When she had as much silence as she could reasonably expect, she said, “Mr. Lewis? Based on Mr. Sutter’s testimony, you may have the wrong man on trial. What do you wish to do?”
Chapter 93
CAINE AND CRUZ were blocking and I had my hand at Del Rio’s back as we left the courtroom through a mob of people who’d been in the gallery plus the gang of raccoons who had, somehow, already gotten word that Rick was free.
Rick was in a state of shocked disbelief, like he’d been in the tunnel and heading into the light when a voice said, “Case dismissed,” and he was dragged back into life.
In front of the elevator, Cruz turned, grabbed Rick into a hard hug, said, “You’re okay, man. It’s all over.”
I thought about last night, how Cruz and I had followed Sutter from the church on West Boulevard to his house on Hickory Avenue in Torrance, then waited for him to get out of his car.
Then we’d crowded him.
Sutter saw me and yelled, “Stay away from me, Tom.”
I shouted that I wasn’t Tom, that I was his brother and that we needed to talk. I told Sutter that I knew what he’d done to Vicky and that I knew Tommy had paid him.
I told Sutter that I had the means to get into Tommy’s financials at any time, that I’d checked Tommy’s bank account and saw that he’d paid Sutter a hundred thousand dollars the day Del Rio was arrested.
In fact, I had seen the amount of the withdrawal, but not the name of the recipient. Calling Sutter out was a calculated bluff, but I was pretty damned sure that Tommy had paid Sutter to kill Carmody and hang it on Rick.
I told Sutter, “Confess what you did to Vicky Carmody and get Del Rio out of the box. Or else I’ll tell Tommy that you’re going to turn him in.”
Sutter went pale, broke out in an instant sweat. He said, “Don’t do that to me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s your choice.”
Sutter made a practical decision on the spot. He agreed to tell the court what he’d done if I got my friends in high places to give him a deal.
We shook hands, and then Cruz asked Sutter if he wanted a little tune-up before we dropped him off at the precinct so that the cops would have reason to believe he needed protection.
Sutter had said, “Don’t hurt my vital organs. Or my junk.”
We did our best to oblige him.
I’d made my call to DA Bobby Petino, and a deal was in the works. But if Tommy was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, it would still be Sutter’s word against Tommy’s.
And Tommy was slick.
My brother might never spend a day in prison, but for now, all I cared about was that Rick Del Rio was free.
In the courthouse, the elevator doors opened.
My guys and I got inside and Cruz held the button while Caine and I blocked the entrance until the door closed. The ride down was exhilarating because Del Rio was finally coming back to himself, blood flowing into his face, the will to live lighting up his eyes.
He hugged me. He hugged Caine. He kissed Cruz loudly on the cheek. Then he said, “I’m buying you guys dinner anywhere you like, anyplace that will take my Visa card.”
The four of us descended to the ground floor, laughing, enjoying the win for the good guys. We cut through the lobby and went out the front doors to Temple.
I said to Del Rio, “We’ll take my car.”
We never got to the parking lot. Dexter Lewis and the cop who’d been assigned to keep Del Rio under control were jogging down the courthouse steps. Lewis was calling Rick’s name.
“Del Rio. Del Rio. I have something for you.”
We stopped, turned. Lewis had a look in his face that could only be called triumphant. But what the hell could he possibly feel victorious about?
“I’m pressing charges,” he said to Rick.
Lewis was enjoying this too much. He had an ugly smile, which he had probably been told his whole life was his best feature. When Rick faced the ADA, he looked like a hurricane in a bottle. Furious. Uncontainable.
“Charges? I’m out, asshole.”
“I’m charging you with the assault and battery you committed against me. Asshole. Arrest him, Officer Brinker.”
I stood by and watched as the cuffs came out. Rick looked at me wildly. “I’ll be out in an hour, right, Jack?”
Caine said, “Don’t make a statement, Rick. Don’t say anything. We’ll meet you at Central Booking.”
My guts twisted. Not this. Not after all this.
