“Just figured I’d lay it out there.”
He stood up, and so did I. “Well, the answer is yes. Let me have Arlene call recruiting, and I’ll speak to the superintendent myself. We’ll work something out.”
Superintendent of Detectives Ramon Davies, I knew, would be my boss on the Major Case Squad. Davies was above Thor Richter, and if I could get this investigation taken out of Richter’s supervision, we’d be able to move a lot more freely on it.
“I think I just cashed in every chit I’ve got,” I said, shaking Terrence Hoover’s hand again.
“It’ll be good to have you on this one,” he said. “I hear they’re calling him the Audience Killer.”
Since I had come up with the name, I was tempted to smile but didn’t. “Audience Killer, huh? I guess that sounds about right.”
Chapter 40
I HOOKED UP with Bree and Sampson back at the Daly Building that evening. I’d already been given an office there, and it was doubling as a nerve center for the Audience Killer case. It felt a little like a college dorm room, with the three of us crammed in there together.
I’d never worked this way before, quite so cooperatively. There was no tension about our roles, though, no debating how the work would get done. There was just the case. And, of course, the proximity of Bree’s long legs and other parts, her fetching looks, and so on and so forth.
She was searching through the drawers for something when I came in. Sampson stood behind her, reading a file on the desk over her shoulder.
“Check this out.” He held up a mug shot. “Meet Ashton Cooley.”
“What’s his deal?” I asked, glancing at the file upside down from where I stood.
“Ashton is a stage name,” Sampson said. “He tried out for, but didn’t get, Matthew Jay Walker’s part in that sci-fi play at the Kennedy. The producers went with the big Hollywood name over the local talent. Typical, right?”
“That could piss you right the hell off,” Bree contributed. “Don’t you think so? I do.”
I took the picture and looked at it. The actor was in his twenties, white, dark-haired, kind of pouty-looking.
“I’m guessing a lot of actors would have wanted that part. Play could’ve been headed for Broadway,” I said.
“Sure,” Sampson said. “But how many of them were suspects in a previous homicide?”
Chapter 41
SAMPSON WAS WORKING another murder case in the projects, so Bree and I went to see the actor. We cut over to Massachusetts Avenue, then up Sixteenth Street to Cooley’s Mount Pleasant address. The neighborhood is still remembered for the 1991 riots, sparked by charges of anti-Hispanic racism among DC’s black cops.
Cooley, I read on the way over, had been—and technically still was—the primary suspect in the shooting death of a girlfriend, Amanda Diaz, two years earlier. The DA had been forced to give it up for lack of evidence, but apparently it had been a close call.
Cooley still lived in the same apartment where the shooting took place. Not the sentimental type, I guess.
The apartment was on the second floor, above a Central American grocery, in a building not yet reached by any neighborhood-improvement effort. Bree and I took the stairs and arrived at a dank, tiled hallway with one translucent window at the far end.
Cooley’s was the middle of three metal-faced apartment doors. We knocked and waited.
“Yeah, who is it? I’m busy.”
“Mr. Cooley, I’m Detective Cross, here with Detective Stone from the MPD.”
To my surprise, the door flew open, and he ushered us inside. “Get in, get in.”
Bree scratched her ear and gave me a look.
“Do you have some particular concern about the police being seen at your door?” she asked.
“You mean because that always works out so well?” he said. “Last I checked, cops at the front door is not good news.”
We walked into a narrow hallway with two closed rooms along the left side and a row of framed headshots—maybe Cooley’s actor friends—hanging on the other chipped and peeling wall. I wondered if one of them was the dead girl-friend.
“Could we sit down?” Bree asked.
He didn’t move. “Not really. What do you want? Like I said, I’m busy.”
Cooley was already one strike away from finding out what it’s like when I lose my patience. “We have questions about two Saturdays ago. Just for starters, can you tell us where you were?”
“Okay.” He started toward the back room. “Let’s sit down. I was right here that Saturday. Never left the apartment.”
Once we were in the living room, Bree stayed on her feet. I sat down across from Cooley on a tall, wobbly stool. He had one very old easy chair, a coffee table, a half-decent home-theater setup, and another stool as the balance of his furniture.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“Ever since I won the lottery,” he deadpanned. His manner was cocky and full of hard eye contact.
Bree stepped in. “Mr. Cooley, can anyone verify that you were here that night?”
He sat back in his chair. “Yeah. The good ladies at 1–900–FUCKYOU can do that.”
With two quick steps, she was on him. She jerked the handle on the side of his La-Z-Boy and laid him out flat. Then she leaned in close. “This isn’t funny, asshole. You aren’t funny. Now talk to us, and keep it straight. I don’t have much of a sense of humor lately.”
She’d gone further than I would have, but it worked out.
The actor put his hands up in mock surrender. “I was just kidding around. Damn. Chill, girl.”
Bree stood up but stayed close. “Talk. I don’t feel like chilling, dude.”
“I rented a movie, ordered Chinese from Hunan Palace. Somebody delivered the food. You can talk to them.”
“What time did they deliver?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Seven? Eight? Somewhere in there. Hell, I don’t know.” Bree barely moved toward him, and he flinched before recovering again. “I’m serious. I don’t know what time it was. But it doesn’t matter. I was here the whole night.”
