Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

“Dolan, you've got a drinking problem.”

She sniffed like her nose was runny. “That's what I need today, you giving me life advice.”

I walked in past her and turned off the music. The living room was large, with a nice fireplace and a hardwood floor, but it was sloppy. The sloppy surprised me. A big couch faced a couple of chairs, and a mostly empty bottle of Perfidio Anejo tequila sat on the floor by the couch. The cap was off. An LAPD Combat Shooting trophy sat on top of the television; the room smelled of cigarettes. I said, “Why didn't you call me back?”

“I haven't checked my messages. Look, you want me to talk to your friend, I will. I'm sorry about what happened last night.”

“Forget it.”

I tossed Wozniak's binder to her.

“What's this?” She scooped a pack of cigarettes off the floor, and fired up, breathing out a cloud of smoke like a volcanic fog.

“A day book that Abel Wozniak kept.”

“Abel Wozniak as in Pike's partner?”

“Read the pages I marked.”

She frowned through another deep drag, reading. She flipped back several pages, then read forward past the point I had marked. When she was done, she looked at me. The cigarette forgotten.

“You're thinking this kid is talking about DeVille?”

“This kid had a relationship with Wozniak, that much we know. He was turned out by someone called the Coopster. If that's DeVille, then DeVille links Sobek to Karen Garcia, too.”

Dolan squinted at me. “You're saying Sobek killed Dersh.”

“I'm saying maybe he killed everybody. Krantz and the Feds have been chasing a serial killer, but maybe this guy isn't, Dolan. At first I thought the connection was through Wozniak, but maybe these killings don't have anything to do with Wozniak. Maybe they're about DeVille.”

She shook her head, scowling and cranky. “I was one of the cops trying to find a connection, remember? We didn't.”

“Did you check out DeVille?”

She waved her cigarette. “Why in hell would we?”

“I don't know, Dolan. I don't know why you didn't find anything, but you ordered DeVille's file from the DA's Record Section, right? Let's check it out and see what's there.”

She took another pull on the cigarette, and stared into the cloud. I could almost see the wheels turning, weighing the odds and what all of this might mean. For her, it was a shot at getting in again. If she could turn something that advanced the case, it could keep her on Robbery-Homicide and save her career.

Dolan pushed off the couch, went to her phone, and called Stan Watts, asking him if she'd gotten anything from DA Records. When she hung up, she said, “Give me five.”

She showered and dressed and took almost twenty.

When we went outside, she said, “Move your car and we'll take mine.”

“No way, Dolan. You scare the hell out of me.”

“Move your goddamned car or I'll back into it.”

She powered up the Beemer as I moved my car.

We drove to Parker Center without saying very much, each of us keeping our thoughts to ourselves. She pulled into the red zone by the front door, told me not to touch anything, then hurried inside. Ten minutes later she came out with DeVille's file.

“You didn't fuck with the radio, did you?”

“No, I didn't fuck with anything.”

We parked a block away in a little parking lot. Dolan went through the file first, peeling away pages and dropping them on the floorboard.

“What's that?”

“Lawyer crap. This stuff won't tell us anything. We want the detective's case presentation.”

The lead detective in charge of the case was a Rampart Division sex crimes D-2 named Krakauer. Dolan told me that the case presentation was the sum total of the compiled evidence used in building the case, and would include witness statements, testimonial evidence, interviews; anything and everything that the detective accumulated along the way.

When Dolan had the lawyer crap separated, she took half of the detective's case presentation, gave me the other half, and said, “Start reading. The case will be divided by subject and chronology.”

I was hoping for some indication that Sobek was connected to DeVille, and perhaps had been the informant that put Pike and Wozniak in that motel room on the day Wozniak died, but most of what I read concentrated on Ramona Ann Escobar. There were statements from her neighbors and the motel desk clerk and her parents, and a transcribed statement from Ramona describing how DeVille had paid her ten dollars to take off her clothes. Ramona Ann Escobar had been seven years old. It was uncomfortable to read, but I read in hopes of finding Sobek.

I was still searching when Dolan quietly said, “Oh, holy shit.”

She was pale and stiff.

“What?”

She handed me a witness list that compiled the names of the people who had lodged complaints about DeVille. The list was long, and at first I didn't understand until Dolan pointed at a name midway down the list.

Karen Garcia.

Her face still ashen, Dolan said, “Keep reading.”

They were all there, the first five victims, plus the newest, Jesus Lorenzo. Dersh wasn't there, but he was the exception.

Dolan stared at me. “You were right, you sonofabitch. These people weren't random. They're linked. He's killing everyone who helped put away Leonard DeVille.”

All I could do was nod.

“Maybe you're the world's greatest fuckin' detective, after all.”

Only one of the six victims actually gave testimony against DeVille, that being Walter Semple, who had seen DeVille at the park from where the little girl disappeared. The others were part of what Dolan called the clutter, people who had been questioned by Krakauer because they had lodged sex crime complaints against a man Krakauer believed to be DeVille, but not directly related to the case for which DeVille was finally prosecuted.

Dolan's breast rose and fell as we read through the rest of the file. A copy of DeVille's criminal arrest record was attached, listing several aliases, one of which was the Coopster.

I said, “It's Sobek. It's got to be Sobek. We have to take this to Krantz. The other people on this list have to be notified.”

“Not yet. I want more.”

“What do you mean, more? This will break open the case. It's a showstopper.”

“It links Sobek with DeVille, but it doesn't prove he's the shooter. If I can bring them the shooter, Bishop's gotta let me on again.”

“You've already got something, Dolan. We've found a connection between these people, and we've got leads. You're going to turn this case around.”

“I want more. I want to put the whole thing right on the table. I want the headline, Cole. I want to push Krantz's face in it. I want it so tight that Bishop can't not take me back on the team.”

I stared at her, and thought that if I were her I would want it this badly, too. But maybe I wanted it more. If we got the shooter, then maybe that would clear Joe Pike.

“Okay, Samantha. Let's find this guy.”

We drove back to her place. It took Dolan almost two hours of phone calls, but we learned that Laurence Sobek wasn't in the adult system, and the system had no record of his present whereabouts. This meant one of two things: Either he'd straightened out and gotten his life together, or he'd moved away before the age of eighteen. Of course, he could always be dead, too. Boys who work the streets often end up that way.

While Dolan made the calls, I went into her kitchen for a glass of water. A couple of million photographs were stuck to her refrigerator with little magnets, including several of Dolan posing with the actress who'd played her in the series. Dolan looked like she could kick your ass and would enjoy doing it, but the actress looked like an anorexic heroin addict. Showbiz.