by Cross, Mason
Allen shook her head. The only problem with sealed perimeters was that they had to stop somewhere—she hated dealing with the reporters and the morbidly fascinated bystanders.
She took her phone out and made a quick call for an update on Gryski. He was stable in Northwest Community Hospital and had already been charged and fingerprinted. At that point, he’d admitted to his real name: Stefan Sikorski. The name had been quicker to run than the prints, of course, and had come back suggesting a good reason why he’d fired on them. Sikorski already had separate convictions for burglary and aggravated assault, and at the moment Allen and Mazzucco had arrived at his apartment, he was being sized up as the prime suspect for a local armed robbery.
“Thank you, Three Strikes,” Allen groaned. The so-called Three Strikes law had been amended a few times over the years to cut down on incidences of people being sent down for twenty-five for a minor charge like shoplifting, but a third violent felony conviction for Sikorski would have been more than enough for him to fall foul of the policy. Reason enough to fire on two cops, if he thought he was cornered. He’d had nothing to lose.
Allen thanked the officer on the other end of the line and hung up. As she approached her parked car, she heard a voice call from behind her.
“Detective Allen? Come on, just five seconds.”
She sighed as she turned around and saw a familiar, smiling face: Eddie Smith. The mutation, as Mazzucco had called him. He smiled apologetically, hands out from his body in supplication.
“Anything you can give me?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, Smith.”
“But it is him, right? The Samaritan?”
“I can neither confirm nor—”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “How about telling me who the new guy is?”
“Excuse me?”
Smith glanced back toward the alley, then back to her. “The guy in the suit who arrived with you and Mazzucco. He’s not a cop, is he?”
“He’s helping us out. He’s a specialist.”
“A specialist?” Smith’s eyes were focused, and she could tell this was the real reason he’d stopped her. Personnel behind the barricades was limited to feds, cops, and techs. A civilian was the odd man out. Smith had obviously sniffed a story, a new angle on the case. Allen decided to downplay Blake’s involvement. She didn’t know him well, but neither did she think he was the kind to do interviews.
“Yeah,” she said with disinterest. “You know, profiling stuff. Hasn’t gotten us any closer to catching this bastard. I guess we’ll check back in with him in a few days if we don’t have anything better by then.”
Smith pursed his lips and nodded. “Sure. One more question?”
Allen let out an exasperated grunt. She wanted to keep this guy on her side, but there were limits. “One.”
He paused for effect and leaned in. “This is him, right? The Samaritan?” The grin broke through at the end as he acknowledged he was pushing his luck.
Allen opened her car door and turned away from him. “Good night, Smith.”
53
I cruised the streets of downtown for a while after I left Allen and Mazzucco, keeping an eye out for hotels that looked quiet.
LA’s downtown district was unlike any I’d ever been in. From afar, the skyscrapers and lights fooled you into thinking it was the hub of the city, and maybe during the daytime that was partly true. But in the evening, the offices closed down and the commuters drove back out to Santa Monica and Glendale and Encino, spreading themselves back out across the city. There were still people around, of course: cleaners, occasional cops and city workers, the homeless, but no crowds. Compared to cities like New York or Paris or London, cities that burst into a parallel nocturnal life after sundown, it was dead. It was strange: a nest of shining skyscrapers and million-dollar businesses by day, a comparative ghost town by night. It reminded me of one of those old horror movies where the inhabitants of a village carry on as normal by day but retreat indoors by dark to shelter from the creatures of the night.
I switched the radio on and cycled through various talk stations until I hit music. Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” The eerie harmonica combined with the solitary environment brought my mind back to my quarry and his habit of picking lone victims in deserted areas. Before Crozier had returned to Los Angeles, it had been his get-out-of-jail-free card—the lack of witnesses. Some of the people he’d preyed upon had been society’s forgettables: bums and prostitutes and addicts. People who could be taken quickly and quietly and were barely missed, if at all. Others, like Sergeant Peterson, had been missed, but their killer had been careful to leave no trace of them. If there’s no body, it’s impossible to conclusively decide a disappearance is the result of foul play.
I thought about how the MO had changed subtly in Los Angeles, moving from an almost random victim profile to a very definite type: young, dark-haired women alone in cars. I couldn’t be certain from the evidence I’d seen, but I’d gotten the sense he’d spent more time with these victims than with the ones in the other states. I wondered again what that meant. And then I started thinking about how the MO had changed once again, with the newest victim.
Mazzucco had been right, of course. The Samaritan was sending us a message, letting us know he did not back down from the challenge now that his activities were public knowledge. But it did something else, as well. He’d decided not to waste any time with this woman. She hadn’t been held for any length of time—had most likely been taken direct from her car to the alley in which she was killed. She hadn’t been tortured. She hadn’t been stripped of her clothes. He’d made no attempt to bury or conceal her body, despite the fact that there was a nearby row of Dumpsters in the alley. He could have placed the body in one of those and probably prolonged the search for at least another hour or two.
