

## TAINTED SOULS

### A Novel

### Steven J. Wangsness

Tainted Souls

© 2012 by Steven J. Wangsness

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Ploughshare Point

Seattle, Washington

for Eric and Nora

There are things we know we know. . . .

We know there are some things we do

not know. But there are also unknown

unknowns—the ones we don't know

we don't know.

—Donald Rumsfeld

## 1

IT STARTED OFF as a simple case of murder. But wasn't.

Later, after they'd trundled him off with a hood over his head and tossed him in a windowless cell, Frost had plenty of time to consider how he'd wound up in such a fix. He blamed himself. He should have seen it coming.

He blamed the Spaniards, too. If not for a jurisdictional oddity they bequeathed to their successors, he never would have left the squad room that day.

The land speculators behind the 1924 drive to incorporate Santa Isidora, then a bucolic hamlet, envisioned a housing boom when Los Angeles eventually debouched over the mountains from the San Fernando Valley, and included within the new city limits all that remained of the once-mighty ranchero deeded by King Charles IV of Spain to Ignacio Salvador Maria de Bonillas y Cervera. The Bonillas land grant's western boundary had been demarcated by a straight line drawn between the convergence of two small, ordinarily dry creeks to the south and a prominent outcropping of dark rock on the summit of a low escarpment to the north, known to the Spaniards as El Lobo Negro. The rock feature had remained intact despite many intervening earthquakes, but the creeks had long ago disappeared into drain pipes, and the southern terminus of the property now lay beneath third base of the Buster Keaton Elementary School baseball diamond.

As it happened, the same boundary line nearly bisected the Twin Pines Motel. The office and bungalows one through seven fell under the aegis of the county sheriff's department. Bungalows eight through twelve were the responsibility of the Santa Isidora Police Department, as was the dead body in bungalow nine.

" 'Twin Pines.' What a load of crap," Madden said.

Jim Madden had been Frost's partner almost since the day three years earlier when Frost, having fallen very far from grace, resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department and parachuted into the SIPD. Trim and muscled when a running back for Santa Isidora High, Madden now carried a beer belly that hung over his low-slung belt like shoplifter's swag. Like Frost, he was thirty-eight, but looked older thanks to a thinning stand of hair on the crown of his head. He sported a robust tan, unlike Frost, who spent his free time mostly indoors, at home.

"Do you see a pine tree anywhere around here?" Madden asked, punching his words through the last morsels of a beef-bean-and-cheese burrito. "I see live oaks. I see junipers. There's a big old walnut over there." A gnarled, black tree leaned precariously across the drainage ditch on the other side of the highway. Madden contemplated a mote of cheese on the tip of his little finger before scooping it up with his tongue. "That's it. Otherwise, all dry grass and dirt."

"Perhaps it's aspirational," Frost said. They were still sitting in the car, a tan Caprice, with the engine running. The SIPD patrol officer who had been dispatched to the motel was standing by his unit, watching them, probably wondering why the detectives seemed glued to their seats. The truth was that it was a hot day—too hot for the first day of October—and they were reluctant to leave the air-conditioned confines of the vehicle. Frost couldn't remember the officer's name but he was sure to know Frost's. The LAPD had kept his name out of the news media but within forty-eight hours every cop from Seattle to San Diego knew who Rick Frost was and what he had done.

His reputation always preceded him.

"The name is meant to evoke fresh air, the scent of pine needles, a location by a pristine lake," Frost said. The owners, he theorized, had pictured for themselves a splendid retirement as the proprietors of a small resort on the shores of a peaceful mountain lake, with plenty of spare time for trout fishing and bocce ball. Then something intervened to dash their dreams—a financial reverse, fear of uprooting themselves from familiar pastures, the opposition of children and grandchildren—and they settled for this humble enterprise with its blistering paint and slowly collapsing cottages.

Perhaps.

Perhaps it was presumptuous of him to be speculating about other people's aspirations when he had none of his own. He had discarded the penchant for indiscipline that led to his downfall at the LAPD, but other ghosts of Los Angeles had followed him north to his new home. He made no effort to expel them.

"Always the philosopher," Madden said. "What do you suppose is up with that?" He pointed to a solitary brown picnic table that sat between the bungalows and the highway. Rising from a pyramid of red, white and blue gravel just beyond the table was an aluminum pole flying a POW-MIA flag.

"We'd better do this," Frost said. He opened the car door and felt a blast of desert heat.

From the SIPD officer—his name was Lutz, it turned out—Frost and Madden learned the motel was owned by Fred and Sheila Vickers. Fred, a disabled Vietnam vet and lifetime member of the NRA, ran the office and kept the books. Sheila, a surprisingly agile sixty-five-year-old who had shoveled cowshit in the summer while in high school, took care of the cleaning and maintenance.

"Whoa," Madden interrupted. "They told you all this just now?"

"They're quite talkative," Lutz said. "I guess it's kind of lonely out here. I got the impression they're one of those old couples who've run out of things to say to each other."

Mrs. Vickers discovered the body a little after noon when she went to make up the bungalow. Two young white men, Ted Smith and Ernie Black, had registered late in the afternoon the day before.

"The one in there is Smith," Lutz said, indicating bungalow nine with a nod of the head. He was the taller of the pair, Mrs. Vickers said. "Black never got out of the car, but Mrs. Vickers says his head barely reached the top of the front seat, so she's pretty sure he's on the short side." The Vickers had gone to bed around ten, after watching Dancing With the Stars and playing a game of Parcheesi. They had not heard or seen anything unusual. A group of immigrant day laborers in bungalow two were the only other occupants of the motel. Lutz hadn't gotten much out of them. "My Spanish is pretty lame," he said.

According to the Vickers, Smith and Black had been driving a late-model, blue Honda Civic. The car was gone. Lutz had already run the license number Smith provided on the registration card. It matched a Civic owned by Julia Pearse of Los Angeles. Nothing in the system indicated the car had been reported stolen.

Frost thanked Lutz and told him to call in a lookout on the car and a short, white male named Ernie Black, though he doubted that was his real name. It had the ring of an alias. So did Ted Smith.

That prompted the first question: why disguise your identities but not the ownership of the car you were driving? Fake names told him the pair probably had been up to no good. Their carelessness about the car suggested they were amateurs.

Frost asked Lutz to keep the Vickers company while he took a look at bungalow nine. He unleashed Madden on the day laborers. Though his background was one hundred percent Anglo, Madden spoke Spanish fluently. Frost had never bothered to find out where and when he had learned it.

Frost donned a pair of latex gloves and examined the bungalow door, jamb and lock for signs of forced entry, found none. He affixed blue cotton booties over his shoes and stepped into the room.

The air conditioner was still running full blast. Frost approached the body, stepping around an unzipped, black canvas duffel bag whose contents—a couple days' change of clothes, from the look of things—lay strewn across the floor.

Smith's body lay chest down, arms at the sides, on the nearer of the two twin beds, resting on a paisley bedspread that was, it seemed to Frost, standard issue in every American motel room. He looked young, early to mid-twenties. His light brown hair was cropped short, a military-style cut. He was wearing green-and-brown camouflage cargo pants, an Army-green T-shirt and white cotton socks. A pair of tan combat boots sat at the foot of the bed. Tattooed on Smith's left forearm was the familiar globe-and-anchor symbol of the Marine Corps. His head rested on a pillow, face turned to one side, as if sleeping—except his eyes were wide open. Neither bed appeared to have been slept in.

Smith's neck was bruised and distorted, his skin cool, and livor mortis, the post-mortem draining of blood to the lower extremities, well advanced. There were no obvious wounds nor any blood stains around the body, but Frost noted blood on the thumb and index finger of his right hand. If Smith had got in a few blows before going down, the blood might be his assailant's. The blood and scrapings from his fingernails could be matched against the DNA profiles in the California database of felons. If they were lucky, the database would cough up a name and address. Since "Ernie Black" had disappeared along with the Civic, he looked good as the prime suspect.

Kate Trocadero and Will Pflueger, the forensics team, arrived. Trocadero immediately set about taking pictures with her Nikon digital. Frost searched the duffel bag and pawed through the clothes on the floor but discovered nothing useful. He found $3.47 and a stick of Orbit gum in Smith's pockets, but no wallet or I.D. Cigarette butts from two different brands and what appeared to be the remains of a joint crowded the nightstand ashtray. Scattered on the floor and bed were several pieces of dried mud, some mere specks, a couple as large as a quarter. Frost scooped them up and bagged them. Droplets of blood stained the edge of the nightstand and carpet beneath. Frost told Pflueger, then securing Smith's hands in plastic bags, to swab the nightstand and to cut out a swatch of the carpet.

The wastebasket contained six crumpled beer cans and empty bags and wrappings from the Drive-By Drive-In, located a few miles to the west, away from Santa Isidora. Frost searched the bathroom, closet and chest of drawers. The bathroom window was securely locked.

Once Frost gave the go-ahead, Trocadero retrieved a vacuum cleaner from the forensics van to sweep up loose hair and fibers. Pflueger popped open a fingerprint kit and started to dust.

Frost stepped outside.

Madden joined him a minute later, stepped into the bungalow for a brief look. The coroner's meat wagon arrived. Madden returned outside, lit a cigarette and positioned himself downwind of Frost.

"Pretty pristine," Madden said. "Victim looks like he's taking a nap."

"There was blood on his hands," Frost said.

"Really? Didn't notice. Pflueger already had his hands in baggies."

"Some more on the floor and the nightstand."

"That I saw. Not much, though. Hardly enough to wet a tampon." He laughed. "Anything on the victim?"

"Nothing. No wallet, no I.D. Marine Corps tattoo on his left arm. Duffel bag of clothes. Dope in the ashtray, along with cigarette butts. We'll have Oleske test them for DNA, along with the blood." Martha Oleske was the chief of forensics.

"Dollars to doughnuts says we'll never need it. I'll bet Ernie Black is out running up a tab on the victim's credit cards even as we speak."

"You know me, I like to cover all the bases."

"Anything else of interest?"

"He's been dead a long time, probably since last night or early this morning. They had beer and Drive-By burgers for dinner. We'll stop in on the way back and see if they have a security camera. Some mud on the nightstand and floor. We'll see what Oleske can make of it. We should send some units around to check with other businesses within a one-mile radius to see if they have security cameras. It would be nice to put a face to the name Ernie Black."

"Won't be much in the way of cameras, out here on the edge of civilization."

"Less work for everyone, then. What did your Mexicans have to say?"

"Salvadorans." Madden shook his head. "Those clowns don't know nada. They were pretty nervous at first. Thought I was from La Migra. But I reassured them. Told them I needed some drywalling done at my place." Madden grinned. He flicked his still-lit cigarette in the direction of the picnic table. It arced in a long parabola and landed in a shower of sparks on the center leaf. "They hear nothing, they see nothing. They got back last night around eight and fried themselves up a batch of pupusas. The Civic was there, it wasn't there, no one's really sure. Didn't see anyone coming or going. Didn't see Smith or Black. They were too busy knocking down a couple of cases of Coronas to pay much attention to what was going on outside. Names they gave me were Rodriguez, Hernandez, Rodriguez again, and—get this—Van Koevering. How about that, a Dutch-Salvadoran!"

Frost shrugged.

"I checked in with the Vickers, too, seeing as I wasn't getting anywhere with the Salvadorans," Madden said. "My, they are a chatty couple. It must be a real pain in the ass checking in or out of here. Remind me never to use this place for a little action on the side."

"Flora would kill you."

"You're right, she'd cut me six ways from Sunday." Flora was Madden's girlfriend. She was petite, with long, straight black hair that sparkled like obsidian when the light caught it just right. She was as energetic as a border collie hopped up on diet pills and as profane as a sailor in a whorehouse. Her most unusual quality, however, were her eyes, translucent and green as emeralds. Frost wondered about the combination of genes that had produced them.

"Were they any more helpful than they were with Lutz?"

"Not really. Watched TV, played a game. Mr. Vickers is in a wheelchair so he can't really see over the counter. A VC mortar round caught up with him outside Chu Lai, he said. It's just by happenstance that Mrs. Vickers was in the office when Smith and Black checked in. She got a brief glimpse of Black out in the car. Like Lutz said, she said he was short, with short brown hair and brown eyes and was wearing the same kind of military-style T-shirt as Smith. Maybe our boys are a couple of survivalists. Got into an argument over who was doing more to stock the larder and prepare for the End Times, and so the one strangled the other."

"Highly plausible."

Frost called in a request for a couple of patrol units to swing by and pick up the Salvadorans. He'd see if they were as ignorant as they claimed. He asked the Vickers to come in to make a formal statement. Madden could sit down with Mrs. Vickers and use the Compositor 2000 software to try to fashion a likeness of Ernie Black.

_

The Drive-By had no security cameras. That was not altogether a surprise. Isolated as it was at the head of a valley hemmed in on three sides by mountains, Santa Isidora and the surrounding area had a relatively low crime rate. That and the tight-fisted attitude of the city council kept the police department small. The Drive-By's afternoon shift workers recalled no one matching the description of Smith or Black.

No witnesses, no video. Two strikes already.

Frost hadn't eaten all day but chose not to order a burger, aware of the Drive-By's frequent citations at the hands of the county health department. He bought a large bag of French fries, counting on the boiling oil in which they were cooked to kill any parasites.

"That is one fucked-up lunch," Madden said after they got back on the road into town.

"Unlike that Mexican dirigible you had earlier," Frost said.

"Florita made that burrito for me. Two, actually—I had one before we got the call. Beef, cheese and frijoles, wrapped in a flour tortilla. It's the complete, balanced meal. You got all four major food groups—meat, dairy, vegetables and carbohydrates."

A coyote dashed across the pavement and Madden swerved to avoid it.

"Fuck! Did you see that? Fucking coyotes are all over the place now. You never used to see them around here."

"It's all the newcomers," Frost said. Despite the city fathers' optimism in 1924, only recently had the inexorable growth of greater Los Angeles made its presence felt locally. Far from soothing Pacific vistas, land was still inexpensive by Southern California standards. Actors, directors, producers and other Hollywood powers had been among the first to discover Santa Isidora, snatching up acreage and building themselves ornate exurban retreats, fueling an explosion of Italianate villas, Spanish-style haciendas and faux-Cotswold cottages. Inevitably, other refugees from L.A.'s human bouillabaisse followed in their wake and a few middle-class subdivisions sprouted up in the flatlands.

Madden looked at Frost blankly.

"When the valley was still mostly farms and cattle ranches," Frost explained, "landowners poisoned or trapped coyotes. Cattle grazing meant less forage for rabbits and other rodents, which meant less food for coyotes. When you replace all that ranchland with subdivisions, no one's going around killing coyotes all day. Plus, the transplants bring all their domestic cats and yappy little dogs and let them loose in their backyards. Makes a perfect-sized meal for a hungry coyote."

"I should tell Flora to keep the cat in the house from now on, so Wile E. Coyote won't come along and snatch the little furball up."

"How is Flora, by the way?"

"She is fine, so fine."

Frost was alarmed by the tone of Madden's voice.

"Please do not make me regret asking the question by regaling me with tales of your sex life." Frost still had a hard time imagining how the six-foot Madden and his tiny girlfriend managed it.

Madden pouted.

"You're just jealous."

"Perhaps so."

"When are you going to get yourself a girlfriend, Iceman?" Madden had pet names for everyone in the SIPD. Frost was "Iceman," an all-too-obvious play on his last name. Their boss, Chief of Police Leo Martinez, was "The One-Hour Martinizer." Madden shook his head. "How long have you been up here now—three years? Have you ever even had a date in that time?"

The way Madden said it made it sound shocking. Frost could try to explain it to his partner, but first he would have to explain it to himself. He wasn't interested. He wasn't trying to reinvent himself.

"What's it to you?"

"I want you to be happy, dude."

" 'If you want happiness, strive for virtue.' "

"Oh, for Christ's sake. Who are you quoting now, you fucking walking Bartlett's?"

"Aristotle."

"A Greek. It figures. Pederasts, every last one of them." Madden eased the car to a stop at a red light. "Seriously, Rick, you need a woman. I know you're straight. I've seen you staring at Flora's tits when she's sunning herself out by the pool." Frost drew back, less embarrassed by the fact that he looked at Flora's breasts than by the fact that Madden would bring it up. "It's OK. I don't mind. Stare all you want. It actually gives me a little charge to know how attractive other men find her."

"Maybe I just don't want to wind up with two ex-wives to whom I have to pay ungodly amounts of alimony every month." Frost almost regretted the remark. It was a sore spot.

"Fucking amen to that."

Frost didn't hear him. He was brooding. No witnesses. He didn't like cases with no witnesses. They were nothing but trouble.

He should have seen it coming.

## 2

THE SIPD OCCUPIED a square, two-story building faced in rose-colored sandstone adjacent to the Santa Isidora Civic Plaza—the rather grandiloquent name for what was, in essence, a small park with a fountain at its center.

Frost settled into his cubicle after pouring himself a cup of the stale sludge that had been sitting in the coffee machine since early that morning. He opened a case file. The SIPD was equipped with a computerized case-filing system, but Frost preferred the manual method. He liked to feel the heft of manila folders stuffed with lists of evidence, interview notes, photos. After a while it became like an archaeological expedition. Sometimes, if you dug through the layers of detritus often enough, you realized what you had tossed aside earlier as slag was really a critical nugget of information. The way he had it worked with his partner, Frost kept a manual file, while Madden transferred everything into the computer.

Frost ran the name "Ernie Black" through the system. As almost always happened, the system kicked back a smorgasbord of bad guys named Ernie Black or who had used the name as an alias at one time or another. Frost eliminated them from contention one by one—this one resided at Atascadero State Hospital, that one was accounted for in San Quentin, this one was six-two, that one was dead. In the end, none fit the profile of the Ernie Black who had checked into the Twin Pines Motel.

He found no good match for "Ted Smith" either.

Frost was getting set to check in with Madden, who was taking on the Salvadorans one after the other, when Leo Martinez motioned for him to join him in his office. Martinez was fifty-five, with an untamed mix of wavy black and gray hair. With a bushy mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth, he resembled the pop artist Peter Max. Martinez had taken the SIPD chief's job five years before after a quarter-century with the LAPD. For part of that time, he had been Frost's supervisor in the Hollywood Division.

"I believe I requested no more homicides until after the election," Martinez said. He had a dry and sometimes biting sense of humor that escaped some and offended others. "This one today makes four in the past two months. The mayor will be unhappy. Mrs. Nickerson will be all over him about it." Janine Nickerson was Mayor Brian Potter's nemesis on the city council and was running against him in the November election. She and her movie producer husband, Peter Nickerson, had moved to Santa Isidora some eight or nine years before. She had almost immediately become a thorn in the side of the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary members who had run the town for decades, pressing for a "greener" and "more humanistic" approach to city affairs. Potter was said to be worried that her husband's deep pockets could tip the campaign in Nickerson's favor and was rumored to have put the bite more heavily on his own stable of contributors.

Or so Frost, who took little interest in local politics, understood from snatches of his colleagues' conversations gleaned here and there.

"You can't really count the Penrod case as three homicides," Frost said. George Francis Penrod, a 42-year-old auto body repairman, had driven from his residence outside Grant's Pass, Oregon, to his boyhood home in Santa Isidora and clubbed his elderly parents to death while they slept in their bed. Then, as Frost had reconstructed the incident, Penrod relaxed in his father's arm chair, drank two beers, called 911 to report what he had done, put a shotgun in his mouth and blew the back of his head off. He left no note. His grieving and dumbfounded wife and three children could provide no explanation for his actions.

"Let's hope the mayor sees it that way. Fill me in on today's tragic turn of events."

Frost ran through the particulars. There seemed little doubt it was murder, though he supposed he couldn't rule out accident or suicide before hearing from the medical examiner. Their victim had no I.D. and they weren't sure of his identity. There was no sign of a break-in. The likely culprit was Smith's traveling companion, who was missing along with the car they had been driving. He had posted a lookout on both car and driver. No one at the motel had heard or seen anything unusual—anything at all, really—but Madden was giving the Salvadoran immigrants the third degree right now. He hoped Mrs. Vickers' memory could be prodded enough to produce a composite drawing of Ernie Black, but she had seen him mostly in profile, so he had his doubts. He wanted Martinez to free up some patrol units to check any businesses in the area that might have security cameras.

Martinez shook his head.

"Not enough to go around for that kind of wild goose chase. I'll have Ollie go through the phone book and make some calls." Sgt. Ollie Needham was the longest-serving member of the Santa Isidora police force. He had been a patrolman before Frost was born. He could have retired long ago, but demurred, saying if he did, he'd have to spend all the extra time alone with his wife. Needham spent his days in the squad room answering the phone, taking care of miscellaneous paperwork and performing other odd jobs. "If Ollie finds anyone who has a tape, I'll dispatch a unit to pick it up. Fair enough?" Frost nodded. "Find the car and driver and you'll find your answers."

Frost agreed. Madden had left a message on the answering machine of the registered owner of the car, asking her to call. As the car hadn't been reported stolen, she might be able to tell them who was driving it.

On the other hand, she might be in Aruba on vacation and have no idea her car had been taken.

Martinez motioned Frost to sit down. That usually meant something unpleasant was about to unfold.

"Rick, I need you to take another run up to the Grove," he said. "There's been another incident. Get up there and check it out and get everyone to chill out."

The Grove was a copse of live oaks believed to be several hundred years old—one of the last such stands in California. Once part of the old Bonillas ranchero, the trees now stood on the property of Thomas Rex ("T. Rex") Coldstone, billionaire tycoon and for the past twenty years Santa Isidora's most celebrated and influential resident. Coldstone wanted to build a hippodrome, stables and other equestrian facilities on the site, but was being frustrated by a band of environmental activists. The protesters had camped out among the oaks and some had even taken up residence in the tree-tops. They pledged not to leave until the oaks were safe, daring the city to try to arrest them or Coldstone to try to evict them.

"Chief, I'm just at the beginning of a murder investigation," Frost said. "Send someone else. Besides, what's the point? Nothing's going to change." Frost had been to the Grove three times in the past three weeks, four times in the six weeks since the protesters began their "eco-action."

"I have explained this to you many times, Detective Frost." Martinez sat back in his brown-leather swivel chair and spread his arms wide, smiling. "We've got a small operation here. We all do double duty. Triple duty, if need be. Every police department needs a Community Relations Officer. You are this department's designated CRO. It falls to your capable shoulders to take on this onerous task. I explained all this to you when I saved your ass and gave you a home away from home." It was a not-so-subtle reminder that Frost owed what was left of his career as a policeman to his friendship with Martinez.

"I am surprised that Coldstone hasn't ordered Potter to send this department's designated SWAT team up there to roust Debbie Waite and her band of nomads out of those trees," Frost said.

Phhttt. The sibilant escaped from between the hairs of Martinez's mustache like steam erupting from a radiator pressure-release valve.

"You know the politics of this is delicate."

"I know that Coldstone got the mayor to do an end run around the city council and use dubious executive powers to re-zone that land from agricultural-use only to build-yourself-a-fucking-hippodrome-use in the dead of night. I just wonder how much it cost him."

"You see, now you're talking just like Mrs. Nickerson and her Hollywood friends." Ed Ballantine and Cici Swithers and other A-listers had made a big show of support recently by taking two-hour turns roosting in the trees. "The mayor wasn't expecting anyone to pay attention and he certainly wasn't expecting show biz glitterati to get involved. Now he's spooked. He knows he can't order a messy eviction. But you're wrong about Coldstone. He doesn't have to pay anybody off. He is the 800-pound gorilla of Santa Isidora. If he comes ambling down the street, the mayor and the council get out of his way. The Coldstone Museum is the biggest thing this town has had going for it in its entire ignoble history. It is probably the single biggest source of sales-tax revenue in this valley. And all that revenue comes from tourists. That helps keep residents' taxes low and makes for satisfied voters. All while paying for essential services, including the generous salaries paid to you and me."

Modeled loosely on the temple of Apollo at Didyma in Western Turkey, the Coldstone Museum of Art and Antiquities housed T. Rex Coldstone's princely personal collection of fine art and antiquities from Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome. The white marble colossus occupied the site of the former municipal dump, now restored to a verdant park-like setting, on the eastern edge of town. Martinez was not exaggerating the museum's impact on the local economy. On some summer weekends thousands of visitors trekked to the valley to gawk at the collection. Their cash sustained a number of local eateries, novelty shops, ice-cream parlors and bed-and-breakfasts.

"Don't forget ChiliFest." The chili cook-off the weekend before Independence Day was also a big draw. CNN had covered it this year.

"Only a Tex-Mex like me can make decent chili." Martinez grew up in San Antonio, moving to California after a hitch in the Navy. "Enough stalling. Madden can finish up with the Salvadorans and try to run down the car's owner again. You get your ass up to the Grove and try to talk some sense into those people."

"Debbie Waite and her crew are perfectly sensible. Most of them, anyway."

Phhttt.

"Go. Get out of my office. I am an important man and I have important work to do."

_

The SIPD contracted with the county sheriff to handle its forensics. Frost walked the two blocks to the Public Safety Building, which housed the sheriff's offices as well as the medical examiner's department. He took the stairs down to the basement, where the forensics lab was located, across the hall from the medical examiner. The basement halls, walls and doors were painted sea-foam green and gray. The subdued colors were meant to cut the edge from a trip to the morgue, but the ghoulish glow thrown off by the overhead fluorescent lamps created just the opposite effect, unsettling and mildly nauseating.

Frost found Martha Oleske roosting on a stool in the lab, holding a plastic zip bag up to the light. A cigarette trailed smoke from an ashtray atop the white acrylic tabletop. Strictly speaking, smoking inside a public building was a violation of California law, the Santa Isidora municipal code and, Frost could only imagine, the proper protocol to be observed in a laboratory stocked with volatile chemicals. But some agreement existed among the denizens of the basement that allowed Martha to smoke with impunity. She was five-foot-four, weighed a hundred-fifty pounds, had a booming voice and a commanding personality to match.

"What's shaking, lover?" she asked without looking up.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"I can smell that corduroy jacket of yours a mile away." She turned and smiled. Martha was stenciled in red on her lab coat over her ample left breast. She pointed to a nearby beaker. "Saw your reflection in the glass. Though I still don't understand why you're wearing that thing. It's like a hundred degrees outside." Santa Ana winds had been sweeping in over the mountains, bringing hot desert air and dust and creating the conditions for Southern California's annual season of brush fires.

"I'm betting on a shift to an onshore breeze."

"Swell. Then the whole valley will smell like Oxnard." Martha brushed back a lock of dark brown hair and puffed on her cigarette. "What can I do for you?"

"Thought I'd check in with you on the Twin Pines Motel case." Visiting her also bought him some time before he had to go up to the Grove.

"And here I thought you'd come by just because you missed me." Martha stubbed out her cigarette. "Kate and Will just got back twenty minutes ago, then took off for a late lunch. I haven't had a chance to catalogue anything, much less take a serious look at it. Working on a forgery case for the county." She held up a bank check. "The signature's pretty good—but still an obvious fake. Anything special you needed looked at?"

"Not really. There was some blood on the carpet. Possibly from the victim, possibly from the perpetrator."

"I can't believe you just said the word ' perpetrator.' "

"Fuck you, Oleske."

She laughed.

"DNA analysis will take six weeks. I could put a fire under it if you need it that badly."

"No, that won't be necessary. It looks to be a pretty straightforward case, really. Two guys traveling together. One's dead, the other one's disappeared. Even I can figure this one out. But if you could type the carpet blood and let me know if it's the same type or not as the victim's blood, or the blood on his hands, that would be helpful." Martha nodded. Frost pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. "Got something for you."

"For me?" she asked, beaming. "How sweet of you!" She snatched the bag and examined it. "What the fuck is this?"

"Mud. Found it at the motel, on the bed, on the carpet. I forgot to give it to Pflueger before I left the scene."

"Any on your victim's shoes?"

"No, his shoes were clean. Maybe from the other guy."

Martha took off her square, red-framed glasses and scratched behind her right ear.

"What is it exactly you want me to do with this?"

"I don't know," Frost said. "Analyze it. Do your forensics thing."

"You want to know where it came from."

"I'm just covering all the bases. But yes, if you can tell me where it came from, that could give us an idea where the victim's partner hangs out, or where he's been lately. That might allow us to narrow the focus of our search for him a bit."

"I can do that." She put her glasses back on and returned her attention to the forged check. "You're smarter than you look, Frost."

"If only everyone held the same opinion."

## 3

FROST DUCKED ACROSS the hall to the medical examiner's, but the autopsy of Smith had not yet begun. He went back to the SIPD, checked out the Caprice, turned the air conditioning on full, and drove up to the Grove.

His reluctance to undertake the task was not so much about his designation as SIPD CRO. He did not care much for community relations work, it was true, but he understood that in a police department as small as Santa Isidora's, being a jack-of-all-trades came with the territory. Once each year he gave an anti-drug lecture at the local middle school. He attended community meetings to push neighborhood watch programs, not that there was much need for them in Santa Isidora, where just about everybody knew everybody else. He represented the department at the local community college's annual career day.

What annoyed him was that the Grove assignment was futile. The squatters would complain about some new round of insults from Coldstone employees. Coldstone's people would demand to know when the police were going to get off their asses and do something about the hippies in the trees. All he could do was ask them all to back off while the city council, which had taken the matter out of the hands of the planning department, deliberated. Nothing was going to happen one way or another until after the election.

He steered the Caprice up the rough dirt road Coldstone's people had bulldozed into the hillside before the protests had shut down their operation. Debbie Waite, the closest thing the protesters had to a leader—they were, in fact, quite proud of their collectivism—was sitting on a boulder, legs in a lotus position, talking on a cellphone. The folds of her peasant skirt fell in a heap between her legs, protecting her modesty. Not that she would much care. Frost had gotten to know her fairly well on his recent visits. She was in her sixties—her exact age she kept from him—with a mane of seal-pup white hair that frizzed out from her head as if charged by electrons. She wore granny glasses that were no different than those she had worn in the Haight in '67—Frost had seen the pictures—except for the thicker lenses: the only concession, as near as Frost could tell, that she had made to the passing of decades. She had done it all back in the day, she told him—the Summer of Love, Woodstock, sex and drugs and rock and roll. She partied with Janis Joplin backstage at the Fillmore. She dropped acid and greeted the summer solstice naked atop Mt. Tamalpais. She slept with Timothy Leary, an experience she described to him as "mind-blowingly dreadful." She spent two years living in a tent in Death Valley. She had lived her entire life on the flip side of the culture. She resided now in a yurt on a farm near Russian River, but had come south when she heard the trees were in danger. She was enormously proud of her daughter Luv, an ophthalmologist in San Anselmo.

Debbie ended her call, saw Frost and ran to him, waving her arms back and forth over her head like a Pentecostal channeling the spirit of the Holy Ghost.

"Philippa Denton!" she said. "Philippa Denton!" Frost shrugged his shoulders. "Haven't Got a Clue," she said.

"I guess so," Frost said.

"No, Haven't Got a Clue the movie, you dolt. Philippa Denton the actress." Frost nodded, pretending to catch her meaning. "I just spoke to her publicist. She may come up this weekend to show her support."

"Good for you, Debbie." He was not always so casual about addressing members of the public by their first names. An air of formality normally worked to project authority. But Debbie Waite had confided in him about greeting the dawn in the nude, about giving birth in the shadows of the redwood forest, about her disappointing love-making with Timothy Leary. She was always "Debbie" after that.

"It's not about me, Rick. It's about the trees."

"Right you are, Debbie." Frost inhaled the air. The wind was shifting. It was forty-five miles to the ocean but you could smell the salt.

"It's good to see you again, Rick."

"You, too, Debbie. Though it hasn't been all that long. Do you want to fill me in on the latest incident?"

"If by 'incident' you mean the fact that those Coldstone creeps have trashed my van, yes, I do," Debbie said.

No, not the van. Frost loved that van. It was a classic green-and-white '67 VW camper bus with the split-screen windshield and six bay windows running along the edge of the roof, three on either side. Despite the van's faded paint and rust splotches that suggested the imminent disintegration of its body, Frost had been waiting for the right moment to try to convince Debbie to sell it to him.

"Show me."

Debbie took him by the arm and led him up the road to the small, flat patch where she had parked the camper. She had set up a semi-permanent camp for herself there, where she cooked for the four tree-sitters and the free-floating assembly of other protesters, which on any given day averaged around fifteen. A Coleman stove stood under a blue tarp along with a table piled high with cooking pots and pans. Laundry hung on a line strung between the rear of the van and a fence post.

All four tires were flat. The bus seemed otherwise unmolested, thank God. Frost inspected the tires closely.

"It looks as if all they did was let the air out of your tires," he said, kneeling by the left rear wheel. "The valve stems look OK. I don't see any puncture marks. You probably just need to pump them back up and they'll be fine. There should be one of those electric pumps that runs off the cigarette lighter in my car. I'll bring it up here before I go." The VW's six-volt battery wouldn't run the pump; he'd have to muscle the Caprice up the hill. He stood up and dusted off his hands. "Has there been any other harassment?"

"The usual insults. Taunts. They turned klieg lights on the sitters for a couple of nights, I suppose to try to keep them from sleeping."

"They gave up on that?"

"The generator powering the lights broke down." Debbie smiled, crow's feet acquired after a lifetime in the sun cutting deep-furrowed Vs in her skin.

"You have anything to do with that?"

"Me? Of course not."

"You know what I mean, Debbie." He had in mind her young and eager companions. Frost shook his head and sighed. It was the same tit-for-tat that had forced him to come out here before. He signaled to Debbie and they started walking up the gently sloping road.

"This is what happens," he said. "They hit you with lights. You bust the lights. They let the air out of your tires."

"They started it," Debbie said.

"You started it when some of your crew poured water in the fuel tank of the earthmover." Fortunately, it had only given the equipment a hiccup. Frost could only imagine what would have been the reaction if the engine of the $250,000 earthmover had been ruined. It was a good thing these kids weren't adept enough at sabotage to have thought of pouring sugar in the tank.

"They started it when they threatened to use the bulldozer to uproot the trees."

It was like the Middle East, all endless arguments about who was to blame for what outrage. You'd have to go back to the year Zero to weigh the claims of victimhood.

He stopped her just short of the main encampment, where the coterie of protesters had erected their tents. A dozen of them were wandering about. Frost had no particular antipathy toward the young, fresh-faced activists. He considered himself a supporter of their cause, not so much because he cared about the trees—in the larger scheme of things, their continued existence hardly seemed to matter—but because they were pissing in the face of T. Rex Coldstone.

"I thought last time I was out here we had worked out a modus vivendi. Live and let live until this whole thing is over." If Potter won the election, which his SIPD colleagues still thought likely despite Nickerson's sacks of money, the trees would probably be uprooted and turned into charcoal briquettes no later than Christmas.

"Talk to them, not to me."

"I will. Who's in charge today?" Though he had given up for now on further work, Coldstone maintained a trailer on the site to keep watch over things, and one or two of his people were usually on hand.

"The son."

"Jake Ballard?" Coldstone had no children of his own. Jake Ballard was his stepson, from his second, and current, marriage to Fiorina MacDougal Ballard, a former Miss South Carolina.

"The evil seed."

Frost hadn't seen Jake Ballard in nearly three years, since the day in Santa Isidora County Court when he skated out from under kidnapping and sexual assault charges after the physical evidence in the case disappeared from the SIPD evidence locker. Frost had been lead detective for the investigation, one of the first major-crimes cases he handled after joining the SIPD. He argued with District Attorney Kent Nogata, who had been elected as a no-nonsense law-and-order prosecutor, to go forward with the trial anyway. Nogata declined, insisting they couldn't gain a conviction relying solely on the testimony of the victim, sixteen-year-old Maria Valenzuela.

Jake would be twenty-two now.

"I'll have a chat with him."

"I don't see why you can't station a police officer here overnight to keep them from hassling us."

"Debbie." Frost couldn't help himself from laughing. "Debbie, for heaven's sake, do I have to remind you that you and all these kids are engaged in an unlawful protest on somebody else's private property? That you are trespassing? You're all lucky Coldstone hasn't convinced the mayor and my chief to throw you all out of here on your granola-eating asses."

"And why is that? From what I hear, Coldstone pretty much gets what he wants."

"You said it yourself, Debbie. Philippa Denton. Ballantine and Swithers and all the other celebrities you've hoodwinked into supporting you." Frost smiled. "And because the mayor got caught trying to pull a fast one on the city council. But you didn't hear that from me."

"My lips are sealed, dearie."

_

Frost walked over to the Coldstone trailer. The logo on the side said hash bros. construction but Frost assumed the company belonged to Coldstone. He knocked on the door.

Jake Ballard answered. He looked a little older than when Frost had seen him last, but there was no mistaking the Elvis-like shock of black hair that drooped over his forehead. He was of average height, like Frost, but skinny. He was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that said ASK SOMEONE WHO CARES. He had a well-trimmed goatee, which was new, and a Band-Aid on his left cheek. He was holding a half-eaten apple.

"Well, fuck me," Jake said, taking a chomp out of the apple. "The ghost of Christmas past. To what do I owe this honor, Detective Frost?" He smirked the same way he had three years before, when the judge dismissed the case against him. As he'd passed Frost on the way out of court, he'd sneered, I'll be on my dad's jet to Cabo before you get out of the parking lot.

"Someone has been messing around with Debbie Waite's van," Frost said. "I'm here in my capacity as local Community Relations Officer. We came to an understanding last week that this back-and-forth between you and the tree-sitters was going to stop. Tell your people to back off. I've got more important things to do than come out here every week and separate a bunch of toddlers." Jake's eyes were the same, too, listless brown pools no more reflective of a conscience than a skink's. "What's with your face?"

"Cat scratch," Jake said, pressing the bandage down. He tossed the remains of the apple to one side. "There would be no trouble if those hippie punks would get the fuck off our land."

"You've got no argument from me on that score." Frost hated agreeing with him. He'd rather stick his hand in a Cuisinart. "Nevertheless, it's my job to again urge everyone to calm down. Nothing is served by both sides playing pranks on each other. These things have a way of escalating. Just let this thing play out."

"Whatever."

"Seriously, Jake. Lay off the kids."

Jake looked Frost over like an unctuous butler inspecting a hobo on the doorstep.

"You know, I'm surprised they would send you of all people out here. Considering the, you know, history between you and our family."

"Let's just leave that out of this, OK?" Keeping this polite was taking an effort. "I told you, I'm the Community Relations Officer, and this is my job."

"I have to say I'm surprised you're still a cop," Jake went on, casting his gaze over toward the gathering of protesters fifty feet away under the trees. "I figured by now you'd have been thrown off the force, like you were in L.A."

Frost gave Jake an icy stare.

"Let's focus, shall we? I want you to pass the word to your men to leave the tree-huggers alone. This penny-ante crap isn't going to solve anything."

"Let me show you something." Jake held open the door and motioned for Frost to come inside.

It was not so different from other construction trailers Frost had seen. Two drafting tables had been squeezed into one end. A desk covered in papers and folders had been placed to one side in the middle of the cab, across from a small sink, mini-refrigerator and propane-fueled stove.

Jake beckoned Frost to take a seat by the desk. Jake sat down next to him and opened a laptop computer.

"This is from the other night," he said.

A video began, showing the trailer exterior at night with a view toward the road. Frost waited as Jake fast-forwarded, caught some action, reversed the video for a few seconds, and clicked PLAY.

Two figures dressed head-to-toe in black, their faces covered in ski masks, entered the frame. The image was dark, the only illumination coming from the single incandescent bulb that hung over the trailer's front door. Frost was surprised at the amateurish quality of the video, considering the resources available to Coldstone. Where were the super-high-tech night-vision cameras and laser-equipped movement detectors and God knew what else? One of the figures approached the trailer and got to work with a can of spray paint. The other could be observed heaving two bucketfuls of some substance at the trailer door. A little more than forty-five seconds later, both figures dashed off in the direction from which they had come.

Jake closed the laptop.

"Did you see those fucking ninjas? Do you know what was in those buckets? Shit. The shit and piss from those fucking tree-sitters. That's what they do, you know. They shit into these buckets they have up in the trees with them and then lower them by a rope to one of their monkeys down on the ground. Fucking gross. They saved up a whole week's worth of shit to throw on our door."

Frost wanted to laugh but restrained himself.

"What did the graffiti say?"

"Oh, who the fuck knows. The usual left-wing wacko bullshit. We had it painted over the next day. So don't get all high and mighty with me and tell me to lay off them. Tell them to lay off us if they don't want to get hurt."

"Threats are not helpful. That's exactly why all this has to stop."

"Whatever."

"You said this happened the other night?"

"Yeah, one or two days ago. I wasn't here."

"Is that before or after you hit them with the klieg lights?"

Jake scowled.

"Fucking ninjas cut the generator wires. Do you know how much those things cost?"

Frost shook his head, but doubted it would make much of a dent in the Coldstone fortune.

"I'm surprised you don't have someone up here twenty-four hours a day."

"We do. We have our people up here all day and night. Two guys at night. These pricks just came out of nowhere, hit us, and then they were gone. Like I said, fucking ninjas."

Frost said he would recommend a patrol unit stop by a couple of times a night. He repeated his warning that both sides needed to knock it off.

He drove the Caprice up the hill, recovered the air pump from the trunk and reinflated the tires on Debbie Waite's van. He told her he was afraid someone was going to get hurt and bluntly commanded her to rein in her ninjas. She said she didn't know any ninjas.

He left feeling he understood the frustrations of generations of diplomats who had shuttled between Israelis and Palestinians, trying to secure the most elusive thing in the world, peace.

## 4

FROST LAY ON the couch at home, picking at take-out chicken teriyaki and reading Suetonius. The emperor Galba, his vigor no longer undiminished, was being murdered beside the Curian pool.

He had returned to the medical examiner's office after his visit to the Grove. The assistant coroner, Dr. Philip Lacey, had just begun the autopsy. His preliminary assessment, however, was that the victim had died of a broken neck.

Frost asked if Smith might have broken his neck accidentally. Lacey, whose enormous girth had inspired Madden to nickname him "Philly Cheese Steak," regarded him with the kind of condescension law professors reserved for the dullest of their first-year students.

"That would be quite a trick," Lacey said. He pointed to the victim's neck, cantilevered to one side like a cathedral cornice. "Whoever did this to him knew what he was doing. Snapped his neck like a No. 2 pencil."

Frost took a copy of the fingerprints lifted from the victim by the M.E. and reported to Martinez, recommending that a patrol unit swing by the Grove periodically. Martinez said he would see what he could do about it, after first launching into a standard declamation on the scarcity of SIPD resources.

Madden, uncharacteristically still in the office after six, greeted Frost with a wide smile and a pumped fist.

"We have an I.D. on the victim and suspect," he said.

"Excellent," Frost said, leaning against his desk. He dropped the fingerprint card on top of the manila case file he'd started earlier.

"I finally was able to hook up . . . No, that's the wrong expression to use these days, isn't it? I finally got a hold of the registered owner of the car, Julia Pearse. She's an attorney in L.A. I just got off the phone with her. The victim matches the description of her brother, Thad Pearse. He and a friend of his, Owen Goetz, had been staying with her for the past couple of days. Goetz matches the description of the victim's traveling companion—young white male, short, brown on brown. Thad asked his sister yesterday morning if he could borrow her car for a few days so he and Owen could go on a road trip. She said OK. Apparently she rides her bike to work most days." Madden rolled his eyes.

"Did she know what they were doing in Santa Isidora?"

"No. She had no idea they were here. She had the impression—she was very careful to say it was an impression, not a fact, very attorney-like of her—she had the impression that they were going to see Goetz's family. They live up north somewhere. She doesn't remember where, exactly."

"Let's run Thad Pearse and Owen Goetz through the system and see what we find."

"What, now?"

"As soon as you're done bending my ear, yeah. Why, is that a problem?"

"No. No, not a problem." Madden looked at the floor, scratching his forehead, his train of thought having jumped the tracks. "Uh, where was I? Oh, yeah. Pearse had a record. His sister said he was busted for stealing a car when he was seventeen. Some other offenses as a juvenile. She had the impression—again, she said impression—that Goetz probably had some kind of record as well. Like they were two peas in a pod."

" 'Two peas in a pod'? That's the best description you can come up with?"

"That's a direct quote," Madden said, holding his notepad out for Frost to see. " 'Two peas in a pod.' See, I wrote it down right here." Frost, smiling, nodded. "OK, there's more. Pearse was in the Marines, Goetz too. The sister doesn't know if that's where they met. Pearse served a tour in Iraq. Don't know about Goetz. They both had just come back from Iraq, by the way. They'd been over there working for some security contractor." Madden checked his notes. "Peacock Overseas Services, Inc."

"You can get in the Marines with a criminal record these days?"

"Yeah, I've heard that due to recruiting problems caused by the war, the military's willing to overlook minor offenses. Or they could have lied about their records. Wouldn't be the first time."

Julia Pearse had also given him Thad's cellphone number. They hadn't found a cellphone at the scene, so it was possible that Goetz had taken it with him. That was good news. They could contact the service provider and get a list of Pearse's incoming and outgoing calls. If Goetz used the phone, the provider would notify them of the new activity. They could also track the phone through its pings. Most people didn't know—and Frost hoped Goetz didn't know—that cellphones constantly sent out signals—"pings"—that could be tracked in real time. It wasn't as accurate as GPS coordinates, but it narrowed the search area considerably, often to within a few blocks.

Madden went off to run Pearse and Goetz through the computer.

Frost sat down at his desk. He opened the bottom drawer and fished out the Maria Valenzuela file from its space under expense reports and other SIPD forms. He let it sit a while on his desktop before opening it, like letting a bottle of red wine breathe. He read the file. It was all in there, the violations that should have sent Jake to Folsom or Pelican Bay.

It was all in there, and it didn't matter.

He shoved the file back in its shelter when Madden returned with the results of his search. It confirmed that Thad Pearse was their victim. His fingerprints, which the M.E.'s office had digitized and transferred electronically to the SIPD, matched the California offender database. The most recent photo of Pearse in the system showed a glowering seventeen-year-old, but it was clearly him.

The system also coughed up Owen Goetz's records for a string of juvenile offenses as well as a more recent petty larceny case, for which no disposition was provided. His hometown was Pickle Center, about halfway up the Central Valley.

Madden put Goetz's name and photo out on the wire to all California law enforcement agencies plus, at Frost's direction, sent a fax to the sheriff in Pickle Center, and went home.

Frost took the task of phoning Julia Pearse back to confirm that the victim was her brother.

"I'll come up tomorrow to identify him and make arrangements," she said after he had confirmed the news and given her his condolences.

"That isn't really necessary," Frost said. "The identification has been made through fingerprints. The medical examiner can make whatever arrangements you want for disposition of the remains."

"I want to come. I owe it to Thad to come see him. I don't know what time I'll get there. I have to rent a car first."

Frost told her to come at whatever time was convenient and provided her with his office and cellphone numbers.

Frost felt pleased with their progress. They had identified both victim and suspect. With Goetz's name and description in the statewide lookout system, along with that of the car, he was confident it wouldn't be long before Goetz would be behind bars. He wondered how someone of Goetz's small stature had gotten the drop on Pearse, who was close to six feet tall, and had broken his neck in the bargain. He wondered, too, what had set Goetz off enough to kill his friend.

But he had been a cop for more than fifteen years and had seen all sorts of senseless violence triggered by all manner of frivolous and banal antecedents.

Once they had him in custody, they could ask Goetz why he had done it.

_

Frost had turned to Galba's successor, Otho, whose reign lasted about as long as a tub of cookie dough at a sorority pity party, when his front door opened. Martha Oleske appeared on the threshold.

"Yoo hoo, anyone home?" she asked, looking straight at him.

Frost closed his book and returned her gaze. She was wearing a periwinkle sleeveless dress and black sandals.

"Is it Wednesday already?"

"Of course it is." Martha entered the room, closing the door behind her. She kicked off her sandals. "Frankly, I'm a little insulted that you could have forgotten, but I really need to get laid, so I'll let it go. I've got ants in my pants." She swiveled her hips, thrusting her crotch out at him. Frost had to laugh. Martha could be crude but somehow pulled it off without seeming indecorous. She plopped down on the couch next to him and laid a hand on his thigh. She bent over and kissed him. She pulled an aluminum foil-covered tin from her bag. "Look, I brought brownies!"

Frost took one and nibbled on it. Martha did the same.

"I had a miserable weekend," she said. "I had to go down to Laguna for my kid sister's wedding. The guy she's marrying—married—is a total wuss. Has the personality of a dead cod. Kind of looks like one, too. I spent the whole time arguing with my mother and getting to know my sister's hellish in-laws. It was horrid."

"No time for your usual weekend regimen, I gather."

Martha subscribed to a number of Internet dating sites—Frost had never learned just how many. She made it plain in her profile that she was LFGT/NSA which, she had explained to him, meant Looking for a good time, No strings attached. She also often described herself as "Rubenesque."

Frost had asked her about that.

"I don't know why you would do that. You're overweight, yes, but you're not heavy. You're not fat."

"It's all about honesty. I don't want some man showing up thinking he's about to meet a woman whose 'few extra pounds' really means a few extra pounds. Just like I don't want to meet some doofus who claims to have 'slab-sided abs' but hasn't seen the inside of a gym since high school."

Her size was no barrier to meeting men for sex, she told him. "You'd be surprised at the number of men who are looking for 'more cushion for the pushin'.' A couple of times guys I met were disappointed that I didn't have rolls of fat they could get lost in."

Martha was strict about practicing safe sex. In addition to mandatory use of condoms, she inspected the genitalia of her paramours "like a hyper-meticulous urologist" before she would agree to hop into bed with them. She ran tests for HIV and other STDs, using the county lab facilities.

"If they don't want to do the blood test, fuck 'em. I mean, don't fuck 'em." Her usual M.O. was to meet her Internet partners on the weekends. As long as the sex was good she would continue to see them until she got bored, or until the man slipped out of LFGT/NSA mode and started getting clingy. Then she would drop him and hustle up a new prospect.

"I've had no sex in a week whatsoever," she said to Frost now. "I had to drive down Friday night for the rehearsal dinner. I might have hooked up with someone at the reception Saturday, but the men there were the biggest assortment of clods, boneheads and girly-men you've ever seen." Martha ran the tip of her index finger along Frost's lips. "So you are in for a workout tonight, mister." She took off her glasses and began to unbutton his shirt. Frost lay back, watching her go to work. "Just seeing you today made me wet."

Frost had asked himself often enough how it was that he had agreed to these regular Wednesday assignations, but the way Martha had laid it out for him at the time seemed to make so much sense. She had shown up at his doorstep seven months earlier with Chinese food and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. After a couple of glasses of wine she put forth her proposal, at once coquettish and clinical. She was a young woman in her early thirties, the prime of her sexual life, she said. Her weekend trysts, which she revealed to him for the first time, quelled her sexual needs for a few days but by mid-week she was anxious and itching for physical contact. She didn't have the time during the week to dedicate to her Internet lovers, even if she weren't required, as she often was, to drive to Ventura or Cucamonga to meet up with them. The answer to her problem came to her with resounding clarity as she was sipping green beer at the SIPD St. Patrick's Day party and he walked into the squad room.

Why him, he had asked.

"First of all, you're cute," she said. She ran her fingers through his hair. "You've still got all your hair. You're in pretty good shape. You shower regularly. You're smart. You appreciate a woman who's smart. You'd be surprised how rare that is. You laugh at my gross jokes and you don't take offense when I razz you. I have a feeling you're OK in bed. I'm betting your kisses are sweet and your caresses are tender and maybe you take your time with things. And you make my pussy twitch. You sure did when I saw you at the party."

"That was probably the beer talking."

