If Angels Fall (57 page)

No one moved until Rust said, “Let’s get going.” He
and Sydowski escorted Reed, while the others took Ann to the elevator, all of
them riding together to the press conference. In the elevator car, Ann
apologized for being late.

“Not a problem,” Rust said respectfully.

“I was trying to decide what to wear.”

No one spoke as the elevator hummed.

“What do I wear to plead for my son’s life?”

It seemed to take forever to arrive in the basement
where the Hall of Justice cafeteria had again been transformed into a
pressroom. Some two hundred newspeople were waiting there.

Reed and Ann were isolated, each alone with their
pain. He was at the bottom of a well, blurry faces peering into it. Microphones
and camera lights made the packed room hot, but he was shivering, his stomach
seething. Copies of
The San Francisco Star
were everywhere. Faces
staring at him. Reed was the man who allowed his son to be kidnapped, and
pushed an innocent man to suicide. Reed was on trial.

The FBI agent in charge of the San Francisco office,
flanked by San Francisco’s police chief, stood before a half-podium placed on a
cafeteria table. He led off with a summary of the abductions, promising to take
questions after Zach’s parents spoke. He turned to the Reeds. Ann went first,
her voice no more than a murmur.

“At the podium, please, Mrs. Reed!” Reporters urged
her.

Reed helped her here, standing behind her as she
clutched a folded note bearing her elegant handwriting on her store’s
stationery.

Ann began: “Edward Keller. I am Zachary Michael Reed’s
mother. He is my only child.” Her monotone voice was alien to Reed. It was as
if he was hearing a Jaycees address. “I want my son back and I am begging you
to return him. I have spoken with the families of Danny Becker and Gabrielle
Nunn. Please, let the children go safely.”

Camera flashes rained on her.

“We’ve done nothing to hurt you and understand you
must be suffering terribly, as we are suffering now. Our hearts are linked in
our pain. Only you can end it safely. The children are innocents. Zach, Danny,
and Gabrielle have done nothing to you. Please, please, I beg you to find it in
your heart to let the children go.”

Ann finished, declining to answer questions as she
left the cafeteria with the help of two FBI agents. Cameras trailed her as Reed
stood alone, unprepared, gripping the edges of the podium. The attention turned
to him. He cleared his throat.

“Edward, if you are watching us, I’m sure you remember
me, Tom Reed. Our understanding is that no one has harmed the children. I know
you are a good man, Edward. Please release the children. The city, the entire
country, now knows your tragedy, knows your pain. Do not extend it to others
who have never harmed you. Release Zach, Danny, and Gabrielle, anywhere safely.
By doing that, you will prove to everyone that you are the good man I know you are,
Edward. You are a smart man, who means no harm to anyone. You have already
proven so much, now is the time to let -- ” Reed stopped, ran a hand over his
face. “Please, let the children go. Please.”

The reporters opened fire.

“Tom, do you think Keller took your son because you
were getting close to learning he had kidnapped the other children?”

“I don’t know, it’s possible. I -- ”

“What kind of man is Edward Keller, Tom?”

“I -- Well, I only met him briefly, so it’s hard to
describe -- ”

“Today being a tragic anniversary for Keller, do you
think he is going to reenact some fantasy with the children?”

“I fear that might happen, but I hope not.”

“What about Franklin Wallace and Virgil Shook, Tom?”

“What about them?

“Both are dead. You reported last year that Wallace
killed Tanita Donner. You still think so, or do you feel he died innocently?”

“I don’t see what this has got to do with -- ”

“What I’m wondering is if there is a chance police
shot the wrong guy in the Donner case. That maybe here’s a connection to Edward
Keller and the unsolved abductions?”

“The Donner case is still under investigation,” San
Francisco’s police chief interjected. “We have nothing linking it with the
kidnappings of Danny Becker, Gabrielle Nunn, and Zach Reed.”

“Have you ruled out the possibility of a connection?”

“Our focus is on the children, who we believe are
still alive and being confined somewhere by Edward Keller.”

“That’s right,” the FBI agent in charge of the San
Francisco office added. “I think we’re getting off track. Now, we have
something to show you. If you’ll just watch the monitors.”

He signaled to begin. Clear security video from the
Berkeley hobby store rolled, showing Keller approaching Zach and leaving the
store with him. It silenced the conference for half a minute.

“We’ve made copies to distribute and we’ve enhanced
the suspect’s face in still photos. We have a news release detailing the facts
of the case. I want to reiterate the enormity of the investigation and that the
reward for information leading to an arrest in this case now stands at
$300,000.”

Reed worked his way out of the room while the
conference continued. But he wasn’t free. With reporters in tow, he tried to
find Ann. He caught up with her outside in the Hall of Justice parking lot as
she was getting into a car with the FBI agent. Three camera crews were on her.

“Ann!” Reed called.

Reporters were shouting, jogging after Reed as he ran
to Ann. He turned to them. “I just want a private word with my wife, so give us
a break. Can you do that, please?”

“Come on,” the agent to the reporters, “back off!”

Reed slid into the backseat with Ann and rolled up the
windows.

“Tom, I just want to go home to wait at my mother’s
house.”

“Ann, I – please -- ”

“I have nothing to say to you right now, and it’s best
we leave it that way. I have no time for you. Every fiber of my being is
focused on my son.”

“Our son, Ann. Our son.”

“He’s my son, he’s your story.”

Reed absorbed the blow.

