Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (33 page)

    
“I
thought Ruthie was Johnny Horn’s girl,” Raszer said. “High school sweethearts
and all that.”

    
“She
was,” said Aquino, turning off the ignition, “until Katy came into the mix that
summer. After that, Ruthie took up with Henry.” He gave Raszer a nod. “But I
have a feeling you know that. Let’s go. I left a message telling Alice Lee I
wanted to stop by and introduce you. I just didn’t say when.”

    
The
Lees’ was the last house on the left. Their driveway was loose gravel poured
over rutted earth, and they had no garage, just a sagging carport sheltering an
old Ford van. The lawn had gone to seed and was as patchy as a worn carpet. The
house itself, a small California ranch, was dark but for the flickering of a
TV.

    
“According
to Emmett Parrish and a few of the townie girls we talked to in the course of
the investigation, Henry stayed in touch with Ruthie after she went back to
Taos. Emailed her almost every day from an Internet café on Foothill.”

    
A raw
wind blew through the fence, and Raszer considered retrieving his newly cleaned
duster. Then he reconsidered, picturing the old squatter dead in it.

    
“Did you
ever get a look at those emails?” he asked.

    
“The
server was clean,” Aquino replied. “We subpoenaed the café’s backup drives,
scoured them, nothing. I don’t know how he did it, but he wiped his
footprints.”

    
“Maybe
he learned that in Iraq, too,” said Raszer, half to himself.

    
“How do
you mean?”

    
“Just
thinking out loud,” said Raszer. “And you never questioned Ruthie?”

    
“No. She
wasn’t a suspect or a witness. And she was in New Mexico.”

    
“What
about the FBI?” Raszer asked. “They weren’t limited by the state line.”

    
“If they
did talk to her,” Aquino replied, “they didn’t share it with us.” Aquino gave
the aluminum door three unambiguous knocks. He turned back to Raszer. “Don’t
expect tea and cookies.”

    
“Okay,”
said Raszer. “Is there a Mr. Lee?”

    
“He
works the docks down in Long Beach. Night shift. It’s just Alice and a
six-year-old. But the kid should be in bed.” Aquino knocked again. A casement
window squeaked open, and a woman’s voice called out, as raw as the March wind.

    
“It’s
almost nine o’ clock, Officer,” she said. “You’ve got no business—”

    
“It’s
Detective
, Mrs. Lee,” replied Aquino.
“And I do have business. I need to introduce you to Mr. Raszer. He’s a private
investigator your church hired to find Katy Endicott. It was the last thing
Silas did before he died.”

    
“Introduce
me?” she exclaimed. “I’m a woman alone with a young child to care for, and you
come here after dark to
introduce
me?
No, sir, Officer. You can bring your friend back here in daylight, or Sheriff
Maca can have my complaint.”

    
“You’re
not as friendly in the daylight, Alice,” said Aquino. “C’mon, give us—”

    
“I’m
sorry, Mrs. Lee,” Raszer broke in, stepping off the stoop. “Stephan Raszer.
It’s my fault. The case is moving very quickly. There was a homicide and a
hostage situation in the city today. Maybe you heard about it on the news—the
police arrested a young man who may have been involved with your son’s
killers—and Katy’s kidnappers. I need your help.”

    
Detective
Aquino parked his hands on his hips and observed.

    
After a
few seconds of silence, Alice Lee replied, “I only have one son, Mr. Raszer,
and he’s here inside with me now. The other one was dead to me long before
 
those men killed him. The other one died in
Babylon.”

    
Raszer
drew a breath of mountain air that still tasted of the day’s smog. “You mean to
say Henry wasn’t the same boy after Iraq . . . is that right, ma’am?”

    
There
was no reply, but Raszer heard a small voice call out, “Mommy?”

    
“It’s
okay, sweetheart,” Alice Lee whispered. “Just some men to see your daddy.”

    
Raszer
sat down on the stoop and took out a cigarette. “How old is your little guy?”
he asked.

    
“Just
turned six,” she answered. “God willing, he’ll see thirty without a war.”

    
“What’s
his name?”

    
“Ezra,”
she replied. “And it’s past his bedtime.”

    
“I think
you’re right, Mrs. Lee,” said Raszer softly. “I think something happened to
Henry, and Johnny, in Iraq. I’d like to un—”

    
“I’m a
patriot,” said Alice, not able to conceal the quaver in her voice. “But that
war is Satan’s curse on this country. Now let the dead rest, Mr. Raszer.”

    
Raszer
flipped open his Zippo and spun the spark wheel. He let the flame burn for a
few seconds so that she could see his face from her window, then lit his
cigarette. “I will, Mrs. Lee,” he said. “But I’m hoping that Katy Endicott is
alive.”

    
“Alice—”Aquino
said, but Raszer gestured silence.

    
“Maybe
she is, and maybe she isn’t,” said Mrs. Lee. “I pray God for Silas’s sake she
is, but I’ve got my doubts. Anyhow, whatever you want to know about Henry, you
can ask that hell-bent sister of hers. She knew him a lot better than I did.
She knows the whole sad story. Now kindly leave us alone. There’s been enough
trouble on this house, and I don’t like the neighbors seeing the police on my
doorstep.”

    
Raszer
stood up and shook off a shiver. “If you want to talk—”

    
“I
won’t,” said Alice Lee, and with that, the window closed with a
ccrraack
.

