Robert Crais - The Last Detective

I said, "We have to get inside Myers's office. Come on."

I ran to the door, but Pike did not follow. He stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

"What's wrong with you? Myers's office is in New Orleans."

"Lucy can do it. Lucy can search his office from here."

I explained as we ran to our cars.

time missing: 51 hours, 36 minutes

Lucy stared at me past the edge of the door as if she were hiding. Her face was masked in a darkness that went beyond the absence of light; as soon as I saw her I knew they had told her about DeNice.

She said, "One of Richard's detectives -"

"I know. Joe's downstairs. Let me come in, Luce, I need to talk to you."

I eased the door open and stepped in without waiting for her to ask. She was holding her phone. I doubt that she had put it down since last night.

She seemed dazed, like the weight of the nightmare had drained all her strength. She sleepwalked to the couch as if she were numb.

"They decapitated him. A detective from downtown, he said they left Ben's shoe in the blood."

"We're going to get him, Luce. We're going to find him. Did you speak with Lucas or Starkey?"

"They were here a little while ago. The two of them and a detective from downtown."

"Tims."

"They told me about the van. They said it was going to be on the news, and they didn't want me to see it like that. They asked me about Fallon again, and two other men, an African man and someone named Schilling. They had pictures."

"How about Richard? Did they mention Richard?"

"Why would they mention Richard?"

"Did you speak with him this evening?"

"I've called him, but he hasn't returned my calls."

She frowned at me, and looked even more concerned.

"Why would they mention Richard? Did something happen to Richard, too?"

"We think that Fallon might have contacted Richard to ask for ransom money. That's probably why Fallon did what he did to DeNice, to scare Richard into paying."

"They didn't say that."

She frowned deeper and shook her head.

"Richard didn't say anything about that."

"If Fallon scared him badly enough, he wouldn't, and I think that Fallon scared him plenty. Fallon scared all of us. Lucy, listen, I think that Myers is involved. That's why they took Ben; and that's how they knew about me. Through Myers."

"Why would -"

I put the copy of my 201 in her hands. She looked at it without understanding.

"This is my military record. It's private. You can't get it from the Army unless I request it or you have a court order. The Army sent out only two copies of this thing, Luce, one to Starkey because of this investigation, and one to a judge in New Orleans three months ago. That judge sent it to Leland Myers."

Lucy looked at the pages. I knew from the way she darkened that she was remembering Richard in the interview room.

"Richard had you investigated."

"Myers is his head of security, so Myers would have handled that. Myers also handles security at Richard's overseas facilities. I talked to a man today who says that Schilling was looking for security work in Central America."

"Richard has holdings in El Salvador."

She glanced up again, and now she didn't seem so hazy. Her anger showed in the way she held her head.

"The judge in New Orleans, who was he?"

"Rulon Lester. Do you know him?"

She thought about it, trying to place the name, then shook her head.

"No, I don't think so."

"I spoke with his assistant. He sent my file to Myers, so Myers had one of only two copies that the Army released. Joe and I found this copy in an apartment in San Gabriel that belongs to Eric Schilling. He made at least six phone calls to a number in San Miguel, El Salvador, that belongs to Michael Fallon. It's Fallon on your tape, Lucy. I called the number. I recognized his voice."

I opened Schilling's phone bills and pointed out the calls to El Salvador. She stared at the number, then dialed it into her phone. I watched her as it rang. I watched as she listened. Her face darkened as she listened to his voice, and then she jabbed hard at the phone to end the call. She smashed the phone down onto the arm of the couch. I didn't stop her. I waited.

"The only way they could have gotten my 201 file is through Myers. Myers probably set up the entire thing and brought them in on it. They nabbed Ben with me as the smoke screen because Richard would buy into that. Myers probably even talked him into coming out here with people of his own to find Ben. That way, Myers could ride it from the inside and control how Richard reacted. He was Richard's point man in the investigation. He could feed Richard the ransom demand and encourage him to go along."

Lucy stood hard.

"Richard's at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Let's go see him."

I didn't move.

"And tell him what? We have the file, but we can't prove Myers knows them. If we don't have something definite, he'll deny everything and then we're stuck. He'll know that we know, and then the only thing left for him is to get rid of the evidence."

Get rid of Ben.

Lucy lowered herself onto the couch and stared at me.

"You said you need my help. You already know how you want me to help, and it's something you can't do or you would be doing it."

"If Myers hired these people before he started thinking about this, then he probably hired them straight up. Richard's company would have a record of it. We have Fallon's phone number in El Salvador and Schilling's number in San Gabriel. If Myers called either of them at any time and for any reason from a company phone, those records will exist."

"But we don't want to ask Richard because Richard might lose it with Myers."

"Myers can't know."

Lucy slumped back, thinking. She glanced at her watch.

"It's almost ten in Louisiana. Everyone from the office should be home."

She went into her bedroom, then returned with a battered leather address book, and flipped through the pages.

"I had friends at Richard's company before we were divorced. I was close to some of these people. Everyone knew he was an asshole, especially the people who knew him the best."

She settled back with her phone and pulled her legs up so that she was sitting cross-legged and dialed a number.

"Hello, Sondra? It's Lucy. Yeah, here in L.A. How are you?"

Sondra Burkhardt had been Richard's comptroller for sixteen years. She oversaw an accounting department which was responsible for paying the company's bills, collecting monies, and tracking cash flow. Most of her job was done by computer, but she told the computer what to do. Sondra had played tennis with Lucy at LSU, and Lucy had gotten her the job. Sondra also had three children, the youngest of whom was six, and Lucy was her godmother.

"Sondra, I need a favor that's going to sound strange and I don't have time to -"

Lucy paused, listening, then nodded.

"Thanks, babe. Okay, I'm going to give you three names, and I need to know whether or not they were ever on the payroll. Can you do that from home?"

I interrupted.

" Central America. Any time in the past year."

Lucy nodded.

"They would have been foreign hires, probably in Central America sometime in the past year. Myers would have been the one to hire them. No, I don't have Social Security numbers, just the names. I understand, that makes it harder. I know."

Lucy gave her the names, then asked if we could get a list of all the calls that Myers had made to Los Angeles and El Salvador. Lucy frowned as she listened to the answer, then asked Sondra to hang on and covered the phone. She looked at me.

"If we can't tell her when he made the calls, she might have to check through thousands of calls. They make hundreds of international calls every day."