Rick couldn’t be going back to jail.
Chapter 94
I WAS DRIVING back to the office after Cruz, Caine, and I had spent half the day at Central Booking. We were there for moral support, but we saw Del Rio for only a moment before he was taken away to be processed and then locked up pending his arraignment.
I’m a graduate of Twin Towers Correctional myself, and I can tell you that it’s worse than its reputation as an overcrowded, gang-infested sewer, a brutal, dehumanizing hellhole you couldn’t dream up if you wrote horror films for a living.
And I was more worried about Rick than before. Unlike in the Carmody case, Rick had actually assaulted an officer of the court in full view of about fifty witnesses.
It didn’t look good for Rick. Not at all.
I was on the freeway, thinking of taking Justine out to lunch, bringing her up to date on what had just happened, when my phone rang. I glanced at it out of habit, thinking whoever it was, they could wait. But I changed my mind when I saw Luke Warren’s name on the caller ID.
The captain was my connection to a couple of loathsome serial felons from a godforsaken, landlocked pile of rocks called Sumar. I had offered to help the captain for free.
I said my name, and he got right into it.
“I’m at the Armstrong Hotel, Jack, over on Brampton. There was a murder here forty-eight hours ago, but it’s not my precinct, no reason for anyone to call me. Except for something a witness said to the first cop on the scene. The witness is sketchy, but I think he can ID the Sumaris.”
“You said it’s a homicide?”
Warren said, “Could be more than one.”
Chapter 95
THE ARMSTRONG HOTEL was a cheap joint on a run-down block at the fringes of the Cypress Park neighborhood. It didn’t look out of place here with its peeling paint, blown-neon signage, cracked and empty swimming pool out front. It was hardly a hotel. More like a crash pad for locals who had no place to go.
I locked my car outside the front door, saw Captain Warren through the plate glass; he was leaning against a planter that divided the front desk from the furniture in the lobby. He straightened up when he saw me, came out, and told the uniformed cop at the door that I was working with the LAPD.
“Glad you could make it,” he said, shaking my hand.
I said, “No problem. Glad you caught me.”
The lobby had already been processed by CSU investigators who had left evidence of their own: yellow tape at the doorways, markers beside blood evidence, fingerprint powder on every surface. I asked Warren what had happened.
“First, I want to say, this isn’t my case. I got my hands on it anyway, because if I can help, the Northeast Division will take it.”
“So where are you with this, Luke?”
He ran a hand through his hair, looked past me to the front desk, as if he were trying to back up the film and see it from the beginning.
“Not far enough. It seems like two guys checked in to room four-oh-three at around ten on Saturday night,” he said. “They checked out before three Sunday morning, and their room was professionally cleaned. Practically sterilized.
“We’ve got a dead woman behind the front desk, and the computer has been trashed, hard drive removed. Surveillance camera’s gone.
“As for why, we don’t know. We don’t know who did it either, but we’ve got a lead. Hang on, Jack. I’ll get our witness.”
I said, “Mind if I look around?”
“Keep your hands in your pockets,
okay?”
The furniture was aquamarine vinyl, looked pretty much the way it had when it was manufactured in the seventies, and that went for the planter of plastic plants as well. The front desk had taken most of the punishment. The computer that must have been there was gone, and there was a dried lake of blood on the floor, spatter on the Formica. It didn’t look like the victim had put up a fight.
I was checking out the hole where the security camera had been ripped from its mount when Warren came over with a skinny, fortyish man wearing polyester pants and a wifebeater under a loud print shirt.
He said, “Jack, this is Kevin Fogarty. He’s the night doorman. He’s the one who found the victim—the desk manager, Lois Bird. Kevin, this is Jack Morgan. He’s an investigator. Why don’t you tell him what you saw?”
Chapter 96
WE STOOD NEXT to the vending machines, the night doorman saying to Captain Warren, “I told you, I hardly know anything.”
