The railcar stood shabby and sun-scorched in the late summer sun. It looked as if Butch and Sundance had robbed the train and cast this car aside.
The sheriff deputy pulled the van off the side road, easing it in next to the patrol cars and blackouts from the medical examiner’s office. All the usual suspects were here.
Seeing the blacked-out Cadillac meat-wagon, Manny moaned quietly. “Oh, great, Doctor Doom is here.” It was anybody’s guess as to whether the county medical examiner got along with anyone, but the general feeling among the rank-and-file was a crime scene was more pleasant without him showing up in person. Not that any bloody crime scene could ever be pleasant, but it was the thought. The mere fact of him thinking to show up personally meant there would undoubtedly be some other high-profile brass standing around with their thumbs up where no tan lines existed.
Manny reached out and grabbed Hooker’s arm as the young man groaned his way out of the back of the van. Hooker turned to look at his mentor and father figure. He very slightly jutted his chin out and up as if to say What?
“Never mind... You already know. I shouldn’t have thought otherwise.” The man’s shoulders collapsed ever so slightly in resolve.
“Manny. I’ve got this. I have your back. Anything I say only goes to you. This is your domain, man. I’m just the Fun New Guy.”
The older man scoffed. “Right, a newbie with two bits buried in him from taking down a serial killer. You may be young, but there’s nothing newbie about you.”
They held the look of mutual respect that was their bond. Slowly, a tiny curl began at the corner of Hooker’s mouth.
Manny grumped to hide his smile. “Oh, shut up. Get me the hell out of here.”
Hooker pulled the chair out, set it up, and then reached in and leaned into the other man’s lap with his good shoulder. Manny reached out and grabbed, two-handed, at Hooker’s belt. With his legs, Hooker dragged the man out of the back of the van. Manny knew the pain on Hooker must be intense, but he also knew Hooker was relentless—only Hooker touched the older detective.
The deputy who could have been there a few minutes earlier to offer some help started to say something. Manny snapped his head at the man and gave him his ‘you are so dead meat’ burning eye. It was a look he had perfected over a couple of decades as one of the top detectives in the city.
The deputy withered and backed away.
Manny pointed to an unoccupied area. “Let’s get back up on the asphalt and go over there. I want to look at this from along the road first.”
Hooker and Manny moved along the road cautiously. The communication was perfect between them. Not a word was spoken. A nod of a head, a finger here, and a hand spread there. It was silent but rich in the depth of looking, instead of just seeing. It was one of Manny’s favorite approaches to teaching.
Looking is what you do at a crime scene. Seeing is looking, but with an overlay of judgments, wants, needs, beliefs, and prejudices. The talent is just to look. Gather all the information you can before you start assuming.
They could feel most of the eyes watching them, wondering what they were doing eighty yards away from the crime scene. One voice called out, and it was calling Manny.
Manny didn’t flinch, didn’t even look up. He kept doing his job. His left hand rose with one finger up, and the middle finger going up and down. His old friend Paul Tanner knew the finger was Manny’s code for ‘be with you in a few minutes.’ For anyone else, it may have meant ‘shut up and go away,’ but for the county commissioner, it was the former. He and Manny had been partners, walking a beat together back in the bad old days.
Had they known each other back then, he would have been Manny’s best man when he married Stella on the dock beside the troopship, he then boarded ten minutes later. Ten minutes after Manny had boarded the ship bound for Pearl, he met the man on the top rack of the bunks, and they had become good friends. When they returned, Manny had convinced Paul the only place to live was in San Jose.
The soft-spoken eighth-generation Minnesotan hadn’t even gone home to collect his belongings. He had his folks bring them out when he and Manny graduated from the police academy. The folks stayed for a month and then went home to sell the family farm. They had lived near the coast in Watsonville ever since.
The soft crunch of hard soles on gravel and sand let Manny and Hooker know from forty feet away they had company. The steps stopped, and Manny made one more critical scan of the field.
The fingers on his right hand kept slowly drumming. Drumming... And then they stopped. There was a slight intake of breath, and Hooker squatted down beside him.
