City of Echoes (Detective Matt Jones Book 1)

by Robert Ellis

  Kaplin gave him a look, then sat down at the desk and pulled the computer closer. “This one might,” he said. “She made headlines a couple of years after her husband died. The local media in Baltimore wouldn’t give up on it and kept the story going for most of the following year. If Baylor was in the hunt, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that he knew about her.”

  Matt joined Vega, huddling behind Kaplin’s back as the agent opened an article from the Baltimore Sun’s archives dated twenty-four months ago. As he began reading, he realized that the article was a summary of the entire case. Apparently, Heidi Bachman had taken on a new patient, a woman in her sixties dying of cancer. After her first visit to the house, Bachman learned that the woman was married, that she and her husband were extremely wealthy, and that they had no children or family. No heirs.

  Matt looked at the photograph of Bachman’s patient, Janet Cameron, standing in front of her home with her husband, Bill. They were holding each other and showing smiles that seemed quiet and genuine. Still, Matt’s pulse quickened as he looked at their house in the background. It was set in the countryside, and he could see horses in the fields on both sides of what could only be called an estate and mansion.

  Kaplin pointed to the first paragraph on the following page. “The wife only lasted five or six weeks. But in that time, Bachman cozied up to the husband real nice and they got tight. We don’t think that it was a sexual relationship. Cameron had lost his wife and was distressed and vulnerable. Bachman was young enough to be his daughter, had his trust, and held his hand.”

  Matt nodded. “And she had no plans of letting go of that hand. No plans of walking away from the treasure chest.”

  “Funny you should put it that way,” Vega said. “But yes, she became his crutch. His most valuable asset, the daughter he never had. The old man’s friends said that she forced herself into his world. She had his ear and started managing his life—pushing his friends away and isolating him. Anything she could do to make it look and feel like the two of them were family, she did.”

  Kaplin turned to Matt. “Everybody could tell that something was wrong. But if they said anything to Cameron, it worked in Bachman’s favor. He dropped them, and they never heard from him again. When the old man died, no one was surprised that she had become the sole beneficiary of his estate.”

  “How did he die?” Matt asked, even though he could feel the answer stirring in his gut.

  Vega smiled. “The same way her husband did. He had a heart attack in his sleep.”

  It clicked, the three them staring at the possibilities. When Kaplin spoke up, his voice was quieter, more matter-of-fact.

  “The coincidence didn’t sit well with anybody,” he said. “Detectives from Baltimore PD took statements and tried to sort things out. An autopsy was performed. According to the medical examiner, the old man’s pipes were clean. There was no sign of heart disease.”

  “How much did she collect from her husband’s death?”

  “Half a million off a life insurance policy,” Kaplin said. “She claims she dumped his ashes into the Chesapeake but doesn’t remember exactly where.”

  Matt had guessed right. “So you think she’s good for both of them.”

  “We do,” Kaplin said. “But Cameron’s tox screen came back just as clean as his arteries. The detectives had no choice.”

  “She walked,” Matt said. “They set her free.”

  Vega smiled again. “They cut her loose and gave her the key to the vault with all of the old man’s money. He was worth more than fifty million dollars. And that’s why we think it works, Jones. That’s why we think the killer might be Baylor, on the move through the South and looking for a way out of the country. Heidi Bachman’s profile fits every one of the doctor’s victims like a glove. She’s a piece of shit, just like all the rest. A greedy black widow who he’d say deserves to be punished. That’s what this is about, right? Taking the one thing away from them that they can’t live without? The one thing they can’t buy back or replace? The one thing they love?”

  Matt nodded, his mind racing. “Where was her daughter’s body found? What part of New Orleans?”

  Vega gave him a strange look and hesitated. “What you were just talking about a few minutes ago,” he said finally. “The words you used—treasure chest.”

  “What about it?”

  “A security guard found her in the middle of the night. She was staked to the ground by one of the levees near Treasure Chest Casino. It’s a riverboat down there.”

