by Leslie Wolfe
“See? I told you it wasn’t true,” Elliot replied, running his hands quickly through his hair. “And they lost my hat,” he mumbled, “scum CHiP assholes.” His eyes met Logan’s scowl. Swallowing the long slew of expletives that were going through his mind, he added, “This was no random DUI stop, boss. I was targeted.”
“Why? Did you have a run-in with CHiP?”
“No,” he replied quickly. He hadn’t worked a case with CHiP for years. “If I pissed someone off at CHiP, I have no idea who and why.”
Logan closed the personnel file folder he had been reviewing, then steepled his fingers on top of it. “I’ll look into it, ask around. It’s bad taste to go after other cops. Only rats do it without a reason, and I won’t tolerate any rats on these highways.” He frowned and paused for a beat, thinking. “If someone has a hard-on for one of my cops, they better run through me if they want a late-night date.”
“Yes, boss,” Elliot replied, his usual sense of calm slowly returning. He felt redeemed by Logan’s confidence in him, but still wished he could’ve watched those bodycam videos. Now all he needed was a shower, a meal and another hat, and he was ready to get back to normal. “I was thinking maybe it has something to do with the Silent Lake murders.”
“What do you mean?” Logan asked.
“Not sure,” he replied, lowering his gaze for a moment. “I know just who to ask, but—”
“You think the killer is CHiP?” His voice was tinged with a hint of sarcasm; he was testing him.
“N—no,” he replied. “Not like that. It’s just that I don’t like coincidences. First, that knife is conveniently buried with a body for us to find. Then I get busted for a DUI and a bogus bribery charge. It just stinks. In the past twenty-four hours, the top people working this case were conveniently sidetracked.”
“You should be happy,” Logan said with a hint of a smile. “You’re getting close to the killer. He’s bound to make a mistake.” He wrote a couple of words on a piece of paper, then buzzed in his assistant and handed her the note. “I want to see these people today.” After she left, he added, “I’ll be questioning the two CHiP officers who pulled you over; see who’s pulling their strings. I’m not expecting they’ll talk, but still want to do it. You grab Dr. Sharp and keep working the case. Those kids are still out there, and we just wasted precious time.”
“About that, sir,” Elliot started, but Logan quickly interrupted.
“You assumed she was covering up her dad’s criminal activities? That’s why you thought she wanted to be a part of the investigation?”
“Well, um, I might’ve said that to her, in other words, but in essence—”
“You’re an idiot, Young; you jumped to conclusions. She must’ve told you you’re being played. And you didn’t listen.”
“We don’t know that much about her, boss. What’s the story with her leaving a job like that to come live in this town? I know she’s a former fed and all that, but do we really know her? Can we be sure?” As he spoke the words, he realized he was sure. She wasn’t covering up for anyone, and he’d been a major idiot for thinking that for a single minute. Charlene and Texas still haunted his thoughts, instilling the fear of making the same mistake again. He’d overreacted.
“You never met old Mr. Sharp,” Logan replied. “He was a sorry-ass drunk who could barely stand half the time, who beat on his wife and kids every chance he got. We locked him up a couple of times. I bet he’s rotting away someplace by now, probably in an Arizona jail or six feet under that desert somewhere.”
“I see,” Elliot replied, wondering why he hadn’t asked Logan about Sharp before ripping Kay to shreds with his suspicions. He’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again.
“As for Dr. Sharp, I hope you don’t believe I’d let someone work cases for us without doing background checks and speaking with her old boss at the San Francisco field office.”
“You did?” he replied, surprised. He’d thought it was his persistence that got Kay Sharp accepted to consult for the sheriff’s office, his vouching for her. Turned out, his word had not carried that much weight after all.
