The Scapegoat, page 23
“Is he injured?”
“No. He stepped out the Jeep and left her to her fate.”
“What a piece of shit.”
“Yeah. Look, we’re back at the house on Allison. Did you find out if it’s rented to Marks or to his alias?”
“I checked that. It’s owned by a Mavis Kent, formerly of Providence, Rhode Island. She’s in her late eighties and the chance of her renting her home is close to zero. I also checked for a familial link between her and either suspect and found nothing.”
“Thanks, Mark.”
He disconnected and looked at Sato.
“We might have to cut Becker in on the five mill.”
“I can’t even tell when you’re joking anymore.”
Coombes nodded. Sometimes he said the truth as if it were a joke, while other times he said a joke as if it were the truth. The gap between each seemed to be narrowing. It was getting hard to take reality seriously.
“I think we need to perform a wellness check on Mavis Kent.”
“Agreed.”
He pulled open a screen door and Sato held it while he tried the door handle. He always tried the handle and it never worked. This time, the door opened. He glanced at Sato, then drew his weapon.
Could Marks have beaten them back here?
He stepped into the house, moving his feet carefully to minimize sound. Sato followed, her own sidearm drawn. She closed the screen door gently against the frame and then the front door.
It was silent, the air hot and musty.
Just inside the door was a dent in the wall and a dark speck that might’ve been blood. Underneath, the bare wooden floorboards looked like they had been cleaned for several feet in every direction.
He pointed at the area to Sato and she nodded. Maybe the old lady had dropped a glass of grape juice.
Maybe someone had dropped the old lady.
Despite it being official policy for wellness checks, he didn’t announce their presence.
Opposite them, was the kitchen at the back of the property. To the left, stairs up to the second floor, and on either side, half-closed doors to what he assumed would be a bedroom and a living room.
There were no sounds of Marks moving about or of Amy Tremaine trying to signal for help. It was so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat.
They worked slowly, clearing each room, providing cover for each other as they moved. The house was a mess. It looked like Mavis Kent had owned the property for a long time and done no maintenance on it the entire time she’d been here. The house was about ready to be torn down. The stairs creaked dramatically as they moved to the second floor.
If Marks was in the house, he’d hear it.
At this point, the ex-Marine would still believe he could pull it off, that he could get to the money and disappear. Marks would kill both of them to get to that point, two last obstacles before freedom. Coombes moved his Glock to cover the second-floor landing in case Marks tried to ambush them. They reached the top of the stairs. Nothing.
The air was still and hot with dust hanging in it.
There was no air conditioning in the house and he guessed that Mavis Kent would look like a sun-dried raisin whether she was dead or alive.
The first door they came to was a bathroom. It was empty, with no sign of the ransom or foul play.
They moved on.
There was only one other door, the master bedroom. The door was wide open and he was able to clear half the room just walking along the hall.
Nathan Marks wasn’t there, but he had been. His clothes lay on the floor where he’d pulled them off and in bags he’d been using to store them. Nothing had been taken out and hung on hangers in a closet. Marks had only been here for six months, he’d get to it eventually. Stone was no better; he could see her undergarments tossed aside like a tree dropping leaves.
Coombes holstered his weapon.
“Based on the smell in here, Marks and Stone were on intimate terms.”
Grace nodded. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“All right, let’s go. We need to get back to the crash site and give our statements.”
They went back down the stairs.
It had taken too long to clear the property. It was obvious why, it was because of his relationship with Sato. His emotions were affecting his efficiency, he couldn’t risk letting anything happen to her.
“Johnny, check it out.”
The floorboards next to the stairs had a scrape about two inches long next to the wall. The scrape had a slight curve. He studied the wall and saw a keyhole. No handle, just a keyhole. He worked his way along the wall and found two recessed hinges. He made his way back to the keyhole and found a hidden lip he could put his fingertips into and pulled.
“It’s locked. Stand back.”
Coombes slammed the heal of his shoe against the keyhole. The wood was old and gave way on the first kick. He pulled the door open and looked inside. It wasn’t a closet as he’d assumed, there were stairs down to a basement.
“Stay here,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Grace, if Marks comes back, I don’t want us both down there. I need you to cover my back. If you prefer, you can go down and I’ll stay here.”
Sato didn’t like that much either. She shook her head.
“This better not be a cock-block, Coombes.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
A domed metal light switch sat just inside the doorway. He flicked it on and a dim light came on below. There were no shouts of fear or relief from Amy Tremaine. He moved down the stairs. The ceiling was low and he had to lean forward to fit. Whoever built the house couldn’t have been much over five-six tall.
There were no foul odors, just dust and cobwebs.
He reached the floor and stepped onto unfinished concrete. Part of him had expected to find a dirty mattress on the floor and a chain attached to the wall. Instead, he saw about eighty empty Mason jars lined up on a table. This hadn’t been a prison, just some old lady’s storage area. People from Rhode Island like to preserve food, he thought.
