Forty Thieves (6 page)

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Sid. “This would be a good place to kill somebody.”

“Or dump a body, anyway.”

Sid stopped the car. “There aren’t any cameras or fences like they sometimes have on construction sites. I guess there’s nothing here to protect yet. Nothing to steal.”

“At least without prying apart the lumber they’ve nailed together,” said Ronnie.

“Too much work for thieves, I guess. Okay. Let’s try to work this out while we can see it. So this guy decides to kill James Ballantine.”

“Or gets hired to kill him.”

“He figures a good place to do it would be in a sparsely populated area north of the city, a place where he can discharge a firearm without waking the neighborhood, because nobody lives in the houses yet. He drives Ballantine up here to look at the lots for sale, or brings him here, maybe drugged or tied up. At some point he shoots him twice in the back of the head with a .22 pistol. The street has an open trench dug in the middle, with a big concrete pipe being laid in as the main channel for storm runoff. The pipe is big enough to drag a body in, and the start of it is already connected to the existing part of the storm drain system. So he drags the victim as far as he can into the completed part of the storm sewer. Right now is the rainy season, and he hopes that as soon as there’s a storm, the body will be swept downstream, maybe all the way to the ocean. Or he might have done this after the rain had already begun. He saw the water running into the drain and realized he had a solution to his body problem.”

“This doesn’t seem like a crime of opportunity to me,” said Ronnie. “There’s too much that’s ideal—no lights, nobody who lives nearby, a way to wash the body of all trace evidence and transport it far away at the same time. You don’t usually find all of those things by happy accident.”

“Okay,” said Sid. “He knew that this development was all new streets, so they’d have to put in pipes to connect with the main storm sewer system. He could have come to the construction site any night and looked closely at the place. With online weather forecasts, he could know in advance when there would be a good day for putting a body in a storm drain. A big rainstorm would also wash away things like footprints and tire tracks and the marks where he’d dragged the body. So it was probably planned.”

Ronnie said, “Right. The .22 rounds would indicate that he met the victim knowing what he was going to do. A pro might use a .22 because it’s relatively quiet, but the victim is just as dead, if you shoot him in the head or heart. But nobody would bring a .22 to a gunfight. He had to know in advance what to bring.”

“Yes,” said Sid. “Is ‘he’ a woman?”

“Maybe,” Ronnie said. “A .22 would be much easier to hide than a bigger pistol on a small body. And a woman could find a way to get in very close.”

“Other possibilities?”

“Dozens,” she said. “Maybe he or she posed as a realtor, an architect, or contractor, and said, ‘I’ll drive you around to look at the lots.’ That way there’s no extra car left here to raise questions. Maybe the shooting took place at an even more remote spot, and he just dumped the body at a construction site on his way home. And there’s still the possibility that this was a psycho out plinking at bottles who saw a lone man in a remote place and wondered what it would be like to kill somebody.”

“And we can’t ignore the fact that Ballantine was black,” said Sid. “It might be too early to rule out racial hatred as a motive.”

“I guess the only things we can rule out right now are suicide and accident. Neither involves two shots to the back of the head,” Ronnie said.

She noticed that Sid was staring into the rearview mirror. “What do you see?”

“I’m not sure. Do you remember about two stops back, there was a car behind us at a distance?”

“You mean when you were speeding?”

“Yeah. Just now, a car came by that intersection back there, and stopped. Whoever was in it seemed to be watching us. Then it pulled forward to where I couldn’t see it, but slowly. It looked like the same car. It’s a fairly small sedan, colored somewhere between dark gray and a dusty black.”

“At the entrance to this street?”

“Yes. They could have been parking up there just out of sight.”

“Why would anybody come down here in the dark?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.” After a moment, he said, “Maybe they’ve been following us all afternoon waiting for a chance to corner us.”

She looked around. “This doesn’t look like a place I want to be cornered.” She released her seat belt.

Sid said. “How do you want to do this?”

