Vigilante (26 page)

The
DSM-IV
went on to say that the symptoms of psychopathic personality disorder can set in as early as age three or four but are rarely diagnosed until fourteen or fifteen. I made another note to call Miami and check into the reason Nix had not been allowed to join the Metro-Dade Police Department, where the rest of his family served. I began to wonder if the medical issues that had barred him from the department were mental instead of physical. Had the more in-depth psychological testing required by the Dade County police turned up his deviant personality? Was that why he had joined the FMP instead?

The chapter continued listing elements of psychotic personality disorder. Psychopaths tended to have white-collar jobs and generally didn’t resort to committing crimes in order to survive, choosing that course only when a huge reward justified the risk. They were frequently articulate, charming, and charismatic. All classifications that pretty much fit Nix Nash. According to the
DSM,
the thing that most motivates a psychopath appears to be a love of control and power. They are masters at reading and exploiting other people’s vulnerabilities. Psychopaths’ primary weakness tends to be egotism.

Nix had scrupulously planned the killing along with his alibi and, being an extreme egoist, believed he could get away with almost anything. This prevailing weakness was leading him closer and closer to the edge.

As I sat back to think it over, I realized it was almost six o’clock. I’d been at this for over an hour.

Then the phone rang. I reached over and picked it up.

“Yeah?”

“Shane, I need your help,” a woman’s tense voice whispered. She sounded terrified.

“Marcia?”

“Yes. Listen. He—Nix—he, he’s out here,” she sputtered breathlessly. “I can’t go home. I—”

“Calm down, Marcia. Where are you?”

“He’s gonna kill me.”

“Where are you?” I demanded again, sharply.

“I’m parked up the block from my apartment. I’m afraid to go in there. He knows I found out what he’s doing. I think he could be—” She stopped, then said, “I don’t know where he is, but when he gets like this he—”

“Marcia, I need an address.”

“Two-Three-Five-Eight Ocean Way in the hills above Malibu. It’s just off the Coast Highway. I’m in my car parked up the street. He’s crazy, Shane.”

“What kind of car are you driving?”

“It’s a white Cadillac convertible with the top up. I’ll tell you exactly how he keeps doing this, how he solves these cases, but you’ve got to come now. Only you, nobody else! I can’t trust anybody. You’ve got to promise you’ll protect me!”

“I’m on my way. It’s gonna take me twenty minutes. Can you stay safe until then?”

“I think so. I’ll try.”

I hung up, and as I ran through the pantry grabbed a hammer out of a drawer before I continued out back to my car. I got inside and used the tool to knock the rearview mirror off the Acura. I threw the mirror out of the window and into a box next to the driveway. I started the car and pulled out.

I’d be lucky if I could make it in twenty minutes. It would all depend on traffic. I tromped on the accelerator and peeled out, speeding down the alley. As soon as I hung a left on Abbot Kinney Boulevard I could see that the street was hopelessly clogged with 6:00
P.M.
traffic.

You aren’t supposed to go Code Three without getting permission from the Communications Division first.

Fuck it,
I thought, and flipped on my red lights and siren.

CHAPTER

44

As soon as I got on the Pacific Coast Highway, I shut down my emergency package but hauled ass, using my horn to get around slower traffic. I wrestled with a tactical dilemma as I drove. Despite Marcia’s demand that I come alone, it definitely presented a risk. I didn’t know if I could trust her or whether she was setting up a trap. Correct police procedure demanded that I call in and get backup and I was about to do that, but my instincts told me it might not be the right move.

Jurisdictionally, the address in Malibu was in the county, which meant calling in the sheriff.

Marcia Breen sounded panicked. Supposing for the moment she was on the level and Nix was lurking around out by her apartment trying to get his hands on her, then bringing in a bunch of Malibu uniforms in black and whites could spook Nash before I got a chance to scope it out. If Marcia really had solid information that could prove Nash’s guilt and could make a statement tying him to Lita’s murder, then my case was made. But that still didn’t put him in custody. The last thing I wanted was to bust the piñata and not get any candy. In addition, if I showed up with a bunch of cops how would that affect Marcia, who had insisted I come alone?

