by J L Aarne
She told him and Ezekiel said he’d be there in about a half hour and hung up. He left the bedroom and went to change. On the way to the stairs, he stuck his head in the living room where Jacob was sitting in a chair reading by lamplight and said, “Jake, I have to go out. I just got a call from the detective on The Lamplighter case and she’s got a suspect. She wants me to talk to him.”
Jacob put his book down and sat up. “Right now?” he said. “It’s kind of late, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but my guess is they haven’t officially arrested him yet,” Ezekiel said.
If they didn’t arrest him, they could ask him all the questions they wanted without dealing with lawyers until Rainer got fed up and actually called a lawyer. It gave them time to build a case against him and a chance to get as much information out of him as they could so that there was a chance of making the charges stick and getting a conviction. Right now, they didn’t have much. Not enough to take to court. That was what they were hoping Ezekiel would get for them.
Ezekiel was counting on Rainer being strong enough to withstand the interrogation, even when it was him asking the questions. He didn’t want him to go to prison, but he could not help him much either or officers would notice and wonder why. Ezekiel would never endanger his career like that, even to protect Rainer. So, Rainer was on his own.
Ezekiel said goodnight to Jacob and kissed him briefly before he left. When he got to the station, a uniformed officer directed him to the observation room off the interrogation room where Rainer was. He found Detective Parker there with several others all watching Rainer on monitors.
“Glad you could come. I’m sorry if I got you out of bed or anything like that,” Parker said.
“It’s fine. I don’t sleep that much,” Ezekiel said.
“I heard that about you,” Parker said. “So, what do you think?”
He moved to stand with her and watched Rainer for a while. He was sitting slumped in a chair, perfectly still, his fingers laced together over his stomach, his eyes closed as though in sleep. On the table near him was the butt of a cigarette. There were no burns on the table where he had crushed it out so he had probably pinched it out when he was finished.
“Did he ask for a lawyer?” Ezekiel asked.
“Not exactly,” Parker said. “We sent Detective Nadia Emerson in to speak with him awhile ago though and when he lost his temper with her he said something about his lawyer being on his way. No one’s shown up yet, so maybe he was just bullshitting.”
Ezekiel glanced over at Detective Emerson and repressed a smile. She was pretty and he could see why they might have thought that would work on Rainer. “You talk to the DA?”
Parker sighed and shook her head. The tall black detective standing to her left looked around at him and said, “The DA ain’t ready to file charges,” he said. Ezekiel recognized him as Jared Doyle by his voice. “We sent the files over and the assistant DA took a look at them, but he says we don’t have anything. We got hair and we got the oil and the guy has scalpels in his fucking bathroom for Christ sake, but that ain’t enough. This guy though, I’m telling you, he did it. Maybe not his neighbor, but probably him, too.”
They did not have enough and Ezekiel was delighted to hear it, but what they had was still too damn much and he didn’t like it. Without a body, it would be almost impossible to take anyone, including Rainer, to trial for murdering Eden Raines. The hair could be explained away in both cases. The oil and even the scalpels were not enough by themselves to connect Rainer to any of The Lamplighter murders. They had evidence pertaining to all three cases, but not enough to connect him to a single one of them and definitely not enough to take to court.
What the DA needed them to get from Rainer was a confession. A confession to any of the murders would be fine, but what they all wanted more than anything was to nab The Lamplighter. That was a sensational case, a case they would write books about, maybe make a movie, a case they would teach upcoming detectives and agents about. Politically, for everyone, it was the score.
Ezekiel looked at Rainer sitting there in that cramped, stale, boring little room, dozing in the uncomfortable folding chair and he didn’t think it was going to happen. But he had been wrong before.
“So…?” He pointed to the little hallway off the room where they were standing that would take him to the interrogation room and Rainer.
Parker nodded. “Go ahead. He’s been sitting there like that for almost an hour now,” she said. “He asked to use the bathroom right after Emerson left him alone, but he hasn’t said a word since.”
