“I’d like to see the kid’s room,” I said.
When I stepped across the threshold, I could see from his stuff that Anthony Sarducci was a smart kid. He had good books, terrariums full of healthy creepy-crawlers, and a high-powered computer on his desk. But what got me most interested were the indentations in the carpet where the desk chair normally stood. The chair had been moved. Why was that?
I swung my head around and saw it just inside the doorway.
I thought about that cop standing sentry outside the Sarducci house and made a mental leap.
The child had heard nothing.
But what would have happened if he had?
I pointed out the chair to the chief.
“Anyone move this chair?” I asked.
“No one’s been inside this room.”
“I changed my mind,” I told him. “There weren’t two intruders here. There were three. Two to do the killings. One to manage the boy if he woke up. He sat right over there in that chair.”
The chief turned stiffly, walked down the hall, and returned with a young female CSU tech. She waited by the door with her roll of tape until we had stepped out of the room. Then she cordoned it off.
“I don’t want to believe this, Lieutenant. It was bad enough when we were dealing with one psycho.”
I held his gaze. Then, for just a second, he smiled.
“Don’t quote me, now,” he said, “but I think I just said we.”
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 65
IT WAS LATE IN the afternoon when I left the Sarducci house. I drove southeast along Cabrillo, my mind buzzing with the details of the crime and my conversation with the chief. When he confirmed that the Sarduccis, like the other double-murder victims, had been whipped, I told him that I’d had a brush with these murderers myself.
I told him about John Doe #24.
All the dots between the Half Moon Bay murders and my John Doe hadn’t been connected yet, but I was pretty sure I was right. Ten years on homicide had taught me that though MOs might change over time, signatures always stayed the same. Whipping and slashing in combination was a rare, possibly unique signature.
The light was red as I approached the intersection just a few blocks from the Sarduccis’. As I braked, I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw a red sports car coming up behind me very fast. I expected the car to stop, but it didn’t even slow down.
I could not believe what I saw next. My eyes were pinned to the rearview mirror, watching as the car kept coming toward me on a collision course.
I leaned on my horn, but the car just got bigger in my rearview. What the hell was going on? Was the driver on his freaking cell phone? Did he see me?
Adrenaline shot through me, and time splintered into fragments. I stepped on the gas and jerked the wheel to avoid the collision, driving off the road and onto a front lawn, taking out a garden cart before coming to rest at the base of a Douglas fir.
I jerked the Explorer into reverse, tearing up the lawn before getting back onto the roadway. Then I took off after the fast-disappearing maniac who’d almost driven through my backseat. Who hadn’t stopped to check on the wreck he almost caused. The asshole could have killed me.
I kept the red car in sight, getting close enough to recognize its elegant shape. The car was a Porsche.
My face got hot as my fear and anger came together. I gunned my engine, following the Porsche as it wove through traffic, crossing the double yellow line repeatedly.
The last time I’d seen that car, Keith had been fixing the oil pan.
It was Dennis Agnew’s car.
A dozen miles flew by. I was still on the Porsche’s tail when we went up and over the hills into San Mateo and south on El Camino Real, a seedy thoroughfare bordering the Caltrain tracks. Then, without signaling, the Porsche hooked a sharp right into a strip mall entrance.
I followed, squealing into the turn, coming to a stop in a nearly desolate parking lot. I turned off the engine, and as my racing heart slowed to a canter, I looked around.
The minimall was a down-market collection of retail shops: auto parts, a Dollar Store, a liquor store. Down at the far end of the lot was a square cement-block building with a red neon sign in the window: Playmate Pen. XXX Live Girls.
Parked in front of the poster-plastered storefront was Dennis Agnew’s car.
I locked the Explorer and walked the twenty yards to the porn shop. I opened the door and went inside.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 66
THE PLAYMATE PEN WAS an ugly place lit by harsh overhead lights and flashing neon. To my left were racks of party toys: dildos and ticklers in garish colors and molded body parts in lifelike plastic. To my right were soda and snack machines—refreshment for all those film lovers trapped inside tiny video booths with their brains hooked into their fantasies, hands firmly on their joysticks.
I felt eyes tracking me as I walked the narrow aisles lined with videos. I was the only female wandering loose in the place, and I guess I stood out more in my slacks and blazer than if I’d been stark naked.
I was about to approach the clerk in front when I felt a dark presence at my elbow.
“Lindsay?”
I started—but Dennis Agnew looked thrilled to see me.
“To what do I owe the honor, Lieutenant?”
I was caught in a maze of stacks and racks of chicks-and-dicks, but like a steer in the chute of a slaughterhouse, I could see that the only way out was straight ahead.
Agnew’s office was a brightly lit, windowless cubicle. He took the chair behind a wood-grain Formica desk and indicated where I should sit—a black leather sofa that had seen better days.
“I’ll stand. This isn’t going to take long,” I said, but as I stood there in the doorway, I had to look around the room.
Every wall was hung with framed photos signed to “Randy Long” from G-stringed lovelies, porn film publicity stills of overheated couplings featuring Randy Long and his partners. I also saw a few flashbulb snapshots of Agnew posing with grinning guys in suits.
Bells started clanging as I matched the mugs of young up-and-coming wiseguys to the mobsters they’d later become. At least two of the suits were now dead.
It took me another couple of seconds to realize that Dennis Agnew and the younger, long-haired Randy Long in the photos were one and the same. Agnew had been a freaking porn star.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 67
“SO, LIEUTENANT, WHAT CAN I do you for?” Dennis Agnew said, smiling, making neat stacks of his papers, corraling a loose pile of cock rings, pouring them like coins from one hand to another, then onto the desktop.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” I said, “but where I come from, running a car off the road is a crime.”
“Seriously, Lindsay. You don’t mind if I call you Lindsay?” Agnew folded his hands and gave me one of his bleached-beyond-white smiles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s crap. Twenty minutes ago you ran me off the road. People could’ve been killed. I could’ve been killed.”
“Oh. No. Couldn’t have been me,” Agnew said, furrowing his brow and shaking his head. “I think I would’ve noticed that. No, I think you’ve come here because you want to see me.”
It was infuriating. Not just that Agnew was a creep with a fast car who didn’t give a shit, but his mocking attitude really fried me.
“See these girls?” he said, hooking a thumb toward his “wall of fame.” “You know why they do these flicks? Their self-esteem is so low they think by debasing themselves with men, they’ll actually feel more powerful. Isn’t that ridiculous? And look at you. Debasing yourself by coming here. Does it make you feel powerful?”