Blood Ties (32 page)

But apparently not. Tregear sagged visibly and with a vague movement of his hand waved the appeal away.

“I'm tired,” he said, and the mere sound of his voice was evidence of it. “My father has been hounding me since I was twelve years old. I've been hunting him because I knew my life depended on finding him first. Now he wants it to be finished, and so do I.”

Okay. The Navy taught the virtues of a flexible response. If one thing wouldn't work, Roland decided, he would try another.

“Then will you let us help you?”

“I'm listening.”

*   *   *

Roland stayed until shortly after one o'clock and then drove back to Treasure Island to make his arrangements. Sam, Ellen and Tregear drove over to the county morgue, where the autopsy on Harriet Murdock was just finishing up.

Allen Shaw, MD, the chief medical examiner, was waiting for them in his office.

“And what is your role here?” he asked Tregear, as they were being introduced.

“He's on loan from the Navy,” Sam answered blandly. “He's constructing a computer model of homicides so we can cross-check the evidence.”

Shaw did not appear to be entirely convinced, and his response was to ignore Tregear's presence.

“Well, I can tell you a few things for openers,” he began, sitting down behind his desk, which was covered with manila folders, various loose pieces of paper and several photographs of unspeakable horror. “The Murdock woman didn't die quickly. The killer took his time. The abdominal wound was the ultimate cause of death. She had had sexual intercourse within the last few hours of her life—apparently, judging from the quantity of semen and the general condition of her labia, quite a bit of it. It was real sex, unlike the Wilkes case, and it was consensual. She was wearing a diaphragm.

“The serology and the DNA work will be done sometime tomorrow.”

“Do you think this is the work of the Wilkes killer?” Sam asked, and then shrugged, as if dismissing his own question. “Just, what's your impression, Doc? I won't hold you to it.”

“I would guess it's the same man.” Dr. Shaw looked down at his desk and picked up a pencil. He apparently just wanted something to do with his hands because all he did was tap at his blotter with the eraser. “We won't know until the DNA is finished, but I'm betting it was. The method was different, but in both this and the Wilkes case the bodies were moved to carefully stage-managed discovery sites. Besides, Sally Wilkes suffered and this one suffered. Both of them were killed by a righteous monster, and how many of those can there be walking around?”

*   *   *

“I'm hungry,” Sam announced when they were back out on the sidewalk. “Let's get something to eat.”

They found a diner, the kind with Formica tabletops and napkin dispensers and no liquor license. They all ordered hamburgers, which was the safe choice.

“He must have seen me,” Tregear said, while they were waiting. “He must have been watching while we searched his house.”

Suddenly, to Ellen's ears, the idea no longer sounded so paranoid.

“How do you know that?” Sam asked.

Tregear raised his eyes to Sam's face, who offered a vague shrug to let him know that it was just a question, that he wasn't challenging him.

“Think about the timing. I walk into that house and four days later my mother's old driver's license is found on a dead woman's vanity table. Besides, you're his audience and he's yours. He wouldn't have been able to resist the show.”

Probably unconsciously, Tregear shook his head. He clearly wasn't pleased with his conclusions.

“So now I'm the bait,” he said.

“Yes, you're the bait.” Ellen looked up at him with something like real anger. “We'll be dangling you in front of a psychopath.”

“That's the idea.”

“You could end up like those women.”

“I don't think so.”

They were interrupted by the waitress with their orders. The hamburgers, to Sam's obvious disgust, came with potato chips instead of fries. The waitress seemed unimpressed with his protest and brought him a bottle of ketchup.

“Why not?” Sam asked him finally, after he had tasted his lunch. “Are you counting on family affection?”

“No, I'm counting on the Navy.” Tregear laughed. It wasn't a cheerful sound. “I've made a deal with them. They'll maintain a cordon around me wherever I go, loose enough that they won't spook Walter. At least, that's the plan.”

