The Night Crew

by John Sandford

  ‘‘Yeah, well, probably a hundred thousand guys have bondage tapes. And not all the tapes are bondage.’’

  ‘‘All right. But something to keep in mind.’’ She put the box back.

  Harper said, ‘‘I hate going through a guy’s stuff like this. I’d hate to have somebody do it to me.’’

  ‘‘You have a box of porno tapes?’’

  ‘‘No. But I’ve got letters and pictures of old friends . . . Nothing that I wouldn’t show anyone, but I wouldn’t want somebody just trashing through it.’’

  ‘‘Interesting, though,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Get to see what people are really like.’’

  ‘‘Probably why you’re good at your job,’’ Harper said. He headed back to the kitchen and a moment later, said, ‘‘He’s got an answering machine.’’

  Anna had found nothing at all: ‘‘Run it back.’’

  The messages were all routine, most of them were from the same woman. The last one, time-stamped at six o’clock that evening, was male: ‘‘Molly said bring some Diet Pepsi, that’s all the Lees ever drink.’’

  ‘‘Find a Molly?’’ Anna asked.

  ‘‘There’s an address book . . .’’ Harper walked to the kitchen counter, picked up a plastic address book with a bank advertisement on the cover. He found a Molly on the first page, with a phone number. He checked, and it was the same phone number as the one on the refrigerator magnet.

  ‘‘Let’s go look,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘What’re we gonna do if we find him?’’ Harper asked. ‘‘We already lost the first guy we tried to follow . . .’’

  ‘‘Screw it: We don’t have any time. Let’s brace him. I’ll know the voice.’’

  Louis turned the phone number into a name and address, and the address was a small apartment three blocks from the university.

  ‘‘Upscale,’’ Harper said.

  The apartment had inner and outer doors, the inner doors locked, but a row of mailboxes showed one ‘‘M. O’Neill’’ on the second floor. Anna picked up the house phone and buzzed the apartment. A woman answered, and Anna said, ‘‘Is this Molly?’’

  ‘‘Yes?’’

  ‘‘My name is Anna Batory. I’m looking for Charles Mc-Kinley, and I was hoping he might be here.’’

  ‘‘Just a minute . . .’’

  McKinley came down, surprised to see her. Pushed open the inner door so they could go inside. ‘‘How’d you find me?’’

  His voice was a baritone, without the gravel of the voice on the phone. But the gravel, Anna thought, could be the product of sexual excitement, or aggression.

  ‘‘We’ve got a really serious problem,’’ Anna said.

  The kid didn’t hear her; instead, he babbled on, his hands jumping around, awkwardly, nerdlike. ‘‘God, you can’t believe the TV shows I’ve been on,’’ he said. His fair skin was going pink with excitement. ‘‘I had a couple of agents calling me . . .’’

  ‘‘Shut up, Charles,’’ Anna snapped.

  He stopped. ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘No more bullshit. We know you set up the whole show with Jason and the animal rights people, that the whole thing was a fake.’’

  McKinley seemed to pull inside himself, and the nerd positively disappeared. ‘‘Shoot,’’ he said. Then he shrugged and grinned at her, and said, ‘‘Good run while it lasted.’’

  Harper was off to one side, and Anna glanced at him. He shook his head, a quick one-sided horizontal move, but she read in the shake what she was thinking: Not this guy .

  ‘‘You know Jason’s dead?’’

  ‘‘What?’’ He was startled, and again, it seemed real enough.

  ‘‘What are you studying?’’ Anna asked suddenly. ‘‘Are you in theater, or something like that?’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s how I met Jason. What happened to him? Christ, I was supposed to call him but I couldn’t ever get him.’’

  ‘‘Because he was already dead,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Murdered. The same night as the raid. We thought you might know something about it.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ He looked quickly at Harper. ‘‘You can’t . . . are you the police?’’

  ‘‘The cops’ll be coming around,’’ Harper said. ‘‘But the guy who did the killing is stalking Anna, here. We’re trying to get a name: and your name came up.’’

  ‘‘My name? How’d my name come up?’’

  ‘‘Because whoever is stalking Anna probably picked her out that night—and the only thing she did that night was the raid, and a . . . suicide.’’

  ‘‘And I didn’t talk to anyone at the suicide,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘Well, I’m not doing it—I mean, I’ve been in New York.’’

