[Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski 04.0] No Way Back

by Rick Mofina

  The mother was permanently disfigured, her marriage ended under the stress. Her wounds required her to endure the rest of her life with the aid of a colostomy bag.

  Tribe was given a six-year sentence.

  A psychiatric assessment described him as a violent, sadistic sexual predator. It cautioned that while he presented a facade of harmless charm, he was a psychotic sociopath prone to flashes of uncontrolled, homicidal rage. There was an excerpt of what Tribe told a psychiatrist about his behavior: “Each woman I met wanted me. What I never understood was why they lied about it. It pissed me off. They didn’t deserve to live for what they did to me.”

  There was a supplemental note that said Tribe loved collecting reptiles. He was partial to snakes and was known to attend shows or join clubs and talked of establishing a reptile farm in Central or South America.

  And Tribe was the normal one.

  That’s what Merida’s crew told them last night. Turgeon finished reading, took a breath, and looked out the window. She watched a pigeon perched on the sill. She went to her notes. They didn’t know a single thing about Tribe’s mystery partner. Not yet. She closed Tribe’s folder.

  McDaniel gave the FBI’s update.

  “So far from our work through the jewelry and gem database, none of the stolen product has emerged. But we’ve picked up several leads on the potential buyers in New York, Chicago, Houston, Boston, Detroit, Miami, and Atlanta. We’re aware dealers will tip us to bring heat on a competitor.”

  “So where do you go with that?” Sydowski said.

  “We’re circulating Tribe’s information and we’ve started the process of getting search warrants in all the listed jurisdictions for all the telephone numbers of the potential buyers,” McDaniel said.

  Gonzales turned to Kay Lowenstein, a supervisor with the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento, for a report.

  “Tribe was released on supervised parole three years ago. He was PC 290 and registered. The Board of Prison Terms and his parole agent indicate he met all conditions and counseling requirements. Complied with his drug test schedule and was clean. No violations,” Lowenstein said, meaning he was not our mistake.

  “Except we don’t have a valid address for him?” Turgeon said. “Parole and community services is required to keep an accurate location history.”

  “Would you like me to stop to debate parole agent caseload with you now, Inspector Turgeon? Tribe satisfied the requirements of his parole conditions. He obviously intended to deceive us on his last address.”

  Sydowski got between them. “Please continue, Kay.”

  “Folsom is assembling an inmate list to give us a pool of whom Tribe may have associated with, or which gangs he was allied with, while serving his sentence. Bearing in mind that Folsom is a level-four maximum-security institution with a shifting inmate population of some three thousand, this could take time. They’re focusing on C Yard, where he did much of his sentence.”

  “What about his employers, his circles on the outside, all the people in addiction counseling groups? He may have befriended his partner in rehab,” McDaniel said.

  “Tribe’s parole agent is on it.” Lowenstein closed her file.

  “Anyone or anything else before we get back to work?” Sydowski said.

  McDaniel stated the FBI was expecting Tribe’s court-martial transcripts, his Leavenworth records, and his Marine records from St. Louis. “We'll go through his unit albums, his entire file for associates. NIS and the U.S. Marshals Service is helping us find his buddies who testified in his defense.”

  McDaniel pulled his cell phone from his pocket, read an e-mailed alert to the task force. “A federal arrest warrant by the United States District Court, Northern District of California, has just been issued for Delmar James Tribe,” McDaniel added. “I’ve talked to our NHQ, we’ll get the ball rolling to put him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list today. “

  “We’re set,” Gonzales said. “We’ll hold a news conference as soon as we can to put out everything we have on Tribe. His picture, his history, we’ll get it out across the country. Finally, before we get back to work, I just want to remind everyone of the obvious. Tribe is only one half of our problem. We need to nail down his partner to double our chances of grabbing them, finding Ann Reed.”

  Files were collected, cell phones were put to use, as the meeting broke.

  “Walt, can I see you?” Turgeon pulled Sydowski aside. “We’d better tell Reed about Tribe, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, he’s going to find out. Might as well be from us.”

