12th of Never

freezer, or a fifty-five-gallon drum, or anything big enough to hold a body. Even the carpet was too thin to conceal a person. I didn’t smell decomp, either.
    “I remember now. There’s a map in one of those,” Randy said, indicating the stack of boxes with his chin.
    “Map?” Parker said. The anger in his voice was almost palpable. “You said you put Debra Lane in here.”
    “I was confused. It’s like a dusty attic inside my head, Ronnie. I thought ‘body.’ Now I’m thinking ‘map.’”
    “Map to what? Where’s this map?”
    “Those cartons,” said Fish. “My books are in the boxes and the map to where I left the girls is in one of my books.”
    “You’ve got three seconds to tell me which carton, which book,” Parker said. “Or I’m gonna cancel this outing and send you back to the smallest, darkest hole in the block. No privileges, Fish, and that includes no phone calls, no access to vending machines, no mail, and especially no
books
—for whatever remains of your miserable life.”
    Fish said, “Sweet-talking me isn’t going to help, Ronnie. I don’t
know
which box. I was in a coma for two years, remember? I could have some brain damage. Maybe if I can look at the labels on the boxes, it’ll come to me.”
    Parker stepped behind Fish, hoisted him by his elbows, and manhandled him into the unit.
    “I need more light,” Parker yelled.
    Six squad cars and cruisers rolled into the storage facility. Conklin waved them in and organized them in a semicircle, with their headlights pointing toward Randy Fish’s storage locker.
    Car radios chattered, doors opened and closed, cops leaned against their vehicles to watch what might be an extraordinary event in the history of law enforcement.
    Conklin followed Parker and Fish into the locker, swept a box of pots and pans off a table. Then he began taking down cartons, putting them on the table, and ripping each one open. I joined Conklin, took out books, turned them upside down, opened them, shook them out, dropped them to the floor.
    I glanced at Fish. He looked like a guest at a wedding, wearing a nice smile as he watched the proceedings. I got the feeling that even now, he was manipulating the police, manipulating me.
    “I drew the map on the back of a sales slip, put it between pages in a book,” Fish said. “I think that’s what I did.”
    I got into a good rhythm—opened a book, shook it out, dropped it, repeat. But I didn’t lose sight of Fish, and every time I edged near the cheap pine desk, a muscle twitched in his temple.
    Conklin reached for another carton of books.
    “Hang on,” I said to my partner.
    I went to the desk, placed my hand on it, and said to Randy Fish, “Am I getting warm?”
    “Warm doesn’t cut it, Lindsay. I’ll let you know when you’re smokin’.”
    I pulled at the desk drawers, all of which opened except for the one on the lower right. That drawer was locked. I rifled through the open drawers, came up with nothing. Then Conklin went to the squad car. He brought back a short crowbar and jimmied open the locked drawer.
    I went right at that file drawer. It was full of old records, songs from the fifties and sixties. I took out the records, looked at each one in the light of the high beams, peeked into the sleeves, then passed them to Conklin so that he could take another look.
    Fish was watching me and he was humming a tune, one of the “oldies but goodies” that my mom used to sing when cooking dinner or driving us in the car.
    Parker said, “Shut up,” and gave Fish a shot to the back of his head with the heel of his palm. Fish fell at my feet just as I put my hands on the last record in the drawer.
    The old 45 was by the crooner Johnny Mathis. Fish had been humming the song—“The Twelfth of Never.”
    The vinyl record was inside a sleeve. I pulled it out and a piece of paper came out with it and fluttered to the ground. I reached for the paper—a U-Store-It receipt with a rough map of the West Coast inked on the back.
    As I bent down, I was eye to eye with the Fish Man. I held up the map so he could see it.
    “Am I smokin’ now, Randy?”
    “You’re red-hot,” said the Fish Man.

Chapter 96
    FISH HADN’T GIVEN me anything, but by humming “The Twelfth of Never,” he’d let me know that the map to his dump sites was inside the record sleeve.
    I felt a flutter of hope, even elation. Good, Randy. Prove to yourself that you can change.
    But now, Fish was laughing. Had he taken us on