The Scapegoat, page 19
Facial recognition.
Live tracking and identification of private citizens outside of an airport setting was the thin end of the wedge to Coombes. It was an abuse of power, and a gross invasion of privacy. This was not why he became a cop, and he could see that soon it would become the default in all surveillance systems.
Barnes approached and glanced at his forehead.
“You been making friends again, Coombes?”
He ignored the jibe and the boyish smirk that followed it.
“What’s the plan here, Barnes?”
“Tremaine brings the ransom, hands it over, that’s it.”
“And Amy?”
“Released later, after they’ve got away. She’s their insurance.”
“You know she’s dead, right?”
Barnes flinched. “We don’t say that.”
“What’s to stop them asking for more money?”
“Our plan is to track the kidnappers back to their nest and scoop them up before they can even count the money. Playing their game pulls them out of the shadows and makes them vulnerable. We’ve got jack so far.”
It was a fair point, and it didn’t seem like they had any other moves left to play. But assuming your opponent was going to make a mistake was a recipe for disaster. Coombes was about to say so when his thoughts were interrupted by the deep throated rumble of a vehicle passing them on the street. The floor was vibrating through his shoes and he glanced up to the monitor covering the car park next door.
“Look alive people,” Henderson said. “He’s here.”
A silver-gray Rezvani Tank rolled through the lot like a huge child’s toy. The vehicle was a military-spec SUV with enormous tires and a boxy design that was supposedly bulletproof. Despite his natural cynicism, Coombes had to fight the urge to exit the command post and take a closer look.
Harlan Tremaine stepped out, followed seconds later by a tall muscular man wearing black combat trousers, black T-shirt, body armor, sidearm, and sunglasses.
Sato leaned in close. “Check out the beefcake!”
A red box appeared around his head. ID: Classified.
Henderson swore, but Barnes laughed.
“I’m guessing he’s not one of yours,” Coombes said.
“Oh my god, that’s Chris Thorne,” Barnes said. “He was involved in my last case before I joined the Bureau.”
“What about him?”
“He’s like all four horsemen of the apocalypse.”
“Why’s he listed as classified?”
“I have no idea.”
Thorne scanned the lot with a slow movement of his head then reached into the footwell of the SUV and pulled out a large gym bag. The armored vehicle, the military bodyguard; Tremaine had taken steps to ensure that nobody was going to by-pass the exchange by intercepting the money before it reached the park.
A woman with tousled TV-anchor hair and an Italian suit stood in front of Tremaine and talked to him as she appeared to adjust the lapels on his jacket. When she was done, she glanced at the camera and nodded.
Tremaine’s voice boomed out a speaker in the truck.
“One, two, one two. That loud enough?”
“Just speak normally, Mr. Tremaine.”
“How about now?”
Even at a low volume his voice was unmistakable, as if it too lifted weights.
“That’s perfect. Good luck.”
Harlan Tremaine entered the park at exactly 10 a.m. and made his way toward a statue known colloquially as The Lady of the Lake, where the money was to be handed over.
The former governor was an unusual sight in sneakers, jeans, and a corduroy jacket with elbow patches. He looked like a history professor, except for his highly worked-out body that was visible through his clothes. Then there was the canvas gym bag in his right hand.
It looked heavy.
People turned to watch as he walked past.
“You know, Henderson, this case has been in the news.”
“What’s your point, Coombes?”
“Everyone in L.A. knows Tremaine; knows his daughter’s been kidnapped. And here he is in a public space carrying a bag that could only be filled with millions of dollars. You’re not worried he’s going to get robbed by one of these people?”
Henderson’s face twitched.
“The venue was not our choice, nor was the decision to pay.”
Coombes knew what the twitch meant; it meant the FBI had been so focused on the kidnappers that they hadn’t thought about third parties being interested in the money. In this part of town, it probably wouldn’t matter. Not too many gang members taking a walk in the park. He turned to Barnes.
“What’s the play here?”
“The bag’s got a tracker sown into it that they’ll not find in a million years. If they ditch the bag, we have another tracker in the middle of one of the stacks of bills. We also put a really obvious tracker in the outside pocket. They’ll know we’ll track the money, so we give them one to find. People tend to stop looking once they find what they’re looking for.”
Coombes nodded, his eyes drifting across to Sato.
“That’s certainly my experience,” he said.
Sato flashed a huge smile, her cheeks turning pink.
Tremaine was almost at the statue when a woman in tight navy leggings and gray hooded top ran toward him. Her face was down, looking at a cell phone. She was moving fast, her Nikes tearing up the distance.
Tremaine moved to the side to get out her way, but they seemed to collide anyway. It was a hard impact, and she ricocheted off his huge frame onto the other side of the footpath and onto her back. Her hood fell back and Coombes saw blonde hair swept back into a ponytail before she got it back into place.
It was the woman from the toy factory.
“Henderson, that’s the bitch who set me up, we have to arrest her!”
“Not a chance, Coombes. We stay with the money.”
