Chasing Darkness

by Robert Crais

  Detective C. Bastilla,

  The cellular number in question is a prepaid number assigned to a cell phone (Model AKL-1500) manufactured by Kyoto Electronics. (See enclosed picture.) Our records indicate that the phone unit, cell-service activation, and additional talk-time minutes were purchased by cash. For this reason, we are unable to provide information about the purchaser.

  Due to legal and liability requirements, we are unable to provide call-log records for the above-referenced number until in receipt of an appropriate court order. Once in receipt of such order, we will be happy to comply.

  Sincerely,

  Michael Toman

  Operations Manager

  Pike said, “She had two conversations with the highlighted number on the day she was murdered.”

  “Joe. Bastilla was trying to identify the caller.”

  “Looks that way. Looks like they were trying to identify someone else, too.”

  Pike drew out a folder that was thick with documents about Wilts, but none of the reports and files were anything I expected. This file was labeled FBI, and contained a letter from Marx to the FBI director in Washington, D.C. It was marked PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL. A short list of phone numbers was attached, including the number that had been highlighted in yellow.

  This letter will serve as my official request that your agency obtain the proper court instruction for, and initiate and maintain, recorded phone monitors on the attached Los Angeles area code phone numbers, and do so independent of and without the knowledge of my own agency, the Los Angeles Police Department, or any other local personnel, officials, or local judicial members. As Councilman Nobel Wilts is believed to have knowledge of or possibly have committed multiple homicides over a seven-year period, I cannot stress enough the need for utmost security in this matter.

  I stared at the page, but the words had lost focus. I pushed past a growing sense of frustration and checked the date. Marx had faxed his request to the head of the FBI only eight days ago—two days before he told the world that Lionel Byrd had committed the murders.

  I said, “Joe.”

  I gave him the page.

  “They aren’t protecting Wilts. They’re investigating him. It’s an active investigation.”

  We were reading through the rest of the files when the first car arrived. They didn’t scream up Code Three with the lights and sirens, and SWAT didn’t rappel from hovering choppers. Gravel crunched outside my door, followed by the soft squeak of brakes.

  Pike went to the window.

  “It’s Marx.”

  The Inner Circle had arrived.

  35

  MARX AND Munson unfolded from his Lexus. Bastilla eased up from the opposite direction with a black-and-white Metro car behind her. They saw me at the same time, but no one shouted or tried to knock me down.

  Marx was calm, but somehow larger, as if swollen with tension.

  I said, “You heartless sonofabitch. You told those people it was over.”

  Munson flicked his fingers, telling me to move out of the door.

  “Let’s go in, Cole. We need to have a little talk.”

  “Do you have a warrant?”

  Bastilla said, “You’re in no position. Act like an adult.”

  The uniforms stayed in their car, but the rest of them came inside. Marx glanced at Pike, then frowned at the files and murder books spread over the table. He told Bastilla to gather their stuff, then frowned at me.

  “Have you read these things?”

  “Enough to know what you’re doing. I pushed this thing because I thought you were protecting him.”

  “Now you know you were wrong. You should have just let it go, but no, you couldn’t mind your business.”

  “Yvonne Bennett made it my business, Marx. So do the Repkos and Ida Frostokovich and the other families you’ve lied to. You told those people it was finished. They’ve buried their children, but they’re going to have to dig them up again. What in hell were you thinking?”

  He hooked a thumb at Pike.

  “How many people besides you and this one know what we’re doing?”

  “A few.”

  “Poitras is probably helping you, isn’t he?”

  “Poitras doesn’t know anything.”

  “We need their names.”

  “Forget it, Marx. There’s no chance in hell.”

  Munson had gone to the sliders.

  “Sweet. You got your privacy, you got your view, you have your stolen police property. Not everyone would have the balls to break into a deputy chief’s house.”

  “You have me confused with someone else.”

  Munson laughed. He was probably a pretty good guy and I would probably like him if he was someone else.

  “Please, Cole. Really. Who else could it be, the way you’ve been dogging us. Now we have this problem.”

  Pike, floating between the dining room and kitchen, said, “We don’t have a problem.”

  Munson hit Pike with the grin.

  “Look at Pike here. Pike looks like he wants to shoot it out. What do you say, Chief? We could kill’m, say they resisted arrest.”

  Bastilla glanced up from stacking the files.

  “You’re not helping.”

  “That was humor. They know I’m kidding.”

  Marx looked at me with the unfocused eyes of someone who had considered it and hadn’t been kidding.

  “We could have gotten the warrants and brought along some boys from Metro, but we didn’t. I can’t force you to cooperate, but we have to contain this. If Wilts finds out, we may never be able to make the case. That meant lying about our investigation, but now this is where we are, and you’re here with us.”

  “You believe Wilts killed those women.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why close the case on Byrd? Why tell those families it was over?”

  “Because that’s what Wilts wants us to think.”

  Munson pulled a chair from the table and swung his leg over it like he was mounting a horse.

