Blood Ties (10 page)

“But tell us anyway.” Sam's voice was not so much urgent as encouraging, so that he seemed to be inviting the man to unburden his soul. “Which three?”

Tregear made a weary gesture, as if to say
, Oh, all right!

“The prostitute at the Marriott three months ago, then the woman who was found dead in a neighbor's car trunk, then this latest.”

“The woman on the coast road?”

“Yes.”

“But you haven't decided about her yet?”

“No.” Tregear shook his head, suggesting that the quest was futile. “I don't know enough about her yet.”

“When will you know?”

“When you file the autopsy protocol.”

It was the only time Ellen could recall when Sam appeared to have been caught totally off guard. He had been about to say something, but the words seemed to have vanished from his mind. He was stunned.

“You have access to police files?” Ellen asked, if only to give her partner time to recover.

“Yes. Through your computer system.”

“But now that we know, we should be able to lock you out.”

“That doesn't follow.”

There was absolutely nothing of triumph in Tregear's manner. He seemed to be explaining a commonplace.

“In any database system that can be accessed from the outside, there are always multiple ways in. In computer parlance they're called ‘back doors.' At present the SFPD uses a two-hundred-and-fifty-six-bit encryption system, with access codes that are changed weekly, but if you restructure the system I'll be back inside within an hour. Computer security is an illusion.”

“Hacking the police system is a felony.”

This seemed to amuse him.

“You'd have to prove your case in open court, and the evidence I would offer in my own defense would compromise so many security systems that the Department of Defense will never allow me to testify. Thus, since I can't be permitted to give evidence, I can't be tried.”

“But your life could be made very unpleasant. Police attention is always disagreeable.”

“Are your threatening me, Inspector Ridley?” He shook his head yet again. He seemed on the verge of laughter. “I am of sufficient value to the Navy that they don't really care what else I do. They just want to keep me happy and working. If someone were to get in the way of that, they wouldn't take a very forgiving attitude.”

“Then perhaps you could tell us about your interest in these homicide cases.”

It was Sam who spoke, having recovered his poise. Tregear only glanced at him, and then seemed to dismiss him from existence.

“I'm not ready to answer that yet,” he said, to Ellen. “It's not a question of what I can tell you, but of what you can tell me.”

“Then what can we tell you?”

“Everything that you know, or guess, about the Wilkes killing.”

Ellen turned to Sam, who merely shrugged.

“First we should find out what he knows,” he said, exactly as if they were alone in the room. Then he turned to Tregear and smiled, not very nicely. “You claim to be able to read our minds—tell us what's in the department files about the first two murders.”

It was an impressive performance. For more than an hour, Tregear fed back to them everything on record about those two cases. The autopsy reports, the house-to-house interviews, the physical evidence gathered at the scenes, even the name and Social Security number of the cleaning woman who had discovered Rita Blandish at the Marriott. There were no mistakes and there were no additions. There was nothing to suggest that he knew anything more than the police about these murders, or any less.

Ellen listened in awed fascination. She had been over the case files several times but, inevitably, some of the details had grown blurry in her mind. Tregear, apparently, did not suffer from any such intellectual weaknesses. His command of detail was perfect.

But what impressed her even more were his powers of organization and analysis. There were no digressions. He could have been reading from a script. And his critiques of some of the lab work were both pitiless and brilliant.

“I was surprised and disappointed to find that your forensics people offered no opinion as to whether the Hudson woman's throat was cut from right to left or left to right. All they had to do was examine the wound under magnification—20X would have done it—and they would have been able to see in which direction the fraying occurred.”

“And that would have told us exactly what, Mr. Tregear? Whether the killer was right- or left-handed?”

“Only if we assume he was standing behind her when he cut, Inspector Tyler. Of course, if he had her tied faceup on a table, for instance, in which case he could have been standing on either side, then it would tell us nothing.”

“And do you have an opinion, Mr. Tregear? Which is he, right- or left-handed?”

“An opinion, Inspector Tyler? No.”

“Or, since you're obviously a man who chooses his words with care, you know it for a fact?”

For a moment Tregear appeared to be studying Sam's expression, as if seeking some clue to his intentions. Or, more probably, he had already made up his mind on that point, and he was simply enjoying himself. Ellen fancied there was the faintest trace of a smile on his face.

“Your killer is left-handed,” he said at last.

“And you know this for a fact?”

“Yes.”

“And you're left-handed yourself. That's interesting.”

Sam was sitting on the right-hand side of the sofa, and he shifted his weight so that he was leaning a little more heavily on the armrest. He appeared to be measuring Tregear for his shroud.

“You conclude this from the fact that I wear my wristwatch on the right,” Tregear answered, holding that arm up for inspection. There was something almost pitying in his voice. “Feel free to inspect my left hand. There's a writer's bump on the middle finger, so you're correct in your assumption. It's an infirmity I share with from five to fifteen percent of the population—I've often wondered why that particular statistic isn't more precise.”

Sam didn't look happy. Perhaps he was beginning to realize that he was out of his depth with this guy. But like a good cop he went straight ahead.

“I wonder if you'd care to share with us how you know this particular bad guy is left-handed.”

Tregear shook his head.

“No. I'm not ready yet, which means that you're not ready yet. But I'll give you something else.”

“I can hardly wait.”

It was clear that Sam didn't enjoy being toyed with, but Ellen had the impression that that was not what was going on. Tregear was serious.

“I'm sure it's obvious to you,” he said finally, “that this particular murderer has had a lot of practice. He isn't making his debut in San Francisco. Can we agree on that?”

Sam nodded, with effort. “For purposes of this discussion, yes.”

