Robert Crais - Chasing Darkness

Maddux smirked automatically, but Darcy was more considered.

“I don’t know, Cole. Maybe they just didn’t want their clients linked to a murder investigation. I get that. But most people are murdered by people they know. A wife gets murdered, the first person you look at is the husband. Doesn’t matter if he’s the greatest guy in the world, you look at him because that’s how it works. You clear the people who were the closest to the vic first, then work your way out. We weren’t allowed to clear Leverage.”

Maddux said, “Agazzi was close. He lived right down the hall.”

Darcy sighed, tired of hearing about Agazzi. He had probably been sighing like that for as long as they were partners.

“We know she left the dinner event alone, but we don’t know if she stopped on her way home. It’s possible she picked up someone, but I’m thinking this guy was waiting for her.”

“Because they went for a walk.”

“That’s right. If she asked some dude back to her place, they’re going inside. So I’m thinking she got home and found someone waiting. Then one or the other of them says let’s take a walk. Probably the male because he already has it in his head to kill her and wants to lead her in the right direction. There was no reason for them to walk south that time of night. Maddux and I made the walk, man. All the action is north on Melrose. I think she knew the guy, she was comfortable with him, and he led her into the kill zone.”

The corner of Maddux’s mouth curled.

“You see this woman going for a stroll with a creep like Lionel Byrd?”

I smiled.

“No, Maddux. I don’t.”

“Which means if Byrd did the deed, he stalked her or the whole thing was a chance encounter. If you buy either one, you have to buy she went for a walk that night by herself, in the bad direction with no open shops and nothing but darkness, in heels. In heels, for Chrissake. That’s bullshit.”

Darcy stared at his partner as if he was thinking it through for the thousandth time, then finally shrugged.

“That’s where we were when they pulled the plug, Cole. We believe she knew the killer. I believe she was seeing someone on the sly. If we were still on it, we’d be all over Leverage. Especially now with what you’ve told us.”

The three of us sat in their car under the elm in silence. I thought through everything and tried to put their information in some kind of usable order.

“What happened with the video?”

“Don’t know. Some task force douche picked it up before my brother-in-law could get to it.”

“Why’d they pick it up?”

Darcy shrugged.

“Don’t know.”

“What did they do with it?”

“Don’t know. We asked, but they wouldn’t tell us.”

Maddux said, “They wouldn’t tell us anything, Cole.”

Darcy checked the time, then nudged his partner’s arm.

“That’s it. Let’s take him back.”

Maddux dropped the car into gear and pulled a slow U-turn. We headed back toward the Repkos’.

Darcy still had his elbow hooked over the seat, staring at nothing. I could see the passing houses and trees crawl across his sunglasses like a film strip. It was a nice film. It looked like the American dream.

I said, “Why’d you guys bring me in?”

Maddux glanced in the rearview. Darcy came out of his film.

“The Repkos deserve to know what happened to their daughter.”

“Meaning you’ve taken the case as far as you can.”

“Man says we’re off, we’re off. You, on the other hand, can do whatever you want.”

Maddux glanced again.

“I just wanna fuck that prick Marx.”

Darcy unhooked his arm.

“That, too.”

They dropped me outside the Repkos’ home, then melted through a tunnel of dappled shade.

DARCY AND Maddux had been cut out of the loop. Poitras, Bobby McQue, and Starkey had been cut, and Chen and the criminalists had been forced to work in the dark. People who should have been collaborators with Marx and his task force had been treated as if they couldn’t be trusted. I wondered what Marx didn’t trust them with.

I sat in my car outside the Repko house, thinking about the video and why Marx pulled it before Darcy’s brother-in-law finished trying to recover whatever was recorded. LAPD had a long history of using local special-effects houses to examine and enhance film and video. If you had state-of-the-art specialists available, it made sense to use them. Marx pulling the DVD bothered me because SID was good, and if they said the DVD was junk, then it was probably junk, which was why Marx’s play didn’t make sense. If the DVD was useless, there was nothing to lose by letting a cutting-edge CGI house see what it could do and everything to gain.

I paged through my notes until I found Lindo’s number, then gave him a call. He didn’t seem as nervous as when we spoke before. Maybe because he was back to investigating bomb-kook conspiracies.

He said, “What’s up, Cole?”

“Do you know what happened to the security video of Debra Repko’s murder?”

The surprise in his voice was clear.

“There was a video?”

“One of the shopkeepers where Repko was murdered turned in a recording. How could you not know about this?”

Lindo was silent for a moment.

“Waitaminute-maybe I heard something. It was blank or something was wrong with it?”

“That’s the one. A CGI house was working on it when you guys took over.”

“Didn’t SID say it was no good?”

“The case dicks took a shot with a CGI house. Marx pulled it before the CGI people finished. I’m trying to find out what he did with it.”

“No idea, man. Like I told you, my team worked on the book. Wasn’t in the book, I don’t know about it.”

“Who worked on Repko?”

“That was Bastilla and Munson. Yeah, I’m pretty sure Munson was on it.”

Munson again.

“Who’s Munson?”

“One of the Homicide Special guys, up there with Bastilla. He and Marx go back. I think they used to work together.”

“Can you ask them what happened with the disk?”

“Uh-uh, man, no way. I’m not going there. They were the inner circle.”

“Just tell them you were wondering about it. No big deal.”

“Cole, you don’t get this at all. Those people were the people who gave us our orders, and one of our orders was to mind our own business. I ask about this DVD, they’ll wonder why. We weren’t even allowed to ask about each other’s work when we were working together.”

“I thought Marx gave the orders.”

“Our work went up to the senior supervising detectives, and they brought it to Marx. That’s why we called them the inner circle. You had to go through them to get to Marx.”

“So each team only saw its own part of the case, but the guys up top put it together.”

“It was the only way to keep so much parallel work coordinated. Look at how much we accomplished in just a week.”

“Was Crimmens part of that crew?”

“Nah. He was an add-on like me. We had a ton of people in here, man. I heard it was thirty-two people, though I couldn’t say. I never met most of them.”

I kept thinking about the DVD. It was a piece of physical evidence. Like every other piece of evidence, it would have been numbered, documented, and preserved in a chain of custody. Even if it was only a useless piece of plastic, its location and uselessness would be a matter of written record.

“Okay. Forget asking. How about you take a peek in their evidence file and tell me what it says?”

“No way. I can’t.”

“Thirty seconds and you’re gone. Just tell me what Marx did with it.”

“I physically cannot. They keep the files in an evidence room. It’s locked. We could only sign out material specific to our assignment. Since I didn’t work on Repko, I don’t have access to that material. One of the commanders would have to sign off.”