Mortal Faults (28 page)

Andrea’s gun was an automatic. Maybe fourteen rounds in the clip. And Reynolds was probably carrying a gun of his own. Too much firepower. She couldn’t dodge every shot.

She propelled herself out from under the car, sliding on a slick of blood from the van driver, and found his gun, the one he’d dropped when she blew his hand off his wrist.

She spun in a crouch and fired at the Mustang, gouging a hole in the side window, and Reynolds, in silhouette, dipped quickly as if hit.

She waited, expecting him to pop up and return fire.

He didn’t. Maybe he was hit worse than she’d thought. She wasn’t in a hurry to find out, though. He could be playing possum. Never trust a politician—that was her motto.

Movement in the car. It shivered on its springs, rocking gently, and something fell out of the far side, something heavy and ungainly.

Reynolds, blindly seeking escape.

He drove himself to his feet and stumbled away, one shoulder crooked at an impossible angle, his legs trembling with the strain of holding him upright. Behind him leaked a long ragged trail of blood.

Abby jumped onto the hood of the Mustang and tackled him. He went down hard, the gun still in his hand. She ripped it free and pitched it into the shadows, then pressed her weapon to the back of his head.

For a moment the garage disappeared, and the ruined vehicles, and she was facing Dylan Garrick again.

“Don’t do it,” a man’s voice said, and it might have been Reynolds or Garrick, she couldn’t say. “Please. Don’t.”

She felt her finger tighten on the trigger. Just a little more pressure, a few ounces’ worth, and she would expel this man from the world.

But she didn’t fire. She took a long, slow breath and let her grip relax.

“Quiet, Jack,” she said softly. “Quiet now.”

Beneath her, Reynolds was whimpering. In pain, maybe, or in humiliation. She knew he didn’t like to lose.

Well, he’d lost now. Lost everything.

Behind her, a clatter of rapid footsteps. Beam of a pocket flash impaling her in its glare.

“Drop your weapon! You’re under arrest!
Drop your weapon!
”

Slowly, Abby smiled. She tossed the gun aside and stood up, raising her hands.

“Hey, Tess,” she said. “Long time no see.”

48

Stenzel’s desk phone rang in the emptiness of campaign headquarters. No one was here on a Saturday night. Even the lowliest volunteers had some kind of life. Only Stenzel had shown up, not because he had work to do—although there was always work to do—but because he couldn’t relax until he knew that the operation at the Brayton Hotel had gone smoothly.

He picked up the phone on the first ring, hoping it was Jack calling to say everything was taken care of.

It wasn’t Jack. It was a newspaper reporter from the
L.A. Times
, a pain in the ass like all of them, but someone whose calls Stenzel had no choice but to take.

“I’m kind of tied up right now, Charlie,” Stenzel said, in no mood for the usual pleasantries, off-the-record remarks, deep background quotes, and other bullshit. “Whatever this is, maybe it can wait till tomorrow.”

“I’ll make it quick. Just want to know if you have any comment about the situation.”

“What situation?”

“At the Brayton.”

Stenzel had occasionally encountered the expression
his heart skipped a beat
. He had never taken it literally until this moment.

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he said.

“I’m referring to the fact that your boss was reportedly seen in the lobby of the Brayton Hotel in downtown L.A. earlier tonight, in a heated discussion with a woman, or maybe two women—the reports are unclear—and some people say this woman or women kidnapped him at gunpoint, and now I’m hearing that arrests have been made. And the FBI is all over it. That situation.”

“This is the first I’m hearing about it. You sure you’re not putting me on?”

“No joke, Kip.”

“It can’t have been Jack. Why would Jack—I mean, Congressman Reynolds—why would the congressman be at the Brayton Hotel, anyway?”

“You tell me.”

“The whole thing sounds like some crazy mix-up. You’re not running with this, are you?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“You’ll look pretty foolish when you have to retract the story.”

“Maybe you can put me in touch with the congressman, and he can straighten things out.”

“The congressman isn’t here at the moment.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You may want to track him down.”

“I’m sure he has no involvement in any of the events you’ve described. And I’m sure you won’t be printing rumor and innuendo in a reputable paper like the
Times
.”

“Is that your only comment?”

“I don’t have any comment. This entire conversation is off the record.”

He ended the call, stifling the reporter’s protests. He noticed he had stood up at some point during the conversation, and he sat down slowly, knowing there was a chair somewhere behind him.

