Fire with Fire, page 11
“The hostages are staying right where they are,” Ryan said. “Until you find our daughter.”
“I understand that you’re—”
“What are you doing right now to find Tilly?” Ryan demanded.
Saskia licked her lips. They felt raw.
“Tilly’s case is a very complex one,” Saskia said. “It’s also old. That’s the truth. Two years is a lifetime in a criminal investigation. Even if we were to reopen the case, it would be incredibly difficult to make any kind of headway on it in the time you’ve allowed us.”
“So you’re doing nothing?” Elsie’s voice came down the line, as hard and unforgiving as her husband’s. “You’re kidding me, right? You’ve got three people here who need you to do what we’re asking or they’re going to die. And you’ve got victims and their family members who need you to bite the bullet and admit that you were wrong about Tilly, or their own cases will go up in smoke.”
“Elsie—” Saskia said.
“The first case we chose was a bank robbery,” Elsie said. “The next case will be something a lot more serious, trust me.”
“How the hell did they get that list?” Curler murmured to himself. Saskia glanced at him. “How do they know which cases are which?”
“Listen, Ryan, Elsie—my priority is those hostages,” Saskia said, iciness slipping into her tone. “Do you understand? I don’t care about the evidence you’re destroying. You’ve got innocent human beings in there. Tell me what I can do to get them out.”
Saskia felt another shimmer of emotion through the people around her. Glances, gestures, whispers. She was losing her grip on them already. Her people. She had started to notice it when she brought Dubois and Soloveras onto the scene to review their actions in the Delaney case. There was wonderment, confusion, in the officers around her. Surely she wasn’t going to side with the Delaneys. Surely she wasn’t going to let two maniac hostage-takers cause her to question the quality of the work done by two cops. Now she’d revealed she was going to let the Delaneys keep destroying the hard work of other officers if it meant delaying an entry and keeping the hostages safe. She was actively talking down the importance of the work of her colleagues.
Saskia was trapped. To approve an entry by a SWAT team might cost Ashlea, Gary, and Ibrahim their lives. To delay an entry would mean more evidence destroyed and cases lost. The only way to save the hostages and the evidence was to negotiate for the Delaneys to give up. But they weren’t going to give up without their case being worked, and allowing their case to be worked would send the message to the world that violence against police got the job done.
“Please just tell me what I can do to get the hostages out of there,” Saskia said. “I can’t reopen your case. But there must be something I can do.”
Ryan Delaney snorted with derision on the other end of the line.
“Fifteen minutes,” Ryan said.
Behind his voice, the laboratory was silent. Whoever had been crying was quiet now.
“Then more bad men go free.”
10
Charlie put a boot on the dashboard and rested his phone against his thigh, tapping an address from the case file into the map. They had exchanged the Kia for a Dodge Ram Viola had left for them in the studio security lot. He’d sunk down into the footwell of the huge black vehicle as they exited the lot, and Lamb had borrowed a black cap and sunglasses from someone. The security staff at Universal all seemed to have been briefed that he and Lamb were to be given whatever they needed at any moment, which made him feel vaguely uncomfortable, as if he were exploiting the studio. Viola surely hadn’t told them the whole story, and as far as any of her movie friends had ever known, she didn’t have a brother. He guessed she’d given them some line about him being a mega-important foreign actor, in town hiding from paparazzi. He popped his head up a few streets away from the studio and didn’t see any obvious tails as they drove away from Universal.
“Head for North Hollywood,” he told Lamb. “I’ll direct you from there.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to pay a visit to one of the kiddie freaks who was around on the day Tilly went missing.” Charlie glanced at the file. “Dubois and Soloveras only called the persons of interest in the area. They didn’t do home visits. That was fine in the case of two of the three. Clinton Sims was in jail on bad checks, and this guy, Mateo Hernandez, was in the hospital getting surgery on his back. But the third guy, Nicolas Rojer? He says he was visiting his mother. Doing some gardening for her.”
