Текст книги "Riptide"

Автор книги: Michael Prescott

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

twenty-nine

It took her an hour to tell the story to Draper and Casey. She kept her voice even, her face expressionless.

They listened, asking few questions. Draper sat on the edge of the desk, in a sport jacket and denim pants. Casey, in uniform, occupied the desk chair in the watch commander’s office.

Jennifer stood, her body rigid, her emotions held in check. This was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she wouldn’t let it break her, and she wouldn’t let them see.

By the time she finished talking, it was four P.M., and her throat was sore. She had been speaking almost continuously since three.

“He attacked you with a knife?” Draper asked.

“After knocking me out, yes. He put the knife to my throat. Even pricked me a little—here.” She pointed to a dab of blood near her collarbone.

“And he said, ’Not yet’? Any idea why he—well, why he didn’t go through with it then and there?”

“I’d like to think he still has some small emotional connection with me.”

Casey gave her a sharp look. “Is that what you think?”

“Not really, no. I think he’s just confused and irrational. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He thinks he’s Jack the Ripper.”

“We don’t know that,” Draper said.

“It’s obvious. The four victims—their first names...”

Casey shrugged. “Those are pretty common names.”

“It’s not just the names. They’re in the correct chronological order, and there are other details that match. The Ripper’s second victim, Annie Chapman, was attacked in a fenced-in backyard, and so was Ann Powell—the woman who was lured outside when her dog went missing. Catharine Eddowes was a street person, just like the bag lady, Chatty Cathy. There may be other parallels. If you let me see the files—”

Draper shook his head. “You’re not seeing any files.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re too worked up about this as it is. You need to calm down and get some perspective.”

“I have perspective.”

“What you have are some similar names.” His fingers drummed the desk. “Very common names, as the sergeant said. If you go through enough crimes, you’ll find all sorts of apparent patterns that don’t mean anything.”

“You don’t get it. You’re not listening. He was on a Ripper site because he’s obsessed with Jack the Ripper. He wrote, Call me Jack. He quoted from the Ripper’s letters. Said he was ‘down on whores’ and wouldn’t stop killing them.”

Draper frowned. “None of the local women you mentioned was a prostitute.”

“He told me all women are whores.”

“Do you have a record of this conversation?”

“No, I was texting. My phone doesn’t store the messages. You think I’m making it up?” She could hear the thin leading edge of hysteria in her voice.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Draper soothed. “It would be useful to read the transcript, that’s all. You’re a document analyst. You know that.”

“Sorry. You’re right. It’s just—there’s not a lot of time. The intervals between the attacks have been getting shorter. Six months between Mary Ann Ellison and Ann Powell. Five months between Powell and Elizabeth Custer. Three months between Custer and Chatty Cathy. And three months have passed since then. He’s due—he’s overdue—to strike. He nearly killed me. And now he’s run off somewhere in an acute phase of his illness. He’s preparing to kill again.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Draper said. “You’re adding two plus two and getting five.”

“You mean you don’t believe me?”

“I believe you about what happened in the library. Your brother is dangerous. He has to be picked up. Whether or not he’s connected with any of these other cases remains to be seen.”

She almost argued the point, then realized it didn’t matter. The only priority was to get Richard off the street. The details would come out later.

“All right,” she said. “As long as you’re going after him.”

“Naturally we’re going after him. He held you at knifepoint. That’s enough for now.”

“He have a car?” Casey asked.

“Not unless he’s stolen one. Otherwise he walks or takes the bus.”

“Since he was at the library, it’s a safe bet he’s still local. You think he’ll stay close to home even now that he knows you’re on to him?”

“The library is as far as he’ll go, I think. Mostly he’ll stay in Venice. It’s his home turf. “

“Have you got a photo of him?”

Her hand was trembling as she removed the picture from her wallet. “This is the most recent one.”

Draper studied it, then passed it to Casey. “I’ll make copies,” Casey said, “and have them circulated at roll call. We can put out a BOLO for units in the field right now.”

“I don’t want him hurt,” she whispered. “I mean—even with everything that’s happened, and everything I suspect, I still...”

