The Blind (15 page)

Monday, November 2
1:21 p.m.

E
vie propped her boots on the table of interrogation room number two. “You know, Brother Trujillo, the silent routine is really making me wonder about your soul. Silence indicates a man who may have something to hide, something the divine might frown upon.”

James Trujillo, a former gangbanger from East L.A. who found the way, the truth, and the light thanks to Gabriel North, shuffled his big feet. He'd been holed up in an interrogation room saying the same line over and over. “Is Brother North here yet?”

When North finally arrived, Evie left Brother Big Shoe and met with the pastor in a room next door. “No attorney?” Evie asked.

“Brother Trujillo doesn't need one,” North said with an arrogant lift of one eyebrow.

“This is serious, North. We're ninety-nine percent sure your man took a shot at a federal agent.”

“Round that up to one hundred,” North said. “He told me about it the night he did it.”

She slapped her hands on the table. “You kept that little nugget to yourself?”

“Brother Trujillo shot at you to
frighten
you,” North said with the exaggerated calm and patience her oldest brother used with his four-year-old son. “He was concerned that you were a threat to my ministry. I don't agree with what he did, but I am certain he won't do it again.”

“Why's that?”

“Because I told him not to.”

“And he'll obey?”

“He has blind faith.”

“That's a hell of a burden you're carrying.” And power.

“I take it seriously. My job is to shepherd my followers to eternal salvation. I listen to their trials and guide them through tribulations.”

Evie rubbed at the back of her neck. “What do you know about Trujillo?”

“He's not your bomber, Agent Jimenez.”

“Why don't you let me decide?”

For about an hour, Evie grilled both Gabriel North and James Trujillo, and by the end, she knew North was right. The overzealous believer was not the Angel Bomber. Trujillo had been in Mexico on a mission with some of North's followers during the second bombing, and he didn't show any signs of resentment, the emotion that usually fueled serial bombers. And according to Cat Girl, he had the wrong size feet.

As she left the interrogation room, North fell in step beside her. “You know we're very much alike, Agent Jimenez.”

“How's that?”

“We're both in the business of saving souls.” They reached the elevator bank. “I hope you catch him.”

“I will.”

“Sounds suspiciously like blind faith, Agent Jimenez?” A devilish glint lit North's eyes.

She believed in herself, her team, and justice. She couldn't do what she did without such rock-solid faith. “Absolutely.”

As Brother North's shiny shoes tapped down the corridor, she checked in with the officer who'd been recording her interview of the Wrong Way Brothers. “Where's Jack?”

The officer checked his watch. “He left an hour ago.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Home, I think.”

Odd, that Jack would go home. But maybe not. Facing off with an IED, even one filled with hundreds of tiny red paper hearts, was enough to make most people want to curl up with a stiff drink or in a soft bed. She could go check on him. No, she
should
go check on him.

“Speaking of Jack,” the officer said. “Your teammate Jon MacGregor was looking for you earlier. He found something on Jack's sister.”

2:07 p.m.

A man's vehicle of choice told a good deal about him.

Carter Vandemere's dad had driven a half-ton pickup truck. “Now that's a real man's truck, son. Can haul your tools and a horse trailer, and if you got a girl you're wanting to poke, throw a couple sleeping bags in the bed and you're ready.” Nudge. Nudge. Hah. Like Carter had ever needed to haul tools and a horse or take a girl out for a drive. But the pickup truck had come in useful when he'd had to haul materials to the construction site where he blew up his father. That had definitely been one of his better explosions. Windows had shaken for a city block, and his father had been blown into golf ball–size pieces.

His mom drove a minivan. Good for hauling groceries.

As for the little FBI agent, the Beetle rental car suited her. Red, small, and full of sass. Plus it had all those nice curves. Agent Jimenez had nice curves, too. Not too big, not too little, a perfectly proportioned landscape of peaks and valleys. When he was growing up, he had a special sketchbook, the one that held all of his drawings of beautiful girls. He rated them with tiny red hearts. Evie would have received five hearts.

