Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

We walked along the south side of Santa Monica Boulevard, heading east into the sun. I gave Pike the sheet with the five names.

“You recognize any of these names?”

“Only Karen. These the other vics?”

“Yeah. Munoz was first.” I went through the others, giving him everything that I'd learned from both Samantha Dolan and Jerry Swetaggen. “The cops've been trying to connect these people together, but they haven't been able to do it. Now they're thinking the guy picks his victims at random.”

“You said there's a suspect.”

“Krantz thinks it's Dersh.”

Pike stopped walking, and looked at me with all the expression of a dinner plate. The morning rush-hour traffic was heavy, and I wondered how many thousands of people passed us in just those few minutes of walking.

“The man who discovered the body?”

“Krantz is under the gun to make a collar. He wants to think that it's Dersh, but they don't have any physical evidence putting Dersh to the killings. All they have is some kind of FBI profile, so Krantz has a twenty-four-hour watch on the guy. That's how they picked me up when I went over there.”

“Mm.”

The passing traffic was reflected in Pike's glasses.

“This thing has been top secret since the beginning, Joe, and the cops want to keep it that way. The deal I made with Dolan is that we'll respect that. We can't tell Frank.”

Pike's chest expanded as he watched the traffic. His only movement. “Big thing not to tell, Elvis.”

“Krantz may be a turd, but Dolan is a top cop, and so is Watts. Hell, most of those guys are aces. That's why they're in Robbery-Homicide. So even if Krantz is half-cocked, the rest of them are still going to work a righteous case. I think we have to give them time to work it, and that means keeping quiet about what's going on.”

Pike made a quiet snort. “Me, helping Krantz.”

“Dolan needs to ask Frank about the four other vics and look through Karen's things. Will you talk to him?”

Pike nodded, but I'm not sure the nod was meant for me.

We walked again, neither of us speaking, and pretty soon we came to Pike's Jeep. He opened the door, but didn't get in.

“Elvis?”

“Yeah?”

“Could I see those?” He wanted the interview transcripts.

“Sure.” I gave them to him.

“You think it was Dersh?” Like if it was, you wouldn't want to be Dersh.

“I don't know, Joe. The always reliable but overworked hunch says no, but I just don't know.”

Pike's jaw flexed once, then that, too, was gone.

“I'll talk to Frank and let you know.”

Joe Pike climbed into his Jeep, pulled the door shut, and in that moment I would've given anything to see into his heart.

Pike wanted to see Eugene Dersh.

He wanted to witness him in his own environment, and see if he thought Dersh had murdered Karen Garcia. If it was possible that Dersh was the killer, then Pike would ponder what to do with that.

Pike knew from the police interview transcripts that Dersh worked at home. All LAPD interviews started that way. State your name and address for the record, please. State your occupation. Pike's instructor at the academy said that you started this way because it put the subject in the mood to answer your questions. Later, Pike had been amazed to learn how often it put the subject in the mood to lie. Even innocent people would lie. Make up a name and address that, when you tried to contact them weeks later, you would find to be an auto parts store, or an apartment building packed with illegals, none of whom spoke English.

Pike pulled into a Chevron station and looked up Dersh's address in his Thomas Brothers map. Dersh lived in an older residential area in Los Feliz where the streets twisted and wound with the contours of the low foothills. Seeing the street layout was important because Krantz's people were watching Dersh's place, and Pike wanted to know where they were.

When Pike had the names of the streets bracketing Dersh's home, he used his cell phone to call a realtor he knew, and asked her if any properties were for sale or lease on those streets. The police would establish a surveillance base in a mobile van if they had to, but they preferred to use a house. After a brief search of the multiple listing service, Pike's friend reported that there were three homes for sale in that area, two of which were vacant. She gave Pike the addresses. Comparing the addresses with Dersh's on the map, Pike saw that one of the homes was located on the street immediately north of Dersh's, and kitty-corner across an alley. That's where the police would be.

Pike worked his way across Hollywood, then wound his way into the quiet of an older neighborhood until he came to Dersh's small, neat home. Pike noted the two-story dwelling just off the alley that would be the police surveillance site. In the flicker of time as he drove past the mouth of the alley, Pike saw the glint of something shiny in the open second-floor window. The officers roosting there would have binoculars, a spotting scope, and probably a videocamera, but if Pike kept Dersh's house between them and himself, they wouldn't see him. In a combat situation, those guys would fast be a memory.

The neighborhood was easy. Small houses set back from the street, lushly planted with trees and shrubs, showing little clear ground between the houses. No one was clipping flowers in their front yards, no housekeepers were peering from their living-room windows, no strollers were passing, no yapping little dogs.

Pike parked at the curb two houses west of Dersh, then disappeared between the shrubs of the nearest house, one moment there, the next gone. In that instant when he allowed himself to be enveloped by leaves and twigs and green, he felt an absolute calm.

He moved along the near house, staying beneath the windows, then crossed between the trees into the prickly shrubs that surrounded Dersh's house. He neither touched nor disturbed the plants, but instead moved around and between them, the way he had done since he was a boy.

Pike eased to the corner of the living-room window, snuck a fast glance into a bright room, caught movement deeper within the house, and heard music. Yves Montand, singing in French.

Pike followed the west wall of the house through a small stand of rubber trees planted with ferns and pickle lilies, passing beneath the high window of a bathroom to the casement windows of Dersh's studio, where he saw two men. Dersh, the shorter of the two, wearing jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. Had to be Dersh, because the other man, younger, was wearing a suit. Dersh moved as if this place were his home; the other moved as a visitor. Pike listened. The two men were at a computer, Dersh sitting, the other man pointing over Dersh's shoulder at the screen. Pike could hear Yves Montand, and catch occasional words. They were discussing the layout of a magazine ad.

Pike watched Dersh and tried to get a sense of the man. Dersh did not appear to be capable of the things that the police suspected, but Pike knew you could not tell by appearances. He had known many men who looked and acted strong, but had cores of weakness, and he had known men who seemed timid who had shown themselves capable of great strength and of accomplishing terrible things.

Pike drew even, steady breaths, listening to the birds in the trees, and remembering the Karen Garcia with whom he had spent so much time, and how she had died. Joe considered Dersh, noting his finger strokes on the keyboard, the way he held himself, the way he laughed at something the other man said. He thought that if Dersh had killed Karen Garcia, he might end the man. He would lay open the fabric of justice, and let it be Dersh's shroud. He could do such a thing now, even here in the daylight as the police watched.