Chapter 6

Unfortunately for Taylor and Robles, Walsh was being held in San Diego and not Los Angeles, which meant a two-hour plus car ride. Taylor had lived most of his life on the East Coast, so he hadn’t been to LA much, but he remembered the traffic the few times he had. This trip was no different, which is why Taylor broke his normal policy of always being behind the wheel and let Robles drive.

While he was happy for the respite from the constant stop-and-go traffic, Taylor mostly wanted to close his eyes and think. This trip had already been a last grasping at straws, and the drive out to see Walsh was an even worse long shot. Taylor had a high opinion of his interrogation skills, but if the guy refused to answer any questions about the inner workings of the family, it was doubtful he’d have much luck. Especially if he was in a place where the entire interview was recorded, taking some of the more extreme options off the table.

The problem was that this guy wasn’t leaving them enough clues to get a handle on them. One of the things Taylor had come to learn about law enforcement was that the most useful tool in tracking down a criminal was the criminal’s own incompetence. Covering your tracks was hard and they always slipped up somewhere. Taylor would like to think his own prowess, and Whitaker’s, was why they had managed to close so many cases, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true.

Sure, they’d been good enough to recognize the mistakes and capitalize on them, but he couldn’t think of any cases where the perpetrator hadn’t screwed up. Even the case they’d done out in West Texas where the General had managed to keep his serial killings under the radar for years, eventually broke because the man overplayed his hand.

This was the first time he’d come across a case where he hadn’t been able to catch a whiff of the perp. Okay, he had figured out the guy worked out here before going to New Jersey. He might not have any evidence to that fact and Robles might still be skeptical, but Taylor was pretty sure he was right on that account.

Unfortunately, it was just as barren out here as it had been in the Garden State. Taylor spent the first hour of the drive staring at the ceiling of the borrowed SUV, trying to come up with any kind of plan B, before he gave up and pulled out his cell phone.

“Let me guess, you’re stuck?” Whitaker asked when she answered the phone.

“Maybe I just wanted to call and see how you are,” Taylor said, both annoyed she’d called him out and happy to hear her voice, even if it was mocking him.

In the last eight months he’d been forced to be separated from Whitaker twice now, and he hated it. Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, he’d found a strange thrill in experiencing her pregnancy with her, and he was really looking forward to meeting his kid. She was so close now, that she and the baby had been on his mind a lot, and he really did want to hear her voice.

Of course, she was also right and he needed her help, since she had a lot more experience in this area than he’d ever have.

“But since you bring it up,” he said, “I could bounce some ideas off you. You know if you’re bored and need something to do.”

She made a sound that others might confuse for a grunt, but that Taylor knew was her way of laughing when she thought something was amusing, but not hysterical. She tended to be fairly reserved, a quality that Taylor, who was himself often accused of being overly stoic, appreciated. They knew each other well enough to read what the other was actually feeling, in spite of their less than emotive expressions.

This was an old joke between them whenever one of them needed help on something, playing it off as doing a favor for the person by letting them help. Although Kara made sure to let them know that no one else found it funny.

“That’s nice of you. So, what happened out there.”

“Sadly, not a lot. We talked to the AUSA who handled the case I thought might involve the hitter, and everything he said seemed to match up with our guy, at least in the abstract, but there aren’t a lot of people that were involved with the family out here to question about it. They managed to make a tax case on the Randazzos and their family kind of fell apart after the boss went down. Most of them, including the head of the family, have been killed off in the remaining years. There’s one guy, who used to work for the family but bailed just before the AUSA started his case, who sounds like he might know enough to give us a name, but they said he refuses to talk about anything that happened with the Randazzos and the case that fell apart.”

“Which means you don’t think you’ll get much from him.”

“Right.”

“And you’d like me to do some digging and see if there’s anyone else who might have been connected that the people out there didn’t know about.”

“See, you read my mind. Honestly though, this is my last lead. I know the hitter worked out here for far longer than he’s worked for the Amatos. I find it impossible to believe that he didn’t leave any evidence. I’m flying blind out here.”

“I’ll see what I can turn up, but I’ve already been looking into it, and there isn’t a lot. The guy who handled the case was pretty thorough.”

“Yeah, he seemed okay.”

“Let me do some digging.”

