The Lost Witness (39 page)

The car started moving again. Cava had managed to slip his bound wrists underneath his body and work the handcuffs behind his knees. Leaning forward slightly, he strained to lower his hands to
the floor. If he could just step through them. If he could just manage to bring his arms forward—

A thought surfaced. The sound of a jail cell door reverberating in his skull.

Cava bent his legs and pushed his wrists lower until he reached his heels. All he needed was another half inch. It suddenly occurred to him that he wasn’t wearing his Bruno Maglis. That he
had been given a cheap pair of slip-on sneakers. He looked back at the cops as he slid them off his feet, then pushed down as hard as he could. His socks were sweaty and he could feel the chain
between the handcuffs begin rolling over the moist cotton until—

He’d made it.

He leaned back in the seat, masking his smile with a darting look out the window. His mind was a jumbled blur. Everything crazy. He slipped his feet back into those twenty-three-dollar shoes and
felt his stomach get hot.

They had just crossed over the Santa Ana Freeway and were passing Union Station on the right. Up ahead he could see a series of industrial buildings marring the landscape. The street looked
darker there. One empty parking lot after the next. He turned back to the cop sitting in the passenger seat, trying to remember how the man’s gun sat on his belt. Cava knew that he would only
get one chance. That although he would have the element of surprise on his side, his move would have to be decisive and smooth. But even more important, the car would have to be moving fast enough
that the driver couldn’t let go of the wheel and interfere. Cava estimated that he needed three seconds at over 30 mph, no more and no less.

The car stopped before another red light. The cop behind the wheel gave him a hard look through the rearview mirror.

“Everything okay back there?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m making my list and checking it twice.”

The cop kept staring at him. Giving him the evil fucking eye. Cava looked away for fear the man might read his mind. When the light turned green and they started moving again, he watched the
speedometer begin to rise and worked on controlling his breathing. He slid behind the cop in the passenger seat, his eyes still on the dash. The car continued to accelerate forward into the barren
cityscape. Ten mph turned into 20, then became 30 and 40, until they topped out at 50 mph.

Kill speed.

Cava grit his teeth and reached deep down in his rotten gut for the courage. And then he burst through the cosmic door, swinging his arms over the man’s head, grasping the gun at his waist
and pulling up until he found his prey’s neck and drew the chain between the handcuffs tight.

The cop struggled beneath the chain, kicking his legs into the windshield. The car started swerving, the cop behind the wheel slamming on the brakes. Cava jacked the slide on the semiautomatic,
saw his own face in the rearview mirror and didn’t know who he was. He jerked the gun up and to the side, pulling the trigger on the driver as he throttled the cop in the passenger seat. The
gun roared, loud as a jackhammer inside the tight space. One shot after another, cut against the sounds of both men screaming. Cava could feel his arms shaking. His entire fucking body. He could
see the rounds moving to the left—breaking through the windshield, the door, and then finally, exploding into the driver’s face.

The car veered off the road, smashed into something, and flipped over. Skidding across a parking lot, Cava rode it out as best he could watching the roof beneath his feet collapse in slow
motion. When the car finally ground to a stop, he took a deep breath and shuddered.

He could smell gasoline in the air. A lot of it. From the glow outside the window, he guessed that the back of the car was burning but couldn’t see the flames. He looked under the front
seat, everything still upside down. Both cops were strapped in with their feet up in the air like a pair of dead astronauts all set for their rocket launch to heaven. Cava could hear the flames now
and scurried into the front compartment. Once he found the keys to the handcuffs, he grabbed the gun and crawled underneath the cop in the passenger seat out the window.

He was hyperventilating. The flames were beginning to engulf the car. He could hear sirens breaking through the night. But as he worked his way out of the handcuffs, he heard something else. He
turned to the car and looked in the window. The cop in the passenger seat was staring back at him. He was reaching out the window and moaning, his face awash in blood.

Cava checked the progress of the fire, then looked back at the cop. The sirens were getting closer, but help probably wouldn’t make it in time.