“He doesn't have to be standing next to you to kill you,” Ellen pointed out. She didn't like the plan very much, and the tone of resignation in Tregear's voice frightened her. “He could lure you someplace and be five blocks away with a high-powered rifle.”

“I don't think he'll try anything like that.” Tregear smiled at her. “He'll want to talk, and that will give me some time. We've got a lot of catching up to do.”

 

25

Ellen spent a restless night in her own apartment and at 4:00
A.M.,
by which time she was convinced that sleep was an empty promise, she was in her living room with a cup of coffee and Gwendolyn asleep in her lap, watching a 1940s doctor movie featuring not a single actor whose face she recognized. She had missed the first half, so she had no idea what the story was about.

Steve probably would have been able to fill it in for her. Steve loved movies, particularly if they were old and low budget. But Steve wasn't around.

Steve had banished her.

“I don't want you anywhere near me,” he had said. “Until this thing is over, I don't even want to talk to you on the phone.”

She understood that he was trying to protect her, that he didn't want her caught in the cross fire between him and his father, but after all she was a cop with a nine-millimeter automatic strapped to her belt, and
he
was the one who needed protecting. Aside from the M-16 the Navy had taught him how to use in boot camp, Steve, as it turned out, had never fired a gun in his life.

“I've got the Shore Patrol to keep me safe,” he had told her. “Walter doesn't know anything about you, and that's the way it has to stay.”

So now she was back to sleeping alone. Except that she wasn't sleeping.

“Well, that didn't last very long,” Mindy had announced, as if the discovery should be headlined in the
Chronicle
.

“We didn't break up,” Ellen told her. “It's more complicated than that.”

After which it became necessary, for more than one reason, to explain the whole situation to Mindy. Perhaps, it crossed Ellen's mind, having laid it all out for Mindy, she might even begin to understand it herself.

“You heard about the body they found in a car trunk down on Skyline? That seems to have done it. Our killer seems to have decided on some sort of blood feud, and Steve is being noble. The problem is, I don't particularly want him being noble.”

“Maybe not, but under the circumstances what else could you expect him to do?”

Mindy's expression became oddly speculative.

“When you've got this beast in a cage,” she said at last, “I want the case, and I don't care if I have to seduce the DA to get it. The book rights will finance my retirement.”

Somehow this struck Ellen as immensely funny, and it wasn't very long before they were both laughing.

“But I don't think it'll go down that way,” Ellen said finally, when she could keep a straight face. “I don't think this one will ever allow himself to be taken alive.”

“Well, isn't that just a fucking shame.”

And then they both started laughing all over again.

Fortunately, tonight Mindy was all tucked up with Whatever His Name Was, so Ellen could sit on the couch with Gwendolyn, watching a commercial for aluminum siding.

When the movie came back on, the Old Doctor, the Young Doctor's mentor and father figure, was talking into a Dictaphone. His voice sounded endlessly sincere and compassionate and it was all very quaint.

She was about to switch to another channel when suddenly she found herself staring at the image of an elderly actor holding a clumsy-looking microphone. How, exactly, would that process work? she asked herself. The doctor's voice was going onto a cylinder, and then a secretary would put the cylinder on another machine and listen to it through headphones as she typed the notes. Then the notes would go in a file folder.

What did they do these days?

Ellen's father was a doctor, so she knew the answer. Doctors usually didn't know how to type—certainly her father didn't—so they still used dictation machines of one kind or another, and the tape cassettes or memory chips were sent to a transcription service.

But what came back? Maybe a paper printout, maybe a computer file on a CD. Maybe by now they just e-mailed them back.

So if Walter had lifted the file folder, which would have contained a printout of a file on one of the front office computers, there was probably still a backup.

Had the San Mateo cops gone through the hard drives? Were Walter's records still there?

The clock on her cable box said four forty-five. Sam's dachshunds wouldn't get him up until five-thirty. She might as well go take a shower.

