No Place to Die (27 page)

Carl McClain rolled the garage door down behind the Taurus, walked from the garage into the kitchen, and set his groceries, briefcase, and backpack on the counter. He returned the gun from the briefcase to the backpack, then put the steaks and the carrots into the refrigerator, grabbing a beer in the process.

He dropped the backpack on the floor in the small bathroom off the hallway, then removed the wig and glasses he’d worn on his outing. He returned them to
the box that also contained the gray wig and mustache that he thought of as his “middle-age” disguise and stuck the box back on the shelf above the toilet.

That done, he wandered into the small living room, plopped into the easy chair, and put his feet up on the ottoman. He twisted the cap off of the beer, took a long pull, and wondered why in the hell Mike Miller hadn’t been home for his interview with “Jason Barnes.”

The note had said Miller had to leave at the last moment because of a “family emergency.” He was sorry that he hadn’t been able to call and reschedule the interview but “you didn’t give me your number.”

McClain had claimed to be an investigative reporter for
New Times
, the small weekly alternative newspaper, rather than pretending to be from the
Republic
or from one of the television stations, figuring that would make it easier to carry off the deception. Was it possible that Miller had nevertheless sniffed out his plan? But if that was the case, why hadn’t the cops been all over him when he got to Miller’s door?

Driving home, he was seized by the conviction that he’d missed his chance at Miller, at least for the time being. He couldn’t risk pretending to be Jason Barnes or any other reporter again, in case Miller had tumbled to the ruse. And he didn’t think that the former detective was likely to fall for something as rudimentary as the gas-company trick. By the time he was five blocks away from Miller’s house, McClain had concluded that it was time for a break in the action—a vacation to Montana, maybe—while things in Arizona settled down a bit.

He regretted the fact that he would have to postpone his revenge against Mike Miller. He remembered Miller as a smug, self-confident son of a bitch who was too lazy to do any real detective work. Once Miller and his idiot partner had found the hooker’s earring in McClain’s Pontiac, they’d taken the easy way out and
refused even to consider the possibility that there still might be another explanation for the murder.

Sitting in the cramped interrogation room, sweating like a pig and knowing that the rest of his life was hanging in the balance by the slimmest of threads, McClain had begged the two detectives to believe his story, swearing on his daughter’s life that he had not killed Gloria Kelly. But McClain had been a quick and convenient solution to their case, and once Miller and Quigly had sunk their teeth into him, there was no getting loose of them.

Sixteen years after the fact, McClain still became enraged every time he thought of Miller, preening on the witness stand like he’d just fitted the glove to O. J. Simpson and solved the goddamn crime of the century. McClain had particularly looked forward to settling that score, and all other things being equal, he would have nailed Miller right out of the box.

But of course, all other things were not equal.

McClain understood that if Miller had been one of his first targets, the cops would’ve immediately gone back into the records, checking to see which of Miller’s arrests had recently gotten out of the joint, perhaps looking to get even. That would have brought his own name up on the radar a lot earlier in the game and would have made it that much harder for him to get at his other targets. Accordingly, McClain had decided to delay his gratification, put Miller farther down the list, and hope that the detectives investigating the killings would not make the connection among the victims before McClain could get to the retired detective.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. But regardless of his hatred for Mike Miller, McClain understood that the smart thing to do now was to stick to the original plan. The two weeks he had allotted himself for this phase of the operation would be up tomorrow, and there was nothing to be gained by
being stupid and greedy. Miller and the last couple of jurors could wait on hold for a couple of months, but for the moment, all of McClain’s instincts were screaming that it was time to be packed up and gone.

Which also meant that it was finally time to deal permanently with Beverly.

He found, much to his surprise, that he was increasingly reluctant to do so. By the night he’d finally grabbed her, his fury against the woman had been building for seventeen long, hopeless, and hellish years. Virtually every night in prison, he’d drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, fantasizing about the ways in which he might punish her for the mistakes that had consigned him to that godforsaken hole. And on that Wednesday night, with the opportunity finally at hand, he had brutally exorcised those demons. At the time, killing Beverly’s husband was simply frosting on the cake because of the obvious additional pain it had inflicted upon her.

In the nine days since, though, he’d begun to secondguess himself. The judge, the prosecutor, and the cops all deserved what they were getting—of that he had no doubt. And so did the jurors. Watching them during the trial, he concluded that he’d never seen twelve dumber, lazier, more closed-minded people assembled together in one small space.

