the timeline when Vallejo said, ‘Right there.’
Bishop had spotted the movement too, and was already dragging the playhead back. When he got to 00.24.37, he let it play in real time.
They saw the beams from the headlights first. At 00.24.44. Then a light-coloured panel van pulled into the forecourt and parked at an angle. Looked like a Merc, judging by the grille. But Bishop couldn’t make out the plates. Not in this light and not at that distance.
‘Sure looks like the same one I saw at the hospital,’ Vallejo said.
Bishop watched as a thickset man in a dark suit got out the passenger side and stood there with his hands at his sides, looking around as though he owned the place. Bishop could make out a goatee on his face and not much hair on top. Most of his features were bleached out from the harsh light, but this had to be the same man Hewitt had seen. From the erectness of his stance, Bishop thought he might possibly be ex-military. In any case, Bishop was looking forward to meeting him in the near future.
Then Bishop’s rented Chevy Impala appeared. It came to a halt on the road and Goatee pointed down to the shutters at the end. The Chevy drove off in that direction. At the same time, the van’s driver got out. He was wearing casual clothes and looked like one of the orderlies Bishop had encountered at the hospital. Goatee said something, then walked offscreen towards the customer entrance while the driver went to the van’s rear and pulled the doors open.
Less than a minute later, Goatee reappeared and joined the driver. Bishop then watched the two men carry a third from the van’s interior towards the customer entrance, his head swinging down like a rag doll’s. Hewitt. And he was clearly already dead.
‘Jesus,’ Vallejo whispered.
Both men came back and pulled out Bishop, then carried him inside, too. It felt weird watching it. Since he’d been unconscious at the time, it was hard to believe that was actually him being carried to his funeral pyre. But there it was, in living black and white.
‘How come they didn’t waste you along with Hewitt?’ Vallejo asked.
‘Two random homicides in a quiet desert community would have opened up too many questions. This way was smarter. As a stranger in town, I’d get the blame posthumously and everybody would be happy. Case closed. It was just their bad luck I regained consciousness in time and managed to get out.’
They kept watching, but after a minute of nothing happening Bishop began fast-forwarding. The killers were still inside, no doubt making their preparations. He was nearing the end of the hour when he noticed more movement. He wound it back a little and resumed watching at 00.55.54.
All three men came into view again. They stood this side of the van and Goatee looked back at the building while the other two lit cigarettes. Goatee seemed to be saying something and then the other two laughed. Probably asked why they hadn’t lit them inside, or something similarly feeble. Then they all got in the van. Goatee rolled down his window and leaned out as the driver turned the van round and d
rove them back the way they came.
Until we meet again, Bishop thought. And we will. You can be sure of it.
He quit out of the file and sat back in the chair. Alfred E. Neuman grinned back at him with that idiotic smile. What, me . . . Worry?
Vallejo said, ‘So did you recognize any of them?’
‘Well, the one in the suit matches the description Hewitt gave me of the leader of the team who took Selina. And the other two could have been the orderlies I fought with at the hospital. Couldn’t swear to it, though.’ After a moment’s silence, he turned and saw Vallejo chewing on her lower lip. ‘What is it?’
‘We have to deliver this to the police, Bishop. And don’t look at me like that. These people killed one man and tried to kill another. And God knows how many others. We might not recognize them, but somebody around here might if we allow them to see the footage.’
Bishop scratched the back of his neck. ‘That would be a major mistake, Vallejo.’
‘Tell me why.’
‘Two reasons. First of all, you’ve just told the police I took that Chevy to the garage myself, after which you brought me back here and boffed my brains out.’ He waved his hand at the laptop. ‘Clearly not so. Which means you’d have to admit you falsified your statement and say goodbye to whatever’s left of your career.’
‘Oh, shit, I forgot about that.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘And the other reason?’
Bishop said, ‘I think the police might be involved, too.’
FORTY-THREE
Vallejo looked at him for a long moment. ‘That sounds like conspiracy talk to me, Bishop. Didn’t you warn me against that this morning?’
‘I didn’t say the whole department. For all I know, it’s just one rotten apple.’ But even as Bishop said it, Shaw’s face loomed large in his mind. He was a definite contender.
