The Night Stalker (39 page)

The sky was getting menacingly dark and the wind had picked up a notch.

‘A minute after I got to the house, Officers Kimble and Perez arrived. I knew straight away I had to get the County Sheriff’s Office involved. Despite our restricted experience with homicides, we all knew the protocol. We immediately isolated the house. No one other than the three of us had access to the scene.’

‘Until the sheriff and the coroner arrived,’ Hunter added.

‘That’s right. As you said, Doctor Bennett, who is now retired, had an investigator with him, Gustavo Ortiz. He’s now the chief coroner investigator for Santa Clara County. Sheriff Hudson had two deputies with him, Edmunds and Hale.’

Hunter nodded. ‘Chief Suarez told me. Edmunds is a captain now and Hale is assistant sheriff. They both live in Santa Rosa.’

Chief Cooper confirmed this. ‘No one else entered the house or saw the scene. I am sure because I was there until all the photographs were taken and the bodies removed.’

Thin rain started falling, but neither man moved.

‘The Harpers had a son, right? Andrew,’ Hunter said.

Chief Cooper nodded slowly.

‘I’ve been through all the files down at the station. There’s no photograph of the body, no autopsy report and no mention of what happened to him. It’s like all the files on the kid are missing.’

The way Chief Cooper looked at Hunter made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

‘His files aren’t missing. They aren’t there because his body was never found.’

‘What?’ Hunter cleared the rain from his eyebrows and stared back at Chief Cooper. ‘Never found? So how did you know he was murdered?’

The chief let out a deep sigh. His glasses were so heavy with rain Hunter could barely see his eyes. ‘The truth is that we didn’t know. But that was what the evidence told us.’

‘What evidence?’

Chief Cooper finally pulled the nylon hood of his raincoat over his head and retreated a few steps back to the shelter of a large tree. Hunter followed him.

‘The Harpers tragedy happened on a Sunday,’ the chief explained. ‘Every Sunday, without fail, for the six years previous to that day, Ray took his son fishing. Sometimes to Lake Sonoma, sometimes to Rio Nido, and sometimes to Russian River. They’re all within driving distance. I went with them several times. Ray was a great fisherman, and his boy was starting to get pretty good at it too.

‘Tito, the neighbor who called in “shots fired”, saw Ray and his kid packing the truck a couple of hours before he heard the shot. The owner of the gas station a few blocks away from their house also confirmed seeing the kid in the passenger’s seat of Ray’s truck while Ray went into the store to buy some ice cream. Andrew never came back to the house with his father. When Forensics checked the truck, they found the kid’s shirt and shoes. There was blood on the shirt, on the shoes, on the car’s dashboard, and on the inside of the passenger’s door. The kid’s blood. The lab confirmed it.’

‘Wasn’t there an investigation into the boy’s disappearance?’

‘Yes, there was. But we found nothing other than what I just told you. We don’t know where he took his son, Detective – Sonoma Lake, Rio Nido or Russian River. There are also acres and acres of forest surrounding Healdsburg and the rivers. He could’ve killed his son and buried or left him to the wolves somewhere in the forest. He could’ve weighted the kid’s body down and dumped him in the lake or the river. Finding the body without knowing where he went that day was a pretty impossible task. Though we did try, we never found it.’

The chief took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the pads had left two sunken red marks.

‘Ray was a good man, but he suffered from depression,’ he continued. ‘I think he found out about Emily’s affair a few days earlier because there was thought put into what he did. It wasn’t your typical loss of control murder, though it might’ve looked that way from all the mess and blood. We figured Ray found out that Emily saw her lover when she thought it was safe to do so. So he got his kid out of the house and killed him first, disposing of the body somewhere. He then went over to Nathan Gardner’s apartment, disfigured him and left him there, bleeding to death, but not before stitching his mouth shut. After that, Ray returned to his house to confront his wife, and to complete his crazy killing plan.’

Chief Cooper paused and looked straight into Hunter’s eyes.

‘And I have no doubt that in Ray’s plan, no one was coming out alive.
No one
.’

Garcia stood across the room from the unmade bed, staring at the mess of clothes and objects on the floor.

Mark Stratton, Jessica Black’s boyfriend, had cut short his band’s pre-tour and come back to LA in the early hours of the morning. Garcia accompanied him to the morgue so he could positively identify her body.

No matter how physically or mentally strong anyone is, seeing a loved one lying naked on a cold metal morgue’s body-tray will cut through their defenses. Despite all the stitches having been removed, Jessica’s face seemed to have frozen with an expression of terror and pain. Mark didn’t have to ask if she’d suffered.

His legs gave away within seconds of him being in the room, but Garcia managed to grab him before he hit the floor.

Hunter had told Mark over the phone that there was a possibility that Jessica had been abducted from inside their own apartment. He explained that it was very important that the police and a forensic team had a look at it as soon as possible. It was also very important that he didn’t disturb anything. It didn’t quite work that way.

Since Mark had come off the phone to Hunter late yesterday, he hadn’t stopped shaking. He had incessantly called his home number and Jessica’s cell phone, leaving message after message. He just couldn’t think straight. Emotions took over and he had lost it, destroying his hotel room in anger and frustration.

Without knowing what had happened, the rest of his band had to kick his door in and hold him down. It took the tour manager a couple of hours to get things organized, including a flight back to LA. By then Mark was tramp-drunk, and at the airport he wasn’t allowed to board the plane.

‘Aviation rules,’ explained the young woman at the airline counter. ‘He’s way too inebriated to fly. I’m sorry.’

That had been the last daily flight back to Los Angeles. In the end, they had to hire a private plane to take him back.

