Taking Liberty (28 page)

___________________________

Even with a federal warrant rushing them along, people still drag their heels.

The airlines gave up their complete flight manifests an hour after our requesting them. They weren’t worth the wait. Turned out the only evening flight out of Anchorage and bound for LA had been the one we’d already checked. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. I was at a loss to explain how Cornsilk had pulled it off.

One flight. Thirty-seven passengers. Zero Snakeskins.

I was still crunching the numbers when Supervisory Special Agent Lee Bishop appeared in the conference room doorway. At first glance, Bishop reminded me of the movie actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, right down to his blond thatch and wire-rimmed eyeglasses. But that’s as far as the similarity went. Unlike his more famous double, Bishop was fifty pounds heavier and confined to a wheelchair.

“I heard you got the flight manifests,” he said. “How’s it going? I’m good with names. Do you need any help going through them?”

Bishop had come into Stone’s team during my stint in Springfield. Bishop had broken his back on the job in New York City. After rehab, the Persons with Disabilities Program had chained him to a desk. The limiter had filled him with resentment. Rae had warned me about Bishop during our return flight – that basically he was an asshole with a chip on his shoulder. Worse kind, in my book. Of course, his disability had nothing to do with it; he was an asshole before the fall.

 “Don’t get excited,” I said. “This was a complete waste of time. Cornsilk isn’t on the list. There was just one incoming flight – the one we checked – and he wasn’t on it.”

Bishop wheeled himself into the room. “Christmas after all. Stands to reason, I suppose. Have you thought to check the private charters? If he didn’t fly with the commercials, there’s always the independents. It doesn’t stretch the imagination to think he could have hired a private plane. I know I would, given his desire to remain undetected.”

I made a face. “Cornsilk was discharged straight onto disability. Unless he won the lottery or robbed a bank I can’t see him squandering upward of fifteen thousand dollars on a one-way ticket to LAX.” I pushed a printout across the table. “All the same, I like to dot my i’s and cross my t’s. You’ll find every private charter company operating up and down the West Coast on there. Only two late night flights arriving from the Pacific Northwest. And not one mention of any passengers named Cornsilk or even fitting his description.”

Bishop had a snicker hanging on his lips. “So how on earth do you propose he got here, Quinn? He waved a magic wand and hey presto.”

I didn’t like Bishop’s attitude. I wasn’t alone.

“I’m working on it. Instead of worrying about my part of the play, what about your end of the deal? Any luck with the traffic cameras?”

Bishop had been put in charge of liaising with Caltrans – the California Department of Transportation – specifically to review all the footage gathered by their live traffic cameras in and around Santa Monica within the hour immediately preceding the first nine-one-one call, and also within the hour immediately thereafter. Routine recordings from roadside surveillance cameras, gas stations and tourist webcams also fell under his remit. It was our hope that one of them would pick up Cornsilk’s melted face behind a steering wheel. Then we’d have a make, a model and maybe even a plate number. In Florida, Snakeskin had escaped in a red Jeep Wrangler, with tags issued in Tennessee. I’d already put its memorized license plate into the system, only to learn that the vehicle had been totaled by its insurance company shortly after being found burnt out in Tampa, the same day he’d tried frying me alive in Jack’s place.

Bishop was giving me the eye – one of those
I’m going to knife you between the shoulders the moment your back’s turned
kind of looks.

 “Actually, we’re on top of it,” he said. “My boys and girls are sifting through the data. As you’d expect, there’s a lot to wade through. We’re triple-checking. We wouldn’t want to overlook a vital clue because we weren’t being thorough.” He pushed the printout back across the conference table. “As in the words of Earl Monroe: just be patient, let the game come to you, don't rush, be quick, but don't hurry.”

I broadcast my discontent. While the rest of us were pulling out all the stops in the hunt for Rae’s killer, Bishop was happily quoting basketball players of yesteryear.

A phone jangled on the conference table, saving me from saying something I wouldn’t have regretted. I reached over and picked up. It was Deputy Medical Examiner Sarah Kuesel, patched through from the switchboard, and calling from the LA County Coroner’s Department. I listened to her request to have me call over there ASAP. I queried it, but she refused to go into detail over the phone.

“That was the ME’s office,” I told Bishop as I hung up. “You’ll have to excuse me; I have to go.”

“I’m coming with you,” he said as he wheeled ahead of me toward the door. “I’ll drive.”

___________________________

Antisocial.

That’s what I’d become since losing Hope.

Like a turtle, I’d reeled in my head at the first sniff of danger and ignored the world as it fell apart around me. Don’t get me wrong – I had plenty of friends, acquaintances and work colleagues to help fill up my time.

I chose not to.

Many of those friends, acquaintances and work colleagues had known Hope. We’d socialized together as couples. Without Hope I’d stuck out like a unicycle in a tandem race. Self-preservation had pulled me back. At first as a survival mechanism. Then later as the norm.

I’d learned something: I actually enjoyed my own company.

Talking to myself in the shaving mirror in the morning was the highlight of my day. Some people go stir crazy without the interaction of others. Not me. Maybe I’m the oddball.

