PJ flashed to tucking Thomas into bed as a child, sweeping his long, black hair back from his forehead, planting a good night kiss there, and smelling his toothpaste breath on her face. Then she got another image of Thomas, this one horrible: she was tucking him into a body bag instead of his bed, and zipping it up over his bloodied face.
“Schultz!” she yelled into her microphone.
“What?” His hands went up to yank the HMD off.
The picture faded. Unnerving as it was, she thought it was her mind projecting what might have happened if gronz_eye had gotten hold of Thomas again.
Could-have-beens.
“Wait, it’s all right. Let’s wrap this up, though. I want to get home.”
He drove the truck some distance away from the dump site, fiddled with the rope and managed to jam the gas pedal, sending the truck roaring down the levee, windows open for maximum water entry.
“So my truck is in the river. I’m stranded here.”
“You walk over to Laclede’s Landing and hail a taxi to go home. Say, how about that?”
“Checking the taxi pickups and destinations for that night?” Schultz said. “Could it be that easy?”
Chapter 47
THE PHONE WAS RINGING when PJ and Schultz got back to her house. She dashed to answer in the kitchen, calling out for Thomas that she was getting it.
When she picked up the phone, there was dead air.
“Hello?”
“Penelope Jennifer Gray,” said a voice that sounded like it was under water.
“Speaking. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Someone with a special interest in you and yours.”
A chill climbed her spine. The gamer with the sword was in jail. Now what?
“You’re out to get me, aren’t you, Penelope?”
Schultz was across the room rummaging in the open refrigerator, his back to her. She went over and kicked him in the shin.
“Ow!”
She gestured at the phone. He immediately went to the living room to listen in.
“I’m not out to get anyone. Why would you think that?”
There was a watery-sounding laugh. “Very good, Dr. Gray. Always thinking like a shrink, turning my question back on me. I know you’re trying to stop me. You’re one of them, and they’re always trying to get me.”
“Stop you from doing what? Are you planning to kill someone?” PJ was shaking. She felt as though evil were creeping along the phone line and pouring itself into her ear. In her practice as a psychologist, she’d dealt with killers face to face. But that was in a controlled setting, usually in an interview room in a prison. Standing in her kitchen, with her son upstairs, with a caller who could be anywhere, was a situation that shook her to the core.
“Too many questions,” the voice said. “How about this? Two questions are all you get. Someone may die, but I won’t lie.”
Someone may die. PJ tried to pull her mind away from going back to that image of Thomas in a body bag. Why didn’t I leave him at Lilly’s? Or is he safer here with us?
She was hesitating too long, her thoughts splintering. Scenes were streaming through her mind: Arlan’s exposed heart, Shower Woman’s blood on the glass door, severed body parts pierced with nails, the neat hole in Frank’s forehead, Greg Royalview lying on the floor next to his dead wife, his blood draining from a dozen wounds.
“Tick, tick …”
“Who are you?” PJ asked.
“I’m dead.”
Dead. April’s dead but not really. One more question. What to ask?
“Where are you?” she blurted.
“Where I can see you. You haven’t taken off that old blue parka of yours yet. You really should get something new. Maybe something bulletproof.”
PJ heard a crash from the living room. It sounded like Schultz had dropped the phone. In a moment he was in the kitchen, gun drawn.
“Down, get down!” he shouted.
As she was dropping to the floor, he collided with her and shoved her under the kitchen table. Then his weight was on top of her, and she heard two pops! Glass rained down on the floor and chunks of the wall went flying, right where she’d been standing.
On the floor just a couple feet away from her was the phone. A drop of sweat—or was it a tear?—slid down her check and onto the floor. Her heart was pounding against her ribs so loudly it nearly drowned out the voice, a voice that sounded drowned.
“Don’t stand in my way. Dr. Gray, or you won’t be standing at all.”
