Things That Go Bump In The Night
by Jeff Cates
When Everett Johnson was busted by us with handcuffs, duct tape, and a bloody knife behind his front seat, everyone on the force was ready to hang him for the sadomasochistic murders of seven working girls- that is, everyone but me.
I was the bait the night he stopped to proposition me. When I asked him if he wanted me to climb into the backseat and wait for him, he didn’t panic. He calmly answered, “We can do it back there if you don’t have any other place to go.” If he thought I was going to spot his stuff, he must have taken half a dozen tranquilizers first.
When Malcolm and Jose jumped out of the van and came after him like a couple rabid bulldogs, Johnson nearly had a heart attack. While they were wrestling him to the ground, I spotted the knife on the backseat carpet.
When we got back to the station, and all that incriminating evidence was bagged by detectives, the guys in the department said we’d caught the killer just in the nick of time. This was Everett’s third bust for soliciting. Call me crazy, but I think a seven-time serial killer would be too smart to get caught more than once, much less leave his killing kit where it could be spotted so easily. Malcolm, Jose, and I rarely argued, but we really got into it over this guy.
Somebody let the papers know we had our man, and the reporters did everything in their rush to judge “the guilty man” except pour jet fuel on his funeral pyre.
Just before I busted Everett, I knew he wanted me; the bulge in his pants confirmed that. Mass murderers generally choose their victims because they have an appearance they’re drawn to. He barely even looked at my face, and his interest seemed to range below that.
Most working girls are pretty wary of getting into worse situations than they’ve already lived through. Some have shown me the scars on their bodies, but ninety-nine percent of them have scars their johns will never see. The older ones, say twenty-four or twenty-five, aren’t going to get into a car with anybody if they’ve got a cheap motel room close by.
After the bust, Johnson’s picture was all over the papers and the net. One interview was with a pretty college girl next door who claimed he kept creeping her out, inviting her over to his place for drinks. Within two days, they’d plowed through his records like a John Deere tractor.
As the trial was approaching, Lieutenant Davis got wind of the fact that I wasn’t convinced of Johnson’s guilt. He called me into his office and said, “Shut the door, Miss Riley.”
“What’s this about, Lieutenant?”
“I’ll be asking the questions.”
“What do you want to know?”
When Davis was getting pissed, the vein on the side of his right temple started to throb. From the looks of it, he was about to have a brain aneurysm.
“I understand the defense has asked you to testify in the Johnson case.”
I didn’t say anything, since technically he didn’t ask me a question.
“WELL?”
Hollywood had a concentration of beautiful people, but I don’t even think Davis’s own mother would have put him in that category, especially with the expression on his face.
“Why are you asking me this question if you already know the answer?”
“Damn it!” he shouted, slamming a meaty fist against his desk.
I jumped about six inches into the air. “Yes, the defense has asked me to testify.”
“There, was that so hard to do?”
“Do you really want me to answer that question?”
The bulging vein seemed to grow to the size of a nightcrawler as he stared at me. He looked like a lion that was about to spring. “No,” I lied.
“Good. Why do you think Johnson’s attorney wants you to testify?”
“You’ll have to ask him. He hasn’t shared his reasons with me.”
He grimaced, reached into his desk drawer, and shoved about half a roll of antacid tablets into his mouth.
“You know, Miss Riley, the department has worked very hard to arrest this psycho who’s been mutilating and killing prostitutes around the city. Now that we got our man, the D.A.’s built an open-and-shut case. If they still used the gas chamber in California, I’d be the first in line to press the button. I hope you understand the importance of this case, not only to the department but to the citizens of Hollywood. I’ve assured the D.A. that nobody from my division is going to do anything that could jeopardize getting a conviction in this case. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Lieutenant Davis, I hope you’re not asking me to lie on the witness stand. Because if you’re asking me to lie, I’m not answering any more of your questions until I get a union Rep. in here with me.”
“I’m not asking you to lie to anybody, and that applies in court and out of it. I’m just asking you not to do anything stupid that could jeopardize this case and your career as a law enforcement officer.”
“So now you’re threatening to take away my job if I tell the truth on the stand.”