"Maybe just as important, I know you won't fall in love with me. I'm not looking for a boyfriend, much less Mr. Right. I'm a young woman, I've got needs, but keeping house with a male of the species is not one of them." She looked into his eyes so hard he thought the back of his skull would come off. "We're the same, Rick. We're both emotional midgets. Neither one of us wants a real relationship with another human being. The kind where you have to share your every thought. Where you have to be there for the other person. We're not capable of that kind of emotional entanglement." She raised her eyebrows and batted her eyelashes like Betty Boop, compelling him to laugh. "C'mon, Rick, this is a pretty sweet deal I'm offering you. I know you like me."

He did like her. He liked her energy, her acerbic sense of humor, her iconoclasm. So he agreed. The truth was perhaps simpler: he had nothing better to do. He had settled into a kind of stasis, goo-stuck like some long-defunct sloth at La Brea. It had started in Los Angeles but it was no different in Santa Isidora.

Martha was right that he wasn't going to fall in love with her. He wasn't capable.

She didn't subject him to the blood test and physical exam. She said she knew there wasn't any need.

Martha stood up from the sofa, reached behind her and unzipped her dress. She let it fall to the floor, unhooked her black Donna Karan bra and hurtled herself at him.

_

Martha was sucking on her second post-coital cigarette when Frost asked her if the forensic evidence contained anything interesting.

"Oh, baby," she said, "I love it when you talk dirty." Frost laughed. "So far we've tentatively identified two dozen different hair samples. Probably the same number of sets of fingerprints. You said the maid discovered him? I'm surprised he wasn't lying there for a couple of weeks. It's clearly not the most sanitary of motels."

"Mrs. Vickers does her best, I'm sure. She's over sixty."

"You were right about the blood on the floor and the victim's hand. Both samples tested O positive. They probably came from the assailant. Your John Doe tested B positive."

"Thad Pearse."

"Huh?"

"The victim's name is Thad Pearse. The description fits and his fingerprints match. I talked to his sister earlier."

"Hmmm. He was still John Doe when I left the office." Martha took a drag from her Merit Ultralight and tapped it against the ashtray that Frost kept on hand especially for her. "It'll take some time before I can tell you if both O positive samples are from the same person. Doc Lacey took some fingernail scrapings from the victim—from Pearse—but I haven't gotten around to testing them yet."

"It probably doesn't matter." Frost told Martha how they had identified Owen Goetz as the likely killer.

"Lucky you. Now you can solve the Hunter murder." The killing of twelve-year-old Taylor Hunter, Santa Isidora's only unsolved murder, dated to 1979. The case file was still active. Once every so often Frost read through it. He had followed up on some old leads but nothing had come of it and he didn't expect anything to come of it. Sometimes the dead got no justice. "I can't say there's much else that would be of evidentiary value to you. You still want me to analyze that mud for you?"

"Absolutely. It might come in handy if Goetz doesn't get picked up soon."

"Great. I've been wanting to fire up my new gas chromatograph." Martha stubbed out her cigarette. She reached over and pulled his face toward hers. "More," she said.

## 5

MADDEN SHOWED UP in the morning with a box of three dozen donuts—old-fashioned, sprinkled, glazed, crullers, long johns, fritters and bear claws. He placed the box next to the coffee machine on the long, narrow table beneath the bulletin board that held lookout posters, announcements about the SIPD-sponsored kids' soccer team, photos of police events dating back years, and the business cards of officers who moonlighted as real-estate agents, eBay middlemen and certified financial planners.

Frost was watching him from his cubicle.

"Don't give me that look," Madden said.

"What look?" Frost said.

"That look. The one you're giving me right now. The holier-than-thou look."

"I didn't say a thing."

"You didn't have to. Look, I stopped by the Honey Bee on the way in for a donut and a latte." The Honey Bee on Broadway bakery was a favorite among local cops. "They shoved a bunch of donuts into a box and told me to take it. What was I supposed to do?"

"You could have said no."

"Rick, those of us who live in the real world, not holed up in our houses like monks, understand there aren't absolutes. It's just a box of donuts, for Christ's sake."

Frost showed him the fax that had come in overnight from the National Military Records Command responding to the SIPD request for Pearse and Goetz's military histories. Frost was grateful for the quick turnaround, but disappointed that the DD-214 personnel forms yielded little more than basic information.

Thad Pearse indeed had been a Marine. His MOS—Military Occupational Specialty—was 0311, infantry rifleman. A plain grunt, in other words. Owen Goetz also had been a Marine, also an infantry rifleman. Pearse and Goetz served in the same battalion of the 7th Marine Regiment in Iraq. The Marine Corps area of operations at the time had been Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni insurgency. There were nine hundred men in a battalion, so it wasn't clear if they had known each other then. Pearse had once been an E-4 corporal, Goetz an E-3 lance corporal, but each had been discharged as an E-2, or private first class. That, and the fact that each had received a general discharge instead of an honorable one, meant there had been some kind of disciplinary problem. They were discharged within a few months of each other, but there was no way to know if the discharges were linked. Pearse had been out of the military about eighteen months, Goetz a little less.

According to the records, Goetz's blood type was O positive, the same as the blood found on Pearse's fingers and on the motel carpet. It was not definitive proof that the blood was Goetz's. Thirty-seven percent of the population had O positive blood. It would be weeks before they got the results of the DNA tests.

An hour later, Madden had obtained a rundown on Pearse's calls from his cellphone provider.

"There were no calls within the last several months until a few days ago," Madden said. "That fits with what his sister said about him being in Iraq until recently. I suppose his phone didn't work there or maybe it was too expensive. He called his sister on Friday evening at her home in L.A. I think she lives in Westwood, if I remember correctly. Anyway, after that he's got a couple of calls to Pizza Hut. One call to Daphne's Quiver. That's a strip club in Glendale. I checked their website. Some nice-looking girls. If we need someone to go down there and conduct some interviews, I volunteer." He guffawed, overplaying the joke. "On Monday he made a call to Beverly Hills, a place called the Diebold Gallery. It's an art gallery, according to the woman I spoke to there. Monday evening, he gets an incoming call. The next day, a little after six p.m., he makes an outgoing call to the same number."

"He called from the motel," Frost said.

"Right. The time puts it right around the time he and Goetz checked in."

"Do we know who that number belongs to?"

"No and we probably will never know."

"A throwaway?"

"Exactly. According to the cellphone company that provides the service, it was purchased at a convenience store and first used a month ago." In other words, it was a cheap cellphone you bought along with a calling-card. You didn't have to register it. You didn't have to provide a name or an address. It was to all intents and purposes untraceable. "I've asked them to check the number and see where it's been used." The phone company could do that by tracing which cell towers the signal bounced off while the cellphone was being used.

"Ask them to ping it, too."

"OK, but the service provider is a subcontractor of a subsidiary of an affiliate, so don't get your hopes up. Are you thinking the same thing I'm thinking?"

Frost nodded.

Disposable cellphones were a favorite toy of drug dealers and other criminals.

"Maybe our boys Thad and Owen came up here to do a deal," Madden suggested. "Owen decides to keep the loot—or the drugs—for himself. He catches Thad unawares, wrings his neck like a wet noodle and skedaddles out of town in Thad's sister's car."

"That's at least a possibility. We should check our informants to see if anyone knows about some out-of-towners coming up to move some drugs."

"That's assuming they were in Santa Isidora to do the deal and not see the sights."

"These two weren't the type to come take a look at statues or hang out at a snooty winery." It was also true that until they found out where the incoming phone call to Pearse came from, where the other person was when Pearse phoned from the motel, they wouldn't be able to rule out the possibility the pair was just passing through on the way to somewhere else.

"I'll get the word to the uniforms and to Robocop and Skeezix," Madden said, using his nicknames for Ed Rollo and Ron Smith, the other half of the SIPD's four-man detective squad.

"What's this gallery in Beverly Hills again?"

"Fine art and antiques. The owner's name is Franklin Diebold. He wasn't there when I called. I spoke to his saleslady or secretary or whatever, Clarice."

"How long did Pearse talk to him?"

Madden checked his notes.

"Eight minutes, forty-two seconds."

"Eight minutes, forty-two seconds." It wasn't a long conversation, but it wasn't a short one, either. Frost clasped his hands as if in prayer. "They call this place Monday during the day. That night they get a call. They leave L.A., come up here and make a call to the same number."

"What are you thinking?"

"These two weren't into fine art and antiques anymore than wine and old statues. We need to check Diebold out."

"Maybe they were calling the saleslady."

"Did you ask her?"

"I will, as soon as we're done here. Are you thinking connection?"

"Could be. Could be a wholesaler. They get the stuff from him, maybe a contact number for a distributor here, come up to unload the dope. Or maybe he's just a middleman. Maybe they were looking to buy, this guy gave Pearse a name, and that's why they came up here."

"Or maybe they went to Daphne's Quiver, met a contact there. Or made one."

"True. Glendale's a long way to go from Westwood if you just want to see some strippers."

"Well, I'm glad we've got it narrowed down," Madden said, laughing. "You'll need to call your contacts in L.A. and see if they have anything on Diebold.... Unless you'd rather I do it."

"No, I'll do it." There had to be a few people down there who still had a good opinion of him—or who didn't remember him. "There were no calls to Pickle Center on Pearse's phone?" Madden shook his head. "That could mean Goetz has his own cellphone, so you'd have to wonder why he took Pearse's."

"Or it could be that he used the sister's phone. I'll get her records and see. Or Goetz has no interest in talking to his family." Madden yawned. "One more thing. I just got a call back from David Plum. He's the head guy at Peacock."

"The outfit Pearse and Goetz were working for in Iraq?"

"Right. Boy, were they a bitch to find. No website, no listed phone number. All I had was the number that the sister gave me yesterday, her contact number for her brother. Anyway, as I say, the guy called me back this morning. He was in a big rush—I think he was on the freeway, and was talking on his cellphone—but he said he'd be out at Peacock this afternoon if we wanted to drop by. It turns out they're headquartered out in the desert east of Palmdale. I told him we'd be out to see him unless he heard from me otherwise."

"That's good. We should go out there. He might know something that could help lead us to Goetz."

While Madden called the Diebold Gallery back to check if the saleswoman had known Pearse or Goetz, Frost placed a call to the Marine Corps personnel center to ask for a more detailed explanation of the story behind Pearse and Goetz's general discharges. They would get back to him, they said.

_

Julia Pearse was a little taller than the average woman. Her medium-length, light-brown hair was cut in a way that managed to be both fashionable and unostentatious. She was wearing a cream-colored suit and satiny pumps. She had put on just a touch of make-up and wore small, gold earrings. She was carrying a worn, red leather satchel.

She looked like a lawyer, but when she introduced herself to Frost and her hand lingered in his longer than he expected, he momentarily forgot that, and that she was the bereaved sister of a murder victim. He recovered quickly enough, and after she had introduced herself to Madden as well, they escorted her to the small conference room adjacent to Martinez's office.

Madden offered her a cup of coffee. She declined. They arranged themselves around the circular table. A recalcitrant fluorescent bulb flickered overhead. Frost began by again offering his condolences.

"Thank you," Julia said. "You have no doubt it's him?" Frost shook his head. "I didn't think so, but I had to ask. It's a lawyer's question." She forced a smile. "I would still like to see him, if that's all right."

"I'll take you over to the medical examiner's when we're done here," Frost said.

"I really didn't know Thad that well," Julia said. Frost couldn't help noticing the way her neck flowed into her suprasternal notch, the hollow at the base of the throat. "Thad was my half-brother. We had the same father but different mothers. My parents were divorced when I was young. The reality is that my father abandoned us when I was two. I never knew him well, either. I saw him three or four times in my life that I can remember. The last time was twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, when I was twelve or thirteen. He showed up at our door in Stockton one day—that's where I grew up, Stockton—wanting to see my mother about something. Probably he wanted to get some money from her. He was always trying to get people to lend him money for some new, get-rich-quick scheme, my mother said. Anyway, my mother was at the grocery where she worked as a cashier and my stepfather told him to get lost. Before he went he patted me on the head and asked how I was doing. And he showed me a picture of a little baby and told me he was my baby brother, Thad."

She shifted in her chair and apologized for getting off track.

Frost told her not to worry about it. Beneath the suit coat she was wearing a scoop-cut, pink shell accented by a thin gold chain necklace.

"As I was saying, I didn't know Thad well at all," Julia said. "He had a hard life. That I know. My father moved him and his mother all over the place, from Galveston to Boise. They even went down to Central America for a bit. His wife was from Costa Rica, and I guess my father went down there looking for his golden opportunity. Thad told me once he had never gone to the same school for more than a year and a half in his entire life. Maybe that's why he got in as much trouble as he did as a teenager, in school. I told you he had been arrested for joy-riding, right?"

"Yes," Madden said.

"Despite all his problems and my father's wandering ways, Thad managed to graduate from high school. A few months later his mom and my father were killed in an automobile accident. They were living in the L.A. area by that time—Burbank, Pasadena. Someplace like that."

"Glendale?" Frost asked.

"Maybe," Julia said. "I really don't remember. Thad went to live for a little bit with his mom's sister in Florida, but they didn't get along very well, and he didn't care much for the climate or the mosquitoes, so he came back to California. That's when he first looked me up. I offered to let him stay with me for a while, but he said I was too busy and he didn't want to be a bother. It's true, I was still new at the firm, working eighty-hour weeks like every other young associate. Thad worked some odd jobs for a while. He tried to join the service but at first they wouldn't take him because of his record. A little while later, though, he tried again and this time the Marines gave him a criminal-conduct waiver and let him enlist. He was in Iraq for a year, then he came back and then he left the Marines."

"I wonder if you know the circumstances under which he left the Marines?" Frost asked.

"Not really," Julia said. "I just assumed his enlistment was up."

"The reason I ask is that Thad had a general discharge. Usually when you leave the service you get what's called an honorable discharge. A general discharge indicates some kind of problem. Also, he was discharged before his enlistment was up. That's also an indication that he was, in effect, asked to leave, rather than leaving on his own accord."

"You mean he was kicked out?"

"Not necessarily. But, yes, usually it means there was some kind of disciplinary action. I'm sorry to be bringing this up. I don't mean any disrespect to Thad. It's just that it could help us with the case. You don't know anything about any trouble he might have gotten into in the Marines? Did he ever mention anything to you like that?"

"No. No. He didn't say anything. Like I said, I just assumed his time was up."

"OK. Go on. What did Thad do when he got back from the Marines?"

"I don't really know. I only saw him a couple of times. He was back for a while. I don't know what he was doing, exactly. I mean, I don't know where he was working—or even if he was working. Then about a year ago he called me up out of the blue to tell me he was going back to Iraq to work in security."

"That was with Peacock?"

"Yes, that's the company. They're a security contractor, like Blackwater. Thad came to see me a couple of days before he left. I tried to talk him out of going. I thought it was too dangerous. He had already done his bit in the Marines. But he told me not to worry, they weren't going to be in combat, just providing security for some Iraqi officials." Julia paused, gathering her thoughts. "He was very calm about it. Strong. One thing the Marines did for Thad was give him a sense of confidence in himself. He had always seemed so lost to me, directionless. But after he got out of the service, he was more mature. I don't want to overstate it. He was still a bit at loose ends. But he just . . . I don't know. I guess I mean he seemed to have grown up a bit."

Julia shifted in her chair. She sniffled.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just can't believe he was murdered. It's so unfair. Thad never hurt anyone. Never. He stole a car and he got into some trouble at school, but he never..." She reached into the large red bag, took out a tissue and wiped her nose. "Sorry."

"No reason to be," Frost said.

"Would you like something to drink?" Madden asked. "Or eat? We have a box full of donuts." Frost cast him an irritated look. Madden looked back at him with an expression that asked, What?

"Water would be nice, thank you."

"I'll get it." Madden left the room.

Julia stared out the window at the three-level fountain in the center of the Civic Plaza.

Frost looked at his notes, then at her slim, manicured fingers.

"That's quite a briefcase you have there," he said. "Or is it a shopping bag?"

Julia laughed, crumpling the tissue in her hand.

"I have been lugging this thing around since before law school. It's a briefcase. It's a shopping bag. It's a purse. I can't seem to part with it, even though it's completely impractical and falling apart." She exhibited a frayed handle from which half the stitching had come out. "I think I keep it around to keep me from getting a swelled head. To remind myself that I'm just a middle-class girl from Stockton, not this fancy-pants, hot-shot tax attorney from Hollywood."

Madden returned with bottled water and a paper cup. Julia thanked him and took a sip.

"Thad got back from Iraq a couple of days ago?" Frost asked.

"Friday. He called me Friday evening and said he had just gotten back. He said the job in Iraq was finished and could he stay with me a few days while he got sorted out. He showed up at my door a few hours later."

"Owen Goetz was with him?"

"Yes." Julia smiled dryly. "That was a surprise. Thad hadn't mentioned anything about bringing a friend. But I didn't mind. It was only for a few days, and Owen seemed nice enough. You really think Owen killed Thad?"

"What I would say is that right now Owen is our prime suspect. He's nowhere to be found and it looks like he has your car. Why, does that surprise you?" The fluorescent bulb refused to come fully to life. Someone needed to talk to maintenance about it.

"Yes, I suppose it does. It's not just that Thad was tall and Owen small. He also seemed so... Timid isn't exactly the right word. He wasn't one to assert himself. The way he followed Thad around, it was almost like a little puppy. Or like a little kid hanging out with his big brother."

"You said Thad said the job in Iraq was finished. Did that mean the work was over, or that he quit?"

"I understood it to mean that the company had finished its contract work. That was my impression."

"Do you have any idea what Thad and Owen were doing up in Santa Isidora?" Frost's gaze settled momentarily on her chest. Her breasts, hidden beneath the suit coat, gave hints of themselves as she breathed in and out.

"None," she said, shaking her head. "Thad asked me Monday night if he and Owen could borrow my car for a few days to take a trip. Up the coast, he said. I said sure. My office in Century City is only a couple of miles down Santa Monica Boulevard from where I live. I usually ride my bike. I take the bus now and then. If it's a rainy day, for example. I hardly ever drive."

"That's got to be pretty unusual in Los Angeles," Madden said.

Julia nodded.

"I try to do my bit for the environment."

"Rick, you'll have to take her up to the Grove to meet your tree-hugger friends."

Frost ignored him.

"I hate to ask this question, but did you ever have any indication that Thad was involved with drugs?" he asked.

"'Involved.' Do you mean using or selling? I suppose it doesn't matter. No, I never saw anything to indicate that. But again, I'd only seen Thad eight or ten times in my whole life. Do you suspect there were drugs involved?"

"We don't really know. We're just checking every possibility. Did Thad ever mention a Diebold Gallery in Beverly Hills?"

"I've never heard of it."

Julia also had never heard of Daphne's Quiver. She had no idea who Thad had been talking to when he placed his call to the disposable cellphone.

_

They went over the same territory for another hour trying, without luck, to see if Julia remembered anything she had initially overlooked. She mentioned that Thad and Owen had borrowed her car for a few hours on Sunday to visit a friend. She didn't know who or where he lived. Thad and Owen had left nothing behind save for a couple of paperback books and magazines; it seemed that all of Thad's worldly possessions fit into the single duffel bag that had been found at the motel. Julia had not found Thad's passport or airline tickets. Though she recalled Thad telling her that one reason he was taking the job in Iraq was because it paid so well, she had found no bank records, other financial information, or cash.

Frost wondered at Owen Goetz's thoroughness, coolly stripping Pearse and his duffel bag of any information that could help to identify him. It suggested a more experienced criminal than his record of petty crimes indicated.

When the session was over, Frost walked Julia over to the Public Safety Building and escorted her to the medical examiner's office.

An autopsy is a brutal procedure, but Lacey had taken care to repair or disguise most of the damage done to Thad's face. Julia confirmed that the body was that of her brother. The M.E. was ready to release the body and Julia asked where she could have the remains cremated. Frost said he would take care of it. He called Tighman's, Santa Isidora's lone mortuary with cremation facilities. He asked them to expedite the service and at Julia's request directed them to put the ashes in a plain cardboard box. Tighman's said they could pick Thad's body up and complete the cremation within a couple of hours. Julia said she would stay in town until they were done.

"I don't really know what I'm going to do with the ashes," she said. "I called his aunt and uncle last evening. They're both on his mother's side. They live in Florida and neither of them is planning on coming here. I don't know any of Thad's friends. So I guess there won't be any memorial service. It's a sad coda to a tough, unfinished life."

As they left the county building, Julia said she thought she would take a walk. Frost asked if he could accompany her.

"That would be nice, thanks," she said. They strolled down Broadway in the direction of the Civic Plaza. "Pleasant little town you have here."

"'Little' is right," Frost said.

"Have you always lived here?"

"Oh, no. I grew up in Long Beach. My dad was a welder at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, back when there was a shipyard."

"How did you end up here?"

"Long story. Long and complicated." That wasn't entirely honest. Not so long. Not so complicated. Busted relationship. Indifference. Torpor. A go-fuck-yourself attitude. A senseless death. One enormous screw-up.

"Give me the short version, then."

"Is this how you cross-examine witnesses in court?"

Julia laughed and threw her head back.

"I haven't been in court except to file documents since I got out of law school. All I do is design increasingly complex tax shelters for actors, directors and producers. Agents, casting directors and screenwriters. Anyone in show business with income to shelter from the IRS."

"The short version is that I was in the LAPD for about twelve years. Our chief of police, Leo Martinez, used to be my boss. Some time after he came up here he offered me a job, and I took it. End of story."

They crossed First Avenue and entered the plaza.

Julia regarded Frost with a look that was at once benign and unsettling. Sunlight accentuated highlights in her hair.

"You're not telling me everything." She wagged her finger at him. "I'm just kidding. But my lawyer's nose tells me there's more to this story. That's OK. You don't want to tell me now. You can tell me some other time."

An unusual tremor of energy shivered through Frost.

They sat on a park bench facing the fountain. Julia placed her satchel on the other side from him. She reached into the bag and retrieved her BlackBerry.

"Do you mind if I check my messages? My clients can be very demanding." Frost watched as her fingers moved across the keyboard with practiced speed. After she finished, they sat in silence, listening to the water cascade down the three levels of the fountain.

"I feel guilty," Julia said without warning. "I want to feel more grief. Thad was my brother. I hardly knew him, it's true, but he was my brother and he was murdered, and I haven't even cried. I haven't shed a tear. All I can work up is a miserable sniffle or two. My thoughts are so clinical. Arrange the cremation. Get a death certificate. Notify Social Security. Dispose of the ashes."

"It's not uncommon. People react to the death of a loved one in a million different ways." Frost felt the impulse to reach out and touch her but contained it. "Give yourself time."

He didn't tell her that it could happen also that there might never be enough time.

"Thad was my last real link to family. My father, Thad's father, is dead. My stepfather died years ago. My mom died of breast cancer last year. And now Thad. I have cousins in Stockton and Sacramento, but I hardly know them." She looked at him, smiling broadly. "You want to know a secret? I hate being a tax attorney!" She laughed. "Sorry for the outburst."

"I rant all the time."

"I sensed that about you, Detective."

"Please, it's Rick."

"And you call me Julia." She held out her hand. He took it, held on to it. "Nice to meet you, Rick."

"So, meeting all those celebrities is not as thrilling as you'd hoped?" He released her hand.

"The thrill fades very quickly. Mostly I meet with their managers, anyway. A bigger bunch of self-important braggarts you'll never meet. Sometimes I think about chucking it all and moving up to Cougarville. That's up in the Sierra foothills, in Tuolumne County. My mother had a home up there. A cabin. It's where she spent the last few years of her life. I tell myself to move up there and put out a shingle. Even in Cougarville they need wills made and powers of attorney drawn up."

"So why don't you?"

"Inertia, I suppose. A body at rest stays at rest."

Frost knew exactly what she meant.

His cellphone rang and he apologized to Julia before answering. It was Madden, reminding him they needed to get on the road if they were going to make it to Peacock in time. Frost snapped the phone cover shut and explained that he had to be going.

"What song was that?" she asked. "The ring tone."

" 'Truckin,' " he said.

"The Grateful Dead?" She laughed. "You're a Deadhead?"

"No, I wouldn't go that far. More of a Beatles fan, really. I did see the Dead in concert once, a thousand years ago. I just like the song. I had Jim Madden download it to my phone for me."

Frost walked her back toward the station. He stopped outside Consuela's, recommending it if she was hungry and liked Mexican food. He gave her his business card with his office and cellphone numbers. He asked for it back and wrote his home number on the reverse.

"You call me whenever you feel like it. For whatever reason."

Julia set her bag down on the sidewalk and pulled out her wallet. She took out a business card and wrote her home number on it.

"You too. Call me." She picked up her bag and shook his hand once more. "It was nice meeting you, Rick, despite the lousy circumstances."

"Very nice meeting you." She smiled and turned to enter the restaurant. Frost watched her go through the glass door, then walked down Broadway to the station, feeling a curious but welcome lightness.

## 6

THE MARINE CORPS had called back with more information and Madden was recounting it for Frost as he navigated over the pass that would take them across the interstate to the Antelope Valley Freeway.

"Thad was drummed out of the Corps for slugging his sergeant and drinking home-made hooch," Madden said, unwrapping a Snickers bar with one hand as he steered through hairpin turns with the other. "That was a double violation of the rules, since the military has a strict no-drinking policy for all the troops in Iraq. The guy I spoke to couldn't tell me why they just administratively discharged him instead of throwing him in the hoosegow, but he said the military justice system was kind of overwhelmed, plus maybe Pearse had a good combat record, so they let it slide. Goetz, on the other hand, made it through Iraq OK, but was busted for failing a drug test for marijuana after he got back to Twentynine Palms." Twentynine Palms was the sprawling Marine Corps base in the Mojave Desert northeast of Palm Springs.

"You've really got to wonder how a couple of fuck-ups like Pearse and Goetz could get themselves hired as contract security in Iraq," Frost said, nervously watching the steep drop-off on his side of the car race by. "It doesn't make sense. If you're providing security in Iraq, with all that chaos going on around you, you'd want to hire the most dependable men you could find. Not an insubordinate drunk or a pothead."

Finding Peacock Overseas Services proved more troublesome than Madden thought, though he had scoped out the route on Google Earth ahead of time. The company's facility lay at the end of a long road after a series of right and left turns in the scrub east of Palmdale. He finally located it in the late afternoon in a corner of desert adjoining Edwards Air Force Base. It was not much to look at. Peacock's headquarters consisted of a single beaten-down, one-story cement-block building and two capacious hangars at the foot of a paved airstrip. The runway ran due east of the buildings. A chain-link fence topped with rusted barbed wire surrounded the property. There was no sign, and Madden wasn't even sure he had found the place until he reached David Plum on his cellphone and Plum came out of the building to unlock the gate and wave them inside.

Frost said he was surprised the cellphone worked out in the middle of the desert. Madden pointed to a cell tower on a nearby hill, speculating that it had been placed there to serve the air force base.

The front room was sparsely furnished with a coffee table that was losing its laminate, plastic chairs distributed in apparently random fashion, a wastebasket stuffed with magazines and an old television attached to a DVD player. A small-town bus depot offered more amenities. Plum escorted them down a barren, poorly lit hallway to an office with equally spartan furnishings—a gray metal desk, three plastic chairs and a blackboard. A black laptop computer and cellphone sat on the desk. A two-drawer, metal filing cabinet had been pushed into one corner. Venetian blinds, their slats half open, covered the window. Plum stationed himself behind his desk, bidding them wordlessly to take a seat. He was tall and well-built, blond, and on the short side of thirty. He was wearing khaki slacks and a checkered, short-sleeve shirt.

Frost and Madden introduced themselves, presenting Plum with their business cards. He looked at them quickly and placed them in his breast pocket. Frost surveyed the hangars through the spaces in the blinds. Tools, compressors, fire extinguishers and other equipment lay strewn about.

The whole place struck him as otherworldly.

"I'm sorry," Frost said. "I don't mean to offend. But, are you it? Is this all there is to Peacock Overseas Services, Inc.?"

"The operation is mostly run out of Baghdad," Plum said in an accent Frost couldn't place. "I coordinate logistical things on this end. Arrange for whatever supplies are needed that can't be obtained locally, see that they get over. Most everything gets done by text or e-mail." He rested his hand on the laptop.

"Who's Miss Scarlett?" Madden asked, indicating the blackboard behind him, on which the name was written, followed by the annotation @2300 9/10.

Plum looked at Madden, and then at the blackboard.

" 'Miss Scarlett' is our plane."

"You have your own plane?" Madden asked.

"Yes, a Gulfstream 550."

"Isn't that a pretty expensive way to fly?"

"The company finds it more economical overall to use our own transportation. That way, we're not subject to the whims of commercial airlines. Getting in and out of Baghdad can be difficult from time to time, as you can imagine. It's one reason the company leased this facility. We bring in an aviation crew whenever the plane is coming or going." Plum betrayed no emotion, but Frost sensed a hint of exasperation, as if he were a parent trying to teach a distracted toddler how to tie his shoes—and the interview had only just begun.

"How do you work it with immigration and customs?" Frost asked.

"We . . . We have an arrangement with them so that whenever we have an incoming flight they're on hand."

" 'Miss Scarlett,' " Madden said to himself, writing the name in his notebook.

"Do you get over there yourself much?" Frost asked. "To Iraq?"

"Once every so often my presence is required in Baghdad. I don't much care for it. Baghdad has no redeeming features at the moment." His smile resembled an iguana's.

"I'm sorry. Again, I don't mean to offend. Your accent. I can't quite place it."

"I'm from South Africa originally."

"How did you wind up here in the middle of the California desert?"

Plum tapped his fingers on his laptop, clearly peeved.

"I was working for Coban Engineering when this offer came along. It was time for a change, so I took it."

Madden, who had been looking at his shoes, perked up.

"Coban, the oil company?" he asked.

"It's an oilfield engineering and services company. I was working in the Dubai office."

"Ha!" Madden said. "From one desert to another."

Frost decided the conversation was getting sidetracked.

"How long has Peacock been in business?" he asked.

"About a year," Plum said. He laced his fingers in front of him.

"Tell me about your operation." Frost took out his notebook.

"We're a very small company. We have a contract to provide security services for the Iraqi ministry of interior. Supplemental security services might be more accurate."

"How many folks in the company?"

"I'm not really supposed to say." Frost looked at him in a way that made it clear the answer wasn't acceptable. "About fifty, more or less, including local hires."

"That's a pretty small operation."

"It's a small contract."

"Is your contract with the U.S. government or the Iraqi government?"

"You know, I don't honestly know the answer to that question. I just order supplies and pay for everything, like I told you." Plum watched as Frost wrote in his notebook.

"Who would know that?"

"The company director."

"And who is that?" Frost had already taken a dislike to the South African. He was one of those reluctant interviewees for whom yielding each tidbit of benign information proved as hard as parting with a 100-carat ruby.

"Henry Green is his name."

Madden looked up and wrote the name in his notebook.

"Where might we contact Mr. Green?"

"He's in Baghdad. It's the middle of the night over there."

"That's all right," Madden interrupted. "It's not important anyway." Frost shot Madden a look that said, What the fuck? Who's conducting this interview? Madden rebounded with a look that said, Why are you getting your nose out of joint?

"I believe Detective Madden explained to you why we wanted to see you?" Frost continued.

"Yes," Plum said, nodding.

"As Detective Madden informed you, one of your employees, Thad Pearse, was found dead yesterday in Santa Isidora. We believe he was murdered sometime early that morning or the night before. Pearse was traveling with another Peacock employee, Owen Goetz. We're hoping you have information on them that could help us in our investigation."

"I have their files right here," Plum said. He handed two manila folders to Frost. "You can keep those, if you want. They're copies. I don't know how much help I can be, but of course I'm willing to assist in any way I can."

Frost opened Pearse's file and quickly scanned the contents. He handed it to Madden. He opened Goetz's file and looked inside. Like Pearse's, Goetz's file contained little more than his name, Social Security number, date of hiring, a brief recap of his military experience and a space for listing next of kin. Thad had named his sister Julia. Goetz had named his parents.

"This is pretty barebones," Frost said.

"I'm sorry about that," Plum said. "It was all I could get out of Baghdad on such short notice."

"Do you have any information on how the employees are paid? You, for example, are you paid by check or is your salary deposited directly into a bank?"

"Directly into a bank."

"What about the employees in Iraq?" Plum shrugged his shoulders. "Could you find out?"

"I can try."

Frost observed that he made no move to make a note of the request.

"How much would someone like Thad Pearse be paid?"

"Again, it's not my area. I just handle the logistics. But they're paid very well, I know that. They're exempt from income taxes and all their expenses are taken care of—housing, meals, travel."

Frost jotted down a note to himself to have Madden research how much security contractors in Iraq were paid.

"Did Pearse and Goetz come home on your plane on Friday?"

"Oh, we haven't had a flight in or out in weeks. I understand they just dropped out of sight in Baghdad last week sometime. They may have taken a flight to Jordan or gone overland to Kuwait and then come to the U.S. from there."

"Do you have any idea where Owen Goetz is?"

"I can't imagine why I would, but no."

"Does Peacock cover its employees with life insurance, health benefits, that sort of thing?"

"Again, I . . ."

"I know. You only handle logistics." Now Frost was getting exasperated.

"I'm an independent contractor. My own contract is a strictly cash one. I take care of those things on my own. I don't know, but it's possibly the same with the employees in Iraq."

"Did Pearse and Goetz have any sort of special position that you know of? Beyond ordinary bodyguard, or whatever you call it?"

"Not that I am aware of."

"Have you had many incidents? Has Peacock been involved in any firefights, been the target of any terrorist attacks?"

"No. Things have gone remarkably smoothly."

"Can you tell us who did the hiring?"

"Mr. Green, I suppose."

"Did he hire you?"

"Yes."

"He's the one who made the hiring decisions for the other employees?"

"I suppose so, yes. That would be logical." Plum exhaled loudly.

Frost shuffled himself. The plastic chair was eating into his flesh. He looked over at Madden, who appeared so listless he might have been asleep. The room was stuffy and warm. The weak stream of air coming from the air-conditioning vents was hardly making an impact.

"The reason I'm asking is that it struck me as peculiar that your company would hire Pearse and Goetz. It's not reflected in here"—Frost tapped Goetz's file—"but both Pearse and Goetz had disciplinary problems in the military. They both had general instead of honorable discharges."

"I see."

"Both had criminal records prior to military service. That also isn't reflected in your records. You'd think they would have been weeded out during your screening process."

"Well, that is odd," Plum said, scratching his right cheek and looking at the water-stained acoustic tiles in the ceiling. "I don't really know, of course, but it could be that the hiring process was an informal one. One old Army buddy contacting another. Something like that. You're right, though. It does sound peculiar that these men were hired."

"Did either Pearse or Goetz get into trouble in Iraq? Did they cause any problems?"

"I'm sure it would have been in their files if that were the case."

"Who would know?"

"Mr. Green, presumably. But as I said, he's in Baghdad."

Frost was running out of patience faster than he was running out of questions. Plum's ignorance of Peacock's operations was deeper than the Marianas Trench. Madden was still engrossed in his shoes. It would be a contest to figure out who was more bored, Plum or his partner.

"Just a few more questions." If Plum felt relieved he didn't show it. "What is this place, exactly? I mean, what did it used to be? Was it part of Edwards Air Force Base?"

"I believe it belonged to the government, but I don't know if it was part of the air force base." Plum's cellphone rang and he snatched it up. "Right. Got it. All set. OK. Right. Right. Will do."

Frost looked at his watch. It was already past six o'clock. He could practically hear the grumbling from Madden's stomach.

As if he'd heard his partner's thoughts, Madden chose that moment to speak up.

"Well," he said, "I think that about wraps this up." He looked at Frost. "Unless you have some other questions."

Theirs was a fairly informal partnership, but Frost was still the senior detective. He thought for a moment to remind Madden of that but let it pass.

"Just one," Frost said. "Who owns Peacock?"

Plum looked at him stone-faced. Frost already knew what his answer would be.

"I don't know. I've only dealt with Mr. Green."

"Is he the owner?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry."

Frost rose and strolled over to the window as Plum watched him over his shoulder. He pulled two slats of the blinds apart and looked down the runway. Heat shimmered in waves off the concrete. He thanked Plum for his time. As they departed Plum's office, he took notice again of the writing scrawled on the blackboard: Miss Scarlett@2300 9/10.

_

"There's something about that guy I don't like," Frost said as he and Madden stood by the open doors of the car, letting out the superheated air.

"Really?" Madden asked. "He seemed pretty straightforward to me."

"He couldn't wait for us to get out of there."

"I couldn't wait to get out of there, either." Madden poked his head inside the car and, deciding it had cooled enough, climbed in. Frost got in on the passenger side.

"Don't you find this whole set-up odd?" Frost asked. "This trashed-up little airstrip in the middle of nowhere? One guy—one guy—in charge of the operation?" Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead and he adjusted the air-conditioning vent so the flow streamed directly into his face.

"It's a fucked-up place, that's for sure," Madden said, settling himself into his seat. "But I can see how it could be useful. They probably used this place as a training facility before they deployed over to Iraq. You could tool around in the desert here, firing off your machine guns and blowing stuff up and no one would complain."

"The guy is twitchy. I know he's holding out on us. I don't know about what. I don't know why. But he wasn't being straight with us."

"Is that the patented Rick Frost Bullshit-O-Meter talking?" Madden shook his head as he negotiated the first of the turns they would have to make to get back to asphalt. "I think you are reading way too much into this. This Plum guy? He just doesn't know anything. He's a flunky." Madden barreled down the washboard road. Frost's sphincter tensed involuntarily. "What he said makes perfect sense to me. The whole operation's in Baghdad. All he does is run errands on this end and ship stuff over there. What's he got to lie about?"

Frost could not deny his partner made sense. Plum was probably nothing more than an out-of-the-loop go-fer.

"I just don't trust the guy. Not to mention that he was of absolutely no help at all."

Madden steered the car onto the paved road and accelerated toward the highway.

"None of this will matter when we find Owen Goetz," he said. "He can't hide himself and that car forever. A fuck-up like Goetz is going to fuck up. He'll surface soon enough. Man, am I hungry. We'll be lucky to get home by nine o'clock."

Madden was right. Finding Owen Goetz was the key to everything.

## 7

FROST WAS HUNKERED down in his sclerotic VW Rabbit at the top of Overlook Drive, classical FM on the radio, bad thoughts in his head. He had chosen this spot in the lee of a squat oak tree because it gave him an unobstructed view of the Coldstone mansion.

It was an odd house in many ways. It was large enough, though not nearly so grand as to make you think a billionaire lived in it. A pastiche of architectural styles, here stately Georgian manor, there French Provincial, the house was situated in an odd spot, its back crammed up against a cliff and its front door no more than fifty feet from the public street. A far better building site lay just down the road, a level patch of ample size. The cliff angled away there, opening up plenty of space for what could have been a majestic back lawn with swimming pools, putting greens and topiary hedges. Milo Bateman, the head of the domestic staff, confided to Frost that Mrs. Coldstone's had been the directing hand behind the design of the house, while T. Rex had taken little interest in its construction. It was he, though, who had insisted on the site.

Frost thought he knew why. The windows on the south side of the house afforded a sweeping view of the Coldstone Museum in the valley below.

There was a lot about Santa Isidora's most famous resident that Frost did not know. He took no interest in the tycoon's business dealings or philanthropic activities. He knew, however, that Bateman was the only member of the domestic staff who was permitted to remain on the premises overnight. The others—the gardeners, the housekeepers, the kitchen and wait staff—were expected to depart as soon as their day was over, the last spade put away or plate cleared from the table and washed. They were expected back promptly at seven in the morning and if they were late twice they were fired. Coldstone insisted that the interior lights be extinguished promptly at ten every evening, the staff's speculation being that this was a relic of his days at a military boarding school in his youth. White wine glasses were not to be substituted for red. The tasseled ends of Persian rugs must not clump. Pillowcases were to be ironed. No one had ever heard him raise his voice in anger but there was no mistaking the fiery flash in his eyes if things were not done according to his wishes.

Frost knew these things about T. Rex Coldstone because he had interviewed everyone in the household, with the exception of the great man himself, who had been on a long trip overseas, when he was trying to put Jake behind bars.

It was after midnight now and the house was, as would be expected, dark as a tomb. A solitary guard sat in the small gatehouse just off Overlook Drive that controlled access to the driveway.

Frost held his Glock 19 automatic in his right hand, resting it on the gearshift. His thumb played over the safety.

Seeing Jake at the Grove had been a jolt that brought the taste of bile to his mouth. Watching the guilty go free was always a disappointment, but watching Jake walk out of the courtroom was especially troubling. Not just for what he had done, but for what he was going to do.

Frost had been the on-call detective when an SIPD patrol unit found a young girl wandering in a daze down the middle of Second Street in the early morning hours. Maria Valenzuela was sixteen and she told the nurse at the hospital who examined her that she had been held prisoner since the day before.

Jake had sat down next to Maria on a park bench in la zona, the mostly Mexican part of town where she lived with her mother. Maria was whiling away the hours, waiting for her mother to return from her job cleaning the houses of the wealthy who lived in the hills. Jake conversed with her for a long time. He asked her if she wanted to come to a party. She'd make some new friends. There would be free beer and maybe a little weed, too, if she wanted. He promised to get her home before her mother came back.

He took her to his house. She and Jake had a beer while they waited for his friends to arrive. They smoked a joint and drank another beer. After a while, she felt woozy. She remembered Jake helping her down some stairs. The next thing she remembered she was naked, tied spread-eagled to a bed. A rolled-up sock had been stuffed into her mouth.

She was terrified.

Jake did not rape her. The hospital exam showed her hymen was intact. He did not even touch her.

He toyed with her. He told her she would never make it out of the room alive. He told her she would disappear and no one would ever know what had happened to her. He sat in a chair next to her and sniffed the air like a bear on the prowl. He pressed an X-acto knife against her neck. Brandishing a pair of scissors, he threatened to cut off her nipples. He looked into her living eyes with his dead ones and told her she was a worthless cunt and no one would even care that she hadn't come home.

Hours passed, an eternity.

He left the room, came back sometime later—she wasn't sure how much later. He took the sock out of her mouth and told her if she let out a peep he would kill her right there and then. He made her drink a glass of alcohol. She couldn't say what kind. He released her bonds, returned her clothes, told her to get dressed. Frost would later find Maria's underwear stuffed in a shoebox at the back of Jake's closet, along with a dozen other women's panties. Jake told Maria she was lucky, he was letting her go, but that if she breathed a word of what happened he would find her and kill her—or send someone to do the job for him. She felt woozy again, and sick. She didn't remember getting into his big, black Silverado pickup or him letting her out in town. She didn't know whose house she had been in but her description left no doubt it was Coldstone's. A witness had seen her getting into the Silverado with Jake. Frost arrested Jake that afternoon in the wood-paneled foyer of his stepfather's house as his mother wailed in disbelief.

It was never going to be an easy case to prove. Maria had gone willingly with Jake. She admitted to drinking beer and smoking marijuana. She was a poor girl from the Mexican side of town. There was no evidence she had suffered physical harm. A canvas of her schoolmates did reveal that she was known to be a good student and not a habitual drinker or drug user. She had never been in trouble with the law or at school.

Jake had high-priced legal talent. Even before he had finished booking Jake, Frost received a call from William DuPont, a celebrity defense attorney from Los Angeles, who commanded that the police not question him further.

District Attorney Nogata fretted from the beginning. DuPont would argue there was no proof any crime had occurred. Whatever happened at the Coldstone house was consensual. There was no evidence Maria had been tied up. Jake had an X-acto knife? What kid who builds model planes didn't? Maria's panties, found in his room, soiled with his semen? DuPont would argue they were a gift, as were the other panties Frost had found. What Jake had done with them was irrelevant.

DuPont would insist on a change of venue. There would be countless motions, delays. Coldstone's money would hire rafts of consultants to ferret out anyone in the jury pool with a predisposition to convict, or even to give the prosecution a fair shake.

For Maria, the trial would be ugly. Coldstone-hired private detectives would examine her life in minute detail. They were bound to turn up something they could use to assault her credibility. No one led a blemish-free life, especially a teenager.

Inevitably, they would find out about Frost and Los Angeles, too.

The one thing they had going for them, Nogata said, was the Rohypnol. Often called "rope," it was the date-rape drug of choice. A sample of Maria's blood drawn at the hospital and tested in the county lab came back positive for the presence of Rohypnol.

Even a lawyer as skilled as DuPont was going to have a hard time explaining that away.

And then—no trial. On the morning of Jake's preliminary hearing came the news that the panties and blood sample had disappeared from the police evidence room. No panties meant the DNA evidence of Jake's semen was inadmissible. No blood sample meant the test showing Rohypnol in Maria's system might as well have never taken place. Maria's testimony was all they had left.

DuPont moved for dismissal and Nogata agreed. Unless the missing items turned up or he produced some new evidence, the prosecutor told Frost, they couldn't go forward. There was not enough to prosecute. Frost argued they had nothing to lose by pressing ahead but Nogata refused to budge. If they went to trial now Jake would be acquitted, ruling out prosecution in the future if the evidence was found.

Frost was more than disappointed. He was worried. Jake exhibited all the signs of a budding serial killer. Breaking into women's homes and snatching their panties, quite possibly while they slept in their beds. Kidnapping and tormenting Maria. Jake wanted to control her, to show her who was in charge.

He hadn't sexually assaulted Maria. He had let her go. Perhaps he got cold feet or concluded he hadn't planned things out well enough. But the next time, or the time after that, Jake wouldn't be satisfied with tying his victim up and taunting her. He would progress. To maintain the thrill, each new attack had to be more dangerous, more exciting than the last. Jake would rape. Jake would kill. If not today, then tomorrow. There would be no stopping him short of putting him behind bars—or killing him.

I'll be on my dad's jet to Cabo before you get out of the parking lot.

Martinez launched an inquiry into the disappearance of the evidence. An inventory showed other items had gone missing, including ten thousand dollars in cash and a quarter-kilo of cocaine. The D.A.'s office funded an outside audit by the state. The auditors uncovered weaknesses in SIPD evidence handling. Too many people had unfettered access. The investigation failed to identify who had taken the items from the evidence room. The auditors could not even ascertain if the thief was connected to the SIPD. They recommended new procedures and a new evidence storage facility. Martinez took their report to the city council but they balked at the price tag and decided to contract out evidence-keeping to the county.

Frost had failed Maria in more ways than simply not putting Jake in prison. Like any cop, he knew you couldn't undo every wrong and make it right. But he could have done more for her. He knew that, too.

He stayed in touch with her after Jake was set free, phoning occasionally to ask how she was doing in school, if she needed anything. He inquired about getting her therapy through the victim's compensation fund, but was told she didn't qualify because there hadn't been a conviction; the victim had to prove her victimhood. After Maria dropped out of school the following autumn, Frost arranged a job for her at a local hardware store. She quit after two weeks. He called a few times after that but never reached her. He could have driven to la zona to see her but never did.

Frost's call to her on the ride back from Peacock was his first in well over a year. Maria's mother, Candelaria, told him she didn't know where her daughter was. Maria was often in and out these days. Candelaria didn't know where she went. Sometimes she didn't come home at night at all. With a weariness born of years of physical labor, Candelaria said she was afraid for her daughter. Two of Maria's brothers had been in trouble with the law for fighting and stealing. She didn't want to see that happen to her baby girl too.

"She was such a sweet baby," Candelaria said. "Such a pretty young girl, always so well-behaved. She did so well in school before . . ."

She didn't need to end the sentence.

Frost felt the cool steel of the pistol. He laid it on the passenger seat. What was he trying to prove? Did he expect Jake to come out of his stepfather's castle? And what if he did? Did he intend to shoot him?

If you hunt monsters, take care not to become a monster yourself.

Being up on Overlook Drive was not about Jake. It was about himself. It was about standing idly by as Maria fell out of reach. It was about his failure, one of many.

He started the car, put it in gear and drove back down into town. The gatehouse guard looked up from his magazine as he passed by.

## 8

FROST PUT IN a call to the Beverly Hills police to hear what they had to say about Franklin Diebold.

Diebold was, in the parlance of cops, "well and favorably known" to them. He had been in business there for more than two decades. His gallery was a high-end outlet for medieval and Renaissance art and antiques as well as the occasional Greek coin or Roman bracelet, Tang dynasty vase or pre-Colombian Incan pot. Diebold was a regular contributor to local charities, including those sponsored by the BHPD and LAPD. He had never come under suspicion for drug trafficking or any other criminal activity. The only stain on his reputation the Beverly Hills officer with whom Frost spoke could recall was that he had been sued years before after selling some antiques that turned out to be stolen. Diebold, who said he himself had been victimized, made full restitution and the objects were returned to their rightful owner.

Madden, in the meantime, confirmed with the gallery shop assistant that she had neither spoken with or knew Thad Pearse or Owen Goetz. Diebold was out on an errand but would be back in the afternoon.

Frost decided that he and Madden would drive down to Los Angeles to interview Diebold in person. He hadn't been to Beverly Hills since he lived in nearby West Hollywood.

A trip Beverly Hills would also put them practically on the doorstep of Century City, where Julia's firm was located.

Frost, Madden and Martinez met in the chief's office to discuss the status of the case.

Martinez wanted to know if there had been any leads on the whereabouts of Goetz or the Honda Civic. None, Frost told him. Martinez chewed on the hairs of his mustache.

"I find that remarkable," he said. "Nothing in Goetz's record suggests we're dealing with a criminal mastermind—just the opposite. A string of arrests for petty crimes. The kinds of acts committed by an impulsive person. This is no international jewel thief we're dealing with. Now all of a sudden, though, he manages to elude every law enforcement agency in California while driving a stolen car. You posted the lookout, right?"

"Of course," Frost said. "His photo, description of the car, home address, the works."

"What's that town he's from again?"

"Pickle Center, up in the Central Valley."

"Do they actually grow pickles up there?"

"Cucumbers," Madden said. "You grow cucumbers, then you pickle them."

Martinez scowled at him.

"You speak with the local police?" Martinez asked Frost.

"The family lives on a farm outside of town. We sent a fax to the local sheriff."

"I want you to give Andy Griffith a call and light a fire under his butt. He needs to send Deputy Fife and his other boys out to find that car. A guy like Goetz is going to run home and go to ground like a frightened squirrel." The chief was mixing his metaphors but Frost decided not to call him on it. He wondered what Pickle Center's hick sheriff might make of the tiny SIPD. "Call the CHP, too, and ask them to put an extra eye out on the I-5 corridor on both sides of Pickle Center."

Martinez next wanted to know what they had turned up on a possible connection to drug trafficking. Frost's answer was, again, nothing.

"We've put the word out on the street but nothing's turned up so far," he said. Speaking of "the street" in the context of Santa Isidora was, of course, ludicrous.

"Any connection to the Mexican Mafia?" Martinez asked. "What about those guapos at the motel?"

"They're Salvadoran," Madden reminded him. "And they're just construction workers."

Martinez chewed his mustache some more.

"Let's think about the drug angle a bit," he said. "If they were coming to sell, or buy, there are only two or three people to consider—César Montero, Billy Williams and Alfie Devine."

"Devine's in UCLA Medical Center getting a quadruple bypass," Madden said. "According to Rollo."

"Good for him. Maybe they'll nick an artery. OK, it's down to Montero and Williams, then. Focus your efforts on those two." Martinez bit the end of a hair, spit it out. "There's something else to consider. These two, they're driving a borrowed car and sleeping in a twenty-five-dollar-a-night motel. They're not exactly high rollers. So did they have the scratch for a drug deal? Maybe not, if they were buying."

"They could have been selling," Frost said.

"Actually," Madden said, "I did some research on the Internet. Security contractors in Iraq are paid a fortune—two thousand, three thousand dollars a week, sometimes more. Tax free. Pearse and Goetz were in Iraq eight or nine months. Between them they could have had a quarter-million dollars or more."

"That puts a different complexion on things," Martinez said. "Could Montero or Williams handle a transaction that big? I don't think so."

"Maybe they're looking to get into the big time," Madden said.

"Or maybe Goetz just wanted the quarter-million for himself." Martinez stretched his arms out in front of him. He spread them wide and brought them together several times while swiveling his chair back and forth, a kind of sedentary tai-chi.

"The fact is we don't know a lot of things," Frost said. "We don't know if Pearse and Goetz came to Santa Isidora for a particular purpose or if they were just passing through. We don't know if they had money, or drugs, or neither. We don't know why Goetz killed Pearse—or even if he did."

"Oh, I think that's pretty clear," Madden said.

Phhttt came Martinez's familiar fricative.

Frost outlined the planned foray to Beverly Hills. It could give them a better idea of what Pearse and Goetz had been doing in Santa Isidora. Martinez gave his OK after reminding Frost to call the sheriff in Pickle Center.

As they were leaving his office he called out after them, pointing out they were still on the hook for the burglary of the Sawtooth Saloon.

Even by the laid-back standards of Santa Isidora, the break-in at the Sawtooth hadn't been much of a crime. Someone entered through the back door during the night and made off with a single keg of lager. The keg would turn up sooner or later, Frost was sure, probably not far from the high school.

Frost asked Madden to try again to pry Pearse and Goetz's bank information out of David Plum.

_

Frost was looking for the number of the Pickle Center sheriff when Martha Oleske called him.

"Hello, lover," she said.

"Hello, Martha," Frost replied. "What's up? Please tell me it's something that will break the Pearse case wide open."

She laughed.

"You should be so lucky. I'm calling about that mud you gave me."

"Have you figured out where it came from?"

"Whoa, hold your horses. A woman likes to be romanced a little first." He heard her sucking at a cigarette. "First, it's not mud, it's clay."

"What's the difference?"

"All the difference in the world," she said. "Mud is just wet dirt. Clay is a specific type of soil composed of fine-grained minerals, phyllosilicates, that impart plasticity to the material."

"I see." She loved lecturing him.

"I know, you couldn't care less. The point is, mud is one thing, clay is something altogether different. You make bricks from mud, what do you get? Mud bricks that wash away in the wind and rain, that's what you get. Bricks made from clay are going to be much harder, stronger and more durable."

"Are you telling me those pieces of mud—clay—came from bricks?"

"No, I'm not telling you that," she said. "Don't jump to conclusions. What you gave me was hardened clay, but whether it was hardened in an oven or in the sun I can't tell you." This was all very useful. Sometimes Martha got wrapped up in the arcana of her scientific knowledge.

"OK," Frost said. "It's clay. Now, can you tell me where it came from?"

"No." She might have said that at the beginning. "The clay doesn't match the chemical signature of any soils in California that I could find in our database, or in other databases I could access."

"Well, it was a long shot from the beginning. So, no big deal. As I told you, I was just covering all the bases."

"Hold on, don't despair. I took it upon myself to FedEx a few of the larger pieces to Norm Fergus at UCLA. He's a geologist and soil scientist. I also e-mailed him the chemical signature I came up with, but he's going to want to run his own tests. He's got much more sophisticated equipment in his lab and access to soil samples from all over the world. He'll be able to tell you where that clay came from."

"Thanks, Martha. Did you . . ."

"Yes, I put it in an evidence bag and made sure he has to sign for it so we keep the chain of custody clear."

"You're way ahead of me."

"I'm a smart girl, Rick."

"I have never doubted that, Martha."

"Rick."

"Yes, Martha."

"I'm facing another lean weekend. I thought maybe I could stop by your place tonight or tomorrow."

"I don't know, Martha."

"I know it violates the Wednesday-only rule, but we've done it a couple of times before. The other night was way cool."

Frost laughed at her tween slang.

"I don't think so, Martha. I've got a lot on my plate."

"OK. Wait." She paused for a moment. "You're not going soft on me, are you? Wait. I didn't mean it like that . . ."

Frost laughed again.

"I know what you mean. I just have a lot to do."

Madden dropped by Frost's cubicle. A patrol unit had brought in the security-camera video from a convenience store a mile from the Twin Pines Motel. Madden had already screened it and downloaded it to his laptop. He showed it to Frost. The tape had captured Owen Goetz buying a six-pack of beer at eleven p.m. on the night of the murder. The M.E.'s office had narrowed the time of death to between ten p.m. and midnight.

"How's that for a stone-cold killer?" Madden exulted. "Has a few brews with his bud, then does him in."

"Those are bottles," Frost said. "The only empties in the room were cans."

"Right," Madden said, looking at the freeze-frame image of Goetz at the counter. "Right. Even colder still. He puts out his buddy's lights, then goes and buys a six-pack for the road."

Frost asked Madden to arrange the release of the video to the media. It was unlikely to break its way onto the Los Angeles newscasts, given greater L.A.'s daily effluvia of gang murders and road-rage killings, but it couldn't hurt to try. Goetz's face might strike a chord with someone who had seen him recently. So far, he had been doing an adroit job of avoiding detection.

_

The one task Frost had remaining before he and Madden could get on the road to Beverly Hills was to place a call to the sheriff in Pickle Center.

Sheriff Roy Grant told Frost that if Owen Goetz had murdered Thad Pearse it would have been the first time in his life he had shown any initiative.

The Goetz family was a known commodity in Tule County, Grant said. The family's roots in the area went back more than a century. At one time, the Goetz spread encompassed hundreds of acres planted in spinach, lettuce and onions, but in the past few decades bad crop years, poor management and a family feud had led them to sell off the domain piece by piece. What little acreage remained in their hands was now given over to raising turkeys—not very profitably, if other local growers were to be believed.

"That may be why the three boys have gone down the road they have," Grant told Frost. There were three Goetz brothers—Brad, Jimmy and Owen. Their criminal histories were packed with an astonishing assortment of misdemeanors and felonies ranging from public urination to auto theft. Their public defenders usually succeeded in plea-bargaining the charges downward in exchange for admissions of guilt, but Jimmy had done two years in Tehachapi for assault and Brad had pulled a three-month stretch in county jail for criminal trespass.

"In fact, I've got Brad back in the county lock-up right now," Grant said. It was a stolen-property beef, the property in question being a seventy-two-inch plasma TV and home theater system, as well as other electronics of questionable provenance. The district attorney had successfully argued for bail of a million dollars by contending Brad was a flight risk. He based this assertion on the sudden appearance at the Goetz homestead of the trappings of new wealth, including two new pickup trucks and a high-performance ATV, all bought within the past couple of months, and all paid for in cash.

"Brad's the clever one," Grant continued. "He'll get out from under these charges one way or another. Right now he's just unhappy he's stuck here with us while he's awaiting trial."

The stolen-property case had given Grant what he really wanted: enough probable cause to search the Goetz farm. They were looking for evidence to tie the Goetz brothers to the manufacture of crystal meth. "We think Jimmy made some connections when he was up in Tehachapi. After he got back, he and Brad went into the meth business. The word is they've got a trailer parked up in the Sierra foothills somewhere where they make the stuff, but we've never been able to track them to it, or even get an idea where it is." The search turned up nothing.

Frost asked Grant if he thought Owen might be holed up at the trailer.

"I suppose so," he said. "We haven't gotten wind of Owen's being in the area, though. The thing about Owen is . . . I hate to say it, but Owen just isn't that smart. Brad, yes—he's an intelligent son of a bitch. Jimmy you might say is average. Owen's the one who got left behind when they were passing out the brains." He paused for a moment. "Brad and Jimmy, if they'd knocked their heads together in some legal enterprise, they probably would have made a success of themselves. They could make that turkey farm profitable if they put their noses to the grindstone. Owen, on the other hand—well, he's just not too bright. He's also on the small side. The runt of the litter. When I saw your fax saying he was a suspect in a murder down there, I just shook my head and said to myself, 'No way that boy did this.'"

"What makes you so sure?" Frost asked.

"Owen is a follower, not a leader. He's a fidgety, nervous little guy. Looked up to his big brothers, did whatever they asked. Even when they played jokes on him he remained devoted to them. I don't think Owen has the courage, if that's what it is, to kill another human being. He might do it if Brad or Jimmy told him to, but otherwise it's just not in his character."

Frost pondered the possibility that Brad and Jimmy and crystal meth were somehow mixed up in Thad Pearse's murder.

"Maybe he changed after the Marines," Frost said.

"I guess. I don't know. I saw him last year when he got out of the service. Still seemed the same, weasely little fellow I'd always known. But maybe I was just seeing what I expected to see."

"Any chance Owen has gone into the crystal meth business with his brothers?"

"He would if they asked him to, I'm sure. I haven't heard that, though."

Could Pearse and Goetz have driven to Pickle Center and picked up some meth and still had time to drive to Santa Isidora? Had brother Jimmy met them half-way?

As far as they knew, Frost told Grant, Owen was the last one to see Pearse alive. It was imperative that they find him. Grant promised he and his deputies would make a special effort to be on the lookout for him.

## 9

MADDEN WAS DISAPPOINTED that Daphne's Quiver turned out to be a "bikini bar"—because alcohol was served, the dancers kept their clothes, such as they were, on. According to the Glendale police, the club was no more, and no less, a venue for illegal activities like drug trafficking than other local bars. The club was open from eleven in the morning until one a.m., seven days a week. The dancers came and went on irregular shifts.

Frost and Madden interviewed the employees on hand, Madden questioning the dancers while Frost took on the bartenders and bouncers. They showed pictures of Pearse and Goetz. None of the employees admitted to an acquaintance with either or recognized them as customers.

They left their business cards and several copies of Pearse and Goetz's photos with the manager on duty, asking that they be shown to the employees on other shifts, and requested that anyone with any information should call the SIPD.

They were practically out the door when a dancer who had just arrived for her shift stopped them. She introduced herself as Amber and said she remembered seeing Pearse and Goetz on Sunday afternoon.

"They were here for a couple of hours," Amber said.

"You're sure of that?" Frost asked.

"Oh, yeah. I remember them well, because they were such shitty tippers. They were sitting at the rail, right up at the edge of the stage, you know, for a couple of hours, nursing their beers. I don't think they coughed up a dollar in tips between them the whole time they were here."

"It's sort of an unwritten rule that when you sit at the rail you're supposed to tip big," Madden said to Frost, and winked.

"Were they alone? Just the two of them, I mean?" Frost asked.

"They were the only two soldiers I remember seeing," Amber said.

"Soldiers?"

"Yeah, you know, they were dressed in, like, Army uniforms. Fatigues. I don't remember if they were with anyone else. The rail was full, so there definitely were guys on both sides of them. Sunday afternoon is a pretty big time for us. Guys tell their wives and girlfriends that they're off to Home Depot to look at a leaf blower or something and then they come here to drink beer and watch the football game."

"Do you recall ever seeing either of them before? This would have been several months ago, maybe a year."

"Oh, gosh, I wouldn't know. I haven't been here that long. All the girls move around, from club to club. Guys like fresh faces. If you stay at one club too long, the tips start to go down, so you gotta move on."

Madden noted, as they drove to Beverly Hills, that Glendale was a long way to go from Julia's place in Westwood just to watch a football game and look at dancers who didn't even take their tops off. Pearse and Goetz must have gone there to meet someone.

Maybe, Frost said. Or maybe Daphne's Quiver was just one of Pearse or Goetz's old hangouts.

_

The Diebold Gallery occupied the north corner of the Palm Building on Beverly Drive. Some of the gallery's merchandise was displayed behind two large windows framed by light-gray marble tiles. Behind one pane a small landscape painting in a gilt frame rested on an easel. The label beneath read AMBROSIUS BREUGHEL - CANAL AT SUNSET. Also on show were a stained-glass window, a large silver plate with inlaid jewels, a pair of clay pipes, a terracotta ewer, a small iron mace and several swords.

Electrified security tape etched a square around the windows. A security camera concealed within a dark blue globe was affixed over the entryway.

Frost and Madden entered the shop to the jingling of a bell. The interior was comparatively small, a little larger than the average suburban living room. To Frost's untrained eye, the distribution of goods on the shelves and in glass display cases appeared to be completely random.

Sitting on a stool behind a mahogany counter was a young woman dressed in a black-and-white GUITAR HERO T-shirt. A small diamond stud sparkled in her left nostril. Streaks of magenta accented her spiky black hair. Looming above her, hanging on strings like a puppet, was a medieval harlequin with a papier-mâché head.

The young woman confirmed she was the Clarice with whom Madden had talked. Frost asked to see the owner. Clarice nodded indifferently. She got up from the counter, turned to the door behind her and knocked softly. She opened the door a crack and whispered through it.

Franklin Diebold came out of the office and introduced himself. Clarice returned to her seat.

Diebold looked to be about sixty. He had a full head of gray hair and a neatly trimmed, white beard. He was short and thick around the middle. He wore tortoise-shell glasses with round lenses. He was wearing a pair of charcoal slacks, a white shirt with French cuffs and a red Hermès tie embossed with tiny green frogs. His cufflinks were round and inset with mother-of-pearl.

Frost and Madden presented their identification and explained the background of their investigation. According to the records of Thad Pearse's cellphone provider, Frost informed Diebold, he had called the gallery the day before he was murdered and spoke to someone for about ten minutes.

"Do you recall having a conversation with either Thad Pearse or Owen Goetz on Monday?" Frost asked.

"I don't recall speaking to anyone of that name," Diebold answered.

"He might not have given his name, or he might have used a false one. This conversation would have been around two in the afternoon. Do you recall any conversation at that time that lasted about ten minutes?"

Diebold rubbed the back of his neck with pudgy fingers.

"I can't say that I do," he said, looking distracted. "I don't remember any specific conversation around that time. We get a lot phone calls during the day, you understand. It's hard to remember them all."

"Let me try this. Do you remember any conversation you had with anyone who mentioned that he had recently returned from Iraq?"

"Iraq?"

"Iraq, the Middle East in general. Overseas in general."

"No, I can't say that I remember anyone mentioning that." Diebold fidgeted with one of his shirt buttons.

"All right. Do you remember any conversation you had in which Santa Isidora came up?"

"Santa Isidora? No."

"OK. Can you recall the specifics of any call you had that day? Any call from a male."

Diebold sighed loudly.

"I don't know, Detective . . . Frost, is it? Today is Friday. You're asking me about . . . What day again?

"Monday."

"Monday. That's five days ago. I may get two dozen or more calls in a day. They all blend into one another. A woman calls, wants to get her husband 'something special' for his birthday. What have I got, what can I recommend? Somebody else calls and says they have a piece for sale, am I interested? Somebody else calls, it's a wrong number. Maybe this was a wrong number."

"Usually a wrong number doesn't take ten minutes to straighten out," Frost said.

"Yes, of course. Maybe the phone company's records are wrong. Doesn't that ever happen?" Diebold's glasses had slipped down his nose. He pushed them back up.

"From time to time."

"Maybe the records are wrong, then. I don't know. Maybe I didn't take the call. Maybe Clarice took it."

The shop assistant, who had been intently scrutinizing an issue of Elle, raised her head.

"What?" she asked.

"I was telling these gentlemen," Diebold said, "that perhaps you might have taken the call from this fellow they're asking about."

"No, I already told them I was off on Monday, remember? I was sick. I went out with some friends on the weekend and we all practically had to have our stomachs pumped." She stuck out her tongue and pretended to gag.

"Yes, I remember now." Diebold squinted. He removed his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, replaced them. "I am trying to remember, but I just don't. I'm sorry, Detective. I forget a lot of things. I'd forgotten Clarice was off on Monday."

"Certainly," Frost said. He tapped his pen against his notebook. Frustration was eating away at him. A distressing pattern was developing. The Vickers had been playing Parcheesi. The Salvadorans had been cooking pupusas, whatever they were. David Plum was a know-nothing flunky. Now, Diebold—a man who had no memory of events that occurred only five days previously.

Owen Goetz already had a four-day head start on them. He could be in Singapore by now.

"Is that it, Detective Frost?" Diebold asked, adjusting his cufflinks.

"Let me think for a moment."

Frost might have been disposed to forego further questions under different circumstances, but Diebold's show of cooperation did not disguise the fact that he simply couldn't be bothered with the questions of a couple of flatfoots from out of town.

Questioning him was like scratching the rash from poison ivy. The more you did it, the more it hurt.

"I must say, Mr. Diebold," Frost said, "I still find it remarkable that you cannot recall a single thing about a conversation that took up almost ten minutes of your important day."

"Detective, people ramble," Diebold said. He stretched out his shirtsleeves, adjusted the cuffs once more. He looked at his watch. "In my kind of business, a high-end business like this that caters to a certain level of clientele, you learn to let people jabber. It makes them feel they have something important to say. This is not a five-and-dime store that relies on a lot of quick turnover. I have a very select inventory and very selective customers. They are very important people, or they like to think of themselves as such. They like to be seduced. They like to take me into their confidence. They want to be my friend. They tell me about what a horrible job their hair stylist did. They tell me which Hollywood producer tried to seduce them, or which producer they seduced. People who appreciate the very special kind of merchandise we offer are people who have stories to tell. To be honest with you, I sometimes just set the phone down and let them prattle on, and I'll come back five minutes later and they're still talking. I may just mumble a word of encouragement and off they go again. So to tell me I had a ten-minute conversation with someone and expect it to register as something I could not possibly forget is just not the case, I'm afraid. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes—that's nothing extraordinary around here."

"He does talk on the phone a lot," Clarice said.

"What do you call this thing?" Madden interjected, holding up a contrivance made of several straps of iron bonded together.

"That," Diebold said, taking the item from Madden and placing it gently back on the square glass pedestal where he found it, "is a chastity belt."

"No kidding. Rick," he said, his expression as delighted as a kid on Christmas morning, "get a load of this thing. I always thought they were a myth. It weighs a ton. Women really wore these?"

"Yes. They were all too real, I'm afraid."

"Huh." Madden looked at Frost. "Rick, maybe Pearse called because he was looking for an unusual present to get Julia. He should have had plenty of money from working in Iraq." Madden looked at the chastity belt again, shook his head. "I still can't believe that thing is for real." He looked at Frost, the crinkle in his forehead signaling, I'm bored, are we done here?

Diebold's expression asked the same question.

"I would like you to think about it some more, very hard," Frost said, unhappy that Madden had been speculating out loud in front of a witness. "Please, give it some thought and see if you can't jog your memory."

"Of course, Detective," Diebold said.

He didn't mean it.

Frost and Madden shook hands with Diebold and Clarice and thanked them for their cooperation and asked them to call if they remembered anything, even if they didn't think it was important.

_

Outside, Frost turned to his partner.

"That's two for two," he said.

"What?" Madden asked.

"First Plum, now this guy. Two know-nothing pricks."

"Oh, I didn't think he was so bad. A bit stuffy, sure, but what do you expect from a Beverly Hills art dealer?"

"He's just like Plum the other day. Outwardly cooperative but doesn't know a damn thing." Madden's behavior had been the same, too—lassitude and an obvious desire to wrap up the interview in a hurry. "Speaking of which, has Plum gotten back to you on the bank information?"

"I'll check." Madden took out his cellphone and quickly clicked a few buttons. "No, no voice mail, no text messages."

"Keep on him. Also, see what you can dig up on Diebold using that Internet wizardry of yours."

Madden said he would. He asked if he could meet up with Frost at the car in an hour. He wanted to go over to Rodeo Drive. Frost agreed and watched as Madden trotted off to the shopper's paradise just one block over.

Frost walked across the street and leaned against a building. He took his cellphone out of his pocket and looked at it. He flipped it open, flipped it closed, flipped it open again.

"Fuck it," he said. He punched in Julia's office number, still thinking he hadn't thought this through. Suppose she said yes. Then what? He'd probably have to flop overnight at Jerry Sirica's place in the San Fernando Valley.

Julia answered on the third ring.

"Julia," Frost said. "It's Rick Frost. I happen to be down here on your brother's case. In Beverly Hills, actually. I thought, since Century City is so close by, perhaps we could get together for dinner or drinks. . . . If you have the time."

"Oh, Rick, I'd love to," Julia said, "but I'm actually on I-5 north of Bakersfield right now, on my way to Cougarville. Your call was automatically redirected to my cell."

"Oh, I see. Well, my idea's no good then."

"I decided to spread Thad's ashes in the woods behind my mother's cabin. That's where her ashes are. I thought Thad deserved at least to have a place where someone who cared for him knows where he is."

"Well, I'm very sorry I won't get the chance to see you."

"Rick, if it's not too inconvenient, maybe I can stop by in Santa Isidora on my way back? I thought I would spend Saturday up in Cougarville and head back Sunday morning. I could be in Santa Isidora around noon or a little after."

"That would be fine," Frost said. "My partner, Jim Madden—you remember him—is having a barbecue on Sunday afternoon. Beer and burgers, that sort of thing. If you'd like to go."

"Sure, I'd love to. That's sounds great." She paused. "Rick?"

"Yes?"

"Have you made any progress on Thad's case?"

"Not really, to be honest with you. I'm sorry. But don't worry. Owen Goetz will turn up sooner or later. Then we'll find out what happened." He was beginning to doubt it was going to be that easy.

"I'm sure you will. I'll see you on Sunday, then. I'll call once I get to Santa Isidora and you can tell me how to get to your place. See you Sunday. Goodbye, Rick."

"Goodbye, Julia."

Frost punched in Jerry Sirica's number at the FBI office downtown.

"How did you get this number?" Sirica said when he came on the line.

"Your wife gave it to me and said you and I needed to have a man-to-man chat," Frost said.

"Rick, it's been a long time. Are you in L.A.? You need to get down here more often. Come visit."

"You know L.A. and I don't mix well. Listen, Jerry, I need a favor."

"You know I owe you more than one."

He gave Sirica a quick run-down on the Pearse murder and his unhappiness with the lack of good leads. He told him about the trip he and Madden had made the day before to Peacock.

"I can't put my finger on it, but I know Plum was holding something back, if not lying to me outright," Frost said.

"Your cop nose is smelling bullshit," Sirica said.

"Exactly. It probably doesn't make any difference. This is probably a case of a drug deal or a friendship gone bad. Still. What I'd like, if you could spare a moment from chasing down terrorists and the Mob, is to see what you can find out about Peacock Overseas Services for me."

"Like what?"

"I haven't a clue. Anything you can dredge up using the infinite resources of the FBI."

Someone sped by in an Alfa-Romeo convertible.

"I'll do a little digging and see what I can find. Don't expect it overnight."

"Thanks, Jerry."

"If you're in town, stop by for dinner tonight. Jen would love to see you."

"Another time. I may be coming down to L.A. more often in the future."

When Madden met up with Frost at the car, he showed him the gold necklace he'd purchased for Flora.

"I probably shouldn't have done it," he said. "I'm behind on Donna and Lucy's alimony checks already. But Flora will love it that I got her something from Rodeo Drive." The car roared to life. "It's all about the women you love, Iceman."

## 10

"IT'S LIKE YOU'VE died inside," Annie said the day she finally walked out for good. "You go through the motions. You sleep, you eat, you go to work, you have sex—occasionally. You keep your nose pressed in your precious books. But inside, at the core, the thing that makes you human is not there anymore. It's like your soul has preceded your body in death." Annie Nystad had a master's degree in English literature from UC Santa Barbara and was an advertising copywriter. She had a way with words.

"What you're saying is I'm a zombie," Frost said.

"You know what I mean."

Frost had replayed the scene in his mind dozens of times over the years. It was no less vivid now, as he circled la zona looking for Maria Valenzuela, than it had been on that winter evening five years before.

He had called Maria three times on her cellphone since speaking to her mother. Each time she had failed to pick up, and each time he had left a voicemail message asking her to get in touch. She hadn't called back. The previous evening he had gone to the station and fished out the instruction booklet that came with his SIPD-issued cellphone.

Painstakingly, he typed out a text message:

Maria - It has been too long. It's important that I see you. Please call. Rick Frost.

He knew that texting protocol eschewed capitalization, punctuation and grammar, but he couldn't bring himself to ignore them.

Later, at home, he stared at the luminous screen of the cellphone, waiting for the tone announcing an incoming message, but none arrived.

"You've let the job get to you," Annie said. "It's eating away at you. You internalize it all, all the strife and crap you see out there. It's like you're at the edge of the ocean bailing with a toy bucket, trying to keep the tide from coming in." She was sitting in the semi-dark across the dining room table from him. "You've become like King fucking Lear, trying to command the winds. You can't win that battle."

Frost sat in silence, watching her. She wasn't looking him in the eye. She couldn't.

"I know it's an occupational hazard for policemen," she continued. "You should do something about it. Get some therapy. Doesn't the LAPD have psychiatrists? Make an appointment. I'm serious." She tugged at one of the silver-and-turquoise earrings Frost bought her on the Navajo reservation during their trip to the Grand Canyon four years earlier, after they first got together. "You have no friends, do you realize that? Only cop friends. Cop buddies."

"I have friends," he said. "Sean Davis."

"Sean and Wanda are my friends. Have you ever called Sean up on your own and said, 'Hey, let's go for a beer?' No? That's because you've pushed friendship aside, along with everything else." Her eyes caught his for a moment and skittered away, unable to hold contact. "You used to be able to maintain a balance between things. Work was work, home was home. You left work at work. Now that's all there is for you. You don't have room for anything else. Ever since Rashid died."

Rashid Smoots was a funny kid from South Central. He died from a gunshot to the chest. There were no witnesses. Frost read about it in the newspaper.

Frost could have argued with her, but what she was saying was true.

It was also beside the point. Their conversation was Kabuki theater. The end had already been written. Annie was in love with someone else. If not in love, infatuated. If not infatuated, sleeping with.

His name was Lester Marsh and he was an account executive at her firm. They consummated the deal during an advertising conference in Chicago. Frost had anticipated it before she left and read it in her face when he picked her up at the airport afterwards. He was, after all, a detective.

Why he had said nothing, done nothing, was another question. It was a good question. He supposed he loved her. He hated that she was seeing someone else. But he told himself there was no point in fighting for her. If he had to fight for her, he had already lost her.

It was less trouble just to wait for her to make up her mind to go.

"Rick, if you don't get out of police work, you will never be at peace."

"Peace comes from within," he said.

"Jesus. All right, I'll bite. Spinoza?"

"The Moody Blues." Actually, it was the Buddha. What else had the Buddha said? He who loves no one has no woes.

"Rick, I'm sorry," she said. "I know you love me. Somewhere deep in that heart you keep hidden away from everyone. But I can't breathe." Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, trickled down her cheeks. "I know you love me, but love isn't always the answer."

Frost rubbed his hand across the grain of the table, a round, light-oak antique they found in Solvang on the last trip they took before they moved in together. He had spent a month restoring its original luster, sanding away a lifetime's worth of cracked and faded varnish, staining it, polishing it, oiling it.

"Who gets to keep the table?"

Annie let him keep the table and the rest of the furniture they had purchased together. A few weeks later he signed a lease on a furnished studio apartment near the corner of Fairfax and Santa Monica. Before he left the old apartment he put the table and the other furniture on the street outside with a sign attached that read FREE TO GOOD HOME.

_

Candelaria Valenzuela told him Maria had come home late the night before and gone out early that morning. She hadn't seen her since.

As barrios went, la zona was not that large—only twenty-five or thirty square blocks. It once held almost all the Mexican-American families in town, but as Santa Isidora grew up and discrimination against native-born Latinos waned, the older families moved out, replaced by immigrants like Candelaria Valenzuela and their children.

Frost was on his third circuit through la zona's commercial district of tacquerias and discount clothing stores, worn-out shocks registering every bump in the narrow streets, when he noticed Maria with three other girls outside an electronic games arcade. He pulled the Rabbit to the curb and got out.

"Hey, Maria," he said.

She turned at him and smiled. The other three girls, perhaps sensing the presence of a policeman, edged away.

"It's OK," Maria reassured them. "It's a friend."

She was wearing cutoff jeans and a yellow tube top. Three slim silver bracelets jangled from her left wrist. Gold hoop earrings the size of tea saucers dangled from her ears. Snaking up from her right elbow to her shoulder was a multicolored vine-and-flower tattoo.

"That's new," Frost said.

"Isn't it cool?" Maria said, showing off the tat. "I was so scared when I got it. I almost chickened out. But I'm glad I did. It's so beautiful."

Frost passed on the opportunity to tell her that by the time she was forty the vines and flowers would look less like art and more like someone's spilled spaghetti dinner.

"Let's get something to eat." They walked two blocks to El Matador, reputed to have the most authentic Mexican food in town. The family that owned it was originally from Sonora.

"How have you been?" he asked, once they had settled into a booth by the window.

"OK. Everything's OK," she said.

"I'm sorry I haven't been in touch for a while."

"That's OK. You're busy. Me too. Sorry I didn't get around to returning your messages. You learned how to text."

"I had the instructions in front of me the whole time." She laughed. A young waitress with irises the size and color of chestnuts took their orders. Frost wasn't sure what to say next. "I guess the job at the hardware store didn't work out."

Maria looked at him for a moment as if he had been speaking Esperanto. Then she nodded, remembering.

"Oh, that place. No, that didn't work out so good," she said, looking out the window.

"The work wasn't interesting enough?"

"Not really. Plus all the guys there hassled me. Made comments about my boobs all the time." She looked down at her chest, up at Frost, a huge smile erupting on her face. "They are pretty awesome, aren't they?"

Frost laughed. She was right about that.

"You could have complained to the manager."

"No, it's OK. That place wasn't for me. Hardware. Who cares about hardware?" She saw it had been the wrong thing to say. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I know you were doing me a big favor getting me that job."

The waitress brought drinks—a Tecate for Frost, a Coke for Maria.

"So what have you been doing with yourself?" he asked.

"Oh, things. Hanging out with my friends," she said.

"Uh-huh." Frost pushed the wedge of lime into his beer and took a sip.

"You know that latte stand on First Avenue by the church?" The Catholic church, dating to 1825, was referred to by all as simply "the church."

"The one where the baristas wear bikinis?" The minor scandal of a risqué coffee stand opening across the street from a house of worship had even wormed its way into the Potter-Nickerson rivalry, though neither proposed taking any action against the establishment, citing the First Amendment right to free expression.

"I'm working there on weekends. Sometimes I fill in during the week, too." Maria grinned. "I figure if guys are going to be staring at my chest all the time I might as well get some tips out of it, you know? It's like God gave me this gift, I should put it to work for me."

Frost took another sip of his Tecate.

"Does your mother know about this?"

"Oh, God, don't tell her! She's so old-fashioned. She'd have a heart attack."

Frost shook his head.

"Isn't she going to see you when she goes to church if you're just across the street?"

"She always goes to early mass. Six a.m. We don't open until nine on Sundays," Maria said, applying lip gloss. "It's only bikinis. It's not like I'm stripping or anything. It's just like being at the beach, only getting paid for it." Frost settled against the back of the booth. "I mean, it's really kind of funny. Men, I mean. Not you," she said, smiling. "Most men. Flash your tits at them and they start to drool. It's just like those dogs that scientist trained."

"Pavlov," Frost said.

"Yes, Pavlov's dogs. Men are just like that, only instead of ringing a bell you show off your boobs or shake your bootie." She laughed and snapped a bite of tortilla chip. "It's like, I could go out on the street right now, lift up my shirt and bring traffic to a complete halt."

"I wouldn't recommend that."

"Then you'd have to arrest me, right?"

"I'd let you go with a warning."

Maria leaned across the table and placed a hand on his arm.

"Rick, I know I've disappointed you," she said. "You want me to go back to school and get my G.E.D. and go on to community college and all. But that's not for me." She took her hand back and drank some Coke. "I appreciate everything you've tried to do for me, like getting me that job."

"I really haven't done much."

"You've done enough. You tried. But I'm not the scared little girl you met three years ago. I'm an adult now. I can make my own decisions. I have to do what feels right for me. Not what someone else feels is right for me, even if they have the best of intentions."

Frost let a minute pass in silence. Maria, idly noshing on chips, didn't seem to mind.

He did not see an adult. He did not see a grown woman. He saw a terrified sixteen-year-old. A confused nineteen-year-old.

"Maria," he said, "I know you have to live your own life. The thing is, I see great potential in you. You are a smart girl and you can go far. I want to help, if I can."

Or was it himself that he was trying to help?

"I'm fine," Maria said. "Really. Things are going great with me. I have a job. I have a boyfriend."

"You have a boyfriend?"

"Joshua Berryessa. He's a Marine. He's stationed at Camp Pendleton right now. I go down there to see him from time to time, or he comes up here. I met him when I went down with some friends to see the mission at San Juan Capistrano. It was so perfect, there were all these monarch butterflies there, and Josh in his pressed uniform. I just love Marines. They're so cute. My uncle César was a Marine."

"Your uncle César?"

"César Montero. My mother's sister's husband." She sucked the last of her Coke through a straw. "I kind of worry about Josh, though. He says he might have to go to Afghanistan. I'm worried he'll get hurt."

"Maybe he won't have to go after all." César Montero was her uncle. How had he not known that already?

"Maybe." She nipped a cuticle with her teeth, regarded the fingertip. "Anyway, you don't need to worry about me. I have a plan. One thing that experience a few years ago taught me is that the poor don't get any justice." She had called it that experience. "The rich get whatever they want. So, I'm going to get rich."

"You're going to get rich?" He showed no emotion but inside he was howling—with laughter, with sorrow.

"I'm going to save up a little money and get out of this town. I'm going to make something of myself. I'm not going to spend my life cleaning out other people's toilets."

"How are you . . . ? What are you . . . ?"

"Like, right now, I'm practicing my singing."

"I didn't know you were a singer," he said.

"Sí," she said. "I'm a good singer. People say so. So, I'm going to go to L.A., maybe New York, try to break in. Maybe I'll audition for American Idol."

"And what if that doesn't work out for you?"

"I don't know. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Move on to Plan B. If it doesn't work out for me as a singer, then maybe I'll go back to school. Be a lawyer or a business executive. Maybe marry some rich dude." She winked at him. "Whatever, I'll be all right. I will. I hope you believe me."

"Of course I believe you."

"The thing is, I want you to stop feeling responsible for me, for what happened to me. That was a long time ago. I've put it behind me. You need to put it behind you, too."

"I don't know if I can ever really do that, Maria."

"You are not my father, Rick—my useless drunk of a, the maricón."

"I know I'm not your father, Maria."

"Rick, I'm over Jake Ballard and what he did to me."

Frost would never be over it.

"You have to get over it, too," she said. "It wasn't your fault he did what he did. It wasn't your fault he got away with it. Rich people always get away with it. Like O.J. That's the system. It's not your fault if the system sucks."

## 11

THE MORNING FOG had burned off and the sun was breaking through puffy marshmallow clouds when Julia arrived in her rented Mustang. She explained, somewhat sheepishly, that it was all the rental car company had on hand. She was wearing blue jeans and a pink cotton Oxford shirt, and as Frost shook her hand he experienced the same powerful tug toward her as when they first met. It was like gravity, invisible and inescapable.

He been looking forward to this moment but the prospect also unnerved him. He understood the physical attraction. Julia was a beautiful woman with a face only an artist could have sculpted. More than that was hazardous, though—for her. There might have been a time when it could have worked, but that was long past. Martha had him pegged: an emotional midget, incapable of love. So why was he trying to drag her into his decaying orbit?

By the time they were on the road to Jim Madden's house he had convinced himself that inviting her to the barbecue had been a mistake. But it was hard to reconcile that with what he felt as he listened to her describe how she had taken her brother's ashes to Cougarville and scattered them amid the ceanothus and blue oaks behind her mother's cabin. Higher on the ridge, in a stand of gray pines where she had scattered her mother's remains, a cache of squirrels had darted about the underbrush.

"It's so quiet up there," Julia said. "You can hear the wind rustling in the trees. You can hear the wildlife. You can hear yourself breathe. In L.A., even in the middle of the night, the air is full of man-made sounds, mechanical shouts and groans and grindings. It overwhelms everything else, suffocates it."

Frost had not been to Madden's house in some time. The first thing he noticed as they drove up was the 25-foot Bayliner boat sitting atop a trailer in the driveway that led to the three-car garage. Frost often marveled at his SIPD colleagues' collection of five-bedroom houses, hulking SUVs and monster pick-up trucks. His own cost of living was so minimal—he lived in a small rental house and his only regular expense was keeping the aging Rabbit in running order —that he never worried about money. He wondered how he would fare if he had to concern himself with mortgage payments, car payments, college tuition payments.

They went around the side of the house through a Japanese archway that led to the backyard.

Flora greeted them wearing white leather open-toed sandals, pink short-shorts and a fire-red fishnet top with a black bra underneath. Madden maintained she was five-feet one, but Frost had his doubts. Giving her a peck on the cheek, as he did now, was like bending over at a water fountain. He introduced Julia, who complimented Flora on her shoes, making her day and winning Julia her instant friendship.

Flora conducted them to a glass-topped portable bar and announced that Jim had told her it was her job to make sure everyone was drunk by two o'clock. Laughing, Julia said she would get started with a gin and tonic. Frost said he would get himself a beer. He walked across the tiled patio to a cooler by the French doors that opened out from the family room. He fished around in the ice before settling on a can of Coors.

Cop parties tended to be incestuous affairs and this one was no different. Martinez was there, along with his wife, May, and teenage daughter, Rachel. Rollo and Smith and their wives, along with some patrol officers and their spouses and dates, had corralled several aluminum lounge chairs and placed them by the pool. Rollo's five-year-old son, Nathan, was the only one swimming.

Madden, wearing an apron that said DON'T MESS WITH THE CHEF, was fiddling with the controls on his stainless steel gas grill. He waved when he caught sight of Frost and pretended to chug a beer, indicating that Frost should do the same with his.

Martha Oleske sidled up next to Frost, a bourbon-and-rocks in her hand.

"Who's the skank?" she asked, nodding in the direction of Julia, still talking to Flora.

"What?" Frost had heard her perfectly well.

"Your date. Who is she?"

"Not a date." Frost popped the top of the Coors. "That's Julia Pearse. She's the sister of Thad Pearse, the victim from the Twin Pines."

"Right. I caught a glimpse of you bringing her by the other day to identify the body." Martha sipped her drink and cocked her head at him, looking him over the way a raven eyed leaf litter for signs of an insect. "I didn't recognize her without the power suit. What's she doing here?"

"She's on her way back to L.A. from scattering her brother's ashes up in the Sierras."

"Uh-huh." Martha looked herself over. "She might at least have called ahead to let me know she'd be wearing practically the same outfit as mine." Frost noticed that Martha was wearing blue jeans and a white cotton Oxford shirt. "One of us has committed a serious faux pas," she said, smirking, before ambling off in the direction of the guacamole and chips.

Frost rejoined Julia and Flora.

"Ricky," Flora said, taking his arm, "Julia was just telling me that she's a tax attorney. Maybe you can get Jimmy to ask her for some advice."

"Why, does Jim have tax problems?" He had never mentioned it.

"I don't know." Flora pushed her large-framed sunglasses up her nose. "A letter came a few weeks ago. When Jimmy saw it was from the IRS, he wasn't too happy."

Frost glanced over his shoulder. Madden didn't look like a guy worried by tax problems.

"It could be anything," Julia said. "Something as simple as an inquiry about a transfer between IRA accounts. Sometimes the paperwork gets lost in the shuffle. I wouldn't worry about it." She sipped her gin-and-tonic. "Also, if he needs advice, I wouldn't be the one to give it. I don't so much deal with the IRS when there is a problem as design ways for people to shelter their income in the first place."

"Julia is the tax attorney to the stars," Frost said.

"Really?" Flora almost squealed. "Who have you met? Tell me!" Julia rattled off a few names. "Wow! He's so cute! I would do the cha-cha with him in a minute!"

"Jim wouldn't like that," Frost said.

"Jimmy wouldn't find out," Flora said, smiling. She beckoned Madden, waving her arms back and forth. "Jimmy! Jimmy! Come over here!" He gestured with a finger that he would be just one minute, and continued to pile cooked hamburger patties on a large platter. When he finished, he placed the platter on a table with buns and condiments and announced that it was time for everyone to get something to eat.

"Hello, Miss Pearse," he said after joining them. "I'd shake your hand, but mine are still kind of greasy." He wiped his hands on the apron.

"Jimmy," Flora said, "do you know that Julia is the tax attorney to the stars?"

"I do know that," he said. "I'm glad that you could join us."

"Thank you," Julia said. "It's nice to be here. Please call me Julia." She paused. "Your house is very nice."

"You wouldn't say that if you saw the mortgage."

"Speaking of which," Frost said, "nice boat in the driveway. Is that new?"

"The Bayliner? Brand new. Isn't she sweet? I can't wait to get her over to Lake Havasu." Madden and Flora vacationed each year at Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was a short drive from the casinos in Laughlin, Nevada, where they liked to gamble and take in the entertainment.

"I don't know how you do it. Especially with all the ex-wives to pay off."

Flora sneered.

"Bitches," she said.

"Creative accounting," Madden said, laughing. "You should know about that, Julia." He laughed again. "So," he said to Frost, "did you tell Julia the news?"

"What news is that?"

"Oh, sorry, I thought Leo had told you," Madden said, looking over his shoulder at Martinez, who was lining up at the burgers-and-buns table with the others. "It's your car, Julia. They found it this morning at LAX in a parking garage. Apparently it's in good shape. We can be thankful for that."

"Did the LAPD find anything in the car?" Frost asked.

"I don't think so. The Martinizer has the details. As far as I know, it was just the car. . . . Julia, I can give you the number of someone to call to retrieve your vehicle once you get back to L.A."

"Do you think Owen Goetz has left the country?" Julia asked Frost.

"It could be," he said. "Or it could just mean he chose the airport as a convenient place to dump the car. He might even have stolen himself a replacement there. We'll have to check with them on that," he told Madden. "We'll have to get the LAPD to go over the security tapes. Not just the garage. All of them."

"They aren't going to like that," Madden said. "There are dozens of cameras at LAX, I'd guess. If he didn't leave the parking ticket in the car, they aren't even going to know what date or time to start checking from. They aren't going to want to go through hundreds of hours of tape looking for our guy."

"It's their job. He's a murder suspect. They can start with the parking garage tape and fast-forward until Goetz parks the car. Then they'll have a time reference."

"You'll have a lot of convincing to do."

"Not me," Frost said, shaking his head. "Leo has to do this."

"Right. Sometimes I forget you burnt your bridges down there. I forget just how it is you came to us. . . . Did Rick ever tell you," he said to Julia, "just how a slick L.A. detective winds up in a two-horse town like Santa Isidora? Ask him to tell you sometime. Ask him what happened in L.A."

"Enough," Frost said. His partner was tipsy, if not drunk.

Madden draped his arm over Frost's shoulder.

"I'm kidding, Iceman. You know I love you, partner. Not in the way I love Florita. Let me make that clear!" He laughed. "Still, amigo, sometimes I just don't get why you're a cop."

"Jimmy," Flora pleaded, "leave Ricky alone."

"It's not that he's a bad cop," Madden said to Julia. "He's not bad. Though I am better. Rick's just not cut out for it. He's too thoughtful, too . . . I don't want to say 'dainty,' but I can't think of another word. . . . He's too refined to be wading around in all the muck. That's what we do all day, you know. Clean the muck off the streets. Sweep it away where the good citizenry doesn't have to see it. Somebody's got to do it. But, Rick . . . Rick should be in a nice, brightly lit, air-conditioned office somewhere. Teaching philosophy at some college, chasing after co-eds. Not that he would know what to do with them. He shouldn't be trolling among the human pestilence we run across each and every day. Like Owen Goetz."

Flora started hitting Madden on the arm.

"Estúpido!" she shrieked. "Pendejo!"

"Let's get some burgers before they're all gone," Frost said, taking Julia by the arm and steering her to the patio.

They ate on canvas deck chairs in the warm sun. Julia told Frost she'd have to sell the Civic. She'd never be able to drive it again. It would remind her too much of the brother she had barely known.

Flora dragged Madden over. Prodded by her pokes to his ribs, he apologized for his earlier behavior.

Leo Martinez, standing in one corner of the backyard in the nominal shade offered by a dwarf tangerine tree, motioned for Frost to come over. Frost asked Julia to excuse him.

"What is she doing here?" Martinez asked, pointing at Julia with a half-eaten hamburger.

"I invited her," Frost said. He explained that Julia had stopped by after returning from Cougarville to dispose of Thad's ashes.

"You heard about the car?"

Frost said that he had, and asked Martinez to holler at the LAPD until they had gone through all the security tapes. Martinez said it would be his pleasure.

"By the way," Frost told Martinez, "César Montero was in the Marines."

"Like Pearse and Goetz. You think there's a connection?"

"I don't know. It would have been a long time ago." Now that he thought of it, Maria's boyfriend Josh was in the Marines. And César Montero was Maria's uncle. He kept these unpleasant thoughts to himself.

"See what you can make of it." He pointed his hamburger at Julia again. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this."

"Not comfortable with what?"

"You and her, together. She's a witness in a homicide investigation. You can't get involved with a witness. It's against policy." It was against policy in every police department. It was a frequently violated policy.

"Who says I'm involved with her?"

"Don't try blowing smoke up my ass."

"Nobody's blowing smoke up anyone's ass. She dropped by on her way to L.A. I invited her to lunch. That's it." It wasn't the whole truth, but it was close enough.

"Good. For all we know, she had her brother killed. Maybe she and Goetz wanted to split a quarter million between them." Martinez placed the hamburger on a plate and reached for the bottle of beer he had cradled in the crook of his arm.

"You don't really believe that."

"Not really, no. She looks innocent enough." He took a swig. "But you never know. Weirder things have happened. It remains a theoretical possibility until you nail down exactly what happened. That's why there's a policy. The policy's no different here than it was in L.A."

"I understand, Chief."

"I hope so, Rick."

_

Frost drove home via Overlook Drive so Julia could get a bird's-eye view of Santa Isidora. As he navigated the road's twists and turns he kept coming back to Martinez's admonition, and his own. For Julia's sake, if for no other reason, he ought to nip this thing in the bud. Julia gazed out the open window at the town below, her skin dappled as late-afternoon sunlight competed with shadow.

"You're awfully quiet," she said after several minutes during which neither had said a word.

"Sorry," Frost said. "Thinking."

"Thinking of what?"

That he was no good for her. That it was no use pretending otherwise.

"About Owen Goetz and how we're going to find him. We don't want to let you down."

"I thought you said it was just a matter of time until someone picked him up."

"He may be smarter than we gave him credit for. I hope not."

Julia put her arm out the window and let the wind carry her outstretched palm up and down, like the wing of an airplane.

"So, what was all that about, what Jim was saying? How you're not cut out to be a cop. How you burned your bridges in L.A. What did he mean?" Her palm fluttered up, down, up again.

"I don't know. Maybe he's right. Maybe I shouldn't be a policeman. I think so myself sometimes."

"Why is that? He made it sound like you're some kind of delicate flower. You don't come off that way." Up, down, up, down. "You seem he-man enough to me."

Frost laughed.

"I should be grateful for that, I suppose."

"It must be hard dealing with all the 'human pestilence,' as he put it. I don't know how you do it."

"Every cop has to deal with it," he said. "It can seem futile at times. You throw someone in jail and another takes his place. Or you can't put someone in jail in the first place because you can't prove he committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt."

"Are you happy being a policeman? Being a detective?"

It was a good question. A more pertinent one would have been, Are you capable of happiness?

"I'll tell you the same thing I told Jim the other day, that Aristotle said if you want happiness, strive for virtue."

"Jim said you should be teaching philosophy. Is that it? Is that the secret to Rick Frost's character? Are you striving to be a virtuous man?"

"I may be too cynical for that."

"So you're like Diogenes, wandering through the streets at night by lantern light, looking for an honest man."

They pulled onto Frost's street.

"How did you become a police officer in the first place?" Julia asked. "I mean, what made you decide to enter law enforcement? I went to law school because it seemed to be the thing to do. All my friends were doing it. Career by chance, more than choice."

"That's pretty much how it happened for me," Frost said. He pulled into his driveway, put the car in park, turned off the engine. "After high school I went to Cal State Long Beach. I had no idea why I was there. Plus, college was expensive. I didn't have a clue about what I wanted to do with my life. So I dropped out after a quarter. I joined the Army. I thought, 'This will straighten me out.' They give you all these tests, you know. For some reason—I never found out why—they decided to make me an MP, a military policeman. More often than not that means you direct traffic and guard prisoners. That's what I did in the Gulf War. Never fired my weapon. Just lumped Iraqi prisoners into a wire cage and made sure they stayed there. Not that there were any escape attempts. They were all too happy to be POWs. That's when I discovered I liked to read. I had so much time on my hands and there wasn't anything else to do except look at the sand. After the war, I got to do some real police work. Pulled over speeders on base, broke up domestic disputes. Assisted the Criminal Investigation Division in some of their inquiries. When I got out of the Army, applying to the LAPD seemed like the natural thing to do. So I did. I went back to school nights, eventually became a detective. Then wound up here. It's almost twenty years later and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up."

"We really are birds of a feather."

"I guess you could say that."

"Rick . . . Why did Jim Madden tell me to ask you about what happened in L.A.? What happened that can be so awful?"

"I told you, it's a long story." He sounded petulant. "I'm sorry. Didn't mean to be so gruff."

They got out of his car. She got into the rented Mustang. He stood by the driver's window. Eucalyptus trees cast long shadows over his small house.

"Do you come down to L.A. much on business?"

"Not really. The other day was kind of a fluke."

"Do you come down to L.A. for any other reason?" She smiled tentatively.

It was a good question. Julia was full of good questions today.

"I pass through now and then on my way to see my mother in La Jolla. She moved down there to be nearer my sister and her family."

"I hope you'll give me a call next time you come down."

"Will do." He didn't sound very convincing to himself. If the expression on her face was any guide, Julia wasn't convinced either. "Goodbye, Julia. Have a safe trip. It was nice to see you again."

"Goodbye, Rick." She drove away.

He had turned on her in those last moments, his tone flat and lifeless. He had acted as if her presence irritated him, as if she were a flea crawling on his skin, a mosquito buzzing about his ear.

Where was the virtue in that?

## 12

FROST SPENT PART of Sunday night in a funk, brooding over his chilliness toward Julia. Right, wrong, smart, stupid—he couldn't decide. Finally he pulled out his cellphone. Using his newly acquired texting skills, he sent her a message saying it had been nice to see her and apologizing for his moodiness. He added that he thought he would be in L.A. again soon and would call her.

It took him over half an hour to compose the message.

At one a.m. the SIPD dispatcher called. A patrol unit had found the missing keg from the Sawtooth Saloon in the brush behind Santa Isidora High School. Since he was the lead detective, the dispatcher told him, the patrol unit wanted to know what to do with the keg.

Ordinarily it wouldn't have been worth the trouble for such a minor case, but since he had long since giving up trying to sleep, Frost decided to wake up Will Pflueger and have him dust the keg for fingerprints before it was moved. Pflueger met him behind the school a half-hour later and quickly made it clear he was not at all pleased to have been awakened in the middle of the night to collect prints for such a "cowflop of a crime." They cleared the scene at 3 a.m. and the keg was taken to the county evidence locker.

A thumbprint on the lip of the keg matched one in state DMV records belonging to seventeen-year-old honor student Sid Freeland. Frost and Madden yanked him out of his A.P. English class. They sat him down in an uncomfortable chair in the principal's office and read him his Miranda rights. The kid readily admitted to attending the kegger but swore he had nothing to do with the burglary of the Sawtooth. He didn't even know the keg had been stolen. He just assumed someone's older brother obtained it legally.

Frost and Madden, hovering over Freeland like Spanish Inquisitors, spelled out the problem. There was a certain order to things. Someone had to answer for the burglary. They had a case to clear. If they didn't wipe it off the books, the knowledge that a crime had gone unsolved would eat away at the fabric of the community. Sin had to be punished. Freeland's were the only identifiable fingerprints on the keg. Ergo, he was going to take the fall.

To drive the point home, Frost read the teenager his rights a second time. He asked the kid if he wanted a lawyer to be waiting when they took him downtown to jail.

Experiencing a sudden change of heart, Freeland blurted out the names of the four boys who stole the keg. Frost and Madden had them hauled out of class. One caved immediately, confessing, and the others toppled like telephone poles in a hurricane before the end of third period.

Frost volunteered to process the boys at the station and take their statements. He called their parents. None had been in trouble before, so it was almost a given that the charges would be reduced to a manageable misdemeanor.

As all four were football players, Madden expressed concern about the team's prospects for the rest of the season. Frost reminded him to check the Internet for anything he could dig up on Franklin Diebold and to take another crack at Peacock while he was at it.

_

After the boys were released to their parents' custody, Frost dashed across the street to Andy's Cafe for lunch. On his return, he found a message that Martha Oleske had called. He ignored it. He contacted the Marine personnel center and confirmed that César Montero had served four years without incident in the mid-'80s. He checked his cellphone for a text message from Julia, found none. He wanted to check on Madden's progress, but he was nowhere in sight.

He studied the message from Martha, rubbing his fingers on the pink paper memo. It said, please call.

He dialed her number.

"Martha, it's Rick," he said.

"Hello, lover." It's what she always called him on the phone. It had never bothered him before. It did now. "You'll never guess."

"I'll never guess what?"

"I got a call this morning from Dr. Fergus at UCLA about your clay." She let a moment pass. "You'll never guess."

"Martha, you said that already. What will I never guess?" He pictured her puffing on a Merit, swiveling in her chair, a big grin on her face.

"Are you ready? It's four thousand years old! Your clay is four thousand years old. Isn't that a kick? Four thousand years." She sounded as excited as a child savoring chocolate for the first time. Frost found it hard to share her enthusiasm. Bits of clay four thousand years old scattered in a motel room with a dead man resting on the bed. He couldn't imagine how this information was going to lead them to Owen Goetz. "Rick? Are you there? Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard. The clay is four thousand years old."

"Isn't that extraordinary?" Martha was positively giddy. She never got giddy.

"I suppose it is. I don't know what to make of it, really."

"There's more, but you need to go have a talk with Dr. Fergus. I made an appointment for you for tomorrow afternoon at three."

"Martha," he said, "I don't have time to go down to L.A. to see this guy. Can't you just tell me what else he said?"

"That would take all the suspense out of it." She was puffing, swiveling, probably still grinning. "Rick, Dr. Fergus is going to be your witness on this material if this case ever goes to court. So you need to hear from his lips how he figured this out, what tests he ran on the clay, et cetera, et cetera. Besides . . ." He heard her suck in a long draw. "A trip to L.A. will give you an opportunity to look up what's-her-name, the sister."

Frost let five seconds pass.

"OK. Give me the address and phone."

"You need to check your e-mail more often. I already sent it to you. With an annotated map of the campus and a suggested parking spot."

"Thanks, Martha. That was very thorough of you." She was thorough. Her reports were always crisp yet full of detail.

"Rick, are we still on for Wednesday?"

He let another five seconds lapse.

"Martha, I don't know about that."

"I knew it. You are sweet on that woman. I never thought I'd see the day."

"Martha, really . . . I don't know that . . ." He hated being at a loss or words. He wasn't sure what he felt. He didn't know if Julia would still speak to him. He glanced at his cellphone, the emptiness of its message-box a painful reminder of his inept self. "Martha, I never ask you about your . . . about the men in your life."

"And I appreciate that, Rick. I really do. Almost as much as I appreciate you letting me abuse your body for my own sexual gratification."

He couldn't stop himself from laughing.

"So that's all I am to you." She laughed too. "Martha, I don't really know where . . . You know, we're not . . ." As articulate as a dead salmon.

"It's OK, Rick," she said. "You don't have to make excuses. This is me, remember. 'No strings' means no strings. But don't pretend. Not to me. Not to yourself. I saw the way you were looking at her. The way she was looking at you. You two are hot for each other. You're just too clueless to see it."

Julia looked unhappy when she drove away. The message-box was empty.

"I don't fall in love, Martha. You said so yourself."

"That's what I thought. Now I'm not so sure." She sighed. "I'm going to miss Wednesday nights, Rick."

"Me, too, Martha."

Frost glanced up and saw Rollo looming over his cubicle. How long he had been there, what he had heard?

"You know, Rick, until you've been in her pants, it wouldn't really be cheating."

"Nice try, Martha. Listen, I'm sorry, I've got to go."

"If it doesn't work out, come back to me, lover."

"You bet. Thanks for setting up the appointment with Dr. Fergus."

"Goodbye, Rick. Good luck."

"Thanks, Martha. Goodbye."

Frost looked up at Rollo. He was resting an arm on the top of the cubicle wall, twirling his pencil in his fingers like a baton.

"Martha Oleske?" Rollo asked. Frost nodded. "Insufferable cow."

"What is it, Rollo?"

"Got a tip for you. On the Thad Pearse case. Just spoke to a guy who says your suspect is going to be meeting up with César Montero at his place tonight."

"Did he mention Goetz by name?"

"No. He said 'the guy you're looking for who killed that guy at the motel.' His exact words."

"Did he say what time Goetz was going to meet Montero?"

"No. Just 'tonight.' " Rollo stifled a yawn.

"What else did he say?"

"He said Goetz and Montero were doing a deal, moving coke and meth."

"Did the guy say who he was?"

"No, he didn't give a name."

"OK. Did he sound familiar?"

"No. I would have told you," Rollo said, punctuating his words. "I didn't recognize him. His voice was muffled, like he was trying to disguise it."

"Anything else?"

"Spanish accent. Pretty heavy. Called Montero a cabrón, whatever that is."

" 'Motherfucker.' " It was Madden, walking up and joining Rollo at Frost's cubicle. "What's going on?"

"Rollo got an anonymous tip on Goetz," Frost said. "The caller claims he's doing a coke-and-meth deal with Montero at his house tonight. Where have you been?"

"Out to lunch. Cabrón also means 'bastard,' 'asshole,' 'jerkwad,' 'douchebag'—it's a full-figured insult. What do you think, Rick, should we run with it?"

Anonymous tipsters were often full of shit. Most didn't know what they were talking about. Many were delusional. Some had an agenda. Anonymous tips as often as not led you down a dead end, every so often over a cliff.

Once in a blue moon, though, they paid off.

"Let's go see Martinez."

The first thing the chief wanted to know was what their other informants were saying.

"Nothing," Rollo said. "None of our regular informants has gotten wind of any big drug deal or knows anything about anyone named Owen Goetz or Thad Pearse."

Frost agreed.

"Nobody knows nothing. That's the long and short of it." He mentioned that Goetz's brothers were in the meth business, though he couldn't say how that might relate to the Pearse case or Rollo's tip.

Martinez sat back in his chair, his face etched in lines of intense concentration. Phhttt went the fricative. Phhttt. Phhttt.

Madden looked at Frost and rolled his eyes.

Frost could imagine what Martinez was thinking. Anonymous tips usually didn't pan out. The SIPD had limited resources. Mounting a stakeout at Montero's house would involve overtime pay. The city council never liked that.

On the other hand, the Pearse case was now a week old and they were no closer to bringing Goetz in than they had been on the first day. Everyone who knew Goetz called him slow, but he had managed to avoid capture, disappearing like rain falling on the sea. The LAPD hadn't gotten back with word on the parking garage tape. They had no idea where Goetz was.

Then there was César Montero to consider. Montero was known to be an active drug dealer. Marijuana was his specialty, but he would move coke or crank if the right opportunity came along. Despite years of effort, the SIPD had never been able to nail him. They had arrested him once, on a simple possession charge, but even that had been dismissed. Rollo's anonymous tip could change that.

Martinez asked about Montero's house. He knew the place, he said, but wanted Rollo to remind him of the layout.

It was an old stucco single-story in la zona, Rollo said. Not much to look at. Whatever Montero was using his income for, it wasn't for home improvements. They could take up a position on Fourth, a commercial avenue, kitty-corner from Montero's, and still get a clear view of the front and side, where a door led off from the kitchen.

"OK, here's what we'll do," Martinez said. "Frost, Madden, you get the pleasure of doing the stakeout. Take the new van and park it on Fourth, as far up as you can and still have a view of the house." The van, a Ford Econoline, had been purchased recently with funds from Homeland Security. It was outfitted with one-way glass windows on either side and in the back. It was new enough that Montero was unlikely to recognize it as belonging to the SIPD. "If you see Goetz, call in for back-up before you move in. I'll make sure the black-and-whites out tonight steer clear of that area but stay close enough that they can be with you in a few minutes." Like every veteran of the LAPD, including Frost, Martinez referred to patrol cars as "black-and-whites," even though the Santa Isidora cars were powder blue. "Frost, you're in charge of the op if one goes down. Clear?"

"Clear, Chief," Frost said.

_

"Fucking Robocop and Skeezix ought to be busting their asses in this van instead of us," Madden complained as midnight arrived, six hours after they began observing Montero's house. The lights were still burning. "It was Rollo's tip."

"It's our case," Frost said. He was positioned at the rear window, keeping an eye on Fourth Avenue. He adjusted his back for what felt like the hundredth time.

His partner had been getting on his nerves all night. He insisted on stopping home on the way to pick up dinner from Flora, and the smell of jalapeño-laced enchiladas soon overwhelmed the van's new-car scent. Madden worsened his mood hours later when the enchiladas returned in the form of a lengthy flatus so rich in its unpleasantness that Frost took a chance on blowing the stakeout by opening the rear doors to air out the van. Madden was often raw and earthy, a nature that lent an air of authenticity to his character, but there were times, like tonight, when it proved to be too much.

Frost was also disappointed that Madden's Internet sleuthing had produced nothing of value about Franklin Diebold.

"There's nothing about him we didn't already know," Madden said. "A picture of him at some Vanity Fair party after the Oscars a couple of years ago. That's about it."

"Anything on the lawsuit he was involved with?" Frost asked.

"No. I didn't find anything like that."

There was still no word from David Plum at Peacock.

There was no message from Julia.

"At least we're getting overtime for this bullshit," Madden said, peering through binoculars at Montero's home.

"It will help you pay for that necklace you bought Flora in Beverly Hills. Did she like it?" Fourth Avenue was deserted.

"She loved it. She . . ." Madden put down the binoculars, leered at Frost. "Well, you don't want to know."

"No, I don't."

"Treat a woman right, she'll treat you right."

A minute passed.

"Rick," Madden asked, focused on the view out the window, "what would you do if you had enough money to do anything?"

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose you won the lottery or something. What would you do?"

"I don't know. Buy my mom a nicer condo than the one she has, maybe."

"I mean, would you still be a cop? If you didn't need the job, would you still do it?"

"I don't know."

"Because . . ." He looked at Frost. "Listen, I'm sorry again for what I said yesterday. In front of Julia, and all. She seems nice, by the way. I hope something happens there." Frost said nothing, so Madden pressed on. "The fact is, you're a good cop. Most of the time." He winked. "But you don't seem to take any pleasure in it. Like this morning, with those kids. You really put it to them. You had them squirming in their seats, practically calling out for their mammas. You were intense, and you got the results you were looking for. But you didn't seem to find any happiness in that. It was like, 'I had a job to do. I did it. Now it's over.'"

"I'm not a sadist. I don't enjoy scaring teenagers." Where was he going with this?

"That's not what I mean. Have you ever expressed happiness when you've solved a case? Ever high-fived someone and said, 'Hey, we got the bastard!'? Not that I can remember. Hey, someone's coming out."

Frost scooted over.

"Can you tell who it is?"

"A woman. She's talking to César." Madden's back stiffened. "Hey, I know that girl. I'd recognize those tits anywhere. It's Maria Valenzuela. The girl from three years ago. The Jake Ballard case."

"Let me see." Frost snatched the binoculars.

"What's she doing here?"

"César Montero is her uncle."

"No shit. I hope she's not mixed up with him. She was a real nice girl."

Maria headed down the front walk. Montero closed the door behind her. Maria turned right at the sidewalk and soon passed out of view. The lights in the house went dark.

"She was carrying a big bag, did you see?" Madden asked. "Maybe something in it."

"Maybe," Frost said. "Maybe not. Montero's gone to bed." He handed over the binoculars. "What would you do if you had enough money to do whatever you wanted?"

Madden reclaimed the porthole window.

"I'd build myself a big house on Lake Havasu and tie my Bayliner up at my private dock."

"And pay off your ex-wives."

"Hah! That'll be the day. Not enough money in the world to satisfy those two."

Frost called it a night at two a.m. Goetz was not going to show. Another anonymous tip, another dead end.

Madden said he was surprised no one had tried to steal the van.

## 13

FROST SLEPT IN, but not so much that he wasn't able to catch Jerry Sirica at home. Feds started their day on a banker's schedule, though they often didn't finish on one. His interview at UCLA should wrap up by four, he said, proposing he drop by Sirica's office after. Sirica suggested instead that they meet at a coffee bar he knew on Santa Monica Boulevard in Westwood, not far from the campus.

Frost waited a few minutes longer, cradling a mug of rapidly cooling coffee, before phoning Julia.

She was not at home or in the office. He imagined her riding her bicycle through Los Angeles' traffic-choked streets and decided against calling her cell. He left voicemail messages on her office and home phones. He tried to sound light-hearted. Lo and behold, here he was coming to L.A. after all. . . . He would like to see her. . . . If she wasn't busy. . . . Could she give him a call. . . .

If she didn't think he was a cabrón.

Frost had been in the squad room less than a minute when Martinez called him into his office. He hadn't even had time to check his voicemail.

Martinez closed the door behind him, shaking his head and muttering.

"I see you're signed out for the afternoon to go to L.A.," he said. "What's that all about?"

"Mud," Frost said. He explained about Martha Oleske's phone call.

"Is this trip really necessary?"

"It's a lousy lead but it's the only one we've got. Now that our anonymous tip has crapped out." Frost had left a note on Martinez's desk about the fruitless stakeout after they turned the van in.

"I'll have Rollo and Smith give it another whirl tonight. Maybe Rollo's tipster got the date wrong. You're not taking Madden with you?"

"It's a one-man job." There was more to it than that, but Martinez didn't need to know. "Maybe a half-man job at that. Anything from the LAPD on the airport tapes?"

"No. Last time I called down there they promised they'd get right to it. But those clowns at the airport station are a bunch of fuckheads. We both know that." Martinez and Frost shared a laugh. "Got another Coldstone problem for you."

"Oh, fuck." That was all he needed.

"'Oh, fuck' is right. This one's bad, too."

"What did they do this time? I told Debbie Waite to keep her crew under control."

"Not the Grove. Worse. Far worse. The museum. Someone snuck in there last night and plastered the place with graffiti." He held up a hand before Frost could protest that vandalism at the Coldstone Museum shouldn't be his responsibility. "It's the same crowd as up at the Grove. Judging by the graffiti. So don't try to talk me out of laying this on your shoulders. It's your Calvary. Get over there and talk to Coldstone. He's waiting for you."

"Coldstone doesn't like me. Send someone else."

"No one likes you, Frost. I already told you, this crown of thorns belongs to you."

"And what is it you want me to tell the illustrious benefactor of our community?"

"Assure him that you take this assault on his fine museum seriously. Tell him that you will get right on the case. That you will track down the miscreants who defiled his temple and see that they are brought to justice." Martinez cracked a smile. He was on a roll. "Please assure Mr. Coldstone that this department recognizes the valuable contributions he has made to our town's well-being. That we will use all the resources at our command to protect his fine museum from attacks on it from any and all quarters."

Frost stared at him.

"Fine, I'll do it. But I don't have to like it."

"Seriously, Rick." He got up from his chair, came around and perched on the front of his desk. "The mayor is all over my ass on this. He's called me twice in the last twenty minutes. Coldstone is his biggest backer."

"You mean his biggest source of graft."

"I'll ignore that remark. If the mayor loses Coldstone's support, he'll lose the election. Coldstone will pick up the phone and the rest of Potter's contributors will suddenly develop carpal tunnel syndrome and won't be able to write him any more checks. Nickerson will suddenly experience a flood of donations and will waltz into office."

"Do you really give a damn who wins the election?"

"No, I don't. I couldn't care less." Martinez put his hands together like a father addressing an errant adolescent. "What I care about is not getting frantic calls from the mayor between now and November. What I care about is keeping my job. I know you don't give a rat's ass what happens to you, but I've got two kids in college and another one heading there in a couple of years."

Frost detected a hidden undercurrent.

"You know I have always been, and always will be grateful, for you making a place for me here." Martinez nodded. He didn't say so, but Frost knew he appreciated the sentiment.

"I was happy to do it, Rick." He looked at his dangling feet. "It wasn't easy, you know. Your reputation preceded you, thanks to . . . Thanks to some people who will remain anonymous. The mayor called me and said, 'What do you want to hire that fuck-up for? He cost L.A. seven million dollars.' I told him it was because you were a damn fine detective. And you are...when you're not on one of your personal crusades." They hadn't talked about that in a long time. Martinez smiled, signaling they weren't going to talk about it now, either. "I didn't mention the fact that you're an insubordinate asshole."

"Guilty as charged."

"Rick, don't fuck this up with Coldstone. Bow and scrape and grovel, if necessary. Be nice. I know you blame him for what happened in that girl's case."

"Maria Valenzuela." Was the bag new? What had she been carrying in it?

"Yes, Valenzuela. I know you blame him for the evidence going missing. You might as easily blame me. It's my department. I was in charge."

"You didn't pay someone to make the evidence go away."

"You can't prove Coldstone did, either."

"I don't have to prove it to know it."

Martinez sighed. He kicked his shoes against the desk, stood up.

"Shit happens. We've both seen plenty of it. Take care of this thing for me this morning. Make Mr. Coldstone happy. Then you can take your joy ride to L.A."

"OK. I will be on my best behavior."

Frost was nearly at the door when Martinez called after him.

"Rick. When you're done with Coldstone, go up to that fucking gypsy camp and tell that woman this is their last warning. One more incident and I will personally go up there and arrest the lot of them, consequences be damned."

_

The Coldstone Museum stood in splendid isolation at the end of Arroyo Seco Avenue, a hundred yards past a small cluster of recently constructed homes, none of them yet sold. Cars from as far away as New York and Florida filled half the parking lot. Frost spotted a small RV with Saskatchewan plates. He saw no graffiti.

He showed his credentials at the ticket office and was directed to the security booth, manned by two uniformed guards. A guard escorted him into the museum, bypassing the line at the metal detectors, and took him down a long corridor flanked by Classical statues to the heart of the facility. Glass doors gave way to an open courtyard landscaped with native plants and small reflecting pools and furnished with wooden garden benches.

One quick look revealed the problem. Spray-painted slogans adorned the courtyard walls: MUSEUM OF BLOOD MONEY, DEFEND THE FORESTS, TREES BEFORE PROFIT, THE PLANET COMES FIRST, DEFENDERS OF GAEA. Frost was appalled. This would only lead to retaliation at the Grove. He would be even less likely to get out from under the demeaning duty of trying to keep the warring sides apart.

He could not help but admire, however, the vandals' use of day-glo green and orange paint. Debbie Waite's ninja comrades deserved credit for that.

He also had to credit them for beating the security at a museum with unlimited resources to draw upon. How they had managed it—that was the first question.

T. Rex Coldstone was standing in the exact center of the courtyard, marked by a replica brass Greek sundial, lecturing a uniformed security guard, jabbing his long index finger at, but never quite into, the man's breastbone. On Coldstone's flank stood a tall, muscular blond in a blue serge suit. He regarded Frost's approach with no overt display of interest until Frost got within six feet, when he stepped forward and raised his hand like a traffic cop.

Frost pulled out his I.D. Before he could announce himself, Coldstone, having turned his head, laid a hand on the blond's shoulder and whispered into his ear. The blond reassumed his impassive stance, hands crossed over his crotch. Coldstone resumed berating the security guard, ultimately dismissing him with a wave of the hand. The security man scurried off to oversee a work crew that was setting up to tackle the graffiti.

"I remember you," Coldstone, said, turning his attention to Frost. "Snow, isn't it?"

"Frost," Frost said.

"Ah, yes. I never forget a face. Used to be I never forgot a name." Coldstone was older than Frost remembered, in his mid-seventies at least. His full head of white hair was neatly trimmed. The tailored silk shirt he was wearing would cost more than Frost made in a week. "I haven't seen you since . . ."

"I was here at the museum a couple of years ago, part of the security detail for the fundraiser you held for Senator Crocker." It was the only other time Frost had set foot on the museum grounds. Senator George Crocker of Wyoming, often referred to as being "more Reagan than Reagan," had emerged as a leading contender for the Republican nomination for president. The fundraiser, one of the first for Crocker's exploratory presidential committee, lured dozens of well-heeled conservatives to Santa Isidora for $25,000-a-plate prime rib. Crocker had faltered in the Florida primary but was widely expected to make another run at the presidency.

"Yes," Coldstone said with a gelid smile, his capped teeth as white as freshly bleached linen. "I recall seeing you there."

Frost didn't remind him—if he needed reminding—of the other time they had encountered each other—at Jake's abortive preliminary hearing.

The muscular blond's eyes were boring into Frost. Coldstone had made no move to introduce him, so Frost stuck out his hand.

"Rick Frost," he said.

"Hendrik Pretorius," he said. His grip was firm.

"Mr. Pretorius is one of our corporate executives," Coldstone said. "Hendrik, why don't you go bring the car around? I won't be much longer." Pretorius nodded stiffly and strode away. "So, Detective Frost, what do you plan to do about this outrage? What can I expect from the Santa Isidora Police?"

"The first thing I'd like to do is talk to your security people, see how this could have happened."

"We have already done that. No one saw anything, no one heard anything. Millions of dollars of security equipment, cameras, alarms, and yet a bunch of hooligans penetrated into the very heart of my museum and defaced it."

"It's hard to believe that could happen." He hated cases with no witnesses.

"Isn't it, though?" Coldstone's cheeks and neck flushed red, as if he'd just swallowed a jar of cayenne pepper. "It's bad enough that your department hasn't done anything about those malcontents trespassing on my property, but this... This is too much. This museum is my life, my legacy. The exhibits here are priceless. Priceless. This museum is a cathedral of Western Civilization. It is Western Civilization. If I have to hire an army to protect it, I will. But I should not have to. I should not have to bide my time as those vagabonds occupy my property. I should not have to."

What the domestic staff had told him was true: Coldstone's fury was unconcealed, but the inflection of his voice remained level, calm.

"I would like to take a look at the museum security-camera tapes myself."

"Mr. Pretorius has already gone through them. They show nothing." Coldstone gestured dismissively. "Nothing! No one came in, no one went out. It's as if these Visigoths appeared out of thin air."

Frost looked around. The courtyard was surrounded by the building. To gain access, you had to enter from one of several sets of doors that led out from the inside. To enter from the outside, you'd have to scale the security fence, get up to the roof of the two-story building, then drop to the courtyard. You'd have to do the reverse to get out. All while avoiding the guards, cameras and alarms. Frost didn't see how it could be done.

"The security force. How long have they been with the museum? Are any of the employees new?" Perhaps Debbie Waite had slipped one of her confrères past the goalie.

Coldstone shook his head.

"You're thinking inside job. That is not possible. All the guards here at the museum have been on the corporate payroll for years. They were hand-picked for this assignment and they're paid well—very well. As I told you, Mr. Pretorius already viewed the tapes. There is no way they were tampered with. No one let them inside."

"Still, I'd like to view the tapes myself." Frost rubbed his chin. If they had come in on parachutes or hang gliders, how had they gotten out? And where were the 'chutes and the gliders?

"You may take them with you."

"If you don't mind, I'd like to take some small scrapings from the wall." He checked his pocket for a knife, found none. He'd have to borrow one. "For samples of the paint. If we're lucky, we might be able to find out who recently purchased day-glo green and orange paint. If we can tie the paint on the walls to whatever brand was purchased, it could give us the kind of evidence we need to make an arrest." Frost contemplated the irony of discussing the importance of evidence with Coldstone. "And get a conviction."

If Coldstone understood Frost's meaning he didn't show it.

"Take the tapes. Scrape the walls. Do whatever you have to do." Coldstone was stabbing his finger at Frost now. "I expect results. You have wet-nursed those barbarians up on my property for too long. I have stood it out of deference to the political sensibilities. But I will not stand for this. Not at my museum. I am a man who gets results. That's who I am. Fix it, or there will be consequences."

Coldstone stalked away, stopping momentarily to harangue the chief of the work crew before exiting through double glass doors into the building.

The words Go fuck yourself had formed on Frost's lips as Coldstone wound up his soliloquy, but he squelched them, thinking of Martinez and his kids in college. It would have been a futile gesture. A man as wealthy as Coldstone lived in an entirely different universe from the rest of mankind and he knew it.

Frost borrowed a utility knife from one of the work crew and took samples of the paint. He went to the security office and interviewed the man whom Coldstone had admonished earlier. His name was Otis and he had worked for one or another of Coldstone's companies for thirty years. Frost put off interviewing the rest of the security force until after he'd had a chance to view the tapes, taking possession of them from Otis. He walked the perimeter, finding no holes in the security fence or signs that a ladder had been used to scale it.

How the graffiti artists had done it was a good question.

He ran into Mayor Potter and his aide-de-camp, a frenetic twenty-two-year-old named Penny Crane, on the museum front steps.

"If you're looking for Mr. Coldstone," Frost told him, "you've missed him." Potter looked bemused. "Rick Frost, SIPD," he said, offering his hand.

"I know who you are," Potter said, leaving his hand untaken. "How bad is it?" Crane was intently marking up a document.

"Some graffiti. They'll have it painted over in no time."

Potter's eyes darted about as if he'd been caught shoplifting pornography.

"This is terrible. How could this happen? Was it that same bunch that's up at the Grove?"

"I can't say, Mr. Mayor, but that's a reasonable supposition. Either them or someone sympathetic to them."

"This is terrible, this is terrible. The Coldstone Museum is the centerpiece of this city. It's our crown jewel. I'm going to speak to Chief Martinez about putting a 24-hour guard around this place." Crane looked up from her editing, eyes wide. She spoke into Potter's ear. "No, of course, that would be too expensive." Satisfied, she gave the document her renewed attention. "But you SIPD boys need to do something. First the Grove, now this. It's terrible . . ." Shaking his head, Potter reversed course and headed toward his waiting sedan, Crane trailing him, her eyes locked on the paper in her hands.

For the second time that day, the words Go fuck yourself came to Frost's lips but stayed put, unlaunched.

_

Frost attempted to call the station from the parking lot before remembering it was useless to try. A cellphone "dead zone" surrounded the museum. The usual explanation for the phenomenon was that the museum rested in a small dell, out of the line of sight of the town's cell towers. Another account, favored by local conspiracy theorists, held that the Coldstone Museum emitted some kind of signal that jammed the phones, presumably so visitors would not violate its aesthetic majesty by yakking with their friends within its hallowed halls. Frost considered either theory plausible. Since Coldstone owned a cellphone company, among other things, he certainly had access to the technical expertise necessary to interdict wireless signals.

He called Martinez when he arrived at the Grove, after trying Madden but getting no answer. He requested that someone check local hardware stores for recent purchases of day-glo spray paint. Martinez said it was the longest of long shots, so he would assign the task to the unpaid intern from the criminal justice program at Valley Community College. Dialing up dozens of hardware and craft stores asking for that kind of information would give her a taste of what real police work was like.

Frost parked next to Debbie Waite's VW camper. She was working bread dough in a large bowl, alternately kneading and punching it.

"Debbie," Frost said, "I need to talk to the Ninjas."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Rick," she said, squishing the dough with her palms.

"The Ninjas. The Boys Who Dress in Black. Your Merry Pranksters. I need to talk to them, Debbie. They've gone too far this time." He told her about the graffiti attack. "Debbie, putting shit on a trailer door is one thing, but desecrating T. Rex Coldstone's baby is another. Things are going to get out of control. Someone's going to get hurt."

"Rick, I appreciate what you're saying, but . . ."

"Debbie, I'm serious. The next step is a bunch of Coldstone thugs coming though here in the dead of night and beating the crap out of everyone."

"Rick, I don't know who they are. I swear."

"Fine, Debbie, have it your way." He was losing his patience with her, grandmotherly as she was.

She pulled her hands out of the dough and wiped them clean with a towel. She looked at him as if he had just slapped her across the face.

"Listen up, Rick Frost." She got up close, put her nose in his face. "When I tell you I don't know who they are, I mean it. Don't accuse me of being a liar, mister. I have been straight with you since the first day you came up here. I'm too old to take any shit off of anybody, and I'm not about to start with you."

She returned to the bowl and started kneading.

Great. Just great. He looked up the hill at the women sitting in the trees. They were all women. Why was that?

"Debbie, why are all the kids in the trees women?"

"Because men don't have the patience for it." She pounded the dough with a roundhouse punch.

"OK, Debbie, I'm sorry. You are right. I was wrong. You have been straight with me since the day I met you. Don't think I don't appreciate it." He sniffed the air, smelled the dough. There was garlic in the mix. "Here's the thing, Debbie. Someone is going to get hurt unless we find a way to talk sense into these kids. Whoever they are. So do me a favor. Spread the word with your tribe up there that I want to talk to them. I just want to talk. I'm not going to arrest anybody. You have my word on that." Their eyes met. "Just talk. I need to talk some sense into them." Also, he said, he wanted to know how they had beaten the museum security.

"I'll see what I can do."

"You have my cell number. Have them call me."

Frost strayed twenty feet and settled himself on a rock. He took out his cellphone, scrolled down to Julia's office number, and punched the button.

## 14

THE PHONE RANG for eons before Julia picked up.

"I thought you said you hardly ever got down to L.A.," she said.

Frost asked if she had gotten his messages.

"Yes. Frankly, I didn't know what to make of it." She sounded tired. "I had the impression on Sunday . . ."

"I know," Frost said. "I'm sorry about that. I wanted... I need to talk to you about that."

"Is it a long and complicated story?"

"Sort of." He mentioned that he would be meeting his friend Jerry Sirica at the coffee bar in Westwood. Julia said she knew the place. She thought she could be there by six.

" 'Complicated' is a kind of double-edged sword when it comes to men," she said. He hoped that he was correctly interpreting the infinitesimal change in the tone of her voice as a hint of levity.

"I'll keep it short," he promised.

He deposited the museum tapes at the SIPD, with a note asking Madden—still nowhere to be found, not answering his cellphone—to review them. He checked out a car and drove to Los Angeles. He parked in the spot near the Department of Earth and Space Sciences that Martha Oleske had marked on the map she'd sent him. He followed her directions to the office of Dr. Norman Fergus. According to Martha's e-mailed brief, Fergus was an expert in geochemistry and paleobiology.

Fergus was as tall and reedy as Abraham Lincoln and had the same bearded chin. Unlike Lincoln, he tied his stringy gray hair in a ponytail and wore an earring. A pair of reading glasses hung on a rawhide string around his neck. Frost introduced himself and took a seat in a chair with stuffing blossoming from cracks in its green leather upholstery. As in every professor's office Frost had ever visited, this one had shelves along both side walls overflowing with books. Fergus' titles included Potential Theory in Applied Geophysics and The Nature and Properties of Soils. Fergus also had, Frost noticed, several years' worth of Civil War Battles magazine stacked in a corner.

Frost began by asking if Martha had explained to him the origin of the clay samples she had sent and their relation to the murder investigation he was conducting.

"Yes," Fergus said, nodding his head. "Miss Oleske . . . Is it 'Dr. Oleske'?"

"I don't believe so," Frost said. He had never considered the possibility that Martha was a Ph.D.

"Miss Oleske said it was important to maintain the chain of evidence, so I signed for the FedEx. I opened the box in the presence of two others. The samples have been with me or under lock and key since. So if it becomes necessary for me to testify about the samples in court, you can be assured that the chain of evidence remains unbroken." Fergus beamed proudly.

"That's excellent. Thank you, Professor."

"Do you think it's likely that I will need to testify?"

"That's very hard to say at the moment." He would make a good witness if it came to that, full of earnestness and gravitas despite the hair and earring. "Right now I'm just interested in trying to find out where the clay came from. If you can identify its origins, it might give us a lead as to where our victim and our primary suspect spent some time recently. Martha—Miss Oleske—said you had ascertained that the clay is four thousand years old. Is that correct?"

"Yes, give or take a couple of hundred years. The radio-carbon dating puts the age of the samples at roughly 1800 to 2200 BCE. 'BCE'—that's 'Before Common Era.' It's another way of saying 'Before Christ' without offending anyone's religious sensibilities."

"I see. Now, Miss Oleske said she wasn't able to identify the origin of the mud—sorry, the clay—within her database of California soils."

"Oh, no, she wouldn't be able to do that. It's not from California."

"It isn't? I see." Had Pearse and Goetz taken a quick trip to Mexico? Arizona? Would they have had time? "Have you been able to identify where it's from?"

"Oh, yes. It's from Mesopotamia." Fergus lifted a green folder from his desk and handed it to Frost.

"Mesopotamia? You mean, Iraq?" Frost glanced at the contents of the folder: a single sheet containing two bar graphs. The x axes, going from left to right, consisted of data points of elements and chemical compounds. The y axes, going bottom to top, measured their concentrations. The graphs, which resembled silhouettes of the Golden Gate Bridge, appeared to be identical.

"Babylon, to be precise." Fergus sat straight in his chair, hands on the desk in front of him, fingers laced, like a second-grader trying to win a good-student award. "The samples you provided are all clay from the Babylon area in that era—four thousand years ago. All the pieces I tested have the same chemical composition, so they are all from a single object, or at least from the same batch of clay. The clay was baked, probably in the sun. You see how very hard it is." Fergus passed Frost a large plastic bag marked SANTA ISIDORA COUNTY - EVIDENCE. "Like brick. Very possibly is brick—that is, fragments of a brick."

"A brick from Babylon? Ancient Babylon?" Frost looked at the bag, laid it on Fergus' desk.

"From ancient Babylon, yes. Possibly Kish. It's a nearby site. But my money is on Babylon."

"If you don't mind my asking, how do you know all this? How is it possible to look at a piece of clay and say, 'This is from ancient Babylon?' "

Fergus leaned forward. Frost sensed a professorial discourse in the making.

"All soil consists of four major ingredients," Fergus said. "Minerals, organic components, water and air. That's on earth, of course. On other bodies like the Moon or Mars you won't find organic components—or at least, no one has so far—and in the case of the Moon, certainly, no air. Do you recall several years ago when NASA announced that they had found evidence of life in a meteorite from Mars? Did you wonder how they knew the meteorite was from Mars?"

"Now that you mention it, yes," Frost said.

Fergus nodded.

"All planetary bodies consist of a certain collection of elements. These differ from planet to planet. This is reflected in one way or another in the kinds of mineral rocks that make up planetary soils." Fergus unclasped his index fingers and began tapping them together slowly, rhythmically. "So each planet has a unique signature. Think of that as a 'metasignature'—the big picture. This rock is from Mars, this one from Venus, this one from the Moon, this one from the Earth, and so on. Now, obviously soils will vary from location to location on any planetary body, even on the Moon, due to differences in volcanism, the imperfect distribution of mineral types, erosion, and so forth. Therefore, in addition to the 'metasignatures' that identify the planetary body from which soil or rocks come from, there will also be 'microsignatures' that are different to varying degrees from place to place. Do you follow so far?"

Frost bobbed his head. It was actually sort of interesting.

"Good. Now, on Earth, the situation gets quite complicated. Soils form a sort of continuum on Earth, gradually changing from one place to another, from one soil type to another. The African savannah gradually gives way to the Sahara Desert in one direction, the tropical rain forest in another, and so on. The kind of soil and what it consists of in any given location is going to be determined first of all by what kind of minerals are in that area to begin with, the latitude, the amount of rainfall, the kinds of plants that grow there, even the kinds of animals that one finds in that area. Just as an example, different kinds of bacteria and plants fix nitrogen with different degrees of efficiency, so you'll find varying levels of ammonia, nitrate and nitrogen dioxide. Using different kinds of instruments, like mass spectrometers of various types—we're especially fortunate to have a new inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer—one can make precise measurements of the isotopic compositions of natural materials in the soil, both organic and inorganic. That yields a very detailed picture of the soil, like the graphs you have there."

Frost nodded again. He peeked at the graphs again, noticing they were separately labeled BABYLON/KISH and SAMPLE - SANTA ISIDORA PD.

"Of course, time is a factor as well," Fergus continued. "Soil composition changes over time. Climate change, changes in rainfall, windborne deposits of dust or volcanic ejecta—all that affects the biome, that is, what plants and animals live in an area. Volcanic eruptions or even the occasional asteroid will layer the soil with specific elements like iridium. Though that's not really a factor in this case." Fergus reclined. "You're actually quite lucky, as Babylonian soils have been studied quite extensively because of all the archaeological interest. So, is this helpful to you?"

It was a good question. What he had learned just now was that bits of clay found in the motel room had come from Iraq. Ancient Iraq, yes—but still, Iraq. He already knew that both Pearse and Goetz had just returned from there.

Martha could have saved him the trip and the primer on soil science if she had just told him what Fergus had found.

"Well, I don't know," Frost said. The professor seemed to deflate. Possibly he thought he had provided the vital clue to solving the crime. "We'll just have to see. I know the individuals we are concerned with were in Iraq recently. I suppose this confirms it, in a way." But what did it tell him? That Pearse and Goetz had visited the site of Babylon? That didn't get him closer to finding Owen Goetz. "You said you thought the clay came from bricks. Would it be possible for someone walking around the site of Babylon these days to find pieces of brick, or to get them stuck in the soles of their shoes?"

"I recall reading that the ruins were damaged extensively during the war. You know what I think probably happened?" Fergus looked at his bookshelf momentarily. "They probably picked up a few pieces lying around on the ground as souvenirs. I did the same thing when I visited the ruins of Hadrian's villa in Tivoli, in Italy. I was going through a passageway when I noticed all these small mosaic tiles underfoot. There didn't appear to be any attempt at restoration being made, so I picked up a few of the tiles and put them in my pocket. I'm a little bit ashamed of it now, but I was much younger at the time. To be honest, I don't even know where those tiles are now."

"OK. Well, thank you, Professor. Sorry to have put you through all this trouble."

"Oh, it was no trouble at all. We have millions of dollars in equipment in our department. With my teaching load, I don't have as much opportunity as I'd like to put it to use." Fergus picked up the evidence bag. "You know," he said, "I did notice one thing that was sort of interesting." He reached into the bag and retrieved one of the clay fragments. "This piece here, do you notice?" He held out the largest fragment in the bunch. Frost scrutinized it. Fergus pointed with the tip of a pencil to what appeared to be a scratch mark in the upper corner. "It's got this mark here. And this other mark going this way. To me, it looks man-made, not a defect of manufacturing. I looked at it under a microscope and it's very regular."

"Meaning what?"

"Just that maybe it's not from a brick. Maybe a hieroglyph from a frieze of some sort."

"Uh-huh." To Frost the marks looked like hen scratchings. And what difference would it make if a bullet or mortar round blasted off a piece of a frieze instead of a piece of a brick?

"You know, if you're interested in the ruins of Babylon, you should go talk to Max Lipka," Fergus said. "He's over in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. He's an expert on ancient Mesopotamia. I know him from a couple of committees we've sat on together, including the Committee on Committees." Fergus laughed. "We are such a big institution that we have one. Lipka is kind of a character. Not the most lovable sort. But he's very expert. I'm sure he could give you a better idea about the state of the ruins. I'll give you his number." Fergus swiveled to his computer and clicked through a couple of screens. He read off Lipka's telephone and office numbers. Frost wrote the information in his notebook, doubting he'd ever use it.

After thanking Fergus for his time and efforts, Frost took custody of the evidence bag, he and Fergus signing off on the transfer. He took the samples and the folder of graphs to the car. A parking ticket had been placed on the windshield—evidently the UCLA cops had no respect for the sticker that identified the car as an SIPD vehicle.

Frost removed the ticket, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it under the car.

He took out his cellphone and called Martha Oleske.

"Martha, what the fuck?" he said.

"You're rather brusque today," she said.

"Why didn't you just tell me the clay was from fucking Babylon? You could have saved me a trip. Knowing that doesn't help at all."

"Rick," she said after letting a few seconds go by, "what do I do for a living?"

"Please, Martha. I'm not in the mood for riddles."

"I test things, Rick. I was testing you. You passed the test. Or failed, depending on your perspective. I presented you with an opportunity to go to L.A. to see her. You tested positive for a crush."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Martha."

"I did you a favor, lover. You would never have done it on your own. You can thank me later."

"Fuck you, Oleske." He hung up.

He called back two minutes later to apologize. She told him a dirty joke and made him laugh.

## 15

THE PONY ESPRESSO was the oddest coffee bar Frost had ever seen. Horseshoes, bullwhips and Western-themed art hung from the walls. The tables were made of rough logs, their tops covered in leather with simulated branding marks.

He was in a curious mood. Martha had done him a favor but he was loath to admit it. It also didn't change the fact that as he sat in this unusual place, a double-shot mocha in front of him, Owen Goetz was digging himself in tighter into whatever Hole-in-the-Wall hideout he had found for himself.

Despite his peculiar taste in coffee hang-outs, Frost was looking forward to seeing Sirica. He hadn't laid eyes on the FBI special agent since he resigned from the LAPD to take the job in Santa Isidora.

He assumed that Sirica would have no useful information for him. That was the way this investigation was going. At every turn, more nonsense. The way things were going, he was going to need a gift from God, a real deus ex machina, if he was going to close the case.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned, smiling, anticipating Sirica.

It was Annie Nystad.

"Annie," he said, flustered. "It's you."

"Hi, Rick," Annie said. She was older but still drop-dead gorgeous, with large, violet-blue eyes and cascades of blonde hair. She was wearing blue jeans and a peasant blouse with embroidered flowers. Her right hand rested on the handle of an elaborate baby carriage made of heavy-duty blue plastic overflowing with bags containing, Frost supposed, the impedimenta of parenthood. It was one of those baby carriages where the top detached and doubled as a car seat. Snuggled inside the carrier silently sleeping under a pink blanket was a tiny human being.

"Well, how are you?" he asked. It was a banal question, but what was he going to say? Oh, you have a baby now. That's nice. Met a nice man and fell in love. Good for you. Made vice-president at the agency, too? Outstanding.

"I'm good, I'm good. I heard you left the LAPD."

"Yes. I'm up in Santa Isidora now."

"Still a cop?"

"Still a cop."

Annie stood in place, absent-mindedly pushing the stroller back and forth, neither making a move to sit down nor to go away.

Was he supposed to ask her to join him?

"So, who's this?" he asked, nodding at the infant.

"This is Alice." Her face lit up.

"She's beautiful. How old?"

"Eight weeks. In two days. Eight weeks in two days."

"Well, that's great. Good for you. You must be happy."

"Yes. Yes, I am happy." Annie took a peek at Alice, then looked into Frost's eyes in the way she had that penetrated to his midbrain. "How are you doing?"

"Fine, just fine." She always knew when he was lying, but she didn't call him on it. "The usual stuff. Chasing down bad guys."

"Is that why you're here in L.A.? On a case?"

"Uh-huh." Frost wasn't sure how he felt about this conversation, but chose to prolong it. "How's the advertising biz?"

"Oh, I'm not working at the moment. I'm on extended maternity leave. Alice is a lot of work." She looked at the child, her face incandescent.

"I can only imagine." Frost noticed, for the first time, that a bleached steer's skull hung over the front door.

"I'll get back to it eventually."

"Of course. Your husband, what does he do?"

She curled her left hand, the third finger of which was graced with a simple gold wedding band and a diamond solitaire engagement ring on a platinum setting.

"He runs the transportation division for the City of Malibu. You know, stop lights, potholes, that sort of thing."

"Malibu. That must be nice." Transportation engineer. Nice, solid job. Probably a nice, solid man.

"Oh, we don't live in Malibu." She rolled her eyes. "We couldn't afford to. We live in Canoga Park. . . . Oh, there they are." She waved to a group of three women on the other side of the room. One of them, an older woman with a cataract of gray hair and a pointy nose, looked familiar. "I have to run. I'm meeting my book group." Her mouth formed a queer smile. "Your old book group, as a matter of fact."

"My old book group?" Frost looked at the older woman again. Now he recognized her. "I never made it to the meetings."

"I know. Kind of ironic, isn't it? After we . . . split up, I ran into Francis at the supermarket one day and she asked about you and we got to talking and . . . Anyway, I wound up going to their meetings. Some of the people are different now, of course."

"Of course. It's a long trip from Canoga Park to Westwood just to go to a book group meeting."

"It keeps me sane." She threw a look over her shoulder. "Well, I have to go. It was good seeing you, Rick. I'm glad I bumped into you."

"Me, too. Congratulations. On the baby, everything. Canoga Park."

"Thanks." She backed the stroller away and turned to go. "Take care of yourself."

"You, too, Annie."

Four years they had been together. The first, like a Hollywood script: laughter, eating out, weekend trips, moving in together, inexhaustible sexual ardor. After that . . . What? It seemed like eons ago. It also seemed like yesterday. Routine. Work. Pleasantries exchanged. Anniversaries remembered. Fights. Making up.

Then, a descent. Though even in the Dantean darkness of that final year there had been moments of lightness, brief, ephemeral, wispy tendrils of a love once remembered and cared about that now lay broken and dry and wasted.

Somewhere along the way he had abandoned hope while Annie had abandoned him.

_

Jerry Sirica was tall—too tall for an FBI man, he claimed, as the Bureau preferred its agents not to stand out from the crowd when undercover. In J. Edgar Hoover's day he wouldn't have made the grade. Hoover wanted men who were taut and of medium height. Sirica was young, still in his early thirties, with a wife and three kids and a three-bedroom mortgage in the San Fernando Valley.

He shook Frost's hand with his giant paw and sat down, splaying his long legs on either side of his chair. On the table in front of him he placed a very large drink made of a mixture of crushed ice, espresso, milk, white chocolate syrup and whipped cream.

"Best fake Frappuccino in L.A.," Sirica said. "Half the price of Starbucks. So, how is life in rustic Santa Isidora?"

"You haven't lived until you've tasted our chili," Frost said.

"Yeah, I really meant to get up there this year for the festival, but...stuff intervened. You know how it is." He sucked his drink through a straw. "Any progress with the murder? You find the guy you were looking for? You know, since I talked to you this morning?" He laughed.

"No, no progress at all. I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round. Up and down I go, round and round, and when all is said and done I've gotten nowhere. Goetz has vanished into thin air. He dumped the car he was driving at LAX. Don't know when. He hasn't shown up at his home base in the Central Valley, or so the local sheriff says. Every lead I follow takes me down another rat hole. No one knows anything. I just now came from a completely unhelpful meeting where I discovered the victim and suspect played tourist in Babylon and picked up pieces of four-thousand-year-old brick. I already knew they were in Iraq. Last night I was up until two in the morning on a stakeout trying to figure out if there was or was not something in a big bag while my partner fouled the atmosphere with farts."

"Isn't law enforcement the life?" Sirica laughed. He sipped some more of the ersatz Frappuccino. "I have some information for you. I don't know if it will be helpful. It's more peculiar than anything else."

"You've found something on Peacock?"

"Something. Maybe nothing. I don't know. It's weird." He puffed his cheeks, emitted a burst of air. "Peacock Overseas Services, Inc., is a Delaware corporation. Nothing unusual there. Half the corporations in America are chartered there. Peacock is in turn owned by Mudrats, Ltd."

"Mudrats?"

"Mudrats, Ltd.," Sirica said, nodding. "Goofy name. Anyhoo, Mudrats is chartered in the British Virgin Islands. You won't get any information out of them. The whole economy of the place depends on setting up dummy corporations and holding companies. That and tourism, I guess. Bottom line is, you'll never figure out who owns Mudrats."

"That's the whole point of offshore corporations. Hide from the tax man, the stockholders, regulatory agencies."

"Exactly." Sirica set his drink down, having finished it. Frost nursed his mocha. "Do you remember Jack Sundstrom? He was in on the . . . He was on our team."

"Sure, I remember him." Frost remembered the team, too.

"Jack is over in Baghdad now. He's what we call a 'Legatt'—that's short for 'Legal Attaché.' The Bureau has a big operation there. Jack says they do everything—intelligence, counterintelligence, security. They investigate corruption, Iraqi and American. Apparently there aren't enough hours in the day. There's just so much money sloshing around that the temptation to skim some off the top is just too great for a lot of people. Jack says they have enough investigations going to keep them busy for the next hundred years." Sirica spun the ice around in his plastic glass. "Jack says Baghdad is the weirdest place he's ever been. They live in this American Disneyland inside the Green Zone with air-conditioning and Pizza Hut and Burger King and whatnot. Outside the Zone it's a whole other world. He says it's like walking in one of those spooky forests in a fairy tale. You know, it's dark, there's fog everywhere, all the trees have those weird goblin faces carved into them. Jack says it's completely unfathomable. You can't tell who's on your side, who's not. Who's on your side today, and on the other side tomorrow. Who's with you this minute and sticking a shiv in your back the next."

Sirica crossed one of his stork legs over the other. He shook his head.

"Sundstrom's making a killing over there, by the way," he said. "Between the danger pay and the hazard pay and the other perks, he's just rolling in it. His IRA is getting so fat he'll be able to stick it on a spit and barbecue it. I wanted to go over, but Jen said no fucking way." Frost cupped his chin in his hands. "But I digress. OK, Peacock," he said. "So, Jack knows about them. There's a few dozen of them altogether. They work out of some villa in the Green Zone that used to belong to one of Saddam's pals. A real grab-bag, Americans, Brits, a couple of South Africans, an Aussie or two, even a Russian. All ex-military of one sort or another. Mercenaries, former special forces, Russian Spetsnaz, who the fuck knows. So here's the thing." Sirica leaned forward. "Jack can't figure out what the fuck they're doing there."

"They told me they had a contract to provide security for the ministry of interior," Frost said.

"Yeah, that's true," Sirica said, nodding vigorously. "That's the story. But that makes no sense. The ministry of interior is the police. It's all the paramilitaries that we have spent years and billions of dollars training and equipping. It's Iraqi SWAT teams. It's Iraqi intelligence. According to Jack, half the guys in the ministry of interior are ex-Baathists, regardless of whatever purge they allegedly carried out. Including a bunch, Jack says, from the old Mukhabarat, Saddam's intelligence service. So what the fuck does the ministry of interior need these couple of dozen guys for? They have everybody they need to protect the minister or the assistant ministers or whatever. What force multiplier does Peacock provide? The ministry of interior has hundreds of thousands of employees and probably just as much weaponry as the ministry of defense."

Sirica was warming to the tale, his pace quickening.

"Also," he said, "according to Jack, none of his contacts at the ministry of interior has a clue what Peacock is up to. Every so often, Jack says, the Peacock crew roars out of the Green Zone in a bunch of bad-ass Hummers and disappears for a few days. Then they're back, hanging out at the villa smoking cigars and drinking beer. No one in the Legatt shop has any idea when or how they've ever provided security to anyone."

"So is it just some kind of scam?" Frost asked. "Are they just skimming some off the top, as you said?"

