Touched By Blood

by Craig Buckhout

  When they reached Edna’s cottage, Rene was just coming out the door. She was a tall, thick boned woman wearing blue jeans, a tee-shirt hanging out at the waist to hide her pistol, tennis shoes, and had a pair of dark glasses hiked up on her head.

  “Perfect timing. This her?” she said nodding her head at Edna.

  Edna stiffened. “Hey, I thought this was going to be between the three of us.”

  “It’s okay, Rene works with us and knows how to use the equipment we need to make sure you’re safe. Everything will still be confidential,” Nick said.

  Al patted her hand, smiled at her, and said, “Don’t worry.”

  Edna avoided looking at Rene. “What sort of equipment?”

  Rene took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s just something that lets us hear what’s going on inside your room. If you need help, we’ll know it. Relax, it’s no big deal.”

  Edna finally looked at Rene. “Help? Nothing’s going to go wrong. She’s probably just some old dyke who wants to get off with someone younger. Certain other people may need help with that,” she said staring, “but not me.”

  Rene looked at Nick and dropped her dark glasses down. “What the fuck, Nick?”

  “Everything’s okay. We just haven’t had time to explain things to her. Just show us where the microphone is.”

  Rene stared at Edna for a second, shook her head, turned, and led them back inside the cottage.

  Edna let go of Al’s arm to get through the door and whispered, “Bitch,” from behind him.

  “Okay, so this is what I did; I hid the microphone in this lamp over here.” Rene pointed to one of the lamps next to the bed. “I unplugged the light because if it’s switched on, it will make the equipment buzz too loud for us to hear what’s said. So whatever you do, don’t plug the cord back in, got it?”

  “Got it,” Edna said. “Don’t plug the lamp in.”

  “Okay, if something goes wrong, I like to use a simple signal. Just say, ‘Please let me go. I won’t say anything.’ Not more than ten, fifteen seconds later, we’ll come through the door.”

  Edna rolled her eyes. “Please let me go. I won’t say anything.”

  “Hey, Edna, this is for your protection. If you don’t give a fuck, I don’t either,” Rene said.

  “It’s stupid …”

  “All right, all right, let’s just get this done,” Nick said. “Edna, I don’t think anything is going to happen either, but you’re part of the team now so we don’t want to take any chances, okay? Just listen to what Rene has to say so we can get this over with.”

  “Since you put it that way, Sergeant Nick.” She took Al’s arm again and pulled it into her chest.

  Al smiled, put his hand over hers, and looked down at her chest.

  “Moving on,” Rene said. “We still making a phone call to this Carl Malone person?” Rene asked.

  “Yeah, and we need to do it pretty soon, too,” said Nick.

  Rene walked over to the phone on the desk and attached a recorder. As she was doing it, she said, “This is how we do it Edna: Once the recorder is going, I’m going to punch-in all but the last digit of his phone number. Then I’m going to say my name, the date, and ask you if we have permission to make and record this call. You say ‘yes’ into the phone. I’ll then punch-in the last number and hand the phone to you. You say what you have to, and hang up. It’s easy as that. You got it?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll help you through it if you get stuck.”

  Nick gave the go ahead.

  Rene and Edna went through the routine, and Edna took the phone. After a few rings it kicked over to voicemail and Malone’s voice was heard to say leave a message. Edna did as she was told, left her room number on the recording, and said the card key would be under a rock to the right of the door.

  “Is that unusual?” Al asked, “Malone not picking up when he knows you’re going to call.”

  “It happens. Sometimes I think he does it just to make me mad.”

  “It would have been nice to get something on tape,” Nick said.

  Nick then told Edna that the three of them would be in a nearby cottage waiting for her client to arrive.

  In their room, Al and Nick took turns watching the front of Edna’s cottage. They could see all but the last ten to fifteen feet of walkway leading up to Edna’s door. Shrubbery blocked the rest of their view. While they were doing that, Rene listened in on Edna through a set of earphones.

