“Anyway, once we had Gladden’s name from the ID net’s alias data bank, from there we picked up the wanted that LAPD put out on NCIC last week. And here we are.”
“It seems . . .”
“Too easy? Well, sometimes you make your own luck.”
“You said that before.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Why would he use an alias that he must’ve known was on file somewhere?”
“A lot of these people find comfort in tradition. Plus, he’s a cocky son of a bitch. We know that from the fax.”
“But he used a whole new alias when he was arrested by Santa Monica police last week. Why would he—”
“I’m only telling you what we know, Jack. If he’s as smart as we think he is, then he probably has several ID packages. They wouldn’t be hard to come by. We have the Phoenix field office working on a subpoena for Hertz. We want Breedlove’s complete renting history going back three years. He’s a Hertz Gold customer no less. Again it shows how smart he is. Most airports, you get off the plane, walk to the Gold lot and your name is on the board. You go to your car and the keys are in it. Most of the time you don’t even have to talk to any clerks. You just get in your car, show your license at the gate and you are out of there.”
“Okay, what about the other thing? You said there were two leads to Gladden.”
“The Best Pals. Ted Vincent and Steve Raffa in Florida finally got hold of Beltran’s records with the organization this morning. He’d been Best Pal to nine young boys over the years. The second one he sponsored, this is going back something like sixteen years, was Gladden.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. It’s all starting to fall together.”
I was silent for a few moments as I considered all of the information she had revealed. The investigation was advancing at exponentially increasing speed. It was seat-belt time.
“How come the field office out here didn’t pick up on this guy? He’s been in the paper.”
“Good question. Bob’s going to have a heart-to-heart with the SAC about that. Gordon’s flag landed last night. Somebody should’ve seen it and put two and two together. But we did it ourselves first.”
A typical bureaucratic snafu. I wondered how much sooner they’d have been on to Gladden if someone in the L.A. office had been a little more alert.
“You know Gladden, don’t you?” I said.
“Yes. We had him during the rapist interviews. I told you about that. Seven years ago. He and Gomble, among others at that hellhole in Florida. I think our team—Gordon, Bob, me—spent a week down there, we had so many candidates for interviews.”
I was tempted to bring up Thorson’s call to the prison’s computer but thought better of it. It was enough just to get her to talk to me again like a human. Telling her I had rifled through the hotel bills was no way to ensure that she would continue. This dilemma also created a problem in regard to nailing Thorson. For the time being I would have to sit on his hotel phone records as well.
“You think there is any connection between Gomble supposedly using hypnotism and what you are seeing on the Poet cases?” I said instead. “Think maybe Gomble taught him his secret?”
“Possibly.”
She had regressed to the one-word reply.
“Possibly,” I repeated, a thin line of sarcasm in it.
“Eventually, I’ll go to Florida to talk to Gomble again. And I’m going to ask him that. Until I get an answer one way or the other, it’s possibly. Okay, Jack?”
We pulled into an alley that ran behind a row of old motels and shops. She finally slowed down to the point where I let go of the armrest.
“But you can’t go to Florida now, can you?” I asked.
“That’s up to Bob. But we’re close to Gladden here. For the time being I think Bob wants to put everything we have into L.A. Gladden’s here. Or he’s close. We can all feel it. We’ve got to get him. Once we have him, then I’ll worry about the other things, the psychological motivation. We’ll need to go to Florida then.”
“Why then? To add data to the serial killer studies?”
“No. I mean, yes, there’s that, but primarily we’ll go for the prosecution. Guy like this, he’s got to go the insanity route. It’s his only choice. So that means we’ll have to build a case on his psychology. One that shows he knew what he was doing and he knew right from wrong. The same old thing.”
Prosecution of the Poet in a courtroom had never entered my mind. I realized that I had assumed that he would not be taken alive. And this assumption, I knew, was based on my own desire that he not be allowed to live after this.
“What’s the matter, Jack, you don’t want a trial? You want us to kill him where we find him?”
I looked at her. The lights from a passing window flicked across her face and for a moment I saw her eyes.
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Sure you have. Would you like to kill him, Jack? If you had a moment with him and there were no consequences, could you do it? Do you think that would make up for things?”
I didn’t like discussing this subject with her. I sensed more than just a passing interest from her.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered. “Could you kill him? Have you ever killed anyone, Rachel?”
“Given the chance, I’d kill him in a heartbeat.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve known the others. I’ve looked in their eyes and know what’s back there in the darkness. If I could kill them all I think I would.”
I waited for her to continue but she didn’t. She pulled the car to a stop next to two other matching Caprices behind one of the old motels.
“You didn’t answer the second question.”
“No, I’ve never killed anyone.”
