Robert Crais - The Watchman

Chen lived in an absolute agony of nerves until Harriet left and his chance to corner the firearms analyst appeared. Now, all he had to do was convince her to let him have the Eagle Rock evidence, and he could finally get Pike off his back.

Chen had come prepared.

The duty analyst that day was a tall, thin woman with close-set eyes and yellow teeth named Christine LaMolla. Chen was convinced she was a lesbian.

John crept down the hall, made sure no one was coming, then pressed the buzzer. Being filled with guns, the gun room was kept locked. He heard the lock click, pushed open the door, and entered.

LaMolla turned from her computer and peered at the coffee, smile-less. Lesbians never smiled.

Chen held out the cup. He had raced out to the nearest Starbucks and bought their largest mocha. Even lesbians liked chocolate.

Chen gave her his toothiest smile.

“For you.”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

Chen tried to smile enough for both of them.

“I know you work late. I thought you might need it.”

LaMolla glanced at the cup again as if she thought it was laced with acid. John had once asked her out, but she turned him down flat. Lesbian.

Now she eyeballed Chen with equal suspicion. She still hadn’t touched the coffee.

“What do you want, John?”

“You know the shootings we had in Eagle Rock? I need to see the guns.”

Mr. Nonchalant. Mr. Just Another Day at the Office.

Her eyes narrowed even more.

“You didn’t cover the Eagle Rock case.”

“Nah, but something came up in one of my old Inglewood cases. I think they might be connected.”

LaMolla peered at him even harder, then took the coffee. She smelled it, but didn’t taste, then went to the door. She locked it, then leaned with her back to the door, blocking his exit.

John got an unexpected, more-than-a-little-hopeful notion that maybe she wasn’t a lesbian after all; that maybe his luck in all things was about to forever change, and he smiled even wider-

– but then she dropped the mocha into a trash can.

She said, “What the fuck is going on?”

Chen didn’t know what to say, and wasn’t even sure what she meant.

“What do you mean, what’s going on?”

“Eagle Rock.”

Her beady eyes made her look like a bird of prey. Chen was confused. He tried to cover it by looking, well, confused.

“Yeah, Eagle Rock. I gotta see the guns, Chris. No biggie.”

She studied him, and Chen felt himself squirm. He knew if she kept it up much longer his nervous twitch would fire up like a chain saw. He shrugged, and did his best to look innocent.

“Hey, all I wanna do is see the guns. What’s going on?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“Whattaya mean, you wanna know? Jesus Christ, you gonna let me see the guns or not?”

She slowly shook her head.

“The feds took them.”

Chen blinked.

“The feds?”

“Mmm. The three semi’s and the wheel gun bagged in Eagle Rock. Here’s what’s really weird. They took the wheel gun last night-a.357 Colt Python. But then they came back this afternoon for the semi’s.”

Chen saw his chances for a Carrera upgrade circling the drain. Visions of his lost opportunity with Ronda flashed like lightning at the edge of his horizon. But mostly he imagined Joe Pike beating his ass. Pike wasn’t a man you let down. Pike would get even.

Chen blurted, “But that was LAPD evidence! The feds can’t just take our stuff. That’s our stuff!”

“They can when Parker tells us to let them have it.”

“ Parker Center gave them permission?”

LaMolla slowly nodded, still watching him with tiny eyes.

“All I know is, Harriet got the call, and she wouldn’t tell me anything about it, John. She said the sixth floor says let’m have what they want-”

The sixth floor of Parker Center was the power floor-the realm of the Assistant Chiefs.

“-so we did. They took the guns.”

John was frantic. His mind was racing for some angle or explanation that might appease Joe Pike when a desperate idea came to him.

“What about the shell casings? Did they take the casings?”

Spent casings would have been gathered at the scene, and like the guns, they could be compared and analyzed.

But Christine was shaking her head, her eyes boring into him now as if searching him.

“They took everything. Even the casings.”

Chen wondered why she was looking at him that way, and then he felt a last dismal shred of hope.

“Chris-you didn’t, you know, keep one of the casings, did you?”

She slowly sighed.

“I kept two, but they went through the evidence list. They checked off every item we recovered, so I had to give them up. But you know what was really weird?”

Chen shook his head.

“They wouldn’t sign an evidence receipt.”

Any time evidence was transferred or moved between departments or agencies, a receipt and an acceptance of possession had to be signed. It was standard operating procedure. This ensured that the chain of evidence remained intact. This prevented evidence tampering. This prevented evidence from being lost. Or stolen.

Chen said, “But they had to.”

LaMolla simply stared at him.

“No, John, they didn’t. And now here you come, wanting those same guns. And the casings. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

LaMolla, who clearly didn’t believe him, said, “Mmm.”

Pike had hinted at some kind of conspiracy, but Chen figured he was talking about a couple of crooked cops. Now it looked like the feds and Parker Center were involved, and no one seemed to know why, or what they were doing, even though they were doing things that no legitimate police agency would do. The chain of evidence was sacrosanct, and now the evidence was gone.

John Chen grew afraid; afraid in a way to which his earlier, over-wrought, overly melodramatic fear could not compare.

No Carrera was worth this. No job in TV as a technical advisor, or even the smokin’ hot ’tang that would follow.

John Chen suddenly felt trapped; caught in a claustrophobic nightmare between a homicidal maniac (Pike), the federal government (rife with known assassins), and the shadowy powers within Parker Center (still hiding the truth about the Black Dahlia killer), none of whom could be trusted, and any of which might snuff his life and career without hesitation. Chen’s hands trembled. The tic beneath his left eye sputtered like a fire raging to life as he saw his future unfolding: LaMolla telling Harriet he had asked about the guns, Harriet ratting to Parker Center; Chen suddenly at the center of an investigation. Or worse.

Chen tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. He worked up some spit.

“You’re not-listen, Chris, you’re not going to tell-well, I mean, Harriet doesn’t need to-”

LaMolla, still considering him with her calm, predatory eyes, uncrossed her arms and spread her hands wide like Moses parting the waters.

“This is the gun room. This room is mine. These guns are mine. The evidence here? This is my evidence. I don’t like someone taking it. I don’t like you knowing something about it that I don’t.”

She lowered her arms and stepped away from the door.

“Get out of here, John. Don’t come back without something to tell me.”

Chen stepped quickly past her and fled down the hall. He ran directly to his car, jumped in, and locked the doors. He started the engine but sat with his hands clenched in his lap, shaking and terrified. Danger was everywhere, just like when he was the tall geeky kid other kids picked on. Destruction might come from any direction. Just like when he was a child-just walking, man; maybe going to his locker or crossing the parking lot, and someone would bean him with a clod of dirt. Hit him just like that, out of nowhere, bang, right in the head, and he never even saw it coming. But it always came. Always.