PIKE TIED her wrists with an extension cord. I put her cell phones in a paper grocery bag I found in the kitchen, but we left everything else as we found it. Marx would want the scene as undisturbed as possible for his detectives and criminalists. It was Marx’s play and I should have left it to him, but didn’t.
When Pike brought Jonna out to his Jeep, I called Bastilla. The only number I had was her cell, but she didn’t answer. She was probably still angry, but she might have been working. Either way, I was glad she didn’t answer. I left a message.
“Ivy Casik’s real name is Jonna Hill. She is Yvonne Bennett’s half sister. Call Pike. She’ll be with him.”
I left Pike’s number, then locked Jonna’s house and joined them at the Jeep. I gave him the keys.
“The police will need these. I left word for Bastilla and gave her your number. They’ll be calling.”
Pike was going to hold Jonna and her mother at a safe location until we reached Marx.
Pike said, “You sure you don’t want me along?”
“I’m good. I’ll see you in a bit.”
I watched them drive away, then glanced at Jonna’s house. I studied it for a while, then considered the sky. The canopy overhead was empty of clouds or birds. I wanted something to be there, but the sky was a milky blue desert. I slipped into my car, studied the cell number Alan Levy had given to me, but I didn’t want to speak to him over the phone. I called his office instead.
“Hi, Jacob. Is Alan there?”
“I’m sorry, no. Did he ever get back to you? I gave him your messages.”
“Yeah, we spoke, but I need to find him again. He isn’t in court, is he?”
“Oh, no. He cleared his calendar when all this started about Mr. Byrd. He hasn’t been in for days.”
“Ah, okay.”
“I could page him again.”
“No need. Listen, is he working at home?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Cole. You know Alan. He might be writing a brief or doing research. He’s hard to keep up with when he gets like this.”
I hung up, then called a real estate agent I know who has access to the property tax rolls. Six minutes later I had Alan Levy’s home address and was heading toward Santa Monica. It was afternoon when I arrived. I shouldn’t have gone, but I did. I should have waited for the police, but I didn’t.
The address brought me to a large two-story Cape Cod home three blocks from the beach in a lovely residential area. It was a family neighborhood with curbed sidewalks, kids on skateboards, and a hybrid in every drive, but it was also near the beach in Santa Monica, which meant the families were rich. I parked across the street. Two kids roared past on skateboards and a woman who was probably someone’s housekeeper stood on a nearby corner. Gardeners worked at several of the houses, but the Levy residence was still. A gate across the drive hid the garage, so I couldn’t see if Alan’s car was at home or not. This time of the summer his kids would be out of school, but I couldn’t tell if anyone was home. Maybe they were away at camp, but maybe they were splashing and grab-assing in their pool, and Alan was splashing with them. Or maybe he was crouched inside the house, watching the street through a gap in the shades.
I took my gun from beneath the seat, wedged it under my shirt, then strolled up the sidewalk. My phone vibrated as I reached the curb, but it was Bastilla. I ignored her.
The front door was large and heavy as a coffin lid. I knocked politely, then rang the bell. No one came, so I climbed over the driveway gate into a spacious backyard featuring a beautiful pool with used-brick decking and a lovely rose garden. No kids were splashing. Levy’s family wasn’t enjoying the breathtaking summer day. A single leaf floated in the pool. The water was so clean it might have been floating on air.
I walked along the back of the house, rapping on glass sliders and French doors, but nothing and no one moved.
“Hey, Alan, it’s Elvis Cole. Anyone home?”
Not even a housekeeper.
I went to the garage. The garage door was down and the side door was locked. I didn’t want to waste time picking the lock, so I returned to the French doors. I broke a pane, reached inside, and let myself in. I should have been holding my gun, but I put it away. I didn’t want to scare his children. They might be inside, sleeping. Maybe all of them were sleeping.
“Is anyone here?”
I stood just inside the door, listening, but the house remained quiet. I called out still louder.
“Mrs. Levy? I work with Alan. Jacob told me he might be home.”
My voice echoed as if their home was a cave. No magazines or DVDs littered the coffee table; no toys or video games cluttered the floor. The rooms were large and beautifully furnished, but lifeless in a way that made my scalp prickle.
“Hello?”
I crossed through the family room into the living room, then crept through a formal dining room as cold as a mausoleum. The table was lovely, the chairs lining its sides perfectly placed as if they had not been moved in years.
The dining room led into the kitchen, then the pantry. You have kids, you have food, but there was no cereal, no Pop-Tarts, no snack bars. The shelves were lined with cans of Dinty Moore beef stew. Only the stew. Empty vodka bottles lined the floor. The cans and bottles had been placed in perfect rows with their labels out, each label perfectly aligned. My underarms grew damp as I backed out of the pantry.
The refrigerator was loaded with take-out containers, soft drinks, and more vodka, but no juice or milk, no peanut butter or eggs. I took out my gun and held it along my leg, but knew I wasn’t going to find anyone. Not Alan or anyone else. Not anyone alive.
My cell phone hummed again, as loud as a swarm of wasps. I didn’t check. I muffled it with my hand, trying to hear past the swarm into the hidden reaches of the house. My breath grew shallow, and I wanted to crash through the door or dive out the window. I wanted to get out of this terrible house and into the light like a boy running from bees, but I didn’t.
