The Last Detective Read online

  “I know. We'll take care of that as soon as we can. You want something to eat?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “You need to pee?”

  “Take me home. I want to see my mom.”

  Mike patted Ben's head. He had a triangle tattooed on the back of his right hand. It was old, with the ink beginning to blur.

  “I'm Mike. He's Mazi. That's Eric. You're going to be with us for a while, so be cool. That's just the way it is.”

  Mike smiled at Ben, then glanced at Mazi and Eric.

  “Put'm in the box.”

  It happened just as fast as when they plucked him from the hill beneath the walnut trees. They scooped him up again, retaped his legs, and carried him through the house, holding him so tight that he couldn't make a sound. They brought him outside in the cold night air, but they covered his eyes so he couldn't see. Ben kicked and struggled as they pushed him into a large plastic box like a coffin. He tried to sit up, but they pushed him down. A heavy lid slammed closed over him. The box suddenly moved and tipped, then fell away beneath him as if they had dropped him down a well. He hit the ground hard.

  Ben stopped struggling to listen.

  Something hard rained on top of the box with a scratchy roar only inches over his face. Then it happened again.

  Ben realized what they were doing with an explosion of horror. He slammed into the sides of his plastic prison, but he couldn't get out. The sounds that rained down on him grew further and further away as the rocks and dirt piled deep and Ben Chenier was buried in the earth.

  5

  time missing: 6 hours, 16 minutes

  Ted Fields, Luis Rodriguez, Cromwell Johnson, and Roy Abbott died three hours after our team picture was taken. Team pictures had been taken before every mission, the five of us suited up alongside the helicopter like a high-school basketball team before the big game. Crom Johnson used to joke that the pictures were taken so the army could identify our bodies. Ted called them “death shots.” I turned the picture Ben had found face down so I wouldn't have to see them.

  I had taken a couple of hundred snapshots of red dirt, triple-canopy jungles, beaches, rice paddies, water buffalo, and the bicycle-clogged streets and bazaars of Saigon, but when I returned to the United States those images seemed meaningless, and I had thrown them away. The place had lost its importance to me, but the people had mattered. I kept only twelve pictures, and I was in three of them.

  I listed the people in the remaining pictures, then tried to remember the names of the other men who had served in my company, but I couldn't. After a while the idea of making a list seemed silly; Fields, Abbott, Johnson, and Rodriguez were dead, and no one else in my company had reason to hate me or steal a ten-year-old boy. No one I had known in Vietnam would.

  Lucy called just before eleven. The house was so quiet that the sudden ring was as loud as a gunshot. My pen tore the page.

  She said, “I couldn't stand not knowing. Did he call back?”

  “No, not yet. I would have called. I'll call you right away.”

  “God, this is awful. It's a nightmare.”

  “Yeah. I'm trying to make this list and I'm sick to my stomach. How about you?”

  “I just got off the phone with Richard. He's flying out tonight.”

  “How was he?”

  “Furious, accusatory, frightened, belligerent—nothing I didn't expect. He's Richard.”

  Losing her son wasn't bad enough, so now she had this. Richard hadn't wanted Lucy to move to Los Angeles, and he had never liked me; they fought often about it, and now they would fight even more. I guess she was calling for the moral support.

  She said, “He's supposed to call from the plane with his flight information, but I don't know. Jesus, he was such an asshole.”

  “You want me to come by tomorrow after Starkey leaves? I can do that.”

  Richard could shout at me instead of her.

  “I don't know. Maybe. I'd better get off the line.”

  “We can talk as long as you want.”

  “No, now I'm worried that man will try to call you again about Ben. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

  The phone rang a second time almost as soon as I put it down. The second time, I didn't jump, but I let it ring twice, taking the time to ready myself.

  Starkey said, “This is Detective Starkey. I hope I didn't wake you.”

  “Sleep isn't an option, Starkey. I thought you were him.”

  “Sorry. He hasn't called again, has he?”

  “Not yet. It's late; I didn't think you'd still be on the job.”

