the Two Minute Rule (2006) (15 page)

He opened the envelope in which he kept his growing collection of clippings and documents, and shook out the thick sheaf of papers.

He said, "Did you have a chance to review what happened?"

"Yes, I did. I read everything that appeared in the Times. Can I speak bluntly?"

"That's what I want--to get your opinion."

She settled back and laced her fingers in her lap, her body language telling him she wanted to get through this as quickly as possible. Holman wished she would take off the sunglasses.

"All right. Let's start with Juarez. You described your conversation with Maria Juarez and expressed your doubt that Juarez would have killed himself after the murders, correct?"

"That's right. Here's a guy with a wife and kid, why would he kill himself like that?"

"If I had to guess, which is all I'm doing here, I'd say Juarez was huffing, living on crank, probably smoking the rock. Guys like this always get loaded before they pull the trigger. The drugs would contribute to paranoia and possibly even a psychotic break, which would explain the suicide."

Holman had already considered this.

"Would the autopsy report show all that?"

"Yes--"

"Could you get the autopsy report?"

Holman saw her mouth tighten. He warned himself not to interrupt her again.

"No, I can't get the autopsy report. I'm just offering you a plausible explanation based on my experience. You were troubled by the suicide, so I'm explaining how it was possible."

"Just so you know, I asked the police to let me talk to the coroner or somebody, but they said no."

Her mouth remained firm, but now her laced fingers tightened.

"The police have legal issues, like the right to privacy. If they opened their files, they could be sued."

Holman decided to move on and fingered through his papers until he found what he wanted. He turned it so she could see.

"The newspaper ran this diagram of the crime scene. See how they drew in the cars and the bodies? I went down there to see for myself--"

"You went down into the riverbed?"

"When I was stealing cars--that was before I got into banks--I spent time down in those flats. That's what it is--flat. The bed on either side of the channel is an empty expanse of concrete like a parking lot. Only way you can get down there is by the service drive the maintenance people use."

Pollard leaned forward to follow what he was saying on the map.

"All right. What's your point?"

"The drive comes down the embankment right here in full view of where the officers were parked. See? The shooter had to come down this drive, but if he came down the drive, they would have been able to see him."

"It was one in the morning. It was dark. Besides, that thing probably isn't drawn to scale."

Holman took out a second map, one he had made himself.

"No, it's not, so I made this one myself. The service drive was way more visible from under the bridge than the newspaper drawing made it seem. And something else--there's a gate here at the top of the drive, see? You have to either climb the fence or cut the lock. Either way would make a helluva lot of noise."

Holman watched Pollard compare the two drawings. She appeared to be thinking about it, and thinking was a good thing. Thinking meant she was becoming involved. But finally she sat back again and shrugged.

"The officers left the gate open when they drove down."

"I asked the cops how the gate was found, but they wouldn't tell me. I don't think Richie and those other officers would have left it open. If you leave the gate open, you take the chance a security patrol might see it and then you're screwed. We always closed the gate and ran the chain back through, and I'll bet that's what Richie and those other guys did, too."

Pollard sat back.

"When you were stealing cars."

Holman was setting her up for the hook and he thought he was doing pretty well. She was following his logic train even though she didn't know where he was going. He felt encouraged.

"If the gate was closed, the shooter had to open it or go over it, and that makes noise. I know those guys were drinking but they only had a six-pack. That's four grown men and a six-pack--how drunk could they be? If Juarez was stoned like you suggested, how quiet could he be? Those officers would have heard something."

"What are you saying, Holman? You think Juarez didn't do it?"

"I'm saying it didn't matter what the officers heard. I think they knew the shooter."

Now Pollard crossed her arms, the ultimate signal she was walling him off. Holman knew he was losing her, but he was ready with his hook and she would either go for it or pass.

He said, "Have you heard of two bank hitters named Marchenko and Parsons?"

Holman watched her stiffen and knew she was finally interested. Now she wasn't just being nice or killing time until she could jump up and run. She took off her sunglasses. He saw that the skin around her eyes had grown papery. She had changed a lot since he had last seen her, but something beyond her appearance was different that he couldn't quite place.

She said, "I've heard of them. And?"

Holman placed the map Richie made showing Marchenko's and Parsons' robberies in front of her.

"My son did this. His wife, Liz, let me make a copy."

"It's a map of their robberies."

"The night he died, Richie got a call from Fowler, and that's when he left. He was going to meet Fowler to talk about Marchenko and Parsons."

"Marchenko and Parsons are dead. That case would have closed three months ago."

Holman peeled off copies of the articles and reports he found on Richie's desk and put them in front of her.

"Richie told his wife they were working on the case. His desk at home, it was covered with stuff like this. I asked the police what Richie was doing. I tried to see the detectives who worked on Marchenko and Parsons, but no one would talk to me. They told me what you just told me, that the case was closed, but Richie told his wife he was going to see Fowler about it, and now he's dead."

Holman watched Pollard skim through the pages. He watched her mouth work, like maybe she was chewing the inside of her lip. She finally looked up, and he thought her eyes were webbed with way too many lines for such a young woman.

She said, "I'm not sure what you want from me."

"I want to know why Richie was working on a dead case. I want to know how Juarez was connected to a couple of bank hitters. I want to know why my son and his friends let someone get close enough to kill them. I want to know who killed them."

Pollard stared at him and Holman stared back. He did not let his eyes show hostility or rage. He kept that part hidden. She wet her lips.

"I guess I could make a couple of calls. I'd be willing to do that."

