The Samaritan (15 page)

Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up: Mazzucco’s number flashed up on the screen. She hesitated a second and decided to let it ring out. She wanted to catch up with her partner to see if he’d had any luck canvassing the gas stations, but she could call him back once the twenty minutes had passed.

It didn’t take long to start finding what she was looking for.

It was impossible to be sure without a closer examination of the individual cases, but when you knew what to look for, a grisly pattern started to emerge. The search was complicated by the fact that she wasn’t searching for one kind of crime: she had to consider not just the open and unsolved torture murders over the past two and a half years, but also deaths where the body had decomposed to the point the cause of death could not be ascertained. She also had to consider unresolved disappearances that could fit the profile. Interestingly, she began to see that the variety of the DC killings had not been an aberration. The victim profile in each state seemed to range much more widely than the type the killer had targeted in LA. She wondered if that meant anything.

Allen found potential cases in no less than six states. In each case, the victims had been found in a remote location with torture wounds and at least one cut from an unusual ragged blade. Once again, the victim profile, disposal method, and official cause of death varied, but the ragged wounds remained a constant that was there only when you looked closely.

Even more interestingly, someone had already made one connection between a confirmed murder and a disappearance taking place months apart: a woman in Kentucky and a teenage boy in Iowa. It looked like the killer hadn’t been quite as careful in those cases. It appeared he’d used the same abduction method on both occasions—and Allen felt a shiver as she saw what it was. Both victims had stopped for gas late at night, and surveillance footage had shown somebody getting into their unlocked vehicles while they paid. The footage was typically low-quality in both cases, and the suspect kept his face away from the cameras both times, but the reports indicated that the working assumption was that this was the same guy. They’d even come up with a name for him: the Attendant. But then there had been no more similar cases. The leads had dried up, and no one ever proved it was the same guy. Allen thought it was. And she thought it was her guy.

“Time’s up.”

Allen jerked her head around and saw the tech standing behind her with a large cup of coffee from Starbucks.

“Get what you need?” he said, when she didn’t say anything.

“Yeah. And then some.”

28

After I left Boden’s house, I drove until I found the 101 and then headed west, thinking about my next move.

Crozier would not be easy to find. I wouldn’t be able to locate him through any of the standard techniques. For a start, I knew he would have left that name behind a long, long time ago. Shedding it like a dead skin, probably as soon as he’d left Winterlong. Phone and credit and vehicle records would be no use to me. He would most likely stay far away from anyplace I could tie to his former life. I knew this because he would have done all of the things I had done to become invisible.

I stopped in Hollywood to grab something to eat, passing a cemetery that gave me an idea for something to check on later. I found a quiet-looking diner on Santa Monica Boulevard and took a seat at the back. I ordered a cheesesteak and a cup of coffee. While I waited for my order, I checked out the few other customers. Another of my habits. There were less than a dozen other patrons, but in a melting pot like LA, this random sample of humanity cut across boundaries of gender and age and race and appearance.

Crozier’s appearance, in all likelihood, would be different. I remembered him as a tallish, slender man with unkempt blond hair and an untidy mustache. Almost all of the personnel I’d known in elite units took a fierce pride in their relative freedom from the strict grooming regulations of the conventional military. In a sense, cultivating a scruffy, individualistic look
was
the regulation. I often thought that if you wanted to differentiate yourself as the devil-may-care, nonconformist rebel in your special operations team, the quickest way to do so was to keep your hair neatly trimmed, shave twice a day, and polish your boots every night before you hit the bunk.

At the side of my table was a wooden menu holder that held a couple of regular menus plus a paper children’s menu and a little plastic packet of colored pencils. I took the children’s menu out and placed it face down on the table, giving me a blank sheet. I used the blue pencil and started to sketch a rough likeness of Crozier the way I’d known him. The hair, the mustache, the general shape of his face and jaw. I had to stop myself from giving him the mirrored shades he wore habitually. I closed my eyes and tried to recall what his eyes had looked like without them, and then I filled them in. I looked at it for a couple of seconds. Not bad, but definitely not perfect either. The eyes were hard to get right.

I started to draw the face again, alongside the first likeness. I kept the general shape, but this time I tried shorter hair and removing the mustache. This one took longer, because it was pure speculation. I didn’t even have the dusty mental picture to draw on. When I’d finished, I looked at the new face for a few seconds. The eyes still weren’t right. I looked back at the old one, comparing the two. I sighed. The clean-shaven version looked utterly anonymous, and for a good reason, I guessed. I had no way of knowing how Crozier might have changed his appearance. He could have grown his hair longer instead of trimming it, cultivated a full beard. He could have shaved his head completely, or succumbed to male pattern baldness. He could have started wearing glasses, or even colored contact lenses.

When the police use a sketch artist or a computer to generate a composite image of a suspect and end up with something so generic as to be useless, they call it a ghost. This was worse than that. I didn’t even have a ghost in front of me; I had a figment of my imagination. It was—

“Not bad.”

I looked up to see the waiter, who’d appeared with my cheesesteak. He was a husky, twenty-something guy in a black short-sleeved shirt.

“Thanks for the critique,” I said.

The waiter beamed at me. “He’s hot. Who is he?”

I thought about the question for a second. “I’m really not sure.”

The waiter gave me a nonplussed look and put the sandwich down in front of me. “Enjoy.”

I ate quickly and turned down dessert but asked for another coffee. While I drank it, I checked some local and national news websites on my phone. Nothing much was new.

The Samaritan Killings
.

I thought about that MO some more. It didn’t seem likely that he’d leave the breakdowns to chance, which was just one more element that reminded me of Crozier. One of the
LA Times
pieces mentioned that anyone with information should contact Detectives Allen or Mazzucco in Robbery Homicide Division. There was an 800 number, too, but I didn’t want to call from the cell, since I’d already had to dispose of my burner.

