14

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Starkey left Glendale without knowing where she would go or what she would do. That was bad. Working an investigation was like working a bomb. You had to keep your focus. You had to have a clear objective and work to that end, even when you were drinking sweat and pissing blood.

If this were a normal investigation, Starkey would have questioned Riggio’s coworkers about his friends and relationships, but now she couldn’t do that. She considered contacting his two SWAT hunting buddies, but worried that word of it might get back to the Bomb Squad.

Leyton had said that Riggio had two sisters. Starkey decided to start there.

Every casebook included a page on the victim. Name, address, physical description, that kind of thing. On the night of Riggio’s death, Starkey had assigned Hooker the task of gathering this information, and he had done his usual thorough job. She looked up the page and saw that Riggio was the middle child between two sisters, Angela Wellow and Marie Riggio. The older of the sisters, Angela, lived in Northridge, which wasn’t far from Charlie’s apartment in Canoga Park. The other sister lived south of Los Angeles in Torrance.

Starkey phoned Angela Wellow, identified herself, and expressed her condolences.

Angela’s voice was clear, but tired. Jorge had listed her age as thirty-two.

“You worked with Charlie?”

Starkey explained that she had, but that now she was a bomb investigator with the Criminal Conspiracy Section.

“Ms. Wellow, there are some—”

“Angela. Please, I get enough of that missus from the kids. If you were a friend of Charlie’s, I don’t want you calling me missus.”

“You live near Charlie’s apartment, don’t you, Angela?”

“That’s right. It’s just over here.”

“Has anyone from the department talked to you?”

“No, not to me. Someone called our parents about Charlie, then Mom and Dad called me. They live in Scottsdale. I had to call my sister.”

“Reason I’m calling now is because you live so close to Charlie’s. We think that Charlie had some files that we need on two other cases. We think he brought them home. Now we need them back. Could you meet me at his apartment, and let me see if I can find them?”

“Charlie had files?”

“Bomb reports on older cases. Nothing to do with Silver Lake. Now we need them back.”

A note of irritation crept into Angela’s voice.

“I was already there. I’ve been there every day, trying to get his things packed. Oh, for God’s sake.”

Starkey made herself hard and detached, even though she felt like a dog for lying.

“I appreciate your feelings, Angela, but we really need those files.”

“When do you have to do this?”

“I’m available right now. The sooner the better from our end.”

They agreed to meet in an hour.

With the traffic, it took Starkey almost that long to get to Northridge, high in the San Fernando Valley. Riggio’s apartment building was on a busy street three blocks south of the Cal State campus. It was a great cave of a building, an upscale stucco monster that had probably been rebuilt after the big earthquake in ’94. Starkey left her car in a red zone, then went to the glass security doors where she and Angela had agreed to meet. Two young women on their way out with book bags held the door, but Starkey waved them off, telling them that she was meeting someone. Starkey watched them heading toward the campus and smiled. This was just the kind of place where Charlie Riggio would live. Inside, there would be a pool and Jacuzzi, probably a game room with a pool table, cookouts every night, and plenty of young women.

Now, a thin young woman with the harried look of a mother opened the glass door and looked out. She was carrying a little boy who couldn’t have been more than four.

“Are you Detective Starkey?”

“Ms. Wellow? Sorry, Angela?”

“That’s right.”

Angela Wellow must have parked beneath the building and entered through the inside. Starkey showed her badge, then followed Angela through the central courtyard and up a flight of stairs to a second-floor apartment. The little boy’s name was Todd.

“I hope this won’t take long. My older boy gets home from school at three.”

“It shouldn’t, Angela. I appreciate your going to this trouble.”

Riggio’s apartment was nice, a two-bedroom loft with a high arched ceiling and an expensive big-screen television. A mounted deer head stared down at her from the wall. Starkey wondered if it was the same deer she’d seen in the pictures. The couch was lined with large boxes, and more boxes were in the kitchen. It would be a sad job, packing the belongings of the dead.

Angela put down her little boy, who ran to the television like it was a close and trusted friend.

“What do your files look like? Maybe I’ve seen them.”

Starkey cringed at the lie.

“They look like three-ring binders. They’re probably black.”

Angela stared at the boxes as if she were trying to remember what was in them.