  About 7:20 PM, Rene said, “Ah man, she just turned on the TV. I can’t hear shit.”

  Nick used the phone in their room to call Edna.

  “We forgot to tell you to keep the television off. When it’s on we can’t hear what’s happening,” Nick said.

  “Nothing’s happening. She’s not supposed to be here for about a half an hour. Why don’t you come on over Sergeant Nick, there’s plenty of time?”

  “Just turn the TV off, Edna. Let’s not blow it now.”

  “It’s boring here by myself. I’ll turn it off as soon as she gets here, I promise.” She gave it her best pouty voice.

  “We can’t protect you if we can’t hear what’s going on. Just a few more minutes, that’s all. Turn it off.”

  “If you’re not coming over, I’m not turning it off.”

  What is this, high school, he thought? “Listen Edna, you’ve got to turn the damn TV off, you hear me. I can’t come over because she may show-up early and then we’re screwed. So just turn the TV off, will you?”

  “Like I said, Sergeant Nick, I’ll turn it off when she gets here. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to hear everything we do.”

  Edna hung-up on him.

  “God damn it!” Nick shouted. “We should call this thing. She’s going to leave it on until her client gets there.”

  “Ah, let it ride for a while, Nick,” Al said. “We’ll see when someone arrives, and if she doesn’t turn it off, we’ll just go knock on the door. It’s not like she’s expecting Jack the Ripper.”

  “I don’t like it,” Nick said.

  “Just a few more minutes,” Al replied. “Hey Rene, you know why Christ wasn’t born in Poland?”

  “Oh gawd,” Nick muttered.

  “No, why?” Rene asked.

  “Because they couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.”

  “I can believe it about the wise men, but some of those Polish women just have to be virgins, if you know what I mean.”

  Nobody laughed except Al.

  Ten minutes later, “Hey …hey, I think something’s going on,” Rene said. “Wait, wait, wait a minute …it sounds like someone else is there.”

  “Nobody came up the path,” Al said. “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know, hold on. Maybe it’s just the TV.”

  “We better go,” Nick said.

  “Let’s just make sure,” Al replied.

  “No, there’s definitely someone there. But, only …it sounds like a dude or this woman has a dude’s voice.”

  “Okay, that’s it, we’re going,” Nick said.

  “Shit, something’s going down. She screamed. …Gunshots!”

  Rene pulled off the earphones and started for the door.

  As they exited, Nick said, “Al, take the back!”

  When Nick and Rene got to Edna’s door, they heard the sound of something inside being knocked over.

  “San Jose Police Department!” Nick shouted. At the same time, he drew his pistol and kicked the door.

  The two of them rushed the room, pistols out and pointing. The first things Nick saw was one of the lamps knocked over on the floor and the rear patio door standing open. As he got closer, he saw a woman face down on the carpet at the end of the bed and Edna’s feet sticking out on the far side. “Shit, two down!” he shouted. Since he was first through the door, he peeled off to clear the bathroom, leaving Rene to go into the main part of the room. At the same time all this was happening, he heard first one shot and then an exchange of gunfire
coming from outside.

  When Nick re-entered the main room, Rene was kneeled down. “Head shots, both of them. No pulse,” she said. “It’s going down outside.”

  “Call it in,” Nick told her. He then went back out the front door and circled around to where he last saw Al heading towards the back.

  Experience and training told him to go slow; to clear the areas around him before moving forward. His gut told him that whatever happened was over with and he better get to his partner, so he ran blindly through the shrubs and blackness in the direction of the shots.

  “Here,” Al said. “I fucked-up man.”

  Nick saw Al stagger and then drop to one knee.

  “Whoa. Whoa big guy. You hit?”

  “Yeah, I think so, …sorry.”

  Al sat down and then laid flat on his back.

  “Rene, Al’s hurt! He’s needs paramedics!” he shouted.

  Nick heard someone from one of the nearby cottages yell, “What’s going on? We’re calling security.”

  “Ah, man,” Nick said.

  There was blood on Al’s shirt.

