by Kirk Russell
Before they arrived, we questioned the Colony owner, a late-middle-aged guy named Max Tona, who out of earshot of Gavotte confessed, “I’m not actually the owner. I inherited the building but had debts. The Hazen Group LA Beautification LLC is the owner. I’m a partial owner of this building and not at all of the warehouse where the car was found.”
“Are you saying you’re not responsible?”
“I manage both,” he said.
“Gavotte thinks you own this building.”
“So do the rest of the artists.”
“Did you give Jody Gavotte a key to the warehouse where the car is?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re in. You want to be truthful with us.”
Tona wore his hair in a graying ponytail. He had a kind, sun-damaged face and had expressed shock, disbelief, and concern, yet said, “It’s probably just what Jody told you. He was trying to make a buck and didn’t think it through, same way as he rents his Chevy.”
Gavotte had claimed to us that he got $200 for storing the car. The same woman who’d traded dope for using his Tahoe had made the deal with him. He didn’t know or care whose car it was—which was probably the truest thing he’d said. Some of the rest was a lie or he wouldn’t have buried the car under a tarp and trash. But the car didn’t matter. What I needed from him was everything he remembered from the night the car was dropped off and where to find the woman he’d made the deal with.
Tona rounded out his version of events and thought he was done. We turned Tona over to the two agents arriving and took Gavotte back to the space and stood outside the roll-up door as he walked back through the sequence of events that night.
“There were two cars,” he said. “The car parked inside was driven by the woman I dealt with. The other had people in it and was parked over near that light pole.”
He pointed across the lot.
“That light is burned out, so I couldn’t see them.”
“Who paid you?” I asked.
“Her, the one I made the deal with. She gave me two hundred bucks. The reason I covered the car was so the friggin’ owner here wouldn’t freak out if he went in there. He, like, prowls around checking out his properties and sometimes goes in with this county dude figuring out how to clean up the chemicals.”
He showed a solid, earnest look he’d probably learned over years facing his frustrated dad. After another hour of questioning, he admitted walking across the lot and checking out the other people in the waiting car. Including the woman he’d made the deal with, there were four people, three women and a man. The only description he gave us was the young woman he’d made the deal with. He was devoid of any concern for Julia. Jody Gavotte was all about himself, but from his very rough descriptions, one of the women sitting in back could have been Julia.
We got the car to an FBI lot, and then drove back to the FBI office. I’d only been there a few minutes when Jo called and said she’d just talked to Julia.
“It was a much more detailed conversation,” Jo said. “The farm is in Tulare County and it’s beautiful. It’s not far from the town of Three Rivers and Lake Kaweah. She still doesn’t have the address but will get it to us very soon.”
“Very soon? How can she not have an address?”
“Let me tell you what else she said. They want her to stay for a year to get her spiritual health back. She said she might stay a couple of weeks at the most and that she’ll be working on the farm while she’s there. They grow vegetables they sell at farmers’ markets and to smaller grocery stores. When I asked her what the living situation was like she said, ‘Communal.’ There are three others there with her, two men and a woman. One of the guys she said is a freak, and the other is on the road all the time delivering or selling. She said the woman, Paula, told her they’ll bring her car to her, and then she’ll get a new phone. She otherwise sounded normal or close to it. Whatever else is going on there, I don’t think she’s frightened, and in some ways she sounds calmer than last week. She said to tell you she loves you and that she’s fine. I wouldn’t call it a normal conversation, but she sounded intact.”
After I hung up with Jo, I called Mara and had a heart-to-heart.
“Ahead of your sworn oath and in the middle of a terror assault on our electrical grid and cellular network, you’ll walk away?” Mara asked.
“Give me a break, Ted.”
“If you’re not saying that, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m worried and I’m not going to sit back and wait. Give me room to find Julia. You and Fuentes still have her marked as possibly involved, and I’m afraid of her unwittingly getting drawn in deeper. That’s why—”
Mara interrupted. “At least speaking for myself, that’s not true.”
“You were plenty clear when I looked at that video with you and Fuentes.”
“You changed my mind. I’m back to neutral. Look at it this way: if Julia is away from the Long Beach house, where at least two people are under surveillance, that’s a good thing. Hang in there. Don’t rabbit on me. If she’s calling, she’s not in danger. I don’t want a phone call from you in Tulare County.”
“I want the flexibility to move quickly if I learn more and need to go,” I said.
“I can’t make that guarantee in this environment.”
“Then don’t.”
I was ready to end the call when he asked, “Are you angry we sandbagged you with the Needles surveillance video?”
“I’m over it.”
“We need you working. We need everybody,” he said.
I left the LA office soon after and drove back to the Colony, knowing I should just go to the hotel and get some sleep. But I couldn’t, not yet. I would soon, but I wanted another look at the whole warehouse complex, not just the Colony.
From Max Tona I’d gotten a map that was mostly marketing but did show the locations of various warehouses and commercial buildings from Burbank up to Sylmar that the Hazen Group owned. Tona had told us the woman managing the warehouses for Hazen also managed a trucking distribution business. Odd but believable, as more and more people took multiple jobs trying to make ends meet.
