Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

  Back at the coffee table, she swept her little light over books, a thick manila envelope, a scattering of pens. As Bert had said, the books were medical and psychological titles concerned with violent behavior. Suspect? Ray made no effort to conceal his desire to understand the more troubling aspects of human behavior, and Cree had a whole library on similar topics. There was also a lycanthropy book Ray had mentioned, The Werewolf: Myth, Madness, and Metaphor, spread open, facedown. When she turned it over, she found that it was open to a horrible woodcut of the Beast of LeGevaudan, ripping and rending one of its many victims. Abruptly it occurred to her that the Beast didn't fit any of the neat werewolf categories she and Ray had talked about. One of history's best-documented werewolves, yet no one had ever figured out what the creature really was. It made her wonder if she'd oversimplified things, overlooked something important. Her heart fluttered as she turned the book over again. Sneaking around in someone else's house, without his knowledge, was not good for the nerves.

  The manila envelope contained photos. Cree slid out the thick sheaf and fanned them on the table and got another shock as her light revealed faces—the faces of corpses. No mistaking it. She controlled her breathing with difficulty as she looked through the collection. There were at least two dozen black-and-white studies of heads and faces, some badly damaged and gruesome, some serene and perfect. On many, Ray had drawn crop lines and other notations, as if he'd played with compositional ideas. From the steel surfaces or zippered edges of body bags visible around the edges, it appeared that every photo had been taken in a lab or morgue. Not at crime scenes! she reassured herself. The memory of the noise she'd heard from Skobold's meat suite carne back to her, the long drawers opening and closing, and suddenly she knew where Ray had gotten at least some of these.

  Okay, she told herself breathlessly, photos of corpses. Not souvenirs, a project. Art works, an artistic experiment.

  Or was it? Ray was a student of death. Why the obsessive interest? And how far had it taken him? For an instant she remembered the savagery of the dogfight and, worse, the darkly joyful reflection of it in the faces of the audience. Would Ray be tempted to delve into that as well?

  Her hands shook as she put the photos away and positioned the envelope as it had been. The cold was beginning to ache in her feet and creep up her legs. Time to look at the maps and go downstairs. Then she'd leave this place. Get a little distance on Ray.

  She could see the maps better now, four paler rectangles against the wall above the drafting table. She stifled her jitters, crossed over to the wall and put her light onto the maps. The legends at the top told her Bert was right, they were topo maps of state parks. Where Ray took his night runs, his wild pilgrimages. The one on the far right was where that toddler had been killed, San Bruno State Park, traced with pencilled-in paths and X's that marked points of particular interest. She wished she had looked at Bert's crime scene map and could see right now whether it corresponded with Ray's markings.

  Maybe she should have taken Bert more seriously.

  She got her camera ready, fighting her swelling anxiety: Ray really might get a little uncool if he caught her at this. She set the camera for low-light mode, checked the LCD to make sure the map was tightly framed, and snapped the shot. She zoomed in and took a series of detail shots, then reviewed the photos in the monitor to make sure Ray's pencil lines were visible.

  Everything seemed a lot less certain than it had an hour ago. Maybe her empathic identification with Ray had confused the rational part of her brain, which just like Bert had been telling her there was something amiss. It wouldn't be the first time. One of the gravest dangers of her penchant. She was panting in shallow breaths and had to shut her eyes for a moment: Easy now. Easy. Slow deep breaths. Settle. Go slow. Don't get spooked. Go slow.

  Back downstairs. This time she remembered the creaking door, but the agonizing slowness it required made her very tense. All she felt was the desire to hurry, hurry to leave here. At the same time, she knew she should try to keep perspective. Okay, Ray took pictures of corpses, but it didn't mean he was a killer. Yes, he had an urgent fascination with some morbid issues, death and violence, but he'd been out front about it. Urgent, definitely the word for Ray. Maybe just too urgent? The way Cree was urgent about similar topics, or some other way? Similar, she decided, but not the same. Coming at it from a different angle, a different motive. For a moment she felt a pattern taking shape in her thoughts, but she was too jittery and it darted away from her.

