Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  He followed her for a block and a half, then she turned into a parking lot not much bigger than a squash court, surrounded on three sides by tall buildings. The booth at the entrance was dark. There were no overhead lights. As soon as she turned into the lot she was in deep shadow. Walter followed soundlessly behind her, the distance between them closing fast. He took out the bayonet, holding it low.

  She never saw him until she opened her car door and the inside light came on. Then it was too late. She started to take a step back and the bayonet slipped effortlessly in under her ribs, puncturing her left lung before it pierced her heart. For a few seconds she just stood there. She stared into his eyes without comprehension and then her mouth opened. All that came out was a thin dribble of blood. And then suddenly, as if she had at last realized that she was dead, she collapsed.

  Her keys were still in the door lock. Walter took them and opened the car trunk. Then he lifted the body from the asphalt and put it inside. She had dropped her purse, so he picked it up and searched it, taking out the cell phone, then placed the purse in the trunk beside her. He didn’t want them to have any trouble identifying her.

  Then he took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and wrote “815A” on the inside of her right forearm. He posed the body carefully so that the writing would be immediately visible.

  He closed the trunk lid.

  When he reached the sidewalk, where there was light from the streetlamps, he checked himself over carefully and was pleased that there was no blood.

  He was feeling weak and tired and he needed another pain pill. He probably needed some sleep too. He would take a shower when he got back to the motel room.

  He found a traffic ticket under the windshield wiper of the Kia. Somehow it annoyed him. He wadded it up into a ball and threw it against the plate glass window of a storefront. It bounced off and landed on the sidewalk.

  Then he remembered he had to call the police. His watch read 9:25, but that was too early. He would call at eleven, using the woman’s cell. He would have to stay awake until then. He would watch TV.

  * * *

  Ellen took the call at ten minutes to midnight. She had been asleep for perhaps half an hour, but she was starkly awake the instant the phone rang. She knew what it meant.

  A body, female, had been found in the trunk of a car in North Beach. She scribbled down the address and climbed into her clothes.

  “They’re expecting you,” the dispatcher had said. Well, they should be. Since Harriet Murdock, any suspected homicide in which the victim was female rated a call to either Tyler or Ridley, and at night it was Ellen because she lived in the city and was therefore closer.

  North Beach wasn’t far away. Within ten minutes she was standing in the parking lot, staring down into a car trunk containing a woman, probably in her late twenties, with the hilt of a knife sticking out just in front of her left arm. The angle indicated that the thrust was upward, probably tearing a good-size hole in her heart. From the look of her, she hadn’t been dead for more than a few hours.

  There was hardly any blood, just a stain on her blouse where she had been stabbed, and a little on her mouth and chin. Ellen felt reasonably sure that this one had died right here, probably while trying to get into her car. The keys were still in the trunk lock, put there no doubt by whoever killed her.

  Had that been Walter? She wasn’t sure. Walter liked them to suffer, and this woman had died from one instant to the next. It seemed possible she hadn’t even had time to realize she was being murdered.

  Ellen was using a standard department-issue flashlight she had taken from the patrol car that was presently blocking off the entrance to the parking lot. At two or three feet, the distance available to her as she examined the body, it cast a narrow beam. For a moment it came to rest on the handbag, which was open and lying next to the dead woman’s knee. It was a nice bag, made of butter-smooth tan leather. It was open. The wallet was still inside and there was still money in it—Ellen could see the corners of a few bills sticking out.

  So this hadn’t been a robbery. The killer’s motives were more personal.

  Then Ellen moved the light again and saw the writing on the victim’s arm:. “815A,” in inch-high block letters.

  Oh, Jesus.

  She went back to the patrol car and pulled the radio microphone off its hook.

  “This is Inspector Ridley,” she almost shouted. “I want some foot soldiers out here. We’ve got a hot one. And send somebody with photographic equipment and a printer. We’ll need to reproduce the photo on the victim’s driver’s license and start showing it around, right now. I want every bartender and waiter in the vicinity to see her picture tonight.”

  Then she phoned Sam.

  “We’re going to be here for a while,” she told him. “I need you to make sure I don’t make any mistakes.”

  “Is it Walter?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think so.”

  Within twenty minutes the forensic people showed up. Within half an hour there were probably eight more uniforms milling around, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. For starters, Ellen had half of them out patrolling the neighborhood, checking the sidewalks and the streets, the trash cans and the license plates of parked cars, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  By then Sam had arrived. Ellen filled him in on what she had so far and he nodded his approval.

  “You don’t need me to babysit you, girl,” he said, then grinned. “Still, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

  “I want to show you something, Sam.”

  They went over to the car, where three evidence technicians were dusting everything in sight. One of them was in front of the open trunk, using an iron bar to lift the dead woman’s purse out by its straps.

  “I want an inventory on what’s in that bag,” Ellen said. She was more excited than she realized, and her tone of voice reflected it. “I want everything, right down to the dates on the nickels in her change purse, and I want it twenty minutes ago.”

  The technician was a woman, about Ellen’s age, and she was unimpressed.

  “Standard operating procedure, Inspector,” she said blandly. “This isn’t our first homicide.”

