“Whatever brand of rubber gloves this ape used had a residue of fine powder on them. The ones I use have cornstarch on them. It keeps the rubber soft and flexible, keeps it from cracking. Also, it makes the gloves easier to slip on.”
“So,” Ann said, disappointed, “he wore gloves.” She recalled how inhuman his touch had felt; it was the rubber she had felt against her skin.
“Yeah,” Melanie said, a hint of that fabulous smile appearing, “but don’t worry about it. We’ve got plenty to work with here.” She suddenly spotted something on the wall and yelled to the young officer working with her, “Alex, get the ladder.”
Ann followed her line of sight and saw what looked like a fly on the wall, up near the ceiling. “What is it?”
“You fired only once in the house, right?”
“Right,” Ann said. “And once in the driveway.”
“The first one must have struck and deflected off the mirror. That’s where it went, up there.” Again she yelled, “Get the fucking ladder and get it now, Alex.”
A young blond-haired officer stuck his head in the room, a look of exasperation on his face. “Melanie, the ladder is at the very back of the van. We’ve got a ton of equipment in there. I’ll have to move everything out to get to it, and it’s really raining hard. Everything else will get wet.”
“So move it,” she said, taking another puff of her cigarette and then going to the bathroom to toss it into the toilet. “If you mess up the evidence we just collected from the stick-and-run, Alex, I’ll break your skinny neck. Put a tarp over it or something.”
Once the young officer had shuffled out of the room, Ann stood beside Melanie. She pulled out her pack for another cigarette and then put it back in her pocket, evidently changing her mind. “You were here, Ann. Hey, you got any chewing gun?”
Ann shook her head. She was trying to play back the exact sequence of events. Everything had happened so fast.
“How about mints? Do you have any mints?”
“I don’t think so, Mel. I have some fruit, some grapes. Would that help?”
“Grapes?” Melanie said, a funny expression on her face. “What would I do with grapes? Forget it. Come and see what we found in the hall.”
Ann followed the woman the short distance as her rubber boots squeaked over the floor. In the center of the hall, right outside David’s room, someone had placed orange highway cones in a half-moon circle out from the wall.
“Sorry,” Melanie whispered, rubbing up against Ann. “I usually just mark it off with chalk, but they gave me that rookie to train, and the guy is either blind as a bat or a fucking moron. Every crime scene we go to, he steps right in the middle of it. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” She stopped and peered up at Ann. “Don’t you think they have to take an eye test at the county? I mean, how can you work in this job if you can’t see?”
Ann chuckled. Melanie always had some weird tale to tell about the people she worked with. “He’s cute, though.”
“The hell with him,” Melanie said, her pale blue eyes coming alive as her attention returned to the cones. “This is where the suspect was when you flipped him off your back, right?”
“Right,” Ann said uncertainly. “No, it wasn’t here,” she said, correcting herself. “I’m certain he jumped on my back right outside my bedroom door.” Ann turned and looked back at the spot where she thought the attack had occurred. It had been dark, however, and she just wasn’t sure.
“Well, then,” Melanie answered, “he must have been standing here when you fired the gun the first time.”
“Right,” Ann said, her nose assaulted with a foul odor. “What’s that smell?”
Melanie laughed. “Scared the shit right out of that sucker, Ann. When you fired off that shot, he got a case of the runs.” She carefully stepped inside the cones and squatted down with a specimen cup and a small plastic spatula. Scraping up the runny excrement, she placed it in the cup. “Great way to earn your living, huh?” she said. “Rather scrape up shit than brains, though. And this is good shit,” she said, laughing again. “Excuse the pun, but we can tell a lot from this guy’s feces.” She brought the spatula up close to her face and stared at it. “Like what he had for lunch, for instance, along with a lot of other fun things. Com. See, that’s a kernel of com right there.”
Ann put her hand over her stomach. Melanie might make more money than she did, but she could keep her job as far as Ann was concerned. “I think you’re stirring that stuff up. God, put the lid on that thing.”
