The Fourth Motive (18 page)

“I don’t know,” Mrs Reyes bit her lip. “It seems if the Judge wanted the police to
have the code to his house, he would have given it himself.”

“This has to be done quickly and quietly,” Ray said sternly, “and as soon as possible.
The Judge is already asleep. If you’d like to disturb him at this hour with a phone
call and ask him if it’s all right for you to give the police who are trying to protect
him and his property the alarm code, be my guest.”

Mrs Reyes’ hesitation was obvious. Ray merely smiled, but he nervously wondered if
she was going to call his bluff and refuse his request. Then her husband spoke up.

“Give the detective what he asks. He is a police officer, for heaven’s sake. Do you
want the Judge to be angry with you?”

She looked at her husband, shrugged, and then back at Ray. “The code is four, zero,
three, one. When you go inside the front or back door, there is a box on the wall.
You must push in the number within ten seconds or–”

“I know how an alarm system works,” Ray said. He wrote the code in his notebook. “May
I see your key to the Judge’s house?”

“My key? What for?”

“Will you just give the man what he asks?” Mr Reyes said. He made no effort to contain
his exasperation. He wanted the intrusion over, the policeman gone, and to return
to the baseball game. Mrs Reyes turned and went into the house, muttering under her
breath in Spanish. She returned a moment later, rummaging through her purse. She held
up a set of keys for Ray’s inspection.

“This one is for the front door and this one for the back,” she said, singling out
two keys for his inspection.

“Excellent,” Ray exclaimed. “You’ve been very helpful.” He noted the location of the
keys on Mrs Reyes’ ring. “I only have one more question.”

Mr Reyes couldn’t hide his relief any more than his irritation.

“We’re concerned that the man who is stalking the Judge and his daughter–”

“He’s after the Judge, too?” Mrs Reyes cried out, fear overtaking her features.

“We don’t believe the Judge is any danger,” Ray calmed her, mentally kicking himself
for his slip of the tongue. “We just want to cover all the bases.”

Mrs Reyes crossed herself. “You had me scared for a second, Officer.”

“You said you only had one more question?” Mr Reyes tapped his newspaper against his
leg.

“Yes.” Ray turned to Mrs Reyes. “If the Judge’s daughter were to go and hide somewhere,
where would she go?”

“Why not ask her?” Mrs Reyes said. “I don’t know where Paige would go.”

“How about her boyfriend’s place?”

“What boyfriend? Paige has no boyfriend that I know of. I can tell you, though, it
would please her father greatly if she was to meet a young man and settle down. But
I know of no boyfriend, and this is a thing I would know.”

“She has no place she would go to be safe? No relatives or friends she could hide
out with for a while?”

“You said one more question,” Mr Reyes reminded Ray.

Ray was thinking of the address book in his pocket and how many entries it had written
inside. It would take forever to eliminate them.

Mrs Reyes rubbed her chin. “There is one place. It’s in Napa, in the wine country.
She has an aunt who lives there. Paige used to spend her summers there as a child.
I believe she would go to her aunt if she had to hide.” She nodded to herself. “Yes,
I’m positive. It’s a big house among the vineyards. Very isolated. And very beautiful.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Ray said. “I have one more question.” He looked apologetically at
Mr Reyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Of course you do,” Mr Reyes said through gritted teeth. “Go ahead.”

“Is there anyone else in the house?”

“No,” Mrs Reyes replied, puzzled at the question. “Our children are grown up and have
moved away. There is only us.”

Ray folded his notebook and returned it to his pocket. “Thank you both very much,”
he said. “You’ll never know how helpful you’ve been.”

“May I have one of your business cards, Detective Evans?” Mrs Reyes asked. “I will
see the Judge tomorrow. If he is uncomfortable with anything I have told you, I would
like him to be able to call you.”

“Certainly,” Ray said. But when he reached into his pocket he came out with his thick
leather work gloves instead of a business card. He donned them while the Reyes looked
on.

