Michael Connelly - The Poet

"Look, I've always been part of this story."

"Yeah, but you didn't shoot anybody. Jack, that's not what reporters do. That's what cops do and you crossed that line. You're off the story. I'm sorry."

"It was him or me, Greg."

"I'm sure it was and thank God it was him. But that doesn't change things, Jack."

I said nothing. In my mind I knew he was right about me not writing it. I just couldn't believe it. It was my story and now it was gone. I was inside still but I was out.

Just as Rachel came back in the room with a clipboard and several forms for me to sign, Jackson came on the line. He told me what a great story it was going to be and started asking questions. I answered them all and told him some things unasked. I signed the forms where Rachel pointed as I talked.

The interview was quick. Jackson said he wanted to watch the press conference on CNN so he would have official comment and confirmation to go with my version of events. He asked if I would call back in an hour in case of follow-up questions and I agreed. We then hung up and I was thankful to get off the line.

"Well, now that you just signed away your life and your firstborn son, you're free to go," Rachel said. "You sure you don't want to read any of this stuff?"

"Nah, let's go. You get the painkillers? My hand's beginning to hurt again."

"Yes, right here."

She pulled a vial out of her coat pocket and handed it to me along with a stack of pink phone message slips, apparently taken at the hospital's front desk.

"What are…"

There were calls from news producers at the three networks, "Nightline" with Ted Koppel, and two of the morning shows, and from reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

"You're a celebrity, Jack," Rachel said. "You went face to face with the devil and survived. People want to ask you how that felt. People always want to know about the devil."

I shoved the messages into my back pocket.

"You going to call them?"

"Nope. Let's go."

On the way back to Hollywood I told Rachel I didn't want to spend the night in the Wilcox Hotel. I said I wanted to order room service and then lie in a comfortable bed and watch TV with a remote in my hand, amenities that the Wilcox obviously didn't offer. She saw my point.

After we stopped at the Wilcox so I could get my things and check out, Rachel drove down Sunset Boulevard toward the strip. At the Chateau Marmont she stayed in the car while I went to the desk. I said I wanted a room with a view and didn't care what it cost. They gave me a room with a balcony that cost more than I'd ever spent for a hotel in my life. The balcony was overlooking the Marlboro man and the rest of the billboards on the strip. I liked looking at the Marlboro Man. Rachel didn't bother getting her own room.

We didn't talk much while we ate our room service dinner. Instead, we maintained a kind of comfortable silence that couples of many years achieve. Afterward, I took a long bath and listened over the bathroom speaker to the CNN report on the shootout at Digital Imaging. There was nothing new. More questions than answers. A good portion of the news conference was focused on Thorson and the ultimate sacrifice he had made. For the first time I thought about Rachel and how she was dealing with this. She had lost her ex-husband. A man she had grown to despise but someone she had shared an intimate relationship with just the same.

When I came out of the bathroom I wore the terrycloth bathrobe the hotel provided. She was lying on the bed, propped against the pillows, and still watching the television.

"The local news is about to start," she said.

I crawled across the bed and kissed her.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I don't know. Uh, whatever the relationship was that you had with Thorson, I'm sorry. Okay?"

"So am I."

"I was thinking… you want to make love?"

"Yes."

I turned off the television and the lights. At one point in the dark I tasted tears on her cheeks and she held me tighter than she had ever done before. There was a bittersweet feel to our lovemaking. It was as if two sad and lonely people had crossed paths and had agreed to help heal each other. Afterward, she huddled against my back and I tried to sleep but I couldn't. The demons of the day were still wide awake inside.

"Jack?" she whispered. "Why did you cry?"

I was silent for a few moments, trying to find the words that would explain an answer.

"I don't know," I finally said. "It's hard. All along, I think, I was hoping in a daydreaming sort of way that I would get the chance to… Just be glad you've never done what I did today. Just be glad."

Still later sleep would not come, even after I had taken one of the pills from the hospital. She asked me what my thoughts were.

"I'm thinking about what he said to me at the end. I don't understand what he meant."

"What did he tell you?"

"He said he killed Sean to save him."

"From what?"

"From becoming like him. That's what I don't understand."

"We probably never will. You should just let it go now. It's over."

"He said something else. At the end. When everyone was there. Did you hear it?"

"I think so."

"What was it?"

"He said something like, 'This is what it's like.' That's all."

"What does it mean?"

"I think he was solving the mystery."

"Death."

"He saw it coming. He saw the answers. He said, 'This is what it's like.' Then he died."

In the morning we found Backus already waiting in the conference room on the seventeenth floor of the federal building. It was another clear day and I could see the top of Catalina rising behind the marine layer of morning fog out on the Santa Monica Bay. It was eight-thirty but Backus had his jacket off and looked as though he had already been at it for several hours. His spot at the meeting table was cluttered with a spread of paperwork, two open laptops and a stack of pink phone message slips. His face was drawn and sad. It looked as though the loss of Thorson would leave a permanent mark on him.

"Rachel, Jack," he said by means of salutation. It wasn't a good morning and he didn't say that. "How's the hand?"

"It's okay."

We had brought containers of coffee with us but I saw he had none. I offered him mine but he said he'd already had too much.

"What have we got?" Rachel asked.

"Did you two check out? I tried to call you this morning, Rachel."

"Yes," she said. "Jack wanted something a little more comfortable. We moved over to the Chateau Marmont."

"Pretty comfortable."

"Don't worry. I won't submit it for reimbursement."

He nodded and I got the idea from the way he looked at her that he knew she hadn't gotten her own room and had nothing to submit anyway. It was the least of his worries, though.

"It's coming together," he said. "Another one for the studies, I suppose. These people-if you can call them that-never cease to amaze me. Every one of them, their stories… each one of them's a black hole. And there's never enough blood to fill it."

Rachel pulled out a chair and sat across from him. I sat next to her. We didn't say anything. We knew he wanted to go on. He reached over with a pen and tapped the side of one of the laptops.

"This was his," he said. "It was recovered from the trunk of his car last night."

"A Hertz car?" I asked.

"No. He arrived at Data Imaging in an eighty-four Plymouth registered to a Darlene Kugel, thirty-six, of North Hollywood. We went to her apartment last night, got no response and went in. She was in the bed. Her throat was cut, probably with the same knife he used on Gordon. She'd been dead for days. It looked like he'd burned incense, slopped perfume around to hide the smell."

"He stayed in there with her body?" Rachel asked.