Scars (Nevada James #2) (Nevada James Mysteries) (12 page)

Chapter 18

My new
motel room looked like the kind of place junkies go to die. It stank of carpet
cleaner that had been applied far too liberally, maybe to cover the smell of
something else that was better left not thought about. I didn’t bother
unpacking my clothes; I didn’t want them exposed to any of the surfaces in
here, anyway. After a cursory check of the bathroom, I decided I’d be taking my
showers at Molly Malone’s dojo. For that matter, maybe I’d go to a hardware
store, buy a roll of plastic sheeting, and cover every surface in the room with
it. I was pretty far from being a clean freak; my house had reached the point
of moldy carpet back in my drinking days, when I’d been too drunk to pick up my
garbage, but this was ridiculous.

I put
the .45 and my Glock down on the bed. As much as I really didn’t care for the
.45, it wasn’t going to kill me to have a backup piece. I didn’t really expect
that any of this was going to come down to a gunfight, but you never really
knew what was going to happen. If my life had a theme, it was that whatever
could go wrong absolutely would, sooner or later. Sometimes it seemed like the
world was out to kick me in the teeth.

I’d made
a mental note of all the cars in the motel’s parking lot when I’d come in. Now
I looked out the window and checked for any new ones. Nothing had changed. If
the copycat had been waiting at my other place and followed me here, he’d had
the sense to stalk me from somewhere I couldn’t see him.

Why
he would send me flowers was an interesting question. The Laughing Man had done
that for years, starting shortly after I’d gotten his case. That was hardly
common knowledge, though. I didn’t think it had ever made the news, but that
was something I could check on. Fewer people knew he’d kept doing it after I’d
been kicked off the force and holed up in my house to drink myself to death.
Dan Evans, Sarah Winters, and…I thought it over. That was about it. Some of the
lab techs had known, certainly. Back when I’d still cared I’d passed things the
Laughing Man had sent to me on to them in the hopes that they might find DNA,
or a fingerprint, but none of those things had ever panned out and eventually
I’d just given up on it. Llewellyn Carter knew. He’d taken it personally back
then. There was little doubt others at the FBI were aware of it. And people did
talk, after all, even when they knew perfectly well they were sharing things
they weren’t supposed to. Want to show off your importance to your friends?
Impress them with your insider knowledge about the most famous serial killer in
San Diego history. The court jester always knows some of the king’s secrets.

I looked
through the window again. One car that had been here when I’d arrived was gone
now. Nothing else looked different.

I was
getting hungry and didn’t feel like having food delivered. I didn’t know
Miramar nearly as well as I did some of the other neighborhoods in San Diego,
so I wasn’t sure where to pick up groceries around here, either. I hadn’t
brought any food with me, though, so I decided to head out to explore. It
didn’t take me long to find a Ralph’s. I went inside and picked up a 12-pack of
Diet Coke, a tray of pumpkin muffins topped with chocolate chips, and half a
rotisserie chicken. If I’d been a grown woman that would have made for a pretty
pathetic dinner. Oh, wait. I
was
a grown woman. Well, too bad. I’d have
a kitchen once they finished building my house, but damned if I was moving in
there before they caught the Laughing Man’s copycat. Two people had died in my
last house inside of a week. The new one was going to stay a corpse-free zone
for as long as I could manage it. As long as
my
corpse didn’t wind up in
there, I’d have nothing to complain about.

When I
left the store I saw a red convertible had parked next to my Mustang while I’d
been inside. I wasn’t that surprised to see a model-beautiful young man leaning
up against its door waiting for me. Another equally beautiful young man sat
behind its wheel, not looking in my direction. That was Fitch. He never looked
at me.

“Hey,
Abercrombie,” I said as soon as I was within earshot. He tossed his head to the
side, sending his silky blond hair tumbling to the side like an ocean wave. If
he hadn’t been gay I might have jumped on him right there.

“You do
know my name isn’t Abercrombie?” he asked.

“And his
isn’t Fitch,” I said, nodding at the other young man. “But you won’t tell me
your real name, so you get to be Abercrombie. Hey, Fitch,” I called to the
driver. Fitch continued not looking at me. “I don’t think Fitch likes me,” I
said to Abercrombie.

“He
likes you. He just has trouble expressing himself. We’re working on that.”

I
couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or not. Abercrombie tended to be
very…dry. “Well, I guess that’s a good thing.”

