The Stranger You Seek (14 page)

“Well, I’m not sure you’d believe it if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Okay. I just got nailed with a coffee cup. There’s a fresh bullet hole in my windshield, and Neil looks like he’s going to puke.”

“Riiight,” Tyrone said. “Okay, well, this will seem easy, then. Guy violated a restraining order, they picked him up, we bailed him out, and guess what? Weasel didn’t show for court. You need a few bucks?”

“Family or criminal court?”

Tyrone hesitated. Not a good sign. “Criminal.”

“So it wasn’t just an order violation. There was an assault?”

“Ex-wife,” Tyrone admitted. “Beat her bad. You get him, you make sure he accidentally bumps into some shit on the way to the station.”

“What’s his name?”

“Some faggy French-sounding shit,” Tyrone said.

“It isn’t LaBrecque, is it?” I asked, rubbing my head. “William LaBrecque?”

“Yeah, that’s the creep. Billy LaBrecque.”

F
orty-eight hours ago David Brooks was found in a bloody hotel bed and the second letter to Rauser hit the news. It had been a week since the first letter about Lei Koto gave the killer a name the media loved, Wishbone. The threat was real. A killer roamed our streets. To ratchet up the city’s boiling point, Atlanta was baking at a hundred degrees for the second straight week. The assault rate was soaring as it always does when big cities and blazing hot summers collide, and the news was full of warnings.
The owner of a downtown convenience store shot … Another case of road rage on Atlanta’s highways … Code-red smog alert
.

No one felt safe. It seemed Atlanta’s streets would find a way to get you. The atmosphere was pure crisis.

At my office, things were piling up. My desk was a mess. I couldn’t find evidence that I’d paid the electric bill, a bank deposit had been waiting for days, and I hadn’t done any billing in three weeks. I hated billing. I do it only because I have to. The agency was growing and seemed determined to become a roaring success with or without me.

Truth is, I’d never really had my heart in the business. I hadn’t had my heart in anything since Dan and being fired and getting sober. Most of the messes I’d made as a practicing drunk had been cleaned up, but I realized during those hot, anxious weeks that there was a chunk of me missing still, a disturbing lack of emotion. Life seemed to blow right past
me without leaving anything behind. When I shut down
—why
I shut down I don’t know exactly—but that night, driving to the Brooks scene with my heart slamming against my chest, and walking into that room where a killer had killed so recently that the body was warm and the wine hadn’t lost its chill, I was alert, alive again. I felt something. That it takes a dead body to bring me around is screwed up, I know. But then Dan lay under me like a corpse for five years and I still managed an orgasm most of the time. To be fair, he did offer the occasional pelvic thrust when duty called, but he’d long lost his appetite for anything that was readily available. My ex-husband was all about the hunt, which meant one day after the wedding ceremony he had absolutely no challenges.

I wanted to get as much done as possible at my office before the lab reports came in from the medical examiner and the crime labs on the Brooks murder. It would take some time to piece together all the information in an assessment that might help guide investigative strategy. The reports would take time too, I knew, but I wanted to be ready. The proper way the scene was processed, the ability to more fully understand victim/offender interaction, would give us all a greater understanding of motive. If we could pierce this killer’s motive, I was convinced, it might lead us to him.

I was planning the trip to Denver, going through my closet, thinking about what kind of clothes I would need. Neil had been right: The corporation that hired us to find their thieving accountant wanted me to deal with him personally, and I needed the money. Their former accountant was in for a big surprise when I showed up at his house. The plan was to fly in one night and fly back out the next. Easy, I hoped. The imprint of Helen Graybeal’s coffee cup on my head and the bruised wrist William LaBrecque had given me hurt enough to serve as reminders that these things do go wrong from time to time. And Larry Quinn’s laser-treatment-gone-wrong case and another date with William LaBrecque were still waiting for my attention. I wondered how agreeable LaBrecque would be to being hauled into APD for processing.

My phone warbled. “Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to call,” Rauser told me. I had sent him a text message before going to sleep last night and never heard back. It wasn’t like him. “Busier than a one-armed paper hanger,” he said. “ME’s report on stomach contents is in. Trout,
crab, turnip greens, some kind of sweet potato dish, and a good amount of white wine. We’re showing Brooks’s picture around to all the local restaurants, especially in the Buckhead area where he was killed.”

