The Last Detective ec-9

by Robert Crais

  Ben said, "I won't scream. Who was that? Was that my mama?"

  Mike didn't tell him or answer any of his other questions. Eric locked him in an empty bedroom with giant sheets of plywood nailed over the windows, and told him to get some sleep, but Ben couldn't. He tried to pull the plywood off the windows, but it was nailed too tight. He spent the rest of the night huddled at the door, trying to hear them through the crack. Sometime during the middle of the night he heard Eric and Mazi laughing. He listened harder, hoping to find out what they were going to do with him, but they never once mentioned him. They talked about Africa and Afghanistan, and how they had chopped off some guy's legs. Ben stopped listening and hid in the closet the rest of the night.

  Late the next morning, Eric opened the door.

  "Let's go. We're bringing you home."

  Just like that, they were letting him go. Ben didn't trust that Eric was telling the truth, but he wanted to go home so badly that he pretended it was real. Eric made him go to the bathroom, then marched him through the house to the garage. Eric was wearing a baggy plaid shirt with its tail hanging out. When he reached to open the door to the garage, his shirt pulled tight and Ben saw a pistol outlined at the small of his back. Eric hadn't been wearing the gun yesterday.

  The garage was heavy with the smell of paint. They

  I98

  had painted the van brown and covered the writing on its sides. Mazi was waiting behind the wheel. Mike was already gone. Eric led Ben to the rear of the van. Eric said, "Me and you are gonna ride in back. Here's the deal on that: I won't tie you up if you sit still and keep your mouth shut. If we stop at a red light or somethin' and you start screaming, I'll shut you up good, then it's the bag. We clear on that?" "Yes, sir." "I'm not fuckin' with you. Somethin' happens like we get pulled over by the cops, you smile and pretend like you're having a great time. You come through on that, we'll bring you home. Got it?" "Yes, sir." Ben would have said anything; he just wanted to go home. Eric lifted him into the back of the van, then pulled the door. The garage door clambered open as Mazi started the engine. Eric spoke into a cell phone. "We're go." They backed out into the street, then drove down the hill. The van was a big windowless cavern with two seats up front and nothing in back except a spare tire, a roll of duct tape, and some rags. Eric sat on the tire with the phone in his lap, and made Ben sit next to him. Ben could see the street past Mazi and Eric, but not much else. Ben wondered if what they had said last night was true, about cutting off legs. "Where are we going?" "We're taking you home. We gotta see a man, first, but then you'll go home." Ben sensed that Eric was telling him that he was going home so that he would behave. Ben glanced at the van's doors, deciding that he would run if he got the chance. I99

  When he turned forward again, Mazi was watching him through the mirror. Mazi's eyes went to Eric. "He go-eeng to run." "Fuckit. He's cool." "Ewe fuhk up ah-gain, Mike weel keel ewe." "These D-boys take everything too serious. Everything's a fuckin' opera. The kid's cool. Kid, you cool?" Ben wondered what a D-boy was and if Eric was talking about Mike. "Uh-huh." Mazi's eyes lingered on Ben a moment longer, then returned to the road. They wound their way out of the hills along a residential street that Ben didn't recognize, then climbed onto the freeway. It was a bright clear day and the traffic moved well. Ben saw the Capitol Records Building and then the Hollywood Sign. "This isn't the way to my house." "Told you. We gotta see someone first." Ben snuck another glance at the doors. Handles were set into each door, but Ben didn't see anything that looked like a lock. Ben checked to see if Mazi was watching him, but now Mazi was watching the road. The downtown skyscrapers grew in the windshield like giraffes huddled together on an African plain. Mazi lifted his hand with the fingers spread wide. Eric picked up the phone. "Five out." They left the freeway, slowing as they curved down the ramp. Ben looked at the doors again. They would probably stop at a traffic light or stop sign at the bottom of the ramp. If Ben made it out of the van, the people in the other cars would see him. He didn't think that Eric would shoot him. Eric would chase him, but even if Eric caught him, the other people would call the police. Ben was scared, but he told himself to do it. All he had to do was pull the handle and shove open the door.

  The van slowed as it reached the bottom of the ramp.

  Ben edged toward the door.

