I sped throughout that twenty-minute drive, cars parting left and right in front of our wailing siren. I turned up the volume on the crackling two-way radio, hoping for another update, worried, because after that single reported sighting of Garza’s car, it hadn’t been seen again.

As I drove, two questions chased around inside my head.

Who had been driving Garza’s Mercedes?

Who had been stabbed to death on Garza’s floor?

I veered right into the departure lanes, Jacobi calling out the side window as he saw Sergeant Wayne Murray from the Airport Bureau waving us down outside terminal A.

Sergeant Murray climbed into the backseat. He directed us through a service entrance to the core of the terminal. From there, we followed on foot through unmarked doors and up back stairways to the squad room and the office of Lieutenant Frank Mendez.

Mendez was wiry, five foot nine, about my age, polite but busy. He stood to shake our hands, offered us chairs across from his desk.

Then he briefed us on the American Airlines triple 7 jet that had been grounded a hundred yards south of gate 12 for the past hour, doors sealed, takeoff denied.

“Dr. Garza’s name is on the passenger manifest,” he told us. “So is Ms. O’Mara’s. They’re on a flight to Miami, connecting to Rio. I don’t know how much longer we can keep that bird on the ground, though.”

Mendez pointed out the Mr. Coffee machine on top of his file cabinet; then he disappeared out of the office.

The phones on the lieutenant’s desk rang without pause. Just outside the office, banks of flickering video monitors showed grainy black-and-white images of passengers going through ticket checkpoints, scenes of luggage loading docks and carousels.

Uniforms and military units bustled around the room while Jacobi and I babysat the lieutenant’s fax machine, waiting for it to cough up the paperwork we needed.

I wondered if Garza and O’Mara believed that a maintenance crew was working on a small mechanical problem.

Were they sipping mimosas and reading the Financial Times?

I slugged down the dregs of my coffee, sunk the empty container into the trash can.

Jacobi coughed, buried his face in his hands, said, “Damn,” and coughed again.

At 6:05 p.m., the fax machine burped, and the DA’s letterhead chugged out of its works followed by the warrant we’d been waiting for.

As the last sheet ended its halting journey, Mendez returned. He took the pages out of the tray, read them.

“Okay,” he said with a smile. “Let’s rock and roll. We’re legal.”

Chapter 131

Chapter 131

MY PULSE RACED as sixteen of us put on oversized black Windbreakers with POLICE stenciled front and back. We all checked our weapons, then jogged down four steep flights of stairs to the garage.