When I finished, Nix checked the LD screen on the polygraph, then sat down on the bumper of the car and regarded me carefully. "You see, you could have saved yourself a lot of pain if you just told me that earlier."
He speed dialed a number on his cell. After a minute he said, "Okay, I think we can contain it. Sammy has to ditch his little assassination pistol and he definitely needs to go visit his family in Russia tomorrow. These guys have the gist of a case, but they can't make it without Sammy's gun or a witness. I think we can make this go away."
There was a long pause as I sat with my head on my chest, feeling lower than I ever had in my life. You like to hold the idea that you can withstand anything-that you can take torture, or the worst man has to offer and not break. But I hadn't been able to do it. I had a much lower threshold than I had imagined. I'd fallen short, and now, even though I was probably not long for this world, I had to live with that uncomfortable knowledge until they killed me.
Nix said into the cell phone, "Fine. I'll go with them and make sure it's done right."
He disconnected and said, "Put him under."
One of the brigadiers stepped forward with a needle and jammed it into my leg again. Whatever was in that syringe was powerful stuff. I was out before they untaped me from the chair.
Chapter 58
When I regained consciousness I was back in the trunk and we were moving. I wasn't sure how long I'd been out, but my whole body ached, and my left index finger was throbbing like a bitch.
Memory started to return, and as it did, I knew I was going for a ride I wouldn't come back from.
I now had some of the "bows," but the "whys" still eluded me. To keep my mind from disintegrating in fear, I tried to reason them out.
Nix was Virtue's right hand, so that meant Virtue was, for some reason, allied with the Petrovitches. Why?
Virtue and the Petrovitches were all in Moscow in the mid-eighties. Stan Bambarak and Bimini Wright had also been stationed there. Was this part of Bimini's '85 problem? Alexa told us that Sammy had been an assassin for the KGB. Was he the shooter who did Bimini's Russian doubles in that Moscow prison? How did all of that tie to R. A. Virtue? Why would Virtue take such a risk? I wasn't sure, but it felt as if it started back then.
Then came a wave of frustration and anger, most of it directed at me. For the past three years, I had gotten into the habit of playing just outside the boundaries. I was usually able to pull it off, but little by little, I had become overconfident. Past successes had blinded me to current weaknesses. I had allowed myself to be taken and then hadn't held up. I'd given our case away. It would now come to nothing. That memory shamed me.
I started to review the events that lead me here. There was now little doubt that Samoyla Petrovitch had degenerated from whatever he'd been in Moscow into a much more dangerous, murderous psychopath. He had pulled that tree-limb cutter from the trunk of his car. Then he'd snipped off my fingertip. Did it without a hint of hesitation or a flicker of emotion.
A question began to bump up against that gruesome memory. What the hell was Samoyla doing with a tree limb cutter anyway? Maybe he bought it to cut off Davide Andrazack's fingertips so the Mossad agent could be dumped in our serial murder case. Then a new idea struck me.
Alexa told me about the Stinger attack in Kabul. How Sammy had been stitched up by a U. S. corpsman who saved him, but also disfigured him for life. I'd seen firsthand that Sammy was an impulse killer. He almost murdered me in his Century City office.
Chapter 59
As I lay stuffed in the trunk of the moving Cadillac, I tried hard not to curse my stupidity. I had been so locked on the idea that Zack was the Fingertip Killer, that I had completely overlooked Sammy.
The hub of my case against Zack hinged on the fact that Vaughn Rolaine was involved in both of his murder cases. But Alexa had pared that coincidence down. As she had said, it was statistically possible that Zack and I just happened to catch the Vaughn Rolaine murder on that Friday night two months ago.
I suddenly wondered if all of the logic I'd used to tie Zack to these murders might just as easily apply to Sammy. Maybe Vaughn Rolaine was the precipitating murder that got Sammy started killing homeless men. He'd been ordered by Virtue or Nix to kill Davide Andrazack because Davide was finding those reverse-engineered Americypher bugs and tracking them to a receiver station on the roof of their Century City office building. But maybe Sammy was so ritualized by then that he just continued the same rage-based techniques he'd been employing during all the other homeless murders.
