The New, Improved John Chen

John Chen had leased the Porsche Boxster – also known as the 'tang-mobile – on the very day he was promoted for his exemplary performance in the Karen Garcia homicide. He couldn't afford it, but John had decided that one could either accept one's miserable place in life (even if, like John, one was born to it) or defy it, and you could defy it if you just had the balls to take action. This was the new, improved John Chen, redefining himself with the motto: If I can take it, it s mine.

First comes the 'tang-mobile, then comes the 'tang.

Just as John Chen had had his eye on the Boxster, so had he been head over heels in heat for Teresa Wu, a microbiology graduate student at UCLA and part-time assistant at SID. Teresa Wu had lustrous black hair, skin the color of warm butter, and professorial red glasses that John thought were the sexiest thing going.

Still flush with the accolades he'd garnered for his work at Lake Hollywood, John drove back to the office, made sure everyone there knew about the Boxster, then asked Teresa Wu for a date.

It was the first time he had asked her out, and only the second time he'd spoken to her. It was only the third time he'd been brave enough to ask out anyone.

Teresa Wu peered at him over the top of the red glasses, rolled her eyes as if he'd just asked her to share a snot sandwich, and said, "Oh, please, John. No way."

Bitch.

That was a week ago, but part of John 's newfound philosophy was a second motto: No guts, no nookie. John had spent the next seven days working up his nut to ask her out again, and was just about to do so when some guy named Elvis Cole called, wanting to speak with him.

Now Teresa had left for school, and John put down the phone with a feeling of annoyance. Not only had the incoming call blown today's chance at Teresa Wu, but Chen didn't like it that Cole implied he had missed something at the crime scene. Chen liked it even less that he'd allowed the guy to badger him into meeting back at the Dersh house. Still, Chen was curious to hear what Cole had to offer; after all, if Chen could make a headline breakthrough on the Dersh case, Teresa Wu might change her mind about going out with him. How could she turn down a guy with a Boxster and his name on the front page of the L.A. Times?

Forty minutes later, John Chen tooled his 'tang-mobile into Dersh's drive beside a green-and-white cab. The police tape had been removed from Dersh's door, and the house long released as a crime scene. Now it was nothing more than bait for the morbid.

As Chen shut down the Boxster, a man whose arm stuck from his body in a shoulder cast climbed out of the cab. He looked like a waiter.

The man said, "Mr. Chen. I'm Elvis Cole."

There's a dorky name for you. Elvis.

Chen eyed Cole sourly, thinking that Cole probably wanted him to falsify or plant evidence. "You're Pike's partner?"

"That's right. Thanks for coming out."

Cole offered his good hand. He wasn't as big as Pike, but his grip was uncomfortably hard – like Pike, he was probably another gym rat with too many Y chromosomes who played private eye so he could bully people. Chen shook hands quickly and stepped away, wondering if Cole was dangerous.

"I don't have a lot of time, Mr. Cole. They're expecting me back at the office five minutes ago."

"This won't take long."

Cole started down the alley alongside Dersh's home without waiting, and Chen found himself following. John resented that: Ballsy guys lead; they don't follow.

Cole said, "When you covered the Lake Hollywood scene, you backtracked the shooter to a fire road and found where he'd parked his car."

Chen's eyes narrowed. He automatically didn't like this, because Pike had done the tracking and he'd only tagged along. Chen, of course, had left that part out of his report.

"And?"

"There's no mention of the shooter's vehicle in the Dersh report. I was wondering if you looked for it."

Chen felt a flood of relief and irritation at the same time. So that was the guy's big idea; that was why he'd wanted to meet. Chen put an edge in his voice, letting this guy know he wasn't just some a-hole with a pocket caddy.

"Of course, I looked for it. Mrs. Kimmel heard the shooter's car door slam in front of her next-door neighbor's house. I checked the street and the curbs there and in front of the next house for possible tread marks, too, but there was nothing."

"Did you look for oil drips?"

Cole said it just like that, without accusation, and Chen felt himself darken.

"What do you mean?"

"The Lake Hollywood report mentions oil drips that you found at the scene. You took samples up there and identified the oil."

"Pennzoil 10-40."

"If the shooter's car was leaking up at the lake, it probably left drops here, too. If we found them, maybe you could prove they'd come from the same vehicle."

Chen darkened even more, his face burning at the same time he felt a grim excitement. Cole had something here. Chen could compare brand, additives, and carbon particulate concentration to match the two samples. If he got a match, it would break open the Dersh case and guarantee headline coverage!

But when they reached the street, Chen's enthusiasm waned. The tarmac had last been refreshed in the sixties, and showed pothole plugs, the scorched weathering of L.A.'s inferno heat, and a webwork of tiny earthquake cracks. In the general area where Chen reasoned that the shooter had parked, any number of drips dotted the road, and they might've been anything: transmission fluid, power steering fluid, oil, brake fluid, antifreeze, the hawked lugey of a passing motorist, or bird shit.

Chen said, "I don't know, Cole. It's been two weeks; anything that dripped that night has been weathered, dried, driven over, maybe contaminated with other substances. We won't be able to find anything."

"We won't know if we don't look, John."

Chen walked along the edge of the street, kicking pebbles and frowning. The damned street was so speckled it looked like measles. Still, it was an interesting idea, and if it panned out, the benefits might be enormous. Sex with Teresa Wu.

Chen dropped down into a push-up position the way Pike had shown him and considered the light on the road's surface. He let everything blur except the light, and noticed that some drips shined more than others. Those would be fresher. Chen moved to the curb, and imagined a car parked there, an SUV like the one at Lake Hollywood. He went low again in that place, looking for drip patterns. A vehicle parked for a time would not leave a single drip, but several, the dots overlapping.

Cole said, "What do you think?"

John Chen, lost in the street, did not hear him.

" John?"

"Huh?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it's a long shot."

"Is there any other kind?"

John Chen went back to the Boxster for his evidence kit, then spent the rest of the afternoon taking samples, and daydreaming about Teresa Wu.