By five forty-five she was at her desk in the duty room, but she exercised restraint and didn't call Sam until six.

Millie answered. Sam was out emptying the dogs. No, he wasn't carrying his cell phone. It was still on his night table.

“Can you have him call me as soon as he gets back? I'm at work.”

Millie promised.

Twenty minutes later, Sam called.

“Your friend the San Mateo cop—what was his name?”

“Pete Castaldi.”

“Can you phone and find out if they've gone through Dr. Fairburn's computers? I think Walter's records might be there.”

“Okay.”

It was almost seven-thirty by the time Sam called back.

“They looked through the files, but they didn't find anything for Walter Stride,” he said. “They think Fairburn was killed by a mugger. His wallet was missing.”

“Can you get us into that office?”

“They won't like it, Ellie.”

“Then you'll just have to be especially charming about it. Can you meet me there?”

“Oh, I suppose.”

By a quarter after eight she was in the parking lot of the medical building in San Mateo. There was a patrol car waiting for her, and when she showed her badge the uniform took her in to Fairburn's office and used his key.

“I don't have to tell you to lock up after yourself, do I?”

“No. You don't.”

Ellen started with the computer on the receptionist's desk. There were lots of patient records, raw transcriptions in Word format, but a search on “Stride” turned up nothing. A search on “Walter” yielded three records, all related to an eighteen-year-old being treated for the clap.

Had their Walter gotten here ahead of her? It didn't seem likely. Ellen had looked in the Recycle Bin and it still held files dated from before Fairburn's murder, so Walter hadn't emptied it.

At eight forty-five Sam showed up.

“Any luck?” he asked. He didn't make the question sound hopeful.

“Not yet, but the morning is young.”

He sat down on the couch in the waiting room, took off his hat and set it on the seat beside him. He was obviously prepared to be very bored.

“If my expertise is required, just let me know,” he said, then leaned back into the couch, folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.

In desperation, Ellen had begun searching the records by date when the door opened and a woman in her forties, dressed in a red T-shirt and gray cropped pants, stepped inside and froze, staring at Sam in amazement.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Sam opened one eye and fumbled for his badge.

“Cops. Go away.”

“Wait a minute!” Ellen stood up and came out into the waiting room. “Do you work here?” she asked the woman.

“Yeah. I'm the receptionist.” She had dark hair with streaks of blond in it. She looked like she would have been exactly Walter's type. She shrugged. “At least, I was. Now they're just keeping me on for a few weeks to tidy up.”

Ellen gestured with her hand. “Come with me.”

They sat down together on the two chairs in front of the late Dr. Fairburn's desk.

“What's your name?”

“Carol.” The ex-receptionist shrugged again. It seemed to be her habitual response to life. “Carol Brush.”

“Do you want some coffee, Carol?”

“Hell, no. The coffee here is foul. Doctors are all cheap sons of bitches.”

“Do you remember a patient named Walter Stride?”

Yes, Carol remembered. You could read it in her eyes.

“He was nice,” she said, then smiled at the recollection.

“What was wrong with him?”

“I don't know—pain. Just pain.”

“Did you do the filing around here?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “I was it. I was the whole staff.”

“And you didn't see his file?”

“No. The first and only time he had an appointment was just four days before…”

“I understand.”

Within about five minutes Ellen really did understand. She understood that Dr. Fairburn had paid his overworked receptionist less per week than his wife might spend on an umbrella, that the doctor's widow only came in to sign the checks and begrudged every nickel, that there wasn't going to be a severance bonus, that Carol Brush was lonely and poor and resentful.

She also understood how the office was run, that the doctor, like Ellen's father, dictated his notes and employed a transcription service, and that the notes were mailed back on a CD.

“What have you been doing with the mail?”

“I sort out the checks and the bills and leave them for Mrs. Fairburn.” Carol pointed to the small pile of envelopes on the doctor's desk. The rest I dump in an empty filing cabinet.”