The Scavenger's Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery

by Mike McIntyre

  My gaze returned to Shard’s backyard. I spotted a vent at the base of the house. I hopped off the porch and dropped to my hands and knees, peering through the wire mesh. It was dark, but I could make out a wall of tools and a workbench. I squinted, trying to look deeper into the basement. Was Friar Tom’s soundproofed torture chamber down there?

  I kicked in the wire mesh and poked my head through the hole. It was too dark to see anything beyond the workbench.

  “Jordan! Jordan, it’s me! Please answer!”

  There was no sound of life whatsoever.

  I got one arm through the vent hole. I tried to pull the rest of my body through. I struggled, but the wall blocked my shoulders. I squirmed back out, strands of wire cutting my neck and face.

  I got to my feet. I turned and saw a middle-aged woman next door watching me from her kitchen. She had a worried look on her face as she spoke into a phone. No doubt calling the police. Good, let her. Where were the police, anyway? Every cop in San Diego should be here now.

  I circled the house, searching for a way in, calling Jordan’s name.

  When I reached the driveway, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Two plastic tubes were mounted beneath the mailbox. They were newspaper delivery receptacles. One bore the name and logo of the Sun, the other the Times. That was odd. Readers took one paper or the other, but rarely both.

  I sensed that Darcy McLaren had been here. And I suspected there was something about Luther Shard’s dual subscription that had led her to him. Darcy had been clever—just not as clever as her killer. I had to keep that in mind.

  I tried Walton again. This time he answered.

  “Why aren’t you here?” I demanded.

  “Where?”

  “Shard’s.”

  “You listen to me, West. I told you to stay out of this. Now leave that man alone!”

  “But he’s Friar Tom!”

  “No he isn’t.”

  “Did you even—”

  “Yeah, we checked him out,” Walton said. “Against my better judgment.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s Mr. Clean, no record, a solid citizen. The Chamber of Commerce even gave him an award.”

  “Detective, the guy’s on a revenge spree. His wife died on Lindblatt’s operating table.”

  “He was a brain surgeon, he lost a lot of patients, goes with the territory.”

  “The mayor and Nina Tate’s makeover of the Gaslamp?” I said.

  “You know how many small businessmen hated that dynamic duo?”

  “What about Tiffany Samples and HomeMart?

  “The guy was an out-of-work hardware salesman,” Walton said. “Where else was he gonna find work in this economy? He’s probably grateful for the job.”

  “You have an answer for everything,” I said.

  “And you have no answers, no proof. Have you ever heard of coincidence, West? Or does that word not exist in the world of hack journalism? Answer me this, if Shard is out for revenge, how was he wronged by Adore, Reggie Wilkinson and Dick Cameron?”

  “Detective, don’t you get it? Those were his most recent victims. The man’s a serial killer. He’s crossed the point of no return. He no longer needs a reason. All this Inquisition stuff is just an excuse. He’s a killer, he’s not going to stop, and Jordan is next on his list.”

  “Dammit, you have no proof!” Walton yelled. “Don’t call me again!”

  CHAPTER 81

  Walton needed proof, and I’d give it to him.

  I called Pacific Catering.

  “Luther Shard, please,” I said.

  “He’s not here,” said the receptionist. “May I take a message?”

  “No, no message.”

  I had confirmation that Shard moonlighted for Pacific Catering. He had to be the masked waiter in the photo.

  But I also knew that Walton would say that didn’t make him the torture slayer.

  I rang my longtime Navy source and asked him to check Shard’s service record. Predictably, he said unauthorized access of personnel files would send him to the brig. My source was a golf nut, so I offered to team with him in the Admiral’s Cup, the annual member-guest tournament held at the Navy course on Coronado Island. He said he’d have something for me on Shard within the hour.

  I hung up and drove to the courthouse.

  I entered Luther Shard’s name into the criminal records database. I checked the computer for both misdemeanors and felonies. Walton was right. Shard had never been arrested. Not in San Diego County, anyway.

  The only Shard listed was Al, the father. There were several court appearances, most for 502s—drunk driving. Another citation noted he had copped a plea on an assault charge. I requested the file from the clerk. On June 24, 1981, Al Shard had struck the coach of an opposing Little League team that had defeated the Hammers that day.

  So the old man was a boozer with a temper. I wondered if he ever beat on his kid.

  My phone rang as I left the courthouse. It was my Navy source. As an eighteen-year-old, Luther Shard had enlisted and applied for the elite Navy SEALs, but a routine psychological test had weeded him out. He spent his two-year stint in a ship’s galley and received a general discharge.

  So far, everything I knew about Luther Shard fit Hector’s profile: white male, forty to forty-five, college degree, widowed, military service with a less than honorable discharge.

  Shard had daddy issues. When Luther couldn’t make the team, Al humiliated him by making him the batboy. Luther compensated by trying to join the SEALs, but ended up a potato-peeler, adding to his humiliation.

  But as Hector had also predicted, Luther was a model citizen. He’d found his way. For a while. He bought into the notion that hard work and playing by the rules would bring him rewards. But when he watched others achieve the success he thought he deserved, he gave up his stake in society and lashed out at the elite he felt had victimized him.

