Sunset Express

But then Joe said, “And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  I blinked at him. “Man, are you ever Mr. Wet Blanket.”

  Joe watched me for a moment, then stood and went to Lucy. He towered over her. “You’re going tomorrow.”

  “That’s right. In the morning.”

  Pike looked at me, but he spoke to Lucy. “He’s going to miss you. He’s done nothing but pine since he got back from Louisiana.”

  I said, “Pine?”

  Lucy smiled. “I like pining.”

  Joe frowned at me. “You must be out of your mind, talking about this stuff when it’s her last night.” He turned back to Lucy. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

  Lucy stood on her toes and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Joe, thank you.”

  Joe said, “Hey, Ben.”

  Ben rolled over the back of the couch and grinned at him. “Bye, Joe. I hope you come visit.”

  Joe pointed at him, then glanced again at Lucy and walked to the door. The cat saw that Joe was leaving, hurried down the stairs, and slipped out with him. Soul mates.

  When Joe was gone Lucy wrapped her arms around me. “He’s so nice.”

  “Nice isn’t a word often used to describe him.”

  “He cares a very great deal for you.”

  “Joe’s okay.”

  She said, “I care about you, too.”

  “I know.” I put my arms around her then and hugged her. I lifted her off the floor and my heart filled, and in a strange moment I felt as if I were fading into a shadow and if I did not hang onto her tight enough I would disappear. I said, “Want to do something wild?” I think I whispered it.

  “Yes.”

  “Want to do something crazy?” I said it louder.

  “Oh, God, I can’t wait.”

  Ben said, “Hey, can I do it, too?”

  And I said, “You bet, bud.”

  I put her down, and then the three of us made hot cocoa and sat in the cool night air on my deck and talked about our time together as the coyotes sang.

  We talked until very late, and then Lucy put Ben to bed, and she and I sat up still longer, no longer talking, now simply holding each other in the safety of my home, pretending that tomorrow would not come.

  31

  I brought Lucy and Ben to LAX at just after nine the next morning. We returned her car to the rental agency, then sat together at the departure gate until the plane boarded, and then I stood with them in line until they entered the jetway and I could go no farther. I watched them until an efficient young woman in a neat airline uniform told me that I was blocking the door and asked me to move. I went to the great glass windows and watched the plane, hoping to see Lucy or Ben in one of the ports, but didn’t. I guess they were seated on the other side. We had spent the morning speaking of innocuous things: It’s certainly cloudy this morning, isn’t it? Yes, but it will burn off by ten. Oh, darn, I forgot to phone the airline and order the fruit plate. I guess it was a way of minimizing our separation. I guess it was a way of somehow pretending that her getting on an airplane and both of us going back to our lives wasn’t somehow painful and confusing.

  When the little tractor pushed the airplane away from the dock and out to the taxiway, I said, “Damn.”

  An older gentleman was standing next to me. He was stooped and balding, with a thin cotton shirt and baggy old-man pants pulled too high and a walking stick. He said, “It’s never easy.”

  I nodded.

  He said, “Your wife and son?”

  “My friends.”

  “With me, it was my grandkids.” He shook his head. “They come out twice a year from Cleveland. I put them on the plane, I always think that this could be the last time. The plane could crash. I could drop dead.”

  I stared at him.

  “I’m not a young man anymore. Death is everywhere.”

  I walked away. Too bad you couldn’t get a restraining order against negativity.

  Joe picked me up outside the terminal and we drove directly to Louise Earle’s. We parked at the mouth of her drive, again went up to her door, and once more rang the bell and knocked. If we knocked much more we’d probably wear a groove in the wood. I was hoping that she might’ve returned home, but the drapes were still pulled and the house was still dark, and there was no sign that she had come back, then left again. While we were standing there, Mrs. Harris came out of her house and made a nervous wave at us. Pike said, “Looks worried.”

  “Yeah.”

