"Hey, Cole."

I stopped.

"I didn't like passing you those bum reports."

"I know. I could tell."

"That's good work you did, putting all this together. You would've made a good cop."

I let myself out of her Beemer. She watched as I walked away.

I reached my office just after seven, but I did not stay there. I gathered the interviews with Dersh and Ward, then walked across the street to a bagel place I like. I ordered Nova lox on a cinnamon-raisin bagel, then took a seat at a window table. An older woman at the next table smiled a good morning. I wished her a good morning back. The older man with her was reading a paper, and didn't bother with either of us. He looked snotty.

It was an ideal place in which to consider multiple homicide.

I went to the pay phone by the rest rooms, and called Joe Pike. He answered on the second ring.

"I'm at the bagel place across from the office. Karen Garcia was the fifth victim in a string of homicides going back nineteen months. The police know that, and they have a suspect." If you're going to say it, you just have to say it.

Pike didn't respond.

"Joe?"

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

I reread Dersh's and Ward's interviews while I waited, all the while thinking about Eugene Dersh. Dersh didn't seem like a homicidal maniac to me, but maybe they said that about Ted Bundy and Andrew Cunanan, too.

Both Dersh's and Ward's versions of events agreed that it was Dersh who had suggested the hike at Lake Hollywood, but differed importantly about why they had left the trail to hike along the shoreline. Ward stated that it was Dersh's idea to walk along the shore, and that Dersh picked the spot where they left the trail. The police called this being "directive," as if Dersh was directing the course of events that led to their finding the body. But where Dersh was clear and decisive in describing their actions, Ward seemed inconsistent and uncertain, and I wondered why.

The elderly woman was watching me. We traded another smile. The elderly man was still lost in the paper, neither of them having shared a word in the entire time I had been there. Maybe they had said everything they had to say to each other years ago. But maybe not. Maybe their silence wasn't two people each living separate lives, but two people who fit so perfectly that love and communication could be derived by simple proximity. In a world where people kill other people for no reason at all, you want to believe in things like that.

When Joe Pike walked in, the old man glanced up from his paper and frowned. There goes the neighborhood.

I said, "Let's walk. I don't want to talk about it here."

We walked along the south side of Santa Monica Boulevard, heading east into the sun. I gave Pike the sheet with the five names.

"You recognize any of these names?"

"Only Karen. These the other vics?"

"Yeah. Munoz was first." I went through the others, giving him everything that I'd learned from both Samantha Dolan and Jerry Swetaggen. "The cops've been trying to connect these people together, but they haven't been able to do it. Now they're thinking the guy picks his victims at random."

"You said there's a suspect."

"Krantz thinks it's Dersh."

Pike stopped walking, and looked at me with all the expression of a dinner plate. The morning rush-hour traffic was heavy, and I wondered how many thousands of people passed us in just those few minutes of walking.

"The man who discovered the body?"

"Krantz is under the gun to make a collar. He wants to think that it's Dersh, but they don't have any physical evidence putting Dersh to the killings. All they have is some kind of FBI profile, so Krantz has a twenty-four-hour watch on the guy. That's how they picked me up when I went over there."

"Mm."

The passing traffic was reflected in Pike's glasses.

"This thing has been top secret since the beginning, Joe, and the cops want to keep it that way. The deal I made with Dolan is that we'll respect that. We can't tell Frank."

Pike's chest expanded as he watched the traffic. His only movement. "Big thing not to tell, Elvis."

"Krantz may be a turd, but Dolan is a top cop, and so is Watts. Hell, most of those guys are aces. That's why they're in Robbery-Homicide. So even if Krantz is half-cocked, the rest of them are still going to work a righteous case. I think we have to give them time to work it, and that means keeping quiet about what's going on."

Pike made a quiet snort. "Me, helping Krantz."

"Dolan needs to ask Frank about the four other vics and look through Karen's things. Will you talk to him?"

Pike nodded, but I'm not sure the nod was meant for me.

We walked again, neither of us speaking, and pretty soon we came to Pike's Jeep. He opened the door, but didn't get in.

"Elvis?"

"Yeah?"

"Could I see those?" He wanted the interview transcripts.

"Sure." I gave them to him.

"You think it was Dersh?" Like if it was, you wouldn't want to be Dersh.

"I don't know, Joe. The always reliable but overworked hunch says no, but I just don't know."

Pike's jaw flexed once, then that, too, was gone.

"I'll talk to Frank and let you know." Joe Pike climbed into his Jeep, pulled the door shut, and in that moment I would've given anything to see into his heart.

Pike wanted to see Eugene Dersh.

He wanted to witness him in his own environment, and see if he thought Dersh had murdered Karen Garcia. If it was possible that Dersh was the killer, then Pike would ponder what to do with that.

Pike knew from the police interview transcripts that Dersh worked at home. All LAPD interviews started that way. State your name and address for the record, please. State your occupation. Pike's instructor at the academy said that you started this way because it put the subject in the mood to answer your questions. Later, Pike had been amazed to learn how often it put the subject in the mood to lie. Even innocent people would lie. Make up a name and address that, when you tried to contact them weeks later, you would find to be an auto parts store, or an apartment building packed with illegals, none of whom spoke English.

Pike pulled into a Chevron station and looked up Dersh's address in his Thomas Brothers map. Dersh lived in an older residential area in Los Feliz where the streets twisted and wound with the contours of the low foothills. Seeing the street layout was important because Krantz's people were watching Dersh's place, and Pike wanted to know where they were.

When Pike had the names of the streets bracketing Dersh's home, he used his cell phone to call a realtor he knew, and asked her if any properties were for sale or lease on those streets. The police would establish a surveillance base in a mobile van if they had to, but they preferred to use a house. After a brief search of the multiple listing service, Pike's friend reported that there were three homes for sale in that area, two of which were vacant. She gave Pike the addresses. Comparing the addresses with Dersh's on the map, Pike saw that one of the homes was located on the street immediately north of Dersh's, and kitty-corner across an alley. That's where the police would be.

Pike worked his way across Hollywood, then wound his way into the quiet of an older neighborhood until he came to Dersh's small, neat home. Pike noted the two-story dwelling just off the alley that would be the police surveillance site. In the flicker of time as he drove past the mouth of the alley, Pike saw the glint of something shiny in the open second-floor window. The officers roosting there would have binoculars, a spotting scope, and probably a videocamera, but if Pike kept Dersh's house between them and himself, they wouldn't see him. In a combat situation, those guys would fast be a memory.