Nodding out with his chin, Hooker knew the mentor was asking for his take. He gathered his thoughts and mapped the area. He nodded slightly toward their right. “There was no evidence of a car, but he came in carrying along that depression. He then moved left to about where Doctor Doom, in the stupid black suit, is standing. After t, he circled to see if the area was clear. But I don’t see that he came out this way.”
Manny nodded as he raised his left hand slightly and waved his old friend Paul in. Still, only to Hooker, Manny continued Hooker’s evaluation. “The bent grass suggests you’re right about him carrying the vic. But I think the deep weight-carry damage masked them leaving.”
“Them?”
“Look along the sightline where the depression becomes a berm. There is some grass flattened there, too. I think we’ll find a footprint, or at least a toe print along there before it becomes hard-packed and railroad ballast. The line you see off to the left is the lookout. Last night, the breeze was coming up from Gilroy, so the lookout took station downwind while our killer walked straight in with the vic on his shoulder.”
“What do you have, Manny?”
Without looking up at his friend, he took in the entire scene. “Well, Paul, to gild the lily and put it in terms little schoolgirls like you and the stupid suits out there can understand, we have a cluster fuck.” He folded his hands in his lap. “Ask Doctor Doom out there not to take a step. Then have your brightest boy go snoop around his feet for the barefoot prints I think he will find.
“As for the royal fucking, the prize would have to go to the two idiots standing at the end of the railcar drinking coffee. They’ve been milling around the past twenty minutes all over the tracks of your killer. The blond one even didn’t like his coffee, so he threw it out, probably along the best place we could have pulled a pure boot print.”
He turned around and looked up at the man. “But if you want to save anything from here, you can ask Hooker here to show your best caster where he can get an un-fucked-up print. Why the fuck would you guys come down here, dance all over the evidence for hours... and then call me? Do you really hate me so much for raping you at the last poker night?”
The man growled back with a deadpan face. “Fuck you, too, Manny. I would have called you three hours ago, but it was some tit-head in City Hall who thought it would be improper to have a civilian here.”
He held Manny’s stare until Manny nodded in understanding. They had both worked against the machinations of those in City Hall, who had no clue about how things ran in the real world of the street.
Sighing, Manny returned his gaze back over the tableau.
Turning to Hooker, the commissioner acknowledged him. “Hooker, it’s always good to see you son. How is the body coming along?”
“Stiff and hurts, but then again, there are the not-so-good days.” They smiled at something all too true about the wounds only coming from being shot, stabbed, or beaten. The commissioner had his fair share of scars, also.
Pointing, “You see the guy in the gray jumper? His name is Harold. He is the best and brightest we have. Go see him about where you want him to cast. We still have to figure out how to get the deadweight up onto the railcar,” he finished as he jerked his thumb at his former partner.
Manny grumped, “At least you didn’t call me a sea anchor,” referring to a bad comment made years before that had become a running joke.
They both watched as Hooker made his way across the field, scanning the entire time—something the police had failed to do.
The commissioner squatted down and rested his right arm on the wheelchair armrest, pushing off Manny’s arm. It was the most extreme invasion of personal space for a person in a wheelchair, but Manny made no protest. They had too much history for privacy.
“He has turned into one fine young man.”
Manny chuckled. “Between Willie, Stella, and Dolly, the kid didn’t have a chance.”
“Would you have pegged him for only sixteen the Christmas Eve he towed Stella and her girlfriend, Claire Osofsky, off the Guadeloupe Parkway?”
“I could tell he was young, but we all thought he was maybe a youngish nineteen or twenty. Only Sweets knew right off the bat, but then Sweets is Sweets.”
Paul laughed. “I still wake up in the middle of the night. I’ll get up and sit in the den and turn Sweets on and listen to the cowboy music of his and read. He even got me reading Louis L’Amour and the whole Sacket family stuff.”
Manny looked sideways at him.
“Don’t look at me that way. I know for a fact you have more than a handful of his books in your office.”
“Reference books,” Manny defended with a faux grump. “All two-hundred books as well as some Zane Grey.”
The two continued to banter and stab at each other like puppies who had gotten too tired or too old to play the physical rough-and-tumble.
