What Waits for You

by Joseph Schneider

  “Hello, can I help you?”

  Jarsdel looked up, embarrassed, and stuffed the handkerchief in his pants pocket. A boy in a suit sat behind the reception desk. He looked perhaps fifteen, with pale, lightly freckled cheeks and a haircut that could’ve been parted with a razor. Jarsdel didn’t know what to say. Had he wandered into a comedy sketch?

  “Sorry, I’m not sure if I’m…” He glanced at the sleek concrete partition behind the boy, where an inlaid wooden sign read McWilliams Real Estate Group. Below that, A tradition of excellence since 1982. “I’m looking for Rich Woolwine. He’s—”

  “Of course. Mr. Woolwine is our executive sales associate and broker of record.” He looked meaningfully at Jarsdel’s badge and gun. “I don’t wish to be intrusive, but is everything all right?”

  Jarsdel had been asked that question countless times, but never so eloquently. “Just fine. I have a matter to discuss with him regarding an open investigation.”

  The boy didn’t look happy with that answer. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I do not.”

  “Okay. Um, please have a seat. I’ll see if he’s available.”

  “I’ll stand, thanks. Please tell him it’s important.”

  The boy picked up the desk phone and punched a couple numbers. Someone must have answered right away, because the boy began a sotto but still audible conversation. “Dad, I’m sorry, but there’s a gentleman here to see you from the police. I said from the police. No. No, I really don’t think I want to ask him that. Okay, thank you.” He replaced the phone in the cradle. “He’ll be out momentarily.”

  “Appreciate it,” said Jarsdel. “I don’t want to be intrusive, either, but isn’t this a school day?”

  The boy’s cheeks reddened. “It’s summer.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. You lose track of that sort of thing when you get older.”

  A man stepped from behind the partition, his hand already extended for a shake. Jarsdel took hold of it, impressed at the resemblance between him and the boy receptionist. The father shared the same lean build, wide brown eyes, small nose, and pale skin. But there was gray at his temples and lines around his mouth and eyes. It was like looking at the boy after he’d gone through cheap old-age makeup.

  “I’m Rich Woolwine. Thanks for waiting—could you follow me, please?” He broke away so quickly that Jarsdel almost had to jog to keep up. They passed several desks of politely curious real estate agents until they reached Woolwine’s glassed-in office. Once the door was closed behind them, Woolwine was apologetic.

  “I’m not gonna close the blinds if that’s okay. They’re a little skittish out there, and I want them to see us speaking amicably. I know why you’re here. Obviously, I know, but…shit. Gimme a minute, hang on.” He stepped outside again and went all the way back to the reception area, giving reassuring nods to his subordinates as he passed.

  Jarsdel sat and noticed the man’s name plate: Rich Woolwine, Executive Sales Associate. How much of his own life, Jarsdel wondered, had he spent in office chairs facing someone’s desk?

  Woolwine returned, shut the door softly, and sat. “I really wish you’d given me a heads-up. Staff’s a little freaked out.”

  “About my visit?”

  “Sure. It’s something we’re all trying to put behind us.”

  Jarsdel looked at Woolwine, letting silence speak for him.

  “It’s a tragedy, of course, and we’re eager to do everything to help. But you have to consider this is a business, a people business, and no one wants a real estate agent who’s morose.” He returned Jarsdel’s gaze with unflappable, steely-eyed confidence.

  “I’m assuming,” Jarsdel said finally, “we’re talking about the same thing. The murder of Amy Sponholz, an employee here at McWilliams Realty.”

  “No,” said Woolwine. “Not an employee. And it’s not merely a semantics issue. Our agents are all basically independent contractors. They operate under McWilliams’s aegis, and under myself as broker of record. But they’re nothing like salaried employees. How often they work and how much they earn is very much up to them. Every desk you passed on your way in here is highly coveted. We associate ourselves with strong, capable agents. They benefit from the company’s name, advertising, and office space, and we benefit from their earnings.”

