The Night Crew

'Maybe something,' Anna said.

The Witch was back: 'You got a pencil?'

Wyatt, nearing panic, was sealing Venice.

Anna, with McKinley's phone number, and Louis tracking the address, told him they were going to look for a kid they'd interviewed the night of Jason's murder.

'You've got to stay in touch,' Wyatt said anxiously. 'We'll call you if we need you: If you get one ring, then one ring, then one ring on your phone, you know, fifteen seconds apart, answer the third one.'

'Okay,' Anna said, and they were gone.

McKinley lived in a bleak cinder-block apartment in Culver City. The parking lot was beginning to break up, with weeds growing through it in patches. Harper parked in a handicapped spot and they took an exterior walkway up; the concrete corners in the stairwell smelled of urine. The walkway had steel railings, and wheelless bike frames were chained to the railings in front of half the doors.

'Students,' Anna said.

'It was three-thirty-seven?' Harper asked.

'Yeah.'

The door faced a narrow inner-courtyard, with a half-dozen concrete picnic tables scattered down its length. A half-dozen student-age men sat at one of the tables, smoking, listening to music on a boom box, talking in Spanish.

McKinley's room was dark, the door locked.

'Can't kick it,' Harper said quietly. 'Too many people, too much noise.'

'Let's see if we can find a manager,' Anna said.

The manager had a first-floor apartment facing the parking lot. A dark-eyed woman answered the door, spoke to them in a language that Anna thought might be Farsi, then waved her hands in a gesture that said, 'Wait', went back into the apartment and shouted something. Returning to the door, she made a 'come in' gesture, pointed to the back and said another word. 'I think she means somebody's in the bathroom,' Harper said.

The woman smiled and pointed a finger up: 'Bat-room. yes.'

Anna nodded, looked aroundand spotted the key board behind the open door. The woman was walking toward the back of the apartment again, and Anna said to Harper, 'Block me outI'm gonna see if I can grab a key.'

'What?'

'There's a key board behind the door.'

Harper stepped sideways, and Anna pushed the door closed a few inches. Behind it, she could see the room numbers under wire pegs, most with keys hanging from them. Then a toilet flushed in the back, and the woman called something out to them.

Harper said, 'Thank you, thank you,' and Anna, still eclipsed by his body, pushed the door another few inches.

The 337 peg held two keys.

'Can I try for it?' She muttered.

'She's looking right at us,' Harper said, turning to her. 'Hold on.'

Harper walked toward the woman, talking. 'We wanted to talk to one of your renters.'

The woman said something else, jabbing her finger at the back. Anna watched, and as Harper got close to her, with the woman looking up at him, he stepped cleanly between them and Anna lifted the key.

Dropped it. Stepped on it. Stood with her hands crossed in front of her as Harper and the woman stood jabbering at each other. Then a man's voice said, 'Hello,' and both Harper and the woman turned toward the back. Anna stooped and picked the key up, and put it in her jacket pocket. She stepped away from the door and the key board.

Harper told the manager that he and Anna were friends of McKinley's from UCLA, but weren't sure they had the right apartment complex.

'Yes, yes, he is here. Apartment three-thirty-seven,' the manager said, bobbing his head. 'He has been much on the television, yes? You see him on the television? He's a hero, yes?'

Anna, smiling. Bobbing her head: 'Yes, a hero.'

Outside.

'Get the key?'

'Got it.'

'Hope they don't notice.'

'We'd have to be pretty unluckysome of the apartments have two or three keys, some don't have any.'

'Hope the key works.'

'Hope we don't find a body.'

'Don't even think it.'

The key worked. They stepped inside, and Anna flipped on the lights. 'Hello? Charles? Chuck?' They were in the living room with a TV set, a love seat, an unmatched easy chair with a missing leg replaced by a paperback novel. An adjoining kitchen dining area was off to the right, and another door went to the left. Anna stepped quickly over to the door: A bedroom. A knot of sheets on a futon, but no blankets. The place smelled of Cool Ranch Doritos.

'Let's get through it quick,' Anna said. 'You look for a Rolodex or address book or anything. I'll just see what he's got.'

'Got a phone number,' Harper said a minute later. 'It's on a refrigerator magnet. I think he uses it.'

'Okay. We can get it to Louis.'

Anna had instinctively gone to the bedroom. McKinley didn't have a chest of drawers, and had built a group of shelves with bricks and unpainted pine boards. T-shirts, underwear and jeans were stacked on the shelves; a small closet held a couple of jackets, some oxford cloth shirts, two pairs of athletic shoes, one pair of worn-out loafers and dust-bunnies the size of softballs.

The futon was on a frame: she picked up the head end of it, looked underneath. A shoebox. She pulled the shoebox out, opened the lid, and found a half-dozen videotapes, all commercial, all pornographic.

'What?' Harper asked, sticking his head in the door.

'Porno,' Anna said. 'A couple of bondage tapes. That might indicate a fantasy thing with capturing people.'

'Yeah, well, probably a hundred thousand guys have bondage tapes. And not all the tapes are bondage.'

'All right. But something to keep in mind.' She put the box back.

Harper said, 'I hate going through a guy's stuff like this. I'd hate to have somebody do it to me.'

'You have a box of porno tapes?'

'No. But I've got letters and pictures of old friends. Nothing that I wouldn't show anyone, but I wouldn't want somebody just trashing through it.'

'Interesting, though,' Anna said. 'Get to see what people are really like.'

'Probably why you're good at your job,' Harper said. He headed back to the kitchen and a moment later, said, 'He's got an answering machine.'

Anna had found nothing at alclass="underline" 'Run it back.'

The messages were all routine, most of them were from the same woman. The last one, time-stamped at six o'clock that evening, was male: 'Molly said bring some Diet Pepsi, that's all the Lees ever drink.'

'Find a Molly?' Anna asked.

'There's an address book.' Harper walked to the kitchen counter, picked up a plastic address book with a bank advertisement on the cover. He found a Molly on the first page, with a phone number. He checked, and it was the same phone number as the one on the refrigerator magnet.

'Let's go look,' Anna said.

'What're we gonna do if we find him?' Harper asked. 'We've already lost the first guy we tried to follow.'

'Screw it: We don't have any time. Let's brace him. I'll know the voice.'

Louis turned the phone number into a name and address, and the address was a small apartment three blocks from the university.

'Upscale,' Harper said.

The apartment had inner and outer doors, the inner doors locked, but a row of mailboxes showed one 'M. O'Neill' on the second floor. Anna picked up the house phone and buzzed the apartment. A woman answered, and Anna said, 'Is this Molly?'

'Yes?'

'My name is Anna Batory. I'm looking for Charles McKinley, and I was hoping he might he here.'

'Just a minute.'

McKinley came down, surprised to see her. Pushed open the inner door so they could go inside. 'How'd you find me?'

His voice was a baritone, without the gravel of the voice on the phone. But the gravel, Anna thought, could be the product of sexual excitement, or aggression.

'We've got a really serious problem,' Anna said.

The kid didn't hear her; instead, he babbled on, his hands jumping around, awkwardly, nerdlike. 'God, you can't believe the TV shows I've been on,' he said. His fair skin was going pink with excitement. 'I had a couple of agents calling me.'

'Shut up, Charles,' Anna snapped.