The One That Got Away (29 page)

“She’s buried here.”

“Where?”

He threw an arm back in the direction of the larger of the two paddocks. Vagaries weren’t good enough.

“I have to see where.”

Beck examined her with a penetrating stare. She hoped he’d see why it was important.

“Please.”

He shook his head. “If this is a delay tactic, it changes nothing.”

“It’s not.”

“Wait here.”

Beck jogged back to the SUV, while Brando stood guard over her. She eyed the dog. This was no pet. It was a killer. Scars marred its muzzle and crisscrossed its body. The dead-eyed stare it gave her said it would pounce at the first inkling of provocation. Beck returned with a handful of cable ties and his knife.

Zoë couldn’t take her eyes off the knife. It was old but honed from years of hand sharpening. It was
the
knife. The knife he marked all his victims with.

“I’m trusting you, so please don’t betray my faith in you,” he said. “Now sit down.”

Beck guided her to the ground. The dog sat a few inches too close to her for comfort. Beck took half a dozen of the cable ties and formed a daisy chain with them. She didn’t know what he was doing until he slipped the outer two loops around her ankles and cinched them tight. He’d made a makeshift set of shackles.

He cut the original cable tie he’d bound her ankles with and helped her up.

“Now you’ve got a little movement.”

A little movement was right. He’d sized the shackles to give her about half of a normal stride. There was no chance of running. Just more chance of falling.

“C’mon, this way.”

He led her to a gap in the paddock fencing. She found it hard to walk through the long grass. Progress was slow and tiring. It was waist high on her, and the shackles dragged across every blade. Even the dog was having trouble, forced to bound over the grass instead of through it. Even without the shackles, it would have been hard going. Her knees and back had taken the brunt of the impact when she’d rolled from the SUV, and they protested when she walked. She wondered if he was doing this to her on purpose. Maybe he thought the long hike through the grass would wear her out and make her more malleable.

“Is Holli the only one buried here?”

“No.”

“So all your victims are here?”

“Not all. Not Laurie Hernandez. Not you.”

Zoë swallowed.

“But they’re not victims,” he said. “Society is the victim. They, you, are the perpetrators.”

She’d struck a nerve, and it exposed his warped view of the world. “Perpetrators of what?”

“Bad behavior. You think it’s OK to take shortcuts, walk over people, make a mess, and expect others to clean up after you.”

Was that it? The crime she, Holli, Laurie Hernandez, and the others were guilty of—bad behavior? Did he have any idea how crazy that sounded?

“Bad behavior? I still don’t know what Holli did to you. I don’t even know you.”

“That’s your problem. Your kind never know what you do wrong, but I will teach you. You will know what you’ve done and the price you have to pay.”

The veiled threat forced her to shudder, which knocked her off balance. She stumbled, then fell to the ground. He helped her up and waited for her to get moving again. She remained where she was.

“Why bring them here?”

“Because,” he said, then trailed off, leaving the answer unfinished.

Another nerve touched
,
she thought.
This place means something to him. Does he think of it as sacred ground?

He clamped his hand on the back of her neck and shoved. “Keep moving. We’re nearly there.”

When they reached the far side of the paddock, he lifted her over the fence, then pointed to a small stand of trees.

“There.”

They walked to a spot under the trees. The grass was shorter here, ankle deep, stunted by the shade depriving it of enough light to grow. Nothing indicated to her that this was a grave. There was no sign of previously disturbed ground. This could be anything.

She shuffled around the spot, careful not to step directly on it, just in case it was the real thing. “Where?”

Then she saw the grave marker. It was understated, but fitting for a killer. The Tally Man couldn’t build monuments to what he did, or it might draw attention. The stone was large and smooth, a river rock polished by centuries of fast-moving current. A Roman numeral
III
painted onto its surface identified it as Holli’s grave.

Her heart broke at the sight of it. Until this moment, she’d held a microscopic belief that Holli was still alive, hiding somewhere under an assumed name to protect herself from him. There was no more proof required. Holli was dead.