  Eric said, "Easy."

  Eric and Mazi were watching him. Eric took Ben's arm.

  "We're not stupid, kid. That African up there, he can read your mind."

  Mazi looked back at the road.

  They turned between a row of faded warehouses, then over a little bridge along more buildings with lots of spray-paint art and chain-link fences. Ben couldn't see much past Mazi, but the buildings looked abandoned and empty. The van stopped.

  Eric spoke into the phone.

  "The Eagle has landed."

  Eric listened for a moment, then put away the phone. He pulled Ben toward the doors.

  "I'm gonna open the doors, but we're not getting out, so don't go nuts."

  "You said I was going home."

  Eric's grip tightened.

  "You are, but first we're gonna do this. When I open the doors, you're gonna see a couple of cars. Mike's here with another guy. Don't start screaming or trying to get out, 'cause I'll fuckin' knock you out. The other guy just wants to see you're okay. If you're cool, we'll give you to

  him and he'll take you home. You good with that?" "Yes! I wanna go home!" "Okay, here we go."

  Eric pushed open the door.

  Ben squinted at the suddenly bright light, but he stayed quiet and didn't move. Mikc was with a large

  thick man that Ben didn't know in front of two parked cars less than ten feet away. The man looked into Ben's eyes, and nodded, the nod saying, you're going to be okay. Mike was talking to someone else on his phone. Mike said, "Okay, here he is." Mike held the phone to the other man's ear so that the other man could talk while Mike still held the phone. The other man said, "I see him. He's upright and alert. He looks okay." Mike took back the phone. "You heard that?" Mike listened, then spoke into the phone again. "Now I want you to hear something else." Mike moved so quickly that Ben didn't understand what was happening even as Mike put a gun to the big man's head and fired one time. Ben jumped at the unexpected explosion. The big man crumpled sideways onto the car, then tumbled off. Mike held the phone near the gun and shot him a second time. Ben moaned from a terrible pressure in his chest, and Eric held him close. Mike spoke into the phone again. "You hear that, too? That was me killing the asshole you sent. No negotiations, no second chances--the clock is running." Mike turned off his phone and slipped it into his pocket. He came to the van. Ben tried to twist away, but Eric held tight. "He cool?" "He's cool. Fuck, dude, that was harsh. You mean business." "They understand that now." Mike stroked Ben's head with an unexpected kindness. Ben stared at the body as it sank in a growing red pool. Mike said, "You're okay, son."

  Mike pulled off Ben's left shoe. Eric carried Ben out of the van past the body and put him into Mike's backseat. Eric got in with him. Mazi was already behind the wheel. They drove away, leaving Mike with the body.

  Part T3ree

  RUN THROUGH THE JUNGLE

  CHAPTER 16

  time missing: 44 hours, 57 minutes

  We got our second break when we took Mrs. Luna back to her catering truck. Though Ram6n Sanchez was unable to add to what she had already told us, her grill cook, a teenager named Hector Delarossa, remembered the make and model of the van. "Oh, yeah, it was a sixty-seven Ford four-door factory panel Econoline with the original trim. Crack in the left front windshield and spot rust on the lamps, no caps." No hubcaps. I asked him to describe the two men, but he didn't remember either. I said, "You saw the van had rust spots around the headlights, but you can't describe the men?" "It's a classic, yo? Me and my bro, J4sus, we're Econoheads, yo? We're rebuilding a sixty-six. We even got a website, yo? You should check it out." Starkey called in the make and model to be included in the BOLO,
and then I followed her to Glendale. Chen had gone ahead of us. The Los Angeles Police Department's Scientific Investigations Division shares its space with LAPD's Bomb Squad in a sprawling facility north of the freeway. The low-slung buildings and spacious parking lot made me think of a high school in the 'burbs, only high-school parking lots don't usually sport Bomb Squad Suburbans and cops in black fatigues. Not usually.

  We parked beside each other in the parking lot, then Starkey led me to the white building that belonged to SID. Chen's van was outside, side by side with several others. Starkey waved our way past the reception desk, then brought me to a laboratory where four or five workstations were grouped together but separated by glass walls. Criminalists and lab techs were perched on stools or swivel chairs, one in each glass space. Something sharp in the air stung my eyes like ammonia.

