That slowed her down and she settled back into the soft leather seat. Across the street in the tow lot, we could see the four new Transit Authority, fifty-passenger buses parked next to the original 1974 Ford van, which was the first vehicle in the North Van Nuys Transit Company. The new buses, like the van, were all painted a fresh pale blue with NVNTA in fancy script on the sides. The rest of the place looked pretty much the way it had when I'd been here two weeks ago-like a rusting parts farm in a Third World country.
'What now,' Alexa said, impatiently.
'Let's take a slow drive around. Go down the alley in the back and see what we can see.'
'Why?'
'Because that's the way I do it,' I told her.
I put the car in gear and started slowly around the block with the headlights off. I turned left into the alley that ran behind the garage and drove at five miles an hour before pulling to a stop under a galvanized metal junction box that was affixed to the eaves of the roof.
'Shine your flash on that,' I told her.
Alexa hit the box with the beam of her police Mag-lite and I grabbed my binoculars off the seat and focused them up at the roof eaves.
'Video security,' I said, reading the name 'Land Mark' off the box through my magnified lenses. 'We've got to disable that unless you want infrared pictures of us at our trial for trespassing and illegal entry.'
'Good get,' she agreed reluctantly.
'Thank you.'
As I continued our slow roll down the alley, what I was really doing was trying to come up with a way to do this that wouldn't cost us our careers in the process. Then I spotted two huge, dark green Dumpsters parked behind the roll-up door in the back of the garage. I pulled the BMW to a stop half a block up the alley.
'Gonna check that out,' I said.
'What?' Excitement was shining on her face. 'You found a way to scuttle the security?'
'Gonna take a walk through those garbage cans,' I said, pointing at the Dumpsters. 'It's discarded trash, which means it isn't personal property anymore and is not subject to a search warrant. We can hunt around in the garbage all we want. Keep a lookout.'
I got out of the car and walked to the Dumpsters while Alexa stood ten yards away with her gun out. I grabbed the edge of the nearest one, threw open the lid, and looked inside. The first thing I saw was a ripped-out interior door panel in brown leather. I pulled it out and examined it. Something seemed familiar. My heart started racing. I vaulted up on top of the bin and dropped inside, landing on green metal.
SUV green.
'Holy shit,' I whispered.
'What?' Alexa's voice came through the dark.
'I think I just found Scout's Suburban.'
I checked the parts in the Dumpster and pulled them out one by one, holding them up to my flashlight. I needed to find the manufacturer's Vehicle Identification Number. I really wasn't too concerned about trying to find those. 06 slugs because they would probably trace back to some street gun, which wasn't going to get Tru out of jail. What I needed was to use this SUV to get enough probable cause to get a search warrant on Church's garage. I was hoping to find an airbag because I could easily trace a car with that installation number. After searching, I realized they weren't here. Church could get a few hundred for each one on the black market, so he'd probably already sold them. I finally found something in the second Dumpster. It weighed about forty pounds but I managed to lift it out and then dropped it at Alexa's feet.
'Present for m'lady,' I grinned over the lip of the Dumpster. 'Transmission housing.'
'And here I was hoping for pearls,' she quipped.
I climbed out and then shined my flash on the small stamped number on the broken housing.
'Write this down.' I read the VIN aloud then looked up at
Alexa and smiled. 'If this came off Scout's car, we can get a warrant on this place.'
'What a lucky bastard you are,' she said.
I got into the front seat of our car and took a card from my wallet.
'Who are you calling?'
'Yvonne Hope,' I said.
'Tru's old P. D.?' She was frowning. 'You sure she wasn't part of this to begin with?'
'Yeah.'
After ten rings it was picked up. 'This better be fucking great,' a sleepy voice said.
Chapter 46
'I can't wake up a city judge in the middle of the night over a stolen car,' Vonnie complained, after I told her what I wanted.
'Then we'll sit on this place until you can get here with a warrant. My crime scene is being chopped up one piece at a time.'
'This connects up to the Hickman case?'
'If you get me a broad enough warrant to search this whole garage it could,' I said.
She was quiet, pondering her options.
'This is your case,' I pushed. 'Hickman's your client. Why don't you stop hedging and go to work for your guy? Use this transmission part number to get me a warrant on this place.'
'Does anybody actually like you?' she asked.
'Does it matter?'
'I'd like to know where to send your fucking ashes.'
She slammed the phone down, but I knew she was onboard.
The sun came up at six-fifty-five. Alexa and I had reparked the car and were now sitting half a block from the Church of Destruction, sipping McDonald's coffee out of happy-looking red
Styrofoam cups. At nine-oh-six, Church arrived along with a dozen beefy guys who didn't know where to buy clothes that didn't have the sleeves ripped off. At nine-forty-five, inside the garage I heard the sound of saws screaming in tortured metallic harmony.
'They're back to ripping up the Suburban,' Alexa noted.
I tried Vonnie's cell phone for about the fiftieth time. Like all the other attempts, it went straight to voice mail.
I got out of the car and while Alexa watched the front of the garage, I went to the alley behind the building and stood behind a phone pole. Then, because everything in this case had to be a huge problem, at that very moment, along came a jumbo-sized garbage truck, preceded by a little shepherding forklift that scooped up the full Dumpsters parked along the alley and placed them on the front of the big truck to be tossed over the top into its giant bin.
As the forklift pulled up to the first of the Dumpsters behind the Church of Destruction, I hustled down the alley to intervene.
'Hang on,' I shouted to the driver.
'Huh?' the operator said, turning a blank stare at me.
I showed him my badge. 'LAPD. Please don't do that.'
'Huh?' What cave did they find this guy in?
'The contents of this bin are evidence in an ongoing case. Leave it.'
'Huh?'
I was wondering how I was going to get through to him when he solved our communication problem by removing his earplugs.
'Come again?' he said.
Before I could go through it once more, the huge elephant doors at the back of the garage started to open and Mike Church, along with a rough looking bunch of characters with grease up to their elbows, stood glaring out
