Ted’s stories.”
His daughter chirped up again.
“Not everyone.”
Cole shook his head.
“Wait. How many witnesses did he tell you about?”
Hollis ticked off a list, citing a hit man from Seattle, a drug-smuggling airline pilot from Miami, a kleptomaniac pimp from Biloxi, a getaway driver from Detroit who ran over two little girls, a bank robber from Detroit who killed his mother over a parakeet, a coke-addled hedge fund executive from San Francisco, a syndicate lawyer from Boston who wouldn’t stop seeing transgender prostitutes, and a one-eyed rapist from New Orleans who flipped on a drug-dealing African prince.
Hollis would have kept going, but his daughter had heard enough.
“Please. Stop.”
Hollis shrugged.
“Awful people make for good stories.”
His daughter interrupted again.
“They weren’t all awful, and they weren’t all criminals.”
Her father made an agreeable nod.
“This is true. Some were good people trying to do the right thing, like the lady from Houston.”
Cole felt a jolt, as if a passing temblor rolled the floor.
“Houston?”
Cole recalled the photo of Ed and his family at Angel Stadium, Angels 4, Astros 3, Ed wearing a Houston Astros cap.
Cole’s mouth felt dry.
“Ted relocated a witness from Houston?”
“Mm-hm. Now in this particular case, bad medicines were killing people, and his witness helped stop it. Here’s a lady, she knew it would be a hardship, testifying and all, but she stepped up when it counted. Folks like this, Ted admired.”
Cole said, “A federal case in Houston?”
Hollis glanced at his daughter.
“Yeah. What’d he call it?”
“Counterfeit pharmaceuticals.”
“That’s it. Fake pills, bad medicine, drugs with all this contamination. Teddy heard so many awful stories, he wouldn’t take an aspirin unless he knew where it came from.”
“Stories he heard from his witness.”
“Mm-hm.”
“He say anything else about his witness?”
“I doubt it. Ted was careful. These people changed their lives for a reason.”
His daughter said, “Go play golf, Dad. Have a drink.”
Cole thanked the Hollises, and returned to his car. An overhead sun baked the sky, only now the heat seemed farther away.
Cole imagined Kemp and Hollis and their buddies out on the links, everyone hitting a flask, and laughing at Ted’s funny stories. Back at the clubhouse, the stories would grow, spreading with each retelling like migrating doves.
Sooner or later, the wrong person might hear.
Sooner or later, the wrong person might come to call.
Cole took a breath. He started his car, and headed for home.
He was afraid for Isabel Roland. More afraid than before.
He thought about Isabel as he drove away, and did not see a tan car follow.
23.
John Chen
The Hancock Park location should’ve brightened John’s day. Most murders brought him to squalid neighborhoods and lice-ridden hovels. John preferred wealthier crime scenes. Wealthy people had nice things (like Teslas) and beautiful homes (a boy can dream, can’t he?). Also, wealthy women (almost always workout fanatics with smoking-hot bodies) were known to be lonely and desperate for love (John believed this to be true, despite having no evidence).
Not today.
The decaying old-money mansion smelled of urine and mothballs. And if hot, horny, lookie-loo wives lived nearby, they were nowhere to be seen.
Six black-and-whites, two D-rides, and two L.A. County emergency vehicles were out front when John arrived. A Wilshire Station Homicide dick walked him through the scene. The dick blew Cheez-Its, so John kept his distance.
The skull of a wheelchair-bound, ninety-two-year-old female had been split with a hatchet. Her sixty-seven-year-old son (a self-loathing mama’s boy) had struck her three times above the right eye (twice through the frontal bone, once through the parietal), after which he wandered out to their pool with the hatchet, phoned the emergency operator, and he shot himself in the head with a .32-caliber pistol. His only words to the operator were “Am I really so bad?”
Douche.
John Chen was thrilled.
Three perfect splatter lines traced the arc of his swings. Blood drips from the hatchet marked the son’s path to the poolside chaise longue where he’d sat, made the call, and buttoned his play. The pistol remained in his hand, the phone rested in his lap, and the hatchet lay on the deck beside him. Barring a staged scene by malevolent actors (which, c’mon, happened only on television), the crime was a grounder.
The Cheez-It dick studied the old lady’s bloody chair.
“Shouldn’t take long, right? Looks like a grounder.”
“No time at all. It’s a grounder.”
Chen opened his equipment case. A grounder was a slam-dunk, open-and-shut case.
The Cheez-It dick walked to an open French door, and stared at the pool.
“Messed up. Poor guy must’ve been in a lot of pain.”
Chen rolled his eyes, wishing the dick would leave.
The Cheez-It dick