He knew Pike would ask.
32
Joe Pike
Wander had not returned, and neither had the Explorer. Young moms and dads passed with kids strapped into car seats, and three boys rumbled past on skateboards. Pike wondered if Cole was inside with Ghazi al-Diri, and if everything was going according to plan.
A woman wearing black utility pants and a black tank top came out of the house next door with a large German shepherd. She had broad shoulders for a small woman, and fit arms, and looked like a commando in all the black, but she didn’t look happy.
The woman and dog walked past the Jeep like they had done this same walk a thousand times and it held nothing new. The dog pulled at the leash, and the woman told it to stop. She seemed angry, but Pike thought she probably wasn’t. They had walked together a thousand times, and each time the dog pulled, the woman complained, and her arms and face showed the strain. Pike wondered why she didn’t change the pattern. Change one element, and everything changes. All she had to do was talk to the dog.
Pike’s phone vibrated. He glanced at the incoming number and recognized Stone.
“Go.”
“They’re dumping bodies. I followed the Explorer into the desert and saw them. They’re killing people in those houses.”
Pike studied the house, and wondered if someone was inside dying.
“Elvis?”
“No. No, man, I checked. They dumped four today, but I counted nine. It is fuckin’ grotesque.”
Pike figured they would be Park’s people.
“Koreans?”
“That’s what I expected, but no. They’re Indians or Pakistanis. How many fuckin’ people has this guy kidnapped?”
This surprised Pike. He wondered if they had been held at the house he was watching, or the Mecca house, or another, and how many more were still prisoners.
“How long have they been dead?”
“The four today, no more than five or six hours. The others have been there for days.”
“Where are you?”
“Inbound now, but the bodies are twenty south of Palm Desert. I fixed a waypoint. What’s happening up there?”
“Nothing.”
Stone didn’t comment, which meant Stone didn’t like it. Pike didn’t like it either. Cole was supposed to be in the house, but Wander had not returned to take him back to his car, and no one else had arrived. If they had taken Cole in the Explorer, he now had no backup, and Pike liked that even less.
Stone read his mind.
“Y’know, we have no reason to believe he was in that Explorer.”
“Uh.”
“But if the Syrian was in Mecca, maybe they dropped off Cole on their way to dump the bodies.”
Pike thought Stone might be right about the meeting at a secondary location, but there was only one way to find out.
“I’m going in.”
“Wait. I’m fifteen out. I’ll make it in twelve.”
“Not going to wait.”
Pike put away his phone, then went to the rear bay. He stripped off his sweatshirt, strapped on a ballistic vest, then pulled the sweatshirt over it. He clipped a Kimber. 45 semi-auto at the small of his back, and was about to clip his. 357 Python when the dog ran past trailing its leash. Pike stepped to the far side of the Jeep to cover his guns.
The dog ran directly to its door, and scratched to get in. Pike guessed the woman had grown tired of being pulled. She came along the street a few seconds later, scowling, and shouting at the dog to stop. The dog didn’t stop. Pike turned away when she glanced at the Jeep.
When the woman and the dog were inside their home, Pike clipped the. 357 to his waist, then drove to the house. He got out with a fifteen-pound sledge, and did not bother to knock.
Pike hit the door square on the deadbolt. The lock crunched into the wood, but the door did not give. Pike swung again, and shattered more wood, but something was blocking the door.
Pike stood to the side. He listened at the hole, but heard nothing. There were no voices, or movement, or men scrambling for guns.
Pike ran back to the Jeep, and drove forward until the brush guard pressed the garage door, and the cheap door crumpled into the garage.
The laundry room door went down to the sledge.
Pike cleared the house fast, leading with the gun, locked out and good to go. The house was now empty. Pike found no bodies, possessions, food, or clothes. The only remaining evidence that something terrible had happened here were the heavy sheets of plywood covering the windows and doors. This house had been a prison.
Pike finished, and stood in the living room, breathing. He tried to listen to what the house knew, but heard only the low steady thud of his heart.
Pike had stood sentry since the gray van delivered Cole to this house, but Cole was now missing.
His friend had been taken.
Pike ran back to his Jeep, backed from the garage, and told Jon Stone to meet him in Mecca.
33
Joe Pike
The house in Mecca contained even less. The plywood had been removed, and the screw holes filled with painter’s putty. No sign remained of Cole or anyone else.
Stone said, “Now what?”
“His car.”
“What?”
“Can’t leave his car at the Burger King.”
“I meant where do we go from here?”
“I know what you meant.”
They left Pike’s Jeep at the Palm Springs airport. Stone drove them to the Burger King, where Pike picked up Cole’s Corvette. He had a key. They would take the Corvette home, get some sleep, and Stone would drive them back in the morning. They would pick up Pike’s Jeep, and sit on the bodies. If nine bodies had been dumped, there might be a tenth.
Two hours and forty-six minutes later, Pike rounded the last curve to Elvis Cole’s A-frame, and guided the old Corvette into the carport.
The house was dark, but Pike knew Cole’s house as well as his own. He turned on the kitchen light, then a table lamp in the living room, then pushed open the glass sliders to Cole’s deck.
The canyon below was dotted with lights. Some of the houses were so close Pike saw the flickering color of televisions, while others held the sky blue shimmer of pools. Pike liked Cole’s deck. He had helped Cole rebuild it when termites attacked the framing, and helped stain the wood every three years. The night air was chill, and smelled of wild fennel.
Pike said, “I hear you.”
The snick-snick-snick of approaching claws, then Cole’s cat bumped against his legs.
Pike looked down at the cat, and the cat looked up. It was a ragged animal, with pale scars lacing its black face and shredded ears.
Pike squatted, and ran the flat of his palm from the cat’s lumpy head along the peak of its spine. The cat enjoyed this for a moment, then stepped away. The fur along his spine rippled. His ears folded, then straightened, and his warrior face grew angry.
Pike said, “He isn’t here.”
Pike went inside. He found an open can of cat food and a bottle of Abita beer in the fridge. He forked the remains of the can into a clean dish, then put out fresh water, the food, and a saucer of beer.
The cat stood by the food, but did not eat.
Pike drank most of the remaining beer, turned on the carport light, and stared at Cole’s car. Filthy. Pike washed his Jeep every day, and waxed it every two months. Cole’s home was neat and orderly, and Cole was fastidiously clean when he cooked, but his car was a mess. Pike did not understand it, though he often wondered if it revealed some truth Pike was unable to understand.
Pike found a mop bucket and towels in the laundry room, squirted dish soap into the bucket, and took the bucket and towels out to the car. An armada of bugs swirled and spiraled around the carport ceiling light.
Pike pulled the hose from the side of the house, filled the bucket with sudsy water, then rinsed the car. He began at the nose, rubbing the car with his hand to slough away the dirt. The cat came out to watch. The water splashed his fur with liquid shrapnel, but the cat did not move.