“You want me to show you the gun box? Maybe when you see it is empty, you can just leave and save us all the time.”

“Not quite, Counselor,” Lankford said. “We’re going through this whole place. I’ll take the car and Detective Sobel will start in the house.”

I shook my head.

“Not quite, Detective. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t trust you. Your warrant is bent, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re bent. You stay together so I can watch you both or we wait until I can get a second observer up here. My case manager could be here in ten minutes. I could bring her up here to watch and you could also ask her about calling me on the morning Raul Levin got killed.”

Lankford’s face grew dark with insult and anger that he looked like he was having trouble controlling. I decided to push it. I took out my cell phone and opened it.

“I’m going to call your judge right now and see if he -”

“Fine,” Lankford said. “We’ll start with the car. Together. We’ll work our way inside the house.”

I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket.

“Fine.”

I walked over to a keypad on the wall outside the garage. I tapped in the combination and the garage door started to rise, revealing the blue-black Lincoln awaiting inspection. Its license plate read NT GLTY. Lankford looked at it and shook his head.

“Yeah, right.”

He stepped into the garage, his face still tight with anger. I decided to ease things a little bit.

“Hey, Detective,” I said. “What’s the difference between a catfish and a defense attorney?”

He didn’t respond. He stared angrily at the license plate on my Lincoln.

“One’s a bottom-feeding shit sucker,” I said. “And the other one’s a fish.”

For a moment his face remained frozen. Then a smile creased it and he broke into a long and hard laugh. Sobel stepped into the garage, having not heard the joke.

“What?” she said.

“I’ll tell you later,” Lankford said.

It took them a half hour to search the Lincoln and then move into the house, where they started with the office. I watched the whole time and only spoke when offering explanation about something that gave them pause in their search. They didn’t talk much to each other and it was becoming increasingly clear that there was a rift between the two partners over the direction Lankford had taken the investigation.

At one point Lankford got a call on his cell phone and he went out the front door onto the porch to talk privately. I had the shades up and if I stood in the hallway I could look one way and see him out there and the other way and see Sobel in my office.

“You’re not too happy about this, are you?” I said to Sobel when I was sure her partner couldn’t hear.

“It doesn’t matter how I am. We’re following the case and that’s it.”

“Is your partner always like that, or only with lawyers?”

“He spent fifty thousand dollars on a lawyer last year, trying to get custody of his kids. He didn’t. Before that we lost a big case-a murder-on a legal technicality.”

I nodded.

“And he blamed the lawyer. But who broke the rules?”

She didn’t respond and that as much as confirmed it had been Lankford who had made the technical misstep.

“I get the picture,” I said.

I checked on Lankford on the porch again. He was gesturing impatiently like he was trying to explain something to a moron. Must have been his custody lawyer. I decided to change the subject with Sobel.

“Do you think you are being manipulated at all on this case?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The photos stashed in the bureau, the bullet casing in the floor vent. Pretty convenient, don’t you think?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking questions your partner doesn’t seem interested in.”

I checked on Lankford. He was tapping in numbers on his cell, making a new call. I turned and stepped into the open doorway of the office. Sobel was looking behind the files in a drawer. Finding no gun, she closed the drawer and stepped over to the desk. I spoke in a low voice.

“What about Raul’s message to me?” I said. “About finding Jesus Menendez’s ticket out, what do you think he meant?”

“We haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Too bad. I think it’s important.”

“Everything’s important until it isn’t.”

I nodded, not sure what she meant by that.

“You know, the case I’m trying is pretty interesting. You ought to come back by and watch. You might learn something.”

She looked from the desk to me. Our eyes held for a moment. Then she squinted with suspicion, like she was trying to judge whether a supposed murder suspect was actually coming on to her.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you might have trouble getting to court if you’re in lockup.”

“Hey, no gun, no case. That’s why you’re here, right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Besides, this is your partner’s thing. You’re not riding with him on this. I can tell.”

“Typical lawyer. You think you know all the angles.”

“No, not me. I’m finding out I don’t know any of them.”

She changed the subject.

“Is this your daughter?”

She pointed to the framed photograph on the desk.

“Yeah. Hayley.”

“Nice alliteration. Hayley Haller. Named after the comet?”

“Sort of. Spelled differently. My ex-wife came up with it.”

Lankford came in then, talking to Sobel loudly about the call he had gotten. It had been from a supervisor telling them that they were back in play and would handle the next Glendale homicide whether the Levin case was still active or not. He didn’t say anything about the call he had made.

Sobel told him she had finished searching the office. No gun.

“I’m telling you, it’s not here,” I said. “You are wasting your time. And mine. I have court tomorrow and need to prepare for witnesses.”

“Let’s do the bedroom next,” Lankford said, ignoring my protest.

I backed up into the hallway to give them space to come out of one room and go into the next. They walked down the sides of the bed to where twin night tables waited. Lankford opened the top drawer of his table and lifted out a CD.

“Wreckrium for Lil’ Demon,” he read. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

I didn’t respond. Sobel quickly opened the two drawers of her table and found them empty except for a strip of condoms. I looked the other way.

“I’ll take the closet,” Lankford said after he had finished with his night table-leaving the drawers open in typical police search fashion. He walked into the closet and soon spoke from inside it.

“Here we go.”

He stepped back out of the closet holding the wooden gun box.

“Bingo,” I said. “You found an empty gun box. You must be a detective.”

Lankford shook the box in his hands before putting it down on the bed. Either he was trying to play with me or the box had a solid heft to it. I felt a little charge go down the back of my neck as I realized that Roulet could have just as easily snuck back into my house to return the gun. It would have been the perfect hiding place for it. The last place I might think to check again once I had determined that the gun was gone. I remembered the odd smile on Roulet’s face when I had told him I wanted my gun back. Was he smiling because I already had the gun back?

Lankford flipped the box’s latch and lifted the top. He pulled back the oilcloth covering. The cork cutout which once held Mickey Cohen’s gun was still empty. I breathed out so heavily it almost came out as a sigh.

“What did I tell you?” I said quickly, trying to cover up.

“Yeah, what did you tell us,” Lankford said. “Heidi, you got a bag? We’re going to take the box.”

I looked at Sobel. She didn’t look like a Heidi to me. I wondered if it was some sort of a squad room nickname. Or maybe it was the reason she didn’t put her first name on her business card. It didn’t sound homicide tough.