“Don’t say one more word. Have you got that?” he shouted. “Now, get the Hell out of my office.”
When I stepped out the door, half the cops in the station were staring in my direction. Two of them were standing by the water jug with paper cups lifted halfway to their mouths. When I stared back at them, suddenly everyone had reports to fill out, full cups to toss into the trash can, and phone calls to make.
***
I was on the witness stand at the trial when the defense attorney asked me to explain why I thought the defendant, Everett Johnson, hadn’t killed those seven women.
“He didn’t panic when I asked if he wanted me to get into the backseat,” I said. “There was no change in the tone of his voice when he said I could if I didn’t have any other place to go.”
“So, Officer Riley, even though the materials necessary to commit this horrendous crime were behind his seat, you don’t believe he had any knowledge these were there. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Wasn’t this the defendant’s third arrest for soliciting for sex?”
“It was.”
“Do you think the defendant is smart?”
“In what way?”
“In his ability to outthink the police and get away with crimes,” he explained.
“No,” I don’t.”
“Why is that, Officer Riley?”
“Well, most johns who’ve been arrested…”
“Explain to the jury what you mean by johns,” the defense attorney interrupted.
“Men who solicit people by offering them money for sex.”
“Please go on, Officer Riley.”
“After johns are arrested for soliciting, they usually change their actions, but Mr. Johnson didn’t do this. That’s why he was caught three times.”
“Do you believe the defendant is clever enough to kill seven women without leaving any trace evidence at those crime scenes?”
“No, I don’t believe he’s capable of doing this so cleverly,” I answered. I happened to glance over at District Attorney Rodriguez. Based on the sour expression on his face, I wasn’t going to receive a Get Out of Jail Free card from him if I ever needed one. I swallowed. I already had a lot of criminals pissed off at me for putting them behind bars, but now it looked like their numbers were growing on the other side of the cage.
“Does it seem strange to you that the knife in the back of Mr. Johnson’s car didn’t have any of his fingerprints on it, but it had the blood of one of the murdered women on it?”
Prosecuting attorney Campbell stood up and said, “Objection, Your Honor, Officer Riley has only been in the department a little over a year. Her job has been to pose as a prostitute and arrest citizens who solicit her for sex; she’s not a detective who investigates crimes, and she’s not qualified to answer that question.”
“Miss Riley is a trained police officer,” the defense attorney said. “If she’s not qualified to give us her input about evidence that’s being used in this trial, then no police officer should be allowed to testify at a trial.”
“Please sit down, Mr. Campbell, your objection is overruled,” Judge Snyder said.
“Let me repeat the question. Does it seem strange to you that a killer who’s eluded police for thirteen months and left no trace evidence behind would wipe off his fingerprints and leave the incriminating blood-stained blade untouched in the back of his car?”
“That seems very strange to me,” I answered.
“Is it possible that a police officer planted this evidence in the defendant’s car?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling a little sick inside.
“Let me remind you, Officer Riley, that perjury is punishable by up to ten years in prison. Now, let me repeat the question…”
“My hearing’s perfectly fine,” I said, cutting him off. “It’s as possible that an attorney planted evidence in the defendant’s car as it is that a police officer did.”
The jurors laughed until the judge banged his gavel loudly. The next thing I knew, I was being escorted from the courtroom and into a holding cell by a big, burly bailiff.
As I stared out the bars of my semi-private suite, I started to feel sorry for myself. So now I was supposed to be the cop everyone hated, except my cellmate, Bertha. She kept staring and smiling at me. It would have bothered me less if Bertha had been a little smaller, say a foot shorter and within a hundred pounds of my weight.
About five that evening, the judge showed up outside of my cell and said, “I will not have this trial turned into a mockery. Is that understood, Officer Riley?”
“Yes, sir,” I said in my most serious tone.
“I’ll expect you to appear in my courtroom tomorrow morning. You will answer the questions that are presented to you without any additional comments. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
He turned to the oversized bailiff. “Let her go.” He spun on his heel and walked away.
“Step back,” the bailiff said.
“Will you come back to visit me?” Bertha asked as I walked out of the cell.
