L.A. Requiem

  I said, “We're taking this guy alive, Williams.”

  “No one asked you, goddamnit.”

  “Krantz, we're taking this guy alive. If he's alive, he'll cop to Dersh.”

  Krantz patted Williams's leg. “Worry about yourself, Cole. My people can handle themselves, and we're bringing this asshole to trial. Right, Jerome?”

  Jerome Williams stared out the window, jaw flexing.

  “We're bringing this man to trial, right, Jerome?”

  Williams twisted around so he could see me. “I ain't forgot what you said. When this is over, I'm gonna show you just how goddamned black I am.”

  The sheriffs were already there when we arrived, four radio cars parked on the camp's dirt-and-gravel lot. The camp administrators were talking nervously with the sheriffs, as, behind them, horses snuffled in their stables. Ben had been right: It smelled of horse poop.

  Krantz hoped to spot Sobek and capture him, so he had the sheriffs park their vehicles inside the camp's barn, then spoke with the senior sheriff about setting up surveillance positions. We did all this in the camp's dining hall, a screen-walled building with unfinished wood floors. The kids were being held together in the boy's dormitory.

  Other parents arrived before Lucy, collecting their children and leaving as quickly as possible. Krantz was pissed that the camp administrator, a woman named Mrs. Willoman, had called the families, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. If the cops tell you that a multiple-homicide killer might be dropping around, there aren't many responsible alternatives.

  Lucy arrived ten minutes later, her face strained when I went out to meet her. She took my hand, but didn't answer when I spoke to her, and didn't look at me. When I told her that we were in the dining hall, she walked so quickly that we broke into a trot.

  Inside, she went directly to Mrs. Willoman, and said, “I want my baby.”

  A teenage camp counselor brought Ben from the bunk room. Ben looked excited, like this was a hell of a lot better than riding horses or even playing tennis.

  Ben said, “This is cool. What's going on?”

  Lucy hugged him so tightly that he squirmed, but then her face flashed with anger. “It isn't cool. Things like this aren't cool, and aren't normal.”

  I knew she was saying it for me.

  Krantz asked Lucy to stay until we received word that her apartment had been secured. After, we would follow them home to make sure they arrived safely. Krantz offered to provide twenty-four-hour protection, and Lucy accepted. She stared at Ben, rubbing his back, and said that maybe they should go back to Louisiana until this was over. When I told her I thought that might be a good idea, she went over to the screen wall and looked out.

  I guess she just wanted to be someplace where she could feel safe.

  We sat around a big table, sipping something red that the counselor called bug juice, Krantz and I explaining Sobek to Lucy and Ben. Lucy kept one hand on Ben, and held my hand with the other, but still did not look at me. She spoke only to Krantz, though she occasionally squeezed my hand as if sending a message she was not yet capable of saying aloud.

  Finally, Krantz was paged, and checked the number. “That's Stan.”

  He called Watts, listened for a few seconds, then nodded at Lucy. “We've secured your home. Manager let us in, and officers are on the site.”

  The tension drained out of her like air from a balloon. “Oh, thank God.”

  “Let me just wrap up here, and we'll get you home. If you decide you want to leave town, let me know and we'll bring you to the airport. I'll call the Baton Rouge PD, if you'd like, and bring them up to speed.”

  Lucy smiled at him like Krantz was human. “Thank you, Lieutenant. If I decide to go home, I'll call you.”

  Home.

  She took my hand again, and smiled at me for the first time in a while. “It's going to be all right.”

  I smiled back, and everything seemed much better in the world.

