First Offense (42 page)

Reed pulled Abrams aside. “Did you verify where Hopkins is?”

“Yeah,” Abrams said, “he’s at his house. I called to verify he was at home before we even left Ann’s house. Then I called him again on my cellular phone just a few minutes ago, and Hopkins answered the phone again. There’s no way he could get over here now without us seeing him. He lives all the way up in the foothills. Besides, we have units positioned on every street leading into the park.”

“Good,” Reed said, nodding. “But let’s not take any chances. Have a patrol unit park in front of Hopkins’s house. As soon as we find out what Sawyer has to say, we’re going to pop him anyway. I want to make damn certain this bastard doesn’t show up tonight. That’s all we need right now.” He started to walk off and then stopped. “And I want you to monitor Ann yourself, Noah. Is she on the auxiliary channel? If she isn’t, any transmission she makes could get buried under other radio traffic.”

“Yes, she is,” Abrams said. “I’ve got my portable tuned to her frequency right now.” He jerked a black portable radio up to his ear and listened. “She just notified us that she was walking into the park. Central dispatch is monitoring her transmissions as well. If anything goes wrong, they’ll broadcast it over both frequencies.”

Reed stared off into space, thinking. “Okay,” he said a few moments later, feeling confident they’d covered all the bases. “Get a unit over to Hopkins’s house at once,” he repeated. “Advise them not to make contact unless he tries to leave. And call Hopkins again to make certain he’s still at his house. We don’t want him slipping out before the surveillance unit gets there.”

Reed walked to his unit and jerked his shotgun from the holder, checking the ammo. If the captain wanted to be obstinate and play by the rules, he thought, so be it. If he had to, he’d take Sawyer down himself. For all they knew, Sawyer was a murderer and butcher. No way was Reed going to let him get to Ann.

Just then the detective looked up and saw a flash of red out of the comer of his eye speeding down the road toward Marina Park. Squinting until he made out the license plate. Reed immediately cranked the engine and screamed out of the parking lot, fishtailing around the parked police units. The plate on the red Honda was JINNY, the girl Sawyer had switched cars with in the mall. Reed grabbed the microphone off the seat and shouted into it, “I’m in pursuit. I have the red Honda and I’m almost certain Sawyer’s behind the wheel. We’re headed west from Alpha Beta on Tradewinds now. Get the units ahead of me to cut him off before he gets to the park.”

Marina Park was located in the beach area of Ventura not far from Dr. and Mrs. Sawyer’s house. After numerous problems with juveniles congregating, drinking, and using drugs, the city had closed the park to the public during the evening hours. Ann pulled up and killed her engine, noting that there were no lights in the park itself. A street lamp was located close to the entrance, however, and cast a narrow beam of light across the playground. To Ann, the park looked desolate and terrifying. She stepped out of the car and closed her white jacket. Then she spoke to the surveillance officers via the concealed microphone: “I’m about to walk in.”

Bracing herself, she began walking. She tried to keep her head straight and resist the urge to look behind her, but her fear was raging. First she walked on grass. As she got to the playground area, her feet sank in the sand. A short distance away, she could hear the waves crashing on the shore, and the air was heavy and damp. She saw what looked like a wooden fort for the children to play in, and then she spotted the jungle gym.

Taking a seat on the bench, she waited.

Minutes passed in agonizing slow motion. Ann had never felt so alone in her life. Somewhere off in the distance she heard sirens, wondering what type of incident they were responding to, then telling herself it was probably a fire or an injury accident.

She knew the officers were listening, ready to come to her rescue at the slightest indication of trouble. It didn’t help. By the time they got to her. Sawyer could kill her. Quickly she placed her hand behind her and touched the cold steel of her Beretta.

Hearing a noise nearby, Ann tensed, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then she almost screamed when she saw a head emerge from the wooden fort, followed directly by a man’s body. “Jimmy?” she said, hoping some drunk or homeless person hadn’t crawled in there to sleep.

Ann was standing, trying to see the man’s face and verify it was Sawyer when the man leaped from the shadows like a wild animal and knocked her to the ground. Instinctively Ann flipped over onto her stomach, reaching behind her for her gun. She came up empty-handed. The gun had fallen out when he had jumped her, and was now lost somewhere in the sand.

