Hit and Run (Moreno & Hart Mysteries)

by Allison Brennan

  Fortunately, she had good equipment. She put her strongest zoom lens on her digital camera, the one she always feared she’d drop and break and cost Moreno & Hart Investigations two thousand bucks. She focused and snapped a couple pictures, watching him walk to the middle of the center graveyard and stop.

  He pulled an envelope from his pocket and placed it on the base of a small statue at the head of the grave. She couldn’t read what was on the marker, but she snapped a couple extra shots.

  Then he turned and left.

  Well, shit.

  She watched him leave, but didn’t follow him. Clearly he’d left a message for someone and she wanted to see who picked it up.

  She also wanted to know what the message said.

  But she couldn’t risk it. His partner in crime could be here watching, waiting for Mercer to leave, and if he saw her approach the grave, they’d know she was onto them.

  She bit her lip. She wanted desperately to know what was in that message.

  She waited five minutes, her lens focused on the gravesite. No one came to pick it up.

  She got out of her car and started walking toward the grave, taking a roundabout way, keeping her eye on the prize while scanning the perimeter for anyone who looked out of place. She trailed a small group of old ladies who were quietly chattering about their departed friend. Apparently, Ethel Driscoll had been eighty-nine when she died after playing eighteen rounds of golf and beating her handicap, or some such thing. It was the one-year anniversary of her passing and they were leaving golf balls on her grave.

  As Scarlet was about to turn toward the headstone where Mercer left the note, she stopped. A white male dressed in black was approaching from the opposite direction. She sidestepped and stood against a tree, about a hundred fifty feet away. She trained her camera on the guy.

  He walked like a cop, but he was no cop. He was one of the men who had shot out Diego’s house Sunday morning. He’d been the one who’d gone around the back, the first guy she’d seen, six feet tall, blond hair, all muscle. He wore black slacks and a black T-shirt and a leather jacket even though it was ninety degrees. It was clear that he had a shoulder harness and it looked almost like he had a badge on his belt.

  “He was a cop, Scarlet,” Jason had said the other day about Gina’s shooter. “He had a badge on his belt. I saw it as he ran, under his jacket.”

  She zoomed in on the belt and snapped some shots, though she couldn’t make out what the badge said. Maybe Mac could enhance it with contrasts or whatever it was he did to make sense of the insensible.

  Mr. Leather Jacket bent over, picked up the note, pocketed it, and kept walking. Toward Scarlet. She put down the camera and looked around for the four little old ladies with the golf balls, but they were standing around a grave twenty feet in the open. This guy would certainly recognize her if he spotted her.

  She slowly walked around the tree, glancing around for a place to hide. The nearest grave was a monument, as tall as her. She immediately walked over and knelt in front of it, her head low, putting her camera around her neck while twisting off the long lens and pocketing it in her jacket, otherwise it would be pretty obvious what she was doing. She dipped her head and clasped her hands as if she were in deep prayer. Her eyes were open a slit so she could keep an eye on the bastard who’d nearly burned her alive.

  He walked ten feet from her and didn’t appear to pay her any attention. She stayed where she was for five long minutes before she got up and looked around.

  He was gone.

  Still, she took the long way back to her Jeep. She uploaded the photos to the Moreno & Hart secure server and then sent Mac a message that she wanted an ID on the guy if possible, and a clear image of the badge on his belt.

  He could be a cop. A cop out shooting at other cops? Was he LAPD? Another department? Or was the badge something else? Maybe so he could impersonate a cop? Or private security? Like Armor?

  Scarlet sent the clearest picture of the pick-up man to her brother.

  Don’t show this to anyone. Do you know who this is?

  It took her about two minutes to make up her mind about what she would do next. She’d originally wanted to hunt down Kyle Richardson, but John was working on that. She’d considered continuing to follow Mercer, but he was a cop—he’d pick up on her tail after a while, especially since she didn’t have a partner where they could swap lead cars.

