Текст книги "Alex Cross, Run"

Автор книги: James Patterson

Соавторы: James Patterson
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER

69

FROM THE UTILITY ROOM DOOR, CREEM TRAVELED LATERALLY. HE SKIRTED THE side yard and pushed right through the ten-foot arborvitae between his own property and Roger Wettig’s next door.

It was a little like passing through the looking glass. The house on this side of the hedge was all lit up, with a soft golden light showing through the expanses of glass on both levels.

And in fact, Roger and Annette Wettig themselves were like some kind of skewed mirror version of the Creems. Roger was twenty years older than Elijah, and Annette was at least ten years younger than Miranda—the prototypical Palm Beach trophy wife, all set to be rich and single as soon as Roger had that inevitable second heart attack of his.

As he came onto the Ipe-planked deck around Roger’s pool, Creem went into his bit. He dragged his right leg behind him and held a hand up to the back of his head, limping the last twenty yards to one of the Wettigs’ back doors.

Inside, he could see Roger watching a Marlins game on an enormous television. His back was to the door, with his hands laced over the monk’s cap of bald scalp on his head.

When Creem banged on the glass, Roger nearly fell out of his chair.

“Hello?” Creem called through.

Roger stared back, squinting, but not coming any closer. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted.

Creem gestured toward the beach. “I was just attacked,” he said. “Could you please help me?”

From the way Roger was looking at him so intently, it was clear he had no idea who Creem was, inside the mask. Just some old stranger who’d had the nerve to be mugged on his spit of Palm Beach. He didn’t even try to hide his annoyance as he came closer.

“Hang on, hang on,” he said. He beeped out a code on the glowing keypad by the floor-to-ceiling sliders, and then pulled one open with a whoosh of air. The Marlins game inside was up at top volume.

“Reyes’s been looking good in early season play….”

“Do you want me to call the police?” Roger said.

“No,” Creem told him. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Whether we’ll see last year’s kind of batting remains to be seen….”

“Well…can I help you?” Roger said. “Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?” Creem said. “Just my feelings, I suppose. You know, you could have at least called.”

Softly in the background, he could hear Josh laughing with a hand over the phone.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Roger demanded.

“A swing and a miss.”

“It’s me, Roger. Elijah Creem.”

That was all the fun Creem allowed himself. He produced the handgun from behind his back and fired into Roger’s left man boob before he could even try to turn away. So much for the heart attack. He dropped dead right there.

“Strike two! Maybe this isn’t José’s night, after all.”

Creem kept moving. He stepped over Roger’s heft and continued farther into the house. He’d been here for a few beers, a few dinner parties, and he knew the basic layout. The master bedroom was on the ground level, in its own wing off to the right.

As he left the great room behind, he could hear another TV up ahead, with whatever Annette was watching on her own back there.

“Roger?” she called out, just as Creem opened the bedroom door and fired his third shot of the night.

It caught her in the shoulder as she started to scramble off the bed. The next bullet hit her in the face, and she went down for good. She died in her husband’s Dallas Cowboys jersey, with little white pieces of cotton between her toes and a fresh coat of red on the nails.

A little knife work would have been more to Creem’s liking—probably Josh’s, too—but not tonight. There was no sense drawing any parallels for the police down here.

He emptied Annette’s drawers quickly, and bagged the two velvet boxes that fell out as he did. He dumped her purse, took the wallet, and then took Roger’s wallet as well, from the tall dresser in the closet.

That was enough. It didn’t really matter what he might have missed, and it was best to keep moving.

But then halfway out the door, Creem’s curiosity got the best of him. He turned around and went back to where Annette was laid out, all angles and wide eyes on the bed. With one gloved hand, he lifted up the hem of her nightshirt to have a look.

Sure enough, her breasts had a noticeable asymmetry, with the shadow of a scar still showing on either side. Roger had cheaped out on the one thing it made the least sense in the world to skimp on, and it showed. What a fool.

Two minutes later, Creem was back on the beach, walking north toward the lot where he’d parked his rental.

