A Tangled Web (19)

"We're treating this as a missing persons case."

That was everything that Rusty had gotten to hear. Then Lt. Provenza had spotted him, hunched at an empty desk in the corner, and frowned and said, "No."

"I –"

"You want to stay here, you go into that conference room and close the door," the lieutenant had instructed with finality. "Otherwise an officer can escort you home."

And Rusty would've protested further, but every moment that Lt. Provenza spent arguing with him was a moment that he didn't spend looking for Sharon. Right now, not getting in the way was literally the only thing that Rusty could do for her.

He went to the conference room.

Buzz had brought him a bagel about half hour later, and the boy had picked at it for a while before leaving it abandoned at the far end of the table. His anxious gaze remained fixed, through the glass walls, on the team. Fervent deals and promises ran on constant replay at the back of his mind.

Provenza drew the usual timeline on the murder board, the gesture he'd done a hundred times before now feeling slow, unnatural. "And from the Captain's phone call with Tao, we can place Erik Jensen in the parking garage, level C, at seven thirty-two p.m." He marked a point near the beginning of the line. "We can assume he entered the garage not too long before that..."

"Buzz and I are looking through the footage from all the cameras in the parking lot," said Sanchez, "but so far we haven't spotted the 2003 blue Honda Civic that's registered in his name."

"He might've arrived in someone else's vehicle," Sykes put in. "We do know that there might've been a third person in there with him and the Captain…"

Tao looked uncomfortable, at that; he'd done his best to reconstruct what had been said in that phone call, but the reception had been terrible, and if Captain Raydor had ever identified the third person, he hadn't heard it.

"We looked at all the cars going into the parking garage in the hour before the bomb went off," said Buzz, "enhancing the image to get a clear picture of the drivers. The camera angle doesn't really catch the passenger side, so we're running the license plates to see if any of the cars is registered to anyone connected to Erik Jensen."

Provenza nodded.

"Try to get the plate of the last car to go in," suggested Tao. "I heard the Captain trying to evacuate someone from the parking garage – if we can find whoever that was, they might be our best witness."

Buzz got straight on that, and Provenza picked up the timeline thread again. It was agonizingly slow, having to go through the motions the way they did with every other case, when all they wanted to do was run out there and look… but sticking to their methods right now was the best way to help.

He still second-guessed himself every step of the way.

"The bomb went off at seven thirty-seven p.m," he marked another 'x' on the timeline. "From what the bomb squad and SID discovered, it seems to have been composed of the same chemicals found in Donnell's locker a few days ago."

"It makes sense," said Tao, "those were the explosives that Erik Jensen had access to, through his lab. SID also found signs that a catalyst had been used…but even so, the blast didn't do as much damage as it could've done if placed inside the actual mall." He shook his head. "My guess is, Jensen was planning to transport the bomb inside the mall and place it near the foundation, in a position where the blast would've compounded with the unstable soil to catastrophic results."

Flynn exhaled angrily. "That psycho was trying to bring down the entire building."

"But he didn't," Provenza said quietly. "The bomb went off in the parking garage instead. Which wasn't what he'd planned."

There was a brief silence, as they all pondered just why the man's plans had been derailed. How the Captain had been involved. If she'd been involved. Why wouldn't she wait for back-up…?

"So the question is," the lieutenant resumed, "what did Jensen do after the explosion happened off schedule? Where did he go? Rescue crews didn't find anyone in the wreckage, so we know that he is, unfortunately, not dead," he reasoned. "That leaves him and Captain Raydor both unaccounted for."

"That son of a bitch took the Captain," growled Julio.

"Now," Provenza held up a warning finger, "we don't know that that's what happened. But until we find something better to go on, it's a reasonable assumption that their two disappearances are connected."

Slowly, he drew a line between Erik Jensen's name and the Sharon's on the murder board.

"I don't know what he was thinking, what do you people want from me?" Susan Crowley threw her hands up in frustration, shaking off her lawyer's calming hand on her arm. "Of course I had no idea that Erik wanted to blow up my mall, you think I wouldn't have turned him over to the police myself, if I'd known?"

