L. A. Heat (30 page)

Chris left a message with the prick, then hung up
and clicked on the image of Bobby. Instantly another page opened.

The Carpet Killer clearly knew something about
computers. He had used a web cam to capture his atrocities, then made skillful
use of some kind of Flash technology to both mask and enhance the images. Chris
thought of Trevor, involved in professional filmmaking, picking up tips from
the old pros with no idea how he was using their suggestions.

Though he forced himself to examine each streaming
video several times, tried to ignore the look of tortured pain and the terror
of Bobby and the others as they were sliced and raped, first by a penis, then
by a knife blade. Chris barely kept his lunch down. He never saw the Carpet
Killer’s face.

The phone rang fifteen minutes later. Chris jumped
a foot off the chair. Hastily he wiped tears from his eyes and fumbled to grab
the receiver.

Thank God, it was David.

“He called,” Chris’s voice broke. Then he froze.
He couldn’t talk about what he had seen over the phone. Not when the images of
Bobby’s last few minutes still burned in his mind with cold neon brightness.
What could he even tell David? He needed to find the source of the website if
he was going to be any help at all. Surely he could do that much at least.

“Trevor, he called.”

“We’ll be right there.”

Twenty minutes later David and a reluctant
Martinez filled the kitchen. Chris’s BlackBerry lay on the table. It had
remained stubbornly silent since Trevor’s call.

“Any idea why he called you?” Martinez’s gaze
skittered from Chris to the BlackBerry, with the occasional side-trip toward
David, who seemed oblivious to his partner’s probing looks.

“Who’s your service provider?” David asked.

Chris told him.

“We’ll start monitoring incoming calls, maybe
catch him if he calls again.” David slammed his fist into his open palm. “Damn
it, I should have anticipated this. I knew he had a fixation on you.”

Under Martinez’s watchful eyes Chris didn’t feel
at ease comforting his lover. He stared down at his own hands, rubbing the
flesh of his thumb uneasily.

“We can’t anticipate them all, Davey,” Martinez
said. “This guy’s a loose cannon.”

David’s cell phone rang. He spoke briefly.

“Our warrant for the car and the storage locker
came through. Let’s check that out before we go any further. You”—he looked
steadfastly at Chris—“call your service provider and see if you can talk to
anyone who can take your authorization to monitor your cell. We’ll call them,
too, but it helps if the owner cooperates. They may still demand a court order,
but we’ll try to work around that for today.”

Chris nodded and looked at the kitchen clock.
Eleven-thirty. His flight left at nine the next night. Soon he’d be in Denver
and for five days he wouldn’t have to watch his back.

“If he calls, assume we’re monitoring and
keep
him on the line
.”

Another nod and Chris followed them to the door,
debating whether to pull David aside and tell him about the websites. Martinez
left first. David half shut the door behind him and turned. He wrapped one hand
around Chris’s arm.

“I know, I know,” Chris said. “Don’t leave the
house. Don’t show my face in the street. Keep him on the phone—” David silenced
him with a finger to his lips. Then he pulled him into his arms.

“I’ll get a patrol car to swing by as often as
possible, but they won’t let us assign someone full-time.” He tilted Chris’s
head up. “I love you, Chris.”

Before Chris could do more than stare in stunned
silence, David was gone, closing the door firmly behind him.

Saturday,
11:50 am, Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Los Angeles

As they drove toward Judge
Harris’s to secure the signature on the warrants, David stared out the car’s
window. Warm air flowed over his flushed face, doing little to cool him.

What had possessed him to say he loved Chris?

He’d just complicated things tenfold. Chris had
been fooling around, having fun seducing the cop-in-the-closet, making him
admit how much David wanted him. Nothing more. Chris was a well-heeled,
stunningly beautiful man; someone who had it all. Why would he be interested in
having a dull, stick-in-the-mud detective in his life?

David mentally kicked himself. Well, no getting
around it, he’d done it now. Maybe it would just speed up the process. Chris
was bound to start distancing himself now. He’d have no choice; unless he was
cruel enough to play with David’s heart, and David didn’t think that was
Chris’s style.

