Shadow Man (16 page)

13

I
REMEMBER THIS
area from when I came to visit Annie after her father died. She lived in a towering apartment building—again, à la New York state of mind, where the apartments are more like condos, replete with dining rooms and sunken baths. We pull up to the front of the building.

“Nice place, nice area,” Alan remarks, looking up at it through the windshield.

“Her dad did okay,” I say. “He left her everything in his will.”

I look around at this clean, safe area. While no area of San Francisco can
truly
be called suburban, it definitely has its “nice neighborhoods.”

They take you away from the noise of the city, the good ones taking you up high so that you can look out across the bay. There are the old neighborhoods, with their Victorian-style homes, and then there are the areas of new development. Like this one.

It strikes me now as it did before: No place is safe from the possibility of murder. No place. The fact that it is less expected here than in a slum will make you no less dead in the end.

Alan calls Leo as we climb out of the car. “We’re in front, son, hang on. We’ll be up in a sec.”

We head through the front doors and into the lobby. The man at re-
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ception watches us as we pour into the elevator, but says nothing. We ride in silence to the fourth floor.

Alan and I were quiet on the way over, and we are quiet still. This is the worst part of the job for anyone who does it. Seeing the actuality of the act. It is one thing to process evidence in a lab, to peer into a killer’s mind as an exercise. It is another to see a dead body. To smell the blood in a room. As Alan once said, “It’s the difference between thinking about shit and eating it.”

Charlie is silent and grim-looking. Perhaps remembering last night, turning that knob and seeing Bonnie.

We arrive at the floor and exit, walk down the hallway and turn. Leo is outside. He’s sitting down, back against the wall, his head in his hands.

“Let me handle this,” Alan murmurs.

I nod and we watch as he moves to Leo. He kneels down in front of him and places a huge hand on the young man’s shoulder. I know from experience that as big as that hand is, the touch is gentle.

“How’re you doing, kid?”

Leo looks up at him. His face is white and pale. It shines with a greasy sweat. He doesn’t even try to smile. “I’m sorry, Alan. I lost it. I saw it, and then I puked, and I couldn’t stay in there . . .” His words taper off, listless.

“Listen up, son.” The big man’s voice is quiet, but it demands attention. Charlie and I wait. As much as we want to get inside and move forward in our jobs, we both have compassion for what Leo is going through. This is a crucial moment for those in our profession. It is the blooding. The point where you peer into the abyss for the first time, where you find out that the boogeyman really does exist and really has been hiding under the bed all those years. Where you come face-to-face with real evil. We know this is where Leo will either recover or find a new line of work. “You think there’s something wrong with you because you got freaked out by what you saw?”

Leo nods and looks ashamed.

“Well, you’re mistaken. See, the problem is, you’ve seen too many movies, read too many books. They give you this crazy-ass idea about what being tough means. How a cop is supposed to act when he sees
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dead bodies or violence, stuff like that. You think you’re supposed to have some smart one-liners on the tip of your tongue, a ham sandwich in your hand, and be all unmoved and shit. Right?”

“I guess.”

“And if you don’t, then you must be a pansy, and you have to be embarrassed in front of the old-timers. Shit, maybe you’re thinking because you puked you’re not cut out for this line of work.” Alan swivels, looking back at us. “How many scenes did you see before you stopped barfing, Charlie?”

“Three. No, four.”

Leo’s head pops up at this.

“How about you, Smoky?”

“More than one, that’s for sure.”

Alan turns back to Leo.

“Me, it was about four. Even Callie’s puked, though she won’t admit it, since she’s the queen and all.” He squints at Leo. “Son, there’s nothing in life that prepares you for seeing that kind of thing for the first time. Not a damn thing. Doesn’t matter how many pictures you’ve looked at, or case files you’ve examined. Real dead is a whole different game.”

Leo looks at Alan, and I recognize the look. It’s the look of respect, bordering on worship, that a student gives a mentor. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” They both stand up.

