The Forgotten Man

As much as Frederick wanted to kill Cole, he hoped they would get into their cars and leave. If they left, he might still get away in Juanita's old Dodge, just get in that baby and ease down the hill, and head up to Bakersfield. Live to fight another day. Live to hunt down Cole on a better day.

Frederick heard Payne said, "That's my boy."

Payne had been a good father.

Cole and the woman turned away from Frederick 's mobile home, and Frederick thought he was home free, but then they started toward Juanita's. Frederick held the shotgun so tightly that his forearms cramped.

Cole stepped around Juanita's Dodge and came toward the broken door.

Cole

The Dodge sedan was silted with a thin layer of undisturbed dust. It probably hadn't been driven in at least a week, but for all I knew it hadn't been driven in years. If Conrad's neighbors used a second vehicle, they probably weren't even home.

I went up to the door and knocked.

"Hello?"

Diaz stood well to the side.

I knocked again, then turned to see if anyone had come out of the other trailers. I turned back to the door, and knocked again.

Diaz said, "I'll check the next trailer."

She moved away, and I knocked again at the door.

"I'm giving away money."

Humor.

Diaz said, "Hey, Cole."

I glanced over. She pursed her lips, then wet them, and I thought she was sad.

"I'm sorry."

I nodded.

The door's handle was bent and wilted. The entire mobile home looked wilted.

"Last chance."

I knocked for the last time.

Frederick

A thin edge of light lay across Frederick 's face like a scar as he held his breath. He stood to the side of the door, watching Cole and the woman through a break in the drapes. He heard Cole say her name. Diaz?

Her name rang a bell, but Frederick didn't have time to think about it; she told Cole she was going to check the next trailer, and then she turned away. They were separating, and now he could kill Cole!

Frederick flicked off the shotgun's safety, then eased forward, reaching for the handle.

She was walking away as Cole hammered at the door.

Thank you, Juanita.

Frederick touched the bent and broken handle with his fingertips, then heard the approaching sirens-

Cole

Diaz and I heard the sirens at the same time. I turned away from the mobile home and took eight steps toward my car so that I could better see the street. Exactly eight; then I stopped.

Diaz said, "Goddamnit-that must be Pardy."

"I told you he was taking it to O'Loughlin."

Her face was creased with disgust when she turned back toward me, and I saw the moment when her eyes focused on something behind and beyond me.

I wish I could have been everything the articles made me out to be, and leaped into action to save us, but true crime and true cops are never that good. I didn't hear anything. I didn't see it coming. The blast kicked me down as if I had been broadsided by a car. I went down, and looked up, and saw Diaz with a perfect clarity as if my eyesight had grown inhumanly sharp. Her hand was under her jacket, reaching for her gun when she suddenly snapped backward against the old Dodge. A cluster of black grapes appeared below her breasts. Diaz staggered, but the vest had saved her and the Dodge held her up. She was still on her feet.

A man I did not know ran forward from the open door of the trailer. He was heavily built, but he moved quickly. He ran past me with a short black shotgun to his shoulder. Diaz brought up her gun, but the shotgun went off as she fired, and Diaz was knocked away.

The heavy man staggered sideways, looked down at himself, then looked at me. A red heart grew on his chest. He lifted the shotgun again, but now he wasn't moving so fast.

He screamed, "You killer!"

I was flat on my back, but I had my gun by then. I squeezed the trigger, and kept squeezing, pointing the gun up at him. He staggered in a circle as I shot him. I shot him until he fell, and kept shooting into the air up where he had been because I was too scared to do anything else, and never gave a thought where the bullets would hit or whom they might hurt. I kept shooting even after he fell.

"Diaz?"

I could see her feet, but she didn't answer me. She had fallen behind the Dodge.

"Diaz, answer me."

I tried to get up, but couldn't. I tried to roll over, but my body flared with an outrageous heat that made me scream. I touched myself, and my hand came away gloved in bright red.

I heard a little girl screaming, and thought it must be Kelly Diaz.

I said, "It's okay. I'm not your daddy."

Blood pulsed out over my fingers, and the trailer park dimmed. The last thing I saw was David Rei

He said, "You took my father."

All the world fell, and then I was gone.

59

Starkey

Starkey knew her nightmare was real when she got Biggins on the patch, midway between Van Nuys and Newhall. Biggins had checked out a tag number registered to one Frederick Conrad, a former employee of Payne Keller's, after the substation sheriff reported the vehicle at Keller's home. When the sheriff did not respond to Biggins's return call, Biggins had gone to Keller's home and discovered the body.

Starkey got directions to Conrad's mobile-home park on the fly, and called in the State Sheriffs herself. She didn't trust Biggins to do it. He seemed too upset.

Pike said, "Faster."

"Shut up."

"Push."

They came around the curve and screamed into the turnoff, and reached the trailer park first through clouds of dust and spraying gravel that rimed her soul with ice. Starkey had died in a trailer park. She had lost Sugar Boudreaux in a place exactly like this, and the echoes from that explosion now rippled through her, and she thought, Oh God, not again.

When she saw Cole, she knew he was dead. Dead people have that look. She didn't know what Pike saw. She wasn't thinking about Pike.

Diaz was down near the front end of an old car. Cole was down, too, halfway between the car and a trailer. A thick squat man was standing over Cole with a shotgun, and looked up at her as if he was peering through the wall of an aquarium. All of them were red. All of them glistened in the brilliant hot sun, and Starkey knew Cole was dead.

Pike made a sound, a kind of sharp grunt, and after that Starkey wasn't sure what happened. The steering wheel snapped out of her hands; Pike's foot crushed hers into the accelerator; the car surged forward, crushing over low shrubs and rocks and a wrought-iron bench. The squat man raised the shotgun. The windshield burst into lace, and then Pike stomped the brake pedal as he yanked the hand brake, and they were sideways. Pike was out of the car before they stopped sliding, and she heard the booms, two fast booms so close she thought they were one-BOOMBOOM-and the shotgun went up, twirling into the sky as David Rei

Pike reached Cole as Starkey fell out of her car.

"Nine-one-one. Clear the perp and check Diaz."

Pike never even gave the others a thought, but that seemed right to Starkey, so very very right. Her eyes filled and snot blew from her nose as she radioed emergency services. She stumbled forward to Cole and threw up as Pike worked. The side of Cole's chest was red pulp. It bubbled as Pike pushed on his chest.