The Lost Witness

by Robert Ellis

  “Well, he just called and said he’s got Cava’s Hummer.”

  Lena spotted the Hummer from a block away. It was hard to miss because it was parked in front of the dealership’s showroom door. But even worse, two guys were outside setting up movie lights.

  She glanced at Rhodes and took another hit of coffee. She hadn’t slept in two nights. She was grinding now. On the move and feeling the furies in her gut. They didn’t have time for this.

  Rhodes pulled up to the showroom. As Lena jumped out, she turned to one of the lighting techs.

  “Where’s Vinny Bing?” she said.

  “Inside the deal tent.”

  Rhodes closed in on the man. “What the fuck’s a deal tent?”

  The guy gave him a look. “It’s inside,” he said. “You can’t miss it, dude.”

  They entered the showroom and heard Nat King Cole singing “The Christmas Song” over the PA system. It was still early and no one was around. Lena spotted the neon sign over the tent’s entrance and pointed at it. let’s do da deal. Pushing the curtains away, she entered with Rhodes.

  A kid wearing jeans and a T-shirt dropped a legal pad on the table and looked up. When some weird guy standing behind the desk in his boxer shorts turned, his eyes got big and he grabbed his costume off the chair.

  “What’s up with all this,” the guy was saying. “The cops are already here.”

  Lena watched him step into his king costume, noting the diamond necklace and the rings on his fingers. His face was pale, his eyes swollen. The king looked like he had a hangover.

  “Are you Vinny Bing?” she said.

  The kid in the T-shirt answered for him. “Who do you think he is? And why’d you get here so early? We need more time to set up.”

  “Set what up?” Rhodes said.

  “The lights. The shots. You’re blowing it, man. Don’t you want to be on TV?”

  Rhodes glared at the kid. “No,” he said. “We don’t want to be on TV. Now get out of here.”

  “What are you talking about? We need to shoot this, man. This’ll be the climax for our whole season. This’ll make the King of Caddies the King of cable TV.”

  “You heard the detective,” Lena said. “Police business. Get out.”

  The kid looked at Bing for help. After a moment Bing snapped his fingers and pointed at the door.

  “Later, Mr. Hollywood. We’ll do our deal. You do yours in B mode.”

  The kid grimaced, then grabbed his legal pad and stormed out. Lena turned back to Bing. He was still getting into his costume. When he opened a box and clipped on a wireless microphone, Lena thought she understood what B mode meant. Tape was rolling. She glanced over at Rhodes and caught the look in his eyes. He had made the connection as well, but there wasn’t time to care.

  “Tell us about the Hummer,” she said.

  Bing smiled through a yawn. “Customer Cava shows up here last Saturday. The dude wants to do business and trade up to an SRX Crossover. Says he wants the V-8. Says he wants the rocket ship.”

  “Were you guys shooting video?” Rhodes asked.

  “ ’Course we were. Customer Cava sat in that chair and showed me the cash.”

  Lena paused a moment, thinking about the man in the window she had seen in Venice the other night. The man who walked out of the next building and raced off.

  “What color was the Crossover?” she asked.

  “Radiant Bronze,” he said. “One of our best.”

  The news settled in. Lena had seen Cava. Not his face, but the way he moved. The way he carried himself and walked away from her into the fog. Cava was the one keeping an eye on the apartment. He was looking for the witness and having the same luck they were. As she tossed it over, she made a mental note to check in with the coroner’s office and see if the witness’s body had turned up. Her hunch had more kick to it now.

  “Tell us about Cava,” she said.

  Bing clipped the wireless transmitter to his belt and starting buttoning up his costume.

  “The man’s got the shakes,” he said.

  “You mean that he was nervous because of the cameras.”

  “No, ma’am. Customer Cava’s got the shakes. The dude’s a user. A space man. That’s why he wanted the rocket ship.”

  Lena traded looks with Rhodes. Bing picked up on it, then yanked open a desk drawer and tossed a Taser in front them.

