So she was living a lie, Syd thought. A psychiatric trick gone horribly awry. The question was, should Syd tell her that?
“I am a little ashamed that it took a death sentence for me to take my revenge,” Alice said. “But I was never willing to throw my life away to get back at them. You know, go to jail or get killed trying to get even. As crappy as my life was, at least it was my life. That’s what keeps most victims down isn’t it, the law’s crazy insistence on even punishing the innocent if they want a little payback?”
Syd was about to give her the standard answer about civilization being built on laws and blah blah blah, instead she blurted out, “It didn’t hold me back. I killed my stepfather.”
Alice’s eyes went wide. “You what?”
“He’d been sexually abusing me for years and one night I just… killed him. I never told anyone that before. Never even said it out loud.”
“Why’d you tell me?”
“I don’t know. Because I wanted you to know I understand how you feel, I guess. And my road from there to here hasn’t been easy. I barely made it. Yet, even knowing that, if I had it to do over again, kill him I mean, I would do it in a second.”
“Justice.”
Syd nodded. “Justice.”
Then they sat for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts, the only sound the crashing of waves on the beach.
Then Syd made a decision. She stood up, pulled a key out of her pocket, leaned down and unlocked Alice’s handcuffs. “Nick Wood is in hiding. I’m not sure where he is, but a good place to start may be his house.”
Syd helped Alice to her feet. “You’re letting me go?”
Syd shrugged. “By the time I got here you were gone.” Syd reached into her jacket pocket, handed Alice her scalpel and gun. “I don’t know how much time I can buy you, so act fast.”
“Thank you…” Alice laughed. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Syd. My name is Syd.”
“Thank you, Syd.”
And now it was time to tell her the truth about the cancer, Syd thought. “There’s something you should know Alice…” Syd trailed off as she saw Ryan step into the living room. Alice saw Syd’s reaction and turned to see who was there.
And that’s what Ryan saw, the Lady in Red turning toward him, a gun in her right hand. Years of training kicked in and purely on instinct, Ryan raised his Glock and fired twice even as Syd called, “Ryan, no!”
Both shots hit Alice in the chest. She staggered back and then crumpled to the floor. Syd dropped next to her. Blood pumped from the two chest wounds. “Alice,” Syd cried as she tried to stem the bleeding. But it was too late. Alice placed her hands over Syd’s, looked her new friend in the eye, managed a feeble smile, and died.
FORTY-EIGHT
Ryan rushed to Syd, knelt down. “Are you all right?”
Syd stared at Ryan, a bit dazed, trying to make sense out of what just happened. “I’m fine. What’re you doing here?”
Ryan looked at her, confused. “You called me, left a message. I called back but you didn’t answer. You sure you’re okay.”
No, thought Syd. But she said, “I’m sure, yeah, I’m fine.”
The sound of distant sirens cut through the night. Syd reacted, surprised. “You called for backup?”
“When I pulled up, I saw your car. You didn’t answer your phone, so yeah. I called Hanrahan, told him to send the cavalry.” His eyes slid off her to the Lady in Red. “Want to tell me what happened before I got here?”
Syd had a decision to make. Trust Ryan or lie. Finally telling someone about her stepfather had felt good. Syd would love to tell Ryan about her stepfather; what he did to her, why she’d felt a bond to the Lady in Red, how she was about to let the Lady in Red go. She wanted to trust Ryan with everything. Tell him about those first terrible years in Hollywood, about Ernesto, the EMT, Eric Templeton, his sister, Andrea. To trust him with everything. Yesterday it would have been a no-brainer, yesterday she trusted him with her life.
But tonight, after seeing him in Anne’s arms, she wasn’t so sure.
Syd said, “I only got here a few minutes ago, saw the body on the living room floor and started searching for the Lady in Red. But I fucked up, Ryan. When I was looking here in the office, she got the drop on me.”
Syd could see doubt in Ryan’s eyes, but she plowed ahead before he could poke at her story. “I was actually talking to her when you showed up, trying to get her to turn herself in. She came here to kill Blake Hunter, but he got the gun away from her, shot her in the shoulder; she fought back with the scalpel, got the gun back and killed him.”
