Shadow Man

by Alan Drew

  Ben turned up the dial.

  “Received,” the dispatcher said. “Be advised, possible 187 at 19745 Buttonwood Street. No word on suspect.”

  “DB still warm,” the voice said now, his words quick, his voice pitching higher. Ben knew the feeling—your heart thumping in your ears, the fog at the corners of your vision, your whole body pinpricked with heat. Didn’t matter how many times you came on scene, especially a fresh one, you felt it: death and fear, married to each other. “Need backup. Need a perimeter.”

  “One Adam 9 en route.”

  The speaker clicked on, nothing but static and quickened breaths for a moment, then clicked off. Another unit called in as responding. The speaker clicked again, and yelling could be heard in background. “Family member on scene,” the uniform said. “Suspect fled. No visual.”

  “Be advised,” dispatch said. “Suspect fled. No description.”

  Ben listened with his elbows on the table, his knees bouncing; dispatch was calling in a crime-scene unit. He stuck a red pin on the map of the address: 19745 Buttonwood Street, Westminster, a quarter mile from the 22 Freeway, off-ramps and on-ramps just two right turns from the victim’s house. The killer was using the freeways, turning off when the urge hit. The house was just fifteen miles away from where he sat. In the hollowed-out silence of the night, he heard the rush of the 5 Freeway, the Santa Ana, slicing the length of the basin from Bakersfield to the Mexican border. It was a fifteen-minute drive if the highway was clear, and by the sound of it—a smooth-flowing river rush—it was wide open.

  —

  HE MADE IT there in eighteen minutes, parked next to an Eyewitness News van, and pushed his way through the crowd. At the perimeter he flashed his badge at one of the uniforms.

  “Wondering if I can take a look?” Ben said. “Got a body cooling in county. Might be related to this.”

  “It’s out of control in there,” the uniform said. He lit a cigarette, the wind blowing it back across his face. “Mackensie’s the IO, and he’s shutting it down. You’re not in there right now, you’re not getting in.”

  Ben walked the perimeter, watching the faces of the crowd. Some killers returned to the scene, got off watching the police work—crime porn, they used to call it up in L.A. No one stuck out here, though, just neighbors, their faces dumb with fear, a couple of teenagers stupid with excitement. Shit, dude, she’s dead. Like, someone killed her.

  There was an elementary school behind the house, a sweep of grass and handball courts, a greenbelt with a trail weaving beyond the playground. Ben drove the cruiser two blocks over, coming around the front of the school—a pair of classroom windows lit from within, papier-mâché art hanging on the sun-yellow walls. A couple of black-and-whites spun lights at either end of the property. Ben pulled up beside the first one and flashed his badge at the uniform.

  “Mackensie wants me combing the school grounds,” Ben said, and a few minutes later he was in the lightless field, a black square of grass surrounded by the glowing windows of Tuscan-style homes. There was a half fence, three feet high, separating the backyard from the school yard. From here, thirty yards away, Ben could see the detectives working the kitchen. He flashed his penlight across the ground—stomped-down grass that thinned to dried mud. Zigzag prints, kids’ shoes. Handprint, Tonka truck tracks, a soccer-ball pentagon. He inched toward the fence that separated the yard from the playground and found it: Vans skate shoes—at least three footprints in the dirt, trailing toward the fence.

  “Get Mackensie on the horn,” Ben said when he got back to the uniform.

  The cop did. Ten minutes later, investigators were in the field, snapping photos.

  —

  BY THE 6:30 Wednesday-morning newscasts, the L.A. and Orange County sheriffs’ offices had declared the obvious. Before most people had finished their first cup of coffee, the L.A. news stations had christened the killer the Night Prowler. Goddamned news. And by 7:45 Ben was sitting in a briefing room with Lieutenant Hernandez and two other detectives, chewing NoDoz and gulping coffee.

  “We’ve got a BOLO for a serial,” Hernandez said, his coat still on, which meant business, the jacket still buttoned, which meant real-deal business. “LAPD and both counties made it official. Random strikes, all after eight P.M., all entering through open first-floor windows or doors. So far, no discernible motive.”