Following Hope’s death, I’d retrained myself to depend solely on Gabriel Quinn, to look after number one and to come and go on my own timetable. So when somebody I didn’t particularly want to share my time with insisted on gatecrashing my party, I tended to take offense.

“How’d you end up in the chair?” I asked Bishop as he drove the specially-modified Suburban east on Wilshire. “I heard your rehabilitation was a success. No physical reason preventing you from walking.”

Some people shy away from being direct about disabilities. Sure, Bishop was in a wheelchair, but he was still a grown man. Nothing wrong with his brain or his voice box. I had no intention of treating him with kid gloves.

“Have you been checking up on me, Quinn?” he smiled falsely.

I pouted. “Just trying to ameliorate the awkward silence, that’s all. Don’t read into it more than that.”

“Actually, talking about it is therapeutic. The doctors say my ongoing condition is psychological. I just need a little more work, that’s all. According to the physiotherapists . . .”

I phased him out. Watched the busy streets roll by, only half listening as he spun his leisurely tale about chasing some bad dude up a fire escape and ultimately falling into the alleyway below, hitting every switchback on the way down.

It was a sunny December day in LA. A cornflower sky with fibers of white gauze out over the Pacific. Christmas decorations brightening up storefronts and power poles. Folks returning unwanted or faulty gifts, or out buying batteries. The epitome of normalcy on the day after Christmas.

But the urban landscape looked strange, somehow.

Not strange as in the strange way it had looked the last time I’d returned to California – after spending six months on a barrier island with nothing but pick-headed pelicans to keep me company. That time, everything had looked rundown, crowded and unpleasant to the eye. This time, everything looked big, busy and brand new. But the only thing to change was me, I knew. Prison life had dulled this blade. Spending endless hours staring at the same four walls had pulled in my perspectives and shortened my horizons. Everything here seemed spaced out, oversized and much greener than Los Angeles had any right to be, this time of year or any other.

Bishop jammed on the brakes, jolting me forward against the seatbelt. We were at an intersection. Signals on red.

“Welcome back,” he said. “For a while there I thought you’d slipped into a coma.”

I loosened up the belt. “Get over yourself, Bishop. We’re conducting a manhunt; I have good cause to be distracted.”

“Can I ask a question?” he said. “How well did you know Agent Burnett?”

I scowled at his prying.

“It’s a straightforward question,” he added as the lights turned green and we moved through the intersection. “No hidden meanings. Liberty Rae Burnett. How well did you know her?”

Bishop was beginning to chaff my hide. “It’s none of your damn business, Bishop. Just keep your eyes on the road and stop trying to take a peek under my hood.”

He snickered. “It looks like she’s pulled the wool over your eyes the same way she has with everybody else.”

I gave him the full weight of my scowl. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean she was your partner. The first thing partners do is have a conversation about each other’s backgrounds. Personal and professional. So I’ll ask again: how well did you know her?”

I sighed out superheated air, “Bishop, you’re really beginning to grind my gears. I’ve gone through fifty years of life and never had reason to pop anyone in a wheelchair. But there’s a first time for everything. Now get to your damn point.”

Bishop had a big stupid smirk ballooning up his face. “You don’t know, do you?”

“I know you’re wearing my patience dangerously thin.”

“You really have no idea why she dropped her going-places job in DC and signed up with Stone. Basically, moving five rungs back down the career ladder.”

Rae had told me she’d requested the temporary transfer to LA in order to assist Stone with
Operation Freebird
. Essentially, she was on loan from Washington. No mention of a demotion. No mention of staying permanently in LA. As far as I was aware, she had every intention of leaving once the nest of vipers was stamped out.

“She hasn’t been completely honest with you, Quinn. Burnett didn’t come here solely to lend a hand with Operation Freebird. She rushed to Stone’s side because he was missing her. That’s right. You’ve been played like a bad hand of poker. Stone and Burnett were lovers.”

___________________________

My first reaction was to pop Bishop on the mouth for speaking ill of the dead. My second reaction was to doubt everything that had happened between Rae and me, and then to pop Bishop on the mouth.

Instead, I grabbed at the steering wheel. “Pull over!”

It was reflexive and stupid. Street full of traffic. The Suburban lurched in its lane. Someone honked in a passing sedan.

Bishop smacked my hands away, “Are you crazy? You’re going to get us both killed!”

I grabbed at it again. “I said
pull over
!”

The Suburban lurched again, tires screeching on the asphalt.

Bishop had no choice but to swing the SUV against the curb. Alloys grated concrete. “No wonder Stone had you committed,” he snarled. “You’re completely out of control.”

I flung open the door and dropped onto the sidewalk. “Go back and do your job, Bishop. Find me an image on those surveillance tapes. And stay the hell out of my business.”

I slammed the door in his face and walked away.

Bishop crept the Suburban along the curbside and rolled down the passenger window. “There’s one other thing you need to know, Quinn,” he called. “You might want to look into Burnett’s background a little deeper. Don’t be a fool and get by on blind trust alone. If she didn’t come clean about her and Stone, what else was she hiding? Ask yourself where she got the money to pay for that place in Pacific Palisades.”

He was still jabbering as I backed up, slipped behind the SUV and crossed the street.