Outside the Wire Page 6

  To understand the murder, Davie had to investigate the victims. To do that, she had to find the other two Ranger buddies.

  10

  Davie turned toward Vaughn.

  He studied her expression and frowned. “You look like crap. Who were you talking to?”

  “Juno Karst is dead.”

  He rolled his chair closer. “That’s one of the Army friends you texted me about. What the hell? How?”

  “They found him a few days ago in a rental car in the Nevada desert with a bullet hole in his head. The local sheriff ruled it a suicide, but I’m not convinced.”

  “You think his death is related to Zeke’s?”

  “Shannon Woodrow told us her dad retired three years ago. Zeke and Juno were friends and about the same age. Each died by a gunshot wound to the head. Both worked for TidePool, so yes, their deaths might be related.”

  Loud voices and laughter erupted from the hallway outside the squad room. Four Burglary detectives, wearing blue nylon raid jackets with police stamped in white on the back and a handful of patrol officers were laughing and talking like cowboys spinning tall tales around a campfire.

  Vaughn gestured for her to follow him toward the hallway. “I have something important to tell you. Let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk.”

  Davie walked behind her partner up the stairs to the second-floor lunchroom, where a civilian Records clerk was eating a sandwich from the vending machine and reading a newspaper. Vaughn poured himself a cup of coffee before setting out for the roof deck above the squad room. A strong breeze whipped the branches of the nearby trees and loosened wisps of Davie’s red hair from the bun knotted at the nape of her neck.

  Vaughn stopped at the far corner of the deck next to the parapet wall. Across the parking lot below, a dozen tarps had been thrown on the pavement and were topped with piles of clothing. She saw Burglary’s Det. Spencer Hall following a group of people dressed in street clothes as they inspected the items. Hall wore a raid jacket tucked into his jeans and a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his short blond hair. His chest looked bulky from the Kevlar vest he wore. Underneath that vest, she assumed his muscles were still as lean and toned as they had been the last time she’d seen them.

  Davie gestured toward the scene below. “What’s going on?”

  “Burglary served a search warrant this morning and recovered a bunch of stolen merchandise. Those people walking around are buyers from local department stores, trying to identify their stuff. It won’t be hard. The knucklehead gangbangers didn’t even bother to cut off the tags.” He paused a beat before adding, “Hall’s going to be loud and proud for the rest of the day.”

  She and Spencer Hall had been an item when she worked Burglary and he was assigned to the Major Assault Crimes table at Southeast Division. One day his partner had been unavailable, so she’d gone with him on a follow-up call for a domestic violence case and found the victim’s husband beating her again. As Hall struggled with the suspect, the man grabbed his service weapon. Davie shot and killed the man. Later, the suspect’s wife falsely accused her of lying on the police report. Davie had been relieved of duty. The fallout nearly ended her career.

  After the incident, rumors swirled that Hall was in control of the situation and Davie had panicked. It wasn’t true. Her supporters, including her current partner, believed Hall was responsible for the rumors. As it turned out, he wasn’t the source, but Vaughn still didn’t trust him. Davie just wanted to put the turmoil behind her.

  “It’s his case, Jason. He deserves to celebrate. What did you find out at CCD?”

  Vaughn folded his arms over his chest. “My contact told me TidePool Security Consultants is registered as a limited liability company in Delaware, a state that has more LLCs than people. They make a bundle peddling secret tax havens to everybody from corporations to organized crime syndicates.”

  Davie leaned in closer. “Who’s behind TidePool?”

  “That’s the beauty of an LLC. The companies don’t have to tell you. They operate in total secrecy. All I know is they’re a global security contractor. They have a website but it doesn’t tell you much. Lots of vague words like ‘logistics management.’ My friend says they don’t advertise. Their clients come to them by referral only. Employees are all former CIA and military types—Special Forces, Rangers, Navy SEALS.”

  “Who are its clients?”

  “Anybody who can pay the fees, including the US government. Ever hear of Blackwater?”