  Starkey swaggered in like she owned the place. "Homie in the house! Look what the bomb blew in!" The techs smiled and called back when they saw her. Starkey gibed with them like a long-lost sorority sister working the home crowd, and seemed more relaxed and comfortable than any time since I had met her.

  Chen had put on a white lab coat and vinyl gloves, and was working near a large glass chamber. He hunched when he saw us as if he were trying to hide inside the coat, and waved at Starkey to keep it down.

  "Jesus, paint a target on me with all that noise! Everybody's going to know we're back."

  "The walls are glass, John; they already know. Let's see what you have."

  Chen had split the wrapper along its length and pinned it flat to a white sheet of paper. Jars of colored powder lined the back of his bench, along with eye droppers and vials, rolls of clear tape, and three of the fluffy brushes that women use to apply makeup. One end of the wrapper was smudged with white powder and little brown stains. The outline of a fingerprint was obvious, but the architecture of the pattern was blurred and indistinct. It looked pretty good to me, but Starkey made a face when she saw it.

  :o7

  "This looks like shit. Are you working here, John, or are you too busy hiding inside your jacket?"

  Chen hunched even lower. If he hunched any more he would be under the bench.

  "I've only been at it fifteen minutes. I wanted to see if I could get anything with the powder or ninhydrin."

  The white smear was aluminum powder. The brown stains were a chemical called ninhydrin, which react with the amino acids left whenever you touch something.

  Starkey bent for a closer inspection, then frowned at Chert as if he was stupid.

  "This thing's been in the sun for days. It's too old to pick up latents with powder."

  "It's also the fastest way to get an image into the system. I figured it was worth the shot."

  Starkey grunted. She was okay with whatever might be faster.

  "The nin doesn't look much better."

  "Too much dust, and the sunlight probably broke down the aminos. I was hoping we'd get lucky with that,

  but I'm gonna have to glue it."

  "Shit. How long?"

  I said, "What does that mean, you have to glue it?" Now Chen looked at me as if I was the one who was stupid. We had a food chain for stupidity going, and I was at the bottom.

  "Don't you know what a fingerprint is?"

  Starkey said, "He doesn't need a lecture. Just glue the damned thing."

  Chen went pissy, like he didn't want to miss out on the chance to show off. He explained while he worked: Every time you touched something, you left an invisible deposit of sweat. Sweat was mostly water, but also

  contained amino acids, glucose, lactic acid, and peptides--what Chen called the organics. As long as moisture remained in the organics, techniques like dusting worked because the powder would stick to the water, revealing the swirls and patterns of the fingerprint. But when the water evaporated, all you had left was an organic residue. Chen unpinned the wrapper, then used forceps to place it on a glass dish with the outside surface facing up. He put the dish into the glass chamber. "We boil a little superglue in the chamber so the fumes saturate the sample. The fumes react with the organics and leave a sticky white residue along the ridges of the print." Starkey said, "The fumes are poisonous as hell. That's why he's gotta do it in the box." I didn't care what he did or how he did it, so long as we got results. I said, "How long is this going to take?" "It's slow. I normally use a heater to boil it, but it's faster when you force the boil with a little sodium hydroxide." Chen filled a beaker with water, then put the water into the chamber close to the wrapper. He poured something labeled methylcyanoacrylate into a small dish, then put the dish into the chamber. He selected one of the bottles from his bench. The liquid inside was clear, like water. Starkey said, "How long, John?" Chen ignored us. He dribbled the sodium hydroxide over the superglue, then sealed the chamber. The sodium hydroxide and superglue fizzed, but nothing flashed or burst into flames. Chen turned on a small fan inside the chamber, then stepped back. :zo9

  "How long?"

  "Maybe an hour. Maybe more. I've gotta watch it. So much reactant will build up that you can ruin the prints."

  We had nothing to do but wait, and we weren't even sure if anything would be found. I bought a Diet Coke from a machine in the reception area, and Starkey bought a Mountain Dew. We brought our drinks outside so that she could smoke. It was quiet and still in Glendale, with the low wall of the Verdugo Mountains above us and the tip of the Santa Monicas below. We were in the Narrqws, that tight place between the mountains where the L.A. River squeezed into the city.

