Assume Nothing (29 page)

‘I’ll be fine.’ He didn’t look fine or feel fine, but this was the kind of false optimism he had to put stock in now.

‘What do you think they’ll do to you?’

‘If I lawyer-up well? I might get off with ten or fifteen years. Maybe see the outside again just in time to attend Jake’s college graduation.’

‘And if you don’t?’

He smiled. ‘I think you can guess the answer to that. Two counts of murder, throw in a couple for kidnapping and B and E . . . They’d have to send me the graduation video, something I could watch in my cell until I passed on.’

He chuckled to ease the severity of the joke, but Iris couldn’t manage doing the same.

‘Whatever I can do to help you, I will,’ she said.

Reddick nodded, turned grim again. ‘You’ve already done more than enough. But thanks.’

‘You can’t really be serious?’ Winn asked.

Lerner looked away, toward Reddick and Iris Mitchell on the other side of the room, both of them just sitting there looking like survivors of a coal mine disaster. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age,’ he said.

‘You mean soft in the head, don’t you? We can’t just let this guy skate. Even if we could pull it off—’

‘Yeah, yeah, OK. I was nuts to even consider it, you’re right.’ He tipped his head in Reddick’s direction. ‘But I mean, look at the poor bastard, No. You know what his story is, what those two just told us happened here. You telling me he’s the bad guy in all this? Hell, the bad guys in all this are
dead
.’

‘And exactly whose fault is that? By his own admission—’

‘It’s his fault, sure. Technically, anyway, in two out of six cases. Or seven, if you count this guy Lizama down in Irvine.’

‘“Technically”? Norm, do you hear what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. Yes!’ Winn was looking at him like he’d just grown a striped horn in the middle of his forehead. ‘Like you said, I asked for a homicide and, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, No, did I ever get my wish. We’ve got seven assholes known dead, including Rainey, and Reddick did at least two of ’em. If it were anybody else, I’d be as ready as you to lock his ass up and throw away the key, but
this guy
—’

Lerner was preaching to the choir and didn’t know it. Winn was only slightly less conflicted about Reddick than he, because Lerner was right: Assuming the statements they’d just gotten from Reddick and Iris Mitchell were to be believed, the only real victim in this whole mess was Reddick. Perry Cross and his friends had themselves been murderers of a sort, the apparently accidental nature of Gillis Rainey’s death notwithstanding, and Reddick had had every right to believe they would kill again, given sufficient excuse.

Going vigilante on four people to protect his family had been a tragic error on his part, and criminal by any definition of the word, but considering the man’s history – the unthinkable loss he had suffered once already at the hands of an animal not unlike Ben Clarke or Ruben Lizama – it was hard, if not impossible, to condemn his actions. Winn herself could not say with any degree of certainty that she would have done differently, under identical circumstances. That didn’t make Reddick innocent, but it did make it easy to wish that Lady Luck would get off the poor bastard’s back and give him a fucking break for a change. Now and forever.

‘What are you suggesting we do?’ Winn asked. ‘Even if we were stupid enough to try, how in the hell do we explain seven dead vics without pinning at least two of them on him?’

Lerner couldn’t hide his surprise, nor his elation. The intransigent hardliner their fellow officers all liked to call ‘No Winn’ was actually acting as if she could be coerced into straying from the letter of the law for once. It was probably just a mirage, he knew, but Lerner went with it anyway, said, ‘Ruben Lizama and his big buddy over there. If what Reddick and the lady say about them is true, they were a couple of really bad hombres. Really bad. Lizama in particular.’

Winn didn’t need to hear another word to know where this was going, but all the same, she said, ‘I’m listening.’

Lerner checked to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, lowered his voice to just above a whisper. ‘Well, Lizama and his boy being responsible for the murders of Cross and his three friends wouldn’t exactly strike anybody as highly improbable, would it? They owed him money and couldn’t pay off. Mitchell said the debt was over two hundred and fifty Gs, for Chrissake. Hell, what happened to those guys is what always happens to people who stiff Mexican drug families out of a quarter million bucks. Am I right?’