  A moment passed, and then another. Long and dark and all ripped up. Matt felt the tingle rising up his spine. It was a sign from the doctor, a note, a message, another strike against greed by a madman.

  Treasure Chest Casino.

  It had to be him.

  Baylor could have known about Heidi Bachman before he even got started in Los Angeles. For all Matt knew, she could have been the one who inspired him. The first victim to make his wish list. But even more, Heidi Bachman would have been considered the prize, the gold ring, because unlike all the others who had lied and cheated to steal their way to the top of the shit pile, only Bachman had committed one, possibly two murders in order to get her hands on the money.

  It had to be him. It had to be Baylor.

  Matt turned and spotted Cabrera staring at them through the glass. He waved him into the office and, after everyone was introduced, looked back at Vega.

  “Has Bachman identified her daughter yet?”

  “Last night.”

  “In person?”

  Vega nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Any chance that the media covered it?”

  Kaplin sat back in the desk chair and laughed. “Are you kidding? When they figured out who the girl’s mother was, everybody showed up. It was a circus.”

  “We need to see that videotape,” Matt said.

  CHAPTER 54

  Matt figured that the waitress knew something was up the moment she got a look at their faces and grabbed a couple of menus. Now, as she set down their plates and topped off their coffees, her eyes went straight to Cabrera’s tablet computer and stayed there.

  They were sitting by a window at Denny’s in the strip mall across the street from the movie studios at Sunset and Gower. The same table they had shared on the way to Hughes’s autopsy. The same middle-aged waitress with the same dyed red hair. Matt doubted that she could see an image on the tablet with all the glare. And even if she could, he didn’t think it would mean anything to her.

  Still, as they got started on their bacon and eggs French-toast specials, neither he nor Cabrera could take their eyes off the screen.

  It was him, dressed in pale blue scrubs with an ID pinned to his chest pocket.

  Dr. George Baylor helping Heidi Bachman as she struggled through the press line from the front entrance of the coroner’s office to a black limousine idling in the darkness on the other side of the parking lot.

  The NBC affiliate in New Orleans had posted the clip on its website as part of the station’s coverage of the murder investigation. The camera appeared to be directly in front of Bachman, backing up as she marched forward, the handheld image rock steady. From the ruined look on her face, Matt guessed that the doctor had achieved all that he could have hoped for. From the look on Baylor’s face, the sparkle in his eyes, and the dimples on his cheeks, the experience had been pure bliss.

  Somehow he had found a way in. He had shepherded Bachman through the identification process and stood by her side as the sheet was lifted away and the woman’s memories of her daughter were forever changed.

  Forever mangled. Forever tattooed to her being and her mind.

  A title graphic had been laid over the images at the top of the screen. Beside a photo of the twenty-year-old murder victim laughing with her friends at a bar in the French Quarter were the words Special Report: Murdered Coed Identified. Who Killed Kim Bachman?

  Matt looked back at the victim’s mother. Although Cabrera had turned th
e sound down on the tablet, he could hear the faint voice of a reporter asking the woman how she was feeling right now. When she didn’t answer, someone shouted from the crowd, “Did you murder Bill Cameron? And what about your husband? Did you kill him, too?” Bachman remained silent, clenching her teeth and pressing forward through the gloom. She was dressed like nouveau riche, cheap and tasteless and adorned with designer labels, on a body that appeared bent but strong and noticeably dreary. As Matt watched her push a reporter out of the way with her fists, he thought that he detected something more than grief showing on her face.

  Something more than even Grace or the doctor possessed.

  He thought that he could break through her grim mask and see who she really was. Someone cold and calculating and devoid of human emotions. A conniving bitch, a complete blank who had probably earned a good living on her own but murdered two men because she thought that she deserved more and more, and even more than that.

  The treasure chest.