  “He got away. I got a couple off at him, but I don’t know if he’s hit.”

  Nick heard footsteps coming fast behind him and spun with his pistol out. It was Rene.

  “Did you call for paramedics?” Nick asked.

  “They’re on the way. Is he okay? Where’s he hit?”

  Al started making a gurgling sound and opened his mouth, struggling for breath.

  “Help me roll him over on his side. I think he’s choking on his blood.”

  Everything was noise and lights and questions after that; lots of questions. Trouble was there weren’t many answers to go with them. How could someone walk in on a police stake-out, kill two women, shoot a cop, and then escape? And who was the other woman? What did the shooter look like? Which way did he go? Was there more than one shooter involved? How did he get into the room unobserved? It was a royal fuck-up.

  After the paramedics cleared Al’s airway, got the bleeding controlled, and stabilized his vitals, he was taken to Valley Medical Center. Only then did Nick ventured back into Edna’s room.

  On the way back to the room, he asked himself what the hell happened? How did the killer and the second woman arrive undetected? Two possibilities came to mind. Instead of arriving on the path, maybe they took an indirect route and walked up in the blind spot. Or maybe they entered through the back patio door. Nick wouldn’t put it past Edna to leave it open while she waited. Whichever the case, once the killer got inside, he shot both women and then went out the back where he ran right into Al.

  Nick squatted down next to the woman at the foot of the bed who was now positioned on her back. It took a minute, a long minute, but then he remembered who she was. She was Peter Blaine’s wife, Melanie. What the hell, Nick asked himself? What’s she got to do with this?

  How could this get any more messed up? Blaine’s wife dead, Edna dead, and Al in the hospital.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  His head was spinning faster than a defense attorney making closing argument. He had to slow it down. He needed to slough off the emotion of everything that happened so he could function effectively. It was hard not to think about those who had been murdered though: Molly, St. Claire, Emerson, Fontaine, and now Melanie Blaine and Edna, too.

  Edna, poor Edna, she had trusted him and was now lying on a blood soaked carpet with a bullet in her head. That image wouldn’t leave his brain. It would live there forever. It was his fault she was dead, all his fault. He should have stopped the sting as soon as Edna refused to turn the TV off. “My screw-up,” he told himself. “I was in charge and people died.”

  All those thoughts and more tumbled around and around as he merged onto 880 north. Then a motorcycle, one of those sleek Japanese jobs, its rider prostrate over the gas tank, shot past him at ninety plus, providing momentary distraction. Nick’s foot automatically pressed down on the accelerator, a programmed response, but he immediately backed off. Never catch him anyway, he thought.

  Back he went to his dark and unsettling contemplations. This whole thing was a blur of events. First St. Claire killed Molly, no mystery there exactly. They were having sex, a free market arrangement, consenting adults, and then St. Claire got a little weird with her. He bit her; it was there on her breast and obvious enough that it must have hurt like hell. So she did something back to him, probably; it stands to reason she would have. Who wouldn’t? There were the scratch marks on his face, but Nick guessed those didn’t come until later, after he wrapped his hands around her throat. Anyway, whatever happened in that hotel room, the asshole killed her. That was clear.

  Things really went crazy after that. Somebody killed St. Claire; stabbed him to death in a very planned, measured way with one thrust to the kidney and one to the neck. This somebody knew what he was doing, so he probably had done it before. Nick’s educated guess was that St. Claire was killed because he was stupid and the killer knew he would eventually get caught. Once he was caught, handcuffed, strip searched, and treated like the punk he was, he’d squeal like a pig in the slaughterhouse. He’d tell the cops everything, including who the pimp was. So this somebody, to protect himself from prosecution, killed the killer.

  Once St. Claire was dead, his assailant probably thought he was safe, problem solved, home free. Anyone else who knew anything about the prostitution operation wasn’t likely to talk because justice was done. St. Claire killed Molly and someone killed St. Claire, so what, he deserved it, good riddance. The killer was a hero. But then the improbable happened; Emerson came along, just doing his job, and exposed the killer. So the killer killed again. Only now he killed a cop, not some pervert, and the heat was on big time. The police would be looking for someone who killed one of their own, and they weren’t likely to let go of it.

