Private: #1 Suspect (24 page)

CRUZ AND DEL RIO were in the car in front of me, forcing me to keep to a sane speed as we headed north into the Valley.

I dictated case notes into a recorder as I drove.

I described the scene at the Sun and brought the Poole case file up to date.

The facts, as we knew them, were starting to make sense.

Karen Ricci, the woman in the wheelchair who had tipped Cruz off, was an escort service call booker. She’d told Cruz that a limo driver knew who had killed the hotel johns, and that she’d gotten that information from her friend, a former escort and current coat checker, Carmelita Gomez.

Cruz had interviewed Gomez and she’d given him false information.

Now we had a lead from Ricci’s first husband, Tyson Keyes. Keyes had picked Gomez up from her date with Arthur Valentine, the john who had been killed at the Seaview hotel last year.

If Carmelita Gomez was the hotel john killer, it was clear that she had easy access.

Twenty minutes after leaving Keyes, we found Gomez’s name on a mailbox on Stagg Street, in front of one of the tan-colored stucco houses in a cookie-cutter development of middle-class homes.

Gomez’s house was set back from the street, centered on a small mat of a yard. A driveway curved in from Stagg, coursed along the fence on the west side of the lot, and ended at a garage in the backyard.

Cruz and Del Rio pulled the fleet car into the mouth of the driveway, and I parked across the street.

I got out of my car and joined Cruz at Gomez’s front door, while Del Rio headed toward the back. With our guns drawn, Cruz and I flanked the doorway.

Cruz rang the bell, and in a moment the porch light came on.

Cruz said, “Carmelita, it’s Emilio Cruz. From the other night.”

There was no response, so Cruz tried again. “Look through the peephole, Carmelita. You know I’m not a cop.
No seas tonto.
Don’t make me kick the door in.”

A car started up at the back of the house. I saw headlights. Everything happened very fast after that.

ONE SECOND, RICK was walking toward the back door.

The next, he’d flattened himself against a stockade fence so he wouldn’t get creamed by an old red Chevy Impala that tore across the lawn and passed the car Cruz had parked in the driveway.

Cruz leaped from the front steps and both he and Del Rio ran toward the fleet car. Gomez seemed to have gone from zero to almost sixty in no seconds flat, but I saw her face as the Impala shot past me and made a hard right turn on two wheels.

Gomez didn’t look afraid. She looked determined.

Del Rio yelled to me, “Should I call the cops?”

I shouted, “Yes.”

I got into my car, made a U-turn, and followed Cruz and Del Rio east on Stagg, a narrow road, not a speedway.

Gomez was out in front and gaining ground, driving through the residential development as if she were both drunk and crazy. She took out a mailbox, sideswiped a couple of parked cars, and ran a stop sign.

She took another two-wheel turn, this time a sharp left onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, scraping the side of an SUV that was headed north in her lane of traffic.

I got onto the boulevard in time to see the red car rocket ahead in the inside lane. Horns blared. The Impala weaved—left, right, back to the inside lane. Cars swerved. Hubcaps rolled across the road. Cruz and Del Rio drafted right behind the Impala but couldn’t pass.

Gomez wasn’t just running, she was escaping like a wildfire was burning up the street.

Sirens blared as we flew through the intersection of Laurel Canyon and Strathern Street, an area cluttered with minimall shops: a liquor mart, a flower shop, a 76 station, fast-food joints.

Then the road flattened into a straightaway that ran between two- and three-story commercial buildings on both sides.

Del Rio’s call to 911 and Gomez’s outlaw run had brought out the cruisers, and when Carmelita Gomez turned, six squad cars were screaming behind us. The sounds of others were in the distance.

Gomez didn’t slow, stop, or falter.

In fact, the more cars pursuing her, the faster and crazier she drove.

CRUZ WAS DRIVING the fleet car, Rick in the seat beside him, Jack’s blue Lamborghini filling the rearview mirror. Ahead of them, Carmelita Gomez was sending all of their speedometer needles into the red. Cruz kept his foot on the gas, staying close, aware that if Gomez braked or plowed into another car, he couldn’t stop in time.

The woman was guilty of something, for sure.

Cruz tried to get his mind around what Tyson Keyes had said about her, and he was picturing that cute but snooty woman in a whole different way.

He flashed on her standing near the wardrobe at Havana, wearing that tight pink dress, not looking at him the way women usually looked at him. At all.

He remembered her later, sitting next to him in the car, finally giving up a guy she said was her driver, Billy Moufan, saying that Moufan knew the killer’s identity.

But there was no Billy Moufan. Anywhere.

Tyson Keyes had been her lover
and
her driver. And he had said Gomez was a man-hater who had sex with men for a living. How twisted was that?

