The Silenced Women

by Frederick Weisel

  Woodhouse smiled. “Eddie told you to come here? Good for him.”

  They walked quickly onto the rocky path, Woodhouse struggling to keep up with Coyle.

  “I couldn’t call you,” Woodhouse yelled to Coyle. “Fucking battery on my phone died.”

  “I figured,” Coyle called back. “Partridge’s panicking. He must’ve figured we have his girlfriend and enough evidence for an arrest.”

  At a dogleg in the trail, Coyle slowed to see around the corner. Partridge wasn’t in sight. “What’s he wearing?”

  “Black jacket. Jeans.”

  “You see a gun?”

  “No.”

  They ran together again.

  A couple walked toward them. Coyle shoved the Glock behind his back and held out his badge. “Did you pass a man in a black jacket?”

  “Just now.” The woman nodded. “About a hundred yards back. He was talking to someone.”

  Coyle bolted past the couple, aware he was leaving Woodhouse behind. Around another corner, he saw Partridge in a clearing, with a young woman in a sweatshirt and running shorts. They stood on a muddy spit at the shallow edge of the lake. The woman faced Partridge, hands on hips.

  As Coyle raced forward, the woman noticed him. In the same instant, Partridge pivoted behind her, looping a cord around her neck and pulling it tight.

  Partridge and the woman instantly became a single, wild creature—at one end, Partridge kneeing his victim’s back, all his weight on the rope ends, at the other end, the woman, arms wheeling helplessly in the air.

  Coyle ran, gun leveled. “Police. Let her go.”

  Without a clean shot, Coyle shoved his gun in his belt and threw himself onto Partridge, tearing at the man’s hands, prying away first one finger, then another. But the cord, fastened around Partridge’s wrists, held. The force of it threw the woman’s head backward, thrusting her chin in the air.

  Coyle pounded Partridge’s face, over and over, bloodying his nose. He looked back but couldn’t see Woodhouse. As Coyle shifted, he slipped forward, tumbling with the pair and knocking all three of them into the shallow water.

  The woman’s head submerged, the cord still wrapped around her throat. Her head whipped frantically from side to side.

  Coyle seized her sweatshirt and pulled her partway out of the water. But Partridge further tightened the cord, squeezing it into the woman’s neck.

  Over his shoulder, Coyle sensed someone running toward him. Then Woodhouse’s arm slammed a gun handle onto Partridge’s head.

  Partridge’s body went slack, and Coyle shoved the weight away from him. He pulled the woman’s head out of the water and unwound the cord from around her neck. Her body was heavy and still. Curling his arms under hers, he dragged her to dry ground and laid her faceup.

  She wasn’t breathing. Coyle knelt beside her and, with one hand, pinched her nostrils. He took a deep breath and put his mouth over hers. He blew in. He did it again.

  Coyle felt his own exhaustion and the coldness of his wet clothes.

  He blew into the woman’s mouth.

  He heard Woodhouse drag Partridge out of the water.

  He blew again, now aware of people watching.

  After his fifth breath, the woman coughed and opened her eyes. Coyle hoisted her into a sitting position and held her while she coughed and vomited. Her face was pale, her eyes struggling to focus.

  “My name’s Martin Coyle,” Coyle said. “I’m a police officer.”

  The woman breathed heavily. Water dripped from her hair down across her face. Her sweatshirt was soaked, her bare legs scratched and smeared with mud.

  Behind her, Partridge said something to Woodhouse. The side of his head was wet with blood.

  The woman turned to see Partridge. The cord, still wrapped tight around his wrists, lay across his body.

  Two hikers helped Woodhouse to his feet. Gun still leveled at Partridge, Woodhouse told the hikers to call 911. In front of the onlookers, a teenage boy took photos.

  The woman tipped back her head and closed her eyes. Red, crisscrossed bruises marked her neck. For a moment, with her eyes shut, she looked like the dead girls in the forensic photos.

  Heaving a breath, she opened her eyes.

  Coyle watched her eyes blink and focus on him. They stared, as if seeing something new.

  “Good,” he said softly. “Good.”

