.
‘You said Goodman needed me back here. You said it was urgent.’
‘That’s what Detective Goodman told me, sir.’ Latisha knew better than to risk the same levels of sass with Johnson that she had with his partner. You did not want to get on the wrong side of Mick Johnson. Everyone in the department knew that. And if you weren’t Irish, Catholic, White and Male, you already had four strikes against you.
‘So where is he?’ Johnson asked through gritted teeth.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘You don’t know,’ Johnson repeated, in a whisper that could only be described as menacing. Sinking down into his chair in the room he shared with Goodman, he closed his eyes and literally willed himself not to lose his temper. Not because the lazy, stupid desk officer didn’t deserve it. But because he didn’t have the time or the energy to waste on her. Things were getting serious now. Deadly serious. He needed to know where Goodman was.
It didn’t help that the two of them had been lying to each other for a long time. Johnson hadn’t spent this afternoon trailing around muffler dealers, any more than Goodman had spent it checking up on BAFTE license applications. He’d been at Carter Berkeley’s Investment Bank, Berkeley Hammond Rudd, strong-arming the accounts department into handing over the files he needed. Files that made very interesting reading and that he’d only gotten halfway through copying when he received Goodman’s summons.
Johnson knew why he’d been lying. He’d stopped trusting his partner in this cursed case a long time ago. But he hadn’t been sure of Goodman’s motives for concealing so much from him. Not till today.
Today, sitting in Carter Berkeley’s offices, it had suddenly come to him. A reason for Goodman to lie, to operate in the same murky world of half-truths that had blinded both of them.
‘Detective Goodman did receive a phone call, sir,’ Latisha said nervously. ‘Shortly after I spoke with you. I can’t say who that call was from, but he took off after that, sir. Like a bat out of hell, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
Johnson’s mind raced, his stomach sour with fear.
Waving Latisha away, he closed the door to the glass box of an office, and sat down not at his own desk, but at Goodman’s.
The net was tightening, but he mustn’t panic.
Think.
Unlike Johnson’s own desk, Goodman’s was clean and organized, as neat as a pin. The envelope addressed to Dr Roberts was still lying there, as was Goodman’s cell phone, a sure sign that he must have left not just in a hurry but in a flat-spin panic. Johnson looked at the envelope first, carefully reading both Williams’ invoice and the writing on the back, and Nikki’s note to Goodman. His chest tightened when he saw his own name. ‘Johnson’s in this up to his neck.’ Stupid woman! She was about to find out what being in something up to your neck really meant.
Slipping the envelope into his pocket, Johnson picked up Goodman’s cell phone. Typing in the access code he’d memorized long ago, he began scrolling through his partner’s messages and calls, as well as his search history.
It didn’t take him long to find what he needed.
Forwarding the information to his own phone, he quickly deleted the record from Goodman’s sent items. The feeling of fear in his chest intensified as he looked at his watch. Six twenty already! How had that happened? What if he was too late?
Reloading his gun, he ran out of the door.
It was time to finish this thing once and for all.
Nikki closed her eyes and braced herself for the bullet that would end her life. At least, in her case, it looked as if the end would be swift, and not the protracted agony inflicted on poor Willie Baden. Strangely, now that it had come to this, she felt very little fear. More resignation, and a sort of dull ache of disappointment that she was going to die before she understood anything at all.
But the shot didn’t come. Opening her eyes, she was surprised to find Luis Rodriguez staring at her, his expression a combination of cruelty and amusement.
‘Why the rush, Dr Roberts? Don’t you want to talk before you meet your maker?’
‘You murdered Willie Baden.’ Nikki looked at him coolly. He was going to kill her at some point. But as long as she was alive she wanted answers.
‘Indeed.’ Rodriguez gave a little bow, as if accepting a compliment.
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’ he laughed. Then, seeing Nikki’s appalled face, added, ‘Oh, come along now, Dr Roberts. Don’t tell me you disapprove? He was a cheating pig, you must have despised the man.’
‘Why?’ Nikki asked again.
‘He got greedy,’ Rodriguez said simply. ‘He’d been taking more than his agreed cut on a little business deal we had together. For a long time, as it turned out. In Mexico he was careful, but here in LA he believed he was untouchable.’ He turned to look appraisingly at Baden’s mutilated, naked body. ‘I disabused him of that notion. No one’s untouchable. Make an enemy of me and I will find you.’
His eyes blazed murderously into Nikki’s and she half expected him to shoot her on the spot. Instead he waited for the wave of anger to subside and said quietly, ‘Next question.’