The Last Detective

The headstone anchors me in the dream with a weight I cannot escape. It is a small black rectangle let into the earth, kissed red by the setting sun. I stare down at the hard marble, burning with a hunger to know who lies within the earth, but the headstone is blank. No name marks this resting place. My only clue is this: The grave is small. I am standing over a child.

I have the dream often now, almost every night, some nights more than once. I sleep little on those nights; instead, I rise to sit in the darkness of my empty home. Even then, I am a prisoner of the dream.

Here is what happens: The sky darkens as a mist settles across the cemetery. The twisted limbs of an ancient oak drip with moss, swaying in the night breeze. I do not know where this place is, or how I got there. I am alone, and I am scared. Shadows flicker at the edge of light; voices whisper, but I cannot understand. One shade might be my mother, another the father I never knew. I want to ask them who lies in this grave, but when I turn for their help I find only darkness. No one remains to ask, no one to help. I am on my own.

The nameless headstone waits for me.

What lies here?

Who has left this child alone?

I am desperate to escape this place. I want to beat feet, boogie, truck, book, haul ass, motor, shred, jet, jam, split, cut out, blow, roll, abandon, get away, get gone, scram, RUN… but in the strange way of dreams a shovel appears in my hands. My feet will not move, my body will not obey. A voice in my head tells me to throw the blade aside, but a power I cannot resist forces my hand: If I dig, I will find; if I find, I will know. The voice pleads with me to stop, but I am possessed. The voice warns that I will not want to see the secrets that lie below, but I dig deep and true to expose the grave.

The black earth opens.

The casket is revealed.

The voice shrieks for me to stop, to look away, to save myself, and so I clench my eyes. I have recognized the voice. It is my own.

I fear what lies at my feet, but I have no choice. I must see the truth.

My eyes open.

I look.

CHAPTER 1

A silence filled the canyon below my house that fall; no hawks floated overhead, the coyotes did not sing, the owl that lived in the tall pine outside my door no longer asked my name. A smarter person would have taken these things as a warning, but the air was chill and clear in that magnified way it can be in the winter, letting me see beyond the houses sprinkled on the hillsides below and out into the great basin city of Los Angeles. On days like those when you can see so far, you often forget to look at what is right in front of you, what is next to you, what is so close that it is part of you. I should have seen the silence as a warning, but I did not.

"How many people has she killed?"

Grunts, curses, and the snap of punches came from the next room.

Ben Chenier shouted, "What?"

"How many people has she killed?"

We were twenty feet apart, me in the kitchen and Ben in the living room, shouting at the tops of our lungs; Ben Chenier, also known as my girlfriend's ten- year- old son, and me, also known as Elvis Cole, the World's Greatest Detective and Ben's caretaker while his mother, Lucy Chenier, was away on business. This was our fifth and final day together.

I went to the door.

"Is there a volume control on that thing?"

Ben was so involved with something called a Game Freak that he did not look up. You held the Game Freak like a pistol with one hand and worked the controls with the other while the action unfolded on a built-in computer screen. The salesman told me that it was a hot seller with boys ages ten to fourteen. He hadn't told me that it was louder than a shoot-out at rush hour.

Ben had been playing the game since I had given it to him the day before, but I knew he wasn't enjoying himself, and that bothered me. He had hiked with me in the hills and let me teach him some of the things I knew about martial arts and had come with me to my office because he thought private investigators did more than phone deadbeat clients and clean pigeon crap off balcony rails. I had brought him to school in the mornings and home in the afternoons, and between those times we had cooked Thai food, watched Bruce Willis movies, and laughed a lot together. But now he used the game to hide from me with an absolute lack of joy. I knew why, and seeing him like that left me feeling badly, not only for him, but for my part in it. Fighting it out with Yakuza spree killers was easier than talking to boys.

I went over and dropped onto the couch next to him.

"We could go for a hike up on Mulholland."

He ignored me.

"You want to work out? I could show you another tae kwon do kata before your mom gets home."

"Uh-uh."

I said, "You want to talk about me and your mom?"

I am a private investigator. My work brings me into contact with dangerous people, and early last summer that danger rolled over my shores when a murderer named Laurence Sobek threatened Lucy and Ben. Lucy was having a tough time with that, and Ben had heard our words. Lucy and Ben's father had divorced when Ben was six, and now he worried that it was happening again. We had tried to talk to him, Lucy and I, but boys – like men – find it hard to open their hearts.

Instead of answering me, Ben thumbed the game harder and nodded toward the action on the screen.

"Check it out. This is the Queen of Blame."

Perfect.

A young Asian woman with spiky hair, breasts the size of casaba melons, and an angry snarl jumped over a Dumpster to face three musclebound steroid-juicers in what appeared to be a devastated urban landscape. A tiny halter barely covered her breasts, sprayed-on shorts showed her butt cheeks, and her voice growled electronically from the Game Freak's little speaker.

"'You're my toilet!"

She let loose with a martial arts sidekick that spun the first attacker into the air.

I said, "Some woman."

"Uh-huh. A bad guy named Modus sold her sister into slavery, and now the Queen is going to make him pay the ultimate price."

The Queen of Blame punched a man three times her size with left and rights so fast that her hands blurred. Blood and teeth flew everywhere.

"Eat fist, scum!"

I spotted a pause button on the controls, and stopped the game. Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking with a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that, now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.

I said, "I know that what's going on between me and your mom is scary. I just want you to know that we're going to get through this. Your mom and I love each other. We're going to be fine."

"I know."

"She loves you. I love you, too."

Ben stared at the frozen screen for a little while longer, and then he looked up at me. His little-boy face was smooth and thoughtful. He wasn't stupid; his room and dad loved him, too, but that hadn't stopped them from getting divorced.

"Elvis?"

"What?"

"I had a really good time staying with you. I wish I didn't have to leave."

"Me, too, pal. I'm glad you were here."

Ben smiled, and I smiled back. Funny, how a moment like that could fill a man with hope. I patted his leg.

"Here's the plan: Mom's going to get back soon. We should clean the place so she doesn't think we're pigs, then we should get the grill ready so we're good to go with dinner when she gets home. Burgers okay?"

"Can I finish the game first? The Queen of Blame is about to find Modus."

"Sure. How about you take her out onto the deck? She's pretty loud."

"Okay."

I went back into the kitchen, and Ben took the Queen and her breasts outside. Even that far away, I heard her clearly. "Your face is pizza!" Then her victim shrieked in pain.

I should have heard more. I should have listened even harder.

Less than three minutes later, Lucy called from her car. It was twenty-two minutes after four. I had just taken the hamburger meat from my refrigerator.

I said, "Hey. Where are you?"

" Long Beach. Traffic's good, so I'm making great time. How are you guys holding up?"

Lucy Chenier was a legal commentator for a local television station. Before that, she had practiced civil law in Baton Rouge, which is what she was doing when we met. Her voice still held the hint of a French-Louisiana accent, but you had to listen closely to hear it. She had been in San Diego covering a trial.

"We're good. I'm getting hamburgers together for when you get here."

"How's Ben?"

"He was feeling low today, but we talked. He's better now. He misses you."

We fell into a silence that lasted too long. Lucy had phoned every night, and we laughed well enough, but our exchanges felt incomplete though we tried to pretend they weren't. It wasn't easy being hooked up with the World's Greatest Detective.

Finally, I said, "I missed you."

"I missed you, too. It's been a long week. Hamburgers sound really good. Cheeseburgers. With lots of pickles."

She sounded tired. But she also sounded as if she was smiling.

"I think we can manage that. I got your pickle for ya right here."

Lucy laughed. I'm the World's Funniest Detective, too.

She said, "How can I pass up an offer like that?"

"You want to speak with Ben? He just went outside."

"That's all right. Tell him that I'm on my way and that I love him, and then you can tell yourself that I love you, too."

We hung up and I went out onto the deck to pass along the good word, but the deck was empty. I went to the rail. Ben liked to play on the slope below my house and climb in the black walnut trees that grow further down the hill. More houses were nestled beyond the trees on the streets that web along the hillsides. The deepest cuts in the canyon were just beginning to purple, but the light was still good. I didn't see him.

"Ben?"

He didn't answer.

"Hey, buddy! Mom called!"

He still didn't answer.

I checked the side of the house, then went back inside and called him again, thinking maybe he had gone to the guest room where he sleeps or the bathroom.

"Yo, Ben! Where are you?"

Nothing.

I looked in the guest room and the downstairs bathroom, then went out the front door into the street. I live on a narrow private road that winds along the top of the canyon. Cars rarely pass except when my neighbors go to and from work, so it's a safe street, and great for skateboarding.

"Ben?"

I didn't see him. I went back inside the house. "Ben! That was Mom on the phone!"

I thought that might get an answer. The Mom Threat.

"If you're hiding, this is a problem. It's not funny."

I went upstairs to my loft, but didn't find him. I went downstairs again to the deck.

"BEN!"

My nearest neighbor had two little boys, but Ben never went over without first telling me. He never went down the slope or out into the street or even into the carport without first letting me know, either. It wasn't his way. It also wasn't his way to pull a David Copperfield

and disappear.

I went back inside and phoned next door. I could see Grace Gonzalez's house from my kitchen window.

"Grace? It's Elvis next door."

Like there might be another Elvis further up the block.

"Hey, bud. How's it going?"

Grace calls me bud. She used to be a stuntwoman until she married a stuntman she met falling off a twelve-story building and retired to have two boys.

"Is Ben over there?"

"Nope. Was he supposed to be?"

"He was here a few minutes ago, but now he's not. I thought he might have gone to see the boys."

Grace hesitated, and her voice lost its easygoing familiarity for something more concerned.

"Let me ask Andrew. They could have gone downstairs without me seeing."

Andrew was her oldest, who was eight. His younger brother, Clark, was six. Ben told me that Clark liked to eat his own snot.

I checked the time again. Lucy had called at four twenty-two; it was now four thirty-eight. I brought the phone out onto my deck, hoping to see Ben trudging up the hill, but the hill was empty.

Grace came back on the line.

"Elvis?"

"I'm here."

"My guys haven't seen him. Let me look out front. Maybe he's in the street."

"Thanks, Grace."

Her voice carried clearly across the bend in the canyon that separated our homes when she called him, and then she came back on the line.

"I can see pretty far both ways, but I don't see him. You want me to come over there and help you look?"

"You've got your hands full with Andrew and Clark. If he shows up, will you keep him there and call me?"

"Right away."

I turned off the phone, and stared down into the canyon. The slope was not steep, but he could have taken a tumble or fallen from a tree. I left the phone on the deck and worked my way down the slope. My feet sank into the loose soil, and footing was poor.

"Ben! Where in hell are you?"

Walnut trees twisted from the hillside like gnarled fingers, their trunks gray and rough. A lone yucca tree grew in a corkscrew among the walnuts with spiky leaves like green-black starbursts. The rusted remains of a chain-link fence were partially buried by years of soil movement. The largest walnut tree pushed out of the ground beyond the fence with five heavy trunks that spread like an opening hand. I had twice climbed in the tree with Ben, and we had talked about building a tree house between the spreading trunks.

"Ben!"

I listened hard. I took a deep breath, exhaled, then held my breath. I heard a faraway voice.

" BEN! "

I imagined him further down the slope with a broken leg. Or worse.

"I'm coming."

I hurried.

I followed the voice through the trees and around a bulge in the finger, certain that I would find him, but as I went over the hump I heard the voice more clearly and knew that it wasn't his. The Game Freak was waiting for me in a nest of stringy autumn grass. Ben was gone.

I called as loudly as I could.

" BEN!!! "

No answer came except for the sound of my own thundering heart and the Queen's tinny voice. She had finally found Modus, a great fat giant of a man with a bullet head and pencil-point eyes. She launched kick after kick, punch after punch, screaming her vow of vengeance as the two of them fought in an endless loop through a blood-drenched room.

"Now you die! Now you die! Now you die!"

I held the Queen of Blame close, and hurried back up the hill.

CHAPTER 2

time missing: 00 hours, 21 minutes

The sun was dropping. Shadows pooled in the deep cuts between the ridges as if the canyon was filling with ink. I left a note in the middle of the kitchen floor: STAY HERE – I'M LOOKING FOR U, then drove down through the canyon, trying to find him.

If Ben had sprained an ankle or twisted a knee, he might have hobbled downhill instead of making the steep climb back to my house; he might have knocked on someone's door for help; he might be limping home on his own. I told myself, sure, that had to be it. Ten- year- old boys don't simply vanish.

When I reached the street that follows the drainage below my house, I parked and got out. The light was fading faster and the murk made it difficult to see. I called for him.

"Ben?"

If Ben had come downhill, he would have passed beside one of three houses. No one was home at the first two, but a housekeeper answered at the third. She let me look in their backyard, but watched me from the windows as if I might steal the pool toys. Nothing. I boosted myself to see over a cinder-block wall into the neighboring yards, but he wasn't there, either. I called him again.

"Ben!"

I went back to my car. It was all too easy and way too likely that we would miss each other; as I drove along one street, Ben might turn down another. By the time I was on that street, he could reappear behind me, but I didn't know what else to do.

Twice I waved down passing security patrols to ask if they had seen a boy matching Ben's description. Neither had, but they took my name and number, and offered to call if they found him.

I drove faster, trying to cover as much ground as possible before the sun set. I crossed and re-crossed the same streets, winding through the canyon as if it was me who was lost and not Ben. The streets were brighter the higher I climbed, but a chill haunted the shadows. Ben was wearing a sweatshirt over jeans. It didn't seem enough.

When I reached home, I called out again as I let myself in, but still got no answer. The note that I left was untouched, and the message counter read zero.

I phoned the dispatch offices of the private security firms that service the canyon, including the company that owned the two cars I had already spoken to. Their cars prowled the canyons every day around the clock, and the companies' signs were posted as a warning to burglars in front of almost every house. Welcome to life in the city. I explained that a child was missing in the area and gave them Ben's description. Even though I wasn't a subscriber, they were happy to help.

When I put down the phone, I heard the front door open and felt a spike of relief so sharp that it was painful.

