Т Паркер - The Fallen

Harris was short of breath. “I know that sounds like bragging, Detective. It is.”

And sure enough, the orange rectangles of pride wavered in the air between us, then dissolved.

“Will you run an HTA on Garrett Asplundh for us?” I asked.

Harris looked at me but said nothing.

“Maybe he already has,” said McKenzie. She smiled, a rarity.

Harris went to his desk and opened a drawer. He returned with a manila folder and handed it to McKenzie. “Yesterday, after I heard what had happened, I ran an HTA on Garrett. It’s hard to get a lot on law-enforcement professionals because their employers have been playing this game for years. But the deeper background comes out. So Garrett was kind of skimpy by HTA standards. It came to one hundred and eighty pages of intelligence, all in this envelope. I included a CD for you also. I read it last night and saw nothing in there that might pertain to his murder. But I’m out of my element in that world. Your world. It may contain something you can use.”

“Thank you,” said McKenzie. “We appreciate it.”

“Garrett wanted an HTA program for the Ethics Authority?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Harris. “But they can’t afford it. I explained to him that I could create the system, install it, train the users, and update it for two years for four hundred thousand dollars. Garrett’s budget for system upgrades was eighty thousand. He told me I should offer my services at cost to help protect this city that had brought me such prosperity. I agreed, which is exactly what the four hundred thousand was — my cost.”

“How did Asplundh take that news?” asked McKenzie.

“I never knew with Garrett. I could never read him. I could tell he was preoccupied that afternoon. He wasn’t all here. Usually with him there was this focus, this intensity. When I saw him in this office... no... his attention was somewhere else.”

“Did he say anything about that, about being distracted?” asked McKenzie.

Harris shook his head. Then he looked at each of us.

“What time did he leave here?” I asked.

“It was five-fifty.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Black two-button suit, white shirt, gold tie. Hand-stitched brogues. Nice clothes.”

“The tie was gold?” I asked.

“Gold silk.”

Not blue. Not soaked in his own blood.

Harris looked down at his watch, sighed, stood. “I’m sorry. I’m out of time for this now. Maybe something in that HTA book will lead you in the right direction.”

“How fast is the Enzo?” asked McKenzie.

“Top speed is two-seventeen, it goes zero to sixty in three point six-five seconds and ripples your face in first.”

“Did you drive it Tuesday night?”

He looked at her, smiled. “I drove it home to Carlsbad around six. I took it out again to get drive-through with my son at about six-forty. He’s five. We were home with our burgers by seven. Reading in bed by eight. I didn’t drive the Enzo again until morning. I’ll let him vouch for me if you’d like.”

“That’s not necessary right now,” said McKenzie. “Does it feel odd driving a six-hundred-thousand-dollar car into a drive-through?”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “Yes. And it’s a long reach up to the window, too.”

Out in the parking lot she ogled the car. I must admit it was a beautiful machine. My dream car has always been a Shelby Cobra. Gina bought me a day at an expensive driving school in Arizona for my birthday one year. I listened to a lecture, then spent the rest of the day with an instructor in a souped-up stock car that hit 160 on the straights. Speed is marvelous, though I’m less enthused about it since my fall. It seems ungrateful to risk your life for a medium-size pleasure. That night at dinner Gina presented me with a small Shelby Cobra model that I still keep in a place of honor on my fly-tying table.

Before getting into the Chevy I tried CAM again and got an answer.

“Carrie Ann Martier’s office.”

“Robbie Brownlaw, San Diego Homicide.”

“Please hold.”

It was a woman’s voice. She sounded assured and professional. I walked away from the car and waited almost a full minute. McKenzie eyed me from across the lot.

“Mr. Brown?”

“Brownlaw.”

“Yes? How can we help you?”

“I want to talk to Carrie Ann Martier about Garrett Asplundh.”

“I’m Carrie Ann Martier. But I’m not sure that I can help you.”

“I don’t need your help. Garrett does.”

There was a long silence. “Okay.”

“How about tonight at six-thirty, the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier,” I said. “I’ll wear a Chargers cap.”

“Spell your name and give me your badge number.”

I did both.

“Be alone,” she said.

“Okay.”

Silence, then she hung up.

The fog rolled in around six as I drove toward Imperial Beach. To the west I saw the Silver Strand State Park campground, where not long ago a seven-year-old girl was taken by her kidnapper. Later he killed her. Her name was Danielle. I thought of her every time I made this drive, and probably will for the rest of my life. A lot of people will. I was thrown from the Las Palmas about three weeks after her body was found.

I didn’t need the Chargers cap. I stood alone at the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier and watched the waves roll in and the lights of the city coming on in the twilight. A public sculpture of acrylic surfboards glowed faintly in the fog. Imperial Beach is the southernmost city on our coast. You can see Mexico right across the Tijuana River. In some odd way, you can sense an end of things here, the end of a state and a nation and the Bill of Rights and a way of living. Then you think of Danielle and wonder if it all means what you thought it did.

Six-thirty came and went. I called Gina again and we talked for a few minutes. She said she felt bad about last night and I said I was sorry about breaking our date for tonight. Funny how two people can live together, have no children, but have so little time together. Sometimes it seems like I hardly see Gina. I’m not so sure she misses my company the way I miss hers, but then I don’t know how she could.

I retrieved a message from Samuel Asplundh, Garrett’s older brother and next of kin, who was due to arrive in San Diego this evening.

I retrieved a message from Patrol Captain Evers saying that they had collected three more witnesses who had seen a car parked off to the side of Highway 163 the night Garrett was killed. All said the car was red. One said it was a sports car, like a Mustang or maybe a Corvette. Another thought he saw a man loitering in the bushes nearby, which is what Retired Navy had told us early that morning.

Next I returned a call from Eddie Waimrin, our Egyptian-born patrol sergeant. He told me that the accent on the taped call to headquarters was probably Saudi. He said the speaker was almost certainly foreign-born. I asked him to put out feelers for Saudi men who drove red Ferraris, on the not-so-off chance that the caller was Mr. Red Ferrari himself.

“I know one for sure,” he said. “Sanji Moussaraf, a student here at State. Big oil family in Saudi Arabia. Big, big dollars. Popular kid. I’ve got his numbers for you.”

“Maybe you should talk to him first,” I said.

Three of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were living here when the doomed jets took off. One of the hijackers had inquired about attending a flight school here. Several of the first arrests in connection with that attack were made right here in San Diego — two of the arrested men were held for nearly three years before being deported in 2004. There was some local trouble right after the suicide attacks, too — spray-painted insults on a local mosque, curses shouted at people who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, vandalism at restaurants and businesses, some very intense police questionings in the days and weeks that followed.