The two smiled proudly as they watched Hooker walk straight up to the most loathed man on the county payroll to tell the medical examiner not to move an inch—until he was released. He pointed out the man had accidentally stepped into the middle of the most important section of ancillary evidence.
The two old friends watched Doctor Doom stiffen in his jet-black sharkskin suit. However, he didn’t even turn his head as the tech took castings mere inches from his shoes. He knew he had screwed the pooch. As a very senior person, he had made a mistake usually marking newbies for their entire careers.
This will be the last crime scene he comes out to for a long time, Manny thought as a wry smile crossed his face and was matched a couple of feet away.
A large box delivery truck with county markings stopped on the highway. Shortly, as the two watched, it carefully started backing its way toward the railcar. On the back was a lift gate.
The commissioner rose stiffly. “I think your elevator has just arrived.”
Manny reached out and gently backhanded his old partner’s sleeve. The silent communication had the man follow as Manny wheeled along the road to the depression at the edge. He pointed at an unmistakable cowboy boot print, size ten or twelve, undisturbed in the sand about five feet away from them.
The toes pointed away from the railcar.
The two men turned and looked across the narrow-asphalted lane. The field beyond was a good hundred acres of burned off stubble from some crop that had failed a few years before. Manny guessed a poor try at winter wheat or sorghum. They moved for a closer look.
There was nothing there.
“A car would have been obvious sitting out here at night.” Paul scanned about. “So, what are you thinking, they were dropped off?”
Manny’s eyes searched the side of the field, looking at the dirt clods for thirty or forty feet in each direction. “I don’t know yet.” He looked up at the commissioner. “I’ll let you know once I see the body.”
“Body is gone. It left almost an hour ago.” He knew what Manny was after. “Male, about five-nine, and hundred-twenty or thirty pounds. An easy carry.”
Manny weighed the information. Turning the chair, he studied the road.
“Then get some cops out here and have them comb this line for at least a quarter-mile.”
He held his hand up to shade his face. He looked across the field to a small stand of low trees in the distance. “What’s out there, Kooser Road?”
“More like Santa Teresa.” Paul saw what Manny had spotted. “I’ll have a team check around those trees and make sure they park a hundred yards off.”
Manny spun and gave a hard push, still thinking. “Let’s go look at the art gallery.”
The sand and broken field weren’t easy, and Manny had to let his old partner tilt him back on the large wheels and then drag him backward to the waiting truck. It was the worst insult for a person in a wheelchair. Surrendering control and doing it so completely they are moved like a broken stove on a hand truck. The commissioner never said a word, but both knew it was something that would always be between them. The same as the bullet in Manny’s spine—he would forever have the upper hand.
Hooker pushed the button, and the motor whined as the three rode up the approximate level of the railcar. The driver had done an almost perfect job of lining up the liftgate until there were only a few inches of separation. This distance was nothing for Hooker and Paul. They each took a side, and they were in.
The walls were solid graffiti in blood.
Hooker and the commissioner stood, with respect, in the doorway. They looked at the horror as Manny unhurriedly rolled the length of the railcar, his eyes cataloging every sweep of the brush strokes.
Manny gave a low whistle. “This is a hell of a lot more than he had to say eight years ago.” He gradually pushed his wheelchair down the railcar.
“Did they find the brush hairs?” It was almost a distracted comment. Paul knew it came from the second side of Manny that was just gathering the information.
“Over here by the door.”
“Were they still bound?”
“Yeah.” Paul shuddered.
“With what?”
“They will have to look at the lab, but they think he peeled the skin off the vic’s penis.”
Manny kept moving and cataloging. He sounded distracted, but both men in the railcar with him knew what they saw were the two heads of Manny. One, looking and recording, and the other, asking questions. When Manny and Paul had been working crime scenes together, Paul had always joked they were the Three Musketeers—Manny, Manny, and him.
Manny stopped. He sat a moment, and then spun the chair around, frowning. “What were they bound to?”
Paul scratched his head. “We’re not sure. It was a small bone of some kind. It was very light and about six inches long.”
Manny didn’t even turn. “It’s a wing bone from a raven. One showed up with the young girl. It just wasn’t attached, so nobody thought anything about it. I always figured, because of the three days it took to find the body, a mouse or rat had separated it from the hair bound to it and moved it just enough away to appear as if it were outside the kill zone.” He turned around, thinking about crows and blackbirds. “Hooker, do we have ravens here?”