"Ben!"

"It's me."

Lucy came into the living room. She was wearing a black business suit over a cream top, but she was carrying the suit jacket; her pants were wrinkled from so long in the car. She was clearly tired, but she made a weak smile.

"Hey. I don't smell hamburgers."

It was two minutes after six. Ben had been missing for exactly one hundred minutes. It had taken Lucy exactly one hundred minutes to get home after we last spoke. It had taken me one hundred minutes to lose her son.

Lucy saw the fear in my face. Her smile dropped.

"What's wrong?"

"Ben's missing."

She glanced around as if Ben might be hiding behind the couch, giggling at the joke. She knew it wasn't a joke. She could see that I was serious.

"What do you mean, missing?"

Explaining felt lame, as if I was making excuses.

"He went outside around the time you called, and now I can't find him. I called, but he didn't answer. I drove all over the canyon, looking for him, but I didn't see him. He isn't next door. I don't where he is."

She shook her head as if I had made a frustrating mistake, and was getting the story wrong.

"He just left?"

I showed her the Game Freak as if it was evidence.

"I don't know. He was playing with this when he went out. I found it on the slope."

Lucy stalked past me and went outside onto the deck.

"Ben! Benjamin, you answer me! Ben!"

"Luce, I've been calling him."

She stalked back into the house and disappeared down the hall.

"Ben!"

"He's not here. I called the security patrols. I was just going to call the police."

She returned and went right back onto the deck.

"Damnit, Ben, you'd better answer me!"

I stepped out behind her and took her arms. She was shaking. She turned into me, and we held each other. Her voice was small and guilty against my chest.

"Do you think he ran away?"

"No. No, he was fine, Luce. He was okay after we talked. He was laughing at this stupid game."

I told her that I thought he had probably hurt himself when he was playing on the slope, then gotten lost trying to find his way back.

"Those streets are confusing down there, the way they snake and twist. He probably just got turned around, and now he's too scared to ask someone for help; he's been warned about strangers enough. If he got on the wrong street and kept walking, he probably got farther away, and more lost. He's probably so scared right now that he hides whenever a car passes, but we'll find him. We should call the police."

Lucy nodded against me, wanting to believe, and then she looked at the canyon. Lights from the houses were beginning to sparkle.

She said, "It's getting dark."

That single word: Dark. It summoned every parent's greatest dread.

I said, "Let's call. The cops will light up every house in the canyon until we find him."

As Lucy and I stepped back into the house, the phone rang. Lucy jumped even more than me.

"That's Ben."

I answered the phone, but the voice on the other end didn't belong to Ben or Grace Gonzalez or the security patrols.

A man said, "Is this Elvis Cole?"

"Yes. Who's this?"

The voice was cold and low.

He said, "Five-two."

"Who is this?"

"Five-two, motherfucker. You remember five-two?"

Lucy plucked my arm, hoping that it was about Ben. I shook my head, telling her I didn't understand, but the sharp fear of bad memories was already cutting deep.

I gripped the phone with both hands. I needed both to hang on.

"Who is this? What are you talking about?"

"This is payback, you bastard. This is for what you did."

I held the phone even tighter, and heard myself shout.

"What did I do? What are you talking about?"

"You know what you did. I have the boy."

The line went dead.

Lucy plucked harder.

"Who was it? What did they say?"

I didn't feel her. I barely heard her. I was caught in a yellowed photo album from my own past, flipping through bright green pictures of another me, a much different me, and of young men with painted faces, hollow eyes, and the damp sour smell of fear.

Lucy pulled harder.

"Stop it! You're scaring me."

"It was a man, I don't know who. He says he took Ben."

Lucy grabbed my arm with both hands.

"Ben was stolen? He was kidnapped? What did the man say? What does he want?"

My mouth was dry. My neck cramped with painful knots.

"He wants to punish me. For something that happened a long time ago."

BOYS BEING BOYS

On the second day of his five-day visit, Ben waited until Elvis Cole was washing his car before sneaking upstairs. Ben had been planning his assault on Elvis Cole's personal belongings for many weeks. Elvis was a private investigator, which was a pretty cool thing to be, and he also had some pretty neat stuff: He had a great videotape and DVD collection of old science fiction and horror movies that Ben could watch any time he wanted and about a hundred superhero magnets stuck all owe his refrigerator and a bullet-proof vest hanging in his front entry closet. You didn't see that every day. Elvis even had business cards saying he was "the biggest dick in the business." Ben showed one to his friends at school and everyone had laughed.

Ben was convinced – profoundly supremely certain – that Elvis Cole had a treasure of other cool stuff stashed in his upstairs closet. Ben knew, for instance, that Elvis kept guns up there, but he also knew that the guns and ammunition were locked in a special safe that Ben could not open. Ben didn't know what he would find, but he thought he might luck out with a couple of issues of Playboy or some neat police stuff like handcuffs or a blackjack (what, to his mom's horror, his Uncle René down in St. Charles Parish called a "nigger-knocker.")

So when Elvis went outside to wash his car that morning, Ben peeked out the window. When he saw Elvis filling a bucket with soapy water, Ben raced through the house to the stairs.

Elvis Cole and his cat slept upstairs in an open loft that looked down over the living room. The cat didn't like Ben or his mom, but Ben tried not to take it personally. This cat didn't like anyone except for Elvis and his partner, Joe Pike. Every time Ben walked into a room where that cat was, the cat would lower its ears and growl. This cat wouldn't run if you tried to shoo it, either; it would creep toward you sideways with its hair standing up. Ben was scared of it.

Ben worked his way to the head of the stairs, then peered over the top riser to make sure the cat wasn't sleeping on the bed.

The coast was clear.

No cat.

The water still ran.

Ben ran to the closet. He had already been in Elvis's closet a couple of times when Elvis showed his mom the gun safe, so he knew that the little room contained boxes on high shelves, Tupperware containers filled with mysterious shadows that might be pictures, stacks of old magazines, and other potentially cool stuff. Ben riffled through the magazines first, hoping for hot porn like his friend Billy Toman brought to school, but was disappointed by their content: mostly boring issues of Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Ben hoisted himself up to see what was on top of the gun safe, a huge steel box as tall as Ben that filled the end of the closet, but all he found were a few old baseball caps, a clock where time had stopped, a framed color picture of an old woman standing on a porch, and a second framed picture of Elvis and Ben's mom sitting in a restaurant. No handcuffs or nigger-knockers.

A high shelf stretched across the closet. The shelf was beyond Ben's reach, but he saw boots, some boxes, a sleeping bag, what looked like a shoe shine kit, and a black nylon gym bag. Ben thought that the gym bag might be worth checking out, but he would need to grow a couple of feet to reach it. Ben considered the safe. If he pushed himself up, then sat on the safe, he could probably reach the gym bag. He carefully placed his hands on top of the safe, heaved himself straight up, then hooked a knee or top and pushed himself up. He was crushing some of the hats and had knocked over the picture of the old lady, but so far so good. He reached for the gym bag, stretching as far as he could, but couldn't quite reach it. He leaned farther, holding onto the shelf with one hand and reaching for the gym bag with the other, and that's when he lost his balance. Ben tried to catch himself, but it was too late: He tumbled sideways and pulled the gym bag with him. He hit the floor with a rain of shirts and pants.

"Crap!"

When Ben scooped up the clothes, he found the cigar box. It must have been sitting on top of the gym bag, and had fallen when he pulled the bag down. A few faded snapshots, some colorful cloth patches, and five blue plastic cases had spilled from the cigar box. Ben stared. He knew that the blue cases were special. They looked special. Each case was about seven inches long with a gold band running vertically down the left side and raised gold letters in the lower right corner that read UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Ben pushed the clothes aside and sat cross-legged to examine his discovery.

The pictures showed soldiers in Army uniforms and helicopters. Some guy sat on a bunk, laughing, with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. A word was tattooed high on his left arm. Ben had to look close to read it because the photograph was blurry: RANGER. Ben figured it was the man's name. Another picture showed five soldiers standing in front of a helicopter. They looked like hardcore badass dudes: Their faces were painted green and black; they were loaded with rucksacks, ammo packs, hand grenades, and black rifles. The second soldier from the left was holding a little sign with numbers on it. Their features were hard to see because of the paint, but the soldier on the far right looked like Elvis Cole. Wow.

Ben put down the pictures and opened a blue case. A red, white, and blue ribbon about an inch and a half long was pinned to gray felt. Beneath it was a red, white, and blue pin like a smaller version of the ribbon, and below that was a medal. The medallion was a gold five-pointed star hanging from another ribbon, and covered by a clear plastic bubble. In the center of the gold star was a tiny silver star. Ben closed the case, then opened the others. Each of the cases contained another medal.

He put the medals aside, then looked through the rest of the pictures: One showed a bunch of guys in black T-shirts standing around outside of a tent, drinking beer; another showed Elvis Cole sitting on sandbags with a rifle across his knees (he was shirtless and he looked really skinny!); the next picture showed a man with a painted face, a floppy hat, and a gun, standing in leaves so thick it looked like he was stepping out of a green wall. Ben had hit the mother lode! This was exactly the kind of cool stuff he had hoped to find! He concentrated so hard on the pictures that he never heard Elvis approach.

Elvis said, "Busted."

Ben jerked with surprise and felt himself flush.

Elvis stood in the door, thumbs hooked in his pockets, his raised eyebrows saying, What do we have here, sport?

Ben was mortified and ashamed. He thought Elvis would be mad, but Elvis sat on the floor next to him and stared at the pictures and little blue cases thoughtfully. Ben felt his eyes well and thought Elvis would probably hate him forever.

"I'm sorry I snooped in your stuff."

It was all Ben could do not to cry.

Elvis made a little faraway smile and rubbed Ben's head.

"It's okay, bud. I said you could look around while you were here – I just didn't think you'd go climbing in my closet. You don't have to sneak around. If you want to check out my things, all you have to do is ask. Okay?"

It was still hard to look Elvis in the eye, but Ben burned with curiosity. He held out the picture showing the five soldiers by the helicopter.

"Is that you, second from the end?"

Elvis stared at the picture, but did not touch it. Ben showed him the picture of the guy on the bunk.

"Who's this guy, Ranger?"

"His name was Ted Fields, not Ranger. A Ranger is a kind of soldier. Some guys were so proud of being Rangers they got the tattoo. Ted was proud."

"What do Rangers do? '"

"Pushups."

Elvis took the photo from Ben and put it back into the cigar box. Ben grew worried that Elvis would stop answering his questions, so he snatched up one of the blue cases and opened it.

"What's this?"

Elvis took the case, closed it, then put it back into the cigar box.

"They call it a Silver Star. That's why there's a little silver star in the center of the gold star."

"You have two."

"The Army had a sale."

Elvis put away another box. Ben saw that Elvis was uncomfortable with the medals and the pictures, but this was the coolest stuff that Ben had ever seen and he wanted to know about it. He snatched up a third medal case.

"Why is this one purple and shaped like a heart?"

"Let's get this stuff away and finish with the car."

"'Is that what you get when you're shot?"

"There are all kinds of ways to be wounded."

Elvis put away the last medal case, then picked up the pictures. Ben realized that he really didn't know much about his mom's boyfriend. Ben knew that Elvis must have done something pretty darned brave to win all these medals, but Elvis never talked about any of that. How could a guy have all this neat stuff and keep it hidden. Ben would wear his medals every day!

"'How did you get that Silver Star medal? Were you a hero?"

Elvis kept his eyes down as he put the pictures in the cigar box and closed the lid.

"Not hardly, bud. No one else was around to get them, so they gave them to me."

"'I hope I get a Silver Star medal one day."

Elvis suddenly looked as if he was made of steel and thorns, and Ben grew scared. The Elvis that Ben knew didn't seem to be there at all, but his hard eyes softened and Elvis came back to himself. Ben was relieved.

Elvis took one of the Silver Stars from the cigar box and held it out.

"Tell you what, bud – I'd rather you take one of mine."

And just like that, Elvis Cole gave Ben one of his Silver Stars.

Ben held the medal like a treasure. The ribbon was shiny and smooth; the medallion was a lot heavier than it looked. That gold star with its little silver center weighed a lot, and its points were really sharp.

"I can keep it?"

"Sure. They gave it to me, and now I'm giving it to you."

"Wow. Thank you! Could I be a Ranger, too?"

Elvis seemed a lot more relaxed now. He made a big deal out of placing his hand on Ben's head like Ben was being knighted.

"You are officially a U.S. Army Ranger. This is the best way to become a Ranger. Now you don't have to do all those push-ups."

Ben laughed.

Elvis closed the cigar box again and put it back on the high shelf along with the gym bag.

"Anything else you want to see? I have some real smelly boots up here and some old Odor-Eaters."

"Ewww. Gross."

Now they both were smiling, and Ben felt better. All was right with the world.

Elvis gently squeezed the back of Ben's neck and steered him toward the stairs. That was one of the things Ben liked best about Elvis; he didn't treat Ben like a child.

"Okay, m'man, let's finish washing the car, and then we can pick out a movie."

"Can I use the hose?"

"Only after I put on my raincoat."

Elvis made a goofy face, they both laughed, and then Ben followed Elvis downstairs. Ben put the Silver Star in his pocket, but every few minutes he fingered the sharp points through his pants and thought that it was pretty darned cool.

Later that night Ben wanted to see the other medals and the pictures again, but Elvis had acted so upset that Ben didn't want to ask. When Elvis was taking a shower, Ben heaved himself back atop the safe, but the cigar box was gone. Ben didn't find where Elvis had hidden it, and he was too embarrassed to ask.

CHAPTER 3

time missing: 3 hours, 56 minutes

The police arrived at twenty minutes after eight that night. It was full-on dark, with a chill in the air that was sharp and smelled of dust. Lucy stood sharply when the doorbell rang.

I said, "I've got it. That's Lou."

