The Beginning (51 page)

A businessman said, “Miss, do you want an ambulance? That guy could have killed you!”

She held up her hands. The rain pounded down on her. “No, no ambulance, please. I'm all right.”

The cops were coming soon; she didn't have much time. She was on her cell phone dialing Savich's number. He wasn't there. Hannah answered. Where was Marcy, Savich's secretary? She didn't need Hannah, not now, but there was no choice.

“Hannah, I need to know where Dillon is. Do you know? Do you have a number for him?”

“No. Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you.”

“Hannah, listen to me. Someone just tried to run me down. Please tell me how I can get hold of him.”

Suddenly Ollie was on the line. “What happened, Sherlock? Marcy's down in the lunchroom. Hannah and I are covering Savich's phone. Someone tried to run you down? What happened?”

“I'm all right, just really dirty and wet. I'm right in front of Dr. Pratt's building. Dillon knows the location, since that's his doctor, too. Please tell him where I am. Oh dear, the police are here.”

It was nearly an hour before Savich strode up and knocked on the window of her Explorer. He was very wet. He looked very angry, which wasn't right. He didn't have any right to be angry yet.

“I'm sorry,” she said immediately, as she opened the passenger door, “I didn't know who else to call. The cops left about twenty minutes ago. My car wouldn't start.”

He slid into the passenger side. “Good thing this is leather or the cloth would stay wet for weeks. Now tell me what happened.”

She did, saying finally, “It sounds pitiful. I think whoever was driving lost it. Maybe he was drunk. When he realized he could have killed me, he didn't want to hang around.”

“I don't like it.”

“Well, no, I don't either. The police are certain it was a hit-and-run. I did see the first three letters of the license plate—PRD. They said they'd check it out. They laughed when I showed them my FBI shield, just laughed and laughed.”

“Who knew you were going to see Dr. Pratt?”

“Everyone in the office. It wasn't a secret. I even met Mr. Maitland in the hall, three clerks, and two secretaries. All of them asked about it. Oh no, you don't think it was on purpose, do you?”

He shrugged. “I don't know anything. I really like this car. I'm glad you didn't let your little designer buy it for you. He'd have gotten you one of those dainty little Miatas. How's your arm?”

“Fine. I just banged it against a parking meter. I went back up to see Dr. Pratt and he checked it out.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much, shook his head and suggested I might consider another line of work. He said being president was a lot safer than what I did. He put the sling back on for another couple of days. Why won't my car start?”

“If it stops raining, I'll take a look.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. “As I said, I don't know anything or think anything particular at the moment. If someone tried to kill you, then you've brought me into another mess. And don't call me ‘sir' or I'll pull off that sling and strangle you with it.”

She was much calmer now, her breath steady, the deadening shock nearly gone. “All right, Dillon. No one would have any reason to hurt me. It was an accident, a drunk driving a big black car.”

“What about Douglas's wife?”

“All right, so I did think about her, but that's silly. She was angry, but surely not angry enough to kill me. If she wanted to kill somebody, she would pick Douglas, not me. The cops pushed me on it and I did give them her name, but no specific circumstances. I noticed those faint white lines on your finger pads. What are they from?”

“I whittle. Sometimes the knife slips and you cut yourself. No big deal. Now, that's really good. A jealous wife would really make them laugh. It's not raining as much. Let me see what's wrong with the Explorer.”

Nothing was wrong. She'd flooded it.

“I should have thought of that,” she said, annoyed and embarrassed.

“You're excused this time.”

“So it was an accident. I was scared that you'd find the distributor cap missing or the oil line cut.”

“It doesn't have to have been an accident. It's possible it was on purpose and if it was, you know what the guy intended, don't you?”

“Yes, to obliterate me.”

