The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel (23 page)

Scott James

S
COTT SAT IN
AN EMPTY CUBICLE
, watching the detectives as he decided what to do. The cubicle’s data terminal and phone were missing. None of the detectives wanted a cubicle without a terminal, so Stiles put Scott in the empty. Now he needed a terminal.

The room was busy with working detectives. Stiles moved back and forth between the conference room and the squad area. Each time she came out, she looked at him, and twice she walked over to ask how he was doing. Carter was in the conference room when Scott arrived, but now he was in the commander’s office with Mantz, a lieutenant from the Intelligence Section, and the deputy chief who ran the Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau.

Three workstations in the squad room appeared to be unused. The surrounding workstations were occupied, but Scott had little choice. Stiles was back on the phone in the conference room, so he went to the workstation farthest away.

The department’s data system required his name, badge number, and password, after which the system would record his every keystroke for later review. This threat of oversight was to discourage the sale of information to lawyers and private eyes. If later questioned, Scott told himself he could honestly say he was running down a possible connection with the Echo Park house.

Scott slouched low behind the partition, typed in Colinski’s name, and entered the search request. He checked to make sure Stiles was still on the phone, looked back at the terminal, and saw the man in the sport coat.

Scott’s chest burned with a rush of adrenaline.

Royal Colinski was the man in the sport coat. Younger, not as lined, longer hair, but Colinski was the man in the sport coat.

Scott glanced up, and the burn grew stronger. He looked at the faces of the detectives around him, and Stiles, who was thirty feet away, all of them trying to identify and find the unknown suspect he now knew was Royal Colinski.

Thanks to Cole.

Scott stared at Colinski’s face, and cursed himself for agreeing not to tell. If he gave the word, Colinski’s picture and warrant would pop up in every radio car and roll call in the city, and ten thousand cops would be on the search.

Scott took out his phone to call Cole.

“Hey.”

Scott startled, and found the gray-haired detective in the next cubicle peering across the partition.

The detective said, “Deets is on his way.”

“Sorry?”

“You’re at his desk. Just letting you know.”

Scott set about clearing the terminal.

“Sorry. I hope he won’t mind.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m just letting you know. When he gets here, he’ll need it.”

“Sure. Thanks. I won’t be much longer.”

Scott punched in the search again, and quickly skimmed Colinski’s record. The file led off with Colinski’s identifying information, which was followed by a lengthy criminal record. Scott was surprised that Colinski’s most recent arrest had occurred sixteen years earlier, and that no warrants were outstanding against him. His prior history showed two stints in prison and multiple felony and misdemeanor arrests, most involving theft, armed robbery, and violent hijack.

Scott glanced up, and froze when Stiles emerged from the conference room. He got ready to shut down the terminal, but Stiles went to the commander’s office, and joined the meeting inside.

Scott tapped the partition.

“Ah, Detective.”

The gray-haired detective turned.

“Where’s the printer?”

“Coffee room. To the right, around the corner.”

Scott touched the print key, then signed out of the system, and went to the coffee room. He was relieved to find the room empty. He collected the rap sheet, quickly folded the pages, and returned to his original cubicle. He took out his phone to call Cole, but Cole beat him to it. His phone buzzed, and showed Cole’s number in the window. He instinctively lowered his voice.

“You got him. Colinski’s the guy.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

Scott felt a flash of frustration.

“No, I didn’t tell anyone, Cole, but let’s think about this. Carter can have ten thousand policemen searching for this animal. We’ll put him down fast.”

“Carter’s out. We’ll tell him later, but not now. Get something to write with.”

Scott looked up, checked the room, and ducked down.

“Carter’s right about one thing. You’re up to the butt in this, and you have been since the beginning. There’s no way you could’ve found Colinski this fast if you weren’t. You know things nobody here knows.”

“That’s right. Like the address here. Copy it, and we’ll both know.”

Cole rattled off a Sun Valley location, and followed it with a question.

