23rd Midnight, page 8
part #23 of Women's Murder Club Series
CHAPTER 30
I WAS AT work before seven that morning. Rich had gone to the airport to get Cindy and would be coming in ASAP. By eight, I’d spoken with Joe and left messages for everyone on my to-do list. Alvarez and I were having coffee at our desks when an email hit my inbox and blew it all to hell.
I stared at the subject heading: News Flash from Blackout to Boxer. And there was an attachment. I said, “Oh, shit,” and Alvarez wheeled her chair around and looked over my shoulder.
“Open it,” she said.
I clicked. The email was blank so I downloaded the video. Like the one Blackout had shot from the back seat of Hammer’s Camry, this was also as seen through the killer’s eyes.
“Body cam?” I said.
“Video glasses,” said Alvarez. “So says Rich’s tech.”
“There,” I said, putting my finger on my computer screen just above a woman in a red tracksuit jogging toward the camera. There was sound: birds, wind through leaves, then, Blackout’s digitized voice, which was pulsing but clear.
He said, “This is the kind of girl Burke likes. Twenties. Limber. Strong.”
Blackout called out to the runner, “Excuse me. I think I’m lost.”
The young woman stopped running a few yards from Blackout, caught her breath, walked closer. She had chin-length, wavy brown hair, a pretty face.
She asked Blackout, “Where do you want to go?”
“Brooks Avenue,” said Blackout. “Where’d I go wrong?”
Behind my shoulder Alvarez was watching as I reacted to the scene playing out on-screen.
“Oh-my-God, oh-my-God,” I said. “This is last night’s victim.”
The runner was looking at a map on Blackout’s phone, pointing out that he’d passed Brooks Avenue, tracing the correct direction on the screen. Our view changed. Blackout was looking up and around, as if he was visualizing the route, giving us a panoramic view of the Fuller Theological Seminary campus. There were lawns. Winding paths. Park benches. Sabal palms. But this was not a sightseeing tour for my benefit. Blackout was making sure the way was clear.
His gloved hand dipped into the pocket of his black windbreaker and came out clenched around a small canister. The runner looked at it, puzzled. She didn’t know what it was. The gloved hand aimed the nozzle at her eyes and pressed the lever with his thumb. The woman shrieked, tried to clear her eyes with her hands and sleeves, but she had no chance against this man who reached for her. She backed up, stumbled, and dropped to the pavement.
I gripped the edge of my desk as she cried out, but all I could see of the scuffle that followed was Blackout’s right hand clapped over her mouth, his left arm angling her into a carotid restraint hold. He formed a right angle with her neck in the crux between his forearm and biceps. He used his full weight to subdue her—and he squeezed.
Alvarez and I watched in shock as the woman’s writhing and kicking stopped. The leather-gloved hand came off her mouth and she didn’t cry out. She was lifeless. Dead.
Blackout stood, and again panned the campus before walking out the way he came. Sound came up, classical music I recognized as “Adagio for Strings.” Soft. Mournful. A dramatic bass line. Blackout’s view shifted upward as if he were looking through palm fronds overhead.
In his digitized voice he said, “Dedicated to you, Mr. Burke.”
The image of palm trees backlit by an indigo sky froze. Then faded to black.
CHAPTER 31
AT TEN THAT morning, the squad room was loud with ringing phones and homicide cops shouting to each other across the aisle. The interview rooms were full. Brady was in his office with Brenda. I was on the line with Jacob Johnston’s widow when Conklin arrived with Cindy.
I explained to Mrs. Johnston that finding who’d killed her husband was top priority, that we still had no suspects, no witnesses, and agreed with her that Mr. Johnston had no known enemies. And I promised to call her day or night if there was a break or even a crack in the case. She was crying when I said goodbye. By then, Cindy and Conklin were crossing the room toward our square horseshoe of desks under the overhead TV.
The morning anchor was talking about the murder in Pasadena when Cindy slipped into Conklin’s chair and glanced up at the TV. I looked her over, asked her how her flight had been, how she was feeling.
