Bones of the Barbary Coast (28 page)

33

I
T
IS
BARBARIC," Ray admitted. "That's its allure, right? People get something they need out of it, a connection to something primal. That's my point."

"How did you even hear about this place?"

"A guy at work. He loves this stuff."

Cree sat next to him in the dark car, staring at the grimy three-story factory building, the plywood-blanked windows, and felt her doubts rise again. There were a few lights on over the entry, enough to illuminate the men who were arriving furtively in twos and threes. Two blocks south was a busy thoroughfare, but this was a quiet street that dead-ended at a gate across the entrance to a factory parking lot. It was the kind of neighborhood Cree had been trained since infancy to avoid, and her urban instincts were putting her on edge.

Ray sensed her unease. "We don't have to go in if you really don't want to. I went last week, and it is pretty . . . intense. I just thought—"

"No. We're here, might as well follow through. I want to understand your point."

Cree turned to him and was startled to see that a group of men had appeared near the passenger window, right next to Ray. They were tough-looking guys and they peered into the car with suspicious looks. Cree felt the sizzle of alarm, but Ray just turned his face so they got a better view. They moved on quickly.

Ray chuckled, then checked his watch again and tipped his head toward the factory. "We should probably go in. It's a mob in there, we won't be able to get seats if we don't get in now. But you have to be, um, kind of alert, okay? Probably you should hang onto your purse, put the strap over your shoulder or something. And don't make eye contact—some of the clientele are a little rough around the edges." Ray cracked his door, but hesitated before he opened it, looking back at her with concern. "But I did warn you, right? And you promise you won't think I'm crazy?"

"Duly warned, Ray," she assured him. "So stipulated."

They went into a cigarette-hazed foyer where four bouncers gave them the evil eye and took twenty bucks, then walked dowm a long cement hallway toward a muted hubbub of voices from deep inside the building. Passing a cross corridor, Cree spotted two men jockeying a big crate through a side door. She briefly heard the distant barking and snarling of dogs, cut off suddenly as the door swung shut again.

When her cell phone rang, she grabbed it and hit the talk button before she thought about whether it was wise to answer.

Uncle Bert again. What was with him tonight? She stepped out of the corridor into a doorway and put a finger in her other ear. Again Bert said he was just checking in, but he sounded worried and groped for words. Cree was sure he'd been drinking hard. This time he told her that he had some new information on his theory, and that Ray was definitely implicated. He apologized again for the way he'd talked at his office, even though they'd pretty well smoothed that out. She was cautious as she talked, too aware of Ray standing there, and was glad to cut the connection.

Neither commented on the call as they continued down the corridor.

"So my point is," Ray said, "there's a central idea or concept in play here. People have been trying to get a grip on it for thousands of years. The various kinds of werewolves, that's important to consider because it reveals a lot about human nature, and I agree, people's ideas and reactions were mostly misguided and stupid. But there
is
a truth at the center of it all. A stubborn fact. The werewolf idea was just one attempt to give it a name."

"Give precisely
what
a name?"

They had come to a pair of broad swinging doors, and Ray raised a hand and tapped the chipped gray paint. "This, I think."

* * *

They pushed into a narrow plywood tunnel, then shuffled through into a large room full of jostling bodies and the scent of tobacco and sweaty skin. Once the room must have housed manufacturing equipment, but now it was mostly full of makeshift bleachers, built so that the seats at the walls rose about eight feet higher than the middle of the room. At the center, a sawdust-floored square had been sectioned off in chain-link, about twenty feet on a side, well lit by cone-shaded hanging lamps.

The arena. The pit.

They fought to a seat high against the outer wall, just below a ceiling crossed with ducts and pipes. From here they had a good view of the bright square at the center. Down at the edges of the arena, bookies were taking bets, accepting fistfuls of cash that they passed to hulking banker-bodyguards.

The audience was mixed. Many were Hispanic, working-class men, but there were also quite a few older white guys in expensive casual clothes, plus a good sprinkling of white college kids and some sharply dressed black men. There were some tough-looking, shady types and a few real down-and-outers, but mostly they were men you wouldn't look twice at on the street. Whatever their class or race, they all had something in common: a sharp-eyed air of anticipation, a hyperanimated, sweaty look as if every one of them had some kind of fever.

