“How’s he doing?”
“Slightly improved.”
Hood wondered if Laws’s arrest injuries might have been worse than they appeared. He was glad to have the name of Terry’s doctor, courtesy of Laurel.
Hood looked up at the photographs of the race cars on Ariel Reed’s wall.
“Three generations,” she said. “Grandma Ruthann on top in black-and-white. That was 1955. My mother, Belinda, in the middle in 1980. Me on the bottom last year. I ran a 6.95 at 202 miles an hour and got ninth overall. That was the NHRA sportsman class Top Alcohol Dragster. I don’t have the reactions to become a pro, and I won’t dedicate the time it would take. I do it for fun. And I like the idea that you enjoy what your ancestors enjoyed.”
“It must be really something to go that fast and not leave the ground,” said Hood.
“There’s nothing like it.”
“Do you get dizzy, or disoriented?”
“Disoriented at times, not dizzy.”
“What does it feel like when you see the light go green and push the pedal down?”
“You go before the light goes green. By a fraction of a second. You anticipate.”
“Well, okay, then how does it feel?”
“There really is nothing like it. So I can’t say, it’s like this or like that.”
“But I asked you how it feels.”
“First you asked what it feels like. Then you asked how it feels.”
“Way to split that atom.”
“I’m possibly too good at splitting atoms.”
“I still want to know how it feels to blast off the starting line.”
“It’s by far the most exhilarating feeling on Earth. You’re humbled by the power, and it makes you godlike at the same time. You are helpless but in control of your fate. I highly recommend it.”
Reed smiled. It was the thrifty smile that Hood had seen before, not an expansive one. It made her nose wrinkle. There was something like play in it, and a touch of malice, too. It was the same one she had given Hood when she talked of throwing the crooked captain in prison for ten years.
Hood smiled back. “Terry had an interesting financial situation.”
“Money problems?”
“The opposite of money problems.”
She gave him the hazel stare.
Hood told her about Build a Dream and the cash donations allegedly raised by LASD deputies and deposited by Terry every Monday for two years, the down payment he took for himself, the admiring credit union employee who believed Terry Laws’s lie because she wanted to.
“What lie?”
“I’ve never heard of Build a Dream. None of the people I work with have, either. I rode with Terry half a dozen times but he never once mentioned Build a Dream. It’s not in the search engines. It’s not in any listing of charities that I could find. It only exists on paper and it’s taking in thirty grand a month in cash.”
Ariel was looking out the window now, her elbows on the desk and her chin resting on her hands.
“Was he a trust funder?”
“No. No inheritance, no lottery score, no smart investments that went big. I’m not finding any of that.”
“Did he make any big arrests? I mean big assets recovered?”
“If he did, I haven’t found them yet.”
“Well, there’s the obvious: drugs, gambling, loan-sharking and prostitution. They’re still the cash crops of our society. There’s robbery for the desperate and vending machines for the organized. A deputy rubs up against all of that.”
“He never worked narcotics or vice. He was a patrolman. He was in that car forty-eight hours a week, doing overtime, earning his sixty-five a year. If you patrol five or six shifts a week when do you have time to earn seven grand on the side?”
“On your day off,” she said.
“That’s an interesting idea.”
“I was half joking.”
“The other half interests me.” Hood made a note to look more closely at Terry’s time cards.
“Private security?” she asked.
“Even a posh security gig two days a week wouldn’t net him seven thousand bucks.”
Hood made more notes. He kept coming back to the idea that Terry couldn’t be earning seven grand a week on the side while driving forty-eight hours on patrol. But he was.
“Tell me about Eichrodt’s preliminary hearing,” he said.
“We laid out the evidence we’d bring to trial. Truly overwhelming. Both victims’ blood was on a jacket in Eichrodt’s truck. We found a Taurus nine in the big locking toolbox in the bed of the truck. It fired the four bullets that killed Vasquez and Lopes. Eichrodt had collected the brass and tossed it in with the weapon. His fingerprints were all over them. He had forty-eight hundred in cash hidden down in the bottom of the toolbox. And we had the anonymous witness who put the shooter in the red truck.
“Eichrodt’s PD claimed that Eichrodt was unable to assist in his own defense and Suarez said okay, we’ll see, put him on. So, for about two hours, Eichrodt sat in a wheelchair at the defense table and tried to answer questions. He knew his name. He was able to name his father and mother. He wasn’t sure what country he was in, but he did say ‘California’ when asked what state he lived in. His long-term memory was spotty, but his short-term was practically nonexistent. He wasn’t sure what kind of facility he was in, couldn’t remember anything about his arrest, couldn’t explain his presence in the courtroom. Couldn’t remember a van, two dead men or four-plus grand. The PD was furious. He said someone should sue the living daylights out of the County of L.A. for what they had done to this man. Suarez took testimony from three doctors-a neurologist, a GP and a psychiatrist. Suarez thought about it for three days, then ten-seventied Eichrodt to Atascadero pending recovery enough to stand trial.”
“Why didn’t someone sue the county?” Hood asked.
Ariel nodded. “The ACLU considered, but the homicide evidence stopped them. If our case would have been wobbly, they might have filed, but even the ACLU doesn’t want to spend its resources on a double murderer. And, like I said, Eichrodt had few friends and family. There was literally nobody interested in going through a long and expensive lawsuit on his behalf.”
“What’s his medical prognosis?”
“The swelling damaged his brain. The craniectomy did little apparent good. The chances of meaningful recovery are slim, according to the doctors at Atascadero.”
Hood thought that if there was a definition of aloneness it was Shay Eichrodt. Even Shay Eichrodt had been taken away from Shay Eichrodt. The louder truth was that he’d brought this down on himself, thought Hood. We make our own luck. Character is fate. All that.
As a deputy Hood saw things from Laws’s and Draper’s side. A violent arrest is a cop’s nightmare. But there was one thing Hood saw that he would have done differently: he would have waited for backup. Laws should have, too. Draper was not even a true deputy, but a successful businessman acting as a reservist for one dollar a year and a chance to experience the thrill of law enforcement. Their opponent was large, strong, probably high on meth, and had very likely just committed a crime that would get him an LWOP or a death sentence. They should have known better.
“Why didn’t Laws wait for backup?”
“He never called for backup. He said he wanted the homicide collar for himself and his partner. The suspect was being cooperative by pulling over and turning off his engine. Then everything happened too fast. Laws admitted it was pure pride and pure foolishness to go after Eichrodt without backup.”
“He was right.”
“His pride. His physique. Foolish, but I can see it.”
Hood saw it, too: Mr. Wonderful.
“What can you tell me about the men that Eichrodt murdered?”
“Bad guys with Eme ties, probably working for the North Baja Cartel. That’s Carlos Herredia and company. Both men were U.S. citizens. East side vatos. Johnny Vasquez and Angel Lopes.”