I trotted the length of the house. I had moved quietly before, but now I moved faster, hitting each door with the gun up and ready. I checked the master bedroom, then Alan’s home office, where the walls bristled with citations and plaques. I jerked open doors, checked closets and bathrooms, then ran up the stairs three at a time. I was terrified by what I expected to find, but pushed harder to find it.
The children’s bedrooms were on the second floor-everything perfect and neat, but somehow even more frightening than the rest of the house. Posters of fading celebrities and forgotten bands decorated their walls. Computers several generations behind the current models sat on their desks. The toothbrushes in their bathroom hadn’t been used in years.
I almost fell as I ran down the stairs, racing back to the master bedroom. The master bath told the same story. The men’s products had been recently used, but the women’s products were dry and out-of-date, and no soiled female garments were waiting to be cleaned.
My heart punched hard in my chest as the silence roared like the ocean. It roared even louder as I ran. I ran back through the house and out the French doors and all the way back to my car. It roared until I realized my cell phone was vibrating again. Bastilla was trying again. This time I answered.
JONNA HILL sat in a pleasant beige room in the Mission Area Police Station at the top of the San Fernando Valley. She was as far from the eyes and ears downtown as Marx could hide her. It was a comfortable room with patterned wallpaper, where rape and abuse victims were interviewed. The feminine surroundings supposedly made it easier for victims to talk. We were watching her through a two-way mirror. She was alone now, toying with the cap from a water bottle. Jonna knew we were watching. Bastilla and Munson had spent almost two hours questioning her, but the pleasant surroundings hadn’t helped. Jonna admitted nothing and refused to implicate Levy.
Munson rubbed his eyes, then leaned against the wall, frowning at me.
“Are you sure it was Levy?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it only sounded like Levy.”
I said, “It was Levy, Munson. I know Levy’s voice.”
Our side of the glass didn’t have patterned wallpaper or comforting decor. The observation room was battleship-grey with a work desk butting the glass, metal chairs, and recording equipment. Pike and I stayed with Munson when Bastilla left to pick up the original death album pictures. Marx was in and out, phoning his contacts at Barshop, Barshop. They were doing everything themselves in order to stay under the radar.
Marx returned a few minutes later, holding his cell phone as if it were hot. He glanced at Munson as he entered.
“She open up?”
“She’s tough, man. Nothing.”
Pike said, “She believes him.”
Munson rolled his eyes.
“Oh, please, Pike. She’s crazy.”
I said, “She might be crazy, but she believes Levy helped her punish the man who murdered her sister. She thinks they’re on the same side.”
Yvonne Bennett’s police record and files were spread across the worktable. The psychiatric evaluation ordered at the time of her first arrest described a pattern of sexual abuse by the men her mother brought home. If those men had felt free to abuse Yvonne, they had probably tried to abuse her younger sister. I wondered if Yvonne had protected Jonna by offering herself to them. I stared at the broken heart on Jonna’s forearm and thought it might be true.
She was always bad, and her bad ways caught up. Wasn’t no better than a cat in heat from when she was little. I wouldn’t even keep her picture up there if it wasn’t for Jonna. She gets mad when I put it away.
Munson didn’t buy it.
“Well, it would be nice if she said something for the record. I still don’t believe it. Wilts is our guy.”
Marx jiggled the cell phone as if he was nervous, then crossed his arms.
“Maybe not. On or about the time Frostokovich was murdered, a partner at Barshop was raising money for Wilts’s campaign. That’s one. The hooker party Wilts threw a few years later was also attended by a couple of Barshop partners. The man I spoke with believes Levy attended. That’s two. So it looks like Levy had access to these women through his firm.”
I said, “Was Levy at the dinner for Wilts when Repko was murdered?”
“Someone is looking into it. He’s going to call back.”
Munson threw up his hands. The room was so small he almost hit Pike.
“So what the hell? Were we wrong about Wilts or is he still a suspect?”
“We’ll know when she talks.”
“Jesus. Could Levy be acting as an agent for Wilts?”
I shook my head.
“You don’t share something like this. You do it yourself. If the pictures came from Levy, then Levy took the pictures.”
Marx looked at Jonna, still spinning the cap.
“What’s the last contact you had with him?”
“We spoke earlier this afternoon. He was pushing me to find her.”
“Okay. Before that?”
“Yesterday. He came to my house. He was feeling me out about what you guys were doing and asking about the girl.”
Munson grunted.
“Using you.”
“Yeah, Munson, how about that?”
“I wasn’t criticizing.”
I turned back to Marx.
“My guess, he’s looking to kill her. She hasn’t been returning his calls, so she’s probably thinking the same thing. That’s probably why she went back to Sylmar.”
Munson sighed.
“We should bag this guy, Tommy. Let’s get him off the street.”
“How? He could be halfway to China by now.”
Pike shifted in the corner.
“No. He wants her. She’s the loose end.”
Marx didn’t look convinced.
“If we make a play for him before she talks, all we’ll do is warn him. We don’t have anything. Even if this girl tells us everything she knows, unless she has something hard, it’s her word against his. You know what Alan Levy would do with that.”
Munson crossed his arms, looking sullen.
“He’ll say she’s harassing him because he defended the man who murdered her sister.”
“That’s it.”
“That could be what we’re looking at, anyway. We have her for forty-eight hours, then we arraign her or cut her loose. Either way, that’s when Levy gets the word. We pick him up now, at least we catch him off guard.”
