I’m not sure why I keep these journals. Maybe to record my own loneliness. I don’t know.
It helps, I guess, just to sit here every now and then and write the words: I’m lonely, I’m lonely, I’m so damn lonely.
I was reading Corinthians yesterday in the Bible. I read it and started weeping. I cried and cried and cried. I couldn’t help it. Here’s what it said:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I read that and I felt for a moment like I couldn’t breathe. Like I hurt so hard I’d fly apart.
It was the question, you see, that it brought to my mind: Will I ever have someone to say those words to? Will I? Will anyone ever feel that way about me?
Is there a man out there who’s going to kiss me and find out what I am and keep kissing me anyway and forever? And if there is, will I recognize him when he appears?
I know, I know, I’m on a journey, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint. But sometimes, I doubt. I doubt myself, I doubt my decisions. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to say, I even doubt God.
How could I doubt God? God is the only one who’s always been there for me.
I’m sorry, God.
Sometimes I just get so damn lonely.
I finish this passage and clear my throat. I move to the next, written two days after the first one.
Nana’s dead. No surprise, but still, it hurts. Nana was a racist, Nana wouldn’t have accepted me the way I am now, but I loved her anyway, I just can’t help it. After all, Nana always kept my secret. THE secret. She kept on loving me even after that terrible thing I did, the most shameful act I ever committed, when I
I frown. It ends there. I run a finger along the inside and realize that pages of the journal have been removed, ripped out. I flip through the later pages.
Then I see it.
And I freeze.
My hands tremble a little bit as I open the journal wider to look, to make sure I’m seeing what I’m seeing.
At the top of one page, a hand-drawn symbol.
A skull and crossbones.
Below that, a single line:
What do I collect? That’s the question, and that’s the key. Answer it soon, or more will die.
I drop the journal onto the desktop. My heart is racing.
Him. He’d been here. The man on the plane.
The man who killed Lisa.
7
“SO HE’S LEAVING CLUES.”
Alan phrases it as a statement, and not a happy one.
“And he’s set a clock. Catch me or I kill again.”
The moment I know, for certain, that a killer is serial, everything stops. It’s a moment of total silence, an indrawn breath. The earth stops rotating and a low hum fills my head and thrums through my veins.
It’s a terrible pause, a necessary minute where I accept the burden of my profession: until I catch him (or her or them), the killing rolls on. Anyone who dies now is my responsibility.
It’s one thing to know that they don’t stop until we catch them. It’s another thing entirely for them to say outright that they’re already homing in on the next victim. A whole different level of pressure.
“Fuck.” He sighs. “I sure get tired of these guys. Don’t they know they’ll never be original?”
“It’s always new to them.”
“Yeah. What do you want to do?”
I’d called Alan first, without really giving it too much thought. I’d needed to talk to someone, to tell them what I’d found. The shock of adrenaline is fading now.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
“He used a credit card to buy his plane ticket. It’s a valid card, turns out it was issued a few years ago. I got an address and I’m headed over there now.”
My heart sinks.
“What was the name on the card?”
“Richard Ambrose.”
“The real Ambrose, whoever he was, is dead, Alan.”
“Yeah.”
If our perp had manufactured this identity from whole cloth, the credit card would have been issued recently.
“He probably found a guy that came close to his own physical description,” I muse. “That will help, at least.”
“You want me to continue with what I’m doing, or come to you?”
“Get over to Ambrose’s place. I’m fine here. It was just a shock.”
“Ned and I will take a look and I’ll call you.”
When Alan was being trained for homicide, his mentor told him that a notepad was a detective’s best friend and that a friend should have a name. Alan gave his pad the name Ned. It’s stuck to this day. I’ve seen many incarnations of Ned pulled from an inside jacket pocket. Ned’s been a faithful friend.
“Okay.”
“You sure you’re fine?”
“I’m sure. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
“MY, MY, MY,” CALLIE MUSES after I fill her in. “Our very own crazy Hansel, leaving us a trail of bloody bread crumbs.”
And James had been right, I think. He is taking something from his victims. He told us he is.
“How is it going there?” I ask.
“We finished vacuuming for trace. I won’t know how helpful that is until I get it back to a lab. I haven’t found any prints, but I did find some smudged areas on the arm rest where prints should have been.”
“He probably wiped them down.”
“Not a stupid Hansel, but then, we expected as much.”
“I bet it means he’s in the system.”
“Why?”
“He’s leaving us clues, Callie. He wants us to know he’s there and that we should chase him. Why bother wiping his prints? I think it’s because he knows they would lead us right to him.”
“Hm. If so, it’s not immediately probative, but helpful. It means he either has a criminal record, is a government employee, or has been in the military or law enforcement.”
“It’s something. What else?”
“Nothing, yet. We’re about to remove the seat cushions. I still need to print the overhead luggage compartment and then we’re done.”
“I want you to come over here next. We need to process this condo.”
An overdramatized, long-suffering sigh. “No rest for the bride-to-be, I see.”