The next second Ann felt the man’s knee press into her lower back, and a hand closed tightly over her mouth. Her screams were muffled inside his palm. She sank her teeth into the skin, but the man didn’t react. Struggling against him, Ann knew the assailant was too strong. With what seemed like herculean strength, he pinned one hand behind her back, holding her other arm on the ground with his body. Fingernails scraped her skin near her chest, and Ann was certain he was going to rape her. But he only ripped the wire off her chest and tossed it somewhere in the darkness.

Ann rolled sideways into his body, knocking him off balance, but he grabbed her and they started rolling together, ending up in the section of the park illuminated by the street lamp. For the first time Ann could see the man’s face.

It was Glen.

“You,” she said, screaming wildly, certain the surveillance officers would be here any second.

She was on her back. Glen on top of her, both her hands pinned now over her head. “They’re not coming for you,” Glen said, smirking. “They’re too busy arresting Jimmy.”

Ann heard something coming from the fort now, heavy radio traffic and police jargon. “A scanner?” she said. “You have a police scanner? That’s how you knew I was meeting Sawyer.”

“What?” he said, his eyes lit by a strange glow. “Do you think I’d let a piece of shit like Sawyer destroy me? Or a stupid woman like you?”

“No,” she yelled frantically. “They’re coming. They’re right down the street. They’ll shoot you…kill you.”

“Poor Ann,” he said, a maniacal grin on his face. “You were so perfect, you know. I really cared about you, but you took the game too far, tried to make it your game.” The grin disappeared and Glen’s face turned hard and cold, an ugly, evil visage that defied description. “Now you want to take all the credit, get all the praise,” he continued. “But you’re not going to do it. I’m the one the legal community will look up to and admire. I’m the one who brought in the convictions on Delvecchio. You know how proud my mother is right now? You think winning just any case would impress her? No, only an impossible case would do.”

“The police know everything,” Ann shouted. “I’ve already told them, given them evidence. If you kill me, they’ll arrest you, track you down, send you to the gas chamber.”

For a moment he paused, a flicker of reason appearing in his eyes, then it was gone, and all Ann could see was the madness. Hands of steel locked around her throat, and she felt him squeezing. Ann was gulping and gagging, clawing at his hands with her own. Where were the men? Then she remembered the missing wire. They couldn’t hear her.

In that instant Ann knew she was going to die.

He was going to kill her. And like everything else, he was going to get away with it. Rage suddenly filled her, driving her like a powerful engine. Finding his little finger on her throat, Ann bent it backward with all her strength, an old police tactic to break a suspect’s grip. The pressure released long enough for Ann to pry his other hand off her neck and scramble a few feet away. She was on her hands and knees when she felt him on her back, the hard object poking between her shoulder blades unmistakable. A gun. Ann froze and every muscle in her body locked into place.

“I don’t like using guns, Ann. They’re too loud.” Glen was panting, his face right by her ear. “I did enjoy shooting you, though,” he said with pleasure. “I never hunted a human being before.”

“Why?” Ann cried. “Why did you want to kill me?” She had to stall him, keep him talking, anything until the men came to her rescue.

“If I had wanted to kill you,” Hopkins said, nipping her ear with his teeth, “I would have done so. I only wanted to put you out of commission. You were a threat.”

“I didn’t threaten you,” Ann whimpered. “We’d just made love.”

“You were going to destroy my business,” he continued. “I worked hard to build that business. For the first time I had real money of my own…more money than most people see in a lifetime.”

Ann felt the gun press firmly between her shoulders and screamed. Then the pressure disappeared momentarily as Glen stood and used the toe of his boot to flip her over onto her back again. She pushed herself to a sitting position, ready to lunge at his legs and try to knock him off balance, when she suddenly stopped and became perfectly still.

The gun in his hands looked like a cannon. Only inches from her face, Ann found herself staring down the dark, seemingly bottomless barrel. Never in her entire life had she been this afraid. Her bladder emptied, and warm urine soaked through her jeans. Glen stood over her, quickly seizing a handful of her hair and pulling her to a kneeling position. When he yanked her head toward the gun, Ann opened her mouth to scream, certain it would be her last sound before death.