  We walked over to her. I could see that her face was pinched and frightened, and that she was cupping one hand with the other, over and over. She said, “That man came back this morning. I thought it was the milkman, they came so early.”

  “They.”

  “There were three men. They were walking all around Louise’s house. They walked around the side. They went in the back.”

  Pike looked at me, and I showed her the photograph of Kerris. “Was this one of them?”

  She squinted at the picture and then she nodded. “Oh, yes. That’s the one who was here before.” She bustled to the edge of the porch, wringing her hands, flustered by the dark thoughts. “They were in her house. The lights came on and I could see them moving.”

  “Did you see them leave?”

  She nodded.

  “Did Mrs. Earle leave with them?”

  She looked at me with large, frightened eyes. “What do you mean by that? What are you saying to me?”

  “Did she leave with them?”

  Mrs. Eleanor Harris shook her head. Just once. Imperceptibly.

  I said, “Had Mrs. Earle come home?”

  She was looking at her friend’s house, wringing her hands, shifting in a kind of encompassing agitation.

  “Was Mrs. Earle at home?”

  She looked back at me with big eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but she may have been.”

  Pike and I trotted around the side of Louise Earle’s house and into her backyard. I felt washed in a cold air, the hair along the back and sides of my head prickling, and scared of what we might find. Pike said, “The door.”

  Louise Earle’s back door had been forced. We slipped out our guns and went in and moved through the house. It was a small home, just the kitchen and the dining room and the living room and two small bedrooms and a single bath. Papers had been pulled from drawers and furniture shoved out of place and closet doors left open, as if someone had searched the place more out of frustration than with a specific goal. I was worried that we might find Mrs. Earle, and that she might be dead, but there was nothing. I guess she hadn’t come home, after all. Pike said, “First Lester, now her. Green’s tying off the loose ends to protect himself.”

  “If she got scared, then she ran. If she ran, she might’ve bought tickets and they might show up on her credit cards. Also, she might’ve called a guy named Walter Lawrence.”

  Pike said, “I’ll take the bedroom. You start in the kitchen.”

  We went through her house quickly and without speaking. She had two phones, one in her kitchen and one in her bedroom. The kitchen phone was an older dial-operated wall mount with a little corkboard next to it filled with notes and clippings and Prayers-for-the-Day and messages that she’d written to herself and probably not needed for years. I looked through them all, then checked the Post-its on her refrigerator door, and then I went through the papers that Kerris’s people had left on the floor. I was looking for a personal phone book or notes or anything that might help me find Walter Lawrence or point to where she might’ve gone, but if there had been anything like that Kerris and his people had taken it. When I finished in the kitchen I went back through into the bedroom. Pike was working in the closet. He said, “Credit card bills by the phone.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed by the phone and looked at what he’d found. There were five past Visa and MasterCard bills, three Visas and two MasterCards. Charges were minimal, and nothing on the bills gave any indication of where Louise Earle might’ve gone,
but then I didn’t expect them to. Tickets purchased within the past few days would not yet have been billed to her, but I didn’t expect that, either. I picked up her phone, called the toll free number on back of the Visa bill, and said, “Hi. I’m calling for my mom, Mrs. Louise Earle.” I gave them the credit card number that showed on the bill and the billing address. “She charged a plane ticket yesterday, and we need to cancel, please.”

  The Visa woman said, “Let me punch up her account.” She was very pleasant when she said it.

  “Thanks. That’d be great.”

  Maybe three seconds later, she said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not showing an airline charge.”

  “Gosh, she told me she’d bought the tickets. She always flies United.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  I said, “You know, maybe it wasn’t an airline. Are you showing a bus or a train?”

  “No, sir. I’m not.”

  I made a big deal out of sighing. “I’m terribly sorry. She told me about this trip and I got concerned. She’s a bit older, now.…” I let it trail off.

  The Visa woman said, “I know how that is.” Understanding.