“Let’s get out of here, but cautiously. Turn around and head out. Keep our windows open and guns ready, but try to look like a normal couple who were just out looking at a new housing development.” She took out her pistol, released the magazine to verify that it was loaded, reinserted it, and pulled back the pistol’s slide to put a round in the chamber.

Sid swung the car to the side of the road, backed up, and turned around. He drove back along the unpaved road toward the intersection at a slow speed, as though he had not seen anything that made him suspicious. Ronnie rested her pistol on her knee with her finger straight along the side of the trigger guard.

Ronnie said, “I’m trying to spot them, but I don’t see anybody yet.”

“Good.”

“Do you think they could be guards of some kind?”

“There’s not much here to guard yet,” said Sid. “If they are, they’ll be satisfied to see us leave, and not bother us. Of course, it could be somebody from an old case, just waiting to get us into a place like this. It could even be Alex Rinosa.”

“Even if he’s been arrested by now, he wouldn’t know who we are yet.”

“Not usually, but it could happen.”

“Thanks for not saying it’s because I took out the ad about a reward for the Ballantine murder,” she said. “Even though it is.”

Sid drove along the gravel road, staying in the center while they both watched the side windows. When he reached the end of the road he turned to the right, the direction the car had gone. A quarter mile ahead of them was the dark-colored car, sitting beside the road. “That looks like the one,” Sid said.

He accelerated toward the car, but the driver pulled out and drove off quickly. As Sid sped up, so did the dark car, moving off now at a high speed.

“Interesting,” said Ronnie. “I guess he isn’t in a mood to chat.”

Sid kept accelerating. “I am now.”

“Me too,” said Ronnie. “But if that’s not possible, I’d be satisfied to get a picture of their license plate.” She took out her cell phone and prepared it to take a picture.

They were slowly gaining on the car ahead of them. Ronnie steadied her phone on the dashboard, and then decided that she could hold it steadier in her hands at this speed.

Ronnie said, “Get closer. I want to get a license number when he goes under a streetlamp.”

They were gaining. Far ahead, Ronnie saw the shape of a human torso extend itself out the passenger window of the car. “Wait a minute, Sid. That looks like a—”

They saw and heard it at once, a flash from the car far ahead of them, a bang and a sound like a hammer hitting their car, an explosion of glass into the front seat that sprayed Sid’s neck and chest and stung his face. There was now a big spiderweb crack in the windshield above his head with a bullet hole in the center.

Sid took his foot off the gas pedal and let the car coast while he feathered the brake pedal to slow it without losing control.

The dark car’s tires squealed as it spun around the next corner, leaving a small gray cloud from the burning rubber.

Sid stepped on the gas pedal again, heading for the place where the car had disappeared. Ronnie said, “Sid!”

“I know. But now we really want that picture.”

The air was so still that the cloud from the burned rubber hung over the intersection long enough for the Abels to drive through it into the turn.

No car was visible. Sid slowed down and they coasted onto the new street. It was a deserted street ending in a cul-de-sac. “What the hell?”

“I don’t know,” Ronnie said. “I’m looking.”

“Most garage door openers have a lightbulb that stays on for a time after they’ve been used. Look for a glow at the edge of a garage door.”

They drifted along the street looking for any sign that a car had been driven into a garage, but they saw no lights and no motion. When they reached the end of the street, Sid stopped the car and they got out.

Ronnie said, “He knew we were going to catch up. How did he manage to disappear?”

“I’m beginning to think he does this for a living,” Sid said. “I’ll take this side and you take the other.”

“Be extra careful,” she said. “I’m not quite done with you yet.”

“You too. If you see anything at all, signal me and wait.”

They took their positions and began to advance back up the silent, deserted street. There were
SOLD
signs on most of the lawns, and the few houses that didn’t have one seemed not to be completed. None looked occupied. Sid and Ronnie walked across front lawns with their guns drawn, each of them keeping one shoulder close to the front of each house, stopping at the end to look around the corner, then crossing the driveway or the lawn to the next one. If a garage had a window they aimed a flashlight into it. They directed their flashlight beams down the spaces between houses, trying to detect a place where a driver might have hidden a car.

