The Dark Halo, page 17
His eyes dipped and he saw that Sato was watching him.
She’s quite beautiful, he thought. Grace held his eye contact until he looked away. His interest in her was shifting from professional into something that should never exist between partners.
Coombes stood and left the room.
He needed to be moving, to feel like he was getting somewhere, because it was obvious to him that he wasn’t. The Ferryman case was going nowhere. He rode the elevator down to the street and stood at the entrance in the still air in front of the building. At one time, when it had been legal, cops had been able to go outside for a smoke and think through their cases. Coombes had never smoked, so he did the next best thing, and set out for a coffee.
When he got back to his desk, he was about halfway through a cup of coffee the size of his head. One day soon, he was certain they’d serve coffee in popcorn buckets. He was ready for that day, he’d been ready for years. He decided to finish the cup before he returned to the task force, on account of the coffee he hadn’t brought for anyone else.
The phone on his desk rang.
“Coombes.”
“Detective, this is Officer Fleet out of Hollenbeck. We met a couple of times when you worked Hollywood station, and briefly again last year.”
Coombes leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
“Fleet,” he said, trying to remember. He pictured a kid in his twenties that looked like he hadn’t started shaving yet. “Are you the snot-nosed punk that contaminated my crime scene on the Lilly Nichols case?”
An awkward laugh came down the line.
“Uh. Officer snot-nosed punk, reporting for duty.”
“What can I do for you today, Fleet?”
“I read about your case in the Times and thought of something that might be related.”
“All right.”
“A few weeks ago, I attended a fatal accident. One Adrian Blackstone out of Bel Air. His car took the Fourth Street exit of the I-5 in excess of 100 mph and hit the side of an RV that was crossing the intersection. We figured he fell asleep and his car drifted onto the exit lane. There were no skid marks until he was almost at the traffic signal, which is when we assumed he woke up. At that point, there was no chance of stopping his car.”
“Okay.”
Not an unreasonable assumption.
“That intersection is less than a mile from our station and the whole thing happened in front of my vehicle as we headed back out after an arrest. It was close, another two seconds and he would’ve hit me. The accident happened too quickly at the time, but we have it all on dash cam. On playback you can see he’s terrified.”
No shit, Coombes thought.
“And how do you think this relates to my case?”
“Blackstone had two silver dollars in the center console.”
It was pretty much what he’d expected Fleet to say.
“Any other change in there?”
“No.”
It felt right, like it belonged on the list. Coombes opened his notebook to where he’d written down the timeline with the dates.
“Let me guess, was this November eighth?”
Fleet paused, no doubt looking at his own notes.
“Yeah, how’d you know? Around two in the a.m.”
Somehow, the press had yet to notice that the kills had all occurred on a Friday. He supposed this was due to the way the story had unfolded, like a dam opening. Coombes felt no desire to share this information with Fleet.
“Lucky guess.”
He picked up his pen and wrote Adrian Blackstone into the blank line he’d left between Simon Keehan and William Morgan. He’d always known there was a name missing. Known enough, to leave a space for it.
“Any sign the car was tampered with?”
“Far as I know, it was never checked. You got to understand, the vehicle was totaled in the accident. That compartment with the coins was about the only part of it that still moved. Our primary focus at the time was trying to save his life. A fire crew spent fifteen minutes cutting him out his car, but he died at the scene. I’d say sadly died, but it was the smart move on his part, his face was burger. His airbag hadn’t deployed.”
“Who investigated it?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, Detective. There was no investigation. It was an open-and-shut accident. We saw it with our own eyes, and we have it on a recording. There was no room for doubt.”
His chest filled with anger. The situation wasn’t Fleet’s fault, yet the persistence of the accident angle grated. Clearly, it was not an accident, and the fact that Fleet had called him was a belated recognition of that fact. Still, the incident had happened at 2 a.m. and at that time in the morning no one is thinking clearly. By the time it gets passed from the graveyard shift to the day crew, detectives would be looking for cases that could be quickly closed out to minimize their inbox.
“You guys still have the dash cam footage?”
“Sure. I’ll send everything we’ve got over to you.”
Blackstone was the first victim to have survived, if only for a short time.
“Did he say anything before he died?”
“The man was breathing and had a pulse, that’s it.”
Coombes sighed in frustration.
“What was Blackstone driving?”
“Tesla Model S. Such a waste, I’d love one of those.”
“What happened to the coins?”
“No idea. Unless they’re needed for evidence, personal effects are returned to next of kin as soon as possible, so my guess is that his widow has them. I tell you something for nothing, Blackstone was seriously rich. He was wearing a watch worth four million dollars, I recognized it immediately.”
“Four million? For a watch?”
“Oh yeah. A Patek Philippe 5004T. If there’s one thing I know, it’s watches.”
Coombes sighed. How the rich chose to spend their money was a frequent source of irritation to him. Once again, there was zero physical evidence for him to work with, it was like working a twenty-year-old cold case. There’d been no fingerprints left on any of the other coins and there was no reason to think the killer would start making mistakes now.
