The Fourth Motive (10 page)

“We don’t know anything for sure at this stage of the investigation,” Wendt soothed
her. “It’s just one possibility.”

“Don’t placate me, Randy. This isn’t a possibility; it’s a certainty.”

“Nothing’s certain at this point,” Wendt said. He noticed several firefighters’ heads
turning toward the elevated sound of Paige’s voice.

“Nothing’s certain?” she mocked, her face flushing. “You’re kidding, right? It’s not
certain this creep knew exactly where to find me during my morning jog, and exactly
what spot on the route was the most secluded? It’s not certain he knew where I work,
because he called me there? It’s not certain he knows where I live, and even what
kind of alarm I have? It’s not certain he knows my name, and my schedule, and probably
what I had for fucking dinner last night?”

Wendt stood silent, afraid to say anything that would further fuel Paige’s tirade.

“The only thing that isn’t certain,” Paige said, “is if I’m going to survive another
twenty-four hours of your department’s uncertainty.”

“I know things look a little bleak right now,” Wendt tried to calm her. As soon as
he spoke, he wished he hadn’t.

“Bleak? Some thug beats the shit out of me, shoots me with a toy gun, threatens me
at work, breaks into my house, and burns me out of my home, all in the span of twenty-four
hours, and you call it a little bleak?”

Suddenly, Paige broke into a grin. “I sound like the proverbial hysterical female
victim, don’t I?”

“I wasn’t going to say it,” Costa said. Wendt gave him a sharp look.

“You have a right to vent,” Wendt said.

“Maybe. But I have no right to take it out on you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Forget it,” he said. She gave the sergeant a weak smile.

“I’m going to my father’s house,” she announced. “Do you guys need me for anything
else?”

“Not right now,” Wendt said. “But I’ll need to reach you later. Why don’t you let
me drive you over to the Judge’s?”

“I appreciate your concern,” she answered, her voice tired. “But you needn’t worry.
It’s only a couple of miles away; I’ll be all right.” She gestured at her torched
condo with a wave of her hand. “What more could happen now? Besides, I’m exhausted.
I won’t be going in to work today. The wheels of justice will just have to revolve
without me.”

“That’s a good idea. I’d prefer you didn’t go to work. I’ll stop by your father’s
house later and let you know how the investigation is going.”

Paige’s eyes narrowed. “You mean you’ll stop by my father’s house to check on me and
to let my father know how the investigation is going.”

It was Wendt’s turn to grin. “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

“So long; I’ll be at Dad’s.”

Paige walked across the complex parking lot to her Saab convertible. She was anxious
to get inside and fire up the heater. Her chills had become full-body shivers. As
she inserted her key into the door lock, she noticed an envelope on the windshield
under the wiper blade.

She retrieved the envelope and climbed into her car. Switching on the ignition and
turning the heater to full blast, she tore open the envelope. There were no markings
on the outside. She presumed it was a note from Sergeant Wendt, placed there before
he knew her whereabouts. She was wrong.

As she read the words typed on the plain white paper from within the envelope, her
expression changed from puzzlement to wide-eyed horror.

 

 

It was a full ten minutes before Paige could compose herself enough to leave her car
and turn the letter over to Sergeant Wendt.

   

CHAPTER 13

 

 

Ray Cowell sat chain-smoking in his car. He was parked in the empty lot of the Bay
Fairway Hall banquet facility near the golf course. He’d chosen that location because
it was the last address on Bay Farm Island before the bridge. No vehicular traffic
could exit the island to Alameda without coming under his scrutiny. It was after 8am,
and more than two hours had elapsed since he had left Paige Callen’s condominium.
The morning commute was in full swing.

The car Ray was using was a 1978 Mercury Monarch, in an oxidized blue color. He’d
taken it from the vast long-term parking lot at the Oakland airport the evening before.
He knew it could be at least several days before the car’s owner returned from wherever
he was traveling to report the vehicle stolen.

Ray had learned how to hot-wire car ignitions from a mail-order book he’d sent away
for after reading an ad in one of his military publications. Over the years, he had
learned a great many useful skills from mail-order literature. Ray had learned, among
other things, how to kill with a knife the Green Beret way, how to bug a telephone,
which poisons were most effective, how to manufacture explosives from common household
items, how to convert a semiautomatic weapon to fully automatic, how to obtain false
identification papers, and countless other unique martial talents.

“Ray has always been a reader,” his mother would tell the neighbors. But that wasn’t
true. Ray had not always been a reader. As a small boy, books were boring things forced
upon him at school. He’d much preferred to be outdoors riding his skateboard, playing
catch with his dad, or chasing Skipper down Pacific Avenue over reading a dusty old
book. That was before the summer of 1964.

After the trial, he and his mother stayed shut up in the house. Ray would go to school
each day and endure taunts and beatings. His mother would go to work and to the grocery
store. Beyond those required excursions, neither Ray nor his mother, who reassumed
her maiden name of Cowell, ever ventured out of doors. His only friend was Skipper,
his beloved pound puppy.

One autumn afternoon, Ray returned home from another hellish day at school to find
his mother burying a newspaper-wrapped bundle in the backyard. When he asked about
it, she merely stood up and kicked the bundle with her shoe.

To Ray’s horror, the parcel contained what was left of Skipper. Skipper’s eyes were
open and bulged out of their sockets, and his tongue filled his gaping mouth. Pinned
to Skipper’s collar was a note. All it read were three letters: R.I.P.