There was no way to be sure of exactly what had happened at the Brayton Hotel tonight. But it was reasonably clear that Reynolds’ plans had been compromised. The woman in the lobby must been Abby Sinclair, or if there were two women, then maybe one of them was Abby and the other was Andrea Lowry. That much was evident. Now arrests had been made, and the FBI was involved.

The FBI, for God’s sake.

“Shit,” Stenzel said, intoning the word softly as a sober assessment of his circumstances.

People often talked about virtues. Stenzel was perfectly willing to listen to such talk and to write speeches incorporating such talk and to include questions about virtue in public opinion surveys he commissioned. He did not, however, actually believe in any virtues—with a single exception. There was one virtue he both preached and practiced, and it was the virtue of flexibility.

It was time to show some flexibility now.

He felt a little bit sorry for what he was about to do. But he had learned from Jack Reynolds and learned well, and one lesson of Jack’s, reiterated many times, was the famous witticism attributed to Harry Truman.
If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog
.

Stenzel dialed 411 and asked for the number of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles. He needed to initiate a dialogue—ASAP.

49

“You’re in a great deal of trouble, Ms. Sinclair.”

Abby lifted an eyebrow. “You think?”

Assistant Director Michaelson leaned back in his chair in the interrogation room. Abby would have liked to lean back also, but her movements were restricted by the manacle securing her left wrist to a steel eyelet in the table.

“You were apprehended,” Michaelson said, “while holding a gun to the head of a United States congressman.”

“Who’d been shooting at me.”

“Because you tried to kidnap him. You and Andrea Lowry.”

Abby glanced from Michaelson to the only other person in the room—Tess, seated across from her. “Oh, come on.”

Tess offered no response.

“We have witnesses,” Michaelson said. “People in the hotel who saw you and Lowry forcibly escort Congressman Reynolds from the lobby.”

“Those witnesses must also have told you that I wasn’t the one holding a gun on him.”

“It doesn’t matter who was holding the gun. You aided and abetted Andrea Lowry’s escape from FBI surveillance. You orchestrated a meeting with the congressman. Then you and Lowry abducted him.”

“You’re wrong about that last part. But two out of three ain’t bad.”

Michaelson seemed to sense an opening. “So you admit to helping Lowry evade surveillance?”

“I more than helped.
 
I pulled it off solo. I was driving Andrea’s car.”

Abby was aware that the meeting was being recorded by hidden cameras, and that her admission could most definitely be used against her. But she saw no point in lying. She was in a locked room in the FBI suite of the federal building, under suspicion of multiple homicides. It was time to test the old adage and see if the truth really would set her free.

“And you admit to setting up the meeting with Reynolds?”

“Correct-amundo. But not to kidnap him. That was Andrea’s idea—and in her defense, she wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”

Tess, the only other person in the room, spoke up for the first time since the interrogation began. “If you weren’t there to harm Reynolds, what was the reason for the meeting?”

Abby shrugged. “Therapy.”

“Come again?” Tess asked.

“Well, therapy was one reason. Getting Reynolds to incriminate himself was another.”

Michaelson frowned. “I’m not following you, Ms. Sinclair.”

“Why does that not come as a surprise? Okay, here’s the story. Reynolds is the bad guy. He was behind the attack on Andrea’s house yesterday. He was also behind the murder of Andrea’s children twenty years ago. She didn’t do it. His thugs did. They put a bullet in her to make it look like suicide.”

Sometime during this explanation Michaelson had folded his arms across his chest, his body language radiating disbelief. “And you know all this—how? Clairvoyance?”

“I’m not clairvoyant—just unusually perceptive. And way smarter than, say, you.”

“Are you now?”

“Oh, yeah. Not that I’m bragging. Because, let’s face it, if I wanted to brag, I wouldn’t be comparing myself—”

Tess cut her off. “Abby.”

The low warning tone wasn’t lost on her. Abby smiled. “Pissing off the boss man isn’t such a good idea?”

“You ought to be taking these proceedings more seriously, Ms. Sinclair,” Michaelson warned.

“I never take anything seriously. It’s all part of my elusive je ne sais quois. Anyway, to answer your question, I knew the truth about Andrea’s past because of a conversation I had with her this morning.”

Michaelson folded his arms tighter, as if trying to hug himself to death. “You’re lying. You were never in contact with Andrea Lowry after the attack on Friday, which means you had no opportunity—”

“Oh, spare me. I met her in the ladies’ room of the Beverly Center while your idiot surveillance squad stood around window shopping outside. The garlic genius she picked up there—I bought it. Incidentally, is there any way I can get remuneration for that? Put it on the Bureau’s tab?”