Carter slipped along the back of the lower level of the Elliott Tower parking garage.

Now Jack Elliott, he was a man with many different cars. Carter slid his hand over the black Audi. This was the car of a man who liked speed and had great style.

He slipped off his backpack and set it on the ground, taking out the bundle of dynamite. It wasn't one of his better designs, more function than form, but it would do exactly what it needed to do. He dropped to the ground and shimmied on his back under the car, this one a Mercedes CLA-Class. Affordable luxury. So telling. He pressed the bundle against the wheel well, the click of the magnet against metal truly a beautiful sound.

2:08 p.m.

Evie pulled her rental car up to the bronze statue of two children holding hands. Her teammate Jon was parked two spaces down in front of a blue and pink giraffe.

“Fun times ahead,” Evie said as she hopped out of her car.

“I hope so.” Jon had spent the past few days tracking down artists whose work appeared in the Twin Citrus stairwell in hopes of learning about the young artist calling herself Luz. He finally found one, an artist named Greta Antony who ran a fine art gallery for children in Malibu.

A bell tinkled overhead as they walked into a sunny room filled with giant colored blocks covered in drawing paper and long, low tables piled with scraps of fabric and pipe cleaners and fuzzy balls. While Jon went to find the owner, she watched a preschooler making a flower garden out of waxy pieces of string. The child looked up and asked, “Do you know how to make a caterpillar?”

Evie squatted. “I think I can work something out.” She coiled six waxy sticks into different-sized circles and set them side by side, adding curling antennas.

“Blue eyes or green?” Evie asked the kid.

“Green.”

She added green eyes and a smile, when a throat cleared behind her. She lifted her gaze.

“The owner's in her office and ready to talk,” Jon said.

Evie hopped up from her tiny chair and followed Jon down a hallway.

“I'm surprised you didn't bring Jack,” Jon said. “You two have been spending quite a bit of time together this week.”

Because Jack had control issues not to mention knowledge and a skill set that was helping her investigation. “He skipped out at the station after I collared North's guy. I think he's had enough explosions in his world today.”

“Pretty shaken?”

“More angry than anything. Vandemere pulled a power move on him.”

When they reached the office, a woman in a paint-smudged apron greeted them. After introductions, Jon asked, “You knew the young woman who painted this.” He showed her the photo he'd taken in the Twin Citrus stairwell of the frolicking turtles.

The woman's eyes brightened. “Yes, that's one of Luz's. She was one of the more talented kids at The Colony. The Colony. That's what we called it. Sounded so much more bohemian than low-rent warehouse space. Luz worked mostly in oils but would occasionally paint in watercolors and sketch with colored pencils. She had such a fun signature.”

“What do you remember about her beyond her art?” Jon asked.

“She always slept with the light on, drank tea, not coffee, and when she had a few dollars to spare would go down to Little Tokyo and buy yakitori.”

“How long was she at The Colony?”

“Just that spring and summer. I must have been eighteen or nineteen, so that was about fifteen years ago.”

“Do you have any idea where she may have gone after she left The Colony?”

“I have no idea. She never talked about going any place else. She loved it there. We were all shocked when she just up and left.”

“Up and left?”

“She packed up all of her art supplies and took off to paint one morning. She never came back. Left everything behind in her room, not that any of us had much of anything back then. A few T-shirts and a toothbrush.”

Evie met Jon's gaze, and she noted the deep creases on either side of his lips.

“Any friends?” Jon asked.

“Everyone loved Luz. She was always so happy and bubbly. I remember her sitting on the back loading dock one day hugging herself. She said she had to hold herself together or she'd burst with happiness. She loved it here, the place, the people, the sun.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?” Jon continued.

“No, she was having a love affair with art.”

“Was anyone interested in her?” Evie asked. “Another artist, possibly one who didn't get on well with the crowd.”