I called the number he gave me for that manager, a Deborah Inze.
First thing she said was, “Don’t call me Deborah, I hate it. Call me Deb.” I’d go see her tomorrow. I don’t know what I expected to learn, but I was missing something I should be seeing. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but I could feel it.
40
May 6th
“You never call or text anymore,” Jace said. “Are you seeing another agent?”
“Yeah, a guy named Mark Hofter and all the time. It’s busy here. The rolling blackouts are doing a number. Sorry I haven’t been in touch. My niece disappeared and seems to be at a farm in Tulare County. Her car was hidden in a warehouse and I’ve been very worried. I’ll tell you about it later today.”
“Where are you this morning?” she asked.
“At a warehouse about to meet a manager who oversees a string of warehouses and office buildings between Burbank and Sylmar.”
“We’ve got some things to talk about. Call me when you’ve got more time.”
I parked the car and walked into a huge open warehouse that smelled like idling 18-wheelers and diesel-powered forklifts. Deb Inze was in her office. She was diminutive but tough, small but fierce, as Shakespeare had said. It wasn’t enough for Inze to see my creds. She called the LA office to verify.
When she hung up she asked, “Why aren’t you out there stopping this mess? What are you doing here?”
“I’m checking out a lead. I’d like to tour your buildings with you.”
“It would take us all day, and I don’t have one to waste. If you want a list of addresses, I’ll give you one. If you want to ride around here with me and visit a few, I’ll do that, but not for long. We can talk on the ride, but give me a few minutes first.”
She went off, and I made calls. When she came back, she said, “At
this hub, meaning where we’re standing, we redistribute cargo. We need storage capacity so we can hold, recombine, or reload freight. The large spaces here are for that. The other warehouses are a variety of businesses. Many are empty. Some are rat nests of temporary renters.”
“Rat nests?”
“That’s my opinion, not the owners’. The Hazen Group LA Beautification LLC owns all of this. Ready to go? I’ve got an electric cart we can ride around in.”
The electric cart was a golf cart she drove through the lots and on the street. Once away from the din of forklifts and diesel trucks I could hear her more easily.
“There are seventeen businesses,” she said. “Most are along this stretch. We’re coming up on one the FBI has had an interest in before. The guy who runs it is named Bill Stuckey, like stuck in the mud. You’ll see him through the window. He’s a salesman dealing in used vehicles but mostly specialty trucks. That’s why agents were here before questioning both me and Stuckey, which I’m gathering you don’t know about.”
She looked over at me. “That’s okay, you don’t have to embarrass yourself if you didn’t know.”
“I know he was questioned about the sale of used Edison trucks.”
“Okay, so you do know. Do you know about the prison time Stuckey did?”
“No.”
“Ask him about it.” Through the window I saw a balding, middle-aged guy sit down at a desk. Deb added, “We dated for a while, but honestly, now I wish he’d take a long one-way swim in the ocean some night. I’ll wait for you here. Don’t buy anything.”
In the warehouse was Stuckey’s spare, elegant desk, and behind it maybe twenty large vehicles parked with space between each on the stained and polished concrete floor. Stuckey took off his glasses. He looked like the curator of a museum. If he’d told me I needed to buy a ticket to walk the floor, it wouldn’t have surprised me.
“The FBI has already been here about the Edison trucks used in the bombings. We handle auctions and/or buy from a number of large corporations, but primarily utilities. How can I help you, and why is she here? Did she bad-mouth me?” Stuckey asked.
“She did.” I gave it a beat. “But I’m not here about that. I want to talk with you about people who shopped for used Edison trucks.”
“FBI agents have already looked at the record of every single sale,” Stuckey said. “They checked everything we sold at auction. I don’t know what else to show you. Is this something she put you up to?”
He stood, stretched out a long arm, and pointed at Deb. She couldn’t miss it.
“I did prison time for embezzlement twenty-five years ago. I was an accountant and had debts that got out of control. I made the mistake of a lifetime. Look at her looking in here.”
I didn’t turn to look, and some aspect of this felt phony.
“One night she’s at my place and we’re half undressed and I tell her about prison. I feel like I have to at some point, you know? She stands up, puts her clothes on, walks out, and the next day tells me she never wants to see or talk to me again. She said go find another job or I’ll ruin your life here. Well, I’m going on sixty and it doesn’t work that way in sales. I don’t just go find another job. I’m lucky to have this one.”
“Let’s get back on track, Bill. I’m going to show you some photos, but these aren’t used Edison rigs. These are people, male and female. They’re random. I want to know if you recognize anyone.”
He sat down again. He’d stood, I’d thought, to be more convincing and now wanted it all over and done.
“Look at photos. Sure, why not? I’ve got to get last month’s numbers to my boss, but that’s fine. Let’s look at pictures together.”
I didn’t spread the photos out on his desk or make any kind of show of it, and instead handed him a dozen photos.
“If you’re not sure but might recognize the face, lay the photo faceup on the desk. If you’re certain it’s not them, lay it facedown.”