Michaelson ignored the question. “Even if you did talk with Lowry, how can anything she told you possibly relate to the meeting with Congressman Reynolds?”

“I needed him to admit what he’d done. I wanted Andrea there to hear it—and to participate. The plan was for Reynolds to say too much, reveal that he’d sent his brownshirts after Andrea twenty years ago. I was hoping if Andrea heard this, she’d have a breakthrough. She’d remember what really happened that night. Not the phony, reconstructed memories the shrinks pounded into her, but the truth.”

“And did she?” Tess asked, sounding just the tiniest bit intrigued.

“She did. Big-time. It was, if I say so myself, a thing of beauty to behold. Up to a point.”

Michaelson still hadn’t released himself from his death grip. “What point?”

“The point when she pulled a pistol out of her pocket.” Abby shook her head. “Wow, try saying
that
three times fast.”

“You’re claiming you didn’t know she was armed?”

“How could I? You guys confiscated her revolver, right? She never said anything about a second gun.”

Michaelson finally unfolded his arms, but only to tent his fingers in front of his face, another sign of resistance. “So you didn’t anticipate that she would abduct the congressman?”

“Nope. I didn’t see that one coming. A rare lapse of prescience on my part.”

Michaelson spoke through his fingers. “But you accompanied her when she left the lobby with Reynolds.”

“I was trying to talk her down.”

“And I suppose you expect us take your word for that.”

“Not at all. It’s on tape. I recorded everything that happened.”

“And where is this tape?”

“In my purse.”

“And where’s that?”

“I lost it when I was scrambling around under Reynolds’ car. One of the crime-scene guys must’ve found it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Abby felt her first flutter of anxiety. All along she’d assumed the purse would turn up. “They
have
to have found it. I mean, it’s a regular size purse with a microcassette recorder inside, and my wallet and ID ...”

“Anything else?”

“Probably some condoms.”

Michaelson’s eyes narrowed. “Condoms?”

“Be prepared. That’s my motto.”

“You and the Boy Scouts,” Tess said.

“Do they carry condoms, too?”

Michaelson stood abruptly. “Ms. Sinclair, this narrative you’ve shared with us is all very interesting, but in the absence of proof it really doesn’t amount to much.”

“Andrea will vouch for me.”

“The statement of your accomplice isn’t likely to carry much weight.”

“Then find my purse and play the tape.”

“And will the tape also clear you in the murder of Dylan Garrick?”

She’d been expecting them to bring that up. She expelled a breath. “No.”

Tess straightened in her chair. “You met with Garrick when he left the bar. I have a witness.”

“Probably the bartender, right? That’s who I would’ve pumped for info.”

From the way Tess’s eyes flickered, Abby knew she’d guessed right. “The identity of the witness is unimportant,” Tess said. “What matters is that you left with Garrick, and he was shot later that night. When I asked you about it this morning, you lied to me.”

“I lie all the time, Tess. It’s a major part of my lifestyle. You ought to know that by now.”

Michaelson had turned away. Tess was handling this phase of the interrogation. “I don’t know why you would lie about Garrick unless you have something to hide.”

“I
did
have something to hide. I was in his apartment. I held him at gunpoint, using his own gun.”

Tess’s face hardened into an expression of contempt. “And you pistol-whipped him.”

“Yes.”

“And wrapped the gun in a pillow.”

“Yes.”

“And then you shot him.”

“No.”

“Why did you wrap up the gun, if not to muffle a shot?”

“I wanted him to think I was going to shoot him.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Again,
N-O
.”

“So who did?”

“No idea.”

“You were trying to scare him as part of an interrogation. Is that what you’re saying?”

Abby hesitated. “Not exactly.”

“What, then?”

“The interrogation was already over. I wanted to scare him just because—well, because he scared me. He put me through two or three minutes of hell in Andrea’s house, and I wanted to return the favor.”

“So you’re telling us Dylan Garrick was alive and conscious when you left?”

“He was alive. Not conscious. I KO’d him with the butt of the gun.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to toss his place, and I didn’t want him tiptoeing up behind me.”

“You searched his apartment?”

“Sure did. Found the gun he used at Andrea’s, and a slightly damaged silencer tube, and some other stuff. It was in his bureau in the bedroom, just like he told me.”

“And then?”

“Then I turned out the lights so I wouldn’t be seen leaving, and I sneaked out. Found a payphone a mile away and called in a shots-fired to nine-one-one. Muffled my voice so I couldn’t be identified on tape.”