  “The guys found it underneath the driver’s seat when they were detailing the car,” Bing said. “At first we thought it was a toy. You know, a Christmas toy for kids. Then I start think’n it’s some kind of ray gun, man. An electric gun. I put two and two together. Customer Cava’s into something weird. The parallel universe so to speak. I got up this morning and made the call. Time for the king to do his best.”

  Lena drew a pen from her pocket and slid the Taser closer without touching it. It was an M-18. A third generation Taser used by special forces and SWAT teams that ran on eight AA batteries, yet hit the subject with fifty thousand volts. Lena checked the safety. She had seen the weapon used in a demonstration just a couple of months ago. The blast of electricity lasted for five seconds. Some people took the hit and were deluged with uncontrollable muscle spasms. Some froze in a standing position, while others tumbled over and hit the ground. But what interested Lena was the data port just below the battery indicator light. The M-18 had a microprocessor. A chip that recorded the time and date of every shot.

  Her laptop was in the Crown Vic. She looked past Bing out the window and found the car in the lot. Hidden behind the Hummer she could see a man with a video camera pointed at them. When she glanced back at Bing, she saw his face turned toward the window slightly and realized that they were shooting through the glass. The king was playing to the camera.

  She turned to Rhodes. “I’ll be right back.”

  She ran outside for her briefcase, ignoring the video crew by the Hummer. Returning to the office, she found a place away from the window, slipped on a pair of gloves, and connected the Taser to her computer. As the information rendered on the screen, she listened to Rhodes warn Bing that Cava was dangerous, then ask for his paperwork. When Bing picked up the phone to call the finance department, Rhodes joined her.

  The M-18 had been fired five times last Wednesday night.

  Five bursts of fifty thousand volts at a young woman who weighed only one hundred and twenty-two pounds. The first occurred at 10:27 p.m. The second, four minutes after that. Then nothing until 11:15 p.m. Shots four and five were logged in at 11:38 and 12:01. According to the Andolinis, Cava showed up at the garage on Barton Avenue around eleven. That meant that the first two jolts went down in the parking lot at the Cock-a-doodle-do and were used to subdue the woman. The last three were fired in the garage for other reasons.

  Lena slipped the Taser into her briefcase. By the time she packed up, a timid man with bleached blond hair and black roots entered with Cava’s file. They opened it on the table. As she read the contact information, she noticed Bing standing beside her in full costume. The king was pointing at the documents and pretending to be involved for his audience outside the window.

  Lena turned back to the file. After a moment, the timid man with the bad dye job cleared his throat.

  “That’s not his address,” he said. “He doesn’t live there anymore. He made a mistake and wrote the wrong one down.”

  Lena didn’t say anything. When Rhodes flipped the page over, an envelope fell out. The letter had been sent by the dealership to Cava’s address and returned by the post office.

  “It came back yesterday,” the timid man said. “It’s no big deal. It’s just a thank you letter we send out after every purchase.”

  Lena glanced at the envelope. There was a bright yellow preprinted label beside the address. Beneath the words return to sender was an explanation. Cava’s application for a change of address had run out and the post office was no longer forwarding his mail. But what struck Lena was the label itself. Cava had used a real former address. At
one time he had lived there.

  She turned to Rhodes and caught the glint in his eye.

  “He’s not hiding,” he said. “He lives here. He’s got a home in L.A.”

  Rhodes gazed out the window at the Hummer. She could see him putting something together, and suddenly realized what it was.

  “The navigation device.”

  Rhodes rocked his head up and down and turned to Bing. “Are the keys in the Hummer?”

  “Yeah, sure. We just moved it.”

  Lena followed Rhodes out the showroom door. Ignoring the video camera, they rushed over to the Hummer and climbed in. Rhodes turned the key, then switched on the navigation device and began toggling through the menu until he reached a list of previous destinations Cava had programmed into the system. She saw Fontaine’s address. Then the victim’s apartment on Navy Street in Venice. But it was the list of options at the bottom of the screen that seemed the most important right now. The button marked home that would have been programmed by the dealership at the time of purchase for the original owner of the car.

