The Lost Witness (43 page)

Nathan G. Cava had seen it, too.

S
he caught the flashing lights as she made the turn
off Sunset and looped up and around the hill. Ten patrol cars from
the Sheriff’s Department in West Hollywood were lined up in front of Senator Alan West’s house. A Chevy Suburban with tinted windows was backed into the drive with its rear gate open.
Every window in the house was lit up, and the front door stood open. As Lena got out of the car, she counted five uniforms standing around on the porch and wondered if she wasn’t too late.
She hustled up the front steps. When the five uniforms stopped talking, she clipped her badge to her jacket and picked out the deputy who looked like he was in charge.

“Is the senator around?”

“Is he expecting you?”

“We’re friends,” she said. “What’s up tonight?”

The deputy shrugged. “We’re making an airport run. We were supposed to leave ten minutes ago.”

Lena entered the house. One of West’s bodyguards was rushing down the stairs with a suitcase. When she turned, she saw West exiting his study with his second bodyguard in tow. West smiled
at her. The two bodyguards didn’t.

“What are you doing here, Detective?” West said.

“Just stopped by to talk. Where are you headed?”

“Washington,” he said. “It’s just for a week. Can it wait?”

Lena glanced at West’s bodyguards. The two heavyweights with rough faces and dark suits who appeared utterly calm and heavily armed. She turned back to West.

“I don’t think it can, Senator.”

West slipped into his suit jacket. “We’re gonna miss our plane. You’ll have to ride with us over to Burbank.”

Lena followed them out the door. West hurried toward the Suburban with his bodyguards. The deputies from the Sheriff’s Department were climbing into their patrol cars. When the last
suitcase was tossed into the SUV, Lena got a look at the driver before he closed the gate. He was young and thin and Latino, no older than twenty with shy eyes. And there were a lot of bags. A lot
for a week in D.C.

She walked around the Suburban and was ushered into the rear seat. One of the bodyguards sat beside her without saying anything. Then West took the seat in front of her, and the second bodyguard
sat down beside him. The Suburban was linked to the patrol cars with a temporary radio sitting on the dash. As the driver adjusted the volume, Lena could hear the deputies discussing their route.
Laurel Canyon over the hill to Sherman Way Once they received confirmation, the caravan started rolling. Five patrol cars led the way. The remaining five covered their backs.

Lena turned to West. “I see you took my advice.”

The senator smiled. “The cavalry? Yeah, I made the call. Can’t be too careful. And I was losing too much sleep.”

“Over Denny,” she said.

He turned to her and nodded. His blue eyes glistened from the ten sets of flashing lights. He looked better than the last time she had seen him. His face had regained its color. He seemed fresh
and relaxed, even relieved.

Lena kept her eyes on him. “His murder upset you, didn’t it, Senator.”

“Denny didn’t start out as a crime reporter. He covered politics. I bet we went back ten years.”

“I bet you did.”

“Is everything okay, Detective?”

Lena glanced at his jacket. “Where’s your nine-eleven pin? I don’t see it on your lapel.”

West stared back at her as if he hadn’t heard her over the sound of the SUV.

“Your gold pin,” she said. “The one the fire department gave you for being such a great guy. The one that you said you wore every day. What happened to it?”

As Lena watched West squirm, she realized why she had never looked to politicians for the answers in her life. Without a script to follow, politicians couldn’t quiet find the right words.
Without a lift across the water, most of them would probably drown.

“What happened to your nine-eleven pin, Senator?”

West rubbed his finger over his lapel. “It’s in a safe place, Detective.”

“I agree with you. Your pin is in a very safe place.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I saw it less than an hour ago.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“That’s right. You lost it.”

“Where?” he asked.

“Denny Ramira’s house. You lost it when you murdered him, Senator. Denny hid it before he died. That’s why Klinger was there, right? The file I took was a bonus. He let me walk
out with it because it made you look good. Nothing inside pointed to you. But the pin would, and you needed to cover your tracks. You sent Klinger over to Ramira’s house to find your
pin.”

