The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  “What’d you tell her?”

  Shoswitz said, “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “Is that why the stern face?”

  “That’s why.”

  “Maybe we should get Daffy in here.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t. She’s a cop, Lou, but she’s not an investigator. You’re an investigator, but you’re not a cop—not active anyway.”

  “Ergo: We make the perfect team,” Boldt said sarcastically.

  “I decide the teams around here. I may manage from the dugout, Lou, but I manage. I don’t need my players out on the field calling plays. Especially players who are sitting up in the stands, by choice.”

  “Foul ball,” Boldt teased.

  Shoswitz didn’t appreciate it. “You learn to watch the foul balls. Sometimes they pull fair.”

  “BloodLines was just a quick little question-and-answer session, Phil. If I hadn’t said I was a cop …”

  “What’s Matthews working on, Lou?”

  Boldt felt that sinking sensation of losing your balance when it’s too late to do anything about it. He had committed to Daphne, but he didn’t want that to be the same thing as committing to Phil Shoswitz. If he handled this incorrectly, he would end up back on the force but off Daphne’s investigation—if she was even allowed to continue with the case. Shoswitz was a tough negotiator. Boldt gave him the details, starting with Cindy Chapman’s appearance at the homeless shelter, up to and including the “coincidence” that four out of four names were in the BloodLines’ database. For now, he left out Dixie’s matching tool markings, saving himself a trump card in case he needed it. He concluded, “You see why we were hesitant to bring this to you? We’re a long way from any hard evidence. Bob Proctor wouldn’t give me five minutes with what I’ve got.” Proctor was the King County prosecuting attorney.

  Shoswitz stared off blankly, deep in thought. He mumbled something about “Matthew’s responsibility to involve the department.”

  Boldt fired back, “You just said she doesn’t qualify as an investigator—which is unfair, mind you, since she took highest honors at the academy.” He suggested, “She only came to me because she knew I would listen objectively.”

  “Objectively?” he asked. “She doesn’t want objectivity. She’s into the overwork phase. She’s going through ‘mental pause.’ That incident with the knife set her way back. She’s still not over it. You know how it goes: When you start to fight back you go too far. She’s haunted by that incident. She wants to prove herself as a detective, wants to be more than a psychologist. She’s itching to get out of the office and into the squad car. She tried to talk her way out of something and it didn’t work, so now she wants it again, wants a chance to prove to herself that she’s over it. I see what you’re thinking,” he added, heading Boldt off, “but it isn’t that easy. I can’t very well recommend her for another rotation when she’s the only shrink on the force. That’s her specialty—that’s what we took her on for, even if she is qualified for investigations. Besides she hasn’t asked for any kind of active duty.”

  “What if she did? What if I signed back up on the condition that we be allowed to partner together on this harvester investigation? Fifty-fifty partners, no seniority on my part, but I would be there to help her out, maybe work her through this. At this same time, she’d agree to continue to handle the more pressing aspects of her job as departmental psychologist.”

  “You’ve thought this out, haven’t you?” Shoswitz said.

  “I know you, Phil. If I sign back up, you’ll yank me over to some murder-one ticket, and I’ll never see this thing again.”

  “What thing? You’re the one pointing out the lack of evidence in this thing.”

  “Give me the manpower and authority to run with this. Give me a few weeks to come up with something to convince Proctor we have a case. If I can’t, I’m yours—I’ll see out my twenty.”

  “One week, no more.”

  “He’s stealing organs, Phil. At least three kids are dead. The deaths are a direct result of his work, and that makes it multiple manslaughter, at least. How many more are there? I thought that was the point of Homicide. Three weeks.”

  “So it’s hardball, is it?”

  “Is it?”

  “I want you back. That’s no secret. I suppose that’s half the problem,” he said, allowing a rare smile. “But I’m not going to deal like this.”

  Boldt interrupted. “What a crock! You make deals like this every waking hour.”

  Shoswitz’s face turned red and his nostrils flared. “Two weeks and that’s final. Is this the new you?”

  “Maybe it is,” Boldt admitted. “I’m not feeling real ‘new’ at the moment, actually. Babies tend to make you feel ancient.”

  “You don’t even have a formal complaint, do you? Is this on the books as a crime?”

  “I’m complaining,” Boldt said, carefully avoiding the second answer.

  “The problem with you is you only see your side of things,” Shoswitz said in a frustrated voice.

  “Now you’re sounding like Liz.”

  This elicited a smile from the lieutenant, and Boldt could feel he had won. Shoswitz glanced over Boldt’s shoulder. Boldt saw a flicker of distraction in the lieutenant’s eye and knew before turning that it would be Daffy. He turned to see her coming at them like a freight train—no stopping her. A beautiful freight train at that. A nice engine. She opened the door without knocking. In a desperate voice she said, “A friend of mine’s been kidnapped. I need your help.”

  15

  Pamela Chase climbed into her car, having decided on a drive because it was raining again and she couldn’t stand it another minute inside her apartment alone. The occasional round-trip flight to Vancouver airport that she performed for Tegg did little to assuage her overall feeling of emptiness. Begrudgingly, she lived alone. Alone with her weight problem—with what she had come to think of as her ugliness.

  A low ceiling of thick storm clouds blotted out the night sky and dumped more rain onto the drowning city. Four years of drought, now this! She didn’t know exactly where she was going, but like a dog on a scent she followed her instincts away from the deafening drumming of the rain on her small balcony with its plastic fern and blown-out lawn chair. Another few minutes and that rain would have driven her right out of her mind. She pulled up to a red light and studied her reflection in the windshield. Mirrors were not popular in her apartment. She searched her face, trying to see it as beautiful, as Elden claimed to see it. She ignored the heavy cheeks and the squinty black eyes, the lifeless hair and spotty eyebrows. She saw someone else entirely. She briefly forgot all about her childhood—her parents’ malicious remarks about her weight problem, her being left behind to “study” when her family went on social outings, the kitchen cabinets being locked, her being fed different size servings and different food than her siblings.

  The neighborhood changed. Suddenly she left behind the stores and fast-food chains, the plastic marquees and 49¢ LETTUCE signs, and was surrounded instead by towering trees, manicured shrubs, and elegant homes.

  This was familiar territory to her, not unlike her childhood neighborhood less than a mile away. This was where the money lived, the professionals, along the lake shore, away from the noise and exhaust.

  The Teggs owned three cars. Since they had only a two-car garage, and his was the one always parked in the driveway it was easy for her to determine Tegg was not at home. She drove by here often, waiting for the hours to pass, waiting for work. She lived for business hours. For Monday through Friday. For late-night emergency calls. For something more than the boredom of that apartment.

  She tried the clinic next, but he wasn’t there either. The place was locked up tightly and the security was on. So where was he? Out at another of his social functions with her? The ballet? The opera? Out with the big names and big money? He loved that world.

  The more she couldn’t have something, the more she wanted it. Just like pean
ut butter. There was one way to make sure of his whereabouts. She pulled over at a Quik-Stop, bought herself a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and ran through the rain to a phone booth, getting soaked in the process. She thought about the voice she would use: Elden had taught her about image, about role-playing and acting. She summoned a convincing desperation, which wasn’t too far from the way she felt anyway. The phone rang several times, which she knew from experience meant it wasn’t the baby sitter answering, because the baby sitter always either occupied the phone line, keeping it tied up, or sat close enough to answer an incoming call on the first ring. The multiple rings confirmed her suspicions: The wife was home, Elden was not.

  The wife answered: “Hello?” she said in that snobbish accent she had perfected.

  “Mrs. Tegg, this is Pamela calling for Dr. Tegg.”

  “Oh, hello, dear,” she said, now in a patronizing tone that implied a warmth between them that didn’t exist. It came out of the fact that this woman was friends with Pamela’s parents and felt obliged to a pretense of a certain degree of amiability. Resentment was more like it—the two of them had squared off on several occasions. “He’s not here, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ve had an emergency call at the clinic—nothing too bad—and Dr. Tegg isn’t answering his pager,” she lied in her most appropriate voice: concern without alarm.

  “He’s out at the farm, dear. Working. Incommunicado, I’m afraid. That’s what he loves about being out there, you know? You’ll just have to refer this emergency elsewhere,” she said in a not-so-subtle tone of disbelief.

  Damn her, Pamela thought, it’s getting so I can’t fool her. The farm! Working? Without me? “Right,” she managed to squeak out, strained though it was. She thanked the woman—she hated thanking her for anything—and hung up.

  It was a long drive out to the farm, tonight even longer because her mind wouldn’t rest, filled as it was with the force of her substantial insecurity—driven to discover what he was up to without her. Once off the Interstate, one road blurred into another. Trees. Darkness. The ceaseless rain hung in front of her like a curtain. Headlights flashed her windshield with silver. Taillights like animal eyes.

  The farm was located far off the beaten track in a section of national forest that had been given over to timber lease some years before, the only access a series of unmarked, twisting, hard-pack roads.

  She negotiated her way over these unmarked roads, across the narrow bridges, and finally pulled into the rutted lane that led to the property.

  To look at it, you might guess the place abandoned, except for the barking that emanated from the Quonset hut—the kennel—situated fifty yards down a sloping grade to the right of the old cabin and driveway. A light was on in the cabin. He was here!

  She parked and hurried through the rain.

  Her wet blouse glued to her chest. Her jeans—absurdly tight—were soaked from just below her crotch to her knees. Her hair was matted and a mess. She twisted the handle—it was locked. She crossed around to the cellar entrance and in doing so passed two glowing basement windows that had been painted over from the inside. She didn’t need to see through these windows to know he was working inside. Now drenched, she approached the thick wooden door and pounded on it loudly. A moment later, he called out, “Who’s there?” When she answered, he opened the door.

  The hall was dark, though to his left the impromptu operating room glowed brightly beneath the surgical lamps. He stood in shadow, his face partially hidden. She slicked back her hair and shook the water off her. Behind her, the loud barking continued inside the kennel. She glanced into the operating room where a sedated woman lay stretched out on the operating table, green surgical cloth covering her. Pamela experienced the horror of exclusion. He was prepared to do a harvest without her! Unthinkable!