  “I waited to hear from the phone company. They show you received a call at six fifty-two this evening. Does that time out about right?”

  “Yeah, that's when he called.”

  “Okay, the call was made from a cell number registered to a Louise Escalante in Diamond Bar.”

  “I don't know her.”

  “I figured you wouldn't. She says her purse was stolen this afternoon, along with her phone. She says she doesn't know you or anything about this, and her billing records support that the call to you was out of her pattern of use. I'm sorry, but I think she's a dead end.”

  “Did you think about calling the number?”

  Her voice cooled.

  “Yes, Mr. Cole, I did. I've dialed it five times. They've turned off the phone.”

  Stealing a phone meant the man who took Ben had criminal experience. He had anticipated the line trace, which meant he had planned his action. Smart crooks are harder to catch than stupid crooks. They are also more dangerous.

  “Mr. Cole?”

  “I'm here. I was thinking.”

  “You getting those names together for me?”

  “I'm doing that now, but I'm thinking about another possibility, too. I've had run-ins with people, Starkey, doing what I do. I've helped put some people in jail or out of business, and they're the kind of people who would hold a grudge. If I make a list, would you be willing to run their names, too?”

  “Sure. Not a problem.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate this.”

  “I'll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

  “Like that could happen.”

  The darkest part of the night stretched through the hours, but little by little the eastern sky lightened. I barely noticed. By the time Starkey arrived, I had filled twelve legal-sized pages with names and notes. It was six forty-two when I answered the door. She was early.

  Starkey held up a cardboard tray with two cups from Starbucks.

  “I hope you like mocha. This is how I get my chocolate fix.”

  “That's nice of you, Starkey. Thanks.”

  She passed one of the cups to me. Morning light filled the canyon with a soft glow. She seemed to consider it, then glanced at the Game Freak. It was on the dining table with the pages.

  “How far down the hill did you find the toy?”

  “Fifty, sixty yards, something like that. You want to get going down there now?”

  “The sun as low as it is, we'll have indirect light. That's not good. When the sun is higher, we'll get direct light. It'll be easier to see small objects and reconstruct what happened.”

  “You sound like you know what you're talking about.”

  “I've worked a few scenes.”

  She brought her coffee to the table.

  “Let's see what you have with the names. Show me the most likely candidates first.”

  I showed her the list of people from my civilian cases first. The more I had thought about it, the more it seemed likely that one of them was behind what had happened to Ben. We sipped the coffee as we went through their names. Beside each name I had written down the crimes they had committed, whether or not they had been sentenced to prison, and whether or not I had killed anyone close to them.

  Starkey said, “Jesus, Cole, it's all gangbangers, mobsters, and murderers. I thought you private guys did nothing but knock down divorce work.”

  “I pick the wrong
cases.”

  “No shit. You have reason to believe that any of these people are familiar with your military history?”

  “So far as I know, none of them know anything about me, but I guess they could find out.”

  “All right. I'll run them through the system to see if anyone's been released. Now let's talk about these other four men, the guys who died. Could their families blame you for what happened?”

  “I didn't do anything for anyone to blame me.”

  “You know what I mean. Because their kid died and you didn't.”

  “I know what you meant and I'm telling you no. I wrote to their parents after it happened. Luis Rodriguez's mother and I corresponded until she died. That was six years ago. Teddy Fields's family sends me Christmas cards. When I mustered out, I went to see the Johnsons and Ted's family. Everyone was upset, sure, but no one blamed me. It was mostly just sad.”

  Starkey watched me as if she was convinced there had to be more, but she couldn't imagine what. I stared back at her, and once more thought she looked familiar.

  I said, “Have we met? You looked familiar last night and now you look familiar again, but I can't place you.”

  Starkey glanced away. She took a foil packet from her jacket and swallowed a white tablet with the coffee.

  “Can I smoke in here?”

  “You can smoke on the deck. You sure we haven't met?”

  “Positive.”

  “You look like someone.”

  Starkey studied the deck longingly, then sighed.

