Bones of the Barbary Coast (29 page)

35

A
LONG GRAY LINE materialized in the near dark, gathered, grew, brightened suddenly, and tumbled onto the sloped shore. Before the foam subsided and slid back, another pale tube had formed against the blackness and was moving in. The cast-up spray turned to mist as it blew inland, and Cree sucked it into her lungs. Sand yielding beneath her feet, fresh sea air, the reassuring rhythm of the waves: Ray was right, this was good. An antidote.

Far behind her, Ray strolled with his hands in his pockets, head down, an indistinct shape in the faint glow from the streetlamps along the Great Highway. She toed ridges in the sand as she waited to let him catch up.

He raised his head as he approached her and they strolled on together. "Better?"

"Much. Thanks for suggesting this."

"Yeah. The first time I saw the dogfights, I actually threw up. But this helps. It's good to get outside, get some distance on human beings when they start to worry you. Do you run? If you do, this is the best place in town to do it. I run here once in a while."

"You look like you do a pretty intense workout."

"Oh, I used to. Now I mainly just run. But I usually do it out of town, up in the hills, so it's more of an obstacle course, really. Night runs, off-trail, cross-country. Another quirky habit. If I get into thornbushes, I can lose a bit more skin than I'd prefer, but it does keep me in pretty good shape. Heals body and soul."

Cree thought of the web of fine scars that covered his legs and lower torso. Ray was definitely an unusual person—a werewolf, an innocent, a kindred spirit, a stranger. Walking next to him in the dark, she sensed his deep satisfaction with the moment and knew that her presence figured importantly in it.

"So, Ray."

"Hm?"

"A man and a woman go a for a walk together on the beach at night—"

"With a priest, a rabbi, and a kangaroo?"

Cree had to laugh. "I thought they went into a bar."

"And because they're mature adults, and sexuality is always an unspoken dynamic under such circumstances, the woman wants to make it clear that she's not available. Maybe it's not good timing, she's coming out of a breakup and she's not ready yet. Or she's already got a boyfriend. She tells him straight up so there are no misunderstandings and no disappointments later. But she hopes they can remain friends. Is that how this one goes?"

Cree kicked at a Styrofoam cup and a gust carried it away. "Something like that."

Ray shrugged and hunched his shoulders a little against the wind.

"And the guy says—?" she prompted.

"I always forget the punchline, dammit." He chuckled quietly. "No. I really haven't built up some big expectation, Cree. I enjoy your company a lot, I can't pretend otherwise. But I . . . it's not the best timing for me, either."

They stood looking out at the crashing, wave-ribbed dark, the cold wind pulling at their clothes and hair. Then it was time to head back.

"But all that was going to be preface to something else," Cree told him. "I was going to ask if you'd want to help me with the wolfman research. You've had more good ideas on the subject tonight than I've had in the last four days. It's pretty tedious, but it would sure go a lot faster with two sets of eyes. Do you have any time?"

"Sure. But what about Bert?"

"I'll talk to him. I'll ask Horace to talk to him. I'm sure we can work it out."

Ray bobbed his head ambiguously.

Cree pulled up in front of Diamond Intermodal, leaving the motor running and lights on. They'd agreed to meet at the Payson Collection in the morning, but otherwise had said little during the drive from the beach. It was only ten thirty, but it felt later. In her exhaustion, Cree felt her anxiety return. The area around Ray's looked grimy, squalid, forbidding in the blue streetlights and narrow wedge of headlight glow.

They said a quick good-night that felt a little strained, and Cree began backing out. She stopped as her headlights panned across Ray's wide-open front door.

Ray leaned to peer warily into the darkness, cocked his head to listen. Cree pulled forward again and slid down her window. In the headlight wash, Ray checked the edge of the door and picked at the crimped metal jamb, then disappeared into the black doorway.

After a moment a dim light came on, and Cree shut down the car and went to the door. A couple of bulbs glowed up near the ceiling, weakly lighting the near end of the desolate interior. It was enough to see Ray, striding quickly past his apartment to the big roll-up doors. He stopped, slapped a button. One of the doors lifted noisily, Ray ducked through. Calling the dogs, she figured. Then she realized she hadn't heard any barking since they'd returned. To Ray, the silence must have seemed very wrong.

By the time she got to the freight door, Ray was emerging from the dark outside. He pulled two of the dogs by their collars and the third followed close behind with stumbling, uncertain movements. There was something the matter with them. When he brought them into the light, Cree could see their swollen, seeping eyes, the froth and vomit that streaked their faces and chests. They hung their heads and worked their mouths and tongues as if trying to expel something.

