Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  Everyone laughed appreciatively.

  “Well,” he said to Ellen, “shall we go in for a look?”

  The house had two stories. There was a kitchen and living room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. One of the bedrooms was just an empty space. The rest of the place was furnished sparsely, but everything was very tidy. Walter seemed to be the sort who made his bed every morning. He might have been anyone, living his ordinary life.

  The basement was something else again.

  It wasn’t very large, maybe twenty by twenty. There was a small furnace in one corner. The center of the room was occupied by a rough wooden table, with large iron hooks at either end and pieces of rope dangling from them. There were bloodstains on the ropes and on the table itself, which rested on a green plastic drop cloth.

  “One supposes this is where Sally Wilkes got dissected,” Sam said, collectedly as his eyes roamed over the table. “Forensics is going to be very busy down here.”

  “God, it’s like a medieval dungeon.”

  Sam was already squatting down, examining the table from underneath.

  “It’s well built,” he said. “If you sanded it a little, you could put it in your living room. I don’t suppose he’d let this thing just sit here for the next tenant to discover. He probably planned to take it apart and burn it. The drop cloth suggests he wasn’t interested in leaving any traces.”

  “Do you think he might have built a new one every place he went?”

  “Probably.”

  “Jesus.”

  They went back outside, where Captain de Lores was waiting.

  “With your permission,” Sam told him, “I’d like to bring our people down here to do the evidence. Our suspect isn’t going to show his face again in your jurisdiction—or mine either, for that matter. It would just be administratively easier if everything was in one place.”

  “And your people have more experience with this sort of thing.” The captain nodded. He wasn’t feeling slighted. He was merely stating a fact. “Okay then, call them in.”

  The two men shook hands and Captain de Lores got in his squad car and drove away, leaving Sam and Ellen alone with their crime scene.

  Twenty minutes later, Tregear showed up. He got out of his car, a gray Subaru with a scratch on the right front fender, and shook hands with Sam. He smiled at Ellen.

  “He’s gone.” That was all he said.

  “We fucked up. You were right.” Sam wasn’t enjoying the taste of defeat.

  “You couldn’t help it,” Tregear told him. “You had to do this a certain way. You didn’t have a choice. But you got closer to him than anybody I know about.” He pointed to the house with his chin. “What’s inside?”

  “A bachelor’s pad, standing on top of a chamber of horrors.”

  “Let’s go look.”

  * * *

  Walter enjoyed watching the SWAT team and wished there had been time to arrange a more suitable welcome for them. He particularly liked the dogs—as if they would have made any difference. Then he watched SWAT leave, and then the Half Moon Bay Police.

  Then a gray car drove up and a man got out. He was wearing a pair of tan trousers and a light blue T-shirt, so he wasn’t official.

  Walter knew it was Steve, his son, almost the moment he first saw him. The man in the T-shirt had his father’s hair, without the gray, and he wore his watch on the right wrist. But it was the way he walked that made Walter’s heart stop. Steve had always been a graceful boy. He could make a stroll down a country road look like a dance number.

  Walter knew it was Steve even before he turned his head and showed his face.

  Of course. All the thick-skulled cops in the world would never have found him by themselves. Steve was hunting him. Still.

  His son was the one person in the world he was afraid of. Walter had known, from the day the kid had run away from home, maybe even from before, that Steve wasn’t going to leave it alone and get on with his life. One day, Steve was going to settle accounts.

  He knew that Steve had opened his mother’s suitcase. In hindsight, Walter couldn’t understand why he had kept the thing all those years, but he had. Probably he was just sentimental by nature. And the kid had got the suitcase open.

  Clever little bastard. Walter couldn’t help a feeling of pride in his son’s ingenuity. Twelve years old. And he hadn’t picked the lock—a kid that age would have left scratch marks all over the thing—which meant that somehow he had gotten hold of a key. How the hell had he ever managed it?

