“But you worked so hard to make it back, Kev. And after they get done being pissed off, they’re going to see—”
“I don’t need them to see anything, Andi,” he said, shaking his head. “They don’t matter. I thought I had to prove something, and I did, to myself. There’s nothing left for me to prove. I can move on with my life.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s one of the most mentally healthy things I’ve ever heard anyone say.”
The commotion began at the courthouse doors and rolled through the crowd on a wave. The doors swung open and Good Man Wrongly Accused emerged with his entourage. Parker wanted to slap the smirk off his face.
Rob Cole was as deserving of punishment as any felon in the system, but the press, who had vilified him from his arrest to this day, would now hail him as some kind of accidental hero. Cole was no more a hero than any idiot who fell down a well and had to be rescued by a huge team of county workers, at taxpayers’ expense. In both cases, the fool would be the one to do all the morning news and late-night talk shows. He’d be a guest on
What a country.
The press conference was brief and nauseating. Parker stood behind Andi, in a prime spot just behind a knot of television news talent. Then Cole moved to one side of the podium to greet his adoring public and sign autographs.
Parker stood at the edge of the madness, watching women hurl themselves at Cole, screaming his name. It turned his stomach.
He glanced to his right. There was a tall, striking woman with short sandy hair standing just a few feet away, waiting her turn, but not screaming. Not screaming, not smiling, just staring at Rob Cole with pale gray eyes as cold as ice. A sense of unease scratched at the back of Parker’s neck.
To his left, Andi made a comment, and he had to lean over and have her repeat it.
In that split second, the woman with the gray eyes pulled a gun from her handbag, pointed it at Rob Cole’s chest, and started shooting.
The surprise on Cole’s face was the thing that would stick with Parker most. Robbie’s shining moment of victory, snatched away from him, just like that.
The scene was chaos. People screaming, people running. From the corner of his eye Parker could see a couple of sheriff’s deputies coming, weapons drawn. Everyone immediately surrounding the shooter had dropped to the ground.
The woman just stood there, gun in hand.
Parker launched himself at her a split second before one of the deputies discharged his weapon. He knocked her flat to the ground. The gun flew out of her hand. She was sobbing now, saying over and over, “Look what he did to me!”
A subsequent search of the home of Rob Cole and Tricia Crowne-Cole yielded a treasure trove of X-rated videotapes. Most of Cole with other women—Diane and the brunette among them—having sex with them, having dinner with them, telling each of them she was his soul mate, that no one had ever made him feel the way she made him feel. Making promises he never intended to keep to vulnerable, needy women.
And there were the tapes of Cole and Tricia, shot in their bedroom. Cole naked, Tricia looking grotesque in lingerie intended for a younger, trimmer woman. Tricia mocking the current other woman, begging him to love her, begging him to stay. The two of them laughing like a pair of jackals.
And a fresh scandal was born.
The press demanded to know why the tapes hadn’t turned up during the initial investigation of Tricia’s murder, but there had been no reason to look for them. Contrary to what television dramas teach the American public, search warrants are specific as to what is being looked for. In the investigation of Tricia Crowne-Cole’s death, there had been no reason to search for anything. They had the victim, the prime suspect in the house with the victim. Rob Cole had motive, means, and opportunity. And the murder weapon had been left on the remains of the victim’s face. What more could Robbery-Homicide have asked for?
Parker watched the news reports and thought maybe there was a God after all, though nothing could ever mend the damage that had been done, the lives that had been ruined. He hired Harlan Braun, attorney to the stars, to represent Diane. One of the other women who had been victimized was filing a class-action civil suit on behalf of all the victims, suing the estate of Tricia Crowne-Cole for suffering and extreme emotional distress.
She was doing all the talk shows too.
On Sundays, Parker would go visit Diane in jail.
Andi Kelly was writing a book.
The laws of nature dictate nothing go to waste when an animal is killed. Rob Cole was feeding the scavengers, all eager to pick their teeth with his bones.
In the end, there would be nothing left of Cole but his infamy. He deserved nothing better.
56
Jace sat in a chair on the roof of the Chens’ building, watching Tyler and Grandfather Chen play with a pair of remote-control cars. Both the old man and the boy were laughing and grinning and chattering at each other in Mandarin as they worked the controls, and the cars careened around in a mad race. For the first time in what seemed like forever, an easy smile spread across Jace’s face.
It was a perfect Saturday morning. The sun was already warm and felt good on his body. After several days of rest, the aches had begun to subside, and some of the tension had left him. It was difficult to justify sweating over life’s details when he was so very aware he was lucky to have a life.
Parker had taken him to the Robbery-Homicide offices in Parker Center the day before so Jace could give his statement of everything that transpired in those few very long days. Jace hadn’t wanted to go, the old suspicions and fears hanging on with talons. He’d held his breath practically the whole time, waiting for someone to ask him about Tyler and the Chens, but it hadn’t happened.
Parker had told him the cops wouldn’t be interested in his private life. LAPD had enough on its agenda without dabbling in social services. And Social Services was too entangled in its own tentacles to go sniffing around LAPD. The system at work. Besides, Parker had said, if Jace really was nineteen or twenty-one, or any of the ages he chose to tell people, he was legally an adult, and entitled to custody of his brother.
The focus of the interview had been narrow and on point. What had happened and when it had happened. Just the facts.
Parker had stayed right there with him the whole time, asking some questions himself, but also interjecting bits of humor here and there, helping Jace stay calm and focused. Parker was a good man, maybe even someone Jace thought he could want to know and trust.
Afterward, Parker had taken him out to lunch, and filled him in on where the case was. Eddie Davis was being charged with four counts of murder, beginning with the murder-for-hire of Tricia Crowne-Cole. A one-man crime spree, fueled by greed and the sheer joy of taking lives.
The fact was, three of those lives, including Eta’s, could have been spared if Assistant District Attorney Anthony Giradello had pushed to have Eddie Davis picked up immediately after Abby Lowell had called and tipped him off regarding Davis’s involvement in the Crowne murder.
An investigation was under way.
The most important thing to Jace was that he was out of it, and his odd little patchwork family was safe. Family—he liked the sound of that. He thought he might actually try to open up to the idea.
Where he would go from here, he wasn’t sure. The broken rib and his other injuries would keep him quiet for another few days. He wouldn’t go back to being a messenger. The stress would be too much for Tyler, wondering every five seconds if his brother was being run down in the street, or chased by someone like Eddie Davis.
Jace probably should have been anxious about what the future would hold, but for the time being, he was content to watch his little brother being a kid. He was content to think that they had a home, and a family, and to know that family didn’t have much to do with blood, but had everything to do with heart.
Parker turned the green vintage racing Jag down the alley and parked behind the Chens’, in the slot where Madame Chen’s Mini Cooper had sat the first time he had come here. Madame Chen emerged from her office in pristine white cotton slacks and a black silk twin set, her hair perfectly coiffed.
