The Scapegoat, page 10
“I can tell you that without looking.”
Coombes nodded. “I’ll bet. I’m going to use Mark’s computer to look up the databases. Just in case you-know-who is watching us.”
He finished his soda and tossed it in the trash can under his desk.
15
Coombes started where he usually did, with a search of the NCIC criminal database. He got eighteen hits for different James Andersons that had each been charged with crimes and booked into the system. Without bothering to narrow the search result by age, height, or hair coloring, he flicked through the mugshots. None of them were the Anderson he was looking for.
Next, he tried the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The DMV was a huge resource in policing, providing verified photographic ID, age, height, weight, and street addresses for nearly every adult in the population. There was one hundred sixty-four James Andersons listed for the state of California, with twenty-eight of them located in L.A. County.
He scrolled through the digital copy of the licenses for the twenty-eight Angelenos. He found matches for the previously-identified Andersons from the criminal database, but saw nobody matching the man in the video.
The chance of Anderson not having a driver’s license was zero. Given the amount of time he had been stalking Tremaine, it didn’t seem likely that he was dealing with someone with an out-of-state license.
He sat back, his eyes moving over Becker’s desk.
It was a mess of candy wrappers, empty coffee cups, and sticky notes. There were three pictures of Becker’s wife at different ages, and she was smiling in all of them. Coombes had no photographs of Julie at his workstation, smiling or otherwise. He didn’t even know if he had a printed-out photograph of her, everything was digital now.
Thinking of Julie and the divorce that would be to come made him wonder if James Anderson had had any other interactions with the legal system. Sometimes, it didn’t matter how careful you were, some other fool could bring the trouble to you.
Coombes opened LexisNexis; a legal service used primarily by lawyers. It simplified the task of finding publicly-available court documents and made them searchable. He found his suspect in less than a minute. To his surprise, it was not as a defendant, but as a witness for the state. Unfortunately for the District Attorney, James Anderson could not be located to testify.
After giving his initial statement, Anderson had vanished into thin air. The prosecutor had been forced to get her investigator to read the witness statement into the official record, where Coombes was able to read it from the court transcript.
Anderson stated that on the evening of May 10th 2019, he had gone for a run along Venice Boulevard. As he came to the Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, he witnessed a dog being clipped by a passing motorcyclist.
Anderson carried the injured animal to a nearby veterinary clinic in Pico-Union.
When he arrived, he was presented with three men in ski masks armed with sawed-off shotguns in the process of robbing the place. Anderson took out all three using a fire extinguisher as a club, then waited with the terrified staff until patrol units arrived to secure the scene.
The dog, a German Spaniel, required only sedatives and rest and was later reunited with its owner.
There were two parts to this that told him this was his guy. First of all, was his easy use of violence to subdue the armed robbers. It spoke to him of a military-trained individual calm in the face of danger. Taking charge after it was over also inclined him to think of the man as an officer. It was what he would have done.
The other part he liked, was that the situation involved a dog and possibly linked to the kidnapping scheme identified by the Bureau. It was no stretch of the imagination to suppose that Anderson was in the process of abducting the dog when it got free and strayed onto the road and into the path of the motorcycle.
Becker appeared next to him, having returned from lunch.
“How you getting on?”
“I have a promising lead, but no photo ID or street address.”
“Any idea how Tremaine filed a restraining order without an address?”
“That’s easy. Anderson was standing outside Tremaine’s residence at the time taking pictures. He was served right there on the street by the same twenty-three-year-old he’d been creeping on minutes earlier with his long lens. No address necessary.”
“Damn.”
Coombes stared off into space.
“What are you thinking, John?”
“This merchandise Anderson sells…it’s got to be chickenfeed that brings in, right? On the other hand, we’ve got his kidnapping caper. First dogs, now people. That’s making a lot of money. He’s wanting five mill just for Amy. Why bother with the website?”
“I guess he’s using it to wash some of the illegal money to give him an official means of support. Cash is great, but the real world operates on credit ratings, mortgages, and rent.”
Coombes nodded and stood so that Becker could sit.
“You’re probably right.”
He returned to his desk and found Sato scrolling through a long grid of images. As he got closer, he saw that it was a shopping page and that all the images were of T-shirts. The format of all of them were the same; a photograph of the former governor with one of his famous quotes underneath. The quotes were either funny or inspiring.
“Bought anything?”
“Not yet. There’s still a couple of months until your birthday.”
“Anything interesting?”
“I asked myself who the hell would be buying this stuff and my answer, I thought, was nobody. Then I noticed something.”
She selected one of the squares.
“What am I looking at, Grace?”
“Wait for it.”
Just then a box slid up from the bottom of the screen.
Item bought by K. Reese of Stockton, California.
Ten or so seconds passed and another message was displayed. Another sale.
“Is this for real? People are really buying this shit?”
