Yesterday's Echo (28 page)

UCSD is located atop a mesa above the coastline, wedged between Interstate 5 and multimillion dollar homes. The Geisel Library was named after the man who gave us Dr. Seuss, a genius heard through a child's ear. The library sits in the middle of campus like a mother ship from a superior race, or a giant spider with a thousand rectangular eyes. I parked well back down the street, and hoped none of those eyes were looking at me.

I'd arrived twenty minutes early. Enough time to do a quick recon. Parked cars and eucalyptus trees gave some cover on the street, but the area around the inverted spider-legged base was flat concrete and grass with low shrubs in the back and a sunken patio in the front. I did a slow wide circle on my gimpy ankle and didn't see any cops. Of course, they might be waiting inside, but I'd left my backpack in the Rav4 that belonged to Kim. If they arrested me, it wouldn't be because they found evidence on me.

I held my breath and entered the library. Nobody jumped from behind a pillar and told me I was under arrest. I went up the elevator to the fourth floor where I could look out over the parking area through one of the spider eyes.

At five minutes to noon, Heather emerged from her Miata. She was alone. I watched her until I lost sight of her entering the
library. I stayed at my perch for another couple minutes to make sure the cops hadn't thrown her out as long bait. Nobody followed her on foot and no black-and-whites or detective slick tops showed up. So far so good. I went downstairs and found Heather waiting in the lobby, facing the entrance.

“Heather.”

She tensed at my voice and quickly turned.

“You scared me.” Her brown eyes scanned me up and down. Not a come-on, a search.

“Why? Weren't you expecting me?” My antennae went full mast. I three-sixtied the lobby. Still no police bolting from the shadows.

“Of course.” She tried to play calm, but she couldn't hold my eyes. “I just didn't expect you to already be inside.”

“Your meeting. How do we play it?”

“You don't look like you came prepared.” She put a hand on the strap of the leather bag hanging from her shoulder. “I thought you had something for me.”

“I'm prepared.”

“Okay.” She let out an irritated sigh and shook her head. “Let's go up to the fifth floor. We should be able to find a private study room there.”

“Wait for me outside the elevator on the fifth floor. I'll be there in five minutes.”

I broke through the lobby and out the front door, hearing Heather's surprised, “What?” over my shoulder. I hustle-gimped up the stairs to the street where I'd parked Kim's SUV. Still no sign of cops or cop cars. It looked like Heather had played it neutral for now. The cops on one side, me on the other, her story in the middle. Fine, as long as she stayed there.

I grabbed my backpack out of the rear compartment and went back to the library. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and then the stairs up to the fifth. I circled around to the elevator. Heather was there with her back to me, facing the elevator doors. Alone. No cops. Still neutral.

“Heather.”

“Shit!” She turned, her brown curls sailing, her face a snarl. “Why do you keep sneaking up on me?”

“I'm not sneaking up, Heather.” I tried a smile. “We're just taking different paths to the same place.”

“Don't get philosophical on me, Rick.” Her face loosened. “It doesn't fit the profile.”

“Yours or the police's?”

I expected a witty retort. Instead a frown tugged at Heather's mouth. “Let's go find someplace private.”

There were small study rooms along the northwest wall of the fifth floor. We found an unoccupied one just back from the corner. Heather took a step inside it, but I went to the occupied room with a window next door and paid two students twenty bucks to switch with us.

I held the door open for Heather while she came in and sat at a small table against the wall. I sat opposite her, affording me a view through one of the windows to the parking area to the west. From there, I should be able to spy on the cops, Grimes, or someone worse if they tried to sneak up on me.

“What was that all about?” Heather asked.

“I like the view.”

I pulled off my backpack and set it on the table. She did the same with her shoulder bag, then pulled out a pen, notepad, and handheld tape recorder.

I picked up the tape recorder, removed its batteries, and set it back down onto the table.

“Notes, yes. Tape recorder, no.” I kept my voice friendly, as anger bubbled in Heather's eyes. “No need for my voice on tape or my name on notes. I'm anonymous or this ends right here.”

