The Poisonous Ten (26 page)

31

“So?” Jackie stared across the table at Parks as he hung up the phone. The lights from the neighboring downtown buildings were lighting up the sky with the sun disappearing behind the horizon. Parks, Jackie and Tippin were sitting around a conference table in the center of the squad floor, each covered in soot, their clothes smelling of sweat and ash, each waiting to finish with their interviews with their superiors about the day’s events. The smell of burning flesh was still imprinted on Parks’s brain and the taste of blood on his tongue. 

“That was Amy,” Parks said to no one in particular. “Evan and Wesley Cosway are dead. Fourth-degree burns on the majority of their bodies. But we knew that.”

“We don’t give a shit about them,” Jackie said. She blushed when Tippin turned to her. “Sorry. Sorry I said that. They were still people.”

“No, you’re right,” Parks agreed. “Cal Ramirez died an hour ago. He had second- and third-degree burns but he a
ctually died from blood loss. The  . . .” Parks was gesturing to his throat and the injury that Ramirez had sustained from his fall on the table. “You know he’s got two ex-wives and four children. His son is in the academy right now. He graduates in the winter. I can’t . . .”   

“What about Rachel?” Jackie asked.

“Oh, she’s a fighter, I’ll tell you that,” Parks said, smiling. “She’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever known. She’s got some first- and second-degree burns as well. But she’ll be fine. Still at the hospital. They’ll keep her overnight, maybe even two. Then she’ll go home. Take a few weeks off. Then she’ll be back to us good as new.”

“Where’s Detective Fairmont?” Tippin asked innocently.

“I had him stay at the hospital to keep me updated on everyone there.”

“What about Wilkes and Hayward?”

“They’re all right as well. Just a little banged up. Hayward said someone jumped him in the stairwell and when Wilkes went to check on him someone got him as well. They’ll take some stitches and bandages but they’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Or today,” Jackie said.

Parks turned to her and she nodded toward Hardwick’s office where Wilkes had just disappeared into. Wilkes’s heightened voice could immediately be heard from behind the closed door.

“Well this can’t be good,” Jackie said, shaking her head.

“What do you suppose that’s all about?” Tippin asked, lowering his head to the desk. Everyone was tired and just wanted to wash the day’s events away. Go home, have a strong drink, and sleep the nightmare away. 

“I’m not sure,” Parks said, still eyeing the office.

“Oh, you know what it’s about,” Jackie said. “Get ready for some blame to come your way. The great Detective Wilkes—not to mention his men—were injured on the job today. On your case.” Jackie eyed Parks, giving him pity he was too tired to accept.

“You don’t know—Oh, here we go,” Parks said, standing up. Chief Hardwick was motioning for him to come to her office. “How do I look?” Parks winked.

“Like a million bucks. Although it’s kinda obvious you didn’t spend it on that suit. Or cleaning supplies.” Jackie winked. “Good luck.”  

“All right  . . .” Parks said, walking into Hardwick’s o
ffice. “I know this looks bad, but this can be seen as a good thing.”

“How’s that?” Wilkes shot back. “What about all the dead bodies we accumulated today? How do you figure that’s a good thing?”

Parks tried to keep his cool in check as he avoided locking eyes with the other detective. Wilkes had a right to vent after what had happened that day. Wilkes was bandaged from the blow to his head and taking whatever drugs had been prescribed for him. Both men’s eyes were swollen and bloodshot. Parks’s lungs were still cleaning themselves out, and he’d been coughing since leaving the hospital. Parks felt like he had been given an injection of adrenaline as he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. 

“Look, we all suffered a great loss today. I know that. But
we need to focus on the positive right now.”

“Positive?” Wilkes snapped, jumping out of his chair, knocking it back against the wall.

“Wilkes,” Hardwick said, staying put behind her desk.

“What the fuck is positive about anything that happened today? Ramirez is dead. Along with another officer I didn’t even know. Hell, even Hayward and myself didn’t get out of that unscathed.”

“And we still have an active case to wrap up,” Parks said, not backing down. “A very serious case that could put a lot more lives in jeopardy if we don’t stop this guy. We’ve never been this close to this guy before. Hell, we were there before the attack. We’re catching up to this guy. We’re putting all of the pieces together. We’re going to get him. Now are you going to help with that? Or not?”

