“I know what his are.”
“Just keep it in mind. Maybe he knows someone in Guatemala, someone who’s connected. Hell, you don’t even know where to start looking.” Sammy turned to Luke. “I know there was some bad blood between you and Calderon, but that was a long time ago.”
“Bad blood? The last time I saw that scumbag, he was taking the skin off a prisoner’s face with his Ka-Bar. Calderon had his knee on the guy’s throat and was cutting off an eyelid. That man was our captive. We were responsible for him.”
Sammy’s face puckered like a fish. “Calderon has some strange shit going on in his head, that’s for sure, but he’s learned how to control himself. And he’s the best wet-ops guy I ever worked with. The man’s a human sledgehammer. I doubt you’d last ten seconds in a room alone with him. Who knows? His skills might come in handy.”
“I said forget it.”
“So, McKenna’s alibi for Tartaglia doesn’t hold up,” Groff said. “Now we got him for two murders.”
The lieutenant slapped the table as though his hand were a gavel and he had just rendered his decision. He winced when the motion carried to his ribs, three of which McKenna had broken the previous day when he kicked Groff down the stairway.
O’Reilly had been summoned to the windowless third floor conference room at LAPD headquarters to give an update on the Tartaglia investigation. They were sitting in what had become the “war room” in the hunt for McKenna.
“Lieutenant, I don’t think we can say that yet,” O’Reilly countered. “There are problems with the timeline.”
The blond muscle-bound detective who’d gone down the stairs with Groff was sitting to the lieutenant’s left, staring at O’Reilly. The man was finding it awkward to chew a stick of gum with his neck wrapped in a brace, but he was doing better than his female partner, who was laid up at home with a back injury.
Sitting on Groff’s right was a drop-dead gorgeous LAPD psychologist who specialized in profiling suspects.
She was looking at the knot on O’Reilly’s forehead when she asked, “What problems, Detective?”
Groff said, “Yeah. You just told us that the security video showed McKenna leaving the hospital at 10:07:22 on the night of Tartaglia’s murder. The victim’s phone call with her mother didn’t end until seven minutes later, at 10:14:29.”
“Give or take,” O’Reilly said. “The hospital’s security clock runs seventeen seconds behind Tartaglia’s cellular service.”
“You’re splitting hairs,” Groff said. “If, like you say, it only takes four and a half minutes to walk from the hospital exit to that parking lot, that means he had two and a half minutes to do her.”
“Not exactly,” O’Reilly said. “The owner of Kolter’s Deli remembers McKenna entering the restaurant while a customer was paying his bill. There’s only one cash register receipt within ten minutes of the murder. It had a time stamp of ten-thirteen.”
“Which still leaves him with a minute and a half,” Blondie said. “What’s your problem?”
“The clock in that restaurant’s register”—O’Reilly checked his notes—“runs sixty-seven seconds behind the cellular company’s. That means, when McKenna walked through the front door at Kolter’s, the time on Tartaglia’s phone was somewhere between 10:14:06 and 10:15:06. I can’t narrow it down any more than that because the restaurant’s register doesn’t show seconds on the printed records. But even if we use the later time—10:15:06—and we assume that McKenna murdered Tartaglia at the moment her phone call ended, that would leave just thirty-seven seconds to take her purse and keys, and get to the restaurant.”
O’Reilly allowed that thought to sink in, then said, “It takes almost a minute to walk to the restaurant from where her car was parked—”
“So he ran to the restaurant,” Blondie offered. “We already know the guy moves a lot faster than you, O’Reilly.”
The embarrassment and anger about McKenna’s escape hung over the room like a stench, and no one was hiding the fact that they blamed O’Reilly. They couldn’t fathom how McKenna had sent them sprawling, jumped to his feet, swept Blondie’s partner onto her back — all before O’Reilly could unholster his weapon.
“Let’s just get through this.” Groff aimed a finger at O’Reilly. “What else do you got?”
Shortly after McKenna’s escape and the discovery of Kate Tartaglia’s e-mail message in his apartment, Groff had officially taken charge of O’Reilly’s investigation. The investigation and search was now a task force operation involving all four of Groff’s teams — eight detectives. Three of the teams were out hunting for McKenna, which was the only reason that O’Reilly was still working the case. As soon as things settled down, Groff would reassign the Tartaglia case to one of his own teams.
O’Reilly tapped his notes with a pencil. “Tartaglia’s e-mail. I’m still trying to find the attachment she sent with it, but then I don’t even know what I’m looking for. There’s nothing in McKenna’s apartment that looks like it belongs to that e-mail. Tartaglia’s ISP has a record of the transmittal, but not the e-mail message itself. They wipe their server clean as soon as an e-mail goes through to the recipient. And McKenna’s cell phone carrier confirmed he doesn’t have a phone that sends or receives e-mail. So that leaves University Children’s. That’s where Tartaglia sent her e-mail, and the hospital’s IT group told us they save everything for thirty days. But so far, our computer forensics team hasn’t found any record of her message on their server — nothing. Our guys say they need another couple of days before they can tell me when it was erased and whether they can recover a copy.”
“I’ll get you more resources if you need ’em, but I want that e-mail attachment. McKenna didn’t just lie to us about not receiving her message. He tried to erase the whole goddamned trail. I wanna know why.” Groff sat forward, flinching as he did so. “What about Tartaglia’s employer, Zenavax?”
“Talked to her boss, and the company’s CEO. Both of them said the usual stuff. She was a good employee, she’ll be hard to replace, they can’t imagine why someone would’ve wanted to kill her.”
When asked about Tartaglia’s project at the Coroner’s Office, they had produced a bland memo describing the creation of a “library” of human blood serum from non-U.S. Hispanic subjects for undetermined future purposes. According to them, it was no more than a collection and storage program. In other words, it was an investigative dead end unless he wanted to slap a warrant on them and search their files, which Groff would never approve.
So instead of tilting at that windmill, O’Reilly said, “Lieutenant, it’s what they didn’t say that I found interesting. When I mentioned that Tartaglia was murdered on her way to a meeting with someone at the hospital, neither of ’em asked me who. I didn’t mention McKenna, and they didn’t ask.”
“What’s your point?” asked Groff.
“Well, I’ve already told you about the big brouhaha that happened when she first joined Zenavax. She used to work for McKenna’s father, remember? So wouldn’t you think they’d be curious enough to ask who she was meeting with at the hospital?”
Groff was shaking his head. “Where you going with this? I don’t need more suspects — McKenna killed her. Tartaglia’s mother puts him at the murder scene, and you just tore a hole in his alibi. His military file tells us that he has the skills. God knows, he had motive. In his mind, the woman stole his father’s work, and maybe cost him a big inheritance.”
“This is about retribution, not money,” the psychologist said. “It’s important that you understand who you’re dealing with. McKenna sees the world in terms of good and evil, and he has no doubt about his judgments. He’s acting with absolute moral clarity.”