“I had a crappy night’s sleep at the hotel, but otherwise I’m, uh, perfect.”
I said, “Okay, good,” and squeezed her hand, but honestly she looked tense and pale. Conklin dragged a chair over to our desks and I told him that Chi and Cappy were at Ennis, Neiman and Bright Advertising checking out Brad Fleet’s alibi.
Rich said to Cindy, “Coffee, hon?”
While he brought Cindy to the break room, I forwarded Blackout’s newest production to Brady, waited thirty to forty seconds, then told Alvarez I’d be right back.
Brady was watching Blackout’s video when I opened his office door. He was swearing softly, making notes with a red grease pencil on a yellow legal pad. When “Adagio for Strings” came up under moonlit palms, he said, “This guy loves himself. He wants to be famous.”
He clicked off the video and looked up at me. He said, “Boxer, let’s talk.”
We covered a lot of ground in five minutes. We both had unproven theories and one common certainty: that Blackout had killed at least two, and maybe five, people in less than a week. In addition to the two videos he’d sent us—Ralph Hammer and this unnamed young jogger—we also liked him for Catherine and Josie Fleet, given the Evan Burke connection, with Jacob Johnston as possible collateral. Brady said, “Grab Conklin and Alvarez, Chi and Cappy, and ask Cindy to join us in the corner.”
Copy that. Quickly, the seven of us assembled in the empty corner office. It hadn’t been cleaned since our last meeting. Coffee containers were in the trash. Morgue photos were still taped to the whiteboard. Cindy stared at Hammer and Johnston’s dead headshots and Brady came in with more faces of the dead; Catherine Fleet, Josie Fleet, and a screenshot printout of the unnamed woman from Pasadena.
Brady taped them to the board and drew a timeline down the left-hand side starting with Saturday and Ralph Hammer to last night’s murder of the woman in Pasadena.
Putting down his red pencil, Brady turned to Cindy. “You know what I’m going to say?”
“It’s off the record. It is. Girl Scout’s honor.”
“Good. This killer is running the show and clearly wants attention. We don’t know shit. Not who, why, or if he’s going to do it again. Press could get him giddy enough to step up his game.”
“Copy that,” said Cindy.
Laughs rounded the table. Richie kissed Cindy’s face, and when the light moment had passed, Brady said, “Boxer, tell the team what you said to me when you showed me Blackout’s videos.”
“I said, Blackout’s taunting me. Why me?” I continued. “Don’t know. Why these targets? Don’t yet know. But, based on Joe’s copy of the FBI Guide to Serial Killer Pathology that we keep on the nightstand,” I joked, “Blackout’s MO is unusual. He doesn’t sexually abuse his victims. He doesn’t collect souvenirs. He films them with sound. He’s clearly experienced at this bloody game. He likes to choke out his female victims. He uses weapons to kill the males. He likes to watch them all die.”
Alvarez rocked back in her chair and then she said, “The music is thoughtfully chosen. He’s an intellectual. And smart. The films are homemade, but he edits the footage. He adds the music, frames the ending. I half expected him to roll credits.”
Conklin said, “If only.”
Brady looked up from his notepad and said, “How does Cindy fit in? At the end of his latest video, Blackout dedicates the murder to ‘Mr. Burke.’ Two of the five killings occur after she does her book signing of Evan Burke’s bio.”
Cindy said, “Why would this guy take out people around me when I’m an unarmed, unguarded target?”
“Effective when I leave this room, you’ll have undercover security 24/7,” said Brady.
Rich said, “Thanks, Brady.”
Brady carefully placed the grease pencil at the top of the page, closed the pad, and folded his hands.
“Cindy, we need your help.”
“Absolutely, yes. What do you need?”
“Tell the team everything you remember about the two people who confronted you, Hammer and this woman, Marge. No detail is too small. And then y’all watch surveillance tapes from both bookstores. I know Rick Martinez, homicide lieutenant at Pasadena PD. I’m sending him the Blackout’s video and the bookstore surveillance.”