  But the fact was, he had been inside the suitcase. He had seen his mother’s stuff and had drawn the obvious conclusion.

  Then he had found that bitch’s corpse in the van, and away he went.

  In a way, Walter blamed himself. If he hadn’t come home stewed he would have remembered to lock the garage and Steve never would have known the difference. But that filthy whore had upset him. She had died hard, shouting and cursing, and she wouldn’t shut up no matter how hard he hit her. They were in the parking lot behind a bar and he got scared someone might come out and find them, so he wrapped her up in a tarp and sailed on out of there. His nerves had needed a little soothing.

  But the business with Steve had been a lesson to him. After that he kept off the hard stuff.

  When the boy ran off, Walter hadn’t bothered with much of a search. How long could a twelve-year-old survive on his own? The cops would pick him up, or some pederast would leave him dead somewhere.

  But he had survived, and he had found his grandparents. It was almost an accident that Walter had discovered him. He was in the neighborhood, and on the off chance…

  But Steve seemed to have a talent for survival.

  And then eight or nine years passed and Walter was working in Maryland. He had gotten off work early one afternoon and was enjoying a beer in some cozy little dive, minding his own business. He was seated near the window, observing the rich spectacle of life, when out of nowhere appeared his baby boy.

  It was the purest chance. He happened to be facing west and a figure moving in that same direction, walking on the other side of the street, almost seemed to sneak right past him. In an instant he was no more than an outline, striding into the sun. But there was something about the way he moved that drew the eye …

  And then it dawned on him. Steve. It simply couldn’t be anybody else. So Walter had followed him until his son disappeared into a hotel.

  An hour later, Walter called. “’Scuse me,” he said, in his best down-home accent. “This is the lost and found at the railway station. Somebody left an envelope full of stuff in the men’s room—paper’n like. Looks like the kinda stuff he’d prob’ly want back. They’s a reservation slip for y’r place in the name o’ Stephen … I can’t quite make it out. You had any Stephens in the last hour ’r so?”

  “Yes, one. A Stephen Rayne. You want me to put you through to his room?”

  “Oh, wait a minute. Somebody just passed me a note. Yes. He called just a minute ago. Problem solved, darlin’. Thank you.”

  Stephen Rayne. Walter had dropped Rayne as soon as he got out of Arkansas, which was the evening of the day after Steve ran away.

  By the grace of God, Walter had caught up with him again in Maryland, but some other guy had come through that hotel room door and died in his place.

  Afterward, he hung around just long enough to find out what had been going on. At first, the police had thought Steve killed that sailor boy—the local newspaper had been full of it. But, reading between the lines of that idiot cop Hill’s statements, it was clear Steve had come to him with information and been dismissed as a nut job.

  And then, suddenly, Stephen Rayne just vanished from the news. The police didn’t like him anymore as a suspect. It was as if someone had told them to forget all about it.

  It had happened a couple of other times that Walter had had to pack up and move out a little earlier than planned. Today was the closest the law had ever been, but there had been a few other nea
r misses. They were getting help. Someone was telling them about all his little ways, someone who really understood how he worked, even how he thought.

  It couldn’t be anyone but Steve. The police just weren’t that clever, and they were local. Someone was tracking him from state to state. Who else but his own sweet son?

  And in all that time Walter had never been able to find his pursuer. Not since Maryland. Steve was like a mirage. You saw him, but he wasn’t there. You ran to catch him and he disappeared. Steve was the ghost of his sins, a black shape haunting his dreams.

  And now Walter had found him again, had seen him in the flesh. And, once more, he was just a man after all.

  Sometimes, with His perverse sense of humor, God answers our prayers.

  20

  Inside the house, Tregear displayed no emotion. It occurred to Ellen that they might as well have been strolling through a museum.

  Upstairs he pointed to the made bed. “He always did that, every morning. He must have had a strict upbringing. Even I’ll leave a bed unmade.”

  In the bathroom he used his pen to open the medicine chest. He pointed to a squat orange container, the kind in which pharmacies dispense their pills.