  “We believe he engineered Byrd’s death so we would close the Repko case—probably because he was scared we might find something on the security disk. He forced our hand with this damned death book. When we realized that’s what he wanted, we gave him Byrd to buy ourselves more time.”

  Pike said, “Why Byrd?”

  Munson shrugged.

  “Byrd was already connected to one of the victims—Yvonne Bennett. He’s gotta be thinking, when we find Byrd with this picture of Bennett, we’ll think it’s a slam dunk. If you’re asking how Wilts and Byrd are connected, we don’t know. Wilts might have picked him because of the Bennett connection, but maybe they knew each other.”

  I said, “That’s a helluva risk to take, thinking you’ll call it quits just because Byrd has the book.”

  Marx’s lips pressed into a hard line.

  “Well, Cole, I guess he thought it was worth the risk, didn’t he? Repko wasn’t some streetwalker—he screwed up by killing someone close to him, which was a mistake he hadn’t made since Frostokovich.”

  A knot of anger grew in my shoulders.

  “Have you bastards known he’s been killing people for seven years?”

  Munson made a grunting laugh that caused Bastilla to glance up, but Marx glowered.

  “Of course not. Only since the book.”

  “You must have known since Frostokovich.”

  “Goddamnit. I took care of some things for him, but nothing like this. He was a nasty bastard, all right, but I was investigating one of my friends. You never think someone you know could do something like this.”

  “So you let it go? You fixed it for him?”

  “Fuck off, Cole. The girl’s friends told us about running into him that night at dinner, so we questioned him. He told us he went to an apartment he kept over by Chinatown after seeing them at dinner. Alone. So we had the coincidence of the meetings, and we knew he was a prick, but that was it. We couldn’t clear him, but we couldn’t find an
ything solid. You can’t make a case on coincidence, so we all went on with our lives. After a while I told myself it was silly to suspect the guy. Hell, he was my friend, and all we had was the coincidental meeting.”

  Pike said, “Until Repko.”

  “Repko got us started, but it was really the book. When we saw Frostokovich everything came back. Wilts knew some of these girls. Wilts was the common demoninator.”

  Munson picked up where Marx left off by explaining they had discovered a connection between Wilts and the fourth victim pictured in the book, twenty-five-year-old prostitute Marsha Trinh. In reviewing her arrest record, it was learned she was one of five prostitutes Wilts had hired for a private party to influence prominent supporters one month before her murder. This contact put Wilts with three of the seven victims. Three out of seven was convincing.

  Munson said, “We still have a long way to go, Cole. We can’t have you drawing attention to this. The man has to believe he’s safe.”

  “How close are you?”

  “We would arrest him if we had something. We don’t.”

  “You think he’s a flight risk?”

  “You never know, but no, I don’t think so. People like this, they think they can beat you and some of them do. They get off by thinking they’re smarter than us. He wanted us to think Byrd is the guy, and right now he believes we bought it. That’s why we played it the way we did. As long as he believes he’s safe, we have a shot at making a case. You cannot kill seven people without making a mistake. It cannot be done.”

  Munson nodded like he believed it, then stared at me.

  “We’re busting our asses to make this case, but right now our biggest problem is you, asking around at Leverage, scaring the shit out of the Casik girl, getting Alan Levy worked up—”

  I raised my palms, stopping him.

  “Waitaminute. How did I scare Ivy Casik?”

  Marx scowled at me.

  “That’s why I hate goddamned private operators like you—you don’t know how to handle yourself.”

  I looked at Bastilla.

  “What’s this about, Bastilla? Did you find her?”

  “I didn’t have to find her. She called. She wanted to file a complaint against you.”

  “For what?”

  “She said you accused her of being a drug dealer.”

  “I asked if she picked up the oxys for Byrd.”

  “She heard it as a threat.”

  “What did she say about the reporter?”

  “There wasn’t a reporter, you dipshit. She made it up to get rid of you. Then she got worried she might get into trouble, so she called us to straighten it out.”

  I flashed on Ivy Casik. I wondered if Levy had found her and if she had told him the same thing. Then Bastilla put the last of the files in the box and stacked the murder books on top.

  “That’s everything, Chief.”

  Marx nodded, then studied me again. His brow was so deeply furrowed it looked like rows of midwestern corn.

  “So what are you going to do? Can we get some cooperation here?”

  I glanced at Pike, and Pike nodded.

  “I don’t like it, but I understand what you’re trying to do. I’m not going to sit out the game, Marx, but I won’t spoil the play. I’m better than that.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Marx put out his hand. The gesture surprised me, and maybe I hesitated too long, but I took it. He left without saying anything else, then Munson followed with the files. Bastilla was trailing after Munson when I stopped her at the door.

  “When you bust Wilts, everything about the chief’s prior relationship with him is going to come out. It isn’t lost on me that he knows that.”

  She arched her eyebrows, and it was as cool a move as anything I had ever seen.

  “How nice for you, Cole.”

  We listened to them drive away, then I went to the phone and called Alan Levy. Jacob answered again.

  “Sorry, Mr. Cole, he isn’t in. Would you like to leave another message?”

