The Samaritan

by Cross, Mason

  I reached into my pocket for my wallet and located the appropriate size pick. Ten seconds later, the lock had been sprung. I held my breath, turned the handle, and gently pulled the door toward me. The rusted hinges screeched, but only a little.

  I got the door open all the way and stood on the threshold, listening. My eyes could just barely make out shapes and hard edges within, so it wasn’t all the way dark. The air that escaped from the doorway smelled musty, abandoned. From somewhere inside, I heard a brief flapping of wings. And something else. I had to move my head closer to the doorway to confirm I was really hearing it. Music. Something old-time, from the thirties or forties. A crooner tune. I took one step and then another into the darkness.

  It took a second for my eyes to adjust further, but I soon realized there was just enough light to make out my immediate surroundings. I glanced up and saw the reason why: a big hole in the corrugated roofing thirty feet above me was letting in moonlight and a reflected glow from the streetlights. Ahead of me was a corridor lined with plywood walls. I guessed that the open-plan warehouse floor had been partitioned into separate rooms—offices or workshops or something. About twenty yards ahead of me down the corridor was a metal stairway that led up to a second level spanning only half of the interior space. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought that was where the sound of the music was emanating from.

  I blinked a couple of times to hasten my eyes’ adjustment to the dark and scanned the concrete floor ahead. It was pitted with holes, weeds were sprouting up in some of the corners, and there were piles of scrap metal and machine parts lying abandoned here and there. I started walking toward the stairway, making sure to avoid the pitfalls and keeping my tread as light as I could with a sprained ankle. As I walked, I passed doors that led off into the partitioning. I tried a couple of them and found them locked. I reached the foot of the stairs and looked upward.

  The music was louder here. It sounded like Bing Crosby, or someone of that vintage. I hadn’t figured Crozier for a fan of old-time pop music. The stairs looked rickety, the guardrail missing on one side. I put a cautious foot on the first step and settled my weight onto it. It held without complaint, so I proceeded upward. I’d made it almost to the top when a flash of movement burst in front of my face. I rocked backward on my heels, grabbing the guardrail, before I realized I’d been startled by a pigeon. Or rather, we’d startled each other. The bird flapped upward before gliding through the torn opening in the ceiling.

  I let a slow breath out and paused to listen. Nothing but my heartbeat and the music. I climbed another step and saw a thin line of light in my sight line, which was just above the level of the upper floor. The light was shining through the gap at the bottom of a stack of wooden pallets. I made the top step and moved onto the upper level. The platform was floored with rigid boards suspended from the roof beams, rather than supported from below. The stacks of pallets created a high wall directly in front of me. The light and the music were coming from farther back. I saw a narrow gap in the pallets thirty feet to my left. It required sidestepping along an empty strip of floor no more than eight inches wide, with no fence or guardrail to separate me from a twenty-foot drop. I put my free hand on the pallets and started to move carefully toward the gap. I glanced down and realized that the partitions had no ceilings of their own. It was like looking down into a wine box divided into squares by crisscrossed cardboard. In the dim light, I noticed that some of the boxes were empty, and some were filled with unidentifiable shapes.

  Another couple of birds took flight as I disturbed their sanctuary. I could be as quiet as I liked, but if there was anybody waiting for me behind the wall of pallets, the birds would be giving him all the warning he needed. I took comfort in the fact that neither the music nor the light had been switched off.

  I made the gap in the pallets and stepped gratefully in off the ledge. There was a narrow corridor twenty feet long and a foot wide between the stacks. The light spilled out from the far end. It was a small, dull light, probably from a low-wattage table lamp. I saw something else, too. A dark red stain pooling out from the source of the light. The music stopped and there was a moment of utter silence. I was almost relieved when another tune kicked in.

