She waved a hand at the construction site. “Sheryl walked in here, she wasn’t carried. She was conscious… we think she was at least. The other victims definitely were. There were no drugs in any of their systems, no sexual assault, no DNA linking any of the victims together—even though the coroner swears all of them were bitten by the same perp. No saliva in the wounds, nothing, and that’s just wrong. Even vamps have saliva in their mouths. It’s different to ours; they use it to heal the bites they leave on their donors.”
Baxter snorted. “Donors, right. We’re missing something big here, something weird.”
“Tell me about it,” she said sourly.
They spent maybe twenty minutes wandering the construction site until the irate manager asked them to leave. They were distracting his men, he said, and if they didn’t go he would call his boss. Ordinarily she would have argued on general principles, but they hadn’t learned anything new and wouldn’t now that the site was being worked. Too many people coming and going for one thing; the earth movers and wreckers had messed up the ground already.
Chris drove them to each of the murder scenes and watched Baxter go through the motions that she and the rest of the team had gone through. All of them had the same basic training, all of them had graduated from the LA School of the Streets and the police academy before that, but each of them had their own unique brand of experience gained through hard work on a myriad of cases. Each had their strengths and weaknesses, but none of it was any use. Baxter struck out just as the rest of them had.
“He started like a mugger—grabbed them off the streets and dragged them into an alley,” Baxter said as he read some of the crap painted in blood on the walls of Jenny Lovett’s hotel room. The room had been sealed to preserve the evidence. Joseph was really pissed about that and Chris was glad. “Sykes thought he was a mugger.”
“Well, he could have been. If not for Patsy and Sheryl turning up dead, I doubt we would have connected her story to the Ghost.”
“How did you find her?”
“She came to us,” she said and nodded at Baxter’s surprise. “Yeah. She didn’t report the mugging until after she heard about Patsy. You know how it is. They get hit for the cash they’re carrying and don’t come to us for fear of losing a night of work. They can’t afford to come up short when their managers come by to do the accounts.”
Baxter grimaced. “It’s the pimps that disgust me more than anything. I can at least understand a hooker’s reasoning. They’ve got something someone is willing to pay for and they have to eat, but the bastards who protect them are just parasites.”
Chris agreed, but she had less sympathy for the women than Baxter did. So okay, some of them deserved more than they got out of life, but that didn’t absolve them. They were accomplices in their own debasement. She could understand them intellectually, but emotionally was another matter. She couldn’t understand how any woman could have so little self-respect.
“So Karen and victim number one were friends?” Baxter said as he copied something into his comp.
“Not friends, but they knew each other.”
“Professionally?”
She grimaced at the thought of the two women working a customer together. “Something like that.”
“You think maybe Karen and Patsy turned him down and he went after them for revenge… no, she would have said if she’d recognised him wouldn’t she?”
“You’d think so.”
“Scratch that then. It doesn’t explain the others anyway.”
She pointed out some of the graffiti above the headboard of the bed. “I don’t think there’s any way for us to anticipate his choice of victim, not when he writes crazy stuff like that. He’s not on the same planet as the rest of us.”
“I hope you’re wrong, because if you’re not we’ll never catch him. What do you make of that?” Baxter said pointing to a patch of wall with a hastily scrawled message on it. “He was in a hurry it looks like.”
I feel him watching me,
Satan, dead man walking.
No one sees, but I see,
I’m scared.
Chris shivered as she read that passage again. Crazy stuff and Baxter was right. It did look hastily written, not that any of them were neat. It must be hard to write in blood.
“It’s just more of his nut bunny ravings. John has a friend of his looking into all this Armageddon stuff. I don’t know if it will do any good, but we have to try.”
Baxter copied it into his comp with the other ramblings of Ghost’s delusional mind. “Where did Jenny Lovett usually hang out, Vermont Avenue?”
“No, around the corner on 104th Street.”
Baxter checked his watch. “Let’s go see if anyone remembers seeing her.”
“Okay, but we did that already.”
“We might get lucky. Besides, you promised we could roust some hookers.”
She grinned and waved him out the door ahead of her. “You’ve got a one track mind.”
* * *
14 ~ Closing In
Chris winced and held her head as someone slammed a door. She took a big swallow of her coffee and shuddered. John had made it extra strong for the entire squad room. They all needed it after the barbecue at Baxter’s place. The booze had flowed a little too freely and all of them were feeling it now. John was sitting opposite her staring at his computer screen with bloodshot eyes.
“Good party,” she croaked.
“Yeah…” John coughed. “Yeah it was. Baxter stiffed me for a hundred bucks.”
“I’ve warned you before about playing poker with him.”
John ignored her.
“Yes!” Baxter shouted from across the room and Chris groaned. “I’ve got the bastard!”
She watched Baxter talking excitedly on the link with someone and wondered how he could be so energetic after a day like the one they’d had yesterday. It was indecent, that’s what it was.
“We’ve got him, Chris!” Baxter yelled as he hurried toward her. “John O’Neal. We’ve got him!”
“Not so loud,” she croaked holding her head. “Who the hell is John O’Neal?”