  “How do we tell him this? After what he’s been through?”

  “We just tell him, Linda, that’s all we can do.”

  55

  The thread of hope named Angela had disappeared into the night on the Oakland waterfront. And the vehicle that had been watching them had pulled away when they spotted it.

  “Tom, maybe this whole thing was a setup,” Wilson said as they drove back to San Francisco.

  “She was too specific about Donnie Ray Ball.”

  “But someone was watching.”

  “Could’ve been police. I don’t care. I’ve got to follow this. Let’s go to the paper.”

  “Now?”

  Reed shot Wilson a look. She pushed the gas pedal and the city loomed.

  The Star newsroom was deserted. They smelled micro-waved popcorn wafting over the sea of empty desks, silent keyboards, and computer monitors whose screen savers flickered in the tranquility.

  Chad, the twenty-year-old news assistant, was the sole person on duty. His Nikes were crossed atop an early edition on the metro assignment editor’s desk. He was reclined on the swivel chair in front of the big-screen TV, watching a John Wayne movie. A portable police scanner clattered next to him, its sound turned low. More interested in keeping his mouth filled with popcorn, Chad glanced at Reed and Wilson. Reed detected a pungent hint of marijuana.

  “Paper’s gone to bed. What’s up, man?”

  “We’re not here.”

  “Hope they find your wife, Reed, so you can kick some serious ass.”

  Wilson went to the coffee room to make a fresh batch. Reed went directly to his desk, logged on to the Star’s computerized article archives, uncertain if they went back far enough to contain that series he did. Scrolling through story after story. It was hard to concentrate.

  Think hard. Stories from way back, about guys thinking they got away with murder. The guy is in your stories—you met him.

  Trouble was, Reed had written hundreds, maybe thousands of stories on crime, murders, rapes, robberies, fires, quakes, mud slides, victims, criminals, profiles, trends, reports, investigations, features on tragedies, anniversaries, and executions. He searched subject, keywords, checking dates, names, or bizarre aspects that stood out. Data flowed by in a blurry river of information. It’s in here. It’s just got to be in here. You met him.

  Reed had met thousands of people. Interviewed them at their homes, offices, schools, jobs, at crime scenes, at hospitals, at funerals, the cemeteries, courthouse steps, and prisons.

  So many.

  It was true. He’d carry the details of some stories until the day he died. Like the way a mother cradles the picture of her murdered child, the way a belly chain sounds when a convicted murderer sits down for his interview on death row, or the way a gun pressed to your head feels when a drug dealer has his finger on the trigger.

  Still, there were stories he couldn’t recall until, for one reason or another, the actual article he wrote popped up in his face.

  “Here, Tom.” Wilson set a mug of black coffee down on Reed’s desk. “Any luck?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Angela said it has something to do with stories you did about people who thought they had gotten away with murder.”

  “I recall a series I did years ago, but no details. Zach’s got a promotional poster for it in his bedroom.”

  “Got your picture on it?”

  “Yeah.
”

  Wilson got on her hands and knees to prospect in the long-forgotten junk zone between their desks. She sifted through the stacks of yellowing editions of the Star, movie posters, a couple of classics from Fillmore West, others for Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones. One for the pope. Wilson got up, unfolding one with tattered edges.

  “This it?”

  It was an old poster with Reed’s head and shoulders over a stylized lead, Did they get away with murder...It had gone into Star boxes years ago to promote his investigative series on unsolved homicides...To find out, read Pulitzer Prize-nominee Tom Reed. Only in the San Francisco Star.

  “That’s the one.”

  “It was here when I moved in,” Wilson said.

  “It hasn’t any details. And I just can’t remember a single name. What’s wrong with me? I’m drawing a blank on this.”

  Wilson went to her keyboard.

  “Tom, I think I referred to one of the cases from your series in one of my old features on Roberta Mind.” Wilson entered the archives and pulled up a single hit under her byline, then displayed the item. The reference was near the bottom. “Roberta Mind,” Wilson read aloud, “killed her husband in a domestic dispute in the late 1980s. Tom, your files would be in the dungeon.”

