Stranger in the Room: A Novel (41 page)

“You wanna test that?” Rauser asked me. “Hey, guys, can we get a forensic light source on the bodies for a second?”

“Jo, you mind if we cut the lights for a minute?” I asked.

“No problem,” Phillips answered, and backed away from the bodies.

Outside, sirens screamed and blue lights came whirling down the street. Balaki sidestepped past blood at the entrance and went out to meet the officers. Lang hung a box in a leather case about half the size of a car battery off his shoulder. He plugged a cord with a light on the end into the front of the metal box. I reached for the light switch.

A blue spotlight traveled over the darkened floor, showed us the blood we’d already seen, then over the victims. Blueish-white drops and smudges spattered their faces and clothes.

“He cries a lot of tears while he’s jerking off,” Rauser said. “The sick fuck.”

  
36

C
SU put down heavy brown paper over plastic sheeting once the blood samples had been taken at the front door and Jo Phillips had made her measurements. The blood, the way it fell or dripped or sprayed, the way it flew off a weapon, would tell Phillips a terrifying story of those deadly seconds when a killer overtakes a victim. In combination with the wound pattern analysis and the physical evidence, every movement the killer had made and how each of these victims had responded would be horrifyingly clear. It would take hours to process the scene. Rauser and I could both be put to better use elsewhere. Too many chefs. The CSU team needed time to do what they do best—amass the evidence that seals the fate in court of cold-blooded murderers like Jesse Owen Richards.

I heard an unfamiliar click as I stepped out on the front porch, then light hit my face. Freestanding spotlights blazed. Voices behind them shouted my name.
“Keye Street.” “Hey, Dr. Street!”

Rauser stepped out behind me. “You up for this? Richards sees you on TV, he’s gonna go off again.”

We stepped off the porch and stripped off scene clothes. “Let him try,” I answered. Microphones came at us as soon as we ducked under the scene tape.

“Lieutenant Rauser, can you describe the scene inside?”

“Two victims,” Rauser told them. “Male and female. Mid-twenties. Names will be released once the victims’ families are notified.”

“Dr. Street, is the Birthday Killer responsible for these murders?”

I was careful not to look at Rauser, but we both knew what that question meant. There was a leak in his unit. “The crime scene is still being processed,” I replied. “As you can see.”

“Obviously something about these murders had characteristics that raised flags or you wouldn’t be here. So—”

“It’s always a good idea to wait for the department in charge of an investigation to release the details when and how they choose and in a manner that won’t harm an investigation,” I interrupted. “In other words, I’m not going there.”

A ripple of strained laughter, then a voice rose above the others.
“Are you sober? What’s your recovery status?”

Microphones crowded nearer.

“The friends and families of the eighteen million other recovering alcoholics in this country would probably tell you that recovery is a process. You take it a day at a time. I’ve been sober for over four years now.”

“There will be a press conference at seven in the briefing room at City Hall East.” Rauser glanced at his watch. “Less than an hour.”

“Do you have a suspect in the birthday killings?”

“We have identified the suspect in the murder of the Clarkston woman and two male victims in Atlanta. Until this scene is fully processed we can’t confirm a connection.” I noticed he refused to use the name the press had given Jesse Owen Richards—the Birthday Killer. “We’ll release the suspect’s identity at the briefing, along with a driver’s license photo and surveillance video recorded just yesterday. We need your help in getting those pictures out. Thank you.”

We headed for Rauser’s new car, got in, sat there for a minute, staring through a perfectly clean windshield. I felt a little shell-shocked. The sun was coming up, revealing a smudged sky streaked with dusty yellow. Storms were moving in today, I remembered.
Oh joy
.

“Hey, you were great back there with the reporters. Did you see how still they got? You had their attention. They like straight shooters.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t like thinking about standing outside that
bloody crime scene, making the story all about me. I kept thinking about those two young people, murdered and bound together in death, about their families and friends planning a wedding that would never happen. How quickly the focus had moved away from all that with one question.
“Dr. Street, are you sober?”

Rauser called the officer on duty at his house to let him know I was coming, then dropped me off in the hospital parking lot. I climbed into the blue bump, flew by The Georgian, showered, changed, tossed some food at White Trash, apologized for the neglect and promised her better days ahead. Wonder when that would happen. I’d constructed all this, after all. I’d lost control of my life, then my job. I’d decided to dig for money as a small-time PI and pimp my FBI experience as a consultant. Right now, overtired and underfed, I wasn’t feeling particularly happy about my choices. It was six-thirty in the morning and I was already thinking about what a shot of Jameson would taste like in my coffee, how it would feel when it hit my throat and started to work on those muscles in my neck, the ones that slept with a gun. What I needed was salt air and a big bath towel on the beach. And sex—long, slow, middle-of-the-day sex—movies, dinners out, baseball games, a friggin’ break. What I had was a cousin with a badly broken leg who would need meals and attention and twenty-four-hour protection, a killer who wanted us both, a neglected business, a hospitalized partner, piled-up paperwork, unanswered messages, and a resentful feline. And all of it by my own design—which was the real head-scratcher. Dr. Shetty had some opinions about why I stack my life up this way, about why I say I want downtime and then can’t handle the quiet.

Dr. Shetty
. It was Thursday.
Rats
. My regularly scheduled appointment was at two, right in the middle of the day, another example of really poor planning. I thought about the next few hours. I needed time to be sure Miki was okay, to deal with some paperwork and return calls at the office, phone time with Mom and Dad, check in on Neil, and an afternoon at APD to look over new reports. Once Rauser released the photos and surveillance video of Jesse Owen Richards, information would flood in.