Chapter 48
SCHULTZ ROLLED OFF PJ and sat up, remaining under the table with her. He pulled out his cellphone, handed it to her, and asked PJ to call her son to make sure he was okay. She called her home phone and Thomas answered it upstairs.
“Everything okay?” she said, and listened briefly. She gave a thumbs-up sign to Schultz.
“Go in the bathroom, sit down on the floor, and stay put,” she said to her son. There weren’t any windows in the upstairs bathroom. The shots had come from outside, so there wouldn’t be an intruder upstairs.
Unless there are two working together.
“Yes, naked,” she said into the phone. “Don’t give me any flak.” She hung up.
Schultz crawled toward the hallway and took up a position where he could see both the front and back doors. Sitting alertly with his gun, he told PJ to call 911.
He’d heard most of the telephone exchange from the living room. It wasn’t PJ’s finest hour. She should have assumed she was talking to April and not wasted her two questions like that. If April was serious about giving two truthful answers, a couple of nice questions would have been “Who have you killed in the last two weeks?” and “Where are you going to be in an hour?” There was no guarantee a flake like April would live up to her promise to tell the truth, but what the hell, why not try? He was angry at the lost opportunity and angry that the killer was so arrogant she could take potshots at the police, lumping PJ into that category. Looking at the pockmarks in the wall where PJ had been standing made him afraid for her and Thomas. His new family was being threatened.
Anger and fear didn’t mix well in Schultz, like electricity and water.
“What the hell kind of questions were those?” he said. “Do you think you could have asked anything stupider?”
She glared at him from her spot under the table and said nothing.
“All right, that was harsh. Shit, I don’t know what I’m saying. Sorry, I’m upset.”
“And I’m not?”
Schultz was rescued from having to answer her question by the arrival of the responding patrol car, which must have been only a few blocks away. He went to answer the door. It was Officer Mel Leeds, who’d been first on the scene at the riverfront dump site.
“Keep this up, Detective, and we’ll have to put you on our frequent callers list,” he said. He bent down and spoke to PJ. “How’re you doing under there, Dr. Gray?”
“I’ve been better,” she said.
“You two stay put. My partner’s watching the outside, and as soon as backup gets here, we’ll set up a perimeter. Maybe the shooter’s still out there, or maybe just his footprints or shell casings. We’ll also make sure the house is clear. The ETU’s on its way.”
“My son is upstairs,” PJ said. “I need to check on him. Now.”
“Can’t let you do that, Dr. Gray. Sometimes it’s the family member who’s the shooter. Goes outside, does the shooting, goes back in. It’d be dangerous for you to go up. Wait till the backup gets here.”
“The hell with waiting,” Schultz said. “I’m going up to check on Thomas.”
Leeds frowned but didn’t make any attempt to stop him.
At the top of the stairs, Schultz took a good look around before moving down the hall. There was a shower curtain covering the doorway to Thomas’s room, since the real door had been hauled away as evidence against the gamer. The bathroom door was closed.
“You in there, Thomas?”
“Yea
h. What’s going on?”
“There were gunshots fired into the kitchen. You need to keep away from the windows, so stay in there for a little while.”
“You’re both okay, right? Man, this shooting and slashing stuff is getting to be a pain in the ass. Especially my bare ass on this tile floor. Can you get my PSP and pass it in to me?”
“We really are okay. The cops are downstairs. It won’t be too much longer. What’s a PSP?”
“PlayStation Portable. It’s on the desk in my bedroom.”
“I’ll be a couple of minutes. You can sit on the toilet if that’s any better.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Schultz went through the upstairs rooms, checking the closets, under the beds, the attic storage accessible through a small door in the wall of each walk-in closet. When he went into Thomas’s room and flicked on the light, Megabite sat up, blinking. She stretched and jumped down from Thomas’s bed, looking reproachfully at Schultz for disturbing her nap.
He grabbed the portable game, plus a T-shirt and boxers that were on the floor in the vicinity of the laundry basket. At the bathroom door, he passed the items to Thomas.
