“I’m the one who called you,” Sarchi said, crossing the street to meet him. “The smell is very strong inside.”
Moving to the sidewalk, the inspector said, “Is the door unlocked?”
“Yes.”
“You wait here. I’ll check things out.”
He was gone long enough for the evening chill to creep into Sarchi’s feet. Then, through the storm door, she saw him flick on the living room lights. He came out and motioned for her.
“I found the problem,” he said when she reached him. “I’ll show you. Don’t worry, it’s safe. I opened the back door and aired the place out.”
Dropping her handbag onto a chair as she passed, she followed him through the front room, into the kitchen and to the closet by the back door where the heating unit was located.
“You’ve got a defective part on your furnace.”
“Can you tell if it was damaged intentionally?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
He looked at her quizzically for a moment, then said, “It was probably an inferior product from the start. I’ve made a repair that should last for several months, but you need to get someone in to replace the part. It’s that valve in back.”
He moved out of the way and held his flashlight high over his head, directing the beam down into the closet. Figuring she’d better see this valve, Sarchi stepped past him and bent over for a look.
Behind her, the inspector slipped his right hand into the pocket of his coveralls. It came out gripping a white athletic sock with a string tied above a bolus of sand in the foot. Holding the sock by the free end, he whipped it in a horizontal arc, hitting Sarchi on the back of the head, stunning her in a way that would leave no bruise. He then stepped forward and captured her neck in the crook of his left arm, applying just enough pressure to compress both her carotid arteries. Within seconds, feeling her knees buckle, Jackie lowered her to the floor, face up. Shucking off his work gloves so his hands were now covered only by rubber gloves, he removed Sarchi’s coat and put it on a kitchen chair.
To make it appear that there had been a gas leak, Jackie had entered the house a half hour earlier and put a rag soaked in 2-mercaptoethanol, the additive that imparts a smell to natural gas, into the furnace blower. When he’d reentered the house posing as an LG&W inspector with Sarchi waiting outside, he’d retrieved the rag, put it in a sealed plastic bag, and hidden it in his toolbox. Now, he moved the bag aside and picked up the two Ace bandages he’d brought.
Careful to keep the fabric flat so it wouldn’t produce any long-lasting marks on Sarchi’s skin, he wrapped her wrists together with one bandage and secured it. The other he used on her ankles.
He reached again into the toolbox for a small bottle of white pills. Kneeling by Sarchi’s head, he unscrewed the cap on the bottle and shook a half milligram tablet of Ativan, an easily absorbed cousin of Valium, into his palm. With some difficulty, he put the tablet under Sarchi’s tongue. In this he was trusting Latham, who had said one pill should keep her unconscious during everything Jackie had to do. Just in case, he slipped a couple of pills into his pants pocket, then recapped the vial and put it back in the toolbox.
He carried Sarchi into her bedroom and put her on the bed. Even though she was well trussed, he unplugged the phone and moved it out of reach. Returning to the front room, he got her keys from her handbag and locked the front door. From there, he went to the phone line in the backyard and disengaged the trap that had directed Sarchi’s call to his cell phone instead of to LG&W. He also retrieved the short range cell phone jammer he’d used to prevent her from circumventing his trap.
With the trap and the jammer stowed in his toolbox, he returned to Sarchi’s bedroom. Satisfied that she was still drugged, he went to the front door and checked the street for moving cars. When it was clear, he darted to his car, tossed the toolbox and flashlight into the trunk, and moved the car to the driveway next door, where it was hidden on one side by the Dumpster and on the other by a thick stand of bamboo.
Convinced that he wouldn’t be noticed by anyone in a passing car, he got out, removed his coveralls, and put them in the trunk, trading them for a jacket. The adhesive-backed LG&W letters on the side of the car had arrived yesterday from a sign shop in Tampa. Their purpose served, he stripped them off and threw them in the trunk with everything else. He then moved the car to a side street half a block away.
Still wearing rubber gloves, which he hid by keeping his hands in his pockets, Jackie walked briskly back to Sarchi’s house and returned to her bedroom, where she was doing just fine, still breathing and still unresponsive.
Now it was just a matter of waiting until the city quieted down and everyone settled into their homes. He had plenty of time. Resident assignments were posted right out in the hall at the hospital where anybody could see them and know that Sarchi’s housemate would be on duty all night.
He sat on the floor next to the bedroom door with his back against the wall and crossed his legs. He was not bored as he waited because when a man has taken the lives of as many people as he had, he has much to think about.
He sat there quietly for nearly two hours. Finally, it was time.
He went into the backyard to open the wooden gates that led to the front, but the right one had sagged so much the bolt holding them shut wouldn’t slide free. Eventually, he managed to inch it loose.
He moved Sarchi’s car into the backyard and closed the gates. After opening the trunk, he returned to Sarchi’s bedroom and put the phone back where he’d found it and plugged it in. He paused to run through his mental checklist.
Her coat and handbag.
He retrieved both and put them on the passenger seat of her car. Now, for the big bundle.