    
The Falls Steakhouse was a bar grill built
in the late 1940s, when people still called them that. A weathered wood-frame
building, it stood at the north edge of town, right at the gaping mouth of the
canyon. Its white clapboard had long since yellowed, and its neon sign’s dark
letters would never light up again. It was the sort of place frequented by old
couples who remembered the fox-trot, and cops who knew they could get a decent
T-bone and a full pour for the price of a blind eye to its lapsed liquor
license. It was a place to be drunk and sad and listen to Julie London on the
jukebox. The booths were dark and musty, and Raszer and Aquino had the whole
row to themselves.

    
Raszer
pushed away his plate, leaving the home fries and overcooked broccoli
untouched, while Aquino nursed his third Cherry Coke. Had the detective ordered
a cocktail, Raszer would have joined him, but he never drank when his dinner
partner was cold sober, especially when the dinner partner was a cop.

    
“You
didn’t like your meal?” Aquino asked, eyeing the plate.

    
“The
steak was good,” Raszer lied.

    
“Not
exactly Morton’s, is it?”

    
“No, but
the atmosphere’s better,” said Raszer. “Right down to the bullet holes in the
bathroom wall.”

    
“This
used to be a mob spot,” said Aquino. “Back in the days when the Hollywood money
still drove up through the canyon to the resorts on Angeles Crest. They’d stop
here to get oiled. And if a guy didn’t have an escort for the weekend, he could
find one here. All kinds of disreputable types.”

    
Raszer
indicated the two highway patrolmen seated at a distant table. “Does that explain
why it’s so popular with cops?”

    
“I guess
like attracts like,” said Aquino with a smile. He cleared his throat. “I feel
for your friend Borges,” he said, and let it hang.

    
“How’s
that?” Raszer asked, after a beat.

    
“You
know . . . one day he’s king of the roost and thinks he pretty much knows the
score. The next day he’s got feds crawling all over his turf and doesn’t have a
clue.”

    
“Is that
how it happened up here? After the murders?”

    
Aquino
drained his Cherry Coke and held out the glass for another. “That guy Djapper
and his team moved in within twenty-four hours,” he said. “Even took my office
until they’d set up HQ at the ranger station. They used Katy’s abduction as a
pretext. Somehow, they knew from the beginning she’d been taken out of state. Where
the lead came from, I dunno. After that, they muddied up the trail for me real
fast.”

    
Raszer
sat back and scowled. “The papers played the story as if the JWs wanted the
investigation kept within the family. One piece in the
Times
even hinted at some kind of inside scandal tied to these
church sex-abuse allegations that are flying around. It struck me as wrong that
a triple homicide would get so little media—now, even more so. Do you think it
was the Bureau that kept the lid on?”

    
Aquino
wiped his moustache and leaned forward. “Let’s just say that the feds wanted it
contained because they were onto something bigger. Kept sqwawking ‘national
security.’ And they had accomplices at the Kingdom Hall.”

    
“Even
Silas Endicott?” Raszer asked.

    
“Even
Silas,” Aquino replied. “Until he came to see you. I think something was
stealing his sleep. Maybe the same thing that steals mine.”

    
Raszer
heard the overlush string prelude to an old Al Martino ballad swell up, and
watched a corseted woman of seventy with a tar-black beehive and eyeliner drawn
out to her temples back away from the jukebox in three-inch heels.

    
“Man,”
he said. “I didn’t think they built them like that anymore.”

    
Aquino
turned discreetly to look. “That’s Agnes, “ he said. “The owner. Until 1975, she
was Jimmy Fioricelli’s girl. Those bullet holes above the urinal . . . the
bullets went through him first. I think the mob gave her the restaurant to keep
her happy, but she never plastered over the holes. I figure she wanted to make
sure that every time one of Jimmy’s killers took a piss, the thought would
cross his mind that he could be next. The cops were there
that
night, too, dining on rare steak while they carried Jimmy
out.”

    
“It’s
never clean, is it?”

    
Aquino
shook his head.

    
“What’s
costing you sleep, Detective?”

    
“A lotta
things. But mostly, something that hit me one day, after my last run-in with
the FBI. These people, the ones who had those boys killed and took Katy
Endicott, they’re in the woodwork like dry rot. And more and more, I think whoever
is calling their tune might be right up at the rooftop, where the rot is worst.
Sure, we’ve still got cops and generals, and some guy we call the president,
but they’re window dressing. The real work is being done by private contactors,
and they’ve got a different agenda. That’s what’s killing my sleep. I can’t
take anything straight anymore. I don’t trust my chief, I don’t trust that guy
Amos Leach, I don’t even trust the woman who shares my bed. And I sure don’t
trust that tight-ass Bernard Djapper.”

    
“I don’t
like him either,” said Raszer. “But he seems to be warming up to me.”

    
Aquino
chuckled for the first time.

    
“Tell me
about this Syrian girl,” he said. “And her boyfriend, the DJ.”

    
Raszer
picked his words carefully. “I’m not altogether sure he was her boyfriend. But
they did have a mutual interest in staying alive, and that makes for a pretty
strong bond.” He gave a small sigh. “You know, Detective, one thing doesn’t add
up. You seem like a solid cop, the kind of guy who wouldn’t be put off a scent
easily. How could you not’ve checked out the DJ? Those guys are like owls—they
see everything. You must’ve known about him . . . and the girl. From Emmett, if
nothing else.”

    
“We
did,” said Aquino, and a flush rose into his cheeks. “And we would have found
them. We would have asked for LAPD assistance. Except for one thing.”

    
“What’s
that?”

    
“Djapper
told us they’d both left the country, and that the Bureau was on it.”

    
“Sonofabitch,”
said Raszer. “One of them—either the DJ or the girl—was an informant. And if it
was the girl—”

    
It came
back in stuttering images: how Djapper had suddenly appeared at Raszer’s car,
anxious to make small talk, as he was waiting for Layla to come out.