Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(32)

“Detective Sakai, did you try to talk him out of this?” I asked. “This is a mistake and you’re going to go down with him when the shit hits the fan.”

“It would be best if you kept quiet,” Sakai said.

“I’m not going to keep quiet,” I threw back at him. “The whole world is going to hear about this. This is bullshit.”

One by one Mattson pulled my hands off the wall and cuffed my wrists behind my back. He led me to their car, which was parked against the curb.

As I was about to be placed in the back seat I saw a neighbor from the building come up the sidewalk with her dog on a leash and stare silently at my humiliation while her dog yipped at me. I looked away, then Mattson put his hand on the top of my head and pushed me down into the back seat.





HAMMOND





13

Hammond was in the lab at his station, spreading nitrocellulose over a gel tray he had just retrieved from the cooker. He felt his watch vibrate against the inside of his wrist. He knew it was one of his flags. He had gotten an alert.

But the process could not be interrupted. He continued his work, next blotting the gel tray with paper towels, making sure to keep uniform pressure on the gel across the entire tray. When he was finished blotting he knew he could take a break from the work. He checked his watch and read the text.


Hey Hammer, wanna grab some beers?



This was a cover text emanating from a cellular relay coded as Max. Of course, Max didn’t exist but anybody who happened to see the message pop up on his watch, even worn on the inside of his wrist, would not be suspicious, though the message came in at 3:14 a.m. and all the bars were closed.

Hammond went to his lab table and pulled his laptop from his backpack. He checked the other stations in the lab and saw that nobody was watching him. Only three other technicians were working graveyard anyway, and there were empty stations separating all of them. It was a budgetary thing. The wait time on rape kits and some cold-case homicides was still months where it should be weeks if not days, but the city’s budget masters had cut back on the lab’s third shift. Hammond expected that soon he would be working days again.

He opened the laptop and used his thumb to authenticate. He went to the surveillance software and pulled up the alert. He saw that one of the detectives he was monitoring had just made an arrest and put someone in jail. His filing the arrest report had triggered the alert. Hammond’s partner, Roger Vogel, had hacked the internal LAPD network and set the whole alert system up. He had master skills.

Hammond checked the other techs and then looked back at his screen. He called up the report filed by Detective David Mattson. He had arrested a man named Jack McEvoy and booked him at the jail at LAPD’s Van Nuys Division. Hammond read the details of the arrest, then reached into the backpack for the phone he carried in an inside zippered pocket. The phone for emergency contact.

He turned the phone on and waited for it to boot up. Meantime, he closed out the arrest report and went to the public-access page for the city’s jail system. He put in the name Jack McEvoy and was soon looking at a mug shot of the man. He looked angry and defiant as he stared at the camera. There was a scar on his upper left cheek. It looked like it could have been easily erased by plastic surgery. But McEvoy kept it. Hammond thought it might be some sort of badge of honor with the reporter.

The phone was ready. Hammond called the single number stored in its memory. Vogel answered with sleep in his voice.

“This better be good.”

“I think we have a problem.”

“What?”

“Mattson arrested somebody tonight.”

“That’s not a problem. That’s good.”

“No, not for the murder. It was a journalist. He was arrested for obstructing the investigation.”

“You woke me for that?”

“It means he may be onto this.”

“How could that be? The police aren’t even—”

“Call it a hunch—whatever.”

Hammond looked at the mug shot again. Angry and determined. McEvoy knew something.

“I think we have to watch him,” he said.

“All right, whatever,” Vogel said. “Text the details and I’ll see what’s out there. When did this happen?”

“They booked him last night. I got flagged on the software you set up.”

“Glad it worked. You know, this could be a good thing for us.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. A couple of ways. Let me go to work on it. You want to meet in the morning? In daylight?”

“Can’t.”

“You fucking vampire. Sleep later.”

“No, I have court first thing. Testifying today.”

“What case? Maybe I’ll come watch.”

“A cold case. Guy killed a girl thirty years ago. He kept the knife, thought washing it off would be okay.”

“Dumbass. Where?”

“Up in the hills. Threw her off an overlook on Mulholland.”

“I mean where’s the courtroom?”

“Oh.”

Hammond realized he didn’t know himself.

“Hold on.”

He dug into the backpack and pulled out the notice to appear.

“Downtown criminal courts. Department 108, Judge Riley. I have to be there at nine to go on first.”