“Only in my dreams, Bertha.”
She smiled at that.
As we walked, my escort said, “A word of advice, Officer Riley.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re lucky Judge Snyder let you out. This is a really important case, and he’s the toughest judge on the bench. Don’t do anything to tick him off again, unless you want to have an extended stay here.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
If the lawyers could have read my mind the next day, they wouldn’t have stepped into the courtroom. The first thing the prosecuting attorney asked me was how it felt to be a free woman, over the objections of the defense attorney. The judge told the recorder to strike that from the record.
“Miss Riley,” he said, “did you say you don’t believe Everett Johnson is guilty of the brutal murders of seven women in our city.”
“That’s correct.”
“Do you have some special ability that allows you to know when someone is innocent and when someone is guilty?”
“My record speaks for itself.”
“Yesterday you were locked up behind bars. Is that the sort of record…”
“Objection, Your Honor,” the defense attorney said. “Attorney Gonzales is attempting to…
“Sustained.” He glared toward the attorney.
He turned toward the recorder and said, “Strike that from the record.”
Then he turned toward the jury and said, “I want you to ignore what was just said.”
He turned back toward the prosecutor. “One more mention of yesterday’s incident, Attorney Gonzales, and you’ll be able to describe the same experience from a first-person perspective. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“You may continue with your cross-examination.”
He cleared his throat and asked, “Miss Riley, do you have any proof that the defendant is innocent?”
I hesitated and then answered, “No, I don’t.”
“You don’t have one shred of evidence to prove that the defendant,” he said, pointing toward Everett Johnson, “is innocent of the crime of murder, do you?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Riley, I couldn’t hear your answer. Would you speak a little louder?”
“No,” I shouted. He knew damn well if I had evidence to prove Johnson was innocent, I wouldn’t be sitting there.
“I have no further questions, Your Honor.”
The judge said, “Officer Riley, you may step down from the witness stand.”
Everett Johnson looked like a boy who knew he was about to get a whipping.
When I went home that night, I felt like I’d been wrung hard and hung out to dry. I knew the expression from spending three summers with my great grandmother Venus. She kept that old washing machine around from her great-grandmother and said it helped to build character. No one could deny that Granny was quite a character. She used to tell me stories about her gentlemen callers that would have made a working girl blush, but I loved her stories. It helped to turn me into the woman that I am today.
She even told me why my parents named me Rebel. I was born with Mom’s IUD in my hand. Granny said, ‘Despite your mother’s plans never to have children, you were a rebellious egg and fought her plans tooth and nail to be born.’
When I returned to work, even Captain Washington looked the other way when we passed each other at the station, and she was the most professional cop there. I walked into the break room to get a cup of coffee, and three of my female coworkers got up and left. I hadn’t been treated like this since I’d been a sophomore in high school and the senior quarterback of the football team asked me to the prom. Guys kill each other with objects, but gals do it with silence.
The jury was still deliberating over what almost every cop believed was an open-and-shut case. If Everett went free, I was going to have to buy a bulletproof vest.
I was closest to my partners Malcolm and Jose, and they were speaking only when spoken to. That was bothering me most of all. I’d drink on occasion, and now I was thinking about going out and getting wasted. Of course, if I did that, some cop was bound to nail me for DUI or worse.
I had an old bottle of cognac someone had given me in college. I drank some before I went to bed. Normally I sleep well after drinking, but not tonight.
What the D.A. thought would be a quick decision lasted six days. Eventually, the jury foreman told the judge they couldn’t come to a decision. One juror admitted that my testimony convinced her that Everett Johnson had been framed for this horrendous crime. The other eleven jurors didn’t feel the same way, but no matter how hard they tried to get her to side with them, they couldn’t dissuade her.
The judge released Everett that day. If I thought everyone in the force was mad at me before this, it was nothing compared to now. I had so many threatening phone calls at home that I had to change my number. There wasn’t any point in reporting them, since I figure at least half were from cops.
There were so many people convinced that Everett was guilty, they’d throw the book at him if he so much as dropped a wad of gum on the sidewalk. If I were him, I would leave town. If he were me, he probably would have done the same thing. Too bad I wasn’t smart enough to follow my own advice.
