Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

But after a time Pike eased away from the window. Eugene Dersh did not seem like a killer, but Pike would wait to see what evidence the police produced. Seeing the evidence, he would then decide.

There was always plenty of time in which to deliver justice.

School

“We did eight hundred push-ups every goddamned day, some days over two hundred chins, and they ran us. Christ, we ran ten miles every morning and another five at night, and sometimes even more than that. We weren't big guys, like badass football linemen or any of that, you know, Rambo with all those pansy protein-shake muscles bulging. We were skinny kids, mostly, all stripped down and hungry, but, hell, we could carry hundred-pound packs, four hundred rounds, and a poodle-popper uphill at a run all goddamned day. You know what we were? We were wolves. Lean and mean, and you definitely did not want us on your ass. We were fuckin' dangerous, man. That's what they wanted. Recon. That's what we wanted, too.”

– excerpt from Young Men at War: A Case by Case Study of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder , by Patricia Barber, Ph.D. M.F.C.C. Duke University Press, 1986

Gunnery Sergeant Leon Aimes stood on the low ridge overlooking the parched hills at Camp Pendleton Marine Training Depot just south of Oceanside, California, scanning the range with a pair of Zeiss binoculars that had been a gift from his wife. He'd been pissed as hell when he'd opened the box at his forty-fourth birthday and seen what they were because the Zeiss had set back the family three months'pay. But they were the best viewing glass in the world, none finer, and he'd gone to her later feeling like a dog to apologize for carrying on. These Zeiss were the best, all right. He would use them hunting blacktail deer this fall, and, a year from now, after his posting as a Force Recon company instructor, when he returned to Vietnam for his fourth combat tour, he would use them to hunt Charlie.

Aimes sat in a jeep with his best drinking buddy, Gunnery Sergeant Frank Horse, the two of them wearing black tee shirts, field utilities, and Alice harnesses, both of them smoking the shitty cigars they'd bought down in TJ two months before. Horse was a full-blood Mescalero Apache, and Aimes believed him to be the finest Advanced Infantry Instructor at Camp Pendleton, as well as an outstanding warrior. Aimes, though African-American, had once been told by his grandmother that he had Apache blood (which he believed) and was the descendant of great warriors (which he absolutely knew to be true), so he and Horse often joked about being in the same tribe when they'd had a little too much tequila.

Horse grinned at him around the cigar. “Can't see'm, can you?”

Aimes rolled his own cigar around in his mouth. Three hundred acres of coastal desert rolled out below them, dipping down into a little creek bed before rising again to another finger ridge half a mile away. Somewhere out in those three hundred acres was a young Marine that Horse thought had the warrior spirit. “Not yet, but I'm lookin'.”

Horse smiled wider and nodded at nothing in particular. “He's right under your goddamned nose, Leon. Hell.”

“Bullshit he is. If he's out there, I'll find him.” Leon Aimes scowled harder and imagined a huge checkerboard laid upon the land. He carefully searched each block on the board, noting clumps of manzanita and puppy grass as he ran a mental comparison to see if anything had moved in the minutes since he'd last scanned the terrain. He could find no trace of movement, yet he knew that somewhere out there a young Marine was slowly creeping toward him.

Horse drew deep on the stogy, making an exaggerated deal out of it, and blew a great plume of smoke into the breeze. “Been here damn near two hours, pard.” Really rubbing it in. Really digging at Leon. “You know he's good, else you woulda found him by now. We gonna keep the boy out there all day, or has this turned into something about you instead've something about him?”

Finally, Gunnery Sergeant Leon Aimes sighed and lowered the glasses. His friend Frank Horse was a wise man as well as a warrior. “Okay, goddamnit, where is he?”

Horse's eyes crinkled, like he'd won some kinda goddamned bet with himself, and Aimes could tell from the smile that Horse liked this boy, all right. Horse pointed off to their left and ahead of them with his cigar. “Heading three-four-zero. See that little depression about three hundred meters out?”

Aimes saw it at once without even lifting the glasses. The barest of shadows. “Yeah.”

Horse reached behind them for the bullhorn. “He came up through that little cut in the creek bank out there off to the right and has been working his way up.”

Aimes spit a load of brown cigar juice, pissed. “How in hell did you see'm?”

“Didn't see shit.” Horse spit his own load, then looked over at his friend. “That's the way I told him to come.”

Their eyes met and Aimes smiled. “Get the boy in here, an' let's talk to him, then.”

Horse keyed the horn and called out across the range. “This program is terminated, Private. Come to your feet.”

The little depression three hundred meters out on heading three-four-zero did not move. Instead, a loose collection of twigs and burlap and dirt slowly rose from the earth off to their right and less than two hundred meters away. Horse's cigar nearly fell out of his jaw, and Aimes burst out laughing. Aimes clapped his old friend on the back. “Three-four-zero, all right.”

“I coulda sworn …”

“Lucky that boy wasn't gonna shoot our old asses.”

Then the two combat veterans were beyond the laughing, and Aimes nodded. Horse keyed the mike again. “Get in here, Private. Triple time.”

Running up to them across the broken ground, Aimes thought that the ghillie suit made the private look like some kind of matted Pekinese dog, all its mats bouncing up and down. Aimes said, “He in good shape?”

“Came here in good shape.”

“Farm boy?”

“Lived in the country, but I don't think they farmed.” Aimes liked boys who grew up on the land and knew its ways.

“What kind of name is that, Pike? English? Irish?”

“Dunno. He don't talk about his people. He don't talk much at all.”

Aimes nodded. Nothing wrong with that. “Maybe he's got nothing to say.”

Now Horse was looking a little nervous, like they had come upon something in the road that didn't sit well with him and that maybe he was hoping that they wouldn't come upon. “Yeah, well, just so you know, he don't say much. I don't think he's stupid.”

Aimes glanced sharply at his friend. “You know better than to waste my time with an idiot.” He glanced back at the running Marine. “Boy ain't stupid who scores as high on his tests as this one.” This boy had tested higher than most of the college boys who came through, and he stood first in every class he was required to take.

“Well, some of the DIs find him a little odd, and some of the platoon do, too. Keeps to himself, mostly, and reads. Doesn't grabass during free time, none of that. Don't think I ever seen the boy smile once since he come to me.”

That concerned Aimes. “You can tell a lot by a man's laugh.”

“Yeah, well.”

They watched him come closer, and finally Aimes sighed. “Got no use for a man ain't a team player.”

Horse spit. “We wouldn't be standing here if he wasn't. Got a lot of fast twitch in that boy, but out on the course, he'll throttle back to help his mates. Did it without having to be told, either.”