“Apparently. Interest in Tremaine has probably skyrocketed as a result of the kidnapping. If you look here,” Sato’s voice flickered as another sale was announced. “There’s a counter that shows how many people are viewing this page. I checked one of the more obscure products by going on my cell phone at the same time. The count rose by one. It’s real.”
There were 63 other people browsing the page. Compared with the video of Amy in the tank of water it was nothing, but that didn’t stop him being impressed.
“I’ve got a juicy lead on Anderson I want to check, you coming?”
“That’s for sure.”
Sato logged out her computer and they made their way across the detective bureau toward the elevator, pulling on their suit jackets at the same time. It felt good to be moving again.
“So what’s the lead?”
“It seems that before Anderson was a bad guy, he was a good guy.”
Sato smiled. “I love those.”
As they drove into the parking lot for the animal hospital, he saw a surveillance camera aimed straight at their car. He saw three more cameras as he parked, on poles in glass domes that made it impossible to tell which way the lens was pointing. The lot was relatively small and he guessed that half the vehicles belonged to staff. He parked away from the entrance to leave room for any emergency arrivals and killed the engine.
“Did you ever have a pet, Johnny?”
“Yeah. I had a golden retriever before I joined the Army. How about you?”
“No. I wanted a dog, but I was never allowed one growing up. Later, when I had my own place, I was out all day. That’s not fair to a dog.”
“You’re right about that.”
They got out the Charger and walked toward the entrance.
He could feel his lunch sitting awkwardly in his stomach as if he hadn’t chewed it at all and it was still a foot-long inside him. Maybe, he reflected, it was a heart attack. This could be the end coming and here he was mistaking it for indigestion.
The doors opened automatically. An empty waiting room. A receptionist looked up at the pair of them, eyebrows raised. She was a pretty brunette in her mid-twenties with long hair tied back behind her head in a ponytail. A name badge on the right collarbone of her pink scrubs said Ava.
He noticed a camera above her head looking straight at him, another over to the side toward a hallway leading to the rest of the facility, and as he turned back toward the door, two more covering the exit. The cameras were wall-to-wall and they looked expensive.
Coombes made a quick introduction, his face on a friendly setting.
“What can I do for you, Detectives?”
“It’s about last year. May 10th.”
Ava’s face changed to one of pure horror before returning to normal.
“The worst day of my life,” she said. “I thought they were going to kill me, those men. Actually, I thought they were going to do some other things first, then kill me.”
Coombes nodded, his right palm raised a little to show that he took her meaning and she didn’t have to traumatize herself any more by expanding on the thought.
“What can you tell us about the man that stopped them.”
Her eyes lit up.
“James Anderson. I think about him every day. He saved me, he saved all of us. We wanted to thank him later but we had no address. Instead, we put up that.”
Ava pointed behind him at a brass plate that was screwed to the wall.
For James Anderson
Not all heroes wear capes
He decided that the receptionist was better off not knowing about Anderson’s fall from hero to villain. She was drawing strength from the idea of who he was, and it seemed to be offsetting some of the fear that the men with shotguns had brought into her life.
“He never gave you his number?”
“No, why would he?”
Because you’re attractive?
Coombes smiled and tilted his head over a little. Maybe she was trying to get him to say the words. For sure, he’d never met a beautiful woman who didn’t know it.
“I tried to find him online but it’s a very common name and I got nowhere.”
Coombes could believe it.
“When was it you looked? Recently, or back when it happened?”
“Both, actually. He didn’t seem to have a social media account which I thought was weird, who doesn’t have one of those? I checked again last week to see if that had changed.”
Coombes made a note of this.
It meant that Anderson hadn’t deleted himself prior to his big score with Amy Tremaine’s kidnapping.
He pointed at the white rectangle in the ceiling.
“These cameras…they were added after the attack?”
“Yes. We also have a monitored alarm that summons an armed response.”
“That must be reassuring,” Sato said.
“I’d give it up in a heartbeat to have James sitting next to me.”
“Was he married?”
The receptionist’s face colored. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you do,” Sato said. “I saw you check my partner’s hand when we arrived. You were burned before, right? Now you do it without thinking. So, was he married?”
“He had no band on his finger, that’s all I know.”
Coombes cut back in.
“What kind of security system did you have before?”
“The kind that didn’t work. The cameras were effectively dummies. There’s no recording of those men, or of James Anderson, if that’s what you’re asking.”
They were getting closer to Anderson, but the only chance of there still being any link between a year-old incident and the current case was if a relationship had formed between him and one of the people he saved. That person was not Ava and if it had been someone else here then her attitude toward him would be markedly different.
“I think we’re done here.”
“Wait a minute. What’s all this about?”
“We can’t comment on active investigations.”
The fear returned to Ava’s face.
