Private: #1 Suspect (26 page)

ZIEGLER TWISTED IN his seat. He’d delivered the news as if it had caused him physical pain.

“We’re all interested, Caine,” he said. “We actually want the one who killed her.”

I exhaled. It didn’t matter that Ziegler and Tandy saw my relief. They had evidence that Colleen had bitten Clay Harris. Their evidence was now
our
evidence.

Apparently Tandy felt the same way. He said, “We’re going to concede that Colleen bit Harris. But, Morgan, before you and your attorney start throwing confetti around, let me say that this bite mark isn’t conclusive. It doesn’t mean that because Colleen Molloy bit Harris, he killed her. You understand that, right?”

The bitterness was in his tone if not his words. Tandy had been wrong about me and that had to be killing him. I wished I could tell him that in the past couple weeks he’d funneled me through a meat grinder with a very sharp blade, that he was a bad cop, that someday he was going to pay.

I stifled myself.

“Colleen fought for her life,” I said. “I’m glad about that.”

Caine tapped the table, half a signal to me to shut up, half a signal to the detectives to keep talking.

“So you’ll be happy to hear that we also have this,” Ziegler said. He opened the envelope again and dumped out a chunk of metal. It was a hard drive. It looked like the one that was taken from my security system the night Colleen was killed.

I stopped breathing.

“What’s this?” Caine asked.

“It’s Jack’s hard drive, with video evidence that Clay Harris carried Colleen Molloy into Jack’s house. It’s time-stamped with the date and hour that approximate Molloy’s time of death. We found it in Clay Harris’s shack of junk. And that indicates that he took it from Morgan’s house and brought it home. This, along with the bite mark…”

Clay Harris had killed Colleen, but he didn’t have the ingenuity to have done it on his own. And he didn’t have a motive either.

Tommy had a motive—to put me in a hole for the rest of my life. But he didn’t have to do the killing himself. Harris had been willing to do it for a year’s salary, which he’d spent on a car.

It just made sense that Tommy had directed the action from the beach outside my bedroom window and that Harris had called him as soon as Colleen was dead.

Caine said, “My client is cleared of the murder charge.”

“We’ve spoken to ADA Eddie Savino,” Tandy said. “He’s meeting with the DA tonight. I think Morgan is going to be free of Molloy’s murder, but here’s the thing, Mr. Caine…”

I saw something I didn’t like in Tandy’s eyes, a flash, a warning.

“We’ve got another dead body,” he continued. “Clay Harris was shot dead, and Jack, if he killed your girlfriend, that’s classic motive to kill him.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Are you charging Jack with Clay Harris’s murder?” Caine snapped.

“Not yet,” said Tandy. “We’re watching you, Morgan. You and your brother.”

TANDY’S RELUCTANCE WAS palpable as he gathered himself to give me evidence about Clay Harris’s murder. If Tandy was looking at Tommy for the crime, I had reason to hope that Tommy had left some trace of himself behind.

It got real quiet inside the interrogation room, except for the soft thwacks of Len Ziegler snapping the rubber band on his wrist. Tandy sat back in his seat, feigning nonchalance.

Finally he spoke.

“Tommy was pulled over for speeding on the night Clay Harris was killed. He was driving a new Lexus LX 570 that belonged to the victim. He’d been drinking.

“He couldn’t explain to the patrol officers why he had Harris’s car. He also couldn’t say where he’d been for the previous few hours or what he was doing in Canyon Country.”

Last time I saw Tommy, he was outside Harris’s house. Cops were on the way. He had to have gone back inside Harris’s house to get the keys to the Lexus. Dumb move, Tommy. Very dumb.

“We’re holding Tommy on a DUI and possession of a stolen vehicle for now,” Tandy said. “We’re not done yet.”

For a slim moment, Tandy’s expression was open and I could read his mind as if it were a newspaper headline. Tandy felt sick that he had nothing against me.

Maybe he could read my expression too.

He had nothing on me. He had nothing.

There was a big celebration going on inside my head. I grinned my face off and did the touchdown dance all over the end zone. Champagne corks blew and bubbly ran down my face. The fans stood up in the stands and cheered, and I was lifted into the air.

Caine wore serenity like a custom-made suit, but his right eyelid twitched. It was a wink, just for me.

I stood up and said, “It’s been a pleasure, detectives. I’m late for a meeting.”

I walked out of the police station with my lawyer. I could stop worrying about going back to the Twin Towers, spending a year or two in court being humiliated before being locked away at Lompoc for twenty-five to life.

I was free, again.

“Fucking say something, Jack.”

I clapped Caine’s shoulder and grinned at him.

“Happy day, Eric. Oh, happy day.”

