Troubleshooter (38 page)

He enjoyed a good genuine laugh, his bulky shadow rippling like a cape.

The Operation Cleansweep task-force headquarters overlooked the VA cemetery. The government-issue headstones formed razor-straight lines on the lush green turf. A few durable Christmas wreaths provided splotches of color, but not enough to detract from the smog and granite.

The similarities between this room and the Service's command post were striking. Same tacked photos, same day-old food, same weary air of expired adrenaline. Bear was speaking in hushed tones over the phone to Tannino, his posture indicating that the conversation was going about as expected. Tim and Guerrera waited patiently for him to finish so they could head back and regroup in the squad room.

Smiles sat on the table, folders resting across his thigh, one loafer tip dipped to the carpet as if stirring waters. Malane had pulled Tim aside and asked him not to make reference to the Polaroid found pinned to Rich's jeans. Tim had agreed reluctantly; he generally objected to office secrets, no matter the motive behind them, but it wasn't his command post and he couldn't see what would be gained by Smiles's knowing. Especially right now. Tim assumed he'd make a different call if he found himself in possession of like information about Bear or another colleague, but he'd learned that his preconceived assumptions weren't particularly useful to him or anyone else.

"So from Uncle Pete's perspective, how was the double cross supposed to play out?" Smiles asked. "I mean, once the Prophet does the test and figures out the Sinners ran the switch on him..."

"He kills Dana Lake, and then Pete doesn't have to pay her cut," Tim said.

"And Wristwatch Annie?"

"She's a slag, not a Sinner," Guerrera said. "Expendable."

"Why burn the producers? Kill the golden goose?"

"Two liters is enough to feed the street for nine months. I mean, socio, fifty million dollars in hand? Weighed against what? The stability of terrorists and the drug trade?"

Malane sat with both hands run into his thin hair; it protruded in tufts from between his fingers. "I can't fucking believe I missed it," he said, for not the first time. "We're dead-ended. All fronts." He lifted his head, a movement that seemed to require great effort. "We'll have to dismantle the Sinners's drug-distribution network, hope to seize the AT in batches as we go. It's not much of a plan, but it's all we have."

"At least we've got Uncle Pete nailed," another agent said.

Smiles continued to review Uncle Pete's seized financials. "These figures are ridiculous. Uncle Pete reported nineteen grand last year, but he drives a"--he turned aside the tax return and pulled out a yellow vehicle-purchase order--"seventy-nine-thousand dollar Lexus LS 430."

A youthful agent said, "No shit? That ride cost seventy-nine grand?"

"Oh, yeah," Smiles said. "Our boy needed chrome wheels, air purifier, headlamp washers, voice-command nav system, headrest massager--"

Tim bolted forward, snatching the document from Smiles.

Smiles held up his hands, feigning offense. "Is that any way to--"

Tim slapped the piece of paper with the back of his hand and looked up at the staring faces around the central table. Bear lowered the phone to his broad chest, his head cocked like a dog deciphering a bird call.

Tim said, "We need Pete Krindon."

Chapter
62

Tim, Bear, and Guerrera waited in a pool of streetlight yellow outside the police impound lot. Bear heaved a sigh, and Guerrera rubbed his eyes. It was 9:45 P.M., and they'd been waiting on Pete Krindon since eight.

Bear clicked his teeth bitterly and said, "Here's where I wish I smoked."

A low-rider thumped by, the sunglasses-adorned driver bouncing his head to the beat, going for tough but looking more like a displeased chicken. He turned and stared at them, not breaking eye contact until his face drifted from view.

"Reminds me of home." Guerrera's smirk flashed, tensing his soft features, and then he stared out at the dark street, his eyes troubled.

Bear jerked his head to indicate the young deputy. When Tim responded with a shrug, Bear widened his own eyes imploringly. Tim returned the glare, exasperated.

"Rey," Tim finally said. "How you doing? About the shooting?"

"Fine. No big deal." Guerrera scraped his teeth with his tongue, then spit on the curb and stepped away. Discussion over.

Bear waved off Tim's palms-up hand gesture.

A van parked at a meter up the block, elegant lettering proclaiming RUDOLPHO PAGATINI CATERING. The driver hopped out, straightened his waiter's apron over his tuxedo, and headed toward them in a stiff, formal gait.

"You gotta be shittin' me," Bear said.

Because of his coiffed hair, sleek mustache, and wire-rim glasses, Pete Krindon wasn't recognizable until he was within feet of them.

Bear said, "I'll have a ham on rye."

"How about you try the South Beach Diet instead." Krindon nodded toward the garage. "Let's get this done. I'm on a job."

"What? Serving meatballs to Lady and the Tramp?"

"Very funny, Rack. Move it."

Krindon trailed behind them as they headed to the security station. The guard looked up from a roast beef sandwich, a line of mayo fringing his mustache. As Tim explained their purpose, the guard's eyes took in the three displayed badges, then came to rest on Krindon's waiter's apron. His forehead wrinkled. "The fuck is this?"

"He's with us."

The guard tossed a clipboard down on the brief counter. "He's gotta sign in. You all gotta sign in."

"He's a freelance consultant," Tim said. "He doesn't sign."

From the warped radio on the counter, an AM deejay, revved up on caffeine and zealotry, ranted about Syria's weapons of mass destruction. The guard folded his arms and leaned back on his stool. "Can't let him in if he doesn't sign."

Krindon leaned forward and scribbled on the form. As he drew back, Tim read the cursive scrawl: Herbert Hoover.

"All set?"

The guard's glance lifted from the signature to Tim's face. Then he broke eye contact with an it's-not-worth-it expression of disgust and waved them through.

They found Uncle Pete's Lexus in a dark back corner. Locked.

Tim, Bear, and Guerrera debated who would have to go back to retrieve the keys from the irritable guard, but then they heard the door click open, and Krindon returned a decoding transmitter to his pocket and slid into the driver's seat. The car had been towed, the front seat still way back to accommodate Uncle Pete's girth, so Krindon had plenty of room to maneuver. He tugged up the leg of his formalwear, revealing a slim jim tucked into a garter. He angled the thin metal bar beneath the box of the navigation system, then pulled a corkscrew from his apron and used it for leverage.

The unit was well ensconced. After some directed jiggling, Krindon paused to wipe his brow. "I can usually get you down within a two-block radius. These nav systems are on satellite networks, so they trip sites like mobile phones or wireless modems. Same Orwellian shit."

Guerrera said, "So anyone can find out where a car's been?"

"No, not anyone." Krindon made an angry noise and turned back to the navigation system. "Nothing's ever truly deleted in a computer system. Only the pointers to the data get wiped out. But that data's in there. You just have to know how to find it. And to know how to find it...well, you have to be me." He jiggled the unit, and it finally gave, sliding into his lap. "So you want to trace Uncle Pete's footsteps. What are you looking for? A crash pad?"

"Or a safe house, a hangout, a business front, a meth lab," Tim said. "Anywhere Den Laurey could be laying his head in a back room. He's a little too recognizable right now to check in to a Best Western."

"How far back you want me to go?"

"Give us the last six months."

"Den Laurey's prison break was only six days ago."

"But this is Uncle Pete's car. I doubt he's visited Den since the prison break--I'm just hoping we can put together a list of Sinner-friendly locations and go from there."

Krindon tucked the nav unit under his arm and closed the car door behind him.

Guerrera said, "We'd better lock the door agai--"

Krindon's hand tensed in his pocket, and the Lexus's locks clicked. He turned and walked away, his shadow stretched long in the dim light. Over his shoulder he said, "I'll be in touch."

Chapter
63

Though he doubted that Den would be dumb enough to play Hollywood stalker, Tim entered his house cautiously and safed each room, then double-locked the doors and closed the blinds. He kept the lights off.

He called Smiles and Malane and filled them in, coordinating activities for the morning. He hoped they'd be able to come up with enough leads to construct a new game plan.

The answering machine was maxed out. After the seventh media call, Tim pressed the "erase" button and held it down. When the case settled, he'd change the number. Again.

