The detectives listened once more to the phone call and the killer's final words, "You failed, You failed a lot of people."
"I guess he's mad now, boss," said Nunez.
McCaughn quipped, “We can still hope for a little luck at Annadel. I see it now. Killer breaks leg. Killer is eaten by mountain lions. Sonoma County is safe once again, except from mountain lions."
“Enough,” said Brown. “Let’s make sure we get some people over to Windsor, just in case. Who’s playing the free concert there tonight?” Brown was hoping it would at least be a type of music he enjoyed, not some hick, country music band. Everyone knew Zach Brown loathed country music.
“Relax, it’s an R&B/Motown band,” said McCaughn. Then he looked more carefully at the schedule on the website. “Uh, boss, you’re not going to believe this but the name of the band is ‘Cold Blood.’”
“There is no God,” Brown muttered to himself. At this point he hoped that the killer really would fall down, break a leg and get consumed by a mountain lion.
Despite its name, the band put on a good show. Cold Blood took advantage of an unusually warm August night and kept playing well past 8 p.m. Brown would have enjoyed it much more if he didn’t want all these people to leave and go lock themselves in their homes. Barricading the doors and cocking handguns. You just can’t be too careful when a psychopath with a needle full of adrenaline is running around.
Next: “Faceoff.” Sandra confronts Brown.
Our guest writer: John Hendrickson practices consumer law in Santa Rosa. He grew up in Cotati, joined the Marines at age 17 and went on to study at Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma State University and UC Hastings College of Law. His version of Chapter 12 was judged tops among the newspaper readers’ submissions.
Previously: The killer escapes detectives. Expect mayhem.
Chapter 14 – Face-off
By MARTIN ESPINOZA
Even in deep sleep, Sandra heard the phone beep. It was about 5 o’clock in the morning when her mind finally stopped racing long enough to let her fall asleep.
She was dreaming she was sitting on a park bench with Detective Brown, sharing a sandwich with him. A perfect gentleman, Detective Brown would politely hold a napkin under Sandra’s chin every time she took a bite. And he made sure to bite the other side of the sandwich when it was his turn. There was a kindness about his face that seemed to make him look much older than he was. Then, suddenly he did become older than Detective Brown and with a sad expression that seemed on the verge of tears, he held the napkin over Sandra’s eyes to keep her from seeing the lifeless body of a woman seated next to him on the bench, her head cocked to the left and back a little. Her gray lips formed a crooked smile. That’s when the phone beeped. And though it signaled only once, the sound seemed so out of place in that dream that it brought her out in an instant.
Still groggy, she frantically reached over to her night stand and clumsily knocked the phone off. She quickly rolled off her bed, landing on her knees on the carpet. She saw the phone, picked it up, fumbled with it and dropped it again.
“Sh--! What’s wrong with you?” she said to herself, more sympathetic than angry.
She knew the cops were monitoring the texts and she wanted to get the message first.
It simply read, “She’s in a green car, 9291 old redwood highway.” Sandra’s stomach sank. She pressed her finger on the address and a listing came up for the library at the Windsor Town Green.
When she got there about 6:45 a.m., a large section of the northeast corner of the Green and adjacent parking lot was cordoned off with police tape and orange cones. Everywhere were sheriff’s deputies and detectives with bullet proof vests searching the area. K-9 units searched the grassy areas next to the Green’s gazebo. Sandra immediately saw the green car, a rather new Honda sedan with the trunk wide open. Detectives wearing surgical gloves were carefully examining the inside of the car as a photographer shot photos of what was inside the trunk.
Only Detective Brown saw Sandra quickly walk past the crime tape and approach the scene. Before she could get close enough to see what was inside the trunk, Sandra felt his hand grip her left forearm, stopping her in her tracks.
“Don’t look in there,” he said in a kind, almost fatherly tone.
Sandra did everything she could at that moment to keep from losing it. She pulled Detective Brown’s hand off her arm and he complied.
