Bailey ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “I’ll be glad when this case is put to bed. Let’s get going. And bring that thing.” She gestured to the box. “We’ll drop it off at SID on the way.”
It was unlikely they’d come up with anything, but we both knew better than to make the rookie mistake of assuming something when it came to evidence. The ride out was silent and tense, and the crush of morning commuter traffic didn’t help.
“This is one of the weirdest cases I’ve ever had,” Bailey remarked. In all the time we’d worked together, I’d never heard her make a statement like that. The case was getting to her. It was good to know I wasn’t the only one. I told her about the conversation I’d had with Dr. Spagnotti and his diagnosis of Zack.
“So he agrees Zack was probably blackmailing Lilah into marrying him,” Bailey said.
“Yeah.” The words brought to mind the image of a bug pinned to a board, its legs and body pumping wildly in helpless agony.
Bailey said nothing for several moments. It had to be hard for her to deal with the notion that a fellow cop could be that twisted. We sat in silence, absorbing the horror of it all.
It was one hell of a bizarre duel. Two psychopaths locked in an unending battle of wills. Godzilla meets Mothra. Or, more precisely, Lizzie Borden meets Hannibal Lecter. I imagined Lilah looking across the table over her Cheerios every morning at the man who sadistically held the threat of ruination over her head. No matter what she did, Lilah would serve a life sentence. Her only choice was whether to serve it with Zack or in a prison cell.
“You know, I have no doubt that if Lilah ever tried to leave him, Zack would’ve brought out the evidence and taken the hit for his part in it, just for the pleasure of destroying her.”
Bailey nodded. “He was one sick fucking bastard.”
We lapsed into silence again, the hum of freeway traffic a soothing, familiar counterpoint to the dark, otherworldly revelations about Zack and Lilah. We’d decided to head out to Johnnie Jasper’s colorful encampment first. Since it was Simon’s last known living space, we thought he might’ve stashed evidence there. We got to Johnnie’s by nine thirty a.m. and found him sitting in his outdoor living room, watching television and holding what looked like a large cup of Starbucks coffee.
“Hey, Johnnie,” I said through the fence.
He frowned and peered at us at first. Then his eyes widened with recognition. He jumped out of his chair.
“You ladies got to go!” he shouted, agitated. “I mean it. You go on, now!”
“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “Last time you were here, someone came by and tore my place up! I went out to do some shopping, and when I came back, everything was thrown around, broken-it was like a tornado hit it!”
Johnnie was bouncing on his toes, thrumming like a freshly tightened guitar string.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We had no idea. Are you sure it was because of us?”
Johnnie shook his head and vibrated at a marginally slower level.
“I can’t say for sure, ma’am,” he said. “And if I’m wrong, I’m real sorry. But no one ever bothered my place before. Then I talk to you, and the next thing I know, my place is trashed-”
“I understand,” I said, and reached into my purse. “Let me at least pay you back for your loss-”
“You can’t pay me back!” he said. “The stuff they broke was one of a kind!”
“What about for your hassle? I could-”
“No,” he replied emphatically. “The only thing you could do for me is get away and right now. I don’t want no more trouble.” He waved us away. “Just go. Please.”
And with that, Johnnie went back to his chair and his television show.
We walked to the car.
“At least he said please.”
Bailey looked at me, then got into the car. I joined her and put on my seat belt.
“How sure are we that Lilah’s people tossed his place because we talked to him?” I asked.
“On a scale of one to ten, with ten being most sure?” Bailey said. “I’d say an eleven.”
“We spread joy wherever we go,” I said.
She just shook her head.
She drove south, heading for the freeway. The snowcapped San Gabriel Mountains loomed in the distance, offering a comforting sense of being encircled, protected. But, of course, it was false. The mountains protected us from nothing.
We pulled up to the curb in front of the Bayer residence and found our old friend Tracy Chernoff fiddling with a sprinkler head. I’d expected to find a FOR SALE sign out front by now. She was wearing the same men’s nylon jacket. I had a feeling it was her dad’s.
I decided to forgive her for not covering me better after my run-in with the homicidal mailbox rooster.
“Hey, Tracy,” I called out. “How’re you doing?”
She straightened up and peered at Bailey and me. After a second, she brightened and moved toward us, hand extended. “Oh, right,” she said. “The cops. I’m good. And you?”
We shook, and I saw that a FOR SALE sign was lying on the ground near the side of the house.
“You put the house on the market?”
“Yesterday,” she said. “But my folks got upset when they saw the sign, so I had to take it down.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Tracy sighed and looked back at the house. I’d had the feeling she was withholding something when we spoke the first time, and now I was getting it again. I gave her an opening.
“Did anyone talk to you back when Zack’s case was going on?” I asked.
Tracy looked down at her feet. “Nah. I didn’t live here, and I didn’t really know anything.”
I keyed in on the really part of that sentence. “What’d you think of Zack?” I asked.
Tracy sucked in her cheeks and pursed her lips. She looked off in the distance, then jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and hunched over slightly. It was one hell of a lot of body language.
“I can promise you that whatever you say will stay between us.”
Tracy blew out a ragged breath and nodded. She turned, putting her back to the Bayers’ house, and stared at her feet as she spoke.
“Zack and I…hung around together when we were kids,” she said. “He was my best friend.” She squinted at the ground. “And my worst enemy,” she said, her voice low but hard. “We’d be having fun, playing video games, riding bikes, you name it…and then, out of nowhere, he’d turn on me-”
“Turn on you?” I asked, perplexed. “How?”
“Lots of different ways,” she said. “But the first one’s the one I remember best. We were playing in the abandoned house-of course we all called it the ‘haunted house.’”
“Every neighborhood has one,” I remarked. “How old were you?”
Tracy tilted her head, brow furrowed. “Five? Six at most. We’d just gotten inside, to the front room, when all of a sudden he was gone.”
I could actually feel her fear, still palpable, after all these years.
“I was so scared, I could barely breathe,” Tracy said. “I just stood there, couldn’t even move, for…well, at the time, it felt like hours. It was probably more like five minutes.”
I pictured her, small and terrified, standing alone in that scary house, waiting for an unknown horror to strike. I could relate to the trauma more than Tracy would ever know.
She took a moment to collect herself, then continued.
“Suddenly, he jumped down from…somewhere, screaming in this high, weird voice. Right behind me. I can still hear it.” Tracy shuddered at the memory. “I screamed, and when I turned around, he was gone again. I lost it, I had to get out of there. I ran to the door, but it was closed…it wouldn’t open. I didn’t know what to do, so I kept yanking on the door, kicking at it, but I couldn’t get it open. I didn’t know whether there was a back door, but the idea of running through the house was even scarier. I cried and pounded on that door until my hand was bloody. I was so scared, I thought I was going to die. And then, suddenly, something tapped me on the shoulder.” Tracy paused and looked down. “I…I completely lost it and wet my pants. It was Zack, of course, and he’d seen it all.” Tracy stopped again and inhaled deeply, then resumed. “Threatened to tell everyone how I’d ‘pissed’ myself. He teased me about it for years.”