Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  They stood quickly and began pushing between knees and backs to the end of the row. When they got to the arena floor, she let Ray lead, his size and his face clearing a path for them.

  The crowd roared as the dogs were loosed. Cree couldn't help herself, her eyes were drawn to the fury.

  "No!" Ray whispered urgently into her ear. "Not the dogs! That's not what we're here for!" And he took her shoulders and turned her to face the other way, toward the bleachers.

  All the leaning, craning, excited faces, the open roaring mouths, the scorn and concern and wild-pleasured glow in every one, row upon row. Their collective appetite seemed to swallow her, suck her in, as their eyes mirrored every awful leap and slash, heave and twist. She stood appalled, paralyzed, until Ray pulled her into the corridor and away.

  34

  RAYMOND KEPT A nice place. The kitchen had terracotta tiles on the floor, hardwood cabinets, marble countertops, a cute little wine rack. Bert inspected the kitchen and attached dining area, didn't find anything of great interest. Still, he pulled out several plastic evidence bags and scanned the floor carefully. People with dogs had dog hair in their houses. Ray's floor was clean, but Bert knelt and laid his face along the tiles and put the light under the refrigerator and sure enough, several inches back there was a good collection of hair and dust. He used the pry-bar to rake some out and then sealed it into one of his evidence bags.

  Check off item number one. One nail in Ray's coffin.

  He found more good samples in a space between counter sections and under the dishwasher, then moved on to the living room.

  It was a hip sort of place, brick walls painted white, nice oak floors, good rugs, the pad of a swinging bachelor who made good money or had inherited or both. Decent stereo and a collection of older rock 'n' roll and classical music on compact discs. Bert shined his flashlight over the bookshelves, seeing fiction titles, some history and biography, texts on anatomy, medicine, radiology, photography, computer tech. Some dog books, too.

  There was a desk beneath one of the windows on the outer wall. Bert snapped on the goosenecked lamp, bent the shade close so it wouldn't spill too much light, and fingered quickly through the stack of papers. Predictably, there were envelopes from Temple and the UC medical school, but there were also some from other path labs. He looked at a few, found a mix of technical lab reports, pay stubs and bills, nothing directly implicating. He went to work on the drawers.

  The top drawer held pens, change, keys, calculator, the usual. The checkbook showed regular deposits every two weeks, probably paychecks; Ray made decent money, must add up to a hundred grand a year. The only obvious anomaly was a recent deposit that exactly covered a big check to something called the Moeris Foundation. Bert filed the unusual name in his memory for future inquiries, then put the checkbook back. He looked at his watch and was surprised to find that he'd already used up half of the one hour he'd planned to allow himself here. Had to keep it moving along.

  Another drawer held more bills, receipts, extra credit cards, office supplies. More keys. Many were electronic key-cards, the plastic kind used by restricted-access places like labs. He looked closely at them, saw logos but no marking except numeric codes. Ray had keys for a lot of doors. Needed for getting in and out of labs and supply rooms at Temple and UC Medical? Or pilfered from his occasional visits to other labs, for other purposes? Another question filed for future consideration.

  The lowest drawer held hanging files, well labeled and alphabetized, and Bert immediately saw one of his targets: dogs. A guy with three dogs would have records of shots, licenses, vet bills, maybe pedigrees. He opened the file and began scanning the pages. Fritz, Sadie, Basil: cute names for the vicious threesome he'd just hosed. Bert photographed a bill detailing rabies and distemper boosters and then another that looked like an annual checkup form, listing the dogs by name along with their ages, weights, and vaccination status. None of the dogs was older than six years, the youngest was only three.

  He closed the drawer and switched off the light just as headlights crossed the window. He couldn't see out through the heavy, wired glass, but clearly somebody was driving up or driving by. Bert stepped quickly aside, froze, listened. Suddenly his heart was pumping too hard, juicing him. Could they have come back already?

  But the lights went on past, blurry orbs that disappeared for only a moment before drifting back the other way. Probably somebody who had just bought some rock in Hunters Point and was looking for an out-of-the-way place to smoke it. Or maybe the other side of that ecosystem, an SFPD patrol car.