Abercrombie
and Fitch worked for Scott Landers, a somewhat retired computer hacker who had
made a fortune stealing from the bank accounts of the rich and unpleasant. Now
he managed money instead of stealing it. Scott’s brother had been an early
victim of the Laughing Man, which was how I’d come to know him. Technically,
given that I’d discovered what Scott’s past had entailed, I should have
introduced him to my friends at the FBI, who would no doubt have loved to meet
him and offer him free lodging at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado,
for the rest of his life. But I had a certain sympathy for the Laughing Man’s
victims, and the truth was I didn’t really care what Scott had done. He didn’t
kill people, and his skills had proven to be extremely useful in my work. He
was the reason nobody other than his people could get a location on my cell
phone, and that was the least of what he could do.

My phone
buzzed with another text from Sarah Winters, asking to meet me as soon as
possible. I put it in my pocket. She was going to have to wait.

“Is that
your dinner?” Abercrombie asked, nodding at my grocery bag. “Because that is
just
tragic
, my dear. Do you want me to take you out and teach you how
to order food in a restaurant? It’s not complicated. Even you should be able to
get the hang of it.”

“Hey,
Fitch?” I called. “When you dump this guy, I’ll have a line of hot boys just
waiting to meet you. Say the word and it’s done.” Fitch continued ignoring me,
but I thought I saw him smirk just a little bit.

“Be
nice,” Abercrombie said. “Do you want what I have or not?”

“Of
course I want it.”

“As far
as I can tell, Michael Lewis kept his nose clean after his hippie days. He was
the faculty advisor for some anarchist club called the Malatesta Group, and he
was on record saying violence has a legitimate place in effecting social
change, but all the club did was march around with their garish little signs and
shout about divestment whenever the university’s regents had a meeting. I
expect it was one of those college things where everybody goes on about ‘the
revolution’ for four years and then forgets all about it once they start
getting a real paycheck. Kind of like the ‘gay until graduation’ crowd.”

“Gay
until graduation?” I asked. “That’s a thing?”

“It’s a
thing,” Abercrombie said. “I could tell you some stories about…”

“No, you
can’t,” Fitch said. I think it may have been the first time I’d ever heard him
speak.

“Yeah, I
actually don’t care,” I said. “What about his work? Anything on oxides or
malaria medicine?”

“His
research was mainly on cadmium selenide particles. Before you ask me what that
is, I don’t know. I do know it doesn’t explode.”

I
sighed. “Damn it. So this was a complete waste of time?”

Abercrombie
cocked his head and grinned at me. “I could have just called and told you that.
I wanted to see your face for the next part.” He waited while I stared at him
expectantly. “Oh, you’re no fun at all, Nevada. You could at least pretend to
be excited.”

“I’m
excited on the inside, I promise.”

Abercrombie
rolled his eyes. “One of Lewis’s students had several papers published that
dealt with peroxide bonds.
Special
peroxide bonds. Can you guess what he
was working on?”

“Artemisinin?”

“Artemisinin
was his starting point, but he came up with a synthetic that makes artemisinin
look like leeches and bleeding. He’s changing the world.”

“Yeah,”
I said. I had a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a hungry animal
had taken up residence there.

“More
than that, he doesn’t even charge for it. He’s been giving the treatment away.
It’s all done through this foundation I’ve forgotten the name of…”

“I think
I can probably guess it,” I said.

“The
man’s singlehandedly responsible for saving thousands of lives. He’s pretty
much Gandhi, Nevada.”

“Oh,
learn some history,” I said, a bit more sharply than I needed to. “Gandhi
didn’t actually cure anything. He’d have to be more like Salk. Or Norman
Borlaug, maybe.”

“I know
Gandhi didn’t cure diseases, Nevada.”

“Yeah, I
just wanted to sound smarter than you for a change.”

“Oh,
yeah? How’s that working out for you?”

I
shrugged. “Not so great. I think my day is about to go to shit. What’s this
guy’s name?”

“Conrad
Meyers. He retired early and sits on the boards of directors of half a dozen
companies that do medical research. Lives up in Del Mar.” He reached into his
pocket and pulled out a slip of folded-up paper. “I even got you an address.”

I took
the paper and looked at it. “Thanks,” I said. “I guess I owe you one.”

“You owe
me several, but who’s counting?” He made an “o” shape with his mouth. “Wait, I
know! Scott’s counting! He wants to know what’s going on with the copycat
case.”

“If he
knows it’s a copycat, why does he care?” I asked.

“I guess
he wants to hear you say it’s a copycat and that screwing around with this
amateur isn’t distracting you from your more important work, which is gutting
the Laughing Man like a fish.”

I
crossed my arms in front of me. “Do I look distracted, Abercrombie?”

“Unless
you think Conrad Meyers is the Laughing Man, you kind of do.”

