Taking Liberty (36 page)

___________________________

His name was Richard Schaeffer.

I knew him as the surfer dude from Huntington Beach.

Others knew him as the one-time live-in butler of Marlene van den Berg, a wealthy widow murdered for her charitable deeds by
The Undertaker
.

I couldn’t believe it.

I had to force the air into my lungs.

What was he doing with Snakeskin?

I’d last seen Schaeffer being carted away by paramedics following his shooting during a foot chase at Cedars-Sinai. Another failed capture, another story and another fiasco. He’d been charged for interfering with an ongoing police investigation and banged up for the night. But come morning, his bigwig daddy lawyer had gotten him off on a technicality and I hadn’t heard a peep from him since.

Richard Schaeffer had been burned alive on Hollywood Boulevard, his gruesome death watched by millions on YouTube.

I couldn’t believe it.

I didn’t want to feel sorry for the stupid kid, but I did.

How had he gone from meddling to being murdered?

I didn’t get the connection between him and Cornsilk, not directly. Snakeskin had sworn vengeance on all those he felt had contributed to his downfall. Not sure how far down the food chain Schaeffer was. Equally, not sure why Cornsilk had chosen him, out of everyone, to kill publically.

More than that, how had Snakeskin convinced Schaeffer to walk down that street wearing a Santa suit and a sandwich board?

I couldn’t imagine Cornsilk and Schaeffer moving in the same circles. They were worlds apart. What did they have in common?

Then it struck me. From nowhere. Out of the blue.

As always, I was the common denominator.

And they had a common motive:

They both hated my guts.

Schaeffer hadn’t held back from making that known. He’d resented me for giving him a hard time during our interview in the aftermath of his mistress’s murder. Spoilt brat syndrome with a narcissistic personality disorder. Out to get revenge for being duped out of his inheritance. Punk. He’d blamed me for his getting shot and nearly falling to his death from the hospital rooftop. In his eyes, I’d humiliated him. And his sociopathic cross-wired logic couldn’t let that go. Schaeffer had held a grudge. All this time.

How did Cornsilk factor into it?

Somehow, Snakeskin had learned about Schaeffer – probably when he was delving deeper into The Undertaker Case, looking for innocent people to burn – and spied an opportunity.

Cornsilk was ex-FBI. Friends still in the Bureau. People owing him favors. Maybe he’d used one of them to give him copies of the case files. Schaeffer’s name had featured prominently in the first days of the investigation. The kid was a soft target.

Thinking about it, I could see how the meeting had gone down. Cornsilk expressing his loathe for yours truly. Playing Mr. Empathy, so that Schaeffer would feel he’d found an ally. Together they could tell the world what an obscenity the Celebrity Cop really was. Snakeskin using his snaky charm to coerce Schaeffer into doing his bidding. Embarrass the Celebrity Cop in a very public place. Somewhere close to home, but where the message would reach around the world, in minutes.

THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT

There, written as if in blood. For my benefit.

Prior to the pyrotechnics gone bad, the sandwich board had been covered with Christmassy wrapping paper. Schaeffer had removed the giftwrap mere seconds before the sparks had flown. It was a safe bet he hadn’t seen what was on those boards. A sure thing Snakeskin had told him it was something other than what it was – possibly a picture of me, together with my name and a bunch of very strong words.

In reality, Schaeffer had been a puppet.

A message bearer.

Delivering a personal damnation from Gary Cornsilk.

Schaeffer’s fiery death is all your fault, Quinn.

And, if I were brutally honest, it probably was.

___________________________

I didn’t advance to the fourth and final photograph. Not straight away. I was too busy thumping the padded chair with my good hand and cursing the day Snakeskin was born.

Cornsilk had killed an innocent kid.

Not because he wanted a martyr for his crazy cause, but because he wanted me to suffer.

Did he have the same design in mind for Rae?

I took an evidence bag from my pocket. Inside was the nickel I’d confiscated from the motel crime scene. I smoothed the plastic down over the face of Thomas Jefferson.

There was a single word standing proud alongside the likeness:
Liberty
.

I thought about Rae – my friend, my partner, my lover – and wondered, miserably, where she was right now and in what conditions she was being held captive.

I couldn’t reconcile with Bishop’s claim that she and Stone were an item. So why was it bugging me? Why couldn’t I dismiss it as Bishop’s attempt to undermine my confidence in Rae and move on from it? Maybe because I knew, if I dug deep enough, I’d find they had worked together over the past twenty years, perhaps multiple times, and that there is rarely smoke without fire. Then again, why would Rae hide it from me if it were true?

Wasn’t it more important to focus on what was happening in the present rather than in the past?

Bishop had gotten under my skin, I realized. Wormed his way into my subconscious and planted seeds of doubt.

Rae had no reason to deceive me.

But what about the place in Pacific Palisades? Rae had said it was an inheritance, a fixer-upper. All the same, the upkeep on a property like that would sponge up all her salary. Plus, she didn’t permanently reside in LA. So what was with that? She’d never mentioned any relatives out in California.

The sums didn’t add up.