So why hadn’t he? The only answer was because he didn’t want to prolong the search. He wanted this body to be found as quickly as possible. And the only reason for that was misdirection.
I was well versed in identifying misdirection. The people I went after often knew someone would come looking for them, and so they took pains to cover their tracks. They left red herrings; they used false names. If they had any sense at all, they departed from their usual routine, if they had one. From there, it was a matter of second-guessing the person you were chasing, separating deliberate misdirection from happenstance. I was looking for the same things with the Samaritan now. It meant I had to focus not on what he’d done this time, but on what he hadn’t done.
I set my mind to work on that and picked a small, quiet-looking hotel. It had a green neon sign that lit up the street around it in a weird, alien glow. I parked in the basement lot beneath the building and checked into a room on the second floor. I thought about turning on the television and decided against it. I undressed and hung my suit up in the closet on one of those hotel hangers that has a pin instead of a hook to discourage you from stealing it. I took a shower in the dark, wrapped the towel around my waist, and lay down on the bed. I set my alarm for six a.m., deciding I’d call Allen first thing. There wasn’t much of a view from the window, just the characterless facade of the building across the street. The green glow from the sign filled the room.
Exhausted from a long day, I began to sink into sleep. I fell immediately into dreams of deserted cities and creatures of the night.
1996
He could still hear the murmurs of conversation from outside the house, punctuated by Kimberley’s occasional laughter. He shrugged his backpack off and dropped it to the floorboards, kneeling beside it.
He removed the three bottles of water, tepid by now, and placed them upright on the floor. He removed Kimberley’s Walkman and her tapes: Nirvana and Alice in Chains. And Metallica as well, because she wasn’t a grunge purist. He removed her balled-up sweater and placed it carefully beside the bottles and the Walkman and the tapes. Then he reached back into the bag and his fingers closed around the hilt of the knife he’d p
laced at the bottom of the pack, with some other things. He withdrew it and slid the blade from its leather sheath. It was a Buck Woodsman hunting knife; the hilt was hardwood, with aluminum on the butt and at the guard. The initials DC were engraved in the wood: his father’s initials. He wondered how long it would take the old man to realize the knife was missing. It was his hope that the first he knew of it would be the next time he saw it up close.
Gripping the hilt in his right hand and listening to the voices outside, he realized how long he’d been waiting for this moment. He’d wanted to be careful, because he had no interest in being caught. But now, a perfect opportunity had presented itself. From things both Kimberley and Robbie had said, he knew Robbie had few friends at Blackstones. Nobody would truly miss him if he happened to disappear. He was seventeen, which was a year into transition age in California. That made a new foster family unlikely to the point of impossible. Kids like him ran away all the time and were never heard from again.
He reached into the bag one more time and withdrew the last couple of items he’d brought with him: a length of synthetic clothesline and a roll of duct tape. He’d brought the latter item to use as a gag, but now he didn’t think he would need it after all.
He straightened up and crossed back across the floorboards to the glassless window. The other two were still down there, still sitting on the broken-down fence. He called out to them, telling them to come quick, because he had something to show them.
A minute later, he heard the front door creak open and the sound of Robbie’s labored breathing. “We ought to be heading back soon,” he said as he began to climb the bare wooden stairs ahead of Kimberley. There was an odd tremble in his voice, like he was nervous or apprehensive about venturing into the house.
Had the kid known what was in store for him then? Of course not. Otherwise he’d never have entered the house. Would never have agreed to the hike in the first place. But perhaps, on some animal level, he sensed the trap that was about to spring shut on him. At any rate, by then it was far, far too late.
He watched as Robbie crested the flight of stairs and looked around him, taking in the attic space, confused that there appeared nothing to see.
“Okay, what . . . ?”
Their eyes met, and Robbie tried to make sense of his companion standing before him, stripped to the waist and holding a Buck knife.
“What . . . ?” he repeated, and then panic flooded his eyes at last.
He turned to flee and ran into Kimberley, who was coming up the stairs. She yelped in surprise and started to say something to Robbie, but then she saw the knife. Her brown eyes widened and she spoke quietly.
“What’s going on?”
WEDNESDAY
54
The phone ringing on the table beside the bed startled me out of a deep sleep.
At first I reached for my cell and for a second couldn’t work out why the display was blank. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t my phone that had woken me. It was the hotel’s. I blinked a couple of times to get my eyes to focus and lifted the receiver off the base.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Romita?”
It sounded like the voice of the clerk at the desk. I took a second to confirm that was the name I’d used on check-in. John Romita took over drawing Spider-Man from Steve Ditko in 1966. I like to use the names of comic book creators—unlike actors or athletes, they’re not household names to most people, but they’re easier to keep track of than a name I’ve invented out of whole cloth.
“That’s right. Is there a problem?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I have a call from your uncle. He says it’s very urgent, I’m afraid.” The clerk’s voice was a mixture of concern and curiosity.
“My uncle?”
“Yes, sir. Uncle Winter.”
