Justice Dig (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 9) Read online

  “Cover it, you mean? We do.”

  Chris was going to spill out more, thought better of it, and said, “Not to sound like a repeat of Finch here. I’d like to pick your brain on something, better off though over something to eat . . . Even a cocktail, or a beer, that would work too.”

  Holly didn’t answer for a moment, and Chris thought, ah Gee, forgot about the boyfriend, the yacht broker from Armonk.

  She said, “Well . . . when Terrence used that line on me, my response was he didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d try something, and more importantly he looked too old to be trying something.”

  “So that cinched it for you,” Chris said.

  “It did. You, on the other hand, I think you might try something.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve had a distinctly underhanded way about you. Being perfectly honest. The same way you’ve been honest with my fiction -- which I appreciate.”

  “How about,” Chris said, “I stop by your office. We go out on the sidewalk. I ask you one or two questions.”

  “I suppose,” she said, and Chris said he’d see her in twenty minutes -- which unfortunately turned into 45, him not realizing the newspaper office was down past Aviation Boulevard in Redondo, and of course the traffic.

  Chris made it quick, he didn’t mention the police, or even Ken, but pointed out that he knew Emma at one time and couldn’t wrap his head around what he heard happened, and could she please keep him posted.

  Holly said she just got the story this morning, and hadn’t learned much, that there had been a mention of it in the Torrance PD Monday briefing, and she hadn’t attended but she caught it online, and they said there were two suspects at large, that they were working it that the victim and suspects knew each other, so the public needn’t fear a random attack.

  Chris asked Holly if he could trust her to keep her sources confidential, meaning if he was one of them, and she said of course . . . and Chris said, “The two suspects at large -- those’d be my roommate and ex-girlfriend,” and he waited for a reaction, and he did have her full attention . . .

  “What?” he said. “This confirms the underhanded business, you’re thinking?”

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “But I thank you for this lead.” She asked about Emma and his roommate’s relationship, and Chris kept it simple, that they’d worked together at the library.

  “How’s the victim?” Chris said. “They say?”

  “Stabilized apparently,” Holly said.

  Chris was happy for the husband, and in Kenny and Emma’s case attempted murder was an improvement over murder, but you weren’t exactly jumping for joy. He said, “So I’ll see ya . . . let me ask you though, if you were on the run, the tables turned, where would you go?”

  “You mean -- if I had an accomplice?”

  “Fine.”

  “I think I’d dump them. Too conspicuous.”

  “Sorta what I was thinking.”

  “I don’t know . . . a plane would be risky, because of the ID. A rental car might be tricky as well . . . maybe a bus. Do they require ID yet on those? Maybe after 9/11 everything does.”

  This gal was on the ball, you had to give her that, and the answer was no, the bus didn’t require ID -- unless that policy had suddenly changed since the Arizona trip.

  He said, “Would you ask someone to help you . . . on the run . . . or just wing it?”

  “Wing it. They’d be all over your friends and family members. They probably already are.”

  Chris said, “You might be tough to hunt down then, working the angles like that.”

  Holly tried not to smile but Chris caught a little something. “Anything else?” she said.

  “Not right now,” he said, “but stay in touch. And you can send me the rest of that story. I mean Jeez, we’re talking made-up fiction, this isn’t life or death.”

  Chapter 7

  Chris got home, thought about taking a dip in the Cheater Five pool, but it was a little chilly. The pool was tired and old-fashioned and probably hadn’t been upgraded at all since it was built, which could have been as far back as the 1950’s, but it was nice to have it available nonetheless.

  Sharif’s maintenance guy, Hector, took the pool maintenance business personally, and he’d be whistling out there reaching the gadget into the water, clearing out the bugs and leaves for your benefit, right down to the tiniest spec of debris. And then he’d be laying down on the edge with various plastic tubes going in the water, and checking and then balancing the chlorine and ph levels like a scientist.

  Finally he’d hose down the pool deck, and put the chairs up and clean the underside of the umbrellas, and it seemed like a whole bunch of other little things -- and really, how could you beat it.

