Robert Crais: The First Rule

“I’m behind you, John.”

“What?”

“Look behind you.”

Chen emerged from his wagon. He stared at the radio car as if the officers would jump out to arrest him.

Pike said, “Farther back. I’m on the next block.”

Chen finally saw him, then shriveled back into his wagon.

“Did the police already come see you?”

“A detective named Terrio.”

“I was calling to warn you, bro. They found a picture of you with the vic. I’m sorry, man. I only heard about it this morning.”

“I want to see what happened in there.”

Chen hesitated again.

“It’s a mess.”

Chen, warning that he would see something awful, but Pike had seen awful things before.

Chen sighed.

“Okay, listen-two dicks from West L.A. are inside. I don’t know how long they’ll be.”

“ I’ll wait.”

“They might be here all day.”

“ I’ll wait.”

“All right. Okay. I’ll call when it’s clear.”

Pike could tell Chen wasn’t comfortable with him being out here, but Pike didn’t care about that or how long he might have to wait. Chen reemerged from his wagon and slouched back to the house, shooting nervous glances at Pike over his shoulder.

Pike got out of his Jeep, pulled on a pair of spare jeans and a plain green windbreaker so he would be less memorable, then climbed back behind the wheel. He studied Frank’s house. A sloping front lawn led to a two-story brick home with a steep slate roof, surrounded by elm trees and feathery hedges. The house looked stable, traditional, and strong, and was suited to the Frank Pike knew. Pike liked that. Frank had done all right for himself.

After a while, a man and woman who were likely the West L.A. detectives came down the drive, got into the unmarked sedan, and drove away. Chen called as Pike watched them.

“You still out there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come get you. We won’t have much time.”

Pike met Chen on the sidewalk, then followed him to the house. The two uniforms appeared to be dozing, and no one was visible in the media van. Neither of them spoke until they reached the front door, when Chen handed Pike a pair of blue paper booties.

“Gotta put these over your shoes, okay?”

They slipped on the booties, then stepped into a large circular entry with a winding staircase up to the second floor. A towering grandfather clock stood guard at the stair, standing tall over a rusty crust of blood footprints that dotted the floor.

Pike felt odd, entering Frank’s home, as if he were intruding into a place where it was understood he would never be welcomed. He had glimpsed Frank’s life from the outside, but never from within. He had never met Cindy, or the boys, and now here he was in their home. Pike heard movement upstairs, and Chen glanced toward the sound.

“That’s another criminalist, Amy Slovak. She’ll be up there a while.”

Pike followed Chen through the entry to a large, open family room adjoining a dining area. An irregular pool of drying blood covered the floor midway between the dining table and the hall. Bright green yarn had been stretched from the blood pool to two metal stands in the living room, two strands to one of the stands, a single strand to the other. These stands marked the probable location of the shooters. A jumble of footprints crossed and crisscrossed the drying pool where one or more of the shooters had walked through the blood. A second, smaller stain was visible across the family room.

Chen nodded toward the big stain at their feet.

“Mr. Meyer was here. His wife and one of the boys there by the French doors. The nanny was in her room. I can give you a pretty good take on how it unfolded.”

A blue three-ring binder was open on a nearby table where Chen had been making sketches. He flipped to a scaled floor plan showing the location and position of the bodies, along with recovered shell casings.

“The family was probably having dinner when the shooters broke in. You saw the door. Bam, they scared the shit out of everybody. Meyer probably advanced on them, brief struggle, boom, boom-he had cuts on his face like they hit him with a hard object, probably a gun-and that’s when they killed him.”

Pike studied the three strands of yarn.

“They shot him three times?”

“Yeah, once high on his hip, once in the side, and once in his back. Two shooters, like they were trying to put him down fast. This suggests he was fighting. The others were shot once in the forehead at close range, which suggests a deliberate execution.”

The others. Cindy and the boys.

The ugly stain where Meyer bled out looked like the Salton Sea. Meyer had been a good fighter. He had superb training and great instincts, else Pike would never have made him part of his team.

“How many men all together?”

“Four, which makes this one a little different. The earlier invasions, there were only three guys. They added a fourth.”

“Four guns?”

“Looks like, but we’re still running the casings and bullets. It’s the shoe prints. We’ve got four distinct shoe prints.”

Pike glanced at the black smudges on door jambs and handles.

“Fingerprints?”

“Gloves. We didn’t get anything from the earlier crime scenes, either. No identifying prints, no DNA, no nothing except the shoes. C’mon, I’ll show you where we found the nanny.”

Chen led Pike across the dining room, through the kitchen, then past the laundry room to a tiny bedroom where the door and jamb were split.

“See how they crunched the door? It was locked. She was probably trying to hide.”

Chen glanced at his notes.

“Ana Markovic, age twenty. Two shots close range, one in the face, one in the chest, two casings here in the room. Both nine-millimeter. Did I mention that?”

“No.”

“These guys used nines. All the bullets and casings we found-nines.”

The room was a small place to die, filled by a bed and a table, with only a casement window for light. Pictures of a smiling young woman hugging Frank’s boys were taped over the desk, part of a birthday card the kids had made of construction paper. We love Ana.

Pike said, “Her?”

“Uh-huh. An au pair.”

Smears of blood on the floor and the door indicated she tried to crawl away after being shot.

Pike said, “Did she describe them?”

“Uh-uh. She was unconscious when the uniforms found her. They got her over to UCLA, but she’s not going to make it.”

Pike stared at the streaks of blood. It was easy to imagine her outstretched hand.

“Does Terrio have any suspects?”

“No one we’ve identified. If he has someone from the other side, I couldn’t tell you. They haven’t issued any warrants.”

SID was the science side. The other side was shoe leather-whatever detectives turned from informants and witnesses.

“How many people have they killed?”

“Four. If the nanny dies, five.”

“Not here, John. All together.”

“Eleven. Hey, that’s why they set up a task force. They’re using divisional dicks from all over the city.”

Chen suddenly glanced at his watch, looking uncomfortable.

“Listen, I gotta get busy. Those dicks are coming back.”

Pike followed Chen back to the dining room, but he still wasn’t ready to leave.

Pike said, “Let me see the pictures.”

Criminalists, coroner investigators, and homicide detectives photo-documented everything. Chen would have photographed the scene before he made the sketches.

“Bro, these people were your friends. You sure?”

“Let me see.”

Chen went to his case and returned with a black digital camera. He scrolled through the images until he found what he wanted, then held it so Pike could see.