“Turnip greens and sweet potatoes in Buckhead?” I asked.

“Probably one of those whoopee-shit fusion places that make little designs in sauce. And get this: There was evidence of a condom on the body, Keye, but it wasn’t in the suite. Also, soap residue all over the body and all over the sheets under him. Brooks was squeaky clean except for some of his own semen. No other DNA on his body. Fingernails trimmed and brushed out. We got a load of stuff from the room, though, but it’s going to take weeks to break it down. Probably got stuff from three years ago in the carpet. Soap on Brooks was consistent with the hotel brand, which is also missing from the room. Oh, and something else interesting. Housekeeping says they put three washcloths in the room. All missing. No condom, no washcloths, no open bar of soap, one missing glass.”

“A sponge bath,” I said. A clearer picture was emerging of this killer, who was capable of more than just a con to get a front door open, but also of a clever, manipulative seduction. “That would account for the seminal fluid and the soap residue on the sheets. Must have been part of their sex. It’s one more thing that separates Brooks from the other victims.”

David Brooks was spared hours of torture. His body was covered in a loving way. He meant something in the life of this murderer—real or symbolic, he was significant.

“Killer came from behind, right?” I asked.

“Exactly right. Reached around from behind and stuck the knife blade into the substernal notch. Wounds are consistent with the knife used at prior scenes.”

The others had known what kind of danger they were in, what kind of monster had entrapped them. They had experienced the terror that comes with that knowing and been left naked with their legs spread. Brooks was different. Brooks was special. The killer didn’t want him to see death coming. Why? I shared my thoughts with Rauser and we grew quiet.

“Lobby cameras show Brooks checking in alone,” Rauser said finally. “No other outside surveillance except at the lobby. The unit next door was empty, and since there are only two of those units per building, it’s
isolated. Somebody shoves a knife blade into my chest, I’m gonna scream like hell. The hotel was a good choice.”

“That kind of stab wound paralyzes the diaphragm,” I told him. “Air can’t pass through the vocal cords. It’s impossible for the victim to make a sound. Death is instantaneous. It wouldn’t have mattered where they were. It’s a completely silent kill.”

“That’s some creepy shit right there, Keye,” Rauser complained. “
Christ
. I don’t think I even want to be hanging out with somebody that knows that shit.”

“Hey, I’m just spreading the sunshine,” I said.

“We’ve been poking around in Brooks’s private life, and he was one womanizing sonofabitch. The guy would do anything that moved. No evidence that he was bisexual, but most guys hide that anyway.” I could hear the tension in his voice. And the exhaustion. “To be honest, I don’t feel one step closer to understanding how he picks them.”

“No,” I said. “We know one thing we didn’t know two days ago. The killer had feelings for Brooks. That’s huge, Rauser. You may have a victim who knew the killer in his life. What did he call it in the first letter, ‘the inner circle’?”

“So you don’t think this is the beginning of him having intercourse with the victims. You think this was specific to Brooks?”

“I think he knew him and I think that Brooks symbolized someone significant. Someone he loved and lusted after.”

“God,” Rauser complained. “What the fuck am I doing in this business?”

T
he Midtown house near Tenth Avenue didn’t look like a battered women’s shelter. I had driven or walked past it a million times over the years. It was ten minutes from my loft at the Georgian, but there was nothing to distinguish it from the other sprawling old Victorians that dotted Atlanta’s neighborhoods.