The cold metal entered her mouth, lodging deep in her throat. She gagged, her mouth filling with fluid. A few moments later, the gag reflex died under the weight of her terror, and she became as still as a statue.

“That should shut you up,” he said, laughing as he pushed on the back of her head, forcing the gun even farther down her throat.

She began praying. Then she felt tears gushing out of her eyes. Tears for her precious child, she thought, but she knew she was grieving for more than David. She was mourning her own death, imagining what it would feel like when he pulled the trigger. She’d seen numerous suicides who’d swallowed a gun. Ann knew she could never survive it. The bullet would blow the back of her head off, her brain along with it.

Glen’s eyes were searching the area, and he appeared to be noticing how close they were to the parking lot and the streetlight. Too much time had passed now, and he couldn’t take a chance. Sliding the gun out of Ann’s mouth, he said fiercely, “Stand and start walking.”

Ann struggled to her feet, forcing back the urge to vomit. A horrid metallic taste was in her mouth, and she brought one hand up to rub her throat. Why didn’t he just kill her, pull the trigger and get it over with? It must thrill him to see her helpless and terrified, pleading for her life. Once he killed her, this awesome power he held over her would be gone. He was enjoying himself, so insane that he thought he was invincible.

Glen nudged her with the gun, and Ann stumbled forward. Should she run for it, she asked herself, make an attempt to escape? No, she decided, knowing he would only shoot her in the back. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. When he killed her, she wanted him to look her straight in the eye.

“Hurry up,” he commanded, forcing her in the direction of the surf.

Ann looked off into the darkness, catching a reflection on the water. What was he going to do to her now? she thought in horror. Was he going to drown her instead of shooting her? It didn’t really matter, she decided, resigning herself to her fate. Whatever means he used to accomplish it, Ann knew when it was over, she would be dead.

The red Honda was parked sideways in the center of the street, the passenger door standing open. One side of the vehicle had sustained substantial body damage. At least a dozen police cars were parked on either side of it, some with their wheels up on the curbs and lawns.

Jimmy Sawyer was prostrate on the ground in the center of the street in the glaring lights from the police units.

“Throw out your weapon,” Reed barked over a loudspeaker from one of the units.

Sawyer pleaded, “I swear I don’t have a gun. Don’t shoot me. Please, don’t shoot me.”

Reed glanced over at Abrams. “Call Ann and tell her we have Sawyer. She doesn’t have to wait any longer.”

Abrams scowled. “She doesn’t have an earpiece, Sarge. We’ll have to go get her.”

“You have been monitoring the surveillance channel?” Reed asked quickly, arching his eyebrows. “She hasn’t called for help and we didn’t hear her?”

“Of course not,” Abrams answered. “She’s got to be just sitting out there wondering what happened to Sawyer.”

Reed turned back to the prisoner. The past fifteen minutes had been chaotic. Sawyer had been traveling at such a high rate of speed when Reed first spotted him that a dangerous high-speed pursuit had ensued. Reed in the lead, with other units joining the chase from various side streets. Finally, Sawyer’s Honda had spun out of control and crashed into a tree.

Reed picked up the microphone again and addressed Sawyer. “Stand up slowly with your hands out from your body. Then strip. Keep your hands where we can see them.”

Sawyer pushed himself to his feet, his hands out at his sides. He was wearing a sweatshirt and quickly pulled it over his head, immediately showing the officers his open palms.

“The pants too,” Reed ordered, turning back to speak to Abrams again. “Go get Ann. I don’t want her sitting down at that park alone.”

While Jimmy Sawyer was removing his jeans and kicking them aside, Abrams spotted his unmarked unit, but it was blocked by several of the black-and-whites. “I’m going to have to wait until we take him into custody,” he told Reed. “I can’t get my car out.”

“Then walk,” Reed said flatly, picking up the microphone again. “Take off your shorts too,” he told Sawyer, watching while the boy removed this last item of clothing. Now he was standing completely naked in the glaring lights, and he instinctively placed a hand at his groin to cover his genitals.

Abrams moved in to cuff him, along with several other officers, thinking that now he could get the officers to move their units and head to Marina Park to pick up Ann. Sawyer had switched directions during the pursuit and led them away from the park. If Abrams tried to walk it, he knew it would take too long.