Never Fear (26 page)

He walked to his squad and quickly drove away without looking back. Harrison and I stood in silence for a moment, Larson's words settling uncomfortably over us.

“What does a twenty-year-old investigation that cleared Hazzard have to do with the death of Victoria Fisher, your father, or three deaths years later?”

I shook my head. “Maybe everything.”

We walked back through the restaurant onto the sidewalk out front. Passing slowly by was an LAPD black-and-white. The driver, wearing dark wraparound sunglasses, looked in our direction for a moment, then stared straight ahead as he drove past.

“What did that look like to you?” Harrison said.

The squad car paused for a second as it turned the corner, then disappeared.

“An exclamation point.”

Regardless of what we thought we knew when we walked through the doors of the restaurant, we walked out with an entirely different set of questions.

Across the street a man walked out of a poultry store carrying two headless chickens still weakly flapping their wings.

“You suppose the chickens know something we don't?” Harrison said.

“What was Gavin's and my brother's next stop?” I asked.

“The County Courts building.”

34

It was a short drive up over Broadway to 210 W. Temple, the Los Angeles County Courts Building. We stopped in a space reserved for police vehicles and watched as a steady stream of jurors filed back into the building after lunch. In a justice system responsible for a population greater than forty-two of the fifty states in the nation, the building gave the appearance that it was bursting at the seams.

“Why a court building?” Harrison said.

It hadn't occurred to me until that moment, then it seemed all too obvious.

“It's not just a court building,” I said, and stepped out of the car. “It's also the district attorney's headquarters.”

“Where Victoria Fisher worked,” Harrison said.

“If Gavin and my brother went through those doors, security will have a record of where they went.”

Inside, hundreds of jurors were waiting their turns to step through the metal detectors. No one got beyond the lobby without a pass, juror badge, or official ID. We showed our IDs to a deputy and were directed to a bank of elevators reserved for non-courtroom floors.

Being a county facility, security was provided by sheriff's deputies, not LAPD, but there was no shortage of uniformed officers and detectives present on their way to or from court or the DA's office, all of whom seemed to glance in my direction as if there were a large target taped to my back. We stepped off the elevator on the eighteenth floor and stopped at reception.

We showed our IDs once again and gave the receptionist my brother's and Gavin's names and the date of their visit. She entered the information in the computer and quickly got a result.

“They signed into room eighteen-twelve-seven.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Bureau of Central Operations Administration.”

“Do people within the department need to sign in here?”

“Only visitors.”

“Is the name Hazzard listed either that day or the day after?” I asked.

The receptionist scanned the columns of names and shook her head. “Nothing here.”

Walking down the hallway to the office was like falling down a rabbit hole into the worst nightmares we have to offer. In this room, crimes against children; in that one, gang violence; in the last room on the right, sex crimes.

We stepped inside and were clearly eyed as police officers by everyone within our field of view. We gave the receptionist the information and she checked the logs on her computer.

“They weren't here to see anyone; it was a freedom of information request for documents,” she said.

“About an OID investigation?”

She shook her head. “Documents related to specific investigations remain in that department's records.”

“Can you tell me what the file was they requested?”

She nodded and hit a few keys. “It was a personnel record, a Victoria Fisher.”

“I'd like to see the documents they requested.”

She passed along the request and a few minutes later a black woman in her late fifties named Robinson stepped into the reception area.

“I'm sorry, the file you requested is no longer available.”

“I'm sorry?” I said, thinking I had misunderstood.

“That file is no longer available.”

“What do you mean by ‘available'?”

“Files this old are still only on paper. When we say they aren't available, between you and me, it means we can't locate them: They could have been moved years ago to records, they could have been misfiled, God only knows.”

“Six days ago this same file was requested. Was it available then?”

“I could check the copy logs to see if any duplicates were made.”

She stepped away to another desk and returned a moment later with a puzzled look on her face.

“Apparently it was—one copy was made. Gavin was the name on the request. The file must have been moved within the last few days,” she said.

“Where did it go?” I asked.

She smiled the way an aged grandmother would who has been asked the same question over and over again year after year.

“That would depend on why it was moved,” she said.

“And you don't have that information.”

She smiled brightly. “Honey, when I don't know something, I just assume it's been done for a reason and move on.”

“Good advice.”

Robinson walked away and I stepped back to the receptionist. “How far back can you track requests for information?”

“We switched to this operating system about four years ago. Anything before that would be on disk; five years before that it's all paper.”

“Would you check to see if anyone else has requested this file at any time?”

She nodded and hit a few keys and began scanning information. Several pages in she stopped.

“About a year and a half ago, another civilian request.”

“What was the name?”

“Fisher,” she said.

I looked at Harrison. “Danny.”

I thanked the receptionist and we stepped back into the hallway, trying to fit the new pieces of the puzzle into what we knew so far.

“A boy trying to uncover the mystery behind his mother's murder requests his mother's personnel file. Then a year and a half later the son and lawyer of the suspected serial killer request the same file.”

A detective stepped out of a doorway down the hall and leaned against the wall, looking in our direction.

“Why just one copy?” Harrison said. “A single piece of paper?”

We looked at each other for a moment.

“The fax.”