I didn’t say so out loud, but I felt inclined to believe him. Despite his show of testosterone, everything about him was weak—the way he moved, the way he talked, the way he had folded so fast when Bree got a little aggressive.
We were looking for someone much more in control than this guy, someone who was stronger in every way.
And probably a better actor too.
Bree must have felt it. “Let’s go, Alex,” she said. She turned back to the actor, smiled. “Sorry, you’re not right for the part. Bet you hear that a lot, smart-mouth.”
Chapter 42
AT NINE THIRTY on Sunday morning, church day, a mild-mannered type named David Hayneswiggle, an accountant, and not a very good one, gazed down and saw that the George Washington Memorial Parkway was filling up with traffic. Both northbound and southbound lanes were crowded—though not enough to keep anyone from doing at least sixty and often eighty or more.
Once in a while, a northbound car would honk loudly as it approached the usually deserted pedestrian bridge that ran across the highway. Made sense to Hayneswiggle.
The people riding along below him had to be wondering what some guy in a droopy Richard Nixon mask was doing up there all by himself. And if they did wonder, they were only half right.
It was a Nixon mask, but he wasn’t alone. David Haynes-wiggle had plenty of company.
The third story had begun, and it was a doozy—very imaginative, high profile, dramatic as hell.
Another terrific role to play too. The accountant with nothing to live for, nothing to lose. Huge chip on his shoulder. Payback time long overdue for this guy.
An eighteen-year-old high-school boy lay motionless on the cement at his feet. The poor lad was dead, his throat slit and already bled out. The boy just couldn’t get it in his head to cooperate and do as he was told. Next to him, a teenage girl sat with her back against a wall that also h
id her from view of the cars passing below.
The girl was still alive. One of her small hands was in her lap; the other hung limply overhead, where she was cuffed to the bridge’s railing. A line of sweat beads showed on her upper lip, just above the duct tape that was wrapped all the way around her mouth and head.
David Hayneswiggle looked down at the girl, who was all bug-eyed and shaking like an addict. “How you doing? You still with me?” he asked.
She either ignored him or didn’t hear what he’d said. It doesn’t matter what the girl thinks, or how she acts, David Hayneswiggle thought to himself. Once again, he watched the traffic down below on the George Washington, gauging for speed and distance, and just the right moment. The third story was going to be something else.
Whenever some total jackass honked at him, he held up the double peace sign. “I am not a crook,” he said in his best croaky Nixon voice. He identified so much with Nixon, another loser with a chip on his shoulder.
When he had seen enough, had memorized the scene for future reference, he knelt down next to the girl. She scrambled, moving away maybe a foot, all that she could manage on account of the handcuffs attached to the railing.
“Save your strength,” he said. “You’re safe, right? As long as you’re cuffed to the rail. Think about it. Everything is cool.”
He squiggled his arms under the boy’s body, then strained to get himself into a half-kneeling position. The kid couldn’t have been more than 150 pounds, but it seemed like a ton. Deadweight, no joke.
David Hayneswiggle flexed his leg muscles, keeping them ready as he eyed the highway from a squatting position. He saw his target. A white Toyota minivan had come into view about a quarter mile away. There were no trucks allowed on the parkway, so a Hummer, or something like the minivan, was as big as he was going to find. The van stuck to its lane, possibly hemmed in by other cars.
He scootched over to the right a bit, lining himself up as best he could.
When the van was about a hundred yards off, he secured his grip on the boy.
At fifty yards, he rose. In one powerful motion, he came to his full height. And then he chucked the body over the rail, watching it tumble like a heavy sack. It hit the minivan’s hood and windshield with a smash of glass, followed by a fast squealing of tires. Holy shit!
The van swerved and skidded underneath the narrow bridge and back out the other side—then it tipped over. Steel groaned against concrete, and two more crashes sounded from behind the minivan as other daydreaming drivers failed to stop in time.
Traffic was backed up almost instantly.
The northbound parkway would soon be the northbound parking lot; southbound cars would be stopped too, as the rubbernecking set in.
He had their attention now.
Finally someone was noticing David Hayneswiggle.
Hell, it was about time.
Chapter 43
DAVID HAYNESWIGGLE addressed the girl now, and he had to speak loudly over the thrum of traffic still headed south on the parkway. He actually had to shout to be heard. “Ready? Are you ready? Hey, I’m talking to you. Don’t act like I’m not here!”
The girl’s boot heels scraped concrete as she tried to get farther away from him—from this madman who had already killed her boyfriend. The handcuff on her wrist cut deeply into her skin, but the pain didn’t seem to matter. She was focused only on getting away from the weirdo in the Richard Nixon mask, that being him.
She was pretty enough, in a suburban-cheerleader kind of way. Lydia Ramirez, according to her driver’s permit. Seventeen years old, but he took no pity on her. Adolescents were the most wretched humans of all. “Okay, now don’t move. I’ll be right back for you. Hold that deer-in-the-headlights look.”
Hayneswiggle stood up again and checked out the scene below. The audience was assembled, and they seemed impatient for the show to continue. The highway was complete chaos now. Northbound traffic was already backed up along the Potomac.