The woman nodded. “That would be Dougie. He followed her around like a lovesick puppy. Offered to clean her brushes. Used to leave little gifts on her bed and in her dresser drawers. It freaked her out. I think he was one of the reasons she left.”

Jon's eagle gaze sharpened. “Did Dougie by any chance reveal his last name?”

“None of us had last names at The Colony.”

“Do you remember anything about his art?” Evie pictured that gruesome online portfolio and the tame but somber works submitted to the Abby Foundation.

“I think he did mostly portraits.”

“Do you recall what he looked like?”

“Oh, yes. Dougie was very memorable.”

Evie pressed her palms against her thighs to keep from jumping up and hugging the woman. “Could you work with our sketch artist?”

“I can do better.” The woman reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a sketch pad. With a thin piece of charcoal, she drew a face. Ten minutes later, she gave the face to Jon. “This is a very good representation. Hair and eyes are brown.”

Evie studied the drawing. Heavyset boy, unkempt hair to his shoulders, long, narrow nose, deep-set eyes. An itch stole across the palms of her hands.

After the interview, Evie and Jon stood at her car. “This is him,” she said on a half-whisper-half-prayer. “I'll need to get an age progression, but I finally have something other than unknowns.”

“While you get an artist on the progression, I'm going to talk with some outreach groups and agencies that dealt with teenage runaways and the mentally ill. Jack said Abby had highs and lows, and it's possible she hit a low and fell into a dark place.”

Evie rubbed her palms on the sides of her jeans. “You still believe she's still alive?”

“You know me, Evie.” Jon opened her car door. “I always believe.”

She took in those words, pushing out what she knew of bombers, and this one in particular. “I'll give Jack a call and give him an update.”

Jon laughed. “Don't bother.”

“Come on, Jon. This is Jack's sister. He'd give away every billion he had to find her.”

“Trust me. I know exactly how much Jack Elliott wants his sister found. He tells me every afternoon when we have our daily conference call.”

“Conference call?”

“That also includes a private investigator he hired along with one of his contacts at LAPD.”

Evie shook her head. Of course Jack was on the case. He was Jack, wheeling and dealing, moving and shaking.

2:20 p.m.

Mondays were dead. Nothing worth shooting ever happened on a Monday, which meant Freddy should be at home in bed dreaming of his beachfront condo in Maui or even working out with the jump rope one of his nieces got him for his birthday last month.

“It's good exercise, and fun,” his niece had pronounced with way too much joy when he opened the gift. In his world, jumping rope didn't happen on Mondays, either.

All day he felt as if his skin was jumping off his bones. He kept looking over his shoulder and sniffing. For what, he had no idea. What did a bomber smell like? Freddy ran his hand along his greased-back hair. The bomber was due to strike any day, and Evie was still stomping through the streets in those red cowboy boots trying to sniff and snuff him out.

On this sunny Monday afternoon, Freddy poked his head into a half-lit art gallery. He liked shadowy places because they often hid folks doing shadowy things.

“Hey, Freddy.” A young man in baggy pants and a bulky sweater one step removed from a goat waved from the top of a ladder where he was changing a lightbulb. “You got some shots for us today?”

Rudy B's was a hole-in-the-wall gallery off Fifth that specialized in photography installations. Most of it was artsy stuff, the human body in motion, architectural shots, extreme close-ups. Last year during his downtime, Freddy had taken some shots of L.A. prostitutes. Raw and gritty. More character study than sexy. Story up the wazoo. Made himself a nice little chunk of change. “Not today. I'm looking for Durant.”

The man atop the ladder waved to a door. “In the basement. Give him a triple buzz.”

And basements were especially dark places.

Freddy gave the buzzer three short jabs and called out, “Hey Durant, it's your favorite photographer of the starz.”

The heavy metal door whooshed open, letting out a belch of cool air that reeked of bleach and wet cigarette butts. Durant sat in front of a small canvas superimposed with a digital image of a couple embracing. The artist must have gotten himself some new high-tech equipment because the brush marks on the digital image had been sharpened and defined.