  ‘‘New York?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. I was on the ‘Today’ show. I didn’t get back until this morning. That’s what we’re doing tonight, we’re celebrating.’’

  ‘‘Celebrating what?’’

  ‘‘Well, you know . . .’’ he gestured, meaning, I’m a hero . ‘‘They’ve had all these animal rights people on, and all these other weirdos, and so now they decided to get me on. I’ve been on like six shows . . . He was murdered? How was he murdered . . .’’

  ‘‘Listen, your friend Molly . . . Can you buzz her, ask her to come down. How many people are up there?’’

  ‘‘Six. No, seven.’’

  ‘‘Ask them to come down.’’

  McKinley went to the mailbox, pushed the call button, and Molly answered.

  ‘‘Uh, Molly, could you and the guys come down here? Something’s come up. Yeah, we’ll tell you when you get down. Right now . . .’’

  Anna was thinking furiously: ‘‘How’d you set us up? Whose idea was it?’’

  McKinley shrugged: ‘‘Jason’s, I guess. I’d seen him around, and mentioned I’d gotten a job feeding the animals up there at night. And he already knew Steve Judge with the animal rights group. I mentioned feeding the animals, and like, the next day, he was back with this idea.’’

  ‘‘So it was you and Steve and Jason,’’ Anna said.

  ‘‘And Sarah.’’

  ‘‘Sarah?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. You know, the Bee. She was the brains of the group; Steve was basically the jock who carried shit around for them.’’

  McKinley had a few more details about the raid: ‘‘If you think somebody was stalking you, you oughta look at that guard, everybody calls him Speedy. He’s a goofy sucker.’’

  ‘‘The guard at the medical center?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, the one with the crew cut. He’s some kind of Nazi.’’

  Anna shook her head: ‘‘Didn’t even see him.’’

  A stairway door popped open, and a woman with deep blue hair stepped into the lobby; six more people, three women, three men, all in their early twenties, trailed behind.

  ‘‘What’s going on?’’ the blue-haired woman asked.

  ‘‘Charles can tell you,’’ Anna said. ‘‘We have a very serious situation: a woman’s been kidnapped, and all we need to know is if Charles has been here for a while. Since eight o’clock, say.’’

  They all looked from Charles to Anna, then back to Charles, and then all simultaneously nodded.

  ‘‘Since seven,’’ blue-hair said. ‘‘Since ten after seven, I remember, I was putting the roast in . . .’’

  ‘‘Let’s go,’’ Anna said to Harper.

  Outside, Anna said, ‘‘We’re running out of time. I don’t know why he hasn’t called back. He’ll be calling. Let’s find the Bee. Maybe she can tell us . . .’’

  She was frantic: wanted to scream, she wanted to run somewhere, do something.

  ‘‘Anna, this is just like when I was chasing shadows on Jacob. We’re finding people, but not the guy. We’ve got to stop running long enough to think . And when I think about it, I think Wyatt might be right.’’

  ‘‘He’s in my neighborhood?’’

  ‘‘Something like that; that’s a possibility. He keeps co
ming to your house, fuckin’ with you.’’

  ‘‘Fucking with my house,’’ Anna said. She looked at her watch: He’d had Pam for at least a couple of hours now.

  ‘‘The other thing is . . .’’

  ‘‘Clark.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, that’s the other thing,’’ he said.

  twenty-eight

  Clark’s apartment was in Westwood, six blocks from the music building. Halfway there, Anna said, urgently, ‘‘We’ve got no time for this, no time.’’

  ‘‘We should have made time,’’ Harper said. They were halfway to Clark’s apartment complex. ‘‘And what else can we do? I mean, we could still call Wyatt, and have the cops do it.’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  Anna fell back in her seat, looked out the window: If the cops got close to Clark, they’d tear him apart. Because Clark was odd—he was a composer of classical music, probably the least likely job in America. And he actually made money at it. And he had attitudes that had driven even his friends crazy: arrogant, conceited, charming, angry.

  Not violent. Not that she’d ever seen. When he got angry, he got sullen, a cool, withdrawing anger, not a hot, platethrowing tantrum. He’d never tear her house up.

  On the other hand, her house wasn’t really torn up. Just the broken window. And the guy had to break a window, if he wanted to get in the house. The destruction wasn’t wanton . . .

