Tim thought about how many times Pierre's name appeared on the visitor clipboard. What was it like for this parent to see his child – his adult child – in that condition, week after week?
"I'm doing my best, sir."
"Anything I can do to help. Anything."
"Well, I do have a few questions. What was the name of the cult Ernie joined?"
"We don't know that. Getting him to talk about it at all was like pulling teeth."
"Did he ever mention the name of anyone in the cult?"
"No. He'd decompensated pretty badly by the time we found him. He admitted to getting caught up with a group of people, and we sort of pieced together it was a cult. But no names, no locations, nothing like that. He would melt down when we pressed him on it, so we finally stopped."
"Your son had a visitor some time ago – a friend called Reggie Rondell. Is that name familiar?"
"No. Hang on." A rustle. "Hey, Mikka. You hear of a Reggie Rondell, one of Ernie's friends?" Tim waited patiently by the elevator. Pierre's voice came back regular volume. "No. He was no friend of Ernie's, at least not through his time at Pepperdine."
"Any chance he might be a friend you and your wife hadn't heard of?"
"No. We're a very close family." He caught himself. "We were a very close family. We knew all of Ernie's friends up until he disappeared."
"Doesn't someone need your approval to get on the visitor list?"
"Now they do. But until recently Ernie could make phone calls, put his own visitors on the list. He took…" Tim waited patiently through the pause. When Pierre spoke again, his voice wobbled a bit. "He took a turn last month. That's when I became his conservator."
"I'm very sorry to hear that, sir."
"It's like there's something inside my son's head, eating him. Eating the boy we raised and knew." The muffled sound of Pierre blowing his nose. "How old are you, Mr. Rackley?"
"Thirty-four."
"Kids of your own?"
The elevator dinged open, and Tim stared at the vacant interior. "No."
"Well, when you have them, you watch out for them. You don't know who's out there."
It took Tim a moment to find his voice. "I'll do that, sir."
Chapter six
The comm center, buried in Cell Block on the third floor of Roybal, hosted a panoply of security screens showing various suspects pacing in cells. Bear hunched over the computer at Tim's side, smelling of the Carl's Jr. he'd just denied eating, offering in place of an admission the implausible claim that he'd filled up on a salad. A chronically unhappy dater, Bear was recounting his latest travails while calling up DMV info on the state computer. "So we get rerouted, laid over in Vegas for the night. Instead of lying on a beach in Cancun, we're stuck at Westward Ho – which by the way is the shittiest joint on the Strip. And to make matters worse, the hotel is having a short-people's convention."
"A short-people's convention? Like dwarves?" Tim pressed his lips together to avoid smiling. The women Bear dated weren't exactly ballerinas – the couple must have terrified the petite attendees.
To Tim's left, two court security officers were embroiled in an argument about the relative attributes of Mexican-mafia tattoos versus those of the Higuera Brotherhood. A third regulated radio contact with deputies in the field.
"No, just small people." Bear's wide fingers moved across the keyboard with surprising fluidity. "So me and Elise, we can't go anywhere without stepping on 'em. We rode elevators with guys who couldn't reach the top buttons. People threw us the stink-eye at the all-you-can-eat buffets. They were selling T-shirts you couldn't fit on my hand. It was very unsettling. Elise lost a cool grand on the tables, and some Danny DeVito look-alike kicked me in the shins for accidentally sitting on his wife at the slots. What am I gonna do? Hit him back?" He pulled his glasses – another addition to his life as a forty – three – year – old – from his shirt pocket, and a Carl's Jr. ketchup fell on the desktop. Mortified, Bear swept the offending packet into the trash can.
Tim's eyes didn't move from the screen. "The salad sous-chef accidentally drop some Carl's Jr. ketchup in your shirt pocket?"
"It's from last week. Anyways, me and Elise had a miserable time, haven't talked since we've been back." Bear exhaled theatrically. "Shit, I think you grabbed the last good one off the market, Rack. I'm never getting married."
"Do you want to get married?"
Bear chewed his lip, breathing hard. "Nah. I prefer to direct all my hatred at myself." The photo of a skinny kid popped up on the monitor, and Bear pointed at it, his ham hand blocking the screen. "So there he is. The fifth Reggie Rondell."
"The fifth?"
"Five Reggie Rondells in the greater Los Angeles area, believe it or not. That includes Reginalds and Reginas, just to be safe. Reginald Rondell Jr. is a crusty white guy from Orange, moved to Philly in January, hasn't traveled west since, at least by plane. Regina Rondell, age seventy-five, God rest her soul, kicked in June. Our third Reggie Rondell is enrolled at Marquez Elementary School in the Palisades. I got the parole officer of the fourth on the phone about ten minutes ago – homie had a dealing problem, was on the inside two months ago. Which leaves us with the fifth Reggie Rondell."
Tim checked the identifiers – five-seven, 135 pounds, hazel eyes, brown hair, twenty-three years old. Reggie had no outstanding traffic tickets, and he didn't legally drive a motorcycle or commercial truck.
Tim pointed to the listed address. "Let's go."
"It's not that easy, my simple friend. The driver's license is two years old, and the only current info falsely lists him as an inpatient at a Santa Barbara nuthouse."
Tim noted Bear's pleased little smirk. "Oh, no," he said flatly. "Whatever are we to do?"
A proud finger shot up. "Have no fear. I called my hook at the IRS, turns out RestWell Motel in Culver City filed a W2 for a Reginald Rondell. RestWell central payroll in Bakersfield – believe that shit? – confirmed he's a current employee. His shift started" – Bear consulted his watch dramatically – "twenty minutes ago."
All this in the hour since Tim had called to fill him in from the road. On Arrest Response Team raids, Tim was the number one on a door-kick entry stack, Bear at his back. During intense fugitive roundups, they sometimes hit as many as fifteen dwellings a day. Trigger time like that went a long way toward fire-forging a friendship.
Tim rested a hand on Bear's shoulder. "It's good to be back."
Bear studied him, his face shifting into a smile.
They rose to go, Tim readjusting the. 357 in his waistband, Bear humming the theme to Baretta as they passed through both security doors into the tiled corridor outside. The wall abutting Cell Block hid a foot of concrete and reinforced steel.
The snickering approach of a few deputies soured Tim's mood. A prisoner between them, Thomas and Freed eyed Tim as they stopped to slide their weapons into the gun lockers outside the Cell Block entrance.
"Hey, Rack?" Thomas's voice was edged and nasty. "I seem to have misplaced my Charles Bronson video. Maybe you've seen it. It's -"
"I know," Tim said. "Death Wish. Why don't you two go sit in Isolation Three and see if you can work up some fresh material?"
Their prisoner, a heavyset Latino in wrist and ankle cuffs, sniggered as the court security officer buzzed them through. Thomas mumbled something to Freed as they steered the suspect brusquely through the door.
Tim and Bear continued down the hall in silence. Bear punched the elevator button a little too hard. The car arrived, and they stepped on. Bear's face kept its pissed-off cast for a few floors, then loosened. "I would have gone for The Stone Killer myself."
Seated in Bear's Dodge Ram in the parking lot, they watched Reggie at the motel front desk. As Bear had promised, they'd found him on shift, elbows on the counter, fists shoving his cheeks skyward. He was entranced by the hatchetfish and platies circling listlessly in the fifty-gallon aquarium next to the blotter. Gray bags rimmed both eyes, raccoon-defined against his sallow skin. A flannel shirt, standard red and black checks, hung over his rail-thin frame, his wrists poking from the sleeves. Had Tim not known Reggie's age, he would have put him near forty.