Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  By the time they reached the flagstone walkway she had had enough and she managed to say, “Let go.”

  Walter stopped and released her, and Ellen discovered that she could just roll over so that she was on her hands and knees.

  Then Walter grabbed her collar again and pulled her up to a standing position. When she didn’t fall down right away he pushed her along toward the back of the house.

  “You’re all right,” he said, as if he suspected she had been faking. “Come on, walk.”

  By the time they reached the screen door to the porch, Ellen had snapped out of her trance. She touched her forehead where it seemed to hurt the most and when she brought her hand away her fingertips were coated with blood. The concussion must have knocked her silly for a bit. She had the mother of all headaches, but otherwise she seemed to be in working order.

  Although getting up the wooden stairs to the porch was something of an ordeal.

  When she saw Sam lying there she forgot everything else. She pulled herself free of Walter’s grip and dropped down on her knees beside her partner.

  “Sam,” she murmured, almost sobbing the word. “Sam, can you hear me?”

  Slowly Sam opened his eyes. His breathing was labored, suggesting that he was in great pain. Blood was welling out from a bullet hole on his right side, just below his rib cage.

  He seemed to be trying to speak. Ellen gathered up his right hand in both of hers and crouched down to hear him.

  “My gun,” he whispered. “It’s on the floor.”

  He dragged his eyes down and to the right, as if pointing.

  The sirens were much louder now and one of them ground to a halt.

  Simply because she did not dare to look for the gun, Ellen turned around to look at Walter, who by now had slumped into a chair. There was blood in two places on his shirt, one on the right side and the other on the left, between the armpit and collarbone. His left arm was hanging limp.

  The right-side wound probably amounted to nothing more than a few broken ribs, but the one on the left side was bad. It was bleeding heavily, so that his shirt was soaked down to his belt, and the nerve centers that controlled the left arm were likely in shreds.

  And Walter was left-handed.

  “They’re coming,” she said to him, giving her voice a little lilt and flashing a ratty grin. “From the sound of it one just pulled up in front of the house, and I can hear others. In the time it takes to count to ten, they’ll have you in a box. Think about it, Walter. There’s nothing between us and the great wide world except some screening. If you stay in that chair it won’t be more than sixty seconds before a SWAT sniper takes your head off.”

  But Walter only smiled.

  “So you know my name?” he asked finally. “Then I’ll bet you know my son.”

  * * *

  Tregear arrived almost simultaneously with the first police units. He drove up Belhaven Avenue and saw Ellen’s car and then the olive-gray Kia in front of it and drew all the obvious conclusions. He parked across the street from Sam’s house.

  As he started to open his car door, a man in a light blue sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves came by and pushed the door closed again. He put his hand on the roof and leaned down, smiling, not very nicely, as he pushed his sunglasses up into his curly black hair. There was a detective’s badge dangling from a chain around his neck.

  “Take off, buddy,” he said. “We’ve got a situation here.”

  “I’m part of the situation.” The cop had to get out of the way fast as Tregear opened his door and stepped out. “Who’s in charge?”

  “Jesus, mister!”

  “I’ll ask again. Who’s in charge?”

  “Nobody’s in charge—we just got here. Who the fuck are you?”

  Tregear dismissed the question with an impatient shrug.

  “Have there been shots fired?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Shots have been fired.” The cop, who was probably in his middle twenties and certainly fancied himself, nodded vigorously. “Now, you’re gonna find yourself under arrest if you don’t get outa here. And I mean right now!”

  Tregear didn’t trouble himself to answer. Instead, as if dismissing the cop from existence, he turned, crossed the street and walked up on Sam’s front lawn. As soon as he got to the flagstones he found traces of blood.

  “Oh, God!”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to have to insist you leave now.”

  Tregear turned to face a different policeman, this one probably forty, in slacks and a Windbreaker, also with a badge hanging from a chain around his neck. His badge said, “Sergeant.”

  “Are you in charge here?” Tregear asked him.

  The sergeant nodded.

  “For the moment, yes. I’m Sergeant Brinkley, Daly City Police. And, like I said, you’ll have to leave now, sir.”

  “This is Sam Tyler’s house. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  The sergeant nodded again. “Yes, sir. Everyone knows Sam.”

  Implying, of course, that such information was common knowledge and bought nobody any special favors.

  “The call was phoned in by an Inspector Ridley of the SFPD,” Tregear announced, almost as if offering a dare. “Sam is her partner and that’s her car down there, parked behind the gray Kia, which, incidentally, is the subject of a fugitive warrant. Sam is in there, either wounded or dead—it’s anybody’s guess—and Inspector Ridley is with him.”

  For an instant he glared at the sergeant with something almost amounting to hatred. By now he was really angry and the emotion frightened him a little.

  “They are being held hostage by a monster. Did you see Sam’s press conference? Doesn’t anybody watch the news anymore? What else would you like to know?”

  The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you, mister?”

  It was a good question. Aside from Sam and Ellen, who were presently unavailable, hardly a soul in San Francisco Homicide had ever even heard of him. And this was Daly City.

  Tregear took out his wallet and extracted Hal Roland’s card. He handed it to the sergeant.

