Fatally Haunted

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  She leaped to her feet and screamed at him. “I gave you the invoice! I gave you Tanner’s address! Did you go there? Why didn’t you stop him!”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She slapped her hand on her thigh. “Can you tell me anything about Tanner? Can you tell me one single thing about Alfred Bergstrom’s murder?”

  Gonzalez shifted on the sofa and studied the notes in his portfolio. He sighed, then looked up at her. “We found a list of books at Bergstrom’s shop. The list had Sam Barbieri’s name on it, and yours. We took Jimmy Barbieri to the hospital. He recognized Tanner, and said Sam hired him to inventory his Latin books. Tanner kept asking if there were other books, and if Sam had ever seen a book about a sixth century bishop.

  “Tanner is a teaching assistant and doctoral student at UCLA. I looked him up and interviewed the people in his department after your first break-in. They say he’s convinced that there two books—one in Greek that lists the treasure of the Parthenon, and another in Latin about a Sicilian bishop who served at the temple in Athens. He thinks he can find that treasure if he can just find both books. The UCLA staff is convinced he’s chasing unicorns.”

  Kate froze. “Alfred put it together. Alfred protected me.” She swiped at the tears in her eyes, then motioned for the detective’s pen and portfolio. She wrote down the name and phone number for Didi Rankovich on one of her business cards. “Give this woman a call. She examined the book, the one Tanner had in his backpack. He was right. Except there’s only one book, not two. It’s a special kind of book. A palimpsest.”

  Detective Gonzalez said, “Okay,” and then, “We may need to get some photographs of that book after we talk to Rankovich.”

  A tear tumbled down Kate’s cheek. “I don’t have it. I don’t want anything more to do with it. After you talk to Didi Rankovich, you can go over to UCLA to see the palimpsest. I’ve donated all of Sam Barbieri’s books to their library, in the name of Alfred Bergstrom.”

  Back to TOC

  Blood Shadows

  B.J. Graf

  When Paul Myrtilos saw the two men in off-the-rack suits walking up the driveway to the house in Reseda where he lived with his sister Thea, he grabbed his keys and slipped out the back. The bulges under the left arm of their suit jackets from the guns holstered there told Paul they were detectives. Had he seen the bow-legged one in the shiny brown suit poking through his trash a week ago? Paul couldn’t be sure, but he wasn’t going to wait and see.

  Two uniformed cops sat in a squad car, which they’d parked in front of his garage to block entry and exit. Paul smiled and shook his head. He’d parked his white van on a side street half a block away in case the cops ever paid him such a visit. Now, in the gloom before sunrise, he slipped through a neighbor’s yard like a shadow.

  Paul climbed into his Ford van and drove off. He turned right onto the Ventura Freeway and headed east. Paul Myrtilos liked to wake up early and pilot his van along the miles of open road running through the city like black arteries. It calmed him down after a hunt. Normally.

  Now, tapping the steering wheel with impatient little jabs, Paul’s van crawled east along the 101. The bumper-to-bumper traffic moved so slowly it wasn’t long before his right foot ached from riding the brake. Must be an accident. His kid sister Thea had told him Los Angeles had won the award for worst traffic in the U.S. for two years in a row. Thea was a few cards short of a deck—she’d believed him when he’d sold her a lie about her being adopted. But she tended to get facts like stats on traffic right.

  When he passed Van Nuys, Paul spotted the black and white riding his tail. He didn’t break a sweat, even when he exited the freeway at Laurel Canyon Boulevard with the cop car still on top of him. When Paul turned left on Ventura, heading east towards Hollywood, the bar of colored lights on the cop car began to flash.

  Running was pointless now, so Paul kept his cool and pulled over to the curb. He glanced in the rearview mirror and waited for the cops to approach. He smoothed back his well-cut salt and pepper hair, ran his tongue over his teeth, and popped a breath mint into his mouth. He then directed his gaze at the approaching blue-suiters.

