Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  Ellen gave him everything that she had. “Unless he’s ditched it already, that’s what Walter’s driving around in. We need to know chapter and verse about that car, including the contents.”

  “I’ll make the call.”

  Driving back to San Francisco, Ellen couldn’t help but feel reasonably pleased with herself. The parking ticket had yielded the description and, unless Walter had switched plates again, she now had the license number of his car. If he had left his prints on the Eco car, it would place him at the scene of Eugenia Lockwood’s murder. The noose was growing tighter.

  Patrol cars could be out looking for a gray Kia already this evening—no, tomorrow. The alert would have to be part of the morning’s oral briefing. They couldn’t broadcast it today because Walter might be listening to the police band.

  By the time she got back to the city it would be four and her shift would be over. She would stop in at the department anyway, just to see if anything interesting had come in and to say good night to Sam, if he was still there.

  He wasn’t, but there was a note on her desk stating that the Berkeley PD reported that no one was answering the phone at 2504 Middlefield Road but that they would send someone around that evening. Sam had given them her cell phone number.

  Out of boredom as much as anything else, Ellen went back to the DMV website for a second look. She found the name of the Oakland dealership that had sold the car to Mr. Mowry.

  Finally, she wrote up her report and posted it to the department database.

  Having at last run out of excuses, she went down to the garage to reclaim her car for the drive back to her apartment, where Gwendolyn, who seemed to miss Steve, would eat her dinner and then sulk for the rest of the evening.

  * * *

  As it happened, Sam had signed out early and driven through town to a diner on the Great Highway, where he could sit in a booth by the window and watch the waves breaking along Ocean Beach. As always, being a reminder of the pointlessness of all human struggle, the sight brought him to a state of pleasant melancholy. The waves had been running up this stretch of sand for a million years before the first murderer was born and would still be at it after the human race had given up and turned it all back over to the sea lions. The waves were without intention or wrath. They just went on and on.

  Sometimes it was necessary to stop measuring time hour by hour and just sit back and eat your meat loaf special. Sometimes it was the only way to stay sane.

  There was no one waiting for him at home, not even the dogs. As instructed, Millie had cleared out and gone to her sister’s, taking the tribe with her. Millie’s sister owned an elderly German shepherd who seemed to enjoy the company.

  Tonight his only company would be a six-pack of Sierra Nevada IPA—and, of course, Walter’s dark shadow.

  He could imagine how the evening would run. Halfway through his second bottle he would turn on the television, hoping the noise would drown out his thoughts. When that didn’t work he would go outside to occupy a lounge chair on the back porch. Eventually, when he could no longer see his neighbor’s house, he would turn on the porch light and watch the bugs as they searched for a way through the screen. By this time he would be into his fourth ale.

  And Walter, silent and listening, would be right there with him, sometimes taking fitful shape in the darkness beyond the porch light. Walter the monster, who had raised murder into an art form.

  In his fourteen years with Homicide, Sam had hunted two serial killers and actually caught one of them. The other had fled to Los Angeles, where he committed three more murders and was arrested, entirely accidently, by a rookie traffic cop who had pulled him over for not using his turn signal. Afterward, Sam had flown down to interview him. They had spent most of an afternoon together.

  Both men were currently on San Quentin’s death row, where they regularly gave interviews and sorted through their fan mail, objects of intense interest to people who would remain forever strangers.

  Somewhere Sam had read that life was most successfully viewed through a single window, but he was inclined to regard this as no more than a clever turn of phrase. Both Keith Jarvis and Eddie Massie were so obsessed with their various grievances that neither had been very successful at much of anything except murder. Probably both were far happier on death row, where the current logjam in capital case appeals meant they were much more likely to die of old age than lethal injection. They would have decades in which to enjoy the smug sense of having at last beat the system.

  Up close and personal, both had proved to be disappointments, pathetically deficient in every human quality except malice and cunning.

  But Walter, according to his son, was a different animal. He was intelligent and charming, and not so much blind to human feeling as merely indifferent. He understood people, but without any complicating sympathy. There was no sense in which he was compensating for anything or getting even. He just enjoyed torturing women the way teenagers enjoyed slasher movies.

  It might even be true. After all, Tregear was the resident expert on Walter.

  Sam pulled into his driveway and pressed the remote that opened his garage door. He put his headlights on high beam and sat in his car for a moment, studying the interior of the garage. Millie’s car was gone, already down in Palo Alto, and there was nothing inside except the lawn mower and, against the back wall, a long shelf supporting the usual collection of dried-up paint cans.

  “You’re getting spooked, Sam,” he whispered to himself. “Cut it out.”

  From force of habit, he parked his car on the driveway and actually had the door open before he remembered to close the garage.

  He followed the flagstones around to the backyard. The porch enclosed the entire rear of the house, and its door was never locked. As he crossed the deck he decided it probably needed restaining. The kitchen door had a double bolt and as he turned the key in the lock he caught himself listening for the dogs. But they were with Millie, in Palo Alto.

  The house was dark, so he turned on the overhead light in the kitchen and went to the refrigerator for a beer. He poured it into a tall glass, tasted it, then left both the bottle and the glass on the kitchen counter when he went into the bedroom.

  He took off his sport coat and hung it in the closet, then he unclipped the handcuff case and the holster from his belt and opened the top drawer of the highboy dresser and dropped the handcuff case inside. Usually the holster followed it, but tonight Sam could not seem to let it go. He just stood there, holding it in his hand as if trying to remember what it was.

  The holster held a standard police-issue .38 revolver with a four-inch barrel. It was the weapon he had carried since he was a rookie and had never fired except at the pistol range. He hated the damn thing for the way the grip gouged at his kidney every time he sat down. The gun was merely one of the inconveniences of being a cop.

  But maybe not tonight.

  This is different. This is Walter, Ellen had said.

  Sam took the revolver out of its holster. Maybe just this once he’d keep it with him.

  He went back out to the kitchen and tasted his beer again. Having lost just a little of its chill, it was perfect.

  The television in the living room would stay off tonight. To hell with it.

  He went out to the porch, the glass of beer in one hand, the gun in the other. The lounge chair welcomed him. He set the revolver down on the wooden floor, where he could reach it easily with his right hand, and put the beer on the table.

  The porch light was on, but the yard was full of murky shadows. Sam could just make out the top of the fence and the vague outline of a neighbor’s tree. Anybody could be out there. He got up, switched on the backyard floods and killed the porch light. Then he sat down again. He felt much better.

  It was a warm night, and windless. He could hear a cricket somewhere, and the usual traffic sounds, but nothing else. He drank his beer and felt himself beginning to relax. When it was finished he went into the kitchen and got ano
ther.

  * * *

  Sergeant Sam’s house was a squat, one-story building with rather small windows, set back about thirty feet from the sidewalk on slightly rising ground. Walter had been involved in the construction of so many houses just like it that he had no trouble imagining the interior layout—a master bedroom in front, to the left of the living room with a hallway in between. There would be a second bedroom behind the master, a dining room behind the living room and the kitchen all the way in the rear.

  The front windows were dark, but there was a car parked in the driveway. Walter put his hand on the hood and discovered it was warm. Somebody was home.

  The garage was separated from the house by a flagstone walkway that seemed to lead to the backyard. Standing there in his rubber-soled shoes, Walter could see that the outdoor lights were on in the backyard. There were no lights in the front yard. Did that mean there was a porch in the back where the sergeant was perhaps even now taking his ease?

  The question of Sergeant Sam’s location in the house was critical. After all, the man was a cop and cops carried guns. It wouldn’t do to give him any warning—one couldn’t simply break in through the front door and start going room to room.

  Besides, there was no hurry. Better to take one’s time and do the thing right. Nobody would start paying any attention until the first shot was fired.

  There was a Mrs. Sam. Mildred. Where was she?

  The garage had one window and there was enough light to look inside and see space for a second car. So where was it?

  Why was the other car parked on the driveway instead of in the garage?

  Walter did not particularly want to kill the sergeant’s wife. It wasn’t enough. It was even possible that Sam might be very happy to get rid of Mildred. He didn’t care to do the guy any favors.

  He wanted to kill Sam. Only Sam would do.

  So what did the car parked outside tell him?

  Sam would leave in the morning and not come back until late afternoon. Mrs. Sam would be in and out all day, running the mysterious errands that constitute a housewife’s life. She would want to be at home when her husband returned. Therefore, she would park her car in the garage and Sam would park in the driveway. QED, as Steve used to say.

  Unless, of course, she worked.

  Walter went back to the car and looked in the driver’s side window. It was a man’s car. The front seat was set all the way back and there was trash in the console. Women were tidier than that.

  It was Sam’s car. Sam was home and his missus was most likely off somewhere. Perfect.

  Which still left the problem of where exactly Sam was in the house.

  There was nothing going on in Sam’s living room. Walter had already had a good look and the front of the house was dark, without even the bluish glow of a television set.

  That left the back, where a light was on.

  The path between the house and the garage led to a wooden gate, about four feet high, and a section of picket fence that filled the remaining space to the garage.

  Standing close to the gate, Walter could see that the back of the house was indeed enclosed by a screened porch. About six feet this side of where the porch started there was a door and a set of cement stairs leading up to it. The odds were short that it was a kitchen door and that the kitchen was also directly accessible from the porch.

  A man sitting at his ease on his own back porch has no reason to keep quiet, so Walter stood still and listened. After a few minutes he was rewarded with a dull click, the sound of a glass or mug being set down on a wooden table.

  It was Sergeant Sam’s cocktail hour.

  This greatly simplified the task at hand. All Walter had to do was walk back to the side of the porch, take aim through the wire mesh and start shooting.

  The only problem was the gate because the gate was closed. It would be hard to open noiselessly and the attempt, should it fail, would give Sam about a five-second heads-up. If he had his gun with him, that could be awkward.

  Then Sam made everything easy by getting up. There was the scrape of furniture against the porch floor, followed almost immediately by the sound of a door being opened. Sam was going back into the house.

