Michael Connelly - Chasing the Dime

"Mr. Pierce, I just came from that house over on Altair and I looked all through that desk.

I didn't see any note."

Pierce nodded like he agreed, even though he had just said the opposite.

"You know what it was, it was my own note I was picturing. I wrote it after I talked to Vivian. She was the one who told me about Wainwright."

"Vivian? Who is Vivian?"

"Lilly's mother. In Tampa, Florida. When she asked me to look for Lilly she gave me some names and contacts. I just remembered, that's where I got Wainwright's name."

Renner's eyebrows peaked halfway up his forehead as he registered his surprise again.

"This is all new information, Mr. Pierce. You are now saying that Lilly Quinlan's mother asked you to look for her daughter?"

"Yes. She said the cops weren't doing anything. She asked me to do what I could."

Pierce felt good. The answer was true, or at least truer than most of the things he was saying. He thought he might be able to survive this.

"And her mother in Tampa had the name of her daughter's landlord?"

"Well, I think she got a bunch of names and contacts from a private detective she had previously hired to look for Lilly."

"A private detective."

Renner looked down at the statement in front of him as if it had personally let him down for not including mention of the private investigator.

"Do you have his name?"

"Philip Glass. I have his number written down in a notebook that is in my car. Take me back to the apartment -my car's there -and I can get it for you."

"Thank you, but I happen to know Mr. Glass and how to reach him. Have you talked to him?"

"No. I left a message and didn't hear back. But from what Vivian told me, he hadn't had much success in finding Lilly. I wasn't expecting much. I never knew if he was good or just ripping her off, you know?"

It was an opportunity for Renner to tell him what he knew about Glass but the detective didn't take it.

"What about Vivian?" he asked instead.

"I have her number in the car, too. I'll give you everything I've got as soon as I can get out of here."

"No, I mean what about Vivian in Florida? How did you know to contact her there?"

Pierce coughed. It was like he had been kicked in the gut. Renner had trapped him again.

The phone book again. He could not mention it. His respect for the taciturn detective was rising at the same time he felt his mind sagging under the weight of his own lies and obfuscation. He now saw only one way out.

Pierce had to give her name. His own lies had left him no other way out. He told himself that Renner would eventually get to her on his own anyway. Lilly Quinlan's site was linked to hers. The connection was inevitable. At least by giving Robin's name now, he might be able to control things. Tell them just enough to get out of there, then he would call her and warn her.

"A girl named Robin," he said.

Renner shook his head once in an almost unnoticeable way.

"Well, well, another new name," he said. "Why doesn't that surprise me, Mr. Pierce? Tell me now, who is Robin?"

"On Lilly Quinlan's web page she mentions the availability of another girl she works with. It says, 'Double your pleasure.' The other girl's name is Robin. There is a link from Lilly's page to Robin's page. They work together. I went to the page and called Robin's number. She couldn't help me very much. She said she thought Lilly might have gone home to Tampa, where her mother lived. So later on I called Information in Tampa and got phone numbers for people named Quinlan. Eventually, that led me to contacting Vivian."

Renner nodded.

"Must've been a lot of names. Good Irish name like Quinlan's not too rare."

"Yes, there were."

"And Vivian being at the end of the alphabet. You must've called information in Tampa quite a few times."

"Yes."

"What's the area code for Tampa, by the way?"

"It's eight one three."

Pierce felt good about finally being able to answer a question without having to lie and worry about how it would fit with other lies he had told. But then he saw Renner reach into the pocket of his leather bomber jacket and pull out a cell phone. He opened it and punched in the number for 813 information.

Pierce realized he would be caught directly in a lie if Vivian Quinlan's phone number was unlisted.

"What are you doing? It's after three in the morning in Tampa. You'll scare her to death if you -"

Renner held up a hand to silence him and then spoke into the phone.

"Residential listing for Tampa. The name is Vivian Quinlan."

Renner then waited and Pierce watched his face for reaction. As the seconds passed it felt as though his stomach were being twisted into a double helix formation.

"Okay, thank you," Renner said.

He closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. He glanced at Pierce for a moment, then withdrew a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote a phone number down on the outside of the file. Pierce could read the number upside down. He recognized it as the number he had gotten out of Lilly Quinlan's phone book.

He exhaled, almost too loudly. He had caught a break.

"I think you are right," Renner said. "I think I will check with her at a more reasonable hour."

"Yes, that might be better."

"As I think I told you earlier, we don't have Internet access here in the squad, so I haven't seen this website you've mentioned. As soon as I get home I'll check it out. But you say the site is linked to this other woman, Robin."

"Exactly. They worked together."

"And you called Robin when you couldn't get a hold of Lilly."

"Right again."

"And you talked on the phone and she told you Lilly went off to Tampa to see momma."

"She said she didn't know. She thought she might have gone there."

"Did you know Robin previous to this telephone call?"

"No, never."

"I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, Mr. Pierce, and say I'm betting Robin is a payfor-play girl. A prostitute. So what you are telling me is that a woman engaged in this sort of business gets a call from a perfect stranger and ends up telling this stranger where she thinks her missing partner in crime went. It just sort of comes out, I guess, huh?"

Pierce almost groaned. Renner would not let it go. He was relentlessly picking at the frayed ends of his statement, threatening to unravel the whole thing. Pierce just wanted to get out, to leave. And he now realized that he needed to say or do anything that would accomplish that. He no longer cared about consequences down the road. He just needed to get out. If he could get to Robin before Renner, then hopefully he could make it work.

"Well… I guess I sort of was able to convince her that, you know, I really wanted to find her and make sure everything was all right. Maybe she was worried about her, too."

"And this was over the telephone?"

"Yes, the telephone."

"I see. Okay, well, we'll be checking all of this with Robin."

"Yes, check with her. Can I -"

"And you'd be willing to take a polygraph test, wouldn't you?"

"What?"

"A polygraph. It wouldn't take long. We'd just shoot downtown and get it taken care of."

"Tonight? Right now?"

"Probably not. I don't think I could get anybody out of bed to give it to you. But we could do it tomorrow morning, first thing."

"Fine. Set it up for tomorrow. Can I go now?"

"We're almost there, Mr. Pierce."

His eyes dropped to the statement again. Surely, Pierce thought, we have covered everything on the form. What is left?

"I don't understand. What else is there to talk about?"

Renner's eyes came to Pierce's without any movement of his head or face.

"Well, your name came up a couple of times on the computer. I thought maybe we'd talk about that."