We went in through a back door into a hallway painted in two tones; dingy lime to about eye level, dingy white the rest of the way up. Rachel went to the first door on the left and knocked and we were let in. It was a motel room, one that would have passed as a kitchenette in the sixties, when it was last refurbished. Backus and Thorson were there waiting, sitting at an old Formica table against the wall. There were two phones on the table that looked as if they had just been added to the room. There was also a three-foot-high aluminum trunk standing on one end with its lid open to reveal a bank of three video monitors. Wires ran out the back of the trunk, along the floor and out the window, which was opened just enough to allow them through.
“Jack, I can’t say I’m happy to see you,” Backus said.
But he said it with a wry smile on his face and he stood up and shook my hand.
“Sorry,” I said, not really knowing why. Then, looking at Thorson, I added, “I didn’t mean to blunder into your setup but I was given some bad information.”
The thought of the phone records went through my mind again but I dismissed it. It was not the right time.
“Well,” Backus said, “I have to admit we were trying a little misdirection there. We just thought it would be best if we could work this out without any distractions.”
“I’ll try not to be a distraction.”
“You already are,” Thorson said.
I ignored him and kept my eyes on Backus.
“Have a seat,” he said.
Rachel and I took the two remaining chairs at the table.
“I assume you know what is happening,” Backus said.
“I assume you’re watching Thomas.”
I turned so I could see the video monitors and for the first time studied the view each one had. The top monitor showed a hallway not unlike the one outside the room we were in. Several doors going down both sides. All of them closed and with numbers on them. The next tube showed the exterior of a motel front. In the blue-gray haze of the video I could just make out the words on the sign above the door. HOTEL MARK TWAIN. The bottom monitor showed an alley-side view of what I assumed was the same hotel.
“Is this where we are?” I asked, poi
nting at the display.
“No,” Backus said. “That is where Detective Thomas is. We’re about a block away.”
“Doesn’t look very nice. What are they paying these days in this town?”
“It is not his home. But the detectives at Hollywood Station often use the hotel to stash witnesses or sleep over if they’re working twenty-hour days on a case. Detective Thomas chose to stay there rather than at home. He has a wife and three children at home.”
“Well, that answers my next question. I’m glad you told him he was being used as bait.”
“You seem measurably more cynical than when we last met this morning, Jack.”
“I guess that’s because I am.”
I looked away from him and checked out the video setup again. Backus spoke to my back.
“We have three-point camera surveillance beamed to a mobile dish on our roof here. We also have the field office’s critical response unit and LAPD’s top surveillance squad watching Thomas around the clock. No one can get near him. Even at the station. He’s perfectly safe.”
“Wait until it’s over and then tell me that.”
“I will. But in the meantime, you have to step aside, Jack.”
I turned back to him, my best puzzled look on my face.
“You understand what I’m telling you,” Backus said, not buying the face. “We are at the most critical stage. He is in our sights and, frankly, Jack, you have to get out of the way.”
“I am out of the way and I’ll stay out of the way. The same deal, nothing I see goes into the paper until you okay it. But I’m not going back to Denver to wait. I’m too close, too . . . This means too much. You’ve got to let me back inside.”
“This could take weeks. Remember the fax. All it said was that he had his next man in sight. It didn’t say when it would happen. There was no time frame. We have no idea when he’ll try to hit Thomas.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t care. Whatever it takes, I want to be part of the investigation. I’ve kept up my end of the deal.”
An uneasy silence settled over the room, during which Backus stood up and began pacing on the carpet behind my chair. I looked over at Rachel. She was looking down at the table in a contemplative way. I threw my last chip into the pile.
“I have to write a story tomorrow, Bob. My editor’s expecting it. If you don’t want it written, bring me in. That’s the only way I can convince him to back off. That’s the bottom line.”
Thorson made a derisive sound and shook his head.
“This is trouble,” he said. “Bob, you give in to this guy again and where does it end?”
“The only time there’s been trouble,” I said, “is when I’ve been lied to or kept out of the investigation, which, by the way, I started.”
Backus looked over at Rachel.
“What do you think?”
“Don’t ask her,” Thorson interjected. “I can tell you right now what she’s going to say.”
“If you have something to say about me, say it,” Rachel demanded.
“All right, enough,” Backus said, holding his hands out like a referee. “You two don’t quit, do you? Jack, you’re in. For the time being. Same deal as before. That means no story tomorrow. Understood?”
I nodded. I looked over at Thorson, who had already stood up and was heading out the door, defeated.
