The Scapegoat, page 20
Her face hardened.
“Keep going, Coombes, and it’ll be a plastic bag.”
He smiled. Sato was adorable when she was frosty.
“This conversation right here…this is why we work.”
“We’re on the same page,” she said.
“Right.”
He stood and took off towards Gantz’ office. He wanted to tell her how it went down before Henderson got in there first and gave some version where he was somehow to blame. No, he thought. The SAC would bypass her and go straight to Block. His captain would then come in hot like a missile and he needed his L-T ready with the facts.
When he came out of Gantz’ office, he found Sato standing next to her desk like she was waiting for him. Something had happened, her eyes were bright and alive with something that could only have been a break in the case.
“What is it?”
“Fingerprint ID confirms Marks at Walton’s apartment.”
He nodded. The fingerprints being Nathan’s seemed like a formality at this point and he wasn’t sure why Sato looked so excited about it.
“Okay, and?”
“Becker has a line on the accomplice, the blonde.”
He smiled. “Excellent.”
They walked across the detective bureau together.
“What you got for us, Mark?”
“Grace was telling me about the woman that was at the ransom drop and the warehouse where you were attacked. White, thirties, medium-build, blonde hair. It got me thinking about something Lester Crumb turned up while he was looking for Marks.”
“You realize that description probably matches about a hundred thousand people in the city alone?”
“Oh, no doubt. Anyway, do you want to hear about it or not? Isn’t this why you had me go through those boxes?”
“Do you have a picture for me?”
After the Kirsten Dekker run-around he wanted to cut to the chase. Becker looked put out, like his big reveal had been spoiled. He opened the file folder and laid three 8 x 10 photographs down on his desk in a pyramid shape.
It was her.
Coombes leaned over to cut the reflections of the strip lights on the high gloss prints. The blonde coming out a store, hair billowing out behind her; the blonde sitting in the driver’s seat of a red convertible, head turned toward the camera, sunglasses half-way down her nose; finally, the blonde putting gas into the car with her feet set wide apart like she was playing baseball, her short skirt stretched tight.
He looked up, at Becker.
“You may tell the interesting story.”
“All right. When Marks left Tremaine’s employment, he setup a mail forward. Anything sent to him at Tremaine’s mansion was re-directed to a post box in Reseda. Crumb asks the manager there about the owner of the box. The guy gives him a mouthful about privacy, which goes away real fast after fifty bucks go in his pocket.
“At first Marks was getting almost no mail but after two months this changed. Now he’s getting a steady stream of envelopes and the manager has to move Marks to a bigger box. These new envelopes are sent direct to the box, they’re not redirects from Tremaine’s place.”
Coombes nodded.
“Okay, then these other envelopes are something new. He has a scam going. These aren’t offers of a credit card or whatever. People are sending him money.”
“That’s a fair assessment, particularly since the new envelopes have a different recipient listed. These are addressed to Nolan Sawyer, same box number.”
Coombes smiled. An alias.
“So Crumb put it together. Why didn’t he solve it?”
“The manager tells him that Marks collects his mail like clockwork every Thursday afternoon so Crumb sets up on the place, only Marks is a no-show. He’s spent four and a half hours in his car pissing in his bottle and it’s for nothing. Then the blonde shows up and picks up mail. On the off-chance that Marks sent this woman to collect for him, he followed her home. He gets a dark picture of a man through a window and that’s it.”
“What do you mean that’s it?”
“The man he sees her with is not Marks, there’s no question.”
Coombes took a deep breath, his eyes closed.
“Here’s what I think. She saw him following her and went to the gas station in an attempt to confirm his tail, or lose him. He stops across the street and takes pictures of her gassing up, not realizing he’s been made. When she’s back underway, she goes to meet with her brother or a friend, knowing that Marks is the real target.”
“That sounds right.”
“So did Crumb try and re-acquire Marks at the post drop?”
“No. He gave up. It seems that our friend Lester believed the manager was leading him on, hoping for more cash. He thought that the reason for the name change on the envelopes was that the box had a new owner and that he’d seen that owner with the blonde.”
“You’re joking.”
“I am not. However, he did do one more thing before he signed off. He ID’d the blonde from the license plate of her car. Her name is Cassidy Stone.”
Coombes blew out his cheeks.
He couldn’t believe any ex-cop would fall for such a simple deception, but there was a reason why Crumb solved no cases. He was an idiot.
Becker still had something; it was there on his face.
“You ran her through the system, right? She’s got a record.”
“She served one third of a twelve-year sentence for abduction, child endangerment, false imprisonment, and assaulting a police officer.”
Coombes recalled the ugly way the blonde’s face had twisted in the toy factory. Telling Marks to finish him.
“She was going to ransom a child?”
“Uh, no. Apparently, she saw the child in a store and decided on the spot she wanted to be its mother. The father was looking the other way and didn’t notice that the stroller he continued to push around was now empty. At least, not until he got to the checkout when all hell broke loose.”
“No kidding,” Sato said. “Did you locate her parole officer?”
Becker looked pained and shook his head.
