Demolition Angel (19 page)

Bergen hit more keys, after which a window on the screen opened, showing two names having a conversation, ALPHK1 and 22TIDAL. They weren’t discussing bombs, or explosives, or anything even remotely related; they were discussing a popular television series.

Pell said, “They’re talking about a goddamned actress.”

“They can talk about anything they want in a chat room. It’s real time. They’re having a conversation just like we are, only they’re typing it. These guys could be anywhere on the planet.”

Starkey watched their exchange with a growing sense that
she might be discovered, that these people might suddenly look through the computer screen and see her.

“Can they see us?”

“Nope, not now. We are cloaked, man, absolutely invisible. There are no walls on the Internet, no walls at all when I am at play.”

Bergen laughed again, and Starkey thought he was probably as crazy as the loons they were watching.

Pell sighed deeply, then nodded at her.

“I can see him here, Starkey. These people would appeal to his ego. He would come here, read all this crap about how great he is, it’s just the kind of thing a guy like this would do. We can reach him here.”

Starkey was swept by the realization that any of these people could be Mr. Red himself.

She looked past Pell to Bergen.

“We can leave messages here if we have a screen name?”

“Sure. Post messages, come here into the chat room, anything you want if I set you up for it. That’s why we’re here, right?”

She looked at Pell, and Pell nodded.

“That’s what we want.”

“No problemo. Let’s get to it, and you can get on your way.”

They chose the name HOTLOAD. Pell thought it was silly, but, as they sat there working, he decided that there was a subliminal sexuality to it that could work for them.

He watched Starkey out the corner of his eye, admiring her intensity. Bergen’s office was small and cramped; barely big enough for the three of them to fit in front of the computer. Bergen smelled so bad that Pell kept leaning away from him into Starkey. Every time Pell touched her, Starkey shrank away.
Once, when their thighs touched, he thought she was going to fall out of her chair.

Pell wondered about that, thinking that maybe she had an aversion to men or hated being touched, but he decided that this was unlikely. When he’d had the damned spell in Atascadero, she had expressed a surprising warmth that he’d found moving … even as she chewed his ass about Tennant.

“Earth to Pell.”

Starkey and Bergen were both staring at him. He realized that he hadn’t been paying attention, that he had been thinking about Starkey.

“Sorry.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, Pell, pay attention. I don’t want to spend the night here.”

Bergen showed them how to use the little computer, how to turn it on and off, and set them up with an Internet address through an anonymous provider owned and operated by the government. Then he showed them how to get to Claudius once they had accessed the Internet. They talked over how to proceed and decided to do something that Bergen called “trolling.” Writing as Hotload, they posted three messages about Mr. Red on the message boards: two affirming Hotload’s status as a fan and one reporting a rumor that Mr. Red had struck again in Los Angeles, asking if anyone knew if this was true. Bergen explained that the idea was to provoke a response and establish a presence on the boards.

When they finished, Pell told Bergen that he would be back in a few minutes, then walked Starkey out.

Starkey said, “Why do you have to go back?”

“ATF business. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, fuck yourself, Pell. Jesus.”

“This annoyance? Is it perpetual with you?”

Starkey frowned without answering. She shook out a cigarette and lit up. Pell thought about all the smoking and drinking, wondering if she had always been this way or if this
Starkey had been born that day in the trailer park. Like the tough talk and bad attitude. Sometimes, as he drove around the city or lay in his shitty hotel room, Pell wanted to ask her those things, but knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. He knew too damned much for his own good, such as how something like the trailer park could change a person, like if your inside was weak, you covered it with a hard outside. He forced himself to stop thinking these things.

She waved the cigarette like she wasn’t happy with the way it was lit, then stared past him.

“I’ve got to get back to Spring Street. I’m supposed to go out with Marzik, looking for people who saw our guy.”

“You take the computer. We can get together at your place later to see if anyone responded.”

She glanced at him, then shrugged.

“Sure. We can do it at my place. I’ll wait in the car.”

