Young Writers Society

Russ is dead. Nyssa and Viggo are wounded. Can they outrun the authorities?

To know more, read Chapter 20.2.

Cordello called around three in the morning. Reims wasn’t asleep. The Carlsen case was depriving him of sleep. He had turned to hot chocolate for comfort – better than drinking himself into a stupor every night…The captain’s phone call was relief, really. It gave him a good excuse to get out of the house and stop brooding.

Her message was short and to the point, as usual, “We found Beck’s car. Down in Blooms. I’m sending the exact address to your cell.”

It came as a surprise because the GPS thing had been a bust. He had already written off the car as a lost cause.

“Should I call our friends from the FBI?” he asked.

Jenks and Mavrici were still hanging around the San Francisco office of the FBI.

“Don’t.”

She hung up.

Reims drove down South.

Blooms was a speck on the map of California. Nice place, he thought. A small town that stretched like a ribbon along the coast. A small, very mixed population, a trailer park and some very nice houses.

He had no trouble getting his bearings. There was pretty much only the one road and half a dozen patrol cars from the sheriff office were parked in a circle around Beck’s small European car.

A flow of lights bathed the scene. People came and went, some of them wearing uniforms and others plain-clothed. Cordello’s plump silhouette was clearly recognizable in the middle of that zoo. Her long black hair tied in her back, she wore gloves, boots and she looked pissed. It was unusual to see her out on the field. Even Reims tended to forget that she had been a cop before she became a paper-pusher.

She came up to his car. Her greeting was the strict minimum – a handshake and a grim nod.

“Another body?” he asked, seeing the coroner’s van parked further down the road.

“You could say that.”

“I don’t understand,” he admitted.

“Come and have a look.”

Russel Pierce looked almost like he had passed out – his position was that natural. His body sat in the driver’s seat. It was badly discomposed – it had probably been there for a couple of days – but anyone who had known Pierce would have recognized him. His head was thrown back. A badge and a gun were on the passenger’s seat next to him.

“Didn’t we take his badge and gun?” Reims asked, to distract himself from the relief he felt – it wasn’t right for a homicide detective to be relieved to learn that someone was dead.

That, plus it nauseated him to see that bastard Pierce with the symbols of police authority.

“The gun must be an unregistered back-up piece. The serial number’s been filed off.” Cordello used the tip of her pen to flip the ID upside down. “It’s not his. It’s Flores’s. Explains why the little shit ran off.”

Disgust curled her lips.

“Suicide?” Reims asked.

“Maybe,” she replied. “The window was open so it’s possible the bullet went right out and lost itself in the woods – who knows if we will ever find it? Not that it matters. Pierce’s got gun powder on his hands and there’s a spent casing under the passenger seat. Bag them as soon as the coroner’s done with the body and you can start collecting evidence.”

There was something in her tone. He couldn’t decide what it was exactly. As she spoke, she looked into the distance, over his shoulder. He looked around and he saw a blaze further down, closer to the waterfront.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Arson,” she answered distractedly. “Probably kids. Who knows? They lit up a beach house. Firefighters are down there but it doesn’t look like there’s much of anything to do beside waiting it out and making sure the fire doesn’t spread.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get, Reims?” she barked. “It’s pretty clear-cut.”

“Why did he drive down here to blow his brains out right in the middle of nowhere? Do we have any idea what he was doing here?”

Cordello’s lips went white with tension. “According to our friends in the sheriff office, he flashed his ID around, following up on a tip we received, that Malik and Carlsen had been seen in town. If you ask me, he was so bitterly disappointed when it didn’t pan out that he killed himself.”

It didn’t seem right. And she kept looking toward the burning house!

“And does anyone around here sound like them?”

She sighed. “Blooms is the kind of town that’s almost all vacation houses and rentals. Lots of people fit our fugitives’ description.”

He stared at her. There was something off – way off – about her.

He pointed toward the fire. “What about this house?” he asked weakly.

She flinched. “A rental.”

