Evidence (21 page)

“She
did a bad thing and got caught,” said Milo.

“She
got busted for prostitution and dope five years ago. Want to take a wild guess
where?”

“Seattle.”

“Heart
of the city, downtown. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never left. Even though
she spun us all kinds of tales about hitchhiking
around
the country, living off the land, none of her details came together correctly
and what I get from her file is the bio of a natural-born compulsive liar.”

I
said, “Des Backer traveled around the country for ten years. Did she claim to
be with him?”

“As a
matter of fact, she did, Doctor. Not as a constant companion, off and on. She
spun weird yarns about living in forests, eating roots and shoots, foraging for
wild mushrooms, whatever. But like I said, when it came to closing the deal on
the finer points, as in dates, towns, cities, states, she fell apart. Bureau
shrinks labeled her a histrionic personality.”

Milo
said, “They examined her?”

“I’ve
seen no clinical report.”

I
said, “Meaning the diagnosis probably came from reviewing the file.”

“Do
you disagree with the diagnosis, Doctor?”

“I
don’t know enough to agree, or disagree.”

Lindstrom
frowned. “No offense, but the psych stuff doesn’t really matter, does it? Same for
Fredd’s nature-girl tales. Maybe part of it was true, maybe she was double-,
triple-, quadruple-bluffing. The point is, no eco-crimes during that period can
be traced to her, so either she was real good at covering her tracks or she and
the other Seattle kids weren’t any big deal in the first place.”

I
said, “Five years ago, Des Backer was in architecture school. Doreen’s turning
to prostitution around then says they’d probably parted ways well before.”

“And…?”

“I’m
just trying to nail down the time line.”

“I
won’t argue with your logic.”

Milo
said, “So she gets busted for hooking. How’d that lead to federal snitch?”

Lindstrom
said, “I haven’t said anything about turning her.”

“Her
identity was erased, cut the crap.”

Lindstrom
played with a strap of her tank top. “Yes, we turned
her,
but it wasn’t the prostie part that scared her, it was the dope. We’re talking
kilos of weed, pills in neat little bags plus some chunks of rock. Enough to
put her away for a real long time.”

“She
was a major-league dealer?”

“The
stuff was found in the basement of a rooming house where she habitually took
johns. Downtown Seattle, not far from the Pike market.”

“She
just happens to be rooming with all that?”

“Sitting
on top of it,” said Lindstrom. “Literally. One of those under-the-bed trapdoors
right below her bounce-for-bucks mattress. Doreen’s bad luck was popping pills
in front of a john who turned out to be undercover Seattle vice. She claimed it
was Advil and that was later verified. But meanwhile, the room got seriously
tossed. The city had just instituted one of those temporary moral crusades—too
many tourists hassled by lowlifes—so warrants were a snap. Doreen claimed she
had no idea the hatch existed in the first place, had never even looked under
the bed. Maybe that’s even true. Lots of girls used the same room and the
building was owned by a couple of Cambodian restaurateurs suspected of bringing
in all sorts of bad stuff. By the time the Bureau got called in, they were gone
and wrapped in layers of paper that dead-ended in Phnom Penh. Our plan was to
confiscate the entire property under the RICO statutes but Seattle PD claimed
the prize as theirs. There’s a cute little shopping center there now. Designer
coffee, sushi bar, Italian café with great pastries, yuppie gym. Tanning salon,
too, which could come in handy in Drizzle City.”

“You’ve
visited recently.”

“I
was there yesterday. Trying to learn what I could about Doreen. After we found
out what happened to her here.”

“What’d
you learn?”

“Not
a thing.” Smile. “I did have a good panini at the Italian place.”

“How
long since you had contact with Doreen?”

“I
never
had contact with her,” said Lindstrom, “I
inherited
her. And a bunch of
others like her. If that sounds defensive, it is.”

“Bunch of snitches living off tax dollars who end up
burning you. Business as usual, Gayle.”

The
skin above Lindstrom’s neckline turned rosy. “Like it never happens to you
guys? I happen to know for a fact that six years ago, one of your best female
vice D’s was set up as a pimp in an apartment in Hollywood. Not some decoy
thing, LAPD had a genuine D Two hiring and working real-life hookers on the
street, running everything real businesslike, keeping books, recording income.
All so you could pull in high-profile johns because a feminist on the city
council screamed loud enough to get heard. So what happens to
your
grand
plan? The street girls your D is supposed to boss slip her a roofie, strip her
naked, take pictures of her being ganged by some of their thug boyfriends, put
the photos online, and abscond to Mexico with the cash.
There’s
police
work at its best.”

Milo’s
expression said he’d never heard any of it before.

Gayle
Lindstrom said, “News to you, huh? Well, then thank the LAPD obstruction squad.
My point is, Milo, we all win some, lose some. And we all cover our collective
butts. Yes, the Bureau thought Doreen might be useful because during the same
period she claimed to be nature-girling with Backer, the whole eco-crazy scene
had heated up in a really nasty way. I’m talking two small children of a
genetics researcher—toddlers, for God’s sake—with third-degree burns after
animal liberation nuts set fire to the family house because Daddy ran rats. I’m
talking a bunch of loggers near the Washington-Canadian border getting blinded
and losing limbs due to tree spikes. A Ronald McDonald house sprayed with
threatening graffiti then overrun with live rats, with families living there.
Families of kids with
cancer
, for God’s sake. All because someone
doesn’t like Big Macs. These people are
lunatics
and they’re vicious.
And in addition to that, at least a dozen residential construction projects had
been turned to charcoal, so why
wouldn’t
we try to use Doreen? Everyone
knew the dope really wasn’t hers, why not deal?”

I
said, “What made you think Doreen had anything to offer?”