  (ii)

  (FRIDAY, 1:10 P.M.)

  Thackrey pointed to the chair beside him. “Let’s talk shop.”

  Eden sat on the edge of the cushion. Her hand trembled as she put the wineglass on the table.

  Thackrey smiled. He took her hand and ran a thumb slowly across its back. “You know why I’m here?”

  “Because I said the thing this morning about Reggie Semple.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “You were testing me, weren’t you? Well, guess what? You were right. Unfortunately, it’s not always a good thing to be right.”

  He let go of her hand and sat back on the sofa. From his pocket, he took a pill bottle. He unscrewed the cap and poured several into his mouth. “How’d you know?”

  Eden tried to gauge Thackrey’s attention level. His eyes darted around the room. Was he alert or just processing the pills? She imagined jumping on Thackrey, ripping the gun from his hand. An even bet had her rising from the chair and being shot in the stomach. “When we went through Elise Durand’s things, we found a book of Keats poetry. She wrote lots of stuff in the margins. But one note puzzled me. Three times, where the word ‘queen’ appears, Elise circled it and wrote ‘murder’ in the margin.”

  “Elise loved her poetry.”

  “Then when we ID’d you, I saw an entry in your file. The San Francisco homicide detectives questioned you at the time of Reggie Semple’s disappearance. Reggie’s short for Regina, which means queen. Elise must have found or heard something that convinced her you killed Semple. You had to kill Elise because she knew. I wasn’t sure until this morning in your house. When I said that thing about Reggie, you stopped smiling for the first time.”

  Eden watched Thackrey’s crossed leg jiggling up and down as it had earlier that morning. “Someone’ll find the evidence.”

  Thackrey looked up at the ceiling, his eyes studying something there. “That’s just it. There is none. Since you enjoy puzzles, I’ll tell you this one. I hired a gypsy cab in the Mission District. A Honduran national named Javier Griffin. Señor Griffin was a great admirer of cash. I paid him a thousand dollars to call the residence of Tyler Morris and pick up Reggie. She and her boyfriend were so strung out on smack, they didn’t question a cab showing up. Griffin brought her to me, asleep in the back seat. I paid him another thirty thousand dollars to disappear.”

  “We’ll find him,” Eden said.

  “Good luck with that. After he left, I injected Reggie’s bony ass with a veterinary tranquilizer called xylazine. Like putting a cat down. I weighted her body and sank it in the bay. Then I donated Griffin’s cab to a salvage yard in Fremont, where it was crushed and sold as scrap. Poof. Gone. Why does anyone think murder’s so difficult?” Thackrey picked up his wineglass and sipped, his eyes dark.

  Eden watched him drink the wine that held her memories. Her anger rose. The image of Reggie Semple floated across Eden’s mind. She saw the dead woman’s dress pulled up in the back seat of the gypsy cab. She suddenly felt furious. “Elise was different from other women, wasn’t she?” Eden said. “She was smarter than the party girls and, like you, she was a risk-taker. She had a wild streak, an exuberance, that showed in her art, without the cushion of your money and the fear that lived in the back of your own soul.”

  “Elise was flat-out crazy.”

  “Oh, sure, but you couldn’t kill her right away, could you? You had to, but some feeling got in the way. You needed to talk yourself into it. Reggie was easy, but Eli
se—”

  “And where do you fit into all this, Detective Somers?” His voice was cold now.

  “I’m the cop you saw coming, the one you’re taking all that speed for.”

  Thackrey stood and pulled Eden up beside him. “Come on. Let’s do this right.”

  Thackrey took Eden’s hand and led her to an open space in the living room. Eden tried to pull away from him, but he held her hand tightly. When he put his arm around her, the gun pressed against her lower back.

  Eden saw his eyes nervously following her.

  Thackrey pressed Eden’s body close to him. “Tell me, Detective Somers, in your nightmare, how do you see yourself killed? Strangled like the girls in the park, choking on your last breath? Or another way?” He tapped his gun against her shoulder. “A bullet? The American way?”

  Eden glimpsed something different across the room. As it appeared, she saw Thackrey register the change in her eyes.

