Fire with Fire, page 17
They fell quiet. Saskia thought about the private investigators she’d dealt with in the past. Wannabe cops and failed cops, predators offering victims’ family members access to the underworld of crime where the truth was supposedly denied to cops with uniforms and badges. They made their day-to-day money catching bail jumpers and insurance cheats, and waited for those big whales, like the Delaneys, who would front them tens of thousands of dollars to do a job they didn’t have the skills for. Then they’d close shop, lie low for a while, and pop up again two cities over to do it all again.
“Go back for me,” Saskia said to Jonie. “You said when you hit Tilly, she ‘just sort of died.’”
“Yeah.”
“What did you mean by that?”
“I mean, like, you know.” Jonie wiped her cheeks with both hands, leaving little pink freckles of nail polish on her high cheekbones. “It didn’t take very long.”
“Describe it for me,” Saskia said. “Did she just slump to the floor? Did she bleed? What part of her head did she hit on the sink? Was it the temple? Was it the back?”
“Dude!” Jonie’s mouth was twisted. “Do we have to talk about all that?”
“The dumpster, then,” Saskia said. “You said it was on the edge of the parking lot?”
“Yeah,” Jonie said.
“What edge? The front edge? Nearest to the street? The back edge, facing the water? Or on the side?”
“I don’t know.”
“How close was it to the door of the restroom?”
“I don’t know, ma’am! I’ve blocked it out!”
The door of the BearCat suddenly opened beside them. Curler was standing there.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Curler said.
Saskia waved over a patrol officer to take care of Jonie. The chief and the negotiator walked back to the main tent, both with their cell phones in their hands.
“Did you listen in?”
“Yeah,” Curler said. “We’ll deal with that in a minute. Right now, we’ve got bigger problems.”
Saskia heard a dull ringing. The laptop on the fold-out table beside them began to peal. The technician sitting in front of it pulled on her headset, and Curler and Saskia turned to face the Delaneys.
* * *
From his position on the floor, Bendigo could see the two vials in Ryan Delaney’s fingers. He could barely make out the numbers scrolling back and forth as the hostage-taker rolled the plastic tubes with his thumbs like a man with two cigars, waiting for the call to the police to connect. Ibrahim nudged Bendigo’s elbow, and the scientist looked over.
“Man, can we switch places?” Ibrahim said, a little too loudly. He glanced at Elsie Delaney, who was sitting on the stool nearest to him. “My head hurts. I think I need a little lie-down, myself.”
Bendigo nodded and shuffled forward, allowing Ibrahim to take his place. He scooted on his butt to where the younger man had been sitting, Ashlea placing her head on his thigh without so much as a glance to query his consent. The journalist was still crying quietly, now and then scooping at the rim of her lower lashes in that strange way women did to preserve their makeup. Bendigo chanced a brief swipe of his own fingers under the surface of the table against which he leaned, brushing the cold steel handle of the scissors Ibrahim had hidden there.
The call with the police connected. Elsie and Ryan Delaney straightened on their stools. Bendigo knew this was his chance. He shuffled backward, his back flush against the cabinet, brushing the scissors again. After some effort, he managed to hook a finger around them and bring them into his fist. For a moment, he simply held them, imagining himself folding them open at that very moment, cutting the cable tie around his wrists, throwing Ashlea off, leaping forward, and stabbing the Delaneys to death.
He knew that his cold, clear vision of himself ending the Delaneys’ lives was nothing more than fiction. That in reality there would be a vicious struggle, and the younger, stronger couple would probably overpower him before he could land any fatal blows. He knew that it wasn’t as easy to stab a person as he or most people dreamed, the scissor blades cutting through the flesh smoothly and soundlessly as though through butter. There were bones to consider. Rubbery tendons. The placement of organs and the elasticity of the skin’s surface. It would take a hard blow, probably all his strength, to force the scissors through the fabric of Elsie Delaney’s shirt, through her flesh, between her bones, into her heart. And then there was the biggest consideration of all: whether Dr. Gary Bendigo felt he was really capable of killing a man. Or a woman. Even in defense of others. Even in defense of himself. But before all those rational thoughts came, he simply sat for a moment, holding the scissors, feeling a hateful triumph at his having secured some foothold of power in a situation that had, until then, completely dissolved every ounce of his free will.