The blonde got to her feet and shouted obscenities at the former governor before running on. Tremaine, though shaken by the incident, continued on to the drop point. After a dozen steps, he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear.
Nothing was coming out of the speakers.
Henderson turned to a tech.
“What happened to the audio?”
“His mic must’ve been knocked off by the impact.”
“All right, but why aren’t we hearing this through the wiretap?”
The man flipped screens, then looked up.
“His cell’s not in use. That’s not his phone.”
Tremaine turned away from the statue, headed south, toward a place renting swan boats to the romantics. Coombes immediately saw the problem. Half the agents were at the top of the park, with the other half split in two by the thin strips of land on either side of the lake.
Soon, 3/4s of Henderson’s agents would be neutralized. Marks was good.
“The blonde put the cell in his pocket when they collided,” he said.
“Thank you, Coombes. Even I worked that out.”
He checked the screens, to see if he could find her again, but she was gone. Not grabbing her was a basic mistake. She could have told them where Amy was, which was probably the same location where Marks would return to when he got the ransom.
Looking at the camera angles, the logical escape vector for the blonde was to walk around the edge of the parking lot and past the truck they were standing in. The FBI had no cameras pointed at the command post, it being the last place they expected to find the kidnappers.
Onscreen, Tremaine was approaching Bellevue Avenue at the southern end of the park. Which meant he was about to leave the area covered by the facial recognition cameras and the undercover agents pretending to take pictures of downtown.
The operation was going about as well as Coombes thought it would and he was glad the Bureau would get the blame. Although somehow, he thought, they’d find a way to blame the LAPD. They always did.
“Where the hell’s he going?”
Coombes turned to the SAC.
“Don’t you get it? The exchange isn’t in the park. They’re going to bounce him around the city to shake off his tail and then take the bag. Don’t you watch movies?”
Henderson’s face and neck were scarlet, like he was about to explode. Somehow, he managed not to take it out on Coombes and instead turned to his own people.
“Give me something!”
“Tracker one, two, and three are active, as is Tremaine’s cell.”
“Pérez, Hill, and Caruso are converging on his position.”
“U/C vehicles holding at outer marker.”
Through the soles of his feet, Coombes felt Tremaine’s SUV roar to life and tear out of the parking lot. Thorne was changing position. It was a good plan; the former governor was moving off the grid. Henderson grabbed a radio handset off the table.
“Airship 1, this is Henderson. Principal is leaving on foot toward the southern corner of Echo Park and Bellevue. Move into position. Over.”
There was a pause before a reply came back.
“Copy. Moving into position.”
They were down to one camera, which had been panned around to face Bellevue from the corner of Glendale Boulevard. They saw Tremaine at Echo Park Avenue turn and make his way toward the camera. At the bottom of the picture, the Rezvani Tank appeared driving half on the footpath, half on a grass verge. It was heading straight at Tremaine.
Henderson swore and gripped the top of his head with his right hand.
“This is Airship 1. We have acquired the principal. Incoming vehicle closing fast on the footpath. Advise.”
Henderson picked up the radio. “Ignore vehicle.”
“Say again. Over.”
“Incoming vehicle works for principal, not target.”
“Copy.”
They watched Tremaine walk along Bellevue, toward the approaching SUV, his hand holding the cell up to his ear. Still getting instructions. It would be difficult for him to reject the idea that Marks was the kidnapper after hearing his voice again. Just then, Tremaine came to an abrupt halt and turned to face a car that was parked in a tow-away lane.
The rear window of the car was wide open.
It was clear the driver wanted him to put the bag into the back. Tremaine stood there, the bag still in his hand. Reluctant to give up the money, the leverage.
The passenger window opened.
“This is Airship 1. We see a gun barrel.”
“Acknowledged.”
Tremaine threw the bag into the rear seat of the car and backed away, hands in the air. He moved across the grass strip and the concrete footpath behind it until his back was against a chain-link fence that bordered the park. The space between the car and the former governor filled immediately with the Tank, which seemed to get covered in sparks.
Multiple agents called out.
“Shots fired, shots fired.”
Marks pulled out of the tow lane and raced toward Glendale Boulevard. He turned south, opposite the camera position, the back end of his car swinging wide. As the lens turned to follow, Coombes saw Tremaine in the background climbing into the passenger side of the Tank which U-turned onto Bellevue to give chase.
“This is Airship 1. Target vehicle has stopped under the Hollywood Freeway. We have no visual. I repeat, no visual.”
Inside the command post, one of the technicians called out.
“Tracker one, two, and three are down.”
“What do you mean they’re down?“ Henderson bellowed.
“They all died at once, sir.”
“And how would they do that, Phil? Did they take out a satellite?”
“A Faraday cage,” Coombes said.
The truck fell silent. Eight faces turned toward him.
“Get a beach bag and cover the inside with aluminum foil. That’s your cage. Now, all you have to do is put Tremaine’s bag inside and close it up,” Coombes turned his hands palm-up as if to reveal his hands were empty. “Adiós, muchachos.”
Henderson turned to glare at the technician. At Phil.