  Bert finished the living room, went into the bedroom. Another example of tasteful decor, nice spread on the hardwood queen-size bed, good furnishings, some original art on the walls. The dresser top was a litter of the usual stuff, coins, tie-clips, a watch, some breath mints.

  And a switchblade knife.

  Oh ho, Bert thought. His first emotion was one of glee, but it was followed hard by a slug of fear for Cree, out there with Ray right now. Abruptly his hands tingled and without thinking about it he yanked out his cell phone and thumbed in Cree's number. If she didn't answer, he'd put out an APB on her car. Then he'd—

  But she answered after two rings. He stuttered, unable to admit he'd seen her with Ray, but he told her to stay away from Ray at all costs, that he had a lot to tell her when they got together tomorrow. In the background, he could hear the murmur of many voices, like she was at a bar somewhere. She definitely did not sound like someone speaking under duress, just a little chilly and reserved. He couldn't blame her, the way he probably sounded.

  For a moment he stood with the phone still in his hand, feeling relieved and suddenly deeply thirsty for a drink. He wondered where she was. Where Ray was, and how soon he'd return. Time to get focused again.

  He snapped open the knife and studied it in the flashlight beam. From the wear on the horn and chrome of the handle, he figured it was not a new weapon but had been in use for many years, maybe something of a keepsake. The blade was long, sharp, and spotless, no trace of residues even at the hinge or in the slot, nothing he could take a scraping of. Too bad. On the other hand, there was a distinctive nick in the otherwise perfect edge, a feature that would surely leave its mark in a wound. He laid the open knife on the dresser, put a quarter next to it for a size reference, then took out his camera and snapped several close-ups.

  On to the bedside table. The top drawer held nothing but a bunch of prescription bottles, which he inspected one by one. Most were drug names he didn't know, but from his years at Narcotics he recognized a couple as Class II painkillers, restricted stuff. The labels named several different prescribing doctors and pharmacies, suggesting Ray was doing the shell-game routine to conceal his habit.

  So Ray was, among other things, a pharmaceuticals junkie. Bert felt he was getting somewhere now.

  The lower drawer contained a half dozen photographs, eight-by-tens facedown on the bottom. Bert got another tingle in his hands. So far he hadn't found anything that looked like a "souvenir," the kind of memento serial killers often took from their crimes, maybe this was Ray's stash. But when he turned them over, he was disappointed to see Ray himself. Much younger, a teenager, bad early-eighties haircut above those pale blue eyes. In one shot he was with a fresh-faced blond girl whose smile showed braces. Ray looked clean-cut, innocent, healthy. Clear skin on an unmarked face.

  Funny, Bert thought, there was a drawer like this in his own house. Photos not exactly hidden, just kept private. Megan photos that came out very, very rarely but were very, very important when they did. A ghost of recognition passed through him, a wispy gray phantom of nameless emotion that made him uncomfortable for a moment and then faded quickly.

  He checked his watch and realized he had to move faster. He finished the downstairs and then went up the suspended stairway from the living room. At the top, he opened a door, turned left on a small landing, and went up four more steps into a big room that rose all the way to the warehouse roof. Some lig
ht came in here, ambient city light from four tall windows. Bert could see huge framed art works on the walls, vague in the dim light. Along one wall were tables with computer monitors and other equipment on them. A workshop or studio.

  The buzz in Bert's veins was increasing. Mainly it was the tension of being here, the risk of getting caught, maybe Ray coming home early. But part of it was another feeling he knew well, an instinctive sense he was getting close to something. This was Ray's sanctum sanctorum. Coming up here, he was finally getting into Raymond's head.

  He brought the flashlight onto one of the canvasses and saw what it was: an X-ray of a skull, one eye-hole and part of a nose opening, the shell of the cranium a pale curve set against empty dark. The next was the same, and the next. Every one featured part of a skull. Bert had looked at enough autopsy photos, X-rays, and MRIs to know what he was seeing. In the MRIs, he recognized a glow of something irregular inside, too soft-edged to be a bullet, had to be a tumor. In one of the X-rays, the faint outline of a broken hole, a cranial injury that had to have been fatal.

