The Scapegoat, page 18
Gantz closed the door then came up in front of him.
“Lift your arms up.”
He frowned but did so anyway.
She stepped closer, put her head sideways against his chest and her arms around his back, under his jacket. She hugged him tight, her arms squeezing where he’d been kicked repeatedly by the blonde woman. Maybe twenty seconds passed, then she released him and stepped back.
She avoided looking him in the eye.
“Don’t say anything crass, okay? In fact, say nothing.”
He said nothing.
“You didn’t black out, right?”
“Right.”
Gantz turned away from him to go around the other side of her desk. She sat and began to fuss with items on her desk, still not making eye contact. He figured she knew the truth by looking at him. Maybe the medic had ratted him out.
“If you blacked out, I have to take you off rotation until you’re cleared.”
“Ellen, come on. It looks worse than it is.”
She glanced at his forehead and flinched. He understood, he’d seen himself in the mirror. He had a lump on his forehead the size of a hard-boiled egg cut down the middle. As bad as it was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been.
“This thing with Becker trying to eat his gun and now this. It’s brought things into focus. I don’t want to lose any of you assholes, you’re important to me.”
Coombes smiled. “Thanks, L-T, that means a lot.”
She waved that away, then cleared her throat.
“Tremaine’s paying the ransom at Echo Park Lake tomorrow at 10 a.m. The feds will have half their field office down there, but I want you and Sato there to witness it all go wrong on behalf of the department.”
“Once they get paid, Amy’s done. You know that, right?”
Her face showed nothing. She thought Amy was dead already.
“Where are you with Schofield?”
“Nowhere, the man’s missing. Not really my department. If someone finds his body parts I’ll get right on it, otherwise he’s on the back burner.”
“You said he was on the abduction footage.”
“No, I said he was on the recon footage. He was already missing by the time of the abduction. If he was involved in this at all it was in the early stages only.”
“Regardless, someone with a lot of pull wants Schofield located and you were the only detective acceptable to this person. Clearly, you made an impression on him last time you met. He doesn’t trust anyone else with this.”
“You know who this person is then?”
“Obviously. I’m just not allowed to tell you, nothing personal.”
“That’s great. What about Tremaine and Walton?”
“Your friend knows they are the priority.”
My friend.
“Then I work Schofield on my own time?”
“I knew you’d understand, John. Open the blind on your way out.”
Gantz, she was all heart.
As he walked back to his desk, he couldn’t help but feel that his lieutenant had given him something he wasn’t meant to have. She’d told him this mystery shot caller was a man and that it was someone he’d met before. Using the word friend without irony told him this person wasn’t a fed. If Block wanted something done, he’d use Wallfisch, not him.
Coombes thought about who had the juice to pull it off and realized the list was longer than he might’ve liked. He encountered many powerful people in RHD, any one of which might have seen him as a known quantity. If one of them was in trouble they might prefer the devil they knew over one they didn’t.
It didn’t matter who this person was for him to do his job, but by concealing the man’s identity, his mind was working on that mystery and the reason for the concealment, rather than where this douchebag with a shaved head and neck tattoos might be found.
Anton Schofield.
Coombes sighed just thinking about him.
He didn’t care anything at all about Schofield. Whatever happened to him, he had no doubt that the man had brought it on himself. The same could not be said for Walton, who was an innocent. In broad terms, he was part of the problem and she was part of the solution.
Yet for some reason, someone on high thought Schofield worthy of his time.
He returned to his desk and, thinking of no new direction to move in with Amy Tremaine, turned back to Elizabeth Walton. Her murder book was thin to say the least, he’d allowed himself to be consumed by the hunt for Amy, just as Cora Roche had predicted.
The official crime scene photographs were now available so he spent the best part of an hour going through them, looking for something, anything.
Seeing her again upset him, because he knew he wasn’t giving her investigation any justice. He’d come to the conclusion almost immediately that her case was tied to Amy Tremaine’s kidnapping and had promptly dropped all other work on it, trusting that solving one case would solve the other.
Objectively, there was no link between the two crimes except for the personal relationship between them, and the timing of the crimes.
He looked again at the positioning of Walton’s nightdress. The medical examiner had confirmed that she had not been sexually assaulted, but there was something about the image that didn’t seem right.
To feel a little better about her case he did some paperwork, appending the autopsy and the toxicology report to the murder book. Keeping the book up-to-date had to be done, but he couldn’t help but feel like Lester Crumb, padding out his no-show work with lots of filler.
He shook his head, disgusted with himself.
It occurred to him that he’d never seen Schofield’s file and brought it up on the computer. Everything he knew about the man had come from Sato’s telephone summary and from a terrified property manager who assumed he was a Nazi.
The file came up and he clicked through to the missing person’s report. A woman called Jolene Kendal had reported Schofield missing.
A girlfriend, he supposed.
