Death Watch

by Elizabeth Forrest

  “I could try.”

  “What do you know about Mr. Blue?”

  “Only that he isn’t Bauer. The sheriff’s cooperating pretty closely with the various police departments on this one, and they’ve kept the lid on. L.A. Basin doesn’t even know they’ve got a serial killer yet and he’s done six or seven women so far.”

  “Ten,” Franklin corrected flatly. “That we’ve been able to identify.”

  “Shit. That’s more than keeping the lid on. That stinks of cover-up.” Carter got a hold of himself and continued, “He likes blue houses. And I’m told he takes a scalp lock souvenir. That’s all I’ve been able to dig up.”

  “And,” put in Sofer, “he starts fires.”

  Carter swiveled on the chair to look at the red-haired man who’d begun to sweat profusely again. “Fires?”

  “He gets in and out easily,” Sofer told him. “We haven’t figured that one out yet, but he seems to know the houses and their weak points like the palm of his hand. Easy entry. But he likes to start fires and not to burn evidence. Drives the victim right into his arms.”

  “Organized or disorganized?” Carter asked, homing in on the Feds’ VICAP profile. An organized killer was much harder to track. He could think on his feet, function despite the fantasies which drove him to violence and murder.

  “I’d say very organized, at this juncture.”

  “What are my chances of getting your profile?”

  Sofer pulled the door open for his partner. “First someone has to admit we have a killer to profile. Then we might share it with you. Off the record, of course. As a consultant. Only John put more work in on this than you have. Of course, there are the givens you should know, profile or not. Probably white, male, about twenty-five. A history of aggression toward women, unsuccessful relationships. The usual with a killer of this sort.” He held Dolan’s file folder in his hands. He looked back, at the sacks of Chinese food. “Wouldn’t have enough for four?”

  Dolan shook his head quickly. “Sorry, guys.”

  Franklin nodded, and the two men left. There was a very long moment of silence, during which Carter got to his feet, locked the door, and then stood by the window at an angle, watching the street. Finally he said, “They’re gone.”

  Dolan put his foot up on the table, slid up his jeans leg and pulled a 3½ inch floppy disk out of the top of his white athletic socks.

  “What have you got?”

  Grinning, Dolan sat down at the computer, sliding the disk into its drive. “Mu shu pork, and Three Flavors lo mein, and chicken fried rice, just like you ordered.” The computer beeped faintly as he booted it up.

  “I mean, on there.”

  “Took me all day, but I think I’ve got a couple of possibilities.”

  The screen began to compose a color picture. Carter stood, watching intently, as the dots came together, almost like a pointillist picture, until he was looking at a computer-generated image of a newspaper photo.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t see her.”

  Dolan stabbed a broken nail at the screen. “See?”

  They studied it together.

  Carter shook his head again. “Not her.”

  “Okay. Well, I stuck to stories you’ve done in the last couple of years, hoping Nelson had seen a connection between you and her. Try this one.”

  The screen went blank and then began to compose itself again. Slowly, inexorably. Carter saw the outlines of a platform dais, peopled with images as though a ceremony were taking place, Century City skyscrapers in the backdrop.

  Suddenly, there she was. Mousy hair no longer, but a striking blonde, figure no longer in grunge undergraduate clothing, but a designer suit dress. The slender figure, and the avid expression had not aged that much over the years. He looked at the caption under the photo.

  “Dr. Susan Craig keynotes expansion of the Women’s Shelter center....”

  At her elbow was an outdated hospital, damaged by the Northridge quake and closed down, and the whole event taking place had been held to purchase and renovate the hospital into a woman’s center. He remembered the story now, with the vague addition that the project had fallen through, budget constraints failing it. The urgency of the school crisis had driven it out of the political spotlight.

  “This is social stuff. What’s your byline doing on it?”

  Carter tried to ease the stiffness of his neck. “They twisted my arm. I’d done a series of pieces on the homeless who’d moved into the hospital after it was abandoned. When it got bought out and fenced off, I had the most background to do the expansion story. The center never happened, though.” After two years of wrangling, the hospital was going to be coming down, replaced instead by a neighborhood easement and platform for the MTA subway line. At one time he’d known the hospital like the back of his hand. He sighed. That was a lot of stories ago. He concentrated on the photo in front of him.

  He put a finger to the screen, touching the platinum hair. “That’s her, by God.”

  Dolan beamed. “Now all you’ve got to do is find her.”

  A sharp stab of concern replaced the joy of recognition.

  He knew where she was all right. He’d practically walked right through her at the Mount Mercy psychiatric ward. What suspicions had John Nelson had about the doctor that he’d never lived to voice?

  And she had McKenzie Smith.

