Evidence (37 page)

He
said, “And if this guy in the hood did the actual killing and you didn’t really
know what was going to happen and you tell me who he is, that will also help
you.”

“That,”
said Helga Gemein, wringing her hands, “would be all idiocy. I killed
nobody.”

“Truth
is, Helga, I’m leaning toward your partner as the major bad guy for Des and
Doreen because there was a certain masculine stupidity to the murders and I
don’t see stupid as part of your makeup. So let’s start with who he is.”

“The
Dalai Lama.”

“Pardon?”

“Today
he is the Dalai Lama. Tomorrow? Emperor Franz Josef, Nikola Tesla, Walter
Gropius. Take your pick.”

“You’re
not helping yourself, Helga.”

“You
think I care to help you?” she said.

“I understand, maybe you didn’t actually pull the
trigger so you think—”

“You
understand
nothing!”
she shrieked. “I did not
kill
anyone!”

“Charles
Rutger would debate that if he could.”

“An
accident,” she said. “Had I known, I would have waited.”

“Even
though you don’t care about people.”

“I
avoid complications.”

“Well,”
said Milo, “you’ve ended up with a whole bunch of complications.”

“You
are stubborn beyond rationality.”

“Like
someone else you know?”

“Who?”

Milo
smiled. “I had a dad like that.”

Helga
shuddered. Her turn to cover the stab of emotion with an even bigger smile.
“Pity for you, Policeman.”

“Let’s
get back to basics, Helga: You’re not leaving here. But you do have a chance to
help yourself by telling me—”

“Policeman,”
she said, “at this time, I need to …”

“Oh,
shit,” said Maria Thomas.

“…
have time to think. Alone. Please.”

Soft
voice, almost gentle.

“You
have surprised me,” she said. “I need to think. Please, some time.”

Milo
said, “Take all the time you need.”

The
door to the observation room swung open. Milo stepped in, wiping sweat from his
face.

He’d
remained cool in Helga’s presence: Zen and the art of detection.

Maria
Thomas said, “I have to say she didn’t look the least bit hinky on those two
murders.”

Don
Boxmeister said, “Even with that, we get her on Rutger, she’s away for a long
time.”

“Don’t
get overconfident about Rutger,” said Thomas. “She has family money. Want to
take bets the first thing any decent lawyer does is move to throw out the last
two hours because she was under emotional duress?”

“Milo
didn’t persecute her, Maria.”

“Who’s
talking reality, Don? It’s a game and rich people have a better win-loss
record.” She turned to Milo. “You’re lucky she’s arrogant. Only reason she
hasn’t lawyered up is she thinks she’s smarter than you. But now that she’s
faced with Rutger, don’t count on that lasting. What’s your next step?”

Milo sat down heavily. Watched Helga through the
glass.

She’d
remained in her chair.

Black-wigged
statue.

Thomas
said, “Milo, you with us?”

“I
don’t know.”

Thomas’s
BlackBerry sent her a message. She checked the screen, poked with a stylus,
scrolled. “Detective Obermann has your German translations all done, he’ll
e-mail them to you but is happy to talk to you over the phone. And … looks like
he identified some of those numbers you found on Gemein’s papers. GPS
coordinates, matching a private hangar at Van Nuys Airport. Registered to …
DSD, Inc. That ring any bells?”

Milo
sat up. “Loud ones. The sultan’s holding company.”

“So
our Swiss Miss had more arson in mind. I’ll talk to the Sranilese consulate,
ask for consent to enter the hangar.”

“There
is no consulate.”

“The
embassy in D.C., then.”

“They’ll
say no and clean the place out.”

“Of
what?”

“Their
royal family’s involved in murder, they’re gonna be in total ass-covering
mode.”

Thomas
thought. “Guess we have a problem.” Helga Gemein closed her eyes.

Boxmeister
said, “How about this: We apply for warrant under exigent danger. Likely
presence of volatile chemicals, imminent risk of ignition.”

“The
hangar’s ready to blow?” said Thomas. “What evidence do we have of that?”

“We’ve
got prior bad acts by Helga and her looking for GPS coordinates. To me that’s
clear intent.”

“She
can look to her heart’s content, Don. How’s she going to gain access to the
hangar?”

Milo
said, “She’s got money to charter a private jet. Maybe once she’s in there she
could find it.”

“Exactly,” said Boxmeister. “Like one of those private
clubs. Getting past the rope’s a bitch, but once you’re in, anything goes.”

Thomas
said, “No judge is going to buy it and we’re talking royalty, to boot.”

Milo
said, “But what if she’s already gotten in there and set her Jell-O? All those
aircraft nearby? All that jet fuel?”

Boxmeister
said, “Shit, I don’t want to even imagine. Sure hate to be the one who failed
to take precautions.”

Thomas
said, “Subtle, guys. You want me to ask the boss.”

Milo
glanced toward the one-way mirror. Helga remained frozen. “Up to you but I used
all my charm up with her.”

Thomas
drummed her BlackBerry. Began texting.

Helga
Gemein stood up, walked to the mirror, turned her back on us.

One
hand reached up. Fooled with the wig.

“That’s
her anxiety tell, messing with the rug,” said Boxmeister. “She’s gonna cave, I can
feel it.”

If
that comforted Milo, he didn’t show it.

Thomas
kept texting.

Helga
Gemein turned again, faced us.

Looking
but not seeing.

Blank
eyes; she’d arrived at a solitary place.

Snatching
off her wig with one deft movement, she exposed a beautifully shaped head
shaved white and glossy. Holding the hairpiece in front of her, bowl up, like a
chalice, she smiled.

Sad
smile. Second time I’d seen it. I liked her no better.