  Today Hector was finishing up when Chris got there and they said hi, and Gee, it was getting to the point where you almost felt like you were insulting the poor guy if you didn’t go swimming.

  Upstairs though, not much email, no new texts . . . you could roam around online, seeing what updates there might be on the Ken and Emma saga -- see if either of them was officially named yet, or if that was still being held back . . . but Chris figured there’s a point sometimes where enough is enough. You didn’t need every detail probably, you weren’t particularly worried about Emma, to be honest about it. She knew what she was doing, and she can make her own bed.

  It was boiling down to one thing now -- you needed to locate the kid.

  No way out of this mess, that Chris could see, unfortunately . . . but you’re getting ahead of yourself . . . don’t try to build Rome here, keep it simple, and find him.

  Soon there was some noise from the pool, that new couple once again with the toddler, and Chris decided it couldn’t hurt, and the air might be nippy but the water was obviously fine, and he waited until he didn’t hear them anymore and threw on his suit and dove in.

  It was true sometimes, what they said, that you could think straighter with water on your head. He’d that experience in the shower, at least once, thinking of the morning he decided to alter his plan, make a left turn off Highway 80 at Salt Lake City and detour up I-15 for three hours on the hunch that Thad might be around.

  Now he was trying to piece it together, anything Ken might have let slip, or even Stacy -- or even Ned or Emma for that matter -- any clue as to where the guy might have run.

  Again, he was raised by a grandmother -- but you figure no, no family contact.

  The car hadn’t gone anywhere. Emma’s vehicle status was unknown. You figure both of ‘em were too smart though, to jump in a known vehicle either way, unless it was for a short distance, and they were in a safe house right here in the LA area.

  It’s conceivable they took off together in a different car -- not a rental since that wouldn’t work -- but someone else’s maybe? You were getting a headache here . . . Chris supposed they could have stolen a car . . . hard as it was to wrap your head around.

  No way that’d be the Ken he knew . . . except none of this was.

  But Ken with the emergency text to Stacy . . . reaching out . . . don’t know what to do, asking for help. Suggestions . . . so you’d lean toward him being on his own at that point. If he was with Emma, that’s probably a question he wouldn’t ask.

  Ken had some porn business associates, mostly female, the ones Chris met, a few guys too . . . but nah, too close to home.

  A guy and a gal Kenny knew were passing through Manhattan Beach one time, and they spent a night in the apartment, and Chris only half paid attention but you could hear them in the living room telling old stories until the wee hours. Maybe. Though in the morning when Chris asked them where they were headed they said up to Vancouver, and they were going to pick up the Pacific Coast Trail . . . and they had a vagabond feel to them, like they wouldn’t necessarily settle down anywhere for a while, if ever, and the option for Ken of emergency-holing up with them was probably off the table.

  This felt like you were going nowhere, and let
’s face it, if the kid was smart he’d follow the lead of what he, Chris, did, and get on the earliest Greyhound bus, and not worry where it was headed, and get off where it seemed logical and keep your head down and hope this nightmare somehow blew over.

  Holly had said the same, that your best bet would be wing it on your own.

  Chris never told Ken in so many words what he’d done those couple times, but the kid got the picture obviously. And . . . maybe that wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and it wouldn’t be their first choice . . . the safest way to play it, probably, but not a slam dunk. Maybe you had to be an older guy to embrace the concept . . . And you did get a little lonely.

  Chris started to think, where had he had any extended conversations with Ken, where the kid might have opened up without Chris realizing it . . . and there was plenty of loose chit chat in the apartment, and he dragged Kenny to Peet’s Coffee a few mornings . . . but the prolonged stuff would have been on that Zodiac hunt they took up to the Bay Area.

  There was something else too. Gloria in her endless generosity had put them up in the house on Washington Street, and she enjoyed Ken, and there were times when Chris went somewhere and left them alone, the trip to Modesto to confront the Hilliard guy being one of them -- Chris not wanting to involve Ken in case something actually did happen out there.