Pell watched Starkey walk away until she was gone, then went back to Bergen’s office. He knocked again, and Bergen peered past him down the hall just like before, making sure that the coast was clear. Pell hated dealing with people like this.

When the door was closed, Bergen said, “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong in front of her.”

Pell took out an envelope containing twelve hundred dollars, then watched as Bergen counted it.

“Twelve hundred. That’s fine. This is the first time you guys have paid me in cash. Usually I file a voucher, but this time Jerry said to leave it alone.”

“If Jerry said to leave it alone, you should leave it alone.”

Bergen shrugged, nervous.

“Right. You want a receipt?”

“What I want is a second computer.”

Bergen stared at him.

“You want another one? Just like the one I gave you?”

“Yes. Set up so I can reach Claudius.”

“What do you need a second one for?”

Pell stepped closer, met Bergen’s eyes in a way that made the muscular man flinch.

“Can you fix me up with a second computer or not?”

“It’s another twelve hundred.”

“I’ll come back later. Alone.”

After Starkey dropped Pell back at his motel, she and Marzik spent the afternoon interviewing customers of the Silver Lake laundry with no success. No one recalled seeing a man in a baseball cap and long-sleeved shirt making a call. Starkey dreaded reporting to Kelso that the suspect likeness would remain unresolved.

At the end of the day, they swung past the flower shop to show Lester Ybarra the three likenesses that Starkey had gotten from Pell.

Lester considered the three pictures, then shook his head.

“They look like three different guys.”

“They’re the same guy wearing disguises.”

“Maybe the guy I saw was wearing a disguise, too, but he looked older than these guys.”

Marzik asked to bum one of Starkey’s Tagamet.

Starkey drove home that night determined to give herself a break from the gin. She made a large pitcher of iced tea. She sipped it as she tried to watch television, but spent most of the evening thinking about Pell. She tried to focus on the investigation instead, but her thoughts kept returning to Pell and their earliest conversation that day, Pell saying that he would take the bullets if Tennant filed the charge, Pell saying he would take the hits.

Starkey shut the lights, went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Not even her usual pathetic two hours.

Finally, she took Sugar’s picture from her dresser, brought it into the living room, and sat with it, waiting for the night to end.

One man had already taken the hits for her. She would never allow another man to do that again.

At ten minutes after nine the next morning, Buck Daggett called her at Spring Street.

“Ah, Carol, I don’t want to be a pest, but I was wondering if you’ve had any breaks.”

Starkey felt a wave of guilt. She knew what it was like to be in Buck’s position, feeling that you were on the outside of something so devastating. She had felt that way after the trailer park. She still did.

“Not really, Buck. I’m sorry.”

“I was just wondering, you know?”

“I know. Listen, I should call to keep you up on this. I’ve just been so busy.”

“I heard they found some writing in the frag. What’s that about?”

“We’re not sure what we found. It’s either a
5
or an
S
but, yeah, it was cut into the body of the pipe.”

Starkey wasn’t sure how much she should tell him about Mr. Red, so she let it go at that.

Buck hesitated.

“A
5
or an
S
? What in hell is that, part of a message?”

Starkey wanted to change the subject.

“I don’t know, Buck. If anything develops, I’ll let you know.”

Santos waved at her, pointing at the phone. A second line light was blinking.

“Listen, Buck, I got a call. As soon as we get anything, I’ll call.”

“Okay, Carol. I’m not nagging or anything.”

“I know. I’ll see you later.”

Starkey thought he sounded disappointed, and felt all the more guilty for avoiding him.

The second call was John Chen.

“We got an evidence transfer here in your name from the ATF lab in Rockville.”

“Is it bomb components from Miami?”

“Yeah. You should’ve told me it was coming, Starkey. I don’t like stuff just showing up like this. I got court today, and now I have to take care of all this chain of evidence paperwork. I’ve gotta be at court by eleven.”

Starkey glanced at her watch.

