The lock was pristine. There was no question—it hadn’t been forced. And the Creeper didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d take the time during a home invasion—alarm blasting in the background—to procure a small tool to pop a nuisance privacy lock. There was only one explanation that made any sense: Amy Sponholz hadn’t locked the door, even after hearing the alarm go off.
Maybe she’d left the bedroom to investigate. Jarsdel covered the few steps from the bedroom to the top of the stairs and looked down. From where he stood, he could easily make out the entirety of the staircase as well as the foyer. The doorway leading to the kitchen was just off the main entrance. If the killer had indeed broken in through the back, he would’ve had to come out that doorway to get to the stairs. Amy Sponholz would’ve had plenty of time to see him and run back into the bedroom before he got to her. Unless, Jarsdel considered, he knew exactly where he was going and had already climbed the stairs.
Troubled, he made his way downstairs and back outside.
Rall was leaning against a black and white. With him was Captain Tricia Coryell of RHD. She looked so furious that Jarsdel was reluctant to approach her. But then she noticed him and he didn’t have a choice.
“Captain,” he said, advancing cautiously.
“Detective Rall says she was strangled,” Coryell managed through her anger.
“Yes, looks that way.”
“And she was violated? With a broom?”
“Yes.” Quickly he added, “But the tech says it looks postmortem.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Coryell spat. “That is the wife of a fucking homicide lieutenant.”
“I know, absolutely.”
“I don’t give a shit for postmortem. What, like that fucking makes it okay?”
“No, Capt—”
“How would you like it if someone shoved a broom up your dead mother’s pussy, Detective? Or your wife’s?”
“Hey.” Rall reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, then thought better of it. “He didn’t mean it that way.”
Coryell didn’t even hear him. All that existed in her world at that moment was Jarsdel. “Oh, ha, you’d say—right? Well, at least it was postmortem. So we can all laugh about it.”
Jarsdel decided silence was the best answer. Anything he said would only make her angrier.
“Captain,” said Rall. His voice was quiet but firm. “He’s just sayin’ she didn’t suffer through it.”
Coryell walked away a few yards and stopped with her back to them, hands on her hips. She bowed her head and Jarsdel could see the broad shoulders beneath her suit coat rise and fall as she took deep, calming breaths. Rall and Jarsdel waited, but it didn’t take long. In less than a minute, she was on her way back. She stopped before them, chin held high.
“Detective. I owe you an apology.”
Jarsdel shook his head. “It’s fine, Captain.”
“If you’re interested in issuing a complaint against me about my conduct, I’ll understand. There won’t be any hard feelings on my end, and I’ll ask Detective Rall here to give you his support as a witness.”
“No,” said Jarsdel. “That’s… No. Not at all.”
Coryell gave a single nod. “In that case, consider I owe you one.” She grimaced and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Jesus, I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.”
A trio of new technicians arrived, escorted by one of the uniformed officers, and signed in at the crime-scene tape. One, a slight woman no more than five feet tall, gave directions to the others before splitting off with the officer, who led her into the house.
“Good,” said Coryell. “At least we’ll know for sure pretty quick.”
The time dragged by. Jarsdel glanced at his phone. Almost seven. He wondered where the Creeper was now, and how he’d made it away so cleanly.
“Excuse me, Detective Rall.”
“What?”
“Do we know yet if Amy was alone?”
“No.”
“No she wasn’t alone?”
“No as in I have no idea. LT’s a fuckin’ wreck. Give the man some space.”
“I wasn’t suggesting we try for an interview. But it seems very likely she was alone, don’t you think?”
Rall sucked some air between his teeth. “Why’re you harping on this, you know, at this particular juncture?”
“Because otherwise it would’ve been suicidal, right? Break into a cop’s house while he’s home?”
Rall shrugged. “Yeah. Obviously.”
“So how’d he know Sponholz’s routine? How’d he know when he’d be home and when he wouldn’t?”
