him. The woman said, 'What kind of car was she driving?'
'Dark green Pontiac Firebird. Couple of years old. I didn't get the plate.'
'Anyone else in the car?'
'No.'
The woman took out her handkerchief and gave it to me. 'Wipe your face,' she said. 'You look like hell.'
Just before ten, Poitras and Griggs and Terry Ito pulled up in a blue sedan. Griggs was in the back seat. They talked to the woman from the DA's office and then the Crime Scene people and then they got to me. Nobody looked happy. Lou Poitras said, 'Half the cops and Feds in L.A. looking for this kid, Hound Dog, how'd you happen to be up here with her and her old man?'
I told him. As I said it, Ito's face darkened and you could tell he wasn't liking it. Hard to blame him. I wasn't liking it, either. Midway through the telling Jillian Becker's white BMW nosed up to the ridge top and stopped by one of the coroner's vans. Jillian Becker and a short man in a tweed sport coat got out. One of the dicks and the woman from the district attorney's office went over to them. Jillian Becker looked at me. Her face was drawn. Terry Ito said, 'You found the girl, and followed her to Kira Asano's and you decided not to tell anyone.'
'Yeah.'
'Even though you knew the police and the Feds were searching for her.'
I said, 'She looked safe at Asano's so I let her sit until I knew what was going on and then I talked with her. She was a mess, Ito. She had run away and couldn't go home because her father was sexually molesting her.'
Poitras said, 'Jesus Christ.'
Ito took a breath, let it out, and shook his head. He looked out off the ridge toward the valley. The hawk was gone.
I said, 'I wanted to get the kid some help before she'd have to deal with you people.'
Across the ridge top, the woman from the district attorney's office opened the coroner's van and showed Jillian Becker and the short man what was inside. Jillian stood stiff and nodded, then turned and quickly walked back to her BMW. The short man went with her. VP from the company, no doubt.
Poitras said, 'Why'd she kill him?'
'I don't know.'
Griggs was staring at his hands. 'Maybe she just had to,' he said, quietly.
Ito looked at Griggs, then took off his sunglasses and stared at them as if there was a bad smudge on the lense. He put the sunglasses back on. Poitras said, 'As far as you know, she still staying at Asano's?'
'Yes.'
'Let's go get her.'
We got into the blue sedan, Poitras driving, me and Griggs riding in back. I told Poitras to go west on Mulholland toward Beverly Glen. He did. The cop sedan with its heavy-duty suspension rolled easily along Mulholland's curves. Poitras had the windows up and the air conditioning on and no one said anything. All you could hear in the car was the hiss and chatter of the radio. I couldn't understand what the radio voices said, but Poitras and Griggs and Ito could. Cops get special ears for that.
When we got to Kira Asano's, Griggs said, 'Man, this guy must be loaded.'
The gate was open. We went up the drive without announcing ourselves and stopped about halfway to the house. We had to stop because Frank was lying facedown in the drive. His legs were bent and his right arm was under his body and the left half of his head was missing. Poitras and Griggs both leaned to the side to free their guns and Ito called in a request for backup. I said, 'There were about a dozen kids here. Some of them were wearing gray uniforms. There was another guy like the one on the drive named Bobby, and Asano, and Bobby probably has a gun.'
Poitras steered the car out onto the lawn around Frank's body and stopped by the front door. The front door was open.
Poitras and Griggs went around the side past the garage, and Ito and I went in through the front. No one tried to shoot us. There wasn't anyone around to try.
Cabinets had been emptied and furniture upended and Asano's paintings torn from the walls in every room. Poitras and Griggs came in from the back and said they'd found a guy who was probably Bobby with two bullets in his chest out by the little fruit trees. They'd seen no sign of the girl or anyone else.
We found Asano in his office. He was lying on the floor in front of his desk, clutching the grip of a samurai sword. He had been shot once in the chest and once in the side of the neck. The sword was bloodied. There was a short, muscular man sitting on Asano's couch. The man and the couch were sprayed with blood, and the man's eyes were slightly crossed and sightless. There was a slash along the top of his left shoulder and two puncture marks in his abdomen and a black automatic pistol in his right hand as if Asano had attacked him with the sword and he had killed Asano and then staggered to the couch to finish dying. The little finger was missing from his left hand. Somebody said, 'Sonofabitch.' I think it was Griggs.
Ito looked at the left hand and then at me. 'You say Asano had the book.'
'Yeah.'
Ito looked at the left hand again. 'Yakuza.'
We looked through the rest of the house. In an upstairs bedroom we found two girls holding each other under some rags in a closet. They screamed when we opened the door and begged us not to kill them and it was quite a while before they believed that we would not. One of them was Kerri.
We went through every room and every closet. There was no sign of either the Hagakure or Mimi Warren. When we had made the complete circuit and were back at the front of the house again, Ito shook his head. 'So,' he said. 'You left her here because she was safe, huh?'
I didn't bother to look at him.
Chapter 31
We brought Kerri and the other girl down to the big open room with the French doors and put them on a couch beneath an enormous watercolor of an old woman sharpening a sword. The old woman was sitting in the snow, and was barefoot, but did not look cold.
The girls were scared and the smaller one had red puffy eyes from crying. We offered them blankets even though it was eighty degrees outside. Kerri kept sneaking glances at me, probably because she had seen me before. She said, 'Are you a policeman?'
'Private eye,' I said. I gave her a little eyebrow wiggle. Elvis Cole, Master of Instant Rapport.
'You're the guy who came here looking for Mimi.'
'Yeah. You know where she is?'
'They took her.'
Poitras said, 'Who's they?'
The other girl pulled her knees up to her chin and locked her arms around her shins. She squeezed her eyes shut. Kerri said, 'These four men came. They just came in and started yelling and shooting and tearing up the house. I saw them shoot Bobby, and then I ran.'
Terry Ito said, 'All Japanese men?'
Kerri nodded.
Poitras asked her when.
Kerri looked at the other girl but the other girl's chin was between her knees and her eyes were still clamped shut. Kerri said, 'I dunno. Maybe seven. I had just got up. I dunno. I ran into the bedroom with Joan and we hid.' Joan was the quiet one.
Poitras looked at me. 'That was before she called Bradley?'
'Yeah.' I said, 'Kerri, was Eddie Tang one of the men?'
'Uh-uh.' She shook her head.
'You sure?'
'Uh-huh.'