  “Percocet, sixty hundred fifty milligrams. He must be hurting because that’s the highest dose. When you get the doctor’s name off the bottle, he should have an interesting story to tell.

  “There’ll be fingerprints all over the place, and you’ll be able to get hair samples out of the shower drain.” He glanced at Ellen and smiled. “You’ll know a lot about him before you’re done.”

  The kitchen had a pantry. Tregear opened it and read the labels.

  “Same stuff,” he announced. “Wheat Chex for breakfast, cream of tomato soup, Ritz crackers, English Breakfast tea. If you look in the refrigerator you’ll find a carton of jumbo eggs and a six-pack of Coors beer. I’ll bet there’s a half gallon of chocolate ripple ice cream in the freezer.”

  Ellen used a dish towel to open the refrigerator.

  “A perfect score,” she said.

  Tregear nodded, suggesting there had never been any doubt, then turned his attention to the sink. “You’ll notice there aren’t any dirty dishes,” he said, almost as if the observation gave him some sort of pleasure. “They’re all washed and put away. Walter hates dirty dishes.”

  The kitchen was just large enough for a table and one chair. There was a stack of newspapers beside the chair, and one on the table, open to page four. There was a two-column story on the Sally Wilkes murder.

  “Walter has been reading his reviews.”

  “Do you want to see the basement?” Ellen asked.

  “No.” Tregear shook his head. “I think I’ll spare myself that—I’ll wait for the photos. I think I’m done here.”

  They went outside, where the Evidence people were unpacking their truck. Tregear looked at his watch.

  “It’s four-fifteen, and it’s been a long day,” he said. “Why don’t you come home with me.”

  “Better yet, come to my place and I’ll make you dinner.”

  * * *

  On the drive back to San Francisco, Tregear apparently didn’t feel like talking. He switched on the car radio and hit the CD button, and the interior space was suddenly flooded with Bach organ music. It was a little like attending a funeral.

  As directed, Tregear parked in front of the hardware store and they climbed the stairs to her apartment. Once inside, Ellen disappeared into the kitchen, where she uncorked a bottle of domestic Pinot Grigio ($8.99 a bottle).

  When she came back out, she found Tregear standing in front of Gwendolyn’s cage. She handed him a glass and he took a sip.

  “Your friend and I have been sizing each other up,” he said matter-of-factly. “I gather he’s not accustomed to strangers.”

  “He is a she.” Ellen opened the cage door. “Gwendolyn, come and meet the nice man.”

  Gwendolyn used Ellen’s right arm as a walkway and then settled on her left shoulder, which was farther from Tregear, whom she regarded with evident suspicion.

  “She’s interested,” Ellen said quietly. “She’s curious. Let’s try something.”

  Ellen let her right hand rest on Tregear’s shoulder. Gwendolyn seemed to consider this new situation and then changed her own position over to Ellen’s right shoulder. Then, after about a minute, she started making her way stealthily along Ellen’s arm. When she reached Tregear’s shoulder, she looked back at Ellen, who then took her hand away.

  “It appears you’ve made a new friend,” she said.

  Gwendolyn began investigating Tregear’s hair, as if testing it for footholds.

  They sat down on the sofa and drank their wine. Gwendolyn was still on Tregear’s shoulder, although he seemed not to notice her.

  “So how long have you had him—her?” he asked, setting his glass down on the table in front of them. “How long have you had her?”

  “About seven years.” Ellen reached over and gathered Gwendolyn up. “I was vacationing at Lake Tahoe and saw her in a pet store window in Carson City. I went in, put my hand inside the cage to pet her and she climbed right up my arm. Sometimes I think she picked me rather than the other way around. She was just a baby then.”

  Tregear smiled and began to say something, but the words seemed to catch in his throat. His expression was suddenly odd, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening to him, and then he buried his face in his hands and began to sob.

