Chapter 15

Experienced investigators referred to the site where an abduction took place as ground zero. It was the intersection where the paths of the victim and perpetrator converged, and merged into one. It was an ambush zone of abrupt furious violence or quiet threat where two paths led in and only one path led out, but these paths weren’t made in a vacuum. The physical world was disturbed—a fish rippled the water; a gliding bird cast a shadow. Pike knew this better than most because he spent most of his life trying to move without being heard or seen, or leaving a trail that others could follow. It was difficult. Jared Palmer had seen Reuben Mendoza. This was the first ripple, but Pike knew there would be others. The problem was time. Pike was building a pressure wave and riding it like a surfer shooting the green tunnel. But returning to Smith’s house to develop the trail could take hours and would diminish the pressure. The wave would collapse. Pike needed help to maintain the pressure, and believed no one was better at finding and recovering missing persons than his partner, Elvis Cole.

Cole was a licensed private investigator Pike met back in the day when Pike still wore the badge. Not the likeliest of pairings, Pike being so quiet and remote, Cole being one of those people who thought he was funny, but they were more alike than most people knew. Cole was an apprentice then, working for an old-school L.A. dick named George Feider to pile up the three thousand hours of experience the state required for a license. When Cole clocked the three-thousandth hour, Feider was ready to retire and Cole wanted to buy his agency. Pike had resigned from LAPD by then, and was making fat cash on military and security contracts. They bought the agency together, though Pike stayed in the background. He preferred it that way. Unheard and unseen.

While Pike waited for Cole to arrive, he phoned Hydeck and Betsy Harmon, hoping he was wrong about their disappearance and that Wilson or Dru had returned their calls or finally showed up at their kitchen. They hadn’t, and Betsy Harmon once more complained that no one had cleaned up the mess.

Twenty-five minutes after Pike called Elvis Cole, Cole slid into Pike’s Jeep outside a bar on Abbot Kinney, a few short blocks from the canals. Cole had made good time. If he was in the middle of something when Pike called, he had not mentioned it.

Cole said, “What’s going on?”

Pike began with Mendoza’s arrest two days earlier, and sketched the sequence of events up to and including his search for Mendoza and his call to Miguel Azzara. When he finished, Cole studied the snapshot of Mendoza before looking up.

“So you don’t believe they went to Oregon.”