23rd Midnight, page 21
part #23 of Women's Murder Club Series
I looked up when Betsy Park, the dog handler for SWAT’s K-9 division, called my name. She stood with me and two powerful sets of jaws.
“Sergeant Boxer. They’re harmless,” she said. “Stand up slowly and step away from the desk. And don’t bark at them.”
I laughed nervously and did as I was told. I met Conklin’s eyes, and when I was away from the desk, he grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. “You okay?”
“What just happened?”
“The sniffer dogs got a hit. You were sitting on it.”
I stood with him against empty bookshelves as uniformed officers moved the chair and then the desk, which wasn’t as heavy as it looked. There were wheels under the pedestals and Lieutenant Martin directed that the desk be pivoted on the left rear corner. Once the desk was moved, I saw something odd where the chair had been. It was a yard square of crosscut boards, a pair of inverted hinges, and a cut-out handhold opposite those hinges.
It was a trapdoor.
Conklin stepped forward and opened the hatch. We surrounded the opening and looked down a flight of stairs into a basement. Martin directed Mastiff down on the steps, the LED lights came on, and the robot bumped down, step-by-step into the hole.
The pack of us, Conklin, Alvarez, Martin, Brady, Park, Holmes, and Crispo, followed Mastiff down the stairs. I brought up the rear and, honest to God, I had a bad feeling.
CHAPTER 95
THE BASEMENT WAS a quarter the size of the store. It had a sloped ceiling that followed the lay of the land above. Wires and pipes ran across the length and width of the ceiling, and the robot provided enough light to see the furnace and other mechanicals.
Lieutenant Martin’s gun was in hand. Brady and Conklin turned on their flashlights. Sergeant Park gave the dogs another deep sniff of Cindy’s cardigan and the canines were off, vacuuming up skin particles from the air. Rich frantically called out to Cindy, tripping over various old tools and odd parts, cursing loudly. He was understandably crazed. Cindy could be here—or nowhere.
There were too many people in that basement room, so I climbed a short flight of stairs in the farthest corner to get out of the way. I sat on the top step, hugged my knees, and watched everything.
There was an oil tank next to me and that made sense. The oil company would pull into the lot, plug in the hose outside, and fill ’er up.
I reached overhead. The roof above me sloped toward the parking area. It was halved in the center and hinged at opposite ends. This was a bulkhead. It opened for use by electricians or any workmen to do repairs without tracking dirt through the store.
I called out to Brady. “This hatch opens out.”
He was with me in two steps. He tested the bulkhead doors.
“It’s not locked,” he said.
He pressed his hand against the doors, and they opened with a terrible whine. Fresh air poured in over my head. Park leashed the dogs and we all headed outside. One thing was clear: this was how Catton had made his earlier near-escape. He’d gotten out of the store through this bulkhead, without us seeing him do it.
A new moon gave off a pale, haloed illumination as we stared around the parking lot. Martin and Brady scrutinized the loading dock. Betsy Park, Conklin, Alvarez, and I walked every inch of the asphalt with Crispo and Holmes.
There was nothing to see. Until the dogs pulled their handler and alerted at a dumpster up against the house and flower shop next door to the former bookstore.
Dogs barked. Rich ran to the dumpster, leaned over the edge of it calling, “Cindy! Cindy, answer me!”
I heard a faint cry. Please, God let it be Cindy, not a bag of kittens. Rich vaulted over the side of the dumpster and started throwing things out. Cartons, paint cans, rags, drop cloths and other trash.
He called again, “Cindy! It’s me.”
I joined him at the dumpster. “Rich, do you have her?”
I heard the sound of a zipper opening and Rich yelling, “Call a bus! Hurry!”
I called for an ambulance as Rich stood up, holding a very limp Cindy Thomas, our girl reporter, in his strong arms. But he was standing on shifting piles of trash and couldn’t keep his balance.
“Boxer,” he said, “Give me a hand.”
I stretched out my arms and he lowered his and transferred Cindy’s body to me.
