The man stopped and turned.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Tyler West. I’m a journalist.”
“In that case, no comment.”
He kept walking. He reached the elevator and pressed the UP button.
I approached him. He grew agitated.
“That weasel ran to the media over one crumbling relic?” Graywalls said. “It’s not even worth that much.”
He was convincing. His sole worry seemed to be that Addison had told me about the Scavenger’s Daughter. I doubted Graywalls was the killer.
“I’m not writing about stolen art,” I said. “But that can change if you don’t want to talk.”
He studied me.
“A serial killer who shares your passion has claimed at least three victims,” I said. “I think you might know who he is.”
The elevator doors opened. Graywalls stepped inside. He didn’t speak.
I pulled Nina Tate’s autopsy report from my back pocket.
“Just look at this,” I said.
The elevator doors started to close. I felt defeated.
Finally, Graywalls said, “Are you getting in?”
CHAPTER 40
I blocked the closing doors and joined Graywalls in the elevator.
He pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
I did a double take. One of his fingers had a white tan line.
I flashed on the photo of the Tiffany Samples kidnapping. Her abductor had worn a big, unusual ring. He’d stop wearing it now that it might be identified.
Graywalls caught me staring at his finger. He rubbed it self-consciously.
“Recently divorced,” he said.
I nodded, tried to act nonchalant. But my heart was pounding.
The doors were closing.
I started to reach for the doors with my left hand. But the sight of Nina Tate’s autopsy report in my right hand made me stop.
I was in this story deep. Maybe too deep. I couldn’t help it. I had to learn the truth.
The elevator climbed. I watched Graywalls from the corner of my eye.
We stepped out into a dimly lighted, deserted hallway.
Graywalls unlocked the door to his corner unit.
The condo had high ceilings. The drapes were closed.
Graywalls tossed his jacket on the sofa, sending a cat scampering across the carpet. I took a nervous look around.
Graywalls headed down the dark hall and motioned for me to follow.
I hesitated.
“Down here,” he said.
I reluctantly followed. He disappeared into a room.
I entered the den and recoiled.
Graywalls grinned at my reaction. He stood in a roomful of medieval torture instruments. A smaller, creepier version of the museum exhibit.
My eyes darted from one frightful device to the next: Shrew’s Fiddles, Noise-Maker’s Fife, Heretic’s Fork, Cat’s Paw.
A head-crusher, skull-splitter and iron gag rested on the mahogany mantel.
A spiked interrogation chair sat in a corner. The ropes and pulleys of the depraved Judas Cradle took up one end of the room. A hanging cage, used to publicly display torture victims, was suspended from the ceiling.
I tried to catch my breath.
“No Iron Maiden?” I said, only because I could think of nothing else to say.
“I’ve been working on acquiring one,” Graywalls said, smiling.
He now stood in the door, blocking my escape.
“You were at the gala,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But Addison said you were banned from the building.”
Graywalls grinned. “It’s not the first museum I slipped into undetected.”
I stiffened, unable to hide my fear.
“After Merrill ran me off, I remembered the Maiden was still armed,” he said. “I went back and removed the springs.”
I blinked, confused.
Graywalls moved from the doorway. He crossed the room and turned on another lamp.
I exhaled, relaxed a little.
“What did you do with the springs?” I said.
“Returned them to the storage room.”
“And this was when?”
“Early. Workers were still setting up for the party.”
“So the storage room was open?”
Graywalls shook his head. “I used my key.”
“And left the door open.”
“No, I locked it.”
“Is it possible someone smuggled in a substitute set of springs during the gala and inserted them in the Iron Maiden?” I said.
“Not a chance. The triggering mechanism was custom made and calibrated. It would malfunction with any other springs.”
I glanced around the room. Something was missing.
“Where’s the Scavenger’s Daughter?” I said.
Graywalls opened the walnut doors of an antique armoire and slid out the top drawer. The hooped contraption lay on a strip of red velvet. It was missing its latches and crumbling—just as Addison had told me. This wasn’t a murder weapon.
“You had something to show me?” Graywalls said.
I handed him Nina Tate’s autopsy report. I didn’t mention that Professor William Lange, his former mentor, had already concluded that the developer died in a Scavenger’s Daughter. I needed his independent confirmation.
Graywalls started to read, occasionally nodding.
“They kept records during the Spanish Inquisition,” he said. “Every heretic’s torture—his auto da fé—was meticulously documented. When I wrote my dissertation, I found fifteenth-century church records of thousands who died like this.”
He flipped the page, still reading.
“The compressed state of the corpse. Severely knotted abdominal and rectal muscles. Profuse bleeding from the nose and mouth. Blood from the tips of the fingers and toes. All the telltale signs are here.”
He looked up from the report.
“No doubt about it,” he said, “this woman is the first modern-day victim of the Scavenger’s Daughter.”
“Any idea who did this?” I said.
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 41
My heart skipped a beat.
“Who?” I said.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know his real name,” Graywalls said. “I only know him by his online alias—Mr. Hardware.”