  She drove to Sunland.

  Gina Perez had lived in one of those foothill neighborhoods where one house was crap and the next had been totally remodeled. Most were single-story ranch style, alternating between well-maintained yards and chain-link framed dirt patches. But Scarlet remembered the neighborhood from when she was a cop. Most residents were blue collar or retired. They watched their neighbors but kept their distance. Crime was mostly limited to theft; violent crimes were statistically less than the rest of the city. It was a decent place to live if you wanted a house, especially if young or single and on a budget.

  Gina’s house was old but neat, a single-story that had been built far back into the lot and appeared smaller than it was. To her right was a tiny bungalow surrounded by mature trees. Neither the house nor the trees had seen much maintenance. To her left was a house almost identical to Gina’s, but in the reverse. Lawn mowed, mini-van in the driveway with the suburban mom stick figure decal on the back window: Dad, Mom, Boy, Girl, Boy, Cat.

  Across the street were two decrepit houses with foliage and chain link fences, and the one in the middle, directly across from Gina’s, was small, cute and a too-bright shade of yellow. Planters hung from the porch, which included two rocking chairs. In one of the chairs was an old man and he was watching her.

  Terrific. Geriatric neighborhood watch. Better to nip it in the bud now.

  She smiled, crossed the street and approached the old man. “Hi, I’m Scarlet Moreno, private investigator.”

  “I thought you were one of those reporters trying to get dirt on my cop.”

  My cop?

  “You knew Officer Perez?”

  He was eying her suspiciously, but he was a talker. She stood at the bottom of his stairs, not wanting to threaten him by crowding him on his small porch. “Of course I knew her. She was my neighbor. She was a good girl. I don’t like the police, as a general rule. Fascists, you know. All power hungry, want to write up tickets right and left, don’t care that you didn’t know your taillight was out. Gina wasn’t like that. She was a good girl. There’s no crime on my street, no crime I tell you, until this.”

  She believed him. Scarlet didn’t think teenagers would dare walk down the street, fearing this old man’s evil eye.

  “Did anyone come talk to you after Officer Perez was killed?”

  “Of course they did. Asking lots of questions about her boyfriend. Said he was her ex-boyfriend, but I know what’s what. No ex-boyfriends spend the night two, three, four times a week.” He snorted. “He was a cop, too, you probably know. Repaired my fence last March when the Santa Ana’s knocked it down.” He nodded, as if the head bob would mean more than his words.

  “I’m a friend of Jason’s. We grew up on the same street.”

  “Do you think he killed her?”

  “Do you?”

  He grunted. “In my eighty-two years I’ve seen a lot of things and a lot of people do a lot of bad stuff. I suppose anything is possible.”

  “But?”

  “But he didn’t shoot her. I told the officer who talked to me that flat out.”

  Scarlet’s instincts buzzed. “Oh?”

  “Of course he couldn’t have! I was sitting in my living room right there.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The picture window revealed a recliner situated at an angle so that it had both a view of the large television on the wall and the street. “I was watching the news, like I always do before bed. This car, a black SUV that hogs the road like they think they own the entire street, drove up the block, then down the block. Then up again. Dark windows. No lights. No
one drives without lights unless they’re up to no good. Ten minutes later all the lights in the house went off, and I thought that was odd because my lights were just fine, and my cop always leaves this little light on in her front window.

  “So I’m sitting here, squinting—my eyesight ain’t like it used to be—and nothing. I know she’s home—I saw her drive in after dinner. Thought maybe that little light just burnt out the bulb, you know, but her porch light was out, too. Fuse. I would go over and help her, but I’m not too handy with things that need those fine motor skills. Arthritis, you know. I went back to the news, and then heard another car, not five minutes later, drive up. It’s that boyfriend of hers. He parks in the driveway like he always does. He’s in his uniform, and he stares at the house, like he knows something’s wrong with the lights, too. He walks right in and I think that’s strange because my cop always locks her door. She should, pretty little girl living all alone. I don’t care that she’s a cop and has a gun because guns aren’t the end all be all of protection, don’t you know.”