The revelation broke Zoë. She’d lived with the knowledge for over a year that she’d abandoned her friend. Worse, she believed that she’d let Holli die. But the ambiguity of never knowing for sure whether Holli was dead or not had given Zoë hope. There was always an element of possibility, a slim chance that Holli had escaped, just like her. It was a dumb thought, a salve to keep the pain at bay, a delusion to keep her from this moment—true confirmation and the guilt that came along with it. Truth—Holli was dead and it was her fault. She couldn’t keep herself upright any longer, and she collapsed on top of Holli’s grave.

“I’m so, so sorry, Holli. I never should have left you. I should have tried harder to save you. I let you down.”

She pressed her cheek into the ground, feeling the dew-sodden earth on her face. She sobbed long and hard. Her chest felt as though it would implode with each gasping breath.

The Tally Man came up behind her and lifted her to her knees. “That’s enough. You got what you wanted.”

A sudden realization struck her. If Holli’s stone was here, then the others’ would be also. As if a veil had been lifted, all the stones revealed themselves to her. Similar river rocks formed a curve around the tree to her right and left. There were five of them. Each one was marked with its numerals. Her gaze stopped at
IV
—her stone.

“Oh God,” she murmured.

“Your place has been waiting for you for a long time,” the Tally Man said. He walked up behind her and pressed the chloroformed rag to her mouth. “I’ve held up my end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It was 6:00 a.m., and the Investigation Unit’s office was quiet. Only Greening and Ogawa were at their desks. Neither of them had left since returning from the raid in Walnut Creek. Everyone else who’d been working through the night had gone home for a shower and a change of clothes. The team had pursued every lead, but it had been hard going with so little to act upon. They didn’t have a print or an ID to direct them. Everything boiled down to a screenshot of a man calling himself Brad Ellis.

The two of them worked the Tally Man’s picture. They got it, along with a photo of Zoë, out to every media channel. Every law-enforcement agency in California, Oregon, and Nevada was on the lookout. Cops from more than a dozen Bay Area cities were combing every vacant building as a possible nest for the Tally Man. Everyone was looking, but no one knew where to look. Greening remembered Ogawa’s remark about cases turning ugly. This investigation couldn’t have gotten any uglier. He’d never felt so impotent as a police officer.

While they’d done everything possible to get the Tally Man’s face out to the world, the lateness of the hour had worked against them. By the time press releases had gone out to the media outlets, it was three in the morning, when the viewer pool was at its lowest, reduced to night workers and truckers. They were forced to wait for the West Coast to wake up and catch their morning news over breakfast or on their commute into work.

“We’ve lost her,” Greening conceded. “That fucker finally gets to close accounts on number four.”

“Hey, you don’t know that,” Ogawa said.

“I don’t, but the odds say it’s so. The bastard likes to kill close to home. He did it with Laurie Hernandez here, he did it with Holli in Bishop, and he probably did wherever he rubbed out victims one, two, and five.”

“She isn’t dead until we find her.”

“What the fuck is that—the Schrödinger’s-cat defense?”

“No,” he barked. “It’s called being a professional. That woman is out there, in trouble, fearing for her life, and we treat her like she’s alive until it’s proven otherwise. Now grow up and be a cop.”

They glowered at each other, but Greening couldn’t maintain his anger. Ogawa was right. Zoë needed him on point, but he couldn’t ignore his faltering sense of hope. The Tally Man now had a six-hour head start. He could be hundreds of miles away and hard at work, flogging the life out of Zoë. It was hard to be optimistic when he thought about their chances of finding her alive.

“I warned you that if this was a serial case, it would get ugly,” Ogawa said without rancor.

“I know, but I screwed up. I didn’t do enough. We knew this guy was gunning for her, and what did I do? Let her shrink protect her. I should have been there or had a cop there at all times.”

“And if that shrink were here now, he’d be all over you.”

“What?”

“Listen to yourself. ‘I didn’t do enough.’ ‘I should have been there.’ Those are all pretty big statements beginning with I. You don’t work for an
I
organization. You work for a collective body.
We
did what we could within the limits of our role.
We
as a body will do everything we can to find Zoë.
We
will take any and all blame should anything go wrong. Got it?”