Four old retired farts, three housewives, two completely ignorant welfare mothers, a school teacher on her summer break, a car salesman, and an assemblyline worker who obviously saw the trial as an interesting and restful diversion from the boring routine of his everyday existence. Only one of them was under thirty. And this was supposed to be a jury of his fucking peers?

For four and a half days, they’d sat on their fat lazy asses in the jury box, mesmerized by the case that Harold Roe was building up against him and totally unimpressed by the faltering defense offered by McClain’s
young and inexperienced PD. And in the end, anxious to get home for the weekend, they’d deliberated for only five and a half hours before finding McClain guilty of all of the charges against him.

McClain was still consumed by a burning hatred for the lot of them, but he was less certain now that Beverly was equally culpable. Maybe she had done her best. Maybe no one else would have done any better. And maybe he had punished her enough already.

It would be simple enough to pack up and get out of Dodge, leaving Beverly tethered to the cable in the bedroom. He could start south, in the direction of the Mexican border, and get twenty or thirty miles away from town. He could call the cops from a pay phone, tell them where to find Beverly, then double back north and take Highway 93 all the way up to Lakeside, Montana, for a brief but rewarding reunion with Ed Quigly.

But could he really afford to do that?

Beverly couldn’t tell the police much of anything that they didn’t already know, but she could give them a much better description of him than anything they were working with now, and that was the real danger. Leaving her alive to collaborate with a talented police sketch artist would almost certainly be a fatal mistake. And no matter the second thoughts he might be having now, that was one mistake he could not afford to make.

As the light slowly faded from the sky, McClain sat in the darkened living room for another twenty minutes or so, pondering his dilemma. Finally, he drained the last of the beer, went back to the kitchen, and dropped the bottle into the garbage can under the sink. Then he walked down the hall and retrieved his wrenches from the side pocket of the backpack.

Beverly was sitting on the bed, leaning back against the wall and reading the Sara Paretsky novel, when she heard McClain’s key in the door a little after six o’clock. He walked into the room wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of tan dress slacks rather than the jeans and T-shirt that constituted his usual uniform. He had his wrenches in one hand and was returning his keys to his right pants pocket with the other.

Beverly put down the novel and scooted over to the edge of the bed. McClain looked at the book.

“You finished
When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes
?”

She nodded. “Earlier this afternoon.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes, I did. The only other Block novel I’ve ever read was one in the series about the burglar. This one was a lot darker, but I thought it was a much better book.”

McClain squatted on the floor in front of her and propped her foot on his knee. “Yeah, I agree. Especially once I got to Lewis, I discovered that I much preferred lying in my bunk with a book to hanging out in the TV room listening to the morons argue over which mindless fuckin’ programs they wanted to waste their lives watching.”

Setting to work with the wrenches, he continued, “Anyhow, I discovered Block pretty early on and managed to read just about everything he ever wrote. And while I like all his stuff, I agree that the Scudder series is far and away his best work. I love the complexity of the character and the way he’s evolved over time.”

He finished removing the cable and set her foot on the floor. “So anyhow, I guess that’s something I got out of all of this—at least it reinforced my love of reading.”

Beverly nodded. In a soft voice, she said, “Well, I’m sorry that’s what it took, and again, I’m sorry for my part in putting you there.”

McClain rose to his feet and looked away to the wall at the head of the bed. “Yeah, well…”

He turned back to Beverly. “I bought a couple of nice rib eyes for dinner. How would you like yours cooked?”

“Medium-rare please.”

“I’ve got a bottle of Cabernet to go with the steaks. Do you want a glass while you’re waiting?”

She shook her head. “No thank you, Carl. I’m fine for the moment, and I think I’d like to anticipate having the wine with dinner.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “I’ll go get things started. Let me know if you change your mind.”

McClain walked out of the room, leaving the door open about a quarter of the way. A few moments later, the radio in the kitchen came to life in the middle of a Van Morrison song.
Moondance
had been one of David’s favorite albums, and Beverly winced at the memory.

She grabbed the Paretsky novel and moved to her seat at the card table from which she had the best view out into the hallway. For a few minutes, she listened to the sounds of McClain puttering around in the kitchen. Then the noises suddenly stopped.

Pretending to read, Beverly watched over the top of the book as McClain walked past the door, headed toward the other end of the hall. Five minutes later, he walked back toward the kitchen, now dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt and carrying a book of his own. She heard a few more minutes of noise from the kitchen and then nothing, save for the classic rock playing softly on the radio.

She debated for a few minutes the idea of going to the bedroom door and trying to sneak another look up and down the hall. But based on what she’d seen before, she was sure that there was no way that she could get out of the house without having to get past McClain, and she was also certain of what his reaction would be if he were to catch her outside of the bedroom. If she was to have any chance to escape, it was critically important that she contrive a way to remain free of the cable for the next several hours. For now, that had to be her priority.

At six forty-five, a patrolman delivered Walter Kovick to the truck we were using as our command post. The landlord was somewhere in his late fifties, a heart attack waiting to happen. A white XXL T-shirt strained against his stomach, which in turn hung precariously over a pair of chinos that were cinched up a good several inches below what would have been his natural waistline. The guy smelled of beer and cheap cigars, and he’d slopped portions of what looked like several meals onto the front of the T-shirt.

Maggie and I climbed out of the truck and walked Kovick over to the patrolman’s squad, where we’d have more room to talk and where we wouldn’t have to compete with the distraction of the communications chatter. We put Kovick in the passenger’s seat, and Maggie took the back.

“I put a classified ad in the
Republic
, and I posted it on Craigslist,” Kovick said. “I don’t know which of the ads Fischer saw, but he called me on November fifth
and asked to see the house. I showed it to him that afternoon. I remember that he asked a lot of questions about the neighbors.”

Maggie leaned forward from the backseat. “What sort of questions, Mr. Kovick?”

The landlord turned back to look at her and shrugged. “He wanted to know if it was a quiet neighborhood. He asked did the neighbors mind their own business—that kinda thing.

“Hell, looking at the fences and the security bars on these houses should have told him the answer to that, but I told him that they did, and he agreed to take the house starting right then. He didn’t even haggle about the rent; he just wrote me a check for the security deposit and another to cover the rent for the rest of the month. On the twenty-fifth, he mailed me a check for the December rent.”

I handed him one of the photos that Brenda Perkins had taken of “Jason Barnes” earlier in the afternoon. “Is this Fischer, Mr. Kovick?”

Kovick held the picture under the dome light and squinted at it. “Well, it sorta looks like Fischer, only younger. Fischer has gray hair and a mustache. And he doesn’t wear glasses.”

“Is Fischer about the same height and weight as this guy?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” he nodded. “But this guy still looks younger to me.” He handed the picture back to Maggie. “Of course”—he shrugged—“I only saw the guy the one time.”

“So you haven’t been in the house since the day you rented it to him?” Maggie asked.

“Nope. Haven’t had any reason to, as long as he pays the rent on time and doesn’t call to bitch about the fact that the stove’s stopped workin’ or some damn thing.”

I nodded. “And there are secure bars over all the windows?”

“Yeah,” Kovick sighed. “It makes the tenants feel better. In case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t one of the city’s more prestigious neighborhoods.”

I handed him a pencil and a yellow legal pad. “Why don’t you draw us a rough sketch of the house, Mr. Kovick? Give us the general floor plan and show us where all the exterior doors are.”

We sat in silence for the next several minutes as Kovick hunched over the pad under the dome light and worked on his sketch. “There’s really not much to it,” he said, handing the pad back to me. “A kitchen with an eating area, the living room, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms.”

I looked at the sketch. “And the only two ways in and out would be either through the front door in the living room or through the kitchen into the garage and out from there?”

“Right.” He pointed to the sketch with the pencil. “You could go through the door here on the side of the garage, or of course you could open the main garage door to the driveway and go out that way.”

He handed me the pencil and looked from me to Maggie. “So are you telling me that I rented my house to some damned crook?”

“Right now we don’t know the answer to that, sir,” Maggie replied. “We’ve just got some questions for the guy.”

“Well, shit,” the fat man sighed. “I sure as hell hope not. This goddamn house is a pain in the ass to rent. I swear it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

We sent Kovick back home with the patrolman, warning the landlord not to discuss our interest in his renter with anyone, and threatening him with dire consequences should he ignore the warning. Now that the darkness had settled in completely, we tightened the
circle around the small house, and Maggie and I slipped into the surveillance van that was parked closest to it.

Light showed around the edges of the blinds that were drawn tightly closed over the windows in the rooms at the front of the house and which Kovick had identified as the kitchen and the living room. Greg Chickris had joined the Special Assignments team that was watching the back of the house where the two bedrooms were located. He reported that that the back of the house was completely dark.

