Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

  “That was Bascombe on the phone,” he says. “We have our warrant to search the house. We’re good to search for knives, records related to them, evidence connected to either victim—including Simone’s laptop and cellular phone—a pretty broad scope. Ordway and Lorenz are down the road from the house, keeping an eye on the place. They haven’t seen Bayard, which means he’s probably holed up in there.”

  I call to David: “Is your mother at home?”

  “She’s always at home. She doesn’t work.”

  “Okay.” I lower my voice. “With what he just told us about the knife game, I think we’re good to go.”

  “All right.” He glances at David, then back at me. He flips his phone open. “It’s been a long road, March, but I think you’ve got this one down. Should I do the honors, or do you want to?”

  I take the phone and start to dial. Then I close it.

  “You know what,” I say. “Let’s do this ourselves. I want to be there when they take the door. I want to get a look at this guy and see the house for myself. Agnieszka told Jack Hill there was an attic window he used to watch her from. I want to check out that view.”

  “Your call. What about Junior over there?”

  “We’ll drop him off downtown, keep him handy while we interrogate the old man. He might be useful, after all.”

  David resists the idea of leaving his car and coming with us, but after some assurances he finally relents. While Aguilar drives, I turn sideways in the passenger seat to keep an eye on him. He looks at the floor, looks out the window, and eventually cracks an uncertain smile.

  “Are you going to arrest him?” he asks.

  “What would you think if we did?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess somebody should.”

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16 — 3:00 P.M.

  The original structure must have been demolished to make way for the Bayard house, a looming brick box sitting on the lot like a big passenger squeezed into a coach airline seat. The walls crowd the sidewalk on the front and side, and a porte cochere juts over the wide drive.

  With a couple of patrol units on the curb, I send Ordway and Lorenz down the driveway, giving them a minute to get positioned in back. Then I lead Aguilar and a couple of uniforms to the front entrance, including Nguyen, the officer who worked the perimeter the night Simone Walker’s body was discovered.

  I punch the doorbell button while Nguyen uses the butt of his ASP baton as a knocker.

  Kim Bayard opens up with a broad and puzzled smile, eyes roving from one man to the next in increasing perplexity. I hand her a copy of the search warrant and ask for her husband. I call into the house over her shoulder.

  “Mr. Bayard? Dave Bayard? It’s the Houston Police Department.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  Nguyen maneuvers her back and starts explaining the warrant. She listens, polite and attentive, the same way she’d listen to the mechanic outlining repairs to her car. Aguilar and I ease our way through the door and across an ocean of blond hardwoods, pausing at the foot of a circular stairway hemmed with more wrought iron. At the top of the stairs, Dave Bayard stands with one hand on the railing.

  “What’s going on?” he says.

  My first glimpse of the killer.

  Bayard dresses like a high school math teacher. Medium height with a broad muscled chest concealed under a sleeveless v-neck sweater and a checked shirt. The crease in his gray wool slacks sharp as a knife. His salt-and-pepper hair, clipped short and receding on the sides, creates a thin promontory over his high forehead. His skin brown, his hands large and rough.

  The blue light of a telephone earpiece twinkles in his right ear. He touches it and speaks in an undertone: “Some people are here. I’m gonna have to call you back.”

  I wait until he’s halfway down to mention the search warrant. His eyes narrow. He pauses. The annoyance of a moment before ebbs out, replaced by a rush of anxiety.

  “Please join us,” I say.

  He continues down the stairs, watching every step. Afraid of slipping.

  When he reaches the bottom, I lay a heavy hand on his shoulder, all but claiming him. Like his son, he exudes a quiet, calculating intelligence, watching everything, taking in the smallest details. But there’s something else, an explosive physicality. Like the corporate lawyer said, a man made for the field rather than the front office.

  “What can I do for you, officers?” he asks.

  “We have a warrant to search these premises,” I say. “We are investigating the murders of Simone Walker and Agnieszka Oliszewski.”