Her eyes settled down and she studied me for a long time before she spoke. “If you're innocent, you're playing a dangerous game, Rick.”

“I am innocent.”

“Then why not turn over what you have to the police?”

“The police haven't always been fair with me.” I looked toward the parking area. All clear. “I'm hoping for better treatment from you.”

Heather studied me some more. She gave me a flat poker face, but I got the feeling she was hiding something. Something I needed to know. My antenna stayed up. That fence Heather was straddling might be leaning over to the police's side. If I pushed her on it, both feet might just fall into their camp. If I didn't push at all, she might end up there anyway. I needed to get all she was willing to give me now and move on. I'd figure out what to do with it later.

“Time to trade, Heather.”

“Okay. Let's see this ledger you told me about.”

I opened my backpack and pulled out Adam Windsor's payoff ledger and set it in front of me on the table, just out of Heather's reach.

“Windsor's Nevada Department of Corrections number first.” I pulled a pen and notepad out of my backpack that I'd picked up at a Walgreens on my way over from the bus station.

Heather rolled her eyes and then opened her notepad and read the number off to me. I wrote it down, then slid Windsor's ledger over to her. She studied it quietly for a few minutes, scribbling down a few notes. Finally, she closed the ledger and looked at me.

“There's no mention of what the dollar amounts are for, and the nicknames could apply to anyone, not just police officers. In fact, there's no mention of the police anywhere.” She pushed the ledger back at me. “This is hardly a smoking gun. If I took this to my editor, he'd put me back in the food section tomorrow.”

“You can't tell me you don't know what this is.” I slapped my hand down onto the ledger, thankful that I'd made Heather give me the NDOC number before I showed her the payoffs.

“Sure, this could be a record of payoffs made to police officers.” Her hands went up in supplication. “I just can't prove it. Neither can you.”

“You're an investigative reporter. Go investigate.” I raised my
eyebrows and my voice. “Did you even try to find information on cops nicknamed Stamp and Scarface?”

“Yes.” An angry hiss. I'd struck a nerve. Good.

“And?”

“What about this birth certificate? Did you bring that?”

“Yes, but you haven't told me everything you know about Stamp and Scarface.”

She measured me for a couple beats, let out a sigh, and then flipped back a couple pages of her notebook. “Okay. There was a cop who worked for LJPD who was nicknamed Stamp.”

“Built like a brick shithouse with a blond crew cut?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“This is where you show me yours and I show you mine.” I tapped the ledger and then learned across the table. “If this thing breaks ugly, your byline will be page one above the fold for weeks. Probably get picked up by the wire services. ‘Corruption in the Jewel by the Sea' or even better, ‘Paradise Lost.' Some bullshit like that. Maybe even get you some talking head TV time. I can help get you there, but you gotta help me too.”

“What do you get out of all this, Rick? What's your angle?”

I glanced out the window and saw a red-tailed hawk rise out of the canyon with something furry and limp in its talons.

“I stay out of jail.”

“That's it?” She cocked her head and gave me raised eyebrows. “You wouldn't get even a little satisfaction bringing down LJPD on corruption charges after they retired your father for the same offense?”

“My father's epitaph was written long ago. Nothing's going to change that. Tell me about Stamp.”

She gave me a poker face again. I gave it back.

Finally, she looked down at her notes. “Robert Heaton. Retired from LJPD years ago. Came from NYPD ten years before that. The rumor is that he used to wear a big gold ring with the initial ‘H' on it. Supposedly, suspects he arrested sometimes had bruised ‘H's
stamped on their bodies. Thus the nickname. He was quietly asked to retire from both departments. He's a PI now. Discreet Investigations of La Jolla.”

I'd been right. The head goon was the bad cop in Windsor's ledger. Stamp Heaton. I thought of my own bruises and Heaton's threats. He'd eighty-sixed the ring and the “discreet” part of his investigations when he worked on me. “Who was his partner fifteen years ago?”

I waited for her to say Tony Moretti. The Pacino-size Scarface with the cleft lip scar hidden by a mustache.