I grabbed my radio, called Al Harris back in the command truck, and asked him if we had a microphone that we could surreptitiously attach to the outside wall of the house.

“We’ve got one,” he replied, “but I’m not sure it would be worth the risk of trying to use it. Depending on how thick the exterior walls of the house are, and depending on how well they’re insulated, I don’t know that we’d be able to hear that much. And almost for sure, we wouldn’t be able to hear anything more than noises from the one room where the mic was attached.

“Besides that, we’d have to send a guy over that damned fence with the thing. What with the streetlights and the occasional car driving by, there’s enough light out here that if McClain should look out the window at the wrong moment, he’d probably see our guy climbing over the fence.”

“Well, shit, Al,” I countered. “Chickris says that the back of the house is completely dark. What if your guy snuck over the fence at the back corner of the garage? If he were dressed in dark clothes, he could press up against the house and move from room to room, starting in the back and testing to see if he could pick up anything. If he stays crouched down below the level of
the windows, the chances of McClain seeing him would have to be pretty small.”

“Okay,” he conceded. “It’s your party. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

Ten minutes later, from his position at the back of the house, Chickris reported that Harris’s man, dressed all in black, had successfully negotiated his way over the fence and was moving up to the side of the house. Over the next ten minutes, the tech, whose name was Curt Hesler, slowly made his way along the back of the house, stopping every few feet to hold a microphone up against the outside of the house and listen for any sounds coming from within through a set of headphones. Whispering through the lapel mic pinned to his jacket, he reported that he could hear no sounds coming from either of the bedrooms.

Through my night-vision binoculars, I watched Hesler move slowly around to the front of the house. Crouching well below the windows and squeezing himself tightly against the building, he stopped every ten feet or so and pressed the microphone up to the wall. Again, he reported no sound coming from the living room.

Detaching the microphone from his last position under the living-room wall, he crab-walked his way to a spot under the kitchen window and placed the microphone just under the window. A minute or so later, he whispered, “Somebody’s moving around in the kitchen. And there’s a radio on in here. I’m not hearing any conversation, though.”

Five minutes later, Hesler reported that the radio in the kitchen had been turned off and that he could no longer hear any sounds coming from within the house. He made another circuit around the house and reported that he could now hear muffled voices from the larger of the two bedrooms. But he couldn’t tell if
the voices were those of people conversing in the room or if, perhaps, someone had turned on a radio or a television in the room, which remained dark.

At seven fifty, Elaine knocked on the door of the van and handed me a search warrant for the house. Glancing toward the house, she said, “I finally got through to Wells Fargo. Their records indicate that Alan Fischer opened his checking account three days before he rented the house. The initial deposit was five thousand dollars in cash. There haven’t been any other deposits, and the only checks written against the account have been for rent and utilities. The woman told me that the balance in the account is down to a little over eight hundred bucks.”

“Have you come up with any other record of Fischer before that week?”

She shook her head. “Not a trace. Riggins is still checking databases. We’ve come up with a few other Fischers, but we can account for all of them, and none of them is our guy here.”

I thanked Elaine, who left to go back to help Riggins chase through the records. Thirty minutes later, Maggie took off her headphones and shook her head in exasperation. “Do you suppose the bastard will be considerate enough to go out for dinner?”

“I don’t know, Maggs,” I sighed. “I hope to hell he decides to go somewhere before the evening is out. Otherwise we’re in for a long night.”

Over the next hour, Al Harris worked out a schedule for rotating fresh personnel into the teams watching the house in the event that the stakeout should go on through the night and into the next morning. While none of us was excited about the prospect of maintaining the surveillance throughout the night, we were even less enthused about the idea of confronting McClain in
the house and creating a possible standoff and/or hostage situation.

Curt Hesler had insisted on sticking to his post next to the house. He’d now made several circuits around the house and, much to my dismay, he’d heard nothing to suggest that Beverly Thompson might still be alive and captive inside.

For the last nine days, the only remotely encouraging note in the otherwise frustrating investigation was that we had not yet been forced to confront the fact that McClain had killed Thompson too. Saving her life would hardly make up for the all the other lives that McClain had destroyed, but it would offer at least some small vindication of our efforts. And I clung to the hope that if the woman was not in the house we were watching, McClain might still lead us to her.