Savich tapped his fingers on the dashboard. “I've always thought that trying to hit someone with a car wasn't the smartest or most efficient way of whacking your enemy. On the other hand, it's a dandy way to scare someone. Yeah, that sounds about right. If, on the other hand, someone did want to kill you, then I wonder why the car came at you when you'd just stepped off the curb and into the street. Why didn't the guy wait until you were nearly to your own car? You'd have been a perfect target then. That doesn't sound too professional. All the planning was in place, but the execution was way off.” He shrugged. “As of this point in time, we haven't the foggiest notion. I'll run those three letters of the license plate through MAXINE and see what she can dredge up.”

“MAXINE? You got another computer?”

“No. MAXINE used to be MAX. Every six months or so there's a sex change. I've had to accept the fact that my machine is a transsexual. Pretty soon, she'll start insisting that I compliment her when I'm working with her.”

“That's crazy. I like it.”

“Now, back to the accident—”

“It was an accident, Dillon. That's what the police think.”

“On the other hand, they don't know you. Now, see if this wonderful ski-hauling four-by-four will start.”

She turned the key and the Explorer fired right up. “Go back to the Bureau, Sherlock, and drink some of Marcy's tea. That'll fix you up. Oh yeah—stay away from Douglas Madigan and his wife. Don't you call him. I will. Where is he staying?”

 

SHE
sat propped up against pillows in bed, the TV on low, just for background noise, reading the police and autopsy reports on Belinda. She didn't realize she was crying until the tears hit the back of her hand. She laid down all the pages and let herself cry. It had been so long; the tears had been clogged deep inside her, dammed up, until now.

Finally, the tears slowed. She sniffed, then returned to the reports. Tomorrow she would consult with MAXINE to see if there were any differences, no matter how slight, between Belinda's killing and all the others. She prayed with all her might that there wouldn't be a smidgen of difference. Now that she'd studied the reports, she hoped to be able to see things more clearly.

On the edge of sleep, she wondered if indeed Candice had tried to run her down. Just as her father had tried to run down her mother? No, that was ridiculous. Her mother was ill, had been for a very long time. Or maybe her mother had said that because of what her husband had said so casually about Belinda and her father. It had come out of left field. Who knew?

Of course Douglas had called her, furious that she'd given Dillon his cell number. It took her ten minutes to talk him out of coming over to her town house. He said he'd spoken to Candice, who'd been visited by the police. He was outraged that anyone would believe she had tried to run down Lacey. It had been an accident.

“I wouldn't be leaving unless I was certain it was an accident, Lacey. I want you to be certain, though, that it wasn't Candice.”

“I'm certain, Douglas.” She'd have said her tongue was purple to get him off the phone. “Don't worry. I'm fine. Everything is fine. Go home.”

“Yes, I am. I'm taking Candice home too.”

Now that sounded interesting, but she was too tired to ask him to explain.

 

THE
next morning, Big John Bullock, Marlin Jones's lawyer, was on FOX, telling the interviewer, a drop-dead gorgeous guy who looked like a model right out of
GQ
, that the FBI and the Boston police had forced Marlin to confess, that he hadn't known what he was doing because he'd been in so much pain. He would have said anything so they'd give him more medication. Any judge would throw out a confession made under those circumstances.

Was Marlin guilty? the gorgeous young hunk asked, giving the audience a winning smile even as he said the words.

Big John shrugged and said that wasn't the point. That was for a jury to decide. The point was the police harassment of the poor man, who wasn't well either mentally or physically. Sherlock knew then that if the judge didn't suppress the confession, Big John would go for an insanity plea. The evidence was overwhelming. Sherlock knew that when the lawyer saw all the evidence against Marlin, he'd have no choice but to go for an insanity plea.

Sherlock stared at the TV screen, at that model interviewer whose big smile was the last thing on the screen before the program skipped to a toothpaste commercial. She'd been a fool. She should have shot Marlin straight through the heart. She would have saved the taxpayers thousands upon thousands of dollars. It would have been justice and revenge for all the women he'd butchered.

By the next afternoon, MAXINE hadn't come up with a thing. There were no differences at all in Belinda's killing versus the other women's. Only tiny variations, nothing at all significant.

