“Coming up, Joe. What about the latent on the snake scale and prints from Gayley’s—”
“—We’ve got a match. We know it’s The Horridus. Now do your job and bring him in.”
In the task force room — it was christened Room Horrible — we had a deputy on each of the three 800 lines; Louis double-checking the statement from the neighbors to whom Chloe had fled; Frances briefing Amanda Aguilar and the animal control officer before they were sequestered in a conference room to do the sketch; one FBI volunteer on a CAY computer lurking the chat rooms for any gossip about I. R. Shroud; the other Fed in conference with an L.A. Sheriff sergeant who was part of the joint-agency SAFE group working child sex out of the Federal Building in L.A.; three deputies collecting paint-and-body-shop numbers from a stack of phone books a yard high; Rick Zant from the DA’s office trying to convince the corporate lawyers for Bright Tomorrows that a release of their employee and subcontractor list might save a life; Woolton on the phone to half the police departments in the county; Burns on the line to the other half; two young deputies trying their best to track property ownership, DMV records and credit information on the ten remaining Eugene Webbs and the eight remaining Eugene Websters in three huge Southern California counties; a young deputy checking out-of-state phone companies for one Collette Loach; and Jordan Ishmael hovering over the room like some kind of mute god, seeing all and saying nothing.
And that was just in Room Horrible. We had twelve more deputies in the field, assigned specific tasks: two who were reinterviewing fabric store and pet shop employees, in case The Horridus had made another purchase in the last week; another pair dispatched to the home of the regional manager of the county’s largest auto paint chain, which, we had learned, kept computerized records of work they had done; one deputy assigned to each of the three release sites The Horridus had used; one staked out at each of the residences he’d already hit, to make sure he didn’t try to take a good thing twice. We even had a team following my footsteps at the behest of I. R. Shroud, moving from Moulton Creek to Main Beach to the Norwalk Green Line station in hope — slim at best — of encountering one of The Horridus’s allies. Besides those, there were ten units cruising the obvious places where The Horridus might hunt that night — amusement parks, malls, theaters showing kids’ movies, entertainment complexes — and two helicopter teams shadowing them from above, strafing the same haunts with searchlights and glassing the world below for a white van. We’d already pulled over nine vehicles by then, with another few thousand to go.
Jordan Ishmael stood in the conference room. We were both getting ready for the press. He was checking the mike at the podium when I walked in. We looked at each other across the empty chairs.
“Congratulations, Naughton. You beat the rap.”
“Thanks.”
He turned the mike on and spoke into it, his voice amplified into the room: “YOU’VE MESSED UP A LOT OF LIVES, FRIEND. YOU DESERVED WHAT HAPPENED, WHETHER YOU DID THOSE GIRLS OR NOT.”
“It was a nice try, Ishmael. But you left a big fat trail, and I’m not the only one on it. See, the way it works when you mess with me is you get messed with back.”
“NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.”
“Next time you invite yourself over to my apartment, make sure I’m home.”
“WHY WOULD I WANT TO DO THAT?”
“So I can kick your ass back out the door.”
“NOT LIKELY, LITTLE FELLA.”
“Going to be a long ride down, Ish. Bring Drama-mine. I’ve got you.”
“WHAT YOU’VE GOT IS MAGGOTS IN YOUR SOUL. I CAN SMELL THEM FROM HERE. ONE GOOD THING ABOUT MEL AND PENNY LEAVING IS THEY WON’T HAVE TO SMELL THEM ANYMORE.”
“I think the volume’s about right.”
I heard the mike click off and looked at Ishmael studying me from behind the podium.
“I. R. Shroud spells Horridus, Ish. How could you be so goddamned thick you didn’t see that?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you talked to him thirty times the last two months, while he was out there taking girls. That’s why.”
“You’re one mixed-up little leprechaun, Naughton. Donna suck all your brains out, too?”
“I’m saving you for another day, Ish. It’s going to be a good one for me. Count on it.”
I heard the door open behind me and Frances stood there with a sheet of flimsy fax paper in her hand. On top was a shot of the rear end of a white van. The bottom shot was from the side, and showed a blur of a driver, a dark-haired male with facial hair was about all you could say for sure.
“Motion-activated cameras shoot toll lane violators and they get tickets in the mail,” she said. “They got this at 2:19 this morning. White Dodge, plates 2JKF869, eastbound on the 91 toward Yorba Linda. One of the FasTrak people saw our press conference, knew about the van, thought we might use this. It’s our van.”
“Can Reilly’s people enhance the driver?”
“The prints are being messengered over right now.”
“Talk to Joe. Tell him what’s coming in and we need a rush on it. If we can get an enhancement for Aguilar and the girl to work from, it might make things a whole lot more convincing.”
“Can do.”
In the doorway I literally ran into Rick Zant.
“I finally got the Bright Tomorrows attorney to come around,” he said. “They ID’d him from the press conference composite. He was there, shooting video for members. David Lumsden — home address in Capistrano. Dawn Christie was kind enough to follow suit if we’d offer a specific name. Bingo — he shot videos for them, too. Same name and address. Woolton has four men out of the Capo substation on the house.”
“There won’t be a house.”
The old fury surged through me as I stood there, realizing that cracking an alias hadn’t helped us much at all. He was still out there — The Horridus, I. R. Shroud, Gene Vonn, David Lumsden, Warren Witt, David Webb, John Q. Public, what did it goddamned matter — and we were still in here, waiting for him to make the next move. I felt like a fly caught in a web, trapped by the silk and knowing that the spider was moving in.
So I kicked the wall of the hallway. My foot went through the plasterboard. When I brought out my shoe it was covered in white dust.
“That hurts,” I said.
“I can see that it might, Terry. Maybe if you smash up your other foot too, it will help us catch this guy. You can’t expect him to go around town using his real name, can you?”
I kicked another hole in the wall.
“Nice to have you back, Terry!” someone piped from Room Horrible.
“Get to work!” I yelled back, already dialing the home number for Sam Welborn on my cell phone. I told him I was back in the hunt. He said he was happy to hear that, and I told him we had two more aka’s and bad addresses, a botched abduction and a murder. What I needed now was anything he could give me on Collette Loach.
He was silent. Then, “Who in hell’s that, Terry?”
“One of Wanda’s daughters or sisters, I’m hoping.”
“Well, I’ve already got the sisters checked out and Collette ain’t one of them. But her daughters, those girls were grown and gone by the time Wanda bought that place in Hopkin. All’s they did was visit sometimes.”
“Ask around, Sam.”
“I have been. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Maybe someone out in Hopkin remembers her. Forget the phone company — we’ve already struck out with them.”
“What is it you want to know about her?”
“If she’s related to Wanda. And if so, exactly where she is. I need a phone number and an address and I need it soon.”
“I’m on it.”
Within the next fifteen minutes, CNB, all three networks and two L.A. stations had reporters and camera crews set up in the conference room, along with writers and photographers from the Times and the Register. Amanda Aguilar and the animal control officer had completed their collaboration and a blown-up version of the sketch now sat on an easel beside the podium. He looked like one of those hot new actors — a smartass with a Vandyke and a wispy mustache. I stood at the back of the room with hope in my heart, a hard glance at Ishmael and a secret smile for Donna, who didn’t notice me as she stood on the dais and completed a sound check with her shooter.