Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

Drusilla Sobek's mouth made a little round O , and she stepped back. Surprised.

I started to say something, but Dolan raised a finger, telling me to shut up. I shut.

She said, “Where can we find Laurence Sobek?”

“I don't know. I ain't seen him in three or four years.” Drusilla's voice was small now, and not nearly so blustery.

“Where was he living the last time you knew?”

“Up in San Francisco with all those other faggots.”

“Is that where he's living now?”

“I don't know. I really don't.” Her lower lip trembled and I thought she might cry.

Dolan took a breath, forcing herself to relax. “Okay, Mrs. Sobek, I believe you. But we still need to find your son, and we still need your help.”

Drusilla Sobek's lip trembled harder, her chin wrinkled, and a small tear leaked down her cheek. “I don't like being spoken to in such a rude manner. It ain't right.”

“Did you ever have an address or phone number for your son?”

“Yeah. I think I did. A long time ago.”

“I need you to go look for it.”

Drusilla nodded, still crying.

“We have his booking photo from when he was sixteen, but I'd like a more recent picture, too. Would you have one of him as an adult?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You get those things. We'll wait here.”

“Uh-huh. Please don't let in the Mexicans.”

“No, ma'am. You go look.”

Drusilla shuffled away into her house, leaving the door open. A fog of the sour smell billowed out at us.

I said, “Christ, Dolan, you're harsh.”

“Is it any wonder her kid turned out screwed up?”

We stood there in the sun for almost fifteen minutes until Drusilla Sobek finally shuffled back to the door, like a sensitive child who had disappointed her family.

“I got this old address up there with the faggots. I got this picture he gimme two years ago.”

“It's a San Francisco address?”

She nodded, her jowly chin quivering. “Up with the faggots, yeah.”

She handed the address and the picture to Dolan, who stiffened as soon as she saw them. I guess I stiffened, too. We wouldn't need the address.

Bigger, stronger, filled out and grown, and with much shorter hair, we recognized the adult Laurence Sobek.

He worked at Parker Center.

Final Action

Laurence Sobek, his true name and not the name by which he is currently known, finishes stapling black plastic over his windows. He has already nailed shut every window but the small one in the bathroom, leaving only the front door as a point of egress. It is sweltering in the converted garage.

The plan was simple and obvious once Sobek lifted De-Ville's case file from the records section. There in black and white he knew all the people who had helped the Sex Crimes detectives put the Coopster into prison where he died, all the people who had lodged complaints or made statements, and fed the Coopster to the prison population like a sacrifice. Sobek designed the sequence of homicides to take advantage of the weaknesses in LAPD's system: He started with the peripheral complainants it would be impossible for LAPD to connect, intent on working steadily up the food chain until it was too late to stop him even when the Task Force finally realized what was happening.

Now, thanks to Cole and that bitch Dolan, he must spare the remaining minor players, and kill the people he holds most responsible. The lead Sex Crimes detective, Krakauer, died of a heart attack two days after he retired. (All to the good, as Krakauer was the only person with even a remote chance of tying together the names of the early victims.) Pike had arrested the Coopster, then sat in the witness chair at his trial and hammered the nails into DeVille's coffin, but Pike is now a fugitive.

That leaves one other.

The apartment now sealed, Sobek pulls DeVille's case file from its hiding place in the closet, along with the brittle, yellowed newspaper articles about DeVille's arrest. He has read these a hundred thousand times, touching the grainy photographs of the Coopster being led from the motel in handcuffs. He touches them again now. He hates Wozniak, who spotted him at a Dunkin' Donut shop that day, and manipulated him into revealing what he knew. This asshole is using you , Wozniak had said. What this guy is doing to you is wrong , he said. Help me help you.

The Islander Palms Motel. Arrest. Prison. Dead.

Sobek closes his eyes, and puts away whatever is left of his feelings for DeVille. He has studied Pike, and learned well. Abandon humanity. Feel nothing. Control is everything. If you are in control, then you can re-create yourself. Become larger. Control everything.

Sobek closes his eyes, steadies his breathing, and feels an inner calm that only comes from certainty. He admires himself in the mirror: jeans, Nikes, gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cropped. He runs a hand over his quarter-inch hair, and imagines that he is not looking at Laurence Sobek, but is seeing Joe Pike. He flexes. The red arrows he had painted on his deltoids are gone, but he thinks that when this is over, he will have them tattooed there permanently. He rubs at his crotch, and enjoys the sensation.

Control.

He places the dark glasses over his eyes.

He has a cut-down double-barrel shotgun that he lifted from the Parker Center evidence room, and a box of twelve-gauge shells filled with #4 buckshot. He pulls the weight bench to the center of the floor, then fixes the shotgun to it with duct tape. He runs a cord from the knob to both triggers, rigged so that the gun will go off when the door opens, and pulls back the hammers.

He lays out the evidence that he wants Cole and the police to find, then lets himself out the back window. He will never return to this place.

Laurence Sobek drives away to do murder.

Dolan ripped away from Drusilla Sobek's house like the queen of the Demolition Derby. She was so excited she was shaking. “We got the sonofabitch. Right under our own goddamned noses, but we got him.”

“No, Dolan, we don't have him yet. It's time to take it inside.”

She glanced at me, and I knew what she was thinking. That she'd like to snap the cuffs on him herself and cut Krantz and Bishop and their whole damned Task Force out of the bust.

“This is what you wanted, Samantha. This is going to get you back on the team, but not if you piss off Bishop even more than he already is.”

She didn't like it much, but she finally went along. “This guy works the day shift, so he's probably at Parker Center right now. I'm putting this on Bishop's desk in person. We've got the files and Wozniak's book. I'm giving Bishop the whole load, and fuck Krantz.”

“Whatever. I've got to use a phone. Stop somewhere.”

“Use mine. It's in my purse.”

“I'd rather use a pay phone. It won't take long.”

She glanced at me like I was crazy. “Sobek is there right now .”

“I need a phone, Dolan.”

“You're going to call Pike.”

I just looked at her.

“I fuckin' knew it.”

She jerked the Beemer into the nearest gas station, blasting past a crowd of people waiting to board a bus. She screeched up to the pay phones, and left the engine running.

“Don't take all goddamned day.”

I did the same thing I'd done before, calling Pike's man, giving him the pay phone's number, then hanging up. Pike called back in less than two minutes. From the static I could tell he was on a cell phone.

“We were right, Joe. It's Sobek.”

“Is he in custody?”

“Not yet. I wanted to tell you that we're bringing it to Bishop now. If we get lucky, Sobek will cop to Dersh. If not, maybe we'll find something that links him to it and clears you.”