“Absolutely,” Lindsey said. “Wherever you go, your cell phone sends data and it’s mapped. And the cell providers keep those records. So somebody could find out Grace’s moves on any given date.” She paused and looked into her lap, and then she pushed her hair out of her face. “These companies have very sophisticated security and firewalls.”
“Can you hack it?”
My appetite fled. I stood and stalked the six feet to his desk. “I can’t believe what you asked her to do. That’s a federal crime.”
He shot up out of his chair and stabbed a finger at me. “What’s your plan, Mapstone? Get blown up again? You might not be so fast next time. We’ve been played for chumps and our clients are dead. Do you know why? I don’t. What I do know is it’s only a matter of time before we’re dead, especially if they get that flash drive.”
“Then we’ll take them on. Why bring Lindsey and Sharon into it?”
“Because they’re already in it with us.” He spat the words. “These assholes are cleaning up loose ends. Tim and the baby were loose ends. Why do they have a tracker on your car? Because they’re afraid of you? No. So they can find you and kill you when the time is right. Who’s going to help you? Your new buddy, Isabel? Not when she finds out you’ve been withholding evidence.”
He wasn’t the only one running hot. I went from zero to asshole in three seconds. I barked, “Lindsey could go to prison! Put your own ass on the line. Put mine. But leave her out of it! Let San Diego PD track Grace’s movements. Somebody cased our office. My god, are you nuts? We’re not safe here. We’re not safe at home. You said it yourself. We’re loose ends.”
So much for our convivial reunited family.
And then Vesuvius went dormant. He sat back in his executive chair and pushed his hair back with both hands. In a conversational voice: “We are safe as long as they are willing to bargain for the flash drive. That’s our hole card. They want it badly. If they hurt us or kill us, no flash drive.”
“Did the guy in the parking lot know that?” I told him about our visitor.
“Yes. He was probably some vagrant. If not, he was only on a recon mission.”
He looked so damned sure of himself.
“Now,” he said, “As for San Diego PD, I would leave this to them, David, but I don’t know how sophisticated they are or how big their caseload is. They might figure this out tomorrow or next month or never. The more I meddle, the more suspicious Kimbrough is going to be that we’re holding back evidence. I would hack those phone records myself, but I don’t know how. Lindsey does. She spent eight years in the Sheriff’s Office Cybercrimes Unit. She can reverse-engineer that knowledge.”
“I know how to be a hacker.” Lindsey’s voice was small but sounded weightier than our explosions.
It wasn’t as easy for me to dial back my anger, but I tried to match her soft voice. “Don’t do this, Lindsey, please.”
I had just, maybe, gotten her back. Now I would lose her again.
She took in my imploring glance, studied Sharon’s practiced calm, and then looked back at Peralta.
“Can you cover your tracks?” he asked.
Her look was that of the old insouciant Lindsey I had fallen for years ago, in her black miniskirt, nose stud, and irreverence that was somehow never cruel. The quarter smile that got the inside joke. The one who would answer him: They’ll never know I was there.
Now I knew that within my haunted beauty was her mother’s voice telling her she was never good enough, her “Linda Unit” as Robin had called it. I had no question about my wife’s skills. But the risks seemed intolerable. There had to be another way.
She looked at Peralta. “You always said I was the best.”
“Then do it.”
26
Peralta took Lindsey and Sharon outside while I called Artie Dominguez at the Sheriff’s Office.
“How’s the best detective in the department?”
His usual ebullient laugh was subdued. “David. Long time, long time. What’s it like working one-on-one with the Big Man every day?”
“You can imagine.” I asked him how he was. He snorted.
“He’s missed,” he said. “I might come be a private dick myself soon. You won’t believe how fucked up things are. Let’s say command these days isn’t very friendly if you have a last name like Dominguez. I used to get the best homicides. Lately, I’ve been on auto theft.”
“No shit.”
“Real shit, man. Twenty-five years and this is what I get. They’re out there playing Border Patrol and everything else has gone to hell. Response times are way down. Serious cases are going untouched. The jail’s a mess. Wait until you read about the El Mirage sex cases we’re not investigating. But rounding up the campesinos standing outside Home Depot makes the old farts in Sun City and the East Valley feel safer. Sucks.”
“Can you run a couple of names through NCIC and ViCAP for me?”
“Sure. It’ll take a couple of days so I can do it without my new boss asking questions.”
I gave him Larry Zisman and Bob Hunter. He was aggravated with me that I didn’t have Social Security numbers and dates of birth. That would mean more work.
“If it makes you feel any better, I have a list of about sixty names with SS numbers that I’d like to email you at home and have you check, too. I know it’ll take time.”
“Damn, Mapstone. We ought to set you up down here with a desk.”
“You know how that would go over with the new guy.”
He sighed like a martyr.
“I’ll owe you,” I added.
“I’ll add it to your tab. That it?”
Not quite. I wanted him to check ViCAP-the massive FBI database-for suspicious deaths involving young women falling bound from high places. Extra points if they were high-priced prostitutes. And Claymore mine explosions.
After a pause. “Was that you in San Diego?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck me,” he said. “I thought you guys were going to be peeping on unfaithful husbands.”
“You know Peralta would get bored with that in an hour or less.”
“True,” he said. “Watch your ass, David.”
Then I went into the Danger Room to review the footage of the outside security cameras. I backed it up until it showed a new sedan pull in the dirt beside the south fence. It was a white Chevy Impala. A man got out and looked around. He was young and Anglo with a high-and-tight haircut, shaved on the sides with a weed-like tuft on top. Put him in a military uniform and give him a stolen Claymore and things started to come together. He was no vagrant.
I watched as he climbed on the Impala’s roof and expertly vaulted the fence, then walked to the carport. Switching to that camera, I saw him open the Prelude driver’s door and lean inside. He popped the seatback forward and climbed into the back. Next, he popped the trunk button and went back there. He was searching for the flash drive. He repeated the move on the passenger side, and then returned to the Impala, looked around again, and got inside.
Switching to the first camera, I saw him back out to leave and expose the license plate. Nevada. I zoomed in, made a screen shot, and printed it out. It was probably a rental car.
Sharon was standing behind me.
“I’m worried about you.”
“Me, too.” Why deny it?
“You’ve changed, David. Lindsey feels it, too.”
“That’s nice. Another excuse for her to leave me.”
She’s not going to leave you. It would have been nice to hear that, but Sharon didn’t say it.
“Mike told me what you went through with the cartels and the old gangster in Chandler,” she said. “Nobody could go through that without being changed.”
“And Robin being murdered.”
Sharon watched me with those big empathetic eyes.
Yes, there was that. And the trial would soon begin. It was another reason I didn’t want to read the local newspaper. It wouldn’t be covered because the defendant was a drug addict who killed someone. But because the victim was a blond, middle-class woman who lived in a historic district and was the sister-in-law of a former deputy sheriff-that was news. I would have to testify. I dreaded the effect this would have on Lindsey.