Crash and Burn (7 page)

Diego had been one on her closest friends and allies since she left LAPD. He’d given her a place to live when she hit rock bottom, much the same way that Krista gave her a purpose with Moreno and Hart Investigations.

She needed to talk to Isaac, wrap her head around what happened in the bar last night—anything she didn’t already know about. But it came down to one question:

Was Isaac capable of murder?

And no doubt, the answer was yes.

“I’ll prove he’s innocent,” she said. Her stomach twisted. She wanted to
believe
he was innocent. But right now, no one was on Isaac’s side. She had to stand up for him, even if it cost her reputation.

What reputation? He already thinks you’re a disgraced cop.

“Stay away from my case.” He stepped toward her and said in a low voice, “You’re not an idiot, Moreno, at least I didn’t think you were. You know Dunn’s history.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s violent. Before he nearly killed his daughter’s molester, he was in a whole host of fights. It’s plausible his four years in prison turned him into a killer, because he was capable of it before.”

“You of all people should know that sometimes things aren’t what they appear.”

His eyes darkened, and Scarlet wished she hadn’t tipped her hand about what she’d just learned from Bishop’s stint in Sacramento.

Still, she held her ground, not breaking eye contact. The standstill lasted nearly a minute.

“And you used to be a cop,” Bishop said, disgust dripping in his tone. He walked out.

She watched him leave, then her body shuddered, betraying her tension and doubt. She closed her eyes for a long moment, willing herself to get her thoughts together.

Slowly, she turned around. Isaac was still behind the bar in the far corner, staring at her.

“What the hell did you tell him?” she asked, not caring about the other patrons in the bar, what they knew or heard or thought. “Why’d you talk to him without a lawyer? Are you crazy?”

Isaac stared at her as if she were the one who’d lost her head. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“He sure as hell doesn’t think so!”

“I can’t help what he thinks.”

She ran both hands through her short hair and wanted to scream. “Do
not
talk to him without a lawyer present.” She sat down on a barstool. She wanted a beer, but she had a feeling it would be a long, all-work and no-play day. “Bishop knows everything about you. Not just about what happened with your daughter, but stuff I didn’t even know about.”

“You never asked.”

She hadn’t wanted to know. Diego would have asked. Diego must’ve known about his background. That made the owner even more culpable if Isaac stalked and killed one of his customers.

“What did you say to him?”

“That I shot the kid in cold blood.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”

“I don’t care if you believe me, Moreno. I didn’t kill anyone.” He glanced behind her and nodded to a group of off-duty construction workers sitting in the far corner. He started filling pints from the tap.

“You need to take this seriously.”

He put the four drinks on a tray. “I do.”

He left to serve the group, and Scarlet walked behind the bar and helped herself to a water bottle. She noticed there was still a piece of pizza from her box last night. She’d forgotten to get lunch after getting the call from Mac, and not eating made her more crabby than normal. She ate the pizza cold and watched Isaac.

He could kill someone, no doubt in her mind. But the stalking part didn’t fit. And neither did the gun. He’d have beaten the kid to a pulp before he shot him.

Didn’t make her feel much better, but her cop instincts, as rusty as they might be, didn’t see Isaac as the type to hunt down and shoot someone in cold blood.

Isaac returned. Scarlet was more temperate now that she had sustenance. “Let’s start over. Isaac, you’re a smart guy most of the time. Don’t talk to Bishop without a lawyer.”

A half smile curved his lips. She could see the Isaac of the past, the one who hadn’t been in prison for attempted murder. The one who had tossed his daughter in the air, gone to her ballet recitals and coached her softball team. One vile predator had not only hurt a little girl, but had destroyed her family in the process. It was criminals like that child predator who made Scarlet want to be a cop in the first place, and criminals like him who helped Scarlet understand men like Isaac.

She didn’t feel sorry for him—he’d made the choice to beat his kid’s teacher to a pulp—but she understood him. Empathize. Even respect.

“The system is fucked,” she said, “but it also works most of the time. Innocent people need lawyers more than the guilty.” She was pretty sure most lawyers would disagree with her, but she didn’t care. Innocent people believed in the system, and didn’t think they needed to protect their rights because they didn’t believe they’d done anything wrong. “Tell me what happened after I went upstairs last night. Everything.”