“Well, I don’t think so. These are his clothes, mostly, and things from the kitchen. Charlie didn’t keep anything like an office. There’s his bedroom upstairs. He has one of those weight machines in the other bedroom.”

“Do you mind if I look?”

“No, but I really don’t have very long.”

Starkey hoped that she would have Riggio’s bedroom to herself, but Angela picked up the little boy and showed her up the stairs.

“It’s this way, Detective.”

“Were you and Charlie close?”

“He was probably closer to Marie, she’s the youngest, but our family was a good one. Did you know him well?”

“Not as well as I would have liked. Something like this happens, you always wish you’d taken the time.”

Angela didn’t answer until they reached the top of the stairs.

“He was a good guy. He had a stupid sense of humor, but he was a good brother.”

The bed had already been stripped of linen. More boxes waited on the floor, some empty, others partially filled. A dresser stood against one wall, a jumble of pictures wedged into the mirror frame. Most of the pictures were of an older couple that Starkey took to be his parents.

“Is this your sister?”

“That’s Marie, yes. These here are our parents. We haven’t taken down the pictures yet. It’s just too hard.”

The little boy upended a box and climbed inside. Angela sat on the bed, watching him.

“I guess you can look through these boxes. They’re mostly clothes, but I remember some papers and books and things.”

Starkey used her body to block Angela’s view as she went through the boxes. Having Riggio’s sister three feet behind her left her with the feeling that even if something was here, she would not find it. There was a heavy photo album that she wanted to look through, and a notepad, and, in the corner of the room, a Macintosh computer that might contain anything at all. There was too much, and here she was, going through it under false pretenses with the dead man’s sister staring at her back. What a half-assed, pathetic way to conduct an investigation.

Angela said, “You were a bomb technician like Charlie?”

“I used to be. Now I’m a bomb investigator.”

“Could I ask you something about that?”

Starkey said that she could.

“They won’t release Charlie’s body. They haven’t even let us go see him. I keep seeing these pictures in my head, you see? About why they won’t let us have him.”

Starkey turned, feeling awkward with this woman’s discomfort.

“Is Charlie, you know, in pieces?”

“It’s not like that. You don’t have to worry about Charlie being like that.”

Angela nodded, then looked away.

“You think about these things, you know? They don’t tell you anything, and you imagine all this stuff.”

Starkey changed the subject.

“Did Charlie talk about his job?”

She laughed and wiped at her eyes.

“Oh, God, when didn’t he talk about it? You couldn’t shut him up. Every call-out was either an atom bomb or a practical joke. He liked to tell about the time they rolled out on a suspicious package that someone had left outside a barber shop. Charlie looked inside and he sees that it’s a human head, just this head. When Charlie’s supervisor asks what’s in the box, Charlie tells him it looks like the barber took too much off the top.”

Starkey smiled. She had never heard that story, and thought that Riggio had probably made it up.

“Charlie loved working with the Bomb Squad. He loved the people. They were like a family, he said.”

Starkey nodded, remembered that feeling, and the pang of loss that came with losing it. And now she suspected that family of murder.

Starkey finished with the boxes, then went through the dresser and the closet without finding anything helpful. She had lost confidence that, working alone, she could discover something that would suggest a motive for Riggio’s death. Maybe there was nothing to be found, and never had been.

“Well, maybe I was wrong about those reports. It doesn’t look like Charlie brought them home after all.”

“I’m sorry.”

Starkey couldn’t think of anything else to say or ask and was ready to leave. Angela had been saying how she was in a hurry to get home for her son, but now she lingered on the bed.

“Detective, could I ask you something else?”

“Of course.”

“Were you and Charlie girlfriend and boyfriend?”

“No. I didn’t know Charlie had a girlfriend.”

Starkey glanced at the pictures in the mirror: Riggio and his parents, Riggio with his sisters and nieces and nephews.

“He had a girlfriend, but he never brought her to meet us. Here’s this nice Italian boy, you’re supposed to be married and have a million kids. My parents were always after him, you know, when are you going to get married, when are you going to settle down, when do we get to meet this girl?”

“What did Charlie say?”

Angela seemed embarrassed again.

“Well, some of the things he said, I got the impression she was married.”

“Oh.”

Angela nodded.

