“Before lunch?” Lawless said, looking at his watch. “It’s already eleven forty-two.”
“I usually don’t get lunch until one, but I’ll try to get it done by twelve-thirty. It should only take me ten minutes. I just have to cut-and-paste from the autopsy drafts.”
Lawless nodded at Jensen for them to go. “Thanks Larry. I owe you one.”
“You owe me two,” Brouchard answered from his desk.
“Right,” Lawless said, no clue what the other one was.
Outside in the car, Jensen read the article out loud. The author was Tommy Wu. All four victims were identified by name — that information had come from the Sheriff Department’s spokesperson, Henry Kellerman — and where their remains were found. The story had enough detail that Lawless knew Wu had talked to at least one person who’d worked all four scenes. He could have spoken to more than one, but it wasn’t likely. Once you find one blabbermouth, why waste energy looking for another? The information about the remains came from an “unnamed source.”
Lawless was named as lead detective on the three county cases, Baskel for the one in Modesto. Lawless was a “no comment,” but Baskel had a few things to say, mostly just asking the public for help: if anyone was in the vicinity of Elk Park at approximately twelve noon yesterday and saw something, anything, would they please contact ... blah, blah. At least Baskel didn’t give out any real information, which made Lawless’s “no comment” look less deceitful. From now on he would refer Wu, or any other reporter, to Kellerman. That was his job, after all.
“Seeing it all written up in the paper like that is scary,” Jensen said, after she finished reading the article. “Just think how you would feel if you didn’t know anything about it and then you get this” — she rattled the paper — “with your morning coffee. How many people do you think get the paper?”
“I don’t know, seventy-five thousand or so. Way less than half of Modesto, but it doesn’t matter with a story like this. It’s sensational enough that local DJs will talk it up on the radio. They don’t know anything more than what’s written in the paper, because that’s where they get their information, but it spreads the story around. After hearing about it on the radio, a lot of non-subscribers will buy a paper at lunch or after work and the Bee will sell out their whole run. Then, guess what?”
Jensen picked up on the flow. “There’ll be another story on the front page tomorrow, won’t there?”
“And every day after that until the story stops selling papers.”
Lawless looked out the window at a group of teenagers walking by, throwing stones at a telephone pole; three boys trying to impress a girl, about fifteen, dressed not too unlike the women in the club the night before. He shook his head and said, “But the story won’t die until the monster dies, or until it decides it doesn’t like the taste of the people around here and moves on.”
“I’ll bet there are a lot of terrified mothers out there,” Jensen said. “People getting their heads ripped off. Police finding bloody feet. How could they send their kids off to school or out to play this morning?”
After a moment, Lawless said, “Right now they’re thinking there’s a pack of crazed lunatics on the loose. School will be out, what, next week? They’re probably safer in school than running around the neighborhood, throwing bottles and rocks into the canals, or swimming in them. No matter how concerned they are now, just wait and see what happens if they ever learn the truth.”
The more he thought about it, the more he fretted about the possibility of widespread panic. “Think about it. How many people in this town could throw their cat over the back fence and have it land in a canal? I’ve seen kids waiting for their school bus a stone’s throw from one of them. They’re everywhere.”
“I see someone walking or jogging next to a canal every time I drive by one,” Jensen added. Then she turned and looked at him. “We need to warn everyone to stay away from the canals.”
“I agree, but we can’t be the only ones crying wolf. If we go to the press now, with what we have, they won’t believe us.”
“So? I bet the paper will print it anyway and people will stay away from the canals. We might save some lives.”
“Then again we might not. Half the people will blow town or barricade themselves in their houses, but the other half will run out to the canals with their video cameras, hoping to film the monster and sell it to the eleven o’clock news. We could very well be setting up a buffet table for it.”
“Shit,” she said, seeing his point.
“Let’s talk about it again after the meeting this afternoon, after we see how the Modesto PD guys take it. It would be nice to spread the responsibility around a little, I’m starting to feel crushed.”