“I’ll be there before you leave. I want to look at it.”

To maintain the chain of evidence, Chen or another of the criminalists would have to personally log over the components into Starkey’s possession.

“I’ve got court, Carol. Make it later today or tomorrow.”

He got this whiny quality to his voice that annoyed the hell out of her.

“I’m leaving now, John. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

She was on her way out when Kelso’s door opened, and she remembered Tennant. For a few brief minutes, she had forgotten Atascadero.

“Starkey!”

Kelso steamed across the squad room, carrying a coffee cup that read
WORLD’S SEXIEST LOVER
. Starkey watched him without expression, thinking fuck it, if Olsen had made the call filing a complaint, it was too late to worry about it.

“Assistant Chief Morgan wants to have a meeting this afternoon. One o’clock in my office.”

Starkey felt the ground fall away beneath her.

“About what?”

“What do you think, Detective? He wants to know what we’re doing down here about Riggio. Dick Leyton will be here, too. You will advise them on the status of the investigation, and I hope to hell you have something to say.”

Starkey felt her panic ease; apparently, no one was complaining to Internal Affairs.

Kelso spread his hands.

“So? Would you care to give me a preview?”

Starkey told him about Claudius, explaining that Tennant had learned about Mr. Red there, and that she felt it was a possible source of information.

Kelso listened, somewhat mollified.

“Well, that’s something, I guess. At least it looks like we’re doing something.”

“We
are
doing something, Barry.”

Even with nothing to drink, he made her head throb.

Starkey was still shaking when she left CCS, hoping to reach Chen before he left for court. She did, catching him coming down the stairs with a sport coat draped over his arm. He wasn’t happy to see her.

“I told you I had court, and you said you’d be here in twenty minutes.”

“Just get me squared away, then you can leave me to it.”

She preferred being alone when she worked. It would be easier to concentrate if Chen wasn’t watching over her shoulder, being male and offering his help.

Chen grumped about it, but turned and two-stepped the stairs, bringing her back along the hall and into the lab. Two techs were eating sandwiches between plastic bags containing what appeared to be human body parts. The smell of preservative was strong.

Chen said, “They sent two devices, Starkey. It isn’t just the library device like you said.”

That surprised her.

“All I expected was the library device.”

“We got that, but we also got the frag from a detonation they had down there. The reports say they’re pretty much the same design, only one was really a bomb and the other wasn’t.”

Starkey recalled what Pell had told her about a sweatshop
bombing, which was described in one of the seven reports he had provided. She had already read the Dade County report on that device and thought that having it might prove useful.

Chen led her to a corner of the lab where two white boxes rested on the black lab table. Both boxes had been opened.

Chen said, “Everything’s bagged, tagged, and logged. You’ve gotta sign here, then the ATF says you’re clear to do whatever you want, up to and including destructive testing.”

Destructive testing was sometimes necessary to separate components or obtain samples. Starkey didn’t anticipate having to do that and would refer to those results that the Miami authorities had found.

Starkey signed four federal evidence forms where Chen indicated, then gave them back to him.

“Okay. Can I work here at your table?”

“Just try not to make a mess. I know where everything is, so put it back in its proper place. I hate when people move things.”

“I won’t move anything.”

“You want me to tell Russ Daigle you’re up here? He’ll probably want to see this.”

“I’d rather work the bomb by myself, John. I’ll get him when I’m done.”

When Chen was finally gone, Starkey took a breath, closed her eyes, and felt the tension melting away with the glacial slowness of ice becoming water. This was the part of the job that she loved, and had always loved. This was her secret. When she touched the bomb, when she had its pieces in her hands, when they pressed into the flesh of her fingers and palms, she was part of it. It had been that way since her first training exercise at the Redstone Arsenal Bomb School. The bomb was a puzzle. She became a piece in a larger whole that she was able to see in ways that others couldn’t. Maybe Dana was right. For the first time in three years, she was alone with a bomb, and she felt at rest.