Dr. Shetty. It was Thursday. Rats. My regularly scheduled appointment was at two, right in the middle of the day, another example of really poor planning. I thought about the next few hours. I needed time to be sure Miki was okay, to deal with some paperwork and return calls at the office, phone time with Mom and Dad, check in on Neil, and an afternoon at APD to look over new reports. Once Rauser released the photos and surveillance video of Jesse Owen Richards, information would flood in.
Okay, so there was no way I was going to make my shrink appointment. That meant I’d have to deal with Mariza, Dr. Shetty’s office manager, a Brazilian who pretended her English was bad so she didn’t have to talk to patients. Mariza enforced a strict twenty-four-hour cancellation policy. We’d been down this road before. I imagined Dr. Shetty having another hour-long lunch on my dime.
I picked up breakfast and raced to Rauser’s. I didn’t want Miki waking up without family. I could only imagine how vulnerable she’d be feeling, hunted, in an unfamiliar bed with a broken leg and a uniformed stranger guarding her.
A police cruiser was parked in Rauser’s driveway. An officer named Jacobs opened the door, hand on gun, and asked for identification. I came in with a bag from Radial Café, the first completely green restaurant in Atlanta and the place for cinnamon rolls—big fat ones made from scratch and smothered in cream-cheese icing. The aroma hangs over Dekalb Avenue when they’re baking. It’s nearly impossible to drive by without hitting the brakes.
The television was on with the volume low. I saw the officer’s smart phone on the coffee table next to his cap. “Has she been up?” I asked.
“Haven’t heard a peep,” Jacobs answered.
I shook the bag. “Radial rolls. Want some coffee too?”
“You bet,” he said. I saw him sit down and pick up his phone. I wondered vaguely what a beat cop Tweets when he’s on a protective detail. Must be boring. Maybe he was updating his Facebook status. Or texting his lover, playing Angry Birds.
The press conference had begun. On the screen, I watched the surveillance video of the suspect we now knew was Jesse Owen Richards, head down, wearing a dark green hoodie and keeping his face away from the cameras. I watched as Rauser spoke to television cameras and enlisted the community in the search. He again described the personality characteristics outlined in my profile. The hospital video looped to show Richards’s physical posture, the way he moved and walked. Rauser had the six-year-old driver’s license picture on a screen and reminded everyone that Richards’s face would be thinner now. APD were estimating that he’d dropped eighty to a hundred pounds since the round-faced photograph had been taken.
It was only a matter of time now. Richards’s face and the video would be all over the media.
I went down the hall to the guest room, which doubled as Rauser’s office, and pushed the door open.
Miki’s broken leg was sticking out from under the covers. The cast was knee-high. It had a few signatures on it already. I smiled at that, put the coffee and the cinnamon rolls on the bed table, sat down on the bed.
I was well aware that Miki was waking to no small amount of emotional and physical distress. What kind of mood she’d be in was anybody’s guess. I wished I could take it all away, all the pain and fear. Getting Richards off the streets and out of her life was a good start. I touched her hand. “Good morning.”
She stirred, blinked up at me, started to sit up, and then remembered there was plaster on her leg. She pushed herself up with wiry, muscled arms. I helped pile pillows behind her.
“I have coffee and some food if you want it.” She wanted the coffee. I handed it to her. “There’s a great-looking uniform in the living room. I guess that’s the silver lining.”
“I only have eyes for Tyrone now,” Miki said. “He actually carried me inside.”
There were crutches leaning against the wall. Miki was thin, but she was strong and was fit. I knew full well she didn’t need to be carried. “What a guy.”
“He’s coming over later, I think. With lunch or dinner or something.”
“Really? Wow.” I didn’t like the sound of that. The last thing I wanted was for Miki to get involved with Tyrone, though he might have been enough of a player to handle her.