She looked at him. “Is that all you’ve been feeling today? Have you felt anything about the creature?”
He shook his head. “Before I fell asleep last night I tried reaching out to it, seeing what I could see. Nothing happened. I just fell asleep. And there’s not even been a twinge today. It’s like all of a sudden a door’s been closed.”
“Maybe it’s for the better,” she said, touching his arm.
“I don’t think the fun’s over yet. You didn’t forget about my dream last night, did you?”
Her hand shot back to her lap. “I had. Until you just reminded me.”
The creature had been resting in the cool canal water for an hour. This was the first time it had ventured into this section of the canals owned and operated by the Modesto Irrigation District, so there was a steel grille to bite through. The grille was no match for its teeth, though. Its species had evolved on a planet with metals much harder than steel; it could bite through five inches of the hardest material found on Earth.
Normally it preferred to hunt and feed from the canals in the vast farmlands surrounding Modesto. However, its preference for the quiet, empty land was changing. Last night’s successful feeding in town had intrigued it. It had been much more satisfying, both physically and psychically, than all its previous feedings combined. Amplifying a human’s emotions while consuming its flesh had been intoxicating.
Merely killing and eating humans was no longer enough, it now wanted terrified and screaming humans it could consume piece-by-piece.
The creature’s physical body did not require rest, so it was odd for it to be idle so long. Earlier in the day it had sensed an increase in the flow of psychic energy emitted by the humans. The creature fed on the energy, yet was also intrigued by it.
Now, as it sat in the cool water, it tested different routines to see which might best allow it to profit from the humans’ angst. It found a few that seemed promising, one in particular.
Next time it would not take the creature an hour to interpret the humans’ emotions.
“Are we ready for the meeting this afternoon?” Jensen asked, ready to stop talking and get moving.
“No. We need to get some stuff from the office, make some copies.” Lawless sighed and started the car. “Might as well get that done.”
The Sheriff’s Department was buzzing when they walked in, despite it being almost lunch. Jensen went off to check in with Sgt. Tingey. Lawless picked up a stack of mail, which he ignored, and several messages: Wu and the sheriff had each called twice, Henry Kellerman once. He threw the ones from Wu in the wastebasket and stared at the two from the sheriff, shaking his head. He shouldn’t have messages from the sheriff, the man should have called him on his cell phone. Isn’t that why everyone had one?
He knew what Kellerman wanted: an update and a fact sheet. A fact sheet was a one-page summary of a case: what was done to whom, who they think did it, who was working on it, and what progress had been made. It was used to brief the media and to quickly bring other police officers or agencies up to speed on a case so it was an important, and evolving, document; easy to create but a pain to keep up-to-date. Lawless, like most investigators, didn’t bother typing them up until someone asked for one. He hadn’t created any for the t
hree canal killings but it appeared he would have to now.
He would not write about a monster in the canals, though, at least not yet.
He called Kellerman first, game him an update and promised a fact sheet in an hour.
Then he called the sheriff and apologized for not getting back to him the day before, after Elk Park. The sheriff chewed him out, going on and on so Lawless stopped listening and started working on his fact sheets. The sheriff finally ran out of wind and hung up.
Thirty minutes later the fact sheets were done and he had copies for everyone.
On his way back from the copier, a secretary handed him a fax from Brouchard. It was too wordy of course, filling the entire page in a size-ten font, and wasn’t as convincing as he hoped, but it would have to do. At least Brouchard touched on all the evidence, including the strange DNA. He wondered if medical professionals took courses on how to write long, boring, and often incomprehensible reports.
He had the photo lab make copies of the crime scene photo cds and chose several to be printed, ones he thought best showed the wounds as bites. He considered making copies of the tape with Tony Fruega’s statement, but decided against it: it wasn’t primo evidence. A summary would have to do, maybe from Jensen.