I sat up in bed, utterly awake now, as though someone had just tossed a bucket of ice water over me. Quickly, I picked my cell up again, activated the recorder app, and held it to the earpiece. I cleared my throat and tried to sound casual as I told the guy to go ahead and put Uncle Winter through. I must not have done that great of a job, because the clerk paused before transferring the call and said, “I’m sorry, sir. I hope it’s not bad news.”
I didn’t think it would be anything but. I wasn’t disappointed.
There was a long pause. I heard street noise, tinnily reproduced: a cell phone. And then I heard a soft, familiar voice that sounded like a cross between a mortician and an accountant. “Good morning. I have to say, you’re a man of many names.”
I got off the bed and stood up, cradling the base unit in my other hand as I walked across the room as far as the cord would allow. I kept to one side of the window and peered out onto the green-lit street one floor below. There was no one there that I could see. I scanned the darkened windows of the office building across the street, saw no movement.
“I could say the same about you,” I said.
Another pause, and then the cold voice. Slow, deliberate. “I’m pleased you’ve decided not to waste time by feigning ignorance of who I am. I always appreciated that about you, Blake. Your . . . directness. I take it you’d prefer I address you as Blake? That is, rather than—”
“Blake is fine.”
“Blake it is, then. I see you’re keeping busy.” There was a condescending lilt to the voice that made me want to reach through the phone line and grab the speaker around the throat.
“You haven’t been too idle yourself. Where are you now, Crozier? Are you close by? I don’t suppose you’ve held on to the old name, either.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I wasn’t sure which question he was responding to, but then I hadn’t exactly expected him to give me his address.
I backed away from the window and scanned the room for signs of entry. None jumped out at me, and the thin strip of tape was still across the door where I’d left it. That was good.
“So don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the call. Nice to hear from you after all these years. But I have an early start tomorrow, so how about you get to the point?”
“The point? The point was just to confirm it was really you. It seemed somehow . . . unlikely. You working with the police.”
“Believe it.”
“So I was right. You’re not with our mutual friends anymore.”
“Not for a long time.”
“Then why are you doing this, Blake? Why interfere in something that’s not your concern?”
“Interfering in things that are not my concern is sort of my mission statement.”
He paused again, and I thought I could hear the sound of a low-flying aircraft in the background. Takeoff not landing, I thought. When he spoke, he sounded almost confused. “Surely you, more than anyone, should be aware of the dangers of interference? You know what I can do to you.”
“I’ll take my chances. Because you know what I can do, too.”
“Walk away now, Blake. Fair warning.”
“Too late for that.”
“A pity. But suit yourself.”
The call was cut off, and I slammed the handset back down on the base. I ran across to the window and looked out, trying to get a view of the sky. No dice. The tall building across the way left only a small rectangle of predawn sky visible directly above. I moved back across the room, flung the door open, and ran down the corridor to the fire escape door at the far end. I pushed the bar to open it and stepped out on the steel walkway. There was a clear view west from here. The vast sprawl of much lower buildings that reached all the way to the mountains. I saw a passenger jet rise and disappear into the clouds. I scanned the rest of the horizon and saw no other aircraft. Too early for the morning rush.
I ran back into the hotel room and switched on my laptop. I replayed the recording of the Samaritan’s phone call, focusing on the background noise this time, instead of our conversation. The plane I’d seen had taken off from LAX, and I was pretty sure it must be the same one I’d heard in the backgro
und. From its position in the sky by the time I made it out onto the fire escape and the volume of its engines on the recording, I knew the call had to have come from somewhere very close to the airport, probably directly under the flight path.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the shifting feeling of unease awoken by the voice on the recording. I heard street noises, the intermittent sound of cars passing by. A yelled greeting from someone to another in the background. Nowhere too remote. I shook my head. If the Samaritan was as smart as the man I’d remembered, he’d have made this call from somewhere far removed from his hideout. But then again, everybody makes mistakes. And it was a place to start.
And then I heard it. Overlapping a fraction with his voice as he said, Don’t be ridiculous. A ringing bell. A very specific kind of bell. The kind that sounds outside of a firehouse when the doors are opening, to alert people to get the hell out of the way because the fire truck’s coming.
I got on the Internet and looked for fire stations under the flight path. There was only one.
55
I don’t ordinarily appreciate being woken by a telephone call from a serial killer at a quarter to six in the morning, but on this occasion it had gifted me an advantage. The LA traffic was manageable at this hour. I used the GPS on my phone for the quickest route and made it to the fire station in Inglewood within twenty minutes.
The street was four lanes wide and unnaturally quiet. I parked directly across from the firehouse. Like most structures in Los Angeles, it was low and wide. Two big shuttered doors closed off the twin bays out front, looking like the garage on a suburban house blown up to double-size. Out front, the Stars and Stripes hung limp in the still air from a pole, beside another pole with a klaxon and lights that were primed to flash to alert traffic when the fire trucks were pulling out. I examined the rig and tried to estimate how far from it my midnight caller might have been standing. Probably not too far, I thought.