“Recognize him?” she asked. “From anywhere?”
“No. I’ve never seen him before.”
Through the walls, the wind chimes came faintly audible, the kiss of metal on metal.
“Look at the rest of these pictures.” She dropped heavily into the chenille couch and plunked her heels on the coffee table, jangling loose change in a black Wedgwood dish parked on an art book. “Do you recognize anyone in those photos? Anyone from Metro South?”
He took his time looking. The sweet, dusty smell of potpourri rose from a bowl on the windowsill. Behind him the patrolmen creaked the floors, bursts of static issuing from the radios strapped over their shoulders. He turned back to Dooley, shook his head, and sank into an opposing studded leather armchair. They looked at each other, frustrated.
“Any idea where Kyle Lane is?” Daniel asked.
“No. One of the neighbors he’s friendly with said he’s never out this late on a school night.”
“You think he was taken?”
“No signs of forced entry.”
“There was no sign of forced entry at Marisol Vargas’s,” Daniel said.
“Or at Jack Holley’s.” Dooley clicked her teeth, a tic of frustration. “Kidnapping’s a whole other animal, but we can’t take anything off the boards.”
“Maybe Lane’s just out of town?”
“He was at work today,” Dooley said. “Left at his usual time.”
“Where’s he work?” Daniel asked.
“CFO of a health-food company. Bars with psyllium husk and flaxseed oil, that kind of crap.”
“He from the city?”
“Appleton, Wisconsin. Came out here to get his M.B.A. at Berkeley. No criminal record. No connection with the other victims that we can establish. We’ve been busting ass, looking at everything. No leads on what Lane ‘did’ to the killer—what any of the suspects ‘did.’ From out here? It all looks random.”
Daniel laced his hands together, a gesture meant to be calming. But he sensed the sweat on his palms. “If you don’t think Lane was kidnapped and he’s not out of town, where the hell is he?”
“That’s what we in the trade refer to as a ‘key investigative question.’” She even threw in air quotes.
A plainclothes officer entered, covering the receiver of his cell phone with the heel of his hand. “Lieutenant wants to know how you plan to handle the broken door.”
She heaved a sigh, seemed to sink further into the couch. Then she unfurled her hand. As she received the phone, she said to Daniel, “There are more pictures in the bedroom up the hall. Take a look.”
Beat cops still crowded the foyer, so Daniel looped through the galley kitchen. With its bare counters, IKEA cupboards, and Kenmore refrigerator, it was designed for function over form, striking a contrast with the living room. When he stepped out into the brief hall, the ambience resumed—wall sconces, Campari posters, even an Aztec rug adding a flare of color to the white shag carpet. The wind picked up outside, moaning through the eaves, the music of the porch chimes growing more insistent—ting, ting.
Faux-antique wood furniture dominated the bedroom at the end of the hall. A jolly sleigh bed, neatly made and overlaid with a dozen or so decorative pillows. The full-length cheval mirror in the corner reflected back the big window across from it and its claustrophobic view of the neighbor’s gray stucco wall, maybe two feet from the sill. Leaning against the high mattress, Daniel examined the scattering of framed photos on the nightstand.
A lot of faces, none he recognized.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, frustration cramping his temples. Then he pushed off the bed, his movement captured by the freestanding tilt mirror. Evelyn kept an authentic version in her dressing room, and he paused to take in the familiar design—the classic oval adjusted to a faint recline in its appliqué-embellished wooden frame.
The reflection staring back was an unflattering one. Pale skin, drawn face, his eyes hollow from stress and lack of sleep. In the two days since he’d accidentally received the threatening letter, he’d been sucked down the rabbit hole, and he was quickly losing sight of the way back. He needed to get home to his wife, grab a good night’s sleep, and reenter his life.
“What are you even doing here?” he asked himself.
As he turned to leave, his reflected feet remained in place, dislocated from his body. An optical illusion? Puzzled, he halted. Stepped back.
His legs continued, he realized, beyond the tilted bottom frame of the mirror. The twinning bands of his ankles and—yes, there, his feet. But they weren’t wearing his shoes.