After a cab dropped him by his private condo, Mark, still half-drunk, stumbled rather than walked through his front door. At that moment all hope of things not being disturbed inside his apartment was lost. He didn’t stop calling Jessica’s name for hours, walking from room to room, turning lights on and off as if she would suddenly magically appear. He opened her wardrobe and rummaged through her clothes. He emptied drawers and cupboards. He lay down on their bed, hugged her pillow and cried until he had no more tears left.

Mark was now sitting quietly in his kitchen, his eyes bloodshot and sore.

Garcia picked up a photo frame from the bedroom floor – Jessica and Mark holidaying somewhere sunny. They looked happy and in love.

He returned the frame to the dresser, turned to face the unmade bed once again and considered what to do. They couldn’t cordon off Mark and Jessica’s apartment because it wasn’t an official crime scene. The chances of him getting a Forensics team dispatched to the apartment before confirming Jessica had been abducted from there were less than slim. The chances of that Forensics team finding any sort of clue in a scene that had been compromised and completely messed with were virtually none.

Garcia walked out of the room, down the long corridor and into the living room. On the stylish glass table that sat between the sofa and the wall-mounted TV set, he found several music magazines. The top one had Jessica on its cover. Out of pure curiosity he flipped it open and looked for the article. It was a two-page interview through which she talked about being a successful musician and her life in general, but one subheader caught his attention –
On Love.
Garcia allowed his eyes to skim through the section, but just a few lines in he paused. A chill ran down his spine as if he’d been suddenly hit by an arctic wind. He read the lines again just to be sure.

‘No fucking way.’ He grabbed the magazine and rushed back to his office.

Hunter left Chief Cooper’s house by Lake Sonoma just before lunchtime, but he wasn’t ready to fly back to LA just yet. His mind was batting thoughts back and forth and he needed to organize them before moving on. He remembered driving past the city library on the way to the chief’s house. He decided to start there.

The building was a single-story structure that couldn’t even be compared to some of LA’s high-school libraries. Hunter parked in the adjacent lot, pulled the collar of his jacket tight against his neck and dashed to the entrance. The rain that had started earlier was still coming down.

The woman at the information desk lifted her eyes from her computer screen and smiled sympathetically as Hunter came through the door.

‘I guess you forgot your umbrella, huh?’

Hunter brushed the water off his hair and sleeves before smiling back. ‘I wasn’t expecting the heavens to open.’

‘Spring downpour. We’re famous for those over here. It’ll pass soon enough,’ she offered with a renewed smile and a couple of paper tissues.

‘Thanks.’ He took them and dried his forehead and hands.

‘I’m Rhonda, by the way.’

They shook hands.

‘I’m Robert.’

Rhonda was in her mid-twenties with short, spiky, black-dyed hair. Her face was ghostly pale and her make-up was one step short from being full goth.

‘So . . .’ she said, fixing Hunter with her dark eyes. ‘What brings you to Healdsburg’s library? Actually, what brings you to Healdsburg at all?’

‘Research.’

‘Research? About Healdsburg’s wineries?’

‘No.’ Hunter thought for a second. ‘I guess I’m looking for an old school yearbook.’

‘A yearbook? An old friend, huh? From which school?’

Hunter paused. ‘How many schools are there in Healdsburg?’

Rhonda laughed. ‘It doesn’t look like you know much about this research of yours.’

Hunter agreed with a smile. ‘The truth is: I’m just trying to find a picture of a kid who lived here many years ago.’

‘A kid?’ Her expression changed to concern and she took a step back from the counter.

‘No, look, I’m a cop from Los Angeles,’ Hunter said, producing his badge. ‘Something that happened here twenty years ago has suddenly become of interest to us. I’m just trying to gather some information, that’s all. A picture would help.’

Rhonda studied the badge and then Hunter’s face. ‘Twenty years ago?’

‘That’s right.’

She hesitated for a beat. ‘So you must be talking about what happened to the Harpers. And if you’re looking for a picture of a kid, you must be talking about Andrew Harper.’

‘You knew him?’

She looked uncertain. ‘Sort of. I was only five when it happened. But he used to come to our house sometimes.’

‘Really? How come?’

‘We lived in the same street. He was friends with my brother.’

‘Does your brother still live here?’

‘Yep. He’s an accountant and runs his own practice in town. You probably drove past his office on your way here.’

‘Do you think I could have a chat with him?’

Another hesitant moment.

‘Whatever information he can give me might help a lot,’ Hunter pushed.

Rhonda regarded Hunter for a second longer.

‘I don’t see why not.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’ll tell you what. It’s coming up to my lunch break. Why don’t I take you there and introduce you to him?’

Rhonda said hello to Mrs. Collins at the reception desk in the anteroom of her brother’s small accountancy practice and pointed to his office door.

‘He’s not with anyone, is he?’

Mrs. Collins smiled kindly as she shook her head.

‘I think he was just getting ready to go out for lunch, dear. You can go right in, Rhonda.’

Rhonda knocked twice and pushed the door open before a reply.

Ricky was pretty much the opposite of his sister. Tall with neatly trimmed hair and a sportsman’s physique, he was dressed conservatively in a light gray suit, baby blue shirt and a blue on red tie. The introductions were quick and to the point, and Ricky’s smile dissipated once Rhonda told him why she’d brought Hunter to see him.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t see how I can help,’ he said to Hunter, looking a little rattled. ‘I was ten when it happened and we weren’t even here, remember?’ He directed the question to Rhonda, who nodded. ‘It happened during Christmas vacation and we had gone over to Grandma’s house in Napa. We only heard about it when we got back.’