I strained to see or hear anything from the house, but there was nothing. In the distance, I could hear sirens approaching—backup was only a minute away. Up close, I could hear the quiet crackle of the police radio in the car. But from the house, I didn’t hear a thing.
Until suddenly, without warning, there were three gunshots inside the house. Boom! Boom! And then, a split second later, a higher-pitched Boom! Almost immediately, a woman ran screaming hysterically from the front door. She was completely nude and her arm was covered in blood.
Holy shit! I jumped out from between the cars. “Over here!” I yelled. “This way!” The poor woman was confused and disoriented. When she heard me call out, she stopped screaming and looked around; then she appeared to get a bit of a grip as she focused on me. “Come on!” I yelled, beckoning her with my arm. “Over here!” I could actually see her eyes drop and focus on the big, blocky “POLICE” lettering on my vest. This must have made the difference and caused her to turn in my direction. I ran out into the street to meet her. “Hurry!”
While she ran over, I continued watching the door of the house, my 1911 in low ready position, ready to defend her as she crossed. Thankfully, no one else came out the front door.
“Here,” I said, as she drew near. I holstered my weapon, grabbed her arm, and rushed her back to the space between the cars, mostly out of the line of fire from the house. Once there, I stripped my vest off and took the coat off that I was wearing underneath. “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re safe now. Put this on.” I draped my coat around her. I’m tall and she was short, so the coat covered her well. The poor woman was doing her best to regain control, yet she was still sobbing and shaking. “He cut my finger off,” she sobbed. I looked down and saw where all the blood on her left arm was coming from. Shit!
“Here,” I said. “Let me see.” I carefully took her injured left hand and looked. Her ring finger was cut clean off at about the level where she’d normally wear a wedding band. Instantly, I was back in Afghanistan with Alpha Company as I surveyed her wound. Blood was seeping from the stump, but not gushing. This was good—the wound didn’t need a tourniquet. I stripped my shirt off and used it for a bandage. “Hold this for a second,” I said. “Tight! Hold it tight.” The cotton shirt made a pretty fair improvised bandage, but now I was down to a T shirt, and it was a chilly November morning. I slipped my vest back on—at least it was something.
“Are you Katherine LaRue?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
My God. I tried to reassure her. “You’re safe now, Katherine. You’re going to be fine. Here, let’s keep some pressure on your finger.”
Seconds passed. I crouched down beside her, with my left hand helping to hold the bandage, right hand with a tight grip on my sidearm, and eyes focused on the house across the street as I waited for Ron, waited for backup. “You doing okay?” I asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her look up at me. She didn’t answer.
I turned for a moment and smiled. “Katherine! You’re going to be fine.” Tears rolled down her face. She was clearly in shock. At that moment, two police cruisers came flying around the corner, one from either direction. Thank God. ‘‘Katherine, I gotta talk to these guys for a quick second, but I’ll be standing right here.” I stepped out between the cars and yelled to the patrolmen as they unloaded, guns drawn. Good thing I was wearing the vest. “Two officers still inside!” I pointed frantically to the house. “Shots fired! Bad guy’s still inside too! I don’t know the status! I’ve got the female victim over here! We need a medic!” One officer dove back into his cruiser and grabbed the radio. The other hustled over to us.
While I spoke to him, three more squad cars pulled up. A sergeant took charge, and the officers immediately moved to clear the house. They entered front and rear simultaneously. I was very worried about Ron and Yoshi—I couldn’t figure out why I still hadn’t seen or heard anything from them. The obvious concern was that they’d been caught up in those gunshots. I wasn’t able to dwell on it for long, though, because I was busy tending to Katherine, talking to her, reassuring her, holding her good hand while I held the bandage on her injured one, all the while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. A couple of minutes later, I noticed an officer run out of the house. “We’re clear inside, but we got an officer down!” he yelled. “We need those paramedics over here ASAP!” My heart went cold.
It seemed like it took forever, but it actually took only about five minutes for a whole army of people to roll up, including three paramedic teams and, ominously, a coroner van and a medical examiner unit. I had no idea what was happening inside except that there were sure as hell a whole lot of medics running in and out, carrying orange and yellow cases of gear.
Meanwhile, one team of paramedics ran over to us to take care of Katherine. First thing, they handed me my coat back and wrapped her in a blanket. Then, they gently helped her up onto the gurney they’d rolled out with them. “How long ago did this happen?” the lady paramedic asked as she unwrapped my blood-stained shirt and started examining Katherine’s hand.
“J-j-just a little while ago,” Katherine stammered.
“We got here about twenty minutes ago,” I said.
The paramedic nodded. She lifted Katherine’s hand and looked at it from all sides. “Well, Katherine,” she said, “I know it may not feel this way right now, but as far as cuts go, this is a good, clean one. The reason that’s good news is that nowadays, there’s about a 90 percent chance that the surgeons can reattach your finger for you, especially if it just happened a little while ago. We’ve already got the officers over there right now looking for it. We’re going to find it.”
Katherine had been looking at the paramedic, her head raised. As the paramedic finished speaking, Katherine let her head drop back to the gurney, tears still flowing down her face.