“This is not my fault,” she said, looking him in the eye.
“I suppose you think it’s mine.”
“You’re the one in charge. Are you not? You’re the one that’s supposed to keep this kind of thing from happening.”
“We’re trying our best,” he said.
“Is that the line you’ve prepared for her family?” Sandra’s heart was pounding now. “While you’re at it, why don’t you tell them that you were the one that screwed up? Tell them you’re the one that underestimated this guy!”
“I had a platoon out here last night,” he said, getting frustrated.
“What are we doing? What am I doing? I’m not a cop. I’m just a newspaper reporter. I’m the one that calls you guys up after the fact and gets all the details over the phone. What the hell am I doing here?”
“Calm down.”
“Don’t you tell me to calm down!” said she, her teeth locking together for a moment. “This is all wrong. I’ve broken every rule in the book. My editor doesn’t know anything about this, and that’s like, like…it’s worse than if you cheated on your wife, if you had one...” Sandra looked at the green car and shook her head.
“Can you believe what I’m saying?” she said, nearly in tears. “There’s a woman over there.”
She turned to walk away and again felt Detective Brown’s hand on her arm. This time his grip was softer. At that moment another detective walked up and whispered something to him.
“Sandra,” he said, “you have another message.”
She pulled the phone from her inside coat pocket and looked up the message. She took a deep breath.
“That’s it,” she said. “It’s over for me. I’m done. He says he won’t send me any more messages from that phone. You’ll have to figure this one out on your own. You’ll have to figure out how to get in front of this guy, instead of always being two steps behind him.”
“Do you really think he’s done with you? I wouldn’t get too comfortable with that last message.”
“I’m done. Don’t you understand?”
“Until we catch this guy, you haven’t heard the last from him.”
Next time: “Handcar Regatta.” The killer makes his move.
Martin Espinoza is a staff writer for the Press Democrat.
Previously: Sandra blames Brown for failing to stop a killing.
Chapter 15 – Handcar Regatta
By FREDERICK WEISEL
In front of Sandra, a man in a pith helmet and darkened aviator goggles drew a large, ancient handgun from his belt and aimed it at the head of the woman beside him. He pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked, and a tin fan at the barrel end spun round and gently blew the hair on the woman’s temple. The woman, perspiring from the fullness of her costume, a silk bustier on top of an ankle-length dress, turned and smiled. “Thank you, darling,” she said.
It was Sandra’s day off, and she was meeting Abby at the Handcar Regatta in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square. Standing at the southern end of the railway station, Sandra looked across Depot Park, which was filled with hundreds of steam-punk revelers.
It was a surreal scene. The costumes were Victorian: women in thigh-high stockings, leather boots, and embroidered parasols. Men in straw boaters, wing-tip collars, and Balbo whiskers.
But amid the faithful reproductions lay the bizarre. A giant wind-up key protruded from a woman’s back. A mechanical owl perched on another woman’s shoulder. A man in an oilskin slicker brandished an antique blunderbuss whose barrel sprouted a ray-gun contraption. It was a historical re-creatio
n of a history that never existed, except in a Jules Verne dream.
As she watched people mill around her, Sandra felt herself swept up in the spectacle. It was as if everyone was in on a big joke, and each new outlandish thing added to the fun. For the first time in two weeks, Sandra felt herself relax.
She checked the time on her cell. Abby was late. Had they mixed up the meeting place?
The crowds on either side of the rails roared as pairs of competing contraptions rolled down parallel train tracks. Over spectators’ heads, Sandra watched a pump trolley pass a pedal-driven handcar across the finish line.
In Sandra’s first week in Santa Rosa, as part of a quick orientation, Abby had told her how the railway station was in a scene from an old Hitchcock film, when a murderous uncle, on the run from the police, arrives on a train to the safety and innocence of this small town.
Sandra walked through Depot Park to Wilson Street. Her cell chimed. Abby. Finally.
