T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

Hood told Wyte about pulling her over for speeding and hearing her description of Lupercio. He silently cursed himself for failing to get the name and number of Suzanne’s alleged relative that night, then failing to get them again the very next day. Wyte listened, tapping his keyboard. Hood noticed that Wyte’s computer wasn’t a department-issue plastic one like everybody else’s but a brushed aluminum laptop that looked like it could withstand an IED. He remembered hearing that Wyte built his own computers, had built one for the sheriff himself.

“Then Lupercio must have seen the woman, just like she saw him,” said Wyte. He shook his head slowly, as if only grand stupidity on Suzanne Jones’s part could have allowed this. “And he’s after her because she’s a witness, or he thinks she is. Where is she now?”

“Her boyfriend isn’t telling.”

“Forty-eight hours in a holding cell would help.”

“I don’t think he knows.”

“Where’s the boyfriend?”

“Oceanside.”

Hood wondered again if Suzanne had seen Lupercio doing more than just sitting in his car in the vicinity of Miracle Auto Body. For instance, seen him making off with four hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds that several people knew were about to change hands. That was another pretty good motive for Lupercio to track her down, he thought. But if she’d seen something suspicious that night, why didn’t she tell him? Because she didn’t know what she was looking at? Maybe. Or maybe she knew something about the deal. Or maybe she, too, had been after the diamonds. Hood hadn’t even considered these possibilities until he’d seen Patmore’s video of Allison robbing the Taco Bell in Van Nuys. If Suzanne Jones was Allison Murrieta, things got possible. Strange things. And if she wasn’t Allison, well, then she was just a schoolteacher on her way home from seeing a relative.

“How did Lupercio find her so fast?” Hood asked.

“Maybe he followed her home.”

“No. She lives out in the country. Just a narrow dirt road the last mile to the house. She would have seen him. And he didn’t show up until the next afternoon, dressed as a fisherman and casing her property. If he’d followed her all the way to her house without being seen that night, they’d have found her body instead of the brothers.”

“I give up.”

“I don’t.”

“You shouldn’t. I was young once, too. And hungry.”

Hood didn’t like that things were fraying: Lupercio seemed to know things he shouldn’t know. Suzanne Jones didn’t look super clean anymore, but she did look like Allison Murrieta. And Allison Murrieta was just brazen enough to think she could lift diamonds from gangsters and live to tell about it, as if the underworld was just another fast-food joint and all she needed to conquer it was an attitude and a gun.

Hood thought of the way Suzanne Jones allowed him to see her in a nightshirt, and what she’d said about liking him and protecting him, and of the way she’d touched her face to his cheek and drawn breath. She had rattled and skinned him.

He began to feel the same clench in his stomach that he had lived with day and night on each of his Iraq tours. He could almost taste the antacid he’d swilled for those months-slippery and separated, crusted on the bottle neck and hot to his throat.

“Where do I find Lupercio?” he asked.

Wyte nodded toward his office window. “After the murders we looked under every rock in L.A. We never laid eyes on him. I suspect he found a woman to take him in and hide him. I suspect he’s no longer living in this city.”

“He finds Suzanne Jones easy enough,” said Hood. “Maybe we can use that.”

“Can you get her to cooperate?”

“I’m not sure I can get her at all.”

Hood silently reviewed his clues: a cell phone number she might or might not answer, an empty home, a boyfriend unable or unwilling to give up her whereabouts, a job she wouldn’t need to report to for another few weeks, three callers who had left her messages on the home phone after she’d taken off with her family early that morning.

“She’ll have to be damned well behaved if we’re going to try that,” said Wyte.

Hood tried to think it through. He stared across the desk at Wyte and saw some locomotion behind his blue eyes. Wyte was large and well built but somehow unstable at the same time. The helicopter crash had killed the pilot. Wyte’s expression now went optimistic and eager, and Hood wondered if Wyte missed the action.

“Listen,” said Wyte. “You might have some luck with this. Bait and wait-we did it in gangs all the time. You keep it small. You stay patient. It could work, Hood. Dangle Jones, then wait and watch.”

“Like a goat on a stake,” said Hood.

“But you’d have spotters, listeners, SWAT if you can get them, and someone close to her. You, Hood-you can hold her hand, calm her down.”

Hood didn’t imagine that.

“I can help,” said Wyte. “I’ll show you what I know.”

Hood nodded.

“But you’ll have to find her first,” said Wyte. “Keep her alive until we can set up. It can take a little time.”

“I’ll find her.”

“Let me know when you do. When she’s onboard I’ll talk to Marlon.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wyte sat back. “Hood, if Lupercio saw her at or near Miracle, he’ll kill her. You should be very aware of that. He’s never let people interfere with him. It’s why he’s alive and a dozen men he used to work with aren’t.”

Hood went out to the lunch truck and got an orange soda and stood in the shade of the headquarters building. His undershirt was stuck to his back and he felt a trickle of sweat behind each ear.

He called the number Ernest had given him and Suzanne Jones answered on the first ring.

“It’s Deputy Hood.”

“Who is that son of a bitch?”

“Lupercio Maygar. Former Mara Salvatrucha. You’re in danger.”

Suzanne Jones said nothing for a moment.

“Where are you?” asked Hood.

“Laguna.”

“A public place?”

“A hotel room.”

“Can you get to that lifeguard station by the boardwalk without having to drive your car?”

“I can walk to it.”

“Meet me there at three. Stay with the beach crowds.”

“This place is one big crowd.”

Hood spotted her sitting on a bench near the lifeguard station. She wore a Raiders cap and big reflective sunglasses, and had a pink mesh tote at her feet.

He was sweltering inside his Target sport coat but it hid his gun. His chinos were a thick winter-weight cotton and his work boots were suede, steel-toed and heavy.

“You look comfortable,” she said with pleasant sarcasm.

“It’s the best I do on an average day,” he said.

They headed north up the boardwalk. The air here in Laguna was cooler than L.A. by twenty degrees and he liked the smell of salt water and sunscreen. The gulls keened and the boom boxes throbbed away down on the beach. The ocean quivered silver and green, and the children screamed and splashed in the small, firm waves.

“He wants what you have, Ms. Jones.” He watched for her reaction to his suggestive words but saw none.

“He wants me dead. Because I saw him.”

“Maybe he’s after something more than your life.”

“What’s worth more than my life if I’m dead?”

“Did you see him again that night? Apart from the three times you told me about?”

She looked at him briefly. “No, I did not.”

“Did you see him take anything from Miracle Auto Body?”

“Take? I was never in that place, Hood.”

“Because if you were and if you saw something you’re not telling me-”