Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 12

by Stalker

  “That wasn’t hard at all, Decker. Just a little love pat! Buck up!” Then he said, “You know, Decker? With your brains and connections, if you just had played it straight, you would’ve made it in the shade. Know what I’m saying? But you got this problem, Decker. You push things. It was bad enough, having this little bitch mouth off to me, showing me up. But then, when you started eating shit, I was going to…cut you some slack.”

  How gracious, Cindy thought. Even in her thoughts, she couldn’t stop the sarcasm.

  He continued to talk. “Because if you made gold—more like when you made gold—you wouldn’t think I was a total son of a bitch. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  Cindy did get what he was saying. She got it perfectly. She ate shit for him, and he was going to forgive her. So how the hell did she foul up? Last she remembered, she was still capitulating to the asshole. What merited true forgiveness from this prick? A blow job in the supply room?

  “Yep, you sure had me fooled. I thought you were really trying to kiss my ass. But stupid, uneducated me. I couldn’t see that you were setting me up, sucking up to me while trying to stick it up me. That was really rotten, Cindy. It really pissed me off. You’re gonna pay for that. Pay big time. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand.”

  But Cindy didn’t understand a damn thing. What had she done to give him the false impression that she was trying to screw him?

  He was tisk-tisking at her now. “You could have left well enough alone, just played the game. You had to go and stick your nose where it didn’t belong!”

  What the hell was he talking about? She hadn’t been scheming against him…she hadn’t been doing anything that remotely could be misconstrued—

  “What were you trying to prove by going down there, huh?”

  Going down where?

  “Trying to upsmart Daddy like you upsmarted me?”

  Outsmart, Cindy thought.

  “Bragging that you can solve things that Daddy can’t. Is that your style with authority? You know what, Decker? Daddy should have given you a sharp kick in the pants a long time ago. Then you wouldn’t have been in this mess, because you would have known your place instead of being so damn nosy! I tried to warn you off. I sent you notes. I chased you around. I gave you signs—little and big signs. Nothing worked. Now you’ve found out things, and look where it got you!”

  She grunted.

  He said, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  Maybe if you took the gag off, you would! Seconds later, she got her wish. In a swift, rough motion, he yanked the gag down until it rested around her neck like a bandanna. The tug was so violent against her jaw, she felt as if he had taken out a couple of bottom teeth as well. “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She wasn’t surprised that she was slurring her words. Her mouth and lips were bloated with edema. What astonished her was that he understood her. At least, she thought he understood her because he laughed. It was a hard laugh, a low-pitched cackle of a warlock, if there were such things as warlocks. And maybe there were because she felt this was pretty damn close to Wells’s vision of hell.

  He said, “With your fancy degree and fancy words, I would have thought you could do better than that!”

  “I can’t because I don’t know what…” She stopped talking. If the conversation continued this way, it would soon bog down to a predictable rut. She’d say this, he’d say that.

  Use your fancy degree!

  Her mind flashed back to her psych courses, specifically to Milton Erickson, and the art of the unexpected. “Thanks for taking off the gag. I really appreciate it.”

  Silence.

  “What am I smelling?” Cindy continued on, desperately fighting the effects of the soporific gag. “Something like chloroform? Where in the world did you get it? They don’t use it in hospitals anymore. You must have searched long and hard. But then again, I see you as a pretty resourceful guy.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’m a smarty pants, remember?”

  Again, no one spoke.

  She tried again. “Can I say something without you getting offended?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Can I try?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  “You could put the gag on again. By now, we both know I’m pretty much under your control.”

  He didn’t answer. Cindy took his silence as a signal to continue. “Sir, you think I was trying to screw you. Tell me how.”

  “Don’t give that bullshit!” He hit the dash so hard, it made her aching body jump. He was panting now…louder than she was. “Don’t fucking lie to me. You’re in no position to fucking lie to me, Decker! We both know damn well why you went out to Belfleur!”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, her jaws pounding with pain. Her brain began to spin. Belfleur, Belfleur…what did he have to do with Belfleur?

  And then it hit her like his hand across her face.

  She had been so intent on Bederman, so sure of his guilt, she hadn’t even bothered to check the rest of the list! If she had, she would have no doubt found his name—and maybe others as well. Who knew how many cops were on the list? She was not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but at the moment, she could only think of that. All of them! They were out to get her because they thought she knew something. She did know something. She knew that they had something to do with Crayton’s death…and Bartholomew’s kidnapping…and Mills’s carjacking. She knew something, but she didn’t know everything. Certainly she didn’t know enough information to die for. But he didn’t know that. He thought she had it all figured out. He had overestimated her abilities, while she had underestimated his.

  God bless Hayley Marx and her tracer. Or rather, God bless her for the moment because Decker still wasn’t sure about her. He vaulted over to the Saturn’s driver’s door, but found it locked. The passenger’s door, however, was shut but unlocked. Heart pounding, he threw it open and peered inside.

  She wasn’t there.

  He popped the trunk.

  She wasn’t there, either.

