"Now, do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?"
"Heard them enough growing up."
Renner raised an eyebrow.
"In the movies and on TV," Pierce added.
"Please answer the question and hold off on being clever if you can."
"Yes, I understand my rights."
"Good. Now is it all right if I ask you a few questions?"
"Am I a suspect?"
"A suspect in what?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Hard to tell what we've got here."
"But you still think you need to read me my rights. To protect me, of course."
"That's right."
"What are your questions? Have you found Lilly Quinlan?"
"We're working on it. You don't know where she is, do you?"
Pierce shook his head and the movement made his head feel a little sloshy. He waited for it to subside before speaking.
"No. I wish I did."
"Yes, it would kind of clear things up a bit if she just walked through the door, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. Was it her blood on the bed?"
"We're still working on it. Preliminary tests showed that it was human blood. But we have no sample from Lilly Quinlan to compare it with. I think I've got a line on her doctor. We'll see what records and possible samples he has. A woman like that, she probably had her blood checked on a regular basis."
Pierce assumed Renner was talking about Lilly checking herself for sexually transmitted diseases. Still, confirmation of the seemingly obvious —that it was human blood he had found on the bed —made him feel more depressed. As if the last slim hope he had for Lilly Quinlan was slipping away.
"Let me ask the questions now," Renner said. "What about this girl Robin that you mentioned before? Have you seen her?"
"No. I've been here."
"Talked to her?"
"No. Have you?"
"No, we haven't been able to locate her. We got her number off the website like you said.
But all we get is a message. We even tried leaving one where I had a guy in the squad who's good on the phone call up and act like he was, you know, a customer."
"Social engineering."
"Yeah, social engineering. But she didn't call back on that one either."
Pierce felt the bottom completely drop out of his stomach now. Last he remembered, Nicole had tried to reach Lucy repeatedly and was also unsuccessful. Wentz might have gotten to her —or maybe even still had her. He realized he had to make a decision. He could dance around with Renner and continue to hold up a veil of lies in order to protect himself. Or he could try to help Lucy.
"Well, did you trace the number?"
"It's a cell."
"What about the billing address?"
"The phone's registered to one of her regular clients. He said he does it as a favor. He takes care of the phone for her and the lease on her fuck pad and she gives him a free pop every Sunday afternoon while his wife does the shopping at the Ralph's in the Marina.
It's more like Robin's doing the favor, you ask me. The guy's a fat slob. Anyway, she didn't show up Sunday afternoon at the pad —it's a little place in the Marina. We were there. We went with this guy but she didn't show."
"And he doesn't know where she lives?"
"Nope. She never told him. He just pays for the cell phone and the apartment and shows up every Sunday. He lays the whole thing off on his expense account."
"Shit."
He envisioned Lucy in the hands of Wentz and Six-Eight. He reached up and ran his fingers along the seams in his own face. He hoped she got away. He hoped she was just hiding somewhere.
"Yeah, 'shit' is exactly what we said. And the thing is, we don't even have her full name —we got her picture from the website, if it is her picture, and the name Robin. That's it, and I get the funny feeling neither one is legit."
"What about going to the website?"
"I told you, we went —"
"No, the real place. The site office in Hollywood?"
"We did and we caught a lawyer. No cooperation. We need a court order before they'll share client information. And as far as Robin goes, we don't have enough to go talk to a judge about court orders."
One more time Pierce thought about his choices. Protect himself or help Renner and possibly help Lucy. If it wasn't already too late.
"Turn that off."
"What, this tape? I can't. This is a formal interview. I told you, I'm taping it."
"Then it's over. But if you turn that off, I think I can tell you some things that will help you."
Renner appeared to hesitate while he thought about it but Pierce had the feeling that so far everything had been scripted and was moving in the exact direction the detective had wanted it to go.
The detective clicked a button on the tape recorder and the red record light went off. He slid the device into the right pocket of his jacket.
"Okay, whadaya got?"
"Her name isn't Robin. She told me her name is Lucy LaPorte. She's from New Orleans.
You've got to find her. She's in danger. It might already be too late."
"In danger from who?"
Pierce didn't answer. He thought about Wentz's threat not to talk to the police. He thought about the warnings from the private investigator, Glass.
"Billy Wentz," he finally said.
"Wentz again," Renner said. "He's the bogeyman in all of this, huh?"
"Look, man, you can believe what I say or not. But just find Robin —I mean, Lucy —and make sure she's okay."