An old furnace sat against the wall on one side of the table and a chest freezer sat on the other. There was a suitcase on top of the chest freezer. His eyes fixed on it. The suitcase was easily big enough to hold five million dollars.
A smile formed on Coombes’ face.
He walked over to the suitcase, his head dipped to avoid the ceiling. The case was old like everything else. It had been down here already; it hadn’t belonged to Nathan Marks. He flipped open the catches and looked inside.
His smile disappeared.
It was full of identical hardcover books, packed in tight. He recalled a large empty space in the living room bookcase.
He lifted one out, then another.
They were encyclopedias, different letters of the alphabet. Heavy. Nobody used books like this anymore, they’d been replaced by the internet. As soon as something was published, it became out of date.
Coombes looked at the freezer underneath and his heart sank.
The bag was a weight.
He pushed the suitcase to the side and let it crash to the floor, books spilling out. It wasn’t going to be five million dollars inside the freezer, he knew that much. He lifted the lid and a light came on brighter than the bulb in the basement ceiling. Coombes stood looking in for a moment, wishing he’d left well enough alone.
Sato spoke from the bottom of the stairs behind him.
“Is it Amy?”
“Mavis Kent.”
“You think she was alive when they put her in there?”
The tips of the old woman’s fingers and thumbs had been torn away from frantic scraping against the lid.
“Looks like it.”
“That’s horrible.”
He closed the lid again to protect any evidence.
There was nothing here for Marks to return for, it was like he’d originally thought. Marks had kept the money away from Stone and wherever that was, was probably also where he’d been keeping Amy Tremaine. When he made it back there to pick up the money, when he was certain he had no more use for Amy, he’d kill her and disappear.
Coombes had no idea where Marks was, or where he was going next.
37
The pickup truck was still parked outside Alex Holland’s address in Highland Park and his windows were lit up from within. There were no drapes pulled and Coombes could look right through the living room window at the other man stretched out on his sofa in front of a television that filled the wall. Holland was playing a computer game. The rear view of a life-sized figure was running down a street with a machine-gun. The volume was cranked up and he could hear sirens, gunshots, and music. Holland did not appear to have any company.
Coombes moved to the door and pounded on it with the base of the fist. He stepped to the side, his body overlapping Sato’s. Shielding her. Holland didn’t have a permit for firearms, but he’d never rely on a database when it came to guns.
Inside the property the television fell silent.
“Who the fuck is this?” Holland said through the wood.
There was no strength in the words, no bite.
A man with a shotgun had a strength you could hear.
“LAPD. Open up, Holland.”
The door started to open and Coombes rushed forward, pushing his way inside and knocking Holland backward onto his ass.
“Hey, what the hell?! I was opening the door.”
“You lied to me, asshole.”
The edge of the opening door had split Holland’s lip. He touched it with his fingertips and looked at the blood, then looked up with a frown.
“What did I lie about?”
“Seeing Marks. You lied to my face. Well, guess what jackass, you’re going to be spending some time in prison.”
Holland got to his feet and staggered slightly to one side. It looked like he’d been drinking all afternoon, getting the weekend started early. An inch-high slab of cell phone stuck out of Holland’s pocket.
“Prison! For what?”
“Aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact. Listen, you better hope Amy Tremaine is still alive, because if she’s not, you’re going down for that too, conspiracy homicide. That’s a full life term for you buddy.”
“I didn’t do shit.”
He grabbed Holland’s cell phone, pointed the display side at the other man’s face and the screen unlocked. Coombes turned away, still holding the iPhone and opened the call log.
“Hey, you can’t do that! You don’t have my permission!”
He turned to Grace.
“Detective Sato, how would you assess Mr. Holland’s current state?”
“Aggressive. Threatening.”
“I agree. Draw your weapon. If he makes any moves toward us assume a hostile intent and put him in the ground.”
Sato drew her Glock and aimed it at Holland’s feet.
“Woah. Take it easy. All I did was call him. You can’t shoot me for that.”
Coombes nodded and scrolled through the call log.
Holland used his cell phone a lot.
Looking at the names he figured they were mostly women he was trying to romance. Booty calls. There were, however, sixteen calls to an un-named number that he took to be a burner cell belonging to Nathan Marks. He based this assumption on the fact that Holland had dialed this number within minutes of Coombes leaving the day before.
“Looks like you guys have been in touch pretty heavily. The two of you must be about ready to choose a ring.” He glanced up from the screen. “I’m guessing it’ll be your ring, not his.“ Coombes winked.
Sato laughed but the former Marine looked like he was about to choke.
“What!”
“You know, Holland, that mustache of yours is going to be pretty popular in prison, those Aryan guys will eat you up like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
Sato glanced back at him.
“Actually, Johnny, it’s the other way around. He’ll be the one doing the eating.”