He imagined a young woman with sun-bleached blonde hair carrying a surfboard along a beach to her VW bus. A free spirit that had somehow fallen for this monster from Germany. As hard as he tried, the image didn’t hold.
Coombes switched to the DMV database and typed in Jolene Kendal.
Five entries, none current.
Two were dead, three had changed name as a result of marriage. The last name on the list was now known as Jolene Jackson, the Chief of Police’s wife.
Shit.
The only thing that made sense to him, was if Jackson and Schofield were linked somehow. Business, or personal. Neither option made any sense to him, the chief was one of the more squared-away type of individuals he’d met on the force.
“Time to go, Johnny.”
He glanced up and saw she had her suit jacket on.
“See you tomorrow, Grace. I’m going to work a little longer.”
“No, you’re not. I’m driving you to the hotel, then, tomorrow morning, I’m driving you back here. I’m your chauffeur, Coombes. If you give me any noise about it I’ll tell Gantz I found you passed out on the floor and that you were out cold for at least five minutes.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
Sato put on her hard, frosty look.
It wasn’t like he was making any progress anyway. He sighed quietly and logged out of his computer. As his wife’s control over him waned, it was being replaced by increasing control from Sato.
“I take it you’re at the Hilton?”
“No, the Biltmore.”
“Really. Why?”
“It’s next to the abduction point.”
“You hoping it’s going to tell you something while you sleep?”
“Something like that.”
They stood and walked over to wait for the elevator next to four other detectives. None of them spoke to each other, all keen to get home.
Between dating and marriage, he’d loved his wife for half his adult life. But no longer. It was like a light that had been turned off. One minute it was there, undeniable, the next it was gone like it never existed.
All she had become to him, was a memory that was ten seconds long. It was seared into his brain like security footage, cued up, ready for playback at any moment.
The memory was destroying him, but he couldn’t feel anger toward her, because the love that was needed to fuel it was gone. The same could not be said for the lawyer. A rage like something he’d never known burned inside his chest. Beat it, man. What kind of person could do that to another and feel no embarrassment, no empathy.
A lawyer, obviously.
Coombes realized he knew nothing at all about him, not even his name.
The elevator doors opened and they all squeezed on, Sato casually pressing herself against him barely five feet from Block, their captain.
Block’s shoulders were covered in dandruff, like a light snow had fallen during the day. All their captain had to do was turn his head to the side and look down and they were both done.
Of course, that was never going to happen.
They were invisible to Block, who thought only of how to work his way up the slippery pole to the Chief of Detectives post he coveted.
The elevator opened again and they all emptied out. A short time later, he was lowering himself into Sato’s personal vehicle and leaning his head back into the headrest.
In his mind he pictured the lawyer tied to a chair, helpless. He imagined a long knife in his hand, like the one Marks had used on James Anderson. Then he imagined himself pushing the blade slowly into the other man’s chest. Right through the heart.
Coombes shivered; his eyes blinking closed with the strength of it.
“You okay?”
He turned to Sato. “Not even close.”
She frowned, then drove her car around to the exit and out into the night air. After a couple of minutes, rain began to fall in big splashes on the windshield.
It was the first rain in almost two months and he wondered if that would be a problem for Amy Tremaine. If Marks had her stashed somewhere that might not be waterproof; that might not have much air. A hole in the ground or a storm drain, filling with water. Her mouth bound tight to prevent screaming, yet screaming all the same.
Then there was the ransom drop.
One way or another, Amy didn’t have much time left.
28
They rode in silence for the entirety of the short drive between the PAB and the Biltmore, each of them lost in their own thoughts. The daylight hadn’t started to go yet and the traffic was moving well. When they got to Grand Avenue, Sato stopped in a yellow zone in front of the hotel and turned to him, the engine still running.
“I guess I’ll pick you up here tomorrow morning.”
It sounded like a question, but his mind was elsewhere.
“Grace, when we searched Schofield’s home we found no laptop, no tablet, no phone. That means either he took them with him when he left, or they were taken by whoever killed him. It’s not like a guy like that didn’t have at least a cell phone, right?”
Sato nodded.
“Right. And there’s nothing but tumbleweed on his socials, so he’s probably dead. I thought you didn’t care about Schofield?”
“Oh, I don’t. My interest is whether any of his missing devices are still operational.”
She frowned. “Why does that matter?”
Coombes said nothing for a moment and instead opened his tablet. He opened Facebook and slid the iPad toward Sato.
“Bring up Schofield’s profile.”
She took out her notebook and flipped through some pages to where she’d written down Schofield’s Facebook ID. She typed it in then passed the tablet back and leaned across the gap between them.
“See? Tumbleweed. No new posts. Machine gun vs Watermelon.”
Coombes clicked on the button to send the other man a message.
“What are you doing, Johnny?”
“Chumming the water.”
He typed into the message box.