“Pick him up where? He’s not at the office. Cole says he isn’t home. You think he’s going to come in, we call him and ask?”
“Have Barshop, Barshop call him. Maybe someone at the firm.”
Pike said, “He’ll read it. He’ll walk away from the phone, and you’ll never see him again.”
I was watching Jonna. On the other side of the glass, she was spinning the cap. The water bottle was empty, which meant pretty soon she would have to pee, but for now she spun the cap. I was watching the cap when she looked up as if she had felt the pressure of my gaze. She smiled as if she saw me, and I smiled back.
I said, “Levy thinks I’m looking for her. He wants me to find her and he’s hoping I’ll call. Let me call him.”
“Where does that get us?”
“I can tell him I found her. I tell him where she is, he’s going to show up.”
“So we bag him. We still don’t have a case.”
“If she cooperated, we might be able to get him to incriminate himself. We get him on tape, you’ll have the case.”
Munson laughed, and swung his hands again. Pike stepped to the side.
“Wake up, Cole. Look at her. That girl is cold.”
“Right now, she believes Byrd killed her sister. If we convince her it was Levy, she might change her mind.”
Marx considered me for a moment, then looked at Jonna. She spun the cap. It skittered across the table, then arced into space.
Marx turned back to me.
“Let’s figure this out.”
I WAITED alone outside the interview room, sipping a thirty-five-cent cup of coffee I bought from a machine at the end of the hall. The coffee was bitter and so hot it blistered my tongue. I drank it anyway. The pain was a pleasant distraction.
Coins clattered into the machine and drew my attention. Marx fed in the money, then noticed me while he waited for the cup to fill. When he had the coffee, he walked over. He took a sip, then made a face.
“This is terrible.”
“Pretty bad.”
“I don’t understand it. We have a machine at Central, makes the best cup of coffee in the world. Same machine, same thirty-five cents, that one’s great, this is awful.”
He had more of the coffee anyway. Like me, maybe he needed the distraction.
“We’re on his house. No sign of him, like you said, but the boys are watching. We’ll keep her mother at Foothill Station for the night, then we’ll have to put her up somewhere, a motel, I guess. We’ll get the bastard.”
He was just talking, but part of me needed it. Maybe he sensed why I was boiling my tongue. Marx suddenly lowered his voice.
“You weren’t the only one. Imagine how all those hotshots at Barshop, Barshop are going to feel.”
I laughed at his joke, and Marx’s big face split into a grin. I had never seen him smile before and would have bet the two of us would never share a laugh.
I said, “You know what gets me the worst?”
“I can guess.”
“Levy made me part of his play. Like his accomplice.”
“You want to look at it that way, so was the judge, Crimmens, and everyone else, but that’s bullshit. You were doing your jobs. Levy saw his opportunity and took it. This is one smart sonofabitch we’re dealing with here. I’ll bet you he’s been planning this from the moment he heard someone was busted for Yvonne Bennett’s murder.”
“I hope we get the chance to ask him.”
Marx was probably right. Yvonne Bennett was the fifth victim. Alan Levy had committed murder four prior times under circumstances where no arrests had been made, no one was charged, and where he was not a suspect. He must have have been pleased with himself. He almost certainly searched for news of the murders he committed, and probably made discreet inquiries from time to time as to the status of the various investigations. It made perfect sense-as a prominent defense attorney, Levy had contacts throughout the system. He was probably surprised when he learned someone named Lionel Byrd had been arrested. I wondered if he was amused someone else had taken the pop or pissed off because someone else was getting the credit. Maybe I would get a chance to ask him this, too. He probably first realized Lionel Byrd would make the perfect get-out-of-jail-free card when he examined Byrd’s history and the shabby case Crimmens had filed. Once freed, Byrd would remain a suspected murderer-the man who had been charged with killing Yvonne Bennett and a potential ace up Alan Levy’s sleeve. After all, if Byrd could be suspected once, he could be suspected again.
I was probably the extra added attraction, brought on because it made sense and looked right.
Marx said, “What are you smiling about?”
“I was wondering what Levy would have done if I had found out the truth when I was working on Bennett.”
“He would have killed you. He probably had that part of it figured out, too.”
I nodded, thinking if it had broken that way three years ago, both Lupe Escondido and Debra Repko would still be alive. Or maybe I would be dead.
Marx said, “It was the bomb tech, wasn’t it?”
He was staring at me.
“What bomb tech? You mean Starkey?”
“Yeah. It was her helping you, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Starkey didn’t help me. Neither did Poitras. I had some inside help, yes, but not them.”
“Starkey was pissed off we cut her out, so she helped you. I hear things, Cole. Just like you.”
“Think what you want, but Starkey didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Marx started to say something more when his cell phone rang. He checked the incoming number, then raised a silencing finger.
“My guy at Barshop-”
Their conversation lasted less than a minute, then Marx put away his phone. He appeared pale in the harsh fluorescent light.
“Was Levy at the dinner?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t expected, but he showed up early. Wasn’t there more than fifteen or twenty minutes, then left before it got started. He appeared agitated.”
“He wanted to see Debra.”
“That’s three for three, Cole. This thing is coming together.”
Levy had probably been working himself up to kill her, but only Levy could tell us that now. Why had he chosen Debra Repko, and why all the others? What had compelled him to murder her that night, three months ahead of his typical schedule, when he had been so very careful in the past? I wanted to know. The case against Levy might be coming together, but only if Jonna Hill went along.