  So these were corpses. Ray was bringing home pictures from work. Or had other access to bodies. The guy was a necrophiliac.

  Bert felt a twitch of panic. Cree was out there somewhere with this fruitcake at this very moment. He should have followed them! His hand found his cell phone and he almost called her again, then decided he'd only antagonize her.

  If he lays a hand on her, he thought. One finger.

  Hurrying now, he looked over the computer equipment briefly, the sleepy drift of screensaver starfields, and wished he could take the time to pry inside Ray's cyber files. But it would take too long, and he was no computer expert. Suffice to know that Ray had high-end computers and clearly knew his way around them. From the pop-ups, he already knew Ray had some good hacking-type skills.

  Back near the stairs again, he put the flashlight in his teeth and opened one of the file cabinets. Fingering through the row of hanging files, he found older bills and receipts, property records, car records, medical, vital papers. And dogs again.

  He pulled the dog file and knew he'd hit gold. Dogs didn't live that long. Some of the cases he was looking at were as much as ten and fourteen years old, meaning they couldn't have involved Ray's current animals. But here were the previous dogs: Lizzie, a malamute from ten years ago. Sherlock, a mastiff from the same period. Rat, mixed breed, twelve years ago.

  A real dog lover, Cameron.

  Bert's spine tingled when he found vet records, including X-rays for dental work on a pit bull from fifteen years ago. This was pure gold, the Crime Lab could maybe match these films with bite impressions on the victims. He lined up selected pages and began snapping photos.

  He had already gone well over the time he'd allotted, and the tension was starting to wear on him. He flipped through the other files, didn't find anything worth stopping for, slid shut the last drawer. Then he went to the coffee table to look over the scattering of artsy things, papers, pens. Also a book about werewolves, one on the psychology of serial killers, one on the neurology of violent behavior. For a heartbeat he felt the bitter savor of vindication: Yes, Ray was one seriously fucked-up guy. But behind it came a flood of fear. The thought of something happening to Cree made him shaky and sick. Jelly in the knees. It was a feeling that went back into the shadowed past, the hidden parts of his heart. The pain he'd kept walled off for twenty-six years. What if he'd let it happen again?

  Pray to God, he thought. Pray to God. Please, not ever again. I am not strong enough. I can't. Please.

  He found his phone, punched in her number, then closed the phone before the connection was made. One more call and she really would think he was crazy. He was too shook up, the tension undoing him. Time to go.

  There was a drafting table near the stairs, and he panned his light over it, just a quick look. Nothing of interest. But there were big pieces of paper taped to the wall above it, and when he shined his light on them he saw that they were maps. Topo maps that showed every back road and house. Rural areas, state parks. There were pencilled-in lines wandering among the topo marks, apparently routes and paths. Bert lost his breath as he read the names of the places. One was San Bruno Mountain State Park.

  San Bruno, where that kid had been killed by dogs or coyotes only four years ago.

  He was fumbling for his camera when the windows came alight with the glow of moving headlights. Instantly his tactical reflexes took over. He scanned the room to determine the angles of view and quickly chose the area between the head of the stairs and the corner, where he'd be behind anyone coming up. The headlights shone full on the windows now as the car turned in at the front of the building.

  He stepped into the shadows and drew his Beretta. He held it with both hands and aimed it at the top of the stairwell and then just waited in the charged half-dark.

  35

  ALONG GRAY LINE materialized in the near dark, gathered, grew, brightened suddenly, and tumbled onto the sloped shore. Before the foam subsided and slid back, another pale tube had formed against the blackness and was moving in. The cast-up spray turned to mist as it blew inland, and Cree sucked it into her lungs. Sand yielding beneath her feet, fresh sea air, the reassuring rhythm of the waves: Ray was right, this was good. An antidote.

  Far behind her, Ray strolled with his hands in his pockets, head down, an indistinct shape in the faint glow from the streetlamps along the Great Highway. She toed ridges in the sand as she waited to let him catch up.

