Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

I nodded.

  “Two out of two hundred is not coincidence. I’d bet my career that Gabriel killed the transient.”

  I turned from the Dumpster and looked toward the flashing lights of the patrol cars on the street. The terrible truth of my life struck me in the chest, causing my heart to skip. How many nights had I stood on damp pavement combing through the remains of violence? How many moments had I missed with Lacy in exchange for the privilege of sorting through the last moments of a wife, beaten to death by a drunk husband’s fists? Or a ten-old-year girl whose skull was splintered by a gang member’s twisted sense of respect. What kind of person would choose this? What kind of a mother would trade kissing her daughter good night for that?

  “I hate this,” I said silently.

  I turned and realized Harrison was staring at me, waiting to ask a question.

  “How does this help us?”

  I pulled myself back to the present.

  “A serial killer doesn’t just turn off the impulse to kill. It’s primary to their existence, it’s how they find their place in the world. And his vanity couldn’t let the killing of the transient go unrecognized. The tape on the arms is his way of staking a claim.”

  I started walking back to the street with Harrison a step behind.

  “You think he wanted you to know it was him?”

  “In the nightmare he’s living, he thinks of himself as an artist. The idea that someone else could take credit for something he’s done would be an anathema to him.”

  “So . . .”

  “We go through everything from the transient’s death: every interview, every location, every shred of evidence that by itself meant nothing. Maybe there’ll be a connection.”

  “There’s something I’m not understanding, Lieutenant,” Harrison said.

  I turned to him as he continued.

  “We’re assuming that nothing he’s done has been an accident, or is random, that everything has a purpose.”

  “I think that’s a safe assumption,” I said.

  “Then why didn’t Gabriel leave the head in the Dumpster?”

  I took two more steps and stopped. Lord, I had missed that.

  “He doesn’t want us to ID him. Unless Philippe’s fingerprints are on file, without a face, dental records, DNA’s only useful if you have something to match it against; identification would be impossible.”

  “I was thinking that, too,” Harrison said.

  The implication hung in the space between us as though awaiting understanding.

  “Something about Philippe is a threat to him, even in death. We figure out what that is, and . . .”

  I didn’t dare take the next leap of imagination. One step at a time. If I started thinking too far ahead, I might miss something and bypass it without notice. One missed step, and the entire house of cards could tumble. And I would lose my daughter.

  “It’s something, at least,” Harrison said.

  I shook my head. “It’s more than something.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was going on eleven P.M. The minutes were racing by as if they couldn’t wait for the dawn. I looked back once more at the Dumpster as a photographer’s flash illuminated the scene in a brief explosion of white light.

  It was more than just something; it might be everything.

  19

  DRIVING THROUGH THE GARMENT and jewelry districts of downtown L.A. is like stepping back into a fifty-year-old Kodachrome home movie of Mexico City. Garish colors of cheap clothes and custom jewelry spill out of storefronts onto the sidewalks like a street festival. The sweet smells of corn tortillas and diesel fumes drift in the air. Salsa music competes with mariachi, which competes with sirens and street crime and broken dreams carried from dirt shacks south of the border. It’s a place unknown to most inhabitants of the City of Angels, as distant from the gated homes of the Hollywood Hills as a Third World shantytown.

  Four blocks north of the light and the music and the petty street crime, the streets turned darker and emptier and more dangerous. In doorways, cautious, bloodshot eyes kept track of any passing threat. A late-model sedan idled on a corner waiting to buy crack. Passing an alley, a prostitute stepped out in search of a customer, then disappeared when she made us out as cops.

  Harrison pulled the squad to a stop outside the Brothers of Hope Mission, which occupied an empty storefront on San Pedro. A quick survey of the dead John Doe’s file had led us here, the last-known address where the transient was seen alive before he was bound by the arms and his throat cut.

  There was no one visible on the street when I stepped out. The curb and sidewalk in front of the mission were spotless, whereas the next storefront over was littered with broken bottles, empty cans of malt liquor, and syringes caked and stained from repeated use by addicts. Aside from the lights inside the mission, life appeared to have retreated from the block and taken shelter for the night.

  In the distance to the east, the pop, pop, pop of a small-caliber pistol pierced the night.

  “It must be getting close to midnight,” Harrison said. He turned to me and saw that I wasn’t following. “New Year’s, Lieutenant.”

  God, I’d forgotten. People were celebrating tonight. Resolutions and promises were being made that were going to change lives and fulfill dreams. In the Hills and suburbs, champagne was being poured. In the barrio, guns were being fired like party favors in a form of celebration that would make Pancho Villa proud.

  “I forgot,” I said, as another faint pop sent a bullet into the air.

  I couldn’t imagine measuring time in spans of years again. My world had been reduced to the next eight hours. I had 480 minutes before the parade began and Gabriel’s hell came tumbling down on me.

  Inside the mission, half a dozen men sat around tables scattered throughout the room. A few were hunched over cups of coffee clutched in their hands, staring into the black liquid as if it contained a secret. Others just sat motionless, like pieces of machinery that had been abandoned once they ceased to function.