  “Okay,” said Jarsdel, “but one of your employees—”

  “Again, not employees. I really can’t emphasize that enough.”

  “Mr. Woolwine. Whatever Amy Sponholz was to this company, she was brutally murdered, and the prevailing theory holds that she was a victim of the Eastside Creeper.”

  “It’s a terrible thing,” said Woolwine.

  “Were you at all close?”

  “No.”

  “You answered that very quickly.”

  Woolwine smiled. “Questions with obvious answers may be answered quickly. That’s their appeal. Before we continue, may I know your name?”

  “Detective Jarsdel.”

  Woolwine had a pen out. “Spell that please?”

  Jarsdel did, and Woolwine copied it down on a notepad. “I’m not being difficult,” he said, capping the pen. “But the company’s attorney will want to know who I spoke with.”

  Whom, Jarsdel nearly corrected. “You said you weren’t close to Mrs. Sponholz. Any particular reason?”

  “You’re asking me why I wasn’t close to one of our many associates? That’s an unusual question, I think.”

  “What was she like? General disposition, I mean. Happy, anxious, thoughtful—how would you’ve described her?”

  Woolwine scratched his elbow. “She was good at what she did. Nowhere near the best, numbers-wise, but she knew the business backwards and forwards. Specialized in commercial properties.”

  Jarsdel waited for him to go on. “And her personality?”

  “Pretty standard. Nothing stood out in particular.”

  “Standard personality. Okay. Any change in her behavior around the time of her death?”

  “None that I noticed. But I still think your concept of the working relationships in this office is faulty. Interactions between myself and any single associate are minimal and only arise out of necessity. This isn’t a social club.”

  “That seems pretty clear,” said Jarsdel. “We’ll move on to her last day, August 19.”

  Woolwine nodded. “I remember it well.”

  “You do? Why’s that?”

  “She bungled the showing of a lot on Nordhoff. Twelve-point-five million.”

  Here we go, thought Jarsdel. This is where he tells me that she didn’t show up that day. Because she was already dead, wasn’t she? And Sponholz somehow fooled the pathologist into miscalculating the time of death. I haven’t figured that out yet, and I still don’t know how he did the Creeper’s prints and the blood in her mouth, but I will. And this is the first step to breaking his story.

  To Woolwine, he said, “How did she bungle the showing?”

  “Double-booked one of the slots. Embarrassing. One of the best ways to ensure a first-time client becomes an only-time client.”

  He spoke the clunky aphorism with practiced smugness. It was obviously a line he’d used many times before. And he must have misinterpreted the expression on Jarsdel’s face, because he added, “Not to speak ill of the dead.”

  “Wait.” Jarsdel leaned forward. “Sorry, back up. You’re saying she came to work that day?”

  “Of course.”

  “On the 19th of August. You’re saying she was showing a property. You’re absolutely positive about that?”

  Woolwine regarded him mildly. “Am I missing the significance of my response? Yes. I’m telling you she came in on the day in question and that she double-booked an appointment to show a valuable property. This was followed by several hours of desk work. I also remember that day because her
husband brought her a coffee on his way to work. I mention that because he looked as if he’d been in some kind of altercation. I understand he’s in the police as well, so perhaps it happened on the job. We were all relieved when he left.”

  Jarsdel’s mind spun. Woolwine couldn’t be right. There had to be an explanation, something he just wasn’t seeing yet. The killer had to have been the lieutenant. It was too much of a coincidence—his injuries, the absurd story about the birds, all the little details at the scene that didn’t fit with the Creeper’s pattern.

  He tried one last approach. “Are you sure it was her?”

  Woolwine’s brow creased. “I don’t follow.”

  “Are you certain the woman you saw that day was actually Amy Sponholz?”