“Rented by?”

Her teeth clenched together, and it obviously cost her a great deal to reach into her pocket and hand him a folded-up paper. It was a very bad copy of two driving licenses.

“My God,” he mumbled. “That’s…”

She tore the paper out of his hands and she very deliberately ripped it in a hundred pieces. “Josh and Abby Ellis. Upstanding citizens. Both dermatologists. Live in Santa Cruz around the year.”

“Victims of identity theft!” he added. “Those two are…”

“Are not to be mentioned either to the sheriff office or to the Feds.”

“But, Captain…” he started protesting.

“Russel Pierce is dead,” she spelled out, meeting his eyes squarely. “He won’t make any more victims and he won’t further sully our department’s reputation. Unfortunately, with Pierce dead, there is no way to exonerate Carlsen.” No, no, no. “I know, I’ve got my doubts too, but the System doesn’t care about that. It won’t care that Malik wanted to do the right thing either.” No, no, no, no. “Whether he’s innocent or not, she aided and abetted. If we catch her, she’s off to jail. Is that something you want to see happen? The press would murder us.”

“But…”

“Pierce is dead. Why shouldn’t we let the matter rest?”

Reims hesitated, looking from Pierce’s dead body to the blaze. With everything that had come out about the dirty bastard, it had become increasingly clear that poor Carlsen and Malik had been victims. And now, the Justice System wanted to put them behind bars for the rest of their lives? It wasn’t right.

He hesitated. It looked like suicide, it smelled like arson. All he had to do was to stop asking questions. It wasn’t even his jurisdiction. It was all Captain Cordello asked of him. Stop asking questions.

“What about the sheriff office?” he asked. “Their investigation might…”

“Their investigation is going to agree fully with our hypothesis. The last homicide they had was a shoot-out between meth dealers six years ago. The sheriff is in over his head. They’re sending the body to our morgue – better than their coroner, who is also the local vet – and all evidence will be processed in our lab.”

Processed by their very competent crime scene techs, under the guidance of one Captain Gordon Levowsky.

“What about the arson case?”

“We’re helping with that too. I’ll deal with the local LEO, Reims – if you can deal with the FBI.”

He opened his mouth to reply. Cordello’s annoyingly shrill ring tone interrupted him.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, walking away even as she picked up the call.

Reims stared at his captain’s back, wishing he hadn’t asked any question. He tried to ignore the buzz of all those conversations around him, to think. Damn, it was hard to think. He had one choice to make: either he went along with Cordello or he didn’t. Neither possibility felt right. He knew what he should do as a cop. As a man…Damn, it was precisely the kind of mess he had spent his career avoiding.

Cordello came back after a minute or two, her expression one of dark satisfaction. “Big news, Reims. They’ve got a bead on Linred.”

The sound of that name startled him. He had totally forgotten about the other fugitive, which showed just how far off-track the search for Carlsen had gone. While Russel Pierce’s was the kind of evil he hated the most, Charlie Linred was the stuff nightmares were made of.

“In San Francisco?” he asked, because that would truly be a nightmare.

“No, Los Angeles. I’ve got a friend in the LAPD. He says they’ve had two murders that look a hell of a lot like his MO.”

“A copycat?” he offered.

“They don’t think so.” She didn’t expound. She didn’t really care. She just wanted some of the pressure off. “Rotwell’s already left. Can I count on you with the FBI?”

Shit. Time of truth, hm?

In the end, it came down to very little. Russel Pierce’s death wasn’t his jurisdiction. Arson wasn’t his jurisdiction. Apprehending wanted fugitives wasn’t his jurisdiction. On the other hand, he had a dozen open cases waiting on his desk back in San Francisco, half a dozen murderers who actually deserved to get arrested.

He sighed. “I’ll take care of the Feds.” A burden was lifted off his shoulders the second his mind was made. “Russel Pierce’s dead – who cares how that happened?”

Viggo and Nyssa are wounded. Will they survive?

To find out, read the epilogue!