by Ty Patterson
The watery eyes focused properly on Zeb for the first time, flicked across his shoulder to the others and came back to the dark tunnels boring into him. The words came out stumbling and then more fluently.
‘I saw him that night. He thought he was alone. He wasn’t. I was lying in some hedge bushes on the side of the street not twenty meters away. I had puked on myself, had a pounding head, but I could see him. His face was lit up by the lights inside on his dash.’
‘He was doing nothing, just sitting there. Just like me. I thought he was a cop and kept quiet. I had some weed on me and if a cop found me, he would take me in.’
‘I lay there watching him watch the street. Once he rolled the window down and spat and I heard the radio. Some ball game.’
‘People came in and out of the strip mall, cabs dropped folks and picked them up. It got late, but he still didn’t move. I had to pee, but this dude just sat there. I got desperate and moved and his head turned suddenly.’
‘He couldn’t see me, I was sure, but I thought he would come out and check. My blood froze, but his eyes went back to the street. There was nothing to see there. I thought he was waiting for someone, but when hours went by, I got it. He just was. He wasn’t there for anyone.’
He looked at his bottle, now empty, and licked his lips. Meghan dug into her bag and offered him hers. He took it and bobbed his head in an oddly elegant bow.
‘She came out at close to midnight, same time as always. I knew because I hung outside the mall often. She walked thataway, here, you’ll see.’
He bent and drew a couple of wavy lines on the loose soil. The street.
He drew a rough box. The strip mall.
He drew another box. The car with the watcher in it.
A hedge, where he lay.
A dotted line. The path Morales took.
‘I wanted to pee so badly. I couldn’t hold it anymore.’ He looked down embarrassed and shuffled his feet.
‘We’ve all been there, Carl,’ Zeb said softly.
The drunk bobbed his head again.
‘I saw him looking at her. Nothing special on his face. She walked deeper into darkness.’
‘He straightened suddenly. He stared after her.’
His hands shook and his breathing was loud and laborious.
‘He got out. Silent, like one of them cats. He had a slight limp in his left leg, but he moved just fine.’
‘Looked left, right, walked straight to her.’
‘She looked back once when he got close, then I couldn’t see anything.’
‘Next thing I see is him dragging her back. One hand over her mouth, another across her neck, hard.’
‘I was scared, man. I had peed on myself, I was high on weed and gin and this hammer was going off in my head, but this dude, he scared me.’
‘He shoved her in the back, did something I couldn’t see, then he just drove off.’
‘That’s it man. That’s all I saw.’
More water went down his throat. ‘I crawled out of the hedges when he drove off. I remember seeing the tail lights but nothing else.’
‘You were drunk. Obviously you haven’t stopped drinking since. How come you remember so well?’ Pizaka’s voice was brusque.
Leon frowned at Pizaka’s not so gentle approach but subsided when he saw Zeb looking in his direction.
Let him ask.
If Carl was embarrassed, it didn’t show. He shrugged. ‘How do I know, man? I just do. I remember a lot of other things back from that day. What I ate, a sandwich some folks had thrown down a trash bin. Tasted nice. What I drank. A half bottle of Texas Single Malt someone had left behind. I can still remember that fire as it went down me.’
He swayed and settled his bony behind against a bicycle rack.
‘Why didn’t you go to the cops then?’
‘Not my business man. I didn’t want trouble. Been in enough, seen a lot. I didn’t want my ass roasted just because I saw something. Besides, how do I know I really saw all that? You just said it yourself. I was stone drunk.’
His eyes attempted to stare down Pizaka, gave up and shifted nervously.
‘You got a description?’
He shook his head and stood up to walk away, shuffled uneasily when Zeb caught his eyes and pinned him down.
‘His hands.’ He licked dry lips and took another swig. ‘They were pale. They stuck out against the rest of him.’
‘He was white?’ Meghan asked him.
Carl’s head bobbed again. ‘Yes, ma’am. But he was tanned. Those hands were a real contrast. I thought he was wearing gloves, but he wasn’t. He was wearing some kinda T-shirt, his arms were bare.’
Zeb nodded encouragingly when he fell silent. ‘Anything else, Carl? Think back to the night. You were lying in the hedges. The smell of earth, vegetation, the whisky in you. You see this car, this guy sitting there doing nothing, you wonder what the heck, but it’s not your business. You want to pee. What else did you see, Carl?’
The drunk swayed on his feet, rocking in small motions, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Zeb’s. Sound and surroundings seemed to fade as the seconds became minutes.
A hoarse whisper. ‘A white man. Short hair. He moved a little like you. That’s all I remember.’
Zeb nodded once in understanding. He kept quiet not wanting to break Carl’s string of memory.
Carl blinked rapidly for a while and finally shook his head. There wasn’t anything else he could recollect.
‘You saw him before?’ Pizaka rapped out.
‘No, man. I couldn’t identify him in the daylight, or from a picture. It was dark.’
He slid down again, back to his resting place, held his head and groaned. ‘Feels like jackhammers inside.’
Leon sat easily in front of him, a fluid grace despite his size. ‘You got anything else for us, Carl?’
