Chapter 5
The alley where Michael had been shot was still cordoned off as a crime scene, but it was exposed to the elements. Carlee doubted she'd find anything there that the police had missed. She was slightly more hopeful about the warehouse, though. After all, the police hadn't had K.I.T.T.'s advanced scanners to scan the place.
By the time the police had arrived at the warehouse, it had been cleared out, all traces of the mob operation that had gone on there were erased.
Carlee pulled a flashlight out of K.I.T.T.'s glove box, and pulled her Glock free of its holster.
Getting out of the car, Carlee visually surveyed the alley. It ended in a dead end about twenty feet from where she was standing, and seemed to be more of a loading dock than an alley. Up against the wall of the other building, several trash bins overflowed with boxes and other detritus. The pavement where she was standing was stained and cracked. A few feet away, the stains were fresher, the red having faded into brown where Michael's blood had fallen and dried.
Carlee swallowed past the lump in her throat. "Keep your scanners peeled, K.I.T.T.," she said as she approached the access door.
"Carlee, please be careful. Some of the building materials must contain lead. I'm having a difficult time scanning. It appears to be deserted, though."
"I remember my training, K.I.T.T. I'll be okay," Carlee replied, as she tested the door knob. Locked.
"A little help, here?" Carlee asked.
K.I.T.T. focused on the lock mechanism.
There was a barely audible click, and the door swung inward.
The vast space inside was nearly black as pitch. This part of the building had no windows. Carlee switched on the flashlight and stepped inside. "I'm going to leave the door open, K.I.T.T. It'll make it easier to find my way back out."
Carlee swept the flashlight around the warehouse floor, wondering if there could possibly be anything worth finding down here. She thought her best bet lay in the warehouse offices.
She quickly walked to the front of the warehouse, located the stairs leading to the offices, and ascended.
The walkway looked out over the warehouse floor. There were four doors leading into four different offices. They each had a window in the door.
Carlee looked down into the warehouse. The open door was a beacon in the darkness. Out the door, she could see K.I.T.T.'s front fender and wheel. "I'm going to check the offices," Carlee said into the comm link, reassuring K.I.T.T. that she was okay. "Are you picking anything up, like a floor or wall safe?"
"I'm still having difficulties because of the lead, but there may be something in the second office. In the floor," K.I.T.T. replied.
"Okay, I'll check it in a minute. I'm going in the first office right now."
Carlee pushed the door open. She went in quick and low, checking to make sure she was alone, before taking a close look around. The room was deserted. Not even a chair remained. One corner of the room yielded a torn piece of paper stuck under the partition separating this office from the next.
She carefully pulled it free, and put it in her jacket pocket for close examination later.
She closed the door behind her, and moved on to the second office. Carlee repeated checking the room for occupants before checking for contents. This office was also devoid of furniture. There was nothing on the floor, either.
"K.I.T.T., I'm in the second office. Can you direct me to the floor safe?"
"Take a step to your left, now two forward. You're standing right over it."
"Thank you, K.I.T.T."
The floor was covered in worn linoleum tiles. Carlee got down on her hands and knees to inspect the ones she'd been standing on. At first glance, they appeared well adhered to the floor, but Carlee was able to use a pocket knife to lift up the corner of one. She pulled that one off, then three others, and set them aside.
Underneath them, there was a square of flooring with two small rings in the top. She grabbed the rings and lifted the piece out of the floor, revealing a combination locked floor safe.
"Okay, K.I.T.T. I need you to work your magic, again."
"It's hardly magic," K.I.T.T. said, as he set to work determining the combination. It took him a minute more than usual because of the interference from the lead.
The lock popped open, and Carlee pulled the lid off the safe.
Carlee let out a low whistle. "Well, it looks like someone didn't clean house very well. This safe is full. Mostly cash, but there are a few files, too." Carlee pulled the files, stuffing them into the front of her jacket.
"Carlee, I'm detecting three people heading toward the front door. Get out of there, now!" K.I.T.T. hissed through the comm link.
Carlee left the safe and hid beside the door, listening. She switched off the flashlight, and held her gun at the ready.
She heard a clang, then light flooded the building as another outside door was opened. This time one of the large cargo doors at the building's front. There were several shouts of alarm, when the new comers discovered the access door standing wide open, and saw the black T-top outside.
"Hey, that's Knight's car!" this voice rose an octave on the word Knight.
"That's eempossible! Ramon shot heem!" the voice said in a heavy Columbian accent.
"Well, it's here now, and that means someone's here with it, probably up in the offices. I'll make sure this one doesn't escape, either," said a third voice. Carlee had the suspicion that this might be Ramon.
"K.I.T.T.!" Carlee hissed into her comm link. "I need you in here. Position yourself under the walkway by the second office and open your top."
"Carlee, it's too dangerous! You can't jump down," K.I.T.T. responded.