  Except for the pot. What had he done with that pot?

  Anna shook her head, pushed her glasses back up her nose: she was losing it. She was five minutes from a confrontation she dreaded as much as anything she could think of, and she was worried about a flowerpot.

  ‘‘Jake.’’ She grabbed his arm. ‘‘Jake: we gotta go back to my place. Now.’’

  Exasperated. ‘‘Anna, we’re two minutes away . . .’’

  ‘‘Jake, forget it, we gotta go back.’’

  ‘‘Why?’’

  ‘‘Something happened to my flowerpot.’’

  The pot had been there earlier in the day. She didn’t remember seeing it, but she would have missed it. It was simply part of the landscape.

  Harper trailed Anna through the house, past the crimescene cops. Wyatt was on the telephone, said something, then put a hand over the receiver: ‘‘Find him?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. It’s not him,’’ Anna said. ‘‘Anything here?’’

  Wyatt shook his head and returned to the phone.

  At the back door, Anna flipped on the porch light, and went out to look at the spot where the pot had been. ‘‘It’s too big to carry anyplace,’’ she said. ‘‘It probably weighs fifty pounds.’’

  ‘‘I can’t see anything,’’ Harper said, scuffing around in the grass.

  ‘‘I’ll get a flashlight,’’ Anna said. She went inside, got a flashlight out of a kitchen drawer and went back out.

  The depression where the pot had stood was a clear ring of raw dirt in the grass going down to the canal. And two feet toward the canal, a lump of dirt that had probably been inside the pot.

  Anna pointed the light over the sea wall, into the murky canal water. The stuff looked like it might have come out of a radiator, a funny green, with gray depths to it. But down there in the water, was . . . something. Something that bobbed . . . up and down, up and down. Something with a round end. A head?

  She stepped back, shivered, turned and went up on the porch: ‘‘Hey, you guys,’’ she yelled. ‘‘You better come out here.’’

  She thought of Pam in the water, anchored by the pot; swallowed. Please don’t let it be. Please.

  One of the crime-scene cops came to the door. ‘‘What?’’

  Anna pointed the light into the water. ‘‘There’s something that shouldn’t be here . . . we can’t tell what it is.’’

  The cop walked out on the porch, followed by a second one, and then Wyatt, jostling past them.

  Anna said, ‘‘Somebody moved a big flowerpot, and maybe put it over the side. I . . .’’

  Wyatt looked into the water: ‘‘Oh, Christ,’’ he said, softly.

  The first cop looked down into the water, then dropped facedown onto the seawall, reached into the water. Couldn’t quite touch whatever it is.

  ‘‘I’ll have to get in,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ll wreck my suit.’’

  ‘‘Put in for it,’’ Wyatt said.

  ‘‘Fuck it.’’ The cop peeled off his jacket, shirt and pants, put his shoes back on, and slipped over the side in his underwear. ‘‘Cold,’’ he said.

  Then he reached down into the murk, and just as quickly pulled his hand back.

  ‘‘What is it?’’ Anna said. She could barely breathe.

  ‘‘Not a body,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  Wyatt exhaled, glanced at Anna. Below, the cop reached carefully through the water again, then said, ‘‘Plastic,’’ and lifted.

  The thing came out of the water, and Anna said, ‘‘Kayak. We were looking at the end of a kayak.’’

  Harper: ‘‘A goddamned kayak. That’s how he got in and out.’’

  Wyatt: ‘‘Shit. He’s not from here.’’

  ‘‘But somebody must have seen him putting it in, up by . . .’’

  And Anna looked at Harper and said, ‘‘Steve Judge.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  She grabbed him by the shirt, both hands, her face six inches from his: ‘‘Remember, out at the ranch? The woman, what’s her name? Daly? She said Steve Judge was up in Oregon running rivers.’’

  ‘‘But he was in Oregon,’’ Harper said.

  ‘‘What’s this?’’ Wyatt asked.

  Anna took a minute to explain, and Wyatt said, ‘‘Gotta check it.’’

  ‘‘He lives in Pasadena,’’ Anna said. ‘‘We’ve got an address.’’

  She found an address in her book, pulled the page and handed it to Wyatt.

  ‘‘Long shot,’’ Wyatt muttered, as he hurried back into the house.

