by Teri White
A smile. “Of course I minded. But that was my own private problem.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone last night?”
“None. We never discussed it.”
They asked a few more questions, hoping to fill in some gaps, but nothing new was revealed by Kilbane’s answers. As they were leaving, he walked them to the door. “Will there be any problem about the arrangements? I can claim the body?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Blue said. “Unless some next-of-kin shows up.”
“That is unlikely, I think.”
They promised to let him know when the body could be claimed and he closed the door.
“Cold fish,” Spaceman said.
Blue shrugged.
From behind the closed door there was a sudden crash and the sound of china breaking.
“Hell,” Blue said.
There was a message from Karen on his desk when they got back to the office. He ignored it. The problem of Robbie was eating away at him, but there was just no time now to think about it. There was also a message from Sharon Engels. Her best guess (guess?) was that Lawrence had not been a willing participant in the sex acts that preceded his death. He was apparently raped, her note said. Repeatedly, including with one or more foreign objects, including a bottle.
So.
There was a pile of other papers in his basket and while waiting for Blue to return from the lab, Spaceman plowed through the accumulation. There was still no picture of the dead boy in Lompoc. He frowned. Probably he should still call up there and check that out, even if he felt sure Robbie was just screwing around with Becky Whatsherface.
One paper marked urgent caught his eye. It was several days old. Typical. He reached for a cigarette and started to read.
As the words penetrated his brain, he forgot the cigarette and about calling Lompoc. He kicked the metal wastebasket that sat beside his desk, sending it flying across the room. It crashed against the water cooler. Petrie, who was standing there drinking from a paper cup, jumped two feet into the air. Water spilled down the front of his shirt and pants. “Shit!” he yelled.
Spaceman was on his feet now. “Goddamn son of bitching motherfuckers! Why the hell doesn’t anybody ever tell me anything in this fucking place?”
“Maybe,” Petrie suggested, wiping at his clothes with a handkerchief, “because you’re never in this fucking place.”
“Hell.”
Spaceman started for McGannon’s office. Halfway there, he ran into Blue, literally. Without a word, he grabbed the slender man by one arm and dragged him along.
McGannon looked up, startled, as they burst through the door. “What?”
“You won’t believe what I just found on my desk,” Spaceman said, releasing his grip on Blue and waving the paper in McGannon’s face.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me.”
Blue watched curiously.
“This is an APB from the Highway Patrol. They thought I might like to know that Thomas Hitchcock escaped last week from that hospital up north.”
McGannon appeared to run his mind back over the years. Then he swore softly. “The knife, right?”
“For starters. And a lot of other things.”
“Yeah, that was a strange one.” McGannon obviously didn’t like thinking about the Hitchcock case.
“Kinky is what it was,” Spaceman said.
“Somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Blue said.
Spaceman lowered himself into a chair. “Tom Hitchcock. I busted him about ten years ago. The court decided he was looney tunes and sent him up for treatment.” He glanced at McGannon. “I don’t think it worked.”
“Apparently not.”
“What’d he do?”
Spaceman grimaced. “Killed his parents. He used a butcher knife on both of them. Bloodiest damned thing I ever saw. At least, until this morning.”
“You said kinky?”
“Yeah. The best story we could ever get down was that this Hitchcock and his brother were involved in some closer-than-usual sibling activities.”
“Incest?”
The very word caused McGannon to sigh; he flicked away some invisible dust on the top of his desk.
“Right,” Spaceman went on. “The parents found out and blamed him. The brother was just a kid, like twelve or so. I guess the shit really hit the old fan. They were going to have Tom sent away, arrested or something. He flipped out and filleted them both.”
“Jesus. And now he’s killing boys.”
“Like I said, kinks upon kinks.” He waved the paper in the air like a banner. “According to this, Tom used a knife on an aide up north and more or less walked out.”
“Well, that would explain the personal angle,” Blue said.
Spaceman nodded.
“Whatever happened to the brother?”
“Don’t know. What the hell was his name anyway?” He closed his eyes and thought back. “Jody. Jody Hitchcock.”
“Tom has a sidekick, right? Two killers. You think it’s possible?”
“I think we better see whatever happened to Jody.”
“Good idea,” McGannon said. “And fast.”
Spaceman crumpled the paper and walked out of the office.
Blue followed him.
Chapter 28
It proved surprisingly easy to follow the trail left by Jody Hitchcock over the past ten years. Spaceman remembered him only vaguely, as a skinny little kid with huge dark eyes. The first time he saw Jody was on the night of the murders. He was sitting on the couch, wearing only the bottom half of some thin summer pajamas, when Spaceman came into the room. He was curled into a tight ball, pale but quiet. No tears or hysterics, as might have been expected.
Spaceman, thinking of his own son, knelt beside the couch. “Hey, Jody,” he said.
The eyes struggled to focus on him.
“You okay, are you?”
Jody nodded.
“Everything’s going to be all right now. You don’t have to be scared.” A stupid thing to say. How could a child have seen the hacked-up bodies of his parents and not be terrified?
But Jody didn’t look terrified. More bewildered. “Don’t hurt him,” he said in a whisper.
