Robert Crais - The Last Detective

I went back to the turkey sandwich that I had left in front of the television, but threw it away. I no longer wanted it. My body ached and my eyes burned from the lack of sleep. The past two days were catching up with me like a freight train bearing down on a man caught on the tracks. I wanted to stretch out on the floor, but I thought that I might not be able to get up. The phone rang again when I was standing in the kitchen, but I wanted to let it ring. I wanted to stand there in the kitchen and never move again. I answered. It was Starkey.

"Cole! We got the van! An Adam car found the van downtown! They just called it in!"

She shouted out the location, but her voice was strained with something ugly as if the news she shared wasn't good. The aches were suddenly gone, as if they had never been.

"Did they find Ben?"

"I don't know. I'm on my way now. The others are on the way, too. Get down there, Cole. You won't be that far behind me, where you are. Get down there right away."

The tone in her voice was awful.

"Goddamnit, Starkey, what is it?"

"They found a body."

The phone fell out of my hands. It floated end over end, taking forever to fall. By the time it hit the floor I was gone.

time missing: 48 hours, 25 minutes

The Los Angeles River is small, but mean. People who don't know the truth of it make fun of our river; all they see is a tortured trickle that snakes along a concrete gutter like some junkie's vein. They don't know that we put that river in concrete to save ourselves; they don't know the river is small because it's sleeping, and that every year and sometimes more it wakes. Before we put the river in that silly trough centered on a concrete plain at the bottom of those tall concrete walls, it flashed to life with the rain to wash away trees and houses and bridges, and cut its banks to breed new channels almost as if it was looking for people to kill. It found what it looked for too many times. Now, when it wakes, the river climbs those concrete walls so high that wet claws rake the freeways and bridges as it tries to pull down a passing car or someone caught out in the storm. Chain-link fences and barbed wire spine along the top of the walls to keep out people, but the walls keep in the river. The concrete is a prison. The prison works, most of the time.

The van had been left under an overpass in the river's channel between the train yards and the L.A. County Jail. Starkey was waiting in her car at a chain-link gate, and rolled when she saw me coming. We squealed down a ramp into the channel and parked behind three radio cars and two D-rides from Parker Center. The patrol officers were in the shade at the base of the overpass with two kids. The detectives had just arrived; two were with the kids and a third was peering into the van.

Starkey said, "Cole, you wait until I see what's what."

"Don't be stupid."

The van had been painted to change its appearance, but it was a four-door '67 Econoline with a cracked windshield and rust around the headlights. The new paint was thin, letting the Em from Emilio's show through like a shadow. The driver's door and the left rear door were open. A bald detective with a shiny head was staring into the back end. Starkey trotted ahead of me, and badged him.

"Carol Starkey. I put out the BOLO. We heard you got a vic."

The detective said, "Oh, man, this one's nasty."

I moved past him to see inside, and Starkey grabbed my arm, trying to stop me. I was holding my breath.

"Cole, please let me look. Stop."

I shook her off, and there it was: A thick-bodied Caucasian man in a sport coat and slacks spread on his stomach with both arms down along his sides and one leg crossed over the other as if he had been dumped or rolled into the back of the van. His clothes and the floor around him were heavy with blood. His head had been cut from his body at the top of his neck. It was tipped against a spare tire just behind the front seat. Like that, his face was hidden. Fat desert flies covered the body like bees in a blood garden. Ben was not in the van.

Starkey said, "Jesus Christ, they cut off his fucking head."

The detective nodded.

"Yeah. The things some people will do."

"You get an ID."

"Uh-uh, not yet. I'm Tims, out of Robbery-Homicide.

We just got here, so we haven't been cleared. The CI's on the way."

They wouldn't disturb the victim until the Coroner Investigator examined the scene. The CI was responsible for determining the cause and time of death, so the police weren't supposed to do anything but preserve the evidence until the CI cleared the scene.

I said, "We're looking for a boy."

"What you see is what we got – one corpse and no blood trails. Why'd you ask about a boy?"

"Two men driving this van kidnapped a ten-year-old boy two days ago. He's missing."

"No shit. Well, if you have suspects here, I want their names."

Starkey gave him Fallon's name and description, along with a description of the black guy. While he was writing it down, I asked him who opened the van. He nodded toward the kids with the uniforms.

"Them. They came down here to ride on the ramps – you know, go up and down? They saw the blood dripping and opened it up. Way the blood's still leaking out the side panel over there, I'd say this couldn't have happened more than three or four hours ago."

Starkey said, "Did you check them for his wallet?"

"Didn't have to. See on his butt where the sport coat's pushed up? You can see the bulge. Wallet's still in his pocket."

I said, "Starkey."

"I know. Tims, listen, if we can put this van to a location or get a line on Fallon, we'll be closer to finding the boy. The vic might have had a hand in it. We need an ID."

Tims shook his head. He knew what she was asking.

"You know better than that. The CI's on his way. It won't be long."

I glanced at Starkey, then went to the driver's door.

Tims said, "Don't touch anything."

Blood had pooled around the driver's seat. I could see part of the body, but I couldn't see his face. I looked under and around the seats as best I could without touching the van, but all I saw was blood and the grime that builds up in old vehicles.

Tims and Starkey were still at the rear. The other two detectives and the uniforms were with the kids. I climbed up into the front seat and squeezed between the seats into the van's bay. It smelled like a butcher shop on a warm summer day.

When Tims saw me, he lurched toward the rear doors as if he was going to jump in with me. He didn't.

"Hey! Get outta there! Starkey, get your partner outta there!"

Starkey stepped in front of Tims and braced her arms across the door as if she was peering inside at me. She was also blocking the door to keep him from pulling me out. One of the detectives and two of the uniforms ran over to see why Tims was shouting.

"Cole. Would you please do this fast?"

Flies swarmed around me in an angry cloud, pissed off that I had disturbed them. The blood on the floorboards was as slick as hot grease. I took the dead man's wallet, then went through his pockets. I found a set of keys, a handkerchief, two quarters, and a card key from the Baitland Swift Hotel in Santa Monica. An empty shoulder holster was strapped under his arm. I tossed the wallet and other things onto the front seat, then turned back to the head. The skin was purple and streaked with grime. The cervical vertebra showed openly in the flesh like a white marble knob and the hair was jellied with blood clots; it was obscene and awful, and I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to be here with the flies and the blood. Tims was shouting, but his voice receded until it was just another fly buzzing in the heat. I balled the handkerchief and used it to upright the head. When I tipped the head, I saw that it had been placed on a black K-Swiss cross-training shoe. A boy's shoe.