“Those men aren’t getting out of prison, are they?”
“No. Look, I wouldn’t worry about them. The way I understand it, James took them out of commission. One can’t lift his arms above his chest, another lost vision in one eye and needs a cane to walk, the last is stuck in a wheelchair drinking smoothies through a tube.”
Ava went still as she thought about that.
After a beat, her chin popped out a little, defiant.
“It’s their own fault, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. If they hadn’t killed someone here that day then I’m sure they would’ve somewhere else down the line, I have no doubt.”
Ava liked that; the light was back in her eyes.
“Exactly!”
“Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
“James has done it again, hasn’t he? Saved someone. Why else would you be asking about him. Tell him he can come back here any time, we’d love to see him.”
Coombes nodded like that was it, a forced smile on his face.
16
Since they were passing Elizabeth Walton’s secret apartment on South Hill Street anyway, it made sense to take a look at it. The building was a modern high-rise made out of glass and steel and was new enough that Coombes could remember it being constructed. As was often the case, he could not remember what building had stood there before.
A roller shutter blocked the entrance and exit to the parking structure. The shutter would be fully automated, triggered by something in the owner’s car.
The black box attached to Walton’s sun visor.
Coombes fizzed down the window of his Charger and looked at a metal box that was mounted to a post. He located a button and held it in for a ten-count.
Longer than a mail man, he figured, to get some attention. An angry voice thundered out a speaker.
“What the hell do you want?”
“LAPD. Open the barrier.”
The voice didn’t come back, but the shutter began to roll up and he drove inside. He took off his sunglasses and tossed them onto the dashboard.
“You know, Johnny, we need to talk about your communication skills.”
“I deal with the world the way I find it.”
“I noticed that.”
His eyes watched the numbers over the parking spots as they scrolled past. It appeared that each apartment was allocated two spaces, each wide enough to park a tank. Considering the SUVs some of the owners drove, this was probably a basic requirement. He saw Walton’s number and parked in one of her spaces.
Now that they had stopped moving, frustration began to build like a static charge. There would be nothing useful in the apartment, but they had nothing else. About the best he could hope for was that something would trigger a new thought process and take him in a new, more fruitful, direction.
A concrete stairwell led from the parking garage into a beautifully-appointed lobby area. There was a ten-foot-long desk marked CONCIERGE in polished silver letters. A young man with a pinched, rat-like face, sat behind the desk giving him the evil eye.
Clearly the man he’d spoken with moments before via the box.
As they approached the desk, a second man in his late-fifties appeared from a doorway. He had bloodshot eyes and his hair was swept back into a ponytail behind his head like a coffee store barista.
“I suppose you’re here about Elizabeth Walton.”
He nodded.
“Detectives Coombes and Sato.”
“Adam Finley.”
“You’re the building manager here?”
“That’s right.”
“We need to see her apartment, Mr. Finley.”
“I thought that was it. Come on, I already have the spare keys.”
Coombes had Walton’s keys in his pocket but said nothing. They got onto the elevator and Finley selected the top floor on the panel. The doors closed.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard, I thought it must be a mistake.”
He heard that a lot in Homicide.
“Did you know her well, Mr. Finley?”
“Just to say hello to. She was nice, why would anyone want to hurt her?”
He glanced at the other man, assessing him.
There was a quiver in his voice. Finley was upset about Walton, he realized, his red eyes were from crying. There were people Coombes saw for hours every day that he wouldn’t shed a tear over, but that was just him. The elevator stopped and they followed Finley along the corridor.
Elizabeth Walton’s unit was right at the end, away from the others. He figured this was the best setup, nobody walking past to get to their apartment, nobody even close to her door unless they had reason to be there. It’s what he would choose, given the choice.
They pulled on nitrile gloves as the manager unlocked the door and pushed it open. Two locks, no alarm. Finley glanced at their gloved hands, his eyes wide.
“You don’t think it happened here, do you?”
Sato answered, her voice soft.
“It’s just procedure, Mr. Finley. Prevents any risk of contamination. It’s also why you’ll have to wait out here. We’ll have some questions for you when we come back out.”
The man’s chest puffed up like he was about to complain, but then he just nodded his head. Sato had a soft touch, Coombes thought, that he doubtless lacked.
A short entrance hallway opened out into a shared space, with living, dining and kitchen areas. There was a glass wall to the north and west, filling the room with light. Through the window to the north was a narrow balcony.
An empty cereal bowl sat on the kitchen island with a spoon sticking out. Eaten at speed and abandoned to deal with later. Over by the sofa, sat a pair of high heels, one sitting on its side. A candle that looked artificial sat on a coffee table next to a glasses case and a hardcover crime novel.
Signs of a life lived, interrupted.
Coombes had visited hundreds of locations during his career and could always sense when he was somewhere that something bad had happened. He got nothing like that here.