  While the counselors were getting Ben's things, I took my bug juice to the door and stared out at the tree line, searching it the way I had when I was eighteen, and in the Army. I thought about Sobek, and what we had found in his garage. His goal was to kill the people he blamed for putting DeVille in prison, and he had started with the people most removed from the prosecution, probably because it would be hardest for LAPD to connect them together. I wondered if that was the only reason. I wondered if maybe he also didn't blame them the least, which meant he was saving the people he blamed the most. Pike, for sure, but there was also Krakauer and Wozniak, though they were both dead. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me, because he had had a personal relationship with Wozniak, and there was every possibility that it was Sobek who had been the one who had tipped Wozniak to DeVille's location that day. I stared at the stables and thought about the horses within; I couldn't see them, but I heard them and smelled them. They snorted and whinnied and talked to each other, I guess, and were real even though they were beyond my sight. Life is often like that, with realities layered over other realities, mostly hidden but always there. You can't always see them, but if you listen to their clues, you'll recognize them all the same.

  Krantz was having two of the sheriffs load Ben's things when I said, “He's not coming here, Krantz.”

  Krantz nodded. “Maybe not.”

  “You don't get it. He's not coming here, or my place, or Lucy's. It's a diversion.”

  Now Krantz frowned, and Lucy looked over, both hands draped on Ben's shoulders.

  “Think about it, Krantz. He wants to kill the people he blames for DeVille, and he's doing that, but then he realized we're onto him. His game's over, and he knows it, right?”

  Krantz was still frowning.

  “He knows that it's only a matter of days before we link the vics, and when we do we'll have a suspect pool, and he's in the pool.”

  Krantz said, “Yeah, that's why he decides to take you out of the play.”

  “But to what end? He can't go on working at Parker, killing another couple of dozen people. If he believes we're on to him, he's going to cut to the chase. If he's thinking that his play is over, then he's going to want to kill the people he blames the most. He can't get to Pike, Krakauer's dead, so that leaves Wozniak.”

  “Wozniak's dead, too.”

  “Krakauer was a bachelor. Wozniak had a wife and a child, and they're in Palm Springs. That's where I got Wozniak's daybook. That's where we should be.”

  Lucy's hands tightened around Ben, as if her newfound security was falling away. “But why would he take Ben's picture? Why would he have our address?”

  “Maybe he put those things together to distract us. We're here with you now; we're not with Wozniak's widow, and that's where he's going.”

  “But you're just guessing. Did you see her address there? Were there pictures of her and her daughter?”

  “No.”

  “We know he had our address. We know he's a killer.” She gripped my arm then, as hard as Frank Garcia had gripped me when he had begged me to find his child. “I need you right now.”

  I looked at Krantz. “Krantz, he's going to Palm Springs.”

  Krantz didn't like it, but he was seeing it. “You got her name and address?”

  “Her name is Paulette Renfro. I don't remember the address, but I can tell you how to get there.”

  Krantz was already dialing his phone. “The States can get the address. They can get a car there before us.”

  Krantz frowned as he made the call, and I knew what he was seeing in his head, a couple of sheriff's deps snapping the cuffs on Sobek, the two deputies getting the headlines and being interviewed by Katie Couric.

  I looked back at Lucy, and gave her my best reassuring smile, but she wasn't at home to receive it.

  “That's where he's going, Luce. I can't go back with you now, but just stay here until I get back. I'll take you home when I get back.”

  Lucy's eyes were distant and cold, and hurt.

  ??
?I don't need you to take me home.”

  Krantz went for the door even as he worked the phone, calling to Williams. “Jerry, let's mount up. We're going over there.”

  When we left the cafeteria, I glanced back at Lucy, but she wasn't looking at me. I didn't need to see her to know what was in her eyes:

  I had chosen someone else once again.

  37

  • • •

  Sobek has not moved for the better part of an hour. The desert sun has driven the temperature inside his Jeep to almost 130 degrees, and his sweatshirt is soaked, but he imagines himself a predatory lizard, motionless in the brutal heat as he waits for prey. He is armored by muscle and resolve, and his mission commitment is without peer. He will wait for the rest of the day, if necessary, and the night, and for all the days to come.

  It does not take that long.

  A car eases up the residential streets below and pulls into the vic's drive. Sobek fingers the .357 when the car turns in, thinking it's her, but it isn't. A man gets out and stands looking at the house in the brilliant desert light, the man wearing jeans, an outrageous beachcomber shirt with the tail out, and sunglasses.

