The Last Detective ec-9

by Robert Crais

  I said, "He couldn't know when Ben would leave my house or be alone, so he needed a safe place to watch and wait. He was some other place until he saw Ben going down the slope, then he came here."

  Pike nodded at the finger ridge across the canyon.

  "Can't see your house from the street below because of the trees and he needed a clear field of view. He had to

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  be across the canyon with a spotting scope or glasses." "That's the way I see it."

  The opposite ridge was a crooked finger of knobby peaks that rose and fell as it stepped down into the basin. Residential streets threaded along its sides, cut by undeveloped wedges where the slopes were too unstable or too steep to hold houses.

  Pike said, "Okay, from where he was, he would have been able to see us here on your deck. That means we can see his hiding place."

  I went inside for my binoculars and the Thomas Guide. I found the page that showed the streets across the canyon, then oriented the map to match the direction of the ridge. There were plenty of places that someone could hide.

  I said, "Okay, if it was you, where would you be?" Pike studied the map, then considered the ridge. "Forget the streets lined with houses. I'd pick a spot where the locals couldn't see me. That means I'd park where people wouldn't wonder about my car."

  "Okay. So you wouldn't leave your car in front of a house. You'd park on a fire trail or pull off the street into the brush."

  "Yeah, but I'd still want fast access to my vehicle. When I saw Ben, I wouldn't have much time to get to my car, drive here, park, then move uphill looking for him."

  It was a long way. Ben could easily be back in my house by the time someone got across.

  "What about two men? One keeping watch, the other

  waiting on this side with a cell phone?"

  Pike shrugged.

  "Either way, someone had to be on the far side, watching. If we're going to find anything, that's where we'll find it."

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  We picked out obvious reference points like an orange house that looked like a Martian temple and a row of six bearded palms in someone's front yard, and marked their locations on the map. Once we had reference points, we took turns glassing the far hillside for houses being remodeled, clumps of trees on undeveloped land, and other likely places where a man could wait for long hours without being seen. We located them on the map relative to our reference points.

  Gittamon came up the hill while we glassed, and nodded at us as he left. I guess he thought we were just killing time. Myers and DeNice came up a little while after and got into the limo. Myers said something to DeNice, and DeNice gave us the finger. Mature. Fontenot trudged up the hill a few minutes later, then DeNice and Fontenot left in the Marquis. Myers went back down the hill to stay with Richard.

  We glassed the ridge for almost two hours, then Joe Pike said, "Let's hunt."

  Ben had been missing for twenty-one hours.

  I thought about telling Starkey what we were doing, but decided that it was better if she didn't know. Richard would bitch and Starkey might feel obligated to remind us that Gittamon had told us not to jeopardize their case. They might have to worry about making a case, but all I cared about was finding a boy.

  We snaked our way across the canyon to the opposite ridge; school had not yet let out, adults were still working, and everyone else was hiding behind locked doors. The world gave no sign that a child had been stolen.

  Everything looked different from a thousand yards away. Close up, the trees and houses were unrecognizable. We checked and rechecked our map against the

  landmarks that we had noted and tried to find our way.

  The first place we searched was an undeveloped area at the end of a fire road. Unpaved fire roads wrap through the Santa Monica Mountains like veins through a body, mostly so that county work crews can cut brush and eliminate fuel before fire season. We parked between two driveways at the end of the pavement and squeezed around the gate.

  Even as we parked, Pike said, "He wasn't here. Parking between these houses is asking to be seen."

  We followed the fire road anyway, jogging together to make better time as we searched for a view of my louse. The brush and scrub oak were so thick that we never once saw my house or my ridge or anything other than sky. It was like running in a tunnel. We jogged even faster going back to my car.

  Seven spots that had seemed likely from my deck were exposed to the neighbors. We scratched them off the map. Four more locations could only be reached by parking in front of houses. We scratched them, too. Every time we saw a home for sale we checked to see if it was occupied. If the house was empty, we went to the door or hopped the side gates to check for a view of my home. Two of the houses could have been used as a blind, but neither showed signs of that kind of use.

  Joe Pike has been my friend and my partner for many years; we were used to each other and worked well together, but the sun seemed to sprint across the sky. Finding likely spots took forever; searching them even longer. Traffic picked up as soccer morns and carpools delivered children from school; kids with skateboards and spiky hair watched us from drives. Adults on their way home from work eyed us suspiciously from their SUVs.

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  I said, "Look at all these people. Somebody saw something. Someone had to." Pike shrugged. "Would they see you?" I looked at the sun and dreaded the coming darkness. Pike said, "Slow down. I know you're scared, but slow down. We move fast, but We don't hurry. You know the drill." "I know." "If you hurry you'll miss something. We'll do what we can, then come back tomorrow." "I said I know." Most of the streets were shoehorned belly to butt with contemporary houses built in the sixties for aerospace engineers and set designers, but a few of the streets held stretches that were either too steep or too unstable to carry a foundation. We found three of those stretches with unobstructed views of my home. The first two were nearly vertical troughs on the inside of sharp curves. You could use them for blinds, but you would need climbing spikes and pitons to hang from the slope. The third was more promising. A shoulder on the point of an outside curve sloped downhill near the foot of the ridge. A house at the beginning of the curve was being remodeled, and more homes sat on the far end, but the point itself was houseless. We pulled off the street and got out of my car. Starkey and Chen were tiny dots of color climbing up to my house. I couldn't tell who was who, but it would have been easy with binoculars. Pike said, "Good view." Two small cars and a dusty pickup were parked off the road near us. They probably belonged to the men who worked at the construction site. One more car wouldn't stand out. I said, "It'll be faster if we split up. You take this side of the shoulder. I'll cross the top, then move down the far side." Pike set off without a word. I worked my way across the top of the shoulder parallel to the street, trying to find a footprint or scuff mark. I didn't. Gray knots of brush sprouted over the slope like mold, thinning around stunted oaks and ragged pine trees. I moved downhill in a zigzag pattern, following erosion cuts and natural paths between great stiff balls of sagebrush. Twice I saw marks that might have been made by someone passing, but they were too faint for me to be sure. The shoulder dropped away. I couldn't see my car or any of the houses on either side of the little point, which meant that the people in those houses couldn't see me. I looked across the canyon. The windows in Grace Gonzalez's house glowed with tight. My A-flame hung from the slope with its deck jutting out like a diving board. If I were surveilling my house, this would be a fine place for it. Pike appeared silently between the brush. "I went down as far as I could, then the slope dropped away. It's too steep on that side for anyone to use." "Then help me with this side." We searched the ground beneath two pines, then worked our way farther down the slope toward a single scrub oak. We moved parallel to each other and ten meters apart, covering more ground that way. Time was everything. Purple shadows pooled around us. The sun kissed the ridge. It would sink faster, racing with the night. Pike said, "Here." I stopped as I was about to take a step. Pike knelt.
He touched the ground, then lifted his glasses to see better in the dim light.

  97 . "What is it?"

  "Got a partial here, then another partial. Moving your way."

  Dampness prickled my hands. Ben had been missing for twenty-six hours. More than a day. The sun settled even faster, like a sinking heart.

  I said, "Do they match with the print we found at my place?"

  "I couldn't see that one clearly enough to know." Pike stepped over the prints. I moved toward the tree. I told myself that these prints could have been made by anyone: neighborhood kids, hikers, a construction worker come looking for a place to piss; but I knew it was the man who had stolen Ben Chenier. I felt it on my skin like too much smog.

  I stepped across an erosion cut between two balls of sagebrush and saw a fresh footprint in the dust between two plates of shale. The print pointed uphill, leading up

  from the tree. "Joe." "Got it."

  We moved closer to the tree, Pike approaching from the left and me from the right. The tree was withered, with spiky branches that had lost most of their leaves. Thin grass had sprouted in the fractured light under the branches. The grass on the uphill side was flat, as if someone had sat on it.

