Chasing Darkness

1

OUR OFFICE was a good place to be that morning. There was only the tocking of the Pinocchio clock, the scratch of my pen, and the hiss of the air conditioner fighting a terrible heat. Fire season had arrived, when fires erupted across the Southland like pimples on adolescent skin.

Joe Pike was waiting for me to finish the paperwork. He stood at the French doors that open onto my balcony, staring across the city toward the ocean. He had not spoken nor moved in more than twenty minutes, which was nothing for Pike. He often went soundless for days. We were going to work out at Ray Depente’s gym in South-Central Los Angeles when I finished the grind.

The first call came at nine forty-two.

A male voice said, “Are you Elvis Cole?”

“That’s right. How can I help you?”

“You’re a dead man.”

I killed the call and went back to work. When you do what I do, you get calls from schizophrenics, escapees from Area 51, and people claiming to know who killed the Black Dahlia and Princess Diana.

Pike said, “Who was it?”

“Some guy told me I was a dead man.”

Pike said, “Smoke.”

I glanced up from the work.

“Where?”

“ Malibu, looks like. Maybe Topanga.”

Then Pike turned toward the door, and everything that had been normal about that ordinary morning changed.

“Listen-”

A stocky man with a short haircut and wilted tan sport coat shoved through the door like he lived in Fallujah. He flashed a badge as if he expected me to dive under my desk.

“Welcome to hell, shitbird.”

A woman in a blue business suit with a shoulder bag slung on her arm came in behind him. The heat had played hell with her hair, but that didn’t stop her from showing a silver-and-gold detective shield.

“Connie Bastilla, LAPD. This is Charlie Crimmens. Are you Elvis Cole?”

I studied Pike.

“Did he really call me a shitbird?”

Crimmens tipped his badge toward me, then Pike, but talked to the woman.

“This one’s Cole. This one’s gotta be his bun boy, Pike.”

Pike faced Charlie. Pike was six-one, a bit over two, and was suited up in a sleeveless grey sweatshirt and government-issue sunglasses. When he crossed his arms, the bright red arrows inked into his deltoids rippled.

I spoke slowly.

“Did you make an appointment?”

Crimmens said, “Answer her, shitbird.”

I am a professional investigator. I am licensed by the state of California and run a professional business. Police officers did not barge into my office. They also did not call me a shitbird. I stood, and gave Crimmens my best professional smile.

“Say it again I’ll shove that badge up your ass.”

Bastilla took a seat in one of the two director’s chairs facing my desk.

“Take it easy. We have some questions about a case you once worked.”

I stared at Crimmens.

“You want to arrest me, get to it. You want to talk to me, knock on my door and ask for permission. You think I’m kidding about the badge, try it out.”

Pike said, “Go ahead, Crimmens. Give it a try.”

Crimmens smirked as he draped himself over the file cabinet. He studied Pike for a moment, then smirked some more.

Bastilla said, “Do you recall a man named Lionel Byrd?”

“I didn’t offer you a seat.”

“C’mon, you know Lionel Byrd or not?”

Charlie said, “He knows him. Jesus.”

Something about Crimmens was familiar, though I couldn’t place him. Most of the Hollywood Bureau detectives were friends of mine, but these two were blanks.

“You aren’t out of Hollywood.”

Bastilla put her card on my desk.

“Homicide Special. Charlie’s attached out of Rampart. We’re part of a task force investigating a series of homicides. Now, c’mon. Lionel Byrd.”

I had to think.

“We’re talking about a criminal case?”

“Three years ago, Byrd was bound over for the murder of a twenty-eight-year-old prostitute named Yvonne Bennett, a crime he confessed to. You produced a witness and a security tape that supposedly cleared him of the crime. His attorney was J. Alan Levy, of Barshop, Barshop & Alter. We getting warmer here?”

The facts of the case returned as slowly as surfacing fish. Lionel Byrd had been an unemployed mechanic with alcohol problems and a love/hate relationship with prostitutes. He wasn’t a guy you would want to know socially, but he wasn’t a murderer.

“Yeah, I remember. Not all the details, but some. It was a bogus confession. He recanted.”

Crimmens shifted.

“Wasn’t bogus.”

I took my seat and hooked a foot on the edge of the desk.

“Whatever. The video showed he was here in Hollywood when Bennett was murdered. She was killed in Silver Lake.”

Behind them, Pike touched his watch. We were going to be late.

I lowered my foot and leaned forward.

“You guys should have called. My partner and I have an appointment.”

Bastilla took out a notepad to show me they weren’t going to leave.

“Have you seen much of Mr. Byrd since you got him off?”

“I never met the man.”

Crimmens said, “Bullshit. He was your client. You don’t meet your clients?”

“Levy was my client. Barshop, Barshop paid the tab. That’s what lawyers do.”

Bastilla said, “So it was Levy who hired you?”

“Yes. Most of my clients are lawyers.”

Attorneys can’t and don’t rely on the word of their clients. Often, their clients don’t know the whole and impartial truth, and sometimes their clients lie. Since lawyers are busy lawyering, they employ investigators to uncover the facts.

Bastilla twisted around to see Pike.

“What about you? Did you work on Byrd’s behalf?”

“Not my kind of job.”

She twisted farther to get a better look.

“How about you take off the shades while we talk?”

“No.”

Crimmens said, “You hiding something back there, Pike? How ’bout we look?”

Pike’s head swiveled toward Crimmens. Nothing else moved; just his head.

“If I showed you, I’d have to kill you.”

I stepped in before it got out of hand.

“Joe didn’t help on this one. This thing was Detective Work 101. I must pull thirty cases like this a year.”

Crimmens said, “That’s sweet. You must take pride in that, helping shitbirds get away with murder.”

Crimmens was pissing me off again.

“What are we talking about this for, Bastilla? This thing was settled three years ago.”

Bastilla opened her pad and studied the page.

“So you are telling us you have never met Lionel Byrd?”

“I have never met him.”

“Are you acquainted with a man named Lonnie Jones?”

“No. Is he your new suspect?”

“During your investigation into the matter of Yvonne Bennett, did you discover evidence linking Mr. Byrd to any other crimes or criminal activities?”

“What kind of question is that? Have you re-arrested him?”

Bastilla scribbled a note. When she looked up, her eyes were ringed with purple cutting down to her mouth. She looked as tired as a person can look without being dead.

“No, Mr. Cole, we can’t arrest him. Eight days ago, he was found during the evacuation up in Laurel Canyon. Head shot up through the bottom of his chin. He had been dead about five days.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Crimmens laughed.

“Wouldn’t that be funny, Con? Wouldn’t that be too perfect? Man, I would love that.”

Bastilla smiled, but not because she thought it was funny.

“He committed suicide. He was living under the name Lonnie Jones. Know why he was using an alias?”

“No idea. Maybe because he didn’t like being accused of murders he didn’t commit.”

Bastilla leaned toward me and crossed her arms on a knee.

“The man’s dead now, Cole. Reason we’re here, we’d like to examine the reports and work product you have from the Bennett case. Your notes. The people you questioned. Everything in your file.”

She waited without blinking, studying me as if she knew what I would say, but was hoping I might not say it. I shook my head.

“I was working on behalf of defense counsel. That material belongs to Alan Levy.”

“Levy is being contacted.”

Crimmens said, “The fucker’s dead, Cole. You got him off. What’s it matter now?”

“If Levy says fine, then fine, but I worked for him, Crimmens, not you. There’s that little thing about ‘expectation of confidentiality.’”

I looked back at Bastilla.

“If the man’s dead and you don’t think I killed him, why do you care what’s in my files about Yvonne Bennett?”

Bastilla sighed, then straightened.

“Because this isn’t only about Bennett. Lionel Byrd murdered seven women. We believe he murdered one woman every year for the past seven years. Yvonne Bennett was his fifth victim.”

She said it as matter-of-factly as a bank teller cashing a check, but with a softness in her voice that spread seeds of ice in my belly.

“He didn’t kill Yvonne Bennett. I proved it.”

Bastilla put away her pad. She got up, then hooked her bag on her shoulder, finally ready to go.

“Material linking him to the murder was found in his home. He murdered a sixth woman the summer after his release. His most recent victim was murdered thirty-six days ago, and now he’s murdered himself.”

Crimmens licked his lips as if he wanted to eat me alive.

“How do you feel now, Mr. Thirty-a-Year?”

