Nix is right, though. David has left the building.
I go back outside to my car, the uniforms coalescing in my wake. I grab my briefcase from the passenger seat, open the laptop right there on my hood. The Outlook software chugs along, filling my inbox with recent arrivals.
“You mind if I release these units?” Nix asks. “I guess I’ll write this one up as a wild goose chase.”
The banter irritates me. “That’s the nature of the game, except when it isn’t.”
He chuckles. “If the law enforcement thing doesn’t work out, you might have a bright future in the exciting world of fortune cookie writing.”
The message from Simone Walker’s email address is there, just as Hanford said. I glide the cursor over her name. I click. The pretense from before is dropped: he hasn’t bothered to pretend the message is from Simone. The strange chattiness is absent, too. There’s just a single veiled threat:
I GUESS THINGS ARE ABOUT TO HEAT UP
As the cruisers pull away, Nix returns to my side. With no subordinates to impress, he adopts a sober expression. We’ve known each other a long time. He leans over to squint at the screen, nodding as he reads the line of text. Then his eyes cut over and he recognizes the name.
“You been getting a lot of those?” he asks.
“Enough.”
“And the guy in the picture, he’s the one?”
I nod.
“All right, then,” he says, clapping my shoulder. “You look out for yourself, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. And listen: I’m gonna need some more muscle from your shift. We’re not letting go of this guy. I need to round up my partner and my lieutenant, then we can all drop in on him at home. He’s got a place in that high-rise on Kirby.”
“Tell me where and when,” he says. “I’ll bring the chips and dip.”
I get back in the car, situating the open laptop on the passenger seat. The photo of Bayard is waiting in my inbox, too. He sits at a patio table with his chin cradled in the scarred hand. The image is fuzzy but unmistakably him. He stares just below the camera. His eyes are lucid and hard. Again, the pretense is gone, all the glancing away, all the awkwardness and evasion. Without the mask, I see him for the first time as he truly is.
Calculating. Intelligent. And all too normal. The serial killer whose existence I denied. The unifying intelligence behind the seemingly unconnected acts.
No, that’s not right.
I’m giving him too much credit. The connections were obvious. The crimes, actual and attempted, were clumsily executed. Only the cleanup showed the genius of evil. The rest was simple depravity.
The story Kristie told me, the girl from across the hall, provides a template for speculation. I can imagine how Simone’s murder must have gone down. She would have been surprised by his presence, perhaps. Or maybe she invited him in. Their relationship would have been like the one he’d developed with Kristie. She would have pitied him.
When he put his hands on her, when he began his pushing game, she might have sensed what was coming. But probably not. She’d have seen him as a big child-“emotionally stunted,” in Kristie’s words-nothing she couldn’t handle. Stop, she would have told him, and she’d turned her back on him. And in a flash he rushed up, knife in hand, closing his fingers over her lips as he inflicted the fatal wound. Then, crouched over her dead body, he’d begun the ritual stabbing. Clumsily again. Learning.
There must have been some contact before. She might have had emails from him. She might have had his name and number programmed in her phone. He’d known all along he’d have to take them.
With Agnieszka, everything must have been different. That was a rush job.
He’d watched her out by the pool, complaining to Jack Hill over the phone. He’d failed with Agnieszka before, but he wouldn’t this time. She had the power to connect him directly to the crime. So when she left, he followed. He learned where she lived, then positioned himself for an ambush when she arrived home. There was no question of coaxing her-she was on her guard-which explains why he resorted to the ligature, choking her first, and then stabbing her. Putting the blade in her hand before plunging it home.
That was personal, and it makes sense: she was the first real target. With Kristie, he was just feeling his way, discovering for the first time what was truly inside him. Watching Agnieszka, the fantasy must have taken root in him. He saw what he would do to her. He could stare the act in the face and recognize himself. But then she short-circuited the process and the obstructing trees went up. Only later, when the new tenant arrived, could he execute his plan.
Simone was his first. I’m certain of that. An experienced predator wouldn’t hunt so close to home. In time he’d gain a kind of trade craft, teaching himself how to commit his crimes while avoiding detection.
Now he will never have the chance. I can at least comfort myself with that.
Yes, things are going to heat up for you, David.
Just not the way you were expecting.
“Gina’s here with me,” Charlotte says, “but I couldn’t get Carter to listen. He said you’d understand. He said he wasn’t going to be a bystander.”
“Great. I’ll call him.”
“What about you? Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine.”
Aguilar taps on the window, motioning me to hurry up. He’s not too happy about being called out. Through the windshield I can see Bascombe slipping a vest over his head while Captain Hedges, already in body armor, rests the butt of a decorative shotgun on his hip, probably practicing for the cameras he expects after the fact. It wasn’t my idea to drag him out to the high-rise-and judging from the lieutenant’s tight features, it wasn’t his, either.
“Charlotte, I gotta go.”
“Be careful,” she says.
The tactical team, stacked up alongside their van, is ready to go. I get out of the car and vest up, press-checking my side arm one more time. So many officers, so many guns, it might seem like overkill to bring in a single knife-wielding nut job. But overkill is our specialty, the firstest with the mostest, overwhelming force applied to an enemy’s weakest point, nipping all opposition in the bud before it can materialize. Textbook blue.
I just wish I knew for certain Bayard was waiting in there. We haven’t done our strategic homework. We haven’t had time.
“If he’s home, he knows we’re coming.”
“Let’s get in there, then,” Aguilar says.
We meet a concierge in the lobby, then travel up the elevators in groups, forming up in the hallway down from David’s apartment. When everyone’s ready, Hedges makes the call, trailing personally behind the tac team, leaving the rest of us to follow in his wake. At the door, the rammer sidesteps politely so the next man in line can insert the concierge’s key. We pause a few moments, breathing hard, keeping the muzzles of our shotguns and pistols and MP5 submachine guns aimed discreetly at the ground.
The lights are off inside the apartment. Our flashlights cut through the darkness, left and right, until someone gets the idea to flip the switch. A dozen policemen fan out through five hundred square feet, figuring out pretty quick that David isn’t here.
“The view of downtown is impressive,” I say.
Hedges glares at me.
There’s a stack of mover’s boxes in the bedroom, some clothes in the closet. Not much else. From the bathroom, Aguilar calls out. I push my way past the tac squad. The bottom of the tub is scorched. In the middle of the burn, a melted laptop computer. A charred brick that used to be Simone Walker’s cell phone.
“He’s covering his tracks,” Aguilar says.
“It’s too late for that.”
In the kitchen, tucked into the refrigerator door, another wine bottle filled with gasoline.