Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
With the fear that Merci
had put into LaLonde, Hess bet the young man would call them if his customer
contacted him for a repair. Then again, he might not, because the override box
could convict them both. Merci had made this clear, that LaLonde was staring at
a murder conspiracy rap if he didn't cooperate. It was hard to know which way a
person would lean.
LaLonde had sketched his
device for them, and Hess now turned to the drawing and noted where the fuse
would go.
But you lost it in Janet
Kane's car, thought Hess. You opened the cell phone body and the fuse fell out
and you didn't notice in the dark. And the override hasn't worked since. Why
open it? Was it failing? Unreliable? Did it open accidentally?
Thus a 1978 Chevrolet
Malibu belonging to Veronica Stevens of Orange, California.
Hess could see the
wavy-haired, mustached suspect wheeling a vehicle with mismatched tires into
this yard in the dark last night, pulling up between the CATs. He knows this
place because he scouted it early. Ditto the last two places he's used to hide
the van and later transfer the woman.He could see Ronnie Stevens inverted from
a rope tied to the top of the CAT's hydraulic blade—about seven feet off the
ground. Like the oak branches, strong, but easier to get to.
But, question: How does he
get from where he parks to where he hunts?
Hess cursed himself for
not thinking of this before. Then he searched his memory for the pertinent
distances: between the Jillson abduction site and where her car was found—5.3
miles. Between the Kane abduction site and where her car was found—3.3 miles.
Between the Stevens abduction site— if it was indeed the nearby mall—and where
her car was found, well, how far was the mall from here, maybe a mile?
You don't walk five miles
unless you have to. Or three. Or even one.
Then how does he get from
where he leaves the van or truck or station wagon to where he hunts the women?
A bike? Too clumsy and
hard to handle. Hard to stash in the victim's car.
A friend? Hess had hoped
that they weren't up against a pair. You didn't see it much in sex crimes, but
two were twice as hard to catch, not twice as easy. None of their evidence,
until now, had suggested that possibility. For the time being, he let it go.
Hitchhike? Too
conspicuous.
Taxi? The same.
The OCTA bus? Well, he
thought, check the routes. Should have done that two days ago. Goddamnit,
anyway.
Merci was talking to the
foreman again. He pointed to the car, then, presumably, to the route he'd
driven in.
Hess walked the mismatched
tread tracks until they came to an end near Main Street. The ground trembled
from the vibrations of the freeway the same way the beach trembled from the
waves at the Wedge.
The van had gone right,
which was the shortest way back to 1-5. This part of Main was light commercial
and residential, or had been at one time. Now the buildings were either razed
or awaiting demolition to make room for a new bend in the interstate and a fat
new on-and-off ramp. Hess trudged back to his car and got out some plastic
bags, into which he spooned soil samples from every twenty yards or so of the
dirt drive. He spread the samples against the insides of the bags. He knew that
all the various oils and fuels and sand and gravel dropped to the dirt and
ground in by construction machinery might help an analyst match up samples
taken from the tires of any given van. He wiped his forehead with his
shirtsleeve. Give me the truck or van, he thought. Give me the truck or van
with the odd tire.
Back at the Chevy he
watched the CSIs dusting the window exteriors. The purse was already gone,
bagged up and secure inside the CSI van. Hess stepped over the crime scene tape
and looked through the dust on the driver's side window.
"Are you done
with the door handle?" he asked.
"Yes, sir,
Lieutenant."
"I'm going to
open it."
"It's all yours,
sir."
Hess swung open the door, bent over and put his hands
on his knees, looking in. The interior was alive compared to the Jillson and
Kane cars, he thought: recent players; recent events. It was just a feeling. He
thought he smelled something sweet and not unpleasant—Ronnie's perfume,
perhaps. Or maybe a man's cologne. He remembered what Robbie Jillson had told
him about smelling his wife's tormentor when he got into herInfiniti a
full
day
after she went missing. How did he describe it?
Faint. Cologne or
aftershave maybe. Real faint. But 1 smelled him.
He leaned further in,
hoping for a more definitive whiff but getting none. A woman's scent lay
underneath it all, he thought, but something else?
A woman's shoe lay on the
floor, down by the pedals. It was a black sandal with a thick sole like the
young people were wearing these days. Hess leaned in and confirmed that the
shoe came up fairly high—above the ankle—and that it fastened with a buckle at
the top. The buckle was burst open and the perforated length of leather, bent
from hours of use, had sprung free of the broken buckle. He could see her
fighting. He looked back up toward the headrest of her seat. One long dark hair
caught in the stitching of the pad. Because you were being pulled back? Because
he's behind you with, what? A cord? A club? Just his strong hands? No chance,
really, with him coming from behind in the dark. You could have a .45 in your
purse but it wouldn't help. It wouldn't help
you,
anyway. No warning. No
purchase. Nothing but your fists and your nails. He could see her unlocking the
door, swinging her purse in, dropping herself to the seat and closing the door
at the same time. She's just about to put the keys in the ignition when he
moves. After the door closes; before the engine starts. Keys still in her hand.
Keys. We always say
to use the keys as a weapon.
Hess saw that they were
still in the ignition, a fat bunch and a small flashlight on a ring. The
flashlight had a good surface for prints. The Snatcher had touched at least one
of those keys, for certain. Hess used his pen and a pocketknife to guide the
ignition key almost free but keep it from falling out. In the smoggy morning
light he did not see what he hoped he'd see: darkened blood in the slot and on
the teeth of the key. He saw nothing but the clean old metal of well-used
metal.
It made him angry and Hess
thought, Sonofabitch, I'm going to find you. And if Merci Rayborn takes target
practice on your face I might look the other way.
It was easy to get worked
up about what had happened to a young woman like this, when you were close
enough in time and space to smell her.