“Doesn’t make much of an alibi.” Lamb listened, eager. “What mother is going to burn her own kid to the police? Especially on such a serious charge. He could have just fed her a line about what to say. So Rojer used to live near Santa Monica Beach?”
“Two-bedroom apartment, maybe three blocks back from the water,” Charlie said. “Mom’s got money.”
“And now he’s moved to North Hollywood?”
“Hansen Hills.”
“Oh.”
Something changed in Lamb. She tapped the steering wheel, her eyes locked on a queue for brunch forming outside a Denny’s.
“What?” Charlie asked.
“Nothing.”
“You know the area?”
“Nope,” Lamb said. She straightened in her seat. “So you said when we left that Surge knows his assignment. I didn’t hear you give him one.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to it.”
“Who actually is Surge? Are you guys usually partners?”
“No. He’s just a very handy man to have around.” Charlie shrugged. “A go-to guy, I guess you’d say.”
“Is he a cop?”
“No.” Charlie licked his molars, thinking hard now about how to worm his way out of the next few questions. Because the truth was, he hadn’t thought much about Surge and Lamb meeting and what that might lead to. Now he felt boxed in to his seat as Lamb’s gaze swung around inevitably from the Denny’s to the traffic light flicking to green and then to his avoidant eyes.
“Was he a cop?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, admitting defeat.
“So what happened?”
Charlie eased a huge sigh, decided to just get it all out in the open and deal with the aftermath. “He got fired,” he said. “On his first day on the job.”
“What?” Lamb squeaked. Charlie didn’t have to look directly at her face. He could see her agape expression in his peripheral vision, it was so dramatic.
“He was teamed up with an older cop, a sergeant, guy named Robinson,” Charlie explained. “Robinson was real straight. By the book. Not creative. Their very first call was a traffic accident over on the 105, near Lynwood. Surge had been on the job for about two hours, all paperwork. They hadn’t even gone cruising yet. Then they get the call. They jump in the patrol car and get to the scene, and it’s a pickup truck that’s hit the back of a semitrailer at high speed.”
Lamb was listening, sitting rigid in her seat and leaning over the steering wheel, her hands gripping the plastic tightly.
“So the front end of the pickup is completely crushed under the semi,” Charlie said. “The driver’s a young guy. His foot is trapped, pinned under the collapsed engine bay. The truck is on fire, and so is the back of the semi. At any second, the whole thing could blow. Surge asks Robinson what they should do, and Robinson does what he always does: he plays it by the book. They can’t get the guy out, not without endangering themselves and other civilians. So he tells Surge to clear the area to stop any citizen heroes from getting involved. Then they just have to stand there and let the guy burn.”
“But—” Lamb shook her head. “What … That’s it? Just let him burn?”
“The fire department was on the way, he said. Nothing they could do in the meantime.”
“So you’re not even supposed to try?”
“No,” Charlie said. “That’s protocol. And Surge soon realized why, when he disobeyed the sergeant’s orders and went into the vehicle to try to pull the guy out. As soon as Surge got anywhere near the driver, the guy grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go. He was on fire, screaming his head off, clawing at Surge like a crazy person.”
“Jesus,” Lamb said.
“Yeah.”
“Drowning people will do that, too, so I hear.” Lamb nodded.
They fell into tense silence. Lamb perhaps imagining Charlie in the sea. Charlie recalling it with terrifying clarity: the woman swimmer, whoever she was, twisting frantically in the water as he grasped on to her. Had she not kicked him, he’d never have let go. He knew that in his bones.
“So what happened?”
“Surge punched the guy out,” Charlie said, grateful for the escape from his memories. “He was a big guy, too. Took a few solid slams to the head to get the job done. All this is being filmed by members of the public, of course. Every asshole in the country’s got a camera on his phone.” Charlie took out his cigarettes and lit one. “But when he finally gets free of the guy’s grip, Surge figures he’s made such a mess of this whole thing already, he’d better get the guy out somehow. So he looks in the back of the pickup and sees there’s a big ol’ chain saw lying there.”
