The Narrows (14 page)

20

T
HE THREE AGENTS WERE STILL TALKING about Bosch when the helicopter lifted off the desert floor and they began the forty-minute journey back to Las Vegas. The three agents wore headphones so they could communicate with each other despite the noise of the rotor wash. Dei clearly remained annoyed with the private detective and Rachel thought that maybe Cherie felt that somehow Bosch had gotten something over on her. Rachel remained amused. She knew they hadn’t seen the last of Bosch. He had seen-it-all-twice eyes, and that nod at the end told her he wasn’t going to just fold up his tent and go home.

“What about the triangle theory?” Dei said.

Rachel waited for Zigo to go first but as usual he said nothing.

“I think Terry was probably onto something,” she said. “Somebody should go to work on it.”

“At the moment I don’t know if we have the bodies to chase all of this stuff. I’ll ask Brass if she’s got anybody. And this William Bing—that name hasn’t come up before.”

“My guess is that he is a doctor. Terry was coming over here and probably wanted to have a name in case something went wrong.”

“Rachel, when we get back, can you just run that down? I know what Alpert said, you’re an observer and all, but if that’s just a loose end, then it will be good to nail it down.”

“No problem. I can do it from my hotel room if you don’t want him seeing me working a phone.”

“No, stay in the FO. If Alpert doesn’t see you he’ll start wondering what you’re up to.”

Dei, who was in the front passenger seat, turned and looked back at Rachel, who was behind the pilot’s seat.

“What was with you two, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You and Bosch. All the looks, the smiles. ‘I hope you are taking appropriate precautions.’ What’s going on with that, Rachel?”

“Look, he’s outnumbered here, okay? It’s natural that he’d pick one of us to play to. It’s covered in the manual on interview techniques and tendencies. Check it out sometime.”

“And what about you? Are you playing to him? Is that in the manual, too?”

Rachel shook her head as if to dismiss the whole discussion.

“I just like his style. He acts like he still has the badge, you know? He didn’t stand down to us and I think that’s sort of cool.”

“You’ve been out in the boonies too long, Rachel, or you wouldn’t say that. We don’t like people who won’t stand down to us.”

“Maybe I have.”

“So does that mean you think he’s going to be a problem?”

“Definitely,” said Zigo.

“Probably,” added Rachel.

Dei shook her head.

“I don’t have the people for all of this. I can’t spend my time watching this guy.”

“You want me to keep tabs on him?” Rachel asked.

“You volunteering?”

“I’m looking for something to do. So, yeah, I’m volunteering.”

“You know, before nine-eleven and Homeland Security, we used to get whatever we needed. Bagging serials were the best headlines the bureau got. Now it’s terrorists twenty-four-seven and we can’t even get overtime.”

Rachel noted how Dei pointedly did not say whether she wanted her to check up on Bosch or not. A nice way to have deniability if something went wrong. She decided that once back at the field office she would get Dei alone and get her to run a check on whether Bosch really had a home in Las Vegas. She’d try to find out what he was up to and keep a loose watch on him.

She looked out her window and down at the black asphalt ribbon that cut through the desert. They were following it back to the city. At that same moment she saw a black Mercedes-Benz SUV heading in the same direction. It was dirty from off-roading in the desert. She knew it was Bosch making his way to Vegas. Then she noticed the drawing on the roof of the Mercedes. He had used a rag or something to draw a happy face in the white dust on the roof. The drawing made her smile, too.

Dei’s voice came in through the earphones.

“What is it, Rachel? What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing. I’m just thinking about something.”

“Yeah, I wish I could smile knowing that there might be a psycho-agent out there waiting to put a plastic bag over my head.”

Rachel looked at Dei, annoyed by such a snide and brutal remark. Dei apparently saw something in her eyes.

“Sorry. I just think you better start taking this more seriously.”

Rachel looked at her until Dei had to look away.

“You really think I’m not serious about this?”

“I know you are. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Rachel looked back down at the I-15 freeway. They were long past the black Mercedes. Bosch was gone, far behind them.

She studied the terrain for a while. It was all so different yet all the same. A moonscape carpet of rock and sand. She knew it was full of life but all life was hidden. The predators were underground, waiting to come out at night.