  “So,” he said in that grating voice of his, “you’ve come.”

  The fear of abandonment penetrated so deeply that she felt paralyzed, unable to move or speak.

  But he touched her elbow and steered her into the cabin’s basement room—his operating theater—and shut the door. The ceiling of exposed floor joists hung low over their heads, woven with a network of old pipes and electrical wiring. He had created a false ceiling by stapling a thick clear plastic to the underside of the joists. He had done nearly the same thing to the stone walls—had placed a series of two-by-fours around the perimeter of the room and had fixed the transparent sheeting to them, creating plastic walls. This room was kept immaculately clean—even the plastic was wiped down with disinfectant following every surgery. He was a cleanliness fanatic—you only had to look at his hands and nails to see that. And although in terms of equipment they got by with only the bare necessities—anesthesia, lights, autoclave, and various monitoring devices—it was all state of the art. There was even a backup generator in case the power failed. Tegg was overly cautious with every aspect of his surgery. Obsessive. She considered him a great teacher. The overhead lights burst with enough candlepower to light a small stadium.

  Only his eyes were visible above the surgical mask as he studied her. He glanced quickly from her to his patient on the table. He seemed briefly confused. She couldn’t remember ever having seen him with this particular expression—as if he had been caught in some wrong. Perhaps he knew how much such a discovery would hurt her. Perhaps he could sense even that.

  Her eyes welled with the tears of rejection. He didn’t need her. He had deliberately excluded her. Just like her parents! Just like everyone! But then he raised and dropped the green cloth as if it meant nothing to him, as if discarding his patient, and stepped toward her with a renewed confidence, strong, even mesmerizing. “My pager must be broken,” she said to him in a dispirited voice, looking for some excuse. She knew it wasn’t broken, but she wanted to offer him a way out. Even now, she felt obliged to protect him.

  He replied, “No, your pager is not broken. I didn’t call you.” Only now did she notice that he held a scalpel in his gloved hand. Devilishly sharp. Dangerous. “I didn’t want to … bother you.” These were the words he spoke, but it was not the message carried in his voice. This contradiction confused her.

  “Bother me? You never bother me. I’m always available for you. For any reason. Anything at all.”

  She strained again to see the patient on the table, but he stepped into her line of sight and placed the scalpel flatly against her cheek. He clearly didn’t want her looking.

  She glanced into his familiar eyes and saw something new there. Her legs trembled. She felt herself flush a crimson red as sexual excitement rushed through her. Here? Now?

  He stepped closer to her and ran the scalpel down her neck to between her breasts. “Elden?” she asked, her heart racing furiously.

  One by one, he cut free the buttons. “Is this all right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I guess so.”

  Keeping his mask on, he kissed her then for the first time. He took her pouty lips between his masked teeth and bit down hard in a way that both thrilled and terrified her. She felt powerless next to him.

  “Is it all right?” he asked again. “Hmm?”

  She hesitated.

  “You want this, don’t you, Pamela? I know you do. Tell me you do.”

  Her shirt fell open. He pulled it back and studied the long scar below her rib cage. He touched it and hummed softly. “Tell me,” he repeated. She thought she might faint. He used the scalpel to cut her bra. It too fell open, exposing her. He didn’t look. He held her eyes. He said, “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He ran the flat of the blade over her breasts. A penetrating, exhilarating chill raced through her. The danger that blade represented … He then held out his empty hand and offered it to her. She kissed his gloved fingers then, one by one. She drew each of his fingers into her mouth, suckling them and curling her warm tongue around them, ignoring the odd odor of the latex. All the while, Tegg continued to stare into her eyes. What did
he see? What was he after? He withdrew his fingers from her mouth, glanced once quickly—nervously?—over his shoulder at his patient, then quickly back at her and said, “You won’t need these.” He tugged her jeans away from her soft middle and drew the scalpel all the way down one pant leg, then the other. Her jeans came off like a pair of chaps. Her head swam, feeling his hand touch her there.

  All at once she could smell her own excitement, and it embarrassed her. It mixed with the musty and medicinal odors of the cellar.

  “You’ll like it,” he said, reading her thoughts. He pulled the severed blouse from her and left it on the floor. He led her—underwear, running shoes and peds—to the end of the operating table.

  He positioned her facing him with her back to the patient, standing between the unconscious woman’s bare feet. She resisted the urge to cover her belly, tried not to think of the way her flesh must look in the glaring light. His eyes glowed behind the operating mask. She could hear his coarse, exciting breathing.

  She felt dizzy, almost drunk. This wasn’t how she had imagined it. He was scarcely himself. Is this how men were? She ached with longing and fear. He reached past her and moved the patient’s feet out of Pamela’s way, clearing a small space between them on the operating table.

  Suddenly, he scooped Pamela up and planted her sitting in this space on the end of the high operating table, centered between the patient’s ankles. He took one of her hands and placed it on her raised knee, then the other, so she held herself open for him. He spun the scalpel before her eyes. Light glinted from its edges. He lowered it. He nicked the waistline of her underwear, and then threw the scalpel to the floor. He placed both hands on her underpants, and tore them open.

  He asked, “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “We can stop,” he offered.