The Samaritan (28 page)
The entire half hour from the end of the Samaritan’s phone call until now had been one long period of frantic activity. I’d barely had time to think, only to act on instinct. One action after another, following the trail, narrowing down the options. It was only now that my options had been reduced to one clear pathway that I took a second to wonder if I’d been meant to follow this trail all along. It was almost too simple: one action after another, leading to an inevitable conclusion. And, as I’d been so quick to brag a little earlier in the night, the Samaritan knew what I could do.
Either the Samaritan had been a little careless and a little sloppy, or he had been very careful and very well organized. I thought about how I would engineer this situation if I were him. I decided that it wouldn’t be so difficult—the trick would be to make sure it didn’t seem too good to be true. If I was right about this, then it meant I was about to walk straight into a killer’s trap.
I put a little more weight on my sprained ankle. It still hurt, but it was solid enough. I considered my options. I could call Allen and have her come out here herself—or better yet, with backup. But that would take time. There was probably more than one exit from the building, and I could be in only one place. There was still a chance that this wasn’t a trap, that the warehouse was a dead end. Perhaps the Samaritan hadn’t watched for the five forty a.m. to Newark taking off before he dialed the number of my hotel. Perhaps he hadn’t called in a fire in this neighborhood to 911 a moment before.
I reached into my pocket for my wallet and located the appropriate size pick. Ten seconds later, the lock had been sprung. I held my breath, turned the handle, and gently pulled the door toward me. The rusted hinges screeched, but only a little.
I got the door open all the way and stood on the threshold, listening. My eyes could just barely make out shapes and hard edges within, so it wasn’t all the way dark. The air that escaped from the doorway smelled musty, abandoned. From somewhere inside, I heard a brief flapping of wings. And something else. I had to move my head closer to the doorway to confirm I was really hearing it. Music. Something old-time, from the thirties or forties. A crooner tune. I took one step and then another into the darkness.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust further, but I soon realized there was just enough light to make out my immediate surroundings. I glanced up and saw the reason why: a big hole in the corrugated roofing thirty feet above me was letting in moonlight and a reflected glow from the streetlights. Ahead of me was a corridor lined with plywood walls. I guessed that the open-plan warehouse floor had been partitioned into separate rooms—offices or workshops or something. About twenty yards ahead of me down the corridor was a metal stairway that led up to a second level spanning only half of the interior space. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought that was where the sound of the music was emanating from.
I blinked a couple of times to hasten my eyes’ adjustment to the dark and scanned the concrete floor ahead. It was pitted with holes, weeds were sprouting up in some of the corners, and there were piles of scrap metal and machine parts lying abandoned here and there. I started walking toward the stairway, making sure to avoid the pitfalls and keeping my tread as light as I could with a sprained ankle. As I walked, I passed doors that led off into the partitioning. I tried a couple of them and found them locked. I reached the foot of the stairs and looked upward.
The music was louder here. It sounded like Bing Crosby, or someone of that vintage. I hadn’t figured Crozier for a fan of old-time pop music. The stairs looked rickety, the guardrail missing on one side. I put a cautious foot on the first step and settled my weight onto it. It held without complaint, so I proceeded upward. I’d made it almost to the top when a flash of movement burst in front of my face. I rocked backward on my heels, grabbing the guardrail, before I realized I’d been startled by a pigeon. Or rather, we’d startled each other. The bird flapped upward before gliding through the torn opening in the ceiling.
I let a slow breath out and paused to listen. Nothing but my heartbeat and the music. I climbed another step and saw a thin line of light in my sight line, which was just above the level of the upper floor. The light was shining through the gap at the bottom of a stack of wooden pallets. I made the top step and moved onto the upper level. The platform was floored with rigid boards suspended from the roof beams, rather than supported from below. The stacks of pallets created a high wall directly in front of me. The light and the music were coming from farther back. I saw a narrow gap in the pallets thirty feet to my left. It required sidestepping along an empty strip of floor no more than eight inches wide, with no fence or guardrail to separate me from a twenty-foot drop. I put my free hand on the pallets and started to move carefully toward the gap. I glanced down and realized that the partitions had no ceilings of their own. It was like looking down into a wine box divided into squares by crisscrossed cardboard. In the dim light, I noticed that some of the boxes were empty, and some were filled with unidentifiable shapes.
Another couple of birds took flight as I disturbed their sanctuary. I could be as quiet as I liked, but if there was anybody waiting for me behind the wall of pallets, the birds would be giving him all the warning he needed. I took comfort in the fact that neither the music nor the light had been switched off.
I made the gap in the pallets and stepped gratefully in off the ledge. There was a narrow corridor twenty feet long and a foot wide between the stacks. The light spilled out from the far end. It was a small, dull light, probably from a low-wattage table lamp. I saw something else, too. A dark red stain pooling out from the source of the light. The music stopped and there was a moment of utter silence. I was almost relieved when another tune kicked in.
I recognized the song from somewhere, though I couldn’t identify the voice of the crooner, who’d probably died of old age thirty years ago. It was all about the girl of the singer’s dreams. I walked toward it, my eyes flicking from side to side for any ambush point that might be concealed in the wall of pallets. I glanced above me and saw nothing but a corrugated ceiling, pendant lights with shattered bulbs hanging every few yards. As I got closer to the blood pool, I could see that it was starting to coagulate, but only just. That meant it had been spilled relatively recently.
I made the corner, paused, and stepped out into the light.
Shit.
There was a woman’s body on the wood floor. She was nude and was lying on one side, her wrists bound with rope. I could see deep incisions on her back and on the backs of her legs. A blood-soaked mop of blond hair covered her face like a shroud, but it didn’t obscure the ragged gash across her throat. I cursed out loud and fought the urge to break something. A voice in the back of my head spoke in a measured, matter-of-fact tone:
This one is on you
. The Samaritan, far from backing down at the challenge, was escalating his activities. This particular victim, whoever she was, had died because of me. To send me a message.
I took my attention from the body for the time being and surveyed the rest of the scene. Someone had created a hidden grotto within the stacks of pallets. The space was about ten feet by fifteen. The light came from a battery-powered lantern that had been placed on one of the horizontal beams supporting the ceiling. There was a small office desk in the far corner. There were three items on the desk: a cheap stereo, from which the music was coming; a heavily bloodstained chamois cloth; and something that looked a little like a small black leather briefcase that was open on its hinges but facing away from me. Attached to one of the ceiling support beams near me was a stub of rope, severed just below the knot. I didn’t need to look back at the corpse’s bound wrists to know that the two lengths of rope would match. The bastard had hung her up while he had his fun.
I looked back at the body. The victim was tall and blond, different body type from the first three victims. Another deliberate choice, I thought. It fit perfectly with my working theory on what the Samaritan was trying to do.
I maneuvered around the body, being careful to avoid the pool of red, and approached the desk. I reached into an inside pocket of my jacket and took out a pair of surgical gloves. I put the gloves on before I reached out and hit the off button on the CD player, cutting off the singer in the middle of another declaration of undying devotion. I turned my attention to the briefcase, only it wasn’t really a briefcase. It was more like a box with a leather cover. I’d seen boxes like that before, and I had a pretty good idea what it would contain. I reached out and took hold of the open lid, using it to swivel the box around so I could see the contents. The interior was lined in red velvet and there were shaped depressions that snugly held a collection of knives. Scalpels, paring knives, boning knives. Like a hunter’s blade set mocked up to look like a surgeon’s kit. But no surgeon would have had a use for the largest blade in the case.
It was an ornate dagger called a Kris, a ceremonial blade of Javanese origin. It had a gilded handle with swirling patterns on it. The blade was eight inches long and curved back and forward in a jagged pattern. The razor-sharp edges glinted in the lamplight. The weapon held an odd attraction. I wanted to pick it up and feel its weight, test the sharpness of its blade. I ignored the impulse, just on the unlikely chance that the Samaritan had left his prints. Even if he had, I reminded myself that they wouldn’t do any good.
I was so absorbed by looking at the blade that I didn’t notice the sound of approaching rotor blades until they were practically overhead.
I heard a smash of glass from one of the windows downstairs, followed by a thud of something heavy hitting the concrete floor. It was followed by a second sequence of the same. I moved quickly back to the narrow corridor that looked back toward the warehouse floor and saw two fat clouds of smoke rising to the rafters. The Samaritan had trapped me, all right, just not in the way I was expecting. I batted the battery lamp off its perch and it crunched on the ground, plunging the death room into blackness. From outside, I heard a screech of feedback from a megaphone and then a gruff, commanding voice.
“This is the LAPD. You are surrounded. Lay down your weapons and come out of the building.”
“Hello?” Allen was still only semi-awake when she hit the button to receive the call from Mazzucco—she had been worried it might be Denny again—but his next words shook her out of the sleep haze immediately.
“I just spoke to McCall—he says they got a heads-up on the Samaritan. They’re surrounding an old warehouse down in Inglewood. They’re making the incursion right now.” Mazzucco’s voice was strained, and she could sense his controlled anger.
“What the
fuck
?”
“Ow. You don’t need to yell, Jess. I know. He says they tried to get ahold of us earlier, but—”
“Bullshit. I’ve had my cell beside me all night.”
“Me too. Jess, we can talk about it—”
“Got it. Just give me the address and I’ll meet you there. Gimme a sec.” She hunted around for a pen and something to write on. “That
fucker
.”
“I know.”
She located a makeup pencil and scrawled the location of the warehouse down on an unopened bill from her cable company. Without bothering to say goodbye, she hung up and threw on the clothes she’d been wearing the previous night. There was no time for niceties.
She took the 405 south. The sun was not yet up, but the early-morning traffic was already beginning to harden the arteries that crisscrossed LA. The whole drive, she was fighting to forget about how much she wanted to rip Don McCall’s stupid goddamn head off and focus on what was important. Who had provided the lead on the Samaritan? How did they know they needed to treat it seriously? How had McCall managed to steal it from under them? Her next thought was of Blake. Had he somehow managed to track the killer down to his lair? Maybe he’d been the one to call it in.
She thought not. She’d known Carter Blake less than a day, but she was a good judge of character, and her every instinct told her he was a straight shooter. He might hold back on some things, but she was certain he wouldn’t deliberately cut her out of the loop in favor of a moron like McCall.
She saw the blue lights glancing off windows and walls before she turned the corner into the street the warehouse backed onto. Mazzucco’s car was already there, along with multiple police cruisers and two of McCall’s tactical vans. A helicopter hovered above the scene, its search beam flitting across the low rooftops. She parked and ran to the barriers. McCall was there with one of his men. Mazzucco was there, too, actually jabbing a finger into McCall’s body-armored chest to make his point.
“What the hell is this?” she yelled at him.
McCall turned to look at her. He couldn’t keep the smug grin off his face, or perhaps he didn’t even feel like trying. “What do you know, Allen? I guess I
was
the first to know, huh?”
Something about the way he said that brought Allen up short. The look in his eyes said he was withholding other information from her and was having a good time doing it.
“This is not your investigation, McCall. It’s not even . . .” She looked at the warehouse and immediately recognized a clusterfuck in progress. McCall had deliberately frozen everyone else out and the blame would probably come back to her as the lead. “Where’s SWAT? Where’s the fucking FBI?”
“As I was just saying to your partner, take it up with Lawrence. We got a call; we had to act. You snooze, you lose.”
“We’re going to talk about this later,” Allen said. “Just tell me what the fuck is happening.”
For a second, McCall looked as though he was considering not responding, but then thought better of it. Perhaps he felt he could afford magnanimity. “My guys just went in. We got the two entrances, front and back. We tossed in some flash-bangs and some smoke grenades. Anyone’s in there, they’ll be out here soon.”