“She
told my
predecessors
that she did. Started spilling the minute they had
her in lockup, claiming all sorts of insider knowledge about
the most radical fringe of the movement. People she’d
come into contact with during her years on the road. What made her credible was
her insistence on getting a pass for herself on anything she talked about.
Implying she had been more than a bystander.”

Milo
said, “But …”

Lindstrom
turned to him. “You’re enjoying this way too much, but fine, I’ll open a vein
for you: We protected her and she screwed us over. Happy, Father O’Shaughnessy?
How many Hail Marys do I need to do?”

Milo
didn’t answer.

She
said, “Looking back, it’s easy to see the pattern, but at the time?”

“What
was the pattern?”

“Once
Fredd was cleared of the dope charge, she put off blabbing by claiming she was
scared for her life, needed a new I.D., a safe house in another city, a
spending allowance. That took months. Once she was set up, she faked
depression, said she had no energy to deal with life, made suicidal noises.
Bureau assigned a physician to give her a full checkup, and a review by a
shrink.”

I
said, “Not the one who labeled her histrionic.”

“No,
a doc who thought she was a sociopath. But we needed to go along with it, not
confront her. Several more months, then she brought up a new medical issue—”

“Plastic
surgery,” said Milo.

Lindstrom
glared. “Don’t play with me. Am I repeating stuff you already know?”

“It
came up on her external exam at the morgue. Why’d Doreen want her nose nubbed
all of a sudden?”

“What
do you think? ‘I’m scared, I need to change my appearance.’”

“Des
Backer’s sister recognized her even with the nose.”

“So
why didn’t she go for something that really worked? Like I said, hindsight’s
twenty-ten. For all I know, she just wanted to look cuter and use our tax
dollars to pay for it.”

I said, “Surgery, then recuperation. A few more months
of delay.”

“By
the time she got talking, over a year had passed. It started off promising, she
spit out all sorts of horrendous stuff. Including nonsense about an interface
between domestic eco-nuts and foreign terrorists, some major Armageddon
conspiracy. But like I said, it all dead-ended.”

Milo
said, “She give you anything righteous?”

“Like
most liars she spiced up her bullshit with morsels of reality. Piddling stuff,
but just enough to keep us going.”

“Like
what?”

“False
reports of endangered species sightings in order to halt public projects—phony
DNA smeared on trees, that kind of thing. Nonviolent fish-huggers setting out
in canoes and cutting up nets, greenies perched in old, venerable trees so they
wouldn’t get chopped down for shopping centers. Which—off the record—I can’t
say bothers me. Giant redwood gets that old, for God’s sake, let it live out
its golden years in peace. And when I drive through miles of clear-cut dirt
where a forest used to be, it doesn’t make me feel patriotic. In any event,
Doreen snitched minor league, nothing came of it, but it took us a while to
chase down all her bum leads.”

“Did
you go back and question her about the dead kid in Bellevue?”

“You
bet we did,” said Lindstrom. “She never wavered from her initial story: She was
snugly bed-a-bye at Hope Lodge the night it happened, was sure none of her pals
were involved, they’d never do something like that.”

“She
did mention Backer being her travel companion,” I said.

“But
she didn’t incriminate him in anything, Doctor. In fact, each time we brought
his name up, she made him out to be Johnny Appleseed, not some maniac
firebomber. Still, we checked him out and like you said, he was in architecture
school, channeling his green impulses in a socially acceptable manner.”

Milo
said, “How soon after you gave her deep cover did she split?”

“She’s
been off our screen for thirty months, two weeks, and three
days,” said Lindstrom. “You want hours and minutes, I’ll
go back to my federal cubicle and use a calculator. I was assigned her file—and
others—a little over a year ago, have been staring at her face with nowhere to
go. All of a sudden, there she is on the evening news and I just about spew my
Lean Cuisine. Your artist did a pretty good job.”

“My
name was on the screen, too, Gayle. So instead of picking up the phone, you
tell Hal to stonewall.”

“No
choice, the directive came from on up.”

When
Milo didn’t respond, she said, “Like it’s different with you?”

“I’m
sensing a theme here, Gayle. Everyone does it as a defense.”

“What
do you want from me?” said Lindstrom. “Flash back to your Hollywood D all
roofied up with her legs spread and guess what, you won’t find a trace of those
dirty pictures anywhere on the Web. Any written record of the operation,
period. What comes from on top filters down to the peons. Our job is to clean
up messes.”

“Fine,”
said Milo. “Kafka’s God and we’re all cockroaches. But even bugs know how to be
social. Why did your bosses want to obstruct me?”

“They
wanted to make sure everything was squared up before we interfaced.”

“As
in cleaning Doreen’s file of anything useful so as not to look stupid?”

“As
in getting my own facts straight. As in a sudden trip to Seattle yesterday
morning in a coach seat next to a snoring fat guy.”

“If I
hadn’t bugged Hal, would we be sitting here, Gayle?”

“I
can’t answer theoretical questions,” said Lindstrom. “Point is, I’m here and I
told you what I know about Doreen. If it helps you close her out, I’ll
celebrate along with you. Because one of my assignments is to get her the hell
off my desk.”

“Then
write a bullshit report. I’m a cockroach enabler.”

“First
enable some more. As in telling me what you can about Doreen’s murder.”

“Doreen
and Backer were enjoying sexual congress in a big house and got surprised in
the act.”

“Ouch,” said Lindstrom. “Mode?”

“He
was shot once in the head, probably a .22, she was strangled.”

“Forensics?

“His
and her prints in expected places, no one else’s, nothing at Backer’s crib. No
crib at all for Doreen, because some unnamed government agency helped her go
bye-bye and let her stay underground even after she screwed them. Why, once you
realized she’d conned you, didn’t you put her factoids back in place?”