“Ladies and gentlemen?” the pilot’s voice said in her ear. “Switch to channel three. You’ve got an incoming call.”

Rachel had to take her headset off to figure out how to change the frequency. She thought that the headset had a stupid design. When she put the set back on she heard Brass Doran’s voice. She was talking rapid-fire the way Rachel remembered she always did whenever something big came up.

“— cent integrity. It definitely came from him.”

“What?” Rachel said. “I didn’t hear any of that.”

“Brass,” Dei said, “start again.”

“I said we got a match from the bite mark database. With the gum. It’s got ninety-five percent integrity, which is one of the highest matches I’ve ever seen.”

“Who?” Rachel asked.

“Rach, you are going to love this. Ted Bundy. That gum was chewed by Ted Bundy.”

“That’s impossible,” Dei said. “First of all, Bundy’s been dead for years, long before any of these men went missing. And he was never known to have gotten to Nevada or California or to have targeted men. Something’s wrong with the data, Brass. It’s a bad read or —”

“We ran it twice. Both times it came up Bundy.”

“No,” Rachel said. “It’s right.”

Dei turned and looked back at her. Rachel was thinking about Bundy. The ultimate serial killer. Handsome, smart and vicious. He was a biter, too. He had been the only one to really give her the creeps. The others she just felt a loathing and disgust for.

“How do you know it’s right, Rachel?”

“I just know. Twenty-five years ago Backus helped set up the VICAP database. Brass remembers. Over the next eight years the data was collected. Agents from the unit were sent out to interview every serial killer and rapist who was incarcerated in the country. That was before I was there but even later, when I was there, we kept doing interviews and adding to the base. Bundy was interviewed several times, mostly by Bob. Right before his execution he called Bob down to Raiford and Bob took me with him. We spent three days interviewing him. I remember that Ted kept borrowing gum from Bob. It was Juicy Fruit. That’s what Bob chewed.”

“Then what, he’d spit it back into Bob’s hand?” Zigo asked incredulously.

“No, he’d throw it in the trash can. We interviewed him in the death house captain’s office. There was a trash can. When we were done each day, Bundy was led out. There were many points when Bob was alone in that office. He could have just taken the gum out of the can.”

“So you’re saying Bob more or less went Dumpster diving for Ted Bundy’s gum and then held on to it so he could put it in a grave all these years later?”

“I’m saying he took the gum out of that prison, knowing it had Bundy’s teeth marks in it. Maybe it was just a souvenir then. But it became something else later. Something maybe to taunt us with.”

“And where’d he been keeping it, in the fridge?”

“Maybe. That’s where I’d keep it.”

Dei turned back around in her seat.

“What do you think, Brass?” she asked.

“I think I should’ve thought of it myself. I think Rachel is onto something. I think Bob and Ted actually got along. He went down there several times to talk to him. Sometimes alone. He could have gotten the gum any one of those times.”

Rachel watched Dei nod her head in agreement.

Zigo cleared his throat and spoke.

“So this was just another way of him coming out and telling us he did this and how smart he was about it. To taunt us. First the GPS with the prints and now the gum.”

“That’s what I would say,” Doran agreed.

It wasn’t that simple, Rachel knew. She unconsciously shook her head and Zigo, sitting next to her, picked up on it.

“You disagree, Agent Walling?”

She noted that Zigo must have attended the Randal Alpert school of building relations among fellow colleagues.

“I just don’t think it is as simple as that. You are looking at it from the wrong angle. Remember, the GPS and his prints came to us first but that gum was in that grave first. He might have intended for the gum to be found first. Before there was any direct connection to him.”

“If that was the case, what was he doing?” Dei asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. I’m just saying, don’t assume at this point we know what the plan or even the sequence was supposed to be.”

“Rachel, you know we always keep an open mind on things. We take things as they come and never stop looking from all angles.”

That sounded like a line taped to the wall in the public information office in Quantico, where agents always had pithy policy and procedure statements to deliver over the phone to reporters. Rachel decided to step back from tangling with Dei on this. She had to be careful not to outstay her welcome and she sensed she was nearing that point with her former student.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“Okay, Brass, anything else new?” Dei asked.