  I recognized the song from somewhere, though I couldn’t identify the voice of the crooner, who’d probably died of old age thirty years ago. It was all about the girl of the singer’s dreams. I walked toward it, my eyes flicking from side to side for any ambush point that might be concealed in the wall of pallets. I glanced above me and saw nothing but a corrugated ceiling, pendant lights with shattered bulbs hanging every few yards. As I got closer to the blood pool, I could see that it was starting to coagulate, but only just. That meant it had been spilled relatively recently.

  I made the corner, paused, and stepped out into the light.

  Shit.

  There was a woman’s body on the wood floor. She was nude and was lying on one side, her wrists bound with rope. I could see deep incisions on her back and on the backs of her legs. A blood-soaked mop of blond hair covered her face like a shroud, but it didn’t obscure the ragged gash across her throat. I cursed out loud and fought the urge to break something. A voice in the back of my head spoke in a measured, matter-of-fact tone: This one is on you. The Samaritan, far from backing down at the challenge, was escalating his activities. This particular victim, whoever she was, had died because of me. To send me a message.

  I took my attention from the body for the time being and surveyed the rest of the scene. Someone had created a hidden grotto within the stacks of pallets. The space was about ten feet by fifteen. The light came from a battery-powered lantern that had been placed on one of the horizontal beams supporting the ceiling. There was a small office desk in the far corner. There were three items on the desk: a cheap stereo, from which the music was coming; a heavily bloodstained chamois cloth; and something that looked a little like a small black leather briefcase that was open on its hinges but facing away from me. Attached to one of the ceiling support beams near me was a stub of rope, severed just below the knot. I didn’t need to look back at the corpse’s bound wrists to know that the two lengths of rope would match. The bastard had hung her up while he had his fun.

  I looked back at the body. The victim was tall and blond, different body type from the first three victims. Another deliberate choice, I thought. It fit perfectly with my working theory on what the Samaritan was trying to do.

  I maneuvered around the body, being careful to avoid the pool of red, and approached the desk. I reached into an inside pocket of my jacket and took out a pair of surgical gloves. I put the gloves on before I reached out and hit the off button on the CD player, cutting off the singer in the middle of another declaration of undying devotion. I turned my attention to the briefcase, only it wasn’t really a briefcase. It was more like a box with a leather cover. I’d seen boxes like that before, and I had a pretty good idea what it would contain. I reached out and took hold of the open lid, using it to swivel the box around so I could see the contents. The interior was lined in red velvet and there were shaped depressions that snugly held a collection of knives. Scalpels, paring knives, boning knives. Like a hunter’s blade set mocked up to look like a surgeon’s kit. But no surgeon would have had a use for the largest blade in the case.

  It was an ornate dagger called a Kris, a ceremonial blade of Javanese origin. It had a gilded handle with swirling patterns on it. The blade was eight inches long and curved back and forward in a jagged pattern. The razor-sharp edges glinted in the lamplight. The weapon held an odd attraction. I wanted to pick it up and feel its weight, test the sharpness of its blade. I ignored the impulse, just on the unlikely chance that the Samaritan had left his prints. Even if he had, I reminded myself that they wouldn’t do any good.

  I was so absorbed by looking at the blade that I didn’t notice the sound of approaching rotor blades until they were practically overhead.

  I heard a smash of glass from one of the windows
downstairs, followed by a thud of something heavy hitting the concrete floor. It was followed by a second sequence of the same. I moved quickly back to the narrow corridor that looked back toward the warehouse floor and saw two fat clouds of smoke rising to the rafters. The Samaritan had trapped me, all right, just not in the way I was expecting. I batted the battery lamp off its perch and it crunched on the ground, plunging the death room into blackness. From outside, I heard a screech of feedback from a megaphone and then a gruff, commanding voice.

  “This is the LAPD. You are surrounded. Lay down your weapons and come out of the building.”

  57

  “Hello?” Allen was still only semi-awake when she hit the button to receive the call from Mazzucco—she had been worried it might be Denny again—but his next words shook her out of the sleep haze immediately.

