The Crime Writer

He nodded his thanks quickly, an uncomfortable tic, and sipped his drink again. "When I was a kid, I always thought I'd learn to reconcile it. Another thing I'd pick up along the way. Maybe that's why I… the job, you know. But then, with Janice well, I never did. Learn. You never do. You can't, maybe. It's always there, and no matter how close you think you are to it, you're never ready."

"Listen, when this… If there's anything "

He cut off my awkward reach of affection, not ready to concede the worst-case. "We have a shot." He spoke quickly, though his voice wobbled. "One more round. We have a shot."

He rose, and I followed suit, and we walked the two steps to the door that dumped out from the kitchen to the gravel driveway, the patch of venetian blind jiggling as I tugged the knob.

"You have to understand. Hope is all you've got. That's it." He gripped the doorframe and tilted his face into shadow, so it wasn't until he spoke that I realized he was crying. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry."

I stood there struck by the incredible limitation of the language I claim to have a passing knowledge of, saying, "It's okay," at intervals like a coach with a Little Leaguer who'd scraped a knee.

Finally he pulled back, covering his face and apologizing still, drawing the door closed quietly behind him and leaving me to the crickets sawing through the chill night.

Chapter 24

My cell phone tap-danced on my nightstand beside my alarm clock: 7:02 a.m. Lloyd's words came fast, excited. "Two rapes, a molest, and an indecent exposure."

I sat up against the headboard, grinding my eye with the heel of my hand.

"I got a suspect for you," he continued. "Check your e-mail looks like a spam piece, subject heading 'Real Rolex Watches.' Print the attachments only. They'll be untraceable. Then call me back. At the lab."

I padded into my office, opened the attachments, and printed a few copies. Leafing through the pages, I dialed the lab on my dead home line before snapping out of it and doing a second take on my cell phone.

Lloyd said, "Top document gives you registrant information for all hundred and fifty-three brown Volvos with a license beginning with seven that the DMV has on record for L.A. County."

I scanned the list eagerly, looking for names I recognized. My breathing had quickened. Had one of these people intended to put me away for a murder I didn't commit? Had one of them sunk the knife into the soft flesh above Genevieve's navel?

"Flip to the next doc," Lloyd said. "Those are photos and rap sheets for the five individuals from the first list who have a criminal record."

Four men and a woman, all with the pallor and frizzed hair unique to booking photos, gazed from my monitor. None I recognized.

"Four are just penny-ante stuff," Lloyd continued, "but one I like. I like this guy a lot."

I knew which one before Lloyd said the name. Morton Frankel. A low shelf of a brow shaded dark eyes. Flared nostrils, angular cheeks, cropped hair. Thin, well-tended sideburns extended past the bottoms of his ears, ending in points. He wasn't smiling so much as baring his teeth, which seemed just slightly too long, as if his gums had receded. Ropy muscle sheathed his neck; he'd flexed as the photo was taken. His bearing and grooming seemed purposely refined to convey menace.

Who the hell was this guy? And if he was the killer, why had he gone to such elaborate lengths to bring me down? How was he connected to Broach and Genevieve? And what the hell did he have against me?

"This guy's right off the movie poster," I said.

"Arrested in '99 and '03 for the rapes. Acquitted once, the other he pled down to a battery he put a hooker in the hospital. Did some time there, his second brief stint. He was a person of interest in another rape investigation in '05, but there wasn't anything to hold him on. Questioned again last year on a missing girl, never held. As you can see, he's got a lot of affection for women."

I thought about the unidentified hair found on Kasey Broach's body. "No DNA on record?"

"Just prints. He's a machinist, drawing a salary right now from Bonsky Forge and Metalworks in Van Nuys. But look at his address. He lives downtown, not ten minutes from the Broach dump site."

"And the electrical tape was bought at the Van Nuys Home Depot, by his work."

"There you go. He's got the diabolical gleam in the eyes, too."

"That he does. Rasputin himself."