When De Ville opened the door, they pushed him backward, Wozniak going first and pushing hard.

DeVille said, "Hey, what is this?" Like he'd never been rousted before.

The room was tattered and cheesy, with a closet and bath off the rear. A rumpled double bed rested against the wall like some kind of ugly altar, its dark red bedspread stained and threadbare, one of the stains looking like Mickey Mouse. The room's only other piece of furniture was a cheap dresser edged with cigarette burns and notches cut by a sharp knife. Wozniak held DeVille as Pike cleared the bathroom and the closet, looking for Ramona.

"She's not here."

"Anything else? Clothes, suitcase, toothbrush?"

"Nothing." Indicating that DeVille hadn't been living here, and didn't intend to. He had other uses for the mom.

Wozniak, who had busted DeVille twice in the past, said, "Where is she, Lennie?"

"Who? Hey, I don't do that anymore. C'mon, Officer."

"Where's the camera?"

DeVille spread his hands, flashing a nervous smile. "I got no camera. I'm telling you, I'm off that."

Leonard DeVille was five-eight, with a fleshy body, dyed blond hair, and skin like a pineapple. The hair was slicked straight back, and held with a rubber band. Pike knew that DeVille was lying, but waited to see how Woz would play it. Even with only three years on the job, Pike knew that pedophiles were always pedophiles. You could bust them, treat them, counsel them, whatever, but when you released them back into the world, they were still child molesters and it was only a matter of time.

Wozniak hooked a hand under the foot of the bed and heaved the bed over. DeVille jumped back and stumbled into Pike, who caught and held him. A rumpled overnight bag was nesting in about a million dust bunnies where the bed had been.

Wozniak said, "Lennie, you are about as dumb as they get."

"Hey, that ain't mine. I got nothing to do with that bag." DeVille was so scared that he sprouted sweat like a rainstorm.

Wozniak opened the bag and dumped out a Polaroid camera, better than a dozen film packs, and at least a hundred pictures of children in various stages of undress. That's how a guy like DeVille made his living, snapping pictures and selling them to other perverts.

Wozniak toed through the pictures, his face growing darker and more contained. Pike couldn't see the pictures from where he stood, but he could see the vein pulsing in Wozniak's temple. He thought that Wozniak must be thinking about his own daughter, but maybe not. Maybe Wozniak was still thinking about the other thing.

Pike squeezed DeVille's arm. "Where's the little girl? Where's Ramona Escobar? "

DeVille's voice went higher. "That stuff isn't mine. I never saw it before."

Wozniak squatted, fingering through the pictures without expression. He lifted one, and held it to his nose.

"I can still smell the developing chemicals. You didn't take this more than an hour ago."

"They're not mine!"

Wozniak stared at the picture. Pike still couldn't see it.

"She looks about five. She matches the physical description they gave us. Pretty little girl. Innocent. Now she's not innocent anymore."

Abel Wozniak stood and drew his gun. It was the new Beretta 9-millimeter that LAPD had just mandated.

"If you hurt that child, I'll fucking kill you."

Joe said, "Woz, we've got to call in. Put your gun away."

Wozniak stepped past Pike and snapped the Beretta backhand, slamming DeVille in the side of the head and dropping him like a bag of garbage.

Pike jumped between them, grabbing Wozniak by the arms and pushing him back. "That doesn't help get the girl."

Then Wozniak's eyes came to Pike; hard, ugly little rivets with something behind the clouds.

When the two police officers went up the stairs, Fahreed Abouti, the manager, watched until they pushed the blond man back into his room. The police often came to his motel to bust the prostitutes and John s and drug dealers, and Fahreed never passed up a chance to watch. Once, he had seen a prostitute servicing the officers who had come to arrest her, and another time he watched as three officers beat a rapist until all the man's teeth were gone. There was always something wonderful to see. It was better than Wheel of Fortune.

You had to be careful, though.

As soon as the upstairs door closed, Fahreed crept up the stairs. If you got too close, or if they caught you, the police grew angry. Once, a SWAT officer in the armor and the helmet and with the big gun had grown so angry that he'd knocked Fahreed's turban into a puddle of transmission fluid. The cleaning cost had been horrendous.

The shouting started when Fahreed was still on the stairs. He couldn't understand what was being said, only that the words were angry. He eased along the second-floor balcony, trying to get closer, but just as he reached the room, the shouting stopped. He cursed the fates, thinking he'd missed all the fun, when suddenly there was a single loud shout from inside, then a thunderous, deafening explosion.

People on the street stopped in their tracks and looked. A woman pointed, and a man across the parking lot ran.

Fahreed's heart pounded, because even a Hindu knew a gunshot. He thought the blond man might be dead. Or perhaps he had killed the officers.

Fahreed heard nothing within the room.

"Hallu?"

Nothing.

"Is everyone all right?"

Nothing.

Perhaps they had jumped from the bathroom window into the alley behind.

Fahreed's palms were damp, and all his swirling fears demanded that he race back to his office and pretend to have heard nothing, but instead he threw open the door.

The younger officer, the tall one with the dark glasses and the empty face, spun toward him and aimed an enormous revolver. Fahreed thought in that instant that he would surely die.

"Please. No!"

The older officer was without a face, his remains covered in blood. The blond man was dead, too, his face a mask of crimson. The floor and walls and ceiling were sprayed red.

"No!"

The tall officer's gun never wavered. Fahreed stared into his dark bottomless glasses, and saw that they were misted with blood.

"Please!"

The tall officer dropped to his fallen partner, and began CPR.

Without looking up, the tall officer said, "Call 911."

Fahreed Abouti ran for the phone.