Playing the Game (27 page)

73

            That had been much closer than she had anticipated. She had almost been caught, and would have been if it weren’t for her lightening quick reflexes in taking out Holland’s legs before driving the knife through his collarbone. She had spared his life, though she didn’t know why. Maybe she should have killed him, but she was sure she’d done enough damage to him to take him out of today’s game.

            She had left Detective Holland lying in agony in the alley way and circled back round to her car, knowing Patton would stop to assist his fallen partner when he regained his faculties. She hadn’t seen him fall; she had been all too aware that both detectives were closing, but she had heard Patton crash into those trashcans, and the fact that he did not arrive to assist Holland, once she had fallen, meant that maybe he had knocked himself out in the fall. Good; she hoped it had hurt him. It was nothing compared to the pain she knew she was inflicting on him right now though.

            She had wanted Patton to suffer; her brother had been dead for eight years now, so why shouldn’t Patton suffer? She had initially wanted to start Katie’s game straight away, but thought that a few hours of Patton’s imagination running riot before she started was the least he deserved, especially after he had found Stella!

            The rain and mud, which had soaked her to the skin too, didn’t bother her. Very little could now. She had spent years, after leaving home after her parents’ ‘accident’, surviving and enduring the hellacious conditions of LA’s streets, becoming almost nomadic within the state, constantly moving around from one area to another; growing increasingly volatile and violent. Her dad had deserved it and her mother had been a pure accident. The guy who pulled up alongside her, a mere two days after she had left home, and made the most obscene suggestions to her for twenty dollars had also deserved it. She had gotten into his car and they had driven to an deserted industrial estate in San Vicente and as he’d undone his flies, she’d grabbed his head with both hands, whilst he’d been looking down, taking him by surprise and rammed his head through the car window, before lifting his head once more and raking his throat down across the shards of glass that had remained. She remembered him rolling over, as the blood drained from his recently slit throat; his eyes wide with surprise and unable to speak. He’d deserved it though. So had the dozens of others over the years, some of which she found herself reliving occasionally, when she got her migraines.

            Over the years, before her arrest for a triple homicide anyway, she had become increasingly proficient at evading the authorities and had added various activities to her criminal repertoire, including the ability to con just about anything out of anyone. To this end, she had amassed a substantial amount of money and, now having settled into a small single room occupancy in Pico, whose landlord asked absolutely no questions, she had at least some semblance of a normal existence.

            A fire had engulfed the entire building several months later, just around the time she learned of her brother’s death. She was told that the fire had been due to faulty wiring that the landlord should have replaced long ago. Although, miraculously, no-one had been killed in the fire, all her possessions were destroyed, including the only photograph she had of her brother; the only reminder of her previous life. The whole building was left a mere husk of a structure, jet black from the smoke damage. She had been relieved that she now had money stashed in various deposit boxes around Pico, Robertson and Manning. With no place to stay, she had returned to her parent’s house in Wilton, which had remained uninhabited since her brother was taken into care. A few nights later, she paid a visit to her landlord, who happened to be eating an evening meal with his wife and sister-in-law when she visited them. She broke in easily enough and was on her landlord, Oscar Rodriguez before he’d finished chewing what he had in his mouth, twisting his neck and killing him instantly despite the substantial weight advantage he carried; the look of surprise was still etched in his face when he stopped breathing. His wife and sister-in-law were too shocked to move, so they had been easy too; taking out her knife she had made short work of the pair of them. To this day, she didn’t know if neighbours had reported a disturbance, or if the police had just happened to be in the neighbourhood, but they had been outside the house and saw her run from the residence, with blood covering her arms and hands. Unable to out manoeuvre three police officers, and unable to fight them off, despite her considerable strength, she had succumbed to their arrest, crying for her brother as she did so.

