“Nothing that I remember. I’m going through those days one at a time with flashback and everything she says or doesn’t say seems suspicious to me now. I need to talk to the district attorney then, Ortega.”
“Mannie Ortega?” K.T. chuckled and took a piece of bacon from Nick’s plate. “Good luck in seeing the mayor to ask questions about something he probably didn’t even know about six years ago. The word downtown is that Ortega sees being mayor of Denver as a temporary stepping-stone. He has national aspirations.”
“Well, fuck him and his national aspirations,” hissed Nick. “I just need to know what Harvey Cohen was working on that might have put him and Dara in Six Flags Over the Jews that day.”
“Maybe you can get away with pulling your Advisor strings once to get in to see Ortega,” said K.T., “but your… investigation… doesn’t have a damned thing to do with who killed Keigo Nakamura anymore, does it?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said truthfully. “I just know that right now I don’t give a shit about who killed that kid unless it has something to do with Dara. And maybe even Dara’s… accident.”
K.T.’s strong eyebrows shot up. “Her accident? You’re not suggesting that the car crash that killed her and Harvey Cohen was more than an accident?”
Nick shrugged and looked down at his cooling and congealing breakfast.
“Nick, the state patrol, sheriff’s office, and DA’s office all shared their investigation notes with you five and a half years ago. I know they did. Traffic was moving fast when Cohen’s car started to exit I-Twenty-five to East Fifty-eighth Avenue—Harvey always drove too fast around the city. The old couple in the Buick gelding in front of them stopped suddenly. No reason… someone just slowed in front of them and they slammed on the brakes, the way old drivers do so often. Harvey couldn’t stop in time or get out of their way, neither could the driver of the eighteen-wheeler behind them, and all three vehicles went into the barrier. The old couple and the trucker also died in the fire. For God’s sake, where is there anything but an accident in that, Nick?”
He looked at her through bloodshot eyes. “Did you ever hear of a swoop-and-squat, K.T.?”
The lieutenant snorted. “Sure I have. One of the oldest auto insurance scams on record. But I’ve never heard of the braking car in front of the targeted auto being an old anglo couple with not a single moving violation to the driver’s name, nor the squat car being an eighteen-wheeler. Nor have I heard of swoop-and-squat scamsters volunteering to die in a fire. You have to do better than that, Nick.”
“Where the hell were they coming from, K.T.?”
“Who?”
“Harvey and Dara. Where were they coming from when this ‘accident’ happened?”
“Lunch, I think the report said.” K.T. suddenly sounded tired.
“They’d been out of the office for more than three hours by then,” snarled Nick. “Long goddamned lunch. And where the hell were they going? The DA’s office at the time just said they were going to take a deposition of someone in Globeville—no other details. Who the hell goes to Globeville to get a deposition?”
“I guess ADAs and their assistants do when the person being deposed lives in Globeville,” said K.T. “Why didn’t you bring these questions up at the time?”
“They didn’t seem important at the time,” said Nick. “Nothing seemed important at the time.”
K.T. looked down at her strong fingers where they were splayed on the tabletop. “You’ll have to see Ortega and the current district attorney for all that information,” she said very softly. “What do you want me to do?”
“First, get me everything that the state highway patrol, sheriff’s office, and DA’s office didn’t show me almost six years ago,” said Nick. “And everything from the coroner’s office that I didn’t see.”
She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Nick, do you really want to see the accident-site photos of Dara’s crumpled and burned body?”
“Yes,” said Nick, returning her stare with some ferocity. “I do. Also Harvey’s body, the old couple’s, and the truck driver’s. And I need to see everything the department had on everyone involved in that crash. I want to know everything there is to know about that trucker and the old farts.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” said Nick. “I need you to poke around and see if any branch of the department or the FBI or anyone else was looking into anything about Keigo Nakamura before he was murdered… anything that might have brought the DA’s office in and sent Dara and Harvey Cohen to Six Flags that day in September.”
“That won’t be easy,” said K.T.
“You’re squad commander, Lieutenant Lincoln,” said Nick. “When you and I were detectives second grade, we considered that position second only to God’s.”
“Yeah?” said K.T., looking at him. “Well, it’s not.”
She started scooting out of the booth again. “You have the same phone number?”
“Yeah,” said Nick but hesitated. “But if you could report to me personally—in private like this—it might be a better idea. Hard copies of the info rather than digital.”
K.T. paused and cocked her head. “Getting a little paranoid, are we?”
“Even paranoids have enemies, K.T.,” said Nick. “If the FBI and CIA kept coming back to this investigation of Keigo’s murder, odds are strong that they suspect some sort of conspiracy against Nakamura and his holdings by those cabals of corporations they have there.”
K.T. was standing next to the booth now, but she leaned over and lowered her voice. “That would be a dangerous area to poke around in, Nick. For you or for me. Since the Day It All Hit The Fan, Japan’s gone almost feudal again. You know that. Those clusters of companies—keiretsu they call them—are like fiefdoms. You’ve heard of the resurgence of the keiretsu in Japan, haven’t you?”
“Sure,” said Nick.
“Then you need to remember that the prime minister and members of the National Diet are nobodies. Heads of these corporate-alliance keiretsu like Hiroshi Nakamura, who also head up their own family monopolies called zaibatsu that have made such a comeback, all want to be Shogun of the new Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that the Japs are carving out of China and the rest of Asia. Being an Advisor to America the way Nakamura is means that he’s one of the top players in that feudal nightmare that these Nipponese samurai-businessmen call a culture. Assassination has always been fair game between these keiretsu and zaibatsu. You really don’t want to get involved in their wars, Nick.”
He looked up at her. They were so close that he could smell the subtle fragrance that she’d worn when they were partners working out of the 16th Street house. “I have to get involved in it, K.T. If there’s the slightest chance that Dara was involved, I have to be, too.”
K. T. Lincoln straightened up and seemed to be looking at the blank wall behind the booth. But she didn’t leave. After a few seconds, she said, “Do you know why I’m part of the tiny five percent of Americans who’ve never once tried flashback, Nick?”
“You’re Amish?”
His former partner didn’t smile. “No, it’s because I already have too many important dead that I’d spend most of my time visiting in the haze of that motherfucking drug. I read in a report that you saw that Google punk Derek Dean yesterday. So you know how sick this habit of going to live that false life with the dead is, Nick. Every hour under the flash is an hour lost from your real life forever.”