Robert Crais - Chasing Darkness

Munson rubbed his eyes, then leaned against the wall, frowning at me.

“Are you sure it was Levy?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it only sounded like Levy.”

I said, “It was Levy, Munson. I know Levy’s voice.”

Our side of the glass didn’t have patterned wallpaper or comforting decor. The observation room was battleship-grey with a work desk butting the glass, metal chairs, and recording equipment. Pike and I stayed with Munson when Bastilla left to pick up the original death album pictures. Marx was in and out, phoning his contacts at Barshop, Barshop. They were doing everything themselves in order to stay under the radar.

Marx returned a few minutes later, holding his cell phone as if it were hot. He glanced at Munson as he entered.

“She open up?”

“She’s tough, man. Nothing.”

Pike said, “She believes him.”

Munson rolled his eyes.

“Oh, please, Pike. She’s crazy.”

I said, “She might be crazy, but she believes Levy helped her punish the man who murdered her sister. She thinks they’re on the same side.”

Yvonne Bennett’s police record and files were spread across the worktable. The psychiatric evaluation ordered at the time of her first arrest described a pattern of sexual abuse by the men her mother brought home. If those men had felt free to abuse Yvonne, they had probably tried to abuse her younger sister. I wondered if Yvonne had protected Jonna by offering herself to them. I stared at the broken heart on Jonna’s forearm and thought it might be true.

She was always bad, and her bad ways caught up. Wasn’t no better than a cat in heat from when she was little. I wouldn’t even keep her picture up there if it wasn’t for Jonna. She gets mad when I put it away.

Munson didn’t buy it.

“Well, it would be nice if she said something for the record. I still don’t believe it. Wilts is our guy.”

Marx jiggled the cell phone as if he was nervous, then crossed his arms.

“Maybe not. On or about the time Frostokovich was murdered, a partner at Barshop was raising money for Wilts’s campaign. That’s one. The hooker party Wilts threw a few years later was also attended by a couple of Barshop partners. The man I spoke with believes Levy attended. That’s two. So it looks like Levy had access to these women through his firm.”

I said, “Was Levy at the dinner for Wilts when Repko was murdered?”

“Someone is looking into it. He’s going to call back.”

Munson threw up his hands. The room was so small he almost hit Pike.

“So what the hell? Were we wrong about Wilts or is he still a suspect?”

“We’ll know when she talks.”

“Jesus. Could Levy be acting as an agent for Wilts?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t share something like this. You do it yourself. If the pictures came from Levy, then Levy took the pictures.”

Marx looked at Jonna, still spinning the cap.

“What’s the last contact you had with him?”

“We spoke earlier this afternoon. He was pushing me to find her.”

“Okay. Before that?”

“Yesterday. He came to my house. He was feeling me out about what you guys were doing and asking about the girl.”

Munson grunted.

“Using you.”

“Yeah, Munson, how about that?”

“I wasn’t criticizing.”

I turned back to Marx.

“My guess, he’s looking to kill her. She hasn’t been returning his calls, so she’s probably thinking the same thing. That’s probably why she went back to Sylmar.”

Munson sighed.

“We should bag this guy, Tommy. Let’s get him off the street.”

“How? He could be halfway to China by now.”

Pike shifted in the corner.

“No. He wants her. She’s the loose end.”

Marx didn’t look convinced.

“If we make a play for him before she talks, all we’ll do is warn him. We don’t have anything. Even if this girl tells us everything she knows, unless she has something hard, it’s her word against his. You know what Alan Levy would do with that.”

Munson crossed his arms, looking sullen.

“He’ll say she’s harassing him because he defended the man who murdered her sister.”

“That’s it.”

“That could be what we’re looking at, anyway. We have her for forty-eight hours, then we arraign her or cut her loose. Either way, that’s when Levy gets the word. We pick him up now, at least we catch him off guard.”

“Pick him up where? He’s not at the office. Cole says he isn’t home. You think he’s going to come in, we call him and ask?”

“Have Barshop, Barshop call him. Maybe someone at the firm.”

Pike said, “He’ll read it. He’ll walk away from the phone, and you’ll never see him again.”

I was watching Jonna. On the other side of the glass, she was spinning the cap. The water bottle was empty, which meant pretty soon she would have to pee, but for now she spun the cap. I was watching the cap when she looked up as if she had felt the pressure of my gaze. She smiled as if she saw me, and I smiled back.

I said, “Levy thinks I’m looking for her. He wants me to find her and he’s hoping I’ll call. Let me call him.”

“Where does that get us?”

“I can tell him I found her. I tell him where she is, he’s going to show up.”

“So we bag him. We still don’t have a case.”

“If she cooperated, we might be able to get him to incriminate himself. We get him on tape, you’ll have the case.”

Munson laughed, and swung his hands again. Pike stepped to the side.

“Wake up, Cole. Look at her. That girl is cold.”

“Right now, she believes Byrd killed her sister. If we convince her it was Levy, she might change her mind.”

Marx considered me for a moment, then looked at Jonna. She spun the cap. It skittered across the table, then arced into space.

Marx turned back to me.

“Let’s figure this out.”

I WAITED alone outside the interview room, sipping a thirty-five-cent cup of coffee I bought from a machine at the end of the hall. The coffee was bitter and so hot it blistered my tongue. I drank it anyway. The pain was a pleasant distraction.

Coins clattered into the machine and drew my attention. Marx fed in the money, then noticed me while he waited for the cup to fill. When he had the coffee, he walked over. He took a sip, then made a face.

“This is terrible.”

“Pretty bad.”

“I don’t understand it. We have a machine at Central, makes the best cup of coffee in the world. Same machine, same thirty-five cents, that one’s great, this is awful.”

He had more of the coffee anyway. Like me, maybe he needed the distraction.

“We’re on his house. No sign of him, like you said, but the boys are watching. We’ll keep her mother at Foothill Station for the night, then we’ll have to put her up somewhere, a motel, I guess. We’ll get the bastard.”

He was just talking, but part of me needed it. Maybe he sensed why I was boiling my tongue. Marx suddenly lowered his voice.

“You weren’t the only one. Imagine how all those hotshots at Barshop, Barshop are going to feel.”

I laughed at his joke, and Marx’s big face split into a grin. I had never seen him smile before and would have bet the two of us would never share a laugh.

I said, “You know what gets me the worst?”

“I can guess.”

“Levy made me part of his play. Like his accomplice.”

“You want to look at it that way, so was the judge, Crimmens, and everyone else, but that’s bullshit. You were doing your jobs. Levy saw his opportunity and took it. This is one smart sonofabitch we’re dealing with here. I’ll bet you he’s been planning this from the moment he heard someone was busted for Yvonne Bennett’s murder.”