Killer (33 page)

Stepping down, he said, “You look and tell me if I missed something.”

I obliged. “You didn’t.”

We circled the house again, looking for spy-space between the blinds. I found a tilting slat on the eastern wall that offered a slice of master bedroom: queen-sized, knotty-pine four-poster, matching night-stands and dresser, cheap overhead fake-Tiffany lamp, wall-to-wall carpeting.

Returning to the yard, we searched for signs of disturbance. No hint of excavation, no recent break in the turf, and the hedges hadn’t been monkeyed with.

Milo circled the house a third time, pausing every few yards to press his ear to the wall.

He returned frowning and forming a zero with thumb and forefinger, leaned against the garage, began kicking the bottom of the wall absently with the heel of one desert boot.

Each thrust of his foot released dust from the grass that spurted and settled. “I’ll get Binchy to watch the place tonight but don’t get your hopes up high.”

“No chance of that.”

“My pessimism’s finally rubbing off?” he asked.

“Reality’s rubbing off.”

His shoe impacted stucco a couple more times and then he realized what he was doing and looked down and saw the smudge he’d left. Kneeling, he used his handkerchief to wipe the stain.

Lightening the gray smear but unable to erase it. Frowning, he straightened.

As he stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket, faint sound emerged.

From inside the garage.

Bump
.

Muted, barely audible.

Long pause.

Bump bump
.

Both of us turned and faced the garage. Milo kicked again, harder.

Immediate response:
bumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbumpbump
.

Then a new sound, terrible, muffled, high-pitched.

Milo shouted at the wall: “Hold on!”

More percussion. Droning—a wail.

We hurried to the side door that opened from the garage to the yard. White-painted wood, simple brass knob.

Second glance said not simple at all: no external hinges, no visible lock, and when Milo tried to turn the knob it didn’t give. He pulled, pushed. Immobile.

The bumps from inside the garage sped up. Still muted but insistent, a terrible drumbeat.

Milo kicked the door hard.

Not a hint of shudder. None of the vibration you’d get with wood, alone.

Braced from behind by something substantial.

Positioning his mouth close to the seam of the door, he shouted: “Ree Sykes? Police.”

Storm
of bumps.

“Just hold on!”

We ran to the driveway, tried the aluminum garage door. Like its smaller wooden cousin, no outward security apparatus but at least these hinges were in sight. Still, no budge when Milo tried to pull the panel up. Operated electrically? Or something else holding it in place?

He said, “Need tools,” and ran to the unmarked. I stayed behind, studying the door. Corrugated aluminum. Hanging an inch or so higher on the left side. I got down on the driveway, used the gap to peer up. Saw the inner wall of gray behind the metal. Grout at the base. Vertical
seams. Cement block. Fresh enough to give off the yeasty odor of wet sand.

Newly constructed prison.

Milo returned with a crowbar. I showed him the barrier and he cursed and we hurried back to the wooden side door and searched for a fissure. The door was set tight into the jamb and when he tried to insert the bar it slipped. After several failed attempts and a narrowly avoided encounter between the point of the bar and his knee, he pulled out his Glock.

Something else strange about the doorknob: no surrounding plate, just brass sprouting from wood like a weird, shiny fruit. Dummy knob, a handhold with no function. But the convex surface posed a serious risk of ricochet and so did the door if it was backed by metal.

Muttering, “Whatever,” Milo stepped back, aimed at the wood around the knob, and squeezed off a shot. The bullet entered the wood with a dull
chunk
.

No bounce-back, minimal splintering.

None of the ping or rattle you’d get with metal. With any surface harder than the bullet.

As if he’d shot a block of cheddar.

He fired at the opposite side of the knob, then above the brass and below. Creating a ring of perforation in the wood.

The sound from within the garage had ceased as the crack of the gun repeated. Conspicuous noise on a quiet day in a quiet neighborhood. Someone might call the cops. Dandy.

He jiggled the knob. Some give, but not enough.

Bang bang bang
.

A new sound seeped from inside the garage, keening and rhythmic like a fire alarm.

A child, gasping, crying.

