Heading for the door, he glanced at his shoes: water had dripped on them. He dried them with toilet tissue — paper towels were coarse and dulled the finish — and couldn’t think of when he last looked at his shoes, or anyone else’s for that matter. There were several scuffs and he wondered what the hell was wrong with him.
He left the bathroom feeling worse than when he’d gone in.
Back at the conference room, he stopped outside and looked through the window. Baskel was still studying the fax, frowning, and Jensen was drinking from her water bottle. Seeing him look at her, she smiled and winked.
He entered and took his chair, feeling ten times better.
“ ‘Reptilian DNA?’ ” Baskel said. “What the hell does that mean? And what’s this about ‘Wounds appear to be the result of a single strike by a large object with very sharp blades.’ Give me a break.”
He dropped the paper on the table. “Is this some kind of joke?” Then he smiled. “Who put you up to this? Frank? That son of bitch.” He laughed until he saw they weren’t smiling.
“What?” he said. “Come on. ‘Reptilian DNA?’ You can’t be serious.”
“Afraid so,” Lawless said.
“You’re shitting me.” Baskel picked up the report again. “Why didn’t Brouchard sign it then? And it’s not printed on letterhead.”
“I asked him to write it up for us this morning, just a summary of his autopsies. You know how wordy those things can get. He made me promise it was for our eyes only. I’ll get you the full autopsy reports when they’re ready.”
Baskel still wasn’t buying it. “Bullshit. Frank typed this up and you’re all in on it.”
“Call the coroner,” Lawless said.
Baskel studied Lawless’s expression. “I will. Later.”
He looked between Lawless and Jensen, anger flaring in his eyes. “No more bullshit. How are these people being killed?”
Lawless hesitated a moment, locked onto Baskel’s eyes and said, “They were all killed by a huge snake-like creature we think lives and hunts in the canals.”
Baskel’s face froze. Then he said, stated, didn’t ask, “And you think this because the lab found DNA it couldn’t identify.”
“Not entirely. We also have an eyewitness, someone who saw the creature kill his friend, the one with the red tennis shoes. Deputy Jensen interviewed him.”
He turned to Jensen and nodded. She summarized Fruega’s statement, leaving out the parts about him being doped up during the interview and where they’d interviewed him.
Baskel still wasn’t buying it. “It was dark. He could have seen anything. A tree branch. Some guy wearing a hood.”
“Take a look at the pictures again,” Lawless said.
Baskel picked up the enlargements, still angry.
Lawless held up his thumb. “Two of the victims look like something big took a bite out of them, Sanchez and Sandovich. The coroner says all of them have the same kind of wounds, clean cut-throughs, even the guy who just had legs left. You could see it if these pictures were close-ups.”
Baskel went from picture to picture, studying, and said, “So?”
“All the victims were killed next to a canal.” Lawless said, flipping up his index finger.
“Coincidence.”
Lawless frowned, held up a third finger and continued. “None of the crime scenes had the usual signs of struggle and there was no blood splatter where there should have been. In fact, there were no signs of struggle period. Think about how you found Mrs. Sandovich: it was like she fell out of the sky and landed on the bridge.”
Baskel rubbed his chin. He looked at Lawless with skeptical eyes, but he was listening.
Lawless held up a fourth finger. “We have two samples of DNA taken from the wounds, and both came back the same: unidentified but similar to snake. A third sample was collected today from your victim and sent to Stockton for testing. The results will be the same as the first two.”
“You assume.”
“Oh, it will. Fifth,” Lawless said, displaying five fingers. “We have someone who saw an attack and lived to tell about it.”
“Where’s this witness? When can I talk to him?”
“He was at Doctor’s this morning. You can talk to him anytime,” Lawless said, hoping Baskel would drop it.
“Why’s he in the hospital? Was he injured?”
“No physical injuries.”
Baskel became suspicious. “What then?”
“He was a little shook up, that’s all.”
Baskel caught it. “Shook up? Was he medicated when you talked to him?”
“Some. Just so he could sleep.”
Baskel smiled. “He was drugged. Your witness was drugged.” He laughed.
Lawless said, “His statement wasn’t taken under ideal circumstances, but it was all we had at the time. He’s the only one who’s seen this thing and lived to talk about it.”
Lawless continued making his case, sticking his other thumb in the air. “Irrigation canals all have metal grilles over the openings where they pass under roads, to prevent large debris from damming up the water. All of the grilles our divers have checked have holes in them big enough to swim through. MID’s seen the holes but doesn’t have an answer. They’ve never had holes in their grilles. Ever. And they say the steel was cut, not punched or blown through. We think the creature made the holes so it could navigate the canals.”
He summarized, again using his fingers. “One, same wounds confirmed by the coroner. Two, all victims were killed next to a canal. Three, lack of expected evidence. Four, unknown DNA similar to snake. Five, eyewitness. Six, holes in steel grilles.
“Now, run with me a little here, I know it’s a stretch. Look at all our evidence. Picture a big snake, ten or more feet long, with some kind of metallic teeth harder than anything we know of, swimming through the canals, hunting. All our evidence can fit in this picture. It hunts mostly at night, your daytime case the only exception. It strikes and runs, taking whatever it can in one bite, except for the attack on the Paradise Lateral, the one our witness saw. For some reason, it came back to finish that guy off.”
