“Nope.” Asnikov remained adamant. “I wish I could help…”
He let the words hang in the air.
End of conversation. Webster kept it alive with another tactic. “What do you know about Guru Bob?”
“Why?”
“Just gathering information,” Martinez said. “For starters, is his last name Russo?”
“Someone’s done some homework. Most people think his last name is Ross. That’s what he used when he was at Southwest U. of Tech. He left without graduating.”
“Actually, he was kicked out,” Webster said. “Either leave or be expelled.”
Asnikov raised an eyebrow. “Then you know more about him than I do. In the past, I hadn’t given Bob much thought. As long as I’ve known the Order, Pluto has been the gatekeeper. Being as infiltration is my stock-in-trade, I’ve always concentrated on how to get around him. Ignoring Bob was probably a mistake. Could be why I’ve had problems.”
“What do you know about Pluto?” Martinez asked.
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing,” Martinez said. “Right now, we’re still trying to get a fix on Bob.”
Asnikov nodded. “Pluto’s given name is Keith Muldoony. He came from dirt-poor beginnings in the backwoods of West Virginia—from a big family. At one time he was their shining star. Not only the family hero but a role model for the entire town. Keith was a college graduate.”
“From where?”
“Community college. Nothing fancy, but considering his surroundings that was some deal. His major was psychology. He actually worked in a hospital for a year. Impressed the relatives with his job because he wore a white coat. When I talked to them, that’s the first thing they told me. ‘Ole Keith worked in a hospital and wore a white coat.’ Guess a white coat is heady stuff for a kid whose relatives are either on welfare or in jail.”
“What did he do in the hospital?”
“Not much more than an orderly from what I could ascertain. Probably in the mental ward, being as he majored in psychology.”
Webster said, “It’s a long way from West Virginia to the Order.”
“Yep.”
“What brought him out here?”
“Jupiter. Pluto came out to join up with him. Together, they started the Order.”
“Where’d he hear about Jupiter?”
“I don’t know. But for a while it was just Jupiter and Pluto and a few oddball followers. Venus, Nova and Bob came later on.” Asnikov took an empty coffee urn and went into the bathroom. A moment later, he started fixing up six cups’ worth of full-strength brew. “He should have been next in line. Best-laid plans of mice and men…”
Martinez wasn’t about to give up. “Mr. Asnikov, surely you must know some ex-Order member. Someone who can help us out with the physical layout of the place.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry what?” Webster asked. “Sorry, you don’t know an ex-Order member, or sorry, you won’t help us out.”
Asnikov’s eyes went to the TV. “We’re going around in circles. Is this your idea of getting something done, or are you just putting in the hours to satisfy your boss?”
“And you don’t know anything about Lauren Bolt?” Webster pressed.
“We’re back to her, are we?” Asnikov smiled. “Bunch of maniacal, murderous ghouls tell you that I kidnapped Lauren Bolt, and you believe them?” He shook his head. “You certainly haven’t learned much these past few days.”
“Why are her parents still out of town?” Martinez asked.
“Beats me.” Asnikov pointed to his inner office. “I got a polygraph in there. I use it on prospective clients to weed out the psychos. Hook me up. Ask me questions about Lauren Bolt and/or her parents. Gentlemen, I guarantee you, you’ll hit more blanks than a washed-out stud.”
Martinez tried one last time. “Mr. Asnikov, we all know your files are confidential. But we’ve got an exceptional situation. They’re holding scores of children as hostages. Do you have children, sir?”
“Detective, I’m on your side. I happen to be familiar with some of the young adults in there.”
“Who?”
“They are ongoing cases. I can’t tell you because of confidentiality. And even if I did tell you, it wouldn’t help. Because they’re still on the inside, and that fact is a testament to my failure!”
No one spoke. The coffeemaker gurgled.