“Sorry guys, I’m losing my touch. Give me a second.”
Almost a minute passed before Becker had the information. Coombes read the parole officer’s name off the screen. Dale Pellegrino. Of course it was.
“You want me to send his details to your cell?”
“Nah. I’ve dealt with this asshat before. I know where his office is.”
“Do you need anything else? I’m done with the PI files.”
Coombes thought about it.
“Take a look at this Nolan Sawyer ID. Maybe he managed to get a real driver’s license with his false paperwork and it’s got an address on it. Then see if you can find out what he drives. This prick might be keeping his head down, but for sure he has a vehicle.”
“You got it.”
31
Dale Pellegrino’s office was located in an unmarked building on Highland Avenue in Hollywood opposite Yum Yum Doughnuts and a French restaurant. It had taken them forty-eight minutes to get there for what should’ve been possible by telephone. Coombes wasn’t too worried about the loss of time, as he knew that Cassidy Stone’s home address would be located relatively close to her parole officer and they’d have to drive there anyway.
Sato parked next to the French restaurant and killed the engine.
“You called him an asshat before, how is it that you know him?”
“We kind of go back, him and me. First time I met him, I was still in uniform. We were called to a party some yahoos were holding. They’d gone onto the roof of their apartment and were getting a bit rowdy. Loud music, drinking, shouting at neighbors, that kind of thing. By the time me and my partner roll up, people were jumping from the roof into the swimming pool below. As we get out, I see Dale Pellegrino throw an eighteen-year-old girl off the roof screaming. Fortunately, she landed in the water, but it could easily have gone another way.”
“Was this a Spring Break type of thing?”
“Hardly, Pellegrino’s has ten years on me.”
Coombes saw himself reflected on Sato’s mirrored sunglasses. He looked rough and only some of that was down to what Nathan Marks had done to him with the baseball bat.
“You said the first time you met. I take it there were others?”
“They say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same spot, but it’s bullshit. Some people live close to the flame. Probably what got him into this line of work in the first place, being close to those on the other side of the line. He’s no fan of us lot that’s for sure.”
They got out the car and walked across the lot to the building opposite. Coombes thought again of his appearance in Sato’s sunglasses.
He wasn’t sleeping too well at the moment. Thinking about Amy Tremaine in some hellhole. Bound, gagged, and thinking she was about to die at any moment.
Marks and Stone had their money now, maybe she was dead.
If she’d been kept alive as an insurance policy to get paid, then what use was she now? None. She had changed from being an asset, into a liability. The smart move for Marks was to get out of town and start over somewhere new with another alias.
Without a prisoner and without Cassidy Stone.
They got off the elevator and walked to Pellegrino’s office. Thoughts of his wife with the lawyer weren’t helping him sleep much either.
Pellegrino’s door was locked, the light inside off.
No note, no Back in Five Minutes. No pretense at fitting in. Wasn’t fitting into society the man’s job? Coombes looked at his watch. A quarter after twelve. For some, close enough to lunch time, particularly when you knocked off work at four-thirty as he suspected Pellegrino did.
“What do you think, Johnny? Out for lunch?”
He thought of the doughnut store. That was Pellegrino’s speed. The world would come to an end before he could imagine the other man going into a French restaurant.
“I think you’re right, let’s take a look.”
They got into the elevator and went back down again. This part of the job they always cut out of TV shows, he reflected. Nothing but shoot-outs and chases. He sure wished he could cut it out, but the world didn’t work that way.
Sato was looking at him again, at his face.
“Eighteen days,” he said.
“Until what?”
“Until the bruises fade.”
The doors opened and he walked out, leaving Sato behind, pouting. He was getting fed up with the way she was looking at him, like she expected him to keel over at any moment. All the same, he was sure glad that Marks hadn’t hit her with a baseball bat.
Yum Yum Doughnuts was busy, but Pellegrino wasn’t in there.
He replayed in his head the last couple of blocks of their drive and nodded.
“I know where he is.”
Coombes walked out onto Highland and less than a block down reached a British-style pub. Dale Pellegrino sat alone at the end of the bar, half a glass of beer in front of him watching a muted TV above the bar. A news channel. He sat on the stool next to Pellegrino and waited for the other man to notice.
“Detective Coombes. What an unpleasant surprise.”
“I didn’t think it was possible, Pellegrino, but you’ve put on weight.”
“You’re not looking too great yourself. Did you forget to pull the parachute cord?”
“Something like that.”
“What do you want?”
“An address for Cassidy Stone.”
“Yeah? What’d she do now?”
Coombes didn’t want to get into details, so instead pointed at his own face. Pellegrino laughed and some of the tension seemed to ease between them.
“You know what? I believe it. Raised by wolves that one. She’s not in our half-way house so I’ll have to get her address from my files.”
Pellegrino returned his gaze to the TV, their conversation apparently at an end.
“Thing is, we’re kind of in a hurry here.”
“Relax. Have a drink, looks like you need one.”
“I tell you what. If we go back to your office right now and get her address, I’ll contribute twenty bucks to your beer fund for the inconvenience. How’s that?”