A car horn blew loud and long as the speeding caravan forced a Caddy tight up against the median strip.

Del Rio said, “Pay attention, Emilio.”

“Pay attention? I’m driving in a straight line. It’s too fast, man? You want me to pull over and you drive? That’s okay with me. I want to piss my pants, you hear me?”

The Impala made a sudden screaming right onto Neenach, and Cruz followed, Jack tight behind them.

Neenach was residential, a lot like the street where Gomez lived, two lines of facing single-story stucco homes fronted by low walls or small gardens, a few trees sprouting up between the houses and the asphalt.

Cruz didn’t want to take his eyes off the road long enough to check the speed, but his gut told him they were going ninety down Neenach, flying toward the intersection at Haddon.

But Gomez didn’t take the turn at Haddon.

There was a sound wall up ahead where Neenach Street dead-ended at the freeway. Gomez wasn’t stopping. She sped into the cul-de-sac, a dead end with a semicircle of houses, maybe six of them, facing the high cement wall that separated them from the freeway.

Cruz slammed on the brakes.

So did Jack and the four cruisers behind him. Cars spun and jackknifed, ran up on lawns and into parked cars. Rubber burned. There was the grating sound of metal compacting as cars slammed into garbage cans and walls.

Cruz saw the Impala leap forward in stop action. The car seemed to pause in the air, then fold up as it collided with the wall. Cruz had his hand on his door handle before his car stopped, and then he was out and running.

Rick and Jack were also running toward the crash, but Rick was yelling at Jack, “Jack, stop. That car is going to blow.”

Jack shouted back over the noise,
“I have to know if she’s alive
,
”
and kept running toward the crushed red metal that had been Carmelita Gomez’s car.

PEOPLE CAME OUT of their houses in their pajamas and underwear, kids clung to their parents, cop cars piled up in the cul-de-sac. I knew full well that I was running toward a crashed car, but flashbacks were flooding my mind, sending me back to the worst night of my life.

I was in Afghanistan, transporting troops to base, when a rocket grenade tore through the belly of my CH-46, knocking out the rear rotor assembly and bringing us down.

There’d been a terrifying descent. The aircraft dropped into a black vortex of night. I pulled up on the cyclic, praying that I could land the Phrog upright—and miraculously I did.

As Del Rio and I scrambled out onto the sand, fuel ignited. Ordnance exploded. A column of fire burned and, through my night-vision goggles, became a green wall of flame.

We were out of the aircraft intact, but fourteen US Marines were trapped in the cargo hold where we’d taken a direct hit.

It was an honest-to-God hell on earth.

Men I knew, fought with, loved, were certainly dead, but I had to know for sure that no survivors were burning alive. I ran toward the cargo bay, and as he was doing now, Del Rio shouted at me to stop, screamed that the aircraft was going to blow.

“Jack
.
”

I turned to Del Rio now and shouted, “I have to know if she’s alive.”

The front end of the Impala had hit the wall head-on and compacted like an accordion.

The driver’s-side door was open and the air bag had deployed and deflated. Gomez was hanging limp from the seat belt. She was bleeding from her mouth, but she was breathing.

I leaned into the doorframe and said to her, “Carmelita. Can you hear me?”

She flicked her eyes toward me.

“Who?”

“I’m Jack Morgan, a special investigator. Did you do it? Did you kill Maurice Bingham? Did you kill Albert Singh?”

Her laugh was a wheeze, maybe an answer with her last breath. But it wasn’t answer enough for me.

“You’re dying, Carmelita. You don’t want to go with this secret.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Cruz said, “Candy.
Dime la verdad. Pides perdón.
”

She sucked in air and said, “God knows. I killed them.
No me necesito maldito perdón,
muthafucka. They…got…what they deserved.”

She lifted her hand with great effort and, looking right at me, she gave me the finger. Then her face froze, her eyes went flat, and she died.

AMBULANCES POURED INTO the bowl of the cul-de-sac, and uniformed cops put up barricades, instructing dazed and frightened homeowners to stay out of the street.

Sergeant Jane Campbell interviewed me beside my car.

Jane was a good cop, twelve years on the job. I had gone to high school with her brother, had had a few sandwiches at her kitchen table a long time ago.

“Looks like about thirty grand in damage,” Sergeant Campbell said, surveying my car. “And that’s just for the rear panel.”

“A police cruiser gave me a tap, but I’m okay. And I’m insured.”

Campbell smiled. “Glad to hear it. Tell me what happened, Jack.”

“Long version or short?”

“Start with the summary, then we’ll back up.”

“Okay. We got information about a case we’re working. Men who were garroted in their hotel rooms. I had a theory that they were killed after having sex with a hooker. We wanted to talk to Ms. Gomez.”

“The LAPD is working that case.”

“We’re on it privately for Amelia Poole.”