COLLEEN’S FRIEND MIKE Donahue and I were at Santa Monica Airport, where I kept my Cessna 172 Skyhawk.

I’d told Donahue that I’d flown with Colleen a few times, and that she’d taken over for me when we were in the air. She had done a couple of loop-the-loops and had shrieked with laughter every time.

Now Donahue wanted to do it too.

We ducked under the wing, and I said to him, “It’s not like you see in the movies, like flying a plane is a step or two over driving a car. In a plane, you control the mixture of fuel and air that goes to the engine, you monitor exhaust temperatures, you reset the compasses. It’s ninety-nine percent procedure and checklists. A minor screwup on the ground means something entirely different when you’re in the air.”

“Like what, for instance, Jack? No. Don’t tell me.”

“For instance, you forget to put the gas cap on. Gas just vaporizes out of the tank. Your plane turns into a glider, and you don’t want that.”

Donahue pointed, said, “Is that the gas cap?”

“Yes.” I smiled at him. “The cap is secure.”

We finished the walk-around, and I gave Donahue a leg up to the cockpit. I got into the pilot’s seat, strapped in, and adjusted Donahue’s headset so that we could talk and he could hear my conversations with the control tower.

I was cleared to taxi to the active runway, and Donahue stared straight ahead, unblinking, as we rolled.

We stopped at the end of the taxiway and I went through another checklist, reported to the tower, and began my takeoff. As always, because of the way the propellers turned, the aircraft pulled to the left, so I gave it some right rudder as I built up speed.

I watched the airspeed indicator, and when we got up to about sixty, I came back a touch on the yoke.

The nose angled upward and we climbed. And I exhaled.

It was a beautiful evening. The sun was going down, leaving a luminous band of sky-blue and pink along the horizon. I headed west and took us out over the ocean. Colleen used to call out the many hues of blue and green as the water went from the shallows to the deep.

I told Donahue that right here, at this altitude and distance from land, was where Colleen liked to take the controls.

“I’ll think of her flying,” Donahue said to me, “but I’ll just be a passenger.”

“Maybe you’ll fly some other time,” I said.

I took the plane into the clouds, and for a few moments there was nothing to see but condensation wicking across the windshield. Then we were above the castles in the air, and for a passenger and the pilot too, it was easy to put motors and magnetos and gas caps into the back of your mind, just feel the magic and the majesty of flight.

Donahue was smiling broadly as we sailed above the pastel-colored cotton balls of cumulus, and then his voice came to me loud over my headset.

“I changed my mind,” he said. “I’d like to take a turn at the controls, boy-o.”

I told Donahue how to do a loop-the-loop, and he did as I said. He pulled lightly up on the yoke. The plane climbed straight up, curved, and flew upside down. Donahue screamed in a very manly way, then yelled into the mic, “This is what we call ass over teakettle.”

His laughter almost popped my eardrums.

Donahue completed the loop and we were heading west again. He took his hand off the yoke and reached out to me. I matched his palm with mine, and we looked at each other, grinning like fools.

Our way of saying good-bye to our dear, sweet friend Colleen.

I GOT HOME at around nine p.m., still jazzed from too much adrenaline and not enough sleep.

I locked the front door behind me, walked around the house and checked the windows, went to the newly improved security system monitor station and ran through the front- and back-door security tapes, reviewing them on fast forward. I didn’t see anyone in my driveway or approaching my deck from the beach, and the log showed that the alarm hadn’t gone off.

I swept the phones and the interior, and as far as I could tell, my house wasn’t bugged.

There was a case of beer in the fridge and not much else. I popped the top of a Molson and swigged half of it down. I paused, then drained the rest of it.

Knowing Tommy was in police custody should have been relief enough, but I checked all the window locks, the sliders, the front door again.

Then I stripped off my clothes and left them where they fell.

The multihead shower was in the master bath, and I headed for it. The water was hot and rejuvenating. I was thinking that I was finally ready to move back into my bedroom, sleep in my new bed, new linens.

If I couldn’t sleep in my bedroom, fuck it, I would sell the house.

So I tried it out.

I went into my bedroom, checked the perimeter once more, and dropped my gaze to the bed. I looked at it for a long minute and still saw just a bed, not a bad image of Colleen lying there dead.

In my mind, at least, Colleen was at rest.

I turned down the covers and turned on the TV.

I flipped around the dial, found twenty-four-hour cable news, and when I saw a talking head standing in front of a lot of flashing red-and-blue lights, I put down the remote.

The reporter’s name and the station call letters were on the screen, “Matt Galaburri, CNN.” There was a headline in small type under that: “DEA busts organized-crime drug haul worth $30 million in Renton, Washington. Four men arrested.”