Across the interview table, Flynn was more than willing to return the temper. "I don't know, you don't seem to care so much about the safety of your shoppers," he retorted. "Or else you wouldn't have built the place on bad soil!"

"Hey! That building is perfectly sa –"

"That building," he cut her off, "is falling apart at the seams as we speak – and the only reason it's still standing at all, is because your psycho ex-husband didn't manage to get his bomb where he wanted it!"

"And how is that my fault?" Her tone was shrill.

"You wanna know what's your fault?" Andy leaned forward menacingly. "How about making a scandal when we searched the place for bombs on Monday? How about refusing to shut it down when we called to express concerns about your shoppers' safety yesterday? How about failing to cooperate now! From where I'm standing," he threatened, "that is all your fault, and unless you want me to find a DA who's gonna argue so in front of a judge, you better start answering my questions!"

"Lieutenant, please…" The lawyer looked somewhere between worried and scandalized, glancing from Flynn to Provenza and back again. "My client came here of her own volition, to –"

"You client," railed Andy, "should've cooperated with us earlier, and maybe none of this would've happened! So unless she wants to be held responsible –"

Watching the interview from electronics, Buzz glanced up a little worriedly at the Assistant Chief next to him. Lt. Flynn was lighting into the woman, and the last thing they needed was Chief Taylor reprimanding him or trying to pull him off the case, or…

Noticing the younger man's look, Taylor sighed. "Whatever gets results, at the moment," he said quietly.

And Flynn's anger was getting results – on the screens they could see Susan Crowley's frustrating superiority deflate under his barrage, until, at a quiet prompt for her lawyer, she let her shoulders slump and resigned herself to answering the two lieutenants' questions.

" – don't know where Erik is, okay? He… I don't know, when he was working on that irrigation project, he used to hang out in this weird little bunker near the river…uhm, on East 6th Street…he showed it to me once but I don't remember exactly…"

Andy scowled; she was describing the 'control room' that he and Provenza had found earlier – but SID was already on the site, and Jensen was definitely not there. "We've got officers covering that," he told the woman. "What else?"

"I don't know! Hey – I don't, look, I'm cooperating but I have no idea where he'd have gone! This whole… thing," Susan Crowley looked exasperated, "planting a bomb, kidnapping a police officer – that's completely out of character for him! He was always a little weird, yeah, and – and resentful, especially after that project got pulled, but…" She shrugged, "Erik's the passive-aggressive type, you know? Quiet, boring… whatever. Always obsessing over some thing or other – like that stupid project? Oh my god, he'd go on about it for hours, like it was the next trip to the moon or something! And then when it got canceled? Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "I couldn't hear the end of it. That's when I filed for divorce. I was tired of all the pointless whining –"

"We don't care," Flynn cut her off, "why you divorced the dirtbag. Do you have any other ideas of where he could've gone? Where he would've taken Captain Raydor?"

"I have no clue!" She held out both hands. "I haven't talked to Erik in… I don't know, a year! More, maybe. I don't give a damn where he spends his time, as long as it's away from me."

"Yeah? You better start giving a damn now," Andy warned. "Think harder!"

The businesswoman groaned in frustration.

Amy put her phone back on her desk. "We've got cars at Jensen's house and his workplace, but he hasn't been back to either yet," she updated. "I also talked to his lab manager, who says that Jensen hasn't checked in since Friday morning. I've got officers searching the campus, too, just in case."

Tao looked up from his computer screen. "Phone records are a bust, too. Checked the last two months, and there's almost nothing on there – couple of calls to Jensen's cell from his family, several to and from his lab, all work related…" he shook his head, "a couple from his landlord...but I can't find any evidence of contact with James Donnell at all."

