The Killing Tide, page 14
He pulled out from his pocket a metal collapsible rod that looked like a police baton except for the loop of rope at one end. With a flick of his wrist he extended it to a length of five feet, twisted it to click it into place, and then readied himself just outside the gate, feet planted wide apart.
“Officer Alonso, you get ready to grab this with me when I say so, but not a moment before.”
The Hispanic officer got behind his boss. The barking grew louder, the Doberman’s big body slamming against the gate once again.
Rebstock looked at the female officer, who had her hand on the gate. “Open it.”
“You sure?”
Alexa and Stuart took a step back, drawing their guns. Alexa sure hoped Rebstock knew what he was doing, because she really, really did not want to shoot a dog.
Even that monster barking its head off on the other side of the gate.
“Go!” Rebstock shouted.
The female officer flung the gate open and leapt to one side. The Doberman barreled out. With a lightning fast movement surprising in someone as out of shape as Rebstock, the homicide detective looped the rope around the dog’s neck as skillfully as any rancher Alexa had ever seen.
But the dog was huge, and the force of its charge made Rebstock stagger back. He leaned in with his weight and stopped both him and the dog, but then the animal started jerking back and forth. Rebstock almost fell over. The dog didn’t seem to feel the inflexible leash at all.
Officer Alonso jumped to his aid, grabbing the pole. Gritting his teeth and planning his feet wide apart, he managed to get the animal under control. Rebstock steadied himself and helped Alonso push the dog out of the way of the gate, growling but unharmed.
“Get in there!” the homicide detective shouted.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Stuart rushed through an open yard, bare of anything except a couple of half-dead shrubs. The house in the middle of the lot was a low, one-story adobe structure with barred windows. Venetian blinds blocked the view inside.
Stuart didn’t even try the door, and he didn’t even try knocking.
“Federal agent! Open up!” he shouted, giving the door a hard kick right next to the lock, the best place to break it.
But this was tougher than your typical American door. Not as strong as the heavily bolted metal doors you got on the average Iraqi home, but tough enough to resist his kick.
Praying Julio Matías didn’t decide to shoot through the door, he gave it another kick. The door cracked but still no luck. Dimly he was aware of Alexa and the female cop flanking him, guns leveled at the doorway.
He gave a final kick, and the door flung open.
He found himself in a stuffy, hot living room. Only a single light shone, and the rest of the house looked equally dim and closed in. The sweet smell of someone smoking meth led him through to the back of the house, Stuart systematically checking each corner as if he was raiding an insurgent compound, leading with his gun, ducking low around every doorway and turn in the hall, Alexa and the female cop protecting his flanks, until he came to an enclosed back porch.
The porch was the kind that had windows all around that could be opened to let in the evening breeze, but like the rest of the house, the windows were shut, the Venetian blinds down, the air heavy with sweat and chemical stink.
Julio Matías sat on a lawn chair at one end of the otherwise bare room, a glass pipe in his hand. In a half circle around him on the concrete floor was a collection of knives, screwdrivers, hammers, and saws. In the middle of the floor sat a young woman, circled up in a ball, eyes wide with terror. A chain ran from a bolt in the floor to a collar around her neck.
For a moment Stuart stopped, stunned. He felt oddly surprised that the woman was clothed, and did not have a visible mark on her.
“Freeze!” Stuart shouted, aiming his gun at Matías.
Matías cackled, showing rotted teeth, and lit up again.
“Drop the pipe! Hands up!” Stuart ordered.
Matías took a deep inhalation. The woman babbled something incoherent.
Gut twisting, Stuart approached the man, intent on subduing him, but before he could make it halfway across the room, Alexa rushed forward, swinging down her pistol. The barrel smashed the glass pipe right out of his hands.
That seemed to wake Matías up. Shouting something in Spanish Stuart didn’t understand, he leapt to his feet, only to have Alexa plant a knee in his balls.
Matías squalled and doubled over, but did not go down. The next instant he was back up, reaching for Alexa. She flipped him and he landed hard on the concrete floor. Stuart dove in and put a knee on the small of the man’s back.
“I got this!” he shouted.
Alexa went for Matías, and Stuart shoved her aside. “I said I got this!”
He saw the rage in her face, and did not want her to be the star of another beating on the evening news.
Holstering his pistol, he leaned harder on Matías’s back as the man shouted and squirmed.
Quickly, before Matías could recover, Stuart pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed him tight. At the edge of his vision, he could see Alexa hovering close by. He could practically feel the hatred in her, the urge to beat this man down.
So Stuart stayed close to him, not because Matías deserved his protection, but Alexa’s career did.
Stuart hauled him to his feet and led him to the far end of the room. The female officer was comforting the woman, who was sobbing and speaking a mixture of Spanish and English.
“Where’s the key?” Stuart said.
Matías only gave him a grin with black-spotted teeth.
Stuart shook him. “Where’s the key?”
When he didn’t get an answer, Stuart turned him around and patted him down. In his pockets he found a couple of baggies of meth and a set of keys.
“Here,” he tossed it to Alexa.