I shook my head at Bastilla.

“What does that mean, you found material?”

“Something in your files might help us figure out how he got away with it, Cole. Talk to Levy. If we have to subpoena, we will, but it’ll be faster if you guys come across.”

I stood with her.

“Waitaminute-what does that mean, you found something? What did you find?”

“A press conference is scheduled for this evening. In the meantime, talk to Levy. The sooner the better.”

Bastilla left without waiting, but Crimmens made no move to follow. He stayed on the file cabinet, watching me.

I said, “What?”

“ Escondido and Repko.”

“Why are you still here, Crimmens?”

“You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“Should I?”

“Think about it. You must’ve read my reports.”

Then I realized why he was familiar.

“You were the arresting officer.”

Crimmens finally pushed off the cabinet.

“That’s right. I’m the guy who arrested Byrd. I’m the guy who tried to stop a killer. You’re the shitbird who set him free.”

Crimmens glanced at Pike, then went to the door.

“Lupe Escondido and Debra Repko are the women he killed after you got him off. You should send the families a card.”

Crimmens closed the door when he left.

2

ON A moonless night three years before Bastilla and Crimmens came to my office, someone shattered Yvonne Bennett’s skull in a Silver Lake parking lot, one block north of Sunset Boulevard. The night was warm, though not hot, with the scent of spider lilies kissing the air. The weapon of choice was a tire iron.

Yvonne Bennett was twenty-eight years old when she died, though everyone I interviewed-including two former roommates and three former boyfriends-believed she was nineteen. As it was for many in Los Angeles, her life was a masquerade. She lied about her age, her past, her work history, and her profession. Of the twenty-three people I interviewed when I tracked her movements on the night of her death, three believed she was a student at UCLA, two believed she was a student at USC, one believed she was a graduate student working toward a doctorate in psychology, and one or more of the rest believed she was a production assistant, a makeup artist, a florist, a clothing designer, a graphic artist, a bartender, a waitress, a sales clerk at Barney’s on Wilshire Boulevard, or a sous chef who worked for Wolfgang Puck. Though she had been arrested for prostitution twice, she was not and never had been a streetwalker. She was a bar girl. She picked up men in bars and brokered the cash before leaving the premises. Even with the arrests, she denied being a prostitute, once telling a former roommate that, though she dated men for money, she never took money for sex. This, too, was a lie.

There wasn’t much in my files about Yvonne Bennett or Lionel Byrd because I hadn’t spent much time on his case, eight days start to finish. Any moron could have solved it. No shots fired, no beatings given or received. The Batman cape stayed home.

I passed the pages to Pike as I read them.

At the time of his arrest, Lionel Byrd was a legitimate suspect in the murder. He had been seen talking to Yvonne Bennett earlier that evening and he had a criminal history with prostitutes-two pops for soliciting and a misdemeanor assault conviction eighteen months earlier when he argued with a prostitute about her services. Byrd was still on probation when Crimmens picked him up.

A twenty-two-year-old coffee-shop barista and aspiring actor named Angel Tomaso was the last person to see Yvonne Bennett alive when she entered the alley behind his coffee shop at eleven-forty P.M. Her body was discovered at twelve-sixteen A.M. These two times created the thirty-six-minute window during which Bennett was murdered, and would prove key to the charges against Byrd being dropped.

Though the evidence against him was largely circumstantial, Lionel Byrd confessed the crime to Crimmens and his partner at the time, a fellow Rampart detective named Nicky Munoz. This sounds more telling than it was. With the assault prior and the witnesses who saw them together, Crimmens convinced Byrd he was cooked on the murder and promised a lesser charge if Byrd confessed. When Levy viewed the confession tape, it was clear Byrd had no knowledge of the crime; Crimmens had fed him the information with leading questions. Byrd later recanted, but by then the damage was done. The confession and its supporting evidence were enough for a murder charge to be brought.

Levy convinced me that Byrd was being given the rush with the jacked-up confession. He also convinced the judge, who threatened to toss the confession. Eight days later I found a time-coded security video placing Byrd in the Two Worlds Lounge in Hollywood at the same time Yvonne Bennett was being murdered sixteen-point-two miles away. Levy, the bartender on duty that night, and I met with the prosecutor in the judge’s chambers three days later, where, at the judge’s suggestion and in hopes of avoiding a slam-dunk acquittal, the deputy district attorney dropped the charges.

Nothing in my files made me doubt myself. Nothing there made me feel wrong. They didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to put it together.

Pike tamped the pages together.

“How was it you found the tape and not Crimmens and Munoz? They had the same information as you.”

“Crimmens had the confession, so he was lazy. We had a list of the places Byrd claimed he was in that night, but he only knew a few of the bars by name. We had to figure out where he was by working off the descriptions.”

“Uh-huh.”

“All of the bars checked out except the last one. He said he stopped for a nightcap at a place like a tiki bar that had bamboo. Everyone, including me, thought it was in Silver Lake.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“We found a bar like that, but not the one he meant. It was a lesbian bar. It wasn’t a tiki place, but it was small and dark with bamboo furniture. This was the only place that came close to his description, but the bartenders denied he was there. That sealed the deal for Crimmens, but here was the tell: Byrd told Crimmens he argued with the bartender because the bartender wouldn’t let him run a tab. On the tape, he says, that guy was a prick.”

“A guy.”

“The bartenders were women. All the other bars had checked out, so him getting it wrong about the bartender bothered me. Byrd had an apartment in Hollywood back then, so I looked for something closer to home. That’s where I found it, a little place between Santa Monica and Sunset. They were trying to look like the Alaskan wilderness. They had these fake totem poles behind the bar, not tiki idols. They still had the security tape, and there he was, having his drink. The time code put him in Hollywood during the window when Yvonne Bennett was murdered. The judge agreed. The DA. Everybody. That’s why they dropped the charges.”

Maybe I was still trying to convince myself, but I didn’t see the hole. I didn’t see how Lionel Byrd could have killed her, and I didn’t see how Bastilla could be so certain that he had.

Pike said, “What about the other murders?”

“I was all over this guy’s life for eight days. I had his priors. I had everything. There was nothing to suggest he was a killer or was involved with anyone who was.”

Pike put my files aside.

“Only now the police say Byrd did it.”

I got up for a bottle of water and looked for the fire Pike had seen, but the fire was out. The firefighters had moved in hard and killed it. That’s the best way to stop these things. Kill them before they grow.

I returned to my desk.

“Listen, take off for Ray’s without me. I’m going to call Levy.”

“I can wait.”

I scrolled through my Palm for Levy’s number and put in the call. I had not called or spoken with Alan Levy in almost three years, but his assistant immediately recognized my name.

“Alan’s in court, but he told me to find him. He might not be able to talk, but I know it’s important. Can you hold while I try?”

“I’ll hold.”

Pike hadn’t moved, so I covered the mouthpiece.

“You don’t have to wait. I’m going to be here a while.”

Pike still didn’t move. Then Levy came on, speaking quickly in a low voice.

“Have you heard about Lionel Byrd?”

“Two detectives just told me Byrd was good for seven murders, including Yvonne Bennett. Is this for real?”

“I got a call this morning from Leslie Pinckert in Major Crimes-did Pinckert talk to you?”

“A detective named Bastilla was here. Crimmens was with her. They told me they have something that puts Byrd with the murders, but wouldn’t say what.”

“Wait, hang on-”

Muffled voices and court sounds whispered in the background, then he returned.

“Byrd had pictures of the victims in some kind of album. That’s all she would tell me. They don’t want this thing out of the bag until they’ve gone public.”

“That asshole Crimmens tells me I got two of those women killed, and they’re playing it tight? I need more than that, Alan.”

“Just settle down.”

“They wanted my files.”

“I know. Did you give them anything?”

“Not until I spoke with you. I thought there might be a privilege issue.”

“Are you in possession of anything that wasn’t copied to me?”

“Just a few notes I didn’t bother typing up in the formal reports.”

“Okay. Get everything together, and we’ll make time tomorrow. I want to cooperate with these people, but I have to review the material first.”

“Did Byrd have a picture of Bennett? Did Pinckert tell you that much?”

Levy hesitated, and suddenly the sounds of justice behind him were loud.

“Pinckert promised to call this evening when she has more leeway to talk. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

The line went dead.

Pike was still watching me.

“What did he say?”