“She didn’t quit, first of all,” Logan said, chuckling slightly when he noticed Elliot’s expression. “Yeah, son, big surprise, she lied to you. Women do that.” He chuckled again, rapping his fingers against the desk in a quick gesture that Elliot had learned to mean he was running out of patience. “She’s on leave for personal reasons, something to do with her family, and she’s welcome to return to work at her earliest. She’s the best they’ve ever had.” He stared at Elliot for a moment. “Now get back to work.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, smiling. “Thanks for calling me your best detective, boss. I know I’m your only one, but still, I appreciate it.”
“Not for long,” Logan replied cryptically. “Now get out of here.”
Elliot left the sheriff’s office wondering what he meant, but soon forgot all about it.
Were they getting close to catching the unsub? Enough to make him desperate enough to set him up?
How the heck were they getting close, when it seemed they didn’t have a single lead left? Every turn he took, everywhere he looked, nothing. Leads disintegrated like smoke in the wind, evidence led nowhere, and the remaining lab tests took forever. He still waited on advanced tox screens on the victims, on fiber analysis for those blankets, on something, anything that could point him in the right direction. Because he was counting the things he was still waiting for, that included the vehicles that had been driven to Mount Chester by Lan Xiu Tang and Janelle Huarez, the unsub’s oldest victims.
Instead of going to his car, he walked over to the maintenance garage and called out. “Heya, Willie!”
The mechanic grinned widely, his teeth white against the grime-covered face. “Was just about to call you,” he said. “Come on over here, let me show you what I got.”
Elliot approached the tarp where Willie had kneeled down, running his fingers over the thin, metallic fins of a radiator.
“I know how he did it,” he announced proudly. “See here?” he pointed his finger at a place on the radiator, but Elliot didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “He pierced the radiators, then waited for the coolant to drain. Then he patched them up with fast resin, and topped the fluid with water. The coolant was diluted in all the cars. I should’ve seen this earlier, but—” He spat on the floor angrily. “I’m getting old, I guess.”
“I don’t see any leaks on this radiator,” Elliot replied.
“That’s ’cause this ain’t dust,” Willie said. “It looks like dust, but it’s spray paint. See?” he ran his finger against the radiator fins, then showed him the finger. None of the apparent dust had rubbed off the metallic surface and onto his skin. “Smart, this feller you’re trying to catch. He sprayed over the radiators to cover the resin plug and all the leaks.”
“He took them apart, like you did?”
“Nah,” Willie replied, standing up with a groan and pointing at the inside of the Jeep’s grille. “He stuck the spray nozzle through these holes, and that did the trick. It didn’t have to be perfect; just enough to make me think nothing was leaking.”
Yeah, he was smart, Elliot thought, heading to his car. At every juncture, the unsub had proven to be methodical, organized, carefully planning every detail with advanced knowledge of forensics. Of how murder investigations were conducted. Of how evidence was collected and examined.
Just like Kay had said he would be.
He called her cell, but it went straight to voicemail. “Damn it,” he muttered, then floored it, flashers on, heading to her place. If she wanted to pout and make him eat crow, that was well within her rights, but not before they caught that sick son of a bitch who was still out there.
Her white Explorer wasn’t at the house, and he almost drove off, but didn’t know where to find her. He tried her cell again, then remembered she never locked her front door. Knowing just how much worse his actions would make things
between them, he entered the house and headed to the kitchen.
“Kay?” he called out, hoping she’d reply. “Kay? It’s me, Elliot.”
She wasn’t home. Silence spelled that out for him.
But her laptop was on the kitchen table, still running. He looked at the screen and froze. A blurry, low-resolution video recording from the SFPD Airport Bureau had been paused at the exact moment when an empty tow truck was leaving the facility and taking the northbound ramp to Bayshore. Behind that window, another blurry, poor resolution image, a scanned photo of two little girls and a boy, taken in front of a red tow truck. He zoomed in the photo, and in one of the little girl’s eyes, in the color of her golden hair, and the line of her stubborn jaw, he recognized Kay Sharp.
She was going after the unsub alone. She hadn’t listened to anything he’d told her. Stubborn, stubborn woman.