Alexa tried a couple of keys before she found the right one. Once the collar snapped off, the woman collapsed in her arms and cried.
Stuart watched as Alexa soothed her, rubbing her back and softly saying something in Spanish. The female officer stood back, appalled at the scene.
So was Stuart. He turned to Matías.
“You speak any English?”
“Not to you, pig.”
“Hold on, we’ll get someone to read you your rights in a way you can understand. Even you get that.”
Matías replied with what sounded like some swear words.
Just then, Rebstock came in with one of the Hispanic officers.
“Hey!” Stuart called him over. “Read Matías his rights in Spanish and tell him his under arrest for the murders and well as kidnapping.”
And God knows what else.
As the Hispanic officer did so, Stuart went over the Rebstock, whose face poured with sweat.
“Where are the others?”
“Taking care of that damn dog. He’s a brute.”
The homicide detective sounded out of breath.
Their attention got distracted by the victim, who began to speak in English, apparently answering a question Alexa had asked.
“I came over to party, and he locked me up here. Made me eat out of the dog bowl. He said he was going to keep me as a pet until he cut me up. He sat there for days smoking and telling me how he was going to cut me into little pieces.”
“You’re safe now,” Alexa said. “You say he’s been here for days? Did he ever leave?”
“Sometimes to go to the bathroom or something, but the rest of the time he just sat here watching me. That was the worst! He never did nothing, just smoked meth and pulled on the chain and laughed at me. For days and days, just staring and laughing.”
“What’s the longest he ever left you?”
“Not for more than ten minutes. He’d always come back. If I tried to sleep, he’d wake me up. It never stopped!”
“How many days?” Alexa asked as Stuart got a sinking feeling in his stomach.
The woman shook her head. “I’m not sure. It’s been like a nightmare. I dunno. At least three days. Four maybe.”
“Are you sure?”
The woman nodded. “Yeah. Cause it was night at least three times. Nights were the worst. He’d just sit there in the pitch black talking about what he’d do to me, or creep around in the dark and kick me just to keep me from dropping off to sleep.”
Stuart stifled a groan. Another false lead. They had done some good, saved a life, but the killer they hunted still eluded them.
He moved over beside Alexa.
“We need to go,” he said.
Alexa nodded. “Yeah, we got work to do.”
She put a hand on the victim’s shoulder and said something else in Spanish, then turned for the door.
They were just getting to it as the Hispanic officer was leading out Matías.
The prisoner turned to her and smiled.
“You should have come later. I was gonna cut up that bitch.”
Alexa snarled. “Why you … ”
She lunged for him.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Stuart got in between them. Alexa tried to push past, and Stuart had to grab her around the middle and pull her away. Matías only laughed.
Alexa swore at him, calling him every name in the book as the officer led him away. Matías laughed all the way out of the house.
“Easy,” Stuart said. “Calm down. He’s going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. He’s done.”
“Get your hands off me!” Alexa pushed him away. Stuart was stronger, but he let her go. He kept blocking the doorway, though.
Alexa glowered at him a moment, then turned away.
Stuart let out a breath of relief. The worst was over, but it would come back, all too soon.
He knew.
That aggression. He’d seen it so many times in Iraq. You’re in a dangerous situation and you keep seeing your buddies mutilated or killed, and your mission never seems to end, never seems to get better. You can fall into a downward spiral of anger and violence.
He remembered one guy in his squad who always shouted at the Iraqi civilians. Given that they hardly ever had a translator, sometimes you had to raise your voice to get their attention, or wave them away from the convoy or gesture with your gun to get them going in the right direction. It’s hard to be polite in a warzone with a language barrier. But Private Thompson took it to the next level, screaming in red-faced fury at every Iraqi who came near them. He even learned some Arabic swear words to use on them, and would spice them up with a good shove. Not a very good way to win hearts and minds. Some in his platoon shrugged it off. Others tried to talk to him about it. Stuart had reported him to his superior officer. Nothing got done.
But Stuart kept an eye on him, and when he caught Private Thompson beating a prisoner, he reported him.
This time he did get listened to. Thompson got a good talking to and was forced to see an Army shrink. He never spoke to Stuart again.
Stuart didn’t think Alexa was that bad. She didn’t have the casual cruelty toward the innocent or the helpless, but the anger she did have was bad enough.
She’d need to be watched.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Alexa was shaking as she walked to the car. That sick bastard should be put down. Just like Drake Logan. Just like the Jersey Devil. Why couldn’t they mete out justice right there and then and save the state some money? She’d watched documentaries about policing in other countries, countries so poor that most people didn’t have shoes but didn’t dare steal because they were terrified of the cops. That’s how it needed to be here.
A small, rational part of her mind knew that she was wrong to feel this way, but damn it, she felt what she felt and she wasn’t sorry.
No, that wasn’t true. As they walked to the car, Alexa began to flush with shame. She had screwed up again, like with that guy Drake Logan had sent, and she didn’t even have a knife wound across her chest to use as an excuse.
She looked at Stuart out the corner of her eye. He was looking down at his keys, fiddling with them to give himself something to do. They got to the car and got in.
