The Dark Halo, page 12
The confusion returned to Ford’s face.
“I don’t know who that is.”
“No? All right. What about Milton Vandenberg?”
“I killed him in that hotel room. Forced him to eat all those pills. Told him I’d kill his kid if he didn’t do it. Said I’d do some stuff before I killed her, you know? He got the picture.”
“How did you get into the room?”
Ford shrugged. “I knocked; he opened the door.”
“Okay, so he ate all the pills, did you bring the wine?”
“He had that already. I let him drink it, helped him swallow the pills.”
Coombes nodded, making notes in his notebook. It was all being recorded, but he liked being able to pull out points at the time or refer to something again during interviews.
“Tell me about the pills. Where did you get them?”
“I broke into a retirement place, they had loads of pills. I chose them.”
“When was this?”
“Last year. They were still in date, I figured they’d work.”
“Then what? Did you wait for him to die, or did you leave before?”
“I waited. Didn’t want him calling for help.”
“And if he wasn’t dead, you wouldn’t be able to leave the coins on his eyes.”
Ford nodded is big head emphatically. “Exactly.”
“So he’s dead, you’ve done the coins, then what?”
“I left.”
“You do anything else before you left?”
The brow came down again as he thought about it, before brightening
“I knocked the wine onto the floor. Made a big stain. Looked like blood.”
“And then you left?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take anything from the scene? Some guys like mementos.”
Ford’s mouth turned upside down.
“Not me. That’s evidence. I’m too smart.”
“Yet you’ve come in here today, confessing.”
The big man scratched the side of his face.
“It was a game back then. Cat and mouse. I always wanted to be caught, but you guys were getting nowhere. The game stopped being fun.”
Ford was a tourist. He only knew what had been reported. He didn’t need to ask about the other deaths, Ford was wasting his time.
“You’re not our typical walk-in, Mr. Ford. Those guys are small, nerdy. You know the kind. They live with their mom and maybe she’s still alive, maybe not. Point is, you could snap ’em like twigs. They’re here to prove something, what are you here to prove?”
“That I killed those people. They had it coming.”
“Can I call you Walter?”
“Sure.”
“Here’s my problem, Walter. If I ask cops here ten years from today if they remember that big guy that came in to confess to the Ferryman killings, every single one of them is going to say yes. You’re kind of memorable. The Ferryman sneaks in and out, nobody sees him. He’s like a ghost. Some claim he doesn’t even exist. You, I could track from space.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Ford struggled to his feet, a task made more difficult by the chair and table being fixed to the floor and his handcuffs pulling him forward. Coombes forced himself to stay calm.
“Sit down and relax.”
To his surprise, his voice was as cool as an airline pilot and the big man instantly responded to it, slumping back down. Ford hung his head. Rather than push him again, Coombes let the words come to the other man. It took a couple of minutes.
“I got nothing, man. No job, no girl. My truck’s in the shop and I can’t afford to fix it. I took the bus here. I saw this guy on TV, a murderer, killed three women in Texas. He’s engaged. Women write him letters every day. They’re going to make a movie about him.”
“That’s what you wanted?”
Ford nodded, then shrugged his big shoulders.
“I wanted to be famous. Be on TV, like you.”
Coombes closed his notebook.
“I don’t know if you thought this through or not, Walter, but prisons are not made with people your size in mind. You think it’s hard out here? Write to someone on the inside, ask them what it’s like. Better yet, go speak to one of them. They’re coffins for the living. If I had a dog, I wouldn’t treat it like that. Don’t waste your life, don’t hurt someone because you think there’s a conjugal visit or a movie deal in your future. It’s not like that.”
“What do I do?”
“This world’s bad enough. Try making it better, not worse.”
“It’s too late for me, I can’t be that guy.”
“Sure you can.”
He stood and walked away. As he got to the door, Ford spoke again.
“That Ferryman, he’s making the world better.”
Coombes sighed. He needed a coffee.
17
Maxwell Rollins had one of the biggest desks in the department. It contained an ultra-wide screen that at first glance looked like three screens pressed together. Unlike most of RHD, Rollins’ computer was state of the art, never more than 6 months old. Coombes walked up casually behind the tech and stood there, hovering. The other man hated being watched, and had attached a blind spot mirror to detect people standing behind him.
“Something I can do for you, Coombes?”
“A suspect gave us video footage as an alibi. I want you to check it out.”
“I heard. A film director.”
“Screenwriter.”
“Whatever. I’m a little busy.”
It was always the same with Rollins. He was too busy to breathe most days, and he expected everyone to be super grateful for the slightest attention he might give them. Coombes leaned over, into the smaller man’s space. He was not above intimidation.
“Too busy for a serial killer. Wow. These must be super important traffic cams you’re looking at here. What happened? Your mom get popped running a stop light?”
Rollins sighed. “Give me the drive.”