  She descended into the living room with utmost stealth, then stood and studied the dark hallway to the bedroom until she verified that nothing was moving. She couldn't hear Ray snoring anymore, but the dogs weren't up and there was no sign of activity.

  Over to the desk. Holding the flashlight between her teeth, she leafed through the many envelopes to find that Bert was right again—path labs, hospitals, some police labs. But which ones? Were any of the labs connected to Bert's collection of dog attack deaths and murders?

  She slipped papers out of one envelope, tried to make sense of the medical jargon, couldn't quite. Looked at more pages from different labs, read carefully, thought maybe she understood some of it. By the third she'd begun to see the pattern. She grabbed at the other envelopes, pulling out one sheet after the other. A sensation like vertigo hit her as she realized what she was looking at.

  A little noise whispered behind her.

  She spun, heart hammering. Something moved at the end of the hallway, then materialized as a canine shadow. The other two dogs followed, and all three took up a position in the middle of the room, oriented toward her. A half-second later she noticed the shape that was higher up at the edge of the hall doorway, the dark motionless blob of shadow.

  Ray's face, leaning out of the dark hall to watch her.

  "Hi, Cree," he said quietly, sadly. "Finding anything good?"

  52

  BERT JAMMED THE brakes as soon as the furthest wash of his headlights picked out Cree's red Honda, cozied up against Ray's van. His face went numb. Seeing her car here, well after midnight, everything that implied, it was something of a last straw.

  He idled for half a minute, torn between conflicting impulses. Conflicting, but all of the fuck it category: Fuck Cree if she's that stupid. Fuck yourself, too, Bright Raven, give it up, lost cause, you're old and burnt to shit and don't have what it takes,go home. The other side of that was, Fuck it, it's lose-lose anyway, might as well have it out, high noon in the middle of the night, who cares about the consequences.

  He settled for a provisional decision. He cut the lights, put the car in reverse, and slid over to the curb. The position gave him a long angle view of Ray's front door. Tired as he was, he knew he'd never sleep tonight. Might as well keep watch as he sifted through the mental dregs and cinders of one of the worst days on record and tried to decide what to do.

  This time last night he was at home, still waiting for the call from Nearing and Koslowski. Planning the operation, they'd agreed that since Bert was already on Ray's radar he shouldn't be anywhere near the action, no possibility he'd be connected. And anyway somebody had to make absolutely sure Cree wasn't there. Bert had driven to her motel, verified that her car was in the lot and that the lights were on in her room, then called Nearing with the go-ahead. He'd gone home feeling giddily pleased, sick, scared.

  By three A.M. the call still hadn't come and the tension was getting bad, and he'd almost called Nearing's cell. But then he worried that his call might come at a critical moment, might distract Rich. So he'd held on, dosed himself with whiskey. At last he'd fallen asleep on the couch with his house phone and cell on his chest.

  He'd awakened with a jerk to realize that it was Monday morning and there'd been no call. His head was pounding and his teeth were fuzzy, the light from the sliding doors was a death ray hitting his eyes.

  First he called Nearing's cell phone. No answer. Koslowski, same result. So he gave it up and called Nearing's home number. His wife was pra
ctically hysterical: Rich had said he was going out for a drink but he hadn't come home, did Bert know where he was? He tried to reassure her: Probably he'd gotten called in on some late-night situation and just hadn't had time to check in.

  He called Koslowski's place, got basically the same message from his girlfriend. When he hung up, he called a guy he knew at the Night Investigations Unit, who he figured would know about anything serious involving cops. He asked if there'd been any unusual action last night.

  Jackpot. Burning up and down the cop grapevine was the news that early this morning, two guys from Narcotics/Vice Division had been brought to the hospital in very bad shape. Some people were saying there was something messy about it, because the brass were not broadcasting the news or calling up the troops. Like maybe Nearing and Koslowski had gotten hurt while engaged in something dirty that needed to be kept quiet pending internal investigations and some spin control.