“That’s it, Josh,” he said. “It’s done. I’m calling it a night.”

“I still don’t get it,” Josh said. “What just happened?”

“Well, for one thing, I might have just single-handedly brought down the property values on this little stretch of Gold Coast. But more important? I made sure that Miranda and the girls are never going to want to use this place again.”

Not bad for a night’s work. Inside his mask, Dr. Creem smiled.

CHAPTER

70

THE NEXT DAY AT WORK STARTED WITH SOME DECENT NEWS. I GOT MY GUN and badge back from Sergeant Huizenga. The chief himself had to sign off on the Glock, so that felt like a vote of confidence in the right direction.

Too bad it didn’t change my work status. I was still stuck in the office, and basically spent the whole day doing three things—answering the phones, logging cold case reports in the file room, and taking the temperature of everyone I’d been working with up until now.

Technically I was off the Elizabeth Reilly case, off the Georgetown Ripper, and off the River Killer. But you don’t just work a multiple homicide one day and then stop caring about it the next. I wanted to know what was going on.

I also still had Ava on my mind, and Ron Guidice as well. In fact, my first detour that morning was over to Jarret Krause’s desk.

“Alex. How’s it hanging?” he said, sitting back as I came into his cube. I noticed he’d shut down whatever window he’d been working on, too.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just wondered if you have anything new on Ron Guidice.”

Krause leaned farther back, with his hands on top of his head, like he was trying to get them as far off the keyboard as possible.

“Jeez, I’m not sure what to say,” he told me.

“Meaning what?” I asked, just to keep the pressure on. I knew what he meant.

“Huizenga was pretty specific. You’re noncontact, right? And frankly, aren’t you supposed to be laying off of Guidice?”

I wasn’t going to answer that one. The truth was, I understood where Krause was coming from. He was a newbie, and probably more ambitious than he was bold. That can change over time, but right now he was working his way up by staying inside the lines. It wasn’t up to me to change that for him. So I moved on.

The person who was the most open to me that morning was Errico Valente. The last we’d really talked was at the double homicide on Cambridge Place, right before my big blowout with Guidice. I still had access to the investigative files online, but Errico let me look through his notes as well.

What I learned was that the knife work on the mother and daughter victims was strikingly similar. The incisions were close enough to each other in placement and scope to indicate some level of expertise. Most of the seemingly random flesh tears were secondary, almost as if the cutter had deliberately gone back and added some messiness to the whole thing. At a minimum, our killer was getting better with practice.

Errico had also been researching mask fabricators. Based on the security camera footage, he’d narrowed it down to three possible companies, in North Carolina, Texas, and California. It seemed doubtful that the Barbie Killer, or Georgetown Ripper, or whoever he was, would do anything so obvious as to have these things shipped to a traceable address. But either way, MPD was now talking about the masks publicly, including at the press briefings.

It was a good move. If nothing else, it might put the killer on the defensive, and maybe even push him to make some kind of mistake. Anything you can do to upset a serial killer’s pattern can be a potent tool, especially when you have nothing else to work with.

By the end of the day, I knew a lot more than I had when I walked in that morning. But I was still frustrated. I wanted to help. Instead, all I could do was pace around the outside of it all, just waiting to get back in.

And so far, there was no sign of that changing anytime soon.

CHAPTER

71

ANOTHER ADVANTAGE TO WORKING THE SO-CALLED RUBBER GUN SQUAD WAS the hours. I went in at eight and signed out at five. There’s only so much office work you can do.

For the first time in a while, I beat Bree home, and even better, sat down to dinner with the family. If there’s one thing I could change about my life, it might just be all those dinners I miss.

After the ice cream was eaten and the dishes were washed, I was helping Jannie with some algebra, when Sampson came up onto the back porch.

“Knock knock,” he said, coming in. We were all feeling pretty down about Ava, but Sampson’s family. He’s welcome anytime.

“How are you holding up, Nana?” he said, giving her a hug in her chair.

“I’m just fine,” she said, but I think she’d been on the same page of Madeleine Albright’s new book for the last half hour. “You want some ice cream, dear?”