"Maybe they only talked in person," Amy suggested, yet the lieutenant looked doubtful:

"It's possible," he admitted, "but I think more likely they called each other from their workphones – which makes it near-impossible to trace, because university calls all go through a central system." He looked frustrated. "So other than the fact that Jensen and Donnell were in staff orientation together, and a lot of circumstantial evidence… we can't actually prove that there was a connection between them. "

"But we can." Provenza hung up his own phone, and turned to the rest of them. "SID finished processing the inside of that control room. Jensen and Donnell's prints were all over the place. Along with evidence of a struggle and," his eyebrows arched, "the remains of a container that tested positive for – of all things – our tree frog toxin. I don't think we need to worry about proving their connection," he finished dryly.

For a few seconds, no one said anything, as they all worked to process the new information. So Jensen and Donnell had worked together. Maybe even had a disagreement near the end. But…

Tao shook his head again. "That still doesn't help us find the Captain."

The older lieutenant passed a hand through his hair; Mike was right – it didn't. They kept putting together the pieces of what had happened too far back in the past, when what they needed to know was what had happened in that damn parking garage!

His eyes slid to the clock. Eleven a.m.. It had already been over fifteen hours…

Flynn marched in, a stormy look on his face and a couple of notepad pages in his hands. "These are all the friends that Susan Crowley could remember, and a list of all the places her dirtbag ex could've gone." He exhaled angrily. "That asshole would've blown up a whole building because of her and she doesn't give a damn – she's not even sorry…!"

Provenza gave a quiet, understanding nod. Taking the list, he passed it to Sykes, with a signal to get all the names and places checked out.

"Do we have anything else?" asked Andy.

His partner's answer was a grim look, and then they both glanced involuntarily at the murder board, where a thick black line was drawn between Jensen's name and the Captain's.

"Nothing yet."

They hadn't put her picture up there. None of them needed to see it to know what was at stake. Her name was incentive enough; each time Provenza glanced at it, his stomach started to hurt.

He'd made sure to make the heading 'Missing', not 'Victim'.

For now.

Damn it.

"Sanchez – did you find out when Jensen got into that parking garage, yet?"

The detective looked as frustrated as the rest of them. "None of the cars in the video belong to him or anyone connected to him! I ran license plates for the last twenty cars that drove in, and contacted the owners and no knows anything. No one saw anything!" He was taking it personally.

"Alright," Provenza tempered. "Alright." He thought about it for a few more seconds. "The Captain must've seen something she recognized in that parking lot. She wouldn't have known this guy's car, so what did she see?"

"Maybe she saw Jensen himself," Tao suggested; then he changed his mind, "although, we didn't have his photo up on the board yesterday, so I'm not sure she'd have recognized him..."

"Maybe she just saw the bomb, in the garage…?" offered Amy.

Standing against his desk, Andy frowned; something about her phrasing felt vaguely familiar.

"She said that Jensen, and possibly someone else, was there," Provenza was pointing out, "so she must've seen more than just the bomb. There's a connection here, people, that the Captain made and we're missi –"

Andy's eyes widened. "Son of a – the garage…!"

"What?"

Flynn spoke agitatedly: "It's how Donnell was gonna transport the bomb in the first place, last week! He asked his idiot buddy to get a delivery van from work! We saw it in Danny Murray's garage when we searched his house!" Understanding dawned on his face. "That's why we couldn't see it on the cameras – son of a…" With another muttered swear, he took off for the interview room again.

In the wake of his abrupt departure, Sykes turned a confused look on the rest of them: "I'm ... not sure I got all that."

Sighing, Provenza hurried after his partner.

Andy flung the interview room door open, interrupting Susan Crowley and her lawyer. The latter immediately straightened his shoulders:

"Listen, lieutenant, my client has cooperated to the fullest –"

"Does the mall parking garage have a separate entrance for delivery trucks? Does it?!" He snapped when the woman took more than a millisecond to respond.

"I'm not sure! Okay? Yeah… I think so." She looked scandalized at his tone. "Jesus. There's an entrance on the far side, opens into a back alley… but we don't have any cameras there, I don't think." She frowned, suspicious. "Why?"

Two more hours passed, agitated, tense. The morning melted into afternoon, and the atmosphere in the murder room grew more incensed by the minute.