Melanie didn’t react at all. “In addition to the saliva and feces, we’ve got a good blood sample. When he broke out the window in your son’s bedroom to get in, he must have cut himself. Because this all went down so fast, it’s probably not contaminated. That means we can come up with this perp’s fingerprints.”
“Wait,” Ann said. “I thought you said he wore gloves.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of fingerprint,” Melanie said, standing and putting the lid on the specimen sample. “His genetic fingerprints. You know, do a DNA test if we need to. Of course, this isn’t going to lead us to the suspect. Unfortunately, we need another blood sample from him or we don’t have anything to match up with.”
Ann shook her head. What they needed now was a way to identify the suspect and track him down. What Melanie was giving her were ways to convict him.
Melanie removed her white rubber gloves, shoving them into her pocket. A few seconds later, she pulled out another cigarette and lit it, a stream of smoke exiting her mouth along with her words. “See, a normal fingerprint is good, but not that good. We never lift a complete set. Seldom do we have anything but partial prints from one or two fingers. It tells us the suspect was in the house on some occasion, but it doesn’t tell us specifically that he was in the house at the time of the crime. With DNA fingerprinting, we know it all. All you have to do is get this bastard in a courtroom.”
The woman stopped speaking and smiled, the full boat, a smile that took up half her face and instantly made the recipient a Melanie Chase fan for life. At times like this she didn’t look hardened by years of working with the worst side of society, scooping up brains, guts, and human excrement. She looked just like a cherub—a little redheaded, toothy, freckle-faced cherub. Except for the cigarettes, Ann thought.
Just then the blond officer came down the hall, lugging the ladder on his back, and promptly knocked two of the cones down. Then he proceeded to pull the ladder right through the area Melanie had sectioned off. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Ann and whispered in her ear, “Guy’s blind. Didn’t I tell you? Good thing I already collected the evidence. If I hadn’t, we’d be scraping it off his shoes.”
While they watched, he tried to get the ladder through the bedroom door but instead walked right into the doorframe. “Where do you want this?” he asked Melanie, rubbing a red dent on his forehead.
“Africa, of course,” Melanie barked. Snatching the ladder from him, she slammed it up against the wall where the bullet was located. “Where do you think I want it, Alex?”
Ann started to leave the room just as Melanie started climbing, the cigarette dangling from her mouth, her head encircled by a dense cloud of smoke. Then Ann heard Melanie screaming, a loud thump, and hurried back into the room. Evidently Alex had bumped into the ladder, for Melanie was on her back on the floor.
“Are you hurt?” the young officer said, bending down over her.
“Get away from me,” Melanie said, standing and brushing herself off. “Don’t touch me or you’re dead, Alex.” Once she had picked her smoldering cigarette up off the floor and shoved it back in her mouth, she slapped the ladder back up against the wall. “Go to the back of the van, Alex, and close the door. No, I take that back. Lock the door. Don’t come out again tonight until we get to the station.”
“But, Melanie, I thought—”
She was climbing again and looked back and said to Ann, “See, I told you it was bad. You just didn’t want
to believe me. No one ever believes me. Personnel doesn’t believe me, my boss doesn’t believe me.”
Ann began to laugh, a good feeling after the ordeal she had been through. The young officer was still standing there, refusing to leave. “But you said you were going to let me—”
“Ann,” Melanie said, high on the ladder, digging in the plaster with some kind of metal instrument while she puffed away, “do me a favor. Handcuff this guy for me. Lock him in a closet or something.”
Sitting on the sofa in the living room, Noah Abrams was brooding over the case. Damn, he thought. It had to be Sawyer. The little fucker had switched cars right under their noses, probably with the express intent of coming over here and committing this attack. Correct that, he told himself. He hadn’t come over here merely to hurt Ann. Whoever was after this woman wanted her stone cold dead. Anyway, that was how he saw it. This was the second explicit attack on her life, and he was the one in charge of the investigation. He had to bring this maniac in, no matter what it took.
But he was confused. He could rationalize Sawyer going after Ann to keep her from testifying, but what was this stuff with her kid?
Ann wandered into the living room and took a seat next to him on the sofa. Noah looked over at her and compressed his mouth. “I don’t like this, Ann. I don’t like it at all.”