  “The joy of strangling people?” Marco Giraldi said. Marco had recently been promoted to detective, primarily on the merits of breaking up a teenage marijuana ring while working patrol. Barely twenty-eight, he looked like a teenager himself; above his top lip was a wispy line of peach fuzz he seemed to think was a mustache.

  Lieutenant Hernandez nodded. “Most likely sociopath,” he said, as he passed a stack of folders around the table. “None of the victims seem connected.”

  “Except by the killer,” Marco said. The more a man shot off his mouth, the more vulnerable he was. In L.A., Ben knew a vice cop who always bitched about “faggots on the make,” how they disgusted him, how they were disease magnets. He was busted three months later with a “faggot on the make” in a Santa Monica motel room. Then there was that homicide detective, twenty-year veteran, big tough guy always cracking jokes over dead bodies, broke down one night in the precinct after a murder/suicide, just turned to water at his desk and spent the next three months hardening up in a facility in the valley. Maybe it was rookie nerves, but Ben suspected the serial had Marco spooked.

  “Multiple races,” Hernandez said, ignoring Marco. “Multiple sexes. Likes to tip the cops after the deed is done.”

  “Jesus,” Carolina McGrath said when she opened the file.

  Ben took a file from Carolina, a shot of acid in his stomach when he saw the crime-scene photos. A woman’s white knees, her torso twisted on the carpet, stacks of magazines spread across the floor, a broken vase, water soaking the carpet near her left foot.

  “Sexual assault?” Carolina said, standing up with her file to pace the room. She was nearly six feet tall, a former University of California volleyball player who could never sit still. Some of the uniforms who didn’t make detective resented her, thought her getting promoted three years ago was some affirmative action BS, but she was a good detective—a real eye for detail.

  “No,” the lieutenant said. “At least, no evidence to that effect.”

  “Suspect wears Vans skate shoes,” Ben said, noticing it wasn’t written down in the description of the perp. “Eight and a half? Nine?”

  “Heard about your extracurricular activity, Detective,” Hernandez said, his reading glasses slid down his nose to look at Ben.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Read a book,” Hernandez said. “It works for me.”

  “Try a romance novel,” Carolina said, raising an eyebrow at him. “They’ll put you to sleep immediately.”

  “ID on that boy’s body yet?” Hernandez said to Ben.

  “Waiting on the science geeks,” Ben said. “Bullet in ballistics. No fingerprint matches.”

  “Keep it quiet,” Hernandez said. “The mayor’s in my ear about this one.”

  “Too late for that,” Ben said. “For keeping it quiet.”

  Ben slid the morning’s paper across the table. HISPANIC FOUND SHOT IN STRAWBERRY FIELD. He’d picked it up at the Rancho Market on his way to the station early that morning, along with a cup of coffee and a microwaved breakfast burrito. He’d glanced through the article and found the line: Detectives offered no comment on the connection between this killing and the Night Prowler. When Reza Salehi, the owner of the market, rang Ben up, he set aside the paper.

  “Was this boy killed by the Night Prowler?” He was frightened, and he wanted Ben to assure him that Santa Elena was still a safe little bubble.

  “Not sure, Reza,” he’d said. “Lock your doors.”

  Now Lieutenant Hernandez skimmed the article himself. “Dammit,” he said. “Call this Miss Marsh and let her know the medical examiner suspects it’s self-inflicted
.” He dropped the paper on the table, pulled his glasses off, and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Anonymous tip on this Mexican kid, right?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “Shooting, though. Nothing else fits this guy.”

  “You never know,” Marco said, turning a page in the file to photos of another victim. “This serial may be branching out.”

  Ben flipped the page and saw what Marco saw. He had to glance away for a moment, out across the courtyard to the field beyond, where a man with a chain saw was quartering trunks of eucalyptus felled the week before. They were going to build a strip mall there, a Lucky grocery, a car wash, a wine store.

  “Bludgeoned,” Hernandez said.

  “Got more than he expected with this one,” Marco said, no joking in his voice.

  “Used a Remington bronze,” Hernandez said.

  “Sculpture?” Carolina said, briefly stopping her pacing. “God.”

