Michael Connelly - Chasing the Dime

"No, what?"

"This is all a mistake. All I did… I mean… I got her number. I just wanted to see… I wanted to help her… You see, it was my fault… and I thought if I…"

He didn't finish. The past and present were too close together. They were morphing together, one confusing the other. One moving in front of the other like an eclipse. He opened his eyes and looked at Renner.

"You thought what?" the detective asked.

"What?"

"Finish the line. You thought what?"

"I don't know. I don't want to talk about it."

"Come on, kid. You started down the road. Finish the ride. It's good to unburden. Good for the soul. It's your fault Lilly's dead. What did you mean by that? It was an accident?

Tell me how it happened. Maybe I can live with that and we can go tell the DA together, work something out."

Pierce felt fear and danger flooding his mind now. He could almost smell it coming off his skin. As if they were chemicals -compound elements sharing common molecules – rising to the surface to escape.

"What are you talking about? Lilly? It's not my fault. I didn't even know her. I tried to help her."

"By strangling her? Cutting her throat? Or did you do the Jack the Ripper number on her?

I think they say the Ripper was a scientist. A doctor or something. You the new Ripper, Pierce? Is that your bag?"

"Get out of here. You're crazy."

"I don't think I'm the crazy one. Why was it your fault?"

"What?"

"You said she was all your fault. Why? What did she do? Insult your manhood? You got a little pecker, Pierce? Is that it?"

Pierce shook his head emphatically, touching off a bout of dizziness. He closed his eyes.

"I didn't say that. It's not my fault."

"You said it. I heard it."

"No. You're putting words into my mouth. It's not my fault. I had nothing to do with it."

He opened his eyes to see Renner reach into his coat pocket and pull out a tape recorder.

The red light was on. Pierce realized that it was a different recorder from the one that had been placed earlier on the food tray and then turned off. The detective had taped the whole conversation.

Renner clicked the rewind button for a few seconds and then jockeyed around with the recording until he found what he wanted and replayed what Pierce had said moments before.

"This is all a mistake. All I did… I mean… I got her number. I just wanted to see… I wanted to help her… You see, it was my fault… and I thought if I…"

The detective clicked off the recorder and looked at Pierce with a smug smile on his face.

Renner had him cornered. He had been tricked. All his legal instincts, as limited as they were, told him to not speak another word. But Pierce couldn't stop.

"No," he said. "I wasn't talking about her. About Lilly Quinlan. I was talking about my sister. I was -"

"We were talking about Lilly Quinlan and you said, 'It was my fault.' That is an admission, my friend."

"No, I told you, I -"

"I know what you told me. It was a nice story."

"It's no story."

"Well, you know what? Story, no story, I figure as soon as I find the body I'll have the real story to tell. I'll have you in the bag and be home free."

Renner leaned over the bed until his face was only inches from Pierce's.

"Where is she, Pierce? You know this is inevitable. We're going to find her. So let's get this over with now. Tell me what you did with her."

Their eyes were locked. Pierce heard the click of the tape recorder being turned back on.

"Get out."

"You'd better talk to me. You're running out of time. Once I take this in and it gets to the lawyers, I can't help you anymore. Talk to me, Henry. Come on. Unburden yourself."

"I said get out. I want a lawyer."

Renner straightened up and smiled in a knowing way. In an exaggerated fashion he held the tape recorder up and clicked it off.

"Of course you want a lawyer," he said. "And you're going to need one. I'm going to the DA, Pierce. I know I've already got you on obstruction and breaking and entering, for starters. Got you there cold. But all of that's bullshit. I want the big one."

He proffered the tape recorder as though the words he had captured with it were the Holy Grail.

"As soon as that body turns up, it's game over."

Pierce wasn't really listening anymore. He turned away from Renner and began staring into space, thinking about what was going to happen. All at once he realized he would lose everything. The company -everything. In a split second all the dominoes fell in his imagination, the last one being Goddard pulling out and taking his investment dollars somewhere else, to Bronson Tech or Midas Molecular or one of the other competitors.

Goddard would pull out and nobody would be willing to pull in. Not under the glare of a criminal investigation and possible trial. It would be over. He would be out of the race for good.

He looked back at Renner.

"I said I'm not talking to you anymore. I want you to leave. I want a lawyer."

Renner nodded.

"My advice to you is, make it a good one."

He reached over to a counter where medical supplies were displayed and picked up a hat Pierce hadn't seen before. It was a brown porkpie hat with the brim cocked down. Pierce thought nobody wore hats like that in L.A. anymore. Nobody. Renner left the room without another word.

Pierce sat still for a moment, thinking about his predicament. He wondered how much of what Renner had said about going to the DA had been threat and how much of it was reality. He shook free of the thoughts and looked around to see if the room had a phone.

There was nothing on the side table but the bed had side railings with all manner of electronic buttons for positioning the mattress and controlling the television mounted on the opposite wall. He found a phone that snapped out of the right railing. In a plastic pocket next to it he also found a small hand mirror. He held it up and looked at his face for the first time.

He was expecting worse. When he had felt the wound with his fingers in the moments after the assault, it had seemed to him that his face had been split open wide and that wide scarring would be unavoidable. At the time this didn't bother him, because he was happy just to be left alive. Now he was a little more concerned. Looking at his face, he saw the swelling was way down. He was a little puffy around the corners of his eyes and the lower part of his nose. Both nostrils were packed with cotton gauze. Both eyes had dark swatches of purple beneath them. The cornea of his left eye was flooded with blood on one side of the iris. And across his nose were the very fine trails of microstitching.

The stitching formed a K pattern with one line going up the bridge of his nose, and the arms of the K curving below his left eye and above it into his eyebrow. Half of his left eyebrow had been shaved to accommodate the surgery and Pierce thought that might be the oddest thing about the whole face he saw in the mirror.

He put the mirror down and he realized he was smiling. His face was almost destroyed.

He had an LAPD cop who was trying to put him in jail for a crime he had uncovered but did not commit. He had a digital pimp with a pet monster out there who was a live and real threat to him and others close to him. Yet he was sitting in bed, smiling.

He didn't understand it but knew it had something to do with what he had seen in the mirror. He had survived and his face showed how close he had come to not making it. In that there was relief and the inappropriate smile.

He picked up the phone and put in a call to Jacob Kaz, the company's patent attorney.

His call was put through to the lawyer immediately.

"Henry, are you okay? I heard you were attacked or something. What -"