The Tesla, however, was different.
Adrian Blackstone of Bel Air almost certainly had life insurance in the tens of millions. Perhaps more. Coombes had no idea what the ceiling was for the super-rich. In any case, the insurance agent would want to examine the car before approving any claim. The vehicle would not yet have been destroyed.
“All right, Fleet, have a good one. If you think of anything else let me know.”
“You got it.”
He cut the call. The shot-nosed punk wanted to be on the task force, he could tell.
Blackstone fitted the pattern of the Ferryman almost perfectly. Rich, killed on a Friday, and the two silver dollars left at the scene. What didn’t fit so well, was that this appeared to be an accident, not a suicide. If they had to look into accidental deaths as well, then their workload might’ve just doubled.
He opened his browser and typed in vehicular suicide then clicked the search button. He got nearly a million hits. Some of the links were purple, because he’d already been on those pages researching the other suicide methods.
It made for grim reading, and after only a short amount of time, he closed the four tabs he’d opened. One article mentioned how the vehicle’s brakes would often be applied before impact, as the last flicker of survival kicked in.
This replicated what Fleet had told him about Adrian Blackstone’s crime scene, and held out the possibility that the killer had somehow been in control of the car and had applied the brakes late to further his twisted suicide agenda.
Another elaborate tableau from the Ferryman, churned gracelessly underfoot by tired LAPD officers convinced they’d witnessed an accident. The subject left a bad taste in his mouth and he fed in a stick of gum to clear it out.
Walter Ford had viewed the dead with amusement when he’d confessed and he sensed a similar dry humor from Fleet describing the victim’s wealth. Nobody cared when the poor died, but when it came to the rich, a lot of people were borderline delighted. As if the death was some kind of cosmic correction to balance out the good fortune they’d experienced up until that point. Coombes walked back to the task force room.
He couldn’t take any pleasure from what was happening. The Ferryman was no hero redistributing wealth, he was a sick serial killer and his victims deserved justice the same as anyone else. Inside the meeting room he found all five members of the task force sitting around the table working on laptops. They looked up and watched as he entered the room and walked to the large whiteboard mounted on the wall. He picked up the eraser, wiped out the top four names on the list and moved them up to make room for the new name.
Theodore Sutton 10/12 hanging
Harry Ryan 10/18 self-administered GSW
Gordon Sellers 10/25 inert gas exit bag
Simon Keehan 11/01 cyanide
Adrian Blackstone 11/08 car crash
William Morgan 11/15 drowning
Milton Vandenberg 11/22 drug overdose
Haylee Jordan 11/29 slit wrists
Anthony Price 12/06 ingestion of corrosive liquid
Steve Ellis 12/13 fall from height
When he finished, he stepped to the side so they could see.
“Oh, man,” McCreary said.
Sato sat back on her seat.
“Well, Johnny, you always said there was one missing.”
He nodded.
“On the other hand, it seems obvious from the date alone that Sutton doesn’t belong on this list. As much as I hate it, I have to conclude his was a suicide all along. Unless any of you think otherwise, I’m going to take his name off the board.”
Coombes looked at each of them, all shook their heads. Sato was the only one who gave him eye contact while doing so. She knew that Sutton wasn’t just a name on a list. He picked up the eraser again and slid it back across over his name. When he was done, there was still a trace of Sutton’s name there, like a ghost, at the top of the list. Nobody had believed his theory about Sutton being the first victim, but they’d gone along with it because that’s what you did. You worked the case and you ground away, until only the truth remained.
“One piece of good news,” he said. “It’s the 21st today.”
Five blank faces looked back. Coombes pointed at the last date on the timeline.
“He’s stopped.”
25
Coombes held a bowl of cereal up near his face and shotgunned the contents into his mouth, crunching and slurping. The most important meal of the day, gone in thirty seconds. He wiped his chin then took his coffee over to the breakfast bar where his tablet was propped up.
He had mirrored a lot of the murder books’ content onto his tablet, along with key images from each crime scene so he could pull them up and work on them when he had the time or an idea drifted through his head. Taking documents home was against official policy, but he didn’t know of a cop that didn’t do it. There was no telling when you might get an idea and he knew from experience that if you didn’t immediately run it down it was likely to be forgotten long before you got back behind your desk.
He pulled up photographs first of the Vandenberg scene, then of Steve Ellis. It was hard to believe there was any link between them. A blue-blood movie producer and a renegade rock star. Then he remembered that Ellis had developed a sideline in acting. Not cameos as himself, but playing proper roles. Small budget indie movies mostly, a couple of high-budget Hollywood movies. Coombes made a note to check if Ellis had ever worked for Vandenberg’s studio. There was a creak on the floor behind him.
“Oh, Jesus! Put that away.”
His wife’s face was screwed up, her head angled away from his tablet.
“I’m working, Julie.”