“Somebody in the computer industry?”
Graywalls shrugged. “Maybe, but I always thought the name referenced his tools of torture. His Internet posts indicate his collection rivals mine. He’s been at this awhile.”
“And what makes you think he’s more than a collector?”
“His contributions to the pertinent blogs and newsgroups have always been thoughtful, almost scholarly. But his recent posts have digressed into wildly graphic descriptions of sadomasochism involving medieval devices of torture. I thought he was just going through a fantasy phase.”
Graywalls handed back Nina Tate’s autopsy report.
“Find Mr. Hardware and you’ll find the Scavenger’s Daughter that killed this woman.”
“But where?” I said.
“I can’t help you there,” he said. “I’ve tried contacting him on various blogs and in chat rooms, but he’s never responded. I don’t know anyone who has met him. I didn’t even know that he lived in San Diego.”
A thought crossed my mind. What if the killer didn’t live here and was only passing through? He may have already taken his traveling Inquisition down the road.
“You mentioned a third victim?” Graywalls said
“Aaron Lindblatt.” I said. “He’s the sticking point in my story. I haven’t uncovered a torture connection.”
“The brain surgeon? I thought he drowned.”
“He was found in the pond in front of his house.”
“But?” Graywalls said.
“But the pond water and the water found in his body don’t match,” I said. “My source at the
medical examiner’s attributes that to whatever drinking water Lindblatt consumed before drowning.”
“How much drinking water?” Graywalls said.
“A lot.”
“Any marks on the body?”
“Just some bruising of the stomach. My source said it was caused by the fall into the pond.”
Graywalls smiled to himself.
“What?” I said.
“La tortura del agua,” he said. “The Spanish Inquisition’s version of waterboarding, only more effective.”
I started taking notes.
“Technically, the Church held that no blood could be spilled while compelling accused heretics to confess their crimes against God,” Graywalls said. “Nor could the torturer leave any marks on the victim. Water torture solved the problem.”
“I must have missed this at the museum,” I said.
“No, I decided against including water torture in the exhibit. While the practice was popular through the Middle Ages, the apparatus it employed is visually uninteresting from the museum patron’s perspective.”
“How does it work?”
“There were two methods. In the first, a linen filter was placed over the victim’s mouth and water dripped through it. The material would gradually slide down the victim’s throat, causing him to begin to suffocate. The torturer would then pull the linen back up the throat and allow the heretic a chance to confess.
“The second method—the one I believe was used to kill Dr. Lindblatt—was less subtle. The victim was stretched out on a rack and forced to swallow copious amounts of water from a funnel. When the victim neared the bursting point, his torturer would tilt the rack, causing the mass of water to press on the internal organs. The pain could be intensified with blows to the stomach.”
I jotted furiously in my notebook.
“Check back with the medical examiner,” Graywalls said. “There should be signs of damage to one or more organs.”
My pen hand cramped as I rushed to keep up.
“This is it!” I said.
“Not so fast.”
I looked up from my notebook at Graywalls.
“I’ll be a source on two conditions,” he said. “Break either of them, I’ll deny we ever had this conversation.”
“What are they?”
“First, you don’t write anything about my possession of the Scavenger’s Daughter.”
Ethically, I could live with this. I’d be protecting an art thief in order to expose a serial killer. Besides, some cop or insurance investigator was bound to catch Graywalls.
“And the second?” I said.
“Keep my name out of the story,” he said. “I’m an anonymous source. Don’t even share my identity with your editor.”
This was trickier. A story this explosive required multiple sources. Anonymous sources tend to undermine a story’s credibility. I had on-the-record interviews with Lange and Addison. I could also go back to Ron with what I now knew. One anonymous source was less than ideal, but it wasn’t fatal.
Still, I hated to let a key source hide behind the cloak of anonymity.
I looked at Graywalls. I knew he wouldn’t budge.
“Deal?” he said.
He extended his hand.
I shook it. I didn’t have a choice. He had saved my career.
CHAPTER 42
The next day I worked on the story from home.
I didn’t want to share the scoop with Rudy until I had all the pieces in place.
I called Ron at work and asked him if Lindblatt had suffered damage to any of his internal organs.
“Darn,” Ron said, “I thought you were calling with a tee time.”
“Sorry, pal, it’s been hectic. Maybe next week.”
He put me on hold while he pulled the file. When he came back on the line, he told me that Lindblatt’s left kidney was ruptured.
It was just as Robert Graywalls had predicted.
“What’s that tell you?” I asked.
“It’s consistent with the manner of death,” Ron said. “He likely hurt his kidney when he slammed against the pond’s marble edge on his way into the water.”
Ron was a first-rate medical examiner. How had he flubbed the cause of death?
I’d put Ron’s expert opinion next to Graywalls’ expert opinion and let the readers decide. The story might make Ron look bad, but I couldn’t worry about that now. I’d have to smooth over any sore feelings later on the golf course.
“Hey, Ty, what’s this about, anyway?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just routine.”