Adult missing persons were handled by the Missing Persons Unit out of Parker Center downtown, but missing or abducted children were dealt with on a divisional level by Juvenile Section detectives. If I had called the police like anyone else, I would have had to identify myself and explain about Ben to the complaint operator, then again to whoever answered in the detective bureau, and a third time when the duty detective handed me off to the Juvenile desk. Calling my friend Lou Poitras saved time. Poitras was a Homicide lieutenant at Hollywood Station. He rolled out a Juvie team as soon as we got off the phone, and he rolled out with them.

Poitras was a wide man with a body like an oil drum and a face like boiled ham. His black leather coat was stretched tight across a chest and arms that were swollen from a lifetime of lifting weights. He looked grim as he kissed Lucy's cheek.

"Hey. How you guys doing?"

"Not so good."

Two Juvenile Section detectives got out of a car behind him. The lead detective was an older man with loose skin and freckles. His driver was a younger woman with a long face and smart eyes. Poitras introduced them as they came into the house.

"This is Dave Gittamon. He's been a sergeant on the Juvie desk longer than anyone I know. This is Detective, ah, sorry, I forgot your name."

"Carol Starkey."

Starkey's name sounded familiar but I couldn't place it. She smelled like cigarettes.

Poitras said, "Have you gotten another call since we spoke?"

"No. We had the one call, and that was it. I tried reverse dialing with Star sixty-nine, but they must've called from a blocked cell number. All I got was the phone company computer."

"I'm on it. I'll have a backtrace done through the phone company."

Poitras brought his cell phone into the kitchen.

We took Gittamon and Starkey into the living room. I described the call that we received and how I had searched for Ben. I showed them the Game Freak, telling them that I now believed Ben had dropped it when he was taken. If Ben had been abducted from the slope beneath my house, then the spot where I found the Game Freak was a crime scene. Gittamon glanced at the canyon through the glass doors as he listened. Lights glittered on the ridges and down through the bowl, but it was too dark to see anything.

Starkey said, "If he's still missing in the morning, I'll take a look where you found it."

I was anxious and scared, and didn't want to wait.

"Why don't we go now? We can use flashlights."

Starkey said, "If we were talking about a parking lot, I'd say fine, let's light it up, but we can't light this type of environment well enough at night, what with all the brush and the uneven terrain. We'd as likely destroy any evidence as find it. Better if I look in the morning."

Gittamon nodded agreeably.

"Carol has a lot of experience with that type of thing, Mr. Cole. Besides, let's hold a good thought that Ben's home by then."

Lucy joined us at the glass doors.

"Shouldn't we call the FBI? Doesn't the FBI handle kidnappings?"

Gittamon answered with the gentle voice of a man who had spent years dealing with frightened parents and children.

"We'll call the FBI if it's necessary, but first we need to establish what happened."

"We know what happened: Someone stole my son."

Gittamon turned from the doors and went to the couch. Starkey sat with him, taking out a small spiral notebook.

"I know that you're frightened, Ms. Chenier, I would be frightened, too. But it's important for us to understand Ben and whatever led up to this."

I said, "Nothing led up to this, Gittamon. Some asshole just grabbed him."

Lucy was good in court and was used to thinking about difficult things during stressful situations. This was infinitely worse, but she did well at keeping herself focused. Probably better than me.

She said, "I understand, Sergeant, but this is my child."

"I know, so the sooner we do this, the sooner you'll have him back."

Gittamon asked Lucy a few general questions that didn't have anything to do with being grabbed off a hill. While they spoke, I wrote down everything the caller had said to me, then went upstairs for a picture of Ben and one of the snapshots Ben had found of me in my Army days. I had not looked at that picture or any of the others for years until Ben found them. I hadn't wanted to see them.

Poitras was sitting on the Eames chair in the corner when I got back.

He said, "PacBell's working on the trace. We'll have the source number in a couple of hours."

I gave the pictures to Gittamon.

"This is Ben. The other picture is me. I wrote down what the man said, and I'm pretty sure I didn't leave anything out."

Gittamon glanced at the pictures, then passed them to Starkey.

"Why the picture of you?"

"The man who called said 'five-two.' You see the man next to me holding the sign with the number? Five-two was our patrol number. I don't know what else this guy could have meant."

Starkey glanced up from the pictures.

"You don't look old enough for Vietnam."

"I wasn't."

Gittamon said, "All right, what else did he say?"

I pointed at the sheet.

"I wrote it down for you word for word. He didn't say much – just the number and that he had Ben, and that he was paying me back for something."

Gittamon glanced over the sheet, then passed it to Starkey, too.

Poitras said, "You recognize his voice?"

"I don't have any idea who he is. I've been racking my brain, but, no, I didn't recognize it."

Gittamon took back the picture from Starkey and frowned at it.

"Do you believe him to be one of the men in this picture?"

"No, that's not possible. A few minutes after this picture was taken, we went out on a mission, and everyone was killed but me. That makes it stand out, the five-two; that's why I remember."

Lucy sighed softly. Starkey's mouth tightened as if she wanted a cigarette. Gittamon squirmed, as if he didn't want to talk about something so uncomfortable. I didn't want to talk about it, either.

"Well, ah, was there some kind of incident?"

"No, not if you're asking if it was my fault. It just went bad. I didn't do anything except survive."

I felt guilty that Ben was missing and embarrassed that he seemed to be missing because of me. Here we were all over again, another nightmare delivered to Lucy's doorstep by yours truly.

I said, "I don't know what else the man on the phone could have meant. That's all it could be."

Starkey shifted toward Gittamon.

"Maybe we should get Ben's description out to patrol."

Poitras nodded, telling her to get on with it. "Talk to the phone company, too. Have them set up a line trap on Elvis's phone."

Starkey took her cell phone into the entry. While Starkey was making the calls, Gittamon asked about my past few days with Ben. When I told him I found Ben looking through my closet, Gittamon raised his eyebrows.

"So Ben knew about this five-two business?"

"Not about the others getting killed, but he saw the pictures."

"And this was when?"

"Earlier in the week. Three days ago, maybe. What does that have to do with anything?"

Gittamon concentrated on the picture, as if he was on the edge of a profound thought. He glanced at Lucy, then looked back at me.

"I'm just trying to see how this fits. The implication is that he took Ms. Chenier's son as revenge for something that you did – not Ms. Chenier, but you. But Ben isn't your son or stepson, and hasn't lived with you except these past few days. I understand that correctly, don't I? You and Ms. Chenier maintain separate residences?"

Lucy unfolded herself on the hearth. Gittamon was obviously considering other possibilities, and Lucy was interested.

"Yes, that's right."

Gittamon nodded, and looked back at me.

"Why would he take Ms. Chenier's son if it's you he hates so much? Why wouldn't he just burn down your house or shoot you or even just sue you? You see what I'm getting at?"

I saw, and didn't much like it.

"Look, that's not it. Ben wouldn't do that. He's only ten."

Lucy glanced from Gittamon to me, then back, not understanding.

"What wouldn't Ben do?"

"Lou, for Christ's sake."

Poitras nodded, agreeing with me.

"Dave, Ben wouldn't do that. I know this kid."

Lucy said, "Are you saying that Ben staged his own abduction?"

Gittamon placed the picture on the coffee table as if he had seen enough.

"No, ma'am, it's too early to say, but I've seen children stage abductions for all manner of reasons, especially when they're feeling insecure. A friend's older brother could have made the call to Mr. Cole."

I was angry and irritated. I went to the doors. A frightened part of me hoped that Ben would be on the deck, watching us, but he wasn't.

I said, "If you don't want to raise false hopes, then stop. I spent the past five days with him. Ben wasn't feeling insecure, and he wouldn't do that."

Lucy's voice snapped behind me.

"Would you rather someone kidnapped him?"

She wanted to believe it so badly that hope glowed in her eyes like hot sparks.

Poitras pushed up from the Eames chair. "Dave? If you have enough to get started, let's roll out of here. I want to knock on a couple of doors. Maybe someone down the hill saw something."

Gittamon gestured to Starkey that she could close her notebook, then stood to join Poitras.

"Ms. Chenier, please, I'm not saying Ben staged his own abduction – I'm really not, Mr. Cole – but it's something we have to consider. I'd like a list of Ben's friends and their phone numbers. It's still early enough to make a few calls."

Lucy stood with them, as intent and focused as I had ever seen her.

"I'll have to get them from home. I can go do that right now."

I said, "Gittamon, you going to ignore the goddamned call?"

"No, Mr. Cole, we're going to treat this as an abduction until we know otherwise. Can you put together a list of the people involved with whatever happened to you in the Army and any other information you have?"

"They're dead."

"Well, their families. We might want to speak with their families. Carol, would you get together with Mr. Cole on that?"

Starkey handed me her card as the four of us went to the door.

Starkey said, "I'll come by tomorrow morning to see where you found the Game Freak. I can get the names then. What's a good time?"

" Sunrise."

If Starkey heard the anger in my answer she didn't show it. She shrugged.

"Better light around seven."

"Fine."

Gittamon said, "If he calls again, let us know. You can phone any time."

"I will."

That was it. Gittamon told Lucy that he would be expecting her call, and then they left. Lucy and I did not speak as we watched them drive away, but once they were gone Ben's absence was a physical force in the house, as real as a body hanging from my loft. Three of us present, not just two. Lucy picked up her briefcase. It was still where she dropped it.

"I want to get those names for Sergeant Gittamon."

"I know. I'll get my names together, too. Call me when you get home, okay?"

Lucy glanced at the time, then closed her eyes.

"Jesus, I have to call Richard. God, that's going to be awful, telling him about this."

Richard Chenier was Lucy's ex-husband and Ben's father. He lived in New Orleans, and it was only right that she tell him that his son was missing. Richard and Lucy had argued often about me. I guessed they would argue more.

Lucy fumbled with her briefcase and her keys, and all at once she started crying. I cried, too. We held each other tight, the two of us crying, my face in her hair.

I said, "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened or who would do this or why, but I'm sorry."

"Don't."

I didn't know what else to say.

I walked her out to her car, then stood in the street as she drove away. The lights were on in Grace's house, Grace with her two little boys. The cold night air felt good, and the darkness felt good, too. Lucy had been kind. She had not blamed me, but Ben had been with me, and now he was gone. The weight of the moment was mine.

After a while, I went back inside. I brought the Game Freak to the couch and sat with it. I stared at the picture of me with Roy Abbott and the others. Abbott looked like a twelve-year-old. I didn't look much older. I had been eighteen. Eight years older than Ben. I didn't know what had happened to Ben or where he was, but I would bring him home. I stared at the men in the picture.

"I'll find him. I'm going to bring him home. I swear to God I will."

The men in the picture knew I would do it.

Rangers don't leave Rangers behind.

CHAPTER 4

The Abduction: Part One

The last thing Ben saw was the Queen of Blame gouging the eyes from a Flathead minion. One moment he was with the Queen on the hillside below Elvis Cole's house; the next, unseen hands covered his face and carried him away so quickly that he didn't know what was happening. The hands covered his eyes and mouth. After the initial surprise of being jerked off his feet, Ben thought that Elvis was playing a trick on him, but the trick did not end.

Ben struggled and tried to kick, but someone held him so tightly that he could neither move nor scream for help. He floated soundlessly across the slope and into a waiting vehicle. A heavy door slammed. Tape was pressed over his mouth, then a hood was pushed over his head, covering him with blackness. His arms and legs were taped together. He fought against the taping, but now more than one person held him. They were in a van. Ben smelled gasoline and the pine-scented stuff that his mother used when she cleaned the kitchen.

The vehicle moved. They were driving.

The man who now held him said, "Anyone see you?"

A rough voice answered from the front of the vehicle.

"It couldn't have gone any better. Make sure he's okay."

Ben figured that the second voice belonged to the man who took him and was now driving. The man holding him squeezed Ben's arm.

"Can you breathe? Grunt or nod or something to let me know."

Ben was too scared to do either, but the first man answered as if he had.

"He's fine. Christ, you should feel his heart beating. Hey, you were supposed to leave his shoe. He still has his shoes."

"He was playing one of those Game Boy things. I left the game instead. That's better than a shoe."

They drove downhill, then up. Ben worked his jaws against the tape, but he couldn't open his mouth.

The man patted Ben's leg.

"Take it easy."

They drove for only a few minutes, then they stopped. Ben thought they would get out, but they didn't. He heard what sounded like a power saw in the distance, and then someone else climbed into the van.

The third man, one who Ben hadn't yet heard, said, "Heez owt on heez dek."

Ben had heard Cajun French and French accents for much of his life, and this was familiar, though somehow different. A French man speaking English, but with some other accent under the French. That made three of them; three total strangers had taken him.

The man who had taken him said, "Roger that. I see him."

The man who held him said, "I can't see shit from back here. What's he doing?"

"He's moving down the slope."

Ben realized that they were talking about Elvis. The three men were watching Elvis Cole. Elvis was looking for him.

The man with Ben said, "This is bullshit, sitting back here."

The rough voice said, "He found the kid's toy. He's running back to his house."

"I wish I could see."

"There's nothing to see, Eric. Stop bitching and settle down. Now we wait for the mother."

The Abduction: Part Two

When they mentioned his mother, Ben felt an intense jolt of fear, suddenly terrified that they would hurt her. His eyes filled and his nose clogged. He tried to pull his arms free of the tape, but Eric weighed him down like a heavy steel anchor.

"Take it easy. Stop it, goddamnit."

Ben wanted to warn his mom and get the police and kick these men until they cried like babies, but he couldn't do any of that. Eric held tight.

"Jesus, stop flopping around. You're going to hurt yourself."

They waited for what seemed like hours, then the rough voice said, "I'll make the call."

Ben heard the door open and somebody get out. After a minute, the door opened again and whoever it was got back in.

The rough voice said, "That's it."

They drove down out of the hills, then back up again on winding streets. After a while, the van braked. Ben heard the mechanical clatter of a garage door opening. They eased forward, then the engine shut off and the garage door closed behind them.

Eric said, "C'mon, kid."

Eric cut the tape holding Ben's legs, then Ben was jerked by his feet.

"Ow!"

"C'mon, you can walk. I'll tell you where."

The man held tight to Ben's arm.

Ben was in a garage. The hood pushed up enough for him to glimpse the van – white and dirty, with dark blue writing on the side. Eric turned him away before he could read what was written.