"I'll be fine! Just get in here, or things are going to get very ugly, very fast!"
"It's not you I'm worried about," K.I.T.T. shot back, but his engine rumbled to life.
"Oh, worried about your own hide! And exactly how many times did Michael pull this kind of stunt?" Carlee snapped back.
K.I.T.T. didn't bother to respond, though. Instead, he came crashing through the cargo door the access door had been part of. He fish tailed around, coming to a stop exactly where Carlee had wanted him. His T-top open in invitation.
By now, the three men had begun to open fire on K.I.T.T.
Carlee used their distraction to her advantage. She covered the short distance from the door to the walkway railing in two strides, checked her position, and vaulted over the railing. She landed on the driver's side seat, and K.I.T.T. instantly closed the T-top.
K.I.T.T. shifted into gear, and with squealing tires, sped out of the warehouse.
"Thanks, K.I.T.T.!" Carlee breathed a sight of relief. "That was close!"
"Nearly too close," K.I.T.T. shot back.
Carlee chose to ignore him. Instead, pulling the files and the torn paper out of her jacket.
She inspected the torn piece of paper first. It had several red spots of directional spatter, and the first two letters of a word. She suspected she knew what the spatter was.
"K.I.T.T. analyze this for finger prints and blood," Carlee said, holding the paper out.
K.I.T.T.'s analyzer popped out, and she put the scrap in it. K.I.T.T. began running the scan.
Carlee turned her attention to the files.
On the outside, they seemed very ordinary. Manilla colored file folders. No markings to indicate what they contained.
"The analysis is complete," K.I.T.T. said. "The blood is Michael's. Possibly deposited when he sustained the head wound. There are three sets of prints on the paper. Yours, Michael's, and this man's," a photograph of a Latino man in his late thirty's appeared on the screen.
"His name is Hector Rodriguez. He's on Columbia's most wanted list as the head of the Juarez drug cartel. He disappeared from Columbia last year. The Columbian authorities alerted the DEA that he may have come here to set up shop."
"Get me in touch with the DEA agents working the case. I want to know everything they know." Carlee said, opening the first of the file folders.
Michael's face grinned up at her from a photograph. She flipped through several more. Someone had been following Michael for some time. There were even a couple of her and Michael, the one time he'd been able to slip away for a couple of hours to see her.
"They knew Michael was undercover nearly from the beginning," Carlee exclaimed in horror. She practically threw the folder onto the passenger seat.
She opened the other folder. "Delivery schedules. Oh, the DEA will love this, some of these haven't happened yet. We need to hurry though, they're scheduled within the hour. Plus, those guys from the warehouse are going to warn the delivery men that we got this file."
"I just got off the phone with the special agent in charge. They're on their way to meet us," K.I.T.T. said several minutes later.
They pulled into a mall parking lot a few minutes later. Just moments after that, Carlee was startled by a tap on the window. She closed the file she'd been reading and looked up to see a face and a badge held up to the window.
Carlee picked up the files, and the two printouts K.I.T.T. had made for her of Rodriguez and Ramon, and got out of the car.
"I'm Agent John Bradford, Mrs. Knight. I talked to Mr. Miles on the phone, and he verified your employment with F.L.A.G. We're glad to have the help. We've been looking for Hector Rodriguez for months."
Agent Bradford was nothing remarkable, as men went. He was a couple inches shorter than Carlee. She thought he was probably about her age. His brown hair was beginning to thin in places, though. He wore a charcoal gray business suit.
Carlee handed Agent Bradford the files, thinking to herself that there was something familiar about this man. She just couldn't place what, though.
That's when he pulled his gun on her.
"Hector will be quite pleased to have these back," his voice rose an octave as he finished the sentence. "Very carefully, pull your gun from it's holster and hand it to me!"
Carlee slowly did as she was instructed. Bradford took the weapon and shoved it in his waistband, then took a pair of handcuffs and cuffed Carlee's hands behind her back.
He then pulled her around to K.I.T.T.'s passenger side and shoved her roughly in.
While Bradford made his way to the driver side, Carlee quickly said, "Go with it, K.I.T.T.!"
Bradford got in, and took a quizzical look at the dashboard. He then shrugged and started the car.
K.I.T.T. allowed himself to be driven away. He just hoped Carlee knew what she was doing.
Carlee fumed at herself. She had been blind sided, just when she thought justice was in sight.
"Look, don't do something stupid," Carlee said, more for K.I.T.T.'s sake than for Bradford's sake. "You haven't killed anyone, yet. You can still get a deal. Help put Rodriguez and Ramon away for a very long time."
"I'm a plant in the agency. I'm Rodriguez's man. Knight, and you, never should have been poking your noses where they don't belong."
"When Hector's man killed my husband, it became my business!"
Carlee looked out the window, noticing they were headed out into the mountains surrounding L.A.