They were wearing black work boots.
Chapter 22
Daniel’s mind lurched, snagging on the reality, grabbing sudden traction, a blaze of white-hot alarm lighting his insides.
Before he could react, the man vaulted out from behind the mirror, that blank-masked face blurring into view. A muscular arm raked the top-heavy mirror forward on its pegs, sending it into violent rotation. Daniel barely managed to lift his arms before the impact knocked him to the floor. Shattered glass cascaded down around him, raining over the back of his head and his shoulders. The mirror, flung horizontally over him, wiped the room and his attacker from view. He saw only the floorboards and pebbled bits of the mirror, spinning and bouncing, a confusion of reflections.
There were two hard footsteps and then another crashing sound from across the room. The window?
Daniel rolled free, his torso grinding glass, the smashed window reeling into view upside down, then right side up. Already the man was gone—he must have bounded straight through the pane.
The cops’ shouts issued from deep in the house, and a single clear thought impressed itself on Daniel’s brain: Wait for them.
He stood. Stared at that glass-fanged window. Judging by the pounding footsteps, the cops had only just reached the mouth of the hall. Precious seconds trickling away.
Don’t go through that window.
But already he was sprinting, the broken frame tilting with each jarring step. He leapt through, hanging shards snapping off against his shoulder blades, the sound like breaking fingers. A half second of flight until his shoulder’s impact with the neighboring wall knocked the breath from his lungs. He slotted down neatly into the skinny alley. The walls squeezed him at the shoulders, forcing him to blade sideways.
Ahead, the intruder flew toward the backyard. The black sweats, gloves, and smooth neoprene curve of the head turned him into nothing more than a dark outline, a shadow unhooked from its human. A barred gate at the alley’s end rose to an arch connecting the low-dropping eaves of the side-by-side houses. From the gate’s hasp swung a rusting padlock. The man was trapped in this stretch of alley.
And Daniel trapped here with him.
His peripheral vision caught the cops spilling into the bedroom, framed by the fractured window, and he shouted, “Here—he’s out here!”
Accelerating toward the rear gate, the intruder pounced and grabbed the bars halfway up with a resonant clang. He scaled quickly, like a clawed creature. Between the gate and the crowning arch, a gap came evident. Just big enough for a man to wiggle through.
Daniel took off in pursuit, yelling, “He’s heading to the backyard!”
As the man reached the top and wormed his torso through the gap, Daniel hurtled up the alley, his shoulders scraping both walls, dry paint flaking off in his wake. The space smelled of tar and reprocessed air, exhaled through a heating vent. Just ahead, the man hauled himself through the gap, stomach, waist, hips vanishing.
Daniel got there and leapt for the gate, but his shoulder clipped the wall and he hit the bars unevenly, sweat-slick hands scrabbling for purchase. The ground swirled below, off kilter. Clinging, he heard from above the yielding purr of tearing fabric, the ring of metal striking ground. Firming his grip, Daniel tugged himself up. He lifted his head to the gap at the top of the gate just in time to see the heavy, drawn-back boot unload like a piston into his face.
; The sense of weightlessness lasted longer than seemed possible. The bolt of lightning across his temple dimmed in slow motion, darkness catching him before he struck bottom.
* * *
The pack of frozen corn retrieved from Kyle Lane’s freezer numbed the swollen bulge of flesh on Daniel’s brow, but what he really needed was something to take the edge off his frustration. The Tearmaker had vanished in the maze of interlacing yards and alleys connecting the surrounding residences. Daniel’s left eye was badly bloodshot, a wispy red claw cupping the iris from below; the sight of it in the powder-room mirror had made him clench the lip of the vessel sink. Now he sat on the chenille couch, Dooley and a trio of plainclothes officers staring at him as if waiting for his head to do an Exorcist spin.
Snatches of sentences made their way through the murk.
“—what happens when you have probies clear a house—”
“—were in a rush, Dooley, responding to a potential murder in progress—”
“—kick in the front door but don’t think to look behind a fucking—”
“—besides which, Brasher shouldn’t even be here. He can sue the city—”
“If I sued the city,” Daniel said, “they’d probably take the money out of my own damn department.”