Bastilla came around the corner with the pictures she had been preparing. Pike and Munson would be watching from the observation room.
Bastilla seemed taken aback when she saw Marx and me together, but then she focused on Marx.
“Ready when you are, Chief.”
“Let’s do it.”
Bastilla stepped into the interview room. Marx started after her, then hesitated and turned back to me.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t back off, Cole.”
“Thanks, Chief. Me, too.”
“Or Starkey. Tell her I said that.”
I nodded, and Marx pushed into the room.
JONNA LEANED back when we entered, and laced her fingers. She seemed completely at ease-not relaxed the way you’re relaxed when you’re just hanging around, but comfortable like an experienced athlete. Marx and Bastilla had agreed to let Bastilla do the talking, woman to woman. They wanted me in the room because Jonna and I had something in common. Her sister.
Bastilla and I sat, but Marx stood in the corner. Bastilla placed a brown manila envelope on the table, but did not open it.
Bastilla said, “How you doing?”
“Pretty well, considering.”
“All right. You know Mr. Cole?”
“Yeah. He’s the one who started all this.”
“And Chief Marx?”
She nodded.
“You know this is being recorded?”
“I don’t care. I didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bastilla rested her palms on the envelope.
“Here you are, Yvonne Bennett’s sister, and you just happened to get tight with the man who was accused of murdering her, just happened to use a false name while doing so, and just happened to do all this in the days immediately preceding his death. What are we supposed to think?”
“I can’t help it if I knew the guy. I thought he was someone named Lonnie Jones.”
Marx moved in the corner.
“You knew he was Lionel Byrd because Alan Levy told you.”
“That isn’t true.”
“You hated Levy. Your mother told us you used to call his office and send him hate mail.”
“She’s old.”
“So you were probably surprised when Levy contacted you. I’m thinking that’s what happened, isn’t it, Jonna? He probably told you how guilty he felt, how sorry he was, some bullshit like that-”
Jonna’s face darkened, but the darkness was her only reaction.
“-how Byrd had fooled him back then, but now Byrd was out there killing people and he wanted to do something about it. Am I getting close here? Ten ring? The eight?”
Bastilla said, “Take it easy, Chief. C’mon.”
Good cop, bad cop.
Bastilla took the pictures from the envelope. Each picture was in a sealed plastic sleeve. They were the actual pictures from the album, still smudged from the SID work. Bastilla dealt them out one by one. Sondra Frostokovich. Janice Evansfield. Every victim except Yvonne Bennett.
Jonna barely glanced at them as Bastilla dealt them out.
“You know Byrd didn’t take them because you gave them to him. You know the absolute truth about that. These pictures were taken by the person who murdered them. It couldn’t have been any other way.”
“You don’t know. The police took them. They take pictures like this when people are murdered.”
“Is that what Levy told you? Is that how he explained where he got them?”
Bastilla took a stapled report from the envelope and placed it in front of Jonna.
“This is the forensic analysis of the pictures. It explains how we determined when the pictures were taken. You can read it, if you want. If you don’t understand it, we can have the SID people explain what it means. We’re not lying to you about this.”
Bastilla touched the picture of Janice Evansfield and pointed out the streamer of blood. She touched the drops that had fallen from Sondra Frostokovich’s nose, then produced the coroner investigator’s photograph showing a much larger puddle. While Bastilla was explaining these things, I slipped the CI’s picture of Yvonne Bennett from the envelope and waited my turn.
Then I pushed aside the other pictures and put the Polaroid of Yvonne on the table. Jonna leaned forward when she saw her sister.
“Do you see this?”
I touched the blood bubble, then placed the CI’s picture of Yvonne beside the Polaroid so she could see the difference.
“It was a bubble made in her blood. It formed as she died. It popped a few seconds later.”
Jonna stared at the pictures, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing them.
“You know I worked for Levy on behalf of Lionel Byrd?”
Her eyes came up, but they might have been focused on something a thousand yards away.
“Uh-huh.”
Bastilla touched me under the table, and Marx smiled from the corner.
“Levy told you about me, didn’t he?”
She shook her head vaguely, then went back to the pictures.
Bastilla said, “Cole’s involvement was never mentioned on TV or in the papers. He never personally mentioned it to you, and we haven’t talked about it with you or in your presence. You would have no other way to know that he worked for Alan Levy.”
I said, “Jonna, look at me.”
Her eyes came up again, but now they seemed dull and opaque.
“Levy used me the same way he used you, and I never saw it coming. I worked with him, talked to him almost every day, and he totally played me. That’s how good he is. Lionel Byrd didn’t kill your sister. I know you believe he killed her, but he didn’t. If Levy gave you the pictures, then Levy killed her, and now we have to prove it.”
Jonna said, “Levy.”
“Levy’s been using me to find out what the police know. He’s also been pushing me to find you. I believe he intends to kill you. We know from your phone he’s been calling you a lot. We also know you haven’t been answering his calls or calling him back. I think this is because you sense something is wrong with the guy.”
Marx stepped out of the corner.
“We see you as a victim here, too. We want to handle it that way. I can’t promise you won’t pull some time, but we’ll cut a good deal. Get you a reduced sentence and early parole if you cooperate.”
She looked at Yvonne’s picture again, the close-up showing the ugly red bubble of blood. She touched it, and her face settled into the same humorless, determined lines I had seen in her high school portrait. She picked up the picture, kissed it, then dropped it with the others. She once more seemed at ease.