  Thackrey swung around. Eddie Mahler stood in the doorway twenty feet away. His Sig Sauer was braced in his hands and pointed straight at them.

  “Put the gun on the floor,” Mahler said.

  Thackrey smiled. He slowly ran the tip of his gun through Eden’s hair. “I’ll put it down in a minute, Lieutenant Mahler. First, you’re going to watch as I shoot your girl here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  (i)

  (FRIDAY, 1:30 P.M.)

  Mahler leveled his gun at Thackrey. The pair paused in front of him, Eden in front, Thackrey behind.

  Thackrey smiled. “You’re early, Mahler. Detective Somers was just about to die.”

  Tiny lights flashed in Mahler’s field of vision. He tried to blink them away. “There’s no play here, Thackrey. A dozen units are on the way.”

  “Spare me your threats.”

  Mahler watched Eden and Thackrey as they turned in a circle. Thackrey’s left hand clasped Eden’s fingers. His right hand, holding the gun, pressed her lower back, pushing her into him.

  “Step away from her, and put your hands where I can see them.” As Mahler watched them, the shadow of a scotoma slowly formed, blocking the center of his vision.

  “Shall I make it easier for you?” Thackrey swung Eden until he was in front of her. “Clean shot now, Mahler. Of course, you still have to worry about the bullet going through me and into Detective Somers. Or, you might miss me altogether and hit her.”

  In Mahler’s eyes, the couple disappeared for an instant behind the scotoma before they came out the other side.

  Thackrey continued moving until Eden was in the front again. “From what I’ve read, Lieutenant Mahler, you’re a screwup. Can you handle this?”

  “This isn’t a game, Thackrey.”

  “Isn’t it? Before you arrived, your pretty detective was telling me about my relationship with Elise Durand. It was somewhat insulting, but maybe she can help you. Tell me, Detective Somers, what do we know about Mahler?”

  Eden looked fully at Mahler. She remembered her hostage training. Stay calm. Don’t hurry. Make eye contact with the rescuing party. Try to establish a line of communication outside the hostage-taker’s awareness, so that you and the rescuing party know what you’re planning.

  Thackrey pressed the gun against her back. “You think I’m kidding?”

  “Lieutenant Mahler suffers migraine headaches,” Eden said quickly. “Research shows migraines can be a psychological sign of the need for retreat. In this case, the body’s way of coping with work pressure.”

  Thackrey laughed. “Nail on the head. What everyone remembers about Eddie Mahler is he screwed up and a girl was killed.”

  Eden stared at Mahler. She felt as if she and Mahler were communicating on a new level. “But memories change over time.”

  “You mean people forget.”

  “No. It’s not forgetting. Memories change. We understand events in a new way. We go on after a mistake. We think we’ll be a hero in our own story. Sometimes we aren’t.”

  “You’re quiet over there, Mahler,” Thackrey said. “What’s wrong?”

  Eden could sense the connection with Mahler ending. “One other thing. According to Lieutenant Mahler’s service record, he’s fired his weapon twice while on duty. Both kill shots. Which means when he shoots you, you’ll be dead.”

  Thackrey pulled Eden toward him so their faces were inches apart. “Think so? Maybe he’ll miss and kill you.” He swung Eden around. “Come on, Mahler, take your shot. It’s simple. It’s like a program code, a binary choice. Yes or no. On or off. Her, then me. You can handle that, can’t you?”

  Mahler turned his head to keep the moving couple in the good corner of his vision. The rest of the room remained a wavy, moving blur.

  Thackrey stopped moving and stared at Mahler. “Wait a minute. Something’s wrong. You can’t see, can you? I noticed something odd about the way you tipped your head when you came to my house.”

  In Mahler’s field of vision, the scotoma began to vibrate and move.

  Thackrey leaned close to Eden. “You’re screwed, Detective Somers. Your boy here can’t see to shoot. You need a different hero.”

  As the pair swung around again, Mahler found them in his vision. He caught a glimpse of Eden looking directly at him with the signaling posture every law enforcement officer learned. The next time, as Thackrey began his turn, Eden gripped the hand that held hers and swung it hard into Thackrey’s face.