“It’s cold out tonight,” Ray commented when he saw the quizzical expressions on their
faces.

“It’s actually pretty warm,” Mr Reyes contradicted.

“So it is,” Ray said.

He brought his knee up into Mr Reyes’ groin. The older man doubled over and fell to
his knees, dropping his beer and newspaper. In almost the same motion, Ray whirled
and struck the horrified Mrs Reyes savagely under the nose, upward, with the heel
of his hand. It was exactly the technique illustrated in FM 21-150, the World War
II–era US Army field manual entitled Unarmed Defense for the American Soldier. It
had been a Military Book Club Book of the Month selection. Mrs Reyes dropped to the
floor, instantly unconscious. Blood streamed from her shattered nose.

While Mrs Reyes lay inert, Ray kicked her husband in the face several times, also
rendering him unconscious. The effort caused Ray’s still-tender genitals and bruised
ribs considerable pain, but in his excitement he barely felt it. Mr Reyes lay motionless,
face-down on the floor next to his wife.

Ray went right to work. He took a guitar string from his pocket and looped it over
Mr Reyes’ head. Once it was in place around his neck, he looped it once more. He took
an end of the guitar string in each hand, placed a knee in Mr Reyes’ back, and pulled
with all the force he could muster.

Mr Reyes lurched convulsively, suddenly awake, and tried to grab the razor-like wire
digging into his throat. Blood seeped from the seam created by the wire and his eyes
bulged. He appeared to gasp but no sound came.

Ray pulled for more than a minute, amazed at the strength of the older man as he fought
for his life. He bucked and thrashed like a horse in a rodeo. But with Ray’s weight
on his back and the wire noose around his neck, the outcome was inevitable. With an
explosive burst of escaping air, the wire tore through Mr Reyes’ windpipe and discharged
his lungs’lungs’ captive cargo. He released his final breath and lay still. An out-of-breath
Ray was careful to avoid the expanding pool of blood beneath the body as he stood
up.

To avoid the lake of blood, Ray walked around Mr Reyes in a wide circle to reach his
wife. He dragged her by the feet until she was well clear of the growing stain. Ray
extracted another guitar string from his pocket, since the first was irretrievably
embedded in Mr Reyes’ throat. He repeated the double-loop procedure around her neck
in the same fashion he had done with her spouse. Then he repeated the tug-of-war with
her neck. A minute later, she too was dead. Unlike her husband, Mrs Reyes never woke
up to struggle. Her lifeblood joined her spouse’s on the floor.

Ray again carefully backed away from the body to avoid soiling his shoes with blood.
He peeled off the surprisingly bloodless leather gloves and replaced them with a set
of surgical rubber gloves from his pocket. He turned the leather work gloves inside
out and put them back into his pocket as well.

He retrieved Mrs Reyes’ dropped purse and removed the key ring. Ray took only the
two keys to the Callen home and returned the ring to the purse. Then he opened the
front door and exited the house, making sure he locked the steel gate before pulling
it shut behind him.

Ray lit a cigarette and strode casually to his faux police car. He got in, fired up
the stolen Ford, and drove back to Fruitvale Avenue. He abandoned the car a block
from the BART station and walked back into the parking lot where he’d left his Hyundai.

Whistling jauntily, Ray drove back over the Miller Sweeney Bridge towards home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 21

 

 

Paige Callen awoke to the sound of her own stifled scream and the agony of deep, painful
cramps in her calves and legs. She was bathed in a cold sweat, and the blankets covering
her were twisted around her body.

She sat up in bed, wincing in discomfort, and pointed her toes to ease the aching
muscles. Within a few seconds, the muscle cramps subsided. She blinked and rubbed
her eyes to dispel the remnants of the nightmare that had shaken her from her slumber.

Paige could only vaguely remember the dream; fleeting scenes of sudden violence and
a claustrophobic sensation. She swept her hair from her damp forehead and got out
of bed.

She switched on the light in the bathroom. After blinking as the stark fluorescent
glow evaporated the darkness, she stared into the mirror and grimaced at the image
looking back at her.