She felt better. Belinda would finally find justice, if the little psycho ever made it to trial. A psychopath wasn't crazy, necessarily, even not usually. But who else knew that? Then she pictured him with Russell Bent of Chicago, both of them playing cards in the rec room of the state mental institution, both of them smiling at each other, joking about the idiot liberal judges and dumb-ass shrinks who believed they weren't responsible for their savagery because they'd had bad childhoods.

She had to stop it. There was nothing more she could do. Her father was right. Douglas was right. It was over. It was time to get on with her life.

“It had to be Marlin Jones.”

“It seems likely, but you don't sound as if you're really satisfied.”

“I'm not, but MAX—oh, I forgot, he's in drag—MAXINE—didn't turn up a single variation in the way Belinda was murdered as opposed to the other women. Marlin killed them all; he had to have.” She sighed. “But why did he leave out Belinda in particular; It makes no sense.”

“I'm glad you're not satisfied. I'm glad you have that itch in your gut,” Savich said slowly, tapping his pencil on his desktop, deliberately. “You've inputted all the physical data and run endless comparisons, but there are other aspects you need to take into account. Now you've got to finish it.”

She was frowning ferociously. A long, curling piece of hair flopped into her face. She shoved it behind her ear, not even aware of what she was doing.

He smiled as he said, “MAXINE and I have been doing a little work. It's her opinion that we need to go back to the props. Okay, think now about how he killed the women. Think about what he used to kill them and where he killed them.”

“A knife.”

“What else?”

“He killed them in warehouses and in a couple of houses. He obviously prefers warehouses; there aren't as many people around at night.”

“What did he use?”

“He built props.”

“Just the way Marty Bramfort was building props for her kid's school play in Boston. Think about what you had to do to build those props.”

She just stared at him, then leaped to her feet, her hands splayed on his desktop, her chair nearly falling over backward. Her face was alight with excitement. “Goodness, Dillon, he had to buy lumber, but the SFPD said they couldn't trace it, it was too common. But you know a better question: Is it possible to know if the same lumber was used in all the killings, that is, was all the lumber bought in the same place? Okay. He had to screw all those boards together, right? They couldn't trace all the brackets and hinges and screws, but is there any way of knowing if someone screws in a screw differently from someone else? If the slant is different? The amount of force? Is this possible? Can you tell if some lumber matches other lumber from the same yard? The same screws?”

He grinned at her. “I don't see why not. You've got it now, Sherlock. Now we've got to pray that the San Francisco police haven't thrown away the killer's props from each murder. Actually, I'd be willing to bet they've got it all. They're good.

“Say they still have everything. Unfortunately MAXINE can't help us here; not even using the most sophisticated visual scanners would work. We've got to have the human touch. I know this guy in Los Angeles who's a genius at looking at the way, for example, a person hammers in a nail. You wondered if this was possible. It is. Not too many people know how to do it, but this guy does. You could show him a half dozen different nails in boards and Wild Burt could tell you how many different people did the hammering. Now we'll test him about not only hammering nails but screwing in the brackets and hinges. Now go find out if you've still got a match.”

 

THREE
days went by. It was hard, but Savich kept his distance. He'd given her Burt York's number—Wild Burt—nicknamed ten years before when a suspect in a murder case had tried to kill him for testifying and Burt had saved himself with a hammer. Unexpectedly, the suspect had survived. He was now serving life in San Quentin. Savich had heard there was still a dent in his head.

No, he'd keep his mouth shut, at least for another day. To do anything active would be undue interference, and he knew she wouldn't appreciate it. If she had questions, she'd ask; he knew her well enough to know that she didn't have a big ego. He forced himself not to call Wild Burt to see what was going on. He knew, of course, that the SFPD hadn't done any comparisons of this sort, simply because they'd never had any doubts that all the murders had been committed by the same person. Also, this kind of evidence wasn't yet accepted in a court of law. He found himself worrying. As for Sherlock, she didn't come near him. He knew from the security logs that she had worked until after midnight for the past two nights. He was really beginning to grind his teeth when she knocked on his office door three days later at two o'clock in the afternoon. She stood in his doorway, saying nothing. He arched an eyebrow, ready to wait her out. She silently handed him a piece of paper.