  Simultaneously, he felt both happy and panic-stricken. He hadn’t found a body—thank you, thank you, God—but she was gone. The uncertainty drove him to frenetic action. He rooted through her bag, finding her wallet and her gun. Money inside the wallet. She had a tube of lipstick, pens…loose credit-card receipts. He pocketed them. Where was her billfold containing her badge and ID? Marge touched his shoulder and he jumped.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Her gun’s here.” Decker turned to her, breathing hard. “She didn’t even have a chance to go for her gun!”

  “We’ll find her, Pete—”

  “You tell me how!” Decker wiped away moisture from his cheeks. “Tell me how!”

  Oliver had walked over. “You know, there’s lots of brush down the embankment. Maybe she ran out of the car and didn’t have time to take her gun—”

  “She would have taken her gun!” Decker got out of the car and began to pace. “Why wouldn’t she grab her gun? The bastard just snatched her out from behind the wheel—”

  “Except the driver’s door was locked,” Oliver said.

  “What?”

  “You snatch someone from behind the wheel, assumedly you grab them around the neck and drag them over to your car. You don’t take time out to close and lock the door—”

  “You kick it with your fucking foot!” Decker said.

  Marge whispered a silent “Shut up” to Oliver, then rubbed her forehead. “Peter, we have to call it in as a crime scene—”

  “So call it in!”

  She did. Then she took out a flashlight. “I’ll be down in the embankment area. See if I can find anything.”

  An ominous statement because everyone knew what she meant. Oliver knew he should go with Marge and help. But the thought of Cindy down there, dead, shot dread through his veins. The image would haunt him forever. He
cursed his selfishness and his weakness, but couldn’t overcome it. He regarded Decker. The big man was leaning against the Saturn for support, his meaty hand covering his face.

  To Marge, Oliver said, “Maybe I should stay up here.” He cocked his head toward Decker.

  “Yeah, maybe you should.” Marge took a few steps, then tripped. She forced herself not to cry until she was out of eyeshot and earshot. When she was halfway down the embankment, she wept softly, wiping away tears as she searched for what she hoped she wouldn’t find.

  Oliver placed his hand on Decker’s shoulder. The big man turned around and stared with glazed eyes. “Why didn’t she take her gun?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t make sense!” Decker swallowed back tears. “She took her badge, but she didn’t take her gun—”

  “She took her badge?”

  “Yeah,” Decker said. “She took her badge. At least her badge isn’t in her purse. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nothing makes sense because we don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Well, thank you for that pithy explanation.” Decker stomped away from Oliver and began to walk back and forth. The uselessness of his actions made them pitiable. Paralyzed, Oliver watched him for a moment, trying to shake stupor from his shoulders. Slowly, he put one foot in front of another, bending down to search Cindy’s car. It smelled of her and that drove him crazy. Using his nose, he realized that it only smelled of her. Whoever had done this…he hadn’t dragged her out. She had come to him.

  Oliver forced concentration upon his brain, taking out a flashlight though it provided dim illumination. He went through her purse. The first thing he noticed was that Decker was right. Her gun was sitting at the bottom of her bag. So was her pocketbook with the money still in the billfold. So where was her standard-issue police wallet, which contained her officer’s badge and ID? Maybe it had fallen out. Cindy’s bag was more of a sack. It wasn’t zipped up, meaning things could easily tumble out. He began to search the car…under the mats and seat cushions, in between the seats and the console, in the glove compartments and door recesses.

  Nothing.

  He heard sirens in the distance. Soon the place would be crawling with cops. If she were near, they’d find her.

  Without thinking, his hand went to the ignition to turn on the motor, just to see if the car was working. But there weren’t any keys in the slot.

  Come to think of it, Oliver didn’t recall seeing keys in her purse. He searched again.

  No badge and no keys.

  He waited a moment, then got out of the car and walked around it, shining the light on the ground. Maybe she dropped her keys. But he didn’t find anything. No keys, no billfold, not even any footprints to speak of, at least not in this light. Nothing to suggest anything sinister. He walked several yards behind the car and illuminated the pavement. Tire tracks that didn’t extend to Cindy’s Saturn. Different tire tracks, but that wasn’t exactly a big deal. One would expect to find tire tracks on the shoulder of the freeway. That’s where cars pull over when they have road problems. But these seemed fresh, like the car—

  “You find anything?”

  Oliver was startled. “You crept up on me.”

  “Sorry. What’re you thinking?”

  He regarded his boss. The ravages of hell had trod over Decker’s face. With the flashlight, Oliver traced the beam of light over the ground. “Look at these.”

  “Tire tracks.”

  “Look new to you?”

  “The bastard pulled up behind her,” Decker said. “He saw that her car had stalled, pulled up, then dragged her out of the car.”

  Oliver hesitated, then said, “Cindy wears sneakers most of the time, doesn’t she?”

  Decker didn’t answer because he knew where Oliver was going. No drag marks had been left from the shoes.

  Oliver said, “You know what else I didn’t find in her purse? Keys.”

  Decker looked at him.

  “For what it’s worth,” Oliver said, “I think she got out voluntarily, took her badge and keys, and met someone. Maybe we got it all wrong. Maybe someone was stalled on the shoulder, and she went to help him and it turned out he was a psycho—”

  “Someone was stalking her. If she had bothered to take her billfold and keys, she would have taken her gun, Scott. She would have taken her gun.”