"I've requested traffic cam footage from all major intersections within a one mile radius of 'Sun Plaza'." Lt. Tao pinned two grainy photos on the murder board. "This was taken at the corner of Atlantic and East Compton – a few minutes from the mall – at seven-twelve p.m. last night."

One of the photos showed a white minivan waiting at a red light; the second photo was a blown-up version of the first, focusing on the logo on the side of the van.

"That's it. That's the name of the store Murray works at." Flynn stared at the image, rubbing a hand to his chin. "Damn it, we were gonna look for this guy yesterday! Patrol couldn't find him…" Why hadn't they made the connection faster?

"Is there any evidence placing this young man at the actual mall?" Taylor had joined them shortly before, having finished his part in keeping the incident more or less out of the press.

"Evidence? What more evidence do you want? This idiot told us that Donnell had asked him to transport the bomb!" Andy shook his head, angry. "He must've known Erik Jensen, too."

"Diego Rojas," the Chief said patiently, "just told us that Donnell hadn't introduced them –"

"He said Donnell hadn't introduced him," Flynn corrected, "and that's if he's not lying...!"

Taylor's lips pursed in annoyance.

"We already knew that Murray and Donnell were closer friends," Provenza cut in before the disagreement could escalate – the last thing they needed was for his idiot partner to get into it with Taylor. "And they'd known each other longer. Donnell had told him about Jensen offering him a research assistant job," he added, "so it's entirely possible that at some point the two might've met, too."

"And now they've gone missing together," said Julio. "Just like with Jensen, there's no sign of Danny Murray anywhere. He hasn't been home since yesterday, and no one at work knows where he is or what he did with the minivan."

"His cell phone's off, too," Mike added, "I can't get a location that way."

Flynn let out a frustrated breath.

"We're circulating his and Jensen's photos to every local law enforcement agency," Provenza said quietly, "and the description of their vehicles is out on the highway advisory system. We'll find them."

"They've got a twelve-hour head start on us! They could be halfway across Nevada by now, or Arizona, or – hell, Mexico! How the hell would they have just disappeared into thin air?"

"We'll find them, Flynn," the older lieutenant reiterated.

"I've got something!" Sykes turned around in her seat, hanging up the phone. "Patrol officers who were checking Murray's mother's house just reported in."

Andy was already reaching for his jacket. "He's there?"

"No – but his mother says that he was there." Her eyebrows arched. "This morning."

"I can't believe this." Andy was looking over the statement from Danny Murray's mother, feeling his frustration grow with every word. "This statement doesn't say anything useful, how the hell did his mom not ask Murray what he was doing? Why he was there?"

Sykes grimaced. "She seemed a little… out of it. Apparently she's on all sorts of anti-anxiety meds and…not that present."

"Like mother, like son," muttered Provenza. "What did she say?"

"Only that he woke her up around nine or so. He'd let himself in and was going through the fridge. She doesn't really remember what they talked about." Amy sighed. "She didn't notice if he was driving the minivan."

"Did she ask where he was going? What he'd been up to?"

The detective shook her head. "Says she went back to bed to watch some morning cooking show on CBS..."

Flynn breathed out. "Un -freakin' - believable. This guy's face is plastered over every police station in the county," he railed, "and he just walks in and out of his mom's house in broad daylight and we miss him! And we have no idea what he was doing or where he went!"

"There's one more thing." Amy cleared her throat, a little hesitant. "Before he left, Danny went through his mom's medicine cabinet. And he asked her if she had a first-aid kit."

The shift in atmosphere was subtle but impossible to miss.

Julio's jaw clenched. "And she didn't think to ask him why? She didn't think that was weird?"

She looked almost apologetic. "No."

Nobody said anything for a long moment. A first-aid kit… and it could've been for Danny himself, yes, or it could've been for Jensen, but… it didn't look good.

"Mike - we've got all local hospitals and clinics on alert," Provenza asked quietly, "right?"

"We do. So far, no one's reported anything..."