"That's what I thought, too. All that reconstruction money floating around." Sirica waved his arms like a fisherman shooing away seagulls. "Billions for the taking! Here's where it gets really weird. Who's paying them? That's the question. If it's the Iraqi ministry of interior, why? Why go to all the trouble of hiring this American company, bringing in all these Westerners, and so on? If you're stealing from your own ministry, you just set up a dummy company in Jordan or Kuwait or someplace, create some ghost employees, throw a little baksheesh around and you're home free. Why get Americans involved? That's just asking for trouble."

"So the American government must be paying them."

"Sure, that'd be the natural thing to think. Just another U.S. government contractor like Halliburton or Blackwater or any of the dozens of other companies the USG has been throwing money at. Peacock gets itself a little piece of the enormous pie."

"But that's not it? Is that what you're saying?"

"Well, I don't know. I don't know." Sirica sucked in air like a turbine. "After I talked to Jack, I thought, I'll do a little investigating. I've got better things to do with my time, but my friend Rick Frost wants to know, and I owe him." He looked Frost in the eye. "I owe him big-time. So I call a guy I know on the House Appropriations Committee and ask him to find out if there's ever been an appropriation for Peacock Overseas Services, Inc., or Mudrats, Ltd. He calls me back a little while later and tells me, sure enough, there was an authorization in a highway bill, of all things, providing ten million dollars for Peacock to provide unspecified security services in Iraq. Senator Crocker's staff guy inserted it."

"Senator Crocker of Wyoming?"

"Is there another one? Anyway, the point is . . . Well, there are two points. First, ten million is chicken feed. Even though Peacock only has a few dozen contract employees, keeping people in Iraq is expensive. You have to pay those guys a couple of grand a week, at least."

"That's what we heard, too. Two or three thousand a week. Tax free."

"That's just salary. Add on Hummers and weapons and food and fuel and flights back and forth and the villa and God knows what else, you're going to spend a hell of a lot more than ten million dollars. So it's a fucked-up contract to begin with and no sane company would want it. But there's something else." Sirica grinned, eyes almost popping out of his head. "There was never any appropriation for the money. There was an authorization, but not an appropriation."

"What's the difference?"

"Congress spends money in a two-step process." Sirica threw up his hands. "Don't ask me why. Has something to do with the folks on the appropriation committees jealously guarding their prerogative to spend money. The point is, first you authorize, then you appropriate. It's like telling a kid to go buy an ice cream cone. Telling him to buy it is the authorization. Giving him the money to buy it with is the appropriation. To authorize but not appropriate is like telling the kid he can have the ice cream but not giving him the money to buy it with. See? So the question is, who's paying Peacock? If it's the U.S. government, where's the appropriation? If it's the Iraqi government, why was there an authorization? Why is Senator Crocker involved?"

"Maybe Peacock gave him a campaign contribution."

"There's no record of that. There's something else." Sirica rubbed his index finger around the rim of his glass, as if trying to produce a tone, but all he got for his efforts was a weak squeak. "My friend calls the Crocker staffer who stuck the authorization in the highway bill and asks how come there's no appropriation. The answer is, 'I have no fucking clue what you're talking about.' A half-hour after he gets off the phone with me, our deputy regional director calls me into his office and asks me why the Director just called him to ask why the fuck one of his agents is hassling Crocker's staff."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him the truth, that you had a murder case in which Peacock seems to play a marginal role and I was trying to find out more about it."

"Thanks loads," Frost said.

"You're welcome." Sirica laughed. "Maybe it means nothing. I don't know. But for that kind of juice to fly around that fast. . . . It has to mean that Peacock is very well connected politically."

Frost slumped in his chair and looked up at the bleached white steer's skull. He reminded himself that this was a simple case of murder and that whatever Peacock was or wasn't was probably irrelevant. Still, he detected a foul odor about the company that made him uneasy.

"I had one thought," Sirica said. "Do you know what the 'black budget' is?"

"Sure," Frost said. "All the secret stuff. CIA and NSA budgets, covert ops, research on the stealth fighter, assassination attempts on Castro, keeping those alien bodies on ice at Area 51. You're suggesting Peacock is a CIA front?"

"It occurred to me. Perhaps the appropriation's not there because it's in the black budget. The authorization was a mistake. Shouldn't have been in the open budget. Crocker is one of the CIA's go-to guys whenever they need something on the Hill. But in this case, his staffer screwed up by putting the authorization in the open budget."

Frost shook his head.

"I don't buy it. You yourself said ten million dollars wasn't enough. The CIA has billions to spend. More important, both Pearse and Goetz were screw-ups. Both of them were kicked out of the military. If you're running some secret covert ops against insurgents or Iranian infiltrators or Shiite death squads or whatever, these are not the guys you'd hire. I still can't figure out why Peacock hired them. But if Peacock is some creature of the CIA, you'd think they'd do a better job of vetting their hires."

"I don't know. You may be exaggerating their competence. Remember, these are the same guys who didn't see the collapse of the Soviet Union coming and who insisted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction up the yinyang."

Sirica and Frost switched topics, catching up on Sirica's growing family and his new assignment to the FBI's regional bank-robbery unit.

Frost felt he had gone for another spin on the merry-go-round.

Julia arrived at six o'clock, almost to the second. She was wearing a black suit, white blouse and black heels. She had her hair turned up. She looked like she had just stepped off the set of Boston Legal.

Frost and Sirica rose to greet her, the FBI man towering over her like one of Los Angeles' ubiquitous palms. Frost introduced them. They exchanged business cards.

"I was just leaving," Sirica said, winking at Frost.

"I hope it wasn't something I said," Julia said.

"Jerry," Frost interjected. "Before you go. How did you find out that Peacock was owned by Mudrats?"

"Dun and Bradstreet report," he said. "It's on the Web. You just run a credit check on them. Julia, be careful not to get in debt to this man. You'll owe him forever." Sirica laughed and then strolled away, passing beneath the steer's skull out onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

Frost noticed that Annie and her book group were gone, too.

He made a mental note to ask his Internet expert, Madden, how he had missed the Dun and Bradstreet report.

## 16

JULIA SAT AT the table.

"Mudrats?" she asked.

"The company that owns Peacock," Frost said. "You look stunning. For some reason I thought I'd see you in bike clothes and a helmet."

"I left them and my bike at the office." She looked so directly at him that he imagined he saw his reflection in her irises. "I'm glad you called, Rick. As I said before, I was a little surprised. We had such a nice time on Sunday, then all of a sudden it seemed you were giving me the brush-off. I tried to think all the way home what it was I had said."

Frost glanced at the floor, then looked in her eyes.

"It's not like that. It's . . . "

"Long and complicated?" Julia laughed. "Come on, where's your car? This place gives me the creeps." She grabbed her satchel and rose from the table.

Once they were in the car Julia directed him to turn onto Wilshire Boulevard in the direction of Santa Monica.

"What happened on Sunday," Frost said as he drove, "is that I thought I'd be doing us—I'd be doing you—a favor by pushing you away."

"Funny kind of favor," Julia said, taking the clip from her hair and letting the wind from the open window blow it free. "Do I scare you that much?"

"God, no, Julia. It's not you who scares me. It's what I feel when I see you. I am—what's the word? . . . Irredeemable. Irredeemably hopeless. Irredeemably lost."

"No one is irredeemable. You can start on your redemption right now by buying me dinner." A few miles later she pointed to the parking lot of a Greek restaurant.

She ordered moussaka; he had souvalaki pork.

He started with the easier conversation.

"Julia, did Thad ever tell you much about his job with Peacock? What he did every day? How much he was making?"

"Right down to business. The hard-bitten detective." Julia laughed. "No, not really. Thad told me before he went over to Iraq that one of the reasons he was going was because they paid so well. I think he said it was over two thousand dollars a week. He called me once or twice from Baghdad, a couple of other times from Dubai. Once from Kuwait." He must have called on a locally obtained cellphone Peacock had provided him. "I think they went out on R&R every month for several days. He said he was fine and that I shouldn't worry. He said he spent most of his time sitting around the pool and drinking beer. He said most of the time he was more bored than anything else."

"Did he ever mention going to Babylon?"

"Babylon? You mean, the ruins?" Julia shook her head. "No, he never mentioned it. Why?"

"I found some bits of clay in the motel room. I just came from meeting a geologist at UCLA who says they're from ancient Babylon. It probably means nothing more than Thad or Owen Goetz visited the place and picked up some bits as souvenirs."

"Is it important?"

"I honestly don't see how. But I have to follow every lead. Even if we do catch up with Goetz—when we catch up with him—we still have to prove our case in court. You need to know the background. Show how Thad and Owen came to know each other, what they did together. Maybe including a visit to Babylon. Every little thing that can help paint a picture of their relationship, help explain what happened in that motel room. Of course," he continued, "there's a good chance Goetz will tell us everything we need to know once we get him in a room and get a chance to talk to him."

"Really? Is confession that common?"

A waitress brought glasses of wine, red for Julia, white for Frost. He noticed Julia's fingernails: shaped, bright with clear polish.

"You'd be surprised. Guilt is a powerful motivator. Except for sociopaths, who have no feelings toward others, guilt weighs heavily on most people. The act of confessing their wrong-doing is a great relief. It's a way to cleanse their soul. The Catholic church was on to something when it invented confession." He toyed with a piece of bread. "I'm sorry we haven't found Goetz yet. I know it must be difficult for you not to know why Thad was killed."

"Yes. It must be frustrating for you, too." She sipped her wine. "Rick, what did you mean when you said you're 'irredeemably lost'? How are you lost?"

Frost sat back in his chair.

"Oh, I don't know that we want to go down that road."

"Yes. Yes, I do. I do want to go down that road."

"It's too soon."

"You said yourself that confession was good for the soul." She smiled, brushing away a strand of hair from her forehead. "Hah! Trapped by your own words. Listen, Rick. . . . Rick, I'm not usually so direct. I'm very indirect. I avoid confrontation. I avoid exposing my vulnerabilities. Maybe that's why I'm a tax attorney. It's all paperwork, no big speeches in court." She let out a long breath. "Rick, I'm just going to say it. I'm attracted to you. I'm very attracted to you. I was drawn to you . . . There was something . . . When we first met." Frost recalled the moment vividly. "And I think you feel the same about me."

"I do," Frost said. "I was attracted to you, too, from the moment we met. It was remarkable." How he felt when her hand lingered in his. "I have thought about you a lot since. A lot."

"So you understand my confusion." Julia drank more wine. "Again, I'm sorry to be so direct. So lawyerly. This is so unlike me. . . . You draw me in. Then you push me away. So I say to myself, 'OK, you read that one wrong.' And then you come along and draw me back in again. Here we are in this Greek restaurant in Santa Monica having dinner like normal people and I don't know what to think. I would like to see where this could go, where we go could go together. I would. But if you're just going to push me away again, then . . . Then I don't want to get started." She rocked her head back and forth a little. Her eyes were sad but not tearful. "My neat little world has gone topsy-turvy," she said, her voice breaking slightly. "Thad is killed, and then you come into my life, practically at the same time. It's been overwhelming."

He covered her hand with his, stroked her soft skin.

"Julia, maybe we shouldn't . . . It's only been a week since . . ."

"No, it's all right. That's not it. I just need to know if you're going to push me away again. Are you? Are you going to push me away again?"

"No," he said. "No. I don't want to. I won't. But you could wind up regretting that I didn't."

"Let me worry about that." She took the fingers of his hand, wrapped them in hers.

In the car on the way to her house, Julia urged him again to explain why he thought he was lost.

"A woman break your heart?" she asked. "I thought all you cops were so tough."

"Not exactly," Frost said. "Yes, a break-up many years ago was part of it. A small part, really, in retrospect. And it wasn't even so much that we broke up, or that she was sleeping with someone else. It was the way I reacted to the whole thing. It didn't happen overnight. It took years to get to the place where it ended. I was unhappy at the end, because of some of the things she had done, but I practiced studied indifference. I did nothing to try to salvage the relationship. I watched it slip away and didn't make a move to save it, like someone on the shore calmly watching a boat slide under the water." Just as he had watched Maria Valenzuela slip away. "I even trimmed her bangs for her the night before she went off to Chicago with her married boyfriend."

"So you didn't care that your girlfriend was cheating on you?"

"Didn't care, pretended not to care. Didn't do anything about it. Stood by, like I was observing someone else's life. Just like I did with the rest of the relationship. She even told me that whatever animating spirit I had was dead. You're supposed to stop being afraid when that happens."

"What is it you're afraid of?" Frost didn't answer. "You're afraid you no longer have the capacity to love, that's what you're telling me? Wow, that's some baggage." Julia tapped her fingers on her valise. "My ex-fiancé is a Ph.D. I was with him for three years. He was getting his doctorate in Latin American studies. He went down to Chile for three months of field work, came back and told me he'd decided he needed someone who had as much passion for Latin America as he did. Just like that. What was I supposed to do? Learn Spanish and start wearing huaraches?" She laughed quietly. "He must have meant what he said, because he wound up marrying some Peruvian woman." She looked at him. "The men I've been out with since . . . Well, most of them are attorneys, you know. God, I hate attorneys!" She laughed again, loudly, carefree.

Julia pointed out her home and Frost eased the car to the curb in front and parked. He turned off the engine. Julia's was one of a group of eight pre-war cottages, four set on either side of a narrow courtyard. The complex stood out in a neighborhood of single-family homes, many of which had recently been remodeled. It was only a matter of time, Julia told Frost, before the owner knocked the cottages down and built a couple of McMansions in their place.

Frost looked at her, caressed her cheek gently with a single finger.

"Julia, I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "I may still be woefully screwed-up and unable to change. But you make me feel like maybe I am redeemable. I'd like to find out."

He leaned into her and kissed her. She put her hand around his neck and drew him to her, pressing her lips impatiently against his. Her mouth was wet and tasted like wine. His hand found her waist and then, urgently, her breast.

"Come on, let me show you my little house," she said.

She led him up the walk to her cottage. She put the key in the door, turned it and walked in. He followed.

_

What he remembered later was Julia turning on the light and gasping and the shape of an arm coming at him. He remembered something hard and heavy landing on his head and Julia screaming and him turning in a slow circle as he went down. He remembered seeing green legs and reaching toward them as he collapsed, his left arm stretching out at the passing forms even as he went with his right for the Glock in the holster at the small of his back. He remembered the ache of the blow as he was hit again and he thought maybe he remembered also the noise of his face hitting the hardwood floor.

Then he remembered seeing rotund Jerry Garcia, gray chipmunk-cheeked beard and fright wig of salt-and-pepper hair and blue T-shirt and wire-rim glasses and sandals. He saw Phil Lesh and Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann too, and Kreutzmann was banging on the drums, and then the light was shining on him and then he could barely see.

Then he remembered that it was his cellphone ringing and he groped in the darkness to quell its unrelenting and insistent summons, but his arms were as heavy as stone and he could not lift them.

Then the light was in his face again and as his eyelids fluttered open he saw first hands and then the arms to which they were attached and then the faces of the EMTs whom Julia had summoned along with the LAPD.

Then he saw Julia's face, her skin pallid, her eyes a study in worry, and he smiled at her, or thought he did.

The cellphone, mercifully, had gone silent. Frost became aware of the pressure a sphygmomanometer was applying to his left arm. He tried sitting up but one of the EMTs gently pushed him back down and he didn't fight it.

"Rest easy, buddy," the EMT said. "You took quite a serious whack to the head."

Julia was looking at him. He smiled at her—this time he was sure of it. She returned the smile and color returned to her cheeks. A pair of uniformed LAPD officers were talking to her.

Frost sat up, brushing away the EMTs' attempts to keep him down.

"You need to rest, mister," one of them said. His name tag read Abedzadeh.

"I'm fine," Frost said.

"You need to go to the hospital and get checked out."

"I feel fine."

"You could have a hematoma. You feel fine now and it sneaks up on you in an hour and you get bleeding all over your brain and you die." This Abedzadeh didn't mince words. Some bedside manner. "Let us take you to the hospital."

Frost shook his head.

"I'll go later," he said.

Abedzadeh shrugged and began to gather up his equipment.

"It's your funeral."

Frost got to his feet and walked unsteadily to the couch. Julia came and sat beside him. She put her arms around him and asked how he was. He told her he was fine. She had a nice couch. It had blue and white stripes. It had a nice feel to it. Soft and firm at the same time.

Abedzadeh and his colleague departed at the same time Nick Merchant squeezed through the front door. Frost knew Merchant all too well from his days in the Hollywood Division. Merchant was a good detective but he had the personality of a feral cat—wild-eyed, sneaky, roughed up around the edges. He cast a quick glance at Frost and spoke to the uniformed officers. After a couple of minutes, he walked over to the couch.

"Rick Frost," Merchant said, extending his hand. He waved Frost off when he started to rise. "Don't get up. I understand you got yourself clobbered tonight."

"It seems so," Frost said.

"It was Owen Goetz," Julia said. Frost sat up straight. Julia nodded. "I didn't see him when we first got in. . . ."

"Guess you didn't see him, either," Merchant said to Frost.

"I saw all this. . . ." Julia pointed to the other side of the living room, which doubled as the dining area. The small dining table had been moved up to the doorway leading to the kitchen, chairs pushed together in a tumble in the corner. Molding had been ripped from the wall and several floorboards roughly taken up, exposing the crawl space between floor and foundation. "Before I could react—before either of us could react—he was hitting you with this big black bag he had. I was so scared. . . . And then you were down. . . . He looked at me for a second, then he ran out the door. Then I heard him drive away on a motorcycle, very loud. It all happened so fast."

"A Yamaha," Frost said to Merchant. "Burgundy and big, at least 600cc. There was one parked on the street outside when we got here."

"That's good," Merchant said, writing the information down. "I see your powers of observation are still intact." He cracked a feline smile. "Miss Pearse told the black-and-white officers that this Goetz character is a suspect in a murder your department is investigating."

"Yes," Frost said.

"Well, now that we know he's in L.A., I'm sure we can scoop him up for you." That was the Nick Merchant Frost knew—all bravado and wisecracks. Merchant turned to one of the uniformed officers and gave him a description of the motorcycle, telling him to pass it and the description of Goetz to dispatch. It wouldn't do any good. Goetz would ditch the motorcycle as he had ditched the car. Frost wouldn't underestimate him again. "So, Rick, how's life up there in . . . where is it? Santa Clara?"

"Santa Isidora." His head was starting to hurt a little.

"Santa Isidora. Must be kind of low-key after life in the LAPD."

"Sometimes. You're at the West L.A. station now?"

"Yeah, finally finagled a transfer out of Hollywood. Too many years of dealing with all the weirdos." Merchant was looking at Frost like he was an object of pity. "Don't think I could stand it up where you are. You know me." He made fists with his hands and held them in front of his chest. "Gotta grab life by the reins, wrassle with the bull, you know. God knows, L.A.'s got plenty of excitement." He laughed. "When we're finished up here, you be sure to get this nice young lady to drive you to the hospital to get you checked out. We don't want you checking out." He laughed again, then faced Julia. "Ma'am, don't take no for an answer from this man," he said. "I know he's got a hard head, but he needs an MRI, whether he wants one or not."

Goetz had broken the simple lock on the rear door, probably with a screwdriver or pen-knife. Julia performed an inventory of the house but found nothing missing. Aside from the displaced furniture and the ripped-up floorboards, everything was in order.

On the way back from the hospital, where he was pronounced fit and free of subdural bleeding or other serious injury, Frost had Julia stop at a hardware store. He purchased a dead-bolt lock set, electric drill and drill bit. He told Julia he would repair the lock and floor in the morning. For now, he jammed a chair against the rear door. He took three of the high-dose ibuprofen tablets he'd been given at the hospital. Julia made them green tea and they drank it in the small kitchen. Frost took off his shoes and lay on top of the covers on Julia's bed. When he woke up in the morning she was asleep next to him, one hand resting lightly on his side.

_

"There's something I need to tell you," Frost said to her an hour later, as she stood in front of the stove, her back to him, tending an omelet. "About us, I mean."

She cocked her head in his direction.

"I don't like the sound of this," she said. She turned back to the stove, scraped the bottom of the pan, flipped the omelet.

"Technically, it's breaking the rules for us to see each other. Actually, there's no 'technically' about it. It's breaking the rules."

"What rules?"

"You're a witness in Thad's case. I'm the lead detective. It's against policy—it's against good police work—for a cop to get involved with a witness." Frost sipped from his mug of coffee. It was deep and rich and aromatic and it momentarily took his mind off the ache in his shoulder he had noticed. "Someone could even say . . . technically . . . you're a suspect. Not that you are, of course. But in other cases . . . " He wished he hadn't begun this discussion.

Julia turned off the stove, slipped the omelet onto a plate, cut it in two, put half on another plate. She handed one to Frost, took the other for herself, and sat at the table across from him.

"I guess it's a good thing we were interrupted last night," she said. She picked at the food.

"No. I don't care about the rules. That's part of my problem. I just thought you should know."

Julia chewed delicately. She drank some coffee.

"I'm glad you don't think I killed my brother. That would really put a damper on things."

Sunlight filtering through the window blinds cast striations of light across the living room floor, the one that Frost would need to repair.

"What would you do if you weren't a cop?" Julia asked.

"I don't know," Frost said. "I've never given it much thought." It was a good question. Madden had asked him something similar the night of the stakeout. "I'd open a used book store," he said finally. "And as soon as it went out of business, I'd go look for a job."

"You're so certain the book store would fail?"

"No one reads anymore. We live in an age of Twitter and Facebook and twenty-four hour cable TV. No one has the patience for books. Who knows, I might not read much myself if I had cable with a hundred channels."

Frost's cellphone pinged. He flipped it open and saw that the battery level was running low, and that he had a new voicemail message. It was from the night before. He recognized the incoming number as Candelaria Valenzuela's. He listened to the message, sighed deeply and flipped the phone closed.

"Bad news?"

"Yes. This girl from a case a few years ago, Maria Valenzuela. She's been arrested. I'll have to go back to Santa Isidora and see what I can do." Julia looked disappointed. "I'll be back. I promise." Thinking about Maria led him to thinking about the stakeout. That led him to thinking about Thad. "Julia, I'm sorry to have to ask again, but are you sure Thad wasn't mixed up with drugs somehow?"

"I don't know, Rick. I don't think so, but I just don't know."

Frost looked at the hole in the living room floor. What had Goetz been looking for? Had he found it?

"How many bags did Thad and Goetz have when they arrived?"

"I didn't really pay attention. I'm sorry. Is it important?"

"I'm not sure. Goetz came here last night looking for something. That's why he tore up your floor. It must have been something he and Thad had stashed there before, when you were out of the house. Something they didn't want you or anyone else to find. Something valuable, something important."

"You think it was drugs?" Julia looked crestfallen. It would hurt to think of her brother, as much of a stranger to her as he had been, dealing in drugs.

"I don't know." He was saying that a lot these days. "They might have brought something back from Iraq. Drugs are one possibility. Iraqi hashish, opium from Turkey, heroin from Afghanistan. We had at least one tip that Goetz was working with a known drug dealer in Santa Isidora. It could explain what they were doing up there. Neither one of them has any other connection to Santa Isidora that we've been able to discern. Drug deals go bad all the time . . . and people get hurt. There's just too much money involved. Sometimes one party or the other wants to keep it all for himself. I don't know that that's what happened. I know very little, in fact. It's disconcerting. But it's one theory that makes sense."

Julia's eyes moistened. Frost took her hand and squeezed it.

"I wish Thad had confided in me," she said. "Asked for help. Told me if he needed money."

"From everything I hear, it doesn't seem Thad would need money. Not at the salary he was making. You haven't found any bank records, have you? No? We're still trying to get something out of Peacock on that. I don't think Thad would have asked you for help, whether it was money or something else. It sounds to me like he was a very independent kid. I think he wanted to make it on his own."

Frost replaced the floorboards and the molding. He fixed the broken lock. Before he left, he gathered Julia in his arms and kissed her. He said he was sorry he had to go. He would much rather stay with her and break all the rules.

"I'm sorry you have to go, too," she said. "I was hoping you could stay. I thought I would take the day off and we could go down to the Santa Monica Pier, visit the aquarium, have some fish and chips. Maybe fool around later, if your head had healed enough." She touched his temple and tousled his hair.

"Boy, that is tempting," Frost said. "Fish and chips, that would make my day." He smiled, took her face in his hands and kissed her again. "I really want to stay, but I do have to go."

"Will you come back again soon?"

"You know I will." He held her a long time, suffusing himself with her scent, wanting it, her, to stay with him. He got in his car and drove to Santa Isidora, retracing his route of the day before, a day that had changed everything.

## 17

MARIA VALENZUELA WAS dressed in the standard-issue orange jumpsuit provided by the county jail. She had been charged with being drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer and, thrown in for good measure, being a minor in possession of alcohol and false I.D.

She had been arrested the night before at the Shadow Box, a crossroads tavern in an unincorporated area outside the city known chiefly for cheap schooners of beer, billiard tables, karaoke, and multiple citations for violations of the California ban on indoor smoking.

According to the sheriff's deputies who arrested her, Maria spent several hours at the bar, drinking and singing karaoke. She got into an altercation with the girlfriend of a patron after bringing him on stage and dancing with him lasciviously—that was the word in the arrest report, "lasciviously"—as she belted out "Be My Baby Tonight." The confrontation moved to the parking lot, where it was witnessed and cheered on by several of the tavern's male customers. It was while the deputies were attempting to separate the two women that Maria had earned the resisting and assault charges.

Maria, seated in a metal folding chair opposite Frost, studied the floor, head bowed, bangs partly obscuring her face.

"You're pissed," she said without looking up.

"No," Frost said. "Concerned. Your mom called me. She's worried about you. She says you're acting out in a way that scares her."

"She just won't admit that I'm grown up." Maria straightened up, spoke confidently. "My mom wants me to still be her little baby. But I'm not. I'm an adult. I can take care of myself."

"Is this what you call taking care of yourself?" Maria stuck her tongue out at him. Frost stifled a laugh. "Your mom's worried. I'm worried."

"I told you before you're not my father. Look, I'm sorry. I fucked up, OK? But it's not my fault. That bitch came at me. I was only defending myself."

"When did you get to be so tough?"

"Life makes you tough, man."

Frost thought back to the tearful, vulnerable girl he first encountered three years earlier, shivering in the back of a police cruiser, still afraid, though surrounded by police, that Jake would find her, terrorize her, kill her. Frost had convinced the shy teenager to overcome her fears and testify against Jake—all for nothing. This new Maria, obdurate and cynical, was a creation of Jake and Frost hated him for that, hated his own failure to prevent this from happening.

"Maria, these are serious charges. Do you have a lawyer?"

"Public defender." She shrugged. "She seems nice enough."

"Jenny Lazarus? Short, brown hair, glasses?" Lazarus was the only female public defender in Santa Isidora County. There was a federal sex-discrimination case pending for just that reason.

"That's her."

"I'll speak to her." Frost was happy to hear that Lazarus was Maria's counsel. She was skilled. Not everyone in the public defender's office was as dedicated. "She's good. In the meantime, I'll see what I can do about getting you out of here." District Attorney Nogata was being a hard-ass about the assault charge and had demanded bail be set at $25,000. The bond was far beyond the means of Candelaria Valenzuela. Why hadn't César Montero stepped forward to pay it? Maybe his drug dealings were less lucrative than the SIPD imagined. "If I do manage to get you out of here, I want you to go straight home and stay put. Stay off the street. Stay out of trouble."

Maria looked at him, expressionless.

"Are they treating you all right in here?" he asked.

"It's no trouble. No big deal."

Frost stared at the ceiling for a while. He tried to lighten the mood.

"The Shadow Box? Why on earth would you be way out there?"

"Karaoke. I told you before. I'm practicing for my American Idol audition."

Frost debated the wisdom of asking his next question. He decided he had no choice.

"Maria, what do you know about your uncle César's business?"

"He's a mechanic. He owns a garage. Everyone knows that. César's Auto Repair, on Third Avenue."

"I know that. I mean, other kind of business. Does he have other associates he does business with?" Maria looked at him as if he'd asked her to calculate the square root of pi. "OK, forget that. Have you ever heard him mention anyone named Thad Pearse or Owen Goetz?" Maria shook her head. "OK. By any chance, do you know where César was on Tuesday of last week, the 30th?"

"September 30th?" Frost nodded. "Sure, I know," she continued. "He was at my cousin Gabriela's quinceañera. She's my mom's brother's daughter. We were all there, the whole clan, at the Santa Isidora Inn."

"When? I mean, what time?"

"From seven to about one a.m., one-thirty. Why?"

"Doesn't matter. Thanks."

He gave her a hug before he left and told her to take care of herself.

Frost caught up with Jenny Lazarus between court appearances in Jury Room B, which doubled as a lunch room for lawyers when not in use. He wrote her a check to cover the cash bond. Lazarus said she probably wouldn't need to cash it. She was going to be making a motion to have Maria released on personal recognizance. She assured Frost that before she was through with him, Nogata would plea-bargain away the D&D, resisting and assault charges. Maria would probably get some community service for the misdemeanor alcohol possession and false I.D. complaints. Nogata wouldn't want Lazarus to cite as a mitigating factor in Maria's case the D.A.'s failure to get a conviction against Jake Ballard. She was going to tell him that's exactly what she planned to do if he didn't lighten up.

When he got back to the squad room, Frost reached into the drawer of his desk and took out the photo Maria had given him. It showed her in the flowing blue silk dress she had worn on her quinceañera, the traditional Latin celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday. Then he slipped it back in the drawer.

_

Leo Martinez was out for the day, attending a law-enforcement conference in Santa Barbara. News of Owen Goetz's assault on Frost had already made the rounds of the SIPD, and he was relieved he wouldn't have to explain to his chief—yet—how he happened to be in Julia's house when he was hit over the head.

Madden greeted him by rapping his knuckles on Frost's skull.

"You ought to have that thing patented," he said. "I always knew you were a bonehead, but had no idea it would come in so handy one day." He guffawed. "But seriously, how did a little jerk like the Goetzinator manage to get the drop on an experienced flatfoot like you?" Rollo and Smith, standing nearby, chuckled.

It was good-natured ribbing, the kind every cop engaged in, but Frost was not in the mood to play along. He and Madden needed to assess where they stood on the Pearse case. Frost snatched the case file from his desk and he and his partner went into the conference room.

The first thing Frost wanted to know was where Madden had been all day the day before. He had tried to reach him several times on his cellphone.

"I was out following a couple leads on the Doubles case," Madden said. "I don't know why you couldn't reach me. Are you sure your phone's working?"

The Doubles case involved night-time thefts from rooms at the Santa Isidora Inn and the Windmill Hotel, upscale establishments that catered to the museum and winery crowd. They called it the Doubles case because the break-ins had taken place over two successive nights. Cash, jewelry, cameras and other small valuables had been taken as guests slept. Frost was convinced further investigation was pointless. It had been four months since the break-ins. No physical evidence in the form of fingerprints or security videos existed. The thief who pulled off the job was clearly an experienced professional and had long since left town. The SIPD had done due diligence. They had collected hotel registration cards from all over the area. They had tried to run down the whereabouts and M.O.s of known cat burglars, looking for a match. Madden continued to investigate when he had time. Frost was usually content to let him, though he sometimes suspected his partner used the Doubles case as an excuse to get out of the office to see Flora for daytime sex or simply to goof off.

"Fair enough," Frost said. "And yes, my phone's working."

"'Cause, you know, technology trips you up sometimes."

Frost let it go. He wrote STATUS on the dry-erase board.

"Any new information come in while I was out?"

"Your friend Nick Merchant called this morning." Madden took a stick of gum out of a foil wrapper and stuck it in his mouth. "They found the motorcycle Goetz was riding out in the Valley somewhere. He stole it right out of someone's garage in Culver City." He chewed loudly and vigorously. "No sign of Goetz, of course."

"Culver City is north of the airport."

Madden, slouched so far down in his chair that he had almost become a part of it, shook his head.

"Time doesn't fit. The LAPD finally got around to reviewing the airport tapes. The motorcycle was stolen day before yesterday. Goetz ditched the car at LAX last Tuesday morning, before we even knew Thad Pearse was dead. He took a cab to Venice. The trail goes cold there."

"Did he have anything with him? Does the tape show?"

"A duffel bag, the LAPD says."

"So he's moving around L.A. Steals transportation when he needs it, then gets rid of it."

"You know, I'm beginning to develop a perverse sort of respect for this guy. He's managed to rack up a pretty decent string of felonies in the past couple of weeks. Murder. At least two counts of auto theft. Burglary. Assault on a police officer. He's got a statewide alert out on his ass yet he manages to stay free. You gotta hand it to him."

"He was hanging around L.A., even though that's not his comfort zone. That would have been Pickle Center, or up in the Sierra foothills where his brothers have their meth lab." Frost wrote the points on the board as he laid them out. "He wanted whatever it was he and Pearse had stashed at Julia's enough to stay in an unfamiliar environment."

"But why did he wait so long before going to her place? Other than getting the chance to knock you upside the head?"

"He probably figured Julia's place was too hot. He must have been worried that the LAPD would have the place staked out."

"Ouch." Madden grimaced. "Don't remind me about stakeouts. My ass still hasn't recovered from the other night."

"He needed some time to figure out what his next step was going to be." Frost wrote NO PLAN on the board. "It probably means he killed Pearse spontaneously. If he killed him," he added.

"Maybe Pearse objected to the brand of beer Goetz brought back," Madden joked. He took the gum from his mouth, wrapped it in the foil, tossed it into a wastebasket. "Two points!"

"Now that he's gone back to Julia's and recovered what he was looking for, there's no reason for him to stay in L.A. He might head back to Pickle Center."

"Or come up here to finish what he and Pearse started."

Frost wrote PC and SI on the board. It helped him to see bits of information in writing. Like words on a page forming sentences to convey meaning, seemingly random scraps of thought put down on paper or on a dry-erase board started to form a pattern. The more points of information you added to the mix, the clearer the hidden pattern became. You experienced an epiphany, like Saul of Tarsus suddenly overwhelmed by a vision of the truth. There were times like the present, though, when the flecks of information refused to coalesce into meaning and every scrap you added only muddled the mix.

The phone company had confirmed there had been no activity on Pearse's cellphone, so if Goetz took it with him, he had unloaded it.

Informants continued to assert ignorance about any drug deal involving Pearse and Goetz.

David Plum neither acknowledged nor returned Madden's calls.

"My guess is he went over to Iraq," Madden said.

"By the way," Frost said to him, "Peacock is owned by an outfit named Mudrats, registered in the British Virgin Islands." He wrote POS on the board.

"Really. Mudrats? That like the Toledo Mud Hens?" He laughed.

"The information's available on the Web if you know where to look for it." Madden showed no awareness that Frost was critical of his Internet sleuthing. "It doesn't tell us anything."

Frost wrote BABYLON on the board.

"What is that?" Madden asked.

"The mud I found at the scene. It's clay from ancient Babylon."

"That's priceless. Promise me if the Martinizer decides to send one of us on a field trip to Iraq to investigate that lead, you'll be the one to volunteer to go."

Frost wrote DQ on the board.

"Dairy Queen?" Madden asked. "OK, I know you mean Daphne's Quiver. We could spend eternity trying to track down everyone Pearse and Goetz might have connected with at that place."

"I was more curious why, if the two of them were so flush with cash after the Iraq job, they were such lousy tippers."

"Some people are just cheap. Like you." Frost raised his eyebrows. Madden smiled cruelly. "How old is that piece of shit Rabbit of yours anyway?"

"It runs," Frost said. He wrote FD on the board. "Franklin Diebold. I still don't trust him."

"You don't trust anyone. I forgot to tell you he called yesterday. Said he remembered someone calling last week about getting a necklace or bracelet. He was looking for something different, an antique. Diebold thought it might have been our man, but he wouldn't swear it was Monday that the guy called."

"What did he tell him?"

"That he didn't have anything like that in stock. Recommended a jewelry store over on Rodeo."

Madden said he was convinced there was nothing to do but wait for Goetz to be picked up. It would happen sooner or later. And the sooner they accepted that fact, the sooner they would stop wasting time running down thin, worthless leads. They'd make better use of their investigative time and energy trying to clear the assorted break-ins and larcenies they hadn't closed, even if the leads in those cases were also less than promising. Frost said he would consider it.

Madden added that Frost could then devote his time to the vandals who had defaced the Coldstone Museum. Madden had watched the security tapes. Rollo too. Hard as it was to understand, there was nothing to see on them. The intern hadn't had much luck tracking down the paint sales.

Frost remained in the conference room after Madden left, staring at the board. The portrait it painted yielded no revelation. It was as formless as a cloud, as opaque as carbon black.

## 18

DANNY CLINTON ARRIVED in an electric-powered Smart Car from the set of his newest comedy, Mugwumps. Cindy Delaney wore Capri pants and a white tank top. Superagent Rob Goldstein gave a stump speech about the importance of protecting what was left of California's native "bio-heritage." Natalie Turner catered a vegan lunch. It was the largest gathering of Hollywood stars in Santa Isidora since the Coldstone fundraiser for Senator Crocker two years earlier, and Los Angeles' Channel 8—"The Southland's 24/7 Eyewitness News Channel"—had a satellite truck parked next to Debbie Waite's VW camper. Its coverage of the "Campaign to Save the Grove" would lead the station's human-interest segment after the usual line-up of ghastly car crashes, gang shootings and brush fires.

Frost drove up to the Grove after finishing the review with Madden, dispatched as part of a small police presence sent to keep order. Jake and a couple of associates sat on the trailer steps glaring at the collection of do-gooders, but the mood was generally festive and peaceful. Close to four hundred people had shown up to lend support to the tree-sitters. One enthusiastic young woman tried to scale one of the oaks and fell, breaking her ankle. An ambulance carted her away to the hospital. Otherwise the event proceeded without incident.

Frost congratulated Debbie Waite on pulling the day off without a hitch. She wandered off to supervise the collection of trash, which was carefully sorted into recyclable, non-recyclable, and compostable piles.

When he returned to his car, Frost found two young men slouching against the hood. College students probably, in their late teens or very early twenties. One, skinny and of average height, had sandy blond hair tied in a ponytail and was wearing black jeans, red sneakers and a T-shirt that said EAT THE RICH. The second was short and compact with a face like a French bulldog. His dark brown hair was streaked in green and magenta and he sported a triangular "soul-patch" under his lower lip. He was wearing khaki shorts, flip-flops and a tie-dyed shirt, and even from where he was sitting Frost could tell he hadn't been to a dentist in years.

The Ninjas.

"Debbie Waite says you can be trusted," Red Shoes said.

"Debbie Waite doesn't know who you guys are," Frost said. "Let's leave her out of this. Give me some names I can call you. They don't have to be your real names."

"That's OK," Red Shoes said. "I'm Mario and this is Kenny." He looked Frost over. "You want to know how we got into the Coldstone Museum with no one seeing us." Kenny grinned. Frost grimaced at the sight.

"Eventually, yes. But first I need you two to understand something. This bullshit has to stop. You've got to knock off the vandalism—spiking the gas tanks, the graffiti, all of it."

"It's just pranks," Kenny said, tapping a flip-flop in the dirt.

"You two have been lucky so far," he said. "That earthmover you monkeyed with is worth more than a quarter-million dollars." Did Pearse and Goetz really have a quarter-million? If so, where was it? Whatever Goetz had hit him with was a lot harder than cash. "If you guys had wrecked the engine, some asshole D.A.—and ours is a complete asshole—could have had you up for grand theft. You can get fifteen years for that. Believe me, you two do not want to be guests of the California penal system. You'd be eaten alive."

"We didn't come here to be threatened," Mario said.

"I'm just letting you know the score. Look, you guys have already won. There is no way T. Rex Coldstone is ever going to be allowed to cut down those trees. You've got Hollywood interested. When Hollywood gets interested, Hollywood prevails. Coldstone is going to have to build his hippodrome or whatever it is he wants to put up there somewhere else. The war is over. The only way he can win this now is if you guys give him the excuse, if he can portray you as a bunch of eco-terrorists and criminals and not the lovable tree-huggers you are."

"Coldstone owns Santa Isidora," Kenny said. "He can buy off the mayor and the city council."

"Maybe, but the politics of this is complicated. There are a lot of other rich folks around here who came up here precisely because it's still relatively unspoiled. They're the ones who keep Wal-Mart and Home Depot out of town. They don't want to see the Grove cut down any more than you do. Coldstone made them angry by sneaking the approval for his plans past the city council without a hearing. Most of them haven't spoken up publicly because they don't want to cross Coldstone overtly. But they're all whispering in the mayor's ears and the councilmen's ears that if they want to get re-elected, if they expect to get any campaign contributions from them, they had better not let the Grove get turned into wood chips."

Frost had no idea if any of what he was saying was true. It didn't matter.

He let Mario and Kenny ruminate for a minute.

"The other part is this," Frost said. "Your so-called pranks have pissed Coldstone off. Especially the museum caper. That's like violating his virgin daughter."

"Good," Mario said. "We want him pissed off so he'll understand that just because he's a billionaire he can't do whatever the fuck he likes. Do you even know the history of this guy?"

"That's not relevant."

"Sure it's relevant," Mario said. He stood up ramrod straight. "It shows what a total shit the guy is." He wiped his mouth with a napkin. "When his daddy died in the early sixties, Coldstone was just an ordinary multi-millionaire. He's worth billions now because he's been ripping off the Third World for decades." Frost wasn't really interested but he listened politely. "The first thing he did was get concessions in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Then the people who live there declared independence as Biafra and renounced the concessions. So Coldstone got the U.S. government to back the Nigerian government and give them all sorts of munitions that they used against the Biafrans. The biggest weapon they used, though, was starvation. Hundreds of thousands of Biafrans died, little babies. Their blood is on his hands. He pushed indigenous people out of the way to get at oil in Ecuador. He was friends with the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein."

"Plus, he did all this shit for Nixon," Kenny interjected. "Stuff for the CIA. Assassinations and stuff, overthrowing governments."

"That's right," Mario said. "And Reagan, too. He was all mixed up in Iran-Contra, trying to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua."

Frost had heard enough.

"OK, I appreciate that you guys don't like his politics. Just for the record, I don't like the guy either. But that is not the point. That's not what we're talking about. The point is, a situation like this can get out of hand too easily. You push him too far and the response could be nasty. I don't want anyone getting hurt. I don't want anyone getting killed."

Mario looked shocked.

"You think he'd come after us? Send his goons to get us?"

"Not necessarily," Frost said. "What I'm talking about is more like road rage. Tempers flare and the next thing you know someone pulls out a gun and then someone's lying dead on the street all because of a fender-bender." He seemed to have their attention now. "Look, Coldstone is not stupid, but some of the people around him are." Jake, for one. "You never know what's going to set someone off. You don't want to push these people any farther. Sit on your victory. Don't fuck it up by pulling any more Halloween pranks." He let the thought sink in. "Now, tell me how you pulled off that stunt at the museum."

The Ninjas grinned simultaneously.

"It was easy," Kenny said proudly.

"Here's the deal," Mario said. He turned around and drew a square in the dust on the Caprice's hood, then traced a second square inside the first. "OK, this is the museum, right? Outside and the patio, right?" Frost nodded. "The thing is, all the security's outward-directed. First, you have the perimeter fence. Then, at each of the corners, cameras. Full lighting around the perimeter. In the front you've got the rent-a-cops. Once an hour, one of them does a perimeter walk and checks the fences. Everything is designed to keep you from getting inside the museum. But if you're already inside, if you're already in the patio area, they don't know you're there."

"You hid in the museum until after closing?" Frost asked.

"No," Mario said, shaking his head. "We thought of that, but they do a pretty thorough check at the end of the day. We 'accidentally' overstayed in the patio area one day, but they found us and shooed us out. Plus, even if you could hide somewhere in the museum, you couldn't smuggle in the paint. And then you'd have the problem of getting out the next day."

"We thought about smuggling in some magic markers to leave messages in the bathrooms, but that seemed lame," Kenny said.

"We weren't even thinking about the patio at first," Mario said. "We wanted to tag the outside walls, but we couldn't see how we'd get away with it. You could get over the fence all right—it's not electrified or anything—but even before you did, they'd catch you on the security cameras and they'd be on top of you in no time."

"I still say there's a blind spot between two of the cameras," Kenny said.

"Even if there is, it's just at the fence," Mario said dismissively. "The cameras would still pick you up when you got to the wall and the guards would come down on you." Kenny shook his head. Mario rolled his eyes. "Whatever, dude. I thought about hacking the security system, but that could have taken forever. Anyway, we're sitting in the patio one day and I'm thinking how can we bust the perimeter. And I'm thinking, the wall, the cameras, the guards—it's just like East Germany. And then it hit me."

"He had a vision," Kenny said.

"A vision," Mario said. "It was just like East Germany. The East Germans did the same thing—focused on perimeter defense. The Wall, the minefields, the guard towers, the Vopos in boats on the canal by the Reichstag. They bricked over windows on the line in Berlin. You could get right up to the border but no farther. Then I noticed this." He took a dime from his front pants pocket and placed in the middle of the inner square. "The storm drain. I remembered reading about after the Wall went up, how some enterprising East Germans started using the storm drains to cross over to the West from East Berlin. The drains ran all through both sides of the city, and the East German regime was so focused on stopping people from crossing the line on the surface that they totally overlooked all these subterranean passageways that gave free access to West Berlin. So we checked it out, and sure enough, the patio storm drain connects to a main city storm drain that dumps into the river right behind the museum."

The Santa Isidora River once ran with such clear, clean water that Ignacio de Bonillas y Cervera had built a brewery on its banks. The sinking of wells and diversion of the river for agricultural use now meant it was mostly dry except after a rain storm, when it could become a raging torrent of muddy, red water.

"All we had to do was cut a few bars blocking the entrance to the outlet pipe and we were home free. It's a straight shot up the drain to the patio storm drain, no more than a hundred yards, except for the last bit, where the patio drain connects to the city drain. It's the first connecting pipe you come to, goes off to the right about thirty feet. You have to lie on your back and wiggle your way up to the patio drain, but then you just stand up and pop the patio drain grating off, yank yourself up and you're there."

"The grating's not locked?" Frost asked.

"Why would it be? Who's going to steal it? Anyway, locking the grating would contradict the whole security philosophy of the place. Like I said, it's all outward-directed. There are alarms on some of the exhibits inside, but they're designed, I think, to alert the security staff if some moron visitor tries to touch some ancient relic. Hell, the patio doors don't even lock. We could have walked right into the main building if we had wanted, but we didn't want to take the chance that some guard might have been walking down the halls to the bathroom. Plus, there are security cameras in the galleries."

"None in the courtyard?"

"Nope. It's another glaring example of the hubris of the security system." Mario leaned back. "So there you have it. That's how we got in and out."

"In and out in less than two minutes," Kenny said.

"Coldstone is just the like the East Germans," Mario concluded triumphantly. "A control freak. But control freaks have their weaknesses."

Frost recalled the storm drain clearly. He was standing on it as Coldstone berated him. If what Mario and Kenny were telling him was true, it was a glaring example, if not of hubris, then of incompetence. Millions in security and a couple of college kids had beaten it with a welding torch and a hundred-yard dash up a drain pipe. He would take a look at the outfall on the way home.

"What about the Coldstone house?" Frost asked. "I assume you've checked it out."

Mario whistled softly.

"That's a lot tougher," he said. "There's just one guard at the front. That's a plus. No dogs."

"Coldstone hates dogs," Kenny said. "Bitten by a dog as a kid."

These two had done their homework.

"There's a big perimeter fence," Mario went on. "It's not electrified, but it's tall—like ten feet tall. We didn't see any cameras, but they must be there somewhere. There's a bunch of trees on the west side right by the fence. You could theoretically shimmy up those and crawl out on the branches far enough to drop down over the fence. But it's a long way to the house. And there's lots of exterior lighting. It didn't look inviting."

Frost wondered why there was only one guard out front. Coldstone could afford an army of them. Hubris? Was he convinced no one would dare assault his house?

"This is all off the record, right?" Kenny asked.

"Yes," Frost said. "I wanted to meet you two to talk some sense in you, not to bust you. Stick to supporting the girls up in the trees. Speaking of which, why are there no men up there? Why don't you two take a spell in the foliage?"

Mario and Kenny looked at each other and simultaneously shrugged.

_

"Well, I see the reports were accurate," Martha said. She cradled Frost's face in her hand, turning his head for a better look at the bruise on his cheekbone. "Ouch. I suppose you'll blame me for this."

"Don't be silly," Frost said. "Why should I do that?"

"For sending you to L.A. on a fool's errand." She smiled.

"It all worked out for the best."

"Brave words for a man with a bump on his head."

She patted his cheek and, cradling the tin of lasagna she'd brought with her, walked the few steps to the small, ill-lit kitchen. A print of Van Gough's Sunflowers covered a crack in the plaster on the far wall by the tiny window. She had put it there herself a few months before.

"Where is that big plastic Tupperware-style thing you . . . Never mind," she said, reaching into the cabinet next to the sink. She scooped two pieces of pasta into the container, placed it in the microwave and set the timer for one minute. "You have any salad?" she asked, looking over her shoulder while opening the refrigerator door. "No, of course not." She shook her head. "We're a real pair, you and I. Nothing in the fridge except frozen dinners and stale milk." She retrieved the lasagna from the microwave, scooped portions and some canned peas onto plates, brought them and silverware back to the living room, placing everything on the coffee table.

"Thanks," Frost said. "This is very thoughtful of you."

"Nothing but the best for my guy. I mean my ex-guy." She winked. "Anyway, it's from the deli section at Safeway. It's not like I cooked it or anything."

They ate, drank Chianti. When she finished, Martha lit a cigarette.

"You should really try to quit," Frost said. He'd never said that before.

Martha regarded him with narrowed eyes.

"My appetites are too big to do that," she said. She blew smoke over her shoulder. "I hear you may be in trouble with Leo Martinez when he gets back."

"Says who?"

"My sources."

"Since when do you have sources?"

"C'mon, you know I always know what's going on." It was true. She did.

"I can handle Leo Martinez." The chief was honest, scrupulous and forthright, but he wasn't perfect. Frost knew where some of the bodies were buried.

Martha took a long drag and followed it with a draft of wine.

"You know, it's damn strange being in this house on a Wednesday night with no prospect of . . ." She laughed. "You know."

"You haven't even tried to convince me."

She looked at him over the rim of her glasses.

"OK, you're kidding. I thought so." She stubbed out the cigarette. "I don't know how that woman has transformed you so quickly from a sullen loner into . . . into whatever you've become."

Frost picked up the plates and the silverware and walked to the kitchen. He placed the dishes in the sink and ran water over them.

"I'm sorry," Martha said.

Frost shook his head.

"No need to be," he said.

"By the way, did you and—what's her name? Julia, isn't it?—did you and Julia manage to . . . before you got hit?" Frost shook his head again. "Oh. That's too bad." She lit another cigarette. "Anyway, I've got things fixed for this weekend, so at least one of us will be getting laid." She laughed.

Frost put the dishes in a rack and dried his hands with a towel.

"That was fast," he said. "I thought you were in some kind of slump."

"Well, I had to go back to the well. This one lives in Simi Valley. I got tired of him after a while, but he's available this Saturday, so. . . . He's an OK conversationalist, smart enough. Teaches high school history. What about you, any big weekend plans? Aside from getting the stitches out?"

"No stitches. They did glue a little bit of my scalp together. Just working on the Pearse case is all."

"How's that going? Was Dr. Fergus any help?"

Frost shrugged.

"Depends on how you look at it."

Martha pointed to the evidence bag of clay fragments, lying on top of Frost's small CD player where he'd left it.

"Want me to take custody of those again?"

"No, thanks. I want to hang on to them for a little while."

Frost's cellphone began playing "Truckin'."

"Well, I should go. I just wanted to see that you were OK. And to leave you this." She placed a brass house key on the coffee table. Frost flipped open the phone and looked at the incoming number.