“Damn it, Kay,” he muttered, storming out the door. “You could’ve at least waited for me.”
Forty-Four
Lesson
Darkness.
Complete, absolute, and terrifying darkness.
Wendy blinked a few times, as if to make sure she was awake. Then she tried to move, to get up from the cold floor, but had to hold on to the wall for support. She was dizzy and felt faint, and a throbbing headache pounded at her skull mercilessly. She rubbed her temple with an ice-cold, trembling hand, trying to ease the pain.
In her hair, her fingers got entangled in something unfamiliar. Her hand froze in midair for a brief moment, then explored the unfamiliar shape. With the sensory recognition came the faint memory of the man braiding her hair and humming an obsessive tune she couldn’t name although she thought she recognized.
Then a flood of forgotten memories flushed over her. His hands on her naked body. Her helplessness, her screams, his laughs. His face, so familiar… where had she seen him before?
As headlights in the fog, a glimmer of recognition found its way into her weary mind. The man at the restaurant where she had that soup. The way he’d looked at her, his eyes riveted on her face. How naïve she’d been, feeling flattered by his attention. How stupid, to stay there and make casual conversation with the server while sipping her soup, instead of running for her life.
Where was she?
She felt her way along the walls, looking for a door, a window, anything. All she could sense were cinder blocks cemented tightly against one another, not a crack in between. Finally, her fingers stumbled across a doorjamb, and felt the uneven, splintery surface of a wooden door. She found the handle and grabbed at it with both hands, then turned it downward and pulled hard.
It didn’t budge.
Leaning her body against the wood panel, she tried pushing outward instead, but that didn’t work any better.
Feeling a heavy, bitter sob rising from her chest, she let herself drop to the floor, hugging her knees tightly. As her head hung lower, the two braids touched her cheeks and the unfamiliar sensation startled her.
Gasping for air as if it had suddenly vanished from the room, she tore the hair ties and unbraided her hair quickly, then ran her fingers through her tangled strands until they didn’t feel like they belonged to a stranger anymore.
Then she stopped moving, blinking away panicked tears. Not a shred of light was coming from anywhere, nothing. Not a sound. The coldness of the floor under her feet, the chill of the air brushing against her skin and sending shivers down her spine, the pain in her body, those were the only indications that she was still alive.
When the door opened, light tore at her eyes like sharp darts and she squinted, throwing her hand in front of her face. Then the blow came, hard, sending her to the ground, seeing stars.
“No, no,” the man said, anger seeping in the tone of his low, threatening voice. “Now we have to do it all over again.” He grabbed her hair roughly and started braiding quickly, humming that unnerving song that sounded so familiar. “It’s all right, you didn’t know. Next time you’ll do better than to disobey me.”
Forty-Five
Sam
Kay found Sam Stinson on the front porch of the house she knew well, smoking and flipping through some receipts. He wore jeans, a black T-shirt, and a work vest with yellow-and-gray reflective stripes. A pair of black-rimmed glasses completed his appearance; that was new. She didn’t recall that about him, nor the neatly trimmed goatee that showed early signs of turning gray.
When she pulled alongside the tow truck and stopped, he stood and dropped the pile of crumpled papers on the Adirondack, then rushed to meet her, smiling like a child on Christmas morning.
“Hey! Look who’s come to visit,” he said, lifting her up in a bear hug that knocked the air out of her lungs. “Judy told me you’d be coming by.”
Kay let the warmth of the reunion swell her heart for a moment, savoring it with her eyes closed and a wide smile on her lips. Beyond the evidence pointing toward Sam’s tow truck as the unsub’s method of choice in disposing of the victims’ vehicles, that was Sam Stinson hugging her, Judy’s younger brother, the kid she grew up with, the freckled boy whom she’d always saved her homework for. He was her little brother too, not just Judy’s. Kay had been the one to punch the class bully in the nose for tripping Sam in the school hallways. She and Judy taught him how to ask a girl to prom, or how to behave when showing up at her door to take her dancing.
