on the bricks-Hotel Farnham. But without the police lights, it would have been impossible to read. The darkness bothered me. The body was a good sixty feet from the near street, so he either took a shortcut he knew well or came with someone else. It would have been scary to come this way alone.
"It was you who found him?"
"I was over on Grand when I heard the shot-one cap. I ran past at first, but I heard him flopping around in here and there he was. I tried to get a handle on the bleeding, but it was too much. It was awful, man… Jesus."
She raised her hands like she was trying to get them out of the blood, and I saw they were shaking. The clothes she wore were probably spares from another cop's trunk. She had probably changed out of her bloody clothes in the ambulance and washed with the alcohol. She probably wanted to throw away her blood-soaked clothes, but she was a cop with a cop's pay so she would wash them herself when she got home, then have them dry-cleaned and hope the blood came out. Diaz turned away. The coroner techs had their gurney up, and were pulling on latex gloves.
I said, "No wallet?"
"No, they got it. All he had were the clippings, a nickel, and two pennies."
"No keys?"
She suddenly sighed, and seemed anxious and tired.
"Nothing. Look, you can take off, Cole. I want to finish up and get home to bed. It's been a long night."
I didn't move.
"He mentioned me by name?"
"That's right."
"What did he say?"
"I don't remember exactly, something about trying to find you, but I was asking what happened-I was asking about the shooter. He said he had to find his son. He said he had come all this way to find his boy, and he never met you, but he wanted to make up the lost years. I asked him who, and he told me your name. Maybe that isn't exactly what he said, but it was something like that."
She glanced at me again, then looked back at his body.
"Listen, Cole, I've arrested people who thought they were from Mars. I've busted people who thought they were on Mars. You heard O'Loughlin-we got bums, junkies, drunks, crackheads, schizophrenics, you name it, down here. You don't know what kind of mental illness this guy had."
"But you still have to clear me."
"If you were home all night, don't worry about it. He'll be in the system. I'll let you know when the CI pulls a name."
I turned away from the body and saw Pardy staring at me. His pinched face looked intent.
"It's not necessary, Diaz. Don't bother."
"You sure? I don't mind."
"I'm sure."
"Okay, well, whatever; your call."
I started back to my car, but she stopped me.
"Hey, Cole?"
"What?"
"I read the articles. That was some hairy stuff, man, what you did saving that boy. Congratulations."
I walked away without answering, but stopped again when I reached the yellow tape. Diaz had joined O'Loughlin and Pardy as the coroner's people bagged the body.
"Diaz."
She and Pardy both turned. Rigor had frozen the corpse. The techs leaned hard on the arms to fold them into the bag. A hand reached out from the dark blue plastic like it was pointing at me. They pushed it inside and pulled the zipper.
"When you get the ID, let me know."
I left them to finish their job.
3
Early in the fall, three men stole my girlfriend's only son, Ben Chenier. An ex-LAPD officer named Joe Pike and I saved the boy, but many people died, including the three kidnappers. Bad enough, but those three men had been hired by Ben's own father and were not your garden-variety criminals-they were professional mercenaries wanted under the International War Crimes Act. What with all the bodies, Joe and I faced felony charges, but the governments of Sierra Leone and Colombia interceded along with-get this-the United Nations. The lurid nature of a father contracting the abduction of his own child fed a wildfire of sensationalist journalism, but even before the worst of it, Lucy Chenier concluded that life with yours truly was not worth the risk, so she took her son and went home. She was right to leave. Being with me wasn't worth a four A.M. phone call saying a murdered stranger claimed to be the father I never knew.
I drove back to my house through a light rain, pretending my life was normal. When I reached home, I made scrambled-egg burritos, then turned on the