“What do you want?”
“A recorded admission of guilt.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
Bastilla shook her head.
“Not you. Levy. Your testimony won’t be enough. We need him to acknowledge he gave you the pictures or helped plan the murder. All he has to do is indicate he had knowledge of these things, and that would be enough.”
“You want me to call him?”
“Levy’s too smart to make an incriminating statement over the phone, but we think Cole can bring him out.”
I said, “If I find you, I’m supposed to call him.”
“So he can kill me.”
“That would be my guess. He will probably try to kill me, too.”
Bastilla said, “We would pick a secure location. We would have plenty of protection, and-”
Jonna cut her off.
“I don’t care. I want to go get him.”
She said it without hesitation or remorse. Munson had been right. She was totally cold.
MARX COMMANDEERED a conference room, then called out an elite SWAT tactical team with supervisors and plus-one team leaders to plan the mission. They let me participate because my role was key-the task was not simply to capture Alan Levy, but to elicit a confession. They broke down a plan, selected a location, and deployed surveillance and tactical teams even before I made the call. We didn’t know if Levy would agree to meet, but the SWAT boys wanted everyone in place asap. If the plan changed, they would roll with it. They were the best in the business.
A surveillance technician named Frank Kilane stuck his head into the room and gave us the thumbs-up. Marx patted me on the back.
“Ready to make the call?”
I grinned, but my grin was too large and strained.
“I live for making calls like this.”
“Want some more of that coffee?”
“You trying to kill me?”
Marx grinned back with the same fractured leer.
“Not until after we get this bastard.”
Nervous humor.
Pike and Munson were waiting in the interview room, but Bastilla had moved Jonna so they could continue the interview. Frank Kilane had wired my personal cell phone into a recording monitor through a hands-free jack. We were using my phone so Levy would recognize my incoming number.
Kilane gave me the phone.
“All you have to do is use the hands-free like you normally would. Don’t worry about losing the signal. We have a pretty good signal here anyway, but I hooked you in with a booster.”
Marx waved toward the two-way glass.
“Okay, then. Everybody out. Let’s clear the room.”
They left me alone to minimize background noise.
I took Jonna’s seat. A yellow legal pad with Levy’s number and the address of the location was on the table. I was glad they thought of it.
Marx’s voice came over a hidden loudspeaker.
“Go when you’re ready.”
I dialed, and listened to the soft burring ring tone. The silence between each ring felt longer than usual, but Levy answered on the seventh ring. He sounded normal in every way.
“Hey, Alan, you still want to talk to Ivy Casik?”
“Fantastic. You found her?”
“Am I not the World’s Greatest Detective?”
Mr. Just-Kidding-Around-Because-Nothing-Is-Out-of-the-Ordinary. Levy chuckled, showing me nothing was out of the ordinary with him, either.
“Ah, well, did you speak with her?”
“Uh-uh. I figured I would wait for you. I didn’t want to spook her.”
I gave him the address without waiting to be asked. It was an abandoned meth lab in a residential area. The SWAT guys selected it because the location offered cover for the surveillance teams and other advantages. The light traffic would make Levy easy to identify as he approached the location, and if he lost his resolve and departed without stopping, he would be easy to follow. If he left, we would let him. We didn’t want him to know we were on to him until he had incriminated himself. I finished setting the stage.
“It’s a little house at the bottom of Runyon Canyon. A dump, man. She appears to be alone.”
He sounded hesitant for the first time.
“Okay, well, this is great work, Elvis, like always. You don’t have to wait. I can’t get over there until later.”
I did my best to sound disappointed.
“Alan, your call, but I really busted my ass to find her. She didn’t unpack her car. I don’t know how long she will be here.”
“Uh-huh, well, I have an appointment with some people at Leverage. They probably have more to offer about what Marx is up to than this girl.”
“I can’t watch her all day, Alan. I have things to do.”
“It’s all right, Elvis. Really. I have the address, but I have to see these people at Leverage first. Don’t stay. If I get by to see her, I’ll call you about it later.”
“Whatever you want.”
As soon as I turned off the phone, Marx pushed open the door.
“That bastard’s going straight for the girl. Let’s roll.”
JONNA HILL stated during her taped interview that she did not shoot Lionel Byrd and was not present at the time of his death. This might or might not have been a lie. According to Jonna, Alan Levy provided the seven Polaroid pictures, the necessary information about Byrd, and cash to rent both the apartment near the Hollywood Bowl and the room across from Byrd on Anson Lane. He contacted her not long after the murder of Debra Repko, claiming to be racked by guilt for his role in freeing a man he subsequently learned was responsible for multiple homicides. Jonna found him easy to believe. He was so smart, she said. So convincing. She was a willing and enthusiastic participant. Levy taught her to mask her fingerprints with plastic-model glue and bind back her hair, and also provided the camera, film, and the My Happy Memories album. Her part was simple. Over the course of a three-week period, she befriended Lionel Byrd while posing as a writer, which had also been Levy’s suggestion. She had Byrd handle the components of the death album to leave his fingerprints, then, on the night of his death, drugged his whiskey with the oxycodone, which Levy also provided. She stated for the record she was not witness to whatever happened after she left that night. This, too, might have been a lie, but it also might have been the truth.
We double-timed it out to the parking lot. Marx coordinated the roll through a SWAT plus-one as we trotted toward a surveillance van the size of a taco truck. The plus-one was a hard-looking guy with a blond crew cut. He glanced at Pike between orders.
“Aren’t you Joe Pike?”
Pike nodded.
“You coming with us?”
Pike nodded again.
“Cool. I admire your work.”
But when we reached the van, Munson stopped Pike.
“This is as far as you go.”
I said, “He’s part of this, too.”
Marx considered Pike, then shook his head.
“We don’t need more civilians. Sorry, Pike, but this is it.”
The plus-one seemed disappointed.
“Bummer.”
I shrugged at Joe.
“Don’t sweat it, man. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Pike stared at me for a moment, then the corner of his mouth twitched.
“I’ll see you.”
Pike trotted away toward his Jeep as Marx waved me into the van.
“We gotta get you wired up. Get in there.”
The van was walled with racks of surveillance equipment, recording devices, tools, and an ice chest so old the plastic was mildewed. Jonna and Bastilla were already inside. The space grew crowded as everyone piled aboard, and Kilane didn’t like it.
“Jesus Christ, just sell tickets, why don’t you?”
Jonna blinked at me.
“Are we going to ride together?”
“Looks like.”
“Good. I’d like that.”
Marx wedged his way up front with the driver, and we pulled out as soon as the door was closed.
Kilane fitted a wire microphone under Jonna’s shirt as Bastilla asked her questions, like did Levy ever check her for mikes or feel up her boobs or search her. Jonna told her no, he never had, and seemed uninterested in what Kilane was doing.
I said, “You scared?”
Bastilla glanced over, irritated.
“Say something encouraging.”
Jonna ignored her, and made a little shrug.
“I’m always scared.”
“You hide it well.”
“I know. I just look this way.”
“Lift your arm, Jonna.”
Jonna lifted her arm, but her attention was on me.
“I was thinking about what you said, how you never saw it coming. How does that make you feel?”
I realized why she had stared at me in the interview room and now wanted me in the van with her. She knew how I felt because she probably felt the same way.
“It made me feel like he owned me.”
“Yvonne was a prostitute.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to do.
“Do you have sibs?”
“No. I’m an only.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
Jonna fell silent after that as Kilane finished his work and lowered the shirt. He turned to a bank of equipment and pulled on a headset.
“How’s that feel?”
“Okay.”
The tech raised a thumb. The mike was transmitting well. He pulled off the headset, then went to work strapping a similar mike to my chest.
Jonna looked around at the cramped quarters.
“Can I see how it feels when I move?”
“Sure.”
Jonna twisted from side to side, then crabbed to the back of the van. Kilane, the plus-one, and I scrunched out of her way. She twisted some more, then stood as best she could with the low ceiling.
“Feels okay.”
She waddled forward, but lost her balance and stumbled into the equipment rack. She made an oofing sound, tangled herself in a box of tools and wire, but managed to stay upright.
“I’m okay. Can you see it poking my shirt?”
Kilane laughed.
“Kid, your own mama couldn’t see that mike.”
Marx put away his phone, then climbed out of the passenger seat to join us. He glanced at me, but studied Jonna.
“We’re ten minutes out. You remember what we talked about?”
“Sure.”
“All you have to do is be visible. If Levy sees you and believes you’re alone, he’ll be more likely to stop. Once he’s out of the car, you go into the house. Cole will carry the ball.”
“I know.”
Marx waved toward the equipment.
“We’ll be able to hear everything you say. If you try to warn him, our deal goes out the window.”
“I’m not going to warn him.”
“So you know. We have your statement on tape now. We might not be able to convict Levy with it, but we’ll sure as hell go after you. Get back in the house. An officer will be inside to take care of you.”
“If I wanted to warn him I wouldn’t have agreed to do this. Relax.”
The plus-one laughed, but Marx ignored him.
“Something else I want you to know. Your safety is my number one concern. You won’t be able to see them, but we’ll have three sniper teams watching every move Levy makes. We will be watching him. If he shows a weapon or makes a threatening move toward you, we will put him down. We won’t give him a chance to hurt you.”
“Everyone will be watching him.”
“You can count on it.”
“I am.”
I patted her leg. The woman had committed murder with a cold-blooded obsession that had bought her a ticket to the psych ward, but I patted her leg. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped.
They let us out of the van in a Rite Aid parking lot in Hollywood not far from La Brea. Two men in civilian clothes who were probably D-team tactical operators were waiting in a green Chevy TrailBlazer.
Marx said, “That’s your ride. We’ll see you on the other side.”
The TrailBlazer barreled up La Brea, then onto the residential streets twisting up into Runyon Canyon. Jonna did not seem nervous. She made a soft, breathy whistle, singing to herself. Da-da-daa, da-da-daa. Staring at nothing and singing until we reached the house.
THE SWAT planners had made a good choice. The house was an old canyon cabin isolated by a curve in the road. It had probably been built in the twenties as a hunting lodge and later expanded, but it hadn’t been maintained in years. Jonna’s white Neon was parked beside it. The man who brought it was inside the house, where Jonna would wait until Levy was spotted. When the surveillance elements identified Levy, they would radio the man in the house. Then it was up to Jonna. All she had to do was let Levy see her so he would know she was present. Once Jonna was safely back inside the house, the rest would be up to me.
They dropped us by the Neon, then quickly drove away.
I said, “Don’t look around for the surveillance teams. You won’t see them, but someone might see you looking for them.”
