“When are you leaving?”
“In two days… after Anna’s funeral.”
“That’s going to be one sad day,” Barbara said, before kissing Cody and leading him to her bed.
Spenser reported that he’d seen Hoyt do nothing strange during the two days he watched him and that he’d spent the current day at the zoo with a little girl he assumed was Hoyt’s daughter. He spoke to Cody and Romeo as they showed up in the evening.
“I know he’s an asshole, guys, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Tomorrow, I’ll be busy making arrangements for our trip and won’t be able to watch Ray. But if you want to continue to keep an eye on him, be my guest.”
The boys agreed to do just that, both night and day, since they could spell each other while they took turns sleeping.
Ray Hoyt stayed home, other than trips to a dry cleaner, a gas station, and a sandwich shop. Cody was wondering if his dislike for the man had been due to Hoyt’s irritating attitude, and not because he sensed something was off about the guy.
Hoyt was a swaggering ass, but his good looks attracted women easily. They had seen women checking him out and he seemed to be polite and friendly with the girl working the counter at the sandwich shop. Maybe it was all an act or a masquerade to appear normal, but Cody was beginning to wonder if he and Romeo had been wasting time.
HOURS LATER
“Yo, Cody, wake up.”
Cody straightened in the passenger seat of their sports car and looked around.
“What’s wrong?”
“Hoyt is on the move.”
“What time is it?”
“After three a.m.”
“That’s a little late to be paying someone a visit.”
“Yeah.”
They followed Hoyt to a suburban neighborhood where all the houses looked dark, except for one. The lighted house was Hoyt’s destination. Through binoculars, Cody saw that Hoyt was dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt.
Once Hoyt was inside the house, Romeo drove past the home and made a left at the corner.
“You’re parking on the other side of the block?” Cody asked.
“Yup, just like Spenser taught us. If something goes down, we don’t need a bunch of neighbors watching us get back in our car.”
The home was surrounded by high hedges in the front of the property, but at the rear and sides there was a six-foot high wooden fence. The boys went over it with little effort, entering on the right side of the property, then crouched and listened. They had slipped into the yard while twelve feet apart, so as to present two possible targets. That was something else Spenser had taught them.
Cody felt as if he had already learned so much in the few months he had been with Spenser. Now the man was saying that the year ahead would be daunting in its intensity.
Rather than feeling apprehensive about it, Cody was excited. He couldn’t wait to be the man he dreamed of someday being. That man, that future self, would be able to overcome anything, and no one he loved would die because he failed to protect them.
They moved closer to the home while hugging the bushes and staying in the shadows, when they came together again at the side of the house, Romeo whispered a question.
“Do you smell that?”
“Chlorine, there must be a swimming pool.”
Romeo was about to say something else, but the words died in his throat as screams pierced the night.
46
Accidents Will Happen
THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE, JANUARY 2018
“They’re heading into New Jersey,” Tanner said. “The question is, why? There’s no shortage of young women in the city.”
“Maybe they’re going to see someone, like another partner,” Sara said.
“We’ll stick with them until we have the answer.”
The ride was slow due to heavy traffic. After entering New Jersey, the van exited the highway several times, only to double back and return to the highway.
“Were we spotted?” Sara asked.
“No. They’re not trying to lose a tail. They’re riding around looking for something.”
“Like what?”
“I have an idea about that. If I’m right now, then we were wrong earlier.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I think they’re looking for a dumping site.”
“For a victim? But we followed them straight to that house. There wasn’t time for them to acquire another victim.”
“There was if that house belonged to their victim and not Dawson’s friend. You were right, Sara. That house didn’t fit him, and while we were outside waiting for them, they were taking another victim.”
“Damn. They took her right under our noses.”
“Yeah, but the good news is that she might still be alive.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Dawson likes to kill with a knife. That leaves a lot of evidence behind. There would be no reason to move the body if she’d been killed at home. My guess is they’re looking for a spot to kill her, and then dump the body in a shallow grave.”
Up ahead, the van made a sharp right off Route 280, but the GPS tracker didn’t indicate the presence of a road. Tanner pulled over onto the shoulder. There was a sign on a fence declaring the coming of an office park and shopping center. The completion date was a year away.
“There’s probably nothing there now but cleared land,” Tanner said.
“If we follow they’ll see our lights or hear the engine.”
“Not if we travel on foot.”
Tanner killed his headlights, then drove his car to where a gate stood open, and shut-off the engine. Beyond a chain-link fence and to the left were the running lights of the van. Behind them and up a slight incline, traffic roared by on the highway.
Near the gate in the fence they found a thick chain with a padlock attached. Dawson had cut the chain with a bolt cutter.
Thanks to a clear night and a bright half-moon, navigating the rough bare soil of the site wasn’t difficult. The van was hidden behind a stack of concrete sewer pipes. Each pipe weighed approximately a ton. The pipes hid the van from view, but also allowed Tanner and Sara the opportunity to get closer without being seen, which they did, with their guns at the ready.