“Yeah. Oh.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, I understand. But it happens, right? I think it was hard for Charlie. Here’s this young, good-looking guy, but he was heartfelt. I think she was married to someone Charlie worked with.”

Angela met Starkey’s eyes as if she was waiting for a reaction, but then she looked away.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that, but if it’s not you, I thought you might know her. I’d like to talk to her. I wouldn’t make a problem with her husband or anything like that. I just thought we could talk about Charlie. It might be good.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about that.”

Starkey wondered if the photo album held pictures that Riggio had wanted to keep hidden, pictures of a woman who was married to someone else that he couldn’t keep out on the mirror.

Angela suddenly glanced at her watch and jumped up.

“Oh, shit. Now I really am late. I’m sorry, but I have to go. My son will be home soon.”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

Starkey followed Angela down, but now her mind was racing for a way to get a view of Riggio’s photo album.

By the time they reached the door, Todd was squirming in his mother’s arms. He was tired and cranky and overdue for his nap. When Starkey saw the time Angela was having with him at the door, Starkey took her keys.

“Here, I’ll get the door. That boy’s a handful.”

“It’s like trying to hold a fish.”

Starkey held the door to let Angela through. She pretended to lock the door, but unlocked it, instead. She closed it, then rattled the knob as if checking to make sure it was secure. Angela’s arms still filled with squirming child, Starkey placed the keys in Angela’s purse.

“Thanks again for trying to help, Angela. I feel a little silly that I got you out here and couldn’t find the files. I was sure Charlie brought them home.”

“If they turn up, I’ll call.”

Angela saw Starkey to the glass doors and let her out. Starkey walked out to her car, climbed behind the wheel, but did not start her car. Her heart was hammering. She told herself that what she was about to do was insane. Worse, it was illegal. A D.A. out to make an example of her could press for breaking and entering.

Five minutes later, Angela Wellow appeared on the service drive at the side of the apartment building in a white Honda Accord, turned south, and drove away. Starkey flicked her cigarette out the window, then crossed back to the apartment building just as a young man with a book bag was wrestling a mountain bike through the glass door. Starkey held the door for him.

“Don’t be late for class.”

“I’m always late. I was born late.”

Starkey walked calmly to the second floor, where she let herself into Charlie Riggio’s apartment. She took the stairs two at a time, going directly to the box with the photo album. Now that she was thinking in terms of an illicit affair, she wanted Riggio’s phone bills and charge receipts, but had no idea which box held those things and was too frightened to take the time to find them. Starkey smiled grimly; she might have been a fearless bomb technician, but she was a chickenshit crook. She found the photo album, but didn’t dare look at it there. It was too thick, and held too many photographs.

She took the book, this time locking the door behind herself, and hurried down to her car. She drove straight home and brought the photo album inside under her jacket as if it were pornography.

She sat with the album at the dining room table, turning the pages slowly, telling herself that the odds were so long as to be unimaginable, that Angela Wellow was probably wrong, and that tomorrow she would be back to square one, all alone in her belief that someone other than Mr. Red was behind Charlie’s death.

Page after page were pictures that charted Charlie Riggio’s life: Charlie playing high school football, Charlie with his buddies, Charlie with pretty young girls who looked anything but like the wives of cops, Charlie hunting, Charlie at the Police Academy, Charlie with his family. They were happy pictures; the type of pictures that a man kept because they made him smile.

It was near the end of the book where she found a picture taken at last year’s Bomb Squad Chili Cookoff. She found the second like it taken at the Christmas party, and then, two pages later, a third which had been taken at a CCS barbeque that Kelso had thrown on the Fourth of July.

Starkey peeled the pictures from the album and put them on the table side by side, asking herself if they could really mean what she thought they meant. She told herself they couldn’t; she told herself she was wrong, and reading too much into them, but what Angela Wellow had said hung over her like an ax.

… she’s married to someone he works with.

The pictures were all the same, a man and a woman, arms around each other, smiling, a little too close, a little too familiar, a little too friendly.

Charlie Riggio and Suzie Leyton.

Dick Leyton’s wife.

Starkey poured a tall gin and tonic, drank most of it. She felt angry, and betrayed. Leyton being a suspect was too big to get her arms around. Just thinking about it wore her down. Starkey decided to deal with it as if Leyton were just another part of the investigation. There was no other way to see it.

