LA Requiem

all of the vies except Dersh. I'm sorry.'

'Maybe he missed something.'

'This kid is sharp, Cole. He lasered Dersh's place looking for fibers that could've come from Sobek's, but found nothing. He lasered Sobek's, looking for something that might've come from Dersh, but that was a bust, too. He doped both places, and ran gas chromes, but struck out all the way around. 1 was hoping he'd find something that put Sobek with Dersh, too, but there's nothing.'

Chen was the guy who'd done the work up at Lake Hollywood. I remember being impressed when I'd read it. 'Think you could send over these new reports?'

'Shit, there's gotta be two hundred pages here.'

'Just the work he did on Dersh's place, and Sobek's garage. I don't need the others.'

'You got a fax there?'

'Yeah.' I gave him the number.

He said, 'You really been taking a cab out to the desert?'

'How'd you hear about that?'

'You know something, Cole? You and Dolan were of the same stripe. I can see why she liked you.'

Then he hung up.

374

ROBERT CRAIS

While I waited for the fax, I reread Chen's Lake Hollywood report, and was again impressed with its detail. By the time I finished, the new reports had arrived, and I found them exhaustive. Chen had collected over one hundred separate fiber and soil samples from Dersh's home and property, and compared them with samples taken from Sobek's apartment, clothing, shoes, and vehicle, but found nothing that would tie the two together. No physical evidence tied Dersh to Joe Pike, either, but that didn't seem to bother Krantz.

I read the new report twice, but by the end of the second reading felt as if I was wasting my time—no matter how often I turned the pages, no new evidence appeared, and Chen's evidentiary conclusions remained unchanged. I was thinking that my time would be better spent looking for Trudy, or going back to the desert, when I realized that something was different between the work that Chen had done at Lake Hollywood and the work he'd done at Dersh's house.

I had read these reports hoping to find something exculpatory for Pike, but maybe what I was looking for wasn't something that was in the report. Maybe it had been left out.

I phoned the SID office, and asked for John Chen.

The woman who answered the phone said, 'May I tell him what it's regarding?'

I was still thinking about what the report didn't say when I answered her.

'Tell him it's about Joe Pike.'

41

The New, Improved John Chen

John Chen had leased the Porsche Boxster—also known as the 'tang-mobile—on the very day he was promoted for his exemplary performance in the Karen Garcia homicide. He couldn't afford it, but John had decided that one could either accept one's miserable place in life (even if, like John, one was born to it) or defy it, and you could defy it if you just had the balls to take action. This was the new, improved John Chen, redefining himself with the motto: If I can take it, it s mine.

First comes the 'tang-mobile, then comes the 'tang.

Just as John Chen had had his eye on the Boxster, so had he been head over heels in heat for Teresa Wu, a microbiology graduate student at UCLA and part-time assistant at SID. Teresa Wu had lustrous black hair, skin the color of warm butter, and professorial red glasses that John thought were the sexiest thing going.

Still flush with the accolades he'd garnered for his work at Lake Hollywood, John drove back to the office, made sure everyone there knew about the Boxster, then asked Teresa Wu for a date.

It was the first time he had asked her out, and only the second time he'd spoken to her. It was only the third time he'd been brave enough to ask out anyone.

Teresa Wu peered at him over the top of the red glasses, rolled her eyes as if he'd just asked her to share a snot sandwich, and said, 'Oh, please, John. No way.'

Bitch.

375

376

ROBERT CRAIS

That was a week ago, but part of John's newfound philosophy was a second motto: No guts, no nookie. John had spent the next seven days working up his nut to ask her out again, and was just about to do so when some guy named Elvis Cole called, wanting to speak with him.

Now Teresa had left for school, and John put down the phone with a feeling of annoyance. Not only had the incoming call blown today's chance at Teresa Wu, but Chen didn't like it that Cole implied he had missed something at the crime scene. Chen liked it even less that he'd allowed the guy to badger him into meeting back at the Dersh house. Still, Chen was curious to hear what Cole had to offer; after all, if Chen could make a headline breakthrough on the Dersh case, Teresa Wu might change her mind about going out with him. How could she turn down a guy with a Boxster and his name on the front page of the L.A. Times?

Forty minutes later, John Chen tooled his 'tang-mobile into Dersh's drive beside a green-and-white cab. The police tape had been removed from Dersh's door, and the house long released as a crime scene. Now it was nothing more than bait for the morbid.

As Chen shut down the Boxster, a man whose arm stuck from his body in a shoulder cast climbed out of the cab. He looked like a waiter.

The man said, 'Mr. Chen. I'm Elvis Cole.'

There's a dorky name for you. Elvis.

Chen eyed Cole sourly, thinking that Cole probably wanted him to falsify or plant evidence. 'You're Pike's partner?'

'That's right. Thanks for coming out.'

Cole offered his good hand. He wasn't as big as Pike, but his grip was uncomfortably hard—like Pike, he was probably another gym rat with too many Y chromosomes who played private eye so he could bully people. Chen shook hands quickly and stepped away, wondering if Cole was dangerous.

'I don't have a lot of time, Mr. Cole. They're expecting me back at the office five minutes ago.'

'This won't take long.'

Cole started down the alley alongside Dersh's home without

L.A. REQUIEM 377

waiting, and Chen found himself following. John resented that: Ballsy guys lead; they don't follow.

Cole said, 'When you covered the Lake Hollywood scene, you backtracked the shooter to a fire road and found where he'd parked his car.'

Chen's eyes narrowed. He automatically didn't like this, because Pike had done the tracking and he'd only tagged along. Chen, of course, had left that part out of his report.

'And?'

'There's no mention of the shooter's vehicle in the Dersh report. I was wondering if you looked for it.'

Chen felt a flood of relief and irritation at the same time. So that was the guy's big idea; that was why he'd wanted to meet. Chen put an edge in his voice, letting this guy know he wasn't just some a-hole with a pocket caddy.

'Of course, I looked for it. Mrs. Kimmel heard the shooter's car door slam in front of her next-door neighbor's house.