  The female officer was a fine-boned brunette with amber eyes and a lot going on beneath her uniform. Exactly his type if he’d been on a hunt. Paul handed over his license and registration with a smile. Maybe, just maybe this was a routine traffic stop, unrelated to the two detectives who’d paid him an unscheduled visit this morning.

  “What’s the problem, Officer Jimenez?” he said, reading her nametag. Paul knew his papers were in order, and he never called attention to himself by speeding or reckless driving.

  “Would you step out of the vehicle and open the back of the van please.”

  Paul complied. She’d find nothing in the van except dog hair from his sister’s black lab. No law against that. Paul didn’t begin to worry until he saw the flash of silver as the cop pulled out her set of handcuffs.

  “Turn around and place your hands on the roof of the vehicle.”

  “Why? I wasn’t speeding.” Paul forced himself to stay calm.

  “Paul Myrtilos, you’re under arrest for the murder of Daria Reyes,” Officer Jimenez said as she slapped the cuffs on Paul’s hands and read him his rights.

  Damn. Daria Reyes. She’d been the redhead. He waited, but the Jimenez bitch didn’t mention any of the others. And there’d been twenty-seven others.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Paul said, still smiling, as Officer Jimenez and her partner tucked him into the squad car for the ride to the station.

  Mistakes. In the twenty-five years he’d been on the hunt, Paul had only made one. It was that stupid mutt that made him do it. If that dog had just kept quiet, Paul wouldn’t have left that used condom in the redhead’s apartment. He was usually so fucking meticulous. Paul had taken out all the security cameras even though he wore a wig and gloves and always burned his clothes afterward. And as for his girls, Paul was careful to wash the bodies in a good bleach solution and comb even their pubic hair to make sure he hadn’t left any trophies for the cops to find. But the redhead’s dog had kept barking, and that made Paul shoot the mutt in order to shut it up. Right through its throat. The shot woke up the neighbors. So, he’d had to rush through his checklist. He’d set the rubber on the counter, meaning to flush it down the toilet, but he hadn’t.

  That was a year ago, and for the first six months after he’d made that mistake, it haunted his every waking moment. There wasn’t a day that went by where he didn’t wake up and curse his bad luck. It made him short-tempered, and that made him sloppy. He’d shot Thea’s black lab that one time when she went away for the weekend when its barking got under his skin. What had Thea called that dog? Snowball. That was it. What a dumb name for a black lab. At any rate, he’d bought her another dog because she wouldn’t stop bawling like a baby.

  Now as Officer Jimenez marched him past the giant fingerprints etched into the walkway that led to the entry of the North Hollywood Police Station, Paul began to calm down. They took his phone and brought Paul into an interview room. Officer Jimenez removed the cuffs as a scruffy thirty-something detective entered the room. It was the bow-legged cop in the shiny brown suit from this morning.

  “You led us on quite a chase, Mr. Myrtilos,” the scruffy detective said. He introduced himself as Detective Frank Waldron.

  Unlike Paul, who kept himself fit and well-groomed, Waldron was twenty pounds overweight and had stains on his tie.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Paul looked around the room. There was nothing to see besides the grey walls behind the two chairs and the plain table between them. “I often take long drives in the morning. No law against that, is there?” He took a deep breath to center himself. The air smelled like stale coffee and disinfectant.

  “No,” Detective Waldron said as he began to lay out pictures on the table between them. “No law against that.”

  The photos
showed crime scenes with those little yellow markers the crime techs used. In one of the real old photos, there was a chalk outline to show where the body had once lain. Blood shadows. Cops used to call those chalk outlines blood shadows.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” the detective said. He began to lay out more pictures, graphic crime scene photos with the bodies still in them this time.

  “No, thanks.” Paul made sure he didn’t smile when he glanced at the pictures. He forced himself to look a little shocked at all the blood.

  From the photos, Paul knew the cops suspected he’d done these other girls, some of them at least. He counted four besides the redhead, not the twenty-seven he’d actually killed. But they’d only charged him with the Reyes murder.