Holman returned all his papers to the envelope, then wrote his new cell number on the cover.

"This is everything I found in the library on Marchenko and Parsons, and what was in the Times about Richie's death and some of the stuff from his house. I made copies. That's my new cell number, too. You should have it."

She looked at the envelope without touching it. Holman sensed she was still struggling with the decision she had already made.

He said, "I don't expect you to do this for free, Agent Pollard. I'll pay you. I don't have much, but we could work out a payment plan or something."

She wet her lips again. Holman wondered at her hesitation, but then she shook her head.

"That won't be necessary. It might take a few days, but I just have to make a few calls."

Holman nodded. His heart was hammering, but he kept his excitement hidden along with the fear and the rage.

"Thanks, Agent Pollard. I really appreciate this."

"You probably shouldn't call me Agent Pollard. I'm not a Special Agent anymore."

"What should I call you?"

"Katherine."

"Okay, Katherine. I'm Max."

Holman held out his hand, but Pollard did not accept it. She picked up the envelope instead.

"This doesn't mean I'm your friend, Max. All it means is I think you deserve answers."

Holman lowered his hand. He was hurt, but wouldn't show it. He wondered why she had agreed to waste her time if she felt that way about him, but he kept these feelings hidden, also.

"Sure. I understand."

"It'll probably be a few days before you hear from me."

"I understand."

Holman watched her walk out of the Starbucks. She picked up speed as she passed through the crowd, then hurried away down the sidewalk. He was still watching her when he remembered the feeling that something was different about her and now he realized what--Pollard seemed afraid. The young agent who arrested him ten years ago had been fearless, but now she had changed. Thinking these things made him wonder how much he had changed, too, and whether or not he still had what it took to see this thing through.

Holman got up and stepped out into the bright Westwood sun, thinking it felt good to no longer be alone. He liked Pollard even if she seemed hesitant. He hoped she wouldn't get hurt.

Chapter
17

POLLARD WASN'T sure why she agreed to help Holman, but she was in no hurry to drive back to Simi Valley. Westwood was twenty degrees cooler and her mother would take care of the boys when they got home from camp, so it was like having a day off from the rest of her life. Pollard felt as if she had been paroled.

She walked to Stan's Donuts and ordered one plain all-American round-with-a-hole glazed donut--no sprinkles, jelly, candy, or chocolate; nothing that would cut into the silky taste of melted sugar and warm grease. Pollard's ass needed a donut like a goldfish needed a bowling ball, but she hadn't been to Stan's since she left the Bureau. When Pollard was working out of the Westwood office, she and another agent named April Sanders had snuck away to Stan's at least twice a week. Taking their donut break, they called it.

The woman behind the counter offered a donut off the rack, but a fresh batch was coming out of the fryer, so Pollard opted to wait. She brought Holman's file to one of the outside tables to read while she waited, but found herself thinking about Holman. Holman had always been a big guy, but the Holman she arrested had been thirty pounds thinner with shaggy hair, a deep tan, and the bad skin of a serious tweaker. He didn't look like a criminal anymore. Now, he looked like a forty-something man who was down on his luck.

Pollard suspected the police had answered Holman's questions as best they could, but he was reluctant to accept the facts. She had worked with grieving families during her time with the Feeb, and all of them had seen only questions in that terrible place of loss where no good answers exist. The working truth of every criminal investigation was that not all the questions could be answered; the most any cop hoped for was just enough answers to build a case.

Pollard finally turned to Holman's envelope and read through the articles. Anton Marchenko and Jonathan Parsons, both thirty-two years old, were unemployed loners who met at a fitness center in West Hollywood. Neither was married nor had a significant other. Parsons was a Texan who had drifted to Los Angeles as a teenage runaway. Marchenko was survived by his widowed mother, a Ukrainian immigrant who, according to the paper, was both cooperating with the police and threatening to sue the city. At the time of their deaths, Marchenko and Parsons shared a small bungalow apartment in Hollywood's Beachwood Canyon where police discovered twelve pistols, a cache of ammunition in excess of six thousand rounds, an extensive collection of martial arts videos, and nine hundred ten thousand dollars in cash.

Pollard had no longer been on the job when Marchenko and Parsons blazed their way through thirteen banks, but she had followed the news about them and grew jazzed reading about them now. Reading about their bank hits filled Pollard with the same edgy juice she had known on the job. Pollard felt real for the first time in years, and found herself thinking about Marty. Her life since his death had been a nonstop struggle between mounting bills and her desire to single-handedly raise her boys. Having lost their father, Pollard had promised herself they would not also lose their mother to day care and nannies. It was a commitment that had left her feeling powerless and vague, especially as the boys grew older and their expenses mounted, but just reading about Marchenko and Parsons revived her.

Marchenko and Parsons had committed thirteen robberies over a nine-month period, all with the same method of operation: They stormed into banks like an invading army, forced everyone onto the floor, then dumped the cash drawers from the teller stations. While one of them worked the tellers, the other forced the branch manager to open the vault.

The articles Holman had copied included blurry security stills of black-clad figures waving rifles, but witness descriptions of the two men had been sketchy and neither was identified until their deaths. It wasn't until the eighth robbery that a witness described their getaway vehicle, a light blue foreign compact car. The car wasn't described again until the tenth robbery, when it was confirmed as being a light blue Toyota Corolla. Pollard smiled when she saw this, knowing the Bank Squad would have been high-fiving each other in celebration. Professionals would have used a different car for each robbery; use of the same car indicated that these guys were lucky amateurs. Once you knew they were riding on luck, you knew their luck would run out.