A long moment passed. Tight, and heavy, and dark as midnight. Everyone in the SUV was making lots of eye contact and trading secret messages. Lena noticed the driver’s gaze riveted on her
in the rearview mirror. The kid looked scared.

West didn’t say anything right away, staring out the window as they reached the top of the hill and started down the winding road into the Valley. There was absolutely no reason for the
senator to hide anymore. The pin that he had received for his support of the rescue workers after 9/11 had been handmade by an artist living in South Pasadena. The three-dimensional work of art
depicting an LAFD fire engine set at ground zero was one of a kind. And there could be only one explanation for how the gold pin wound up in Denny Ramira’s hand.

West cocked his head and looked at her. “Do you have it with you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s still in Denny’s hiding place.”

“And where’s that?”

Lena met the senator’s eyes. “You might say he palmed it.”

West grinned at her, then spoke slowly as he thought it through. “Denny Ramira was a great reporter. He didn’t care much for politics, though, and he was glad when the chance came
his way to move on. He always used to say that we didn’t get it. That the world couldn’t be divvied up into left or right. That you couldn’t distinguish people by their god, their
tribe, their size or shape. You couldn’t even break them down by the things they liked to eat. Something was either right or it was wrong, he’d say. A person was either decent or
indecent. And that was the key to his work. That was his secret. If you had to pick a side, you better make sure there was more right to it than wrong.”

“Which side did you pick, Senator?”

He shrugged, still gazing into the past. “I can tell you this, Detective. I gave as much as I got. And if some say that I got more than I gave, well—I did better than
most.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when I talk to the families who lost their children because they thought Formula D was safe. The people who put their trust in you, Senator—you and
Tremell and the FDA. Thanks for making sure the clinical trials were straight and true.”

He held the glance but didn’t say anything. Lena pressed forward, still trying to understand.

“When Jennifer Bloom first came to your office and told you what happened to her son, it didn’t move you?”

“She didn’t use her real name, Detective.”

“What kind of a response is that? When she told you how her son died, that it had been a deliberate act on the part of Tremell, a pharmaceutical company, and a handful of government
lowlifes who were bought and paid for, you weren’t moved by her story?”

“Of course I was. Who wouldn’t be?”

“When she walked out, how long did it take before you called Tremell? A day? An hour? Or was she still on her way out the door? You’re the one who called him. You told Tremell who
Jennifer Bloom really was. You’re the one who told him that she played him for a fool.”

She could see his soiled mind working behind his eyes. The gears inside his head spinning round and round even though they were warped and bent and out of alignment.

“He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants,” West said. “Ten percent of my stock portfolio was wrapped up in his lousy company. The share price had already nose-dived
because of all the rumors. If Bloom’s story had been made public, it would’ve taken years for the price to bounce back.”

Lena stared at him in disbelief. “That’s why you ratted her out? Because of your stock portfolio?”

“That’s right, Detective. For the money. For
my
money. She didn’t trust me to see it through. A former member of the United States Senate. She walked out of my office,
met Ramira, and told him everything. And I mean everything. And so I made Denny Ramira my new best friend. It was the only way I could keep an eye on him. He had this thing for you, you know. He
felt guilty about what happened to you last year. That story you gave him about your brother’s murder. He felt guilty that he won so many awards and you nearly lost your career. He
wasn’t holding out on you because of the book or anything he was doing for the paper. He wanted to hand you this one on a plate. Everything wrapped up and ready to go. He thought he owed you
that. But as you can see, timing is everything in life. Denny waited a day too long.”

The SUV made a right turn onto Sherman Way. They were less than two miles off, approaching the airport from the rear. Lena glanced at the patrol cars. West’s bodyguards didn’t seem
concerned that they were surrounded and she turned back to the senator.

“Denny was ready to talk,” she said. “So you went over to his place. What clinched it for him? And don’t tell me that it was because he ID’d Cava. Denny
didn’t ID Cava. You fingered him to cover yourself.”