  Ben returned to the shot. The left side of the man’s skull had been bashed in. Bruises again on the neck, but the killer had crushed the larynx—the picture showed the sinkhole in the neck. The victim had been a big man, and he must have fought and fought.

  “He’s not branching out,” Carolina said. “This one was back in August. It’s all women since then.”

  “ME says the killer’s got small hands,” Ben said. “Woman-sized hands.”

  “Doubtful it’s a woman,” Carolina said. “A woman would use a ligature, especially if she was going to overpower a man bigger than herself.”

  “He wasn’t strong enough to strangle this one,” Ben said.

  “So he used the sculpture,” Hernandez said.

  “Then it’s all women after that,” Marco repeated, nodding.

  The next shot was of a woman’s face, her head yanked to the side, her neck mottled with bruises. Petechiae on the eyes and cheeks, a cluster of purple dots pinpricking the skin.

  “The place last night was gated,” Ben said. “A playground behind the house, a greenbelt leading out of the playground.”

  “Unlocked doors,” Carolina said. “Playground deserted at night, so no witnesses.”

  Ben turned the pages to find more photos, this time an elderly man, back in July. The refrigerator door behind him was swung open; a gallon of orange juice and a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor sat on the shelves. Bruises again on the body, finger-pad marks circling the throat. Strangled. The most intimate of crimes. Face-to-face, watching the terror and recognition there—either terribly personal or completely impersonal. A serial. Had to be impersonal.

  “Rafferty’s case in Mission Viejo wasn’t gated,” Ben said. “But it was master-planned. A greenbelt running behind it.”

  “The Palos Verdes place,” Carolina said, “is master-planned, too. I dated a guy near there for a while.”

  “If he’s got a thing for master-planned,” Ben said, “Santa Elena’s the place.”

  “All we got is in the file in front of you,” Lieutenant Hernandez said. “Maybe an ID from last night in Westminster: Five six or five seven. Dark clothes. A woman was walking her dog in the park around one A.M. when she saw him come out from the backyard. She was halfway down the block, though, and that’s all she’s got.”

  “He stayed on foot?” Carolina asked.

  “Turned the corner.”

  “Car parked on the next block probably,” Ben said. “All killings are less than a half mile from a freeway.”

  “Narrows it down”—Marco smiled—“to about five million possible future victims.”

  Using the freeways. Master-planned communities. Vans shoes. Open windows.

  “One more thing,” Hernandez said. “They found something scratched into the bedroom wall last night.” He glanced through the file. “Swear something or other—it’s jumbled and cut off. Westminster thinks the husband nearly stumbled in on the killer. Just back from a business trip in New York.”

  Ben flipped the pages and found the photocopy of the Polaroid. The image was grainy, and the words scratched into the plaster were clumsy and poorly drawn—letters backward, some of the lines squiggly and indistinct.

  “It’s like kid writing,” Marco said.

  “A cipher?” Carolina said.

  “Something about Swear you’re going,” Ben said, trying to decipher it.

  “Swear you’re going what?” Carolina said.

  “Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Marco said, holding up a shot of the last victim.

  —

  “CAN I SEE you a moment?” Lieutenant Hernandez said.

  They stepped into Hernandez’s office, a rectangle of floor-to-ceiling windows. “The hamster cage,” the detectives called it, since you could watch every single thing the lieutenant did behind the glass. If the man picked his nose, the whole station knew. Once, when Hernandez had an argument with his wife, some of the guys thought it hilarious to tie a fake ball and chain to the front door.

  “Moonlighting it, huh?” Hernandez said.

  “Just trying to connect the dots,” Ben said.

  The glass office was supposed to reflect the new transparency of an organization built on trust and coordination. The windows, cleaned every night by a “rehabilitated” felon, were streakless; if you didn’t know they were there, you’d think you were sitting out among the crowd of cubicles and metal desks.

  “Did you sleep in the cruiser last night?”

  Ben shrugged, not sure what to say. He got twenty minutes in the station parking lot before the meeting.

  “Maybe you should talk to some—”

  “No one’s shrinking my head,” Ben said.