“He thinks they’re keeping it buried until they know how to spin it.”

“Hollywood Station covers the canyon. If a body was found up in Laurel, Poitras should know.”

Lou Poitras was the detective-lieutenant in charge of the homicide bureau at Hollywood Station. He was also a friend. If a body dead from suspicious circumstances was found up in Laurel Canyon, Lou’s detectives would have rolled to the scene before Bastilla and her task force were involved.

I immediately called his office, and got a sergeant named Griggs on the line. I had known Griggs almost as long as Poitras.

“Homicide. Lieutenant Poitras’s office.”

“It’s me. Is he in?”

“Yes, he’s in. Some of us work for a living.”

“That’s right, Griggs. And the rest of us are cops.”

“Eff you.”

Griggs hung up.

I redialed the number, but this time Poitras answered.

“Are you harassing my sergeant again?”

“Did your people roll on a DB suicide up in Laurel by the name of Lionel Byrd?”

The easy banter in his tone hardened as if I had flipped a switch.

“How did you hear about this?”

“A cop named Connie Bastilla just left my office. She told me something was found with his body that puts Byrd with seven killings.”

Poitras hesitated.

“Why would Bastilla tell you about this?”

“Byrd was up for the murder of a woman named Yvonne Bennett. I was on the defense side. I found the evidence that freed him.”

Poitras took even longer to answer this time.

“Wow.”

“What do they have?”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Does that mean you won’t tell me?”

“It means I don’t know what they have. You know Bobby McQue?”

Bobby McQue was a senior detective on Lou’s squad.

“Yeah, I know Bobby.”

“Bobby had it, but downtown rolled in when they saw we had a possible serial. They cut us out.”

“So what did McQue find before you were out? C’mon, Lou, I need to know if this is real, man. Right now, it feels like a nightmare.”

Poitras didn’t respond.

“Lou?”

Behind me, Pike spoke loud enough for Poitras to hear.

“Tell Poitras to man-up.”

“Was that Pike?”

“Yeah. He was here when Bastilla showed up.”

Poitras hated Pike. Most L.A. police officers hated Pike. He was once one of them.

Poitras finally sighed.

“Okay, listen. The chief running the task force wants a tour before they go public, so I gotta go up there later. You want, you can meet me up there now. We’ll walk you through the scene.”

Poitras gave me the address.

“We won’t have much time, so get up there right now.”

“I understand.”

Poitras hung up.

“He’s going to let me see Byrd’s house.”

Pike said, “Poitras won’t want me up there.”

“I’m just going to see what they have. You don’t need to come.”

Pike moved for the first time since Crimmens and Bastilla left. Maybe I had stood a little too quickly. Maybe my voice was a little too high. Pike touched my arm.

“Were you right three years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re still right. You didn’t get those two women killed. Even if the police have something, you didn’t kill them.”

I tried to give him a confident smile.

“Say hi to Ray. If it’s bad, I’ll give you a call.”

Pike left, but I did not leave with him. Instead, I went out onto the balcony and let the bone-dry heat swallow me. The glare made me squint. The nuclear sun crinkled my skin.

Picture the detective at work in his office, fourth floor, Hollywood, as the Devil’s Wind freight-trains down from the desert. Though dry and brutally harsh, the desert wind is clean. It pushes the smog south to the sea and scrubs the sky to a crystalline blue. The air, jittery from the heat, rises in swaying tendrils like kelp from the seabed, making the city shimmer. We are never more beautiful than when we are burning.

Knock, knock, thought you’d like to know, after you cleared that guy he murdered two more women, it should be hitting the news about now, their families should be crying about now.

I locked my office and went to see what they had.

The phone rang again as I went out the door, but I did not return to answer it.

3

Starkey

DETECTIVE-TWO CAROL Starkey spilled the fourth packet of sugar into her coffee. She sipped, but the coffee still tasted sour. Starkey was using the large black Hollywood Homicide mug Charlie Griggs had given her as a welcome-aboard gift three weeks earlier. She liked the mug. A big 187 was stenciled on the side, which was the LAPD code for a homicide, along with the legend OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN YOUR DAY ENDS. Starkey added a fifth sugar. Ever since she gave up the booze her body craved enormous amounts of sugar, so she fed the craving. She sipped. It still tasted like crap.

Clare Olney, who was another hard-core coffee hound, looked on with concern.

“You’d better watch it, Carol. You’ll give yourself diabetes.”

Starkey shrugged.

“Only live once.”

Clare filled his own mug, black, without sugar or milk. He was a round man with a shiny bald dome and pudgy fingers. His mug was small, white, and showed the stick-figure image of a father and little girl. The legend on its side read WORLD’S GREATEST DAD in happy pink letters.

“You like working Homicide, Carol? You fitting in okay?”

“Yeah. It’s good.”

After only three weeks, Starkey wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. Starkey had moved around a lot during her career. Before coming to Homicide, she had worked on the Juvenile Section, the Criminal Conspiracy Section, and the Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad was her love, but, of course, they would not allow her back.

Clare had more coffee, noodling at her over the top of his cup as he worked up to ask. They all asked, sooner or later.

“It’s gotta be so different than working the bombs. I can’t imagine doing what you used to do.”

“It’s no big deal, Clare. Riding a patrol car is more dangerous.”

Clare gave a phony little laugh. Clare was a nice man, but she could spot the phony laugh a thousand clicks out. They laughed because they were uncomfortable.

“Well, you can say it’s no big deal, but I wouldn’t have the guts to walk up to a bomb like that, just walk right up and try to de-arm it. I’d run the other way.”

When Starkey was a bomb technician, she had walked up to plenty of bombs. She had de-armed over a hundred explosive devices of one kind or another, always in complete control of the situation and the device. That was what she most loved about being a bomb tech. It was just her and the bomb. She had been in complete control of how she approached the device and when it exploded. Only one bomb had been beyond her control.

She said, “You want to ask me something, Clare?”

He immediately looked uncomfortable.

“No, I was just-”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it.”

She did mind, but she always pretended she didn’t.

Clare edged away.

“I wasn’t going to-”

“I had a bad one. A frakkin’ earthquake, for Christ’s sake, imagine that shit? A temblor hit us and the damn thing went off. You can dot every i, but there’s always that one frakkin’ thing.”

Starkey smiled. She really did like Clare Olney and the pictures of his kids he kept on his desk.

“It killed me. Zeroed out right there in the trailer park. Dead.”

Clare Olney’s eyes were frozen little dots as Starkey had more of the coffee. She wished she could spark up a cigarette. Starkey smoked two packs a day, down from a high of four.

“The paramedics got me going again. Close call, huh?”

“Man, Carol, I’m sorry. Wow. What else can you say to something like that but wow?”

“I don’t remember it. Just waking up with the paramedics over me, and then the hospital. That’s all I remember.”

“Wow.”

“I wouldn’t go back to a radio car. Screw that. Day to day, that’s way more dangerous than working a bomb.”

“Well, I hope you like it here on Homicide. If I can help you with anything-”

“Thanks, man. That’s nice of you.”

Starkey smiled benignly, then returned to her desk, glad the business of her bomb was out of the way. She was the New Guy at Hollywood Homicide, and had been the New Guy before. Everyone talked about it behind her back, but it always took a couple of weeks before someone asked. Are you the bomb tech who got blown up? Did you really get killed on the job? What was it like on the other side? It was like being dead, motherfucker.

Now Clare would gossip her answers, and maybe they could all move on.

Starkey settled at her desk and went to work reviewing a stack of murder books. This being her first homicide assignment, she had been partnered with a couple of veterans named Linda Brown and Bobby McQue. Brown wasn’t much older than Starkey, but she was a detective-three supervisor with nine years on the table. McQue had twenty-eight years on the job, twenty-three working homicide, and was calling it quits when he hit thirty. The pairings were what Poitras called a training rotation.

Brown and McQue had each dropped ten ongoing cases on her desk and told her to learn the books. She had to familiarize herself with the details of each case and was given the responsibility of entering all new reports, case notes, and information as the investigations developed. Starkey had so much reading to do it made her eyes cross, and when she read, she wanted to smoke. She snuck out to the parking lot fifteen or twenty times a day, which had already caught Griggs’s eye. Jesus, Starkey, you smell like an ashtray.

Eff you, Griggs.