A commotion broke out across the room. People pressed against the walls as a pair of men came in with a big dirty-yellow dog that strained at its leash. When they got to the pit, they opened a narrow gate and shoved the animal inside, but they kept it pulled hard against the mesh. A moment later a second dog was let into the opposite side, this one a little smaller, dark brown, some Rottweiler or pit bull in the mix. The dogs craned their necks to look at each other, quivering with fear and eagerness. At first they were forcibly restrained by their handlers, but soon both pulled away from the barrier to face each other, standing on hind legs with leashes taut, choking on their collars. The people sitting near Cree and Ray argued about their relative merits. Apparently these weren't great dogs; the better fighters would come out later.

Cree leaned close to Ray's ear.
Do they kill each other?
she was going to ask.
Do they fight to the death?

But her question was drowned out by a roar of voices. The dogs had been loosed.

Cree had thought they'd be wary at first, circling and sparring, but the instant their collars were slipped they flung themselves at each other. They moved so fast she could hardly see them. They collided in the middle of the arena, rising up on hind legs, chest to chest, as both tried for throat holds. Their speed was appalling. After an instant of grappling, they each found a grip and came down on all fours, straining, shaking. The Rottweiler mix was more muscular, but the mustard-colored dog had a better hold, a wide-mouthed clamp on the front of the throat. Their necks twitched and tossed, legs braced and repositioned, hindquarters strained, paws scraped and slid in the sawdust. Always the two growls, gargling, muffled by fur and flesh.

The crowd went crazy as the Rottweiler gave a tremendous twist that threw the yellow dog down. For a moment the brown dog stood above, worrying frantically, but the yellow dog hadn't let go and the Rottweiler weakened and suddenly the yellow dog was up again. The Rottweiler lost its grip as one yellow ear tore in its mouth. It tried for another hold, but abruptly its hind legs splayed and the powerful body dropped into the sawdust. Its growl became a high screaming stifled in its clamped throat. The yellow dog hunched over it, tossing its head With movements of shoulders and neck so powerful the Rottweiler's whole body jerked back and forth. Its legs flailed. The yellow dog's teeth snatched a new hold right under the enemy's chin. The yellow dog's handlers vaulted the sidewall, warily noosed their animal, pulled it away. Ravening, relentless, it strained back at the twitching Rottweiler.

The loser's handlers were slower to come over the fence. The dog's jaws were snapping as the men hoisted it away, but Cree was pretty sure it was dead. The crowd subsided to a quieter gabble as the bookies paid off and private bets were settled.

"I don't know about this," Cree said weakly. It had lasted maybe sixty seconds. So much savagery condensed into one minute, an explosion. Nausea bloomed in her belly. "What're we here for, Ray? What is it you want me to understand?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out. It has to do with the primal self, our animal self. Isn't 'werewolf' just an attempt to give it a name? To understand it?"

Cree shut her eyes. "But why the focus on . . . this?"

"The way it makes you feel."

"All I feel is sick, Ray."

"No! Look at it closely. Please. It upsets me too, believe me—I'm a dog lover! But isn't there something else in the feeling?"

The images came back at her: that furious energy, that mindless singleness of purpose. The raw murderous urge in the straining muscles. Seeing it had blasted energy into her, set every nerve firing. She couldn't deny that it echoed something distantly familiar inside, like an intense memory she couldn't quite recall. It had to do with the energy or living force of the dogs. The sheer elemental power, a tornado compressed into those bodies.

"Like fear," she told him. "But different. The power of it, I don't know, maybe . . . awe."

"Yes! Fear leads to awe which merges right into reverence. 'Fear thy God.' People need something like this to make them remember. To let them feel it again. For a while I thought it was the sheer savagery, the killing—the freedom in letting go completely, maybe we know we're not fully alive without it. But now I'm thinking it's even more basic, it's death itself. Any form of freedom has to accommodate the reality of death. It's uncomfortable for us, but a wise person has to live in the continuous knowledge of death. Has to face that big bad secret we keep from ourselves. Because death weeds weakness and irrelevance out of you! Death is a wolf in the sense that death is a winnower, the way the wolves winnow the deer herds of the sick and frail and keep the bloodlines strong. You live more urgently if you're aware you're going to die. You celebrate your existence and live each moment fully. You become strong. You know what freedom is."