He assessed her. Isaac was formidable with broad shoulders and tension that bulged his muscles. She’d never seen him relax, not completely. Scarlet could see him beating a child predator to death. She couldn’t see him shooting an arrogant college prick in cold blood. She didn’t know why that made her feel better, but it did.

“I told Detective Bishop the truth, and I’ll tell you. None of those college kids came back after we ran out the red shirt. The last customer left at one-thirty. I had already cleaned up, and I set the alarm at about one-forty. I walked Heather to her car, which was near the church, then I came back here and hopped on my bike.” Isaac rode a motorcycle. There was no parking at the bar or pretty much anywhere on the peninsula unless you were lucky enough to have a tiny garage or could find street parking. A bike was a lot easier to park than even Scarlet’s Jeep.

“That means I drove away sometime around two a.m. I didn’t check my watch, I wasn’t really thinking about much of anything, just getting home to crash before I had to open up. I didn’t see anyone hanging around the area, and I didn’t hear a gun shot.”

“The gun shot woke me up at ten after,” she said. “You swear to me, none of those kids returned after I left. Right?”

He practically growled at her. “That’s what I said. You don’t believe me?”

“I do,” she said. “Just making sure.” Her old interviewing techniques. Ask the same question a half-dozen different ways and see if the answer changed. “When did you get home?”

“It only takes ten minutes to get to my place in Costa Mesa in the middle of the night. But I can’t prove when I got there. I live in an apartment on Harbor. Most of my neighbors wouldn’t talk to the cops even if they did see me. And it was after two in the morning.”

“So he has no proof. Unless he can tie you to the murders with physical evidence or a witness, he can’t prove you killed anyone.”

“Which he won’t find because I didn’t do it.” He hesitated, and Scarlet pushed.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He didn’t say anything.

Scarlet held out her hand. “Give me a dollar. From your wallet.”

“I don’t want you getting in the middle of this.”

“I already am.”

Isaac reached into his pocket and took out four quarters. Dropped them into her outstretched palm.

She closed her fist. “As far as Moreno is concerned, you’ve hired me.”

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as PI-client privilege.”

“Just work with me here. What did you
forget
to tell Moreno?”

He glanced around and made sure no one was listening. “I ran the kid’s name off his credit card. The one who confronted me. Richard Sanders.”

Her stomach sank. “And?”

“Well, I got his address. Before he was shot.”

“Aw, shit, Isaac.” The cold pizza in her stomach became a hard, painful lump.

“I didn’t go over there. I was going to talk to bartenders at the pier, see if he’s been a problem. But it won’t look good, and how I got the information wasn’t strictly legal.”

Damn straight it didn’t look good. If Moreno found out, he would certainly have probable cause to get a warrant. But he’d have to know to look.

She asked, “You used your phone to get the information?”

“Yeah.”

Bishop would need a warrant for Isaac’s phone records, and he’d need probable cause. He might be able to get it with some of the judges, just based on the confrontation with the kids earlier in the evening. But Scarlet guessed that unless he had at least one piece of physical evidence, or a witness, he wouldn’t be able to get it.

“This is why you need a lawyer,” she mumbled.

“I’m not calling a damn lawyer unless they arrest me. Last time, my lawyer screwed me during my plea agreement.” By his tone, Scarlet wondered if even an arrest would prompt him to call for help.

She frowned and realized she needed to talk to Isaac more. She only knew the basics—she thought serving four years in an eight-year sentence for attempted murder was pretty damn good. But based on what Bishop had dug up in less than twelve hours, there was more to his story than she knew.

“Don’t talk to Bishop,” she repeated.

“What are you going to do?”

“Talk to the other kids.” First, she needed names and addresses. She only had one lead on that, the girl Valerie who’d called 911 from Richie Sanders house. “Someone knows what happened after they left the bar, and my guess is that one of them knows—or suspects—who the killer is.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her old friend Lieutenant Hank Riley walk into the bar. She lowered her voice and said to Isaac, “We’re going to clear your name, no doubts, okay? Is there anything else—
anything
—that could get you in trouble? Like, did you drive by his house? Walk by?”

