by Robert Crais
One moment, on his way to earn an honest wage; the next, at the precipice of destruction.
Life was odd.
Edward stumbled back, and the man came for him.
Powered by a triple shot of adrenaline, Edward gripped the Sony Discman and swung it at the man's head as hard as he could, but the man caught his arm, twisted, and Edward felt the pain before he heard the snap.
Edward Deege, Master Carpenter, threw himself backward and tried to scream—
—but by then the man had his throat—
—and crushed it.
John Chen on the case.
The next morning, when John Chen ducked under the yellow police crime scene tape that sealed the trail leading down to Lake Hollywood, the pencil caddy in his shirt pocket fell into the weeds, scattering pens and pencils everywhere.
"Shit."
Chen glanced back up the road at the two uniformed cops leaning against the front of their radio car, but they were looking the other way and hadn't seen him. Good. There was a guy cop and a girl cop, and the girl cop was pretty good-looking, so John Chen didn't want her to think he was a dork.
John gathered up the Paper-Mate Sharpwriter pencils that he collected like a dust magnet, then jammed the caddy back into his pocket. He thought better of it, and put the caddy into his evidence kit. He'd be bending over a lot today and the damned caddy would keep falling, making him look like a world-class geek. It didn't matter that once he was down at the crime scene no one would be around to see. He'd feel like a geek all the same, and John had a theory that he tried to live by: If you practiced being not-a-geek when you were alone, it would eventually rub off and you would become not-a-geek when you were around good-looking babes.
John Chen was the junior criminalist in the LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division, this being only the third case to which he'd been assigned without a supervisor. Chen was not a police officer. Like everyone else in SID, he was a civilian employee, and to be just a little on the nose about it (as John
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was), he couldn't have passed the LAPD's physical aptitude requirements to win a blow job from the Bunny of the Month. At six feet two, one hundred twenty-seven pounds, and with an Adam's apple that bobbed around with a life of its own, John Chen was, by his own merciless description, a geek (and this did not even include the horrendously thick glasses he was doomed to wear). His plan to overcome this handicap included working harder than anyone else in SID, rapid advancement to a senior management position (with the attendant raise in salary), and the immediate acquisition of a Porsche Boxster, with which Chen was convinced he could score major poontang.
As the criminalist assigned to the case, Chen's responsibility was any and all physical evidence that would help the detectives identify and convict the perpetrator of the crime. Chen could have rushed through his inspection of the Garcia crime scene yesterday, tagging and bagging everything in sight and leaving it to the detectives to sort out, but, in the failing twilight after Karen Garcia's body had been removed, he had decided to return today and had ordered the site sealed. The detectives in charge had closed the lake, and the two uniformed officers had spent the night guarding the site. As the male uniform had a hickey on his neck that was not in evidence yesterday, Chen suspected that they had also spent the night making out, that suspicion confirming what he believed to be an undeniable fact: Everybody was getting some but him.
Chen grimly put the good fortune of others out of his thoughts and continued along the trail until he came to the little clearing where the vie had been murdered. The wind had died sometime during the night, so the trees were straight and still, and the reservoir was a great pool of glass. It was as quiet as the proverbial tomb.
John put down his evidence kit (which looked like a large tackle box, but weighed more) and leaned over the lip of the bluff to see where the body had been. He had photographed the site yesterday before the body was moved, and had taken a sample from where the vic's blood had dripped onto a bed of olive leaves. A little metal wire with a white flag now stood at
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that spot. He had also tried to isolate and identify the various footprints around the body, and he believed he had done a pretty good job of separating the prints of the two men who discovered the vie (both were wearing cleat-soled hiking boots; one probably Nautica, the other probably Red Wing) and of the cops and the coroner investigator who had walked around the area like they were on a grade school field trip. The goddamned coroner investigator was supposed to be cognizant of the scene, but, in fact, didn't give a damn about anything but the stiff. Chen, however, had dutifully marked and measured each shoe print, then located it on a crime scene diagram, as he had located (and oriented) the body, the blood evidence, a Reese's Pieces wrapper and three cigarette butts (which he was certain were irrelevant), and all necessary topographical features. All the measuring and diagramming had taken a long time, and by the time he had moved up here to the clearing at the top of the draw—where the shooting occurred—he had only had time to note the scuff marks and broken vegetation where the vie had fallen. It was at this point that he had dropped a flag on the play and suggested to the detectives that he come back today. If nothing else, his coming back might score points when promotions rolled around, putting him that much closer to the 'tang-mobile.
