by Robert Crais
"Me again. Sorry. Have you spoken with Dru since you've been away?"
"Hell, yes. I call her every couple of weeks, make sure everything's okay, check on the house."
"She never mentioned Mr. Smith?"
"This is the first I've heard of him, and I don't like it. If this guy's been living there all this time and she hasn't told me, she's been lying to me, and I don't like liars. If you find her, you tell her she better call me, and I mean yesterday. I want that sonofabitch out of my house."
Cole finished the call feeling even worse than before. The picture he now had of Dru Rayne was very different from the woman Joe described. This left him with even more questions, but Cole forced himself to focus on the fact she was missing. He had to mine Wilson Smith's neighbors before the police sealed the mine.
Cole reached the canals a few minutes later and once more walked in. Mendoza and his partner had passed these same houses going to and coming from the Smith house, which was when Jared saw them, and now Cole wanted to see if anyone else had seen them, but he targeted the houses with security cameras first.
Almost out of habit, he checked Jared's window as he moved down the alley, but Jared was missing. Amazing.
The day before, Cole noted three homes with cameras. No one answered at the first house, so he slipped a business card under the door with a note asking them to call. A middle-aged woman answered at the second home, and asked if he was with the police she spoke to the day before. This told Cole that Button and his partner had made the rounds after speaking with Jared. Cole told her he was, and dropped Button's name to fortify the lie. Cole asked if Button checked her surveillance recordings, but Button had not asked, and it would not have mattered if he had-her cameras displayed real-time images but were not hooked to a recorder. The first house had potential, but the second house was a bust.
Cole had better luck at the third house. A housekeeper told him she didn't know much about the security system, but believed the cameras made a recording. She explained her employer was at work, but thought he would be happy to speak with Cole as he was very interested when she told him the police questioned her yesterday. Cole left another card, then reconsidered his plan.
Knowing that Button made the rounds after speaking with Jared, Cole decided there was no point in covering the same ground again. The available witness list was currently limited to Jared.
Cole returned to Smith's house, and found Jared back in his window, straggly black hair, shirtless, wires dripping from his ears. Jared was watching him.
Cole made a little wave. Jared waved back. Cole motioned for Jared to come down, and Jared turned from the window.
Cole was waiting outside his house when the door opened and Jared came out.
"Hey, dude, whassup? You with the police or the big dude?"
"The big dude."
"Dude's all right. I like that cat. I already told him about those banger dudes I saw. Him, and the police. They were here yesterday."
Jared had seen a lot of action in the past two days. He was comfortable with it.
"I'm not here about the banger dudes. I was hoping you could tell me how long Dru's been living next door."
"Dude. I'm so bad with time."
Cole waited, letting the silence press Jared for an answer.
Jared finally shrugged.
"Gotta be three months. Steve hooked it back to London three months ago. That dude has cash. He's always in Europe."
"She moved in the day he left?"
"That's the way it works. Steve brought her over, introduced her to my mom, this is my house-sitter, all of that stuff."
"When did her uncle move in?"
Jared glanced across the street and made a sly smile. Cole wondered at both the hesitation and the smile.
Jared said, "The next day."
Jared glanced across the street again, and Cole sensed Jared wanted to say something so badly he could not maintain eye contact.
Cole said, "What?"
"I see things, dude. Dru has a hot body. She lays out a lot. I'm up in that window for a reason."
"Tell me, Jared."
"I don't think Uncle Wilson is Uncle Wilson. They don't always act like relatives, if you're catching my subtext here."
Cole stared at Jared for a long time. He felt cold inside, but his mouth was dry and the morning sun was hot on his skin. A knot of anger blossomed in his chest like cherry-red fire.
"Do not say this if it's bullshit."
"Dude. I have a dead-on view of their yard. I can see in their windows, and she doesn't pull the shades. I've seen them fucking. I think she digs it that I watch."
The cold grew until Cole felt numb. He stared at Steve Brown's house, and wondered who these people were and if everything the woman told Pike was lies.
Cole looked back at Jared, but didn't know what to say. The best he managed was a nod.
Cole did not try to hide what he did next. Jared might have gone back into his house, but Cole didn't notice because Cole didn't care.
Cole found the key in its place by the gatepost, opened the gate, and let himself into the house. He knew what he wanted and what he would do with it.
He pulled on the vinyl gloves as he went to the kitchen. During his earlier search, he had seen folded paper grocery bags wedged into the gap between the refrigerator and the counter. He pulled out several bags, shook one open, then placed it on the counter. He selected three glass tumblers from the dishes left on the counter, put each in a separate bag, and placed the three bags carefully into the open bag. He collected two empty Diet Coke cans and a water bottle from the family room, bagged them the same way, then went up to the master for the metal box with Wilson's papers. He brought it down to the kitchen.
Cole stopped in the downstairs guest bedroom on his way out. A few of her things were there, but now he wondered if she really used the room or if it was just for show. An empty stick of Dry Idea antiperspirant deodorant was on the dresser. He added it to the bag, then locked the house and gate as he left.
Cole returned to his car, but did not start the engine. He called a friend named John Chen, who was a criminalist with the LAPD's Scientific Investigations Division.
