Robert Crais - The Two Minute Rule

“A multiple felon and gang member and you didn’t think it worth mentioning?”

“Katherine-?”

“What are you doing, Holman?”

“Nothing-”

“Don’t call me again.”

The line was dead.

Holman hit the speed-dial, but her voice mail picked up. She had turned off the phone. He spoke as fast as he could.

“Katherine, listen, what should I have said? Chee’s my friend-that’s Gary’s nickname, Chee-and yes he’s a convicted felon, but so am I. I was a criminal all my life; the only people I know are criminals.”

Her voice mail beeped, cutting him off. Holman cursed and hit the speed-dial again.

“Now he’s straight just like I’m trying to be straight and he’s my friend so I went to him for help. I don’t know anyone else. I don’t have anyone else. Katherine, please call back. I need you. I need your help to get through this. Agent Pollard, please-”

Her voice mail beeped again, but this time Holman lowered his phone. He sat in the parking lot, waiting. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know where she lived or how to reach her except through her phone. She had kept it that way to protect herself. Holman sat in his car, feeling alone the way he had been alone on his first night in jail. He wanted to reach out to her, but Agent Pollard had turned off her phone.

POLLARD’S MOTHER called at dinnertime. That’s the way they had been working it. Her mother would meet the boys when they were brought home from camp, then bring them to her condo in Canyon Country where the boys could play by the pool while her mother played online poker. Texas Hold’em.

Pollard, knowing it would be awful and steeling herself for the pain, said, “Could they camp out with you tonight?”

“Katie, do you have a man there?”

“I’m really tired, Mom. I’m just beat, that’s all. I need the break.”

“Why are you tired? You’re not sick, are you?”

“Could they stay?”

“You didn’t catch anything, did you? Did you catch something from some man? You need a husband but there’s no reason to become a slut.”

Pollard lowered the phone and stared at it. She could hear her mother still talking, but couldn’t understand the words.

“Mom?”

“What?”

“Could they stay?”

“I guess it would be all right, but what about camp? They’ll be heartbroken if they miss their camp.”

“Missing one day won’t kill them. They hate camp.”

“I don’t understand a mother who needs a break from her children. I never needed a break from you or wanted one.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Pollard put down the phone and stared at the clock over her sink. She was in the kitchen. The house was quiet again. She watched the second hand sweep and waited for the tock.

TOCK.

Like a gunshot.

Pollard got up and went back into the living room, wondering if Leeds was right. She had felt a kind of admiration for Holman both back in the day and now, for how he went down and how he had brought himself back. And she had felt a kind of attraction, too. Pollard didn’t like admitting to the attraction. It made her feel stupid. Maybe she had gone Indian without even knowing it. Maybe that’s the way going Indian happened. Maybe it snuck up on you when you weren’t looking and took over before you knew.

Pollard stared at the papers on the couch and felt disgusted with herself. Her Holman file.

She said, “Jesus Christ.”

Sixteen million dollars was a fortune. It was buried treasure, a winning lotto ticket, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was the Lost Dutchman Mine and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Holman had robbed nine banks for a total score of less than forty thousand. He had pulled ten years and come out with nothing, so why wouldn’t he want the money? Pollard wanted the money. She had dreamed about it, seeing herself in the dream, opening a shitty garage door in a shitty neighborhood, everything covered in grime; pushing up the door and finding the money, a great huge vacuum-packed block of it, sixteen million dollars. She would be set up for life. The boys would be set. Their kids would be set. Her problems would be solved.

Pollard, of course, would not steal it. Keeping the money was just a fantasy. Like finding Prince Charming.

But Holman was a lifelong degenerate criminal who had stolen cars, ripped off warehouses, and robbed nine banks-he probably wouldn’t think twice about stealing the money.

The phone rang. Her house phone, not the cell.

Pollard’s gut clenched because she was sure it was her mother. The boys had probably bitched about staying over, and now her mother was calling to lay on both barrels of guilt.

Pollard returned to the kitchen. She didn’t want to answer, but she did. She was already guilty enough.

April Sanders said, “Are you really helping out the Hero?”

Pollard closed her eyes and shouldered a fresh load of guilt.

“I am so sorry, April. Are you in trouble?”

“Oh, fuck Leeds. Is it true about the Hero?”

Pollard sighed.

“Yes.”

“Are you fucking him?”

“No! How could you even ask a question like that?”

“I’d fuck him.”

“April, shut up!”

“I wouldn’t marry him, but I’d fuck him.”

“April-”

“I found Alison Whitt.”

“Are you still going to help me?”

“Of course I’m going to help you, Pollard. Give a sista some credit.”

Pollard reached for a pen.

“Okay, April. I owe you, girl. Where is she?”

“The morgue.”

Pollard froze with her pen in the air as April’s voice turned somber and professional.

“What have you gotten yourself into, Pollard? Why are you looking for a dead girl?”

“She was Marchenko’s girlfriend.”

“Marchenko didn’t have a girlfriend.”

“He saw her on multiple occasions. Marchenko’s mother spoke with her at least twice.”

“Bill and I ran his phone logs, Kat. If we had ID’d a potential girlfriend on the callbacks we would have followed up on her.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe he never phoned her at home or maybe he only called her from his mother’s.”

Sanders hesitated and Pollard knew she was thinking about it.

Sanders said, “Whatever. The sheet shows a couple of busts for prostitution, shoplifting, drugs-the usual. She was just a kid-twenty-two years old-and now she’s been killed.”

Pollard felt the blood tingle again.

“She was murdered?”

“The body was found in a Dumpster off Yucca in Hollywood. Ligature marks on the neck indicate strangulation, but the cause of death was cardiac arrest brought on by blood loss. She was stabbed twelve times in the chest and abdomen. Yeah, I’d call that murder.”

“Was there an arrest?”

“Nope.”

“When was she killed?”

“The same night Holman’s son was killed.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Pollard was thinking of Maria Juarez. She wondered if Maria Juarez would turn up dead, too. Finally, Sanders asked the question.

“Kat? Do you know what happened to this girl?”

“No.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“Yes, I would tell you. Of course I would.”

“Okay.”

“What was the time of death?”

“Between eleven and eleven-thirty that night.”

Pollard hesitated, unsure what this might mean or how much she should say, but she owed April the truth.

“Mike Fowler knew her or knew of her. Do you recognize Fowler’s name?”

“No, who’s that?”

“One of the officers killed with Richard Holman that night. He was the senior officer.”

Pollard knew Sanders was taking notes. Everything she now said would be part of Sanders’ records.