“What? Are you saying I haven’t been?” Wilkes asked. “Well, fuck you.”

“Of course not—”

“Fuck you!”

“No one’s saying that,” Hardwick interrupted. “No one’s saying anyone associated with this case hasn’t put in a hundred and ten percent. But the truth of the matter is this guy’s still out there. And yes, we suffered a loss today. A big, fucking loss. So the question is, what are we going to do about it? As it is, I have the press hounding me, as well as the mayor and the commissioner. What happened today isn’t likely to be forgotten any time soon. Luckily, most everyone was evacuated out of the hospital before the attack, so there aren’t many eyewitnesses to deal with. It’s being reported as a bomb scare, and for now we’re getting away with that. It’s believed we can keep this under wraps for the most part.”

“What about the Cosway brothers?” Parks asked.

“That’s not your problem to concern yourself with,” Hardwick said. “Honestly, I don’t know yet. We’re still dealing with that. Who knows what they’re going to say about them.”

“Fuck that,” Wilkes said, pacing the room, building up tension like a tea kettle waiting to explode.

“It was a very public attack,” Parks said. “The chances of this guy doing what he did and not being seen by anyone, someone, somewhere, a security camera, something, is unlikely. I had our guys pull forensics off you and Hayward and anyone else who was attacked to try and figure out what you were attacked with.”

“I’ll tell you what I was attacked with,” Wilkes said, still pacing. “A psychopath you can’t seem to stop.”

“Now listen here,” Parks replied, standing up and getting in Wilkes’s face. “This wasn’t my fault. Shit happened. No one’s blaming anyone.”

“Well, I’m blaming you,” Wilkes shot back.

“Wilkes,” Hardwick said sternly from her desk. “Cool it and sit down.”

“You know what? I am blaming you,” Wilkes continued as he poked his finger into Parks’s chest. “This is all your
fault. I lost damn near my entire team today. And that is your fault. You are in charge. This is your investigation.”

“Get the hell out of my face, Wilkes,” Parks said, swa
tting Wilkes’s finger out of his face.

The gesture immediately ignited Wilkes, who shoved Parks back against the wall with his whole body and then pinned him up against the wall.

“Wilkes,” Hardwick shouted. “Knock this off. I will not tolerate this.”

“I lost them all today because of you. If you had just spent some more time planning instead of listening to that little faggot spout conspiracy theories,” Wilkes spat into Parks’s face as he held him up against the wall.

“We didn’t have time! And watch—”

“Fuck that!” Wilkes’s face was red and his pulse raced, the veins in his neck and forehead throbbing. Several offi
cers ran into the room and pried Wilkes off Parks, which only infuriated Wilkes more, forcing the officers to hold him back as he kept trying to get back at Parks.

“Fuck you!” Wilkes continued. “This is your fucking fault!”

“Wilkes!” Hardwick shouted. “Get the hell out of my office. Get out of here. Go home. You’re suspended. Now!”

Parks massaged his neck while the other officers pulled Wilkes out of the office. He continued to scream and stru
ggle to get at Parks the whole time. Jackie and Tippin were standing at the conference table, concern and fear on their faces, as they watched Wilkes be dragged away. 

“Fucking hell,” Hardwick cursed, throwing her pen down on her desk and having it bounce up and almost hit Parks. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. And it’s not his either. It is my fault. He’s just short-tempered. Always has been. It’s just who he is.”

“That’s no excuse. He’ll be suspended, and that’s all I need is for another detective to be out of service right now. He’s right. We already lost one good man today. Fuck.”

“I won’t press the matter,” Parks said, trying to control his shaking hands.

“Doesn’t matter. He has a short temper and it needs to be dealt with. And it all happened in front of me. And other witnesses. What am I supposed to do? Pretend it never ha
ppened?”

“I’ll go along with whatever you decide.” Parks breathed deeply. “Our department is thinned out enough as it is. We need more people. I understand the difficulty of suspending him. Maybe restricted duty for a few weeks.”

“It’s my decision either way,” Hardwick said, ending the subject. “Where’s your report on today’s events?”

“Not finished yet.”

“Then that’s your priority right now,” Hardwick said matter-of-factly. “It’s Saturday. Finish your reports. Then you and your whole team go home for the night.”