He nodded. “I’ll bet you’re right about that.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Holland said.
Coombes moved the text on screen again before the display timed-out and the phone would lock again. Alex Holland continued to deny it all but he tuned it all out and held up his free hand to silence him.
It took a long time to scroll back to the next part he was interested in, the part where the calls started. If Holland had dialed Marks’ number from a saved entry, it would have his name on it, or a quick way to find him, there wouldn’t be just numbers.
He reached a congested patch of calls around New Year’s and gave up.
It wasn’t there.
He realized he’d answered his own question. If it took this long to go back and find a new number that had called in, Holland would’ve added that number to the address book for quick access. The fact that he hadn’t meant something pretty obvious.
“He was here, wasn’t he? When?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“Let me explain something. You’re not under arrest, you’ve not been detained. You are helping us with our enquiries. I have not read you your rights, therefore anything you say to me can’t be used against you. All I care about is saving that young woman’s life. It’s something you should want too, Holland. If she’s dead, you’re done.”
The former Marine sighed, his chest deflating.
“All right. He stayed here one night about a month ago. I hadn’t seen him for years like I said, then he showed up out of nowhere. He had some skanky chick with him called Cassidy. Man, she’s damaged goods. If you ask me, she’s been hitting the crack pipe. Anyway, we had a big fight the next morning and he storms out of here like his ass is on fire. I thought that was it for our friendship, but he came back on Monday and apologized for everything.
“Nate said he had a big score in the works. I didn’t want to know what it was; I knew he was talking about something illegal. My gig pays well, I don’t need to be messing around in anything heavy. He said people might come here asking about him and gave me a number to call if they did.”
“You called him sixteen times. Some calls were before we showed up.”
“If you say so.”
“What did you talk about? From our perspective, it looks like you were involved.”
Holland shook his head.
“You couldn’t be further from the truth. I was trying to stop him from doing whatever he was was planning. I said I’d loan him money to get back on his feet if that’s what he wanted. It wasn’t. All he said was ‘Someone’s going to pay, but it’s not going to be you.’.”
“After we were here you called him, said we’d been.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you ask him if he’d taken Amy?”
Holland seemed to lose track of the moment and his head moved around like he was looking at where he was for the first time.
“Yeah. I asked. He said I could choose to remain his friend and just hang up, or I could stay on the line and he’d tell me. I stayed on the line. He admitted that he took Amy and said that she was still alive, then he disconnected. I have tried to call him back many times but it doesn’t connect. He’s tossed the cell.”
“When was this?”
“Fourteen thirty…fifteen hundred?”
“All right, go back to when you said he came here the second time.”
“Okay.”
“Did anything about that visit seem strange to you?”
“Not really. We had a couple of beers, a couple of joints. Just kicked back, same as it used to be. The problem before was the woman, she’s-”
“Damaged, I know. Go on.”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“Here’s the part I can’t figure, Holland. Over the years I have apologized to a lot of women but I have never once apologized to a man. Not a friend, at least. I would avoid that situation the same as I’d avoid giving any of them mouth-to-mouth. But you’re saying that Nathan Marks came here and said sorry for some drunken comment? The guy must be fixing to flee the country any minute, why bother come back here?”
“We grew up together-”
“No. That’s bullshit. He hasn’t talked to you for years. He came back here because he wanted something. What is it?”
“There’s nothing, I swear.”
“The night he stayed over, what did you talk about?”
“I don’t remember. The past, mostly. I was hitting my stash pretty hard, makes it difficult for me to remember stuff later.”
“Your work,” Sato said. “You told my partner that you only smoke when you aren’t working. Did you talk to Marks about the site being closed down?”
“Sure. He thought it was sweet that I was getting paid for doing nothing.”
Coombes glanced at Sato and nodded.
“You have keys to get in and out?”
“Yeah, I’m the structural foreman. The site keys are on the board next to my truck keys and my ID. The keys have a big yellow plastic disk so you don’t lose them.”
“Show me.”
They moved over to a set of wall hooks. There was no yellow disk. Coombes could tell it was gone before they got there, but Holland pantomimed searching through all the keys like it would suddenly appear.
“That motherfucker. I could lose my job over this.”
“Give me the address.”
Holland gave him a street number on Figueroa. As Coombes copied it into his notebook, he realized he knew the building, he’d seen it going up over the last eight months.
“How near is it to completion?”
“We’re glazed and weathertight up to 30, the next 2 floors are open to the elements, after that you’re talking steel beams and crane. Go above 30 without a harness and you’re asking to be blown out onto the street. At that height, wind can appear out of nowhere.”
Coombes moved toward the door.
The time for talk was over. He walked to the Charger with Sato, Holland trailing after them in bare feet. She started the engine. Alex Holland tapped on his window and he fizzed it down.
“Don’t use the crane elevator, he’ll hear you coming.”
