The Pain Scale (38 page)

“You said you had it from two other angles as well?”

“Yes,” Ben said. He showed me those, too. The second recording was from the upstairs camera he’d shown me the night before, and it gave us a better view of Patrick, but we were only able to see the intruder’s back. The third came from a camera mounted on the opposite of the loft and came fairly close to reversing the angle of the one we’d just watched.

“This is fantastic coverage,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Never had three angles on a crime before.”

“That’s not all.”

“What else?”

“Detective Glenn had a camera outside, too.”

“Show me.”

He tapped at his keyboard, and I saw a view of the street and part of the parking lot outside of Patrick’s place. A Honda Accord pulled up to the curb and parked about thirty yards north of the loft. It was partially obscured by some tree branches, but we could see the man who accosted Patrick get out and walk calmly toward the front door. It looked liked he put the mask on while his face was out of view.

“Nothing on the face?”

“No, but I did find something interesting on the car. It was confiscated three days ago in a DEA drug raid. It’s supposed to be impounded in Santa Ana.”

“Supposed to be? Do we know if it is?”

“Yeah, it’s there now. And according to the lot’s records, it never left.”

“Can you put everything you just showed me on a disc?”

“Already did. And made a couple of extras, too.” He handed me three DVDs in plastic jewel cases. “I’m going to stay on these. See if we can find anything else.”

As soon as I got back upstairs, I slipped the DVD into my computer and cued up the footage. I watched each angle again
and then began to focus on them one at a time. It was the third time through the first angle Ben had shown me—the wide-angle view from across the room—that I spotted them. I wasn’t sure at first, so I went through the other angles a few times each. When I was absolutely positive, I called Jen.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“About the same as when you left. He’s out of danger, but he still hasn’t woken up.”

“How about you?”

“I’m doing okay,” she said. She’d said that to half a dozen people in the last eighteen hours. This was the first time I believed her.

“Good,” I said. “Because I need some backup.”

“T
HE SHOES?”
J
EN
asked.

“Yeah. New Balance Nine Fifty-Fives. We talked about them. Remember I told you about meeting him at The Potholder?”

“He was wearing them?”

“Yeah. I used to have a pair just like his. Then they changed the model, and neither one of us liked the new version.”

“Is that enough?”

“There’s the car, too.” I told her about the impound lot in Santa Ana.

“Is that the same one the Orange County Sheriff’s Department uses?”

I nodded. “Santa Ana PD, too. If we dig around there, we might be able to firm things up a bit.”

“We put him at the lot or in the car, it’s solid,” she said. “Want to head over there?”

“We know they’ve got video, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t we skip the preliminaries and go right for a warrant?”

“I’ll call Bob.”

By dinnertime we were in the lieutenant’s office showing him the footage Patrick’s camera had picked up outside his loft of Goodman getting into the car. The time codes from both sources lined up perfectly, putting him at the scene less than an hour after he’d left the impound lot.

“He’s at the Westin?” Ruiz asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Grab him before he gets wind of the warrant.”

The hotel was only a few blocks away from the station. I was only half joking when I suggested to Jen that we should walk. Dave and Marty hadn’t signed out for the day, so they and four uniforms joined us.

“You suppose we’re going in heavy?” Marty asked.

“No,” I said. “He only used a Taser on Patrick, but he could be getting desperate, feeling cornered. Better to hit him hard with a lot of force so he doesn’t get any stupid ideas.”

“Shock and awe,” Dave said from the backseat. I looked at him in the rearview mirror, and the setting sun angling onto his face made the laugh lines etched into his face look like creases in ancient leather.

The Westin’s director of security was a former LBPD sergeant who had taken his twenty and gone private. He met us at the desk.

Marty had ridden with him back in the day.

“Sarge,” Marty said, extending his hand.

They shook and gave each other a pat on the elbow with their free hands.

“Good to see you,” he said, giving the rest of us a single nod.

I stepped forward, and he didn’t have to ask which one of us was the lead. “He’s upstairs?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just had the front desk do a courtesy check. He said everything was fine.”

“Any chance that might have tipped him?”

“Got a man on the door, just in case.”

“You want to lead us up?”

We took two elevators to the eighth floor.

He rode with the uniforms.

Down the hall from Goodman’s room, he gave me a master key card. “Works just like a regular one, slide it into the slot, pull it out, wait for the little green light, and you’re good to go.”

“I know how hotel key cards work, Sarge,” I said.

“Well, you can’t ever be sure with detectives.”

The uniforms got a grin out of that, and to be honest, the rest of us did, too.

We stacked up on either side of the door, Dave on my shoulder and Marty on Jen’s. We unholstered our weapons.