He had caught Hooker unaware, and the young man had to do some mental gymnastics to catch up. He knew it was a trick question of Manny’s to bring him back into the investigation instead of just standing in repulsed awe of the writings on the walls. “Um, no... We have crows and blackbirds. Many people think the crows are ravens because they are large. A crow is much larger than our blackbirds, but the raven is even larger still.”
Manny put his index finger in the air. “Paul, did you know that?”
The larger man looked at Hooker with a frown. “You sure they aren’t ravens?”
Hooker nodded. “Ravens have a diamond-shaped tail when they fly, but our crows have a blunt square tail. People confuse them because they both have black beaks, as where the blackbird has a brown beak.”
“Where are ravens found, Hooker?” Manny smiled to himself. He was now having fun with his former partner. He leaned in to look closer at a few of the writings in the darker areas. Only half of his mind was paying attention to the lecture path he had sent Hooker down.
“They should be here, but the crows and blackbirds seem to have pushed them out. Going south, there have been sightings down in Salinas, but more down near San Louis Obispo. In the temperate spring, you might find some venturing into the upper bay, but mostly they stay over in the Central Valley. There is a lot more grain over there, but the crows and blackbirds like the roadkill, and we have it in spades on Blood Alley.”
Paul stood with his mouth open. He thought a moment and closed it. “How do you know all of this?”
Manny laughed. “How long have you been clearing bodies and stuff off Blood Alley, Hooker?”
“Ten years... thereabout.”
Manny looked at his old detective partner. “It’s like working the streets, Paul. Some things you learn in books, and then you learn the more important stuff by just doing it in the street.”
“But how did you know he knew it?”
It was Hooker’s turn to laugh. “One day, we caught Dolly out on something. And I’d never tell a soul what it was... just because. But I shot three or four birds. Maddie told me I had the wrong ones. They were only large blackbirds. She told me she would pay me a dollar if I could kill a crow. But then she added she would pay me a fifty if I could bag a raven. She knew there weren’t any ravens.”
“So how many crows did you get?”
Manny laughed. “None.”
The commissioner frowned and looked back at Hooker.
Hooker rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Crows are smart. They can count up to three. So if you sneak up on them, they know it. They also know what a gun or rifle is.”
“They can count?”
“Yup,” Hooker nodded. “They count one... two... three... many. So if five men walk into a blind, they are many. If four walk out, they are many... and the blind is empty. But if four men walk in, and three walk out… the crow knows there is at least one still in the blind.”
“So, you never got close enough to shoot one.”
Manny was laughing even harder now. Hooker glared and then laughed, too.
“Oh, I did... once... I reloaded Betsy with hard bird buck, which is between the size of double ought with nine pellets in the shell and standard bird which is twenty-four or so. I had sixteen BBs. And I spent the day walking around the field with Betsy under my coat.”
“So, what happened?” Paul frowned, getting a little antsy about telling war stories instead of solving a crime.
Manny harrumphed a snort. “He was right underneath the bird when he shot it.”
Paul thought a moment. His imagination shifted from information to imagining. He chuckled. “Was there anything left?”
Hooker shrugged and rolled his eyes. “A few feathers.”
Paul laughed, and then looked out at the other people looking in at the three laughing at a crime scene of a brutal murder.
He frowned as he thought it. “What did this have to do with Dolly?”
Manny smiled. “Stella was going to bake a pie for Dolly.”
The penny finally dropped for Paul... “So she could eat crow.”
The young tow driver and the man in the chair just smiled.
Paul smacked his face with his hand. “Oh, brother, she would have been on the warpath for sure.”
Hooker nodded his head as if to say do you think so.
Manny wheeled back and down to the other end and returned, and then circled his finger in the air. “You think they got plenty of good photos of all this?”
Paul frowned. “Sure, why?”
“Because I need to go down now, over near the highway.”
Hooker didn’t have to ask. He pulled the chair up on its back wheels and jumped it down onto the liftgate and into the box of the truck. “Hold on to the bang boards,” he directed Manny and then leaned out and around the edge of the truck. He whistled to the driver. “Take us out to the highway and stop on the side.”