  But no . . . you can’t bring Gloria into this, start peppering her with questions . . . and separately, out of curiosity, Chris was trying to get it straight, how did it play out up there exactly?

  He’d come back from Chico, said hi to Gloria, and not sure of the context but she casually let it slip that her neighbor said he saw the Zodiac killer the night of the crime, all those years ago, being a young man then back home with his parents after flunking out of college.

  Chris and Gloria talked to the guy the next morning, and Chris made a mental note to come back and follow up on some of what the guy said. So the next opportunity, Ken came along as well, and they worked it like pretty good detectives actually . . . kind of like in Law and Order where they keep knocking on different doors, a lot of them dead ends, but some leading to the next one.

  So they started on California Street, then as Chris remembered it, that led to a gal out in the Sunset . . . which led to a sister or someone in San Rafael . . . which led to someone else in Point Reyes.

  And finally, after getting re-fortified with a couple hamburgers, since this had turned into a good bit of running around . . . you had the second act, which was the basement of the high school building in Brisbane, going through the old yearbooks.

  That was quite a day, he and Ken did talk a lot in the car, and here and there a comment would trigger something, not necessarily about the Zodiac, but prompting you to tell a story . . . and Chris was honing in on it now, Ken mentioning the Bolinas guy.

  It was the San Rafael to Point Reyes leg, Chris taking Sir Francis Drake all the way out to the coast, a nice ride through Lagunitas and some sleepy towns . . . and they get to Highway One at Olema and start turning north, and there’s an overturned truck, not a huge semi, more like a step van, and it says Bolinas Osmosis and Healing Provisions . . . and no one looked injured luckily but they chewed on that one for a while, Chris telling Ken that Bolinas was an unusual place, 10 miles the other way on Highway One, a throwback to the 1960’s hippy era, and he’d place a bet that the Healing Provisions part of the operation got you a bit more than was advertised.

  Ken said he’d never been to Bolinas but knew someone who moved there, a guy he met in line at the snack bar one time at a Jason Aldean concert, and they hit it off pretty good those couple minutes, and the guy said what the heck, come visit.

  Ken mentioned again how he never took him up on it, and this was 2, 3 years ago now, with the snack bar deal . . . and Chris like an idiot kept blabbing about his own experience with the place and didn’t give Ken much room to expand . . . but of course how could you know it could mean anything.

  Hmm.

  This would be a shot in the dark, even so. But Chris asked himself, did you have any better ideas?

  He wasn’t sure Ken knew much more than that about Bolinas, but the fact was you kind of could get lost there. You had a main part of town down below and what they called the Mesa up above, plenty of money pouring into the place the last couple decades, weekenders and so forth, but parts of the Mesa still being pretty raw and there were some folks living off the grid.

  There was also a sign on Highway One, a little fork you came to -- with Stinson Beach to the left and Bolinas to the right . . . and Bolinas locals kept taking down the sign for Bolinas, to the point where Cal Trans pretty much stopped trying to put it up.

  A missing sign is not going to stop the cops obviously, but it makes the point . . . plenty of people living there who didn’t want you to find the place, or maybe find them either.

  Chris got out of the pool and went back upstairs. He felt a tiny bit encouraged, that you at least had something semi-concrete to latch on to -- and maybe the whole thing was a mirage . . . but unless a better idea crossed his plate in the next 8 1/2 hours, he was going to be on the road in the morning.

  Chapter 8

  Except that in the morning, he realized he kept forgetting about the dang DNA.

  If you were headed to the Bay Area anyway, you wanted to consolidate a few items, take care of business. One thing was stop by the apartment on Broderick, his sublet, make sure things were going smooth.

  Though maybe don’t stop by -- directly. That’s what got him into the jam up there last time. So keep it indirect, which meant at least paying a visit to Shep in Weatherby’s.

  So you had that, plus always a few other developments up there that you could justify. Going up there, period, wouldn’t be your choice though, without the Kenny angle being inserted. There’d been enough back and forth to hold you for a while.