It was easy to put it in those terms if they tracked down Zoë in time, but he wasn’t so sure how it would hold up if they didn’t. He couldn’t have her death on his conscience. For the first time, he truly understood how Zoë felt about leaving her friend to die. The past few hours were killing him. He couldn’t imagine suffering through fifteen months of this.

“I’ll take it under advisement. I’m going to dunk my head in a sink and change this shirt. It’s starting to crawl.”

“No, it is crawling. You’ve been curling the blinds with your stench for some time.”

Greening smiled and grabbed a spare shirt, which he kept for situations like this, from his desk. He walked into the men’s room and stripped off his soiled garment and tie, tossing them on the counter next to the sinks. Since there were no stoppers, he plugged one with paper towels, filled it with cold water, and dunked his face. He let the chill seep into flesh and spread through him. He felt his body temperature drop and his equilibrium return. He was running on empty, physically and emotionally. The chill helped restore him. He was a cop again. As a cop, he could help Zoë. He raised his head and dried it with a fistful of paper towels.

He drained the sink and refilled it with hot water. With soap from the hand dispenser, he washed his face, chest, and under his arms. He felt human again. He was astounded that the simple act of bathing could do so much for his well-being. He dried himself off, pulled on his clean shirt, and retied his tie. He checked himself out in the mirror. Yeah, he was a cop again, a tired one, but a cop.

“Hang in there, Zoë. We’re coming.”

As he carried his dirty shirt into the Investigations Unit, Ogawa tossed him his jacket.

“We’ve got an ID. Someone just phoned it in. His name is Marshall Beck.”

Minutes later, Greening was holding on to the handle of the passenger door as Ogawa sliced through traffic, lights and sirens blaring. Ogawa blew through a red light and stopped their Crown Vic in front of the Urban Paws Animal Rescue Center in a no-parking zone. A slim, middle-aged woman who’d been standing outside the entrance to the shelter rushed toward them.

“Kristi Thomas?” Ogawa asked.

“Yes. Call me Kristi.”

“I’m Inspector Ogawa, and this is Inspector Greening. Now, you’re sure the person we’re looking for is your employee?”

“Yes, I can show you.”

Kristi pushed the door open. Greening and Ogawa followed her in. She stopped in the lobby and pointed at a wall that held nearly two dozen individually framed photos.

“This is our staff, and this is Marshall.” She pointed at a photo on the second row.

Greening didn’t have to compare the photo with the one on his phone. He’d burnt the image of the Tally Man into his head, and Marshall Beck was the guy.

“What does he do here?” Greening asked.

“He’s our financial officer. He takes care of our accounts and writes grants. I don’t understand this. Marshall is a nice guy, a bit stiff and awkward, but a good guy. Has he really abducted this woman?”

“Do you have Marshall Beck’s contact information, address, phone numbers, things like that?” Ogawa asked.

“Yes, of course. In my office.”

“Which office is Beck’s?” Ogawa asked.

“His is across from mine.”

“Do I have your permission to search it and check out his computer?”

“Yes. I give you permission.”

“Thank you,” Ogawa said. “I’m calling this in. Greening, you go with Kristi.”

Kristi took him into her office. She went to her computer and pulled up Beck’s details. Greening scribbled down the San Francisco address.

“Edward, I’ve got his address.”

Ogawa came rushing in with his phone to his ear. He snatched the paper with Beck’s info on it and left the office, requesting a SWAT team.

Shock spread across Kristi’s face. She turned to Greening. “Is SWAT really necessary?”

“You think you know Mr. Beck, but you only know a version of him. We know another. Have you called him? If you’ve warned him, I need to know.”

Kristi frowned. “I have called him, but not about this. Something happened here yesterday.”

“What?”

“A few weeks ago, Fremont Police busted a professional dog-fighting ring. We took in those dogs for assessment. Marshall took a liking to one of them. He wanted to adopt it, but it failed the assessment, so we were ordered to destroy it, by the court. Marshall didn’t take the news well, and I think he stole the dog. I called him and even went to his place, but he wasn’t there. I don’t know where he is.”

Loves dogs, hates people
, Greening thought. There was no figuring some people.