  “As in the Iraq War Blackwater?”

  “According to the detective at CCD, Blackwater provided services to the CIA and other government agencies to the tune of a billion dollars or more. Employees all had top-secret clearances. A ton of them were former SEALS or Rangers just like Zeke Woodrow. Then several contractors killed a bunch of civilians in Baghdad. Twenty more were injured. Some of their people died, too. The scandal forced them to change their name and regroup. And by the way, CCD told me Blackwater was also registered as an LLC in Delaware.”

  “Just like thousands of other companies.”

  Vaughn drank coffee from his cup. “Right, but it’s still interesting. Both Zeke Woodrow and Juno Karst had decades of experience in covert and clandestine operations and both were TidePool employees.”

  “And both are dead,” Davie said. “How does your contact know so much about this?”

  “After 9/11 she was loaned to the FBI to work on a counterterrorism task force. She knows a lot about terror networks in the Middle East and private security contractors.”

  Davie mulled over the implications. “You know what’s weird about this case?”

  “Everything. Are you adding to the list?”

  “Both Zeke and Juno were trained for things like rescuing hostages behind enemy lines and all that shock-and-awe hype.”

  Vaughn swirled the dregs of his coffee around in the cup, like a medium divining someone’s fortune. “Yeah. So what?”

  “I’d guess guys like that are paranoid and suspicious as hell. So, if it turns out they were both murdered, why did they let someone get close enough to put a bullet through their heads?”

  “Because they knew the killer and trusted him?”

  “Yeah,” Davie said. “The daughter and the ex both claimed Zeke was close to friends from his military days, but that can’t be the extent of his social life. I mean, did he pal around with coworkers, a girlfriend, a trainer, a hair stylist? Somebody else had to be in his life.”

  “The daughter also said Zeke didn’t like working for TidePool. We don’t know why yet but maybe he had a beef with somebody there. Except, we don’t know if the same person killed both men. We don’t even know if Karst was murdered.”

  Davie stared at the buyers milling around the parking lot. “The dog tag might mean the hits were related to his military service, but that spans a lot of years and a lot of wars—everything from Vietnam to the Gulf Wars, possibly even to Afghanistan. If that’s the motive, why would the killer wait until now?”

  “To pull off two hits like that, the person must have had some kind of special training, either military or police. He also had to have time and money.”

  Davie felt a quiet dread as she caught her partner’s gaze and held it. “We don’t know that it’s just one person. It could be two, or ten. We have to search Zeke’s house in Santa Barbara.”

  “It’s late. It’ll be dark soon. We won’t be able to see anything. Let’s use the rest of the day to follow up on other leads, like getting that crime report from Nevada.”

  Davie knew he was right, but it didn’t make her any less edgy. “I’ll search for contact information on Woodrow’s other two buddies, but first thing in the morning we’ll head to Santa Barbara.”

  Vaughn gave her the thumbs-up sign. “I’ll call TidePool. See what they have to say.”

  Vaughn lingered in the break room
to make a fresh pot of coffee, but Davie headed back to the squad room. She nearly ran into Spencer Hall as he entered the back door.

  “Hey, Spence,” she said. “Congratulations. Looks like you cracked a major theft ring.”

  He grinned as he unsnapped his raid jacket and slipped it off, exposing the Kevlar vest. “Thanks, Davie. It was a lot of work, but we got a couple of lucky breaks toward the end.”

  They studied each other in silence as several patrol officers hustled through the door and navigated around them. Finally Davie broke the uncomfortable stalemate. “So … good work.” She turned and walked into the squad room followed by the fading sound of Hall’s voice.

  “Thanks.”

