Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

She still watched me, as if she was searching for something.

I said, “Joe didn't do this.”

She nodded.

“Joe didn't do this. Dersh didn't kill Karen. Joe knows it. He wouldn't kill Dersh.”

Lucy kissed my cheek. There was a kindness in her eyes that bothered me.

“Call me when you know more. Give Joe my best.”

She went up the stairs, and I watched her go.

* * *

Parker Center uses the ground floor for booking and processing suspects. A few minutes after I checked in, Charlie hurried out a gray metal door.

“You just made it. Another five minutes, you'd've missed it.” Charlie Bauman is several inches shorter than me, with a lean pockmarked face and intense eyes. He smells like cigarettes.

“Can I see Joe?”

“Not till after. We get in the room, there's gonna be the witness. She's some little old lady. You let the cops do all the talking, doesn't matter what she says.”

“I know that, Charlie.”

“I'm just telling you. No matter what she says, you don't say anything. Me and you, we can't talk to her, we can't ask her any questions, we can't make any comments, okay?”

“I got it.” Charlie seemed nervous, and I didn't like that.

I followed him back along a tile hall as we spoke. The hall opened into a wide room that looked like any other corporate workplace, except this one had posters about drunk-driving fatalities.

“Have you had a chance to talk to him?”

“Enough to get the gist. We'll talk more, after.”

I stopped him. Behind us, two detectives I didn't know were positioning a black guy in front of a camera like they use to take driver's license pictures, only this guy wasn't up for renewal. His hands were cuffed, and his eyes were wide and afraid. He was saying, “THIS IS BULLSHIT. THIS THREE STRIKE CRAP IS BULLSHIT. ”

“Charlie, do these guys have anything?”

“If the witness makes a positive ID and they write the paper, then we'll see. She's old, and when they're old they get confused. If we're lucky, she'll pick the wrong guy and we can all go home early.”

He wasn't answering me.

“Do they have anything?”

“They've already got a prosecutor coming down. He'll lay it out for us when he gets here. I don't know what they have, but they wouldn't've called him down if they didn't think they have a case.”

Krantz and Stan Watts came out of an adjoining hall. Krantz was holding a cup of coffee, Watts was holding two.

Charlie said, “Okay, Krantz. Whenever you're ready.”

I looked at Krantz. “What are you pulling on Joe?”

Krantz appeared more calm than I'd ever seen him. As if he was at peace. “I can show you Dersh's body, if you want.”

“I don't know what happened to Dersh. What I'm saying is that Joe didn't do it.”

Krantz raised his eyebrows and looked at Watts. “Stan here told me that you were at home with a woman last night. Was he wrong about that?” He looked back at me. “Were you with Pike?”

“You know what I'm saying.”

Krantz blew on his coffee, then sipped. “No, Cole, I don't know that. But here's what I do know: At three-fifteen this morning a man matching Pike's description was seen entering Eugene Dersh's backyard. A few moments after that, Dersh was shot to death by one shot to the head with a .357 magnum. Could be a .38, but judging from the way the head blew apart, I'm betting .357. We've already recovered the bullet. We'll see what it tells us.”

“You got any fingerprints? You got any physical evidence that it was Joe, or is this another investigation like you ran with Dersh, you just working off an urge?”

“I'm going to let the prosecutor explain our case to Pike's lawyer. You're just here on a pass, Cole. Please remember that.”

Behind us, Williams appeared, saying that everything was good to go.

Krantz nodded at me. Confident. “Let's see what the witness says.”

They led us past six holding cells into a dim room where a uniformed cop and two detectives were waiting with a shrunken woman in her late seventies. Watts gave her the second cup of coffee. She sipped at it and made a face.

Charlie whispered. “Amanda Kimmel. She's the wit.”

Krantz said, “You okay, Mrs. Kimmel? You want to sit?”

She frowned at him. “I wanna get this done and get the hell outta here. I don't like to move my bowels in a strange place.”

The wall in front of us was a large glass double-paned window that looked into a narrow room lit so brightly that it glowed. Krantz picked up a phone, and thirty seconds later a door on the right side of the room opened. A black cop with bodybuilder muscles led in six men. Joe Pike was the third. Of the remaining five, three were white and two were Hispanic. Four of the men were Joe's height or shorter, and one was taller. Only one of the other men wore jeans and a sleeveless sweatshirt like Joe, and that was a short Hispanic guy with skinny arms. The other three wore a mix of chinos or dungarees or coveralls, and long-sleeved sweatshirts or short-sleeved tees, and all six were wearing sunglasses. Every man in the room except Joe was a cop.

I bent to Charlie's ear. “I thought they had to be dressed like Joe.”

“Law says it only has to be similar, whatever the hell that means. Let's see. Maybe this works for us.”

When all six men were lined along the stage, Krantz said, “Nobody on that side of the glass can see in here, Mrs. Kimmel. Don't you worry about that. You're perfectly safe.”

“I don't give a rat's ass if they can see me or not.”

“Is one of the men in there the same man you saw going into Eugene Dersh's yard?”

Amanda Kimmel said, “Him.”

“Which one, Mrs. Kimmel?”

“The third one.”

She pointed at Joe Pike.

“You're sure, Mrs. Kimmel? Take a careful look.”

“That's him right there. I know what I saw.”

Charlie whispered, “Shit.”

Krantz glanced at Charlie now, but Charlie was watching Mrs. Kimmel.

Krantz said, “Okay, but I'm going to ask you again. You're saying you saw that man, number three, walk down the alley beside your house and go into Eugene Dersh's backyard?”

“Damned right. You can't miss a face like that. You can't miss those arms.”

“And when the officers took your statement, that is the man you described?”

“Hell, yes. I saw him real good. Look at those damned tattoos.”

“All right, Mrs. Kimmel. Detective Watts is going to take you up to my office now. Thank you.”

Krantz didn't look at her when he said it; he was staring at Joe. He did not look at me or Charlie or Williams or anyone else in the room. He did not watch Mrs. Kimmel leave. He kept his eyes on Pike, and picked up the phone.

“Cuff the suspect and bring him in, please.”

Suspect.

The big cop handcuffed Joe, then brought him into the observation room.

Krantz watched Pike being cuffed, watched as he was brought in. When Pike was finally with us, Krantz took off Joe's glasses, folded them, and dropped them into his own pocket. For Krantz, no one else was in that room except him and Joe. No one else was alive, or mattered, or even meant a damn. What was about to happen meant everything. Was the only thing.

He said, “Joe Pike, you're under arrest for the murder of Eugene Dersh.”

Krantz handled the booking himself, taking Joe's fingerprints and snapping his booking photo and typing the forms. Hollywood Homicide raised a stink, trying to keep jurisdiction of Dersh's murder since it fell in their area, but Krantz sucked it into the Robbery-Homicide black hole. Related to the Dersh investigation, he said. Overlapping cases, he said. He wanted Pike.

I watched for a time, sitting with Stan Watts at an empty desk, wishing I could talk to Pike. One minute you're asleep in bed, the next you're watching your friend being booked for murder. You put your feelings away. You make yourself think. Amanda Kimmel had picked Joe out of a lineup, but what did that mean? It meant that she had seen someone who looked more like Joe than the other men in the lineup. I would learn more when I spoke with Joe. I would learn more when I heard the prosecutor's case. When I learned more, I could do something.