Ryan glanced at the Lady in Red, saw the bloodstain on her shoulder.
“Take a look at what she did to Blake Hunter, Ryan. He’s a mess.”
Ryan hesitated, he knew Syd well enough to know he wasn’t getting the whole story, but he figured no need to rush it, especially since he had a bagful of his own deceit to deal with.
So he stood up, stepped carefully around the bloodstains to examine Blake Hunter. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Ryan muttered. “She filleted him.”
“They must’ve had one hell of a fight,” Syd said. “Check out the master bathroom, there’s blood everywhere.”
Ryan was happy to look at anything but Blake’s butchered face.
“Down the hall to the left,” Syd said, pointing. As soon as Ryan disappeared down the hall, Syd hustled to the DVD player and hit the eject button. The High School Pool Party disc slid out. She stuck it in her jacket pocket. Next she grabbed the digital tape out of the video camera and tucked it safely away.
In the bathroom Ryan stared at the bloodstained towels, discarded bandage packaging, open medicine cabinets. Something on one of the bottles caught his attention; he put on his surgical gloves, carefully picked up the bottle. A bloody fingerprint was on the label. Then he noticed the same fingerprints on other bottles. The Lady in Red had gone through Blake’s drugs. Looking for what? Then he saw the open bottle of Betadine; she was looking for antiseptic he realized. She wanted to disinfect the gunshot wound.
He looked back at the fingerprint on the label again, the fragment of an idea stirring in the back of his head.
Syd stepped into the bathroom. “She left plenty of DNA this time,” Syd said.
“And fingerprints,” Ryan said. “Either you interrupted her before she could clean up or she didn’t care anymore.”
“I don’t think she cared anymore. She’d finished what she started.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’d killed the men who raped her. I talked to her parents, Ryan, found out what happened. Eleven years ago, when Alice was a high school senior, she was invited to a party by a boy she had a crush on, Adam Devlin. Only there was no party, just three horny high school boys, Adam, Colin Wood and Blake Hunter. They drugged her then gang raped her. Blake videotaped the whole thing. The next day he emailed nude pictures of Alice having sex to all his friends. She wanted to go to the police but a lawyer representing the three boys showed up and paid Alice’s family a million dollars to walk away.”
“And let me guess, the lawyer’s name was Zachary Stone.”
“Give the smart detective a cigar.”
Ryan digested the story; the refocused picture of the Lady in Red didn’t sit well. She’d just been transformed from serial murderer to victim. And he’d killed her. He sagged a bit as the implications pierced his soul.
Syd saw remorse flood his face. “You had no choice, Ryan. You saw a suspect holding a weapon turning toward you. You had to shoot.” Syd meant every word. If anything, she knew it was her fault Alice was dead. If Syd hadn’t been pissed at Ryan and just answered his phone call, he wouldn’t have charged into the house with his gun drawn.
The sirens had been steadily getting louder. Now they reached a crescendo and suddenly stopped.
“We’ve got company,” Syd said.
Chaos. That was the best way to describe the crime scene an hour later. Since Malibu falls under
the L.A. County Sheriff’s jurisdiction, when Lieutenant Hanrahan got the call from Ryan, Hanrahan phoned the Sheriff’s Department and they scrambled two patrol cars to secure the scene.
Officially, the murder of Blake Hunter would be a L.A. County Sheriff’s investigation, but since LAPD had processed the scenes of the Lady in Red’s last two murders, and since an LAPD officer was involved in a shooting, it became a dual investigation. So detectives and crime scene technicians from both departments soon swarmed Blake Hunter’s beach house.
That kind of manpower can confuse any crime scene but it was nothing compared to the gathering media circus.
The press monitors LAPD and Sheriff’s Department frequencies so it wasn’t long before word of a murder in Malibu spread throughout the city. And if that wasn’t newsworthy enough, minutes later it was confirmed that it was a Lady in Red story. She had murdered another victim and then she had been killed in a shootout with an LAPD detective. But not just any detective, it was Detective Ryan Magee, the lottery-winning cop who was about to get a check for tens of millions of dollars.
