a typical November day for Los Angeles. At least there was no snow. He’d grown up in South Dakota, and he’d seen enough snow there to last two lifetimes.
He was on the third floor, and from this corner window he could see a couple of patrol cars. More interesting was the vendor, selling fish tacos and horchata, standing by the front entrance. He’d probably witnessed the gunmen enter the hotel, although he’d probably be too scared to be of any help.
“Detective Yarrow.”
Vince turned. Tyson walked in with two manila folders.
“The woman taking care of the fourteenth floor is Kate Rydell. I’ve asked her supervisor to bring her here.”
“Great.” He nodded at the folders. “May I take a look?”
The man handed them over, and Vince turned slightly, giving the manager more of his back, hoping he’d catch the hint.
In the folder, he found Rydell’s work application along with a very blurry copy of her driver’s license. Shit, he couldn’t get anything from the picture at all. It was even hard to make out the license number or the salient facts. Squinting, he saw that she was five-eight, one hundred eighteen pounds, and had brown hair and eyes. That wouldn’t get him far. “I’ll need copies,” he said, not bothering to turn. He checked her license address against the application information. They were the same. Her work history was just about what he expected. Hotel service, waitress. High school education.
He heard the manager behind him and handed him the first folder. “Do you have surveillance cameras?”
“In the lobby and in the garage.”
“I’ll need them.”
“Why don’t you come with me. You can watch the tapes while I get the photocopies. We can wait for Ms. Rydell in the security office.”
Luckily, the woman who was in charge of security for the hotel thought on her feet. She’d already taken out the tapes from this morning and queued them for duplication. Her name was Phyllis Samms, and from what he could see she was a regular on the weight machines. He’d hate to run into her in a dark alley.
Even her handshake was muscular. “I’ve got them ready,” she said, pointing to a chair. He sat down. “I couldn’t find your shooter in the lobby. Maybe your people will have more luck. However, there are some interesting shots in the garage.”
She sat next to him and pressed the remote. The camera angle wasn’t good—it was aimed more for identifying cars than people. Someone would have to look up in order for him to get a good face shot. Phyllis was right, there were some interesting shots. Two guys in big coats with hoods ran out at eleven-seventeen. He couldn’t see who they were, not even tats, but he’d take the tape and let the lab boys go to town. They’d find something.
The bangers didn’t get in a car. Instead they ran out of camera range.
As Phyllis went to stop the tape, Vince shook his head. He kept watching. A couple of businessmen came out, got into their cars. A hotel employee, a male, came out for a cigarette. Then nothing until a police car came in, followed by an ambulance.
He watched as his own unmarked car entered the garage. Jeff got out, then he did, and they walked right into the building.
Nothing except cops and EMTs and then, a woman. She was in a blue uniform and she had dark hair. Slim, tall—it had to be Kate Rydell.
She glanced at the official vehicles, then walked calmly to her car, a beat-up old Toyota Celica. Nothing about her was rushed or panicked. Still, she wasn’t wearing a coat, which told him she hadn’t stopped to clock out or to go to her locker. She got her keys out of her pocket and opened her door.
That’s when he saw her face. It was nothing like the picture on her driver’s license. Even though the security camera wasn’t the best, he could see she was a very attractive woman. Her hair had been pulled back, so he got a pretty decent look. She didn’t seem like a room service employee. Not with those cheekbones.
“You know her?” he asked Phyllis.
“Not really. I’ve seen her around, but we’ve never talked.”
“No?”
“She kept to herself. I’ve never seen her with anyone. Expect maybe Ellen.”
Vince got out his notebook. “Ellen?”
While Phyllis gave him the details about the housekeeper, he thought about Kate Rydell. She must have known something about the gangbangers who’d killed Tim. She’d gotten out so damn fast, he knew she was running, that she didn’t want anyone to know she’d seen the whole thing. She wasn’t about to cooperate, not willingly. But in the end, she would. He’d make sure of that.
2
THE MOTEL WAS AS nondescript as its name. The Sleep Inn had only twenty rooms, and the one she requested was on the second floor, on the end, with windows facing the parking lot and Van Nuys Boulevard. It cost thirty-nine dollars plus tax a night.
She put the cardboard box on the small round table and looked around the room. A double bed with an ugly green bedspread, a TV bolted to a squat dresser. A phone she wouldn’t use. The carpet was worn and seemed recently vacuumed. The sink tile was cracked, but the water pressure wasn’t bad. She’d stayed in worse places. Lots worse.
For the first time since she’d witnessed the murder, she let herself take a moment. In the past two hours she’d packed, loaded her car and gone by several other motels until she’d found this one. It was far enough from her old apartment that she felt relatively safe, but not so far she couldn’t hook up with the others.
Seth and Nate were working on something big, tailing some high-level employee of Omicron—that was when they weren’t trying to earn a living with their private security business. They’d both been surveillance experts in Kosovo. When they’d gotten back, they’d spent every last cent setting up a trauma room in Harper’s basement. Just in case. Not only couldn’t they get regular jobs any longer, they couldn’t do half the things normal people took for granted. Go to a hospital, for example. At least not for the kinds of injuries they were likely to get fighting Omicron. Even she’d had to learn to shoot, and Kate had always hated guns.
Harper worked at the free clinic in Boyle Heights, but she was always on call in case anything happened to any member of the team. They hadn’t had to use her services so far. She had been one of the doctors for the U.N. staff Kate had met in Kosovo. Harper had seen firsthand what Omicron had created in the Balkans. It had been her misfortune to be taken to the remote Serbian village that had been the testing ground for the gas. A nurses’ aide hadn’t been able to reach her family, so she’d asked Harper to drive with her to her home town. Everyone there was dead. Men, women, children. A town full of life, wiped out in one awful morning.
Then Kate had met Tamara, a chemist who thought she’d been working to eliminate biological and chemical weapons, but in truth Omicron had tricked her and a lot of other scientists into creating a chemical agent of unimaginable horror. Tam had rebelled, and now she was one of them. One of the six who were hunted.
But Kate hadn’t talked to either of the women in a long time. She was too busy trying to earn a living and trying to make sense of the poor photocopies from Kosovo. Her days swam by in dread and tedium. The