About midnight, I heard a bump against my front door. I picked up my .38 from the top drawer of my nightstand and crept forward. Peeking out the curtains, no one was there. I risked opening the chained door a little. There was something red and black on my doorstep.
I unhooked the chain and slowly pushed the door open. “Bastards!” I growled. A bloody dead rat sat on my doormat. It was a message to me, but I wasn’t going to be intimidated. I’d pick it up in the morning.
After a sleepless night, I got up and checked the front doorstep. The rat was gone. Thank God for stray cats.
The phone rang. I picked it up without speaking.
“Officer Riley, are you there?”
“Who is this?”
“This is Everett Johnson. I think someone’s trying to kill me.”
“Call 911.”.
“You’re the only cop who believes I’m not the killer. If I call the police, one of them will shoot me and say they felt threatened. I’m begging you! I need someone to protect me.”
I covered the speaker and said, “Shit!”
“Please don’t hang up on me.”
“If you want to talk to me, it’s going to have to be in a public place.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
I almost screamed Nowhere. “How about at Caesar’s Rifle Range?”
“Isn’t that place full of cops with guns?”
“And lots of witnesses,” I added.
“I’m trying not to get killed.”
“Take it or leave it,”
A few seconds passed. “Alright. What time?”
“Nine fifteen.”
“You’ll be there on time, won’t you?”
“You get there on time, and I’ll do the same.” Then I slammed down the phone.
“Crap! What am I getting myself into?” I muttered as I headed for my closet. I only wore baggy sweats when I was exercising, but that’s what I was wearing to Caesar’s.
I parked outside the rifle range and waited for Everett to show up. A taxi dropped him off. His clothes looked like he’d slept in them. He turned in a complete circle before heading up the steps. I let him go through the entry door and followed about twenty steps back. When I stepped up behind him and called his name, he jumped.
“Officer Riley, you about scared me to death!”
“I’ll try harder next time.” It went over his head.
“Do you think it’s safe here?”
“Most killers don’t like to do a job when there are lots of people with guns close by. Now, what is it you need to tell me?”
“Before sunrise yesterday, I heard someone in the alley getting into my trashcan.”
“Could it have been the garbage man picking up your trash?”
“No, they came this morning at the same time. Also, somebody knocked on my door last night. When I looked out the peephole, he was wearing a ski mask.”
“What did you do?
“I didn’t open the door, and I hid in the closet. I spent the night sleeping in there.”
In my mind, I imagined the headlines reading, “Convicted Sex Offender Comes Out of the Closet.” Bad girl, Riley, stick to the subject at hand.
“Why didn’t you call the cops?”
“I was afraid he’d hear me and kick in the front door and gun me down.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Protect me from getting killed. Isn’t that what cops are supposed to do?”
He had me there. Even if he was a horny scumbag, Everett showed no signs of being a violent sex offender.
“Why don’t you get a security camera set up outside your door?”
Everett stared at me blankly.
“Only a stupid criminal would try to take you out if he knew he was being filmed,” I explained.
“All my money’s tied up in legal fees.”
“Can you buy a fake camera you could set up?”
“How much does a fake camera cost?”
“You could pick up an old camera that doesn’t even work at a thrift store for twenty or thirty bucks?”
“If I do that, I’ll have to give up food for a couple of days.”
“That’s better than giving up food forever,” I said.
He took a deep breath. “Is there any other way I could convince them I had a camera on them?”
“Well, you could put up a sign that said, “Warning, these premises are protected by video surveillance. It would need to look like it was printed professionally.”
“I could type it on my computer and print it out.”
“That would work.”
“OK, I’ll make a sign.
“I just wish there was some safe place I could stay until they caught the real killer.”
Now it was my turn to look at him blankly.
He sighed. “How am I supposed to get home?”
“I’m not giving you a ride if that’s what you’re asking. If you can’t afford a taxi, take a bus. If you can’t afford a bus, walk.”
“But someone could shoot me in the back if I walk down the street,” he whined.
“Then walk against traffic. If you move quickly, nobody will have time to get a good shot off.” I turned and walked away.