“Your dog found the explosive on your car?”

“What does this have to do with Colinski?”

“If it was made with the same material you found in Echo Park, everything.”

Scott wondered where Cole was going.

“They were the same. Why?”

“Two hundred kilograms of this stuff may be here. We need to find it, and we have to find it under the radar. Carter can’t know.”

“Are you serious?”

“I identified the person who made it. I followed that person to this facility, but they have a hundred storage units. We need your dog.”

Scott sank lower in the cubicle.

“Dude, listen. If you’re right, if you have that much explosives in a public business, we have to tell Carter. We have to get the Bomb Squad up there.”

“No, Scott, we don’t. Trust me. Not everyone working with Carter is being straight with him.”

“Who isn’t straight?”

Scott knew he had spoken too loud. The gray-haired detective was staring when Scott glanced up, but quickly turned away. Scott hunched farther into the cubicle and lowered his voice.

“What were you doing in Echo Park? What do you know about those stolen munitions?”

“Did you print the rap sheet?”

“How did you find Colinski so fast?”

“If you want this to end, bring the dog.”

“Who isn’t being straight? What does that mean?”

“Bring the dog. I’ll tell you everything I know, and I’ll give you Colinski.”

“Her name is Maggie.”

“Bring her. Don’t tell Carter, or anyone else. You gave me your word.”

Cole hung up.

A door opened on the far side of the room. Carter and Stiles came out, followed by the deputy chief and the suit from the Intelligence Section. Carter and Stiles spoke for a few seconds, then Stiles turned back to the others and Carter went to the conference room. The deputy chief said something funny, and Stiles flashed the big smile.

Not everyone working with Carter is being straight with him.

Stiles started back to the conference room, but suddenly turned and came to Scott.

“How’re you doing with those mug shots?”

Scott handed her the binder.

“Struck out. He isn’t in here.”

“Then I’ll get you started on the next two hundred.”

Scott eased to his feet.

“Gotta take a rain check. I have to find new digs for tonight.”

“I’m so sorry about all this. You go take care of that dog. We’ll get you more pictures tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

Scott watched her walk back to the conference room. Carter was inside, on the phone. Carter had been watching them, but now he turned away.

Bring her, and I’ll give you Colinski.

Scott gathered his things, and left to get Maggie.

Elvis Cole

T
HE RATTY BLUE
T
RANS
A
M
pulled up behind us forty minutes later, and Scott got out. He left the dog in his car. The dog was big, and built strong, and filled the front seat like a black-and-tan wolf.

I said, “Isn’t it dangerous, letting her ride in front?”

Scott shoved the rap sheet at me, and stared at Safety Plus.

“Colinski. This the place?”

“Yeah. The woman in there is a problem, so we’ll need a plan.”

“Before we plan, tell me what you know, and how you know it. And let me say this upfront, if what you tell me sounds like bullshit, my dog and I are leaving.”

I gave him everything, beginning with Amy and Jacob Breslyn, how Jacob died, and that Amy was trying to learn who killed him by reaching out to al-Qaeda.

I said, “A man named Charles appears to be helping, so he’s probably the person who set up the contact. The house belongs to
Colinski, so he’s hooked into the deal, either as a middleman, or through a connection with the buyers.”

Scott stared across the street.

“The buyers being al-Qaeda terrorists.”

“The people who killed her son in Nigeria are aligned with al-Qaeda.”

Scott shook his head, and looked at the dog.

“Perfect. The asshole who put the bomb on my car is a lunatic al-Qaeda terrorist.”

“I don’t know who built it, but you wanted to know what I know. Now you know.”

Scott went to his car. The window was down, and the dog was leaning out. Scott touched her nose, and scratched the sides of her head.

“Carter doesn’t know any of this. No one on the task force is talking about any of this. Who isn’t being straight with him?”

I took out my phone, and showed him the official HSI portrait of Janet Hess.

“Know who she is? Special Agent in Charge Janet Hess.”

Scott studied the picture.

“Uh-uh. Never met her.”

“What about an agent named Mitchell?”

“He’s been around the office.”

“When Carter and Stiles came to my house, Mitchell was with them. Hess is Mitchell’s boss.”

I held up my phone again, showing her picture.

“Hess hired me to find Amy Breslyn two hours before you and I met, only she didn’t identify herself as a federal agent. She pretended to be a friend of Amy’s. She told me someone named Thomas Lerner could help, and gave me his address.”

Scott glanced at her picture.

“Hess sent you to Echo Park?”

“Yes. This is why I was there, and what I was doing.”

“Stiles says he doesn’t exist. She thinks you made him up.”

“She’s half right. Lerner doesn’t exist, but Hess made him up, not me. And if Carter and the task force don’t know any of this, it’s because Hess and her boy Mitchell haven’t shared the wealth. Hess knows everything I’ve told you, and more.”

Scott frowned hard and scratched the dog again.

“Does she know Colinski is the man in the sport coat?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know which side she’s playing. She knew about Amy and Charles, and they’re involved with Colinski. She sent me to the house, and the house belongs to Colinski.”

Scott stared at the dog, only now she wasn’t relaxed and happy. Her ears were up, and she looked like she wanted to bite.

“This is bullshit. We should tell Carter. Let him bust Hess and this thing wide open.”

“If we tell Carter, Hess will find out. Hess doesn’t know what I know, so she thinks she’s invisible. If Colinski is taking shots at you, he thinks he’s invisible, too. I don’t know if they’re connected, or how, but they don’t know we’re here, Scott. If we keep it this way, they won’t see us coming.”

Scott glanced at the entrance.

“Colinski.”

“The deal happens tomorrow. When Breslyn is safe, we’ll get Colinski, and all the rest of them. But first, we have to secure these explosives.”

Scott nodded, and turned to get into his car.

“Let’s do it.”

“Slow down. We need a plan. The woman in there hates me.”

“Here’s your plan. Pike, in front. Cole, get in back.”

“With the dog?”

“You’ll be harder to see, and Pike looks more like a copper. Get in.”

I climbed over the bucket past the dog to the tiny back seat, and Pike slid into the shotgun. The dog wedged herself on the console, but most of her spilled into the back.

Dog hair covered the seat, and the floor, and the armrests. Fur clung to the doors and the roof and piled under the seats and along the rocker panels in drifts like snow. Fur swirled and hung in the air, and settled on me like dandruff.

The dog sniffed me.

If the dog looked big in the window, she looked even bigger an inch from my nose.

I smiled, and tried to look friendly.

“Remember me? You met my cat.”

The dog panted hot breath in my face as we drove across the street.

W
E PARKED BY THE TRUCK
outside the little office. Scott let Maggie out, and the two of them went inside.

“I hope he knows what he’s doing. This woman is a battle-ax.”

Pike said, “Mm.”

Five minutes later, Scott, Maggie, and the ax came out. The ax smiled at Pike, and eyed me pleasantly.

“Why didn’t you say you’re a policeman instead of pretending you were a customer?”

Scott spoke before I could answer.

“Undercover coppers are like that, Hannah. That’s why he makes me drive this crappy car.”

Hannah.

“Thank the lady, Maggie. Shake.”

Hannah beamed when the dog lifted its paw.

“She’s such a sweet girl.”

Scott dimpled like a poster boy.

“If you’re one of the good guys.”

Hannah giggled and returned to her office. The dog jumped in beside me, and Scott slid in behind the wheel.

“I asked if we could use the place to train.”

“And just like that, she went for it?”

Scott glanced in the mirror.

“People love dogs.”

We rolled through the gate and took a quick tour.