  Sobek leans forward until his chest touches the steering wheel.

  It is Joe Pike.

  Pike goes to the front door, rings the bell, then goes around to the back of the house. Sobek can't see him back there, and thinks Pike must be sitting on the little veranda, or that he's found a way inside.

  Sobek waits, but Pike does not return.

  His heart pounds as he clutches the .357 with both hands. The gun is nestled between his legs where he can feel the weight of it on his penis. It feels good there.

  He allows himself to smile, the first expression of emotion he's had in days. Pike has come to him.

  Control.

  Sobek settles back and waits for Paulette Wozniak and her daughter to return.

  Paulette picked up her daughter Evelyn earlier that morning from Banning, where Evelyn had dropped her car for service. Evelyn's Volkswagen Beetle had gone kaput, and now Evelyn was without a car. First the boyfriend, then the apartment, now the car. Paulette had taken Evelyn to her job at Starbucks, then picked her up again, and was bringing her home to wait until her car was ready at the end of the day. Evelyn, of course, wasn't happy about it. Paulette never expected to find a strange car in her drive.

  Evelyn was sulky and angry, and glowering in the passenger seat like she was fit to choke a dog. The only thing she'd said that morning was to ask if Paulette had heard from Mr. Cole again. Paulette hadn't, and thought it odd that Evelyn would ask.

  Paulette Renfro turned onto her street thinking the old cliché was true: When it rains, it pours. What could be next?

  Evelyn glared at the strange car. “Who's that?”

  “I don't know.”

  A neat, clean sedan was parked to the side of her drive, leaving her plenty of room to get into her garage. She did not recognize it, and wondered if one of her friends had gotten a new car without telling her. It was so hot out that they were probably in back, waiting under the veranda, though she couldn't imagine why anyone would be waiting for her unannounced.

  Paulette pressed the garage opener, eased her car inside, then let Evelyn and herself into the house through the laundry room.

  She went directly to the back glass doors in the family room, and that's where she saw him, standing tanned and lean and tall in the shade on the veranda. He was waiting for her to see him. He wore a flowered shirt that looked a size too big and dark glasses, and her first thought, the very first thought that came to her after all these years was, “He hasn't aged a day and I must look like hell.”

  Evelyn said, “There's a man outside.”

  Joe raised a hand in greeting, and Paulette felt herself smile.

  Evelyn said, “You know that guy?”

  Paulette opened the door, then stepped back to let him inside.

  “Hello, Joe.”

  “It's good to see you, Paulette.”

  She had thought of this moment—of seeing him again—in her dreams and over morning coffee and during long quiet drives across the desert. She'd imagined what she would say and how she would say it in every possible way, but all she managed to get out was so lame.

  “Would you like some water? It's so hot out.”

  “That would be fine. Thank you.”

  Evelyn got that ugly sulk on her face, the one that said she was unhappy and everyone was supposed to know it. You had to know it and do something about it, else she'd get even sulkier.

  Evelyn said, “You called him Joe.”

  Paulette knew what was coming. “Joe, this is Evelyn. Evie, you remember Joe Pike.”

  Evelyn crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. Her face grew blotched. She said, “Oh, fuck.”

  Joe said, “Paulette, I need to talk to you. About Woz, and about something that's going to happen.”

  Before Paulette could say anything, Evelyn leaned toward Joe and shrieked, “What could you possibly have to say? You killed him! Mother, he's wanted! He just murdered someone else!”

  Paulette took her daughter by the arms, wanting to be gentle, but wanting to be firm, too.

  “Evie. Go in the back. I'll talk to you later, but I want to talk with Joe now.”

  Evelyn pulled away, livid and furious from a lifetime of mourning her father. “Talk to him all you want! I'm gonna call the police!”

  Paulette shook her daughter with a fierceness she hadn't felt in years. “No! You won't!”

  “He killed Daddy!”