“Do I want to know what you’re doing naked in the middle of the day?” Schultz said.
“Probably not.”
Turning to head downstairs, Schultz bumped into PJ, who was right behind him. She shoved the bathroom door open so hard it smashed against the wall, catching Thomas nude, one foot into his boxers.
“Hey! A little privacy here,” Thomas said. He quickly turned his back on PJ, preferring to bare his butt to his mom rather than his genitals.
“Sorry. I just wanted to see that you’re okay.”
“You saw more than that.”
Figuring that PJ was about to launch into “You weren’t born with underwear on, young man, I’ve seen it all,” Schultz tugged on her arm.
“Come on, let’s go talk to the officers,” he said. “Everything’s okay now.” He caught himself just in time before calling her babe.
Chapter 49
SUNDAY MORNING, DAVE CAME around at seven o’clock, picked PJ up, and drove her to the Embassy Suites Hotel at Laclede’s Landing. He’d gotten a call from the hotel security manager.
The hotel’s central atrium was filled with plants luxuriating in natural light pouring in from skylights several floors up. The sunshine was warm on PJ’s shoulders, a pleasant change from being outside. The air smelled of flowers and the preparation for Sunday brunch. PJ thought wistfully of getting pampered in a hotel. Sleeping in, room service, relaxing poolside. And doing it again the next day.
The security manager checked their IDs and asked for Dave’s weapon. He balked.
“I’m a law officer on duty. It’s against procedures to surrender my gun.”
“I’ll take Dr. Gray upstairs alone, then,” the manager said.
Dave frowned and gave in. In the security manager’s office, his gun was put into a locker. The manager used a key in the elevator to take them to the top floor. When the elevator doors opened, they were surprised to see several guards dressed in foreign military uniforms in the hallway, and a woman wearing a colorful African wraparound dress.
“Who exactly are we seeing, Dave?”
“A man from Ghana. I guess with all this, he must be an important man from Ghana.”
PJ was given a pat down in a private room by the woman in the hallway, who was efficient and unsmiling in spite of her bright clothing. PJ assumed Dave got his pat down right there in the hall. They were taken into the living room of a suite furnished as an office. A man in a dark suit and white shirt rose from behind a desk to greet them. The desk had nothing on it, not even a mote of dust.
The man would collapse on the spot if he saw the clutter in my office.
“The Honorable Hosni Naybet, Ambassador to the United States from Ghana,” the security manager said, and left the room.
Dave stood rooted to the spot. PJ stepped forward, shook the ambassador’s hand, and introduced herself and Dave. The ambassador was in his late sixties, tall, barrel-chested, and going gray at the temples. He looked like he’d been a physically powerful man in his youth and would still be formidable. His skin looked like the deep spaces between the stars at night and he carried himself with dignity.
“Welcome. Sit down, please,” the ambassador said. “Would you like breakfast?”
“No, thank you.” Dave had found his voice.
“I apologize for the security,” he said. “Unfortunately, we live in a dangerous world.”
He had a strong voice that PJ could listen to all day. He could be reciting a dictionary, and that would be all right with her.
“Why did you want to see us?” she said.
“I have some information in the case of the Metro Mangler, as the local media has termed the killings. A small thing, perhaps inconsequential, but you should be the judge of that.”
He sipped from a mug of coffee that was about the size of a pint of ale. “I was here in the hotel the night of the first murder. I have a good friend in the city, and I get here when I can to visit. Not nearly often enough, of course. At about ten minutes after ten, I went to my window to look out on the river and the Arch, a view I always enjoy. A vehicle caught my attention, since no others were moving at that time on the frontage road.”
“What type of vehicle was that?” Dave said.
“A pickup truck, traveling south. I have no information on the model, color, or license plate number. The truck came to a stop at the edge of the road. The driver got out and pulled a tarp from the truck bed, where it had been covering something.”
