"So you took the weight."

"DeVille was going to wake up and say that Woz hit him. I just went with it. I told them that we struggled, and that's how it happened. It would fit with what DeVille was going to say, and it would explain Woz being dead."

"Only you get marked rotten for causing your partner's death to protect a pedophile."

"You do the best you can with what you've got."

"Did Paulette know the truth?"

Pike stared at the cement. "If Paulette knew, she would've told the department. Even if it meant losing the benefits."

"Wasn't that her decision to make?"

"I made the decision for all of us."

"So she doesn't know that her husband killed himself."

"No."

Pike just stood there, and I thought that this was his single lonely way of protecting the woman he loved, even if it had cost him any chance at her love, forever and always.

Pike would take that weight.

And had.

I said, "All this time, all these cops hating you for nothing."

Pike cocked his head, and even in the dim light of the little building the glasses seemed to glow.

"Not for nothing. For everything."

"Okay. So now what?"

"She still gets his survivor benefits. I want to make sure that whatever leaves here doesn't affect that."

"Even if it's something that could help you?"

The corner of Pike's mouth twitched. "I didn't come this far to quit now."

"Then let's see what we find."

We sat in a Denny's just off the freeway for the next two and a half hours, drinking tea and going through the day books. The Denny's people didn't mind. With the heat, they didn't have much business.

We started with the most recent book and worked backward. Eight pages were missing from that book, but the rest were there, and legible. Wozniak's entries were often cryptic, but pretty soon they made sense to me.

At one point I saw that Pike had stopped reading, and asked him, "What?"

When he didn't answer, I leaned closer and found what had stopped him.

"This Pike is a sharp lad. He'll make a good cop."

Pike pulled back the book, and kept reading.

Many of the entries were about arrests that Wozniak made, with notes on crimes and criminals and witnesses that he took for future reference, but much of what he'd written was about the street kids whom Wozniak had tried to help. Whatever he had become, Wozniak had been sincere in his efforts to help the people he was sworn to protect and to serve.

In all seven books, only three names were used in a context that suggested they might be informants, and only one of those seemed a possible, that being in an entry dated five months prior to Wozniak's death.

I read that entry to Pike.

"Listen to this. 'Popped a kid named Laurence Sobek, age fourteen, male hustler. Likes to talk, so he might be a good source. Turned out by the Coopster. ID? Fucked up kid. Gonna try to get him inside.' " I looked up. "What's that mean, get him inside?"

"Get him into a halfway house or a program. Woz did that."

"Who's the Coopster?"

Pike shook his head.

I stared at the page.

"Could it be DeVille?"

Pike considered it. "Like a nickname. Coupe DeVille."

"Yeah."

"Thin."

"You remember Laurence Sobek?"

"No."

"Anything else in here look good?"

Pike shook his head again.

"Then this is what we go with."

We paid the bill, then brought the books out to our cars. I took the notebook that mentioned Laurence Sobek with me.

"How can I reach you?"

"Call the shop and tell them you need me. I'll have a pager."

"Okay."

We stood in the heat and watched the trucks go by on the freeway. Behind us, the windmills churned for as far as we could see. Pike was driving a maroon Ford Taurus with an Oregon license plate. I wondered where he'd gotten it. When I finally looked over, he was watching me.

I said, "What?"

"I'm going to beat this. Don't worry about me."

I made like Alfred E. Neumann. "What, me worry?"

"Something's eating you."

I thought about telling him about Lucy, but I didn't.

"You take care of yourself, Joe."

He shook my hand, and then he drove away.

It was late when I got home, but I called Dolan anyway. I called her house twice, leaving messages both times, but by the next morning she still hadn't gotten back to me. I thought that she might be at Parker Center, clearing her desk, but when I called her direct line there, Stan Watts answered.

"Hey, Stan. It's Elvis Cole."

"So what?"

"Is Dolan there?"

"She's over, man. Thanks to you."

Like I needed to hear that.

"I thought she might be there."

"She's not."

Watts hung up.

I called Dolan again at home, still got her machine, so this time I took Wozniak's notebook and drove over there.

Samantha Dolan lived in a bungalow on Sierra Bonita just a few blocks above Melrose, in an area more known for housing artists than police officers.

I parked behind her BMW, and heard music coming from the house even out in my car. Sneaker Pimps. Loud.

She didn't answer the bell, on my knock, and when I tried the door, it was locked. I pounded hard, thinking maybe she was dead and I should break in, when the door finally opened. Dolan was wearing a faded METALLICA tee shirt and jeans and was barefoot. Her eyes were nine shades of red, and she smelled like a fresh dose of tequila.

"Dolan, you've got a drinking problem." She sniffed like her nose was runny. "That's what I need today, you giving me life advice."

I walked in past her and turned off the music. The living room was large, with a nice fireplace and a hardwood floor, but it was sloppy. The sloppy surprised me. A big couch faced a couple of chairs, and a mostly empty bottle of Perfidio Anejo tequila sat on the floor by the couch. The cap was off. An LAPD Combat Shooting trophy sat on top of the television; the room smelled of cigarettes. I said, "Why didn't you call me back?"

"I haven't checked my messages. Look, you want me to talk to your friend, 1 will. I'm sorry about what happened last night." "Forget it."

I tossed Wozniak's binder to her.

"What's this?" She scooped a pack of cigarettes off the floor, and fired up, breathing out a cloud of smoke like a volcanic fog.

"A day book that Abel Wozniak kept."

"Abel Wozniak as in Pike's partner?"

"Read the pages I marked."

She frowned through another deep drag, reading. She flipped back several pages, then read forward past the point I had marked. When she was done, she looked at me. The cigarette forgotten.

"You're thinking this kid is talking about DeVille?"

"This kid had a relationship with Wozniak, that much we know. He was turned out by someone called the Coopster. If that's DeVille, then DeVille links Sobek to Karen Garcia, too."

Dolan squinted at me. "You're saying Sobek killed Dersh."

"I'm saying maybe he killed everybody. Krantz and the Feds have been chasing a serial killer, but maybe this guy isn't, Dolan. At first I thought the connection was through Wozniak, but maybe these killings don't have anything to do with Wozniak. Maybe they're about DeVille."

She shook her head, scowling and cranky. "I was one of the cops trying to find a connection, remember? We didn't."

"Did you check out DeVille?"

She waved her cigarette. "Why in hell would we?"

"I don't know, Dolan. I don't know why you didn't find anything, but you ordered DeVille's file from the DA's Record Section, right? Let's check it out and see what's there."

She took another pull on the cigarette, and stared into the cloud. I could almost see the wheels turning, weighing the odds and what all of this might mean. For her, it was a shot at getting in again. If she could turn something that advanced the case, it could keep her on Robbery-Homicide and save her career.