The morning heat brought the smell of wild sage up from the canyon. Something rumbled far away, a muffled thumping like the sound of heavy bombs beyond the horizon. I hadn't thought of the war in years, and pulled the sheet over my head.
Lucy snuggled into my back. "Someone's at the door."
"What?"
She burrowed her face into me, her hand sliding across my side. I liked the dry heat of her palm. "At the door."
Knocking.
"It's not even seven."
She burrowed deeper. "Take your gun."
I pulled on gym shorts and a sweatshirt, and went down to see. The cat was squatting in the entry, ears down, growling. Who needs a Doberman when you've got a cat like this?
Stan Watts and Jerome Williams were on the other side of the door, looking like they'd been up a while. Watts was chewing a breath mint.
"What are you guys doing here?"
They stepped in without answering. When they did, the cat arched his back and hissed.
Williams said, "Hey, that's some cat."
"Better watch it. He bites."
Williams went over to the cat. "Hell, cats like me. You'll see."
Williams put out his hand. The cat's fur stood up and the growl got as loud as a police siren. Williams stepped back fast.
"He got some kinda thing with black people?"
"He's got a thing with everybody. It's seven in the morning, Watts. Did Dersh confess? You guys ID the shooter?"
Watts sucked at the mint. "Wondering where you were last night, is all. Got a few questions."
"About what?"
"About where you were."
I glanced at Williams again, and now Williams was watching me.
"I was here, Watts. What's going on?"
"Can you prove it?"
Lucy said, "Yes, he can. But he doesn't have to."
The three of us looked up. Lucy was standing at the loft's rail, wearing my big white terry-cloth robe.
I said, "Lucille Chenier. Detectives Watts and Williams."
Watts said, "You here with him?"
Lucy smiled. Sweetly. "I don't think I have to answer that."
Watts held up his badge.
"Now I know I don't have to answer that."
Williams said, "Man. First this cat."
Watts shrugged. "We were hoping to be nice."
Lucy's smile dropped away. "You'll be nice whether you want to be or not, and unless you have a warrant, we can and will ask you to leave."
Williams said, "Well, for Christ's sake."
"Lucy's an attorney, Watts, so don't get cute on us. I was here. Lucy and I went down to the Ralph's for some things, and made dinner. The receipt's probably in the trash. We rented a movie from Blockbuster. It's over there on the VCR."
"How about your buddy Pike? When was the last time you saw him?"
Lucy had come down the stairs and was standing next to me with her arms crossed. She said, "Don't answer him until he tells you why, and maybe not even then. Don't answer any more of his questions." She faced me and her eyes were serious. "This is the lawyer talking, do you understand?"
I spread my hands. "You heard her. Watts. So either tell me what's going on or hit the road."
"Eugene Dersh was shot to death last night. We picked up Joe Pike for it."
I stared at him. I glanced at Williams.
"Are you guys joking?"
They weren't joking.
"Is Krantz running a number on Joe? Is that what this is?"
"Eyewitness saw him going into the house. We've got him downtown now to run a lineup."
"That's bullshit. Pike didn't kill anyone." I was getting excited. Lucy touched my back.
Watts spoke quietly. "Are you saying he was here at the house with you two?"
Lucy stepped directly in front of me. "Are you arresting Mr. Cole?"
"No, ma'am."
"Are you exercising any warrants at this time?" Her voice was all business.
"We just wanted to talk, is all." He looked at me past her. "We don't think you're good for it. We just wanted to see what you knew."
Lucy shook her head. "This interview is at an end. If you are not prepared to arrest him, or me, please leave."
The phone rang even as I locked the door.
Lucy answered, scooping up the phone before I could get there. "Who's calling, please?"
She was in full-blown protectress mode, still my girlfriend and the woman I loved, but now as focused as a female tiger protecting her mate; face down, concentrating on what was being said.
Finally, she held out the phone. "It's someone named Charlie Bauman. He says he's a criminal attorney representing Joe."
"Yeah."
Charlie Bauman had been a United States attorney prosecuting federal cases until he decided to make five times the money defending the same guys he'd once tried to put behind bars. He had an office in Santa Monica, three ex-wives, and, at last count, eight children among them. He paid more in child support than I earned in a good year, and he'd represented Joe and me before.
He said, "Who in hell is that woman?"
"Lucy Chenier. She's a friend of mine. She's also a lawyer."
"Christ, what a ball-buster. You hear about Joe?"
"Two cops were just here. All I know is they said Dersh was murdered, and they've got an eyewitness who puts Joe at the scene. What in hell is going on?"
"You know anything about it?"
"No, I do not know anything about it." Irritated that he would ask.
"Okay, okay. Watch out, dickhead! Christ!" Horns blew. Charlie was on his car phone. "I'm on my way down to Parker Center now. They're waiting for the lineup to book him."
"I want to be there."
"Forget it. They'll never let you."
"I'm coming down there, Charlie. I'm going to be there. I mean it."
I hung up without another word. Lucy was watching me, her face grave.
"Elvis?"
I've been in war. I've faced men with guns, and dangerous stronger men who were doing their best to hurt me, but I could not recall a time when I was more afraid. My hands trembled.
Lucy said, "Elvis? Is this man good?"
"Charlie's good."
She still watched me, as if she was searching for something.
I said, "Joe didn't do this."
She nodded.
"Joe didn't do this. Dersh didn't kill Karen. Joe knows it. He wouldn't kill Dersh."
Lucy kissed my cheek. There was a kindness in her eyes that bothered me.
"Call me when you know more. Give Joe my best."
She went up the stairs, and I watched her go.
Parker Center uses the ground floor for booking and processing suspects. A few minutes after I checked in, Charlie hurried out a gray metal door.
"You just made it. Another five minutes, you'd've missed it." Charlie Bauman is several inches shorter than me, with a lean pockmarked face and intense eyes. He smells like cigarettes.
"Can I see Joe?"
"Not till after. We get in the room, there's gonna be the witness. She's some little old lady. You let the cops do all the talking, doesn't matter what she says."
"I know that, Charlie."
"I'm just telling you. No matter what she says, you don't say anything. Me and you, we can't talk to her, we can't ask her any questions, we can't make any comments, okay?"
"I got it." Charlie seemed nervous, and I didn't like that.
I followed him back along a tile hall as we spoke. The hall opened into a wide room that looked like any other corporate workplace, except this one had posters about drunk-driving fatalities.
"Have you had a chance to talk to him?"
"Enough to get the gist. We'll talk more, after."
I stopped him. Behind us, two detectives I didn't know were positioning a black guy in front of a camera like they use to take driver's license pictures, only this guy wasn't up for renewal. His hands were cuffed, and his eyes were wide and afraid. He was saying, "THIS IS BULLSHIT. THIS THREE STRIKE CRAP IS BULLSHIT."
"Charlie, do these guys have anything?"
"If the witness makes a positive ID and they write the paper, then we'll see. She's old, and when they're old they get confused. If we're lucky, she'll pick the wrong guy and we can all go home early."
He wasn't answering me.
"Do they have anything?"
"They've already got a prosecutor coming down. He'll lay it out for us when he gets here. I don't know what they have, but they wouldn't've called him down if they didn't think they have a case."
Krantz and Stan Watts came out of an adjoining hall. Krantz was holding a cup of coffee, Watts was holding two.
Charlie said, "Okay, Krantz. Whenever you're ready."
I looked at Krantz. "What are you pulling on Joe?"
Krantz appeared more calm than I'd ever seen him. As if he was at peace. "I can show you Dersh's body, if you want."
"I don't know what happened to Dersh. What I'm saying is that Joe didn't do it."
Krantz raised his eyebrows and looked at Watts. "Stan here told me that you were at home with a woman last night. Was he wrong about that?" He looked back at me. "Were you with Pike?"
"You know what I'm saying."
Krantz blew on his coffee, then sipped. "No, Cole, I don't know that. But here's what I do know: At three-fifteen this morning a man matching Pike's description was seen entering Eugene Dersh's backyard. A few moments after that, Dersh was shot to death by one shot to the head with a.357 magnum. Could be a.38, but judging from the way the head blew apart, I'm betting.357. We've already recovered the bullet. We'll see what it tells us."
"You got any fingerprints? You got any physical evidence that it was Joe, or is this another investigation like you ran with Dersh, you just working off an urge?"
"I'm going to let the prosecutor explain our case to Pike's lawyer. You're just here on a pass, Cole. Please remember that."
Behind us, Williams appeared, saying that everything was good to go.
Krantz nodded at me. Confident. "Let's see what the witness says."
They led us past six holding cells into a dim room where a uniformed cop and two detectives were waiting with a shrunken woman in her late seventies. Watts gave her the second cup of coffee. She sipped at it and made a face.
Charlie whispered. "Amanda Kimmel. She's the wit."
Krantz said, "You okay, Mrs. Kimmel? You want to sit?"
She frowned at him. "I wanna get this done and get the hell outta here. I don't like to move my bowels in a strange place."
The wall in front of us was a large glass double-paned window that looked into a narrow room lit so brightly that it glowed. Krantz picked up a phone, and thirty seconds later a door on the right side of the room opened. A black cop with bodybuilder muscles led in six men. Joe Pike was the third. Of the remaining five, three were white and two were Hispanic. Four of the men were Joe's height or shorter, and one was taller. Only one of the other men wore jeans and a sleeveless sweatshirt like Joe, and that was a short Hispanic guy with skinny arms. The other three wore a mix of chinos or dungarees or coveralls, and long-sleeved sweatshirts or short-sleeved tees, and all six were wearing sunglasses. Every man in the room except Joe was a cop.
I bent to Charlie's ear. "I thought they had to be dressed like Joe."
"Law says it only has to be similar, whatever the hell that means. Let's see. Maybe this works for us."
When all six men were lined along the stage, Krantz said, "Nobody on that side of the glass can see in here, Mrs. Kimmel. Don't you worry about that. You're perfectly safe."
"I don't give a rat's ass if they can see me or not."
"Is one of the men in there the same man you saw going into Eugene Dersh's yard?"
Amanda Kimmel said, "Him."
"Which one, Mrs. Kimmel?"
"The third one."
She pointed at Joe Pike.
"You're sure, Mrs. Kimmel? Take a careful look."
"That's him right there. I know what I saw."
Charlie whispered, "Shit."
Krantz glanced at Charlie now, but Charlie was watching Mrs. Kimmel.
Krantz said, "Okay, but I'm going to ask you again. You're saying you saw that man, number three, walk down the alley beside your house and go into Eugene Dersh's backyard?"
"Damned right. You can't miss a face like that. You can't miss those arms."
"And when the officers took your statement, that is the man you described?"
"Hell, yes. I saw him real good. Look at those damned tattoos."
"All right, Mrs. Kimmel. Detective Watts is going to take you up to my office now. Thank you."
Krantz didn't look at her when he said it; he was staring at Joe. He did not look at me or Charlie or Williams or anyone else in the room. He did not watch Mrs. Kimmel leave. He kept his eyes on Pike, and picked up the phone.
"Cuff the suspect and bring him in, please."
Suspect.
The big cop handcuffed Joe, then brought him into the observation room.
Krantz watched Pike being cuffed, watched as he was brought in. When Pike was finally with us, Krantz took off Joe's glasses, folded them, and dropped them into his own pocket. For Krantz, no one else was in that room except him and Joe. No one else was alive, or mattered, or even meant a damn. What was about to happen meant everything. Was the only thing.
He said, "Joe Pike, you're under arrest for the murder of Eugene Dersh."
Krantz handled the booking himself, taking Joe's fingerprints and snapping his booking photo and typing the forms. Hollywood Homicide raised a stink, trying to keep jurisdiction of Dersh's murder since it fell in their area, but Krantz sucked it into the Robbery-Homicide black hole. Related to the Dersh investigation, he said. Overlapping cases, he said. He wanted Pike.
I watched for a time, sitting with Stan Watts at an empty desk, wishing I could talk to Pike. One minute you're asleep in bed, the next you're watching your friend being booked for murder. You put your feelings away. You make yourself think. Amanda Kimmel had picked Joe out of a lineup, but what did that mean? It meant that she had seen someone who looked more like Joe than the other men in the lineup. I would learn more when I spoke with Joe. I would learn more when I heard the prosecutor's case. When I learned more, I could do something.
I kept telling myself that because I needed to either believe it or scream.
I said, "This is bullshit, Watts. You know that."
"Is it?"
"Pike wouldn't kill this guy. Pike didn't think Dersh was good for those killings."
Watts just stared at me, as blank as a wall. He'd sat with a thousand people who had said they didn't do it when they had.
"What's next, Stan? The serial killer's dead, so you guys are going to declare victory and head for the donuts?"
Watts 's expression never changed. "I realize you're upset because of your friend, but don't mistake me for Krantz. I'll slap your fucking teeth down your throat."
Finally, Watts took Charlie and me to an interview room where Joe was waiting. His jeans and sweatshirt had been replaced by blue LAPD JAIL coveralls. He sat with his fingers laced on the table, his eyes as calm as a mountain lake. It was odd to see him without his sunglasses. I could count on both hands the number of times I'd seen his eyes. Their blue is astonishing. He squinted, not used to the light.
I sighed. "All the people in the world who need killing, and you've got to pick Dersh."
Pike looked at me. "Was that humor?"
Inappropriate is my middle name.
Charlie said, "Before we get started, you want something to eat?"
"No."
"Okay, here's what's going to happen. The ADA handling your case is a guy named Robby Branford. You know him?"
Pike and I both shook our heads.
"He's a square guy. A pit bull, but square. He'll be here soon, and we'll see what he's going to show the judge. The arraignment will be this afternoon over in Municipal Court. They'll keep you locked down here, then bring you over to the Criminal Court Building just before. Once we're there, it shouldn't take more than an hour or two. Branford will present the evidence, and the judge will decide if there's reasonable cause to believe you're the guy popped Dersh. Now, if the judge binds you over, it doesn't mean there's proof of your guilt, just that he believes there's enough reason to go to trial. If that's the way it breaks, we'll argue for bail. Okay?"
Pike nodded.
"Did you kill Dersh?"
"No."
When he said it, I let out my breath. Pike must've heard, because he looked at me. The edge of his mouth flickered.
I said, "Okay, Joe."
Charlie didn't seem impressed, or moved. He'd heard it a million times, too. I'm innocent. "Dersh's next-door neighbor just picked you out of the lineup. She says she saw you going into Dersh's yard this morning just before he was killed."
"Wasn't me."
"You go over there last night?"
"No."
"Where were you?"
"Running."
"You were running in the middle of the goddamned night?"
I said, "He does that."
Charlie frowned at me. "Did I ask you?" He opened a yellow legal pad to take notes. "Let's back up. Give me your whole evening, say from about seven on."
"I went by the store at seven. Stayed until a quarter to eight. Then went home and made dinner. I was home by eight. Alone."
Charlie wrote down the names of Joe's employees, and their home phone numbers. "Okay. You went home and made dinner. What'd you do after dinner?"
"I went to bed at eleven-ten. I woke a little after two, and went for a run."
Charlie was scribbling. "Not so fast. What'd you do between eight and eleven-ten?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing? You watch TV? You rent a movie?"
"I showered."
"You didn't shower for three goddamned hours. You read a book? Maybe call a friend, someone call you? Did your laundry?"
"No."
"You had to be doing something besides the goddamned shower. Think about it."
Pike thought.
"I was being."
Charlie wrote on the pad. I could see his mouth move. BEING.
"Okay. So you ate, took your shower, then sat around 'being' until you went to bed. Then you woke up a little after two and went for a run. Give us the route."
Joe described the route he followed, and now I was writing, too. I was going to retrace his route during the day, then again at the same time he'd run it, looking for anyone who might've seen him.
Pike said, "I stopped at the bluffs on Ocean Avenue between Wilshire and San Vicente, where you can see the water. I talked to a girl there. Her name was Trudy."
Pike described her.
Charlie said, "No last name?"
"I didn't ask. She was meeting someone named Matt. A black minivan arrived. New Dodge, no license or dealer tag that I could see. Custom teardrop windows in the back. She got in and they left. Whoever was inside would've seen me."
I said, "When was that?"
"Got to the bluffs about two-fifty. Started running again just at three."
Charlie raised his eyebrows. "You're sure about the time?"
"Yes."
I said, "That's only fifteen minutes or so before the old lady heard the shot. No way you could get from the ocean to Dersh's in fifteen minutes. Not even at three in the morning."
Charlie nodded, thinking about it and liking it. "Okay. That's something. We've got the girl, maybe. And all this running could give us plenty of potential witnesses." He glanced at me. "You're gonna get started on that?"
"Yes."
Someone rapped at the door, and Charlie yelled for them to come in.
Williams stuck his head in. "DA's here."
"Be right out."
When Williams closed the door, Joe said, "What about bail?"
"You've got your business. You've got a home. All of that is to the good when I'm trying to convince a judge you won't run. But when you're talking murder, it depends on the strength of their evidence. Branford will make a big deal about this old lady, but he knows – and so does the judge – that eyewitness testimony is the least dependable evidence you can admit. If all he has is the old lady, we're in good shape. You just sit tight, and don't worry, okay?"
Pike put the calm blue eyes on me, and I wished I knew what was behind them. He seemed peaceful, as if far worse things had happened to him, and nothing that could happen here would be as bad. Not even here. Not even charged with murder.
He said, "Don't forget Karen."
"I won't, but right now you have to come first. Edward Deege is dead. He was found murdered."
Pike cocked his head. "How?"
"Dolan says it looks like a street beef, but Hollywood has the case. They're investigating."
Pike nodded.
"I'll see about finding Trudy."
"I know."
"Don't worry about it."
"I'm not."
I took my sunglasses from my shirt pocket and held them out.
Pike's eyes flicked to the glasses.
"Krantz would just take them."
Charlie Bauman said, "Come on, for chrissake. We don't have all day."
I put the sunglasses back in my pocket and followed Charlie out.
Robert Branford was a tall man with large hands and bristling eyebrows. He met us in the hall, then walked us into a conference room where Krantz was sitting at the head of a long table. A TV and VCR were in the corner, and a short stack of files and legal pads were on the table. The TV was on, showing a blank blue screen. I wondered what they'd been watching.
Even before we were all the way in the room, Charlie said, "Hey, Robby, you meet your eyewitness yet?"
"Mrs. Kimmel? Not yet. Gonna see her after the arraignment."
"Better see her before."
"Why is that, Charlie? She got three heads?"
Charlie made a drinking motion. "Booze hound. Jesus, Krantz, I'm surprised you could stand being so close to her at the lineup. Damn near knocked me out when she walked past."
Branford had gone to his own briefcase and was taking papers from different manila folders. He raised his eyebrows toward Krantz.
To his credit, Krantz nodded. "She's a drinker."
Charlie took a seat at the table without bothering to open his briefcase. "Did Krantz tell you about the M1? If you're going to her place, you'd better wave a white flag before you get out of your car."
Krantz said, "I told him, Bauman. What does that have to do with anything?"
Charlie spread his hands, Mr. Innocent. "Just want to make sure Robby knows what he's getting into. A seventy-eight-year-old lush gives a visual on a guy she's trying to plug with an M1 Garand rifle. That's going to look real good when you get to court."
Branford laughed. "Sure, Bauman. You're thinking about my best interests." Branford took a slim stack of papers from his briefcase and handed them to Charlie. "Here's Mrs. Kimmel's statement, plus the reports written by the officers responding to her call. We don't have anything in from the CI or the criminalist yet, but I'll copy you as soon as we get anything."
Charlie flipped through the pages absently. "Thanks, Robby. Hope you got more to offer the court than Mrs. Kimmel."
Branford smiled tightly. "We do, but let's start with her. We've got an eyewit who puts your man at the scene, and picked him out of a line. Second, the swabs came back positive, confirming that Pike recently fired a weapon."
I said, "Pike owns a gun shop. He shoots every day of his life."
Krantz leaned back. "Yeah. And today he took one shot too many."
Charlie ignored him. "SID match the slug and Pike's gun?"
"SID has the weapons at the shed now, running them."
Krantz said, "You know how many guns we found at his place? Twelve handguns, four shotguns, and eight rifles, two of which are fully automatic assault weapons. This guy's a friggin' poster boy for gun control."
Charlie made a hurry-up gesture. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, and every one of those weapons is legally registered. Here's a prediction, Robby. You're not going to get a match."
Branford shrugged. "Probably not, but it doesn't matter. He's an ex-cop. He knows enough to dump the murder weapon. Does he have an alibi?"
Now Charlie was looking annoyed. "Pike was in Santa Monica. At the ocean."
"Okay. I'm listening."
"We're locating the wits now."
Branford didn't quite manage a smile. "And all I've got to do is believe you." He took the chair near his briefcase and leaned back. Maybe he and Krantz had rehearsed it. "For the motive, we've got Karen Garcia. Pike blamed Dersh for murdering his girlfriend. Here he was, inside the investigation, and it was killing him that everybody knew that Dersh was the one, but that the police couldn't put together a case."
I said, "Their relationship was over years ago. Talk to her father and check it out."
"What does that matter? Men get weird when it comes to women."
Branford brought another manila folder out of his briefcase and tossed it on the table.
"Besides that, we're not dealing with the most stable personality here, are we? Look at this guy's record. You see all the shootings he's been involved in? You see how many people he's killed? Here's a guy, he thinks nothing of using deadly force to solve his problems."
I was watching Krantz. Krantz nodded every time Branford made a point, but so far the points didn't add up to much.
Yet here was Krantz, looking assured and confident, and not at all bothered by the pissant nature of things like "prior history." Even Branford seemed amused, like he knew he was giving us nothing.
I said, "I don't get how you put it on Joe."
They looked at me.
Branford said, "The old lady."
"She knows Joe by sight? She called 911 and said she saw Joe Pike sneaking down the alley?"
Krantz uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. "Figure it out, Sherlock. How many guys run around at night with the no sleeves and the tattoos and the sunglasses?"
"Somebody who was trying to look like Joe Pike, Sherlock."
Krantz laughed. "Oh, please, Cole. You don't have to be Einstein to figure this out."
Charlie put the papers Branford had given him into his briefcase, then stood. "You guys are light. Way light. Here I was, thinking you were going to lay out real evidence like Pike's fingerprints on Dersh's doorknob, and all I'm getting is that you don't like that he's in the NRA. This is lame, Robby. I'll have the old lady saying she saw Santa Claus, and the judge is going to laugh you out."
Robby Branford suddenly looked smug. "Well, there is another thing. You wanna see it now?"
He didn't wait for us to answer. He went to the VCR and pressed the play button.
The flat blue screen filled with a soundless color surveillance video of the back of a house. It took me a moment to realize that it was Dersh's house. I had only seen it from the front.
Krantz said, "This is a surveillance tape of Dersh's house. See the date down here?"
The time and date were in the lower left corner of the screen. The date showed it to be three days before Karen Garcia's burial. That would be the day I had learned the truth about the five victims. It was the day Pike had gone to see Dersh.
We could see a large picture window off Dersh's studio, and inside, two blurred figures I took to be Eugene Dersh and another man.
I said, "That's not Pike."
"No, it's not. Watch here, past the edge of the house where you can see the street."
Krantz tapped the upper left side of the screen. Part of Dersh's drive was visible, and, beyond it, the street.
Krantz hit a button, and the image slowed. A few seconds later, the nose of a red Jeep Cherokee eased into the frame. When the cab was visible, Krantz hit the freeze frame.
Krantz said, "That's Pike."
Charlie's face drained, and his mouth formed a thin, dark line.
The picture advanced frame by frame. Joe's head turned. Joe looked at the house. Joe disappeared.
"When a jury sees this, they're going to put it together with everything else we have and think just what we think. Pike was doing a drive-by to case the area, working up his nut to pull the trigger."
Robby Branford put his hands in his pockets, pleased with himself and his evidence. "Looks pretty good now, doesn't it, Charlie? I'd say your boy's going to jail."
Charlie Bauman took my arm and said, "Come on. Let's go outside and talk about this."
Charlie kept hold of my arm until I shook him off in the booking area. "It's not what it seems. That was three days before Karen Garcia's funeral. Pike only went over there to see Dersh."
"Don't talk so loud. Why'd he go see Dersh?"
"I'd just found out about the other victims, and that Krantz suspected Dersh for the killer."
"So Pike wanted to go check out the suspect?"
"Yeah. That's pretty much it."
Charlie led me to the elevators, making sure no one was close enough to hear. "He go over there to talk to Dersh? Ask him if he did it?"
"No. He just wanted to look at him."
"He just looked at him?"
"He wanted to see if he thought Dersh could do it."
Charlie sighed and shook his head, "I can see me trying to explain that to a jury. 'You gotta understand, ladies and gentlemen, my client is a goddamned swami and he was just trying to vibe whether or not the victim was a killer.' " Charlie sighed again. "This really, really is gonna look bad for us."
"Will it come up in the arraignment?"
"Sure, it's gonna come up. Look, I can tell you right now that Joe is gonna get bound over for trial. He's going to stand for this one. Our problem isn't with the arraignment judge anymore, it'll be with the jury."
"What about bail?"
"I don't know." Charlie took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, and stuck one in his mouth. Nervous.
A passing cop said, "They don't want you smoking in here. City building."
Charlie fired up the cigarette. "So arrest me."
The cop laughed and went on.
"Look, Elvis, I'm not going to tell a jury that Pike just wanted to see the guy. I'll make up a better story than that, but it still looks bad." He checked his watch. "They're gonna transfer him to the Criminal Court Building in a few minutes. I'll go over there to talk with him again before the arraignment."
"I'll meet you there."
"No, you won't. You're going to look for the girl Pike saw at the beach. There's nothing you can do sitting in a room with me."
The elevator doors opened and we went in. Two women and an overweight man were inside. The shorter of the women sniffed at Charlie's cigarette. "There's no smoking in here."
Charlie blew out a cloud of smoke, and waved his hand. "Sorry. I'll put it right out."
He didn't.
"How bad is it, Charlie?"
Bauman drew deep on the cigarette, then blew a huge cloud of smoke toward the woman. "Can you spell plea bargain?"
As I walked out through Parker Center, the voices of the people around me were distant and tinny. The world had changed. Karen Garcia and Frank Garcia and Eugene Dersh were gone. The police thought their assassin killer was gone, but even if he wasn't, it didn't matter.
There was only Joe in jail, and the need to save him.
I spent the afternoon retracing the six-mile route that Pike had run, listing every business along the way that might employ twenty-four-hour help. When I reached the part of Ocean Avenue where Pike had met the girl, I left my car and walked. Small groups of homeless people were dotted through the park, some sleeping on blankets in the hot sun, others clustered in small groups or busy searching through trash containers. I woke them if they were sleeping or interrupted them if they were talking to ask if anyone knew Trudy or Matt, or if, last night, they had seen a jogging man who wore sunglasses even after dark. Almost everyone said yes, and almost everyone lied. Trudy was tall and skinny, or short and fat, or had only one eye. The jogging man was a black guy looking to harvest the organs of unwilling donors, or a government operative bent on mind control. The schizophrenics were particularly co-operative. I didn't stop for lunch.
I worked my way through every Ocean Avenue hotel, asking for the names of night-time staff, and when I finished I drove home hard to begin calling. Completing my first pass along Joe's route had taken almost five hours, and left me with a sense that I was falling behind.
Dersh's murder was the headline story on every four o'clock newscast in town. LAPD had released Joe's name as the suspect, and one station supered a picture of Joe with the legend VIGILANTE KILLER. Everyone reported that Dersh was the main suspect in the recent string of killings, with sources "among the upper echelons of LAPD" saying that that investigation would remain open, though no other suspect was expected to be identified. The cat came in during the newscast, and watched with me.
At ten minutes before five, my phone rang, and Charlie Bauman said, "The arraignment just ended. He's bound over."
Charlie sounded hollow.
"What about bail?"
"No bail."
I felt dull and weary, as if my frantic pace had taken its toll.
"We'll have another arraignment in Superior Court in about a month. I can argue for bail again there, and maybe that judge will swing in our favor. This one didn't."
"So what happens now?"
"They'll let him sit in Parker for another couple of days, then transfer him to Men's Central. They'll keep him over in the safe wing because he used to be a cop, so we don't have to worry about that. All we have to worry about is building his defense. You find anyone who saw him?"
"Not yet." I told him how I'd spent the day.
"Christ, how many names you got?"
"Between hotel people and businesses, two hundred fourteen."
"Man. You work fast."
It didn't seem like very much to me.
"Listen. Fax your list to my office. I'll have my secretary get on it tomorrow. That way you can keep pounding the pavement."
"I'll make the calls."
Charlie hesitated. When he spoke again his voice was calm. "Don't freak out on me, Elvis."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's after six. Businesses are closing, and the night shifts aren't on yet. Who're you going to call?"
I didn't know.
"Joe's okay for now. We've got time. Let's just do a good job, all right?" Like I was a little boy who'd lost his best friend, and he was my dad telling me everything would be okay if I just stayed calm.
"I'll fax the list, Charlie."
"Good. We'll talk tomorrow."
After we hung up, I sent the list, then got a beer and brought it out onto the deck. The air was hot, but the canyon was clear. Two red-tailed hawks floated in lazy circles overhead. They hung on nothing, patient, tiny heads cocking from side to side as they searched for field mice and gophers. I have seen them float like that for hours. Patient hunters are successful hunters. Charlie was right. When I was in Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, they taught us that panic kills. Men who had lived through three wars taught us that if you panicked you would stop thinking, and if you stopped thinking you would die. A sergeant named Zim ran us for five miles every day carrying sixty-pound field packs, a full issue of ammunition, and our M16s. Between each cadence he made us shout, "My mind is my deadliest weapon. Sergeant Zim says so, and Sergeant Zim is never wrong. Sergeant Zim is God. Thank you, God."
When you're eighteen, that leaves an impression.
I said, "Okay, moron. Think."
If Amanda Kimmel had seen a man dressed like Joe, wearing sunglasses like Joe, and sporting tattoos like Joe, then someone was pretending to be Joe. Finding that person would be an even better way of clearing Joe than finding Trudy or Matt, but so far, all I had was something that no one else seemed to have: An absolute and complete belief that Joe Pike was telling the truth. I did not doubt him. I would not. They could have videotape of Joe walking into that house, and if Joe pointed at the television and said, "That's not me," I would believe him.
You work with what you have, and all I had was faith. An awful lot of people have found that to be enough.
You look for connections.
Krantz came at this by looking for people with a motive to kill Dersh. He thought Pike's motive was Karen. Frank Garcia had the same motive, and had the money to have Dersh killed, but he wouldn't put it on Joe. That meant someone else, and I wondered if that someone had some true connection to Dersh, or had only used Dersh as a means to an end. Getting Pike. Maybe this wasn't about Dersh at all, but was about Pike.
I went inside for a yellow legal pad, came back out again, and made a timeline. From Karen's murder until the story broke that Dersh was the suspect took six days. From the story breaking about Dersh until his murder was only three days. I tried to imagine some guy with a grudge against Pike watching his TV He's out there hating Pike, and he's never before in his life heard about Karen Garcia or Eugene Dersh, but he sees all this, and the world's biggest lightbulb blinks on over his head. Hey, I can cap this guy Dersh to get Pike! All in the span of three days.
Uh-uh.
That meant he knew of Dersh prior to the story breaking, and had time to think about it. Also, all of L.A. knew that the police had been surveilling Dersh around the clock. Yet this guy had picked a time after the surveillance had been scaled back. I wondered about that.
I brought my beer inside, poured it out, then went back onto the deck. The hawks were still up there. I had thought they were hunting, but maybe they were just enjoying the air. I had thought they were looking for prey, but maybe they were looking at each other instead, and finding joy in each other's company there above the earth. Love hawks.
Relationships are often different than they appear at first glance.
I decided that the killer was someone connected both to Joe and to Dersh. Joe was connected to Dersh the same way Frank was connected to Dersh: Through Karen. Maybe the killer was connected to Joe through Karen, also.
I went inside, dug around for Samantha Dolan's home number, and called her.
She said, "Hey, it's the World's Greatest Everything. Callin' little ol' me."
She sounded drunk.
"Are you okay, Dolan?"
"Jesus. Would you call me Samantha?"
"Samantha."
"This has got to be about your buddy, right? I mean, you're not just calling to flirt?"
"It's Joe."
"I'm out of that, remember? I'm off the Task Force, I don't know what Krantz is doing, and I don't care. Hey, from what I heard, Pike sounds good for it."
"I know that Branford has a case against him, but I'm telling you that Pike didn't do this."
"Oh, puh-lease. You weren't there, were you? You didn't see it."
"I know him, is all. Pike wouldn't go into Dersh's house in the middle of the night and shoot him like that. It isn't Pike's style."
"What style murder would he use, you know him so well?"
"The kind that can't be seen. Pike could do it and you would never know and would never even think that it might be him. They would disappear, one day here, the next day gone, and you'd be left wondering what happened, Dolan. That's the way Pike would do it, and, believe me, you would never find the body. Pike is the most dangerous man I know, and I've known more than a few. He is without peer."