They were on opposite sides of the street, about three houses from the corner, when Ronnie signaled Sid with her light, and he ran to join her. “What have you got?” he whispered.

“This.” She aimed her flashlight beam between two houses. In the beam Sid could see that a car’s tires had flattened the side lawn in two ruts. She said, “Some of the others have fences or trees between them. He found one where he could drive all the way through to the next street over. He’s long gone.”

Ronnie and Sid watched the helicopter making its passes high overhead, completing larger and larger circles in its search for the dark car, its rotors beating the air with a deep
throbbing noise. Now and then its spotlight would sweep across a promising sight on a nearby street, go back and stay on it, and then move on.

Sid looked at his watch. “It’s been hours. They could be in Palm Springs or Santa Barbara or Victorville by now, having their third drink.”

Ronnie sighed. “It’s after closing time. But maybe there’s a minibar in their hotel room.”

Sid said, “I wish there were one here.”

They watched the line of five cops walking the straight road away from them, their flashlights sweeping back and forth on the pavement, the gutters, and the weedy margins as they went.

The radio in a nearby cop’s hand said, “Hold up.” There was a brief silence and the voice said, “I’ve got something.”

Two sergeants and a detective hurried down to the spot to join the cop who had spoken. Sid and Ronnie listened to the radio traffic and watched the cops. In a few minutes the officer in charge of the scene, a plump, red-faced detective named Hebert, returned holding a plastic evidence bag with a brass casing. He announced to nobody in particular, “It’s a .308 Winchester. It must have been a hell of a shot from a fast-moving car. About three hundred yards.”

“I was impressed at the time,” said Sid.

Hebert said, “Have either of you thought of a good reason why the two men would shoot at you?”

“Not a
good
reason,” said Sid. “We were trying to come close enough to see who they were, or get a picture of their plate.”

“We told you about the case we came here to investigate,” said Ronnie. “We were trying to figure out where a victim
could have been dumped in a storm drain a year ago during the storms and end up in North Hollywood. We’re just getting started.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not as though we knew too much, so somebody would want to kill us. We don’t know anything yet. The original homicide detective in North Hollywood, Detective Kapp, had been trying to figure out where the victim was dumped, and we were just here to see if we could sort out which of the leads he had was the right one.”

“I’d say the shooter may have just told you,” said Detective Hebert. “Well, it’s after two a.m. I think we’ve got about all the information you can give us for the moment. If you two want to go home, you can.”

“Thanks,” Sid said.

“We’ll call if we need anything else.”

Sid and Ronnie walked back to their car. Sid got in behind the wheel and looked up at the hole in the windshield and the milky, pulverized safety glass around it.

“I’m alert enough to drive,” Ronnie said. “If you’re about to doze off and kill us both, I’d be delighted to take over.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m feeling alert. That big shot of adrenaline just after night fell got me going, and then standing around for hours didn’t make me tired, just frustrated.” He drove to the end of the road and then south away from the development. The roads at the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley were dark and sparsely traveled at this time of night. It was too late for the bar crowd to come home and too early for the early risers to go to work.

“Did you buy Hebert’s theory that the shooting told us that was where James Ballantine was killed?”

“No. The only thing this told me is that I have to get the windshield replaced. And I feel stupid. It never occurred to me that somebody would decide to follow us today.”

“Well no,” said Ronnie. “We’re supposed to be following them. A fox doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if he’s being stalked by chickens.”

5

Nicole Hoyt picked up the .308 bolt-action rifle, her five-foot-three frame and her small, thin fingers making the rifle look huge. She released the magazine from the rifle, then pulled the bolt up and back to keep the chamber open. She verified that the chamber was empty, as she had known it was, but she checked because that was what a pro did. It didn’t matter how many kills you had if the last one was you. This had been a long night, and she didn’t want to leave anything to chance when she was tired.