Dewitt leaned forward, pulling out his notebook. “The what?”
“The motel. That’s what we call it… the inmates. The Medication Motel… that’s the full name. The rooms are cheap, the views limited.”
Dewitt took down a note.
“That interests you, James?”
“Tell me about Vacaville. About this person.”
“As I was explaining, we don’t use names. But I can tell you all about the individual in question. We played chess together. Did I tell you I’m undefeated, James? Three years now, undefeated. Know it’s true. He lost at chess—this individual in question—I won. But I always let it be close, to maintain his interest. I’m that good, James. I can control the game.” He added with a perverse smile, “Can’t I?”
Dewitt went about polishing his glasses.
Seeing this, Collette commented, “I’m nearsighted. Did you know that? Yet they don’t allow me glasses. Not even plastic lenses. And they say we have rights. But not in here. Know it’s true. Here, there are only wrongs.” He chuckled. “Talk about nearsighted,” he said, self-amused.
“Tell me about him,” Dewitt said, hooking the glasses behind his ears.
“We shared common interests. He began by leaving pet food out, attracting a pair of noisy neighborhood dogs. He taped the dogs’ jaws shut, placed plastic bags over their heads, and watched them run around the house until they dropped. That’s how he felt: choked. I know that feeling. I live with that feeling, James. Know it’s true. The streets are choked; the cities; all of us. Yes, we shared common interests. Escalation, James. The history of the world is told in terms of escalation. Dissatisfaction. The leaders, the workers, all the same. Dissatisfaction followed by escalation. It was in Sacramento, I think, though of this I am uncertain. They never caught him, James. You, the police. Whatever town it was, you will find a Girl Scout missing. She was the first for him. Came right to his door selling cookies. Last stop for her. Others followed. A woman taking some kind of poll, or was it the census? Yes, it might have been, that would be ironic… taking the census. You see? By the time she’s through—he’s through—there’s one less in the population. Change in the census. Another woman, selling perfume, I think he said.
“If you learn one thing out there, it’s that the law moves slowly. Know it’s true. What did they get him on? Not the Girl Scout. Not any of the women. He was always careful to move the bodies late at night, a great distance. He distanced himself from the crimes, you understand?” A self-satisfied chuckle. “They didn’t even get him on the arson. They got his nephew for that. No, what they got him on was the pets, you see? In practicing for the arson, he burned his own place down. Putting out the fire, they came across the skeletons… the pets! Over a dozen dogs by then, I believe is the number he said. All, in various degrees of decomposition, with their mouths taped. They sent him to the hospital at Vacaville for examination. Ninety days, because all they could prove was the pets. That’s where we met, as I’ve said. We shared histories.” He stopped and faced Dewitt, his thin body framed by the double set of netting. “He’s the only one I have ever shared the details with. He was good enough to share his with me. I don’t know his name, but he’s your man. I sacrifice him only in self-preservation. Survival of the quickest, James. Seize every opportunity as if it’s your last. Know that it’s true.”
“A description?”
“Angry eyes. I remember those eyes. An attractive man, I think you would say. Big. Indian blood in him. Apache? Blackfoot? Not much, but you could see it in his bones. He liked to brag about it.”
“If I showed you photographs, could you pick out a face from a photograph?”
“Perhaps Shilstein didn’t tell you: I’m a genius, James. Know that it’s true. A photographic memory. What you ask is kid’s stuff. Of course, it’s up for negotiation. I’d like to see the system installed first. I’d like to see the rental agreement with that video store.”
“There’s no time for that.”
“You’re on the wrong side of the net, James. Ball’s in this court. Over here, there’s plenty of time. Nothing but time. I have to protect my assets. Be grateful I don’t ask for a transfer. I’m not a greedy man, James. Simple needs. Really quite simple. Make a few phone calls, James. That must be something you’re capable of. We’ll talk. You know where to find me. Guard!” he shouted.
“His name, Collette. I know you know his name. You must have called him something.”