I glanced down the hall and the detective was gone. “This is what it's like in my head,” I whispered, then looked at Harrison. “You remember the definition of madness about repeated action?”

“Someone who repeats the same thing over and over expecting a different result.”

I nodded and looked back down the hallway. “It could also be a definition of hope.”

I picked up my phone and punched in the number for Cross's office. It rang twice and was picked up by an operator.

“Investigations, Palmdale. How may I direct your call?”

“Investigator Cross,” I said.

“I'm sorry, Investigator Cross is out of the office this week.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Would you like to talk to another investigator, or leave your name and number?”

I quickly hung up. “Cross is out of the office all week.”

“Which is strange, since you just saw him two days ago,” Harrison said.

From around the corner I heard the sound of footsteps echoing on the marble floor and then silence.

“If paranoia was a crop you grow,” I said, “I believe we just stepped into a field of it.”

As we passed the reception desk and walked to the bank of elevators, I noticed the receptionist picking up the phone. Two floors before the lobby, the elevator stopped and two plainclothes detectives stepped in and quickly turned their backs, without making eye contact, blocking our exit.

As we reached the lobby one of the detectives reached inside his jacket, pulling it back just enough to reveal the weapon on his belt. The doors opened and the detectives paused just long enough for a sense of threat to rise in my throat, and then they walked away.

Outside the courthouse the wind was blowing out of the desert again. Pieces of paper and plastic bags blew along the curb like they were caught in the current of a river.

As we approached the Volvo I realized where I had seen one of the detectives on the elevator with us.

“The lead officer at Lopez's shooting—I think he was just on the elevator with us.”

“Pearce,” Harrison said.

“Funny him being in that elevator at the same time as us.”

Harrison's attention was on something across Temple.

“It gets funnier,” Harrison said.

I looked across the street. The sidewalk was filled with people who had left the courthouse and were heading to their cars.

“What is it?” I said.

Harrison shook his head. “I think I just saw Cross.”

35

Danny had been moved from the hospital in Pasadena to County USC and its lockdown psych ward. Pulling up outside County, it was easy to understand how the PI Andi James had lost my brother the night she was following him.

What Barnum & Bailey is to circuses, County USC is to medicine. It was built back when it was assumed one facility could handle all of Los Angeles's medical needs. Its large white edifice looms over the surrounding neighborhood to the east of downtown. The large open wards feel as if they were lifted from a page in a Dickens novel. On any given day it handles more patients than almost any hospital in the country. One out of every twenty-seven babies born in the United States arrives here. The treatment of high-velocity impact wounds is a specialty in the emergency ward.

Inside, the people waiting for treatment reminded me of the crowd in a large open-air market in East L.A. There were a dozen different languages being spoken. Old men in cowboy hats in wheelchairs, young pregnant mothers in labor, fever-stricken children all waited their turn for treatment behind the gunshot and car-accident and heart-attack victims.

The psych ward, in contrast to the chaos around it, was quiet. Or at least the kind of quiet produced by tranquilizers. We checked our weapons with the deputy at reception, then were led into the general ward, which was nothing more than a very large room with beds pushed up against the wall. A few patients stared at a television in the corner with no sound. Others sat or lay motionless on their beds. A few walked back and forth, trying to pass the hours of boredom.

An orderly passed us into the lockdown area and directed us to the desk in the center of the ward. A nurse was walking past each locked room, glancing through the windows in the doors at the patients inside. The resident on call met us at reception and introduced himself. As we walked to Danny's room, he started to fill us in on his condition.

“He's had moments of lucidity, but they don't last more than a few minutes at a time, and then he retreats into extreme paranoia, bordering on the fantastic.”

“He's got reason,” I said.

We stopped at the door.

“At two this morning he was convinced there were eyes in the walls watching him. He had to be restrained. We're trying some new protocols that will hopefully balance things out for him.”

“Has he talked about an angel or dark angel?”

The doctor shook his head. “He hasn't talked to us at all. I don't believe he looks at us as being the good guys.”

“If he sees you as the enemy, we'd like to see him alone.”

The doctor nodded his approval. “You can try, but I'd be surprised if he talks to you.”

The doctor unlocked the door and Harrison and I stepped in. The room was not much bigger than a cell. The walls were painted a dull yellow. Anything that could possibly be harmful to patients or others had been removed.

Danny was wearing white hospital scrubs, standing at a small sealed window that looked out toward the west and the towers of downtown. When the doctor closed the door, Danny turned around and looked at us.

“Do you remember me, Danny?” I asked.

He looked at me blankly, giving away nothing. “I'm crazy, not stupid. I remember you.”

He looked at Harrison. “I don't know him, though.”

“He's my partner, Harrison.”

“How do I know that?”

“Would you like to see my ID?” Harrison said.

“Anyone can get an ID.”

“I can wait outside if you prefer.”

Danny smiled, shook his head. “You pass.”

“Do you mind if we sit down?” I asked.

As we stepped over and sat on the bed, I noticed Danny took exactly half a step away from us for each one we moved closer.

“I want to talk about your map and some other things.”

“You talked to my grandmother, didn't you?”

“I couldn't talk to you, you weren't home.”

“My grandmother's old. I think she has Alzheimer's. ”

“A year and a half ago you went to the district attorney's office and asked to see your mother's personnel file.”

He shook his head.