by Blake Pierce
He wore a sport coat and a dress shirt that couldn’t contain his stomach, which cascaded down over his slacks. His bushy mustache appeared to swallow his upper lip. Despite the weather, he was sweating profusely. He looked at Sarah, lying naked and handcuffed on the bed, and licked his hairy lip. She tried to stifle the urge to retch.
“Mr. Smith, this is Number Four,” Mr. Holiday said as he started to leave the room. “She’s delighted to make your acquaintance. Why don’t I leave you two to get to know each other better?”
He closed the door, which Mr. Smith locked before returning to face her.
“You remind me of my favorite niece,” he rasped before taking off his sport coat, making a show of draping it over a chair and lumbering toward her.
Sarah closed her eyes and tried to picture herself anywhere else. But as she felt the man’s heavy carcass climb on top of her, her imagination failed her. She could think of nothing but the horror that was this moment.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Keri sat in the back of the ambulance, numb to everything around her.
The EMT was asking her questions but she couldn’t process his words. It was as if she was underwater and he was standing at the edge of the pool.
She watched a uniformed officer place crime scene tape around the Collector’s body, which had yet to be moved. A long, thick trail of blood from his head wound had streamed down the parking lot ramp and started to drip into the rain grate at the bottom of the ramp. Her wig and glasses lay on the ground beside him.
Her knees both ached but she knew they weren’t shattered as she’d been able, with assistance, to walk up the ramp to the ambulance. Her right jaw hurt from the impact of it slamming against the Collector’s chest when he’d hit the ground. Other than those things, physically, she felt okay.
Psychologically, it was a different matter. Her head echoed with his words.
What kind of mother are you, to inflict such suffering on your own child?
It was true, Keri thought. Everything that happened to Evie from this point forward would be her fault. If she could have found some other way to handle this situation, her only link to her daughter might still be alive.
What if she had let Ray come, as he’d begged her to? What if she had managed to avoid making that suspicious remark and kept the charade going? What if she’d simply admitted who she was and offered him an obscene amount of money in exchange for Evie’s whereabouts? Any of those would have been preferable to having her one lead lying dead on the hard cement of a parking ramp.
She felt someone gently shaking her shoulder and looked up. The EMT was speaking to her, a worried look on his face. She tried to focus on his words.
“…in shock. We’re going to take you to the hospital. The police will ask you some questions there.”
Keri glanced over at the crime scene. One officer was talking to some bystanders, apparently interviewing them. Even though she couldn’t hear them clearly, from their expressions and the tone of their voices, she could tell they didn’t have a clue what had happened. Nobody had seen the fight.
The officer who had put up the tape was kneeling near the Collector’s body, marking off Keri’s glasses and wig with numbered placards, making sure not to touch them. He was youngish looking, tall and gangly, with an unkempt shock of yellow hair shooting out from under his police cap. He seemed hesitant, as if this was new to him. He was nothing like Jamie Castillo.
She would have long since taken charge of the scene. She would have ordered the witnesses to be interviewed separately. She would have let experienced detectives mark all the evidence at the crime scene instead of doing it herself. She would have already interviewed Keri at this point. She would have the situation under control.
For the first time since the incident, Keri smiled. And as she did, she seemed to snap out of her daze. A thought began to circulate in her head.
This doesn’t have to be over. You still have time to salvage this situation if you get off your ass and move.
“What’s my status?” she asked the EMT, interrupting whatever he’d been saying.
“You’re in shock. Your vital signs—”
“No. I mean physically. I hit my knees pretty hard when I landed. Any major damage?”
“Nothing seems to be broken,” he told her, taken aback at the forceful tone of the woman who’d been nearly catatonic only moments earlier. “You’re going to have some serious bruising and swelling for the next few days. But I don’t see any long-term damage.”
“And this area?” she asked, running her finger along the right side of her face, jaw, and neck. “It all made contact with his chest when we hit the ground. Do I have a concussion? Broken jaw?”
“The jaw’s okay structurally. We’ll do more testing on your head when we get to the hospital, put you in concussion protocol. But my early guess is that you don’t have one. It looks like the lower half of your face took the brunt of the fall, not your skull. That’s a good thing.”
“Thanks,” Keri said as she delicately slid down from the back of the ambulance and gingerly rested her feet on the ground. “That is a good thing.”
“What are you doing, ma’am?” the EMT asked, his voice rising in alarm. “You shouldn’t be standing up. We’re about to transport you to the hospital.”
“I don’t think so. And it’s not ma’am. It’s Detective. Help me stand up, please.”
The EMT, against his better judgment, did as he was told. The crime scene cop saw what was happening and hurried over, clearly irked.
“Ma’am, you need to stay in the ambulance,” he said with a confidence she knew he didn’t really feel.
“I don’t think so, Officer…Dennehy,” she said, peering at the nametag on his uniform as she pulled out her badge. “My name is Detective Keri Locke. I’m with the Pacific Division Missing Persons Unit. I was working undercover, trying to get that suspect to reveal the whereabouts of a missing teenage girl. Unfortunately, he attacked me and well, you see how that turned out. But the girl is still out there. And I need to find her.”
