Sunset Express

'Or Truly might have helped him.'

I nodded. 'Just thinking out loud.'

'Because you have no proof.' The veins in his arms weren't as prominent, and his tattoos had lost their glow. The danger of thermo-nuclear meltdown was passing.

I shook my head. 'No. Lester could be on the level, even though he's a creep.'

'What about the woman?'

'Louise Earle is different. Kerris went to see her, and now she's changed her story. I don't buy that she was lying to me, and I don't buy that Rossi held a gun to her head and made her lie six years ago. Rossi wouldn't have done that, and Louise Earle wouldn't have lied about it.'

'If she wasn't lying then, she's lying now.'

'Yes. But why?' The waiter brought our food, and the smells of mint and garlic and curry were strong. He set out the dishes and said, 'We make spicy. Like always.'

'Great.'

When the waiter was gone, Pike said, 'Because the law is war, and to defeat the prosecution Green must do two things. He must float a viable theory for what happened to Susan Martin, and he must discredit the prosecution's theory.'

'Okay.'

'Lester gives him the alternative theory. The business with Rossi gives him a way to discredit the prosecution's evidence.'

'If Rossi framed LeCedrick Earle, she's also framing Teddy Martin.'

Pike nodded. 'Yes.' Pike twisted toward the Hitachi and said, 'Listen.'

Jonathan Green was on the noon news. The lead story was Elliot Truly's connection to James Lester, also known as Stuart Langolier. Green was announcing that James Lester had revealed to a defense investigator that he had once been known as Stuart Langolier and, under that name, had once been represented by Elliot Truly. Green said that it was his understanding that Mr. Truly had no recollection of Mr. Lester as a client and added that the defense team had immediately notified the district attorney's office to mitigate the appearance of a conflict and to allow them the opportunity for a complete investigation. I said, 'He's doing just what he said. '

Pike grunted. 'Covering his ass,'

The little woman noticed that we were watching the TV and turned the Hitachi so that it would be easier for us to see.

The news anchor shifted the story to the charges against Angela Rossi and cut to the same tape of Louise

Earle that I'd seen last night, Mrs Earle crying as she charged that Angela Rossi had framed her son, saying that the police had made her lie before, saying that they had threatened her. The tears looked real. Her pain looked real. Jonathan Green was standing next to her. Elliot Truly was standing behind them. Everyone looked oh-so-concerned.

Pike turned away. 'I can't look at this.'

I stared at the Hitachi. I watched Green and I watched Louise Earle, and it just didn't make sense. 'If what we're thinking about Lester and Louise Earle is true, why would a guy like Jonathan Green risk who he is and what he does?'

'Because he's an asshole.' The world according to Pike.

I said, 'Lizard people.'

Pike's glasses gleamed. 'We can talk about this forever, but the only way we're going to find out what's going on with these people is to ask them.'

The young waiter was watching us. He didn't like it that we hadn't touched the food, and he looked concerned. He said something to the little woman. She frowned at us and seemed to share his concern.

The waiter came over and wanted to know if anything was wrong. Pike looked at him and stood. 'Probably. But if there is we'll fix it.'

We picked up the Santa Monica Freeway and drove to Louise Earle's home in Olympic Park. We knocked twice, and rang the bell three times, but she didn't answer. Pike said, 'I'll look in back.'

Pike disappeared around the side of the house. The day was bright, and the same three girls were across the street, whiling away their summer on their porch. I waved and they waved back. Getting to be old friends. Pike reappeared from the opposite side. 'She's not home.'

'Then let's see Lester.'

We climbed back onto the freeway and worked our way east past Pasadena to La Puente and James Lester's house.

Lester's home was unchanged from the last time I was there. The yard was still dead, the Fairlane was still rusted, and everything was still covered with fine gray sand. We parked at the curb and walked across the gray soil to the house. The front door was open, and music was coming from the house. The George Baker Selection doing 'Little Green Bag.' When we got closer, Pike said, 'Smell it?'

'Yep.' The sweet rope smell of hashish was coming from the house.

When we reached the door we didn't have to knock. Jonna Lester was sitting on the couch, sucking hard on a glass pipe, the little electric fans arcing back and forth as they scattered her hash smoke. She was wearing a Michigan State University T-shirt and short-shorts and the clear plastic clogs. Her left eye was red and blue and swollen almost closed, and the bottoms of the clogs were crudded with something dark, as if she'd stepped through mud. She smiled stupidly when she saw me and waved the pipe at her eye. 'Helps with the pain. You wanna smoke a bowl?'

I opened the screen door and we went in. There was another smell in the room, just beneath the dope. I tilted her face to better see the eye. 'James do this?'

She pulled away from me and waved the pipe again. 'It'll be the last time, yessireebob.' She took another pull on the pipe.

'We need to see him.'

Jonna Lester giggled. 'He's in the bathroom. It's his favorite room in the house. He always said that.' She giggled again.

'Would you tell him we want to see him, please?' The other smell felt wet and old, like melons that had gone soft with age.

Jonna Lester sank back on the couch. 'This is such a cool song.'

Joe-Pike walked over to the radio and turned it off. Jonna Lester screwed up her face and said, 'Hey!'

I called, 'James?'

Jonna Lester pushed to her feet and angrily waved toward the back of the house. 'He's back there, you wanna see the sonofabitch so bad. C'mon, I'll show ya.'

Pike and I looked at each other, and then Pike took out his.357 Python and held it down along his leg. We followed her out of the living room and across a square little hall to the bathroom. It was an old bathroom, built sometime back in the fifties, with a buckled linoleum floor and corroded fixtures and a brittle glass shower door, the kind that can hurt you bad if you fall through it. Jonna Lester stopped in the door and waved the hash pipe. 'Here he is. Talk to the sonofabitch all you want.'

I said, 'Oh, man.'

James Lester was lying through the broken shower door, half in the tub and half out, impaled on half a dozen jagged glass spikes. His head was almost severed, and the walls and the tub and the buckled linoleum were sprayed with gouts of dark red blood that looked not unlike wings raised toward heaven.

We had wanted to ask James Lester about Pritzik and Richards and the fabrication of evidence, but now he wasn't around to answer our questions. Neither were Pritzik and Richards.

Funny how that works. Isn't it?

CHAPTER 22

I got as close to the body as I could without stepping in blood. Jonna Lester's footprints were already on the linoleum from an earlier visit, but there didn't seem to be any other marks or tracks or signs of passage. There was a single small window at the far end of the bathroom above the toilet, open for the air. The window's screen was dirty and torn, but was hooked from the inside and appeared undisturbed. Metallic black flies bumped against the screen, drawn by the blood. I said, 'Did you touch anything?'

She said, 'Yee-uck! I ain't touchin' that mess.'

'Your footprints are on the floor. There's dried blood on your shoes.'

Jonna Lester took another pull on the hash pipe. The hash nut must've gone out, because she frowned at the pipe and poked the bowl. 'I hadda turn off the water.' One of the black flies worked its way through the screen and droned low across the slick floor. You could see its reflection in the blood.