Expose

by Danielle Girard

  The house was quiet.

  Hal tested the knob, but the door was locked. He reached for his phone to call Naomi. The call went straight to voicemail, and he clenched his eyes closed. It was Saturday on Thanksgiving weekend. What did he expect? He ended the call and dialed Dispatch again.

  “It’s Inspector Harris,” he said, winded. “I need to find out if George Ramseyer—Professor George Ramseyer—owns any properties other than his main house in Berkeley.”

  “We’re pretty short staffed, Inspector.”

  “I need this yesterday.” He’d needed it two days ago.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” the officer said.

  Hal ended the call and tried the knob again, shaking the door until the glass chattered in its frame. “There’s got to be something in there to give us a clue about where he took her.”

  “There’s a door on the side of the house,” Schwartzman said. “Maybe that one’s unlocked.”

  They hurried down the steps and around the side. The rosebushes looked brittle in the cool air, barren and almost gray. The man who had been pruning the bushes, that had to have been Deming Bao. Hal had assumed it was the gardener. He cursed his own prejudices. But the man’s response to the professor made sense now. He hadn’t been giving the finger to his boss. He’d been giving it to his father.

  Hal stared at the door. If he went in, he was breaking and entering. This wasn’t his jurisdiction. He glanced back at the street. Where the hell were the patrol cars? His gaze settled on the Mercedes Coupe on the street. An older model.

  The Berkeley police officer had told him that Susan Slade was run down by an older woman in a two-tone coupe. Professor Ramseyer had a two-tone coupe. In the darkness, the witness could have confused the gender. Was it possible? Had the professor killed Susan Slade?

  Why?

  Because she had discovered the truth about his son?

  He pictured Tabitha Wilson. She’d survived a brutal assault fourteen years ago and now . . . Was she inside right now?

  Hal grabbed the knob and rattled the door. Locked. Schwartzman shook her coat off her shoulders, put it over his hand, and motioned to the window. “Use this to break the glass.”

  He hesitated. It was an emergency. A woman might be held inside. A prisoner. The professor had lied to the police. For fourteen years.

  Hal punched through the window, feeling a release as the glass clattered on the concrete floor. Using Schwartzman’s coat, he carefully broke off the jagged pieces before reaching in to unlock the door.

  He pushed the door open with his foot and shook out her coat before handing it back to her. She put it back on as Hal drew his weapon, entering a basement.

  The room was maybe eight by ten, surrounded on two sides by crawl space. The other two walls were concrete. A flight of wooden stairs led up from one corner, and a workbench stretched the length of one wall, making the space feel even smaller.

  “Professor Ramseyer?”

  The cat slithered past them and passed under the workbench, circling its tail around one of the legs. Then it settled and began to mew.

  He and Schwartzman listened. Other than the cat, it was quiet, the house above them still. No one was home.

  He holstered his gun and rubbed his head. He’d broken into a professor’s house—outside of his jurisdiction—on a whim. A whim that wasn’t panning out.

  Hal moved through the dark space. He smelled sitting water and something dank, like mold. The basement looked as it had in the photos from the assault file. The women had been tied to tables, separated by a few feet. But where? This space was too small.

  He scanned the items on the workbench. Gorilla tape, mousetraps, cable ties in various lengths and colors, a hammer, nails, and a small white bucket filled with different sizes of nuts, bolts, screws, and nails. Torture devices? He’d seen all of these things used in horrific ways, but his mother and sisters had the same items in their garages.

  He met Schwartzman’s eye, saw the question. Shook his head. There was nothing there.

  She walked to the far side of the space and crouched under the stairs.

  Hal followed. A crawl space. He used the light on his phone to peer inside. Behind the retaining wall, the dirt was four feet high. A few boxes had been tucked along one side, decades of spiderwebs connecting the cardboard to the support beams above them. His flashlight caught the sheen of a web, making it glisten in the dark.

  Nothing there.

  Hal pulled a piece of insulation from her hair and caught something in Schwartzman’s expression. He followed her stare to the workbench.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “The cat.”