Asnikov’s jaw bulged as he poured himself a cup of full-strength espresso. “What do you want from me? I know bits and pieces. But if I tell you some misinformation and that causes a major screw-up, not only will my reputation be justifiably ruined but I’ll feel personally responsible for every life that’s lost. Wait them out. That’s what I do. I wait until I know what I’m doing.”
“Waiting is good—if you have time!” Martinez said.
There was strain on Asnikov’s face—the humiliation of failure. Webster felt he was at the breaking point. He said. “Sir, why don’t you just come down and give us your insights into the Order. You’ve been studying the group a lot longer than we have.”
“I don’t want to be part of your raid. Because I know you’re going to screw up. I have absolutely no confidence in law enforcement.”
Webster started to speak, but Martinez held him back. Bert pulled out a card. “Fair enough. If you change your mind, give me a call. Or better still, feel free to drop by the Order. As long as we have this situation, you’ve got a standing invitation.”
Asnikov put the card in his breast pocket. “I suppose it’s to my credit that you think I know so much.” His face became grave. Again, his eyes went to the TV. “My sister died at Jonestown…along with my niece—a three-year-old with a cherub face and beautiful curls. My parents have never recovered from their deaths.”
He finished his coffee and opened the office door.
“I’m not without empathy.”
29
Decker squinted into the sun, then tented his eyes under a roof of fingers. “So you’re telling me that Asnikov’s hiding something?”
Martinez said, “No, I said I think he is—”
“Then sic a judge on him!” Decker said. “I’m not playing footsies when there are lives at stake! We got the law behind us, i.e., eminent danger to an individual or individuals outweighs patient/doctor confidentiality. Let’s use it.”
“Loo, we don’t know anything definite,” Webster said.
Decker turned to Tom. For once, the permapressed Southern boy looked wilted. “So Asnikov isn’t hiding anything?”
“Maybe he was acting a little cagey—”
“What does that mean?” Decker was trying to keep the edge out of his voice, but it wasn’t working.
Webster told Decker Asnikov’s parting line—a sister and three-year-old niece who died in Jonestown, Guyana.
“Something like that in your history—like a personal connection to every kid holed up in a cult. I think he’d help, but confidentiality is holding him back.”
“So we’ll take the decision out of his hands. Let’s get a subpoena to search his files.”
Martinez said, “Even when we get one, Loo, it’s going to take time to go through all his files.”
Decker stared at the bunkers. “If Bob decides to hunker down for the long run, we’ll have lots of time.”
Martinez chewed the ends of his thick mustache. “If Bob decides to hunker down…”
“If,” Decker repeated. He checked his watch. Seven-thirty. He’d been up for over twenty-four hours. His heavy eyes lifted from his wrist and landed on an FBI van. McCarry was inside, updating his boss. The agent wasn’t a bad sort. But he was an inconvenience: another body with another set of orders. Someone who could screw things up. Decker supposed McCarry felt the same way about him.
Martinez asked, “What now?”
Decker said, “Go out and file a petition for the subpoena. At least you’ll be doing something. Me?” Decker pointed to his chest. “I sit around, scratch my balls and
wait.”
“Kinda like baseball players,” Webster remarked.
“Wish I made their money.”
“Bob hasn’t made phone contact?” Martinez asked.
“Not in the last four hours.”
More silence…mind-numbing silence.
Webster asked, “Where’s Europa?”
“We sent her home.”
“Why?”
Decker shrugged. “No new insights. She pretty much told me what she had told you. We’ve got her pager number if something comes up. But there was no reason to keep her here. Especially since Bob didn’t want to talk to her.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets, brushed loose bits of packed dirt with the tip of his shoe.
“I thought she might have been able to flush him out. From the looks of things, Bob doesn’t want to talk to anyone. The inactivity is making the Brass nervous. Both LAPD and fed SWAT teams are talking raid.”
Martinez looked at the buildings. From his perspective, they resembled fortified castles. “How are they planning to break in?”