Starkey palmed a cigarette from her bag for her third sprint to the parking lot that day when Lieutenant Poitras came out of his office. Christ, he was big. The sonofabitch was pumped-out from lifting weights like a stack of all-terrain truck tires.

Poitras studied the squad room, then raised his voice.

“Where’s Bobby? McQue on deck?”

When no one else answered, Starkey spoke up.

“Court day, Top. He’s cooling it downtown.”

Poitras stared at her a moment.

“You were with Bobby on the house up in Laurel, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pack up. You’re coming with me.”

Starkey dropped the cigarette back in her purse and followed him out.

4

THE LATE-MORNING sun bounced between sycamores and hundred-foot eucalyptuses as I drove up Laurel Canyon to the top of Lookout Mountain. Even with the heat, young women pushed tricycle strollers up the steep slope, middle-aged men walked listless dogs, and kids practiced half-pipe tricks outside an elementary school. I wondered if any of them knew what had been found up the hill, and how they would react when they heard. The family-friendly, laid-back vibe of Laurel Canyon masked a darker history, spanning Robert Mitchum’s lurid “reefer ranch” bust to Charlie Manson creeping through the sixties rock scene to the infamous “Four on the Floor” Wonderland Murders starring John “Johnny Wadd” Holmes. Driving up through the trees and shadows, the scent of wild fennel couldn’t hide the smell of the recent fire.

The address Lou gave me led to a narrow street called Anson Lane cut into a break on the ridge. A radio car was parked midway up the street with a blue Crown Victoria behind it. Poitras, a detective I knew named Carol Starkey, and two uniforms were talking in the street. Starkey had only been on the bureau for a few weeks, so I was surprised to see her.

I parked behind the Crown Vic, then walked over to join them.

“Lou. Starkey, you driving now?”

“I shot Griggs for the job.”

Poitras shifted with impatience.

“Catch up on your own time. Starkey rolled out with Bobby when the uniforms phoned in the body. They were on it until the task force took over.”

“All of a day and a half. Fuckers.”

Poitras frowned.

“Can we watch the mouth?”

“Sorry, Top.”

Poitras turned toward the house.

“You wanted to see what we have, this is it.”

The house was a small Mediterranean with a Spanish tile roof heavy with a mat of dead leaves and pine needles. The lot was narrow, so the living quarters were stacked on top of a single-car garage. The garage door was splintered as if a latch had been pried, probably so the police could gain access. A rickety stair climbed the entry side of the garage to a tiny covered porch. On the far side of the garage, a broken walk disappeared between overgrown cedar branches where it ran alongside the garage. A single knot of crime scene tape was still tied to the garage, left by whoever pulled down the tape.

Poitras squinted up at the house like it was the last place on earth he wanted to go.

“Starkey can lay out the scene for you, but we don’t have any of the forensics or case files. Downtown has everything.”

“Okay. Whatever you have.”

“It’s going to be hotter than hell up there. The AC’s off.”

“I appreciate this, Lou. Thanks. You, too, Starkey.”

Poitras stripped off his jacket, and we followed him up.

Stepping into the house was like walking into a furnace. A ratty overstuffed chair had been pushed against a threadbare couch and a coffee table. Swatches of cloth had been cut from the arms and the back of the chair, leaving straw-colored batting bright against stained fabric. The stains were probably blood. Light switches, door jambs and the inside front doorknob were spotted with black smudges from fingerprint kits. More black was smudged on the telephone and coffee table. Starkey immediately took off her jacket, and Poitras rolled up his sleeves.

Starkey said, “Bleh. This smell.”

“Tell him what you found.”

Starkey glanced at me as if she wasn’t sure how to start.

“You knew this guy, huh?”

“I didn’t know him. I worked for his lawyer.”

Just being asked if I knew him seemed to imply we were friends, and left me feeling resentful.

Poitras said, “Describe the scene, for Christ’s sake. I want to get out of here.”

Starkey moved to the center of the room, indicating an empty spot on the floor.

“The chair was here, not over by the couch. Once the body was out, the SID guys moved things around. He was here in the chair, slumped back, gun in his right hand-”

She held out her right hand with the palm up, showing me.

“-a Taurus.32 revolver.”

“The chair was in the middle of the floor?”

“Yeah. Facing the television. A bottle of Seagram’s was on the floor by the chair, so he had probably been hitting it. As soon as Bobby saw the guy he said that stiff’s been here a week. It was a mess, man.”

“How many shots fired?”

Poitras laughed, and moved closer to the door.

“You think he had to reload?”

Starkey said, “One spent, up through the bottom of his chin. Wasn’t much blood. A little on the floor here and up on the ceiling-”

She indicated an irregular stain on the floor, then a spot the size of a quarter on the ceiling. It looked like a roach.

Poitras spoke from the doorway. Sweat had beaded on his forehead and was running down his cheeks.

“The coroner investigator said everything about the body, the gun, and the splatter patterns was consistent with a self-inflicted wound. We haven’t seen the final report, but that’s what he told them here at the scene.”

Starkey nodded along with him, but said nothing. I tried to imagine Lionel Byrd slumped in the chair, but his image was formless and grey. I couldn’t remember what Byrd looked like. The only time I had seen him was on a videotape of his confession to the police.

I considered the neighboring houses. From the front door, I saw the roof of the black-and-white and the houses across the way. A woman was standing in a window across the street, looking down at the police car. Safe in her air-conditioning.

“Anyone hear the shot?”

Starkey said, “Remember, the guy had been dead for a week before we found him. No calls were made to 911, and none of these people remembered hearing anything on or around the day of death. Everyone was probably buttoned up from the heat.”

Poitras said, “Tell him about the pictures.”

Starkey had been watching me, but now she glanced at the floor. She seemed uncomfortable.

“He had an album with Polaroid pictures of his victims. There were seven pages with a different vic on each page. We thought they were fake. You see something like that, you think it’s gotta be phony, like that porno stuff with girls pretending to be dead? We didn’t know the shit was real until Bobby recognized one of the girls. It was fucking disgusting.”

“The mouth.”

I said, “Where did you find the album?”

“On the floor by his feet.”

Starkey positioned herself as if she was sitting in the chair and touched the top of her left foot.

“Here. We figured it slid off his lap when he went for the gold-”

She suddenly glanced up.

“He only had one foot. The other was screwed up.”

Lionel Byrd had lost half of his right foot in a garage accident when he was twenty-four years old. I hadn’t remembered it before, but now I recalled Levy telling me about it. The settlement had left Byrd with a modest disability payment that supported him the rest of his life.

Poitras said, “It was Bobby put it together. One of the vics was a prostitute named Chelsea Ann Morrow. Bobby knew her, and after we had Morrow, we faxed the pictures through the other divisions. That’s when the IDs started coming. Downtown rolled in that afternoon.”

I stared at the floor as if I would suddenly see the album. Maybe that was why Starkey kept looking at the floor. Maybe she could still see it.

“Did he leave a note?”

“Uh-uh.”

I glanced at Starkey.

“So all you found were the pictures?”

“We pulled a camera and a couple of film packs. There was a box of ammo for the gun. If the task force guys found anything else, I don’t know.”

“Pictures don’t mean he killed them. Maybe he bought them on eBay. Maybe they were taken by one of the coroner investigators.”

Poitras stared for a moment, then shrugged.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Whoever took them, the geniuses downtown decided he’s good for it.”

The scores of black fingerprint smudges seemed to be moving. They were worse than roaches. They looked like swarming spiders.

“Can I see it?”

“What?”

“The album.”

“Downtown has it.”

“What about crime scene snaps?”

Starkey said, “The task force. They cleaned us out, man. The CI’s work and everything from SID went to them. Witness statements from the neighbors. All of it. They hit this place like an invasion.”

A car door slammed, drawing the three of us to the porch. A senior command officer and a younger officer had just gotten out of a black-and-white. The senior officer stared up at us. He had a tight grey butch cut, razor-burned skin, and a nasty scowl.

Poitras said, “Shit. He’s early.”

“Who’s that?”

“Marx. The deputy chief in charge of the task force.”

Starkey nudged me.

“You were supposed to be gone before he got here.”

Great.

Poitras moved to greet him, but Marx didn’t want to be greeted. He came up the steps at a quick march, locked onto Poitras like a Sidewinder missile.

“I ordered this scene to be sealed, Lieutenant. I specifically told you that all inquiries would be handled through my office.”

