The Scapegoat, page 3
The man got back inside and closed the van door as it pulled away.
The whole incident took less than five seconds.
“Jesus,” Coombes said.
“He had a strip of duct tape in his hand. Covers her mouth first to prevent her from screaming, leaving both hands free to maneuver her inside the van.”
He glanced at the mouse, then up at Barnes.
“Do you mind?”
“No, go ahead.”
Coombes dragged the playhead to line up the clip so that it was paused with the kidnapper a step behind Tremaine, his hand blurred as he reached forward to grab her across the mouth. He studied it for a moment in silence, soaking it up.
Based on the time recorded in the corner of the footage, Amy was abducted over an hour and a half after Elizabeth Walton’s body was discovered by Harlan Tremaine. Easily possible for the same people to pull off both crimes.
“I assume there’s not enough to identify him?”
“No. We can’t get facial recognition from the side of his face; we need eyes, nose, and cheekbones. Honestly, it’s a miracle we have this footage at all.”
For the first time, Coombes wondered where the camera had been.
“Why? Where did you get this?”
“Small electronics store next to the abduction point. Has a drone in the window, it’s on fishing line so it looks like it’s hovering. It’s fitted with a camera that records people on the sidewalk. I saw it for what it was straightaway. Owner says it’s for security and I believe him. Didn’t come across as a pervert to me.”
The description of the drone was familiar. He stood and took out his notebook.
“Okay, run me through the victim’s timeline.”
“Amy Tremaine took the Metro from MacArthur Park to Pershing Square every morning, then walked to the Schiff & Cornell law practice via the Starbucks on 6th and Grand. We figure her kidnappers knew where she worked and moved backward from there.”
Coombes made a note of this and looked up.
“What makes you say that?”
“MacArthur Park is a better abduction point.”
“All right,” he said. It came to him where he’d seen the drone before and decided it would be his next stop. “What about the license plate?”
“A dead end. We pulled it off another camera but it’s a fake. Kidnappers cloned a pre-existing vehicle, which is pretty smart. A patrol car running the plate would get no red flags.”
“Her cell phone?”
“Tossed out the window and destroyed by passing traffic.”
Coombes thought for a moment, looking down at the screen. Barnes’ workstation was immaculate. No notes, no coffee cup rings on the desk, no food wrappers. Just keyboard, mouse and two plastic business card containers, nearly full. Mason Barnes, special agent.
“Are you looking at any work connection?”
Barnes frowned. “In what way?”
“A problem with a client, or with someone she went up against?”
“That’s not an active area of investigation.”
“The former governor then?”
Barnes glanced at the SAC. Henderson was deep into something on his computer, mashing keys on the keyboard. It didn’t have the rhythm of someone typing, it sounded like a kid hitting random keys just for the hell of it. Barnes nodded.
“So there’s been a ransom demand already?”
“Came in about ten minutes before you arrived.”
A quick demand was a bad sign. What you wanted to do was leave a longer gap, let the victim’s family marinate until they were good and tender. Let their worries feed on themselves. Once they start to think that all is lost, then you come back with the ransom demand. At that point, relief will make them accept any figure a kidnapper chose. When a kidnapper asked for an amount quickly, they almost always got seller’s remorse, believing they asked for too little. From there, things tended to take a turn for the worse.
“That was fast,” Coombes said.
“I know,” Barnes replied, like he was admitting Tremaine was dead.
He remembered the office blinds being closed.
“You’ve got something cooking already, don’t you?”
“Look, I’ve already said too much.”
“You’ve hardly said anything at all.”
Henderson appeared next to him, faster than he would’ve expected.
“That’s enough. The Bureau has the abduction, LAPD has the murder. That was our deal. You work your side of the street, Detective, we’ll work ours.”
“This is bullshit. There’s no federal case to answer here. Not with the murder, not with the kidnapping. You’re pushing me out of my case. I have jurisdiction, not you.”
Henderson’s face turned scarlet as two agents came up behind Coombes.
“Get this prick out of here. Use restraints if you have to.”
Coombes glanced at the men and laughed.
“Please. I could snap these two underwear models like twigs.”
“I’ll show him out,” Barnes said. “Right, Coombes?”
“Whatever, I’m done anyway.”
He pushed past the men behind him and walked toward the exit. Barnes rushed to fall into step next to him. Coombes had nothing against the young agent, who’d tried his best to answer his questions. The guy had it bad if he had to work under Henderson all day.
“Were you a cop, Barnes?”
“Yeah. I still am.”
He glanced at the FBI agent.
“All right. Then you have to realize our cases are the same case and splitting them down the middle increases the likelihood that another woman is going to die.”
“I agree, but the Bureau has more experience with kidnappings.”
The elevator arrived and they got on. They were all alone.
