While driving I had unconsciously taken myself back into the alley behind Ms. Thompson's house when the cell rang.
"Freeman."
"Richards," she said. "The crime scene guys got a match off some fingerprints from the doc's car. Some guy named Eddie Baines. He was in Marshack's forensics unit three years ago for a couple of months on a theft charge. We got an old home address for him, and SWAT is headed out there now. Can you meet us?"
She sounded in control, but pumped.
"Give me the address," I said.
A cop stopped me at a roadblock three blocks away from the house. I gave the uniformed officer Richards's name and he called it in over his radio.
"Somebody will have to take you in," he said.
Down the street the road was blocked again by two squad cars parked nose to nose. People who had been evacuated from their houses were milling around, talking to the cops and probably getting little answer for their questions. Another officer jogged up and told me to follow him to the command post. Richards, Diaz and two SWAT officers were working from the side patio of a small stucco house. Richards introduced me around and then filled me in.
"His place is the beige one across and to the left." I peeked around the corner. The house had a dilapidated look that followed the neighborhood trend. All the shades were down. The driveway was empty. The roof had a deep sway in the middle as if part of the air had been let out of the place.
"The phone has been disconnected for years," she continued. "Neighbors say that Eddie used to live there with his mother, but they hadn't seen either of them for quite a while."
"How old's the mother?" I asked.
"From what we know she's got to be mid to late sixties. Property records say she's owned the place for thirty years."
"What's the sheet on our guy?"
"Thirty-seven years old. Picked up a couple of times for loitering but only the one time for theft, when they say he stole some plants off a woman's carport. Low IQ. Signs of mental illness. They kept him in the forensics unit for more than thirty days to evaluate him. Nothing in the file to show they had any trouble with him there. Dr. Marshack did a preliminary workup on the guy, but when he'd served out his time they cut him loose to the streets with an appointment for follow-up at the local mental health clinic."
"And he never showed up," I said, knowing the answer. In some things, the world worked the same no matter what city you were in.
"He have any weapons charges?"
"Nothing that showed."
"So how come SWAT?"
The two guys in black never flinched.
"We got a quasi-county employee with half a bottle stuck in his neck. We got some psycho with his prints all over the inside of the victim's car. Hammonds wants this one tight and by the book," Diaz said.
All right, I thought. Show of force. Couldn't argue with that.
"They used the bullhorn on the place already. No answer. Now they got guys coming in through the alley and it's sealed from the front by a sniper," he said, pointing up to the roof over our heads.
I looked around the corner again and watched a three-legged dog limping down the middle of the empty street, snuffling the ground and then tilting its muzzle to the air trying to figure out the smell of clean leather and fresh gun oil.
"All right, detectives, we're set in the back with the door ram. Let's get this done before it gets any darker," said the SWAT lieutenant. Richards nodded her head.
The lieutenant whispered an order into his radio, and he and his partner stepped around us and out toward the street. We heard the muffled splintering of wood and then a series of shouts from the target house. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, waiting for a crack of gunfire we would all recognize and dread. A few seconds later we heard another whump from inside and then nothing.
The lieutenant spoke into his radio, and when he raised his hand and motioned us, we moved up behind him.
"All clear inside," he said. "Nobody alive."
Diaz led the way in. The SWAT team had opened the front door and we could smell the stench spilling out on the porch. An officer coming out shouldered his MP5 machine rifle and offered Richards a tin of jellied Vapo-Rub.
"Bad in there, ma'am."
She dipped a finger and dabbed it up at her nostrils. I took him up on the offer. Diaz declined.
What furniture there was inside had been shoved up against the walls. It was hot and stale and others on the team were snapping up the window shades and trying to force open the windows. The light that washed in gave the place a gray cast. The lieutenant directed us to a bedroom door just off the kitchen that had been splintered open, but as we approached, another black-suited team member opened the nearby refrigerator door and jumped back.
"Jesus Christ," he yelped.
On a bottom shelf stood a huge glass pickle jar that at first glance seemed to be full of a caramel soda that had been shaken and was fizzing over. On second look, a boil of brown cockroaches was streaming out of the jar in an effort to flee the officer's flashlight beam.
"Shut the damn door, Bennett," the L.T. snapped, and the kid slammed the door and danced into the next room.
Richards still had her eyes closed when we went into the bedroom.
"Signal seven in the closet," said the lieutenant.
I stepped forward and looked. Folded up in a small linen closet were the remains of a woman. Her gray hair was matted on skin that wasn't far from the same color. She was curled up in a fetal position and looked too small to be an adult. There was a swatch of silver duct tape wrapped around what was left of her mouth.
"Been here a while from the looks of that decomp," said Diaz.
I turned away and noticed that all the windows had been sealed with the same duct tape. The bed was still made up. But the dresser top had been cleared of anything remotely valuable.
"Lets get the M.E. out here," Richards said. "And let's call Hammonds."
27
Another twilight was spun through with red-and-blue light bars from a line of squad cars. Another visit by the M.E.'s black Suburban. Another body bag.
I leaned up against the driver's door of Diaz's SUV while Richards talked on a cell phone inside, filling her boss in on the details. I was thinking about crisp new hundred-dollar bills, doubting that they were going to find any in this house. The detectives were playing their theme: A former psych patient goes wacko for some reason, tracks down the shrink that treated him in jail and robs and kills him.
"Uh, yeah. We've got a mug shot from the jail and a physical description, sir," Richards was saying into the phone.
Diaz had turned on the overhead light in his truck and was looking through the jail and arrest reports on Eddie Baines. He handed a sheet to her.
"We've got a black male, thirty-seven years of age, approximately five-foot-ten and 250 pounds. Brown hair, uh…no eye color here. Some scars on his forearms, possibly knife wounds it says here, sir. No marks or tattoos.
"Yes, sir. I believe we've already got the BOLO out, sir," she said, passing the sheet back to Diaz.
I was staring down the darkened street, seeing something big and thick and menacing in the back of my head.
"Uh, no, sir, I don't believe so." She turned to Diaz. "Anything in there about a vehicle?"
"Uh, nada," he said, reading through the arrest report. "Looks like he was stopped by patrol on foot while he was pushing some kind of shopping cart. Like a junk man or something."
I reached in through Diaz's window and plucked the sheet out of his hand.
"Yo, Freeman," he snapped.
"What?" Richards said.
I read the line about the shopping cart, the description.
"He's our guy," I said, as much to myself as to them. "That's him."
The detectives were watching me.
"Um, yes, sir. Yes, Freeman, sir," Richards was saying into the phone.