  “The first divorce is tough,” Hernandez said. “I know.” He smiled and slapped his big hand on Ben’s shoulder. “The second one’s a little easier.”

  Ben laughed sarcastically.

  “You put me in a tough spot with Westminster, crashing their scene,” Hernandez said, serious again.

  “I know.”

  “It’s not professional.” Hernandez waited a moment. “Usually people offer an apology right about now.”

  “They wouldn’t have found the print,” Ben said.

  Hernandez nodded. The lieutenant knew the cops had never found the driver of the Chevelle, the one that hit Ben’s father that night years ago and killed him. He and Ben had talked about it one night over beers soon after he’d joined the force. Whoever hit-and-ran his dad was probably still out there, living his life. The cops had probably never even tried to find the driver; they had murders to deal with, robberies. Who cared about some old cowboy thrown from his horse? “Ghosts,” Hernandez had said then. “The ones that get away.” Hernandez meant that Ben had to let it go; some perps got away, that’s just the harsh fact of the matter. Hernandez was right, but Ben couldn’t stand shitty police work—or no police work—that let a criminal dissolve into thin air.

  “What dots’re you trying to connect?”

  “Maybe I’m still looking for them.”

  “To my reading, the Mexican looks like a suicide, not this serial,” Hernandez said, sitting down at his leather desk chair. “Depressed strawberry picker.”

  “Right-handed but gun in left?” Ben said. “Shot in the back of the head? That doesn’t spell suicide to me.”

  Hernandez looked at him closely. Ben knew he wanted this neat and clean, wrapped up, filed away. Hernandez was good at the politics of the job, knew how to deliver the right message, giving the mayor and the town what they wanted: an illusion, not reality. That’s why he got paid the big bucks. Ben was pretty sure the lieutenant had his eye on higher office—the first Hispanic mayor of Santa Elena, maybe.

  “A kid, right? Teenager?”

  “Yep.”

  “You haven’t been to the high school yet?” Hernandez said. “Unless I missed something.”

  “He’s most likely illegal,” Ben said, a pitch of defensiveness coloring his voice.

  “Doesn’t keep them out of the schools.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “I
would’ve thought you’d already checked there,” Hernandez said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not used to telling you how to do your job, Ben.”

  —

  THE HIGH SCHOOL could wait. Ben grabbed the Polaroid camera from his filing cabinet, then called Rafferty off an affidavit for a ring of car-stereo thieves and met him at the Mission Viejo scene that afternoon.

  Police tape still ribboned the house. A memorial of flowers and half-burned candles littered the driveway gutter. The house had been shut up for two days, all the curtains drawn, the air still thick with the dank fetor of death. Investigation chalk hieroglyphed the kitchen linoleum, and a salted stain ringed the corner of the floor like a dried-up lake.

  “Jesus, Raff,” Ben said. “Get a crew to clean that up, huh?”

  “Got orders not to touch it,” he said. “Still an open investigation.”

  “Natasha’s got what she needs from that.”

  “Would love to shut it down,” Rafferty said. “I’ve got recitals and baseball games to get to. Didn’t move down here for this kind of shit.”

  How he kept his marriage together after Delia found out about his screwing around was beyond Ben. Rachel wouldn’t have stood for that crap. Put up with a lot else, but she wouldn’t have any of that.

  “Etched into the wall?”

  “With a paper clip,” Ben said. “Or an X-Acto knife. Something like that.”

  They searched the walls in the kitchen—grease stains, calendar pinned to a corkboard. They pulled back the curtains on the pantry windows to check the lime-green painted plaster, combed over the cabinets and wooden dining table.

  They split up, Rafferty taking the family room and Ben searching the living room. He ran his palms over the green recliner, unfolded the quilt spread neatly over the headrest. He ran his fingers over the brick of the fireplace, checked the backs of the framed photos on the mantel, checked the silver face of the Pioneer hi-fi sitting on a shelf beneath the television. “You’re going, you’re going…” he whispered to himself. “Swear you’re going to what?” He got down on his knees and brushed dust from the baseboards and swiped a hand underneath a couch, pulling out an old Sunset magazine and a green jelly bean.