“That was it. That was enough.”

“Okay. Then we’ll talk to you at the next one.”

Meaning the next conference room case session. Doran said good-bye and broke off and then the onboard communication link remained silent as the helicopter crossed the dividing line between the harsh undeveloped landscape and the beginning of the sprawl of Las Vegas. As Rachel looked down she knew it was merely a trading of one form of a desert for another. Down there, beneath all the barrel tile and gravel roofs, predators still waited to come out at night. To find their victims.

21

T
HE EXECUTIVE EXTENDED STAY MOTEL was off the south end of the strip. It had no neon lights flashing in front of it. It had no casino and no floor show. In fact, no executives stayed there. It was a place populated by the fringe dwellers of Vegas society. The addicted gamblers, the take-off men, the sex trade workers, the kind of people who can’t leave the place but at the same time can’t put down permanent roots either.

People like me. Often when you meet a fellow tenant at the Double X, as the longtimers call the place, they’ll ask you how long you’ve been there and how long you’re staying, as if you’re working off jail time. I believe that many of the tenants of the motel have had the real experience of jail time and I chose such a place for two reasons. One was that I still carried a mortgage in Los Angeles and could not afford to stay over time at a place like the Bellagio or the Mandalay Bay or even the Riviera. And two was that I didn’t want to get comfortable in Las Vegas. I didn’t want things to feel right there. Because I knew when it was time for me to go, I just wanted to turn in the key and leave.

I got to Vegas by three and knew my daughter would be home from day care and I could go to my ex-wife’s home to see her. I wanted to but I also wanted to wait. I had Buddy Lockridge coming in and I had things to do. The FBI had let me out of the RV with my notebook still in my pocket and Terry McCaleb’s map book still in my car. I wanted to put them to good use before Agent Dei maybe realized her mistake and came back to me. I wanted to see if I could make the next step in the case before she did.

I pulled into the Double X and parked in my usual spot near the fence that separated the motel from the private jet stalls on the McCarran tarmac. I noticed that a Gulfstream 9 that was parked there when I left Vegas three mornings earlier was still in place. There was also a smaller but sleeker-looking black jet parked next to it. I didn’t know what kind of jet it was, only that it looked like money. I got out and walked up the steps to my one-bedroom efficiency on the second floor. It was neat and functional and I tried to spend as little time there as I had to. The best thing about it was the small balcony off the living room. In the brochures they offered in the rental office it was called a smoking balcony. It was too small a space to actually fit a chair. But I could stand out there and lean on the extra-high railing and watch the billionaires’ jets come in. And I found myself doing that often. I found myself standing there and even wishing that I still smoked. Oftentimes one of the tenants from the apartment on either side of my unit would be standing on their balcony smoking when I was out there. On one side was a card counter—or an “advantage player,” as he called it—and on the other a woman of indeterminate means of income. My conversations with them were perfunctory. Nobody wanted to ask or answer too many questions at this place.

The last two days’ editions of the
Sun
were on the worn rubber mat outside my door. I hadn’t canceled it because I knew the woman who lived next door liked to sneak over and read the paper, after which she would refold it and put it back in its plastic bag. She didn’t know that I knew this.

Inside I dropped the newspapers on the floor and put McCaleb’s map book down on the dinette table. I took the notebook out of my pocket and put that down, too. I went over to the sliding door and opened it to let some of the stuffiness out. Whoever had the place before me didn’t use the smoking balcony and the place seemed to have a permanent nicotine funk.

After plugging my phone’s charger into the wall below the dinette I called Buddy Lockridge’s number but the call rang through to voice mail. I disconnected before leaving a message. I next called Graciela McCaleb’s number and asked if the FBI had shown up yet.

“They just left,” she said. “They went through a lot of stuff here and they just went down to the boat. You were right, they’re going to take the boat with them. I don’t know when I’ll get it back.”

“Have you seen Buddy around today?”

“Buddy? No, was he supposed to come by?”

“No, I was just wondering.”

“Are you still with the FBI?”

“No, they let me go a couple hours ago. I’m at my place in Vegas. I’m going to keep working on the case, Graciela.”