  But the part of that conversation with Ken that resonated -- the guy had said come visit. And whether or not this guy was literally off the grid, or an extreme back to nature person, it didn’t matter.

  If you meet a guy in a snack bar and that’s the extent of it, you likely (hopefully) left little if any residue behind. Even so, with enough detective work, the cops might catch up to this guy eventually, add him to the list.

  But Ken would be savvy enough, that there’d be a lot of leads before it came to that. And he could buy some time. For now

  So Chris woke up placing the odds a little higher, and he even looked it up, there was a Greyhound run, three a day, from downtown LA to 7th and Market in San Francisco . . . and then you had to maneuver your way around the city a bit but you picked up a Golden Gate Transit bus that took you to West Marin, with the last stop Bolinas. One of those per day only, but if you timed the Greyhound you could work it cleanly.

  So he’d thrown a bag in the car and gassed it up and came back, and was going to tell Marlene to keep a little eye on the apartment -- but that would have been awkward, since they’d cooled the jets big time on the couple dates they’d had -- plus, thinking more clearly, you didn’t want her, or anyone, knowing that you went somewhere, on the off chance the cops came back and asked a neighbor why that might be.

  But then the DNA business. This was like doing your taxes, when you sat at your desk and had a list of 10 other things to do, all of them more pleasant, so you kept the taxes on the back burner.

  Mark the hacker had driven it home last time, when Chris saw him on the way to New York and Mark had set him up with that syringe which helped out admittedly, not at first but eventually -- but meanwhile Mark correctly stressed the importance of Chris obtaining his own DNA profile.

  And he told Mark he started the ball rolling, which was true, he found a lab in Hawthorne, and went and gave them a swab from the inside of his cheek, and they’d told him 2 weeks.

  And what was this now? Jeez, he arrived in New York around the 25th . . . That would be February, which meant he was hanging out and being lectured to by Mark mid-month . . . and to
day, wow, we’re talking Tuesday, correct? And Chris looked it up and it was the 19th . . . so the two weeks for lab test had morphed into a good five, and would they have simply discarded the thing?

  The lab in Hawthorne had been pretty casual about the whole business, fortunately. DNA testing clearly wasn’t their main thrust, the place felt like a standard medical lab who jumped on the bandwagon.

  The casual part meant Chris paid cash for his test and gave a fake name. Arnold Rye, was the one he had gone with. There was a one-page form you filled out, pretty silly, where you essentially checked a box and signed that you were authorized to obtain the DNA profile.

  Authorized by whom? By yourself, they meant? You were the one letting ‘em swab you or giving you a cup to spit in. Anyhow . . .

  He regretted the Arnold Rye bit after he handed the clipboard back to the receptionist, because he was pretty sure now that was a bread company, but you drawing attention to it would be worse, and he forked over the cash, a hundred ninety bucks, and they told him the two weeks.

  So it was something you had to do today, and luckily the receptionist (different one) found his paperwork pretty quickly and spoke to someone in back on the intercom and told him his drive will be up in just a minute.

  Chris is thinking, what the heck is drive . . . but he didn’t ask any questions and soon someone with a white half coat put an envelope on the counter, and the receptionist said she would just need his ID, and he’ll be good to go.

  He hadn’t thought of this, and he tried starting to say he left it in the car actually, but did they really need it? . . . and a young guy came into the reception office then and said to Chris, “Hi, how are you today?” and continued into the back, and Chris smiled and waved and he grabbed the envelope and did the same to the new receptionist, and she seemed okay with it now, and that was that.

  He drove out of there pronto in case someone did come out of the lab questioning him, and he was hungry anyway and stopped at the old Foster Freeze they had down here on South Inglewood, a legendary hangout back in the day, now a bit run down and a little dangerous-feeling too, but he went for a shake and some fries and opened the envelope, and son of a gun, it was a computer drive-type-gizmo. One of those plastic things with the metal stick prong that you shove into your USB port.