'That's it, just the two. The records section keeps track for eight years.'
'You have a phone number for the judge, Master Sergeant.'
'They don't keep a copy of the order, just that your
files were sent and why, along with the court's filing number. You want that?'
'Yes, sir. Let me get a pen.'
He read it off along with the date of the order and the date that my file had been sent. I thanked him for the help, then put down the phone. New Orleans was in the central time zone like St. Louis, so the courts would be closed, but their offices might still be open. I called the Information operator in New Orleans and got numbers for the State Superior Court and Judge Lester's office. The coincidence between Richard living in New Orleans and a judge there ordering my files was obvious, but I wanted to be sure.
A woman with a clipped Southern accent answered on the first ring.
'Judge Lester's office.'
I hung up. Lester would have had no legitimate reason for writing a court order to force the Army to release my files. He would have done so only as a favor to Richard or because Richard had paid him, either of which was an abuse of his office. He almost certainly wouldn't talk to me about it.
I thought it through, then dialed the number again. 'Judge Lester's office.'
I tried to sound older and Southern.
'This is Bill Stivic with the Army's Department of Personnel in St. Louis. I'm trying to track down a file we
sent to the judge in response to an order he issued.' 'The judge has left for the day.'
'Then I'm in a world of hurt, sugar. I pulled a whammy of a mistake when I sent the file down to y'all. I
sent the original, and that was our only copy.' Sounding desperate was easy.
'I'm not sure I can help you, Mr. Stivic. If the file is
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admitted evidence or case documentation, it can't be returned.'
'I don't want it returned. I should've made a copy before I sent it, I know, but, well, I don't know what I was thinking. So if you could find it, maybe I could get you to overnight a copy to me up here. I'd pay for it out of my own pocket.'
Sounding pathetic was easy, too. She said, 'Well, let me take a look.' 'You're a lifesaver, you truly are.'
I gave her the date and the file number from Lester's court order, then held on while she went to look. She came back on the line a few minutes later.
'I'm sorry, Mr. Stivic, but we don't have those records any longer. The judge sent them on to a Mr. Leland Myers as part of the requested action. Perhaps you could get a copy from his office?'
I let her give me Myers's number, and then I hung up. I thought about the folder that Richard slapped on the table when we were listening to the tape. Myers had probably handled the investigation. It felt like a dead end, and left me deflated. Fallon could have gotten most of what he knew by breaking into my house, and could have learned the rest a thousand other ways. All I had learned from Stivic was what I already knew--Richard hated my guts.
I went back to the turkey sandwich that I had left in front of the television, but threw it away. I no longer wanted it. My body ached and my eyes burned from the lack of sleep. The past two days were catching up with me like a freight train bearing down on a man caught on the tracks. I wanted to stretch out on the floor, but I thought that I might not be able to get up. The phone rang again when I was standing in the kitchen, but I
wanted to let it ring. I wanted to stand there in the kitchen and never move again. I answered. It was Starkey. 'Cole! We got the van! An Adam car found the van downtown! They just called it in!' She shouted out the location, but her voice was strained with something ugly as if the news she shared wasn't good. The aches were suddenly gone, as if they had never been. 'Did they find Ben?' 'I don't know. I'm on my way now. The others are on the way, too. Get down there, Cole. You won't be that far behind me, where you are. Get down there right away.' The tone in her voice was awful. 'Goddamnit, Starkey, what is it?' 'They found a body.' The phone fell out of my hands. It floated end over end, taking forever to fall. By the time it hit the floor I was gone.
time missing: 48 hours, aS minutes
The Los Angeles River is small, but mean. People who don't know the truth of it make fun of our river; all they see is a tortured trickle that snakes along a concrete gutter like some junkie's vein. They don't know that we put that river in concrete to save ourselves; they don't know the river is small because it's sleeping, and that every year and sometimes more it wakes. Before we put the river in that silly trough centered on a concrete plain at the bottom of those tall concrete walls, it flashed to life with the rain to wash away trees and houses and bridges, and cut its banks to
34 breed new channels almost as if it was looking for people to kill. It found what it looked for too many times. Now, when it wakes, the river climbs those concrete walls so high that wet claws rake the freeways and bridges as it tries to pull down a passing car or someone caught out in the storm. Chain-link fences and barbed wire spine along the top of the walls to keep out people, but the walls keep in the river. The concrete is a prison. The prison works, most of the time. The van had been left under an overpass in the river's channel between the train yards and the L.A. County Jail. Starkey was waiting in her car at a chain-link gate, and rolled when she saw me coming. We squealed down a ramp into the channel and parked behind three radio cars and two D-rides from Parker Center. The patrol officers were in the shade at the base of the overpass with two kids. The detectives had just arrived; two were with the kids and a third was peering into the van. Starkey said, 'Cole, you wait until I sec what's what.' 'Don't be stupid.' The van had been painted to change its appearance, but it was a four-door '67 Econoline with a cracked windshield and rust around the headlights. The new paint was thin, letting the Em from Emilio's show through like a shadow. The driver's door and the left rear door were open. A bald detective with a shiny head was staring into the back end. Starkey trotted ahead of me, and badged him. 'Carol Starkey. I put out the BOLO. We heard you got a vic.' The detective said, 'Oh, man, this one's nasty.' I moved past him to see inside, and Starkey grabbed my arm, trying to stop me. I was holding my breath.
235 'Cole, please let me look. Stop.' I shook her off, and there it was: A thick-bodied Caucasian man in a sport coat and slacks spread on his stomach with both arms down along his sides and one leg crossed over the other as if