A groan and another headshake was his reply.
‘Rest in the shade, buddy.’ Leon stood up and led the others back.
He turned round when Carl raised his head and addressed Zeb fiercely. ‘I was a good gunny.’
Zeb continued facing him and something jumped and danced in the air between the two men.
‘Never doubted it.’
He paused and let his eyes travel over Carl.
‘You can be better than this, gunny.’
Meghan peered back through the window when Zeb drove them away. Carl was standing and when he met her gaze his head bobbed again and the bottle rose.
It felt like a salute.
Back at the APD’s office, Leon beamed. ‘We’re getting somewhere, Zeb, aren’t we?’
Zeb nodded distractedly and Beth and Meghan picked up on it.
‘What’s bothering you, Zeb?’
‘That car was a rental that he’d rented using a false ID.’
Leon nodded in confirmation.
‘One of those totally remote transactions. You pay in advance and collect the car and keys at a secure location. Cameras didn’t capture the killer.’
‘How did he get back? The car with Morales inside was found five miles outside the city. He hitched a ride? Walked?’
‘My reckoning is he walked, but we just don’t know. We checked back on the route and no one had seen anything. No one came forward with any information. I went back again this time, no better luck.’
Pizaka flared at Leon. ‘How did you miss questioning this dude four years back?’
‘He wasn’t in the neighborhood. We canvassed it and no one ever mentioned him hanging around. He told me he drifted to the west side the very next day of that night and hung around there for years. He came back to East Austin last year. That food garden is a big draw.’ Leon responded easily, evenly.
‘It didn’t strike you to check those cuts nationwide?’
‘Nope.’ Leon glared back. He wasn’t into shamefaced apologies.
Zeb looked at him as he barely fit on his chair, his gut straining against his shirt.
He knows they made a mistake. Gu
ilt must be weighing him down. The hours he must have put in going through the case files, canvassing the neighborhood again...how he must have felt when he found Carl.
Leon read his glance and his mouth broadened into his ‘aw shucks’ grin.
‘When you catch this Flayer, don’t forget to call this podunk cop.’
‘Thank you, Bill.’
‘Anything, anytime, for you.’ Leon replied simply.
Chapter 11
November 5th – 11th
The visits to New Mexico that same evening, and to Los Angeles the next day, had contrasting outcomes.
No one had anything more to add in New Mexico, but Pizaka had an update on the flight to Los Angeles.
‘That bracelet has a rectangular centerpiece, like a plate on which names are inscribed. A chain goes around the two ends.’ He showed sample images on his tablet and compared those to the outline on the killer’s wrist.
‘I relayed Carl’s info to them and they are going through the video again. They aren’t hopeful. The killer wore gloves.’
Los Angeles.
Orange sunsets and swaying palms looked down indifferently at those for whom fitness and looks were a religion and also on those for whom they weren’t.
They visited the LAPD’s Police Administration Building, a modern glass and concrete construction that faced the white-walled City Hall. A contact from Zeb’s past was the police chief and he had re-opened the case when Zeb had called.
Jeffrey Hall, the police chief, was an inch taller than Zeb, built like a tank and darker than coal. He never smiled and his eyes were permanently flat and hard. Those eyes thawed a mite when he met Zeb and they exchanged bone-crushing hugs.
He opened the door to his office; it didn’t dare to squeak and he stood there motionless without saying a word. Two detectives rushed in and Hall gestured at them to report. All done silently, no words exchanged and no greetings.
The two detectives, who were different from those initially looking into the cases, had treated the cases as new. Prebble’s murder didn’t turn anything new, but they had better luck with Rodriguez’s case.
The pair of detectives didn’t question just the same people as previously, they went to the women’s pimps, and dug out the customers’ names some of who were regular. One customer said he saw Rodriguez get into a car.
He had swung back to the escort’s usual hang out on Santa Monica Boulevard for ‘a second round’ as he called it. He saw her departing in another car. The detectives checked with other streetwalkers and pimps, but no one came forward with anything else.
The customer remembered something else.
The driver seemed to be wearing gloves. White gloves.
It stuck in his mind all these years.
White Gloves? In L.A. in the summer?
Pizaka scowled when the detectives left Hall’s office.
‘We had to travel across the country for this. You couldn’t email these developments to us? Or call? You didn’t think to check country wide for similar victims?’
His face burned and he held back any further comments when the tank’s turret turned on him.
The flight back was quiet but not for long.
Meghan griped at Zeb. ‘Come on, Zeb, spit it out. You have kept a tight lid on what you’re thinking. Share.’
Beth joined battle with her sister. ‘You knew Leon and Hall and yet you didn’t say a word. I know you are several steps ahead of us on this. No more secrets, Zeb.’
Zeb stalled and deferred to the cops. ‘What about you guys? What do you think?’
Pizaka crossed a leg, pulled his trousers to keep the knife edge crease, shoes gleaming. ‘Those white gloves he wears? Maybe it’s to hide some deformity on his hands.’
‘Carl would have mentioned such a thing.’ Chang protested.
Pizaka’s brows moved up scornfully. ‘A drunk’s comments? I wouldn’t take them so seriously. In any case he wasn’t close enough to see detail.’
