The Emerald Cat Killer (26 page)

“Thank you, Professor. Just one more thing, sir. When will you be back in Berkeley? We may need to talk with you again, sir.”

“Monday, Sergeant. I have a nine
A.M.
on Monday.”

“Thank you, sir. Have a happy weekend. Please apologize to your wife for me.”

EIGHTEEN

Carolyn Horton pushed the sleep mask from her eyes and reached for the bedside telephone. She knew even before the caller asked if this was indeed she, knew who was calling and what the message would be.

“Mrs. Horton, this is Father Wyshinsky at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. I'm the chaplain on duty. I'm calling about your husband. I think you'd better get down here quickly.”

“Father Wyshinsky?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What kind of father is that?”

“Roman Catholic, Mrs. Horton. From the Diocese of Oakland.”

“There must be some mistake. We're not Catholic.”

“Doesn't matter, ma'am. We work in rotation. I just happened to pull the duty tonight. Mrs. Horton, I don't mean to be discourteous, but I really think you ought to hurry.”

“Couldn't it wait till”—she blinked at the beside clock—“couldn't it wait till morning, Mr. Wyshinsky?”

“I really don't think so, ma'am.”

She returned the handset to its cradle. The hallway fixture cast a thin light into her bedroom. She turned on a lamp and crossed to her closet, setting out to select an appropriate wardrobe.

Before long she was ready to examine her appearance in the three-way mirror she had made Joseph install in her bedroom. She knew it would be a damp, chilly night and she had selected her wardrobe accordingly. Merino wool sweater by Dale of Norway in a pale pink, dark blue Renee Dumar suit, her Ellington Hepburn bag, Fownes cashmere-lined lambskin gloves, Franco Sarto boots.

The colors were all wrong, her face looked drawn, and her hair was a disaster. She changed the sweater for a teal silk blouse and it was no better. She tried an orange one, and gave up. What difference did it make? Joseph was out of it, she knew that, and who cared what a priest thought, anyway, after the absurd vows they had to take.

When she got to Broadway and MacArthur, the local businesses had all shut down for the night. A thin mist hung in the air, creating nimbuses of red and green around the traffic lights and pale orange around the streetlamps. There was not much vehicular traffic, and what there was moved slowly due to the limited visibility.

She strode through the lobby. She knew where she was going. She hated hospitals. They were places of sickness and death. They were almost as bad as nursing homes, where every face she saw only reminded her of her own fate, of the fate that drew closer every day. Of age and death.

At the ICU she was met by a portly, silver-haired man in a business suit and by a stranger in medical garb. The silver-haired man took her hand. “Mrs. Horton? I'm Szymon Wyshinsky. We spoke earlier.”

“I told you, we're not Catholic.”

“Of course. If you wish, we have representatives of other faiths on staff. We're all on call, twenty-four seven.”

“No. Never mind, I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to the doctor.” She addressed a dark-skinned man with gray-shot hair. “Are you the doctor in charge here?”

“Dr. Rosen. Yes, ma'am. I've been treating your husband.”

“Where's that woman, that Chen woman? I thought she was in charge.”

“She's off-duty, ma'am.”

“Well, what about Joseph?”

“I'm afraid he's not doing well. That's why Father Wyshinsky contacted you. We find that most people would rather receive this news from the chaplain than from medical personnel.”

“Well, never mind that. I want to see my husband.”

“You can do that.”

“How is he doing? They told me he was on the best antibiotics.”

“He is, ma'am. But we're pretty sure he's infected with a Mersa bacterium. Did Dr. Chen explain Mersa to you?”

“She certainly did. And with all the premiums we pay for medical insurance I'd expected better of this hospital.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am.” He flashed a look at the chaplain standing nearby. Then, to Carolyn Horton, “If you want to come in now. I don't think he'll be able to speak with you. He's been comatose for the past hour or so.”

She stood at her husband's bedside. His face was gray. An oxygen feed rested on his upper lip, a tiny plastic tube in each nostril. The intravenous drip was still attached to his arm. A monitor at his bedside flashed numbers that were meaningless to her and a green line ran jaggedly across what looked like a circular video screen.

“Joseph? Joseph?”

He did not respond.

She took his hand. Nobody had said anything to her about washing before touching the patient. She had placed her gloves carefully in her Ellington Hepburn handbag. Joseph's hand felt hot and dry. She realized with a start that she might contract the infection from him. But this doctor—what was his name, she'd met so many new people lately, her head was in a whirl, Rosen, that was his name—Dr. Rosen would surely have stopped her if there was danger in touching Joseph.

She tried again, and when he failed to respond she put his hand back on the coarse white bedsheet. She would be sure to wash thoroughly with antiseptic soap before leaving the room.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dr. Rosen move toward the priest, that Father Wish-something. They put their heads together like a couple of conspirators in a bad TV movie.

“Mrs. Horton.” It was the priest. “Mrs. Horton, I'm afraid the end is very near. Would you like me to administer last rites to your husband?”

“I told you, we're not Catholic!” She was angry.

“I don't think God would quibble, but if you'd rather—”

“No. Never mind. I told him not to go out. It's his own fault. I told him not to go out and he brought this on himself. He's a soft-bellied middle-aged businessman, and we were already paying a detective. But he had to be a hero, and now look at what he did to himself!”

She leaned over her husband, nodded, and started from the room. But she turned back and strode into the bathroom and closed the door behind herself. She washed her hands thoroughly with strong antiseptic soap and used a clean towel to handle the doorknob on her way out.

At least the Lexus had not been vandalized. In Oakland, California, in the middle of the night, any car left at the curb for more than thirty seconds was fair game for vandals.

When she got home the light was blinking on her answering machine and the bright red readout indicated that there were two messages waiting for her.

She punched the playback button to listen to the messages. The first was from that annoying Father Wyshinsky. Szymon Wyshinsky. Didn't they need priests in Poland?

“I'm very sorry, Mrs. Horton. Your husband passed away just a few minutes after you left here. I'm sure that your visit was a comfort to him. Time of death was two thirty-seven
A.M.
There's no need for you to do anything right now. The social worker here at the hospital will contact you in the morning to determine your wishes. Please accept my condolences, and feel free to contact me at any time.”

She slammed down on the playback button and stamped around her bedroom shaking her fists in rage. She rolled back the mirrored doors of her wardrobe. This was terrible, terrible. She was desperately understocked with black. When she had control of herself, she sat down on the edge of her bed and punched the button to play the second message.

“Kellen Jamison here, Mrs. Horton. There's been an important development. Really important. And really urgent. Please call me at once. Look, I even got myself a cell phone. Call me as soon as you get this message. If I don't answer, try Sergeant Olaf Strombeck of the Berkeley Police Department. You got a pencil? Get a pencil, I'll give you a minute to get a pencil. Got a pencil? Okay, here's my cell number, and if you can't reach me, here's Sergeant Strombeck's number.”

She carefully wrote the numbers in her personal directory, then lifted the telephone handset and punched in Kellen Jamison's cell-phone number.

She didn't need to use the other number he'd given, the one for a Sergeant Strombeck. Jamison reacted to the first ring. She announced her identity.

“Mrs. Horton, we think we've spotted your daughter. She and a companion are believed to be in a rooming house, the former Van Buren Hotel on Acton Street at Channing Way in Berkeley. Can you meet me there, absolutely ASAP?”

“But I—I've just had some very bad news, Mr. Jamison. And look at the hour. Can this wait till morning? I haven't had much sleep since my husband was attacked. And I'm really very fatigued.”

“Mrs. Jamison, it's up to you, but I think you really, really need to get down here.”

She heaved a sigh. “Very well, Mr. Jamison. I'll come down there. I assume you'll meet me.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She dropped the handset onto its cradle, sighed once again, and crossed the room. She opened a drawer in her signed Paul Guth chiffonier and selected a Pashmina cashmere scarf. If she had to go out again on this beastly night she could at least dress warmly.

*   *   *

She pulled the Lexus to the curb, first making sure that Kellen Jamison's Plymouth was there. She also saw several black-and-white police cruisers. None of them had their lights flashing and the street was dark and quiet.

She heard a sharp rap on the window of the Lexus and frowned angrily. She turned and recognized Kellen Jamison. He put his finger to his lips in a ridiculously melodramatic signal for silence, then gestured, indicating that she should get out of the Lexus.

When she did, a police officer joined them. He was very tall and good looking in a Scandinavian way. Jamison said, “This is Sergeant Strombeck. This is Mrs. Horton. The mother of the female juvenile.”

Carolyn Horton bristled at the use of the term “female juvenile.” It was so impersonal, so bureaucratic. Why couldn't the man just say “Rebi,” or “the young lady.”

Strombeck said, “We've got a task force assembled here.” He gestured vaguely toward the police cars and the dark, ugly building half a block away. That, Carolyn Horton assumed, was the infamous rooming house.

“We believe that your daughter and a male companion are in the Van Buren Hotel. We intend to make entry and bring them out safely if possible. But there is danger. I hope you understand that, ma'am.”

“What do you mean, bring them out? My daughter wouldn't live in such a place. Certainly not with a male companion. She's just a child.”

“Well, ma'am, we're not certain they're in there. We're trying to find out. But there may be a confrontation. We believe the young man is armed and dangerous. You might want to keep your distance, that's all.”

*   *   *

Marvia Plum stood facing the old cut-glass and dark wood door of the Van Buren. The lobby was dark but her LED Tac Light provided plenty of illumination. She could see the row of buzzers for the rooms in the converted hotel but they were too small and too far to read from here. There was a single buzzer beside the outside door, a faded card beneath it reading
RING 4 MANNAGGER
. She pressed the button, hoping that it still worked. She kept at it until a dark figure shuffled into the lobby. Gray hair, week's beard, sweatshirt, and khakis.

His expression reflected a mix of anger and sleepiness. He stood opposite Marvia, growling imprecations.

She showed him her ID. She'd decided that there was a better chance of success if she wore civvies than if she'd attempted this operation in uniform, but she knew that there were plenty of uniforms waiting in the dark to move if they were needed.

The sweatshirted man unlocked the door.

Marvia stepped inside. She signaled for silence and spoke in a soft voice. “You have two juveniles in residence. Young female, skinny, short red hair, name is Rebi Horton. Young male, also thin, dirty blond hair, first name may be Bobby.”

“That's Bobby,” the manager said. “Sounds like Bobby and Red. They're good kids. Quiet. Don't make no trouble.”

“All right. Are they here now?”

“How should I know? I'm not their papa.”

“You don't know, then. Is that correct?”

“Yes'm.” Getting polite now.

“Where is their room?”

“Four fourteen.”

“That's the fourth floor?”

“Yes'm.”

“There an elevator in this building?”

“No'm.”

“I see the staircase there. Is that the only one? Is there another? A fire escape?”

“No other inside stairs. Old iron fire escape on the back of the building.”

“Can they get access to that from four fourteen?”

“Could. Yes, they could.”

Marvia spoke into her shoulder radio, relaying the information to Strombeck. Civvies or no, she was wired into her team. She spoke a few more words into the radio and waited while Strombeck joined her and the manager. Half a dozen other officers followed Strombeck. Kellen Jamison followed the police, accompanied by Carolyn Horton. A couple of uniformed officers, she knew, would be working their way up the fire escape at the back of the building.

Marvia headed up the stairs. They were carpeted. That was good, helped her move quietly. She reached the fourth floor, cut down the setting on her Tac Light and checked the numbers on the doors. She located four fourteen. She reset the brightness on her Tac Light and rapped lightly on the door. She said, “Rebi. Rebi, are you in there?”

She heard no reply.

She rapped harder on the door and asked more loudly, “Rebi, are you there? Is Bobby in there with you?”

She thought she heard someone stirring.

“You need to open the door. You need to come out. Both of you. No one will hurt you if you come out.” She had her weapon drawn.