Hess backed out, gently
shut the front door and opened the rear one. There you were, he thought. Your
place. Not much room, really. Hess wondered if he just sat on the seat,
unmoving and dressed in dark clothing—maybe a dark ski mask pulled down—and let
darkness, reflections on glass and people's general inattentiveness be his
cover. Maybe.
You find the woman and you
know her car, which means you must have seen her in it. You are on foot now, in
the parking lot, where Kamala Petersen first saw you. You walk purposefully
and deliberately: a gentleman going to or from the mall, to or from his car.
Alert. Observant.
You override her alarm if
she has one; jimmy the door lock; get in. You carry the Jim where? Down your
pants? In a bag or box? Along with the "cell phone" override? Along
with your choke cord or sap?
You wait in the back;
overpower; take the keys and drive away.
Hess tried to picture the
Purse Snatcher slugging his victims unconscious with a sap or a club. But he
couldn't see it happening—the headrests kept getting in the way.
He shut the back door and
looked at one of the CSIs. "Do your best."
The CSI nodded.
"We've already got a lot of prints, sir. But cars are traps—you know that.
Can I mention something? Did you notice a smell in the car?"
"Yeah, I can't place it."
"I think I can.
My cat was operated on a few months ago. They let me watch because the vet's an
old family friend. Typically they put the animal under with a ketamine and
Valium shot, then keep it down with halothane gas. But last time, my cat got
real sick with either the ketamine, the Valium or the halothane. He's old.
Almost died. Anyway, they tried chloroform. The vet's an old guy—he used it
decades ago and he was good with it. But I got that same smell, sweet and kind
of nice, when I opened the door of this car."
It made the kind of
sense that sent a little shiver of recognition to Hess's heart.
"It knocked out that
cat in about two seconds. And you know how uptight and nervous a cat at the vet
is?"
They found Ronnie Stevens's Santa Ana address and
parked right out front. It was a fifties' suburban home in a tract that looked
well tended and peaceful. A big acacia tree bloomed purple in the middle of the
front yard. An older Chevy—a model once driven by Sheriff Department deputies,
Hess noted—sat in the driveway.
"I hate
these," Merci said. "Maybe you can do the talking."
Ronnie Stevens's mother
was tall and dark-haired, an aging beauty, Hess saw. He wondered that a
sixty-seven-year-old man with ten-pound fingers would consider a fifty-year-old
woman aging. She'd been cleaning the house.
Hess stumbled through his
lines as best he could. He felt his face flushing and heard his voice crack as
he told her that her daughter was missing and presumed dead. He hated these
moments, too: tragedy revealed, and irrefutable evidence of his own failure. Of
the failure of his entire profession.
Eve Stevens received the
news with a small nod, an uncertain wobble of chin and eyes filling quickly
with tears.
"We're going to get
this guy, Mrs. Stevens," Merci said.
Eve Stevens excused
herself and left the living room. Merci was standing by a cabinet that housed
family photographs and mementos. Hess saw the eager shine of trophies and the
twinkle of keepsakes.
"Brothers," said
Merci. "Baseball and archery. The girl, Veronica, she was a swimmer."
Hess heard a toilet flush.
He heard the low keening from the bathroom, then the toilet flush again. When
Eve returned her face was a sagging mask of tragedy and her eyes looked like
they'd been burned.
Eve could only talk about
Ronnie for a few minutes. She sobbed steadily the whole time, but Hess was impressed
by her courage. Ronnie was a conscientious young woman, had been a good student
and reliable worker since she was sixteen. She had graduated from high school a
semester early to go full time at the jewelry store. She had no ambitions other
than to travel and see some of the world. She saved her money, had a few
friends, stayed out late on Fridays and Saturdays. No steady guys. Eve didn't
think Ronnie had much interest in drugs, had never found any or seen her
intoxicated or overheard her talking about them with friends.
Then she stood, and Hess
knew the expression on her face.
"May I?" she
asked.
"Please."
With this, Hess went to
her and hugged her, very lightly, almost formally, and not for very long. He
let her break it off when she wanted to.
"Thank
you," she said.
Hess just nodded, then
handed her the sketch of the Purse Snatcher suspect. He watched her tears hit
the paper.
"No. She liked
the clean-cut type. At least, I think she did."
Hess asked if
Veronica had remarked anything unusual about a man lately—any man—a stranger,
an acquaintance, a customer, a new or old friend.
Eve nodded. "Two
nights ago, Thursday, we talked when she came home from work. We talked late.
We talked about men, how funny they could act. Because this man had blocked her
from getting out of the parking lot, then asked her for a date. Odd."
Merci exhaled with
some disgust. "This guy's odd for more reasons than that."
Hess looked at her
but it was too late. Raybom was thick as a post sometimes. "Did she
describe him?"
"No."
"He just parked
his car right behind her?" he asked, anything to get Merci's last
implication out of the air.
"His van. Ronnie
said it was a silver panel van."
• • •
The OCTA bus driver
on the Saturday evening route recognized the sketch immediately. It had taken
Hess about two minutes and the transit district schedule to see that there were
bus routes proximate to all three sites where the cars had been abandoned.
"Last night,
late, after eight-thirty," he said. "He got on at Main and 17th, got
off at the Main Place Mall. What did he do?"
"We think he killed a
woman," said Merci.
The driver looked at
Hess, then back to Merci. "He sat on the right, up near the front of the
bus. I remember that he wore cologne. Kind of a funny smell. Strong. Had a
shopping bag—the ones with the handles on them. He had a book out.
Fodor's Los Angeles.
So I thought he
was a tourist. Nice clothes, country and western style. Long coat. Mustache and
long hair, like the picture. But some guys, they've got this thing about them,
you notice it."