  Ellen raised her hands and smiled apologetically. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  And then, just to show there were no hard feelings, the technician shook her head.

  “I’ll tell you one thing right now that’s funny,” she said. “No cell phone. You ever see a woman walking around with a bag like this who didn’t carry a cell phone?”

  “Maybe she dropped it when she was killed.”

  “Not if she died here, and I’m betting she did. We’ve looked.”

  She turned away and trotted off to the forensics truck with her trophy.

  “You know, you’ve got to learn to be nicer to people,” Sam told her, only half-seriously. “Now, what did you want to show me?”

  They went around to the trunk, and Ellen shined her flashlight on the victim’s forearm.

  “You see that?” she asked, unnecessarily. “What do you make of that?”

  “‘Eight-fifteen A.’” Sam shook his head. “Damned if I know. You think it’s Walter? You think he’s playing games with us again?”

  Ellen gave no evidence that she had even heard.

  “You remember Sally Wilkes?” she said finally. It wasn’t really a question. “And that one last night—also in a car trunk. You remember how staged it all was? This is like that.

  “I’m thinking he killed her there,” she went on, pointing to the door on the driver’s side. “I’m thinking he picked her at random and she led him to the car. He stabs her, and she drops her purse. Then he puts her in the trunk and goes back to pick up the purse to put it in here with her, so we’ll have it right away and we won’t have to fool around finding out who she is.”

  “So far I’m with you.”

  “Then look at the way she’s posed. If he’d simpl
y dumped her in and closed the lid, her right arm would have fallen to her side with the elbow turning out. The elbows always go out—it’s the way the bones are articulated—but that way we wouldn’t have been able to read his little message. He posed her.”

  “You think he killed this woman just to send us a note?” Sam looked puzzled.

  “And the note gives us a time,” Ellen said, with something like awe in her voice. “Eight-fifteen A.M..”

  “There’s hope for you yet, girl.”

  This made then both laugh.

  “Inspector.”

  They both turned to see a uniform standing by the front of the car. He was holding a slip of paper about the size of his hand. He offered it to Ellen.

  “I found this a block and a half down the street,” he said. “Who throws away a parking ticket?”

  And that was just exactly what it was, a parking ticket. The time indicated was 9:10 P.M. Also noted were the make, model, color and license tag of the vehicle.

  Ellen showed it to Sam, who looked at it for a few seconds then raised his eyes to the uniform.

  “What’s your name, Officer?”

  The uniform, a gangly blond kid of about twenty, snapped to attention and said, “Ludlow, sir. Timothy J.”

  Sam nodded, as if making a mental note of it. “Well, Officer Ludlow, you’ve earned your keep tonight.”

  Ludlow, Timothy J., smiled broadly then was gone, probably to paw through every trash barrel within a mile radius.

  “Is that how it’s done?” Ellen asked, amused in spite of herself.

  “Yes, girl, that’s how it’s done.”

  * * *

  Forensics lifted the victim’s driver’s license out of her wallet with a pair of tweezers, and within five minutes surprisingly good five-by-six photos of her were coming out of their portable printer. Ellen passed them around to the remaining uniforms and told them to go find out how Eugenia Lockwood had spent the last few hours of her life.

  It was two in the morning when they removed the dead woman from the trunk of her car and she began her journey to the morgue. The car itself would be towed downtown and a team would spend half a day going over it for hair, fibers and prints, but Ellen didn’t think they would find anything.

  By three-thirty the site was pretty well closed down. The parking lot was taped off and a patrol car and two men were left inside to keep people out. Tomorrow morning, in daylight, the evidence people would make another sweep and then it would be business as usual, as if nothing had ever happened.

  Ellen didn’t go home. She drove straight to headquarters and sat down at her desk to write her report. She wanted everything that was known about the death of Eugenia Lockwood to be in the database by the time the sun rose. She wanted it all to be right there for Steve when he sat down in front of his computer with a cup of his vile tea.

  She couldn’t see him or even talk to him on the phone, but she wanted him to know that she was there for him, keying in every detail of this latest sad story. And maybe he would appreciate that she had spent a sleepless night so that he could have it all before breakfast. It was the only way she had right now to make him understand that he was always in her thoughts.

  The parking ticket Officer Ludlow had found crumpled up on the sidewalk was in an evidence bag and was working its way through Forensics. Probably by the end of the day someone would take a statement from the traffic officer who wrote it. Then someone else would have to do a search for the owner. Ellen guessed it was probably a blind lead.

  The reports were beginning to come in from the uniforms who had checked the bars and restaurants. The bartender at a place called La Questa had looked at Eugenia Lockwood’s photo and recognized her. She had sat at the bar and downed two glasses of white wine. She hadn’t seemed to be expecting anyone and nobody had hit on her. She had left sometime between nine-fifteen and nine-thirty.

  The autopsy hadn’t started yet, but the murder weapon had been identified as a regulation Navy bayonet, Spanish-American War vintage. There wasn’t another mark on the body, and the technician who called in the identification was quite sure Eugenia had died almost instantly from a single stab wound.