"John? I need you to check some prints. I need it done fast."
"Dude. I'm at a drive-by in Hawaiian Gardens. I've been here all frakkin' night."
"I need this, John. It's for Joe."
Chen hesitated, which told Cole he would agree.
"Okay. Okay, for sure."
"I can bring the samples to you. Where in Hawaiian Gardens?"
"Uh-uh, bro, way too many witnesses here. Meet me downtown in an hour. Make it an hour ten. Outside CCB."
Cole closed his phone and headed for downtown Los Angeles.
24
Elvis Cole
As an employee of the Los Angeles Police Department, John Chen, like the department's sworn officers, was forbidden to perform unauthorized case work, use city resources for personal gain, or help civilian private investigators off the books. These were good and valid rules to preserve the integrity of case evidence, enforce a professional code of conduct, and discourage employee corruption.
John Chen was corrupt.
A paranoid with low self-esteem, Chen lived for the headline, and this was normally Cole's ace. Cole often gave Chen information that allowed him to make breakthroughs on cases he would not have made otherwise. These breakthroughs led to a media profile few other criminalists enjoyed, Chen having been quoted more than a dozen times in the Los Angeles Times, interviewed by various local TV news anchors, and hired as a technical consultant on motion pictures based on two of his cases. Chen, whose obsessions in life revolved around women and money, currently drove a Porsche Boxster. The women had so far eluded him.
Cole worked his way onto the I-10 Freeway for the fifteen-mile trek across the Los Angeles Basin. He was approaching the Mid-City area less than halfway across when his phone rang, and he saw it was Pike. Cole had been struggling with what
to tell Pike, but now the call forced his hand. If Wilson and Dru were still alive, he would say nothing until he knew more.
"Was it them?"
"Mendoza and Gomer. They're dead."
Cole felt a kick of surprise. Mendoza and Gomer were the predators. They weren't supposed to be dead. If the predators were dead, where were the victims?
"What about Wilson and Dru?"
"Nothing. Mendoza was in the canal by Washington. Gomer was in a car up at the north end. If the cops found something in Gomer's car, they haven't told me."
Pike quickly described how they were killed, which left Cole even more unsettled.
"When did it happen?"
"Fill you in later. I'm being questioned."
"You're a suspect?"
"It won't be a problem. They're covering the bases."
"There's a third player, Joe. The person who jimmied the kitchen window."
"I know. I've been thinking about it."
Pike hung up and Cole drove on, letting the flow of traffic carry him through increasingly darker thoughts.
When the Los Angeles Police Department relocated their headquarters from a decayed and crumbling Parker Center to the new Police Administration Building two blocks away, they forgot to take the Scientific Investigation Division with them. This wasn't factually the case, but was one of many jokes the criminalists liked to tell. The reality was that until a suitable site was found, SID would remain the last man standing in LAPD's past.
Cole didn't drive to the old Parker Center location. He waited for Chen outside the Criminal Courts Building six blocks away, arriving early and waiting an extra twenty minutes until John arrived.
Chen slipped into the passenger seat of Cole's car so fast it was as if he fell from the sky. He wore oversized dark sunglasses, a Dodgers cap pulled low on his face, and a windbreaker with the collar turned up even though it would reach almost ninety degrees later that day. His grapefruit head was tucked into the collar like a turtle into its shell. Hiding.
"I don't think anyone saw me, but we'd better drive. They might have followed."
Chen's paranoia.
Cole pulled into traffic, determined to make this a short drive. The news about Mendoza and Gomer had left him feeling even more concerned about Smith and Dru Rayne.
Cole reached behind the seat for his bag, and put it on Chen's lap. There wasn't much room. Chen was tall, skinny, and looked like a praying mantis folded into the front passenger compartment.
"It's breakable, so be careful."
"What's in here?"
"Glasses. A couple of soda cans. Things like that. I also have a metal box you can have when you get out of the car.
Chen took off the sunglasses and put on his regular glasses. The lenses looked like they had been cut from the bottoms of Coke bottles.
Chen peered inside.
"Shit, this is a lot. I have a caseload, man. I have so many cases my backlog has a backlog."
"I know it's a lot, but don't get ahead of yourself. The prints should belong to two individuals-a male and a female who live at the residence. The woman's prints should be on the deodorant stick. The male's prints are probably on the file box. Run the stick first, then the box. If you pull something clean, you won't have to clock anything else."
Chen didn't look any happier.
"I didn't say I couldn't do it. I just gotta figure out how. I'll have to work this stuff into the landing pattern, and that could take days."
The Latent Prints Unit was staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The backlog of prints waiting to be analyzed was so large the unit employed almost eighty specialists around the clock to hold back the tide. With so many cases in line to be analyzed, a first-come-first-served waiting list was maintained to reserve the equipment needed for the work. This list was known as the landing pattern.
Cole said, "Days is too long. I need this."
Chen looked over, sour but thoughtful.
"For Joe?"
Cole nodded.
"What's up?"
"I'm hoping you can tell me. If these people are in the system, Joe needs to know why. I need to know why, too."