He finished at one and called Jensen: “Lunch?”
“Starved.”
“Meet you out front.”
In the car, she said, “Ready for the meeting?”
“Yeah. Got everything copied and set to go. We’ll wow ’em.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Summarize Fruega’s statement, nothing too detailed. ‘Just the facts, ma’am,’ that kind of thing. Don’t offer that he was doped up. Make them pry it out of us.”
“Where do I say the interview took place?”
“Don’t. Just say something like, ‘We took Mr. Fruega’s statement at whatever time this morning, and he said blah blah.’ ”
“I can do that.”
On the road, he realized he didn’t know where they were headed. “What do you want?”
“A&W?”
A&W was an old-fashioned drive-in restaurant, with carhops on roller skates and trays that hooked onto car windows. They served greasy, somewhat pricey burgers, hot dogs, decent fries, and ice cold draft root beer in frosty mugs. Too warm to eat in the car, they ordered lunch at the dining room counter.
When their food came, Jensen said, “You keep feeding me like this, I’m gonna’ get fat.”
“You can work it off later,” he said, with a straight face.
She blushed, looked around to see if anyone was listening: a small bug-eyed child was staring at her gun.
They finished their food at two, an hour before their meeting at Modesto PD.
“Let’s sit outside,” Lawless said, pointing to a metal dining table shaded by elm trees. They went outside and sat at the table.
An old man wearing a ragged coat pushed a shopping cart down the sidewalk next to the restaurant, in no apparent hurry. His right foot had a palsy so the toe of his shoe scraped the cement. The cart’s right front wheel wobbled and spun in the air. Inside the cart were two large plastic trash bags and a tattered old rolled-up sleeping bag. A light breeze blew the foul smell of an unbathed human, who wore a heavy topcoat in ninety-degree weather, twenty feet to where Lawless and Jensen sat.
“Whew,” Jensen said, wrinkling her nose and fanning the air in front of her.
The old man caught the movement, took two or three seconds to recognize her uniform, and shifted into a higher gear, going from snail-pace to turtle-pace. Then, realizing his quickened pace might imply a guilty conscience, he returned to snail-pace. He glanced at the officers out of the corner of his eye, saw them watching him, and quickly turned his head.
Lawless and Jensen laughed, trying their best to do it quietly.
“Where do you think he’ll sleep tonight?” Jensen asked.
“Who knows. It’s spring now, so maybe in a park or under the bridge.”
“He’d never make the bridge by nightfall, fast as he’s going.”
The man was almost out of sight when a cup of soda and ice flew out the window of a little Kia, hitting him in the legs, soaking his pants and shoes with cold sticky liquid. A young male poked his head out the window and laughed. Then, seeing Jensen, said, “Oh shit!”
His head went back in the car, where he presumably told the driver the cops had seen him douse the homeless man. The Kia blew a stop sign and got t-boned by a pickup doing thirty-five in a twenty-five zone. The impact sent the Kia crashing into the steel pole holding the a&w sign: smoke and steam rose from the crumpled hood and green antifreeze leaked from a cracked radiator, like alien blood.
Lawless looked at his watch. “We have time.”
Chapter 10
They assisted in busting the punks in the Kia, which busting, seeing as how two police officers witnessed the assault on the homeless man, the failure to stop at a stop sign, and the crash, was thorough.
The Modesto PD was housed in a new building four blocks west of the A&W restaurant. Lawless parked on the street and they went in the main door. He flashed his badge and they were ushered down a side hallway to a small conference room, where they were left alone for several minutes.
“Nice setup,” Jensen said, noticing the leather seats and art work hanging on the wall. “The city paid for all this?”
“Tax dollars at work.” Lawless was laying his things out on the table, getting ready for the meeting.
Detective Dave Baskel poked his head in the door and said, “You guys want something to drink? Soda? Bottled water?”
“Coke’s good, if you have it,” Lawless said.