  I did not move closer.

  "Joe."

  "I see it. I've got footprints in the dirt to the left. Can you see?"

  "I see them."

  "You want, I can get closer."

  Behind us, the sun was swallowed by the ridge. The

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  pooling shadows around us deepened and lights came on in the houses on the far ridge. "Not now. Let's tell Starkey. Chen can try to match the prints, and then we have to start knocking on doors. This is it, Joe. He was here. He waited for Ben here." We backed away, then followed our own footprints up the hill. We drove back to my house to call Starkey. We had seen her leave almost two hours ago, but when we tooled around the curve she was parked outside my front door, no one else, just Starkey, sitting behind the wheel of her Crown Vic, smoking. We swung into the carport, then hurried out t'o tell her. I said, "I think we found where he waited, Starkey. We found prints and crushed grass. We've gotta get Chen out to see if the prints match, and then we have to go door-to door. The people who live over there might've seen a car or even a tag:" It came out of me in a torrent as if I expected her to cheer, but she didn't. She looked grim, her face dark like a gathering storm. I said, "I think we have something here, Starkey. What's the matter with you?" She sucked down the last of her cigarette, then crushed it with her toe. "He called again." I knew there was more to it, but I was scared she would tell me that Ben was dead. Maybe she knew what I was thinking. She shrugged, as if that was an answer to the things I wasn't brave enough to ask. "He didn't call you. He called your girlfriend." "What did he say?" Starkey's eyes were careful, like she was hoping I TOO

  would read that part of it, too, so she wouldn't have to explain. "You can hear it yourself. She hit the Record button on her message machine and got most of the call. C'mon, we want you to see if it's the same man." I didn't move. "Did he say something about Ben?" "Not about Ben. C'mon, everybody's down at the station now. Take your own car. I don't want to drive you back after." "Starkey, did he hurt Ben? Goddamnit, tell me what he said." Starkey got into her car and sat quietly for a moment. "He said you killed twenty-six civilians, then you murdered your buddies to get rid of the witnesses. That's what he said, Cole, you wanted to know. Follow me down. We want you to hear it." Starkey drove away, and I was swallowed by darkness.

  time missing: 27 hours, 3z minutes

  The Hollywood Division Police Station was a flat red-brick building a block south of Hollywood Boulevard, midway between Paramount Studios and the Hollywood Bowl. The evening streets were choked with traffic going nowhere at a glacial pace. Tour buses cruised the Walk of Fame and lined the curb outside the Chinese Theatre, filled with tourists who had paid thirty-five dollars to sit in traffic. It was full-on dark when I turned into the parking lot behind the station. Richard's limo was parked by a fence. Starkey was waiting by her car with a fresh cigarette. "Are you carrying a weapon?" IOI

  "It's at home." "You can't bring it inside." "What, Starkey, you think I want to murder some witnesses.Z" Starkey flicked her cigarette hard into the side of a patrol car. A shower of sparks exploded off its fender. "Don't be so testy. Where's Pike.z" "I dropped him off at Lucy's. If this asshole has her phone number, he probably knows where she lives. You worried this is going to luck up your case, too." She didn't fight me about it. "That was Gittamon, not me." We went inside through double glass doors, then along a tile hall into a room marked DETECTIVES. Chest-high partitions cut the room into cubicles, but most of the chairs were empty either crime was rampant or everyone had gone home. Gittamon and Myers were speaking quietly across the room, Myers with a slim leather briefcase. Gittamon excused himself and came over when he saw us. "Did Carol explain what happened?" "She told me about the call. Where's Lucy.z'' "We're set up in an interview room. I'm going to warn you that the tape is disturbing. He says some things." Starkey interupted him. "Before we get to that, Cole should tell you what he found. They might have something, Dave." I described the prints and the crushed grass that Pike and I had found, and what I thought they meant. Gittamon listened like he wasn't sure what to make of it, but Starkey explained. "Cole's making sense about someone having to be across the canyon. I'll check it out with Chen tomorrow as soon as we have enough light. Maybe we'll get a match on the shoes." Myers walked over when he saw us talking, and watched me from under his eyebrows like an aborigine staring at the sun.

