Robert Crais: Chasing Darkness

“Homicide. Lieutenant Poitras’s office.”

“It’s me. Is he in?”

“Yes, he’s in. Some of us work for a living.”

“That’s right, Griggs. And the rest of us are cops.”

“Eff you.”

Griggs hung up.

I redialed the number, but this time Poitras answered.

“Are you harassing my sergeant again?”

“Did your people roll on a DB suicide up in Laurel by the name of Lionel Byrd?”

The easy banter in his tone hardened as if I had flipped a switch.

“How did you hear about this?”

“A cop named Connie Bastilla just left my office. She told me something was found with his body that puts Byrd with seven killings.”

Poitras hesitated.

“Why would Bastilla tell you about this?”

“Byrd was up for the murder of a woman named Yvonne Bennett. I was on the defense side. I found the evidence that freed him.”

Poitras took even longer to answer this time.

“Wow.”

“What do they have?”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Does that mean you won’t tell me?”

“It means I don’t know what they have. You know Bobby McQue?”

Bobby McQue was a senior detective on Lou’s squad.

“Yeah, I know Bobby.”

“Bobby had it, but downtown rolled in when they saw we had a possible serial. They cut us out.”

“So what did McQue find before you were out? C’mon, Lou, I need to know if this is real, man. Right now, it feels like a nightmare.”

Poitras didn’t respond.

“Lou?”

Behind me, Pike spoke loud enough for Poitras to hear.

“Tell Poitras to man-up.”

“Was that Pike?”

“Yeah. He was here when Bastilla showed up.”

Poitras hated Pike. Most L.A. police officers hated Pike. He was once one of them.

Poitras finally sighed.

“Okay, listen. The chief running the task force wants a tour before they go public, so I gotta go up there later. You want, you can meet me up there now. We’ll walk you through the scene.”

Poitras gave me the address.

“We won’t have much time, so get up there right now.”

“I understand.”

Poitras hung up.

“He’s going to let me see Byrd’s house.”

Pike said, “Poitras won’t want me up there.”

“I’m just going to see what they have. You don’t need to come.”

Pike moved for the first time since Crimmens and Bastilla left. Maybe I had stood a little too quickly. Maybe my voice was a little too high. Pike touched my arm.

“Were you right three years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re still right. You didn’t get those two women killed. Even if the police have something, you didn’t kill them.”

I tried to give him a confident smile.

“Say hi to Ray. If it’s bad, I’ll give you a call.”

Pike left, but I did not leave with him. Instead, I went out onto the balcony and let the bone-dry heat swallow me. The glare made me squint. The nuclear sun crinkled my skin.

Picture the detective at work in his office, fourth floor, Hollywood, as the Devil’s Wind freight-trains down from the desert. Though dry and brutally harsh, the desert wind is clean. It pushes the smog south to the sea and scrubs the sky to a crystalline blue. The air, jittery from the heat, rises in swaying tendrils like kelp from the seabed, making the city shimmer. We are never more beautiful than when we are burning.

Knock, knock, thought you’d like to know, after you cleared that guy he murdered two more women, it should be hitting the news about now, their families should be crying about now.

I locked my office and went to see what they had.

The phone rang again as I went out the door, but I did not return to answer it.

Starkey

DETECTIVE-TWO CAROL Starkey spilled the fourth packet of sugar into her coffee. She sipped, but the coffee still tasted sour. Starkey was using the large black Hollywood Homicide mug Charlie Griggs had given her as a welcome-aboard gift three weeks earlier. She liked the mug. A big 187 was stenciled on the side, which was the LAPD code for a homicide, along with the legend OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN YOUR DAY ENDS. Starkey added a fifth sugar. Ever since she gave up the booze her body craved enormous amounts of sugar, so she fed the craving. She sipped. It still tasted like crap.

Clare Olney, who was another hard-core coffee hound, looked on with concern.

“You’d better watch it, Carol. You’ll give yourself diabetes.”

Starkey shrugged.

“Only live once.”

Clare filled his own mug, black, without sugar or milk. He was a round man with a shiny bald dome and pudgy fingers. His mug was small, white, and showed the stick-figure image of a father and little girl. The legend on its side read WORLD’S GREATEST DAD in happy pink letters.

“You like working Homicide, Carol? You fitting in okay?”

“Yeah. It’s good.”

After only three weeks, Starkey wasn’t sure if she liked it or not. Starkey had moved around a lot during her career. Before coming to Homicide, she had worked on the Juvenile Section, the Criminal Conspiracy Section, and the Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad was her love, but, of course, they would not allow her back.

Clare had more coffee, noodling at her over the top of his cup as he worked up to ask. They all asked, sooner or later.

“It’s gotta be so different than working the bombs. I can’t imagine doing what you used to do.”

“It’s no big deal, Clare. Riding a patrol car is more dangerous.”

Clare gave a phony little laugh. Clare was a nice man, but she could spot the phony laugh a thousand clicks out. They laughed because they were uncomfortable.

“Well, you can say it’s no big deal, but I wouldn’t have the guts to walk up to a bomb like that, just walk right up and try to de-arm it. I’d run the other way.”

When Starkey was a bomb technician, she had walked up to plenty of bombs. She had de-armed over a hundred explosive devices of one kind or another, always in complete control of the situation and the device. That was what she most loved about being a bomb tech. It was just her and the bomb. She had been in complete control of how she approached the device and when it exploded. Only one bomb had been beyond her control.

She said, “You want to ask me something, Clare?”

He immediately looked uncomfortable.

“No, I was just-”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it.”

She did mind, but she always pretended she didn’t.

Clare edged away.

“I wasn’t going to-”

“I had a bad one. A frakkin’ earthquake, for Christ’s sake, imagine that shit? A temblor hit us and the damn thing went off. You can dot every i, but there’s always that one frakkin’ thing.”

Starkey smiled. She really did like Clare Olney and the pictures of his kids he kept on his desk.

“It killed me. Zeroed out right there in the trailer park. Dead.”

Clare Olney’s eyes were frozen little dots as Starkey had more of the coffee. She wished she could spark up a cigarette. Starkey smoked two packs a day, down from a high of four.

“The paramedics got me going again. Close call, huh?”

“Man, Carol, I’m sorry. Wow. What else can you say to something like that but wow?”

“I don’t remember it. Just waking up with the paramedics over me, and then the hospital. That’s all I remember.”

“Wow.”

“I wouldn’t go back to a radio car. Screw that. Day to day, that’s way more dangerous than working a bomb.”

“Well, I hope you like it here on Homicide. If I can help you with anything-”

“Thanks, man. That’s nice of you.”

Starkey smiled benignly, then returned to her desk, glad the business of her bomb was out of the way. She was the New Guy at Hollywood Homicide, and had been the New Guy before. Everyone talked about it behind her back, but it always took a couple of weeks before someone asked. Are you the bomb tech who got blown up? Did you really get killed on the job? What was it like on the other side? It was like being dead, motherfucker.