Casey understood. “I’ll tell all units that if anyone spots him, they’re to contact me immediately before taking any action. I’ll personally supervise, all right? I’ll make sure things don’t get out of hand.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Draper was staring out the window into the squad room, the neat maze of cubicles with waist-high partitions. “How much of this did you tell Sandra Price?”

The question surprised her. “None of it, really. I just said I had concerns about someone close to me.”

“Good. We don’t need any vigilantes looking for your brother.”

“She’s not a vigilante.”

“She’s not a cop, either. This is a job for law enforcement, not community activists.”

She wanted to say that maybe if they chose to work with Sandra Price instead of against her... But now was the wrong time.

“Anyone else know about this?” Casey asked.

“Well, there’s a friend of mine, Maura Lowell. She dated Richard for a while, before he started showing symptoms. She’s worried about him, too.”

“We’ll need contact information for her, as well as your brother’s address. For the time being, you shouldn’t go home. You can stay with a friend or—”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m waiting right here until you find him.”

“That could be hours. Or days.”

“Then I’ll wait hours. Or days. Casey, he’s my brother.” She nearly lost her composure as she said it.

Casey looked away too quickly, and she knew he had read the expression on her face.

“Okay, Silence,” he said, his voice low. “Okay.”

thirty

Jennifer sat in the detectives’ squad room amid the ringing telephones and the clatter of footsteps. Casey and Draper had left on separate missions more than an hour ago. She had no one to talk to, no one to share her fears with. Fears of what Richard might be planning to do when the sun went down. Or sooner.

She remembered missing Maura’s call. There were no messages on her voicemail. She tried Maura’s cell, then her home phone. No answer. Probably showing a house, not taking calls.

It seemed unfair. The one time when she needed companionship and reassurance, and she was alone.

She felt a presence beside her and looked up. Draper was there.

“News?” she asked, rising.

“I went to the library. Richard’s card was used on one of the computers during the appropriate time frame. And a patron found a cell phone in the stacks, turned it in to lost-and-found.”

“Richard’s phone?”

“Probably, but don’t get too excited. It’s one of those cheap throwaways with prepaid minutes that you can buy in any drugstore. No calling plan, no way to trace the owner.”

“Why would he leave it behind?”

“He was probably afraid we could identify the phone from your cell records and then zero in on his GPS signal.”

“Yes, he’s smart enough to think of that. How about the patrol units?”

“No sightings yet. Like Casey said, it could take days. Your brother could be anywhere. Living in an alley or on the beach—”

She remembered. “The beach.”

“What about it?”

“This morning I ran into a homeless man in a tent city on the beach. He claimed he’d seen Richard around, but he wouldn’t tell me where. Of course, he could’ve been shining me on.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Even better—I can point him out to you, if he’s still there.”

“I don’t normally bring along a civilian when I’m questioning a witness.”

“I’m not exactly a civilian, Roy. I’m a police consultant. I’ve been to crime scenes. I know how to keep out of your way.”

“You’ll just ID him, then stand back and let me handle it?”

She raised her hand as if swearing an oath. “Promise.”

He gave her a sour look. “How come I don’t believe you?”

***

“You’re very quiet,” Draper said.

She turned to him. He was driving south along the beach, the westering sun shooting orange spears through the passenger window. “Just thinking.”

“About Richard? The two of you must have been pretty close.”

“We were. Before...” She didn’t have to say more.

“You’re sure you can’t provide a better description of what he was wearing?”

“I didn’t pay much attention to his clothes. Loose shirt, faded color. Casual pants. They could have been jeans.”

“Okay.”

“You still think I’m wrong about the murders, don’t you?”

“Probably. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re under strain.”

“I haven’t been—” She stopped. Of course she had been under strain. The earthquake, the skeletons, the diary, Richard’s disappearance, Sirk’s revelation about her father... “I’m not imagining things,” she said.

“We’ll see.”

He parked within a short walk of Venice Pier. They trekked onto the sand, toward the sad scatter of trash-bag tents. The tent city was smaller than it had been this morning. Many of the inhabitants must be on the streets or the boardwalk, cadging spare change, and they’d taken their possessions—even the makeshift tents—with them.

But the man with the port-wine stain was still there. She saw him standing in a huddled group of men who watched their approach with hostile eyes.

“That’s him,” she said. “With the birthmark.”

“All right. You remember our agreement, right? You stand back and let me handle it.”

“Of course.”

“Stay right here.” He traced a line in the sand with the toe of his shoe. “Don’t cross this line.”

She looked at him and saw him grinning. His little joke.

Draper strode into the camp with an easy gait, his posture authoritative but unthreatening, his sport jacket flapping in the sea breeze. “Hey, buddy. Need to talk to you for a second.”

The others in the circle backed off but stayed near enough to take in the show.

“I ain’t done nothing,” the man with the birthmark said.

“Didn’t say you had.”

The man looked past Draper, at Jennifer. She knew he recognized her. “What’s she doing here? She a cop, too?”

Draper hadn’t identified himself as a cop, but the guy seemed to know it intuitively.

“She’s looking for her brother, and so am I. You told her you knew where he’s hanging.”

“Bitch is crazy. Jerking your chain.”

Draper was close to him now, and smiling. “What’s your name?”

“Eddie.”

“You know what I think, Eddie? I think you’re the one jerking my chain.” His hand shot out and grabbed Eddie’s left arm, wrenching it behind his back. “That’s what I think,” Draper added conversationally.

Jennifer’s heart sped up. She remembered the excess force complaints in Draper’s file.

“Shit, man, lemme go.”

“Talk to me straight.” Draper twisted harder. “Where’s her brother?”

“Fuck, that hurts, let go!”

“I’ll let go when you talk to me.”

Eddie waved his free arm in surrender. “Okay, okay...ease up, and I’ll tell you.”

Draper complied, but only a little. “Talk.”

“I seen him flopping at the old hotel by the boardwalk. You know the one they red-tagged ’cause of the quake? It’s, what do you call it, evacuated.”

“He’s in there?”

“I seen him go in.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“How’d he get in if the hotel is closed up?”

“Anyone can get into that shit hole. You know that.”

“Just tell me how.”

“Side window. Half the windows in that place don’t even close, and the other half don’t open. He got in through one of the open ones. I seen him crawling through.”

Draper still hadn’t released his hold on Eddie’s arm. “You wouldn’t be shitting me?”

“No way, I swear.”

“Because I don’t like having my time wasted by bullshit. If your info doesn’t pan out, I’ll be pissed.”

“I can’t swear he’s still there, but that’s where he was yesterday.”

“And you just happened to notice him when he went through the window? It made a big impression on you? Come on, that’s a lot of crap.”

Eddie swallowed. Even from a distance Jennifer could see the heavy jerk of his Adam’s apple. “Okay, I was thinking—thinking I might roll him, you know? He had good shoes. Better’n mine.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“ ’Cause he gave off this vibe. This crazy vibe. You know what I’m saying? Like he’s a nut case. And crazy people, they ain’t worth the trouble.”

Draper let him go. Eddie staggered back, rubbing his arm.

“That wasn’t cool, man. I could make a call, get you in trouble for pulling shit like that.”

“Sure you could. Maybe you can use some of these guys as witnesses.” Draper’s arm swept the ragged crowd of onlookers. “Their testimony will be real credible, won’t it? Oh, I’m in some deep shit now.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Draper smiled. “Fuck me.”

He walked back to Jennifer, looking not at all perturbed, as if this were literally just another day at the beach. He took her by the shoulder, leading her away. After a moment she pulled free.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I never pictured you doing anything like that.”

“I worked patrol for ten years, Jen. I’m not a choirboy.” He read her eyes and added, “I wouldn’t have really hurt him. Not in any serious way.”

“It looked like you were ready to break his arm.”

“Not even close. It’s a standard maneuver. Well within departmental policy. They teach it at the academy.”

“To subdue a violent suspect. That man wasn’t violent.”

“It’s up to the officer’s discretion.”

“It was unnecessary. You could have gotten him to talk without hurting him.”

“Think so? Did he talk to you this morning?”

She couldn’t argue with that.