The tipped van at the head of the line ensured that nearly all the stopped cars were on the south side of the walkway, facing him. A smashed Volvo directly below let out a hissing cloud of steam. A few of the onlookers were yelling up at him, but he couldn’t tell what the hell they were saying. Probably just pissed because they’d been inconvenienced. Well, screw them.
“Can’t hear you!” he shouted back. And that reminded him.
He picked something up from the sidewalk, one of the items he had brought with him for the show—a twenty-five-watt bullhorn with about a thousand-yard range.
He pointed it at the crowd. A few of the jackasses down there ducked.
“I’m baaa-acck!” he announced. “Did you miss me? Of course you did.”
Several motorists who weren’t already out of their cars got out now. A woman with a bloody forehead looked up at him in a daze.
“And you thought this was going to be an ordinary day, didn’t you? Guess again, folks. Today is real special, one you’ll never forget. You’ll tell your grandchildren—that is, if this messed-up world of ours lasts that long. Hey, speaking of the world lasting, how many of you voted for Al Gore?”
He set down the bullhorn and took something out of his pocket, something that glared in the sunlight. Then he hunched over the girl, shielding her from view. A moment later, he stood again—with the girl in his arms.
“Here she is! Let’s hear it for our little star, Lydia Ramirez.” Then, smiling broadly, he casually flipped her over the edge of the overpass. Just like that, like nothing.
The girl’s legs and feet flew up into the air ahead of the rest of her. Then a metallic ringing sang out as the handcuff spun on the rail and caught hold. The audience gasped.
The girl crashed back against the bridge, her feet dangling directly over the highway.
“Fake out!” David Hayneswiggle said into the bullhorn. “Look closely now. At her, please. Not at me. I told you, she’s our star today. Pretend I’m not even here. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Look at her!”
As the audience stared, a dark curved line appeared on the girl’s exposed throat. Then it became a sheet of red that ran down her neck and over her T-shirt. The people down below were finally beginning to realize what had happened—her throat had been cut.
Then she was still, other than the slightest rhythmic sway of her body.
“Okay, she’s gone. Show’s over. For today, anyway. Thank you all for coming. Thank you so much. Drive safely.”
People started honking their horns, and there was angry screaming. A police siren finally sounded from some-where, but it was far off, unable to get through the backed-up traffic.
David Hayneswiggle started to run in a funny duck waddle. He bobbed around the hairpin turn at the far end of the ramp and disappeared into the bushes.
He knew that it didn’t matter how many people saw which way he went. Hell, let them search for him all they liked.
Who were they going to look for, anyway—Richard Nixon?
Chapter 44
THIS WAS AS SAD and disturbing a homicide scene as I’d ever worked in my years with Metro or the FBI. Two young people were dead, and the murders seemed arbitrary and just plain cruel. The kids were definitely innocents in whatever was going on here.
The G.W. Parkway had been rerouted, but not without stranding at least a mile-long queue of cars still backed up on the roadway. They were now waiting for a flipped minivan to be cleared away by the police. That required a sign-off from Bree, who needed the medical examiner to finish with the two bodies. She had established Metro’s jurisdiction here, but not without a heavy dose of animosity from the Arlington County Police Department, which didn’t bother Bree in the least.
Helicopters flew overhead every few minutes, police and media, the latter always coming too close for comfort. I saw them as Peeping Toms with a license to look and to shoot film.
The crowd, many of whom had witnessed the actual murders, was a strange mixture of angry-aggressive and scared silly
. They were a captive audience, though. We needed to identify some of them as our witnesses, then try to get everyone else moving again. The title of an old Broadway show popped into my head: Stop the World—I Want to Get Off. I really did.
The Virginia Highway Department was there in numbers, the state police too, and they were showing their impatience and ire with body language, if nothing else. Bree, Sampson, and I had divided our part of the workload as best we could. Bree was on the immediate crime scene, checking out all the physical evidence. Sampson had the killer’s entry and exit from the scene, which had created a huge extended perimeter from the Potomac all the way into Rosslyn, Virginia. He had a team of Arlington cops working with him on-site.
My focus was on the killer and his mind-set at the time of the two murders. To ascertain this, I needed the best witnesses I could find, and I needed them in a big hurry. With a scene as sprawling as this one, I had no guarantee that the traffic wouldn’t start moving again. For the moment, at least, the killer had stopped the world, and nobody was getting off unless he wanted them to.
Chapter 45
I DID A QUICK ASSESSMENT of the cars nearest the bridge, looking for solo white males. Make no mistake about it, I believe in profiling during emergency situations like this one. The more a witness has in common with the criminal they’ve seen, the more reliable their testimony will be—at least statistically speaking. That had also been my experience at homicide scenes again and again. So I was looking for white males, preferably alone in their vehicles.
I settled on a black Honda Accord about five car lengths back from the overpass. The man inside was sitting sideways to avoid looking ahead, and he had a cell phone pressed to his ear. His car was running, with the windows rolled up.
I rapped hard on the glass. “Metro Police. Excuse me, sir? Sir? Excuse me!”