The Closers (16 page)

He exhaled, almost too loudly. He had caught a break.

"I think you are right," Renner said. "I think I will check with her at a more reasonable hour."

"Yes, that might be better."

"As I think I told you earlier, we don't have Internet access here in the squad, so I haven't seen this website you've mentioned. As soon as I get home I'll check it out. But you say the site is linked to this other woman, Robin."

"Exactly. They worked together."

"And you called Robin when you couldn't get ahold of Lilly."

"Right again."

"And you talked on the phone and she told you Lilly went off to Tampa to see momma."

"She said she didn't know. She thought she might have gone there."

"Did you know Robin previous to this telephone call?"

"No, never."

"I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, Mr. Pierce, and say I'm betting Robin is a pay-for-play girl. A prostitute. So what you are telling me is that a woman engaged in this sort of business gets a call from a perfect stranger and ends up telling this stranger where she thinks her missing partner in crime went. It just sort of comes out, I guess, huh?"

Pierce almost groaned. Renner would not let it go. He was relentlessly picking at the frayed ends of his statement, threatening to unravel the whole thing. Pierce just wanted to get out, to leave. And he now realized that he needed to say or do anything that would accomplish that. He no longer cared about consequences down the road. He just needed to get out. If he could get to Robin before Renner, then hopefully he could make it work.

"Well ... I guess I sort of was able to convince her that, you know, I really wanted to find her and make sure everything was all right. Maybe she was worried about her, too."

"And this was over the telephone?"

"Yes, the telephone."

"I see. Okay, well, we'll be checking all of this with Robin."

"Yes, check with her. Can I --"

"And you'd be willing to take a polygraph test, wouldn't you?"

"What?"

"A polygraph. It wouldn't take long. We'd just shoot downtown and get it taken care of."

"Tonight? Right now?"

"Probably not. I don't think I could get anybody out of bed to give it to you. But we could do it tomorrow morning, first thing."

"Fine. Set it up for tomorrow. Can I go now?"

"We're almost there, Mr. Pierce."

His eyes dropped to the statement again. Surely, Pierce thought, we have covered everything on the form. What is left?

"I don't understand. What else is there to talk about?"

Renner's eyes came to Pierce's without any movement of his head or face.

"Well, your name came up a couple of times on the computer. I thought maybe we'd talk about that."

Pierce felt his face flush with heat. And anger. The long ago arrest was supposed to have been erased from his record. Expunged was the legal term. He had completed the probation and did the 160

hours of public service. That was a long time ago. How did Renner know?

"You're talking about the thing up in Palo Alto?" he asked. "I was never officially charged. It was diverted. I was suspended from school for a semester. I did public service and probation. That was it." "Arrested on suspicion of impersonating a police officer."

"It was almost fifteen years ago. I was in college."

"But you see what I'm looking at here. Impersonating an officer then. Running around like some kind of detective now. Maybe you've got a hero complex, Mr. Pierce."

"No, this is totally different. What that was back then was I was on the phone, trying to get some information. Social engineering- I was soshing out a number. I acted like I was a campus cop so I could get a phone number. That was it. I don't have a hero complex, whatever that is."

"A phone number for who?"

"A professor. I wanted his home number and it was unlisted. It was nothing."

"The report says you and your friends used the number to persecute the professor. To pull an elaborate prank on him. Five other students were arrested."

"It was harmless but they had to make an example of us. It was when hacking was just getting big. We were all suspended and got probation and community service but the punishment was more severe than the crime. What we did was harmless. It was minor."

"I'm sorry but I don't consider impersonating a police officer to be either harmless or minor."

Pierce was about to protest further but held his tongue. He knew he would not convince Renner. He waited for the next question and after a moment the detective continued.

"Says in the records you did your community service in a DOJ lab in Sacramento. Were you thinking of becoming a cop then or something?"

"It was after I changed my major to chemistry. I just worked in the blood lab. I did typing and matching, basic work. It was far from cop work."

"But it must have been interesting, huh? Dealing with cops, put ting together the evidence for important cases. Interesting enough for you to stay on after you did your hours."

"I stayed because they offered me a job and Stanford is expensive. And they didn't give me the important cases. Mostly the cases came to me in FedEx boxes. I did the work and shipped it all back. No big deal. In fact, it was kind of boring."

Renner moved on without transition.

"Your arrest for impersonating an officer also came a year after your name came up on a crime report down here. It's on the computer."

Pierce started to shake his head.

"No. I've never been arrested for anything down here. Just that time up at Stanford."

"I didn't say you were arrested. I said your name's on a crime report. Everything's on computer now. You're a hacker, you know that. You throw in a name and sometimes it's amazing what comes out."

"I am not a hacker. I don't know the first thing about it anymore. And whatever crime report you are talking about, it must be a different Henry Pierce. I don't rem em--"

"I don't think so. Kester Avenue in Sherman Oaks? Did you have a sister named Isabelle Pierce?"

Pierce froze. He was amazed that Renner had made the connection.

"The victim of a homicide, May nineteen eighty-eight."

All Pierce could do was nod. It was like a secret was being told, or a bandage ripped off an open wound.

"Believed to have been the victim of a killer known as the Dollmaker, later identified as Norman Church. Case closed with the death of Church, September nine, nineteen ninety."

Case closed, Pierce thought. As if Isabelle were simply a file that could be closed, put in a drawer and forgotten. As if a murder could ever really be solved.

He came out of his thoughts and looked at Renner.

"Yes, my sister. What about it? What's it got to do with this?"

Renner hesitated and then slowly his weary face split into a small smile.

"I suppose it has everything and nothing to do with it."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Sure it does. She was older than you, wasn't she?"