He smiled widely. He was missing several teeth on his left side. “I called him Trapper John. He called me Hawkeye. That’s because I’m the funnier of the two of us. Oh, and because he had been married. In the show, Trapper John’s married, you know. Hawkeye’s not.”
Standing. “That’s not right,” Dewitt corrected. “A genius, Collette? I don’t think so. It wasn’t Trapper; it was B.J.” Collette looked troubled, even puzzled by his error. “Know that it’s true,” Dewitt added, scrunching his toes so that his feet wouldn’t fall out of his shoes as he walked.
6
Dewitt phoned Capp from Shilstein’s office. With a two-hour drive ahead of him, he wanted to take advantage of the few remaining work hours in this day. He explained the session with Collette and suggested that because of the increasing evidence uncovered by Clare O’Daly, a task force be organized utilizing investigators from both the District Attorney’s office and the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, both of whom had been consulted throughout the short investigation. The purpose of the task force would be to show photographs of Osbourne and McDuff to motel employees in an attempt to determine where each had stayed the night of their murders. A job of enormous scope in this tourist area; nonetheless, it was one that Dewitt felt must begin immediately.
Dr. Bradford Shilstein, emotionally charged by participating in an active investigation again, used his contact with authorities at Vacaville to have copies of all records of inmates discharged within the past six months sent both to Dewitt and himself. Further arrangements were made with a downtown electronics store to have Collette’s entertainment system installed immediately. Dewitt left Atascadero feeling something like a conductor: He could wave the baton, but the performance depended on the players themselves.
7
“Do you believe in God?” asked the heavily accented voice of Dr. Ricardo Emmanuel. “Allow me to rephrase.” Pause. “Do you believe in the Scriptures?”
“I plead the fifth,” replied Dewitt. The back room of Maratea’s Funeral Parlor smelled sour.
Zorro’s Sherman nonfilter cigarette was pinched between his long fingers. He indulged in the flavor of the slate-gray smoke by passing it from his mouth and recycling it up into his nose. The room was also exceptionally cool. A pair of bloody latex gloves lay in the trash.
Lumbrowski’s body lay covered by a sheet on an examination table.
“You remember the story of Jonah and the whale?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a believer in ultimate irony?” The doctor pronounced it ironing.
Dewitt took a seat on an adjacent stool. Zorro and his drama, his smoldering cigarette, his fiery brown eyes and theatrical eyebrows. Get on with it, Dewitt wanted to say. He waited.
“Our swollen friend over there was your nemesis, would you not agree?”
“We didn’t get along too well.”
The comment elicited a coquettish grin from the doctor. “An understatement, indeed. He was your archenemy, this whale-livered dipsomaniac, was he not? And so who would believe it would be Howard Lumbrowski who ended up doing James Dewitt a favor?”
Dewitt adjusted himself on the uncomfortable stool. There was no rushing Zorro, just as there was no rushing anyone in this business. Each person had to be left to their own script, and Zorro seemed to be relishing the moment.
He slid a beaker of clear fluid before Dewitt. It smelled like alcohol. “Behold,” Zorro said, waving the cigarette carelessly. Dewitt anticipated an explosion. “An olive branch. A final offering of peace from H
oward Lumbrowski to James Dewitt. If it had your name on it, I could not read it more clearly.”
Dewitt moved the glass. Lying on the bottom of the beaker was a key. “Jonah,” he echoed.
“Yes, Detective,” Zorro proclaimed proudly.
“You found this inside him?”
“Bravo.”
“He swallowed a key?”
“Immediately prior to death,” the doctor prompted. “I have no doubt that this was the last thing Howard Lumbrowski swallowed. Probably his last act.”
Dewitt picked up the beaker then and studied the key more carefully. Stamped into the metal of the key was the number 12. It was clearly a commercial key. A motel key.
“It will require the diligence of a good detective to find what door that key fits, but on the other side of that door, I believe you may find the clue to Howard Lumbrowski’s murder. A person must be fairly determined to swallow a key, after all. Not terribly palatable. I can only presume it is, for lack of a better expression”—he cast Dewitt a self-satisfied look—“a dying clue.”