I’d packed for my Denver trip, then spent what was left of the morning looking for William LaBrecque. I went by the home he had once shared with his Russian wife, Darya, in Candler Park. A neighbor said it had been empty for a couple of days, that Darya and the boy left as soon as they found out LaBrecque had been released on bail. She knew he’d come back for her, said the neighbor, he always came back. I tracked down his parents and quickly discovered that Billy boy came by his rudeness and anger honestly. I hadn’t really expected them to help me haul their son off to jail, but I wasn’t prepared for them to be so utterly vile. They did share some thoughts on their daughter-in-law, and when I sifted through all the expletives, it was the words
whore
and
slut
that surfaced again and again, apparently favorites of theirs. It crossed my mind that LaBrecque probably called Darya these things while he beat her. I did learn that LaBrecque met his wife in Germany while hospitalized on an American military base during his last year of service. A hero, his parents called him.
Right
. He had found Darya on the Internet, one of those cyber-bride websites. She went to Germany for the meeting;
they fell in love and came to the United States together seven years ago. I knew a few things his parents had omitted. The police had responded to three domestic violence calls at the LaBrecque home in the last year and a half. They had once arrested Darya even though she was bleeding and bruised, because LaBrecque met them at the door and told them she’d started the fight in a jealous rage and he’d simply defended himself. Gender does not guarantee the cops will be on your side. Child protective services had sent a social worker to the hospital once after a doctor reported suspicious bruising and broken bones on the boy. Darya finally filed a restraining order, which had done absolutely nothing to protect her.

There wasn’t a lot in LaBrecque’s folder to point me in the right direction. His parents gave me nothing. He didn’t have friends, but I figured his wife would know where he’d hide, so I started calling and leaving messages at women’s shelters all over the metro Atlanta area. No one at them volunteered any information, of course. Women’s shelters do everything within their power to protect the anonymity of their residents. But when my cell rang and the number showed up as restricted, my gut told me it was Darya.

I walked up the empty driveway toward the rambling white Victorian with the lacy peach-colored shutters. A motorized iron gate was closed and locked and I assumed staff cars and resident vehicles were parked behind the house and out of sight. I saw sections of a privacy fence surrounding the backyard, nicely painted to match the house. A security camera, barely noticeable in the upper-right corner of the enormous front porch, watched me while a tiny light under the camera lens blinked green. Traffic on the Midtown street, one of the city’s busy one-ways, was sparse this time of day. At rush hour all lanes would be crawling bumper-to-bumper.

“I’m Keye Street,” I told the woman standing behind the screen. “Darya called me.”

“Hey,” she said, and with just one word, I heard Louisiana in her accent. She pushed open the door for me. “I’m Adele. I work with CADV.”

“What’s CADV?” I asked as she ushered me inside. She was thirty, perhaps, lanky with spiky hair and bright blue-green eyes. An elaborate stained-glass tattoo ran down one bare arm. In the background, I heard women’s voices, children, a television.

“Coalition Against Domestic Violence,” Adele answered. “I’m one of the social workers on rotation here. Another brick in the wall,” she added, smiling.

She led me down the foyer past a bedroom that had been turned into an office. I saw two desks, a woman at one talking into a headset. “We have a twenty-four-hour crisis line in there,” Adele explained. “We all take turns. It’s brutal.” I looked again and noticed three security monitors, with views of the front porch, back porch, and driveway.

We turned a corner and stepped into the main living area, where several kids played on the floor and a row of women on a couch barely looked up from
The Jerry Springer Show
. The furniture was used Salvation Army, mismatched, long out of date. A couple of folding card tables added to the mix.

“Donated funds don’t care about decorating,” Adele said. We walked past several bedrooms with lines of single beds and cots, and through the kitchen, where two women played cards. Adele pointed to the door. “Darya’s on the back porch.”

She might have been pretty before LaBrecque went to work on her with his fists, but it was hard to tell now. Darya was smoking a cigarette, her face so bruised and misshapen that her lips wouldn’t close completely around the filter. There was a little sucking sound of air when she took a drag. My stomach did a flip-flop.

I sat down next to her on a porch swing. A dark-haired boy about seven worked resolutely on a toy car, taking it apart and reassembling it at a bright green and red child’s table. “Thank you for calling me back.”

“I want you to find him.” I detected her Russian accent even through the slur from a swollen jaw and lips. Her bruises were ugly and hard to look at. I looked instead into her eyes. She’d been shown enough disrespect. “I think I know where he will be. There is a lake near Lawrenceville in the Gwinnett County. There is a cabin there. It is private and owned by his friend who is wealthy and travels. Billy stays there sometimes. He likes to fish.”