"We're coming to a step. Step up. C'mon, lift your goddamned feet!"

Ben felt for the step with his toe.

"Shit, forget it. This is taking too long."

Eric carried Ben into the house like a baby. Being carried made Ben mad. He could have walked! He didn't have to be carried!

Ben glimpsed dim rooms empty of furniture, and then Eric dropped his legs.

"I'm putting you down. Stand up."

Ben stood.

"Okay, I put a chair behind you. Siddown. I've got you. You won't fall."

Ben lowered himself until the chair took his weight. It was hard to sit with his arms taped to his sides; the tape pinched his skin.

"Okay, we're good to go. Is Mike outside?"

Mike. Mike was the man who had taken him. Eric had waited in the van. Now Ben knew two of their names.

The third man said, "I want to see heez face."

Eye- wahnt- tu- see- heez- fehss.

His voice was eerie and soft.

"Mike won't like it."

"Stand behind him if you are afraid."

Stand- beehighnd- heem.

The voice was only inches away.

"Christ. Whatever."

Ben didn't know where he was or what they were doing, but he was suddenly scared again, just like when they talked about his mother. Ben had not yet seen any of the three men, but he knew that he was about to, and the thought of seeing them scared him. He didn't want to see them. He didn't want to see any of this.

The hood was pulled off from behind.

An enormously tall man stood in front of him, staring down at Ben without expression. The man was so tall that his head seemed to brush the ceiling, and so black that his skin drank the room's dim light and glowed like gold. A row of round purple scars the size of pencil erasers lined the man's forehead above his eyebrows. Three more scars followed the line of his cheeks below each eye, each scar a hard knob like something had been pushed under the skin. The scars terrified Ben; they looked creepy and obscene. Ben tried to twist away, but Eric held tight.

Eric said, "He's an African, kid. He won't eat ya until he cooks you."

The African carefully peeled the tape from Ben's mouth. Ben was so afraid that he trembled. It was dark outside; full-on night.

"I want to go home."

Eric made a soft laugh like he thought that was funny. Eric had short red hair and milky skin. A gap showed between his front teeth like an open gate.

Ben was in an empty living room with a white stone fireplace at one end and sheets hung over the windows. A door opened behind them, and the African stepped away. Eric spoke fast as a third man came into the room.

"Mazi has the African thing goin'. I told him not to."

Mike slapped his palm into Mazi's chest so fast that the African was falling back even before Ben realized that Mike had hit him. Mazi was tall and big, but Mike looked stronger, with thick wrists and gnarled fingers and a black T-shirt that was tight across his chest and biceps. He looked like G.I. Joe.

Mazi caught himself to stay on his feet, but he didn't hit back.

Mazi said, "Ewe ahr dee bawss."

"Roger-fucking-that."

Mike pushed the African farther away, then glanced down at Ben.

"How you doing?"

Ben said, "What did you do to my mother?"

"Nothing. We just waited for her to get back so that I could call. I wanted her to know you're gone."

"I don't want to be gone. I want to go home."

"I know. We'll take care of that as soon as we can. You want something to eat?"

"I want to go home."

"You need to pee?''

"Take me home. I want to see my mom."

Mike patted Ben's head. He had a triangle tattooed on the back of his right hand. It was old, with the ink beginning to blur.

"I'm Mike. He's Mazi. That's Eric. You're going to be with us for a while, so be cool. That's just the way it is."

Mike smiled at Ben, then glanced at Mazi and Eric.

"Put'm in the box."

It happened just as fast as when they plucked him from the hill beneath the walnut trees. They scooped him up again, retaped his legs, and carried him through the house, holding him so tight that he couldn't make a sound. They brought him outside in the cold night air, but they covered his eyes so he couldn't see. Ben kicked and struggled as they pushed him into a large plastic box like a coffin. He tried to sit up, but they pushed him down. A heavy lid slammed closed over him. The box suddenly moved and tipped, then fell away beneath him as if they had dropped him down a well. He hit the ground hard.

Ben stopped struggling to listen.

Something hard rained on top of the box with a scratchy roar only inches over his face. Then it happened again.

Ben realized what they were doing with an explosion of horror. He slammed into the sides of his plastic prison, but he couldn't get out. The sounds that rained down on him grew further and further away as the rocks and dirt piled deep and Ben Chenier was buried in the earth.

CHAPTER 5

time missing: 6 hours, 16 minutes

Ted Fields, Luis Rodriguez, Cromwell Johnson, and Roy Abbott died three hours after our team picture was taken. Team pictures had been taken before every mission, the five of us suited up alongside the helicopter like a high-school basketball team before the big game. Crom Johnson used to joke that the pictures were taken so the army could identify our bodies. Ted called them "death shots." I turned the picture Ben had found face down so I wouldn't have to see them.

I had taken a couple of hundred snapshots of red dirt, triple-canopy jungles, beaches, rice paddies, water buffalo, and the bicycle-clogged streets and bazaars of Saigon, but when I returned to the United States those images seemed meaningless, and I had thrown them away. The place had lost its importance to me, but the people had mattered. I kept only twelve pictures, and I was in three of them.

I listed the people in the remaining pictures, then tried to remember the names of the other men who had served in my company, but I couldn't. After a while the idea of making a list seemed silly; Fields, Abbott, Johnson, and Rodriguez were dead, and no one else in my company had reason to hate me or steal a ten-year-old boy. No one I had known in Vietnam would.

Lucy called just before eleven. The house was so quiet that the sudden ring was as loud as a gunshot. My pen tore the page.

She said, "I couldn't stand not knowing. Did he call back?"

"No, not yet. I would have called. I'll call you right away."

"God, this is awful. It's a nightmare."

"Yeah. I'm trying to make this list and I'm sick to my stomach. How about you?"

"I just got off the phone with Richard. He's flying out tonight."

"How was he?"

"Furious, accusatory, frightened, belligerent – nothing I didn't expect. He's Richard."

Losing her son wasn't bad enough, so now she had this. Richard hadn't wanted Lucy to move to Los Angeles, and he had never liked me; they fought often about it, and now they would fight even more. I guess she was calling for the moral support.

She said, "He's supposed to call from the plane with his flight information, but I don't know. Jesus, he was such an asshole."

"You want me to come by tomorrow after Starkey leaves? I can do that."

Richard could shout at me instead of her.

"I don't know. Maybe. I'd better get off the line."

"We can talk as long as you want."

"No, now I'm worried that man will try to call you again about Ben. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

The phone rang a second time almost as soon as I put it down. The second time, I didn't jump, but I let it ring twice, taking the time to ready myself.

Starkey said, "This is Detective Starkey. I hope I didn't wake you."

"Sleep isn't an option, Starkey. I thought you were him."

"Sorry. He hasn't called again, has he?"

"Not yet. It's late; I didn't think you'd still be on the job."

"I waited to hear from the phone company. They show you received a call at six fifty-two this evening. Does that time out about right?"

"Yeah, that's when he called."

"Okay, the call was made from a cell number registered to a Louise Escalante in Diamond Bar."

"I don't know her."

"I figured you wouldn't. She says her purse was stolen this afternoon, along with her phone. She says she doesn't know you or anything about this, and her billing records support that the call to you was out of her pattern of use. I'm sorry, but I think she's a dead end."

"Did you think about calling the number?"

Her voice cooled.

"Yes, Mr. Cole, I did. I've dialed it five times. They've turned off the phone."

Stealing a phone meant the man who took Ben had criminal experience. He had anticipated the line trace, which meant he had planned his action. Smart crooks are harder to catch than stupid crooks. They are also more dangerous.

"Mr. Cole?"

"I'm here. I was thinking."

"You getting those names together for me?"

"I'm doing that now, but I'm thinking about another possibility, too. I've had run-ins with people, Starkey, doing what I do. I've helped put some people in jail or out of business, and they're the kind of people who would hold a grudge. If I make a list, would you be willing to run their names, too?"

"Sure. Not a problem."

"Thanks. I appreciate this."

"I'll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep."

"Like that could happen."

The darkest part of the night stretched through the hours, but little by little the eastern sky lightened. I barely noticed. By the time Starkey arrived, I had filled twelve legal-sized pages with names and notes. It was six forty-two when I answered the door. She was early.

Starkey held up a cardboard tray with two cups from Starbucks.

"I hope you like mocha. This is how I get my chocolate fix."

"That's nice of you, Starkey. Thanks."

She passed one of the cups to me. Morning light filled the canyon with a soft glow. She seemed to consider it, then glanced at the Game Freak. It was on the dining table with the pages.

"How far down the hill did you find the toy?"

"Fifty, sixty yards, something like that. You want to get going down there now?"

"The sun as low as it is, we'll have indirect light. That's not good. When the sun is higher, we'll get direct light. It'll be easier to see small objects and reconstruct what happened."

"You sound like you know what you're talking about."

"I've worked a few scenes."

She brought her coffee to the table.

"Let's see what you have with the names. Show me the most likely candidates first."

I showed her the list of people from my civilian cases first. The more I had thought about it, the more it seemed likely that one of them was behind what had happened to Ben. We sipped the coffee as we went through their names. Beside each name I had written down the crimes they had committed, whether or not they had been sentenced to prison, and whether or not I had killed anyone close to them.

Starkey said, "Jesus, Cole, it's all gangbangers, mobsters, and murderers. I thought you private guys did nothing but knock down divorce work."

"I pick the wrong cases."

"No shit. You have reason to believe that any of these people are familiar with your military history?"

"So far as I know, none of them know anything about me, but I guess they could find out."

"All right. I'll run them through the system to see if anyone's been released. Now let's talk about these other four men, the guys who died. Could their families blame you for what happened?"

"I didn't do anything for anyone to blame me."

"You know what I mean. Because their kid died and you didn't."

"I know what you meant and I'm telling you no. I wrote to their parents after it happened. Luis Rodriguez's mother and I corresponded until she died. That was six years ago. Teddy Fields's family sends me Christmas cards. When I mustered out, I went to see the Johnsons and Ted's family. Everyone was upset, sure, but no one blamed me. It was mostly just sad."

Starkey watched me as if she was convinced there had to be more, but she couldn't imagine what. I stared back at her, and once more thought she looked familiar.

I said, "Have we met? You looked familiar last night and now you look familiar again, but I can't place you."

Starkey glanced away. She took a foil packet from her jacket and swallowed a white tablet with the coffee.

"Can I smoke in here?"

"You can smoke on the deck. You sure we haven't met?"

"Positive."

"You look like someone."

Starkey studied the deck longingly, then sighed.

"Okay, Cole, here's how you know me: Recent current events for a thousand. The answer is: Ka-boom."

I didn't know what she meant. Starkey spread her hands like I was stupid.

"Don't you watch Jeopardy!? Bombs. Bombers. The Bomb Squad lost a tech in Silver Lake a couple of months ago."

"That was you?"

"I gotta have a smoke. This is killing me."

Starkey pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket and broke for the deck. I followed her.

Carol Starkey had bagged a serial cop-killer who murdered bomb technicians. Mr. Red had been headline news in L.A., but most of the stories were about Starkey. Three years before Mr. Red, Starkey herself had been a bomb tech. She had been trying to de-arm a bomb in a trailer park when an earthquake triggered the initiator. Both Starkey and her partner had been killed, but Starkey was resuscitated at the scene. She had literally risen from the dead, which had yoked her with lurid nicknames like the Angel of Death and Demolition Angel.

Maybe she read what I was thinking. She shook her head as she fired up the cigarette, scowling at me.

"Don't even dream about asking, Cole. Don't ask if I saw white lights or pearly gates. I get that out the ass."

"I don't care about that, and I wasn't going to ask. All I care about is finding Ben."

"Good. That's all I care about, too. The bomb squad stuff, that's behind me. Now I do this."

"I'm happy for you, Starkey, but the bomb squad stuff was only a couple of months ago. Do you know anything about finding a missing boy?"

Starkey blew a geyser of smoke, angry.

"What are you asking, if I'm up to the job?"

I was angry, too. I had been angry since last night and I was getting more angry by the second.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm asking."

"I reconstructed bombs and bomb scenes, and traced explosives through the most perverted landscape you can imagine. I made cases against the assholes who built bombs and the dickwads who trade the components those assholes use. And I nailed Mr. Red. So you don't have to worry about it, Cole. I know how to detect, and you can bet your private-eye ass that I'm going to find this boy."

The sun was high now. The slope was bright. Starkey snapped her cigarette over the rail. I looked to see where it hit.

"Hey, we have a fire hazard up here."

Starkey faced me like the mountain was already an inferno and couldn't get any worse.

"We got plenty of light. Show me where you found the toy."

time missing: 15 hours, 32 minutes

Starkey changed shoes outside at her car, then met me on the side of my house wearing a pair of beat-up Asics cross-trainers with her pants rolled to her knees. Her calves were white. She stared warily down at the slope.

"It's steep."

"Are you scared of heights?"

"Jesus, Cole, I was just saying. The soil here is loose, I see a lot of irregular ground cover, and you've already been tramping around down there. That's going to make it harder. I want you to be careful not to contaminate the scene any more than you already have, which means all you're gonna do is show me where you found the Game Freak, then get the hell out of my way. We clear?"

"Look, maybe I was out of line. I'm good at this, too, Starkey. I can help."

"That remains to be seen. Show me."

When I stepped over the edge, she followed, but she looked awkward and uncomfortable.

Ben played on the hill so much that he had worn narrow paths that flowed with the rise and fall of the earth like trickling water. I led Starkey down the slope by following alongside the paths so that we wouldn't disturb his footprints. The ground was rugged and unbroken where I walked, and I noticed that Starkey was using the path.

"You're walking on his footprints. Walk where I walk."

She stared down at her feet.

"All I see is dirt."

"Just walk where I walk. Come over by me."

Ben's trail was easy to follow until we reached the base of the trees, then the soil grew rocky. It didn't matter; I knew the way from yesterday. We cut across the slope. Starkey slipped twice and cursed both times.

"Put your feet where you see me putting mine. We're almost there."

