Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

I walked down the infinite flight of steps from Lucy's apartment to sit in my car. I thought about starting it, but that was beyond me. I tried to be angry with her, but wasn't. I tried to resent her, but that made me feel small. I sat there in my open car on her quiet street until her lights went out, and even then I did not move. I just wanted to be close to her, even if she was up in her apartment and I was down in my car, and for most of the night I tried to figure out how things could go so wrong so quickly. Maybe a better detective could've found answers.

The sky was pale violet when I finally pulled away. I was content to creep along in the morning traffic, the mindless monotony of driving the car familiar and comforting. By the time I reached home, Dolan was gone. She had left a note on the kitchen counter. What it said was, I'll talk to her if you want .

I cleaned our glasses from the night before, put away the tequila, and was heading upstairs for a shower when the phone rang.

My heart pounded as I stared at the phone, letting it ring a second time. I took a breath, and nodded to myself.

On the third ring I picked it up, trying not to sound like I'd just run ten miles.

“Lucy?”

Evelyn Wozniak said, “Why didn't you call?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I left a message yesterday. I said you should call no matter what time you got in.”

I had checked my message machine when Pike was still in the house, but there had been no messages. I looked at it now, again finding nothing.

“Okay. You've got me now.”

Evelyn gave me directions to the storage facility that her mother used in North Palm Springs. She had had a duplicate key made for the lock, and had left it for me in an envelope with the on-site manager. I asked her if she wanted to be there when I went through her father's things, but she said that she was scared of what she might find. I could understand that. I was scared, too.

When she was done, I said, “Evelyn, did you leave any of this on your message?”

“Some of it. I told you the name of the place. I know it was your machine and not somebody else's, if that's what you're thinking. Who else would have a message that says they're the world's greatest human being?”

I put down the phone, then went upstairs, changed clothes, and drove to Palm Springs, wondering if Pike had heard the message, and if he'd erased it.

And why.

When I was thinking about Pike, I didn't have to think about Lucy.

Two hours and ten minutes later, I left the freeway and again made my way through the wind farms. The desert was already hot, and smelled of burning earth.

The storage facility was clusters of white cinder-block sheds set in the middle of nowhere behind a chain-link fence with a big metal gate. A cinder-block building sat by the gate with a big sign saying LOWEST RATES AROUND. Since nothing else was around, it was an easy guarantee to keep.

An overweight woman with skin like dried parchment gave me the key. Her office was small, but a Westinghouse air conditioner big enough to cool a meat locker was built into the wall, running full blast and blowing straight at her. It was little enough.

She said, “You gonna be in there long?”

“I don't know. Why?”

“Gonna be hot,” she said. “Make sure you don't pass out. You pass out, don't you try to sue me.”

“I won't.”

“I'm warning you. I got some nice bottled water in here, only a dollar and a half.”

I bought a bottle to shut her up.

Paulette Renfro's storage unit was located at the rear of the facility. Each unit was a cinder-block shell that sprouted corrugated-metal storage spaces. There was no door on the shell, so you walked inside what amounted to a little cave to get to the individual storage spaces.

From the tarnish on the lock, it was clear that Paulette rarely if ever came here, but the key worked smoothly, and opened into a space the size of a closet. Boxes of various size were stacked along the walls, along with old electric fans and suitcases, and two lamps.

I emptied the closet, putting the unboxed things to the side, then carried out the boxes. When all the boxes were out, I went through the older boxes first, and that's where I found the notebooks that Evelyn Wozniak remembered. Her father had kept field notes much like a daybook, jotting notes about the young officers he trained, the perps he busted, and the kids he was trying to help, all dated, and crammed into seven small three-ring binders thick with pages. I was pretty sure that the most recent would be the most relevant.

I put the seven binders aside, then went through the rest of the boxes to see if anything else might be useful, but the only other things of Abel's were a patrol cap in a plastic bag, a presentation case with Wozniak's badge, and two framed commendations from when he was awarded the Medal of Valor. I wondered why the commendations were here in a box, but she had remarried. I guess over time she'd lost track of them.

I was repacking the boxes when a shadow framed itself in the door, and Joe Pike said, “I wanted to get here before you.”

I glanced over at him, then went on with the packing.

“It's so easy to show you up.”

“Find anything?”

“Wozniak's daybooks.”

“You look through them yet?”

“Too hot to look through them here. I'll take them where it's cooler.”

“Want some help?”

“Sure.”

He put the boxes I had finished repacking back in the closet. I sealed the last two boxes, then handed them to him one by one.

“You erase Evelyn's message?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“I wanted to make sure you didn't find anything here that would hurt Paulette.”

“I'm looking for something to help you.”

“I know. Maybe we'll get lucky.”

“But maybe there's something here that will hurt Paulette.”

Pike nodded.

I took that in, and it was like taking in volumes.

“How did you break Karen Garcia's heart, Joe?”

Pike stacked the boxes until the last box was in place, and then he went to the door and looked out toward the desert as if something might be there. All I could see past him were other cinder-block buildings with other people's memories.

I said, “Karen loved you, but you loved Paulette.”

Pike nodded.

“You dated Karen, but you were in love with your partner's wife.”

He turned back to me then, the flat lenses empty.

“Paulette was married. I kept waiting for the feelings I had for her to go away, but they didn't. We didn't have an affair, Elvis. Nothing physical. Woz was my friend. But I felt what I felt. I tried dating other people to feel other things, but love doesn't just come and doesn't just go. It just is.”

I stared at him, thinking about Lucy.

“What?”

I shook my head.

“You already know that Krantz thought Wozniak was involved with a burglary ring.”

“Yes.”

“It was true.”

I watched him.

“Krantz thinks I murdered Woz for Paulette.”

“Did you?”

The corner of Pike's mouth twitched, and he tipped the glasses my way. “You believe that?”

“You know better. Krantz also thinks you were involved with Woz in the ring. I don't believe that, either.”

Pike tipped his head the other way, and frowned. “How do you know that?”

I spread my hands.

“Right.”

Pike drew a deep breath, then shook his head. “I didn't have any idea. All that time in the car with Woz, and I never knew until Krantz talked to Paulette and scared her. She asked Woz about it, and he denied it, so she asked me. That's how I found out. I followed Woz and saw him with the Chihuahuas. He'd gotten some girl pregnant, and he'd set her up in an apartment in El Segundo. He was paying for it by tipping the Chihuahuas on easy places to rob. Krantz had it all. He just couldn't prove it.” Just what McConnell had said.