  “My name is Stephen Tregear,” he said. “Ask him.”

  * * *

  “Do you know my baby boy?”

  Walter smiled, then his head tilted a little to one side as his eyes narrowed.

  “I remember you,” he went on, in the tone of someone recalling a pleasant experience. “You were at the house. You showed up after the boys in the black jackets struck out. And Sam here was with you. And then, after a while, Steve arrived.”

  He shook his head and laughed.

  “Isn’t that funny? I’d forgotten about it until just now. I remember thinking, ‘For a cop, she’s damn cute.’”

  Suddenly his face contracted with pain. When the spasm was over he looked down at his left shoulder.

  “And you’re a damn good shot too. But I don’t hold that against you.”

  With his right hand he made a gesture toward the wall of the house.

  “Why don’t you be a good girl and snick off these floodlights?”

  Ellen stood up and went over to the switch panel beside the door. In an instant the light in the backyard seemed to shudder and then disappear. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  It wasn’t any later than eight-thirty and still twilight. The porch was darker than the yard. It might be another half hour before anyone outside would find the darkness inconvenient.

  Sam’s gun was still lying on the floor just under the lounge chair, now covered by its impenetrable shadow. Apparently Walter hadn’t noticed it.

  “You need to be in a hospital,” she said, without looking at Walter. “Otherwise you’re not going to finish the evening alive—either the cops will kill you or you’ll bleed to death.”

  Walter might as well have not heard. He was studying Ellen’s face.

  “I remember something else,” he said. “You and Steve went into my house together. Did he give you a guided tour of all his da
ddy’s little ways? And then you drove off with him in his car. Are you two sweet on each other?”

  The idea seemed to amuse him.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. You know, you remind me a little of Steve’s mother.”

  As she listened, Ellen let her face turn to stone. She didn’t want Walter to see her fear.

  She remembered thinking how paranoid Steve had sounded when he wondered if his father had been watching that day. But he had been right. This most evil of men had seen them together, and had guessed the rest.

  “What about it?” she asked him—anything to get him thinking about something else. “How do you want to leave here, on a stretcher or in a body bag? I don’t suppose you’ve got very long to make up your mind.”

  “Death doesn’t hold any terrors for me, Miss…”

  “Ridley.” She offered him a fast, unpleasant little smile. “Inspector Ridley to my friends.”

  “I’ll leave here when it suits me,” he answered calmly, all the while regarding her with the eyes of a predatory animal. “I have only one thing left to do in this world and God, in one of His rare displays of mercy, has put into my hands the means to do it. I’m very happy to meet you, Inspector Ridley.”

  * * *

  The sounds of movement around them had finally forced Walter to accept the logic of his position.

  “Come on,” he said, standing up. “They’re getting too close. Let’s go inside.”

  “Let me do something for Sam,” Ellen pleaded. “I’ve got to try to stop the bleeding.”

  She and Walter faced off across a distance of perhaps twenty feet. They were little more than shadows to each other, but Ellen could still see the gun in his right hand.

  Suddenly he pointed it at where Sam was lying on the floor.

  “If you like I can put him out of his misery right now,” he said calmly.

  “No.”

  “Then it’s time to get moving.” With the gun he motioned toward the kitchen door. “After you.”

  At one point Sam’s gun was no more than a yard from Ellen’s foot. She thought of making a dive for it but gave up on the idea. The odds were too long and then Walter would only shoot Sam. She hated to leave it behind, but there wasn’t a choice.

  In the kitchen he made Ellen sit on the floor, on the far side of the room, while he examined the contents of the refrigerator.

  “Ah, beer!” He took out a carton with four bottles remaining and placed it on the counter next to the sink. “Maybe our Sam isn’t all bad after all.”

  He found a bottle opener in a drawer and dropped it into one of the empty slots in the beer carton. Then he stepped away from the counter and motioned to Ellen to get up.

  “Here, you get to carry it into the dining room.”

  The dining room, predictably, had only one window and it was curtained. Walter pulled down the shade and then drew the curtains closed. Then he flipped the light switch and the chandelier came on.

  He studied it for a moment with evident disapproval.

  “Vulgar crap. Belongs in a whorehouse.”

  There was a sideboard, the upper section of which was a glassed-in display case filled with antique cups and saucers. The lower section was a cabinet with double doors concealing its contents, but its top was a flat surface at present occupied by nothing except a silver tray.

  Walter looked at Ellen and motioned for her to put the beer on the tray.

  “Now lie down on the floor, facedown,” he said. “Go on. Over there.”

  She did as she was told. She was about as far away from him as the size of the room allowed, and she watched as he stuck the pistol in his belt and then used his one good arm to upend the dining room table and lean it against the window.

  “You can get up now.”

  His face was sweaty and was beginning to acquire a waxy pallor. By then the whole left side of his shirt was soaked in blood. He was hurting.

  “Let’s go see if Sam’s got any aspirin,” he said.

  A search of the bathroom turned up a bottle of Excedrin and, under the sink, a reasonably well equipped first aid kit. There was also a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Ellen got to carry it all back to the dining room.

