Bud wiped at his face, but his eyes still fluttered, and returned to Pike again and again.

“I’m looking at you, and it’s like nothing happened. You just killed a man, and there’s nothing in your eyes.”

Pike felt embarrassed and drew back.

Flynn suddenly seemed embarrassed, too, and ashamed of himself, as if he realized he was talking nonsense. He forced out a laugh.

“You ready to go? We got a hellacious amount of paperwork. That’s the worst part about shooting someone, you have all these damned forms.”

Pike took out his sunglasses and put them on, covering his eyes.

Flynn laughed again, louder, showing even more strain.

“It’s pitch-black. You going to wear those things at night?”

“Yes.”

“Well, whatever. That business with you calling me Officer Flynn and me calling you Officer Pike? We’re past that. My name is Bud.”

Pike nodded, but Bud was still trembling and the phony smile made him look pained.

Pike wished none of it had happened. He wished they had not taken the call, and their day hadn’t ended this way. He felt sick, thinking he had disappointed his training officer. He vowed to try harder. He wanted to be a good and right man, and he wanted to serve and protect.

12

PIKE was driving hard toward Glendale and the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division when his cell phone buzzed. He glanced at the number and saw it was Ronnie.

“Go.”

“They hit your store fourteen minutes ago. Those boys are willing to work in broad daylight. They want you, m’man.”

Larkin, beside him, said, “Who is it?”

Pike held up his finger, telling her to wait.

“Did the security guys roll?”

“Code three, lights and sirens, and they called in LAPD. Denny and I are rolling over right now. You wanted a full-on response, you got a full-on response.”

“File a report with the police. If we have any physical damage, have an insurance adjuster come out. If anything needs to be repaired, call out the repairmen today.”

“I get it. You want noise.”

“Loud.”

Pike put down the phone, and Larkin punched him in the arm.

“I hate how you just ignore me. I asked you a question, you just show me your finger.”

She showed Pike a finger, but it wasn’t her index finger.

Pike said, “We’re going to see someone in Glendale, then we’re going to meet Elvis where you had your accident-”

“Why can’t we just go back to the house?”

“Someone is trying to kill you.”

“Why can’t we just hide?”

“Someone might find you.”

“You have an answer for everything.”

“Yes.”

She punched him in the arm again, but this time Pike ignored her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she slumped back in the seat, sullen.

Pike was glad for the silence. They climbed up through the Sepulveda Pass, then down into the San Fernando Valley. The valley was always much hotter, and Pike could feel the increasing heat even with the air-conditioning. He watched the outside air temperature rise on the dashboard thermometer. From Cheviot Hills to Van Nuys, they gained fifteen degrees.

Larkin was quiet for exactly nine minutes.

Then she said, “Would you like to watch me masturbate?”

Pike didn’t look at her or respond, though he wondered why she would ask such a thing. She had probably wanted to shock him. Shocking statements probably worked with some people, but Pike wasn’t one of them. Shock was relative.

“I could do it right here in the car. While you’re driving. Would you like that?”

She slid her hands down over her belly to where her legs met. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper.

“I’ll ask your friend. I bet he’d like to watch.”

Pike glanced at her, then continued driving.

“Day I got to Central Africa, I watched a woman. Her family had been murdered that morning, just two hours before we rolled in. She cut the fingers off her left hand, one by one, one each for her husband and her four children. She started with the thumb.”

Pike glanced over again.

“That was how she mourned.”

Larkin folded her hands in her lap. She stared at him, then turned to the window. The silence was good.

They drove through the valley heat.

13

John Chen’s Secret Mission

DESPERATION bred innovation, and John Chen was a desperate man. That same desperation also bred lies, deception, and masterful acting, all of which John had employed with convincing brilliance because-well, face it-he was the smartest senior criminalist employed by LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division. In the past few years, John had broken more cases (necessary for career advancement [read that: money]), amassed more face time on the local news (mandatory for hitting on chicks [read that: At six-two, one twenty-seven, and with an Adam’s apple the size of a goiter, he needed all the help he could get]), and garnered more merit pay raises (essential for leasing a Porsche [read that: This isn’t a gearshift, baby, I’m just happy to see you]) than any other rat in the lab. And how had he been rewarded for putting SID on the map and ascending to criminalist stardom?

More work.

A larger caseload.

Less time to enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Namely, poontang.

John Chen was all about the ’tang. He was the first to admit it, and did, often, to anyone who would listen, including the young women of his acquaintance, which probably explained why he couldn’t get a date. He was a man obsessed when it came to the ’tang; hungry to make up the poontang shortfall which had been his lifelong burden; convinced, as he was, that every single straight male in California had enjoyed a veritable all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of the stuff since puberty. Except him.

But now was the payoff.

John Chen had scored a girlfriend. Well, okay, she wasn’t really his girlfriend. He knew that; he wasn’t kidding himself. Ronda Milbank was a married secretary with two kids from Highland Park who liked to drink. Every couple of weeks she told her husband she was going to a movie with the girls, but what she really did was hit a few bars hoping somebody would buy her a drink. John Chen had delivered the goods. Hey, princess, what are you drinking? Gimlets. She liked the sugar.

Well, he hadn’t really said that; he had been too scared. But he sat next to her, and after a while Ronda spoke to him. A couple of weeks later, he saw her again at the same bar. That was last night. He bought her a drink, and then another, and then-after having three or four drinks himself-he asked if maybe he could, you know, kinda see her sometime. And Ronda said, sure, tomorrow between eleven and noon-my husband will be at work and my kids will be at school.

SCORE!!!!

But then came the problem. As Jack Webb said: This is the city- Los Angeles. Four hundred sixty-five square miles; millions of civilians; untold criminals, all of whom were out doing crime; nine thousand of the world’s finest police officers, all of whom were out busting said miscreants; hundreds of crime scenes, more every day, more every hour of every day; an unending tsunami of crime scenes and evidence; each and every item of which had to be preserved, documented, recorded, tested, and analyzed by LAPD’s understaffed, underfunded, overworked, but world-class-

Scientific Investigation Division.

So John knew the answer even without asking. I mean, what? “Oh, sure, John, you need a ’tang break midway through the morning, be my guest.” Yeah, like that could outlast a snowball in hell.

Here’s how John Chen orchestrated his departure: That morning, he secured a small bit of dental enamel from a comparison kit, then waited for the height of the mid-morning coffee break when lab techs, scientists, or criminalists (who were all too overworked to leave their workstations) wolfed down muffins and Cheetos between sperm samples and bloodstains. At exactly fifteen minutes after ten, John made a point of walking past his supervisor just as he took a bite of his Ralphs Market raspberry-swirl muffin, and screamed-