Dolan didn't say anything.
"Dolan? You still there?"
"Something tells me you could be pretty dangerous, too."
I didn't answer. Let her think what she wanted.
Dolan sighed. "Okay, World's Greatest. What do you want?"
"Whoever killed Dersh might be connected to Joe through Karen Garcia, and that goes back to the days Joe rode a black-and-white. Joe's partner was a guy named Abel Wozniak."
"Sure. The cop Pike killed."
"You don't have to say it like that, Dolan."
"There's only one way to say it."
"I want to find out who was around back then who might hate Pike enough to kill Dersh and frame Pike for it. I'm going to need files and records, and I can't get them without help."
She didn't answer again.
"Dolan?"
"You got a fucking set on you, you know that? The trouble I'm in."
She hung up.
I called her back, but she had the phone off the hook. Busy. I called every five minutes for the next half hour. Busy.
"Shit."
Twenty minutes later I was sitting at the dining-room table and thinking about calling Dolan again when Lucy let herself in. She took off her suit coat and shoes, and went to the fridge without looking at me.
I said, "I guess you heard about Joe."
"I followed the story at work. We had people at the arraignment."
"Uh-huh."
She hadn't come out to give me a kiss, and she hadn't yet looked at me.
"Can I get you something to eat?"
She shook her head.
"Want a glass of wine?"
"Maybe in a minute."
She was staring into the box.
"What's wrong?"
She stopped staring and closed the door.
"I never knew these things about Joe."
The day's tension crept back into my shoulders with a dense tightness.
"I saw a tape of Branford arguing against bail. He talked about all the shootings Joe's been involved in, and the men he's killed."
The tension turned into a stabbing ache.
"I thought of Joe as this strong, quiet man who was your friend, but now it feels like I never knew him. I don't like knowing these things. I don't like knowing a man who would do things like this."
"You know he treats you well and with respect. You know he's good with Ben, and that he's my best friend."
Something confused and fearful worked in her eyes. "Branford said that he's killed fourteen men, for God's sake."
I shrugged. "If you can make it in L.A., you can make it anywhere."
"This isn't funny to me."
I tried to do something with the ache but there was nothing to be done. I wanted to call Dolan again, but I didn't. "The men he's killed were trying to kill him, or me, or someone that Joe wanted to protect. He is not a hit man. He has never committed murder for hire, or killed someone simply to kill them. If he's killed, it's because he's put himself in situations that have required it. Just as I have. Maybe there's something wrong with both of us. Is that what you're getting at?"
Lucy came to the door but did not cross through. "No, that isn't what I'm saying. There's just so much to assimilate here. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be like this." She put on a smile, but it was strained. "I haven't seen you all day and I miss you, and all of this about Joe made me miss you more. I just don't know what to think. I read the documents that Branford submitted to the court, and what was there scared me."
"They were supposed to scare you, Lucy. That's why Branford used them to argue against bail. You know that."
I wanted more than anything else to get up and go to her but I couldn't. I thought she might want me to, or that she wanted to come to me, but something was stopping her, too.
"Elvis?"
"What?"
"Did Joe kill that man?"
"No."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure."
She nodded, but then her voice came small and from far away.
"I don't think I am. I think that he could've. Maybe I even think that he did."
We stood without speaking for a time, and then I went into the living room and put on the radio. I did not return to the kitchen.
I sat on the couch, staring out at the darkening sky, and realized that where Joe Pike sat this night, he could only see walls.
I wondered what the killer could see.
Number six
The hot breeze carries the stink of the public rest room to where the killer hides in a stand of red oleander. Mac Arthur Park is quiet this time of night, a perfect time for hunting.
The killer is flush with excitement at how well things are going. The Task Force still has not connected the five homicides, Hollywood Division detectives have begun turning evidence in Edward Deege's murder, and killing Dersh has proven to be inspired.
Joe Pike is in jail, and will stay there for the rest of his life, until some rat-house lifer pushes a shank between his ribs.
And won't that be fitting.
The killer smiles, just thinking about it. The killer doesn't smile often, learning that trait from Pike, from having studied Pike for so long now, Pike, whom he hates more than any other. But this is a special time, and there is plenty of hate to go around.
Pike, in perfect control.
Pike, in absolute command.
Pike, who took everything from him, and then gave him purpose.
Payback is a motherfucker.
The only possible fly in the ointment is this girl Trudy. The killer did what he could to protect himself from someone like her: He staked out Pike's home, making sure Pike was alone, waiting until the lights went out, then waiting longer still to be sure Pike was asleep before setting off to kill Dersh. The killer suspects that there is no Trudy, and that Pike is making it up, but he can't be sure, and thinks that he may have to find Trudy himself. He could run her name on the NCIC computers, and on VICAP through the FBI. And if someone beats him to her, well, he'll know as quickly as anyone. And deal with her then.
Still, the heavy lifting is done, and now all that remains is killing the rest of them, and ensuring with absolute certainty that Pike is convicted.
That means preparing for Pike's partner, Elvis Cole.
What a stupid name.
The killer is considering how he might deal with Cole when he hears Jesus Lorenzo approaching, and grips the.22 caliber pistol that he's taped into a plastic Clorox bottle. There is no mistaking Lorenzo. He is five feet ten, wearing red pumps with four-inch heels, a red satin micro-sheath, and a platinum wig. The killer has watched him cruise MacArthur Park on six separate nights at this time, waiting for this moment.
When Jesus Lorenzo disappears into the men's room, the killer steps out from the oleander and follows. No one else is around, no one is in the men's room. The killer knows this because he's been here for almost two hours.
The plan continues.
Payback, you motherfucker.
Lucy and I started the next day with a careful hesitancy that left me uncomfortable. Something new had been introduced to our relationship that neither of us knew how to approach. We had slept together, but we had not made love. Though she appeared to sleep, I think it was feigned. I wanted to speak with her about Joe. I wanted her to be all right with him, but didn't know if that was possible. By the time I decided to plunge in, she had to leave for work.
As she was walking out, she said, "Are you going to see Joe today?"
"Yes. Probably later."
"Would you give him my best?"
"Sure. You could come with me, see him yourself."
"I have to get to work."
"Okay. 1 know."
"But maybe."
"Luce?"
She looked at me.
"Whatever Joe is, that's what I am, too."
She probably didn't want to hear that.
"I guess what bothers me is that you're not disturbed by these things. You accept them as ordinary, and things like this aren't ordinary."
I didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound self-serving, so I didn't say anything.
Lucy pulled the door closed and went to work.
Another fine day in the City of Angels.
I wanted to call Charlie Bauman's secretary to tell her what I had already done, but she probably wasn't yet in the office. Charlie would tell her, but I wanted to tell her, too. I also wanted to contact both the FBI and the California State Sheriffs to access the data bank they keep on missing and runaway children. I wanted to see if I could get any hits on the first names, Trudy and Matt, and I also wanted to run the stolen vehicle reports for a black Dodge minivan. I decided to call Dolan first, and got Williams.
"Hey, Williams. Is Dolan there?"
"What's it to you?"
"I want to talk to her."
"Haven't seen her. You wanna know what I heard Krantz say?"
"I'm not going to like this, am I?"
"Krantz says you were probably in on it with that bastard, Pike. He says if he can tie you into it, maybe you and Pike can do the IV tango together." Williams chuckled when he said it.
"Hey, Williams."
"What?"
"You're the whitest black man I ever met."
"Fuck you, Cole."
"You, too, Williams."
I hung up, thinking that if the day got any better my cat would die.
I was on my way upstairs to take a shower when the doorbell rang. It was Samantha Dolan, looking hungover.
"I just called you."
"Was I there?"
"You know what, Dolan? Today isn't a good day for humor."
She walked in past me, again without being invited, and peeked into the kitchen. She was wearing a navy blazer over a plain white tee shirt and jeans, and oval Italian sunglasses. The shirt looked very white beneath the dark blazer. "Yeah, well, I have days like that, too. You never fixed the tiles."
"I don't want to be rude, but what are you doing here?"
"You worried the little woman's going to get jealous?"
"Do me a favor and don't call her the little woman. It's pissing me off."
"Whatever. You think I could have some juice or water? I'm a little dry."
I brought her into the kitchen and poured two glasses of mango juice. When I handed the glass to her, she took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were bloodshot, and I caught a whiff of tequila. "Jesus, it's eight in the morning, Dolan. You hit it this early?"
The bloodshot eyes flashed angrily. "Is it any of your business when I 'hit it'?"
I raised my hands.
Dolan put the sunglasses back on.
"I was thinking about what you said last night. That maybe the killer is connected to Pike through Garcia. Maybe you've got something there, but I sure as hell couldn't call you from the office to talk about it."
"That mean you'll help?"
"It means I want to talk about it."
The cat nosed through his cat door. He got halfway inside, and stopped, staring at her.
Dolan scowled at him. "What in hell are you looking at?"
The cat cocked his head, still staring.
"What's wrong with this cat?"
"I think he's confused. The only other person in the world he likes is Joe Pike. Maybe it's the glasses."
Dolan scowled deeper. "How nice for me. Mistaken for a two-hundred-pound bruiser with a butch cut and no tits."
Dolan took off the glasses and bugged her eyes at him.
"Better?"
The cat cocked his head the other way.
"Why does he hold his head that way?"
"Someone shot him."
Dolan squatted and held out her hand.
I said, "Don't do that, Dolan. He bites."
"Samantha."
"Samantha."
The cat sniffed. He eased toward her and sniffed again.
"He doesn't seem so mean to me."
She scratched his head, then finished her juice.
"He's just a damned cat."
I stared at him, then her. I had seen that cat claw a hundred people over the years, and I had never seen him let anyone other than me and Joe touch him.
"What?"
I shook nay head again. "Nothing."
She took a hard pack of Marlboros from her pocket. "You mind if I smoke?"
"Yeah, I do. If you gotta have one, we can go out on the deck."
We went out. Yesterday's gray haze still hung in the air, but it had thinned. Dolan went to the rail and peered down into the canyon. "This is nice. You got your chairs out here. You got your Weber."
She fired up a Marlboro and blew a great fog of smoke to add to the haze. Inviting.
I said, "So what were you thinking last night?"
"I wasn't on the job when that happened with Wozniak and Pike, but Stan Watts was. I asked him about it. Do you know what happened?"
"I know."
A little girl named Ramona Ann Escobar had been seen leaving a park with a man the police believed to be a known pedophile and child pornographer named Leonard DeVille. Pike and Wozniak learned that DeVille had been sighted entering the Islander Palms Motel, and had driven there to investigate. When they entered the room, Ramona was not present. Pike had never spoken to me of these things, but I recalled from the newspaper coverage that Wozniak, the father of a young daughter, had apparently been fearful that DeVille had harmed the girl. He drew his weapon, and struck DeVille. Pike, feeling that Wozniak might endanger the suspect, intervened. A struggle followed, during which Wozniak's weapon discharged, killing Wozniak. Internal Affairs conducted an investigation, but brought no charges against Pike. What the articles I'd read didn't say is that even though IAG didn't bring charges, damn near every officer on the job at that time blamed Pike for Wozniak's death, hating him all the more because Pike had killed Wozniak defending an asshole like Leonard DeVille. A child molester.
Dolan said, "So if you're looking for people with a grudge, you're gonna have to start with a couple of thousand cops."
"I don't believe that."
"I'm talking hate, buddy. They got cops still around who hate Pike for what happened to Wozniak."
"Think about what you're saying, Dolan. You believe some random cop has been carrying a grudge so big he's willing to kill an innocent man like Dersh just to set up Pike?"
"You say innocent, and this is your theory, not mine. If one of these cowboys thinks Dersh is a serial killer, maybe he figures it's a no-brainer sacrifice. And if it isn't a cop, you're probably talking about one of the two or three hundred assholes that Pike arrested. That's still a pretty big suspect pool."
I spread my hands. "I can't go there, Dolan. There are so many variables here that if I try to deal with all of them I'll just sit home and wait for Krantz to crack the case."
"Guess that wouldn't work for you."
"Does it work for you?"
She smiled. "No. Christ, that sun is hot."
Dolan took off the blazer and draped it over one of the deck chairs. Her Sig was in a clip holster on the right hip of her jeans, and her tanned arms looked strong. The white shirt was so bright it made me squint.
I said, "I've got to stay with what's in front of me, and that's Wozniak and Karen Garcia, and how they all came to meet. I need to find out everything I can about Wozniak and DeVille, and what happened in that room. I want the shooting team report, the incident report, and whatever Internal Affairs had."
She was shaking her head before I finished. "I can tell you right now you can forget the IAG documents. They're under seal. You'd need a court order."
"I need Wozniak's personnel file and DeVille's case file. I'm going to talk to Joe and see what he says."
"Man, you don't want too much, do you?"
"What else can I do?"
She took another deep pull on the cigarette. "Nothing, I guess. I'll make some calls for you. It might take a while."
"I appreciate your doing this for me, Samantha."
She rested her elbows on the rail, looking out at the canyon. "I've got nothing better to do. You know what Bishop has me doing? Due-diligence calls on last year's robbery cases. You know what that is?"
"No."
"We gotta go through unsolved cases every three months just to keep the cases alive. You call the detective of record, ask if he's learned anything new, he says no, and you log it. A fucking clerk could do it. And every time I see Bishop, he shakes his head and walks away."
I didn't know what to say.
She finished the cigarette and dropped it in the juice glass.
"I'm sorry, Samantha."
She looked at me. "You've got nothing to be sorry about."
"I jammed you into coming across about the Task Force, just like I'm jamming you now. I apologize for doing that. I wouldn't've told Krantz that I knew about it, or that we'd had that conversation in your car that morning."
"Everything always comes out, buddy. I'm on thin ice now, but if I'd lied that day and they'd found out, I'd be underwater for sure. Like I said, maybe if I kiss enough ass, Bishop will let me stick around."
I nodded.
She glanced over. "I feel like a damned lush."
"Because you had a couple this morning?"
"Because I want one right now."
She stared at me some more.
"I didn't take the drink because of this shit with the job, you dumb ass."
I looked at her, thinking that she didn't need to come to my house, that she could've called. I thought how she'd rung the bell just a few minutes after Lucy had gone.
Dolan was leaning on the rail, her back stretched long and taut, the white tee shirt pulled tight. She looked good. She saw me looking and shifted her weight so that her ass swayed. I looked away, but it wasn't easy. I thought about Lucy.
"Elvis."
I shook my head.
Dolan stepped close and put her arms around my neck and kissed me. I could taste the cigarettes and the tequila and the mangoes, and I wanted to kiss her back. Maybe, for a moment, I did.
Then I took her arms from around my neck.
"I can't, Samantha."
Dolan took a fast step back. She went a very bright red, then turned and ran back through my house. A moment later, I heard the Beemer rev to life and pull away.
I touched my lips, and stood on the deck for a long time, thinking.
Then I went inside and phoned Charlie Bauman.
Charlie listened without comment as I told him why I wanted to speak with Pike.
When I was done, he said, "Visiting starts at ten unless they're bringing him over to Men's Central this morning. Let me call over there to find out, then I'll get back to you."
The cat came downstairs to the landing and looked at me while I waited. He went into the guest room, then came back into the living room, where he looked at me again.
I said, "She's gone."
He fell onto his side and licked his penis. Cats.
I couldn't get Dolan out of my head, and having her there made me feel a guilt unlike any I had known since the first time I killed a man. Dolan was leaning on the rail, and then she was pressed against me. I could still taste her cigarette. I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water, but it didn't wash away the taste. The love I felt for Lucy flared into something white and fierce, and I wished she were here. I wanted to hold her, and tell her that I loved her, and hear her say the same back. I wanted her caress, and the comfort of her love. Most of all I wanted to stop wanting Samantha Dolan, but I didn't know how. It made me feel disloyal.
I stared out the kitchen window for a time, then washed the glass, put it away, and forced myself to think about what I had to do.
Charlie called back four minutes later, and told me to meet him in the Parker Center lobby at eleven.
I used the time until then to look for Trudy, calling the Department of Motor Vehicles for a transfer and registration check on all new minivans sold in the past two months, sorted by color. I told them I was only interested in black. We got twenty-eight hits. I asked if they could fax the information to me, but was told no, they'd have to mail it. The government in action. After that, I spent almost two hours on the phone talking to the FBI, the United States Marshals, and the L.A. County Sheriffs. Most of that time was spent on hold, but I learned that no current model year black minivans had been stolen in the past three months. I arranged to have the names Trudy and Matt run through the law enforcement agencies' VICAP and NCIC computers, which show outstanding fugitive warrants from around the country, and also contain a database of missing or abducted children. When they asked me why I wanted this, I didn't tell them about Pike; I told them I was working for the parents. Everyone was more cooperative that way, but everyone told me the same thing: With no last name, the odds of getting any useful information were slim.
I drove to Parker early, scanning the smokers out on the walk as I turned in for Dolan. She wasn't among them, and I wondered if she was getting the files I needed, or if she would.
And then I thought that maybe I was looking for another reason, and the guilt burned like bitter coffee.
Even though I was early, Charlie Bauman was already in the lobby, waiting. He said, "You look like hell. What's wrong?"
"Not a goddamned thing."
"That's just what I need. Attitude."
An overweight cop with a red face led us back along the corridor to the interview room. Charlie and I sat without speaking for the five minutes it took them to bring Joe. He was wearing the blue jumpsuit, but he'd rolled the sleeves. The veins in his wrists and forearms bulged as if he'd been exercising when they'd come for him.
The same black cop with weight-lifter arms who had brought Joe out of the lineup now led him through the door. "You gonna be good?"
"Yes."
Pike was wearing the cuffs and shackles. The black cop unlatched the handcuffs and pocketed them.
"Gotta leave the ankles."
Pike nodded. "Thanks for the hands."
When the cop was gone, I smiled. Joe wasn't squinting anymore. He'd grown used to the light.
Joe said, "You find Trudy?"
"Not yet."
"So how come you haven't broken me out?"
"Too easy. I'd rather do it the hard way and figure out who set you up."
Charlie leaned forward like he was going to dive across the table. "Cole has an idea that maybe whoever popped Dersh is also connected to you through Karen Garcia. Maybe it's even the same guy who killed her."
Pike looked at me. I thought he might be curious, but you never know with Pike.
I said, "Whoever killed Dersh hates you so much that he made himself up to look like you, and even used a.357 like you. That means he knows you, or at least has made an effort to learn about you."
Pike nodded.
"If he hates you that much, why wait until now, and why kill Dersh just to frame you? Why not just take you head-on?"
Pike's mouth flickered. "Because he can't."
Charlie rolled his eyes. "I shoulda brought my waders. The testosterone is getting pretty deep in here."
I went through what I'd been thinking about the timeline, and the coincidence of it all. "He's been thinking about this, Joe. Since before the story broke about Dersh. Maybe even since before Karen was killed. He doesn't want to kill you. He wants to punish you. This guy's been carrying a grudge for a long time, and now he's seen a way to work it out, and that makes me wonder if he isn't connected to Karen also."
Pike canted his head, and now the calm blue water of his eyes held something deeper.
"He wouldn't have to be connected to Karen. I arrested two hundred men."
"If it's just some guy, then why here and why now? Just some guy, then we're spiking the coincidence meter, and I can't buy it."
Charlie smiled like a wolf, and nodded. He was getting into it. "Goddamned right."
Pike said, "Leonard DeVille."
The man Joe and Wozniak went to arrest the day Wozniak died.
Charlie said, "Who?"
We told him.
Joe said, "DeVille was there at the end, but he was also why Karen and I met. Woz and I responded to a report she called in about a suspected pedophile. Woz thought it might be DeVille."
Charlie said, "So maybe it's DeVille."
Joe shook his head. "DeVille died in prison. An Eighteenth Street gang-banger cut him two years into his term." Child molesters didn't last long in prison.
I said, "Okay. What about Wozniak? Maybe there's something through him."
"No."
"Think about it."
"Woz is dead, too, Elvis. There's nothing to think about."
Someone knocked hard twice on the door, and Charlie shouted for them to come in.
It was Krantz and Robby Branford.
Krantz frowned when he saw Charlie's cigarette. "No smoking in here, Bauman."
"Sorry, Detective. I'll put it right out." Charlie took another drag and blew the smoke at Branford. "You planning on talking to my client without me around, Robby?"
Branford fanned the air, annoyed.
"They knew you were here and called me. If you hadn't been here, I would've phoned. You're going to kill yourself with those things, Charlie."
Charlie said, "Yeah."
I didn't like the expressions on their faces, and neither did Charlie.
He said, "What? I'm in the middle of a conference with my client."
Robby Branford took out a tiny leather notepad and glanced at it. "At seven twenty-two this morning a transvestite named Jesus Lorenzo was found dead in a public bathroom in MacArthur Park. One shot with a.22, white plastic particulates have been identified in the wound. Initial time of death is about three this morning."
He closed the pad, put it away, and looked at Pike.
"A full day after you killed Dersh."
I leaned back and stared at Krantz. "So Dersh didn't kill Karen Garcia or anyone else."
Charlie Bauman said, "What the hell does that have to do with us? You gonna charge Pike with that one, too?"
Branford shook his head. "No, not that one. It's bad enough when somebody takes the law into his own hands to get revenge, but it's even worse when they fuck up and kill the wrong man."
Charlie said, "Pike didn't kill anyone."
"We'll let the jury decide that. In the meantime I wanted to put you on notice."
"When we arraign in Superior Court next month, we're going for Special Circumstances. We'll ask for the death penalty."
A tic started beneath Charlie's left eye. "That's bullshit, Robby."
Branford shrugged. "Dersh's relatives might disagree. We're going to want to talk to your man after lunch. Why don't you and I get together and set a time when you're done here."
I was still staring at Krantz, and Krantz was staring back.
"You going to charge Krantz with getting an innocent man killed?"
Branford walked out without answering, but Krantz paused in the door.
He said, "Yeah, Dersh was the wrong man, and I'll have to live with that. But I've still got Pike."
He walked out and closed the door.
Sunday Afternoon with the Wozniaks
Pike said, "Hold on tight."
Evelyn Wozniak, age nine, grabbed his outstretched hands as tightly as she could.
"Bet you can't lift me! I'm too big!"
"Let's see."
"Don't drop me!"
Joe lifted, holding the girl at arm's length, and slowly turned in a circle. Evelyn squealed.
Abel Wozniak called from the barbecue. "Evie, tell your mother I need more water in the spray bottle. Hurry up before I burn the goddamned chicken."
Pike returned Evelyn to the earth, where, flushed and breathless, she ran into the house. A few minutes ago, Joe and Abel had set a picnic table on the covered patio out of the sun, while Karen and Paulette had gone inside for the place settings and fresh drinks. Now, Joe sat in the lawn chair beneath the big sun umbrella and sipped his beer. Across the lawn, Abel prodded at the chicken and cursed the hot coals.
Joe had always admired the Wozniaks' backyard. Abel and Paulette kept it simple and neat. They lived in a modest home here in San Gabriel, where many officers and their families lived, and they both worked hard to keep the house and the yard looking nice. It showed, and Joe had always enjoyed coming to their home for a Sunday afternoon cookout.
Abel cursed the coals again, shouted that he needed the goddamned water, then covered the grill and came over to sit next to Joe. Abel had a beer of his own. He'd had several.
Joe said, "You deal with it yet?"
"Fuck off. You don't know what you're talking about." Abel stared at the smoke pouring out of the barbecue's vents.
"I followed you, Woz. I saw you with the Chihuahua Brothers. I saw you with that girl. I know what you're doing."
Wozniak took a Salem from the pack on the ground next to his chair and lit up. Wozniak said, "Why the hell are you doing this?"
"I can't let it go on."
"I'm your goddamned partner, for chrissakes."
Joe finished his beer and placed the empty bottle on the lawn. Paulette and Karen came out, Karen with a huge bowl of potato salad, and Paulette the spray bottle and a tray of forks and knives and napkins. Abel went over, used the water on his coals, then came back. The women stayed busy with the table.
Wozniak muttered, "Fuckin' chicken looks like shit."
"I mean it, Woz. I won't ride with this forever."
Woz flicked at his cigarette. Nervous. "I got responsibilities."
"That's why I'm giving you the choice."
Wozniak leaned toward him so far that the chair tipped. "You think I like this? You think I want it to be this way? Man, I feel like I'm caught in a goddamned vise."
Karen flashed a great brilliant smile at Joe, and Joe waved. Paulette smiled, and waved, too. They couldn't hear what the men were saying.
"I know it's a vise, Woz. I'm trying to help you with it."
"Bullshit."
"You don't have a choice."
Wozniak watched the two women, then considered Joe. "Don't think I don't know how you feel about her."
Pike stared at him.
Wozniak nodded. "I've seen you looking at Paulette. A great kid like Karen, and you're looking at my wife."
Pike stood and looked down at his partner.
"You're going to resign, Woz. And it's going to be soon."
"I'm warning you, you sonofabitch. If you don't back off, one of us is going to die."
Paulette and Karen had gone to the grill and were frowning at the chicken. Paulette called, "Abel! I think this chicken is dead!"
Abel Wozniak stared at Joe for a moment longer, and then he stalked back to the grill.
Pike watched Abel and Paulette and Karen, but soon he saw only Paulette. It was as if everything else had grown more and more faint until only she remained.
He had not felt such emptiness since he was a child.
When I left Parker Center even more smokers were outside, watching the news vans arrive. From the number of cops on the sidewalk, there probably weren't many left inside, but you never know. Samantha Dolan wasn't among them, and neither was Stan Watts. Half the dicks on the walk were probably from IAG, and most of them weren't smoking. They were probably taking names of those who were.
I walked down to the covered level looking for Dolan's Beemer, found it, then walked back to the lobby pay phone, and called her. She answered on the second ring.
"Dolan."
"It's me."
"Listen, I'm busy right now. I don't want to talk."
"I'm downstairs, and I want to talk to you. I need those files."
She lowered her voice. "I'm feeling just a little bit humiliated right now, can you understand that? I don't usually… I don't do what I did this morning."
"Yeah. I get that. I'm feeling pretty awkward myself."
"You weren't the one rejected,"
"I'm with somebody else, Samantha. I told you that." I felt defensive, like I had to justify myself.
"The little woman."
"Don't call her that. Lucy's tough, too, and she might kick your ass."
Dolan didn't say anything.
"That was a joke, Dolan."
"I know. I didn't say anything because I'm smiling."
"Oh."
"Maybe I'll call her out and see who's left standing."
"Did you find out about the files I wanted?"
"It's really hard to talk right now. You know about this new vie?"
"I was with Pike when Krantz and Branford came down. Will you come down to your car? I really need your help right now, but I don't want whatever it is you feel about me to get confused with that."
When she answered, it was frosty and cool. "I think I can manage not to get confused. Five minutes."
"Samantha."
But she'd already hung up.
Dolan was standing at the mouth of the garage, watching the news vans. She wasn't smoking, but a crushed butt was by her toe. Guess I'd caught her between puffs. She also wasn't carrying the files.
She said, "They're going to go crazy with this."
"Yeah. How are you doing?"
The cool eyes came to me. "You mean, has my ego survived your rejection, or am I grieving the loss of my self-esteem?"
"They don't come any tougher than you, do they?"
She turned back into the garage, and I followed her to the Beemer.
"Okay. Here's what I found out: Wozniak died so long ago that Rampart won't have his file anymore. They would've sent it down to the file morgue by Union Station."
"None of this is on computer?"
"This is the LAPD, World's Greatest. We got shit for computers."
I nodded.
"Internal Affairs has their own separate storage facility, with their own procedures for getting into their records. Forget it. But the file morgue is different. We've got a shot at that."
"Okay."
"I talked to a detective I know over at Rampart. He said it's pretty much the same story with DeVille. Since he died in prison, the Rampart sex crimes detectives who worked that case would've boxed the file and sent it to storage. We could order it from the district attorney's case file morgue, but we won't have to do that."
"You got a way to get at the files in storage?"
"I'm there almost every damned day with running the due diligence, but we can't just go in and sign the stuff out. You see?"
"So what do we do?"
"Steal it. You up for that?"
"Yes."
"Glad you're up for something."
The Los Angeles Police Department storage facility is an ancient, red brick building in an industrial area just south of the railroad yard. The bricks looked powdery, and I thought that there was probably no way the building could pass an earthquake inspection if it wasn't owned by the LAPD. It was the kind of place that, while you're in it, you're spending most of your time hoping we don't get a big temblor.
Dolan parked the Beemer well away from the other cars that were there, then led me through a plain gray door and along a short hall.
I said, "Hot."
"The frigging air must be out again. Listen, do us both a favor and don't say anything. I'll do all the talking."
I didn't answer her.
"Well?"
"You said not to say anything."
"Try not to act smart. You don't pull it off."
An overweight civilian clerk named Sid Rogin was reading a magazine behind a low counter. He was in his sixties and balding, with thin, wispy hair, and a glass eye. He brightened when he saw Dolan and put down the magazine. He was also sweating, and had a little fan going. The fan was pathetic. He would've gotten more air from a Chihuahua wagging its tail.
"Hey, Sammy, what it is? They still got you running down due diligence?" The middle-class white man does black.
Dolan gave him a sparkling grin. I would've guessed that if anyone called her Sammy she would gun them down on the spot. "Yeah, same old same old. We've got to run down a deceased officer and a perp he was working named Leonard DeVille, also deceased."
Rogin turned a sign-in log toward her. "Names and badge numbers. What kind of time frame we talking here on the perp?"
She picked up his pen and glanced at me. "I've got it. No sweat." She told Rogin when DeVille had died.
"You taking out the files?"
"Not if we're lucky. Just gotta look up some dates." She flashed the bright smile again. "Figure my partner here could look up the officer while I get the perp, save everybody some time."
"Okay. Step around behind."
Dolan and I followed Rogin into a series of rooms lined with industrial shelving stacked with dusty cardboard boxes.
"What's the officer's name?"
"Stuart Vincent." She spelled Vincent.
"Good enough. Officers on this floor. You and I will have to go up to the second for the perps."
"No problemo."
We followed Rogin along the aisles, me thinking that all the crummy cardboard boxes looked like little crypts.
We turned a corner into a section of aisle marked T – Z. Rogin said, "Here ya go, V as in Vincent." Six boxes were marked with V's. He pulled down the one that would hold Vi. "All you wanna do is look through the file?"
Dolan glanced at me, and nodded.
I said, "That's right."
Rogin had the lid off, pulling out a thick file that had been tied with a string. He frowned. "It's awful thick, Sammy. You gotta read through the whole thing?"
"You look busy, Sid. Sorry to put you out this way."
"Well, it's not that. They just don't like people back here."
Dolan raised her eyebrows back at him and stiffened. "Well, Sidney, I guess if you'd rather I go back to Parker and have them call down." She let it drop, watching him.
"Oh, no, hell, you don't have to do that. It's just I gotta get back up and watch the front."
I said, "I'll be done by the time you guys get back from the second floor. No sweat."
"You sure?"
"Absolutely."
Dolan clapped Sid on the shoulder and grinned at him some more. "Let's do it, Sid. Get outta this goddamned heat."
I pretended to be interested in Vincent's file until their steps were gone, then I searched down the aisle for the W's. Twelve boxes were marked with a W, the eighth and ninth file boxes holding Wo.
We could have asked for Wozniak's file and signed for it, but we didn't want a written record connecting Dolan to what we were doing. She was in enough trouble, and if things went wrong I didn't want her in more.
I pulled Wozniak's file, then pushed the boxes back in their rows.
Wozniak's personnel file was too thick to shove down my pants, but most of it didn't concern me. I pulled the sheet listing his partners prior to Pike and their badge numbers, then flipped back to the beginning of his career and pulled the sheet noting his training officers. Wozniak was a top cop: He'd been awarded the Medal of Valor twice, twelve certificates of commendation, and a half dozen public service commendations for working with schools and troubled youth. The list of his arrests went on for pages, listing the arrestee, date of arrest, and charge. I jerked those pages, folded them, and put them in my jacket. The next section in the file was devoted to disciplinary actions. I wasn't even thinking to look at it except that Abel Wozniak had been called to appear before the Internal Affairs Group on two occasions six weeks prior to his death. The requesting Internal Affairs officer being one Detective Harvey Krantz.
I said, "Damn."
No other information was given except the notation that the inquiry was terminated, along with the date of termination.
Krantz.
I jerked that page, too, and put it with the others.
Dolan's voice came along the aisle, Dolan saying, "Hey, buddy, I hope you're ready to go. We're outta here."
I stuffed the remains of the file together and pushed it between the boxes, then hurried back to the V's. I picked up Vincent's file just as Dolan and Rogin came around the corner.
She said, "You find what you need?"
"Yeah. You?"
She shook her head. Slow.
"DeVille's file isn't here."
I raised my eyebrows. "Where is it?"
Rogin waved his hand. "Some other dick probably checked it out. You want me to look it up?"
I said, "If you don't mind. Maybe I can call the guy and get what we need."
We followed him back to the counter and waited while he fingered through a box of little index cards. He scratched his head, checked some numbers he'd written on a little pad, then frowned. "Hell, it ain't here. If it was signed out, I woulda had the log-out card in here, but it ain't."
"Any way to tell how long it's been gone?"
"Not without the card. Ain't this the shits?"
Dolan glanced at me again, then pulled at my arm.
"Maybe you just misfiled it, Sid. It's no big deal."
When we were on our way out to her car, she said, "I don't believe in coincidences."
"You thinking someone ripped off that file?"
"I'm thinking I don't believe in coincidences. But we can still get a copy. The district attorney's office keeps a record of all their case files in their own storage facility. I can order up theirs."
"How long will that take?"
"A couple of days. Don't be peevish, World's Greatest. What'd you get?"
"I got some names, and his collar jacket, but something else, too." I told her about the disciplinary notation showing Wozniak had been the subject of an investigation, and that Krantz was the investigating officer.
Dolan made a hissing sound. "That's IAG, man. You can't just ask Krantz."
We got into her car. The leather was so hot it burned through my pants. Dolan lifted her butt off the seat.
"I never should've got black."
She started the engine and turned on the air conditioner, but didn't put the car in gear.
I took out the pages and looked at them again. I skimmed over the arrest pages, but ended up back with the disciplinary sheet and the two meetings with Krantz. The dates were there. "If I can't get the files, and I can't ask Krantz, maybe there's someone else I can ask."
She held out her hand for the sheet. "This doesn't say shit."
"No. It doesn't."
"It doesn't say if he was the subject, or if they wanted to question him about someone else."
"Nope."
She handed the sheet back, thinking, then took out her cell phone and punched a number.
"Hang on."
She made three phone calls and spoke for almost twenty minutes, twice writing in a notepad. "This guy might be able to help you. He was an IA supervisor when Krantz was there."
"Who is he?"
She handed me the sheet. "Mike McConnell. He's retired now, living out in Sierra Madre. That's his number. He owns a sod farm."
"Sod."
"He grows grass."
"I know what it means."
"I wasn't sure. Sometimes you're stupid."
She floored the gas, spun her tires, and brought me back to my car.
Sierra Madre is a relaxed community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the east of Los Angeles. Mature green trees line the streets and kids still ride bikes without worrying about getting shot in a drive-by. The town has a peaceful, rural feel that Los Angeles lost when the developers took over city hall. It is also where Don Siegel filmed the exterior locations of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I haven't yet seen a pod person there, though I keep looking. Farther west, L.A. is filled with them.
Mike McConnell's sod farm was on a broad flat plain near the Eaton Canyon Reservoir. The reservoir has been dry for years, and the property beneath it has been leased to farmers and nurseries who've put it to good use. Model airplane builders come fly their tiny machines out of the unused land, which is scrubby and dead, but the irrigated parcels are brightly alive with acre after acre of flowers and yearling plants, and sod.
I turned off the paved street and followed a gravel road between flat green fields of buffalo grass, Bahia grass, St. Augustine and Bermuda grasses, and others I didn't recognize. Rainbirds dotted the fields like Erector Set scarecrows, spraying water, and the air smelled of fertilizer. I was hoping to find a field of pulsating pods, but instead I came to a service area where a trailer and a large metal shed sat surrounded by spindly eucalyptus trees. Live in hope.
Three Hispanic guys were sitting in the bed of a Ford pickup, eating sandwiches and laughing. They were soiled from working in the sod fields, and burned deep umber by the sun. They smiled politely as I pulled up and got out of my car. A thin brown dog was lying beneath the pickup's gate. He looked at me, too.
I said, "Señor McConnell?"
The youngest guy nodded toward the trailer. A late-model Cadillac Eldorado was parked next to it between the trees. "He's inside. You want me to get him for you?"
"That's okay. Thanks."
McConnell came out as I was crunching across the gravel. He was in his sixties, with a large gut hanging over khaki trousers and Banner work boots. An unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt let the gut show like he was proud of it. He held a Negra Modelo beer in the dark bottle, but he offered his free hand. "Mike McConnell. You Mr. Cole?"
"Yes, sir. Please, call me Elvis."
He laughed. "Don't know as I could do that with a straight face."
What do you say to something like that?
"I'd invite you in, but it's hotter in there than out here. You want a beer? All I got is this Mexican shit. Fresh out of American."
"No, sir. But thanks."
A slim Chicana who couldn't have been more than twenty appeared in the trailer's door and frowned out at him. Somebody had sprayed a thin cotton print dress over her body, and she was barefoot. Hot in there, all right.
She said, "No me hagas esperar. No me gusta estar sola."
McConnell looked scandalized. "Quidado con lo que dices o te regreso a Sonora."
She stuck out her tongue and pouted back into the trailer. The guys on the truck nudged each other.
McConnell shrugged apologetically. "She's young."
He led me to a redwood table set in the shade between the eucalyptus trees, and had some of the Modelo. A USMC globe and anchor was so faded on his right forearm that it looked like an ink smudge. "Got two thousand square yards of St. Augustine goin' out this evening to a Chinaman in San Marino. If you're looking for St. Augustine I might not be able to help you, but I got twelve other kinds of sod. What are you thinking about?"
I gave him one of my cards. "I'm afraid I wasn't being straight with you, Mr. McConnell. I apologize about that, but I need to ask you about an IA investigation that happened on your watch. I'm hoping you'll talk to me about it."
He read over the card, then put it on the table. He reached around behind him like he was going for a handkerchief, but came out with a little black.380 automatic. He didn't aim it at me, he just held it.
The men on the truck stopped eating.
"Lying's a poor way to start, son. You carrying?"
I tried not to look at the gun. "Yes, sir. Under my left arm."
"Take it out with your left hand. Two fingers only. I see more than two fingers on metal, I'll pop you."
I did what he said. Two fingers.
"You keep holding it like that, away from your body like it smells bad. Walk on back over there and drop it in your car, then come on back."
The hired hands were poised on the bed like swimmers on their starting platforms, ready to dive if the shooting started.
Imagine: Coming north all the way from Zacatecas to get shot in a sod field.
I dropped the gun into the front seat, then walked back to the table.
"I didn't come here to make trouble for you, Mr. McConnell. I just need a few answers. It's been my experience that if I warn people I'm coming, they have a tendency to be gone when I get there. I couldn't afford that you'd be gone."
McConnell nodded.
"You always carry that little gun out here?"
"I spent thirty years on the job, twenty-five in Internal Affairs. I prosecuted cops who were every bit as rotten as any thug on the street, and I made enemies doing it. More than one of 'm has tried looking me up."
I guess I'd carry the gun, too.
"I'm trying to learn about a deceased officer named Abel Wozniak. He was investigated when you were on the job as a supervisor, but I don't know why, or what came of it. You remember him?"
He gestured with the.380. "Why don't you tell me what your interest is in this first."
Retired Detective-Three Mike McConnell listened without expression as I told him about Dersh and Pike. If he knew anything of the headline news happening just a few miles to the west, he gave no indication. That's the way cops are. The first time I mentioned Joe's name, McConnell's eyes flickered, but he didn't react again until I told him that the investigating detective for Internal Affairs had been Harvey Krantz.
McConnell's weathered face split into a mean grin.
"Shits-his-pants Krantz! Hell, I was there the day that squiggly weasel let go!" He enjoyed the memory so much that the.380 drifted away from me. The guys in the truck relaxed then, and pretty soon they were balling up paper bags and climbing into the truck's cab. The show was over and it was time to get back to work.
McConnell said, "So Pike's your partner now, is he?"
"That's right."
"Pike's the one made Krantz shit his pants."
"Yes, sir. I know."
McConnell laughed. "That boy damn near made me shit mine, too, the way he grabbed Krantz. Damn, that boy was fast. Lifted Pants right off the floor. I remember he was a Marine. So was I."
I thought about that, and how humiliated Krantz must've felt. It had hurt his career, and he still carried the name.
"You remember why Krantz was investigating Wozniak?"
"Oh, sure. Wozniak was involved with a burglary ring."
He said it like it was nothing, but when I heard it I stiffened as if he'd reached out and flipped my off switch.
McConnell nodded. "Yeah, that's right. Krantz developed it off a couple of Mexican fences working out of Pacoima, up in the valley. Little bitty guys named Reena and Uribe. We called them the Chihuahua Brothers, they were so short. Near as we could figure, Wozniak tipped these Mexicans whenever a business's alarm was on the fritz, or when he found out the watchman had called in sick, or whatever, and they'd send a crew over to rob the place. Auto parts, stereos, that kind of thing."
"You're saying that Wozniak was dirty."
"That's right."
"You're telling me that Joe Pike's partner was part of a burglary ring."
Like maybe I'd heard him wrong and wanted to be sure.
"Well, we weren't at a point in the investigation where we could make the case and charge him, but he was good for it. After he died we could've kept going, but I decided to let it drop. Here was this man's family, a wife and the children, why put them through that? Krantz was livid about it, though. He wanted to keep going and nail Pike."
"Because Pike had embarrassed him?"
McConnell was about to take another sip of the beer when he paused, and considered me.
"Not that at all. Harvey believed that Pike was involved."
Sometimes you hear things that you never want to hear, things so alien to your experience, so outlandish that it seems you've rolled out of bed into a Stephen King novel.
"I don't believe that."
McConnell shrugged. "Well, most people thought what you thought, that Krantz was just hot to get Pike because Pike's the one made him shit his pants. But Krantz told me he really did believe Pike was involved. He didn't have any proof, but his feeling was how could they not be, the two of them riding together every day. I told'm if he'd spent more time in the car being a real cop instead of trying to suck ass his way into fancier jobs, he'd know. It's like being married. You can spend your whole life with someone and never know them." He glanced out toward the field. The truck had stopped by the control station of the rainbirds. The two older guys were working there, but the younger guy was out on the sod, jumping and waving his arms and splashing around in the water.
McConnell slid off the table. "Now what do you suppose that fool is doing?"
McConnell shouted something in Spanish, but the men couldn't hear him. The girl reappeared in the door to see why he had shouted. She looked as mystified as McConnell.
McConnell fished around in his pants for keys to the Caddie. "Sonofabitch. I'm going to have to go out there."
"Mr. McConnell, I only need a few more minutes. If there wasn't any proof, what made Krantz think Pike was involved? Just because they were in the same car?"
" Harvey didn't believe Pike's story about what happened in that motel room. He thought they'd had a falling-out with each other because of the investigation, and that maybe Pike was worried that Wozniak was going to give him up to cut a deal. Krantz had been trying to do that, you know. Play them against each other. He was sure that Pike murdered Wozniak to keep him quiet."
"Do you believe that?"
"Well, I never believed that we knew what really happened in that room. Wozniak lost it with DeVille and knocked him out. We know that much for sure because DeVille and Pike told the same story. But after DeVille was out, all we know is what Pike told us, and some of it didn't make sense. Here was Pike, young and strong and fresh out of the Marines, knowing all that karate stuff the way he did. It just doesn't make a lot of sense that he'd have that much trouble trying to cool out Wozniak. Krantz thought Pike was stonewalling us, and maybe he was, but what are you going to do? We couldn't make the case."
I didn't like hearing any of this. I was getting irritated with it, and pissed off that McConnell was distracted by the guys in the field. Now the other two guys joined the younger guy in the artificial rain, jumping around with him.
McConnell said, "Oh, this really is out of hand."
"Do you think Krantz was right?"
McConnell shouted in Spanish again, but the men still didn't hear him.
I went around and stepped in front of him so he had to look at me instead of the men.
"Was Krantz right?"
"Krantz hadn't turned anything that we could make a case on. I figured one tragedy was enough, so I told Krantz to drop it. That's what we did. Look, I'm sorry I can't help you, but I gotta get out there. Those crazy bastards are costing me money."
He started around me, and when he did I trapped his hand and twisted away the gun. He wasn't expecting it, and the move had taken maybe a tenth of a second.
McConnell's eyes widened, and he froze.
"What about these two fences? You think either of them might be trying to set up Joe Pike?"
"Wozniak was nothing to those two. Reena hauled ass back to Tijuana because he got into a beef with some meth-head. Uribe was shot to death at a gas station when he got into an argument."
"Wozniak's file showed that he had received administrative punishments on five separate occasions, and twice been suspended for using excessive force. Seven complaints, and in five of those the complainant was either a pedophile or a pimp dealing in child prostitution. Do you know who the informant was who tipped Wozniak about DeVille?"
McConnell's eyes flicked to the gun, then came back to me.
"No. Wozniak probably had several. That's what made him such an effective patrol officer."
"How could I find out?"
"The divisions keep a registered informant list. They have to do that to protect the officers. But I don't know if Rampart would still have one for Wozniak, all of that being so long ago."
McConnell looked past me to the fields again, then shook his head. "Goddamnit, you gonna shoot me, son, or you gonna let me go take care of my business? Look at the water they're wasting."
I looked at the gun, then handed it back to him. I felt myself turn red.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that."
"Kiss my ass."
He stalked toward the Cadillac. When he got to the door, he turned back to me, but he didn't look angry anymore. He looked sad.
"Look, I know how it is, your partner gets in trouble. Just so you know, I never believed that Pike had anything to do with that burglary ring. And I don't think he murdered Wozniak. If I'd thought he had, I would've stayed after him. But I didn't."
"Thanks, Mr. McConnell. I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Right."
McConnell climbed into his Caddie and roared away into his fields.
I went back to my car, put my own gun back in its holster, and sat there, thinking. The smell of the fertilizer was stronger now. Rainbows floated around the dancing men in the mist from the rainbirds. The Caddie skidded to a stop behind the truck and McConnell got out, pissed off and shouting. One by one the men stopped jumping and went back to work. McConnell turned off the water and the rainbirds died.
Sitting there, I reread the LAPD incident report and found the reference again: Acting on information received from an unnamed informant, Officers Wozniak and Pike entered room #205 of the Islander Palms Motel.
The more I sat there thinking, the more I thought about the unnamed informant, and what he might know. He or she probably didn't know anything, but when you've got nothing the way I had nothing, a long shot starts to look pretty good.
I went back through the rest of my notes and found Wozniak's widow. Paulette Renfro.
Maybe Wozniak talked about his work to his wife, and maybe she knew something about the informant. Maybe she knew something about Harvey Krantz, and how the Leonard DeVille file had come to be missing.
You look for connections.
I started my car, pulled in a wide circle, and drove back toward the highway.
Behind me, the sod had already begun to bake in the afternoon heat. Steam rose from the ground like a fog from hell.
You're getting close to Palm Springs when you see the dinosaurs.
Driving through the Banning Pass, a hundred miles east of L.A. where the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains pinch together to form a gateway to the high deserts of the Coachella Valley, you emerge into the Morongo Indian Reservation. A towering apatosaur and tyrannosaurus rex stand just off the freeway, built there by some sun-stricken desert genius long before Michael Crichton created Jurassic Park. Years ago, they were the only thing out here, monstrous full-sized re-creations standing in the desert heat as if they were frozen in time and place. You could pay a dime and walk around them, and maybe have your picture taken to send to all the folks back home in Virginia. Look, Ma, here we are in California. The dinosaurs have been there for years, but drunks and hopheads still stumble into the bars down in Cabazon, swearing they've seen monsters in the desert.
A few miles past the dinosaurs, I left the freeway and followed the state highway along the foot of the San Jacintos into Palm Springs.
During the winter months, Palm Springs is alive with tourists and weekenders and snowbirds come down from Canada to escape the cold. But in the middle of June with temperatures hovering at one hundred twenty degrees the town is barely breathing, its pulse undetectable as it wilts in the heat like some run-over animal waiting on the side of the road to die. The tourists are gone, and only the suicidal venture out during the day.
I stopped in a tee-shirt shop to buy a map of the area, looked up Paulette Renfro's address, then made my way straight north across the desert, one moment with dinosaurs and Indians, the next passing the science-fiction weirdness of hundreds of sleek, computer-designed windmills, their great flimsy blades rotating in slow motion to steal energy from the wind.
Palm Springs itself is a town of resorts and vacation homes and poodle groomers for the affluent, but the men and women who keep the city running live in smaller communities like Cathedral City to the south or North Palm Springs on what's considered the wrong side of the freeway.
Paulette Renfro lived in a small, neat desert home in the foothills above the freeway with a view of the windmills. Her home was beige stucco with a red tile roof and an oversized air conditioner that I could hear running from the street. Down in Palm Springs the people can afford to irrigate for grass lawns, but up here the lawns were crushed rock and sand, with desert plantings that required little water. All their money goes into the air conditioner.
I parked off the street and walked up her drive past an enormous blooming century plant with leaves like green swords. A brand-new Volkswagen Beetle was parked behind a Toyota Camry, only the Camry was in a garage and the Beetle was out in the sun. Visitor.
A tall, attractive woman answered when I rang the bell. She was wearing a nice skirt and makeup, as if she planned to leave soon or had just returned.
I said, "Ms. Renfro?"
"Yes?" Nice teeth and a pretty smile. She was five or six years older than me, but that meant she must've been younger than Abel Wozniak.
"My name's Cole. I'm a private investigator from Los Angeles. I need to speak with you about Abel Wozniak."
She glanced inside like she was nervous about something. "Now isn't really a good time. Besides, Abel died years ago. I don't know how I could help you."
"Yes, ma'am. I know. I'm hoping you can answer a few questions about a case he was working on at the time of his death. It's pretty important. I've come a long way." Sometimes if you look pathetic enough it helps.
A younger woman appeared behind her, the younger woman saying, "Who is it, Mom?"
Paulette Renfro told me that we were letting out all the cold and asked me to come in, though she didn't look happy about it. Most people don't. "This is my daughter Evelyn. Evelyn, this is Mr. Cole. From Los Angeles."
"I have to finish moving." Annoyed.
"Hi, Ms. Renfro." I offered my hand, but Evelyn didn't take it.
"My name's Wozniak. Renfro was her mistake."
"Evie, please."
I said, "This shouldn't take any more than ten minutes. I promise."
Paulette Renfro glanced at her watch, then her daughter. "Well, I suppose I have a few minutes. But I have things to do, and I have an appointment to show a house in less than an hour. I'm in real estate."
Evie said, "I don't need your help. I just need to bring in the rest of my things."
Evie Wozniak stalked out of the house and slammed the door. She looked like a twenty-something version of her mother in the face, but where Paulette Renfro was neat and well put together, her daughter was puffy and overweight, her features pinched with a set that said most things probably annoyed her.
I said, "Looks like I interrupted something. Sorry about that."
Ms. Renfro seemed tired. "There's always something to interrupt. She's having boyfriend problems. She's always having boyfriend problems."
The house was neat and attractive, with an enormous picture window and comfortable Southwestern furniture. The living room flowed through to a family-room combination with the kitchen on one side and a hall that probably led to bedrooms on the other. Beyond the family room, a small blue pool glittered in the heat. From the picture window, you could look down across the freeway and see the windmills, slowly turning, and farther south, Palm Springs.
"This is very nice, Ms. Renfro. I'll bet Palm Springs looks beautiful at night."
"Oh, it does. The windmills remind me of the ocean during the day, what with their gentle movement like that, and at night the Springs can look like one of those fairy-tale cities from A Thousand and One Nights."
She led me to a comfortable couch that looked toward the view.
"Could I offer you something to drink? With our heat out here, you have to be careful to keep yourself hydrated."
"Thanks. Water would be good."
The living room was small, but the open floor plan and a spare arrangement of furniture made it feel larger. I hadn't expected Paulette Renfro to keep any fond memories of Joe Pike, but as I waited for the water, I noticed a small framed picture resting in a bookcase among a little forest of bowling trophies. Paulette Wozniak was standing with her husband and Pike in front of an LAPD radio car that was parked in the drive of a modest home. Paulette was wearing jeans and a man's white shirt with the sleeves rolled and the tails tied off in a kind of halter.
Joe Pike was smiling.
I went over to the bookcase, and stared at the picture.
I had never seen Pike smile. Not once in all the years that I'd known him. I had seen a thousand pictures of Joe in the Marines, of him hunting or fishing or camping, pictures of him with friends, and in none of them was he smiling.
Yet here was this picture of her former husband and the man who had killed him.
Smiling.
Paulette Renfro said, "Here's your water."
I took the glass. She'd brought water for herself, too.
"That's Abel on the left. We were living in the Simi Valley."
I said, "Ms. Renfro, Joe Pike is a friend of mine."
She stared at me for a moment, holding her glass with both hands, then went to the couch. She sat on the edge of it. Perching.
"I imagine you find it odd that I would keep that picture."
"1 don't find anything odd. People have their reasons."
"I've been reading about all that mess down in Los Angeles. First Karen, now Joe being accused of murdering this man. I think it's a shame."
"You knew Karen Garcia?"
"Joe was dating her in those days, you know. She was a pretty, sweet girl." She glanced at her watch again, then decided something. "You say you and Joe are friends?"
"Yes, ma'am. We own the agency together."
"Were you a police officer, also?" Like she wanted to talk about Joe, but wasn't sure how to go about it.
"No, ma'am. Private only."
She glanced at the picture again, almost as if she had to explain it. "Well, what happened to Abel happened a long time ago, Mr. Cole. It was a terrible, horrible accident, and I can't imagine that anyone feels worse about it than Joe."
Evelyn Wozniak said, "Your child feels worse about it, Mother. Since he killed my father."
She had come through the kitchen carrying a large cardboard box.
Paulette's face tightened. "Do you need a hand with that?"
Evelyn continued on through the living room to disappear down a hall without answering.
Paulette said, "It was hard on Evelyn. She's moving back home now. This boyfriend, the one who just left her, took their rent money and now she's lost her apartment. That's the kind of men she finds."
"Was she close to her father?"
"Yes. Abel was a good father."
I nodded. I wondered if she knew about Krantz's investigation. I wondered if she knew about Reena and Uribe and the burglaries.
"I really do have to be leaving soon. What is it that you want to know?"
"I want to know what happened that day."
Paulette stiffened, not much, but I could see it.
"Why do you want to know about that?"
"Because I think someone is trying to frame Joe for Eugene Dersh's murder."
She shook her head, but the stiffness remained.
"I couldn't even guess, Mr. Cole. My husband didn't talk about his job with me."
"On the day your husband died, he and Joe were tipped to the whereabouts of this man DeVille by one of your husband's informants. Would you know who?"
Paulette Renfro stood, and now she wasn't looking so much like she wanted to help. Now she was looking uncomfortable and suspicious.
"No, I'm sorry."
"He didn't talk about that kind of thing with you, or you don't remember?"
"I don't like to talk about that day, Mr. Cole. I don't know anything about it, or about my husband's job, or any of that. He never told me anything."
"Please take a moment and think, Ms. Renfro. It would help if you could come up with a name."
"I'm sure I never knew."
Her daughter came back through the room then, carrying empty boxes and clothes hangers.
Paulette Renfro said, "Do you have all your things?"
"I'm going back for the last of it."
"Do you need money?"
"I'm fine."
Evelyn Wozniak stalked on through the living room and slammed the door. Again.
Paulette Renfro's jaw knotted. "Do you have children, Mr. Cole?"
"No, ma'am."
"You're lucky. I really do have to be going now. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help."
"Could I call you again if I think of something to ask?"
"I don't think I'll be any more help then than now."
She walked me to the door, and I went back out into the heat. She didn't come out with me.
Evelyn was waiting by her Beetle. She'd put on little sunglasses, but she was still squinting from the glare. Waiting for me in this insane heat. The boxes and hangers were in her car.
"She wouldn't talk about him, would she? My father."
"Not very much."
"She won't talk about that day. She never would, except to defend that guy."
"Joe?"
Evie glanced toward the windmills, but shrugged without seeing them.
"Can you imagine? The bastard kills her husband, and she keeps that goddamned picture. I used to draw on it. I've broken that goddamned thing so many times I can't count."
I didn't say anything, and she looked back at me.
"You're his friend, aren't you? You came out here trying to help him."
"Yes."
"Do you know that they were investigating my father? The Internal Affairs?"
"Yeah. I know."
"She tried to keep it from me. And so did Daddy." Daddy. Like she was still ten years old. "Men came to the house and questioned her, and I heard. I heard her screaming at my father about it. Can you imagine what that's like when you're a child?"
I thought that I could, but I didn't say anything.
"She just won't talk about it. She'll talk about anything else, but not that, and that's the most important thing that's ever happened to me. It ruined my whole fucking life."
Standing on the cement drive was like standing on a bright white beach. The heat baked up through my shoes. I wanted to move, but she seemed about to say something that wasn't easy for her to say, and I thought that if I moved it would break her resolve.
"I want to tell you something, you're his friend. That man killed my father. It was like my world ended, I loved my father so much, and there is nothing I would love more than to hurt the goddamned awful man who took him from me."
Pike.
"But there's something I want more."
I waited.
"She's got all Daddy's things in storage somewhere. You know, one of those rental places."
"You know where?"
"I'll have to find out. I don't know if there's anything there that will help, but you're trying to find out what happened back then, right?"
I told her that I was, but that I also wanted other things. I said, "I'm trying to help Joe Pike. I want you to know that, Evelyn."
"I don't care about that. I just want to know the truth about my father."
"What if it's bad?"
"I want to know. I guess I even expect that it is, but I just want to know why he died. I've spent my whole goddamned life wanting to know. Maybe that's why I'm so fucked up."
I didn't know what to say.
"I don't think it was an accident. I think your friend murdered him."
Exactly what Krantz had thought.
"If I help you, and you find out, will you tell me?"
"If you want to know, I'll tell you."
"You'll tell me the truth? No matter what?"
"If that's what you want."
She wiped at her nose. "It's like if I just knew, then I could go on, you know?"
We stood there for a time, and then I held her. We had been in the sun for so long that when my hands touched her back it felt as if I'd gripped a hot coal.
I watched the windmills stretching across the plain of the desert, turning in the never-ending wind.
After a time, Evie Wozniak stepped back. She wiped her nose again. "This is silly. I don't even know you, and here I am telling you my life's secrets."
"It works like that sometimes, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. I guess you'd better give me your phone number."
I gave her the card.
"I'll call you."
"Okay."
"You can't tell her, all right? If she knew, she wouldn't allow it."
"I won't tell."
"Our little secret."
"That's right, Evie. Our little secret."
I drove back down off the mountain, Palm Springs far in the distance, shimmering in the heat like a place that did not exist.
Man of Action
The cell was four feet wide by eight feet long by eight feet high. A seatless toilet and a lavatory stuck out from the cement wall like ceramic goiters, almost hidden behind the single bunk. Overhead, bright fluorescent lamps were secured behind steel grids so the suicidal couldn't electrocute themselves. The mattress was a special rayon material that could not be cut or torn, and the bed frame and mattress rack were spot-welded together. No screws, no bolts, no way to take anything apart. The single bunk made this cell the Presidential Suite of the Parker Center jail, reserved for Hollywood celebrities, members of the media, and former police officers who had found their way to the wrong side of the bars.
Joe Pike lay on the bunk, waiting to be transferred to the Men's Central Jail, a facility ten minutes away that housed twenty-two thousand inmates. His hair was still damp from the lavatory bath he'd given himself after exercising, but he was thinking that he wanted to run, to feel the sun on his face and the movement of air and the sweat race down his chest. He wanted the peace of the effort, and the certain knowledge that it was a good thing to be doing. Not all acts brought with them the certainty of goodness, but running did.
The security gate at the end of the hall opened, and Krantz appeared on the other side of the bars. He was holding something.
Krantz stared at Pike for a long time before saying, "I'm not here to question you. Don't worry about your lawyer."
Pike wasn't worried.
"I've waited a long time for this, Joe. I'm enjoying it." Joe. Like they were friends.
"You look bad, being wrong about Dersh."
Pike spoke softly, forcing Krantz to come closer.
"I know. I feel bad about Dersh, but I've got the Feebs to share the blame. You hear Dersh's family already filed suit? Two brothers, his mother, and some sister he hadn't seen in twenty years. Bellying up to the trough."
Pike wondered what was with Krantz, coming here to gloat.
"They're suing the city, the department, everybody. Bishop and the chief can't fire me without it looking like an admission that the department did something wrong, so they're saying we just followed the FBI's lead."
"They should win, Krantz. You're responsible."
"Maybe so, but they're suing you, too. You pulled the trigger."
Pike didn't answer that.
Krantz shrugged. "But you're right. I look bad. A year from now when everything's calmed down, that's it for me. They'll ship me out to one of the divisions. That's okay. I've got the twenty-five in. I might even make thirty if I can't scare up something better."
"Why are you here, Krantz? Because I humiliated you?"
Krantz turned red. Pike could tell that he was trying not to, but there it was.
"I didn't ruin you, Krantz. You took care of that yourself. People like you never understand that."
Krantz seemed to think about that, then shrugged. "For the humiliation, yes, but also because you deserve to be here. You murdered Wozniak and got away with it. But now you're here, and I like seeing it."
Pike sat up. "I didn't murder Woz."
"You were right in with him on the burglaries. You knew I was going to nail him, and you knew I would get you, too. You were a chickenshit, Pike, and you decided to take out Wozniak because you're an amoral, homicidal lunatic who doesn't think twice about snuffing out a human life. Which is about as much thought as you gave to Dersh."
"All the time you spent investigating, and that's what you came up with. You really think I murdered Woz in that room to keep him quiet?"
Krantz smiled. "I don't think you killed him because you thought he'd give you up, Pike. I think you killed him because you wanted his wife."
Pike stared.
"You had something going with her, didn't you?"
Pike swung his feet off the bunk. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Krantz smiled. "Like your asshole friend says, I'm a detective. I detected. I was watching her, Pike. I saw you with her."
"You're wrong about that, and you're wrong about Dersh, too. You're wrong about everything."
Krantz nodded, agreeable. "If you've got an alibi, bring it out. If you can prove to me that you didn't do Dersh, I'll personally ask Branford to drop the charges."
"You know there's nothing."
"There's nothing because you did it, Pike. We've got you on tape casing his house. We've got the old lady picking you out of the line. We've got the residue results and your relationship with the girl. We've got this."
Krantz showed Pike what he was carrying. It was a revolver wrapped in plastic.
"This is a.357 magnum. SID matches it with the bullet that killed Dersh. It's the murder weapon, Pike."
Joe didn't say anything.
"It's a clean gun. No prints, and all the numbers have been burned off, so we can't trace it. But we recovered it in the water off Santa Monica exactly where you said you talked with the girl. That puts you with this gun."
Pike stared at the plastic bag, and then at Krantz, wondering at the coincidence of how the murder weapon turned up at the very place where he admitted to being.
"Think about it, Krantz. Why would I admit to being there if that's where I threw the gun?"
"Because someone saw you. I think you went there to ditch the gun, and did, but then someone saw you. I didn't believe you about the girl at first, but maybe you were telling the truth about that part. Maybe she saw you there, and you were worried we'd find her and catch you in a lie if you denied it, so you tried to cover yourself."
Pike looked at the plastic bag again. He knew that cops often showed things to suspects and lied about what they were to try to elicit a confession.
"Is this bullshit?"
Krantz smiled again, calm and confident, and in an odd way Pike found it warm. "No bullshit. You can ask Bauman. The DA's filling him in on it right now. I've got you, Joe. I couldn't make the case with Wozniak, but this time I've got you. Branford's making all this noise about Special Circumstance, but he's full of shit. I couldn't get that lucky, Pike, you getting the needle."
"I didn't put the gun there, Krantz. That means somebody else did."
"That's some coincidence, Joe, you and the gun just happening to be in the same place."
"It means they knew my statement. Think about it."
"What I think is that we've got plenty for a conviction. Charlie is going to tell you the same thing."
"No."
"Bauman's already floating plea arrangements. Bet he didn't tell you that, did he? I know you're telling Bauman no plea, and he's saying sure, like he's going along with it, but he's not an idiot. Charlie's smart. He'll let you sit in Men's Central for six months, hoping you're telling the truth about this girl you claim you saw, but when she doesn't turn up he'll deal you a straight hand about taking the plea. My guess is that Branford will let you cop to twenty with the possibility of parole. Saves everybody looking bad about how we fucked over Dersh. Twenty with time off means you serve twelve. That sound about right to you?"
"I'm not going to prison, Krantz. Not for something I didn't do."
Krantz touched the bars. He slipped his fingers along the steel like it was his lover.
"You're inside now, and you're going to stay inside. And if you're dumb enough to go to trial, and I'm thinking you might do that because you're such a hardhead, you'll be in a cage like this for the rest of your life. And I did it, Pike. Me. You're mine, and I wanted to tell you that. That's why I came here, to tell you. You're mine."
The black jailer with the big arms came down the cellblock and stopped next to Krantz. "Time to take your ride, Pike. Step into the center of the floor."
Krantz started away, then turned back. "Oh, and one other thing. You heard we found the homeless guy dead, didn't you?"
"Deege."
"Yeah, Deege. That was kind've goofy, wasn't it, Pike, him telling you guys that a truck like yours stopped Karen, and a guy who looked like you was driving?"