  The cat remained under the workbench, mewing. He shook his head.

  She took hold of his shirt, leaned close to his ear. “The professor said it was like a dog, always wanted to be with people.”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t follow. “We’re here.”

  “But the cat is over there, facing the wall.”

  It was true. The cat wasn’t even facing them. Instead, it stood between two separate tables of the workbench. Above it hung a line of cabinets, also divided in that same place.

  Drawing his gun again, he moved across the room. He reached his fingers in between the two workbenches, working them apart. They stuck briefly before the right one slid away. The wall was on rollers. He gave it a push, and it moved aside to reveal another room.

  It was dark inside, but a light came from around the corner. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

  A moment too long.

  “Drop the gun.” The professor no longer spoke with the soft tones of an old man. This voice was stern, focused. “Drop it, Detective, or I’ll kill her.”

  Hal sensed Schwartzman shift along the wall, ducking out of view as he began the slow process of lowering his gun. His eyes adjusted to the dark interior, and he saw Bitty Wilson.

  She lay naked on the floor next to a rough-hewn wood table, its legs thick posts, like something from a medieval castle. Rusted chains dangled at the sides of the table, its surface covered by what looked like dried branches of a rosebush. Her face, turned away from the professor as she whimpered, was blackened with dirt.

  Hal lowered the gun to the floor. That wasn’t dirt on Tabitha Wilson’s face.

  It was blood.

  And the source of it was almost certainly the man who lay dead on the floor.

  51

  Schwartzman held her breath, listening to the strange buzz coming from the darkness. Hal moved slowly into the room without glancing her way. Had the professor heard her? Did he know Hal wasn’t alone? She glanced over her shoulder at the stairs. Could she get upstairs and call for help? Where were the police?

  Something darted through the air in front of her. She swallowed a gasp and pressed her palm to her racing heart, tracking the shape across the room. It was followed by another, the same slash of color in the air. They were dragonflies—the same brilliant red as the one found in Aleena Laughlin’s mouth.

  “Get her in here,” came the professor’s growling voice. “Or I’ll kill the girl.”

  A chain rattled, and a woman’s scream pierced the silence.

  Schwartzman froze.

  Hal looked to her, his eyes wide with fear.

  “Now!” Ramseyer shouted, and the woman cried out, the noise sharper, the pain etched in the animal-like noise.

  Schwartzman stepped forward as though moving through water. Her thoughts spun, frantic for another solution, a way out. The dragonflies buzzed across the room. A third, then a fourth. How many were there? One darted toward her, and she flinched.

  “Hurry up!” Ramseyer shouted. The dragonfly corrected its course and flew past.

  The professor stood beside a heavy wooden table. Unshaven and pale, he seemed a different man from the one they’d met on Thursday. His shirt had been buttoned askew and lay untucked over his wrinkled slacks. His oily hair hung limp beside his ruddy face. “Come join the party,” he said, slur
ring. He’d been drinking.

  A man lay motionless on the floor. Blood pooled around him. Dead.

  Her gaze returned to the professor. The gun in his right hand was aimed at Hal, who stood ten feet away. In his left hand, he held the tail end of a chain that lay across the neck of a woman bound to the table beside him.

  Tabitha Wilson.

  The blackish-brown blood that covered her naked body was not fresh. Thick metal cuffs encircled her wrists, and rivulets of scarlet ran down her arms.

  Schwartzman took a step toward Wilson.

  Ramseyer yanked on the chain. The metal tightened against her throat. Wilson choked, her hands struggling toward her neck. A chain across her waist held them down. Her face grew blue.

  “Stop!” Schwartzman yelled.

  With a bark-like laugh, he loosened his grip. Wilson bucked her head to create slack in her restraints. Her body rocked with sobs. His eyes on Schwartzman, Ramseyer flipped the end of the chain and whipped it across her belly.

  Again, she cried out, her voice hoarse.

  A line of welts swelled on her belly, the skin already turning ghoulish shades of red and purple.

