Graveyard

by William C. Dietz

  Molly was quick to jump in. “That has nothing to do with the subject of this press conference.”

  “Oh, but it does,” Zumin said serenely. “It’s my understanding that Mr. Deon Eddy was killed by a bullet from a .45 semiautomatic pistol that originally belonged to Detective Lee’s father . . . And he was the Bonebreaker’s eighth victim.”

  That caused something of a stir, and there wasn’t much that Lee could say other than, “I have no comment. Questions like that one should be directed to Dr. Kane’s attorney.”

  “That will be all for today,” Molly said hurriedly. “We’ll release an update regarding Chief Corso’s condition at nine tomorrow morning.”

  Lee looked at Yessum to see how he had reacted to Zumin’s question but the chief was chatting with one of the reporters. So all she could do was go back to her desk and return to work. Even though Lee had been able to empty her in-box earlier in the day, another load of stuff had arrived while she was gone. And an eight-inch-by-eleven-inch manila mailer was sitting atop the pile. She knew it had been scanned, opened, and cleared by internal security prior to being delivered to her desk. It was a process put in place after the package the Bonebreaker had sent her the month before.

  Lee picked it up and looked at the return address. The envelope was from Dr. Alan Penn. And judging from the address, he lived in the West Adams section of Los Angeles. Had she met him? No, Lee didn’t think so. But the mailer was heavy. She dumped the contents onto her desk, and a bound journal hit with a thud. The loose sheet of paper was wrinkled but still legible.

  Dear Detective Lee,

  My name is Dr. Alan Penn. I am a semiretired criminologist and profiler. I worked for the FBI prior to the plague and taught criminal psychology at the University of Maryland. Fortunately, my wife and I moved to LA just before the outbreak. Edith is gone now, but I’m writing what will probably be my final book, the subject of which is the Bonebreaker.

  I mention these things in order to establish my bona fides and explain why the Bonebreaker sent his journal to me. Assuming that it was he rather than a deranged wannabe. But you’re an authority where the Bonebreaker is concerned—and can command the resources required to determine if the diary is genuine. Assuming it is, the journal will provide you with valuable insights into the Bonebreaker’s character and give me the opportunity to use excerpts in my book.

  Finally, please accept my condolences regarding your father’s death.

  Sincerely yours,

  Dr. Alan Penn

  Lee put the letter aside and took a moment to flip pages. The journal was written diary style and packed with marginalia, unbound inserts, and newspaper clippings. All of which was especially interesting since it had been vetted by a trained criminologist. Or so it seemed. Lee made a note to run a search on Penn. Still, the journal was or could be a very exciting development, and Lee planned to read it soon.

  That task would have to wait, however. Lee had a different priority at the moment . . . She was going to put Kane first instead of last and visit him. And, if a TV crew jumped her, Lee planned to flip them off. She placed the journal in her briefcase, grabbed her bag, and left. A short drive took her to an overpriced parking lot located two blocks from the MDC. By that time the sun was low in the sky, and dark shadows pointed at the jail.

  As before, Lee had to show ID, surrender her weapons, and fill out a form prior to being admitted. Because people were off work by then, the waiting room was packed with friends and relatives, all there to see one of the inmates. Lee felt a kinship with them now—and a lot more sympathy than she had earlier.

  Twenty minutes passed before her number was called and Lee could enter a booth. Kane was there, handset to his ear, smiling at her through scratched Plexiglas. “Hi, hon,” Lee said, as she picked up her phone. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too,” Kane replied. “Congratulations! You found the Bonebreaker’s hideout . . . That’s awesome.”

  “You get to watch the news?”

  “Not often,” Kane admitted. “Most of the guys prefer sports. But I lucked out.”

  Then he frowned. “You shouldn’t be here. I heard the question Zumin asked you . . . The bitch could be out there lying in wait.”

  Lee shrugged. “I don’t care. I wanted to see you.”