"Aren't there other kinds of freedom?"

Ray didn't seem to hear her. "I mean, look at them! Every last man will walk out of here more energized, more vivid than when he walked in. He'll be a stud with his wife or girlfriend tonight. He'll look in his kids' bedroom doors and love them fiercely. Because for a little while he'll remember he's mortal! He'll feel his life as high drama, tragic, heroic. And that's what he's paid for! That's what he came here for!"

She hardly heard the last words. The noise of the crowd had risen sharply as the next dogs appeared at the outer doors. This time the animals were a little smaller, one a Doberman mix, the other some kind of terrier about the same size. Their handlers pushed them into the pit, and again there was a wait as the bookies finished taking bets for this round. With its head pulled against the mesh, the Doberman strained so hard to see its enemy that its eyes rolled white around the edges.

The prospect of watching another fight gave Cree a panicky feeling. "That's all for me," she said firmly. "I need to leave now."

They stood quickly and began pushing between knees and backs to the end of the row. When they got to the arena floor, she let Ray lead, his size and his face clearing a path for them.

The crowd roared as the dogs were loosed. Cree couldn't help herself, her eyes were drawn to the fury.

"No!" Ray whispered urgently into her ear. "Not the dogs! That's not what we're here for!" And he took her shoulders and turned her to face the other way, toward the bleachers.

All the leaning, craning, excited faces, the open roaring mouths, the scorn and concern and wild-pleasured glow in every one, row upon row. Their collective appetite seemed to swallow her, suck her in, as their eyes mirrored every awful leap and slash, heave and twist. She stood appalled, paralyzed, until Ray pulled her into the corridor and away.

34

R
AYMOND KEPT A nice place. The kitchen had terracotta tiles on the floor, hardwood cabinets, marble countertops, a cute little wine rack. Bert inspected the kitchen and attached dining area, didn't find anything of great interest. Still, he pulled out several plastic evidence bags and scanned the floor carefully. People with dogs had dog hair in their houses. Ray's floor was clean, but Bert knelt and laid his face along the tiles and put the light under the refrigerator and sure enough, several inches back there was a good collection of hair and dust. He used the pry-bar to rake some out and then sealed it into one of his evidence bags.

Check off item number one. One nail in Ray's coffin.

He found more good samples in a space between counter sections and under the dishwasher, then moved on to the living room.

It was a hip sort of place, brick walls painted white, nice oak floors, good rugs, the pad of a swinging bachelor who made good money or had inherited or both. Decent stereo and a collection of older rock 'n' roll and classical music on compact discs. Bert shined his flashlight over the bookshelves, seeing fiction titles, some history and biography, texts on anatomy, medicine, radiology, photography, computer tech. Some dog books, too.

There was a desk beneath one of the windows on the outer wall. Bert snapped on the goosenecked lamp, bent the shade close so it wouldn't spill too much light, and fingered quickly through the stack of papers. Predictably, there were envelopes from Temple and the UC medical school, but there were also some from other path labs. He looked at a few, found a mix of technical lab reports, pay stubs and bills, nothing directly implicating. He went to work on the drawers.

The top drawer held pens, change, keys, calculator, the usual. The checkbook showed regular deposits every two weeks, probably paychecks; Ray made decent money, must add up to a hundred grand a year. The only obvious anomaly was a recent deposit that exactly covered a big check to something called the Moeris Foundation. Bert filed the unusual name in his memory for future inquiries, then put the checkbook back. He looked at his watch and was surprised to find that he'd already used up half of the one hour he'd planned to allow himself here. Had to keep it moving along.

Another drawer held more bills, receipts, extra credit cards, office supplies. More keys. Many were electronic key-cards, the plastic kind used by restricted-access places like labs. He looked closely at them, saw logos but no marking except numeric codes. Ray had keys for a
lot
of doors. Needed for getting in and out of labs and supply rooms at Temple and UC Medical? Or pilfered from his occasional visits to other labs, for other purposes? Another question filed for future consideration.

The lowest drawer held hanging files, well labeled and alphabetized, and Bert immediately saw one of his targets: dogs. A guy with three dogs would have records of shots, licenses, vet bills, maybe pedigrees. He opened the file and began scanning the pages. Fritz, Sadie, Basil: cute names for the vicious threesome he'd just hosed. Bert photographed a bill detailing rabies and distemper boosters and then another that looked like an annual checkup form, listing the dogs by name along with their ages, weights, and vaccination status. None of the dogs was older than six years, the youngest was only three.

He closed the drawer and switched off the light just as headlights crossed the window. He couldn't see out through the heavy, wired glass, but clearly somebody was driving up or driving by. Bert stepped quickly aside, froze, listened. Suddenly his heart was pumping too hard, juicing him. Could they have come back already?

But the lights went on past, blurry orbs that disappeared for only a moment before drifting back the other way. Probably somebody who had just bought some rock in Hunters Point and was looking for an out-of-the-way place to smoke it. Or maybe the other side of that ecosystem, an SFPD patrol car.

Bert finished the living room, went into the bedroom. Another example of tasteful decor, nice spread on the hardwood queen-size bed, good furnishings, some original art on the walls. The dresser top was a litter of the usual stuff, coins, tie-clips, a watch, some breath mints.

And a switchblade knife.

Oh ho,
Bert thought. His first emotion was one of glee, but it was followed hard by a slug of fear for Cree, out there with Ray right now. Abruptly his hands tingled and without thinking about it he yanked out his cell phone and thumbed in Cree's number. If she didn't answer, he'd put out an APB on her car. Then he'd—

But she answered after two rings. He stuttered, unable to admit he'd seen her with Ray, but he told her to stay away from Ray at all costs, that he had a lot to tell her when they got together tomorrow. In the background, he could hear the murmur of many voices, like she was at a bar somewhere. She definitely did not sound like someone speaking under duress, just a little chilly and reserved. He couldn't blame her, the way he probably sounded.

For a moment he stood with the phone still in his hand, feeling relieved and suddenly deeply thirsty for a drink. He wondered where she was. Where Ray was, and how soon he'd return. Time to get focused again.

He snapped open the knife and studied it in the flashlight beam. From the wear on the horn and chrome of the handle, he figured it was not a new weapon but had been in use for many years, maybe something of a keepsake. The blade was long, sharp, and spotless, no trace of residues even at the hinge or in the slot, nothing he could take a scraping of. Too bad. On the other hand, there was a distinctive nick in the otherwise perfect edge, a feature that would surely leave its mark in a wound. He laid the open knife on the dresser, put a quarter next to it for a size reference, then took out his camera and snapped several close-ups.

On to the bedside table. The top drawer held nothing but a bunch of prescription bottles, which he inspected one by one. Most were drug names he didn't know, but from his years at Narcotics he recognized a couple as Class II painkillers, restricted stuff. The labels named several different prescribing doctors and pharmacies, suggesting Ray was doing the shell-game routine to conceal his habit.

So Ray was, among other things, a pharmaceuticals junkie. Bert felt he was getting somewhere now.

The lower drawer contained a half dozen photographs, eight-by-tens facedown on the bottom. Bert got another tingle in his hands. So far he hadn't found anything that looked like a "souvenir," the kind of memento serial killers often took from their crimes, maybe this was Ray's stash. But when he turned them over, he was disappointed to see Ray himself. Much younger, a teenager, bad early-eighties haircut above those pale blue eyes. In one shot he was with a fresh-faced blond girl whose smile showed braces. Ray looked clean-cut, innocent, healthy. Clear skin on an unmarked face.

Funny, Bert thought, there was a drawer like this in his own house. Photos not exactly hidden, just kept private. Megan photos that came out very, very rarely but were very, very important when they did. A ghost of recognition passed through him, a wispy gray phantom of nameless emotion that made him uncomfortable for a moment and then faded quickly.

He checked his watch and realized he had to move faster. He finished the downstairs and then went up the suspended stairway from the living room. At the top, he opened a door, turned left on a small landing, and went up four more steps into a big room that rose all the way to the warehouse roof. Some light came in here, ambient city light from four tall windows. Bert could see huge framed art works on the walls, vague in the dim light. Along one wall were tables with computer monitors and other equipment on them. A workshop or studio.

The buzz in Bert's veins was increasing. Mainly it was the tension of being here, the risk of getting caught, maybe Ray coming home early. But part of it was another feeling he knew well, an instinctive sense he was getting close to something. This was Ray's sanctum sanctorum. Coming up here, he was finally getting into Raymond's head.

He brought the flashlight onto one of the canvasses and saw what it was: an X-ray of a skull, one eye-hole and part of a nose opening, the shell of the cranium a pale curve set against empty dark. The next was the same, and the next. Every one featured part of a skull. Bert had looked at enough autopsy photos, X-rays, and MRIs to know what he was seeing. In the MRIs, he recognized a glow of something irregular inside, too soft-edged to be a bullet, had to be a tumor. In one of the X-rays, the faint outline of a broken hole, a cranial injury that had to have been fatal.

So these were corpses. Ray was bringing home pictures from work. Or had other access to bodies. The guy was a necrophiliac.

Bert felt a twitch of panic. Cree was out there somewhere with this fruitcake at this very moment. He should have followed them! His hand found his cell phone and he almost called her again, then decided he'd only antagonize her.

If he lays a hand on her,
he thought.
One finger.

Hurrying now, he looked over the computer equipment briefly, the sleepy drift of screensaver starfields, and wished he could take the time to pry inside Ray's cyber files. But it would take too long, and he was no computer expert. Suffice to know that Ray had high-end computers and clearly knew his way around them. From the pop-ups, he already knew Ray had some good hacking-type skills.

Back near the stairs again, he put the flashlight in his teeth and opened one of the file cabinets. Fingering through the row of hanging files, he found older bills and receipts, property records, car records, medical, vital papers. And dogs again.

He pulled the dog file and knew he'd hit gold. Dogs didn't live that long. Some of the cases he was looking at were as much as ten and fourteen years old, meaning they couldn't have involved Ray's current animals. But here were the previous dogs: Lizzie, a malamute from ten years ago. Sherlock, a mastiff from the same period. Rat, mixed breed, twelve years ago.

A real dog lover, Cameron.

Bert's spine tingled when he found vet records, including X-rays for dental work on a pit bull from fifteen years ago. This was pure gold, the Crime Lab could maybe match these films with bite impressions on the victims. He lined up selected pages and began snapping photos.

He had already gone well over the time he'd allotted, and the tension was starting to wear on him. He flipped through the other files, didn't find anything worth stopping for, slid shut the last drawer. Then he went to the coffee table to look over the scattering of artsy things, papers, pens. Also a book about werewolves, one on the psychology of serial killers, one on the neurology of violent behavior. For a heartbeat he felt the bitter savor of vindication: Yes, Ray was one seriously fucked-up guy. But behind it came a flood of fear. The thought of something happening to Cree made him shaky and sick. Jelly in the knees. It was a feeling that went back into the shadowed past, the hidden parts of his heart. The pain he'd kept walled off for twenty-six years. What if he'd let it happen again?

Pray to God,
he thought.
Pray to God. Please, not ever again. I am not strong
enough. I can't. Please.

He found his phone, punched in her number, then closed the phone before the connection was made. One more call and she really would think he was crazy. He was too shook up, the tension undoing him. Time to go.

There was a drafting table near the stairs, and he panned his light over it, just a quick look. Nothing of interest. But there were big pieces of paper taped to the wall above it, and when he shined his light on them he saw that they were maps. Topo maps that showed every back road and house. Rural areas, state parks. There were pencilled-in lines wandering among the topo marks, apparently routes and paths. Bert lost his breath as he read the names of the places. One was San Bruno Mountain State Park.

San Bruno, where that kid had been killed by dogs or coyotes only four years ago.

He was fumbling for his camera when the windows came alight with the glow of moving headlights. Instantly his tactical reflexes took over. He scanned the room to determine the angles of view and quickly chose the area between the head of the stairs and the corner, where he'd be behind anyone coming up. The headlights shone full on the windows now as the car turned in at the front of the building.

He stepped into the shadows and drew his Beretta. He held it with both hands and aimed it at the top of the stairwell and then just waited in the charged half-dark.