Blood of Others (6 page)

Thirty-something. SWF. Retail
manager. Hopelessly shy, a good listener. livinsf.

Olivia’s slot showed she had a
few new responses, unread since the last time she visited this site. Nothing
special, a few welcomes, a few descriptions of bad dates, boyfriends who were
jerks, men complaining about women. Olivia went to another site, where someone
-- a woman -- took the time to advise livinsf not to be shy. To get out and
meet real people. Another site member chimed in with lists on how to meet men.
One member actually had wondered where livinsf had gone.

After a long, thoughtful walk,
I’m back,
Olivia typed, then reached for her teacup. It needed refilling,
so she went to the kitchen. By the time she returned, she had received a new
response.

What exactly do you look for
in a man?

Ominous rock
music hammered in the hallway of
the inner-city apartment building. Garbage was strewn on the floor, obscene
graffiti violated the punctured walls, screaming along the scar-like crack that
led to the shouting coming from unit 832, where San Francisco Police Inspector
Ben Wyatt had business. He was about fifteen yards away when the door burst
open, ejecting a woman in her twenties, torn dress, bloodied face, sobbing,
running to him.

“He’s going to kill me! Please
help me! He’s going to kill me!”

A large male appeared at the
darkened doorway. “Come back here!” Stained sleeveless T-shirt, rope-like veins
in muscular tattooed arms, one rising, outstretched hand holding a handgun
aimed at the woman.

Wyatt had no time. “Police
officer! Put your weapon down!” The man, his face contorting into a malevolent
mask, yelling: “Woman, you are going to die!” Wyatt’s eardrums throbbing,
music, shouting, stress, he sidestepped, crouched, feeling the smooth trigger,
training his .40-caliber Beretta on the suspect. “Police. Drop it!” The man
refused.

Wyatt squeezing one, two, three,
times. The suspect went down. In four point two seconds, Wyatt had saved one
life and taken another. He lowered his gun. Exhaled. Each time he killed a
suspect now, his pulse rate peaked a little lower than it used to. He had lost
track of the number of dead now.

“You made the proper decision,
Ben.” Sergeant Elmer
Gruzzio
, a firearms instructor at
the SFPD Academy, checked the cable attached to Wyatt’s Beretta, the C02 tank,
and the line connecting it to the air pack attached to Wyatt’s belt. Gruzzio
replayed the “deadly domestic” scenario on the full screen, both men studying
the three dots in a tight cluster grouping over the suspect’s left upper chest.
All three dots were green. “All mortal,” Gruzzio said. “Want to go again?”

One night a month for over a
year, Wyatt had arrived at Diamond Heights Park after regular classes ended to
take a private session on F.A.T.S., the SFPD’s Firearms Training System. It is
a computerized laser shooting simulator, a high-tech tool used to sharpen the
stressful mental process any cop can face in a heartbeat. It confronts them
with realistic “shoot, don’t shoot” scenarios allowing a split second to make a
life or death decision.

Then you drop into hell,
Wyatt thought.
Where’s the scenario for that?

Since Wyatt’s ex-partner Reggie Pope
had gotten shot, Gruzzio was the only officer in the entire SFPD who exchanged
complete sentences with Wyatt. A few months after it happened, the police
psychologist had confidentially urged the department’s hierarchy to return
Wyatt to street duty and discourage his shunning from all ranks.

There was more than one
officer wounded in the tragic shooting of Inspector Pope,
the psychologist
wrote in his most recent status review.
Inspector Wyatt continues to pay an
extraordinary personal price for unfortunate circumstances beyond his control.
It appears to me that contrary to force-wide perception, he did not “choke at a
critical moment.” He had no option. He did nothing wrong and remains an
extremely capable officer who should be returned to street duty and standing
among his peers.

After Pope’s shooting, Wyatt was
bounced around, then detailed to Crime Scenes, tasked to investigate computer
and Internet crimes. Since then he had become skilled at computer work but he
wanted to get back into investigations, to return to the street, to go
toe-to-toe with his demon. So he took intense firearms sessions at the academy
where he came to know Gruzzio, insisting he throw the most demanding scenarios
at him, pursuits, gun-jammings, school yards. Wyatt consistently scored high,
making the proper decision in every case. Like this morning.

“Got time for another?” Gruzzio
said.

“I’ll pass, Elmer. I’m pretty
bushed.”

