If Angels Fall (36 page)

“I know.” Exhausted, he placed his face in his hands.

Wilson bit her lip and blinked. Her bracelets tinkled
as she brushed her hair aside. She tapped a finger on the table thoughtfully
before turning to him.

“I’ll help you, Tom.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s only one thing you can do.”

“What?”

“Check Keller out yourself, quietly. Take a few days,
dig up everything you can about him, then decide whether or not to pass it to
the police. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

It would be risky. The paper would fire my ass if it
found out what I was doing.”

“Nobody would have to know. I’ll cover for you. I’ll
help you.”

Sydowski was
wide awake. The numbers of his clock radio blazed 3:12 A.M. from
his night table. He tugged on his robe, made coffee, and shuffled to the aviary
to be with the birds.

He deposited himself into his rocker, a Father’s Day
gift from the girls, running a hand over his face, feeling his whiskers as he
sat in the dark, listening to the soft chirping.

Turgeon had volunteered to stay with Mikelson,
Ditmire, and the crew keeping an all-night watch at the Nunn home. For all the
sleep he was getting, he might as well have stayed, too. He fingered his
beeper. Linda would page him if anything popped.

Damn. This was a ball-breaker.

The out-of-focus video footage was good, but it wasn’t
enough. They had squat. No good calls. No solid leads. Virgil Shook’s file was
supposed to arrive today. That should help. They had zip on Becker and Nunn.
DMV was working up a list of all Ford pickups and the California partial tag.
They were certain the severed braids they found were Gabrielle’s. Beyond that
and the footage, they had no physical evidence on Becker and Nunn.

IDENT would hit the Nunn house and neighborhoods at
daybreak, concentrating on the dog’s pen, comb it for anything. More than two
dozen detectives were dissecting each family’s background for a common
denominator. Why were these children selected? Was it random? Becker was stalked;
Nunn was lured in a calculated plan. But the guy risked getting caught. If he
was fearless, he was on a mission, and when there was a mission, delusion
fueled it. What kind? Nothing surfaced to lead them to terrorists. Nothing to
lead them to a cult, or human sacrifice, according to Claire Ward with Special
Investigations. The families’ religious backgrounds varied. Angela Donner was
Baptist, the Beckers were Protestant, the Nunns, Anglican. No common thread,
except their Christianity. And those faces.

Angels faces.

Tanita Marie Donner. Peering into that bag. What he
did to her was inhuman. Was it Shook? Was he their boy? Was he now out of
control? Tanita may have been stalked. Taken in broad daylight. But he killed
her, left a corpse, left pictures, left his mark, and called the press. Why? To
mock the police? Was he just practicing with Tanita?

Practice makes perfect.

Sydowski was alert now. Might as well go to the hall.

In the shower, he thought of the children. What about
their birth months? Signs of the Zodiac. The Zodiac? He patted Old Spice on his
face after shaving, pulled a fresh pair of pants over his Fruit of the Looms.
He chose the shirt with the fewest wrinkles, a blue Arrow button-down, plopped
on his bed, and laced up his leather shoes. The Zodiac had taunted police with
his mission. Sydowski took a navy tie from his rack, knotted it, then strapped
on his shoulder holster, unlocked his Glock from the safe on the top closet
shelf. He checked it, slipping it into his holster. He hated the thing, it was
so uncomfortable. He put on a gray sports coat, rolled his shoulders. Gave his
hair a couple of rakes with a brush, reached for the leather-encased shield,
gazing at his laminated ID picture and his badge. A lifetime on the job.
Twenty-six years of staring at corpses. He looked at the gold-framed pictures
on his dresser—his girls, his grandchildren, his wedding picture. Basha’s
smile. He slipped the case into his breast pocket and left.

On the way to the hall, he stopped at his neighborhood
all-night donut shop. A few nighthawks huddled over coffee. Jennie, the
manager, was wiping the counter with an energy that, at 4:30 A.M., was painful
to witness. Her face told him he looked bad. “You’re working too hard, Walt.
You getting enough sleep? A growing boy needs his sleep.” She poured coffee
into a large take-out cup. “You need a woman to take care of you.” She spooned
in sugar, a couple of drips of cream, snapped on a lid.

“You think so?”

“I know so. You’re early today. Bert ain’t made no
chocolate yet. I’ve got some fresh old fashions though. Warm from the oven.”

“Fine.”

She dropped four plain donuts into a bag. Rang up the
order. “It’s a shame about them kids, Walt.”

A moment of understanding passed between them.

“You’ll crack it, Walt. You’re a wily old flatfoot.”

Sydowski slid a five toward her. “Keep the change,
Jennie.”

At the Hall of Justice, in the fourth-floor Homicide
detail, three faces watching him from the mobile blackboard in the middle of
the room stopped Sydowski in his tracks. Poster-size blowups of Tanita Marie
Donner, Danny Raphael Becker, and Gabrielle Michelle Nunn.

Score: Three to fucking zero.

A couple of weary inspectors were on the phone,
pumping sources on the abductions. Files and reports were stacked next to
stained coffee mugs. The
Star’s
edition was splayed on the floor, the
front-page headline blaring at him. The enlarged, city case map at one end of
the room now contained a third series of pins, yellow ones, for Gabrielle Nunn.
Someone was shouting in one of the interview rooms. A door slammed and a
massive slab of Irish-American righteousness with a handlebar mustache, in
vogue for turn-of-the-century beat cops, stepped out: Bob Murphy.

“Who you got in there Bobby?”