Keri stopped to let Officer Dennehy process her words, all of which were technically true. She conveniently left out the fact that she wasn’t authorized to conduct an undercover operation, that the missing girl was her daughter, and that she’d been gone for over five years.
“Detective,” he said, clearly unsure how much he could push back, “I appreciate your situation. But you just survived a ten-foot fall onto concrete. And this is a crime scene. Once other detectives arrive, you can work out the logistics of your operation. But I need to keep this scene secure.”
Keri admired his willingness to stand up to her. And usually, she didn’t like to dress down uniformed cops, especially one who might very well be at his first-ever crime scene. But she didn’t see how she had much choice here. Time was of the essence.
“Are you sure that’s the line you want to stick with, Officer Dennehy? Because once the detectives arrive, I don’t think they’re going to be psyched that you were the one marking evidence. Usually they like to work with CSU to avoid contaminating the crime scene and stuff like that.”
Officer Dennehy shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Keri could tell he was thrown. But in order to do what she was about to try, she needed him more than uncomfortable. She needed him compliant. That meant pushing harder.
“And your partner over there,” she continued, nodding at the officer interviewing witnesses. “Did it ever occur to him to separate those folks before questioning them? They’re all hearing each other’s versions of what happened. Inevitably, those versions are going to seep into each other’s memories, influencing their take on what happened. You think your detectives are going to be happy about that?”
“Detective Locke, I didn’t mean to—”
“Listen,” she interrupted, realizing that she’d never have a stronger hand than right now, “I’m not trying to break your balls here. I’m not going to tell them. It’s not the end o
f the world. I’m alive. The bad guy’s dead. It’s not like there’s going to be a trial with a defense lawyer. These mistakes aren’t case-killers this time. But they could have been, you understand?”
Officer Dennehy nodded. Now that he was in her debt, she made her move.
“But there is still a missing girl out there. And I’m worried that if this guy has a partner, he might get antsy if that dead guy over there doesn’t come back soon. He might move the missing girl. So I don’t have much time. That’s why I’m going to search him.”
And with that she headed for the Collector’s body.
“What for?” Dennehy balked.
“Identification, maybe a cell phone. Who knows, maybe he’s got a note in his pocket that says ‘the missing girl is located here.’ Help me out, please. This ramp is steep and I’m still a little shaky on my feet.”
To her amazement, Dennehy complied, giving her his forearm to steady herself as she walked down the ramp to inappropriately search the body of the man she’d just killed.
This was suspension-level stuff, maybe even dismissal-worthy. But if it meant she could find a clue that would lead her to Evie, it would be worth it.
And she didn’t have much time. Once those detectives arrived, her ability to control the scene would disappear. They wouldn’t put up with these antics. They definitely wouldn’t let her search the body.
I’ve got to find some kind of lead fast and get out of here before they arrive or I’m screwed. They’ll take me down to their station, interview me. I’ll be out of commission for hours.
Still, Keri walked slowly, trying to keep her balance. The incline was steep and the ramp acted like a tunnel, whipping the bitter night wind at her.
Once they reached the body, Keri took a moment to really look at the Collector for the first time without having to keep her guard up. His hazel eyes were open, blankly staring up at the night sky.
No longer a threat to her, he seemed smaller than she remembered. In her memory, he had been a brutal giant, galloping away with her daughter, tossing her into his van like a rag doll, swiftly and mercilessly killing a Good Samaritan.
Maybe it was that he could do her no harm in death. Maybe it was that in her years as a cop, she’d seen many more monsters. But looking at him lying there on the ground, she realized he was just a normal-sized man, probably five-foot-ten, maybe 180 pounds, completely unremarkable.
And that was almost worse, that the source of all her pain was just some guy, like any other guy. The everyday nature of his evil was somehow harder to process than if he really had been a hulking, drooling giant.
Keri felt herself slipping into a raw, vulnerable place and realized that would do her no good right now. She shook it off, snapped into detective mode, and bent down to study him. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just that black sweater and jeans. That made him easier to search. She felt around in his two front pockets, ignoring her freezing hands, but found nothing.
“Help me out here, Dennehy. I need you to roll the side of his body up so I can check his back pockets. Try not to move him or disturb him too much—just enough so I can get my hand under him.”
Despite it being a violation of protocol, Dennehy did as he was asked. He knew he was already in deep. There was no point in arguing about niceties at this point.
Keri didn’t find anything in his right rear pocket and was starting to worry that after all of this, she was going to come up empty. But there was something in his left rear pocket. She pulled it out carefully. It was a valet parking stub.
Trying to keep her suddenly rapid breathing under control, she stood up, scanning the crowd. It only took a moment to see a parking attendant, sitting on a stool under a black umbrella next to a parking stand. He seemed to know she was looking for him and stood up.
“Take me over to that guy,” Keri ordered Officer Dennehy.