“It’s a commercial key. The kind used by motels,” Dewitt said.
“So it appears,” the doctor agreed. “Did you see the face?”
“Yes.”
“The hands?”
Dewitt nodded. “He got in a fight?”
“If he did, his opponent was a wall. I found splinters in his knuckles.”
“What about those red marks?” Dewitt asked. “The ones on his neck?”
“No idea,” said Zorro. “Some kind of abrasion. It’s unfamiliar to me.”
“He put his hand through a wall?”
“You’re the detective.”
“May I keep this?”
“To preserve the chain of custody, I would prefer it be delivered to the lab. There couldn’t possibly be prints, of course, because of stomach acids, but rules are rules.”
Dewitt checked his watch. “Ten minutes to five. What if I ran it over to the lab for you?”
“Won’t they have closed?”
“Not if I make a phone call.”
“So make a phone call. I have about twenty minutes more here.”
8
Clare admitted him through the laboratory’s back entrance, a double-door arrangement for added security. At any one time, the laboratory’s evidence room contained hundreds of bags of various controlled substances and weapons of every kind, a potential target for looting. He delivered the box of vials and petri dishes containing various trace evidence from the Lumbrowski autopsy. In the cooler, he carried the organics. She explained that a coworker was out picking up some fast food. The two of them would tackle the Lumbrowski autopsy evidence tonight. She promised to have a copy of the key to him in the morning.
He caught her up on his interview with Collette. She leaned over and kissed him in the middle of his talking. It was a long sensuous kiss. “How fast is that fast food?” he asked, his implication obvious.
“It’s pizza. She’ll be at least twenty minutes.” As she unbuttoned his shirt, she asked, “Have I shown you the evidence room lately? We really should put all this stuff away.”
He mirrored her efforts, drawing her shirt open button by button.
“You smell wonderful,” she said, burying her face in the crook of his neck.
“Are there still blankets in the evidence room?” he asked.
“You bet,” she said, taking him by the hand.
They were back in the lab well before the pizza arrived. Clare handed him a piece of paper. “Today’s major victory,” she explained. “We identified the manufacturer of the bleach found on the cotton fibers.”
Dewitt read from the page. This woman had a habit of saving the best for last—in and out of the office, he thought. The industrial quality bleach was manufactured by Pacific Rim Chemical Corporation. Also listed were the three commercial laundries between San Jose and Salinas that were clients of Pacific Rim. Brighton Laundry and Cleaning Service, the last on the list, was located in Seaside. “We’re putting together a task force. We were prepared for a door-to-door of all motels, health clubs, and the like, to show photos of Osbourne and McDuff. This just saved us a few thousand man-hours. We’ll run down Brighton’s clients first. If Brighton can give us a list of motels—”
“Mind if I play devil’s advocate for a minute?”
“Shoot.”
“Why the emphasis on motels? As you’ve just said, it could be a health club, a massage parlor, a whorehouse… anyplace these men might have lain down on a sheet or towel. So what if Wood stole the stereo while McDuff was at a motel? McDuff could have gone on from there—” Dewitt shook his head, interrupting her.
He explained: “Wherever that stereo was stolen from was McDuff’s last stop while alive. He would have reported the theft to his wife—and she insists he would have to us, as well—had it been stolen prior to their speaking early the evening of the eleventh. Next day, the twelfth, when we found him, it was missing from the truck. Therefore, it must have been lifted that evening. Had McDuff gotten back into that truck alive, say at a restaurant or a health club, he would have needed a police report for his insurance.” He raised a finger. “I should condition that. He may have gotten into the truck alive, but in that case, he never came back out. Add to that Wood’s statement that he had recently hit a motel parking lot—”
“But can you trust that?”
“Until this key showed up, I wasn’t sure. Now I’m convinced to start with motels. If that key fits a door, we have probable cause to get ourselves a search warrant.”