Too bad he’d promised to be home early, had told
Chris to wait for him. He could have pleaded workload and hung around the
station all evening, until he was sure Chris was safely asleep. Tomorrow he was
leaving. In a week there would have been no reason for Chris to look him up
when he came back. They all could have saved face.

But David always kept his promises.

They called a tow truck on the way out to Trevor’s
apartment. They would examine the car in situ, in the hopes that it might offer
up some evidence they could use immediately; then it would be towed to the
police impound lot, where the true forensic work would be done.

Martinez parked three spots over from the
abandoned vehicle. David popped the trunk and hauled out their camera, checking
to make sure it had a full charge, then dragged out their evidence kit.
Martinez grabbed a pair of gloves and drew them over his thick fingers. David
would take his pictures first.

The city-run tow truck bounced into the lot and
the driver greeted them with a laconic nod. He immediately produced a shimmy
and while David circled the car, shooting a round of film, he popped both doors
open.

“She’s all yours, man,” the driver said, wiping a
layer of sweat off his brown forehead with a greasy rag he pulled from his
overalls.

“We’ll let you know when we’re done,” David said.

The driver retreated to the cab of his truck where
he promptly dug out a
Gents
magazine and fell to reading sideways.

Both David and Martinez peered into the hot, musty
car.

David tried to imagine Trevor helping some guy he
had just slipped Ketamine to into the passenger’s seat. Strapping them both in.
Already anticipating the evening to come. Driving where? Back to here? David
glanced up at the three-story walk-up. Not here. Not if he held them for hours,
as the medical examiner claimed. He had to have a stash site. Someplace more
private, where he could take his time—have his fun.

Maybe a clue to the location of that place could
be found in this nondescript-looking vehicle. A map or an address. A name.

They had already done a title search on Trevor’s
name and come up empty. If Trevor Watson owned property anywhere in Southern
California, it wasn’t registered in his name.

Did he have access to someone else’s property?
They’d had no luck tracking down any of Trevor’s relatives. He hadn’t provided
any contact information to his employer and the landlord didn’t have any names.

“Finished here?” David asked.

Martinez nodded, and David went over to let the
tow-truck driver know they were ready. David shot more images once the car was
removed—of the oil-covered pavement underneath the vehicle. Then they did a
quick walk around, making sure nothing was overlooked.

Within twenty minutes they were back on the road,
heading for Mascot Self-Storage, on North Hollywood Way, where the landlord had
stored Trevor’s belongings.

They met with the manager of Mascot’s and showed
him the warrant. Overhead a Boeing 767 with the American Airlines logo on its
tail flew low, bound for the Bob Hope Airport. The manager eyed the warrant
grudgingly and tottered out of his air-conditioned office and headed for the
rows of low sheds that housed the eight-by-ten storage units that he leased by
the month.

In unit 25 they turned on the single overhead
light, which cast a yellow glow over the stacked boxes that lined two walls. A
few rag-tag pieces of thrift-shop furniture filled the rest of the space.

“Got a couple of folding chairs we can borrow?”
Martinez asked the manager.

Reluctantly the manager left, returning moments
later with a pair of folding metal chairs with plastic lattice covering, one
orange, the other blue.

Martinez took them, unfolded them, and plunked
them in the middle of the cement floor. After dragging down several boxes they
sat down and methodically began to go through each one. The job was
tedious—sorting through mounds of dirty dishes, curios, and books that had been
haphazardly packed. Whenever they came across paperwork they set it aside.
Bills and receipts might be used to plot Trevor’s movements over the last few
months.

Once they had culled several boxes of paperwork,
the search began in earnest.

There was too much to sort through in one
afternoon. In the end they did a quick sort, arranged everything by year, and
tossed everything back into a box, each box holding at most two years’ worth of
paper. Then they lugged the whole lot down to the station.

By the time they got four D’s working on resorting
everything by month it was going on three-thirty.

