In Cold Blonde (30 page)

“Well, boys, the party’s over.  Everyone
out!”  The boys hurry for the door.  “And Colin,” Nick Wood
says.  “You are so grounded.”

The boys exit the room.

“Thank God Nick Wood showed up,” Syd said.  “No telling what they
would have done to you next.”  Syd reached for the Stop button on the
remote control.

“Wait,” Alice said.  “It’s not over.”

Syd was confused.  “But they all just left the room.”

“True.  But I’m still not alone.”

Shock filled Syd’s face as the implication registered.  No. 
Fucking.  Way.   

She turned back to the screen.   

The angle hasn’t changed.  The camera is on the bar
pointed toward the pool table.  Nick Wood closes the game room door,
stands there thinking for a moment, then locks it.  He walks back to the
pool table, looks at Alice.

“So young,” he says. 

He walks toward camera, picks up the bottle of Jack Daniels,
pours himself a drink.  Only half of his face is visible on the right side
of frame.  “So damn young,” he repeats.

He sips his drink and his eyes spot something behind the
camera.  His hand reaches past the camera, and then comes back into frame
holding a condom.  He stares at it for a long time, thinking, and then a
mischievous smile tugs his lips. 

He turns back to Alice.  He takes a long pull on
his drink as he slowly makes his way back to the pool table.  He weaves a
bit as he walks.

“Hello,” he says.  “Can you hear me?”

No response.

“Hello,” he says, gently shaking her naked shoulder.

Nothing.

His hand is still on her shoulder.  He slowly
lowers it until his hand covers her breast.  He begins stroking the
breast, watching her face for any reaction. 

He puts down his glass and now both hands are on her
breasts. 

He bends down and kisses the breasts.  One of his
hands drifts past her stomach and buries itself in her pubic hair.

He suddenly stands, shakes his head.  “This is
crazy,” he mumbles.  He veers toward the door, looks like he’s going to
leave, but no, he just double checks to make sure it’s locked.  He turns
back to Alice. 

“What the fuck,” he says and pulls down his pants. 
He rips open the condom, slips it on and inserts himself into the naked,
unconscious girl.

The sight of a fifty-year-old man raping an unconscious seventeen-year-old
girl horrified Syd.  She remembered meeting Nick Wood in the morgue. 
And then pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.

Zachary Stone was Nick Wood’s lawyer.  Nick Wood must’ve heard Stone
had been killed on Saturday night.  And when his son Colin was murdered by
a woman on Monday night, Nick Wood realized who the killer was.  But
instead of telling us he hid out.  Why?  Because he was afraid he might
be on her hit list.  

Nick Wood grunts as he comes, pulls out of Alice, rips
off the used condom and tosses it into the trash.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” he says, and
laughs.  Then he pulls up his pants, grabs the bottle of Jack Daniels and
leaves the room.

 “Unbelievable,” Syd said. 

“Mr. Wood had no idea his son had left the camera on.  Blake told me
he didn’t realize either until the next day when he was fast-forwarding through
the tape looking for some frames to email.  Then when the shit hit the fan
at school and he got worried about me going to the cops, he called Mr. Wood and
told him he knew what he did to me.”

“And that’s why Nick Wood was willing to pay so much,” Syd said.  “He
couldn’t risk this tape going public, so he was willing to pay anything to stop
your parents from going to the cops.”

“My father sold me out for a million dollars.”

The amount shocked Syd.  She’d known there’d been a settlement, but
not how much.  A million dollars, wow.   And that got her
thinking… If Nick Wood hadn’t been recorded raping Alice, if he wasn’t
personally in danger of going to jail, would he have coughed up a million
dollars?  Not likely. 

So if Nick Wood hadn’t raped Alice, there would have been no payoff so
Alice would have gone to the police with her parents and gotten her day in
court.  She might never have tried to kill herself.  She might never have
gone to the Institute.  She might have had all her childhood dreams come
true.

The real bad guy here, the ultimate bad guy, was Nick Wood.

“So now you’ve got a problem,” Syd said.  “You have another man to
kill.”