He was out there somewhere. Crozier.
The Samaritan
. I thought back to the quiet, reserved monster I’d been acquainted with, and for the first time since I started in this line of work, I felt a strange sense of apprehension about taking on a job. I wondered briefly if it could be just because this was the first time I’d decided to go to work without a client. Even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew that was bullshit. The Samaritan needed to be stopped, and it probably had to be me who stopped him. That wasn’t what was giving me pause.

I’d spent the previous few years being scrupulously careful not to cross paths with anybody from Winterlong. I wasn’t sure that my former employers would have made the connection yet, but they would in time, particularly if Crozier was caught, booked, and fingerprinted. If that happened, there would be some difficult questions to answer. Questions that would lead to nothing but dead ends for the cops and probably even the feds, but that would result in other, less accountable people taking an interest in the case. And in anyone else involved.

I knew I could find Crozier on my own. It would take time, but I could do it. It would be safer, cleaner to resolve the problem without ever coming into contact with local law enforcement.

There was only one problem with that. The Samaritan had already taken at least three victims in Los Angeles over a two-week period. I wasn’t sure why he’d returned to his hometown, if something personal had dragged him back to his roots, but I was certain that he wasn’t done with killing people yet. Killing people here, or wherever he went next, if he elected to move on once again. I would track him down if it took a week or a month or a year. I would track him down and I would stop him, one way or the other. But more victims would certainly die in that time. More Kelly Bodens.

I drank the last from my cup and made my decision. I nodded at the waiter and asked him for the check and one other thing. “Do you know where there’s a pay phone around here?”

His face crumpled in incredulity. “What is this, 1986?”

“I’m old-fashioned like that.”

He shrugged as though it was my funeral and pointed across the street. “I think they still have one at the 7-Eleven.”

Three minutes later, I was speaking to a bored-voiced woman who sounded like she’d been taking the same call all day.

“I’d like to speak to Detective Allen, if he’s available.”

A sigh. “He’s a she. This is about the case out in the hills?” The tone of voice suggested the operator wasn’t exactly expecting a major breakthrough from this call.

“That’s right.”

“What is the nature of your information?”

“I kind of need to speak to Allen about that.”

Another sigh, this one more audible. “Name and phone number.”

“I’ll call back,” I said, and hung up. I remembered from a previous job that Robbery Homicide was based out of LAPD headquarters at Parker Center. Another quick Internet check told me they’d moved since the last time I’d been in town. RHD was now based out of the new Police Administration Building, on West First Street. There was another number, which I called.

“LAPD Homicide Special Section, how may I direct your call?”

“Detective Allen, please.”

“May I say who’s calling?”

“My name’s Englehart; she’s expecting my call.”

There was a pause, and I wondered if that bluff would be enough to get me through, and what I’d say if it did. I didn’t get to find out.

“She’s not available, Mr. Englehart. Can I take a message, or redirect you to voicemail?”

I kept my voice light, unconcerned. “That’s okay. I’ll call her back. When would be a good time?”

“I’m not sure about today, but you could leave a message.”

I thanked her and hung up. I did a quick Internet search to see if anything came up relating to a female Detective Allen and found a couple of interesting points. The only female homicide cop by that name I could find a mention of was one Jessica Allen. She was a recent transplant to the city and had left her old department in Washington, DC, under lingering suspicion in an evidence-fabrication case that had seen her partner sent down on a corruption charge. The articles on the case in the Washington media mentioned her track record for disciplinaries on minor insubordination matters. On the other hand, her clearance rate on murder cases was exemplary. At any rate, nothing had stuck to Allen as far as the serious corruption investigation went. But I knew there would have been whispers. There are always whispers around something like that.

I didn’t know how receptive Detective Allen might be to an offer of assistance, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to make one. From my limited experience of the LAPD, they took a fierce pride in keeping things entirely in-house.

So what next?

It was Los Angeles, so at least I knew one thing: whatever came next would have to begin with a drive.

29

Allen and Mazzucco met halfway between their respective starting points, at a deli on Vine Street in Hollywood. They ordered sandwiches and sat on stools at the window. Allen let Mazzucco talk first, knowing she’d need a little time to work up to what she had to tell him.

“So I drove two different routes from the bar in Santa Monica to Dutton’s place last night. I passed four gas stations altogether. Three of those places, nobody remembered seeing a Porsche the night before, but I got the security tapes anyway.”

“They actually had tapes?”

“You know what I mean. That stuff’s all digital now.”

“Makes life easier.”

“Makes getting the footage easier; doesn’t make the rest of the process easier. You still have to watch the damn things. I got the Saturday-night footage from each place emailed to me in a ZIP file. I was going to start looking through it this morning.”

“So what about the fourth place?”

“I was getting to that. The fourth place, they asked me to come back today, because the guy who worked Saturday night was on day shift. I’ll be honest. I wasn’t going to make a special trip out there. But he called this morning and I asked him if he remembered a silver Porsche. Jackpot. Right before the rain started, a girl matching Kelly Boden’s description came in and put some gas in the tank, paid in cash. I guess she wanted to make sure she had enough to get her to Dutton’s place.”

“Only she never made it.”

“That’s right.”

Allen thought about the Iowa and Kentucky cases—the man who’d gotten into the vehicles at gas stations. “Did you find her on the tape?” she asked cautiously.

“Yeah.”

“Let me guess—she parks, goes to pay for the gas, and somebody gets into the car, right?”

Mazzucco looked at her, surprised. “Not quite.”

“What do you mean?”

Mazzucco took his phone from an inside pocket and tapped into the gallery. “I saved the clip.”