I got your money, tell me where to meet.
He pressed send and glanced at Sato. Her mouth had fallen open.
“Now we wait,” he said.
“What money?”
Coombes shrugged.
“A guy like this? There’s always money.”
“He’ll be able to look at your profile.”
“Have you seen my profile? It’s so empty that even tumbleweeds can’t get a foothold.”
A three dot animation showed someone was writing back.
Who’s this? I don’t know you.
Coombes smiled and began typing.
A friend of a mutual acquaintance. I fix his problems. He’s passed the settling of your so-called debt on to me.
Your friend’s name?
Not on here.
We’re done asshole.
I’ll tell him I gave you the $50k either way.
The three dots appeared again, then stopped. Coombes began to count in his head. If there was no response by the time he reached twenty he would write another message. At eighteen, the dots started again.
First letter of your friend’s last name.
Smart. He couldn’t duck it a second time and there was no reason not to supply the information as it gave nothing away. Coombes exhaled slowly. If his hunch was wrong, at least he’d get confirmation that the chief was not involved.
“You had a good run there, Johnny, but he’s got you.”
Coombes typed a single letter.
J.
The response this time seemed faster.
Your friend is light. He owes me a lot more than that.
So much for the chief.
“Who the hell is J? What aren’t you telling me?”
Coombes typed again.
This is all he gave me. You want what I have now, or wait for the whole amount later?
As before, he counted in his head while the other man considered the offer. This time, he decided to wait, however long it took. Appearing to be desperate would give the game away. Coombes got to thirty before the next response.
I’ll get back to you.
There was no more text, no more animated dots. The other person was simply gone. Coombes swore under his breath. He closed his tablet and sat back, the palm of his hand resting on the black pseudo-leather case while he thought about what happened next.
“Are you going to tell me who this J character is or what?”
He stared through the windshield.
“I can’t,” he said. “Not yet.”
She said nothing, but he felt her gaze shift from warm and pleasant to the heat of the sun through a magnifying glass.
“Don’t make the face at me, Grace. I can’t get this one wrong. We’re talking career-ending implications and I can’t put that on you.”
“For the record, Coombes, there was no face.”
He nodded as if chastised, as if what she said was true.
Coombes knew every line and curve of her face and the micro-expressions she made that she didn’t even know about. Not because he was the world’s greatest detective, or because they’d been partners for two years. It was because he loved her.
“Who do you think was on the other end? Schofield, or his killer?”
It was a fair question and one he hadn’t considered. The answer came easily.
“Schofield.”
“Me too. He’s been in hiding then.”
“Looks that way.”
He saw the way she was looking at him.
“You want to come in and have dinner?”
“And then what?”
He recalled her comment about picking him up in the morning and understood. She wanted to stay the night. Perhaps imagining he had a fancy room, worthy of such a grand hotel. One with a four-poster bed and a bath with carved lion’s paws for feet.
“Nothing, Grace. I plan on lying in bed with the light out with a bag of ice on my head. I don’t want that to be our first hotel experience, do you?”
She nodded.
“Then I’ll skip dinner as well if you don’t mind.”
“No problem.”
29
On a map, Echo Park Lake looked like a toddler reaching up with one arm to give a high-five. At the point where the toddler’s shoulder would be, a fountain shot into the sky giving romantically-inclined couples something to look at while they paddled small boats around underneath.
Coombes was not romantically-inclined, but had visited the lake with three different women on dates over the years, not to mention his soon-to-be ex-wife. Now he was here again with Grace Sato and twenty-two members of the FBI.
Fridays were the third-busiest time to visit the lake, which was probably why the kidnappers had selected it as the time for the ransom drop. Not so full that it made escape difficult, but full enough that there were plenty of potential human shields to hide behind should things go sideways. It was a situation that went both ways, however, as it allowed the FBI to place agents in the field posing as couples and tourists with cameras.
A command post had been set up in a truck-sized RV with blacked-out windows on Park Avenue which sat on the north side of the lake near the entrance to a parking lot. It practically screamed FBI surveillance truck and he wondered why the feds thought it blended in so well. Henderson was glaring at him.
“What did I just say, Coombes?”
“We’re here as a courtesy, blah, blah, blah. I kind of drifted in and out to be honest, but I got the gist of it. This is your operation and you’re the big dog.”
The SAC’s face turned red.
“Watch the tone. I need you here like I need piles.”
Coombes smiled and said nothing.
Like his captain, Henderson thought being a leader meant cracking a whip and diminishing those underneath to appear in command. He saw no respect in the agents around Henderson, only fear or disgust.
They were hooked into security cameras around the lake which were piped into a bank of screens along one wall. He stood and watched the screens and the people on them that knew nothing of their image being captured.
The images were suspiciously sharp, which made him think he was looking at high-res Bureau cameras. On screen, squares appeared over faces.