"That's it? That's all you've got for me?"
"Her website photo is legitimate. I saw her."
Renner nodded as though he had assumed so the whole time.
"The picture's getting a little clearer here," he said. "What else can you tell me about her?
When did you see her?"
"Saturday night. She took me to Lilly's apartment. But she left before I went in. She didn't see anything, so I tried to keep her out of it. It was part of the deal I made with her.
She was afraid Wentz would find out."
"That was brilliant. You pay her?"
"Yes, but what does it matter?"
"It matters because money affects motives. How much?"
"About seven hundred dollars."
"A lot of bread for just a ride through Venice. You get the other kind of ride, too, did you?"
"No, Detective, I didn't."
"And so if this tale you told me before about Wentz being this big bad digital pimp is right, then her showing you the way to Lilly's apartment sort of puts her in harm's way, doesn't it?"
Pierce nodded. His head didn't go through the fishbowl effect this time. Vertical movement was okay. It was the horizontal moves that caused the problem.
"What else?" Renner said, still pushing.
"She shares that apartment in the Marina with a woman named Cleo. She's supposedly on the same site, though I never checked. Maybe you talk to Cleo and get a line on her."
"Maybe, maybe not. That it?"
"Last thing, I saw her get into a green and yellow taxi on Speedway on Saturday night.
Maybe you can trace it to her place."
Renner shook his head slightly.
"Works in movies. Not too often in real life. Besides, she probably went back to the fuck pad. Saturdays are busy nights."
The door to the room opened and Monica Purl stepped in. She saw Renner and stopped in the threshold.
"Oh, sorry. Am I —"
"Yes, you are," Renner said. "Police business. Could you wait outside, please?"
"I'll just come back."
Monica looked at Pierce, her face reacting in horror to what she saw. Pierce tried to smile and raised his left hand and waved.
"I'll call you," Monica said, and then she went back through the door and was gone.
"Who was that? Another girlfriend?"
"No, my assistant."
/> "So you want to talk about what happened on that balcony Sunday? Was it Wentz?"
Pierce didn't say anything for a long time as he thought about the consequences of answering the question. A large part of him wanted to name Wentz and file charges against him. Pierce felt deeply humiliated by what Wentz and his giant had done to him.
Even if the surgery on his face was successful and no physical scars were left behind, he knew without a doubt that the attack was going to be hard to live with, always to have in his memory. There would be scars nonetheless.
But still, the threat Wentz had made lodged in his mind as something very real —to himself, to Robin, even to Nicole. If Wentz was able to find him and invade his home so easily, then he would be able to find Nicole.
He finally spoke.
"It's a Santa Monica case, what do you care?"
"It's all one case and you know it."
"I don't want to talk about it. I don't even remember what happened. I remember I was carrying groceries up to my apartment and then I woke up when the paramedics were working on me."
"The mind is a tricky thing, isn't it? The way it blocks out the bad things."
The tone was sarcastic and Pierce could tell by the look on Renner's face that he did not believe his memory loss. The two men stared at each other for a long moment, then the detective reached into his jacket.
"How about this, jog anything loose?"
He pulled out a folded 8 × 10 photo and showed it to Pierce. It was a grainy blowup of the Sands apartment tower taken from a long distance. From the beach. He pulled the photo closer and saw the small images of people on one of the upper balconies. He knew it was the twelfth floor. He knew it was him and Wentz and his muscle man, Six-Eight.
Pierce was being held off the balcony by his ankles. The figures in the photo were too small to be recognizable. He handed it back.
"No. Nothing."
"Right now it's the best we got. But once they put it on the news that we're looking for photos, videos, whatever, we might come up with something decent. A lot of people were out there. Somebody probably got a good shot."
"Good luck."
Renner was silent, studying Pierce for a long while before he spoke again.
"Look, if he threatened you, we can protect you."
"I told you, I don't remember what happened. I don't remember anything at all."
Renner nodded.
"Sure, sure. Okay, then let's forget the balcony. Let me ask you something else. Tell me, where did you hide Lilly's body?"
Pierce's eyes widened. Renner had used misdirection to hit him with the sucker punch.
"What? Are you —"
"Where is it, Pierce? What did you do with her? And what did you do with Lucy LaPorte?"
A cold feeling of fear began to rise in Pierce's chest. He looked at Renner and knew the detective was deadly serious. And he knew suddenly that he wasn't a suspect. He was the suspect.
