CHAPTER 107
The Billboard Bandit showed up after dark and parked his pickup behind my smashed Chevy on Kalmia Street.
He unloaded an extension ladder, ropes, a harness and a small bag of tools, and set it all on the sidewalk.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take it from here.”
“What?”
“I changed my mind. This guy has already killed eight people. I’m the one with the missing wife. You’ve got no stake in this. I’m going up alone.”
“Like hell you are,” the Bandit said. “You don’t look like you’re in any condition to even carry this stuff. What happened to you, anyway?”
“Nothing, I can manage.”
“Look, Ty, Friar Tom knows you. You think he won’t see you waltzing down Laurel with a fifty-foot extension ladder? And what do you mean I don’t have a stake in this? This is my city, man, and this creep is terrorizing it. Now I’m coming, and that’s final.”
He was right. “Okay, but it’ll be safer if we head over separately. Can you carry all this yourself?”
“Hey, you’re talking to the Billboard Bandit.”
I popped the trunk on my car and lifted out a gym bag filled with my nighttime golf paraphernalia. It was dark, and there was no telling what might come in handy up on that SeaWorld sign.
I felt around in the trunk and pulled out my new sand wedge.
“What the hell is that for?” the Bandit said.
“Closest thing I have to a weapon, not that I plan on needing one. But if I do, I can’t fight with my pen.”
“Here, try this instead,” he said, offering me a heavy crescent wrench from his tool bag.
“I’ll stick with the golf club. Getting out of hazards is the best part of my game.”
I put on a sweatshirt and pulled the hood over my head, hiding as much of my face as I could. I hid the sand wedge under my pants, along my leg. It kept my knee from bending. This part of town has a lot of drifters. If Friar Tom was already in the area, he might not notice a hooded vagrant with a limp.
“Give me five minutes,” I told the Bandit, then hobbled off.
When I reached Laurel, I walked close to the buildings on the north side of the street, keeping to the shadows. Each time a car approached, I turned my hooded head away, hiding my face.
At the intersection of Laurel and Union, the hill got steeper and it was harder to walk with the club. I tottered down the sidewalk to the edge of the dilapidated apartments next to the self-storage complex.
I ducked down a path between the apartment building and the storage facility. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire separated the two properties.
The dirt path was only two feet wide. Workers used it to access the sign whenever they needed to clean it or replace the ad.
I pulled the golf club from my pants and stumbled along the dark path until I reached the base of the SeaWorld billboard. The sign poles rose from a hillside on the north edge of the storage complex. The billboard’s catwalk jutted over the last storage unit at the top of the hill.
The billboard was massive and well illuminated. A life-size image of Shamu, the killer whale, greeted motorists driving north on the I-5.
I heard footsteps in the dark behind me. I crouched behind one of the poles.
There was a loud clang.
“Damn,” I heard the Billboard Bandit whisper. He must have banged his ladder into the apartment building.
There was silence as he must have paused to see if the clamor would attract attention.
I heard a window open.
“Who’s out there?” a slurred voice demanded.
Time stood still. I waited in fear. Then I heard the window close.
The Bandit crept up a moment later, out of breath.
“Did he see you?” I said.
“I was right below his window, but I don’t think so,” he said. “The guy looked falling-down drunk. He’s probably passed out by now.”
He quietly set the ladder, ropes and harness on the ground and looked up at the billboard.
“Like I told you,” I whispered. “The perfect lookout.”
“Except for the lights,” he huffed.
“But you can turn those off, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s a well-known sign with a lot of traffic driving by. It won’t be long before some conscientious SeaWorld worker sees it’s dark and makes a call. They’d send someone to check it out for sure.”
“Let’s hope Friar Tom shows before then.”
CHAPTER 108
Friar Tom stepped from the U-Haul and shot Rock 107 producer Amy Gossett in the leg as she loaded the radio station’s van.
“That’s for working with these scumbags,” he said.
Nobody inside the concert heard the gun above the din of My Monkey’s Uncle.
“What the fuck!” Riff shrieked.
“I promised this city I’d punish two more heretics this week.”
Raff gasped, dropping his bottle of iced tea. “It’s Friar Tom!”
“The one and only. I’m disappointed you so-called shock jocks never had me on your show. What, am I not shocking enough for you?”
Raff froze in place while Riff ran. Friar Tom fired a bullet into the deejay’s left buttock, and he went down hard.
“Get back over here,” he told Riff, motioning with his pistol.
The wounded deejay crawled across the asphalt, moaning and crying.
“Aw, quit your bawling. It’s only a flesh wound. She’s hurt way more than you,” Friar Tom said, nodding at Gossett, “and she’s not even whimpering.”
The producer slumped against the Rock 107 van, pressing the bloody hole above her knee.
“Now, put these on,” Friar Tom said. He tossed two disposable painter’s masks to the deejays. They were doused with isoflurane, a liquid anesthetic.
Raff grimaced when he held the mask and whiffed the pungent smell. “What is this?”
“Just put it on. But you might want to sit down first.”
Friar Tom pointed his gun. Raff joined his bleeding partner on the ground.