Standing at the top of the bluff, John Chen imagined the vie at the water's edge where he had first seen her, then turned his attention to the trail. The lip of the bluff had crumbled where the vie had fallen, and, if Chen backed up a step, he could see a bright scuff at the edge of the trail. The vie had probably taken the bullet there, her left toe dragging as she collapsed, the lip giving way as she tumbled down toward the lake. He noticed something white at the edge of the trail by the scuff, and saw that it was a triangular bit of white plastic, maybe a quarter inch on a side, and soiled by what appeared to be a gray, gummy substance. It was probably nothing—most of what you found at a crime scene was nothing—but he took a marking wire from the evidence kit, marked the plastic, and noted it on his evidence diagram.
That done, he considered the trail again. He knew where
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the victim had been, but where was the shooter? From the wound, Chen knew that the shooter had been directly in front of her, on the trail. He squatted in the trail to try to pick out where the shooter had been standing, but couldn't. By the time the vie was discovered, by the time the police sealed the area and Chen arrived, an unknown number of walkers and runners had come by and damn near obliterated everything. Chen sighed as he stared at the trail, then shook his head in defeat. He had hoped for a shoe print, but there was nothing. So much for coming back the next day. So much for fast advancement and a poontang Porsche. His supervisor would probably raise hell about wasting overtime.
John Chen was listening to the wind and wondering what to do next when a soft voice behind him said, "To the side."
Chen jumped up, stumbling over his own feet as the diagram fell into the weeds.
The man said, "We don't want extra prints on the trail."
The man himself was standing off the trail in the weeds, and Chen wondered how he'd gotten here without Chen having heard. The man was almost as tall as Chen, but roped with lean muscle. He wore dark glasses and short military hair, and Chen was scared to death of him. For all John knew, this guy was the shooter, come back to pop another vie. He looked like a shooter. He looked like a psychopath who liked to pull the trigger, and those two damned uniforms were probably still making out, the girl slurping hickies the size of Virginia all over her partner's neck.
Chen said, "This is a police crime scene. You're not supposed to be here."
The man said, "Let me see."
He held out his hand and Chen knew he meant the diagram. Chen passed it over. It didn't occur to him not to.
First thing the man said was, "Where's the shooter?"
Chen felt him
self darken. "I can't place him. There's too much obscuration." He sounded whiny when he said it, and that made him even more embarrassed. "The police are up on the road. They'll be down any minute."
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The man stayed with the diagram and seemed not to hear him. Chen wondered if he should make a run for it.
The man handed back the diagram. "Step off the trail, John."
"How'd you know my name?"
"It's on the document form."
"Oh." Chen felt five years old and ashamed of himself. He was certain he would never get that Porsche. "Do you have any business being here? Who are you?"
The man bent close to the trail, looking at it from a sharp angle. The man stared at the scuffmark for a time, then moved up the trail a few feet where he went down into a push-up position. He held himself like that without effort, and Chen thought that he must be very strong. Worse, Chen decided that this guy probably got all the poon he could handle. Chen was just beginning to think that maybe he should join a gym (this guy obviously lived in one) when the man stepped to the side of the trail, and looked in the brush and weeds.
John said, "What are you looking for?"
The man didn't answer, just patiently turned up leaves and twigs, and lifted the ivy.
John took one step closer and the man raised a finger, the ringer saying: Don't.
John froze.
The man continued looking, his search area growing, and John never moved. He stood frozen there, wondering if maybe he should shout for help, sourly thinking that those two up in the radio car were so busy huffing and puffing that they'd never hear his cries.
The man said, "Your evidence kit."
John picked up his evidence kit and started forward.
The man raised the finger again, then pointed out a long half-moon route off the trail. "That way."
John crashed through the low brush where the man told him, ripping his pants in two places and picking up a ton of little scratches that pissed him off, but when he arrived, the man said, "Here."
A brass .22 casing was resting under an olive leaf.
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John said, "Holy jumpin' Jesus." He stared at the man, who seemed to be staring back, though John couldn't tell for sure because of the dark glasses. "How'd you find this?"
"Mark it."
The man went back to the trail, this time squatting. John jammed a wire into the ground by the casing, then hurried to join him. The man pointed. "Look. Here to the side."
John looked, but saw nothing. "What?"
"Shoe." The man pointed closer. "Here."
John saw little bits and pieces of many prints, but couldn't imagine what this guy was talking about. "I don't see anything."
The man didn't say anything for a moment.