"Are you fucking kidding me? You wouldn't even know about this if I hadn't called you people. I was the only one who cared about it."
"Yeah, and maybe by calling us and traipsing all over that scene and the house, what you were setting up was a nice little defense. And maybe the job you had Wentz or one of your other pals do on your face was part of the defense. Poor guy gets his nose smashed for sticking it in the wrong place. It doesn't get my sympathy vote, Mr. Pierce."
Pierce stared at him, speechless. Everything that he had done or that had been done to him was being perceived by Renner from a completely opposite angle.
"Let me tell you a quick little story," Renner said. "I used to work up in the Valley and one time we had a missing girl. She was twelve years old, from a good home, and we knew she wasn't a runaway. Sometimes you just know. So we organized the neighbors and volunteers into a search party in the Encino Hills. And lo and behold, one of the neighbor boys finds her. Raped and strangled and stuffed into a culvert. It was a bad one.
And you know what, turned out that the boy who found her was the one who did the deed. Took us a while to circle back around to him but we did and he confessed. Being the one who found her like that? That's called the Good Samaritan complex. He who smelt it dealt it. Happens all the time. The doer likes getting close to the cops, likes helping out, makes him feel better than them and better about what he did."
Pierce was having difficulty even fathoming how everything had turned on him.
"You're wrong," he said quietly, his voice shaking. "I didn't do it."
"Yeah? Am I wrong? Well, let me tell you what I've got. I've got a missing woman and blood on the bed. I've got a bunch of your lies and a bunch of your fingerprints all over the woman's house and fuck pad."
Pierce closed his eyes. He thought about the apartment off Speedway and the seagull house on Altair. He knew he had touched everything. He'd put his hands on everything.
Her perfume, her closets, her mail.
"No . . ."
It was all he could think to say.
"No, what?"
"This is all a mistake. All I did . . . I mean . . . I got her number. I just wanted to see . . . I wanted to help her . . . You see, it was my fault . . . and I thought if I . . ."
He didn't finish. The past and present were too close together. They were morphing together, one confusing the other. One moving in front of the other like an eclipse. He opened his eyes and looked at Renner.
"You thought what?" the detective asked.
"What?"
"Finish the line. You thought what?"
"I don't know. I don't want to talk about it."
"Come on, kid. You started down the road. Finish the ride. It's good to unburden. Good for the soul. It's your fault Lilly's dead. What did you mean by that? It was an accident?
Tell me how it happened. Maybe I can live with that and we can go tell the DA together, work something out."
Pierce felt fear and danger flooding his mind now. He could almost smell it coming off his skin. As if they were chemicals —compound elements sharing common molecules — rising to the surface to escape.
"What are you talking about? Lilly? It's not my fault. I didn't even know her. I tried to help her."
"By strangling her? Cutting her throat? Or did you do the Jack the Ripper number on her?
I think they say the Ripper was a scientist. A doctor or something. You the new Ripper, Pierce? Is that your bag?"
"Get out of here. You're crazy."
"I don't think I'm the crazy one. Why was it your fault?"
"What?"
"You said she was all your fault. Why? What did she do? Insult your manhood? You got a little pecker, Pierce? Is that it?"
Pierce shook his head emphatically, touching off a bout of dizziness. He closed his eyes.
"I didn't say that. It's not my fault."
"You said it. I heard it."
"No. You're putting words into my mouth. It's not my fault. I had nothing to do with it."
He opened his eyes to see Renner reach into his coat pocket and pull out a tape recorder.
The red light was on. Pierce realized that it was a different recorder from the one that had been placed earlier on the food tray and then turned off. The detective had taped the whole conversation.
Renner clicked the rewind button for a few seconds and then jockeyed around with the recording until he found what he wanted and replayed what Pierce had said moments before.
"This is all a mistake. All I did . . . I mean . . . I got her number. I just wanted to see . . . I wanted to help her . . . You see, it was my fault . . . and I thought if I . . ."
The detective clicked off the recorder and looked at Pierce with a smug smile on his face.
Renner had him cornered. He had been tricked. All his legal instincts, as limited as they were, told him to not speak another word. But Pierce couldn't stop.
"No," he said. "I wasn't talking about her. About Lilly Quinlan. I was talking about my sister. I was —"
"We were talking abou
t Lilly Quinlan and you said, 'It was my fault.' That is an admission, my friend."
"No, I told you, I —"
"I know what you told me. It was a nice story."