“Actually, I was hoping to grab Alex and Bree for a minute,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder. “Maybe outside?” He leaned down to kiss Jannie on the cheek as we headed out to the picnic table in the yard.

“What’s up?” I asked, once John had closed the back door behind him.

Sampson settled his bear-size frame across from us and clasped his hands on the table. It took him a second to figure out what he wanted to say, or at least, how he wanted to start.

“Let me give you a hypothetical,” he said. “Suppose there’s some guy pressing charges against someone else—charges he knows are false. And say this guy’s gone to some lengths to set that person up, and make life difficult. Maybe he even breaks the law to get it done, but no one can prove it.”

“Okay,” I said. We were obviously talking about Guidice—but also not talking about Guidice. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and follow John’s lead for the moment. “Go on.”

“I’m thinking that sort of guy might have a few skeletons in his closet,” Sampson said. “The kind that don’t show up on a regular background check.”

I noticed Bree was sitting very still, not saying a word.

“What kind of skeletons?” I said.

Sampson leaned back and shrugged. “Drug habit? Bad debt? I don’t know, maybe he’s sleeping with his best friend’s wife. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say someone else finds out about it. Someone like me, for instance. That kind of information might be used to make a person reconsider these charges he’s pressing. And maybe that makes life a little easier for the other guy. Him, and his family.”

“Jesus, John,” I said. If I weren’t so on the rack about all this, the pretense might have almost seemed funny. “I couldn’t ask you to do something like that—”

“If we were even talking about it,” John said. “Which we’re not. But just for the record, Alex, you have asked me to do that kind of thing before. More than once.”

“Yeah, when I’m in on it,” I said. “This is different.”

Finally, Bree spoke up. Her voice was low, and I got the impression she’d been expecting this.

“My two cents?” she said. “I don’t think John would have come over here if he didn’t want to.”

“That’s true,” Sampson told me.

I believed him, but it was also true that Sampson would do anything for us. The same way I’d do anything for him. That’s not always a good thing. This was John’s career we were talking about.

“I don’t know, Sampson,” I said.

“But I do,” Bree told me. “There’s a lot at stake here, Alex, and you’re right in the middle of it. Let me call this one. Please.”

When I looked into her eyes, I saw something else. There was something she wasn’t saying—and I finally got the whole picture. Unless I was very much mistaken, this wasn’t just John’s idea. Bree had asked him to come over tonight.

I still felt conflicted about it all, but she was right. There was a lot at stake here, either way. I was the one with the restraining order, and they were doing whatever they could to protect me—but also Ava.

Under other circumstances, I might have also still been caught up on the loss Guidice himself had incurred, back in 2007. But he’d trumped that issue the minute he’d started messing with my family.

So instead of saying anything else, I just stood up from the table and started back inside.

“I’m going to finish helping Jannie with her homework,” I said. “You two come on in when you’re done talking.”

CHAPTER

72

BY THE END OF THE NEXT DAY, WE WERE FINALLY PERMITTED TO GO VISIT Ava. Sampson’s wife, Billie, was nice enough to come over and watch the kids, while Nana, Bree, and I drove up to Quarles Street in Northeast.

The home where Ava had been placed was on the fringes of one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. It was a converted single-family house, called Howard House now. They had twelve girls living there, along with a house manager, a pair of overnight staff, and a couple of part-time counselors.

I don’t expect miracles from the city, and I’ve got plenty of respect for the job these people are up against. Still, I had to keep my feelings in check as we walked up the cracked sidewalk and rang the bell.

Inside, the place reminded me of a few of my college apartments. The furniture was old and mismatched, with a threadbare wall-to-wall carpet that looked like it had been new sometime in the seventies.

Several young women were hanging out in front of the TV in the living room, watching Judge Judy on a wall-mounted TV. I could hear cooking sounds from farther back, and half of a phone conversation, at full volume, from somewhere upstairs.

“Yes, I did. Nuh-uh! Don’t start, Lamar. Don’t even start with that shit!”