  “And why don’t you think Jason killed Officer Perez?”

  “Because I didn’t hear no gun shot, that’s why. The officer who talked to me said she’d been shot twice, but I didn’t hear anything, and what boyfriend would just walk in and shoot? No fighting? No breaking things? Just bang bang with a silencer? Do cops carry those around with them wherever they go? I think not.”

  No one heard anything.

  “And then I heard a gunshot. One. In the back and the boyfriend runs out from the back yard, his gun is out, he’s panicking, looking up and down the street. I didn’t see anyone, and he didn’t, either. I called 911 then. And I saw him take out his phone and call 911.”

  “You heard one shot.”

  “That’s what I said. My hearing is just fine, little girl.”

  “And you told all this to the police.”

  He grunted. “I said that.”

  “Do you know which officer you spoke to?”

  “He didn’t give me a card or anything. But his last name was Thompson. Saw that on his nameplate.”

  “Did he have a partner?”

  “Nope, just him. A short, Fascist white cop, that’s what he was.” The old man grunted. “The kind of cop who’d give you a ticket for a busted taillight, that’s who.”

  “Thank you, Mister …?”

  “Leo. Name’s Leo George.”

  “Thank you Mr. George.”

  “Leo. My cop always called me Leo. I’m going to miss her.”

  He looked momentarily heartbroken, then scowled at Scarlet. “Use the path, you. Don’t trample my lawn, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He grunted and watched her leave.

  Thompson. She didn’t know him. If he was a responding officer, he would be in the Foothill Division, which covered Sunland. But if the Mission Division sent out their own team because Perez was from Mission, then he could be from there. She made a note to ask Jason or Richardson about him.

  Did the gun found in Jason’s car have a silencer attached? Richardson hadn’t said anything about it. Had Richardson followed up with Thompson? With the neighbors? Had he been back here? He was in Special Operations, like John, because this was an officer-involved shooting; no specific division would be assigned. Sort of a multi-jurisdictional issue. But first responders would be local cops. It would make sense for Richardson to simply accept their reports. But if Thompson had been honest in his, Richardson would have followed up.

  Either Thompson was the problem … or Richardson was. And if Richardson was corrupt, Scarlet didn’t know how she was going to get out of this. She’d dragged her brother into the middle of it as well, and her brother had been threatened.

  She didn’t know if she’d be able to live with herself if something happened to her brother.

  She called Mac. “Hey,” she said, “I need as much info as you can get on Detective Kyle Richardson, out of Special Operations.”

  Silence.

  “Mac?”

  “It’s uncanny how you do that.”

  “What?”

  “I was just about to call you. I traced that phone number you wanted. It took a while because it’s private, but I’m good.”

  “I know you’re good. It was Tony Mercer.”

  “No. It was Ben Vartarian.”

  She froze. “The ADA?”

  “Yep. Private cell phone.”

  What the hell was an accused murderer doing calling the District Attorney’s office? And did that have anything to do with Mercer leaving his precinct and dropping a note off for tall, blond and creepy errand boy?

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course,” he said, irritated.

  “Any luck with the ID on the photo I sent you?”

  “No, but I enhanced the badge using an embossing and relief function in—”

  “I don’t need to know how, I just need the result.”

  “It’s a private security badge. I can’t make out the name across the bottom, but the emblem is AP. With a sword going through it.”

  Armor Plus.

  “Thanks, Mac. Tell Krista.”

  She hung up.

  Minutes after Sykes calls Ben Vartarian’s private cell phone, Tony Mercer leaves the police station and drops a note off at a gravesite for Armor Plus to pick up. Armor Plus—run by Ben Vartarian’s cousin, Diana.