  Chapter 25

  Hotchkiss watched the sun dip down over Lake Arrowhead. Blue jays whisked past the deck railing, scolding him. A squirrel ran along it like a gymnast on the balance beam, found the saucer full of peanut hearts he’d set out, stuffed a cheek pouch, and left. All while the sky turned the color of pink lemonade, illuminating mares’ tails of clouds. Beautiful. Peaceful.

  And if he had any guts at all, he would take this incredibly serene day and make it his last.

  Maybe going down the mountain, he could just miss a curve and sail off a cliff into the forest, a glorious, burning statement for personal freedom, like Thelma and Louise .

  Or he could just crash and burn.

  Hotchkiss rubbed his forehead as if he could bury the worries that gnawed through his skull. He’d called his voice mail and gotten an update on Ibie Walker. The councilman had improved, but it would be forty-eight to seventy-two hours before his doctors would hazard a guess about the extent of his recovery. As it was, he had partial paralysis and no speech. The frailty of the mind within the body could not even begin to be ascertained.

  His party wanted him to be ready. Ready to leap into a run for the seat which would almost certainly be up for election in September no matter who occupied it now. They wanted him to voice support of Ibie and his policies and indicate that there was a legacy there which needed to be carried on. In his own inimitable way, of course. And they wanted him to come down for a meeting, as soon as possible.

  And there was a single, terse last message. Call us when you’re ready to deal. The number was an unfamiliar one, but he knew who’d called. They had.

  Even as the pink sky deepened into hues of mauve and indigo, gradually feathering into gray and sooty night, he contemplated the irony of his life. The length to which he’d gone to stay free of entanglements, deals, strings, commitments. As a politician, he’d struggled to remain unfettered so that he could truly vote his conscience. His sexual preferences had nothing to do with his conscience, really. Yet now he could no longer avoid them, for they had changed his life forever. It was no longer a simple matter of gratification.

  If he even dared ask what they proposed, they would know they had him. Yet, if he did not ask, begin a negotiation, he would never know if this was something he could, after all, live with. There was no one he could turn to. Even his mother could not be trusted with his confidences.

  Hotchkiss rubbed his brow again. The squirrel cleaned out the peanut dish, knocked it rolling to the deck, flicked its tail, and ran off, scolding him for the noise and inconvenience. He got up from his chair and strolled back into his bedroo
m.

  His laptop sat open on the vanity, its modem plugged into the local telephone wires. Hotchkiss pulled up his stool and booted it up.

  He dialed a bulletin board. After a moment, the screen showed him on-line. He typed in his password.

  The account was billed through a series of screens and false identities that would lead all the way to the Cayman Islands. It would take, he hoped, a great deal of energy to crack.

  >Hello. You’re on line.<<

  >Hello<<, he typed back. >>I’m a very, very lonely boy.<<

  Instantly, it seemed, the screen crowded with responses from other, very lonely boys. Stephen’s fingers moved over the keys faster and faster as he gained confidence in his conversation. In a short matter of time, they would pair off in private conferences, and begin to exchange intimacies. Perhaps even photos. He had a file just for that, picturing himself as a tall, unmarked twelve-year-old boy with sable hair and sad, turquoise eyes.

  A warm glow began in his groin and spread outward, comforting him. He could be loved. He was loved. There was every kind of intimacy here that could be imagined or initiated.

  And, if he wished, he could meet the boy at the other end of the phone line.

  Stephen’s fingers flew.

  Perhaps in the morning he would call the anonymous number and see what they wished of him. Perhaps he could deal with it.

  Perhaps he would not have to end all of this after all.

  >Hello, lonely boy. I’m a lonely AND naughty boy.<<

  Graciela straightened over the last battered cardboard box, put a hand to the small of her neck, ay, que dolor , what a pain she had there. Donaldo had stopped unpacking and sat in the room which would be his, bouncing a hard blue handball off the white walls. Thud, thud, thud. The noise echoed in the emptiness. He had nothing but boxes of clothes and a sleeping bag in there. She’d change that, maybe not overnight, but he’d have his bed like a race car, and a dresser, and a boom box, and posters on his wall, just like any other kid. Graciela crossed herself, willing it to be God’s will as well as her own.

  The handball thudded sullenly again. Thud, thud, thud.

  “Donnie! Callate ! Shut up with that, okay?”

  He caught the ball and got to his feet, scowling with the handsome dark looks of his father. “When are we gonna eat?”

  She mopped her forehead with the back of her hand. The only utility they had on so far was the electricity— and the stove was gas. The refrigerator hummed, but it stood empty. She had a small amount of money the shelter had advanced her. Tomorrow night the cupboard would have rice and cereal and the refrigerator milk, but now.... “How about Mickey D’s?”

  It brought the first smile she’d seen since that morning when they’d begun packing to leave the shelter. Graciela returned it. “Okay, but you’ve got to hang up your clothes first.”

  “What for?”