“Ryan? Elsie? Are you there?”
It was the woman. Bendigo had heard the Delaneys talking about her. Saskia Ferboden, chief of the LAPD.
“We’re here,” Ryan said.
“What have you done in the past two hours to find our daughter?” Elsie demanded.
The voice that answered wasn’t Ferboden’s. “We’ve been very busy for the past couple of hours,” a man said. The negotiator, Curler. “Our focus has been on making sure the loved ones of Ashlea, Ibrahim, and Gary are aware of the situation and reassured that their family members are safe. It’s our understanding that Ashlea may need to get access to some medications soon or she will become dangerously unwell. So we’d like to discuss the possibility of Ashlea, or ideally all the hostages, being allowed to come out safely.”
Ashlea sat up. Bendigo saw that her tears had left a heart-shaped spot of dampness on his trouser leg. With her hands bound in front of her, the young journalist swiped nervously at her cheeks.
“That’s … that’s true,” she said. “If I don’t get my meds, I—”
“Bullshit.” Ryan shook his head. “Come on. Come on, you stupid fucks. We’ve made it clear from the outset we’re not gonna play these games. We want one thing, and one thing only. That’s for you to find Tilly. If you’re not going to do that, we have no choice but to keep destroying evidence. And when we run out of evidence, we’re going to have to get real creative up in this motherfucker. Do you understand what we’re saying?”
“We’re trying to decide between two samples,” Elsie said.
Bendigo saw that her hands were trembling as she took the vials from Ryan.
“One of them is related to the murder of two police officers in Encino. The other is from a missing persons case.” She held up the vial to the light, examined the cotton swab inside it. “A twenty-year-old woman named Mariana Navarro.”
“Which one should we burn?” Ryan asked. He stroked his short beard, the mock philosopher. “I kind of feel like punishing the police. Don’t you, El? I mean, maybe we need them to understand how it feels to lose one of their own and to have no power, no ability to do anything about it.”
“Don’t do anything,” Ferboden said. “Just talk to us, Ryan. Elsie. Please, before you do anything at all. There are options we are willing to offer you.”
“Like what?” Elsie asked.
“Like an endgame scenario for all this that allows you to see your other daughter,” Curler said.
Bendigo watched the Delaneys’ faces harden. They glanced at each other.
“Look, guys, we are heading for an end to all this. Okay?” Curler continued. “Some way or another, you’re going to come out of there. And Jonie is going to be out here, waiting for you.”
The couple were silent. Bendigo felt a shimmer of hope in his heart.
“How is she?” Elsie asked suddenly. Ryan reached over and gripped her knee gently.
“She’s devastated, of course,” Curler said. “She’s worried about the future. And we want to talk about that future. Ryan, Elsie, we’re prepared to cut a deal, right now, to ensure one of you can have a normal, noncustodial relationship with Jonie in the years to come. If we can get Ashlea, Ibrahim, and Gary out of there safely today, I can see that being a possibility.”
“‘Noncustodial’?” Ryan smiled icily. “You mean, ‘outside prison’? Why don’t you just say it? Say the word prison.”
There was silence from the laptop.
“You guys have got it all worked out, huh?” Ryan continued. “This is the divide-and-conquer strategy. We send out Elsie and a couple of the hostages, and we feed the press and the lawyers and the jury and the judge a story about how I made her come here today and do all this. We’ll say she only did it because she felt her life was threatened. Elsie gets a ten-year sentence, she’s out in seven with good behavior, and then she’s free and she gets to see Jonie again. That’s the offer, right?”
“Ryan,” Ferboden said.
“Sounds nice, huh, El?” Ryan asked. “You want to take it?”
“I’m not interested,” Elsie said. “I want our daughter found. We didn’t come here to cut deals. We came here to make you find our child.”
