She said, What did Joe want? The daughter of a friend of his is missing. He wants me to help check it out. Lucy looked up at me, her face now serious. A child? He didn’t say. You mind if I go? She gla...
She asked me why I always had something flip to say. I said that I didn’t know, but having been blessed with the gift, I felt obliged to use it.
Sergeant Dominick Leland was tall, thin as barbed wire, and peered at the world through a permanent scowl. A rim of steel-colored fuzz circled his mocha pate, and two fingers were missing from his lef...
Scott squeaked approval, stayed her, and went to his car. Maggie sensed something was wrong by the change in his gait. She desperately wanted to follow, but Scott had stayed her. She obeyed, but whimp...
Scott let Maggie out the rear, clipped her lead, and hurried to catch up as Sims and another Fugitive dick brought out Estelle Rolley. Rolley looked like a walking skeleton. Street officers called thi...
Scott found two discs when he opened the envelope, one labeled Tyler’s, the other Club Red. Something about the number of discs bothered him, and then he recalled Melon had logged two discs from Club...
Scott ejected the disc. The Club Red disc was by far the superior, which left Scott wondering what the missing disc showed. He dug out Melon’s interview with Richard Levin to make sure he had it right...
Pretty soon Joe Pike came back, scrubbed and fresh and bright-eyed. It’s never easy to tell if someone is bright-eyed when they’re wearing sunglasses, but one makes certain assumptions.
Pike was focused on Dru. She had thrown on shorts and a faded T-shirt in her rush to the shop, and now her hair was mussed and her feet were smudged with green. Pike thought the smart eyes seemed worr...
Pike studied her. She was pretty and used to it, and the clothes and the hair indicated she liked being the center of attention, which would be a problem. The Savile Row suits were still piling up bag...
Pike stood six-one and weighed one ninety-five, all ropy muscles and crimson arrows inked on his delts. He wore a sleeveless gray sweatshirt, sun-faded jeans, and running shoes. Dark glasses masked hi...
Pike slipped behind the wheel of his Jeep, lowered the sun visor, then started the engine. None of the three men looked toward the enormous Do-It-Yourself parking lot across the street. They would hav...
Pike rolled down his window and motioned them over. Pike spoke Spanish pretty well, along with French, gutter German, a little Vietnamese, a little Arabic, and enough Swahili to make himself understoo...
Pike made the Corolla for an early ’90s model. It was dark brown in color with mismatched wheels and rusty acne on the trunk. Pike copied the plate number. He stayed between three and four cars behind...
Pike jogged back across Mulholland, and found Rose Platt squatting beside Rainey. He tried to understand what he felt about her, but he mostly felt nothing. Rose stood when she saw him, and Pike slowe...
Pike didn’t know what he would find or if he would find anything, but the Malibu’s back seat was filled with their duffels and sleeping bags. Pike checked to make sure no one was watching, then used a...
Pete was relaxed around them, so Maggie tolerated them, but only when Pete was near.
Nothing smelled worse than the death of another human being. Not horses or cattle or rotten whales washed onto a beach. Human death was the smell of what hid in the future, waiting for you.
Nobu Ishida had lived in an older split-level house on a Leave-It-to-Beaver street in Cheviot Hills, a couple of miles south of the Twentieth Century-Fox lot. It was dark, just after nine when we roll...
My phone buzzed in my pocket, but I did not move. He did a slow three-sixty until his eyes settled on the taco stand. A middle-aged Latina was ordering food. The red-haired cop was forty yards away, b...