"Lean close, John. Use the sun. Let the light catch it, and you'll see the depression. A three-quarter print." His voice was infinitely patient, and John was thankful for that.
John rested with his belly in the brush alongside the trail, and looked for the longest time where the man pointed. He was just about to admit that he couldn't see a goddamned thing when he finally saw it: Three-quarters of a print, partially obscured by a runner's shoe print, and so shallow on the hard edge of the trail that it couldn't have been more than three grains of dust deep. It appeared to have been made by a casual dress shoe of some kind, like that worn by a cop, but maybe not.
John said, "The shooter?"
"It's pointing in the right direction. It's where the shooter had to be."
John glanced back toward the shell casing. "So you figured an automatic? That's why you looked over there?" An automatic would eject to the right, and would toss a .22 casing about four feet. Then John thought of something and squinted at the man. "But what if the guy had used a revolver? A revolver wouldn't leave anything behind."
"Then I wouldn't have found anything." The man cocked his head almost as if he was amused. "All the people around, and no one heard it. Can't silence a revolver, John."
John felt a blush creeping up his face again. "I know that."
The man moved along the trail, dropping into his push-up
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position every few feet before rising and moving on. John thought that now would be an ideal time to run for the two uniforms, but instead jammed a wire into the ground to mark the print, and followed the man to a stand of leafy scrub sumac at the edge of the little clearing just up the trail. The man circled the trees, first one way, then another, twice bending low to the ground.
"He waited here until he saw her."
John moved closer, careful to stay behind the man, and, sure enough, there were three perfect prints in the hard dirt that appeared to match the partial by the shell casing. As before, the prints were slight, and damn near invisible even after the man pointed them out, but John was getting better at this.
By the time John had taken it all in, the man was moving again. John hurried to wire the site before hustling to catch up.
They came to the chain-link fence that paralleled the road, and stopped at the gate. John guessed that the paved road would be as far as they could go, but the man stared across the road as if the slope on the other side was speaking to him. The radio car was to their left at the curve, but judging by the way the two cops were wrestling around in the back seat, they wouldn't notice an atom bomb going off behind them. Sluts.
The man looked up at the ridge. Off to their left were houses; to their right, nothing. The man's gaze went to a little stand of jacaranda trees at the edge of the road to their right, and then he was crossing and John was following.
John said, "You think he crossed there?"
The man didn't answer. Okay. He wasn't talkative. John could live with that.
The man searched the slope in front of the jacarandas and found something that made his mouth twitch.
John said, "What? C'mon?"
The man pointed to a small fan of loose dirt that had tumbled onto the shoulder of the road. "Hid behind the trees until people passed, then went through the gate."
"Cool." John Chen was liking this. Big time.
They climbed the slope, the shooter's prints now pronounced in the loose soil of the side hill. They worked their way to the
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ridgeline, then went over the top to a fire road. John hadn't even known that a fire road was up here.
He said, "I'll be damned."
The man followed the fire road about thirty yards before he stopped and stared at nothing again. John waited, biting the inside of his mouth rather than again asking what the man was looking at.
But finally he couldn't stand it and said, "What, for chrissake?"
"Car." The man pointed. "Parked here." Pointed again. "Coolant or oil drips here. Tire tread there."
John was already marking the spots with wire.
The man said, "Off-road tread. Long wheelbase."
"Off-road? Like a Jeep?"
"Like that."
John wrote notes as fast as he could, thinking that he'd have to call his office for the things he'd need to take a tire impression.
"He parked here because he's been here before. He knew where he was going."
"You think he knew her?"
The man looked at John Chen then, and Chen reflexively stepped back. He didn't know why.
"Looked to be about a size-ten shoe, didn't it, John?"
"Uh-huh."
"Pretty deep on the hard pack, which makes him heavier than he should be." Pretty deep. Three grains of dust. "You can use the shoe size and his weight to build a body type. An impression of the shoe print will give you the brand of shoe."
"I know." John was annoyed. Maybe John wouldn't have found any of this evidence on his own, but he wasn't an idiot.
"Take an impression of the tires. Identify the size and brand. From that, you get a list of makes."
"I know."
The man stared down at the lake no
w, and John wondered what could be going on behind those dark glasses.
"You one of the detectives from downtown?"
The man didn't answer.
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"Well, you gotta tell me your name and badge number for the report."
The man angled the glasses back at him. "If you tell them this came from me, they'll discount it."
John Chen blinked at him. "But... what do I tell them about all this?"
"I was never here, John. What does that leave?"