Coombes smiled and handed it over. Rollins plugged it into his computer and opened the folder. He looked at the files, hummed to himself, then opened a new program. The screen filled with windows. All of the cameras running together, synchronized. At the top of the page was a larger playback of camera 1. Of course, Coombes thought, this is how it would show on Curtis’ system. Not as a list of separate files, but as a whole. The cameras were showing just after midnight on the first of November.
“Help me, Coombes. What are we looking for?”
“I need to know that the dates on these files haven’t been changed. That each camera is showing the same day, and that we’re looking at is a genuine calendar month, not different days stuffed into a folder. Basically, anything that points to his alibi being bullshit.”
“You realize, Detective, that the timestamp is displayed over the footage?”
“So what?”
“Well, if he changed the date of the file, it wouldn’t change what appears on the recordings. That’s encoded at the time of the recording.”
“At the movies I’ve seen aliens and dinosaurs. I’ve seen actors and singers perform after their death. I figure a timestamp is small beer.”
“All right, let’s think about this. First of all, you’d have to remove the original timestamp and generate new pixels to fill in where the numbers were. There are 16 cameras running 24 hours a day for a month in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. That’s a lot to retouch, even using an AI. Then you’d have to go back and drop in the new timestamp which is no breeze either because it’s semi-transparent.” Rollins paused and shook his head. “If he was really going to do that then for sure he’d only give you footage for the day of, not for a whole month. The amount of extra work that adds is off the charts.”
Coombes nodded. He had already calculated that there was almost 12,000 hours of recordings. Even watching it would take too long, retouching it would take forever.
“What about metadata?”
Rollins smiled. “Well look at you joining the twenty-first century. This program actually uses the metadata to play back these files, that’s how they’re synchronized. Up here it shows the date and time, which is the same for all cameras. If your guy changed the date on one file then that camera would freeze and a red box would appear around it.”
“So, in your opinion, this is all legit?”
“Put it this way, Coombes. Your guy didn’t alter these files after the fact. I am 100% certain of that. What’s on them, happened just as they were recorded. If he’s on camera here, then I guess he isn’t your killer.”
Coombes had a new idea and had the tech bring up the 22nd, the day of Vandenberg’s murder. Because he’d watched it already, he was able to get Rollins to advance it in a matter of seconds to just before Curtis first appeared. This time, because all the cameras were playing, he was able to watch Jake Curtis move from one camera to the next as he walked through his house before finally curling up on the cedar floor next to the window.
“Could he have looped this footage over and over somehow? He’s like that for almost 36 hours.”
“Like the bus video in Speed?”
Coombes hadn’t seen that movie for a very long time, but he knew immediately what Rollins was talking about.
“Yes! Could he have done that?”
Rollins stroked his chin.
“Not for 36 hours. The problem is the light changing through the window during the day. Even if he only did it for two or three hours so he could whack your guy then come back, there’d still be a jump when it changed. Which, by the way, is what happened in Speed.”
“Okay, how about this. What if he’d lain in that spot for the right amount of time on a different day, all that lighting stuff would match up. Then superimpose it onto the recording later and edit out the joins.”
“In that case, it would be simpler to swap out that whole camera feed and fix the timestamp. Of course, he would then need to alter the other cameras so that he could leave the house and kill your guy, then alter the cameras so he could get back in, then alter the cameras again to line up with the dummy recording. You see the problem, Detective? The amount of work just balloons and balloons. The man’s rich, no? It would be easier for him to pay an escort to say she’d been with him the whole time on some yacht in the Catalinas. You might suspect her story was bull, but unless you could prove it, he would have an alibi.”
That much was certainly true.
“All right. Thanks anyway.”
Rollins gave him back the thumb drive and returned to his previous screen looking at street cam footage of an intersection. Closing programs was a form of goodbye in Rollins’ world and he knew better than to wait for the man to say any more to him. There was a divide between them, he had a badge and a gun; Rollins had a laminate ID. It was a divide that would never close. Rollins wasn’t a cop and never would be.
He headed back to his desk on the other side of the floor.
Truthfully, running anything past Rollins was always the last step before moving on. You knew something was junk, you took it to Rollins who told you it was junk, and then you forgot all about it. He sighed. Even before he knew about the underage girl, Coombes had wanted Jake Curtis in the box for the murders. There was just something about him and his ridiculous goddamn beard. His wealth, his attitude, the way he carried himself. Everything about him irritated Coombes. Obviously, there was the pig’s head incident, and there was no doubt in his mind that he could charge him for that. Whether it could be escalated to some kind of extortion or threatening behavior charge wasn’t clear. The main problem would be that Pacific Pictures neither retained any of the evidence beyond a couple of photographs, nor had they pressed charges at the time.
His cell phone began to vibrate. Grace Sato.
“Tell me something good.”
“It’s not good, Johnny. You’re in some deep shit.”
When he got back to his desk, he found Block standing there, hands on his hips, leaning over Sato who was seated in front of her computer. Block was not a small man and his position over her was outrageous and totally crossed the line. Coombes stood over him, just to see how he liked it.
“Captain.”
Block jumped and twisted out from under him.
“Coombes, what the fuck have you done?”