‘Assuming he was wearing gloves, why white? That’s so distinctive. He would be remembered.’
‘Not in L.A. He would blend in. ‘
The twins jumped in.
‘We have been thinking about this.’ Beth said.
‘You mean I have been thinking about it.’ Meghan interrupted her witheringly and ignored the raised finger.
‘You both are forgetting that we saw pale skin in the video too. I am going with Zak. There’s something on his hands that he wants to conceal. Maybe a deformity or some scars, marks or tattoos.’
‘Carl said he moved like you,’ Chang looked quizzically at Zeb. ‘You seemed to know what that meant. Leon looked like he was clued in.’
The Texan cop had tried to reach the drunk again to get more out of him, but he had disappeared.
Zeb shrugged. ‘It could mean the guy had the posture and walk of an armed forces officer. Upright, shoulders back, that kinda thing. ’
Chang’s eyes gleamed. ‘I bet that’s what Leon figured too. We now have got several angles to pursue, more than what we had a few weeks back.’
He directed a question at Zeb. ‘You’ll check out NPRC?’
Zeb nodded. The National Personnel Records Center maintained service records for armed forces personnel, but it wasn’t the only body that maintained records.
Getting them will be a bitch, but knowing all those generals in the Pentagon should help.
‘Many people have such postures. The killer need not be military.’ He cautioned.
‘Whoever he is, right now he might be planning another kill,’ Pizaka said soberly.
The Ghul was also planning a series of kills.
He had been in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, moved from apartment to apartment in New York without staying in any one for more than a few days.
He had arrived in the country bearing the passport of a British citizen, Trevor Johnson, a businessman out of London. He was fair enough to be easily mistaken for a Caucasian and his fabricated back story and British accent ensured smooth passage through border control.
He made contact with the ten strong cell in New Jersey the day he landed and spent the rest of the day assessing them.
Masood Deeb, the cell leader, owned an electric cabling company which worked on residential homes and small offices in New Jersey and New York. All the cell members, born in the U.S., worked with him in the firm.
The cell members weren’t all strangers to The Ghul.
Masood, twenty-eight, five-foot-eight, dark skinned and bearded, had fought alongside The Ghul in Iraq and Syria two years back. Ayoob Awad, Nasib Botros, Samir Hadad, and Majid Malouf, four other members of the cell, had the same fervor that Masood had and joined him in the holy fight.
It was no accident that several of Masood’s employees had the same beliefs and radical ideas as him. He himself was a second-generation immigrant whose folks were from Afghanistan. His dad drove a cab and his mom was a homemaker. But Masood had nothing to do with them.
They embraced the American way, whereas he, Masood, rejected it.
He knew he was different from them and had grown apart the day he set foot in a particular mosque in New Jersey a long time back. He recruited his employees carefully, making sure they shared similar views and once they joined, cultivated a select few and assessed them.
Thus his cell was formed.
Masood had planned his holy war trip well those years back.
He had completed all his contracts, had told all those he was in contact with that he was taking a year’s break to see the world. He prepared an elaborate itinerary and had booked flights, hotels, and arranged visas for all the countries on the itinerary.
Once everything was in place, he stuck his itinerary on his internet profile and closed down his firm. One of his employees would update his social profile with photographs and posts, whenever he was supposed to be in a particular country.
The five of them initially flew to the United Kingdom on tourist visas and once there, had switched pa
ssports and identities and had traveled to Turkey. HOF supporters in that country had guided them to Iraq.
They had spent months in a training camp and had then joined the fight against the Great Satan.
The Ghul had come across Masood’s American accent and had observed the man and his companions. They were good fighters, were committed and passionate to the cause, and were good at killing with weapons as well as by hand.
He had flagged them to Omar who had asked The Ghul and a few commanders to keep a watch on the men. Six months later, a commander approached Masood and told him to pack up and leave.
When the American fighter had looked in bewilderment, the commander told him his presence, and that of his companions, was more important to the HOF in the U.S. than in Iraq.
A sleeper cell in the Great Satan.
Masood understood and two months later, they were back in New Jersey, back from their world tour. He re-opened his business, recruited more cell members after vetting them carefully and lay in wait for orders.
The Ghul was not fully convinced about them.
Two years was a long time, enough time for the Great Satan to corrupt the most devoted fighters. He would test them.
A simple test.
He drove all of them to Harriman State Park the next day of his arrival, tested their shooting skills and when darkness fell, he had handed each one of them ten knives.
‘Kill the person next to you. Bury his body.’
Ten men looked at him in surprise and shock. He was expressionless. When they saw he was serious, they gripped the knives and looked at one another uncertainly.
Masood was the first to move.
Three hours later when the grunting and the groaning had finished, five survived, bloodied but triumphant.
All five were those who had tasted blood in Iraq. He watched them bury the bodies and drove them back silently.
They talked about being martyrs on the way home.
‘It’s not enough to be a martyr,’ The Ghul said harshly. ‘You must kill as many as you can. You are no martyr if you die unaccompanied by infidels.’
Masood dropped his eyes as he accepted the rebuke.