The 18th Abduction

by James Patterson

  The Mission is gentrifying now, but five years ago, when we were working this case, it was dangerous after sunset. Even armed, I was on edge as the light faded out and the fog that usually evaded the Mission rolled in.

  Rich slowed the car and we crawled down Shotwell, both of us searching the darkening streets for a taco delivery vehicle and a man called Denny, last name unknown, no verified ID, who was maybe a pimp and was definitely a person of interest.

  We passed the intersections of Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth.

  Men with hoods obscuring their faces clustered on the unlit street corners, drug deals going down in plain sight. We passed Nineteenth and came upon Shotwell’s, on the corner of a seemingly quiet street known as the prostitution hub of the area.

  Chapter 51

  Something about this area—or maybe it was just the darkness of this case, the specter of a man who got off on torturing women—was stirring up memories for me. I’d worked the Mission as a beat cop, and I’d spent a lot of time on these streets. San Francisco had been a different city then. After years of gentrification, the city barely had anything that qualified as a “bad neighborhood.” Although the building had some polish now, I remembered Shotwell’s being a lot grittier.

  It was a personal landmark for me. When I was still a rookie, this tavern was an off-site HQ used by female cops. It was a meeting place to discuss how to deal with being ignored, belittled, and sexually harassed by the men of the SFPD.

  And with the fonder memories of those nights drinking with some of the toughest women I’d ever known, Shotwell’s brought back vivid images of a crime I’d worked when I was still green. Still unaccustomed to the shock of human savagery.

  I recalled every detail of that night that had begun with a crackling radio call. “Calling all cars. Homeless down at Shotwell and Twentieth.”

  My partner, Lisa Frazer, and I had answered the call.

  Lisa had ten years on the Job and was a wife, mom of two, and top marksman. As she proved often in the squad car, she could also carry a tune. Lisa was singing and driving as we patrolled the Mission that night, and when dispatch called at midnight, we responded.

  We were two blocks from the location and arrived in under a minute. Frazer braked the car, turned off the engine. The headlights went out. Without the headlights, the only illumination was one small light coming from a high window in a nearby apartment.

  It threw just enough wattage to shadow the victim, lying spread-eagle in the street.

  I jumped out of the car and got to the victim first. I took one look and called our street sergeant, Pat Correa, saying that we were on the scene and needed clear air, an ambulance, and CSI.

  She said, “I’m on it. I should be there in three, four minutes.”

  Thank God it was Correa. She was an old hand and a role model.

  Meanwhile, Frazer and I had work to do. By our flashlight beams, what I could see through the dark and fog looked to be the work of a serial psycho known around the Hall as the Bloodsucker. No one had ever seen him up close, so the man was also a myth, but he did cut throats, drink his victims’ blood, and leave his signature behind.

  My hand was shaking as I shined my light on the victim and said, “I’m Lindsay. I’m a cop,” and I asked her to hang in. An ambulance was en route. She groaned softly but didn’t open her eyes and didn’t move.

  The victim appeared to be a street person, middle aged, with knotted hair and rags for clothes. The plastic bag she used to carry her possessions was still looped over her left wrist.

  I sorted through it for ID and found an apple, a wad of tissues, a ball of tinfoil, and miscellaneous odds and ends, but no wallet, no ID.

  The four-inch-long gash to the side of the victim’s neck looked like a knife wound, and an artery had been cut. No mistake about it, she was bleeding out. So much blood was puddling around her, it was separating, and the iron smell of it blended with the urine stink coming up from the street.

  Frazer was quick to render aid, pressing her gloved hand to the victim’s pulsing wound.

  She said, “I’ve got her, Boxer. Preserve the scene.”

  The victim was still alive. Just.

  Was the Bloodsucker hanging back, watching us?

  I looked at the faces of the gathering crowd of bystanders. Gangbangers who ran the neighborhood, I thought. We didn’t have cell phones then, so I took pictures with my mind, memorizing what little I could see of the rubberneckers even as I ordered them away from the immediate area.

  One of the onlookers was a husky guy with big hands, and he just wouldn’t step back. I warned him off. I got in his face and blocked his access, but he mocked me, crouched into a boxer’s stance, and danced on the balls of his feet, daring me to take him on.

  And then he rushed me.

  My father was a bad father, a worse husband, and also a dirty cop. Maybe I was trying to make up for all that by becoming a cop myself. One thing Marty Boxer did teach me: “With the name Boxer, you better know how to box.”

  I thought the husky guy could hurt me, but I was more afraid that he’d corrupt the scene. So I drew back my fist and punched him in the face with all my strength.

  He howled, staggered backward holding his hands over his nose. The crowd I had shooed away reassembled and began hooting, catcalling me and Frazer, “Here, piggy, piggy.”

  I was worried that this mob was getting out of control. Two of us. More than a dozen of them. I fired a shot into the air to get their attention. I remembered, too late, that warning shots were illegal, but I figured I’d explain later. We were outnumbered and I was afraid for my life.

  It was almost pure bravado when I yelled, “Who wants to go to jail for interfering with law enforcement?”