  Gripping the chain in one hand and the gun in the other, Ramseyer stepped forward and kicked Hal’s gun from the doorway. It skittered back into the outer part of the basement. Using his foot, he slid the wall closed again. A simple partition. One of them could open it. The other could run.

  Ramseyer’s eyes narrowed as though reading her mind. He would shoot. He would yank that chain and choke Tabitha Wilson. Two of them would die, almost certainly.

  Hal held his arms to his sides, elbows bent. “Professor.”

  Ramseyer shook his head. “Don’t.”

  The space smelled of dust and mothballs and the sharp, metallic scent of blood. The buzzing grew louder. In the corner sat a small plastic pool with an inch or two of water, its surface covered with blackish mold.

  “He loved them,” Ramseyer whispered.

  Tabitha Wilson muffled a sob, and Ramseyer looked at her. He seemed to weigh the chain in his hand.

  “Did he raise them himself?” Schwartzman asked, drawing his attention away from Wilson.

  “He did,” Ramseyer said proudly. “A few times. It’s quite difficult to do.”

  “Professor,” Hal said again, softly.

  “Shut up!” Ramseyer roared. The gun exploded. The bullet struck the wall behind Hal.

  Wilson shrieked, and Ramseyer whipped her again.

  Schwartzman’s legs buckled, and she caught herself. Turned to Hal, desperate to go to him.

  He gave her a quick shake of his head.

  She drew a breath, caught her balance.

  Hal made an almost imperceptible nod.

  Talk to him, it said. Schwartzman fought to swallow. “Where did he learn about dragonflies?”

  “Books,” the professor said. “All from books.”

  The room went silent again.

  Schwartzman glanced at Hal, who blinked. “He’s very smart.”

  “Brilliant,” Ramseyer said. “I sent him a dragonfly paperweight for his sixth birthday, a cheap little thing I’d found at a museum store. He still has it.” He swiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  Hal tensed, and Schwartzman held her breath, waiting for him to charge.

  But the professor aimed the gun again.

  “You met his mother when you were on sabbatical.”

  “Yes,” Ramseyer said, his eyes glassy. “It was during my first sabbatical. My first wife, Margaret, didn’t want to go because the girls were young. Too young to travel to where I was going . . .” His gaze was unfocused.

  “Where was that?” Schwartzman asked, keeping her voice even.

  “The areas that are now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,” he said. “I was in the capital there—Dushanbe—for several months.” His shoulders softened as he spoke, but the gun didn’t waiver. He watched Schwartzman as he went on. “Lan did research similar to mine. Her father was Malay, an expat living in China. She was brilliant but from a conservative family that disapproved of her aspirations for a career.” Ramseyer studied the chain in his hand and then looked at Tabitha Wilson. He shifted his weight, as though to lift it again.

  “And then she found out she was pregnant,” Schwartzman said in a rush.

  Ramseyer turned back to her. “I learned of her pregnancy only after I had come back to the States. She’d been banished from her family’s home in Shanghai. She’d gone back to Dushanbe to have the baby.” He rubbed at his chest with the hand holding the chain.

  On the table, Wilson flinched as the metal shifted on her neck. She squeezed her eyes closed, her ribs shuddering under her sobs.

  Ramseyer didn’t notice. “She wanted me to bring him home, but I couldn’t.” His eyes went wide as he spoke, and the words came out strangled by some deep emotion. Guilt, perhaps. “I didn’t yet have tenure, and Margaret’s father was on the board of trustees at the university. I would have lost my job, my home . . . the girls.”

  “So you arranged that he stay there, in Dushanbe.” Lactic acid burned in the muscles of her legs and back from standing so still, so frozen. How much longer could they do this?

  “We shared the cost of supporting him. He had private nannies and tutors there. When he was grown, he would come to one of us. I would have introduced him as the son of a colleague . . .” His gaze traveled to the floor. “We were trying to do the best for him.”

  “And Lan was in China?”

  “Her family arranged a proper marriage for her. She was killed in an accident when Deming was four. I never saw her again.”

  “There was nothing you could do,” Schwartzman said.

