“Okay, can you call Las Vegas PD and see if they will detain him? You want to go and do the interview?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll clear the ticket with Navarro and then catch the first flight there.”
“I’ll be in as soon as I drop Al off.”
Al burped, patted his stomach, wiped some chili sauce from the corner of his lips with his thumb, inspected it, popped it in his mouth and said, “Tell you what, it sounds like it’s starting to come together, so I’ll just go in with you and hitch a ride home with one of the fellas. It’ll give me a chance to say hi to a few people.” He started wrapping up his second hotdog to take with him.
“It’ll only take ten minutes to get you home.”
“Yeah, but then it’ll take you another ten, fifteen minutes to get back to the office. A lot can happen in twenty, twenty five minutes.”
Nick looked at his watch again. Al had a point.
“Okay, and you’re going home after, right? You’re not going to try and stay?”
“Are you crazy?”
He still didn’t sound convincing.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Al was king shit on parade, so Nick left him with his minions and found Fanucchi in the office.
“The Vegas cops have him under surveillance,” Fanucchi said. “I should be there in about three hours. How’s Al doing?”
“He’s got a full stomach and signing autographs in the hallway if you’re interested,” Nick said.
He then threw a set of photographs on Fanucchi’s desk that included one of Melanie Blaine’s body.
“If Blaine gets a little stubborn on you, these might loosen him up some.”
Fanucchi thumbed through them quickly, put them in his briefcase, grabbed his hat, and headed for the door.
“I’ll call you,” he said over his shoulder.
Carla, followed by Arnold Grant, walked into the room.
“Hey Fanuch, where you going?” Carla asked.
“Vegas. Blaine’s there.”
“Vegas huh? Did I tell you that’s where that lousy husband of mine took me to get married? Yeah, he said the money for a formal wedding would be better spent on a honeymoon. So where do we go; we go to some car race, in some boring city, where we watched the good ole boys crush beer cans on their heads to impress their barefoot, halter topped, tattooed girlfriends. That’s where we went for our honeymoon.”
“Got to go Carla,” Fanucchi said, and then he was out the door.
“Nick, you know Al’s out in the hallway?” Grant asked.
“Yeah, so I heard,” Nick said.
“Hey Nick, DEA on line two,” the secretary’s voice came over the intercom. He could hear people laughing in the hallway.
Al came into the room with a big smile on his face.
Nick picked up the phone and pushed the button for line two.
“Sergeant Zajac.”
“Agent Nesbit, San Francisco DEA office. You ran a set of prints and they came back to one of our fugitives. What’s the deal, what are you working on?”
“Yeah, which fugitive?”
“A guy named Moby.”
“Gimme your office number and I’ll call you back,” Nick said remembering Meyers’ caution.
“You got him?”
“What’s your number, and I’ll call you back?”
“All right. All right.” He gave Nick the number.
“What do the feds want?” Al asked, he smile gone.
“I think we got a hit on Templeton’s prints. They must have had the warrant flagged and they called the DEA instead of us.”
Nick dialed the number he was given, went through the receptionist, and was connected to Nesbit.
“We submitted a set of lifts taken from a vehicle and another object handled by a guy we know here as Roger Templeton. Templeton is now our prime in a series of homicides were working on.”
“We want him for drug trafficking, tampering with evidence, lying to a federal officer, and impersonating a federal law enforcement officer. You know where he is now?”
“Not specifically, but in the area of, yeah,” Nick said.
“Okay, great, we’re going to send some guys down there to see if we can hook him up. How do we contact you? We’re going to need local support.”
“Yeah well, were going to have to interview him first, so we’ll go ahead and make the arrest and let you know when you can come on down.”
“Are you going to arrest him on your case or our warrant?” Nesbit asked.
Nick knew he was still short on probable cause to make an arrest for homicide, but long on probable cause for a search warrant. So his plan was to arrest Templeton on the federal warrant, search his home, business, and vehicle, and interview him on the murder charges. The federal warrant made all that possible.
To make the homicide case, he needed something to connect Templeton to at least one of the killings; a pistol, a matching shoe to the footprint left at one of the murder scenes, a rifle, records of prostitution deals, something. It wasn’t enough that he just fit.
“We’ll pick him up on your warrant, do our interview, and then if we don’t have enough to charge him on our case, he’s all yours. Look, I know he embarrassed some of your guys, and he was bringing quantity into the U.S., but we think he’s responsible for six murders, including a cop and the wounding of another, that’s got to have priority.”
“Bet your ass it takes priority,” Al mumbled.
“How’d you find out about him trafficking and the other thing?” Nesbit asked.
“It’s kind of a long story. We were just following up on some information we developed. We didn’t know for sure our guy Templeton was your guy Moby, we only suspected the possibility.”
“Okay, okay, how about I send just a couple of agents down there to monitor what’s going on? It’d be nice to get our hands on this asshole.”
“Not a problem,” Nick said. He gave Nesbit his cell number and hung-up.
After Nick was off the phone, Al asked, “The feds giving you a hard time?”