I chuckle. “Relax. Marilyn is still working on the wedding logistics, right?”
Marilyn is Callie’s daughter.
“It’s not Marilyn I’m worried about. It’s her helper.”
I frown. “Who?”
“Kirby.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Beach bunny Kirby?”
“Is there any other?”
Kirby Mitchell is an eccentric bodyguard I’d hired a few years back to help protect a potential victim. She’s in her early thirties, about five-seven, blonde, with all the plucky personality and chipper talk you’d expect from a California stereotype. The truth of Kirby is something a little different, however. Kirby is ex-CIA “or something like that” as she likes to say. The rumors are that she spent many years down in Central and South America as an assassin for the U.S. government. I have zero doubt about this. Kirby, for all her thousand-kilowatt smiles and “gee-whiz” exclamations, is as deadly as they come.
She’s also loyal and funny and has managed to insinuate herself into the lives of the team.
“Why’d you pick Kirby?”
“She’s got wonderful taste for a killer, Smoky. Exquisite, actually.”
“I see.”
“But she needs supervision, you know?”
“Oh yeah, I know.”
Kirby is unapologetic about satisfying her impulses, and her moral compass needs a little nudge sometimes.
Callie sighs. “Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be f
ine. I told her not to hurt anyone too much if they tried to overcharge me.”
“‘Too much’?” I query.
I can almost hear Callie’s smile. “What’s the use of having an assassin help with your wedding planning if you can’t use her to scare the vendors a little?”
I PLACE A CALL TO Rosario Reid and fill her in on what I found. She’s silent for a moment.
“He—he was there? The man who killed my Lisa?”
“Yes.”
More silence. I know what she’s feeling. Grief, rage, violation. An impotent desire to destroy the man who did this, who not only took her child from her, but walked through Lisa’s condo, Lisa’s life, with impunity.
“Rosario, I have to ask—do you have any idea what Lisa was talking about in her journal? The big secret she mentions?”
“I haven’t the slightest, I really don’t.”
Is that true? Or are you lying to me?
I let it go, for now.
She sighs. “What are you going to do now?”
“When my team is done with the plane, they’ll be coming over here. They’ll be processing the condo from top to bottom.”
“I see.” Yet more silence. “Thank you for keeping me up-to-date, Smoky. Please call me if you need anything.”
She hangs up, and I realize that she hadn’t asked me what else Lisa had written in her journal.
Perhaps you’re capable of dishonesty after all, Rosario. Maybe you know you’ll find that Lisa wasn’t as happy as you told yourself she was.
I can’t blame her for this. I want to remember my Alexa as perfect too.
My phone rings. Alan.
“Not only is Richard Ambrose dead,” he begins without preamble, “his body is still here.”
I curse to myself. This is getting out of hand.
“Give me the address,” I say. “I’ll find a cab and meet you there.”
8
IT’S NOW NEARING TEN IN THE MORNING, AND I’M STARTING to feel like someone who has missed a night’s sleep. My eyes are gritty, my mouth tastes bad, and I have aches I’m not usually aware of.
I concentrate on the weather and the sky to shake myself awake. The cold has cleared the air and the sky is incredibly blue. When I step out of the cab the wind bites into me, not unpleasant. The sun burns cold, nothing more than a source of light.
Richard Ambrose lived in a medium-sized older home. It’s built with the sloping roof houses have in places that get snow. The exterior is mostly gray stone, lightened in places by blue and white trim. It sits on a large yard that’s covered with the leaves of fall.
It’s a quiet neighborhood, very charming. I have visions of hot apple cider on Halloween, kids raking those leaves into a pile so they could jump into them. I’m not one of those Californians who think California is superior, or the only place to be. I can understand the draw of a place like this, the character of it. I could even consider living here, if it weren’t for the snow.
I don’t do snow.
I pay the cabbie and send him on his way. I crunch through the leaves until I reach the concrete porch, noting the neighbor on the left peeking through a curtain. The front door is cracked. I open it and am assaulted by the sweet and sour smell of death.
“Jesus,” I mutter. I swallow hard, forcing down something wet and gooey that’s trying to climb up my throat.
I force myself to enter, closing the door behind me.
The inside of the home is warm—warmer than it should be, like the heat has been cranked up.
Is this a little present you decided to give us? Turn the house into a sweat lodge so that the body would get nice and stinky?
I breathe in deeply through my nostrils, fighting the urge to gag as I do. I don’t have a mask to put on or any menthol to rub under my nose. This is another trick; draw the scent in deep and overwhelm the olfactory receptors. Nothing really works one hundred percent, other than a gas mask. The smell of death is too profound.
The inside of Ambrose’s house matches the outside, rich in its oldness. I see dark hardwood floors everywhere, and although the wood shines, it’s scuffed and worn in a way that makes me think it’s original. The walls are actually plaster and the light fixtures are old enough to be authentic as opposed to tacky.
“Alan?” I call out.
“Upstairs,” he answers.