Clare speculated: “The killer locates his victims at a particular motel, stakes out their vehicles, and hides inside the car, waiting?”
“Collette killed his victims while they were asleep. This guy has imitated the rest of Collette’s techniques. Why not that one, as well?”
“Inside the room?”
“It’s possible. I need that key. I need to find this room. I think Lumbrowski was tortured, was beat up by somebody. He left this key to lead us back to the crime scene. This key is the best piece of hard evidence we have. We lead with our strength and hope Collette comes through with a name. I think he will. It’s the combination of evidence that tells the story here. Let me call the aquarium. I’ll try to stay and help you.”
“No, you will not,” she interrupted. “You’re the detective on this, not the FI, and you admitted the aquarium is the one place that gets your mind off all this. You need that, James. Go. Maybe I’ll stop by your place with some good news later on.”
“Even without good news,” he said.
“We’ll see. I don’t want to wear you out,” she said with a smile.
“I wish you would,” he said, taking her hand and stroking her fingers.
9
Emmy and Briar walked over to the aquarium following their Tae Kwan Do class. Dewitt realized that this meant being with Clare tonight was out. Briar said bluntly, “He’s spending the night with Tona and thinks I don’t know about it.” Emmy seemed nervous. Dewitt asked her what was wrong and she mugged her way through a “Nothing. No problem.” It didn’t feel right, however.
The girls had showered and changed, their hair damp and faces still red.
“Break any bones?” Dewitt tried.
Emmy ignored him and said, “This is the busiest I’ve about ever seen it here.”
“Tour buses were delayed,” Dewitt explained. “It’ll be this way ‘til closing.”
“Lucky you,” Emmy said. Briar laughed. “We’re going to wander around, okay?”
“Sure,” agreed Dewitt. Briar blushed. “What’s up?” he asked the girl.
She shrugged and glanced at Emmy.
Dewitt told them about a newborn pair of baby otters. “You might want to check it out,” he told them.
“Sure thing,” Emmy said, taking Briar by the arm and dragging her away.
“Emmy?” he called out.
The girls were quickly absorbed by the thick crowds of senior ci
tizens and camera-clad tourists.
Dewitt fielded a variety of questions. Some evenings he felt like a human tape recorder, delivering his memorized information with all the enthusiasm of a directory-assistance operator. He found himself reciting the feeding procedure and why the tank’s windows were seven inches thick. Slowly, he got back into it. Since he had sold off his own collection of nearly two hundred rare species, the fish in these tanks had become his hobby.
Cynthia Chatterman, the ever-present board member, came waltzing up to Dewitt from behind and said, “Phone call for you. I had it transferred to administration.”
Dewitt hurried through the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and found his way to administration. If it had been business, his pager would have sounded. “Dewitt,” he answered, punching the phone’s only lit button. “Dewitt,” he repeated. “Hello?” No one answered. He heard the annoying ventilation system kick on, looked to the ceiling, and then realized the sound was coming over the phone. A practical joke of some sort? He might have allowed himself to believe this on any other day, but with Rusty’s recent murder, he felt he had to look. He started off at a walk, breaking quickly into a run. What if the intention was to get him away from his post temporarily? Away from Emmy?
He took a shortcut: out the building, around the side, and back in through the member’s entrance.
The receiver of the third pay phone was off the hook, hanging by its wire. He glanced over at the nearby otter tank viewing balcony that he had recommended to the girls, and spotted them immediately in the crush of tourists.
Seeing the girls relieved some of his anxiety. Still, he didn’t like the mysterious phone call. He decided to speak with them and ask them to stay by him over at the Kelp Forest until closing.
It was on his way over, as he looked up a second time, that he spotted a man standing in the crush of onlookers. As the girls moved, so did the stranger.
Dewitt began to walk slowly toward this display area to get a better look. Don’t run, he chided himself. Don’t attract attention. As he passed beneath the giant whales, he briefly lost sight of the crowded balcony. He picked up his pace, stitching his way through a sea of cotton-haired retirees shuffling and pointing their way from one exhibit to the next.
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