Stephen Cannell - White sister

He turned and walked back up to the road to get the crime techs. I followed, then got into my car with Bodine and backed out of the trees and onto the road. I drove over Mulholland to Coldwater Canyon and headed down the hill into the Valley.

"I'm hungry," Bodine said.

I didn't answer.

"Man's gotta eat."

I still didn't answer.

"Gonna go get me a fire-breathing hard-on from the Legal Aid. You gonna curse the day you ran down the Crown Prince of Cameroon. The prince ain't some sleep-in-the-park half-stepper you can scrape off yer shoe. You about to explode in the oven, asshole."

He never stopped. He just kept filling the car with nonsense and complaints. So I pulled over and parked about a block from the 101 Freeway. Then I reached across Bodine and pushed open the passenger door.

"Get outta my car." I had no more time for this. My life had just taken a horrible turn and I had too much on my mind to deal with him.

"You can't just throw me out!"

"Watch me."

I got out of the car, came around, and threw Bodine's door wide. I yanked him out of the seat by the collar of Chooch's sweatshirt and slung him away from me. He stumbled into the trunk of an elm tree, but managed to keep from going down.

"That's assault! Police brutality!"

"Leave me alone!" I was totally over the edge, out of control and screaming at him.

"This is the Valley. I don't wanna be in the Valley. I hate the Valley. Wanta go back to Sixth Street."

I shoved a handful of bills at him and yelled, "Take a cab!"

I got back in the car and put it in gear. Bodine started banging on the window, but I locked the doors before he could get inside. I pressed the accelerator down and pulled away. He ran alongside, banging on the glass until I finally left him standing in the middle of Coldwater, screaming after me.

It wasn't until I got off the freeway on Mission Street that I remembered I still had his shopping cart and all of his rubbish in the back of my car.

Fifteen minutes later I was parked across from the Medical Examiner's Facility on North Mission Road in a spot with a good view of the lighted parking lot. The coroner's van would be arriving in the next half hour with Ray Tsu and the dead Crip G aboard.

I knew I had to call Chooch. I didn't want him to hear about this on the news in the morning, but I dreaded making the call. Reluctantly, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number for USC summer football housing. The team was staying at an apartment complex near Howard Jones Field to facilitate training table, curfews, and six A. M. wake-ups. After ten rings, an assistant coach finally answered and after I told him who I was, said he'd go and get Chooch out of bed.

Ten minutes later, Chooch came on the line.

"Yeah?"

It's me, Chooch. I've got bad news."

He sounded sleepy, but that brought him out of it fast. "What bad news?"

"Your mom is missing. They found her car up on Mulholland an hour ago. There was a dead gang-banger in the front seat. She's not there. Nobody knows what happened to her."

"What?" he shouted.

"I know… look, there could be a lot of explanations. Unfortunately, some of them are bad. I don't have anything else, but I'm working on it. I'll let you know as soon as I come up with something."

"I'm coming home."

"No, you're not!"

"Dad, if Alexa "

I cut him off. "Listen to me, son. I'm not supposed to work on this because she's my wife and I'm emotionally involved, but screw that, because nobody will work it harder than me. And there're some problems I need to address. An issue with her gun."

"Dad, I'm not staying here."

"You're not coming home, either."

"Why not?"

"Right now, I've got a chance to run free for a short time, but that won't last long. I might get a jump on this if I kick ass right now, but when the two homicide cops who got the squeal catch up with me, I'm gonna be in a world of hurt. I can't put you in the equation. I don't have time."

"She's my mom!"

"I know. But son, what are you gonna be able to do, really?"

"I'll… we'll talk it over. I'll… I don't know. I can't just stay here and hit a blocking sled."

"Tell the coaches. I'm sure they'll let you take some time off. But you've gotta stay where you are. Let me do this my way."

There was a long pause. I could hear him breathing.

"Dad, what do you mean there're issues with her gun?"

"It might be the murder weapon."

"And they think Mom shot this banger dude?"

"They're cops. They'll follow the evidence wherever it leads. But whatever you hear on TV, remember who your mom is. I'm not letting this get sideways. Wherever she is, I'll find her."

"What if… what if…"

"She's not dead, son. She can't be. I won't allow it."

After that, we didn't know what to say to each other.

"I'll call you in the morning," I said.

"Okay."

"Love you," I said. There was silence. "Say it back, Chooch. I need to hear it."

"I love you, too, Dad." He sounded devastated.

I hung up the phone and looked out the window again at the North Mission Road building. It was a new, plain-looking structure that housed the morgue and all of our forensic science units. Like most municipal buildings, budget considerations had deprived it of any architectural extras. It was a shoebox with windows.

I'd worked enough homicides to know pretty much how the next hour would play out. Ray Tsu would bring the corpse here, and do the preliminary death photos, prints, and dental work. Sepulveda and Figueroa would finish up at the crime scene, impound the car, and then head back to stand over the body while Ray, or the chief ME did the autopsy. Because Alexa was missing, it was an APE case and ticking PR bomb. For that reason, there wouldn't be the standard two-week wait for an autopsy, which had been a growing problem for homicide cops in L. A. They would do the cut tonight. That meant if I moved fast, I might have half an hour to forty minutes alone to work on Ray Tsu before Tommy and Rafie arrived. I had to make that forty minutes count, and find out who did this dead Crip was. Then I had to work that angle fast. It was the best thread in the case.

I sat in the front seat of the Acura, running the other permutations. I couldn't come up with a theory that accommodated what appeared to have happened. If you took Alexa out of the equation, it was easier to understand. A dead banger in cuffs, executed up on Mulholland, could fit a lot of scenarios. He could have been kidnapped, driven up to that lonely spot, popped, and left there for somebody to find in the morning. Handcuffs were easy to get. I'd seen dozens of hits that more or less went down like that.

It was adding Alexa to the picture that skewed everything. What series of events, what missing facts, made Alexa's involvement and subsequent disappearance add up? I couldn't think of anything.

Half an hour later, the coroner's van swept into the lot. I waited while Ray Tsu and the driver pulled the gurney out of the back. They popped the wheels down and rolled the dead Crip inside. On their way, they hit a button to close the electric parking lot gate.

I jumped out of the Acura, locked it with a chirp, and sprinted across the street, making it through the gates just as they were closing. I rang the bell at the back door of the building, held up my badge for the security camera, and was buzzed in.

Nobody was sitting behind the downstairs admitting desk. The midnight-to-six shift had been pared in half during the last round of budget cuts. Usually there were two guards back here a lucky breach of security because I had no business to conduct. There was a camera in the entry hall taping the room, so I crossed to the security desk and signed in for the benefit of the guard up on three, writing Samik Mampuna on the entry log. Then I took the elevator to the fourth floor where autopsies and body preps were done.