“Why? It seems—the agents told me it was a priority investigation now. They think that agent changed his meds. Backus.”

What she was asking was what it was I could do that the august powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation couldn’t do. The answer of course was nothing. But I remembered what Terry had said to Graciela about me. That he would want me on the case if anything ever happened to him. It left me unable to walk away.

“Because it’s what Terry wanted,” I said. “But don’t worry, if I come up with anything the bureau doesn’t have, I’ll give it to them. Just like today. I’m not trying to compete with them. I’m just working the case, Graciela.”

“Okay.”

“But you know you don’t have to tell them that if they ask. They might not be happy about it.”

“I know.”

“Thank you, Graciela. I’ll call if anything comes up.”

“Thank you, Harry. Good luck.”

“I’ll probably need it.”

After disconnecting I tried Buddy Lockridge once more but got voice mail again. I guessed that maybe he was on a plane with his phone turned off. I hoped, anyway. I hoped he had gotten onto the boat and then off before the bureau agents saw him. I put the phone down and went to the refrigerator. I made a quick sandwich of processed cheese and white bread. I had both in the box in case my daughter should want a grilled cheese sandwich when she visited. It was one of her staples. I skipped the grilling and just stood at the counter and quickly ate the tasteless sandwich to fill the void in my stomach. I then sat at the table and opened my notebook to a new page. I used a couple of self-relaxation exercises I had learned years ago in hypnosis class. In my mind I saw a blank chalkboard. Pretty soon I picked up the chalk and started writing in white across the black surface of the board. As best as I could I re-created Terry McCaleb’s notes from the missing men file—the notes the FBI had taken away. When I had as much as I could remember on the board, I started rewriting it all in my notebook. I thought that I got most of it, except for the phone numbers and I didn’t care so much about them because I could recover them by simply dialing information.

Through the open balcony door I heard the high-pitched whine of jet engines. Another plane was parking out there. I heard the engines quit and it got peaceful again.

I opened McCaleb’s map book. I checked every page and found no handwritten notations other than those on the page illustrating southern Nevada and the contiguous sections of California and Arizona. Again, I looked at what McCaleb had done. He had circled the Mojave Preservation Area, which I knew included the Zzyzx Road exit and the location of the FBI’s body excavation scene. On the outside margin of the map, he had written a column of numbers and added them up to 86. Beneath this he had drawn a line and written “Actual—92.”

My guess was that these numbers corresponded to miles. I looked at the map and found that it noted mile counts between distances on all significant roadways. In a matter of seconds I found numbers that matched the column McCaleb had written on the side of the page. He had added up the mileage counts between Las Vegas and a point on I-15 in the middle of the Mojave. Zzyzx Road was too small and inconsequential to be listed on the map by name. But my guess was that it was the unnamed point on the 15 from which McCaleb had started to add up the mileage.

In my notebook I wrote and added the numbers myself. McCaleb got it right—86 miles, according to the map. But then he had disagreed or charted a different route, coming up with 92 miles. My guess was that he had driven the route himself and gotten a different count from the map on his car’s odometer. This conflict would have occurred because in Las Vegas he would have had a specific destination. The map’s mileage counts would have used a different end point in the city.

McCaleb’s destination was unknown to me. I had no idea when the markings on the map page had been made or whether they were in any way connected to the case. But I thought they were because he began his count at Zzyzx Road. That could not be a coincidence. There are no coincidences.

From the balcony I heard a cough. I knew it was the woman next door smoking on her balcony. I found her very curious and kept somewhat of a watch on her whenever I was staying at the Double X. She wasn’t much of a smoker and she seemed to go out on the balcony only when a private jet was coming into a parking stall. Sure, some people like to watch planes. But I thought she was up to something and that made me all the more curious. I thought maybe she was spotting marks for the casinos or maybe other gamblers.

I got up and walked out through the door. As I stepped out I looked to my right and saw my neighbor throw something backward into her apartment. Something she didn’t want me to see.

“Jane, how you doing?”

“Fine, Harry. Haven’t seen you around lately.”

“I’ve been gone a couple days. What do we have out here?”