I climbed into my car and started the engine. I looked in my rearview mirror to see if he’d try to follow me. Slimeballs like Johnson infested our streets. It was time for him to feel like a victim.
As I drove away, he started walking against traffic. He looked as relaxed as Frankenstein’s monster. I was still convinced he wasn’t the killer we were looking for, but I wasn’t willing to be his human shield either.
After work, I thought about Johnson more than I ever wanted to. If he was killed, I’d never forgive myself.
Before work the next day, I drove by his house. One of the windows was broken. Johnson was probably too scared to call it in.
Dr. Lee was a guy Malcolm, Jose, and I had met and agreed to work for during my first year on the force. Everything was on the up and up, but we had to keep secrets. He’d given all of us some of the latest state-of-the-art gadgets, and I brought a manufactured bumblebee with me. It looked like the real thing, but it also took surveillance pictures wherever it flew. I didn’t want to knock on Johnson’s door to check up on him, so I figured I’d let the bumblebee visit the scene for me.
I opened a small metal cough drop cylinder and dumped it into my hand, cringing because it felt like a real bee. Blowing gently, my breath brought it to life. It was programmed to follow oral instructions keyed to my voice.
“I want you to fly into that house across the street, go in through the broken window, find out if anyone’s inside, and then return to me.” I rolled down my window, and the mechanical insect took off. It had to alter its flight to pass over a speeding garbage truck, but I saw it fly into Johnson’s house.
I got out of the car and sat down at a bus stop bench nearby before I slipped on a pair of smart sunglasses and watched the bumblebee’s view of Johnson’s home. There was broken glass and a brick on the carpet, but no sign of Johnson. In the kitchenette, dirty dishes filled the sink, and a model in a tiny bikini was pictured on a calendar that hung on the fridge. I had a smaller one I’d worn at a soccer team car wash when the cheerleaders did a fundraiser in high school. We got a lot of business too.
The bathroom door was open. Dang, did Johnson ever clean the place? There was a bedroom with an open door. The bee buzzed around a little before I noticed that the closet door was shut. “Turn on infrared and view of the door.” I could see red heat leaking out around the edges. Well, heat meant he was alive, or he hadn’t been dead very long.
“Amplify sound,” I said.
I could hear the sound of a heartbeat and breathing coming from the closet. Even though Johnson was a scumbag, I would have felt bad if he’d been killed. Someone else out there had killed those women, and I didn’t want him to get away with it by pinning the crime on a not-so-innocent man.
“Send message.”
The bee hovered right in front of the closet.
“Johnson, this is the police. There’s no one else in the house. Come out of the closet.”
“Who’s that?”
“A cop who thinks you didn’t murder all those women.”
“Officer Riley?”
“Look, I’m not here to babysit. You’re safe, and I’m done checking up on you. Bye.”
After the bee returned to me, I started to walk away and made the mistake of looking back just as a young woman was walking up to his front door. Didn’t she know you don’t visit what the town thinks is a sadistic lady killer? Well, I guess the babysitting session wasn’t over.
I was surprised when Everett opened the front door. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion; I just couldn’t turn my eyes away. About that time, I realized she was wearing a Girl Scout uniform, only she wasn’t a girl.
“Damn it!” I jumped out of the car, waited for a convoy of trucks to pass before I could cross the street. Halfway across, I caught a glimpse of green as she stepped inside, and the door closed behind her. I released the bumblebee and said, “Fly back inside and find the two people.” I knew something was wrong after I donned my smart glasses.
I dashed across the yard and tried the front door. Just my luck, it was locked. I watched the overgrown Girl Scout through my smart glasses. She pressed a knife to Johnson’s throat and forced him into the bathroom. She turned on the water in the tub and slammed the door shut, blocking the bumblebee’s view. It hovered just outside the door. I glanced around quickly. There was an antique boot scraper by the front door. I picked it up and used it as a battering ram. When it punched out the center panel, I reached my hand through and unlocked the door.
Maybe the running water drowned out the sound when I knocked out the door panel. And maybe Johnson wasn’t bleeding out in the tub right now. All I knew was, two of us could end up dead very soon. I carried the scraper with me and hurried to the bathroom door.