“Prob’ly staked out his place. Waited for him to be gone.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Seems kind of risky. Stake out the house of the man who’s chasing you.” Jarsdel looked around. “Pretty empty street, too. Not a lot of activity. You’d probably notice a strange car or someone who wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Rall surveyed the area and nodded. “True. But maybe it’s like…” He didn’t finish his thought. The fingerprint technician had come striding out of the house. She moved fast, stripping off her gloves as she approached.
“Which one of you is Captain Coryell?”
Coryell lifted a hand. “What do you have?”
“The prints at this scene match the exemplars I was given. Same as Eastside Creeper.”
“You’re sure?”
“There’s no doubt. Counted twenty points of comparison, which is the gold standard, and I could’ve kept going.”
“Thank you. What was your name?” Coryell had her field notebook out.
“Mendez, first name Xochitl. That’s X-O-C-H-I-T-L. The X is an ‘sh’ sound.”
“And you’re with Devonshire Area, or…?”
“Sheriff’s Department, actually. I have a friend at Northridge Station, and she asked if I could come by as a favor.”
“Appreciate it. Thank you. Mind hanging around just in case we need you again before the scene is cleared?”
“I’m here to stay, Captain. If I can contribute in any way, I’d be grateful.”
Coryell and Mendez shook hands. “Lucky to have you,” said the captain.
Once Mendez had moved off, Coryell turned to Jarsdel and Rall. “You both good here? I’m gonna go check on Ed. Want him to know he has all our support.”
“Sure, Captain,” said Rall.
“Just so you’re aware, I plan on telling him the Creeper’s going to be in custody before the end of the summer.”
Rall pursed his lips. “That’s, uh, like five weeks, uh, Captain.”
“It sure is.” Coryell moved off toward her car. Rall watched her go, his expression mild, and waited until her taillights disappeared around the corner before speaking.
“I wanna call her a bitch, but that ain’t fair. She were a dude we’d all say she had ‘command presence,’ right?”
“What were you about to say before?” asked Jarsdel.
“Huh?”
“You were about to say something. I said the thing about how you’d notice a strange car or a person, and you said that maybe it was like…and you didn’t finish.”
“Oh. Yeah. I was gonna say maybe it’s like the other cases. Like where he hides out in the house. Maybe that’s how he knew she was alone.”
“I guess,” said Jarsdel, but inwardly, he knew it didn’t make any sense. Because if the Creeper had been hiding in the house, he would’ve attacked both Sponholzes while they were in bed and helpless. And the murder itself was too quick, too clean for his usual style. This felt like a blitz attack, a crime of opportunity he couldn’t resist passing by. But that brought Jarsdel back to the same problem: how had the Creeper known Amy was alone? And how had he gotten in? And why hadn’t she locked the bedro
om door?
“Nah, that don’t work,” said Rall. “He’d’ve killed ’em both. And our boy likes to take his time. Choking’s too quick.” He looked at Jarsdel. “You were thinkin’ the same thing, weren’t you?”
“I was considering it, yes.”
“Speak up, then. Ain’t got time to waste tiptoein’ ’round everybody’s egos.”
Jarsdel considered. There’d been something else he’d been wondering about, but hesitated in bringing it up. But now that Rall had invited him to offer his ideas, he thought it would be a good opportunity.
“I’m curious about the broom.”
Rall nodded. “Good. Why?”
“Where’d it come from? I mean, yes, it was probably already in the house, but from a cleaning closet or the garage or something. I just have a tough time thinking it was somewhere in the bedroom and the guy just picked it up.”
“So the question is,” Rall said, “why’d he go hunting for the broom in the first place? Wasn’t much of a weapon. Plastic handle and all that. At the Lauterbachs he gets a claw hammer. Rustads he uses that gas shutoff wrench they had out back. But here he picks up that flimsy-ass broom. Was he just looking for anything to—you know—to do that thing he did with it? Maybe.”
“Maybe,” Jarsdel agreed. “In that case it looks like this: I’m the Creeper and I’ve developed a fixation on the LT for leading the task force that’s hunting me. I track him down, follow him from PAB, or throw his name into a data dump. Either way, I end up at his house. Somehow I realize Amy is alone. I can’t resist, so I get inside.”