Things moved fast after that. The parking attendant helped Keri find the Collector’s car, a twenty-year-old Honda Accord. Part of her had been expecting a white van like the one he’d used to abduct Evie. But it would have been odd for him to drive around town for years in what was essentially a moving crime scene.
She found his registration in the glove box, as if he were a regular human being just doing what the rest of us would. It had his address, an apartment in Echo Park, less than fifteen minutes from here. And it had his name: Brian Wickwire.
She stared at it for a long moment, trying to process that some random guy named Brian was responsible for the complete collapse of everything that mattered in her life. He was dead now, at her hands, but it still didn’t seem like a fair trade.
She took a photo of his address, ordered Dennehy to secure the vehicle, and left the parking garage, limping uncomfortably on bruised knees to her car just as the detectives were arriving. She glanced at her watch. It was 10:29 p.m.
She guessed that the fight and fall had occurred around 10:07. The uniformed officers had arrived on the scene less than five minutes after that. The EMTs were there a couple of minutes later. And now the assigned detectives were on scene barely twenty minutes after the incident.
Pretty good response time. But not quite good enough.
She got in her car and pulled out of the hotel just as Officer Dennehy, standing with a grizzled detective, looked around desperately, obviously wondering where she had gone.
*
A short time later, she stood in front of the door to Brian Wickwire’s apartment on Allison Avenue, just off Sunset Boulevard. The building was less than a ten-minute walk from Dodger Stadium and Keri couldn’t help but wonder if Wickwire was a regular attendee. What was the day-to-day life of a child abductor like? Did he keep a grocery list? How often did he go to the store? Did he like cottage cheese? Was he big on organic fruits and vegetables?
Even monsters have their personal preferences.
She used a credit card to open one lock. Finding the door also had a chain lock, she pulled out a small pair of bolt cutters and snapped through it. Stepping into the apartment, she was stunned at how normal it looked. She’d spent so much time imagining that this bogeyman lived in an underground dungeon or something similar that finding a copy of Sports Illustrated on a wooden coffee table next to a coaster threw her.
She wandered around, looking for anything out of the ordinary. She didn’t expect to find a notebook labeled “My Ledger of Abducted Children.” But it was hard not to think that somewhere in his home, the Collector kept some kind of record of his crimes.
Keri sat at the small desk in the corner of the living room and opened an unlocked knee-high filing cabinet beside it. She rifled through his files but there was nothing suspicious.
He had his last five years of taxes kept in one folder, along with his W-2s. Apparently he worked as a large-appliance repairman fixing mostly refrigerators and dishwashers. Maybe that explained his ability to travel and the white van. She’d have to interview his co-workers when time allowed.
His utility bills were well organized, as was his bundled phone, Internet, and cable bill. He had a box of postcards sent by friends when they were on vacation. In the same box were years of birthday cards from his parents, who apparently lived in Phoenix.
A laptop sat on his desk. She opened it but wasn’t surprised to find it was password protected. That would take time. She’d need Edgerton’s help to access its contents. She could take it with her, she thought. But she figured the best thing to do was to leave it here, let the local cops take it in as evidence, and deal with it then.
Other than that, the desk was immaculate. There was small notepad with a pen resting on top of it. It had several line items, including ground beef, cereal, milk, and popcorn. Apparently vicious child kidnappers did keep grocery lists.
This was no good. The detectives she’d eluded at L.A. Live would have found the same registration she had. Dennehy might even have mentioned that she’d taken a picture of the address. They’d be here soon. And they wouldn’t be happy.
&nbs
p; In addition to her other violations of protocol after the incident, she could add fleeing the scene of a crime and breaking into a private residence without a warrant. If these cops were anything like her, they wouldn’t be interested in her excuses for why she’d done what she’d done. They’d arrest her first and ask questions later. She needed to find something useful and get out of here quick.
Keri shut the laptop, leaned back in the chair, and closed her eyes. She tried to picture the room around her without looking at it, scanning her memory for anything that seemed out of place.
It was all so was so average and unremarkable. Wickwire kept a clean house. He had a job. He stayed in touch with his parents. His friends sent him greetings from exotic locations.
His friends…
Something about that didn’t sit right. Everything she knew about Wickwire screamed “loner.” He may have stayed in touch with his parents but he lived in a different city from them. His apartment was clearly a bachelor pad, without any touches that suggested he was involved in a relationship.
His job allowed him to spend long stretches of time solo, traveling from assignment to assignment. He just didn’t strike Keri as the kind of guy who had a circle of friends that would send him warm greetings from far-flung places.
She opened her eyes. Putting the box with the postcards on the table, she spread them out and studied each more closely. Almost immediately it became apparent that they weren’t what they seemed.
Yes, they were all from faraway places: Hawaii, Thailand, Bali, Cancun, Puerto Rico. But the postal service stamps on each of them were from more local spots. One was marked Irvine, another Saugus, a third from Rancho Cucamonga. All of those were Southern California communities.
She didn’t know how he’d gotten these postcards. Maybe he’d purchased them online. But it was clear that none of the cards had ever been anywhere other than California. And then she noticed the return addresses.