by Scott Frost
The sound of his breathing began to slow.
“Promise,” came out of the darkness.
“I promise,” I said.
Slowly a hand crept out into the light, a little bit at a time, until his entire hand was visible.
“Your mom was making macaroni and cheese. You like macaroni and cheese?”
His fingers withdrew into the darkness for a moment, then came back to the light, where he began to run them back and forth over the floor of the closet.
“Yeah,” Peter said.
Harrison stepped to the doorway and nodded that help was on the way.
“Did your mom ask you to stay in here until she got back?” I asked.
His other hand tested the light, but he didn’t answer. I glanced at my watch to try to estimate how long it had been since whatever happened to his mother had taken place. We couldn’t have missed it by more than half an hour.
“Is your mom in a secret place, too, or can you tell me where she is?”
The top of his blond head became visible as he leaned into the light and rocked back and forth.
“She went with the man.”
Each passing second began to sound in my head like a clock picking up speed. And with each click she was slipping farther away.
“What man, Peter?”
His little hands tightened into fists and withdrew into the shadows. How far had he taken her in just these few seconds?
“What man?”
“The man who came to the door,” he whispered.
I reached out and placed my hand a few inches from the edge of the light. “And that’s when you came to hide here?”
“Yeah,” he said, but it was little more than a squeak. Then his hand slipped back into the light and his fingers stretched out until they just touched mine.
41
We were driving west on Mulholland as I checked my watch. Another unit had arrived five minutes after Harrison’s call. Seven minutes after that Peter slipped out of the darkness of the closet and I held him long enough for his grip to relax on my arm.
How many minutes had it taken to get here? Another ten? I hadn’t looked when we left the house. Each second that passed became a heartbeat pumping blood out of an open wound.
As we rounded a curve, the dark line of the ocean became visible in the distance and we pulled to a stop at the top of a gravel road that disappeared down the valley side through thick vegetation. A short driveway led to a house on the right, which appeared to have lost power. Cross’s home was the only other one on the street, another hundred yards out of sight around a corner in complete darkness.
I eased my foot off the brake and coasted until we reached the turn. Twenty yards ahead, surrounded by large oaks and chaparral, was the house. The headlights lit a tall brick wall topped with metal spikes that appeared to wrap around the property.
“A fortress,” Harrison said.
I shut off the car, stepped out, and started walking down the gravel road until the driveway came into view.
“It’s not a fortress anymore,” I said.
The iron gate that stretched across the driveway had been smashed. The ornate scrollwork and bars looked as if a tank had driven through it. I looked around the corner of the wall into the courtyard. A large white sedan was parked inside.
“It’s a Buick,” Harrison said.
“The car that followed my brother.”
He nodded. “If this belongs to Cross, he killed John.”
We rushed up to the Buick. Its front end was undamaged.
“This didn’t drive through that gate. Someone else was here,” Harrison said.
I looked in the car, and sitting on the front seat were several long coils of yellow cord.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, and then began running across the courtyard toward the front door. The entry was nearly hidden in shadow, but I could see that the front door was partly open. I swept the windows facing the entrance with my weapon—nothing moved inside. It was like looking into the lifeless eyes of a corpse.
“Go,” I said, and Harrison was through the door.
“It smells like the ocean,” Harrison said.
Broken glass, sand, and water covered the floor where an aquarium had been smashed. A three-foot-long yellow eel as thick as my fist was moving slowly across the gray slate tile, slapping its tail, opening and closing its mouth as it gasped for water that was no longer there.
“Cross,” I yelled.
Not a sound came back. The kitchen was to the left, past the fireplace; a hallway led to the right and the bedrooms. I stepped into the living room. I motioned toward the hallway and Harrison nodded. I took three steps and stopped, my stomach in my throat.
“Jesus,” Harrison said.
A clump of long, sandy brown hair was lying on the floor. I walked over. The hair looked to be eight or ten inches long.
“Just under shoulder-length,” I said. “Candice Fleming.”
I knelt down and examined it. “Pulled out at the roots.”
Down the hallway was another clump of hair in front of a closed door. I pushed the door open, then swung around, raising the Glock. Inside, the coffee table and couch had been pushed back, creating an open space on the rug large enough for a person to lie down. A sheet of heavy clear plastic had been laid down.
I walked over and looked down at it, playing out what I was seeing in my head.
“He put the plastic down to keep any rug fibers from sticking to her clothes, and to catch any blood or bodily fluids.”
Harrison knelt down and examined it. “It’s clean. It hasn’t been used.”
I looked over to the broken window.
“He either took her somewhere else in the house, or . . .”
“Someone stopped him,” I said.
“She could still be alive.”
“Then what happened to Cross?”
We ran back outside and looked at the smashed gate and then back at the house.
“What does this look like to you?” I asked.
Harrison’s eyes moved across the grounds, stopping and taking in details.
“The gate is crashed, then two entries are made into the house—the window and the door. This wasn’t the work of a single person.”