Alice looked at her, surprised.  “That’s right.  My plan was to
just kill the four of them, Blake, Adam, Colin and that lawyer.  After
that, it didn’t matter.  I actually wanted to get caught by the police so
I could tell my story.”  Alice laughed.  “I had this crazy thought my
story might inspire other women to fight back, stand up for themselves the way
I didn’t.  Men take advantage of women every day and we just let
them!  Well, I was sending a message with every bullet, with every
amputated prick.  And if other women started fighting back, started to
make men pay for their cruelty, maybe, just maybe, scumbags like Colin, Adam
and Blake would think twice before they rape somebody.”

Okay, thought Syd.  That’s a little nuts, but hey, she’s spent the
last eleven years in a psychiatric hospital, what do you expect.    

And Syd thought she knew the answer to the next question but she asked it
anyway.  “Why now, Alice?  Why wait eleven years?”

“I’ve got cancer.  The doctors just gave me a few months to
live.  They told me to use the time as productively as I could.  I
don’t think they had my becoming a serial killer in mind, but hey, it seemed
like a good idea at the time.”

So she was living a lie, Syd thought.  A psychiatric trick gone
horribly awry.  The question was, should Syd tell her that?

“I am a little ashamed that it took a death sentence for me to take my
revenge,” Alice said.  “But I was never willing to throw my life away to
get back at them.  You know, go to jail or get killed trying to get
even.  As crappy as my life was, at least it was my life.  That’s
what keeps most victims down isn’t it, the law’s crazy insistence on even
punishing the innocent if they want a little payback?”

Syd was about to give her the standard answer about civilization being
built on laws and blah blah blah, instead she blurted out, “It didn’t hold me
back.  I killed my stepfather.”

Alice’s eyes went wide.  “You what?”

“He’d been sexually abusing me for years and one night I just… killed
him.  I never told anyone that before.  Never even said it out loud.” 

“Why’d you tell me?”

“I don’t know.  Because I wanted you to know I understand how you
feel, I guess.  And my road from there to here hasn’t been easy.  I
barely made it.  Yet, even knowing that, if I had it to do over again,
kill him I mean, I would do it in a second.”

“Justice.” 

Syd nodded.  “Justice.” 

Then they sat for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts, the only
sound the crashing of waves on the beach.

Then Syd made a decision.  She stood up, pulled a key out of her
pocket, leaned down and unlocked Alice’s handcuffs.  “Nick Wood is in hiding. 
I’m not sure where he is, but a good place to start may be his house.”

Syd helped Alice to her feet.  “You’re letting me go?”

Syd shrugged.  “By the time I got here you were gone.”  Syd
reached into her jacket pocket, handed Alice her scalpel and gun.  “I
don’t know how much time I can buy you, so act fast.”

“Thank you…” Alice laughed.  “I don’t even know your name.”

“Syd.  My name is Syd.”

“Thank you, Syd.”

And now it was time to tell her the truth about the cancer, Syd
thought.  “There’s something you should know Alice…” Syd trailed off as
she saw Ryan step into the living room.  Alice saw Syd’s reaction and
turned to see who was there.

And that’s what Ryan saw, the Lady in Red turning toward him, a gun in
her right hand.  Years of training kicked in and purely on instinct, Ryan
raised his Glock and fired twice even as Syd called, “Ryan, no!”

 Both shots hit Alice in the chest.  She staggered back and then
crumpled to the floor.  Syd dropped next to her.  Blood pumped from the
two chest wounds.  “Alice,” Syd cried as she tried to stem the bleeding. 
But it was too late.  Alice placed her hands over Syd’s, looked her new
friend in the eye, managed a feeble smile, and died.

Ryan rushed to Syd, knelt down.  “Are you all right?”

Syd stared at Ryan, a bit dazed, trying to make sense out of what just
happened.  “I’m fine.  What’re you doing here?” 

Ryan looked at her, confused.  “You called me, left a message. 
I called back but you didn’t answer.  You sure you’re okay.”

No, thought Syd.  But she said, “I’m sure, yeah, I’m fine.”

The sound of distant sirens cut through the night.  Syd reacted,
surprised.  “You called for backup?”