“Not here you’re not. Not that. Read your notes, or news stories, or whatever, but not pictures. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want that in our home.”
Coombes sighed and flicked the cover closed on his iPad.
“I don’t much want to see it myself; it makes me remember the smell.”
Julie held up the palm of her hand. Too much.
“Do you really think you can swim in the same water as this psychopath and not be contaminated by the darkness? In case you haven’t figured it out yet, all this,” she pointed at his tablet, “it’s not normal. It’s sick.”
It was part of their old relationship dynamic that she’d test him with an argument because how he responded told her how he felt about her and how much he valued their relationship. He didn’t have time for games.
“You know what? You’re right. I’m sorry you saw that, okay?”
It was a skip-to-the-end answer and her lip curled with anger. She didn’t want to be right; she already knew she was right. She wanted to be valued and he just couldn’t get there.
“When will this end, Johnny?”
“When I catch him.”
“There’s always going to be someone who needs to be caught.”
“I should quit? Let this guy continue to kill?”
“Why not? Someone would replace you. When this guy’s caught, someone will replace him. People are crazy, Johnny, you can’t stop that. Is this all you want from life? Looking at someone’s brains over breakfast? Our last vacation was five years ago. Five years! You might as well be dead for all the difference it makes to me.”
Coombes nodded, like he was agreeing with her, instead of spinning his mental radio dial to another station. He opened a kitchen cupboard and pulled out his travel mug. Her eyes fixed on it, clear about its significance. That he’d rather drink his coffee alone as he drove to work, than listen to her. Coombes tipped his coffee into it, held it up like he was toasting her health, then scooped up his iPad and walked out the room.
“Johnny! We’re having a conversation here.”
“Yeah? Let me know how it turns out.”
He pulled the front door shut and heard something thump against the wood next to his face and crash on the floor. When he solved Ferryman, he was going to be back here listening to this for two weeks minimum. He got into his car and pulled away fast, like he was fleeing the scene of a crime.
No matter how bad things got, he’d never once considered leaving the job. It was all he’d ever known. Even in the Army, he’d been a cop. What would he be if he wasn’t a detective? The thought went around and around as he moved through Fairfax. He knew cops who’d punched out early. Some had gone on to work as security consultants, some little more than bodyguards to the rich. More money, regular hours, no corpses.
It didn’t appeal to him at all.
His cell phone rang and the screen displayed a photograph of Grace Sato. He hadn’t added a photograph to her contact details, yet there it was. It was a selfie, and it appeared she’d used his phone to take it. He found himself smiling as he took the call.
“Grace.”
“Hi, Johnny. Are you on your way in?”
“Yeah, what’s happening?”
“I’m at Theodore Sutton’s home in Silver Lake. Someone set it on fire last night and they weren’t messing around. The building’s gutted and part of the roof has fallen in.”
He felt a space open up inside him, something important.
“Anyone dead?”
“Nobody seems to know. The fire investigator just got here.”
“All right. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Twenty-eight minutes later, he parked and stepped out onto a packed street. Because of her size, it took him a moment to locate Grace Sato. When he did, he saw that she was looking straight at him and probably had been the whole time. Instead of being irritated by this, she looked amused by his confusion.
“You remembered me being taller, huh?”
“Grace, I forget what you look like from one minute to the next.”
Her jaw fell open and she smacked his arm playfully with the back of her hand. It was no Sofia Lass punch, yet he felt it just the same. Her eyes were dark and intense. They weren’t hard to look at, yet some primal urge made him turn and face across the street to where a man was standing watching them. Nicolas Sutton. The other man’s hands were balled up into fists inside a warm-up jacket, the muscles across his shoulders stretched tight with tension.
Coombes’ smile flattened out.
Whatever friendship they’d once had was long gone, replaced by something close to hatred. He’d failed to catch Teddy’s killer and now here he was at the burned-out scene of the crime with a big smile on his face. Coombes made what he hoped was a more compassionate expression and threw in a small nod. Sutton spat on the asphalt and walked away.
Coombes sighed and turned back to Sato.
“What do we know so far?”
“Neighbor woke around 4 a.m. Thinking something woke him up, he looked out his bedroom window. One time he saw a coyote on the street and he keeps hoping to see it again. Anyway, this time, he sees a figure running out of Sutton’s gates. By the time the neighbor got out front, the building was on fire. He called it in. Fire Department got here in five minutes; our guys took twenty-two. Needless to say, they found no trace of the arsonist.”
He flinched at the twenty-two minutes.
It made little difference. Whoever did this would be inside a car in less than a minute, and a mile away several minutes after that. There was little chance of catching the perpetrator of a crime when the crime itself consumed much of the evidence left behind.
“He saw a figure? That’s what he said?”
“That’s what he said. I pushed him to see if he might go one way or the other, but he said it was too dark to be sure. I have a feeling his eyesight isn’t the best. He was wearing these Mr. Magoo glasses with thick lenses. They made his eyes look like they were lit up.”