West smiled at the memory. “The lost witness,” he said after a moment. “Denny thought he’d figured it out last Sunday. That the witness was really the target. That the
witness was Jennifer all along.”

“But it took until Wednesday before he confirmed it,” she said.

“That’s right. It took three days to find her. She was living at a friend’s house, the one that Cava murdered. She made a mistake and answered the phone. Denny heard her
voice.”

“And you called Tremell again. You sold her out twice.”

“That’s right. I let everybody know. Then I went over to Denny’s and tried to convince him to wait. I told him that we needed to find her and talk to her. But he wouldn’t
listen and he got angry. When he reached for the phone to call you, things got out of hand. Then I cleaned out his office, and drove home. Obviously, I missed a single file. The one Klinger found.
But you’re right, the pin was more important to me than the file. And that’s why I sent him there.”

Lena shook her head, silently counting the number of people who had lost their lives because this man was worried about the price of a share of stock. This man who had served three consecutive
terms in the U.S. Senate representing the State of California. This man who had been appointed to the police commission by the mayor of Los Angeles and approved in a unanimous vote by the City
Council in an attempt to restore public trust in the department.

This horrible man sitting right in front of her. Somehow he had managed to rat out Jennifer Bloom twice. And he’d ratted out Cava, too.

“What about Cava,” she said. “How did you make contact?”

“I was a senator at the time. I spent a few days in Iraq, then toured a facility in Eastern Europe. Cava was there and we met.”

“What facility? Are you talking about the secret prisons? The Black Sites?”

West eyed her face, choosing his words carefully. “It was a facility,” he said. “Cava had been transferred there as a medical officer. His role changed over time, but he
didn’t have the temperament for it.”

“You fucked him up is what you’re saying.”

“I didn’t do anything to him.”

“How did you talk him into killing for you?”

“I told him what you tell every soldier. That his efforts would be for the greater good. That his sacrifice would be seen as contributing to a better world. Then Tremell backed it up with
cash. Cava was so fucked up he bought it. At least in the beginning he did.”

The van slowed down and Lena watched as the five patrol cars in front of them shut down their flashing lights and pulled ahead. When she looked out the window, she saw the five cars behind them
passing on the left and vanishing up the street. The kid driving the Suburban switched off the radio, making a right turn into a parking lot, passing a guard at the gate, and cruising swiftly onto
the tarmac. Lena spotted the private jet, felt the burn, and read the sign on the hangar.

BARNES AVIATION.

She turned back to West and caught the broad smile on his face.

“Did you really think we were flying Southwest?” he whispered.

The senator’s bodyguards chuckled. As the van stopped, Lena tried to pull herself together. She could see a handful of private aviation companies on this side of the runway, but every one
of them was closed. The lights from Burbank Airport were cutting through the light fog a half mile across the tarmac. West’s pilot was inspecting the jet, and after circling the plane,
appeared ready to go. Then the young driver climbed out of the Suburban and began helping a member of the grounds crew transfer the bags.

Lena turned back to West. His eyes were on her. He had been watching her take it all in.

“My apologies for keeping you in the dark,” he said. “I’m sure you understand that it was the only way. You thought that you could rely on the Sheriff’s Department
once we reached the airport. You thought that you could milk what happened out of me, and West Hollywood’s finest would back you up. And just like Denny Ramira, you got your story but guessed
wrong.”

Lena had been holding her .45 in her hand ever since she set eyes on the jet. Now she lifted it out of the darkness and pointed the muzzle at West’s face. The senator laughed at her.

“It won’t work, Detective. You’re a hell of a man, but it won’t work.”

The two bodyguards drew their pistols in unison. Another stretch of silence passed with everyone making eye contact and trading heavy secrets.

West shrugged. “It really won’t work here, Detective. You’re outmanned and you’re outgunned. Bringing me in to face my sins just isn’t in the cards tonight. And
let’s face it. It isn’t worth losing your life over when you could live to fight the fight another day. You better hand me that. My friends get nervous and even a private aviation
company has a thing about people pointing guns.”