  I thanked her for her time, and then I called MasterCard and went through it again, and again I learned that Louise Earle had bought no tickets. Of course, she might’ve paid cash, but since I couldn’t know that, it wasn’t worth worrying about. Like most other things in life.

  When I hung up from MasterCard, Pike was waiting.“Looks to be some missing clothes. No toothbrush.”

  “Great.”

  “She has to be somewhere.”

  I picked up the phone again, called my friend at Pacific Bell, gave her Louise Earle’s phone number, and asked for every call that Louise Earle had made in the past five days. Her records would show only toll calls, so if she’d phoned someone the next street over I’d never know it. But, like paying cash for airline tickets, it wasn’t worth worrying about.

  My friend read off twelve numbers that I dutifully copied, nine of which were in local area codes (310, 213, or 818), and three of which were long distance. The long distance calls were all to the same number, the first two of which were collect calls that she’d accepted the charges on. The third time she’d dialed the number direct. I thanked her for the help, then hung up and started dialing. Minimum-wage detective work.

  I called each number and got two answers out of the first five calls, one from a pharmacy and one from an elderly woman. I hung up on the pharmacy and asked the elderly woman if she knew where I could find Mrs. Earle. She didn’t. The sixth number was long distance. The phone rang twice, and a male voice said, “Federal Correctional Facility, Terminal Island.”

  I didn’t speak.

  The voice said, “Hello?”

  I told him I was sorry, then hung up and looked at Pike. “LeCedrick.”

  Pike said, “She probably didn’t go to stay with him.” Everyone’s a comedian.

  “She didn’t call LeCedrick. LeCedrick called her. LeCedrick calls, and she changes her story. She wouldn’t do it six years ago, but she does it now. What do you think he told her?”

  Pike shrugged.

  I tapped the phone, thinking about it, and then I called Angela Rossi at her home. Her machine answered, but again she picked up when she heard that it was me. I said, “At six this morning, Kerris and two other guys broke into Louise Earle’s house, looking for her. They searched the place, and I don’t know if they got a line on her or not.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because LeCedrick Earle might know where she’s gone. When I spoke with Louise she told me that she hadn’t spoken to LeCedrick since he was sent up. She said he wouldn’t speak to her. But four days ago he called her twice. Three days ago she changed her story. She called him the day before yesterday. That’s the day she disappeared. He might know where she’s gone. Do you see?”

  Angela Rossi didn’t say anything.

  “I saw him before, but the last time he agreed to see me. I’m pretty sure he won’t this time, and I need a badge to get in without his permission. Maybe you could talk to Tomsic. Maybe he could get me in.”

  Angela Rossi said, “Pick me up.”

  “You’re suspended, Rossi. You don’t have a badge.”

  “I’ll get one, goddammit. Pick me up and we’ll go see him. I’ll get it set up before you get here.”

  She hung up before I could say anything else.

  32

  Angela Rossi was waiting at the mouth of her cul-de-sac, looking professional in a dark blue business suit that’d she’d probably worn to work every other week for the past three years. She swayed back and forth the way cops do when they’re anxious. It’s an unconscious habit they pick up in their uniform days when they have to stand in a place for long hours with nothing to occupy themselves except their baton. It’s called the nightstick rock.

  We stopped at the curb, and she climbed into the back seat. She said, “It’s set up. The guards think we’re coming to interview him about a past association. That’s what he thinks, too.”

  Pike said, “Did you get a badge?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Protecting someone, saying if you don’t know you can’t tell.

  Pike pulled back in traffic without waiting for her to buckle in. I said, “You could give us the badge, then you wouldn’t have to come in. Less chance of anyone finding out that you’re violating your suspension.”

  She neither answered nor looked at me. Her mouth was set and her eyes empty. Cop eyes. Just another day on the job walking the razor’s edge.

