“What do you mean by split, Warren?”
“Vamoose, moved on. Somewhere south. According to the dude, one or two guys who used to hang around with them still come in from time to time. Some big redheaded dude. But basically they hit the road. Permanent-mente.”
“Keep on it. Find me the redheaded dude.” Now that the van led nowhere and I had no connection between the victims, that lion-and-snake symbol was all we had.
“Keep on it?” Jacobi whined. “How long? We could be out here for days!” “I'll send out a change of underwear,” I said, and hung up.
For a while I just sat there, rocking back in my chair with a mounting feeling of dread. It had been three days since Tasha Catchings was killed, and three days before that, Estelle Chipman.
I had nothing. No significant clues. Only what the killer had left us. This damned chimera.
And the knowledge... serials kill. Serials don't stop until you catch them.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 31
PATROLMAN SERGEANT ART DAVIDSON responded to the 1-6-0 the minute he heard the call. “Disturbance, domestic violence. Three oh three Seventh Street, upstairs. Available units respond.”
He and his partner, Gil Herrera, were only four blocks away on Bryant. It was almost eight; their shift was over in ten minutes.
“You want to take it, Gil?” said Davidson, glancing at his watch.
His partner shrugged. “Your call, Artie. You're the one with the wild party to go to.”
Some wild party. It was his seven-year-old's birthday.
Audra. He had called in on break, and Carol had said if he got home by nine-thirty she'd keep her up for him so that he could give her the Britney Spears makeup mirror he had picked out. Davidson had five kids, and they were his life.
“What the hell.” Davidson shrugged. “It's what we get paid the big bucks for, right?”
They hit the siren, and in less than a minute, Mobile 2-4 pulled up in front of the dismal and dilapidated entrance to 303 Seventh, the tilted sign of the defunct Driscoll Hotel hanging over the front door.
“People still camping out in this dump?” Herrera sighed.
“Who the hell would live here?”
The two cops grabbed their nightsticks and a large flashlight, and stepped up to the front door. Davidson pulled it open. Inside, the place smelled of feces, urine, probably rats.
“Hey, anybody here?” Davidson called out. “Police.”
Suddenly, from above, they heard the sound of shouting.
Some kind of argument.
“On it,” Herrera said, bounding up the first flight.
Davidson followed.
On the second floor, Gil Herrera went down the hall, banging his flashlight on doors. “Police, police.”
In the stairwell, Davidson suddenly heard the sounds again - loud, frantic voices. A crash, as if something had broken. The noise came from over his head. He headed up two flights of stairs on his own.
The noises grew even louder. He stopped in front of a shut door. Apartment 42. “Bitch... ” someone yelled. The sound of a plate shattering. A woman seemed to beg, “Stop him, he's going to kill me. Stop him, please... Somebody help me. Please.”
“Police,” Art Davidson responded, and drew his gun. He yelled, “Herrera, up here. Now!”
He threw all his weight against the door. It opened. The inside was dimly lit, but from an interior room, more light and the arguing voices... closer... screaming.
Art Davidson clicked his gun off safety. Then he barged through the open door into the room. To his amazement, no one was in there.
There was dim yellow light angling from an exposed bulb.
A metal chair with a large boom box on it. Loud voices coming from the speakers.
The words were the same ones he'd heard earlier. “Stop him, he's going to kill me!”
“What the hell?” Davidson squinted in disbelief.
He walked over to the stereo, knelt down, and turned off the power. The loud, blaring argument came to a halt.
“What the fuck...?” Davidson muttered. “Somebody playing games.”
He looked around. The pitiful room looked as if it hadn't been occupied in a while. His eyes were drawn to the window, then beyond it, across an alley to a facing building. He thought he saw something. What was it?
Ping... His eye caught the tiniest pinprick of a yellow spark, so quick it was like the snap of a finger, the blink of a firefly on a dark night.
Then the window splintered and a blunt force slammed into Art Davidson's right eye. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 32
I HAD JUST ABOUT GOTTEN HOME when the distress call crackled in: “Available units, proceed to three oh three Seventh, near Townsend.”
1-0-6... officer in trouble.
I pulled my Explorer to the curb. Listened to the call.
EMS's to the scene, the district captain called in. The quick, urgent exchanges convinced me the situation was critical.
The hairs on my arms were standing up. It was an ambush, a long-distance shot. Like La Salle Heights. I threw my car in gear and executed a quick U-turn down Potrero, slamming onto Third Street and heading for downtown.
When I pulled up four blocks from Townsend and Seventh, bedlam reigned. Barricades of blue-and-whites, flashing lights, uniforms everywhere, radios crackling in the night.
I drove ahead, holding my police ID out the window; until I couldn't go any farther. Then I left my car and ran toward the center of the commotion. I grabbed the first patrolman I could find. “Who is it? Do you know?”
“Patrol cop,” he said. “Out of Central. Davidson.”
“Oh, shit... ” My heart sank. I felt nauseated. I knew Art Davidson. We had gone through the academy at the same time. He was a good cop, a good guy. Did it mean anything that I knew him?
Then a second wave of fear and nausea. Art Davidson was black.
I pushed my way through the crowd toward a run-down tenement where a ring of EMS trucks were parked. I ran into Chief of Detectives Sam Ryan coming out of the building, holding a radio to his ear.
I pulled him aside, “Sam, I heard it was Art Davidson. Any chance...?”
Ryan shook his head. “Chance? He was lured here, Lindsay. Rifle shot to the head. Single shot, we think. He's already been pronounced.”
I stood to the side, a whirring wail growing louder and louder inside my skull, as if some private, unknowable fear had revealed itself only to me. I was sure it was him.
Chimera. Murder number three. He only needed one shot this time.
I brandished my badge to the uniformed cops at the entrance and hurried into the run-down building. Some EMS techs were coming down the stairs. I kept going past them.
My legs felt heavy and I could hardly breathe.
On the third-floor landing, a uniformed cop barreled past me, shouting, “Coming down. Everybody get out of the way.”
A couple of medical techs appeared - and two more cops carrying a gurney. I couldn't turn my head away.
“Hold it here,” I said.
It was Davidson. His eyes still and open. A crimson dime-sized peephole above his right eye. Every nerve in my body seemed to go slack. I remembered that he had children. Did these murders have something to do with kids?
“Oh, Jesus, Art,” I whispered. I forced myself to study his body, the bullet wound. I finally touched the side of his forehead. “You can take him down now,” I said. Fuck.
I made my way to the next floor somehow. A crowd of angry plainclothesmen was gathered outside an open apartment. I saw Pete Starcher, an ex-homicide detective who worked with IAB, coming out.