“What have you done in the past two hours to find Tilly?” Ryan asked again. “Because if your answer is ‘nothing,’ and it keeps being ‘nothing’ for long enough, the only way anybody will be leaving this building is in a body bag.”
He looked at Bendigo. The scientist felt a sparkle of fury in his chest. He gripped the pair of scissors at the small of his back tightly.
“Have you done anything at all to find—” Elsie began. But a sound interrupted her, a short, sharp crack from overhead. Bendigo looked up, Ashlea, Ibrahim, Elsie, and Ryan all doing the same. The crack rang in Bendigo’s ears, but no further sound came.
“What the fuck was that?” Elsie asked.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said.
Their gazes drifted back to the laptop screen.
“I think it’s clear that we have to do this,” Ryan said. He pointed at the vials in Elsie’s hands. “Pick one, El.”
There was a taut silence. Ryan lit the Bunsen burner. Elsie shifted the two vials to one hand and seemed ready to take the cap off one of them, selecting and then pinching the top between her thumb and index finger. Then Ferboden’s voice burst forth from the laptop, high and desperate.
“Mariana Navarro was just a girl,” she pleaded. “She was twenty. A kid. Not much older than Jonie.”
Bendigo heard some muffled noises on the other end of the call. Elsie and Ryan looked at each other. Then Elsie uncapped the other vial and took the swab from it. Bendigo and his fellow hostages watched the cotton tip burn. He used the distraction to shift up onto his knees and slide the pair of scissors into the waistband of his trousers.
“All we can hope,” Elsie said, “is that the families of the Encino police officers forgive you.”
“Bring our daughter home before we have to do this again,” Ryan added.
He slammed the laptop lid closed.
15
MINA: You there?
DORREE: Yeah.
MINA: I don’t know what happened. It just dropped out. Anyway, so yeah, about fifty people? Sixty people? Not bad for a Thursday night. It was jumpin’. Wall-to-wall partiers. My ears are still ringing. And then about 2:00 a.m., there was last call and they were all set to start closing down when who walks in? The Weeknd, and his entourage, and about fifty more people. The place went off.
DORREE: I don’t even know who that is.
MINA: Of course you don’t.
DORREE: I don’t even think you should know who that is. No one who’s over thirty should know who that is.
MINA: Well, I do, and I met the guy, and it was great. He bought drinks for everyone. The whole bar.
DORREE: I bet the bartenders loved that.
MINA: Yeah, they were pissed. But the tips were good.
DORREE: I tended bar in college. It was not a glamorous job.
MINA: I know, Dor. I was there.
DORREE: What time did you get in?
MINA: I don’t know. About four?
DORREE: Jesus, Minnie, when are you gonna get a real job and stop crawling into bed at 4:00 a.m.? That’s not right. It’s bad for your biorhythms.
MINA: You sound like Mom.
DORREE: Case in point, I’m listening to you cooking your breakfast at goddamn midday. You’re not supposed to have eggs this late. Keep doing that and you’ll get anal polyps.
MINA: I was wondering how long it was going to take for you to bring my anus into the conversation.
DORREE: Four years in food medicine and I can’t tell you anything about anything.
MINA: Anyway, now you can listen to the TV, too, because I want to keep up with this hostage thing.
DORREE: Oh god, isn’t it awful?
MINA: Are they gonna go in or what? Why don’t they just go in?
DORREE: They must have a bomb in there or something.
MINA: Jesus.
DORREE: I read on Twitter about them having another daughter. Like, what is she doing right now?
MINA: Freaking the fuck out.
DORREE: That poor kid. She loses her sister and now th—
MINA: Oh my god!
DORREE: What? What?
MINA: That’s … that’s him!
DORREE: Who?
MINA: The … the … the—
DORREE: Who?
MINA: The guy! The guy I pulled out of the water!
DORREE: What?
MINA: Put it on. Channel 6. Channel 6.
DORREE: Okay, okay!
MINA: Jesus Christ, that was him! I’m telling you! It was him!
DORREE: Which one, Mina, for god’s sake?