“Something a tactical squad would do in a rescue,” I said.
“Or a killing.”
I looked at Harrison. “We have to find Hazzard.”
42
What I had learned since finding Danny’s message on the door of my refrigerator was that my father did not kill Victoria Fisher. But the door to that nightmare hadn’t been closed. Two young women had still been murdered by the River Killer, and whether by design or actual circumstance, my father was connected to them.
Harrison had hit it on the head at the theater when he called my father’s assaults on the two students dress rehearsals for a full performance. Was it part of this? Or did this chain of violence end with Cross and Hazzard? Which of my father’s roles had returned from the past?
A large silver pickup that I didn’t remember seeing before was parked in Hazzard’s driveway. I drove slowly to the end of the cul-de-sac past his house. No lights appeared to be on. Nothing was visible in any of the windows.
I pulled to a stop behind the pickup and stepped out. For an instant the wind held the scent of a rosebush, but then it shifted and the bitter remains of destroyed homes replaced the sweet, pungent air.
“Look under the truck,” Harrison said.
There was a puddle under the front of the truck, and a dark line of fluid running down the driveway to the curb. I walked around the side of the pickup. The front grill had been heavily damaged. The pattern of the denting matched the contours and lines of the gate at Cross’s house.
“Call for backup,” I said, and Harrison took out his phone.
Inside the cab a bone-handled hunting knife lay on the passenger seat. On the floor were small pieces of yellow cord. I pulled out my Glock, stepped up to the corner of the gar
age, and looked around to the front windows. In the dark interior of the living room something was there. Not visible, but there just the same.
“There’s movement,” I said.
The blackness appeared to be shifting in and out like a tide, but whatever I had seen was already gone.
“The back,” I said, but we were already moving, nearly there. A bonfire in the middle of the yard illuminated the back of the house with a warm glow.
“His things,” I said.
Hazzard had emptied his house of his prized signed hockey sticks and jerseys and balls and bats and set everything on fire.
“He’s burning his bridges,” Harrison said.
A figure was standing at a bedroom window on the second floor, in the darkness. His face appeared more like a mask than that of a living, breathing soul. Circles of shadow surrounded his eyes, the set of his jaw as rigid as if it were carved of wood or bone. I could see his mouth moving ever so slightly, as if he were whispering a secret to someone just behind him in the darkness.
I heard myself say, “The house,” but I was already running to the back door as Harrison kicked it open. Somewhere inside music was playing.
“The Stones,” Harrison said. “He’s playing the Rolling Stones.”
A stack of unwashed plates filled one of the sinks. The odor of fried food and spilled beer hung heavily in the air.
“He’s falling apart,” I said.
We moved across the kitchen to the living room.
“The music’s coming from the second floor,” Harrison said, but I didn’t hear a word. Candice Fleming was crawling across the carpet, short lengths of yellow cord dangling from her wrists.
I rushed across the living room and knelt next to her as Harrison covered the stairs.
“You’re all right now,” I said.
She didn’t react to the sound of my voice, just continued to crawl, her eyes fixed on the door and her escape. I reached over and placed my hand on hers. “Your son is fine. I found him.”
She stopped moving, her fingers digging into the carpet as if it were soil in a garden.
“Peter stayed right where you told him to. You did the right thing,” I said.
“Peter,” she whispered.
I nodded.
She started to reach out toward me, then saw the cord dangling from her wrists and I could see panic beginning to return in her eyes. I took her hand and tried to pull her back.
“We’re going to take those off you. It’s over.”
She shook her head.
“Yes it is, but we have to get you outside. Can you walk?”
Fleming looked at me, her eyes still partially in the nightmare inflicted on her.
“Delillo,” she whispered.
“That’s right.”
I got Fleming to her feet and walked her to the front door.
“Run to my car. Other policemen are coming; they’ll take care of you.”
The panic in her eyes vanished and she stared at me with unmistakable clarity.
“He was a policeman,” she whispered.
She turned and ran into the night as I rushed back to the stairs where Harrison waited. A half dozen steps led to the second floor. I eased up the stairs until the hallway came completely into view. It looked as if a windstorm had blown through it. Shattered glass littered the floor, strands of wire and pieces of broken picture frames hung on the walls where pieces of his collection had been.
The music was coming from the room at the end of the hallway fifteen feet away. A faint light was visible along the bottom of the door. There were two other doors, one on either side between where we stood and the far end.
“Take the left door, I’ll take the right,” I whispered, and Harrison began to move, the broken glass on the carpet snapping under his feet with each step.
Harrison stopped at the first door and swung into the room with his weapon raised, then stepped back into the doorway and shook his head.
“Cover the far door,” I whispered, and Harrison raised his gun.
I pressed myself against the wall on the right and inched along. The door was another six feet. Half a dozen steps with glass snapping under each step and I stopped. Harrison nodded that he had me covered, and I reached out and tested the handle—it was unlocked. I turned the handle as gently as I could until I felt the latch release, then I pushed the door open and brought the Glock up to a shooting position.