“Uh. He’s right. That would work.”
“You’re saying our best trackers can be defeated with turkey foil?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Henderson’s cell phone rang and when he answered the van’s speakers activated, filling the interior with echo-filled traffic noise. The call was from Tremaine.
“I’m under the freeway. The car’s here, no sign of the driver or the money. My associate found a tarp on the ground and some tire tracks. Looks like the bastard had a motorcycle hidden here. He could be anywhere by now.”
Tremaine cut the call before Henderson could say anything.
Coombes shook his head. The dirtbags had been given five million dollars cash and the best possible chance to escape. Amy’s only hope now, as far as he could tell, was if the kidnappers were greedy and asked for more money. The fact that Nathan Marks had tried to kill Tremaine after the hand-off did not bode well.
Marks was smart. He’d know it was time to tidy up loose ends and relocate.
Amy Tremaine was the loose end.
He threw the truck door open and walked down steps to the ground, Sato following after him. The former governor was going to be headed back this way in a foul mood and as the representative of the LAPD’s best interests, he wanted none of the blowback.
“Where are you going, Coombes?”
The SAC was standing in the doorway like a big, sweaty meatball.
“Like you said before. This is your operation. We’ll leave you to it.”
Coombes put on his sunglasses.
“If it helps, Henderson, I do have one piece of good news for you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“He’ll have to open the bag to get at the money. Soon as he does, all those trackers come back to life.”
30
With Nathan Marks in the wind, there was little else to do but return to the PAB and search for a new angle to take the investigation and update Gantz on the ransom drop. It occurred to him as they arrived at headquarters that he’d never looked into Olaf and Kirsten Dekker who, from Marks point of view, had cost him everything. If what was now happening to Tremaine now was payback for his betrayal, had he sought to extract revenge from Dekker?
As Coombes stepped onto the elevator, he imagined a second scenario, one where Kirsten Dekker had blonde hair and corpse-white skin. He pictured Marks’ accomplice the way he’d seen her an hour earlier in the park.
The hooded top, the hair tied back.
Tremaine’s description of Kirsten’s takedown of Marks held the possibility of the whole thing being fiction. If it was, and he was far from convinced, then they were dealing with a pathological mind. Deeply twisted and disconnected from the result of her actions.
Either Marks was drawn to erratic females, or they were the same person. The elevator doors opened and they got off, headed for their desks.
Would Marks take Kirsten back after she’d destroyed his life? It seemed unlikely, but when it came to matters of the heart, you never knew. The whole thing could’ve been a smoke screen designed to throw her grandfather off the trail and allow them to be together.
Coombes sat at his computer and logged in without stopping to take off his suit jacket. He’d talked himself into something and he had to find out the answer before he could do anything else.
He Googled Olaf Dekker first, cheating himself out of an immediate answer. The page refreshed, and a long list of clickbait headlines appeared, linking to newspapers struggling to stay alive in the digital age. Everything was more lurid now, it had to be.
Olaf Dekker, philanthropist, shot dead at 89.
Murder in Bel Air, prominent industrialist assassinated.
Arms manufacturer samples own product.
Coombes sat forward, his focus sharpening.
He clicked on one of the news stories and saw it was four years old.
A man dressed as a landscaper had waited outside the Dekker residence in Bel Air for almost two hours, trimming the hedge. As Dekker’s gates opened and he began to pull his Rolls-Royce out onto the road, the unknown ‘maintenance worker’ had moved in close and emptied a seventeen-round magazine through the side window into Dekker’s head and chest at a range of less than five feet. When his weapon was empty, the killer dropped it through the destroyed window into Dekker’s lap and walked calmly away.
Everything had been captured on security cameras.
Coombes pulled up the criminal database and ran a search for the status of the case and found it was listed as open-unsolved.
Interesting.
He returned to the news article and found links to two newer related stories. One was a somber obituary, the other a hatchet job on a man too dead to complain about it. Coombes clicked on the second of the two.
According to the journalist, Dekker was a vile man that had driven his wife to suicide and his daughter to an early death at the hands of a drug addiction. His entire wealth went to his granddaughter Kirsten.
This time the related story was about Kirsten. He clicked it.
“Shit,” he said.
Kirsten Dekker had long black hair and golden skin.
He pushed his keyboard angrily away and sat back in his seat. Another dead end. He’d known it was weak all along and had deliberately avoided going straight to the answer to avoid the inevitable.
Coombes tilted his head down from the ceiling tiles and caught Sato looking at him. At his forehead. Maybe she was realizing that he wasn’t what she wanted anymore. Sometimes all it took was a small change to make you re-evaluate the whole thing, like a fly sitting on a slice of pie. Her eyes dipped down to his and she smiled awkwardly.
“Grace,“ he said, reproachfully.
“Don’t hate me, Johnny, but I was thinking I could help out.”
“Help out. What does that mean?”
“Put concealer on your bump. No one would know it was there.”
“No one, or you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I disgust you now. I could put a paper bag on my head if you like.”