  “The dungeon? I never go down there.”

  “Chad!” Wilson called. “We need the keys to the dungeon, they should be in the assistant’s supply desk.”

  The dungeon was at the very bottom of the Star building, a vast basement warehouse area on the same floor as the presses, which were now rolling with the Star's final edition, making the building tremble and hum.

  Wilson and Reed unlocked the battered steel door, threw on the lights, and walked down the rows of chicken-wired storage stalls, each with its own door and lock. Every journalist at the Star had a unit for storage. Each one measured four feet by eight feet and had shelves filled with discarded files and material. Editors who were in divorce proceedings hid personal treasures here, like cash, rare coins, or game balls autographed by Bonds, or Montana.

  The vibrating presses made the lights flicker and raised dust.

  “This place stinks. It’s musty,” Wilson said. “Here we go.” She tapped on a stuffed unit whose door read 647 TOM REED.

  “I’ve never come down here, I just sent junk down,” Reed said, pulling out his keys. “I think it’s this one.” The key worked.

  Wilson entered. Large cardboard file boxes, stacked six high, filled the unit. Each one was dated.

  “This one, this one, this one.” Her pen squeaked check marks on the boxes to start searching. Reed grunted, hoisting them to the floor, tearing them open. They were jammed tight with files, notebooks, printouts, papers.

  “Look for Roberta Mind,” Wilson said, climbing to a higher shelf where she tore open a box. “That should lead you to the others.”

  “They’re not even in alphabetical order. I just heaved stuff in here. Most of the dates are wrong.”

  “Keep looking.” Wilson was fast. “Together we can get through this stuff. Come on. Anything with Roberta Mind will lead us to the others.”

  The lights flickered as the presses droned, making the room shake. Minutes became half an hour. Half an hour became an hour, then another hour as the pile of boxes searched became larger than the remainder.

  Reed flipped through file after file, dust and sweat stinging his eyes, his body aching, until he came across a file with Roberta scrawled in large letters. It was thick. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  He scanned the draft of a story from a dot matrix printer. Roberta Mind was a hairdresser acquitted of killing her husband because of a history of domestic abuse. But detectives said she’d planned his death, plying him with booze and taunting him, even though he had completed four successful months of counseling. Reed remembered that story.

  But according to Donnie Ray Ball’s tip, Ann’s kidnapper was a man Reed had met. That ruled out Roberta. Reed caught a note in her file saying her case was among four in the series he did.

  The next one was about Elonzo Haze, a pimp suspected of murdering one of his hookers who was going to testify against him. That one came back to Reed. It involved voodoo or something occult. People who’d had info on the case kept disappearing before detectives could question them. It was never solved. A real bone-chiller. Reed talked to Elonzo on the phone a few times but they’d never met.

  A note on the file folder said More series material in box 3312.

  “That one, Molly.” Reed pointed to the box on the top shelf in the corner. “Get that one. Look for two stories from the series. The folders might have something written on them.”

  Still on the higher shelf, Wilson heaved the box nearer, opening to the case of Cyras Makepeace. “Remember that case, Tom? Wilderness guide whose customers died hiking?”

  “Yeah, it’s all coming back. Cyras arranged to make himself a beneficiary on their insurance policies before his clients had wilderness accidents. They never charged him even after a couple of exhumations.”

  “Here’s the last one on the series,” Wilson said, just as the lights flickered, the floor shook from the presses, and the board she was standing on cracked. “Look out!” Wilson caught herself but the box crashed, files spilled on the floor at Reed’s feet He bent down to collect them. He reached for a black-and-white mug shot and he froze. “Jesus Christ!”

  Realization rushed at him with all the fury and the earth-shaking thunder of the presses, driving him to his knees as he studied the face that met his in the flickering light.

  The face of a long-forgotten enemy.

  John Mark Engler.