“And could you see what that was?”
“Are you familiar with the 1950s movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
PJ and Dave both nodded.
“The item in the truck bed resembled a seedpod. Bigger than the ones in the movie, I think, but I was looking down from some distance. At that moment, my wife called me to the telephone. I moved away from the window to take the call. By the time I got back, the truck was gone. I left on a plane for Ghana later that night, and it wasn’t until I got back here yesterday and read the local newspaper that I made any connection in my mind.”
“It’s likely that you saw the body of the first victim being dumped at the river’s edge,” Dave said. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“No, I’m sorry.” The ambassador stood up, and it was obvious that their visit was over. “A horrible thing. I hope you find the killer soon. Dr. Gray,” he said, turning to her, “I’m familiar with your work in virtual reality crime scene simulation. I’ve been urged by law enforcement officials and university faculty in my country to invite you to lecture, and if willing, to present a short workshop.”
“I’d be honored.”
PJ left him her card, with a request to call if he thought of anything else.
“Wait,” Dave said. “What happened to the tarp that was covering the seedpod?”
Ambassador Naybet stared out the window, looking at the barges on the river, evidently reviewing the scene in his mind.
“The driver put it into the cab of the truck,” he said. “On the passenger’s side.”
When Dave pulled around the back of PJ’s house to drop her off, there were two cars in her parking area. A dark blue car stood next to her Ford Focus.
“What’s that?” she said. She felt a stab of fright. April?
“I think about a 1989 Taurus,” Dave said.
“No, I mean what’s it doing here? Could there be an intruder in the house?”
“Would an intruder be so blatant about it? Give Schultz a call. He probably just woke up.”
PJ glanced at him. He casually accepted that Schultz was sleeping at the boss’s house. Sooner or later that was going to trip her up, trip them both up, and hard choices would have to be made.
She pulled out her cell and called her home number. Schultz answered on the first ring.
“Are you going to come int
o your house or sit out there and admire it?” he said, without preamble.
Not only was he awake, he’d been watching them.
“I think I’ll stay here and make out with Dave.” Dave’s eyes widened, and she smiled to reassure him that she wasn’t about to jump him. “You have a visitor in there?”
“Nope. You are looking at my newly-assigned vehicle.”
“A 1989 Taurus,” she said, hoping to dazzle him with her automotive knowledge.
“Tell Dave it’s a 1987. Air-conditioned, radio, power windows, cruise, tilt steering wheel. I have fallen into the lap of luxury.”
“How many miles?” Dave said, loud enough for the cell’s microphone to pick up.
“Hundred twenty-eight thousand. Practically new.” She relayed the answer, ended the call, and thanked Dave for the ride.
The kitchen smelled of coffee and pancakes, and Schultz was setting the table.
“I need to get your consent to tap your home phone,” Schultz said as he put syrup and butter on the table. “I think it’s likely April Winter will call back.”
“Sure. I’ll let Thomas know he’d better watch what he says to the girls,” she said. “That goes for you, too.”
“The wire guy will be over in a couple of hours. He’ll have a form for you to sign, keeps his butt out of trouble.”
Over breakfast, PJ talked about her visit to the Embassy Suites Hotel. Schultz was suitably impressed that she’d been invited to lecture in Ghana.
“Nothing will come of it, I’m sure,” she said. PJ was already exploring the idea, though, wondering what the life of a traveling consultant might be like, helping countries all over the world set up forensic computer simulation programs. She could take Thomas out of the academy for a year abroad and have him travel with her. If Mr. Archibald was satisfied with eagle viewing and Hannibal as an educational trip—they hadn’t even had time to drive by Mark Twain’s boyhood home—then she could imagine what he’d think of a trip around the world. Would she miss direct involvement in crime solving? She looked at the small craters in the wall where Schultz and a tech had dug out two bullets. She would have to hang a calendar over them.
Time of Death Page 26
