15
• • •
Starkey left her house well before dawn. She had had it with the emptiness of the quiet rooms, the conflicting thoughts about Pell and Dick Leyton and her shitty life. She told herself to get her head in the case, so she left the thoughts and emptiness, and made her way across town.
She needed to determine Dick Leyton’s whereabouts at the time of the blast and thought that Hooker might have noted Leyton’s TOA in the casebook. Starkey didn’t bother to shower. She changed clothes, lit a fresh cigarette, and drove.
Spring Street was a tomb. Hers was the only car on the parking level. Not even the Fugitive Section had shown for work.
Starkey said fuck it and brought her cigarette into the office. She could always blame the cleaning crew.
The casebook was on Marzik’s desk where she remembered it, but Hooker had made no note of Leyton’s arrival time, just that he was present. Starkey pulled the box of videotapes from under Hooker’s desk. She found the copy of the enhanced tape that Bennell had made for them, along with the news tape she remembered as having the widest angles, and brought them upstairs to the video room. She had watched those damned tapes so many times she knew them by heart, but she had always been looking for the man in the baseball cap; she had never looked at the cops.
The image quality of the enhanced tape was crappy on the VCR just as Bennell had warned, but she watched it anyway, searching the perimeter of the cordon for Dick Leyton. She remembered that he was wearing a polo shirt, that he looked as if he’d just come from home.
She watched the tape, then watched it again, but it was always the same: Riggio approached the box, the explosion, then Buck ran forward to strip away his partner’s helmet. Starkey gave up trying to find Leyton in the moments prior to the explosion because the clips were too short and indistinct. She concentrated on that time after the blast figuring that if Leyton were at the scene, he would have run forward to see about his man. She keyed the tape to the explosion, and watched again. Bang! For almost twelve seconds of real time after the blast, Buck and Charlie were alone in the frame. Then the paramedics’ ambulance raced up beside them from the bottom of the picture. Two LAFD paramedics jumped out, taking Buck’s place. Four seconds later, a single uniformed officer ran forward from the left side of the frame, and two more uniformed officers entered from the right. The officer from the left appeared to be trying to get Buck to sit down or move away, but Buck shook him off. Three more officers entered the frame from the bottom, turning back almost at once to head off two men in street clothes. Other men in street clothes entered from the right. Now a second ambulance moved into the frame, followed by more people on foot. Two of the figures appeared to be wearing polo shirts, but she didn’t recognize them. Then the tape ended.
“Shit!”
Something about the tape bothered her, but she wasn’t sure what. She was seeing something, yet not seeing it. The answer was in the tape. Starkey cursed the news station for not running the camera longer, then went back to CCS.
Starkey decided to ask Buck. She left CCS before the other detectives arrived and made her way to Glendale. She didn’t know whether or not Buck had duty that day, so she stopped at a diner to wait until seven when the Bomb Squad receptionist, Louise Mendoza, arrived. Mendoza, who would know the duty roster, usually arrived before the bomb techs.
At five minutes before seven, Starkey phoned.
“Louise, it’s Carol Starkey. Does Buck have duty today?”
“He’s back in the shed. You want me to put you through?”
“I just wanted to know if he was there. I’m on my way over to see him.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“One other thing, Louise. Ah, is Dick there?”
“Yeah, but if you want to talk to him you’d better let me put you through. He has to go down to Parker this morning.”
“That’s okay. It’ll keep.”
Starkey pulled into the Glendale PD parking lot ten minutes later. She found Buck and Russ Daigle in the shed, the brick building at the ass end of the parking lot where the squad practiced with the de-armer and the robots. They were standing over the Andrus robot, drinking coffee and frowning. Both men smiled when they saw her.
“Damn thing’s pulling to the right. You try to make the damn thing go straight ahead, but it veers off to the right. You got any idea what’s wrong?”
“It’s a Republican.”
Daigle, a staunch Republican, laughed loudly.
“Buck? Could I see you for a moment?”
Buck joined her at the door, the two of them stepping outside.
She told him that she had come about the enhanced tape, that they were ready for him to take a look. That was her excuse for the conversation.