  He said, "You must be a clue magnet, Cole, finding all these things the way you do. Is that just good luck?"

  I turned away from him. It was that or hit him in the neck.

  "Gittamon, are we going to hear this tape or not?" They brought me to an interview room where Lucy and Richard were waiting at a clean gray table. The room was painted beige because an LAPD psychologist had determined that beige was soothing, but nobody looked soothed.

  Richard said, "Finally. The sonofabitch called Lucy, Cole. He phoned her goddamned house."

  He put his hand on her back, but she shrugged it away.

  "Richard, you're really pissing me off with the snide remarks."

  Richard's jaw knotted, and he looked away. I pulled a

  chair beside her and lowered my voice.

  "How are you?"

  She softened for a moment, but then a fierceness came to her face.

  "I want to find this sonofabitch myself. I want to undo all this and make sure that Ben is safe and then I want to

  do things to this man."

  "I know. Me, too."

  She glanced at me with her fierce eyes, then shook her head and stared at the tape recorder. Gittamon took a seat opposite her, and Starkey and Myers stood in the door.

  Gittamon said, "Ms. Chenier, you don't have to hear this again. There's really no need."

  "I want to hear it. I'll be hearing it all night."

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  "All right, then. Mr. Cole, just so you know, Ms. Chenier received the call at five-forty this evening. She was able to record most of the conversation, but not the beginning, so what you're about to hear is an incomplete conversation."

  "Starkey told me part of that, yes. Did you trace back to the same number?"

  "The phone company is working on it now. This recording you're about to hear is a duplicate, so the sound quality isn't so good. We've sent the original to SID. They might be able to pull something off the background, but it isn't likely."

  "All right. I understand that."

  Gittamon pressed the Play button. The cheap speaker filled with an audible hiss, then a male voice began in mid-sentence:

  The Voice: --know you had nothing to do with this, but

  that fucker's gotta pay for what he did.

  Lucy: Please don't hurt him! Let him go!

  The Voice: Shut up and listen! You listen! Cole killed them! I know
what happened and you don't, so LISTEN!

  Gittamon stopped the tape.

  "Is this the man who called you last night?"

  "Yes, that's him."

  Everyone in the room watched me, but Richard and Lucy most of all. Richard was slumped back in his chair with his arms crossed, looking sullen, but Lucy was leaning forward, poised at the edge of the table like a swimmer preparing to race. I had never seen her looking at me that way.

  Gittamon noted my answer in his pad.

  "All right. Now that you're hearing the voice a second time, does anything about it ring a bell? Do you recognize him?"

  "No, nothing. I don't know who it is."

  Lucy said, "Are you sure?"

  The sinews and tendons stood taut on her hands and her breath labored as if she was holding an enormous weight.

  "I don't know him, Luce." Gittamon touched the button again. "All right, then. We'll go on."

  When he pressed the button, their voices overlapped, each shouting to be heard over the other.

  Lucy: Please, I'm begging you- The Voice: I was there, lady, I know! They slaughtered

  twenty-six people- Lucy: Ben is a child! He never hurt anyone! Please!

  The Voice: They were in the bush, off on their own, so they figured, what the fuck, no one will know if we don't tell them, so they swore each other to secrecy, but Cole didn't trust them- Lucy: --tell me what you want! P]ease, just let my son

  go- The Voice:--Abbott, Rodriguez, the others---he murdered them to get rid of the witnesses! He fired up his own team! Lucy: He's a baby--!

  The Voice:--sorry it had to be your son, but Cole's

  gonna pay. This is his fault.

  The message stopped.

  The tape recorder hissed quietly for several seconds, then Gittamon rewound the tape. Someone shifted

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  behind me, either Starkey or Myers, then Gittamon cleared his throat.

  I said, "Jeez. If he knows all that, I must've let one get away."