“Chief, this is Elvis Cole. Cole is a personal friend of mine, and he’s also involved.”

Marx didn’t offer to shake my hand or acknowledge me in any way.

“I know who he is and how he’s involved. He conned the DA into letting this murderer go.”

Marx was a tall rectangular man built like a sailing ship, with tight skin stretched over a yardarm skeleton. He peered down at me from the crow’s nest like a parrot eyeing a beetle.

I said, “Nice to meet you, too.”

Marx turned back to Poitras as if I hadn’t spoken.

“I’m not just being an asshole here, Lieutenant. I clamped the lid so nobody could run to the press before the families were notified. Two of those families have still not been reached. Don’t you think they’ve suffered enough?”

Poitras’s jaw knotted.

“Everyone here is on the same side, Chief.”

Marx eyed me again, then shook his head.

“No, we’re not. Now get him out of here, and take me through this goddamned house.”

Marx went into the house, leaving Poitras to stare after him.

I said, “Jesus, Lou, I’m sorry.”

Poitras lowered his voice.

“The real chief’s out of town. Marx figures if he can close this thing before the chief gets back, he’ll get the face time. I’m sorry, man.”

Starkey touched my arm.

“C’mon.”

Poitras followed Marx back into the house while Starkey walked me down. The two uniforms and Marx’s driver were talking together, but we kept going until we were alone. Starkey fished a cigarette from her jacket as soon as we stopped.

“That guy’s an asshole. It’s been like this all week.”

“Is Marx really going on TV tonight?”

“That’s what I hear. They wrapped up their work last night.”

“A week to cover seven murders?”

“This thing was huge, man. They had people on it around the clock.”

She lit the cigarette and blew a geyser of smoke straight overhead. I liked Starkey. She was funny and smart, and had helped me out of two very bad jams.

“When are you going to quit those things?”

“When they kill me. When are you going to start?”

You see? Funny. We smiled at each other, but her smile grew awkward, and faded.

“Poitras told me about the Bennett thing. That must be weird, considering.”

“Was her picture in the book?”

Starkey blew more of the smoke.

“Yeah.”

I looked up at the house. Someone moved in the shadows, but I couldn’t tell if it was Poitras or Marx.

Starkey said, “Are you okay?”

When I glanced back, her eyes were concerned.

“I’m fine.”

“It was me, I’d be, I dunno, upset.”

“He couldn’t have killed her. I proved it.”

Starkey blew another cloud of smoke, then waved her cigarette at the surrounding houses.

“Well, he didn’t have any friends here in the neighborhood, I can tell you that. Most of these people didn’t know him except to see him, and the ones who knew him stayed clear. He was a total asshat.”

“I thought the task force cut you out.”

“They used us here with the door-to-door. Lady at that house, he told her she had a muscular ass. Just like that. Woman at that house, she runs into him getting his mail and he tells her she could pick up some extra cash if she dropped around one afternoon.”

That was Lionel Byrd.

“Starkey, you’re right. Byrd was a professional asshat, but he didn’t kill Yvonne Bennett. I don’t believe it.”

Starkey frowned, but the smile flickered again.

“Man, you are stubborn.”

“And cute. Don’t forget cute.”

I could have told her I was also sick to my stomach, but I let it go with cute.

She drew another serious hit on the cigarette, then flicked it into a withered century plant. Here we were in fire season with red-flag alerts, but Starkey did things like that. She pulled me farther away from the uniforms and lowered her voice.

“Okay, listen, I know some things about this Poitras doesn’t know. I’m going to tell you, but you can’t tell anyone.”

“You think I’m going to run home and put it on my blog?”

“Guy I worked with at CCS is on with the task force. He spent all week analyzing the stuff we pulled out of the house. You won’t like this, but he told me Byrd’s good for the killings. He says it’s solid.”

“How does he know that?”

“I don’t know, moron. We’re friends. I took his word for it.”

Starkey nudged me farther from the uniforms again and lowered her voice even more.

“What I’m saying, Cole, is I can have him explain it to you. You want me to set it up?”

It was like being thrown a life preserver in a raging storm, but I glanced up at the house. Poitras was standing in the door. They were about to come out.

“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Hey, fuck Marx. The real chief gets back, he’ll probably ream the guy a new asshole. You want in with my guy or not?”

“That would be great, Carol. Really.”

The woman across the street was still in her window, watching us as I left.

5

STARKEY SET me up with a Criminal Conspiracy Section detective named Marcus Lindo, who was one of many detectives brought in from the divisions to assist with the task force. She cautioned that his knowledge was limited, but told me he would help me the best he could. When I called him, it was clear from the start that Lindo didn’t want to see me. He told me to meet him at a place called Hop Louie in Chinatown, but warned he would not acknowledge me in any way if other police officers were present. It was as if we were passing Cold War secrets.

Lindo showed up at ten minutes after three with a royal blue three-ring binder tucked under his arm. He was younger than I expected, with espresso skin, nervous eyes, and glasses. He walked directly to me and did not introduce himself.

“Let’s take a booth.”

Lindo put the binder on the table and his hands on the binder.

“Before we get started, let’s get something straight. I can’t have this getting back to me. I owe Starkey plenty, but if you tell anyone we sat down like this, I will call you a liar to your face and then it’s on her. Are you good with this?”

“I’m good. Whatever you say.”

Lindo was scared, and I didn’t blame him. A deputy chief could make or break his career.

“My understanding is you want to see the death album. What is it you want to know?”

“Three years ago I proved Lionel Byrd did not kill Yvonne Bennett. Now you guys are saying he did.”

“That’s right. He killed her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how, not the way you mean. We broke the casework down into teams. My team worked on the album and the residence. The vic teams worked the ins and outs on the vics. I know the book. The book is how we know he’s good for it.”

“Having pictures doesn’t prove he killed these women. Pictures could have been taken by anyone at the scene.”

“Not pictures like these-”

Lindo opened the binder, then turned it so I could see. The first page was a digital image of the album’s cover showing a hazy beach at sunset and curving palms. The cover was embossed with gold script lettering: My Happy Memories. It was the type of album you could buy at any drugstore, with stiff plastiboard pages sandwiched between clear plastic cover sheets that adhered to the plastiboard. You could peel the cover sheet up, put your pictures on the page, then press the cover sheet back into place to hold the pictures. Just seeing the cover creeped me out. My Happy Memories.

“There were twelve pages in all, but the last five were blank. We recovered fiber and hair samples trapped under the cover sheets, then lasered everything and put it in the glue for prints-”

Lindo checked off the elements with his fingers.

“Front cover, back cover, inside front cover, inside back cover, the seven pages with the pictures plus the five blanks, the twenty-four plastic cover sheets, plus all seven Polaroids. All of the discernible prints or print fragments matched one individual-Lionel Byrd. The fibers came from Byrd’s couch. They’re running DNA on the hair now, but it’s going to match. The criminalist says it is eyeball-identical with Byrd’s arm hair.”

“Who’s the criminalist?”

“John Chen.”

“Chen’s good. I know him.”

Lindo turned the page. The next scan showed a single Polaroid of a thin young woman with short black hair and hollow cheeks. She was on her right side on what appeared to be a tile floor in a darkened room or enclosure. The wall behind her was burned by the glare from the camera’s flash. Her left cheek was split as if she had been struck, and a red trace of blood had run down her face to drip from the end of her nose. Three overlapping drops were spotting the floor. A cord or wire was wrapped so deeply into her neck it disappeared into her skin. Someone had labeled the bottom of the scan with the victim’s name, age, date of death, and original case number.

Lindo touched the image.

“This was the first victim-Sondra Frostokovich. See the cut here under her eye? He coldcocked her first to stun her. That was a unifying element of his M.O. He stunned them so they couldn’t fight back.”

“Was she raped?”

“None of them were raped, so far as I know. Again, I didn’t work the individual cases, but this guy didn’t play with them-there wasn’t any rape, torture, mutilation, or any of that. You can see that much in the pictures. Now check this out-”

Lindo touched the page by her nose.

“See the blood drops below her nose? Three drops, two overlapping. We compared this picture with the original shots taken by the coroner investigator. The crime scene pix show a puddle about the size of her head. Likely your boy was in front of her for the strike that cut her cheek, then strangled her from behind. The blood started to drip as soon as she was down. Three or four drops like this, she couldn’t have been down more than twenty seconds before he snapped the picture.”

“He wasn’t my boy.”