I jacked up the sound.

It had happened as I hoped it would, but I wanted to hear the details to be sure that Private was in the clear.

The reporter was excited, kept turning his head as he talked, so that half his words were lost. He was looking at a white panel van surrounded by law enforcement, both unmarked cars and those with the initials DEA on their sides.

The location was a parking lot outside a warehouse that, judging from the camera angle, looked to be on a highway. The warehouse was one of those unremarkable square buildings you drove past on your way to somewhere and never thought a thing about.

The reporter said, “What you see behind me is mop-up of one of the largest drug busts in recent history. A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency has told CNN that narcotics valued in the tens of millions have been confiscated and four men were arrested, men who are known to have strong ties to organized crime.”

He then filled in the backstory, how the van had stopped to transfer the cargo at a warehouse just south of Seattle that had been under surveillance for the past year.

There was a cutaway to a video shot earlier by a dash cam mounted inside a DEA vehicle. The scene was illuminated by headlights.

Four men were shown briefly unloading a white transport van with a vegetable decal on the side. A split second later, cars screamed into the lot.

There were loud shouts, and cops rushed the four men on foot. Two of the men ran, two put up their hands. Law enforcement agents brought all of the men down, cuffed them on the asphalt.

The video cut away again, this time to a man in a suit standing behind a podium marked with an official insignia. The lettering in the lower portion of the screen identified the man as Brian Nelson, director of the DEA.

Nelson said to the cameras, “The officers involved in this operation saved a lot of lives today—”

My phone rang and I dragged my eyes from the screen, saw Fescoe’s name on the caller ID. I thought,
What the hell is this now?
as I picked up the call.

MY OLD FAIR-WEATHER friend, chief of police Mickey Fescoe, said, “Jack. Turn on the TV. Something you’re going to want to see.”

“I’ve got it on,” I told Fescoe. “Looks like the DEA took a lot of illegally obtained drugs off the street.”

“That’s right, buddy. I didn’t say anything about your role in this. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Right. I don’t want any credit. Don’t say anything to anyone,
ever
.”

“I hear you, Jack. The DEA is elated. All that van needed was a red bow on top. Didn’t even need that. Noccia family fingerprints are all over this deal. Can we get Carmine? I don’t know, but this bust isn’t going to help him any. Maybe he’ll have a heart attack. Maybe someone will whack him. We can hope.”

We exchanged a few more words about the good outcome for America, and then Mickey said, “By the way, I’m glad you’re free of the Colleen Molloy murder rap. I kept my eye on Tandy and Ziegler throughout. I don’t want any credit either,” Fescoe said, “but I hope you feel that the LAPD treated you fairly.”

I said, “I have no complaints.”

There was a beep in my ear and I checked the caller ID.

Just when I thought there wasn’t a drop of adrenaline left in my body, I got a rush of panic as I saw that Carmine Noccia was on the line.

Noccia’s drugs were gone. His customers were going to go crazy, and the DEA had Noccia’s men in custody.

I told Fescoe I had incoming fire and congratulated him on his part in the DEA score.

Then I switched to the second line.

As I said hello to Carmine Noccia, I was hoping to heaven that he didn’t know I was behind the DEA bust. If he did, he was calling to tell me to put my affairs in order.

Noccia said to me, “You heard about our unfortunate run-in with the DEA.” His tone of voice told me nothing.

“I just saw it on CNN. That’s rough, Carmine.”

“You had nothing to do with that, right, Jack?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I had to ask.”

There was a long pause as I listened to my blood hum a very nervous tune. Then Noccia started speaking again.

“The Feds say they’ve been watching our transfer station. Shit, maybe someone said something and the Marzullos found out. Called in a tip.

“Either way, I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I should have arranged a transfer at another point, but we own that place, never dirtied it. We could get in and out fast, it being right on the highway like that. Hide the van until we could chop it up. Or so I thought.

“Anyway, it’s my problem, Jack. I’m calling to tell you to keep the fee.”

Was it safe to draw a breath?

I said, “You want me to keep the six-million-dollar fee?”

“You got the van out of the warehouse without incident, right? You handed it off to us. You gave us the names of the guys who took it. You executed the mission and so I’m paying you. That’s how it works between us.”

Crap.

Classic case of good news, bad news.

Noccia trusted me. He was saying we were like brothers. That there was honor among thieves—and US Marines. The six million dollars in Private’s bank account meant that Carmine and I were friends.

I never wanted to hear from Noccia again, but I didn’t think I was going to be that lucky.

He hung up the way he always did—suddenly.

He didn’t say good-bye.