“You found out? How did that work? Did he tell you?”
“No. It was his car.”
They both looked at the gray Kia on the other side of the street.
“He stole it. Ellen tracked it down, including the original dealership. I cracked their computer records and found out it had a GPS with an antitheft feature that begins transmitting if the car is started without the key. They even listed the MAC address, so I began sniffing around for it. When I found it I also found that it was parked over there.”
“Jesus.”
In the next instant Tregear’s cell phone started ringing.
* * *
The number displayed on the cell phone’s readout was Eugenia Lockwood’s, dead not even forty-eight hours. After four rings, Tregear hit the answer button.
“Hello, Dad. How’s your evening working out?”
He could hear Walter’s laughter. It was the sort of joke that would appeal to him.
“Fine, son. Just fine. Are you having this call traced?”
“Why would I do that? Your car is parked on Belhaven Avenue in Daly City, so I assume you’re not far away. How is Sam? Is he dead yet?”
“I think he’s still alive—he was last time I saw him. But he wasn’t looking too good. By the way, your girlfriend’s here.”
For just an instant Tregear couldn’t find anything to say. He knew the pause was a giveaway, but he couldn’t help himself. It was as if some part of his mind had refused to believe what he knew perfectly well to be the case, that Dad had Ellie …
“Which girlfriend is that?” he asked, perhaps just a shade too brightly. “You know, I lead such an active love life.”
God, he could hardly believe how stupid that sounded. Walter could probably hear the desperation in his voice.
“Inspector Ridley, son—but you knew that.”
“Well, be nice to her until I get there.”
“I will, I promise. She’s already tried to kill me once, but we’re old friends now. By the way, when do you think you can make it?”
“I’m on my way, Dad. The traffic is bad, so give it about twenty minutes.”
“That’s about all the time she has, son.”
And then the line went dead.
While Tregear had been on the phone with his father, a new man had arrived. He was presumably a cop, since no one tried to shoo him away, and from the fact that he wore a coat and tie he was presumably higher up the chain of command. This was confirmed by the body language of the conversation he was having with Sergeant Brinkley.
And, even worse, one of those boxy sedans all federal agencies bought by the fleet drove up and parked across the street. The door opened and Lieutenant Commander Hal Roland climbed out. As things happened, it was the first time Tregear had ever seen him in civilian clothes.
The two men nodded to one another from opposite sides of Belhaven Avenue and then Roland, with the intuitive sense of a born politician, turned his attention to the two senior policemen. He walked across the street to join them.
Not without me you don’t, Tregear said to himself.
By the time he reached them, Roland was already explaining to the two cops how “national security issues” required the Navy to “assume responsibility.” He was really enjoying himself. He was bringing in his own team, he told them. The Daly City police could withdraw.
“They’re staying,” Tregear said flatly. “There’s no time for heroics. We’ve got…” He checked his watch. “… about seventeen minutes before I have to go over there and have a little reunion with my father. Otherwise he’s going to blow Ellen Ridley’s head off.”
“I have the authority of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy—” Roland started to tell him.
“But you don’t have mine.”
It was an interesting moment. The cops, who had not been happy about Roland’s taking command, were waiting to see who would win.
“It’s very simple, Hal. My father has murdered probably hundreds of women, and all of them died alone, in some secret place, without a hope of rescue. That’s not going to happen to Ellen Ridley.”
“She’s a cop,” Roland answered, as if the fact were grounds for resentment. “She knew the risks.”
Tregear smiled.
“Then let me put it in terms you’ll find easier to comprehend. You get in my way on this, you interfere and Ellen dies, and I go to work for Norton Antivirus. The Navy can whistle for its codes and its security procedures. Have you got that?”
From the way his throat muscles were working, it appeared that there was something the lieutenant commander very badly wanted to swallow but that just wasn’t going down.
To hell with him.
“Does anybody have a floor plan of the house?” Tregear asked, addressing his question to Sergeant Brinkley.
Brinkley glanced at Roland, who couldn’t seem to meet anyone’s eye, and the decision was made.
“In my car,” he said.
* * *
Walter was not looking at all well. The gauze patches over his wounds were saturated with blood, which was leaking out of him as if nothing could stop it. He was sweating heavily and he was clearly in serious pain.
He was panting. Ellen had seen enough shooting victims to know the signs—Walter was bleeding internally and his shortness of breath meant that he was reaching a point where his diminishing blood supply wouldn’t be able to carry enough oxygen to keep him alive.
“I give you less than an hour,” she told him, breaking a long silence. “You’re hemorrhaging. Pretty soon you’ll begin to feel light-headed and after that you won’t be anybody’s problem anymore. You need to be in a hospital.”
There was an antique clock on a little wooden wall shelf about three feet above and to the right of Ellen’s head. It didn’t keep very good time, being off by a little more than two hours, but it was running.
It was the object of Walter’s rapt attention.
“I don’t need an hour,” he said. “He’ll be here in another ten or twelve minutes, and after that my work in this world will be done.”