"Hi, Julia," he said. Martha waved to him silently as she slipped through the doorway.

## 19

HE WAS A CHILD, alone, lost and scared, wandering Hansel-like through a dark, malevolent forest. The trees watched his every move and danger lurked behind mossy stumps and toadstools the size of boulders. He found Julia there, a child, sitting cross-legged on the damp forest floor in a frilly white dress, weeping. She too was lost. He wanted to save her, to take her by the hand and lead her out of the black darkness of the forest into the bright sunshine, but he didn't know the way. He stood helpless before her and his arms and his legs would not move and then his feet turned to stone and soon his legs and his torso too, and he began to cry but the tears turned to granite and the last embers of life left him and he was nothing more than a boy who once was.

Frost hardly ever remembered his dreams. He would have forgotten this one, too, if he hadn't been nudged, then goaded from sleep by the obstinate electronic chirping of the cordless phone by his bedside.

It was Leo Martinez. Frost noted the time—five a.m.—even as he locked away in his memory the images from his forest dream.

"Owen Goetz is dead," Martinez said.

"Where? When?" Frost snapped on the table lamp, found a pen and rummaged around for something to write on. He settled for the inside cover of a paperback copy of The Glass Bead Game.

"In an alley in Hollywood, between two dumpsters. The LAPD called me ten minutes ago. It looks to be an OD. They found the needle right next to him."

Was his dream a metaphorical lesson? Was he the one who was supposed to save Julia, or would she save him, transform the boy statue into a living being—a man, maybe?

Or was it just a stupid dream?

"Are they sure of that?" Goetz was a recreational drug user, of that there was no doubt. But there was nothing in his records, civilian or military, about him using hard drugs.

"They have him on the slab at Mission Road." In other words, at the coroner's. "Presumably the toxicology screen will confirm it."

"Did they find anything with him? A big bag?"

"A big bag? Like Santa?"

"A big, black bag." His head was still sore from being clobbered with it.

"They didn't mention. Then again, I got the barebones story. You can check with them when you get into the office. Nick Merchant's handling it."

"Nick Merchant?" Martinez had to be kidding.

"Yeah. You remember Nick, don't you?"

"Of course."

"A bit of a prick, but a competent cop." Martinez laughed.

Frost ambled toward the kitchen, taking the phone with him, intent on brewing a pot of coffee.

"Any reason you felt this couldn't wait until the morning meeting?"

"I didn't see why I should be the only one awake at this hour." Martinez laughed again. "Plus, you're scheduled to be in court this morning, as I recall."

Frost threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. He poured himself a cup of coffee before the coffee maker was finished brewing; it was thick as tar but he drank it in gulps. He sat down at the small kitchen table and called Nick Merchant on his cell.

"Frost," Merchant said, "you are like the proverbial bad penny. You come back to L.A. for the first time in three years and suck me into your vortex of trouble and turmoil. How's that head of yours?"

"It's fine," Frost said. The bruise on his cheek where his face first made contact with the floor was tender.

"I'll bet you're happy to hear that the guy who embarrassed you with a sucker punch has left this earthly realm." Frost didn't feel like sparring with Merchant. He had done enough of that in the past.

"Tell me about Owen Goetz, Nick. First of all, how is it you're on the case?"

"That's your fault, you miserable putz. Hence my reference to the bad penny. Some clever dick on duty in Hollywood didn't feel like going out into the dreary dark. After the black-and-white called in, he ran Goetz through the computer, saw he had been involved in a little fracas with you the other night, and that I was the lead investigator and had asked to be called if anyone picked him up. Next thing I know, I'm awakened from a deep and peaceful sleep and told to get my ass out to Hollywood to check on a dead body report. Thanks a lot, Frost."

"You're welcome, Nick." He poured himself another cup of coffee.

"I still find it hard to believe he got the drop on you like that," Merchant said. "Your hinky meter didn't go off as you walked up to the door?"

"No, it did not." The second cup was even more satisfying than the first.

"The old Frost would've smelled a rat, gone in with guns blazing. You know, the old Frost, before . . ." Frost waited for Merchant to say it, but he had already made his point. Instead, he heaved a sigh into the phone, sounding like booming surf. "I already told your chief everything, what, a half-hour ago."

"Humor me."

"Fine. A Hollywood Division black-and-white on regular patrol is driving down an alley when they spot legs sticking out from between two dumpsters. They figure it's your basic Hollywood drunk. They go to roust him and find they have a stiff on their hands instead. They call it in and eventually I get the call, like I told you. There were no signs of a struggle. No apparent trauma. A pretty obvious OD. He had surgical tubing wrapped around his arm, an obvious needle mark above his left elbow. The needle was found right next to him."

"Have you got the toxicology report yet?"

"No. They're still slicing and dicing him down at the coroner's." Merchant paused for a lengthy yawn. "It'll be a while before they get the tissue samples tested. But we did a quick field test on the needle and it tested positive for heroin."

"Did he have any other needle tracks?"

"Not that I could see. What's your point?"

"Only that Owen Goetz was not, as far as I know, a user of hard drugs. Pot, yes. But nothing in his record indicates he was a heroin user."

Merchant made little clicking sounds with his tongue.

"Well, there's a first time for everything."

Frost shaved close. He was due in court at nine a.m. to testify in a case involving a string of residential burglaries. It was a good thing Martinez had reminded him. It had been nearly a year since the arrests, so he was going to have to get to the office early and review the case files if he didn't want to look like an idiot on the stand.

For some cops, going to court was like playing hooky. An added bonus was overtime pay if the court appearance came outside their usual shift. Frost hated going to court. The judicial process was ponderous and he often had to wait for hours before being called. Sometimes he was never called at all.

He was almost ready when the SIPD dispatcher phoned, putting through a call from the LAPD. Nick Merchant was on the line.

"Fuck, Frost, I told you that you were a bad penny," he said.

Frost was not unhappy to hear it.

"What is it now, Nick?"

"Since you seemed so sure Goetz had never used before, I called over and pulled Dr. Tomizuka out of the autopsy to ask if Goetz had any other needle tracks. The answer is no. The tissue tests will take a couple of weeks but they had already done a blood test. He tested positive for heroin. He had enough in his system to kill a horse." Merchant paused. "Huh. 'Enough horse to kill a horse.' That's good. I'll have to remember that."

"I'm on my way to court, Nick." Frost had the phone cradled in his neck as he tried to decide between his red tie and his blue one.

"The more interesting thing is his blood alcohol content—zero point two nine." A BAC of 0.29 was enough to put you in a stupor, if not make you pass out altogether. Goetz would have had loss of sensation and severe motor impairment.

"He would have been practically comatose, Nick."

"I'm aware of that."

"He would never have been able to wrap a rubber tube around his arm, find a vein and shoot himself up."

"As I said, I'm aware of that. Someone else made the dose. Tied the tubing, shot him up. Goetz starts to convulse, goes belly up and his druggie pal takes off down the alley."

"You question the neighbors?"

"What the fuck, Frost? We're professionals down here, what the fuck do you think? Of course we questioned the neighbors. We woke up everyone on the whole goddamn block. No one saw a thing." That was not surprising. Where Pearse and Goetz were concerned, no one ever saw anything.

"Sorry," Frost said. "I didn't mean to imply anything. Old habits die hard."

"It's OK," Merchant said. "I'm running on no sleep and I'm supposed to start my regular shift in six hours."

"Was anything found with him? Any property?"

"You mean that big, bad, black bag he hit you over the head with? No. Probably still in the stolen Plymouth he was driving around in. He had keys to a Plymouth in his pocket." Frost heard the sound of rustling papers. "There was nothing else on him except his wallet, twenty-seven dollars and change, and a nine-millimeter Beretta. Didn't smell like it had been used recently."

"No cellphone?"

"No, no phone. Oh, one more thing. I almost forgot. Tomizuka said he had some adhesive residue on his hands."

"What, like glue?" What had Goetz been up to?

"Not Elmer's or anything. They took some swabs but test results on that won't come back for some time. Maybe he built model airplanes in his spare time." Papers rustled. Frost heard the sound of coins hitting the desk, Merchant setting the evidence bag down. "Fuck, Frost, that blood alcohol content really screws things up. I had a nice, simple OD case and now I've got to figure out who was with Goetz when he died, who cooked up the smack and stuck him with it. I'm going to have to roust every low-life drug addict and pusher in Hollywood. I'm going to have to interview every whore and john and even those morons dressed up as superheroes out on Hollywood Boulevard. I'm going to have to go to every stinking bar within a one-mile radius and see if anyone remembers a short punk drinking himself to oblivion. Thanks a lot for getting clocked on the head."

"You're welcome, Nick." Frost decided on the red tie.

"You're one lucky bastard, Frost. Your case is closed while I get to pile another case folder on the fucking mountain of case folders I've already got."

"Who said my case was closed? My case isn't closed." Should he take the time to polish his shoes? Annie once complained that he was hard on his footwear. He decided to go with them as they were.

"What are you talking about?" Merchant asked. "I thought Goetz was your guy, the one who knocked off the brother of that pretty young lawyer you were with."

"He's our prime suspect," Frost said, eager to tie his tie and get going. He still had to review the case files. "Was our prime suspect. Our only suspect. But I still don't know what happened that night. Until I do, I can't be sure Goetz was the killer."

"Well, you're going to have a hard time getting anything out of him now." Merchant snorted a laugh. "Take my advice, Frost. Don't look this gift horse in the mouth. Close the case file, take a bow, and get back to courting your lady friend."

What was the advice Merchant had offered him three years ago? Get some treatment for that dyslexia of yours, Frost.

"Have you notified the Goetz family yet?"

"Someone spoke to his daddy up there in, where the fuck was it? Pickle Center. Fuck, what a nightmare that place must be. Nothing but cowshit and Okie clodhoppers."

"Thanks, Nick. Let me know if you find that bag." Frost put the phone down, passing on the chance to tell Merchant the story of his grandfather Matthew, who had come west from Ardmore, Oklahoma, with his family in 1933. It was more important to make himself look presentable for court, scuffed shoes notwithstanding.

_

Frost sat on a bench in the courthouse hallway, reading the Los Angeles Times. He rarely opened the local Santa Isidora Herald, its coverage heavy with high-school sports, local zoning issues and neighborhood events. He sat from nine to twelve, when court broke for lunch. Then he sat from two to two-fifteen, when the plea arrangement worked out over lunch between prosecution and defense was announced and he was told he was free to go.

He ran into Jenny Lazarus on his way down the courthouse steps. She told him she had succeeded in getting Maria Valenzuela released on personal recognizance. He told her to tear up his check.

When he got back to the SIPD, he and Madden sat down to review the Pearse case in light of Goetz's death. Frost asked Madden for his thoughts.

"I think we should write it up and move on," Madden said. "We may never find out why Goetz killed Pearse but there's really no question that he did it. The 'why' doesn't matter anymore, now that Goetz is dead."

"You give up easily, Jim." Frost was looking at the paper case file. It wasn't helping.

"I'm just being practical, Rick." He used his fingers to enumerate several quick points. "Goetz has always been our only suspect. We have no witnesses, no other suspects. The fingerprints in the room belong to Pearse and Goetz or unknown persons or guests of the motel who stayed there weeks before. Goetz is the only person known to have had the opportunity to kill Pearse. No one saw anyone else go into that room. We know he was still in town at around the time Pearse was killed because of the videotape. Goetz showed guilty knowledge when he took off in the car and dumped it at LAX."

"Motive?"

"Money, drugs or both. We know that between them, Pearse and Goetz might have had as much as a quarter-million dollars from working in Iraq. They brought part of it up here for a drug buy. Or they turned part of it into drugs in L.A. and then came up here to sell. Either way, Goetz decided he wanted it all for himself. Plus he wanted whatever part of it, drugs or money, they left behind in Julia Pearse's house."

"César Montero has an alibi for the night of the 30th, by the way. He was at his niece's quinceañera."

"OK," Madden said. "So César wasn't involved. Billy Williams, then, or somebody we don't know about—somebody from out of town. Or maybe César—whoever—wasn't supposed to meet them until the next day. It's kind of irrelevant at this point."

"It doesn't bother you that we'll never know why Goetz killed Pearse? If he did."

"Who the fuck knows, Iceman? Do we know why George Penrod came down here and killed his parents? No. Did they abuse him as a child? Did they humiliate him for wetting the bed? Did he not get the bike he wanted for his sixth birthday?" Madden threw his hands up. "We'll never know why." He took a deep breath, let his lungs deflate. "I'm just following the facts to their logical conclusion."

The case Madden made was a good one. Their experience, the facts as they knew them and the logical inferences to be drawn from them—all pointed to Goetz as the killer. Frost looked through the case file again. Everything they knew was in there. Every fact. Every rumor they had heard. Every random thought Frost had scribbled on a piece of paper. Still, there was no mistake more common than appealing to logic in cases that were beyond its jurisdiction. Something—he didn't know what—was missing in that file.

"Did you ever hear back from David Plum?" The unreachable, uncooperative Peacock employee was becoming his personal adversary.

"No," Madden said. "All I get now is one of those 'The-number-you-are-calling-is-not-available' announcements. That's why I figure he's overseas."

"I want to continue working it for a while." Frost closed the file folder.

"OK, but you'll have to convince Martinez. When he told me about Goetz this morning, he seemed inclined to close the file."

They went to the chief's office and knocked on the door. Martinez was bent over a ficus, watering it. He waved them in. They took turns briefing him. Frost filled him in on what he had learned from Nick Merchant about Goetz's BAC and the level of heroin in his system. He made the case for keeping the investigation open. There were too many unanswered questions. They still didn't know what Pearse and Goetz had been doing in Santa Isidora. If they had drugs or cash, where was it? The company they worked for, Peacock, was a complete cipher. Diebold, the antiques dealer, had given them a line of bullshit when he said he couldn't remember speaking with Pearse. Now, mirabile dictu, Goetz was dead from an OD he couldn't possibly have administered himself. Madden said he usually deferred to his partner's judgment but felt further investigation would be fruitless. Yes, there were a lot of unanswered questions, but none of them was really relevant to their job, which was to find Pearse's killer. He was satisfied that Goetz murdered Pearse. In his mind, other than Goetz's motive, about which they could only speculate, the evidence was unambiguous and, frankly, always had been.

Martinez paced back and forth, then looked up at the wall, seemingly studying the diploma from UCLA he received along with his master's degree in criminal psychology. It hung alongside a raft of awards and pictures of his family.

"Rick," he finally said, "I have to say I agree with Jim on this one. The facts are the facts. Everything else is just idle speculation." He turned away from the wall, facing them. "One of you write up a report to the district attorney. If Nogata signs off on it, we'll officially close the case."

"I'll do it," Madden said.

"There's a first," Martinez said, laughing. Madden was legendary for his aversion to writing reports and the lengths he would go to get out of doing them.

"Rick's head already hurts enough from the beating it took the other day," Madden said.

"Get going on it, then. Rick, stay a second." Madden left the office to get started. Martinez was still standing. He crossed his arms, something he usually did only when he was irritated. "Rick, until Nogata has his say and this case is officially closed, I want you to stay away from the Pearse woman. Clear?"

Frost looked at him a long time before answering.

"Understood," he said.

"I'm serious, Rick. I could suspend you right now. Are we clear on this?"

"Crystal clear. Can I still work the case until it's closed?"

"Only in your spare time. And you know you don't have much of that." Martinez uncrossed his arms at last. Phhttt. "No more field trips to L.A. or anywhere else chasing down speculative leads. Use the phone if you have a flash of insight. But only, I say, when you've got nothing else going on."

"OK," Frost said. A detective never had "nothing else going on," even in Santa Isidora.

Frost returned to his cubicle. Madden was in his, sitting in front of his computer, writing up the report to Nogata. Frost looked at his watch. It was almost five o'clock. He needed to be out in the desert by nine. He'd have to hurry.

## 20

THE DESERT WAS COLD. Frost stood on a small rise at least two hundred yards from the Peacock airstrip. It was as close as he dared get without running the risk of being spotted. Even at this distance, with a half-moon hovering in clear skies behind him, he stood out like a sore thumb on the barren ridge. He had left his car a hundred yards away on the verge of a dirt road that ran due east from the turnoff to Peacock and walked the rest of the way to this vantage point. He wished he had worn a warmer coat.

He had arrived two hours ahead of what he hoped was the scheduled arrival of "Miss Scarlett," the Peacock Gulfstream jet. So far there had been nothing to see except the stars. Here in the clear air of the desert, cut off by mountains from the lights of the greater Los Angeles megalopolis, there seemed to be so many more of them. He gazed at the vast expanse of the Milky Way. At its middle was a black hole sucking into its maw everything that came within its event horizon. The enormity of the universe had an odd way of making you feel insignificant and grounded at the same time. Human troubles, human history, human existence were nothing in comparison. The stars lent perspective.

The lights were burning in the Peacock building and the adjacent hangars but Frost had seen no activity, no sign of movement. The runway lights were dark.

He feared he had embarked on a wild goose chase. The notation he had seen on the chalkboard at Peacock had been Miss Scarlett@2300 9/10. Because David Plum was a South African, Frost figured he wrote down dates the same way the British did—day first, month second. If he was right, "Miss Scarlett" was scheduled to arrive at 2300 hours—eleven p.m.—on October 9, tonight. If he was wrong, if an American had written the notation, or if Plum had adopted the American custom, it meant he was a month late. "Miss Scarlett" would have arrived on September 10.

That was only one of the things that could have gone wrong. Even if he had interpreted the message correctly, the flight could have been expedited, delayed or even scrubbed.

Even if the plane showed, Frost wasn't sure what he expected to see or how it would shed any light on Thad Pearse's death.

He had called Julia to let her know Goetz was dead, but Merchant had beaten him to it. Merchant had called "as a courtesy," Julia said. Frost tried not to give her any false hope that he would ever have an explanation of why her brother was dead.

Julia took the news with equanimity. Thad's death was of a piece with the onslaught of loss she had faced, she said—her mother's death, her stepfather's, even that of her indifferent biological father. Maybe it was better not to know why Thad had died. It might color her memories of him, which were already so few and so gray.

Julia told him she had been staring at the file of a Hollywood producer for the previous two hours. She was supposed to untangle his spider's web of exotic tax shelters and investment deals and rearrange them in a way that would not encourage the IRS to launch another exacting audit. She hadn't turned a page.

In fact, she said, she rather liked the idea of this particular producer being taken away to a cell in Terminal Island prison. He was, she told Frost, both boorish and demanding.

It was a very naughty idea for a tax attorney, she admitted.

She was having a lot of naughty ideas these days.

What she really wanted was to kiss him again.

Frost said he would be in Los Angeles the next day. He was going to take the day off and run some errands and then he would call her.

She would be waiting for his call, she said.

He didn't tell her he was going to UCLA to try to see Dr. Max Lipka, the expert on Mesopotamia.

He didn't tell her that before that, he was going to go in the opposite direction, up Interstate 5 to Pickle Center.

Sheriff Roy Grant had called in the late afternoon just as Frost was getting set to depart for the desert. He was having trouble believing the LAPD report of Owen Goetz's death.

"There doesn't seem to be any doubt that it was Goetz, and that he died of a drug overdose," Frost said.

"Oh, I don't doubt the truth of what they're saying," Grant said. "I just can't believe it. It's so out of character for Owen. You ever notice how the smallest kitten in a litter becomes a nervous adult cat? Always looking over its shoulder, afraid of being attacked. Taking cautious steps. Same thing with the smallest puppy. Becomes the omega dog, the one that always has its tail behind its legs, afraid of its own shadow. That was Owen, the runt of the litter, all omega dog. He had too cautious a character to be sticking needles in his arms. I just can't swallow it."

"You know him better than I," Frost said. He started taking notes, wondering if Martinez would agree that he had nothing better to do.

"Let me tell you about the Goetz brothers," Grant said. "I have never known this clan to use drugs, not counting weed. They smoke plenty of pot. You could probably smell the smoke from the highway on a calm day. But other drugs? Intravenous drugs? Never. They may be cooking up meth in the hills somewhere, but they're far too smart to use it themselves. Big brother Brad—remind me to tell you something about him if I forget—Brad once told me, in a voice completely devoid of irony, that meth users were 'the stupidest motherfuckers on the face of the planet.' His exact words. 'The shit fries your brain,' he said. 'Gives you sores all over your face, makes you look like you've got the plague.' He said the same thing about cokeheads. Told me the story of how John Phillips—you know, from the Mamas and the Papas—how he spent two million dollars in one year on cocaine. 'Two million dollars,' Brad said to me. 'What a fucking tool.' He had the same opinion about opiates and every other drug under the sun—ecstasy, you name it. If it weren't for the fact that the guy's stoned twenty-fours hours a day and is probably responsible for supplying half the meth addicts in this county, he and the rest of the Goetz brothers could be poster boys for the Moral Majority."

"All right," Frost said. "Let me play devil's advocate. Owen wasn't with his brothers. He was on the run. Maybe he met someone. Someone with a drug habit and he decided to go along for the ride. You know, trying to fit in, like the omega dog would. Maybe he met some girl he took a fancy to, and he thought shooting up smack with her would help him get laid. The LAPD thinks someone else gave him the shot, since he had so much alcohol in his system."

"They told me about that when I called down there. With that blood alcohol level, he'd have been lucky to have the awareness to keep breathing, much less shoot himself up with heroin." Frost could hear Grant cracking sunflower seeds. "I could see Owen doing it for a girl, maybe. The Goetz women—Brad and Jimmy's wives—are pieces of work, believe me. Boozers, potheads." He paused a moment. "I see what you're saying, though. Being on the run, outside the family orbit. Maybe Owen got a little carried away. Lost his head over a girl. I don't know.... Look, I'm just the sheriff of a little county that's got more cows than it does people, but it doesn't sit right with me."

"I'm just a small-town cop myself, Sheriff," Frost said. Grant chuckled. "But the truth is, I agree with you. Something's not right. There are too many unanswered questions."

"Have you all closed your investigation into the murder?"

"Not officially, but for all practical purposes, yes. I'm going to do what I can to keep looking into it, but unless I come up with something big, the pressure's going to be to close the file. Goetz still looks good for the murder. We just may never know why it happened. . . . You said you had something to tell me about Brad Goetz."

"Yeah," Grant said. "He wants to see you."

"He wants to see me? Did he say why?"

"Wouldn't say. Just said, 'I need to see that cop from Santa Isidora.' I can tell you this. He went ballistic when he heard about Owen's death. Kept yelling that it was bullshit, the L.A. cops are corrupt. That sort of thing. My officers had to threaten to give him a big old dose of Thorazine to get him to calm down."

Frost agreed to get up to Pickle Center early the next morning. Brad had a ten a.m. court hearing scheduled, so Frost promised to be there by eight if he could.

_

Now, as he stood in the moonscape of the desert, Frost wanted to curse the wafer-thin lead that had brought him out here. He was going to have to stay in a motel in Palmdale if he had any chance of making it to Pickle Center on time. The plane, if it was coming, was already late. Nor was there any sign of life on the Peacock property. He decided to stay until one a.m., after which he would drive to Palmdale and register at the first motel he came across with a VACANCY sign out front.

It was a little after midnight when headlights blazed in the desert to the west. Soon Frost counted three sets of lights. When the vehicles turned left at the junction, he knew they were heading to the Peacock property.

The vehicles stopped at the Peacock gate. There were two dark Jeep Cherokees and a large white van like the kind hotels used as airport shuttles—an Iveco or possibly a Dodge Sprinter. The driver of the first Cherokee got out, unlocked the gate and pushed it in. He appeared to be of medium height but Frost could not discern his features. The zoom lens on the little digital camera he had brought was only 4X, and it lost resolution at the higher settings. Lights from the facility and the perimeter fence also obscured the view. It would be a near-miracle to get a good shot of the license plates but he snapped pictures anyway. The cars and the van drove around the building to the tarmac, made a circle in front of the hangars and parked with their grilles pointed toward the entrance. The driver of the first Cherokee went into the main building and a minute later the runway lights came to life.

Frost considered creeping closer. The rocky, undulating ground would make it tough going. He decided to stay where he was, for better or for worse.

The drivers were clustered by and partially hidden by the Cherokees. One was noticeably taller than the others, with fair hair, but that was all Frost could make out.

Aircraft landing lights appeared in the southeast. The jet's engines whined as the plane banked hard left and lined up on its final approach. It taxied briskly down the runway after landing, its nose coming to a stop not more than ten feet from the back of the first Cherokee. It was the Gulfstream. It had no special markings that Frost could make out. He photographed the tail numbers.

The bottom of the combination door-stairway dropped down. The port side of the plane blocked much of his view, but Frost still recognized David Plum as he stepped off. Madden had been right, after all; Plum had been in Iraq. The second passenger to deplane also looked familiar, but Frost couldn't place him. He was tall, thin, wearing a gray suit. He slapped Plum on the back and walked off toward the Cherokees, affording Frost a better look. He had a weathered face, a droopy mustache and bright red, almost orange hair. Frost snapped a photo before he disappeared inside the first Cherokee. Just behind him came a short, fat woman in a camel-colored dress with a white scarf tied around her head.

The car doors closed and the driver dashed around to his side and started up the engine. More passengers came off the plane. First came a young man in blue jeans, white running shoes and a green polo shirt. Plum directed him toward the second Cherokee. Another young man wearing a turtleneck and black slacks followed, accompanied by a young woman in a dark, shapeless ankle-length dress with a scarf covering her head. She was carrying an infant in her arms. The engine of the second Cherokee started as Plum ushered them into the car, closing the door after them.

Frost didn't see anyone from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on hand. Plum said they had an arrangement with ICE to send an agent whenever one of their flights arrived from overseas.

So where was he?

Before he could give the question any more thought, the Cherokees began to maneuver their way toward the exit. Plum and two other men—one presumably the driver of the van—had the plane's belly cargo doors open and were emptying its contents onto the tarmac.

Frost had to choose what to do next. The Cherokees were already out of the gate. The van was meant for luggage. The Cherokees would have the important cargo. He abandoned his place on the ridge and sprinted toward his car, hoping that he didn't sprain his ankle or disturb a scorpion on the way.

When he reached his car, he threw the camera on the passenger seat, turned the ignition over and sped down the dirt road. He could see the tail lights of the Cherokees far ahead. He punched the gas. The Rabbit's 2-liter engine whimpered, struggling to respond to his desires. Worn shock absorbers transmitted every bump in the road up his spine to his already battered and aching head.

When he reached the paved road, he pushed the car even harder, throwing it into fifth gear and pressing the accelerator with all his might. The Rabbit, still smarting over its treatment on the dirt road, responded by squealing in a high-pitched voice.

Frost was already in the fringes of the urbanized area ahead, with scattered tracts of ranch homes on either side of the road. There were other cars on the road up ahead now and he had difficulty keeping track of the Cherokees. He tried to will the Rabbit to close the gap as he passed a small clump of businesses—a 7-Eleven, an Italian restaurant, a pet shop.

He didn't notice the flashing red and blue lights until he heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of the siren. He looked in the rearview mirror. The Highway Patrol car was practically in his trunk. He looked ahead and saw that he had lost the Cherokees in what was now a swarm of tail lights. He eased up on the accelerator and glided the Rabbit to a stop.

He had run a red light at the previous intersection, the CHP officer told him. Frost hadn't even noticed it but he could see it now, far behind him, the first set of lights denoting the return to civilization from the wilderness. Frost displayed his SIPD I.D. and explained that he had been on official business. The CHP officer, looking over Frost's twelve-year-old Rabbit, seemed to have his doubts. A white van passed them. Frost lunged for the digital camera but it had fallen between the seat and the door. The van sped away before he could get a look at the license number. The CHP officer, a thorough professional, ran Frost's driver's license and plates. In the end, he said he would let him go with a warning.

"Richard Frost," the CHP officer said. "There was a Richard Frost who used to be a cop in L.A."

His reputation always preceded him.

"Never heard of him," Frost said.

He plodded on to Palmdale, where he checked into the first motel he came across with a VACANCY sign out front.

## 21

HIS HEAD HURT. Far from being the restorative he'd hoped, Frost's few hours of sleep left him feeling stiff and afflicted. He bought a bear claw at a convenience store and washed it down with coffee that tasted like it had been brewed at the battle of Gettysburg. He got on the interstate, headed north. The VW Rabbit protested with jerky acceleration and an ominous clacking noise.

North of Fresno he called in sick to the SIPD. A little while later, he turned east onto the two-lane blacktop that took him to Pickle Center. The place wasn't much to look at, other than the town hall, a Victorian edifice that dominated the only hill for miles around.

Sheriff Grant had already pulled Brad Goetz from his cell and placed him in a conference room.

"He's not cuffed," Grant said. "Brad's very docile—very controlled, that is. He shouldn't be any trouble, but I'll have one of my deputies just outside the door watching through the glass. Just in case."

Frost helped himself to a cup of Sheriff's Department coffee. It tasted remarkably good, smooth and rich. He poured a second cup, for Goetz, and entered the conference room.

Goetz was seated at the table. He stared at Frost, taking his measure. Owen Goetz's big brother was solidly built, packing a lot of muscle in his shoulders and arms. He had a black Fu Manchu mustache and a receding hairline.

Frost set a cup of coffee in front of him and motioned for him to take it.

"Help yourself," he said. "It's not bad."

Goetz reached out with an oversized hand, took the coffee, slurped loudly.

"Needs sugar," he said. "You the guy from Santa Isidora?"

Frost nodded, taking a seat across from Goetz and handing Goetz his business card.

Goetz glared at it, then at Frost. He fingered his mustache, saying nothing, his amber-brown eyes locked on Frost's. Frost let the staring contest go on for thirty seconds.

"Look, Brad," he said finally, "this is your party. You're the one who invited me up here to talk. I got up at five o'clock this morning after a lousy night. I'm not in the mood. You want to talk, let's talk. You want to fuck around with a lot of jailhouse bullshit, I'm just going to get in my car and drive home, take a shower and hit the sack. It's your choice."

Goetz downed the rest of his coffee in one long gulp.

"What makes you think my little brother was a killer?"

"Let me spell out the facts for you." Frost found himself using his fingers to enumerate his points, just as Madden had done to him the day before. "Owen was the last one seen with the victim. He took off after the victim was killed in a car the victim had been driving. He ditched the car. He kept himself disappeared." Also, he had conked Frost over the head pretty good. "You add up all the facts, that's the way it comes out." When he added them up himself, there didn't seem to be all that many facts.

"There is no fucking way Owen killed that guy," Goetz said, shaking his head vigorously. "He was Owen's friend."

The conference room was painted stark, blinding white. For Frost, being in it was like having pins pushed in his eyes.

"It wouldn't be the first time someone killed his best friend," Frost said. "Happens all the time, as a matter of fact."

"Can the fucking sarcasm." Goetz glowered at him. "I am not naive. I may be sitting here in this fucking orange monkey suit"—he fingered his sleeve—"but I am not a fucking monkey." Goetz's thousand-yard stare wasn't working on Frost—he had all the power in this encounter—but he could see how it could intimidate whoever was unlucky enough to be his cellmate. "I didn't say that guy Pearse was Owen's best friend. He wasn't. I was Owen's best friend. Ever since he was a kid. If somebody picked on him because of his size, they had to answer to me. If he got into trouble, he came to me. If he'd had some kind of beef with Pearse, Owen would have come to me first."

"Maybe, Brad. Maybe that's how it used to be. But Owen wasn't a kid anymore. He was an adult. He was an ex-Marine. Maybe he thought he didn't need your protection." Frost tapped the top of his coffee cup. "Plus, you were in here."

"He would have gone to my brother Jimmy."

"Brad, I appreciate your feelings about your brother. But it doesn't change the facts. I deal in facts. I collect facts. I try to put them together in logical fashion. It's not rocket science. It's taking one fact after another and building to a conclusion." He shook his head. "The facts of this case—the facts that I have—point squarely at Owen. He was there. Then he wasn't. And some time between those two points, Thad Pearse was killed."

"How was he killed? Was he shot, stabbed, what? The news stories didn't say."

They had withheld several details of the crime from the press, hoping, as always, that once they had their suspect in custody he would trip himself up during questioning by revealing knowledge of the crime only the killer would have. That was why smart criminals—Frost was betting that Brad Goetz was one—never said a thing to the police other than to demand a lawyer.

"His neck was broken."

"Do you seriously think," Goetz said, calmly but firmly, "that my little brother—my little brother—broke some guy's neck? He was five feet, four inches tall. He wasn't built strong like me."

"It isn't that hard to break somebody's neck. Look, Brad, your brother was a Marine. Marines are trained to kill. They're trained to take down people bigger than they are."

Goetz made a fist with his left hand, wrapping the fingers of his right hand tightly around it. He was making an effort to restrain himself, but it was clear he was angry.

"This it total bullshit," he said. "Total bullshit. If Owen wanted to kill Pearse, why didn't he just shoot him?"

It was a good question. It had occurred to Frost. If Owen had killed Pearse in a moment of rage, why had he chosen the very uncertain route of taking him on physically? If he had planned the killing in advance, the same question arose.

"Did Owen own a gun?"

"A Beretta M9," Goetz said. "Standard U.S. military issue. He occasionally boosted some goods when he was in the Marines. A gun here, some auto parts there. Nothing major. Once, though, he scored a whole crate of Berettas. He sold them, but kept one for himself."

"The Marines never caught on to him?"

"Oh, he got caught, alright. But the Marines were too embarrassed to admit all this shit had gone missing, so they just busted him on dope charges and discharged him."

Frost massaged his temples and worked his sore jaw.

"Brad, I'll concede your point about shooting Pearse instead of breaking his neck. But that is not a fact. I told you before I deal in facts." Goetz was bouncing his knee up and down. "All this speculation is interesting, but it doesn't alter the facts. You're not giving me anything useful, anything new."

"Facts?" Goetz said, practically spitting the word out. "You want facts? Do you believe Owen really died of a drug overdose—that he gave himself a hot shot of heroin even though he was so drunk he could hardly move?" Sheriff Grant had obviously shared the LAPD report with him.

"There's no doubt it was an OD. How exactly it went down—the LAPD's still working on that. They figure he probably had help, that someone else injected the heroin."

"You mean, somebody killed him."

"Someone was doing him a favor and fucked it up."

"I'm telling you, man," Goetz thundered, "somebody gave Owen a hot shot on purpose. He was murdered."

"Oh, for Christ's sake." Frost crumpled up the paper coffee cup and hurled it against the wall. He heard stirring behind him and looked around to see the watchful deputy inch into the room. Frost waved him away. "Who? Who killed Owen?"

"The same people who killed Pearse."

"Pearse was killed in Santa Isidora. Owen was found in an alley in Hollywood."

"I'm telling you . . ."

"You're not telling me anything," Frost said. "Let me go through it again. Facts. One, Thad Pearse was killed in a motel room in Santa Isidora that he shared with your brother. Two, we know your brother was still in town at the time Pearse was killed. He had the means—he was a small guy but trained by the Marines to kill with his hands. He had the opportunity. He was there. No one saw anyone else go into or out of that motel room." No witnesses. He hated cases with no witnesses. "Nothing you've told me changes any of that."

"Doesn't that usually comes in threes? Means, opportunity, and motive? What motive did Owen have to kill Pearse?"

"I don't know, OK?" Frost caught his voice rising. Was it simply force of habit that was making him be so hard on Goetz? Just yesterday he had argued to Martinez that Owen's death was too convenient. "I don't know, and now that Owen is dead we may never know." Frost sighed and shook his head. "People kill each other for the stupidest of fucking reasons." There was that fifteen-year-old who killed his grandmother with a baseball bat after they got into an argument over what program to watch on television. Rashid Smoots was killed because he wanted to remain an individual. The world was full of vagabond, hapless souls whose lives seemed to prove that hope only prolonged human torments.

"I wish they let us smoke in here," Goetz said. "Can you believe it? This whole jail's gone non-smoking. There's nothing else to do in here, man. How else are you going to pass the time? It's fucking unconstitutional—cruel and unusual punishment, you know?" He drummed his fingers on the table, but Frost hardly noticed, still thinking of that fifteen-year-old with a black hole where his heart should have been, with despair where his optimism should have been, still thinking of smart, goofy Rashid lying in a pool of his own blood. "I can help you with the third thing," Goetz said. "Motive. But you have to promise me you can keep a secret."

Frost sat back in his chair, noticing how uncomfortable it was. Ordinarily, the suspect got the uncomfortable chair, the cop the comfy one.

"A secret? You want me to keep a secret?" What was he up to now?

"I have another bail hearing coming up," Goetz explained. "That's why I'm going to court this morning. I don't want the sheriff to hear from you how I know what I'm going to tell you. It could affect my bail."

Frost waved a hand airily.

"Sure. Go ahead. I promise. Boy Scout's honor."

"I told you before I don't care for sarcasm," Goetz said.

"All right. Fine."

"I know Owen didn't kill Pearse because he told me he didn't."

Frost looked him in the eye.

"Owen told you this? Just when did he tell you this?"

"I spoke to him on the phone. Owen called Jimmy a few nights ago. Said he needed to talk to me. Jimmy got word to me, so I called Owen the next day." Goetz made it sound as routine as ordering a pizza.

"Called him? From what, the pay phone in jail?" A savvy jailbird like Goetz would know any conversation on that phone would be recorded.

"It's not that hard to get a cellphone into jail." Goetz smiled. "That's what I don't want the sheriff or the D.A. or especially the fucking Nazi judge they got up there to know about. We OK on that?" Frost nodded. "OK. Like I said, I called Owen on the number he gave to Jimmy, his cellphone. First thing I told him was to make it short, because I know you guys can track those things and figure out where someone is." First they would have to have known the number of Owen's cellphone, but Frost didn't mention it. "I asked him how he was doing and he said OK. He swore to me up and down that he didn't kill Pearse. He said he was his friend. They went way back to the time they were both in the Marines. Owen said the dude was already dead when he got back to the room after making a beer run. He said it had taken him nearly an hour to go buy the beer and get back, because he couldn't find a store out there where the motel was and then he got all turned around and lost when he tried to go back."

"Did he say who killed Pearse?"

"No." Goetz coughed, phlegm rattling in his chest. "No. He said he and the other guy went up to Santa Isidora to do a deal. They were supposed to wait at the motel. Owen figured the guys they were waiting for came while he was out getting the beer and that's when Pearse was killed."

"What kind of deal? A drug deal?" Frost listened intently but didn't take notes. He was sizing Goetz up, trying to determine if he was being sincere or simply laying down a layer of bullshit, hoping to earn some as-yet-unasked-for favor from him.

"He didn't say. He called it 'the merchandise' or 'the stuff.' He was real cagey like he figured someone might be listening in. Owen said the guys they were supposed to meet probably got pissed at Pearse because he only brought part of the stuff with him up to Santa Isidora. Owen said Pearse wasn't really sure how much it was actually worth but he thought maybe a whole lot more than they had asked for. He was trying to hold them up for more money by keeping the rest of the stuff back."

Stuff. It could mean anything. Drugs. Stolen credit cards. Contraband cigarettes. Green eggs and ham.

"So, Owen freaked out and got the fuck out of there," Goetz continued. "He drove around, trying to figure out what to do. He headed back to L.A. He got nervous about the car so he dumped it at the airport. He wanted to come up here but he figured this would be the first place you'd look for him."

"Did he tell you where he stayed in L.A.?"

"No. He just said he hung out."

"Why did Pearse and Owen go to Santa Isidora? Were they meeting someone Pearse knew there?"

"They had some contact in L.A. who put them in touch with the people in Santa Isidora. Owen said he went back to where he and Pearse had stashed the rest of the stuff and got it. He was going to go back to the contact to do the deal."

"He was going back to the guy? Even after they killed Pearse?"

Goetz shook his head, glum.

"I know. I didn't like it at all. But Owen said he had it figured. He was going to take precautions. They way he saw it, like I said, Pearse pissed these guys off by trying to hit them up for more money. Owen was going to be very businesslike. Contrite. Tell them no hard feelings about Pearse, take what they had offered and get the hell out of there."

"That still seems awfully dangerous to me. Foolish, really."

"I told him it sounded dangerous. But Owen insisted he had it all worked out so there would be no problem. He was covered, he said. He was going to have the edge on them when they met. He was determined to go through with it." Goetz looked down at the table. "I think he was trying to prove something. To me. That he could pull off a big score." He shook his head back and forth. "He was trying to impress his big brother," he said, his voice trailing off.

Frost looked at the ceiling lights for a while, giving Goetz time to recover.

"Did he say who this contact was, where he was, anything about him at all?"

"No, just that Pearse had found him."

"When did you say you talked to Owen?"

"A couple of days ago. Day before yesterday."

The day after Owen Goetz had hit him over the head and run out of Julia's house with a black bag. A bag of stuff.

The deputy tapped his fingers on the glass window and pointed at his watch. They had to wrap it up.

"Brad, did Owen have a lot of money with him? He was making a near-fortune in Iraq, from what I understand."

"And spending a near-fortune, too," Brad said. "They'd go on R&R every few weeks for three or four days. Kuwait, Dubai. He said they went to Cyprus once. He managed to spend as much as he made. He was pretty much broke when he got home." Goetz shrugged his big shoulders, smiling. "The Goetz family never has been much good at hanging on to money."

"Why did he quit, then, if he was broke?"

"He didn't quit, he was fired."

"Fired?" David Plum said they had vanished.

"Let go, he said. They were told one day their services were no longer needed. They flew him home a couple days later."

"On the company plane?"

"I don't know. Owen didn't say."

If they had come home on the Peacock Gulfstream it would explain how they could have gotten drugs into the country without running afoul of Customs.

If they had brought the stuff home with them.

The deputy opened the door. Goetz got to his feet. He shook Frost's hand. As the shackles for his court appearance were being placed on his hands and legs, he addressed Frost one last time.

"My rule has always been never cooperate with cops," he said. "But someone killed my little brother and I may not have the chance to find out myself who it was. I need you to find out for me who they are. Then I can take care of them."

"If I find them, I'm sending them to prison, not to you," Frost said.

Goetz smiled and the deputy led him out of the conference room.

_

As he drove back to Santa Isidora, eager to stand under a hot shower, Frost considered Brad's story. Even assuming he had been telling the truth, it didn't mean Owen had been telling the truth. He might have made it all up to cover the shame he felt over killing Thad. It might be half true and half a lie. Owen killed Pearse as they thought. Owen didn't kill Pearse, took off in a panic when he got back to the room. Owen was in the room when Pearse was killed, but bargained his way out of the situation by promising to deliver the rest of the merchandise. Owen was killed when he made the second deal. Owen died by his own hand celebrating the successful conclusion to the second deal with his first-ever use of heroin.

Had David Plum lied about Thad and Owen going AWOL or had Owen lied to Brad? Had someone lied to Plum?

There were other possible realities, too. They grew in Frost's imagination, twigs and shoots and branches fanning out from a logic tree. Pretty soon it was like a chart of Indo-European languages morphing through time, here Anatolian leading to Hittite and Lydian, there Sanskrit changing to Hindi and Urdu, separate paths leading in multiple, divergent directions.

When he got home he showered, shaved, and put on a fresh set of clothes. He ate an apple and a slice of Cheddar cheese.

He called Jim Madden.

"Jim," he said, the words tumbling out rapidly, "I want you to re-interview the Vickers and the Salvadorans. We need to squeeze them this time. I'm not satisfied they didn't see or hear anything. Also, we need to take another look at any security-camera tapes that show the highway on either side of the motel and on Boundary Drive. We're looking for a car or cars going to and from the motel around eleven p.m."

"What are you talking about? The case is closed," Madden said.

"Not officially. We have time."

"I already sent the report to Nogata. All he has to do is sign off on it."

"Jim, there are too many loose ends for us to close this thing down."

"Martinez will never approve. We went over all of this yesterday, Rick."

"Let me handle Leo. Right now, I need your help to get going on this."

The silence at the other end of the line was absolute, profound.

"No," Madden said firmly. "No, I'm not going to do any of that. I'm sorry, Rick, but the case is closed. Goetz killed Pearse, that's all there is to it. I am not going to re-interview the Vickers or the Salvadorans or anyone else. I am not going to watch any fucking videotapes. You are obsessed with this shit. You're not being professional. You're letting your judgment be clouded by..."

"Clouded by what?"

"You know by what. What's wrong with you, anyway? I thought you were out sick."

"I have an enormous headache."

"Take two aspirin and go to bed. If you want to waste more time on the Pearse case, fine, but I don't want any part of it. Goodbye, Rick." Madden hung up.

Frost placed the receiver in the base unit. He stared at the phone for a long time.

His head was throbbing.

## 22

FROST ARRIVED AT UCLA shortly after three o'clock in the afternoon after speeding over the mountains from Santa Isidora. He didn't have much time left. It was slipping away from him like water through an open hand. District Attorney Nogata would be only too happy to close the Pearse file, burnishing his law-and-order credentials with another crime solved, another instance of justice meted out. The pressure would be to move on. Move on to the next crime.

There was always another crime to move on to.

Frost went directly to the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. He had tried multiple times without success to set up an appointment with Dr. Max Lipka. Professor Lipka, the departmental secretary had informed him, did not hold office hours. Only students could get an appointment, and only after passing a rigorous examination of their claimed need to see him in person. Professor Lipka, the secretary told Frost in confidence, was a great man and a learned scholar but also a deeply troubled human being.

Frost bypassed the departmental office and, furnished with the information Fergus had given him, went straight to Lipka's personal office. According to a schedule taped to his door, Lipka should be just wrapping up a class in Mesopotamian Civilization in a classroom in the same building. Beneath the schedule was a sign proclaiming OFFICE HOURS BY APPOINTMENT AND IN CASE OF NECESSITY ONLY.

Frost planted himself outside the classroom door. His watch said the class had another five minutes to go. He phoned Julia's office and was told she had taken the day off. He reached her at home.

"Rick, I'm so glad to hear from you," Julia said. "I've been going through my old laptop and found some interesting things, Internet searches that Thad had done. It's stupid of me not to have thought of it before. I've got Brian the IT guy from our office here helping me."

"That's great," Frost said. It was stupid of him not to have thought of that, either. "I'll be over as soon as I can."

He waited outside the door until the class ended. Students began filing out, swarming past like army ants marching over the forest floor. He caught Lipka inside the classroom while he was still stuffing lecture notes into a briefcase.

"Professor Lipka," he said, flashing his badge. "My name is Detective Lieutenant Rick Frost." The SIPD didn't give its detectives ranks, but Frost thought it might make a good impression on a man said to be difficult. For the same reason, he didn't mention that he was from Santa Isidora. Better to let Lipka have the impression he was from the LAPD. "I need a few moments of your time, if you don't mind."

Lipka snapped his briefcase shut and made for the door, fast.

"I'm very busy," he said. "Now is not a good time. Please make an appointment through the department secretary."

"I have tried that, Dr. Lipka. Several times, as a matter of fact." Frost followed on Lipka's heels out the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures building onto a quadrangle cross-stitched with cement walkways. Lipka was short and fat and his bald spot had the look of a monkish tonsure, but his stubby legs had the power of a rhinoceros—which he also slightly resembled—and he barreled across the quad at a rapid clip. "It will only take a minute. I have something I need you to take a look at." Frost pulled the evidence bag with the clay fragments from his coat pocket and dangled them in front of Lipka's face like the lure of an anglerfish, but failed to break his stride.

"I'm meeting with the dean of the graduate school in fifteen minutes. It's halfway across campus." Lipka glanced at the bag. "What have you got there?"

"Fragments of clay from Babylon. Dr. Fergus—Norman Fergus, in the Earth and Space Sciences department—said you might be able to help me out with them."

"Yes, I recall him calling me. Something about a murder investigation, yes?"

"That's right."

"Let me see them." Lipka took the bag from Frost. He continued walking, though at a somewhat more leisurely pace.

"Dr. Fergus said he thought he saw something on one of the pieces—that large one, there—that looked like it had been drawn by a human hand."

Lipka stopped, reached into the bag and retrieved the largest piece. He examined it for a moment.

"Have you got a magnifying glass? No? I thought all detectives carried a magnifying glass. No matter." Lipka reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. He unfolded a gray plastic wedge with a round lens. "Fishermen's model. Use the magnifying glass to tie on flies. Do you fly fish?"

"No. I don't fish much at all, as a matter of fact."

"Me neither, anymore. Can't seem to find the time. I should take it up again, though. Here, hold this." He handed Frost his briefcase and indicated he should hold the side of the case horizontally, like a table. Lipka spread the pieces of clay on the briefcase. He peered through the lens at the fragment. "Hmm, what else have you got here?" He began sliding the fragments around, back and forth, up and down, his fingers working as rapidly as a Chinese accountant with an abacus. Within a minute he had four pieces assembled together in the middle, including the large fragment. "What do you know, Dr. Fergus was right. These four pieces put together form the symbol for 'beer.' Part of it, anyway. You can see here," he said, pointing at the joined pieces. "There's a bit of a diagonal coming off the primary line here. The symbol for beer is an upright jug with a pointed base. That's what this is. A couple of the other pieces have stylus marks, too, but I can't say what symbols they represent. There isn't enough to tell." He scooped the fragments up and placed them gingerly in the bag. He folded up the Swiss Army knife and put it in his pocket. "I hope this helps your investigation, though I can't possibly imagine how." He took his briefcase and started off at a quick pace. Frost chased after him, stuffing the evidence bag back in his pocket.

"Dr. Lipka, what else can you tell me about these fragments?" Frost asked, matching him step for step. "Dr. Fergus thought they could be from a frieze or . . ."

"Cuneiform tablets," Lipka said. The sun was shining off his bald spot. "They're fragments from clay tablets. Dr. Fergus said Babylon, circa 2,000 B.C.E. I'll take him at his word on that. Cuneiform tablets were used for all sorts of purposes. Accounting, inventory, receipts."

"How can you tell just by looking at these fragments that they're from clay tablets?"

Lipka stopped, regarded Frost with unmistakable condescension.

"Color, grain, workmanship. Et cetera." He began speed-walking again, following a service road between two buildings that led to a plaza crowded with students. He looked at his watch and stopped. "I have perhaps two more minutes to devote to you, Detective. The dean does not like to be kept waiting. I do not like to be late. The dean and I share a certain synchronicity in that." He looked at his watch again. "You haven't told me how this fits into your murder investigation."

"I honestly don't know," Frost said. "These fragments were found in a motel room with the victim. Both he and our prime suspect in the murder were recently in Iraq. Dr. Fergus thought maybe the two of them had visited the ruins of Babylon and found these fragments and picked them up as souvenirs."

"Nonsense," Lipka said authoritatively. "Dr. Fergus does not know what he is talking about. Babylon has been picked over by archaeologists and thieves for centuries. You wouldn't find fragments like that lying around. Pieces of brick, perhaps, but brick is a whole different construction. Any fragments of cuneiform tablets in the area that may once have been lying about were found and catalogued by generations of graduate students long deceased. 'Dr. Fergus thought . . .' Nonsense. Give me the bag again."

"So there's no way," Frost said, handing over the fragments, "that these two fellows could have stumbled on fragments like these, in Babylon or anywhere else?"

"Certainly not," Lipka said. "I can tell you something else. Just by looking at these pieces I can state with a high degree of probability that they came from the same, single tablet. You can see that by the color and the way they're fashioned. Color, grain, workmanship." He handed the bag back to Frost.

"Well, where might you obtain a clay tablet?"

"One would have a great deal of difficulty 'obtaining' a Babylonian clay tablet. Most of them are in museums or universities. A few are in private hands, bought long ago by collectors before desecrating archaeological sites was considered a crime. But you couldn't afford to buy one of those unless you were very rich. I'm sorry, I have to go."

"If you did get your hands on one, how valuable would it be?"

"That question is impossible to answer, because you couldn't sell it anywhere, not to any honest collector. No museum would touch it."