  There was laughter. This was bad. A menacing scrum of kids was having a good time with the lady cop. They might have weapons. I would be surprised if they didn’t. The crime scene was still exposed, and it was just me holding off gangbangers, and Frazer standing between the victim and death.

  I pushed through the hecklers, and when I got to the car, I called dispatch, demanding backup forthwith.

  Correa’s voice came over the radio. “I’m on Mission and Twentieth. Watch for my lights.”

  The gangbangers heard Correa’s voice over the radio saying that she was three blocks away, and it backed them off. I’d bought a minute to tape off the street and I got to it.

  Frazer said, “I’m sorry I can’t help with this.”

  I said, “Do you see that?”

  I flashed my light on the brick wall, and there, finger-painted in blood, was the Bloodsucker’s signature, the sketch of a grinning face, blood running down his chin.

  Frazer was asking the victim for her name, telling her to stay with us, repeating her promise that she would be all right.

  The guy I’d punched was sitting with his back against a car, holding his nose and howling. I prayed that we’d gotten to the victim in time. That someone had seen the victim’s attacker.

  I took out my notepad and shouted to the ominous and growing crowd. Not just young men anymore, thank God. “Did anyone see the attack on this woman?”

  One old man raised his hand. He was wearing a Giants cap and a plastic bag over his clothes. I felt mist on my face. It was starting to rain.

  “I saw him,” he said.

  I said, “Come with me.”

  Chapter 52

  I still remembered how it had seemed to me, then, as though everything were working against Lisa and me, and most of all, against the victim, who hadn’t yet been able to tell us her name.

  But there was a witness.

  I steered the elderly man to a place where we could speak outside the tape. I stood with my back to the wall.

  I asked him for his name and address.

  He pointed to his chest and said, “I’m Sam Winkler.” Then he pointed to a large cardboard box halfway down the block, leaning against the wall of a building, and said, “My centrally located, eco-friendl
y, multipurpose abode.”

  He was deadpan, but I had to smile.

  While keeping my eyes on the street, I asked Sam to tell me what he had seen.

  He said, “This strange guy passed right by me—four feet away. He was talking to himself, very loud and very crazy. I didn’t understand him. I don’t think it was English. Maybe Swedish. I never saw him before. I was just glad he kept going. I didn’t mess with him.”

  “Tall? Short? Black? White? Young? Old?”

  Sam Winkler shrugged, then said, “Medium-sized and skinny.”

  I made a note. “And you saw the attack?”

  “Some of it. I stood up to make sure he was gone, and Rona was sitting right there against the building when this dude came up to her. He hunched down. She cried out, and I couldn’t see what he did from where I was. But I saw when he wrote on the wall with his finger.”

  “You did?”

  Sam said, “That was him, right? The Bloodsucking bastard?”

  “The victim’s name is Rona?”

  “Yeah. That’s what she calls herself.”

  “Last name?”

  He shrugged for the second time.

  I said, “Do you see that man here now?”

  “No, he took off thataway.” He pointed southbound toward Twenty-First Street. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “Would you recognize him from a picture?”

  “I wanna help,” Sam told me. “But my eyes aren’t good. And it’s blacker than black here, right?”

  He was right. Almost total darkness with a chilly froth of fog.

  The bystanders were getting rowdy again and a half dozen of them began to rock our car. It was a dangerous situation. I pictured ordering them to line up with their faces to the wall, frisking them, cuffing them.

  I’d never pull that off. It was not a one-cop job and Frazer was occupied.

  Where was our sergeant? Where was backup?

  I turned to see Frazer still keeping pressure on the fire hose that was Rona’s severed carotid artery. She was saying, “Hang on, please, dear. Help is on the way. I promise.”

  I thanked Sam for his time and went on to a witness found after I’d left the scene. This one was high on drugs and had not seen the crazed, bloodsucking psycho. Of the six men and women I questioned, only Sam had seen the actual assault, and his eyewitness report was almost useless.

  To my great relief, Sergeant Correa arrived with lights and sirens on full blast and a cruiser drafting behind her. The ambulance pulled up, and after a moment the victim was lifted in and the bus took off.

  Once the victim was gone, the crowd dispersed, and Frazer, Correa, and I waited for CSI with our hands on our guns. Correa went back to her car and took the call from dispatch, who informed her that Rona had died in the bus en route to the hospital.

  Correa told Frazer, “I hope yours was the last face Rona saw before she died, not her killer’s.”

  I felt sad and mad. He’d been right here, and for all any of us knew, he was still here, one of the shadowy figures just out of reach.

  He was never caught. The killings of this type stopped, and that meant that the Bloodsucker had gotten scared, or married, or moved on. But unless he was dead, the odds were good that his blood lust was only dormant.

  Another killer the SFPD chased, a sadist, committed a dozen murders. Then he put himself on the shelf for thirty full years, holding a regular job, belonging to the neighborhood watch and family-type organizations. Until he missed the attention and began to kill again.

  Had the Bloodsucker retired? Or was he still living in the Mission, hiding out, working as a barber or a librarian, watching cartoons with his kids on the weekends, biding his time?

  “Lindsay! Look!” Was he watching us now?