Lamb was so deep in the story she had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a family using a crosswalk.
“He … he didn’t,” Lamb said.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “He did.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not.”
“And the guy survived?” Lamb asked.
“Sure did,” Charlie said. “He’s still hobbling around out there somewhere, as far as I know.”
“So Surge just got fired?” Lamb’s mouth twisted. “I mean, no warning? No reprimand? No nothing?”
“He cut a guy’s foot off!” Charlie laughed.
“But he saved his life!”
“Doesn’t matter.” Charlie shrugged again. “It just doesn’t matter, Lamb.”
“Was his chief pissed?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “I wasn’t at the station when Surge got back, but I heard from guys who were. They said you could hear the chief yelling at Surge from down on the sidewalk. The whole building went quiet to listen in. People stopped answering the phones. At some point, the chief goes, ‘If you wanted to be a surgeon, you shoulda gone to med school!’”
“Whoa,” Lamb whispered. “That’s where it comes from. Surge. The Surgeon. I thought his name must have been Sergio.”
Charlie choked out a smoky laugh. “Sergio. No, it’s not Sergio. His name’s Wyatt Hill.”
“A pretty spectacular act, to earn a nickname like that.” Lamb nodded. “I see what you meant.”
“Yeah.”
“But Surge still works for the cops. I don’t get it. You said he was fired.”
“Oh, he was. He is. He’s not a cop. He just does things for cops now and again.” Charlie glanced up at another billboard of Viola Babineaux as it sailed past the window. “A lot of guys at the station felt like Surge got a raw deal, so they’d cut him in on things if they could. You know. Grunt work. Security gigs. Concerts. Cleanups. Stuff like that. And the guy whose foot got cut off turned out to be somebody, too. Son of a big gangster from up in Pasadena. He was pretty grateful. So now Surge kind of works both sides, I guess.”
“I wish someone from my station had done that for me,” Lamb said, her eyes wistful.
“Done what?”
“Figured I got a raw deal and helped me out.”
“Lamb, where are you sitting right now?” Charlie narrowed his eyes in disbelief. “What are you doing?”
“This isn’t you helping me out.” Lamb looked over, curiosity creasing her face. “This is you tolerating me until you can convince me I need to be doing something else with my life.”
“Right.” Charlie exhaled smoke out the window. “So that isn’t helpful?”
“No, it’s not.”
“I think you’ll find that it is,” Charlie said. “When you’re on a private jet to Paris with Viola and you’re earning half a mil a year just to make sure the hotel carries the kind of shampoo she likes.”
“I’m not working for Viola.”
“Getting fired was what Surge needed,” Charlie said. “He shouldn’t have been a cop, either. He was too impulsive. Too creative. He couldn’t follow rules. Sure, cutting the guy’s foot off was the right thing to do, but that’s only because it worked. A couple of miles down the road, he was going to do something equally as crazy and stupid, and he was going to get a bunch of people killed, including himself.”
Lamb wasn’t convinced. Charlie could see it on her face.
“Why do you think I’m even telling you this story?” he asked. “I’m trying to show you that people have been fired on their first day on the job before and survived and gone on to do what they were supposed to do. It’s not the worst thing that could ever happen to you.”
She thought for a while. “So what was I going to do a couple of miles down the road?” she asked. “If I’d been allowed to stay in?”
“You were going to get called a pig by some junkie and burst into tears in the middle of an arrest,” Charlie said. He didn’t even hesitate.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” Lamb shook her head vehemently. “Maybe I’ve been a little overly emotional the past few days, but that’s only because my entire goddamn world just imploded. I’m capable of taking abuse from criminals and making good arrests and keeping my emotions in check. You’ll see that.”
“If you’re not inconsolable about something within the hour, I’ll eat my hat.”
“You don’t even have a hat.”
“Go left here.”