It was one in the afternoon, but Kevin Fogarty smelled of alcohol. When Warren had a chance to run his name, I was pretty sure he’d be looking at a long sheet littered with misdemeanors and outstanding warrants.
Fogarty pulled a bent half of a cigarette from the hip pocket of his shiny slacks, lit up, and when he’d framed his thoughts, he said, “I’m not going into any court to testify against anyone. Just be sure you hear me. I don’t do that. That’s not me. I like to keep a low profile.”
“Go ahead with what you saw,” I said.
Fogarty took a long draw on the cigarette, coughed violently for too long, then: “Like I said, I saw these two guys coming in around ten on Saturday night. They was carrying brown paper bags, so they’d brought their own bar service, I guess. They were with these two women, heavyset. Bleached blondes.
“The four of them seemed like they’d been drinking for a while. They were at the elevator as I was going out on my break. All giggly, like the party was on, something I’ve seen maybe a hundred million times.”
Warren said, “But something was different, right, Mr. Fogarty? You saw something that made you remember them?”
“Like I told you and the other five cops I spoke to, one of the guys was wearing a muscle shirt, no sleeves. He had some tattoos on his arms. They were like stripes going around the biceps and all the way down, and maybe words written above the stripes. He pinched one of the ladies, hard. She yelped, but that’s all I saw. I remember that noise she made.”
There was more smoking, coughing, and encouragement to finish the story before Fogarty continued.
“When you showed me their pictures,” Fogarty said to Warren, “I thought maybe I recognized the guy with the striped tattoos. He has a lot of hair. And a big nose.”
“Did you see them again?”
“No. I came back from my break. There was nothing happening, so I told the girl at the desk to call me if she needed me. I went to an empty room right here on the main floor and I watched TV and fell asleep. When I come out here, at like three a.m., the girl, Ms. Bird. She’s on the floor over there and she’s dead.
“I called 911. I stayed here. I talked to the cops. And then, a little while ago, the boss calls me and fires me. Because I was sleeping on the job. I’m not even mad about that. If I’d been on the door, I would be dead too, right, Captain? I’d be dead too.”
“Tell about the back door, Mr. Fogarty.”
“It was open, okay? The girl had the key. So she musta given it to someone, because the rear service door was hanging open. You got enough? Because I gotta go down to the office for my check.”
“Thank you,” Warren said to Fogarty. “You’ve been a big help.”
We watched the ex-doorman leave through the front door. Then Warren said to me, “I hate those guys, Jack. I hate that they’re in LA, I hate what they’re doing, and I hate that they’re so slippery. I’ll bet we don’t know the half of what they’ve done. It’s their game and they keep getting away with it.”
“I want to see their room,” I said.
Chapter 97
CAPTAIN WARREN PUSHED open the door to room 403, lifted the tape so I could go in before him. He said, “This room and the one next door were likely booked as a suite. The door between them was left open.”
The room was dingy blue, identical prints of a beach scene hanging on three walls and dusty gray draperies flanking windows that overlooked Cypress Avenue to the north.
A king-size bed, stripped bare, backed up against a wall and faced an armoire that held a TV and six open, empty drawers. The wall-to-wall carpet was a dark blue pattern designed to defy stains.
Hotel rooms are one of the worst possible places to collect forensic evidence, just below a strip club in Hollywood and the city dump. Hundreds of people had slept in this creepy room, all of them leaving prints, a blooming field of germs and too much DNA.
“Detectives from the Northeast got here within six minutes of Fogarty’s call,” said Warren. “They closed off the lobby and did a floor-to-floor canvass. When they saw four-oh-three, they locked it down. CSU was here for most of the last thirty-six hours, but as of ten this morning, they packed it in. They’re coming up empty.”
Just like they had in the lobby, CSU techs had left evidence of their own here; fingerprint powder was everywhere, white microfiber jumpsuits were wadded up behind the door, and discarded swab wrappers littered the place.
“CSU took the bedding?”
Warren said, “Hell no. The bed was naked when the cops got here. I’m still trying to get my mind around that. Same deal in the adjoining room.”
