Robert Crais - The Two Minute Rule

“How’s your friend Gary Moreno-L’Chee?”

“I haven’t seen him in years. Maybe I’ll look him up.”

Random tossed Holman’s wallet and rental papers into the Highlander.

“You’re fucking me up, Holman, and I cannot tolerate that and will not allow it. I will not allow it for the four men who died. And I will not allow it for their families in which, as we all know, you are not included.”

“Can I go now?”

“You claim you want answers, but you have made it harder for me to find those answers, and I take that personally.”

“I thought you knew the answers.”

“Most of the answers, Holman. Most. But now because of you an important door just closed in my face and I don’t know if I’ll be able to open it again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maria Juarez disappeared. She split, man. She could have told us how Warren put it together, but now she’s gone and that one is on you. So if you feel like undercutting me with your daughter-in-law again, you get the urge to make these families doubt what we’re doing and keep their grief fresh, you explain to them how you delayed the case by being an asshole. Are we clear?”

Holman did not respond.

“Don’t try my patience, boy. This isn’t a fucking game.”

Random went back to his car. Vukovich and the other guy vanished. The grey car pulled away. The three kids on the sidewalk were gone. Holman climbed back into the Highlander and picked up his phone. He listened, but the line was dead. He got out again, went around to the passenger side, and felt under the seat. He checked the floorboards and glove box and panel pocket in the door, then checked the rear floors and back seats, too, worried that they had planted something in his car.

Holman didn’t believe Random’s false concern for the families or even that Random believed he was looking to score. Holman had been fronted and leaned on by a hundred cops, and he sensed something deeper was at play. Random wanted him out of the way, but Holman didn’t know why.

POLLARD WAS ON her way downtown to check out the crime scene. She had picked up the Hollywood Freeway and dropped down into the belly of the city when April Sanders called.

Sanders said, “Hey. You get the faxes okay?”

“I was going to call you to say thanks, girl. You really came through.”

“Hope you still think so after I tell you the rest. LAPD froze me out. I can’t get their file.”

“You’re kidding! They must have something in play.”

Pollard was surprised. The Feeb’s Bank Squad and the LAPD’s Bank Robbery team worked together so often on the same cases they shared information freely.

April said, “I don’t know why they wouldn’t come across. I asked the putz-you remember George Hines?”

“No.”

“Probably came on after you left. Anyway, I said, what gives with that, I thought we were butt buddies, what happened to agency cooperation?”

“What did he say?”

“He said they didn’t have the case anymore.”

“How could they not have the case anymore? They’re the Robbery bank team.”

“What I said. After they closed the file someone upstairs pulled the whole damned thing. I’m like, who upstairs, the chief, God? He said it wasn’t their case anymore and that’s all he could tell me.”

“How could it not be Robbery’s case? It was a robbery.”

“If those guys knew what they were doing they would be us, not them. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Pollard drove for a few seconds, thinking.

“But he said the case was closed?”

“Those were his words. Shit-gotta run. Leeds-”

The line went dead in Pollard’s ear. If LAPD had closed the book on Marchenko and Parsons, it increased the odds that Richard Holman had been involved with Fowler and the others in something off the books. It was bad news for Holman, but Pollard already had bad news to share-April’s witness list had included the names and numbers of thirty-two people who had been interviewed by the FBI in the matter of Marchenko and Parsons. Marchenko’s mother, Leyla, had been among them. Pollard had checked the thirty-two telephone numbers against the outgoing numbers appearing on both Richard Holman’s and Mike Fowler’s phone records and come up with a hit. Fowler had phoned Marchenko’s mother twice. It was highly unlikely that a uniformed field supervisor would have a legitimate reason to contact a witness, so Pollard now felt sure Fowler had been conducting some kind of rogue investigation. Fowler’s contact indicated Holman’s son was almost certainly involved in something inappropriate or illegal. Pollard didn’t look forward to telling Holman. She found his need to believe in his son moving.

Pollard dropped off the Hollywood Freeway at Alameda, then cruised south down Alameda parallel with the river. When she reached Fourth Street, she used the Fourth Street Bridge to cross over to the eastern side of the river. The east side was thick with warehouses and train yards and congested with eighteen-wheel cargo trucks. Pollard had been to the river only twice before, once as part of a task force targeting the importation of Iranian drugs and the other as part of a task force tracking a pedophile who brought children from Mexico and Thailand. Pollard had arrived on the scene in the drug case after the body had already been found, but she hadn’t been so lucky in the pedophile case. Pollard had discovered the bodies of three small children in a container car, one boy and two girls, and she had not slept after that for weeks. It wasn’t lost on Pollard that here she was again, drawn back to the river by death. The Los Angeles River left her feeling creeped out and queasy. Maybe more now because she knew she might break the law.

Pollard was a cop; even though she had left the Feeb eight years ago, she still felt like part of the law enforcement community. She had married a cop, most of her friends were cops, and, like almost every cop she knew, she didn’t want to get in trouble with other cops. The L.A. River was a restricted area. Jumping the fence to check out the crime scene would be a misdemeanor offense, but Pollard knew she had to see if Holman’s description held up. She had to see for herself.

Pollard drove along Mission Road, following the fence past trucks and workmen until she found the service gate. She parked beside the fence, locked her car, then went to the gate. A dry breeze came out of the east that smelled of kerosene. Pollard was wearing jeans and Nikes and had a pair of Marty’s work gloves in case she had to climb. The gate was locked and had been secured with a secondary chain, which she had expected. She also expected that security patrols along the gates had been increased, but so far she hadn’t seen anyone. Pollard had hoped she could see the scene well enough from above, but as soon as she reached the gate she knew she would have to climb.

The riverbed was a wide concrete plain cut by a trough and bordered by paved banks that were crowned with fences and barbed wire. She could see the Fourth Street Bridge from the gate, but not well enough to envision the crime scene in her head. Cars crossed the bridge in both directions and pedestrians moved on the sidewalks. The bright morning sun painted a sharp shadow beneath the bridge, cutting across the river. Pollard thought everything about the scene was ugly and industrial-the nasty concrete channel with its lack of life; the muddy trickle of water that looked like a sewer; the weeds sprouting hopelessly from cracks in the concrete. It looked like a bad place to die, and an even worse place for an ex-FBI agent to be arrested for unauthorized entry.

Pollard was pulling on her gloves when a white pickup truck drove out from one of the loading docks and beeped its horn. Pollard thought it was a security patrol, but when the truck drew close she saw it belonged to one of the shipping companies. The driver braked to a stop by the gate. He was a middle-aged man with short grey hair and a fleshy neck.