“Ann, I swear, I’ll bring him ba--”

“Get out of the car. I want to go.”

“Ann.”

“Get out, now!”

In the Hall of Justice, four floors up in the small
waiting area of the Homicide Detail, San Francisco cabbie Willie Hampton was
holding up his cap, watching live coverage of the news conference on the little
TV at the desk of Homicide Detail’s secretary.

“Like I said, I don’t know if that’s the dude on the
TV there,” he repeated. “I just got back from Hawaii and seen this tragedy all
over the news. Sorrowful thing.”

Willie hung his head and shook it.

“I’m catchin’ up on the news an’ somethin’ specific
catches me ‘bout that little Danny, the boy got stolen from BART at Balboa.
Something’s ticklin’ my memory sayin’ ‘Willie, you got to check this here,’
see. So I get my calendar, check my ride sheet for that day. Sure enough I was
workin’ around Balboa Park when that boy got taken.”

Willie leaned forward, dropping his voice: “Between
you an’ me, my last fare was a curbside, off the books, right ‘fore I left on
my vacation.” His tone rose back to normal conversation. “Picked up a dude
carryin’ a kid near Balboa same time they say Danny got taken. Somethin’
strange ‘bout the man. The kid was a girl, maybe five, but I recollect her hair
looked kinda phony, like a wig maybe. I dropped them at Logan and Good, near
Wintergreen. Somethin’ funny ‘bout it all. Somethin’ not right. That’s all I’m
sayin’, see.”

Willie examined his cap for a moment.

“Miss, how much longer you figure ‘fore someone talks
to me?

Turgeon took notes as Willie Hampton told her and
Sydowski about his strange fare to Wintergreen. This was it, the real thing.
Sydowski felt it in his gut as Willie recounted how he got lost on the dead-end
street, turned around to find his way out, then saw his fare walking with the
child over his shoulder before entering the broken-down house. When Willie finished
his story, Sydowski had one question.

“Can you take us to this house now, Mr. Hampton?”

“Well, yes, sir. I think I can.”

Half an hour later, Sydowski, Turgeon, and Willie
Hampton sat in an unmarked police car, a few doors down the street from Edward
Keller’s house.

Dispatches about
the break in the case sizzled on police scanners. Reporters who
covered that morning’s new conference scurried to Wintergreen. Local TV
interrupted network shows with live reports from the curb. The house and entire
yard were sealed. Identification experts from the FBI and SFPD, clad in white
hairnets, surgeon’s gloves, and coveralls -- “moon-walking suits” -- dissected
the scene. The feds took the inside and the city team took the garage and yard.
An FBI chopper equipped with Forward Looking Infrared able to trace body heat,
even that of corpses, hovered overhead. The city guys covered every square foot
of Keller’s yard, using a probe and vapor detector, which picks up the presence
of body gases from decomposition. Military camouflage canopies were erected
over the area to hamper news helicopters from broadcasting the excavation of
bodies, should the task force find any.

The scene inside the house was chilling. Nothing could
have prepared Sydowski for it as he suited up with Rust to go in.

“Never seen anything like this,” an FBI agent mumbled
to them as they entered. Huge surveillance photos of the children were
plastered on the living room walls, which bled with quotations from the
Scriptures. A claw of colored wires sprouted from the kitchen wall where the
phone had been. It was a violent testament to the menace, thought Sydowski,
deducing how Keller must have smashed it when Zach called for help. The
solitary rocking chair before the TV underscored Keller’s insanity. Rust went
to the worktable and thumbed through Keller’s journals, reading the criteria he
used to select the children: angel names, ages matching his dead kids at the
time of their drownings. How he sought them through birth notices, traced their
families through public records, studied, and stalked them. IDENT detectives
were going through his computer.

Sydowski took the stairs to the basement room.

As he stepped off the last step to Keller’s basement,
Sydowski was assaulted by the stench of excrement, urine, and garbage, and
pulled up his surgical mask. The children were gone, yet he braced himself for
whatever awaited him in the room. Two FBI IDENT experts were working there,
breathing through gas masks. They nodded to Sydowski as he entered, watching
him take in the scene, the knee-deep garbage of half-eaten fast food and
wrappers, the soiled mattresses, the rats, the barred, papered window, and the
bloodstained baseball bat.

“It’s not human blood, Walt,” one of the IDENT guys
said, his voice muffled from under his mask.

Sydowski nodded, blinking quickly. It was Golden Gate
Park all over again -- the rain, Tanita Marie Donner in the garbage bag, the
stink, the maggots, flies, the gaping slash across her doll’s neck, nearly
decapitating her. Her snow-white skin, her tiny body on the slab, her beautiful
eyes imploring him, beseeching him, reaching into him. All these fucking years
on the job. All the fucking stiffs. It was supposed to get easier. Why wasn’t
it getting easier? Were three more child corpses waiting for him somewhere? Was
that the way it was going to play out? His stomach was seething, his heartburn
erupting. Give us a break here. We’re so close to this guy. Sydowski gritted
his teeth. So close.

He returned upstairs to confer with Rust in the living
room. A funeral atmosphere permeated the house. Everyone was working quietly,
cataloging evidence, bagging and hauling it into a van which would deliver it
to a plane waiting to fly it to the state forensic lab in Sacramento. Few
investigators spoke, those who did, used low, respectful tones. Rust was still
studying Keller’s maps and binders, amidst the clutter. “”Are we too late,
Walt?”