Clew's color rose. Huff saw it. “I'll stick around anyway,” he said.
Lesko shook his head. “Weasels need closed doors. That's where they make deals.” He raised an eyebrow toward Clew as if inviting agreement.
Clew glared at him, then looked down, the equivalent of a nod.
Huff hesitated. “Bannerman's deal,” he said. “Delivering the Campus Killer. Is that still on?”
Lesko grunted. “Bannerman's a different kind of prick but he's straight. Yeah, Andy. I'd say it's on.”
More hesitation. “You'll be okay?”
“I'll call you. We'll have a beer.”
Lesko watched him go back to his car where he snatched at a microphone, probably calling his captain. Lesko stood, largely ignoring Clew, who was already telling him how much trouble he was in. A litany of threats. Something now about murder charges for a slicing in Malibu and a crushed windpipe in a Brentwood parking lot. This was Clew's idea of a softening up.
Bannerman had known that he'd show, although maybe not this soon; he even outlined the script—threats, deal, more threats, better deal, maybe some flag-waving mixed in.
“The first offer,” said Bannerman, “will be immunity for you in return for my whereabouts. This will expand into a guaranteed safe conduct back to Westport if we all, including Belkin and Streicher, surrender immediately and if there's no hit on Sur La Mer.
“Hear him out. But your answer is no because we can't deliver Streicher and because Roger won't keep his word in any case.
“The trick,” said Bannerman, “is to find out what he thinks we want. Without that, we have no leverage.''
“Has he gone there?” Clew was asking, his voice low, urgent. “Is he there right now?”
Lesko pretended to hesitate, then shook his head. “He doesn't need to.”
At first, Clew's expression showed relief but then he stared hard. “What does that mean?”
Lesko shrugged. “Whatever he wanted there, he's got it.”
“This,” Bannerman had told him, “is your key line. Watch carefully.'' Lesko did. Clew was trying to show no reaction but he deflated visibly. His eyes said Oh, shit. This was clearly trouble. But Scholl, standing near, had a different kind of Oh, shit. This was more like disappointment. In one shot, he had hit two very different nerves. From here, thought Lesko, it ought to get interesting.
“Do you know?” Clew chose his words. “What he's got, I mean?”
Another shrug.
“I've got to see him,” Clew said through his teeth. “I'll meet him alone but it's got to be now.”
Bannerman's leverage, thought Lesko, seemed to be building nicely. Clew even jerked his head toward the agent who had cuffed him and who was coming with his key. As the cuffs came off, Lesko worked at framing his next few questions, designed to elicit a few more hints as to what the hell they were talking about. But his train of thought was interrupted by a yell from Andy Huff who was waving his arms. Lesko lifted his chin.
“Susan Lesko,” Huff called. “Is she your daughter?”
His stomach tightened. “What? What happened?”
“There's been a shooting. Come on.”
As if in a dream, Lesko was aware of Clew stumbling backward. An agent raised a hand to his chest and was suddenly down. Guns coming up. Clew running toward them, arms waving, men making room now. Katz, he thought, was shoving them aside. But Lesko barely saw all this because his eyes were locked on Huffs. Huff saw the question.
“That's all I know. Get in.”
Carla was on the floor with him, stroking him, her head crooked at an odd angle.
He lay in a fetal position, his arms hugging the pillow that she had pressed against his abdomen. A towel, jammed under his belt, helped stanch the flow of blood from the rear.
Carla had checked the exit wound. It seemed clean enough. Copper jackets. The bullet had probably passed through his kidney but it hit no bone. She could feel him going into shock. That was good. It would ease the pain.
She reached for a couch cushion to place under his head. She managed it, but with difficulty. Her right arm was almost useless. Her neck throbbed terribly; his arm had been around her when the bullet struck, and her neck was wrenched when they fell together. It was just as well. She did not know what she might have done to Susan otherwise.
*'C... Carla?”
“Shhh. Don't talk. Help is coming.”