“Well, I don’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do,” Ezekiel said.
He went down the hallway, opened the door and stepped inside the room with Rainer. Rainer didn’t immediately open his eyes, but Ezekiel waited him out. After a couple of minutes, he did and he raised his eyes to Ezekiel and slowly smiled.
Ezekiel crossed the room to the table. “Hair, scalpels, razor, lamp oil,” he ticked off as he walked over to him. He stopped by the table and looked down at him. Rainer tilted his head back to return his gaze. “That’s pretty fucking stupid.”
Rainer tensed and his calm mask slipped just enough to show Ezekiel a glimpse of his outrage. He had offended him.
Good.
“I’ve been assisting with this case for a while now and you know what I know about The Lamplighter, Mr. Bryssengur?”
“What’s that, Agent Herod?”
Ezekiel put his hand flat on the table and leaned toward him. Rainer did not lean away and it put their faces very close. “Everything except who the bastard is,” Ezekiel said.
Rainer shrugged. “Congratulations,” he said. “So, this is an intimate relationship you have, is it?”
Ezekiel snorted. He shook his head and sat down across from him.
“You know, a popular idea you find in fiction is that the really good cops who pursue such monsters have to think like they do,” Rainer said. “They have to put themselves into their minds and at least partly become like they are. Risk the abyss looking back into them. That’s the genius of the Will Grahams, the Lucas Davenports, the Sherlock Holmeses of the fictional world. What do you think?”
“I think that’s a lot of horseshit,” Ezekiel said. “I know what I know because of experience, because I’ve been doing this for a long time, because I have the training and the education and I’ve met a lot of fucked up people.”
“Ah, well, that’s not the more interesting story though, is it?” Rainer asked.
“You writing a book, Mr. Bryssengur?”
“I might if I have to stay here much longer. I’ve been here over four hours now, Agent. I could have started one hell of a book if I’d known this was going to take so long.”
“You know this isn’t a joke or a game,” Ezekiel said, and he was angry.
Then Rainer met his eyes across the table and that taunting little smirk made a reappearance on his mouth and the anger was overwhelmed by arousal. Rainer was turned on and Ezekiel could smell it on him. It was so strong in the confined space of the room that he could almost taste it.
“Why don’t you tell me about the lamp oil found in your closet,” Ezekiel said.
“I’d rather not. Do we have to go over that again?” Rainer asked. “It’s boring.”
“Tell me why you had two big bottles of the stuff in your closet,” Ezekiel insisted. “It’s not something people really use anymore, so when we find it in the residence of someone we are already looking at in connection with a crime, well… it’s suspicious.”
“Uh-huh. But, as your charming Detective Emerson pointed out, the date on the bottles is from last year,” Rainer said. “Don’t you think if I was running around Los Angeles butchering people and setting them on fire, I would have used up any oil I bought for that purpose a year ago?”
“Maybe you stocked up and it was leftover,” Ezekiel said. “The Lamplighter did become inactive for quite a while there. That was… oh, about a year ago.�
�
Rainer glared at him and Ezekiel smiled.
Gotcha.
“I already told them why I had it,” Rainer said.
Ezekiel shrugged. “All right then. What about scalpels? I understand you wanted to be a doctor there for a little while, but that didn’t work out, so… What kind of doctor, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Cardiologist,” Rainer said.
Ezekiel almost laughed, but managed to keep it in. Rainer noticed the amusement in his expression though and smiled faintly himself, sharing the joke.
“And why didn’t you pursue a career in medicine?” Ezekiel asked.
“I realized that my interests lay elsewhere,” Rainer said.
“You know, they’re going to connect you to these murders,” Ezekiel said, abruptly switching back to the topic at hand. “It’s only a matter of time. You could save everyone a lot of trouble if you’d just tell us what really happened.”
