No Good Deed (31 page)
Emilio cleared his throat and she turned around.
Julie and her assistant had a biohazard body bag on a gurney. They were lifting what looked like a clear bag of thick bone soup from the trunk right onto the covered gurney. The plastic—thick, clear plastic that painters used—was wrapped multiple times around the body and duct-taped. Through a small hole, fluid started running out. Julie swore and quickly maneuvered the body into the body bag and zipped it up.
Emilio walked over to Julie. Kenzie followed.
“Is there anything left to make a tentative ID? Clothing? Jewelry?” Emilio asked.
“Based on the cranium, I’m comfortable saying your victim is an adult male,” Julie said.
Kenzie said, “Barry wore a class ring on his right ring finger. College, I think.”
“You’re welcome to inspect the body, but I’d suggest we do it at the morgue.”
“We’ll follow,” Kenzie said.
“You planning on staying with me all night? Because I’m telling you right now, I’m not doing anything other than processing and weighing the body tonight. Autopsy will be first thing in the morning. Seven a.m.”
“We need an ID,” Kenzie pushed. “This car belongs to an FBI agent.”
Julie nodded. “I heard. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you for certain that this is Barry. I know him and it sucks that this corpse isn’t recognizable. Search the car, maybe you’ll find something useful.” She paused. “I wish I had more information for you, but the faster I get him to the morgue, the faster I can get you something.”
“Thank you, Julie,” Kenzie mumbled.
“The plastic leaked when we moved the body,” Julie said, “but there doesn’t seem to be much fluid in the trunk. I’m done here, your team can have the car.”
While Julie packed up the body, Emilio said to the deputy sheriff, “We need all surveillance footage from Friday afternoon through now. Any way to tell when the car was parked here?”
“The time stamp on the ticket. There’re surveillance cameras on the entrance as well, and it appears the lot is also covered. I’ll grab everything from airport security.”
“Stat. That’s a federal agent who was murdered. Either he drove in here and someone killed him in broad daylight and stuffed him in the trunk, or someone else drove his car,” Emilio said. “The FBI Evidence Response Team is on its way, they’ll process the car and take it to our warehouse.”
“Was there any luggage in the vehicle?” Kenzie asked.
They all looked into the trunk. A lone suitcase had been pushed back, to make room for the body.
“There’s nothing in the cab,” the deputy said. “We checked.”
“No laptop? Cell phone?”
“We didn’t go inside—but we didn’t see anything through the windows.”
His cell phone had either been stolen or was on his body. As the ERT truck turned into the parking lot, Kenzie pulled out her phone and dialed Abigail Durant.
“Ma’am? It’s MacKenzie Malone. We found Agent Crawford’s car. There’s a body in the trunk. We can’t be certain, but it’s an adult male and most likely Barry. ERT just arrived and are going to process the car, autopsy is at seven in the morning. We’re pulling security feeds.”
“Shit,” Abigail mumbled. Kenzie didn’t think she’d ever heard the ASAC swear. “Keep me informed. We have a situation downtown. One of the shooters from yesterday is in a standoff with the marshals right now.”
“Do you need us?”
“No—I already sent agents to the scene. Stay with Agent Crawford’s car until ERT secures the scene. Then go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.”
* * *
Mac “Big Mac” Jackson woke up this morning knowing he’d be dead by sundown.
Official sunset was eight thirty-five according to the app on his phone. At eight, he thought he might have beat out this sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was going to die, but of course no one can escape their fate.
He wasn’t psychic or any of that other bullshit, but he could see the writing on the wall. There had been fucking
six
of them yesterday morning, but he and Dom were the only two whom witnesses had seen.
Because they were the two who dumped the fucking
car
.
Dom was in jail and he wasn’t getting out anytime soon. He wouldn’t talk, but he had nothing to lose. He had no wife, no girlfriend, no kids. He didn’t care if Tobias put a bullet in his mother’s head because Dom hated his mother. Dom was content to sit in jail and not say a word, happy as a clam to get three meals a day and work the system from the inside.
Of course, Dom was too stupid to realize that Tobias had already put a hit out on him. He was a liability.
