Wicked Prey

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 thumb-nails, 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,