Dooley perked up. “It speaks.”
“Barely.” He shifted, and another fork of lightning speared his brain.
“Okay,” Dooley said. “Take me through it. Step by step. You should be good at this by now.”
Daniel rose to literally walk her through what happened. The house crawled with crime-scene investigators, dusting and tweezing. Camera flashes made the hall and bedroom strobe like a nightclub. Threading through the ordered commotion, he gave her every detail he could recall, interrupted at intervals by cops sailing in to deliver updates or receive instruction, which Dooley handed out in efficient bursts: “Move the checkpoints out to Dolores and up to Twenty-eighth.” “Clear the rec center and roust the bums in Billy Goat Hill Park, see who saw what.” “Start running the prints through AFIS now, wheat from the chaff.”
Daniel watched the men watching her and nodding compliantly, and he realized that all of them were half in love with her. And that that was extremely useful to her in the midst of a manhunt.
He resumed his account to Dooley as they continued their walk-through, winding up before the shattered bedroom window.
Dooley leaned out, peering up the narrow passage between houses. “You said you heard his clothes rip when he went over the gate, right?”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “Right before he kicked in my face.” He studied her thoughtful expression. “You’re hoping for a piece of fabric?”
“I’m hoping for better than that,” she said. “I’m hoping he tore a pocket.”
He still hadn’t caught up.
“Shit spills outta pockets, Brasher. Especially when you tear them. Let’s have a look-see.”
Rather than climb through the broken window, they circled out the front door toward the alley. A few news vans had turned up, and a CHP helicopter chopped thunderously a few blocks away, the powerful searchlight beaming down like something out of science fiction.
“Guess he’ll figure out now I’m getting his mail,” Daniel said.
“He’ll know you’re on his case for something,” Dooley said. “Which isn’t bound to make him happy.” She slipped into the alley, her slender shoulders, even squared up, clearing either side.
The lane between the houses caught light only from sparse windows, so their shadows sprang up fast and sharp. The gate loomed ahead. On the far side, an investigator stood atop a ladder, ducked precariously beneath the arch to peer at the spikes, one ghost-white gloved hand gripping a flashlight.
Daniel recalled how effortlessly the intruder had scaled the bars. The bulk of his muscles beneath the loose-fitting black sweats. The sole of that boot, hammering down toward Daniel’s face. The memory made him wince into a fresh burst of pain.
He said, “I wish I’d grabbed his legs and impaled him on the spikes.”
Dooley paused. “Aren’t you supposed to be a therapist?”
“I’m not on the clock.”
They approached the gate, Dooley looking up at the man perched atop the ladder. “How you doing up there, Roscoe?”
“Oh, ya know. One thousand thirty-nine more days till I retire with full pension. Got me a iPhone app counting that shit down for me.” The flashlight beam picked across the tops of the bars. “Not finding anything up here. No blood, threads, nothing.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Dooley tugged the Maglite from her belt and crouched by the base of the gate, scanning the concrete with the beam.
Daniel flattened to the wall to give himself a vantage past her. Dooley moved the shaft of light along the bottom of the fence, illuminating a few weeds sprouting from the cracks in the concrete, pebbles, flecks of rust.
And a folded white square to the side, just beneath the bottom hinge.
Dooley leaned forward and used her pen to flick the small piece of paper out into the open. It landed up on its edge, an open V with the mouth pointed at them. She squatted over it, and Daniel saw her shoulders settle as if under a great weight.
“What?” he asked.
She pressed her shoulder blades to the wall so he could see past to the little rectangle at her feet.
A business card.
His.
As he stared at the crisp font announcing his name, his heartbeat found the bruise at his temple, breathing pain back into it. At once he struggled to find air here in this cramped alley, the walls closing in on him. The cell-phone number on the card was crossed out.
He lifted the pen gently from Dooley’s grasp and used it to tap the card over to the flip side. Written across the back in his own hand was his new cell-phone number.
There were only six of these business cards he’d written his new number on.
