“I understand. Could I take a look at whatever you have?”

“Sure. I’ll try to burn a copy tonight. I’ve never done it before, but I have an instruction booklet somewhere around here. If it works, I’ll get it over to you tomorrow. If not, maybe you could come here.”

“That would be great, Mr. Laine. Thank you.”

When Cole put down the phone, he went back to the deck. He wanted to share the one piece of good news he had gotten that day, but when he stepped outside, Joe Pike was gone.

“Joe?”

The cat was gone, too.

“Joseph?”

The canyon swallowed his voice.

Cole went to the rail. Down below, the first few flickering lights twinkled in the shadows. Darkness pooled in the deeper cuts like purple mist, and would climb as the sun died until it consumed him. But not now, and not yet.

“It’s going to be okay, buddy. It only hurts for a while.”

His voice a whisper meant only for himself.

Then the cat growled, somewhere to his right and below on the slope. It started low, and spiraled louder like a terrible war cry until it filled the canyon with an anguished wail as if the cat was in pain. Cole thought it was the cat. He was pretty sure it was the cat.

Cole leaned over the rail, trying to see. He stretched as far into space as he could, trying to find the cat by listening to its scream, but saw nothing. The cat was there, but so well hidden he could not be found.

Sometimes you want to help them, but can’t.

Chapter 27

27

The air felt clean when it cooled in the evening. Pike opened the Jeep’s windows, letting the air chill his skin. Oncoming headlights, flaring brake lights, and neon signs scribed molten arcs on the Jeep’s gleaming hood. As he neared the ocean, streetlights cast halos in the mist, each halo brighter than the last. Pike drove back to the canals.

Gomer had been murdered in an empty lot on the west side of Grand Canal where a home had recently been razed. Pike had visited the site earlier when the police cut him free, but Gomer had been killed at night, so Pike wanted to see this place in the darkness as Gomer and his killer had seen it. He had no place else to go.

Pike parked on the street, and walked past an abandoned trailer across bare ground to the canal. Earlier, the area had been filled with officers, but now it was deserted. Not long after the project was started, a new foundation had been poured and the trailer was brought in for the construction manager, but somewhere along the way the money dried up and the project had been abandoned. Gomer had driven up onto the construction site and parked facing the canal.