  No one spoke.

  “But she did take her keys.” Decker was thinking out loud. “She got out and took her keys so she didn’t accidentally lock herself out…she took her badge but not her gun—”

  Think! Think!

  But nothing came.

  Decker said, “Heard from Marx?”

  “She still hasn’t tracked down Bederman or Tropper.”

  “Bastards! Call her again!” Decker barked. “Maybe she’s lying!”

  Oliver took out his phone and started dialing. In an instant, an idea invaded Decker’s thoughts. What did Bederman and Tropper and Marx and all the others have in common? They were all cops.

  “Hang up for a second!” Decker shouted.

  Oliver pressed the end button. “What?”

  “How about this? She was stalled, Scott. She was stalled because some fucking psycho in her department was playing games with her car. So here she was, stalled on the freeway, then suddenly someone pulls over to help her. If it were just Joe Blow, she would have taken out her gun to meet him. But it wasn’t Joe Blow. It was someone she wasn’t afraid to meet.”

  “Someone she knew.”

  “No, that would make her even more suspicious…if someone she knew just happened to find her stalled on the freeway.”

  Decker was right, of course. Oliver said, “Go on.”

  “How about a cruiser?” Decker suggested.

  Oliver hit his forehead. “Of course. She sees a cop pulling behind her. She’d know better than to approach a cop with her gun in her hand.”

  “And that’s why she took her ID. To identify herself—”

  “Pete!” Marge called out.

  “Oh God!” Decker’s knees buckled. Oliver caught him before he caved in. Marge came running over and spoke rapidly. “I didn’t find anything…I mean I didn’t find her.” She broke into tears. “I mean I didn’t find her body!”

  “What did you find?” Oliver asked.

  The sirens got louder.

  Marge said, “There are lots of crushed bushes. I think there was a struggle down there.”

  “Blood?” Decker asked.

  “Not that I can see.”

  But Decker sensed that she was telling partial truths. He felt his head going light. “I’ve got to sit down.”

  Marge eased him into Cindy’s car. He felt hot tears well up in his eyes. He blinked them back and looked away.

  Oliver said, “Marge, get me my cell phone. Or better yet, can you call up Hollywood and find out if Tropper or Bederman is on duty. If they’re not, find out if either had checked out a patrol car, or if a cruiser’s missing.”

  “Why?”

  Oliver explained Decker’s theory.

  “I’ll do it right away.” Marge turned to use her cell phone.

  “Also…” Decker cleared his throat. “Also, call up CHP.”

  “Why?”

  “Just…” Again, Decker cleared his throat, along with a sharp intake of air. He felt as if he were suffocating even though the night air was clear and crisp. “Ask if all their cruisers are accounted for.”

  Marge looked at him.

  Decker said, “If I were Cindy…not knowing who was with me or who was against me…I’d be suspicious of a patrol car. It might be Bederman…it might be Tropper.” Another big breath. “But a CHP cruiser…if I were stalled and I saw a CHP cruiser…I’d be very happy. I’d get out of the car without my gun…but with my badge…and say…and say, ‘Hey, can you help me?’”

  35

  From the safety of her car, Hayley spoke into her cell phone. “Lopez is accounted for. He’s been at his
parents’ for the last four hours. Tropper’s still a question mark. I did get hold of Bederman’s wife. She expects him back any moment—”

  “Back from where?” Oliver interrupted.

  “From a drive. He goes out for a drive by himself sometimes—”

  “That sounds like total bullshit to me.”

  Hayley felt the same way. “He’s got a pager. I’m trying to track him down.”

  “If he hasn’t answered, Marx, he doesn’t want to answer!”

  “You want to put out an APB on the car?”

  “I’d love to except we don’t have anything concrete on him. Plus, he’s a cop.” Oliver was very conflicted. “Give me the license plate.”

  “He’s got two civilian cars—a Ford Aerostar minivan and a Camaro convertible. His wife said he took the Camaro…which is his car.” Hayley gave him both license plate numbers. “But I’m also thinking, Scott, that if he’s doing something nasty maybe he has the van and the wife isn’t coming clean.”

  “Why don’t you go to the house and see what’s missing?”

  “Yeah, sure…good idea. I’m also five minutes away from Graham Beaudry’s house. He’s Cindy’s current partner—”

  “Isn’t he also Bederman’s ex-partner?”

  “Yeah. But they’re still friends. They still hang together.”

  “Right. Cindy told me that. I think it’s weird.”

  “You gotta know Graham. He’s just that kind of guy. I’m thinking that maybe Graham knows where Bederman is. Or at least, maybe he knows where Bederman hangs out. Because they are still friends.”

  “You checked Bellini’s?”

  “Yeah, I called. He’s not there. Graham’s a nice guy. Let me ask—”

  “You’re looking at Graham as a nice guy. You ever consider him as a possible perp?”

  “I don’t see it, but if he is involved, then I definitely should go see him. So what should I do first? See Graham or check out Bederman’s vehicle?”