"I hate the outdoors."

"I can tell."

I pointed out the patch of rosemary where I had found the Game Freak and several of Ben's footprints. Starkey squatted in place as if she was trying to memorize every rock and spike of rosemary. After all the slipping and cursing, she was careful at the scene.

She glanced at my feet.

"You wearing those shoes yesterday?"

"Yeah. New Balance. You can see the prints I left yesterday."

I pointed my prints out to her, then lifted a foot so that she could see the sole of my shoe. The soles were cut with a pattern of raised triangles and a large N in each heel. The triangles and N were obvious in some of my prints. Starkey studied the pattern, then a couple of my footprints, then frowned at me.

"Okay, Cole, I know what I said when we were up at your house, but I'm more your city-type person, you know? My idea of the outdoors is a parking lot. You seem to know what you're doing down here, so I'm going to let you help. Just don't fuck up anything, okay?"

"I'll try not to."

"We just wanna figure out what happened. After that, we'll bring in SID."

Criminalists from LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division would be responsible for identifying and securing any evidence of the crime.

Starkey divided the area into a rough grid of squares which we searched one square at a time. She moved slowly because of the poor footing, but she was methodical and good with the scene. Two of Ben's prints suggested that he had turned around to return to my house, but the impressions were jumbled and could have meant anything; then his prints headed downhill.

She said, "Where are you going?"

"I'm following Ben's trail."

"Jesus, I can barely see the scuffs. You a hunter, or what?"

"I used to do this."

"When you were a kid?"

"In the Army."

Starkey glanced at me as if she wasn't sure what that meant.

Ben's footprints led through the grass for another eight feet, but then I lost his trail. I went back to his last print, then spiraled out in an expanding circle, but found no more prints or any other sign of his passing. It was as if he had sprouted wings and jumped into the air.

Starkey said, "What do you see?"

"If someone grabbed Ben, we should see signs of a struggle or at least the other person's footprints, but I don't see anything."

"You're just missing it, Cole."

"There's nothing to miss. Ben's prints just stop, and the soil here bears none of the scuffs and jumbled prints that you'd expect to find if he struggled."

Starkey crept downhill, concentrating on the ground. She didn't answer for a few minutes, but then her voice was quiet.

"Maybe Gittamon was right about him being involved. Maybe you can't find a struggle because he ran away."

"He didn't run away."

"If he wasn't snatched, then -"

"Look at his prints – they come this far and then they stop. He didn't go back uphill, he didn't go downhill or sidehill; they just stop. He didn't just vanish. If Ben ran away, he would have left prints, but he didn't; he didn't walk away from this point. Someone carried him."

"Then where are the other person's prints?"

I stared at the ground, shaking my head.

"I don't know."

"That's stupid, Cole. We'll find something. Keep looking."

Starkey paralleled my move downhill. She was three or four yards to my side when she stopped to study the ground.

"Hey, is this the boy's shoe or yours?"

I went to see. A faint line marked the heel of a shoe that was too large to be Ben's. The impression was crisp without being weathered, and was free of debris. I compared the crispness of its edge with the edges that marked Ben's shoe prints. They had been made at about the same time. I got behind the print and sighted forward through the center of the heel to see which way the print was headed. It pointed directly to the place where Ben's trail ended.

"It's him, Starkey. You got him."

"We can't know that. One of your neighbors could have been dicking around up here."

"No one was dicking around. Keep looking."

Starkey pushed a stalk of rosemary into the soil to mark the print's location, and then we widened our circle. I searched the ground between the new print and Ben's, but found nothing more. I worked back in the opposite direction covering the same ground a second time, but still found nothing. Fragments of additional shoe prints should have been salted through Ben's like the overlapping pieces of a puzzle. I should have found scuffs, crushed grass, and the obvious evidence of another human moving across the earth, but all we had was the partial heel print of a single shoe. That couldn't be, but it was, and the more I thought about the lack of evidence, the more frightened I became. Evidence was the physical history of an event, but the absence of a physical history was its own kind of evidence.

I considered the surrounding brush and the flow of the slope, and the trees that surrounded us with their dead winter leaves spread over the ground. A man had worked his way uphill through heavy brush and brittle leaves so quietly that Ben did not hear him approaching. The man would not have been able to see him through the thick brush, which meant that he had located Ben by the sound of the Game Freak. Then, when he found him, he took a healthy ten-year-old boy so quickly that Ben had no chance to call out.

I said, "Starkey."

"There's bugs down here, Cole. I fuckin' hate bugs."

She was examining the ground a few feet away.

"Starkey, forget the names I gave you from my old cases. None of those people are good enough to do this."

She misunderstood.

"Don't worry about it, Cole. I'll have SID come out. They'll be able to tell what happened."

"I already know what happened. Forget the names from my case files. Just run the people who served with me, and forget everything else."

"I thought you said none of those guys would do it."

I stared at the ground, then at the thick brush and broken land, thinking hard about the people I had known and what the best of them could do. The skin on my back prickled. The leaves and branches that surrounded us became the broken pieces of an indistinct puzzle. A man with the right skills could be ten feet away. He could hide within the puzzle and watch us between the pieces and we would never see him even as his finger tightened over a trigger. I lowered my voice without realizing it.

"The man who did this has combat experience, Starkey. You're not seeing it, but I can see it. He's done this before. He was trained to hunt humans and he's good at it."

"You're creeping me out. Take a breath with that, okay? I'll have SID come out."

I glanced at my watch. Ben had been missing for sixteen hours and twelve minutes.

"Is Gittamon with Lucy?"

"Yeah, he's searching Ben's room."

"I'm going to see them. I want to tell them what we're dealing with."

"Look, Cole, don't get spooky with all this. We don't know what we're dealing with, so why don't you wait until SID gets here?"

"Can you find your way back?"

"If you wait two minutes I'll go with you."

I walked back up the hill without waiting. Starkey trailed after me, and called out from time to time for me to slow down, but I never slowed enough for her to catch up. Shadows from a past that should have been buried lined the path back up to my house. The shadows outnumbered me, and I knew I would need help with them. When I reached my house, I went into the kitchen and phoned a gun shop I know in Culver City.

"Let me have Joe."

"He isn't here."

"It's important you find him. Tell him to meet me at Lucy's right away. Tell him that Ben Chenier is missing."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Tell him I'm scared."

I hung up and went out to my car. I started the engine, but sat with my hands on the steering wheel, trying to stop their shaking.

The man who took Ben had moved well and with silence. He had studied when we came and when we left. He knew my home and canyon, and how Ben went down the slope to play, and he had done it all so well that I did not notice. He had probably stalked us for days. It took special training and skills to hunt humans. I had known men with those skills, and they scared me. I had been one of them.

CHAPTER 6

time missing: 17 hours, 41 minutes

Beverly Hills makes people think of mansions and hillbillies, but the flats south of Wilshire are lined with modest stucco homes and sturdy bungalow apartments that would go unnoticed in any American town. Lucy and Ben shared an apartment in a two-story building shaped like a U, with the mouth facing the street and the arms embracing a stairway courtyard filled with birds- of- paradise and two towering palms. It was not a limousine street, but a black Presidential stretch was waiting by the fire hydrant outside her building.

I wedged my car into a parking spot half a block down and walked up the sidewalk. The limo driver was reading a magazine behind the wheel with the windows raised and the engine running. Two men were smoking in a Mercury Marquis parked across the street in front of Gittamon's car. They were thick men in their late forties with ruddy faces, short hair, and the flat expressions of men who were used to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and weren't much bothered by it. They watched me like cops.

I went up the stairs and rang her bell. A man I had never met before answered the door.

"May I help you?"

It was Richard. I put out my hand.

"Elvis Cole. I wish we weren't meeting like this."

Richard's face darkened. He ignored my hand.

"I wish we weren't meeting at all."

Lucy stepped in front of him, looking uncomfortable and irritated. Richard was good at making her angry.

She said, "Don't start."

"I told you this would happen, didn't I? How many times did I tell you, but you wouldn't listen?"

"Richard, just stop, please."

I said, "Yes, now would be the time to stop."

Something sour flickered in Richard's eyes, but then he turned back into her apartment. Richard was Lucy's age, but his hair was silver on the sides and thinning badly. He wore a black knit shirt, khaki slacks that were wrinkled from the plane, and Bruno Magli mocs that cost more than I made in a week. Even wrinkled and sleepless, Richard looked rich. He owned a natural gas company with international holdings.

Lucy lowered her voice as I followed her inside.

"They just got here. I called to tell you that he landed, but I guess you were on your way over."

Richard had joined a solidly built man in a dark business suit in Lucy's living room. The man had steel-gray hair so short that he was nearly bald, and eyes that looked like the wrong end of gun sights. He put out his hand.

"Leland Myers. I run security for Richard's company."

Richard said, "I brought Lee to help find Ben since you people managed to lose him."

As Myers and I shook, Gittamon came out of the hall with Ben's orange iMac. He huffed with the weight as he put it on a little table by her door.

"We'll have his E-mail by the end of the day. You'd be surprised what children tell their friends."

I was annoyed that Gittamon was still chasing the

staged abduction theory, but I wanted to be careful with how I described what we found on the slope to Lucy.

"You're not going to find anything in his Email, Sergeant. Starkey and I searched the slope this morning. We found a shoe print where Ben dropped his Game Freak. It was probably left by the man who took Ben, and he was likely someone who served with me in Vietnam."

Lucy shook her head.

"I thought the others were dead."

"They are, but now I think that the person who did this has a certain type of combat experience. I gave Starkey a list of names, and I'll try to remember more. She called SID to try for a cast of the print. Any luck, and we might get a pretty good guess of his height and weight."

Richard and Myers glanced at each other, then Richard crossed his arms, frowning.

Richard said, "Lucy told me the man mentioned Vietnam last night, and that all of this had something to do with you. Were we doubting this before now?"

"People can say anything, Richard. Now I know he's for real."

Myers said, "What do you mean, a certain type of combat experience?"

"You don't learn how to move the way this man moved by hunting deer on the weekends or going through ROTC. This guy spent time in places where he was surrounded by people who would kill him if they found him, so he knows how to move without leaving a trail. Also, we didn't find signs of a struggle, which means Ben never saw him coming."

I told them how Ben's footprints ended abruptly and that we had found only the one other print. Myers took notes while I described the scene, with Richard crossing and recrossing his arms with increasing agitation. By the time I finished he was pacing Lucy's small living room in tight circles.

"This is fucking great, Cole. You're saying some kind of murdering Green Beret commando like Rambo took my son?"

Gittamon checked his pager, looking unhappy with me.

"We don't know that, Mr. Chenier. Once SID reaches the scene, we'll investigate more thoroughly. Mr. Cole might be jumping at conclusions without enough evidence."

I said, "I'm not jumping at anything, Gittamon. I came here because I want you to see for yourself. SID is on the way now."

Richard glanced at Gittamon, then stared at Lucy. "No, I'm sure that Mr. Cole has it right. I'm sure this man is every bit as dangerous as Cole believes. Cole has a history of drawing people like this. A man named Rossier almost killed my ex-wife back in Louisiana thanks to Mr. Cole."

The corners of Lucy's mouth tightened with pale dots.

"We've been over that enough, Richard."

Richard kept going.

"Then she moved here to Los Angeles so another lunatic named Sobek could stalk our son – how many people did he kill, Lucille? Seven, eight? He was some kind of serial killer or something."

Lucy stepped in front of him, and lowered her voice.

"Stop it, Richard. You don't always have to be an asshole."

Richard's voice grew louder.

"I tried to tell her that associating with Cole puts them in danger, but would she listen? No. She didn't listen because our son's safety wasn't as important as her getting what she wants."

Lucy slapped him with a single hard shot that snapped on his cheek like a firecracker.

"I told you to stop."

Gittamon squirmed as if he wished he were anywhere else. Myers touched Richard's arm.

"Richard."

Richard didn't move.

"Richard, we need to get started."

Richard's jaw knotted as if he wanted to say more but was chewing the words to keep them inside. He glanced at Lucy, then averted his eyes as if he suddenly felt awkward and embarrassed by his outburst. He lowered his voice.

"I promised myself I wouldn't do that, Lucille. I'm sorry."

Lucy didn't answer. Her left nostril pulsed as she breathed. I could hear her breathing from across the room.

Richard wet his lips, the awkwardness giving him the air of a little boy who had been caught doing something naughty and embarrassing. He moved away from her, then shrugged at Gittamon.

"She's right, Sergeant – I'm an asshole, but I love my son and I'm worried about him. I'll do whatever I can to find him. That's why I'm here, and that's why I brought Lee."

Myers cleared his throat.

"We should see this hill Cole described. Debbie's good with a crime scene. He should be in on this."

Gittamon said, "Who's Debbie?"

Richard glanced at Lucy again, then sat on a hard chair in the corner. He rubbed his face with both hands.

"Debbie DeNice; it's short for Debulon or something. He's a retired New Orleans detective. Homicide or something, right, Lee?"

"Homicide. Phenomenal case clearance rate."

Richard pushed to his feet.

"The best in the city. Everyone I brought is the best. I'll find Ben if I have to hire Scotland-fucking-Yard."

Myers glanced at Gittamon, then me.

"I'd like to get my people up to your house, Cole. I'd also like a copy of those names."

"Starkey has the list. We can make a copy."

He glanced at Gittamon.

"If SID is on the way, we'd better get going, but I'd also like a quick brief on what we know and what's being done, Sergeant. Can I count on you for that?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely."

I gave him directions to my house. Myers copied them onto a Palm Pilot, then offered to carry Ben's computer down to Gittamon's car. They left together. Richard followed after them, but hesitated when he reached Lucy. He glanced at me, and his mouth tightened as if he smelled bile.

"Are you coming?"

"In a minute."

Richard looked at Lucy, and the hardness around his mouth softened. He touched her arm.

"I'm staying at the Beverly Hills on Sunset. I shouldn't have said those things, Lucille. I regret them and I apologize, but they're true."

He glanced at me again, then left.

Lucy raised a hand to her forehead.