It was hard to feel much relief, at that. No news, in cases like this, were far from good news.

"Post a squad car at Mrs. Murray's house," Provenza spoke again, eventually, "in case Danny goes back. Tell them to stay out of sight, follow him if he does show up. Call us immediately." Once Amy nodded and began to dial her phone, he turned to Sanchez. "Where are we on that list of Jensen's friends?"

"Sykes and I called most of them," said Julio. "No one's seen him. I've sent patrol cars to all the possible locations that Susan Crowley gave us, but they're all coming up empty." He sounded as though it was his personal failure that the man hadn't turned up yet.

Damn it.

Flynn's phone went off, and he walked toward one of the windows before picking up. "Flynn."

"Keep going through the list," Provenza told Sanchez. Until they hit another lead, methodical search was all they had. "When you're done, I want you to..."

Unfamiliar footsteps in the doorway caused him to trail off and turn his head. He let out a displeased breath, "Whatever it is, it'll wait," he told the newcomer, then turned back to Julio. "I want you and Sykes to make another run through Jensen's house. See if we missed something this morning."

"Yes, Sir."

The lieutenant nodded, then turned his attention back to the files on his desk; after a second, he shot another cautionary look toward the doorway. "Believe me when I say that now isn't the time to push your luck, young man."

"No – lieutenant…" Officer Cooper took another couple of steps in. "I'm here to help. The Chief put out the call this morning, said 'all available resources'. You need people on the ground looking." He tugged on the hem of his uniform. "I know you've already got other officers volunteering. And I – I admire Captain Raydor. I want to help."

Provenza gave him a brief, thoughtful once-over.

"Buzz," he called quietly. "Are you still browsing through that camera footage?"

At the desk next to Julio's, the blond nodded, his expression discouraged. "I'm sorry, there's a lot to look at... I haven't spotted the minivan again, either in the parking lot or at any of the neighboring intersections..."

Provenza motioned Cooper to Buzz's desk. "Take a break," he told the civilian.

"What...?" Buzz looked almost offended. "It's okay, lieutenant, I can do this."

Wordlessly, Provenza nodded toward the conference room. Through the glass walls, they could see Rusty sitting at the table, his head in hands. He hadn't moved from that spot in a couple of hours at least.

"Take a break," the lieutenant said again, meaningfully.

Buzz's expression turned regretful, and he pushed his chair back. "Do you know how to work this?" he asked Cooper, waving toward the program that scrolled through the traffic cam footage.

"Uh ... yeah, sure." The young man nodded. "I've got it. Don't worry."

"Don't break anything," Buzz warned him.

Then, with a sigh, he glanced toward the conference room again, and began to make his way over.

"Tell him..." Provenza trailed off, his mouth half-open as he tried to find good words. Was there anything good enough...? Finally he just shook his head, "Tell him she's alive," he said. "And we're going to find her."

Ten minutes later, the phone rang.

"Goddamn press," muttered Andy, as Sykes moved to pick up. "I thought Taylor was taking care of that. How the hell do they know what happened?"

"They don't," Provenza pointed out. "That's why they keep circling. For now, the official story is an electrical failure at that garage. No victims."

Julio frowned. "Sir...If we can't find Jensen and Murray, wouldn't it be useful to give their pictures to the press? Have the public help us search?"

Provenza thought about it for a moment. "Not until we have more information on what actually happened," he said. "Once we go public with this, we can't take it back... and I have a feeling that we'll have better luck finding Mr. Jensen if we don't advertise that we're looking for him. It's–"

"Oh my god."

The room fell silent at Amy's words. As everyone's attention turned to her, the detective glanced up, uncertainty in her eyes.

"Traffic just got a call about a vehicle matching the description of Murray's delivery minivan. It was run off the road on San Fernando, highway patrol spotted it when it caught fire...It's..." She swallowed, cleared her throat. "There's a dead body."

I know, I know... In my defense, several of you *have* expressed support for my evil ways.

Thank you all for reading :) Uhm, on your way out, please don't forget to pick up your complimentary bottle of antacids!