Reaching
into the wig, she pulled something out. Small and white and capsule-shaped,
pincer-grasped between thumb and forefinger.

Still
smiling, she opened her mouth, popped the white thing. Swallowed.

Her
smile spread. Her breathing quickened.

Boxmeister
said, “Oh, shit.”

Milo
was already up, rushing for the door.

Maria Thomas looked up from her BlackBerry. “What’s
going on?”

Milo
ran past her, let the door slam shut.

Inches
away, blocked by glass, Helga Gemein wobbled. Clutching her abdomen, she let
out a gasp.

Retched.

Something
green and slimy trickled out of her mouth.

Slack
mouth, the smile was gone.

Thomas
said, “Omigod,” and ran out of the room. Boxmeister hustled after her.

I
stayed in my chair. No reason to crowd the space.

Helga
began convulsing. Her breath grew labored. Staggering closer to the one-way,
she panted raggedly. Filmed the glass. Flecked it with glassy spit, then
pinpoints of pink.

The
massive convulsion began at her eyes, raced downward as her entire body was
seized.

Rag
doll, shaken by an unseen god.

Foam
began pouring out of her mouth, a Niagara of bile. Chunks of slime coated the
glass, clouded my view. But I managed to make out Milo rushing in, catching her
as she fell.

Laying
her down gently, he began chest compressions. Thomas and Boxmeister stood by,
transfixed.

Milo’s
technique was perfect. Rick insists he recertify every couple of years. He
gripes about the colossal waste of time, homicide is brain-work, when would he
ever have the opportunity to get heroic.

Today,
he did.

Today,
it didn’t matter.

The
police chief’s face is pocked more severely than Milo’s. A lush white mustache
does a pretty good job of camouflaging a harelip.

He’s
a lean man with no discernible body fat. The lack of spare flesh stretches the
skin that sheaths his skull, highlighting pit and crater, glossing lump and
scar. The skull is an oddly shaped triangle, broad and unnaturally flat on top,
coated with silky, blond-white hair, and tapering to a knife-point chin. His
eyes are small and dark and they alternate between manic bounces and long
stretches of unblinking immobility. When he turns his head a certain way,
patches of taut, tortured dermis give him the look of a burn victim.

He
turns that way a lot and I wonder if it’s intentional.

Take
me on my terms
.

Everything
in his history supports a
Screw-you
approach to life: the up-from-nothing
ascent, the graduate degree at an Ivy League university he disparages as “an
asylum for rich brats.” War heroism followed by clawing up the ranks of a
notoriously corrupt East Coast police force, the combative years spent kicking
bureaucratic ass and
clearing out departmental
deadweight. Defying the brass and the police union with equal-opportunity
contempt, he arm-twisted his way to dramatically lowered felony rates in a city
considered “ungovernable” by pundits he dismissed as “fat-assed brats with
mental constipation and verbal diarrhea.” Stunning success was exploited to
demand and receive the highest law enforcement salary in U.S. history.

A
month later, he quit unceremoniously, when L.A. upped the ante.

Everyone
said L.A. would be his fatal challenge.

Within
a year of arriving, he’d divorced his third wife ten years his junior, married
a fourth twenty years his junior, attended a lot of Hollywood parties and
premieres, and lowered felony rates by twenty-eight percent.

When
he’d taken the job, departmental wienies had bad-mouthed Milo as “a notorious
troublemaker and a deviant,” and urged demotion or worse.

The
chief checked the solve-stats, most of the wienies ended up taking early
retirement, Milo got the freedom to do his job with relative flexibility. As
long as he produced.

I’d
met the chief once before, when he’d invited me to his office, showed off his
collection of psych texts, expounded on the finer points of cognitive behavior
therapy, then made me an offer: full-time job heading the department’s
department of behavioral sciences. Even with his promise to raise the pay scale
by forty percent, the salary didn’t come close to what I earned working
privately. Even if he’d tripled the money, it would never be an option. I know
how to play well with others, but prefer my own rulebook.

During
that meeting, he was dressed exactly as he was today: slim-cut black silk suit,
aqua-blue spread-collar shirt, five-hundred-dollar red Stefano Ricci tie
embedded with tiny crystals. On a lesser man it would’ve screamed
Trying too
hard
. On him, all that polish emphasized the roughness of his complexion.

My
terms
.

He faced Milo and me across a booth at a steak house
downtown on Seventh Street. A pair of massive plainclothes cops watched the
front door; three more had staked out positions inside the restaurant. A velvet
rope blocked other diners in this remote, dim section. The waiter assigned to
us was attentive, vaguely frightened.

The
chief’s lunch was a chicken breast sandwich, seven-grain bread, side salad, no
dressing. He’d ordered a thirty-ounce T-bone, medium-rare, all the fixings, for
Milo; a more moderate rib eye for me. The food arrived just as we did.

Milo
said, “Good guess, sir.”

The
chief’s smile was crooked. “In the gulag, we keep files on dissidents.”

His
sandwich was divided into two triangles. He picked up a knife and bisected each
half. Got five bites out of each quarter, chewing daintily and slowly. Sharp
white teeth, somewhere between fox and wolf.

He
wiped his lips with a starched linen napkin. “I bought you an insurance policy
on Gemein, Sturgis. Know what I mean?”

“Captain
Thomas.”

A
gun-finger aimed across the table. “Lucky for you Maria was there when that
crazy bitch cyanided, because, like all hot air, blame floats to the top.
Extra-lucky
for you, Maria was the one who didn’t want to strip-search. She’s smart and
industrious but she does tend to overthink.”

Milo
said, “Even without her directive, I wouldn’t have strip-searched, sir.”

“What’s
that, Sturgis? Penance?”