TWENTY-FOUR
Malin squinted through a downpour of rain that spattered against the windshield. Just as the call came in about a girl who had turned up in the women’s hospital on Montgomery.
Becky.
Malin saw the look on Temeke’s face. The relief, the misty-eyed stare. Saw him jot down the details of where she’d been held.
“Bastard had her for five days. Gave her one meal a day and shot her up with sedatives. God alone only knows what he did to her while she slept.”
Malin looked at the clock on the console. They arrived at 5024 Timoteo Avenue around eleven forty-five in the evening. Dispatch had responded to a possible shooting near the Williams house sending a couple of units ahead. Temeke and Malin were the second of those units to pull up alongside the vacant lot. It was a busy night.
A few lights blinked on and off, residents awakened by the police activity. Temeke jumped out, opened the passenger door. He grabbed a bullet-proof vest and a flowery pink notepad. He saw the look on her face and nodded. “It’s all they had at Walmart. If I don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.” He zipped up his leather jacket, face puckered and grim. “You stay out here and wait for the field investigator.”
He slammed the car door before Malin had time to argue. He probably wanted to have a smoke and think. He was probably mad at his brother-in-law for being on leave. He had to have lunch with her now.
She took her flashlight and walked to the vacant lot. The police unit was parked on the other side of the street, still idling by the sound of a worn out engine and the sagging front seat.
“There’s a puddle of blood over there and gasoline,” officer Jarvis said, pointing. “I took what I could.” He held up a plastic sample container.
Malin gave a tolerant smile and turned her back. She couldn’t stand the man, pink, pasty and full of―
“I’d be careful if I were you,” he shouted.
Too late. She was facing the lot now, sloshing around in a bloody puddle and watching a pounding rain that threatened to flatten the channels the tires had made. Wide tires, curling back about fifteen feet and then veering off toward Bandelier. The car had clearly idled on the lot for a time, reversing back into the road at high speed.
Jarvis had already marked off several shell casings and a slither of rubber, and there was a smear of blood seeping off the curb into the road. The driver had been hit all right.
She was still staring at the blood spatter when the field investigator arrived. That was her cue. Whether Temeke had told her to wait outside or not, she was going in.
She opened the front gate, a heavy cedar door with a speakeasy grill, and found herself in a courtyard scented with damp mud brick. Metal lanterns with frosted globes―some round, some cylindrical―threw an amber glow on the pavers and a fountain graced the center, three lug-handled urns feeding into a shallow basin filled with pebbles. It would have sounded glorious in the summer months, an endless calming trickle.
Temeke was standing in the foyer with the Williams man, head down, scratching a diagram in that little pink book. There was a pistol on the hall table, a car-buster by the look of it.
Darryl looked up at her and gave a long hard stare. It was difficult to break away from a look like that and she half wondered if he was still in shock. He nodded as she wiped her feet on the doormat and then gave a wistful smile.
“Thought I told you to wait in the car,” Temeke said, head cocked to one side.
“It’s cold out there,” Malin said, rubbing her hands.
Temeke turned back to Darryl. “You said you got a good look at him through the driver’s window. What did he look like?”
“White, very white actually,” Darryl said.
“What were you aiming for?”
“The gas tank mostly.”
“Any chance you hit the driver?” Temeke leaned toward Darryl even though his eyes were locked on some distant object across the hall.
“None.”
Darryl hardly noticed as Temeke drifted into the living room to answer his phone. He sat on the arm of a leather chair and began flipping through a gun magazine. It was Luis he was talking to by the sounds of things.
“Features?” Malin prompted. She noticed Darryl seemed to relax a little more and his demeanor became warmer the closer he moved toward her.
“Blunt nose, you know, the type that looks like it’s been under a knight’s helmet for too long.”
“Age?”
“Late thirties.” Darryl shrugged.
“Hair?”
“Short, blond,” he nodded.
“Anything else unusual?” Malin examined Darryl’s eyes. They were normal now, not wide and lifeless as they had been a moment ago. Although she could smell something tart on his breath.
“He had an accent come to think of it. Foreign. Couldn’t tell you where. I was mad, that’s why I did it. I just couldn’t help myself.”
“Where did you get that gun?” Malin pointed at the hall table.
“The Eagle? I bought it at Conway’s two months ago. Thought I should protect the girls.”
Malin gave Temeke a cursory look. He was looking through a pair of binoculars he’d found on the coffee table.
“Anything missing?” she asked.
Darryl frowned and shook his head. “Maisie lost her cell phone a day or so ago. We think she dropped it in the street. So I got her another. Would you like some tea?”
Malin shook her head, wondering if she should have offered to make him one instead.
“Got anything stronger?” Temeke said as he walked back into the hall. “Just a sip―to keep out the chill.”
They followed Darryl through a stone archway into a spacious kitchen. Malin knew Temeke had smelled the odor from Darryl’s mouth, probably thought he’d had too much to drink.
The cabinets were a rustic style with pendant lights over an island and wooden beams on the ceiling. A large white mantel dominated the back wall and beneath it was an antique range. There was a bottle of red wine on the granite countertop with yellow flowers and blueberries on the label. Home-made it promised.