  11

  Davie returned to the squad room and saw Autos Det. Joss Page with a telephone receiver held to her ear, motioning Davie toward her desk. Joss had transferred to Pacific from Devonshire Division at the beginning of the last deployment period. She was a willowy blue-eyed blonde with perfect skin and the healthy glow of a yoga instructor. Despite this, Davie liked her. The first time Davie and Joss had gone to the gun range together to qualify, they discovered each of them had been crack shots since the first time they’d picked up a weapon. In the early days, Davie thought her ability to hit the bulls-eye nearly every time was dumb luck, but as time passed she realized it was a gift. Joss felt the same way, but neither could explain how they did it.

  Joss hung up the receiver. “Davie, I wanted to catch you before you got busy. I’m recruiting people for the Baker-to-Vegas Challenge Cup. Interested?”

  Baker–Vegas was an annual twenty-five-mile foot race through the desert that was meant to promote fitness and a sense of community among law enforcement personnel. LAPD officers competed every year, but she’d never thought about participating, mainly because she hadn’t run distances since her academy days.

  “Didn’t the race just happen last month?”

  “Yeah, but we’re already gearing up for next year. The first planning meeting isn’t until October, but we’d love to have you join us.”

  Davie shook her head. “I don’t run anymore … unless I’m chasing bad guys.”

  “Come train with me. You’re in good shape. It won’t take long to get past the pain.”

  “You make it sound like so much fun.”

  Joss laughed, a warm lilting tone that explained why her chronic volunteerism sucked everybody into its vortex. “Good. I’ll put you on the list. And don’t forget tomorrow is Blue Shirt Tuesday.”

  Davie spent a few more minutes chatting with Joss. Then she waved and returned to her desk to find that Vaughn had reached the Goldfield County sheriff. The man was out on a call but promised to fax the Juno Karst death report as soon as he got back to the station. Vaughn had also called TidePool to inform them of Zeke’s murder. The CEO was on assignment in Istanbul but the HR director verified that both Zeke and Juno were employees and provided basic information, most of which they already had.

  “Did you ask if Cormack or Lunds worked there, too?”

  “Yeah, but the guy didn’t want to give up the information at first. I kept pressuring him until he finally told me Cormack didn’t work for them but Lunds did. He said for security reasons he couldn’t give me any more information without checking with his boss.”

  “Let’s wait for the CEO to call back. If we don’t hear from him by the end of the day, we’ll go to plan B.”

  After that they called a few airlines to see if Woodrow was on their passenger list, but they were met with enough resistance to force Vaughn to write a boilerplate search warrant, as Giordano had suggested.

  While Vaughn was busy getting a judge to sign the warrants, Davie looked for any trace of Zeke’s Army buddy Harlan Cormack. She searched law enforcement databases and public websites but found no information about him. Cormack was a ghost.

  She’d been searching for over an hour when she found an entry in the Department of Motor Vehicles database that she’d overlooked because of a spelling error. “Harlen” Cormack had a mobile home registered with an address in Barstow, California, but when she searched a maps program to get a look at the place, it turned out to be a mailbox store.

  There was no telephone number listed under Cormack’s name. She wanted to find him but other than staking out the mail drop, which would take valuable time she didn’t have, she had run out of ideas. From everything she knew about the four men, they’d been best friends, but investigations were not solved by assumptions. Until Cormack and Lunds had been interviewed, she couldn’t rule out the possibility that either or both had killed Zeke. As a last resort, she wrote a note on an LAPD contact form that included her name, telephone number, and a short message, asking Cormack to call her about Zeke Woodrow’s death. If he killed Zeke, the letter would tip him off that the police were closing in, but that was a risk she had to take.

  Davie didn’t know how long the letter would sit at the station before it was picked up, so she drove to the post office, slipped it into an overnight mail envelope, and paid for the postage herself. The likelihood that Cormack would respond to her request for an interview seemed slim. All she could do was hope for the best.

  She drove back to the station past squatty apartment buildings, strip malls anchored by liquor stores, and nail salons. Above the streets, telephone lines crisscrossed like cat’s cradles, throwing spindly shadows on mature trees covered in dust. Even the occasional patch of fake grass seemed less like landscape and more like a bad dye job on an old man’s toupee.