The captain’s breath came at him like a wild animal, all garlic and spices. His fleshy face was red with anger, his eyes bulging.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You two clowns are the only people who had access to the footage, and let’s be honest here, Coombes, this move has your name written all over it.”
He still didn’t know what Block was talking about, but he was getting an idea what it might be. He turned and looked down at Sato’s computer and saw an LA Times web page. The headline filled much of the screen; he could read it without any difficulty. Firestorm Screenwriter Caught with Underage Girl. A large edited screenshot lay underneath for those who needed help with the words. This was what Rollins had referred to without him realizing it. He hadn’t given any thought as to how the tech knew about the video, but this explained it.
“I didn’t do this,” he said.
In hindsight, he wondered why he hadn’t.
“Come off it, Coombes. Put yourself in my position, what would you think?”
He looked into Block’s eyes and made it worth something.
“Honestly, I had nothing to do with it. I don’t like the guy and it wasn’t my idea to agree to that deal. All I’ve done is try and establish if he’s our killer. Unfortunately, it’s a wash. I’m just back from seeing Rollins and he can’t see how the alibi video could be faked.”
The anger was still there in Block’s face, he wasn’t ready to give it up.
“That’s too bad. Because if he sues us, we’re going to be looking at the wrong end of a multi-million-dollar payout.”
“No jury’s going to award a payout to a rapist.”
“That’s a real weight off my mind, Coombes. I’ll tell Jackson that you think we’re in the clear, I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”
Coombes’ patience was wearing thin.
“Look, Captain. I didn’t do it. I know Grace didn’t either, which means the leak came from somewhere else. The facts are simple. Curtis can’t prove where it came from and he’ll want this to go away as soon as possible, which is the exact opposite of a trial.”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“What?”
“The video is out there too, totally unedited. This isn’t going anywhere.”
Coombes said nothing for a moment, thinking it through.
“All right. This girl, Tammy Watkins. I doubt she’s his first. There’s an old charge on his file for exposing himself to a minor, that’s the pattern of a predator. Get sex crimes to look into him, see if they can dig something up.”
“That’s not bad, Coombes. I’ll do that.”
Block turned and walked off. As he did so, Coombes noticed that some of the other detectives were standing, watching the show. Smiling. They all knew about the story, and they all thought he’d leaked it.
“Jesus, Johnny. What did you do?”
He sighed. “Et tu, Grace?”
She tilted her head over, studying his face.
“I like the haircut, Johnny. Just enough to flick through my fingers.”
“It’s funny, that’s exactly how I asked for it.”
He imagined Grace running her fingers through his hair. Pulling it. Her delicate face close to his, her breath landing on his cheek. A shiver went down his spine. What the hell was he doing? Sato was still looking at his face, smiling.
His cell phone rang again and this time he saw it was Gantz. More blame, he supposed, for the leaked video of Curtis or his enthusiastic back-and-forth with Block.
“Coombes.”
“We got another body, John, and it’s a bad one. Don’t eat anything you don’t want to see again.”
18
As they drove to the crime scene, he found himself thinking again about the Jake Curtis video, and how it might have found its way online. It hadn’t put itself out there that was for sure and he could see how Block would think it was him. Viewing it objectively, he was the most likely candidate. More likely than Sato, or any of the others on the task force. He had also noticed that the article had been written by Monica Sullivan and it was common knowledge in the task force that he’d used her to plant the false coins narrative. It made him wonder if he wasn’t being framed for it.
But who would benefit from it, except Sullivan?
Clearly there could be a financial motive, but he didn’t figure that any payment would be worth that much. Not enough for a serving cop to risk a serial killer conviction. It was more likely personal.
Personal to him, or personal to Curtis?
It was conceivable that he could be removed from the investigation and someone else would have to step in. Another D-3. He thought of the other detectives that had been standing, watching him and Block go at it. Wallfisch. His face had been split open with a grin like a Halloween pumpkin. Wallfisch wanted to lead the investigation bad enough and was certainly not above a move of this kind.
Then there was Curtis’ lawyer, William Fielding. He had access to the video footage before he had and he appeared to be both disgusted and upset to be in a position of defending his client’s behavior regarding the girl. Was it possible that he’d copied the contents of the thumb drive and sent it on to Sullivan?
Traffic had slowed to a halt, there was some kind of obstruction ahead. He saw Sato reading her tablet. A white page with a lot of text on it. A Wikipedia page. He could tell by the formatting, and the margins.
“That the vic?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“Long version or short version?”
He glanced at her and said nothing.
“Right,” she said.
Sato skimmed the article again, mentally summarizing the contents, her fingers zipping through the page, which seemed very long and require a lot of scrolling.
“Anthony Price Junior, 65. Ran a hedge fund worth tens of billions in New York for close to two decades. Left for Los Angeles after 9/11 in search of a new life, yada, yada, yada. Bought the restaurant in ’04, apparently as some kind of joke and that’s pretty much all she wrote. Charity work, the usual rich white guy routine. Trying to buy his way into heaven with cents on the dollar.”