  In the far corner, a single woman sat with bulging plastic garbage bags containing her possessions and several chairs gathered around her the way settlers circled their wagons at night for security on the frontier. Her eyes were the only ones that took notice of our entrance, scrutinizing us with the practiced caution of a hunted animal, evaluating the escalation in threat with quick, darting glances. New Year’s Eve would pass unnoticed in this room, suffocated by the heavy odor of human sweat, stale coffee, and bleach.

  From a small side office, a bearded man in his mid-fifties, wearing a white shirt and dark pants, stepped out and extended his hand. I recognized him as Father Paul, the same Franciscan I had questioned eighteen months before in the death of the transient. His forearms were the size of a dockworker’s, the edge of a tattoo just visible below the rolled sleeve of his shirt belying a past that was far more complicated, and I imagined less pious, than the present. I introduced Harrison, then he escorted us into the small spare office. A crucifix adorned one wall. On the opposite, a blue Dodger pennant.

  “I can’t imagine that there is anything else I can tell you,” he said. “I only remembered the man who was killed because he broke the rules and brought alcohol into the shelter. I had to forcibly remove him and ban him from the shelter. I try to give people as many chances as possible, but he was too combative.”

  I took out the drawing of Gabriel and laid it on the desk in front of Father Paul. He studied it for a moment with the practiced eye of someone whose safety depends on his ability to read the level of rage or despair behind a client’s eyes.

  “I would remember him,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s a face designed to not be forgotten. I don’t think he was ever in here.”

  I reached into my pocket and removed the photograph of Philippe I had taken from the mirror in his room.

  “How about him?”

  He gently picked up the photograph by the corner with his thick, muscular fingers. A question formed immediately
in his eyes.

  “There’s something . . .”

  He considered it for another moment, then recognition replaced the question in his eyes. “Yes, I think . . .”

  He laid it on the table and sat back, searching his memory. “He volunteered here for a brief time, I’m almost certain.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He looked again and nodded. “He rode with our outreach van for a few weeks. I remember because he was the only volunteer we’ve had who was from France.”

  “When was this?”

  “It’s been quite a while.”

  “Can you give me a date?”

  He nodded and turned to a filing cabinet behind the desk and began flipping quickly through rows of folders.

  “We keep addresses and phone numbers of volunteers in hopes they can be enticed to help out again. Most never do.”

  “Did he?” Harrison asked.

  “No,” Father Paul said, pulling out a dog-eared file.

  He paged quickly through it and removed a five-by-seven index card.

  “This is him,” he said. “Jean, no last name.”

  “Jean, you’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  He read our reaction the way a cop would have. “You know him by a different name?”

  I nodded. “Philippe.”

  “Why would a volunteer give me an alias? He have a warrant on him? Or have immigration problems?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  “Well, he didn’t want someone to know he was here.”

  He glanced at the drawing of Gabriel.

  “Maybe it was him.”

  “You should have been a cop, Father.”

  “That’s what a parole officer once said to me.”

  “Can you give me a date you last saw him?” I asked.

  “He was last here . . .” His finger traced a line on the card until he found what it was searching for. “He last volunteered in April 2003.”

  “A month before the transient was killed,” Harrison said.

  “Is there an address?”

  Father Paul glanced at me guardedly.

  “We like to think these are confidential, unless there’s a reason for it not to be.”

  “Earlier this evening we found the man you know as Jean and we know as Philippe murdered in a Dumpster.”

  Father Paul extended the card to me without saying a word. “I’ll pray for his soul.”

  Next to his name was an address but no phone number. I studied it for a moment, then handed it to Harrison.

  “That’s in Pasadena, not Hollywood,” he said in surprise.

  I stood up and reached out to shake the father’s hand. He took it gently, looking into my eyes with a weariness that was constantly doing battle with his faith.

  “I hope the first hours of the new year bring something better than the last few of the old one.”

  “Thank you, Father.” I turned and started for the door.

  “And I’ll pray for you, Lieutenant.”

  I glanced at my watch; ten of my 480 minutes had already vanished into the new year.

  20

  THE ADDRESS IN PASADENA was a run-down eight-unit apartment building a block north of the 210 freeway on Villa. The outside was a dirty mustard-yellow color, and as was the practice in the early sixties when it was built, the complex was given a grand name in elaborate lettering above the entrance: The Villa Estates.

  Two graffiti-covered palm trees framed the entrance like a couple of forgotten, aging doormen who had been left behind when the building began its downhill slide.

  There was no interior central hallway in the building. Each unit had its own exterior entrance. Four downstairs, four up. The last apartment on the ground floor was the address given to Father Paul. The entrance was tucked in a far corner, secluded from the street and the other apartments by a row of large bushes.

  “A person could come and go and never be noticed,” Harrison said.

  It had one window that was curtained. Several flyers for Thai and Mexican food lay outside the door.