The stairs to the second floor face the front door. They’re narrow, walled on each side. I walk up, clacking and squeaking all the way, more of that old wood. The smell of rotting flesh keeps getting stronger.
I reach the top landing and find myself facing a wall. A hallway stretches to the right and the left.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Master bedroom,” he calls out, his voice coming from the left.
I turn left and listen to the wood protest being walked on. It sounds like a cranky old man, or maybe a mother laying on a guilt trip. I pass a print on the wall, a Picasso sketch, a study of Don Quixote on his horse.
I reach the master bedroom and turn in.
“Wow,” I say, grimacing.
Alan is standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at something that used to be a living person.
Ambrose was laid on his back, his arms arranged next to him. He’s past the point of being bloated. His skin has a creamy consistency in some places, is black in others, and body fluids have run over the mattress on both sides to drip onto the floor. The smell in here is overwhelming. I struggle to keep my mouth from filling with saliva. Alan seems unaffected.
“State of decay, he’s been dead between ten and twenty days,” Alan notes.
I nod. “Alone too. No insect activity to speak of means this house has been locked up tight. Any obvious cause of death?”
Alan shakes his head. “I don’t see any bullet holes, and there’s been too much slippage and decomp to tell if he was strangled or had his throat cut.”
“This was purely functional,” I murmur. “There’s no joy here. The killer needed his identity, that’s all.”
“Speaking of that, check this out.”
Alan hands me a photograph in an eight-by-ten frame. I see a good-looking man in his mid-forties with dark hair and an easy smile. Ambrose was not movie-star handsome, but I doubt he had many problems attracting women. Most interesting, however, is the fact that he sports a full moustache and beard. I hand the photo back to Alan.
“He chose Ambrose because they’re roughly the same age, height, and appearance,” I say. “He knew he’d be on a plane, in an enclosed environment. He couldn’t afford to get too clever or complex with his disguise. I’m betting he went clean shaven to the airport and used Ambrose’s driver’s license. He’d tell security personnel that he’d just shaved the moustache and beard.” I shrug. “If he was confident and charming enough, and the basic physical similarities were there, he could pull it off.”
“I don’t know. Seems risky. What if he got a really alert attendant, someone that did a double take?”
“He killed on a plane, mid-flight. I don’t think risk is an issue for him.”
“Good point.”
“Besides, the truth is, with adequate social engineering, it’s just not that hard.”
The problem with decent people is that they are decent people. They tend to assume decency in others by default. If he says he’s a plumber and he’s in a pair of coveralls, then he’s a plumber, not a serial killer in disguise. Ted Bundy wore a cast on his arm and asked a girl for help moving a couch into his van. He was handsome, charming, and she, being decent, helped him without a second thought. He, being evil, killed her without a second thought. I’m sure she still couldn’t believe it, even as it happened.
The funny thing is, people assume we’re more careful now, that Bundy’s broken arm trick wouldn’t work today. They’re wrong. It would work today, and it will work a century from now. It’s just the way we are.
“What’s the plan?” Alan asks.
I sigh. “We’re getting spread too thi
n. We have the plane as a crime scene, and now Lisa’s condo and this house. Callie and James aren’t going to be able to handle it all.” I shake my head. “I’m calling AD Jones.”
“IT’S TIME TO START PLAYING this by the book, sir,” I tell him. “We’ve got three crime scenes now. Legally, the Ambrose murder belongs to the locals. If I try and contain it I’m not only getting into sketchy legal territory, I’m putting the need for confidentiality above the need for a speedy investigation. I can’t do that.”
Investigation of murder is a full-court press, always. It’s a blitz, no finesse. You pull out all stops, use every resource available, because if you don’t come up with something in the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours, it’s unlikely you’re going to come up with anything at all. I had remembered this as I stared down at the rotting corpse of Richard Ambrose and realized I was solving someone else’s problem. Like I told Rosario—I work for the victims. Not her, not her husband, certainly not political expedience.
I hear AD Jones sigh. “Any other way around this?”
“Not ethically, no, sir. We’ve got a murder scene here, a pretty big one. The whole house needs to be gone through. We’ve got identity theft, interviews still to be done of plane passengers, ticket counter personnel, flight attendants. Not to mention the distinct possibility that other past victims are going to pop up and his promise to kill again until we catch him. If we’re going to do a good job of this, we need to bring in local law enforcement.”
A long pause. “Agreed. But we hold on to the Lisa Reid murder directly. We have legal reason to do so. I don’t want anyone else in her condo, and I want the ME report to continue being suppressed. If the details about the cross leak, it’ll impair your investigation.”
“Right.”
“Before you call in the cavalry, though, I want you to arrange a little air cover, Smoky.”
“Such as?”
“Call Rosario Reid. Explain to her that keeping this in-house is no longer practical or feasible. Get her to understand that it’ll impede finding Lisa’s killer. Appeal to her as a mother and the wife of a politician. I’ll deal with the Director.”