  The killer had a problem now; a big, big problem. The people questioned would also feel the heat. There’d be a lot of arm twisting going on, a lot of finger pointing, a lot name calling, and a lot of threat making, too. It would get ugly. If the cops thought someone knew something, he’d be squeezed until the information flowed like blood from a head wound. Witnesses would be more afraid of the cops than of the killer, so they’d talk. That fact forced the killer to start knocking off people who knew or possibly knew who he was and what he was doing. There goes Fontaine and now Edna. If it wasn’t for the lady across the street, Ellen would be dead, too.

  In his rear view mirror, Nick saw a pair of headlights come up on him fast. After a second or two, he could make out the silhouette of a patrol car with a light bar across the top of the roof. He checked his speed and saw it was below the posted limit. The marked unit changed lanes around him, and he saw its emergency lights come on. He reached over and turned the volume up on the two-way; maybe something was going on? …Nothing. He punched through the channels but still nothing. Just an accident he finally decided.

  The rear flashing yellows made him think about the ambulance that took Al to the VMC Trauma Center, which in turn made him think again of Edna and Melanie Blaine.

  But that brought him to the big question: What the hell did Melanie Blaine have to do with this? What was she doing there? Why was she killed? Nick didn’t even have a guess for that one.

  The single thread that weaved through all these murders was Malone. Edna told Nick that it was Malone who sent Molly and her to meet with clients. Ellen overheard Malone asking Molly if she had told Ellen about their other business. And most damning, Malone was the only outsider who knew which cottage Edna was staying in. Malone, Malone, Malone, his was the only name that kept coming up. But if it was Malone, why involve Melanie Blaine? He could have killed Edna without ever involving Mrs. Blaine. He didn’t need to make such a big production of it. It didn’t make sense.

  He stopped the Ford waiting to make a left-hand turn. Next to him was a Volkswagon Beetle, one of the new ones, with a couple of young women inside. Next to it was a white Chevy Tahoe blastin
g out something angry. Two guys were hanging out the windows like a couple of zoo monkeys, saying something to the women.

  The light turned green for all of them and Nick made his left hand turn.

  The Blaines lived in a twenty-eight hundred square foot luxury condominium at Santana Row, one of those live, shop, and play developments in west San Jose that architecturally resembled an Italian fishing village on the Amalfi Coast. It covered about six square blocks of prime real estate. The buildings ran to three stories and were shaded green, yellow, and terracotta. The bottom level was shops and restaurants, most the latter with sidewalk seating to give it a European ambiance. The upper levels were mostly designated for condos and apartments with a sprinkling of office space. The main street consisted of one lane in each direction with a median between, wide enough for several kiosks and an occasional musician. It was the place to go if you could afford a two hundred dollar pair of shoes or six California Rolls and a chocolate martini for thirty bucks.

  At the end of the street Nick turned left and found a red zone with his name on it. Trouble was that one of the many security officers didn’t see it that way and said, “You can’t park there, sir.”

  “You have a supervisor?” Nick asked.

  “Ah, well yeah, that’d be Sergeant Cameron, but he’ll just tell you the same.”

  Nick pushed his badge at him.

  “Oh, I didn’t know. Sorry, no problem.”

  “I still need to talk with your supervisor,” Nick said.

  “Okay …ah, okay …can you tell me first? I mean he’ll ask what it’s about.”

  “Just tell him I need his help for a little bit and I’ll explain when he gets here.”

  The security officer looked back at a marked unit that was just pulling to the curb with its lights off and another that was also blacked out and gliding-in behind.

  “Maybe I better not ask him over the radio. Maybe I should go get him instead.”

  “Good idea. And you come back with him, too, okay?”

  The security officer drove off in his golf cart with his yellow gumball whirling.