"Dr. Lipka . . ."

"You have forty-five seconds."

"Right. Forty-five seconds. What about dishonest collectors, unscrupulous ones? What would they pay for one of these?"

"Certainly there are such people," Lipka said. "The same sort of people who buy stolen Rembrandts or Titians. Rich eccentrics. They don't care if they can't show their stolen prize off to the world. It's for their eyes only, their own enjoyment. But I have no idea how much they might be willing to pay for a Babylonian tablet. . . . You say your victim and his killer were both in Iraq recently?"

"Yes, until a couple of weeks ago."

"Have you considered that the Iraqi National Museum was looted during the invasion?" Lipka adjusted his watch band as he talked. "Thousands of artifacts went missing. Priceless antiquities, some dating to the very beginnings of civilization. A monstrous crime. Some of the artifacts have been recovered, but many, many more are still missing, including cuneiform tablets from the Babylonian period."

"You think someone could buy a tablet like this on the black market in Iraq?" Anatolian to Hittite, Hittite to Lydian . . . His headache was getting no better. He was also very tired.

"I have no earthly idea. I know nothing about the Iraqi black market. But if there is such a market, I would think such a tablet would fetch a very high price, assuming it is intact. Of course, the war may have changed things. Life seems to have gotten pretty cheap in Iraq, unfortunately. I don't know about fragments like these. It's not the sort of thing that would appeal to a collector, I imagine. Only academics like me would be interested in such things." Lipka looked at his watch. "Time's up," he said, and began walking away.

"Who would know about the market for black-market Babylonian tablets?" Frost shouted after him.

"Someone who deals in antiquities," Lipka said, giving Frost a wave with the back of his hand. Class dismissed. Frost watched him go, sailing across the plaza on his thick rhinoceros legs.

Frost weighed the evidence bag in his hand.

He knew one person who dealt in fine art and antiques. As well as the occasional antiquity.

Someone who had spoken to Thad Pearse for nearly ten minutes the day before he died but couldn't remember a thing about it.

_

Frost drove to Beverly Hills and parked in the loading zone in front of Franklin Diebold's gallery. He entered the shop, the little bell over the door signaling his arrival.

Diebold was there, dressed in white trousers and a blue blazer, cradling a foot-high carved jade monkey, describing its attributes to a middle-aged woman in a Rorschach test of a dress. Frost recognized her as Shelly Karroll, the female lead from All About My Day, a television comedy that had been a brief hit in the early 1980s. She hadn't aged well and she was wearing enough mascara to sink a battleship.

Clarice, the shop assistant, had dyed her hair a brilliant shade of ultramarine and was at her usual roost at the back counter, engrossed in a copy of Cosmopolitan.

Frost walked up to Diebold and, ignoring the formerly famous actress, held up the evidence bag of clay fragments.

"We need to have another chat," he said.

"I beg your pardon?" Diebold asked, wide-eyed and flustered. Karroll looked bewildered behind her mask of cosmetics.

"More answers this time, Franklin. Less bullshit."

"Detective, really, this is..."

"Got any idea what these are?" Frost asked, brandishing the fragments in his face. Diebold glanced at the bag. His eyelids fluttered like leaves in a thunderstorm. "I'll tell you what they are. They're what's left of a four-thousand year-old Babylonian clay tablet." Frost shook the bag. "Know anyone in the market for Babylonian tablets, Franklin?"

The actress sidled away, feigning interest in a pre-Columbian Mayan tschotschke. Diebold's face flushed and he took two or three baby steps back.

"I'm serious," Frost said. "Who's in the market for Babylonian tablets? How much can I get for one? I should mention they're probably stolen from the Iraqi National Museum, so we'll have to keep this transaction on the down-low."

"What is the meaning of this?" Diebold's cheeks reddened. "You have no right to come in here and speak to me like this. I have no idea what you are talking about."

The bell over the door rang as Shelly Karroll walked out, no doubt heading for Rodeo Drive where they still appreciated her. Clarice looked up momentarily and just as quickly returned to her magazine.

"That's what you said the last time I was here," Frost said, advancing on him. The gallery owner reached behind him as if looking for something to steady himself upon. Frost kept on him until he had Diebold pinned against a display of medieval cutlery. "I told you, that answer's no longer acceptable. Thad Pearse called you two weeks ago. He said he had some clay tablets for sale." Frost's face was inches from Diebold's. "You spoke to him for almost ten minutes. Now, I want to know what the two of you discussed. Did you tell him you knew someone who would be interested in making a purchase? Did you set up a meeting?"

"I already told you, I have no recollection of any such conversation. I don't know any such person. How many times do I have to tell you I don't know what you're talking about!" Diebold squirmed, trying to get past Frost.

"Again with the bullshit. You talked to Pearse. The next day he's dead, murdered. You're all mixed up in this, Franklin. You can't worm your way out of it. Your only chance is to talk to me."

Diebold broke free and ducked behind the counter next to Clarice.

"You're crazy!" he shouted. "You're out of your mind!"

"Maybe I am crazy," Frost said. "I haven't slept in two days. I've got two dead men on my hands now and I don't have time to put up with your lies." Diebold's knees knocked. "You didn't know that, did you?"

"What?" Diebold said, placing a hand on the counter, steadying himself.

"You didn't know there were two dead men." Frost came up to the counter, looked straight into Diebold's eyes. "Thad Pearse was killed last week after you set up a meeting for him. His traveling companion Owen Goetz was found in a dumpster in Hollywood a couple of days ago."

Diebold blanched momentarily, recovered.

"This has nothing to do with me. I want you to leave me alone."

"You don't understand," Frost said. "Let me enlighten you. It has everything to do with you. You set this train in motion by agreeing to help Thad Pearse sell his stolen Iraqi tablets. You're an accessory to two murders. You need to talk to me if you want to have any chance of getting out from under this thing. But you have to do it now. Now. This offer's no good tomorrow."

Diebold studied him. Frost's sleep-deprived, flagging energy showed.

"Clarice," Diebold said, his voice an even pitch, "please call the police." Clarice looked up from her Cosmo. She looked at the phone next to her but made no move to pick it up.

"I am the police, goddamnit!"

Frost knew that Diebold prevailed as of that moment. He'd had him on the defensive but now, with his composure lost, the antiques dealer regained his.

Though still shaking, Diebold made a show of tidying himself up, dusting off the sleeves of his blazer, shooting his arms out and tugging on his shirt cuffs until his gold cufflinks showed properly. He stood erect, pushing his chest forward.

"Clarice," he said, looking beyond Frost, "I am going for a walk. I shall return in fifteen minutes. If this gentleman is still here at that time, then you may call the police." He came out from behind the counter and, taking a moment to reset a Chinese vase on a shelf, strolled out the front door.

Fuck. A rookie cop on his first day on the job would have done better. Frost closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was tired. His brain was only firing on three cylinders. Losing his temper as he had done reminded him of the old days. There was something about Los Angeles.

"That was wicked," Clarice said, looking up from her Cosmo and giving Frost a big smile full of lustrous white teeth. "He can be such a dick at times."

## 23

JULIA GREETED FROST at the door with a smile and a kiss and almost immediately dragged him inside by the hand.

"Rick," she said, pulling him along, "I think we've found some important information." She brought him over to the living room couch, where a black man with a nose like Charles de Gaulle and glasses with lenses as thick as slabs of Canadian bacon sat hunched over a silver laptop computer. "This is Brian McKinley, the head of our IT department." McKinley waved lamely without looking up from the screen. "He's been helping me reconstruct what Thad was looking for on the computer while he was here."

Julia put an arm around his waist, and Frost looped his arm over her shoulder. It felt right, felt good.

"I should have thought of it sooner," Julia said. "I'm just kicking myself. I bought a new Mac this summer, which I use for work and at home. I'd almost forgotten I had this other laptop just lying around. Thad asked me if he could use it to play around on the Internet, but after he died...after he was killed, I completely forgot about it."

Frost had overlooked her computer, too. Madden should have thought of it for him.

"What have you found?" he asked, looking at McKinley click through windows.

"He was a busy boy," McKinley said, holding out up a legal-size piece of paper containing a handwritten list. "Those are the Google searches he did. I'm finishing up the page views now." Frost scanned the search terms Thad had entered:

clay tablets iraq

clay tablets babylon

iraq national museum looting

value babylonian clay tablets

ancient artifacts dealers california

antiquities dealers los angeles

franklin diebold

"Is this everything?"

"I left out the adult sites," McKinley said, looking up and smiling. "He visited quite a few. I've got them on a separate list, if you're interested."

"No, not for now." Frost moved closer, looking over McKinley's shoulder.

"He viewed several websites and news stories, prompted by his Google searches," McKinley said. "He deleted the browsing history and cookies, but you can still tell where he went if you know where to look for it. I think I've found just about everything. I've created a document with a list, so all you have to do is cut and paste the URL into the web browser and you're good to go."

"Can you show me any news stories he looked at that reference Franklin Diebold?" Julia stood next to him, her hand resting on his back.

"Sure. We just punch up the news stories he looked at and search for 'Diebold.' " McKinley cut and pasted and searched, his fingers dancing across the keyboard like a pianist playing ragtime. "Here's one," he announced, turning the laptop so Frost had a better view of the screen.

Frost leaned in and read an AP story on the looting of the Iraqi National Museum in 2003, to which the Los Angeles Times had appended a paragraph of local interest:

The looting of the artifacts is a "great tragedy," according to Beverly Hills expert Franklin Diebold. Diebold, an art and antiques dealer for the past 25 years, called the looting of the museum "a crime against humanity" and said if the thousands of missing items are not recovered "it will be a monumental blow to our understanding of the history of civilization."

"It makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it," he said.

Another article briefly recounted Diebold's advisory role in the making of High Wire Act, a movie about a jewel thief who goes to work for the OSS in World War II. There was also a snippet about his appearance at a post-Oscar Vanity Fair party, the story Jim Madden had come across—all he had come across, according to Madden.

The last article Thad Pearse read had appeared in the Times four years previously:

The Coldstone Museum of Art and Antiquities is returning more than three dozen items of looted art in its collection in a settlement reached yesterday with the Italian and Greek governments. The list of objects to be returned encompasses some of the museum's most cherished exhibits, including a statue of the huntress Artemis from the 5th Century B.C. and a statue of the god Poseidon that is said to have once watched over the harbor in Syracuse in Sicily.

In recent years the Italian and Greek governments have undertaken significant efforts to retrieve items deemed important objects of their national and cultural inheritance. Talks between the museum and the governments had dragged on for years, with the Coldstone Museum denying that any of the disputed objects were stolen but the governments insisting that the items had been improperly taken from the countries' archaeological sites.

Franklin Diebold, a Beverly Hills antiquities dealer and consultant to the Coldstone, said yesterday that the museum continues to believe the disputed artworks were properly acquired but agreed to return the objects "in order to put this issue behind us." Both the Greek and Italian governments had threatened to bring criminal charges against Diebold and the museum's director, Gerald Richter, but agreed to drop any possible charges as part of the settlement agreement.

Diebold was investigated in the early 1990s after several pieces of Incan pottery he sold to film producer Ben Zimmer were later revealed to have been stolen from a Lima, Peru museum, but no charges were ever filed. Diebold denied any wrongdoing and reached a settlement with Zimmer after he filed suit over the incident.

T. Rex Coldstone, the billionaire founder of the museum, located in the town of Santa Isidora, north of Los Angeles, declined comment through a spokesman.

"Jesus Christ, I'm an idiot," Frost said. "An idiot." He should have seen it the moment Lipka told him what he had in the evidence bag.

"What?" Julia asked. Frost continued looking at the laptop screen, shaking his head. "Rick, what is it?"

Frost looked at his watch and flipped open his cellphone. It was dead. He hadn't used the charger he kept in the car and after two days on the road the phone had simply run out of juice.

"I need to borrow your phone," he said. He took the digital camera he had used the night before from his coat pocket and handed it to McKinley. "Can you do me a favor and load these photos on the computer? I can never remember how to do it."

"Sure thing," McKinley said. "All you need is a USB port and the right cable."

Frost took Julia's cordless phone and stepped out into the courtyard in front of the cottage. He dialed Madden's extension at the SIPD. Madden picked up on the second ring.

"Jim, it's me," he said.

"Rick," Madden said. "Where the fuck are you? Martinez has been trying to get you for over an hour."

"Never mind that. Pearse and Goetz. It's Coldstone."

"What? What is? What are you talking about?"

"Pearse and Goetz. Why they were in Santa Isidora. They were there to see Coldstone."

"What are you talking about? Pearse and Goetz came up here to do a drug deal with T. Rex Coldstone? The guy's a fucking billionaire."

"Forget drugs. This was never about drugs. It's about clay tablets. Ancient Mesopotamian tablets. Cuneiform tablets from Babylon." Frost waited, but Madden didn't respond. "Jim? Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard you," he said. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Cuneiform tablets," Frost said. "Before paper, the Babylonians used tablets made out of clay to write on. The clay fragments we found in the motel are pieces of a four-thousand-year-old Babylonian tablet. Pearse and Goetz must have gotten their hands on some in Iraq. Don't ask me how. They wanted to sell them but didn't know where to start. They found Franklin Diebold on the Internet. Diebold is a consultant to the Coldstone Museum. He has a history of dealing in stolen antiquities. So does the Coldstone Museum. Diebold put Pearse in touch with Coldstone. He and Goetz went up to Santa Isidora to make the deal. But Pearse got cute and tried to hold them up for more money. He only brought samples of the tablets. An argument probably ensued and Pearse got whacked. By the time Goetz got back from his beer run, Pearse was dead. He saw the body, panicked and took off." Frost was feeling the exhilaration that came when the pieces finally started to come together and a clear picture emerged. "Goetz came to Julia's house to get the rest of the tablets that Pearse had stashed here. He went back to the same people to try to make the deal work, thinking he would be able to manage them. Instead, they took the tablets and made sure Goetz got an overdose."

"Oh, man," Madden interrupted him. "Rick, I'm laughing. I'm crying. This is the story you plan to take to Martinez? To put before a grand jury? T. Rex Coldstone, billionaire oil magnate, financier and telecommunications poobah, goes to sleazy motel in the middle of the night to buy really old shit and kills someone? This is the best you can come up with?"

"Not Coldstone himself," Frost said. "One of his flunkies. Jake Ballard, maybe."

"Oh, crap. Just because you hate Jake Ballard for what he did to that girl doesn't give you the right to pin a murder on him," Madden said. "Where the hell are you, anyway?"

"I'm in L.A."

"Where in L.A.?"

"I'm at Julia Pearse's house."

"Oh, that's just swell."

"Listen," Frost said. "We pull Diebold's phone records. We have enough for a warrant now. If they show him calling Coldstone after he spoke to Pearse, we pull him in for questioning. He'll crack. He doesn't want to go down as an accessory. I saw it on his face this afternoon. He'll give them all up."

"Will you listen to yourself?" Madden sighed, wheezing. "You've got no evidence. You've got a bag full of shitty clay fragments and that's all you've got. Goetz killed Pearse. It's so obvious even fucking José Feliciano could see it. Stop fucking around and get back up here before Martinez has your head on a platter."

Irritated and frustrated, Frost took a moment to think. McKinley exited the house and told Frost he'd loaded the pictures onto Julia's laptop. Frost thanked him. McKinley hopped on a fire-red Vespa and drove away.

"Jim," Frost said. "What's gotten into you lately?"

"Now what are you talking about?" Madden asked.

"You haven't been yourself since the day this case started. You cut off the interview at Peacock like you had to rush home to save your burning house. You had a completely unprofessional attitude during our interview with Diebold, like it was some kind of lark. You missed Mudrats being the owner of Peacock on a simple Internet search. And speaking of Internet searches, how in the hell did you miss the fact that Diebold was a consultant to the Coldstone Museum?"

"Hey, fuck you, Frost! You're the fucking computer illiterate, not me. It's the twenty-first century and you can barely manage to send an e-mail. Get a clue. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? You get kicked off the LAPD and show up in Santa Isidora with your tail between your legs. And then what happens? Leo Martinez makes you lead detective over me, over Rollo, over Smith. The LAPD old boy's network. I've been a cop just as long as you. And I'm a better cop, street smart, not some Buddha-quoting intellectual who tries to unload all the drudgery on his partner so he can work on his Big Theories. Hey, Madden, go talk to the Salvadorans. Hey, Madden, go search the Internet. Well, hey, Frost, go learn some Spanish, and go fuck yourself." He hung up.

"I wasn't fired by the LAPD," Frost said to the dead air. "I resigned."

He turned around and saw Julia standing in the doorway.

"Are you ever going to tell me about you and the LAPD?" she asked.

"Let's go inside," Frost said. He walked past her wordlessly and tossed the phone on the couch. She followed, closing the door behind her. She leaned by the door, hands behind her, her face fallen.

"I'm sorry," Frost said. "It's not every day you realize what an idiot you've been." He went to her, put his arms around her waist. He drew her to him and kissed her. She kissed him back. She rested her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair, smelled it. She was like a refuge.

He took her face in his hands.

"I need to tell you something about Thad."

He sat her down on the couch, took her hands in his. He told her what he had just told his partner. That Thad and Owen had gotten their hands on cuneiform tablets stolen from the Iraqi National Museum and smuggled them into the U.S. That they looked for a buyer and found Diebold. That Diebold put them in touch with Coldstone. That Thad held out for more money and was killed. That Owen recovered the tablets and tried again to sell them. And was killed.

That he couldn't prove any of it.

"They killed Thad just for that?" Julia's eyes moistened, her lips quivered.

"I can't tell you how it happened or what set it off. An argument, probably, that escalated. There are people in this world who will kill other people for a pair of shoes, for whom human life has no value."

"Poor Thad," Julia said, tears forming. "Just like his father, looking for the big score."

The phone rang. Julia looked in his eyes and he smiled as if for the first time. She answered, held the receiver out to him.

"It's for you," she said, voice cracking. "Leo Martinez."

Frost took the phone. Julia went into the kitchen.

"Chief," Frost said.

"I see Madden was right when he said you were in Los Angeles at Julia Pearse's house," Martinez said.

"That's right." He looked at his watch. It hadn't taken Madden long.

"We discussed this. I told you not to see her."

"I know." Martinez sounded sedate but Frost could tell he was steamed.

"Do you know who I just got off the phone with? The police chief of Beverly Hills. Do you know who the mayor just got off the phone with? The mayor of Beverly Hills. Do you have any idea why they were calling?"

"I could come up with a plausible theory."

"Very funny, Detective Frost," Martinez said. He only called him that when he was joking or fuming. "Do you mind telling me what the hell you think you were doing in Beverly Hills, threatening one of that city's upstanding citizens?"

"I didn't threaten him. I just got in his face a little."

"I see. Is that how you remember I taught it in the LAPD? To bust into somebody's shop and start flinging accusations at him?" Martinez paused. He was probably biting his mustache. "Do you mind telling me what you're doing in L.A. in the first place? You called in sick."

"I've had a remarkable recovery."

"Goddamnit, Frost, I am not amused. I am not amused. I am not a happy camper." Phhttt. "The mayor is all over my ass. The chief of the Beverly Hills police is all over my ass. He wants to know why the hell one of my officers is in his jurisdiction acting like Conan the Barbarian."

"Leo, listen . . ."

"Do not call me Leo! Do not. I am Chief Martinez."

"OK. Chief, did Madden tell you . . ."

"Did he tell me about your little theory? Babylonian tablets and such? That T. Rex Coldstone, a man who could buy and sell this town a hundred times over, a thousand times over, had someone killed over some clay tablets? That theory?" He could not have sounded more sarcastic. "Yes, he told me. And I will tell you what he told you. You have no evidence. You have a theory built on a foundation of air. You don't even know that those cockamamie pieces of clay you found belonged to Thad Pearse. They could have belonged to anyone."

Frost couldn't deny that what Martinez was saying was true.

It just didn't matter.

"Listen, Chief, I spoke to Owen Goetz's brother today."

"You did what?" Phhttt.

"I went up to Pickle Center and talked to Goetz's brother, Brad. He told me Owen called him and told him he found Pearse's body after making a beer run and he panicked and took off."

"You were up in Pickle Center today," Martinez said. "You were conducting an investigation in someone else's jurisdiction against my express orders to the contrary." Phhttt. Phhttt. "Damn it, Frost, what has gotten into you? You lie about being sick. You're in two other jurisdictions in one day without my permission. You're down there right now in that woman's house." He made it sound like a disease—that woman's house. Frost heard squeaking; Martinez was swiveling in his chair. "Rick, I am sorry to have to do this, but you have pushed it too far. I'm suspending you as of this moment. You are suspended. You are officially off this and every other case. Do you understand me? You get your ass up here first thing tomorrow and turn in your badge and gun."

"Tomorrow's Saturday."

"I mean it, Rick. You're suspended. Turn in your shield and your weapon tomorrow. Don't fuck with me."

After Martinez hung up, Frost walked over to the kitchen counter and set the receiver in its base set.

"That's two police departments now where I'm persona non grata," he said to Julia. "You may wish to rethink your relationship with me."

Julia walked over to him, kissed him. She looked into his eyes. Her tears were gone but their traces remained. She had cried for Thad at last.

"Now will you tell me what happened between you and the LAPD?"

"You'll have to sleep with me first."

"That's a price I'm willing to pay," she said, taking him by the hand.

## 24

THERE WAS THIS goofy kid named Rashid Smoots, he told her, his arm resting on her bare shoulder, her hand resting on his naked chest. He was all arms and legs, thin as a laser beam. Frost met him when he came bounding out of a bookstore on Sunset Boulevard, chased by a security guard.

"He ran right into me. Do you know what he was shoplifting? William Blake. Songs of Experience."

Frost wasn't even on duty at the time, but he had been right there, so he took the collar and walked the kid over to the Hollywood station on Wilcox. On the way Rashid somehow opened a discussion on the failings of existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre was a big blowhard, he said. All existentialists were old men before they were eighteen. Rashid said he was a pragmatist in the tradition of William James.

Rashid was sixteen years old and lived with his mother in South Central. When Frost ran him through the system, he popped up as a missing person. He had left home three weeks before and had been living on the streets in and around Hollywood. He loved his mother, he said, but he begged Frost not to send him home. His mother worked two jobs and was never around. And when she was . . . She tried to be a good Christian, Rashid said, but she had a problem with drinking and sometimes she brought men home and he didn't like them very much.

He hadn't seen his own father since he was five years old and as far as he knew he was dead.

Rashid didn't fit in at school. He was an outsider and happy to be one, but it was tough in his neighborhood if you weren't a member of some group, some clique, some gang. He was taunted for being brainy and bullied for being skinny. He skipped school as often as he could. He hadn't been so happy in a long, long time as he had been the last three weeks in Hollywood.

He begged Frost a second time not to send him home. Frost told him he had no choice in the matter. His mom was worried about him and already on her way to pick him up. They played chess while they waited for her to arrive. Rashid beat him three times in a row, handily.

Rashid was shot through the heart four weeks later as he sat on the stoop of his house, reading. Someone took his sneakers. Frost read about it in the Times. No arrest was ever made.

Frost took it upon himself to find Rashid's killer. He devoted every spare moment he had to it but got nowhere. No one in Rashid's neighborhood had seen anything, heard anything, knew anything. He kept banging up against brick walls of silence, the omertà of the streets, but he persisted until the South Central District got wind of his freelancing in their territory and he was forbidden by them and his own supervisors from pursuing it further. He was poaching on South Central's turf, screwing up their mojo.

He ignored them, was found out, reprimanded, cautioned. He ignored the caution, was found out again, reprimanded again.

After that he developed a reputation as undisciplined and insubordinate. Increasingly, he tried to live up to it.

He moped. He drove aimlessly on the freeways. He felt sorry for himself. When things with Annie Nystad started to unravel, he met the challenge with deliberate indifference.

He was still a good detective, made cases, busted criminals. But he was a problem child. Supervisors disliked his attitude. So did partners. He went through three in three years. He was transferred. His bosses tried to send him to counseling but he fought their moves with the support of the police guild. Finally, the LAPD farmed him out to a multi-year, multi-jurisdictional task force investigating gun smuggling and money laundering. That would keep him out of their hair for a long while.

The task force worked out of a warehouse in Westlake not far from MacArthur Park. That was where Frost met Jerry Sirica, a fresh, new FBI agent working his first big assignment. He might have stayed with the task force and remained on the LAPD payroll for years had it not been for what became forever after known as "the incident."

The task force planned a raid on a residence in Brentwood where, according to an FBI confidential informant, a stash of automatic weapons and explosives were being held pending shipment to a Mexican drug cartel. The FBI was concerned about burning their informant and would play no overt role in the raid, leaving that to the LAPD, the Sheriff's Department, Customs and other agencies in the task force. The LAPD would obtain the search warrant and direct the raid. Jerry Sirica provided the information for the warrant and Frost did the paperwork.

They were supposed to take down a house at 1629 Prospero Drive. Instead, the task force members burst into the house at 1692 Prospero, the residence of Dr. Nigel Gupta, an acclaimed Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, his wife and three daughters, aged nine, five and three, and Dr. Gupta's seventy-five year-old mother-in-law.

"You can't imagine what it's like having those guys break into your house," Frost told Julia. "Flash-bang grenades going off. Swarms of heavily armed men dressed from head to toe in black rushing in on you, swearing, yelling at the top of their lungs for everybody to get down on the floor—now!" Frost shook his head, laughing softly. "It's sort of funny now, but it wasn't at the time, of course."

The Guptas were terrified. The children screamed and cried. The Guptas' Yorkshire terriers ran around yapping. Gupta's mother-in-law collapsed in an easy chair, clasping her chest. Gupta and his wife lay quivering on their living room floor while the old lady appeared to be dying as the black-clad invaders yelled at everyone to shut the fuck up!

It took twenty or thirty minutes to get it all sorted out, just about the time satellite trucks from every television station in the greater Los Angeles area arrived on the scene. The residents at 1629, having seen all the commotion up the street, organized themselves in short order to move all the weapons to another location.

The city of Los Angeles quickly settled with Dr. Gupta for a reported seven million dollars.

There would, of course, be an investigation. Someone had to take the fall. Jerry Sirica was a young father of two small children. His wife Jen was pregnant with their third. Frost had nothing to protect. He stepped forward, volunteering that he was responsible for the mistake in the warrant. The LAPD transferred him to the public affairs office, the usual dumping ground for pariahs. He had been there a few months when Leo Martinez called and offered him a job in Santa Isidora.

"That's why Jerry Sirica says he owes you," Julia said. "He transposed the numbers when he gave you the information for the warrant." Frost nodded.

"I don't think I realized until just the last few days why I reacted to Rashid's death the way I did," he said. "I've known plenty of murder victims, like every cop. But Rashid was the first one I knew before he became a victim. He was a funny, bright kid with a great future and his getting killed over a pair of sneakers just seemed to tear a big hole in the universe. I tried to fix it first by solving his murder, getting some small measure of justice for him. After I failed at that I fixed the hole by not caring anymore. If Annie was unhappy with me or I with her, I didn't care. If my bosses hated my attitude, I didn't care. If I took the rap for traumatizing the Guptas, I didn't care. It was like I was anesthetized. I embraced being burdened by this stigmata of sin. The sin of indifference."

"I don't believe in tainted souls," Julia said, raising her head to look at him. "I don't believe you don't care. You care about that girl you told me about, Maria, that she never got her day in court. You tried to help her after."

"No, I didn't, not really," he said. "I went through the motions. I told myself that I had helped her, but I gave up easily. Until recently I hadn't even tried to contact her in well over a year." He ran his fingers over Julia's warm, supple skin. "I haven't helped Maria at all. She's a mess."

"You care about me," Julia said.

"I do." He kissed her on the temple, plied his fingers though her hair. "I do care about you. I have wanted to be with you from the moment I met you. It scared me at first as much as it thrilled me. I thought all that was lost in me. You brought it back."

She nestled closer, her breasts pressing against his chest. His hand caressed the angle of her shoulder blade, floated down her back.

" 'All you need is love,' " Julia said. "John Lennon."

## 25

FROST AWOKE ALONE under cool sheets in a bed not his own, his head resting on a pillow that still had life in it. He breathed in Julia's scent, still fresh, and let it linger. He wanted to linger, too, to stay in her bed, to repose languidly beneath the soft down comforter, to shun the world outside and its disappointments, its iniquities, its frailties, its pratfalls, its untidiness. He had spent the better part of his adult life trying to order its disorders and right its wrongs. It was the ultimate loser's game; the house never lost.

What was the point?

It wasn't written in stone that he had to be a cop. It wasn't even written in clay. He hadn't even chosen this life for himself. The Army did that. Afterwards it was easier just to go with the flow. He hadn't had to choose. He hadn't had to ask himself what it was he really wanted.

What he wanted was to stay with Julia.

He loved her. The realization of this astounded him. Loving her was important. Nothing else was.

He would stay here with her forever and they would entwine themselves under a soft linen canopy and taste the salt sweat of each other's bodies and in the evening drink coffee and amaretto and laugh together and the world could go to hell.

And there would be no justice for Thad.

Frost dropped one foot to the floor, then another. He showered and dressed in his day-old clothes.

He found Julia in the living room, sitting on the couch, cup of coffee in hand, scanning her old laptop.

"Good morning," she said brightly. "There's coffee."

Frost went to the kitchen, took a mug from the cabinet, poured coffee up to the brim. He inhaled the smoky aroma.

"These pictures," Julia asked. "What are they?"

"Peacock's private airport," Frost said, drinking in the sight of her. "I was out there the other night watching their plane come in." Already it seemed ages ago. "I don't know what good it did." He had checked the photos briefly at the motel in Palmdale. He couldn't read any of the license plate numbers on the camera's small screen, nor did he recognize anyone but David Plum.

"I recognize this one fellow." Julia pointed at the screen. "The one with the red hair and the mustache."

Frost sat next to her. He touched her shoulder. She smiled.

"This one, you said? The one with orange hair?" She had several photos open, spaced around the computer desktop, all of them larger than the images Frost had seen on the camera screen.

"It is orange, isn't it?" she said, laughing a little. "He looks like Carrot Top, the comedian. I don't remember his name, but I'm pretty sure I remember that face. He was one of Saddam Hussein's lieutenants."

Frost saw it too now, remembered the face from television, the defiant sneer and the boasts he made prior to the war. One of Hussein's Baath Party cronies, a minister or one of his vice-presidents. He had always been decked out in military uniform, a black beret hiding the bald spot at the top of his head, but the hair that poked out from the beret and the mustache were the same unmistakable, unique shade of orange.

"Do you remember his name?"

"No, but I can find out." Julia typed on the keyboard. "I'm searching for 'Iraq, Deck of Cards.' You remember, during the war, the military put out a deck of cards with the names and photos of Iraq's most wanted—Saddam's henchmen, the top government and military guys. Here it is," she said, as a web page came into view. "Amir Nabil al-Tikriti, the King of Hearts. He's the highest-level Baathist still at large. Secretary of the Revolutionary Command Council, former deputy chief of the Baath Party, regional military commander, head of the state oil company, minister of culture. It's a wonder he kept it all straight." She turned to him. "Rick, what does this mean? Why was he on that plane? Who are all these people with him?"

"His family," Frost said, pointing out the individuals. "That's my guess. His wife. His son. Another son—or daughter—with his or her spouse and their child, his grandchild. He brought his family with him."

"I don't understand. Why did Peacock bring al-Tikriti and his family to America?"

"I have an idea why. But first we need to check something." He pointed at the screen. "How do we look at the other pictures?" Julia clicked on the mouse, and the screen filled with thumbnail shots of all the photos he had taken. "We need to look for any license plates that are visible. Can you see any?"

"The white truck," Julia said. "Some of the numbers look legible."

"I can't read it. Can you enlarge the photo?"

"Of course." Julia clicked on the thumbnail and it filled the computer desktop.

"I still can't read the plate."

"You're almost forty. You'll be needing glasses any day now."

"Can you enlarge that section of the photo?"

"Sure." She shook her head, cracking a smile. "You really do need a course in technology." She clicked the cursor a couple of times over the license plate and the image enlarged. "BC 17254."

Frost wrote the license number on the back of a paper napkin. He walked to the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialed the SIPD.

"See if you can find any other numbers," he said to Julia.

Ollie Needham answered the phone. That was a lucky break. No one would have bothered to tell him Frost was suspended. Frost asked Needham to run the plate. Needham didn't bother to ask why. Frost looked over at Julia. She shook her head; she couldn't read any other plate numbers. This was their one shot.

Needham came back on the line and gave him the information. Frost thanked him and hung up. He walked over to Julia.

"Let's have breakfast and I'll tell you a story," he said. "I want you to listen as a lawyer and try to poke holes in it."

_

Julia toasted some bagels. Frost slathered his with cream cheese and strawberry jam.

"The white truck is registered to the Coldstone Museum," Frost said. "I'll bet if we checked the tail numbers on the plane and had an infinite amount of time and resources, we could trace it to Coldstone, too. This is what I think happened. Senator Crocker, whom T. Rex Coldstone has bankrolled and wants to see as the next president, stuck a last-minute amendment deep in the middle of some highway bill authorizing Peacock to provide ill-defined security services in Iraq. That gave them a license to be in Iraq, in the Green Zone. The military and the embassy would accept them as just another bunch of security contractors among the hundreds of thousands of other government contractors in Iraq. No money was ever appropriated to pay Peacock, but they went ahead and spent millions to set up operations in Iraq anyway. Why? Because Peacock wanted it that way. If there was no actual taxpayer money involved, they could operate under the radar. No taxpayer watchdog group or liberal congressman was going to be ranting and raving about gold-plated contracts, because they weren't costing the taxpayers a dime."

"But that makes no sense." Julia said, puzzled. "Why take on the contract if you're not being paid?"

"Because there never was any contract. Not with the U.S. government, not with the Iraqi ministry of interior. It's just a cover story that got Peacock into Iraq so they could do what they wanted to do."

"What was that?"

"To find the treasures looted from the Iraqi National Museum." Sometimes logic led you down a path toward enlightenment, but Frost always knew he was right when he felt it in his gut. He had sensed from almost the beginning that something was wrong about this case. Something didn't fit. It was hanging in the atmosphere like ionized oxygen before a desert thunderstorm. He could smell it, but he couldn't see it.

Now he saw it, he was sure of it. But it had taken him far too long.

"I should have seen it the minute I was told those bits of clay were four thousand years old," he confessed. "Who else would Thad and Owen have gone to Santa Isidora to see? Who lives in Santa Isidora and has a world-renowned collection of ancient artifacts? Who else but T. Rex Coldstone? I'll bet anything that beneath the layers of dummy companies he no doubt set up, Mudrats and Peacock belong to Coldstone. Once he got Peacock into Iraq, they could spend their time spreading his millions around trying to come up with leads that would take them to the loot. There's no way Thad or Owen could have known Peacock belonged to Coldstone when they tried to sell the tablets, even if they had known that Coldstone was the buyer--which I doubt."

"Why would they hire Thad to do security then?"

"They'd still need highly trained personnel adept with weapons and communications to provide security—but not for any Iraqi ministry. For themselves. Even though things have calmed down there a lot in the past couple of years, Iraq is still a dangerous place. You turn a corner and don't know if you're going to run into an insurgent, an al-Qaeda terrorist, some tribal elder with a grudge or common criminals. Or stumble into a firefight between rival militias. So they hired ex-soldiers like Thad and Owen to ride shotgun as they scoured the country for the missing artifacts. But there was something else." He hesitated, but he owed it to Julia to be honest. "One of the things that bothered me was that I couldn't figure out why Peacock would hire guys like Thad and Owen, guys who were . . ."

"Fuck-ups," Julia said.

"Fuck-ups," Frost agreed. "They both had criminal histories and both had been kicked out of the military. If you're on the up and up, that's exactly who you don't want, someone who rebels against military discipline."

"But it's exactly who you do want if you're running a scam."

"Yes. You want ex-military, guys handy with weapons who can handle themselves in a tough spot. But you also want people who will look the other way if you pay them enough, who won't ask too many questions like, 'Why do we spend so much time sitting around the Green Zone drinking beer and then suddenly go on a tear through the countryside?' The only downside is, if they figure out what you're really up to, they might want to take a piece of the action for themselves."

"The clay tablets."

Frost nodded.

"I think Coldstone's money finally made its mark. Peacock located the looted artifacts, or some of them, at any rate. . . . You said al-Tikriti was minister of culture."

"Among other things."

"The minister of culture would be in charge of museums. Al-Tikriti may have moved some of the National Museum artifacts even before the war started or after it became clear how badly it was going to turn out for the Baathists. He hid some choice pieces away someplace safe as a kind of insurance policy. If he had to flee and leave everything behind, he could sell them to crooked collectors like Coldstone, or he could use them as bargaining chips to gain immunity for himself and his family, from the U.S. or whatever government emerged in Iraq after the war. These artifacts are Iraq's patrimony. It's as if someone made off with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. You'd hate the son of a bitch who stole them, but you'd pay almost any price to get them back."

"There's something else that fits," Julia said. "Al-Tikriti was head of the Iraq state oil company during the oil-for-food program. You remember, the UN allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy humanitarian goods—food, medicine, other essentials. The program was hugely corrupt. The Iraqis sold a lot more oil than they were allowed to by the UN. Some of the money from those clandestine sales went to the Iraqi government, some of it wound up in the pockets of corrupt officials, both Iraqis and UN employees who were supposed to be supervising the program. A lot of the oil was sold at less than the going world price, so oil companies that violated the UN sanctions were guaranteed a huge profit once they sold it on the spot market. All they had to do was make a secret deal with Saddam or one of his lieutenants, pay a few UN officials to look the other way and falsify a few documents."

"And Coldstone's in the oil business," Frost said.

"More specifically, Coldstone is in the Persian Gulf oil business. His father was one of the original Texas wildcatters who struck it big. He desperately wanted a piece of the Persian Gulf. When he was frozen out of the big ARAMCO consortium that turned Saudi Arabia into an oil giant, he went around the Gulf making deals with all the lesser states—Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait."

"And Iraq."

"That came later, after Coldstone Senior was dead and T. Rex had taken over the company. After the Baathists came to power, T. Rex made some deals with them. Not drilling or developing oil fields, but marketing their production. He supposedly helped U.S. intelligence by providing entrée to Saddam's inner circle during the Iran-Iraq war, back when we were on Saddam's side."

Julia stood, retrieved the carafe of coffee from the kitchen and filled their cups.

"The kicker," she continued, "is that Coldstone was widely suspected of violating the oil-for-food program by using a bunch of dummy companies to ship and market the illegal oil. The FBI was alleged to have investigated him, but nothing ever came of it—whether because there was nothing to the rumors or for some other reason isn't clear."

"Some other reason like political clout," Frost said.

"Al-Tikriti must have been heavily involved in the oil-for-food program as head of the state oil company."

"So Coldstone and al-Tikriti already had a corrupt relationship. If Coldstone could find him, there's a good chance he'd agree to come out from hiding and bring the looted artifacts with him, because al-Tikriti knows that Coldstone is someone just like him, someone he can do business with." Frost drained his coffee cup and regarded Julia with a look of wonder. "How do you know all this?"

Julia cocked her head toward the living room, where her Mac was set up next to the old laptop Thad had used.

"I did a little research this morning while you were sleeping. I'll bet if we searched the Internet long enough, we could find a picture of T. Rex Coldstone shaking hands with Saddam Hussein."

"Or Amir Nabil al-Tikriti."

"If it really is al-Tikriti, we should tell someone," Julia said gravely.

"I don't know that my amateur photography is going to convince anyone, but you're right. It might also be our only chance to get a foot over the moat that protects Coldstone."

Frost excused himself, took his newly charged cellphone and stepped outside to call Jerry Sirica at home. One of the children answered, and as he waited for Daddy to be fetched, Frost pictured the San Fernando Valley ranch house. It was the perfect icon of placid, middle-class life in America, set among quiet streets with sparkling, white sidewalks, trim houses with neat, uncluttered driveways, kids on bikes and skateboards. It was a life nothing like his own, but one precious to Sirica.

"Did you get my messages?" Sirica asked without even saying hello.

"What messages?" Frost asked.

"The ones I left last night on your home phone, your cellphone, your e-mail."

"I was out of town. My cellphone was out of power." There was a way of checking his e-mail from the phone, Frost knew, but he had never bothered to learn how to do it. "What's the message?"

"OK. But after I tell you, just let it be." Sirica took a deep breath. "You remember our friend Sundstrom, the Legatt in Baghdad?"

"Sure."

"He did a little checking around after I spoke to him. He called me yesterday to tell me that Peacock has bugged out."

"They've bugged out?"

"Stopped operations. Sent half their crew home a couple of weeks ago on their private jet. Most of the rest flew out commercial a couple days ago. There's just a couple of guys left, selling off the Hummers and other equipment."

"Half their guys left two weeks ago on their jet?" That confirmed that Pearse and Goetz didn't have to worry about Customs when they brought the Iraqi artifacts home, and why no trace of their flight home had turned up. Plum made up the story about their quitting and flying home through Kuwait or Jordan. If he had told Frost the truth, that Pearse and Goetz had come back on Peacock's plane, it might have led Frost to the discovery that Peacock was flying in and out of the country without being inspected by Customs or Immigration.

"Now," Sirica said, "just let it alone."

"Why? Why should I let it alone?"

"Just do it, Rick. Leave it be."

"You know I'm not going to."

"Rick," Sirica said, "I have a bad feeling about this. There's something more than meets the eye about Peacock. I sense it. It's dangerous to look too closely under the covers."

"You're just spooked because of that phone call from the Director."

"Rick, seriously, I'm telling you. Back off."

Frost considered it for a moment but knew he couldn't let that happen.

"It's too bad you feel that way," he said, "because I was going to share something with you about our dear friends at Peacock."

"Oh, fuck me," Sirica said. "What?"

"Have you ever heard of Amir Nabil al-Tikriti? Of course not. He's the highest-ranking Baathist still on the list of the missing. The King of Hearts. I saw him the other night east of Palmdale, getting off Peacock's plane and driving away in cars owned by T. Rex Coldstone." There was silence on the other end. That was happening a lot lately. "Did you hear?"

"I heard you. I suppose you have proof of this."

"Photographs. I was a couple of hundred yards away so the image isn't the greatest, but it's him, there's no doubt. There's no mistaking that orange hair of his. Someone could perform a computerized analysis of the photos against known exemplars, comparing nose-to-chin and knee-to-hip ratios and whatnot, but there's no time for that. You have to move fast. He won't be holed up at Coldstone's forever."

"At Coldstone's? You mean, his house?"

"They might have stashed him at a safe house, but I doubt it," Frost said. "Coldstone is a control freak. He'd want to keep al-Tikriti at his fingertips until he was sure he'd delivered the goods. Which in this case is a bunch of artifacts stolen from the Iraqi National Museum. That's what Peacock was set up to do—find al-Tikriti and trade him a pampered place in exile for access to the loot. They were unloading boxes from the plane when I took off after their cars. I assumed it was just luggage, but now I think they were unloading the artifacts. The plane might even have turned around to go back for more, for all we know. Coldstone would want to have all the artifacts checked out first before he gave al-Tikriti the keys to his retirement home. Franklin Diebold's his expert. His shop assistant told me yesterday that he'd only gotten in a half-hour before I came to see him. He probably spent most of the day up in Santa Isidora making sure Coldstone hadn't bought a bunch of fakes. Unfortunately, our interview didn't go so well, so I never got to ask him how his day had been going."

"If you're so sure of all of this," Sirica said, "why don't you go up to Coldstone's house and arrest him?"

"Harboring Iraqi war criminals is a Federal offense, not a local one. So is smuggling Iraqi antiquities. Plus . . ."

"Plus what?"

"Plus I have been suspended." He laid out what had happened the day before. "Getting to Coldstone through al-Tikriti is the only way to get to him for Thad Pearse's murder. You can do that for me—you can get to Coldstone."

"And just how am I supposed to do that?"

"Go after al-Tikriti. Come down on Coldstone. Flip Diebold."

Another long, ponderous silence.

"Rick, I owe you a lot," Sirica said. "You saved my career. You may have saved my marriage and family. It was a big, big sacrifice and I know it. I am not an ingrate. But you are asking too much. Bring down T. Rex Coldstone on the basis of a photo—one that you say is this al-Tikriti character? I can't help you on this one. This is too hot. Peacock is radioactive. It is protected at levels of power and influence you and I cannot imagine." Frost heard the sound of children playing in the background. "Give the photos to the L.A. Times if you're so sure of this thing. But I can't go near it. You have to understand that."

"OK, Jerry. I understand." He did. He understood.

"Rick, I'm sorry. But, Rick . . . You need to let this one go. Take a pass. Sometimes that's just the way things are. You know it as well as I. Liberty and justice for all—it's a nice sentiment, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way. Sometimes the bad guys win. It sucks. It's not fair. It's not right. But it happens all the time. It's the system. You know that perfectly well."

He did. He knew it perfectly well.

## 26

IF WE CAN really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem. Frost, still standing on the walkway outside Julia's front door, contemplated Krishnamurti's advice.

The problem hadn't changed: there was no proof. No witnesses and precious little evidence. He could not prove that the clay fragments found at the Twin Pines belonged to Thad or if they did, that they were related to his slaying. Even if one of Coldstone's minions had been captured on video on the highway near the time of the murder, the closest cameras were a mile away and could not provide a direct link to the motel. Thad's phone call to Diebold proved nothing, even if Diebold were to admit receiving it.

As for the rest of it—Coldstone, Peacock, al-Tikriti, looted Iraqi artifacts—all that was just wild speculation, or so any competent defense attorney would argue. A fairy tale from the tortured imagination of a cop with a checkered past. A stew of nonsense, rumor, lies and paranoid lunacy. You might as well assert that extraterrestials had descended in a UFO and murdered Pearse. Besides, everyone knew that Owen Goetz killed Pearse; that's what all the responsible, sane police officials said.

Not that it would ever get to court. Nogata would never pursue it. He would sweep it under the rug.

Time was everything now. Satisfied that al-Tikriti had delivered the genuine articles, Coldstone would spirit him away, forever out of sight and out of reach. The FBI was afraid to go after him, just as they had been when Coldstone profited from clandestine dealings with Saddam Hussein's regime to violate UN proscriptions on Iraqi oil exports.

There was not enough time to send pictures to the L.A. Times and wait for them to go after the story—if they, too, weren't afraid of Coldstone.

There was no time.

The solution had to be found today.

Frost knew he could crack Franklin Diebold if only he could get him alone in an interrogation room. He had smelled Diebold's weakness as clearly as a hunting dog scenting game. Diebold was venal and corrupt but Frost was certain he hadn't planned on getting mixed up in murder. He was vain, too, and that could be used to flip him. Trading in stolen antiquities was one thing, a sort of venerable, cheeky gentlemen's game, but murder flung Diebold down into the dark and scary pit of the human underworld and threatened his carefully crafted, delicate and refined image of himself.

Frost had gone at Diebold prematurely the day before, without knowing the whole story, and Diebold had thrown the hook. Now, though, Frost could put him in the boat. He was sure of it.

But he was suspended, off the case; and even if he weren't, if by some miracle Martinez allowed him to drag Diebold in for questioning, the antiquities dealer might lawyer up before Frost brought him to his psychological tipping point. Nothing was more frustrating than investing hours in the interrogation of a swaggering suspect, catching him up in lies and contradictions, bringing him right up to the edge of confession, only to have him suddenly recall his Miranda rights. That, though, was how the system worked. The system was all about the rights of the accused. The system had rules, regulations, procedures. The system was designed to protect the innocent, but part of the cost was that the guilty sometimes went free. To be a cop was to embrace the system, to become an organic part of it. To be a cop was to accept the system's limitations, to learn to walk away when the guilty went unpunished, when justice was miscarried, when injustice triumphed. You accepted the system or you got out of it.

You accepted it or you got out.

The answer will come out of the problem because the answer is not separate from the problem.

Frost punched in Leo Martinez's home number. Overhead, a Qantas jumbo jet made a long and lazy turn toward the Pacific and home.

"Leo," Frost said when Martinez answered. "It's 8:37 a.m., Saturday, October 12. I am officially resigning from the Santa Isidora Police Department as of this moment. I'll send an e-mail to confirm."

"Frost, what the . . ."

"I'll turn in my weapon and shield as soon as I have the chance."

Frost hung up, walked inside and used the old laptop to log on to his e-mail account. At least he wasn't completely tech-illiterate. He sent Martinez an e-mail confirming that he was tendering his resignation with immediate effect.

If you were a cop, you were part of the system.

You had to play by the rules.

If you weren't a cop, you didn't.

_

Franklin Diebold's modernist house, all square angles and glass, perched precariously atop a pinnacle at the end of Manzanita Canyon. Long columns supporting the rear half of the house spiked into the scrub-covered hillside that dropped off at a forty-five degree angle beneath. Diebold wasn't listed in the phone book, but Julia had found his address in public property-tax records. Frost hadn't told her why he wanted it, and when he left twenty minutes later he told her he was meeting Jerry Sirica.

The curtains were drawn on the wall of glass and the garage door was closed. Diebold's shop didn't open until noon on Saturdays, so Frost hoped he was still at home. He parked across the street in the shade of a pepper tree. He strolled across the pavement and up Diebold's pink-tiled walk, instinctively checking the small of his back for the reassuring presence of his Glock.

He peered into the darkened living room through a small opening between window and curtain and gave the brass knob on the front door a tentative twist. The door gave way and he stepped inside. The interior was cool, the lights off. Frost closed the door quietly behind him and began a slow, methodical search.

The house was empty.

Disappointed, Frost sat in one of Diebold's dining-room chairs. The curtains on the back plate-glass windows had been left open. He took in the view. The Santa Monica Mountains spread toward the Pacific and a nearby reservoir glimmered in the full sun. Frost decided he might as well go out on the back deck and enjoy the scenery for a while as he pondered what to do next. As he stood up, he noticed a pale white residue on the arms of the chair next to him. Looking closer, he saw the same substance on the chair back and legs. It was sticky to the touch.

Frost opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck. It never failed to amaze him that people in earthquake-prone Los Angeles lived in houses like this one, set on stilts over a steep canyon. He looked over the side of the railing. It was a long way down and there was a lot of air under the structure. It was hard to see how the house would survive if the earth started shaking.

A glint of white halfway down the hill caught his attention. He thought at first it was a large bundle, like a hotel laundry bag, but as he looked more intently he made out a pair of legs in white trousers.

Frost crept carefully down the slope to the body. It was Franklin Diebold. His face was banged up and bloody, but not so much so as to suggest a bullet or a bludgeoning. It was hard to say where he had landed and how far he had rolled after, but it seemed likely he had pitched—or been pitched—over the railing of his deck and come tumbling into the dirt and rocks below, sustaining the injuries to his head and face.

Frost sat on a large rock next to the body. Diebold's beard was dirty and spattered with blood. His mouth was open, the teeth dark red with caked-on blood.

He looked like he was trying to tell Frost something.

Frost climbed back up the hill and reentered the house. He went back to the dining room, took another look at the chairs. Only one had the sticky substance. He scraped a bit off with his fingernail and rubbed it between thumb and index finger. He had a pretty good idea now why Owen Goetz had adhesive residue on his hands when he was found.

Frost had a difficult time finding a pay phone—they were as rare as snow leopards nowadays—but finally located one near a bus stop on Wilshire Boulevard. He phoned 911 and reported a dead body in Manzanita Canyon, giving Diebold's address. He declined to give his name. He also declined the opportunity to offer his opinion that the victim's neck had probably been broken before he went down the hill.

He drove back to Westwood and parked down the street from Julia's. Time and his options were both running out. Diebold was dead. He couldn't intimidate a corpse into implicating Coldstone in Thad's murder. It had been a weak thread on which to hang his hopes and now even it was gone.