"Help me with them," he commanded her. "Dogs, this is Cree. She's our friend. Okay?" To Cree again: "Grab Sadie's collar. Lead her to the house. They can't see."

She took the Rottweiler's collar and tugged her along after Ray and the others. The dog reeked of a sharp chemical scent Cree recognized: Mace or some equivalent self-defense spray.

The door to the apartment was ajar, too. Ray snapped on the kitchen lights and they brought the animals to the sink.

"Sit," he ordered. "Stay and hold."

They sat in a row, three tortured canine faces, saliva hanging in strings from their jowls. Sadie whimpered, but the others sat stoic, trusting Ray absolutely. As soon as they were settled, Ray groped in a broom closet and came out with a baseball bat. He left them there and went into the living room. Cree saw the lights come on, heard the sound of doors quickly opening and closing. Ray searching for the intruder.

If it's Bert,
she was thinking.
If he's still here. If he's gone this far.
She heard Ray's footsteps start up the stairs to the second-floor studio and suddenly she couldn't help herself, she left the dogs and ran to the living room door.

"Hey, Ray," she called.

He stopped halfway up the stairs. "What."

"Maybe I should come with you up there."

"Why?"

"What if somebody has a gun or—?"

"Just stay with the dogs. I'll deal with this." Before she could move, he bounded up the stairs, shouldered open the door at the top, and burst through it.

36

C
REE LISTENED TO Ray's footsteps moving through the room above. She didn't realize she wasn't breathing until a moment later, when she let out a pent-up breath.

No shots. No sound of a scuffle.

She went back to the dogs. They were still sitting as they'd been ordered, wheezing painfully but alert and tracking Ray's movements with their ears. She opened cabinets until she found a stack of kitchen towels, then ran water from the tap. When the temperature seemed right she soaked a towel in the flow. She turned back to the dogs and saw how jittery they were and she faltered as she wondered whether they'd really accept this kind of contact from a stranger. They were all big dogs with powerfully muscled shoulders and haunches, in better shape than any of the dogs she'd seen in the pit. And very screwed up right now.

Ray appeared at the kitchen door. He put down the bat and came to the sink. His movements were crisp and taut, tightly focused. He glanced at the towels, tested the water with his hand. "Good. Okay, you do Sadie, I'll do the boys. Sadie, just hold and Cree will make you feel better."

He soaked a towel, knelt next to the shepherd, laid the sopping cloth over its eyes. The dog flinched at the contact but held still as Ray began gently massaging. Cree did the same with the Rottweiler. The eyes twitched under her fingers and Sadie's whining sharpened. Cree soaked the dog's face and neck, scrubbed the ears, the nose, feeling the bone at the brow, the knob at the base of the skull, the long jaw. Their contours reminded her of the wolfman's bones. After a few minutes she rinsed the towel, wrung it, soaked it again, did the whole thing once more. Sadie's whimpering quieted.

Ray worked on the other dogs without speaking except to murmur softly to them. When he was done, he rubbed them with dry towels and then poured fresh water into a big bowl on the floor. The dogs lapped and cast themselves randomly on the kitchen's throw rugs, wheezing and exhausted but looking much better. Ray took off his fouled shirt, gathered the towels, and threw them all into a hamper in the closet.

"He fucked around in my desk drawers," Ray said. "Went upstairs and poked around. Opened my file cabinets. I don't know if anything's missing or not."

" 'He'? You know who did this?" It sounded bogus even as she said it.

Ray turned a baleful eye on her. "You know, I don't have time for bullshit. You should go, Cree. Thanks for everything tonight, and thanks for helping with the dogs, I mean that. I have to figure out some way to lock up the outer door, so I'll see you out."

"Ray, why would Bert do this? Spray your dogs, I mean, that's just sadistic, Bert wouldn't—"

"They'd have come to the fence and barked the whole time he was in here and sooner or later somebody would have noticed. Or maybe the sound just bugged him. So he shut them up before he came in." Ray slammed a fist into a cabinet, startling the dogs.

"You don't know it was him! And even if it was Bert, you can't . . . do something back. That's what I came here for today, Ray, that's the main thing! Let me deal with this. Don't crank this up any worse. It's stupid and it's dangerous."

"What, you're going to tell Uncle Bert that Ray's a nice fellow? Ray'd never hurt a fly? You don't believe that yourself! You don't know what to believe."

"Show me, Ray! Show me what you'd do. Show me you've got a handle on your anger. If Bert did this, he's way over the line. Don't go there with him!"