Tanner went left, while Sara took the right side. When they were within ten yards of the pipes they heard digging, and voices.
“Are you sure we should put her so close to the pipes? What if they bury one of them here?”
“This is just a staging area. It will be paved over once the pipes are gone.”
“How do you know that? Did you used to work in construction?”
“I just know, okay?”
Tanner recognized the voice of the second speaker as belonging to Dawson, then he heard another sound. It was soft mumbling, and it was coming from the van. Their victim was still alive. Tanner signaled for Sara to halt, then moved to her side and spoke in her ear.
“I hear the woman. She’s still alive.”
There was a loud clanking noise that sounded like metal striking stone. It was followed by a cry of shock and the sound of a body hitting the ground. The clanking noise was heard three more times, accompanied by grunts of effort.
Through a gap between two pipes, Sara saw movement. When she pointed it out to Tanner, they both leaned down and peered through.
Cliff Dawson was staring down at the body of his partner. He had just caved in one side of the young man’s head with his shovel.
Tanner whispered into Sara’s ear again.
“Wait ten seconds, then tap on the pipe twice with your gun.”
Sara nodded her understanding, then watched as Tanner moved to the farther end of the pipe. When the seconds had elapsed, she tapped loudly on the concrete sewer pipe.
Dawson reacted with an audible gasp of surprise. When Sara bent over to peer through the crack to look at him again, she saw that he was gazing back at her.
“What the hell? Yo
u’re the same bitch that was at the bar.”
The clanking sound was heard again, only this time it was Dawson’s head coming into contact with a shovel. Sara watched his face grow slack before it slid along the pipe and disappeared from view.
“It’s all clear,” Tanner said.
Sara rushed around to the other side. Her face wore a grim expression when she took in the mess Dawson had made of his partner’s head. A moment later and she climbed into the rear of the van to check on the victim.
There was a young tattooed brunette inside strapped to the mattress. She was naked, had been beaten and raped, but she was alive.
“I think she’s been drugged. We have to get her help.”
“We will, but we have to set the scene first.”
“What scene?”
“The same one Dawson was setting up. I think he was about to unbalance the stack and roll this pipe onto his partner’s body. The police would assume it was a freak accident that did a good deed. The kid would get blamed for the murder and Dawson would be in the clear.”
“He would have had to kill this girl too. She must have seen his face.”
“Yeah, and after he killed her, he could then hide the second shovel.”
“And now?”
“We’re going to give the police the same story to believe, only in our version the girl gets to live.”
While Sara went off to bring back the car, Tanner used a shovel to dig out dirt beneath one end of the stout wooden boards holding the concrete pipes in place. Once they were unbalanced enough, the pipes rolled forward with a tremendous crash, crushing the body of Dawson’s young partner and making his earlier wounds indiscernible.
Sara drove the car close, so Tanner could dump Dawson into the trunk. They had used duct tape found in the van to secure Dawson and gag him. It was a shame the man wasn’t conscious enough to experience treatment similar to what he had done to his victims.
When they were back on the road and parked along the shoulder, Sara called the police and reported loud noises and screams coming from the construction site. She had given a phony name and used one of the burner phones Tanner kept in his glove box.
Four minutes later, the flashing lights of a police car appeared in the rear-view mirror. Tanner merged back into the flow of traffic as the lights grew closer, then saw them stop at the entrance to the construction site.
Sara was turned in her seat and looking out the back window.
“I think they’re waiting for backup to arrive.”
She was right, as another set of flashing lights appeared.
Tanner was confident that the girl in the van would receive the help she needed. Another young woman needed help. That was Dawson’s daughter. Tanner was going to make certain she got it.
If Dawson woke on the ride back to Manhattan, he didn’t advertise the fact. He was as quiet as the dead, and he would soon be joining them.
47
Caught In The Act
TUCSON, ARIZONA, MARCH 1998
Romeo used the blade of his knife to open the lock on a window and the boys entered the house as the screams continued.
They were in a small spare bedroom, or possibly a servant’s room, given the size of the house. After leaving the room with their guns drawn, they moved with haste down a corridor. Cody was in the lead, while Romeo lagged behind with one eye on their rear in case someone stepped out of a doorway.
The screaming stopped, then was replaced by the faint sounds of what might have been a struggle. Cody hoped it meant the girl, whoever she was, was fighting back.
The sounds came from the other end of the home. As they walked along a second and much wider hallway, Cody noticed the pictures hung on the walls. They were family photos, Mom, Dad, Son, and Daughter. The daughter was an exceptional dark-haired beauty who was in her teens in most of the photos, although some showed her younger.
When he reached the other end of the hallway, which led into a massive living room, Cody saw that the girl’s beauty had been soiled and ravaged. She lay naked on a white rug in front of a sofa, her legs spread wide and with deep gashes in her chest and throat. Her eyes stared at a spot on the ceiling with an expression of horrified amazement, but they were past seeing anything ever again in this world.
