Demolition Angel by Robert Crais Read Free Book Online

reconstruction.”
    “They just started. How far could they be?”
    “Far enough to know some of the components, Beth. We get some manufacturers, we get the chrom, we can get going here.”
    “We got all these interviews to do.”
    Marzik made her tired. It was a shitty way to start the day.
    “You guys can start in with the interviews while I’m over there. Round up Jorge and come to the desk.”
    “I think he’s in the crapper.”
    “Knock on the door, Beth. Jesus Christ.”
    Starkey borrowed a cassette player from the section sergeant, Leon Tooley, and brought it to her desk. Each CCS detective had a desk in a partitioned cubicle in the larger main room. There was the illusion of privacy, but the partitions were just low dividers, meaning that there was no real privacy. Everyone spoke in whispers unless they were showing off for Kelso, who spent most of his time hidden behind his office door. Rumor had it that he spent his day on the Internet, trading his stock portfolio.
    Marzik and Santos showed up a few minutes later with coffee, Santos saying, “Did you see Kelso?”
    “No. Should I?”
    “He asked to see you this morning.”
    Starkey glanced at Marzik, but Marzik’s face was unreadable.
    “Well, Jesus, Jorge, nice of someone to tell me. Look, let’s listen to this before I see him.”
    Santos and Marzik pulled up chairs as Starkey turned on the tape. The sound started with the Emergency Services operator, a black female, and was followed by a male voice with a heavy Spanish accent.
    EMS:
911. May I help you?
    CALLER:
’aullu?
    EMS:
911. May I help you, sir?
    CALLER:
Eh … se habla español?
    EMS:
I can transfer you to a Spanish speaker
.
    CALLER:
Eh … no, is okay. Lissen, you better sen’a man to look here
.
    Santos leaned forward and stopped the tape.
    “What’s that behind him?”
    Starkey said, “It sounds like a truck or a bus. He’s calling from a pay phone just off Sunset, a block east of the mall.”
    Marzik crossed her arms.
    “Isn’t there a pay phone right there outside that Cuban restaurant?”
    “Yeah, and there’s another across the street at that little food store, the Guatemalan place. But he walked down a block.”
    Santos looked at her.
    “How do you know that?”
    “EMS called back with the address. I walked the scene again this morning.”
    Marzik made a grunt, staring at the floor. Like only a loser without a life would do something like that.
    Starkey started the tape again.
    EMS:
Look at what, sir?
    CALLER:
Eh… I look in dis box, and I tink dere’s a bomb in dere
.
    EMS:
A bomb?
    CALLER:
Dese pipes, see? I dunno. It made me scared
.
    EMS:
Could I have your name, sir?
    CALLER:
Is by the trash dere, you know? The beeg can
.
    EMS:
I need your name, sir
.
    CALLER:
You better come see
.
    The line clicked when the man hung up. That was the end of the tape. Starkey turned off the machine.
    Marzik frowned.
    “If it’s legit, why wouldn’t he leave his name?”
    Santos shrugged.
    “You know how people are. Could be he’s illegal. He’s probably just some neighborhood guy, around there all the time.”
    Starkey scrounged for something to write on. The best she could do was a copy of
The Blue Line
, the LAPD’s union newspaper. She drew a rough street map, showing the mall and the location of the phones.
    “He says he looked in the bag. Okay. That means he’s here at the mall. He says it scared him, seeing the pipes like that, so why not just use the phone right here outside the Cuban place or over here across the street? Why walk another block east?”
    Marzik crossed her arms again. Every time Marzik didn’t like something, she crossed her arms. Starkey could read her like the daily news.
    “Maybe he wasn’t sure it was a bomb, and then he wasn’t sure he wanted to call. People have to talk themselves into things. Christ, sometimes I gotta talk myself into taking a shit.”
    Santos frowned at Marzik’s mouth, then tapped the phone outside the laundry.
    “If I