  At the mention of their names, Kim Bayard yelps audibly, covering her mouth with a ringed hand. Bayard’s mouth turns down, either at my words or his wife’s reaction.

  “Don’t worry, babe,” he says, jaw clenched. “It’s only natural with the one girl getting killed in our backyard. Isn’t that right, officers? You have to be thorough, don’t you?”

  Like his clothes, his voice contradicts his body language. He sounds calm, but looks like he’s ready to run. Or fight.

  I exchange a look with Aguilar. “Your wife has a copy of the warrant. We’d like you to accompany us as we search. If anything is removed from the property, we’ll provide you with an inventory before we go.”

  “I see.” He glances at the warrant in his wife’s hand. “And you have to do it right this minute? I was actually on a pretty important call.”

  I don’t dignify the question with an answer. I motion Nguyen toward the back of the house to let the others inside.

  “I think . . .” Bayard rubs his chin, uncertain. “Maybe I should call my attorney.”

  “You’re welcome to,” I say. “But we won’t be taking a statement here. We just need to search the property. Like you said, a woman was murdered, practically in your backyard. We really do need to be thorough.”

  I can see him processing his risk level, going over in his mind everything he stands to lose. His jaw relaxes. He lets out a deep breath.

  “Kim,” he says. “Just to be on the safe side. I think you’d better call.”

  I move my hand to his elbow, asserting more control. “Now, if you don’t mind, sir, we have a search to conduct.”

  My first impulse is to head to the attic. Look for the window with a view of Dr. Hill’s pool. But a proper search must be systematic, deliberate. We must divide the house into quadrants, assign every officer with a task, ensuring that nothing is missed and every discovery is properly witnessed and documented. I keep Bayard by my side, judging his reaction as we move from one part of the house to the next.

  He makes an effort to appear affable, probably thinking that’s how innocent people react, friendly and helpful.

  He’s wrong, of course.

  No one is more inconvenienced, more outraged by the invasion of privacy than the man who has nothing to hide. Knowing what a waste our efforts are—he’s done nothing, after all—an innocent man grows increasingly irritated and impatient. Of course, everyone has something to hide, and when you’re innocent and those little secrets are revealed anyway, you feel the injustice keenly.

  Only the guilty look relieved when their misdemeanors are uncovered. They hope finding the smaller offenses will blind us to their felonies.

  His windows of his upstairs office look out onto the backyard. But the swimming pool where Simone Walker died is entirely screened from view by the hedge and Bayard’s own four-car garage, which sides diagonally across part of the yard. For a desk he uses a long antique table with a green marbled leather top and brass corners. On closer inspection it appears to be a high-dollar reproduction.

  Aguilar makes him unlock each of the drawers in turn while I scan the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that line the room on three sides. The bottom rows are occupied by oversized coffee-table books, mainly art and photography, with hardbacks on the middle rows and smaller volumes above eye level. There’s even a ladder that runs along a brass rail.

  One section of shelvin
g holds not books but a series of locking glass cases. Inside, a series of knives are displayed under pinpoint lights. Seeing my interest, Bayard actually moves to the wall and twists a dimmer dial, bringing up the luster of the blades. He appears at my side, smiling, not even trying to conceal his pride.

  “Are you a collector, as well?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “It’s just that my victim, she was gutted with a knife like one of these.”

  A condescending smile. “I doubt it was like one of these.”

  I’m tempted to wipe that smile off his face by rattling off the details: SCHARF. OLD SCHOOL BOWIE, #29 OF 50. But I’m not here to clue him in on our case. Besides, he already knows. He dropped his prized weapon on my bedroom floor.

  “March.”

  I turn to find Aguilar at an open desk drawer. In his gloved hand he holds a small, thick paperback book.

  The Kingwood Killing by Brad Templeton.

  “I’m a reader,” Bayard says, laughing nervously. “What can I say?”

  I take the book in my own gloved hands, flipping through its pages. The glossy photo insert appears pristine. There are no markings inside. I’m about to hand it back for bagging when I notice something on the flyleaf. A handwritten inscription in ink.