“You’re okay, Katherine,” I said to her, holding her right hand. “You’re okay.”
She nodded, but bit her lip and didn’t stop crying. I can’t begin to imagine the horror she’d been subjected to over the past four days. I actually cringed at the thought of it.
“Do you know what’s happening inside?” I asked the medic. I was very worried about my friends. One of them, at least, was hit.
“Yeah, I think I heard them say there’s one DOA and one wounded.”
“Any idea who?”
She shook her head as she continued to work on the bandage. “Sorry.”
A couple of minutes later, two paramedics appeared at the front door, walking backward, guiding a gurney. The injured man on the gurney came out feetfirst, so I was unable to make him out until an instant later. I saw Ron pop out the front door, leaning over Yoshi, who was flat on the stretcher. A large dressing covered a wound on the right side of his neck. Ron was reaching forward, tightly gripping Yoshi’s hand.
“Shit,” I said quietly. “Katherine, I’ll be right back. I gotta go check on my buddy.” I squeezed her hand and then let go and walked over to Ron and Yoshi as they started to roll his gurney to the waiting ambulance.
I caught Ron’s eye, and he gave me a quick nod and a thumbs-up. “I bashed the door in,” he explained, “and when I got inside, the fucker saw me coming and started to run out the back. He ran right into Yoshi. Guy got two shots off at Yoshi before Yosh fired back one time, I think, and put him down.”
“How is he?” I asked as I walked alongside the rolling gurney.
“He took one in the neck,” the paramedic said, all business. “I don’t know. We’ve got him stabilized now. We need to get him to Harborview.”
“How’s the girl?” Ron asked. “When I came in, she ran into the living room but I didn’t know where the bad guy was so I just pointed to the front door. She split, and I didn’t talk to her.”
“I got her when she came out. I think she’s okay. The son of a bitch cut her finger off.”
Ron turned to look at me as the gurney reached the ambulance. “He what?”
“
He cut her finger off.”
“He cut her finger off? What the . . .” He let go of Yoshi’s hand and stood up straight, looking at me. “Damn, Logan, that means this guy’s the serial killer?”
It suddenly hit me. In the intensity of the last few minutes, I hadn’t made the connection. “Do you think?”
“Unless there’s more than one psycho running around killing girls and chopping off their fingers, I think maybe we got him.” A copycat murderer was unlikely since SPD had never released the information about the mutilations to the public. No one knew about the fingers except the police. And the bad guy. And now, Katherine LaRue, of course.
I nodded toward the house. “What about the perp?” I asked. “Is he . . . ?”
“Problem solved,” Ron said. “Little buddy here stood there with a bullet in his neck and ended that motherfucker. One shot, right here.” He pointed to the spot right between his eyes.
I nodded. “Good. Serves the bastard right.”
Ron nodded. “Damn straight. Never been prouder.”
I’ve spent most of my adult life working in the criminal justice system, one way or another. This included three and a half years in U.S. Army CID and now, the five years since. I have full respect for the system, even though I recognize that it’s not perfect. That said, the most important aspect of the criminal justice system to me has always been the part about justice, not necessarily the system itself. I’m not saying that I’m any kind of vigilante or anything—I don’t have any patience for that kind of crap. But on the other hand, if a known bad guy—a killer at that, and a killer of women in particular—if that bad guy draws down on me or anyone else I know who happens to be armed, the decision’s easy. We’re taking him out. See ya. Send him on up to God and let the big guy sort things out. Justice, after all, must be served. Way to go, Yoshi.
I watched as they finished loading Yoshi into one of the ambulances. Ron walked over, leaned in and whispered a word of encouragement before turning and walking back to me. The paramedics had wheeled Katherine over to the other ambulance. I walked over. The kind paramedic, whose name I never got, was holding Katherine’s right hand.
“Hey, Katherine,” I said. “You alright?”
She looked up at me. She nodded. “Thank you.” Tears formed in her eyes again.
I smiled. “You going to be at Harborview too?”
The paramedic nodded. “You bet. We’re headed that way now.”
“I’ll stop in and see you when you’re feeling better,” I said to Katherine.
She gave me a weak smile and nodded. I stepped back, and they slammed the doors shut. A second later, both ambulances roared off, sirens blazing.
Ron and I watched them leave, then he turned to one of the uniformed officers. “Linda!” he called out. “Where’s the CSI unit?”
A tall police lieutenant looked Ron’s way. “They’re on the way,” she answered. “Should be here in just a minute. You okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, I need you to stay put. Your captain and my captain are both on their way out. You can’t go back inside until they get here.” SPD has a well-defined policy in place to review all use-of-force incidents. No doubt, Ron was going to be subjected to many hours of debriefing.
As she was explaining this to Ron, I suddenly remembered Katherine’s finger. Damn! How could I have forgotten that, even for a minute? “Lieutenant,” I said, “I need a few officers to go inside with me. Our female victim had her finger cut off. We have to recover it and get it to the hospital.”
She looked at me for a second, then she smiled. “Mr. Logan, is it? Don’t worry. We’ve already recovered it,” she said. “The medics have it. It went to the hospital in the ambulance with Ms. LaRue.”