“I’ll look if you want, but I didn’t see anything in those other tapes. Jesus, I don’t know if I can stomach it again, seeing Charlie like that.”
She wanted to turn the conversation to Leyton.
“There’s no rush. Maybe I should ask Dick if he saw anything. He might be able to pick out someone.”
“You might. He was back there behind the cordon.”
Starkey felt sick. She told herself to be professional. This is why she was here. This is why she was a cop.
“When did he get on scene?”
“I dunno, maybe twenty minutes before Charlie went out, something like that.”
“I’ll talk to him about it.”
Starkey walked back across the parking lot feeling as if her legs were enormous stilts, pushing her to a height that left her dizzy. She could barely get into her car, taking forever to fold the stilts the way a mantis folds its legs. Nothing fit anymore. She stared at the Bomb Squad. Leyton’s office was there. The box with Charlie Riggio’s things was still beneath Daigle’s desk. She thought of his cell phone there. If Riggio and Susan Leyton had been lovers, Starkey thought that he would probably have called her often. He would have snuck calls to her during the day when Dick was at work, and there would be the record of it in his phone bills. Starkey was surprised at how unin-volved she felt when that thought came to her. Maybe it was just another step along the case. It was as if nothing mattered very much except building the evidence that she could bring to Kelso, and prove Pell wrong.
She took out her own cell phone, and called Angela Wellow. This time she told her the truth.
Starkey sat with Angela Wellow in the quiet of her home, the two of them sitting on the edge of a tattered couch. Riggio’s photo album was on the couch between them; Todd was sleeping facedown on the floor. Angela glanced at the album again and again, as if there were some explanation beyond what Starkey was giving. She rubbed her palm on her thigh.
“I don’t know about this. I don’t know what to think when someone says something like this. You’re telling me that Charlie was murdered?”
“I’m investigating that possibility. That’s why I need Charlie’s phone bills, Angela. I need to see who he was calling.”
Angela stared at her. Starkey knew what was coming. When Starkey gave back the album and explained that she had gone to Charlie’s condo under false pretenses, Angela had listened to it all without saying a word. Now she was about to say it.
“Why did you have to lie to me yesterday? Why couldn’t you just say?”
Starkey tried to look her in the eyes, but couldn’t.
“I don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus.”
Angela walked over to her little boy, stared down at him like she wasn’t sure who he was.
“What do I tell my parents?”
Starkey ignored that. She didn’t want to talk about the details of what was happening. She didn’t want to get sidetracked. She wanted to keep moving forward until this thing was tied down, and she could bring it to Kelso.
“I need his phone bills, Angela. Can we please go look for his phone bills.”
Angela said, “Todd? Todd, wake up, honey. We have to go out.”
Angela lifted her sleeping boy onto her shoulder, then turned on Starkey with angry eyes.
“You can follow me over there. I don’t want you going in Charlie’s house again.”
Starkey waited outside Riggio’s building for almost an hour until Angela Wellow came out the glass doors with a handful of white envelopes.
“It took me forever to find them. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. I appreciate this, Angela.”
“No, you don’t. I don’t know what you’re doing or why, but you don’t know me well enough to appreciate what I’m doing.”
Angela left her with the envelopes, walking away without another word.
Starkey struck a cigarette, exhaling a cloud that settled in the car even with the windows open. She liked the taste of it, and the way smoking made her feel. She didn’t see what all the whining was about. So what if you got cancer.
She opened Charlie Riggio’s phone bills and there it was, so obvious that it jumped out at her. She didn’t know the Leytons’ home number, but she didn’t need to know it. Charlie had called the same number in the same 323 area code two and three times every day, sometimes as many as six or seven calls, going back for months.
Starkey put the bills aside, finished her cigarette, then took out her own phone. She checked the number again, then dialed.
A familiar woman’s voice.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Susan.”
Starkey felt tired.
“I’m sorry. Who?”
Starkey paused.
“Susan?”
“I’m sorry. You have the wrong number.”
Starkey looked at the number again, making sure she had dialed correctly. She had.
“This is Carol Starkey. I’m calling for Susan Leyton.”
“Oh, hi, Detective Starkey. You dialed the wrong number. This is Natalie Daggett.”