  When she returned to the station, she continued the search for the last of Zeke’s friends, Dag Lunds, but had no luck finding him. Privacy was practically nonexistent these days, but for people who worked in intelligence and law enforcement there were ways to live off the grid.

  Davie always worked her cases until she ran out of leads to investigate, sometimes going for days barely eating, sleeping, or showering because she had long ago accepted the reality that a good Homicide detective had no life. It wasn’t a job for people who wanted to eat dinner with their family every night, but she’d known that going in and she loved her job. Zeke had chosen a similar path, a career in the Army, and that made her feel closer to him.

  By midnight she had already dozed off twice at her desk. She considered crashing in the second-floor cot room but rejected the idea. There was no way to determine how many sweaty bodies had tossed and turned on that lumpy mattress since the sheets were last washed. She planned to go home to rest for an hour or two, but on her way, she stopped to see her father.

  William “Bear” Richards owned a dive bar called the Lucky Duck in an area of Culver City that Davie considered hip adjacent. The neon sign above the door illuminated the boxy façade and dark wood exterior. While much of the city was on the path to gentrification, the Duck had remained mostly unchanged since the 1970s. It was once a hangout for cops and neighborhood drunks, but over the years the clientele had become more upscale. Not that Bear was happy about that.

  The front door of the Duck was locked. Bear must have closed early. The light was on, so she assumed her dad was still inside. Davie walked through the alley and tapped on the back door before using her key. Rusty hinges groaned as she nudged it open with her shoulder. Inside, cold air blunted the odor of spilled beer soaked into ancient carpet.

  Her father was hunched over several liquor cartons stacked on the floor in the middle of the room. His brown XXL leather jacket stretched across his broad back as he guided the blade of a box cutter along the seam of a carton of Hornitos Reposado.

  Without looking up, he said, “Hey, Ace. Just in time to help.”

  Davie surveyed the room and the boxes of liquor. “Where’s PJ?”

  Bear looked up and sighed. “Sick. I sent her home early and closed the bar.”

  PJ had been a bartender at the Lucky Duck long before Bear had bought the place. She had agreed to stay on, but jus
t until she told him how to run the business. That was ten years ago and she was still telling him what to do. Davie had half expected them to hook up, but Bear continued to resist her charms and Davie guessed that wasn’t about to change.

  “What brings you here so late?” he said.

  “I’m working a case. It’s not much fun.”

  “None of them are.”

  Cold air snaked up Davy’s spine as she remembered Zeke Woodrow’s body curled up on the ground of the parking garage. Bear was a former LAPD detective, so she laid out the generalities of her investigation so far. “The victim was a retired US Army Ranger who was working for a private security contractor.”

  The box-cutter made a clicking sound as Bear ratcheted up the blade from inside its plastic case. Davy could tell by his frown he was disturbed by the information.

  “Pisses me off. A man gives his sweat and blood fighting for his country. Then he comes home and gets lit up by some asshole.”

  Davie grabbed a couple of bottles of tequila and set them on the shelf. “Just curious. Did anybody in the family keep Uncle Rob’s dog tag after he died?”

  Bear raked his hand through the stubble of his self-inflicted crew cut. “He was your mother’s brother. Why are you asking me?”

  “Just thought you might know, that’s all. Maybe Grammy has it. I’ll call her when she gets back from Ojai.”

  Normally Davie called or visited her grandmother every day at her assisted living apartment, but her grandmother was staying with a relative for a couple of weeks, enjoying the country atmosphere and the fresh air. Davie knew she would phone if she got lonely or just wanted to talk. So far, there had only been one call to let her know she was having fun.

  Bear opened another box. “You could check with Robbie.”

  It seemed unlikely her brother would have anything that belonged to their dead uncle. Robbie wasn’t the sentimental type. He had a law degree and thought he was Atticus Finch, even though he was a contracts attorney for a high-profile entertainment law firm, not a trial lawyer fighting for the wrongly accused.