He opened the refrigerator door, grimacing against the waft of spoiled food. He cleaned it out, throwing away the perishables, and returned to see what he was left with. An onion, a jar of jalapeno mustard, a bottle of Newman's Own, two strawberry Crushes, and one turkey Lunchable.

He arranged the Crush and the turkey crackers on the silver tray as he had for Dray the night before her encounter with Den Laurey, then stood in the dark kitchen, unsure where to take himself. The TV's light would broadcast that he was home, so he ate at the kitchen table in the dark. Though he was accustomed to eating alone when Dray worked P.M. shifts, the new reality of his home life made even this simple activity a painful one. His mood grew heavy; it became evident why he'd spent virtually no time at home since Dray was shot. If he kept moving, he didn't feel as keenly. But now, with the trails gone cold and Pete Krindon working the sole lead on a freelancer's schedule, he had no choice but to be still. A childish longing struck him, but he knew that sleeping beside her at the hospital would be nothing more than an addictive falsehood.

At least half of Tim's child-size meal wound up in the trash. On his walk down the hall, he paused outside the nursery and, without looking over, pulled the door closed. In the bedroom he picked up Dray's sweats, folded them neatly, and set them on a shelf on her side of their shared closet. Each of her outfits, filled out by a hanger and gravity, matched an evening out, a mood, a mental snapshot. Navy blue button-up with a ketchup stain on the right sleeve--Dray pouty after consecutive gutter balls, drinking Bud from a bottle shaped like a bowling pin. Morro Bay sweatshirt--a pre-stirrups grimace before her last OB checkup two weeks ago. Yellow dress with tiny blue flowers--the first night they'd met, at a fireman's charity. She'd worn it again the morning she'd come to meet him at the courthouse to take him home.

An empty house and a full closet were only part of what Den Laurey had left in his wake, but Tim felt it as an utter and profound devastation. Marisol Juarez's grandmother, knocking around her tiny apartment by the dim light of her Advent candles, felt her granddaughter's absence the same way. We'll do our best, Tim had promised her, and Marisol had wound up split open on a warehouse floor. Her death had been a matter of timing and chance, just as countless variables had aligned to land the pellet at the back of Dray's rib cage. He wondered how, if he had to, he'd wrap his mind around the loss of his wife. If he'd learned one thing from Ginny's death, it was that--despite all certainty to the contrary--he'd persist. Like the Northern Alliance fighter he'd seen through the blaze of the midday Kandahar sun, stumbling along a treeless ridge with blood streaming from both ears, carrying his own severed arm. He'd be separated from himself, diminished, but he'd stagger on.

He slid into bed, occupying only his half. His exhaustion was overpowering. He had only a moment to be thankful for that petty mercy before slipping into sleep.

When he woke up six hours later, a stack of computer printouts was waiting on the foot of his bed.

Chapter
64

Tim had entered the squad room carrying the pages triumphantly. His energy proved contagious, and virtually all the other deputies had pulled chairs around his desk to dig back into the case. In the printouts Krindon had broken down the Lexus's headings into five-minute snapshots, yielding a profusion of numbers, but still it took maps, a military GPS computer program, and trial-and-error strategy to evaluate the data. In some places Krindon had pegged the area to within a hundred feet, in others within a few blocks. Not until lunch did they start connecting the dots to figure out travel routes, which they then harmonized with the street maps and traced with red pens. Tim Sharpie-marked as potential destinations anywhere that no movement was recorded between snapshots, but this assumption didn't account for traffic and was further complicated by the fact that satellite towers were not closely spaced in rural areas.

At 2:15, Jim looked up at the wall clock and said, "It's been a week. Since Den Laurey's escape. Since Frankie."

They returned to the data with newfound vigor. Routes overlapped, but Uncle Pete proved to be surprisingly mobile. It quickly became plain that they had more leads than they could parse in a feasible time frame. Even once they carved up the routes between deputy teams and pulled in the FBI, they looked to be weeks away from completing the follow-up, and if Tim knew one thing, it was that they didn't have weeks. Den Laurey would likely lie low until his face was off the front page and the news teasers; then he'd slip away to an ironically named desert town where cash was king and anonymity the rule.