“Nah, not really. I’d probably feel the same way if we got screwed-over, too.”
Nick picked up the phone and called Rene.
“Good work on the prints,” he told her. “It turned out Templeton’s real name is Nathanial Moby and he’s wanted for drug trafficking and impersonating a federal cop, so hook him up as soon as you lay eyes on him.”
“Okay, we’ll see if we can find him, but he’s been in there a long time. I got this bad feeling he’s onto us and we’re watching a car that isn’t going anywhere.”
“Do you have the exits covered?”
“Now, but we didn’t get that set-up for five minutes or so, maybe longer. He could have easily walked in one door and right out another. And now, what’s he have, a two or three hour jump on us?”
“Maybe, maybe not; this guy’s pretty slick, though. But it could also be he’s planning some big function, and it’s just taking a lot of time. Doesn’t much matter I guess because the way I see it we have no choice anyway. We can’t just fold up our tents and go home until we know for sure. So if you spot him, take him into custody. And while you’re doing that, I’ll get search warrants for his car, house, and business.”
“We don’t have enough people to cover those other locations,” Rene said.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll get a hold of Special Ops and get them on it.”
“Yeah, thanks, that’ll help. I’ll call you if we get him. So you think he’s the one; the one who shot Al and the others?”
“Pretty damn sure.”
“Well, who knows, maybe he won’t put his hands-up like a good little asshole.”
“Be careful, Rene.”
“No problem.”
As soon as Nick put the phone down Al said, “Why don’t I get started on the search warrants while you get the special ops boys going?”
“No way, you just got out of the hospital.”
“Hey look, if I g
o home now, all I’ll be doing is sitting on my butt and talking on the phone anyway. I can do that here. It’s only for a few minutes; just long enough for you to get the other locations covered.”
“I don’t know, man,” Nick said.
“Where’s the search warrant you did on Blaine’s place? All we have to do is update it with the information on Templeton, I mean Moby, whoever.”
Al moved to Nick’s desk and started going through the paperwork on top.
“Hey, you’re going to screw everything up,” Nick said as he pushed Al’s arm away with one hand and fished out the Blaine residence search warrant with the other.
“Here,” Nick said handing it to Al. “And here’s a copy of the federal arrest warrant for Moby; you’ll need that, too,” he added, passing over the fax he got from Meyers in Mesa.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Al sat right front, arms crossed, staring straight ahead, and except for his shallow breathing, not moving an inch. Strapped to his hip, he had a short barreled, five shot Smith. He carried a second snubby in his coat pocket. After a time he blinked, inhaled deep, let it out, and passed a meaty hand over his face as if trying to wipe away the tension.
Nick glanced sideways at his partner. He’d promised to stay put, not even get out of the car; yeah, right. He leaned over and turned-up the silence on the two-way. It was deafening.
Minutes passed, then: “Perimeter team stand-by, we’re making our approach.” It blasted from the speaker. Nick turned the volume back down again.
From half a block away, with his window open, he could hear the SWAT team pounding and shouting its demands. “San Jose Police. We have a search warrant. Open the door.”
More silence, only seconds this time, followed by Moby’s door going down. And then there was a loud gunshot; not the pop of a pistol, or the sharp crack of a rifle, but louder, deeper, blunter.
Nick’s heart did a quick-step at the sound, and his first inclination was to go toward it. He knew better. He had no business there right now. He’d only get in the way.
Five more minutes went by and he heard someone ask for the ambulance to move-up to the corner. Another minute after that and someone else asked for the detectives. His first thought was Moby was dead.
Nick started the car and drove it to the front of the house. Two officers were supporting another as he limped to the ambulance, blood spotted the front of the injured man’s left thigh.
“What happened?” Nick asked.
“The bastard set-up a shotgun on a tripwire, and a couple of the pellets caught him in the leg.”
“Is the house clear?”
“Yeah, nobody’s inside.”
The house was a white with green trim, single story rental. There was a struggling lawn in front surrounded by red and pink geraniums and Japanese boxwood. A stained, gray cement birdbath rested near the porch, its bowl filled with leafs from the Maple tree in the neighbor’s yard.
When Nick stepped through the door he saw an officer squatted near a twelve-gauge, single-shot, shotgun that had been wired to the legs of an end table positioned to the right side of the door and pointed somewhat towards it.
The officer looked up and said, “Fortunately for us he made two mistakes. First, he put the shotgun to the side of the door instead of straight on. Doing it this way, most of the pellets missed. If it had been straight on, anyone standing in the doorway would have caught all of them. His other mistake was he wired it to a table that was too light weight. When the trip wire tightened on the trigger, it pulled the table a little bit out of alignment causing the pellets to shoot at a slight angle away from the door.”
Nick looked to where the projectiles had impacted the wall to the left of the door. By the size of the holes, they looked like number four shot. As he examined them closer, the portable phone in the living room started ringing.
“You want me to answer it?” the officer by the shotgun asked.
“No, I’ll get it,” Nick said.
He answered the phone on the fourth or fifth ring.
“Yeah?” Nick said.