  Bert turned suddenly cold and shaky. It could all unravel from here. If he got caught in it, he was screwed. All the other stuff they'd been doing for the last six years would come out. Hearings, trials, maybe jail. No pension. And if the lid blew off soon, he'd get so tied up he wouldn't be able to follow through on Ray, legally or otherwise.

  Damage control time. He needed to find out exactly what had happened so he could consider his options.

  It took a while to find out where they were, people didn't know or wouldn't tell. It was almost noon when he drove to the hospital, hoping desperately that it hadn't gotten administrative yet, he wouldn't be prohibited from talking to them. Assuming they were able to talk.

  He got a jolt when he found a pair of inspectors already in the room, but then it turned out they were both General Works inspectors. Not Management Control Division. That fact brought Bert's shoulders down a full inch. General Works meant it was still routine, they were just waiting for the victims to be in shape to talk so they could start their assault investigation.

  They met him in the hall, so he couldn't get close to Rich and Pete, but through the door he could see two motionless figures in the beds, with bandaged heads and a tangle of IV tubes and monitor wires. They said Nearing had been conscious when the medics brought him in, if pretty out of it from a concussion. But he'd required surgery for a lacerated jaw and was still under the anesthetic. Koslowski was in worse shape, a serious skull fracture, but supposedly the prognosis was okay.

  "What the hell happened?" Bert asked.

  Minken, the taller GW guy, who seemed to be the lead, answered: "Hospital gets an anonymous tip about two guys in a car over near the arena. They send an ambulance and call the PD. A black and white goes out, gets there and sees two badly hurt guys but an undamaged car, so it's not a car crash, it's assault. No ID on the victims, they had to run the plates to figure out the car owner is Richard Nearing. Naturally the captain at Narcotics heard and got very interested, they put us on it right away."

  "Your buddies, huh?" the second inspector asked.

  "Rich Nearing is a great guy," Bert said carefully. "His wife's a terrific gal, got a couple of great kids. I hate to see this happen to that family."

  The second inspector grunted. "Could have been a lot worse—both their guns were in the car, one had been fired, but whoever the bad guys were, they didn't reciprocate. Used a brick or a rock or something on them. Couple other funny details."

  Bert almost slipped up. He almost asked, Dog bites? He couldn't imagine any other way Ray had gotten the upper hand with two guys like Nearing and Koslowski. But that would suggest he knew something he shouldn't. He just frowned and asked, "Oh, yeah? Like what?"

  But Minken had shot the other guy a look. He shrugged and gave a casual, dismissive toss of his head. "Just little stuff. Who knows if it's worth anything. You know how it is."

  Bert knew not to push it. Minken's eyes had gone suddenly flat, and the signal between them had been a reminder: Don't talk about it.

  He stopped at a restaurant and stuffed some food into his face even though he was anything but hungry, then went to a bar chosen at random for a couple of shots. His cell phone went off, but the caller ID told him it was Cree and there was no way he could talk to her now. The next time it went off, he was afraid to even look, maybe it was the first little hello from MCD, the first beat of his career's death knell.

  What had gone wrong? The plan had been to go into Ray's, inflict enough damage on Ray to cause him major hurt and keep him laid up until Bert could put him away. They were to take pictures, toss the place and make off with some valuables to make it look like a robbery—a common enough scenario in that neighborhood, easy to fake. What had gone wrong?

  More to the point, what would happen next? He forced himself to think systematically about the likely progression of events. By the time he drove home, he felt certain that unless Nearing and Koslowski had a lot more imagination and strength of character than he figured them for, they'd blow it while trying to make up a story about what had gone down. The Narcotics/Vice people already had their antennae up, Minken and the other guy had been warned, so they would separate Pete and Rich for the interviews. The fairy tales wouldn't match, so they'd bring in MCD. A little pressure and soon Ray's name would come up, and Bert's name, and it would all blow.

  How soon? How long did he have?