“Neither do I,” she said grimly, lacing her fingers together and then placing them in her lap.
“Isn’t there anything more specific that you can tell me about the guy who did this? I mean, you did see him. Isn’t that what you said?”
Ann stared off into space, forcing herself to bring forth the vision of the man in the driveway. “He—he was…” she stammered, the memory filling her with terror.
“What?” Abrams said, frustrated. “Give me something, Ann.”
At first Ann didn’t respond. Why had she hesitated? Why hadn’t she pulled the trigger when she’d seen him in the driveway in the light? If she had, he would be dead, and this would all be behind her. “He looked familiar,” she finally said, cutting her eyes to him. “I don’t think it was Sawyer, Noah.”
“You know him?” Abrams said, leaping to his feet. “Shit, you’ve got us jumping through hoops here, and you know who it is?”
“I know him,” Ann said weakly, dropping her eyes, “but I don’t know him.” Realizing how ambiguous this sounded, she added, “It was only a second, Noah. I saw him only a second, but his eyes—”
“Wonderful,” Abrams said, annoyed, turning to walk out of the room, then stopping and facing Ann again. “What about his eyes?”
Tears slowly inched down Ann’s face. “I just don’t know, Noah,” she said, the most honest statement she could make. “Maybe it will come to me later. You know, where I’ve seen him before. I’ve handled so many cases, dealt with so many criminals through the years. It could have been any one of them.”
Ann cupped her hand over her mouth, forcing back the tears. She didn’t want him to see her this way. She wanted him to see her as strong and resilient, not terrified and weak. For years she had stood in her father’s shadow and fought to win the respect of men like Noah. Now she was just another terrified female, so hysterical she couldn’t even give them a straight answer.
Seeing her distress, Abrams dropped down in front of the sofa, pulling her head onto his shoulder. “We’ll get him,” he said tenderly. “I promise you, Ann, we’ll get him.”
Chapter 11
By the time Reed and Whittaker finally left the Black Onion, it was last call, almost two o’clock. But they learned things they hadn’t known and made a contact. They’d verified that Peter Chen and Brett Wilkinson were regulars at the dance club, even though they hadn’t been seen there lately and no one knew who Jimmy Sawyer was. Evidently the Black Onion was not the type of establishment Sawyer favored. Their clientele was new-age funk. From what they’d heard. Sawyer preferred heavy metal.
Phil Whittaker’s contact was a parolee from federal prison who had served four years on a narcotics bust. Phil knew he was using again and could easily get him shipped back to the joint. So they traded, a common practice in police work. The man was trading information for silence.
“Big operation,” Phil said on the walk back to the car. It had stopped raining momentarily, but water was still rushing noisily down storm drains, and huge pools had formed in depressed sections of the parking lot. “I mean, big operation, Reed old buddy. We landed feet first in a rattlesnake nest.”
Reed nodded, his face muscles twitching. “How did little shits like Sawyer and his buddies get in with these guys? Want to tell me that, Phil? There are two distinct breeds of cat here.” Reed stepped off the curb right into a foot of water. “Fuck, will you look at that?” The cuffs of his pants were soaking, his socks squishy inside his shoes. “They just dried out, and now…”
Whittaker coughed a few times, feeling too miserable to care about Reed’s plight. The two men continued walking down the street. Not wanting to arrive in a police car, even an unmarked one, they had parked several blocks away. “How do I know? Maybe they were at the right place at the right time. Colombian drug dealers,” Phil said, shaking his head. “Shit, those guys open fire with their AR-15s if you so much as sneeze on them.” Just as he finished that statement, he did sneeze and reached for a tissue in his pocket. “Sure wouldn’t want to run into those mothers right now,” he said, his nose clogged up. “You’d be talking to a dead man.”
Reed took his car keys out and unlocked the door to the police unit. They were in downtown Los Angeles, and the nearby buildings were covered with graffiti. Reed looked around him, thinking he wouldn’t want to be on the job in this area. Ventura looked squeaky clean compared to L.A.