“Hey, Abby,” she said. “Where are you? The races are starting.”
Silence.
Turning away from a loud vendor, Sandra faced the park, and pressed the cell tight to her ear.
“Surprise,” a voice said. “Me again.” It was him.
“Where’s Abby?” Sandra snapped. “How’d you get her phone?”
“Your friend’s in a good place,” the killer said calmly.
“You creep,” Sandra shouted. “If you harm her . . .”
“How about you just shut up and listen. If you want your friend to stay alive, you need to focus right now on doing your job. You’re a professional. Do your job and save a life.”
Sandra felt her hand shaking. “What do you want?” she said. Her voice cracked. Beside her, a small boy in a train conductor’s hat smiled at her. He seemed to live in a different world.
“Turn around. Go down Fourth to the mall. When you get there, call me and I’ll tell you what to do next. Oh, and let’s not call our law enforcement friends, shall we? And do hurry, dear.”
Sandra squeezed her cell and took off in a half-jog east on Fourth, down the narrow sidewalk, weaving in and out of the Handcar crowd coming toward her. Old man in a brocade military uniform. Tall woman in a straw hat wrapped in silk. As she ran, she suddenly thought, Something’s wrong. What is it?
She went past a family bunched in a cafe doorway. Around a sidewalk signboard.
She crossed Davis, waving her hand to stop a car. Through the traffic bollards and into the cavelike darkness of the freeway overpass.
At Morgan, bent over and breathing hard, she stopped for the light. Come on, she said to herself. Think. What is it?
The light changed. She thought: How’d he know I needed to turn around? She punched re-dial on her cell.
*
Detective Brown broke the plastic lid opening on his coffee and smelled the Jamaica Blue Mountain. He was parked in an unmarked car in the Barnes and Noble parking lot downtown at Third and D streets. As he sipped his coffee, he thought of Sara Flemming, the Windsor victim who was not here to see this morning.
What had Cordero said that other morning? You don’t get how smart this guy is. Was she right? Was Flemming my fault?
On the seat beside him, his cell sounded. Flores.
“Our boy’s used the stolen cell again,” Flores said.
“Cordero?” Brown asked. He stuck his cup in the console holder.
“No. The paper. He just told an editor to send a photographer to the mall lot. Second floor. Behind the old Mervyn’s store.”
Brown started the car and put it in gear.
“And get this,” Flores said. “He said Cordero’s about to write the story of her life.”
“Where’s he calling from?”
“Railroad Square.”
Still holding the cell with one hand, Brown pulled the car into the intersection, turned right on Third, and accelerated hard down the street.
Next: “Scared of Noise.” A killer’s scheme.
Frederick Weisel is the author of Teller: A Novel, a new mystery set in Sonoma County, which Kirkus Reviews describes as a “smartly written debut mystery . . . with elegant echoes of Chandler and Macdonald.” His second novel, Elise, which will be published in 2013, is a fast-paced police procedural set in Santa Rosa, and featuring police detective Eddie Mahler. See www.frederickweisel.com for excerpts, backstory, discussion, reviews, and videos.
Previously: The killer kidnaps Abby.
Chapter 16 – Scared of Noise?
By ROBERT DIGITALE
The killer answered Sandra’s call. “Hold still,” he said. “Your friend’s life depends on you.”
Sandra heard a siren. A patrol car flew past her onto Morgan Street and stopped to block the entrance to the mall parking garage. “The cops just showed up,” she said. “I didn’t call them. I swear it.”
“I know you didn’t. Now listen to me. Your friend’s alive and stretched out in the trunk of her car. It’s parked on the second floor of the garage near the back of the old Mervyn’s store. The key is near the left front tire. You’ve got to go up there and pull her out. Now, Sandra, you’re not afraid of a little noise, are you?”
Sandra could hardly breathe. “No, I’m not afraid.”
“Good, cause there’s going to be a little noise downstairs. Just ignore it and do your job. Now I’m only going say this once. If you don’t save Abby in the next five minutes, she’s dead. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, just let me go to her.”