He was family.
“How about a beer?” he asked, as soon as he let her go. “I don’t have much food, but I can always pop a cold one for you.”
“Sure,” she replied, realizing she was thirsty. It wasn’t even one in the afternoon yet, but beer was a guaranteed icebreaker and lubricant of potentially difficult conversations.
When Sam came back outside, he was only holding one bottle. He popped the cap and handed it to her.
“And you?” she asked, surprised he wasn’t going to join her.
He shrugged, then gestured toward the tow truck. “Customers frown when they smell alcohol on my breath, even if it’s just a lousy beer. They don’t tip me as much,” he added with a sheepish grin.
“Cheers, then,” she said, raising the bottle as if he had one in his hand too, then downed a few thirsty gulps. “This is good,” she added with a satisfied sigh. “I needed this.”
“There’s more where that came from,” he replied with a wink. “Come, sit down,” he invited her, clearing the Adirondack of the scattered paperwork. He collected all the receipts and shoved them in his vest pocket. “Damn accountant has me on a tight leash,” he muttered. “Every quarter he wants the receipts, as if I need him to tell me I’m not making enough money.”
She sat on the rocking chair, remembering Mrs. Stinson sitting there, knitting scarves and sweaters while Judy, Sam, Jacob, and she played in front of the house, the smell of fresh cookies baking in the oven filling her nostrils and seeding cravings in her belly. She let the chair rock back and forth for a while and closed her eyes. She could almost smell the sweet scent of those cookies, of molten chocolate, of home.
“How’s the towing business?” she asked casually, regretting the cherished memory as soon as she opened her eyes and it dissipated. “Do you get enough customers to keep you going?”
“Barely,” Sam replied, lowering his gaze. “Winter season is the best, when tourists fill the slopes and do stupid shit. California drivers have no clue how to drive on ice, thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I would’ve been broke by now.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers intertwined. “I’m not far from it as it is.”
She threw the tow truck another glance. Rust was popping up here and there, piercing through the metal below the fenders and at the lowest edge of the door panels. The color was faded, burned by winter salt and the brutal summer sun, and the decals were barely legible.
Feeling the threat of tears burning her eyes, she inhaled sharply. “What kind of customers are you getting?” she asked, aware her voice sounded strangled. She cleared her throat, then to
ok another swig of beer. “Do you get a lot of rental cars breaking down?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Tourists don’t know how to drive these steep mountain roads. They overheat the engines climbing up, and burn through brake pads going back down.” He stared at the truck for a while, as if he’d never seen it before. “But I don’t get all those calls, unfortunately. Sometimes the rental companies dispatch their own road assistance or send a mechanic with a replacement vehicle for the tourist, then fix it themselves.” He paused for a beat. “It’s tough.”
There was tension in his shoulders, and ridges ran across his forehead. He began bouncing his right foot, as if waiting impatiently for something.
“You’re just, um, expecting calls to come in?” Kay asked, starting to understand his situation. He waited his life away, some days better than others, in the hope that calls would come, and he’d be able to make ends meet. Not making nearly enough to call it a decent living, making just enough to not have the heart to kill his father’s business and find a different line of work. Stuck in his rut, with no way out.
“That’s pretty much it,” he replied, looking briefly at her with a sad smile. “Triple A sends me some business, but it pays bottom dollar. Some car rental companies dispatch me when they’re out of options, but I’ve seen a couple of Enterprise and Budget trucks towing loads from around here.” He sucked his teeth and ran his fingers across the back of his head, probably a subconscious effort to relieve the tension nestled in there. “The one-off calls are the best, when the customers call me directly. Locals know they get ten bucks if they refer business to me.”
“That’s smart,” she said, finishing off the bottle and setting it down on the discolored deck. “I bet these customers ask locals for referrals, like servers and baristas and such, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Sam replied. “Tommy sends me a lot of business. Remember him? He was a senior when you were a sophomore, right?”