Spaceman leaned closer. “What?”
“Don’t hurt Tommy, please. He’s my brother.”
Spaceman’s mouth went dry. “You mean your brother did that?”
Jody nodded. Then a stricken look appeared in his eyes and the first tears began to roll down his face. “I didn’t mean to snitch. Forget what I said. It wasn’t true.” The childish voice was edged with a very grown-up sense of desperation. “It wasn’t Tommy,” he said. “It was … it was a big Chinaman. That’s who did it. A big Chinaman with a knife.”
Spaceman glanced up at another cop. “Put out an APB on the older son.”
Jody grabbed at his sleeve. “Don’t hurt him.”
Spaceman patted the seemingly fragile hand. “We won’t, Jody.”
“I shouldn’t have told. It’s my fault.”
Later that night somebody drove the boy over to juvenile hall, and it was there that the paper trail began, a trail that ten years later they could still follow.
Jody was never adopted or even farmed out to a foster family; there were no relatives willing to take him. He stayed in the county home until age seventeen, when he graduated high school. He was an average student, a loner. Once he left the care of the county, his path became a little harder to follow, but with the help of social security it was possible. They found that he’d held a string of jobs, moving around the area restlessly for nearly a year. Then he started working in a small bookstore out in Azusa. He was now a partner in the store, and also in the ownership of a house nearby. Theoretically, he should still be happily in residence there.
Spaceman wouldn’t have put much money on that likelihood, however.
It was an odd little house that made Spaceman think, for some reason, of a saltine cracker
box. The white paint and blue trim gleamed in the bright sunshine, and flowers covered most of the small front yard.
“I’m in the back,” a voice called in answer to the doorbell’s chime. “Come on around. Unless you’re selling something.”
They followed the sound of the voice around the house.
A young man, thirty or so, was pulling weeds from a vegetable patch. He was thin almost to the point of gauntness, starting to turn red from the sun beating down on him, with sandy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. As they approached, he leaned back onto his heels and shaded his eyes with one hand.
“Excuse us,” Blue said. “We’re trying to locate Jody Hitchcock.”
“The whole world is,” he replied shortly. Then he grinned sheepishly and wiped at the sweat rolling down his face. “Weeding is damned hard work, isn’t it? I don’t usually go in for this kind of thing.”
“Somebody does. It’s a terrific garden,” Blue said.
He stood, wiping both hands on his denim shorts. “Yeah, well.”
“Jody usually takes care of that, does he?”
“Uh-huh. Who are you anyway? Why are you looking for Jody?”
They introduced themselves. His name was Jerry Potter, and he didn’t know where Jody was, either.
“I can’t understand it,” he said a few minutes later. They were in the house, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking the lemonade he’d offered. It was too sweet.
“So what happened between you and Jody before he left?” Spaceman asked, trying to swallow the sticky drink.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Potter used a paper napkin on his face; he was going to have a hell of a burn. “We have the bookstore and this place. I mean, it’s nothing fancy, but it’s enough. Things were just fine.” He was quiet for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, rubbing the damp napkin back and forth on the table. “I’ve been thinking, though. I guess it was about three months ago that Jody started to get uptight. Not about us; things were fine there. It was like an attack of nerves. He …” Potter paused again, seeming to search for the right words. “It was like he was always looking over his shoulder. As if he were afraid of being surprised by something.”
“Or someone,” Blue said.
“Yeah. Then one day he just announced that he had some ‘business’ to take care of. I wasn’t to worry and he’d be back as soon as possible.” Potter shrugged, but the darkness in his hazel eyes belied the casual tone of his words. “Then he climbed into his truck and took off.”
They exchanged a look; it was thought that Tom Hitchcock had made his getaway in a truck.
“Does Jody have a violent streak?” Spaceman asked. Sitting in this sun-dappled, red-and-white kitchen, it sounded like a ridiculous question.
Potter seemed to think so, too. “Jody? Of course not. He’s a quiet guy. A little moody, maybe, but good-natured. Gentle.”
“What do you know about his past?”
“Not much. I know he spent a lot of time in an orphanage. His parents died when he was about twelve, I think.”
“You know how?”
Potter shook his head. “I know it was traumatic for him.”
Blue was quiet, studying the pattern of the tablecloth.
“Did Jody ever mention his brother?”
“Tom? Yes, but only once, just to say that he existed. I always sort of thought that maybe he was in jail or something. But I never pressed Jody about it. It wasn’t important to me.”
Spaceman lit a cigarette and looked for an ashtray.
Potter got a saucer from the cupboard and gave it to him. “There were letters, I know. But we just didn’t talk about the past.”
Spaceman scooted the saucer closer. “Jerry, Tom Hitchcock broke out of a hospital for the criminally insane last week.”
Beneath the sunburn, his face went ashen. “My god, you’re kidding.”
“And we think Jody helped him escape. Is still helping him.”
Potter took a quick gulp of lemonade. “That’s very serious, isn’t it? I mean, Jody could get into trouble?”
“Yes. A lot of trouble.”
“But it was for his brother. Jody’s very loyal.”
“When Tom Hitchcock was seventeen, he murdered their parents,” Spaceman said bluntly.