She went to her own collection of pictures and found a shot of Leyton that she’d taken at an LAPD Summer Festival Youth Camp. It was a crisp shot, a close-up showing Leyton in civilian clothes and sunglasses. She brought it to Kinko’s, made several copies, adjusting the contrast until she had one that showed the best detail, then returned home where she phoned Warren Mueller. She didn’t expect him to be in his office, but she tried him anyway. To Starkey’s surprise, she got him on the first ring.

“I’ve got a favor to ask, Sergeant. I have a photograph that I want you to show the old man who lives in Tennant’s duplex.”

“Is it the guy in the hat?”

“It could be. Here’s the thing, I don’t want anyone else to see the picture. I want this kept between me and you.”

Mueller hesitated.

“I’m not liking the way this sounds.”

“It’s about tracing Tennant’s RDX. I don’t want to tell you any more than that, and I am asking you not to ask.”

“All this makes me wonder who’s in your picture.”

“Look, Mueller, if this is too hard, I’ll drive up there and do it myself.”

“Now, hold on.”

“It’s someone who would be hurt badly by this if I’m wrong, and I might be wrong. I’m asking you for a favor here, goddamnit, so what’s it going to be?”

“This guy in your picture, he’s LAPD, isn’t he?”

Starkey couldn’t bring herself to speak.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll take care of it. You know what you’re doing down there, Starkey? You gonna be okay with this?”

“I’m okay.”

“All right. You fax up your picture. I’ll go wait by the machine. If you’re expecting to use this ID in court, I’m gonna have to make up a six-pack.”

The suspect picture was never shown to witnesses by itself; the courts ruled this to be leading. Detectives were required to show a spread of pictures, hoping that the witness would identify the right one.

“That’s fine. Now, one more thing. If we get a confirmation from your wit, I’m going to want to see Tennant about this. I’d like to do that tomorrow.”

Mueller cleared his throat, hesitating.

“Hell, Starkey, I guess you didn’t hear. Tennant’s dead. I called Atascadero today to set up a little interview about his shop, you know? The silly sonofabitch blew his damned arms off and bled to death.”

Starkey didn’t know what to say.

“He blew off his arms? His arms were separated?”

The energy it took to do that was tremendous.

“Yeah. Man I talked to over there said it was a real mess.”

“What did he use, Mueller? Christ, you can’t make anything like that out of cleaning products.”

“Sheriff’s EOD is running the analysis. Guess we’ll know in a day or two. Whatever the case, you can forget about getting anything from Tennant. He’s a memory.”

Starkey was slow to answer.

“I’ll fax that picture now. If it doesn’t come through clear, call back and I’ll try again.

She gave him her home phone.

“Owe you one, Sergeant. Thanks.”

“I’ll collect. You can bet your split-tail bottom on that.”

“Mueller, you’re the most charming man I know.”

“Kinda grows on you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Like anal warts.”

Starkey gave Mueller a minute, then put the photocopy of Leyton through her fax. She waited for his call, but after a few silent minutes had passed, she figured that the photo had gone through okay.

She didn’t know what else to do. She could take the photo to Lester Ybarra, but if he told Marzik she would have to explain. She needed to put Leyton in Silver Lake at the time of the detonation, but that meant questioning more people who she couldn’t question. She knew that Leyton was at the scene when she arrived, but had he been there in the moment when someone had triggered the device?

Starkey’s eye kept going to the computer, waiting silently on her dining room table. She had not turned it on since she turned it off last night. Now it seemed to watch her.

I did not kill Charles Riggio.

I know who did.

Starkey lit a cigarette, then went into the kitchen and made herself another drink. Sobriety had lasted all of two days. She went back into the dining room, turned on the computer, and signed on to Claudius.

Mr. Red did not jump out at her. The chat room was empty. She sipped her drink, smoked, and read through the boards. There were new posts, but nothing beyond the mundane chitchat of defective personalities. She finished her second drink, then made another. She left the computer on with Claudius’s flaming head like a painting on her wall. She smoked a second cigarette. Starkey walked through her house, once stepping out the back door, twice stepping out the front. She thought about Pell, and she thought that she might one day like a persimmon tree. She didn’t know what persimmons were like, but that didn’t stop her from wanting the tree. Outside, the eastern sky purpled and time passed.