“When I pulled up, I saw your car.  You didn’t answer your phone, so
yeah.  I called Hanrahan, told him to send the cavalry.”  His eyes
slid off her to the Lady in Red.  “Want to tell me what happened before I
got here?”

Syd had a decision to make.  Trust Ryan or lie.  Finally
telling someone about her stepfather had felt good.  Syd would love to
tell Ryan about her stepfather; what he did to her, why she’d felt a bond to
the Lady in Red, how she was about to let the Lady in Red go.  She wanted
to trust Ryan with everything.  Tell him about those first terrible years
in Hollywood, about Ernesto, the EMT, Eric Templeton, his sister, Andrea.  To
trust him with everything.  Yesterday it would have been a no-brainer, yesterday
she trusted him with her life. 

But tonight, after seeing him in Anne’s arms, she wasn’t so sure.

Syd said, “I only got here a few minutes ago, saw the body on the living
room floor and started searching for the Lady in Red.  But I fucked up,
Ryan.  When I was looking here in the office, she got the drop on me.”

Syd could see doubt in Ryan’s eyes, but she plowed ahead before he could
poke at her story.  “I was actually talking to her when you showed up,
trying to get her to turn herself in.  She came here to kill Blake Hunter,
but he got the gun away from her, shot her in the shoulder; she fought back
with the scalpel, got the gun back and killed him.”

Ryan glanced at the Lady in Red, saw the bloodstain on her shoulder.

“Take a look at what she did to Blake Hunter, Ryan.  He’s a mess.”

Ryan hesitated, he knew Syd well enough to know he wasn’t getting the
whole story, but he figured no need to rush it, especially since he had a
bagful of his own deceit to deal with.   

 So he stood up, stepped carefully around the bloodstains to examine
Blake Hunter.  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Ryan muttered.  “She filleted
him.”

“They must’ve had one hell of a fight,” Syd said.  “Check out the
master bathroom, there’s blood everywhere.”

Ryan was happy to look at anything but Blake’s butchered face. 

“Down the hall to the left,” Syd said, pointing.  As soon as Ryan
disappeared down the hall, Syd hustled to the DVD player and hit the eject
button.  The
High School Pool Party
disc slid out.  She stuck
it in her jacket pocket.  Next she grabbed the digital tape out of the
video camera and tucked it safely away.

In the bathroom Ryan stared at the bloodstained towels, discarded bandage
packaging, open medicine cabinets.  Something on one of the bottles caught
his attention; he put on his surgical gloves, carefully picked up the
bottle.  A bloody fingerprint was on the label.  Then he noticed the
same fingerprints on other bottles.  The Lady in Red had gone through Blake’s
drugs.  Looking for what?  Then he saw the open bottle of Betadine; she
was looking for antiseptic he realized.  She wanted to disinfect the
gunshot wound.

He looked back at the fingerprint on the label again, the fragment of an
idea stirring in the back of his head.

Syd stepped into the bathroom.  “She left plenty of DNA this time,”
Syd said.

“And fingerprints,” Ryan said.  “Either you interrupted her before
she could clean up or she didn’t care anymore.”

“I don’t think she cared anymore.  She’d finished what she started.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’d killed the men who raped her.  I talked to her parents, Ryan,
found out what happened.  Eleven years ago, when Alice was a high school senior,
she was invited to a party by a boy she had a crush on, Adam Devlin.  Only
there was no party, just three horny high school boys, Adam, Colin Wood and Blake
Hunter.  They drugged her then gang raped her.  Blake videotaped the
whole thing.  The next day he emailed nude pictures of Alice having sex to
all his friends.  She wanted to go to the police but a lawyer representing
the three boys showed up and paid Alice’s family a million dollars to walk
away.”

“And let me guess, the lawyer’s name was Zachary Stone.”

“Give the smart detective a cigar.”

Ryan digested the story; the refocused picture of the Lady in Red didn’t
sit well.  She’d just been transformed from serial murderer to victim. 
And he’d killed her.  He sagged a bit as the implications pierced his
soul. 