  The blow stunned Thackrey. He let go of Eden for a second, swaying. Regaining his balance, he raised his gun. Before he could shoot, Mahler fired three times.

  The bullets exploded into Thackrey’s body and opened like flowers on his chest. He looked down, searching for something. Then his legs weakened. He fell backward, hitting the coffee table on his way to the floor.

  Mahler rushed across the room, his Sig still leveled on the fallen figure. He pulled the gun from Thackrey’s fingers and laid it on the table out of reach. Holding Thackrey’s wrist, Mahler felt for a pulse. When he found none, he let the arm fall beside the dead man’s body, where dark blood had begun to pool. The room was suddenly still, as if death had extinguished sound and left behind a hollow, empty space.

  (ii)

  (FRIDAY, 1:35 P.M.)

  In her move to strike Thackrey, Eden had fallen to the floor. Now she crawled on her hands and knees across the room until she reached a corner and couldn’t go farther. She sat there, crouched in a tight ball.

  Mahler returned his gun in its holster. He walked to Eden and knelt next to her. When she looked up, he noticed red stippling across her forehead. He reached with his sleeve to wipe it off.

  “Oh, God.” She ran her fingers over her face and hair. “Is it gone?”

  Mahler nodded.

  “I don’t want him on me.” Her body shook. “Did you get it?”

  “It’s gone.” He held one of her hands. “It’s gone.”

  Eden looked across the room. “I didn’t think it would be like that.”

  “No. It’s not what you expect.”

  “It happened so fast.”

  “It’s over. You did the right thing.”

  “The blood smells,” Eden said. “It’s like something—”

  “Metal,” Mahler said.

  “Yeah, metal.” Eden took a deep breath and let it out. “Was Thackrey right? Are you having trouble seeing?”

  “Yeah, one of my migraines.”

  “But you saw me?”

  Mahler let go of her hand and sat beside her. He didn’t want to think about how close it was. “I saw you.”

  “How’d you know to come here?”

  “Thackrey’s friend Tao told us about Reggie Semple. I figured Thackrey might try to get to you after that question you asked him this morning about Semple and Elise Durand.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke. The room was d
ark. They looked across to where Thackrey lay—only his legs visible, splayed where he had fallen.

  From outside came the sounds of patrol cars arriving.

  “I can’t do this work.” Tears welled in Eden’s eyes. “I was wrong when I said I could.”

  The footsteps of other officers sounded behind them. Turning, Mahler held up one hand. “The shooter’s down,” he called to them. “Give us a minute.”

  When the others retreated, Eden said, “I’m no good at it.” She wiped at the tears.

  “You helped solve the cases, Detective Somers.”

  “I should quit. It’d be better for you.”

  “For me?”

  “You could hire someone more like Frames.”

  Mahler smiled. “I’m not sure I could handle two Steve Frameses. Besides, I may not have a job. Chief Truro said he was replacing me.”

  “On Wednesday night, when you said I don’t know what this job is, you were right. I don’t.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “No. You were right. You remember my college thesis?”

  “Sure. The Highway 60 serial killer.”

  “When I started that research, I wasn’t sure what was important, so I read everything. Witness statements, interview transcripts, investigators’ files, medical examiner’s notes.”

  “I remember the appendices.”

  “But something happened. That’s what I wanted to tell you this afternoon. One night in college I read the Arizona ME’s report on the cause of death for one victim. You know how the girls were murdered?”

  “Suffocation, wasn’t it?”

  “The suspect, Albert Jory, put dirt and grass in their mouths and noses. Then he taped their mouths closed. They aspirated on dirt.” Eden’s voice cracked. “The Arizona ME wrote a full page on one victim. He said before the victim blacked out, she tasted dirt. The Arizona surface soil, according to the examiner, is alkaline. He said it would have tasted chalky and coated the tongue.”

  “We see and hear terrible things in this work, and it affects people in different ways. I’ve seen it before. You’ll get through it.”

  “I still have the panic attacks. I’ve been on Ativan for two years.”