Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (22 page)

It was the final straw. The father burst into uncontrollable sobs. Slamming his big hands across his face.

‘I shouldn’t have looked away!’ He bawled.

I glanced at the mother. She had focused on my face. For the first time I saw emotion in her eyes. But not like her husband’s.

‘Do you have children?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Yes.’ I answered.

‘Do you love them?’

‘Unquestionably. More than anything.’

She leaned toward me. ‘Would you die for them?’

‘Without a doubt.’

‘Would you kill for them?’

The question caught me off guard.

‘Annie, please …’ I heard the father begin through his tears.

‘Would you kill for them?’ She pressed again, this time reaching across the table and grabbing my wrist.

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ The answer surprised me.

‘Promise me something?’

I tried to pull free. Tried to pull back from the searing heat suddenly burning in her eyes. But her grip was unrelenting.

‘When you find the monster that did this to my daughter will you kill him, for me? Will you kill the monster that took away the one thing in life that I loved?’

I looked into the fiery eyes of Anne McNamara and realized she didn’t want solace. She wanted retribution.

59

^{___________________________}

Arguing against a mother’s logic is like stoking a fire with your finger and expecting not to get burnt.

It was 5 p.m.. I was back at LAX. At the end of a long return flight filled with awkward silence. I’d sat next to Peter McNamara all the way back – while his wife had sat staring out the tiny window, as though in a daydream. There is something deeply disturbing about seeing a grown man reduced to tears, I reckon. Something unholy. I couldn’t imagine what these people were going through. Confined to their own personal hell. Only see that their whole world had been shattered with the death of their daughter and everything they knew was now drifting slowly out of their grasp.

One of the Precinct’s unmarked sedans picked up the parents from the airport. And I followed at a respectful distance in my own jalopy. The sedan stopped at the Station House to collect one of our public relations officers: a trained counselor who was good at listening. Then they continued on to the Coroner’s Office without me.

I didn’t see Anne or Peter McNamara after that.

But I did see their daughter.

60

^{___________________________}

I was still sitting in my car – going over the McNamara interview in my head – when Captain Ferguson opened the passenger door.

‘Got a minute?’

‘Sure.’

He climbed in. Pulled the door shut behind him. He had a file folder pressed against his chest.

‘The parents are on their way to the Coroner’s Office.’ I said.

Ferguson looked like he’d seen a ghost.

‘You all right, John?’

‘Just drive.’ He answered in a coarse whisper.

I didn’t. Not straight away. I stared at him for a moment. Wondering what had caused him to look so spooked. Then I turned over the engine. Drove across the Station House rooftop lot. Turned down the access ramp way. Bumped out onto 6
^th
Street. Headed north through the darkening dusk.

‘John, is everything okay?’

‘No.’ He said. ‘As far from okay as it can get.’

61

^{___________________________}

Who knows why these things happen? Planes crash. Bridges collapse. Shit happens. It’s the universal way of things. Happens every damn second of every damn day. You figure it out.

Now that I think about it, I don’t recall the drive to the County Medical Center. Only that we somehow arrived there miraculously in one piece. Some things are like that. When the brain enters trauma mode it goes on autopilot. Doesn’t matter about us and what we think. It’s a case of survival.

I remember following Captain Ferguson into the hospital, on heavy feet. Not going through Admissions or the ER. Heading straight for the underground cold store instead. Riding the shaking elevator down into the basement with a lump of bile rising in my throat. Remember seeing the ashen look on the Captain’s face. Knowing that his was doing the same. Remember descending into a morgue from a B movie. No frills. No polished floors and concealed lighting. Just the bare necessities: rinse-down everything.

I remember being in a dream. Scratch that: a nightmare. Dazed. I might have put it down to jet-lag had my flight been inter-continental. But it hadn’t. And it wasn’t. I remember colliding with a trolley in the corridor. A sheet-wrapped cadaver on top. Almost dumping it to the floor. Remember grabbing at it. Steadying it. Remember a mortuary technician appearing from a side doorway. Coming to see what all the commotion was about. A small, slightly rounded man with a receding hairline and thick black glasses. Heavy-duty green rubber gloves covering his hands and arms, all the way up to the elbows. Fingertips daubed in blood. A matching rubber apron looking like it had spent the last ten years in a butcher’s shop.