  Matt watched her climb into the limo, bark instructions at the driver, then snap the door shut. As the car eased through the press line and started to move off, the strobe lights switched to full auto, and night became day in a series of rapid-fire bursts. The light was blinding, and Matt could see Dr. Baylor shielding his eyes as he slipped into the shadows and disappeared into the crowd. While Kaplin and Vega were headed to New Orleans on a late tip that the doctor might have stayed at Le Pavillon Hotel, Matt guessed that they would find the room clean and the trail ice cold.

  The shot on Cabrera’s tablet ended and switched to real time, cutting to a female news anchor as she interviewed a senior investigator from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. A close-up photograph of Dr. Baylor’s face had been placed over a map of the United States with the cities lining the Gulf of Mexico highlighted as possible escape routes.

  Matt turned away and gazed out the window at the people on the corner waiting for the light to change in the oppressive heat.

  It didn’t matter. He already knew that they were too late. He also knew that Baylor would never set foot in any of the cities that were being discussed as the most probable. Baylor didn’t do probable. Worse, he was a plastic surgeon whom the Los Angeles Times had deemed brilliant in their coverage of the story last week. One article included testimonials from his patients, most of whom remained grateful to him for his talent and refused to believe that he was anything but the best and brightest. No doubt he had colleagues across the country who felt the same way.

  Even if the FBI got lucky and managed to find the doctor, odds were that they wouldn’t know that they had found him.

  In a few days, a few weeks or months, Matt guessed that the madman would become undetectable, his chance of capture requiring a new set of victims, another murder spree, and another pair of detectives who could see the pattern, put together the crimes, and identify the new face.

  The new man.

  In a few days, a few weeks or months, the doctor, the grief collector, would become invisible. So inconspicuous that Matt wondered if he would leave the country at all. After the smallest of procedures—a chin or a nose, the color of his hair, or the addition of a mustache to break the plane of his face—he could live anywhere, even here in Los Angeles. He could walk down any street, round any corner and, with his talent, rework his identity and start building a new medical practice.

  And wouldn’t it be just like the doctor to want to remain close and watch from a seat in the front row as the investigation in LA sputtered and eventually went cold? Wouldn’t it be amusing to live in the one city where no one would be searching for him? Wouldn’t it be thrilling to settle down in a place where no one would ever guess?

  But even more, wouldn’t it be frightening to live in a city where the doctor could be anywhere and everywhere at any time? A man who couldn’t help himself. A man who killed because he got off on killing and the horrific wake it left behind for those who survived. A brutal, sharklike man who was smart enough to know that he needed a new methodology, a new way, to feed his addictions so that he could keep moving and keep living.

  What would life be like knowing that the doctor was here?

  Matt thought it over, pushing his plate away and finishing off his coffee. As he set down his mug, the waitress walked over with their check.

  “You guys sure don’t talk much, do you? It’s like you’ve been married for thirty years.”

  Matt glanced at Cabrera as they got up from the table, then gave the waitress a long look. She was staring back at him with furrowed brows and a crooked smile. She was shaking her head at him the same way his aunt might have when her intuition told her that something was up, something was going on. He tried to smile back at her but only made it halfway. He was thinking about how they had failed. He was thinking about the death of Kim Bachman and that strange feeling he never acknowledged when either Kaplin or Vega mentioned that the twenty-year-old weighed less than a hundred pounds. It had a certain bite to it. It made the darkness darker—the pit deeper. It made everything worse.

  CHAPTER 55

  He didn’t pick up on the silver Nissan until the sun spiked his rearview mirror at the bottom of the hill on Los Feliz Boulevard. He had just eased onto the entrance ramp to the 5 Freeway, heading for Laura’s house in Glendale and the only place that he felt comfortable right now. The truth was that he hadn’t been looking for the Nissan since his release from the hospital. He thought that the man had gone away. With everything that had happened, with everything that Matt had learned, even in the past few hours, the man in the silver Nissan seemed like the least of his worries.