And though it was midnight, cell phones rang, engines started, helicopter blades whirled; every resource was scrambled to cover the story. Soon the Pacific Coast Highway was clogged with satellite trucks, the sky was filled with news choppers and the shoreline outside Blake Hunter’s beach house was choked with camera-toting boats.
Sheriff’s deputies and police barricades kept the Press at bay, but the reporters, photographers and cameramen knew that Ryan Magee would have to come out at some point and they wanted to be there when he did.
Inside the house, Tony Ramirez and his SID team, aided by the Sherriff’s Department forensic experts, scoured the house. Liz finished her examination of Blake Hunter’s body and crossed to the Lady in Red’s corpse.
Off to the side and safely out of the way, Ryan and Syd stood with Hanrahan. Hanrahan sucked on a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop. Ryan and Syd had declined Hanrahan’s offer.
After Syd summarized Alice’s high school rape and Syd’s abridged version of the Blake/Lady in Red battle, Hanrahan said, “Wait, you’re saying the rape was videotaped.”
Syd nodded. “Blake Hunter taped the whole thing and then he used frames from the tape to send out those disgusting emails.”
“Where’s the tape now?” Hanrahan asked.
Syd planned to discover the DVD in a day or so. She wanted the world to see what happened to Alice Waterman. To understand what drove the Lady in Red to kill those men. And maybe help realize Alice’s hope that her rape and ultimate revenge would inspire and empower other rape victims. But she couldn’t turn the tape over. Not yet.
“I don’t know,” Syd said.
“Blake Hunter’s office is full of tapes and DVDs,” Ryan said. “And he’s got stacks of hard drives. It could be here, but it’ll take us a while to go through them all.”
Tony Ramirez joined them. “Well, unlike all the other crime scenes, this one is teeming with evidence. Some familiar, like the Lady in Red numbering her victims; she used the four of hearts this time. And the severed penis, I get it already, she hated these guys. And he’s got a missing American Express card, which I found in her wallet. But we’ve got a lot of new stuff; I found five .25mm shell casings, one in the kitchen floor and four in the living room. In the past the Lady in Red always picked up her brass. We’ve got blood in the living room, on the floor leading into the master bath and all over the master bath. Bloody fingerprints galore in the master bath; I did a quick check with the Lady in Red’s fingers, they match. There also signs of a struggle in the office; there are fresh bloodstains and tissue fragments on that wall,” he said pointing.
“That would be Blake Hunter’s blood and skin,” Liz said joining them. “Besides the scalpel lacerations and that bullet hole between his eyes, he shows signs of blunt force trauma to his face and forehead, and his Achilles’ tendon has been severed.”
“And let’s not forget his cock,” Hanrahan said.
“I’ve seen bigger.” Liz said.
Hanrahan grunted.
Liz went on. “The Lady in Red has the three gunshot wounds as well as a huge contusion on the top of her skull and abrasions on both wrists.”
“Probably from these,” Ramirez said holding up an evidence bag containing Blake’s fur-lined handcuffs. “I found them on the floor of the office.”
“Yep,” Liz said. “Those would do it.”
“And this is interesting,” Tony Ramirez said, holding up Blake’s camera. He turned it on and showed them the digital screen in back. A stunning picture of the Lady in Red backlit by the sunset appeared. Tony hit a button and scanned through three more poses.
“Wow, classy shots,” Liz said.
“Wait, he was taking pictures of her, too?” Hanrahan said. “So let me get this straight, he takes her picture, knocks her out, handcuffs and shoots her. She bangs his head into the wall, cuts his ankle, slashes his face and shoots him in the head.”
“I’ve had worse dates,” Liz said.
“God, I’d love to know exactly what happened here.” Hanrahan said.
“I don’t think we’ll ever really know for sure,” Ryan said.
Oh yes you will, Syd thought. She intended to find the videotape of Alice and Blake’s fight to the death when she discovered the rape tape. The image of Alice, bound and handcuffed, being forced to watch her own rape was too heartbreaking not to release. And Alice’s brave fight to save herself was downright inspirational.
But once again, not yet.
“You guys finished?” Hanrahan asked Liz and Tony. They both nodded. “All right, good work.”