Okay, so there was no way I was going to make my shrink appointment. That meant I’d have to deal with Mariza, Dr. Shetty’s office manager, a Brazilian who pretended her English was bad so she
didn’t have to talk to patients. Mariza enforced a strict twenty-four-hour cancellation policy. We’d been down this road before. I imagined Dr. Shetty having another hour-long lunch on my dime.

I picked up breakfast and raced to Rauser’s. I didn’t want Miki waking up without family. I could only imagine how vulnerable she’d be feeling, hunted, in an unfamiliar bed with a broken leg and a uniformed stranger guarding her.

A police cruiser was parked in Rauser’s driveway. An officer named Jacobs opened the door, hand on gun, and asked for identification. I came in with a bag from Radial Café, the first completely green restaurant in Atlanta and
the
place for cinnamon rolls—big fat ones made from scratch and smothered in cream-cheese icing. The aroma hangs over Dekalb Avenue when they’re baking. It’s nearly impossible to drive by without hitting the brakes.

The television was on with the volume low. I saw the officer’s smart phone on the coffee table next to his cap. “Has she been up?” I asked.

“Haven’t heard a peep,” Jacobs answered.

I shook the bag. “Radial rolls. Want some coffee too?”

“You bet,” he said. I saw him sit down and pick up his phone. I wondered vaguely what a beat cop Tweets when he’s on a protective detail. Must be boring. Maybe he was updating his Facebook status. Or texting his lover, playing Angry Birds.

The press conference had begun. On the screen, I watched the surveillance video of the suspect we now knew was Jesse Owen Richards, head down, wearing a dark green hoodie and keeping his face away from the cameras. I watched as Rauser spoke to television cameras and enlisted the community in the search. He again described the personality characteristics outlined in my profile. The hospital video looped to show Richards’s physical posture, the way he moved and walked. Rauser had the six-year-old driver’s license picture on a screen and reminded everyone that Richards’s face would be thinner now. APD were estimating that he’d dropped eighty to a hundred pounds since the round-faced photograph had been taken.

It was only a matter of time now. Richards’s face and the video would be all over the media.

I went down the hall to the guest room, which doubled as Rauser’s office, and pushed the door open.

Miki’s broken leg was sticking out from under the covers. The cast was knee-high. It had a few signatures on it already. I smiled at that, put the coffee and the cinnamon rolls on the bed table, sat down on the bed.

I was well aware that Miki was waking to no small amount of emotional and physical distress. What kind of mood she’d be in was anybody’s guess. I wished I could take it all away, all the pain and fear. Getting Richards off the streets and out of her life was a good start. I touched her hand. “Good morning.”

She stirred, blinked up at me, started to sit up, and then remembered there was plaster on her leg. She pushed herself up with wiry, muscled arms. I helped pile pillows behind her.

“I have coffee and some food if you want it.” She wanted the coffee. I handed it to her. “There’s a great-looking uniform in the living room. I guess that’s the silver lining.”

“I only have eyes for Tyrone now,” Miki said. “He actually carried me inside.”

There were crutches leaning against the wall. Miki was thin, but she was strong and was fit. I knew full well she didn’t need to be carried. “What a guy.”

“He’s coming over later, I think. With lunch or dinner or something.”

“Really? Wow.” I didn’t like the sound of that. The last thing I wanted was for Miki to get involved with Tyrone, though he might have been enough of a player to handle her.

She sipped her coffee and studied me. “I remembered something about Owen. I had a birthday while I was an inpatient at Peachtree-Ford. I don’t know how he knew, but he knew. I was so depressed. We were in this common area with a TV. They let you do that after you’ve been there a few days. He handed me this little tablet of paper. He’d made a cover for it. I think there was some artwork on it. I don’t really remember. They take everything, you know? So you can’t hurt yourself—belts, shoestrings, whatever. But somehow he’d gotten hold of some ribbon and used it to bind this paper. He made a big loopy bow for the top. He was so nice to me. I remember thinking how sweet he was. I don’t get it. I don’t get why he wants to hurt me.…”

She broke off, shook her head. I was silent.

“You know, Keye, I don’t even remember what I did with that gift. Or what I said to him. You saw me in that place. I could barely remember my own name.”

I imagined her casually pushing his gift aside, the one he’d worked on and decorated with something meaningful to him, something that had taken no small amount of effort to obtain. He would have fantasized about how she’d react when she received it, how grateful and smitten she would be, her affection for him amplified in his mind about a million times. But Miki hadn’t followed the script. Miki rarely does. The gift meant nothing to her. Had that been the trigger that turned his infatuation to rage?

Miki was watching me. “You think I did something to cause all this, don’t you?” she asked.

“He’s an egocentric sonofabitch, Miki. You didn’t cause that.”

Her blue eyes smiled a second before she did. “That your official diagnosis?”

“And just one more reason I never went into private practice.”

I helped her up and handed her the crutches. She was hurting, I could see, as she navigated the hallway in panties and an undershirt. While she brushed her teeth, I found the mega-dose ibuprofen she’d been prescribed. “You have to eat before you take these, okay?”

“You’re leaving? What am I supposed to do?”

“Read. The bookshelves are full. You have a Kindle.” I needed to find a way out of mobile home health care. I wasn’t really cut out for it. Back in the guest room, I handed her the remote control. “Rauser has every channel known to man. Have you noticed the size of the dish out back? Seriously. You can see Russia from his house.”

“Fucking great.” Miki’s mood turned sour instantly at the prospect of being left alone.

“I’m sorry. I know it sucks.” I opened the blinds. Thunderclouds were gathering. I remembered Rauser saying emergency services were on alert. “Can you call your insurance company and see about getting some home care? I’ll be back early this afternoon to check on you. The landline is on Rauser’s desk right there, okay? Call if you need anything.”