Gruzzio began disconnecting the
air pack from Wyatt’s belt. He had grown to like Wyatt, who seemed like a
conscientious, intelligent cop. But after months of watching him, Gruzzio could
no longer keep silent about his concern over Wyatt’s situation and the
increasingly aggressive, desperate way he worked through each session. “What’s
the latest word on when you’ll be detailed back to the street?”

Wyatt slipped on his sports
jacket. “They keep telling me ‘soon’. You hear anything?”

“Not a word.” Gruzzio knew it was
rough on him. “Ben, I’ve watched you here, working on this contraption for over
a year. Want some advice?”

“Go ahead.”

“You probably have the highest
score average than any officer I’ve run through here. I know it’s been a while
since the shooting. But no matter how many times you get it right here, it will
never erase what happened. You can’t go back, I don’t have your shooter in
here. This machine does not offer a forgiveness scenario. That one comes from
you.”

Wyatt looked at Gruzzio. “It’s
that obvious?”

“From day one. Ben, you’ve got to
let it go.”

Wyatt did not know if he could.

Gripping his car’s steering wheel
as he drove to his apartment, he knew what was coming. It tormented him after
every session, pulling him back to that terrible day when he and Reggie had
worked plainclothes in Narcotics, following a lead on a new drug family.

Their suspect standing six on
a downtown corner, a woman, early twenties. Twitchy.
She knows us.
Something
cold in her eyes. A flash and she’s pointing a chrome-plated gun at Wyatt.
“You’re one dead pig!” She vanishes into the rat-hole slum behind her. Reggie
radioing for backup. “Take the back, Ben!” Finding the rear door torn from its
hinges, entering coming to a rear stairway, hearing Reggie running up the front
stairs, calling. “Second floor, Ben!” Then a gunshot. More running. Another
gunshot. “Third floor, Ben”’ Wyatt taking the rear stairs two at time. Hearing
a cracking crash, something metal banging, thumping down the front stairwell,
Reggie shouting. “Goddamnit! Ben! Goddamnit!” Another gunshot as Wyatt mounts
the rear stairs, panting, taking cover at a corner ten yards down the hall,
smelling urine, cordite, sirens approaching, the scene hitting him. At the
midway point to the third floor, Reggie had dropped to his waist through a
rotted stair, trapped, his gun had fallen to the landing, out of reach, leaving
him exposed to the suspect, her eyes glazed as she fired down on Reggie from
the top of the stairs. ‘Ben, Jesus! Shoot her!’ Suddenly a boy, about twelve
years old, steps from a door. In a heartbeat, the woman steps back from the
stairway, puts her arm around the boy’s throat, making him a shield. The boy
struggling. She’s out of Reggie’s sight, extending her arm from behind the boy
around her wall, the chrome muzzle flashing
pop pop
like firecrackers,
firing two more rounds at Reggie. “Christ, Ben, I’m hit. Shoot her! Goddamnit!’
No clear shot. All he found were the widened eyes of the boy, forcing him to
hesitate, Reggie shouting, the woman firing, then disappearing down the hall
with the boy.

That day rolled on like fog. A
couple of black-and-whites had scooped the shooter two blocks away passed out
on the street still carrying the empty gun. She had never recovered. Died of a
cocaine overdose. No one had located the boy. In the days, then weeks that
followed, Wyatt felt the investigators’ sympathy for him sour into suspicion.

“Reggie got off two shots, yet
you never fired a single round. Tell us again about the boy, Ben. Reggie never
saw him. No one in the building ever saw him. No one in the canvas saw him. No
one can find him. Tell us again about the boy.”

The kid became known as “Wyatt’s
phantom,” and while his account of the shooting was noted in the report, the
unofficial version convicted Wyatt of the unforgivable sin of failing his
partner.

The worst of it came the last
time he saw Reggie in the hospital. A .38-caliber round was still lodged near
his spine and the doctors were uncertain he would walk again. Reggie had looked
as if half of his life had drained from him. He was sedated, Wyatt was
anguished. It was bad.

“Ben, for the last time, I
never saw a kid. Never heard a kid. I’ll tell you what I saw: I saw you
standing there frozen, like some sort of…”

“Like some sort of what?”

“Like some sort of goddamned
coward, standing there frozen letting a freaked-out cokehead shoot me up. That
is what I saw.”

