I swung open my front door. I was about to jog down the steps.
But standing a few feet down the hall, dressed in khakis, a polo shirt, and a blue blazer, holding a Heckler amp; Koch. 45 at his hip was Wally Wegland.
“Let’s head back inside,” he said. “No sudden movements.”
I glanced at the stairs, calculating how quickly I could avoid the trajectory of his shot. Wegland jammed the HK in my back and said softly, “Move. Now.”
I slipped my key into the lock. Wegland followed me inside and slammed the door.
As I moved toward my shoulder holster, which was slung over a chair, Wegland said, “You take one more step, and it’ll be your last.”
Wegland was aiming at the center of my chest in a perfect Weaver Stance: right arm partially extended, gun supported by his left hand, knees slightly flexed, left foot forward.
He motioned with the gun for me to sit on the couch. “Take it real slow.”
I sat on the edge. Wegland eased into a chair across from the couch.
“So I guess you’ve got a contact at the VMD lab,” I said.
“ Fortunately, they caught me while I was at my desk. Fortunately you’re only a few minutes away. Unfortunately, they called you first.”
Wegland studied me for a moment and then shook his head sadly. “If you weren’t so damn obsessive, if you could have just left well enough alone, we wouldn’t be here at this painful juncture.”
He jabbed the gun at me and said, “Why couldn’t you let Fuqua take the fall? Why couldn’t you just follow the obvious leads and let him go directly to jail?”
My mouth was dry and I swallowed hard. “Because he didn’t kill Relovich.”
“So what? Who cares about a predator like him?”
“So you broke into Fuqua’s place in South Central, grabbed a Kleenex out of the trash, and planted it at Relovich’s,” I said softly, more to myself than to Wegland. “You knew he’d been charged with rape, so his DNA would be in the state DOJ database. You also knew that Relovich had arrested him and you heard about how Relovich kicked his ass. So you assumed we’d stumble on the obvious motive.”
Wegland looked at me and frowned. “It all could have been so easy, but you had to make it so hard. I knew things would get dicey when that cretin Grazzo brought you back for this case.”
“When he wanted to pull me off the case, why’d you persuade him to keep me on?”
“I didn’t. But that’s what I told Duffy. Actually, I lobbied hard to get you off the case. But Grazzo wouldn’t budge because the chief was already on board with you. So I tried another tack. I told him all about how you went postal on Graupmann. I convinced him to suspend you. He tried, but you outfoxed him on that one.”
“So it wasn’t Graupmann who put all that Nazi shit on my desk. It was you. Trying to provoke me. Trying to get me to do something stupid, something that would get me thrown off the case.”
“Almost worked,” Wegland said.
I wanted to keep Wegland talking until I could figure out a way to make my move.
“Then why come after me now? Why not just let things play out and hope I wouldn’t be able to put it all together?”
“You were getting too close to the bull’s-eye.”
“I knew the VMD print was from a cop. But I just assumed they were from a patrol officer. I didn’t realize-”
Wegland waved me off. “I’ll talk my way out of that one; I’ll claim I left the print on a visit months ago. But I knew Duffy had freed you up for a week to take another look at the case. I knew that once that week was up you wouldn’t drop it. You’d keep chewing and chewing on this case until you came up with something else. I didn’t want to see what your next surprise would be.”
“So Relovich and Mitchell were in cahoots with you on the heist at Silver’s house,” I said.
“Not initially,” he said pompously.
Wegland was no different from most scumbags I had interviewed. They talked too much because they couldn’t resist showing how smart they were.
“Not many people knew about Silver’s collection,” he said. “But when I was a robbery detective in Hollywood, I investigated a theft at his house once. I had to toss the place and itemize what he had for the insurance claim. So I knew what it was worth. I was also aware he had a safe. He told me he kept a lot of cash in there, but the thieves never got it. Of course, I made a mental note of that.”
“And you,” I said, “had enough on Jack Freitas to have him locked up for a long time. But he was your informant so you were able to keep him on the streets. You took advantage of his B and E expertise and had him do jobs for you, rip shit off for you, like he did at Silver’s. Then things turned sour there.”
“That’s right. Freitas started arguing about the split, right in the middle of the job.”
“So you took him out. And you figured no one would care. A crook killed by a crook.”
“That’s how Hollywood Homicide played it.”
“So Relovich and Mitchell hear the shots and stumble on the scene,” I said. “That’s for real? They didn’t know this was going down?”
Wegland snorted loudly. “They had no idea. They got there as I was about to slip out the back door.”
“You must have done some fast talking.”
“It wasn’t as hard as you’d think.”
“Were you really friends with Pete’s old man?”
