"Jesus Christ!" Wainwright said.

He had come up the steps to see what the dragging sounds were all about. He was standing behind Pierce.

"Is that what I think it is?"

Pierce didn't answer. He didn't know what to say. Yesterday he plugged in a new phone.

Little more than twenty-four hours later it had led to this ghastly discovery.

"Wrong number," he said.

"What?" Wainwright asked. "What are you saying?"

"Never mind. Is there a phone here?"

"No, not that I know of."

"You have a cell phone?"

"In the car."

"Go get it."

Pierce looked up when Detective Renner walked in. He tried to keep his anger in check, knowing that the cooler he played this, the faster he would get out and get home. Still, over two hours in an eight-by-eight room with nothing but a five-day-old sports page to read had left him with little patience. He had already given a statement twice. Once to the patrol cops who responded to Wainwright's call, and then to Renner and his partner when they had arrived on the scene. One of the patrol cops had then taken him to the Pacific Division station and locked him in the interview room.

Renner had a file in his hand. He sat down at the table across from Pierce and opened it.

Pierce could see some sort of police form with handwriting in all the boxes. Renner stared at the form for an inordinate amount of time and then cleared his throat. He looked like a cop who'd been around more crime scenes than most. Early fifties and still solid, he reminded Pierce of Clyde Vernon in his taciturn way.

"You're thirty-four years old?"

"Yes."

"Your address is Twenty-eight hundred Ocean Way, apartment twelve oh one."

"Yes."

This time exasperation crept into his voice. Renner's eyes came up momentarily to his and then went back to the form.

"But that is not the address on your driver's license."

"No, I just moved. Ocean is where I live now. Amalfi Drive is where I used to live. Look, it's after midnight. Did you really keep me sitting in here all this time so you could ask me these obvious questions? I already gave you my statement. What else do you want?"

Renner leaned back and looked sternly at Pierce.

"No, Mr. Pierce, I kept you here because we needed to conduct a thorough investigation of what appears to be a crime scene. I am sure you don't begrudge us that."

"I don't begrudge that. I do begrudge being kept in here like a suspect. I tried that door. It was locked. I knocked and nobody came."

"I'm sorry about that. There was no one in the detective bureau. It's the middle of the night. But the patrol officer should not have locked the door, because you are not under arrest. If you want to make a personnel complaint against him or me, I'll go get you the necessary forms to fill out."

"I don't want to make a complaint, okay? No forms. Can we just get on with this so I can get out of here? Is it her blood?"

"What blood?"

"On the bed."

"How do you know it is blood?"

"I'm assuming. What else could it be?"

"You tell me."

"What? What is that supposed to mean?"

"It was a question."

"Wait a minute, you just said I was not a suspect."

"I said you are not under arrest."

"So you're saying I am not under arrest but I am a suspect in this?"

"I am not saying anything, Mr. Pierce. I am simply asking questions, trying to figure out what happened in that apartment and what is happening now."

Pierce pulled back his growing anger. He didn't say anything. Renner referred to his form and spoke without looking up.

"Now in the statement you gave earlier, you say that your new telephone number on Ocean Way belonged at one time to the woman whose apartment you went to this evening."

"Exactly. That's why I was there. To find out if something happened to her."

"Do you know this woman, Lilly Quinlan?"

"No, never met her before."

"Never?"

"Never in my life."

"Then why did you do this? Go to her apartment, go to the trouble. Why didn't you just change your number? Why did you care?"

"I'll tell you, for the last two hours I've been asking myself the same thing. I mean, you try to check on somebody and maybe do something good and what do you get? Locked in a room for two hours by the cops."

Renner didn't say anything. He let Pierce rant.

"What does it matter why I cared or whether or not I had a reason to do what I did?

Shouldn't you care about what happened to her? Why are you asking me the questions?

Why isn't Billy Wentz sitting in this room instead of me? I told you about him."

"We'll deal with Billy Wentz, Mr. Pierce. Don't worry. But right now I am talking to you."

Renner was then quiet a moment while he scratched his forehead with two fingers.

"Tell me again how you knew about that apartment in the first place."

Pierce's earlier statements had been replete with shadings of the truth designed to cover any illegalities he had committed. But the story he had told about finding the apartment had been a complete lie designed to keep Robin out of the investigation. He had made good on his promise not to reveal her as a source of information. Of everything that he had said over the last four hours, it was the only thing he felt good about.

"As soon as I plugged in my phone I started getting calls from men who wanted Lilly. A few of them were former clients who wanted to see her again. I tried to engage these men in conversation, to see what I could find out about her. One man today told me about the apartment and where it was. So I went over."

"I see, and what was this former client's name?"

"I don't know. He didn't give it."

"You have caller ID on your new phone?"

"Yes, but he was calling from a hotel. All it said was that it was coming from the RitzCarlton. There are a lot of rooms there. I guess he was in one of them."

Renner nodded.

"And Mr. Wainwright said you called him earlier today to ask about Miss Quinlan and another property she rented from him."

"Yes. A house on Altair. She lived there and worked in the apartment off Speedway. The apartment was where she met her clients. Once I told him she was missing, he went and cleared out her property."

"Had you ever been to that apartment before?"

"No. Never. I told you that."

"How about the house on Altair? Have you been there?"

Pierce chose his words like he was choosing his steps through a minefield.

"I went there and nobody answered the door. That's why I called Wainwright."

He hoped Renner wouldn't notice the change in his voice. The detective was asking far more questions than during the initial statement. Pierce knew he was on treacherous ground. The less he said, the better chance he had of getting through unscathed.

"I'm trying to get the chain of events correct," Renner said. "You told us you went to this place ECU in Hollywood first. You get the name Lilly Quinlan and address for a mail drop in Santa Monica. You go there and use this thing you call social engagement to -"

"Engineering. Social engineering."

"Whatever. You engineer the address to the house out of the guy at the mail drop, right?

You go to the house first, then you call Wainwright, and then you run into him at the apartment. Do I have all of this straight?"

"Yes."

"Now you have said in both your statements so far tonight that you knocked and found no one home and so you left. That true?"

"Yes, true."

"Between the time you knocked and found no one home and when you left the premises, did you go into the house on Altair, Mr. Pierce?"

There it was. The question. It required a yes or a no. It required a true answer or a lie which could easily be found out. He had to assume he had left fingerprints in the house.