‘You are. But—’

‘I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna say the evidence won’t add up. And for the most part, it probably won’t. But a dirtbag like Lizama, assuming he’s everything they say he is, who the hell’s gonna care? The Feds? The authorities down in Mexico? I don’t think so. They’ve probably both been trying to put this guy out of business for years. We hand them his head on a silver platter – four homicides he’s tailor-made to fit – I kind of doubt they’re gonna spend a whole lot of time worrying it might be a frame-up.’

Lerner was oversimplifying matters, to be sure, but Winn couldn’t argue with the crux of his logic. Given a choice between two ways to close the books on Ruben Lizama – one imperfect but quick and dirty, the other a convoluted, open-ended mess that could take months of investigative legwork to resolve – what cop in his right mind, regardless of the agency involved, would choose the latter? Especially when a killer like Ruben Lizama, who was dead and beyond giving a damn, was the only one likely to be hurt?

‘Even if all you’re saying is true –’ Winn said, ‘and I’m not deranged enough yet to admit that it is – you seem to be forgetting one thing.’

‘Yeah? What’s that?’

Winn tipped her head in the direction of Reddick and Iris Mitchell. ‘Them. They’d have to go along for the ride. Almost none of what they’ve just told us would jibe with your “Lizama wasted them all” scenario. Would it?’

Lerner shook his head. ‘No. You’ve got a point there.’

‘Of course, people’s stories change,’ Winn said. Imagining what Reddick’s wife and kids, butchered in their sleep, must have looked like nine years ago in Florida, and how trying to live with that kind of memory might have tested her own ideas about the senselessness of street justice. ‘If we interviewed them again, they might remember things differently. Maybe a lot differently. That’s how it usually happens, isn’t it?’

Lerner gave his partner a long look, trying to spot some telltale sign that this was not Finola Winn speaking at all, but an identical twin born on another planet who’d taken her place while his head was turned. ‘Only one way to find out,’ he said.

Reddick didn’t know what the hell was going on. He should be getting booked right about now. Instead, he was still here at his home, watching Winn and Lerner break up their little chat and head back his way, looking like they hadn’t already been given enough information to ensure his conviction, ten times over, for the murder of two men.

‘We’re going to need to go over a few more things with the both of you,’ Winn said, speaking to Reddick and Iris Mitchell as if they were one and the same person. ‘Starting with Andrew Baumhower.’

‘What about him?’ Iris asked.

Now Reddick knew for certain something was up. One of the cops should be taking Iris aside to question her individually, while the other remained here to do a one-on-one with him, just as they had earlier. Questioning them together, the two detectives working as a pair, was nothing short of inept, an invitation for Reddick and Iris to listen to each other’s answers and tell a story to match.

Winn consulted her notes. ‘You said Mr Reddick here admitted killing Mr Baumhower in your presence. Is that correct?’

Iris gave Reddick a sheepish glance, apologizing the only way she could. ‘Yes. But—’

‘Did he describe the killing to you? Can you remember exactly what he said?’

‘Look—’ Reddick said, not wanting to see Iris harassed on his account any more than she already had been.

But Lerner said, ‘You’ll get your turn to speak shortly, Mr Reddick. In the meantime, kindly keep your mouth shut, OK?’

Reddick started to argue, decided to hold his tongue.

‘Ms Mitchell?’ Winn said, turning Iris’s attention back to her question.

Iris gave the matter some thought. ‘I can’t remember exactly, but I think he said . . .’ She took her mind back to the morning before in Reddick’s car, after he’d dragged her out of Cross’s condo and she’d posed the question to him, point-blank: ‘Did you kill Andy?’ What had he answered?

And then it came to her.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said.

Winn studied her. ‘What?’

‘He never answered the question.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘He never actually said he killed anybody. I realize now I’d just assumed he killed Andy because he kept avoiding the question.’

‘You’re saying he
didn’t
confess to Baumhower’s murder?’

‘No. I mean, yes. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘Then you can’t say for certain that Mr Reddick was the person who broke into Mr Baumhower’s residence and killed him Friday evening. For all you know, that individual could have been someone else.’

‘Someone else?’

‘Like this Ruben Lizama character, for instance,’ Lerner said, looking straight at Reddick as he did so.
Are you paying attention, sport?