“I had my gun drawn, my finger
was on the trigger, but she pulled the kid. I swear there was a kid.”

“I believe what I saw. You
stay the hell away from me, Wyatt.”

He never saw Reggie Pope
again.

After parking, Wyatt took the
stairs to his apartment on the edge of the Mission, near some old Section Eight
housing. He moved here after his fiancée moved out on him from the trendy loft
they had shared in North Beach. Opening the refrigerator to finish a half-eaten
can of cold beans, he glanced at the calendar taped to the door, catching the
upcoming Saturday she had highlighted almost a year ago. It was going to be
their wedding day.

Old wounds. He knew he should
have tossed the thing long ago but he could not bring himself to get a new
calendar.

She had been a nurse at San
Francisco General and had tried to help him after the shooting. But her friends
were married to officers and in no time at all their suspicion had worked its
way to her, bubbling to the surface one night at home a month after the shooting.

“Ben, are you certain there
was a boy?”

His eyes were fixed to the TV.

“Because I talked to some of
the shrinks at the hospital about post-traumatic stress and compensating for
guilty feelings.”

He stood up. Looked at her.
“You don’t believe me either.”

“Ben, I was talking with some
people at work and --”

“If you don’t believe me, we
have nothing.”

“Ben.” Tears filled her eyes.

“Nothing.”

And that was it.

He had left for a long drive and
refused to speak to her for days. A few weeks later she had decided he needed
space to sort himself out, then moved in with a girlfriend. He refused to take
her calls. Not long after that, she took a new job at a hospital in Los
Angeles. Her engagement ring came back to him in the mail, taped to a
tear-stained note:
I was only trying to help, Ben, but you shut me out. I’ll
remember the good times. Good luck with your life.

For weeks, even months after the
shooting, Wyatt returned to the scene obsessed with finding the boy. It got
around and it became a joke, on the street and in the force. Now he just drove
the streets alone at night, a haunted man searching for some way to make sense
of the few seconds that had cost him everything.

The spoon clinked as he tossed it
into the empty tin can.

Would he ever be able to crawl out
of this hole of misery? Was there anyone out there who would believe him, help
him find his way back to the land of the living?

Sometimes for no reason, he saw
the face of the shooter and would seethe with rage.

One more chance.

That was all he wanted.

One more chance to make it right.

His phone rang.

“Wyatt?”

“Yes.”

“Samuels.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“This is short notice but you’re
being detailed to assist on a homicide effective tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Report to Gonzales. Sydowski’s
the primary.”

Less than
twenty-four hours after Iris Wood
had dared to step beyond her world, her naked corpse lay on a stainless-steel
tray in the autopsy room of the San Francisco medical examiner’s office in the
Hall of Justice.

Female. White. Five-feet-four
inches. One hundred twenty-two pounds. Thirty-two years old.

Sydowski looked upon her as
Seaver conducted his work. A life taken with such wrath, such brazenness. There
was the wedding dress, blood-drenched and shredded. Seaver and his assistant
had taken care removing it, correlating the pierced fabric with the stab
wounds, photographing it, examining it, recording their findings. The six- thousand
dollar hand-crafted gown designed to be the centerpiece of a wedding, now
evidence. They had attempted without success to develop latents from her skin.
She had been dead for too long. Then Seaver and his assistant washed the body
while Sydowski grappled with the questions gnawing at him.

Why such savagery and arrogant
display? And how had he gotten her to the shop and into the dress, posed? The
hows and whys.
Don’t go down that road. Not yet. It will divert you. Look at
what’s real. What you know. Stick to the facts, the irrefutable facts. Use them
as blocks to build the case. The autopsy could provide another block.

But Sydowski didn’t care for this
part of the job, which seemed to have become harder after his wife had passed
away. The coldness of the autopsy room, the smells of formaldehyde, ammonia,
the egg-like odor of organs, their meaty shades of pink and red, the popping
sound when the calvarium is removed, opening the skull to reveal the brain and
dura, or seeing the primary Y incision across the chest, as the pathologist
works through the identification, the external and internal examination of the
body.

Years ago, when one of Sydowski’s
daughters was researching a school term paper on philosophy, she’d asked him a
question that remained with him to this day.
“Did you ever see a person’s
soul in an autopsy, Dad?”
Now, in his old age, Sydowski was still searching
in the presence of the dead, hoping to solve the riddles of life, and it was
this secret quest that enabled him to endure each case.

