47

TRAFFIC AT A STANDSTILL. Late afternoon. Someone lost control of his vehicle, and now the southbound 405 was a parking lot. Kelly Walsh didn’t mind. Windows up, AC blowing, the horns outside muted. CD player. She touched the replay button, and the backup singers began their soothing riff-dum, dum, dum, dundee, doo-wah-and Roy Orbison kissed her heart with longing and pain.

Only the lonely.

Walsh had listened to the song four times in a row, and was now on her fifth; trapped on the stalled freeway in a cocoon of melancholy.

Walsh missed him terribly, Special Agent Jordan Brant, killed in the line of duty, one of her guys, and could not escape the guilt that she had failed him, then, and even now.

Michael Darko had cut a deal, which meant there had been no trial. Walsh knew she should be happy, but Jordie Brant’s wife lost the chance to confront her husband’s killer, and Walsh herself lost the righteous vengeance of offering the testimony to nail Darko’s conviction. The lack of closure left her feeling as if Jordie remained unavenged, and that she had somehow failed him again. And lost him again.

They’re gone forever.

Sitting there, listening to Roy, her cell phone buzzed. Walsh checked the incoming ID, then stopped the music to answer.

“Kelly Walsh.”

“Have you heard?”

“I get promoted?”

“Better. Michael Darko was murdered.”

Walsh was caught off guard and left feeling surprised. She had expected this call sooner or later, but not this soon, and not today. A mixture of warmth and fear blossomed in her belly.

She said, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

“These things happen.”

“Yes. Yes, they do. They know who did it?”

“Uh-uh. Someone got in his cell during a free period. No video, either. The DVR was down.”

Walsh kept the smile from her voice.

“No shit. That’s a bad break. How’d they kill him?”

“Looks like an ice pick or a screwdriver. Stuck him sixty-two times.”

Walsh smiled a warm, soft smile all the way from Jordie Brant’s grave.

“Thanks for letting me know. Sounds like someone had a serious mad-on for this prick.”

“No kidding. Hope that dude doesn’t get mad at me.”

Walsh laughed politely, then closed her phone. She sat in silence for a moment, feeling her spirits lighten. Walsh had called in big favors to have Darko transferred to Corcoran, and would owe a big favor in return, but Special Agent Kelly Walsh had fulfilled her obligation. Jordie Brant had been one of her guys. You have to take care of your own, and that’s what she did.

Walsh had known how she would do it since she learned Lonnie Tang was in Corcoran.

A nasty little sonofabitch.

A natural-born killer.

Walsh ejected the Orbison, and decided she wanted to hear something lighter. More bouncy and upbeat. She loaded her favorite all-girl mix into the player-Pussycat Dolls, No Doubt, Rihanna, and Pink, sprinkled with classics by the Bangles, Bananarama, and the Go-Go’s. She hit the play button, and cranked up the volume.

The energy filled her.

She sang with the band.

This town is my town.

She felt better already.

Those women can rock!

48

COLE FOUND THE FAMILY. They were good people, a young couple from Sierra Madre who had already adopted two children, both, coincidentally, from the former Soviet Union. Cole had checked them out thoroughly, and interviewed them several times, and Pike had watched how they related to the boy and their other children. He thought they would do a fine job.

Walsh had come through on the paperwork. Documents would be created that established the boy as a natural-born citizen of the United States, born to a fictitious couple in Independence, Louisiana, and adopted through a private attorney.

Pike held the boy for the last time on a bright sunny morning outside a federal office building in downtown Los Angeles. A private social worker employed by the attorney was going to deliver the boy to his new parents, who were currently waiting across the street.

The boy liked the sun, and he liked being outside. He flapped his arms and made the gurgling laugh.

Pike said, “You good?”

The boy flapped his arms harder, and touched Pike’s face.

Pike stroked his back, then handed him off to the social worker. Pike watched her deliver him to the young couple. The young woman took the boy in her arms, and the young man made a silly face. The baby seemed happy to see them.

Pike turned away without looking back, went into the building, and found the office. A woman there was going to generate the necessary paperwork.

She told Pike to have a seat, then faced her computer.

“I have to fill in the birth information. The name, place of birth, things like that. Most of these things will change with the adoption-like his name-but we need something right now to create his place in the system.”

“I understand.”

“I was told you’re the one who has that information?”

Pike nodded.

“Okay. Let’s get started. What’s his first name?”

“Peter.”

“Spell it, please.”

“P-E-T-E-R.”

“Middle name?”

“No middle name.”

“Most people have a middle name.”

“I don’t. Neither does he.”

“Okay. His last name?”

“Pike. P-I-K-E.”

Robert Crais

Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. He purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction. Other literary influences include Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker, and John Steinbeck.

After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which the New York Times declared: "A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 20s."

In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the collaborative working requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Crais conceived of the novel as a stand-alone, but realized that-in Elvis Cole-he had created an ideal and powerful character through which to comment upon his life and times. (See the WORKS section for additional titles.) Elvis Cole’s readership and fan base grew with each new book, then skyrocketed in 1999 upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and forever changed the way Crais conceived of and structured his novels. In this new way of telling his stories, Crais combined the classic ‘first person’ narrative of the American detective novel with flashbacks, multiple story lines, multiple points-of-view, and literary elements to better illuminate his themes. Larger and deeper in scope, Publishers Weekly wrote of L. A. Requiem, "Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer-Ross Macdonald-always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base." Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience."