The Samaritan (26 page)

Allen stopped feigning disinterest. “A survivor?”

Channing nodded. “A prostitute. Got into a car with a john; felt threatened when he locked the doors; crawled out of a window when she saw a cop car. He let her go and the cops never got the license plate. The date of the incident was slap bang in the middle of the period the Samaritan must have been there.”

“Can we speak to her?”

“Sure,” Channing said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

I could tell Allen was about to protest that, but Channing’s phone rang and he turned away from us to answer it.

“Think we’ll ever get to speak to this survivor?” Mazzucco said under his breath.

Allen shook her head. “No way. But I guess we’ll get the details secondhand. In the meantime, we have enough to keep us occupied,” she said, looking back at the victim.

“Same murder weapon, but no torture, and no attempt to conceal the body,” Mazzucco summarized. “Why the change in MO? It’s been working for him so far.”

“Have you ever heard of the observer effect?” I asked.

Mazzucco glanced at me, as though he’d forgotten I was there. “Sure,” he said carefully. “By observing something, you change it.”

“That’s right. You found his dump site; you uncovered the other murders. He knows he’s being watched now, and that’s changing his behavior.”

Allen took a couple of steps back from the body and rubbed her right temple. “Well, it hasn’t changed it in any good way.”

I turned my eyes from Allen and looked at the slight, motionless figure that had so recently been a living, breathing person—a person who had died to make a specific point.

Mazzucco spoke up. “I think he wants to send us a message. He’s not afraid to keep going. He’s not going to hide from us.”

“Message received,” Allen said.

“But this tells us other things, too,” I said. “Maybe it tells us more about him than he wants it to.”

51

At first, the Samaritan could barely believe the evidence of his own eyes.

It had been a minor risk, returning to the alley after the police had arrived, but only a minor one. It was something he’d done before. In a big city like this one, with all kinds of bystanders attracted to the aftermath of violence like moths to a flame, there was plenty of cover. There was nothing to distinguish him from the other people. He fit right in. Even if one of the cops had a moment of divine inspiration and decided to accost, or even search him, there was nothing to tie him to the woman in the alley. No blood had gotten on him when he’d cut the woman’s throat. His hands were long practiced, and he knew how to avoid the torrent when necessary.

The only item he had on his person that might raise questions was the magnetic tracker in his pocket. It would be simple enough to palm and drop if he needed to, and anyway, the device was so small and unobtrusive that it could pass for a parking token.

He’d made sure to arrive after the police had set up a cordon, so he could mingle with the crowd on the civilian side and observe them at work from afar. He’d spent a satisfying few minutes watching the comings and goings of the cops and the feds, listening to the speculations of the media people and the civilians around him. He’d been on the point of leaving when an unmarked gray Ford had rounded the corner at speed and parked not far from the crowd. He wasn’t surprised by the two people who got out: Detectives Allen and Mazzucco, the primaries assigned to his case. But then a blue Chevy had pulled up behind them and stopped—certainly not a police vehicle. And yet Mazzucco and Allen had hung back, waiting for the driver to get out. There was a flurry of activity among the media as one of the uniformed cops approached the barrier. Some shouted questions, but the Samaritan barely noticed. The driver’s door of the blue Chevy opened and a man in a dark suit stepped out.

He was a few years older, and his appearance had changed, but the Samaritan recognized him instantly. It was something about the way he moved, the way his gaze read the street. The man in the suit nodded at Allen, and then his eyes started to sweep over the crowd: a precaution, something hardwired into him. The Samaritan put a hand up to cover his face, masking the gesture by appearing to be scratching his forehead. He turned back toward the alley, looking in the same direction as the rest of the crowd, but out of the corner of his eye he monitored the three new arrivals.

Him
. What was
he
doing here?

Before the question was fully formed, he had an answer. As soon as the killings across the country had started to be uncovered, he’d known something like this was a possibility. The possibility that someone from his old life would recognize his signature, understand the significance of what he was doing. So this was who they’d decided to send for him. Or had they?

Allen spoke to the cop at the barrier, who seemed to know her. The cop asked a question, looking warily at the man in the suit. The Samaritan took a chance and moved a few steps closer, close enough to make out Allen’s words: “ . . . helping us out. His name’s Blake.”

Blake
. He was calling himself Blake now.

The Samaritan hung back from the crowd after the two detectives and the man in the suit entered the alley. No one noticed him walking back down the street, brushing against the back bumper of the Chevy as he stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street. No one saw the small magnetic device he slipped under the bumper.

52

“This tells us more about him than he wants it to?” Allen repeated. “What do you mean by that?” Allen asked.

Blake didn’t answer for a moment. He was still looking at the body sitting against the wall, but his eyes seemed to gaze right through it.

“I need a little time to think,” he said finally, snapping out of his thoughts. Then he told Allen and Mazzucco he’d call them first thing and, with that, headed back toward the crime scene tape and out into the street. Allen noticed the way Agent Channing’s eyes watched him as he passed by, though he still appeared to be engaged in a phone call.

Allen looked back at Mazzucco, who was also watching Blake leave, a thoughtful expression on his face.

“He’s growing on you,” Allen said.

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Mazzucco turned back to her. “You could use some downtime too, Jess. You’ve been working this thing flat-out since Sunday. Not to mention you could have been killed tonight. Why don’t you follow Blake’s example and get back to this in the morning? I got this.”

Allen opened her mouth to object, but the look in Mazzucco’s eyes said he’d been plenty accommodating today, and he was standing firm on this one. He probably wasn’t naive enough to think she’d go back home and actually sleep, but he could make sure she took a step back. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world, all things considered.

Channing had wound up his phone call and was coming back toward the body as Allen made her way out of the alley. She ducked under the tape and ran the gauntlet of media, keeping her head down and avoiding the cameras and phones and recorders thrust in her face as best she could. There would probably be some kind of press briefing once the body was taken away. Probably Agent Channing as well as Lawrence and the chief. It would be interesting to watch on the late news, if only to see who was taking the lead.

Because her eyes were on the sidewalk, she started when she almost walked straight into the chest of a tall man standing on the edge of the crowd. He wore a leather jacket and a red and blue LA Clippers ball cap, and had been so fixated on the activity beyond the tape that he obviously hadn’t noticed her coming. Irritated, she grunted, “Police, get out of the way.” The man frowned and stepped aside and then turned his attention back in the direction of the alley.

Allen shook her head. The only problem with sealed perimeters was that they had to stop somewhere—she hated dealing with the reporters and the morbidly fascinated bystanders.

She took her phone out and made a quick call for an update on Gryski. He was stable in Northwest Community Hospital and had already been charged and fingerprinted. At that point, he’d admitted to his real name: Stefan Sikorski. The name had been quicker to run than the prints, of course, and had come back suggesting a good reason why he’d fired on them. Sikorski already had separate convictions for burglary and aggravated assault, and at the moment Allen and Mazzucco had arrived at his apartment, he was being sized up as the prime suspect for a local armed robbery.

“Thank you, Three Strikes,” Allen groaned. The so-called Three Strikes law had been amended a few times over the years to cut down on incidences of people being sent down for twenty-five for a minor charge like shoplifting, but a third violent felony conviction for Sikorski would have been more than enough for him to fall foul of the policy. Reason enough to fire on two cops, if he thought he was cornered. He’d had nothing to lose.

Allen thanked the officer on the other end of the line and hung up. As she approached her parked car, she heard a voice call from behind her.

“Detective Allen? Come on, just five seconds.”

She sighed as she turned around and saw a familiar, smiling face: Eddie Smith. The mutation, as Mazzucco had called him. He smiled apologetically, hands out from his body in supplication.

“Anything you can give me?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, Smith.”

“But it is him, right? The Samaritan?”

“I can neither confirm nor—”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “How about telling me who the new guy is?”

“Excuse me?”

Smith glanced back toward the alley, then back to her. “The guy in the suit who arrived with you and Mazzucco. He’s not a cop, is he?”

“He’s helping us out. He’s a specialist.”

“A specialist?” Smith’s eyes were focused, and she could tell this was the real reason he’d stopped her. Personnel behind the barricades was limited to feds, cops, and techs. A civilian was the odd man out. Smith had obviously sniffed a story, a new angle on the case. Allen decided to downplay Blake’s involvement. She didn’t know him well, but neither did she think he was the kind to do interviews.

“Yeah,” she said with disinterest. “You know, profiling stuff. Hasn’t gotten us any closer to catching this bastard. I guess we’ll check back in with him in a few days if we don’t have anything better by then.”

Smith pursed his lips and nodded. “Sure. One more question?”

Allen let out an exasperated grunt. She wanted to keep this guy on her side, but there were limits. “One.”

He paused for effect and leaned in. “This is him, right? The Samaritan?” The grin broke through at the end as he acknowledged he was pushing his luck.

Allen opened her car door and turned away from him. “Good night, Smith.”

53

I cruised the streets of downtown for a while after I left Allen and Mazzucco, keeping an eye out for hotels that looked quiet.

LA’s downtown district was unlike any I’d ever been in. From afar, the skyscrapers and lights fooled you into thinking it was the hub of the city, and maybe during the daytime that was partly true. But in the evening, the offices closed down and the commuters drove back out to Santa Monica and Glendale and Encino, spreading themselves back out across the city. There were still people around, of course: cleaners, occasional cops and city workers, the homeless, but no crowds. Compared to cities like New York or Paris or London, cities that burst into a parallel nocturnal life after sundown, it was dead. It was strange: a nest of shining skyscrapers and million-dollar businesses by day, a comparative ghost town by night. It reminded me of one of those old horror movies where the inhabitants of a village carry on as normal by day but retreat indoors by dark to shelter from the creatures of the night.

I switched the radio on and cycled through various talk stations until I hit music. Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” The eerie harmonica combined with the solitary environment brought my mind back to my quarry and his habit of picking lone victims in deserted areas. Before Crozier had returned to Los Angeles, it had been his get-out-of-jail-free card—the lack of witnesses. Some of the people he’d preyed upon had been society’s forgettables: bums and prostitutes and addicts. People who could be taken quickly and quietly and were barely missed, if at all. Others, like Sergeant Peterson, had been missed, but their killer had been careful to leave no trace of them. If there’s no body, it’s impossible to conclusively decide a disappearance is the result of foul play.

I thought about how the MO had changed subtly in Los Angeles, moving from an almost random victim profile to a very definite type: young, dark-haired women alone in cars. I couldn’t be certain from the evidence I’d seen, but I’d gotten the sense he’d spent more time with these victims than with the ones in the other states. I wondered again what that meant. And then I started thinking about how the MO had changed once again, with the newest victim.

Mazzucco had been right, of course. The Samaritan was sending us a message, letting us know he did not back down from the challenge now that his activities were public knowledge. But it did something else, as well. He’d decided not to waste any time with this woman. She hadn’t been held for any length of time—had most likely been taken direct from her car to the alley in which she was killed. She hadn’t been tortured. She hadn’t been stripped of her clothes. He’d made no attempt to bury or conceal her body, despite the fact that there was a nearby row of Dumpsters in the alley. He could have placed the body in one of those and probably prolonged the search for at least another hour or two.

So why hadn’t he? The only answer was because he didn’t
want
to prolong the search. He wanted this body to be found as quickly as possible. And the only reason for that was misdirection.

I was well versed in identifying misdirection. The people I went after often knew someone would come looking for them, and so they took pains to cover their tracks. They left red herrings; they used false names. If they had any sense at all, they departed from their usual routine, if they had one. From there, it was a matter of second-guessing the person you were chasing, separating deliberate misdirection from happenstance. I was looking for the same things with the Samaritan now. It meant I had to focus not on what he’d done this time, but on what he hadn’t done.