‘You’ve both told us Baumhower and your fiancé, Mr Cross, along with Mr Clarke and Mr Sinnott, owed Lizama a great deal of money,’ Winn said. ‘Money they apparently didn’t have. Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes. Perry and Will both told me that was the case.’

‘So isn’t it possible – or more likely, even – that it was Lizama, and not Mr Reddick, who broke into Mr Baumhower’s home and killed him, in an attempt to retrieve what Baumhower and the others owed him?’

Reddick couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but hell if he was going to question it. One wrong word and whatever spell Winn and Lerner were under might break, bringing them all back to reality with a vengeance.

‘Is it possible?’ Iris asked Winn. And then, finally and inevitably, the clouds parted and she was able to see the door that was not only being held open for her, but through which she was being masterfully steered. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. She turned to Reddick, braved a small smile. ‘In fact, I’m almost sure that’s what must have happened.’

Lerner stole a glance at his partner, who betrayed no indication of noticing. Instead, her stoic expression never faltering, Winn flipped to a new page in her notebook and, in a perfect imitation of a boxer too tired to answer the bell, said to Iris and Reddick, ‘In that case, I guess we’d better get your statements all over again. Just to be sure there’s nothing else you two might have remembered, for lack of a better word, “incorrectly.”’

She didn’t wink, but she didn’t need to. Reddick caught her meaning just fine without.

THIRTY-FIVE

J
ake and Reddick were four frames into their second game, Jake having bounced his bowling ball off the bumpers in the gutter fortuitously enough to roll his second strike of the day, when his son pointed at somebody behind Reddick and said, ‘Hey, Daddy! There’s the man who hugged Mommy at the motel!’

Reddick turned around and saw Orvis Andrews entering the building, scanning the lanes at Jewel City Bowl in Glendale for the man he’d come here to see. Reddick raised an arm to wave him over, then said to Jake, ‘You go ahead and keep playing, OK? Mr Andrews and I have to talk for a quick minute.’

‘What are you going to talk about?’ Jake asked.

‘Just things. I’ll be back in a second.’

Reddick went up to meet Andrews halfway and the two men shook hands, then found a table. Mid-morning on a Saturday, there were a lot of empty ones to choose from.

‘This is your idea of a joke, right?’ Andrews asked. Reddick couldn’t tell if he was amused or not.

‘Let’s just say, I thought it would be an appropriate setting.’

Andrews nodded, taking no offense, and looked casually over at Jake. ‘How’s little man doing? OK?’

‘He’s fine. Been asking a lot of questions I can’t answer, of course, but other than that, he’s good.’

‘And the wife?’

‘She’s good, too. Thanks for asking.’

Andrews nodded again, let out a sigh. ‘I’ve been thinkin’ about it a lot. What might’ve happened to ’em if I hadn’t been there. ’Cause that cat Lizama, he was really bad news, wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah. He was,’ Reddick said.

Andrews grinned. ‘Course, people say the same shit about me. Which is why you gave me the job in the first place, I suppose. You knew I could do what might need doin’.’

‘Something like that.’

Six days ago, when Reddick had shown up unannounced at Andrews’s front door seeking his help, he had told the big man in no uncertain terms what he wanted done. He needed somebody to go down to the Embassy Court Motel in Irvine and watch over Dana and Jake; take a room of his own and exchange it with theirs. But all that was the easy part, the part any thug with a gun and a mean streak could probably handle. The hard part would be following Reddick’s instructions, regarding what to do if anybody –
anybody
– walked into room 108 without invitation, to the letter:
blow their fucking brains out
. No questions asked, no hesitation. If Andrews wasn’t down with that, Reddick had come to the wrong address.

Andrews had said he was down with it, no problem.

Reddick was, after all, offering him a deal he could hardly pass up: His assistance in exchange for all the video Reddick had shot of him rolling the rock out at Arrowhead Lanes in Lancaster four days earlier. Using an arm his eleven million dollar lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles claimed he couldn’t use anymore. If Andrews went down to Irvine, Reddick had said, he’d make sure the City Attorney never saw the video, and hell if that didn’t strike Orvis as a better than fair trade.