“Something that big, why hasn’t anyone seen it?” Baskel said. “A lot of people work or live by a canal. Someone would have seen something that big.”
“There are more than two hundred and fifty miles of canals running through the county. That’s a lot of canal to hide in, especially if it only comes out of the water when it feeds, and then only at night.”
Lawless put his hands down and waited.
Baskel rubbed his chin and looked at the picture of Sandovich. After a minute, he stood and said, “I need to make a couple of calls.”
“Think he’s calling for the padded wagon?” Lawless asked, after Baskel left.
“I thought you did a good job. What else could we do?” Jensen said. “And you’re right, we can’t do this by ourselves. We need help.”
Lawless nodded, then said, “I could use some caffeine. I’m going to find out where he got his Pepsi. You want anything?”
“Caffeine sounds good. No diet, though. I don’t like fake sugar.”
He returned with a Pepsi and a Mountain Dew.
When Baskel came back ten minutes later, his attitude had changed.
“Called the coroner and he confirmed the fax. Didn’t sound too happy about my call, though. Seemed scattered. I’ve never known Brouchard to be like that.”
“He’s had a bad day,” Jensen said.
“Mine’s not going so well, either,” Baskel said, his face a mixture of anger, fear, and frustration. He clenched a fist, then relaxed it, looked up at the ceiling, exhaled.
“I also called my wife. I live in north Modesto, fairly close to the mall. There’s a canal that runs alongside Standiford all the way to Dale. I suppose it runs through a tunnel after that because it just disappears after Dale.”
He clenched a fist again.
“I have a kid in seventh grade who walks on that canal bank
every week with her friends when they go to the mall to hang out. And my wife takes a walk on the canal bank every day.”
He smiled, but put nothing into it, relaxed his hand.
“That’s the same canal I told you something had happened on last night, when you called me this morning to change the meeting time.”
Lawless nodded.
“Anyway. She always walks in the morning after the kids have gone to school and I’ve gone to work. Sometimes she takes a second walk, in the afternoon or evening, depending on how hot it gets.”
He rubbed the knuckles on one hand, like an arthritic trying to massage pain out of swollen joints.
“I told her not to walk by the canal anymore, at least not for a while, and to tell our daughter to stay away from it. She asked why. I didn’t know what to tell her so I just told her some strange shit had been happening by the canals and it’s not safe to be around them right now.”
“That’s not far from the truth,” Jensen said. “Did she say yes?”
Baskel nodded. “I’m going to have to explain it to her, though. She likes her routines.”
Jensen looked relieved.
“Did you check out that thing by the canal, the one I told you about this morning?” Baskel asked Lawless.
“Yeah. It’s different from the other scenes, but possibly an attack. Maybe it decided to eat everything this time.”
“We sent a second pair of uniforms out there this morning,” Baskel said. “They found a wallet. ID turned out to be fake, but very high quality. Professional. They also found a small kit of burglar tools. Again, quality stuff. And there was a rental car parked on the street in the neighborhood next to the canal. The renter’s name didn’t match the wallet id, but when we showed the clerk the picture he ID’ed the man as his renter. Looks like we’re missing a professional thief.”
“Sounds like number five,” Jensen said, dread in her voice. “The last two in town.”
No one spoke for several seconds.
“Have you checked to see if such a ... huge snake even exists?” Baskel asked. “Maybe someone had a pet they turned loose in the canals.”
Lawless said, “We haven’t checked, but it’s something to do. The DNA samples taken off the bodies being the same, though...”
“Yeah, but if something like that exists, it’d be a place to start. We could get a picture or a description. Maybe somebody gave it steroids or something and it got too big.”
“Could be. Can you guys look into that?” Lawless didn’t think that was the case, but it would be good to have Modesto PD doing something, anything, to help. He was sure the canal monster was not a snake, but Baskel wasn’t. And the metal teeth, what kind of steroids did Baskel think could do that?
“What about something else that’s real, like an alligator or a crocodile? What about that?” Baskel asked.
“We didn’t think of that either. Do you think either of them could bite through a human, though?”
Baskel shrugged. “Just looking at everything. What about killers with some kind of big trap-like thing? An animal trap? Maybe the killers use the canals to move around in, kill with the trap and throw their vics off a boat. Something like that.”
Lawless shook his head. “Imagine how powerful it would have to be to cut through a human in one stroke. That much power, it would have to be huge. Someone would have seen it. Also, canals would be poor navigation routes because they go under so many roads. They’d be constantly getting out of the water to carry the boat to the other side. Wouldn’t exactly be a fast getaway, and they would be seen for sure. And why would they cut holes in all the grilles if they were using a boat?”
“Maybe they use scuba gear, swim away after they kill. Maybe your witness saw someone in scuba gear, using the trap-thing.” Baskel was desperate to transform the canal monster into something that fit his world.
Lawless frowned. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to kill people at random. It’d be simpler and safer to shoot a guy in the head. Why drag a huge gadget around just to kill an old lady walking her dog, or some turkey cutter smoking dope by a canal?”
