She wondered how long it had been since she’d stepped into the hall and noticed the dead bolt. Realistically, she knew it could not have been more than a minute or so, but it felt like an hour. Whoever was in here would have noticed the hesitation and that she hadn’t made any noise since.
Allen realized she was still holding her breath as she approached the bedroom door, which was open. Had she left it that way? She couldn’t remember. She got within a foot of the door and stopped to see how much of the room she could see in the gap between the door and the jamb. A frustratingly small field of vision, was what. There was no one in her line of sight, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be someone standing by the window, or standing on the blind side of the door.
What she could see was part of her unmade bed. She could also see her coat discarded on top of the duvet, a bump showing where she’d tossed her shoulder holster before dropping the jacket on top of it. She reminded herself not to start feeling too relieved—there might still be someone standing between her and the gun. She glanced behind her and let the held breath out slowly and silently. Another breath and she opened the door, eyes scanning the room even as her hands made straight for the bulge under the jacket. She ripped the jacket off the bed as her eyes swept the room to confirm it was empty.
But then she heard the hard click of a shoe stepping onto the wood floor of the hall behind her, joined a second later by another. She looked down at the holster, guessing she probably had time to get the gun out, disengage the safety, and be covering the door before—
Allen stared down at the bed in disbelief. The leather holster and shoulder strap was still there, approximately where it had landed ten minutes ago.
But the gun had vanished.
“Afternoon, Agent.”
Agent Jim Channing looked back at the doorway of the house that was being virtually taken apart by his agents and saw Detective Mazzucco standing there, cradling a sandwich bag in one hand and two cups of coffee in a cardboard drinks holder in the other.
“Looking for Allen?”
Mazzucco hesitated before answering. “Allen’s on suspension.”
Channing smiled. “She happened to stop by. You just missed her, in fact. She said she had someplace to be.”
Mazzucco said nothing. His eyes flickered to either side of Channing, as though not entirely sure whether to believe him. Then he shrugged and nodded at the cups of coffee. “I guess I have some going spare, then,” he said, holding the tray out for Channing to take one. He accepted the offering with a nod.
“How we doing here?” Mazzucco asked as Channing sipped the coffee.
Channing suppressed a grimace as he realized the latte had at least three sugars in it, but swallowed anyway. “Not a lot to find,” he said, casting his gaze around the hallway and into the bedroom. “Besides the torture kit—which, of course, could be explained away by any halfway-decent defense attorney, if it ever gets that far—all we know is that somebody’s been living here for a while and that they seem to lead a pretty spartan existence. A couple days’ worth of food in the refrigerator, nothing fancy. A few books, including the Bible, some clothes and some electronic odds and ends. Nothing to suggest anybody was ever held here against their will—no blood, no female personal effects, nothing like that. We looked up the name on the lease and found out there wasn’t one. This place was repossessed by the bank in 2009 and hasn’t been inhabited since. I guess there are enough of these empty places these days that the banks don’t notice a few squatters, huh?”
Mazzucco took a sip of his coffee and said nothing, waiting for Channing to continue. A classic interrogation technique. Channing dry-swallowed to try to get the sugary aftertaste out of his mouth and depressed the raised buttons in the plastic lid, as he habitually did. He decided to take the same tack as he had with Allen, see how it went down with her partner.
“Tell you the truth, Detective Mazzucco . . . Jon, is it?”
Mazzucco nodded slowly, as if reluctant to confirm or deny.
“I’m not sure this lead is going to take us anyplace. I mean, sure, the connection with the warehouse down in Inglewood is interesting, if it was the same guy . . .”
Mazzucco cut in sharply. “And what about the guy in the green Dodge, hightailing it as soon as he sniffed cop?”
Channing shrugged as though he didn’t have a particular dog in this fight. “It’s a good point. Definitely worth investigating. But if the guy’s living here illegally, that’s reason enough for him to pull a fade, isn’t it?”