“Maybe freeze the bars, break them off and shoot some canisters of tear gas through the windows, then find someone small enough to crawl inside. First, they’re trying to figure out if the windows are electrically hot-wired and/or attached to detonators.”
“How do you do that from a distance?”
“Beats me. I’m no weapons expert. They’ve got scanning machines, they’ve got every conceivable weapon and the latest in high-tech gismos. What they don’t have is an insider’s knowledge. You get us an insider from Asnikov’s files, you give us one hell of a magic bullet.”
Silence.
Ten seconds…
Twenty seconds…
A minute…
Decker’s eyes shifted from the lifeless compound to the buzzing press area. The hordes were being contained by a band of yellow tape, a half-dozen police officers and a lot of psychology.
“Which judge do you want us to wake up, sir?” Webster asked.
Decker gave him a name, then an alternate if the first wasn’t available.
“Do you have a phone number?” Martinez asked.
“In my office.” Decker fished into his pocket for a ring of keys. “Marge and Scott are there now…at the station house. I should say they were there. I told them to come here around ten minutes ago. They arrived back in town while you two were interviewing Asnikov.”
Webster said, “Why’re you bringing them out here? I thought you wanted them out of the way so they could work independently.”
“Captain’s orders. He wants their input because Scott and Marge have both been inside the compound.”
Again, no one spoke. The trio stared at the buildings, their skin tone pallid from lack of sleep and a wash of dirty sunlight. Again, Decker checked his watch—seven thirty-eight. Talk about time slowing to a crawl. Maybe in a former life Einstein had been part of a multi-disciplinary law enforcement task force in a no-win hostage situation. Then again, Albert had probably had lots of empty hours as an employee of the postal system in Switzerland. Back then, disgruntled clerks didn’t have guns, so things must have been pretty damn slow in the mailroom.
McCarry was still conferring with his colleagues.
Decker was still waiting for Bob to call.
Very, very quiet.
“The key, Loo?” Webster asked.
Decker let out an absent chuckle as he sorted through the ring. “Be nice if I could keep a train of thought.”
“Probably has something to do with sleep deprivation.”
“No doubt.” Decker unlatched the key from the ring and handed it to Martinez. “Either of you know how to work my electronic Filofax?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Martinez answered.
“I can figure it out,” Webster said. “That’s why Bert and I make a good team. I can do the Filofax, and he pulls me down to the ground when someone’s shooting at me and I’m standing like some frozen squirrel.”
But Decker wasn’t listening. He was distracted by familiar faces in the distance. Dunn and Oliver were trying to get past an army unit’s worth of security personnel. Martinez saw them, too.
“Bert, go rescue them,” Decker said. “We’ll all compare notes, then I’ll explain how to use my Filofax.”
Five minutes later they took positions beneath the feathery boughs of one of the many elms. Decker sat huddled in his wrinkled brown suit, sucking on a cigarette. His four nonsmoking homicide detectives waved away his smoke.
“How can you puff on that thing at…” Marge looked at her wrist. “At eight forty-five in the morning—”
“Seven forty-five,” Decker said.
“Oh, that makes it even better.” Marge was irritable from lack of sleep. They were all drained and tense. With careful deliberation, Oliver gave them a step-by-step recap of their night up at Central City. Before they had returned to Los Angeles, they had once again grilled Benton the farmhand in the Central City jail. This had been done at five-thirty in the morning.
“It wasn’t one of my best interviews,” Marge said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Oliver said. “Benton slept through it.”
“Not true,” Marge said, “he talked. He said he didn’t do it—over and over and over and over and over—”
“He was talking in his sleep, Margie. Just like I’m doing now.” Oliver stifled a yawn. “Since we rushed back here, someone should go back to the Order’s ranch and do an evidence search in the house and premises now that it’s light outside. See if we can find a kill spot for Nova.”
Decker said, “I’ll send someone else up. Right now, Strapp wants both of you here.”
“I’m touched,” Marge said.
“If SWAT decides to raid, they’ll need your input, since you’ve both been inside.”