Milo yanked the knob, putting his weight into it and bracing himself with a foot on the wall. The dummy knob shot loose and he tumbled
backward, landed on his butt. I would have helped him but he was on his feet quickly and I had better things to do. Picking up the crowbar, I inserted it into the hole the knob’s exit had created.

I hooked, pulled hard. Still no give to the door. On the other end of the hole was a panel of medium brown. Grained. Plywood. But plywood didn’t explain the
chunk
. Sticking my finger into the hole, I poked around. Touched something worm-like.

“There are wires in here. It’s probably activated by a remote.”

“Careful, it could be a booby trap.” Placing his mouth near the hole, he shouted, “Ree, this is the police, we’re going to get you out of here so bear with us but we found wires behind the door. If it’s a booby trap, tap once. If not, tap twice.”

Bump. Bump
.

“Okay, good. If it’s safe to mess with the door, tap once. If not, tap twice.”

Bump
.

“Good. If the door is operated by a remote, tap once.”

Bump
.

“If the remote’s in the hou—”

Hard bump
.

Milo ran to the kitchen door.

That one was easy to pry and he was back in a couple of minutes, brandishing a black plastic module sporting a single square white button.

Standard cheapie, adaptable to anything running on a circuit.

One finger-push and we were in.

The bullet-burying barrier behind the door was a sandwich of two foam mattresses divided by one sheet of plywood and backed by another, the entire contraption framed with two-by-fours.

One side of the frame was hinged to the inner surface of the doorway. Operated by a solenoid wired to a high rafter. Crude but effective. Sound-resistant.

Sound damping didn’t end there.

The walls of unfinished garages that accompany houses like the beige structure are usually wood beam and tar paper. These walls had been surfaced with carelessly grouted block. The result was a dingy cruel space, barely illuminated by the single bulb dangling from the peak of the rafters.

A room that should’ve been clammy but was warmed well past stuffy by a space heater glowing in a corner. A porta-crib sat in the opposite corner. Eyebolts driven into the block hosted sampler-type homilies dangling from piano wire.

Children Are For Loving

THE GREEN TREE OF LIFE IS NURTURED BY THE FOUNTAIN OF CARING

Families Are the Glue; Love Is the Craft

Ree Sykes, hunched, gaunt, limp-haired, wild-eyed, at least ten pounds thinner than the last time I’d seen her, stood well away from all that wisdom, as close to the center of the garage as she could manage. Clutching Rambla tight to her bosom. Her rusty hair had been chopped short and ragged. Rambla’s dark tresses had also been clipped. No obvious wounds or outward signs of abuse but the little girl’s cheekbones were too pronounced for those of a toddler.

The room stank of baby poop and applesauce. A steel garbage can overflowed with soiled paper. Next to the crib was a portable latrine. Three rolls of toilet paper sat on the floor next to a package of disposable diapers. Same brand Hank Nebe had purchased last night.

The crib was within Ree’s reach but the space heater wasn’t due to the stainless-steel ankle band and matching chain that formed her umbilicus to the garage’s eastern wall.

Six feet of chain; a two-step universe. Links running out a maddening foot and a half from the padded door.

The ankle encased by the band was swollen and thatched with scratch marks, testimony to a vain struggle to free herself. Scabs on the scratches said she’d given up days ago. Soon after being taken captive.

The setup was Predator 101 but her captors had made a tactical error by shackling her close to the wall adjoining the yard.

Allowing
bumpbump
to filter through.

Despite the heat, Ree Sykes trembled, naked under a pale blue cotton nightgown. The kind you get in the hospital.

Rambla wore pink fuzzy pajamas with feet. Snot mustached her upper lip.

I said, “We’re here for you.”

Both of them screamed.

I approached slowly.

Rambla brightened with recognition. Then her little face clouded and constricted. Shuddering, she jerked away from me, clutched her mother.

Cody in the fleabag, now this.

Both kids reverting to primal survival impulse, genetically encoded eons ago:
Make yourself small
.

As Rambla fought to burrow into her mother, Ree capped the child’s head with a protective hand.

I backed away.

Ree’s eyes bounced around. “They’re
crazy
!” Her voice quaked like that of an old woman.