“Go, but keep your phone on. I’ve still got something big to say to you.”
Sandra raced to the garage stairwell, put her hand on the green metal railing and scrambled up. She reached the gray concrete space of the second floor and jogged toward the other side. Near her the parking stalls were filled with the cars of revelers who’d gone to the Handcar Regatta in Railroad Square. But the vehicles soon thinned out. She spotted a uniformed police officer coming toward her. Behind him was her editor, Doug Smith.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the officer called out. “I need to ask you to exit the parking garage.”
“Right away, officer,” she replied “Doug, what are you doing here?”
“Your killer called and hinted that something big is about to happen,” Doug said. “Our photographer’s still on his way, so I’m here ready with my smart phone. What’s going on?”
“You’ll see in a moment.”
An unmarked police car sped up the ramp and swung the corner. Detective Brown slammed on the brakes and jumped out. “What are you doing here?” he called to Sandra.
She ran past him. “Saving a friend.”
“What?”
“Abby’s up here locked in a trunk. I’ve got five minutes to get her out.”
“Slow down. This sounds like a trap. Give me a minute to check things out.”
Kaboom! An explosion went off downstairs near the back entrance of the mall. Screams echoed through the garage, followed by the wail of approaching sirens. Sandra didn’t stop. She knew Brown couldn’t be sure which car held Abby. She spotted the faded beige 2001 Toyota Camry two spaces over from a stairwell. The detective, meanwhile, kept looking around to see if the killer might be in the garage or up on the mall’s roof. Sandra neared the Camry, and at the last moment darted in between the parked sedans. She stooped at the left front tire, found the key on the pavement and made for the trunk.
Brown blocked her way. “Wait a minute. Let me get a bomb squad in here.”
“There’s no time for a bomb squad. He told me if I don’t get her out in five minutes, he’ll kill her. He already warned me about that explosion. You know he can kill her.”
Brown clenched his teeth. Sandra put a finger in his face. “Don’t let him kill my friend!”
The detective backed up a step and yelled to the police officer, “Keep everyone back!” Everyone was Doug Smith, standing awkwardly with smart phone in hand.
Sandra put the silver key in the trunk lock and turned the latch. Up popp
ed the trunk. Abby lay inside bound and unconscious. Brown pushed past Sandra and scooped up the groggy woman. “Get to the stairs!” he ordered Sandra. To the officer, he yelled, “Get an ambulance to us down there.”
In the confusion, Doug ran forward to take photos.
Outside the garage, Brown led the way toward the mall’s back entrance. A fire engine was parked nearby, and firefighters with extinguishers were dousing a blown-up trash can. Soon an ambulance sped up the roadway that separated the mall from the garage. As it screeched to a halt, Brown raced forward. Paramedics flung open the back doors and the detective helped place Abby inside on a gurney. As he stepped back, Sandra hopped in. “I’m going with her,” she said.
“Don’t leave the hospital until I get there,” Brown said. “I’m sending a patrol car to follow you.”
As the ambulance departed, Abby’s ring tone chimed on Sandra’s phone. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Exactly where are you?”
“I’ve got Abby. We’re going someplace safe.”
“Be right back.” He hung up.
Sandra got worried and called Doug. “Is everybody away from Abby’s car?” she asked him.
“Yeah, why?”
KABOOM!
“Unbelievable!” Doug shouted. “Her car just blew up. It’s on fire. I’ve got to get a photo. Bye!”
Tears welled up in Sandra’s eyes. She turned to the paramedic tending Abby. “Is she OK?”
“Yeah,” he said. “She seems drugged but stable.”
The ambulance raced to Memorial Hospital in less than three minutes. As the paramedics removed Abby atop the gurney, Sandra’s phone rang again.
“Screw you!” she yelled at the killer.
“Listen up. I’ve got news for you. You can tell your readers I’m going away for awhile.”