  “No,” he said, his head snapping up. “I did it!” he shouted, spit flying from his mouth. “I left him there, to get tortured by those boys. It was my fault.” He jerked the gun up and shot at the ceiling.

  The blast sent Schwartzman to her knees.

  Hal reached out to her, but she waved him away.

  “Get up!” Ramseyer shouted.

  Schwartzman used the wall to help her stand.

  “I supported him on my own,” he said, his voice hard.

  “You couldn’t tell your wife,” Hal said.

  Schwartzman stiffened, waiting for Ramseyer to aim the gun at Hal. To shoot.

  But Ramseyer faced Hal, shaking his head. “No. I couldn’t. But I supported him the whole time,” he said again.

  “Until he murdered that prostitute in Germany,” Hal said.

  Schwartzman gasped.

  Ramseyer extended the gun.

  Hal tensed, ready to spring.

  “He didn’t murder her!”

  Schwartzman took a step forward. “He’s gone, Professor.”

  Ramseyer wavered on his feet. The gun shifted to her.

  Hal put his hand out. “Don’t do it.”

  Ramseyer began to cry. “He was my son.”

  “He killed a woman. He brutally attacked two others.”

  “You don’t understand. My only son. My brilliant boy.” Ramseyer dropped the chain in his left hand.

  Schwartzman waited for him to lower the gun.

  Instead, he placed his left hand over the right. “I have to do this. I have to make sure no one ever knows.” Both hands aiming the gun. At her.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  Ramseyer tilted his head toward the sound.

  She held her breath. Drop the gun.

  But his arm swung upward, the barrel looping into the air.

  Schwartzman sprinted toward Hal.

  “No!” Hal called out.

  Ramseyer closed his mouth on the barrel, and the room seemed to explode around them.

  52

  As often as she could get away from the morgue, Schwartzman came to watch the Tabitha Wilson interviews. She had never followed a case before, been curious about motives or frame of mind. But Schwartzman had been connected to this one from the start—from before Aleena Laughlin was k
illed, when Kaelen had waved to Buster that night in the park. Schwartzman wanted to see the case through to the end.

  Bitty Wilson would stand trial for the murder of Malik Washington. She had not been charged with the murder of Aleena Laughlin. In every interview, Bitty denied killing her college roommate, claiming that Deming Bao had confessed to the murder before she’d killed him. By tracking her name and the flights, Bao had been notified that Bitty was coming to San Francisco. He had simply followed Aleena, right to the park.

  Hal suspected Bao had probably expected the two women to be together that night and thought he could finish them both. But Bitty had arrived later, in a cab. For whatever reason, Bao didn’t make his move on Bitty—fear of getting caught, most likely. Or perhaps the presence of the boy threw him.

  From what Schwartzman could gather, Aleena had planned for Kaelen to stay at a friend’s house, but Bitty’s panicked call from the airport had caused her to change her plans. It was too early to drop off Kaelen, so Aleena had decided to bring him with her. How terrified she must have been, dying without knowing what would happen to her son.

  Thank God, the boy was all right.

  At least Bitty had protected him, sort of. After finding Aleena dead in the park, Bitty had discovered Kaelen in the Jeep, panicked and sobbing when his mother hadn’t returned. To calm him, Wilson had given him sleeping pills, which she had cut into the center of gummy bears. She had been afraid for Kaelen—afraid for both of them. In her panic, Wilson had taken the weapon and the niqab lying beside Aleena Laughlin’s body and left the park with Kaelen.

  The prosecutors believed her to be innocent of Aleena Laughlin’s homicide, but they had her on the death of Malik Washington. Although his death was unintentional, from her account of it, the prosecution seemed confident she would go to prison.

  Schwartzman had submitted a report outlining the difference between the two mortal injuries Aleena Laughlin and Malik Washington had suffered. Her supposition—and it was only supposition, because there would never be a way to know for certain—was that the eight-and-a-half-inch difference in the height of the two wounds, when measured off the ground, possibly indicated two different attackers. The height difference between Bitty Wilson and Deming Bao was just over seven inches.