“Why report shots fired, if there were none?”

“I figured it was the best way to get a fast response.”

“Why call the police at all?”

“So they would find his gear, link him to the shooting in San Fernando. Come on, Tess, you know how I work.”

“Yes,” Tess said quietly, “I know how you work.”

“Not sure I’m liking the mother superior tone. I was trying to help out. I even left the door unlocked to make it easier for the cops to get in.”

“When they got in, they didn’t find Dylan Garrick unconscious. They found him dead.”

“I know. I was watching.”

Michaelson turned to face her. “Watching?”

“After I called nine-one-one, I doubled back and parked a few blocks away. Then I found a vantage point where I could observe the action. I wanted to make sure the cops checked out the whole apartment and found the gun in the bedroom. That was the only link to the assault on Andrea. Instead I saw them call for a morgue wagon. I saw Dylan carried out in a body bag. That’s when I knew there was a problem.”

“A problem,” Michaelson said coldly, “because you shot him.”

“No, dickwad. A problem because
somebody else
shot him, but I would be linked to the crime. People saw me leave the bar with Dylan. Tess here already suspected me of having vengeance in mind—”

“Because you
did
have vengeance in mind,” Tess snapped.

“I didn’t shoot Dylan.”

“No, I’m sure the thought never even crossed your mind.”

“It crossed my mind.” Abby took a breath. “I thought about killing him. I wanted to. And ... I came close. When I put the pillow around the gun, I wasn’t
just
trying to scare him. I was ... thinking about it. How easy it would be.”

“And you yielded to that temptation,” Michaelson said. “Come on, be straight with us. I understand what you were feeling. I can sympathize. You’d hardly be human if you didn’t hate the man.”

This was the ADIC’s ham-fisted way of trying to establish rapport with the suspect. Abby could see why this bozo didn’t do fieldwork. Any halfway intelligent street criminal would see through him like Plexiglas.

“Don’t give me the touchy-feely routine, please,” she said. “I cry real easy, and I don’t want us to get all
Oprah
and start exchanging hugs.”

Michaelson backed off, frustrated. Tess took over again. “If you left Garrick alive, how did he end up dead?”

“Obviously someone else decided to do the job. I guess I’d made it easy. I left the door unlocked, lights off, Dylan unconscious with his gun on the floor where I’d left it, and the pillow right next to it.”

“In other words,” Michaelson said with heavy sarcasm, “someone just happened to walk in there, saw Garrick unconscious, and whacked him?”

Abby wrinkled her nose. “Don’t say ‘whacked.’ Too
Sopranos
.”

“It’s a rather large coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not necessarily. Dylan was pretty nervous. He’d screwed up royal. Disappointed Reynolds—and other folks, too. It’s not too surprising someone would take him out.”

“Someone like you.”

Abby sighed. She definitely was not getting through to this guy. “No, someone like one of his fellow gang members, enforcing discipline, imposing the penalty for failure. Maybe someone who was watching the apartment and waiting for Dylan’s girlfriend—namely me—to leave. When I did, this other guy comes upstairs, finds the door open, sees Dylan asleep, or so it appears. In the dark the intruder wouldn’t see the bruises or the blood. He moves closer, finds the gun on the floor. Realizes he can do the job with Dylan’s own piece. Fires twice through the pillow. Then runs.”

“All this takes place while you’re off providentially making a phone call to nine-one-one?”

“I’m not sure how much providence had to do with it, but yeah.”

“Why would the shooter run?” Tess asked. “Why wouldn’t he search the apartment like you did, take the evidence tying Dylan to the San Fernando raid?”

“I’m guessing that was his plan. But maybe the second shot was too loud. Or he might have heard the sirens of the cop cars responding to my call.”

Michaelson folded his arms again. A bad sign. “That’s an interesting series of suppositions.”

“Thank you.”

“But entirely unnecessary. We don’t need a mystery gunman on a grassy knoll. We have you.”

“I never mentioned a grassy knoll.”

“Are you listening, Ms. Sinclair?
We have you.
You’re looking very, very good for the murder of Dylan Garrick.”

Abby gave up on Michaelson and looked at Tess for support. “You know that’s not my style.”

Tess took a long moment to respond. “Honestly, Abby, I don’t know what to think about you anymore.”

Silence in the room, broken finally when Abby heard herself say words she had never spoken before. “Maybe I’d better call a lawyer.”

Michaelson gestured for Tess to rise. “There’ll be time for that later.”

“Hey. I’m supposed to get a phone call. It’s in the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or some old document under glass.”