I looked
over at Fitch, but if I’d thought I was going to get some backup from over
there, that had been a mistake. “He’s not. I’ll be on the Laughing Man as soon
as he actually
does
something, but right now I’ve got nothing to go on.
He’s been quiet since he sliced Chandler Emerson up at my house.”

“Doesn’t
that seem strange to you?” he asked.

“A
little. I wonder what he’s waiting for. But I also don’t know if he’s even
still alive. He could have been hit by a car last week and we all read his
obituary without even knowing it. When the Laughing Man moves, I’ll move. Until
then, we’re in intermission.”

Abercrombie
watched my face for a second, then looked away. “I already know the answer,” he
said, “but I was told to ask. Are you sober?”

I stared
at him. “I said I know the answer, Nevada,” he said, shrinking away as if he
thought I might hit him.

“What do
you think?” I asked.

“Yes,”
he said. “I remember you when you were a drunk. You looked like you’d been in a
concentration camp. And my
god
but you stank, Nevada.”

I
nodded. “Fair enough. Tell Scott thanks for the concern, and the help. I’ll be
in touch when I have something new for him.

Abercrombie
nodded and looked back at Fitch. “We’re going to get going. Good luck with
Conrad Meyers. I doubt he’s going to have many good days left.”

“Why is
that?”

“Because
when I told you he was changing the world, you made a face like…like you were
having the best dream of your life and you just realized you were about to wake
up.”

That did
seem about right. “Maybe,” I said. I held up the paper he’d given me. “If this
is the guy I’m looking for…well, I guess I really hope he’s
not
the guy
I’m looking for. Because if he is, I’m going to ruin his life.”

Chapter 19

Del Mar
was only about twenty minutes away from the motel I was hiding out in, but it
was getting late and I still had half a rotisserie chicken in my bag that I
wanted to eat before it got cold. Conrad Meyers could wait. I doubted he was
going anywhere.

I hadn’t
bothered to get paper plates or plastic forks at the store, so I wound up
eating the chicken with my fingers while I watched the evening news on the
motel’s tiny television. There was nothing new on the copycat killer. Nor were
they running any footage of me screaming in the park. Hopefully the media were
on their way to forgetting about me.

My phone
buzzed. It was a text from Dan that read,
No joy with Tapestry Flowers.
Buyer wore a hat and kept his head down. White male
.

Serial
killers were almost always male, and white guys in San Diego were about as
common as sunny days. I went to wash my hands before I texted Dan back.
Maybe
you should investigate hat dealers
.

Smartass
,
he sent back.
You okay
?

Fine.
May move again tomorrow. Let me know if you get anything new.

Will
do
.

I was
about to go back to picking at the chicken carcass when the phone rang. It was Brad
Ellis this time. It occurred to me that I’d been ignoring Sarah’s messages.
Maybe she thought I was mad at her. “Hey,” I answered.

“Sorry
to bother you, Nevada,” Ellis said. “We’ve got another crime scene. Can you
spare us some time?”

I
sighed. “Look, Brad, I don’t mean to be a bitch, but I don’t see what I can
contribute to this. Sarah said she had some ideas. She’s a good detective. You
seem okay enough. What do you want me to do here?”

“We just
need another pair of eyes,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t
important.”

“Fine,”
I said. “Tell me where.”

Ellis
gave me an address in Balboa Park and hung up. I looked at the phone for a
moment, thinking things over. I really didn’t feel like looking at another
body. Nor did I really want to see Dan right now, and it was almost certain
he’d show up at the crime scene sooner or later. He might try to bundle me up
and put me on a plane to South America, no doubt while lecturing me on the need
to keep safe.

Still,
it might be better to make an appearance. I just needed to remember to keep my
cool, not let my emotions get away from me, and most of all not to completely
flip out and start yelling at people that weren’t there. A good display of
sanity and reasonableness might be enough to keep Dan off my back for a while.

I tucked
my Glock into its shoulder holster and put the .45 Dan had given me on my hip.
He’d be happy to see I was carrying it. I almost looked like a real cop.

Once
outside I rolled the Mustang’s window down so I could feel the night air. It
tended to relax me, and being relaxed would be a plus once I got to the crime
scene. Traffic was light and I managed to find the address Ellis had given me
within about fifteen minutes. It was a small, one-story house in a residential
neighborhood that had seen better days, but not so bad people would be afraid
to walk down the street after dark. I recognized Sarah’s car parked in the
house’s driveway. It was the only one there. A few other cars were parked along
the streets in either direction, but this was a residential neighborhood. Cars
were
supposed
to be parked here. None of them were police cars, though.
I didn’t know what Ellis drove, but nothing here appeared to be an unmarked
police car, either.

I got
out of the Mustang and looked up and down the street. Everything about this
place looked like just another pleasant night in San Diego. There were no cops
anywhere in sight. I couldn’t hear any sirens in the distance. There was no
yellow tape set up around the house. Either I was in the wrong place, or this
wasn’t a crime scene at all.

The
address on the house was the one Ellis had given me, though. I was in the right
place, unless he’d gotten the address wrong. I took my cell phone out of my
pocket and unlocked it so I could dial Dan’s number. He’d know about a new
murder by now. If I was in the wrong place, that was one thing. But if this
where Ellis had sent me...

A man’s
voice came from behind me. “Drop the phone, Nevada.”

I
lowered the phone to my side without turning around. “I’m not dropping it,” I
said. “It was expensive. Besides, with the modifications I had made, it’d be
damn hard to replace.”

“I said
drop it.”

“And I
said go fuck yourself.” I tossed the phone through the Mustang’s open window. “There.
Good if I turn around now, Brad?” I turned around before he had a chance to
answer. Brad Ellis stood there. He had a gun in his right hand pointed at me in
a traditional gunfighter’s stance. It wasn’t all that accurate a position to
fire from, but he didn’t really need accuracy at this range. With the gun at
his side, it would be hard for anyone at a distance to see what he was doing.
We’d look like two people chatting.

I looked
at the gun. It looked like a Walther to me. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his
service weapon. That would have been too easy to trace.

Ellis
smiled at me. “Surprised?”

“I don’t
surprise all that easy,” I said. “Sing something from
Evita
and I’ll be
surprised.”

He
looked almost disappointed. “I’m standing here with a gun pointed at you.”

“Sure,”
I said. “But as traps go, this isn’t all that great.”

“Fair
enough. I had something else planned, but my timetable got pushed up kind of abruptly.
Sarah’s a much better detective than I thought. Now give me the .45.”

It had
been a reasonable gamble that Ellis wouldn’t be willing to drop me out here in
the street over not breaking my phone, but leaving me with a gun was another
matter entirely. I reached for my hip slowly, then took the gun from its
holster with my thumb and forefinger. “On the ground,” he said. I knelt down,
holding my arm at an angle so my jacket wouldn’t swing open. When it was on the
pavement and I’d stood back up he nodded. “Kick it over here.” I kicked the gun
to him. He picked it up and stuck it in the front of his pants like he thought
he was in an action movie. If he wasn’t careful he’d blow his dick off. Not
that I’d have minded if he did.

“Is
Sarah still alive?” I asked.

Ellis
nodded. “Of course. This wouldn’t have been any fun if it was just the two of
us. The game has to have a prize, doesn’t it?”

“Wow,” I
said. “You’re just…bugfuck, aren’t you?”

He
ignored that. “In the house. Walk ahead of me, nice and slow. Don’t do anything
we’ll regret.”

“It’s
pretty much guaranteed one of us is going to regret this shit,” I said. But I
let him march me up the walkway to the house. The door was unlocked and he was
careful to stay out of my reach as I opened it, just in case I turned and tried
to attack him with my hands. The man had done his homework; I had to give him
that much. The last guy I’d hit had suffocated to death on his own broken
trachea.

The
front door led into the living room with a kitchen area off to the right. I didn’t
bother taking off my shoes. I looked around as Ellis shut the door behind us
and turned the deadbolt. The furnishings in here were modest but functional.
The one couch in the room was worn through to the padding in a few places, and
the television was at least a decade old. Everything in sight was dusty and
there was a staleness that suggested nobody had cleaned in here in a long time.
It reminded me of my old house, back when I’d been drinking and not bothering
to take care of anything.

“Dining
room,” Ellis said.

I walked
slowly, scanning the room for anything I could use against Ellis when the time
came. The smell of fresh garlic suddenly distracted me. Either Ellis was afraid
of vampires or someone had been cooking in here very recently. There was no
sign of whoever lived here, though. Or whoever
had
lived here. I
suspected the house’s owners might not be around anymore. Whether they’d left
of their own accord or Ellis had killed them remained to be seen. Possibly in
the dining room. He’d brought me here for a reason, after all.

The
dining room table was rectangular and had been covered with a tablecloth
featuring a muted flower design. Three places had been set, and three dinner
plates with a meal of steak, a potato, and vegetables had been placed on the
table. Three wine glasses had been filled, and a decanter with the remainder of
a bottle of red sat nearby. He’d even set out a basket for dinner rolls.

