Redzone (5 page)

Lee saw the corners of Wolfe's mouth turn up and wondered what she was thinking. Was Wolfe drinking the Kool-Aid? Or did she think Ayeman was a loon as well? It was impossible to tell.

“By the way,” Ayeman said, as he dropped into the remaining chair. “This is an excellent time to talk about the importance of good documentation when managing a team. I'm going to ask each supervisor to complete a personnel assessment form for each person who reports to them. That's what we'll use to set goals, measure performance, and make decisions about whom to promote.”

Lee looked at Jenkins. How did he feel about the suggestion that his work had been less than adequate? But if the deputy chief was offended, there was no sign of it on his face. So either he agreed with the initiative—or had decided to give his new guy some rope. To what extent had Jenkins been involved in hiring Ayeman anyway? Was the desk jockey
his
choice for the job? Or had Chief Corso done all of the choosing for him? “I'm kind of busy right now,” Lee said. “What's the deadline on those forms?”

Ayeman smiled lazily. “The day after tomorrow at roll call. I hear you have a tendency to show up late, Detective Lee. Here's a piece of advice: Don't.”

*   *   *

It wasn't easy, but Lee managed to extricate herself from the meeting without running her mouth. She should have
gone to work filling out personnel assessment forms for Yanty and Prospo, but there was no fucking way. Not until she managed to cool off.

So Lee went down to the garage, got in the sedan, and left the building. It was a relatively short drive to the LAPD Academy and the shooting range there. Her days at the academy seemed like ancient history now. She parked in the lot, and as Lee made her way through the facility, various people said hello to her. It felt good to mingle with
real
cops after spending twenty minutes with Ayeman.

Having neglected to check the schedule before coming over, Lee was relieved to discover that the range was currently open for monthly qualifications. A requirement that every officer had to comply with.

After checking in and picking up some standard safety gear, Lee followed a uniformed patrol officer out into the open area, where a dozen lanes led to the same number of head and torso targets. Lee and two other police officers took their positions as the range master put them on standby. That was followed by the command to advance and fire.

In order to qualify, each person had to score a minimum number of hits at twenty-five yards, fifteen yards, and seven yards. At each distance, it was necessary to draw, fire, and reload. Firing weapons was something that Lee not only was good at but enjoyed. And by pretending to shoot at her new boss, Lee managed to release most of the tension that had built up during the meeting.

The .9mm Glock was her primary weapon, but Lee took the opportunity to fire her backup as well and was pleased to see the tight grouping the Smith & Wesson produced from seven yards. Then it was time to pick up her brass and find out how she'd done. A passing grade was 147 out of a possible 210. Her score was 192. Not bad . . . Not bad at all.

Lee was feeling pleased with herself as she walked out into the sunshine. She looked up, saw that rays of sunlight were slanting through broken clouds, and noticed something
else as well. What looked like a toy airplane was circling above her. A small drone? Yes. The shadow team was watching over her.

Lee took comfort from that as she crossed the parking lot to the spot where the sedan was parked. It beeped, and the parking lights flashed when Lee thumbed her key. The scanner was in her pocket. She removed the device and turned it on. And it was then, just as Lee prepared to circle the car, that she heard the mosquito-like whine. So she looked up and was startled to see that the drone was diving straight at her! She ducked as the miniature airplane struck the vehicle. There was a flash of light, a clap of thunder, and the world went dark.

AS LEE CAME
to, she could hear the muffled sound of the siren and feel the ambulance sway as it rounded a corner. When she tried to sit up, her head hurt. The EMT put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. She had a softly rounded face and was wearing a stethoscope. “Don't move, hon . . . The doctors need to look you over.”

Lee remembered the drone and the split-second decision to duck. Had that been the difference? She was alive, so maybe it had. “I need to make a phone call,” she croaked.

“No you don't,” the EMT countered. “We know who you are, the police department was notified.”

So all Lee could do was lie there while the ambulance pulled into the hospital's parking lot and came to a stop in front of the entrance to the emergency room. She wanted to get off the stretcher and walk in, but the EMT wasn't having any of that.

So Lee was forced to remain where she was as the attendants pulled the stretcher out of the van, allowed the undercarriage to deploy, and wheeled her inside. There was a brief
pause near the front desk, followed by a short trip to the treatment area. Then came a flurry of activity as a nurse took her vital signs, and Lee stared up at the stylized sky on the ceiling. She could see the sun, plus some fluffy clouds, but no drones.

Then the privacy curtain parted to admit a small woman. She was wearing a white coat over OR scrubs. “Hello,” she said. “I'm Doctor Wu . . . How do you feel?”

“As if I was hit in the head.”

Wu laughed. “Your sense of humor is intact . . . That's a good sign. Do you feel dizzy? Or nauseous?”

“No, but my head hurts.”

“I'm sure it does,” Wu said sympathetically. “Please turn your head to the left. Let's see what we have.”

Lee turned her head, winced, and tried to look stoic as the bandage was removed. “You have a scalp laceration,” Wu announced as she examined the wound. “But I'd say you got off easy given what happened. Five stitches, maybe six, and you'll be good as new! We'll have to shave a small area around the wound. Sorry about that.”