Half a step into the room I caught the smell of beer, and then the door swung violently back toward me. I tried to react, but it was too swift. The door knocked me back against the frame and then started to close on me. I tried to bring up the Glock but the door closed on my arm, pinning it just above the elbow. Pain shot up into my shoulder and my legs buckled. If the Glock was still in my hand I couldn’t see it through the narrow opening or feel it in my fingers.
“Tell your partner to stop, or I shoot you right now,” Hazzard said from the other side of the door. I could smell the beer on his breath through the opening where my arm was caught in the door. I could see the barrel of his revolver as he pressed his hand to the edge of the door. What little I could see of the room appeared to be mostly empty and used for storage.
“I don’t think a man who just saved a woman’s life is going to shoot me,” I said.
Hazzard leaned into the door with his bulk, closing it on my arm even tighter.
“Tell him to stop,” he shouted.
I tried to speak but the pain in my arm took my breath away. I looked back at Harrison moving toward me with his gun raised and shook my head.
“Don’t come any closer,” I managed to say.
Harrison stopped, his weapon trained on the door that had me trapped and helpless.
“I’m not going to jail,” Hazzard said. “Do you understand?”
I could only manage a nod as the music in the far room fell silent.
“Why the hell didn’t you just walk away?” Hazzard said as he yanked the Glock out of my pinned hand and threw it across the room.
“Where’s Cross?” I said.
Hazzard made a sound that could have been a laugh. “What is it you think you’ve done, Lieutenant? ” he said.
I glanced over to Harrison as he took a careful step forward, trying to place his foot between pieces of glass so it wouldn’t give away his movement.
“Dazzle me with your detective skills,” Hazzard said.
I began to put images together in a new way, as if I were looking at a photo album that had fallen off a table and spread across the floor. Two young black men falling to the ground while another stands defiantly. An out-of-control cop picks him up in a chokehold until the last breath of life is squeezed from his lungs. Victoria Fisher hiding a piece of paper in a file. My brother running down a street in his socks. A glowing yellow sign—PUBLIC FAX—and now a clean sheet of plastic spread across the floor in Cross’s house.
Through the narrow opening in the doorway I could just see the edge of Hazzard’s face as he leaned against the door pinning my arm.
“It wasn’t you,” I said.
I saw a flash of recognition in Hazzard’s eyes.
“You haven’t killed anyone—not twenty years ago, not today. That’s why you brought Fleming here, why you saved her at Cross’s house.”
“Go on, Lieutenant,” Hazzard said.
I looked back at Harrison as he took another step toward me, a piece of glass snapping under his foot.
“It was Cross who picked up that kid and choked him to death,” I said. “It wasn’t you.”
Hazzard’s eyes appeared to drift for just a moment.
“He was just standing there, wouldn’t get down on the ground with the others,” Hazzard said. “Cross killed him before I knew what he was doing.”
“You were the senior officer about to make the leap to Homicide. You took responsibility because you knew there would be no questions asked of one of the force’s rising young stars. You might even get a citation for bravely subduing a
dangerous criminal with your bare hands. The investigation would go nowhere.”
“And didn’t,” Hazzard said.
“Until Victoria Fisher.”
“I didn’t know about that,” Hazzard said.
“Cross killed her when he discovered she knew the truth about the kid’s death.”
Harrison took a step toward me, pushing glass out of the way with the toe of his shoe.
“Did you help Cross make her death appear to be part of the River Killer’s work, or did he do that by himself ?” I said.
“It was done by the time I knew,” Hazzard said.
“But you did nothing because it could have ruined you,” I said.
“She was dead. I couldn’t bring her back.”
“She was murdered.”
“I couldn’t change that,” Hazzard said.
Another piece of glass cracked under Harrison’s foot as he inched closer.
“You could have stopped it from going any further,” I said.
“It was stopped. I spent eighteen years making sure Cross was never in a position to do any more harm.”
“Tell that to my brother.”
“I told Gavin to let it go,” Hazzard said.
Harrison took another step and was now nearly within reach of me.
“Cross killed three more people because of you,” I said.
“I didn’t know. I tried to stop it,” Hazzard said.
“Dana Courson didn’t even know why she died.”
Hazzard leaned into the opening in the doorway and I saw tears in his eyes.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” he whispered.
“Detective Williams had his throat cut. And you let Hector Lopez get hunted down like an animal because you knew he could identify Cross as the cop at the Western Union office who took the security tape.”
“I tried to stop that. I was there to stop it,” Hazzard said.
“You didn’t.”
Harrison was now three feet from me, his gun raised toward the opening in the doorway.
“Cross killed my brother,” I said.
Hazzard began to shake his head back and forth like a traumatized zoo animal in a cage.
“It’s not my fault,” Hazzard said.