  Both were silent for a moment as they eyed each other through the barrier. There was so much to say—and no way to say it. Not with jailers listening in. “I can’t go into details,” Lee said finally, “but there is a promising lead where your case is concerned.”

  Kane’s expression brightened. “Really? That’s wonderful.”

  “It could be,” Lee replied cautiously. “But there’s more work to do. Just remember that I love you, and people are working to get you out of here.”

  Kane nodded. “I know . . . Thank you.”

  “Okay,” Lee said, “I can’t come here often, but we’ll talk on the phone.”

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you,” Lee replied. And with that, the conversation came to an end.

  Lee rose, blew him a kiss, and turned to go. Was Zumin waiting outside? Lee steeled herself for a possible confrontation as she paused to collect her weapons. Then, with her jaw clenched, she left the MDC. The only person waiting for her was a homeless man who wanted a handout. Lee gave him a five-nu bill and returned to her car.

  Lee had plenty to think about as she drove home, parked the car, and took the elevator up to Kane’s condo. It was dark, and turning the lights on did very little to make the place seem less lonely. Don’t be silly, Lee told herself. You lived alone for years.

  Yeah, the other her responded, and I didn’t know what I was missing.

  Lee dumped her bag and briefcase on the couch prior to heading for the bedroom and a quick shower. Then it was time to microwave her dinner, pour herself a glass of wine, and curl up with a good book. Or what could be a bad book in this case.

  The journal was strange in a number of ways, not the least of which was the fact that, while most of it was written in the first person, certain sections had been penned in the third person. Especially those that described violence. It was almost as if the author wanted to distance himself from what he’d done—and Lee wondered what Kane would think of those passages. For her part, Lee wasn’t ready to dive in yet.

  After sampling sections of the book Lee poured herself another glass of wine and went back to page one.

  I was five years old when the plague broke out, and like most kids children of that age, had only a limited understanding of what was happening around me. But I’m older now . . . Old enough to read up on the subject—and put my memories down on paper.

  I know my parents worked at LAX because they took me there . . . Daddy took me up into the control tower so I could look out at the planes—and mommy let me spin her chair around. Looking back, I realized they were good jobs, or would have been except for B. Nosilla. But it was an airborne disease. And, since people had been sent to LAX to spread it around, my parents were vulnerable. Why? Because the government was incompytent that’s why . . . Because they didn’t care. Mommy got sick first. I remember how pale she looked—and the way the bathroom smelled when she was done in there.

  Daddy did the best he could to take care of her but he got sick also to. Then the people in white suits came. I didn’t know why. But now, based on the ressearch I’ve done, the answer is obvious. The neighbors turned us in. To pertect themselves? Maybe. But the city health department was paying a fifty dollar per head bounty for “positives” by that time.

  So the pigs came. They were dressed in white suits with stick-on badges and name tags. I could see their faces through the foggy plastic and they looked like monsters. I was scared of them, but daddy said they were scared of me, and maybe that was true because they didn’t want to touch me. They made daddy carry mommy to the bus. He fell down once and t
hey yelled at him to get up. I was crying, and trying to help, as he got to his feet.

  Daddy managed to carry mommy to the bus where a passenger helped him. There were other people to . . . Sick people and the air smelled like vomit. I had to sit on a woman’s lap and she thought I was her son.

  Later, much later, I wondered what happened to our house. And to our belongings. So I did some reesearch. And sure enough . . . It was common for neighbors to turn positives in and take all of their possessions. May they burn in hell.

  Eventually, when I turned twenty-one, the government gave me fifty thousand nu as “compensation.” Fuck them. No-body can compensate me for the ride to the quarantine center. It was hell on earth. Tens of thousands of sick people were dumped into a tent city filled with people to sick to take care of themselves. There were sanikans, but not enough of them, so people went to the bathroom outside their tents. That led to the spread of callera, which killed hundreds of people who weren’t BN positive—but had been sent to the camp because they might be carriers. But God was smiling down on me, and I didn’t catch so much as a cold.