He left eye was blacker than ever. She parted her hair to examine the bald patch and
stitches. The abrasions on her brow and the tip of her nose had scabbed, and she took
solace knowing they were superficial enough to heal within a day or two. She splashed
water on her face, slipped into a thick robe, and went downstairs for something to
abate the dryness in her mouth.

As Paige descended the staircase, she noticed a light emanating from the partially
opened door of her father’s study. She peered in to find her father, also clad in
a bathrobe, seated at his desk. He was wearing his reading glasses and seemed to be
looking intently at something concealed from her view. She opened the door and stepped
inside.

At the sound of Paige’s entry, the Judge looked up, startled, and hastily secreted
something into the open top drawer of his desk. Paige glanced at the grandfather clock
across the room. Its ornate, polished brass hands read 3.11am.

“Dad, do you know what time it is?”

“I do. What are you doing up?”

“I just asked you the same question,” she said. The Judge removed his glasses and
leaned back in his chair.

“I’m an old man. I fall asleep at odd hours of the day and find myself wide awake
at equally odd hours of the night. What’s your excuse?”

“I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get a glass of juice from the kitchen. You want anything?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

Paige disappeared. Within a couple of minutes, she returned to the study with two
glasses of orange juice. She handed one to her father and sat down on the plush couch
opposite his desk.

“Bad dreams?” he asked after taking a sip.

“No,” she said. “What makes you think that?”

“You’re a lousy liar, Paige,” the Judge smiled. “Always have been. That could be fatal
for an attorney.”

Before Paige could retort, a blinding bright white light filled the room from outside.
After a moment, the light faded and was gone. Paige started to get up to check the
window.

“Just a patrol unit spotlighting the house,” the Judge remarked. “Letting us know
it’s out there.”

“Your doing?” she asked, settling back into her seat.

“Sergeant Wendt’s. Standard procedure for extra attention by the sector patrol officer
assigned to this beat.”

Neither spoke for several long minutes. Paige broke the silence.

“Dad,” she began tentatively, “I guess I owe you an apology for the way I bit your
head off today. It wasn’t appropriate to do in front of strangers.”

“Those strangers are doing everything within their power to protect you.”

“Sergeant Wendt, perhaps,” she said. “But that Farrell character? He’s not a cop;
he’s a crook. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

“You don’t know him.”

“The hell I don’t,” she said. “I reviewed the prosecution packet on him and his just-as-crooked
partner. When they walked away free and clear after all that they did, I had to stand
there and watch it happen. Don’t tell me that I don’t know him.”

“Do you know why he and his partner weren’t prosecuted?”

“Some sort of shady deal Farrell brokered with the Feds, I assume.”

“You assume because you don’t know,” the Judge said. “For your information, I do.”

“Of course you do. You always know the dirty little secrets.” Paige looked skeptically
at her father. “It’s how you control people. How you always get them to do what you
want them to do.”

“This is about your mother, isn’t it?”

Paige shrugged. “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said, without refuting his statement.
She instinctively knew that she could no more defend herself against her father’s
clever sparring today than she could as a child. She took a slow breath and resigned
herself not to get sucked into his game.

“It’s me you have a problem with, isn’t it?”

Paige folded her arms across her chest. “It’s what you do. And who you do it with.
People like that Farrell creep.”

“Bob Farrell had the foresight to plan for a contingency the police did not foresee,”
Judge Callen said. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened to you if
I hadn’t retained him and he hadn’t deployed his associate to protect you.”

“That’s what I mean,” Paige said. “Just because you think you know what’s best for
me doesn’t give you the right to make decisions about my life. And just because this
Farrell jerk made a sound call, once, doesn’t change who he is or what he’s done.
He’s a wrong man, Dad. End of discussion.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that,” Callen said.

“We will.”

The Judge stared at his knuckles. Paige drank her orange juice.

“What shall we talk about?” he finally said.

“Whatever you like,” she said.