“Back to the court records, I guess,” Stuart muttered.
“Yeah, let’s get to work,” she mumbled, looking out the window.
They drove in silence for a time. The minutes stretched out, making Alexa feel more and more awkward. Finally she summoned the courage to speak.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s OK,” Stuart replied, too quickly.
Alexa took a deep breath. “No, it’s not. I kind of lost it back there.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation I wanted to beat the guy to a pulp myself.”
Maybe you did, but I wanted to kill him. And not only for justice, but for my own satisfaction.
Alexa stared vacantly at the dry, desolate neighborhood of the barrio, where people were emerging from their houses now that the police had made their raid. She thought back on what Robert Powers had said in his journal, how he had felt the darkness too. Maybe lots of people were the same way.
Yeah, but they manage to keep it under control. I need to find a way to do that.
Stacy saw the video of you beating down that guy who cut you. She didn’t judge you because you got attacked, but what if you blow up in a worse situation, like the one back there, and you get filmed a second time? She might not look at you with so much admiration after that.
That possibility filled Alexa with more fear than breaking into the home of an armed robber with a giant Doberman.
Stuart’s phone rang. Still driving, he pulled it out, checked it. His eyes went wide and he pulled over to the side of the street, right in front of a rundown house where half a dozen guys in their undershirts were drinking beers and listening to Mexican rap.
Stuart got a boyish grin on his face as he answered.
“Hello Miss Doctor Guevara. How are you? … Oh, good. … Me? Nearly got eaten by a Doberman as big as a bus and then arrested a kidnapper. A real scumbag but not our guy. … Yes? … Oh really? That’s great! Yes, please do.” Alexa crossed her arms, irritated. He could at least put it on speaker, but the way his ears were turning red it looked like he wanted to keep this between the two of them. “Yes … OK … about that dinner. When I solve the case? What if Alexa solves the case, are you going to have dinner with her?”
Stuart burst out laughing. Alexa could hear Annette laughing on the other end of the line. Then she said something Alexa couldn’t hear.
“Ooooh …” Stuart gave Alexa a sly grin as she frowned back. “I see. Well, I think that’s a good idea. Yeah, got to go. Thanks a million. Bye.”
“So?” Alexa said as he hung up.
He laughed, irritating Alexa even further. “She says you’re too serious for her, and you’re a boring straight girl anyway. But she says not to worry, because she’s looking for a guy to hook you up with. She says that would help you lighten up,” Stuart laughed again.
“What did she say about the case?” Alexa asked, her annoyance rising.
“Oh, the case! Right,” Stuart looked disappointed, like he wanted to keep talking about Annette. “She says the knife wounds and some footprints they found make her sure it’s the same guy. He was wearing Timberlands this time, same size as the sneakers he had on when he killed Billings. Also, he scratched himself when he went through that gap in the fence. She found a couple of threads of a light tan cotton shirt and, even better, some traces of skin.”
Alexa sat bolt upright, her irritation vanished. “DNA!”
“Yes. She’s extracting a sample right now. Might take some time to run it through the database, and of course if our perp was from an older case they won’t have him in the database, but it’s still a win.”
Alexa nodded. It was rare that you found enough direct evidence to convict someone outright, especially with a person this clever. But with a DNA sample, they could corroborate a suspect’s presence at the scene. That would be enough to convict.
They still had to find a suspect, though.
A clinking on the glass of her window made her look around. One of the guys from the porch had come up to the car and was knocking on the window with his beer bottle. His friends stood in the yard, halfway between the house and the car. They all looked pissed off.
Alexa realized that with the sun in his eyes and the slight tint to the window, he couldn’t see she was wearing a uniform.
“You’re in our spot,” he said loud enough to be heard through the closed window. “Move your ass!”
“I’ll handle this,” Stuart said, unbuckling his seatbelt.
“No, I will,” Alexa said.
“But—”
Too late. Alexa was already opening the door.
She stepped out and stood in front of the guy, ending up almost touching him. She had to look up to look in his eye. Quite a long way up.
“Can I help you?” she asked in as polite a tone as she could muster.
His gaze flickered across her uniform, resting on her chest for a moment.
Seriously? You’re staring at a cop’s breasts?
He seemed to remember himself and looked her in the eye. “Uh, sorry officer. It’s just that we’re expecting a friend and we need this spot.”
“All right. We’re just stopping for a minute. But I don’t want you getting all aggressive with strangers in cars, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. I mean ma’am. Officer.”
Alexa pointed to his beer bottle. “And you’re in violation of Phoenix’s open container law.”
The guy quickly retreated to the lawn.
“That’s better,” Alexa said, getting back in the car. “Have a nice day.”
“Uh. You too.”
Stuart chuckled as they drove off. Alexa hoped that display of professional self-control had lightened the mood somewhat, but she knew her partner wasn’t going to forget the ugly scene back at Julio Matías’s house.
And then there was the main problem—they still didn’t have a suspect. While Rebstock’s people were checking some of the less-serious suspects, Alexa didn’t hold out much hope for them to get lucky.