Relief. I nodded. “Thank God. Thanks, Lieutenant.”
Then came the surprise. “Mr. Logan? One other thing,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Same thing goes for you as goes for Lieutenant Bergstrom. Since you were involved, I need you to stick around here and answer some questions. You and Lieutenant Bergstrom shouldn’t speak about the incident until after your debrief. You’re not to go inside. Got it?”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
She turned and walked back toward the house, leaving Ron and me standing on the sidewalk. We stood there silently for a few seconds, then Ron turned to me. “Hey, Logan,” he said.
I looked at him.
He held out his hand to shake. “Thanks.” We shook hands, the sincere gesture of two guys who’d been through combat together. “I mean it. You had our backs. We won’t forget.”
I smiled and nodded. “Of course.”
He nodded back. “Find me those fucking pictures you were talking about. If they’re what you think they are, I’ll take ’em to Captain Jerry. And I’ll sit on him to make sure he does right by ’em.”
Chapter 21
WE WERE SEATED AROUND THE CONFERENCE room table for a Thursday staff meeting the next morning.
“What’s the latest on Detective Hinari?” Richard asked.
“He made it through surgery yesterday afternoon. He’s still in ICU, but they said he’s out of the danger zone now. He’ll be laid up for a few weeks, but he’s going to make it. Bullet missed everything important.”
“Thank God,” Richard said. “And the woman?”
“They reattached her finger—say the prognosis is good.”
“Physically,” Toni added.
“True,” I said. “Physically. It’s going to take time to recover mentally, after everything she went through. We’re going to go see ’em both tomorrow. The nurse said they’ll be moving Yoshi out of ICU and up to a room tomorrow morning.”
Richard nodded. “Well, he’s certainly a lucky man, GSW to the neck like that. Those are often fatal. A couple of inches to the right, and that bullet would have severed the spine or the carotid.”
I shuddered. “And that would have been terrible. Good thing the bad guy pushed his shot.”
“Indeed. And I heard on the news last night that the crime lab matched up the prints from the fingers they found in that psycho’s freezer.”
“That’s right. If you can believe it, the idiot made sure to keep the evidence that ties him conclusively to all the women he abducted and mutilated and killed over the past six years. There were five—no doubt, Katherine LaRue would have been number six. He was keeping a collection.”
Richard shook his head. “No one ever accused your average criminal of being a refugee from a Mensa camp.”
“That’s true.”
A few minutes later, we got started. First thing, I turned to Kenny. “Any luck on the pictures? Ron told me if we find ’em, he’ll take ’em to his captain and try to get him to keep the investigation on Sophie open.”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Not a thing. I went through all of Leonard’s cameras, went through their desktops at home, Leonard’s laptop; Gloria even took me over so that I could check the machines at his office. No photos that match up to the time frame. His Nikon uses a Compact Flash storage card,” he held up his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, “It could be anywhere.”
“Safe deposit box?” Doc asked.
He shook his head again. “Went with her and checked it. Nothing.”
“What about the brother who went with him?” Richard asked. “Maybe he has something?”
“She said she’s asked him before, and he said he didn’t have any pictures,” I said. “I asked her to call him again. Maybe he doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to be looking for.”
“Yesterday she said she called him, and he hasn’t called her back yet,” Kenny said. “Some sort of a backup copy is logical for a tech geek like Leonard,” Kenny said. “The McKenzie house is full of high-tech stuff. Leonard would have been all over the concept of backup, and he’d probably be predisposed to some sort of off-site copy.”
“Other than a hard-copy printout?” I asked
.
Kenny shrugged. “That could work. But more likely, he’d keep a copy of the original digital files.”
“How ’bout one of those cloud storage services?” Doc said.
Kenny looked at Doc and smiled. “Very good, dude. You’ve been paying attention.” He looked at me. “Carbonite, Mozy, those kind of places. Leonard could have uploaded the photos and then hid the memory cards. Hell, for that matter, once he uploaded them, he could have erased the memory cards. I actually found a bunch of them in his desk. They were all empty.”
I thought about this for a couple seconds. “Why don’t you start going through those services and seeing if Leonard had an account?” I paused, then said, “If you find one, can you get into it?”
He shook his head. “Doubtful. Matter of fact, I might not even be able to find out if he had an account without Gloria’s authorization.”
“We’ll call her after the meeting,” I said. “She’ll help.”
“Meanwhile, though,” Richard said, “we’re left with Gloria’s brother and the hope that Leonard left him something.”
I nodded. “That’s it. Hopefully, he’ll call Gloria back.”
“So what you’re saying,” Richard said, “is that, at least for the moment anyway, there might be a smoking gun in this case in the form of the pictures. But at this particular moment, all we have is just the smoke—not the gun?”
“Or the pictures,” Doc added.
I smiled. “Yeah, I s’pose you could put it that way.”
“Just a hint of a suspicion, a whiff of smoke, really,” Toni said.
I nodded. “I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. That being the way of it, it’d be crazy for us to pin all our hopes on that.” I turned to Doc. “Where are we with those financial reports?”
Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) Page 26