Chen shifted, maybe trying to get comfortable, but maybe because he was nervous. He was so tall his knees were above the dash and his head touched the roof.
Chen peeked into the bag again, then peered at Cole with enormous owl eyes.
"You know who I am?"
The question caught him by surprise, but then Cole sensed Chen wasn't talking to him-Chen was talking to himself. Cole shook his head.
"Sure you do, bro. All you have to do is look at me. I'm the guy defense attorneys make out to be the bumbling geek, so juries laugh. I hear cops making cracks when I'm at a scene. Every time I look in a mirror, I know why the girls laugh."
"John, you don't have to-"
Chen held up a finger, stopping him.
"When I first met you guys, I was freakin' terrified of Joe. He was everything that scares me shitless. Here's this guy, and no one would have the balls to make a crack or laugh. Here he is, a fucking street monster, but of all the people I deal with, he treats me with more respect than anyone else."
Chen lifted the bag.
"So I will find a way to do this. Pull over. I'll go get started."
"I'll take you back."
"I'd rather walk. It'll give me time to think."
Cole pulled over, and Chen got out with the bag.
"John."
"What?"
"Take the box."
Chen took the bag containing the box.
"If you speak with Joe, don't mention this."
Chen stared at Cole a long time, then abruptly walked away.
25
Elvis Cole .
When Cole reached his office he got down to business. The night before, he had asked a friend on the Hollywood Station homicide table for sheets on Mendoza and Gomer. These he would have used to identify known associates and relatives, but they were no longer necessary. He called her to cancel the request, but she had already printed the information and was pissed she had taken the risk for nothing. He then spread the contents of Wilson Smith's file box over his desk. With Mendoza and Gomer out of the picture, Cole focused on Wilson and Dru.
He quickly determined that most of the files related to Smith's business, with the individual folders containing invoices, bills, equipment warranties, and rental agreements. Smith purchased fresh seafood from a purveyor in San Pedro, sandwich rolls and breads from a bakery in Boyle Heights, and had signed a one-year lease agreement with Lodestar Properties for the storefront that now housed his kitchen. Cole checked through the bills and invoices for a prior address, but everything that had been mailed was sent to Smith's shop. Cole made a list of names and numbers from the various letterheads in case he wanted to phone them, then pushed the business files aside.
He tackled the money files next. There were two folders, one for checking and one for savings, with both accounts drawn on the Venice branch of Golden State Bank amp; Trust. The statements went back eight months, showing both accounts were opened on the same day. The savings account was opened with a $9600 deposit, from which $2000 was used to open the checking account. Two weeks after opening the savings account, an additional $6500 was deposited. The first statement had been mailed to Smith at a P.O. box in Venice, but the following seven, including the most recent, were mailed to Wilson's Takeout Foods. Cole copied the P.O. box address, then examined the statements. Deposits, withdrawals, and checking activity all seemed reasonable, with most of the drafts made out to pay for rent, utilities, and supplies. The canceled checks were in the file. Smith was obviously a man who didn't believe in online banking. He was also a man who didn't believe in credit cards.
The contents of Wilson Smith's metal file box contained nothing showing a date prior to the accounts that were opened eight months ago, nothing of a personal nature, and nothing to connect Wilson Smith with Louisiana or anyplace else. It was as if the man had
been born eight months ago with a $9600 deposit.
Nothing in the file box named or was related to Dru Rayne. It was as if she didn't exist at all.
Among the utilities was a monthly phone bill. Pike had given Cole the cell phone numbers for Wilson and Dru, but this number was different. Cole dialed the number, and reached a voice message informing him Wilson's Takeout Foods was currently closed but was open during the following business hours. The voice was a woman's, and Cole thought it must be Dru. She had a nice voice.
Cole hung up, staring at nothing. He told himself they were house sitters, which was a temporary arrangement, so most of their possessions were probably in storage or packed in a friend's garage, but Cole told himself this was bogus even as he formed the thoughts.
Everything about Dru Rayne and Wilson Smith was wrong.
Cole leaned back and stared out the French doors. The French doors opened to a small balcony and, twelve miles beyond, the sea. Cole could see the ocean on a clear day, but today a wall of haze obscured his view. He felt depressed, and wondered how Pike was doing with the police. He did not like knowing this thing about Dru Rayne that Pike did not know. He did not like the expression he had seen on Pike's face when Pike was shouldering the guilt for whatever trouble the woman was in. Cole had seen that same expression in the mirror too many times.
Cole dialed the takeout shop again to hear her voice. Pleasant, friendly, medium timbre with a hint of a Southern accent. A familiar voice that inspired an ache in his chest. Cole had loved a woman from Louisiana. They had gotten in so deep Lucy moved out with her eight-year-old son. It was a gamble for all of them that didn't work out, so Lucy and her son returned to Louisiana. This had been Lucy's call, not Cole's. Cole would have gone all the way.
When Cole realized he was thinking more about Lucy Chenier than Dru Rayne, he checked the time. Louisiana was two hours ahead. Lucy would be at her office or in court. She was an attorney in private practice with a successful firm in Baton Rouge, and it occurred to Cole she might be able to help. It also occurred to him this was simply an excuse to hear her voice.