  And for what—a fast exit to Mexico? A serious visit to Ray and then the gun in the mouth? Because there was no way he could see being put through that wringer again. Not at this age, this stage. No way.

  Bert realized he'd been sitting in the dark car outside Ray's for over an hour. His legs were stiff and cold. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost three o'clock. Time to fish or cut bait. Do something here or go home.

  He thought of Cree, in there, getting it on with a guy like that. So deceived. So unaware of how dangerous he was. The rage, the frustration, everything came roaring in. Again he considered storming the place right now. But it wasn't really an option. Ray would have fixed his door, probably armored it this time, and after Nearing and Koslowski he had no doubt taken other precautions. What could he do, stand on the street and shoot at the windows? Even if he somehow got inside, Cree could easily get hurt in the ensuing drama. Or even come in on Ray's side, what would happen then?

  He started the car. There was nothing he could do tonight. It would all have to wait until tomorrow. If the internal investigation wasn't casting its baleful gaze his way yet, maybe he could still do something. Maybe Cree could pry herself away from Scarface long enough for Bert to catch him alone. Or Hank Chambers would come up with something on the evidence side.

  Actually, that could solve the whole mess: Pin a murder on Ray, even demonstrate a reasonable presumption of guilt, and any internal investigation had a good chance of quietly fading away.

  The thought rose quick and bright, a spark of hope. He shook his head at himself as he pulled the car around and started toward home. Yeah, Bert Marchetti in a nutshell, he thought, the incurable optimist.

  53

  I CAN'T TELL YOU how disappointed I am." Ray sounded vastly weary and sad.

  "Don't scare me here, Ray."

  "Scare you? Why should you be scared?" He came fully into the room to stand among the dogs. They were all just shadow shapes.

  "Ray, turn on the light so I can see your face. I didn't tell you earlier, but Bert, he's seriously after you, he's—"

  "Yeah, I'm starting to get that impression."

  "I was sure he was wrong! I wanted to prove it to him, so that he'd—"

  "Still so sure?"

  "You turn on the light and look at me and see me and we'll both tell each other what's true. Goddamn it, Ray!"

  Ray's shadow held for a long minute, but then he did it, he went to a lamp and turned it on. The glow lit the room. He wore only his boxer shorts, and he looked impossibly strong, every muscle chipped and carved. In the better light, she could see his left eye ticking, shivering, from side to side, independent of the right. Cree tried not to shake as th
ey stared at each other from ten feet away.

  At last she tipped her head toward the desk. The envelopes. The reports from oncological path labs and the letters from doctors that spelled it out. "Why not just tell me? Why the big secret? Does Horace know? Does anybody?"

  "It's nobody's business. It's just my situation. My little challenge. I have my way of dealing with it."

  She wanted to go to him, hold him, but the fear sweat was freezing her, she was shaking and couldn't think straight. "I don't know how to do this, Ray Help me. I don't know what hurts or helps, or what part I might have in anything. I don't know how to talk to a dying man."

  Ray passed a weary hand over his brow. She couldn't make out what was in his eyes. "Everybody's dying," he said. "I'm just aware of the fact."

  Much later there was a vertical band of warm rainbow colors, bright against the cool blue of shadow. It was lustrous and mesmerizing. Cree stared at it for a long time before she realized she was conscious. She was sitting hunched at the end of the couch, and the band was a narrow shaft of sunlight slicing in a long diagonal onto the bookshelf and making the book spines glow. Little motes of dust hung in the invisible beam.

  Morning.

  She stirred and the ache in her shoulders brought her awake. Sprawled against the other end, Ray shifted and slowly raised his head. Their eyes met across the length of the couch and held. More curious than wary, not a shadow of pretense, no deflection available to either of them.

  Ray groaned and sat up. The dogs lifted their heads and the Rottweiler came to demand some affection. He roughed her coat and nuzzled her with his face when she insisted on more.

  "Okay," he croaked. "Okay, Sadie. The dog food machine is awake and on duty." He stood, wrapped his blanket around himself, then shuffled off to the kitchen with the dogs.