Part of this thinking, I will admit, is produced by my natural tendency toward lone-wolfing. I’ve been in situations before where I’ve specifically asked a sister agency for covert backup only to get surprised by ten fully lit black and whites boiling in looking like a presidential motorcade. I decided the better option was to wait till I got to Ocean Way and then check out the neighborhood, looking for Marcia’s white Cad. I’d get her into protective custody, debrief her, and then decide what the next step should be.

It took me over half an hour to get to Ocean Way, which turned out to be a tree-lined canyon street up in the Malibu hills above the PCH. I found her apartment building at 2358 and slow-rolled the address. The development was a beautiful tile-roofed, Spanish-style structure built into the canyon hills. The units looked large and each had a balcony that faced down the canyon toward the ocean.

I drove the narrow street, looking for Marcia’s car. I finally saw her white Cadillac Eldorado with the top up parked a block up from her apartment complex on the right. I drove slowly past but could see nobody in the car. Maybe she had ducked down when she saw my headlights.

I hung a U and came up behind the Cad, parking in a slot two down from her. I pulled out my Springfield XD(M), took the safety off, and chambered up a round. Then I held it surreptitiously down by my right leg as I got out of the Acura, stood beside my car, and made a careful visual sweep of the street. Nobody seemed to be around. It was still early, only a quarter to seven. There was occasional drive-by traffic, residents heading home after work. I walked up to the Cadillac and looked inside.

Empty.

I tried the door and found it unlocked, leaned in, and popped the trunk. Then I walked back to check inside.

Spare tire and jack.

I took another careful look up and down the street, checking behind me. I didn’t want to get surprised, but the whole area seemed quiet. Nobody on any of the balconies or between the houses across the street.

I was just getting set to close the trunk when I heard a strange sound. It started as a faint whir but scant seconds later intensified like the buzzing of a large flying beetle. Then it hit the right side of my chest. Sudden intense pain followed.

I looked down and, to my horror, saw that a large red dart was sticking out of my shirt, just above the right nipple.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and snatched at it. But in the one or two seconds since it hit me I was already losing coordination. Sudden numbness spread through my upper body. I missed pulling the dart out on my first try. Whatever drug was in there, it was extremely fast acting, because in the next few seconds I was not even able to lift my right arm for a second attempt. I stood behind the open trunk of Marcia’s car, teetering like a drunk, as all the muscles in my body began to spasm and shut down.

I sensed someone walking toward me from my right. Paralysis had already hit and I couldn’t even turn my head to see who was approaching. The footsteps came closer.

A tall strange-looking man in camouflage clothes stepped into my field of vision. He was narrow shouldered and almost six and a half feet tall. He had a grotesque face that was a sharp collection of bony planes. Above it rode an unruly shock of red-orange hair. His long, stringy goatee was set off by snow-white skin and freckles. He had a lean body, ropy, as if fashioned out of twisted twine. But his worst feature was his eyes. Gray, predatory, and lifeless. I’d only seen eyes like those on the tiger sharks that sometimes cruise the reefs north of Rincón.

“
Ils demandent dat chu shoot homme,
” he said in a thick Cajun accent. Then he pulled the dart out of my chest and pushed me roughly into Marcia’s open trunk.

I landed next to the spare tire. Then the lid slammed closed and I lay paralyzed in the dark, unable to move a muscle.

CHAPTER

45

When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. It appeared to be some kind of windowless concrete room. I heard a radio playing bluegrass. A rendition of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” with guitar and banjo. I was in a straight-back wooden chair. I had regained some mobility and tried to move my arms and legs but couldn’t budge. I could only move my head a little. I didn’t seem to be tied to the chair but for some reason couldn’t move. I turned my head slightly to the right. The room was a large, garage-sized bunker made entirely of gray unpainted concrete. A lone light hung from an electrical cord overhead, but it only lit the center of the room. The periphery fell away into darkness. I could hear the distant hum of a generator outside supplying power. I turned my head farther right. The fin of Marcia’s white Cadillac was at the edge of my peripheral vision.