  Fresh water arrived in tankers each morning. Those who could took the bottles they’d been given and got in line. Daddy and I went there together. Then, when he got to sick to do it, I took over. The bottles were heavy and it was hard for me to carry them. And sometimes people who were to lazy to wait in line took my water. Then I had to find new jugs and start over.

  All of this was detailed in the factual manner that Lee might use to write a police report. But the facts were so horrible that no exaggeration was required to make her cry. And, while the Bonebreaker had caused her to weep before, it had never been for him. She continued to read.

  Oddly enough there was plenty to eat. Military rations not only arrived on trucks, they fell out of the sky on parachutes, and some of them landed on tents. But because most of the people in the camp were nazeous, and suffering from diherea, pallets of MREs sat untouched. I was hungry. So it didn’t take me long to open meals and pick through the contents. The candy and cookies were my favorites.

  Mommy died three days after we arrived. I watched the police in the white suits throw her body onto an already heavily loaded truck. I screamed, and begged a policeman to let me go with her, and he told me to “shut up.” Years later I learned that tens of thousands of such bodies were dumped into mass graves—and there was no way to know which one my mother was buried in.

  A picture of the vast ditch called CBP-314 had been inserted into the journal and it was filled with rag-doll corpses. Lee winced and hurried past it.

  Daddy got even sicker and it was hard for him to talk. But somehow he managed to say goodbye. And I remember every word he said. “You’re going to servive,” he croaked. “That’s because you’re immune. ‘Immune’ means you won’t get sick like mommy and daddy did. I wish I could tell you who will take care of you but I don’t know. But god loves you—and he will watch over you.

  “Now take this piece of paper and never let it go. It’s a list of the policemen who were mean to us. When you grow up all big and strong I want you to find the men on this list and kill them for mommy and daddy. Will you do that son? Will you? And not just them . . . But their children too. Because bad people don’t deserve to have children.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” I told him and took the piece of paper. And I kept that piece of paper all through the years in the orphanage and beyond. I still have the original but here’s a copy.

  Lee felt something akin to ice water trickle through her veins as she read the list of murdered policemen. And there, scrawled next to the number “8,” was her father’s name.

  ELEVEN

  LEE ROSE TWO hours earlier than usual, showered, and got ready for work. Breakfast consisted of coffee and a stale blueberry muffin from a drive-thru restaurant.

  Lee’s heart was beating a little faster than usual as she approached the Street Services Garage and for good reason. She was about to risk her career for Kane by using her position to run a records check she shouldn’t run. Would someone notice it? Probably not . . . But if they did, Internal Affairs would nail her. Who had the opportunity to access the records on that particular morning? Answer: Detective Lee. And who had the motive to help accused murderer Dr. Lawrence Kane? Answer: Detective Lee. Case closed. Next.

  With that in mind, Lee parked the car, entered the building, and went straight to her desk. Other people were present but very few compared to the number who would arrive when the day watch started at 7:00 A.M.

  Should someone ask, Lee planned to tell them that she’d come in early in order to work through her in-box. To support that story she logged on to her computer and opened her e-mail. Then she removed a thumb drive from her bag, put the bag in a drawer, and pushed it closed.

  Lee said “Hi” to a homicide detective as they passed each other in the main corridor, took a left, and made her way back past some cubicles to the cramped space where records clerk Misty Gammon did her job. Gammon was employed by the LAPD’s Records and Identification Division. It ran a stand-alone computer system that was isolated from the Internet, and because of that, it was virtually impossible to hack.

  That was no defense against someone’s making unauthorized use of it from the inside, however, which Lee was about to do, thanks to the fact that Misty had her log-on written on a slip of paper in her lap drawer. A fact known to at least a dozen detectives as well as various clerks who took over when Misty was ill or on vacation. It wasn’t right, of course, but like so many workarounds, it solved a problem, and higher-ups had chosen to ignore it.

