Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais Read Free Book Online Page B

papers together. I’m seeing Levy about it tomorrow morning. He doesn’t think there will be a problem.”
    She hesitated, then sounded mollified.
    â€œAll right. What?”
    â€œDid Angel Tomaso change his story?”
    â€œTomaso.”
    Like she had so much on her plate she couldn’t remember.
    â€œTomaso was the last person to see Yvonne Bennett alive, or don’t you know that? He was Crimmens’s witness.”
    â€œRight. We couldn’t find him.”
    â€œTomaso was a major element in establishing the time frame. How can you ignore him?”
    â€œWe didn’t ignore him. We just couldn’t find him. That happens. Either way, the evidence we have is overwhelming.”
    â€œOne more thing—”
    â€œCole, you’re not a participant in this.”
    â€œWas Byrd a suspect in any of the seven cases?”
    â€œOnly yours.”
    Mine. I now owned Yvonne Bennett.
    â€œBesides Bennett.”
    â€œThat’s how good this guy was, Cole—there were no suspects in any of the cases except Bennett. That was the only time he fucked up. Now if you want to know anything else, you can read about it in the paper tomorrow.”
    Bastilla hung up.
    Bitch.
    I decided to make a copy of the Lionel Byrd file. I would keep the original, but bring the copy to Levy. If he gave me the okay, I would give the copy to Bastilla.
    I reread the pages and the notes as I fed them through the machine until I came to the witness list. The list showed a work number for Tomaso at the Braziliana Coffee Shop and a cell number. It had been three years, but I decided to give them a try. The cell number brought me to a bright young woman named Carly, who told me the number had been hers for almost a year. When I asked if she knew Tomaso, she told me she didn’t, but offered that I was the second call she’d received from people trying to find him. The police had called, too.
    I said, “When was that, Carly?”
    â€œA couple days ago. No, wait—three days.”
    â€œUh-huh. You remember who called?”
    â€œAh, a detective, he said. Timmons?”
    â€œCrimmens?”
    â€œThat’s it.”
    At least Crimmens had done his due diligence.
    I tried the coffee shop next and heard exactly the same thing. Crimmens had called for Tomaso, but the current manager had never met Angel, had no idea how to reach him, and was pretty sure Tomaso had left the job more than two years ago because that was how long she had worked there. I hung up and went back to copying the file.
    Angel Tomaso had not been my witness. Crimmens had located and interviewed him two days after Yvonne Bennett’s murder, but I didn’t begin working on the case until almost ten weeks later. The prosecution had been required to share their witness list with Levy under the rules of discovery, along with all the necessary contact information for those witnesses. I came to these pages as I copied the file, and found a handwritten note I had made with a different name and number for Tomaso.
    When Crimmens first identified Tomaso as a witness, Tomaso was living with his girlfriend in Silver Lake. By the time I contacted him at the coffee shop ten weeks later, Tomaso had split with his girlfriend and was bunking in Los Feliz with a friend of his named Jack Eisley. Though Tomaso’s work and cell phone numbers were good at the time, I had interviewed him at Eisley’s apartment and still had Eisley’s address and number. I finished copying the file, separated the original from the copy, then brought Eisley’s number to my desk.
    Three years after the fact, the odds were slim, but I called Eisley’s number. His phone rang five times, then was answered by a recording.
    â€œThis is Jack. Leave it after the beep.”
    â€œMr. Eisley, this is Elvis Cole. You might remember me from three years ago when I came to see Angel Tomaso. I’m trying to locate Angel, but I don’t