  “This would be easier if you gave me his cell.”

  Jacob wouldn’t give me the cell, but he promised to page Alan and then hung up.

  I put down the phone and turned to Pike.

  “Let’s go see Ivy. If I scared her, wait ’til she sees you.”

  “You don’t think she lied?”

  “I think she’s lying to someone. The question is who.”

  We were moving for the door when Alan Levy returned my call. Jacob had come through with the page.

  36

  SPEAKING WITH Levy left me conflicted. Alan was trying to help, but I had given Marx my word and understood his need for secrecy, so I did not tell Levy that Wilts was a suspect. I told him about Ivy Casik instead.

  “I spoke with Bastilla again. She told me Ivy made up the story about the reporter.”

  “Where did Bastilla find her?”

  “She didn’t. Ivy called her to complain about me.”

  I related what Bastilla told me.

  Alan made grunting noises as he listened, then sounded doubtful.

  “She claimed you threatened her?”

  “She was surprised when I approached her, but I didn’t threaten her or do anything to scare her. She told Bastilla she made it up to get rid of me.”

  “Does Bastilla believe her?”

  “It sounded that way. Ivy called Bastilla, not the other way around. She wanted to file a complaint.”

  “Did she tell them anything new about Byrd?”

  “I don’t think so. Bastilla didn’t say that she did.”

  Alan fell silent for a moment.

  “We should speak with this woman. I went over there again today and she still wasn’t home.”

  “Pike and I were leaving for her apartment when you called.”

  “Good. If you find her, let me know. I think this girl knows more than she’s telling.”

  “I do, too, Alan.”

  “Let me give you my cell number. You won’t have to go through Jacob.”

  He gave me the number, then Pike and I locked up the house. We took both cars in case we had to split up, driving in a loose caravan down through the canyon and east to Ivy Casik’s apartment.

  The modest apartment house held the same watchful silence it had on my earlier visits, as if the building and people within it were sleeping. The afternoon stillness trapped the scent of the gardenias in the courtyard, reminding me of the cloying smell of a funeral parlor.

  Pike and I knocked on Ivy’s door, but, like before, she did not answer.

  Pike said, “Creepy place.”

  “Pod people live here.”

  “Maybe she’s at work.”

  “She’s a website designer. She works at home.”

  Pike reached past me and knocked again. Loud.

  I pressed my ear to the door, listening for movement inside her apartment. A large window was to the left of the door, but Ivy had pulled her drapes. I cupped my face to the window, trying to see through a thin gap in the drapes, but couldn’t see much. The lights were off, but my view was only a thin slice of the interior. The memory of Angel Tomaso’s body was fresh, and I suddenly feared I might find Ivy the same way.

  “You with the noise again.”

  We turned, and saw the pear-shaped manager in his door. He blinked at me, then saw Pike and blinked again.

  He said, “Oh, my.”

  The little pug waddled out between his feet and stood in the courtyard, panting.

  I said, “Sorry. The sound really echoes in here, doesn’t it?”

  “Is this about the police again?”

  He wore the same thin cotton shirt and baggy shorts, and still held a cocktail glass. It might have been the same glass. His legs were lumpy with cellulite and very white.

  I said, “That’s right. We need to see her.”

  “You and everyone else. Someone was here earlier, too, banging away at the door.”

  That would have been Levy.
<
br />   “Was she home?”

  “She travels a lot, you know. I don’t think she saw the note you left in her box.”

  He tinkled the ice again, pissed off I had left the note in her mailbox instead of with him, and frowned at the dog.

  “Go make piddle.”

  The little dog’s round face curled into a smile, then it waddled back into his apartment.

  “She doesn’t tell me when she’s coming and going. If you’d like to leave a note with me this time, I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  I glanced back at her apartment, wondering what was behind the door.

  Pike gestured at the surrounding apartments.

  “She friendly with any of these people? Maybe they know where she is.”

  He sized Pike up and down, and tinkled the ice again. He put out his hand.

  “I’m Darbin Langer. Yours?”

  “Pike.”

  Langer hadn’t bothered to introduce himself to me.

  He shook his head, answering Pike’s question.

  “I doubt it. She isn’t the friendliest person, and we like our privacy here. We like a quiet home without all this coming and going and knocking. They’re all at work anyway, and I’d ask you not to pound on their doors.”

  “How about I slip a note under her door. Maybe that would work better than leaving it in her box.”

  He frowned, pissy again, then turned back into his apartment.

  “Whatever. Just stop with the noise.”

  Pike and I returned to her apartment but I had no intention of leaving a note. I left Pike by her door, then circled behind the building, trying to see inside.

  Climbing roses trellised the walls, bracketing a tall hedge that formed a narrow path leading around the sides of the building. The rose vines drooped over the path, brushing my face like delicate fingers. The stillness and silence felt eerie. I followed the path around the building, peeping in Ivy’s windows like a neighborhood pervert, with the creeped-out feeling I was about to see something I didn’t want to see, like Ivy with a slashed throat.