The truth was, Ava could be just as street as the next girl. I had no doubt she could stand up for herself, and even hold her own in a fight, if it came to that. But it made me sadder than I could say to know she was living here now. Just looking at Nana and Bree, I could tell they felt the same way.

Eventually, a middle-aged woman in braids came out from the back, drying her hands on a dish towel. The T-shirt over her enormous bosom had a portrait of James Baldwin, one of Nana’s favorites. I chose to take that as a good sign—our first one of the day.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“We’re here to see Ava Williams,” I told her.

The woman threw the towel over her shoulder. “And you are?”

“We’re her family,” Nana said. There was a little edge of stress in her voice.

“Her foster family,” Bree added quietly.

“Stephanie Gethmann from Child and Family Services said we could see her today after five,” I told her.

The woman nodded and took a deep breath. I imagine she took a lot of deep breaths, in her job.

“Ava’s had some issues today,” she finally said. “Now’s not a good time. Maybe you could come back tomorrow.”

“Is she here?” Bree eyeballed the open staircase, where the loud phone talker was on her way down.

“Damn, Lamar, what you want from me?” she said into her cell, but then stopped between us and the woman we were talking to. “Can I go to the store?”

The woman held up five fingers, as in, you’ve got five minutes to be back. The girl continued out the door and down the steps, cursing Lamar the whole way.

“Sorry,” the woman said. She stepped out of the foyer and into the empty dining room, which I guess was the closest thing to privacy around here. “Anyway—no. Ava’s not here right now.”

“What kind of issues are we talking about?” Bree said. “Is she hurt?”

“She’ll be fine,” the woman said.

“Is she high?” Bree asked.

At that the woman paused, and looked me in the eye instead of Bree. “I really can’t talk about it,” she said.

“She’s high,” Bree said. “Unbelievable. Two days here and she’s using again.”

I tried to step in before Bree’s or Nana’s temper got us into trouble.

“We can help, if you’ll let us,” I said. “How about if we wait for her?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Visiting hours are over at seven, and she won’t be back until later. You should really call first.”

There didn’t seem to be anything more we could do. For a minute we all just stood there, not wanting to leave. It was incredibly disappointing.

“Well, you give her this,” Nana said between clenched teeth. She handed over the tin she’d brought, filled with her homemade brownies and Ava’s favorite butterscotch candies. “I want every single one of those to get to Ava. Do you understand?”

“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll make sure she gets them.”

“Hey, lady, what’s that?” someone called out from the living room. “Something good?”

“Shee-it, nobody be bringing me nothing. Who those people here to see, anyway?”

Nana looked over her shoulder. “You watch your mouth, young lady,” she said. Then she reached over and took the tin out of the manager’s hands. “I changed my mind. We’ll bring these tomorrow,” she said.

The manager was doing her best, she really was. I don’t know anyone in the child welfare system who isn’t overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated.

Still, as we left the house, I’m pretty sure all three of us were thinking the same thing. If Ava was going to have any kind of chance, we had to get her out of there.

CHAPTER

73

MY THIRD DAY OF DESK DUTY WENT PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AS THE FIRST two. I was starting to feel like some kid stuck with an in-school suspension.

Then, late in the afternoon, another call came in.

“Homicide,” I answered, for the hundredth time that day.

“Yes, hello, this is Detective Penner from Palm Beach Police down here in Florida. I’m looking for Detective Cross.”

“You’ve got him,” I said. I’ve done a fair amount of collaborating with departments all around the country. It’s not so unusual to get a call like this. My guess was that he wanted some kind of consult.

“First of all, can I just say I’m a fan of your book?” Detective Penner told me. “I’m hoping you’re going to write something else one of these days.”

“Sure, in my spare time,” I deadpanned. “How can I help you?”

“We’ve got a double homicide investigation going on down here, from two nights ago. It’s a husband and wife, with all indications of a simple robbery. The reason I’m calling is we just heard from the caretaker at the house next door to this one. Looks like it was hit, too, when no one was home.”