Susan had backed out the door. There were people passing. They'd been startled by the shot. A woman squealed at the sight of Susan's gun in one hand and a knife in the other. The knife was Carla's. She'd dropped it when her arm went numb. Susan shouted for them to call an ambulance.
“Claude's not my real name.”
”I know. Shush.”
“It's Sumner,” he gasped. “Sumner Todd Dommerich.”
“That's a good name.”
“My . . . mother called me Todd. I like Sumner.”
“Sumner, then.”
“Toad.”
”. . . What?”
“That's what my father called me. Toad.”
She said nothing. But she felt his hurt.
“Carla?”
She reached to brush his cheek.
“Don't be mad at Susan.”
She took a breath.
“Is she nice?”
”I guess.”
“As nice as you? And Lisa?”
“Claude ... be still.”
“Am I dying?”
“No.”
”I think I am. I don't mind.”
Carla thought again about the wound. You could never tell with a gunshot. But she didn't think it was fatal. If they stopped the bleeding in time.
”I get crazy sometimes.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Who doesn't.”
He grunted, then shook his head. “Not like me. I did things . . . well . . . you know.”
“You did some good things, too, Sumner. You helped your friends.”
She felt a smile.
There was a flurry outside. Men coming. No guns or uniforms. Probably hotel security. They were talking to Susan. No attempt to disarm her. Susan gesturing into the bungalow. The men seemed afraid to enter. One rushed back toward the lobby.
She heard sirens in the distance. Sumner did not react to either. He was very still.
Carla remembered his knives. She rolled onto her back, the better to use her good arm, and felt for them. She found the skinning knife and worked it free of its case.
“What are you doing?” he asked drowsily.
“Nothing. Thinking.”
“If we went before ... I mean if Susan didn't . . . where would we have gone?”
“Canada, maybe.”
He murmured approval. “The north woods. We'd find a cabin.”
“Maybe. Sure.”
Or maybe just down to the beach, thought Carla. Stretch out in the sun. Talk. She'd rub his back, make him feel good . . . sleepy . . . like now. Then she'd slide her knife through the base of his skull. One twist. He would die with a smile.
Dommerich dozed again.
Outside, sounds of running feet. Voices. She saw Susan bending her knees, lowering her weapons to the ground. A policeman, uniformed, gun in hand, stepped into view and took them. Another dashed across the door. Susan talking to them now. Trying to calm them. Explaining.
They entered in spite of her, one high, one low, from either side. They saw the skinning knife. Its blade was pressed against Domraerich's throat, just under the jaw line. One asked her, quietly, to put it down. Carla's eyes flashed, warning him away.
Susan stepped through the door. A policeman reached for her. She shook him off. She stepped closer, and knelt, saying nothing. She listened to the sound of Dommerich's breathing. It was becoming labored.
Carla looked into Susan's eyes.
She saw that she understood.
Carla yanked the sodden towel free. They would wait together.
52
Barbara Weinberg blessed h
erself as she entered the double doors leading to the main hall. It seemed the thing to do.
Outside, her husband and Dr. Feldman were rounding up the members one by one. Darby was following, obstructing where he could, curiously taking the side of those members who were protesting this interruption of their fresh-air period. Jason Bellarmine refused to leave his canvas unfinished. Harland was close-hauled in a storm off Catalina.
Darby, in any case, gave no sign that he recognized Alan who, she assumed, would let Feldman do the talking.
Barbara walked with a limp. The cause of it was the silenced MP-5 taped to her inner thigh but she felt that the limp added to her disguise. The first real test of it was just inside the hall—the desk guard she'd disabled just last Sunday.
But he barely looked up as she asked which doors led to the Members' Wing. She reached for a light switch. He told her, rudely, to leave it alone. She wondered why the hall was being kept so dark—there was only the guard's desk map—but she was not about to make an issue of it.
She had no actual need to visit the Members' Wing except for the sake of appearances. Nellie, of course, was nowhere outside. She was back at Dr. Feldman's house, watching television. It would not do, however, to have anyone wonder why they made no effort to find a member whose name appeared on her clipboard.