  My reverie dissolved when Rich shouted my name, then said, “Chevy Tahoe at three o’clock.”

  The Tahoe was dark blue, a full-size SUV with logos spelling out the taqueria’s name and phone number on the side doors. Across the street from the vehicle was the Taqueria del Lobo, a small walk-in take-out taco shop.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  I called in our location, and my partner double-parked beside the Tahoe, blocking it in its spot.

  Conklin and I got out of our car into a neighborhood of bad old memories and ghosts that were still quite alive in my mind.

  We waded through the fog.

  Chapter 53

  The blue Tahoe had the Taqueria del Lobo logo on both sides.

  The vehicle was locked, but I shined my light through the windows to look all around the interior. It was clean and tidy. There wasn’t even a taco wrapper in the footwell. Richie checked the tags and called out to me that the number was the same as what we’d gotten from the DMV.

  Across the street and down a few doors was the taco shop. The sign overhead was a line drawing of a grinning wolf saying “Bite me” in a voice balloon. The sign hanging in the window read OPEN. We crossed the street and Rich pushed the door. A bell tinkled and I followed him in.

  The place was small and brightly lit, and smelled delicious. That reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since coffee and toast with Joe this morning, eleven long hours ago. Something dancy was playing over the sound system, and three men in work clothes were hunched over one of the small tables, eating tacos and refried beans.

  The woman behind the counter was in her late twenties, with auburn hair in a ponytail and various tats on what I could see of her arms, mostly of the hearts-and-butterflies variety.

  She looked at us, but her big brown eyes swung to my partner.

  “What can I get for you?” she asked.

  “We’re with the SFPD.” Conklin smiled, introduced us, asked the woman for her name.

  “Lucinda. Drucker.”

  He said, “We have a few questions for you, Ms. Drucker.”

  “Questions for me? ”

  I stepped in and showed her the photo of Denny on my phone. I asked, “Do you know this man?”

  She scrutinized the photo, and I swiped the screen, showing more photos from the same set the ATM had shot of the parking lot. Finally she said, “I think that’s Denny.”

  “Last name?”

  “Lopez.”

  I said, “Denny works here?”

  “Denny’s my boyfriend. What’s wrong? Why do you need to know?”

  I said, “Denny was seen with a vehicle like the one across the street. It was parked near a crime scene. He may have seen something that could help us with our investigation.”

  A dark-haired man with a tattoo of a wolf on the side of his neck came out of the kitchen and into the small main room. He wore a stained white apron over his T-shirt and jeans and was drying his hands on a dish towel. This had to be Jose Martinez, the taco shop’s proprietor and owner of the matching SUV.

  Conklin and I were both wearing SFPD Windbreakers. Martinez noticed, scowled, and said, “Can I help you?”

  Lucinda said, “I got this, Jose. It’s personal. I need to take a smoke break, okay?”

  The boss said to me, “This is my shop. Did she do something wrong?”

  “We’re doing an investigation, and Lucinda may know a witness who can help us out.”

  He was going to go nuts when I told him we were going to impound his vehicle, but I wasn’t ready to disclose that yet. First we needed Lucinda to talk about Denny.

  He said to Lucinda, “Your boyfriend get into an accident with my car?”

  “No, no, Jose. No, he did not.”

  Martinez looked at her, walked to the front window, peered out until he saw the SUV. Then he flapped his dish towel over his shoulder and glared at Lucinda, saying, “Five minutes, Lucy. You gotta help me out here.”

  Martinez went to the cash register as the three men stood, balled up their trash, and dunked it into a bin. Lucy ducked under the counter and came around with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  Given Lucinda’s noticeable anxiety, I thought she might refuse to give De
nny up. Regardless, I was betting that Carly Myers had left a print or a trace of DNA inside the SUV. Maybe Susan and Adele had also left some trace.

  I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be optimistic, but I felt this close to bagging Denny Lopez.

  Chapter 54

  I was high on hope as we followed Lucinda Drucker out to Valencia Street.

  I watched and waited as she fumbled with her lighter, lit her cigarette, and took a long drag. She exhaled. Then she said, “I don’t know where Denny is. I called him a couple times today and he didn’t call me back yet.”

  Conklin asked for Denny’s number and hers, and she reluctantly complied. He asked, “Under what circumstances did Denny use the company car?”

  “He does lunchtime deliveries. Sometimes I let him take it after we’re closed.”

  “Martinez is okay with that?”

  “Please don’t…look, he’ll fire me.”

  Conklin asked, “Do you know where Denny was last Tuesday at about this time?”

  “Oh, hell no. I don’t ask him his business.”

  She rubbed her shoulder as if she was remembering something that had happened when she’d asked him his business before. She asked, “What kind of crime was he supposed to have seen?”

  “Does Denny do other kinds of work?” I asked, sidestepping her question by inserting one of mine.

  “I told you, I don’t ask him his business. Here’s what I want to say: I love Denny. He loves me. I dropped out of high school ten years ago, and he was my first boyfriend and my only. I really know him. Understand? He would never do anything wrong.”

  I said, “But you don’t ask him his business.”

  She scowled, took a drag on her cigarette, flicked ashes.