“Ready?” I whispered, making brief eye contact with each person close to the door. When I had unanimous nods, I slipped the key into the door, pushed it open, and shouted, “Agent Goodman! Police! We’re coming inside!”

The room was off-white with lots of wood and earth-toned upholstery and accents. It was also empty.

“Goodman!” I shouted. “Police!”

I moved inside. The crew followed. Something was wrong. He’d answered the phone ten minutes earlier. Was he barricaded in the bathroom? The door, to my right as I came in, was closed. I nodded in that direction, and Jen moved into position behind me, facing it and giving me cover to check out the rest of the room.

“Goodman?” I said, moving across the room and around the king-size bed.

He wasn’t there. The closet, across from a sink and mirror, flanked the entryway to the bathroom. Jen moved aside to let me in first.

I said his name again as I tried the knob. It wouldn’t turn. “Locked,” I said.

We backed out of the room into the hallway.

“Sarge,” I said, “the bathroom’s locked. You have anything we can use on it?”

“You hear anything from inside?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Just kick it. It won’t take much. Otherwise, we’ll have to wait five minutes for maintenance.”

Back inside, I lifted my knee and drove my heel into the door just below the knob. The latch popped open and the door recoiled hard against the wall, giving me a brief glimpse of Goodman’s brain matter and blood spattered on the wall over the toilet before it bounced back and swung back into the jamb again.

I nudged it with my toe to reveal the scene again. Goodman’s body was leaning back over the toilet tank, with his head tilted toward the wall in way that didn’t allow us to see the worst of the damage. Only a small red hole under his chin was visible. If not for the spray of blood and viscera fanned on the eggshell wallpaper, it might be possible he suffered nothing worse than a particularly nasty shaving wound. Although, there were a few bits of fluffy white material clinging to his jaw.

On the floor next to the toilet I saw his Sig service pistol and a pillow from the bed, and I realized how he’d done it.

“He put the pillow under his chin,” I said to Jen, who was looking around me into the bathroom.

She finished my thought. “And pressed the muzzle into it. That’s why the guard didn’t hear.”

We backed out of the room and asked one of the uniforms to call the Crime Scene Detail and the ME.

She gave a nod and started talking into the radio mic clipped to her shoulder.

“Sarge?”

“Yeah, Danny?”

“You get a lot of noise complaints?”

“Almost none. Great soundproofing. Best in Long Beach.”

We didn’t have much to investigate at the scene. We bagged Goodman’s phone, his laptop, and all of his other personal effects. It seemed, unlike most of what we’d been investigating,
completely clear what had happened. The call from the front desk had tipped him, and that was all he’d needed.

Carter, the ME, had the body laid out and ready to be put into the body bag when I asked him to wait. “Can you roll him over?”

“Sure. What are you looking for?”

“I need to look at his ass.”

Goodman had been wearing a T-shirt and his suit pants. No shoes or belt. Carter tugged down on the waist of his gray wool slacks and exposed his cheeks. On the right one were two green footprints. No apparent aesthetic value.

“Does his partner, Young, have a room here, too?” I asked the sergeant.

“Not that I know of. Goodman checked in with me as a courtesy. Imagine he would have mentioned another agent staying in the hotel.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaving him. Jen was just down the hall. “What should we do about the other one?”

“Young?”

“Yeah. Don’t know where he’s staying.”

“Think he was in it with his partner?”

“No sign of him on any of the video. You’d think if he were involved, he’d be there for backup.”

“You’d think.”

“But you don’t?”

“I’m worried he knows something. We give him a heads-up, he might spook.”

“You have an idea, don’t you?”

“Where’s the evidence we booked?”

Twenty minutes later, Special Agent Young was downstairs in the lobby bar looking for Goodman. He was green, but he was sharp enough to realize something was wrong when he saw us approaching him instead.

“Detectives, hello.”

We nodded our greetings.

“Are you meeting Agent Goodman here as well?”

“No,” I said.

“Must be a coincidence, then.”

Jen said, “No, it’s not. We sent you the text message.”

The small amount of cordiality that had been lightening his expression disappeared. “Where?” he said.

“Back at the station.”

“Should I get my car?”

“We’ll give you a ride.”

None of us said another word until we were seated at the table in the Homicide interview room. We pulled a third chair in from next door so we could all sit. There wasn’t much point in trying anything tricky with Special Agent Young. The FBI had made sure he had even better interrogation training than we did.

Jen started. “Would you like to have someone from the LA office here for this?”

“No,” Young said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

We did. In detail. Starting with Patrick’s attack and finishing with Goodman on the toilet.

“Why do you suppose he killed himself?” I asked.

“
Why?
” he said indignantly. “You really need to ask? He assaulted a police officer. His career was over and he was going to jail. The real question is why did he throw a twenty-five-year career away? That’s what I’d like to know.”