MINA: Wait until they show the footage again. Just wait. Just wait. Urgh, come on. There. There! Black T-shirt. Jeans. Talking to the big, important-looking police lady with the stripy sleeves.
DORREE: That’s him?
MINA: I swear to god.
DORREE: You told me the guy you rescued had long hair and a beard.
MINA: Well, maybe he … I don’t know. Maybe he cut it.
DORREE: Um.
MINA: Look at the tattoos. I’ve paused it. I’m going to take a picture. Look, he’s got tattoos on his arms.
DORREE: It’s not him.
MINA: It’s him, Dorree! Fuck! I’m telling you!
DORREE: You told me you found out the guy was a biker or, like, a gang member or something.
MINA: Well, yes. But—
DORREE: So what’s he doing in the middle of all those police people?
MINA: I don’t … I don’t know.
* * *
“What the fuck was that?” Curler’s eyes were wild.
Saskia straightened, felt light-headed. She needed water, coffee, food—to sit and think. The consequences of what she had just done tried to push into her mind, to plead with her to begin damage control. But there was no time. The burning of the second sample had sent a ripple of electricity through the scene outside Hertzberg-Davis. There were people coming to the edges of the tent, techs and SWAT members, patrol cops and comms specialists, open-mouthed and stunned or hard-faced and glaring. Recounting of what she had said about Mariana Navarro was taking place in whispers behind hands.
“What was that?” Saskia shrugged. “That was a second unsuccessful negotiation. Let’s do something to avoid a third.” She slid a laptop toward her, stood over it, watching the playback the technician had been working through. The black-and-white body-cam footage was from the SWAT officer who had crept into the ground floor of the building and hooked up the PA system while the Delaneys were distracted. The cracking sound of static that had split the air in the Hertzberg-Davis building came as he plugged a feeder cord into the PA system. “We have a new communication channel in,” Saskia said. “We have to do this right.”
“I wasn’t talking about the negotiation.” Curler was standing too close to her, working his jaw, his molars quietly clacking. “I’m talking about the line you gave the Delaneys about Mariana Navarro. You just pitched for them to destroy one piece of evidence instead of another. They burned the Encino DNA sample over the Navarro one because you made a personal appeal!”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” Saskia swallowed hard. “I just … I said what I felt.”
“With respect, Chief, you shouldn’t be saying anything. This is my negotiation.”
“I know. I know.”
“What if they start shooting the hostages?” Curler asked. “Are you going to let me know now who your favorite is so I have a sense of your preferred running order?”
“Curler.”
“If these cops here today weren’t pissed at you already—”
“Come with me.” Saskia tugged his arm. They slipped between the cars making a barricade along the side of the tent and stood in the shade of a BearCat. Saskia watched as Jonie Delaney and her boyfriend, Tanner, were reunited, hugging, gazing quietly toward the building together. When they were alone between the vehicles, with some semblance of privacy, she spoke to Curler.
“Listen,” Saskia said, tugging him closer by his lapel, her voice low. “I know the Mariana Navarro case.”
“And?” Curler asked.
“And it belongs to an undercover of mine. Charlie Hoskins. You met him earlier.”
“Ah, with the tattoos.”
“Yes.”
“Delightful chap.”
“Hoskins went under with a biker gang five years ago. He was made last week, and the whole thing turned to shit.” Saskia watched the teens in the near distance, trying to catch her breath. “We’re sure that one of the top three leaders of the gang, a guy named Dean Willis, killed the Navarro girl. Hoss spent three years trying to get that sample, okay? He did some fucked-up shit. I couldn’t let them burn it.”
“And all that makes it okay for you to throw the Encino cops under the bus?” Curler said.
“That case is stronger.” Saskia watched his eyes, pleading. “It’s a double homicide of two white LAPD officers! For god’s sake, you know how this works. They’ll still make that case even if they lose the sample. Mariana Navarro was a Hispanic kid from Compton with a father in prison. She witnessed a drive-by out of her bedroom window, and despite everything she’d ever learned from growing up in gangland, she decided to help the police. Charlie Hoskins was the only hope that case ever had. He almost died trying to make it.”