“Point is, we have time-specific indicators in pretty much every picture that marks them at or near the time of death. This is his second victim, Janice Evansfield-”

The second picture was of an African-American woman with Rasta hair whose neck had been slashed so many times it was shredded. Lindo pointed out a blurry red string floating across her face.

“See that? We didn’t know what it was until we enhanced it.”

“What is it?”

“That’s blood squirting from the carotid artery at the base of her neck. See how it arcs? She wasn’t dead yet, Cole. She was dying. This exposure was taken at the exact moment her heart beat. That kinda rules out some cop later at the scene, doesn’t it?”

I looked away, feeling numb and distant, as if the pictures and I weren’t really in the booth, so I could pretend I wasn’t seeing them.

Lindo showed me each of the remaining victims, and then a photograph of a clunky black device with knobs and sensors like you’d see in a dated science fiction movie.

“Okay, the second way we put him with the murders is by the camera. These cameras, they push the picture out through a little slot when you snap the exposure. The rollers leave discrete impressions on the edges of the picture-”

It was easier to look at the picture of the camera.

“Like the rifling in a gun barrel marks a bullet?”

“Yeah. This is a discontinued model. All seven pictures were taken with this camera, which we recovered in Byrd’s house. The only prints on the camera belong to Lionel Byrd. Ditto the film packs we found in the camera.”

He showed me a picture of two film packs, one labeled with the letter A, the other with B.

“Partials belonging to a different individual were found on the unopened film, but we believe they belong to the cashier or salesclerk where he bought the film. The lot numbers gave a point of sale in Hollywood, not far from Laurel Canyon. You see how it’s adding up?”

Lindo went through his facts with the mechanical precision of a carpenter driving nails.

“Byrd bought the film. Byrd put the film in the camera. Byrd, using the camera, took seven photographs that could only have been taken by someone present at the time of the murders. Byrd was at one time charged in the murder of one of the women whose death shot-a photograph taken within moments of her death-has now been found in his possession. Having taken the pictures, Byrd then placed them with his own hands in this sick fucking book. Byrd then picked up a gun with his own hands, as evidenced by fingerprints found on the gun, cartridge casings, and ammunition box recovered in his home, and blew out his own fucking brains. What we have here is called a chain of reason, Cole. I know you were hoping we wouldn’t have squat, but there it is, and it is good.”

I suddenly wanted to see Yvonne Bennett again, and flipped to the fifth picture. Yvonne Bennett stared up at me with mannequin eyes. Brain matter and pink shards of bone were visible, along with a bright ball that had apparently been placed in the wound. I didn’t remember seeing the ball in the wound when Levy showed me the coroner’s picture.

“What’s this round thing?”

“It’s a bubble. The M.E. says air was probably forced into an artery when he beat her, then floated out when she died. It made a blood bubble.”

I wanted to look away, but didn’t. I stared at the bubble. It had not been present in the coroner’s picture. At some point between when the two pictures were taken, it had popped. I took a deep breath and finally looked away.

“Did you read the murder book on Yvonne Bennett?”

“Told you, we had teams for each vic. I worked the album.”

“We had a hard time frame in which she was killed. Byrd was in Hollywood when this woman was killed. How could he be two places at once?”

Lindo leaned back. He seemed tired and irritated, like I was too slow to keep up.

“Here’s the short version-he wasn’t because he didn’t have to be.”

“This wasn’t something I made up, Lindo. Crimmens and his partner had the same window. There wasn’t enough time for Byrd to kill her in Silver Lake, then get to Hollywood.”

Lindo closed the book. He wasn’t going to stay much longer.

“Cole, think about it. You got a hard edge on one side of your window when the body was discovered. The other side, you have this dude who was the last person to see her alive, what was his name, Thompson?”

“Tomaso.”

“I’m not saying Tomaso lied, but shit happens. People get confused. If Tomaso was off on the time, your window was wrong.”

“It wasn’t just my window. Crimmens talked to him, too.”

“We know that, man. Marx put Crimmens on the task force to cover that evening. Crimmens thinks it flies. If Tomaso was off by even twenty minutes, Byrd had time to kill her and then get to your bar.”

“Did Crimmens talk to Tomaso about this?”

“What’s the boy going to say-he was sure? I don’t know if they talked to him or not, but either way it wouldn’t matter. Physical evidence trumps eyewitness testimony every time, and we have the evidence. That’s it, Cole. I have to go.”

“Hang on. I still have a question.”

He glanced at the door as if the entire sixth floor of Parker Center might walk in, but he stayed in the booth.

“What?”

“What about the suicide?”

“I don’t know anything about it. I worked on the book.”

“Did someone tie Byrd with the times and locations where these women were killed?”

“Other people handled the timelines. All I know is the book.”

“Jesus Christ, didn’t you people even talk about this? When Bastilla and Crimmens came to see me, they wouldn’t even tell me these pictures exist.”

Lindo’s eyebrows lurched nervously and he pulled the binder close.

“They wouldn’t?”

“They wouldn’t tell me anything, and now I meet you, and you know the book, but you don’t know a whole hell of a lot about anything else.”

“Maybe I don’t need to know, Cole.”

He tucked the binder under his arm. He was fine as long as we were lost in the science, but now he was frightened again.

“You better not tell anyone about this, Cole. This is just between us.”

“I’m good with it, man. Don’t worry about it.”

He started to say something else, but stood and walked away without looking back.

I stayed in the dark booth, still seeing the pictures. I closed my eyes to shut them out, but the pictures came to life. The blood spurted from Janice Evansfield’s throat with each beat of her heart, the stream growing weaker as her heart slowly died. The red pool expanded around Sondra Frostokovich as blood dripped from her nose, the metronome drops logging the time of her death. The bubble of blood swelled in Yvonne Bennett’s wound until it burst. Seeing the images felt like being trapped in a gallery with nightmares spiked to the wall, but I could not believe it. I told myself not to believe it.

I imagined Lionel Byrd in the chair with the album. In my mental movie, he turns the pages one by one, reliving each murder. The gun is on the chair beside his leg. If he has the gun, then he has planned his own death. He will take the gun and the album to the chair. He will reminisce about his work. Maybe he will even regret these things. Then, when he’s had enough, he will join his victims in death. I wondered if he thought about how he would shoot himself. Up through the bottom of the mouth or in the temple? Up through the mouth feels creepy. You might miss the kill shot, but blow off your mouth. Then you might wake up in the hospital, alive, charged with the murders, mouthless.

I would have gone for the temple. I thought Lionel Byrd would have gone for the temple, too.

6

ANGEL TOMASO had been alone when he saw Yvonne Bennett disappear into the alley. There had been no way to double-check his version of events, but he had seemed like a good kid with a steady job, and was well-liked by his co-workers. Crimmens had believed his story was solid, too. The time window was the one thing we all agreed on, but now the police didn’t seem to feel it was important. Maybe they had talked to him, and maybe he had changed his story. I decided to ask Bastilla.

I worked my way back across the city, climbed the stairs to my office, and let myself in. The message light was blinking and the counter showed four new messages. I opened a bottle of water, dropped into place at my desk, and played back the messages.

The first message was straightforward and direct. An anonymous male voice told me to fuck myself. Great. The incoming ID log registered his number as private. The second message was a hang-up, but the third was from the pest control service that sprays my house for spiders and ants. They had found a termite infestation under my deck. Could today get any better? The fourth message was similar to the first, but left by a different male caller.

“We’re going to kill you.”

He screamed “kill” as loud as he could.

This voice was younger than the earlier voice and shaking with rage. One threat would have been easy to write off as a crank, but this made three. Maybe something was going around.

I deleted the messages, then found Bastilla’s card on the edge of my desk and called her.

“Bastilla.”

“This is Elvis Cole. I have a question for you.”

“When can I have your files?”

“Take it easy, Bastilla. That isn’t why I’m calling.”

“We don’t have anything else to talk about.”

“I didn’t call to argue. I’m here in my office to get the papers together. I’m seeing Levy about it tomorrow morning. He doesn’t think there will be a problem.”

She hesitated, then sounded mollified.

“All right. What?”

“Did Angel Tomaso change his story?”

“Tomaso.”

Like she had so much on her plate she couldn’t remember.

“Tomaso was the last person to see Yvonne Bennett alive, or don’t you know that? He was Crimmens’s witness.”

“Right. We couldn’t find him.”