  Paul bit his lip. Detective Waldron was bluffing. They probably had the condom Paul had left in the redhead’s apartment by mistake, but nothing else. Since his DNA wasn’t in the system, they’d need a court order to force a sample from him to match the DNA found in the condom. That took time, and Paul planned to get out of Los Angeles by then. He certainly wasn’t going to give the cops a saliva sample on a coffee cup now and incriminate himself.

  When Paul refused the coffee, the detective placed a plastic bottle of water in front of Paul. “Water? The AC has been on the fritz all week.”

  The air in the room did feel hot, hot and stuffy. Paul wondered if they’d turned off the AC on purpose to make him sweat. He’d read cops did stuff like that. He refused to touch the water.

  “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” Paul said. “I don’t know why you think I had anything to do with this.” He gestured to the pictures.

  “We’ve known for a while someone with a genetic profile similar to yours murdered Daria Reyes, Mr. Myrtilos. Somebody in your family. It took some time to narrow down the suspects to you.”

  “Someone in my family? What are you talking about?” Paul didn’t have to force a shocked expression on his face this time. He really wanted that water now.

  The detective pulled a sheet of paper out of his file, turned it around and pushed it forward so Paul could read it. It was a report from an open source genealogical website that allowed the public to send in DNA in order to trace ancestry. The name printed on the line that said “customer” was Thea Myrtilos.

  Paul shook his head. What had his idiot sister done now? The report was dated April 2018. One year ago. He sighed. That was about the time he’d told Thea she’d been adopted. And the gullible fool had believed him. Believed him enough to do an ancestry search. Her DNA put a target on his back.

  He told himself to stay calm. The cops only had a family profile match. That didn’t prove he did it. And he wasn’t going to give them anything.

  “I want a lawyer,” Paul said.

  “You’ll need one,” Detective Waldron said, nodding. “Daria Reyes isn’t your only murder victim, is she?” He tapped each of the photos of the four women besides the redheaded Reyes in turn. “Tell us about the others. How many were there?”

  Paul crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You’ll help yourself if you cooperate, Paul. Why don’t we start by swabbing your cheek? We’d like you to give us a DNA sample, voluntarily.”

  “So you can frame me,” Paul said. “I’ve heard about cops planting evidence. No way.”

  “Actually, it’s for your own protection,” Detective Waldron said. “We already have a sample from you that matches the DNA in the contents we found in a used condom inside Daria Reyes’ apartment.”

  “What are you talking about?” Even as he said it, Paul knew. That’s why Waldron had been poking around in his trash a week ago. He’d stolen Paul’s DNA off a beer bottle or a clump of hair.

  Paul swore a blue streak under his breath. He wasn’t going to take this lying down. He would fight it. Paul wondered if he could get the DNA from his trash excluded from evidence somehow. He’d be sure to ask his lawyer.

  “Your sister Thea’s here with the lawyer,” Detective Waldron said an hour after Paul had placed his one phone call. “You want to see her?”

  Paul nodded.

  A few minutes later they brought Thea into the interview room, without the lawyer. The cops probably hoped Paul would further incriminate himself.

  “Your attorney will be right in,” Detective Waldron said from the door. “Thea wanted to talk with you alone for a minute. I’ll get us coffee.”

  Paul’s mousy-haired sister had bitten the cuticles around her nails until they bled, and the dark bags under her eyes had grown big enough to hide a small corpse. He waited until she had taken a seat opposite him before he started to unload.

  “What did you do, Thea? What did you do?!”

  “The police showed me the pictures,” Thea said in a quiet voice as she stared down at her hands with the bloody cuticles. She wore that ratty old sweater he hated and hadn’t even managed to button it right. Thea looked so much older than her thirty-seven years. “They said you killed those women.”

  “The only crime here is what you did, sending your DNA to that ancestry website. I’m your brother, Thea, and the cops are using it to frame me.”

  “You said you weren’t my brother,” Thea countered, her eyes still downcast. Tears fell from them. “That was the day you told me I was adopted. The day Snowball went away.”

  “That’s because I was mad at you!” he yelled. “Because you do stupid things.”

  “Were you mad at Snowball too?”