Mac was no fucking way going back to prison. It had been hell the first time. He was a tiger, unable to be caged for any length of time. The first week he managed, but every week after messed with his head. He had panic attacks—who the fuck had panic attacks behind bars? He was six foot two of solid muscle and hyperventilated when he stepped into his ten-by-ten-foot room.
The thought of returning to prison made him sick to his stomach.
Sunset. Tonight was the night. Unlike Dom, Mac had something to lose outside of his freedom and sanity. He had a girl and a kid and he knew what Tobias did to women. He’d seen it, he’d cleaned up after the bastard, he didn’t want it happening to Diana.
He knew which asshole called the cops. It was the old Indian busboy. This place was supposed to be a sanctuary, but he saw how the janitor looked at him. It was more than recognition.
But Mac had waited too long to act. He saw people starting to slip out of the bar. Half of them had guns, could take him out if they wanted to. They just didn’t want to be caught by the fucking cops because they were either on parole or wanted fugitives.
Like that ever stopped him from carrying a piece.
Mac made a call. The phone was answered on the first ring.
He didn’t call Tobias. Tobias wouldn’t give a shit about him or his girl.
“Problem?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t do what Dom did.”
“Don’t let Tobias get to my girl.”
“Be a hero, and I’ll protect her. I give you my word.”
“Thank you, Mr. Contreras. I’ll take out as many of them as I can.”
“Icing on the cake.”
Mac hung up. He slipped the burner phone into his beer just in case the feds had a way of tracing the call. Yesterday, he’d considered grabbing Diana and the kid and just disappearing, but he didn’t have anyplace to go. The money he’d been paid would run out fast on the run. He’d been born and raised in San Antonio. And today, he would die in San Antonio.
He stood up and stretched. Looked around. Half the bar had cleared out. The bartender eyed him warily.
“Big Mac, we don’t want any trouble.”
“You should have warned me.”
“I didn’t know! I swear, not until people started leaving.”
Mac grabbed a hooker who was too high to realize what was going on.
“Hey, sugar, pay up first.”
He’d never paid a whore in his life.
“Not so tight!” she whined.
He pulled out his gun. A solid .45 with a magazine of twelve rounds. But it wasn’t just the power of the gun. It was the type of rounds he used, jacketed hollow-points. Might not pierce the Kevlar, but he could do some serious damage. And one of these babies in the thigh and the bastard would bleed out in minutes.
The whore stared at the gun and started shaking, but kept her mouth shut. Which was good because he might have just popped her there.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the barkeep reaching under the counter. Mac aimed and fired without hesitation. The bullet hit a little high—he forgot about the kick this baby had—slamming into the guy’s upper right shoulder. He grabbed himself and dropped to the ground. As if Mac would waste another bullet on him.
Eleven bullets.
The whore started crying and Mac held her close, the barrel of the gun at the back of her head.
“Come in and get me, assholes,” he muttered. He kept his back to the bar, where he could see the front door and the hall that led to the bathrooms. At the end of that hall was the storeroom and a back door. The cops could come in from either entrance. Or both, simultaneously.
The customers who hadn’t already left cowered in the corners and at their tables. He glared at them. “Make a move, I’ll kill ya,” he said.
No one moved. Pussies.
He heard the boots in the hall before he saw a cop. He focused on the doorway. Saw the tip of a rifle pointed slightly down. To his right, the front door jiggled, just a little. Both entrances at once.
Sure, do it. Let’s get this over.
I’m sorry, Diana. It was fun while it lasted.
As soon as he saw the cop in the hall step forward, Mac started shooting.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight bullets left …
The SWAT team moved in and Mac got three rounds off, all aimed at the first guy through the door, before two bullets hit him in the head.
But he didn’t know it was two bullets because he was already dead.