“The shotgun was meant for you Zajac. Too bad it didn’t do its job.”
“Well Moby, I guess that’s just the way things have been going for you lately, huh?”
“That answers that; you know who I am.”
“Who you are and what you are.”
Al walked through the door and Nick pointed to the phone.
“So your partner’s back in action. I thought I’d killed him, too.”
That little admission just tied you to two of the murders, Nick thought.
Nick covered the mouthpiece and said, “He must be somewhere nearby. He just saw Al come in the door.” He then waved Al away from the entry.
The SWAT officer spoke into his radio telling other officers to check the perimeter for the “suspect”. He then moved to the side of the door jam and peered out.
Nick figured he needed to draw the conversation out until they found him.
“You know what man, you’re one sick motherfucker,” Nick said. “To kill all those people, you’ve got some serious head problems going on there. You need yourself a major tune-up. Why not let me take care of that for you?”
“I know you’re not serious. You and I both know this isn’t going to end with me in a court room listening to some shrink telling twelve losers that I’m a sociopath but because I still know right from wrong I should be juiced anyway. If you really think that, you’re the crazy one.”
Another good statement, Nick thought. Not exactly a confession, but certainly an admission.
“Nah, I was thinking more about taking care of it by putting you out of your misery.”
“De hombre a hombre, eh. Good, you had me worried for a second. That’s more like it. But it’ll never happen Zajac. You’re not smart enough. In fact, I’m going to kill you. But first, first I’m going to torture you a little bit; take from you what’s most precious; make you hate like never before; and after that, I’ll make you scared of everything around you, every sound, every doorway you pass, every car that pulls up alongside. And when I’m tired of messing with you, that’s when I’ll kill you.”
Nick saw the SWAT officer push his fingertips to his earpiece, apparently listening to some radio traffic, and then look his way and shrug his shoulders. Nick took this to mean that the perimeter units weren’t able to locate Moby.
“Why don’t you just tell me where you are and we can get it over with? That’s what it’s all about, right; the shotgun, the phone call? I figured out who you were, messed with your little business, made you on the murders, and now you want to get even. You can’t stand being the loser, you pathetic little shit?”
Nick hoped by baiting him, he might reveal something helpful.
“Loser, pathetic, you know nothing about me. People much more cleaver than you have tried to take me down and they haven’t even come close. I go where I want, when I want. I also kill who I want. Nobody can touch me, especially you. I pick the time and place. I control things.”
“Yeah, well the way I see it you’re not controlling anything right now. I’m standing in the middle of your living room and you’re hiding like a scared little kid. That doesn’t sound like you’re in control of shit to me.”
“I know exactly where you’re standing Zajac, and what you’re doing, too, because I’m right there with you, right there in the room. I can see you’re holding the phone with your right hand. I can see that your fat partner has his pistol out. I can see you looking around now, wondering what the fuck is going on. And that’s why you don’t have a chance in hell. I’m just smarter than you.”
Nick scanned the room. Given his location, there were only a limited number of positions Moby could view him from and none of them included windows or doors. The possible locations were narrowed further when you considered he could also see Al. …Shit, nanny cam! Hidden camera! I should have thought of that. Pretty slick.
“Any ten year old with a computer c
an do that, big deal. That doesn’t make you a criminal mastermind. The trouble with you is that you think you’re better than you are.”
Nick covered the mouthpiece again and told Al there was a camera somewhere in the living room broadcasting their picture over the internet. Al faced the living room and gave Moby the finger.
“Maybe I’ll kill him, too.”
“What’s the point of all this; money, power, what? When you’re dead and buried do you think anyone is going to remember you or what you’ve done?”
Al and the SWAT officer began searching the living room.
“Hey now, you’re partner’s getting warmer. And there is no point. I do it because I can do it. Money, women, power, history is just what comes with it. Oh, by the way, speaking of women, that’s a nice little woman you have there; maybe I’ll borrow her for a few hours one of these days. Is she as good as the sister? I had the sister you know.”
Nick bit back his anger. He knew Moby was baiting him, maybe trying to see what pushed his buttons.
“You’re brain is all over the place, man. Are you even able to keep a single train of thought; kill Al, kidnap someone you only imagine to be my girlfriend, stock and kill me? I think your old man must have hit you one too many times with that belt. You’re messed up.”
Silence.
“Hey Moby, you still there.”
“My old man, huh! My old man! I’ll tell you about my old man, you fuck! He pissed his pants before he died. He squirmed and cried and moaned. He begged for his life. ‘Please, Nate. Please, help me.’ Fuck him and fuck you because that’s exactly what you’re going to do, too. Please. Please, Nate. Help me. And you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to film it all and send copies to the Mercury News and all your little buddies just so everyone will know what happens to people who mess with me.”
“Oops, I think we’ve found you,” Nick said.
Al turned the camera around to face the wall.
“Okay, so what now Moby, anymore juvenile tricks? Anymore hollow threats. If not, I got to go. I’ve got a nutcase to hunt down.”
Touched By Blood Page 21