She sipped her coffee and studied me. “I remembered something about Owen. I had a birthday while I was an inpatient at Peachtree-Ford. I don’t know how he knew, but he knew. I was so depressed. We were in this common area with a TV. They let you do that after you’ve been there a few days. He handed me this little tablet of paper. He’d made a cover for it. I think there was some artwork on it. I don’t really remember. They take everything, you know? So you can’t hurt yourself—belts, shoestrings, whatever. But somehow he’d gotten hold of some ribbon and used it to bind this paper. He made a big loopy bow for the top. He was so nice to me. I remember thinking how sweet he was. I don’t get it. I don’t get why he wants to hurt me.…”
She broke off, shook her head. I was silent.
“You know, Keye, I don’t even remember what I did with that gift. Or what I said to him. You saw me in that place. I could barely remember my own name.”
I imagined her casually pushing his gift aside, the one he’d worked on and decorated with something meaningful to him, something that had taken no small amount of effort to obtain. He would have fantasized about how she’d react when she received it, how grateful and smitten she would be, her affection for him amplified in his mind about a million times. But Miki hadn’t followed the script. Miki rarely does. The gift meant nothing to her. Had that been the trigger that turned his infatuation to rage?
Miki was watching me. “You think I did something to cause all this, don’t you?” she asked.
“He’s an egocentric sonofabitch, Miki. You didn’t cause that.”
Her blue eyes smiled a second before she did. “That your official diagnosis?”
“And just one more reason I never went into private practice.”
I helped her up and handed her the crutches. She was hurting, I could see, as she navigated the hallway in panties and an undershirt. While she brushed her teeth, I found the mega-dose ibuprofen she’d been prescribed. “You have to eat before you take these, okay?”
“You’re leaving? What am I supposed to do?”
“Read. The bookshelves are full. You have a Kindle.” I needed to find a way out of mobile home health care. I wasn’t really cut out for it. Back in the guest room, I handed her the remote control. “Rauser has every channel known to man. Have you noticed the size of the dish out back? Seriously. You can see Russia from his house.”
“Fucking great.” Miki’s mood turned sour instantly at the prospect of being left alone.
“I’m sorry. I know it sucks.” I opened the blinds. Thunderclouds were gathering. I remembered Rauser saying emergency services were on alert. “Can you call your insurance company and see about getting some home care? I’ll be back early this afternoon to check on you. The landline is on Rauser’s desk right there, okay? Call if you need anything.”
“I want to go home.”
I felt that tic at the corner of my eye. “Not yet. It’s not safe.”
“It’s a free country, Keye. I’m an adult. Besides, isn’t Mr. Uniform out there supposed to protect me? Make him take me home.”
Pain makes people nuts. So does fear. Cut her some slack, I told myself. “Why put yourself and the officer in more danger?” I didn’t say that she’d already put my parents at risk or that because of her Richards had added me to his creepy list. “Give Rauser’s team twenty-four hours. They’re closing in. Now, eat something and take the ibuprofen. You’ll feel better.”
“I’m going to call some friends to keep me company,” Miki said.
I pressed my finger against the corner of my eye. “Miki, every time that door opens, every time someone else is introduced, you’re adding risk. No one should know where you are, okay? It’s not safe. Not yet.”
I poured a glass of water from a f
iltered pitcher in Rauser’s nearly empty refrigerator and set it on the bed table. My phone jangled. My mother is the only one who calls me at seven-thirty in the morning. I looked at caller ID. It was my alarm company.
“This is Peachtree Security. Is this Keye Street?”
“Yes.”
“We have an alarm at your place of business. We’ve notified law enforcement.”
Now what? Crap. “Miki, I have to go.” I kissed her cheek.
She refused to look at me. “Tell the cop Tyrone’s coming over later, okay? And tell him not to bother me.”