I saw the tall, stringy-orange-haired man sitting at a workbench to my left, his back to me, hunched over working on a project of some kind. The bluegrass music was coming from a CD player at his elbow.

Off to his left, I could see a portable camp stove like the one I’d found in the Airstream trailer. Next to that was a big ice chest. Sitting on top of the chest, a crossbow and a leather shoulder quiver full of red darts.

“Aughhh…,” I said, trying to get his attention. I was groggy, but as I continued to regain consciousness, I could feel some of my strength coming back. Whatever he had shot me with seemed to burn off quickly. He turned from what he was working on and looked directly at me.

“Where am I?” I said weakly.

He studied me for a moment with those cold gray eyes but said nothing. Then he turned and went back to his project. I tried to move my arms and legs again but still couldn’t. I looked down a second time and now my vision had cleared slightly and I realized I was lashed to the arms and legs of the chair with heavy fishing line. It was looped around my wrist at least ten times, hard to see and impossible to break.

“Lee Bob?” I asked, forming the words carefully around my thickened tongue.

“
Bouche ta gueule,
” he said, in Cajun French, his voice strangely reedy and high-pitched. “You in my
cachot. Ecoute-moi, no gris gris.
”

Not a clue what that meant. He turned back to his workbench and refused to look at me or say anything more.

Half an hour later I heard a metal door slide open and footsteps moved into the concrete room. Nix Nash was suddenly standing in front of me, wearing a tailored tuxedo with a bow tie and cummerbund. He had a festive red carnation pinned to his lapel, a black overcoat draped across his left arm.

“Guess you should’ve joined my team after all,” he said dryly.

“Where’s Marcia? What did you do to her?”

“She’s waiting in the shed outside.”

“What … what did he shoot me with?”

“Lee Bob hunts gators with a crossbow in the ’Glades. It’s his thing. Loads those darts he makes with succinylcholine. It’s a fast-acting skeletal relaxant. A neuromuscular blocker. It can fully paralyze a bull gator in fifteen seconds. It’s an animal tranquilizer, so no coroner ever puts it on a blood tox screen. Won’t show up at your autopsy, if you even get one.”

“You actually think you can get away with killing me?” I asked.

“Yeah. After Lee Bob does his thing, he’s gonna get lost for a while, go home. Things will cool off.”

Classic psychopathic egotism. Nix was studying me carefully. I saw flashes of adrenalized excitement in his eyes.

“I sorta knew it would come down to this after we had our talk on the
Bounty,
” he said. “I tried to warn you. I offered you a fortune and a chance to work this with me. If you’d listened, none of this would have happened.”

“You can’t kill us,” I said slowly. “I’m a police officer. Marcia’s an ex–L.A. prosecutor. We both have important friends in Los Angeles. You’ll never get away with it.”

“You obviously haven’t been paying very close attention,” he said softly. “I would think by now you’d know I don’t leave much to chance.” He grabbed a nearby wooden chair, pulled it over, and straddled it, sitting backward. Then he put his chin on his crossed arms and leaned forward, studying me lazily.

“The final confrontation,” he said, smiling. “One winner, one loser. It’s like great sex without the complaining.”

“You haven’t won, and you won’t. People in my department know what’s going on. We found Lee Bob’s Airstream. It’s loaded with evidence. We’re already working on getting a warrant for your arrest.”

“Not in any law school I attended,” he said. “I admit, you surprised me by finding his hideout so fast, but the fact is, I saw that possibility coming over two days ago. I’ve been covering my bets ever since we took that sail. None of that stuff you found up there in that Airstream is gonna tie up to anything. I had Bobby throw it all away, buy new. His clothes, tread wear on the boots, all the ammo. It will match nothing at Lita’s crime scene.”

“Then why are you here? Just come to gloat?”

“I want you to tell me anything that I might not already know.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So you and Marcia won’t have a horrible last hour with Lee Bob before you both die. He’s got a black heart. You don’t want that Cajun miscreant experimenting on you with one of his cane knives.”