  After a quick glance over her shoulder, Lee sat down on the thick cushion that Misty kept on her chair, pulled the lap drawer open, and eyed the slip of paper that was taped to the beige-colored metal. Keys rattled as Lee entered the alphanumeric code and hit ENTER.

  When the Records Division interface appeared, Lee chose “Motor Vehicle Licenses,” and entered “Janice Olin.” Bingo! There it was: Olin’s name, birth date, and address. It took only seconds to transfer the data to the thumb drive and slip that into a pocket.

  Then, conscious of the seconds that were ticking away, Lee exited the system. The moment the screen went dark, Lee left the area and returned to her desk, where she heaved a sigh of relief. She was in the clear, for the moment at least, since Misty had no reason to check recent activity on her terminal, and even if she did, the clerk would assume Olin was under investigation by one of the detectives.

  No, there wouldn’t be any trouble unless IA got wind of what she’d been up to, and Lee planned to avoid that. As for the information itself, Lee would follow up on that later. But first it was necessary to get through the day.

  Lee wanted to have one of the department’s experts look at the Bonebreaker journal and give her an opinion as to whether it had actually been written by him. So she placed a call to a forensic document examiner named Alvin Soltis. She’d dealt with the specialist before—and wasn’t looking forward to doing so again.

  But like most of the people on the day watch, Soltis hadn’t arrived yet. So she left a message and went to work on clearing the backlog of e-mails. And she was working on her weekly activity report when the phone rang. “Detective Lee.”

  “This is Alvin,” Soltis said. “Long time no see. What can I do for you?”

  Lee gave him a general idea of what she wanted and Soltis agreed. “Thanks to all of the material recovered from the Bonebreaker’s hideout, plus the notes he sent in after some of the murders, we have lots of handwriting samples to work with. When can I expect the most beautiful detective in the department to arrive?”

  “I don’t know,” Lee said. “You’ll have to ask her. I’ll be there at eight thirty.” Then she hung up. Some people change over time—Soltis wasn’t one of them.

  Just prior to roll call, Lee managed to corral Yanty and Prospo long enough to show them the journal—and tell them about
the appointment with Soltis. “Providing this thing is real, and it fits with the evidence collected in the cemetery, it could help us create an accurate profile. But remember . . . We’ve got to focus on the Corso shooting at the moment. I’m scheduled to meet with Carolina Moss at noon.”

  “I’m trying to get a one-on-one with Ma,” Yanty put in. “But he doesn’t seem all that eager to talk.”

  “I have an appointment to see Stryker at his gym,” Prospo added. “He’s a fitness freak.”

  “You should try it,” Yanty suggested. “Before your blood turns to gravy.”

  Prospo looked hurt. “Let he without brains throw the first stone.”

  Lee laughed. “Okay, you two . . . Let’s go to roll call. And, Dick, if you fall asleep, do it with your eyes open.”

  Roll call was a routine affair for the most part. According to Jenkins, Corso was not only stable but able to speak. A good sign indeed.

  The team working on the Halvo kidnapping had very little progress to report, the detective in charge of Operation Roundup announced that her group was about to be disbanded, and Prospo gave a brief presentation regarding the Bonebreaker case.

  So far, all of the evidence gathered from the underground hideout was consistent with the theory that the killer had lived there for a long period of time. And based on items collected there, a long-standing question had been answered: By what means was the Bonebreaker able to incapacitate so many armed policemen? And then abduct them?

  The answer was one of the many disguises at his disposal, combined with a long barreled CO2-powered pistol, and a dart loaded with Ketamine—an anesthetic that was widely available on the street. “Once an individual was subdued,” Prospo told them, “the Bonebreaker could load him or her into a stolen vehicle and wait for night to fall. Then he would drive to a spot on the west side of the cemetery, where a section of fence had been loosened.