Baxter dragged a chair up to her desk and she shuddered again at the noise it made. He sat and slapped a sheet of paper covered in notes down in front of her. “I just got off the link with forensics. They double and triple checked it for me. They found a latent print. John O’Neal’s right index finger on the razor and on the bean can it was found in.”
“Razor… Oh, okay. I got it. The razor from the alley. I remember.”
Baxter peered into her eyes. “Are you okay? You don’t look so hot.”
She blinked slowly at him. “I don’t think so.”
“This will get your juices flowing. O’Neal was born with a hereditary medical condition. Want to guess which one?”
“Not albinism?”
“You got it.”
Excitement swept through her obliterating her tiredness in seconds. “Holy shit you found him!”
Baxter grinned. “We found him. You and me. We’ve got the bastard!”
“Goddess please be right,” she whispered snatching up Baxter’s notes. “It says here he was on medication for schizophrenia and depression. How the hell did you get this?”
“I called in some favours. O’Neal tried to off his wife and kid fifteen years ago, but she testified in his defence at the trial. I don’t get that part. I mean he tried to kill her kid and she helps him?”
“Love I guess.”
Baxter shrugged. “Right, anyway, he gets two years in a mental institution instead of prison—big difference there huh? When he gets out, his wife has divorced him, shacked up with some stud who used to be his best friend, and filed an injunction to stop him coming near the kid. O’Neal goes apeshit. He beats the living crap out of the wife’s lover and disappears. He’s turned up in the system a couple of times since then. Nothing heavy. Drunk and disorderly, petty theft, vagrancy… you know the sort of thing. He’s just a bum no
w. If we showed the artist drawing of Ghost to those bums you spoke to down that alley, I bet, I just bet they would identify him.”
“There must be a picture of him in the files too.”
Baxter scowled. “Well yeah there is, but…”
“But?”
“You’ve got to remember that it’s fifteen years old. People can change a lot in that time.”
“Okay, what aren’t you telling me?”
Rather than tell her he showed her by pulling up O’Neal’s file on her comp. Chris studied it for a minute then pulled out the artist’s sketch of Ghost. They looked similar but that’s as far as it went. She really wanted Baxter to be right. If not for that, she would have said that both men were related but that they weren’t the same guy. The artist’s sketch was drawn from Karen Sykes’ description, which portrayed O’Neal as lean but muscular with high cheekbones and Hollywood style good looks despite his albinism. The computer showed a man that looked considerably older and heavier. His features were blunted with heavy jowls and he was obviously overweight.
John stood behind her comparing the two images. “I don’t know, call me crazy but I think there’s something there.”
She pulled at her lower lip thoughtfully and looked at the artist’s sketch again in silence.
“I’ve got his ex-wife’s address,” Baxter said slyly. “You could take John for a ride and talk to her. He looks like he could use the fresh air.”
“Hmmm.”
“Come on Chris, it’s him I know it!” Baxter burst out.
She nodded slowly still frowning at the computer screen. A fierce grin slowly spread across her face and she tapped the image with a finger. “I’ve got you.”
She called the team into the incident room to give them the news. Cappy noted the excitement and wandered inside to listen. Chris held up a picture she had printed out and swept her eyes over the assembly, but then she frowned.
“Baxter!” she roared at the top of her voice making everyone jump.
Baxter popped his head around the door. “What?”
“Get your butt in here. When I said I wanted to brief the team I meant everybody.”
“But I’m not part of the task force.”
Chris glanced at Cappy who nodded almost imperceptibly. “You are now. Sit!”
“Yes ma’am!” Baxter said and grinned at the laughter his eagerness caused.
She waited for him to take his seat and held up the picture again. “Thanks to Baxter we finally have a suspect. This guy’s name is John O’Neal. He’s a schizophrenic and manic-depressive that tried to off his wife and kid fifteen years ago. This picture is a little out of date. He was heavier back when it was taken, but the similarities between it and Karen Sykes’ description are too great to ignore. I don’t have to remind you not to talk about this to anyone outside this room. O’Neal is our best lead and only suspect, but that’s all he is at the moment. A suspect. Clear?”
She made eye contact with each of the team and nodded. “Okay. Raz, I want you to take one of these pictures and go see Sykes. See if she’ll give it the nod. Take Matt with you. When you’re done, see if you can track down those two bums we talked to and get them to look at it. I want to know if O’Neal is their missing friend or not and if they’ve seen him lately. After that, we need to start painting a picture of this guy. Things like where he used to hang out, what he liked to do, where did he eat, where did he sleep. Who were his contacts, his friends… anything we can dig up might lead us to him.”
“Sykes then Teddy and Morris,” Raz said. “Gotcha.”
“John is going to continue working with Radthorne and Lockstone for now.” John made to protest but she raised a hand. “Sorry John, but you’ve spent more time on those writings than the rest of us—not even Raz knows as much about them as you do now. O’Neal might not be the one we’re after. We can’t ignore the possibility that Lockstone’s work will lead us to someone else. I’ll take Baxter with me when I talk to O’Neal’s wife.”
John scowled. “Okay, but we are going to have a talk about this later.”