What he’d just said was technically a felony.
California Penal Code 67, Bribery of an Executive Officer. It would be hard to argue that trying to get a man to do his job to save a life had a corrupt intent, but a conviction could result in up to four years in prison. Coincidentally, the same length of time served by Cassidy Stone for abducting a child.
Pellegrino turned to him, unfazed.
“Make it fifty and you got yourself a deal.”
Grace Sato touched his arm.
“Johnny, look.”
On TV, the news had cut to helicopter footage of a bus being pulled over on a desert road by six black SUVs with pulsing strobe lights. Suburbans. The doors of the SUVs opened and close to thirty figures in FBI vests poured out and surrounded the bus, guns raised.
Three boarded the bus, while the rest stood ready. After a minute, the three figures came back out, guns holstered. One of them held a familiar gym bag. Even from the high angle, he could tell that it was empty, the sides concave.
The figure holding the bag appeared to notice the helicopter for the first time and looked up, his gray poured-concrete face showing nothing.
Combes turned to Pellegrino.
“Let’s go.”
32
The call came through from Gantz while they were inside Dale Pellegrino’s office picking up Stone’s address. She confirmed that the FBI had regained the tracker signal and swooped in, capturing only the empty ransom bag with three GPS trackers still inside.
Because of the live broadcast of the failed arrest, not only did the FBI have serious egg on their faces, but Marks and Stone would know their handling of the trackers had been successful and they were in the clear.
“You know what this means, right John?”
Coombes turned away from Pellegrino.
“It means she’s probably dead.”
“No,” Gantz said. “It means we probably only have the rest of the day before we can assume the kidnappers have left town and are permanently in the wind. Whatever you’re working on, do it fast. Harlan Tremaine is calling me every half hour for updates.”
In Marks’ place, he’d already be gone.
“We’re running down a lead right now. I’ll get back to you when we have something.”
Coombes disconnected and turned to see the parole officer with a thin smile and his hand out. Now he was the one looking down the barrel at four years in prison. Instead of cuffing him, he gave him $50 and got Stone’s address in return.
“Since you and me are old pals, I’ll give you something for free.”
“What’s that?”
“Stone’s been coming here since she got out. Most of that time she’s driven a 1978 Jeep CJ-5 Renegade, but sometimes she’s taken to driving a 1969 Pontiac GTO. I figure the GTO belongs to whoever she’s with now, because she seems more like a Jeep-girl.”
“Thanks. Do you know what color the vehicles are?”
Pellegrino shook his head.
“I only know this much because when she comes in here she has keys and a cell phone in her hand. Her pants don’t leave enough room for imagination, never mind a set of keys. We don’t have much to talk about, her and me, so when I saw the old keys I asked her about them. Same when I saw she had a different bunch.”
Coombes read the address he’d been given. Cole Avenue, a block past Wilcox. It was about half a mile from where they stood. He’d worked Hollywood before moving to RHD and he knew the area well.
“Do other ex-cons live at this address?”
Pellegrino glanced at his watch, reminding him they were using up his beer time.
“Sure. There’s two other women there, but they won’t give you any problems. I’m not stupid, I only put one lion in each enclosure.”
“One last question. Is she employed?”
“She works at the storm drain place across the street from her apartment. It’s a weird shift pattern, try the apartment first. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m getting thirsty from all this talking. If you have any other questions, ask me them in the bar.”
Sato parked on the street outside Cassidy Stone’s address and cut the engine. She took off her sunglasses and tilted her head to look up through the windshield at the apartment building. Like Elizabeth Walton’s apartment, residents’ cars were parked in a secure garage beneath the building, which meant it was impossible to tell if either Marks or Stone were home.
“Johnny, how is it that this child-stealer lives in a better place than we do?”
“I guess because she doesn’t have to pay for it, and because this place is still cheaper than holding three cons in cells at Chowchilla.”
“That’s not right.”
He fed a stick of chewing gum into his mouth as they moved along the sidewalk.
Access to the apartment building was controlled by an intercom system which released the door when the resident pressed a button. Like most systems, there was a button marked SERVICES for deliveries and suchlike. He pushed it and the door opened immediately.
“Imagine if criminals knew about that button,” Sato joked.
The interior was cool so they took the stairs. He thought through what he was likely to find in the apartment. The answer was nothing. This place was all wrong as a hideout for two kidnappers. A single vehicle parked across the exit and Marks and Stone would be trapped and forced to flee on foot. They wouldn’t get two blocks.
Coombes got to the door and drew his weapon. He took the chewing gum out his mouth and stuck it over the peephole then knocked with his knuckles. A firm, but polite knock. After a moment a woman answered through the wood.
“Who is it?”
“Delivery for Stone,” he said, then winked at Sato.
“Can you step back? I can’t see anything.”
“Ma’am? I need your signature.”
He heard a sigh then the door opened on a chain. Through the gap he saw a young woman’s face and a bare, pretzel-thick arm. Her face registered that he wasn’t a delivery man and the door began to close again. He had his foot ready and it stopped the door from closing.