  “I just spoke to McCall—he says they got a heads-up on the Samaritan. They’re surrounding an old warehouse down in Inglewood. They’re making the incursion right now.” Mazzucco’s voice was strained, and she could sense his controlled anger.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Ow. You don’t need to yell, Jess. I know. He says they tried to get ahold of us earlier, but—”

  “Bullshit. I’ve had my cell beside me all night.”

  “Me too. Jess, we can talk about it—”

  “Got it. Just give me the address and I’ll meet you there. Gimme a sec.” She hunted around for a pen and something to write on. “That fucker.”

  “I know.”

  She located a makeup pencil and scrawled the location of the warehouse down on an unopened bill from her cable company. Without bothering to say goodbye, she hung up and threw on the clothes she’d been wearing the previous night. There was no time for niceties.

  She took the 405 south. The sun was not yet up, but the early-morning traffic was already beginning to harden the arteries that crisscrossed LA. The whole drive, she was fighting to forget about how much she wanted to rip Don McCall’s stupid goddamn head off and focus on what was important. Who had provided the lead on the Samaritan? How did they know they needed to treat it seriously? How had McCall managed to steal it from under them? Her next thought was of Blake. Had he somehow managed to track the killer down to his lair? Maybe he’d been the one to call it in.

  She thought not. She’d known Carter Blake less than a day, but she was a good judge of character, and her every instinct told her he was a straight shooter. He might hold back on some things, but she was certain he wouldn’t deliberately cut her out of the loop in favor of a moron like McCall.

  She saw the blue lights glancing off windows and walls before she turned the corner into the street the warehouse backed onto. Mazzucco’s car was already there, along with multiple police cruisers and two of McCall’s tactical vans. A helicopter hovered above the scene, its search beam flitting across the low rooftops. She parked and ran to the barriers. McCall was there with one of his men. Mazzucco was there, too, actually jabbing a finger into McCall’s body-armored chest to make his point.

  “What the hell is this?” she yelled at him.

  McCall turned to look at her. He couldn’t keep the smug grin off his face, or perhaps he didn’t even feel like trying. “What do you know, Allen? I guess I was the first to know, huh?”

  Something about the way he said that brought Allen up short. The look in his eyes said he was withholding other information from her and was having a good time doing it.

  “This is not your investigation, McCall. It’s not even . . .” She looked at the warehouse and immediately recognized a clusterfuck in progress. McCall had deliberately frozen everyone else out and the blame would probably come back to her as the lead. “Where’s SWAT? Where’s the fucking FBI?”

  “As I was just saying to your partner, take it up with Lawrence. We got a call; we had to act. You snooze, you lose.”

  “We’re going to talk about this later,” Allen said. “Just tell me what the fuck is happening.”

  For a second, McCall looked as though he was considering not responding, but then thought better of it. Perhaps he felt he could afford magnanimity. “My guys just went in. We got the two entrances, front and back. We tossed in some flash-bangs and some smoke grenades. Anyone’s in there, they’ll be out here soon.”

  “You just went straight in?” Mazzucco asked.

  Allen shook her head. “Of course he did. What did you expect, subtlety?”

  “Hey, fuck you, Fixer,” McCall said. “Now back off, cupcake. We got work to do.”

  Allen snapped. She launched herself at McCall, but was caught around the waist by Mazzucco, who’d plainly been anticipating the explosion. McCall’s man, late to react, inserted himself as another layer in between the two of them and McCall.

  “You heard the man,” he said stonily, eyeing the pair of them.

  Mazzucco fixed Allen with a glare. “Later.”

  She nodded and relaxed, jutting her chin at McCall’s flunky as she allowed Mazzucco to move her a couple of steps backward.

  McCall had moved a few steps in the opposite direction. He put two fingers to the earpiece on his headset. “Rooker, sit-rep.”

  Allen backed away and looked at the building. And then she realized she’d forgotten all about somebody in the heat of the moment.

  “Where is he?”

  “Where’s who?” Mazzucco replied.

  “Where’s Blake?”