The driver fired up the truck, and it started to roll as the commissioner jumped over with a question on his face.
Hooker didn’t have to look at Manny for clearance. “He’s going to throw up.”
The ex-partner looked around Hooker to see Manny grabbing the sideboards with both hands and had pulled his body out of the seat until his head was hard against the boards. His knuckles were as white as his blanched face.
Paul watched his old partner and still best friend.
It was a rare cop or detective who ever had a personal stake, much less personal experience in a murder. This one was too close for Manny. Manny and Paul had drawn this killer over a period of five years when he started.
The controlled violence of a true psychopathic killer is like no other killer. Most kills are classified as a cold-blooded kill, such as a hit with a single gunshot wound, or GSW, to the head or heart. These are usually from someone who knew the victim, and the victim is usually found in bed with another person to whom they aren’t married.
The next step up in violence and gore is the crime of opportunity. This spreads a whole class of gore. The cleanest is an armed robbery gone south. It is usually the nervous young gang punk who empties a gun into a liquor store owner and then runs, leaving the money lying on the counter.
The bloodiest is the wild bar fight that goes wrong if there is such a thing. A good bar fight is just fists and kicking until someone breaks it up. When things get out of control, bottles are broken and used as weapons. These usually result in ambulances and time in jail. The ones Paul and Manny saw were the ones starting with bottles and pool cues but soon turned to knives and a rare gun.
None of them is more than heated blood.
The psychopath plans and is metered. How the crime is performed is like a fingerprint. The fingerprint of this killer was a small four-inch scar on Manny’s lower spine where the surgeons removed the bullet but couldn’t repair the spine.
Several minutes later, the three stood on the side of Monterey Highway looking across a small field at the rail siding. Manny grumped quietly. “We need to contact Southern Pacific and find out how long the car has been there.”
“But this is a Northern Pacific and Burlington Northern line. Southern doesn’t run up this far.”
“That may be true, Paul, but look at the undercarriage. It’s not made for snow country. It’s a Southern.” He looked up at his ex-partner. “I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I want to know why it’s here, how long it has been here, and when it was supposed to move next. I want all the information I can have on the car. I also want to know how often this siding is used. The ballast is all washed out, and I don’t think the bed would hold much weight.”
“I’ll get them rolling on it. Anything else?”
“We need the officer and van for a few more hours. And I’d like copies of everything you find as well as all the photos out to the house this evening.”
Paul smiled. “Is Stella home?”
“Call her and give her your request. If we need to pick anything up, like Sicilian sausage from Chiaramonte’s, then she can get ahold of us through Dolly and the radio.”
“I’ll have it all at the house by dinner.” He turned to leave and looked back. “I’ll have the deputy bring the van over here to pick you up.”
“Thanks, Paul. We’ll see you for dinner. You can even bring a date. It’ll give Stella someone to talk to who isn’t talking about killing and blood.”
The man waved his hand over his head as he walked across the field toward the rest of the circus. The troops had thinned out, but there would still be some kind of presence until they figured out how to move the railcar to an evidence barn.
“What do you think?” Hooker squatted and steadied himself by putting down his fingertips of his left hand.
“I think it’s going to be a happy tummy dinner.” Manny smiled at the young man.
They both knew Stella loved cooking extra special when there was a guest at the table, and the last guest had been Hooker’s slave for two weeks. Squirt, was a young kid who saved Hooker’s life a couple of months before, and who was having the fifth and hopefully, final operation this morning to remove some excessive scarring restricting the blood flow and use of his right arm.
“I was talking about this,” Hooker pointed to the railcar and surrounds.
Manny pointed out across the fields. “I think they parked over there in the little clump of low trees. I think the killer did all the carrying. The other guy is just the watcher. I think he carried the vic all the way over here, and then I think the vic took a very long time to die, probably hours. This asshole has expanded, and he had a lot to say this time.” He thought, and then looked over at Hooker as they saw the van arriving onto the highway. “And I think we need to go see your girlfriend.”
“Uncle Willie or Dolly?”
“Both.”