“Tomaso was a major element in establishing the time frame. How can you ignore him?”

“We didn’t ignore him. We just couldn’t find him. That happens. Either way, the evidence we have is overwhelming.”

“One more thing-”

“Cole, you’re not a participant in this.”

“Was Byrd a suspect in any of the seven cases?”

“Only yours.”

Mine. I now owned Yvonne Bennett.

“Besides Bennett.”

“That’s how good this guy was, Cole-there were no suspects in any of the cases except Bennett. That was the only time he fucked up. Now if you want to know anything else, you can read about it in the paper tomorrow.”

Bastilla hung up.

Bitch.

I decided to make a copy of the Lionel Byrd file. I would keep the original, but bring the copy to Levy. If he gave me the okay, I would give the copy to Bastilla.

I reread the pages and the notes as I fed them through the machine until I came to the witness list. The list showed a work number for Tomaso at the Braziliana Coffee Shop and a cell number. It had been three years, but I decided to give them a try. The cell number brought me to a bright young woman named Carly, who told me the number had been hers for almost a year. When I asked if she knew Tomaso, she told me she didn’t, but offered that I was the second call she’d received from people trying to find him. The police had called, too.

I said, “When was that, Carly?”

“A couple days ago. No, wait-three days.”

“Uh-huh. You remember who called?”

“Ah, a detective, he said. Timmons?”

“Crimmens?”

“That’s it.”

At least Crimmens had done his due diligence.

I tried the coffee shop next and heard exactly the same thing. Crimmens had called for Tomaso, but the current manager had never met Angel, had no idea how to reach him, and was pretty sure Tomaso had left the job more than two years ago because that was how long she had worked there. I hung up and went back to copying the file.

Angel Tomaso had not been my witness. Crimmens had located and interviewed him two days after Yvonne Bennett’s murder, but I didn’t begin working on the case until almost ten weeks later. The prosecution had been required to share their witness list with Levy under the rules of discovery, along with all the necessary contact information for those witnesses. I came to these pages as I copied the file, and found a handwritten note I had made with a different name and number for Tomaso.

When Crimmens first identified Tomaso as a witness, Tomaso was living with his girlfriend in Silver Lake. By the time I contacted him at the coffee shop ten weeks later, Tomaso had split with his girlfriend and was bunking in Los Feliz with a friend of his named Jack Eisley. Though Tomaso’s work and cell phone numbers were good at the time, I had interviewed him at Eisley’s apartment and still had Eisley’s address and number. I finished copying the file, separated the original from the copy, then brought Eisley’s number to my desk.

Three years after the fact, the odds were slim, but I called Eisley’s number. His phone rang five times, then was answered by a recording.

“This is Jack. Leave it after the beep.”

“Mr. Eisley, this is Elvis Cole. You might remember me from three years ago when I came to see Angel Tomaso. I’m trying to locate Angel, but I don’t have a current number. Could you give me a call back, please?”

I left my cell and office numbers.

Progress.

Maybe.

Doing something left me feeling better about things, though not a whole lot. I was heading for the door with Levy’s copy of the file when the phone rang. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but the ringing seemed unnaturally loud.

I returned to the desk.

The phone rang again.

I hesitated, then felt stupid for waiting.

“Elvis Cole Detective Agency.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

All I heard was breathing.

“Hello?”

The caller hung up.

I waited for the phone to ring again, but the silence remained. I went home to watch the news.

7

THE SUN was lowering as I traced the winding streets off Mulholland Drive toward home. I live in a house held fast to the steep slopes overlooking Los Angeles. It is a small house on the lip of a canyon I share with coyotes and hawks, skunks and black-tailed deer, and opossums and rattlesnakes. More rural than not, coming home has always felt like leaving the city, even though some things cannot be left behind.

My house did not come with a yard the way flatland houses have yards. It came with a deck that hangs over the canyon and a nameless cat who bites. I like the deck and the cat a lot, and the way the lowering sun will paint the ridges and ravines in a palette of purple and brass. The termites, I can do without.

When I rounded the final curve toward home, Carol Starkey’s Taurus was at my front door, but Starkey wasn’t behind the wheel. I let myself in through the kitchen, then on into the living room, where sliding glass doors open onto my deck. Starkey was outside, smoking, the hot wind pushing her hair. She raised her hand when she saw me. Starkey never just dropped around.

I opened the sliders and stepped out. “What are you doing here?”

“You say that like I’m stalking you. I wanted to see how it went with Lindo.”

She snapped her cigarette over the rail. The wind caught it, and carried it out into the canyon.

“We’re in the hills, Starkey. This is a tinderbox up here.”

I studied the slope long enough to make sure we weren’t going to be engulfed by an inferno. She was watching me when I looked up.

“What?”

“So how did it go?”

“The leading theory seems to be I misread the time frame when Bennett was murdered. Not only me, but the original investigating detectives.”

“Uh-huh. That possible?”

“It’s always possible, but these guys don’t think it’s important enough to double-check the key witness. They decided it doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe it doesn’t. What Lindo told me sounds pretty good.”

“That doesn’t excuse the loose ends. These guys are in such a hurry to close the case they’re not even waiting for all the forensics to come back.”

We lapsed into silence for a moment, then Starkey cleared her throat.

“Listen, Marx might be a jackass, but Lindo’s good. A lot of the people working on this thing are good. Either way, that old man had the book. He was all over that book. You can’t forget that.”

She was right. Either way, Lionel Byrd had an album of photographs that could only have been taken by a person or persons at the scene when the murders were committed. A book and pictures Byrd and only Byrd had touched.

“Starkey, let me ask you something. What do you make of the pictures?”

“As in, what do I think the pictures mean or why do I think he took them?”

“Both, I guess. What kind of person takes pictures like this?”

She leaned on the rail, staring out at the canyon. Starkey wasn’t a trained psychologist, but she had spent a large part of her time at CCS profiling bomb cranks. The people who built improvised explosive devices tended to be serial offenders. Understanding their compulsions had helped her build cases.

She said, “Most of these guys, they’ll take hair or a piece of jewelry or maybe some clothes as a way of reliving the rush. But pictures are a deeper commitment.”

“What do you mean?”

“These women were murdered in semi-public places. He didn’t take them into the desert or some soundproof basement somewhere. They were killed in parking lots or near busy streets or in parks where someone could happen by. Grabbing an earring or a handful of hair is easy-you grab it and run-but he had to stick around to take the pictures. He chose high-risk locations to make his kills, then increased the risk by staying to take a picture when someone might see the flash.”

“Maybe he was just stupid.”

Starkey laughed.

“I think he got off on the complexity. He was tempting fate by taking the pictures, and each time he got away with it he probably felt omnipotent, the same way bomb cranks feel strong through their bombs. The rush isn’t so much the actual killing-it’s the getting away with it.”

“Okay.”

“Did Lindo talk to you about the composition?”

I shook my head. Lindo hadn’t mentioned the composition, and I hadn’t thought about it. The pictures had all looked pretty much the same to me.

“A picture isn’t a part of the experience like a more traditional trophy-it’s a composition outside of the experience. The photographer chooses the angle. He chooses what will be in the picture, and what won’t. If the picture is a world, then the photographer is the god of that world. This dude got off by being God. He needed to take the pictures because he needed to be God.”

I couldn’t see Lionel Byrd feeling like a god, but maybe that was the point. I tried to imagine him stalking these women with the clunky, out-of-date camera, but I couldn’t picture him with the camera, either.

“I don’t know, Starkey. That doesn’t sound like Byrd.”

Starkey shrugged, then looked at the canyon again.

“I’m just sayin’, is all. I’m not trying to convince you.”

“I know. I didn’t take it that way.

“Whatever this jackhole did or however he was involved, you need to understand you aren’t responsible for his crimes. You played it straight up and did your job. Don’t eat yourself up about it.”

I met Carol Starkey when Lou Poitras brought her to my house because a boy named Ben Chenier was missing. Starkey helped find him, and the friendship we developed during the search grew. A few months later, a man named Frederick Reinnike shot me, and Starkey visited me regularly at the hospital. We had been building a history, and the friendship that grew with it made me smile.

“I ever thank you for coming to the hospital all those times?”

She flushed.

“I was just trying to score with Pike.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

She kept her eyes on the canyon.

“Hear much from the lawyer?”