He thought about Sirica's advice: just let it go. Admit there were circumstances over which he had no control. He had banged his head repeatedly against a brick wall to assuage the responsibility he felt for Rashid Smoots' death and in the end he had only done injury to himself.

There would be no justice for Thad but the oceans wouldn't boil over, birds would not drop from the sky.

He had found a life with Julia, maybe, just maybe, after so many years of drifting in emptiness. Preserve that, above all else. Preserve himself. He was trapped in a dead-end street, maneuvered there by T. Rex Coldstone.

_

Corner a dog in a dead-end street, the Chinese said, and he will turn and bite. He was the dog, Frost told Julia, after he told her where he had been and what he had found. There was only one thing left to do and that was to turn on Coldstone and bite him. Attack him directly. There was no time left for subtleties. Al-Tikriti would vanish into the ether. The Iraqi loot would be sequestered beyond reach. The paper trail on Peacock would go up in smoke. T. Rex Coldstone would, as he always had, pay no price for the human wreckage he had caused.

Julia wanted to know what he was planning to do.

Jump the moat surrounding his fortress, Frost said. Tear down the walls. Pull back the curtain. Reveal the Wizard.

"I don't know what you mean," Julia said apprehensively.

"I'm going to get inside Coldstone's house," Frost said. "Tonight. I'm going to find al-Tikriti and I'm going to march out the front door with him, the stolen artifacts, or both."

A look of worry washed over Julia's face.

"What are you saying?"

"There's not enough evidence to get a search warrant for Coldstone's house, his cars, his offices. Even if there were, there's not enough time. But if I can get inside the house, find al-Tikriti or the artifacts, that will be enough. Enough probable cause for search warrants, subpoenas. Enough to get the Feds involved."

"Are you talking about breaking in to his house? Rick, you can't do that. You're a policeman."

Frost smiled.

"I forgot to mention that I'm no longer a cop. I resigned this morning." Julia took a step backward. "It was the only way, Julia. If I'm a cop, I have to play by the rules. If I had dragged Diebold in for questioning I would have had to stop the second he asked for a lawyer. But if I'm a private citizen I can ignore all that. He could have demanded his Miranda rights all day but I could have kept after him. Even if I had gotten him to confess by scaring the hell out of him—and I'm sure I could have—the evidence would've been admissible." He removed a mini tape recorder from his coat pocket and tossed it on the couch.

"I thought about hopping the fence and breaking into the house," Frost said. "I know where to do it. I know the house well—I searched it twice looking for evidence against Jake Ballard. And breaking and entering is only a misdemeanor. But it's too risky in the dark. Coldstone has this weird, strict lights-out policy at ten. The staff thinks it comes from his military-school days. I think it's because he enjoys controlling other people. Everyone has to comply if they want to avoid his wrath. I think it's just possible that Jake finally let Maria go because he was afraid Coldstone would discover he had been up after curfew. He was more afraid of being found out for that than for having kidnapped a girl and imprisoning her in the basement."

"How do you plan to get in, then? Are you planning on getting yourself invited into the house?"

"In a way, yes. I'm going to file a false police report. I'll be sitting outside his house. Lights out at ten. At ten-thirty I'm going to call 911 and say I'm being held hostage at the Coldstone house by Jake Ballard. I'll say he left the room for a minute and I managed to get my cellphone out from where I'd had a chance to hide it. The SIPD will have to dispatch a black-and-white, probably two. I'll follow them right in. Everyone in the house will be a little disoriented from having just gone to bed only to be rousted in their pajamas. They'll have to let us search the house. Even Coldstone won't be able to prevent it, not when there's a possible kidnapping in progress. He can threaten and bluster all he wants but he'll have to let us—me—search every room, including all the guest rooms."

"But you quit," Julia said. "You aren't even a cop anymore."

"The uniformed cops won't know that and if for some reason they've heard about it, I'll just say they heard wrong. I only need ten minutes."

"Misrepresenting oneself as a police officer is a criminal offense."

Frost shrugged his shoulders.

"I shouldn't have to misrepresent myself. Coldstone will assume I'm still on the force, just like the patrol officers. But if I have to show my badge and declare I'm a cop, so be it. If I come out of the house with al-Tikriti it won't matter. No one will give a damn how I got him."

Julia shook her head.

"Do you really think you can make yourself sound like a woman on the phone, with that baritone voice of yours?"

"Enough to fool the 911 dispatcher."

"I could do it for you."

"No." Frost shook his head emphatically. "If this thing blows up—if there's no al-Tikriti, no Iraqi artifacts—then I go down alone. You have a law license to protect. I've got nothing anymore."

Julia wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.

"You have me," she said. She began to tremble. "I'm worried. It sounds dangerous. You don't know what these people are capable of."

"I know all too well," he said. He kissed her on the forehead. "Julia, this is the only way. I have to be honest with you. I don't think I will ever be able to prove that Coldstone was involved in Thad's death. He has to go down for something else—for al-Tikriti and the Iraqi artifacts. If this doesn't work, Coldstone will get away with it. Just as he made sure his stepson Jake got away with kidnapping and terrorizing Maria Valenzuela. I can't let him get away with it a second time."

"How much of this is about Maria and Jake?" Julia's eyes were filling with tears. "I'm so afraid I'll lose you."

"It's about Maria. It's about Thad. It's about Rashid Smoots, in a way." He held her, kissed her a long time. "It's about justice. Justice for Maria and Thad. And Owen Goetz and even Franklin Diebold and everyone else whose lives Coldstone has trampled on over the years. A little part of it may be for those crazy kids sitting up in the trees. And part of it is that he makes me mad. Coldstone offends me. It offends me that he has gotten away with so much over the years. . . . This probably won't work. But it's the only chance I see. It may be the only chance I have left to do some good. Doing good is man's most glorious task, you know," he added, laughing.

"Rick, a couple of men were here earlier looking for you," she said, startling him.

"Who? Did they say who they were? What did they look like?"

"They didn't say who they were. They were dressed in suits." She breathed in, exhaled. "I told them you had gone down to La Jolla to spend the weekend with your mother. I don't know why I told them that."

"You couldn't have thought of anything better," he said. "That was perfect."

"Who do you think they were?"

"I don't know. I don't want to know. We have to get out of here," he said.

They couldn't stay. The LAPD was bound to connect him to Diebold's death and show up at her door, if the two men who had come earlier weren't themselves from the LAPD. That seemed unlikely; it would have been fast footwork on their part. Did she have someone she could stay with?

"I'm not leaving you, Rick," Julia said.

"Julia, please. This isn't a game. I don't think you're in any real danger, but . . ."

"I'm not leaving your side," she said firmly. "I'm going with you to Santa Isidora."

She was determined. He could see there would be no talking her out of it.

They parked his Rabbit two miles away and went in the sky-blue Prius Julia had bought to replace the Civic Thad had been driving when he was killed. Frost wanted to be certain his house was not being watched and they were less likely to draw attention in the Prius. If his house was hot, he planned to leave Julia with Candelaria Valenzuela.

If she were going to be waiting at his house when he went after Coldstone, however, he wanted someone there with her, someone he could trust.

He called Jerry Sirica. Messages on his home phone and cellphone said he would be in Pasadena all day attending his daughter's soccer league tournament. Frost left voicemail messages on both phones.

"Jerry," he said, "I need to ask you for one last favor, an important one. Tonight. No time to explain. You won't be able to get me on any of my phones. Call Julia's cell. You have the number. On the business card she gave you."

He turned off his cellphone and removed the SIM card. He didn't want anyone to be able to reach him or to track his location. He assumed that removing the card was enough to prevent the phone from pinging, but just to be sure he flung both the SIM card and the phone out the window on the I-405 on the way out of town.

## 27

THEY TOOK THE long route via the Pacific Coast Highway to eat up some time. Frost wanted to arrive at his house just before he set off for Coldstone's mansion. He bought a cheap cellphone at a convenience store in Malibu for the 911 call. They visited a winery in Santa Paulina. They ate dinner in Divine Glen.

They cruised Frost's block and the blocks surrounding three times before he was satisfied there was no surveillance. They parked the Prius a block over and cut through his neighbor's backyard, entering his house from the rear. Frost pulled down the blinds and turned off the lights except for the sixty-watt bulb in the kitchen. He unplugged the phone.

They sat at the small kitchen table in silence. The stillness reminded Frost of the emptiness in the air as his family gathered around his father's hospital bed. Michael Frost was a fragile shell of his formerly robust self, thin and wasted and wan, laid low by a coronary and the hospital-borne infection that would eventually kill him. Frost was seventeen and when he lost his father he lost his lodestar. He had been looking for it ever since.

Someone needed to come and stay with Julia; one way or the other, it promised to be a long night. He had tried Jerry Sirica twice more from the road, only to hear the same message. Candelaria Valenzuela, he decided, had enough troubles of her own. Martha Oleske would be out on a date. He closed his eyes and searched in his mind for someone to call. He came up dry. Annie Nystad had been right about one thing: he had no friends.

Reluctantly, he phoned the one person he could think of.

Jim Madden gave him a cool hello.

"Jim, I need a favor," Frost said. "An important one. Now. Right this minute." He paused to take a deep breath. "I'm sorry about last night. I'm sorry about a lot of things. You're right. I haven't always given you the proper amount of respect. You deserved better from me."

"Water under the bridge," Madden said. "I got a little hot-headed myself, said a lot of things I didn't mean. What's this favor you want?"

"I need you to come to my place and watch over someone, make sure she's safe. For an hour or two."

"Who? Who have you got there who needs baby-sitting?"

"Julia Pearse."

"Julia is at your place, huh? Why does she need watching?"

"I have to go out for a while."

"Is she in any danger?"

Madden's question lingered, an unwelcome guest.

"I don't think so," he said. "I'd just feel better if someone were here with her."

Madden let five seconds tick by, ten. His labored breathing whistled through his septum.

"Rick, does Leo Martinez know you're in town? He called me three times today wanting to know if I'd heard from you."

"No, Leo doesn't know I'm back from L.A., and I'd just as soon he doesn't know for a little while longer. Please, Jim. It's important."

"What are you up to, Iceman? Please don't tell me this is about Thad Pearse. You know where that stands. I have a bad feeling."

"Don't. Don't have a bad feeling. Just come over here and sit with Julia until you hear from me. That's all you need to know. That's all you want to know."

"Flora's going to want to know where I'm going all of a sudden."

"Tell her it's police business. She should be used to it."

"OK, fine," he said. "I'll be over there in twenty minutes."

"Thanks. I owe you one." Frost had one last question. "Who's the on-call detective tonight?"

"Skeezix," Madden said. That was good news. Ron Smith was a reluctant weekend warrior. It would take him at least a half an hour to respond to the 911 call and join up with the patrol units dispatched to the house. That would be more than enough time.

It was time to go. Frost told Julia that Madden would come to stay with her; she should check through the peephole that it was him before opening the door. He would try to find out what Frost was up to. She should play dumb. Madden might feel the pull of departmental loyalty and quash the 911 call. He kissed her goodbye and told her to expect a call on her cell within the next couple of hours.

He would be calling to tell her he had Amir Nabil al-Tikriti in custody, or that he was in jail and needed to be bailed out.

He waited until after he got into Julia's Prius to check the magazine in his Glock.

_

Frost arrived at Coldstone's house at nine forty-five, placing the Prius in the same vantage point where he had waited in vain for Jake to show himself. The guard was in the gatehouse, reading a book. He would pose no obstacle to the patrol officers when they demanded entry to the estate.

If he was going to back out, now was the time. The smart move was to drive home, take Julia in his arms, make love to her, wake up next to her in the morning.

Had he ever made the smart move? Ever made a real choice for himself? He had wandered as if lost in a dark wood, his choices not made but avoided.

For better or worse, he was making a choice now. It might blow up in his face but it would be a mess of his own making.

The lights were still burning at five past ten. Frost checked his watch, a cheap Japanese model.

Fifteen minutes later the lights still blazed. He would wait. He wanted them all in bed, asleep or nodding off, before he made the 911 call.

The lights were on at ten-thirty. By eleven, Frost worried that no one was home. If the house was empty, the game was over. Al-Tikriti gone. Artifacts gone.

He waited. At eleven-thirty he withdrew the Glock from its holster and checked the magazine again. Full.

At midnight he turned off the automatic dome light and stepped out of the car to stretch.

The lights were on at twelve-thirty, quarter to one, one.

A little after one, a soft thump followed by the hum of an electric motor drew Frost's attention to the carriage-house garage. Two of the four doors were opening. Frost watched the door panels lift out of sight. Two black Jeep Cherokees emerged and drove slowly to the head of the circular driveway. Jake got out from the driver's side of the lead Cherokee, Hendrik Pretorius, Coldstone's associate from that day at the museum, from the other. Seeing Pretorius now, Frost was convinced he had been the tall, fair-haired man on the tarmac the night the Peacock Gulfstream arrived with al-Tikriti.

Al-Tikriti came out of the front door, his hand on the elbow of T. Rex Coldstone. His wife followed a step behind, carrying a canvas bag. Jake held the door as the Iraqis entered the back seat. Coldstone got in the front. Al-Tikriti's son, a bulging white plastic shopping bag in his hand, clambered into the front passenger seat of the second Cherokee while the young couple, carrying plastic bags and their infant child, entered the back.

Jake and Pretorius climbed in the vehicles and they made their way down the drive. The guard stood in the gatehouse as the electric gates swung open and the Cherokees filed through. They turned right on Overlook Drive, away from Frost, and gathered speed.

Frost turned the Prius over and pursued them, his mind whirring. The departure from the estate had upset the plan. Al-Tikriti was within his grasp, but he couldn't stop the Cherokees on his own. Jake wouldn't hesitate to plow over the Prius if he tried to block them.

He grabbed the cellphone from his pocket. He'd have to modify the story he would tell the 911 dispatcher but he could still make it work.

The Cherokees surprised him by turning down Arroyo Seco Avenue. He had expected them to head to the highway out of town.

He breathed more easily, let up on the accelerator. They were heading to the museum. One last favor for al-Tikriti, a private tour of the great man's collection of treasures.

Coldstone was the one caught in a dead end now.

Frost switched off the Prius' headlights as he swung the car onto Arroyo Seco. He took in a lungful of air, feeling the tension of the chase leaving him. He had them. He would give Coldstone and his companions five minutes to settle in before bringing the SIPD down on them. He would tell the 911 dispatcher a group of armed men had taken hostages at the museum and were making off with priceless works of art.

The SIPD would send every black-and-white there was.

His relief turned to despair as he passed the crest and dropped into the dell and saw the museum parking lot.

He counted four black Chevy Suburbans and two dark-blue Ford Econoline vans as well as the two Cherokees. He brought the Prius to a dead stop.

"Fuck," he said.

Two dozen men, and a couple of women, formed a perimeter around the vehicles. Clad in identical black pants and black windbreakers, each stood with feet planted firmly on the asphalt, Uzi submachine gun held aloft at a forty-five degree angle away from the body. Frost knew the uniform well, knew the stance and the weapons, just as he knew the identical Suburbans with their black-tinted windows, the blue hue of the vans, and the distinctive blue-and-white license plates all of them had. He had seen them all when he worked on the task force in Westlake.

Feds.

He observed two men in suits standing to one side, one speaking into a handheld radio. Al-Tikriti embraced Coldstone, kissing him on both cheeks. Al-Tikriti's wife, the edges of her headscarf flapping in the light breeze, put down her canvas bag and clasped her hands together as if in prayer, bowing to the billionaire before kissing his hands. Coldstone patted her on the shoulder. She and her husband, escorted by one of the men in suits, entered the lead van. Their children and grandchild would already be in one or the other.

Frost backed the Prius up slowly, then wheeled it, still in reverse, into the small subdivision that stood a hundred yards from the museum. He came to a stop in front of the third house in on the right, a Pueblo Revival-style with a red tiled roof, wrought-iron railings and a FOR SALE sign posted in the front yard. He rolled down the front windows, turned off the ignition and lay back in the seat. He listened as the engines of the government vehicles roared to life. He watched, his eyes barely above the level of the dash, as the convoy of Suburbans and vans drove past the clump of homes toward whatever new home and new life the U.S. government had promised Amir Nabil al-Tikriti and his brood.

The CIA, the military, the FBI, or some other outfit from the alphabet soup of agencies that was the Department of Homeland Security. . . . It didn't really matter. The King of Hearts had vanished, whisked away on a magic carpet ride to a new identity courtesy of the U.S. government. What did they have in store for the former Baathist deputy leader and minister of culture? A quiet retirement in a seaside cottage in Key West? A condo and yacht club membership in Marina del Rey? A sprawling ranch house with a to-die-for view of the Grand Tetons? It didn't matter what Faustian bargain the government had made with al-Tikriti, whether it was to give up the whereabouts of his former comrades who were still at large, to lead the Americans to leaders of the insurgency or the factories where they made their roadside bombs, or to cough up the numbers to the secret bank accounts in which Saddam Hussein had stashed away billions. None of that mattered. Frost had the pictures of al-Tikriti arriving on Peacock's plane but they were worthless now. They could be explained away as a case of mistaken identity, denounced as fakes. Once in the maw of the government, al-Tikriti would evanesce, evaporate. He would no longer exist. If Frost claimed to have seen him he, too, would be denounced. He would be consigned in public opinion to the same book of fantasies in which con men and half-wits and paranoids recounted their tales of malodorous, screeching Sasquatches, aliens with mozzarella-white skin and penetrating plum-colored eyes, black helicopters chopping through the wilderness at night ferrying UN troops in the service of the Zionist Occupation Government. . . .

The Iraqi loot would never see the light of day again. It didn't matter now where Coldstone had it hidden—his mansion, his apartment in New York, his castle in Ireland, his private Caribbean island. Like stolen Rembrandts, the artifacts would be reserved for the great man's private viewing—with a government stamp of approval. Like Tiberius at the end of his reign, T. Rex Coldstone had conquered his empire and given himself over to the pursuit of personal pleasures. While Tiberius spent his final years on Capri leading a life of sexual debauchery beyond the imagination of any man who did not command the power of a Roman emperor, Coldstone was engaged in a different sort of debauchery, using his own almost unlimited resources to satisfy a perverted lust for treasures that rightly belonged not to him, but to the world. How better to prove to yourself what a Colossus you have become? If fleas like Thad Pearse got in your way you squashed them, because that's what great men do.

Let it go. Embrace the great man's latest thrashing.

He had been too slow, too stupid. Now he was simply too late.

Let God sort it out in the next life, if there was one.

Frost walked through the darkened subdivision to Arroyo Seco. The museum parking lot was now deserted except for the Cherokees. That was odd. Where had the guards parked their cars? A tiny glimmer of light was shining through the museum entrance but the perimeter lights were off. That was odd, too.

A pair of headlights flashed in the distance, approaching. Frost ducked behind an azalea bush and crouched. If the U.S. government was on its way back, he didn't want it to find him.

The Dodge Ram pickup was almost on him before he recognized it as Jim Madden's. He caught a glimpse of Julia in the passenger seat, her face pale, as Madden flew by. He crept out from the bush and reached the side of the road in time to witness Madden pulling into the parking lot. He brought the pickup to a halt by the museum entrance. He ran around to the passenger side and took Julia by the arm, leading her up the steps.

Even at this distance, Frost could see the gun Madden held in his hand, pressed into Julia's back.

## 28

FROST FLIPPED OPEN the convenience-store cellphone and punched in 911. Nothing happened.

He had no bars. He was in the wireless dead zone that surrounded the museum. Every direction in the compass produced the same result.

He had to think.

He could run to the car and drive until he found a signal and call 911. But how far would he have to go—a hundred feet or a mile? Julia could be bundled up and taken away before he or the SIPD patrol cars he had called down got to the museum.

She could be dead before he got to her.

He had no time. He had to get inside the museum.

He had to find her.

Now.

He unholstered the Glock and ran down the road. He could get in through the drainpipe into the central courtyard, following the route the Ninjas had taken, but the outfall was nearly a hundred yards behind the museum. Then he would have to crawl through the pipe to the courtyard.

There wasn't enough time.

He would have to go in through the front.

As he bounded the hedge that bordered the parking lot, he cast his eyes at the security cameras covering the front of the museum. They could see him coming.

So be it. He snapped off the automatic's safety.

He reached the building and vaulted over the railing onto the wheelchair ramp. He dashed up the incline, hugging the marble front wall. He took brief refuge behind a Doric column in the entrance plaza.

The museum front doors were wide open, no guards in sight.

Frost understood. It made sense. If you were handing off an Iraqi war criminal to a government agency, you'd do it in the dark of night with no inconvenient witnesses around. You'd turn off the lights and give the guards the night off. Tell them that their supervisors would look after the place while they enjoyed an unaccustomed free night with their families.

He burst through the entrance, expecting to be fired upon at any moment. He took cover behind a black marble statue of Pan —a late Roman copy of an earlier Greek original, according to a small brass plaque on its pedestal. The right-hand side of the interior was pitch dark; a faint glow emanated from the left. He made his way to the left, checking behind him periodically. He stopped and listened when he reached the long exhibit hallway. He heard only the low hum of the air conditioning and his own rapid breathing.

He sprinted across to the far side of the hall, opposite the courtyard windows. Positioning himself between the outer wall and the parade of Greco-Roman figures that ran all the way to the back, he took measured steps toward the rear of the museum. The light, he saw now, was coming from a stairwell that led under the first floor.

He knelt at the top when he reached the stairs, peering cautiously down the steps. A ceiling vent blasted him with cold air. He descended the stairs cautiously, quietly, laying the soles of his feet on each step as daintily as an English duchess fingering a cucumber sandwich. Two narrow hallways met at right angles at the bottom of the stairwell. Directly in front a short, dark passage led to a door labeled MAINTENANCE. An incandescent glow came from a hallway to his left.

He chose to go left. He jiggled the handles on two unlabeled steel doors that led off the corridor. They were locked. He paused at the end of the hallway. On the left was an alcove with a water fountain. Drawing himself up and cradling the Glock in both hands, he spun around the corner to the right into a shooting stance. Ten feet in front of him was a metal door, slightly ajar, light escaping through the crack. He checked his back. It was clear. He edged his way to the door. Keeping his automatic at chest level, he eased the door open with his foot.

Frost stepped through the door into a small storage room, twenty-five feet square. The oily sweet smell of fresh paint permeated the air. Cardboard boxes, disassembled packing crates, bubble wrap, paper and straw had been heaped in one corner. Metal shelf units fifteen feet long by eight feet high lined both sides of the room, stocked with vases and urns, figurines made of clay and carved from stone. He saw a red-and-yellow pot with handles in the shape of snakes and a bowl adorned with sunflowers. A chalk-colored goblet with elephants lumbering around the rim and a marble bust of a woman with no nose. There was a bronze bas-relief of a bull and a terracotta representation of a jackal and a small rectangular plate with scenes of fighting lions inlaid in copper, oxidized green with age. There were clay tablets. Square tablets and oblong tablets and tablets broken into shards.

Frost's eyes landed on a folding table in the middle of the room near the far wall. Reposing on top was a two-foot-high golden statue of a man with jutting jaw, stylized, square-cut hair and beard, a mask covering his forehead and eyes, his arms crossed against his chest.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

_

Frost spun on his heels, Glock at the ready.

T. Rex Coldstone stood in the doorway, posture relaxed, one hand in the pocket of his gray slacks, white hair neatly coifed, looking as if he'd just stepped off the eighteenth green and into the clubhouse. Jake and Hendrik Pretorius occupied his flanks, automatics leveled at Frost.

"It's my favorite of the collection," Coldstone said, strolling into the room, removing his hand from his pocket to gesture at the statue. "It almost has to be, of course. The 'Sumerian King,' gold laid over bronze, circa twenty-five hundred B.C. Like nothing else from its time. Exquisite. Such refined workmanship and exacting detail." He held his hand out, palm up, offering to take Frost's weapon. Frost drew the Glock back, kept it aimed at Coldstone's heart. "Very well," Coldstone said airily. "I understand. You're still trying to figure out what your situation is. Working the odds. I have seen it innumerable times in business negotiations. Someone comes into the room, tries to assess where he stands. What can he gain, what can he profit? Who is vulnerable, who can he take advantage of, who does he have to watch out for?" Coldstone smiled, showing teeth. "That is why I never go into a negotiation unless I know what the outcome is beforehand. The other fellow may believe he has some influence over how the deal comes out but in reality it's already preordained. Preordained. You understand?"

Frost cocked the hammer of his automatic. Jake and Pretorius did the same to theirs.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

"Miss Pearse is fine," Coldstone said.

"Bring her here."

"Shut up, asshole," Jake said. "You're in no position to make demands."

"Jacob," Coldstone said, his head turning almost imperceptibly in his stepson's direction, "there's no call for that." He nodded at Pretorius. The South African uncocked his weapon, slipped it into his coat pocket and left the room.

Coldstone walked to the table, Frost matching him step by step, maintaining his aim on the billionaire's sternum. Coldstone reached out and touched the statuette, stroking it as one would pet a Persian cat. He trembled slightly.

More perverse even than Tiberius.

"A man in my position faces many questions," Coldstone said, his fingers playing over the gold. "Existential questions. Once one's material needs have been met completely, what is life all about?" He regarded Frost serenely. "What gives meaning to existence? Power? Glory? Or is it something higher, grander, more sublime? Something that takes us beyond this nasty and brutish human life, that lifts us above the drudgery and squalor of the human condition. That calls us to a higher purpose. That animates the spirit, elevates the soul above its state of degradation and sloth."

Pretorius returned, pushing Julia in front of him. Her eyes were wide with fear, her skin ashen. Jim Madden sidled through the doorway. He slipped over to his right, to the corner of the room where the boxes and packing materials had been heaped together. Frost looked at him with contempt and Madden averted his eyes.

Frost held out his left arm, beckoning Julia, while keeping his right and the Glock aimed at Coldstone.

Coldstone nodded to Pretorius, and he slowly marched Julia toward Frost.

"Close enough, Blondie," Frost said when Pretorius was within ten feet.

Pretorius grinned and gave Julia a shove. She stumbled the rest of the way and Frost took her by the waist with his left arm, pulling her in.

"Are you all right?" he asked. Julia nodded. The skin around her wrists was red. Madden must have had her in cuffs. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," she said, trembling. "This is all my fault."

"Don't blame her," Madden said from his corner.

"Shut the fuck up, Madden," Frost snarled. "You're lucky I don't take your head off right now."

"I used a ruse, Iceman. I knew whatever you were up to involved Pearse and . . . Mr. Coldstone. I had Flora call me a few minutes after I got to your house. I told Julia it was you, that you were in trouble, you needed my help right away. Then I pretended you were cut off before you could tell me where you were." Frost looked at Julia. She nodded, hands covering her mouth. He squeezed her shoulder. "Don't feel bad, Julia. No one lies like a policeman."

"So you set me up. You told them where I was. And they put al-Tikriti in the car and drove him here to get me here."

"Like drawing a moth to a flame," Jake said, beaming like he'd just won the Olympic decathlon. "We had to move up the delivery schedule, but the Feds were totally accommodating. You are so gullible, Frost. Pathetic."

In retrospect, Frost couldn't argue the point.

"You're still going to wind up in Folsom someday, boy. They have a code. They don't like rapists up there." Frost tilted his head in Coldstone's direction while staring at Madden. "How long have you worked for this asshole?"

"It's not like that," Madden said, looking at the floor, shuffling bubble wrap with a foot.

"You made the evidence in the Valenzuela case disappear."

"Yes." Madden looked at him. "I had to, Rick. I had a really bad run at the casinos. I was into them for a fortune. You don't know what it's like. You have no life, no family. No obligations. I've got a mortgage to pay, a girlfriend to support, alimony to two exes to pay. I was desperate. I saw an opportunity and I took it. Mr. Coldstone was very grateful . . . and generous."

"You took the dope too. Where'd you lay that off? César Montero?" Madden nodded. "The phony tip about Montero and Goetz, a whole night wasted. That was you, too, wasn't it?" Pretorius had edged closer, inching along a rack of shelves. "I told you to back off," Frost said to him. Pretorius looked at him stone-faced, but stayed where he was.

"I was just trying to stall you," Madden said. "When I figured out Mr. Coldstone had some involvement in all of this, I went to him. I didn't know the specifics. Still don't. But I figured it was worth his while if I could throw you off the track, keep you from zeroing in on him. I offered to put a monkey wrench in things. To send you off in another direction so you wouldn't make the connection yourself."

"And just when did you figure that Coldstone was connected to all this?" Frost cast a sidelong glance at the billionaire. He was still looking at the statue, apparently indifferent to the dialogue between Frost and Madden. Frost flicked the Glock briefly at Pretorius, signaling him to stay put, then quickly turned it again on Coldstone.

"The day we went to Peacock." Madden stood up straight, pride washing over his face. "Plum said he worked for Coban Engineering. Coldstone-Bancroft, the outfit founded by Mr. Coldstone's father. I Googled it. If you knew how to use a computer you could have done the same. But that just confirmed what I already knew. Anyone who knows anything about this town knows that Mr. Coldstone has two passions in life, after making money. Art and the game of Clue. Peacock. David Plum. Henry Green. Miss Scarlett. They're all characters from Clue. And Mudrats? An anagram for 'Mustard'—Col. Mustard. For Christ's sake, Rick, Mr. Coldstone sponsored an international Clue tournament, right here at this museum, just a couple of months after you moved here." Frost recalled it now, vaguely. He glanced at Coldstone. The great man was staring at Frost, expression unreadable. Madden shook his head. "But you don't care about this town, Rick, you never did. I've lived here all my life. Santa Isidora means something to me. To you it's never been anything more than a place to hang your hat after you got kicked out of the LAPD. You were so addled by your infatuation with Julia that you missed all the clues that were right in front of your face." Madden looked at Julia and smiled. "I told you he wasn't cut out to be a policeman."

"Clue is just a diversion," Coldstone said. "A game. Art—art transcends life. It lives in the heavens above us. It is eternal. Art is like the crystal orbs the ancients believed in, turning among the stars, creating a harmonious melody more beautiful than any composition by Beethoven or Mozart." Coldstone's ice-blue eyes had taken on a serpentine glint. "But I don't expect you to understand. One has to have the passion." He drew a fingertip casually along the table top. "Did you know, Detective Frost, that Isaac Newton, after he invented calculus and discovered his laws of motion, gave up on science and devoted the rest of his life to the study of theology? No? I'm surprised. I was told you were something of a student of philosophy." Coldstone was taking obvious pleasure in his tutorial. "He was only twenty-five, Newton. A lot of people will tell you that it was a great waste for such a genius to turn from science to theology. But who are we—who is anyone—to tell a genius what's important?" He paused for a moment. "I devoted most of my life to making money. I am still very good at that. But it's never been my passion. . . . I have devoted the second half of my life to art, to preserving and protecting the best and most exquisite pieces of the ancients, to exhibiting them to the masses, giving them a chance to transcend their own wretchedness and ignorance, to cultivate an awareness of something greater than themselves, greater than all the other so-called achievements of the human race."

Frost spied Jake rolling his eyes.

"So you cooked up a scheme with the CIA or whoever," Frost said. "You'd get them al-Tikriti, and they'd let you rape Iraq's national heritage."

Coldstone laughed.

"I was approached for assistance by some individuals in the government, yes. On an informal basis. I was happy to help. I have before. I'm a patriotic American. They wanted to, if you will, bring some of the former Baathist leaders in from the cold. They knew I had known Amir for a long time. You know," he continued soberly, "I never liked this war. The Baathists weren't so bad. Tough, yes, cruel—sometimes. But in a place like Iraq, you need a strong hand to keep things together. Otherwise, the center cannot hold, you get anarchy and chaos. Just witness what happened after the invasion. All those priceless objects in the National Museum, looted by mobs with no idea what they were taking."

"So you are the savior of Iraq's heritage? You're the good guy in this tale?"

"Yes, exactly." Coldstone drew himself up, posing like one of the statues in the gallery above them. "I tried for a long time to find a way to save the artifacts, but it was too difficult operating in Iraq without the proper, official imprimatur, even with unlimited funds. But once Peacock was set up, we had official carte blanche to operate anywhere in the country we wanted. No one could stop us—not the U.S. military, not the Iraqis. It wasn't easy, but Hendrik was persistent."

Frost glanced at the big blond.

"Henry Green, I presume?"

Pretorius sneered.

"Eventually," Coldstone went on, "we located al-Tikriti through his tribe. He was willing to relocate to the U.S., but I wanted something from him first."

"The artifacts."

"I knew he had some or knew where some were. I knew Amir would have taken out an insurance policy in case the regime fell."

"So the U.S. government doesn't know you have them?"

"I told you, it was an informal agreement. They got what they wanted. I just took advantage of an opportunity presented. Have you ever read Sun-Tzu, The Art of War?"

"Not lately."

" 'All warfare is based on deception.' Business is the same. This was business."

"None of this belongs to you," Frost said, bobbing his head toward the shelves full of artifacts. "You'll never be able to show them to anyone."

"They're better off with me." Coldstone swept his arm in an arc across the room. "These antiquities are not TVs to be looted from some storefront! This is art, some of the greatest the world has ever produced. This is civilization itself."

_

"Tell me why you killed Thad Pearse." Frost had to keep them talking as he tried to think of a way to get Julia and himself out of their predicament. She was calm now. The smell of her shampoo made him long for her.

"That was unfortunate," Coldstone said.

"It was his own fucking fault," Jake called out. "Stupid fuck! We paid those guys in Iraq a fortune—over two thousand dollars a week. No expenses, no income tax. But every time they went on leave to Dubai or some other place they'd come back broke. They'd blown it all, every last cent, on liquor, whores, gambling. Fucking losers." Frost pulled Julia close to him as Jake ranted. "They got pissed off when we told them we were closing up shop. They were going to be coming home after months in the desert with nothing to show for it. So they swiped some of the materials. Hendrik here," he went on, smirking at Pretorius, "didn't notice until after the two of them had already flown home and gone off the radar. Then Pearse called Franklin Diebold trying to sell the precious tablets he and Goetz stole from us. The one guy in the universe who could lead them to us. Stupid. Mother. Fucker."

"It should have been a simple transaction," Coldstone said. "I was happy to pay for the tablets. Ten thousand dollars. I would have gladly paid a hundred thousand if they'd asked. The money was inconsequential."

"We meet him at the motel," Jake said, "and the fucker tries to hold us up. He's only brought one fucking tablet with him and now he wants fifty grand before he'll produce the rest of them. Pissed me off. So I pull out my gun and tell him to stop being an asshole and he goes all ballistic. Just loses it. Throws the fucking tablet against the wall, busts it into a million pieces, whips out a knife from his boot like a fucking paratrooper and comes at me with it. He cut my face." The bandaged cat-scratch that afternoon at the Grove. "So Hendrik put him in his place, South African Special Forces-style." Pretorius twisted his hands in the air as if wringing the neck of a chicken. He had been inching closer again, one hand resting on the shelves, the other at his side, his predator's eyes fixed on Frost.

Pretorius was the dangerous one.

"We didn't know about Owen Goetz until the news reports," Jake said. "Another dumb motherfucker. He goes to Diebold's house and wraps the guy up in enough duct tape to plug up a hole in fucking Hoover Dam, then calls us, says he has the tablets and we should bring the ten thousand or he's going to blow poor Franklin's brains out. So we go down there, we give him the money, we tell him sorry about his buddy Pearse, it was all a big misunderstanding, no harm, no foul, let's all be friends. We share a few brews with the guy. Diebold's still all tied up, red-faced and pissed as all get-out. Hysterical. Meanwhile, Hendrik slips some Rohypnol in Goetz's drink, he gets a little groggy, we pour some more alcohol down his gullet until he's passed out."

"Then you shot him up with a hot dose of heroin and dumped him in Hollywood." Frost shook his head at Coldstone. "Nice boy you have there, T. Rex."

Pretorius had Frost fixed in his vision, ready to strike. Madden was skulking in the opposite corner, oblivious, looking up at the ceiling like a bored husband dragged to a tea party. Jake was relishing his role, lording it over Frost. He hadn't noticed that as he talked animatedly about his role in killing Pearse and Goetz, he was waving his gun hand around instead of keeping it pointed squarely at Frost.

"We couldn't let that asshole go," Jake said. "He would have told someone sooner or later."

Drop Pretorius first. Spin Julia, push her into Coldstone, get in the lee of the shelving. That would provide some cover. Madden next, on the opposite corner. Then it would be one-on-one, him and Jake. Finally.

"I can't understand why you killed Diebold." He looped his left arm tightly around Julia's waist. "I figured he was part of this, that it was his job to verify the authenticity of the artifacts."

"That was your fault, asshole!" Jake screeched. "He didn't have the constitution for the dirty side of things. You freaked him out when you told him Goetz was dead. We told him we were just gonna make sure Goetz knew who he was dealing with and then let him go. Diebold nearly had a coronary over Pearse and then you go and tell him there's another corpse on the floor!" Jake was waving both arms in the air.

Frost swept his right arm and fired into the center of Pretorius' chest, sending him tumbling into the rack of shelves. With his left arm, he pulled Julia, spinning, presenting his back to the room while covering her, and smashed them both into Coldstone. One set of legs on the folding table collapsed and the "Sumerian King" fell to the floor. Pottery and vases tumbled from the shelves.

Frost wound up on his side with his neck pinned against the wall, Julia and Coldstone on top of him. He struggled to free his gun hand from under his ribs as Coldstone rolled across him and lurched to his feet, making toward the door. Jake fired through the shelves as his stepfather passed and the slug whipped past Frost's forehead and slammed into the concrete wall above him. On the other side of the room Madden had slipped on bubble wrap and fallen to the floor. He kicked at the wrap while reaching behind him to unholster his weapon. Frost elbowed Julia to get her behind him while still trying to free his right hand. Jake stepped around the side of the shelving in a crouch, trying to get a line on Frost. Frost's hand was still pinned. Madden freed up his Glock and brought it to bear.

Madden fired, hitting Jake in the top of the right shoulder and sending him reeling into the doorway.

"Motherfucker!" Jake yelled, firing his automatic. Madden moaned and collapsed into the empty cardboard boxes.

Frost rolled, came up with his Glock in both hands and pumped two rounds into Jake, causing a spray of blood and brain to fan out on the wall behind him, sending him twisting into a heap on the floor.

Frost turned, reaching behind him to Julia. She was splattered with concrete and paint dust but unhurt. He took a quarter-sized flake of wall from over her ear and tossed it aside. He asked her if she was all right. She nodded. Frost stood up, helped Julia get to her feet.

He checked Pretorius, whose glassy eyes confirmed he was dead. There was no need to check on Jake, whose blood pooled around his head, bright and shining and crimson. He went to Madden, who lay on his back, still moaning, his hand clutching his bloody abdomen.

Frost bent over him and looked at the wound.

"It hurts like hell," Madden said. Blood had soaked his shirt. "This is what I get for saving your ass." He looked at Frost. "I couldn't let that little prick shoot you."

"It missed your liver," Frost said. "You'll live." He would, probably, if they could get him help before he went into shock. Frost looked around the room. He asked Julia to bring him a towel from a cleaning cart that was behind the half-collapsed table.

He placed the towel over Madden's wound and told him to keep pressure on it.

He retrieved Madden's Glock and checked the slide.

"Do you know how to use this?" he asked Julia. She nodded. He placed the automatic in her hands. "Hold it with both hands, like this." He demonstrated with his own weapon. "Keep it pointed at the door. If anyone comes through and it's not me, shoot first and ask questions later. I mean it." She bobbed her head. "Aim for the center of the chest. I'll be right back. I have to find a phone that works in this crazy place."

He also wanted to find Coldstone.

He retraced his earlier steps down the hallway, checking each locked door. He was torn about going up the stairs. Coldstone could be hiding in one of the locked rooms he would be leaving behind him, as perhaps he had been before, when they suckered him into the storage room. But he needed to find a working phone. He had to trust that Julia would take care of Coldstone if he went back to the treasure trove.

Frost climbed the stairs and entered the long hallway. The pantheon of statues felt menacing, their cold, marble eyes following him as he advanced. Demeter. Apollo. Zeus. Athena. Augustus. Plato. Lights were burning in the security office. As he turned the corner toward the front entrance, Glock in hand, he saw T. Rex Coldstone sitting in a chair in front of a bank of monitors, calmly talking on the telephone.

"Put the phone down," Frost demanded. "Put it down and call 911."

Coldstone swiveled the chair around to face him.

"Certainly," he said. "But first, there's someone who wants to talk to you."

He held out the receiver.

## 29

THE USA PATRIOT ACT, Frost discovered, covered a multitude of sins. He learned this on his third day of detention in whichever Federal facility they had secreted him.

Three days. Three weeks. Three months. Three years. Three decades. Three lifetimes. It's all the same. We can hold you here as long as we like. Forget about seeing a lawyer. Forget about a trial. Forget about charges. We're in a war. A global war on terror. You have knowledge of a critical aspect of that war. If we think there's the slightest chance you'll reveal any part of that information, we'll keep you here. For as long as it takes.

The voice of his interrogator—no, that wasn't the right word, he hadn't asked Frost anything—was a flat monotone. His face was granite, devoid of affect. He did not introduce himself. He did not say what agency or branch of government he represented. To be precise, he did not say he was from the government. He was simply we.

It wasn't the same voice that had been on the other end of the phone that Coldstone handed him. That voice was vigorous, commanding, resonant. It barked orders, made demands, threatened reprisals. That voice belonged to one of the men in suits who had come in the Suburbans with black-tinted windows and blue-and-white tags to escort Amir al-Tikriti to his plush new life in the home of his former enemies. By the time Frost took the phone from Coldstone, two of the Suburbans had already made the turn and were racing back to the museum. SIPD patrol officers who arrived after Frost's 911 call were quickly shooed away after the Suburbans returned, the words "national security matter" working their magic on the local cops. The Fire Department EMTs were allowed to stabilize Madden but the man in the suit had called in a medevac helicopter with a trauma team that ferried Madden away before the paramedics had a chance to deliver him to Santa Isidora Memorial.

Frost was bundled into one Suburban—relieved of his Glock with a pair of Uzis pressed against his cranium—and Julia into another.

He never did find out where they had held him. It was a long drive, that much he knew, made to seem longer by the hood they placed over his head shortly after peeling out from the museum parking lot. They turned north at the Pacific, he was pretty certain, then there were more hours on the road.

He could smell the kelp-laden ocean as they transferred him from Suburban to cell. So, Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc. Or the Presidio of Monterey. Maybe.

They left him alone in the cell for three days—he counted the nights by noting when the overhead lights changed to red—with no human contact beyond the hand that delivered food through a slot in the cell door twice a day.

Then a couple of warders in plain black jumpsuits came and took him to the room where the provisions and penalties of the USA Patriot Act were explained to him. In particular, he was told to take cognizance of the fact that the Act provided for a very broad and expansive interpretation of what constituted rendering aid or assistance to terrorist groups, their affiliates and sympathizers.

When all was said and done, the Act meant what they said it meant.

The penalty for rendering such aid and assistance, in case he was interested, was life in prison.

Or the death penalty.

But that assumed there would be a trial, and as was previously pointed out to him, a trial was not necessary.

It also was pointed out to him, in case he had any doubt in the matter, that Julia's freedom depended on him. His actions. His attitude.

"I'm sorry you felt the need to resort to firearms," Coldstone said after Frost, having chosen to ignore the barking voice, finished his call to 911. "I felt we might reach an accommodation."

"Such as I overlook three murders and the looting of another nation's cultural heritage?" Frost asked. "I don't think so."

"We hadn't even opened negotiations."

"You said yourself you never go into a negotiation without knowing the outcome in advance. You were going to kill us. Or rather, have your South African ape and Jake do it for you."

Coldstone drummed his fingers on his lips.

"I suppose you're right. A certain logical necessity would have dictated events proceeding in that way."

Coldstone inquired, dispassionately, what had become of Jake. Frost told him, dispassionately, that the fresh paint job in the storage room was now stained with his stepson's gray matter.

"His mother will take it hard, I suppose," Coldstone said. "To be honest, I won't miss the boy. He's been nothing but trouble. None of this would have happened were it not for him. I should never have allowed him to be part of it. The world is probably better off without him, and he without it."

"You should have let me send him to prison where he belonged," Frost said.

"What he did to that girl was terrible," Coldstone said, sighing. "Shameful. I felt awful for her. But his mother . . . To her, Jacob could do no wrong. As you may know, I have no children of my own, so parental feelings are rather alien to me. And Jacob . . . Well, his mother loved him. So when Detective Madden offered to make the evidence disappear, there really was no choice. I did it for her, not for him." Coldstone gazed at Frost wearily.

Frost wasn't feeling any sympathy.

"Too bad there's no one left to inherit the empire now," he said.

"Oh, Jacob wouldn't have gotten anything." Coldstone dismissed the idea, waving his hand like the Pope acknowledging the faithful from the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square. "My fortune will all go here, to the museum. And to other worthwhile causes. A foundation, scholarships. I've provided for my wife, of course. She'll be very comfortable."

"I'm sure she will."

"I'm sorry about Franklin. He was a good friend to this museum, a very valuable collaborator over the years in helping to build the collection. A good man. Weak, though. It's most unfortunate it became necessary . . . Most unfortunate." Coldstone turned his head suddenly at Frost, as if thunderstruck. "Did you ever find out who vandalized my museum, Detective?" Frost nodded. "Hooligans," Coldstone muttered. "No respect. Like the Iraqi masses, treating their museum as if it were an electronics store in Brooklyn during a blackout. An outrage."

Frost heard the sirens of the SIPD cars in the distance. Soon, the blue and red flashes of their roof-top lightbars shimmered in the parking lot. Coldstone watched the cruisers arrive, his fingers again drumming a tune on his lips.

It infuriated Frost, Coldstone's concern for his precious museum, his nonchalance about the dead souls he had left in his wake.

"You're awfully fucking insouciant for a man who's about to go to prison," he told him.

Coldstone looked at Frost, eyes as cold as the abyssal plain.

" 'Insouciant,' " he said with an appreciative smile. "That's a good word."

War isn't pretty, Frost was reminded. There are casualties, many of them, some senseless, some brought about by the incompetence of commanders, some caused by friendly fire. You have to put it behind you, focus on the job ahead.

There was no point in talking about justice, because it was an unjust world. If it would assuage his conscience, however, Frost should consider that Jake Ballard was dead, and so was Hendrik Pretorius, and after all, it had been the two of them who set this chain of events in motion by killing Thad Pearse. Franklin Diebold was an accessory after the fact and had engaged in a criminal conspiracy, so one might say he got his just desserts as well. Amir Nabil al-Tikriti was a son of a bitch who had the blood of thousands on his hands, yes, but he was going to tell them everything he knew about the insurgent networks in Iraq, because he knew if he didn't bare his soul unreservedly they would drop him back in Iraq with the word "traitor" etched on his forehead and a big red bull's eye painted on his back. Hundreds of American lives might be saved, and wasn't letting the old man live out his last few years in a suburban ranch house on a modest stipend well worth the price?

As for T. Rex Coldstone . . . It was certainly understandable from Frost's perspective that letting him off the hook was too much to ask. Just so he felt better about that, he ought to know that Coldstone had pulled a fast one on them as well. Negotiating al-Tikriti's relocation in exchange for the stolen Iraqi artifacts was not part of the program.

Coldstone is a crafty old bastard, isn't he? his interlocutor said, smiling for the first and last time during their colloquy. You almost have to admire the audacity he showed in screwing everyone at the same time. But insisting on a pound of flesh from the crafty old bastard is engaging in pre-9/11 thinking and the country can't afford that.

So, Frost was told, this would be the understanding.

He had never seen Amir Nabil al-Tikriti or his family.

He had never heard of Peacock Overseas Services, Inc., or David Plum.

He had never heard of Hendrik Pretorius.

Owen Goetz killed Thad Pearse.

A person or persons unknown killed Owen Goetz. The LAPD would go through the motions, of course, especially after the toxicology tests came back showing the presence of Rohypnol, but not to worry. They weren't going to bust their humps over the death of a petty criminal and all-around lowlife. They were talking about the LAPD, after all.

Franklin Diebold fell over the railing of his house and broke his neck, poor dumb bastard.

Jake Ballard died in an automobile accident, poor dumb bastard.

Special forces from the new Iraqi Army would uncover a cache of artifacts stolen from the Iraqi National Museum, thanks to timely, accurate intelligence provided by the U.S. military.

Jim Madden, who incidentally was recovering nicely from the wound he received while chasing down a burglary suspect at the Coldstone Museum, would be retiring from the Santa Isidora Police Department on a full-salary annuity provided by a grateful museum board. He was expected to remove permanently to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where an ever-grateful museum board had purchased a three-bedroom lakeside home with a private dock for him.

T. Rex Coldstone would mourn his stepson and continue his business and philanthropic activities now and in the future free of any concern that false and defamatory allegations would be made against his character and conduct.

There would be pledges to be sworn to, documents to sign. Any deviation even in the slightest degree from the contents of those sworn agreements would constitute a violation of the USA Patriot Act, the National Security Act of 1947, as amended, and other Federal statutes too numerous to mention.

Madden, as he might have surmised, had already signed from his hospital bed.

This is, his interlocutor emphasized, a take-it-or-leave-it deal.

Never go into a negotiation unless you know what the outcome is beforehand.

_

When they took off his hood in the van that was taking him home, the first thing he saw was Julia looking up into his eyes.

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you, too," she said.

_

After he loaded his possessions in the VW camper he bought from Debbie Waite, Frost was struck by how much room he had left over. Even accounting for the fact that he had sold or given away all his furniture and furnishings on Craigslist, the collection of clothing, books and miscellaneous objects spaced around the interior of the van seemed remarkably meager for a man who was almost forty.

He had been moving and throwing things out for too long. With luck, this would be the last move for a long time.

Debbie Waite had been reluctant to part with the camper, even in the glow of the victory she and her band of activists had won in the Battle of the Grove. T. Rex Coldstone had unexpectedly announced he was dropping his plans and donating the Grove and an adjacent fifty acres to the city of Santa Isidora for use as a natural area and wildlife refuge.

You want me to sign, that's my price, Frost said.

He had convinced Debbie that she needed a more reliable vehicle if she were going to be trekking from one end of the country to the other ministering to the young men and women who were carrying the torch of idealism and battling on the front lines of direct action. She took eight hundred dollars for the van, and both she and Frost thought they had got the better part of the deal.

As he guided the camper through town toward the highway across the mountains, he passed one last time through la zona. He had heard from Jenny Lazarus that Maria Valenzuela had traveled to Nashville to try out for American Idol but hadn't made it as far as the audition. She had skipped out on the community service she had been ordered to perform after Lazarus reached a plea deal with the prosecutor, but no one was going to be calling the U.S. Marshals to bring her back.

Julia was waiting for him. She had gone ahead to Cougarville to get the cabin ready. With winter fast approaching, she told him he could expect to be spending a lot of time chopping wood. He would be there by nightfall.

Frost didn't look back as he topped the pass. He drove down the other side of the mountains to Interstate 5 and joined the northbound traffic. The VW bus shook and shuddered as semi-trailers sped past, some of them, perhaps, hauling goods off-loaded at the Port of Long Beach, where the shipyard had been in which his father had worked himself into an early death.

He passed through Fresno a little after noon and a little after that he took the Pickle Center exit and drove to the Goetz farmhouse. Brad Goetz, having beaten the charges against him as Roy Grant had predicted, was there to greet him.

And there he violated the USA Patriot Act, the National Security Act of 1947, as amended, and other Federal statutes too numerous to mention.

About the Author

Steven J. Wangsness is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Evans School of Public Affairs of the University of Washington. A former U.S. Foreign Service officer, he lives in Seattle.

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