  “You won't!”

  Joe spoke quietly. “It's okay, Paulette. Let her call.”

  Evelyn looked as surprised as Paulette felt, the two of them staring at Joe for a moment before Evie ran back toward the bedrooms.

  Paulette said, “Are you sure? I saw on the news.”

  “I'll be gone before they get here. You look good, Paulette.”

  He spoke with the absolute calm at which she had always marveled, and secretly envied. As if he were so certain of himself, so secure and confident that there was no room left for doubt. Whatever came, he could handle it; whatever the problem, he would solve it.

  She felt herself blush. “I've gotten older.”

  “You've grown more beautiful.”

  She blushed deeper, suddenly thinking how odd this was, to be here with this man after all this time, and to blush like a teenager because of him.

  “Joe, take off those glasses. I can't see you.”

  He took off the glasses.

  My God, those eyes were incredible, so brilliantly blue that she could just stare. Instead, she got him the water.

  “Joe, I've seen the news. A friend of yours was here. What happened?”

  “We can talk about it later.” He glanced after Evelyn and shrugged. “The police are coming.”

  She nodded.

  “I didn't kill that man. Someone else did. The same person who killed another six people.”

  “That's what your friend said.”

  “His name is Laurence Sobek. He was one of Woz's informants. When the story is out, you're going to have the press and the police bring up everything that happened on that day.

  They're going to dig into Woz again. Do you understand?”

  “I don't care.”

  “It could hurt you.”

  “It can't.”

  Behind them, Evelyn spoke in a voice so soft that Paulette hadn't heard it since Evie was a child.

  “Why could it hurt her, and why do you care?”

  Paulette turned and looked at her daughter. Evelyn was peeking around the corner like a five-year-old, her face distant and smooth.

  “Did you call the police?”

  Evie shook her head.

  Pike said, “Go call. Your mother and I have to talk.”

  Evelyn went to the bookcase and took down the picture of her father and Paulette and Joe Pike.

  “She keeps this out where anybody can see it.” She looked
at Paulette. “Why do you keep this goddamned picture? Why keep a picture of someone who killed the man you loved?”

  Paulette Wozniak considered her adult daughter for a time, then said, “The man I love is still alive.”

  Evie stared at her.

  Paulette said, “Joe didn't kill your father. Your father killed himself. He took his own life.” She turned back to Joe and looked at the placid blue eyes, the eyes that made her smile. “I'm not stupid, Joe. I figured it out years ago when I went through his notebooks.”

  Joe said, “The missing pages.”

  “Yes. He wrote about the Chihuahua brothers, and that whole mess. And then, later, just days before it happened, he wrote how he felt trapped. He didn't say he was planning on it. He didn't say what he was going to do or how, but he wrote that there was always a way out, and that a lot of cops had gone that way before.”

  Evie was pulling at her fingers now, pulling and twisting like she was trying to rip them off.

  “What are you talking about? What are you saying?”

  Paulette felt a horrible pain in her chest. “I didn't know for sure until I went through his books after he was dead, and then, I don't know, I just didn't want you to know the truth about him. You loved him so. I took out those pages and destroyed them so you could never find them, but I know in my heart what he was saying there. Joe didn't kill your father. Your father took his own life, and Joe took the blame to protect you, and me.”

  Evie shook her head, and said, “I don't believe you.”

  “It's true, honey.”

  Paulette tried to put her arm around Evelyn, but Evelyn pushed her away. Paulette looked at Joe then, as if maybe he would know what to do in the sure certain way of his, but that's when a large, muscular man wearing sunglasses stepped out of the kitchen behind Joe, aimed a black pistol, and pulled the trigger.

  Paulette screamed, “Joe!”

  Her shout was drowned by a deafening sound that hit her like a physical blow and made her ears ring.

  Joe hunched forward, then spun so quickly that he seemed not to move at all, was just suddenly facing the man, a big gun in his own hand, firing three huge times so fast that the shots were one BAMBAMBAM.