Cindy was almost weightless. Her skin was pale, bloodless and her lips were cracked. She looked close to death but moaned softly.
“Cindy, Cindy. We’ve got you. We’re here. You’re going to be fine,” I told her. I was overwhelmed with relief that she was breathing. I set her down gently on a stinking drop cloth, moved her hair away from her face, put two fingers on her wrist. Her pulse was thready, but she had one.
I ignored everything but Cindy and Richie as I listened for the ambulance.
“He put her in a garment bag,” Rich said.
“Blackout? Plastic? With a zipper?”
“Yes. He knew he was asphyxiating her or maybe he thought she was dead.”
Rich asked Cindy to open her eyes, but she didn’t do it. He told her his name and that he was there for her and that help was on the way.
I shouted out over the now crowded lot, “Where’s the ambo?”
It had been only minutes since I’d called them but Cindy’s breathing was irregular, her pulse feeble.
Rich said again, “Cindy, open your eyes. It’s Richie. I’m here.”
She cracked open her eyes, looked at Richie, and closed them again. Cindy wasn’t speaking. She took in air through her mouth and sometimes she didn’t seem to breathe at all.
The small parking lot was filled with squad cars when finally, the ambo’s siren reached us. I don’t know from which direction it had come, but the EMTs were here. Doors opened and running footsteps came toward me. I heard the wheels of a gurney rattling over asphalt and when I looked up, I saw white uniforms. I was asked to step aside, and I scrambled up.
Two EMTs lifted Cindy onto the gurney and wheeled her to the rear of the ambulance. Rich climbed in after it and seconds later he called out to me, “We’ll be at Metro.”
Doors slammed and the ambulance went Code 3, its sirens screaming, lights blazing as the bus edged out of the lot and into the dark street.
Brady came up to me.
“Report from the EMTs?”
They weren’t saying if Cindy was a DOA or if a twenty-four-hour saline drip would bring her back to life.
I said, “She’s still breathing. Just. I saw bruises around her neck and eyes and that’s all I could see of her body. Brady, he left her in a plastic shroud inside a dumpster. God, I hate him so much.”
“Are you hurt, Lindsay?”
“You mean physically?”
He nodded.
I looked down. My hands were sticky with Catton’s blood. His blood was on my shoes, and there was a good chance I’d smeared some across my face.
“It’s his. Catton’s. From the gunshot. Is Richie going to be okay for shooting that scum?”
“You would have been dead if he hadn’t. Conklin’ll be behind a desk for a week or two, but that’s what he needs.”
“That, Brady, is the truth.”
I felt tears I’d been holding back for hours and days welling up. I turned away from my friend. Took some breaths. Then said, “I’m glad Rich didn’t kill Catton. That would be too easy an out for that psycho. And too much added stress on Rich.” I turned back and looked into Brady’s face.
I swear he’d aged years since this morning.
I asked him, “How are you?”
“Better now. We got the bad guy. Cindy’s in good hands and I say she’s going to make it. There were a hell of a lot of pieces to this case, but I’m proud of how well alla y’all worked together. Will you burst into tears if I tell you that you did a fan-tastic job?”
I nodded yes, and he put his arms around me and patted my back and let me cry against his coat. I tried to apologize but he wouldn’t hear of it. I was cooked, done, ready to call home, where Joe was watching Julie.
While Team Blackout was searching the basement, I had phone calls to make. Richie at the hospital first and then about ten other people who’d been going through hell out of fear for Cindy.
I was about to tell Brady I’d see him in the morning when he said, “Before you leave, we found something you’ll want to see. Take a minute.”
“What kind of something?”
“You’re going to want to see it,” he said again.
“Then show me. Show me now.”
CHAPTER 96
I FOLLOWED BRADY through the bulkhead and down the stairs to the cellar. Under CSU’s klieg lights, the dark and gloomy room was now bright and gloomy in shades of gray and brown. The floor and a worktable were littered with pipes, partial rolls of wire, and broken parts that were of no use to Bob Brooks when he’d abandoned his business.