Murphy had been up for nearly twenty-four hours. He
slapped a file into Sydowski’s hand. Sydowski put on his bifocals and began
reading.

Donald Arthur Barrons, age forty-three. Five feet,
three inches tall, about one hundred pounds. Red hair. No tattoos. No beard.
Nowhere near the description of the suspect. He was the flasher pervert whose
prints were lifted from one of the stalls in the girls’ washroom at the
Children’s Playground after the abduction. Witnesses put Barrons at the park
earlier that morning.

“Accomplice?” Murphy anticipated the question of
description. Barrons had molestation convictions. Worked downtown. Parking lot
attendant.

“Vice picked him up about midnight at his apartment.”

“And?”

“We got zip. Sweet dick, Walt. I jumped him too soon.”

“Why’s that?”

“He admitted right off to being there. Said he goes
there to play with himself in the girls’ can. But he’s alibied solid. Was
working his lot well before Nunn was grabbed. It checks. He’s got clock-punched
parking receipts. Witnesses. And a hot dog vendor remembers selling him a
cheese dog. So nothing.”

Sydowski went back to the file. Barrons worked for
EE-Z-PARK, a company that owned several small lots in prime downtown locations.
“Do you know if the Beckers and Nunns ever parked at his lot?”

“No.”

“Ask them. If they can’t be sure, get the company to
show you records. I know they computerize tag numbers of all cars. Check the
Ford and the partial tag with them, too. May be a common factor there.”

Sydowski slapped Murphy on the back and handed him the
file. “I’d kick Barrons loose, go home, and get some sleep.”

Murphy nodded. He was a good cop. The boys in Vice did
jump Barrons too soon. Sydowski thought, starting a fresh pot of coffee in the
coffee room. He stared at the fading poster above the counter. A .38 Smith
& Wesson with a steel lock through the action—“Keep it locked at home.”
They may have blown it with Barrons. Damn. Too many divorced, heart-broken cops
thinking like fathers instead of detectives here.

Notice of a case status meeting was scrawled on the
blackboard: 8:30 A.M. Sydowski eyed the fax machine. Nothing from Canada. He
sipped coffee and flipped through a basket of the most recent tips and leads
that had been checked, or dismissed. He went through the E-mail printouts. Lots
of advice on how to conduct an investigation. Cyber advice from around the
world pointing them to suspicious websites and kiddie porn stuff. Most of the
tips came from crazies. Most of it was plain useless stuff. Sightings across
the Bay Area of a man fitting the general description. “Suspect spotted on BART
last year, caller can’t remember when.” Impossible to check. Psychics and
anonymous kooks such as: “Caller says she was instructed to inform police by
the Lord.” Sydowski shook his head.

One dismissed report came with a cassette recording.
Sydowski rummaged through his desk for his machine, inserted the tape, rewound
it to the beginning, put on a headset, and pressed the play button.

“We’ve been in love for more than a year...”

The words hung in the air like a bizarre smell. It was
difficult to determine the speaker’s gender.

“Danny is with me now. It’s better this way. He loves
me. He’s always loved me. Our first meeting was so beautiful, so innocent. I
think it was preordained. Shall I tell you about it?”

Sydowski checked the accompanying report. The caller
had phoned in on the task force line, which was wired to record calls.

“I was walking through the park when we saw each
other. Our eyes met, he smiled. Have you seen his eyes? So expressive, I’m
looking at them now. He is so captivating. I won’t tell you how we made
contact, that’s my little secret, but I will say he communicated his love to me
intuitively. A pure, virtuous, absolute love...” The voice wept, rambling for
five minutes until the line went dead.

Sydowski removed his headset, went over the accompanying
report. The caller was Chris Lorenzo Hollis, a forty-year-old psychiatric
patient who called from his hospital room. The staff said he’d been mesmerized
with the Becker kidnapping, and fantasized about being Danny Becker’s mother.
He watched TV news reports, read the newspaper stories faithfully. He hadn’t
left the hospital in sixty days.

Sydowski went to another cleared report, opening the
thin legal-size file folder containing a single sheet of paper sealed in clear
plastic and a two-page assessment. The piece of paper was left that night on
the counter of the SFPD station in Balboa Park. Nothing on the person who
delivered it. It was in a blank, white letter-size envelope. No markings.
Sydowski read the document.

Re: Kidnapping of Danny Becker and Gabrielle Nunn.

Dear Sirs: This material was channeled spiritually so it is open to
interpretation. The kidnapper is Elwood X. Suratz, born Jan. 18, 1954. He is a
pedophile who was in the city recently for counseling. He cancelled his
appointment when he became overwhelmed by his urges. While in a semi-psychotic
state, he went XXXXXX hunting for prey on the subway where he abducted Danny
Becker...

The letter graphically described assaults on Danny,
then detailed biographical material on Suratz. The accompanying two-page report
dismissed the tip as bogus. No such person existed. Every claim in the letter
has been double-checked. Not one item could be verified. The letter was typed
on the same portable Olympia manual that was used for ten other similar letters
sent to the police on ten different high-profile cases. Police suspect the
letters came from somebody who thought they had psychic abilities. They didn’t.

Sydowski gulped his coffee just as the fax machine
began humming. The first of twenty-six pages, via the FBI liaison in Ottawa, on
the Canadian police, prison, and psych records of Virgil Lee Shook were
arriving, including copies of the most recent mugs of Shook. He was a
forty-eight-year-old Caucasian, six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds. He
had light-colored hair. Put a beard on him and he fit the description in the
Becker-Nunn cases. His tattoos matched those of the hooded man in the Polaroids
with Tanita Marie Donner.