Starkey floated like that for almost two hours as the purple dimmed to black, and then she was rewarded.

WILL YOU ACCEPT A MESSAGE FROM MR. RED?

She opened the window.

She stared at the line, then typed her answer.

Red’s hesitation left her with a grim satisfaction.

She did. She drew deep on the cigarette, then typed her question.

Starkey laughed at the way he wrapped the conversation around to force her admission.

He hesitated again, and she felt a stab of hope that he might actually tell her.

She waited, but nothing came back. She thought he might be typing a long reply, but the minutes stretched until she finally realized that he wanted her to beg. His need to manipulate and control was textbook.

He paused again, and then his message appeared.

The statement struck her like a board. It came from nowhere, jolting her like a head-on collision.

He didn’t answer.

No answer.

Nothing.

No answers came back. The window hung there, unchanging. His statement that Pell was not who he seemed haunted her. Her first impulse was to phone Pell, but she felt caught between them like a ship between the ocean and a storm, Mr. Red on one side, Pell the other.

During the days when Starkey served on the Bomb Squad, the ATF had maintained a liaison agent with LAPD in an office housed with CCS. Three weeks after Starkey returned from Bomb School in Alabama, Sugar had introduced her to Regal Phillips, the ATF liaison agent. Phillips was an overweight man with a friendly smile, who had retired near the end of Starkey’s first year; they had worked together only occasionally during that year, but Sugar loved the older man, and Starkey sensed then that the feelings had run deep both ways. Phillips had visited Starkey twice during her time in the hospital, both visits ending with Phillips weeping after recounting stories about Sugar’s exploits on the squad.

That final visit had been the last time Starkey had seen Regal Phillips, almost three years ago. She hadn’t phoned him after the hospital because she couldn’t be with Regal without being with Sugar, and that hurt too much.

Now, after all this time, she felt embarrassed as she listened to his phone ring.

When Regal answered, she said, “Reege, it’s Carol Starkey.”

“Lord, girl, how are you? I had it in my head that you didn’t talk to black people anymore.”

He sounded like the same old Reege, the warm voice revealing only a hint of surprise.

“Pretty good. Working. I’m on with CCS now.”

“I heard that. I still got friends over there. I’m keeping tabs on you.”

He laughed softly when he said it, his voice so full of affection that she felt ashamed of herself.

“Reege, ah, listen, I’m really sorry I haven’t stayed in touch. It’s hard for me that way.”

“Don’t worry about it, Carol. Things changed for a lot of people that day in the trailer park.”

“You know about Charlie Riggio?”

“What I see on the news. You working on that?”

“That’s right. Reege, this is an awkward thing for me to ask.”

“Ask it.”

“I’m working with an ATF agent that I, ah, have my doubts about. I was wondering if you could look into him for me. You know what I mean?”

“No, Carol, I don’t think that I do.”

“I want to know who he is, Reege. I guess I’m asking you if I can trust him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack Pell.”

Phillips told her that it might take a day or two, but that he would call back soon. Starkey thanked him, then hung up and doused the lights. She did not sleep. She didn’t even get into bed. Starkey stayed on the couch in the dim light, waiting until morning, wondering how a man she now trusted so little could mean so much to her.

Pell

Earlier that day, when Pell left Barrigan’s, he squinted against the nuclear California sun. The light was so bright that it felt like an ax blade wedged between his eyes. Even the sunglasses didn’t help.

Pell sat in his car, trying to figure out what to do. The look of hurt on her face had left him feeling like a dog. He knew that she was right: He was so obsessed by Mr. Red that he couldn’t see anything else, but he had the fragment with her name on it. He had wanted to reach across the table and tell her everything, tell her the truth. He had wanted to open himself, because he had also been closed, and thought that she might be the only one who could understand, but he couldn’t be sure. He had wanted to tell her of his growing feelings for her, but there was only Mr. Red. He no longer knew where Red ended and he began.

His head began to throb.

“Jesus. Not again.”

Soft gray shapes floated up from the dashboard, from the windows, from the hood of his car.

It was happening more frequently now. It would only get worse.