74

            ‘I take it everything is in place’, Paul McCrane remarked to the room in general, as he walked into Captain Williams’ office. His anger at finding out who had leaked this story to the press remained bubbling under the surface but he realised that this deal he was about to sign would take care of that. He had no option but to give the police most of what he knew. If The Chemist was caught, then he would face no charges relating to this morning’s front page of the LA Times and there would be no arraignment on anything to do with corruption forthcoming. Once he’d gone about putting those charges to bed, he would have to pay Conrad Conway a visit and seek a little retribution. He had indeed been surprised to see Conway walking the halls of this very station, for he knew exactly the window of opportunity that Daryl Walls had been given to carry out Burr’s instructions, and that window had now long since passed. He hadn’t had the chance to find out exactly what had gone wrong, but he feared that Conway had got the better of Walls in the struggle, maybe even killed him. Maybe he could get something out of Captain Williams.

            ‘My good friend, Senator Conrad Conway was downstairs as I was coming to your office Captain. I trust he’s ok?’ he enquired.

            ‘He shot and killed an intruder at his house this morning’, Williams replied looking directly into the eyes of the District Attorney.

            ‘My word’, McCrane replied, ‘Sounds like he had a lucky escape. Do you know who the intruder was?’ It wouldn’t hurt to make a seemingly concerned enquiry.

            ‘He’s been identified as Daryl Walls’, Williams informed him. ‘He was already in the system. As soon as we got his prints, we had him. Curious thing though’, he continued. ‘He had both yours and Burr’s business cards in his back pocket. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

            ‘Indeed I would not’, McCrane genuinely told him, leaning back in the chair, thinking quite rightly that Conway must have planted them on the body to try to further incriminate himself and Jameson. ‘I couldn’t begin to think where he might have got them from’, he added. The tone of Williams’ last question had clearly implied he suspected either himself of Burr knew the attacker.

            ‘Anyway’, Patton inserted himself into the conversation. ‘You’ve got your deal. Tell us what we need to know’. McCrane was not about to rush himself for the man who had beaten him earlier this morning.

            ‘If I may inspect the proposal?’ he held his hand out and Williams grudgingly handed him the document lying on his desk.

            It took McCrane several minutes to fully digest the proposal, checking its legalities and legitimacy. He could have done it in half the time but he quite enjoyed seeing Detective Patton grow more and more impatient, the longer he took. Finally, satisfied that the deal was as advertised, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pen, signing the document with a flourish.

            ‘So then’, he smiled. ‘Now that we are happy the deal is in place, how may I be of assistance?’

75

            The Chemist left Wilton satisfied that she had done the right thing by following Patton to her former address, even though she had come close to being caught. She had been right about Holland too; he moved much quicker than his frame suggested he could, and had been very strong during their brief tussle in the alley way. She hadn’t planned to follow them, but couldn’t resist when she’d seen them leave the station. She recognised the reporter with them too, even though it had been eight years since she’d last seen him. Paul Britland-Jones had been sniffing around asking questions after her brother’s funeral, and had actually alerted her as to the circumstances surrounding his death on the Windsor Hills. She was sure he worked at the LA Times.

            She drove from Wilton; following Patton and Britland-Jones back to the station, and then after a brief stop, on to Montebello, where she was holding Katie. Although she had used Clozapone on all the previous girls, in her excitement to start Katie’s game straight away, she hadn’t found the time to find an additional courier at such short notice; therefore the Clozapone would have to be forfeited, for now anyway. Not that it really mattered, the end result would be the same: The death of Katie Patton, which would leave her father regretting the day he ran Andrew Caldwell off the road during a high speed pursuit, forever.

            She pulled up to the small house in Montebello, which she had rented under a false name around five months ago. She hadn’t cared to see what it was like inside. Her only prerequisite had been that it had to have a cellar, which was surprisingly difficult to find nowadays. The house was run down, with paint peeling off every wall, and vermin could often be seen scuttling across the floor in the moonlight that shone through the back window. Quite often, gunshots could be heard to ring out across the night sky, penetrating the hum of traffic from the freeway half a mile from the house. It was a neighbourhood where everyone minded their own business and no-one asked any questions; which was of much more importance to Sarah Caldwell than anything as menial as a well-maintained building or pleasant surroundings.