Pike waited.
"Someone crushed his throat and stuffed him in a Dumpster on one of those little cul-de-sac streets below the lake."
Pike waited.
"A couple of teenagers saw a red Jeep Cherokee up there, Joe. Parked in the middle of the street and waiting on the very night that Deege was killed. They saw the driver, too. Guess who they saw behind the wheel?"
"Me."
"This gets better and better."
Krantz stared at Pike a little longer, then turned and walked away.
Earlier, there had been a prisoner who made monkey sounds – oo-oo-oo – that Pike had thought of as Monkeyboy, and another prisoner with loud flatulence who had thrown feces out of his cell while shouting, "I'm the Gasman!"
They had been taken away, and Pike had dubbed the jail cop with the big arms the Ringmaster.
When Pike was standing, the Ringmaster waved down the hall. Jailers didn't use keys anymore. The cell locks were electronically controlled from the security station at the end of the cellblock, two female officers who sat behind a bulletproof glass partition. When the Ringmaster gave the sign, they pushed a button and Pike's door opened with a dull click. Pike thought that it sounded like a rifle bolt snapping home.
The Ringmaster stepped through, holding the handcuffs. "We won't use the leg irons for the ride, but you gotta wear these."
Pike put out his wrists.
As the Ringmaster fit the cuffs, he said, "Been watching you work out in here. How many push-ups you do?"
"A thousand."
"How many dips?"
"Two hundred."
The Ringmaster grunted. He was a large man with overdeveloped arm and shoulder and chest muscles that stretched his uniform as tight as a second skin. Not many prisoners would stand up to him, and even fewer could hope to succeed if they tried.
The Ringmaster snugged the cuffs, checked to see they were secure, then stepped back.
"I don't know if you're getting a square shake with this Dersh thing or not. I guess you probably did it, but if some asshole popped my lady I'd forget about this badge, too. That's what being a man is."
Pike didn't say anything.
"I know you're an ex-cop, and I heard about all that stuff went down when you were on the job. It don't matter to me. I just wanted to say I've had you here in my house for a couple of days, and I read you as a pretty square guy. Good luck to you."
"Thanks."
The two female cops buzzed them out of the cellblock into a gray, institutional corridor where the Ringmaster led Pike down a flight of stairs and into the sheriff's prisoner holding room. Five other prisoners were already there, cuffed to special plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor: three short Hispanic guys with gang tats, and two black guys, one old and weathered, the other younger, and missing his front teeth. Three sheriff's deputies armed with Tasers and nightsticks were talking by the door. Riot control.
When the Ringmaster led Pike into the room, the younger black prisoner stared at Pike, then nudged the older man, but the older man didn't respond. The younger guy was about Pike's size, with institutional tats that were almost impossible to see against his dark skin. A jagged knife scar ran along the side of his neck, as if someone had once cut his throat.
The Ringmaster hooked Pike to the bench, then took a clipboard from the deputies.
Pike sat without moving, staring straight ahead at nothing, thinking about Krantz, and what Krantz had said. Across the room, the younger guy with the knife scar kept glancing over. Pike heard the older man call him Rollins.
Fifteen minutes later, all six prisoners were unhooked from their chairs and formed up in a line. They were led out into the parking garage and aboard a gray L.A. County Jail van, climbing through a door in the van's rear while two deputies with Mossberg shotguns watched. A third dep, the driver, sat at the wheel with the engine running. They needed the engine for the air conditioner.
Inside the van, the driver's compartment was separated from the rear by the same heavy-gauge wire mesh that covered the windows. The rear compartment where the prisoners sat was fixed with a bench running along each wall so that the prisoners faced each other. The van was set up to hold twelve, but with only half that number everyone had plenty of room.
As they climbed in, a deputy named Montana touched each man on the shoulder and told him to sit on the left side or the right side. One of the Mexicans got it wrong and the deputy had to go inside and straighten him out, holding up the process.
Rollins sat directly across from Pike, now openly staring at him.
Pike stared back.
Rollins snarled up his lips to show Pike the double-wide hole where his teeth should be.
Pike said, "Sweet."
The trip to the Men's Central Jail would take about twelve minutes with the usual downtown traffic delays. When the last of the six was in and seated, Deputy Montana called back through the cage. "Listen up. No talking, no moving around, no bullshit. It's a short trip, so nobody start any crap about having to pee."
He said it a second time in Spanish, then the driver put the van in gear and pulled out of the parking garage and into traffic.
They had gone exactly two blocks when Rollins leaned toward Pike.
"You the one was a cop, aren't you, muthuhfuckuh?"
Pike just looked at him, seeing him, but not seeing him. Pike was still thinking about Krantz, and about the case that was slowly coming together against him. He was letting himself float and drift and be in places other than this van.
Rollins poked the older black guy, who looked like he'd rather be anyplace else on the planet. "Yeah, this muthuhfuckuh the one. I got a nose for shit like that. I heard'm talkin' about him."
Pike had arrested a hundred men like Clarence Rollins, and had fronted off five hundred more. Pike knew by looking at him that Rollins had been institutionalized for most of his life. Jail was home. The world was where you went between coming home.
"You a real Aryan muthuhfuckuh, ain't you, them fuckin' pale ass eyes o' yours. Lemme tell you somethin', muthuhfuckuh, it don't mean shit to me you killed some muthuhfuckuh. I killed so many muthuhfuckuhs you can't count, an' there ain't nuthin' I hate more'n a motherfuckin' cop like you. Lookie here-"
Rollins peeled back a sleeve to show Pike a tattoo of a heart with LAPD 187 written inside it: 187 was the LAPD's code for homicide.
"You know what that means, muthuhfuckuh? LAPD one eighty-seven? Means I'm a cop-killin' muthuhfuckuh, that's what it means. You best fear my ass."
Rollins was working himself up for something. It was as predictable as watching a freight train round a bend, but Pike didn't bother paying attention. Pike was seeing himself in the woods behind his boyhood home, smelling the fresh summer leaves and the wet creek mud. He was feeling the steambath heat of Song Be, Vietnam, when he was eighteen years old, and hearing his sergeant's voice shouting at him across the dry scrub hills of Camp Pendleton, a voice he so wished to be his father's. He was tasting the healthy clean sweat of the first woman he loved, a beautiful proud farm girl named Diane. She had been from a proper family who despised Joe, and had made her stop seeing him.
"How come you ain't sayin' nothin, muthuhfuckuh? You goddamned well better answer me when I talk to your muthuhfuckin' ass, you know what's good for you. Your ass is trapped in here with me." When he said that, Rollins flashed the long slender blade hidden in his sock.
The other places and people melted away, leaving only the van and Pike and the man across from him. Pike felt as peaceful as the woods behind that childhood home.
"No," Pike whispered. "You're trapped with me."
Clarence Rollins blinked once, clearly surprised, then launched off the bench, driving the blade square at Pike's chest and pushing with all the power of his legs.
Pike let the blade slip past his hands, then trapped and folded the wrist, channeling all the speed and power of Rollins's own attack in turning the knife. Gunnery Sergeant Aimes would be pleased.
Rollins was a large, strong man, and considerable force went back into his forearm. The radius and ulna bones snapped like green wood, slicing through muscles and veins and arteries as the bones exploded through his skin.
Clarence Rollins screamed.
Deputy Sheriffs Frank Montana and Lowell Carmody both jumped at the scream, bringing their Mossbergs to port arms. The three Hispanic prisoners were bunched together at the front screen, making it hard to see, but Rollins was thrashing around in the aisle like something was biting him.
The driver shouted, "The fuck is going on back there?" Carmody yelled, "Knock it off! Get back in your seats!" Pike was down in the aisle with Rollins, who kept turning over and flailing and spinning around. Rollins was screaming in a high, little girl's voice as a three-foot geyser of blood sprayed all over the back of the van.
Montana said, "Holy fuck! Pike's killing him!" Montana and Carmody both tried to sight past the His-panics over their Mossbergs. Montana screamed, "Get away from him, Pike! Get back in that seat, goddamnit!"
The Mexicans saw the shotguns and scrambled out of the way, still trying to avoid the blood. They were probably thinking about AIDS.
Pike lifted his hands away from Rollins and eased back onto the bench.
Clarence continued thrashing and rolling and screaming as if his whole body was on fire.
Montana shouted, "Shut up, Rollins! What the hell is going on back there?"
The older black man said, "He's hurt! Can't you see that?"
Montana shouted, "Knock off that shit and get back in your seat, Rollins! What the hell are you doing?"
The older man said, "He's bleeding to death, goddamnit it. That's blood."
Rollins kept howling, the blood spraying everywhere. The older man was squatting on his seat, trying to stay clear.
Pike said, "I can help him. I can stop the bleeding."
"Stay the fuck in your seat!"
Carmody peered through the mesh. "Shit, he ain't faking it, man. He's bleeding like a stuck goat. One of these bastards musta cut him."
The older man said, "He ain't been cut! That's his goddamned bones stickin' out! His arm's broke. Can't you see that?"
Montana could see it even with the way Rollins was carrying on. The bones looked like pink ivory.
The driver said that they were only another ten minutes from the jail, but when he said it they were locked down in the thick traffic. The van didn't have a flash bar or siren, so there was no way to get the cars to move.
The old man yelled, "Ten minutes in your butt! This man needs a tourniquet. We ain't got no belts or nothing back here. You just gonna let him bleed like that?"
Montana said, "Fuck. We'd better do something." He could see the bastard bleeding out back there, and the three of them getting sued by the ACLU.
Montana told the driver to radio their sit-rep and request a medical unit. He left his shotgun and his sidearm with Carmody because he didn't want to tempt any of these bastards with a weapon, then pulled on vinyl gloves. He just knew that bastard had AIDS. Every one of these scumbags probably had it.
"You cover my ass, goddamnit," he told Carmody.
Carmody shouted at everyone to stay in their goddamned seats, trying to make himself heard over Rollins's moaning and flopping. Every time the blood squirted toward the Mexicans, they jumped in a little herd.
Montana trotted around to the rear, keyed open the door, and looked inside. Christ, there was blood everygoddamnedplace.
"Settle down, Rollins. I'm gonna help you."
Rollins spun around on his back like he was break-dancing, kicking his feet and crying. Montana thought that Mr. 187 was a big goddamned baby.
Pike was sitting to his left and the old guy was to his right and the Mexicans were all bunched together in the front on the left side. Carmody had the shotgun at port arms, and the driver had his handgun out.
Carmody said, "Just drag his ass out of there and lock the fuckin' door. We can take care of him outside."
That's the plan.
Pike said, "You want help?"
"Stay on that goddamned bench and don't move a fuckin' muscle."
Montana climbed into the van, trying to watch the prisoners and get a handle on Rollins at the same time.
Rollins rolled end over end, squirting blood on Montana 's pants, then flopped backward up the aisle toward the Mexicans. All three jumped up on the seats in front of Carmody.
"Goddamnit, Rollins. You got the AIDS I'm gonna beat you to death, you fucker. I swear to God I'll kill you myself."
Montana scrambled up the aisle past Pike and the older guy to where the three Mexicans were trying to kick the hysterical Rollins away.
Montana gritted his teeth, cursed, then grabbed Rollins by the leg, standing to tow him back down the aisle, when both Carmody and the driver shouted, "Getouttatheway getouttatheway! He's running!"
Both their Mossbergs were pointing right at Montana.
Frank Montana felt an icy rush in his stomach as he dropped to the floor, spun around, and saw that Joe Pike had escaped through the open door.
The mirrored towers of Los Angeles rose up out of the basin like an island from the sea. Reflections of the setting sun ricocheted between the buildings, making them glow hot and orange in the west, backdropped with a purple sky. The freeway was a lava flow of red lights chasing the sun. Twilight was beginning.
When you're coming to my house and reach Mulholland at the top of the mountain, you make a hard turn onto Woodrow Wilson Drive, then follow it along its winding path through the trees until you reach my little road. Wide shoulders flare off Mulholland there at the mouth of Woodrow Wilson, and are often used as parking by guests visiting the surrounding houses, so I don't usually pay attention. But tonight a boxy American sedan with a man and a woman in the front seat was the only car off the road. They looked away when I glanced at them. It was like having a neon sign that read COPS.
Five minutes later, I pulled into the cool shadows of my carport, let myself in, and knew why the cops were there.
Joe Pike was leaning against my kitchen counter in the dark, arms crossed, the cat sitting nearby, staring at him with abject worship.
Joe said, "Surprise."
It seemed normal and natural that he was here in my home, only there was no Jeep outside and he was supposed to be in jail. He wore a loose cotton beach shirt that showed little brown dolphins jumping free in the sea, the sleeves hiding his red tattoos, the shirt's tail out over his jeans. He was wearing the glasses again, even standing here in my dark house.
I flipped on the light.
"Don't."
I flipped it off.
"Charlie didn't get you out, did he?"
"It was a do-it-yourself program."
I went around the ground floor, pulling the drapes and drawing the shades.
"I'm home now. It would look odd if there weren't lights."
He nodded, and we turned on the lights.
"There's a car on Mulholland at Woodrow Wilson. Anything else, or should you just start telling me why the hell you escaped?"
"There's another car at the top of Nichols Canyon. They probably have a third unit down below, coming up out of Hollywood. Two units are on my condo and another on the gun shop."
"Sooner or later, the police are going to come here to question me."
"I'll leave before then."
"You have a place to stay? You've got wheels?"
The corner of his mouth twitched, like it was silly of me to ask.
"They're probably watching my house, too. Maybe they weren't when you got here, but they've had time to set up. Wait until it's full dark before you leave. Full dark, you can get all the way down to Hollywood and they won't see you."
He nodded.
"Jesus, Joe. Why?"
"I'd rather be out, Elvis. Krantz has a case. Even though I didn't do it, they have a case, and they could win. Out here I can help clear myself. In there, I could only be their victim. I don't do victim."
Pike told me what had happened, and how. As he spoke, he picked up the cat and held it, and I thought that there were times when even tough men needed to feel a beating heart.
When he told me that the murder weapon had been recovered off the point where he'd met the girl, I said, "They planted it."
"Someone did. Else we're back to coincidences again. You hear about Deege?"
"He's dead."
"Murdered. A couple of kids saw a red Jeep where it happened. Saw a guy who looked like me behind the wheel."
I stared at him. I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what to say. It just kept getting deeper.
"It fits together pretty well. I killed Dersh. I killed Deege. Pretty soon it's going to look like I killed all these people."
"Except Lorenzo. You were in jail when Lorenzo was killed."
Pike shrugged, like maybe he thought there might be a way to pin that one on him, too.
I said, "Krantz hates you. It all comes back to Krantz."
"It all comes back to me and Woz and DeVille. Krantz was part of that. So was Karen."
I said, "Maybe it isn't just Karen and Dersh. Maybe all six victims go back to that day. Before Dersh we've got a shooter who's murdered five people. He's sent no notes, left no messages, but he used the same method to murder all five. That means part of him wants the cops to know that he's responsible."
"A power thing."
"His way of sticking out his tongue. The vics are killed three months apart, no one can find a connection, and everything points to a serial killer. But what if he's not a serial killer? What if he's just a murderer with a grudge, and a plan for his killings?"
Pike nodded.
"I tried pulling DeVille's file, but it was missing. I know you and Wozniak located DeVille through an informant, so I pulled Wozniak's file, too, but there was nothing in there. Do you know where he got the information?"
"No. Woz had people up and down the food chain."
"I went to see his widow, but she didn't know, either."
Pike stopped stroking the cat.
"You went to see Paulette?"
"Her name's Renfro now. She didn't want to talk about it, but her daughter is trying to help."
Pike stared at me for a long time, then let the cat slip from his arms. He got two beers from the kitchen, handed one to me, then poured a little beer on the counter. The cat lapped at it.
"It's been a long time, Elvis. Leave Paulette alone."
"She might be able to help."
A car pulled up then, and Joe vanished into the living room, but I knew the car.
"It's Lucy."
I opened the kitchen door, letting her in with a bag of groceries and two suits still in plastic laundry bags. I guess she'd gone by her apartment. Her face was ashen, and she moved with quick short steps, looking nervous. The cat hissed once, then sprinted through his cat door.
"Oh, shut up. Something's happened. Joe escaped custody."
"I know. He's here."
As I closed the door, Joe stepped out of the living room.
Lucy stopped in the center of the kitchen, looking at Joe. She was not happy to see him.
She said, "What were you thinking?"
"Hello, Lucy."
She put her purse and the grocery bag on the counter, but did not put down the two suits. Her face was hard; no longer nervous, but angry. "Do you know what a bad move this is?"
Joe didn't answer.
"They've got him in a box, Luce. I don't know if this is the smart way to play it, but it's done."
Lucy glared at me, and there was an anger in her face I did not like. "Don't defend this. Let there be no doubt, I can assure you both that this is not the smart way to play it." She turned back to Joe. "Have you spoken to your attorney yet?"
"Not yet."
"He's going to tell you to give yourself up. You should."
"Won't happen."
Lucy turned back to me. "Did you have anything to do with this?"
It felt like Mama was angry at her two little boys, and I was liking it even less.
"No, I didn't have anything to do with it, and what's with you? Why are you so upset?"
She rolled her eyes as if I were an idiot, then draped the suits over the grocery bags. "May I see you?"
She stalked across the living room.
When we were as far from Joe as we could get, I said, "Do you think you could be a little less supportive?"
"I don't support this, and neither should you."
"I don't support this, either. I'm dealing with it. What would you like me to do? Kick him out? Call the cops?"
Lucy closed her eyes, calming herself, then opened them. Her voice was measured and calm.
"I have spent the last three hours worried sick about him, and about you. I tried to reach you, and couldn't. For all I knew, you were part of this. You and the Sundance Kid over there, partners jumping off a cliff."
I started to say something, but she held up a hand.
"Do you realize that his being here jeopardizes your license under California law? You're harboring a fugitive. That's a felony."
"He's here because we have to work together if we're going to beat this thing. He did not murder Eugene Dersh."
"Then let him prove that in court."
"We've gotta have proof to prove it. So far, the state has a case and we don't have any way to dispute it. We're going to have to find the person who really killed Dersh, and right now I'm thinking that's the same person who killed Karen Garcia and those other five people."
Lucy's mouth was tight, her face set in a hard mask because it wasn't what she wanted to hear.
"It's dangerous for him here, Lucy. He knows that, and I know it, too. He's not going to stay, but he can't leave until it's dark."
"What if the police knock at your door right now? With a search warrant?"
"We'll deal with it if it happens."
She stepped back from me.
"You're not the only one in jeopardy here."
She steeled herself in a way that was visible. "I am not Joe's attorney. As long as I'm living here with you, my license to practice law could be at risk. Worse, what is happening here now could call into question my fitness as Ben's mother if Richard sues for custody."
I glanced at Joe, then back to Lucy.
Lucy kept the emotionless eyes on mine.
"If Joe stays, I have to leave."
"He's going as soon as it's dark."
She closed her eyes, then said it again, slowly and carefully.
"If Joe stays, I have to leave."
"Don't ask me this, Lucy."
She didn't move.
"I can't ask him to go."
A long time ago in another place I was badly wounded and could not get immediate medical attention. Little bits of hot steel had ripped through my back, tearing the arteries and tissues inside me, and all I could do was wait to be saved. I tried to stop the bleeding, but the wounds were behind me. My pants and shirt grew wet with blood, and the ground beneath me turned to red mud. I lay there that day, wondering if I would bleed to death. The minutes turned to hours as the blood leaked out, and the passage of time slowed to a crawl in a way that made me think that I would always be trapped in that single horrible moment.
The time passed like that now.
Lucy and I stood by my fireplace, neither speaking, staring at each other with hurt eyes, or maybe eyes that didn't hurt enough.
I said, "I love you."
Lucy went back across the living room into the kitchen, snatched up her suits, and went out the door and drove away.
Joe said, "You should go after her."
I hadn't heard him approach, I hadn't felt him put his hand on my shoulder. He was in the kitchen, and now he was beside me.
"If it's about me, I would've gone."
"Your chances are better when it's dark."
"My chances are what I make them."
He moved to the table, pulling the chair and sitting so quietly that I heard no sound. Maybe I was listening for other things. The cat reappeared and jumped onto the table to be with him.
I went back into the kitchen, and looked in the bag she'd brought. Salmon steaks, broccoli, and a package of new potatoes. Dinner for two.
Joe spoke from the dining room. "Ever since I've known you, I've looked to you for wisdom."
Pike was a shape in the shadows, my cat head bumping his hands.
"What in hell does that mean?"
"You're my family. I love you, but sometimes you're a dope."
I put the food away, and went to the couch. "If you want something, get it yourself."
Two hours later it was fully dark. During that time, we decided what we would do, and then Joe let himself out the kitchen door, and slipped away into darkness.
Then I was truly alone.
I sat on the couch in my empty house, feeling a tight queasiness as if I'd lost something precious, and thinking that maybe I had. After a while, I called Lucy, and got her machine.
"It's me. Are you there?"
If she was there, she didn't pick up.
"Luce, we need to talk about this. Would you please pickup?"
When she still didn't pick up, I put down the phone and went back to the couch. I sat there some more, then opened the big glass doors to let in the night sounds. Somewhere outside the police were watching, but what did I care? They were the closest thing to company that I had.
I poached one of the salmon steaks in beer, made a sandwich with it, and ate standing in the kitchen near the phone.
Lucy Chenier had been out here for less than a month. She had changed her life to come here, and now everything had gone to hell. It scared me. We weren't mad because we liked different movies, or I had been rude to her friends. We were mad because she had given me a choice between herself and Joe, and she felt I'd chosen Joe. I guess she was right, but I didn't know what to do about that. If she gave me the same choice again, I would decide the same way, and I wasn't sure what that said about me, or us.
Someone pounded hard on the front door. I thought it was the cops, and in a way it was.
Samantha Dolan swayed in the doorway with her hands on her hips, four sheets to the wind.
"You got any of that tequila left?"
"Now isn't a good time, Samantha."
She started to step in past me just like she'd done before, but this time I didn't move.
"What, you got a hot date with the little woman?"
I didn't move. I could smell the tequila on her. The smell was so heavy it could have been leaking from her pores.
Dolan stared at me in the hard way she has, but then her eyes softened. She shook her head, and all the arrogance was gone. "It isn't a good time for me, either, World's Greatest. Bishop fired me. He's transferring me out of Robbery-Homicide."
I stepped out of the door and let her in. I felt awkward and small, and guilty for what happened to her, which stacked nicely atop the guilt I felt about Lucy.
I took out the bottle of Cuervo 1800 and poured a couple of fingers into a glass.
"More."
I gave her more.
"You're not going to have one with me?"
"I've got some beer."
Dolan sipped the tequila, then took a deep breath and let it out.
"Christ, that's good."
"How much have you had?"
"Not nearly enough." She raised her eyebrows at me. "Had a little tiff with your friend?"
"Who?"
"I'm not talking about your cat, stupid. The little woman." Dolan tipped her glass toward the kitchen. "A purse is sitting on your counter. You aren't the only detective in the house." She realized what she'd said, and had more of the drink. "Well. Maybe you are."
Lucy's purse was by the refrigerator, put there when she'd set down the bags. She'd taken her clothes, but forgotten the purse.
Dolan had more of the tequila, then leaned against the counter. "Pike wasn't smart, playing it this way. You talk to him, you should get him to turn himself in."
"He won't do that."
"This doesn't help him look innocent."
"I guess he figures that if the police aren't going to try to clear him, he should do it himself."
"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this."
"Maybe not."
"It just looks bad, is what I'm saying."
"Let's not talk about it."
The two of us stood there. It's always a laugh a minute at Chez Cole. I asked her if she wanted to sit, and she did, so we moved into the living room. The tequila followed us.
"I'm sorry about Bishop."
Dolan shook her head, thoughtful.
She said, "Pike would've been in uniform just before I came on. You know what areas he worked?"
"Did a year in Hollenbeck before moving to Rampart."
"I started in West L.A. There weren't as many women on the force then as now, and what few of us there were got every shit job that came along."
She seemed as if she wanted to talk, so I let her talk. I was happy with the beer.
"My first day on the job, right out of the Academy, we go to this house and find two feet sticking up out of the ground."
"Human feet?"
"Yeah. These two human feet are sticking straight up out of the ground."
"Bare feet?"
"Yeah, Cole, just lemme tell my story, okay? There's these two bare feet sticking up out of the ground behind this house. So we call it in, and our supervisor comes out, and says, 'Yeah, that's a couple of feet, all right.' Only we don't know if there's a body attached. I mean, maybe there's a body down there, but maybe it's just a couple of feet somebody planted."
"Trying to grow corn."
"Don't try to be funny. Funny is another in the long list of things you can't pull off."
I nodded. I thought it was pretty funny, but I'd been drinking.
"So we're standing there with these feet, and we can't touch them until the coroner investigator does his thing, only the coroner investigator tells us he won't be able to get out until the next morning. The supervisor says that somebody's gotta guard the feet. I mean, we can't just leave'm there, right? So the supervisor tells me and my partner to watch the feet."
"Okay."
She killed the rest of her tequila, and helped herself to another glass as she went on with her story.
"But then we get this disturbance call, and the supervisor tells my partner he'd better respond. He says to leave the girl with the feet."
"The girl."
"Yeah, that's me."
"I'm up with that part, Samantha."
She took another blast of the tequila and took out her cigarettes.
"No smoking."
She frowned, but put the cigarettes away.
"So they take off, and now I'm there alone with the feet in back of this abandoned house, and it's spooky as hell. An hour passes. Two hours. They don't come back. I'm calling on my radio, but no one answers, and I am pissed off. I am majorly pissed. Three hours. Then I hear the creepiest sound I ever heard in my life, this kind of ooo-ooo-ooo moaning."
"What was it?"
"This ghost comes floating between the palm trees. This big white ghost, going 'ooo-ooo-ooo, I want my feet.' Real creepy and eerie, see, just like that."
"Don't tell me. Your partner in a sheet."
"No, it was the supervisor. He was trying to scare the girl."
"What did you do?"
"I whip out my Smith and shout, 'Freeze, motherfucker, LAPD.' And then I crack off all six rounds point-blank as fast as I can."
"Dolan. You killed the guy?"
She smiled at me, and it was a lovely smile. "No, you moron. I knew those assholes were going to try some shit like that sooner or later, so I always carried blanks."
I laughed.
"The supervisor drops to the ground in a little ball, arms over his head, screaming for me not to shoot. I pop all six caps, and then I go over, and say, 'Hey, Sarge, is this what they mean by foot patrol?' "
I laughed harder, but Dolan took a deep breath and shook her head, I stopped laughing.
"Sam?"
Her eyes turned red, but she shook back the tears. "I put everything I had into this job. I never got married and I didn't have kids, and now it's gone."
"Can you appeal it? Is there anything you can do?"
"I could request a trial board, but if I go to the board, those pricks could fire me. Bishop just wants me out of Robbery-Homicide. He says I'm not a team player anymore. He says he doesn't trust me."
"I'm sorry, Samantha. I'm really, really sorry. What happens now?"
"Administrative transfer. I'm on leave until I'm reassigned. They'll put me in one of the divisions, I guess. South Bureau Homicide, maybe, down in South Central." She looked down at her glass, and seemed surprised that it was empty.
"At least you're still on the job."
A kindness came to her eyes, as if I was a slow child. "Don't you get it, Cole? Wherever I go, it's downhill. Robbery-Homicide is the top. It's like being in the majors, then having to go down to the farm team in South Buttcrack. Your career's finished. All you're doing is killing time until they make you leave the game. You got any idea what that means to me?"
I didn't know what to say.
"My whole goddamned career has been forcing men like Bishop to let me be a starting player, and now I don't have a goddamned thing." She looked over at me. "God, I want you."
I said, "Sam."
She raised a hand again and shook her head.
"I know. It's the tequila."
She looked into the empty glass and sighed. She put the glass on the table, and crossed her arms as if she didn't know what to do with herself. She blinked because her eyes were filling again.
She said, "Elvis?"
"What?"
"Will you hold me?"
I didn't move.
"I don't mean like that. I just need to be held, and I don't have anyone else to do it."
I put down my beer and went over and held her.
Samantha Dolan buried her face in my chest, and after a while the wet of her tears soaked through my shirt. She pulled away and wiped her hands across her face. "This is so pathetic."
"It's not pathetic, Samantha."
She sniffled, and rubbed at her eyes again. "I'm here because I don't have anyone else. I gave everything I had to this goddamned job, and now all I have to show for myself is a guy who's in love with another woman. That's pretty fucking pathetic, if you ask me."
"No one asked you, Samantha."
"I want you, goddamnit. I want to sleep with you."
"Shh."
Her breast moved against my arm. "I want you to love me."
"Shh."
"Don't shush me, goddamnit."
She traced her fingers along my thigh, her eyes shining in the dim light. She gazed up at me, and she was so close that her breath felt like fireflies on my cheek. She was pretty and tough and funny, and I wanted her. I wanted to hold her, and I wanted her to hold me, and if I could fill her empty places maybe she could fill mine.
But I said, "Dolan, I can't."
The kitchen door opened then, an alien sound that had no part in this moment.
Lucy was in the kitchen, one hand still on the door, staring at us, a terrible pain cut into her eyes.
I stood.
"Lucy."
Lucy Chenier snatched her purse from the counter, stalked back across the kitchen, and slammed out the door.
Outside, her car roared to life, the starter screaming on the gears.
Outside, her tires shrieked as she ripped away.
Dolan slumped back into the couch, and said, "Oh, hell."
The ache in my heart grew so deep that I felt hollow, as if I were only a shell and the weight of the air might crush me.
I went after her.
Lucy's Lexus was parked in front of her apartment, the engine still ticking when I got out of my car. Her apartment was lit, but the glow from the pulled drapes wasn't inviting. Or maybe I was just scared.
I stood in the street, gazing at her windows and listening to her car tick. I leaned against her fender, and put my hand on the hood, feeling its warmth. One flight of stairs up to the second floor, but they might as well have gone on forever.
I climbed, and knocked softly at her door.
"Luce?"
She opened the door, and looked at me without drama. She was crying, sad tears like little windows into a well of hurt.
"Dolan came over because she was fired. She's in love with me, or thinks she is, and she wanted to be with me."
"You don't have to say this."
"I told her that I couldn't be with her. I told her that I love you. I was telling her that when you walked in."
Lucy stepped out of the door and told me to come in. Boxes had been put away. Furniture had been moved.
She said, "You scared me."
I nodded.
"I don't mean with Dolan. I mean from earlier. I'm angry with you, Elvis. I'm hurt with you."
Joe.
"You changed your life to come here, Luce. You're worried about Richard, and what's going to happen with Ben. You don't need to worry about me. You don't need to doubt what we have, or how I feel, and what you mean to me. You mean everything to me."
"I don't know that now."
I felt as if the world had dropped away and I was hanging in space with no control of myself, as if the slightest breeze could make me turn end over end and there was nothing I could do but let the breeze push me.
"Because of Joe."
"Because you were willing to put everything that's important to me at risk."
"Did you want me to call the cops and turn him in?" More tension was in my voice than I wanted there to be.
She closed her eyes and raised a palm.
"I guess you're mad at me, too."
"I don't like these choices, Luce. I don't like being caught between you and Joe. I don't like Dolan coming to my house because she doesn't have anywhere else to go. I don't like what's happening between us right now."
She took a breath and let it out. "Then I guess we're both disappointed."
I nodded.
"I didn't come two thousand miles for this."
I shook my head.
I said, "Do you love me?"
"I love you, but I don't know how I feel about you right now. I'm not sure how I feel about anything."
It sounded so final and so complete that I thought I must have missed something. I searched her face, trying to see if there was something in her eyes that I was missing in her voice, but if it was there I couldn't find it. I wanted an emotional catharsis; her measured consideration made my stomach knot.
"What are you saying here, Luce?"
"I'm saying I need to think about us."
"We're having a problem right now. Is it such a big problem that you'd question everything we feel for each other?"
"Of course not."
"That's what thinking about us means. One thing happens, you don't stop being an us."
I looked around at the boxes. The stuff of her life. This wasn't going the way I had hoped. I wasn't hearing things that I wanted to hear. And I wasn't doing a good job of saying the things I had wanted to say.
Lucy took my hand in both of hers.
"You said I changed my life to come here, but my coming here changes your life, too. The change didn't end when I crossed the city line. The change is still happening."
I put my arms around her. We held each other, but the uncertainty was like a membrane between us.
After a time, she eased away. She wasn't crying now; she seemed resolved.
"I love you, but you can't stay here tonight."
"Is it that clear to you?"
"No. Nothing's clear. That's the problem."
She took my hand again, gently kissed my fingers, and told me to leave.
Sacrifice
The killer presses the needle deep into his quadriceps and injects twice the usual amount of Dianabol. The pain makes him furious, his rage causing his skin to flush a deep red as his blood pressure spikes. He throws himself onto the bench, grips the bar, and pushes.