Syd saw remorse flood his face.  “You had no choice, Ryan.  You
saw a suspect holding a weapon turning toward you.  You had to
shoot.”  Syd meant every word.  If anything, she knew it was her
fault Alice was dead.  If Syd hadn’t been pissed at Ryan and just answered
his phone call, he wouldn’t have charged into the house with his gun
drawn. 

The sirens had been steadily getting louder.  Now they reached a
crescendo and suddenly stopped. 

“We’ve got company,” Syd said.

Chaos.  That was the best way to describe the crime scene an hour
later.  Since Malibu falls under the L.A. County Sheriff’s jurisdiction, when
Lieutenant Hanrahan got the call from Ryan, Hanrahan phoned the Sheriff’s
Department and they scrambled two patrol cars to secure the scene. 

Officially, the murder of Blake Hunter would be a L.A. County Sheriff’s
investigation, but since LAPD had processed the scenes of the Lady in Red’s
last two murders, and since an LAPD officer was involved in a shooting, it
became a dual investigation.  So detectives and crime scene technicians
from both departments soon swarmed Blake Hunter’s beach house.

That kind of manpower can confuse any crime scene but it was nothing
compared to the gathering media circus.   

The press monitors LAPD and Sheriff’s Department frequencies so it wasn’t
long before word of a murder in Malibu spread throughout the city.  And if
that wasn’t newsworthy enough, minutes later it was confirmed that it was a
Lady in Red story.  She had murdered another victim and then she had been
killed in a shootout with an LAPD detective.  But not just any detective,
it was Detective Ryan Magee, the lottery-winning cop who was about to get a
check for tens of millions of dollars.

And though it was midnight, cell phones rang, engines started, helicopter
blades whirled; every resource was scrambled to cover the story.  Soon the
Pacific Coast Highway was clogged with satellite trucks, the sky was filled
with news choppers and the shoreline outside Blake Hunter’s beach house was choked
with camera-toting boats. 

Sheriff’s deputies and police barricades kept the Press at bay, but the
reporters, photographers and cameramen knew that Ryan Magee would have to come
out at some point and they wanted to be there when he did.

Inside the house, Tony Ramirez and his SID team, aided by the Sherriff’s
Department forensic experts, scoured the house.  Liz finished her examination
of Blake Hunter’s body and crossed to the Lady in Red’s corpse.

Off to the side and safely out of the way, Ryan and Syd stood with
Hanrahan.  Hanrahan sucked on a cherry Tootsie Roll Pop.  Ryan and
Syd had declined Hanrahan’s offer.

After Syd summarized Alice’s high school rape and Syd’s abridged version
of the Blake/Lady in Red battle, Hanrahan said, “Wait, you’re saying the rape
was videotaped.”

Syd nodded.  “Blake Hunter taped the whole thing and then he used
frames from the tape to send out those disgusting emails.”

“Where’s the tape now?” Hanrahan asked.

Syd planned to
discover
the DVD in a day or so.  She wanted
the world to see what happened to Alice Waterman.  To understand what
drove the Lady in Red to kill those men.  And maybe help realize Alice’s
hope that her rape and ultimate revenge would inspire and empower other rape
victims.  But she couldn’t turn the tape over.  Not yet.

 “I don’t know,” Syd said.

  “Blake Hunter’s office is full of tapes and DVDs,” Ryan said. “And
he’s got stacks of hard drives.  It could be here, but it’ll take us a
while to go through them all.” 

Tony Ramirez joined them.  “Well, unlike all the other crime scenes,
this one is teeming with evidence.  Some familiar, like the Lady in Red numbering
her victims; she used the four of hearts this time.  And the severed
penis, I get it already, she hated these guys.  And he’s got a missing
American Express card, which I found in her wallet.  But we’ve got a lot
of new stuff; I found five .25mm shell casings, one in the kitchen floor and
four in the living room.  In the past the Lady in Red always picked up her
brass.  We’ve got blood in the living room, on the floor leading into the
master bath and all over the master bath.  Bloody fingerprints galore in
the master bath; I did a quick check with the Lady in Red’s fingers, they
match.  There also signs of a struggle in the office; there are fresh bloodstains
and tissue fragments on that wall,” he said pointing. 