Compared to Harry Bright, carrying Sarchi was a breeze. He put her in the trunk and closed the lid. After backing her car out and securing the gates from inside, he went through the house and out the front, locking the two doors he’d used behind him.
There were many ways Jackie’s goal for tonight could have been achieved. But even with the difficulty of working around a housemate, the absence of immediate neighbors had made this approach irresistible, so as he backed Sarchi’s car into the street, he was confident no one in the area had noticed him.
Jackie drove to Overton Park, a forested area less than a mile away that was home to the zoo and a public golf course. He went in the main entrance, drove past the darkened art museum to the statue of the World War I doughboy thrusting his bayonet at shadows, then followed the road as it curved to the right, skirting the dappled front lawn of the art school. Apart from someone going in the side door of the school, the park was empty.
He turned left just beyond the school and proceeded slowly to the pavilion parking lot where the city had put up barricades to prevent cars from following the road into the woods.
Shit . . .
There were two cars parked side by side in the lot. In one, he saw the flare of a cigarette.
Since he’d anticipated this might happen, it was a disappointment but not a disaster. Shifting to his alternate plan, he turned the car around and headed back toward the school.
Two minutes later, Jackie was pleased to see that site B, a short road leading to the golf clubhouse driveway, was deserted. He eased the car down the road and used the clubhouse driveway as a turnaround so he could park on the road with the trunk facing the woods.
Before getting out, he grabbed Sarchi’s coat and tossed the zip-top plastic bag he’d stowed in his jacket at the start of the operation onto the passenger seat. Even if the Ativan had worn off, the bandages on Sarchi’s wrists and ankles would keep her from going anywhere. Even so, he didn’t open the trunk from inside the car, but went around and used the key.
And there she was . . . still out and still breathing.
He was now maximally exposed, so more than ever he needed to be quick and efficient in his movements. He draped Sarchi’s coat over the side of the raised trunk lid. In the dim glow of the trunk light, he untied her and stuffed the bandages into the pockets of his jacket.
There was no room to slip her coat on her in the trunk, so he first lowered her to the ground. Apart from their relative seclusion, the two potential dump sites he’d chosen were places where he wouldn’t leave footprints. In this case, there was a footpath lined with crushed gravel running beside the road, so as he worked on Sarchi there, he didn’t have to worry about where he stepped.
Finishing up, he put Sarchi’s keys in her coat pocket and paused to review the scene.
Was the car unlocked? It had to be unlocked. He checked and found it so. Now he had to make sure she was found before the Ativan wore off.
To do that, he jogged to the Circle K convenience store across from the park’s main entrance. There, he used an untraceable “burner” phone to call 911 and report a woman’s body by the clubhouse. He then called a taxi to pick him up several blocks from the park and take him back to the general area where he’d parked his car.
22
THERE WAS LIGHT above her, a way out of the black void in which she floated. She felt that if she kicked her feet and swam with her arms she could escape. But she was paralyzed—just like Drew and Stephanie.
Billows of gray smoke drifted into the void and across her face, hiding the light. Behind the smoke there was something very close . . .
Sound invaded the profound silence—someone talking, but the words were slurred as though being played too slow. The smoke thinned, and she saw a man’s face . . . his lips moving.
“Ma’am, are you hurt?” His words were distinct now but seemed to be a beat behind the movement of his lips.
“What’s your name?” he asked. This time everything was in synch.
“Sarchi Seminoux,” she said slowly. “What’s happened?” She now realized she was lying on her back, and the man asking the questions was kneeling over her. Shifting her eyes, she saw another man standing and holding a flashlight . . . a cop. A cool breeze blew over her face. They were all outside.
“Where am I?”
“Overton Park,” the cop leaning over her said. “I’m Officer Varela. Can you get up?”
Overton Park. It seemed impossible. As she shifted her arm so she could use her elbow to lever herself into a sitting position, Varela moved around behind her to help.
They let her sit for a few seconds to see how she’d react.
“Think you can stand?” Varela asked.
“I guess . . .”
The cops helped her up, and Varela moved back to where she could see him. “Do you feel like discussing what happened?”
Discussing it? She was on the ground, for God’s sake, with no knowledge of how she got there. Dazed and confused, she didn’t answer.
“No need to stay out here,” Varela said.
She let him guide her to one of two patrol cars whose dithering lights hurt her eyes. As Varela put her in the backseat of the nearest car, police chatter crackled from their radios, calling the other cop away to answer it.
Varela went around to the other side of his car and got in beside her, leaving his door cracked so the overhead light would stay on. He opened a little notebook and got ready to write. “I’m sorry, could you tell me your name again?”
Preoccupied with clearing her thoughts, she ignored him until he repeated the question. Usually, when she gave her name to someone who was going to write it down, she also spelled it for them. Now, needing to concentrate on her own problems, she provided Varela with that additional information only after he asked. Then, feeling it was important somehow that he know it, she added, “I’m a doctor . . . a resident at the Children’s Hospital here.”
“Doctor, can you tell me how you came to be in the park?”
