Night Hunter (36 page)

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he smiled.

John looked over the list of Miss Classic contestants as Regina drove toward Daly City.

“
Twenty-eight women made the initial lineup,” he said, reading. “This was cut to ten, and finally four runners-up and the winner. How many days did the pageant run?”

“
One week. Because there was no talent competition, we could only parade around in various stages of dress and undress for so long.” She turned to him. “Don’t you remember? You covered the contest for the newspaper.”

“
It was a long time ago,” he said, looking out the passenger window, avoiding her eyes.

“
What paper?”

“
The
Chronicle,”
he said without hesitation, and hoped to God the
Chronicle
had assigned someone that piece. She would know.

As he slid the list back into the folder a pink message slip fell out. “What’s this?” He held it up.

“
I picked that up at the station this morning. What’s it say? I didn’t have time to read it.”

“
It says, ‘Someone with an alibi is lying.’”

“
Who is it from?”

“
It doesn’t say.”

“
Odd.” After a moment’s silence, she said reflectively, “Last night a woman called and said there was a dangerous person who had killed and would kill again. She added something that didn’t make any sense. I thought it was a crank. I don’t know if I can remember what she said.”

“
Try,” John said.

“
Something about an ocean. An ocean will lead to the killer. No, not ocean. Sea. Yes. A sea will lead to the killer.”

“
That’s it?”

“
There was something else. Ultimately, a sea—no, wait —Initially, a sea will lead to the assailant. That was it.”

John wrote it on the back of the pink message slip. “We’ll go over this later.”

She looked back to the road. “Tammy’s house is right up here.” She turned right, then made a left on the first street and pulled up to the second house from the corner.

“
Have the cops been out here?” he asked.

“
They were out the night the dog died. But that was the Daly City police. I don’t know if any came out after her death.”

“
Probably not, since she died in the city and they were quick to rule out homicide,” he said. “Where two jurisdictions are involved, one hand rarely seems to know what the other hand is doing.”

They walked up the driveway to the front door. John rang the bell.

After several minutes he strolled around to the side of the house. He opened the wooden gate and stepped through. Standing just inside the yard, he paused to take in the scene. He heard Regina come up behind him.

“
Tell me what you remember about that night. Where was the dog?”

“
On the patio.”

Scrutinizing the ground in front of each footstep, John slowly walked to the edge of the concrete slab. About two feet in he saw a foamy substance resembling hardened egg whites tinged with what looked like blood. He pointed at it. “There?”

“
I think so.”

He scanned the ten-by-fifteen-foot patio. In the center he saw something dark. Flies crawled over it. He walked to it, bent down in a crouch, and stared.

It was dried meat. Bits of raw ground beef that had stuck to the rough cement. He looked around. The fence was about twenty feet away,

John walked back to the gate. At the top he saw fresh scratch marks in the weathered wood.

“
What is it?” Regina asked.

“
The dog got pretty excited about something. Whoever poisoned him must have stood here. See the gouges? And then tossed the hamburger—probably a ball of meat with the poison inside—on to the patio. Big dogs aren’t known to be finicky eaters.”

“
Then Tammy was right,” Regina said. “He wanted her to come out in the open. He could have dropped the poison right here, but he wanted to make sure Tammy saw the dog and felt its suffering.”

John opened the gate and went out between the two houses. The narrow space comprised a concrete walkway and grass. He dropped his gaze to the ground and began scanning outward.

Trapped in the corner, where the house and fence met in a right angle, was a pile of windblown debris, leaves, twigs and bits of paper. John bent down and, with a twig, poked through the litter. A piece of white paper caught his eye. He worked it out and picked it up by the two edges.

Regina had crouched down beside him, watching.

“
What’s that look like to you?” he asked.

She leaned in closer. “A tab —no, wait—tape. Butcher tape?”

“
Umm.” He held it up. “Can you make that out?”

There was something printed on the tape in blue, but most of it had been torn away. Regina studied it, turning her head this way and that. “It looks like an emblem of some
kind ...
a sun, or ... ” she shook her head, “I don’t know, John, I can’t tell.”

“
We’ll find out. Do you have something to put this in?”

Regina reached into her purse, brought out an appointment book, and opened it. John dropped it between the pages. She carefully put it back in her purse. “It could have been there a long time.”

“
It’s not weathered. It hasn’t been there long.”

John looked up. Over the top of the connecting fence to house on the left he saw gray hair and a pair of pale blue, watery eyes. The head disappeared.

“
Hello,” John said, moving to the fence. “Sir?”

