Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

I tossed the phone back to Bruly on my way out the door, trying to ignore the tinge of accusation I'd heard in her voice.

The Verdugo Tennis Camp was a good hour east of L.A. in the rural foothills of the Verdugo Mountains. Krantz used a bubble flasher, and knocked a hundred most of the way. He left Watts to coordinate the surveillance of my home and Lucy's apartment, and spent much of the drive on his cell phone talking to Bishop. Sobek's landlady provided a license number, and both the LAPD Traffic Division and the Highway Patrol were alerted. The make and model of Sobek's Jeep were identical to those of Pike's.

Williams sat ahead of me in the front seat, crying and muttering. “A fuckin' shotgun. He about cut her in half with that goddamned thing. Motherfucker. I'm gonna cap that sonofabitch. I swear to Christ I'm gonna cap his ass.”

I said, “We're taking this guy alive, Williams.”

“No one asked you, goddamnit.”

“Krantz, we're taking this guy alive. If he's alive, he'll cop to Dersh.”

Krantz patted Williams's leg. “Worry about yourself, Cole. My people can handle themselves, and we're bringing this asshole to trial. Right, Jerome?”

Jerome Williams stared out the window, jaw flexing.

“We're bringing this man to trial, right, Jerome?”

Williams twisted around so he could see me. “I ain't forgot what you said. When this is over, I'm gonna show you just how goddamned black I am.”

The sheriffs were already there when we arrived, four radio cars parked on the camp's dirt-and-gravel lot. The camp administrators were talking nervously with the sheriffs, as, behind them, horses snuffled in their stables. Ben had been right: It smelled of horse poop.

Krantz hoped to spot Sobek and capture him, so he had the sheriffs park their vehicles inside the camp's barn, then spoke with the senior sheriff about setting up surveillance positions. We did all this in the camp's dining hall, a screen-walled building with unfinished wood floors. The kids were being held together in the boy's dormitory.

Other parents arrived before Lucy, collecting their children and leaving as quickly as possible. Krantz was pissed that the camp administrator, a woman named Mrs. Willoman, had called the families, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. If the cops tell you that a multiple-homicide killer might be dropping around, there aren't many responsible alternatives.

Lucy arrived ten minutes later, her face strained when I went out to meet her. She took my hand, but didn't answer when I spoke to her, and didn't look at me. When I told her that we were in the dining hall, she walked so quickly that we broke into a trot.

Inside, she went directly to Mrs. Willoman, and said, “I want my baby.”

A teenage camp counselor brought Ben from the bunk room. Ben looked excited, like this was a hell of a lot better than riding horses or even playing tennis.

Ben said, “This is cool. What's going on?”

Lucy hugged him so tightly that he squirmed, but then her face flashed with anger. “It isn't cool. Things like this aren't cool , and aren't normal .”

I knew she was saying it for me.

Krantz asked Lucy to stay until we received word that her apartment had been secured. After, we would follow them home to make sure they arrived safely. Krantz offered to provide twenty-four-hour protection, and Lucy accepted. She stared at Ben, rubbing his back, and said that maybe they should go back to Louisiana until this was over. When I told her I thought that might be a good idea, she went over to the screen wall and looked out.

I guess she just wanted to be someplace where she could feel safe.

We sat around a big table, sipping something red that the counselor called bug juice, Krantz and I explaining Sobek to Lucy and Ben. Lucy kept one hand on Ben, and held my hand with the other, but still did not look at me. She spoke only to Krantz, though she occasionally squeezed my hand as if sending a message she was not yet capable of saying aloud.

Finally, Krantz was paged, and checked the number. “That's Stan.”

He called Watts, listened for a few seconds, then nodded at Lucy. “We've secured your home. Manager let us in, and officers are on the site.”

The tension drained out of her like air from a balloon. “Oh, thank God.”

“Let me just wrap up here, and we'll get you home. If you decide you want to leave town, let me know and we'll bring you to the airport. I'll call the Baton Rouge PD, if you'd like, and bring them up to speed.”

Lucy smiled at him like Krantz was human. “Thank you, Lieutenant. If I decide to go home, I'll call you.”

Home.

She took my hand again, and smiled at me for the first time in a while. “It's going to be all right.”

I smiled back, and everything seemed much better in the world.

While the counselors were getting Ben's things, I took my bug juice to the door and stared out at the tree line, searching it the way I had when I was eighteen, and in the Army. I thought about Sobek, and what we had found in his garage. His goal was to kill the people he blamed for putting DeVille in prison, and he had started with the people most removed from the prosecution, probably because it would be hardest for LAPD to connect them together. I wondered if that was the only reason. I wondered if maybe he also didn't blame them the least, which meant he was saving the people he blamed the most. Pike, for sure, but there was also Krakauer and Wozniak, though they were both dead. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me, because he had had a personal relationship with Wozniak, and there was every possibility that it was Sobek who had been the one who had tipped Wozniak to DeVille's location that day. I stared at the stables and thought about the horses within; I couldn't see them, but I heard them and smelled them. They snorted and whinnied and talked to each other, I guess, and were real even though they were beyond my sight. Life is often like that, with realities layered over other realities, mostly hidden but always there. You can't always see them, but if you listen to their clues, you'll recognize them all the same.

Krantz was having two of the sheriffs load Ben's things when I said, “He's not coming here, Krantz.”

Krantz nodded. “Maybe not.”

“You don't get it. He's not coming here, or my place, or Lucy's. It's a diversion.”

Now Krantz frowned, and Lucy looked over, both hands draped on Ben's shoulders.

“Think about it, Krantz. He wants to kill the people he blames for DeVille, and he's doing that, but then he realized we're onto him. His game's over, and he knows it, right?”

Krantz was still frowning.

“He knows that it's only a matter of days before we link the vics, and when we do we'll have a suspect pool, and he's in the pool.”

Krantz said, “Yeah, that's why he decides to take you out of the play.”

“But to what end? He can't go on working at Parker, killing another couple of dozen people. If he believes we're on to him, he's going to cut to the chase. If he's thinking that his play is over, then he's going to want to kill the people he blames the most. He can't get to Pike, Krakauer's dead, so that leaves Wozniak.”

“Wozniak's dead, too.”

“Krakauer was a bachelor. Wozniak had a wife and a child, and they're in Palm Springs. That's where I got Wozniak's daybook. That's where we should be.”

Lucy's hands tightened around Ben, as if her newfound security was falling away. “But why would he take Ben's picture? Why would he have our address?”

“Maybe he put those things together to distract us. We're here with you now; we're not with Wozniak's widow, and that's where he's going.”

“But you're just guessing. Did you see her address there? Were there pictures of her and her daughter?”