"This is a nightmare."

time missing: 18 hours, 05 minutes

The sun had risen like a mid-morning flare, so intense that it washed the color from the sky and made the palm trees glimmer. Gittamon had gone by the time I reached the street, but Richard was waiting by the black limo with Myers and the two men from the Marquis. They were probably his people from New Orleans.

They stopped talking when I came around the birds- of- paradise, and Richard stepped in front of the others to meet me. He didn't bother hiding his feelings now; his face was angry and intent.

"I've got something to say to you."

"Let me guess: You're not going to ask where I bought the shirt."

"This is your fault. It's only a matter of time before one of them gets killed because of you, and I'm not going to let that happen."

Myers drifted up and touched Richard's arm.

"We don't have time for this."

Richard brushed away his hand.

"I want to say it."

I said, "Take his advice, Richard. Please."

Debbie DeNice and Ray Fontenot moved to Richard's other side. DeNice was a large-boned man with gray eyes the color of soapy dishwater. Fontenot was an ex-NOPD detective like DeNice. He was tall and angular with a bad scar on his neck.

DeNice said, "Take his advice or what?"

It had been a long night. Pressure built in my head until my eyes felt hard. I answered him calmly.

"It's still morning. We're going to see a lot of each other."

Richard said, "Not if I can help it. I don't like you, Cole. I don't trust you. You draw trouble like flies to puke, and I want you to stay away from my family."

I made myself breathe. Further up the street, a middle-aged woman walked a pug. It waddled as it looked for a place to pee. This man was Ben's father and Lucy's former husband. I told myself that if I said or did anything to this man it would hurt them. We didn't have time for this nonsense. We had to find Ben.

"I'll see you up at the house."

I tried to go around them, but DeNice stepped sideways to block my path.

"You don' know whut you dealin' with, podnuh."

Fontenot smiled softly.

"Oh, yeah, you got that right."

Myers said, "Debbie. Ray."

Neither of them moved. Richard stared at Lucy's apartment and wet his lips again as he had upstairs. He seemed more confused than angry.

"She was stupid and selfish to move to Los Angeles. She was stupid to be involved with someone like you, and selfish to take Ben away. I hope she comes to her senses before one of them dies."

DeNice was a wide man with a lurid face that made me think of a homicidal clown. He had small scars on the bridge of his nose. New Orleans was probably a tough beat, but he looked like the kind of man who enjoyed it tough. I could have tried again to step around him, but I didn't.

"Get out of my way."

DeNice opened his sport coat to flash his gun, and I wondered if they were impressed with that down in the Ninth Ward.

DeNice said, "You don't get the picture."

Something flickered at the edges of light; an arm roped with thick veins looped around DeNice's neck; a heavy blue.357 Colt Python appeared under his right arm, the sound as it cocked like breaking knuckles. DeNice floundered off balance as Joe Pike lifted him backwards, Pike's voice a soft hiss.

"Picture this."

Fontenot clawed under his own jacket. Pike snapped the.357 across Fontenot's face. Fontenot staggered. The woman down the street glanced over, but all she saw were six men on the walk with one of them clutching his face.

I said, "Richard, we don't have time for this. We have to find Ben."

Pike wore a sleeveless gray sweatshirt, jeans, and dark glasses that glittered in the sun. The muscles in his arm were bunched like cobblestones around DeNice's neck. The red arrow tattooed across his deltoid was stretched tight with inner tension.

Myers watched Pike the way a lizard watches, not really seeing, more like he was waiting for something that would trigger his own preordained reaction: attack, retreat, fight.

Myers spoke calmly.

"That was stupid, Debbie, stupid and unprofessional. You see, Richard? You can't play with people like this."

Richard seemed to wake, as if he was coming out of a fog. He shook his head.

"Jesus Christ, Lee, what does DeNice think he's doing. I just wanted to talk to Cole. I can't have something like this."

Myers never looked away from Joe. He took DeNice's arm even though Pike still held him.

"I'm sorry, Richard. I'll talk to him."

Myers tugged the arm.

"We're good now. Let go."

Pike's arm tightened.

I said, "Richard, listen. I know you're upset, but I'm upset, too. We have to focus on Ben. Finding Ben comes first. You have to remember that. Now go get into your car. I don't want to have this conversation again."

Richard's jaw popped and flexed, but then he went to his car.

Myers was still watching Pike.

"You going to let go?"

DeNice said, "You better let go, you motherfucker!"

I said, "It's okay now, Joe. Let him go."

Pike said, "Whatever."

DeNice could have played it smart, but didn't. When Pike released him, DeNice spun and threw a hard straight punch. He moved a lot faster than a thick man should and used his legs with his elbow tight to his body. DeNice had probably surprised a lot of men with his speed, which is why he thought he could do it. Pike slipped the punch, trapped DeNice's arm in a joint lock, and hooked DeNice's legs from under him in the same moment. DeNice hit the sidewalk flat on his back. His head bounced on the concrete.

Richard called from the limo.

"Goddamnit, Lee!"

Myers checked DeNice's eyes. They were glassy. He pulled DeNice to his feet and pushed him toward the Marquis. Fontenot was already behind the wheel, holding a bloody handkerchief to his face.

Myers considered Pike for a moment, then me.

"They're just cops."

He joined Richard at the limo, and then both cars drove away.

When I turned to Joe, I saw a dark glimmer at the edge of his lip.

"Hey. What's that?"

I looked more closely. A red pearl colored the corner of his mouth.

"You're bleeding. Did that guy tag you?"

Pike never got tagged. Pike was way too fast ever to get tagged. He touched away the blood, then climbed into my car.

"Tell me about Ben."

Boy Meets Queen

"Help!"

Ben pressed his ear to a tiny hole cut into the top of the box, but all he heard was a faraway shush like when you hold a seashell to your ear.

He cupped his mouth to the hole.

"Can anyone hear me?"

No one answered.

A light had appeared over Ben's head that morning, shining like a faraway star. An air hole had been cut into the box. Ben put his eye to the hole, and saw a tiny disk of blue at the end of a tube.

"I'm down here! Help me! Help!"

No one answered.

" HELP! "

Ben had ripped the tape from his wrists and legs, then freaked out during the night: He kicked the walls like a baby having a tantrum, and tried to push off the top by getting on all fours. He thrashed around like a worm on a hot sidewalk because he thought that bugs were eating him alive. Ben was absolutely and completely certain that Mike and Eric and the African had been T-boned by a speeding bus on their way to the In-N-Out Burger. They had been crushed to red goo and bone chips, and now no one knew that he was trapped in this awful box. He would starve to death and die of thirst and end up looking like something on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Ben lost track of time and drifted at the edges of sleep. He didn't know if he was awake or asleep.

" HELPI'MDOWNHERE!PLEASELETMEOUT! "

No one answered.

" MA-MAAAAAAAAA! "

Something kicked his foot and he jumped as if ten thousand volts had amped through his body.

"Jesus, kid! Stop whining!"

The Queen of Blame leaned on her elbow at the far end of the box: a beautiful young woman with silky black hair, long golden legs, and voluptuous breasts spilling out of a tiny halter. She didn't look happy.

Ben shrieked, and the Queen plugged her ears.

"Christ, you're loud."

"You're not real! You're only a game!"

"Then this won't hurt."

She twisted his foot. Hard.

"Ow!"

Ben scrambled backwards, slipping and sliding with no place to go. She couldn't be real! He was trapped in a nightmare!

The Queen grinned nastily, then touched him with the toe of a gleaming vinyl boot.

"You don't think I'm real, big guy? Go ahead. Feel it."

"No!"

She arched her eyebrows knowingly and stroked her boot along his leg.

"You know how many boys wanna touch that boot? Feel it. See if I'm real."

Ben reached out with a finger. The boot was as slick as a polished car and as solid as the box around him. Her toes flexed. Ben jerked back his hand.

The Queen laughed.

"You wouldn't last two seconds against Modus!"

"I'm only ten! I'm scared and I want to go home!"

The Queen examined her nails as if she was bored. Each nail was a glistening razor-sharp emerald.

"So go. You can leave any time you want."

"I've been trying to go. We're trapped!"

The Queen raised her eyebrows again.

"Are we?"

She watched him without expression, tracing her nails over a belly that was as flat as tiles on a floor. Her nails were so sharp that they scratched her skin.

"You can leave any time you want."

Ben thought she was teasing him, and his eyes welled with tears.

"That isn't funny! I've been calling for help all night and no one can hear me!"

The Queen's beautiful face grew fierce. Her eyes blazed like deranged yellow orbs and her hand raked the air like a claw.

"Claw your way out, you idiot! See how SHARP!"

Ben cowered back, terrified.

"Get away from me!"

She leaned closer, fingers weaving like snakes. Her nails were glittering knives.

"FEEL THE SHARP POINTS! FEEL HOW THEY CUT!"

"Go away!"

She lunged at him.

Ben threw his arms over his head. He screamed as the razor-sharp points dug into his leg.

Then he woke up.

Ben found himself curled into a ball, cowering. He blinked into the darkness, listening. The box was silent and empty. He was alone. It had all been a nightmare, except that Ben could still feel the sharp pain of her nails in his thigh.

He rolled onto his side, and the sharp thing bit deeper.

"Ouch!"

He felt to see what was sticking him. Elvis Cole's Silver Star was in his pocket. He took it out, and traced the medal's five points with his fingers. They were hard and sharp, just like a knife. He pressed a point into the plastic overhead, then sawed the medal back and forth. He felt the plastic with his fingers. A thin line was scribed in his sky.

Ben worked the medal back and forth some more, and the line grew deeper. He pushed faster and harder, his arms pumping like pistons. Tiny bits of plastic fell through the darkness like rain.

CHAPTER 7

The Operator

Michael Fallon was naked except for faded blue shorts. With the windows covered and the central air off so that the neighbors wouldn't hear it running, the house felt like an oven. Fallon didn't mind. He had been in plenty of Third World shitholes where heat like this was a breath of cool air.

Schilling and Ibo had gone out to steal a car, so Fallon stripped down to exercise. He tried to work out every day, because if your edge wasn't clean the other guy had you, and nobody had Mike Fallon.

He did two hundred push-ups, two hundred crunches, two hundred leg lifts, and two hundred back bends without pausing between sets, repeated the cycle twice more, then triple-timed in place for twenty minutes, bringing his knees high to his chest. Sweat glazed his skin like icing and splattered the floor like rain, but it wasn't much of a workout; Fallon regularly ran ten miles with a sixty-pound ruck.

Fallon was toweling off the sweat when the garage door rumbled open. That would be Schilling and Ibo, but he picked up his.45 just in case.

They came through the kitchen with two bags from Ralphs, Schilling calling like some stiff who was getting home in the 'burbs.

"Mike? Yo, Mike?"

Fallon stepped out behind them. He tapped Schilling with the gun.

Schilling jumped like a bitch.

"Jesus, fuck! You scared the shit out of me."

"Pay more attention next time. If I was the wrong guy, you wouldn't have a next time."

"Whatever."

Schilling and Ibo put down the bags, Schilling bitching because Fallon had gotten the drop on him. Ibo tossed a green apple to Fallon, then took a bottle of Orangina, for himself. It had to be orange – orange juice, orange soda, Orangina; Ibo wouldn't drink anything else. Fallon needled Schilling about getting the drop, but they both knew that Eric was good. In fact, Eric was excellent. Fallon just happened to be better.

Fallon said, "You get the car okay?"

"Mazi got it. We went down to Inglewood. Half the rides down there are rolling stolen, anyway; the cops won't pay attention even if the owner calls it in."

Ibo said, "Eets good cahr. Nyce seets."

Schilling took two cell phones from a bag and tossed them to Fallon, one, two, a Nokia and a Motorola. They needed the car and the phones for what they had planned.

Fallon watched for a moment as they put out the food, then said, "Listen up."

Schilling and Ibo looked over. They had been planning this for a long time, but now they were getting close to the edge. It would be go or no-go in just a few hours.

"Once we double-cross this guy, there's no going back. Are we all good on this?"

Schilling said, "Hell, yes. I want the money. So does Mazi. Dude, this op is nothing compared to that other shit; fuck what some asshole thinks."

Ibo rapped fists with Schilling, the two of them grinning. Fallon knew how they would answer, but he was glad he had asked. They were in it for the money, like professionals.

"Hoo."

Schilling and Ibo answered, "Hoo."

Fallon dropped to the floor to pull on his socks and shoes. He wanted a shower, but the shower could wait.

"I'm gonna go find an AO. Stow the chow, then check the kid. Make sure he's tight."

The AO was the location they would secure and maintain as the area of operation for the double-cross.

"He's tight. He's under three feet of dirt."

"Check him anyway, Eric. I'll be back after dark, then we can pull him up to make the call. We'll probably have to put him on the phone to convince these guys."

Fallon slipped his gun into his pants, then started for the garage. Schilling called after him.

"Yo. What are we going to do with the kid if we don't get the money.''

Fallon didn't even look back or break stride.

"Put him back in the box and plug up the hole."

CHAPTER 8

time missing: 18 hours, 38 minutes

Laurence Sobek murdered seven people. Joe Pike was supposed to be the eighth. They were seven innocent human beings, but Sobek blamed them for putting a pedophile named Leonard DeVille into prison for the rape and sodomy of a five-year-old girl named Ramona Ann Escobar. As often happens to men with "short eyes," DeVille was murdered by inmates. All of that had happened fifteen years ago. Joe Pike, who was then with LAPD, had been the arresting officer, and Sobek's seven victims had been witnesses for the prosecution. Sobek shot Pike twice before Pike put him down, and Pike almost died. His recovery had been slow, and sometimes I doubted it. I guess Pike doubted it, too, but with Pike you never know. The Sphinx is a chatterbox compared to Pike.

I told him about Ben and the call as we drove to my house.

Pike said, "The man on the phone didn't make any demands?"

"He told me it was payback. That's all he said. Just that it was payback for what happened in Vietnam."

"You think he's for real?"

"I don't know."

Pike grunted. He knew what happened to me that day in Vietnam. He was the only person I'd told about that day outside of Army personnel and the families of the other four men. Maybe all of us needed to play the Sphinx, time to time.

