During the ride, Levon half listened as Hawkins talked, telling him how to handle the police, saying to be helpful, to make the cops your friends and not to be belligerent because that would work against them.
Levon had nodded, grunted “uh-huh” a few times, but he was inside his head, wouldn't have been able to describe the route between the hotel and the police station, his mind fully focused on the upcoming meeting with Lieutenant James Jackson.
Levon came back to the present as Marco was parking at the mini-strip mall, and he jumped out before the car had fully stopped. He walked straight up to the shoebox-sized substation, a storefront wedged between a tattoo parlor and a pizzeria.
The glass door was locked, and so Levon jabbed the intercom button and spoke his name, saying to the female voice that he had an appointment at eight with Lieutenant Jackson. There was a buzz and the door opened and they were in.
The station looked to Levon like a small-town DMV. The walls were bureaucrat green; the floor, a buffed linoleum; the long hallway-width room lined with facing rows of plastic chairs.
At the end of the narrow room was a reception window, its metal shutter rolled down, and beside it was a closed door. Levon sat down next to Barbara, and Hawkins sat across from them with his notebook sticking out of his breast pocket, and they waited.
At a few minutes past eight, the shuttered window opened and people trickled in to pay parking tickets, register their cars, God knows what else. Guys with Rasta hair; girls with complicated tattoos; young moms with small, bawling kids.
Levon felt a stabbing pain behind his eyes, and he thought about Kim, wanting to know where she could be right now and if she was in any pain and why this had happened.
After a while, he stood up and paced along the gallery of Wanted posters, looked into the staring eyes of murderers and armed robbers, and then there were the missing-children posters, some of them digitally altered to age the kids to how they might look now, having disappeared so many years ago.
Behind him, Barbara said to Hawkins, “Can you believe it? We've been here two hours. Don't you just want to scream?”
And Levon did want to scream. Where was his daughter? He leaned down and spoke to the female officer behind the window. “Does Lieutenant Jackson know we're here?”
“Yes, sir, he sure does.”
Levon sat down next to Barb, pinched the place between his eyes, wondered why Jackson was taking so long. And he thought about Hawkins, how he'd gotten in very tight with Barb. Levon trusted Barb's judgment, but, like a lot of women, she made friends fast. Sometimes too fast.
Levon watched Hawkins writing in his notebook and then some teenage girls joined the line at the front desk, talking in high-pitched chatter that just about took off the top of his head.
By ten fifteen, Levon's agitation was like the rumbling of the volcanoes that had raised this island out of the prehistoric sea. He felt ready to explode.
Chapter 29
I was sitting in a hard plastic chair next to Barbara McDaniels when I heard the door open at the end of the long, narrow room. Levon leapt up from his seat and was practically in the cop's face before the door swung closed.
The cop was big, midthirties, with thick black hair and mocha-toned skin. He looked part Jimmy Smits, part Ben Affleck, and part island surfer god. Wore a jacket and tie, had a shield hooked into the waistband of his chinos, a gold one, which meant he was a detective.
Barbara and I joined Levon, who introduced us to Lieutenant Jackson. Jackson asked me, “What's your relationship to the McDanielses?”
“Friend of the family,” Barbara said at the same time that I said, “I'm with the L.A. Times.”
Jackson snorted a laugh, scrutinized me, then asked, “Do you know Kim?”
No.
“Have any information as to her whereabouts?”
No.
“Do you know these people? Or did you meet them, say, yesterday?”
“We just met.”
“Interesting,” Jackson said, smirking now. He said to the McDanielses. “You understand this man's job is to sell newspapers?”
“We know that,” Levon said.
“Good. Just so you're clear, anything you say to Mr. Hawkins is going directly from your mouths to the front page of the L.A. Times. Speaking for myself,” Jackson went on, “I don't want him here. Mr. Hawkins, have a seat, and if I need you, I'll call you.”
Barbara spoke up. “Lieutenant, my husband and I talked it over last night, and it comes down to this. We trust Ben, and he has the power of the L.A. Times behind him. He might be able to do more for us than we can do alone.”
Jackson exhaled his exasperation but seemed to concede the point. He said to me, “Anything out of my mouth has to be okayed by me before you run with it, understand?”
I said I did.
Jackson 's office took up a corner at the back of the building, had one window and a noisy air conditioner; numbers were written on the blue plasterboard walls near the phone.
Jackson indicated chairs for the McDanielses, and I leaned against the doorframe as he flapped open a notepad, took down basic information.
Then he got down to business, working, I thought, off a notion that Kim was a party girl, questioning her late-night habits and asking about men in her life and drug use.
Barbara told Jackson that Kim was a straight-A student. That she had sponsored a Christian Children's Fund baby in Ecuador. That she was responsible to a fault and the fact that she hadn't returned their call was way out of character.
Jackson listened with a mostly bored look on his face before saying, “Yeah, I'm sure she's an angel. I'm waiting for the day someone comes in, says their kid is a meth head or a slut.”
Levon sprang to his feet, and Jackson stood up a beat after that, but by then Levon had the advantage. He shoved his palms into Jackson 's beefy shoulders, sending him backward into the wall, which shook with a loud crack. Plaques and photos crashed to the floor, which is what you'd expect when 180 pounds or so was used as a wrecking ball.
Jackson was the bigger and younger man, but Levon was mainlining adrenaline. Without pause, he reached down and grabbed Jackson up by his lapels and threw him against the wall again. There was another terrible crashing sound as Jackson 's head bounced off the plasterboard. I watched him grab for the arm of his chair, which toppled, and sent him down a third time.
It was an ugly scene even before Levon crowned the moment.
He stared down at Jackson, and said, “Damn, that felt good. You son of a bitch.”
Chapter 30
A heavyset female officer barreled toward the doorway as I stood there like a stump, trying to absorb that Levon had assaulted a cop, shoved him, thrown him down, cursed at him, and said it felt good.
Now Jackson was on his feet, and Levon was still panting. The woman cop yelled, “Hey, what's going on?”
Jackson said, “We're fine here, Millie. Lost my balance. Gonna need a new chair.” And he waved her off. Then he turned back to Levon, who was shouting at him, “Don't you get it? I told you last night. We got a fricking phone call in Michigan. The man said he took my daughter, and you're trying to say Kim's a tramp?”
Jackson straightened his jacket, his tie, righted his chair. His face was red and he was scowling. He jerked the chair around, then shouted back at Levon, “You're crazy, McDaniels.