happened so fast nobody knew what to do and it never even occurred to them to scream. What the fuck. You can't say why people do anything."
Alvarez seemed both pissed off and spent after that, so Padilla let it ride. The social workers got themselves buckled in, and started their car.
"Why you think they didn't kill the little girl?"
"I don't know. Maybe they figured she couldn't finger them, her being so little, but my guess right now is they didn't see her. The way her footprints lead back to her room, she was probably in there sleeping or playing when it happened and they left before she came out. We'll let the psychologists talk to her about that. You never know. We get lucky, maybe she saw everything and can tell us exactly what happened and who did the deed. If she can't, then maybe we'll never know. That's the way it is with murder. Sometimes you never know. I gotta get back to work."
Alvarez joined another detective and the two of them walked around the side of the house. Padilla didn't want to go back to work; he wanted to go home, take a shower, then drink a cold beer in his backyard with his wife while his children watched television inside, but, instead, he stood and watched.
The social workers were slowly working their car around the civilians and cops crowding the street. Padilla couldn't see the little girl. She was too small to see, as if the car had swallowed her. Padilla had been a cop long enough to know that the murders that had occurred tonight would haunt everyone involved for the rest of their lives. The neighbors who lined the tape would worry that the killers might return. Some would feel survivor's guilt, and others would grow fearful. Insecurities would flare, marriages would fail, and more than one family would sell their house to get out of Dodge before it happened to them. That's the way it was with murder. It would haunt the people who lived here and the cops who investigated the case and the friends and relatives of the victims and the little girl most of all. The murder would change her. She would become someone other than who she would have been. She would grow into someone else.
Padilla watched the car turn onto the highway, then crossed himself.
Padilla whispered, "I'll pray for you."
He turned and went back into the house.
PART ONE. Next of Kin
1
They called me to view the body on a wet spring morning when darkness webbed my house. Some nights are like that; more now than before. Picture the World's Greatest Detective, reluctant subject of sidebar articles in the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles magazine, stretched on his couch in a redwood A-frame overlooking the city, not really sleeping at 3:58 A.M. when the phone rang. I thought it was a reporter, but answered anyway.
"Hello."
"This is Detective Kelly Diaz with LAPD. I apologize about the time, but I'm trying to reach Elvis Cole."
Her voice was coarse, reflecting the early hour. I pushed into a sitting position and cleared my throat. Police who call before sunrise have nothing to offer but bad news.
"How'd you get my number?"
I had changed my home number when the news stories broke, but reporters and cranks still called.
"One of the criminalists had it or got it, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm sorry for calling like this, but we have a homicide. We have reason to believe you know the deceased."
Something sharp stabbed behind my eyes, and I swung my feet to the floor.
"Who is it?"
"We'd like you to come down here, see for yourself. We're downtown near Twelfth and Hill Street. I can send a radio car if that would help."
The house was dark. Sliding glass doors opened to a deck that jutted like a diving platform over the canyon behind my house. The lights on the opposite ridge were murky with the low clouds and mist. I cleared my throat again.
"Is it Joe Pike?"
"Pike's your partner, right? The ex-cop with the sunglasses?"
"Yes. He has arrows tattooed on the outside of his delts. They're red."
She covered the phone, but I heard muffled voices. She was asking. My chest filled with a growing pressure, and I didn't like that she had to ask because asking meant maybe it was.
"Is it Pike?"
"No, this isn't Pike. This man has tattoos, but not like that. I'm sorry if I scared you that way. Listen, we can send a