  Walter took one of the large end chairs and pulled it over to a corner near the outside wall. He opened a beer and used it to wash down a handful of Excedrin.

  It occurred to Ellen that aspirin in that quantity might thin Walter’s blood and make him bleed to death faster. She didn’t know, but it was something to hope for.

  “Sit down,” he told her and then, after raising his eyes to look at her, “how’s your head?”

  Without thinking, Ellen reached up to touch the wound on the right side of her forehead. It was still wet.

  “What do you care?” she answered, wiping her bloody fingers on her jacket.

  Walter merely shrugged and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  It was a painful spectacle to watch. Walter’s lower right side was a mess, the bullet having bounced around on the ribs and then exited messily just above the kidney. In places the shirt fabric stuck to the wound and had to be ripped free. Walter calmly set his pistol down on the sideboard, which was just within reach, opened the first aid kit, soaked a large square of gauze in the alcohol and began to clean up the ragged tears in his flesh.

  “It’s not the worst,” he said quietly. “One time on a construction job in Arizona some idiot working two floors above me slipped and knocked over his toolbox. The building was just an open skeleton, so it all rained down on me. I got a claw hammer stuck in my arm and a crosscut saw damn near took my head off.”

  He cut strips of adhesive tape and pressed them down at the edges of a couple of gauze pads. He covered the wound in front easily enough, but the exit wound was beyond his reach.

  “You want me to do that?” Ellen asked.

  “Would you mind?”

  He set the gauze pad down on the sideboard and picked up his automatic. Ellen got up from her chair and taped the pad over an oblong wound that was still oozing blood—apparently the bullet had exited sideways.

  “Thank you,” Walter said, when she had sat down again.

  “You’re welcome. I apologize for the discomfort. I’d intended to kill you.”

  Walter’s first reaction was surprise and then he started to laugh. He was still laughing when he set the pistol back down and started to work on his left shoulder.

  “You almost did,” he said, still chuckling. “My arm isn’t worth much. I can still move the thumb and first finger a little, but that’s about it.

  “You must be pretty good at your job,” he went on. “How did you get here so fast?”

  “Steve phoned. He was tracking your car.”

  “No shit!” Walter shook his head, as if such a thing defied belief. “How do you suppose he could do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He’s a very clever man.”

  For a moment Walter seemed lost in amazement, then his expression darkened.

  “I suppose that’s how it works,” he said sullenly. “My son the magician sniffs after me at a safe distance and then, when he’s got the scent in his nose, he sends in somebody like you for the kill.”

  “He isn’t after your life.”

  “No? Recent experience would suggest otherwise.”

  “He doesn’t want to kill you.” Ellen studied Walter’s face, searching for some resemblance to the man she loved. In that moment it was hard to believe they were even the same species. “He just wants to put a stop to you.”

  “He wants to put me in a cage?” The idea seemed to constitute a grievance.

  “Or a hospital, or on the dark side of the moon—anywhere you can’t go on killing people.”

  “But you just said you tried to kill me.” Walter smiled, as if the irony of the situation appealed to him. “Then what’s the difference?”

  Ellen shrugged, a gesture hinting at the pointlessness of the discussion.

  “It’s my
job. I don’t do it for fun.”

  She watched Walter smiling at her and felt the fear grow cold inside her. She could not remember another time she had been this afraid. But instinct told her she had to hide it. Fear would only excite him. Fear was what he lived on.

  “That’s not to say I wouldn’t like another chance,” she said. “Maybe next time my aim will be better.”

  But Walter wasn’t paying attention. He seemed absorbed in the difficulties of getting something out of the left pocket of his trousers. At last his efforts were successful and what he held in his hand was a cell phone.

  “I think I’ll just call up Sonny Boy,” he announced. “Invite him to the party.”

  31

  “I talked to your Commander Roland,” Sergeant Brinkley announced, when he came back to where Tregear was sitting on the bumper of a police car, under the watchful eye of the cop in the cutoff sweatshirt. “He says you’re some kind of computer spook but that we can believe anything you have to tell us about this case. He also says we shouldn’t let you do anything rash and he’ll be here in half an hour.”

  “In half an hour Sam Tyler and Ellen Ridley will probably both be dead.”

  The sergeant made a gesture with his hand, as if somehow discounting the risk.

  “We’re going to have a little talk with our suspect in there, give him a chance to surrender. Most of the time in hostage situations, they end up coming out meek as lambs.”

  “Not this one.” Tregear stood up. “Roland said you could believe me, so believe this. Your ‘suspect,’ who happens to be my father, is never going to just give up. He’ll make you kill him or he’ll kill himself, and he’ll take as many people with him as he can.”

  “We have to give it a try.” Brinkley did not look happy. “He’s your father? What else can you tell us about him?”

  “Nothing that’s going to make everything all better.”

  “Do you know what he’s doing here?”

  “Sure.” Tregear looked away and shrugged, as if embarrassed. “Walter didn’t like the press conference…”

  “Walter?”

  “That’s his name—the only one we can be sure of. Anyway, he took offense and came over here to teach Sam better manners by killing him. I found out about it, so I phoned Ellen. She got here first.”