We didn't find any bugs or scans on the ME's computer, so maybe that chest carving hadn't leaked after all. Maybe Sammy had been using it all along, carving a Medical Corps insignia on Davide Andrazack as well as all the other homeless vets he killed. All of it because of psychopathic anger over that botched field triage in Afghanistan. Maybe Davide Andrazack wasn't a copycat kill, but part of the same series of murders, and the only thing that was different was the motive.
I had to admit that Sammy fit the unsub's profile at least as well as Zack. I remembered Underwood's suggestion that the unsub was covering the eyes of the vics because he thought he was ugly and didn't want them looking at him even in death. I had scoffed at that, but now with Sammy as a suspect, I wondered if I was wrong, just like I was wrong about the unsub being an organized, methodical killer. Sammy was an impulse killer with a questionable IQ who didn't plan his murders. But he was also a KGB-trained assassin. He knew how to cover up his crimes, and those acts made the crime scenes appear organized when in reality they weren't. He was a classic example of a mixed unsub, and cutting to the bottom of it, Judd Underwood's profile was a lot closer than mine.
Clever detective that I was, I had actually managed to get myself caught by the very serial killer I was investigating. It doesn't get much worse than that.
The car slowed slightly, and I felt the tires humming on asphalt. We had left the highway and were now on a winding road.
Suddenly, the car passed over something, and intense vibrations rattled the chassis. A cattle grate? It seemed we were outside of L. A., far out in the country.
Half an hour or so later, I felt the car tilting and tipping as the driver negotiated what felt like deep rain crevices.
After what I estimated was about a half mile, we made a long sloping turn and came to a stop.
Car doors slammed.
A minute later, the trunk opened and I was looking up into the sunlight. Looming over me, looking like something a mad scientist concocted in his basement, was Samoyla Petrovitch. He reached down and scooped me out of the trunk, using so little effort, it shocked me. Then he turned and threw me on the ground nearby.
I thumped in the damp grass. When I looked around, I realized I was about a hundred yards from a beautiful, blue lake. Wherever we were, it appeared deserted. No neighbors or houses in sight, no docks or boats. I saw Kersey Nix getting out of a gray government sedan, which was parked behind the black Cadillac Brougham I had ridden in. I took a head count. Including Nix, Sammy, Iggy, and their five brigadiers, there were eight all together.
I started to lose it.
To begin with, no full-grown male likes to be lifted off his feet and thrown around like a sack of laundry. Secondly, eight against one is lousy odds unless you're the star of a kung fu movie. I couldn't see any way to change that. I was in terrible shape-beat to hell with one fingertip gone, taped up, and weak from loss of blood, miles from civilization. I wasn't going to get out of this.
I craned my neck and saw that we were on a rolling lawn in front of a sprawling mountain lodge in a garden framed by low brick walls. The house was designed to look like a Swiss chalet with wood carved eves and Disney-esque pastel colors. The Petrovitches' summer place on New Melones Lake. I was going to disappear up here just like Calvin Lerner.
I glanced at Sammy. He had a blank expression on his ruptured face and was again rocking side to side. Two brigadiers were standing behind, watching him sway, frozen b
y his murderous intensity.
"Sammy. .," I said.
He didn't answer.
"Listen, man, you don't want to kill me. This is a very bad plan. I'm a cop. You kill a cop, it doesn't go away." Thinking even as I said it, that it hadn't slowed him down, or hurt him much when he shot Martin Kobb ten years ago.
The Petrovitches and Kersey Nix went into the house, leaving me on the lawn with a few brigadiers assigned to guard me. Ten minutes later Sammy came back out carrying a fifty-pound Danforth anchor in his left hand. Then he grabbed my bound feet in his right, and began dragging me down toward the lake. My head kept hitting rocks on the path as he yanked me savagely along, rounding a point to a small cove, just out of sight of the main house.
There, tied to the end of a private dock, covered by a canvas tarp, was a classic, varnished wood Chris-Craft.