“She owns the Sun? On Santa Monica?”

“Right. Another guest was killed in her hotel today, strangled with a wire. She’s concerned for her guests’ safety.”

“You think Carmelita Gomez was the killer—”

“We got a tip an hour ago saying she was. We went to her house to talk to her, and she fled, I mean at warp speed. We called the police immediately.”

“So why are you here?”

“We had to follow her, Jane. She was telling us she was guilty by the fact of her flight. We couldn’t take a chance she’d get away. I saw her drive into that wall. She didn’t try to brake. You’ll see there’s no rubber on the road. It was a suicide.”

“So you had a tip, chased your suspect, and now she’s dead. That’s what you’re telling me?”

“I didn’t see any other option. I still don’t.”

“Emilio Cruz,” she said, indicating him with her chin. “He said Ms. Gomez made a dying declaration.”

“She did.”

“And you’ll testify to her confession?” the sergeant asked.

“Yes. I will.”

“We’re going to have questions. Please don’t leave town, Jack.”

“People keep telling me that,” I said. “Do I have to worry about moving violations? Anything like that?”

“Why? So you can call Fescoe and get it fixed? Just get your taillight repaired,” she told me. “And tell Tommy I said hi.”

I drove my car up to where Del Rio and Cruz sat in the fleet car with the engine idling.

“Is the day over yet?” Del Rio asked.

“It’s done. Good job, both of you.”

I said good night and drove my injured car to the Hollywood Freeway. This time of night, it was only twenty minutes to Hancock Park.

Since my release from jail, I’d spent every free minute analyzing, researching, watching. Then I’d ruminated some more.

Jane’s message to Tommy was the prodding I needed to do what my gut had been telling me to do since the beginning.

I PARKED IN the driveway of a house with a pediment and Doric columns and underwater lights turning the reflecting pool deep ocean-blue. It was the very picture of over-the-top conspicuous consumption as only Californians could do it.

Lights were on in the house.

I set the brake, climbed the walk, rang the doorbell a couple of times, and when no one came to the door, I let myself into the house.

I found my sister-in-law in the five-hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen, making chocolate pudding and watching
Goodfellas
on TV. Her back was to me.

I said, not too loud, “Annie. Hey.”

Annie screamed and dropped the spoon. She turned, hands to her cheeks, still screaming.

“It’s me, it’s me. I rang the bell.”

She took a breath, put her arms out, and hugged me. “You’re a menace, Jack,” she said. “Feel my heart racing?”

“I’m sorry.” Maybe she’d lied to give my brother an alibi, but I loved her anyway.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

I hugged her, patted her back, said, “I’m fine. But I’ve got to see Tommy. Believe it or not, I need his help.”

“He’s in the barn. Go wake up your nephew. He’s worried about you. Take this.”

She took a jug of milk out of the refrigerator, poured a glass, and handed it to me. “You remember where his room is?”

Ned was asleep.

I turned on the lamp and lit up a room lined with posters: military recruitment, dinosaurs, action figures. I sat on the side of the bed, looked at the eight-year-old boy who wasn’t my child but carried half my genes.

I put the milk down, touched Ned’s arm, said, “Hey, buddy. It’s your old uncle Jack.”

His eyelids flew open and he sat up fast, throwing his arms around my chest. I hugged him and kissed his hair.

“How are you, buddy? How’s Ned?”

He pulled back and grinned at me. “I was digging and look what I found. Dad says it’s older than he is.”

I followed his finger, saw the old glass Coke bottle on the night table. I picked it up, and admired it under the light.

“This is fantastic. It’s a real antique.”

“I saw you on TV,” Ned said. I put the bottle down, and Ned was back in my arms, talking into my chest. “They said you killed someone. Colleen.”

“It’s not true, honey. I know what people say, but I didn’t kill her. I’m being framed.”

He looked up at me, questions and tears in his eyes.

“Someone
lied
about you? But
why?
”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not right. That’s whack, Uncle Jack.”

“He’s not going to get away with it. I’m not kidding.”

“Good. Go get him. Bring the dirty dog down.”

I bumped fists with the little guy and hugged him again. Then I left the house with its elaborate coved ceilings, formal furniture, and fireplaces in every room, walked past the Olympic-sized heated pool and out to the six-bay car barn.

Tommy had a classic American car collection, a passion he’d shared with Dad. I found him under a 1948 Buick Roadmaster, a pewter-gray automobile that looked as if it had been blown from a bubble machine. It was a beautiful thing.

I grabbed Tommy’s ankles and pulled him out on the dolly he’d rolled in on.

He stared at me, his expression changing as his initial fear turned to mocking anger.

“What’s your problem, Jack?”

“I know who set me up, Junior. I know who killed Colleen.”