Once he had fired up the car and pulled out, he continued the discussion. “All right, let’s assume Sawyer and his gang are financed by these Colombians from Miami. That gives us a better picture of the overall situation now. It goes like this:
“Sawyer and the rest cook the dope, and they get to distribute in their assigned territory, basically colleges and middle-class kids with some bucks, a little loose change for drugs. These guys are perfect. Wilkinson and Chen look like they just stepped out of a frat house. Sawyer works the locals, kids he probably knew in high school, kids that didn’t make it to college. That accounts for his long hair and loser looks.” The rain was starting to come down again, and Reed stopped to turn on the windshield wipers. “At least the nasty boys from Miami know what they’re doing. A bunch of South American drug dealers in a small town like Ventura would stand out like a sore thumb. Every narc in town would be crawling up their assholes.”
“I agree so far,” Whittaker said, nodding. “Keep going.
“So, after Sawyer and company sell off their quota of goodies, they turn the rest of the product over to this drug cartel, which peddles it on the streets in Miami. Think they’re shipping drugs out of the country?”
“Nah,” Whittaker said, tipping his head back and snorting nose spray up his nostrils. “Everyone’s a drug dealer in Colombia. Why do you think they come over here? We’re not talking coke or smack here anyway. The stuff Sawyer and his gang are cooking is a snap to produce. All you have to know is a little basic chemistry and you’re in business.’”
“Exactly,” Reed said. “My bet is they’re manufacturing X, a little acid, and a ton of high-quality speed.”
Reed watched as Whittaker squirted more nose spray up his nostrils. “You’re going to get addicted to that nose spray,” Reed cautioned. “Last year it took you a year to get off it.”
“Oh, yeah?” Whittaker said, making a show of squirting even more. “Maybe I should contact Sawyer and see what kind of goodies he’s got in his drugstore. Bet they could fix me right up.”
When Reed stopped at a light, the two men turned toward each other. “Fucking Colombians,” Reed said, shivering like a wet dog.
“Severed fingers and Colombians,” Whittaker said, the same anxious look in his eyes as
Reed’s. “Great combination, huh? Goes together like a ball and chain.”
The remainder of the ride was made in silence.
When they reached the station, Whittaker was so tired and sick that he told Reed just to leave him at the door to his car. Reed went inside the station to check with the watch commander for any new developments.
“Where you been. Reed?” the watch commander said gruffly. “Your men lost the perp, and Ann Carlisle was attacked in her house.”
Reed’s body lunged forward over the counter. “Was she hurt? When did it happen?”
“Hours ago,” the man said. “I think the units have already cleared. Abrams handled it.”
“Where is he?”
“Home in bed, probably.” The man shrugged.
Reed was out the door in seconds, back in his car speeding over the city streets.
Even though it was close to three in the morning, all the lights were burning when he pulled up at the curb in front of Ann’s house. All the way over. Reed had been mulling over the situation. If the informant was right. Sawyer, Chen, and Wilkinson might be lightweights, but the people they were in business with were deadly. Every day that lab was out of commission, they lost a fortune in revenue. And there were other considerations. Sawyer and his friends were neophytes in the drug trade, just eager to bring in the bread, get the chicks, buy the fancy cars. To them, it was all a game. But if they were apprehended, the men behind the operation, hardened and vicious criminals, had no assurance these kids would keep their mouths shut, not turn state’s evidence and cough up everything they knew. If Reed’s suspicions were valid, all three boys were sitting ducks. Once they were no longer able to supply these people with narcotics, they were expendable—basically garbage.
Reed also had to consider the fingers Ann said she had seen in Sawyer’s house. How did fingers fit into this equation? Did Sawyer and the rest have to do someone in, maybe to make their bones with the South American thugs? Reed was well aware that kids involved in minor crimes often proceeded to commit more serious ones. The boys could have murdered a street person, a drifter of some kind that no one had reported missing, then sliced off the fingers to provide proof of what they had done. Tommy felt a rush of excitement as he yanked open the car door. Now, this made sense. If drug dealers from Colombia knew Sawyer and his friends were tough enough to commit an actual murder, they would be more likely to accept a bunch of stupid rich boys as part of their operation.
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