“You ready to brief me, Agent Carnes?” I make my voice a little stern. He needs it.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He has some color in his cheeks again and looks a little more determined. To me, he just looks young. Leo Carnes is a baby, introduced to murder, now destined to get old before he should. Welcome to the club.

“Well, go ahead, then.”

His voice is calm as he talks. “I came over and ran through the initial checks, verifying that there were no booby traps or viruses present. I then did the first thing you always do—I checked to see what file was last modified. It turned out to be a text file named
readmefeds
.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I opened it up. It contained a single sentence:
Check the pocket of
the blue jacket.
There was no blue jacket I could see, but then I looked in
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the closet. Inside the left pocket of a woman’s blue jacket, I found a CD.”

“So you decided to take a look. It’s okay. I would have done the same thing.”

He continues, encouraged. “When you make a CD, you can give it a title. When I saw the title of this one, I got very interested.” He swallows. “It was named
The Death of Annie
.”

Charlie grimaces. “Son of a bitch. Jenny’s going to be pissed that we missed this.”

“Go on,” I say to Leo.

“I looked to see what files were on the CD. There was just one. It’s a high-quality, high-resolution video file. It essentially fills the entire CD.” He swallows again. Some of the paleness is coming back. “I clicked on the file, which launched a player, which then played the video. It was . . .” He shakes his head, tries to get a grip on himself.

“Sorry. The killer encoded and created this video. It’s not a complete start-to-finish timeline—that would probably be too big for a CD, in terms of the size of the video—it’s more of a . . . montage.”

“Of Annie’s murder.” I say it for him; I know he doesn’t want to have to say it himself.

“Yeah. It’s—
indescribable.
I didn’t want to keep watching, but I couldn’t help myself. Then I started puking, and then you called. I left the apartment and I waited outside until you came.”

“You didn’t puke in the bedroom, did you?” Charlie asks.

“I made it to the bathroom.”

Alan claps him on the back with one of those catcher’s-mitt-size hands. If Leo had dentures, they would have gone flying out of his mouth. “See? You do have the stuff, Leo—you kept your head about losing your stomach. That’s good.”

Leo gives him a sheepish half smile.

“Let’s go see this,” I say. “Leo, you don’t need to be there if you don’t want to be. I mean it.”

He gives me a very direct look. It is a surprising mixture of maturity and contemplation. I realize in a flash of insight that I know what he is thinking. He is thinking that Annie was my friend. That if I’m going to go and watch her die, anybody should be able to. I can almost hear his thoughts. His eyes confirm it; they get hard and he gives a determined
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shake of his head. “No, ma’am. The computer end of things is my job. I’ll do my job.”

I acknowledge his strength the way we acknowledge things like that—by making nothing of it. “Fair enough. Take us inside.”

Leo opens up the door to the apartment and we enter. It hasn’t changed much from how I remember it. It’s a three-bedroom layout, with two bathrooms, a large living room, and a great kitchen. Most striking is the fact that Annie is everywhere. She lives through the decor, the essence of the place. Blue was her favorite color, and I see blue in the drapes, a blue vase, a photograph containing a broad blue sky. The place is classy, it has a kind of effortless quality, without gilt edges or gold leaf. Everything matches, but not in that irritating obsessive-compulsive way, that “keep up with the Joneses” way. It is a study in muted beauty. It is serene.

Annie always had that gift. The ability to accessorize without having to think about it. Everything, from the clothes she wore to the watch on her wrist, was always stylish, without being arrogant or frumpy. Elegant without being ostentatious. It was instinctive for her, and I always viewed it as evidence of her inner beauty. She did not choose things because of how others would see them on her. She chose them because they called to her. Because they were right. Because they fit. The apartment is a reflection of this. It is covered in the ghostly dust of Annie’s soul.

But there is another presence here as well.

“You smell that?” Alan asks. “What is it?”

“Perfume and blood,” I murmur.