Malin watched Darryl pour two small glasses with a shaky hand. Either he was nervous or just dog tired. He must have been exhausted working up all that adrenaline to shoot a man.
“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” he said, looking at her with a wrinkled brow. There was a spark of mischief in his eyes as he stood there, hands clutching two full glasses.
“I’m fine thanks,” Malin said, feeling the heat from those eyes. She instinctively turned toward Temeke, wondering what possessed him to sample the wine.
“You identified the car as a dark colored Camaro,” Temeke said, saluting Darryl with his glass before taking a large gulp.
“Goes down like silk,” Darryl said, holding up a warning hand, “and then comes the punch.”
Malin saw Temeke’s shoulders hunch as he began to sputter, and then the fit of coughing stopped. “Oh, man! That tastes like hot creosote.”
Darryl laughed, showing a perfect set of white teeth. “Too much and it’s a laxative.”
“Now he tells me,” Temeke said, handing the glass to Malin.
“The car,” Darryl began. “I’ve seen it before. No license plate. Just sits outside the bank and watches. He followed me home last week and I could have sworn he was the same man in my back yard. He jumped over the wall and down into the arroyo. But tonight it was different. Like he wanted something.”
“Anything unusual about the car?”
Darryl shook his head.
“You said he spoke to you?”
“He knew I was hiding. Said he took heads, young girl’s heads. Like Kizzy’s. Said he wanted me to give him one of my daughters.”
“So you shot him.”
Darryl stared blankly as if mystified. “I shot at the car. What would you have done?”
Malin could hear the silence over the buzz in her ears. The wine tiptoed down her throat, tasting of bitter
fruit until the explosion hit her empty stomach. The room was starting to blur around the edges and it took a great deal of effort to focus on Darryl’s face.
“I would have called the cops,” Temeke said quietly, face puckered. “That’s a high-powered set of binoculars you’ve got in there. Unusual birds in the neighborhood?”
Darryl licked his lips. “I usually use them for hunting. I’ve seen the car a few times, tried to read his license plate. I would have called it in if he had one. You’d have thought the cops would have pulled him over by now.”
You would, thought Malin. She flicked a hand at Jarvis and asked him to check for footprints in the back yard.
“Seems like the Journal has their own slant on things, Darryl,” Temeke said. “Don’t be surprised if they start pointing fingers in your direction. Parents first. Our friendly journalist claims she’s got a new source. With a British accent.”
Darryl knotted his brows and shook his head. “You’re kidding?”
“A pain in the―” Temeke shot Malin a look and seemed to change his mind. “And talking of cops, we’ve got both entrances of Clemency Christian School covered. My brother-in-law called. Just got back from a fishing trip. Said he’ll be covering the afternoon shift. Lt. Luis Alvarez. I’ll make sure he says hello to the girls.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
“We’ll put some security cameras around your house, a telephone-tap, that kind of thing. I’ll leave you my vest.” Temeke pointed at the hall chair where it was draped over the seat. "Until then, if you hear any funny noises, practice barking. Most intruders are scared of dogs. Most detectives are scared of dogs.” Temeke reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph. “Does this look like the man you saw?”
Darryl frowned and peered at the photograph through half closed eyes. “Yeah, that’s him.”
Malin looked down at the photo in Temeke’s hand. It was Morgan Eriksen. The only photograph he had.
TWENTY-FIVE
Darryl stared at a plate of bacon and eggs, heartbeat racing. His stomach was rock hard and he had no idea why. Sharek’s fever was down, but her cough was worse. It might have been that hacking cough and the crowds in the Village Inn that made him feel sick.
He had been mad about the newspaper article on Friday morning. It painted him out to be a suspect, a tragic loner whose wife died under suspicious circumstances. If you could call an asthma attack suspicious then so be it.
What had been more suspicious was his boss’s reaction to it. Morty Coben, a man who groomed his moustache more than his staff, had called him into his office that same morning and thought it appropriate to let him go. After all, it was in his own interests.
Lucky he gave him a big fat pay check otherwise Darryl would have punched his teeth out.
He tried to smile at Sharek with her stack of pancakes, tried to smile at Tess. Maisie’s eyes flicked here and there, fork picking at a sloppy pile of scrambled eggs. He wanted to say something to make them laugh, something clever like he used to in the old days.
The best he could do was stare at his iPad, at the real-time video of every room in his house. It was then he realized something serious and profound was happening. The sliding door to the patio had been left open.
He couldn’t remember excusing himself from the table, pushing past Maisie, telling her to look after the girls. He raced home, tires skidding in the driveway and leaped from the driver’s seat without closing the door. To his surprise there were no signs of the police, no alarms, just the melodic splash of the fountain in the front yard.
Fountain, he mouthed. It wasn’t possible.
The water had been drained out almost a month ago, every last drop sucked out with a power vacuum. Sure enough, water trickled over the lip of the first urn and dropped into the next. He was as clueless as he was baffled.