They climbed back into the car. Draper called the station and learned that Casey was out cruising, then used the radio to ask the RTO to hail 14-l-50 and request him to switch to tactical frequency five. Casey’s voice came on. “Go, fifty.”

Draper brought him up to speed. “It’s the Fortezza,” he concluded.

Casey grunted. “Where else?”

Jennifer didn’t have to ask what he meant. The Fortezza had a reputation, and it wasn’t good.

The hotel was among Venice’s oldest buildings, erected in 1905 in time for Abbot Kinney’s gala celebration of his new city on the Fourth of July. It had been elegant then, a four-story Italianate tower, home to visiting opera divas and yachtsmen.

Today it was a faded relic, a hostel and fifth-rate tourist trap periodically written up for health violations. The mattresses crawled with bedbugs. The drawers were lined with roaches. Vagrants gathered in the alley behind the building to drink and curse long into the night. Prostitutes rented rooms by the hour.

The earthquake had caused structural damage. The hotel had been condemned and vacated. Only squatters roosted there. Richard could be one of them.

If he was there now, he would soon be in custody.

In custody—or dead.

thirty-one

Draper pulled alongside the hotel at 5:45 as the sun brushed the horizon.

“You think he’ll still be here?” Jennifer asked him as he double-parked, blocking in an SUV at the curb.

“When these guys find a spot that’s safe, they tend to stick around. And if he’s mainly nocturnal, there’s a good chance he’ll be here during daylight hours.”

“If he’s inside, he may see the patrol cars.” Draper’s car was unmarked, but the cruisers would stand out.

“Cops aren’t exactly a rare phenomenon in this neighborhood. There are police cars going up and down this street all day. By the time he realizes we’re entering his building, he’ll be stuck.”

“If he’s cornered, he may fight.”

“We can handle him.”

“Don’t let him get hurt.”

“I’ll do everything I can.”

She thought of how he’d roughed up the man on the beach. She said nothing. .

A black-and-white rolled to a stop beside them. Casey stepped out as two more squad cars rounded the corner. None of them used lights and siren. They weren't advertising their arrival.

She heard Casey report to dispatch. “Fourteen-L-fifty to Control One, show us code six at Sunset and Speedway.”

Draper briefed him, both men looking away from the hotel to avoid betraying any interest in it.

“It’s a big building,” Casey said. “And the power’s off. It’ll be dark inside.”

“So?”

“So it’s a tricky business. We might be better off with another couple units.”

“That’ll just raise a red flag. We’re already drawing a crowd.”

He nodded toward the spectators congregating outside the coffee shop across the street. More people were drifting down from the boardwalk.

“So what’s your plan?” Casey asked. “Crash the hotel and do a room-to-room search?”

Draper fingered the service Beretta in the shoulder holster under his sport coat. “You got a better one? If we call out SWAT, there’ll be time for him to book.”

“Okay, but I’m calling the shots inside.”

“Understood.”

“And I’ll have to station two officers outside to watch the front and rear exits. That means just four of us to search the interior.”

“Five of us,” Jennifer said. “I’m going too.”

Casey turned to her. “Like hell you are.”

“I may need to talk to him. If he tries to resist, I may be able to talk him down.”

“You think this is a movie? In real life we don’t bring in the suspect’s sister to get through to him. You’re staying here. End of discussion.”

He motioned to one of the patrolmen, a lanky kid with P2 stripes.

“Sullivan. You and Hanes are posted outside. One in front, one in back. Watch the exits. Anybody tries getting out through a window, grab him. We’ll give you periodic updates on tac five. Otherwise we’ll stay off the air as much as possible, and you do the same. And keep an eye on Miss Silence here. She is not to enter the hotel.”

Jennifer bristled. “You don’t need to treat me like a child.”

Casey ignored her. “Cox, Jorgensen, we’re going in.”

Sullivan sent his partner around to the rear and took up a position where he could watch the lobby door. Casey and Draper led the other two patrol officers up the steps.

“We don’t know what this mope is carrying,” Casey said to the uniforms. “If he resists, light him up.” He indicated the taser carried by one of the men, who nodded.

“Lot of trouble just to roust a bum,” one of the cops groused.

Jennifer felt a flash of anger that anyone would refer to Richard that way. Then she remembered that he was something much worse.