When Brady left the room, I switched my phone to record, slid it to the middle of the table, and said, “Ready, Cin? Picture Ralph Hammer. What do you remember about him?”
CHAPTER 32
YUKI SLIPPED INTO her chair at the prosecution table moments before court was called back into session.
She whispered to Gaines, “What’d I miss?”
Her second chair shrugged his right shoulder in the direction of the defense table and Yuki looked across the aisle. Switzer and his client, Lewis Sullivan, had swiveled in their seats. They were facing one another and whispering vehemently behind their hands. Yuki couldn’t hear them, but their body language was loud and clear. There was disagreement between attorney and client and the client was winning his point. What was up?
The bailiff intoned, “All rise for the Honorable Judge Karen Froman.” The hundred people inside the courtroom got to their feet, as Her Honor entered the courtroom from her door behind the bench. The judge asked them to sit and they did.
Switzer stopped his whispered confab with his client and resumed his normal calm demeanor.
Judge Froman quieted the rustle of bags, shuffle of feet, and murmurs into cell phones with the bang of her gavel. When the room was still, Froman said, “Mr. Switzer, your first witness?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” he said. “We call Mr. Lewis Sullivan.”
Yuki and Gaines exchanged surprised looks. Sullivan was going to testify? It was a very risky strategy, but it appeared that Sullivan had demanded to take the stand.
Yuki watched as Lewis Sullivan stood up from his seat at the counsel table. He was wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and businessman’s striped tie, tie clip. His haircut was jailhouse style, cut with blunt scissors, shaved high and short on the back and sides. Still, he looked presentable and almost pure as he walked across the blond-wood floor to the witness stand.
When Sullivan had been sworn in and was seated, Switzer asked his client, “How are you holding up?”
“Bad,” Sullivan said. “I hadn’t planned on being put up at the city jail.”
Juror number four, Pierce Rodman, a retired restaurateur in his fifties, laughed at Sullivan’s joke.
Sullivan thought he was funny. But Yuki had a different thought. Something she had learned long ago in law school: a laughing jury is an acquitting jury.
She started making notes for her cross-examination, but now she heard Switzer asking Sullivan the very same damaging questions she was planning to ask. A legal tactic known as “drawing the sting.”
Switzer asked, “During three days in January of this year, did you have occasion to chain your wife to a sink pedestal and restrain her in other ways?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Did you injure her with your fists and shoes and a number of other implements including a bread knife?”
“I did that, yes.”
“Can you tell the jury why you committed these acts against your wife?”
Sullivan’s face reddened and his lower lip quavered. He had a handkerchief in his breast pocket and used it to now dry the sweat from his face, dab at his eyes, and possibly buy a few moments of time to think.
Switzer stood by patiently until Sullivan was composed.
“I can’t give you an easy answer,” Sullivan said. “I—We—”
Yuki stood, “Non-responsive, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Sullivan,” the Judge said. “Answer the question.”
“Could you repeat it, please?”
Switzer said, “Lew. Very simply, why did you beat up your wife?”
“I did it for Barbara.”
Gasps come from the gallery and the jury box.
Sullivan explained himself. “I mean, she has issues. She introduced me to rough sex. I wasn’t trying to kill Barbara. And I didn’t. I love her, even now. She knows that and loves me, too. If I could just talk to her …”
Yuki was prepared to object again, but Sullivan’s shoulders heaved, he began to sob loudly, saying “Sorry, sorry,” but kept crying.
Switzer said, “Your Honor, may we have a ten-minute recess?”
“No,” Sullivan said. “I’m still going to be like this in ten minutes or whatever. My heart is fucking broken.”
Switzer said, “Take a few breaths, Lew.”
“She seems like a victim, I know,” Sullivan said. “But she liked to get me going. She flirts with other people to egg me on. One of our neighbors, Tom, is in love with her. This time, she was tormenting me and I was ready for sex. Then she lunged at me with a knife, like this,” Sullivan continued, thrusting out his clenched right hand.