“Then I can offer you something,” Tregear announced, as if genuinely pleased. “Talk to the Seattle police about four unsolved murders that occurred between June and November of last year. Then call a Sergeant Carton at Boise Homicide, about a case that's still on the books from last April. Needless to say, there are others, but those will give you a taste.

“And now you can do something for me.” Tregear addressed this to Ellen. “Tell me about the Wilkes killing.”

Ellen glanced at Sam, who looked as if his lunch was beginning to disagree with him, and then turned back to Tregear with what she hoped was a modest, slightly embarrassed smile.

“I wonder if I could use your bathroom.”

It took a brief moment for the request to register, and then Tregear instantly switched back to the perfect host.

“Certainly.” He halfway rose out of his chair, as if he thought he might be required to lead her by the hand. “Up the stairs. First doorway on your left.”

As she exited the room, she wondered if Tregear was watching her. And then she wondered what her wondering might mean.

It was the cleanest bathroom in living memory, which was a disappointment. There was nothing on the sink except a dispenser of liquid soap—no comb, no brush, no electric razor. The medicine cabinet was just as barren.

Ellen had the sinking feeling that this was probably the guest bathroom.

Then she noticed the towels. They weren't folded as if they had just come from the linen closet. She touched the face towel and it was still slightly damp.

This was Tregear's bathroom. He was just a clean freak.

There was a shower stall. Lots of people preferred a shower stall to a bathtub. Maybe the only thing Tregear did in this room was use the shower.

The shower drain was covered with a plastic cap. She took out the jackknife she always carried and pried the cap out.

Praise be to God, there were a few strands of hair sticking to the inside.

Ellen extracted an evidence bag and one plastic glove from her pocket. By the time she had put the glove on, used her finger to scoop out the hair strands, put both the glove and the hair in the evidence bag and then put the bag back in her pocket and replaced the drain cap, she had been in the bathroom for about a minute and a half.

She was almost ready to leave and go back downstairs when she remembered she had forgotten to flush the toilet. She worked the handle and then made a leisurely production out of washing her hands. Men always assumed that it took women forever to pee, so when her hands were clean she inspected her face and hair in the mirror.

She didn't like her expression. It was cold and cynical. This is what I do, she thought to herself. I steal hair out of people's drains. I pry into their lives.

When she got back to the living room, there was complete silence. Ellen had the impression there had been what her mother would have called a “scene.” Sam looked angry and Tregear looked uncomfortable, as if he had just witnessed a display of bad manners he was too polite to acknowledge.

Sam stood up. “We'd better be going now.”

The only exchange of pleasantries at the door occurred when Tregear took her hand and smiled the kindest, warmest smile Ellen had ever seen.

“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said.

They were in the car and had already slipped into the flow of traffic before Ellen could bring herself to speak.

“So what happened while I was gone?” she asked.

“I told him I'd check with Seattle and Boise and that if his information turned out to be useful we might have another chat.” Sam was clenching the steering wheel as if he hated it. “But if that freak thinks I'm going to share any information with him, he really is crazy.”

Then he looked at her and grinned, almost savagely.

“I think your little hunch might just pan out, Ellie. I think this might be Our Boy.”

Ellen didn't answer. In theory she agreed. Tregear was the leading contender. He even fit the psychological profile, another narcissistic game player, a smart son of a bitch who thought the rest of the human race existed solely for his amusement. Another Brad, if you will.

Except that this guy was even smarter than Brad, and Brad expressed his contempt of women—or, at least, of her—by dumping them without even the courtesy of a good-bye, which was a step or two up from cutting their guts out while they were still alive to enjoy it.

“Didn't you just love the way he played with us?” Sam shook his head and, as he changed lanes, almost sideswiped a little old lady in a white Buick. “He thinks he's so smart. He thinks he can come this close to the fire and not get burned, the arrogant prick. Well, his arrogance will be his undoing. I'll enjoy putting the cuffs on this one.”

In that moment Ellen decided she wouldn't tell Sam about the hair samples.

 

7

Tregear saw off his visitors, locked the door behind them and went upstairs to the guest bathroom.

There was a bathroom immediately across the hall from his bedroom, but it didn't have a shower stall, which he preferred to washing himself while he stood in a bathtub screened by a plastic curtain decorated with blue waves and mermaids. He liked to be able to see out, just in case he should have forgotten to lock the door.

Thus he always showered in the guest bathroom. Otherwise, he used the one next to his bedroom.

He wasn't absolutely sure that Ellen Ridley had had some devious purpose in visiting his bathroom, but he preferred to know these things.

The inside of the sink was wet and there was a droplet of liquid soap clinging to the nozzle of the dispenser, so she had washed her hands. But the toilet seat was still up. How many women would think to put the toilet seat back up? So the odds were good that she had flushed the toilet without actually using it.

And thus it followed that she had been up to something.

The room contained only the toilet, the sink, which she had used, a medicine cabinet, which contained nothing except a bottle of rubbing alcohol and three boxes of bandages, and a shower. Tregear opened the shower door.

There was nothing obvious, so he got down on his hands and knees for a closer look.

Sure enough, he found a tiny scratch in the metal rim of the drain. It sparkled under the light, so it was new. Inspector Ridley had been here ahead of him.

Tregear pried off the drain cap, but there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about the drain. Then he turned the cap over and had a look at the inside.

There were two strands of his hair just under the top, but the sides, where he knew from experience that hair would be more likely to collect, were perfectly clean—just as if someone had scoured all the way around with her finger.

Now, who could that have been?

He popped the drain cap back into place, closed the shower door and went back downstairs to his kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. When it was ready, he took it with him into the living room and sat down on the leather chair. As he drank the tea, he stared at the left side of the sofa, where Inspector Ridley had been sitting not twenty minutes earlier. He seemed to be trying to conjure her up out of the thin air, and perhaps he was.