From the look on his face he was Saint Sebastian, waiting for the angels to receive him.
“Why do you hate him so much?”
It was not a question Ellen had expected to hear herself asking.
“I don’t hate him. He’s my son.”
“Then why are you so afraid of him?”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
It was the first time she had heard Walter lie. The tell was how his eyes drifted down and to the left, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her.
“You are afraid of him,” she said. “I’ve heard you admit it. Even now, on the doorstep of eternity, you’re afraid of him. Is it because he’s smarter than you are?”
“When have I ever admitted it?”
“On the recordings.” She smiled at him, almost pityingly. “He’s recorded all your conversations, did you know that? He knows more about you than you do about yourself.”
“You talk too much, sweetheart.”
He picked up the gun and pointed it at her head. At that distance, with his right hand and in his condition, maybe he’d hit her and maybe he wouldn’t. It seemed a chance worth taking.
“You just can’t bear the thought of leaving him behind, can you.”
The gun wavered slightly, which could mean a failure of resolve or merely bodily weakness. There was no way of knowing.
“Why don’t I just kill you right now?” Walter said. “I’m sick of listening to you.”
“Because you can’t. I’m the bait, remember?”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, then slowly his gun hand came down until it curled up in his lap.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
He shook his head, not to signal any objection but merely, she sensed, to bring things back into focus. Then he raised his right hand and looked down at the pistol cradled in his palm. His eyes, when he raised them to Ellen’s face, were e
mpty of mercy. He smiled.
“Still, why don’t you shut the fuck up or I’ll just put one in your knee. Trust me, you won’t feel so chatty then.”
Except that they both knew what would happen at the first sound of gunfire. Ellen was almost ready to call his bluff but then thought better of it. Walter wasn’t paying attention.
He appeared almost to have forgotten her existence. He took another handful of Excedrin and was into his second beer, but none of it appeared to afford him any relief. The pain of his wounds seemed to make him restless. He could not keep still.
“How long have you known him?” he asked finally.
“Who?”
“My son—Steve. Who did you think? Willie Nelson?”
He allowed himself one short syllable of laughter and then his face collapsed into an expression of anguish and hatred.
“My son,” he repeated. “Have you known him long?”
“Not long.” She smiled at him mockingly. “Since a few days after we found Sally Wilkes. You remember her?”
He ignored the taunt. His mind seemed to be elsewhere.
“He was always a sweet boy,” he said wistfully. “And smart. I’d show him a thing one time and he’d have it forever. If I ever loved anybody in my whole life I loved that boy.”
“And now you want to kill him.”
“It’s none of your business.”
Ellen could only shake her head. Sitting across from him like this, Walter seemed such an ordinary man. But the workings of his mind were unfathomable. He was a paradox concealed in a riddle—a riddle, probably, even to himself.
“Everything about you is my business,” she said quietly. “I’m a homicide detective and you’re a murderer. You made yourself my business.”
But Walter wasn’t listening. His eyes were on the wall clock above Ellen’s head.
32
The screen on Sergeant Brinkley’s laptop, which he had set up on the hood of his car, showed a schematic of Sam’s house. The feed was from the Daly City Department of Records. Tregear had only to raise his eyes to see the real thing.
“Sam is probably here,” he said, pointing to the broken line that indicated the back porch. “The blood trail suggests that Walter retreated in that direction, and Sam is no fool. I don’t see where else Walter could have got the drop on him—certainly not inside the house.”
Brinkley nodded.
“We’ve got guys behind the backyard fence, but the lights are off and they can’t see much. If Sam is in there, and down, he’d be just about invisible.”
There were two ambulances parked at the end of the street and police crews were busy putting up floodlights all around the house.
Brinkley tapped with his finger at the space labeled “Dining Room.”
“My bet is your Walter is holed up here. There’s only one window and he’ll have lines of sight to both the front and the back doors.”
“I think you’re right,” Tregear answered. “And he’ll barricade the window.”
The lieutenant, whose name was Klegg, made a low, whistling sound.
“He has to know there’s no way out,” he said.
“He’s not looking for a way out.” Tregear’s expression, as his eyes rested on the lieutenant’s face, suggested no emotion. He might have been explaining something to a child, without any hope of being understood. “He wants a little chat with his son, just to get everything straightened out, and then it’s Armageddon.”
“And you’re the son.” Brinkley shook his head. “Are you counting on that?”
“I’m not counting on anything.”
“Then he’d actually do it? He’d really kill you?”
“He’ll want to talk first, and then we’ll see.”
“Jesus.”
“Just because somebody has to say it,” the lieutenant began, “I’ll tell you here and now, there’s not a reason in the world why you have to do this.”
“Yes, there is.”
“You have to stop him.” Roland, who had tagged along simply because he couldn’t think what else to do, was almost clawing at the lieutenant’s arm. “You can’t let Tregear go in there. He’s a national security asset. He belongs to the Navy.”