I turned and left before the scene ended with my hands around her neck. The diva act was wearing on me. I let the officer know about Tyrone’s visit. He’d have to call Rauser to authorize the visit. I didn’t like the idea of anyone coming in and out. It made the officer’s job too difficult, and I believed it would have a psychological effect on his level of vigilance. He would be at his best when he wasn’t expecting anyone, when everyone who stepped on that porch was suspect.
37
Two police cruisers were parked at my office when I came down the hill in the blue bump. The lot was empty. The surrounding businesses didn’t open until nine or ten. The metal door to my office was wide open. I could see the dents as soon as I stepped out of the car. An officer was sitting in his vehicle with the engine running, writing on a clipboard. The windshield wipers made an occasional sweep. The windows were foggy. The rain we’d been promised had turned from a fine mist to a trickle. Another officer stepped out of my office onto the landing where the bullet that hit my partner had ricocheted.
“You Ms. Street?” she asked when I ran up the steps. She was standing under the tin overhang out of the rain. I glanced behind her into my work space.
“What happened?”
“Looks like vandals,” she said. “We responded within seven minutes, but there’s a lot of damage. Door was open when we arrived. No one on the premises.”
I stood there in my doorway, trying to take it in. She was right: The damage was extensive. It looked like someone had run through our office with a huge hook and just swept everything off the surfaces and onto the floor. Our desktops, monitors, our printer and fax machine were smashed, broken, kicked. Neil’s expensive chair was on its side. Glass and bits of plastic and paper littered the floor. The smart panel was shattered. There had to be thousands of dollars in damage. Hours of work and love and effort down the tubes.
“Looks like they used crowbars on the door,” the officer commented. “Probably what they used in here too. Hope you’re insured.”
Every drawer in my office had been wrenched out, dumped. My desk chair had been ripped up, vicious slits across the back and seat. The glass top that protects my desk had cracks webbed out across the length of it. He’d used a black Sharpie to write CUNT on the glass. There was no question that Richards had done this. His vile energy had coated everything in our offices.
“We checked the whole strip. No other break-ins,” the officer told me. “Looks like somebody has it in for you, Ms. Street.”
I left my office and went to Neil’s desk chair, stood it upright, dusted it off—a tiny island of order in the ugly chaos.
Rauser was in Williams’s cube in the Homicide room. Detectives Bevins, Angotti, and Thomas were at their desks. The other cubes were empty. That meant fourteen homicide investigators were out on the streets today. I didn’t have to guess their focus. Rauser waved me in. I heard Andy Balaki’s South Georgia drawl on the speakerphone. “We’re heading to the job site to see if we can find him.”
Rauser pressed the end call button and looked at me. “Monica Roberts called me awhile ago. Said you’d agreed to an interview with the two of us?”
I glanced at Bevins. She tried to hide the smile playing on her lips, looked down at her keyboard. I figured Rauser had let off some steam after the reporter called.
“Does that sound like something I’d agree to?” I retorted. I didn’t even try to disguise my shitty mood.
“Well. No. Actually,” Rauser said.
“She asked. I was vague. But I did not agree.”
“You catch any news today?”
“I’ve been a little busy.” I didn’t mention watching the press conference.
“The Fox Five morning show had a big discussion about you,” Bevins said.
“Great,” I muttered. Dread hit me like an eighteen-wheeler. Why wouldn’t it? So far the day had been about as much fun as finding a hairball in my shoe. I assumed the worst, of course. On the right day with the right degree of stress and exhaustion, it didn’t take a lot to shake my self-esteem.
Rauser was looking at something on the computer, typing with two knotty fingers, something I usually found cute. It annoyed me today. “Relax, Street,” he said without looking up. “It’s like I said, they like straight shooters.”
“Looks like you have single-handedly broken the stigma of addiction by talking about recovery,” Bevins said. She didn’t try to hide the sarcastic tone. Bevins had her own personal challenges with booze. I knew this from Rauser. It was private. She’d never talked to me about it.
“A few months ago they were going to string me up,” I said, gloomily.