“You mean it’s not my charm?”
“’Fraid not.”
Marge clutched her hands into fists. “When are they going to raid?”
“I don’t know even if it’ll happen let alone when,” Decker said. “In the meantime, as soon as McCarry’s done with his boss and the architect, Brass’ll want to talk to you.”
“What’s he like?” Oliver asked. “McCarry?”
“Uptight and nervous—like all of us. He seems fairly competent…as if he’d like to do a good job. For himself, for the bureau. The feds got Wacko Waco to live down.”
“Where’s Strapp?” Marge asked.
“With the police chief and McCarry.”
“They’ve excluded you?” Marge asked.
“When they called the meeting, I excused myself, claiming I had to be ready in case Bob called,” Decker said. “Too many friggin’ people on this task force.” Another drag on his smoke. “Too many people, too many opinions and too many meetings.”
Oliver couldn’t help it. This time, he let go with a full-mouthed yawn. “Do you know if they’ve scheduled any meals or naptime into our watch period?”
Webster muttered, “Good luck with that.”
Marge turned to Martinez and Webster. “What have you two been up to?”
Bert filled them in. When Martinez was done, Oliver said, “So Asnikov was a bust.”
“The Loo doesn’t think so,” Webster said. “We’re getting a subpoena for Asnikov’s files just as soon as he explains how to use his electronic Filofax.”
Martinez said, “Did we tell you that we found out Pluto’s real name? It’s Keith Muldoony.”
“Muldoony?” Decker squinted with bleary eyes. “Irish?”
“Could be,” Webster said. “But Pluto was a dirt-poor Appalachian white…originally from West Virginia. I thought most of them were English stock.”
“West Virginia?” Dunn said. “Now that’s a surprise. I spent some years in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on the base. I can usually spot regionalist speech.”
“Ditto,” Webster said. “He fooled me, too.”
Oliver said, “You know, that makes perfect sense to me—Pluto being
a country boy. I saw him slaughter a chicken. He just whacked its head off without a moment’s hesitation. Then he offered to help Benton clean up the bird shit in the coop. I should have guessed that he’d once lived on a farm.” He thought a moment. “A guy like Bob…he would never have done that.”
“Oliver, I could see Bob killing a chicken,” Marge said. “He shot Pluto in a heartbeat.”
“Shooting is urban,” Oliver said. “Whacking the head off a squawking chicken with a single ax blow is pure country. And talk about spray. Can’t picture a guy like Bob getting dirty.”
Marge said, “If he killed Nova, he sure as hell got spray.”
“Not if he shot him first and carved him later.” Oliver paused. “Maybe he wore galoshes and a slicker.”
“How did Pluto’s name even come up?” Decker asked.
Martinez said, “We’d reached a dead end with Asnikov so I brought him up to keep the conversation going.”
Webster said, “Old Reuben claims that Pluto’s from a large, uneducated family. However, he managed to graduate from community college.”
“Psychology major,” Martinez added. “He became the family’s local hero because he got a job in a hospital.”
“Wore a white coat,” Webster said. “That impressed them all.”
“Pluto worked in a hospital?” Decker’s eyes darted from face to face. “What did he do?”
“Asnikov thought that he worked as an orderly.”
“An orderly?”
“They wear white coats, Loo,” Webster said.
“You mean Pluto was the guy who emptied the bedpans?” Oliver grinned, deepening the bags under his eyes. “How fitting.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Martinez said. “Maybe Bob resented Pluto because the little guy had pulled himself up by the bootstraps.”
“So that’s why Bob gunned him down?” Webster made a face.
“I’ve heard of stranger reasons,” Marge said. “Also, Pluto graduated college while Bob was kicked out.”
Decker said, “You can’t compare Southwest U. with a local community college. In the smugness and prestige department, Bob had it way over Pluto.”
Martinez said, “According to Asnikov, the Order was founded with just Jupiter, Pluto and a few followers. Bob came in later.”
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