“I think that’s his choice,” Klegg said.
“In a situation like this a relative is the best negotiator.” Brinkley was speaking to his lieutenant, not to Roland. “It’s a big risk, but my guess is Tregear has the best chance of ending this without bloodshed.”
“I agree.”
“It’s ready, Lieutenant.”
Who had spoken? A technician in blue coveralls, a kid who hardly looked twenty and who stood at the bottom of Sam’s lawn, waiting for a signal.
Klegg nodded, and the next instant the floods went on and Sam’s house was bathed in hard, white light, making it seem huge, imparting to it a sinister grandeur.
“Are your shooters in place?” Tregear asked.
“Yes.”
“Then if Sam is on the porch I’ll call you to come pick him up.”
He checked his watch. He had about three minutes left.
It was a trick of the imagination, he knew, but suddenly Sam’s one-story bungalow became the last home Tregear had shared with his father. He was twelve years old again, and Dad was asleep in a second-floor bedroom. He had just discovered the corpse in the van, but running away was no longer an option. He had to go into that house and face his worst nightmare, the man who had raised him, whom he had loved all his life.
“Tregear.”
He turned his head and saw Sergeant Brinkley, who had something in his hand. It was a gun, a standard service revolver.
“Take it,” Brinkley murmured, as if the offer had to remain their secret. “Give yourself a chance.”
Tregear put his hand on the gun and, very gently, pushed it away.
“I can’t,” he said, in a voice so quiet he might have been talking to himself. “He’s my father. I’d never be able to bring myself to use it.”
“Okay.” Brinkley reached back and put the revolver in its holster. “But the first shot fired, we’re coming in.”
Tregear flashed him a quick, frightened grin. “I’m counting on that.”
He stepped down from the curb and started his slow walk across Belhaven Avenue. Each step seemed to require a separate act of will.
Tregear looked up into the night sky, nearly obliterated by the floodlights, searching for a star. It seemed the most important object of his life to see one point of light in the heavens, but there was none.
He had lied to the police—he had no real doubt Walter intended to kill him. But his first object was to get Ellie out of there, and that seemed possible. That was worth dying for.
Then he would just see, along the road to Come What May.
The gentle slope of Sam’s front lawn was like a mountain under his feet. He wanted to get down on his hands and knees to climb it.
Finally he touched the corner of the house and somehow he felt better. Now he had something to do.
His cell phone rang.
“Where the hell are you?” It was his father’s voice.
“I’m on the walkway, coming around to the back of the house.”
“Well, move it.”
“In my own sweet time, Dad.”
He clicked the phone off.
In was three steps up from the flagstones to the porch, and before he took the first step Tregear could see Sam lying there, his feet toward him.
Tregear let the porch door slam shut behind him. Best to let Dad know he had arrived.
He knelt down and checked the pulse in Sam’s throat. Sam never stirred. Then Tregear clicked a button on his cell phone.
“Sam’s unconscious, but his heart is beating,” he said. “Get your people in here.”
He stood up and opened the kitchen door.
“Dad?” he shouted. “Where are you?”
He didn’t really need to ask. The only light in the house was coming from a room to
the left, down a short hall that led to the front.
“I’m here,” the answer came, sounding thinner than over the phone. “You’ll find me.”
Tregear went down the hall and stopped just short of where the light poured out from an open doorway.
“Let me hear your voice, Dad.”
“What would you like, a few choruses of ‘Old Man River’?”
This was followed by laughter, which was in turn followed by a coughing fit that seemed to go on and on. But the sound let Tregear know that his father was on the other side of the room.
He stepped just inside the doorway while Walter was still trying to catch his breath.
“Ellie, are you all right?”
He asked without taking his eyes from his father, but he knew where she was—close enough that he could have touched her.
“I’m all right.”
Tregear nodded, still without looking at her. He did not dare look at her. If he was to get her out of there alive he had to keep focused on Walter.
He had to create the impression that there was only him and Walter, that no one else mattered.
“Dad, in a few minutes you’re going to hear noises coming from the porch. The medics will he picking up Sam, who you’ll be happy to hear is still alive.”
A flicker of wrath crossed Walter’s face but was quickly suppressed. Walter was smart enough to grasp there was nothing he could do. If he went out there with the idea of stopping it a sniper would get him. If he shot Ellen Ridley—his only means of retaliation—Steve would disappear.
It was the first time that father and son had seen each other in over twenty years. Tregear had the sense that Walter was searching his face for some trace of the boy who had run away so long ago. Perhaps it was easier for Tregear to see the father he had fled.
Beyond this, he found it difficult to look at the clear signs of approaching death—the waxen, sweating face and the wounds in the naked flesh. Walter’s left arm even had a faintly bluish cast to it, as if it had already begun to turn putrid.
He was holding an automatic in his right hand, but without pointing it at anyone.
“You’ve grown up,” he said. “You still looked like a kid in Maryland. Twelve years has really made a difference.”
Blood Ties Page 31