“Thanks. We’re out here for the rest of the day, but if there’s nothing else, we’ve got to abandon this and get back to Jersey to see if we can get something to flip there.”

“You could just sit on Finney. All you really need to do is keep him alive until trial.”

“You’ve seen the records of this guy’s hits. I honestly am not sure we can keep him alive once he steps back out in public. I’m confident we have him hidden now, but next week he has to go to the courthouse for a deposition, and I’m worried he won’t make it back from there. This guy is that good.”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking at some of the deaths out in LA. Okay, call me when you finish with the guy you’re going to see, and I’ll let you know if I found anything.”

“Thanks, princess. How are you feeling?”

“Like someone’s dancing on my bladder while using my spine as a punching bag.”

“It won’t be long. A month or so and she’ll be here.”

“I know. I can’t wait to meet her, but I really wish this whole thing was just a little easier.”

“You’ll make it through. Speaking of kids, how’s Kara doing? Have you talked to her since she started the winter internship?”

“She’s doing good, although she made it clear she didn’t want me butting in or using my connections to interfere in any way.”

“She understands she got these two internships because you’re her mother, right?”

“I think she wants us to all pretend that isn’t true. You know how stubborn she is.”

“I really do. I also assume you’ve ignored her completely.”

“Of course. Actually, I think she might have been able to get the first one on her own, if she’d managed to get into the interviews. And this one she got all on her own. Her supervisor loved her so much over the summer that she locked up this spot before it even posted, and he told me he doesn’t regret the decision at all. He says they can’t seem to give her enough busy work to actually keep her busy, so they’ve let her go audit some of the training sessions a few times. Did you know she actually raised her hand and answered a question after they very clearly told her to be quiet and just listen.”

“She got it right, I bet.”

“She did. Honestly, everyone I’ve talked to there says she’s a dream intern and they want her keep bringing her back.”

“I had no doubt she’d excel.”

“Okay, this is going to take me some time. Go interview your guy and call me back when you’re done. I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thanks, Whitaker.”

“Just remember this the next time you decide to leave me at home,” she said, and hung up.

The description they’d been told of the prison being ‘near San Diego’ hadn’t been all that accurate. Walsh was being held at Centinela State Prison, a decently large prison closer to El Centro than San Diego. It was in the middle of open scrub desert with nothing in any direction for miles.

Even though they’d called ahead to let the administrators know they were coming and who they needed to talk to, they still had to go through all the hoops prisons always made law enforcement jump through before putting them in a room with a prisoner.

The first few times Taylor had been through this he’d gotten pretty annoyed, and had once even vowed to never interview someone in prison again, leaving it to Whitaker. Eventually, he’d gotten over it and now saw it as just one of those things bureaucracies liked to make its minions do. That, at least, made it feel familiar, since the Army loved nothing more than having its soldiers jump through hoops.

Finally, they were taken to a room with a glass window and a single metal table in the center. When they brought Walsh in, he looked older, or at least more worn, than Taylor had expected. He’d looked over Walsh’s file, which had indicated the man was in his mid-forties, but there hadn’t been a picture. He hadn’t expected this balding man with a scraggly bearded and deeply lined face. Just looking at him, Taylor would have guessed he was in his late fifties at best. Prison had been hard on him.

“What?” Walsh said when he sat across from Robles and Taylor at the metal table.

“We came to ask you about the Randazzos,” Taylor said

“Randazzo is dead. If that’s all you need,” he said, starting to stand up.

“Sit down, Mr. Walsh,” Robles said. “You’re the last person around who worked for the family while it was still going, and we need some information on the family’s operations. Anything you say will be covered by immunity and we’ve already discussed a possible decrease to your sentence with the AUSA, as well as more privileges while you’re still in here.”

“Man, it’s like you guys all have just one playbook and you all follow it to the letter. Sure. They’re all dead, so who cares if I spill it now. How long are you offering?”

“Five years off the twenty you have left if you give us actionable information.”

“Five years. That ain’t shit. I’ll still be damn near retirement age by then.”

“Are you really saying you’d rather be in here five more years than you have to?” Robles asked.

“Fine. Yeah. I guess. Just ask your questions so I can go back. It’s almost yard time.”

“Tell us about the hitter the family used?” Taylor asked.

“They used all kinds of guys. Any time someone needed to be taken care of, someone would volunteer or they’d just say ‘hey you, go take care of this guy.’”