Rainer let out a laugh and shook his head. “I’m so very concerned about all the bother I’ve caused,” he said sarcastically. “Enough to apologize for inconveniencing you all by forcing you to drag me down here and keep me in this room for hours and bore me with tedious, repetitive questions and annoy me with your offensive insinuations. Yes, I think I’ll do that. I’ll just lay down right here and now and confess. You’ll have to coach me through it though as I’m not entirely sure what I’m confessing to.”
Ezekiel sighed. “Have it your way. If you cooperate though—”
“Yes, you’ll take it easy on me. I’m so sure,” Rainer said. “I’m not confessing to anything, so you can forget it.”
“What kind of friend gives a person a straight razor for Christmas?” Ezekiel asked. “A custom designed straight razor with an ebony and gold handle adorned with your initials. That’s pretty damn impressive. I also happened to notice the gold was done in a pattern of flames. That’s interesting.”
“Test the fucking thing if you want to. I’ve never even used it to shave with,” Rainer said. Which was true, though he had liked it from the moment Elijah gave it to him for its potential as a murder weapon.
“They checked it for blood residue,” Ezekiel said. “Lucky for you there wasn’t any.”
“Lucky for me,” Rainer muttered. “I expect to have it returned to me when we’re finished here.”
“That’s not up to me.”
There was a knock on the door and Ezekiel looked around at it then got up to open it and see what they wanted. It was Parker and she looked like she’d just swallowed a lemon.
“His lawyer’s here,” she said. “You’re never going to fucking believe this. It’s Diana Barker.”
Diana Barker was the eldest daughter of State Supreme Court Judge Warren Barker and one of the highest paid defense attorneys in southern California. She did not often lose cases and she was known among her peers to be a cunning bitch who would do anything to win for her client. It had never been proven that she sometimes did so with illegal tactics, but she won way more than she lost, even when she should have lost. If you killed somebody and you were guilty as hell, you wanted to hire Diana Barker.
“How the hell can he afford Barker?” Ezekiel asked Parker in a whisper as they walked back down the hall. “That bitch charges twenty-five hundred dollars an hour just to consult.”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of shit about this guy that doesn’t make sense to me,” Parker said. “You should have seen him with Emerson. It was like two completely different people. One minute he’s fine, polite, courteous, cooperative, and then snap.” She snapped her fingers. “Like another personality woke up and started talking.”
Ezekiel nodded. He hadn’t seen it happen with Rainer before, but he knew how that worked. Rainer had been playing along, careful to be the normal, personable kind of guy no one would ever think had bodies buried in the basement. Then he’d had enough. Ezekiel had seen it happen in psychopaths he had studied before. He wondered if he could get Parker to show him that part of the tape. He would have to ask her later.
They walked into the observation room and interrupted Diana while she was dressing down an irritated looking Detective Doyle. “So, you’re not only claiming that my client abducted and murdered Eden Raines—without a body or even so much as a spot of blood to show for it—you’re telling me that he’s now suspected of beating to death his neighbor, whom he barely knew, and he’s also the killer responsible for all of these Lamplighter murders?”
Diana Barker was a tall, slender, beautiful woman with dark red hair, dressed in a designer skirt and four inch heels that looked like they cost more than anyone in that room made in a month. Doyle looked mad, but he also did not reply to the question. Which was smart on his part in Ezekiel’s opinion. Whether deliberate or not, Diana was antagonizing him—all of them—and she would use it against them if they took the bait.
By the door a tall, fit, tanned man with piercing pale blue eyes and a bored expression leaned against the wall, arms crossed watching them. Ezekiel could tell from the drape of his jacket that he wore a shoulder rig under it, but they would have checked the weapon in at the desk when he arrived. He was Diana’s bodyguard. Some kind of ex-military mercenary type who now spent his days making sure people Diana had pissed off did not try killing her.
“Why not just blame him for every single unsolved murder in the greater Los Angeles area, Detective?” Diana asked. “It’s a miracle he still manages to get to work on time every day, being that busy.”
Ezekiel turned his head and looked at the floor, hiding a smile. He liked Diana Barker, though he was fairly certain she did not know it.