“How about this, Barnes. You and me work together. Back channel. Anything I get, I share with you; anything you get, you share with me. All that matters is the woman.”
Barnes screwed up his face.
“I’m ten weeks out of the Academy, I can’t do it. Henderson doesn’t like me much better than you, he’d bounce me right out the Bureau.”
The elevator doors opened and they walked in silence through the lobby and out into the area in front of the building. People in suits were coming and going. His own suit made him fit right in, nobody gave him a second look.
“Your lead, what is it? You don’t have to give me names or anything.”
“We believe our suspects are responsible for a series of dog kidnappings.”
“Dogs?”
“Hear me out. We’re talking about pets of the super rich here. Some of them don’t have children so their pet is like family to them. You wouldn’t believe the bubble they live in. Diamond-studded collars, two-thousand-dollar grooming bills; these people let their dogs lick inside their mouths, it’s disgusting.”
Coombes nodded, he was frequently disgusted.
“All right, I see it, but that can’t be the whole thing.”
“We think they have some kind of access to these homes. A security or catering company, something like that. They’re on the inside, they know who to hit. Who’s vulnerable, who can liquidate a lot of cash quickly. It would surprise you. Some of these people are holding on to properties by their fingernails, living off cat food. Those people don’t get hit.”
“What about Elizabeth Walton?” Coombes said. “You figure she gave up Amy’s work address, then they killed her to keep her silent?”
“No. We can’t explain that. You can find out where Amy Tremaine works using Google, her name’s right on the firm’s website. Walton’s death doesn’t fit the pattern or make any kind of tactical sense.”
“You think this is the first time they’ve taken a person?”
Barnes shook his head.
“It’s the first we’ve heard about, but you saw how that guy moved. They’re pros. A real slick operation. My feeling is we only know about this one because somebody got killed.”
“How do you square that with the quick ransom demand?”
“Maybe they realized they made a mistake taking the governor’s kid. They’re exposed and the longer it continues, the worse it gets. So they want to off-load her as quickly as possible. The pressure to catch them eases if she’s returned.”
“Or?”
“Or she’s already dead and they need the money to relocate until things blow over. I know the situation, Coombes. Look, I’ve got to get back up there, I’ve been too long already.”
“One more. Where does the FBI really fit into this?”
Barnes shrugged.
“Tremaine called the U.S. Attorney, that’s it.”
5
The space in front of the electronics store was a crime scene, but there was no police line protecting the area, no uniforms limiting access, no crime techs dusting for prints. It was like nothing had happened. A door had opened and a woman had vanished without trace.
Coombes turned and looked at the storefront.
It had a single large window and a door to the side. A box with a strobe advertised that the store was protected by an alarm, but there was no sign of an external camera covering the sidewalk.
Sidewalks belonged to the City, aiming private cameras at public land was illegal, although that didn’t stop many from doing it. When challenged about an illegal camera, it was common to hear that it was only a dummy, or that it had stopped working years ago. The camera would remain and nothing would be done to remove it.
Everyone had something better to do.
The store owner had hidden his camera in plain sight on a drone that appeared to hover at the top of the window. It was both a security measure and an advertisement for a product they sold. Barnes had come here and seen it for what it was, but Coombes wasn’t sure that he would have.
The agent was good.
He walked into the store and saw a man standing behind the counter with a friendly smile. It looked like he’d been watching Coombes stare at the drone in the window and had taken his interest and expensive suit as a sign of a big purchase to follow.
“Help you?”
He pulled his jacket to the side to reveal his badge.
“Detective Coombes, LAPD. I want to see the drone footage.”
The man’s expression soured.
“You got a warrant?”
The store owner had rolled over for the FBI and given them what they wanted, but it was clear he couldn’t expect the same treatment. For him, he’d need a warrant. The man had watched his cop shows, he knew his rights.
Coombes glanced around the store and saw it was aimed at the security and surveillance market. Alarms, cameras, drones, motion-activated lights. Everything a paranoid person could ever need. But there was something else. Cameras built into photo frames, clothing buttons, jewelry. Suitable for private investigators, or perhaps, federal agencies.
“I have friends who left the department, set out their own tent, you know? Mostly cheating spouses, wandering daughter cases, that type of thing. They always have good things to say about your store, your equipment.”
The store owner’s stance changed and he saw a flicker of pride on his face. They were going to be able to work something out. He sensed an anti-government vibe and decided to lean into that a little.
“Feds are freezing me out,” Coombes continued. “By the time a warrant comes through, chances are, the girl’s dead. You know who I’m talking about, who her father is. That’s a lot of heat coming down the pipe for everybody. I just want to see the footage for myself, check the feds didn’t miss something important. If there’s nothing there, then I don’t waste time on a dead end that could be better spent elsewhere. What do you say?”
“All right, it’s through back. Just don’t get excited by anything else you might see there.”
