CHAPTER 46
“Where the hell is Flan?”
No sooner do I say it than a soaking wet Ryan Flanagan steps through the door and into our conference room.
“Sorry, Kev. Had to bail Casey out of jail this morning.”
“Jail?” Jake says. “What the hell for?”
“She was riding around downtown Honolulu last night with some thugs in a stolen car.” Flan shakes it off. “But enough about her. How did it go in court yesterday?”
“We accomplished what we set out to with Mia Landow,” I tell him. “We’ve doubled-down on the motives of a few viable suspects. But there is still no physical evidence pointing at any of them, and our best prospect, Isaac Cassel, has a paper alibi.”
“And you exposed Trevor Simms for what he was, I assume?” Flan says as he takes a seat next to Jake.
I nod. “Thing is, putting the victim on trial in this case isn’t going to win it. Bottom line: there were eleven victims.”
“Can’t put ’em all on trial,” Jake says.
“That’s right. Which means, we lose unless we have someone reasonable to point to. What we need to do is pick a party and fill that empty seat.”
“What happened with Turi’s firebug?” Flan asks.
“Full confession from Corwin Pierce,” I say. “Four times, story didn’t change a bit.”
“Well, that’s great.”
“Hell it is,” Jake says.
“There are three problems with pointing at Corwin Pierce,” I tell Flan as the rain pounds against our floor-to-ceiling windows. “One, his story is too perfect, down to the last detail.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Flan says.
“His confession sounded rehearsed,” I say. “He recited it from memory like he did a poem he wrote, some crazy shit he made me listen to when I first got there.”
“So?”
“So he could have picked up those details from watching two hours of Marcy Faith. She has been blathering about this case on her prime-time national cable news show for six months now, revealing every scintilla of evidence—admissible or inadmissible—to the masses and speculating on precisely how the crime was committed.”
Jake shakes his head wearily. “One more thing the American system of justice has to thank brainless cowards like her and Gretchen Hurst for.”
“All right,” Flan says. “What else?”
“Two,” I tell him, “Corwin Pierce, this notorious fire-junky, this pyromaniac, this fucking crazier-than-hell sociopath, claims he was paid to take out Trevor Simms.”
“By who?”
“By whom,” I say.
“Fuck you. By whom?”
“By Javier Vargas.”
“The Angry Rooster?”
“The Angry Rooster.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Flan cries. “That’s motive.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Firebugs and motives don’t mix. Pyromaniacs like Corwin Pierce don’t set fires for money. They set fires to get off, to watch shit burn.”
“Instant gratification,” Jake adds. “See the flames, smell the smoke, then watch as the world spins into chaos all because of something you created. Sit back and listen for the alarms and sirens, watch for the fire engines, the flashing lights. It’s a rush. It would be an insult for someone like Pierce to be asked to do it for a couple hundred bucks.”
“Not to mention,” I add, “since when do violent-as-all-hell L.A. street gangs hire out their wet work to head cases like Corwin Pierce?”
Flan shrugs his shoulders, frustrated by the entire conversation. “Can’t this Corwin Pierce and Javier Vargas be exceptions?”
“Sure,” I say. “And we have no choice but to follow up on this lead. But here’s the third problem.” I lean back in my seat and painfully cross my right leg over my left. “Corwin Pierce knew every single detail about the fire—how it started, where it started, what happened to the lighter, all of it. Everything except for one thing, one crucial piece of information that even Marcy Faith can’t squawk about.”
“Which is?”
“He couldn’t tell me what the hell he did with the knife.”