  56

  The forty-watt porch lighting of the Moonlit Dreams Motor Inn attracted clouds of frenzied moths but few guests dared to stop. Every few minutes a car or truck passed down the highway, interrupting the crickets but ignoring the vacancy sign beckoning from the darkness.

  But for the paint blistering, not much happened here.

  The air conditioner didn’t work in number 6 where Ann Reed’s wrists were handcuffed to the wooden arms of a chair. Duct tape covered her mouth. She blinked away the salty sting of another sweat droplet.

  Delmar Tribe couldn’t stop watching her. Even when he tilted his head to swallow more beer, he kept a predatory eye locked on to her. It had been twenty minutes since they’d settled in. John Engler stepped from the bathroom after a shower, his hair damp, face reddened.

  “Where the hell you going?” Tribe said.

  “To phone our guy and get some food, which is your job but you’re too damned drunk.”

  “Screw you.” Tribe stared at Ann, then at the fractured TV screen. The set got two channels: a fire-and-brimstone Bible-thon and professional wrestling. “How long you gonna be?”

  “Half an hour. Maybe less, so don’t get any ideas, Del.”

  “Why the hell do you pick these rat-hole dumps, huh?”

  “To make you feel at home.” Engler began collecting the keys, knives. “These places are cheap, out of the way, take cash, ask no questions. Do I have to spell it out for you? Give me your gun.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Because I don’t want any trouble while I step out.” Tribe glared at him before giving up his gun, then opening another beer.

  “Slow down there,” Engler said. “How ’bout some chicken from that place we passed down the road?”

  “How ’bout we get our money and split? I’m sick of this. I want my cut. Let’s keep driving and get it done with the buyer.”

  “No, he’s not ready. Take it easy. I’ll be right back.”

  “Get more beer.”

  Engler drove off.

  Tribe lit a cigarette and resumed watching Ann through his smoke cloud. Her breathing quickened. Alone with him, she was vulnerable. Maybe John did this on purpose. Time ticked by as she fought to figure out Tom’s link to these men. If she understood, maybe she could reason a way out. As crickets chirped in the night, Ann felt Tribe’s
eyes on her. Watching. Waiting. She blinked at her mounting fear. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes had passed, providing some relief. Maybe he would leave her alone.

  Without warning he stood and stripped off his shirt.

  He was huge. He had the build of an inmate for whom bodybuilding was a religion practiced daily in the exercise yard. His powerful muscles strained the tattoos on his arms and shoulders. Being shirtless magnified his deformed ear, underscoring Ann’s worry that he was abnormal.

  “This place is a sweatbox.” He touched his beer to his forehead and chest “I see you’re hot too, darlin’.”

  Watching her watching him, he shook his head slowly.

  “Damn! You’re a looker.” He seemed bigger as he stepped next to her, bending over, drawing his face to hers. “Well, it’s no secret anymore. I know what you want.”

  She began to tremble.

  Fight. They’re going to kill you. Don’t let him do this. Fight him.

  He held up the handcuff key and his rotting teeth emerged as he grinned.

  In a few quick powerful movements he had Ann handcuffed to the bed, using the length of chain for her legs. She managed to scratch him, drawing blood on his shoulder. She got in a few hard punches but it was like slamming her hand against rock. He laughed.

  “Might as well admit the truth to yourself,” he said, “you want this. You really want this bad. They all wanted it, darlin’. All of them.”

  He placed one of his knees on the bed between her legs. Her heart galloped. She thought of Tom. Of Zach, thought of the woman buried in the desert. She prayed. Prayed to die now so he couldn’t do this, couldn’t take her last bit of dignity. She prayed for the other one to return.

  His eyes burned into hers, the tips of something so dark and dead it turned Ann’s blood cold. He cupped one hand around her neck. His fingers met at the front, like a vise. His big thumb caressed her chin, her lips.

  “Darlin’, I seen how you’ve been looking at me and I know what you want. It’s been a long time since I had something as beautiful as you. We both have needs. I’m going to help you with yours.”