  Now it was Woolwine who leaned forward. “Detective, I’m pretty good at recognizing faces, especially those I’ve encountered daily for almost five years. And Amy Sponholz in particular had very distinctive features. If you’ve seen her photograph, you probably know what I mean. But if that’s not good enough for you, you’re welcome to speak with our associates. Any number of them will be able to confirm her presence in the office on August 19th.”

  Jarsdel stood up. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you for your help.”

  Woolwine rose as well, looking much happier. “Pleasure. Can you see yourself out?”

  Jarsdel didn’t hear him. He wondered what had made him so certain Sponholz was guilty. He couldn’t even be sure at what point he’d come to such a rash conclusion. He felt ridiculous, yes, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He’d betrayed his lieutenant, pursued him as he would any other murder suspect, and had done so based on nothing other than a vague sensation of disquiet. No witness statement, no dying declaration, no evidence suggesting he’d been involved. Quite the contrary. Based on the abundant physical evidence, the only conclusion a reasonable person could come to was that, without the faintest doubt, Sponholz hadn’t done it.

  Jarsdel opened the office door, turning his thoughts over, examining them, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. Behind him, Woolwine murmured, “Okay, then. Have a wonderful day.”

  Past the agents at their desks, past the boy receptionist, back outside in the Great LA Cookout. Eyes stinging, nostrils burning in protest with his first breath. Into his car with the AC on full. The air was cooler but otherwise just as bad. He hit the interior air cycle.

  It’s your reputation you ought to be worried about, not your lungs. When Rall finds out you liked the LT for his own wife’s murder, you might as well put in your transfer paperwork. Forget homicide—you’re through.

  23

  The DNA was a match. Whoever the Eastside Creeper was, he’d left his contact DNA on the hole-punch letter to Sponholz. He’d also left his fingerprints, which a Forensic Science Division tech had been able to develop with ninhydrin. The chemical reacted with the amino acids excreted through the skin, and could reveal prints even on porous surfaces like paper, where they emerged as intricate purple stains.

  The Creeper was communicating with police. That was good news. Every communication was an opportunity for a slipup, an accidental flashing of a clue. But apparently there was more, something bigger, and Rall had called them in right away.

  He stood at the head of the conference table, his normally flat affect replaced by an excitement Jarsdel wouldn’t have thought the man capable of. It was unclear, however, if Rall was jubilant or furious or some strange hybrid of the two. He looked from Mailander to Jarsdel, then back to Mailander again.

  “Where the hell’s—”

  Al-Amuli breezed in, sipping from a mug inscribed with the title, “World’s Okayest Detective.” He took a seat on the other end of the table, as far from the rest as possible.

  “You got your coffee?” asked Rall.

  “I’m good,” said Al-Amuli.

  Rall appeared to consider making more out of it, then gave a quick shake of his head. “Okay, we finally got a break. Check it.” He swung a briefcase onto the table, popped the latches, and pulled out a manila folder.

  “Motherfucker sent us a letter.” He waited, probably for the storm of rapid-fire questions he thought would follow. Instead, his three junior detectives simply stared.

  Finally, Al-Amuli asked, “You sure it’s authentic?”

  Rall gave him a contemptuous sneer. “No, man. I thought it’d be cool to waste you all’s time. That’s where I’m at with you. Burnin’ daylight just ’cause.”

  Al-Amuli blinked. Watching him, Jarsdel marveled at how often he looked like he’d just been woken from a nap.

  Rall blew out a disgusted breath from between his teeth. “So yeah. Creeper sent us a letter. Came in with yesterday’s mail, and we already sent both it and the envelope off to the lab. Got details in it nobody else would know. I’m-a hand it out to you now.”

  He opened the folder and handed a thin stack of papers to Mailander. “Take one and pass it on. These copies are all accounted for. You lose it and it’s your ass. You leak it, and we have a very small suspect pool.”

  Jarsdel took the sheet Mailander offered him and saw it had been stamped in red with the word COPY, and that beside this Rall had written #2 and signed his name in blue pen. He sailed the remaining page toward Al-Amuli at the end of the table. The detective almost had it, but it went off the side.