Blood pooled beneath the fresh corpse and was splattered about. There was also a crimson handprint on the tan leather sofa, as if the girl’s murderer had rested his bloody hand upon it to help himself rise to his feet.
The sound of mumbled words drifted in through an open glass patio door on the left. Romeo went through it first, followed by Cody.
There was a man sitting on his haunches near the edge of the pool. He was mumbling to himself and wore a white T-shirt and jeans. He was using the pool water to cleanse his hands of blood. Beside him on the tiled surface was a gun.
Hoyt! Cody thought while raising his weapon and taking aim.
The pool lights were off, the moon hidden behind a cloud, but the man was dressed as Hoyt had been and seemed to be alone. That is, if you didn’t count the dead girl. Cody counted her, along with Anna and the other two girls the police believed were killed by the same hand, hands belonging to Ray Hoyt.
“If you reach for that gun we’ll kill you, asshole,” Romeo said.
The man at the pool was startled by the voice and his hands stopped moving in the water.
“Stand up slow,” Romeo said.
The man nodded, but instead of standing, his right hand shot out quick as a snake to grab up the gun. He was swiveling around when the first rounds from Cody and Romeo hit him. He fell into the pool with a splash, gurgled spasmodically as pool water entered his lungs, then floated face down, as the water around him darkened with his blood.
The boys walked to the edge of the pool and gazed down at the man, who was beginning to sink below the surface. When a light came on in the window of a house to the left of them, they sprinted to the opposite fence and went over it, to return to their car.
When they were two miles away and sure they hadn’t been pursued, Romeo spoke.
“Spenser is not going to like this.”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
“I know, but he’s still gonna give us grief.”
“Yeah.”
They roused Spenser from a sound sleep before five a.m., then told him the story. He listened with a face that revealed no hint of what he was feeling, then asked a question.
“Are you certain you weren’t followed?”
“Yes,” Cody said.
“But your car might have been spotted by a neighbor and the plate number reported to the police.”
“No way, man,” Romeo said. “We parked around the block, then when we got out, Cody removed the plates. We also wore baseball caps and kept our heads down in case there were cameras.”
“You’re sure the girl was dead?”
“No doubt there,” Cody said, “and I don’t regret killing Hoyt.”
“Nor should you. Good job, guys. The man needed to be put down and you did it.”
The boys shared a look that Spenser understood.
“You thought I was going to chew you a new one, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Romeo said. “But there was no time to call you or anything like that.”
“That’s right, and I won’t always be there anyway. It might seem a long way off to you two right now, but you’ll be leaving the nest someday, so to speak, and you’ll be on your own. When that happens, it’s sink or swim. Tonight, you swam.”
The boys were too pumped up to sleep, so they waited outside a diner until it opened up at six a.m.
“Are you nervous about the training in Mexico, Cody? I know I am, but it’s a good nervousness, like excitement.”
“Yeah, and I can’t wait to get there.”
Romeo played with a salt shaker by sliding it back and forth atop the table between his open palms.
“I’ll miss Monique, even though I know we’d never last. What about you and B
arbara?”
“I like her a lot, but yeah, we wouldn’t last.”
“Imagine if they knew what we were really like.”
“They wouldn’t understand.”
“I’ll find a woman like that someday. A woman who knows me, knows all about me, and still sticks around.”
Cody smiled. “Good luck with that.”
“They’re out there, Cody, they’re out there.”
48
Do The Right Thing
NEW YORK CITY, SUNDAY, 12:37 a.m., JANUARY 2018
Sara kept watch at the mouth of an alley that sat between two brick warehouses. At the other end, Tanner’s car blocked the entrance. Situated in the middle of the alley was Tanner and Cliff Dawson. They were illuminated by a weak 15-watt bulb that was screwed in a fixture above a steel door.
Dawson was out of it when Tanner plopped him on the ground with his back against the door, but he had begun mumbling moments later. When Dawson awoke, it was with a start, and his face twisted with fear and confusion.
“What’s going on? Why does my head hurt so much?”
Tanner leaned over, while placing his face in the light.
“Do you recognize me? Look at my eyes.”
Dawson stared at Tanner for long seconds, then nodded once.
“Yeah, I’ve seen you before, years ago. Where was it?”
“Arizona, 1998, the year you killed Anna Hopewell.”
Dawson remembered the name and smiled.
“That was one dumb bitch. I don’t think she understood what was happening until I stabbed her. She really believed I was just going to let her go after she’d seen our faces.”
“Our faces? You’re talking about your old partner, Ray Hoyt, the real Ray Hoyt.”
Dawson squinted.
“The only people who knew me as Hoyt were the girls and the people I did business with back then. Shit, yeah, I do remember you. You and some other guy were hanging around Tanner… and you two were at the house with the pool. You killed Ray Hoyt.”
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