Maybe I didn’t know Rae as well as I thought I did. Scratch that. There was no way I could know the new Rae as well as I had the old Rae. Time and experience changes us all. I had. I wasn’t wholly the same person today as I was two decades ago. I couldn’t expect Rae to be unchanged. I couldn’t expect her to have updated views and opinions. Other than twenty-year-old memories, what did I really know?

Aside from Bishop’s accusation, I knew nothing whatsoever about her recent personal life. Nothing. When I’d asked her about previous partners she’d gently steered me in another direction. I didn’t even know if she’d gotten married, or had kids. Selfishly, I’d been too caught up in the moment to ask.

As for her career, I knew Rae specialized in breaking down human trafficking rings for the Bureau – hence her coming onboard with
Operation Freebird
. Two decades ago, after I’d fled with my family to California, Rae had worked her way to the rank of Police Detective in Memphis, mirroring my own progression in another State. Where I had specialized in Robbery-Homicide, she’d worked in the Missing Persons Unit for a number of years before moving into Sex Crimes, where she’d spearheaded successful operations against child prostitution rings fed by human trafficking. Five years in, her achievements had piqued the FBI’s interest and they’d poached her for their own. That was ten years ago. She’d been an integral part of the Bureau’s Human Trafficking Program ever since, more recently based at the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center in Washington, DC.

A lot could happen in twenty years, I knew. Rae had firsthand experience out on the streets, mixing with trouble. Over the years she would have come into contact with all manner of criminal organizations. Bad guys with clout. Lowlifes with leverage. Was this what Bishop had been hinting at? Had one gotten to her, turned her?

Had she worked with Gary Cornsilk in Memphis?

An uncomfortable thought pushed suddenly to the forefront of my thinking:

Was Rae the mole and she’d played me all along?

If so, was I walking straight into a trap?

___________________________

With a flick of her wrist, she signed the last check, tore it out and handed it over.

That was it; she had all the information she needed.

The retired cop turned private investigator thanked her for her kind business and left her with his glossy card and a gaping hole in her bank balance.

She waited until he’d got in his car and drove down the street before letting out a satisfied breath.

Some things were worth their weight in gold.

She didn’t care about the money.

She didn’t care about the family business falling by the wayside and its suppliers threatening lawsuits.

She didn’t care her marriage was on the rocks and sinking fast, and that her husband had suggested a trial separation.

She didn’t care she was stick-thin and sickly, and refusing to get checked out.

She didn’t care her shunned friends thought her mad and possessed.

She didn’t care the bank was foreclosing on their house and that everything she had ever worked for was about to be lost.

The only debt she cared for was a personal one, about to be expunged.

She looked at the name on the piece of paper, at the names associated with it, at the location the private detective had come up with.

She had thought she’d feel blind rage, revulsion, pure unadulterated hatred, but instead an unexpected calmness had settled over her.

For the first time in almost a year she saw hope.

___________________________

Forty minutes to my destination, I gave Stone a courtesy call. I told him the bad news about Springfield. Told him there was nothing left for me to do in Missouri and that I was returning to LA to help find Rae. He wasn’t happy, but Stone’s happiness wasn’t my concern.

I didn’t tell him about the trade, or even that I’d spoken with Rae.

“Did you at least get to the bottom of the Cornsilk and Bridges connection?” he asked over the satellite link-up.

It sounded like a bluegrass duo. Either way, I hadn’t. I’d racked my brains trying to figure it out, with no success.

“Bloody typical,” he sighed. “Okay, the good news at this end is we believe we have a lead on the vehicle Cornsilk was using. One of Burnett’s neighbors remembered seeing a white van driving down the street shortly before the first nine-one-one came through. We showed her some photos and we narrowed it down to a Ford E-Series Wagon. Possibly with smoked windows. As we speak, we’re rechecking the traffic camera tapes.”

“And that’s our only lead in twelve hours, a white Ford van?”

I didn’t hide my incredulity.

The entire resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation focused on the safe retrieval of an abducted federal agent and all they’d come up with was a white van.

 “It’s better than finding a bloody body,” he countered.

I remembered the fourth and final photograph sent from Tim. He’d mentioned it showing Snakeskin’s getaway vehicle. Maybe it was the same van. Maybe the resolution was good enough to reveal a license plate.

I hurried Stone off the phone and opened up the image.

It was another zoomed-in shot, looking across the street from Tussauds, but on a slightly different angle. This view was of the doglegged junction where North Orange Drive intersected Hollywood Boulevard, with the Spanish-style Roosevelt Hotel in the background. Parked about twenty yards down the side of the hotel, in deep shadow, was a white van with smoked glass windows.

It looked like a Ford – just one of hundreds of clones in that popular touristy part of town, used to ferry hotel guests.

I looked closer.

There was a guy sitting on the rear bumper, I saw, enjoying a cigarette in the shade. A guy with a crop of dark unruly hair and the makings of an evening shadow, even at midday. The third man, in the way of the license plate. According to Tim: Snakeskin’s driver.

I pinch-zoomed the image to get a better look.

And that’s when the impossible reached out and slapped me across the face.