Parks nodded.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and this asshole will poison himself planning for his next attack,” Hardwick muttered to herself.

Parks realized he had no proper reply for his boss’s co
mment as he left her office.

32

“You’re never going to believe what we found,” Fairmont said with a smile across his face.

“What’s that?” Parks asked, not sure he would believe much of anything right now. It had been a little less than forty-eight hours since the catastrophe at the hospital, and while everyone was physically better, no one’s moods seemed to have been repaired quite so quickly.

“The connection between Allison Tisdale and Ian Harris,” Fairmont replied.

“I thought you already said he took pictures of houses for her?”

“I did. He does—did. But there’s more.”

“More?” Parks got up out of his chair and sat on the end of the table, picking up his nearby Rubik’s Cube and playing with it as he listened to Fairmont and Tippin.

“Well, it was my idea, but Tippin here helped me figure out how to find the information,” Fairmont said, beaming.

“I got it, I got it,” Parks said, rolling his hands, signaling for Fairmont to continue. “You’re brilliant. How would we ever survive without you. What do you have?”

“We followed the flower trail.”

“What flower trail?”

“Remember the flowers that Allison was receiving? How
we thought they were from whoever she was having an affair with. We found out who was sending them.”

“Ian Harris.”

“Ian Harris,” Fairmont confirmed.

“So what does that give us?” Hayward, who had been li
stening quietly, asked as he set down the file he had been scanning from the far corner of the room.

No one had had much incentive to do any intensive inve
stigation work ever since the fire. They all needed something to pep them up and get them going again, and this might have been what they needed. Parks had been left with only Fairmont and Tippin of his original team, since Rachel Moore was at home recovering. Wilkes’s entire team had been dismantled, as Ramirez had been killed in action and Wilkes had been ordered to deskwork as part of his probation for his attack on Parks. That left the only working member of Wilkes’s team, Detective Hayward, loaned out to Parks’s team for the remainder of the case in light of Rachel’s absence.

Jackie had been out at Newport Beach all day, investiga
ting a body found near the beach that had, according to the officer who had called it in, a “bizarre” skin rash. She had checked in earlier that evening and informed Parks that the rash, though still unconfirmed, was unrelated to the Palisades Poisoner. She promised to stop by and help with the case when she could afford it, but the coroner’s office had requested that she return to her regular duties and work on her own active case load. In other words, she wasn’t sure when she would be back.

Parks turned to the murder board and thought.

“Parks?” Hayward said, standing up.

Fairmont turned to Hayward then back to Parks. “Dave?”

“We’re not looking for a typical serial killer. We’re looking for a pattern,” Parks said to no one in particular as he sipped his coffee, which seemed to reinvigorate him some.

“What do you mean?” Fairmont asked. “This guy has killed at least eleven people that we know of. I think that counts as a serial killer in my books.”

“A serial killer is generally defined as a person who kills three or more people,” Parks explained. “They have cooling-off periods between each murder, though that time can shrink as the killer’s need for satisfaction escalates. Their motives for the murders are sexual, anger, seeking a thrill . . . and typically their victims all have something in common, such as race, gender, appearance, age group . . . like black women or prostitutes or college girls. Ted Bundy, Green River Killer and so on . . . there’s a reason behind what they’re doing, even if it only makes sense to them. Then there are serials who attempt to rid the world of a certain type of people. Prostitutes. Women in general. Homosexuals. Someone of an opposing religion. They see themselves as ridding the world of something . . . wrong. Something that needs fixing.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“This guy’s sort of a mixture. He’s all over the place. I mean, why? Why is he doing this? Is he ridding the world of people who have sinned? Broken one of the Ten Commandments? That only rids the world of ten people. Then what? Once that’s done, does he start over again? Back at square one looking for another set of ten people who have broken the commandments? Or is he finished? Or is he hoping we’ll stop him before he gets to the end? Does he need to keep killing, or will he be satisfied with this group of ten? And if so, then why this group of ten? What makes them so special?”

“What do you think?” Fairmont asked, looking to Tippin, who simply shrugged.