Mazzucco had opened his mouth to reply when Channing felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw it was Agent Moreno, a tall, twentysomething woman in her first year out of the academy. She looked serious, as though something had caught her by surprise for the first time on this job.
“What have you got for me, Isabella?”
Moreno looked uncomfortable, glanced at Mazzucco, who was watching with fresh interest.
“It’s about the prints, sir. We heard back from the lab.” She inclined her head toward the living room of the house, suggesting that Channing might want to speak in privacy. He was intrigued, but he didn’t want to break the moment with Mazzucco by overtly freezing him out. He nodded at the detective and smiled at Moreno.
“It’s okay. You can go ahead. We’re all on the same team here, right?”
Moreno’s discomfort seemed to heighten. She stared at Channing for a moment longer before relenting. “The lab followed what they tell me is the standard procedure, albeit with a rush. They ran the prints through the local databases first, checked out anything held by local law enforcement.” She glanced at Mazzucco as she said this.
“And?”
“And the search triggered a DR17.”
“A DR17?”
“It’s a flag, in this case from Homeland Security. It means forget you asked.”
Channing’s eyes narrowed. All of a sudden, he was starting to regret having this conversation in front of Mazzucco, but it was too late now.
“Okay,” he said, making sure to keep his voice even and unrattled. “So what happened when we ran them using the national database?”
“That’s the weird thing, sir. They put the prints through the VICAP database next.” The acronym stood for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—a nationwide database used to map similarities between violent crimes crossing state lines, available only to the Bureau and cops who put their request in writing and ask nicely.
Moreno continued. “We got a hit on the prints there and a little more information. But I’m told we can expect a call from somebody in DHS.”
“Well, who is he?” Channing prompted, careful not to betray how impatient she was making him. He expected she was about to tell him that the prints matched one of the murders in another state. He was not prepared for what she actually said.
“He’s a dead man, sir.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dean Crozier, born right here in LA in 1980, signed up for the army in ninety-eight, KIA 2004 in Afghanistan. He’s been dead for over a decade.”
Channing glanced in Mazzucco’s direction, wishing he could erase the cop’s memory of the previous three minutes. Mazzucco’s face was impassive. He took another sip of his coffee as he watched the show.
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Those prints come from this house. They’re all
over
this house, the same prints. They were left here by somebody recently.”
Moreno stared back at him wide-eyed, as though worried that he wanted her to explain this apparent impossibility on the spot.
“Thank you, Agent,” Channing said, dismissing her with a strained smile. Moreno gratefully turned away and headed outside.
Mazzucco watched her as she went. He raised his eyebrows at Channing. “First time I heard of a legally dead squatter.”
Channing put the sugary coffee down on the floor and approached Mazzucco. Mazzucco didn’t move, didn’t back off, just returned his gaze and let the hint of a smile play over his lips.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Detective. Meantime, our number one priority is still tracking down Carter Blake.”
“Let me guess. No progress on that, either?”
Channing let the implied insult go. “Your partner seems to have gotten quite attached to this guy.”
“She tell you that?”
“She has a habit of doing her own thing. Isn’t that right?”
Mazzucco said nothing for a minute, then looked away. “I think I’ll head back down to headquarters. I need to check in with the lieutenant.”
Channing smiled. “Be careful, Detective. It’s easy to be led astray, particularly when it’s your partner who’s doing the leading.”
Mazzucco nodded and turned back toward the doorway.
“Enjoy the coffee, Agent.”
Channing watched Mazzucco’s back as he walked down the path toward the sidewalk and waited until he’d vanished from view. Then he took his cell phone out and dialed a number that he’d added very recently. There were a couple of rings, and then a gruff, harried voice answered.
“McCall.”
“Captain McCall, it’s Agent Jim Channing, FBI.”
“Oh yeah?” The voice betrayed surprise, along with immediate suspicion.
