Robert Crais - The First Rule

He found it on the backseat, as alien to the car’s cracked, filthy interior as a perfect white rose-a baby’s bib. Made of a soft white cloth with a pattern of blue bunnies. Orange and green stains streaked the front. Pike felt the supple material, and knew the bib had been in the car only a few days. He held it to his nose, and knew the stains were recent. The orange smelled of apricots, the green of peas.

Pike folded the bib into a square and tucked it into his pocket, wondering what Moon Williams had done with the baby. Then Pike remembered Moon’s grandmother. The freeway noise was loud, but multiple gunshots had been fired. The woman should have heard. Her grandson and the other two bodies had been here for at least three days. She would have discovered them.

Pike locked the Riviera and went to the double-wide. This time he didn’t knock.

The gray-and-white cat raced out when he opened the door, and the same terrible smell seared his throat. The living room was neat and orderly the way he had seen it through the window, but as soon as he entered he saw the broken door at the end of the hall, and heard the cheery, upbeat melody of game-show music. Pike found Ms. Mildred Gertie Williams dead on her bedroom floor. A small television on her dresser was showing a rerun of Bob Barker’s The Price Is Right. Ms. Williams was wearing pajamas, a thin robe, and furry pink slippers, and had been shot twice in the body and once in the forehead. She had been shot in the left hand, too, but the bullet had entered the palm and exited the back of her hand, making a through-and-through defensive wound. She had been trying to ward off the shooter or begging for her life when the shooter fired, shooting through her hand.

Pike turned off the television. Her bed was rumpled and unmade, with a TV remote by the pillows. She was probably watching TV when she heard the shots, and got up to see what happened. Pike pictured her standing as she would have been before she was murdered. He placed himself where the shooter would have stood, made a gun of his hand, and aimed. The spent casings would have ejected to the right, so he looked right, and found them between the wall and an overstuffed chair. Two nine-millimeters, same brand as the casings in Moon’s trailer.

Pike stood over Mildred Williams, her face now misshapen and rimed with blood. Framed pictures of children lined the dresser, smiling gap-toothed boys and girls, one of whom was probably Moon.

Pike studied the pictures. He said nothing, but thought, this is how your love was repaid.

Pike left her as he found her, went outside, and sat in one of the lawn chairs under the awning. The air was good and cool, and not filled with death. Pike exhaled with his diaphragm, pushing out the bad stuff. If death was in him, he wanted to get rid of it.

Pike phoned John Chen, who answered from the lab at SID in a hushed, paranoid whisper.

“I can’t talk. They’re all around me.”

“Just listen. In a couple of hours, SID will roll to a murder site in Willowbrook. They’ll find three deceased males, a deceased female, three nine-millimeter pistols, and spent casings from a fourth gun.”

Chen’s voice grew even softer.

“Holy Christ, did you kill them?”

“Comp their guns with the casings and bullets you have from the Meyer house. They’re going to match.”

“Holy Christ again! You got the crew who killed the Meyers?”

“The spent casings in Willowbrook will probably match with the casings you found in Ana Markovic’s room. The man who killed Ana probably committed the Willowbrook murders.”

“The fourth man?”

“Yes.”

“Waitaminute. You’re saying one of their own guys killed them?”

“Yes.”

Pike broke the connection, then phoned Elvis Cole.

“It’s me. You alone?”

“Yeah. I’m at the office. Just dropped her off.”

“She have anything?”

“She showed me three condo complexes and gave me a lecture on how Darko runs his call-girl business, but whether it’s true or helps us, I don’t know. I’m having a title and document search run, but I won’t have the results until later. I’m about to get started on her sister.”

“You won’t need to trace Rahmi’s calls.”

“You found Jamal?”

Pike did not mention George Smith by name, but described how someone with inside information connected Michael Darko with a D-Block Crip named Moon Williams, who lived down in Willowbrook. Then Pike described what he found.

“You think they were killed the same night Meyer was murdered?”

“Within hours. We’ll know if these are the same guns when Chen runs the comps, but they’re going to match.”

Pike told him about the bib.

Cole said, “But why would Darko kill them after they delivered his kid?”

“Maybe they didn’t deliver the kid. Maybe they tried to hold him up for a bigger payoff, or maybe he just wanted to get rid of the witnesses.”

Cole said, “What are you going to do?”

“Call the police. I can’t leave these people like this. Little kids live around here. They might find the bodies.”

Even as Pike said it, the pit bull growled, and Pike saw two L.A. County sheriff’s cruisers coming toward him up the street. An unmarked car was behind them.

Pike said, “Looks like I won’t have to call. The sheriffs are rolling up now.”

“How did the cops get there?”

“Cars.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know. I’m wondering that myself.”

A third cruiser appeared from the opposite direction, the three of them blocking his Jeep. Uniformed deps and the plainclothes people climbed out of their vehicles, and no one seemed in much of a hurry. Almost as if they knew what they’d find. Pike found that curious.

Pike started to end the call, then remembered the bib in his pocket.

“Don’t tell her what I found here, okay? I want to tell her.”

“Whatever you want.”

“I have to go.”

Pike put away his phone, but stayed in the chair, and raised his hands. The deputies saw him, and an older dep with gray hair and a hard face approached the gate.

“You Joe Pike?”

“I am. I was just about to call you.”

“Sure, you were. That’s what they all say.”

The deputy drew his gun, and then the other deps fanned out along the fence, and they drew down on him, too.

The dep said, “You’re under arrest. You do anything with those hands other than keep them up, I’ll shoot you out of that chair.”

The pit bull went into a frenzy, trying to break free. Pike didn’t move. He studied the two plainclothes cops who got out of the unmarked car. Middle-aged Latin guys. They looked familiar, and then he realized where he had seen them before. The last time he saw them, they were driving a Sentra.

Elvis Cole

Ana Markovic graduated from the East Valley Arts and Sciences High School in Glendale two years earlier. Cole knew this from the yearbook Pike took from her room. First thing Cole did, he found her picture among the senior class-a thin girl with bright features, a large nose, and two monster zits on her chin. She had tried to cover them with makeup, but they were so inflamed they had burst through. Ana had probably been mortified.

Cole thought she kinda looked like Rina, but many people kinda looked like someone else.

The yearbook stated that Ana’s class consisted of 1,284 graduating seniors, most of whom, Cole thought, had written an inscription in Ana’s book. The yearbook’s inside covers were dense with notes and signatures, mostly from girls, telling Ana to remember what great times they had or teasing her about boys she had liked, everyone promising everyone else they would be best friends forever.