“As long as you know how it works,” Rauser said. “Where you been all morning?” He looked up at me. “You okay?”
“My office was trashed this morning. Richards. He left a note on my desk using one of his favorite words. Everything was smashed to pieces. I had to deal with police reports. Insurance companies, locksmiths, landlords. I had to wait for the door to be repaired before I left.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“The damage was done, Rauser. The police were there. There was nothing you could do.”
“Seeing you talk to the press outside his crime scene and then a follow-up on the morning show probably really got his bells ringing.” Bevins was frowning.
“No doubt,” I agreed. “So where are we? Anything from the tip lines?”
“Half my unit is out on follow-ups,” Rauser said. “And we located the landscaping company the grandparents told us about. Big turnover in the ranks. The front office doesn’t really mingle with the workers. Nobody remembers our guy. But they have him on record. They have a supervisor who’s been there a few years. Balaki and Williams are trying to locate him. See what he remembers.”
Lightning flashed so bright we all looked at the windows. I did what I’ve done in storms all my life. I counted in my head, waiting for the thunder. It was a tactic my mother had used to distract me from the storms that had always frightened me. One, two, three. Boom. There it was. The lights blinked out in the old building. Computer screens went dark. Bevins cursed softly. There were twelve seconds before the lights and fans and computers came back to life. In the silence, all we could hear was the rain spraying the windows along North Avenue like buckshot.
“Christ,” Rauser said. “Somebody find out if this shit is gonna get worse. Why haven’t we heard back from Balaki and Williams? Bevins, find out where they are with that landscape guy.”
“Landscapers can’t work in this stuff, Lieutenant,” Bevins answered evenly. “They’re probably still trying to locate him.”
“Find out,” Rauser snapped.
“Lieutenant,” Detective Angotti said. “Those storms have crossed the state line. Watches are out for the city and warnings for the south metro counties.”
Ken Lang came around the corner. He dropped a photo of the bloody shoe prints we’d all seen on the floor where Jorge Wagner and Emma Jackson had been shot and stabbed. “They’re plate shoes,” he said. “Size thirteen.”
“As in baseball?” Rauser asked.
“As in umpire.” Lang dropped another photo down on the table. “This particular style just looks like an orthopedic. Super comfortable. But look at this angle. High-traction rubber outsole. It matches our prints.”
Bevins cupped her hand over the phone. “Lieutenant, Balaki and Williams are talking to the lands
caper now,” she reported.
“Good. Okay, everybody, go back over that list of officials in the local leagues. Find out if they have photo IDs. Look for anything that stands out. We think he’s still using an R name. So start there. These people are like freelancers. They work different leagues all over the state. Bastard could be anywhere right now.”
The phone rang. Rauser hit speaker. “Found him, Lieutenant.” Balaki sounded excited. “At the Zesto’s on Moreland. He remembers Jesse Richards real well. Said the guy was pretty strange. Pissed off a lot. Fat and real touchy about it. Only other guy that would put up with him was some guy named Rabelo who got him started jogging.”
“What happened to Rabelo?” I asked.
“Julian Rabelo quit his job here in a letter and never came back,” Balaki answered. “Asked to have his last paycheck snail mailed. Crew chief thinks it was pretty close to the time Richards left.”
“I bet it was,” I said. Rabelo’s decomposed body was probably in some stretch of forest or picked clean on the banks of the Chattahoochee so that Mister R, as Fatu Doe had called him, could steal his identity. We’d found our man.
“Crew chief is calling the front office to see where they sent his final check,” Balaki told us. “We got Rabelo’s DMV records pulled up.”
“Crew chief recognize the photo?”
“No sir. He swears it’s not the guy he knew as Rabelo. So we asked if it looked like Richards and he says maybe, if he lost a hundred pounds.”
“Here we go, Lieutenant,” Bevins said. “We have a Julian Rabelo on the list of league umpires. We took his statement in our first sweep. No red flags.”
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