  He raised his head as he approached her and they strolled on together. "Better?"

  "Much. Thanks for suggesting this."

  "Yeah. The first time I saw the dogfights, I actually threw up. But this helps. It's good to get outside, get some distance on human beings when they start to worry you. Do you run? If you do, this is the best place in town to do it. I run here once in a while."

  "You look like you do a pretty intense workout."

  "Oh, I used to. Now I mainly just run. But I usually do it out of town, up in the hills, so it's more of an obstacle course, really. Night runs, off-trail, cross-country. Another quirky habit. If I get into thornbushes, I can lose a bit more skin than I'd prefer, but it does keep me in pretty good shape. Heals body and soul."

  Cree thought of the web of fine scars that covered his legs and lower torso. Ray was definitely an unusual person—a werewolf, an innocent, a kindred spirit, a stranger. Walking next to him in the dark, she sensed his deep satisfaction with the moment and knew that her presence figured importantly in it.

  "So, Ray."

  "Hm?"

  "A man and a woman go a for a walk together on the beach at night—"

  "With a priest, a rabbi, and a kangaroo?"

  Cree had to laugh. "I thought they went into a bar."

  "And because they're mature adults, and sexuality is always an unspoken dynamic under such circumstances, the woman wants to make it clear that she's not available. Maybe it's not good timing, she's coming out of a breakup and she's not ready yet. Or she's already got a boyfriend. She tells him straight up so there are no misunderstandings and no disappointments later. But she hopes they can remain friends. Is that how this one goes?"

  Cree kicked at a Styrofoam cup and a gust carried it away. "Something like that."

  Ray shrugged and hunched his shoulders a little against the wind.

  "And the guy says—?" she prompted.

  "I always forget the punchline, dammit." He chuckled quietly. "No. I really haven't built up some big expectation, Cree. I enjoy your company a lot, I can't pretend otherwise. But I . . . it's not the best timing for me, either."

  They stood looking out at the crashing, wave-ribbed dark, the cold wind pulling at their clothes and hair. Then it was time to head back.

  "But all that was going to be preface to something else," Cree told him. "I was going to ask if you'd want to help me with the wolfman research. You've had more good ideas on the subject tonight than I've had in the last four days. It's pretty ted
ious, but it would sure go a lot faster with two sets of eyes. Do you have any time?"

  "Sure. But what about Bert?"

  "I'll talk to him. I'll ask Horace to talk to him. I'm sure we can work it out."

  Ray bobbed his head ambiguously.

  Cree pulled up in front of Diamond Intermodal, leaving the motor running and lights on. They'd agreed to meet at the Payson Collection in the morning, but otherwise had said little during the drive from the beach. It was only ten thirty, but it felt later. In her exhaustion, Cree felt her anxiety return. The area around Ray's looked grimy, squalid, forbidding in the blue streetlights and narrow wedge of headlight glow.

  They said a quick good-night that felt a little strained, and Cree began backing out. She stopped as her headlights panned across Ray's wide-open front door.

  Ray leaned to peer warily into the darkness, cocked his head to listen. Cree pulled forward again and slid down her window. In the headlight wash, Ray checked the edge of the door and picked at the crimped metal jamb, then disappeared into the black doorway.

  After a moment a dim light came on, and Cree shut down the car and went to the door. A couple of bulbs glowed up near the ceiling, weakly lighting the near end of the desolate interior. It was enough to see Ray, striding quickly past his apartment to the big roll-up doors. He stopped, slapped a button. One of the doors lifted noisily, Ray ducked through. Calling the dogs, she figured. Then she realized she hadn't heard any barking since they'd returned. To Ray, the silence must have seemed very wrong.

  By the time she got to the freight door, Ray was emerging from the dark outside. He pulled two of the dogs by their collars and the third followed close behind with stumbling, uncertain movements. There was something the matter with them. When he brought them into the light, Cree could see their swollen, seeping eyes, the froth and vomit that streaked their faces and chests. They hung their heads and worked their mouths and tongues as if trying to expel something.