Ray's rage built, his whole body stiffening with the effort to contain it. With his shirt off his torso was a study of chiseled musculature. When she didn't move, he came up to her and with one hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her toward the door. But she knocked the hand away with a hard forearm sweep and whirled back to him.

The three dogs came instantly to their feet.

Ray's face warped. "Cree, if you don't leave, I'm going to fold you up like a lawn chair and toss you out. Jesus Christ, this is
my housel
What does it take to convince you and Bert that this is
my house?"

His face had become hard on one side and savage on the other, but what Cree felt was not fear or anger but a sudden sense of loss. The things they'd talked about all night were scary and strange, but he'd told everything with an oddly innocent excitement, an implicit trust in her. Its absence hurt her and she thought it must hurt him too and without thinking she reached for him.

His hand scythed up and snatched her arm out of the air. He held it off to the side, beamed his outrage at her.

"I wasn't going to hit you," she said.

He flung her arm away. "What then?"

She laid her hand cautiously along his cheek. Her right hand, his left cheek, it was just an accident that it was the scarred side. With her hand hiding that side he almost looked like an undamaged man, handsome, well made, symmetrical. He couldn't hide his surprise or how much he needed the touch. She held the contact until the fear of it went out of both of them.

"I'm going to help you get the place cleaned up," she told him. "Then we're going to talk until we figure out what to do."

37

F
RIDAY NIGHT, THE Tenderloin Club was busier than the typical weekday. The pool tables were loud with cracking balls and drunken conversation, the booths and tables were packed. Bert didn't know anybody in the crowd. He took his first drink at the bar and nursed it until around eleven the front corner booth opened up and he moved over. It was darker here, the table lit mostly by the beer signs in the windows. He positioned himself so he could see the entrance, then set out his second whiskey, his cigarettes, lighter, notepad, pen. He was beginning to come down at last.

Back at Ray's place, he'd been tense as a time bomb, and when the headlights lit the windows he'd gotten instantly wired, stoned on the adrenaline. He had stood with his gun in his hands, feeling a mix of fear and power, a rush that he focused into a hard sense of righteous self-preservation.

But nobody had come. The lights had shone onto the windows, paused, then pulled away. Somebody making a three-point turn on the parking apron in front. He had waited until the lights were gone, then bolted down the stairs, outside, to the Suburban. It was only two minutes later, roaring up Third, that he realized he'd let himself be distracted, that he should have taken photos of the topo maps and the trails Ray had drawn on them. He cursed himself for losing control. He needed to compare Ray's maps with the scene of at least one murder, the kid killed in San Bruno Mountain Park. A stupid oversight, he'd panicked like a fucking rookie. But he couldn't go back tonight. Ray might return at any moment. And anyway he was too fried.

Instead he'd gone home to Mars Street. Still twitchy, he'd reviewed the images on his camera and printed up the best ones on his inkjet. When that was done, he'd hit the telephone, calling in a favor—one of the last remaining chits culled from thirty-five years on the job. Now he had a little while before his meeting, enough time to get his nerves back together and put his case in order. The booze was starting to hit and it felt like a reward, calming and smoothing him. He felt clearer and sharper than he had in a long time.

He finished his second drink, ordered a third, then opened his briefcase and took out the envelope of photos and the three plastic bags of trace evidence. On his pad he started to draw a timeline based on what he knew, filling in any corroborating bits and pieces. It was still full of holes, not enough to pry a search warrant out of a judge, not even enough to talk to his lieutenant, yet. But Hank Chambers would see it. Hank would know how to work with it.

He stared at the materials as if he might spot images hidden between the scrawled pen marks. He knew the pattern would emerge if he thought long and hard enough, and the pattern would reveal ways to prove what had happened. Every event and date and place suggested other lines of inquiry, and he made systematic notes of these as they occurred to him. He was still working on it when the front door swung open and Hank came in, pouted, and began making his way to the booth.

"Hank, I love you madly. Marry me. I'm serious. You're my fucking hero."

"I'm here, Bertie, but I'm not making promises. Right? I have to believe this is worth the effort. And you have to agree that if you come up with something admissible, you'll route it so it never comes anywhere near me. If I do this, I'm tainted. One whiff of bad procedure will sink any case you might have."

"I know the rules. How about a drink?"

"Just give me the spiel. My girlfriend expects me back."