Supervisory Special Agent Blair Novak had been a federal agent for twenty-one years. She’d been offered an ASAC position in Omaha, Nebraska, five years ago, which she turned down because she had no burning desire to live in the Midwest, and her husband had just been promoted at Lockheed, a private defense contractor, and was beginning to make some serious money. Then three years ago she’d been offered a desk job with a 15 percent salary increase to move to Washington, DC, and work in headquarters. She and Johnny had seriously talked about that position. Not because of the money—Johnny was pulling in six figures plus even better benefits than she was—but because his mom lived in Virginia and her parents lived in Baltimore and they thought maybe they should go back home. Johnny could work at the Lockheed office in Virginia, and travel to LA as needed.
But the kids came first. JJ was a high school sophomore and Mia was a freshman. How could she just uproot her children? They’d moved from DC to LA because of her job in the first place, when JJ was starting the third grade. The move had been hardest on the kids, and she’d vowed not to do it again until they graduated. So she stayed in LA as an SSA and never regretted it. She liked her job. She liked her colleagues. She was up for a promotion to ASAC of the Long Beach Resident Agency at the end of the year when the current ASAC retired. It would be a major advance. She’d miss the fast-paced downtown office, but she’d be in charge and closer to home.
She would have helped Hans Vigo even if she didn’t want the promotion, but she was more than eager to do a great job because Vigo’s name carried a lot of weight in the Bureau.
Blair Novak wasn’t stupid, though. If this case was as dangerous as she thought, no way was she talking to the mother of an escaped felon by herself. She tagged rookie agent Carter Nix. He was late entering the Bureau like so many recent rookies. When she was a new agent, the average age of Quantico grads was twenty-five. Now? Thirty-two. A lot had changed in twenty years. They now had more former military in their ranks and many in local law enforcement wanted to do a stint at the Bureau for either the benefits, the retirement package, or the types of crimes feds investigated.
Nix was a former marine, thirty-three, and had been assigned to Los Angeles when he graduated six months ago. He was married with two little girls, and his wife was still in the process of moving the family west. She hadn’t wanted to move the girls from Denver in the middle of the school year. Blair liked Nix, liked the way he thought, but mostly she liked the fact that he was a sharpshooter with good instincts. Not that she was expecting trouble, but she preferred to have someone solid at her side.
On the way to Tamara Rollins’s residence in Topanga Canyon, Blair thanked Nix for working late—it was after six, and they should have been wrapping up paperwork and heading home. While she didn’t mind putting in the extra hours, she increasingly appreciated the time she had with her family.
“It’s not a problem, ma’am,” Nix said. “My family won’t be here until the end of the month. I don’t have much of a home to go home to right now.”
She wanted to ask if there was anything wrong—she had a feeling that the assignment to Los Angeles hadn’t gone over well with Nix’s wife—but decided it was better to keep their relationship professional.
She filled Nix in on their assignment. “The property belongs jointly to both Tamara Rollins and her sister, Margaret Hunt. The only reason it wasn’t seized in asset forfeiture when Jimmy Hunt fled the country was because it had been willed to Margaret and Tamara by their parents, and Jimmy Hunt isn’t on the deed.”
“How’d it slip by that a wanted fugitive has a niece in the DEA?” Nix asked.
“According to AD Vigo, Nicole’s paperwork indicates that her mother is deceased. She also listed only her mother and brother as relatives—no aunts or uncles. We don’t require employees to show a death certificate when they lose a parent, but it makes me curious as to why she lied about that. And the paperwork indicated that Tamara Rollins was living in Austin, Texas at the time.” She paused a moment as she slowed for a sharp turn. “The DEA agent responsible for verifying information about Nicole Rollins’s family made several mistakes. He’s currently under investigation.”
“Mistakes? Or intentional?”
“Don’t know.”
Twenty minutes later they found themselves at a gate on a private road off Old Topanga Canyon Road, nearly halfway between the Pacific Coast Highway and the 101 Freeway. Topanga itself was an interesting community, a combination of extremely wealthy homeowners wanting the privacy and seclusion of the Topanga Canyon, and longtime residents in small, crumbling houses that may have been here since the 1960s when growing pot was just to get high, not cultivate and sell. The hills and valleys that made up Topanga Canyon were surrounded by areas like Malibu and Pacific Palisades and Mulholland Highway, but the canyon itself was peaceful, a remnant of how Blair thought Los Angeles might have been sixty years ago.