  “Great. Thank you,” he said.

  Jarsdel hardly heard him. He couldn’t believe what he was holding. Actual words from the demon itself. The letter had been written with heavy black marker in block capitals. The text looked blurry at first, then he realized each letter had been written on top of itself three or four times, the pen probably passed from hand to hand to disguise the penmanship. After that, the document had been photocopied, the resulting generation photocopied again, and so on and so on. What remained was very difficult to trace forensically, either by scientific investigators or a handwriting analyst.

  The group read silently.

  Dear police detectives and others assisting,

  I am the one you know of as the Eastside Creeper, though I am not flattered by the name bestowed upon me. I do not creep rather I hunt and I have not confined these hunts solely to the eastern part of Los Angeles. On the contrary there are victims of my crimes in other parts of the city, even other parts of the state and maybe even beyond. Who knows? I have conscripted many lives for my gallery of dreams.

  I understand you may contend with many charlatans claiming to be me for whatever reason, so here is proof that I am who I say. I could provide many, many details obviously, but these give me some pleasure to recount.

  At the Lauterbach house, I struck the first (male) officer in the face with a hammer, then hid under the bed until his partner came in, after which I pulled her to the floor. I considered killing her, but left when I heard how close the backup units were. Later I regretted at least not striking her in the face as I had done with her partner.

  At the Rustads one of the things I did that was quite fun was when I secured a bike lock cable around the head of the husband. I had already taken a wrench from near the gas shutoff valve in the front yard (which as you know I also used to break Missus Rustad’s knees) and this I inserted between the cable and the man’s head. Turning the wrench I was able to tighten the cable to an extreme tightness. Since it takes about five hundred pounds of force to crush someone’s skull (depending on how much milk they drank in their youth, ha-ha) and the cable was much stronger, the result was that his eyes fairly burst outward. When that happened I stopped out of concern that the man would die and I did not want that to happen as of yet. I let him be and he lived perhaps another hour, though it is difficult to say with certainty as his breathing became more shallow.

  I also want you to know that I killed Amy Sponholts (sp?) because she was the wife of the man who pointed at me on TV and said how he’d get me, and I wanted him to know that
such threats could go either way.

  How I got into the house was like this: I climbed the backyard fence which was not at all difficult and then I used lockpicks to gain entry. When the alarm began counting down I knew I didn’t have much time, so I went upstairs as quickly as I could. She called out asking for hubby and didn’t realize the danger until she saw me. I already had my hands around her throat when the alarm began to sound.

  I did that thing with the broom because it pleased me to think of the lootenant finding her that way and feeling upset. I was lucky because it was already in the room. I did not bite her as I normally like to do as I did not have time.

  The Minchews excited me. I know it’s not how I usually do things. Too quick! But I couldn’t control myself.

  The reason I’m writing is to tell you I’m going to be moving on. Don’t bother trying to find me. I promise you will not succeed. In fact, by the time you get this letter I will already be gone. Out of the city not to return. I also plan on changing my methods, so that next time you hear of a crime you will wonder if it is me or not. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t.

  It’s been fun playing my wits against yours, but alas the time has come to say…

  Adieu,

  Belphegor

  Jarsdel finished reading and looked up. “This is stupid.”

  The others turned to him, surprised.

  “This.” Jarsdel tossed the letter onto the table. “It’s… I don’t know. It’s like it’s deliberately weird. Forced.”

  “It’s weird, Detective,” said Rall, “because it was written by some crazy-ass, drooling shitbag.”

  “Sorry. I don’t buy it. I mean, look. Here: ‘Bestowed upon me,’ ‘conscripted many lives,’ ‘gallery of dreams.’ That’s awfully arch. Hannibal Lecter meets…I don’t know—meets tired, played-out crap. I’ve read a lot of essays in my life, and if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s spotting derivative work. This is just dreadful, overly poetic. Grandiose.”