Robert Crais - The Forgotten Man

"PAYNE??"

Calling, just for show. If Payne had betrayed him, a policeman or reporter might be anywhere.

Frederick felt the Jesuses watching him, and closed his eyes. A buzzing started in his head, and if he didn't make it go away the buzzing would grow into voices.

"Make them stop, Payne. Make them go away."

The buzzing gradually faded, and Frederick pulled himself together. He hurried into the kitchen to check the message machine, and found two new messages, but one was from Elroy and he had left the other. Frederick had checked the house twice a day every day since Payne disappeared, hoping to find a message that would give some clue about Payne's fate, but all he ever found were the messages he left expressing concern for Payne's well-being (also for show), and the messages from Elroy.

Frederick deleted the messages, then scrounged a box of trash bags from the cupboard, relocked the house, and returned to his truck for the shovel. He hurried around the side of the house into the woods, then followed a dry creek bed until he was at the base of a large rock. Frederick considered the trees both ways along the gulley, but wasn't sure if he was in the right spot or not. He felt confused and fuzzy, but also excited.

Frederick moved with increasing strength.

He climbed uphill behind the rock, then suddenly recognized his surroundings with a precision that made every leaf as familiar as old friends. He felt a rush of confidence.

"Yes, it is," he said, smiling. "Yes, it is."

He put his weight into the shovel, and levered up the earth. Frederick Conrad, which was the name he now used, worked with great purpose. The shovel struck something hard. He clawed away the dirt, and uncovered the first skull.

Six hours earlier, the streets had been empty, but now pedestrians churned the sidewalks, bike messengers whipped between cars like tweaked-out hummingbirds, and the shops along Grand and Hill had become an open bazaar. The police were gone. The yellow tape, area lamps, criminalists, and patrol cars had vanished, erasing all evidence that a murder had occurred. To the untrained eye, it was another flawless day in the City of Angels.

I drove back to the crime scene, pulled to the curb outside the flower mart, and studied the mouth of the alley. I couldn't do any more than the police, and wasn't sure why I wanted to try. I never once-not then at the beginning-believed that John Doe #05-1642 was or could be the father I had never known. He was more like a client who had hired me, and the person I had been hired to find. Maybe I was bored after so many weeks not working; maybe I didn't want to go back to a house that felt pointless without Lucy and Ben. It was easier to lose myself in murder; it was merciful to focus my anger at someone else.

The Big Empty was a moldering area east of the convention center and south of the business district, unclaimed by the homeless, who tended to gather several blocks north at the parks and missions of Skid Row. The streets were lined with wholesale outlets, cut-rate office space, garment resellers, and businesses that closed at dusk; the bars, hotels, apartments, and missions were ten blocks or more to the north, and not an easy walk from the alley. John Doe #05-1642 either lived in the area or had been seeking a destination, though there wasn't much in the area to seek. I studied my Thomas Brothers map. I wanted to talk to the people who worked at the flower mart, then search the area for businesses that might have been open.

I turned across traffic into the alley, and parked. When I got out of my car, a thin man in a form-fit pink shirt came out a service door. His arms were filled with cardboard boxes that had been flattened, and his face pinched into a pruned knot when he saw me.

"You can't park there. They'll tow it."

"Police business. A murder occurred here at two forty-five this morning. The police will be around to talk to you."

"Someone was already here. A tall man. He was brusque and rude, and that doesn't look like a police car."

I drive a 1966 Sting Ray convertible, which would probably look more like a police car if I washed it. It's yellow.

"It's not, and I'm not, but I'm looking into the case. Were you here at your shop around three this morning?"

He looked irritated at having been asked. I guess the rudeness had put him off.

"I've already talked to the police. Of course I wasn't here. I don't sleep here. I wasn't here when it happened, and I don't know anything about it."

I gave him what I hoped was a friendly smile, trying to ease his irritation.

"All right. Maybe you can help me out with something. I'm trying to figure out why the victim was in this area at that hour. I was going to look around for businesses that might have been open at that hour. You know of anything?"

His faced tightened and he seemed even more irritated.

"No, I don't, and you can't leave your car. Delivery trucks can't get through with your car."

Thirty feet away, a man had bled to death from a bullet to the chest, but here was this guy, pissy. I studied the space between my car and the far side of the alley. There was plenty of room.

"There's no place else to park, and I won't be long."

"See the sign on the wall, 'No Parking? If you don't move your car, I'll call the police."

I stopped trying to be friendly, and told him to call. People like him give me hives.

I took longer than I needed just to spite him. I spent two hours walking the surrounding twelve square blocks, but counted only six restaurants and two Starbucks, none of which would have been open at two forty-five in the morning. There was no reason for the John Doe to have been in the area unless he was on his way to somewhere else.

After a while I went back to the alley. My car had not been towed, but a mountain of garbage bags was piled behind it. I guess the man in the pink shirt figured if he couldn't have me towed, he would block me in. Pissy.

I went to the Dumpster. The alley had been washed clean after the police released the scene. The blood was gone, and disinfectant had been sprayed. No chalk marked the body's outline and no evidence buttons marked a telltale trail of forensics, but veins in the tarmac remained damp with the disinfectant.

I looked up and down the alley, trying to imagine it at two forty-five that morning. It would not have been an inviting place to walk, but fear is relative. The cross streets were well lit, but John Doe #05-1642 chose darkness. Maybe the darkness meant safe harbor, or maybe he had been chased. The shooter might have already been in the alley when the victim entered, resulting in a crime of opportunity, but most homicides are committed by family, friends, or acquaintances; the odds promised that the victim and the shooter knew each other. If they entered together, the alley would not have seemed so foreboding. The victim and his killer might have sought out the darkness together, but to what end? I thought over what Diaz described: She heard the shot, found him no more than three minutes later, and asked what had happened. Instead of telling her who shot him or how it happened, he told her he was trying to find me. Identifying me as his son, and saying he wanted to make up for the lost years were his dying words. I didn't like knowing that. Had he entered this particular alley to find me? Did he believe he was going to someplace where I would be? Had the shooter claimed to know me and promised an introduction?

I stared down at the place where his body had been and imagined them facing each other against the Dumpsters. The gun came out, the victim resisted-

– bang -

I closed my eyes and saw it, the withered dead man suddenly alive and on his feet, facing an assailant hidden by shadows-