‘Everything all right, defective?’

I remember the question. Remembered his face. Remember I would have reached out and gladly throttled the smirking face of Walden Coombs had I not been so dazed. So out of whack. Remembered his little beady eyes watching me all the way to the corridor’s end. Watching like the waxwork of John Christie – the famous London strangler – I’d once seen in Madame Tussaud’s. It had completely escaped me that he worked here.

I remember the entranceway to the cold store being screened by those long vertical rubber blinds that only let enough light through to make whatever lies on the other side look as eerie as possible. Remember grappling my way through. Light-headed. Remember the long metal slab in the middle of a dungeon-like room. The smell. The atmosphere. Ferguson with his head hung low. Shoulders slumped. Suit looking too big for his stooped frame.

The body lying on the slab.

A body covered up to the chin by a crisp white sheet.

A body with a face I recognized.

Bile loitering in my throat before surging into my mouth.

I will always remember that moment.

62

^{___________________________}

In such moments, the body reacts as it does, regardless of our input. I rushed over to a porcelain sink jutting out of the wall and puked up clotted coffee until my eyes stung.

‘You need to get that ulcer checked out.’ I heard Ferguson whisper.

I found a paper towel. Wiped stinking goo from my lips.

‘They think it was a heart attack.’ He said.

‘He was fine yesterday.’ It was my voice. But it sounded someplace else. Strained.

‘He had complications, Gabe. We’ll know more once the ME’s taken a look.’

I threw the towel in a can. Couldn’t think about Harry being dissected like one of Coombs’ animals.

‘This was on his chest when the crash team tried to revive him.’

He handed me the file folder he’d been nursing all the way from the Station House. I opened it up. It was full of newspaper cuttings. Magazine articles. I pulled one out at random. It was from the front page of the
LA Times
, dated almost a year ago. I’d seen it many times before. I was familiar with every letter, every line; had a copy of it on the wall in my basement.

In a bold typeface, the headline read:

‘Maestro Writes Celebrity Cop Dirge.’

Fresh acid seared my throat.

‘Gabe, what was he doing with all that?’

I shook my head, ‘I don’t know.’

I didn’t know. Not exactly. Not for sure. But I had suspicions.

‘Were you and he still working the Piano Wire Murders?’

I hesitated long enough for Ferguson to anticipate my less-than-honest response.

‘Gabe, for the love of sweet Jesus –’

‘It’s not like that, John.’ I said quickly. ‘This is my thing. Not Harry’s. As far as he was concerned, I’d moved on. I have no idea why he had this file. I don’t even know how he got it. He’s been holed up here for weeks. I never saw it before now.’

‘I’m pulling you off The Undertaker Case.’ He said suddenly.

I was side-swiped. Stunned. ‘John, I’m okay.’

Truth was, I was as far away from being okay as I had been when the
LA Times
had run the story. And Ferguson knew it.

‘I’m okay.’ I repeated quietly. ‘John, I’m on top of this. Making real progress. I can do this. Trust me.’

 
‘Then go see the Police psychiatrist.’ Ferguson said. ‘Convince her you’re okay and I’ll reconsider. In the meantime, you’re off the case. Walters and Phillips can take up the slack.’

I remember Walden Coombs, the living waxwork of John Christie, watching us all the way to the rickety elevator. A blood-stained bone-cutter saw in his hands. A hint of evil delight in his beady eyes.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there and breathe fresh air.

He couldn’t wait to get his blooded mitts on poor Harry.

63

^{___________________________}

The police came and asked him a few questions. It was standard procedure. Nothing he couldn’t handle; he’d learned his answers parrot-fashion beforehand:
pleasure, Saturday, Thursday, at a mall, no.
A potbellied sergeant and his apathetic sidekick. Going through the motions. Hardly making notes. Hardly interested. They should have come yesterday, but they weren’t in any rush. Made that quite clear, thank you. They came and asked everyone the same questions: