The Lost Witness (42 page)

“You’re gonna get an award for this,” he said.

“Shut up, Rhodes. Just keep walking.”

“They’re gonna give you a medal, Klinger. Put your picture in the paper. The caption’s gonna read
KEN KLINGER, THE DUMBEST FUCK THERE EVER
WAS
.”

“You’re making this easy, Rhodes. You’re making it fun. Keep moving.”

Lena didn’t think taunting Klinger would work. He was still keeping his distance and running too hot to make a mistake.

“I don’t get it,” she said to him. “When Dobbs and Ragetti went down, you were still over at Internal Affairs. You made the case against them, Klinger.”

“So what?”

“You ended their careers. You don’t think they want payback?”

He hesitated, but only briefly. “Money changes things,” he said. “It always has.”

“But who’s gonna take the fall for all this? Someone’s got to be held accountable. With Cava gone, you’re the weak link, Klinger. You’re the only one
left.”

“Keep your mouths shut. Both of you.”

They had reached the top of the hill. Lena could feel time running out. The dark building across the lot was shimmering in and out of the grim clouds. The neon rooster on the roof, winking at
her and waving good-bye.

“This is it,” Klinger said. “Get down on your fucking knees.”

“You sure we’re facing east,” Rhodes said.

“No, you piece of shit. You’re heading south. Now get down on your fucking knees and smile at that fucking chicken over there.”

Lena took a deep breath and lowered herself to the ground. It felt like all the blood had already drained out of her head. Everything was spinning. Everything blurry and slowed down. She glanced
over at Rhodes and tried to focus on his face. He was looking back at her. She could see the sweat blistering on his forehead. His nostrils flared. His eyes big and bright and full of life. She
could remember what he said in the car. How he tried to make her feel better. Maybe they’d get a drink later. Maybe they’d kick back and relax. He knew a good bar down this way.

And then she heard the sound. The loud hollow crack.

I
t sounded like a melon exploding.
The blood spatter fanning out all over the asphalt. All over Klinger’s Caprice in
an ultra fine spray.

Lena jumped to her feet and stared at the body beside her. Felt someone grab her hand and looked up in horror. Met Rhodes’s eyes and finally noticed that the sound of the shot was still
reverberating within the fallen clouds. Still streaming through the darkness.

It couldn’t have been a pistol.

And Klinger wasn’t lying before them with a small hole in his head. The skin from his face had peeled away in a thin layer that reminded her of a latex glove. The image was still there,
his identity intact. But everything else was gone.

She jerked her head around and looked behind them. Caught the three figures standing on the overpass behind the Lincoln. The trunk was open and she could see Barrera peering through a pair of
binoculars. The chief lifting a long rifle off the handrail and passing it to the man she had seen sitting in the passenger seat.

It took a moment to comprehend what had actually happened. Lag time before the meaning reached her and finally jelled.

Chief Logan had just saved their lives—the same man who kept an M21 rifle mounted on his office wall beside his medals from the Vietnam War. For whatever reason, the former sniper had
selected his target in the gloom and wiped it out with a single shot.

She watched Rhodes raise his hand in the air. She saw Barrera signal back that help was on its way. The moment was real. And even though she didn’t trust it, it took her breath away.

She turned to Klinger, her stomach in her throat. Rolling his body over, she pulled his belt away and grabbed her .45 and Rhodes’s Glock. Then they charged back down the hill.

The limo was still here, and so was the Audi—both cars smoldering in the cold heat. But it looked like the rats had heard the rifle shot and run for cover. Rhodes moved around the limo to
the trunk, grabbed a handful of cash out of the duffel bag and tossed it in the air. They couldn’t have run very far. And it was more than obvious that they had every intention of coming
back.

She turned and counted twelve pillars supporting the overpass. Then she kept watch as Rhodes started working his way down the line toward the trees and brush bordering the freeway. Visibility
was still less than twenty-five feet. The first two columns were clear. But when he swept past the third, something scurried out on two legs and made a run for it. Rhodes fired two shots at
point-blank range, then ran forward as the figure collapsed on the ground.

The silence returned and Lena waited, keeping her eyes on the support columns with her Smith & Wesson ready. Rhodes turned the body over in the mist.

