"A house burned down over by the canals-Carroll Court," Lucas said. "We hear you've been doing some documentary photography in the area."
Harelson looked astonished, stepped back to let Lucas inside. "A house on Carroll Court? Which one? Was it badly damaged?"
"Yeah, it's pretty messed up," Lucas said. "As you go in from Venice Boulevard, it's a left turn, about halfway down the block, a pink stucco. It's got a shiny steel garage door with a sunflower incised on it."
Harelson slapped himself on the forehead: "The Lu house."
"Lu?"
"He was the original owner ' the builder ' years and years ago. Oh, God. I've got to get over there."
"Wait a minute. We're really hurting. We've got dead cops, dead civilians…" He told Harelson the story, and Harelson said, halfway through, "I never knew. I don't watch TV."
Barr came in and said, "Beat it," meaning the ticket, and Lucas said, "Good," and Harelson said, "I keep my files in a Lightroom database and I sort them by block and some of them by address, but not the Lu house, it's not that' distinguished."
"We need a car, we need one of the women, we need anything."
Harelson nodded: "Come on. I'll show you."
He had an Apple computer in the back, a tall silver tower with handles on top and two screens, a really big one and a smaller one, and he called up the program, called up the block files into thumbnails, and they began looking up and down the block for cars. "How many pictures do you have?" Barr asked.
Harelson tapped a couple of keys: "On this block, four hundred and twelve. Back in the film days, I would maybe have had six or ten. God bless digital."
"I've been shooting a little myself," Lucas said.
"Yeah? A cop would have some great opportunities…"
In the end, they found two photos of the Lexus sitting in the driveway, and one of the Toyota. The Toyota was taken side-on, and from some distance, late in the afternoon, and they couldn't make out anything special about it. In one of the photos of the Lexus, they could almost make out the license-tag number, in the thumbnail. "Hang on," Harelson said. He isolated the license, magnified it: "Got it."
"Amazing," Barr said, and he slapped the fat man on the back. "Print that."
The car was registered to a Louise Janowitz, and Louise Janowitz had insurance through State Farm, and a driver's license with the state of California. "So it's Louise, not Lauren or Laura or Martha," Barr said.
Lucas was a little skeptical. "Who knows, at this point? Why would she give the right name to the DMV when she lies about everything else?"
Barr, operating from his cell phone, said, "We'll have her driver's license photo in two minutes, down at the office. They can e-mail it to me and we can get it at a coffee shop Wi-Fi."
"Gotta find the car," Lucas said.
"We're looking," Barr said. "It's not a common car, even out here. So, if it's around, we'll get it."
They got the photo at a Starbucks, of a dark-haired, sallow-faced woman with large plastic-rimmed glasses and Three Stooges bangs. She peered out of the photo with a depressive frown, chin down. "Whoa. Gonna jump right on that," Barr said.
"Didn't think that was an option open to us," Lucas said.
"Hey, gay or straight, don't matter. Look at the vibration she gives out: you gonna jump on that, gay or straight?"
They didn't find the car immediately, but they did get a break. One of the LA crime-scene people, checking the house phone, found an incoming call that morning, an hour and fifteen minutes before the fire erupted.
The call had come from an over-the-counter prepaid cell phone, with no real way to trace it-but after some rigmarole with the local prosecutor's office, they got a list of phone calls from that cell phone. There weren't many, but two of them, two days apart, went to a motel in Bloomington.
"Might be nothing, but might be something," Barr said.
They were standing in the driveway of the burned house, talking, and Lucas saw the garage door across the street go up, and the pretty woman walk around the back of a Mercedes SL500. He waved at her, shouted, "Hang on," and said to Barr, "Get your computer."
Barr got it from his truck, and they walked it across the street. "Did David what's-his-face help out?" the woman asked. "Yes, he did, and we're grateful," Lucas said. "Could you take a look at this…"
She peered at the photo of Louise Janowitz for several long seconds, shook her head and laughed ruefully, said, "Yeah, that's her ' but that's not what she looks like. You'd never recognize her from that. She's actually quite attractive."
Lucas said to Barr, "That's not good."
They were sitting in a Fatburger in Marina del Rey, three hours after Lucas arrived, and Lucas looked at his watch, and then at a list Carol, his secretary, had made. He could get on a plane at four o'clock-maybe-and be back in the Cities by 10 p.m. The Bloomington motel was five minutes from the airport'
"You think you could get me on a four-o'clock plane out of LAX?"
Barr looked at his watch. "We'd have to move right along. I could call a cop out there, have him push you through."
Lucas popped the last of the Fatburger. "I'm thinking this: I was hoping to get the house and maybe Knofler, and maybe see something you wouldn't see, because I've got some background. Now, with no house and no suspect, I'm not going to get anything you won't. The way I see it, they were ready for us: they had a whole exit plan all figured out. She's probably in Canada by now."
"Why Canada?"
"Well, Canada's full of criminals, so it's a good place to hide out," Lucas explained.
"I didn't know that," Barr said. "Anyway-there's that motel. In Bloomfield, or whatever it is."
"Yeah. Bloomington. Maybe I oughta get back."
Barr slurped up the last of his orange soda, looked at his watch, and said, "Let's go. You got a ticket?"
From Barr's car Lucas called Carol, who called Northwest and got the ticket fixed; and he called Del, who said he'd get Shrake and Jenkins and they'd meet him at the motel.
At the airport, an airport cop was waiting at the ticket counter and pushed him through security, and got him a ride to the gate. The cabin attendant said, "Man, you were pushing it," and Lucas said, "Glad to be going home, though."
They pulled the door shut behind him, and as he settled into his seat his cell rang: the cabin attendant said, "Sir, you'll have to turn off your phone. We're ready to roll."
Lucas looked at the cell screen, saw that the call was from Los Angeles. He said, "I'm a police officer working a murder case. This will only take a minute and it could be important."
She nodded, curious, and Lucas opened the phone and said, "Yeah?" and Barr said, "We found that Lexus."
"Ah, jeez, I'm on the plane."
"Don't worry about it," Barr said. "It was illegally parked on a nice quiet street up in Pasadena, Ninita Parkway. Nice green oak trees over the street, nice houses, nice cars. They noticed it when it exploded and burned right down to the wheels."
"Man…"
"Some kind of bomb, probably on a timer," Barr said. "If a kid had messed with that car, or if a cop had checked it out, they might have been barbecued. So: take care."
"You, too. You ever need anything out of the Cities, let me know."
The three and a half hours going back wasn't as bad as the three and a half hours going out, because, to his own surprise, Lucas dozed off in the quiet cabin. He had a window seat, and declined the meal; dropped back, the seat softened by a pillow from the flight attendant, and closed his eyes. When he woke up, the guy in the next seat, who was poking at a laptop, said, "Wish I could sleep like that."