The man lifted part of the counter to let him through, then took him down a corridor piled high on one side with boxes containing crossbows and samurai swords, up a flight of stairs and into an office with no windows.
Next to the door was a sink, coffee machine, and a refrigerator. A desk was pressed against the end wall under a framed print of a president Coombes hadn’t voted for and who he didn’t want to continue breathing.
A laptop sat open on the desk next to an all-black Smith and Wesson 1911.
Coombes sat in front of the computer as the old man explained his system.
Unlike the state-of-the-art cameras inside the store, the jury-rigged drone had no interface of its own and simply produced a list of files which could be viewed with a media player. He saw that there were two clips for that morning and one for each of the proceeding days. It was easy to guess why, the footage had been interrupted by the FBI after the abduction and a new clip had started.
The biggest surprise was that the FBI had left the store owner with not only the original footage of the abduction, but the laptop computer that stored it.
He’d worked four previous cases that overlapped with the Bureau, and in each case they had taken possession of all evidence and any equipment connected to that evidence. It seemed to Coombes like this was an oversight by Barnes who was under a lot of pressure to save a woman’s life, but a mistake that would soon be corrected.
He started the earlier clip from that morning.
The time was encoded at the top right of the screen and he fast-forwarded to near the time of the kidnapping and resumed playback. It was the same footage he’d seen at the federal building. On rewatching, it was clear to him that the kidnappers knew exactly what they were doing.
Smooth, efficient, professional.
Only two bystanders seemed to realize what had happened, everyone else had their head buried in a cell phone, or were focused on the task of maintaining distance with other people on the busy sidewalk.
He could see why the location had been chosen as a grab point, it was perfect. Aside from the hidden security camera, of course. He rewound the clip and restarted playback. Once again, the man threw Tremaine inside the van, jumped in after her, and closed the door as it pulled into traffic. There was no one else in the rear compartment, just the driver up front.
A two-man operation.
The expression caught on something as he thought it. Because of the angle of the camera, the driver was obscured. It was therefore possible that the driver was a woman. He made a note in his notepad.
Driver, female?
There was no reason to think this based on the footage alone. But if Barnes was right, and this was a team that had started out kidnapping dogs, then there was a chance they were dealing with a Bonnie and Clyde type couple on an escalating crime spree.
He watched the clip through again, but found nothing more.
Amy Tremaine passed the same spot every day on her way to work and then on the way back home. The kidnappers knew she was going to be there, because they knew her routine. Knowing where she worked wouldn’t have told them her route, they had to have followed her at least once beforehand, perhaps each way to determine the best time.
He glanced at the store owner, standing over him.
“This is going to take a while. You can go out front if you like.”
The man’s face twisted.
“Look, I don’t know. I should stay I think.”
Coombes shrugged like he didn’t care. Doubtless this meant the man had things on his computer that he didn’t want to share with the LAPD or the FBI. He saw the store owner was now holding a mug of coffee.
“Any chance I could get one of those?”
“Black okay?”
“Perfect.”
When the old man turned away, Coombes took a thumb drive out his pocket and plugged it into the side of the laptop. He dumped the weekday files going back three weeks onto it. The files were large and the transfer would take several minutes.
Coombes glanced back and saw that the store owner was already on his way back. At times like this, he would normally rely on Sato to run interference for him. It could be hard to see past her face, her smile, the hint of something in her eyes.
He minimized the copy window and put his iPhone on top of his thumb drive. The drive made his cell phone tilt up at an odd angle, so he used the corner of his notebook to make his cell lie flat and began making notes about the kidnapper to justify its position.
Hair color, build, approximate age.
He didn’t worry about the approaching store owner reading his writing, he could barely read it himself.
“You think she’s dead, son?”
Coombes stood and took the mug that was being held out to him, his whole body in front of the laptop and his cell phone. He took a long drink and nodded his head with exaggerated thanks at the man’s mediocre coffee.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Such a waste. They always take the pretty ones.”
Coombes had heard this sentiment before in one form or another and he knew it wasn’t true. People just remembered some more than others, cared about some more than others. Based on their looks, their race, their religion. He said nothing and instead took another mouthful of coffee.
The world could be a terrible place and humans had developed belief structures that enabled them to cope.
People that mattered, people that didn’t.
A buzzer sounded in the store below; the first customer since he’d arrived. The old man reluctantly went to deal with it and Coombes took the opportunity to check on his file transfer. He was in time to see it hit 100%. He ejected the drive and checked the copy window had also closed.
Now that he had his own copy of the footage, he felt little desire to remain where he was with either the old man or the framed buffoon looking down at him as he worked.
Coombes left and dipped his head in thanks to the store owner who had a drone sitting out on the counter for two young Latinos. He decided to visit the Starbucks Amy used every morning while he was in the area.
It was a brief walk, but he felt breathless by the time he arrived.