Sammy dragged me to the end of the pier and dumped me next to the boat, then pulled out his 5.45 PSM automatic. It disappeared quickly into his enormous hand. He jabbed the barrel behind my left ear, its cold muzzle pressing hard against my skull.
I gathered myself together, trying to prepare for death, but all I kept thinking was, I'm not ready yet.
Then Sammy wheezed, "Suck my dick, yakoff."
I steeled myself, waiting for the bullet. Instead, he just laughed. It was a high-pitched squeak that shot over ruptured vocal chords, hee-heeing across the silent mountain terrain in a breathy, whistle. He pulled the gun away, leaned down, and fastened the heavy anchor to my legs with a rope.
The idea of getting shot in the head was bad, but going swimming with a fifty-pound anchor didn't exactly cut it either.
Sammy lumbered back toward the house as one of the brigadiers unzipped the canvas cover on the speedboat, peeled it off, and then jumped down into the cockpit. He slid behind the wheel and turned on the blower, waiting for the gas fumes in the bilge to clear. Then he pushed the starter.
A rolling ball of fire blew straight up into the air, sending wood splinters flying into my face as the classic speedboat exploded. The blast rolled me across the dock and almost knocked me into the water. From where I lay, I saw the brigadier who had been behind the wheel catapult through the air engulfed in flames. He fell toward the water, finally splashing into the lake, extinguishing himself and sinking without a trace thirty yards out.
Sammy Petrovitch screamed something in Russian. I craned my neck and saw him running across the lawn, heading back toward the dock.
He was so intent on the burning speedboat, he didn't see the white Econoline van speeding out of a dirt road in the woods, coming directly at him from behind. Just as it was a few feet away, Sammy heard the engine and spun. The front bumper clipped him and the impact knocked him sideways. Then the speeding van roared right on past, heading toward the dock where I lay. It hurtled out onto the pier, its tires clattering on the wooden planks, and finally slewed to a stop just inches from the water.
The side door flew open. "Some fucking mess you got here, Bubba," Zack said, as he jumped down onto the dock, a big square-muzzled Glock in one hand, a fishing knife in the other. He put the knife between his teeth, then pulled out his handcuff key, leaned down, and quickly unlocked the metal bracelets.
"Gimme a gun!" I yelled.
He threw the automatic to me. I tried to catch it, but with my wrapped and painful left index fingertip missing, the Glock went right through my grasp, hit the dock, and splashed into the water.
"Nice catch, asshole," Zack cursed. "My last backup piece."
Gunfire erupted, coming from the direction of the house. I turned and saw Sammy, Iggy, and their remaining brigadiers all shooting at us from the lawn with Kalashnikov submachine guns. Kersey Nix ran out of the chalet firing a handgun. The barrage of bullets zapped and sparked against the dock while pieces of the burning Chris-Craft still rained down around us.
The wood pier was disintegrating under a steady stream of 7.62-mm machine gun bullets.
"Get in the van!" Zack yelled.
I managed to pull most of the tape off my ankles and untie the anchor. Then I half-hopped, half-threw myself through the open side door as gunfire riddled the vehicle. Rounds punched through the metal sides, ricocheting and sparking around me.
Zack jumped into the front seat and threw the van into reverse. "The metal case in the back!" he shouted. "Get the SAR out and get busy," referring to a semi-automatic rifle.
I scrambled to the back where there was a metal case with LAPD SAWT stenciled on the top. I could barely raise the heavy lid on the box because the missing fingertip made my left hand all but useless. I finally heaved it open and wrestled a semi-automatic.223 AR-15 out, slammed in a clip, tromboned the slide and jammed the muzzle through the back window, breaking the glass.
We squealed backward off the dock, once swerving very close to the edge, almost going into the water.
I let loose with the semi-automatic rifle.
The AR-15 had been modified to fire four shot bursts and the 55-grain JSP rounds scattered the mobsters and FBI agent on the lawn.
Zack powered backward onto the grass and made a sharp turn, taking my scrambling targets from view. I rolled to the front of the van and, kneeling in the open side door, began firing again, squeezing off short bursts like an aircraft waist gunner. I saw Kersey Nix break for cover, and fired in his direction. I took his legs out and he screamed as he went down. Then I swung the barrel and took out a brigadier who was just running off the porch, gun blazing.
