Chapter37
FRESH AIR FILLED MY LUNGS as soon as we stepped outside. Chris Raleigh, Hartwig, and I walked down the dirt road. The grid of the valley floor stretched out below us. Rows of fallow grapes hugged each side. We were silent. Shellshocked. A scary idea shot through me. We were a thousand feet up, totally isolated. Something didn't sit right. "Why here, Hartwig?" "How about, it's remote and no one ever comes up here." "What I meant," I said, "is why here? This particular spot. Who knows about this place?" "There's isolated property all up and down these slopes. The consortiums have eaten up the valley floor. These properties take more work than capital. Labors of love. Check the listings. Dozens of them dry up every season. Anyone around here knows places like this." "The first killings were in the city. Yet he knew exactly where to come. Who owns this plot?" Hartwig shook his head. "Dunno." "I'd find out. And I would also make another pass through their room. Someone had them targeted. Knew all their plans. Travel brochures, business cards, see if there's anything from any limousine services." From below, I heard the sound of a large vehicle climbing up the dirt road. I caught sight of a white San Francisco Medical Examiner's Bronco pulling to a stop. Claire Washburn was behind the wheel. I had asked her to come- in the hope of matching evidence from both crime scenes. I opened her door and said gratefully, "Thanks for coming, sweetie." Ckire solemnly shook her head. "I only wish they had turned up differently. It's a call I never like to receive." She pulled her heavy frame out of the car with surprising ease. "I have a meeting later back in town, but I thought I'd look over the crime scene, introduce myself to the presiding onsite." I introduced Claire to Frank Hartwig. "Your MEs Bill Toll, isn't he?" she asked with authority. He blinked warily, clearly nervous. First, he had Raleigh and me here as consults. But he had asked us in. Now the San Francisco M.E. pulls up. "Relax, I already patched through to his cell phone," Claire said. "He's expecting me." She spotted the medical team standing over the yellow bags. "Why don't I go take a look." Trying to hold on to some sense of order, Hartwig followed close behind. Raleigh came and stood next to me. He looked tired. "You okay?" I asked. He shook his head. He kept his eyes fixed on the shed where the bodies had been dumped. I remembered how he had steadied me at the morgue. "Been a while since you took in a really bad one?" "That's not it," he said, with the same unsettled look. "I want you to know… that wherever this leads, it's not about interfacing with City Hall. Or containment, Lindsay. I want this guy." I was already there in my head. This wasn't about the big collar. Or my shot at lieutenant. Or even fighting Negli's. We stood there side by side for a while. "Not that either of us," he finally said, breaking the silence, "is in much of a position to be the last line of defense for the institution of marriage."
Chapter 38
PHILLIP CAMPBELL had driven since the first light of dawn, setting out in the bulky rented stretch limo. He was nervous, wired- and he absolutely loved it. He chewed up the miles in a steady, purposeful daze, crossing the Bay Bridge and continuing east on 80. He finally broke free of the morning traffic near Vallejo and maintained a vigilant sixty on the speedometer as he headed east. He didn't Want to be stopped. The papers called him a monster. Psychotic, sociopathic. Expert witnesses on TV analyzed his motives, his past, his possible future murders. They know nothing. They are all wrong. They'll find what I want them to find. They only see what I want them to see. From the Nevada border it was a short drive down into Reno, which he considered a vulgar, aging cowboy town. He stayed on the highway, avoiding the Strip. Wide, stucco-lined boulevards of gas stations, gun dealerships, pawnshops. You could get anything here without a lot of questions. It was the place to come to buy a gun, or unload a car, or both. Out by the convention center, he turned into Lumpy's. He pulled the car up to an open area in the lot, opened the glove compartment, recovered the folded paperwork, breathed a sigh of relief. The limo was perfectly clean. Spotless. There were no ghosts whispering. All day yesterday, he had cleaned and polished, scrubbing out the bloodstains until the last trace of evidence was gone. Now the car was silent, as un confiding as the day he had picked it up. He breathed easier. It was as if Michael and Becky De George had never existed. In minutes he had paid for the car and called a cab to take him to the airport. At the airport, he checked in, looked through a San Francisco paper at a newsstand. Nothing about Becky and Michael. He made his way to the gate. He bought a bottle of Fruitopia apricot drink and a vegetarian wrap at a fast-food counter. He checked in at Gate 31, Reno Air to San Francisco. He took a seat and started eating his lunch. An attractive young woman sat next to him. Blond hair, tight ass, just tawdry-looking enough to attract his eye. She wore a gold chain around her neck with her name on it in script: Brandee. A tiny diamond ring. He smiled a quick, inadvertent greeting. She pulled out a Kipling knapsack, took a swig from a plastic water bottle, and took out a paperback, Memoirs of a Geisha. It interested him that of all things, she was reading about a woman in bondage. These were signs. "Good book?" He smiled her way. "That's what everyone says," she replied. "I'm just starting." He leaned over and breathed in the cheap, citrusy scent of her perfume. "Hard to believe," he went on, "it was written by a man." "I'll let you know." She flipped a few pages, then added. "My fiance gave it to me." Phillip Campbell felt the short, thin hairs on his arms stand up. His heart began to throb. He ran a tremulous finger along the edge of his goatee. "Oh- when's the big day?"