  FOR DAVID,

  THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST!

  ALL THE BEST,

  BRAD TEMPLETON

  “I knew him,” Bayard is saying. “The Donald. Donald Fauk. Unbelievable story.” He pauses. “You’re not . . . Are you the same Detective March—?” He reaches for the book.

  I hand it to Aguilar, who seals the paperback in a plastic evidence bag.

  “You’re taking that?” Bayard says. “I don’t get it.”

  “Have you been consulting the book recently?” I ask. “It’s in your desk drawer.”

  “What? No, of course not. I don’t even know what it’s doing there.”

  “But it is your book? You’re not denying that.”

  “Yeah.” His big shoulders slump in defeat. “It’s mine.”

  A narrow staircase leads up to the attic, hidden behind a locked door. We ascend single file: Aguilar, Bayard, me, Nguyen. Through another door, we enter a small finished room with a cork floor, a small tufted couch, an older television set with a dusty VCR player attached.

  “This was originally going to be a media room,” Bayard says, “but when David Junior moved out I just decided to convert his room. It’s bigger.”

  Along the wall, a row of empty bottles are stacked, their labels soaked off. I count eight of them. At the end of the line there’s a metal gasoline container, the type you’d find in a garage next to a lawn mower. I lift it with a gloved hand. Next to empty.

  “What’s the deal with all this?” I ask. “You making Molotov cocktails?”

  “Hardly,” he says. “I don’t know what these are doing here.”

  “We need to photograph these, then take them,” I say to Aguilar. “Check them for prints. Mr. Bayard, if you’ve been manufacturing explosives—”

  “I told you I don’t know what they’re doing here.”

  “Then who does?”

  He says nothing.

  “And what’s through here?” I ask, indicating a small door on the far side of the room, half blocked by the couch.

  “Nothing. Just storage. The eaves were too low to make finishing it out worthwhile.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  We drag the couch out of the way. Reaching inside, I flip on a row of bald bulbs nestled inside the exposed framing. There are some cardboard boxes stacked near the door. Beyond them, nothing but plywood flooring over joists.

  “Where’s the window?” I ask.

  “The window?”

  “There’s a window overlooking the neighbor’s pool.”

  He rubs his chin again. “Oh. It’s just decorative. You’d have to walk across the joists that way to reach it.” He points past the boxes into the darkness. “The finished room kind of boxes it in, so you have to go around. There’s no light, though.”

  I pull my Fenix light. “Not a problem.”

  Leaving Bayard with Nguyen, I start across the joists with Aguilar balancing behind me, taking it slow so we don’t lose our footing. I don’t fancy the idea of plunging through a high ceiling, landing two floors down or getting impaled on a chandelier.

  “You think it’s booby-trapped?” Aguilar whispers.

  “Because of the bottles?” I smile. “Guess we’ll find out. You wanna go first?”

  “Be my guest.”

  We keep the wall of the finished room on our right, turning the corner after a minute of slow progress. Ahead, I spot a faint slit of light and start toward it.

  The window is closer than it appears. A length of blackout cloth hides most of the light. With the aid of my flashlight I make out a loose piece of plywood situated at the window to serve as a makeshift floor. On top, there’s a metal folding chair. Under the chair, a wooden cigar box with the lid ajar. As I get closer I see something concealed behind a flap of blackout cloth, perched on the windowsill.

  “What is that?” Aguilar says.

  I reach the plywood and move across. I draw the curtain back. Standing on the ledge, a pair of black binoculars, expensive ones, with a red dot Leica logo.

  From the window I can see over the hedge and into Dr. Hill’s backyard. The pool glistens in the cloudy daylight. A woman sunbathing by the water would be easy to observe. I lift the binoculars with two fingers, raising them just in front of my eyes. I can make out the detail of the slate surrounding the pool, the latticework of the metal chairs. From here, using these binoculars, he could have studied every inch of her at leisure.