“What happens if he doesn’t come?”
“We’ll be bored. You’d better get in the house. If he sees me out here with you, we’re screwed.”
I waited until she was inside, then moved into a gnarled clump of scrub oak on the opposite side of her car. If Levy stopped anywhere at the front of the house, I would be able to approach him without being seen. I wanted to surprise him.
I settled in to wait. Levy would come or not. Might be ten minutes, or never. The occasional car passed without slowing. Local residents. Construction workers. First-time hikers trying to find the park who took the wrong turn. None of them was Levy. I listened to thrushes and mockingbirds. None of them was Levy, either.
The trees whispered behind me, followed by a voice that wasn’t much louder.
Pike said, “Good spot.”
He settled onto the earth beside me.
I said, “Marx is really pissed right now. I’m wired.”
“You think I’m trusting someone else to cover your back?”
We fell silent. Marx would be cursing. He would be livid, but the blond plus-one would be trying not to laugh.
Jonna Hill stepped out of the house eight minutes later and went to the Neon. That was my signal and also the bait. A brown Dodge sedan crept around the curve, slowing to look. Levy was hunched over the wheel. He slowed even more when he saw Jonna, and stopped in the middle of the street. His head swiveled, searching the area.
Jonna stepped away from the Neon. She wasn’t supposed to go into the house until he got out of his car, and didn’t. Her lips moved as she studied the Dodge. She was singing again. Da-da-daa, da-da-daa.
The three sniper teams would be on him with telescopic sights, ready to rock if a gun appeared. If any of them saw a gun, that shooter would touch off a.30-caliber round traveling at 2600 feet per second. We didn’t want him dead. We wanted him alive, but that’s the way it would be if he made the wrong move.
The Dodge swung in a lazy arc and parked directly between Jonna and me. Levy got out, no more than a car length from her and two lengths from me. His coat and pants were wrinkled, as if he had been sleeping in them.
Pike sighed a whisper.
“Perfect.”
Jonna did not return to the house. She should have immediately gone inside, but she didn’t.
She said, “How did you find me?”
Levy responded as if this was the most natural moment in the world.
“You had me worried. Why didn’t you answer?”
I slipped from the trees, and he didn’t hear me until I was directly behind him.
I said, “Worried about what, Alan?”
He stumbled sideways so dramatically I thought he would fall, then spun in a panicked circle. I held up my hands, showing my palms and taking a step back.
“Don’t have a stroke. Everything’s cool. How’d it go at Leverage?”
When he realized he was still alive, he pulled himself together. He glanced past me to see if anyone else was coming, then at Jonna, then up and down the street. Frightened.
“The meeting got canceled.”
“Good. We have a lot to talk about. Jonna, why don’t you go inside, give us a chance to talk?”
Jonna said, “No.”
Levy glanced at Jonna with bug eyes. Jonna had moved closer. She was staring at him, and I didn’t like the way she was staring. Marx wouldn’t like it, either. The snipers would have a more difficult time with Jonna outside.
Levy said, “I can talk to her alone. You didn’t have to wait.”
I edged toward Jonna, trying to put myself between her and Levy, but Levy backed away. He hooked his thumbs on his belt under his jacket. I didn’t see a gun, but the shooters would be on high alert.
“Yeah, I did, Alan. My new best friend here, Jonna, and I have already talked. I know what happened.”
Levy glanced at her again and continued backing away.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you do. Killing Lionel Byrd.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Alan, please. I caught you in one lie when you drove up. You told me you never met this girl, but you asked her why she hadn’t answered, you told her she had you worried.”
“I didn’t say anything like that. You must have misheard.”
Jonna said, “Yes, you did.”
I took a step after him, trying to keep up the pressure. I wanted Levy focused on me, not her, and I was still trying to get between them.
“Here’s what’s going to happen-you can pay me to keep your filthy little secrets, or we’ll go to the police. I’m thinking two million dollars, one for her, one for me. Sound good?”
Levy glanced up and down the street again as if he sensed the police were watching and knew he was being recorded.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t understand why you’re trying to do this, but I’m leaving-”
He suddenly veered toward the Dodge, and then Jonna said something that stopped both of us.
“I taped you, Alan.”
Fear played over his face as his eyes bulged.
“The day you gave me the pictures of the dead girls, I had a tape recorder under my shirt. I gave it to him. I let him listen.”
Jonna pointed at me. She had never mentioned a recording, had not given a recording to me, and the police had not found such a recording in her possessions. I wondered if she knew she was lying. I wondered if she believed it.
“Go in the house, Jonna. Alan and I will work it out.”
She didn’t go into the house. She moved toward him.
“Two million dollars isn’t enough.”
Levy wet his lips. He looked from me to Jonna, then back to me, and his hands went back to his belt.
He said, “How much do you want?”
We had him with those words. Alan Levy had demonstrated knowledge and awareness of the pictures by negotiating with us. We had him, and Marx would now be issuing commands to effect the arrest, but then Jonna said something else.
“There isn’t enough.”
Jonna took a knee as if bending to tie her shoe, then came up like a sprinter out of the blocks with what we would later confirm was a rat-tail file she had palmed when she stumbled into the tool rack in the surveillance van. She went for his neck, hitting him so hard she knocked him backwards into the Dodge and onto the ground.
Everyone had been so concerned Levy might kill Jonna, it never occurred to us she would kill him.
