He slouched in the front passenger seat. I had the rear to myself. The car was impeccable but it smelled of vanilla, as if someone had partied with cookie dough.
The man his employers knew as M. Carlo Scoppio had remained inside the law firm since arriving, save for a ten-minute smoke break out in the rear parking lot. No chance to take him as he puffed away; three other nicotine freaks indulged themselves close by.
Several times Scoppio had walked people on crutches to the firm’s front door. A couple of the limpers actually seemed to be disabled.
At three p.m., when the roach coach honked “ La Cucaracha,” Scoppio wasn’t part of the small crowd surging for snacks.
“Maybe he’s brown-bagging,” said Lindstrom. “Saving his hard-earned blood money for a rainy day.”
Seven cops from the fugitive apprehension squad were positioned at various spots in the neighborhood. The location wasn’t ideal for stakeout: Heavy traffic on Soto would make a quick dash across the street hazardous, and light pedestrian traffic killed the chance of sidewalk surveillance. The lot where Scoppio had smoked was blocked to the north by deeper buildings, one way in and out, a cracked driveway. To the east coiled a warren of residential side streets, to the west was the thoroughfare, freeway-close, the on-ramp in sight, raising the risk for a high-speed chase. Though at four thirty p.m., any lam artist would encounter bumper-to-bumper.
While Scoppio worked the wonderful world of personal injury, the house he’d shared with Lara Rieffen and Doreen Fredd got tossed by Moe Reed, Sean Binchy, and a Sheriff’s crime scene tech.
No remnant of Fredd’s residence, no blood beyond a few pinpoints under the bathroom mirror, probably shaving-nick spritz. No indication anything violent had ever taken place in the bungalow. The tech swabbed and pulled up prints and left.
Binchy and Reed found the gun box right where Rieffen had said it would be. Resting on top was a black plastic case housing the.22 S &W, serial numbers filed off but probably accessible chemically.
Binchy drove the gun to the ballistics lab. The final report would take time, but the analyst saw enough to opine that the bullets from Backer and Escobar came from the same weapon.
Reed’s meticulous room-by-room produced an arsenal under the bed: three rifles, a shotgun, boxes of ammunition. Maybe Rieffen had been telling the truth about bad dreams.
Both her prints and Monte’s showed up on the murder weapon. The longer-barreled gun inserted in Doreen Fredd’s vagina could be any of several in the collection but a Charter Arms Bulldog did show up, fitting Dr. Jernigan’s guess.
The top drawer of a desk in a spare bedroom held newspaper accounts of the lynx hair episode, along with Rieffen’s med school acceptance letter, well thumbed. Baggies of prescription tranquilizers and crystals of what looked like methamphetamine showed up in a bottom drawer.
A pantry cupboard was filled with heavy-duty muslin bags crammed with packets of bills.
Reed calculated the total three times. $46,850.
“Checked both credit cards for expenditures since they got back from Washington, Loo. They’ve been to dinner three times, he’s a bad tipper, total charges were $146.79. Nothing else substantial pops out on the cards, just a hundred or so in piddly charges. But I did find some matchbooks from three Indian casinos in his nightstand, so that could account for the rest.”
“You’re slipping, Moses.”
“Sir?”
“Those dinners, what’d they eat for dessert?”
“Hopefully humble pie, Loo.”
At four fifty-six p.m. two middle-aged Hispanic women in casual clothes rode away from the law firm in a battered Nissan, followed by a younger blonde, identified as Kelly Baird Englund, daughter of the senior partner and a lawyer herself, in a powder-blue Jaguar convertible. Seconds later, Daddy Bryan Baird, corpulent in a bad blue suit, waddled to his black Mercedes. Ed Habib, in no better haberdashery, steered his black Lexus LX haphazardly while talking on the phone, followed by Owen Garroway, patrician in pinstripes, handling his black Porsche Cayman with aplomb.
“Black’s the new black,” said Gayle Lindstrom.
No sign of Carlo Scoppio and that hadn’t changed by five fifteen.
Lindstrom fidgeted. “Maybe he tried to contact Rieffen, couldn’t reach her, somehow found out she was in lockup.”
Milo said, “She was brought straight to High-Power. Wimmers handled it himself.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Keep doing that, Gayle.”
“What?”
“Being a little bundle of human Prozac-okay, here we go.”
Scoppio hadn’t appeared but a gaunt, furtive, sandy-haired man wearing a backpack walked around to the back, checked out Scoppio’s pickup truck, jogged to the door. Binocs revealed a face ravaged by pustulant eruptions. Constant, jerky movement was the dance of the hour.
“Your friendly neighborhood meth man,” said Lindstrom. “Speedy delivery.”
The door cracked. The dealer was inside for ninety seconds, hurried off.
Milo picked up the radio. “For those who can’t see, our subject just bought dope, probably meth, could be tweaking right now. So factor that into the danger level.”
Multiple assents from the field.
Four minutes later, Carlo Scoppio walked out.
He’d changed from business casual to jeans, running shoes, a baggy gray hooded sweatshirt that lent his medium-sized frame the illusion of bulk. A small white rip on the left sleeve matched the hyper-enlarged security photo from the storage bin.
In his hands, a gym bag.
Unremarkable man with sloping shoulders, a soft, square face, dark curly hair. Roller-coaster eyes.
He shook himself off like a wet dog. Ran in place. Bobbed his head. Headed for his truck.
Lindstrom said, “To me that’s definite tweaking. Hopefully there’s nothing nasty in that bag.”
“Maybe he’s gonna exercise,” said Milo.
“Mr. Literal.”
“I’m getting too old for symbolism.”
Scoppio’s truck rolled out of the lot.
Lindstrom said, “Ready?”
“Hold on, Gayle.”
“You’re calling it.” Her hands bounced on the wheel. “Though I should point out that if he does get too far ahead-”
“Yes, dear, whatever you say, dear, I’ll wash the dishes, dear.”
“You and me in domestic bliss,” said Lindstrom. “I’m sure my partner would find it as humorous as yours would.”
Milo laughed. “Now we go.”
Carlo Scoppio passed the freeway on-ramp, continued south to Washington, headed west. Just past Vermont, he pulled into a shabby strip mall. Plenty of vacant spaces, but a donut shop and a coin laundry were doing okay. So was Dynamite Action Gym, the name co-written in Thai lettering, the wide-open door showcasing bright light.