The lawyer. Now I turned toward the canyon, too. Once upon a time I shared my life with a lawyer from Louisiana named Lucy Chenier. Ben was her son. Lucy and Ben had moved to L.A., but after what happened to Ben they returned to Louisiana and now we lived apart. I wondered what Lucy would think of Lionel Byrd, and was glad she didn’t know.

I said, “Not so much. They’re getting on with their lives.”

“How’s the boy?”

“He’s good. Growing. He sends me these letters.”

Starkey suddenly pushed from the rail.

“How about we go somewhere? Let’s hit the Dresden for a few drinks.”

“You don’t drink.”

“I can watch. I’ll watch you drink while you watch me smoke. How about it?”

“Maybe another time. I want to catch the news about Byrd.”

She stepped back again and raised her hands.

“Okay. I got it.”

We stood like that for a moment before she smiled.

“I gotta get outta here anyway. Hot date and all.”

“Sure.”

“Listen-”

Her face softened, then she lifted my hand, turned it palm up, and touched the hard line of tissue that ran across four fingers and most of the palm, cut when I was fighting to save Ben Chenier’s life.

“You think you have scars, mister?”

She touched the side of my chest where Reinnike put me in the hospital with a 12-gauge shotgun. Number-four buckshot and two surgeries later.

Starkey smiled.

“You oughta see my fuckin’ scars, Cole. I got you beat all to hell.”

The bomb that killed her in a trailer park.

She dropped my hand.

“Don’t watch the news, man. Just forget it.”

“Sure.”

“You’re not going to forget it.”

“No.”

“Maybe that’s why I love you.”

She punched me in the chest and walked out of my house.

That Starkey is something.

I put on the TV to get ready for the news, then took out a pork chop to thaw. Service for one. I drank a beer standing in the kitchen, offered myself another, then returned to the television when the news hour rolled around. Earnest news-jock Jerry Ward looked Los Angeles in the eye and intoned in his best understated delivery: Murders solved by bizarre discovery in Laurel Canyon.

Then Jerry arched his eyebrows.

When Jerry arches his eyebrows, you know you’re in for something bizarre.

I had plenty of time to grab another beer. The lead story was a visit by the president, who had arrived in town to survey the recent fire damage. The second story reported on rebuilding efforts and the decreasing chance of more fires in the coming days. News of the fires segued nicely to the bizarre discovery of Lionel Byrd. I was probably on my third beer by then. Or fourth.

Jerry gave the story almost three minutes, intercut with a clip of Marx at his press conference. During the clip, Marx held up a clear plastic evidence bag containing what appeared to be the actual album, and described the “portraits of death” as “trophies taken by a deranged mind.” The only victims mentioned by name were the most recent victim, a twenty-six-year-old Pasadena native named Debra Repko, and Yvonne Bennett. My stomach tightened when I heard her name.

The Bennett mention was a simple statement that Byrd had been charged at the time of her murder, but the charges were dropped when conflicting evidence surfaced that apparently cleared Mr. Byrd. Neither I nor Alan Levy was mentioned. I guess I should have been thankful.

Marx looked pretty good with his full-dress uniform and his finger in the air, proclaiming the city safer, as if he had personally rescued another victim instead of finding a rotting corpse. He declared he was personally offended by Byrd’s release when he had been brought before the altar of justice in the Bennett case, and promised to do everything in his power to ensure such outrages never happened again.

I said, “Wow. Altar of justice.”

Marx was flanked by a city councilman named Nobel Wilts, who congratulated Marx on the fine police work. The woman I had seen across the street from Byrd’s house was interviewed in a ten-second clip, saying she would sleep easier tonight; and the mother of Chelsea Ann Morrow, the third victim, was interviewed at her Compton home. I wondered how the cameras had gotten to the mother and the neighbor so quickly, since the press conference had happened within the past hour or so. Marx or Wilts had probably tipped the media so they could set up for the prime-time coverage.

When the story changed to a toy recall, I brought the remains of my beer out to the deck.

The winds blow fiercest at sundown in a last furious rush to the sea, and now the trees filling the canyon below me whipped and shivered. Grey eucalyptus; scrub oak and walnuts; olive trees that looked like dusky green beach balls. Their branches rattled like antlers, and their brittle leaves fluttered like rice paper. I listened and drank. Maybe Marx and his task force were right about Tomaso. Tomaso had seemed like a bright, conscientious kid who wanted to help, but maybe he had tried too hard to be helpful. Change his answer by half an hour, and everything changed. Make a mistake by thirty minutes, and suddenly Lionel Byrd had the time to kill Yvonne Bennett, drive back to Hollywood, and stop for a fast one before heading home. Nothing like a double shot of Jack after crushing a woman’s skull.

I was still listening to the trees when the phone rang, and a quiet female voice came from two thousand miles away.

“Is this the World’s Greatest Detective?”

I immediately felt better. I felt warm, and at peace.

“It was. How’re you doing?”

Lucy said, “Was?”

“Long story.”

“I think I know part of it. Joe called.”

“Pike called you?”

“He said you could use an ear.”

“Did Joe really call?”

“Tell me about Lionel Byrd.”

The canyon grew dark as I told her. As the outside darkness deepened, the houses dotting the banks and ridges of the canyon glowed with flickering lights.

When I finished, she said, “So what do you think?”

“It’s just the thought of it, I guess. Sometimes you can’t duck the blame even when you do everything straight up and by the book.”

“Do you believe Byrd killed those seven people?”

“Looks that way, but I don’t know. The facts appear to be on their side.”

“It might look that way, but do you believe it?”

I hesitated, thinking back through everything Lindo and Starkey had told me, and also everything I had learned three years ago on my own.

“No. Maybe I should, but I don’t. I know Byrd. Not the way someone who knows him would know him, but I put everything I had into reconstructing his life on the night Yvonne Bennett was murdered. That night, I owned him. I had him by the places he went, the people he met, what he said to them, and how he said it. I knew how loud he talked, how little he tipped, where he sat, and how long he stayed before moving on. An A-list predator would have blended into the background, but Byrd was loud, crude, obvious, and drunk. I knew him on that night better than anyone, and I do not believe he killed Yvonne Bennett. Maybe he knew the murderer, I guess that’s possible, but he did not kill Yvonne Bennett. I do not believe it. I can’t.”

“Listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Even if the worst is true, what happened here is not your fault. You will feel bad, and you will mourn because something so ugly happened, but you have always acted with a good heart. If this terrible thing is true, do you know what you will do?”

I nodded, but didn’t answer.

“You will man up and ranger on. I will personally fly out on the L-jet, and hold you. Do you hear me?”

The L-jet was our personal joke. If Lucy had a private jet, it would be the L-jet.

I said, “You’re holding me now.”

“I’m not finished. Have you been drinking?”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me.”

“I miss you.”

“Shut up and listen. I want you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Say something funny.”

“Lucy, c’mon-”

She raised her voice.

“Say something funny!”

“Something funny.”

“Not your best effort, but it’s a start. Now hang up.”

“Why?”

“Just hang up. I’ll call right back.”

She hung up. I held the phone, wondering what she was doing. A few seconds later it rang. I answered.

“Luce?”

She shouted.

“Answer like you mean it!”

She hung up again. I waited again. The phone finally rang, so I answered the way she wanted.

“Elvis Cole Detective Agency. We find more for less. Check our prices.”

Her voice came back as gentle as a kiss.

“That’s my World’s Greatest.”

“I love you, Luce.”

“As a friend.”

“Sure. Friends.”

“I love you, too.”

“We could be friends with benefits.”

“You never give up.”

“Part of the benefit package.”

“I’d better get going. Call me.”

“Call you what?”

She hesitated, and I knew she was smiling. I could feel her smile from two thousand miles away, but then my own smile faded.

I said, “Do you think I’m kidding myself?”

“I think you want to be convinced. One way or the other, you’ll have to convince yourself.”

I stared at the black canyon below, and the lights showing warm on the ridges.

“If Byrd didn’t kill them, then someone else did.”

“I know.”

She was silent for a while, then her voice was soft and caring.

“You told me the facts were on their side. If you don’t like their facts, find your own facts. That’s what you do, World’s Greatest. No one does it better.”

She hung up before I could answer.

I held the phone for a while, then called Pike. His machine picked up with a beep. Pike doesn’t have an outgoing message. You just get the beep.

I said, “You’re a good friend, Joe. Thanks.”