"What is it?"

"Got a partial here, then another partial. Moving your way."

Dampness prickled my hands. Ben had been missing for twenty-six hours. More than a day. The sun settled even faster, like a sinking heart.

I said, "Do they match with the print we found at my place?"

"I couldn't see that one clearly enough to know."

Pike stepped over the prints. I moved toward the tree. I told myself that these prints could have been made by anyone: neighborhood kids, hikers, a construction worker come looking for a place to piss; but I knew it was the man who had stolen Ben Chenier. I felt it on my skin like too much smog.

I stepped across an erosion cut between two balls of sagebrush and saw a fresh footprint in the dust between two plates of shale. The print pointed uphill, leading up from the tree.

"Joe."

"Got it."

We moved closer to the tree, Pike approaching from the left and me from the right. The tree was withered, with spiky branches that had lost most of their leaves. Thin grass had sprouted in the fractured light under the branches. The grass on the uphill side was flat, as if someone had sat on it.

I did not move closer.

"Joe."

"I see it. I've got footprints in the dirt to the left. Can you see?"

"I see them."

"You want, I can get closer."

Behind us, the sun was swallowed by the ridge. The pooling shadows around us deepened and lights came on in the houses on the far ridge.

"Not now. Let's tell Starkey. Chen can try to match the prints, and then we have to start knocking on doors. This is it, Joe. He was here. He waited for Ben here."

We backed away, then followed our own footprints up the hill. We drove back to my house to call Starkey. We had seen her leave almost two hours ago, but when we tooled around the curve she was parked outside my front door, no one else, just Starkey, sitting behind the wheel of her Crown Vic, smoking.

We swung into the carport, then hurried out to tell her.

I said, "I think we found where he waited, Starkey. We found prints and crushed grass. We've gotta get Chen out to see if the prints match, and then we have to go door- to- door. The people who live over there might've seen a car or even a tag:"

It came out of me in a torrent as if I expected her to cheer, but she didn't. She looked grim, her face dark like a gathering storm.

I said, "I think we have something here, Starkey. What's the matter with you?"

She sucked down the last of her cigarette, then crushed it with her toe.

"He called again."

I knew there was more to it, but I was scared she would tell me that Ben was dead.

Maybe she knew what I was thinking. She shrugged, as if that was an answer to the things I wasn't brave enough to ask.

"He didn't call you. He called your girlfriend."

"What did he say?"

Starkey's eyes were careful, like she was hoping I would read that part of it, too, so she wouldn't have to explain.

"You can hear it yourself. She hit the Record button on her message machine and got most of the call. C'mon, we want you to see if it's the same man."

I didn't move.

"Did he say something about Ben?"

"Not about Ben. C'mon, everybody's down at the station now. Take your own car. I don't want to drive you back after."

"Starkey, did he hurt Ben? Goddamnit, tell me what he said."

Starkey got into her car and sat quietly for a moment.

"He said you killed twenty-six civilians, then you murdered your buddies to get rid of the witnesses. That's what he said, Cole, you wanted to know. Follow me down. We want you to hear it."

Starkey drove away, and I was swallowed by darkness.

time missing: 27 hours, 31 minutes

The Hollywood Division Police Station was a flat red-brick building a block south of Hollywood Boulevard, midway between Paramount Studios and the Hollywood Bowl. The evening streets were choked with traffic going nowhere at a glacial pace. Tour buses cruised the Walk of Fame and lined the curb outside the Chinese Theatre, filled with tourists who had paid thirty-five dollars to sit in traffic. It was full-on dark when I turned into the parking lot behind the station. Richard's limo was parked by a fence. Starkey was waiting by her car with a fresh cigarette.

"Are you carrying a weapon?"

"It's at home."

"You can't bring it inside."

"What, Starkey, you think I want to murder some witnesses?"

Starkey flicked her cigarette hard into the side of a patrol car. A shower of sparks exploded off its fender.

"Don't be so testy. Where's Pike?"

"I dropped him off at Lucy's. If this asshole has her phone number, he probably knows where she lives. You worried this is going to fuck up your case, too?"

She didn't fight me about it.

"That was Gittamon, not me."

We went inside through double glass doors, then along a tile hall into a room marked DETECTIVES. Chest-high partitions cut the room into cubicles, but most of the chairs were empty either crime was rampant or everyone had gone home. Gittamon and Myers were speaking quietly across the room, Myers with a slim leather briefcase. Gittamon excused himself and came over when he saw us.

"Did Carol explain what happened?"

"She told me about the call. Where's Lucy?''

"We're set up in an interview room. I'm going to warn you that the tape is disturbing. He says some things."

Starkey interrupted him.

"Before we get to that, Cole should tell you what he found. They might have something, Dave."

I described the prints and the crushed grass that Pike and I had found, and what I thought they meant. Gittamon listened like he wasn't sure what to make of it, but Starkey explained.

"Cole's making sense about someone having to be across the canyon. I'll check it out with Chen tomorrow as soon as we have enough light. Maybe we'll get a match on the shoes."

Myers walked over when he saw us talking, and watched me from under his eyebrows like an aborigine staring at the sun.

He said, "You must be a clue magnet, Cole, finding all these things the way you do. Is that just good luck?"

I turned away from him. It was that or hit him in the neck.

"Gittamon, are we going to hear this tape or not?"

They brought me to an interview room where Lucy and Richard were waiting at a clean gray table. The room was painted beige because an LAPD psychologist had determined that beige was soothing, but nobody looked soothed.

Richard said, "Finally. The sonofabitch called Lucy, Cole. He phoned her goddamned house."

He put his hand on her back, but she shrugged it away.

"Richard, you're really pissing me off with the snide remarks."

Richard's jaw knotted, and he looked away. I pulled a chair beside her and lowered my voice.

"How are you?"

She softened for a moment, but then a fierceness came to her face.

"I want to find this sonofabitch myself. I want to undo all this and make sure that Ben is safe and then I want to do things to this man."

"I know. Me, too."

She glanced at me with her fierce eyes, then shook her head and stared at the tape recorder. Gittamon took a seat opposite her, and Starkey and Myers stood in the door.

Gittamon said, "Ms. Chenier, you don't have to hear this again. There's really no need."

"I want to hear it. I'll be hearing it all night."

"All right, then. Mr. Cole, just so you know, Ms. Chenier received the call at five-forty this evening. She was able to record most of the conversation, but not the beginning, so what you're about to hear is an incomplete conversation."

"Starkey told me part of that, yes. Did you trace back to the same number?"

"The phone company is working on it now. This recording you're about to hear is a duplicate, so the sound quality isn't so good. We've sent the original to SID. They might be able to pull something off the background, but it isn't likely."