I looked across the parking lot to the tarmac. Another sleek black jet had parked next to its twin. A matching black limo was waiting near the jet’s stairs. A man wearing a suit, sunglasses and a maroon turban was coming out of the plane. I realized I was ruining Jane’s surveillance if that was a camera or set of binoculars she tossed back into her place when she saw me.

“The sultan of swing,” I said, just to be saying something.

“Probably,” she said.

She took a drag on her cigarette and coughed again. I knew she wasn’t a smoker. She smoked so it would look plausible for her to be on the balcony watching rich men and their airplanes. She also didn’t have brown eyes—I had seen her on the balcony one day when she’d forgotten to put in the tinted contacts—and her hennaed black hair was probably not the real color either.

I wanted to ask her what she was up to, what the game or the con or the scheme was. But I also liked our balcony-to-balcony conversations and I wasn’t a cop anymore. And the truth was that if Jane—I didn’t know her last name—was in the business of separating those rich men from some of their riches, then down deep I couldn’t work up a good deal of outrage over it. The whole city was built on the same principle. You roll the dice in the city of desire and you get what you deserve.

I sensed something intrinsically good about her. Damaged but good. One time when I brought my daughter to the apartment we ran into Jane on the steps and she stopped to talk to Maddie. The next morning I found a little stuffed panther on the doormat next to my paper.

“How’s your daughter?” she asked, as if she knew my thoughts.

“She’s good. The other night she asked me if the Burger King and the Dairy Queen were married.”

Jane smiled and I saw that sadness in her eyes again. I knew it had something to do with kids. I asked her something I had been thinking about for a long time.

“You got kids?”

“One. She’s a little older than yours. I’m not with her anymore. She lives in France.”

That was all she said and I left it at that, feeling guilty because of what I had in my life and because I knew before I asked the question that I was tempting the grief in her. But my question prompted her to ask one she had probably been holding on to for a while, too.

“Are you a cop, Harry?”

I shook my head.

“Was. In L.A. How’d you know that?”

“Just a guess. I think it was the way I saw you walking with your daughter out to your car. Like you were ready to jump on anything that moved. Anything bad.”

I shrugged. She had pegged me.

“I thought that was kind of nice,” she added. “What do you do now?”

“Nothing really. I’m thinking about it, you know.”

“Yes.”

We were suddenly becoming more than neighbors exchanging superficial conversation.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Me? I’m just waiting on something.”

So much for that. I knew that was the end of the line in that direction. I turned from her and watched another sultan or sheik start his way down the jet’s steps. The limo driver was waiting with the door open. It looked to me like the driver had something under his jacket, something he could pull out if the going got tough. I looked back at Jane.

“I’ll see you, Jane.”

“Okay, Harry. Say hi to her for me.”

“I will. You be careful.”

“You, too.”

Back at the dinette I tried Buddy Lockridge once more and got the same result. Nothing. I picked up the pen and drummed it impatiently on my notepad. He should’ve answered by now. I wasn’t getting concerned. I was getting annoyed. The reports on Buddy were that he was unreliable. That was not something I had time for.

I got up and went to the kitchenette and took a beer out of the under-the-counter refrigerator. There was a bottle opener on the doorjamb. I cranked the bottle open and took a long draw. The beer cut through the desert dust and tasted good going down. I figured I deserved it.

I went back to the balcony door but didn’t step out. I didn’t want to spook Jane again. Staying inside, I glanced out and saw that the limousine was gone and the new jet was buttoned up tight. I leaned out and checked Jane’s balcony. She was gone. I noticed that in the ashtray perched on top of the railing she had butted out her smoke after only a quarter burn. Somebody ought to tell her that was a giveaway.

A few minutes later the beer was gone and I was back at the dinette looking at my notes and McCaleb’s map book. I knew I was missing something, I just couldn’t touch it. It was there, it was close. But I just couldn’t reach out to it yet.

My cell phone rang. Finally, it was Buddy Lockridge.

“Did you just call me?”

“Yeah, I did. But I told you not to call me at this number.”

“I know but you just called me. I thought that meant it was safe.”

“What if it hadn’t been me?”

“I’ve got caller ID. I knew it was you.”

“Yeah, but how did you know it was me? What if it was someone else with my phone?”