The shooter teams crashed from their hides, but they were far away and unable to shoot with the three of us clumped together. Pike burst out of the trees. I grabbed Jonna from behind, but she had wrapped herself around Levy, stabbing him in the neck and the face and the head. I caught her arm to pry her away, but that’s when I heard the popping, and then Joe Pike shouting.
“Gun!”
Levy had a small black pistol pressed deep into her belly and made a high, keening sound as he shot her. He pulled the trigger as fast as he could.
Jonna suddenly stepped back. I pushed her aside, then moved for the gun, but Levy had already dropped it. He was holding the bloody rag of his neck with both hands when Pike slammed into him.
Jonna stumbled backwards, sat down, then burped a red mist. I tore off my shirt and pressed it onto her belly as the SWAT guys swarmed over us.
“Hang on, Jonna. Hang on. Keep breathing.”
I don’t think she saw me. Her mouth was set in the determined line, but something in her eyes had changed. The seeds of anger were softer. I’m not sure, but I like to think so. I hope so.
Jonna Hill died as the paramedics arrived.
THE SANTA Monica sky was incandescent with shoreline haze, filling Alan Levy’s backyard with light so bright the swimming pool sparkled. City Councilman Nobel Wilts and Chief Marx were standing beside me at the edge of the rose garden. Thirty-two varieties of roses had been carefully removed and heaped in a pile on the far side of the yard. They would not be replanted. When the city finished its work, the roses would be discarded.
Marx waved over Sharon Stivic, who was the chief coroner investigator overseeing the recovery.
“How much longer?”
“It’s a big hole. You have to be careful with the soil. We don’t want to miss something important.”
The bodies were found using a gas sensor that detected the unusual concentrations of methane generated by decomposing flesh. A side-scanning sonar had then been employed to determine the exact locations, and now members of the medical examiner’s office were scraping away the soil.
Wilts said, “Gotta be his wife and kids, right?”
Marx nodded. The sonar had defined their shapes and sizes.
“Won’t know for sure until the identification, but yeah-it’s an adult and two children.”
“Jesus Christ, I met the woman. I’m pretty sure I met her. It was a while ago.”
Wilts scrunched his face, trying to remember whether he had met Alan Levy’s wife or not, but finally gave up. He mopped his brow, then scowled at the sky.
“Fuck this. I’m getting out of the sun.”
We watched him walk to the house, which was swarming with criminalists, detectives, and reporters. Levy’s street was crowded with so many news vans, coroner vehicles, and gawkers that I had parked three blocks away. None of the newspeople had showed up when Yvonne Bennett was murdered, but Yvonne had not been a downtown attorney who had murdered his family-Yvonne was only a nobody who had once protected her sister.
Marx had called early that morning, telling me the bodies had been located the night before. He had asked me to come to the recovery, so I did, though I had seen enough bodies. I didn’t want to see more, but I was hoping for answers. Both for myself and the Repkos.
I gestured at the growing mound of dirt.
“Might find Debra Repko’s PDA in there.”
“Might.”
“Or in the house.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Or more pictures.”
“I hope to hell not.”
“Levy’s autopsy show anything?”
“Nothing. Brain was clear. No tumors, cysts, or lesions. No drugs. Blood chemistry looked fine. What can you say?”
“What about the people at his firm?”
“Stunned, like everyone else. Levy told them his wife left him and took the kids east. That was eight years ago, just before Frostokovich.”
“Neighbors add anything?”
“Most of’m never met the man. We’ll be reconstructing this mess for months.”
There was nothing more to say. You want them alive to answer the questions. Why did you do this? Were there only seven, or did you kill more? Now we had questions that would never be answered. Why had Jonna Hill done what she did?
A booming laugh came from the house. Marx and I turned to see Wilts with a beautiful female reporter from one of the local television affiliates. Wilts was fingering her ass.
I said, “Does he know you suspected him?”
“Nah. I didn’t see the point.”
Marx had gone to the Repkos and the rest of the families to explain why he misled them, but had not told them his true suspect was Wilts. A fixer to the end, he kept Wilts out of it. I respected his courage for facing them.
Two men with blunt-nosed shovels were up to their thighs in a four-foot-by-eight-foot hole. They scraped the soil away one inch at a time. Both men stopped digging at the same time, then one stooped to touch something. They wore rubber gloves.
“I’m going to take off, Chief. I don’t want to see this.”
Marx stared at the ground for a moment.
“Do you think she taped him, the way she said? When he gave her the pictures?”
“She made it up. She made up a lot of things. Her sister was the same way.”
“If that tape exists, I’d like to find it.”
“You have her interview.”
“Hearing that tape would help. Not just what he said, but how. You never know what the sonofabitch might have said. It could explain a lot. Might answer a lot of questions.”
“If you find it, let me know.”
I hoped he was right.
I left him standing by the grave in Alan Levy’s backyard, and walked through the crowd to the street. The sky was a beautiful crystalline blue, as bright as any I had ever seen, but a certain darkness could blot the sky, even in the middle of the day.
Darkness had lived in Alan Levy. A dark shade touched Jonna Hill long before her sister was murdered. Debra Repko brushed darkness and never returned. Why had she gone for a walk with him? Why had he killed her on that night, and not another? We would never know.
The darkness frightens me, but what it does to us frightens me even more. Maybe this is why I do what I do. I chase the darkness to make room for the light.