  Rhodes pressed the button. Lena’s eyes zeroed in on the text. They had him. Nathan G. Cava lived in Universal City.

  43

  Barham Boulevard had been closed, the entire complex of four buildings, evacuated and shut down. Each building was three stories high and shaped like a box. A mix of modern and Tudor styles wrapped around courtyards that were fleshed out with swimming pools and palm trees and rows of lounge chairs. The fact that the Bates Motel from the movie Psycho stood just over the next hill on the Universal lot was something Lena didn’t really want to think about right now.

  She was waiting by the pool with Rhodes, hidden beneath Cava’s unit on the third floor. Neither detective would be involved in the arrest. Lena didn’t want to take the chance. They needed Cava alive. After hashing it out with Barrera at Parker Center, Lt. Chase Thomas from Special Weapons and Tactics was called in to oversee the operation. Thomas had rescued fifteen hostages from a bank robbery last year and was awarded the Medal of Valor, the department’s highest award for heroism in the line of duty. He was the cream of the crop and a consummate professional. In five minutes he would lead his team upstairs to Cava’s front door.

  Curiously, as they planned the operation in the captain’s vacant office, there had been no word from the sixth floor. Chief Logan had made no comment, offered no response, and remained strangely silent. And Klinger hadn’t been seen in the building all day.

  Lena didn’t take any of this as a good sign.

  The crime scenes at Ramira’s house off Edgewater Terrace and Fontaine’s mansion on South Mapleton Drive had been processed by different divisions at the local level. Both decisions had been made in the heat of the moment, both decisions born out of desperation. But from where Lena stood, the tree wasn’t rotting from the ground up. The tree was disintegrating from the top down. Her best chance at getting to Tremell, her only chance, was to keep the investigations as far away from Parker Center as she could. To have faith in the department’s roots and the local homicide divisions where the chief’s ability to write and direct the outcome would be far less certain. It seemed obvious enough now that Logan had assigned the case to her because he wanted to destroy her. But just as important, he was in on it. He had asked for her because he believed that she would fail. By calling 911 at both locations, she had thrown a wrench into his plans. She had brought more people into the mix. Fresh eyes and ears.

  So the silence from the sixth floor had to mean something. And Lena figured that nothing about it could be good.

  Her mouth was dry. She turned and saw Thomas entering the courtyard with ten men behind him—each wearing helmets and body armor. Of the ten, four carried shotguns. The rest were equipped with automatic rifles. But it was the shotguns that caught Lena’s eye. They were Winchester SX3s capable of firing twelve shells in less than 1.5 seconds.

  The SWAT team was ready. And when Thomas gave her the nod, she moved down the walkway with Rhodes and followed their progress up the stairs. Cava’s curtains were drawn. The entry team worked quickly, avoiding the windows and falling into position. Then Thomas stepped to the side and pounded on the front door.

  Thirty seconds rolled out hot and heavy with no response. Thomas tried again, harder than before. Another burst of time came and went.

  Lena watched as he held his ear to the door. After a third attempt, he turned and found her in the courtyard below. His shrug could only mean that there was no movement inside.

  She thought about Cava’s car in the garage. The SRX Crossover. They knew that he was here. And there was no need to break the door down. The keys had been furnished by the management company.

  Thomas fished them out of his pocket and tossed them to a team member. Once they got past the locks, Cava’s door was pushed open with the business end of a Winchester SX3.

  A moment passed. Those first jittery peeks inside the darkened apartment. Then the team quickly filed in with their weapons raised.

  Lena glanced at Rhodes, instinctively moving toward the stairs. Listening, watching. The waiting tearing her up inside.

  After five long minutes, Thomas reappeared in the doorway and waved them up. Lena’s first thought as she tore up the steps was that Cava had been killed before they got here. That the word had been out all morning that they located him, and that no one involved at any level could afford to take the chance that he might talk. When she reached the front door, Thomas pulled off his helmet like the operation was over and gave her a look.