When we reached my house, a pale blue SID van was parked across my drive, where Starkey was helping a tall, gangly criminalist named John Chen unload his equipment. Gittamon was changing shoes in the backseat of his car. Richard and his people had gathered at the side of my house with their jackets off and sleeves rolled. A nasty purple bruise had risen under Fontenot's eye. DeNice openly glared at us.

Pike and I parked off the road past my house, then walked back to the van. Starkey shot a resentful glance at Gittamon and lowered her voice. She was still smoking.

"You see all these people? Gittamon is letting them come down the hill."

"This is my partner, Joe Pike. He's coming, too."

"Jesus, Cole, this is a fuckin' crime scene, not a safari."

John Chen emerged from the van with a day pack and an evidence kit like a large metal tackle box. He bobbed his head when he saw us.

"Hey, I know these guys. Hi, Elvis. Hiya, Joe. We worked together on the Sobek thing."

Starkey sucked at her cigarette, then squinted at Pike.

"So you're the one. I heard Sobek put two in your guts and fucked you up pretty bad."

Starkey wasn't long on sensitivity. She blew out a huge bloom of smoke, and Pike moved to stand with Chen. Upwind.

Myers walked over and asked Starkey for the list of names.

She said, "I phoned them in while I was waiting. Any luck, we'll hear back later today."

"Cole said I could have the list. We'll run our own check."

Starkey frowned past her cigarette at me, then took out the list. She gave it to me. I handed it to Myers.

He said, "What are we waiting for?"

Starkey glanced at Gittamon, clearly irritated that he was taking so long, and called out to prod him.

"Any time, Sergeant."

"Almost ready."

He was red-faced from bending over. Myers went back to the others, and Starkey had more of her cigarette.

"Prick."

The black cat who shares the house with me came around the corner. He's old and scruffy and carries his head cocked to the side from when he was shot with a.22. He probably came because he smelled Pike, but when he saw other people standing in front of the house, he arched his back and growled. Even DeNice looked over.

Starkey said, "What's wrong with that thing?"

"He doesn't like people. Don't take it personally. He doesn't like anyone except for me and Joe."

"Maybe he'll like this."

Starkey flicked her cigarette at him. It hit the ground in a shower of sparks.

I said, "Jesus, Starkey, are you nuts?"

The cat didn't run away like most cats would. Instead, his fur stood like a fright mask and he growled even louder. He stalked toward her sideways.

Starkey said, "Holy Christ, look at that bastard."

Pike went over to the cat and stroked its fur. The cat flopped onto its side and rolled onto its back. That cat worships Joe Pike. Starkey scowled at them like the whole thing was distasteful.

"I hate cats."

Gittamon finished with his shoes and climbed out of his car.

"All right, Carol. Let's see what you found. John, are you ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Chenier?"

Starkey said, "Go first, Cole. Take us down."

Pike and I went over the edge first, paralleling Ben's path like I did that morning. Starkey kept up better this time even though she helped Chen with his equipment, but Gittamon and DeNice had trouble with the footing. Myers moved as if he was annoyed with having to wait for the others.

We passed through the walnut trees, then circled the rise to come out above the area where I found the Game Freak. The sprigs of rosemary that Starkey used to mark the footprints stood in the soil like miniature headstones. I pointed out where Ben's footprints ended, then showed them the partial. I squatted at its heel again, and showed them how it was headed toward Ben. Chen opened his evidence kit, and marked the location with an orange flag. Pike bent next to me to study the partial, then moved downhill without a word.

Starkey said, "Hey, be careful. We don't want to disturb anything."

Gittamon and Richard crowded between Chen and Starkey to see the print, with DeNice and Fontenot behind them. Myers considered the print without expression.

"You haven't found any other evidence."

Starkey said, "Not yet."

Richard stared at the partial print, so still that he might have been numb. He touched the dry soil beside it, then glanced around at the rosemary and manzanita brush as if to fix the place in his mind.

"Is this where my son was taken, Cole? Is this where you lost him?"

I didn't answer. I stared at the print, and once more followed its line toward Ben. I had searched the ground between the partial and the terminus of Ben's prints at least three times. The distance between them was at least ten feet. The ground between them was soft and dusty, and should have been covered with prints.

I pointed out what I saw, talking more to myself than the others.

"Ben was over there, facing away from us, playing the Game Freak."

Ben Chenier's ghost walked past on the path, its feet leaving Ben's prints. His ghost was hunched over the Game Freak, which was loud with shrieks and the splat of wet blows. A darker ghost stepped through me, moving toward him. Its right foot kissed the impression into the dust in front of me.

"Ben didn't know he was here until he reached this spot. Then maybe Ben heard something or turned for no reason, I don't know which, but the man was scared that Ben would see him and call out."

The dark ghost suddenly accelerated toward Ben, pushing off in the soft soil and leaving the partial print. I watched it happen.

"Ben still didn't know what was happening, not really, or we'd see scuffs in his footprints. Ben had his back turned. He grabbed Ben from behind and lifted him off his feet. He covered Ben's mouth so he couldn't scream."

The dark ghost carried a struggling boy into the brush. When the ghosts faded, I was shaking.

"That's what happened."

Myers was staring at me. So were Starkey and Chen. Myers shook his head, but I couldn't read his expression.

"So where are his other prints?"

"That's how good he was, Myers. He didn't leave other prints. This one was a mistake."

Richard shook his head, disgusted, then got up. Myers got up with him.

Richard said, "I can't believe this is all you have, one crappy half-assed hole in the dirt, and your only explanation is that Rambo stole my son. Jesus."

DeNice glanced around the hill.

"Maybe they just didn't look hard enough."

Fontenot nodded.

"Bubba, I hear that."

Myers nodded at them, and Fontenot and DeNice spread out over the hill.

Gittamon leaned closer to the print.

He said, "Can you make a cast of this; John?"

Chen pinched a bit of soil and let it dribble through his fingers. He didn't like what he saw, and frowned, sourly.

"You see how fine and dry the soil is, like salt? Soil like this won't hold its structure. You got soil like this, you can lose a lot of detail when you make the pour. The weight of the plastic deforms the impression."

Starkey said, "Everything's a drama with you. I've worked fifty blast sites with this guy and it's always the end of the world."

Chen looked defensive.

"I'm just telling you. I can frame the impression to help with the structure, then seal the soil before I pour, but I don't know what I'll get."

Starkey got up.

"You'll get a cast. Stop whining and start working, John. Jesus."

Richard watched DeNice and Fontenot searching through the brush, then shook his head. He checked the time.

"Lee, this is going to take forever at this rate. You know what to do. Hire more people if we have to and bring in whoever we need. I don't care what it costs."

Starkey watched Gittamon like she was hoping he would say something, and she spoke up when he didn't.

"If more people come out it'll end up like a zoo down here. It's bad enough now."

Richard slipped his hands into his pockets.

"That isn't my problem, Detective. My problem is finding my son. If you want to arrest me for obstruction or some silly thing like that, I'm sure that'll make a good story in the local news."

Gittamon said, "No one's talking about anything like that. We just have to be concerned with preserving the crime scene."

Myers touched Richard's arm. The two of them had a low conversation, then Myers turned back to Gittamon.

"You're right, Sergeant, we need to worry about preserving the evidence and also the case against whoever took Ben. Cole shouldn't be here."

I stared at him, but Myers held the same unreadable expression. Gittamon looked confused.

I said, "I don't get your point, Myers. I've already been here. I was all over this slope searching for Ben."

Richard shifted his shoulders impatiently.

"What's not to understand, Cole? I never practiced criminal law, but I'm enough of a lawyer to know that you'll be a material witness in whatever case arises. You might even be named as a party. Either way, your presence creates a problem."

Starkey said, "Why would he be a party?"

"He was the last person to see my son alive."

The canyon grew hot. Sweat leaked from my pores and blood pushed hard through my arms and legs. Chen was the only one who moved. He tapped a sheet of rigid white plastic into the soil a few inches from the shoe print. He would frame the print like that to support the soil, then spray a thin clear sealant not unlike hairspray to bind the surface. Framing the soil would lend strength. Binding its surface would yield structure. Stability was everything.

I said, "What are you saying, Richard?"

Myers touched Richard's arm again, just as he'd done outside Lucy's apartment.

"He's not accusing you, Cole. It's nothing like that, but it's clear that the man on the phone bears a grudge against you. When everything comes out, maybe it will turn out that you used to know him and didn't like him any more than he likes you."

"I don't know what he's talking about, Myers."

Richard said, "Myers is right. If his lawyer can establish that the grudge goes both ways, he'll argue that you purposefully contaminated the evidence against him. He might even claim that you planted evidence. Look at O.J."

Starkey said, "That's bullshit."

"I used to be a lawyer, Detective. Let me tell you that when you're in court, bullshit sells."

Gittamon squirmed uncomfortably.

"No one is doing anything improper down here."

"Sergeant, I'm on your side – I'm even on Cole's side, as much as it pisses me off to say it, but we have a problem with this. Please. Ask your superiors or someone in the prosecutor's office. See what they think."

Gittamon watched Pike and Richard's detectives moving through the brush. He glanced at Starkey, but all she did was shrug.

He said, "Ah, Mr. Cole, maybe you should wait up at your house."

"What good would it do, Gittamon? I've already been all over this slope, so it won't make any difference if I keep looking."

Gittamon shuffled. He reminded me of the pug, nervous for a place to pee.

"I'll talk to the Hollywood captain. I'll see what he thinks."

Richard and Myers turned away without waiting for more and joined Fontenot and DeNice in the brush. Gittamon hunkered down beside Chen so that he wouldn't have to look at me.

Starkey watched all of them for a moment, then shrugged at me.

"Look, I'll probably hear back on those names in a couple of hours. A regular guy sitting around in Des Moines doesn't just decide to do something like this one day; anyone who would do this is an asshole and assholes have records. If we get a bounce on one of those names you gave us, we'll have something to work with. Just wait upstairs and I'll let you know."

I shook my head.

"You're crazy if you think I'm going to wait."

"We don't have anything else to work with. What else can you do?"

"Think like him."

I waved Pike over, and we climbed the hill to my house.

CHAPTER 9

time missing: 19 hours, 08 minutes

When people look at Joe Pike, they see an ex-cop, ex-Marine, the muscles and the ink, dark glasses riding a secret face. Pike grew up at the edge of a small town where he spent his childhood hiding in the woods. He hid from his father, who liked to beat Pike bloody with his fists, then tool up on Pike's mother. Marines weren't frightened of brutal alcoholics, so Pike made himself into a Marine. The Marines saw Pike move well in the woods and the trees, so they taught him other things. Now Pike was the best that I had ever seen at those things and it was all because he once used to be a scared little boy in the woods. When you see someone, all you see is what they let you see.

Pike studied the canyon from my deck. We could hear Starkey and the others below, though we could not see them. The cut of the canyon funneled their voices, and would have funneled Ben's voice, too, if Ben had called out.

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 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."

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 land-marks 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 house. 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.

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.

"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 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 to 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 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, 31 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?"

"It's at home."

"You can't bring it inside."

"What, Starkey, you think I want to murder some witnesses?"

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?"

"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 fuck 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?''

"We're set up in an interview room. I'm going to warn you that the tape is disturbing. He says some things."

Starkey interrupted 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."

"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! Please, 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 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."

The skin under Lucy's eye flickered.

"How can you joke?"

"I'm joking because it's so absurd. What do you want me to say to something like this? None of that happened. He's making it up."

Richard tapped the table.

"How do we know what happened over there or what you did?"

Lucy snapped an irritated glance at him. She started to say something but didn't.

Gittamon said, "We're not here to make accusations, Mr. Chenier."

"This asshole on the tape is making the accusations, not me, and to tell you the truth I don't give a rat's ass what Cole did over there. What I care about is Ben, and that this sonofabitch -"

He jabbed at the tape recorder.

" – hates Cole so much that he's taking it out on my son."

Lucy said, "Just calm down, Richard. You're making it worse."

Richard squared himself as if he was worn out and tired of talking about it.

"How totally blind about Cole can you be, Lucille? You don't know anything about him."

"I know that I believe him."

"That's perfect. Absolutely perfect. Of course, you would say that."

Richard waved at Myers.

"Lee, let me have that."

Myers passed him the briefcase. Richard took out a manila folder and slapped it on the table.

"FYI, since you know so much: Cole joined the Army because a judge gave him a choice, jail or Vietnam. Did you know that, Lucille? Did he tell you? Jesus Christ, you've exposed yourself and our son to lowlife dangerous trash ever since you've been with this man and you act like it's none of my business. Well, I made it my business because my son is my business."

Lucy stared at the folder without touching it. Richard stared at me, but he was still talking to her.

"I don't care if you're mad, and I don't care if you like it. I had him looked into and there it is: Your boyfriend has been a magnet for trouble ever since he was a kid – assault, assault and battery, grand theft auto. Go on, read it."

A hot wash of blood flooded my face. I felt like a child who had been caught in a lie because the other me was a different me, so far in the past that I had put him away. I tried to remember whether or not I had told Lucy, and knew by the tight expression in her eyes that I hadn't.

"How about my SAT scores, Richard? Did you get that, too?"

Richard talked over me without stopping, and never looked away.

"Did he tell you, Lucille? Did you ask him before you left your son with him? Or were you so caught up in your own self-centered needs that you couldn't be bothered? Wake up, Lucille, Jesus Christ."

Richard stalked around the table without waiting for Lucy or anyone else to speak, and left. Myers stood in the door for a moment, staring at me with his expressionless lizard eyes. I stared back. My pulse throbbed in my ears and I wanted him to say something. I didn't care that I was in the police station. I wanted him to speak, but he didn't. Finally, he turned away and followed Richard out.

Lucy stared at the folder, but I don't think she was looking at it. I wanted to touch her, but I felt too hot to move. Gittamon breathed with a raspy wheeze.

Starkey finally broke the silence.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Chenier. That must have been embarrassing."

Lucy nodded.

"Yes. Very."

