AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alicia said, “Hot-sheet Hiltons. You want us to cover the same area, do parallel searches?”
“Just you, kiddo,” said Milo. “The two of us will keep in touch on a tac line, make sure we’re not duplicating. I can’t neglect east–west so Sean, take east, Moses, west. Don’t read anything into that, it’s arbitrary.”
Both of the men nodded. Reed looked disappointed.
Milo said, “What?”
“Not going to lie, L.T. From Bel Air to the beach is nonstopseven-figure houses. I like a pleasant drive as much as anyone but I’d rather be useful.”
“That’s if you take Sunset. Go with Pico and come back on Olympic.”
“Got it.”
Sean said, “Me, too?”
“No, you stay on Sunset. You can wear a blindfold through Beverly Hills but once you get into West Hollywood, there’ll be plenty to eagle-eye. Especially east of La Brea, plenty of the same kind of roach-palaces all the way to downtown.”
Sean said, “On it, Loot.” Bright-eyed and ready to go.
Reed tapped his foot. Alicia kept giving the board sour looks.
Milo said, “I know the whole search is iffy at best and with the black-and-whites having the BOLO, you could be thinking, why bother? But just getting the uniforms the info means nothing. Some officers pay attention, others don’t. The marshals are a better bet and no one’ll be happier than me if they find him. But we’re not extraneous because we’re focused.”
Alicia frowned but said nothing.
Milo said, “This is an open forum. What?”
She said, “Obviously, I’ll be giving it my all, L.T., but I’m just wondering why he’d stay in town.”
“That’s a very good point,” said Milo. “But since when do we limit ourselves to sure bets?”
CHAPTER
46
Three days of fruitless searching passed before Sean and Alicia were pulled off and assigned to a street mugging / attempted murder barely on the wrong side of the West L.A.–Venice border. Milo and Reed continued to look for the black Honda, but Milo’s captain was making noise about optimal use of Reed’s time.
The United States Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force, working with the FBI, did a commendable job of communicating with their units nationwide. The FBI also produced three unsolved shoot-to-the-heart deaths other than Nicole Fontenot, coinciding with Rooney Gilmore’s travels. Two in Atlanta, one in Biloxi, Mississippi, all associated with armed robberies.
The Biloxi victim was an Ethiopian immigrant working as a convenience store clerk, left on the floor of the business, shot once in the heart, the till empty, CCTV picking up a stocky hooded killer. The Georgia cases were both bartenders, one male, one female, ambushed shortly after closing time and relieved of the night’s take. No cameras.
Unlike the California homicides, bullets had been recovered intact, each time tracing to a .38 Smith and Wesson Police and Military revolver. A common weapon and lack of communication among threeteams of detectives meant no attempt had been made to match ballistics. A rush job meant the FBI lab might get the results back in a week.
All in all, a well-coordinated effort.
It didn’t matter.
—
Inglewood police officers Armando Casagrande and Karen Brousse were doing their usual midmorning thing: patrolling a particularly annoying stretch of Imperial Highway in their spiffy new Ford Explorer. Annoying because the street was lined with by-the-hour motels and the businesses they attracted and that meant nuisance calls, lots of them. More street psychology than police work.
Casagrande and Brousse didn’t mind nuisances. Their previous assignment had been the night shift and they’d contended with tides of serious gang crap and more than their share of maimed and dead bodies. They’d applied for the transfer days apart. Not by chance, they were a secret item and joked that one day they might actually use one of the no-tell motels. If they could bring their own sheets.
One hour in, having just finished 7-Eleven coffees, they received a 415 call to a smoke shop two blocks from where they were chilling in the parking lot. About to read this morning’s BOLOs but that was boring and actually going out on a call was a lot more fun so they checked with Dispatch.
Attempted shoplifting and threatening behavior at a smoke shop. Probably another homeless mental case. They knew the store and the only thing you could easily lift were dinky edibles and a few bongs left on the counter.
When they got there, the owner, an emaciated goat-face named Otto Banks, was standing out front, moving his foot up and down and gesticulating with pipe-cleaner arms.
