Why'd they pick it up?

Darcy shrugged.

Don't know.

What did they do with it?

Don't know. We asked, but they wouldn't tell us.

Maddux said, They wouldn't tell us anything, Cole.

Darcy checked the time, then nudged his partner's arm.

That's it. Let's take him back.

Maddux dropped the car into gear and pulled a slow U-turn. We headed back toward the Repkos'.

Darcy still had his elbow hooked over the seat, staring at nothing. I could see the passing houses and trees crawl across his sunglasses like a film strip. It was a nice film. It looked like the American dream.

I said, Why'd you guys bring me in?

Maddux glanced in the rearview. Darcy came out of his film.

The Repkos deserve to know what happened to their daughter.

Meaning you've taken the case as far as you can.

Man says we're off, we're off. You, on the other hand, can do whatever you want.

Maddux glanced again.

I just wanna fuck that prick Marx.

Darcy unhooked his arm.

That, too.

They dropped me outside the Repkos' home, then melted through a tunnel of dappled shade.

Chapter 20

DARCY AND Maddux had been cut out of the loop. Poitras, Bobby McQue, and Starkey had been cut, and Chen and the criminalists had been forced to work in the dark. People who should have been collaborators with Marx and his task force had been treated as if they couldn't be trusted. I wondered what Marx didn't trust them with.

I sat in my car outside the Repko house, thinking about the video and why Marx pulled it before Darcy's brother-in-law finished trying to recover whatever was recorded. LAPD had a long history of using local special-effects houses to examine and enhance film and video. If you had state-of-the-art specialists available, it made sense to use them. Marx pulling the DVD bothered me because SID was good, and if they said the DVD was junk, then it was probably junk, which was why Marx's play didn't make sense. If the DVD was useless, there was nothing to lose by letting a cutting-edge CGI house see what it could do and everything to gain.

I paged through my notes until I found Lindo's number, then gave him a call. He didn't seem as nervous as when we spoke before. Maybe because he was back to investigating bomb-kook conspiracies.

He said, What's up, Cole?

Do you know what happened to the security video of Debra Repko's murder?

The surprise in his voice was clear.

There was a video?

One of the shopkeepers where Repko was murdered turned in a recording. How could you not know about this?

Lindo was silent for a moment.

Waitaminute maybe I heard something. It was blank or something was wrong with it?

That's the one. A CGI house was working on it when you guys took over.

Didn't SID say it was no good?