He shook his head, thinking about the guilt that was piling up. The idea that once the killing started, it took on a life of its own and was hard to stop. He could feel the cosmic door closing
on him and knew that he needed to find a new set of wheels and bolt. He picked up the gun with a jittery hand and put two rounds in the cop’s head. Then he ran off.

T
he king was dead.

Cava gazed up at the ceiling in the garage and watched Vinny Bing’s knuckle dragging corpse sway
from a rope as the heat switched on and the vents in the rafters blew out hot air. Remarkably, it looked like the king was still wearing that TV smile beneath his crown. His mouth was thrust open
and he could see his yellow teeth.

Cava had been freezing his ass off outside the dealership for more than hour. Following the king’s movements through the plate glass windows as he closed up for the night. It turned out
that Vinny had a thing for Frank Sinatra CDs, microwaved popcorn, and glasses of bourbon. That he liked to prance around the showroom in his costume, listening to music and peeking in his
employee’s desks when no one was around.

Cava had caught up with him as he walked out the front door. Although the king acted surprised and things got dramatic for five or ten minutes, although the king had repeatedly bitten him like a
rabid dog during the struggle, it was over now. The king and his cable TV show would wind up buried in the metro section of the paper and fade into oblivion as a rerun.

Cava looked at the cell he had removed from the man’s pocket. It was encrusted with diamonds in the shape of a crown. Below the crown was his first name, Vinny. When he flipped the phone
open, it played a jingle. Cava recognized the tune, but couldn’t place it. Once he finally did, he almost wished that he hadn’t killed the slob. It was from the Miss America beauty
pageant that used to be on TV. The jingle they played at the end of the show when the winner received her crown and started to cry.

Cava shrugged it off and entered a phone number from memory. After three rings he heard her voice. Heard her say hello.

“Lena?” he asked.

She didn’t say anything right away. He could see her face in his mind’s eye. He could feel the shock through the radio waves in the air.

“Where are you?” she said.

“Free and clear and heading for paradise in a magic pair of cheap shoes. I told you that I’d walk.”

“You’re a cop killer, Cava.”

“Does that mean our deal’s off?”

She paused again. And he could see her face again. He liked having the image in his head and hoped that it wouldn’t wear off over time.

“How’d you get this number?” she said finally.

“I saw it on the screen when you opened your cell and turned it off.”

“You need to turn yourself in, Cava. Believe me. It’s your best chance at surviving this.”

“Stop talking and listen,” he said. “I called for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“My end of our deal and a rare moment of clarity. Tremell’s kid didn’t know anything about the murder. The old man used him as bait to get the girl out to that whorehouse. All
the kid knew was that his father wanted to dirty her up and make her look like a whore.”

Another run of silence. Cava thought he could hear traffic in the background. She was in her car.

“He’s covering for his father,” she said.

“Most sons would. But he didn’t know about the murder.”

“What else?”

The king’s shadow drifted over the key rack on the wall. Cava noticed it and glanced at the tags. He could have any car on the lot he wanted. It was free car night.

“The reason I called,” he said. “You’ve missed something.”

“Missed what?”

“A piece of the puzzle. You’ve missed it. And it’s a big piece.”

“What is it?”

He paused a moment, thinking it over. “I’ll leave that to you,” he said. “I’ve got your number. I’ll check in when I get to paradise.”

He shut down the phone and slipped it into his pocket. Then he skimmed through the key tags and picked out another SRX Crossover. Walking to the door, he turned back for one last look at Vinny
Bing the Cadillac King and caught the man’s horrific smile from above.

“Hang in there,” he said.

L
ena sat in her car, still parked on the shoulder
of the Hollywood Freeway in Echo Park. She had pulled over as soon as
she realized that it was Cava on the phone. Not because of the shock. She could handle that. She had pulled over because she wanted to hear his voice. Wanted to listen to him and concentrate on the
moment.