He shook his head. “I saw him a few times at the academy shooting range, but we never actually had a conversation.” He fiddled absent-mindedly with a blazer button, as if lost for a moment in a memory. “Pete wasn’t a problem at Silver’s. He’d only been on the job a few years. Mitchell was the senior guy. I figured Pete would follow Mitchell’s lead. Anyway, I knew all about Mitchell. He’d been working Hollywood forever, and I had worked there for a while. He was dirty. Not filthy dirty. But dirty. Some of us knew he was checking department files and selling the info to PIs. So when the two of them see me, I figure I have got a chance to talk my way out of it. Of course when you’ve got two hundred thousand in cash you can be pretty persuasive.”
He stared through me; his eyes looked unfocused. I wondered if he was steeling himself to pull the trigger. I was about to make a dash for the door when Wegland said, “I told them I was doing some undercover work for the art detail. Then I pointed out Freitas with the bullet hole in his temple. Mitchell had arrested him before; he knew he was scum. I told them I’d heard Freitas was going to pull this caper at Silver’s, and when I’d tried to stop him he pulled a gun on me. So I had to drop him. I convinced Mitchell not to call it in. Said I was doing the undercover work without authorization. Said I’d be in a hell of a fix if I had to deal with all those interviews and shooting boards. When I pulled out the duffel bag with cash, Mitchell was persuaded. I told both of them it was drug money and if we didn’t take it, it would just get turned over to the feds. Pete wasn’t too happy about it, but he was surrounded by two vets, so he went along with the program. They gave me a few minutes to get down the canyon. Then they called the station-and never mentioned anything about me.”
“So why’d you have to silence Pete after all these years?”
“He never got over this thing,” Wegland said, dropping the barrel of the Smith for a moment. “I think that’s why he bailed out of the department. Always looking over his shoulder, thinking he was going to get jammed by I.A. for taking the money and covering up what happened at Silver’s.”
“That why he was drinking so much?”
“Maybe. Though he eventually did dry out and get it together. But last year Hollywood Homicide got some kind of federal grant to reopen all their unsolved cases from the past fifteen years and take another look. The feds figured that with the automated fingerprint system and DNA available now, the new technology would dig up some suspects and a bunch of these old cases would get cleared. Pete and Avery Mitchell figured it was only a matter of time before they were questioned about the Freitas homicide. It was a misdemeanor murder-just a loser ex-con who nobody cared about. But it was unsolved, so it fit the bill. I heard through a source of mine that Pete talked to one of his pals who used to work I.A. He didn’t tell him the particulars of the case, just presented a hypothetical situation. Talked about making a deal-asked if he could avoid prosecution if he laid out what happened. Next thing I knew, he made an appointment with an investigator.”
Wegland frowned and shook his head. “That was unacceptable.”
“Why was Pete so worried?”
“He figured with the new technology, maybe I’d get IDed. Then maybe if I got cornered, I’d implicate him and Mitchell. Maybe I’d even put the murder on them.”
“And after you shot him, you strangled him, to make it look personal, to-”
“Mitchell had a little more savvy than Pete,” Wegland said, ignoring me. “He wasn’t running scared. But about six months ago he calls me out of the blue. Asks for what he called ‘a loan’ to expunge his memory.”
“Blackmail?”
“That’s how I interpreted it.”
“So you gave Relovich and Mitchell the netsukes and ojimes?”
Wegland whistled softly. “You don’t miss much, do you? I remember when you were a young patrolman in Pacific and I was a detective working robbery. I said to myself, That’s a sharp kid. That’s a kid to watch.”
“Why did you give ’em to Relovich and Mitchell?”
“After I’d investigated the robbery at Silver’s, he showed me his whole collection and told me all about them, the history and what they represented.” He cupped a hand, as if holding the imaginary netsukes and ojimes. “I gave each of the cops a matching pair. A Shoki and an Oni. A demon and demon queller. I told them the predators out there-like Freitas-were the demons. And us cops were the demon quellers. I told them not to forget which side they were on.”
“But you did.”
“I did what?” he said impatiently.
“You forgot which side you’re on.”
“No I didn’t. I always know what side I’m on- my side.”
“Why were you so sure I’d-” I paused in mid-sentence when I heard a screech of brakes, the crash of a fender-bender, the shattering of glass. Wegland flinched and briefly glanced toward the window.
I jumped to my feet, hurdled over the sofa, and zigzagged to the corner of the room, as I heard the blast of the gun and a bullet zip past my ear. Snatching my surfboard off its hooks, I held it in front of me like a shield and charged Wegland, the pop-pop-pop of shots splintering the fiberglass. I smashed into him, and with all my strength shoved the surfboard and Wegland through the window, shattering the glass.
I craned my neck and watched Wegland frantically wave his arms and legs as he and the board spiraled down eleven stories, and then he exploded on the sidewalk in a red mist.