Potter was speechless now. He just shook his head helplessly.
Blue leaned forward. “Jerry, it gets worse.”
He set the glass down very carefully. “Tell me.” He sounded like a man clinging to a sinking raft.
Instead of answering directly, Blue pulled a newspaper from his pocket and flopped it open on the table. The faces of Chris and Pete looked up at them.
Potter seemed mesmerized. He ran a fingertip over the images. “You think Jody and his brother did these terrible things?”
Blue nodded.
“Oh God.” He took a deep shuddering breath, then met Blue’s gaze. “It’s Tom’s fault, you know. Jody wouldn’t do anything like that on his own. His brother must be forcing him.”
“Maybe. But we won’t know that until we find them.”
Potter must have had a store of personal strength. His jaw firmed. “Jody will need me. Will you call me when you find them?”
“You’re pretty loyal, too.”
“Jody is family. We have a good thing going here and I won’t give up on it without a fight.”
All three stood. “If you hear from him,” Spaceman said, “let us know immediately. That’s his best chance.”
“I know. I’ll call.”
They left him standing in the kitchen.
Spaceman kicked a tree.
“Feel better?” Blue asked mildly.
“No, damnit, I don’t feel better. I think I broke my fucking toe.”
“Occupational hazard.”
Spaceman leaned against the car. “I just wish I didn’t feel like this is all my fault.”
“Your fault? How do you figure that?”
“Maybe all these people are dying so that Thomas Hitchcock can get back at me.”
“You know that’s a load of shit, don’t you?”
Spaceman didn’t say anything.
Blue sighed. “I think we’re going to beat this case, Spaceman.”
“You do, huh?”
“Sure. Frankly, I think we make a pretty good team.”
Spaceman looked at him for a moment. “Maybe,” he admitted grudgingly. “But I keep getting the feeling that I’m playing Jack Klugman to your Tony Randall.”
After a moment, Blue grinned. He lightly punched Spaceman on the arm. “Well, come on, then, Oscar. Let’s go catch a crazy.”
Spaceman limped around to the other side of the car and got in.
Tom watched as they drove off. He let them go and thoughtfully finished a cigarette, then tossed the butt out the window.
It annoyed him to see Kowalski and his partner talking and smiling like they were. Kowalski didn’t have a right to be happy, to have friends. Another idea was beginning to edge into his mind, but Tom set it aside for the moment. There was something else he had to do first. He got out of the car.
This was the place where Jody lived. The fact that Kowalski was here meant they were onto him. How the hell …?
Then Tom told himself that it didn’t matter. The plans were rolling now and nothing the cops would do could stop him. Still, to know that Kowalski was getting so close rankled.
Tom reached the house and peered in through the front window, glad that Jody had stayed out at Holly Point to get things cleaned up. He couldn’t see anything through the window, so he walked around the house. Through the back door, he could see a tall thin figure bent over the sink. The man was splashing water in his face.
Tom opened the screen door and stepped in quietly.
Not quietly enough, though. Some faint sound must have alerted the man because he turned around quickly. He squinted near-sightedly across the room. “Jody?” he said hesitantly. Then he fumbled for the glasses on the counter.
“No,”
Tom said softly. “It’s not Jody.” He kept one hand in his pocket.
“My God. You’re Tom, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Jody?”
“He’s safe, if it’s any of your business.”
The skinny creep held out a hand. “Please, Tom, turn yourself in. Let Jody turn himself in. Before it’s too late. You don’t want to see him hurt, do you?”
“You’re a real chickenshit faggot coward, ain’t you? We’re not scared of the cops.”
“Can I talk to Jody? If I could just talk to him we might be able to fix things.”
Tom realized that as the man was talking, he was edging toward a drawer. That made him angry. “You better stop right there,” he warned.
Instead, the man lunged at him, empty-handed.
The first knife thrust was almost an accident. Tom pulled back quickly and stepped away. The man was staring at him, clutching at his stomach. Blood leaked out between his fingers, and he was crying. It was too bad, but the guy had brought it on himself. Besides, Jody didn’t need him anymore.
“Please … help me.” He fell to his knees.
Tom stabbed him again and he toppled over. He was still breathing, but quiet. Blood began to form a puddle on the shiny floor.
Tom walked out of the kitchen. It was a nice little house. Maybe he and Jody could live here later, when this was all over. The living room had a lot of books, as well as a big color television. He walked closer to the set to look at the framed photo on top. Jody and the other guy were standing in front of the house, holding onto a SOLD sign, and smiling. He wondered who had taken the picture.
There was one bedroom, small and tidy, the big bed neatly made up with a colorful patchwork quilt. Tom stared at the bed for a long time. He was angry again, suddenly, without knowing why. Stupid to get angry at a damned bed.
But he was. He knelt on the quilt and used the bloody knife to make long gashes in the mattress. Again and again he stuck the blade in and ripped. So caught up was he in the frenzy of the attack, that he was hardly aware of the rush of heat and the explosive climax until it was over.
He slid to the floor and huddled there, gasping for breath.
It was a noise from the kitchen that brought him back to reality. He straightened, listening, then jumped up and went back into the kitchen.