“Don’t worry, fellas. It won’t kill you. But your mouths have spouted trash for too long. Time for them to take a little of it back. Suck it up.”
“Look, we can help you,” Riff pleaded. “We’re going into syndication Monday. How about coming on our first show? We’ll do a live remote. The cops won’t know where you are. You can say anything you want to eighteen million listeners. We’ll give you a whole hour.”
Friar Tom aimed the gun at Riff.
“Okay, two hours,” Riff blurted.
Friar Tom cocked the pistol.
“Okay, okay,” Riff said, pulling the mask’s elastic band over his head. “Just don’t kill us. Please.”
Raff placed his mask over his face. Within seconds, the two shock jocks passed out and collapsed to the ground.
“Nighty-night,” Friar Tom said.
He opened the back of the U-Haul and lifted the deejays into the truck.
“I’m letting you off easy,” he told Gossett. “I got a suggestion for you, though. Find a more meaningful line of work.”
He walked away, then turned back. “After you recover.” He fired a bullet into the producer’s other leg.
He pulled out of the parking lot and drove east on Mission Bay Drive.
The masks held a minimal amount of anesthetic. He’d need to secure the deejays before they came to.
At Bonita Cove Park, he pulled into the lot and parked in a space at the end.
He entered the back of the truck and closed the door. Riff and Raff still lay unconscious. One at a time, he lifted them under their arms and set them in crude wooden chairs that looked like dollies.
Tall, thick planks formed the back of each chair. The planks were each fitted with a garrote, a strangulation device popular in the Middle Ages.
When a victim is garroted, he sits in the chair with his back against the plank. An iron collar attached to the plank is fix
ed around his neck. The executioner tightens the collar by turning a handle at the back of the plank.
The chair Friar Tom sat Riff in was the traditional Spanish garrote. Its no-frills iron collar simply asphyxiates the victim. Raff’s garrote was the fancy model favored by the Catalonians. Its key feature is the iron point at the end of a thick screw attached to the handle. As the torturer turns the handle, the iron point penetrates the victim’s vertebrae while his trachea is crushed against the front of the collar.
Friar Tom locked the wheels of the chairs in place so the deejays wouldn’t roll around during the rest of the drive.
He hopped down from the truck and started to close the door. He stopped when he heard Riff and Raff begin to stir.
They choked and gurgled as they tried to speak.
“Listen to the funny guys,” Friar Tom said. “What’s the matter? Got nothing funny to say?”
The shock jocks struggled to move their larynxes against the iron collars.
“Don’t speak. You’ve had your say. Just listen for a change.”
The deejays looked at the killer, their heads immobilized.
“As you may have noticed, you’re each restrained by a different type of garrote. Riff, yours is the Spanish one. Raff, yours is the Catalonian. Or is it the other way around? I can’t keep you idiots straight. I’ve always wondered, though, which garrote is the most painful? We’ll find out when we get back to my torture chamber.”
He saw the terror in the deejays’ eyes.
“Won’t be long,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
CHAPTER 109
The Billboard Bandit broke the latch on the sign’s power box with a hammer and turned off the lights. I saw Shamu vanish overhead.
The Bandit extended the ladder into the air and moved it around, feeling in the dark for the sign’s catwalk. When he heard the sound of metal, he locked the ladder in place.
The ground was uneven. The Bandit stacked three wrenches under the ladder’s left leg, bringing it level with the right. He stood on the first rung and bounced up and down, testing it.
“Grab your things, let’s go,” he said.
He slung his tool bag over his shoulder and scrambled up the ladder like he had done this countless times, which, of course, he had. He disappeared into the void after five or six rungs. When I heard him step onto the catwalk, he sounded much higher, like he had scaled a skyscraper rather than a fifty-foot ladder.
“What are you waiting for?” he called back down through the dark in a low voice.
I’m scared of heights. Anything over my head petrifies me. I’d hoped that the dire situation would free me of my phobia, but it was worse than ever. I was panic-stricken.
“Ty?” the Bandit said.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I said, but the words caught in my throat.
I looped my gym bag of equipment through my belt and let it ride on my backside. My sand wedge rested on top of the bag, parallel to the ground.
I grabbed the ladder.
Please, just this once.
I climbed the first few rungs.
You can do this.
When I stepped onto the seventh rung, I was suddenly aware of how high I was. I climbed a few more wobbly steps, then stopped. I grew dizzy. I clutched the rails of the ladder with sweaty palms.
“Ty?” the Bandit called.
I couldn’t speak.
“Ty?” he said more urgently.
I didn’t answer.
“Look, you stay down there. I’ll keep a lookout for him.”
“No,” I managed to say. “You don’t know what he looks like. I’ve got to get up there.”
“Okay, then, one step at a time,” he said. “Just pretend you’re walking up a flight of stairs.”
I rested my cheek against a rung. I was paralyzed with fear. I tried to lift my leg, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Ty, listen, man. You can’t freeze. One rung at a time.”
Be brave for Jordan…Be brave for Heather…They’re counting on you.