“Dobbs,” he called out. “He’s not gonna make it.”

Lena waved back but knew that she was losing sight of Rhodes in the clouds and wouldn’t be able to cover him from the limo. After a quick look around, she legged it across the grass to the
first column on the far side. She could see Rhodes pocketing Dobbs’s gun and patting down the man. When she checked her back, she spotted Ragetti rising out of the muck and realized that he
had been hiding underneath the limo guarding the cash. Now his gun was raised and pointed at Rhodes. Directly behind Rhodes she could see Justin Tremell pulling away from his father and stepping
out from behind a tree with Jennifer Bloom.

Lena turned back to Ragetti and aimed her .45, but knew that she was late on it. Knew that she didn’t see it in time.

She shouted Rhodes’s name, pulled the trigger, and felt the recoil. She saw Ragetti’s pistol flash in the darkness and heard the loud pop. Bloom screamed and Ragetti fell down. And
then Dean Tremell cried out.

Lena picked up Ragetti’s gun and moved closer. No one had screamed or cried out for Phil Ragetti. And no one seemed concerned about Rhodes. He was on his feet and brushing himself off
after hitting the ground.

Ragetti had pulled the trigger, missing one life and hitting another. And everyone’s eyes were glued on the luckless target. Justin Tremell had been hit in the center of his chest as he
tried to flee with Bloom. The kid was lying on a bed of grass. His eyes were open, his gaze stamped out.

Headlights began streaming down the hill, the space filling with a light so bright that the fog looked more like smoke now. Dean Tremell didn’t seem to notice and staggered toward his
son’s dead body. Wilting onto the ground, the old man drew his only son into his arms and began rocking him on his knee.

Lena glanced over at Rhodes, then pulled Jennifer Bloom away and guided her toward the approaching headlights. She could hear Tremell weeping behind her. She could hear his sorrow cutting into
the night. She knew the tone and cadence from personal experience. Knew what the agony felt like and looked like. Knew how much the loss of a loved one could weigh down the soul.

And so did Jennifer Bloom.

L
ena watched two cops handcuff Tremell,
read him his rights, and lead him away from his son’s body in the grass.
Tremell stared at the ground as they passed through the darkness. His lips were quivering, his shoulders hunched. Dean Tremell had been ruined, so there was no real reason for anyone to say
anything to him. No reason to call him a piece of shit. But someone from the crime scene team muttered it anyway. Lena doubted that he heard it though.

She looked up the hill and saw Rhodes interviewing Tremell’s driver, then turned back to Barrera. They were standing by the ambulance while the EMTs prepared Jennifer Bloom for the ride to
the hospital. Lena had bummed a cigarette from one of the paramedics. She couldn’t help it.

“I knew that it was a bad idea,” Barrera said. “I knew that when you saw the chief in the car, you’d think the worst.”

“You were right,” she said. “I did.”

“I knew that you’d never believe me. That you wouldn’t pick up your cell. It was a mistake, but he wanted to be there. He insisted on it.”

“Where is he?”

“On his way downtown for the press conference.”

She checked her watch. It felt like four or five in the morning. When she saw that it was only 10:30 p.m. it threw her until she remembered that she hadn’t caught a decent night’s
sleep in three days.

“The chief wanted to be the one who told you,” Barrera said. “He wanted you to hear it from him.”

“Hear what?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter anymore.”

She took a drag on the cigarette. “What did he want to say?”

Barrera flashed a wry smile, then pulled back on it. “He wanted to warn you about Klinger. He thought that you were in danger if you went home. Like I said, Lena, it doesn’t really
matter anymore.”

“I guess it doesn’t,” she said. “Who was the guy in the passenger seat?”

“His new adjutant.”

“Hand picked from Internal Affairs?”

“No. Abe Hernandez from Pacific Division. I’ve known him for ten years. He’s a good man.”

Barrera’s cell started ringing and he stepped away to take the call. Lena turned back to Jennifer Bloom. She was strapped down on the gurney and about to be lifted into the ambulance. She
reached out for Lena’s hand and held it. Bloom didn’t say anything. Just met her eyes.

“It’s okay,” Lena said. “Everything’s good now. I’ll stop by tomorrow so we can talk. You want me to call your brother?”