A sudden clatter and a tinkling of glass startled the guard. He spun in his chair toward its source. Down the hall, thought Barbara. One of those rooms on the left. The guard, snatching a cane, rose to his feet and hobbled in that direction. Thrashing and banging sounds began. Barbara, only mildly curious, stood and watched.
The guard knocked on a door, waited, and knocked again.
“Mr. Marek?” She heard him call.
Barbara chewed her lip. No, she told herself. Don't. You as much as promised.
The guard opened the door. The room bathed him in gray light. Barbara heard a moan from inside and then a female voice. The guard seemed to stiffen but he entered. Barbara lifted her long skirt and winced as she peeled the surgical tape from her skin. Holding the MP-5 against her thigh, she eased herself along the paneled wall until she had almost reached the door.
A woman, almost hairless, skin glistening in the same gray light, backed into the hall. Her right hand, which doubtless held a gun, was still inside the room. She saw Barbara. Barbara's instinct was to shoot. But she did not. The MP-5 remained hidden within the folds of her skirt.
“Don't interfere, Sister,” said the woman.
Barbara recognized the voice, and now, less readily, the face. Luisa Ruiz. Alan's thermite must have oxidized over time, lost much of its heat. Still Ruiz was a mess.
“May I?” Barbara gestured toward the door. Ruiz hesitated. She did not say no.
Barbara saw the guard first. He was on the floor, prone, his hands clasped behind his head. Next, she saw the man whom she presumed to be Theodore Marek. He, too, was on the floor amid broken glass. He was not so much on his back as on his head and heels. The back was impossibly arched and totally rigid. An obscene grin split his face. His teeth protruded.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she murmured. She affected an Irish accent. It seemed a nun-ish thing to say.
Ruiz, watching his agony, raised a hand to stop her from entering.
“You can't help him, Sister,” she said.
Barbara recognized the effects of strychnine. The dramatic arching of the spine, the facial spasms, respiratory paralysis. As she watched, the body began to relax. Another spasm would follow soon. He tried to scream but could not. He had bitten through his lower lip. His fingernails were torn and bloody where they had clawed at the carpet.
“How much did you give hm?” she asked, then wished she hadn't. It was not a nun-ish question.
Ruiz appeared not to notice. “About two hundred milligrams. In brandy. Don't waste your time.”
Barbara pursed her lips. Killed him three times over, she thought. A particularly nasty death. The cycle of spasms could go on for an hour. He would feel every second of it. Barbara, unaware of it, raised a hand to her mouth.
“Don't do that,” Ruiz told her.
“Don't do what? ... My child.”
“Bless him.”
Barbara understood. Ruiz assumed that she was beginning another sign of the cross, although with her left hand. Barbara lowered it.
“He . . . has hurt a lot of people.”
“Has he hurt you, my child?”
“Yes.” She became aware, suddenly, of the burns on her face and hands. “Not this. I mean ... a long time ago. I really was ... a child.”
“This man . . . hurt a little girl?”
She nodded. Her breath caught in her throat. “Then God will forgive you.”
The approach to the Beverly Hills Hotel was ablaze with flashing lights. Huff’s car, like the ambulance before it, had to mount the grass. A television news van tried to follow but it was waved off by shouting policemen. Camcorders were everywhere.
All Lesko knew, or cared about, was that the victim did not seem to be Susan. He'd heard that much on Huff’s police radio. “Woman with a gun . . . officers responded. Woman disarmed . . . white male down . . . hostage situation . . . second woman, possibly wounded, holding police at bay . . . shooting victim alleged to be the Campus Killer.”
But the identification of Susan as the woman with the gun was still tentative as was the identity of one Sumner T. Dommerich and one Carla Benedict. Oral declarations, no confirmation. The mention of the serial killer was enough to create a circus.
Lesko had a leg out before Huff’s driver stopped. He bulled though the still-gathering crowd. Huff followed on his heels, waving his badge.
He saw her and his knees went weak.
