12 Days (14 page)

Chapter Seven: Swan Song

Day 4: 4:05 p.m.

Call it luck, good police work, anything you liked, the cop at the desk next to Jim found out where the killer had bought the bamboo birdcage in what Jim had to believe was record time. A salesman at the Target in Whittier remembered the gentleman who bought the cage that morning. First, the salesman said, the oversized bamboo bird sanctuary was not a big seller, so any purchase was memorable, and second, the man who bought it had a terrible limp. Target maintained constant video surveillance in the store and the task force would soon have footage of their prey for inspection.

Most of the cops thought that this could be a big break; Jim saw it as nothing more than confirmation of what they already knew. He would look at it all tomorrow. Right now, he had an out-of-work television producer at his house and after he wrapped up his paperwork, he had to get home to make sure she was kept happy.

Day 4: 4:16 p.m.

The blow that crushed his skull was as swift as it was unexpected. After such a glorious day, to have it end like this was truly a travesty, but then again it was just another death in what was turning into the bloodiest ever holiday season in Los Angeles. The killer washed the bloody instrument and placed it back on the kitchen counter before taking leave of the apartment. Once the hallway of the building was clear of nosy neighbors, the killer snuck away unnoticed, leaving Milt Adams in a pool of blood.

Day 4: 5:25 p.m.

Not merely pretty, she had an exotic sexy quality that would stop men in their tracks. Gisele An sat in the makeup trailer and prepared for her segment on the Ten O’clock News. She had been born in Las Vegas, Nevada to World Champion Poker player Phillip An and his Austrian dancer/wife, Heidi, 27 years before. Giselle had the rich blond hair of her mother’s Germanic bloodline contrasting the almond shaped eyes and high cheekbones so often found in women who hailed from the Vietnamese peninsula. Gisele could have become a gambler like Phillip or a stripper like her mom but, after graduating from Stanford, she became a reporter. She started at KVTM news five years before as a production assistant, but quickly outgrew the job. Her looks got her face time on the air and her smarts kept her in place. She was now a featured reporter and everyone who worked with her knew that before she hit thirty, Gisele An would be doing national news on a major network. Tonight she would tell the world about victim number four. Unbeknownst to her, she too had made the list.

Day 4: 7:20 p.m.

Lisa finished loading the dishwasher with soiled flatware while Jim took out the trash; they were the pictures of domestic bliss. When Jim got home, dinner was cooking and a bottle of a precocious Cabernet Sauvignon was starting to breathe. He was very impressed by Lisa’s demeanor; she was appropriately distressed by the situation at work, but not overly so. They talked pleasantly about the case over spaghetti puttanesca and garlic bread and then they put the kitchen in order. Lisa broke down in tears when Jim told her about Mrs. Edwards and the savage nature of her death. She knew that her desire for a story had gotten the old lady killed and she was having a difficult time dealing with it. She collapsed on the couch; Jim tried to comfort her, but wasn’t succeeding.

“He killed the Edwards woman because she saw him. He probably thought she would interfere with his plan so he made her part of it. You saw him, too.”

“All the other murders, besides Edwards, were planned. It seems to me that number ‘four’ shows that he can adapt on the fly. Jim, please be careful.”

“When the roles were reversed, two days ago, you said you would ‘worry about it tomorrow.’ I’m going to take your advice. If we turn on the television right now we could catch the final question on Jeopardy. How does that sound?”

“Terrific.”

Jim picked up the remote and followed her suggestion.

Day 4: 9:20 p.m.

Captain Jones had just finished another long day at work. He settled into the front seat of his Cadillac Escalade and tuned his radio to KUSC, the college station that featured classical music around the clock. As a lovely Haydn quartet wafted through his speakers, he recounted the events of the day. After much prodding, the mayor had finally come around and now saw the advantages to Jones’ decision to release information about the killer to the press. Sometimes he could not understand how this dolt had been elected mayor of the second largest city in America. The only way to get through to this guy was to hit him across the forehead with a two-by-four, so to speak, and even then, the mayor would need an aide to explain to him what had just happened.

The surveillance video from Target confirmed that Jim Jovian had a good eye for details, as the artist’s rendition of the killer was spot-on. Still, Captain Jones knew that it was likely not the face that would get their suspect caught, but the limp. He had called an orthopedic surgeon friend to look at the tape and give him an opinion. Jones was told that although it could have been a knee injury that caused the limp, in all likelihood it was the hip. Based on the description of the man’s walk and how it now looked on-camera, the diagnosis would have to be degenerative arthritis with congenital hip dysplasia at the top of his differential diagnosis. The surgeon suggested that the suspect probably had been born with a dislocated hip that had not responded to treatment. A brace worked in selective cases, but the more recalcitrant ones required operations that had varying degrees of success. To the surgeon, the “antalgic gait” on the man in the video was proof of therapeutic failure.

Jones wanted to use this fact to his advantage. The severity of the limp was far more distinguishable than the killer’s facial features and he wanted that piece of information circulated to the news stations. His press conference at seven o’clock let the news stations know that the man who was terrorizing southern California had a bad wheel; if anyone knew the suspect, they should call the hotline immediately. The Captain had done all he could; day five was less than three hours away.

Day 4: 10:07 p.m.

