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you, that Cole can carry all the weight you put on him, and still kick your ass. The killer takes this opinion seriously.
When you are plotting against the enemy, you always look for an exploitable weakness.
Cole has a girlfriend.
And the girlfriend has a child.
32
I walked down the infinite flight of steps from Lucy's apartment to sit in my car. I thought about starting it, but that was beyond me. I tried to be angry with her, but wasn't. I tried to resent her, but that made me feel small. I sat there in my open car on her quiet street until her lights went out, and even then I did not move. I just wanted to be close to her, even if she was up in her apartment and I was down in my car, and for most of the night I tried to figure out how things could go so wrong so quickly. Maybe a better detective could've found answers.
The sky was pale violet when I finally pulled away. I was content to creep along in the morning traffic, the mindless monotony of driving the car familiar and comforting. By the time I reached home, Dolan was gone. She had left a note on the kitchen counter. What it said was, /'//
I cleaned our glasses from the night before, put away the tequila, and was heading upstairs for a shower when the phone rang.
My heart pounded as I stared at the phone, letting it ring a second time. I took a breath, and nodded to myself.
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On the third ring I picked it up, trying not to sound like I'd just run ten miles.
'Lucy?'
Evelyn Wozniak said, 'Why didn't you call?'
'What are you talking about?'
'I left a message yesterday. I said you should call no matter what time you got in.'
I had checked my message machine when Pike was still in the house, but there had been no messages. I looked at it now, again finding nothing.
'Okay. You've got me now.'
Evelyn gave me directions to the storage facility that her mother used in North Palm Springs. She had had a duplicate key made for the lock, and had left it for me in an envelope with the on-site manager. I asked her if she wanted to be there when I went through her father's things, but she said that she was scared of what she might find. I could understand that. I was scared, too.
When she was done, I said, 'Evelyn, did you leave any of this on your message?'
'Some of it. I told you the name of the place. I know it was your machine and not somebody else's, if that's what you're thinking. Who else would have a message that says they're the world's greatest human being?'
I put down the phone, then went upstairs, changed clothes, and drove to Palm Springs, wondering if Pike had heard the message, and if he'd erased it.
And why.
When I was thinking about Pike, I didn't have to think about Lucy.
Two hours and ten minutes later, I left the freeway and again made my way through the wind farms. The desert was already hot, and smelled of burning earth.
The storage facility was clusters of white cinder-block sheds set in the middle of nowhere behind a chain-link fence with a big metal gate. A cinder-block building sat by the
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gate with a big sign saying LOWEST RATES AROUND. Since nothing else was around, it was an easy guarantee to keep.
An overweight woman with skin like dried parchment gave me the key. Her office was small, but a Westinghouse air conditioner big enough to cool a meat locker was built into the wall, running full blast and blowing straight at her. It was little enough.
She said, 'You gonna be in there long?'
'I don't know. Why?'
'Gonna be hot,' she said. 'Make sure you don't pass out. You pass out, don't you try to sue me.'
'I won't.'
'I'm warning you. I got some nice bottled water in here, only a dollar and a half.'
I bought a bottle to shut her up.
Paulette Renfro's storage unit was located at the rear of the facility. Each unit was a cinder-block shell that sprouted corrugated-metal storage spaces. There was no door on the shell, so you walked inside what amounted to a little cave to get to the individual storage spaces.
From the tarnish on the lock, it was clear that Paulette rarely if ever came here, but the key worked smoothly, and opened into a space the size of a closet. Boxes of various size were stacked along the walls, along with old electric fans and suitcases, and two lamps.
I emptied the closet, putting the unboxed things to the side, then carried out the boxes. When all the boxes were out, I went through the older boxes first, and that's where I found the notebooks that Evelyn Wozniak remembered. Her father had kept field notes much like a daybook, jotting notes about the young officers he trained, the perps he busted, and the kids he was trying to help, all dated, and crammed into seven small three-ring binders thick with pages. I was pretty sure that the most recent would be the most relevant.
I put the seven binders aside, then went through the rest of the boxes to see if anything else might be useful, but the only other things of Abel's were a patrol cap in a plastic bag, a presentation case with Wozniak's badge, and two framed com-
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mendations from when he was awarded the Medal of Valor. I wondered why the commendations were here in a box, but she had remarried. I guess over time she'd lost track of them.
I was repacking the boxes when a shadow framed itself in the door, and Joe Pike said, 'I wanted to get here before you.'
I glanced over at him, then went on with the packing.
'It's so easy to show you up.'
'Find anything?'
'Wozniak's daybooks.'
'You look through them yet?'
'Too hot to look through them here. I'll take them where it's cooler.'
'Want some help?'
'Sure.'
He put the boxes I had finished repacking back in the closet. I sealed the last two boxes, then handed them to him one by one.
'You erase Evelyn's message?'
He nodded.
'Why?'
