Due to legal and liability requirements, we are unable to provide call-log records for the above-referenced number until in receipt of an appropriate court order. Once in receipt of such order, we will be happy to comply.

Sincerely,

Michael Toman

Operations Manager

Pike said, “She had two conversations with the highlighted number on the day she was murdered.”

“Joe. Bastilla was trying to identify the caller.”

“Looks that way. Looks like they were trying to identify someone else, too.”

Pike drew out a folder that was thick with documents about Wilts, but none of the reports and files were anything I expected. This file was labeled FBI, and contained a letter from Marx to the FBI director in Washington, D.C. It was marked PERSONAL & CONFIDENTIAL. A short list of phone numbers was attached, including the number that had been highlighted in yellow.

This letter will serve as my official request that your agency obtain the proper court instruction for, and initiate and maintain, recorded phone monitors on the attached Los Angeles area code phone numbers, and do so independent of and without the knowledge of my own agency, the Los Angeles Police Department, or any other local personnel, officials, or local judicial members. As Councilman Nobel Wilts is believed to have knowledge of or possibly have committed multiple homicides over a seven-year period, I cannot stress enough the need for utmost security in this matter.

I stared at the page, but the words had lost focus. I pushed past a growing sense of frustration and checked the date. Marx had faxed his request to the head of the FBI only eight days ago-two days before he told the world that Lionel Byrd had committed the murders.

I said, “Joe.”

I gave him the page.

“They aren’t protecting Wilts. They’re investigating him. It’s an active investigation.”

We were reading through the rest of the files when the first car arrived. They didn’t scream up Code Three with the lights and sirens, and SWAT didn’t rappel from hovering choppers. Gravel crunched outside my door, followed by the soft squeak of brakes.

Pike went to the window.

“It’s Marx.”

The Inner Circle had arrived.

MARX AND Munson unfolded from his Lexus. Bastilla eased up from the opposite direction with a black-and-white Metro car behind her. They saw me at the same time, but no one shouted or tried to knock me down.

Marx was calm, but somehow larger, as if swollen with tension.

I said, “You heartless sonofabitch. You told those people it was over.”

Munson flicked his fingers, telling me to move out of the door.

“Let’s go in, Cole. We need to have a little talk.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

Bastilla said, “You’re in no position. Act like an adult.”

The uniforms stayed in their car, but the rest of them came inside. Marx glanced at Pike, then frowned at the files and murder books spread over the table. He told Bastilla to gather their stuff, then frowned at me.

“Have you read these things?”

“Enough to know what you’re doing. I pushed this thing because I thought you were protecting him.”

“Now you know you were wrong. You should have just let it go, but no, you couldn’t mind your business.”

“Yvonne Bennett made it my business, Marx. So do the Repkos and Ida Frostokovich and the other families you’ve lied to. You told those people it was finished. They’ve buried their children, but they’re going to have to dig them up again. What in hell were you thinking?”

He hooked a thumb at Pike.

“How many people besides you and this one know what we’re doing?”

“A few.”

“Poitras is probably helping you, isn’t he?”

“Poitras doesn’t know anything.”

“We need their names.”

“Forget it, Marx. There’s no chance in hell.”

Munson had gone to the sliders.

“Sweet. You got your privacy, you got your view, you have your stolen police property. Not everyone would have the balls to break into a deputy chief’s house.”

“You have me confused with someone else.”

Munson laughed. He was probably a pretty good guy and I would probably like him if he was someone else.

“Please, Cole. Really. Who else could it be, the way you’ve been dogging us. Now we have this problem.”

Pike, floating between the dining room and kitchen, said, “We don’t have a problem.”

Munson hit Pike with the grin.

“Look at Pike here. Pike looks like he wants to shoot it out. What do you say, Chief? We could kill’m, say they resisted arrest.”

Bastilla glanced up from stacking the files.

“You’re not helping.”

“That was humor. They know I’m kidding.”

Marx looked at me with the unfocused eyes of someone who had considered it and hadn’t been kidding.

“We could have gotten the warrants and brought along some boys from Metro, but we didn’t. I can’t force you to cooperate, but we have to contain this. If Wilts finds out, we may never be able to make the case. That meant lying about our investigation, but now this is where we are, and you’re here with us.”

“You believe Wilts killed those women.”

“Yes.”

“Then why close the case on Byrd? Why tell those families it was over?”

“Because that’s what Wilts wants us to think.”

Munson pulled a chair from the table and swung his leg over it like he was mounting a horse.

“We believe he engineered Byrd’s death so we would close the Repko case-probably because he was scared we might find something on the security disk. He forced our hand with this damned death book. When we realized that’s what he wanted, we gave him Byrd to buy ourselves more time.”

Pike said, “Why Byrd?”

Munson shrugged.

“Byrd was already connected to one of the victims-Yvonne Bennett. He’s gotta be thinking, when we find Byrd with this picture of Bennett, we’ll think it’s a slam dunk. If you’re asking how Wilts and Byrd are connected, we don’t know. Wilts might have picked him because of the Bennett connection, but maybe they knew each other.”

I said, “That’s a helluva risk to take, thinking you’ll call it quits just because Byrd has the book.”

Marx’s lips pressed into a hard line.

“Well, Cole, I guess he thought it was worth the risk, didn’t he? Repko wasn’t some streetwalker-he screwed up by killing someone close to him, which was a mistake he hadn’t made since Frostokovich.”

A knot of anger grew in my shoulders.

“Have you bastards known he’s been killing people for seven years?”

Munson made a grunting laugh that caused Bastilla to glance up, but Marx glowered.

“Of course not. Only since the book.”

“You must have known since Frostokovich.”

“Goddamnit. I took care of some things for him, but nothing like this. He was a nasty bastard, all right, but I was investigating one of my friends. You never think someone you know could do something like this.”

“So you let it go? You fixed it for him?”

“Fuck off, Cole. The girl’s friends told us about running into him that night at dinner, so we questioned him. He told us he went to an apartment he kept over by Chinatown after seeing them at dinner. Alone. So we had the coincidence of the meetings, and we knew he was a prick, but that was it. We couldn’t clear him, but we couldn’t find anything solid. You can’t make a case on coincidence, so we all went on with our lives. After a while I told myself it was silly to suspect the guy. Hell, he was my friend, and all we had was the coincidental meeting.”

Pike said, “Until Repko.”

“Repko got us started, but it was really the book. When we saw Frostokovich everything came back. Wilts knew some of these girls. Wilts was the common demoninator.”

Munson picked up where Marx left off by explaining they had discovered a connection between Wilts and the fourth victim pictured in the book, twenty-five-year-old prostitute Marsha Trinh. In reviewing her arrest record, it was learned she was one of five prostitutes Wilts had hired for a private party to influence prominent supporters one month before her murder. This contact put Wilts with three of the seven victims. Three out of seven was convincing.