Three hundred pounds.
He lowers the weight to his chest, lifts, lowers, lifts. Eight reps of herculean inhuman effort that does nothing to appease his anger.
Three hundred motherfucking pounds.
He rolls off the bench and glares at himself in the mirror here in his shitty little rental. Muscles swollen, chest flushed, face murderous. Calm yourself. Take control. Put away the rage and hide yourself from the world.
His face empties.
Become Pike to defeat Pike.
The killer takes a calming breath, returns to the bench, sits.
Pike's escape has changed things, and so have Cole and that bitch Dolan. Knowing that he's been framed, Pike will try to figure out who, and will be coming for him. Cole and Dolan have already tried to get DeVille's file, and that's bad, but he also knows they didn't get it. Without DeVille's file they cannot follow the trail back to him, but they're getting closer, and the killer accepts that they are very close to identifying him.
He must act now. He decides to jump ahead to the final targets, and nothing must stop him. Pike is the wild card, but Cole he can account for. Cole must be distracted. Get his mind off saving Pike, and onto something else.
He believes that Dolan has always been overrated as an investigator, so the killer discounts her. But Cole is another matter. He has met Cole, and studied him. Cole is dangerous. An ex-Army guy who wears the Ranger tab, and an experienced investigator. Cole does not appear dangerous in an obvious way, but many officers respect him. He heard one senior detective say not to let the wisecracks and loud shirts fool you, that Cole can carry all the weight you put on him, and still kick your ass. The killer takes this opinion seriously.
When you are plotting against the enemy, you always look for an exploitable weakness.
Cole has a girlfriend.
And the girlfriend has a child.
I walked down the infinite flight of steps from Lucy's apartment to sit in my car. I thought about starting it, but that was beyond me. I tried to be angry with her, but wasn't. I tried to resent her, but that made me feel small. I sat there in my open car on her quiet street until her lights went out, and even then I did not move. I just wanted to be close to her, even if she was up in her apartment and I was down in my car, and for most of the night I tried to figure out how things could go so wrong so quickly. Maybe a better detective could've found answers.
The sky was pale violet when I finally pulled away. I was content to creep along in the morning traffic, the mindless monotony of driving the car familiar and comforting. By the time I reached home, Dolan was gone. She had left a note on the kitchen counter. What it said was, I'll talk to her if you want.
I cleaned our glasses from the night before, put away the tequila, and was heading upstairs for a shower when the phone rang.
My heart pounded as I stared at the phone, letting it ring a second time. I took a breath, and nodded to myself.
On the third ring I picked it up, trying not to sound like I'd just run ten miles.
"Lucy?"
Evelyn Wozniak said, "Why didn't you call?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I left a message yesterday. I said you should call no matter what time you got in."
I had checked my message machine when Pike was still in the house, but there had been no messages. I looked at it now, again finding nothing.
"Okay. You've got me now."
Evelyn gave me directions to the storage facility that her mother used in North Palm Springs. She had had a duplicate key made for the lock, and had left it for me in an envelope with the on-site manager. I asked her if she wanted to be there when I went through her father's things, but she said that she was scared of what she might find. I could understand that. I was scared, too.
When she was done, I said, "Evelyn, did you leave any of this on your message?"
"Some of it. I told you the name of the place. I know it was your machine and not somebody else's, if that's what you're thinking. Who else would have a message that says they're the world's greatest human being?"
I put down the phone, then went upstairs, changed clothes, and drove to Palm Springs, wondering if Pike had heard the message, and if he'd erased it.
And why.
When I was thinking about Pike, I didn't have to think about Lucy.
Two hours and ten minutes later, I left the freeway and again made my way through the wind farms. The desert was already hot, and smelled of burning earth.
The storage facility was clusters of white cinder-block sheds set in the middle of nowhere behind a chain-link fence with a big metal gate. A cinder-block building sat by the gate with a big sign saying LOWEST RATES AROUND. Since nothing else was around, it was an easy guarantee to keep.
An overweight woman with skin like dried parchment gave me the key. Her office was small, but a Westinghouse air conditioner big enough to cool a meat locker was built into the wall, running full blast and blowing straight at her. It was little enough.
She said, "You gonna be in there long?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"Gonna be hot," she said. "Make sure you don't pass out. You pass out, don't you try to sue me."
"I won't."
"I'm warning you. I got some nice bottled water in here, only a dollar and a half."
I bought a bottle to shut her up.
Paulette Renfro's storage unit was located at the rear of the facility. Each unit was a cinder-block shell that sprouted corrugated-metal storage spaces. There was no door on the shell, so you walked inside what amounted to a little cave to get to the individual storage spaces.
From the tarnish on the lock, it was clear that Paulette rarely if ever came here, but the key worked smoothly, and opened into a space the size of a closet. Boxes of various size were stacked along the walls, along with old electric fans and suitcases, and two lamps.
I emptied the closet, putting the unboxed things to the side, then carried out the boxes. When all the boxes were out, I went through the older boxes first, and that's where I found the notebooks that Evelyn Wozniak remembered. Her father had kept field notes much like a daybook, jotting notes about the young officers he trained, the perps he busted, and the kids he was trying to help, all dated, and crammed into seven small three-ring binders thick with pages. I was pretty sure that the most recent would be the most relevant.
I put the seven binders aside, then went through the rest of the boxes to see if anything else might be useful, but the only other things of Abel's were a patrol cap in a plastic bag, a presentation case with Wozniak's badge, and two framed commendations from when he was awarded the Medal of Valor. I wondered why the commendations were here in a box, but she had remarried. I guess over time she'd lost track of them.
I was repacking the boxes when a shadow framed itself in the door, and Joe Pike said, "I wanted to get here before you."
I glanced over at him, then went on with the packing.
"It's so easy to show you up."
"Find anything?"
"Wozniak's daybooks."
"You look through them yet?"
"Too hot to look through them here. I'll take them where it's cooler."
"Want some help?"
"Sure."
He put the boxes I had finished repacking back in the closet. I sealed the last two boxes, then handed them to him one by one.
"You erase Evelyn's message?"
He nodded.
"Why?"
"I wanted to make sure you didn't find anything here that would hurt Paulette."
"I'm looking for something to help you."
"I know. Maybe we'll get lucky."
"But maybe there's something here that will hurt Paulette."
Pike nodded.
I took that in, and it was like taking in volumes.
"How did you break Karen Garcia's heart, Joe?"
Pike stacked the boxes until the last box was in place, and then he went to the door and looked out toward the desert as if something might be there. All I could see past him were other cinder-block buildings with other people's memories.
I said, "Karen loved you, but you loved Paulette."
Pike nodded.
"You dated Karen, but you were in love with your partner's wife."
He turned back to me then, the flat lenses empty.
"Paulette was married. I kept waiting for the feelings I had for her to go away, but they didn't. We didn't have an affair, Elvis. Nothing physical. Woz was my friend. But I felt what I felt. I tried dating other people to feel other things, but love doesn't just come and doesn't just go. It just is."
I stared at him, thinking about Lucy.
"What?"
I shook my head.
"You already know that Krantz thought Wozniak was involved with a burglary ring."
"Yes."
"It was true."
I watched him.
"Krantz thinks I murdered Woz for Paulette."
"Did you?"
The corner of Pike's mouth twitched, and he tipped the glasses my way. "You believe that?"
"You know better. Krantz also thinks you were involved with Woz in the ring. I don't believe that, either."
Pike tipped his head the other way, and frowned. "How do you know that?"
I spread my hands.
"Right."
Pike drew a deep breath, then shook his head. "I didn't have any idea. All that time in the car with Woz, and I never knew until Krantz talked to Paulette and scared her. She asked Woz about it, and he denied it, so she asked me. That's how I found out. I followed Woz and saw him with the Chihuahuas. He'd gotten some girl pregnant, and he'd set her up in an apartment in El Segundo. He was paying for it by tipping the Chihuahuas on easy places to rob. Krantz had it all. He just couldn't prove it." Just what McConnell had said.
"You tell Paulette?"
"Some of it. Not all. He was her husband, Elvis. They had the child."
"So what happened?"
"I told him he had to resign. I gave him the choice, and I gave him the time to think about it. That way it was between me and him. That's why he died."
I thought that maybe Krantz had been right about many things.
"What happened in the motel, Joe?"
"He didn't want to resign, but I didn't give him any choice. I didn't want to give him to Krantz, but I couldn't let a bad officer stay on the job. If he didn't hang it up, I would've brought in Paulette, and I would've arrested the Chihuahuas."
"The Chihuahuas would've rolled on him."
"If he resigned I would've found another way at them, but it never got to that. We got the call about the missing girl and DeVille, and Woz got the location. When we got over there, Woz was already short, and that's when he lost it and hit DeVille with his gun. I think he was just working up his nut, because he already knew what he was going to do. It was about me, and the box he was in, and how he was going to get out of it." Pike stopped for a time, then went on. "He let DeVille have it, and when I pushed him away he pointed his gun at me."
"You shot him in self-defense?"
"No. I wouldn't shoot him. I didn't draw my weapon."
I stared at him.
"He knew I loved his wife, and he knew she loved me. His career was over, and if Krantz could make the case he would go to jail. Some men can't take the weight. Some men break, and will do anything to stop the pressure."
"Abel Wozniak killed himself."
Pike touched his chin. "Pointed the gun here and pulled the trigger, up through his chin and out the top of his head."
I asked but I had already guessed. "Why take the blame?"
"It had to be explained. If I tell the truth, Krantz would be able to make the case, and if Woz goes out a felon, his pension and benefits could be withheld. Paulette and the girls would've lost everything. Maybe Parker Center might've felt sorry, and cut them slack, but how could I know? If he goes out a suicide, there's no insurance. The insurance we had then wouldn't pay if you capped yourself."
"So you took the weight."
"DeVille was going to wake up and say that Woz hit him. I just went with it. I told them that we struggled, and that's how it happened. It would fit with what DeVille was going to say, and it would explain Woz being dead."
"Only you get marked rotten for causing your partner's death to protect a pedophile."
"You do the best you can with what you've got."
"Did Paulette know the truth?"
Pike stared at the cement. "If Paulette knew, she would've told the department. Even if it meant losing the benefits."
"Wasn't that her decision to make?"
"I made the decision for all of us."
"So she doesn't know that her husband killed himself."
"No."
Pike just stood there, and I thought that this was his single lonely way of protecting the woman he loved, even if it had cost him any chance at her love, forever and always.
Pike would take that weight.
And had.
I said, "All this time, all these cops hating you for nothing."
Pike cocked his head, and even in the dim light of the little building the glasses seemed to glow.
"Not for nothing. For everything."
"Okay. So now what?"
"She still gets his survivor benefits. I want to make sure that whatever leaves here doesn't affect that."
"Even if it's something that could help you?"
The corner of Pike's mouth twitched. "I didn't come this far to quit now."
"Then let's see what we find."
We sat in a Denny's just off the freeway for the next two and a half hours, drinking tea and going through the day books. The Denny's people didn't mind. With the heat, they didn't have much business.
We started with the most recent book and worked backward. Eight pages were missing from that book, but the rest were there, and legible. Wozniak's entries were often cryptic, but pretty soon they made sense to me.
At one point I saw that Pike had stopped reading, and asked him, "What?"
When he didn't answer, I leaned closer and found what had stopped him.
"This Pike is a sharp lad. He'll make a good cop."
Pike pulled back the book, and kept reading.
Many of the entries were about arrests that Wozniak made, with notes on crimes and criminals and witnesses that he took for future reference, but much of what he'd written was about the street kids whom Wozniak had tried to help. Whatever he had become, Wozniak had been sincere in his efforts to help the people he was sworn to protect and to serve.
In all seven books, only three names were used in a context that suggested they might be informants, and only one of those seemed a possible, that being in an entry dated five months prior to Wozniak's death.
I read that entry to Pike.
"Listen to this. 'Popped a kid named Laurence Sobek, age fourteen, male hustler. Likes to talk, so he might be a good source. Turned out by the Coopster. ID? Fucked up kid. Gonna try to get him inside.' " I looked up. "What's that mean, get him inside?"
"Get him into a halfway house or a program. Woz did that."
"Who's the Coopster?"
Pike shook his head.
I stared at the page.
"Could it be DeVille?"
Pike considered it. "Like a nickname. Coupe DeVille."
"Yeah."
"Thin."
"You remember Laurence Sobek?"
"No."
"Anything else in here look good?"
Pike shook his head again.
"Then this is what we go with."
We paid the bill, then brought the books out to our cars. I took the notebook that mentioned Laurence Sobek with me.
"How can I reach you?"
"Call the shop and tell them you need me. I'll have a pager."
"Okay."
We stood in the heat and watched the trucks go by on the freeway. Behind us, the windmills churned for as far as we could see. Pike was driving a maroon Ford Taurus with an Oregon license plate. I wondered where he'd gotten it. When I finally looked over, he was watching me.
I said, "What?"
"I'm going to beat this. Don't worry about me."
I made like Alfred E. Neumann. "What, me worry?"
"Something's eating you."
I thought about telling him about Lucy, but I didn't.
"You take care of yourself, Joe."
He shook my hand, and then he drove away.
It was late when I got home, but I called Dolan anyway. I called her house twice, leaving messages both times, but by the next morning she still hadn't gotten back to me. I thought that she might be at Parker Center, clearing her desk, but when I called her direct line there, Stan Watts answered.
"Hey, Stan. It's Elvis Cole."
"So what?"
"Is Dolan there?"
"She's over, man. Thanks to you."
Like I needed to hear that.
"I thought she might be there."
"She's not."
Watts hung up.
I called Dolan again at home, still got her machine, so this time I took Wozniak's notebook and drove over there.
Samantha Dolan lived in a bungalow on Sierra Bonita just a few blocks above Melrose, in an area more known for housing artists than police officers.
I parked behind her BMW, and heard music coming from the house even out in my car. Sneaker Pimps. Loud.
She didn't answer the bell, on my knock, and when I tried the door, it was locked. I pounded hard, thinking maybe she was dead and I should break in, when the door finally opened. Dolan was wearing a faded METALLICA tee shirt and jeans and was barefoot. Her eyes were nine shades of red, and she smelled like a fresh dose of tequila.
"Dolan, you've got a drinking problem." She sniffed like her nose was runny. "That's what I need today, you giving me life advice."
I walked in past her and turned off the music. The living room was large, with a nice fireplace and a hardwood floor, but it was sloppy. The sloppy surprised me. A big couch faced a couple of chairs, and a mostly empty bottle of Perfidio Anejo tequila sat on the floor by the couch. The cap was off. An LAPD Combat Shooting trophy sat on top of the television; the room smelled of cigarettes. I said, "Why didn't you call me back?"
"I haven't checked my messages. Look, you want me to talk to your friend, 1 will. I'm sorry about what happened last night." "Forget it."
I tossed Wozniak's binder to her.
"What's this?" She scooped a pack of cigarettes off the floor, and fired up, breathing out a cloud of smoke like a volcanic fog.
"A day book that Abel Wozniak kept."
"Abel Wozniak as in Pike's partner?"
"Read the pages I marked."
She frowned through another deep drag, reading. She flipped back several pages, then read forward past the point I had marked. When she was done, she looked at me. The cigarette forgotten.
"You're thinking this kid is talking about DeVille?"
"This kid had a relationship with Wozniak, that much we know. He was turned out by someone called the Coopster. If that's DeVille, then DeVille links Sobek to Karen Garcia, too."
Dolan squinted at me. "You're saying Sobek killed Dersh."
"I'm saying maybe he killed everybody. Krantz and the Feds have been chasing a serial killer, but maybe this guy isn't, Dolan. At first I thought the connection was through Wozniak, but maybe these killings don't have anything to do with Wozniak. Maybe they're about DeVille."
She shook her head, scowling and cranky. "I was one of the cops trying to find a connection, remember? We didn't."
"Did you check out DeVille?"
She waved her cigarette. "Why in hell would we?"
"I don't know, Dolan. I don't know why you didn't find anything, but you ordered DeVille's file from the DA's Record Section, right? Let's check it out and see what's there."
She took another pull on the cigarette, and stared into the cloud. I could almost see the wheels turning, weighing the odds and what all of this might mean. For her, it was a shot at getting in again. If she could turn something that advanced the case, it could keep her on Robbery-Homicide and save her career.
Dolan pushed off the couch, went to her phone, and called Stan Watts, asking him if she'd gotten anything from DA Records. When she hung up, she said, "Give me five."
She showered and dressed and took almost twenty.
When we went outside, she said, "Move your car and we'll take mine."
"No way, Dolan. You scare the hell out of me."
"Move your goddamned car or I'll back into it."
She powered up the Beemer as I moved my car.
We drove to Parker Center without saying very much, each of us keeping our thoughts to ourselves. She pulled into the red zone by the front door, told me not to touch anything, then hurried inside. Ten minutes later she came out with DeVille's file.
"You didn't fuck with the radio, did you?"
"No, I didn't fuck with anything."
We parked a block away in a little parking lot. Dolan went through the file first, peeling away pages and dropping them on the floorboard.
"What's that?"
"Lawyer crap. This stuff won't tell us anything. We want the detective's case presentation."
The lead detective in charge of the case was a Rampart Division sex crimes D-2 named Krakauer. Dolan told me that the case presentation was the sum total of the compiled evidence used in building the case, and would include witness statements, testimonial evidence, interviews; anything and everything that the detective accumulated along the way.
When Dolan had the lawyer crap separated, she took half of the detective's case presentation, gave me the other half, and said, "Start reading. The case will be divided by subject and chronology."
I was hoping for some indication that Sobek was connected to DeVille, and perhaps had been the informant that put Pike and Wozniak in that motel room on the day Wozniak died, but most of what I read concentrated on Ramona Ann Escobar. There were statements from her neighbors and the motel desk clerk and her parents, and a transcribed statement from Ramona describing how DeVille had paid her ten dollars to take off her clothes. Ramona Ann Escobar had been seven years old. It was uncomfortable to read, but I read in hopes of finding Sobek.
I was still searching when Dolan quietly said, "Oh, holy shit."
She was pale and stiff.
"What?"
She handed me a witness list that compiled the names of the people who had lodged complaints about DeVille. The list was long, and at first I didn't understand until Dolan pointed at a name midway down the list.
Karen Garcia.
Her face still ashen, Dolan said, "Keep reading."
They were all there, the first five victims, plus the newest, Jesus Lorenzo. Dersh wasn't there, but he was the exception.
Dolan stared at me. "You were right, you sonofabitch. These people weren't random. They're linked. He's killing everyone who helped put away Leonard DeVille."
All I could do was nod.
"Maybe you're the world's greatest fuckin' detective, after all."
Only one of the six victims actually gave testimony against DeVille, that being Walter Semple, who had seen DeVille at the park from where the little girl disappeared. The others were part of what Dolan called the clutter, people who had been questioned by Krakauer because they had lodged sex crime complaints against a man Krakauer believed to be DeVille, but not directly related to the case for which DeVille was finally prosecuted.
Dolan's breast rose and fell as we read through the rest of the file. A copy of DeVille's criminal arrest record was attached, listing several aliases, one of which was the Coopster.
I said, "It's Sobek. It's got to be Sobek. We have to take this to Krantz. The other people on this list have to be notified."
"Not yet. I want more."
"What do you mean, more? This will break open the case. It's a showstopper."
"It links Sobek with DeVille, but it doesn't prove he's the shooter. If I can bring them the shooter, Bishop's gotta let me on again,"
"You've already got something, Dolan. We've found a connection between these people, and we've got leads. You're going to turn this case around."
"I want more. I want to put the whole thing right on the table. I want the headline, Cole. I want to push Krantz's face in it. I want it so tight that Bishop can't not take me back on the team."
I stared at her, and thought that if I were her I would want it this badly, too. But maybe I wanted it more. If we got the shooter, then maybe that would clear Joe Pike. "Okay, Samantha. Let's find this guy."
We drove back to her place. It took Dolan almost two hours of phone calls, but we learned that Laurence Sobek wasn't in the adult system, and the system had no record of his present whereabouts. This meant one of two things: Either he'd straightened out and gotten his life together, or he'd moved away before the age of eighteen. Of course, he could always be dead, too. Boys who work the streets often end up that way.
While Dolan made the calls, I went into her kitchen for a glass of water. A couple of million photographs were stuck to her refrigerator with little magnets, including several of Dolan posing with the actress who'd played her in the series. Dolan looked like she could kick your ass and would enjoy doing it, but the actress looked like an anorexic heroin addict. Showbiz.
The picture that Dolan had taken of me at Forest Lawn was stuck near the handle with a little Wonder Woman magnet. Seeing it there made me smile.
I finished my water, then went back into the living room as she put down the phone.
Dolan said, "We've got to go to Rampart."
"Why?"
"Because that's where Sobek was busted as a juvenile. The Juvie Section there will know where to find his sheet. They might have it loaded on their system, but maybe somebody will have to dig through paper."
"I thought you said we'd need a court order to get at the juvenile stuff."
She frowned, annoyed. "I'm Samantha Dolan, you idiot. Get up to speed."
And this woman wanted to sleep with me.
The Rampart Division station house is a low-slung, brown brick building facing Rampart Street a few blocks west of MacArthur Park, where Joe Pike had first met Karen Garcia.
We parked in a small lot they have behind the place for officers, then entered the division through the back. This time Dolan didn't tell me to keep my mouth shut and try to look smart. Looking smart would be out of place in a station house anyway.
Dolan badged our way into the Juvenile Section, which was microscopic in size, just four detectives attached to the robbery table in the corner of a dingy room. Where Parker Center and the Robbery-Homicide offices were modern and bright, the detective tables at Rampart seemed faded and small, with outdated furniture that looked as tired as the detectives. Rampart was a high crime area, and the detectives there busted their asses, but the cases rarely made headlines, and no one was lounging around in six-hundred-dollar sport coats waiting to be interviewed on 60 Minutes. Most of them just tried to survive their shift.
Dolan zeroed on the youngest detective in the room, badged him, and introduced herself. "Samantha Dolan. Robbery-Homicide."
His name was Murray, and his eyebrows went up when she said that.
"I know you, don't I?"
She gave him the smile. "Sorry, Murray. Don't think we've met. You mean from the TV show?"
Murray couldn't have been more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. He was clearly impressed. "Yeah. You're the one they made the show about, right?"
Dolan laughed. She hadn't laughed when I'd mentioned her show, but there you go. "These Hollywood people, they don't know what being a detective really means. Not like we do."
Murray smiled wider, and I thought if she told him to roll over and bark, he wouldn't hesitate. "Well, that was some case you put together. I remember reading about it. Man, you were news."
"Hey, it's just Robbery-Homicide, you know? We get the hot cases, and the press tags along. No different than what you do here."
Dolan didn't look good playing modest, but maybe that was just me.
Murray asked how he could help her, and Dolan said that she wanted to look at an old juvie packet, but she didn't have a court order for it. When Murray looked uneasy about that, she grew serious and leaned toward him. "Something we got down at Parker Center. Headline case, man. The real stuff."
Murray nodded, thinking how cool it would be to work the real stuff.
Dolan leaned closer. "You ever think about putting in for RHD, Murray? We need sharp cops who know how to make the right call."
Murray wet his lips. "You think you could put in a word for me?"
Dolan winked at him. "Well, we're trying to find this kid, you see? So while we're reading his file, maybe you could run a DMV check and call the phone company. See if you can't shag an address for us?"
Murray glanced at the older detectives. "My supervisor might not like it."
Dolan looked blank. "Gee. I guess you shouldn't tell him."
Murray stared at her a moment longer, then got busy.
I shook my head. "You're something, all right."
Dolan considered me, but now she wasn't smiling. "Something, but not enough."
"Let it go."
She raised her hands.
Twenty minutes later we had the file and an interview room, and Murray was making the calls.
Laurence Sobek had been booked seven times from age twelve to age sixteen, twice for shoplifting and four times for pandering. The DOB indicated he would now be in his late twenties. Abel Wozniak was twice the arresting officer, first on the shoplifting charge, then later for the second pandering charge. Sobek's most recent booking photo, taken at age sixteen, showed a thin kid with a wispy mustache, stringy hair, and aggravated acne. He looked timid and cowed.
At the time of his arrests, he had lived with his mother, a Mrs. Brasilia Sobek. The record noted that she was divorced, and had not come to pick up her son or meet with the officers any of the seven times.
Dolan scowled. "Typical."
Murray interrupted us, knocking once before opening the door. He looked crestfallen.
"Doesn't have a California driver's license and never had one. The phone company never heard of him, either. I'm really sorry about this, Samantha." He was seeing his chance at the hot stuff fizzle and melt.
"Don't worry about it, bud. You've been a help."
The booking sheets showed that his mother had lived in an area of South L.A. called Maywood.
I said, "If she's still alive, maybe we can work through the mother. You think she's still at this address?"
"Easy to find out."
Dolan made a copy of the booking photo, then used Murray 's phone to call the telephone company.
As Dolan called, Murray sidled up to me. "You really think I got a shot at Robbery-Homicide?"
" Murray, you've got the inside track."
Three minutes later we knew that Laurence Sobek's mother was still down in Maywood.
We went to see Drusilla Sobek.
Detective Murray was disappointed that he could not tag along.
Drusilla Sobek was a sour woman who lived in a tiny stucco house in a part of Maywood that was mostly illegal aliens come up from Honduras and Ecuador. The illegals often lived eighteen or more to a house, hot-bedding their cots between sub-minimum-wage jobs, and Drusilla didn't like it that they'd taken over the goddamned neighborhood. She made no bones about it, and told us so.
She peered at us heavily from her door, her flat face wrinkled and scowling. She was a large woman who filled the door. "I don't want to stand here all goddamned day. These Mexicans see me here with this door open, they might get ideas."
I said, "These folks are from Central America, Mrs. Sobek."
"Who gives a shit? If it looks like a Mexican and talks like a Mexican, it's a Mexican."
Dolan said, "We're trying to find your son, Mrs. Sobek."
"My son's a faggot whore."
Just like that.
When she'd first come to the door, Dolan had badged her, but Mrs. Sobek had said we couldn't come in. She said she didn't let in strangers, and I was just as glad. A sour smell came from within her house, and she reeked of body odor. Behind the hygiene curve.
I said, "Can you give us an address or phone number, please?"
"No."
"Do you know how we can find him?"
Her eyes narrowed, tiny and piglike in the broad face. "There some kind of reward?"
Dolan cleared her throat. "No, ma'am. No reward. We just need to ask him a few questions. It's very important."
"Then you better look somewhere else, lady. My faggot whore son ain't never even been close to important."
She tried to close the door, but Dolan put her foot in its base and jammed the sill. Dolan's left eye was ticking.
Drusilla said, "Hey! What the hell you think you're doing?"
Dolan was a little bit taller than Drusilla Sobek, but a couple of hundred pounds lighter. She said, "If you don't get the stick out your ass, you fat cow, I'm gonna beat you stupid."
Drusilla Sobek's mouth made a little round O, and she stepped back. Surprised.
I started to say something, but Dolan raised a finger, telling me to shut up. I shut.
She said, "Where can we find Laurence Sobek?"
"I don't know. I ain't seen him in three or four years." Drusilla's voice was small now, and not nearly so blustery.
"Where was he living the last time you knew?"
"Up in San Francisco with all those other faggots."
"Is that where he's living now?"
"I don't know. I really don't." Her lower lip trembled and I thought she might cry.
Dolan took a breath, forcing herself to relax. "Okay, Mrs. Sobek, I believe you. But we still need to find your son, and we still need your help."
Drusilla Sobek's lip trembled harder, her chin wrinkled, and a small tear leaked down her cheek. "I don't like being spoken to in such a rude manner. It ain't right."
"Did you ever have an address or phone number for your son?"
"Yeah. I think I did. A long time ago."
"I need you to go look for it."
Drusilla nodded, still crying.
"We have his booking photo from when he was sixteen, but I'd like a more recent picture, too. Would you have one of him as an adult?"
"Uh-huh."
"You get those things. We'll wait here."
"Uh-huh. Please don't let in the Mexicans."
"No, ma'am. You go look."
Drusilla shuffled away into her house, leaving the door open. A fog of the sour smell billowed out at us.
I said, "Christ, Dolan, you're harsh."
"Is it any wonder her kid turned out screwed up?"
We stood there in the sun for almost fifteen minutes until Drusilla Sobek finally shuffled back to the door, like a sensitive child who had disappointed her family.
"I got this old address up there with the faggots. I got this picture he gimme two years ago."
"It's a San Francisco address?"
She nodded, her jowly chin quivering. "Up with the faggots, yeah."
She handed the address and the picture to Dolan, who stiffened as soon as she saw them. I guess I stiffened, too. We wouldn't need the address.
Bigger, stronger, filled out and grown, and with much shorter hair, we recognized the adult Laurence Sobek. He worked at Parker Center.
Final Action
Laurence Sobek, his true name and not the name by which he is currently known, finishes stapling black plastic over his windows. He has already nailed shut every window but the small one in the bathroom, leaving only the front door as a point of egress. It is sweltering in the converted garage.
The plan was simple and obvious once Sobek lifted DeVille's case file from the records section. There in black and white he knew all the people who had helped the Sex Crimes detectives put the Coopster into prison where he died, all the people who had lodged complaints or made statements, and fed the Coopster to the prison population like a sacrifice. Sobek designed the sequence of homicides to take advantage of the weaknesses in LAPD's system: He started with the peripheral complainants it would be impossible for LAPD to connect, intent on working steadily up the food chain until it was too late to stop him even when the Task Force finally realized what was happening.
Now, thanks to Cole and that bitch Dolan, he must spare the remaining minor players, and kill the people he holds most responsible. The lead Sex Crimes detective, Krakauer, died of a heart attack two days after he retired. (All to the good, as Krakauer was the only person with even a remote chance of tying together the names of the early victims.) Pike had arrested the Coopster, then sat in the witness chair at his trial and hammered the nails into De Ville's coffin, but Pike is now a fugitive.
That leaves one other.
The apartment now sealed, Sobek pulls De Ville's case file from its hiding place in the closet, along with the brittle, yellowed newspaper articles about De Ville's arrest. He has read these a hundred thousand times, touching the grainy photographs of the Coopster being led from the motel in handcuffs.
He touches them again now. He hates Wozniak, who spotted him at a Dunkin' Donut shop that day, and manipulated him into revealing what he knew. This asshole is using you, Wozniak had said. What this guy is doing to you is wrong, he said. Help me help you.
The Islander Palms Motel. Arrest. Prison. Dead.
Sobek closes his eyes, and puts away whatever is left of his feelings for DeVille. He has studied Pike, and learned well. Abandon humanity. Feel nothing. Control is everything. If you are in control, then you can re-create yourself. Become larger. Control everything.
Sobek closes his eyes, steadies his breathing, and feels an inner calm that only comes from certainty. He admires himself in the mirror: jeans, Nikes, gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cropped. He runs a hand over his quarter-inch hair, and imagines that he is not looking at Laurence Sobek, but is seeing Joe Pike. He flexes. The red arrows he had painted on his deltoids are gone, but he thinks that when this is over, he will have them tattooed there permanently. He rubs at his crotch, and enjoys the sensation.
Control.
He places the dark glasses over his eyes.
He has a cut-down double-barrel shotgun that he lifted from the Parker Center evidence room, and a box of twelve-gauge shells filled with #4 buckshot. He pulls the weight bench to the center of the floor, then fixes the shotgun to it with duct tape. He runs a cord from the knob to both triggers, rigged so that the gun will go off when the door opens, and pulls back the hammers.
He lays out the evidence that he wants Cole and the police to find, then lets himself out the back window. He will never return to this place.
Laurence Sobek drives away to do murder.
Dolan ripped away from Drusilla Sobek's house like the queen of the Demolition Derby. She was so excited she was shaking. "We got the sonofabitch. Right under our own goddamned noses, but we got him."
"No, Dolan, we don't have him yet. It's time to take it inside."
She glanced at me, and I knew what she was thinking. That she'd like to snap the cuffs on him herself and cut Krantz and Bishop and their whole damned Task Force out of the bust.
"This is what you wanted, Samantha. This is going to get you back on the team, but not if you piss off Bishop even more than he already is."
She didn't like it much, but she finally went along. "This guy works the day shift, so he's probably at Parker Center right now. I'm putting this on Bishop's desk in person. We've got the files and Wozniak's book. I'm giving Bishop the whole load, and fuck Krantz."
"Whatever. I've got to use a phone. Stop somewhere."
"Use mine. It's in my purse."
"I'd rather use a pay phone. It won't take long."
She glanced at me like I was crazy. "Sobek is there right now."
"I need a phone, Dolan."
"You're going to call Pike."
I just looked at her.
"I fuckin' knew it."
She jerked the Beemer into the nearest gas station, blasting past a crowd of people waiting to board a bus. She screeched up to the pay phones, and left the engine running.
"Don't take all goddamned day."
I did the same thing I'd done before, calling Pike's man, giving him the pay phone's number, then hanging up. Pike called back in less than two minutes. From the static I could tell he was on a cell phone.