  “Snowball?” He stared at her. What did the idiot dog have to do with anything? “I told you before, Thea. I didn’t do anything to that dog. He just ran off.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Thea said. “I found Snowball’s body in the trash. In one of those cheap kitchen garbage bags you use. Somebody shot him. There was blood leaking out of the bag.”

  Paul closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again as he jabbed at the table between them. “Well, it wasn’t me. I even got you a new dog, didn’t I?”

  Thea didn’t answer. She looked different too, something about the set of her thin shoulders changed.

  Paul forced himself to lower his voice and take a deep breath. He had to remember she wasn’t too sharp, and he would need her to post his bail.

  “Thea, I know you’re upset,” Paul said. “I don’t blame you. None of this was your fault. I should never have said you were adopted. That was wrong. You were confused, so you sent your DNA to that website. I get it. But the cops used that to set me up, don’t you see?”

  “I’m not confused,” she said, slowly raising her head and staring back at him. Her dark eyes had grown hard. “I was hoping the ancestry website would share information with the police.”

  Paul felt a trickle of cold sweat snake down his back as realization wormed its way into his head. “You didn’t send your DNA to that website because you thought you were adopted?”

  Thea shook her head. “I always knew we were tied by blood. Even if I hated the idea. I wasn’t sure you killed those women at first, but the dates of their murders always matched the times you were gone. Then, after the Golden State Killer, I heard the police were checking genealogy sites. I knew there was a way to finally find out.”

  “You sent your DNA to the website to trap me?” Paul stared at his sister. It was like looking at a stranger.

  Thea’s eyes widened. “You trapped yourself, Paul. You shot Snowball through the throat. Just like you shot that woman’s dog after you murdered her. Now you’ll have to pay the price.” She rose from her seat. She seemed much taller than her height of five feet, six inches.

  “I didn’t want it to be you.” Thea looked down at him. “I kept telling myself I was wrong, that you couldn’t be a murderer. Right up until today I kept telling myself that. Because you’re my brother. My blood. The fact that we’re related will haunt me to the end of my days. How I wish I were adopted.”

  When she reached the door to the interview room, his sister turn
ed her back on him with a finality that felt like a judge’s sentence. And the door closed behind her with a hollow clang.

  Back to TOC

  Strands of Time

  Roger Cannon

  Monday morning, 8 a.m., Bell Gardens Police Department briefing room

  “First name’s Jake, last name’s Revenir. Friends call me Rev. Not much to tell. I’m twenty-eight, graduated from B.G. High ten years ago and joined the military right away. Had two tours of duty in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. Special Forces trained me well.” A few heads at the briefing wagged approval. “I left as a sergeant after six years, went to college four more, and got my Bachelor’s in Police Science. What I learned overseas should serve me well as a police officer. I appreciate your consideration. Thanks.”

  Captain Fairchild then reviewed major crimes and misdemeanors that happened over the weekend. Ten minutes later, the meeting ended and officers shuffled to their lockers or squad cars to start their day.

  “Rev, you’re with me today for the ride-along. I’m Sergeant Rodriguez. Given name’s Santiago, but everyone calls me Chago. Get your gear and meet me in the parking lot.”

  I’d heard about the handsome, thirty-five-year-old, bilingual officer with the thick black moustache who had been with the department ten years. Acclaimed as one of the few glues who held the city and the P.D. together, Chago’s promotion to lieutenant was expected soon. To spend time with BGPD’s finest, I would know by the end of the day if I would be a good fit here.

  Five minutes later, I met Chago in the parking lot. “Rookie, we inspect the car every time before we set out to start a shift. It reduces screw-ups that can bite us in the butt later.”

  “Show me your routine, Sarge. You won’t have to show me twice.”

  After a quick inspection of our 2016 Explorer, we drove to Eva’s restaurant two minutes away and swung into an open booth.

  Chago greeted both waitresses and waved to the cook. “Eva’s coffee’s way better than the station’s, and they make a mean Acapulco omelet. We’re in no hurry because I want to get to know you, so order away.”