Alvarez was taking pictures of the basement for our files.
Brady said, “Sonia found Blackout’s lair.”
“It was a team effort,” she said.
“Sonia found it,” Brady repeated. “Say the magic words and show Boxer.”
Alvarez laughed and walked to the base of the long flight of stairs that ran from the trapdoor in the main room down to the basement floor. She edged in between the staircase and the furnace, then, using a spackle knife, she pried a wide, vertically placed board from the side of the stairs.
She shot a grin at Brady and said, “Open Sesame.” Then she propped the board against the wall, leaving a void where the piece of three-quarter-inch ply had been. The narrow opening was a doorway. Reaching inside, Alvarez flipped a switch that turned on an overhead light and an exhaust fan.
What the hell?
“Our guy has been using the neighbor’s juice. Come on in,” said Alvarez. Brady and I ducked and entered a small subterranean flat underneath the staircase that extended into a carved-out section between the bookstore basement and the building next door.
I took in the compact three hundred square feet of hidden real estate, every inch of it in use. The walls were white. To our right was a bunk bed with a toilet below it. Across from the bed and WC was a kitchenette. I mentally catalogued the microwave, small sink, and a dorm-sized fridge. Above the kitchen counter were cabinets for dishware and packaged foods.
Looking ahead to the far end of the room was an office consisting of a long narrow ledge for a desk, a wheeled chair, a high-end laptop, centered on the desk with the lid open. A thirty-two-inch screen was affixed to the wall above the computer.
To the right of the laptop were a printer and a framed photo of a Venom helicopter with Marines posing in front of it. I couldn’t be sure, but the young man in uniform, standing a foot or two apart from the rest, could be Blackout.
To the left of the laptop was a fireproof box, a cube about twenty inches on each side.
“Locked,” said Alvarez. “And look here.”
A pair of black-rimmed glasses was clipped to a charging station. Blackout had left his video glasses behind, surely with the expectation that he would be back.
Brady lifted his chin, indicating the computer screen mounted on the wall.
“Boxer. This was on when we got here. It’s in plain sight, so no problem. As for the fireproof box, it’s closed and locked.”
What was inside that fireproof box? It was important enough to Blackout that he’d kept it locked even inside his cave. The press clippings we found at the old Victorian were meant to distract us. Here was where Blackout kept his treasures. I was pulled from my thoughts when Alvarez called my attention back to the computer screen on the wall.
She said, “This is going to shock you, Lindsay, but it’s a good thing disguised as a bad thing.”
Before I could say “I don’t get it,” Brady stretched out a gloved finger and touched the laptop’s “on” button and the screen on the wall lit up, displaying a grid of edge-to-edge photos, each about two inches square. It looked like a double-page spread in a school yearbook and was too much detail to take in all at once.
Alvarez explained that the photos were interactive. Tapping an image played embedded audio features. Voices. Music.
I stepped closer and saw that each photo showed a subject of Blackout’s past murders, taken with his video glasses, cut from the videos to still shots.
I said, “It’s a hit list.”
“Hammer, meet nail,” said Brady.
CHAPTER 97
I STARED AT the screen. The top row of photos documented Blackout’s murders of Catherine and Josie Fleet and his disposal of her baby and body. My eyes scanned downward to shots of the rest of his known kills and crime scenes.
Toward the bottom of the grid, the photos came closer to home: Claire at Baker Beach; Brady and Yuki holding hands as they left the Hall; Brady addressing the press; Yuki in court facing Barbara Sullivan in her wheelchair; Barbara Sullivan at home in bed, her mouth stretched wide in a scream as a blade slit her throat. It was a horrible portrait, so graphic that even in miniature I could feel her terror and pain.
There were a dozen pictures of Cindy, each one ratcheting up my overpowering fury at Blackout; Cindy with Rich at the book signing; Cindy approaching the brightly lit windows of Susie’s; hugging Claire outside the Hall; and individual shots from Blackout’s videos of Cindy, tied and gagged. Helpless. Terrified. He’d displayed that vignette in various angles; gag removed, screaming, curled under the desk.