"We were right, Joe. It's Sobek."
"Is he in custody?"
"Not yet. I wanted to tell you that we're bringing it to Bishop now. If we get lucky, Sobek will cop to Dersh. If not, maybe we'll find something that links him to it and clears you."
"It's going to bring up Woz."
"Yeah, it is. We've got to show Wozniak's notebook to tie Sobek to DeVille, and to Wozniak. Once the story breaks, they're going to dig into what happened between you in that room. I just wanted to warn you. After we're finished with Bishop, I'll call Charlie, then go see Paulette and Evelyn so they aren't caught flat."
"You won't have to. I will."
I didn't know what to say, but I smiled.
Dolan blew her horn.
Pike said, "It's been a long time. I guess it's time we spoke."
"Okay, but stay safe until this guy takes the weight for Dersh. You're still wanted, and we don't know what we'll get from him."
When I was back in her car, Dolan swerved through the gas station, cut in front of the bus, and blasted toward the Los Angeles River.
"Dolan, have you ever killed anybody in this thing?"
"Cinch your belt tighter if you're scared. You'll be fine."
I glanced at her and she was smiling. I guess I was smiling, too.
When we reached Parker Center, Dolan didn't bother going into the parking lot; she put it in the red zone out front. We trotted in, Dolan badging us past the desk guard. I looked at everyone we passed, wondering if Sobek would be standing there when the elevator doors opened, but he wasn't.
We pushed into Robbery-Homicide, Watts and Williams raising their eyebrows when they saw us. Dolan steamed straight into Bishop's office, surprising him on the phone.
Dolan said, "We've got the shooter."
He covered the phone, annoyed. "Can't you see I'm on the phone?"
She put the photograph of Laurence Sobek on his desk. "His real name is Laurence Sobek. Here's another picture when he was booked under his true name as a juvenile. He's our shooter, Greg. We got him."
Bishop told whoever was on the phone that he'd get back in five and hung up. He leaned closer to the pictures. Sobek had gained muscle and changed his appearance, but when the pictures were side by side you could tell they were the same guy.
"This is Woody something."
I said, "You know him as Curtis Wood. He's a civilian employee here. He pushes the mail cart around."
Krantz and Watts appeared in the door, Williams standing on his toes to see past them.
Krantz said, "Is there a problem, Captain?"
Dolan laughed. "Oh, please, Krantz. Like you could do something."
"They say he's our shooter, Harvey." Bishop squinted up from the pictures. "Where'd you get this booking picture?"
I said, "Sobek's juvenile record. We got the recent picture from Sobek's mother."
I showed them the pages we'd copied from Abel Wozniak's notebook, pointing out the passages about Sobek and DeVille, and their relationship, then the copy of Sobek's juvenile record showing Wozniak as one of his arresting officers.
Even as I said it, Krantz made a sour face as if he'd bitten into a rotten carrot. "All this proves is we've got someone working here under a false name. For all you know, he changed it legally because of the problems he had as a child."
"No, Krantz, we've got more than that."
Dolan said, "You find a connection yet between the six vics, Harvey?"
Krantz stared at her, suspicious. You could tell he wanted to say they weren't connected, but he knew she wouldn't have asked if she weren't about to drop a bomb. Instead, he glanced at me. "What's your connection in all of this?"
"If Sobek did the six vics, then he probably killed Dersh, too."
Krantz scowled at Bishop. "We're being scammed. This is just some bullshit Cole cooked up to save Pike."
Bishop was looking dubious, but Stan Watts grew thoughtful. "How are they connected?"
Dolan said, "Leonard DeVille was the pedophile in the motel when Abel Wozniak was killed. Wozniak and Pike had gone in there on a tip, possibly from Sobek, looking for a little girl named Ramona Escobar."
Watts nodded. "I remember that."
"Cole worked backward from Dersh, asking who'd have a motive and why would they put it on Pike."
Krantz said, "This is bullshit. Pike killed that man."
Bishop raised his hand, thinking about it.
Watts looked at me. "How'd you make the jump to DeVille?"
"I wasn't thinking the connection was through DeVille. I was thinking it had to be through Wozniak, but it turned out to be the other."
Dolan went on. "We tried to pull DeVille's case file out of stores, but it's missing. Sobek could've slipped in there and lifted it. I ordered this copy up from the DA's section. This is the witness list from that case file. All six vics are on this list."
Bishop stared at the witness list without expression for almost thirty seconds. No one else in the room moved, and then Bishop quietly said, "Fucking-A. Goddamned fucking-A. All six victims are right there."
As Krantz read it, Watts and Williams looked over his shoulder, Williams making a whistling sound.
Bishop said, "Okay, this is looking good. This is major, but what have you got that locks Sobek to the killings?"
"So far just what you see here. The relationships. You'll need to bring Sobek in and sweat him. You've got more than enough for warrants to search his home and automobile."
Williams was still with the list, shaking his head. "This fuckin' guy I see every day. We were just talkin' about the new Bruce Willis movie."
Krantz jutted his jaw. He hated giving anything to Dolan or me, but he could read Bishop, and he knew Bishop wanted it. "It's good, Captain. Let's find Sobek or Wood or whatever his name is and get him in here. I can get a phone order for the search, and get that done while we're talking to him."
Bishop picked up his phone. No one said anything while he spoke, but Stan Watts caught Dolan's eye and winked. She smiled when he did. After a couple of minutes, Bishop wrote something, then put down the phone. "Wood didn't come in today. He didn't come in yesterday or the day before, either."
Krantz peered at Dolan. "I hope you didn't do anything to make him bolt."
"We didn't go near him, Harvey, and no one could've tipped him. We didn't see his mother until twenty minutes ago, and she doesn't know how to contact him."
Bishop said, "Now, Harve, let's not make accusations. I think Sam's done a good job here."
Krantz smiled, smooth and friendly, and squarely in Bishop's butt.
"I wasn't accusing you, Samantha. This is good work. This really is." He turned to Bishop. "But we've got to take this a step at a time now. If this stands up, and I believe it will, Samantha, then this man is a civilian employee of the Los Angeles Police Department. He was murdering people while he worked here, and he was using our information sources to do it. If we're not careful, we could have another public relations nightmare on our hands. We need to match his prints. We've got to field some physical evidence, maybe correlate the daytime homicides with the days this guy had off or missed work, that kind of thing. Then hope for something physical when we raid his home."
He looked at Dolan, then the others, like he was trying to drive home a point. In command and on top of things.
"If he's not here, we have to find him, and that might take time. I want to move fast, but I don't want to lose this guy because we didn't get all the signatures we should've, and I don't want him tipped because word leaked out." Krantz looked at Dolan when he said that, and she turned red.
Bishop laced his fingers, nodding. "Okay. How do you want to play it, Harvey?"
"Let's keep it small until we know what we're dealing with. Just us, and maybe two radio cars, but let's not make a big show with SWAT. If something goes wrong, the press will be all over us. Until he's in custody, I don't want him to know we're on him. If we miss the guy, the press will have it all over the air and he could slip through our ringers."
"Okay, Harvey, that sounds good. Set it up the way you want, and roll on it."
Krantz clapped Stan Watts on the shoulder, then turned for the door. He looked like Errol Flynn heading off with the Dawn Patrol.
Dolan said, "I want a piece."
Everyone stopped, and looked at her.
"Captain, I earned a place here. I want this. I want to be there when we get this fucker."
Krantz's jaw tightened, and he made the little jut. He wanted to tell her no so badly that he had cramps, but he was watching Bishop.
Bishop tapped his desk for a moment, then leaned back and nodded. "It's Harvey's Task Force, Samantha. I never force a commander to take someone he doesn't want."
Krantz nodded, and jutted his jaw again.
"But I think you deserve a second chance. How about you, Harve? Think you could find room for Dolan?"
It was clear what Bishop wanted, and Krantz hated it. His jaw rippled with tension, but he nodded gamely. "We'll meet you in the parking lot, Dolan. You're welcome to come along."
Everyone filed out as the meeting broke, Stan Watts and even Williams slapping Dolan on the back or shaking her hand. She accepted their congratulations with a wide, bright smile, sparkling eyes, and a flush of excitement that was breathtaking. Samantha Dolan was beautiful. I would never again see her as happy.
When we got down to her car, Dolan opened the trunk, and tossed me a bullet-resistant vest. "Here. Gonna be small, but you can adjust the straps."
I held it up to myself, then put it back in her trunk. "Not my color."
"Your call."
Dolan stripped off her shirt right there in the parking lot until she was down to her bra, then put on her own vest. All the people out on Los Angeles Street could see her, and so could the cops coming out of Parker Center, but she didn't seem to mind.
Dolan caught me watching and grinned nastily. "See anything you like, go for it."
I waited in the car.
When Dolan was dressed, she got behind the wheel. "I've been thinking about all this, hotshot, and I'm putting you on notice. I'm not giving up on you."
I looked at her.
"I'm not calling it quits just because you've got your Southern Belle. I want you, and I always get what I want. Maybe I'll put Scarlett O'Hara on notice, too. I intend to take you away from her."
I shook my head and stared out the window.
"Be the best you've ever had."
"Dolan, let's just not go there, okay?"
Her voice and her eyes softened. "I know you love her. I just gotta make you love me more."
She looked away then, and I looked away, too.
We sat quietly after that with the air conditioner running until Krantz and Watts rolled out of the covered parking in their D-ride, Williams and Bruly behind them. Dolan keyed a small black radio. "I'm on."
Watts came back, "Okay."
Williams said, "Up."
We pulled into line behind them, and eased out of the lot.
I said, "Hey, Dolan."
"Mm?"
I stared at her until she glanced over.
"I like you a lot. I mean a lot, you know?"
She made a gentle smile that crinkled her eyes, but she didn't answer.
The plan was simple: We would proceed directly to Sobek's address, reconnoiter the area, then withdraw to decide what to do while waiting for two Rampart Division radio cars to come in as backup units.
Two blocks from Sobek's address, Krantz slowed as we passed an AM-PM Minimart, and called us over the radio. "We'll meet back at this minimart after we make the pass."
Everybody rogered that.
"Dolan. You go in from this side, and we'll follow in a couple of minutes. Williams, swing up and come down from the north. We don't want to look like a parade."
Dolan double-clicked her radio to roger, then glanced at me. "First smart thing that airhead has said."
" Watts probably suggested it."
Dolan laughed.
Williams swung up a side street as Dolan and I continued on by ourselves.
Laurence Sobek, also known as Curtis Wood, lived in a converted garage apartment in a depressed residential area less than one mile from Parker Center. An undersized house like a little square box cut into a duplex sat near the street, with a driveway running along its side to a smaller box at the back of the property, which was Sobek's conversion. A stocky Hispanic woman and three small children were in the front yard of the house next door, playing with a garden hose. The neighborhood wasn't unlike where his mother lived: Rows of small stucco boxes and older apartment buildings, mostly inhabited by immigrants from Mexico or Central America. Sobek's box was run-down and sad.
I said, "I make two doors, one facing the main duplex and another on the side. Looks like something's on the windows."
"You see anyone in the main house?"
"Couldn't tell, but it looks quiet."
"I didn't see a car."
"Me neither. But it could be one of these on the street."
We passed Williams and Bruly coming in opposite us, then took two right turns and went back to the AM-PM. The two Rampart radio cars were waiting when we got there. We pulled in beside them and left the engine and air conditioner running. Williams pulled in thirty seconds after us, and Krantz followed almost a minute after. We joined him at his car.
Krantz said, "We got the telephonic warrant, so we're good to go with entering the property. Stan, how do you want to play it?"
Dolan nudged me. There was Krantz, giving it over to Watts again.
Watts said, "Secure the duplex first. I want to get that woman and her children out of there. Put one of the radio cars on the house directly behind Sobek's conversion in case he makes a run out the back. The rest of us cover the doors and windows. If he doesn't answer the door, I don't want to break it down, 'cause then he'll know we were here. Maybe see if we can slip the lock, and if not maybe we can crack one of the windows."
I said, "How do you want to approach the house?"
Krantz frowned at me. "Let us worry about that."
Watts answered anyway. "I'd say two groups, one down the drive and the other from the side yard to the north. Again, we want to keep a low profile. If he's not home, it's best if he doesn't know we were here."
Krantz gave the radio units their assignments, describing Sobek and giving them copies of the file shots the employment office had taken. He told them that if this guy came hauling ass through the yard they should consider him dangerous and act accordingly.
When the uniforms had gone back to their cars, Krantz turned back to the rest of us. "Everybody got their vest?"
Dolan said, "Cole doesn't."
Krantz shrugged. "Won't matter. He's going to wait here. So are you."
"Excuse me?"
"This is as far as you go, Dolan. I was fine with letting you tag along, but this is it. This is a Task Force operation, and you're not part of the Task Force."
Dolan charged up to Krantz so fast that he jumped back, and Williams lurched between them.
"Take it easy, Dolan!"
Dolan shouted, "You can't do this, goddamnit! Cole and I found this guy!"
"I can do anything I want. It's my operation."
I said, "This is really chickenshit, Krantz. If you felt this way, you should've made the play in front of Bishop."
Krantz jutted the jaw. "I've inspected the scene and determined it's best for the operation if only Task Force members participate. We're going to look too much like an army back there as it is. If you and Dolan were there, we'd be crawling all over each other and the odds of someone getting hurt would increase."
I smiled at Watts, but Watts was staring at the ground. "Sure. It's a safety issue."
Dolan's face grew as tight and hard as a ceramic mask, but her voice softened. "Don't cut me out of this, Harvey. Bishop said I could go."
"You did. You're here. But this is far enough. When the location is secure, you and your boyfriend can come in."
He jutted his jaw at me, and I wondered how it'd feel to kick it. The "boyfriend" would like kicking it just fine.
I said, "Why are you doing this, Krantz? Are you scared she's going to get the credit for doing your job?"
Watts said, "You're not helping."
I spread my hands and stepped back. "You want me out of it, fine, I'm out of it. But Dolan earned a piece of this."
Krantz considered me, then shook his head. "That's big of you, Cole, volunteering like that, but I don't give a shit what you want or not. I still think your partner killed Dersh, and I still think you had something to do with breaking him out. Bishop might be willing to overlook that, but I'm not." He glanced back to Dolan. "Here's the way it is: I run this Task Force. If you want any chance, and I mean any, of getting back on Robbery-Homicide, you'll sit your fanny back in that car and do exactly as I say. Are we clear on that?"
Dolan's face went white. "You want me to be a good little girl, Harvey?"
Krantz drew himself up and tugged at his vest. It made him look bulky and misshapen, like a deformed scarecrow. "That's exactly what I want. If you're a good girl, I'll even make sure you get some of the credit."
Dolan stared at him.
Krantz told the rest of them they'd be going in one car – his – and then the four of them got into it and drove away.
I said, "Jesus, Dolan, what a prick. I'm sorry."
She looked at me as if I was confused, and then she smiled.
"You can sit here if you want, World's Greatest, but I'm going in through the back."
I didn't think it was a smart idea, but that didn't do any good. She climbed into the Beemer without waiting for me, and it was either stand there like Krantz's toad or go with her.
Krantz had gone up the front street, so we drove up the back, straight to where the second radio car was waiting. The two uniforms were standing against the fender, smoking while they waited for Krantz's call.
Dolan said, "You guys hear from Krantz yet?"
They hadn't.
"Okay. We're gonna move in. Wait for the call."
I said, "Dolan, this isn't smart. If we surprise one of these guys, they could blow our heads off." I was thinking about Williams, looking so hinky he'd pop a cap if someone behind him sneezed.
"I told you to wear a vest."
Great.
The property behind Sobek's was a single-family bungalow about the size of an ice chest. Nobody was home, except for a yellow dog in a narrow wire pen. I was worried the dog would bark, but all it did was wag its tail and watch us with hopeful eyes. Dolan and I moved up the drive, and into a backyard that was separated from Sobek's by a chain-link fence overgrown by morning glories that were brown and brittle from the heat. His converted garage was close to the fence and easy to see.
Dolan made a hissing sound to get my attention, then motioned for us to go over the fence.
When we were on Sobek's side, we separated and circled the building. I listened close at the windows, and tried to see inside, but couldn't because they'd been covered by what looked like plastic garbage bags. The bags meant he was hiding something, and I didn't like that.
Dolan and I met near Sobek's.front door, then moved to the side.
I whispered, "I couldn't see anything in there. Did you?"
"Every damned window is like this. I couldn't see anything and didn't hear anything. If he ain't our guy, he's a goddamned vampire. Let's try the door."
Stan Watts and Harvey Krantz came down the drive, and froze when they saw us. Krantz made an angry wave for us to come over to him, but Dolan gave him the finger.
"You're cutting your own throat with that guy, Dolan."
"He's fucked me long enough. You got your gun?"
"Yeah."
"Let's try the door."
Dolan went to the front door and knocked, just the way you'd knock if you wanted to ask your neighbor for a small favor. I stood three feet to her left, gun out, and ready to get on Sobek if he answered.
Stan Watts drew his gun and hurried over beside me. Krantz stayed out by the duplex. I could hear Williams and Bruly in the next yard.
Watts said, "Goddamnit, Samantha." But it was only loud enough for me.
Dolan knocked a second time, harder, and said, "Gas company. We got a problem we've traced to your house."
No answer.
She said it louder. "We've got a gas company problem out here."
Still no one answered. Watts stood, and Krantz hurried over from the duplex. His face was red, and he looked like he wanted to bite someone in the neck.
"Goddamnit, Dolan, I'm going to have your ass for this." He was whispering, but it was harsh and loud, and if anyone was inside they would've heard. "This is my collar."
I said, "He's not here, Dolan. Pull back and let's figure out what to do."
Krantz put away his gun and jabbed me with his finger. "I'm going to have your ass for this, too. You, and her. Stan, you're a witness."
The three of us were still off to the side when Dolan touched the knob. "Hey, I think it's open."
I said, "Dolan. Don't."
Samantha Dolan eased open the door just far enough to peek inside, but she probably couldn't see anything.
Dolan relaxed.
"We're clear, Krantz. Looks like I've done your job again."
Then she pushed the door open and something kicked her backward with a sound like a thunderclap.
Stan Watts yelled, "Gun!" and hit the ground, but I didn't hear him.
I pushed low through the door, firing at a smoking double-barrel shotgun even before I knew what it was. I think I was screaming.
I fired all six rounds before the hammer clicked on nothing, and then I was running back into the yard, where Watts was trying to stop the bleeding, but it was already too late.
The point-blank double load from the shotgun had blown through her vest like it wasn't there.
Samantha Dolan's beautiful hazel eyes stared sightlessly toward heaven.
She was dead.
As Detective Samantha Dolan's blood seeps into Los Angeles ' dry earth, Laurence Sobek parks his red Cherokee in the next victim's drive. He no longer carries the little.22 with his homemade Clorox suppressors; he carries a full-blown.357 magnum loaded with light, fast hollow points. When he shoots his victims now, they will blow apart like overripe avocados, with no chance for survival.
Sobek has the gun in his waist, his hand tight on its grip as he goes to the door. He knocks, but no one answers, and, after knocking again, walks around to the back, where he tries the sliding glass doors. He considers forcing the doors, but sees a Westec alarm light blinking from its control panel.
Sobek is ready to kill. He is ready to do murder, and wants to with such a ferocity that his palm is slick on the pistol's wood grip.
He goes back to the Jeep, and drives up the hill until he finds a parking place with an unobstructed view of the house.
He waits for the child.
Krantz said, "Oh, holy Jesus. Oh, Christ."
He dry-heaved, and turned to lean against an avocado tree. Williams and Bruly came around the corner, guns out and eyes wild, the four uniforms following with their shotguns. Someone shouted from one of the surrounding houses. The yellow dog howled.
Bruly yelled, "Is she dead? Jesus, is she dead?"
Watts 's hands were red with Samantha Dolan's blood. "Krantz, clear the house. Williams, clear the house, goddamnit."
No one was paying any attention to the house. If Sobek had been in there, he could've shot the rest of us.
I said, "It's clear."
Watts was still shouting. "Williams, secure the evidence. Wake up, goddamnit, and be careful in there. Do not contaminate the evidence."
Williams crept to the door, gun out and ready. Watts went over to a garden spigot, washed his hands, then took out his radio and made a call.
I draped my jacket over Dolan's face, not knowing what else to do. My eyes filled with tears, but I shook my head and turned away. Williams had stopped outside the door and was staring at her. He was crying, too.
I felt her wrist, but it was silent. I rested the flat of my hand on her belly. She was warm. I blinked hard at the tears, then put Samantha Dolan and everything I was feeling out of my head to concentrate on Joe.
I went to Sobek's garage.
Krantz saw me from the tree and said, "Stay out of there. It's a crime scene. Williams, stop him, goddamnit."
"Fuck you, Krantz. He could be out there killing someone else right now."
Williams went back to staring at Dolan. "She's really dead."
"She's dead."
He cried harder.
Watts called, "Cole, be careful. He could have the whole fucking thing booby-trapped."
I went inside without stopping, and Krantz came in behind me. Bruly came to the door, but stopped there.
The air was layered with drifting gun smoke. It was intensely hot and dark, with the only light coming through the open door. I turned on the lights with my knuckle.
Sobek didn't have furniture; he had weights. A weight lifter's bench sat squat and ugly in the center of the room, black weight disks stacked on the floor around it like iron toadstools. No one walked in front of the shotgun even though smoke still drifted from both barrels. Residual fear. Articles from the Times about the killings and Dersh and Pike were pinned to the wall, along with a Marine Corps recruiting poster and another poster depicting LAPD SWAT snipers.
Bruly said, "Jesus, look at this shit. You think he's coming back?"
I didn't look at him; I was looking for trip wires and pressure plates, and trying to smell gasoline, because I was scared that Sobek had rigged the garage to explode. "You don't rig a booby trap the way he's rigged this place and expect to come back. He's abandoned it."
Krantz said, "We don't know that, Cole. If we can get Dolan cleaned up fast enough, we can secure the area and wait for him."
Even Bruly shook his head.
I said, "You're really something, Krantz."
Bruly took a small book from a cardboard box, then a couple more. "He's got the Marine Corps Sniper Manual in here. Check it out: The Force Recon Training Syllabus, Hand-to-Hand Combat. Man, this turd is the ultimate wannabe."
Krantz opened the fridge and took out a glass vial. "It's filled with drugs. Steroid products. The guy's a juicer."
It wasn't much of an apartment, just one large room divided by a counter from a kitchenette, with a bath and closet. All I cared about and wanted was to find a slip with Dersh's address, or the clothes that Sobek used to dress as Pike – anything at all that would tie Sobek to Dersh and clear Joe.
"Over here, Lieutenant."
Bruly found seven empty Clorox bottles in the closet, along with three.22 pistols and some ammunition. Two of the Clorox bottles had been reinforced with duct tape.
Krantz slammed Bruly on the back. "We got the sonofabitch!"
I said, "Dolan got him. You just came along for the ride."
Krantz started to say something, then thought better of it, and went to the door. He spoke to Stan Watts. Outside, a siren approached.
Leonard DeVille's original case file was spread across the kitchen counter, along with yellowed clippings about Wozniak's death, the lead detective's witness complainant list, and notes and addresses on all six victims. Karen Garcia's address was there. Her habit of running at Lake Hollywood, and notes on her route were there, as were similar notes on Semple, Lorenzo, and the others. It was creepy; like getting a glimpse inside a cold and evil mind that was planning murder. He had watched some of these people and charted their lives for months.
Krantz said, "I've got to hand it to you, Cole. You and Dolan made a right call. That was good work."
"See if there's anything about Dersh."
Krantz's jaw jutted, but he didn't say anything. Maybe, just then, he thought it was possible.
We were still shuffling through Sobek's planning notes when we came to my listing in the yellow pages, and a DMV printout showing my home address and phone numbers. Dolan's home address was listed, also.
Bruly whistled. "He has you, dude. I don't know how, but he knew you and Dolan were on him."
Krantz fingered through the papers. "He was all over Parker Center every day. He could've heard anything. He could've asked damn near anyone anything, and no one would've thought anything of it."
The way Krantz said it made me think that he and Sobek had had more than one conversation.
Bruly spread more loose pages, exposing a snapshot that was so wrong to this place and moment that I almost didn't recognize it. A snapshot of three boys talking to a teenaged girl holding a tennis racket. The girl's back was to the camera, but I could see the boys. The boy on the right was Ben Chenier. Two other snapshots of Ben were mixed with the papers, all three taken from a distance at his tennis camp in Verdugo. Lucy's apartment address was scratched on a corner of the DMV printout.
Krantz saw the pictures, or maybe he saw the expression on my face. "Who's this boy?"
"My girlfriend's son. He's away at this tennis camp. Krantz, this address is my girlfriend's apartment, this one's my home. That's the television station where Lucy works."
Krantz cut me off to yell outside for Watts. Somewhere out on the street, the siren died, but more were coming.
"Stan, we've got a problem here. It looks like Sobek was going to shut down Cole. He might be on the girlfriend, or the girlfriend's son, or on Cole's home."
Something sharp and sour blossomed in the center of me, and spread through my arms and legs and across my skin. I felt myself shaking.
Watts looked through the papers and photographs as Krantz spoke, and turned away with his cell phone before Krantz finished. Watts read out the addresses into the phone, requesting patrol officers be dispatched code three. Code three meant fast. Sirens and lights. Watts cupped the phone to glance back at me. "We got the camp's name?"
I told him. I was shaking when I borrowed Bruly's phone to call Lucy.
When Lucy came on, she was hesitant and contained, but I cut through that, telling her where I was, and that officers were on their way to her, and why.
Krantz said, "Cole, do you need me to speak with her?"
When I told her that Laurence Sobek had snapped Ben's picture, her voice came back higher and strained.
"This man was watching Ben?"
"Yes. He took photographs. The police are on their way to the camp now. They've dispatched the Highway Patrol."
Krantz said, "Tell her we have officers on the way to her, too, Cole. She'll be safe."
Lucy said, "I'm going to Ben. I'm going to get him right now."
"I know. I'll come get you."
"There's no way I could wait. I'm leaving now."
"Luce, I'll meet you there."
"He's got to be safe, Elvis."
"We'll keep him safe. Stan Watts is talking to the camp, now."
When I said it, Watts looked over and gave me a thumbs-up.
I said, "Ben's okay, Luce. The camp people have him. He's with them right now, and we're on the way."
She hung up without another word.
I tossed the phone back to Bruly on my way out the door, trying to ignore the tinge of accusation I'd heard in her voice.
The Verdugo Tennis Camp was a good hour east of L.A. in the rural foothills of the Verdugo Mountains. Krantz used a bubble flasher, and knocked a hundred most of the way. He left Watts to co-ordinate the surveillance of my home and Lucy's apartment, and spent much of the drive on his cell phone talking to Bishop. Sobek's landlady provided a license number, and both the LAPD Traffic Division and the Highway Patrol were alerted. The make and model of Sobek's Jeep were identical to those of Pike's.
Williams sat ahead of me in the front seat, crying and muttering. "A fuckin' shotgun. He about cut her in half with that goddamned thing. Motherfucker. I'm gonna cap that sonofabitch. I swear to Christ I'm gonna cap his ass."
I said, "We're taking this guy alive, Williams."
"No one asked you, goddamnit."
"Krantz, we're taking this guy alive. If he's alive, he'll cop to Dersh."
Krantz patted Williams's leg. "Worry about yourself, Cole. My people can handle themselves, and we're bringing this asshole to trial. Right, Jerome?"
Jerome Williams stared out the window, jaw flexing.
"We're bringing this man to trial, right, Jerome?"
Williams twisted around so he could see me. "I ain't forgot what you said. When this is over, I'm gonna show you just how goddamned black I am."
The sheriffs were already there when we arrived, four radio cars parked on the camp's dirt-and-gravel lot. The camp administrators were talking nervously with the sheriffs, as, behind them, horses snuffled in their stables. Ben had been right: It smelled of horse poop.
Krantz hoped to spot Sobek and capture him, so he had the sheriffs park their vehicles inside the camp's barn, then spoke with the senior sheriff about setting up surveillance positions. We did all this in the camp's dining hall, a screen-walled building with unfinished wood floors. The kids were being held together in the boy's dormitory.
Other parents arrived before Lucy, collecting their children and leaving as quickly as possible. Krantz was pissed that the camp administrator, a woman named Mrs. Willoman, had called the families, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. If the cops tell you that a multiple-homicide killer might be dropping around, there aren't many responsible alternatives.
Lucy arrived ten minutes later, her face strained when I went out to meet her. She took my hand, but didn't answer when I spoke to her, and didn't look at me. When I told her that we were in the dining hall, she walked so quickly that we broke into a trot.
Inside, she went directly to Mrs. Willoman, and said, "I want my baby."
A teenage camp counselor brought Ben from the bunk room. Ben looked excited, like this was a hell of a lot better than riding horses or even playing tennis.
Ben said, "This is cool. What's going on?"
Lucy hugged him so tightly that he squirmed, but then her face flashed with anger. "It isn't cool. Things like this aren't cool, and aren't normal."
I knew she was saying it for me.
Krantz asked Lucy to stay until we received word that her apartment had been secured. After, we would follow them home to make sure they arrived safely. Krantz offered to provide twenty-four-hour protection, and Lucy accepted. She stared at Ben, rubbing his back, and said that maybe they should go back to Louisiana until this was over. When I told her I thought that might be a good idea, she went over to the screen wall and looked out.
I guess she just wanted to be someplace where she could feel safe.
We sat around a big table, sipping something red that the counselor called bug juice, Krantz and I explaining Sobek to Lucy and Ben. Lucy kept one hand on Ben, and held my hand with the other, but still did not look at me. She spoke only to Krantz, though she occasionally squeezed my hand as if sending a message she was not yet capable of saying aloud.
Finally, Krantz was paged, and checked the number. "That's Stan."
He called Watts, listened for a few seconds, then nodded at Lucy. "We've secured your home. Manager let us in, and officers are on the site."
The tension drained out of her like air from a balloon. "Oh, thank God."
"Let me just wrap up here, and we'll get you home. If you decide you want to leave town, let me know and we'll bring you to the airport. I'll call the Baton Rouge PD, if you'd like, and bring them up to speed."
Lucy smiled at him like Krantz was human. "Thank you, Lieutenant. If I decide to go home, I'll call you."
Home.
She took my hand again, and smiled at me for the first time in a while. "It's going to be all right."
I smiled back, and everything seemed much better in the world.
While the counselors were getting Ben's things, I took my bug juice to the door and stared out at the tree line, searching it the way I had when I was eighteen, and in the Army. I thought about Sobek, and what we had found in his garage. His goal was to kill the people he blamed for putting DeVille in prison, and he had started with the people most removed from the prosecution, probably because it would be hardest for LAPD to connect them together. I wondered if that was the only reason. I wondered if maybe he also didn't blame them the least, which meant he was saving the people he blamed the most. Pike, for sure, but there was also Krakauer and Wozniak, though they were both dead. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me, because he had had a personal relationship with Wozniak, and there was every possibility that it was Sobek who had been the one who had tipped Wozniak to DeVille's location that day. I stared at the stables and thought about the horses within; I couldn't see them, but I heard them and smelled them. They snorted and whinnied and talked to each other, I guess, and were real even though they were beyond my sight. Life is often like that, with realities layered over other realities, mostly hidden but always there. You can't always see them, but if you listen to their clues, you'll recognize them all the same.
Krantz was having two of the sheriffs load Ben's things when I said, "He's not coming here, Krantz."
Krantz nodded. "Maybe not."
"You don't get it. He's not coming here, or my place, or Lucy's. It's a diversion."
Now Krantz frowned, and Lucy looked over, both hands draped on Ben's shoulders.
"Think about it, Krantz. He wants to kill the people he blames for DeVille, and he's doing that, but then he realized we're onto him. His game's over, and he knows it, right?"
Krantz was still frowning.
"He knows that it's only a matter of days before we link the vics, and when we do we'll have a suspect pool, and he's in the pool."
Krantz said, "Yeah, that's why he decides to take you out of the play."
"But to what end? He can't go on working at Parker, killing another couple of dozen people. If he believes we're on to him, he's going to cut to the chase. If he's thinking that his play is over, then he's going to want to kill the people he blames the most. He can't get to Pike, Krakauer's dead, so that leaves Wozniak."
"Wozniak's dead, too."
"Krakauer was a bachelor. Wozniak had a wife and a child, and they're in Palm Springs. That's where I got Wozniak's daybook. That's where we should be."
Lucy's hands tightened around Ben, as if her new found security was falling away. "But why would he take Ben's picture? Why would he have our address?"
"Maybe he put those things together to distract us. We're here with you now; we're not with Wozniak's widow, and that's where he's going."
"But you're just guessing. Did you see her address there? Were there pictures of her and her daughter?"
"No."
"We know he had our address. We know he's a killer." She gripped my arm then, as hard as Frank Garcia had gripped me when he had begged me to find his child. "I need you right now."