“Jerry Manley. Retired last year.”

I tried to hide my disappointment.

“What does Manley look like? Any scars on his face?”

“No.”

“Was Heaton ever partnered with Tony Moretti?” I wasn't ready to give up on my theory yet. Maybe she had the chronology screwed up.

“No. Why?” She seemed to be trying hard with the poker face again, but her eyebrows wandered upward and her eyes followed after. “Do you think Detective Moretti is somehow involved?”

I thought about telling her about the break-in, Midnight's poisoning, and the stink of Moretti's cologne on my carpet. But I held it in. The mention of Moretti's name made her tense. I thought back to the Windsor murder scene at the Shell Beach Motel and Heather's demeanor while questioning the detective. The easy familiarity between the two. Possibly more than acquaintances? Then back to the day Moretti and Coyote grilled me at the Brick House. Heather had been the only reporter who knew I was there. Her inside information had to have come from somewhere.

Moretti.

Sweat popped up on the back of my neck.

“How long have you been sleeping with Detective Moretti?”

Her face went crimson and her eyes hit the table. A denial now would have been an insult. “This was supposed to be about police corruption.”

I had too much to risk to worry about the propriety of infidelity. I needed an edge. “Does his wife know?”

The red in her face turned to anger and her eyes went tight. “Are you going to blackmail me now, Rick? Is that what this is all about?”

“I need to know if you told him about our meeting today.”

Her silence was my answer.

I grabbed the ledger, stuffed it into my backpack, and stood up.

“Rick, wait. It's not what you think—” Her cell phone donged in her bag. She pulled it out and looked at a text message. “Please, just wait. I have to make a quick call and I'll be right back.”

She left the room and closed the door behind her. I slung the backpack over my shoulder, ready to leave, then noticed Heather had left her notepad on the table. I glanced at the door and reached for the notepad when my eye caught movement on the walkway from the parking area below. A man hurried toward the library with a cell phone to his ear.

Short. Porn mustache. An attitude I could feel five stories up.

Moretti.

I grabbed Heather's notepad, tape recorder, and batteries, and shoved them into my backpack. Then I checked the window. Moretti was still visible, no longer talking on his phone. He'd make it to the entrance of the library in less than a minute and then up the elevator to the fifth floor. I bolted for the door, but it opened before my hand reached the handle. Heather stood in the doorway, phone in hand, a surprised look six inches from my face.

“I need to borrow your phone.”

“Wha—”

“Your phone.”

I grabbed it from her hand. “Thanks. Be right back.”

She stood stunned, and I scrambled away from her and punched numbers into the phone while I held my other thumb on the end button. I put the phone to my ear, pantomiming waiting for a call to connect, and circled around the center column out of Heather's view. If she thought I was coming back, it would give me a bit of extra time before Moretti went on the hunt. Even if she didn't believe I was coming back, she wouldn't have a phone to warn Moretti that I was on the lam.

I put the phone in my pocket and pushed through the door into the stairwell and hyper-hobbled down the stairs. Each step, a jolt to my swollen ankle. By the time I reached the first floor, my shirt was damp with sweat from exertion, pain, and fear. I pushed through the door, eased around a corner, and waited. Ten seconds later Moretti entered the library and made for the elevator. He got in, the door closed, and I sped out of the building.

I shuffle-gimped up the stairs and across the concrete walkway
to the parking area. Out from under the main body of the library I was exposed, hurrying to avoid human stares through spider eyes on the fifth floor.

I made it to the cover of the eucalyptus trees that separated the street from the overgrown canyon on the right. A rust-colored slick-top Crown Vic sat twenty yards in front of me. I froze, then ducked behind a tree trunk and peered into the unmarked cop car. Empty. Either Moretti had come alone or Detective Coyote was out there somewhere watching and waiting.

I hung behind the tree and scanned the street. If Coyote was stalking me, he was well hidden. I didn't have time to count every eucalyptus leaf or the sagebrush creeping up the rim of the canyon. Moretti would come bursting out of the library any second. Or call to alert his hidden partner.