That was half true. I was back in my routine. I was an investigative reporter again—and it felt great.
I opened my laptop and quickly banged out the lead, the story’s opening paragraphs:
A serial killer is stalking some of San Diego’s most prominent citizens and torturing them to death. The unknown torture slayer has claimed at least three victims, including Mayor James Stanton, whose grisly death was previously thought to have been an accident. Stanton’s killer is also responsible for the deaths of real estate developer Nina Tate and brain surgeon Dr. Aaron Lindblatt, according to sources familiar with this investigation.
The bizarre link among the murders is the use of torture devices from the Dark Ages, said two experts. Sources claim that Stanton was butchered by the Iron Maiden after he was deliberately locked inside the torture machine on display at the Museum of Medieval History. Tate was compressed to death by a contraption called the Scavenger’s Daughter, said William Lange, a UCSD professor of history and an authority on medieval instruments of torture. A second expert, who talked to the Wire on the condition of anonymity, said that Dr. Lindblatt died from a method of water torture that was used during the Spanish Inquisition…
I held off calling the San Diego Police Department. As soon as I asked for official comment, the story might leak to the Sun and the Times.
I kept writing, adding comments from Ron and Addison.
I reminded readers that HomeMart CEO Tiffany Samples was still missing. I pointed out that she had attended the museum gala, as had the three torture victims.
Late in the day, I made the obligatory call to SDPD.
Detective Darrell Walton had a one-word comment:
“Horseshit!” he exploded.
“I no longer work for a family newspaper,” I said, “so I can quote you verbatim.”
“Fuck you, West! Run this crap, you won’t even be able to blog on Facebook!”
He abruptly hung up.
Walton’s knee-jerk denial boosted my confidence in the story’s truth. He hadn’t even asked me what evidence I had. I figured the cops had already connected the murders, but they had no clue who the killer was. Better to deny the truth than to admit incompetence.
I finished my story and shipped it to Rudy. I called him at the Wire.
“Check your e-mail,” I said. “And feel free to give me a raise.”
I waited for Rudy to read my story.
“Holy shit!” he said.
“Yeah, I figure that will be the typical reaction when you upload this,” I said.
“How good are your sources?”
“Solid,” I said.
“Who’s your anonymous expert?”
“I can’t say.”
“Come on, Ty, we may be Web-only, but we’ve still got standards. You know the rules. You can hide his identity from readers, not from your editor.”
“He swore he’d deny everything if I told you.”
Rudy chuckled. It sounded sarcastic.
“Seriously, Rudy? You really think I’d invent a source?”
“No, Ty, wait, I wasn’t suggest—It’s just that…Look, we’re new, we don’t even have a legal department yet. We can’t afford to absorb any hits like…like you had at the Sun.”
“Welcome to Big Boy Journalism,” I said. “You in?”
There was a long pause.
“Sorry, Ty. Let me think about it.”
&nb
sp; I hung up the phone, miffed.
Rudy didn’t think about it too long. An hour later, my exclusive was up on the Wire’s Web site.
A screaming headline read: SERIAL KILLER HUNTING CITY’S ELITE. MEDIEVAL TORTURE TIED TO THREE DEATHS.
I bounded from the couch and punched the air in victory. Maya slept on the floor.
“How’s that for a tale, Maya?”
Maya wagged her tail ever so slightly.
“Maya, give it up! Is that a tale or what?”
Maya thumped her tail harder, and I laughed.
I sat back down. I was suddenly drained. I crashed on the couch and slept like I might not ever wake up.
CHAPTER 43
The next morning I went outside to get the papers.
I was relieved to see that the Sun and the Times had gone to press before my story broke. They were now a day behind.
I ran into a few local surfers cutting across my yard. They lugged their boards toward the path that switchbacked down the cliff to Newbreak Beach. They were coming here long before I moved in, so I accommodate them. When I built my house, I also installed an outdoor shower and a Porta Potty for the surfers.
“Morning, boys,” I said, “what’ll it be?”
“Surprise us,” said the one known as Thrasher.
I stepped inside and popped a CD labeled “Classic Mix” into the stereo. Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” blared from the patio speakers aimed at the ocean. Thrasher gave me a thumbs-up as he and his mates headed down the trail.
The phone rang.
“Congratulations,” Jordan said. “Turn on the TV. Your early reviews are in.”
“Which channel?”
“Take your pick.”
I said goodbye and flipped on the TV. The local network affiliates had cut away from the national morning news shows to alert viewers that a serial killer was at work in San Diego.
Channel 2 displayed a graphic of my story. A reporter from Channel 3 was doing a live remote in front of the Museum of Medieval History, noting that this was where the mayor had encountered the slayer.
CNN was the first national media outlet to join the fray. By 8:45, it had an expert on serial killers speculating on the type of person likely to be the San Diego Slayer.
FOX News came up with a snappy title that TV news programs like to use to package a story. They were calling it Torture in Paradise.
The Scavenger's Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery Page 10