  The report on the victim’s purse was in. No prints except the victim’s and nothing unusual among the contents. There was $84.26 in the wallet. There was no cell phone, and one hadn’t been found at the scene.

  Was that meaningful? Why would anybody, even Walter, steal Eugenia Lockwood’s cell phone? People forget their cell phones all the time. Maybe it would turn up when they searched her home.

  The address was on Larkin Street, which meant it was probably an apartment.

  So, what were they left with? A random, motiveless murder and four digits written on the victim’s arm. It didn’t seem like much.

  * * *

  At six-thirty that morning, before he had even brewed his tea, Stephen Tregear turned on the computer in his workroom. Within two minutes he was reading the police reports on the homicide of Eugenia Lockwood. The news failed to surprise him.

  Walter seemed in a hurry, and it never crossed Tregear’s mind that this latest murder was not his father’s work. If he had had any doubts, the four digits on the victim’s forearm would have erased them. Like Ellen, he interpreted them as a time signature: 8:15 A.M.

  The question then became, what happened at 8:15 A.M.? Perhaps without realizing it, Ellen provided the answer.

  “No cell phone was recovered from the victim’s purse or at the scene. Its absence has been noted as surprising.”

  Very surprising. Something like 93 percent of adults under thirty owned a cell phone, and the figures were higher for women than for men. Eugenia Lockwood, according to her driver’s license, was twenty-eight.

  Within three minutes Tregear had confirmed that, yes, Eugenia Lockwood had owned a cell phone. He also had the number.

  He dialed it. After one ring it rolled to a recording of a rather breathy female voice: “This is Eugenia. I can’t take your call right now…”

  Of course. Dad didn’t want his whereabouts traced, so he had switched the thing off. He would be available only at the time indicated.

  Tregear looked at his watch. It was six fifty-five. He had an hour and twenty minutes to kill, so he went downstairs to his kitchen and scrambled himself a couple of eggs. He also brewed a mug of tea. He was going to need it.

  It was finally beginning. After all these years, it was finally going to happen.

  By the time he finished breakfast it was seven-twenty. He had fifty-five minutes to kill, so he took his half-full mug of tea upstairs and spent the time reading over the rest of the case files.

  At eight-fifteen he pulled up his sound recording and tracking software and dialed the late Eugenia Lockwood’s cell phone number. The phone rang exactly twice, then he heard the voice that had haunted his dreams for over twenty years.

  “Yes?”

  “Good morning, Dad.”

  27

  What do you say to your father when he’s a serial murderer, when he’s killed your mother and your grandparents, when he’s tried twice to kill you?

  “How are you feeling, Dad?”

  “Fine, son. Fine. Never better.” This last punctuated with a faint chuckle.

  “Why are you laughing, Dad? Because it’s true or because it’s not?”

  “Just glad to hear your voice, son. It’s been such a long time.”

  At first Tregear didn’t know what to say. He felt overwhelmed by contradictory emotions. He felt like he was twelve years old again.

  And then he remembered the corpse in his father’s van, staring out at him through the plastic sheeting that was her shroud.

  “Dad? Dad? Are you sick?”

  “You mean sick in the head?” He laughed. “Probably.”

  “No. I just want to know why you’re taking painkillers.”

  A slight pause, no longer than a few heartbeats. “Well, that’s just a little stomach trouble, son. Nothing to worry about. You saw
the bottle in my medicine cabinet?”

  “Yes. And I think you’re lying to me. I think you killed that doctor just so nobody would know how sick you really are.”

  “You always were a clever son of a bitch, Steve. You do me credit.”

  “Is there any chance I can get you to turn yourself in?” Tregear asked, almost pleadingly.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t want to lie chained to a bed in some prison hospital. Besides, I still have unfinished business.”

  For a long moment there was silence. Tregear began to worry that his father would just hang up on him. He didn’t want that. The tracking software was rapidly narrowing in on the signal source, and he wanted to keep Walter talking.

  And, if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want the conversation to end that way. He kept remembering the time his father had shown him the building site in Marion—all the times before his father had become a terrifying stranger. Walter.

  “Is that why you’re sticking around? They’ve got your fingerprints and your description. You can’t hide anymore, Dad. They’ll nail you.”

  “I’m not worried about them, Steve. You’re the one who scares me.”

  “But it’s the police who will kill you.”

  “They’re welcome to try.”

  “Then why are we talking, Dad? What is this conversation about?”

  “Maybe just for the pleasure of hearing your voice,” he answered. “You are my son, after all.”

  “And you can hear my voice anytime you want. I’m calling you on my cell phone, and it’s always with me. The phone you’re talking on is a Blackberry Curve 8900. You can read my number off the display.”

  “Now how the hell did you know that?”

  “How the hell did I know you were in San Francisco? It’s an interesting question, isn’t it.”

  “Do you know where I am right now?”

  “Could be, Dad. The net is tightening.”

  “Well then, now that we’ve found each other again, let’s stay in touch, son.”

  Before Tregear could say anything, the signal went dead. The tracking software had focused on an area of the Mission District, somewhere east of Van Ness Avenue and between Sixteenth and Twentieth streets. There were probably twenty-five thousand people currently occupying that space, so it wasn’t very useful information.