  Any number of stressors could have set him off. His dead wife. His terminally ill daughter. His bankrupt business.

  And to secure insurance for his ailing daughter, Shard was forced go to work for HomeMart, the chain whose low prices helped drive him out of business. The added humiliation fueled his bitterness and prompted him to kill HomeMart heiress Tiffany Samples, along with other successful San Diegans.

  Hector’s profile, the Little League ring, the catering job, the ties to most of the victims—I had no doubt that Luther Shard was Friar Tom. But Walton would call all of this evidence circumstantial. He required concrete proof.

  There was one place left to look for it.

  CHAPTER 82

  The local HomeMart was in Mission Valley.

  I went there once to buy supplies when I built my cob house. The experience was so maddening I never went back. The smaller hardware stores and lumberyards on my side of town charge more, but you get better service.

  I pulled into HomeMart’s sprawling parking lot. It was a weekday, but most of the spaces were taken. I had to park in the outer reaches of the lot, near Qualcomm Stadium, home of the Chargers football team. Maybe Luther Shard had walked over on his lunch break and killed Reggie Wilkinson with that pile of weights.

  As I entered the cavernous store, I noticed a self-serve computer for people to fill out job applications. Luther Shard, onetime proud hardware merchant, would have sat at this terminal and applied for work. That had to have felt degrading.

  I had no idea what Shard looked like. I had only seen him in a black leather mask.

  I started down an aisle, reading the nametags of every employee I passed. I didn’t worry about arousing suspicion. The last thing HomeMart workers want to do is stop and see if you need any help.

  Given Shard’s experience, my hunch was that he worked in the hardware section, so I headed there.

  No luck.

  I briskly walked up and down each aisle, glancing at the nametag pinned to each employee’s HomeMart apron. Each aisle felt as long as an airport runway. There were no Luthers
in Plumbing, Heating, Electrical, none in Lumber, Tile, Lighting.

  I checked outside in the Garden section. No Luthers there, either.

  I wondered if it might be Shard’s day off. I grew antsy. My methodical search of HomeMart wasn’t getting me any closer to Jordan. Still, I had to check every aisle.

  I came to the Paint section. There were two guys behind the U-shaped counter. One of them looked Latino—probably not a Luther. I couldn’t read the other guy’s nametag, so I walked closer.

  I saw the ring. Even from a distance, I knew it was the one in the gala photo.

  The man waited on a woman in front of me. I was maybe ten feet away. He looked the same size and shape as the masked man who snatched Jordan.

  I could now see his nametag: Luther. And beneath it, in lettering across his apron: Your HomeMart Paint Professional.

  This was definitely the guy in the photo. Now what?

  The woman in front of me finished and I stepped to the counter.

  “Help you?” He gave no indication that he recognized me. I wondered if he knew who I was. It was dark when he grabbed Jordan from my car. He may have been bluffing when he wrote he was watching me at the libraries; he could have left those notes in the books the day before.

  I flinched involuntarily and hoped he didn’t notice. I suddenly saw what had been staring me in the face since I’d entered the store.

  His apron, like every other employee’s, was red and yellow—the colors worn by the killer reflected in Tiffany Samples’ contact lens.

  I was speechless.

  “Was there something you needed?” Friar Tom said.

  CHAPTER 83

  “Paint,” I blurted. “I need some paint.”

  Luther Shard chuckled and said, “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Any particular paint? We’ve only got about ten thousand kinds.”

  He was friendly, easy going, a regular guy—just like Hector said he would be.

  “Uh, green,” I said. “It’s for a fence.”

  “Green, huh? That narrows it down to about a hundred and fifty colors. This a picket fence?”

  I was thrown by the question. I nodded and said, “Yeah.”

  “You sure you don’t want white?”

  “White?”

  “You know, a white picket fence,” he said, still smiling. “That’s what all the wives want.”

  Was this friendly HomeMart banter, or had Friar Tom recognized me? It took every ounce of my control to keep from jumping the counter and throttling him. There would be time for that after he led me to Jordan.

  A carousel of sample color cards stood on the counter. I grabbed the first green one I saw and handed it to Shard.

  “Well, I tried,” he said. “Fern Green it is. A gallon be enough?”

  “Sure.”

  He pulled a gallon of white paint from the shelf and carried it to a machine. He popped the lid and set the can under a nozzle. He pressed some keys and several colored streams squirted into the can. He hammered the lid back on with a rubber mallet and put the can in a paint shaker.

  “Just be a couple minutes,” he said.

  Time was running out. I wondered what I was going to do. Then it came to me.

  Shard’s fingerprints were all over the paint can.

  All I had to do was get the can to the police. They could lift the prints and compare them to those recovered at the Friar Tom crime scenes. Once they confirmed the match, they’d drop a net over Shard.

  I had him!

  Shard removed the paint can from the shaker and popped the lid. He brought the can over and tilted it so I could inspect the color. I wanted to grab the can and bolt, but that might alarm him. He still had the upper hand—he had Jordan.

  “That look like your picket fence?” he said.

  “Looks fine.”

  He shrugged. “To each his own.”

  He dipped a wooden stir stick into the green paint and dropped a dollop onto the lid so that I would know the contents. He flipped on a hand-held hair dryer and blew the dollop dry. He replaced the lid and hammered it with the mallet.

  As he hammered the lid on with his right hand, he rotated the can with his left. He had a day’s worth of paint on his hands, and his fingers were leaving flawless, colorful prints on the white label.

  He set the paint can on the counter in front of me. I stared at the big, beautiful fingerprints.

  “Anything else?”

  “No, this is great, thanks,” I said, reaching for the can.

  “Aw, geez, will you look at that,” Shard said, scowling. “I’ve made a real mess of this can. I’ll clean it up for you.”

  “No, that’s alright!”

  But it was too late. He had the can.

  He set it on the worktable and pulled a rag from his back pocket. I watched in agony as he wiped the can clean of every last fingerprint.

  He lifted the can by the wire handle, holding it in his palm, and set it on the counter.

  “There you go, good as new,” he said.

  CHAPTER 84

  I walked toward the checkout line to pay for a gallon of paint I didn’t need. With each step, I felt Jordan slipping further from my grasp.

  Halfway down the aisle, I turned back for the paint counter. I had an idea. Something almost as good as fingerprints.

  For weeks, Friar Tom had taunted San Diego with his weirdly handwritten letters. I’d trick him into giving me a writing sample.

  I reached the counter. Shard was busy with another customer.

  “May I help you?” said the other clerk.

  “No, thanks. I need to speak with your colleague.”

  “I’d be glad to assist you.”

  Shard hadn’t noticed me yet. “That’s alright, I appreciate it,” I told the clerk in a low voice. “But I was just up here, and it might be easier if I explain it to him.”

  The clerk shook his head and walked away to check on a can of paint in the shaker.

  The customer Shard was waiting on left, and I took his spot at the counter.

  “You’re back,” he said, smiling. “Change your mind about the white?”

  “No, the green’s fine,” I said, matching his jovial tone. “But I wonder if you could write down the color formula, in case I need to come back for more.”

  “It’s on the lid.”

  I looked at the paint can in my hand. A sticker with the formula for Fern Green was on top.

  “Oh,” I said, feigning embarrassment, “so it is.”

  Okay, Ty, think of something—fast.

  I set the can on the counter. “Uh, you know how these cans get paint all over them once you get going. So if you don’t mind, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d jot down the formula. Just in case.”

  Shard shrugged and reached for a pen and pad on the counter.

  My excitement built, until…

  Shard used the back of his hand to push the pen and pad toward me.

  “You know,” he said, still friendly, “I’m sure you can scribble it down as easy as I could.”

  I looked down at the pen and pad. No fingerprints, no writing sample.

  “Have a nice day,” Shard said.

  He knew who I was.

  He looked straight through me and said, “Next?”

  PART FOUR:

  FRIAR TOM

  CHAPTER 85

  Luther Shard exhaled deeply after Tyler West left the HomeMart paint counter. His heart raced—first with fear, then with exhilaration.

  West knew he was Friar Tom. So what? He had no proof. West’s discovery merely made Friar Tom’s Inquisition that much more thrilling.

  West apparently wasn’t taking the deal. He was switching from crime writer to crime fighter. Friar Tom had lost his favorite biographer. The upside was that he had gained his next two victims. Friar Tom would make sure that West’s final byline would be his wife’s obituary.

  Shard checked his watch. Four o’clock. Time for his break.

  One of the few benefits of work
ing at HomeMart was its proximity to Shard’s storage unit. It allowed him time to give his victims the food and water needed to sustain them through the lengthy torture sessions.

  He’d use his afternoon break to check in on Jordan Sinclair. He had kept his word. He hadn’t killed her. But now he would. Slowly. He had just enough time to fit her with his Scavenger’s Daughter.

  He turned to his co-worker, Javier, and said, “Back in fifteen.”

  Shard strode briskly toward the employee locker room. As he walked, he pulled off his apron. He had another one just like it inside his torture chamber. Only that one was missing the second T— so that it read, YOUR HOMEMART PAIN PROFESSIONAL.

  He reached his locker and traded the apron for a jacket. He found his time card and inserted it in the company time clock.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  He looked up. It was Stan Larkin, his supervisor.

  “It’s time for my break, I’ve got a quick errand to run.”

  “No can do,” Larkin said. “You owe HomeMart fifteen minutes.” Larkin snatched the time card from the machine and held it up to Shard’s face, pointing to the line that showed how he had clocked in fifteen minutes late that morning.

  “So I’ll clock out at six-fifteen, Stan.”

  “Doesn’t work that way,” Larkin said, returning the time card to its slot. “Let me ask you something, Luther. Do you like your job?”

  “No, Stan, I love my job.”

  “Then you’d better start acting like it.”

  As an assistant manager, Larkin earned a bonus of three-sixteenths of a share of HomeMart stock each pay period. It made him feel less of a pawn on the HomeMart chessboard.

  “Now, get back out to the pod,” Larkin said. “Javier is backed up.”

  Shard imagined wedging his 16th-century Heretic’s Fork between Larkin’s chin and collarbone. All in good time.