  It was the most pathetic sound Ellen could remember hearing, a mingling of grief and fear for which there was no comfort. She knelt on the sofa beside him and put her arms around his shoulders. There was nothing more she could do. No words were adequate. Words would have to wait until the spasm passed.

  And it did. After three or four minutes he took a handkerchief out of his trousers pocket and wiped his face. His hands were still trembling.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Ellen made a vague gesture down the hall, and after a few seconds she could hear water running.

  When he came back again, it was as if the whole episode had never happened.

  “What would you like for dinner?” she asked him, simply to be able to say something.

  “Anything. Whatever.”

  “How about leftover lasagna? Gwendolyn doesn’t like lasagna, so she won’t make a pest of herself.”

  “Perfect.”

  By the time the lasagna was ready, their wineglasses needed refilling. Ellen kept moving back and forth between the kitchen and the living room because she sensed that Tregear wasn’t ready to talk. They ate in silence, balancing the plates on their laps.

  “Would you like something for dessert?” she asked. “I have ice cream.”

  But Tregear seemed not to have heard her.

  “We lost him, Ellie,” he said. “We’ll never have another chance like this one.”

  Ellen shook her head and sat down beside him.

  “We’ll have his fingerprints, and his DNA. We’ll be able to tie him to the Wilkes murder. If he sticks his head up again, we’ll have enough to put him on death row.”

  “That’s the problem. He’ll learn caution from this episode. He’ll think it through and figure out how you found him. Then he’ll change his patterns.”

  “Maybe not.” Ellen managed a cautious smile. “Serial killers are usually pretty compulsive about method. Maybe he won’t be able to change.”

  Tregear took a deep, almost convulsive breath and then let it out very slowly.

  “You have to understand something, Ellie.” He shook his head and his eyes were full of pity, as if he were about to strip her of her last illusion. “Most serial killers are in the grip of some sexual obsession. The hunt is like foreplay. If they change the method they lose the thrill. But with Walter this isn’t about sex. It’s about power, the power of life and death. It’s about being like God. And as God is capricious and sudden, so is he. As God is cruel, so is he.”r />
  “Do you believe in God, Steve?”

  She hadn’t meant to ask the question. She couldn’t imagine why she had. But there it was. Tregear only smiled and shook his head again.

  “No. But Walter does.”

  * * *

  They didn’t make love that night. Tregear seemed completely unmanned. And they hardly slept. They just lay in bed, holding each other, each the other’s refuge against the world. And it occurred to Ellen that she had never felt so close to any other human being.

  “I’ll have to be on my travels again,” he said at one point. “When he starts up in some other place, I’ll have to follow.”

  “Do you think he knows you followed him here?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t know where to find me, and if we bumped into each other on the street I doubt if he would recognize me. But he knows I’m after him. I’ve got the Internet, but I’m no smarter than he is. He knows.”

  “I think you’re the smartest man I’ve ever known.”

  “That’s because you’ve never met Walter.” Tregear laughed, but the laugh was cut short. “I hope you never do.”

  * * *

  About a quarter to six the next morning, Tregear left Ellen asleep to get himself a glass of water in the kitchen. The apartment was laid out so that the only entrance to the kitchen was through the living room, where he found a strange woman asleep on the sofa.

  As he wasn’t wearing anything except his boxer shorts, Tregear decided to forget about the water and retreated back into the bedroom. By then Ellen was awake.

  “There’s somebody sleeping in your living room,” he said, as if he couldn’t imagine why anyone would be interested to know that.

  “Oh, yes. That’s Mindy. She was my college roommate and hasn’t found an apartment yet. She works in the DA’s office and she’s between husbands—it’s a long story.”

  Tregear nodded. “Perhaps I should get dressed.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.”

  By six-thirty everyone was ready for breakfast. Mindy was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee while Ellen made oatmeal with blueberries.

  “So when did that happen?” Mindy asked, tilting her head toward the living room, where Tregear was renewing his acquaintance with Gwendolyn.