She gazed over the concrete divider at the cars moving up and down Glendale Boulevard below the freeway. Echo Lake was almost invisible. The mariner layer had pushed east from the coast, the
cool mist hugging the ground and beginning to fill the basin like concrete rising to the lip of a mold.

Cava had said that she missed something. Something big.

And she had no doubt that he was telling her the truth. She had heard it in his voice. And now she could feel it in her gut. The main wheel that guided her internal compass. The thing she relied
on that made it all work.

Something remained hidden. Something essential to the case.

Her cell started vibrating on the passenger seat. She read Barrera’s name on the display and pried open the phone.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Echo Park,” she said. “Heading home.”

“Don’t go home, Lena.”

The tone of his voice spooked her. “What is it,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t go home,” he repeated. “I’m in Hollywood. We need to talk.”

“Where?”

“How ’bout the parking lot outside Capitol Records in ten minutes?”

That main wheel in her gut was talking to her again. “I’ll see you then,” she said.

She closed the phone with an unsteady hand. Lit a cigarette and pulled onto the freeway. The traffic was moving smooth and steady through the gloom toward the Cahuenga Pass. Almost too steady.
Her imagination was playing tricks with her. Feeding on something she couldn’t place. Connecting dots that might not be there. When she pulled into the lot, she spotted a Lincoln Town Car
parked all the way back against the chainlink fence. On the other side of the fence was Vista Del Mar—a small road tucked away from downtown Hollywood and the exact spot where she had found
her brother’s dead body so many years ago.

Couldn’t be good.

She got rid of the cigarette and climbed out of her car. As she crossed the empty lot and walked toward the Town Car, the rear door swung open and the interior lights switched on. Barrera was
behind the wheel sitting beside a man she had never seen before. When her eyes flicked to the backseat, she froze.

It was the chief. All three were waiting for her.

She kept her eyes on them and started backing away. Then she finally turned and made a run for it. Barrera jerked the Town Car forward. Lena jammed her key into the ignition, fired up the
engine, and floored it. When she hit Vine Street, she made a hard left and pointed the hood downhill into the congestion. But the Town Car was right behind her—tires screeching and pushing
fast.

She blew through the light at Hollywood Boulevard and gunned it, then checked the mirror. Barrera was closing in. She tried to think. Come up with a plan. She grabbed her phone and hit
Rhodes’s speed dial number, waiting for him to pick up. It felt like an eternity. And she could hear the phone beeping through the ring. Someone else trying to break through. Her Honda was a
stick shift. At this speed she couldn’t hold the phone and work the road at the same time. Rhodes finally picked up.

“Where are you?” she said.

“Venice.”

“Stay there. Keep your cell on.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll call as soon as I get there.”

She threw the phone onto the passenger seat and grabbed the gear shift. The Town Car could easily outrun her on a straight track. Zigzagging her way over to La Brea, she finally hit the Santa
Monica Freeway but lost sight of Barrera in the rearview mirror. There were too many headlights. Too much traffic and glare. She brought the car up to a hard ninety. As she wove through the lanes,
she checked the mirror searching for a pair of headlights following her path. After a mile she thought she spotted them. But when the car rocketed past her doing a hot one hundred and twenty, it
was another Honda, a lowrider with neon lights along the floorboards and a straight pipe out the back.

She slid into the next lane, keeping her eye on the lowrider and following its course through the traffic. When she hit the Lincoln Boulevard exit, she made a sudden hard cut across three lanes
and blew up the ramp. She checked the mirror again. The darkness and the mist. She’d lost them.

She filled her lungs with air and exhaled, thinking that she needed a place to hide while she called Rhodes back and figured out what was going on. When she finally reached Navy Street, she
checked her rearview mirror again and turned back.

The fog was thicker here. Billowing off the Pacific over the buildings and streets and filling in the rough edges with more gloom.

Lena cruised past the apartment and found a place to park around the corner. Then she pulled Jennifer Bloom’s keys out of her briefcase and legged it up the sidewalk and into the
building.