  We picked up the San Diego Freeway and headed south, and once more I was passing Inglewood and Hawthorne and Gardena and Torrance. Angela Rossi sat behind me in silence, hands in her lap, gazing out the window without seeing, dressed in her cop clothes, carrying a cop’s badge, going on a cop’s mission. She had given her all to it for a great long while, and I wondered if she was thinking that it might now be at an end. I wondered if she was thinking that the dream of being the first female chief of detectives had been a silly one. I wondered if she had regrets.

  Forty minutes later we crossed the land bridge onto Terminal Island and passed through the gate, and then we were at the administration building. We parked, took off our guns, and then Angela Rossi and I went in. I said, “You okay?”

  Rossi said, “Keep your mouth shut and try to look like an officer. I’ll do the talking.”

  Yes, ma’am.

  We went through the front door and up to the reception desk. I was worried that the reception guard would be the same guy, but he wasn’t. This guy was paging through Saltwater Fisherman magazine, but looked up when we approached. He said, “May I help you?” He was a young guy, tall and athletic and looking as if he’d just mustered out of the military. He was wearing the blue blazer and tie.

  Rossi showed the badge. “West L.A. robbery/homicide. I called to see an inmate named LeCedrick Earle.”

  The receptionist jotted down the badge number, then said, “Sure. Hold on.” He flipped through the loose-leaf book until he found Earle’s name, then told someone on the phone that he wanted prisoner number E2847 in the interview room. When he hung up he said, “Guns?”

  Rossi said, “Left’m in the car.”

  “Great. Someone will be right out for you. Wait by the sally port.”

  Rossi said, “Would it be a problem to check your logs for the visitors that Mr. Earle has had over the past two weeks?”

  “No sweat.” He turned to a computer and typed something. “We enter the log into the computer at the end of each day for the record. You want a hard copy?”

  “Yes.”

  It took maybe sixteen seconds, and then a laser printer spit out a single sheet. Modern crime fighting at its finest. He said, “Here you go.”

  Rossi took it and we looked at it as we went to the sally port. The only visitors that LeCedrick Earle had had in the past two weeks were Elliot Truly and Stan Kerris. How about that?

/>   A second guy in a blue blazer opened the sally port for us and said, “This way, please.”

  We followed him through and turned right. He was a couple of years younger than Rossi and he looked her over. “You guys down from L.A.?”

  Rossi said, “That’s right.”

  “What kind of case?” Rossi was trying to ignore him, but the guard was giving her the grin.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  The guard grinned wider. “How long are you going to be down here? Maybe we could get together for a drink.”

  Rossi never looked at him. “Do yourself a favor, sport. I just tested positive for chlamydia.”

  The guard’s grin faltered and he moved a half-step away. Talk about a conversation stopper.

  He brought us to the same interview room that I had used before and opened the door. He stood kind of bent to the side so that Rossi wouldn’t brush against him when she went by. “I’ve got to lock you in. Your guy will be here in a minute.”

  Rossi said, “Thanks.”

  He locked the door behind us and we were alone. I nodded at her. “Chlamydia. Nice.”

  Rossi shrugged. I guess it was something she’d had to do ten thousand times.

  We had been there less than thirty seconds when the rear door opened and a third guard led in LeCedrick Earle. His eyes widened when he recognized us, and he shook his head at the guard. “Forget this shit. I don’t wanna see’m.”

  The guard shoved LeCedrick toward the table without acknowledging him and said, “Just punch the buzzer when you’re finished.”

  LeCedrick Earle said, “Hey, fuck this shit. Take me back to my cell.”

  Rossi said, “Thanks, officer.”

  The guard closed the door and locked it, and Rossi smiled. “It’s my favorite perp. How’re you doing, LeCedrick?”

  LeCedrick Earle glowered at us and stood with his back to the door, as far from us as possible. He said, “I don’t have anything to say to you.” He wiggled a finger at me. “I said everything I had to say to you before. I ain’t gotta see you without my lawyer.”

  I said, “Stan Kerris is trying to kill your mother.”

  He blinked twice, and then he laughed. “Oh, that’s right. You drove all the way down here for that?” He laughed some more.