It was a letter from Burt. He read: “Agent Sherlock, the tests I ran included: 1) type of drill used, 2) drilling and hammering technique, 3) type and grade of lumber, and 4) origin of lumber.

“The drill used in all the San Francisco murders except #4 was identical. However, the drill used in murder #4 was too close in particulars for me to even try to convince the D.A. that it wasn't identical. As to the drilling and hammering technique, it is odd, but I believe some was done by the same person and others were not. They were utterly different. No explanation for that. Perhaps it's as simple as the murderer had hurt his right hand and was having to use his left, or that he was in a different mood, or even that he couldn't see as well in this particular instance The lumber wasn't identical, and it did not come from the Bosman Lumber Mill, South San Francisco. Again, it doesn't really prove anything one way or the other, it is merely of note, although again, I wonder why only murder #4 had lumber from a different lumberyard.

“This was an interesting comparison. I've spoken to the police in San Francisco. The San Francisco D.A. is speaking with the Boston D.A. They will doubtless have comparisons made between the props used in the San Francisco murders and the props used in Boston. I don't doubt that even though the lumber can't be identical, the technique will be, and thus perhaps the presiding judge will allow it to be used as evidence in Marlin Jones's trial, if and when the man stands trial.

“So, the bottom-line results of my test are inconclusive. There are differences, aberrations. I must tell you that I have seen it happen before, and for no logical reason.

“I hope this is of assistance to you, but given the reason for your request I doubt that you are overjoyed. My best to Savich.”

Savich said nothing, merely took in her pallor, the stark disappointment in her eyes, the hopelessness that seemed to be draining her. He wished it could be different, but it wasn't. He said finally, “Burt said it himself. Inconclusive. It doesn't nail down the coffin lid, Sherlock.”

“I know,” she said and didn't sound as though she believed it. “He didn't write this in his letter, but Mr. York said on the phone a few minutes ago that all the same particulars with the other murder props were completely identical. It was only with murder number four where there were inconsistencies.”

“That's something,” Savich said. “Look, Sherlock, either Marlin did it or he didn't. As to Marlin claiming he killed only six women in San Francisco, Belinda not included, then someone else did. You're not happy, are you?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to be certain once and for all and it's still not proven, either way. Can you think of anything else to do?” But she didn't look at him, just stared down at her low-heeled navy pumps.

“Not at the moment, but I'll think about it some more. Now let's get back to the Radnich case.” He wished he could let her mull over her sister's murder, but there were too many demands on the Unit. He needed her.

“Yes. Thank you for giving me all this time. Ollie also said there was a new murder spree, a couple of black guys killing Asian people in Alabama and Mississippi.”

“Yes. We'll talk about it in the meeting this afternoon.” He watched her leave his office. He tapped his pen on the desktop. She'd lost weight she couldn't afford to lose. He didn't like it. Even though he saw the results of it in the families of victims, he still couldn't begin to imagine what it must feel like to have lost someone you loved in such a horrible way. He shook himself. He turned to MAXINE and typed in a brief note to his friend James Quinlan, pressed send.

Sherlock stopped outside his office, leaned against the wall. It was too much and not nearly enough. She had to go to Boston again. She had to speak to Marlin Jones one more time. She had to make him tell her the truth. She had to. She looked up to see Hannah staring at her. “Why are you so pale? You look like someone's punched you. Actually, you look like you're coming down with the flu.”

She shook her head. “I'm fine. It's the case I'm working on. Things are inconclusive and I hate that.”

Hannah said, “Yes, that's always a bitch, isn't it? How's your arm?”