Earlier in the procedure,
Seaver’s rubber-gloved right hand pointed a finger at the left upper neck area,
drawing Sydowski and Turgeon’s attention to a series of small paired reddened
dots. The dots of each set were about two inches apart, as if someone had taken
a pen and drew vampire bites. Turgeon exchanged glances with Sydowski and
Seaver.

“Stun gun?” Sydowski had said.

Seaver had nodded.

When the autopsy was completed
they met in Seaver’s office. It had a flourishing Boston fern and a small
bubbling aquarium with tiny, gliding angel fish. Living things, Sydowski
thought.

“Iris Wood died where she was
found sometime between ten P.M. and four A.M.” Seaver’s chair creaked.

Sydowski and Turgeon took notes.

“In my opinion, her death was
caused by one of the fifty-three stab wounds to her heart, which was literally
carved into pieces. Ten of the wounds pierced her back. They caused massive
internal bleeding. No defensive wounds. No significant bruising near her arms
where she was bound. Her fingernails appear absent of foreign material.”

“How did he kill her without a
struggle?” Turgeon said.

“The series of red markings on
her neck are indicative of a stun gun, which can send a powerful jolt of
electricity into the body, momentarily incapacitating the muscles and nervous
system. I would say a stun gun was used.”

“Any other injuries?” Sydowski
said.

“None that would have caused
death, no blunt trauma, no gunshot, or indication of strangulation. Toxicology
will take some time, of course.”

“But her face?”

“The gross mutilation.” Seaver
cleared his throat.

“Why? Any theories?”

“Part of his fantasy, possibly.
Or twisted logic. Maybe’s he was under the influence of a substance.
Psychological profiling isn’t my field. But given the state of the incisions, I
would say a scalpel was used but not by a person possessing professional
surgical skills. He likely used the stun gun to immobilize her during the
mutilation. It was
ante mortem
.”

“She was alive while he did
this?”

“In and out of consciousness, but
alive. Yes.”

Sydowski looked at the aquarium,
watching an angel fish floating tranquilly to the surface, breaking it before
darting happily away.

“Ever see a soul, Dad?”

Later at his desk in the homicide
detail, Sydowski slid on his bifocals to stare at Iris Wood’s face. Plain.
Fresh-scrubbed wholesome. Friendly. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Warm eyes. What
dreams did they hold? Did she have a good life? Why would someone take it with
such vengeance? Did she know her killer?

Iris Wood offered no answers
staring back from the clear color enlargement of her California driver’s
license photograph. But facts were coming. Pieces of truth. Slowly. Before the
autopsy, they’d had a few breaks. Like finding her abandoned car near Stern
Grove. They learned it was registered to her. Records kicked out her driver’s
license, which gave them her thumbprint. Seaver obtained prints from the body’s
hands which SFPD Forensics compared with the DL records, which confirmed the
identity of the corpse as that of Iris May Wood. On the car’s windshield, they
found an employee parking decal for American Eagle Federated Insurance,
downtown on Montgomery. Sydowski called the building’s night security guard.
The parking permit was valid. The guard gave Sydowski the home number of
American Eagle’s vice president.

“Of course I’ll help you right
away, Inspector,” the vice president said, “but I don’t understand why you’re
inquiring about one of our employees.”

“We have reason to believe she
may have been harmed.”

“Good God. Where is she now?”

“I can’t confirm anything just
yet. This is very serious. We’ll need that information from you as soon as
possible, please.”

“Yes of course. My God. Let me
make a few phone calls.”

That was before the autopsy. Now
Sydowski rubbed his eyes, staring at Iris Wood, waiting to learn more from her
employer. Should have heard back by now. Turgeon was on the phone at her desk,
making calls. Crime Scene had the car and Iris Wood’s apartment.

It was an uphill one-bedroom in
the Western Addition. Third floor of a Victorian mansion. The owner lived on
the main floor. A soft-spoken man in his late sixties. Short with droopy eyes
and a pencil-thin moustache matching his white wispy hair.

Sydowski and Turgeon had gone
there directly from the spot where Iris Wood’s car was found to determine if she
lived alone and take a quick look before passing it to Crime Scene. Showing
their stars, telling the owner they needed to go inside her apartment to check
on her welfare, studying his face as concern crept into it.