She was sitting, handcuffed, at the base of a tree. Her face, streaked with tears, tried to turn from whirring cameras. He rushed to her. A policeman moved to stop him. Only a shout from Huff saved the policeman from harm. Lesko dropped to his knees, embracing her. She sobbed against his chest, trying to speak. Several minutes passed before he began to make sense of what she was saying.
Through the open door of Bungalow 6, he could see the EMS crew working on a body. He caught a glimpse of Carla, inside, also handcuffed. She seemed to be wearing a cervical collar. She was staring at the floor, oblivious to the flashes of police photographer cameras.
Andy Huff, a Motorola to his ear, was talking to the arresting officers. A suit, probably FBI, appeared in the doorway. He gave a thumbs-down sign to Huff. Huff acknowledged with a nod then held up à hand as he listened to a call. Lesko saw him make a fist and shout, “Yes!” Huff beckoned to him, almost grinning. Lesko would not leave Susan.
More FBI arrived, Scholl leading them, Roger Clew behind. Lesko met Clew's eyes. He saw bewilderment in them, and concern for Susan that he knew was genuine. It had been a while, but he knew that the man from State liked her.
Huff led one of the uniformed officers to the tree where he knelt to remove Susan's handcuffs. Lesko took her wrist and kissed it. Her arms snaked around his neck and squeezed it with more force than he thought possible.
“We ... ah ... have a confirmation,''said Huff quietly. “Detectives went to his apartment. They found artifacts. Bracelets made out of blond hair. Other evidence. The knives. There's not much question. And it was more than six.”
Lesko nodded. From inside, he heard the zipper of a body bag.
“For what it's worth,” Huff touched Susan's hair, “your daughter's a hero.”
“Yeah, well . . . give us a little time, okay.”
“Wait.” Susan's voice. “What about Carla?”
“Well,” Huff rocked a hand, “we have a problem there. Whatever else this Dommerich did, they could hit her with murder one.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
“Me, too. I helped her.”
Huff studied the sky to show that he didn't hear that.
“Daddy?”
“Sweetheart, shut your mouth.”
“Daddy, then help her. Or get Paul.”
“Okay. Shut up. Give me a second.”
They were wheeling the body out. Then Carla. She was in a fog. Lesko wondered about the bloodied knees. Susan tried to look but he blocked her vision.
“Hey, Andy?”
“Yeah?”
“See that guy over there?”
“The State Department guy? What's he want here?”
“His name's Roger Clew. He's a fixer. Go tell him . . . he fixes this, I give him what he wants.”
The man Marek had seen walking a dog, on the Tower Road monitor, was John Waldo.
It was Waldo's practice to travel with a retractable leash. A dog could always be borrowed from someone's yard. No one ever seemed to look twice at a man walking a dog.
His basic purpose in strolling along Tower Road was not so much to spot Carla as to be seen by her. To make her think twice about going in by herself. But he really didn't think she'd show. Broad daylight, no equipment, no weapon except her dumb knife and no idea of the layout once she got here. He, at least, had studied the plans.
She's probably just cooling off someplace, he decided. But if she did turn up, she'd check out the perimeter first, starting with the gates and cameras. And it wouldn't take her five minutes to notice that one blind spot where two cameras faced in different directions.
Walking a dog is fine but you can overdo it. A dog shits or he doesn't. After the station wagon and the little bus went in, he decided he'd better sit in the blind spot for a while. He let the dog go. A young golden retriever. It sniffed around a little, then trotted off when it looked like Waldo wouldn't be much more fun. It only lived a few streets away.
Golden retrievers and yellow labs were the best when you needed a dog. They're always wandering and they never get skittish. You don't even really have to steal them. You just call them, tell them how pretty they are and they say, “Hey, you want to play?”
Waldo was half-tempted to go up and take a look. Except that his job was to watch for Carla. On the other hand, he thought, this is the way she'd come in. He turned to peer in through the pine trees. Thick woods. Plenty of cover. Idly, he picked out a route. He still had no intention of following it but then he noticed a footprint.
Bannerman's Law Page 41