  McCall heard her and grinned. “I forgot to tell you the other thing, Allen. Our caller gave us a name, too.”

  58

  I moved back down the tight corridor between the pallets and glanced over the edge of the drop. The smoke was already filling the warehouse. It looked like they’d fired smoke and stun grenades in from the windows on both sides. Had I been on the ground floor, I’d be blinded or severely disoriented. As it was, the Samaritan’s little makeshift death chamber had effectively insulated me from the explosives.

  The smoke had already engulfed most of the open portion of the ground level, rising and expanding and starting to fill the small partitioned rooms. It was like standing halfway up a mountain and seeing the morning fog fill the valleys below. I saw movement toward the rear door, the one I’d come in by. I huddled close to the nearest stack of pallets and tried to focus on the movement. In another minute, the smoke would be thick enough to blind me to anything further than a couple of feet in front of me, but for now I was elevated enough to make out shapes and disturbances in the smoke below. I could make out at least four figures entering from the doorway, where the smoke was thinner. I caught small details that added up to trouble. Body armor. Riot helmets. Assault rifles. A SWAT team. LAPD, most likely, or perhaps FBI. Either way, it was very bad news for me.

  I remembered the SIS guy I’d encountered earlier. McCall, that was his name. If McCall’s men followed his lead, they’d be the type to shoot first, ask questions never. If I’d guessed their numbers at the rear entrance correctly, that meant the same number again approaching from the front entrance. Minimum: eight trained men with Kevlar and grenades and M4s, versus one unarmed guy wearing a nice suit.

  I glanced around my immediate surroundings, knowing I had bare seconds to do so. I saw nothing that could help me. I looked up at the roof and remembered the gaping hole in the ceiling. I found the spot and dismissed any idea of escaping that way. It was fifty feet out from my position, more than a thirty-foot drop to the solid warehouse floor. The nearest steel rafter was ten feet from the hole. Even if it hadn’t been, I could still hear the chopper’s rotors thumping away directly above me, its search beam glancing through the hole and the second-floor windows every so often. Behind me was a tight corridor and then a brick wall: a dead end with a dead body.

  If I was getting out of here, it had to be from the ground level.

  I looked back toward the position of the four men who’d entered at the back. It was getting tougher to see them all the time, but I could see they were beginning to spread out, covering the open-pl
an area at the back of the warehouse. I heard low voices as they called out code words. The smoke finally reached me, my already limited visibility beginning to gray out. I crouched down, gripped the edge of the platform, and swung myself over the edge. I took a deep breath and let go, allowing myself to drop blindly into the void. I hoped I’d memorized the configuration of the partitions below correctly.

  I landed hard on the concrete floor, making sure to favor my right side. I couldn’t avoid banging the sore ankle pretty hard, though, and I had to stifle a grunt as my shoes cracked off the surface. I heard a yell, a three-round burst of automatic fire, the splintering of wood. None of it too close to me. I waited and exhaled. I guessed I had dropped into the second row of boxes, meaning the guys out there would have to clear the first row. Nice going, Blake, I thought. You’ve bought a whole extra couple of minutes of remaining unperforated. I could see a little better down here. As I’d hoped, the partitioned workshops or offices or whatever they were, were fouling the dispersal of the smoke. Some of it was seeping through, but visibility in here was much better than out on the floor.

  The immediate space around me was square, about ten by ten. The walls were also ten feet high, making this a big square wooden box with no lid. And me, the Jack, waiting to be sprung. The box was virtually empty, the bare wood walls showing holes and scuffs where shelves or bulletin boards had hung. There was a door that I knew had to open out on the central corridor. Since I didn’t have too many other options, I carefully pushed the handle down and pulled the door open. I had a vague idea about getting farther back into the nest of partitioned rooms, but beyond that I was out of ideas. All I knew was that the longer I wasn’t shot or cuffed, the better. The smoke was much thicker in the corridor. I turned in what I was reasonably sure was the opposite direction from the men who were approaching from the warehouse floor and started to walk deeper in.