Baskel gave up. “Who else have you told about your giant snake theory? Does Sheriff Wisehart know?”
“We haven’t told anyone but you,” Jensen said. “I’m sure you can understand why.”
Baskel looked down at his hands, playing with them. “I can’t go to the captain with this. We need something more, something real. A picture would help. If we found a picture of a giant snake and pitched the mutation angle, it might fly. Or the alligator-crocodile thing, those’re real.”
Lawless got a little excited. “Hey, you’re right. The big snake story just might work. I could go to the sheriff with that, maybe get some resources if it was pitched right. Let’s do that.”
Baskel smiled, also excited. “I’ll get someone looking into snakes on Monday.”
“Monday’s too late,” Jensen said. “It’s been killing at least once a day since Tuesday. More people will be dead by Monday.”
“Shit,” said Baskel, picturing more bloody corpses. “I can’t ask anyone to pull overtime for this, not yet. I guess I can work on it myself, go out on the Internet.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Jensen said. “But is there some way we can get people to stay away from the canals without starting a panic? I mean, if you felt you had to call your wife, shouldn’t others be warned as well?”
Lawless said, “We talked about this. We tell the public there’s something in the canals and half of them will head straight for the water with their video cameras.”
“Maybe Detective Baskel can come up with something. We can’t just do nothing and let it pick off whoever it wants.”
Lawless grumbled, pulled on his ear, and looked at Baskel. “What do you think?”
Baskel thought, and rubbed his chin enthusiastically, like Aladdin trying to free the Genie. “Why don’t we just say what I told my wife, that people are being killed around the canals so everyone should stay away from them for a while?”
Lawless and Jensen nodded, and Jensen said, “That should do it. Even the video nuts wouldn’t want to mess with that.”
“I’ll call the reporter who wrote today’s story,” Lawless said, making a note. “I spoke to him a couple of days ago.”
“One last thing,” Baskel said. “Assuming you’re right about the snake creature, do you have any ideas about how to catch or kill it?”
“We think catching it’s probably impossible,” Lawless said, draining the last of his Pepsi. “If it can bite through steel bars, what cage could hold it? We have a couple of ideas for finding it, though.”
“What?”
“We could affix some kind of motion detector gizmo over the holes in the grilles. When it goes through the hole, we know what canal it’s in.”
“Then what?” Baskel said. “Wait for it to poke its head out of the water and arrest it? Ask it to stop eating people?”
“No. We shoot the shit out of it.”
Baskel slumped in his chair. “We’d need a lot of manpower for that. Overtime. A lot of standing around. What’s your second idea?”
“Drain the canals and expose it. Then shoot the shit out of it.”
Baskel brightened. “That’s not a bad idea. That’d be fast and cheaper. We could do that next week.”
“It’s not that easy,” Lawless said. “It’s the middle of irrigation season. The MID guy said it would take an act of Congress to drain the canals now. Think our case is strong enough to move Congress?”
“Let’s run with the sensor idea, then,” Baskel said. “You going to do that?”
“I’ll get started today, if our tech guys haven’t gone home.”
Baskel looked at his watch. “I’ve had enough Twilight Zone for one day, and we’ve got work to do.”
They recapped their plan, such as it was, and exchanged cell numbers. Baskel gathered his things and left.
Lawless looked at his watch:
a quarter to five, lots of daylight left.
“Think he’s really on our side?” Jensen asked.
“Seems like it. He’s pretty shell-shocked but at least he agreed to help. I’m just worried nothing’s going to get done until Monday, if then.” He looked at his watch again. “We gotta go, see if the tech guys are still at HQ.”
They got there at five to five, perfect time to brief the sheriff on their plans to notify the Bee: he would have his keys in hand, one foot out the door, and wouldn’t bother Lawless with silly questions like how come he didn’t let Kellerman handle the press.
“Sounds fine detective,” the sheriff said, distracted. “How’s it going with the boys at Modesto PD? You working with them on this?”
“Met with Detective Dave Baskel this afternoon.”
“Good, good. Keep me informed.”
The sheriff wasn’t listening, had somewhere else on his mind; a crab feed at some lodge or a barbecue at a crony’s ranch.
Lawless and Jensen agreed to eat at her place and Jensen went home.
The tech guys had already left for the day. Lawless looked up their numbers so he could call them later.
Tommy Wu was at his desk, playing tough reporter.
“If you want this in the paper, you need to give me something more. People are going to wonder why the Sheriff’s Department is asking them to stay away from the canals and it’s my job to give them what they want.”
Lawless just wanted it done, so he was willing to make something up for Wu.
“Several people have been killed when walking or working by canals lately, isn’t that reason enough?” He stalled, looking for an angle.
“That was in today’s paper. Our readers already know that. I need something new. Have you made any progress on solving the murders?”
“If I told you about our progress, it would compromise our investigation.”
They continued the back-and-forth for five minutes before Lawless came up with a hook.
“You can’t print this, but we think there’s something to one of the vic’s shoes being red.” He waited to see if Wu would take the bait.
Canals Page 19