“Can I go home?”

“Probably,” Wu replied. “We'll see how you're doing once the stitches are in place.”

Wu injected a local anesthetic into the area around the cut and went to work. It took less than fifteen minutes for Wu to close the gash, apply a small bandage, and declare Lee fit for release. A nurse gave her some pain pills, and she took two.

That was when Jenkins appeared. There was a frown on his face and a look of concern in his eyes. “Cassandra? Damn, girl . . . You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry,” Lee said. “The sky fell in.”

Jenkins turned to Wu. “Can she leave?”

The doctor nodded. “Yes. She should be fine. But if she feels dizzy or nauseous, bring her in.”

Lee thanked Wu, allowed herself to be wheeled outside, and felt a little light-headed when she stood. But that passed
as Jenkins helped her into the passenger seat of his car. “So,” Lee said, as Jenkins got behind the wheel. “What the hell happened?”

Jenkins pulled out of the loading zone and steered the car toward the street. “That's a damned good question. Wolfe's looking into it. But, pending further investigation, it looks like the Bonebreaker took the bait.”

“Really? With a
drone
? That's way outside his MO.”

“True,” Jenkins conceded. “But who else would do such a thing? Maybe the press conference spooked him . . . Maybe he's scared. I'll check with the shrinks to see what they think.”

“Good idea,” Lee said. “What's Ayeman up to? Is he busy updating my personnel file or something?”

Ayeman was her supervisor. Normally,
he
would be the one to rush to the hospital, and Jenkins was well aware of that. He kept his eyes on the road. “Ayeman has a lot of meetings scheduled for today. I left a message for him.”

Lee smiled thinly. “Tell him not to worry . . . I'll turn the personnel assessments in on time.”

*   *   *

Lee made a point out of arriving on time the following morning and took a lot of good-natured ribbing as she crossed the bull pen. “Hey, Lee,” one detective said, “don't sit near a window!” She flipped him the bird and kept walking.

The drone attack was all over the news by then, and Lee had been forced to say, “No comment,” over and over again as she hurried from her apartment to the car that had been sent to pick her up. Now, as she entered the conference room, there were more jokes mixed with a bit of sympathy. “The motor pool wants their car back,” one officer said. “What happened to your hair?” another wanted to know. “It took a hit.”

“Ignore the cretins,” Yanty said as he pulled a chair out for her. “We're glad you're okay.”

Ayeman entered as Lee sat down. Wolfe was two steps
behind him. And when he took a seat, Wolfe sat next to him. “Good morning,” Ayeman said. “As all of you are aware, someone tried to kill Detective Lee yesterday. Thankfully, they failed.

“We have no way to know who initiated the attack, but unless we receive information to the contrary, we're going to assume that the Bonebreaker was controlling the drone. The shrinks think he's scared. If so, that could explain his departure from his past MO.”

Yanty raised a hand and got a nod. “Regardless of
who
did it, where was the shadow team at the time?”

Lee smiled. Yanty might
look
like a CPA—but he had some balls. Based on their facial expressions, it was easy to see that neither Ayeman nor Wolfe were pleased. They couldn't dodge the issue, though. “Would you like to take that one?” Ayeman inquired, as he turned to look at Wolfe.

Lee watched as Wolfe's eyes shifted from Yanty to make contact with hers. “Of course . . . The simple answer is that the possibility of a drone attack never occurred to us. We fucked up. It won't happen again.”

Lee was pleasantly surprised. Wolfe was willing to take responsibility. That made quite a contrast to pass-the-buck Ayeman.
Maybe I was wrong about her,
Lee thought to herself.
And maybe you weren't,
the other Lee countered.
It ain't over until it's over.

Having successfully avoided any blame, Ayeman nodded. “I, for one, appreciate Lieutenant Wolfe's honest appraisal. Now that we know about the danger, we will take steps to prevent such attacks.

“Detective Lee, if you feel up to it, please make yourself available for a press conference at one o'clock. We're going to pull the Bonebreaker's chain. Who knows? Maybe he'll show up in person next time. If he does, we'll nail him.”

Roll call went downhill from there as Ayeman covered a variety of topics including a ten-minute dissertation on how important the personnel assessment process was.
Prospo fell asleep halfway through the lecture—but came to when Lee nudged him.

Once the team was dismissed, Lee returned to her cube, where she forced herself to fill out assessment forms on both of her subordinates, studied the statement Molly had e-mailed to her, and took a pain pill before reporting to the sun-splashed plaza.

The second press conference was similar to the first except that it had a more militant tone. “There's a coward out there,” Ayeman said as he read from a prepared statement. “A lunatic who tried to assassinate Detective Lee with a homemade drone. But I'm happy to say that the attack failed—and she's standing here beside me. Detective Lee?”

That was Lee's cue to step in front of the mike, look perky, and deliver a largely fictitious report about how much progress had been made. The press had lots of questions about the drone attack, but experts were present to deal with the technical stuff, and that meant Lee could fade.