36
The Wilcox Hotel, as I learned it was called, had room for one more—especially when the night clerk learned I was with the government people already staying there and was willing to pay the top price, thirty-five dollars a night. It was the only hotel I’d ever checked into where I felt a nervous sense of foreboding about giving the man behind the front counter my credit card number. This one looked like he was halfway through a bottle on this shift alone. It also appeared as though he had decided on the last four successive mornings that he wasn’t quite ready for a shave yet. He never looked at me during the entire check-in-process—which took an unusually long five minutes as he hunted for a pen and then accepted a loan of one from me.
“What’re you people doin’, anyway?” he said as he slid a key with the stamped room number almost worn off it across the equally worn Formica counter.
“They didn’t tell you?” I asked, feigning surprise.
“Nope, I’m just checkin’ people in is all.”
“It’s a credit card fraud investigation. A lot of it going on around here.”
“Oh.”
“By the way, which room is Agent Walling in?”
It took him a half minute to interpret his own records.
“That’d be seventeen.”
My room was small and when I sat on the edge of the bed it sank at least a half foot, the other side rising by an equal amount with the accompanying protest of old springs. It was a ground-floor room with spare but neat furnishings and the stale smell of cigarettes. The yellowed blinds were up and I could see a metal grate over the one window. If there was a fire, I’d be trapped like a lobster in a cage if I didn’t get out the door fast enough.
I took the travel-size toothpaste tube and folding toothbrush I had bought out of the pillowcase and went into the bathroom. I could still taste the Bloody Mary from the plane and wanted to get rid of it. I also wanted to be ready for all eventualities with Rachel.
The bathrooms in old hotel rooms are always the most depressing. This one was slightly larger than the phone booths I used to see at every gas station when I was growing up. Sink, toilet and portable shower stall all complete with matching rust stains were set in a crowded configuration. If you were ever sitting on the toilet when somebody came in, you’d lose your kneecaps. When I was finished and had returned to the comparative spaciousness of the room, I looked at the bed and knew I didn’t want to sit back down there. I didn’t even want to sleep there. I decided to risk leaving the computer and my pillowcase full of clothes and left the room.
My light knock on the door of room seventeen was answered so quickly I thought Rachel had been waiting on the other side. She quickly ushered me in.
“Bob’s room is across the hall,” she whispered by way of explanation. “What is it?”
I didn’t answer. We looked at each other for a long moment, each waiting for the other to act. I finally did, stepping close to her and pulling her into a long kiss. She seemed as into it as I was and this quickly calmed many of the worries I had allowed to simmer in my brain. She broke the kiss off and strongly pulled me into an embrace. Over her shoulder I surveyed her room. It was bigger than mine and the furniture was maybe a decade newer but it wasn’t any less depressing. Her computer was on the bed and there were some papers spread over the worn yellow spread where a thousand people had lain and fucked and farted and fought.
“Funny,” she whispered, “I just left you this morning and I found myself already missing you.”
“Same here.”
“Jack, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to make love on that bed, in this room, or in this hotel.”
“That’s okay,” I said nobly, though I regretted the words as I spoke them. “I understand. Looks like you got a luxury suite compared to mine.”
“We’ll have to wait but then we’ll make up for it.”
“Yeah. Why are we staying here, anyway?”
“Bob wants to be close. So we can move if they spot him.”
I nodded.
“Well, can we leave for a little while? Want to get a drink? There’s got to be someplace around.”
“Probably no better than this. Let’s just stay and talk.”
She went to the bed and cleared the papers and the computer, then sat back against the headboard, propped on a pillow. I sat in the room’s one chair, its cushion scarred by an ancient knife slash repaired with tape.
“What do you want to talk about, Rachel?”
“I don’t know. You’re the reporter. I thought you’d ask the questions.”
She smiled.
“About the case?”
<
br /> “About anything.”
I looked at her for a long moment. I decided to start with something simple and then see how far I could go from there.
“What’s this Thomas guy like?”
“He’s fine. For a local. Not overly cooperative, but not an asshole.”
“What do you mean not overly cooperative? He’s letting you use him as human bait, isn’t that enough?”
“I guess. Maybe it’s me. I never seem to get along with the locals.”
I moved from the chair onto the bed with her.
“So what? It’s not your job to get along with anybody.”
“That’s right,” she said, smiling again. “You know, there’s a soda machine in the lobby.”
“You want something?”
“No, but you said something about getting a drink.”
“I was thinking of something stronger. It’s all right, though. I’m happy.”
She reached over and did her finger drag through my beard. I caught her hand as she dropped it away and held it for a moment.
“Do you think the intensity of what we’re doing and what we’re involved with is causing this?” I asked.
“As opposed to what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just asking.”
“I know what you’re saying,” she said after a long moment. “I have to admit I’ve never made love to anybody thirty-six hours after the first time I’d ever seen him in my life.”
She smiled and it sent a beautiful thrill through me.
“Me neither.”