by M. Z. Kelly
“No.” He leaned closer to me until I could feel his hot breath. “What the hell is this all about. I got a right to know.”
The guard took a step around the table and told Hopkins to sit back. He did as instructed.
“One more question, Mr. Hopkins. This guy, Dave, the one you met at the bar and the Golden Corral. Can you give us a description of him?”
“He was average height, maybe in his fifties. Had brown hair, same color eyes, I think.”
“Anything else?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “Yeah. I saw part of a tattoo on his neck when he leaned over while we were playing pool. It looked something like a cross.”
I glanced over at Buck, remembering that Harvey Brill had a similar tattoo. I looked back at Hopkins. “Have you ever heard the name Harvey Brill?”
Hopkins shook his beefy head and raised his voice, “You got to tell me what’s going on here. I’m an innocent man.”
Apparently the stress of our meeting and what he’d seen and talked about, was too much for Collin Rae Hopkins to bear one minute longer. The massive inmate rose up and launched himself across the table, landing on Peter Roth, crushing him.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It was after six by the time we left San Quentin and made all the connections back to the island. Peter Roth had survived his encounter with Collin Rae Hopkins, only suffering some minor cuts and bruising. Hopkins had been hauled away by a small army of guards, screaming that he was innocent and had been framed.
“I’ll have some war stories to tell tomorrow night,” Roth said as we dropped him at the funeral home. “Can you and your friends pick me up?”
“We’ll see you around eight,” I said.
I’d almost forgotten about the policemen’s ball. With everything that had been going on I had no desire to attend the affair, but I’d made a promise to go. There was that, plus the thought of Buck being there and some explicit fantasies I’d had about us getting together at the ball. I decided it was all just girlish nonsense and dismissed it from my mind.
Buck smiled at me as we pulled away from the funeral home. “You two going steady?”
I dragged a hand through my limp hair. I’d been knocked out of my chair during Hopkins’s attack on Roth and hit my head. I felt like I hadn’t fully recovered. “Yes. I’ve been thinking about moving into the funeral home with Roth and Mildred, maybe even getting my own queen sized coffin.”
Despite the late hour, Lieutenant Sloan had said he wanted us to stop by the station and update everyone on what we’d learned. When we entered the station Buck and I heard him in the break room cussing. We found the lieutenant and Spencer in front of a television.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Sloan said, turning to us.
“What’s going on?” Buck asked.
Sloan didn’t answer him. Instead he looked directly at me. “It’s some idiot reporter with those two friends of yours.”
I felt guilty about not having had a chance to warn him about Natalie and Mo going to the press. I turned to the TV and saw my friends were sitting across from the wiry little reporter. Carmine Feckle was about forty. Even on the television I could tell he was small in stature. He had brown hair, dark eyes, and the furtive expression of a rodent, maybe a ferret. When he spoke he had a way of making everything sound overly dramatic.
“Let me be sure I completely understand this,” Feckle said to my friends, pronouncing each word as if it had a half-dozen syllables. “The bodies of the girls found in the backyard of the abandoned ranch house, they were dressed as brides?”
“That’s what I’m told,” Mo said. My friend had on a green wig, a body hugging chemise, accentuating breasts that were larger than some third world countries. “There’s some kinda crazy shit going on, Mr. Feckle, and I’m worried about my niece.”
The expletive was deleted but the message came across. Mo went on to make a plea for help in finding the kidnappers and Sissy.
“I just got some more 411 on the case from Sammy Boxer, a PI we’ve been working with,” Natalie chimed in when Mo was finished.
“By all means, let’s hear all about it.” Feckle leaned forward, now reminding me of a small rat that had just stumbled across a block of cheese. Or maybe his reaction was because he was sitting across from Natalie who looked like a supermodel, wearing a dress that hit her about forty-five degrees north of mid-thigh.
I thought I saw the rodent drooling as Natalie went on, “As you already know, there was a sex tape found in that rat turd, Clay Aster’s house. Sammy told us today that he heard the victim in the video is someone known as, The Fallen Angel.”
Feckle’s mouth fell open as Sloan said, “Fuck-me.”
The reporter went on to question Natalie further, talking about Angela Mae Waters, and the man sitting on death row for her murder. I knew that the sensational story, now leaked to the press, would bring a pack of other reporters to the island like rats running from a sinking ship in Avalon Harbor.
“How in the hell does Sammy Boxer already know about the Water’s’ case?” Sloan asked. “And why are your friends talking to that fucking Feckle?” He went over and snapped off the TV.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think they’re just desperate to find the girls and didn’t know what else to do.”
Julie Spencer stood up and came over to me. “Maybe someone told Boxer all the details about our case. Maybe someone who’s close to the investigation.”
“I haven’t said a word,” I spat back at her.
“Your friends seem to have a habit of opening their big mouths and telling the world about every detail of our case,” Spencer went on, taking a step closer to me. “Do you make it a practice of going home and telling them everything we talk about at the station?”
“I haven’t told them anything,” I yelled. My lack of sleep and the contusion on my head from the encounter with Hopkins’s left me with no patience. “Maybe you’ve been talking to your brother, the reporter, about the case.” My impulse control button then popped like a cork in a champagne bottle. “Or maybe you’ve been fucking Feckle, invited him to the island to investigate the murder and kidnappings.”
“I won’t stand here and listen…”
“Enough,” Sloan said, physically coming between us. “Standing around and arguing isn’t getting us anywhere. Let’s go into the conference room and talk.”
I was still angry over my encounter with Spencer and let Buck take the lead when we got to the conference room. He began by telling them about our trip to death row. “According to Hopkins, he met a guy at a bar in the valley a couple of days before the Waters homicide. He convinced Hopkins to meet him at the Golden Corral a couple of nights later. They drank, picked up a couple of prostitutes, and they all ended up in a motel room. Hopkins said the next thing he knows he’s being arrested for Waters’ murder.”
“Hopkins gave us a physical description of the man he met,” I said, regaining some composure. “He said that he had a tattoo of a cross on his neck. Harvey Brill roughly matches the physical description and had a similar tattoo.”
Sloan hissed out a breath, dragged a handkerchief across his brow. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Angela Mae Waters came to Catalina on vacation a few days before her death. While she was here, she somehow ended up in the sex tape Clay Aster had in his secret room. A couple of days after that she leaves the island and goes to work at her part-time job at the Golden Corral. Hopkins and some other guy, maybe Brill, are there, but they leave with a couple of prostitutes, and Angela ends up dead in the alleyway the next morning.”
“According to Hopkins, Brill, or whoever the guy was in the bar, gave him a business card for the Golden Corral,” Buck said. “Hopkins’s took it long enough to leave a print and it ended up in Angela’s purse. The card and the print was the only evidence linking him to the crime.”
Sloan let out a slow breath. “So we’ve got a guy on death row who might be there for a crime he didn’t co
mmit.” The lieutenant looked like he could keel over at any moment out of both confusion and exhaustion.
“Along with two dead attorneys who were probably up to their necks in committing the murder,” I said.
“What did Roth have to say about being Aster’s assistant?” Spencer asked me, apparently trying to move past our differences.
“He said he was just a paper-pushing paralegal and didn’t know anything about Hopkins’ case, other than Aster appeared to make a pretty feeble attempt to defend him.”
“How did Aster end up as his attorney?” Sloan asked.
“Hopkins said Aster contacted him out of the blue offering to represent him pro bono, making it sound like he was offering his services out of the goodness of his heart.
“So, if we’re right,” Spencer said, “Brill and Aster murdered Angela Waters and set up Hopkins to take the fall, both by planting evidence to convict him and representing him at trial in a way that would ensure his conviction.”
“I still think we’re looking at a small piece of a bigger puzzle,” Buck said. “We know that Brill and Aster were involved in the Blue Hoods in the past. It could that other parties were also involved, maybe even somebody who held the camera during the attack on Waters.”
We also know that before his murder, Brill hired Derek Shaw and someone else to go out and find some girls,” I said. “There’s got to be somebody still out there, maybe even as we speak, continuing what Brill and Aster started.”
“There’s one other thing,” Julie Spencer said. “Baxter came back to work for a few hours this morning before he went home sick again. We did some more checking on Josh Robbins. He’s a player, hooking up with a lot of girls.”
Even though Mo had leaned on him hard, the thought occurred to me that maybe Robbins had been the one working with Derek Shaw and knew something more about Brill’s involvement in the sex cult.
Spencer continued, “We also followed Brian Green, the courthouse security screener, for a few hours this afternoon. He met up with Robbins in a park not too far from where Green lives. It looked to us like Robbins and Green are good buddies.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The day Wendy is supposed to marry the man named Lamech, Grace awakens early, at least she thinks it’s early. She can’t be sure how much time has passed or if it’s even daylight outside the house where she’s a prisoner. The sounds of Wendy and Sissy sobbing make it impossible for her to sleep. She realizes the men have put both girls in the same room again, maybe to make preparations for the wedding.
Grace walks over to the bucket, pulls up her dress and relieves herself. She then pushes the container into a corner. After Wendy was chosen, the men made all the girls put on their dresses when they got back to their rooms and took their other clothes away.
There’s a small amount of water still left in her bottle. Graces carries it with her as she goes over to the wall. She thinks the men have left the house again but she can’t be sure, so she keeps her voice low. “Wendy…Sissy, it’s me. Are you okay?”
The sobs she’s heard before grow louder. She hears Wendy’s voice on the other side of the wall. It’s full of the earlier desperation but now there’s also something else—resignation. “I’m going to die…tonight.” The crying continues.
“No. You can’t think that way. You can’t just give up.”
“But…but…I know what happens…I’ve seen the other girls. They all die.” Wendy breaks down again.
Grace waits until Wendy seems a little more composed. “You’ve got to be strong and work together.” She thinks about Sissy, how the girl had clung to her trembling with fear on the night the men had called The Rendering. “Sissy, are you okay?”
“I’m scared,” Sissy cries, her voice chokes with emotion. “I just want to go home.”
Grace tries again to calm their nerves but realizes it’s useless. She then thinks about the men who hold them captive. “Did either of you recognize Lamech or Priest when they took off their hoods?”
Wendy cries out, “No. I don’t understand any of this…”
“I think I saw the one they call Lamech before but he looks different,” Sissy says.
Grace questions Sissy further but the girl is so distraught that she can’t remember where she’d seen her captor. After some more words of encouragement Grace formulates a plan. “I want you both to listen to me. You need to look around your room. Look at the walls, the ceilings, and the frame around the door. Is the wood splintered anywhere? Is there anything you can use as a weapon?”
“I don’t think so…” Wendy’s voice trails off into tears.
“You need to both go and look, now,” Grace demands, trying to emphasize that they can’t give up. “Check everywhere you can and then come back and let me know what you find.”
Grace listens, hearing the sound of the girl’s footsteps as they move around the room. They don’t come back over to the wall for a couple minutes. She prays that they’ve found something that they can use.
“It’s useless,” Wendy finally says, her voice against the wall again. “We looked everywhere, even where the light comes in. There’s nothing.”
“Light? Where is the light, Wendy?”
“Around the edge of the window but it’s high up on one side.”
“I think it’s too high to reach,” Sissy says. “It’s at the top of the window.”
“Listen to me carefully,” Grace says, voicing a plan. “I want you both to go over and check the baseboard around all the walls. See if there’s any place where it’s come loose. Then come back and talk to me.”
A couple of minutes later, Grace hears Wendy’s voice, now more animated. “I have part of a board that was splintered.”
“Describe it for me. How thick is the board?”
“It’s pretty wide on one end but smaller on the other.”
“Okay, here’s what you both need to do.” Grace takes a couple of minutes, explaining to the girls about levers and fulcrum points. She even knows the mathematical formula, how the mechanical advantage of a lever can be determined by the balance of torque about the fulcrum or hinge point.
“Levers can be used to exert a large force over a small distance at one end by exerting only a small force over a greater distance at the other,” Grace explains.
There’s a pause before Grace hears Wendy’s voice. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
“That’s okay. Here’s what you’re both going to do. You’re going to use the piece of wood as a lever to pry loose the boards covering the window. I want you to try and break off one end of the board or find another smaller piece of wood to use as the fulcrum point. It will help you gain something called leverage.”
While she waits, Grace again hears the girls scurrying about the room, trying to put together the simple device she’s described. Several minutes later, she hears Wendy’s voice against the wall again. “I think I’ve got what we need.”
“Okay, good. I want you both to go over to the window and try it on the board where you see the light coming in.” Grace wonders how much time they have before the men return. “Hurry.”
“I think I can help boost Wendy up,” Sissy says. “She has to get high enough to work on the boards near the top.”
“Yes, great idea,” Grace says. “Go do it now.”
Several minutes pass, turning into what Grace thinks could be almost half an hour. Finally, she hears a crashing sound, a board breaking. She thinks the lever might have broken.
“I did it,” she hears Wendy’s excited voice against the wall. “The boards around the window are loose. We can get out.” Sissy also calls out, her voice animated with the prospect of freedom.
“Great. Listen to me carefully, here’s what you need to do.” Grace tells them about the electric fence, the two ways she’s thought about getting past it. After telling them to look for an electrical panel to try and kill the power, she tells them what to do if they can’t cut off the electricity. “You’ve got to be care
ful if you try and go over the fence with the power on. If you touch the fence, make sure that you’re not grounded.”
“What’s that?” Wendy asks.
“Just be sure you’re not touching the fence and the ground at the same time. If you have to touch it, you need to be up off the ground, using something between you and the ground. But be careful, the fence could have both live and ground conductors in it. You’re going to have to touch it for just an instant to test it when you’re up off the ground.”
“Okay. What should we do if we get over the fence?”
Grace gives them instructions about finding a main road and waving down a car, but tells them to be sure it’s not the men who hold them captive. “Have someone call 911 as soon as you can, and try to remember the way you came so that you can tell them how to find the house.”
“Okay, I think we’re ready,” Wendy says.
Grace listens for a moment, thinking the girls are working on the boards but then she hears Wendy’s voice again, full of emotion. “If I don’t make it, Grace, and you get out would you tell my mother that I love her.”
“Me too,” Sissy calls out.
Grace brushes a tear. “Of course. But you’re both going to make it. Go now, stay together, and remember everything we’ve talked about.”
Wendy and Sissy thank her as Grace slumps back against the wall. In a moment she hears the sound of boards splintering. There’s a crashing sound and then only silence. She knows that the girls are free, at least as free as you can be in a yard surrounded by an electric fence.
A few minutes later Grace goes over and finishes the small amount of water in her bottle. She says a silent prayer for the girls, then sits down against the wall again. She listens for a long time, hearing nothing, before she finally closes her eyes.
When she awakens Grace doesn’t know how long she’s been asleep but thinks it’s probably been several hours. The transition from sleep to consciousness comes suddenly, her mind quickly becoming aware of the high pitched sound of an engine approaching.
