were pulling the strings. My strings.”
“Harry, please.”
“Don’t ‘Harry, please’ me. You wanted revenge on them and I was your ticket. Well, you got it, partner. I took care of all of them, just like you thought. Like you hoped. You played me just right.”
He didn’t say anything. His eyes were cast down, away from mine.
“Now there’s one thing I want from you. I want to know where you and Jack hid Marty Gessler. I want to bring her home.”
He remained silent, his eyes away from me. I reached down and took the file off his lap. On the bureau I opened it and started leafing through the documents.
“You know, I didn’t see it until somebody I taught the job to saw it first,” I said as I looked through the file. “She’s the one who said it had to be a cop. It was the only way Gessler could’ve been taken so easily. And she was right. Those four punks didn’t have the steel.”
I gestured toward the empty television screen.
“I mean, look what happened when they came for me.”
I found what I was looking for in the file. A map of Griffith Park. I started unfolding it. Its creases cracked and split. It had been folded in the file for maybe five years. It was marked by the location where Antonio Markwell’s body had been found in Bronson Canyon.
“Once I started in that direction, then I began to see it. The gas had always been a problem. Somebody used her card and they bought more gas than her car could hold. That was a mistake, Law. A big one. Not buying the gas. That was part of the misdirection. But getting so much of it. The bureau thought maybe it was a truck, that they were looking for a trucker. But now I’m thinking Crown Vic. The Police Interceptor model they make for all the departments. The cars with extra-capacity gas tanks so you don’t get caught out there on the hunt without any juice.”
I had delicately spread the map open. It depicted the many winding roads and footpaths of the huge mountain park. It showed the public road up through Bronson Canyon and then the fire road which extended further up into the rocky terrain. It showed the area of caves and tunnels left behind when the canyon had been a quarry, its rock payload crushed and used for railroad beds across the west. I laid the map across Cross’s lap and over his dead arms.
“The way I figure it, you guys followed her from Westwood. Then in the Pass you pulled her over in one of the quiet spots. Used the blue light on your Crown Vic and she thought, No problem, they’re cops. But then you put her in the trunk of that big car with the big gas tank. One of you drove her car to the airport and the other followed and picked him up. Probably you backed her car into another car or a pillar or something somewhere. Nice touch. Sell the misdirection. Then you drive up to the desert and use the gas card. Again, sell that misdirection. And then you turn around and take her back to the real hiding place. Which one of you did it, Law? Which one actually took from her everything she had or would ever have?”
I didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. I pointed to the map.
“That’s my bet. You guys went to a place you were familiar with, a place nobody would be looking for Marty Gessler because they’d all be looking up in the desert. You wanted her hidden but you wanted access to her, right? You wanted to know exactly where she was. She was your ace in the hole, right? You would use her to get to them. Marty and her computer. The connection was on that box. Find her and find the box, the connection would be made and there’d be a knock on Linus Simonson’s door.”
I paused to give him a chance to protest, to tell me to get the hell out or call me a liar. But he didn’t do any of that. He didn’t say a word.
“It all seemed to work,” I said. “And then that day at Nat’s you guys were supposed to cut the deal, right? Shake hands and share the wealth? Only Linus Simonson had other ideas about that. Turned out he didn’t want to share anything and he’d take his chances with Gessler’s computer. That must have shocked you. There you two were, waiting in there, probably already counting your money. And he comes in and opens up on you…
“I think you should’ve seen it coming, Law. ”
I leaned down and tapped the map with a finger.
“Bronson Canyon. All those tunnels, caves. Where you found the boy.”
My eyes came up from the map.
“That’s my guess. They’ve got the roads going up there locked. But you two had a key, didn’t you? From the boy’s case. You kept that key and then it came in handy. Where is she?”
Cross finally brought his eyes up to mine and spoke.
“Look what they did to me,” he said. “They deserved what they got.”
I nodded in agreement.
“And you deserved what you got. Where is she?”
His eyes turned and he looked up at the empty TV. He said nothing. Anger bloomed inside of me. I thought of Milton squeezing the air tubes shut. Of becoming a monster, of becoming the thing I hunted. I took a step toward his chair and looked down on him with eyes dark with rage. Slowly I raised my hands toward his face.
“Tell him.”
I turned and Danny Cross was in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she had been there or what she had heard. I didn’t know if it was a story that was new to her or not. All I knew is that she brought me back from the edge of the abyss. I turned and looked back at Lawton Cross. His eyes were on his wife and his frozen face still somehow took on an expression of sadness and misery.
“Tell him, Lawton,” she said. “Or I won’t be there beside you.”
A look of fear immediately took over his face. Then there was pleading in his eyes.
“You promise to stay with me?”
“I promise.”
His eyes dropped to the map spread across the chair.
“You don’t need this,” he said. “Just go up there. You go in the big cave and then take the tunnel on the right. It comes to an open clearing. Somebody told us they call it The Devil’s Punchbowl. Anyway, that’s where we found him. She’s there now.”
He could no longer hold my eyes and looked away, back down at the map.
“Where do I look, Lawton?”
“Where the kid was. That family marked the spot. You’ll know when you get there.”
I nodded. I understood. Slowly I took the map from him and refolded it. I watched him as I did it. He seemed becalmed, his face now returned to expressionless. I’d seen the look a thousand times before in the eyes and faces of those who have confessed. A lifting of the burden.
There was nothing else to say. I slipped the map back into the file and took it with me as I left the room. Danny Cross remained just outside the door, looking in at her husband. I stopped as I passed her.
“He’s a black hole,” I said. “He’ll suck you in and take you down. Save yourself, Danny.”
“How?”
“You know how.”
I left her there and went out. I got in my car and started driving south toward Hollywood and the secret the hills had hidden for so long.
44
It wasn’t raining yet but the sky was full of the low rumbling of thunder by the time I got to Hollywood. From the freeway I took Franklin over to Bronson and then up into the hills. Bronson Canyon had been in more movies than I had probably seen in my whole life. Its rugged terrain and jagged rock outcroppings formed the backdrop of countless westerns and more than a few low-budget interplanetary explorations. I had been there as a kid and I had been there on cases. I knew that if you weren’t careful you could get lost on the trails or in the caves and quarried-out spaces. The rock facings would begin to crowd you and after a while they all looked the same. You could lose your bearings. In that sameness was the danger.
I took the park road up until it terminated at the fire road. Entrance to this dirt and crushed-gravel extension