  “Okay, Cole, here's how you know me: Recent current events for a thousand. The answer is: Ka-boom.”

  I didn't know what she meant. Starkey spread her hands like I was stupid.

  “Don't you watch Jeopardy? Bombs. Bombers. The Bomb Squad lost a tech in Silver Lake a couple of months ago.”

  “That was you?”

  “I gotta have a smoke. This is killing me.”

  Starkey pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket and broke for the deck. I followed her.

  Carol Starkey had bagged a serial cop-killer who murdered bomb technicians. Mr. Red had been headline news in L.A., but most of the stories were about Starkey. Three years before Mr. Red, Starkey herself had been a bomb tech. She had been trying to de-arm a bomb in a trailer park when an earthquake triggered the initiator. Both Starkey and her partner had been killed, but Starkey was resuscitated at the scene. She had literally risen from the dead, which had yoked her with lurid nicknames like the Angel of Death and Demolition Angel.

  Maybe she read what I was thinking. She shook her head as she fired up the cigarette, scowling at me.

  “Don't even dream about asking, Cole. Don't ask if I saw white lights or pearly gates. I get that out the ass.”

  “I don't care about that, and I wasn't going to ask. All I care about is finding Ben.”

  “Good. That's all I care about, too. The bomb squad stuff, that's behind me. Now I do this.”

  “I'm happy for you, Starkey, but the bomb squad stuff was only a couple of months ago. Do you know anything about finding a missing boy?”

  Starkey blew a geyser of smoke, angry.

  “What are you asking, if I'm up to the job?”

  I was angry, too. I had been angry since last night and I was getting more angry by the second.

  “Yeah, that's exactly what I'm asking.”

  “I reconstructed bombs and bomb scenes, and traced explosives through the most perverted landscape you can imagine. I made cases against the assholes who built bombs and the dickwads who trade the components those assholes use. And I nailed Mr. Red. So you don't have to worry about it, Cole. I know how to detect, and you can bet your private-eye ass that I'm going to find this boy.”

  The sun was high now. The slope was bright. Starkey snapped her cigarette over the rail. I looked to see where it hit.

  “Hey, we have a fire hazard up here.”

  Starkey faced me like the mountain was already an inferno and couldn't get any worse.

  “We got plenty of light. Show me where you found the toy.”

  time missing: 15 hours, 32 minutes

  Starkey changed shoes outside at her car, then met me on the side of my house wearing a pair of beat-up Asics cross-trainers with her pants rolled to her knees. Her calves were white. She stared warily down at the slope.

  “It's steep.”

  “Are you scared of heights?”

  “Jesus, Cole, I was just saying. The soil here is loose, I see a lot of irregular ground cover, and you've already been tramping around down there. That's going to make it harder. I want you to be careful not to contaminate the scene any more than you already have, which means all you're gonna do is show me where you found the Game Freak, then get the hell out of my way. We clear?”

  “Look, maybe I was out of line. I'm good at this, too, Starkey. I can help.”

  “That remains to be seen. Show me.”

  When I stepped over the edge, she followed, but she looked awkward and uncomfortable.

  Ben played on the hill so much that he had worn narrow paths that flowed with the rise and fall of the earth like trickling water. I led Starkey down the slope by following alongside the paths so that we wouldn't disturb his footprints. The ground was rugged and unbroken where I walked, and I noticed that Starkey was using the path.

  “You're walking on his footprints. Walk where I walk.”

  She stared down at her feet.

  “All I see is dirt.”

  “Just walk where I walk. Come over by me.”

  Ben's trail was easy to follow until we reached the base of the trees, then the soil grew rocky. It didn't matter; I knew the way from yesterday. We cut across the slope. Starkey slipped twice and cursed both times.

  “Put your feet where you see me putting mine. We're almost there.”

  “I hate the outdoors.”

  “I can tell.”

  I pointed out the patch of rosemary where I had found the Game Freak and several of Ben's footprints. Starkey squatted in place as if she was trying to memorize every rock and spike of rosemary. After all the slipping and cursing, she was careful at the scene.