“That would be Blake Hunter’s blood and skin,” Liz said joining them. 
“Besides the scalpel lacerations and that bullet hole between his eyes, he
shows signs of blunt force trauma to his face and forehead, and his Achilles’ tendon
has been severed.” 

 “And let’s not forget his cock,” Hanrahan said.

“I’ve seen bigger.” Liz said.

Hanrahan grunted.

Liz went on.  “The Lady in Red has the three gunshot wounds as well
as a huge contusion on the top of her skull and abrasions on both wrists.”

“Probably from these,” Ramirez said holding up an evidence bag containing
Blake’s fur-lined handcuffs.  “I found them on the floor of the office.”

“Yep,” Liz said.  “Those would do it.”

 “And this is interesting,” Tony Ramirez said, holding up Blake’s
camera.  He turned it on and showed them the digital screen in back. 
A stunning picture of the Lady in Red backlit by the sunset appeared.   Tony
hit a button and scanned through three more poses.

“Wow, classy shots,” Liz said.

“Wait, he was taking pictures of her, too?” Hanrahan said.  “So let
me get this straight, he takes her picture, knocks her out, handcuffs and
shoots her.  She bangs his head into the wall, cuts his ankle, slashes his
face and shoots him in the head.”

“I’ve had worse dates,” Liz said.

“God, I’d love to know exactly what happened here.” Hanrahan said.

 “I don’t think we’ll ever really know for sure,” Ryan said. 

Oh yes you will, Syd thought.  She intended to
find
the
videotape of Alice and Blake’s fight to the death when she
discovered
the rape tape.  The image of Alice, bound and handcuffed, being forced to
watch her own rape was too heartbreaking not to release.  And Alice’s
brave fight to save herself was downright inspirational.  

But once again, not yet. 

“You guys finished?” Hanrahan asked Liz and Tony.  They both
nodded.  “All right, good work.”

Liz turned to her two assistants.  “Let’s bag them up.”  They
dropped the first body bag next to Blake and unrolled it.

Tony Ramirez headed into the kitchen where he left his crime scene
kit.  He started boxing the evidence.  “Excuse me a minute,” Ryan
said to the others and went to join Tony.

“So,” Hanrahan said, turning to Syd.  “Looks like you and Ryan have
still got the only perfect record in Homicide.  You’re my Dream Team.”

Some dream team, Syd thought.  A bitch-fucking, backstabbing, lottery
stealing Ryan and a lying, evidence stealing, murdering Syd.  “We make a
great team, all right,” Syd said.   

And, Syd thought, there was a very good chance their partnership wouldn’t
last past tomorrow. If, as she feared, Ryan and Anne hooked up, she’d be asking
Hanrahan for a transfer.

Hanrahan drifted off leaving Syd alone.  She glanced into the
kitchen.  Ryan was huddled with Tony Ramirez, Tony was shaking his head
and laughing.  What the hell were they talking about, Syd wondered.

A body bag was unrolled next to the Lady in Red.  Syd watched as the
coroner assistants picked Alice up, slipped her into the bag and zipped her up. 
Was there anything more dehumanizing than being zipped into a black plastic
bag?

“There’s a lot of sympathy in those green eyes,” Liz said joining Syd.

“I feel sorry for her, Liz.  She was a good kid just trying to get
by before those boys raped her.  And I can’t help but wonder what her life
would have been like if she didn’t go to that party.”

“I call it the Domino Theory,” Liz said.  “The innocent single event
leads to an inevitably tragic conclusion.  This morning I had a six-year-old
boy on my table, shot once through the head.  Last night he found his
dad’s handgun in a bedside drawer and started playing with it.  He dropped
it, it went off and killed him.  So when did the first domino fall? 
When the kid found the gun, when his dad put the gun in the drawer instead of
the top shelf of the closet, when his dad bought the gun, when his dad read the
newspaper article about a home invasion in their neighborhood that sent him to
the gun store in the first place?  Sometimes it gets a bit murky, but it’s
always there, the first domino.  And if you could just stand it up again,
stop the chain reaction, then so much needless tragedy could be undone.”