Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

It had a head-high window of one-way glass in the door so they could look in but she couldn’t look out. A knee-high bunk was bolted to the floor, with an inch-thick mattress and a single thin gray blanket. A sink and toilet were built into the wall facing it. In one upper corner of the room was a camera lens: they could be taping her even when she went to the bathroom. They fed her at irregular intervals. Bland institutional food.

The interrogations, in a room down the hall with a table and two chairs and the ubiquitous camera behind one-way glass, were always the same. How long had she and Corwin traveled together? What had they done? Where had they gone? She told them only what she was sure they had already learned elsewhere.

Only Hatfield asked what Corwin might have told her. And about Thorne. To him, her replies were unvarying: Corwin had told her nothing. She had never heard of anyone named Thorne.

‘We have recovered your 4-Runner.’

‘I owned it free and clear. I had the right to trade it for a motorcycle if I wanted to.’

‘Not a STOLEN motorcycle,’ Hatfield said in nasty triumph.

And she knew how they had found her. Fat-Arms LeDoux.

Sammy buttonholed Hatfield outside the interrogation room, where he obviously had been waiting. A company man, unlike Terrill. A bureaucrat. Afraid to bend the rules when they needed bending.

‘Ah, Terrill, we’ve gotten whatever we’re going to get from her. What do you want me to do with her?’

‘Let her rot,’ Hatfield said.

‘I read the transcript of LeDoux’s statement. She was driving a hot Suzuki thumper she didn’t know was hot.’

‘Lighten up, Sammy.’ God, what a pussy! Hatfield clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’re the good guys. Don’t you want to be Assistant Director?’

Sammy sighed. ‘Has the D.A. up in Lodi sprung LeDoux yet?’

‘LeDoux is slime. Let them bury him forever.’

Watching Hatfield strut away down the corridor, Sammy Spaulding saw his old pal in a new light. This wasn’t why he had become an FBI agent. He wanted to catch the bad guys. He didn’t see any bad guy in this scenario. Only a lone, scared woman.

But... Assistant Director. It could be his. With the President behind him, Terrill was going to become Director. He would take Sammy with him up the ladder.

Unless Terrill came up against someone who was even tougher and more driven than he was. Little chance of that.

‘Only Superman can stop a train with his bare hands,’ chuckled Walter Houghton, M.D. ‘Take off your clothes.’

They were in one of the medical examination rooms at Houghton’s office. Thorne said, ‘I’m not that kind of guy. And I didn’t come here for a physical.’

‘You’re getting one. Get naked, my man.’

Thorne stripped. Slowly and carefully. Houghton gave him a routine physical: took his blood pressure and pulse, peered into his eyes with a bright light, hit his knees with a rubber hammer, held a stethoscope to first his back, then his chest, while having Thorne breathe deep. His strong, delicate fingers poked and prodded, getting grunts and one yelp. He re-dressed the gunshot wound, retaped the ribs.

‘Any advice?’ asked Thorne.

‘Eat more.’

‘Thanks for the check-up, but I didn’t come for medical reasons.’

Houghton, watching him get dressed, asked, ‘Then why?’

‘You told me Janet Kestrel was raped, but there was no oral, anal, or vaginal penetration. So what’s the evidence of sexual assault as opposed to just a beating?’

‘Oh, the assault was sexual, believe me. Punching and kicking her gave the assailant an erection, so when he was finished he could manually ejaculate on her face and body.’

Thorne nodded. ‘And if someone sent you a semen sample, could you match its DNA with that of Janet’s attacker?’

‘Of course.’

‘Hold that thought,’ said Thorne.

Houghton sighed theatrically. ‘Enigmatic to the very end.’

Thorne rode a series of city buses way out Sepulveda into the Valley, looking for just the right setup. Finally, in the back of a mall parking lot in Mission Hills, he spotted a beat-up 1998 Isuzu Trooper LS with a FOR SALE, $850 sign in the driver’s window and a phone number written in soluble paint on the door.

The paint was peeling, the trim around the left headlight was gone, the front bumper was mashed down on the left side. But the rubber was good, a like-new spare was mounted on the back, and scrawled on the FOR SALE sign was ‘153,411 mi, runs great, power windows and steering and door locks, full tank of gas’.

He was reminded of his ancient Land-Rover, back in Tsavo. He shook off the memory, and called the number. When he asked about the Trooper, a squeaky-voiced teenage girl exclaimed, ‘Matt’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t go ’way!’

Matt was a community college student, thin and earnest and eager to make a sale. Thorne took the Trooper around the parking lot and out into the hustle-bustle of Sepulveda, with Matt beside him, stopped back in the lot with the motor running.

‘Seven-fifty. Right now. Cash.’

Twenty minutes later, Thorne was on the 405 north to its merger with 1–5 in the Trooper, the signed pink slip over the visor. Whenever he stopped for gas, he bought candy bars and corn chips. Seven hours later he checked into the Microtec Inn and Suites at the cloverleaf where east-west 12 intersected north-south 1–5. He ate everything in sight at Rocky’s across the interchange. Back in his room he left a message for Deputy Escobar at the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department. No name: just a phone number, room number, and two words: CALL ME.

Escobar called back within a half hour. Thorne said:

‘Lunch is on me tomorrow, same time, same place.’

Escobar took just a moment to place the voice. Then he said, ‘Check,’ and hung up.

Thorne went to bed and slept hard, without nightmares.

‘Déjà vu all over again,’ said Thorne when Escobar entered the Sunset Bar and Grill at the Tower Park Marina off California 12. The deputy did indeed look exactly the same, right down to the miniature purple heart and mid-East service bar pinned above the ESCOBAR nametag on his impeccable tan Sheriff’s uniform. He chuckled at Thorne across the table.

‘Not you. You look like you need to swear out an ag-assault complaint against somebody.’

The place was crowded with tourists and day-sailors. A blonde waitress came to take their order. Cheeseburgers, fries.

‘You ought to see the other guy,’ said Thorne. ‘That’s not the best part of it. Now the Feebs are looking for me as hard as they were looking for your perp last time around. You can win a promotion by turning me in.’

A grin softened Escobar’s features. ‘I knew that relationship wouldn’t last.’ He turned his coffee cup idly. ‘I saw by the TV that Jaeger ate a bullet for the President up in Montana. You know anything about that?’

‘Yeah, a lot. Listen, you told me you took fluid, blood and tissue samples at the crime scene here in the Delta — including semen samples from Nisa’s body, right?’

‘Right. And the Feebs threw me off my own case and then stonewalled the evidence. No DNA results, no autopsy results, no tox screens. Never told me if the Magnum was the murder weapon, or even who it was registered to. So I forgot to tell them about my samples. I’ve got nothing to compare ’em with anyway.’

‘The Magnum was Damon Mather’s.’ Escobar’s eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘Yeah, intriguing, isn’t it? And here’s something else. Back in November, a doctor down in LA had a rape victim who was connected with this case. Intimately. Her attacker ejaculated on her face and body after beating the shit out of her. And the doc’s got the perp’s semen samples.’