“I was defending myself. I got the knife away from her. And she kicked me in the balls. I snapped. I wanted to teach her a lesson, but she kept calling me names. I wanted her to apologize, and she wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t say, ‘I’m sorry.’ I hurt her. But still, I never, ever wanted to kill her.”
Switzer thanked his witness and said, “I have no more questions.”
CHAPTER 33
LEW SULLIVAN WAS blowing his nose and otherwise mopping up when Yuki addressed him in her cross-examination.
“Mr. Sullivan, do you feel well enough to answer a few questions? Or would you like to take a break?”
“I want to get this over with, if it’s okay with you.”
“Sure. This isn’t the first time you’ve beaten Barbara, is it?”
“Like I said, she liked it rough, but this time was the worst.”
“She’s called the police some of those times, isn’t that right?”
“Objection,” said Switzer. “Prejudicial.”
“Showing a pattern of behavior, Your Honor,” Yuki shot back.
Sullivan said, “I’d like to answer that, Your Honor.”
“Go ahead,” Froman said, as if to say, It’s your funeral.
“Barbara liked to pull the sympathy card,” said Sullivan, “and then change her mind at the last minute.”
“So, that’s a ‘yes,’” Yuki said. “Your wife has had to call the police on you in the past.”
“Yes, she called the police a few times to scare me but always dropped the charges. Until now.”
Yuki said, “As I understand your testimony, Barbara was goading you with a knife. You snatched it. And she kicked you in the testicles.”
“That’s what happened. And that’s why I snapped.”
“By ‘snapped,’ do you mean that you bound her hands and feet to free weights, sliced her up, kicked her to the point of destroying one of her kidneys, broke three ribs and punctured her right lung, broke her right leg in three places, as well as fractured her skull, resulting in a severe concussion and possible brain damage. And you blinded her in one eye. Do I have that right, Mr. Sullivan?”
“It was like someone else took me over. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wish I could take every bit of that back.”
“That’s a ‘yes’?”
“Yes. Apparently, I did that.”
“In order to wreak this damage on your wife and mother of your children you had to assemble your arsenal of instruments in advance, correct?”
“Most of it was already in the basement. She brought the knife.”
“Isn’t it possible, Mr. Sullivan, that Barbara brought the knife to protect herself against your abuse?”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Emergency Medicine Doctor Michael Parker testified that from the partial healing of her superficial wounds, it was evident that you’d worked Barbara over for twenty-four hours, is that correct?”
No answer from Sullivan.
“Your Honor, please direct Mr. Sullivan to answer the question.”
“Mr. Sullivan. You must answer.”
“Yes, Your Honor. I spaced out just now. What was the question.”
“Ms. Castellano, please restate your question.”
“Did you chain and restrain and beat your wife for a period of twenty-four hours?”
“I didn’t keep track of the time.”
“And did you know that your children could hear their mother calling out to them and knew that you were hurting her?”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Mo Switzer said. “Prejudicial. No foundation for this line of question by the prosecution.”
Froman sustained the defense objection and told the jury to ignore the prosecution’s question.
Yuki said, “I just have one more question, Mr. Sullivan. You maintain that you had no intention of killing Barbara James Sullivan, your beloved wife. And yet, when you saw her semi-conscious, bleeding profusely, soaked in blood, you didn’t call for an ambulance, did you?”
No answer from Sullivan. Yuki continued, “The reason you didn’t call the police is that you wanted her to die, isn’t it?”
When Sullivan didn’t reply, Yuki let the silence gather like a storm over the courtroom, then said, “I have no further questions.”
“Mr. Switzer. Redirect?”
Switzer rose to his feet and walked over to his client who had gone red in the face. Sullivan said to Switzer, “Who does she think she is?”
Switzer said, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell the court?”
“Yes. I love Barbara. I’ve loved her since we were in the eighth grade. I haven’t been permitted to speak with her but if I could, I would tell her how sorry I am and that I love her with all my heart.”
CHAPTER 34