“In some ingenious way,” said Rall.
“In some heretofore unexplained manner,” Jarsdel agreed. “The alarm goes off—we’re presuming—and I don’t know how long I’ve got until the LT comes back, so I attack the wife. Then, to show what an asshole I am, I go scavenging around the house for something to profane the body. I see the broom…” Jarsdel furrowed his brow. “Albert DeSalvo—the Boston Strangler—he did that to one of his victims. Broom handle. Diseased minds think alike.”
Rall frowned. “Boston Strangler—what was that, like fifty, sixty years ago?”
“I wasn’t suggesting it was a copycat. Just thinking aloud. Anyway, there are a few missing pieces, and it looks like the Creeper got very lucky on a couple points, but I guess it could’ve happened that way.” Jarsdel prepared himself for the reaction his next request was going to earn from Rall. “I want to talk to the LT.”
“Hell no.”
“I know he’s hurting, but it needs to be soon so we can put a timeline on all this. Whatever the unis come up with from their canvassing isn’t going to mean anything until we nail down exactly where he was and when.”
“I said forget it.”
“I’m willing to do it,” said Jarsdel. “And I understand. You’ve known him for years, and disturbing him in the midst of his grief feels like a violation of his privacy. But you know the best chance we have of balancing the scales is slipping away from us by the minute. The earlier we talk to him, the better our info’s going to be.” He weighed his next words carefully, then said, “Only thing is, I’d leave Mailander and Al-Amuli out of it. Nothing against them on a personal level, but I’m concerned about crowding the guy. And I don’t think his rapport with them is all that solid.”
Rall stared at him, jaw muscles flexing. Jarsdel couldn’t tell what the man was thinking, but he took a small step back just to be safe.
Finally, the detective spoke. “Al-Amuli’s a toolbox, and Mailander’s got no finesse. If we’re gonna talk to the LT, I’m gonna be there, too.”
“Good,” said Jarsdel. “And if you’d prefer doing it alone, that’s fine.”
“No. Since you don’t know him as well, you might ask questions I wouldn’t think of. Can only help. But we got ground rules. LT’s a sensitive guy. Too sensitive, maybe. But he’s got a brain. Always been gracious, always respectful. Knows how to delegate. He’s a good leader, a solid LT. Different strategy, different command style than the guys I was used to, but effective.”
“I’m unclear. So what are the ground rules?”
“I don’t want him pushed. His wife’s murdered. She was his whole world. I know it’s the first thing we do—look at the husband. But we already got the prints back, and it’s for sure not him. So when we go in there, I don’t even want a hint of suspicion in what we say. I’m talking about tone. That sort of shit’s injurious to a person. Dealing with loss, then with people insinuating you had something to do with it. So I don’t care if his story’s jumbled up or whatever, we don’t push. Let him come to us.”
Jarsdel was surprised. “That’s fine, of course. I’m curious as to why you’d assume I’d come at him from that angle.”
“You’re a walkin’ textbook. Everyone knows that. Mr. Procedure. You do what it says in the literature regardless of what the world’s telling you. So I’m reminding you what the world’s telling you here—the LT ain’t our guy, so don’t treat him like your typical surviving husband. That clear?”
Jarsdel didn’t trust himself to speak right away. Rall was suggesting he had no instincts—that the only reason he operated by the book was because he didn’t possess any judgment of his own. He shrugged. “Appreciate your sharing your concerns. I’m happy to let you guide the interview.”
Rall began to head off to his car. Jarsdel added, “You know it’s starting to feel a little bit like this isn’t really a team. Like we’re not equals.”
“We’re not equals,” said Rall, without turning around.
* * *
There was a cot in Devonshire station, for use by detectives working long shifts, and the desk sergeant said Sponholz had been asleep in there for three hours. Rall let his boss sleep, and it wasn’t until ten in the morning when word came to them that Sponholz was awake.