Liz turned to her two assistants. “Let’s bag them up.” They dropped the first body bag next to Blake and unrolled it.
Tony Ramirez headed into the kitchen where he left his crime scene kit. He started boxing the evidence. “Excuse me a minute,” Ryan said to the others and went to join Tony.
“So,” Hanrahan said, turning to Syd. “Looks like you and Ryan have still got the only perfect record in Homicide. You’re my Dream Team.”
Some dream team, Syd thought. A bitch-fucking, backstabbing, lottery stealing Ryan and a lying, evidence stealing, murdering Syd. “We make a great team, all right,” Syd said.
And, Syd thought, there was a very good chance their partnership wouldn’t last past tomorrow. If, as she feared, Ryan and Anne hooked up, she’d be asking Hanrahan for a transfer.
Hanrahan drifted off leaving Syd alone. She glanced into the kitchen. Ryan was huddled with Tony Ramirez, Tony was shaking his head and laughing. What the hell were they talking about, Syd wondered.
A body bag was unrolled next to the Lady in Red. Syd watched as the coroner assistants picked Alice up, slipped her into the bag and zipped her up. Was there anything more dehumanizing than being zipped into a black plastic bag?
“There’s a lot of sympathy in those green eyes,” Liz said joining Syd.
“I feel sorry for her, Liz. She was a good kid just trying to get by before those boys raped her. And I can’t help but wonder what her life would have been like if she didn’t go to that party.”
“I call it the Domino Theory,” Liz said. “The innocent single event leads to an inevitably tragic conclusion. This morning I had a six-year-old boy on my table, shot once through the head. Last night he found his dad’s handgun in a bedside drawer and started playing with it. He dropped it, it went off and killed him. So when did the first domino fall? When the kid found the gun, when his dad put the gun in the drawer instead of the top shelf of the closet, when his dad bought the gun, when his dad read the newspaper article about a home invasion in their neighborhood that sent him to the gun store in the first place? Sometimes it gets a bit murky, but it’s always there, the first domino. And if you could just stand it up again, stop the chain reaction, then so much needless tragedy could be undone.”
Was tonight’s domino the bus ride eleven years ago when Alice fell in love with Adam, Syd wondered. Or
her saying yes when he asked her to the party, or Adam not walking out the door of the game room that night, or Nick Wood raping Alice, or Alice’s father selling her out, or the doctor’s lying to her about the cancer or Syd not answering Ryan’s phone call?
Liz asked, “And what was the first domino in your relationship with Ryan? The day you first met him… or the day he first met Anne?”
Syd recalled her binocular-enhanced view of Ryan kissing Anne. A melancholy smile touched Syd’s lips. “I’m afraid it was the day he met Anne.”
Liz touched Syd’s arm. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“Well, it’s not over until the greedy bitch sings.”
Liz laughed.
From the kitchen Ryan watched Syd and Liz. What was Liz laughing about, he wondered. But Syd didn’t look amused, if anything, she looked downright miserable.
Ryan knew Syd lied to him. She’d said she’d just arrived at the house a few minutes earlier, but when Ryan arrived, he put his hand on the hood of Syd’s car. It was cool, so she’d been there at least a half an hour. Plus, she told him to check out the mess in the master bathroom, but if the Lady in Red had gotten the drop on Syd in the office, how would she have known what was in the master bath?
He wanted to know why she lied. He wanted to know what really happened inside 22756 Pacific Coast Highway.
And then there was the bigger question. What was to become of them? Looking at Syd he knew he still loved her. But after the way Anne so easily seduced Ryan, he had to wonder if he loved Syd enough. And what does he tell Syd about what happened at the hotel? If he tells her the truth, could she ever forgive him? Should he lie to protect her feelings?
Syd’s attention returned to Ryan. He was tense, tenser than she’d ever seen him. And ever since he first walked into Blake Hunter’s house, there had been a reticence to Ryan, like he was holding something back. Anne? She wanted to ask him what happened at the hotel, but she was terrified he’d lie to her and she could never forgive him if he lied.
And so there they stood; two people looking across the crowded room at each other, with so much to say to one another, and no idea how to say it.
In Cold Blonde Page 27