The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (30 page)

After a minute or two the intensity diminished, and then they fell silent.

“Thank you,” Maddie said. “I’ll make a statement first. Then answer questions, if any remain. No warrant charging anyone for these crimes is in the works.”

“How close are you to naming a suspect and issuing an arrest warrant?”

“We can’t know that at this point. The investigation continues. There’s nothing more I can say.”

“You mean nothing more you will say,” someone hollered from near the back.

“If you prefer, nothing more I will say.”

“How did you feel when you learned that the latest victim was your friend, Katie Carson?”

Maddie held her breath and started counting. At eight she answered sternly.

“I felt just like those of you who knew KC felt, the difference being that I can’t allow myself to be overcome with grief and anger and start grandstanding the way you all are doing. I’ve got a job to do and, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on with doing it.”

She pushed her way through the throng and entered the station house, leaving the embers of their nervous chatter behind.

When Maddie had first joined the force, she had generally been in favor of leniency, but over the years she had learned there were criminals whose brutality was so immense, no matter their excuse, that they deserved nothing less than permanent darkness.

Chapter 44

There were no sounds of a ten-year-boy and no aromas coming from the kitchen when Maddie stepped inside her home. The staples of her life were gone: her mother punctuating whatever she was stirring through the occasional thwack of her wooden spoon upon the rim of some pot. The mixed voices of the news station on the small TV on the kitchen counter. And Bradley always doing or saying something unexpected. Only silence.

Jed had called at five to say they had arrived safely in California, and that he would call again around eight after he got to where he was staying. She felt tired, weary more than sleepy, but that, too. All brought on in some part by the uncommon quiet.

After locking the door, she put her police phone and the house cordless on the counter in the bathroom, and striped. Her breasts dangled while she reached to turn on the hot water for the tub. Then the home phone startled her. She turned off the water. Maybe it was the stillness, but the shrill sound in her empty house seemed sinister.

“Yes,” she said, going tense when there was no reply. After a moment of standing naked in her bathroom holding a silent phone, the faucet still dripping into the tub, she started to hang up. Then a man said, “Sergeant Richards?”

“Who is this?” she demanded.

“Sergeant Richards?”

“Yes. This is Sergeant Richards. Who are you?”

“This is Steve. Steve Gibbs. Doctor Ripley told me you were asking about me. That you think … I’m that evil man.”

Maddie quietly lowered the lid on her toilet, dropped a towel over it, and sat down. “Doctor Ripley shouldn’t have said anything.”

“He was just concerned for me. He said I should find an attorney in case I was arrested.”

So much for doctor confidentiality. Rip did believe Steve to be innocent, so he must have felt compelled to forewarn his assistant.

“Well, that’s good advice, I suppose. But he shouldn’t have upset you. Where are you?”

“I’m at a pay phone. I won’t talk long. I don’t want you to be able to trace this call.”

“You’ve been watching too much TV, Steve. Police officers don’t have tracing technology in their homes.”

“How could you think—”

“Steve, I don’t think you did it. But there is evidence, circumstantial evidence. You know what that means. You also know there is always circumstantial stuff pointing at different people, stuff that ends up meaning nothing.”

“I’m so ashamed,” he said. Maddie heard a muffled sob.

“I know this is hard, but you hang in there. And call your aunt or go home. She’s worried. So am I.”

“Doctor Knight had convinced me that life was worth it, but I don’t see it, Sergeant Richards. I just don’t. I …” his next words were left unfinished.

“Steve, trust me. I just lost one friend to the Beholder. I don’t want to lose another. Please trust me. I believe in you. Really, I do. It’s just, well, others in the police department knew about the circumstantial evidence. I had to act, but we held it to a warrant designating you as a person of interest. It’ll be all right. Just tell me where you are and—”

The phone went dead. Steve Gibbs had hung up on her. She hoped he hadn’t also hung up on life.

Maddie just sat there on the towel on the toilet, praying that Steve would not do anything crazy. After a while she shook it off and went through the motions of everything being okay. She checked the phone for messages. There were none. Jed wasn’t going to call for at least another hour. She thought about going for a jog, but decided she just didn’t have it in her. She forgot about the bath and went in to lie on her bed naked, staring at the ceiling, the phone cool against her stomach.

At eight-fifteen, after having spoken to Jed, and refusing to discuss the Beholder case with him, Maddie went back into the bathroom. She drained the inch of water from the tub and took a shower, letting the water pound her head and cascade over her face and down and around her back. She sat on the small tile bench seat, used a pumice stick to attack the dead skin on her heels, and thought about Lincoln Rogers. Wishing he was with her to scrub her back and … to just hold her.

After dressing, she called her son at his aunt’s house. “Have you finished reading
The Secret of The Old Mill
?”

“I left it there so we could finish reading it together after I come home. I brought another one to read.”

She smiled. No matter the tension she was under, Bradley somehow always reminded her of the simple joys of living. He told her about seeing the ocean, but that they hadn’t stopped.

“Grandma told me we could go to the beach tomorrow or Universal Studios. I have to tell her which one at breakfast. What do you think Mom?”

“Oh, I don’t know, either way you’ll get to do them both.”

“Which one would you do tomorrow?”

“Well, I’d probably let the weather decide for me. If it was cold or very windy I’d save the beach for another day. But that’s an adult’s way of thinking. Don’t fret over it. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll know.”

After they hung up, Maddie went in to tidy Brad’s room and saw the book he had left behind for them to finish together. She held the book with both hands and said, “I love you, son.” Then her thoughts turned to KC, and whatever semblance of normalcy she had mustered faded.

***

At nine-thirty, wearing her sleeping T-shirt and sandals, she considered following her mother’s routine and making a cup of chamomile tea, but ended up filling a blender with the makings for margaritas, using Cointreau instead of triple sec. She took the blender out to the patio with a sliced lime and a saucer of salt; she licked the rim of the glass so more salt would stick. She also took a bunch of seedless green grapes in a bowl.

She sat there sipping margaritas and going over her suspects and the reasons for each. Then she considered the holes she could easily punch into her feeble thinking, the holes that would be punched for her by defense attorneys. She had never before had a case that touched her family. That had followed her home. And she didn’t like the way it blurred the lines between work and family.

And through it all, anger for the possibility that the trauma brought by the car shadowing her home could be her ex-husband trying to buffer his claim that she was not a fit mother?

Two margaritas later, she heard a noise, a noise that didn’t belong. The noise had quieted the critters’ whose natural sounds largely went unnoticed until silenced. She listened without moving, nearly without breathing. She willed her ears to listen around the corner of the house. A moment later she heard the crunch of someone stepping on something hard.

The warm night suddenly turned cold, the way it would if a seam in time had allowed December to visit July. She waited and listened. Her arms wrapped as far around herself as she could. The sound occurred again, then twice more.

Her Smith & Wesson was inside. Damn. She always took it off at home. She knew that was foolish given this case had invaded her home. Her holster might not look fashionable with her sleeping shirt and sandals, but it would be reassuring.

Then the sound stopped, but the critters remained silent. Whatever the sound that didn’t belong in her world was, it also didn’t belong in theirs.

The gentle wind ambled across her patio. Under normal conditions it would have set a relaxing tone that would bring her closer to sleep. She wished for a loud wind. Raucous and ripping, threatening and foreboding, but instead the wind seemed to whisper: go to sleep precious one and I will protect you. Like a man wind lying to get what it wanted.

Then that sound came again. She considered rushing inside to get her gun. But her curiosity had been aroused, not to mention her dander. If the Beholder had chosen her, she wanted him to come, not scare him away. It was her job and she was ready to do it.

Come on, sucker. Mommy’s waiting.

She put down her glass next to the bowl of grapes, emptied the pitcher of margaritas into a little john bottle bush along the side of the house and kept a tight grip on the handle of the pitcher. Fortunately her blender was old enough to have one of the hard glass pitchers and not the wimpy plastic ones that had recently replaced the real deal. She held her breath. The hand gripping the pitcher pulled back enough to allow her first motion to be forward.

The desert’s critters again fell instinctively quiet. Like Maddie, they, too, were listening. The sound grew louder, or maybe just closer. It added a steady cadence. Her mind feverishly worked like a computer screening this sound against all known sounds. Then she found it. Someone was walking on the crushed rock along the side of her property, walking toward the back yard, toward her. Her visitor was coming up on the side to her left.

Her breathing went shallow. She waited, wanting to be invisible. But she wasn’t. She regripped the pitcher and stepped back into the alcove formed where Brad’s bedroom wall framed one side of the patio.

Then she heard a voice, a familiar voice. She stepped out past the corner of the house and saw the outline of Gary Packard’s body coming around the corner of the house. As he moved closer, she saw he was holding a sports bag in one hand with the fist of his other hand gathered around a beer bottle.

“I just got back from playing some night softball,” he said. “I saw your mother and Brad leave this morning with your ex–partner. I’d been watching your place since that car I told you about. Your house was dark, but I saw a small glow from your backyard and thought I’d better check it out. Is everything okay?”

Whether or not everything was okay would depend upon whether or not Gary was the Beholder. Maddie didn’t think so, but Jed felt he might be and Jed, despite his trouble-making pecker, was a solid detective.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Thank you.” She drank the last two swallows from her glass. “Where did you play?”

“Somewheres in Glendale.” He came closer. “One of the guys picked me up. Have you heard from your mother?”

“Yeah.” She said keeping her fingers wrapped around the thick handle of the blender.

“Mom had been offering to take Bradley to the beach and Sea World in San Diego all summer.” Maddie said, lying about where her family had gone.

“He’s at a great age for that,” Gary said. “He’ll have a blast. Now, how’s his mother doing with the cop business?”

“I can’t talk about the case.”

“I didn’t mean that you should.” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s just that you have such a rough job. I know. In many ways you’re isolated. You have no one but your colleagues to turn to, and often not even them.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Every day, it gets in the blood. Listen, Maddie, are you going to be all right tonight? Do you want me to stay with you? I’m not coming onto you here. But the business about your friend, it’s all over the news. If you don’t want to be alone—”

“Thank you, but no. You want a margarita? I can make a fresh batch in a minute.”

“Don’t do it just on my account.”

“I’d like another myself.” She said, without mentioning she had thrown a half a pitcher full into the bushes. “Come on in while I make ‘em.”

“I’m pretty gamey. You’d be wise to keep me out here in the open air.”

Maddie felt both attraction and fear. She really didn’t want to be alone, and she did really want to find out if he was the Beholder. What the hell, she decided, it was time.

“Hey, I’m not exactly dressed for company either.” She looked down and smiled, raising one bare leg adored with a black sandal.

“The look reminds me of the day I saw you and Brad washing your car.”

“I’m dry, tonight.”

“I can get the hose.” They laughed.

“Come on in. You can jump in the shower while I whip up the margaritas. I’ll slice some cheese, too. I haven’t eaten anything all day except for these grapes. I didn’t realize I was hungry until these margaritas brought me down.”

“I do have a change of clothes in my bag, along with my glove and bat.”

“The bag doesn’t look long enough for a bat?”

“It’s a weighted short bat. I swing it in the on-deck circle to loosen up.” He leaned down and hoisted his bag by its strap.

Maddie felt the hairs on her neck bristle when she turned her back and walked in ahead of Gary. She remained alert for the sound if he unzipped his bag. That short bat could be the blunt instrument they hadn’t found at the murder scenes.

***

I’m not a serial killer. I’m merely a humble artist painting human emotion on the grand canvas of a city living in chaos. I’ve saved the star of my gallery for last. After her, I’ll lay low and revel in the panic that will wash over the city. For that time, I’ll be part of my own art, content in the knowledge I have outsmarted everyone. Then, someday, I’ll awaken the city from its slumber, with new victims, but the same M.O. And the next time the panic will come quicker and be even more intense.