“It might be a shock if he hears my voice. He’s been through a lot.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Bloom released her hand. Lena stayed until the ambulance drove off. Then she walked halfway up the hill and sat down in the grass. She was watching the criminalists from SID swarm the crime
scene and trying not to think about what a hot shower might feel like. Trying not to think too much about climbing into bed. Her ears were still ringing from all the gunshots. Her body was so sore
it felt like someone had tossed her out of a moving car.

The investigator from the coroner’s office hadn’t arrived yet and the bodies were still laid out the way they fell. Justin Tremell was too far off to really make out, his corpse
muted by the fog. But she could see Dobbs and Ragetti clear enough. One face up, the other, face down.

She took another drag on the cigarette, the body count preying on her mind. As she got to her feet and looked up the hill, she saw the coroner’s van backing into position at the edge of
the parking lot. Ed Gainer hopped out and spotted her in the haze, then motioned her up to the van.

“What’s with your cell, Lena?”

She pulled the phone out of her pocket and checked it. The battery was dead.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Madina was trying to reach you,” he said. “He had something he wanted you to see.”

She followed Gainer to the back of the van and watched him open up. It looked like he had made a stop before this one. A single body bag was already onboard.

“What’s he want me to see?”

Gainer shrugged. “I don’t know. He said that when you saw it, you’d understand what it meant. You know what Madina’s like, Lena. Sometimes he goes cryptic on you like
just maybe he did one too many autopsies that day. After a while it would have to get to anyone. All those dead bodies. It sure as hell gets to me.”

He laughed, then rolled the body bag closer to the rear doors.

“What are you doing, Ed?”

He turned and gave her a look. “He wants you to see this. It’s Denny Ramira. He got started on the autopsy, then stopped and said you needed to take a look first.”

Lena tried to pull herself together. She had already seen enough. She needed the day to end and needed it bad. Taking another look at Denny Ramira’s corpse felt like it was pushing her
over some psychological edge. She watched Gainer unzip the bag, then pull the plastic open. Saw Denny’s battered face and eyes. That meat thermometer still in his chest. But even worse, she
caught the odor venting out of the plastic and thought that she might lose it.

Gainer reached inside the bag and fished out Denny’s left arm. Then he switched on his flashlight and turned over the dead reporter’s hand. All of a sudden, Lena was wide awake. Her
mind, clear as a day with the man in the moon.

“Do you know if they took a picture, Ed?”

Gainer nodded. “It’s documented. It’s a matter of record. After they got the shot, Madina stopped the autopsy and loaded him in my van. What is it?”

Lena zeroed in on the pin stuck in Denny Ramira’s left palm. The palm that she couldn’t see when she found his body in the kitchen because he had clenched his fist in a death grip.
Denny had been a crime-beat reporter and a good one. He would have known from experience that by clenching his fist at the time of his death he was unleashing a chemical reaction in his body. That
his fingers would be locked like a bank vault until rigor mortis set his body and finally released it. That he could keep his secret for more than a day. And that he could buy enough time to tell
Lena exactly who murdered him by jabbing the pin into his own palm and holding on to it for the rest of his life.

Just the sight of it cut to the bone.

She parted the body bag and gazed at Ramira’s face for a long time. Her doubts about his murder had begun the moment she set eyes on that meat thermometer. She had known from the lack of
blood that it had been an afterthought. A play that followed the murder but had nothing to do with it. Ever since that moment she had suspected that Cava probably wasn’t good for it any more
than Klinger could have been. Over the past hour she had come to the conclusion that Dobbs and Ragetti made the kill. The two bruisers seemed to fit the bill. The two ex-cops with a history of
physical violence. The two thugs whom Tremell had said were listening to Ramira’s phone calls.

But now she knew with certainty that it was none of the above. That the play had been a weak attempt to link Ramira’s murder to the rest and let Cava take the fall for everything. After
all, the play explained why Cava spent so much time staring at the picture of Ramira’s dead dog during their interview. He was looking at the photograph the same way anyone would have if they
were seeing it for the first time. But even more, it explained why Cava had needed time to think her offer over. And it explained why he had called her on the phone. The things he had said to her
and his reasons for saying them.