I said, "I got into some trouble when I was a sixteen- year- old. What do you want me to say?"

No one looked at me. Gittamon reached across the table to pat Lucy's arm.

"It's hard when a child is missing. It's hard on everyone. Would you like someone to take you home?"

I said, "I'll take her."

"I know this is hard, Mr. Cole, but we'd like to ask you a few more questions."

Lucy stood, still staring at the folder.

"I have the car. I'll be fine."

I touched her arm.

"He made it seem like more than it was. I was a kid."

Lucy nodded. She touched me back, but still didn't look at me.

"I'll be fine. Are we finished here, Sergeant?"

"You are, yes, ma'am. Are you going to be all right tonight? You might want to stay at a hotel or with a friend."

"No, I want to be home if he calls again. Thank you both. I appreciate what you're doing."

"All right, then."

Lucy squeezed around the table, and stopped in the door. She looked at me, but I could see that it was hard for her.

"I'm sorry. That was shameful."

"I'll come by later."

She left without answering. Starkey watched her walk away, then took one of the empty chairs.

"Man, she married a prick."

Gittamon cleared his throat again.

"Why don't we get a little coffee, then keep going. Mr. Cole, if you'd like the bathroom, I'll show you where it is."

"I'm fine."

Gittamon left for his coffee. Starkey sighed, then gave me one of those weak smiles people make when they feel bad for you.

"Rough, huh?"

I nodded.

Starkey pulled the folder across the table. She read whatever was inside.

"Man, Cole, you were a real fuckup when you were a kid."

I nodded.

Neither of us spoke again until Gittamon returned.

I told them about Abbott, Rodriguez, Johnson, and Fields, and how they came to die. I had not described those events since the day I spoke with their families; not because I was ashamed or because it was painful, but because you have to let go of the dead or the dead will carry you down. Talking about it was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope at someone else's life.

Gittamon said, "All right, this man on the tape, he knows your team number, he knows the names of at least two of these men, and he knows that everyone died except you. Who would know these things?"

"Their families. The guys who served in my company at the time. The Army."

Starkey said, "Cole gave me a list of names earlier. I had Hurwitz run them through NLETS, including the dead guys. We got zip."

"One of them might have a younger brother. One of them might have a son. He says on the tape, 'He made my life hell.' He's telling us that he suffered."

I said, "He told us that he was there, too, but only five people went out and the other four are dead. Call the Army and ask them. The citation and after-action reports will tell you what happened."

Starkey said, "I already called. I'm gonna read that stuff tonight."

Gittamon nodded, then glanced at his watch. It was late.

"All right. We'll talk to the families tomorrow. We might know more after that. Carol? Anything else?"

I said, "Can I have a copy of the tape? I want to hear it again."

Starkey said, "Go home, Dave. I'll get his tape."

Gittamon thanked me for my time and got up. He hesitated as if he was thinking about taking Richard's folder, then looked at me.

"I want to apologize for that outburst, too. If I had any idea he was going to do that, I wouldn't have allowed it."

"I know. Thanks."

Gittamon glanced at the folder again, then went home. Starkey left with the tape and did not come back. A few minutes later, a detective I had not met brought a copy of the tape, then walked me to the double glass doors and put me outside.

I stood on the sidewalk wishing that I had taken the folder. I wanted to see what Richard knew, but I didn't want to go back inside. The cool night air felt good. The double doors opened again, and a detective who lived up on the hill by me came out. He cupped a cigarette and his lighter flared.

I said, "Hey."

It took him a moment to place me. A few years ago, his house had been damaged in the big earthquake. I didn't know him then or that he was with LAPD, but not long after I jogged past while he was clearing debris and saw that he had a small rat tattooed on his shoulder. The tat marked him as a tunnel rat in Vietnam. I stopped to give him a hand. Maybe because we had that connection.

He said, "Oh, yeah. How ya doin'?"

"I heard you quit."

He frowned at the cigarette, then drew deep before dropping it.

"I did."

"I don't mean the smoking. I heard you left the job."

"That's right. I hadda come around to sign the papers."

It was time to go, but neither of us moved. I wanted to tell him about Abbott and Fields, and how I pretended to be sick after they died because I was scared to go out again. I wanted to tell him that I had not murdered anyone and how the rage in Lucy's eyes scared me and all the other things that I had never been able to talk about because he was older and he had been there and I thought that he might understand, but, instead, I looked at the sky.

He said, "Well, stop around some time. We'll have a beer."

"Okay. You, too."

He walked around the side of the building, and then he was gone. I wondered about the silence that he carried, and then I wondered at my own.

Joe Pike and I once drove down to the tip of the Baja Peninsula with two women we knew. We caught fish in Baja, then camped on the beach at Cortez. That far south, the summer sun heated the Sea of Cortez until it felt like a hot tub. The water was so heavy with salt that if you let yourself dry without first showering, white flakes would rime on your skin. That same heavy water pushed us to

its surface, refusing to let us sink. It could lull you, that water. It could make you feel safe even when you weren't.

That first afternoon, the sea was so still that it lay clean as a pond. The four of us swam, but, when the others stroked back to shore, I stayed in the quiet water. I floated on my back without effort. I stared into the cloudless azure sky feeling something like bliss.

I might have dozed. I might have found peace.

I was absolutely still in my world when, in the next instant, a fierce and sudden pressure lifted me without warning as the sea fell away. I tried to kick my legs under me, but the surging force was too great. I tried to right myself, but the swell grew too fast. I knew in a heartbeat that I would live or die or be swept away, and I could change none of it. I had lost myself to an unknown force that I could not resist.

Then the sea settled and once more grew flat.

Pike and the others saw it happen. When I reached shore, they explained: The Sea of Cortez is home to basking sharks. Basking sharks are harmless, but monstrously large, often reaching sixty feet in length and weighing many tons. They cruise at the surface where the water is warm, which is how they earned their name. I had floated into the path of one. It had dipped under me rather than going around. The swell of its tremendous passing had lifted me in its wake.

I had forgotten the feeling of fear when my body and fate were controlled by an unknown power; the feeling of being so purely helpless and alone.

Until this night.

CHAPTER 10

Tunnel Rat

Sweat pooled in the caverns of Ben's eyes. He ducked his head from side to side, wiping away the sweat onto his shoulders. In the depthless black of the box, he tried to work with his eyes closed, but all of his instincts drove them open as if with an expectation of sight. His clothes were soaked, his shoulders ached, and his hands were cramped into claws, but Ben felt ecstatic: School was out, Christmas was here, he had knocked in the game-winning run. Ben Chenier was approaching the finish line and he was happy!

"I'm gonna get out. I'm getting OUT!"

A cut opened across his plastic sky like a scar pulling free of its stitches. Ben had worked furiously throughout the night and through the day. The Silver Star bit through the plastic again and again, and loose soil fell like rain.

"Yeah, that's it! YEAH!"

He had dulled three of the star's five points, but by the afternoon of the first day the cut had grown into a snaggle-toothed leer that stretched across the width of the box. Ben worked his fingers into the gap and pulled as hard as he could. Tiny pebbles bounced around him as dust trickled through the split, but the plastic was strong and did not bend easily.

" SHIT! "

Ben heard a mumble and a thump, and he wondered if he was dreaming again. He wouldn't mind if the Queen of Blame came back; she was hot. Ben stopped working, and listened.

"Answer me, kid. I can hear you down there."

It was Eric! His voice sounded hollow and far away coming down the pipe.

"Answer me, goddamnit."

The light from the pipe was gone; Eric must be so close that he blocked the sun.

Ben held his breath, suddenly more afraid than when they first put him in the box. A few hours ago he had prayed for them to return, but now he was almost out! If they discovered him trying to escape, they would take away the medal, tie his hands, and bury him again – and then he would be trapped forever!

The light returned, and then Eric's voice sounded farther away.

"The little prick won't answer. You think he's okay?"

Ben heard Mazi clearly.

"Eet weel not mahter."

Eric tried once more.

"Kid? You want some water?"

Here in the darkness of the box, Ben hid from them. They wouldn't know if he was alive or dead unless they dug him up, but they wouldn't dig him up during the day. They would wait until dark. No one can see you do bad things in the dark.

"Kid?"

Ben held perfectly still.

"You little shit!"

The light reappeared as Eric moved away. Ben counted to fifty, then grew scared that it wasn't enough. He counted to fifty again, then resumed work. He was in a race with them now; he had to get out before they dug him up. The African's words echoed in the darkness: Eet weel not mahter.

Ben felt along the jagged edge of the split until he found a ragged spot near its center, then set to work carving a tiny notch. He worked the Silver Star with small firm moves like a man signing a contract. He didn't need much; just a small tear so that he could get a better grip.

The star cut through the plastic, and the notch grew. He scraped dirt from behind the plastic, then gripped the split again and pulled. A shower of soil fell all at once. Ben sneezed, then brushed dirt from his eyes. The split had opened into a narrow triangular hole.

"YES!"

Ben pushed the soil that had rained down to the end of the box with his feet, then put the Silver Star into his pocket. He pulled his T-shirt over his face like a mask, then scooped out more soil. Ben worked his hand through the split up to his wrist, and finally to his elbow. He dug as far as he could reach, finally creating a large hollow dome. Ben gripped the plastic on either side of the T-shaped hole and hung with all his weight as if he was doing a chin-up. The hole didn't open.

"You dick! You pussy asshole!"

He shouted at the hole.

"You weenie!"

He had the door; all he had to do was open it. OPEN THE DOOR!

Ben scrunched into a ball, pulling his knees to his chest. He propped a knee onto the left side of the T and gripped the right with both hands. He strained so hard that his body arched from the floor.

The plastic tore like cold taffy slowly pulling apart.

Ben's grip slipped and he fell.

" YES! YESYESYES! "

Ben wiped his hands as best he could, then took another grip. He pulled so hard that his head buzzed, and the roof abruptly split as if the plastic had simply surrendered. A landslide of dirt poured through, but Ben didn't care – the box was open.

Ben pushed the dirt and rocks that had fallen to the end of the box, then peeled open the flap. More dirt piled around him. He worked his arm and then his head up into the hole. The freshly turned soil came easily. He twisted his shoulders through the hole and then he was up to his waist. He clawed dirt down past his sides like a swimmer pulling water, but the more he pulled the more the earth closed around him. Ben grew more frantic with each stroke. He reached higher, clawing for the surface, but the earth pressed in on him from all sides like a cold sea pulling him under.

Ben couldn't breathe!

He was being crushed!

Panic filled him with terror and the absolute certainty that he was going to die -

– then he broke through the surface of soil and cool night air washed his face. A canvas of stars filled the overhead sky. He was free.

The Queen's voice whispered.

"I knew you'd kick its ass."

Ben got his bearings. It was night, and he was in the backyard of a house in the hills. He didn't know which hills, but lights from the city were spread in the distance.

Ben wiggled along the ground until his feet were free. He was in a flower bed at the edge of a patio in the backyard of a really nice house, though the yard was dry and dying. Neighboring houses sat behind walls that were hidden by ivy.

Ben was scared that Mike and the others would hear him, but the house was dark and the windows were covered. He ran to the side of the house, and slipped into the shadows as if they were comfortable old coats.

A walkway ran along the side of the house to the front. Ben crept along the walk, moving so quietly that he could not hear his own footsteps. When he reached a chain-link gate, he wanted to throw it open and run, but he was scared that the men would catch him. He eased the gate open. The hinges made a low squeal, but then the gate swung free. Ben listened, ready to run if he heard them coming, but the house remained silent.

Ben crept through the gate. He was very close to the front of the house. He could see a brightly lit home across the street with cars in its drive. A family would be inside, he thought; a mom and a dad, and grown-ups who would help! All he had to do was sneak across the street and run to the neighbor's door.

Ben reached the end of the house and peeked around the corner. The short, sloping driveway was empty. The garage door was down. The windows were dark.

Ben's face split into a huge toothy grin because he had escaped! He stepped into the drive just as steel hands clamped over his mouth and jerked him backward.

Ben tried to scream, but couldn't. He kicked and fought, but more steel wrapped his arms and legs. They had come from nowhere.

"Stop kicking, ya little prick."

Eric was a harsh whisper in Ben's ear; Mazi an ebony giant at his feet. Tears blurred Ben's eyes. Don't put me back in the box, he tried to say; please don't bury me! But his words could not get past Eric's iron hand.

Mike stepped out of a shadow and gripped Eric's arm. Ben felt the terrible pressure of his grip in Eric's sudden weakness.

"A ten-year-old kid, and he beat you. I should beat you myself."

"Jesus, we got him. It saves us the trouble of diggin' him up."

Mike ran his hands over Ben's legs, then searched Ben's pockets and came out with the Silver Star. He held it up by the ribbon.

"Did Cole give you this?"

The best Ben could do was nod.

Mike dangled the medal in front of Mazi and Eric.

"He cut his way out with this. See how the points are dull? You fucked up. You should've searched him."

"It's a fuckin' medal, not a knife."

Mike grabbed Eric's throat with such speed that Ben didn't see his hand move. Their faces were only inches apart with Ben sandwiched between them.

"Fuck up again, I'll put you down."

Eric's voice gurgled.

"Yes, sir."

"Keep your shit tight. You're better than this."

Eric tried to answer again, but couldn't. Mike squeezed even harder.

Mazi gripped Mike's arm.

"Ewe ahr keeleeng heem."

Mike let go. He considered the Silver Star again, then pushed it into Ben's pocket.

"You earned it."

Mike turned away into the shadows and Ben caught a glimpse of the house across the street. He saw the family inside. Ben's eyes filled. He had come so close.

Mike turned back to them.

"Bring him inside. It's time to put him on the phone."

Eighty feet away, the Gladstone family enjoyed meatloaf for dinner as they shared stories about their day. Emile was the father and Susse the mom; Judd and Harley, their sons. Their comfortable home was bright with light, and they laughed often. None of them heard or saw the three men or the boy, and had only a vague sense that minor repair work was being done during the day while the new owners awaited the close of escrow. As far as the Gladstone family knew, the house across the street was empty. No one was home.