“He was poisoned,” Ray’s mother said harshly. “Found him on the porch. Now don’t you
start crying. You know I hate crying. What’s done is done. Anyway, it’s your own damned
fault. You shouldn’t have let him get out.”

Ray ran into the house and buried his face in his pillow as his mother buried the
only friend he had in the world. He cried for the whole rest of the day. Sometime
during the night, his mother came into his room and sternly ordered him to stop whining
like a little baby and be a man. She smelled of vodka, which was becoming more common
in the evenings, and was unsteady on her feet.

After Skipper was gone, Ray’s only friends became his books and magazines. He spent
every waking moment scouring the pages of almost any type of literature he could get
his hands on, anything to distract him from the painful reality of his daily existence.
His favorite books were about aviation, but he loved military books in general and
sports stories. When not devouring the printed page, Ray spent hour after hour meticulously
constructing model aircraft; working tirelessly to get even the tiniest detail correct.
He spent all his paper route money on magazine subscriptions, books, and model airplanes.

As Ray grew older, he became even more reclusive. His books became his friends, family,
and lovers. They taught him amazing things and took him to exotic places. His books
did not judge. And like his mother’s vodka, they numbed him to the stark reality of
his daily life.

His voracious reading had its rewards. Ray excelled in school despite the constant
bullying. When he turned sixteen, he got a job at a local electronics store by impressing
the manager with his extensive knowledge of hi-fi stereo systems, know-how gained
from the pages of countless electronics journals. He brought in extra money repairing
appliances and used the additional income to pay for correspondence courses in everything
from gun repair to diesel mechanics.

One other consolation Ray allowed himself came, like his other magazine subscriptions,
on a weekly basis. But unlike his other magazines, these arrived wrapped in plain
brown paper and bore no return address. These magazine he kept stored in a box on
the floor of his closet, away from his mother’s prying eyes.

In the solitude of his room, with the help of these special magazines, Ray would turn
the pages and enter a world of flesh. A world whose inhabitants were always “turned
on” and “wanted it”. Ray knew it was dirty and he should be punished for reading the
“filthy” magazines, as his mother used to call them when she found them in his father’s
garage, but was locked in a fascination born from his remembrances of Sissy.

In fact, though Ray’s special magazines always featured a menagerie of women of different
races and appearances, it was the dark-haired, light-skinned women, like Sissy had
been, who gave him the most pleasure. Those and the blond-haired ones, with the innocent
eyes, like the little girl at the courthouse.

By the time Ray turned seventeen, he had completed his high school equivalency diploma.
He asked his mother for her consent to join the army since he wasn’t yet eighteen
years of age. At first, she refused to sign the enlistment papers, until she learned
what his income would be. Once she realized how much money Ray would be sending home,
she signed in a flash.

A week later, a pale and skinny Raymond Cowell boarded a bus in Oakland, bound for
basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It was the first time Ray had left
the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ray was a quiet recruit and endured the rigors of military indoctrination without
complaint. He enjoyed basic combat training and was an attentive student. Ever the
loner, he eschewed the unity-building camaraderie of the barracks, preferring instead
to spend his few free moments rereading his field instruction manuals.

He had enlisted under contract to become an aviation electronics maintenance specialist,
a military occupational specialty that would enable him to utilize his already considerable
electronics skills, as well as work on the aircraft he had adored all his life. For
the first time since childhood, Ray was close to being happy.

But things were not to remain happy for Private First Class Raymond Cowell. Shortly
after his eighteenth birthday, and a week prior to graduation at the top of his avionics
radar systems class, his military career and all that it promised came to a screeching
halt.

By then, Ray had been in the army for almost a full year. He was stationed at Fort
Rucker, Alabama, while attending advanced aviation electronics training. He’d made
rank quickly and had attracted the attention of several of his senior instructors
for his unassuming personality, laser-like focus, and burgeoning electronics skills.
As a result, he’d been recommended for assignment to a rotary-wing maintenance unit,
highly coveted duty typically not offered to a soldier of his limited tenure. If Ray
worked hard, he could be assigned to a helicopter maintenance aircrew. After that,
maybe even advancement to warrant officer status and a shot at becoming a crew chief
on a helicopter of his own. His boyhood dreams of flight would be realized.

With newfound confidence chipping away at his normally restrained temperament, Ray
allowed his fellow graduating classmates to talk him into a night of celebration.
The party was to be at one of Enterprise, Alabama’s local nightclubs. It would be
a night Ray would never forget.

Ray and his classmates went to a club whose patrons consisted mostly of soldiers from
nearby Fort Rucker. The place was loud, raucous, and packed with GIs in various stages
of intoxication. The club was also brimming with girls.

Ray had never before consumed an alcoholic beverage. His introduction to the world
of liquor was shots of tequila washed down with mugs of beer. And Ray had seldom ever
spoken to a member of the opposite sex, much less been on a date. It was therefore
both strange and exhilarating to find himself for the first time chugging drink after
drink and dancing with girl after girl.

As the evening of revelry progressed, his fellow soldiers took turns staggering outside
to the parking lot with a girl, to the leers and cheers of his drunken pals. One of
the soldiers had driven the group to the club, and his parked car was serving double
duty as a makeshift hotel room. After a few minutes, each soldier and his companion,
usually wearing sly grins and adjusting their disheveled clothing, would stagger back
into the club, this time to the thunderous applause and lewd comments of the crowd.
Suddenly it was Ray’s turn.

By now, Ray had lost track of the number of drinks he’d consumed and was having difficulty
focusing his vision. He realized he was about to have sex; something he’d hitherto
only read about in magazines.