Safety Plus Storage was laid out along a grid of alleys like a rectangle cut down the center and across the middle. The alleys were lined with dusty, beige sheds, which were partitioned into different-size units. Customers provided their own locks to ensure their security.

Scott decided to follow a clockwise search pattern and parked near the gate. Hannah watched from the office door and waved. Scott and I waved back. Pike didn’t.

Scott said, “I’m going to work Maggie off leash, so stay a few steps behind us. If she sniffs you or bumps you, don’t pet her.”

“You said she doesn’t bite.”

“When we work, she’s all business. Right, Maggie? Am I right, pretty girl?”

Scott spoke to the dog in a little kid’s voice, and something between them changed. She dropped to her chest with her butt in the air, as if she knew what was coming and desperately wanted to play.

He unclipped her leash and pointed at the nearest shed.

“Find it, girl. Maggie,
seek
!”

She swirled away with effortless power, and followed his point. The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched.

“Marine.”

Scott let the dog range ahead. She sniffed along the base of five or six units, then he crossed her to the opposite side. Pike and I followed, contributing nothing.

We reached the first corner, and turned. A camera tree stood overhead, sprouting a bloom of cameras. I wondered if Hannah was watching. Her movie had to be more interesting than three men following a dog, but the movie hadn’t shaken her hand.

We reached the far back corner, and turned again. The dog crossed, and re-crossed, and was approaching the central intersection when she backtracked, and grew agitated. Her head swung low to the ground, and her pace quickened. She reversed herself, reversed again, and abruptly lay down, facing a door.

Scott said, “Damn.”

“She found it?”

“This is what she did at my car and the house. That’s her alert.”

The dog gave Scott a sloppy, German shepherd grin, and Scott called her away.

The nearest camera watched from the corner behind us, and another watched from the far corner. The ax had an unobstructed view, but we would be small in the frame, and far away.

Pike moved close to block the camera.

The lock was a beast, with a shrouded shackle, a drill plate protecting the core, and a security rating too high for my pick gun. Scott fidgeted when I took out my tools.

“Dude. That’s a four-fifty-nine. Burglary.”

“Watch the office. If she comes out, let us know.”

Scott didn’t move.

“What if you can’t open it?”

Pike said, “Keep watch.”

Scott clipped up his dog, and hurried away.

I inserted the tension bar, and went to work with the rack pick. The lock opened three minutes later.

Amy’s unit was the size of a small room, with a table in the center set up as a workbench. Scissors, spools of thread, and a roll of black fabric covered the table, along with two battery-powered lamps. Inexpensive shelving units hugged the wall behind the table, and were crowded with boxes, bags, and white plastic bottles. A tailor’s dummy wore a fringed leather jacket in the corner, admiring itself in a mirror propped against the wall. Amy’s unit was more like a tailor’s shop than a cache of explosives.

Pike and I quickly moved to the shelves. The explosives could be in a single box, or cut into pieces for easier storage.

A shopping bag from a local hobby store contained kits for making buzzers and doorbells. Jugs of liquid resin and rolls of plastic food wrap sat beside the bag, and a mini-loaf baking pan was wedged between the jugs. Plastic sewing kits were stacked next to X-Acto knives, and so many arts and crafts supplies Amy could open a hobby shop.

The next bag held a heavy, two-quart plastic food container filled with a white material like modeling clay. I pressed my thumb into the surface, and left a depression.

“Joe.”

Pike looked, and tossed me a smooth, white block. The putty I’d found was heavy and pliable, but the block was light, and hard.

Pike said, “Resin?”

The shape and size reminded me of the baking pan. It was cut into six cavities, each about an inch deep, three inches wide, and seven long. The resin block fit perfectly.

“Yeah. She made it.”

I flashed on a snapshot I’d seen in her home. Amy with Jacob and his high school newspaper friends, holding a tray heaped with dark rectangles. The cakes could have come from this pan, and probably had. Maybe Amy was still making cakes for her son, only now with a less happy intent.