I looked at Krantz. "Krantz, he's going to Palm Springs."
Krantz didn't like it, but he was seeing it. "You got her name and address?"
"Her name is Paulette Renfro. I don't remember the address, but I can tell you how to get there."
Krantz was already dialing his phone. "The States can get the address. They can get a car there before us."
Krantz frowned as he made the call, and I knew what he was seeing in his head, a couple of sheriff's deps snapping the cuffs on Sobek, the two deputies getting the headlines and being interviewed by Katie Couric.
I looked back at Lucy, and gave her my best reassuring smile, but she wasn't at home to receive it.
"That's where he's going, Luce. I can't go back with you now, but just stay here until I get back. I'll take you home when I get back."
Lucy's eyes were distant and cold, and hurt.
"I don't need you to take me home."
Krantz went for the door even as he worked the phone, calling to Williams. "Jerry, let's mount up. We're going over there."
When we left the cafeteria, I glanced back at Lucy, but she wasn't looking at me. I didn't need to see her to know what was in her eyes:
I had chosen someone else once again.
Sobek has not moved for the better part of an hour. The desert sun has driven the temperature inside his Jeep to almost 130 degrees, and his sweatshirt is soaked, but he imagines himself a predatory lizard, motionless in the brutal heat as he waits for prey. He is armored by muscle and resolve, and his mission commitment is without peer. He will wait for the rest of the day, if necessary, and the night, and for all the days to come.
It does not take that long.
A car eases up the residential streets below and pulls into the vic's drive. Sobek fingers the.357 when the car turns in, thinking it's her, but it isn't. A man gets out and stands looking at the house in the brilliant desert light, the man wearing jeans, an outrageous beachcomber shirt with the tail out, and sunglasses.
Sobek leans forward until his chest touches the steering wheel.
It is Joe Pike.
Pike goes to the front door, rings the bell, then goes around to the back of the house. Sobek can't see him back there, and thinks Pike must be sitting on the little veranda, or that he's found a way inside.
Sobek waits, but Pike does not return.
His heart pounds as he clutches the.357 with both hands.
The gun is nestled between his legs where he can feel the weight of it on his penis. It feels good there.
He allows himself to smile, the first expression of emotion he's had in days. Pike has come to him.
Control.
Sobek settles back and waits for Paulette Wozniak and her daughter to return.
Paulette picked up her daughter Evelyn earlier that morning from Banning, where Evelyn had dropped her car for service. Evelyn's Volkswagen Beetle had gone kaput, and now Evelyn was without a car. First the boyfriend, then the apartment, now the car. Paulette had taken Evelyn to her job at Starbucks, then picked her up again, and was bringing her home to wait until her car was ready at the end of the day. Evelyn, of course, wasn't happy about it. Paulette never expected to find a strange car in her drive.
Evelyn was sulky and angry, and glowering in the passenger seat like she was fit to choke a dog. The only thing she'd said that morning was to ask if Paulette had heard from Mr. Cole again. Paulette hadn't, and thought it odd that Evelyn would ask.
Paulette Renfro turned onto her street thinking the old cliché was true: When it rains, it pours. What could be next?
Evelyn glared at the strange car. "Who's that?"
"I don't know."
A neat, clean sedan was parked to the side of her drive, leaving her plenty of room to get into her garage. She did not recognize it, and wondered if one of her friends had gotten a new car without telling her. It was so hot out that they were probably in back, waiting under the veranda, though she couldn't imagine why anyone would be waiting for her unannounced.
Paulette pressed the garage opener, eased her car inside, then let Evelyn and herself into the house through the laundry room.
She went directly to the back glass doors in the family room, and that's where she saw him, standing tanned and lean and tall in the shade on the veranda. He was waiting for her to see him. He wore a flowered shirt that looked a size too big and dark glasses, and her first thought, the very first thought that came to her after all these years was, "He hasn't aged a day and I must look like hell."
Evelyn said, "There's a man outside."
Joe raised a hand in greeting, and Paulette felt herself smile.
Evelyn said, "You know that guy?"
Paulette opened the door, then stepped back to let him inside.
"Hello, Joe."
"It's good to see you, Paulette."
She had thought of this moment – of seeing him again – in her dreams and over morning coffee and during long quiet drives across the desert. She'd imagined what she would say and how she would say it in every possible way, but all she managed to get out was so lame.
"Would you like some water? It's so hot out."
"That would be fine. Thank you."
Evelyn got that ugly sulk on her face, the one that said she was unhappy and everyone was supposed to know it. You had to know it and do something about it, else she'd get even sulkier.
Evelyn said, "You called him Joe."
Paulette knew what was coming. "Joe, this is Evelyn. Evie, you remember Joe Pike."
Evelyn crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. Her face grew blotched. She said, "Oh, fuck."
Joe said, "Paulette, I need to talk to you. About Woz, and about something that's going to happen."
Before Paulette could say anything, Evelyn leaned toward Joe and shrieked, "What could you possibly have to say? You killed him! Mother, he's wanted! He just murdered someone else!"
Paulette took her daughter by the arms, wanting to be gentle, but wanting to be firm, too.
"Evie. Go in the back. I'll talk to you later, but I want to talk with Joe now."
Evelyn pulled away, livid and furious from a lifetime of mourning her father. "Talk to him all you want! I'm gonna call the police!"
Paulette shook her daughter with a fierceness she hadn't felt in years. "No! You won't!"
"He killed Daddy!"
"You won't."
Joe spoke quietly. "It's okay, Paulette. Let her call."
Evelyn looked as surprised as Paulette felt, the two of them staring at Joe for a moment before Evie ran back toward the bedrooms.
Paulette said, "Are you sure? I saw on the news."
"I'll be gone before they get here. You look good, Paulette."
He spoke with the absolute calm at which she had always marveled, and secretly envied. As if he were so certain of himself, so secure and confident that there was no room left for doubt. Whatever came, he could handle it; whatever the problem, he would solve it.
She felt herself blush. "I've gotten older."
"You've grown more beautiful."
She blushed deeper, suddenly thinking how odd this was, to be here with this man after all this time, and to blush like a teenager because of him.
"Joe, take off those glasses. I can't see you."
He took off the glasses.
My God, those eyes were incredible, so brilliantly blue that she could just stare. Instead, she got him the water.
"Joe, I've seen the news. A friend of yours was here. What happened?"
"We can talk about it later." He glanced after Evelyn and shrugged. "The police are coming."
She nodded.
"I didn't kill that man. Someone else did. The same person who killed another six people."
"That's what your friend said."
"His name is Laurence Sobek. He was one of Woz's informants. When the story is out, you're going to have the press and the police bring up everything that happened on that day. They're going to dig into Woz again. Do you understand?"
"I don't care."
"It could hurt you."
"It can't."
Behind them, Evelyn spoke in a voice so soft that Paulette hadn't heard it since Evie was a child.
"Why could it hurt her, and why do you care?"
Paulette turned and looked at her daughter. Evelyn was peeking around the corner like a five-year-old, her face distant and smooth.
"Did you call the police?"
Evie shook her head.
Pike said, "Go call. Your mother and I have to talk."
Evelyn went to the bookcase and took down the picture of her father and Paulette and Joe Pike.
"She keeps this out where anybody can see it." She looked at Paulette. "Why do you keep this goddamned picture? Why keep a picture of someone who killed the man you loved?"
Paulette Wozniak considered her adult daughter for a time, then said, "The man I love is still alive."
Evie stared at her.
Paulette said, "Joe didn't kill your father. Your father killed himself. He took his own life." She turned back to Joe and looked at the placid blue eyes, the eyes that made her smile. "I'm not stupid, Joe. I figured it out years ago when I went through his notebooks."
Joe said, "The missing pages."
"Yes. He wrote about the Chihuahua brothers, and that whole mess. And then, later, just days before it happened, he wrote how he felt trapped. He didn't say he was planning on it. He didn't say what he was going to do or how, but he wrote that there was always a way out, and that a lot of cops had gone that way before."
Evie was pulling at her fingers now, pulling and twisting like she was trying to rip them off.
"What are you talking about? What are you saying?"
Paulette felt a horrible pain in her chest. "I didn't know for sure until I went through his books after he was dead, and then, I don't know, I just didn't want you to know the truth about him. You loved him so. I took out those pages and destroyed them so you could never find them, but I know in my heart what he was saying there. Joe didn't kill your father. Your father took his own life, and Joe took the blame to protect you, and me."
Evie shook her head, and said, "I don't believe you."
"It's true, honey."
Paulette tried to put her arm around Evelyn, but Evelyn pushed her away. Paulette looked at Joe then, as if maybe he would know what to do in the sure certain way of his, but that's when a large, muscular man wearing sunglasses stepped out of the kitchen behind Joe, aimed a black pistol, and pulled the trigger.
Paulette screamed, "Joe!"
Her shout was drowned by a deafening sound that hit her like a physical blow and made her ears ring.
Joe hunched forward, then spun so quickly that he seemed not to move at all, was just suddenly facing the man, a big gun in his own hand, firing three huge times so fast that the shots were one BAMBAMBAM.
The big man slammed backward, hitting the kitchen floor with a wheeezing grunt, and then there was silence.
The moment was absolutely still until Joe hunched again, and that's when Paulette saw the blood spreading on Joe's back like some great red rose.
She said, "OhmyLord! Joe!"
Joe winced when he tried to straighten, then looked at Paulette, and smiled. She hadn't seen that smile in so many years that her heart filled and she wanted to cry, though the smile was small and hurt.
He said, "Gotta go now, Paulette. You take care of your baby."
Joe Pike held her gaze for another moment, then turned away as the large man sat straight up on the kitchen floor as if rising from the dead and shot Joe again.
Joe Pike fell hard.
The two women finally arrive, and Sobek eases down the hill to Paulette's house. He knows from watching that none of the neighbors are home, so he strolls up the drive and into Paulette Wozniak's garage without fear of being seen.
He creeps through the garage past Paulette Wozniak's ticking car, and puts his ear to the utility door, but doesn't hear anything. He knows that doors like this usually open to a laundry room or a kitchen, and decides to take the chance that Pike and the others aren't poised on the other side. He turns the knob, then cracks the door, and sees a washer and dryer.
He can hear voices now, and then a woman shouts, "What could you possibly have to say? You killed him! Mother, he's wanted! He just murdered someone else!"
Sobek grips the.357, pulls back the hammer, then eases into the laundry. He peeks into the kitchen. No one. He creeps through the kitchen, careful not to make any noise, getting closer and closer to the voices until they are just around the corner in the family room. Two women and the Pikester.
Sobek takes a deep breath, then another, then steps around the corner and shoots Joe Pike in the back.
Ka-Boom!
The.357 kicks harder than the little.22s, and before he can shoot again Pike has a gun in his hands and fires BAMBAMBAM. Three bricks hit Sobek in the chest all at the same time, knocking him flat on his ass, and making him see stars.
He thinks he is dead, then realizes that the Kevlar vest he's wearing under the sweatshirt has saved him. Most cops wear lightweight vests designed to stop common rounds like the 9mm or.45, but Sobek wears the heavier model, rated at stopping anything up to and including the.44 Magnum.
Control.
He hears voices. They're talking. Pike is still alive, but wounded.
Second chance.
Sobek sits up and shoots Joe Pike again even as the younger woman screams.
Pike drops like a bag of wet laundry, and Sobek says, "Cool!"
The older woman falls to her knees beside Pike and grabs for his gun, but Sobek runs forward and kicks her in the ribs. He is dizzy from the hits that he's taken, but his kick is solid and upends her.
A red pool spreads through Pike's shirt.
Sobek looks at Paulette Wozniak, then the younger woman. "Are you Abel Wozniak's daughter?"
Neither of them answer.
Sobek points the.357 at the older one, and the younger one says, "Yes."
"Okay. Let's get a couple of chairs, and you two sit down."
Sobek feels disoriented and nauseated from the chest trauma, but he tapes their wrists and ankles to two wooden dining-room chairs and puts more tape over their mouths. Then he peels off his shirt and vest to inspect his wounds. The entire center of his chest is a throbbing purple bruise. The bullets probably broke some ribs. Christ, that Pike can shoot. All three bullets would've been in his heart.
Sobek spits on Pike's body, and screams, "FUCK YOU!"
The screaming makes his head spin worse, and he has to sit or throw up. When the spinning subsides, he considers the women.
"You're next."
He is thinking about how best to kill them when he hears a car door out front and sees two deputies strolling toward the house.
Sobek drags the two women into a back room to hide them even as the doorbell rings. He puts on his shirt, not even thinking of the three bullet holes, and hurries to the door as it rings again. He plasters on a big smile, opens the door with a surprised expression, and says, "Oh, wow, the Highway Patrol. Are we under arrest?"
The two deps stare at him for a moment, and then the closer one smiles. Friendly and getting the joke. "Is Mrs. Renfro at home?"
"Oh, sure. She's my aunt. Did you want to see her?"
"Yes, if we could."
"Come on in out of that heat and I'll bring you back. She's in the pool."
The other dep smiles then and takes off his campaign hat. He says, "Man, I could go for some of that."
Sobek nods, and smiles wider. "Hey, why not? I'll get you guys a beer or a soft drink, if you like."
He holds the door and lets them step past him into the living room, then closes the door, takes out his.357, and shoots both deputies in the back, puts the gun to their heads, and shoots them again.
Verdugo to Palm Springs was less than an hour. Paulette didn't answer when I called, which none of us liked, but I left word on her machine that she should drive directly to the Palm Springs Police Department and wait for us there.
During the drive, Krantz spoke several times on the radio, once getting a report that sheriffs had arrived on scene at Paulette's, and that everything was fine.
We left the interstate at North Palm Springs and drove directly to Paulette's house in the hills above the windmills. A clean new sedan that I didn't recognize was parked in the drive. The garage door was down, and no other cars were parked on the block. The house, like the neighborhood, was still.
I said, "I thought the sheriffs were supposed to be here."
"They were."
Krantz got on his radio and told someone to confirm with the sheriffs, then have them send another car.
We parked beside the sedan, and got out.
Williams said, "Goddamn. It's hot as hell out here."
We didn't make it to the front door. We were passing the big picture window when all three of us saw the body in the family room, and a cold sweat broke over my back and legs even in the awful desert heat.
"That's Joe."
Williams said, "She-it."
Krantz fumbled out his gun. "Jerome, radio back. Tell'm we need cars right goddamned now. I don't care who. Tell'm to send an ambulance."
Williams ran back to the unit.
Two swerving blood trails led out of the living room through the family room and into the kitchen. I couldn't see any other bodies, but I thought it might be Paulette and Evelyn. Then I saw that the sliding back doors were open.
"I'm going in, Krantz."
"Goddamnit, we gotta wait for backup. He might still be in there."
"Those people might be bleeding to death. I'm going in."
The front door was locked. I trotted around the side of the house, popping fast peeks through every window I came to, not seeing anything unusual until I found Paulette and Evelyn in the rear corner bedroom. They were taped to chairs with duct tape covering their wrists and ankles and mouths, and struggling to get free. I tapped on the glass, and their eyes went wide. Evelyn struggled harder, but Paulette stared at me. I made a calming gesture, then spread my hands, asking if Sobek was in the house.
Paulette nodded.
I mouthed, "Where?"
Paulette shook her head. She didn't know.
I moved along the rear of the house to the glass doors, dropped into a push-up position, and peeked inside. Joe was slumped on his side, the back of his shirt damp with blood. I was trying to see if his chest was moving when I heard a voice. The two blood trails ran past Pike through the kitchen and into the laundry room; that's where the voice came from. I looked at Pike again, and this time the tears started and my nose clogged, but I made the tears stop.
Krantz came toward me from the opposite side of the house, stopping on the other side of the doors. He had his gun out, holding it with both hands. "I've got units and paramedics on the way."
"Paulette and her daughter are alive in the room at the end of the hall. I'm hearing something in the garage. You get them out of here, okay? Get them safe."
"What are you going to do?"
"Someone's in the garage."
Krantz swallowed, and I could see then that he heard the voice. "Ah, maybe I should do that."
I liked him then, for maybe the first time. "I'm better, Harvey. I'll do it. Okay?"
He stared at me, and then he nodded.
"Just get them out of the house. Where's Williams?"
"Covering the front."
"He got a radio?"
"Yeah."
"Tell him we're going inside and not to shoot me, then get those women."
I stepped through the doors. The smell of blood was thin, and raw, and the great black desert flies had already found their way into the house. Pike was out in the center of the floor, but I did not go to him. I stayed near the walls, trying to see as many doors as possible.
I whispered, "Just us, buddy."
The blood trails arced through the kitchen and into a laundry room, where they stopped at a closed door. The voice was behind the door. Maybe Sobek was sitting in the garage talking to the bodies. Lunatics do that.
Here's what you do: You open the door, or you walk away and wait for the Palm Springs PD. If you walk away, then whoever is in the garage bleeds to death and you have to live with that, and with knowing you didn't go in because you were scared. These are the choices.
I closed my eyes, and whispered, "I don't want to get shot."
Then I hammered back my pistol, took six fast breaths, and went in.
Sobek's red Cherokee was parked directly in front of me, the sheriff's car next to it, both engines ticking. The two deps were in the front seat of their car, the remains of their heads slumped together in death. The voice was coming from their radio. I looked under both cars, then glanced into their backseats. Sobek wasn't there.
I closed the utility door behind me, and went back into the kitchen. Krantz had freed Paulette and her daughter. They were behind him, just coming into the family room from the hall. I thought we were going to make it. I thought that we'd get them out of there, and safe, but that's when Jerome Williams shouted something from somewhere outside, and two fast shots cracked through the house.
Krantz shouted, "Jerome!"
Laurence Sobek ran out of a doorway at the end of the hall and in that crazy moment might have been Joe Pike; large and powerful, and dressed as Pike used to dress, even down to the sunglasses. But not. This was a mutant Pike, an anti-Pike, distorted and swollen and ugly. He didn't look like Curtis Wood now; he looked more like the inbred villain in a slasher movie.
Paulette, Evelyn, and Krantz were in the line of fire between me and Sobek. I yelled, "DOWN! GET DOWN!"
Krantz shoved Paulette out of the way, aimed past Evelyn, and fired twice, hitting Sobek in the big torso both times.
Sobek came off the wall firing blindly, his bullets hitting the floor and the ceiling. One of his rounds caught me under the right arm with a hard slap, knocked away my gun, and spun me into the refrigerator.
Paulette ran to her daughter, again blocking Krantz's line of fire.
I yelled, "Head shot, Krantz! The head! He's wearing a vest!"
Sobek charged straight down the hall, and barreled into Paulette, wrapping her in his arms and knocking Evelyn aside. He was crying, and his eyes were hopping as if his brain was on fire. He put his gun to her head.
"I'm not done yet. I'm not done."
Krantz yelled, "Drop your gun! Put it down, Curtis!"
My arm felt wet and tingly, as if worms were crawling beneath the skin. I tried to pick up my gun, but the arm wouldn't work.
Sobek jammed his weapon harder into Paulette's neck. "You drop your own fuckin' gun, Krantz! You put it down or I'll kill this bitch. I'll do it, you bastard. I'll do it right fuckin' now!"
Krantz backed up, his gun shaking so badly that if he fired he would as likely hit Paulette as Sobek. I think Krantz knew that, too.
I tried to pick up my gun with my left hand. Sobek didn't even seem to know I was there anymore. He was focused on Krantz.
"I MEAN IT GODDAMMIT KRANTZ I'M GONNA DO IT I'M GONNA DO IT RIGHT NOW BLOW HER BRAINS OUT AND THEN I'M GONNA KILL MYSELF I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE!"
It is against LAPD policy for an officer to give up his or her weapon. They teach that at the Academy, they live by it, and it is the right thing to teach and live by. You give up your weapon, and you're done.
But if you don't do what Laurence Sobek says, and someone dies, you will always wonder. It is another choice and another door, and you won't know what lies behind it until you go there.
He was going to kill her.
"Okay, Curtis. Just let her go and we'll talk. I'm putting the gun down like you want. Just don't hurt her, Curtis. Please do not hurt her."
Krantz put his gun on the floor, and for the second time that day I liked Harvey Krantz.
I spoke quietly. "Sobek? Why'd you kill Dersh? He wasn't part of this?"
Crazy eyes danced to me. "Pike killed Dersh. Don't you watch the news?"
Krantz said, "Shut up, Cole. Curtis, put down the gun. Please."
Sobek walked Paulette closer to Krantz, shaking his head. "I'm not done yet. They're going to pay for the Coopster. They're going to pay for that."
Behind Sobek, Pike moved.
I said, "Tell us about Dersh, Sobek. Tell us why you set up Pike."
Sobek pointed his gun at me, and cocked the hammer. "I didn't."
Pike's eyes opened.
Krantz said, "Damnit, Cole, shut up. Curtis, don't kill him. Let this woman go."
Pike pushed himself up. His face was a mask of blood. His shirt was wet with it. He picked up his gun.
Sobek said, "She's gotta die, and Wozniak's kid is gonna die, too. But you know what, Harvey?"
"What?"
Sobek aimed his.357 point-blank at Harvey Krantz.
"You're gonna die first."
I said, "DeVille isn't dead."
Laurence Sobek stopped as if I'd hit him with a board. His face filled with rage, he aimed his gun at me again, then brought it back to Krantz. I could see his gun hand tighten.
He said, "This is for killing my father."
Krantz yelled, "NO!"
Sobek was squeezing the trigger when Joe Pike brought up his weapon and fired one round through the back of Laurence Sobek's head. Sobek collapsed in a heap, and then there was silence.
Pike fell forward onto his hands, and almost at once tried to push himself up again.
Paulette said, "Joe, lie down. Please lie down."
Krantz just stood there. I could hear the sirens far away now, but drawing closer.
I struggled to my feet and went to Joe. Blood ran down my arm and dripped from my fingers.
"Stay down, Joseph. Got an ambulance on the way."
Pike said, "No. If I go down now, I'll spend the rest of my life in prison. Right, Krantz?"
Krantz said, "You're going to bleed to death."
Pike found his feet and stood, using Paulette to steady himself. He put his pistol into the waistband of his pants, then looked at me. "You're shot."
"You're shot twice."
Pike nodded. "It's so easy to show you up."
He staggered then, but I caught him.
Paulette said, "Please, Joe." She was crying.
Pike was looking at me. "Maybe there'll be something at Sobek's to put him with Dersh."
"There wasn't."
Pike looked tired. He took a handkerchief from his pants, but the blood had soaked through and it was red.
Paulette Wozniak said, "Oh, damn."
She pulled off her shirt and used it to wipe his face. She was wearing a white bra, but nobody looked or said anything, and I thought in that moment I could love her myself, truly and always.
The corner of Joe's mouth twitched, and he touched her face. "Gotta go."
Paulette blinked at the tears.
Joe let his fingers linger. "You really are more beautiful."
Then he turned away for the door, leaving his fingerprints in blood on her face.
Krantz said, "I can't let you go, Pike. I appreciate what you did, and I'll stand up at your trial, but for now it's over."
Krantz had his gun again. He was pale, and shaken, but he had the gun.
I said, "Don't be stupid, Krantz."
"It's over."
Pike kept walking.
Krantz aimed his gun, but it was shaking as badly now as when he was aiming at Sobek. "I mean it, Pike. You're a wanted man. You are under arrest, and you're going to stand trial. I won't let you leave this house."
Krantz steadied the gun with his second hand, and pulled back the hammer, and that's when I twisted the gun away from him with my good hand. I shoved him against the wall.
Krantz screamed, "You're interfering with an officer, goddamnit! You're obstructing justice!"
Pike walked out the front door without closing the door, and then he was gone.
I said, "Goodbye, Joe."
Krantz slumped to the floor and put his face in his hands. The sirens were working their way up the hill and would soon arrive. They would probably pass Pike on their way up, and I wondered if any of them would notice the car driven by the bloody man. Probably not.
Krantz said, "You shouldn't've done that, Cole. You aided and abetted his escape. I'm going to arrest you. It's going to cost your license."
I nodded.
"You didn't help him, you asshole. He's going to bleed to death. He's going to die."
The sirens arrived.
Of the two shots Sobek fired at Jerome Williams, only one connected, nipping an artery in his thigh. He would make it. My own wound was a bit more complicated. The bullet had torn through the outside of my right pectoral muscle, clipped the third lateral rib, then exited through my right latissimus dorsi. One of the hospital's resident surgeons came down to take a look, and said, "Hmm." You have to worry when they say that.
"I can clean you up," he said. "But you're going to need some reconstructive surgery to the muscle group. Your pectoris attacher tendon is partially sheared, and the anterior joint capsule needs to be repaired." "How long will that take?" "Four hours, tops."
"Not how long will the surgery take. How long would I have to be here?" "Three days." "Forget it."
"Just want you to know the score. I gotta put you out anyway to take care of this."
"Just give me a local. You're not putting me anywhere, and I'm not going out." I wanted to be awake to find out about Pike. I figured they'd find him bled out on the side of a road. I wanted to be awake when the word came because I wanted to go to him.
"It's going to hurt like a sonofabitch with just a local."
"Pretend you're a dentist and shoot me up, for chrissake."
He gave me about two thousand injections, then cleaned the wound, and stitched the muscles and skin. It hurt worse than he said, but maybe it wasn't just the shoulder.
When he was done, he said, "I'm giving you a Percocet script for the pain. You're going to need it. When the anesthetic wears off you're going to hurt even worse. This is strong stuff, so be sure you take just what I'm writing here. You need to see your own doctor tomorrow."
"I'll be in jail."
He sighed again and handed me the prescription. "Take twice as much."
He used thirty-two stitches to close the wound.
Krantz officially arrested me in the Palm Springs Hospital emergency room while Williams was in surgery. Stan Watts had driven out, and he stood there with a blank expression as Krantz read me the rights. Krantz said, "Stan, I'm having him brought to County-USC so they can look at him. Maybe they'll want to book him in the jail ward there, and keep him overnight."
Watts didn't answer.
"I want you to be there when they look at him. If they give him a pass, bring him over to Parker for the booking. I'll take care of it myself when I get back."
Watts didn't answer again; he just kept staring at me with the blank look.
Krantz walked away to talk to the press.
When Krantz was gone, Watts said, "I spent the whole ride out trying to figure out whether to blame you for Dolan."
"I've been doing some of that myself."
"Yeah, I imagine you would. But I know Dolan more than ten years, and I know what she was like. When she was hit, I saw how you went in. You didn't know what was in there, but you went right in. I saw how you covered her with your jacket."
He stood there for a time like he didn't know what else to say, then put out his hand. I gave him my left, and we shook.
I said, "Any word on Pike?"
"Not yet. Krantz said he was hit pretty bad."
"Yeah. Bad. You guys finish going through Sobek's garage?"
"Most of it. SID's there now."
"You see anything that clears Pike?"
Watts shook his head. "No."
I considered the Percocet script, wondering if it could take away this kind of hurt.
Watts said, "C'mon, I'll take you back."
"Krantz called a radio car."
"Screw the radio car. You can ride with me."
We didn't say ten words between Palm Springs and L.A. until we were approaching the exit for the County-USC Medical Center, where Krantz had ordered him to bring me.
"Where's your car?"
"Dolan's."
"You drive with that arm?"
"I can drive."
He continued past the County-USC exit without a word and brought me to Dolan's. We pulled into her drive, and sat there, staring at the house. Someone would have to go back to Sobek's garage for her Beemer. Someone would have to bring it home.
"I'm not going to book you tonight, but you gotta come in tomorrow."
"Krantz will be pissed."
"You let me worry about Krantz. You gonna come in or am I gonna have to go look for you?"
"I'll come in."
He shrugged like he hadn't expected anything else, and said, "I'll bet she's got a pretty good bottle of tequila in there. How about we tip one for her?"
"Sure."
Dolan kept a spare house key beneath a clay pot in her backyard. I didn't ask Watts how he knew. When we got inside, Watts knew where she kept the tequila, too.
Her house was as quiet as any house could be, as if something had vanished from her home when she died. Maybe it had. We sat and drank, and after a while Stan Watts went back into her bedroom. He stayed there for a long time, then came out with a small onyx box, and sat with the box in his lap, and drinking. When he'd had enough to drink, he opened the box and took out a small blue heart. He slipped the heart into his jacket pocket, then put his face in his hands and cried like a baby.
I sat with him for almost an hour. I didn't ask him about the heart or the box, but I cried with and for him, and for Dolan, too. And for Pike, and me, because my life was falling apart.
The human heart is worth crying for, even if it's made of onyx.
After a while I used Dolan's phone to check my messages. Joe hadn't called, and neither had Lucy. The news of Laurence Sobek's identification and the events in Palm Springs had broken, and I hoped she would've called, but there you go.
I thought that I should call her, but didn't. I don't know why. I could shoot it out with Laurence Sobek, but calling the woman I loved seemed beyond me.
Instead, I went into Dolan's kitchen for the photograph she'd taken of me at Forest Lawn. I stared at it for a long time, and then I took it. It was right there on the refrigerator, but I hoped that Watts hadn't seen it. I wanted it to be between me and Samantha, and I didn't want it between Watts and her.
I went back into the living room and told Watts that I had to leave, but he didn't hear me, or, if he heard, didn't think I was worth answering. He was someplace deep within himself, or maybe in that little blue heart. In a way, I guess he was with Dolan.
I left him like that, got my prescription filled, then drove home, wishing I had a little blue heart of my own. A secret heart where, if I looked real hard, I could find the people who were dear to me.
My home felt large and hollow that evening. I phoned the guys who work for Joe, but they hadn't heard from him, and were upset by the news. I paced around the house, working up my nut to call Lucy, but thinking of Samantha Dolan. I kept seeing her earlier that morning, telling me she was going to stay after me, that she always got what she wanted, and that she was going to make me love her. Now she was dead and I would never be able to tell her that she already had.
My shoulder throbbed with a fierceness I didn't think possible. I took some of the Percocet, washed my hands and face, then called Lucy. Even dialing the phone hurt.
Ben answered on the third ring, lowering his voice when he realized it was me.
"Mom's mad."
"I know. Will she speak to me?"
"You sure you want to?"
"I'm sure."
I waited for her to come to the phone, thinking about what I would say and how I would say it. When Lucy picked up, her voice was more distant than I'd hoped.
She said, "I guess you were right."
"You heard about Joe?"
"Lieutenant Krantz called. He told me that Joe left the scene wounded."
"That's right. I took away Krantz's gun so that Joe could leave. Officially, I'm under arrest. I have to go down to Parker Center tomorrow and turn myself in."
"They call that aiding and abetting."
I felt slow and stupid and sick to my stomach. My entire right side hurt.
"That's right, Lucy. I took Krantz's gun. I interfered. I committed a felony, and when I'm convicted I'll lose my license, and that's that. I'll get a job as a rent-a-cop, or maybe I can re-up with the Army. Be all I can be."
Her voice softened. "Were you going to tell me that you were shot?"
"Krantz tell you that?"
"Oh, Elvis."
Sounding tired, she hung up.
I stood at the phone for a time, thinking that I should call her back, but I didn't.
Eventually, the cat came home, sniffing hopefully when he eased into the kitchen. I opened a can of Bumble Bee tuna, and sat with him on the floor. The Bumble Bee is his favorite. He lapped at it twice, then came to sniff my shoulder.
He licked at the bandages, and I let him.
There isn't so much love in the world that you can turn it away when it's offered.
The next morning, Charlie brought me to Parker Center, where Krantz and Stan Watts walked me through the booking process. Neither Krantz nor Watts mentioned that I had spent the night at home. Maybe they had worked it out between them.
I was arraigned that afternoon, a trial date was set in Superior Court, and I was released without bail. I wasn't really thinking about the proceedings; I was thinking about Joe.
Paulette Renfro and Evelyn Wozniak drove in from Palm Springs for the arraignment. After, they sat with Charlie and me to discuss what had occurred between me and Krantz. Paulette and Evelyn both offered to lie on my behalf, but I declined. I wanted them to tell the truth. Charlie listened to their version of events, which matched with mine. When they were done, Charlie leaned back and said, "You're fucked."
"That's what I like about you, Charlie. You're inspirational."
"You want my legal advice, take them up on their offer to lie. We can cook up a good story, then it's the three of you against Krantz in court, and you'll skate."
"Charlie, I don't want to play it that way."
"Why not?"
That Charlie is something.
Later, Charlie spoke with the prosecutor handling the case, a young woman named Gilstrap out of USC Law who wanted to be governor. He came back and told me that I could plead guilty to the one felony charge of interfering with a police officer, and they would drop the obstruction of justice charge. If I took the plea, I would receive probation with no jail time served. I said, "It's copping to a felony, Charlie. It means I lose my license."
"You fight this, you're gonna lose your license anyway. You'll also do eighteen months."
I took the plea, and became a convicted felon.