David stretched, wincing when his back creaked and
popped in protest. He had already told Martinez earlier he had to be home by
four. Now he caught the other detective’s gaze.

“If you catch anything interesting, call me. See
if you can contact Anstrom’s parents while you’re at it. Maybe we can run up
there later.”

*****

At four o’clock sharp David
locked his front door behind him. From the living room he heard one of his
radios playing. It had been changed from KZLA to something louder.

Chris emerged from the bedroom, and David stared
at the vision in front of him.

Chris had changed from his red silks into a pair
of skintight jeans that hugged his muscular thighs and clearly outlined the
shape of his half-erect penis. The jade green shirt he was wearing stretched
tight across his chest, showing off his sculptured body. Again David marveled
at how utterly perfect he was. And how completely out of place he looked in
David’s shabby surroundings.

“Hi,” Chris said.

He looked at one of David’s treasures, a Dutch
cuckoo clock he had found in a North Hollywood flea market years ago and had
painstakingly restored. It even kept reasonably accurate time.

“Right on time,” he said.

“I promised.”

“I’ll have to get you to promise things more often
then.”

David swallowed, but his throat had gone dry.

“I remembered that you had tickets for the game
tonight.”

David groaned. “Damn,” he said softly. “I
completely forgot about that.”

Chris feigned a look of disappointment. “Oh,” he
said. “Is there something else you’d rather do?”

David wasn’t sure what to make of it when Chris
moved closer. His breath was warm on David’s face. His body radiated heat and
the erotic smell of aftershave and soap. David remembered how he tasted, the
sounds he made when he came, how tight he felt buried inside him. He closed his
eyes, fighting the memories.

Knowing it could never be. He was so far out of
Chris’s league it was a joke to imagine he could have a lifetime of this. He
shook himself like a dog.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Chris smiled. “Surely you remember. No baseball
game. We have to find something else to fill our time...” He circled David,
forcing him to turn to keep face to face with him. He brushed his hip against
David's, edging closer with each turn.

“I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’ve never
had anyone prey on my mind like you do, Detective David Laine. Why do you think
that is?”

David opened his mouth to speak, to tell Chris
this had to end here, now, but nothing came out. Chris didn’t wait; he shoved
his mouth over David's, pushing his tongue past David's teeth, tangling with
his tongue, tasting him. David’s resistance vanished in a wave of lust.

Chris broke away long enough to whisper, “Fuck me,
David.”

David growled and dragged Chris into his arms.
“Screw the game. It’s only baseball.”

Sunday,
7:55 am, Piedmont Avenue, Glendale

Chris shut the bedroom door
behind him, taking care not to wake David, who was still sleeping soundly,
despite the hour. After last night, Chris wasn’t surprised.

Chris hadn’t wanted to say anything about his find
the night before. Between making love and cooking an intimate dinner for three—Sweeney
insisted that pork tenderloin was vastly superior to dry cat food and wouldn’t
take no for an answer—the right moment hadn’t arrived to show David the grisly
playground Trevor had put online. So far, Chris’s attempts to trace the site’s
origins had met with failure. Even at ARIN, the American Registry for Internet
Numbers, the vast on-line repository of domain names, he had drawn a blank.
Which meant the killer was spoofing his IP address. Every computer connected to
the Internet had a unique IP, or Internet protocol, address, usually supplied
by their Internet service provider. The killer was obviously skilled enough to
fake his own IP so he couldn’t be traced. He was using a labyrinthine technique
to conceal his location behind legitimate addresses. He may even have jacked
other machines and was using them as relays to host his site—if he activated
enough of those and he could rotate the site’s actual location often enough to
avoid detection by nearly anyone.

But Chris wasn’t just anyone. He dug into his bank
of software tools and with some programming tweaks, set his own snoopers
spidering along the Internet conduits. Sooner or later he would narrow the
search down to something useful.

Two cups of coffee later, nothing had come back.
With a sigh he rinsed his mug out and logged off. Maybe something would turn up
before his plane took off.