A Fate Worse Than Death

The warehouse parking lot was ablaze with swirling cop lights. Ten or more police cars were jammed into the lot, with two ambulances and the CSI unit parked near the door to the warehouse. Farber was speaking into his cell phone, madder than hell. “Pick up Sandusky now! And hold him till I get back to the station! I don’t care how much he squawks! He’s not getting away this time!”

Lyle pulled in as far as he could, jumped out of his car, and ran toward Farber. “What happened? How’d they get them out of here so fast?”

“Who knows? Can’t find any blood stains. No sign of Helen Worthington.”

“I doubt you’ll get anything out of Sandusky, no matter how hard you squeeze.”

“We found their camera and rifle in the building across from the parking lot. Baker filmed two men at the handoff, but their faces were covered and unrecognizable. We’re tracking down the owner of the car.” Farber paced back and forth, pulling his fingers through his hair. “This was supposed to be easy. I should’ve sent more men. I really screwed up.”

“No street cameras here I guess?” Lyle asked as he looked around.

“We’ll check.”

“I should’ve been with him.”

Farber wasn’t listening. “I’ll make Sandusky talk if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll have lots of help.”

****

Rosemaria was sound asleep when the sound of her cell phone ringing penetrated a strange dream about being in front of her poli-sci class and giving a presentation on pesto sauce. She licked her lips and still tasted the garlic from the lasagna she’d had at Vincente’s the day before. She checked the time on her phone. It was three thirty.

“Yes, hello. This is Rosemaria.”

“Rosemaria, it’s Lieutenant Farber.” He sounded grim.

Rosemaria bolted straight up as if she had been shot from a cannon. “What’s happened to my dad?!”

“I won’t kid you—it’s bad.”

“Tell me!”

“He went to what should have been to a simple handoff last night, but he, Messina, and the woman they were protecting have disappeared.”

Rosemaria fell back on her bed. “Disappeared?” she whispered.

“Your dad had a camera, and we got a clear picture of the license plate number. The two men were wearing hoodies so we can’t get facial recognition off the video.”

“Did you track down who owns the car?”

“We’re on it, Rosemaria. There’s nothing you can do. We have a BOLO out on the car, and we’ll do our best to track him down.”

“And when you find him?”

“We’ll bring him in and get him to talk.”

“Why was my father there? Who are these people?”

“You know I can’t tell you that. Let us do our job, Rosemaria. I promise you; we’ll find your father.”

“By then he might be dead.”

“Goodbye, Rosemaria. I’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

She hung up and sat on the bed, letting what Farber had told her sink in and contemplating her choices. She breathed in and out heavily for several minutes and made her decision. She pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed her purse, and ran out into the early morning darkness.

****

Farber clicked off his phone in frustration and watched as the last of the cop cars left the warehouse parking lot. Forensics would still be there for a while longer, determined to find something to give them a lead on what had happened. He hated giving the bad news to Baker’s daughter. Now he had to tell Messina’s wife the same thing. His phone rang, and he clicked back on. He listened for a moment then started running to his car and yelled at Lyle to follow him. “Helen Worthington was picked up on the side of the freeway! She’s in the ER, barely alive!” He got in his car and sat in the driver’s seat, Lyle jumped in to ride shotgun, and they sped lights and siren toward Good Samaritan Hospital.

****

Rosemaria breezed past reception—a familiar face and the daughter of a cop in trouble. She looked around for a couple of seconds to make sure no one was in the squad room and then sat at her father’s desk. She figured she better work fast before anybody showed up. She knew forensics would have loaded the footage from her father’s camera into the police database by now. She typed in the password and hunted around for where the video might be stored. God knows she wasn’t much of a computer expert, but she’d watched her father work on his department computer plenty of times. Finally, she found the video with the right date and time. She watched the video intently as the two men drove up to the warehouse and stopped. She got a good look at the license plate number. She quickly wrote it down. She kept watching as a black Lexus drove into the parking lot and a woman stepped out and walked up to two men standing by their car. She handed one of them a duffel bag, started to leave, but then turned back around and followed the two men into the warehouse. The video ended there.

She logged off the computer and looked through the few folders her father had on his desk. Nothing. In his top drawer, he had the folded front page of a recent LA Times reporting that the former Helen Sandusky had married Senator Worthington. Sandusky? She remembered that name from years ago. Her dad had been investigating a murder having to do with somebody named Sandusky. And this dark-haired woman in the picture looked very much like the woman in the video. It had to be her. Rosemaria was starting to put the pieces together. She looked up the phone number of the DMV and, using the phone on her father’s desk, she dialed.

“Yes, I need you to look up the name and address of someone with this license plate number. This is Baker in downtown robbery-homicide. You can call me back here at my desk to verify…Thank you. The number is”—she read the license plate number from her notes—“Could you also please fax me a copy of the driver’s license of the owner of this car?” She scrolled through her cell phone and found the number that she had used faxing papers to her father more than once. The person at the DMV was happy to comply.