“My dad’s got Alzheimer’s.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“It’s just a fact.”
Ariel sipped her beer, then reached out the bottle and tapped it against the finish light stanchion.
“It’s a family thing. Generation after generation, speeding down the track. But I’ll let you in on a little secret-I don’t care if I win or not. I don’t do it for history. I do it because it thrills me.”
“To thrills,” said Hood. They touched bottles.
Some time passed and Hood sensed that Ariel was brooding in her silence.
“You think thrills are a sign of immaturity,” she said. “Because you were a soldier. Because you enforce the law on the street. Because your partner got shot to death right in front of you.”
“Nothing about you is immature, Ms. Reed.”
“I said you think thrills are overrated.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
“Then tell me.”
“I like it that you put bad guys in jail. I like it that you drag race. I like your smile.”
She pulled the band off her ponytail and shook out her hair. “I’m wound tight as a golf ball, Charlie.”
“I know.”
“Doesn’t that make you want to walk away?”
“It makes me wonder what makes you tick.”
“You found out what made Allison Murrieta tick. An armed robber.”
“Thrills,” Hood said. “Gain. Fame. Vengeance. History. It was complicated.”
“There must be something in the thrill seeker that attracts you.”
“She loved fast cars, like you do.”
“It’s not really my business, but you and her were about all the DA’s office talked about for most of that week.”
They walked into the grandstands and up the rows of empty seats. When they got to the top it started to rain and Hood could hear the patter on the sunscreen over their heads. The drops came faster and heavier and the racetrack looked like it was coming to a boil. They sat and looked out at the track and watched the rain slant down through the lights.
“Bakersfield. You like the music, Deputy?”
“I wish they’d make more of it. I got just about all of it they ever recorded. They put out a Bill Woods Live at the Blackboard in ’03. Red Simpson, Don Rich. Great CD.”
“I wish I could play an instrument. I’ve got no discernable talent for anything. Except maybe for splitting atoms, as you pointed out.”
“It was kind of a compliment. I took it as one.”
“Wish I had another beer,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“Long walk back to the cooler in this rain.”
“Let’s watch it for a minute.”
“While you tell me about Shay Eichrodt.”
He told her what he’d seen and heard. Ariel listened without interrupting, her expression dark.
“You really think Laws and Draper cuffed him and beat him?” she asked.
“Possibly.”
“I very highly doubt it.”
“I can go one uglier.”
“They killed Vasquez and Lopes and took their money, which explains Terry Laws’s sudden fortune.”
“That and a whole lot more,” he said.
Hood looked out at the rain.
“All you have is the very questionable word of a brain-damaged felon who can face a death sentence if he’s convicted,” said Ariel.
“In some simple-ass way, that’s why I think he’s telling the truth.”
“If a jury doesn’t, the state can execute him.”
“Yes, it can,” said Hood. “But what’s he supposed to do? Shut up and stay in a mental hospital the rest of his life?”
The rain roared against the shade roof above them. Hood watched the water pour off the racetrack lights, little waterfalls bent south by the wind of the storm.
“What’s all that mean to a Blood gangsta machine-gunning Terry Laws one night?” asked Ariel.
“I don’t know what it means.”
“What have the homicide guys come up with?”
“Londell Dwayne. He looks right. He’d threatened Terry. We talked to him but his alibi fell apart pretty quick. Next thing, Londell maced two detectives and blew into the wind.”
They sat for a long while without saying a word. The rain got heavier, then it slowed. Hood held her hand as they went down the wet steps and across the track to the pit.
They got into her El Camino and she gave Hood a ride to the parking lot.
“Nice Camaro,” she said. “Glasspacks and fat soft tires. Maybe you’re not immune to thrills after all.”
“I’m really not.”
She pushed the car into park and took Hood’s face in both her hands and kissed him and he kissed her back.
“Nice,” she said. “Very nice. Thank you. That’s a dumb thing to say.”
“Thank you. There.”
Hood got out of the El Camino and shut the door. Ariel gunned the engine and looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. Suddenly the El Camino burned away and slid into a big screaming one-eighty on the wet asphalt, back tires throwing up rooster tails of water, which brought her right back to where she’d started. Her window came down.
“Call me later.”
19
In the Hole’s early chill Hood unlocked the center drawer of his desk. The CD was there-a recording of the anonymous tipper. And so was Coleman Draper’s package from HR, both promised by Warren.
He listened to the recording. It was just as Ariel had described it-hissing with wind noise, barely audible, a drunk-sounding man with an accent. Hood knew that spectrographic voice prints were not allowed as evidence in California state courts but he was still hoping that the recording would be clear enough to tell him something about the caller. Now he doubted it.
This was disappointing, but what Hood really wanted was a basic understanding of Coleman Draper.
First he scanned through Draper’s package, which was surprisingly light, even for a reservist. Hood went straight to the money, looking for signs of Draper’s cut of the courier cash, which had sent Terry Laws into the charitable trust scam. Draper’s bank was First West, and at the time of his “hire” four years ago by LASD, he had a savings account with $5,890 in it, and a money market savings account of $15,433, a stock portfolio valued at $12,740, and a SEP IRA with $8,500 in it. He was making reasonable payments on a home in Venice Beach, with a purchase price of $939,000. He owned a late-model Audi valued at $40,000. His last year’s income from Prestige German was $82,000.
Hood’s computer led him to newspaper accounts and government sites and the usual personal sites and pages. His law enforcement status got him into state and county information that a normal civilian cannot access.
He read patiently.
Coleman Marcus Draper was born on December 12, 1980, to Gerald and Mary Draper, formerly Coleman. That made him about three months younger than Hood was.
Gerald and Mary briefly made the news in 1990 when a local man named Mike Castro was gunned down outside their restaurant in Jacumba. They said he was a regular customer and a nice guy. The restaurant was called Amigos. According to unnamed sources, Castro was a suspected smuggler of drugs and human beings.
Coleman attended San Diego County public schools and graduated from Campo High School in 1998. He was the oldest of three children-his sister, Roxanne, was twelve and his brother, Ron, was ten when an explosion rocked the Draper home in Jacumba.
Hood read from the digitized San Diego Union-Tribune of February 5, 1995:
FOUR PERISH IN JACUMBA BLAZE
Four members of a Jacumba family were killed early yesterday morning when their home exploded into fire. A minor and a neighbor who was spending the night survived the blast but authorities are withholding both names pending further notifications. One firefighter suffered smoke inhalation but was treated at the scene. A San Diego County Fire Department spokesman said the apparent cause of the fire was a propane gas leak but the fire is still under investigation. The fire broke out in the early morning hours when the family was sleeping. It is believed that the victims died of asphyxiation while they slept. Liquid propane turns to an odorless gas at normal pressure and is usually mixed with a strong odor-causing compound in case of leaks. Flames rapidly engulfed the wood-sided home. A county fire crew extinguished the fire after a one-hour battle. No neighboring structures were damaged. Jacumba is a small town of less than 1,000 on the U.S. Mexican border in East County. George Bryan, a neighbor, said the family were lifelong residents of the quiet border town and were well liked. He said that his dogs woke him up barking in the early morning but the house had not yet begun to burn. He said “it sounded like a bomb went off” shortly before four a.m. when the house exploded.