“She lives alone. This is a
very quiet building and she’s a very quiet tenant,” he told them, his keys
jingling as they ascended the stairs. No reply to his knocking, which drew
meowing from the other side. His hands shaking slightly, the landlord sighed
and opened the door. Sydowski and Turgeon pulled on rubber gloves. A
short-haired tabby leaped into the landlord’s arms. “It’s okay, Jack.” He
stroked its back as Sydowski and Turgeon walked through the apartment taking
swift inventory when Turgeon spotted an SFSU brochure. The entry of an astronomy
class was circled.

“Walt.”

Sydowski put on his bifocals,
bent down to read it without touching it.

“Her first class was last
night.” Turgeon took notes from the pamphlet.

The landlord was stroking the
cat, blinking nervously, struggling to grasp a nightmare as Sydowski took down
information from him, telling him the apartment would be locked. Turgeon used
her cell phone to call for a uniform as Sydowski told the landlord police would
now be guarding the apartment.

“We’ll be back,” he said.

Sydowski smelled fresh coffee.
Turgeon placed an SFPD mug on his desk, rolled a chair next to him.

“Ran her prints through AFIS,
NCIC, RCMP. Nothing. Still waiting on Interpol. No outstanding warrants. No
traffic violations. Looks like she was a good girl, Walt.” Turgeon studied Iris
Wood’s photograph. “Landlord tells us she seldom went out. Never brought dates
home. What do you think?”

“We don’t know enough about her
yet. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We can kick theories around at tomorrow’s
meeting. I want to do another walk through the shop with Clarice Hay, to be
certain nothing is missing or out of place.”

Turgeon stared at Iris Wood’s
picture.

“Linda, it’s been a long day and
it will be another long one tomorrow. Go home.”

“What are you waiting on?”

“Her employer is getting back to
me. I’ll call Leo then call it a night.”

“I’ll wait. I’m too jazzed for
sleep.”

Sydowski took a sip from his mug,
leaned back in his chair. It felt good on his back. “All right then,” he said.
“Since it’s been so long since you updated me on the soap opera that is your
love life, tell me how things are going with the architect.”

“We’re definitely on again. He
wants to get married. Wants babies.”

“He still want you to leave cop
world?”

“No. He got over that.”

“But?”

“I just don’t know if I’m ready.
I mean it scares me, Walt.”

“Scares you? You’re a homicide
cop. What scares you?

“No. It’s hard to explain. We do
what we do, we see what we see. Then to have a baby and love it so much knowing
that monsters exist.”

“You can’t take this job
personally. You’re tired and we’ve had some pretty rough cases recently. Now
this fire-breather. Just take it easy. I need you.”

Sydowski’s phone rang. It was the
vice-president of American Eagle Federated Insurance.

“Inspector, can you give me more
information on what harm you think may have come to Iris Wood?”

“I’m sorry sir, I can’t at this
time.”

“I see. Given that you’re a
homicide investigator, I can only surmise where this is going.”

“Were you able to obtain the
information?”

“We’re a large company. I don’t
know her. Not many people do. She works in researching and editing our
publications.”

“Any family listed in her
personnel file?”

“None. I had someone access her
policy. Every employee is entitled to a basic policy.”

“Death benefit?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How much was hers?”

“She’s dead, isn’t she? Someone
killed her.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t confirm
anything right now.”

“The policy has a graduated death
payout depending on years with the company. Hers is eighty-six thousand,
one-hundred. I checked in case she listed a relative as beneficiary.”

“Is there a beneficiary?”

“Yes.”

“A relative?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s her cat.”

“Her cat?”

The vice president explained that
the benefit was to be paid to the cat in her possession at the time of her
death by way of a donation in the animal’s name to a San Francisco animal
shelter.

Sydowski made a few notes,
absorbing that one.

“You said her job involves
researching and editing publications.”

“That’s right.”

“What sort of publications?”

“Brochures, information
packages.”

“On what subjects? Can you be
more specific?”

“She wrote” -- the vice-president
cleared his throat -- “she produced our main booklet and brochures that we
provide to bereaved families, how to find comfort, solace when a loved one
passes away.”

Sydowski removed his glasses and
rubbed his tired eyes, hearing his own caution coming up on him.
Do not go
looking for this to make sense.

“Inspector, is there anything
more?”

“No.” He replaced his glasses.
“We’ll be talking again tomorrow. Thank you.”