“And you’re calling me because…”

“I’m having a hard time locating the owner of that second house. As it turns out, this guy is someone you arrested a while back. A doctor by the name of Elijah Creem. Ring any bells?”

It sure did. There was no forgetting that name, just for the name’s sake. But beyond that, the night of Creem’s little underage sex party, and the bust we ran, was pretty hard to forget.

He’d also made a few headlines in the meantime. They’d been calling him Dr. Creep in the rags. I was pretty sure he and his friend, Bergman, had a trial coming up, where Sampson was going to be testifying.

“I was wondering if you might be able to send someone over to see if Dr. Creem is home, or even in town,” Penner said. “He hasn’t been answering any calls.”

“Is he a suspect?” I said. The guy was such scum, I was prepared to believe anything about him.

“Depends on where he was two nights ago,” Penner said. “At a minimum, I need to notify him of the robbery and ask a few questions.”

Technically, it was a breach of my noncontact status to start interacting with the public. But everyone else was flat out, and truth be told, some part of me wanted to see how far this guy had fallen since the night I put the cuffs on him. If it turned into anything, I’d pass it on to Sampson. He worked out of Second District, where Creem lived, anyway.

I waited until five, then clocked out and headed over to Creem’s house.

CHAPTER

74

DR. CREEM LIVED IN AN IMPRESSIVE TUDOR ON A LITTLE CUL-DE-SAC IN Wesley Heights. The whole property butted up against Glover-Archbold Park, with plenty of privacy all around. From what little I knew of Creem’s situation, I assumed his next address was going to be something a bit more downscale, with guards and a roommate.

Then again, money like his has been known to buy justice—and freedom—every once in a while. I hadn’t been planning on following the trial, but now that he was back on my radar, maybe I would.

There was no answer at the front door when I rang, but the garage was open, with a midnight-blue Escalade parked inside. I let myself around through the side gate, toward the wooded back half of the property.

That’s where I found him. He was standing with a cigar clenched in his teeth, bent over a putter on a big kidney-shaped green that had been worked into the patio at the back of the house. A small yellow flag stuck up from each of the three cups sunk into the fake turf.

“Dr. Creem?”

He didn’t seem to recognize me at first. I’m pretty sure all he saw was some black guy in a suit, standing there on his property.

“Don’t you believe in ringing the bell?” he said.

“I did,” I told him, and showed my badge. “I’m Detective Cross from MPD. We’ve actually met before.”

A flash of recognition showed on his face then. I wondered if he remembered trying to bribe me, too.

Either way, he played it off. He took a ball from the pocket of his sweats, dropped it on the green, and put both hands back on the putter. The guy just oozed arrogance. I tried not to take too much pleasure from the fact that I was here with bad news.

“What exactly can I do for you?” he said.

“We had a call from Palm Beach,” I said. “The police department’s been trying to reach you.”

“Yeah? What did I do now?” he said and executed a smooth, twenty-foot putt that just missed its mark.

“Apparently there was a robbery at your house the other night. Your place and the one next door. Unfortunately your neighbors were both killed by the intruder.”

“You don’t say.” Creem dropped another ball onto the ground. “Are we talking about the Wettigs or the Andersons?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

“Jesus, I hope it’s the Wettigs,” he said. “No disrespect, but that guy’s an ass, and he plays his TV way too loud.”

No disrespect? It was a little late for that. I knew I couldn’t stand this guy for a reason.

I interviewed Creem a little bit and got his story. He’d been home the night of the Florida murders and said I could check it out with his friend, Josh Bergman, if necessary. I told him I’d pass it all on to the Palm Beach Police Department.

“Now, if that’s all, I need to keep moving, detective. I’ve got a social engagement.” He stopped and looked me in the eye, with a familiar grin. “Believe it or not, there are still some people in this town who will associate with me.”

In a strange way, it made me think of Ava, the way Creem deflected any and all sense of real emotion—about himself, or anyone else for that matter. In his own way, the man was shut up tight against the world. Just like Ava.

The difference being that I wished Ava well.