“No.” He didn’t break eye contact. “Scarlet, I didn’t kill anyone. But—we need to talk later.” He glanced at Hank as he sat down next to her. “Lieutenant.”

“Dunn.”

“Your usual?”

Hank nodded. Isaac pulled a Sierra Nevada draft from the tap and put it in front of Hank.

Hank Riley was fifty, a twenty-five year veteran of Newport PD. He was born and raised here, married and divorced here, raised his two sons here. And as he often said, he’d die here.

Hank nodded toward her water bottle, his eyebrows raised.

“I’m working today,” she said.

Hank lifted his mug. “Not me.” He took a long drink.

“Rub it in,” she muttered. “What brings you down to the bar on a beautiful Saturday afternoon?”

“You don’t bluff well.”

“Bluff?”

He motioned toward the wide-screen television mounted on the wall behind the bar. “The Dodgers are playing.”

She rolled her eyes. She was an Angels fan. Didn’t earn her a lot of friends in this bar because Diego bled blue.

“You didn’t come down to watch the Dodgers game.”

“Not only,” he admitted. “It’s my day off, but I got an earful about you this morning.”

“I’ll bet,” she said.

“Bishop is a good cop. And so were you. Give him room to do his job.”

“He doesn’t like me. I’m not going to stomp all over his case, but Isaac didn’t shoot anyone last night.”

“I warned Diego about Isaac.”

“Then what are you doing drinking in this bar?”

“Keeping my eye on the situation.” He looked pointedly at her. “I don’t want you to get into trouble, Scarlet.”

Scarlet glanced at Isaac. He kept a stoic expression, but he was watching the situation even as he tried to be discreet. “Isaac wanted to help the girls, not kill the jerks who drugged them. He got them out, that’s all he cared about.” Except for the fact that red shirt was with Valerie when he was shot. Had he raped her? Maybe she should’ve been nicer to Bishop earlier and he might have told her something.

“The answer to your unspoken question is I can’t tell you anything about the case.”

“I’m not asking.”

“You don’t need to use words.”

“I’m going to help Isaac.”

“The best help he can get is to hire a good lawyer.”

“Or a good P.I.”

“Don’t get involved.”

She didn’t respond. Hank knew her better than that. “I can vouch for you with Bishop, but I’m not going to tell him to keep you in the loop.”

“Don’t bother. Someone has already gotten to him.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he thinks he knows everything about me.”

“You have friends here, Scarlet. You know that. He didn’t hear anything from my people.”

“Maybe I don’t have as many friends as I thought,” she mumbled. She thought back to the responding officers last night. It had to be one of them. Maddox? She doubted it. But she didn’t know some of the others, like the cop named Pete. She’d burned bridges when she left L.A., and it wouldn’t surprise her if one of the NBPD cops was friends with someone who hated her guts. They might be in separate police departments in two different counties, but they weren’t all that far apart.

“I’ll talk to him.”

She shook her head. “I’ll handle it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing to damage the police investigation—but I need to prove Isaac couldn’t have shot two college kids in cold blood.”

“Two?”

She blinked, not realizing that she’d voiced a theory that wasn’t fully formed. “There was another gunshot victim on the beach. Young guy, I didn’t see his face. And then Sanders a couple blocks over? My mind connected them. I can’t shake off the feeling that it’s the same killer.”

Hank nodded. Took another sip. “Bishop came to the same conclusion.”

Both of them knew he shouldn’t have told her, but she was grateful he had. It helped her focus on how to prove Isaac was innocent. She needed to find a witness who saw him during the window of at least one of the crimes. Even though it was late at night, he was pretty recognizable at six feet, two-hundred-ten pounds with tats on his arms driving a Harley at two in the morning.

Hank smiled up at the television. “Finally, the Dodgers are playing like they used to. This is our year. I can feel it.”

“It won’t last,” she said optimistically, and Hank glared at her. “Later.”

She walked to the opposite end of the bar where Isaac was pouring his killer margaritas for a group of young women in bikinis. The word had gone out about Isaac’s talents, and Diego was going to have to hire a second cocktail waitress because Heather only worked three nights a week. Isaac glanced at Hank, then said to Scarlet, “You’re going to find someone who was out at two in the morning and remembers seeing me?”