When Rall and Jarsdel entered, the LT was sitting on his cot, sipping a mug of coffee. He looked as if he’d aged ten years. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes, which clung damply to his skin. It was stifling in the little storage room where they kept the cot.
Sponholz glanced up as they entered, but said nothing.
“Good morning, sir,” said Rall.
No answer.
“We came by to pay our respects,” said Rall.
“You came by to knock out a timeline,” said Sponholz. His voice was like the sound of wind through a seashell, hollow and weightless.
Rall and Jarsdel exchanged a look. “That’s true,” said Rall. “We want to give your wife the best chance of getting some justice.”
“Amy was the third of four siblings. Grew up in a Tampa trailer park, lived off food stamps and surplus government cheese. Endured regular sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle. Skip ahead a couple decades and she meets me. Gets the whole cop’s wife treatment. Absentee husband. Wanted kids and I didn’t. She’s never had any justice, so why start now?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Rall. “But you know—”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s get it over with.”
“Would you rather talk to me alone?”
“Tully can stay,” said Sponholz. “More heads in on this, the better. And the sooner we can put this…animal…in the ground.” He choked back a sob on the last couple words. He closed his eyes and took a long breath in through his nose, held it, and exhaled. His eyes opened. “Okay. Go.”
“Tell us everything you can, from the beginning.”
Sponholz thought it over, then shook his head. “I’m all addled. Agitated. I don’t know where to start. You’ll have to be specific.”
“Sure, no prob. Um, I guess…how did you come to know your wife had been…”
“Murdered? It’s okay to say it. She was. She was fucking murdered.” He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
Rall held up a calming hand. “All right. How did you come to know she’d been murder
ed?”
Sponholz collected himself, sighed, shook his head again. “I came home. I’d been out. All the way across town at PAB. Schedule was all screwed up from the case. Must have been two-thirty when I finally finished up. I was wired on coffee. Just wired. I thought I’d get in a workout and then go home and crash. Just sleep until the afternoon and then come on back between lunch and evening rush hour. I do it that way and sometimes can make it in forty-five minutes. This is stupid—don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Okay, I’m focusing. I work out. I shower, but I don’t bother shaving. Get in the car and make it home, and it must have been sometime around four thirty. Place is a circus. My phone starts going nuts right around the time I’m pulling in. Security company’s there, and by then so is Devonshire PD. I knew, right when I saw it, I knew it had to be Amy.”
Sponholz held back another sob, then slapped the sides of his face with both hands. Five times, fast. “Jesus, okay. I tried to get inside, and of course the officers were doing their job and they wouldn’t let me. I was angry, I think I was angry, and I probably said some pretty terrible things, but they were very calm and professional and didn’t let me past the tape. One of the unis told me there’d been an incident, and of course I’ve given that line myself a few hundred times. So I knew. I knew what’d happened. And that it was him. That he’d been the one who’d done it.”
Jarsdel wasn’t sure if Rall wanted him to speak or not, but he wanted to clarify something about Sponholz’s story.
“Sir, do you have any idea how the killer gained entry?”
Sponholz blinked at him. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“The alarm was set. We know that of course because the signal went to the security company’s dispatch. And we know it was the back door that was set off. It’s been electronically recorded.”
“Okay, yeah,” said Sponholz. “What’s the question?”
“There’s no evidence of forced entry. And you’ve got pretty good locks on all your doors. Did you have a hide-a-key he could’ve picked up? Or one under the mat?”
“Gimme a second to think. I don’t know. A hide-a-key’s possible. Maybe years ago we put out one of those fake rocks. Nothing under the mat, no. I’m thinking, trying to think.” Sponholz squinted, as if he could will the memory into focus. “Goddamn it, yes. It was Amy. She’s been getting lazy about that stuff, leaving doors unlocked, especially that one because it opens onto our yard and not the street. She doesn’t take it seriously, and I remember I said to her, I said, ‘Hey, this is no joke. We got a killer prowling the city and God knows what other nutjobs crawling out of the woodwork these days.’ But she forgets. She forgets to do it. Yes. We just had this conversation, must have been a couple days ago.”
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