The next day I went into the hospital to have my shoulder rebuilt. It took three hours, not four, but left me in a cast that held my arm up from my body as if my shoulder were dislocated. I told the doctor that it made me look like a waiter. The doctor said another centimeter to the left, and Sobek's bullet would've severed the nerve that controlled the small muscle groups in my hand and forearm. Then I would've looked like overcooked macaroni.
Thinking about that made me feel better about the cast.
That evening, Lucy brought flowers. She let her ringers drift along the cast, then kissed my shoulder, and didn't look so mad anymore. A kindness came into her eyes that frightened me more than Laurence Sobek or getting shot or losing my license. I said, "Are we over?"
She stared at me for a long time before she shook her head. "I don't know. It feels different."
"Okay."
"Let's be honest: This job was an excuse to come here. I came to Los Angeles because I love you. I changed my life to be with you, but also because I wanted to change. I had no promises or expectations about where we would go with this, or when, or even if any of it would work out. I knew what you were and what it meant the first time we met."
"I love you." I didn't know what else to say.
"I know, but I don't trust that love as much as I used to. Do you see?"
"I understand."
"Don't just say that."
"I get it, Lucy, but I couldn't have done anything else. Joe needed me. If he's not dead, he still needs me, and I will help him."
"You're angry."
"Yeah. I'm angry."
Neither of us said very much more, and after a while she left. I wondered if I would see her again, or ever feel the same about her, or she about me, and couldn't believe that I was even having such thoughts.
Some days really suck.
The next morning, Abbot Montoya wheeled Frank Garcia into my room. Frank looked withered and old in the chair, but he gripped my leg in greeting, and his grip was strong. He asked about my arm, and about Joe, but after a while he seemed to drift, and his eyes filled with tears.
"You got that sonofabitch."
"Joe got him."
"You and Joe, and the woman who came to my house."
"Her name was Samantha Dolan."
His face screwed up, concerned. "They haven't heard anything about Joe?"
"Not yet, Frank."
"Anything you need, you let me know. Lawyers, doctors, I don't care what. Legal, illegal, it doesn't matter. My heart belongs to you now. If I can do it for you, I'll do it."
He started to sob, and I felt embarrassed.
"You don't owe me anything, Frank."
He squeezed my leg harder, so hard I thought the bone might break. "Everything I have is yours. You don't have to understand that, or me. Just know that it's so."
I thought about Rusty Swetaggen, and understood.
When they were leaving, Abbot Montoya stepped back through the door.
"Frank means it."
"I know."
"No. You don't know, but you will. I mean it, too. You are ours now, Mr. Cole. Forever and always. That is a blood oath. Perhaps we are not so far from the White Fence, even after all these years."
When he left I stared at the ceiling.
"Latins."
Later that afternoon, Charlie Bauman was filling my room with cigarette smoke when Branford, Krantz, and Stan Watts dropped by.
Krantz stood at the end of my bed with his hands in his pockets, saying, "A couple of kids found Pike's car outside Twentynine Palms." Twentynine Palms is a barren, rugged place northeast of Palm Springs where the Marines have their Ground Combat Center. They do live-fire exercises out there, bringing in the fast movers to napalm the sand.
Charlie sat up.
I said, "Was Pike in it?"
Branford glanced at my cast. "Nope. Just a lot of his blood. The whole front seat was soaked. We've got the States out there doing a sweep."
They were staring at me like I had helped him park the car.
Bauman said, "You're not still going to prosecute Pike for this Dersh thing, are you, Branford?"
Branford just looked at him.
"Oh, for chrissake."
I said, "Krantz, you know better. You saw how Sobek was dressed, just like Pike. He's who the old lady saw."
Krantz met my eyes. "I don't know anything like that, Cole. Mrs. Kimmel saw arrow tattoos. Sobek didn't have tattoos."
"So he painted them on, then washed them off."
"I heard you ask Sobek if he did Dersh. I heard Sobek deny it."
Charlie waved his cigarette, annoyed. "You want a signed confession? What are we talking about here?"
"I want facts. We haven't been sitting on our asses with this, Bauman. We ran everything Pike said about his alibi through the system, and it came back just the way I thought it would: bullshit. No hits on a black minivan, Trudy, or Matt. We flashed Sobek's picture in a six-pack for Amanda Kimmel, but she still puts the finger on Pike."
Branford said, "We've got the murder weapon, the GSR, and the motive; that gives us Pike."
Charlie said, "Pike's statement wasn't a secret. Sobek could've tossed the gun off the pier to match with Pike's story. If Sobek didn't kill Dersh, why was Jesus Lorenzo killed just a few hours later? You writing that off as a coincidence?"
"I'm writing it off as something I can't ask Sobek because Sobek is dead. Look, Pike saved Krantz's life, and those two women's, but I can't just forget about Dersh because we owe him one. You give me some proof that he didn't do it, or that Sobek did, I'll think it over."
Charlie Bauman waved his cigarette like he didn't believe Branford for a second, then considered Krantz. "Tell me something, Lieutenant? You really draw down on Pike after Pike saved you?"
"Yes, I really did that."
"Even after he saved your life?"
"He murdered Eugene Dersh, and he's going to answer for it. What I feel doesn't matter."
"Well, at least you feel something."
No one said much after that, and pretty soon everybody left but Watts.
He said, "We buried Samantha this morning. Had over a thousand officers in the ranks. It was nice."
"I'll bet it was."
"We get any word on Pike, I'll let you know."
"Thanks, Stan. I appreciate it."
Thinking back, I'm sure the only reason Stan Watts tagged along with Krantz and Branford that day was to share Samantha Dolan's final moment with me, and to tell me that a thousand officers had seen her off.
I don't think he would've come for any other reason.
I wish I could have been there to see her off with them.
I left the hospital the next day.
The doctors raised hell, but I couldn't take lying in bed with Joe still missing. I hoped that Joe was alive, and thought that if anyone could survive it would be him, but I also knew that if Pike had found his way into the ravines and arroyos of the desert, his body might not be discovered for years.
I took too many painkillers, but still couldn't drive with the cast, so I hired a cab to take me out to the desert. I went back to Paulette's house, then up to Twentynine Palms, and tried to imagine what Joe might've been thinking, and where he might've gone, but couldn't.
I checked all the nearby motels and service stations, and ate so many Percocet that I threw up twice.
I went back to the desert the next day, and the next, but never found a trace. The cab fares totaled eight hundred dollars.
Perhaps if I were a better detective I could have gotten a line on him, or found his body, though not if Joe was alive and covering his tracks.
Telling myself that was better than thinking him dead.
When I wasn't at the desert I haunted Santa Monica, walking Joe's route both during the day and at night, talking to clerks and surfers and gang-bangers and bodybuilders and maintenance people and food vendors and the limitless armies of street people. I walked the night route so often that the hookers who worked Ocean Avenue brought home-baked pie for me and Starbucks coffee. Maybe it was the cast. They all wanted to sign it.
My friends at the FBI and the DMV ran still more searches for black minivans, and people named Trudy and Matt, and I even got them to badger their friends in other states to do the same. Nothing turned up, and after a while my friends stopped returning my calls. I guess our friendship had its limits.
Eight days after I left the hospital I phoned Stan Watts. "Is there anything on Joe?"
"Not yet."
"Has SID finished with Sobek's garage?"
He sighed. "Man, you don't give up, do you?"
"Not even after I'm dead."
"They finished, but you're not going to like it much. They got this sharp kid over there named Chen. He tied Sobek to all of the vics except Dersh. I'm sorry."
"Maybe he missed something."
"This kid is sharp, Cole. He lasered Dersh's place looking for fibers that could've come from Sobek's, but found nothing. He lasered Sobek's, looking for something that might've come from Dersh, but that was a bust, too. He doped both places, and ran gas chromes, but struck out all the way around. 1 was hoping he'd find something that put Sobek with Dersh, too, but there's nothing."
Chen was the guy who'd done the work up at Lake Hollywood. I remember being impressed when I'd read it. "Think you could send over these new reports?"
"Shit, there's gotta be two hundred pages here."
"Just the work he did on Dersh's place, and Sobek's garage. I don't need the others."
"You got a fax there?"
"Yeah." I gave him the number.
He said, "You really been taking a cab out to the desert?"
"How'd you hear about that?"
"You know something, Cole? You and Dolan were of the same stripe. I can see why she liked you."
Then he hung up.
While I waited for the fax, I reread Chen's Lake Hollywood report, and was again impressed with its detail. By the time I finished, the new reports had arrived, and I found them exhaustive. Chen had collected over one hundred separate fiber and soil samples from Dersh's home and property, and compared them with samples taken from Sobek's apartment, clothing, shoes, and vehicle, but found nothing that would tie the two together. No physical evidence tied Dersh to Joe Pike, either, but that didn't seem to bother Krantz.
I read the new report twice, but by the end of the second reading felt as if I was wasting my time – no matter how often I turned the pages, no new evidence appeared, and Chen's evidentiary conclusions remained unchanged. I was thinking that my time would be better spent looking for Trudy, or going back to the desert, when I realized that something was different between the work that Chen had done at Lake Hollywood and the work he'd done at Dersh's house.
I had read these reports hoping to find something exculpatory for Pike, but maybe what I was looking for wasn't something that was in the report. Maybe it had been left out.
I phoned the SID office, and asked for John Chen.
The woman who answered the phone said, "May I tell him what it's regarding?"
I was still thinking about what the report didn't say when I answered her.
"Tell him it's about Joe Pike."
The New, Improved John Chen
John Chen had leased the Porsche Boxster – also known as the 'tang-mobile – on the very day he was promoted for his exemplary performance in the Karen Garcia homicide. He couldn't afford it, but John had decided that one could either accept one's miserable place in life (even if, like John, one was born to it) or defy it, and you could defy it if you just had the balls to take action. This was the new, improved John Chen, redefining himself with the motto: If I can take it, it s mine.
First comes the 'tang-mobile, then comes the 'tang.
Just as John Chen had had his eye on the Boxster, so had he been head over heels in heat for Teresa Wu, a microbiology graduate student at UCLA and part-time assistant at SID. Teresa Wu had lustrous black hair, skin the color of warm butter, and professorial red glasses that John thought were the sexiest thing going.
Still flush with the accolades he'd garnered for his work at Lake Hollywood, John drove back to the office, made sure everyone there knew about the Boxster, then asked Teresa Wu for a date.
It was the first time he had asked her out, and only the second time he'd spoken to her. It was only the third time he'd been brave enough to ask out anyone.
Teresa Wu peered at him over the top of the red glasses, rolled her eyes as if he'd just asked her to share a snot sandwich, and said, "Oh, please, John. No way."
Bitch.
That was a week ago, but part of John 's newfound philosophy was a second motto: No guts, no nookie. John had spent the next seven days working up his nut to ask her out again, and was just about to do so when some guy named Elvis Cole called, wanting to speak with him.
Now Teresa had left for school, and John put down the phone with a feeling of annoyance. Not only had the incoming call blown today's chance at Teresa Wu, but Chen didn't like it that Cole implied he had missed something at the crime scene. Chen liked it even less that he'd allowed the guy to badger him into meeting back at the Dersh house. Still, Chen was curious to hear what Cole had to offer; after all, if Chen could make a headline breakthrough on the Dersh case, Teresa Wu might change her mind about going out with him. How could she turn down a guy with a Boxster and his name on the front page of the L.A. Times?
Forty minutes later, John Chen tooled his 'tang-mobile into Dersh's drive beside a green-and-white cab. The police tape had been removed from Dersh's door, and the house long released as a crime scene. Now it was nothing more than bait for the morbid.
As Chen shut down the Boxster, a man whose arm stuck from his body in a shoulder cast climbed out of the cab. He looked like a waiter.
The man said, "Mr. Chen. I'm Elvis Cole."
There's a dorky name for you. Elvis.
Chen eyed Cole sourly, thinking that Cole probably wanted him to falsify or plant evidence. "You're Pike's partner?"
"That's right. Thanks for coming out."
Cole offered his good hand. He wasn't as big as Pike, but his grip was uncomfortably hard – like Pike, he was probably another gym rat with too many Y chromosomes who played private eye so he could bully people. Chen shook hands quickly and stepped away, wondering if Cole was dangerous.
"I don't have a lot of time, Mr. Cole. They're expecting me back at the office five minutes ago."
"This won't take long."
Cole started down the alley alongside Dersh's home without waiting, and Chen found himself following. John resented that: Ballsy guys lead; they don't follow.
Cole said, "When you covered the Lake Hollywood scene, you backtracked the shooter to a fire road and found where he'd parked his car."
Chen's eyes narrowed. He automatically didn't like this, because Pike had done the tracking and he'd only tagged along. Chen, of course, had left that part out of his report.
"And?"
"There's no mention of the shooter's vehicle in the Dersh report. I was wondering if you looked for it."
Chen felt a flood of relief and irritation at the same time. So that was the guy's big idea; that was why he'd wanted to meet. Chen put an edge in his voice, letting this guy know he wasn't just some a-hole with a pocket caddy.
"Of course, I looked for it. Mrs. Kimmel heard the shooter's car door slam in front of her next-door neighbor's house. I checked the street and the curbs there and in front of the next house for possible tread marks, too, but there was nothing."
"Did you look for oil drips?"
Cole said it just like that, without accusation, and Chen felt himself darken.
"What do you mean?"
"The Lake Hollywood report mentions oil drips that you found at the scene. You took samples up there and identified the oil."
"Pennzoil 10-40."
"If the shooter's car was leaking up at the lake, it probably left drops here, too. If we found them, maybe you could prove they'd come from the same vehicle."
Chen darkened even more, his face burning at the same time he felt a grim excitement. Cole had something here. Chen could compare brand, additives, and carbon particulate concentration to match the two samples. If he got a match, it would break open the Dersh case and guarantee headline coverage!
But when they reached the street, Chen's enthusiasm waned. The tarmac had last been refreshed in the sixties, and showed pothole plugs, the scorched weathering of L.A.'s inferno heat, and a webwork of tiny earthquake cracks. In the general area where Chen reasoned that the shooter had parked, any number of drips dotted the road, and they might've been anything: transmission fluid, power steering fluid, oil, brake fluid, antifreeze, the hawked lugey of a passing motorist, or bird shit.
Chen said, "I don't know, Cole. It's been two weeks; anything that dripped that night has been weathered, dried, driven over, maybe contaminated with other substances. We won't be able to find anything."
"We won't know if we don't look, John."
Chen walked along the edge of the street, kicking pebbles and frowning. The damned street was so speckled it looked like measles. Still, it was an interesting idea, and if it panned out, the benefits might be enormous. Sex with Teresa Wu.
Chen dropped down into a push-up position the way Pike had shown him and considered the light on the road's surface. He let everything blur except the light, and noticed that some drips shined more than others. Those would be fresher. Chen moved to the curb, and imagined a car parked there, an SUV like the one at Lake Hollywood. He went low again in that place, looking for drip patterns. A vehicle parked for a time would not leave a single drip, but several, the dots overlapping.
Cole said, "What do you think?"
John Chen, lost in the street, did not hear him.
" John?"
"Huh?"
"What do you think?"
"I think it's a long shot."
"Is there any other kind?"
John Chen went back to the Boxster for his evidence kit, then spent the rest of the afternoon taking samples, and daydreaming about Teresa Wu.
Exactly twenty-four days after the City of Los Angeles district attorney's Office registered my conviction with the state, I received a letter from the California State Licensing Board revoking my investigator's license. In the same mail, the California Sheriffs Commission revoked my license to carry a firearm. So much for the Elvis Cole Detective Agency. So much for being a detective. Maybe I could become a sod farmer.
Two days later the doctors cut off my cast, and I began physical therapy. It hurt worse than any physical pain I'd ever felt, even worse than being shot. But my arm worked, and I could drive again. Also, I no longer looked like a waiter.
I drove to my office for the first time since the desert, walked up the four flights, and sat at my desk. I had been in that office for over ten years. I knew the people who worked in the insurance office across the hall, and I used to date the woman who owned the beauty supply company next door. I bought sandwiches from the little deli in the lobby, and did my banking in the lobby bank. Joe had an office there, too, though it was empty. He had never used it, and now perhaps never would.
I watched Pinocchio's eyes move from side to side, and said, "I guess I could hang you in the loft."
When the phone rang, I said, "Elvis Cole Detective Agency. We're out of business."
Frank Garcia said, "What do you mean, out of business?"
"Just a joke, Frank. How you doing?" I didn't want to get into it.
"How come you haven't called? How come you and that pretty lady haven't come see me?"
"Been busy. You know."
"What's that pretty lady's name? The one works for Channel 8?"
"Lucy Chenier."
"I want you two to come have dinner. I'm lonely, and I want my friends around. Will you?"
"You mind if it's just me, Frank?"
"Is something wrong? You don't sound so good."
"I'm worried about Joe."
Frank didn't say anything for a while, but then he said, "Yeah, well, some things we can control, and some we can't. You sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine."
I spoke to Lucy every day, but over time our calls grew shorter and less frequent. I didn't enjoy them, and felt worse after we had spoken. It was probably the same for Lucy, too.
Stan Watts called, time to time, or I called him, but there was still no word about Joe. I phoned John Chen on eight separate occasions to see if he'd gotten anything from the tests he'd run, but he never returned my calls. I still don't know why. I stayed in touch with Joe's gun shop, and went through the motions of searching for the mysterious girl in the black van, but without real hope of finding anything. After a time, I felt like a stranger in my own life; all the things that had been real to me were changing.
On Wednesday of that week, I phoned my landlady and gave up my office. The Elvis Cole Detective Agency was out of business. My partner, my girlfriend, and now my business were gone, and I felt nothing. Maybe when I lost my license I had gone, too, and that was why I didn't feel anything. I wondered if they were hiring at Disneyland.
On Thursday, I parked in Frank Garcia's drive, and went to the door expecting dinner. Abbot Montoya answered, which surprised me.
He said, "Frank and I had a little business, and he invited me to stay. I hope you don't mind."
"You know better than that."
He led me into the living room, where Frank was sitting in his chair.
I said, "Hi, Frank."
He didn't answer; he just sat there for a moment, smiling with a warmth that reached all the way into my heart.
He said, "How come I gotta find out from other people?"
"What?"
"You weren't kidding about being out of business. You lost your license."
"There's nothing to be said for it, Frank. How'd you find out?"
"That pretty lady, Ms. Chenier. She called me about it."
"Lucy called you?" That surprised me.
"She explained what happened. She said you lost it helping Joe get away."
I shrugged, giving his own words back to him. "There's things we can control, things we can't." I wasn't comfortable talking about it, and didn't want to.
Frank Garcia handed me an envelope.
I held it back without opening it. "I told you. You don't owe me a nickel."
"It's not money. Open it."
I opened it.
Inside, there was a California state investigator's license made out in my name, along with a license to carry a concealed weapon. There was also a brief, terse letter from a director of the state board, apologizing for any inconvenience I might've suffered for the temporary loss of my licenses.
I looked at Frank, then at Abbot Montoya. I looked at the license again.
"But I'm a convicted felon. It's a state law."
A fierce pride flashed in Abbot Montoya's eyes then, and I could see the strength and the muscle and the power that had been used to get these things. And I thought that maybe he was right, maybe he and Frank weren't so far from the White Fence gang-bangers they'd been as younger men.
He said, "Temos tu corazón y tu el de nosotros. Para siempre."
Frank gripped my arm, the same fierce way he had gripped me before. "Do you know what that means, my friend?"
I couldn't answer. All I could do was shake my head.
"It means we love you."
I nodded.
"That pretty woman, she loves you, too."
I cried, then, and couldn't stop, not for what I had, but for what I didn't.
Two days later I was hanging a framed copy of the new license in my office when the phone rang. My first thought was that it was John Chen or Stan Watts, but it was neither.
One of the guys who worked in Joe's gun shop said, "You know who I am?"
My heart rate spiked. Just like that, and a cold sweat filmed my chest and back.
"Is this about Joe?"
"You ever been to the old missile control base above Encino? The one they turned into a park? You'll like the view."
"Is Joe okay? Did you hear from him?"
"No way. Joe's probably dead. I just thought we might get together up at the park, maybe raise one for an old friend."
"Sure. We could do that."
"I'll give ya a call sometime. Bring a six-pack."
"Anytime you want."
"Sooner the better."
He hung up.
I locked the office, and drove hard west through the city, and up to Mulholland.
It was a beautiful, clear Friday morning. The rush hour had passed, letting me make good time, but I would've made the time even if the streets had been crushed. It had to be Joe, or word of him, and I drove without thinking or feeling, maybe because I was scared the word would be bad. Sometimes, denial is all you have.
The government had built a missile control base high in the Santa Monica Mountains during the Cold War years. Then it was a top secret radar installation on the lookout for Soviet bombers coming to nuke Los Angeles. Now it was a beautiful little park that almost no one knew about except mountain bikers and hikers, and they only went on weekends.
When I reached the park, a Garcia tortilla company truck was parked off the road. I left my car behind it, hurried into the park, and made my way up the caged metal stairs to the top of the tower. The observation tower had once been a giant radar dome, and from it you could see south to the ocean and north across the San Fernando Valley.
Joe Pike was waiting on the platform.
He stiffened even though I didn't hug him hard. He was pale, and thinner than I'd ever seen him, though the white Garcia bakery shirt made him seem dark.
I said, "Took you long enough to call, goddamnit. Can you spell 'worry'?"
"I was down in Mexico, getting better."
"You got to a hospital?"
Pike's mouth twitched. "Not quite. How's the arm?"
"Stiff, but it's okay. I'm more concerned about you. You need anything?"
"I need to find Trudy."
"I've been looking." I told him what Watts had reported, and what my own searches had confirmed. Nothing on a black minivan or Trudy or Matt existed anywhere in the system. I also told him that I had no leads.
Pike took that in, and went to the rail. "The police are on my house and the gun shop. They've frozen my accounts, and flagged my credit cards. They've been to see Paulette."
"Maybe you should go south again. Sooner or later I'll get a hit that we can work with."
Pike shook his head. "I won't go south to hide, Elvis. I'm going to live it out here, one way or the other."
"I'm not saying go south to hide. Go to stay free. Coming up here is too big a risk."
"I'm willing to risk it."
"And go back to jail?"
Pike's mouth flickered in an awful way. "I'll never go to jail again."
Then he looked past me, and straightened in a way that made my scalp prickle. "They're on us."
A flat blue detective sedan and an LAPD radio car slid to a stop by the Garcia van. A second radio car barreled in from the opposite direction, stopping in the center of the road. We didn't wait to see who they were or what they were planning.
Pike went low fast, and snaked down the twisting metal stair toward the ground. I was right behind him. We couldn't see the stair from the platform, or the ground from the stair, but if we could get away from the observation tower, the park opened onto miles of undeveloped mountains that stretched south to Sunset Boulevard and west to the sea. If Pike could get into the sage, there was no way the police could follow him without dogs or helicopters.
As we banged down the stairs, I said, "There's a trail works south through the mountains to a subdivision above the Sunset Strip."
"I know it."
"If you follow the trail down, I can pick you up there later."
It was planning done for nothing.
When we reached the bottom of the stair, Harvey Krantz and two SWAT cops with M16s were waiting.
The SWAT cops covered Joe Pike like he was a coiled cobra. They spread to the sides for crossing fire, their black rifles zeroed on Pike's chest even from ten feet away. Behind them, a cop shouted our location to the people on the road.
Krantz wasn't holding a gun, but his eyes were on Pike as if he were a down-range target. I expected him to start with our rights, or tell us we were under arrest, or maybe even gloat, but he didn't.
Krantz said, "Go for it, Pike. Shoot it out, and you might get away."
The SWAT cops shifted.
Pike stood with his weight on the balls of his feet, hands away from his body, as relaxed as if he were in a Zen rock garden. He would have a gun somewhere, and he would be wondering if he could get to it, and fire before the SWAT cops cut loose. Even wounded and weak, he would be thinking that. Or maybe he wasn't thinking anything at all; maybe he would just act.
Krantz took a step forward, and spread his hands. "I don't have a gun, Pike. Maybe you'll get me."
I looked from Krantz to Joe, and knew in that moment that something more than an arrest was happening. The SWAT cops traded an uncertain glance, but didn't lower their guns.
"What's wrong with you, Krantz?" I put up my hands. "Raise your hands, Joe. Goddamnit, raise them!"
Pike didn't move.
Krantz smiled, but it was strained and ugly. He took another step. "Time's running out, Joe. More officers are on the way."
"Raise your hands, damnit! If you don't, then Krantz wins!"
Pike took a single breath, then looked past Krantz to the SWAT cops, talking to them now. "My hands are going up."
He raised them.
"Gun in my waistband under my shirt."
Krantz didn't move.
One of the SWAT cops said, "Krantz, get his damned gun."
Krantz took out his own gun.
Stan Watts trotted up the path, breathing hard, and stopped when he saw us.
The SWAT cops said, "Hey, Watts, get this bastard's gun."
Stan Watts took Pike's gun, then took mine, and he stared at Krantz, standing there with his gun at his side. "What in hell's going on, Krantz? Didn't you tell them?"
Krantz's jaw rippled as if he were chewing hard candy, and still his eyes didn't leave Pike. "I wanted Pike to spook. I was hoping he'd give us the excuse."
I said, "Take his gun, Stan. Please take his gun."
Watts stared at Krantz, then the gun Krantz held. Krantz's fingers worked at the gun like they had a life of their own. They kneaded and gripped the gun, and maybe wanted to raise it. Stan Watts went over and pried the gun away, and then pushed Krantz back hard.
"Go wait in the car."
"I'm your superior officer!"
Watts told the SWAT cops they were done, then told us to put our hands down. He wet his lips like his mouth was dry. "You're not under arrest. Branford s dropping the charges. You hear that, Pike? Branford's with your attorney right now. SID put Sobek's vehicle at Dersh's house. That's enough to get you off the hook."
I gripped Pike's arm, and held it. John Chen had come through.
Krantz pushed past Watts and jabbed his finger at Pike. It was exactly the same move he'd made at Lake Hollywood the first time I saw him. "I don't give a rat's ass what SID says, Pike; you're a murderer."
Watts said, "Stop it, Harvey."
Krantz jabbed again.
"You killed Wozniak, and I still believe you killed Dersh."
Krantz jabbed again, and this time Pike grabbed his finger so quickly that Harvey Krantz did not see him move. Krantz shrieked as he dropped to the ground, screaming, "You're under arrest, goddamnit! That's assaulting an officer! You're under arrest."
Pike and Watts and I stared at him there on the ground, red-faced and screaming, and then Watts helped him up, saying, "We're not going to arrest anyone, Harvey. Go back to the car and wait for me."
Krantz shook him off, and walked away without another word.
I said, "Get him off the street, Watts. He came up here to murder Pike. He meant what he said."
Watts pursed his lips, watching until Krantz was gone, then considered Pike. "You could make a complaint, I guess. There's grounds."
Pike shook his head.
I said, "That's it? We're just going to forget what happened here?"
Watts put the frying pan face on me. "What happened, Cole? We came up to give you the word, we did."
"How'd you know we were here?"
"We've been running taps twenty-four/seven on phones Pike's employees are known to use. The wire guys heard Pike's boy tell you about this place, and figured it out."
Watts glanced back to the road where Harvey Krantz was waiting in their car, alone.
Watts handed back our guns, holding on to Pike's as Pike reached for it. "What Krantz said about hoping you'd give us an excuse, that's bullshit. He's just upset. I don't play it that way, and he wouldn't either. Bauman said you hadn't been in touch, so we figured if there was a shot at reaching you up here, we should take it."
I said, "Sure, Watts."
"Screw you, Cole. That's the way it is."
"Sure."
Watts followed after Krantz, and pretty soon the police mounted their cars, and left great brown clouds of dust as they drove away. I guess Harvey Krantz hated Pike so much he had to believe Pike was guilty no matter what. I guess that kind of hate can make you do things you ordinarily wouldn't do.
" Watts can say whatever he wants, but Krantz wanted it. You don't bring tactical officers to tell some guy he's off the hook. You don't even roll out. If Krantz didn't want it, he could've put the word through me and Charlie and the guys at your shop. You would've heard."
Pike nodded without comment, and I wondered if he even gave a damn. Maybe it was better not to.
I said, "What are you going to do?"
"Call Paulette."
"Does it bother you, what Krantz said about Wozniak? That you're still carrying the blame?"
Pike shrugged, and this time I knew he didn't give a damn.
"Let Krantz and everyone think what they want. What I think, and do, is more important."
Pike took a deep breath then, and cocked the dark glasses my way.
"I missed you, Elvis."
That made me smile.
"Yeah, Joseph, I missed you, too. It's good to have you back."
We shook hands then, and I watched him walk down to the Garcia bakery truck and drive away. I stood in the hot wind for a time, telling myself that it was over, that Pike was home, and safe, but even as I told myself these things, it was without a sense that any of it was finished, or resolved.
We were different now. The world had changed.
I wondered if our lives would ever be the same, or as good, and if we were less than we had been.
The devils take their toll, even in this angel town.
Maybe here most of all.
I have lived in my house for many years, but it wasn't my house anymore. It wasn't the cozy A-frame that wrapped me in warm woods and copper sunset light, hanging there off the side of a mountain. It had become a great cavern that left me listening to echoes as I walked from room to room searching for something I could not find. Climbing to the loft took days. Going into the kitchen weeks. Funny, how the absence of a friend can do that. Funny, how it takes a woman three beats of a heart to walk out a door, but the man she's walking away from can't make that same trip in a lifetime.
Guess that's why you're smiling, Cole. It's so damned funny.
That night, I locked my door, and worked my way down the crooked mountain streets into Hollywood. It gets dark in the canyons first, shadows pooling in the deep cuts as the high ridges hide the sun. Here's a tip: If you leave the canyons you can find the light again, and get a second chance at the day. It doesn't last long, but nobody said second chances will wait for you.
The Sunset Strip was a carnival of middle-aged hipsters rat-racing Porsches, and goateed Oval-dudes smoking twenty-dollar Cubano Robustos, and a couple of million young women with flat bellies flashing Rodeo Drive navel rings. I didn't see any of it. Shriners from Des Moines were lined up outside House of Blues like catalog models for JCPenney. Yellow-haired kids clumped outside John ny Depp's Viper Room, laughing with LAPD motorcycle cops about the latest acid casualty. Didn't see it; didn't hear it. Twilight faded to full-on night, and the night grew later. I drove all the way to the water, then north through the steep mountain passes of Malibu, then back along the Ventura Freeway, just another mass of speeding metal. I felt edgy and unsettled, and thought that maybe if I drove long enough I might find a solution.
I love L.A.
It's a great, sprawling, spread-to-hell city that protects us by its sheer size. Four hundred sixty-five square miles. Eleven million beating hearts in Los Angeles County, documented and not. Eleven million. What are the odds? The girl raped beneath the Hollywood sign isn't your sister, the boy back-stroking in a red pool isn't your son, the splatter patterns on the ATM machine are sourceless urban art. We're safe that way. When it happens it's going to happen to someone else. Only thing is, when she walks out of your door, it isn't someone else. It's you.
I let myself off the freeway at the top of the Santa Monica Mountains and turned east along Mulholland. It's quiet up there, and dark; a million miles from the city even though it lies in the city's heart. The dry air breezed over me like sheer silk, and the desert smells of eucalyptus and sage were strong. A black-tailed deer flashed through my headlights. Coyotes with ruby eyes watched me from the grass. I was tired, and thought I should go home because this was silly, all this aimless driving. Just go home and go to sleep and get on with my life. You can save the world tomorrow. Find all the answers you want tomorrow.
After a time I pulled off the road, cut the engine, and stared at the lights that rilled the valley floor. Two million people down there. Put them end to end and they would wrap around the moon. Red taillights lit the freeways like blood pumping through sluggish arteries. An LAPD helicopter orbited over Sherman Oaks, spotlighting something on the ground. Another opera I didn't want to be part of.
I got out of my car and sat cross-legged on the hood. The barrel shape of an owl sat atop a power pole, watching me.
The owl said, "Who?"
You get that from owls.
A month ago, I had almost been killed. My best friend and partner had almost died, too, and I'd spent every day since then thinking that he was gone. Today, he came very close to dying again. Samantha Dolan was dead, my girlfriend had walked out on me, and here I was sitting in the dark with an owl. The world had changed, all right. Some great large place inside me was empty, and I didn't know if I could fill it again. I was scared.
The air was sultry, and felt good. When I first came here, I fell in love with this place. During the day, Los Angeles is a great playful puppy of a town, anxious to please and quick with a smile. At night, it becomes a treasure chest filled with magic and dreams. All you have to do is chase your dreams. All you need is the magic. All you have to do is survive, but it's that way anywhere. That's what I found here when I first came; that's what more and more people find here every day, always had and always would. It's why they come; that treasure chest of hope.
I could make it right with Lucy. I could pull my life together again and fill that empty place.
The owl said, "Who?"
I said, "Me."
I climbed back in the car, but I didn't go home. I turned on the radio and made myself comfortable. I didn't need to go home anymore. I was already there.
L.A. isn't the end; it's the beginning.
So was I.