“I know—”

“We need to go
now
.” Lifting her shackled leg. Rambla trembled and mewled.

I glanced back at Milo. On the phone. “Soon.”

I stood there, making sure to pose no threat to anyone.

Rambla hazarded a peek at me. I smiled. Her lips vibrated and tears streamed out of her eyes and tiny fingers began clawing her mother’s nightgown.

“C’mon, now,” said Ree. “Baby-dolly’s okay baby-dolly okay, ’sokay …”

Rambla mumbled, “Nuhnuhnuh,” and broke into sobs.

Ree looked at me. “I can’t help her.”

I said, “You’re doing fine.”

“We need to
go
.”

“We’ll get you out of here.”

She clutched Rambla tighter, rocked faster. “
Both
of us.”

“Of course.”

“I
mean
it.”

“So do I, Ree. You’re her only mother.”

She studied me. “You,” she said. As if seeing me for the first time. “You
hold
me.”

Mother sank into my embrace but daughter cried harder, letting loose tears and gasps and sprays of mucus that glazed my sleeve.

Ree’s comforting chant lowered to a mechanical drone. “ ’Sokay, baby dolly, ’sokay …”

I focused on Milo’s phone conversation, 911 request for Fire Rescue, specifying bolt cutters, a “freed hostage situation.” Then the lieutenant at Van Nuys station.

Rambla never stopped crying.

When the sirens sounded, Ree Sykes said, “That’s beautiful.”

With both victims hustled away in an ambulance and an army of techs ready to do their thing, the entire property became a crime scene.

Milo and I returned to the unmarked. Leaning against the van and kicking the tire the way he had with the garage wall, he followed up with Moe Reed.

Reed said, “Didn’t call you, El Tee, because she’s not coming back there right now, drove into Burbank, Marie Callender’s, she’s having lunch. That gave me a chance to look into her car. She’s a slob, but no baby stuff and nothing overtly weird.”

“She dining alone?”

“So far. I’m out in the parking lot, in position to see if that changes.”

“Whenever you’re ready, take her down, Moses.”

“Re-ally,” said Reed. “So you got the evidence.”

“Got everything.” Milo filled in the details.

“Whoa. And I missed the party. Okay, so she’s my loose end, I’ll tie her up.”

“Any indication she’s packing?”

“Not unless she’s got something small in her purse.”

“One of our vics was killed with a .25.”

“I’ll remember that, El Tee. Congratulations.”

“For what?”

“Live victims.”

Next call: SWAT lieutenant Byron Bird, using a secure tactical band. Bird answered with a growling, “Yeah?”

Milo said, “I could use your help.”

“And here I was thinking you were offering me tickets to the game,” said Bird. “Let me give you some deep background, friend: Been up since three a.m., shitload of time wasted on a false-alarm dope raid. So don’t even talk to me about work, Milo. Going to the gym.”

“Got something more therapeutic than bench-pressing, Byron.”

“Like what?”

Milo told him the situation. Bird said, “Two tan-shirts, Lordy Lord. Where exactly at Mosk?”

“Family and probate.”

“Familiar with both those purgatories. Two divorces and my mother’s will. Okay, I’m déjà-vu-ing the layout in my head, those halls full of
civilians … my thought is we need to be
subtle
. That’s French for just enough foreplay.”

The takedown team would be sixteen of Bird’s physically strongest officers in plainclothes.

“Eight for him, eight for her,” said Bird. “Last thing I need is my new girlfriend getting on me for the sexist thing.”

Laughing his way through the planning but not pleased at substituting muscle for staggering firepower. But getting any sort of a weapon into the court building without triggering a commotion would be tough, let alone showing up with the heavy artillery the swatters preferred.

The final arrangement: each of the sixteen officers would be limited to a single 9mm handgun concealed by a blousy shirt and relegated to last resort.

The primary weapon would be human bulk: blitz-swarming the Nebes after they left their respective courtrooms. As long as the bailiffs ventured far enough from onlookers to minimize collateral damage.

If the hallways were packed, the arrest would be postponed for a safer time and place.

“Just what I need,” said Bird. “Another pud-yank marathon.”

“Be optimistic, Byron.”

“Why?”