The head came up again, slowly. A tiny man in his early seventies, with a pair of eyeglasses pushed up through his sparse, yellow-gray hair, glared at him, eyes squinted.

“
Afternoon, sir. We’re from the Humane Society and we’re investigating the death of Mrs. Kowalski’s dog.”

The limpid eyes, filled with suspicion, went from John to Regina and back to John.

“
Mrs. Kowalski’s dead too. What’s the big deal about the dog?”

“
We’re not the police. We’re following up on a report of animal poisoning. Could you answer a few questions, please?”

“
Don’t look to me. I didn’t do it.” He rose higher, so that his entire head cleared the top of the fence.

John moved to the fence and looked over. He saw that the man, in bedroom slippers, was standing on a weathered step stool that looked as if it had been in that spot a long time. Around his neck
hung
a small pair of binoculars. “We’re not accusing anyone. Did the dog bark a lot?”

“
Naw.”

“
The night the dog died, did he bark?” He assumed this neighbor was aware of the all the particulars of the dog’s death. Anyone who used a step stool to see over the fence and carried binoculars knew what was going on around him.

“
Yeah.”

“
Did you see anyone out here that night? Possibly right where I’m standing now?”

“
Couldn’t have. When the dog started barking I was in bed. I got up, but I didn’t go outdoors. There’s no window on this side of the house, don’t you know.”

“
Before you went to bed that evening did you see anyone at all?” Regina asked.

“
Nope.”

John stepped back. “Well, thank you for—”

“
Saw a car though.”

“
A car?”

“
Parked around the side of my place. It was there a long time. Never saw it before in the neighborhood.”

“
What kind of car?”

He shrugged.

“
Color?”

“
Dark. Blue, black, brown.”

“
New? Old?”

His mouth went down and his shoulders came up. “Hard to say. It had one of those hood ornaments. They don’t seem to make hood ornaments these days.”

“
What did the ornament look like?”

“
Couldn’t see it good. That’s the night I misplaced my glasses. Mostly I saw the lights, y’know, from the street lamps, reflecting off it.”

“
Did anyone get in or out of the car?”

“
Not while I was looking.”

“
Did you see anything else out of the ordinary? Not just that night but any time in the past week or two?”

The man shook his head. “Just that weirdo she was seeing that drove that infernal motorcycle. The noise liked to wake the dead, coming and going odd hours of the day and night.”

John looked to Regina questioningly. She shrugged, shaking her head.

“
What’s become of those two little girls?” the man asked. “The twins?”

“
They’re with their father,” Regina said.

The head disappeared.

John watched Regina take a pen and paper from her purse. She spoke aloud as she wrote. “Dark car with hood ornament. Friend with motorcycle. Do you think there are fingerprints on the butcher tape?” she asked.

“
It’s not likely there’ll be a clear one. And again, as with voiceprints, it’s a matter of comparison.”

“
How do you know so much about crime detection?”

“
I write suspense novels. It’s my business to know. Of course it’s a lot easier to solve a crime when you know who the bad guy is.” He put a hand on the small of her back and said, “C’mon, let’s head home. We have follow-up work to do.”

Back in Regina’s apartment, John sat on the couch scanning the phone book for meat markets while Regina, sipping a Corona, was on the phone calling from the list of Miss Classic contestants. The women from the original list had since married or moved. Two had died, one of cancer, the other from an overdose of barbiturates. More than half of the twenty-eight had disappeared without a trace. She reached Jamie Sue, the contestant who had called in to Saturday’s show with her account of near death from alcohol poisoning. Jamie Sue then went on to tell of several other oddities, contestants plagued by freakish accidents and mysterious illnesses. Regina brought up the food poisoning at the banquet.

“
Amelia lied on the show,” Jamie Sue said. “She said she’d had a touch of food poisoning. She didn’t.”

“
Are you certain?”

“
Yes. She hates shellfish. I do too. We talked about it. I also saw her doing something with a pair of aqua dyed-satin pumps, and that evening Tammy, coming down the stairs, lost the heel on one of her aqua pumps.”

“
God.”

“
Amelia had vodka stashed in a rubbing alcohol bottle in plain sight in the changing room. She offered me a swig and that’s when I told her I was allergic to alcohol.”

Things were falling into place. Not jinxed, but sabotaged. The two women talked several more minutes, then said good-bye.

John only nodded when Regina passed on Jamie Sue’s information.

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out two cold Coronas. “Any luck?” she asked, pointing to the open phone book on the table in front of him as she handed him a beer.