Casey produced a set of keys, one of which unlocked the hotel’s front door. It wasn’t unusual for cops to have master keys to buildings in a high-crime district.

“Watch your six,” Casey said.

The men entered, the door closing behind them. Jennifer moved close to Sullivan, listening to updates on the tactical frequency. In the ground-floor windows she saw movement. The police were checking one room at a time.

Casey’s voice crackled over Sullivan’s radio. “First floor clear. Heading up.”

She surveyed the scene. Maura and other civic boosters might talk about Venice’s comeback, but there was no sign of it here. Shopping-card people and zoned-out addicts wandered the street and adjacent alleys, scrounging in trash cans. Rap music throbbed from the coffee shop in a steady stream of expletives. Next door to the café was a tattoo parlor, and beyond it was an S & M shop, its storefront windows displaying nude mannequins in bondage poses. An abandoned movie theater completed the row of buildings, the letters on its marquee spelling out Goodbye Cruel World.

The concrete promenade called Ocean Front Walk was bustling with even more activity than usual for a warm Friday evening. The overflow from the boardwalk was swelling the crowd of lookie-loos. She wished no one were watching. She didn’t want Richard’s arrest to be a public spectacle. But of course everything in his life would soon be public knowledge, fodder for the 24-hour news channels and the tabloids.

“We’re on the second floor,” Casey reported. “Found a squatter. Not our guy. We’re sending him down to the lobby and proceeding to the third floor.”

She couldn’t endure just waiting. To distract herself, she scanned the crowd. She saw a drag queen in a feather boa, a shirtless guy with a swastika tattoo on his chest, a pair of tourists with fidgety children. A stoner grooving to his iPod. An obese woman with a faded T-shirt stretched taut across her boobs, bearing the slogan Meat is Murder. At the back of the crowd, a nervous figure in a hooded gray sweatshirt, swaying rhythmically.

“Hotel’s clear.” Casey’s voice on the radio. “I want Officer Sullivan to bring Jennifer Silence to meet us on the fourth floor. We think we found the room the suspect was using. Maybe she can confirm that the items in the room belong to him.”

Sullivan escorted her inside the Fortezza. The lobby was dark except for Sullivan’s flashlight. The beam passed over a ragged man clutching a backpack and looking lost. The squatter from the second floor.

At the foot of the staircase, Jennifer saw an old poster captured in the wavering circle of light. Hot salt water in every room as a therapeutic bonus, the sign boasted. Every amenity available in Venice-of-America, birthplace of the American Renaissance.

That was a long time ago.

They climbed the stairs. The banisters were grimed with filth, and there was a bad smell coming from the carpeted treads.

“You shouldn’t have to be in here,” Sullivan said with quiet solicitude.

“I’ve been in worse places.” She was thinking of the utility room in San Francisco.

The odor was worse in the fourth floor hallway, a potpourri of mildew and urine. They passed a row of doors, the room numbers written in black Magic Marker. Halfway down the corridor they found Draper and Casey in one of the rooms. The door had been forced—no great trick, given the cheap lock and wobbly frame.

Jennifer stopped just inside the doorway. She’d thought the Dogtown apartment was bad, but it was a luxury suite compared to this nasty hole. The bed lay against a wall, near a window looking out on a fire escape. A glance into the bathroom revealed an unflushed toilet and a shower stall without a curtain or shower head. The room reeked of trapped body odor.

This was what he’d been reduced to. She wanted to cry.

“Is the stuff his?” Casey asked, reminding her why she was here.

Sullivan handed over his flashlight. She examined the items left behind in the room. On a rickety chair lay a library book about the Illuminati and Freemasons. Conspiracy theories. She flipped through it and found copious underlining and spidery marginal notes. Richard’s handwriting, she thought.

On the bureau, a dilapidated antique that listed drunkenly, she found a few other items. Some candy bars. One of the wanted posters put out by C.A.S.T., ripped off a utility pole or fence, the suspect’s computer-generated face slashed out.

And heartbreakingly, or perhaps ominously, a Polaroid of their father, the colors long ago faded to purple. In the picture, Aldrich Silence was smiling, but there was something strange about his eyes, something indefinable but wrong.