I was searching the shelves again when Scott ran up to the door.

“Hannah came out. Did you find it?”

“A few pounds. We’re looking.”

“Look faster. If she sees what we’re doing, we’re screwed.”

“Stall. Buy us five minutes.”

Scott hurried away.

The next shelf brimmed with more rolls of cloth, crayon-colored spools of insulated wire, and a tool kit with all the tools necessary for do-it-yourself appliance repair.

Pike said, “Look.”

He held out another resin block, as smooth and white as the first until he turned it over.

Faint steel eyes peered from the resin. I knew what they were even before Pike showed me the bag of ball bearings.

Ball bearings had been layered in the mold before the resin was poured. The steel eyes were as cold and merciless as the eyes of a crab, but a bag I found on the bottom shelf frightened me more.

Silver tubes bulged in a Ziploc bag. Each was the size of a short pencil, and twin wires sprouted from an end. I knew what they were from my Army days, only the wires back then were longer. These had
been cut and stripped, and were ready for use. I looked under the Ziploc, and lifted the bag to the table.

“Electric detonators, and more explosives.”

Neatly wrapped bricks of plastic explosive were stacked beneath the detonators. Each was identical in size and shape to the resin block.

Pike came closer.

“How much?”

“Thirty or forty pounds. More like forty.”

I took a block from the bag, and turned it over. Eyes. I checked another. Eyes. A third. Eyes. Pike and I glanced at each other, and turned to the jacket.

The lovely leather jacket with its generous fringe was large for Amy, but otherwise identical to the jacket she wore.

Scott pounded up with the dog at his side.

“Did you find the rest?”

I touched the fine leather. It was soft, and the fringe was as light as air.

Pike said, “Just the two bags. Get your car.”

Scott moved closer.

“This isn’t four hundred pounds.”

“Get the car.”

Scott cursed, and pounded away.

I opened the jacket. Rows of pockets were sewn under the arms, down the sides, and across the lining, each joined to the next by neatly stitched lines of brightly colored wire. The resin block with its ugly steel eyes fit the pockets perfectly.

My head filled with a steady hum, like a fluorescent light beginning to fail. I saw Amy, past and future, what she intended and what she had done, as if her ghost were beside me.

Amy had shaped her putty in the mini-loaf pan. She wrapped each block carefully, and taped the seams as neat as a birthday surprise. The wrapping would make them easier to handle, and use. I didn’t count the bricks or the pouches, but their number would be the same, and the weight of their special surprise would be about forty pounds, same as a four-year-old boy. Amy probably swung Jacob in circles when he was four. She knew she could carry the weight, and would carry it again, with just as much love.

Once the blocks were in their pockets, she’d press a tube into each, and daisy chain them together with crayon-colored wire, making for a festive display. These rainbow wires would twine to a switch, a switch she, herself, had built, which would send an electric kiss to each silver tube, instantly, simultaneously, causing everything thereafter to happen so fast Amy would not feel the furious explosion, as it shattered the air and the people around her with an agonized mother’s roar.

I said, “Oh, Amy.”

Scott’s car pulled up fast, and he ran to the door.

“Tell me you found it. Tell me we got the stuff.”

Pike said, “Just the bags.”

I stroked the soft leather, and loved Amy Breslyn so much my heart broke. Everything Charles and Janet Hess and I believed about her was wrong. Amy outsmarted us.

Scott came closer, looking angrily from me to the jacket.

“What is this? What’s she doing in here?”

Pike closed the jacket, and picked up the bags.

“A suicide coat. The woman’s.”

I said, “She plans to wear it, Scott.”

Pike pushed me toward the door.

“Go now. Move.”

I wanted to burn the unit. I wanted to torch the fine leather jacket and the wire and scissors and thread, and cloud the sky with smoke, but we didn’t. I slipped the jacket off the mannequin, and folded it over my arm.

We locked Amy’s unit, and quietly drove away.