He looked at me and muttered something about sorting them however he wanted to. I left it alone and he went through them at about one every two seconds, twelve photos in less than thirty seconds. Then he went back through them slowly. He laid one facedown on his desk, a second faceup, and handed me the remaining, with the comment, “I’m good at this. Everybody who comes through that door is a potential buyer. I study their faces. Been doing it for years.”
The faceup photo was Jody Gavotte, about which he explained. “I don’t know that he’s been in here. There’s a start-up coffee roaster among these buildings. Sometimes I’ll walk down there. I feel like that’s where I’ve seen him. I don’t remember him in here.” He handed Jody’s photo to me and said, “Now this other photo, the one I have facedown, she was in here in February with a lot of questions, buyer questions, a lot of interest, and then I never saw her again. She was serious enough that I figured she’d bought from a competitor. There are three others in Southern Cal that deal in used utility vehicles. She must have gone somewhere else. She was a buyer. I’m sure of that. Her name was Dalia. We had fun talking and I expected her to come back.”
He had trouble flipping the photo over and finally got a nail under it, but I already knew who it was. I’d been thinking about Gavotte and Julia’s car and the blue Tahoe caught on the Tehachapi security camera. It was too many things coming back to one location. Here was another. He handed the photo to me. I was looking at Samantha Clark.
“How sure are you?” I asked.
“Dead certain. Like I said, I remember faces.”
41
Deb shook her head. “Why did he point at me?”
“Ask him. Let’s see the rest of what you’re willing to show me, then stop by the coffee roaster and I’ll buy.”
“It’ll have to be to-go.”
When we stopped there, they didn’t ask for her order. They made a small Americano with two shots, held the coffee down an inch from the rim, and handed it to her. We toured the rest of the businesses in the half block of warehouses before she dropped me at my car.
I drove back to the LA FBI office and sent Hofter the list of businesses I had gotten from Inze, then met for twenty minutes with Fuentes and told him, “I’ve just come from the warehouse complex where Jody Gavotte lives and where agents from here interviewed a used utility vehicle salesman named Bill Stuckey. The firm he works for refurbishes and sells used specialty vehicles.”
“I know who he is. His sales records checked out. Why were you there?”
I slipped the photo of Samantha Clark out of a notebook and across to Fuentes.
“Out of a dozen photos he picked her. She came in last February with a different name and asked about used Edison trucks.”
Fuentes picked up the photo. “You talked with him today?”
“I just came from there.”
Fuentes nodded. “You’re wondering if we knew this and you’ve been left out of the loop. We didn’t know.” He waved the photo. “This is new. What you haven’t been told is that Clark connects to Laura Balco, the Blond Bomber, and the unidentified dead accomplice. We’d heard whispers about a secret militant edge of Witness1. An anonymous tip gave us a way in. Agent Hofter has been briefed all the way along. You’ve been left out as we’ve tried to resolve your niece’s role. The night Julia disappeared they managed to lose us. We had no idea her car was where you found it.” He handed the photo back saying, “That warehouse complex is coming up way too much, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
At the door, I paused for two reasons. One, I didn’t quite understand the exchange we’d just had, and two, to say, “I think wherever Julia is, they talked her into it.”
“I hope it’s all just as you say, Grale. I really do. Find her and we’ll take it from there.”
42
Fuentes will let Mara deal with me. Good decision for both of us because I still didn’t accept how easily Julia had become a person of interest. Nor did I accept the decision to keep me in the dark about what had been learned thro
ugh wiretaps of those suspected of being part of a Long Beach cell. Fuentes was unsurprised Clark had shopped for used Edison trucks. I saw that standing in front of his desk looking at him. No matter how I turned all the pieces, keeping me in the dark came down to suspecting Julia was involved.
Fuentes, the agents here, Mara, the rest, probably all were concerned for me. Worried how hard it would be when Julia was busted on terror charges. I knew myself. I knew I’d pull back and work more on my own.
Late in the afternoon I left the LA office and drove back to the storefront Stuckey worked out of. He’d told me he likes to lock the door at 5:30 in the afternoon. I’d wait for that and follow him, but only up to a point. If he locked up and went to his favorite watering hole or picked up to-go food or sat down in a diner or went straight home, I’d leave him be.
At 6:45 he locked up, got in his car, and drove slowly away then started turning down one street, up another, driving fast, driving slow like a spy in a TV movie. He did this for ten minutes in an area between San Fernando and the south edge of Sylmar, then followed Polk east until the road dead-ended in hills. There, he turned into a steep driveway with an awkward ornamental iron fence and gate at the bottom, as if the house above was a hacienda rather than a stucco ranch notched into the dry, steep slope.
I changed streets for a better view and saw Stuckey’s car and another side by side. When Deb Inze and Bill Stuckey walked out and Stuckey had a hand around her shoulders, I called Fuentes and told him I might need backup.
He listened then said, “Okay, but kind of walk me through this. You think they played you?”
“I do, and now after the drama show I think they’re worried, so they’re having a little meet-up. Stuckey just got in his car. I’m going to let him go and stick with Inze.”
“I’ll get two agents headed your way in separate vehicles. They’ll call you. You coordinate with them. You can fill me in later on how you happened to be there.”