"A few years."

"She was a runaway. You used to go look for her, didn't you? Says so on the computer, so it must be right, right? At night. With your dad. He'd --"

"Stepfather."

"Stepfather, then. He'd send you into the abandoned buildings to look because you were a kid and the kids in those squats didn't run from another kid. That's what the report says. Says you never found her. Nobody did, until it was too late."

Pierce folded his arms and leaned across the table.

"Look, is there a point to this? Because I would really like to get out of here, if you don't mind."

"The point is, you went searching for a lost girl once before, Mr. Pierce. Makes me wonder if you're not trying to make up for something with this girl Lilly. You know what I mean?"

"No," Pierce said in a voice that sounded very small, even to himself.

Renner nodded.

"Okay, Mr. Pierce, you can go. For now. But let me say for the record that I don't believe for a moment you've told me the whole truth here. It's my job to know when people are lying and I think you're lying or leaving things out, or both. But, you know, I don't feel too bad about it, because things like that catch up with a person. I may move slow, Mr. Pierce. Sure, I kept you waiting in here too long. A fine, upstanding citizen like you. But that's because I am thorough and I'm pretty good at what I do. I'll have the whole picture pretty soon. I guarantee it. And if I find out you crossed any lines in that picture, it's going to be my pleasure, if you know what I mean."

Renner stood up.

"I'll be in touch about that polygraph. And if I were you, I might want to think about going back to that nice new apartment on Ocean Way and staying there and staying away from this, Mr. Pierce."

Pierce stood up and walked awkwardly around the table and Renner to the door. He thought of something before leaving.

"Where's my car?"

"Your car? I guess it's wherever you left it. Go to the front desk. They'll call a cab for you."

"Thanks a lot."

"Good night, Mr. Pierce. I'll be in touch."

As he walked through the deserted squad room to the hallway that led to the front desk and the exit, Pierce checked his watch. It was twelve-thirty. He knew he had to get to Robin before Renner did but her number was in the backpack in his car.

And as he approached the front counter he realized he had no money for a cab. He had given every dollar he had on him to Robin. He hesitated for a moment.

"Can I help you, sir?"

It was the cop behind the counter. Pierce realized he was staring at him.

"No, I'm fine."

He turned and walked out of the police station. On Venice Boulevard he started jogging west toward the beach.

As Pierce went down the alley to his car he saw that Lilly Quinlan's apartment was still a nest of police activity. Several cars were clogging the alley and a mobile light had been set up to spray the front of the apartment with illumination.

He noticed Renner standing out front, conversing with his partner, a detective whose name Pierce did not remember. It meant Renner had probably driven right by Pierce on his way back to the crime scene and had not noticed him or had intentionally decided not to offer him a ride. Pierce chose the second possibility. A cop on the street, even at night, would notice a man jogging in full dress. Renner had purposely gone by him.

Standing- or maybe hiding- next to his car while he cooled down from the jog over, Pierce watched for a few minutes and soon Renner and his partner went back inside the apartment. Pierce finally used the keyless remote to unlock the door of the

BMW.

He slipped into the car and gently closed the door. He fumbled with the key, trying to find the ignition, and realized the ceiling light was off. He thought it must have burned out because it was set to go on when the door was open. He reached up and tapped the button anyway and nothing happened. He tapped it again and the light came on.

He sat there looking up at the light for a long moment and considering this. He knew the light had a three-setting cycle controlled by pushing the button on the ceiling next to it. The first position was the convenience setting, engaging the light when the door was open. Once the door was closed the light would fade out after about fifteen seconds or the ignition of the car, whichever came first. The second position turned on the light full-time, even if the door was closed. The third position turned the light off with no automatic convenience response.

Pierce knew he always kept the light set on the first position so the interior would be lit when he opened the door. That had not occurred when he had gotten into the car. The light had to have been in the third position of the cycle. He had then pushed the button once- to position one- and the light did not come on, because the door had already been closed. He had pushed it a second time and the light came on in position two.

Opening and closing the door, he went through the cycle until he had confirmed his theory. His conclusion was that someone had been in his car and changed the light setting.

Suddenly panicked by this realization, he reached between the two front seats to the backseat floor. His hand found his backpack. He pulled it forward and made a quick check of its contents. His notebooks were still there. Nothing seemed to be missing.

He opened the glove box and that too seemed undisturbed. Yet he was sure someone had been inside the car.

He knew the most expensive thing in the car was probably the leather backpack itself, yet it had not been taken. This led him to conclude that the car had been searched but not burglarized. That explained why it had been relocked. A car burglar probably wouldn't have bothered to disguise what had happened.

Pierce looked up at the lit doorway of the apartment and knew what had happened. Renner. The police. They had searched his car. He was sure of it.

He considered this and decided there were two possibilities as to how it had happened and how the mistake that led to his tip-off had occurred. The first was that the searcher opened the door- probably with a professional "slim jim" window channel device- and then hit the light button twice to extinguish the light so as not to be seen in the car.

The second possibility was that the searcher entered the car and closed the door, the overhead light going out on its timer delay. The searcher would have then pushed the overhead button to turn the light back on. When the search was completed he would have then pushed the button again to turn the light off, leaving it in the cycle position Pierce had found it.

His guess was that it was the latter possibility. Not that it mattered. He thought about Renner inside the apartment. He knew then why the detective had not given him a ride. He had wanted to search the car. He beat Pierce back to the scene and searched his car.

The search would have been illegal without his permission but Pierce actually felt the opposite of angry about it. He knew there was nothing in the car that incriminated him in the Lilly Quinlan disappearance or any other crime. He thought about Renner and the disappointment he probably felt when the car turned up clean.