  Walter did not move until light came through the glass panes of the side door, which meant that Sam was in the kitchen getting himself a refill. Then Walter opened the gate latch with only the faintest possible sound and the gate swung open silently on its hinges.

  He stood out of sight, just at the edge of the screen, holding his .32 in both hands and waiting for Sam to come back out. Finally there was the sound of a door opening and then footsteps on the porch’s wooden floor.

  Now.

  He stepped out and was at first surprised by how dark the porch was. Sam was still on his feet, only a vague shape in the darkness. Walter fired once and the shape instantly went down.

  He could only wait. The shadow on the floor did not move. After perhaps thirty seconds Walter thought he heard a soft moan.

  The son of a bitch was still alive.

  Walter considered if he should go in there and finish the job, but there were too many risks. Sam might have his piece on him and even a dying man can kill you. Besides, people might ignore the sound of one shot—one shot could be a car backfiring. But two shots rated a call to the police.

  Better just to let Sergeant Sam bleed out. Time to leave.

  30

  Ellen had just finished dinner when her cell phone rang. She thought it would be the Berkeley police, reporting in about Mr. Mowry, but the area code was San Francisco.

  With a slight shock she realized it was Steve.

  “Hello,” she said, as seductively as she could manage. “How are you?”

  There was a silence that lasted perhaps a second. Was he embarrassed?

  “Ellie,” he responded finally, “Walter’s car is parked about half a block from Sam’s house.”

  “When?”

  “Right now. Get everything you can over there. Send an ambulance.”

  “How do you know this?” The question instantly seemed irrelevant and stupid. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’ll meet you there.”

  And then the line went dead.

  For perhaps five seconds Ellen stared at her cell phone, unable to move beyond her own astonishment. Gradually an image began to form in her mind—it was Sam, lying facedown in a pool of blood.

  She made the call.

  It was seven forty-five and the evening rush hour was just beginning to tail off. Ellen was not prepared to put up with traffic. She took the flasher from her backseat and stuck it on the roof of her car. She had never used it before, so she spent a second or two figuring out that the power cable plugged into her cigarette lighter.

  When the roads were clear she could make it to Sam’s in a little more than half an hour. Today, her horn blaring, she did it in twenty-three minutes.

  Almost as soon as she made the turn onto Belhaven Avenue she spotted what looked like Walter’s car, parked about two doors down from Sam’s house. Ellen pulled in behind it, got out and stopped just long enough to check the license plate.

  6AOB291, big as life.

  The next thing she noticed was the quiet. Belhaven Avenue was just another suburban street on a Friday evening. There were no police cars, no ambulance, no cops milling around.

  This was not what she had expected.

  Then she looked across the street and saw an elderly couple standing on their front lawn, and she knew at once what had happened.

  Ellen had phoned in the call to the SFPD exchange and they had called the Daly City cops, who didn’t know a thing in the world about Walter and were slow to react. Maybe they would send around a patrol car in another ten minutes, maybe not.

  So she was alone here, and Walter was probably inside Sam’s house. Had the couple across the street heard a shot? Was that what had brought them out? It didn’t seem like the right time to ask.

  It didn’t matter. If Sam
was down he was down, but down wasn’t the same as dead. Sam was her partner and you didn’t let your partner die just because there was no backup. You had to do something.

  Ellen drew her nine-millimeter and started across Sam’s front lawn.

  She was perhaps five feet from the sidewalk when a man appeared, coming down the walkway between the house and the garage. For an instant she thought it might be Sam, but then she knew it wasn’t.

  It was Walter, and there was a gun in his hand.

  “Drop it!” she shouted. “Drop it now.”

  He just laughed.

  Ellen didn’t hesitate. She raised her weapon and fired.

  Walter appeared to stagger a bit, then he raised his weapon. She could almost feel herself in his sights when she fired again.

  And then everything stopped.

  * * *

  Ellen never heard the shot that hit her. Suddenly she was just flat on her back. She could feel the grass beneath her hand and it felt cool.

  She was conscious, but very little more. She seemed to have no will, but there was also no fear. She could listen and watch. That was it.

  Walter was standing over her. He was holding a small automatic in his right hand. His right hand? Now why was that? He was pointing it at her.

  And then she heard the sound of a police siren. It seemed to be coming from all directions at once. It hurt her head.

  Or maybe her head just hurt for some other reason. She didn’t know.

  Walter seemed ready to finish her, and she found herself wondering abstractedly if it would hurt. And then Walter brought his hand up. He seemed to be listening.

  “Your lucky night, little girl,” he said—Ellen recognized his voice from the sound files. “Maybe you’ll be more useful alive than dead. Get on your feet.”

  She would have liked to explain to him that that didn’t seem possible. She tried, but talking was suddenly a very complicated business that was just going to have to wait.

  Walter kicked her in the hip, not very hard, and then apparently gave up. Suddenly his hand was on the collar of her jacket and he was dragging her over the lawn like a sack of fertilizer.