My eyes skipped to the last line of photos on the screen. I felt Alvarez standing beside me on my left, Brady on my right.
I had chosen to look at the images in order. But now I was up against the wall. There was a shot of me in front of our apartment holding Julie, handing her to Joe, me waving goodbye as Joe’s big black car drove up Lake Street. Mrs. Rose taking Martha’s leash while I dashed across Lake Street.
Blackout had been watching us all.
Beside me, Alvarez said, “It’s history, Lindsay. The bastard is in the hospital under heavy guard. His right arm will never hold a gun or a comb or a spoon. He’s out of business. There is enough evidence in this room and in the videos he sent you to convict him a hundred times.”
“I know, I know, I know. It’s too much, Sonia. Too close. I’m processing that every one of my friends were his targets. He tried to kill Cindy because she refused his demand to talk about Burke. He sent me the videos because killing me was supposed to be his finale.”
Brady said, “Let’s get out of here before I lose my breakfast.”
When we were outside, my mind was still whirling with everything I knew about Blackout. I flashed on his diary. I could see it, still in the desk upstairs in the store. I had to get that, voucher it, and most important, read every word.
If there was an answer to the black hole that was Bryan Catton, I wanted to know what it was. Why had he gone from a would-be actor with a wide-ranging and high IQ to a serial killer?
I hugged Alvarez, told her I’d see her in the morning, then took the long staircase up to the chaotic scene on the main floor. I hoped Blackout’s war journal would still be in the desk drawer.
CHAPTER 98
WHILE BRADY ASSIGNED uniforms to protect the former bookstore against looters, press, curiosity seekers of all kinds, I searched Blackout’s desk. I located the journal, took it out to Brady’s SUV and began to read. The journal’s title, “Blackout. Last Night in Helmand Province,” had been written in longhand with a fine-point Sharpie.
A quick flip through the pages had told me that this journal was about a night mission that took place during Catton’s yearlong tour in Afghanistan. He had been a helicopter door gunner in a reconnaissance chopper.
He described his mission as one of resistance suppression—clearing the field of enemy fire in advance of a squadron of heavy-lift choppers in their wake, ferrying in fresh troops to the battlefield.
Catton wrote:
“Once the troop transport following us to the Landing Zone put down, our job was to orbit the field, keeping track of and quashing additional resistance.
“Our pilot, Jamie Jackson, was nearing the end of his third tour and he was in charge. Smart guy. Well trained. Great instincts. From liftoff to our return to base, his job was twofold. Pilot the chopper and look for the enemy.
“Our gunship holds twelve people: pilot, co-pilot, crew chief; eight combat-ready Marines; one gunner who stands in the doorway with a large M240 machine gun and takes out the enemy. I’m the door gunner.
“That night our pilot was talkative.
“‘Hey, gunner, they’re down there, left side beneath those trees and they’re live. Keep an eye out and if you see them, do what you do.’
“We were flying over a wide-open terrain, very few trees, and this couldn’t be missed. It was a unit of about a dozen or so to my left and then, when we were in range, a tight burst of muzzle flare erupted below.
“I opened up on the enemy, firing, firing, holding the trigger down.”
* * *
I stopped reading Blackout’s journal to take a breath and look around the parking lot behind the store. There were cop cars everywhere, but no muzzle flare. Law enforcement and CSU were going in and out of the abandoned bookstore.
I looked down at the open book on my lap and sent my mind back to the firefight.
* * *
Blackout wrote, “We were flying low under total cloud cover, but below the chopper’s belly was a different kind of night sky, one pocked not with stars but gunfire. It’s common to be crapping yourself in situations like this, but I wasn’t afraid. I felt high.
“I had a heavy-duty gun and more ammo than I’d ever thought I’d need. I fixed on the location of enemy fire, aimed, pulled the trigger, and held it down again.
“The belts fed the ammo smoothly through the chamber and as the rounds discharged, the links came undone and a pile of metal parts and casings mounted around my feet. The ground below me was dark.