“They’re his things,” she said.

Draper seemed unsurprised. “This was the only room that showed signs of occupancy, other than the one the squatter was using.”

She looked around her. “It’s so awful,” she said softly, speaking mostly to herself.

 ***

The daylight was nearly gone by the time she left the hotel with Draper and Casey. The crowd of onlookers had thinned. But the drag queen was still there, and the stoner with the iPod, and the person in the hooded sweatshirt, almost lost to sight in the gathering dusk.

She paused, focusing on that sweatshirt. She had seen it before.

Sandra Price’s rally, in the gymnasium. The nervous figure rocking in a distant corner of the bleachers.

Richard had attended that event. In disguise. He’d told her so.

Casey was saying something, possibly to her, possibly to Draper. She didn’t hear it. His voice was far away, and all around her was an unnatural quiet, like the stillness in the streets after the earthquake.

She took a step toward the onlookers, walking slowly, her arms at her sides, her head lowered, sending every body-language signal of disinterest. The hooded figure didn’t move, didn’t react.

She remembered Sandra Price saying that an unknown person in a hood had been spotted near one of the crime scenes. It must be the disguise Richard used when he went trolling for victims, or when he spied on her.

As he was doing now.

She entered the crowd, slipping past a large man with a porn-star mustache and a skinny kid fingering a GameBoy. Still the hooded figure hadn’t stirred. She threaded among the spectators, closing in. The face beneath the hood was invisible, a shadow face. She thought of Abberline’s avatar, the faceless man.

She was less than ten feet away when the figure broke into a run.

“Richard!” she screamed. “Stop!”

She ran in pursuit.

He covered ground awkwardly in an ungainly loping stride. Though he had a head start, she thought she could catch him. Then he veered onto the wide concrete strip of the boardwalk and cut past startled pedestrians, racing north. She followed, but in the sudden crush of people she lost sight of him. A banner was strung along the shop fronts: March Festival. That was why the crowd was so heavy—one of the numerous open-air events sponsored by the city.

She glimpsed him once, the gray hood bobbing in the sea of heads.

Behind her, Casey appeared. “It’s him,” she gasped, pointing. “Gray sweatshirt.”

Casey gave chase. People darted out of his way, opening a path for a cop in uniform, and she had a momentary hope that he might catch up with his quarry.

Then he stopped. He reached down for something crumpled on the ground. As she ran up to him, she saw that it was the gray sweatshirt. He’d shed it as he ran.

She scanned the promenade in the sunset’s dimming afterglow. Richard had vanished.

“You’re sure it was him?” Casey asked.

She nodded.

He keyed his radio and reported that the subject had been seen outside the building. “Last seen northbound on foot on Ocean Front Walk. Too many peds—I lost him in the crowd.”

Draper ran up as Casey asked dispatch to request all available Pacific units in the vicinity to proceed to Sunset and Speedway.

“You think they’ll get him?” she asked Draper.

He shook his head. “Too many places he can run. Side streets, alleys, the beach, other red-tagged buildings...”

She nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

She turned and saw a teenager with pierced lips, pierced nostrils, pierced eyebrows, and a surprisingly respectful expression.

“That guy you were chasing dropped this.” He handed her a bracelet. “What’d he do, boost it off you?”

She stared at the object, catching a gleam of copper and turquoise. She didn’t answer.

“Jennifer?” Draper asked.

She looked at the teenager. “Thanks,” she managed to say. “Thanks very much.”

Casey was watching her now. “Is it yours?”

She shook her head. Couldn’t speak.

“Talk to us, Jen,” Draper said.

“It’s not mine. It belongs—it belongs to Maura. Maura Lowell.”

“The woman he used to go out with?”

“Yes.”

Casey shifted his weight. “Maybe he stole it from her, back when they were seeing each other.”

“No. She just got it. She was wearing it this morning. There’s no way Richard could have this.”

No one spoke for a moment.

“You told us she’s a friend of yours,” Draper said, his voice low.

Jennifer nodded, still staring at the bracelet, unable to look away. “My best friend,” she whispered, realizing it only now.