  Yet he was still here. Two cars back and tailing him.

  For what possible reason?

  In another hour it would be dark, and Matt had planned to spend what was left of the afternoon reviewing preliminary files on Dr. Baylor’s background that the FBI had made available to him on the Internet. He had been given a password by Kaplin, and they had exchanged cell phone numbers. At least for now, it seemed as if both Kaplin and Vega wanted him in the loop.

  But even more, he needed to be with Laura.

  He needed to see her and touch her. He needed to hold her body close to his body. He needed to bask in her presence and live beneath her spell.

  He checked the mirror as he slid into the first lane and picked up speed. The piece of shit was still on him. Still there.

  Why?

  Matt dug into his pocket for the pack of nicotine gum, pushing a piece through the foil and pressing it between his cheek and gum. He had been strong. As he and Cabrera were leaving the restaurant, his feelings for the victim in New Orleans and his own sense of personal failure had boiled up into a full-blown rage. He could have easily followed his partner into the minimarket and bought a pack of cigarettes. Instead, he found a way past the moment and drove off.

  But now that moment was over, his strength beaten back by someone he didn’t even know. An intruder violating his space, his privacy, his being and time.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. He tried to settle down and let the nicotine wash through his bloodstream. It didn’t take long. Within a minute or two he could feel his mind beginning to clear and sharpen, his senses awakening.

  He looked up and down the freeway, then across the lanes. There was too much traffic to outrun the Nissan. Too many chances that someone innocent might get hurt. As he passed beneath Colorado Boulevard and saw the signs for the 134 Freeway just ahead, it occurred to him that there weren’t too many people left that the man in the silver Nissan could be working for. Grace wasn’t in a position to even talk, much less hire a pair of shoes to keep watch for him. Orlando and Plank had hit the finish line and would never bother anyone again. The idea that McKensie might somehow be involved seemed ludicrous, off the charts, not worth wasting time over. And while it could be some sort of vendetta by a friend or relative of someone for the way things played out, it seemed more likely that the man following him had something to do with Dr. Baylor. />
  It had never occurred to him before, and he tossed it over—the doctor keeping watch on him from the beginning.

  Why had the doctor saved his life? The question still plagued him, still made him feel uneasy. Why had the doctor taken the time to treat Matt’s gunshot wound when he could have easily walked away and made his escape? Was the man in the silver Nissan a threat? Or was the situation benign and just an attempt by the doctor to keep an eye on him even now? Matt might have found the idea intriguing a half hour ago at the restaurant, but could it be possible that the doctor really was planning a return to Los Angeles?

  Matt remembered walking up to the car when the man was watching his house that night in the fog. He could still see the .38 revolver resting on the console between the bucket seats. But he could also remember thinking that nothing about this guy or the car he was sitting in felt like any version of law enforcement, either public or private. It was something else. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. The man was in his late thirties or early forties, on the chunky side, with a receding hairline. A white male with brown hair and a face so soft and plain that it would have been difficult to pick him out of a lineup. He remembered the striped tie, the glow of a cigarette burning between the man’s fat fingers, the lack of any visible wear or tear on his hands or forehead or even around his eyes.

  Matt slowed the car down enough to match the speed of traffic in the next lane. When he reached the 134 Freeway, he passed the eastbound entrance to Glendale and headed west. After finding the Nissan in his rearview mirror, he used his turn signal and exited onto Lankershim Boulevard.

  He’d come to a decision. Probably a bad decision, but a decision nonetheless.

  He would work his way through surface streets, heading for North Hollywood Park and the spot where Faith Novakoff’s body had been found. He would take his time and act as if he had no idea that he had company. He wanted to lure the man out of his car. He wanted to confront him, but he knew that he needed privacy to do it. The park offered the cover of tall trees and dense brush. Even more, the steady sound of traffic from the freeway on the other side of the woods would mask the kind of conversation he had in mind.