“The computer is this way,” Leo says. He leads us into the bedroom. Harmony dies in here. This is where
he
did his work. It is a conscious opposite of Annie’s unconscious beauty. Here someone strove for dissonance. To break the serenity. To destroy something exquisite. The carpet is stained with blood, and my nose picks up the strong, rotten odor of decay, mixed with the smell of Annie’s perfume. They are two opposites: one the smell of life, the other the stench of death. An end table is overturned, a lamp smashed. The walls have been scratched, and the whole room feels jagged and wrong. The killer raped this room with his presence.

Leo sits down at the computer. I think of Annie.

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“Go ahead,” I tell him.

Leo pales. Then he moves the mouse and positions the arrow over a file, double-clicking it. A video player fills the screen, and the video begins. My heart almost stops as I see Annie. She’s nude from head to toe and handcuffed to the bed. Bile rises in my throat as I think of myself with Joseph Sands. I force it back. The killer is dressed in black. He has a hood over his face.

“Is that a fucking ninja outfit?” Alan rumbles. He shakes his head in disgust. “Christ. It’s all a fucking joke to him.”

My gift as a hunter kicks in on automatic. The killer looks to be about six feet tall. He’s in shape—somewhere in between muscular and wiry. I can tell from the skin exposed around his eyes that he is white. I’m waiting to hear him speak. Voice-recognition technology has come very far, and this could be a crucial break. But then he disappears from the camera view for a moment. I can hear small sounds of him fumbling with something. When he comes back into the camera’s view he looks right into the lens, and I get the sense from the crinkles around his eyes that he is smiling behind that mask. He lifts up a hand and gives a count with his fingers.
1, 2, 1–2–3–4 . . .
Music fills the room in the video. It drowns out all other noises. It takes me only a moment to place it. When I do, I am almost sick. Almost.

“Jesus Christ,” Charlie whispers, “is that the Rolling Stones?”

“Yep. ‘Gimme Shelter,’ ” Alan says. His voice is flat with rage. “Just a barrel of laughs for this sick fuck. Giving himself a little
mood
music.”

The volume is up and the song is loud. As it picks up speed, the killer starts to dance. He has a knife in one hand, and he dances for Annie and for the camera. It’s frenetic, crazy, but he does move with the beat. Insanity with a rhythm.

“
Ra-a-ape, murder . . .”

This is why he picked this song. That’s his message. It echoes my sentiments earlier in the day. What he can do, it’s always just a step away. I close my eyes for a moment as I see that Annie, too, realized this. It is something I can see in her eyes. Terror mixed with a loss of hope. The killer has stopped dancing, though he still twitches to the beat. His movements seem almost unconscious. Like someone tapping their foot to a song without realizing they’re doing it. He is standing by the
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bed, his eyes fixed on Annie. He seems mesmerized. Annie is struggling. I can’t hear it over the music, but I can tell she is screaming through her gag. He looks at the camera once more. Then he bends forward with the knife.

The rest of it is as Leo had said. A montage. Flashes of Annie’s torture, rape, horror. The knife is what he uses on her, and he takes his time with it. He likes to cut slowly, and he likes to cut long. He touches her everywhere with its blade. I physically jolt as each new image flashes. Full body spasms that make me feel like I’m being shocked by a car battery. Flash, shock, jolt, Annie getting tortured. Flash, shock, jolt, Annie getting raped. Flash, shock, jolt, he cuts, he cuts, he cuts, dear God, he won’t stop cutting. Her eyes fill with agony, her eyes fill with terror, and eventually they empty and fill with an endless gaze at nothing. Still alive, but no longer there. The killer is joyous, exultant. He is doing a rain dance, and the rain is blood. I watch as my friend dies. It is slow and awful and without dignity. By the time he is done, she is long since gone, a gutted fish. Watching her die, this woman I held as a child, this woman I grew up with and loved, it’s like being back in that bed, watching Matt scream.