The motion detector in the bell tower should have sensed movement as he came through the front gate. He’d set it when he left and there was no beam winking between the columns, no alarm buzzing outside. His phone hadn’t sent him a text. It hadn’t even rung.
He walked toward the front door, saw the gap between the frame and the jam, and pushed it open with one hand.
He saw nothing unusual, only shadows in the hall and sunlight streaming in through the skylight. The smell of fresh air streaked through the house, and he could hear the pat-pat-pat of the window blinds.
At the end of the hall was the kitchen and he walked stiff-legged toward it. Sucking in a deep cool breath, he peered into the living room, no furniture overturned, no smashed glass underfoot.
The blinds began to snap back and forth as a stream of cold air shot through the house. He’d been holding his breath as he went through the house and he let it out in one big sigh.
Just as he was about to close the patio door, he saw footprints carved into muddy slush on the pavers, a crisscross pattern like those on the bottom of a moccasin. They seemed to be heading toward the back wall, stopping at the footing as if someone had jumped right over it.
They were inside the house too, etched in the light beige carpet all the way back to the front door. He hadn’t noticed them when he came in. But there they were, just dark enough to make out on the travertine floor.
This way, he said to himself, walking toward the sitting room, eyeing the mantel, seven photographs in their neat silver frames.
Something was different.
Two were missing. The one of Kizzy on her swing and Tess proudly holding a medal. He saw the revolving pendulum on the clock, the glass screen, the reflection of a man’s face. His face. He nearly gasped when he saw it. Pasty, like a ghost.
Then he heard a sound, like the clip and slide of a gun. It came from the other side of the house, the garage if he guessed right. Inhaling slowly, he was convinced the intruder would hear each drawn breath, that he would track the very warmth of it with those supernatural powers of his.
Not an intruder. A hunter.
That was the worst thing. When his intuition kicked in and told him the intruder was somehow supernatural. A predator with sharper senses than a dog. How did he get in without tripping the alarms?
Darryl sensed his time was running out, that the hunter would find him at any moment, that he was being tracked and scented. As he started forward, another fear replaced the first. What if the intruder had a gun?
He eased around the furniture, eyes flicking toward the hall. He had to get his gun. The one in the nightstand. It was only seven steps to his bedroom, only five if he ran for it. The corridor was deserted. The only thing that moved was an army of dust motes, twisting beneath the skylight.
Sprinting down the hall, he reached the bedroom in three ragged breaths. The nightstand drawer gaped open. The gun was gone.
“No,” he murmured, fingers searching under the pillows on his bed, between the mattress and the box spring.
His first instinct was to call the police, but the noise would only carry around the house and attract the intruder’s attention.
But he could text.
Snatching the phone from his pocket, he found Detective Temeke in his contacts and clicked off four words.
Intruder in the house.
He checked the volume. The sound was off.
Then he sat on the edge of his bed and took three small breaths, listening to a chiming clock in the living room. He looked from the dresser to the open door and then to the closet on the other side. It was all the same, just how he had left it.
The phone vibrated in his hand and a red light blinked in the top left corner.
“Thank God,” he murmured.
He swiped the screen and stared at an unfamiliar number. There were four words in the message.
Can’t find your gun?
In spite of the terror he felt, Darryl knew better than to answer it. The security features on the phone had somehow been compromised and Detective Temeke was no longer getting his messages. The deep gloom that surrounded him got thicker by the second
and he wished he’d kept the landline, the old dial phone that once sat beside the bed.
He saw the next text surrounded by a speech balloon. It looked so flippant in light of the message.
Should take care of your things Darryl. Should have taken care of your daughter.
What day was it? Sunday. Darryl had almost forgotten. His girls were eating breakfast with their aunt. They would be safe from this maniac.
Should always lock the door. Always check the alarms.
Darryl was already sick to the stomach. Texts flying out of nowhere. All he needed to do was get to the front door and out into the street. Anything to warn the girls just in case they came home.
A good father is a protective father. Remember that.
For some reason he couldn’t grasp, Darryl was reminded of his car before he entered the house. Had he locked it? Abruptly he felt poised on the brink of panic. If everything he had was systematically being taken away from him, what then? What did he have left to escape with? What did he have left to fight with?
The baseball bat. Behind the door.
Rather than hole himself up in his bedroom, he stumbled for the door, staring at the blank space between the carpet and the wall. He was sure he had left it there, sure it was there two days ago. And then he felt the vibration of his phone again.
A baseball bat? You must be hard up.
Darryl heard the pounding of his heart, so loud he thought it would break through his rib cage. The hunter was in the kitchen, watching every room in the house from the security monitor.
It was then his mind went back to the mantel shelf, to the clock, to the pictures. Why had he taken those two pictures? And the sound of a clip and slide? It was next door’s garage door. He could hear it closing as they drove away.
He wanted to shout out then, wanted to warn the intruder that he would protect his youngest from a mind sicker than sick. He wanted to rush out and squeeze that neck with both hands.
Trouble was, he didn’t have a weapon. But he did have a bullet-proof vest. In the closet.
I know what you’re thinking, Darryl. You’re thinking you’d like to run.
The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) Page 15