Trying to tune out the distracting radio messages being spit into the front seat, Sarchi searched her uncooperative mind for an answer. “I have no idea. I remember that a man from LG&W was showing me a defective part on my furnace and then . . . there you were standing over me.”
“When were you with this guy?”
“Around five o’clock. What time is it now?”
The cop checked his watch. “Nearly eight.”
His answer chilled Sarchi far more than lying on the cold ground had. For nearly three hours she’d been utterly defenseless, unable to control what happened to her, part of that time in a public park. The thought was monstrous. “It must have been him,” she said. “He did something to knock me out, then brought me here.”
“Is there any reason to believe he might have sexually assaulted you?”
Oh my God . . . He could have. Did he? She tried to focus on what her body could tell her, but the lines were down. How could you not know something like that? The question galloped across her mind in boxcar-sized letters. Eyes wide and swimming, she looked at Varela. “I . . . don’t know.”
“I understand.” Varela closed his notebook. “I’m going to talk to Officer Martin and be right back.”
Through the side window, Sarchi watched Varela and Martin confer in voices too low for her to hear. After no more than a minute or two, Martin nodded, went to his car, and got on the radio. Varela returned to where Sarchi was waiting, opened the door, and leaned down. “Doctor, we’d like for you to be examined at the sexual assault center. Would that be all right?”
No, she thought. It was all wrong. In her confused state she felt that somehow going to the center would mean it had happened. She resisted. “I’d rather just go home.”
“We really need for you to do this, and it’s something you should do for yourself. If you were assaulted, there are health risks that have to be addressed.”
He was right. Damn him, but he was right. Resigned that this nightmare would last a while longer, Sarchi said, “Where is this place?”
“It’s not far.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, Varela came to a stop at a darkened multistory parking garage where a civilian car with its engine running flicked its lights at them.
“That’s your nurse,” Varela said, looking at Sarchi in the rearview mirror. “When it’s after hours like this, whoever’s on call comes from home.”
The nurse backed up and pulled forward so she could feed her access card into the garage gate control. The barricade arm over the entrance lifted just long enough to admit her. She used her card in another reader inside to let Varela and Sarchi in.
Varela followed the nurse through the empty garage up to the second level, where they both parked by the elevator. Varela got out and opened Sarchi’s door. When Sarchi got out, the nurse, a small dark woman with sympathetic eyes, was waiting.
“I’m Eileen,” she said. “I’m so sorry we had to meet under these conditions. But you were right to come. We’ll be going upstairs in the elevator.”
Sarchi nodded, grateful that the nurse hadn’t expected her to reply.
They all rode to the eleventh floor in awkward silence. When they arrived, the nurse led them down a long hall to a locked door. Once she had unlocked it, they went into another hallway.
“You can hang your coat right there,” the nurse said, pointing at three hooks on the wall beside some molded plastic chairs. “Then have a seat while I do a little paperwork before we start.”
While Sarchi hung up her coat and slumped into one of the plastic chairs, Varela and the nurse went into a room to the right and shut the door, leaving her alone, so far from her normal life she couldn’t have seen it with the Hubble telescope.
In a few minutes, Varela came back into the hall. Behind him, the nurse beckoned. “Would you come in please?”
The room was quite small but efficiently laid out: an examining t
able in one corner, a bench and cabinets along the opposite wall, good lighting.
As she shut the door, the nurse pointed at another plastic chair beside a small desk. “Please, sit down.”
“Could I have a drink of water?” Sarchi asked.
“We need to talk a bit first. Officer Varela said you were unconscious in the presence of a man unknown to you for approximately three hours. Do you think he took advantage of you sexually during that time?”
“I realize I should know the answer to something that important, but . . .”
Seeing how upset she was, the nurse reached out and touched her arm. “It’s not your fault. But under the circumstances, we have to consider all forms of assault, so before I can give you anything to drink, I need to take some swab samples from your mouth. Would that be all right?”
The implications of this turned Sarchi’s stomach. But she knew why it had to be done.
“Go ahead.”
The nurse got some swabs from the bench behind her and positioned herself. “Now, if you’ll just open your mouth and lift your tongue . . .”
She ran a swab under Sarchi’s tongue and probed around her gums, invading and scraping.
“Just a bit longer . . .”
After scouring Sarchi’s mouth with a second swab, the nurse rubbed two more in tandem over the upper surface of her tongue. “I know that was unpleasant,” she said, finally. “There’s some mouthwash and paper cups in the bathroom. I’m afraid the only water I can offer you is from the tap.”
Implanted with the thought of what the kidnapper might have done to her, Sarchi used nearly half the bottle of mouthwash, not stopping until her mouth was on fire. She rinsed that taste away with some water and only then slacked her thirst.
Upon her return to the examining room, she was directed once more into the plastic chair. The nurse turned off a noisy blower drying the swabs she’d taken, then came back and sat at the desk.
“Now, I have some more questions for you and some things to explain.” She began by gathering the usual background information and entering it on a form she plucked from one of the stacks on the desk.
The Killing Harvest Page 18