The six he’d handed out to his group members.
Chapter 23
Despite the chill on Kyle Lane’s roof, he was sweating beneath the mask, his humid breath rebounding into his pores. He sat patiently, arms folded across his knees, watching the helicopter, now a half mile away, continue its futile outward spiral. From the beginning, the cops had focused elsewhere, on the surrounding blocks through which he’d presumably fled. His black clothes had served him well for the one quick sweep the searchlight had taken over the house itself. He’d simply tucked himself against the base of the chimney, camouflaged in its umbra.
The eyeholes constricted his vision only slightly, his pupils jerking alertly to track Daniel Brasher as he crossed the front lawn, heading back to that stupid car. Brasher paused for a moment with his hand on the roof, head bent as if to catch his breath. He looked shaken.
After Brasher puttered off, he lay on his back and took in the few stars penetrating the night gloom. The sound of the helicopter continued to fade, and below, on the street, engines turned over and cars drifted away in twos and threes. When it was safe, he lunge-stepped silently across onto the neighbor’s roof, then lowered himself onto the lid of a built-in barbecue in the backyard. Through slats in the fence, he could see the crime-scene investigators packing up their gear under the watchful eye of the black lady cop.
He removed the mask, drawing in a lungful of cool air, then tucked it into his waistband along with his gloves. The sweatshirt came off next, revealing beneath a fitted red thermal sporting the 49ers logo. He stuffed the sweatshirt into a trash bin in the side yard, burying it beneath mounds of ketchup-stained paper plates. Tugging down the long sleeves of the thermal, he let himself out onto the sidewalk. As he strolled, he whistled, his fingertips trickling along the hedge of juniper and stirring up the delightfully bitter scent. Turning the corner, he came face-to-face with a beat cop hauling several flexible traffic cylinders.
“Excuse me, Officer,” he said, approaching. “Have you seen my cat? She’s a tabby named Lady, and—”
“Sorry,” the cop s
aid. “No luck finding anything tonight.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Never mind. No, I haven’t seen your cat.”
The cop never slowed, the rubber bases of the traffic cylinders dragging across the asphalt.
He watched the cop go, then continued on his way, picking up the whistled song where he’d left off.
Chapter 24
The sun broke across the horizon, fanning a sheet of gold through the iconic skyline. Daniel was weary, half asleep behind the wheel, the early-morning haze of the city a match for the early-morning haze muffling the steady throb in his head.
If that neoprene motorcycle mask were peeled back, whose face would be revealed? A-Dre’s? Big Mac’s? Fang’s? Martin’s?
Or had one of the group members given Daniel’s card to someone else? Was the killer an associate? A brother or a boyfriend?
The hooded woman in the rain—Lil or Xochitl?
No matter the explanation, one thing seemed clear: Someone in the group was involved in the Tearmaker murders. Someone who’d shared intimate shortfalls and sins. Someone he’d fretted over and pried at and fought for and against, usually at the same time. He’d pledged to help these people reconstruct themselves. He’d cared for them, bent his own shoulder to their burdens so they could stand straighter.
He’d thought he knew these people. He’d thought he entered the worlds they lived in, dipped beneath the surface, swam in the undercurrents. But maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe he’d understood nothing. Maybe no matter his focus and perspective, he was still just a rich asshole from Pacific Heights.
The shock and dread and the mule kick to his temple had left him in an altered state, washed up on the shore of a landscape at once familiar and alien, a dream version of the streets he was driving through. He cut past the Castro, where Latina drag queens in fishnets and feathers paraded the sidewalks, strutting past bars with inventively uninventive names—the Lonely Bull, the Missouri Mule, Dirty Dick’s. He kept on, skirting the edge of the Haight, where painted VW buses and druggie runaways littered the curbs, in search of a lost decade. During the Summer of Love, Janis Joplin strummed her Gibson in a one-room flop pad here, a tambourine’s throw from where the Grateful Dead commune tuned in and dropped out. Relics of each era endured, layered like geological strata in storefronts, charting the evolution from beatniks to hippies to yuppies to fauxhemians.
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