Lamb froze, then shook herself into action, swung the wheel toward the turn too late, and then chickened out, swerved back into her lane. Charlie watched the turn sail by, a pair of panhandlers on the corner balking at Lamb’s driving.
“That was the turn,” Charlie said.
“Where?”
“Back there.”
“Oh. Uh. Sorry. Uh. You didn’t give me enough notice.”
“So go around the block.”
“There are only strip malls down that way.” Lamb was watching the rearview mirror, the tendons in her thin wrists straining. “The guy doesn’t live there.”
“I know. I want to grab something to eat. There’s an amazing Cuban sandwich place down there.”
“It doesn’t have to be that exact one, though. Look. There are more food places farther on.”
“It does have to be that exact one,” he said. “I’ve been hanging out to go to this place. Biker gangs are racist assholes, and I’ve spent the past half a decade pretending to be one of them. That means steak, eggs, and burgers. The most exotic cuisine I had in all my time under was Wiener schnitzel. When this case is over, I’m going to hit every one of my favorite Chinese, Mexican, and Cuban places, between tattoo removal appointments. Turn here.”
She missed the second turn. Wasn’t even listening now. “We’re on the clock here! Let’s just hit a drive-through.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Charlie squinted. Something in his gut was twitching at Lamb’s sudden nervousness, her furtive glances at people on the sidewalk.
“Nothing, nothing. Urgh. I’ll go. I’ll go.”
She got the job done, reluctantly, swiping weirdly at her long black hair and sweeping her gaze back and forth across the parking lot continuously as they drew into the space. Charlie would have been more disturbed by it all, but when he opened the door of the car, his nostrils were flooded with the smell of onion powder and grilled pork, and he was drifting across the lot with Lamb at his heels as if he were walking on clouds. The storefront was as he’d remembered it. Huge jars of lazy, green pickles lounging in brine on the counter, crowded with sauce bottles. A dark, narrow interior crowded with mismatched tables, old men in guayabera shirts reading newspapers in silence. He ordered himself a sandwich, heavy on the mustard, in a combo and nudged Lamb, who was watching a row of stores across the street and groaning quietly to herself.
“Order,” he said.
“I don’t want anything.”
“Wrong again.”
She went back to staring and groaning, her arms folded tightly across her chest. He ordered for her, and when the bags of food came, she snatched hers and her can of soda and was halfway across the parking lot by the time he had turned to step away from the counter.
“Come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” she was saying, juggling the can and the bag and the car keys, her head still on a swivel. He was about to confront her, to demand an explanation for all the squirrelliness, when a small, round woman cut across him so sharply he stumbled to a halt. She rushed toward Lamb with her arms outstretched.
“Linny! Linny! Linny!”
Charlie looked in the direction from which she’d come and spied another small, round human shutting the door of a Ford Fiesta with a huge television box crammed in the back. The driver looked around, searching for his wife.
“Linny! What are you doing here?”
“Oh, Jesus, Mom,” Lamb moaned as the small woman reached up and gripped her head, tugged it down to plant kisses on her cheeks. Charlie stood back and watched, his mouth stretching into a slow smile as Lamb’s parents boxed her in against the side of the Ram.
“This is such a nice surprise!”
“Hi, Mom, hi.”
“Look, Eddie! Linny’s here!”
“There’s my baby blue!”
“Hey, Dad.”
Charlie watched all of Lamb’s will to live drain out of her, her mouth and shoulders downturned, her knees sunk together. Her parents were almost identical: a foot and a half shorter than their daughter, dark-haired, with big, eager mouths and deep, earnest eyes. Lamb’s father was sporting a handlebar mustache, and her mother was wearing a T-shirt with gold cursive script that read TOO GLAM TO GIVE A DAMN across her breasts.
“What are you doing here, Linny?” Lamb’s father was taking it all in—hands on hips, the examiner of evidence. The Ram, the bag and soda in Lamb’s hands, Charlie standing there watching from the end of the car space. “You should have told us you were coming! Aren’t you working? You said you had three days on duty.”