  Aguilar clears his throat. “Look at this.”

  I put the binoculars down. On the edge of the platform, there’s another bottle. This one is three quarters full, with some wadding stuffed down the neck. I run my light all around it, looking for tripwires. Nothing.

  “I’ve seen some weird things in my time,” Aguilar says, “but this . . .”

  “Let’s take a look in that cigar box.”

  I prop it open with a pen. There’s a bag of weed inside, some rolling papers, and a fat white envelope with something sticking out. I turn the edge of the envelope. A stack of photographs. Digital shots output on an inkjet printer. Aguilar shines a light with his free hand. I ease the deck of photos out, flipping through them one by one.

  “That’s the Polish girl,” he says.

  Oliszewski in a flower-print bikini stretched on a recliner by the pool. On her back. On her stomach. On her stomach again, undoing her top with a twisted hand.

  “And Simone.”

  One shot after another: Simone in a variety of swimsuits, in the water and out. Sitting under the pergola. Talking on the phone. Looking at the screen of her laptop. And then I flip the photo and Aguilar jumps.

  “No way.”

  Simone stripped to the waist, lying facedown on the slate, her legs in the water, the bloody wounds chewing up her back. It’s a grainy, nighttime photo, snapped from a few feet above the body. I flip to the next one. Night again, but bright this time. Illuminated by the crime scene lights. The photo, taken from the window, shows three dark silhouettes around the pool. A tall man, a shorter one, a plump woman in a white jumpsuit. Bascombe. Me. Dr. Green.

  “Okay,” I say, putting the photos back. “Get in there and make the arrest. Have Nguyen put him in the car for transport. I want all of this photographed in situ.”

  “You coming?” he asks.

  “In a minute.”

  As he creaks across the joists, I return to the window, gazing down on a scene Bayard must know by heart. The voyeur, aloof and untouchable, seeing everything. Present with the women when they thought they were alone.

  He would have come up here, rolled a joint, and enjoyed the show, taking photos, printing the most meaningful, the most intimate.

  His secret place, his nest.

  And when Agnieszka spott
ed him and Hill had the strategically placed trees planted, what did Bayard think? He must have been enraged. Maybe frightened. But the Polish girl left and the trees came down. The new tenant, Simone, had no idea she was being observed.

  Looking through the same window, standing in the same place, I imagine what he must have felt. The photos play back in my head.

  I need to remember this. I need to capture it. The voyeuristic glee. The sense of intimacy with these strangers, feeling as close to them as a lover. Did he know their names? Had he met them in ordinary life? Did he experience an illicit thrill when he encountered them, reveling in his secret knowledge?

  He must have sent the first email from here. Not on the curb in front of Dr. Hill’s house. From this spot he could access the neighboring wireless network just fine. Our sudden arrival on scene must have spooked him, forcing him to change up.

  We have enough to make the arrest. We have enough for a conviction. But I want more. I want to put the crowbar in and crack him open. I want him to look in my eyes and admit what he did. He stabbed both women over and over. He broke into my house, he went after my wife, and tried to do to her what he’d done to them.

  “March.” Aguilar’s voice.

  I cross the joists and reenter the finished room. Bayard stands at the center of the room, arms pulled back, wrists cuffed. His face bloated and red, eyes moist. Nguyen guides him to the top of the stairs.

  “I don’t understand,” Bayard says. “What are you people doing?”

  Aguilar follows. I bring up the rear.

  “This is insane,” Bayard calls back. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Are you ready to make a statement, sir?”

  “You want my statement? You want my statement? ” He stumbles, but Nguyen rights him. They reach the landing and Bayard turns. “Here’s my statement, Officer: I want my lawyer.”

  “You disappoint me, Dave. You really do.”

  Bayard’s lawyer is a slender woman in pearls and a red pantsuit, unflappable even in the face of the photographs recovered in her client’s attic. They’ve already been processed by the crime scene unit, along with the Molotov, but I hand each one over in its evidence bag, making her look through official plastic.