  “We’re either going to surprise the hell out of some illegal day laborer, or . . .” I looked at Harrison as he let the thought go. Standing here was an act of desperation. A two-year-old address of a dead man.

  “He probably just moved,” I said.

  Harrison nodded less than convincingly. “And changed his name.”

  I placed my hand on my weapon and motioned Harrison to knock on the door.

  “This is the police. Open the door!”

  Nothing stirred inside. I kept my eye on the curtains for any hint of movement, but nothing disturbed them.

  “Again,” I said.

  Harrison pounded on the door, but no one responded. I glanced at the flyers on the ground. My breath caught up short like a cotton sweater hung on a nail. The hot rush of air from the blast at Sweeny’s flashed in my memory. I winced at an imagined shower of broken glass and involuntarily stepped back.

  “There were flyers on the ground outside Sweeny’s bungalow,” I said.

  Harrison glanced at me, then began to meticulously run his hands over the door frame looking for any sign of explosives. Frustration and anger began to boil inside me. Once again, Gabriel had gotten inside my head. I felt like a frightened kid who had been told a ghost story.

  “Screw it,” I said, reaching out and touching him on the shoulder.

  He turned to me.

  “We don’t have time for this . . . Lacy doesn’t have time for this. Kick it open.”

  “Yeah, why not.”

  For a man whose life depended on meticulously dismantling devices designed to kill, it was an enormous leap of either faith or wild abandon.

  He stepped back and drove a foot powerfully against the door, which flung open like it had been hit with a blast of wind. I swung around and trained my Glock into the apartment. Nothing moved. The air inside carried the stale odor of cigarettes. I reached around the door, found the light switch, and flipped it on.

  A small round coffee table sat in the living room with a large ashtray in the middle. Several large pillows were gathered around it. Add a TV, and there was nothing else in the room. I motioned toward the door to the bedroom, and Harrison moved across the living room and gently pushed it open. He swept the room with his weapon, then flipped on the light. He started to take a step inside but stopped, his eyes staring in wonder at something.

  “I think you’d better look at this.”

  I walked over to the door of the bedroom and stood next to Harrison. On the floor of the room was a single mattress neatly made with a sheet and blanket in tight military-style corners. On the floor next to the bed sat a laptop computer and a printer.

  “Jesus,” Harrison whispered.

  The walls of the room were lined with photographs. My eyes moved across them with the reluctance of a civilian who has just stumbled upon the aftermath of battle.

  “It’s his collection,” I said. “They must have found something similar in France.”

  I glanced at Harrison and saw the confused look of someone who had just wandered off the map of human understanding.

  “Have you ever seen . . .” He didn’t bother finishing the thought. He saw in my eyes that there was no need to. He shook his head in disbelief, then glanced uneasily into the room. One photograph after another of Gabriel’s victims, all arranged as if in an exhibition at a gallery. Harrison turned to me in barely contained horror and blocked my path into the room.

  “Maybe you should let me look first—”

  I shook my head. My heart began to beat wildly against my chest.

  “No.”

  “Lieutenant—”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Please, just let me look first.”

  My eyes fixed on Harrison’s, refusing to give in to the possibility. “She can’t be here. No goddamn way . . . no way.”

  Harrison’s eyes held mine for a moment, as if pleading.

  “You’
re right, but just let me do this. For me, not you.”

  He began to reach for my hand, then withdrew it. I saw that my own hand was trembling.

  “You’re just wasting our time.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly, turning around and staring into the living room. “But she’s not here.”

  I felt his hand gently fall on my shoulder and then slip away as he walked into the room. With each step he took, my heart rate jumped tenfold. I heard his breath catch and then rapidly pick up in pace. His movement around the room seemed to take forever. And with each second, each step he took, my resolve that Lacy was not up on one of those walls began to weaken. How had my world gone so utterly and completely insane? A voice inside my head began to whisper, “I can’t do this, I can’t. I can’t—” I was going to scream.

  “She’s not here, Lieutenant.”

  I spun around, the wave of relief coursing through my body nearly buckling my knees. Harrison put his arms around me as I tried to regain control of my breathing.

  “You’re sure she’s not?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  His arms held me for another moment, then slipped away as I took a deep breath.

  “He was here this evening, maybe as little as an hour ago. There’s a photograph of Philippe.”

  I stepped past him into the room and began to take in the record of carnage: every horrible act displayed on the wall as if he were chronicling a summer vacation to Yellowstone and these were pictures of buffalo and mud pots. There was the headless body of Philippe in the Dumpster. The Mexican major floating in the casting pool. Finley lying on the cold concrete floor among the flowers. Sweeny in the burning car. The eco-warrior with his hands tied behind his back who died in the house on Monte where I found Lacy’s shoe. And then it got worse.

  “Breem,” escaped my lips in horror.

  His sunken, terrified eyes stared straight out at the camera—the same eyes I had seen in the car before the bomb went off. Tape covered his mouth, but I could see from the contorted muscles in his jaw that he was screaming underneath it. His hands, encased in the ball of explosives, were held up as if pleading for mercy.