Robert Crais - The Last Detective

Starkey took out her phone and went to the edge of the shoulder, calling her office to start a wants- and- warrants search and BOLO on the van. The uniformed commander at Hollywood station would relay the information along to Central Dispatch at Parker Center, advising every Adam car in the city to be on the lookout for a van with Emilio's Plumbing written on its side.

I told Mrs. Luna that I would drive her back, but she didn't respond. She watched Starkey with her brow furrowed, as if she were seeing more than Starkey at the edge of the slope.

"She right about the memory. I remembering now. He have a cigar. He was standing like that – like the lady – and he take out a cigar."

The tobacco.

"That's right. He have a cigar. He didn't smoke it, but he chewed it. He bite off little pieces, then spit them out."

I tried to encourage her. I wanted the memories to come and the picture to build. We walked out to join Starkey at the edge. I touched Starkey's arm, the touch saying listen .

Mrs. Luna stared Out at the canyon, then turned back toward the street as if she could see her catering truck pinched against the hill and the plumber's van driving away.

"I got the truck away from the rocks an' I put it in gear. I look back at him, you know? He was looking down. He was doing something with his hands, and make me think, what? I wanted to get going 'cause we late, but I watch him to see. He unwrap the cigar and put it in his mouth and then he went down there."

She pointed downhill.

"That's when I think he must be going to the bathroom. He have dark hair. It was short. He wear a green T-shirt. I remember that now. It dark green and look dirty."

Starkey glanced at me.

"He unwrapped the cigar?"

Mrs. Luna put her fingers together below her belly.

"He do something with it, something down here, then he put it in his mouth. I don't know what he was doing, but what else?"

I realized what Starkey was asking.

I said, "The wrapper. If he tossed the wrapper, we might get a print."

I started searching the edge of the shoulder, but Starkey shouted at me.

" Stop it , Cole! Get back! Do not disturb this scene!"

"We might be able to find it."

"You're gonna step on it or kick dirt over it or push it under a leaf, so get the hell back! I know what I'm doing! Stand in the street."

Starkey took Mrs. Luna's arm. She was so focused now that I might not have been with them.

"Don't think too hard, Mrs. Luna. Just let it come. Show me where he was when he did that. Where was he standing?"

Mrs. Luna crossed the street to where her truck had been, then looked back at us. She moved one way and then the other, trying hard to remember. She pointed.

"Go right a little bit. A little more. He was there."

Starkey looked down at the surrounding ground, then squatted to look more closely.

Mrs. Luna said, "I sure he right there."

Starkey touched the ground for balance, and eyeballed a widening area.

I spoke quietly to Mrs. Luna.

"What time were you here, eight, nine?"

"After nine. I think nine-thirty, maybe. We got to get the truck ready for lunch."

By nine-thirty the heat would have been climbing, and, with it, the air. A breeze would have been coming up the canyon just as it was now.

"Starkey, look to your left. The breeze would have been blowing uphill to your left."

Starkey looked to her left. She crept forward a step, and then to her left. She touched aside rosemary sprigs and weeds, and then she crept again. Her movements were so slow that she might have been wading through honey. She dribbled a handful of dirt through her fingers and watched the dust float on the breeze. She followed its trail, more to the left and farther out on the shoulder, and then she slowly stood.

I said, "What?"

Mrs. Luna and I both hurried over. A clear plastic cigar wrapper was hooked in dead weeds. It was dusty and yellow with a red and gold band inside. It could have blown here from anywhere. It might have been here before him or come after, but maybe he left it behind.

We didn't touch it or even go close. We stood over the wrapper as if even the weight of light might make it vanish, and then we shouted for John Chen.

time missing: 43 hours, 56 minutes

John Chen's Advice to the Lovelorn

First thing Chen did was flag the shoe prints, the crushed bed of grass behind the oak tree, and the heavier concentrations of spitwad tobacco balls. Chen didn't think twice about some guy working up tobacco balls; two years before, Chen worked a series of burglaries by a jewel thief dubbed the Fred Astaire Burglar: Fred hot-prowled mansions in Hancock Park while wearing a top hat, spats, and tails. Hidden surveillance cameras in two of the houses showed Fred literally cutting the rug with the ol' soft shoe as he flitted from room to room. Fred was so colorful that the Times made him out to be a dashing cat burglar in the Cary Grant/ It Takes a Thief tradition, but, in truth, Fred left calling cards that the Times neglected to report: In every house, Fred dropped trou and crapped on the floor. Hardly dashing. Hardly debonair. Chen had dutifully bagged, tagged, graphed, and analyzed Fred's fecal material at fourteen different crime scenes, so what were a few spitballs compared with cat-burglar shit?

When the flags were set, Chen measured and graphed the scene. Each piece of evidence was assigned its own evidence number, then each number was located on the graph so that Chen, the police, and the prosecutors would have an accurate record of where each item was found. Everything had to be measured and the measurements recorded. It was tedious work, and Chen resented having to do it by himself. SID was sending out another criminalist – that skanky bitch Lorna Bronstein who thought she was better than everyone else but it might be hours before she arrived.

Starkey had been helping until Cole dragged her back up the hill. Starkey was okay. Chen had known her since her days on the Bomb Squad, and kinda liked her even though she was skinny and had a face like a horse.

Chen was thinking about asking her out.

John Chen thought about sex a lot, and not just with Starkey. In fact, he thought about it at home, at the labs, and while driving; he rated every woman he saw as to sexual desirability, immediately dismissing any who fell below his admittedly diminishing standards (beggars can't be choosers) as "hogs." Didn't matter where he was, either: He thought about sex at homicides, suicides, shootings, stabbings, assaults, vehicular manslaughter investigations, and in the morgue; he woke every morning obsessing about sex, then added his log to the fire (so to speak) by watching that hot little number Katie Couric flashing her business on the Today show. Then he'd head off to work where armies of man-killer love muffins fanned the flames. The city was filled with them: Hardbodied housewives and nymphomaniac actresses cruised the freeways in a never-ending search for man meat, and John Chen was the ONE guy in L.A. who missed out! Sure, his silver Boxster drew looks (he had bought it for just that reason and dubbed it his 'tangmobile), but every time some hottie looked past the sleek German lines of his Black Forest Love Rocket and saw his six foot three, hundred-thirty pound, four-eyed geeky ass, she quickly looked away. It was enough to give a guy issues.

John spent so much time fantasizing about sex that he sometimes thought that he should see a shrink, but, you know, it was better than thinking about death.

Starkey wasn't exactly in his top ten "Must Do" list, but she wasn't a hog. He once asked if she wanted to go for a ride in his Porsche, but Starkey said only if she could drive. Like that would ever happen.