“I’ll take bottled water,” Jensen said.
“Pepsi okay?” Baskel asked Lawless.
“Hmm ... Water’s good.” The cola wars raged on in Modesto.
Baskel returned three minutes later with the waters and a Diet Pepsi for himself.
“The other guys coming later?” Lawless asked.
“No. They had time this morning, but when the meeting got postponed ...” Baskel shrugged.
“They still going to work the case?”
“Frank’s going to, but Jimmy and Herb have full loads right now. No time.”
Lawless couldn’t remember who was who, so he said, “Which one’s Frank?”
“The smoker.”
Lawless nodded.
He looked at his stuff on the table and took a deep breath. Certain Baskel would think him mad and report him to the sheriff, he did what every nervous person did when confronted with the thing making them nervous, he stalled.
“You guys got anything new on your case?” he asked, drying his hands on his pants.
“We don’t have anything more than we had yesterday, evidence wise,” Baskel said. “We found out who she was, Rachel Sandovich, only because someone recognized her dog; she wasn’t carrying any id. We found her purse and wallet in her house, so it doesn’t look like robbery. The poor guy who found her is pretty shook up, but we haven’t found anyone who saw anything suspicious in that area yesterday. No screams. No speeding getaway cars. No guys creeping around carrying a heavy bag. Nothing.”
He took a sip from his Diet Pepsi and continued. “You know, we didn’t find a single drop of blood anywhere around that canal, except under the vic’s body. I’d like to know how they did that. It should’ve been all over the scene.”
“Maybe she was killed on the footbridge and her blood went into the canal,” Jensen said, jumping in early.
Baskel turned to her and said, “Maybe, Deputy...?”
“Jensen.”
“Jensen. Sorry. I don’t see how that’s possible. And, I mean, they didn’t just cut off her head, which isn’t all that easy to do by the way, they cut down into her chest. Did you see that they cut through her heart? Sliced her clean through: spine, ribs, everything.”
Lawless cleared his throat. “We think we know how she, they, all of them, were killed
.”
Baskel stared at Lawless. “And you’re just now telling me? How?”
“I’ll explain.” He handed Baskel the photo enlargements. “These are photos of the other three victims.” He let Baskel look for a while, understanding the horror he saw on the man’s face.
“Good God,” Baskel said, dropping the pictures. “I heard their deaths were similar to our vic’s.”
“The wounds on this one look familiar to you?” Lawless asked, putting the Sanchez photo on top.
Baskel studied the picture for a minute, then nodded. “Looks a lot like Sandovich.” Then, “Hold on. I’m gonna’ go get the shots of Sandovich’s body.”
He returned five minutes later with the pictures. While he was gone, Jensen used the restroom and Lawless reread Brouchard’s fax, again wishing it was more concise.
Baskel brought one enlargement and a stack of four-by-sixes. He slid the enlargement across the table and said, “Our vic’s wound does look similar to your guy’s.”
Lawless and Jensen looked at the photo, and Lawless felt sick. Even though he’d been at all the crime scenes and had viewed the bodies as they were found, and had studied the digital photos in his office, the images still got to him.
He dropped the picture and rubbed his face.
“What does the coroner say? Do you have his reports?” Baskel asked.
Lawless pushed a copy of Brouchard’s fax across the table. “I got him to write a one-pager. Excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”
Baskel picked up the fax as Lawless left. He didn’t need to relieve himself, he just wanted to get away from the pictures and splash some water on his face. He stared at himself in the mirror, dripping, and thought he looked old. He wondered, yet again, what Jensen saw in him.
Depressed now, his mind chased after the thought she was probably using him to move her career along; working on a big case would look impressive on her detective application. She would dump him after this canal case was over, find someone younger and better looking. With more money. Someone exciting. Someone not him.
He ripped a length of paper towel from the dispenser and dried his face, looked in the mirror again and felt sorry for himself.
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