  Another car arrived out front, and as they moved back inside, Anna called information, got the number for the Full Heart Ranch, dialed it. No answer. Dialed again. Still nothing.

  ‘‘If Steve’s the guy, we oughta go out to the ranch,’’ Anna told Harper.

  ‘‘Let the cops do it,’’ Harper said. ‘‘And it’s really a long shot.’’

  ‘‘What, send a deputy who doesn’t know what’s going on? He’d get lost out there, at night. The cops can surround his house in Pasadena, no problem, but if Steve’s the guy, and he’s up at the ranch, he’d see them coming a million miles away,’’ Anna said. ‘‘We know the road. We can go out there and park by the gate and walk in.’’

  ‘‘Anna, that’s crazy.’’

  ‘‘Well, what’re we gonna do?’’ she shouted at him. ‘‘He’s got Pam. He’s gonna kill her. We can’t just hang around here with two hundred cops. He’s not gonna be here, whoever he is.’’

  Harper looked at her, and the cops working in the house, and all the lights and cars, and said, ‘‘I’ll need a gun. We can stop at my place. It’s on the way.’’

  They took the San Diego over the hill, moving fast. Anna said, ‘‘The name of the ranch in Oregon. Was it Cut River Canyon?’’

  ‘‘Don’t remember. That sounds good.’’

  Anna punched in the information number for Oregon, got an operator: ‘‘I don’t show a Cut River Canyon, but I show a Cut Canyon . . .’’

  ‘‘That’s it.’’ Anna muttered the number to herself as she redialed. The phone rang eight times, Anna muttering, ‘‘C’mon, c’mon,’’ and on the ninth ring, was answered by an irritated woman, who snapped: ‘‘Hello?’’

  ‘‘Yes. My name is Anna Batory, from Los Angeles. I talked to someone at the Cut Canyon Ranch who connected me to a man named Steven Judge. Are you the woman who connected me?’’

  ‘‘Yes. Do you know what time it is? Steven isn’t here . . .’’

  Anna interrupted: ‘‘Ma’am, somebody in Los Angeles has murdered at least three people
in the last week and now has kidnapped a woman. And this is somehow tied to me. The police say he is stalking me. Mr. Judge’s name has come up a couple of times in the course of the investigation, but if he was really up at Cut Canyon when I called, then he can’t have anything to do with it.’’

  There was a long hesitation, and then the woman asked, ‘‘Are you with the police?’’

  ‘‘I can have the office in charge of the L.A. County serialmurder task force call you in five minutes, if you have something to say,’’ Anna said.

  Another pause. ‘‘And this isn’t a joke. We didn’t receive anything like this information . . . before.’’

  ‘‘You mean from Mr. Judge?’’

  ‘‘Yes, from Steve. The stalking, I mean, he suggested it might be somewhat the other way around, that’s why we . . .’’

  ‘‘Ma’am, I’m going to have Lieutenant Wyatt from the Santa Monica police department—he’s the head of the task force for this series of crimes—I’m going to have him call you in the next five minutes. Please tell him everything you know.’’

  ‘‘How do I know this isn’t some kind of, of, arrangement? That he’s a policeman?’’

  ‘‘If you would like, you could call the Santa Monica Police Department on your own. I’ll give you the area code, you can get the number from information—and they will transfer you to Lieutenant Wyatt.’’

  ‘‘Oh, God. Okay, I’ll call Santa Monica.’’

  ‘‘Wait five minutes,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I’ve got to tell Lieutenant Wyatt that you’ll be calling.’’

  Anna gave the woman the area code for Santa Monica, rang off, said to Harper, ‘‘I think he’s the one, all right, Steve Judge,’’ and punched in the Santa Monica police department number. A woman answered, and Anna told her that she needed to speak to Wyatt immediately, and spent a minute filling the woman in. She rang off again and Harper said, ‘‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’’

  She said, ‘‘Jake, I know you do. But he’s probably in Pasadena, anyway. This is just something that we can cover better than the cops could. If the cops even decide to go up to the ranch, it’ll take them three or four hours to get a SWAT team over there . . . trying to talk to Ventura, trying to figure out where it is and how to get there. They’ll have to get maps and all that stuff . . . There’s no way Pam’ll get out alive: he’s nuts, he’s itching to kill her. There’s no way they’ll even find him, until it’s too late. And if he gets out, where’s the evidence that he was even there?’’