Bobby Santoro sat on his couch, orange dye from the bag of nacho-flavored Doritos covering his fingers. He briefly touched himself in the way he always did, when he saw the beautiful Gisele An on the news. The movement that her face inspired in his pants quickly disappeared when the face of Captain Robert Jones suddenly filled the screen. He took another hit from his bong and exhaled.
The guy with the limp,
he thought,
I know that guy.
What the fuck was his name?
He came very close to remembering it when a Wendy’s hamburger ad caught his attention and sent him down a completely different thought pattern altogether.

Day 5: 6:47 a.m.

Nothing again last night
, thought Captain Jones. Either the guy was changing his modus operandi or he had gone underground. He looked at the morning edition of the L.A. Times as he drank the first of many cups of the black coffee that he would indulge in today. The headlines were stupid. “The Birdman of Covina” as he was so quickly dubbed, would now take his place with “The Hillside Strangler” and “Son of Sam” as infamous serial killers. Like the others, this new maniac would now be forever etched into the minds of the communities that they had terrorized. He had checked with Central; they received hundreds of calls after the news ended last night from people who knew a man with a limp. It was now up to his task force to sift through the silver linings to find this very dark cloud.

Day 5: 7:00 a.m.

Jim had left home early that morning with Lisa still asleep in bed.
She must be exhausted
, he thought,
I’ll let her rest
.
It’s probably the first time she’s slept in, in years, poor thing.
He was growing very fond of Lisa; she did not cramp his style, she was very smart, and she was wonderful in bed. Jim had never been one to think of the future from a romantic standpoint, but something was changing inside him and Lisa was the catalyst of his metamorphosis. He entered the I10 Freeway at Rosemead Avenue and played with the radio. As he flipped through his options, he was overjoyed. Now that Christmas was over, the constant prattle of holiday songs that had filled his head since Thanksgiving had finally come to an end. Jim was not a Scrooge by any stretch of the imagination, but if he heard ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ one more time, he would buy drumsticks and snap them off in some criminal’s ass. Six weeks of Christmas songs was enough to drive anyone crazy. Jim tuned into KROQ just in time to hear Barry Manilow’s rendition of “Another New Year’s Eve.”
Unbelievable
, Jim thought,
un-fucking-believable
.

Day 5: 7:43 a.m.

He had not slept well last night, but then again, he never did. It wasn’t the headaches that kept him awake. It was the knowledge that the police were getting closer; that they might catch him before he got a chance to finish his work. He knew that at some point, he would get caught; it was part of the plan. He just wanted to be further along. He toyed with the idea of completing all the scheduled kills at a faster pace but alerting the police to the victims’ locations on the appointed day, so that the pattern could still be seen in all of its intended glory. He would think about this more after he swallowed a few pills and got himself together. He had to make a quick stop before his scheduled audition that afternoon and he did not want to be late. He had to see a man about a drum set.

Day 5: 7:49 a.m.

Organized chaos is what Jim thought about when he arrived at the fourth floor conference room in Parker Center that morning. The task force was working at a furious pace to catch a homicidal madman. Call after call had come over the hotline as hundreds of concerned citizens let the police know that the man with the limp lived somewhere amongst them. Twenty-eight calls were fielded about women with limps, sixty-six calls about elderly men with walkers, and one call about a three-legged dog named Buster that was terrorizing a lady in Riverside. Eight witnesses with credible stories had either arrived or were on their way for personal interviews by the task force. Jim drew the name of a man named Julio from Long Beach who said he knew the guy. After about five minutes, Jim had sent him home after instructing the self-proclaimed “witness” that the Christmas killer was a white man, not a man of African-American descent who sat in front of the Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles restaurant in a wheelchair and sold incense.

Jim knew that this was going to be a long day.

Day 5: 9:45 a.m.

Lisa stood in the shower with the hot knob turned as far to the left as possible. But no matter how scalding the water, she could not get warm. She was freezing inside as she thought about the events of the previous day. She knew that for the rest of her life, she would carry the blame for death in her heart. She crumpled into a ball on the shower’s floor and cried.
What do I do now
? she asked herself.
What do I do now?

Day 5: 10:45 a.m.

Bobby Santoro woke early; he hadn’t gotten much accomplished on his script yesterday so he wanted to get a fresh start. He rolled out of bed and brushed the thin layer of marijuana residue out of his mouth, threw on a hoodie, and left his apartment. Bobby really wanted a whitefish salad on a toasted onion bagel and cup of coffee from Kanter’s Deli, so he made a right and drove to the Fairfax district. As he entered the restaurant, he noticed that the takeout line was only five people deep. It was a strange time to eat, somewhere between breakfast and lunch. Bobby placed his order and stood in waiting line behind a short bald man who smelled like cilantro. Bobby tried to ignore the smell as he busied himself reading newspaper headlines over the short man’s shoulder about the Christmas killer. Then, in a moment of clarity, Bobby remembered what had been bothering him for the past few days; Marty Lord. Marty fucking Lord, that was his name. He had that stupid script,
12 DAYS
or something like that. Bobby knew that he had to contact the police immediately; he ran out of the deli and onto the street towards his apartment before the old Jewish guy behind the counter could yell that his bagel was ready.

Day 5: 10:57 a.m.

It was Jim’s turn to man the phones. Most of his cohorts were either interviewing prospective witnesses or taking an early lunch. As luck would have it, he took the call from Bobby Santoro.