  Her anger flared. “What for? Do I got to tell you over and over again? This place has to look nice. I’ve got a chance to be the assistant manager here. It’s empty now, so you can make noise and stomp around, but next week, in a couple of weeks, it’s going to be full of people. Nine apartments like this one. And I’ll have a job at the beauty parlor, and I’ll have a job here. The manager is a nice man. This is a big opportunity, our big chance. I want this to look nice when Mr. Patel comes back tomorrow.”

  A sneer flashed across his face. “Some opportunity,” he said, adding with a wisdom beyond his age, “All you have to do is to keep humping him.”

  “Donaldo!” The anger flashed from her head down her arm and into her hand, but she did not swing. She bit her lip until she could taste the blood, but she did not hit him. He knew, and yet he did not know, what he was saying by that. Her face grew hot, and she curled her fingers into a fist until her nails bit into the skin. “Don’t talk like that about me, hijo . I’m your mother.”

  “Yeah.” He looked around. “Nobody else lives here because the quake ruined it.”

  “And now it’s all fixed,” she said firmly. “And it looks brand new, jus’ like us. Now get in your room and do what I told you, or it’ll be too late to go get dinner.”

  He turned slowly, deliberately, as if to show her he was still boss. Graciela did not let any more words past her teeth. So much like his father, the bastard, the son was. Yet she loved him, had loved them both. She could not help it.

  The apartment manager was not Latino, and he was older, but there had been something quiet about him she had liked from the first moment they met. He had been simpatico about her problems, her need to find a home for Donnie.

  So what if her son was right, and wrong, about her relationship with him? It was her life, too.

  Graciela squared her shoulders. She had a lot of work to do.

  It was barely dusk, and he moved through the quiet alleyways, taking heed of those coming home from work and searching for parking places. He didn’t like doing anyone this early, but she had given him his orders, and he did not yet feel like disobeying her. She meant too much to him. She’d anchored him when he’d been set adrift, and he knew she helped him in all the things that he did.

  Even things like this.

  The apartment unit did not look right to him, set off by an empty lot and across from another, but he could see that it had been restructured extensively, retrofitted after the Northridge quake. The empty lots had probably been other apartment houses which had come down instead of being redone. The isolation of the building both helped and hindered him. It would be difficult to move in close, but there would be less chance any disturbance could be clearly heard.

  He did not like the aura the building gave off. Under the gear, little pools of sweat broke through and ran down the cheekbones of his face. He stood in eaves-high oleander bushes, and watched his prey, waiting until the sun lowered a bit more.

  Ta-rah-rah-BOOM-ti-ay, have you had yours today, I got mine yesterday from the girl across the waa-ay—

  “You get the girl, Dudley, and I get the boy. I want that boy brought back. And I don’t want any sign that you did that. I don’t want anybody looking for the boy. Understand?”

  Oh, he understood.

  Dudley shifted weight, the industrial strength lawn bag across his shoulders like a Santa’s pack filled with a curled limp body still cooling, a cocky kid from off the streets, neck broken like that, car-rack , and no one would be looking for the first boy. She had not asked how he intended to cover his tracks, and he knew it was because she had not really cared. She said children were important to her, all children, but he always thought of what she said like what had been written in Animal Farm . All animals were equal, only some animals were a lot more equal than others.

  She wanted the first boy. She would get him. That was all that counted.

  He watched the windows through the gear. Unless he missed his guess, the building was totally empty, as she’d told him it would be. Only a battered silver Corolla hunkered down at the curb. The carports in back stood empty, the windows stayed blank and dark. He swung his head slowly back and forth so that his augmented vision could keep up with him.

  The final scan took only a few moments. Dudley analyzed what he saw, picking out the weak spots in the building, the three stories of regular apartments, side by side, with a single, bigger apartment on the basement level, shared with what would be a laundry room and utility basement for the furnace, air, and such. He spotted the accesses and egresses, the fire escape, everything he needed to know. The only thing he could not change was the overall feel of the building.

  It was not cool enough. As the killing fever seared its way through his veins, the sweat poured out of him. It pooled under the helmet, plastering his hair to his head slickly. Dudley boosted the sack on his back, as it seemed to grow heavier, and decided he could wait no longer.

  He put a hand to his gear, activating the program he needed. He took a long, slow approach to the building, making sure he was not seen. The debris- and weed-laden lots made it easier. B
y the time he hugged the shadowed, hidden side of the apartment house, the program he wanted played on the visor screen, showing him the building it had identified through the scan and its most logical floor plan. The visor had been designed so that he could see through it, with the virtual reality program an overlay over his own vision.

  She would have nowhere to run that he didn’t already know about. Nowhere to hide.

  Dudley moved into hunting mode.

  He stashed the boy’s body in the laundry room. He could feel the heat rippling off him. He could feel the fire’s brilliance eating through his skin, like a sun about to go nova. He was flame. He was power and destruction let loose. He was ...

  ... the sleeping man stirred.