            She parked the Cadillac a good distance from the house as she usually did, preferring to walk the rest of the way. The car might attract unnecessary attention, sticking out in such a neighbourhood. In fact, the only time the car had been anywhere near the house was when she had taken Katie there yesterday, and even then, it had only been outside the house for maybe ten minutes. She would have to pull the Cadillac around the back in a few minutes, but wanted to check on Katie first.

            Getting to the house, she made her way to the cellar trapdoor, moving the rug and table that covered it; unless you knew about the cellar, no-one would suspect one existed. She hadn’t wanted to take any chances there, you never knew in this city when the police would be in the right place at the wrong time! In a neighbourhood where crime was rife, particularly at night, it wouldn’t do for the police to take a random interest in the house as they went about their business.

            The house was set as such that no-one who happened to be walking by could see any of the goings on inside; the windows were higher than foot level and hadn’t been cleaned in quite a while, which added to the murkiness that surrounded the house in general. Not that if anyone happened to peer inside, they would see anything suspicious but it didn’t hurt to have precautions like that in place.

            Pulling open the cellar door, she could hear muffled, frightened cries that told her Katie was conscious. She hadn’t been back to check on Katie since initially bringing her here yesterday afternoon; it had been around five o’ clock by the time she had gotten her back here yesterday and she had still being unconscious from the chloroform used in her abduction. She still hadn’t come round whilst The Chemist had tied her to the strappado-like pulley that was a fairly crude replica of the medieval torture device.  She had read, whilst incarcerated in San Quentin actually, of the Spanish Inquisition and the various methods of torture they employed. The strappado appeared to be a favourite, where the individual was hoisted up on a rope with their arms behind their head, causing dislocation and internal nerve damage. She had gone for a more subtle method, whereby the arms were above the victim and not behind; therefore dislocation was less likely, but she had wanted to preserve Katie in pretty good condition; for now. She wanted Katie to suffer just as much as her father; she could only imagine what the last twenty-something hours had been like for her, strung up there, imagining what fate may lie ahead. She had also placed a hood over Katie’s head which would not only make it more difficult to breathe but would also substantially heighten her sense of fear.

            A quietness overcame the frightened girl as she sensed someone was in the room with her. She was visibly shaking, which made her sway back and forth on the pulley, the ropes digging into her wrists and ankles, which delighted Sarah Caldwell.

            ‘Who, who’s there …’ she called, stuttering her words. ‘What do you want with me? Why am I here?’

            The Chemist moved slowly towards her, like a creature stalking its prey. Stopping inches from Katie, she was sure that the girl could hear and feel her breath as she approached. Almost mesmerised, transfixed with Patton’s shaking daughter, she lifted the hood from the girl, and couldn’t help but smile when she saw the fear in her face. Her mascara had run from where she had been crying, which only served to seem to make her more frightened, more afraid. Her eyes were wide and became focussed as she adjusted her vision to the light.

            Sarah Caldwell said nothing, but merely stared at Katie, watching as her eyes darted around her environment, watching as she realised the trouble she was in. Finally, Katie’s gaze fixed on her captor, remembering how she had been abducted on her way to the library yesterday afternoon. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She had only stopped to help the woman with directions. When the woman had smiled at her she had thought there was no harm in helping her. She looked the same now too, although she had a welt on her cheekbone which was turning blue that she didn’t think was there yesterday.

            ‘Fuck you’, she spat, and as she did so a globule of spit landed on Sarah’s forehead, and trickled down over the bridge of her nose. Ah, so maybe she did take after her father then? Saying nothing, and showing no sign of shock at Katie’s actions, The Chemist merely stuck out her tongue, capturing drops of the spit as it dripped over her lips, and laughed as she finally raised her hand to wipe away the remnants of the saliva.