Chambers's face told Bert he was very definitely not in the same place Bert was, that flushed feeling of hot hope and righteous bloodlust, the celebratory rush you got after a close call and a big breakthrough. Hank was in his late fifties, dressed tonight in new jeans and a checked shirt and a sport jacket. With his silver hair and yachting tan and tasseled loafers, he looked more like some CEO on vacation than a senior forensic scientist and lab administrator making an off-the-record rendezvous. He'd always struck Bert as a bit of an snide, self-obsessed prig, spoiled by the seemingly endless sequence of younger women he reeled in over the years. But professionally, Hank was old school. For the last seven years he'd been chief of the Berkeley lab of the Bureau of Forensic Services, a branch of the California attorney general's office tasked to assist local police agencies with highly technical or interjurisdictional investigations. The lab was devoted to DNA work, but Hank's position and reputation would get him access to cold case evidence of any kind, from any department in the state, no questions asked.

He and Bert went a long way back, but clearly the comrades-in-arms routine wasn't enough tonight. This was stretching it, and Bert knew another approach was needed.

"Hank—this is big. This is—"

"Hey, Bertie, you know how many retiring cops have come to me like this? Wanting a favor to help them nail down the last big one?"

Bert felt a flush creep up his neck. "But they weren't me. Not one of them was as good as me. You know that. I'd've been shown the door ten years ago if I didn't have the best clearance and conviction rates in this city. Is that worth anything to anybody right now? Tell me what's worth something, Hank."

Hank shrugged.

"Trust me, this warrants you coining down here tonight when you'd rather be doing something else. I wouldn't have called if it wasn't the only way I could go. I know I got nothing to offer in return. Except my gratitude. And maybe some satisfaction for having done the right thing."

They locked eyes, gauging each other. At last Chambers must have made a decision, because he flipped open a pair of reading glasses and slid them on, making a
give it
gesture with his other hand.

"Okay." Bert turned around the page so Chambers could read it.

"General scenario is, a series of homicides, going back some years, a likely perp who never got nailed, some recent developments pointing to a particular guy. I've noted the dates, jurisdictions, and file numbers for the cases I think he might be good for. Some are old enough that they didn't have the lab tech you've got now, the evidence will need a second look. Some of these might not pan out, but I'm betting some will."

"What else?"

Bert showed him the photos. "These are from his residence. The knife is maybe the best item here. It's old, there's a possibility it was used in a couple of those. It's pretty clean, probably no organic residues to test, but I figured you'd be the guy to ask around, look for a match with the wounds."

Chambers studied the photos, scanned Bert's notes, then went back to the photos with a puzzled frown. "What's with the veterinary records?"

"Dogs. The guy has three attack breeds now, he's had dogs going back years, these will tell you the previous breeds and when he had them. Five of those cases involve canine attacks, two within the lifespan of his current dogs. For the older cases, I'm hoping you can match hair found at the scene to the breeds he had then. If we're very lucky, the dental records on that pit bull will match some bite impressions. For the newer ones, I've got the hair of his current dogs." Bert pushed over the plastic bags.

Chambers frowned at the hair and dust briefly before tucking the bags into his jacket pocket. "If they even took hair and fiber on these cases. If I can put my hands on it. If there's any DNA in the samples."

"I know there's dog hair on the one of them, the slice-and-dice. I checked. Got the list right here." Bert slid the stapled sheaf over to him.

Chambers still looked skeptical, but Bert knew he'd hooked him with the possibilities. Here was a puzzle with one piece missing, and Hank couldn't resist trying to fit his piece in. That instinct was what they had in common, what Bert was counting on.

Chambers gathered up the photos and slipped them and Bert's notes into the envelope. When he'd closed the clasp, he paused, pursed his lips, frowned like a man having second thoughts.

Bert felt a stab of panic. "Three months, Hank! I'll get my plaque and my badge in a block of Lucite, which I'm gonna toss in the trash when I get home. But you do this, you give me this, I'll have something I can keep."

Hank bobbed his head, giving up, then stood and turned to go. Over his shoulder, he said, "I know, Bertie. I know what this is."

Bert ordered another whiskey that he flourished and tossed off like champagne. He looked at his notebook and checked off items on his list. Everything was going like clockwork. With any luck, Hank would find something that tied the physical evidence from Raymond's place with evidence from one or more of the crimes. One hair on that kid in San Bruno Park. One match of presumed dog breed with one of Ray's dogs. One stab wound that matched the blade of Ray's knife. Bert could then work up a legal pretext to go into Ray's place with the warrant that would provide him with admissible evidence.

And if that didn't pan out, there were other ways to do this. Next item on the list was to set up the contingency plan. Plan B. Fortunately, he had pretty good resources for Plan B.