“I told you you were off these cases.”
“I was right about them. I couldn’t let it go.”
“You were ordered to let it go.”
“Fine, suspend me. But fire Benny and follow up on these.” He took the two sketches out and placed them on the desk, Tabitha’s memory sketch on top of the other. “This is him, Danny. He’s targeting families and using an accelerant that most fire investigators can’t detect.”
Childs breathed heavily out his nose and lowered his eyes to the drawings. He glanced back up. “Slim Jim, you wanna keep these cases?”
“Hell no,” Slim Jim said, picking a piece of lint off his tie.
“It’s your case,” Childs said. “I’ll find another body to partner up with you.”
“Don’t need it. I’ll get Stephen when he gets out.”
“You kiddin’ me? He was shot and you’re gonna put him back to work?”
“I know him. He won’t lie in bed long.”
Childs leaned back in his chair. “All right, it’s your show. You run it. But if you fuck it up and this is wrong, or if you’re right and this…thing, gets away. It’s your ass.”
“I know.”
“So what’s next?”
“I want to give these to the media and have them on the six and ten o’clock news and every website and blog we can.”
“Tricky move,” Slim Jim said, pulling the sucker out and looking at it as he twirled it in his fingers, “he could run.”
“I know. I want a phone bank with as many people as we can spare. The calls’ll come quick and we need to nab him.”
“What makes you say that?” Childs said.
“He’s disorganized. He was so frantic to get work done at the Humbolts’ that he let a sixteen-year-old girl ID him. He didn’t care if neighbors of the girl he cut up saw him. He didn’t even bother to wear a wig or a baseball cap. The calls identifying him will come in quickly and we need to have people on standby to go as soon as we get the right call.”
“I ain’t got that many people, Jon. You can pull some interns and secretaries but that’s it.”
“What about the trainees at the academy?” Slim Jim said.
Childs shrugged. “You call over and see if they can send them.”
Slim Jim sighed as he stood up. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I thought it was going to be more work for me.”
Childs picked up the sketch. “Man, I hope you’re wrong about this. I hope it was a fucking accident. I don’t wanna know that people like this exist in the same world as my daughter.”
Within two hours, a room had been set up with twenty phones. Trainees had been pulled from their coursework at the academy on a volunteer basis; the volunteers having to make up the missed day on Saturday. Half a dozen interns from the local criminal justice programs at the city college joined them as did two secretaries. Stanton had run to Kinkos and gotten the sketches blown up. He pinned them to the wall at the front of the room. Childs and Slim Jim came in and stood by as Stanton turned to the people sitting on the folding chairs at the long tables they’d taken from the cafeteria. Slim Jim nodded to him, indicating that the sketches as well as an official statement had been sent to every media outlet in the county and even a few statewide.
“We’re going to get a lot of people claiming to be him,” Stanton said. “The accelerant he used was called naphtha. Ask them what type of accelerant they used in the fire and if they say anything else tell them the police are on their way to their location as we traced their number. They won’t be, but we need to get them off the phones as quickly as possible and make sure they don’t call back.”
One of the trainees, a young man, raised his hand. “What if he answers right?”
“Let any of the detectives in the room know and they’ll run a trace on the call. He won’t do that, though, he’s too smart and he hasn’t shown any indication of wanting to make contact with us in the past.” He glanced around. “Any other questions?”
“Yeah,” one of the other trainees said, “can I be the one to take the fucker for a ride when we catch him? I’d hate for him to get hurt by someone else’s crazy driving.”
There was a murmured, forced laugh from the crowd. Stanton smiled but didn’t respond. He gathered a couple of pens and a legal pad, pulled out a folding chair, and sat at one of the tables, staring at the phone.
CHAPTER 44
Nehor Stark sat quietly in the recliner as the young girl across from him woke up. He had cleaned and bandaged her head as well as he could with the supplies he’d found in the condominium. At present, the wound on the back of her skull had stopped bleeding and he was confident she hadn’t suffered any permanent injury. He didn’t say anything as she came to and looked around the living room.
“Where am I?” she said, her voice thick from grogginess that hadn’t left yet.
“You’re home, dear.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your friend. Don’t you remember?”
“No.” She leaned her head back. “My head hurts.”
“Would you like some medication? I found quite a stash of Percocet pills in your bathroom.” He rose and took two pills out of an amber bottle that was on the coffee table. He held them up and she opened her mouth without protest. He placed them on her tongue and grabbed the plastic water bottle that was on a side table, putting it to her lips and allowing her to drink.
“What happened?” she said.
“Apparently you fell down and hit your head. Quite hard I’m afraid.”
“Shouldn’t I go to the hospital?”
“Not yet, but you will.”
“Who are you again?”
“Dear, I swear, you’re going to start hurting my feelings.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her head only to have it collapse back down. “I don’t feel good.”
Nehor rose. “Get some sleep. I’ll be back to check on you.”
As he walked around the couch he checked the cuffs on her ankles locking her to the chains that had been wrapped around the massive entertainment center. They gave her almost nine feet of slack, but it didn’t matter. All the phones had been smashed and the two entrances to the condo were at least twenty feet away.
Nehor stepped outside and got into Amber’s BMW. It purred to life and he pressed the accelerator a few times to hear the engine. He smiled to himself as he pulled out of the parking stall and onto Balboa Avenue. Pacific Beach wasn’t far and he briefly considered going there and putting his feet in the ocean. It’d been so long since he’d seen the ocean he had forgotten what it looked like. He had an image of it in his mind, but he knew it wasn’t accurate any longer.
He drove for a long time and got on Interstate 15 for a while, putting the top down and enjoying the blasts of warm air over him. He pulled off when he spotted a police cruiser behind him and came to a quaint neighborhood he hadn’t been to before. There was a yoga studio on one corner and a coffee shop next door with an alternative jewelry retailer across the street. He parked behind the yoga studio and went inside the coffee shop.
It never ceased to amaze him how much the style of clothing had changed since he was young. Then again, his memories were little more than fragments and even those had been altered in the time he’d spent in the little square room with no window. He didn’t trust his memories anymore to give him accurate information and he considered himself lucky. He was a man that wasn’t bound to anything.
He ordered a coffee with milk and argued with the cashier who quoted him four dollars for it. He paid with a five and went to a little station, mixing in sugar with a thin straw before finding a seat by the window. He watched the passing traffic, the monstrous SUVs and trucks that swallowed the road. Cars had gotten larger, more shiny, more a status symbol and less transportation. He remembered suddenly the smell of his mother’s Buick as they drove from Nevada to California, stopping only once a day to eat at greasy fast food restaurants to save money.
A man sitting across from him at the next table was staring at him. Nehor caught his glance and smiled and the man turned away. When he thought Nehor wasn’t looking he turned back, and then his eyes lifted to the television screen. Nehor glanced up to see a drawing of his face.