“I think it’s easier in the movies because the cops always stop the killer before he gets to the end and they never have to ask these questions,” Parks said with a sigh. “But really? What is his ultimate goal? It’s obvious he’s enjoying this so I don’t see him stopping. But then what? If you look at these murders, they’ve gotten more and more elaborate. At first this was a mission. The murders had a purpose. But he’s come to like them. He’s thriving off the thrill of the murder and the game of cat and mouse with us. I don’t know if he’ll finish after these ten like he might have originally planned. This has become so much more to him. It’s become . . . it’s become an addiction for him. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that these ten are different. There’s a connection between them all. There’s a reason he originally picked these ten.”

“We know that most of them are connected one to the next,” Fairmont said. “Like a chain letter.”

“No,” Parks said, still staring at the board. “There’s more to it. There’s one central connection between all of these people and the killer. He knows them all.”

“Of course, he’s killing them all.” Fairmont wasn’t sure what more to say.

“What set him off?” Parks wondered. “Why did he start this series of killings? Something set him off. A catalyst. What was it?” Parks turned around and faced the rest of the room. “The beginning. What was the beginning? What started this all?”

“That’s what we don’t know.” Fairmont shrugged.

“Allison Tisdale,” Hayward answered as he leaned back in his chair and repeatedly clicked a pen in his left hand. “She was the first murder, right?”

“And her connection?” Parks asked. “We already tried her.”

“And if her murder is what started all of this. How?” Hayward continued. “Her sin, according to the kid’s chart, is what? An affair? I don’t know about you but when it comes to murders, good, old-fashioned jealousy is more often than not a very simple motive. One of the oldest in the Bible.”

“An affair?” Fairmont rebuked. “That’s what we’re sa
ying now? That’s what started all of this?”

“What if we’re looking at this all wrong?” Hayward
asked. “What if this was a simple homicide? To begin with.  A simple motive. Jealousy. Then a fit of rage. What if this was all a more personal murder? Tisdale discovers his wife’s infidelity and kills her. Then, in an attempt to cover his tracks and throw us off, he elaborated. Took what tools he had available to him and used them to take the heat off him and direct it onto other possibly unrelated victims. And on the journey, he went overboard in trying to cover his tracks.”

“You’re saying Douglas Tisdale?” Parks asked, looking back at the murder board. “But we’ve already checked him, and he was cleared. We had a squad car parked outside his house, and they said he never left during the second and third murders.”

“And he had an alibi,” Fairmont said. “For his wife’s murder.”

“No, he didn’t,” Hayward rebutted. “Not according to the murder book. He was at home. Unaccounted for. When the other murders began, you simply wrote him off. Did you check his alibis for any of the other murders? They say they never saw him leave his house, but did they actually see him in it the whole time? Windows open, putting on a show to make sure the world knew he had an alibi? Or was he simply last seen walking through his front door and they don’t know for sure?”

Parks looked to Fairmont, who shook his head, and turned to Hayward, who shrugged. They turned to Tippin, who was off in his own world, not focused on anyone else in the room while he took in what Hayward had just said.

“Milo?” Parks called out.

“No,” Tippin said, coming back to focus. “We never went back to him. We just wrote him off, like you said. Plus . . .”

“Plus what?”

“Don’t forget the reason he was our original prime suspect. What he teaches.” Tippin let everyone think for a second. “Biochemistry and molecular biology. He has the know how to pull this all off.”

“Dammit. All right. It’s enough to at least find him and pick him up. Just to question him. We don’t know anything for certain, yet. If it is him, then chances are he’s not around anymore.”

Fairmont and Hayward started out of the office, but Parks held Tippin back a second while the room cleared out.

“I was wondering if you could stay here and do som
ething for me,” Parks said.

“Uh, sure,” Tippin said, looking around and realizing they were alone.

“You’re good with the computers. And you spent all summer working on uploading our past case files. So what I need is a search.”

“Okay. What?”

“Poisonings in LA County going back the last two years. Maybe even as far back as five.”

“Sure thing,” Tippin said. “I can do that, no problem. Homicides from poisonings. I’ll have something for you
when you get back from Tisdale’s.”

“No,” Parks said, stopping Tippin. “Not homicides.”

“Not homicides? But our guy is killing people by poisoning them, right?”

“True. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I need you to search for all poison-related deaths ruled accidental, suicide or undetermined.”

“Uh, okay . . .”

“That’s what I need,” Parks said firmly.

“Then consider it done,” Tippin said with a nod and left the room.