She was supposed to meet Yanty down in the garage at two and got there with time to spare. By visiting the personnel department, and raising a fuss, Yanty had been able to obtain McGinty's
real
address. A place the first set of investigators missed because they, like everyone else, assumed that the chief lived with Cheyenne Darling.

Yanty was at the wheel and clearly knew where he was going as they drove to the south side of the downtown area. It appeared that McGinty, like Lee, preferred to live close to work. The address they were looking for was emblazoned on the front of a nondescript apartment building. It was a boxy affair that had an ugly parking lot out front with two graffiti-covered Dumpsters sitting off to one side.

After parking in a slot marked
VISITORS
, Yanty told her to wait while he went looking for the manager. He had spoken to the woman earlier and was armed with a search warrant. Under normal circumstances, Lee would have gone with him but was grateful for the chance to take it easy. The
detective was back ten minutes later. Lee got out of the car. “The manager says McGinty wouldn't let anyone enter the apartment unless he was notified ahead of time,” Yanty said. “So we're the first ones to go in since his death.”

Yanty led her inside. An elevator with a cracked mirror and threadbare carpet carried them up to the fourth floor, where the smell of what Lee recognized as Indian cooking permeated the air. Yanty led her to apartment 407, inserted the key into the lock, and motioned for her to move aside. Then he unlocked the door, took a step to the right, and gave it a push.

The double-barreled shotgun went off with a roar—and sprayed the opposite wall with double-ought buck. Both detectives drew their weapons as Lee called out, “Los Angeles Police! Drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!” A man down the hall stepped out into the hall to look around and went back inside when Yanty flashed a badge at him.

Not having received a reply, Lee took a peek around the corner. Gun smoke eddied in the air. The shotgun was clamped to a sawhorse. Wire cables led from it to pulleys and from there to the door. “It was a booby trap,” Lee said. “How the hell did you know?”

“I didn't,” Yanty confessed. “It pays to be careful, that's all.”

“You are a fucking genius,” Lee said admiringly. “I'll call the bomb squad. Who knows what else might be waiting in there.”

It took twenty minutes to get the bomb squad on-site, and Lee had a headache by then. Yanty took her back to headquarters, where she requested another car and drove it home. Lee knew that the walls had eyes, but she was too tired to care. The moment her jammies were on, she went to bed. Sleep pulled her down.

*   *   *

Lee overslept the next morning, missed roll call altogether, and went to visit Jenkins. If he was upset about her tardiness,
there was no sign of it on his face. “There are two possibilities,” he said, as Lee took a seat. “The first and most obvious is that McGinty hoped to bag the Bonebreaker. But it could have been the other way around as well. What if the Bonebreaker killed McGinty, went to the apartment, and rigged the shotgun?”

“And?” Lee prompted.

“And we don't know yet. Not for sure. But it's my guess that McGinty's fingerprints are all over that shotgun. That's why he told the manager not to enter the apartment without talking to him first.”

“That makes sense,” Lee agreed. “Plus, prior to the drone attack, the Bonebreaker always did things the same way. And it's a stretch to think that he abducted the chief, locked him up somewhere, and went to the apartment to set a trap.”

“Exactly,” Jenkins said. “We'll see what, if anything, the forensics people come up with. They're processing the apartment now.”

“Good,” Lee said. “In the meantime Yanty, Prospo, and I are going to look at all of the past suspects. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky.”

“Be careful out there,” Jenkins cautioned. Lee promised that she would and left.

Thus began the long, tedious process of checking to see which suspects were still alive, which ones were on the loose, and where they'd been on the day of the abduction. And in the wake of the drone attack the police had another filter to apply. Given the complexities involved in building a drone, even one that came in a kit, the profilers had reason to believe that the Bonebreaker was an educated man.

So days went by, the headaches disappeared, and Lee's hair grew back. During that time, the team took a second look at a retired science teacher with a penchant for sadomasochism, a computer programmer who enjoyed killing cats, and a priest who had switched his allegiance to Satan.

But the science teacher was confined to a wheelchair, the
programmer was in prison the day McGinty disappeared, and the priest had been killed in an auto accident. And Chief Corso was getting antsy. Operation Thunderstorm was sucking up a lot of valuable resources, and the department had nothing to show for the effort thus far. And that was bad for Jenkins since the whole thing was his idea. But things changed when Prospo phoned Lee and asked her to join him and Yanty in a conference room on the seventh floor.

Lee got off the elevator and made her way down a long hallway to Conference Room 7-J, which was located next to an emergency stairwell. When Lee opened the door, it was obvious that Yanty and Prospo had converted the tiny space into their own mini–operations center—complete with pieces of paper taped to the walls and a big stack of cardboard boxes, all of which were marked as
EVIDENCE
.

A table occupied the center of the room, and both men were seated at it. Prospo was halfway through a candy bar, and Yanty was typing on his laptop. “What the heck is
this
?” Lee inquired as she took a look around.

“It's where we drink coffee and take naps,” Yanty replied. “And every once in a while, we do some work. That's how we came up with a grade-A, number one suspect for you.”

Lee felt a rising sense of hope. Prospo and Yanty were good detectives, so if they had a suspect, there was bound to be some there-there. “I like it,” Lee said as she sat down. “Tell me more.”