  She glanced at my feet.

  “You wearing those shoes yesterday?”

  “Yeah. New Balance. You can see the prints I left yesterday.”

  I pointed my prints out to her, then lifted a foot so that she could see the sole of my shoe. The soles were cut with a pattern of raised triangles and a large N in each heel. The triangles and N were obvious in some of my prints. Starkey studied the pattern, then a couple of my footprints, then frowned at me.

  “Okay, Cole, I know what I said when we were up at your house, but I'm more your city-type person, you know? My idea of the outdoors is a parking lot. You seem to know what you're doing down here, so I'm going to let you help. Just don't fuck up anything, okay?”

  “I'll try not to.”

  “We just wanna figure out what happened. After that, we'll bring in SID.”

  Criminalists from LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division would be responsible for identifying and securing any evidence of the crime.

  Starkey divided the area into a rough grid of squares which we searched one square at a time. She moved slowly because of the poor footing, but she was methodical and good with the scene. Two of Ben's prints suggested that he had turned around to return to my house, but the impressions were jumbled and could have meant anything; then his prints headed downhill.

  She said, “Where are you going?”

  “I'm following Ben's trail.”

  “Jesus, I can barely see the scuffs. You a hunter, or what?”

  “I used to do this.”

  “When you were a kid?”

  “In the Army.”

  Starkey glanced at me as if she wasn't sure what that meant.

  Ben's footprints led through the grass for another eight feet, but then I lost his trail. I went back to his last print, then spiraled out in an expanding circle, but found no more
prints or any other sign of his passing. It was as if he had sprouted wings and jumped into the air.

  Starkey said, “What do you see?”

  “If someone grabbed Ben, we should see signs of a struggle or at least the other person's footprints, but I don't see anything.”

  “You're just missing it, Cole.”

  “There's nothing to miss. Ben's prints just stop, and the soil here bears none of the scuffs and jumbled prints that you'd expect to find if he struggled.”

  Starkey crept downhill, concentrating on the ground. She didn't answer for a few minutes, but then her voice was quiet.

  “Maybe Gittamon was right about him being involved. Maybe you can't find a struggle because he ran away.”

  “He didn't run away.”

  “If he wasn't snatched, then—”

  “Look at his prints—they come this far and then they stop. He didn't go back uphill, he didn't go downhill or sidehill; they just stop. He didn't just vanish. If Ben ran away, he would have left prints, but he didn't; he didn't walk away from this point. Someone carried him.”

  “Then where are the other person's prints?”

  I stared at the ground, shaking my head.

  “I don't know.”

  “That's stupid, Cole. We'll find something. Keep looking.”

  Starkey paralleled my move downhill. She was three or four yards to my side when she stopped to study the ground.

  “Hey, is this the boy's shoe or yours?”

  I went to see. A faint line marked the heel of a shoe that was too large to be Ben's. The impression was crisp without being weathered, and was free of debris. I compared the crispness of its edge with the edges that marked Ben's shoe prints. They had been made at about the same time. I got behind the print and sighted forward through the center of the heel to see which way the print was headed. It pointed directly to the place where Ben's trail ended.

  “It's him, Starkey. You got him.”

  “We can't know that. One of your neighbors could have been dicking around up here.”

  “No one was dicking around. Keep looking.”

  Starkey pushed a stalk of rosemary into the soil to mark the print's location, and then we widened our circle. I seached the ground between the new print and Ben's, but found nothing more. I worked back in the opposite direction covering the same ground a second time, but still found nothing. Fragments of additional shoe prints should have been salted through Ben's like the overlapping pieces of a puzzle. I should have found scuffs, crushed grass, and the obvious evidence of another human moving across the earth, but all we had was the partial heel print of a single shoe. That couldn't be, but it was, and the more I thought about the lack of evidence, the more frightened I became. Evidence was the physical history of an event, but the absence of a physical history was its own kind of evidence.