“Are you sure you want to go forward?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll get back to you when we can.”

Cole put down the phone with an uneasy sense that his legs had been swept from beneath him by a furious river of unknown events and unknowable people, and the river was carrying him with it. He stretched until his shoulders cracked, then remembered the pictures, and realized what had been bothering him.

He placed the pictures of Wilson Smith and Dru Rayne on his keyboard, and studied their faces again. Their eyes didn’t show the anxious tension of people with a gun at their backs. They didn’t look scared. Cole wondered why.

Chapter 32

32

Pike rolled hard down the canyon from Elvis Cole’s house until he was free of the high ridges. He called Arturo Alvarez as he entered the flats. The phone rang so many times Pike thought no one would answer, but finally a young woman picked up, her voice so subdued Pike wasn’t sure if she was the same young woman he’d met at the Angel Eyes house.

“Hello.”

“Marisol?”

“Yes. May I help you?”

“This is Joe Pike. Can I speak with Artie?”

The line was so quiet Pike wondered if she put him on hold.

Pike said, “Hello?”

“Go to hell.”

She hung up without saying more, and Pike knew by her anger, something ugly had happened to Art.

The freshly painted stucco house was as subdued as Marisol’s voice when Pike arrived. The crowd of kids Pike had seen on his last visit was gone, and the yard was deserted except for a shirtless male counselor on the roof, replacing a tile shingle in the late-morning sun.

The front door was open for air, so Pike did not knock. He stepped inside, and found the living room empty.

“Anyone here?”

Pike heard a voice in the rear, then Marisol appeared in the hall, her arms crossed tightly over her breasts, her eyes angry black gunsights.

“Get out of here.”

“Where’s Art?”

“You brought them here. Go.”

Pike called into the house.

“Art?”

A low mumble he recognized as Art’s voice came from the back rooms, but Marisol spoke over him.

“We don’t want you here. Go away.”

Pike pushed past her and found Father Art in a small bedroom across from his office, one of the tiny rooms a kid used when they had no place else to go. Already hot, but the windows were up and a small electric fan stirred the air. Art was propped on a single bed with couch cushions for support. His left eye was swollen to a slit, and both were purpled and black. Contusions like the Verdugo Mountains crossed his forehead. His nose was twice its normal size and bent to the right, pointing at his split upper lip and a discolored mouse on his cheek. A loose white T-shirt made him look thin.

Pike said, “Azzara.”