  Starkey sat on the curb. I sat beside her. I tried to conjure a picture of Ben alive and safe, but all I saw were

  flashes of shadow and terrified eyes.

  "Did you call Gittamon?"

  "And tell him what, that I bailed on a crime scene to come over here with a guy that I was specifically ordered

  to keep off the case? That would be you, by the way." Starkey flicked ash from her cigarette.

  "I'll call him when we know what John finds. He's been paging me, but I'll wait."

  I said, "Listen. I want to thank you."

  "You don't have to thank me. I'm doing my job."

  "A lot of people have the job, but not everyone busts their ass to get it done. I owe you. However this plays out, I owe you."

  Starkey had more of her cigarette, then grinned out over the cars in the parking lot.

  "That sounds pretty good, Cole. Now what kind of

  ass-busting did you have in mind?" "I didn't mean it that way." "My loss."

  2IO

  Starkey ate another white tablet. I decided to change the subject. I decided to be clever.

  I said, "Starkey, are those breath mints or are you a drug addict."

  "It's an antacid. I have stomach problems from when I was hurt, so I gotta take the antacid. It messed me up pretty bad inside."

  Hurt. Being blown apart and killed in a trailer park was "hurt." I felt like a turd.

  "I'm sorry. That wasn't my business."

  She shrugged, then flicked her cigarette into the parking lot.

  "This morning you asked why I didn't bring you the tape."

  "It's not important. I just wondered why the other guy brought it instead of you. You said you'd be back."

  "Your ox and 24 were waiting in the fax machine. I started reading while I was waiting for the tape. I saw that you were wounded."

  "Not when I was out with five-two. That was another time."

  I should have gone to Canada. Then none of this would be happening.

  "Yeah, I know. I saw you got hit by mortar fire. I was just curious about that, is all, what happened to you. You don't have to tell me if you don't want. I know it doesn't have anything to do with this case."

  She struck up a fresh cigarette to hide behind the movement, as if she was suddenly embarrassed that I knew why she was asking. A mortar shell was a bomb. In a way, bombs had gotten both of us.

  "It wasn't anything like with you, Starkey, not even close. Something exploded be
hind me and then I woke up under some leaves. I got a few stitches, that's all."

  "The report says they took twenty-six pieces of frag out of your back and you almost bled to death." I wiggled my eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. "Wanna see the scars, little girl?" Starkey laughed. "Your Groucho sucks." "My Bogart's even worse. Want to hear that?" "You want to talk scars? I could show you scars. I got scars that'd make you shit blue." "What a pleasant use of language." We smiled at each other, then both of us felt awkward at the same time. It wasn't banter any more and it somehow felt wrong. I guess my expression changed. Now both of us looked away. She said, "I can't have kids." "I'm sorry." "Jesus, I can't believe I told you that." Now neither of us was smiling. We sat in the parking lot, drinking our caffeine as Starkey smoked. Three men and a woman came out of the Bomb Squad and crossed the parking lot to a brick warehouse. Bomb techs. They wore black fatigues and jump boots like elite commandos, but they goofed with each other like regular people. They probably had families and friends like regular people, too, but during their shift they de-armed devices that could tear them apart while everyone else hid behind walls, just them, all alone, with a monster held tight in a can. I wondered what kind of person could do that. I glanced at Starkey. She was watching them. I said, "Is that why you're on the Juvenile desk?" She nodded. Neither of us said very much after that until John Chen came out. He had the prints.

  ZII time missing: 47 hours, o4 minutes

  White concentric circles covered the wrapper in overlapping smudges. People don't touch anything with a clean, singular grip; they handle the things they touch-pencils, coffee cups, steering wheels, telephones, cigar wrappers--their fingers shuffle and slide; they adjust and readjust their grip, laying fingerprint on top of fingerprint in confused and inseparable layers.

  Chen inspected the wrapper through a magnifying glass attached to a flexible arm.

  "Most of this stuff is garbage, but we've got a couple of clean patterns we can work with."

  I said, "Is it going to be enough?"

  "Depends on how many typica I can identify and what's in the computer. It'll be easier to see when I add a little color."