In other
circumstances, even if Ellis
had
been the Laughing Man, I might have
been tempted to sit down and eat something. The food smelled a lot better than
my supermarket chicken had. But the sight of Sarah Winters duct-taped to the
chair at the head of the table, another piece of tape covering her mouth, was
enough to put me off the food. She was alive, eyes wide, and looked as
terrified as I could remember ever seeing another person. Not that I blamed
her.

The
whole setup looked oddly familiar, but it took me a second longer than it
should have to place it. In my defense, I’d been pretty well plastered the last
time this had happened. “You really are a copycat,” I said to Ellis. “You
recreated my dinner with the Laughing Man.”

“Have a
seat,” Ellis said, motioning to the empty chair on the far side of the table
with his gun. I walked around Sarah and sat down. Sarah kept her eyes on me as
I went by, then looked back at Ellis. He sat down across from me. “What do you
think?” he asked.

I looked
around. “It’s better,” I admitted. “You’ve actually created a scene here. The
food is a nice touch. Of course, it’s hardly original.”

Ellis
put his gun hand down on the table but kept his finger on the trigger. He’d
miss me, barely, if he fired from that position. I still wasn’t in a spot to do
anything about it, though. “It doesn’t need to be original,” he said. “The
original was incomplete. Unfinished. This one won’t be.” He nodded at the plate
in front of me. “You should try the steak.”

“I
already ate,” I said. “If I’d known you were making steak, I might have
waited.”

Sarah
tried to say something but it was muffled by the tape. Ellis glanced at her. “I
think Sarah would like some,” he said. He looked back at me. “I can’t feed her
and hold the gun, obviously, but if you want to give her something, I won’t
stop you.”

“I think
what she was saying was you should get up and run away from here as fast as you
possibly can.”

Ellis
smirked. “Why? You going to kill me, Nevada?” He tapped the barrel of his gun
on the table. “I don’t think you’ve thought about how this ends.”

“It’s
pretty obvious you haven’t, either,” I said. “How are you going to explain
this? Are you going to say you found us here, dead, and you have no idea what
happened? This is some haphazard shit you’ve got going on here.”

He
nodded. “That’s true. I had to advance my timeline much faster than I wanted to.
I’d thought I’d have time to play with you for a while, just to show
him
I could do it better. But Sarah here…” he frowned at her. “Sarah started asking
questions. She was pretty subtle at first, but then someone in the department
told me she ran the GPS on my car to see where I’d been going.” He shook his
head at her. “I’m not stupid enough to have used my own car,” he said, “but the
fact that you were asking was trouble enough.”

I
shifted my left arm, just enough to give me better access to my Glock. I was
fast, but not enough to clear the shoulder holster and get a shot off before he
put a bullet in me. Drawing from a seated position was going to be awkward,
anyway. It would add time I didn’t have to waste getting into position. Even if
he took his hand off his gun he’d be able to recover it and get a shot off
before I could. “You haven’t explained how you’re not going to get caught.”

“I’ve
got some experience rigging crime scenes now,” he said. “I think I’ll manage.”

I
shrugged. “You should still run. I promise I’ll give you five minutes before I
start chasing you. How about that?”

Ellis
stared at me. “How are you so calm?” he asked. “Did you…” he glanced around the
room. “No. Nobody’s coming. If you had a SWAT team on the way they’d have
kicked in the door by now. You act like you knew it was me and none of this is
a surprise, though.”

“I
didn’t know it was you,” I said. “My money was on someone in law enforcement,
though. I kept going out there and critiquing crime scenes. The killer was learning
from me. You thought it was about the blood and the bodies, but that was never
right. It was about art. It was about the meaning he left behind.”

Ellis
nodded. “I did catch on.”

Sarah
said something else and struggled against the tape that held her in place. Trying
to distract him, I thought. Clever girl. If she could goad him into taking his
attention off of me long enough, maybe I could do something. He’d never fall
for it, though. He’d kill her first.

“It took
a shift in my thinking,” Ellis said. “I didn’t get it at first, but now I do.
But it’s also about the game.”

“Which
is why I’m here? Why you sent me flowers? That was a nice touch, by the way,
but I knew they weren’t from the Laughing Man.”

“No,” he
said. “You weren’t supposed to. The game isn’t about me being the Laughing Man.
It’s about me succeeding him. The student becomes the master. The game is the
game, and we are the players.”

“If
Buddha cuts a tree down…” I started. “Wait, that’s wrong. Give me a second. I’ve
got one. If the bear shits in the forest, is he also the Pope?”