Then we were back in the woods on the same dirt road Zack had come out of earlier. The van's engine must have taken hits from those monster 7.62-mm slugs, because it was now running rough, coughing and sputtering.
"This thing is trashed! Gotta find some cover," Zack shouted as he pulled the van into the brush and parked. We both bailed out.
I saw the black Caddy rounding a distant turn, heading toward us, throwing a dust cloud out behind as it came. I waited until it got close enough so I could see Sammy and Iggy and maybe three other men crowded inside. Then I let loose with two bursts from the assault rifle, breaking the windshield first, then taking out the front grill of the speeding cad. The men all ducked down and the cad lurched right and skidded to a stop. Then I saw their heads pop up and they all jumped out of the car. The long gun was empty so I turned and ran into the woods, following Zack.
We scrambled up a hill, finally coming to a small clearing.
"How many?" Zack asked.
"Four, maybe five. I didn't hit anyone, but I took out the block."
Zack saw the slide on the AR-15 was locked open and took the rifle out of my hands and pulled the last magazine out of his back pocket and began changing clips, dropping the empty, slamming the fresh one home.
"The fuck happened to that boat?" I asked.
"Snuck over there, opened the gas line. Drained half the tank into the hull. My idea was to hit it with a hot round, blow it up and use it for a distraction. I almost shit when they took you out there and that asshole hit the starter."
"How did you find me?"
"Been tailing you for two days. Got pretty worried when they had you in that garage near Pismo Beach. Had to wait it out, hopin' they didn't kill you. I been watchin' your six, Bubba, just like the old Wild West days in the Valley. Nothing changes, huh?"
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out my badge case and handed it back to me.
"Here. If we get lucky enough to arrest these hair bags you might need this."
I felt like shit as I took my shield. I'd just spent two days trying to drop a serial murder case on this guy while he'd been following me around trying to keep me from getting killed. "I had it all wrong," I said. "I'm sorry, Zack. I should've believed in you."
He looked up, his face hard to read. "I know I'm a strange flavor, man. It's why I don't have many friends." He didn't speak for almost ten seconds, then said, "I gotta look after the few buds I've got."
I was too choked up to say anything, so I just nodded.
He finished reloading the SAR and tromboned a fresh round into the chamber. "Glock's in the lake, one thirty-shot clip left for the long gun. One knife. And it's five against two."
Then my partner smiled. "I don't know, Bubba, seems like a pretty fair fight to me." He handed over the hunting knife. "Whatta ya say we go kick some commie ass?"
Chapter 60
Zack and I made our way slowly back down the hill toward the road, our footsteps deadened by a heavy bed of pine needles. I heard Zack wheezing in front of me, breathing through his mouth. After about ten minutes we stopped and kneeled in the dense brush beside the road.
"We need to set up an ambush," he whispered.
"We should sneak back up the road to their car," I responded.
"Right." But he stayed where he was, hunkered down in the brush. "You didn't really think it was me murdering those homeless guys, did you?"
I didn't want to talk about this now. We needed to keep moving.
"I gotta know," Zack said. "You really thought I was the unsub?"
"I'm sorry, Zack. But you looked pretty good for it. I couldn't get past the Vaughn Rolaine coincidence and how fucked up the murder book was. It was almost like you were trying to tank the case. And then after you damn near killed me. . I'm sorry, but for a while, that's the way I saw it."
He shook his head, looking down at his shoes. "Guess loyalty just ain't one a your strong suits," he said, softly. "What's important is, I was wrong."
He was still kneeling there, shaking his head while cradling the automatic weapon in those huge, fleshy forearms. "You know how completely fucked that is?" His voice was loud, carrying in the still forest.
Suddenly, I felt very strange about all this. I hadn't exactly proved that Sammy was the unsub. Boiled down to its essence, that was just a promising theory. I gripped the hunting knife tighter, wondering whether I'd just made another terrible mistake.
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