Wiping down phones and doorknobs was Cleanup 101. But people didn’t take bedding out of a room unless they were serious pros mopping up a homicide. In my one meeting with Gozan Remari and Khezir Mazul, I hadn’t made them as clean freaks. I thought they were pigs.
Assuming the Sumaris had been here and had been accompanied by two women, what had happened to those women? Had the Sumaris’ past pattern of sexual assault gone over the edge into murder?
Folded towels were on a rack in the bathroom, but if there had been any used towels, they were gone. Porcelain glistened under the fingerprint powder, and even the stopper had been removed from the sink.
I stood in the doorway between the two rooms and saw that 405 was a mirror image of 403. Stripped beds, fingerprint powder, no obvious trace of blood.
Professionals had made all the evidence disappear.
Warren said, “Here’s the sum total of what we’ve got, Jack. Fogarty’s five-second look at distinctive arm tattoos on a man with big hair and a big nose. He also saw the backs of two plus-size blondes. That’s all, but I know it was them. Remari, that pervert. And the other one. Mazul with those tattoos.”
I commiserated with the captain, and then went out to the balcony. It was sparsely furnished with a glass table and two homely lounge chairs. The view was equally spare: a deserted service road running parallel to the distant freeway. Directly below the balcony was a foundation planting of haphazardly trimmed hedges.
The smog was eye-watering. I was about to go back inside when I caught a glimpse of something forty feet down in the shrubbery, an object that didn’t belong. I called Warren and pointed until he saw the cell phone too.
He gripped the railing, exhaled hard.
“Is it too much to hope that that phone belongs to one of those pukes from Sumar?” he asked.
“Are you feeling lucky?” I said.
Chapter 98
VAL KENNEY WAS fifteen minutes late for her 6:00 p.m. appointment with Lester Olsen, and she was worried about that. Would Olsen wait for her or not? And by the way, she was still kind of lost.
She called Mo-bot, who told her to take a sharp left on West Spring Mountain Road, go one block, then take another left into the strip-mall parking lot. Val did that but couldn’t find an empty spot. She swore, apologized to Mo, then drove around the block and parked on the street.
“I’m good now, Mo.”
“Good. Take a breath. Never l
et ’em see you sweat.”
Val laughed, took a moment to touch up her lipstick. Then, gripping her handbag, she doubled back to the strip mall, walked along the row of shops until she saw the discreet, inset doorway between a pizzeria and a tanning salon, the inscription Love for Life etched in the glass.
Val pressed the buzzer, and a smiling Lester Olsen opened the door wide and welcomed her into his office. He looked boyish in a pink polo shirt, jeans, running shoes. She smelled peppermint on his breath.
“I’m sorry. I made a wrong turn,” Val said. “It took forever to turn around.”
“Forgive the mess,” Lester said, ushering her through a minimal reception area into a room at the back. “This is my work space and I don’t usually have people here, but we have work to do, don’t we? Sit there, Val.”
Lester showed her to a chair across from his desk, asked, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
Val said, “Thanks, no. I’m good.”
Lester went around to his desk chair, saying, “Are you ready, Val? This might be the turning point of your life. Pretty exciting, isn’t it?”
“I cannot wait,” she said.
“Me neither,” Olsen said, grinning, reaching out and touching her wrist. “I’ve picked out five superb candidates from my prospect files, all very wealthy men who have been waiting half their lives to meet a woman like you.”
He bent to his computer, clicked around, said, “They’re all older than men you might ordinarily date. They’re in their seventies, got a couple in their eighties. All five have more money than you could even believe.”
“So you haven’t told me how this works, Lester. If one of these candidates and I get married—he pays your fee?”
“Something like that,” said Olsen. “Now, let’s get in the right mood. Imagine that our very rich, very old dude cannot believe his luck and wants to marry you right away, because he really doesn’t have much time left. He has heart problems. And he’s lonely in his gigantic, double-wide, California king.”