“How’s your guy doing, the one Blake assaulted?”
“He’ll live. You make a habit of expressing your concern for on-the-job injuries, or is this a social call?”
Channing smiled. “Actually, I wanted to get your opinion on one of your colleagues. Jessica Allen.”
I sat back on Allen’s leather couch, trying to rub some sensation back into the left side of my jaw while I waited for her to come back through.
After a minute, she appeared at the door, having wrapped a hand towel around her wet hair and quickly dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She didn’t look any less pissed off than she had a couple of minutes before.
“You want some ice or something for that?” she asked curtly.
I shook my head. I’d let her take the swing at me; figured she deserved it.
“What the hell are you doing breaking into my apartment, Blake? I thought you were
him
.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around.”
“Where’s my gun?”
I nodded at the television table, on top of which I’d left her gun after taking the precaution of moving it from where she’d expected it to be. Given her violent reaction to seeing me, I decided it had been a sensible precaution.
“I was worried you might not give me a chance to explain.”
Allen kept her eyes fixed on me as she crossed the room and picked the gun up. She ejected the magazine and checked the load, then clicked it back into place. She didn’t point it at me or anything, but I noticed that she didn’t put it down again either.
“So explain.”
“You want to sit down, or—?”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t kill the girl in the warehouse. I got there ten minutes before the cops did—it was a setup. That must have crossed your mind, right? The guy you’re looking for isn’t that sloppy.”
“Let’s say I thought there might be more than meets the eye. Keep going.”
“Somehow he found the hotel where I was staying. He called me up last night, wanted to talk.”
“He called you. The Samaritan called you.”
“Yeah. I think he tailed me from the scene of the first murder last night, the one in the alley.”
“Wait a second. Why would he be interested in you? You’re not even an official part of this investigation.”
I’d been hoping she might not pick up on that.
“I think he noticed I was helping you. He decided to check me out and then decided I was a nice, expendable individual who wasn’t any kind of cop and wouldn’t be believed if I was found in a warehouse with the latest victim.”
Allen waited to see if I was going to say anything further. When I didn’t, she brought the gun up to cover me and moved over to where she’d left her cordless phone on a shelf of the bookcase. She picked it up, eyes still on me, and began to dial a number.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling it in. I’m going to tell them I’m holding Carter Blake at gunpoint and I’d like them to come get him.”
“Wait a second. I thought you believed me.”
“I didn’t say that. I had some doubts about the way things went down at the warehouse. But I don’t believe a goddamn word of what you just said.”
“It’s the truth, Allen. He tracked me down, called me up, and led me to the warehouse like an idiot. I was so eager to nail him I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“That’s not the part I’m talking about, and you know it. Whoever set you up didn’t pick you at random. And you didn’t pick this case at random either, did you, Blake?”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. And then she dialed three more digits, the tones sounding like a discordant advertising jingle.
“One more digit, Blake. I press it, and time’s up.”
“Wait.”
She held a finger poised on the last button, turned her face to me expectantly.
“What gave me away?” I asked.
Allen didn’t put the phone down, but she did move her finger away from the button. “I never really bought the idea you’d come all the way out here on a whim. You showed up within hours of the story hitting the news. That tells me you wanted in on this badly.”
I kept my mouth shut. The first rule when you’re in a hole: stop digging.
“I parked my suspicions, though, because it seemed like you were on the level about doing this for a living, and your references checked out. I thought you could help us. The clincher was last night.”
“The tow truck driver?” I asked.
She nodded. “You knew Gryski wasn’t the Samaritan the second you looked at him. How did you know that? He fit the profile and he resisted arrest using deadly force. Exactly like a cornered killer would behave. But you knew it wasn’t him as soon as you saw his face. Call it a cop’s instinct, but I knew right away—your body language changed as soon as you didn’t see the face you were looking for. Which means you know who we’re looking for, don’t you?”
“It’s not that simple.”