  No coincidence, but nothing tangible to bring to Internal Affairs. And after what happened to her three years ago, Scarlet didn’t trust IAG. They hadn’t believed her statement, thought she’d been suffering from post-traumatic stress.

  Gina, what did you see? Why did they kill you?

  She felt a strong kinship with the dead police officer. Gina Perez should never have feared being killed by one of their own. It went against everything Scarlet believed in—honor, loyalty, duty. They were supposed to unite to protect the public and stop bad people from doing bad things. It was simple and noble.

  Until it went so very wrong.

  Krista had been Scarlet’s savior that fateful day, proving to Scarlet that there were people who felt the same as she did, that others were willing to risk their lives doing the right thing. But what about cops who did the wrong thing? What did John call Mercer—a fixer? Bad cops get in trouble, they go to him … but that means he has something over them. It means he can call in favors from maybe dozens of people. People with badges and guns.

  If Sykes called Ben Vartarian, and he was the one who made the chess pieces move—Mercer and Armor’s trade of information at the graveyard—what was the order? What was on that paper? It was low tech—but low tech was sometimes the best way to communicate because computer forensics and electronic surveillance had become so sharp. Paper could be burned. It could be anonymous. It left no trail for the paranoid.

  Connections. This was all about making the connection. She could tell Kyle Richardson everything she knew, but that meant shit because nothing she knew pointed to a smoking gun. She hadn’t seen anyone do anything illegal. And while she could identify Mr. Leather Jacket as skulking behind Diego’s house right before the gunfire that nearly killed her and Jason, she hadn’t seen him fire his weapon. Even if law enforcement could prove he was there through cell phones or GPS or footprints, that didn’t prove that Vartarian or Mercer was behind it.

  Maybe Richardson could make him break. Interview him until he confessed and turned on everyone he worked for. Offer a deal. But if someone in the ADA’s office was involved, would he get a deal? Would he, too, be in danger? And Richardson would need at least one tangible piece of evidence to use as leverage. No one, especially someone trained in private security, would break easily.

  Scarlet wanted to search Gina’s house, but with Leo watching, while he probably wouldn’t call the “Fascist cops,” he also probably wouldn’t lie when asked, and she didn’t want to tamper with evidence.

  Jason had said Gina wanted to show him something. He’d also said the shooter came out of
Gina’s office and ran out the back. Since they were still trying to kill Jason, it reasoned that the shooter hadn’t found whatever tangible piece of evidence Gina had. If they had found it, Jason’s life shouldn’t still be in jeopardy. Maybe she’d hidden it in her house. Or she hid it somewhere else and planned to take Jason to it when he arrived.

  At this point, all Scarlet was doing was guessing.

  Instead of breaking the police seal and searching Gina’s house, she jumped in her Jeep and drove south, back to the main LAPD headquarters where both her brother and Richardson worked. But before she got there, Kyle Richardson finally called her.

  “Jason Jones is in critical condition.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Are you still at St. Joseph’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay. I’m ten minutes away.”

  “Did you just tell me to stay?”

  Scarlet winced. That had come out very, very wrong. “Please wait for me. I have information you need to know.” She paused. “Pretty please with sugar on top?”

  “Actually, I do need to talk to you. In person.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Just get here as soon as you can.” He hung up.

  Chapter Ten

  Scarlet was surprised to see her brother, John, waiting for her in the main lobby of St. Joseph’s Hospital. “John—what are you doing here?”

  “Richardson brought me into the investigation.”

  “O-kay,” she said cautiously. “And?”

  “And just follow me.”

  She had a hundred questions, but silently followed her brother to the elevator. They exited on the third floor and walked down a quiet hall to a row of offices. John knocked on an unmarked door.

  Richardson opened the door but pointed to the phone as he listened to whoever was on the other end. He motioned for them to enter and finished his call. He hung up. “Thanks for coming so quickly, Scarlet. I briefed your brother on the investigation, not just because I need his help, but because I wanted you to trust me.”