At the moment, she was making the detectives in the room feel like a pack of ridiculous clowns. Her words were a subtly implied threat to make them look that way if they continued with their respective cases against her client and didn’t produce some real evidence quick. In the awkward silence that followed, Diana tapped her foot and pulled the sleeve of her jacket back to check the time on her watch.
“I need to speak with my client now,” she said. “I expect all cameras and listening devices into that room will be turned off.”
“Miss Barker,” Parker said. She cleared her throat and glanced at Ezekiel with a wry twitch of her lips. “Miss Barker, your client is not under arrest.”
“Has he been informed of this?” Diana asked.
“We can still hold him for a while without charges,” Doyle protested.
Diana looked his way and arched a brow. “Oh, really?” she said. “You can do that, Detective, but unless you think you’re going to pull something out of a hat in the next twenty-four hours, you shouldn’t. It could look very bad for you and your department.”
“He has been told. Several times,” Parker said, cutting Doyle off before he could say anything else. “He’s aware. We won’t be holding him.”
Diana sighed impatiently. “Fine. He’ll be leaving then,” she said. “Immediately. Anse, wait for me outside, please. I’ll only be a minute.”
The bodyguard didn’t say anything or even nod, but he obediently opened the door and left the observation room. Diana walked by Ezekiel and Parker, went down the short hallway and disappeared into the interrogation room with Rainer. She was only in there five minutes and the door opened again and she walked right back out, Rainer trailing at a slightly more leisurely pace behind her.
He locked eyes with Ezekiel as he drew even with him. “Good evening, Agent Herod,” he said. “I hope you get your man.”
“Oh, I will,” Ezekiel said.
Rainer shifted his gaze to Detective Doyle and smirked. Doyle looked like he wanted to spit on him. When he was gone, Parker cursed and dragged a hand through her hair, then looked around at them all and said, “Sorry, guys.”
“It’s not your fault,” Emerson said.
Doyle and his partner, Detective Kurtwood both nodded their agreement. “Fucking DA,” Kurtwood muttered. “Fucking Diana Barker.”
“That’s our g
uy,” Doyle said, talking to Ezekiel. “I don’t care how it sounds, I don’t care if it won’t stand up in court, I know that’s our fucking guy. You see the way he looked at me?”
“Yeah,” Ezekiel said, glad only that in their preoccupation no one had noticed the way Rainer looked at him.
“Makes me want to punch his fucking head in,” Doyle said. “You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do.” He could think of a few things he’d like to do to him more than punch him though.
“Sorry I couldn’t help you with this one,” he told Parker.
“No, don’t be sorry about that,” Parker said. “Hell, you were great. Brilliant, really. You go on home though. We’re through here.”
Ezekiel was about to agree and be on his way when a uniformed officer shoved open the door and looked around, calling for Parker. “Detective Parker?” He was young, still had livid acne scars on his chin and between his eyebrows. He was fresh faced and he looked a little alarmed. “There’s another body.”
Parker frowned at him and walked toward him, backing him out of the room. “What do you mean, another body?”
She was tired, it had been a long day, and she was, after all, a homicide detective. She was also as convinced as Doyle was that The Lamplighter had just walked out the door with his lawyer.
The young cop stammered. “That—the—I mean—” He stopped, tried to compose himself and said, “The Lamplighter. They just got a call. There’s another one.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Parker hissed. “Fuck.” She stalked by the young cop heading for the doors and her car, already taking her phone out of her pocket. She saw something on her phone, missed calls or messages, and said, “Fuck!” again as she hurried away.
Chapter 44
Thomas was waiting for Rainer out front on the steps when he walked out of the police station with Diana Barker. Diana had been giving him her contact information and cautioning him to be careful and not to talk to the police under any circumstances without her when Detective Parker went by them at a jog out of the building. Diana had asked the officer at the front desk what was happening and been told that he could not talk to her about it, but Diana, not one to take no for an answer, had asked another officer hurrying to get by her and been told: The Lamplighter had struck again.