  “You need to see this,” he said. “Follow me.”

  Her heart almost stopped beating. She entered the darkened apartment, noting the sparse furnishings as she and Rhodes followed Thomas past the kitchen into the bedroom. All ten SWAT team members were huddled around the bed. Thomas cleared a path for them. As the bodies parted, she looked down and saw Nathan G. Cava lying on top of the bed.

  But he hadn’t been murdered, and the surgeon-turned-hit-man wasn’t dead.

  Instead, Cava was listening to music with a pair of headphones on and his eyes closed. Lena could hear the sound leaking into the quiet room. It was a blues cut and a good one—“Bobby’s Bop,” from an import album by Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters called Hope Radio.

  “He won’t budge,” Thomas said. “He’s out.”

  Rhodes pointed to the bedside table. Six or seven empty auto-injectors were piled up beside a fresh pack of five more. Cava was binging on morphine. The auto-injectors were identical to the two they found on Fontaine’s desk.

  His eyes opened.

  Everybody in the room flinched.

  Then six rifles and four shotguns slid forward an inch or two from the man’s face. Cava didn’t appear to see them. He didn’t even move. He just aid there, listening to the blues and holding on to the great White Nurse in a state of bliss.

  44

  Lena looked at Barrera standing before the window. He was smoking a cigar and watching the last rays of orange sunlight clip the hilltops to the north. Directly west the marina layer was already flooding into the basin.

  “You’ve got everything, right?” he asked.

  “I’m all set.”

  They were in the captain’s office. Alone on the floor. The air fraught with electricity. Cava was waiting in one of the interrogation rooms across the way, his cosmic bliss winding down from a six-hour discharge. A doctor had examined him at his apartment and signed off on his condition. For the past hour, Cava had been alone in the small room—handcuffed to a chair with nothing to do. By now the walls were closing in on him. The ground, fertile.

  Barrera turned from the window. “If you need anything, I’ll be right outside the door.”

  Lena nodded. She appreciated his concern, but they had gone over it at least ten times. And there had been more than enough time to pin down who Cava really was, collect props, and prepare for the interview.

  She gathered her files, then picked up a pair of new slip-on sneakers. Becau
se the interrogation rooms were built almost fifty years ago and didn’t include one-way mirrors or observation rooms, the session would be recorded by SID on the fourth floor. Although Klinger was still missing and Chief Logan remained eerily silent, Rhodes would oversee the recording to make sure that no one was eavesdropping from above.

  The phone rang. Barrera grabbed it and listened, then hung up and turned to Lena.

  “Rhodes,” he said. “They’re ready. Tape’s rolling.”

  She met his eyes, then walked out of the office heading for the interrogation room. When she pulled the door open, Cava looked up from his chair against the rear wall.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Doctor?”

  He stared at her for a moment, surprised. “Sugar, but no cream,” he said in a quiet voice.

  Lena left her things on the table, then poured two cups of coffee at the counter by the fax machine, added sugar, and returned to the room. As she closed the door and sat down, she could feel Cava’s eyes on her. He seemed reserved, catlike. She pulled her cell out and flipped it open. When the screen lit up, she switched off the power and returned the phone to her pocket. Cava’s eyes slid across the table to his coffee. Lena watched him lift the cup. His hands were trembling, and he seemed aware that she had noticed.

  “Where are my medications,” he said. “And what happened to my shoes?”

  She pushed the sneakers across the table. “These should fit. They’re size ten.”

  He pulled them closer and examined them, then noticed the lack of shoelaces. “You think I’m gonna hang myself?”

  She shrugged and it seemed to anger him.

  “The pair you took from me were Bruno Maglis. They cost four hundred dollars.”

  “These cost twenty-three,” she said.

  He shook his head, then dropped the sneakers on the floor and slipped them over his socks. Lena used the time to open her files and lay them out on the table. As she made a few adjustments, Cava rattled the handcuffs.

  “You think that I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.

  She turned to him, but remained silent.