“What? Oh, my arm's fine.”

“How are you feeling after that hit-and-run driver nearly hit you the other day? That must have been pretty bad.”

“It was, but not as bad as this. I think it was an accident, some drunk guy who probably was so scared that he nearly hit someone that he couldn't wait to roar away from me. The cops said the three numbers I saw on the license plate didn't lead anywhere. Too many possibilities. It could have happened to anybody. I was just the lucky one.”

“Did you hurt your arm again?”

“Banged it up a bit more, no big deal.”

“Dillon isn't busy now, is he?”

“I don't know.” She walked away, thinking about who had had access to all the crime details in San Francisco.

She sat at her desk and stared at the blank computer screen. She heard a sound and turned to see Hannah standing by the water cooler, frowning at her. It was more than a frown, and Sherlock felt a brief burst of cold run through her. She forced herself back to the Radnich case, but there was nothing new there. Another murder and her old-woman theory hadn't washed. The afternoon meeting was canceled because Savich had an emergency meeting with Jimmy Maitland. She was still puzzling over the newest developments in the Mississippi/Alabama cases, when she heard Savich behind her. “It's after six. It's time for you to hang it up. Let's go work out.”

She stared up at him blankly. “Work out?”

“Yeah, I bet you haven't moved from that desk since this afternoon. Come along. I won't throw you around because you have this wimp excuse about your arm.”

 

SHE
could barely walk. Nor could she talk. She was still using all her breath to pull oxygen into her lungs. It was just as well because Hannah Paisley turned up before they were ready to leave. She looked fit and strong, and every guy in the gym was staring at her. She was wearing a hot-pink leotard with a black top and black thong.

Savich gave Hannah a salute as he said, “Come on, Sherlock. I told you you've got to work on your breathing. More breath or you'll collapse on me the way you're almost doing now.”

She eyed him and gasped out, “I'm going to kill you.”

“Good. An entire sentence. You're getting it together again. You want to go shower?”

“I'd drown. I'd fall down, plug the drain, and that would be the end of it.”

“Then let's walk home. A nice walk dries all the sweat.”

“I want to be carried. These legs aren't going anywhere on their own.”

Hannah was standing behind Savich. She lightly touched her fingers to his bare arm. His skin glistened with sweat.

“Hello, Dillon, Sherlock.”

Lacey only nodded. She was still breathing hard.

“You're looking good, Hannah,” Savich said. Sherlock realized at that moment how clear it was to her that they'd slept together. They were both magnificently made, beautiful specimens. She could imagine how they'd look together, naked, all over each other. She forced herself to smile. To look the way the two of them did, they had to sweat a lot to build those sleek muscles. Sherlock wasn't too fond of sweating. She watched Dillon squeeze Hannah's biceps. “Not bad. Look at poor Sherlock here. She's threatening to collapse on me all because she got her arm hurt and we had to spend the time on her legs.”

“She does look a bit on the edge. While she rests up, could you come coach me a minute on my bench presses?”

“Sorry, not tonight, Hannah. Sherlock has to get home, and I promised I'd drop her off.”

Hannah nodded, smiled at both of them, and walked off, every man's eyes, except Dillon's, on her butt.

“She's very beautiful,” Sherlock said, pleased she could talk without wondering if she was having a heart attack.

“Yes, I guess so,” Savich said. “Let's go.”

They stopped for a half-veggie, half-sausage pizza at Dizzy Dan's on Clayton Street.

“You only left me two slices,” Savich said, picking up one slice quickly. “You're a pig, Sherlock.”

Cheese was dripping down her chin. She was so hungry, she was pleased she hadn't started chewing on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She quickly grabbed the last slice. It was still hot enough so that the cheese pulled loose and dripped down the sides of the slice. She couldn't wait to get it into her mouth. “Order another one,” she said, her mouth full.

He did, and this garden delight pizza he ate himself. She was so full she didn't want to move, didn't even want to raise her hand from the tabletop.