I closed my eyes. I pictured that I was in my kitchen, climbing a stepladder to put the ice cream maker back on the top shelf. The vertigo went away.
I held the image in my mind as I took one step with my eyes closed, then another. I forgot that I was nearing fifty feet in the air.
The rungs were two deep where the sections of ladder overlapped. I wasn’t ready for the first single rung of the last section. My foot missed the rung. I stepped into empty space.
I opened my eyes. I was falling.
I grabbed for a rung and missed. My legs whacked the ladder as I dropped. I fell through the air, twisting to my left. My golf club clanged against the rail.
I reached again for the ladder. I caught the rung with my left hand and gripped it as tight as I could. I stopped with a jerk. The ladder lurched, but didn’t slide from the catwalk. The Bandit must have held it.
My shoulder felt like it was yanked from its socket. I dangled in the air. I was on the underside of the ladder. The rungs below the one I gripped angled away from me.
I kicked at the rungs, trying to regain my footing. I couldn’t reach them. The ladder swayed.
“Ty!” the Bandit said.
I frantically swung back and forth, trying to hitch my leg around the ladder. I started to lose my grip.
“Ty!” the Bandit said.
I let go of the rung as my leg finally hooked the ladder. I pulled myself up and onto the front.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I called.
I was so startled from the fall that, for the moment, I’d lost my fear of heights. I scrambled up the remaining rungs. The Bandit grabbed me by the collar and pulled me onto the catwalk.
“You made it.”
I peered out over the precipice. “Yeah, but I wonder how I’ll ever get down.”
CHAPTER 110
The Bandit and I sat on the catwalk, our legs hanging over the edge.
We had a clear view of everything: the apartments across the street, the storage complex below, the limo garage, the off-site airport parking lot and, kitty-corner from that, the row of rundown buildings.
The Bandit scanned the neighborhood through his binoculars. I looked through the night-vision goggles I wear on my nocturnal golf outings. They’re good for seeing in the dark, but poor for distance.
“Here, try these,” the Bandit said, handing me a second pair of binoculars he fished from his bag.
“Why two pair?”
“The wife’s been riding shotgun with me lately. She got tired of sitting home alone every night.”
“A husband-wife billboard graffiti team. When this is all over, that’s a story I wouldn’t mind writing.”
“Anytime. You know I’m a whore for publicity.”
The billboard now seemed higher than it did from the ground. The drastic pitch of Laurel Street enhanced the illusion.
I looked at the storage complex below. Terraced rows of cinder-block units ran downhill to the entrance on State Street. The earth appeared to fall away from us.
I grew queasy and fixed my bearings by looking at the level billboard. From the shadows, the giant eye of Shamu stared back at me.
“There’s someone entering an apartment across Laurel,” the Bandit said.
I peered through the binoculars at a man carrying a bag of groceries.
I shook my head. “Shard is much taller.”
Jetliners on final approach to Lindbergh Field roared by about once a minute. They descended over the freeway and the Laurel Travel Building before landing on a runway framed by red lights.
We watched a few people enter and exit the apartments. None of them resembled Shard.
Black limos pulled in and out of the garage across the street. Shuttle vans returned passengers who had left their cars at the cheaper off-site airport parking lot.
I studied the ramshackle dwellings on the other side of State. They had looked vacant earlier in the day. A logical hideout for Shard.
T
he hours ticked by. I wondered how long it would be before someone reported the SeaWorld billboard was out.
I heard the automatic gate of the self-storage complex open. I raised the binoculars to my eyes.
A vehicle pulled through the gate. My heart skipped a beat.
“This might be him,” I said.
The storage facility had overhead lights at each terrace along the driveway up the hill. I waited anxiously for the vehicle to pass under one of the lights.
It wasn’t Shard’s white van.
“Nope,” I said. “It’s a U-Haul truck.”
The gate closed behind the orange and white truck.
“Weird time of day to be moving house,” I said.
“Maybe his old lady caught him cheating and threw him out,” the Bandit said.
I kept the binoculars trained on the U-Haul as it climbed the drive. It passed the first row of storage units, then the second, then the third. The driver headed for the last row of units, below us, at the top of the hill.
The overhead light on the upper level of the storage complex was out. I set down the binoculars and donned my night vision goggles.
The U-Haul stopped in front of the unit below us. The driver got out and left the engine running.
Even in the poor light, I could tell it wasn’t Shard. The guy had a huge shag haircut.
I looked at another part of the neighborhood. But as I turned away, something caught the corner of my eye. A flash of gold.
I swiveled my head back to the man below. He fumbled with his keys, trying to find the one to his storage unit. I saw the flash again.
I tore off my night vision goggles and picked up my golf yardage finder. It’s like a tiny telescope that measures distances to the pins on golf greens.
I zoomed in on the man’s hands as he searched for the storage unit key. The flash was unmistakable.
It was a San Diego Hammers championship ring.
Friar Tom was directly below me.
CHAPTER 111
Shard left the engine running as he squatted in front of the U-Haul and fumbled with a wad of keys in the headlights. A handgun was tucked in his waistband.
The Scavenger's Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery Page 25