Chris winced.
Carol O’Neal was now Carol Bridges. She had married John O’Neal’s best friend and subsequent punching bag shortly before he got out of hospital. James Bridges was a lowlife—a lawyer, but he was an up and coming, well-paid, highly respected lowlife lawyer. Chris had never fallen foul of his tactics in a courtroom, but upon further investigation she had learned that the same could not be said for some of the others in the squad. When they learned which Bridges she was going to see, they came forward one at a time to offer her some advice. Advice like: aim low, squeeze the trigger don’t jerk it, and kick him while he’s down. All good advice for any lawyer, she thought, but she wasn’t here to talk to James. It was Carol she wanted to see.
She pulled the car over and looked around. The Bridges lived in a nice little house next to other nice little houses in a nice little neighbourhood surrounded by nice little gardens and nice fences. The lawns were lushly green and wet from the sprinklers that were busy whirling away, the street was clean, and traffic noise was remote. No kids, no noise, no dogs. In short, the place was utterly sterile and without character or history. All the houses looked the same, little painted boxes surrounded by flowerbeds in bloom.
“Nice,” Baxter said looking around at all the pretty flowerbeds, white painted fences, manic car washing husbands, and lace-curtained-with-bobs-on homes. “No rowdy barbecues in this neighbourhood I bet.”
“Yeah,” she said sourly. It was a picture perfect example of Middle America. What a nightmare. “I really must make a point of buying something around here… not!”
Baxter grinned.
Chris made to open her door and climb out but Baxter grabbed her arm before she could. “What?”
“I just wanted to say thanks for bringing me in on this.”
“Hey, this is as much yours as mine. You found us a suspect. Without your work we would be nowhere.”
“Yeah okay, but thanks anyway. Mary Pat told me about your little chat.”
Chris’ stomach suddenly felt hollow. “Oh… oh shit. Now don’t do something you’ll regret. I didn’t mean nothing by it and… and she seemed cool about it… and I really… what?”
Baxter was grinning. “I love watching you squirm.”
“Yeah?” she said with her lips tugging up into a smile of her own. “So we’re okay? You don’t mind that I talked to her?”
“She’s your friend. We both are. Of course you should talk with her if you want to.”
“You know what I mean.”
Baxter nodded. “I was annoyed at first you know? When she told me what you spoke about I mean, but it kind of worked out better than I thought. We couldn’t seem to get started on it. We both knew there was a problem, but we couldn’t talk about it. When she told me what you said, it gave us another way to start. We talked about what you said, and that led to her feelings about it. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she doesn’t want me to retire. She knows how I feel about the job. I mean sure, she would love it if I got promoted to a desk somewhere. That would be heaven from her point of view—me still in the job but safe.”
“Yeah, I can understand that.”
“You know I would hate that, but if by some miracle it happens and I get that kind of promotion I would take it for Mary Pat’s sake. I want you to promise me that if it ever happens you won’t make waves. You promise?”
“You’re looking forward to being Captain Baxter? That has to be a ways off yet I figure.”
“No. Like I said, I hate the thought of living behind a desk, but I don’t want you telling Mary Pat. If it happens, I’m going to smile and take the desk for her sake.”
“She knows how you feel, Dave. You’ve been married eighteen years. She knows.”
“I know she knows! Like I know how happy it will make her to see me behind a desk! Look Chris, I’ve spent a lot of years on the streets having fun, I can afford to spend some
time behind a desk to make my wife sleep better at night.”
“Okay, I promise,” she said.
“Thanks.”
They climbed out of the car and she led the way up the path to Carol’s house. She rang the bell and was rewarded a moment later with someone calling faintly from inside.
“I’ll be there in a minute!”
Chris stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and turned to watch the guy opposite washing his car. Baxter took out his badge as the door opened and introduced them both. She turned to get her first impressions of Carol Bridges.
Carol was blond. That was the first thing she noticed and it might be called significant if only for the fact that Ghost preferred them. The second thing she noticed was that Carol bore a striking resemblance to victim number eight—Jenny Lovett. Baxter noticed it too. If Ghost was John O’Neal, and if he was still fixated on his wife, then it was one more piece of data that might help them nail him.
If she had been Ghost and wanted to kill Carol, she would simply have blown her away and left it at that, but John O’Neal loved his wife. He couldn’t kill her could he? No, he had to kill her surrogate… multiple times. Whenever the tension built too high, he chose someone that looked like her and killed her instead... if Ghost was John O’Neal.
Carol was slim, blue eyed, in her forties but still good looking. Her face was open and friendly though she looked puzzled about why the police were visiting her. Chris tried to clothe Carol in Jenny Lovett’s barely there miniskirt and tank but it didn’t work. Carol was too clean cut—a veritable Suzie Homemaker.
“Can we come in?” Baxter said putting his badge away.
“My husband will be home at five—”
“It’s you we came to see, Carol,” Chris said. “I can call you Carol can’t I?”
Carol looked from Baxter to Chris and back. “I suppose so. What’s this about?”
Shifter Legacies Special Edition: Books 1-2 Page 18
