“Did you get the bike messenger?”
He nodded. “He didn’t have anything to do with your father’s death.”
“He tried to sell me the negatives. I thought he was in on it with Davis.”
“Why would you have wanted them?”
“Should I have an attorney present?” she asked.
Parker shook his head. “It’s not against the law to purchase negatives. Are you in them?”
“No.”
“Did you have any part in the blackmail scheme?” He wasn’t sure she didn’t. Her behavior through it all had been less than innocent.
“I found out what Lenny was up to,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought he could surprise or disappoint me anymore. I was wrong.”
“It’s hard to learn that lesson with someone you care about.”
“I didn’t want it to be true. I confronted him, begged him to put a stop to it, like that would have changed the fact that he was guilty of blackmail. He told me he would. He told me he had gotten caught up in it, that he was afraid of Eddie.”
“How did he get involved in the first place?”
“Davis was already a client. He came to Lenny and confessed to the murder, bragged about it. He didn’t think Lenny could do anything because of privilege. Then he asked Lenny to help him with the blackmail. He needed someone who wouldn’t rat him out to take the photographs.”
“And Lenny said yes,” Parker said. The lure of money had been too much for him, and/or having had a confessed perpetrator of a brutal murder make the offer made it too scary to refuse.
A nurse came into the room and gave Parker the eye as she looked at the machines and checked on Abby, trying to move him along. He could see by the strain on Abby’s face that she was running out of gas.
“Did Lenny give up Davis to the DA’s office? He wanted the last big payoff to himself?”
Tears brimmed over her lashes. The machine monitoring her heart rate began to beep a little faster. “I did,” she confessed in a small, hoarse whisper. “I thought if Giradello could go after Davis . . .”
Then Davis would have been arrested for Tricia Crowne-Cole’s murder. The negatives showed only Davis and Diane. Maybe they wouldn’t find anything against Lenny, except the word of a hit man. But Davis had had other plans.
“Did you speak to Giradello himself?”
“No. To his assistant.”
“Did you give your name?”
“I couldn’t.”
And how seriously would Anthony Giradello take an anonymous tip on a case that was a lock to convict, and a lock to launch his own political career? Not very. He had a vested interest in sending Rob Cole away. It was a wonder he’d even bothered to put Kyle and Roddick into the field to nose around.
Parker looked at Abby Lowell lying there looking young and frightened and crushed at the losses she had suffered. And he could see her at five or six in his mind’s eye, with that same expression as she sat in the corner of some bookie joint, left there by her father like she was a piece of luggage he would pick up on his way out.
Her eyes closed. The nurse scowled at Parker. He murmured a good-bye and walked out the door.
55
I think the unemployment office is in a different building,” Andi Kelly said, as Parker walked toward her through the waiting mob outside the Criminal Courts Building, where Rob Cole and his dream team would be emerging shortly to tell the world he was a free man.
Parker had taken off his tie and opened the collar of his shirt. His suit was rumpled from sitting in a Parker Center conference room for two hours. “Suspended,” he said. “Thirty days without pay.”
“Never mind that you cleared about three cases for them in one fell swoop.”
“I didn’t ask pretty please if I could.”
Actually, the words that had been tossed around the conference room by the chief of detectives, the head of Robbery-Homicide, and Bradley Kyle (who had a raccoon’s mask of bruising from Parker breaking his nose at the Olvera Street Plaza), among others, had been words like insubordinate, dangerous, rogue.
Parker had brought up the subject of Robbery-Homicide’s shadowy involvement in the Lowell homicide investigation, and had been brushed off. He had pointed out that a lot of people could have been killed at Pershing Square. No one wanted to hear it. He mentioned that Kyle had shot a woman in the back. Internal Affairs would investigate the shooting. Kyle would be on desk duty pending the outcome and would likely be suspended afterward.
At least Parker had the satisfaction of knowing Bradley Kyle would not be advancing his career. He would probably be sent down from Robbery-Homicide, or fired if the brass could get around the union. And then the lawsuits would come rolling in from Abby Lowell, from any civilian standing in Pershing Square when the shooting had started.
When Parker’s sentence had been pronounced, the chief of detectives had asked him if he had anything he wanted to say. Parker stood up and asked Bradley Kyle directly, why, if Giradello had been given a reason to suspect Eddie Davis for the Crowne homicide, had he not had them pull Davis in for questioning before he killed someone else.
They had all looked at one another like they were trying to pass a hot potato with telekinesis.
They hadn’t taken the threat of Eddie Davis seriously enough on the weight of an anonymous tip. And certainly, Tony Giradello wouldn’t have wanted it to get out that another suspect was being questioned practically on the eve of his making his opening statement to the jury, telling them Rob Cole was, without a doubt, a brutal murderer.
So Kyle and Roddick had dragged their feet, and a lot of people had paid a terrible price for it.
“I quit,” he told Andi. “I took off my service weapon, took out my ID, left it all on the table, and walked.”
Kelly was wide-eyed. “Whoa. Intense.”
“Yeah.”
“But you worked so hard to make it back, Kev. And after they get done being pissed off, they’re going to see—”
“I don’t need them to see anything, Andi,” he said, shaking his head. “They don’t matter. I thought I had to prove something, and I did, to myself. There’s nothing left for me to prove. I can move on with my life.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s one of the most mentally healthy things I’ve ever heard anyone say.”
The commotion began at the courthouse doors and rolled through the crowd on a wave. The doors swung open and Good Man Wrongly Accused emerged with his entourage. Parker wanted to slap the smirk off his face.
Rob Cole was as deserving of punishment as any felon in the system, but the press, who had vilified him from his arrest to this day, would now hail him as some kind of accidental hero. Cole was no more a hero than any idiot who fell down a well and had to be rescued by a huge team of county workers, at taxpayers’ expense. In both cases, the fool would be the one to do all the morning news and late-night talk shows. He’d be a guest on Larry King, and be asked to judge the Miss America Pageant.
What a country.
The press conference was brief and nauseating. Parker stood behind Andi, in a prime spot just behind a knot of television news talent. Then Cole moved to one side of the podium to greet his adoring public and sign autographs.
Parker stood at the edge of the madness, watching women hurl themselves at Cole, screaming his name. It turned his stomach.
He glanced to his right. There was a tall, striking woman with short sandy hair standing just a few feet away, waiting her turn, but not screaming. Not screaming, not smiling, just staring at Rob Cole with pale gray eyes as cold as ice. A sense of unease scratched at the back of Parker’s neck.
To his left, Andi made a comment, and he had to lean over and have her repeat it.