If they're protecting Wilts, you're not going to find anything in their files. They would destroy incriminating evidence or doctor it.

Maybe I'm hoping something incriminating will be there. If Marx showed Wilts as a person of interest in the Frostokovich murder, maybe I'm wrong about the cover-up. Maybe it's something else.

Starkey laughed, but it was sickly and weak.

Right. And you want to be wrong.

Like you said, the man's a deputy chief of police. It's okay if he's a political asshole, but it's not okay if he's protecting a murderer. The only way I can know what they're doing is to see what they're doing with the information.

Starkey nodded, but she was still thinking it through.

So you just want to see.

The murder book Marx started on Frostokovich should contain statements by the girls she had dinner with on the night she died. They would have mentioned bumping into Wilts, and Marx should have followed up by asking Wilts if he saw anything that night. I also want to see what these blind tests they're running through SID are about, and what happened to the DVD from the Repko case.

All right, listen here's what I can do. That's very specific. That's just looking in some boxes to see what's what, right?

It won't take long.

I'll have Lindo do it. He'll bitch, but he'll do it. He can go in early and take a look when no one's around.

They keep the room locked.

Cole, wake the fuck up the department uses these offices every time someone squirts a new task force out their ass. They don't change the locks. I know five different people down there who have keys to that room. I used to have them myself.

Lindo can't be involved. If Lindo looks, I'll have to tell him what to look for, and he'll figure it out. The more people who know, the greater the chance Marx will find out.

There are ways to do this, man. There are people we can talk to.

Starkey wasn't liking it, and I couldn't blame her. I twisted sideways, the better to face her.

I know what I'm asking. You tell me you can't get involved, that's fine. I mean it.

Oh, that's big of you, Cole. That is amazingly generous. If I decline to help you commit a crime against my employer, which just happens to be the Los Angeles Police Department, me being a sworn officer and all, you won't hold it against me. How did I become so lucky?

I felt myself flush.

I didn't mean it that way. I'm talking about a city councilman and a deputy chief who might be abetting the deaths of seven women. I can't bring something like this forward until it's tied up so tight Marx and Wilts can't use their influence to duck it.

Starkey rubbed at the sides of her face again.