As I pressed an ear against it, the door swung open, and I fell into the bathroom. The Girl Scout jumped back. I caught a glimpse of a very big knife in her right hand and a very naked Everett in the tub. As I lifted my head, her foot grazed my temple and struck my shoulder. I swung the boot scraper and caught her leg. She screamed and slammed back against the sink. As I struggled to get up, she brought the knife over her head. I blocked it with the boot scraper, stopping the blade an inch from my face. I twisted the scraper and the blade tumbled from her grasp. She punched me in the stomach with her left hand, and I tumbled into the tub on top of Everett. I couldn’t breathe as I saw her reaching for the knife. If she got her hand on it, we were dead.
My training kicked in as I caught the glint of silver. I drove my heel into her knee as hard as I could. She cried out a second time and dropped the knife. I swung the scraper and caught her right thigh. She screamed and jerked down the shower curtain on top of us.
By the time I got the curtain off, I heard the front door slam. The wail of sirens grew louder, and I noticed the bumblebee floating in the tub. I was sitting on Johnson’s business and soaked to the bone. I grabbed the bumblebee and stood up. When I looked down at him. his eyes were wide, his hands were taped over his head, and a piece of duct tape covered his mouth. And he had an erection.
I turned off the water that was running and looked Johnson in the eye. “Really?” I said. “You’d be bleeding out right now if I hadn’t just saved your ass.”
About that time, I spotted a couple in blue charging into the living room with guns drawn. “In the bathroom,” I shouted.
It was just my luck, Phillips, the Mouth of the South, got there first. I knew as soon as he poked his ugly mug in through the doorway, he was going to get a lot of mileage out of this. “Well, well,” he said, “it looks like we interrupted somethin’. Shall I wait outside until you two lovebirds are done with your kinky game?”
His partner, Viola Jiminez, was right behind him. “Uh, Riley,” she said. “what are you planning to do with that boot scraper?”
I hadn’t realized I was holding it like a war club in my white-knuckled grip. “I was thinking of giving your partner a free tonsillectomy,” I answered in my sweetest voice.
Jiminez laughed. Phillips took a step back.
“So what happened here?” Jiminez asked.
“A woman tried to kill him. I got here just in time. She went after me with the knife inside the bathroom.”
“And you just happened to be here?” Phillips asked.
“He’d told me someone was trying to kill him over the phone. I saw a woman dressed as a Girl Scout knock on his front door.”
Phillips guffawed. “A woman… dressed as a Girl Scout?”
“And you came all this way to rescue an innocent man from a knife-wielding Girl Scout?” Phillips needled.
“I was in the neighborhood,” I answered. “Just because I don’t think he’s a sadistic killer doesn’t mean I think he’s a prince. If he gets killed, someone else is getting away with murder. I figure it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Why don’t you go in there and cut your boyfriend free?” Phillips asked.
“I’ve already seen more than I want to see. It’s going to take more than a shower to get that image out of my mind,” I said.
“Well, it’s your case, not mine,” Phillips said.
“Jack, stop being a jerk, and cut the naked guy loose,” Viola shouted.
For once in his life, Phillips said nothing. He turned and went into the bathroom.
A couple minutes later, Big Mouth stepped out of the bathroom, followed by Everett Johnson wrapped in a towel.
We heard a knock on the door frame. Detective Jeremiah Jefferson stepped over the remnants of the door into the room. “I heard you had a little excitement.” His resonating baritone commanded our attention. Jefferson was probably the sharpest dresser on the force. Whenever he passed through a room, he seemed to repel dirt.
He nodded to each of us. “Riley, Jiminez, Phillips. You want to fill in the blanks for me?”
I spoke up first. “A woman tried to kill Johnson. Her knife’s on the bathroom floor. I got here just in time to stop her, but she got away. She was dressed like a Girl Scout.”
“Hmmm, I bet that was a real turn-on for Johnson,” he said.
“That’s probably why he let her in.”
“So, what were you doing here?”
“He’d called me saying he thought someone was trying to kill him. I came to check things out. Just as I was about to leave, I turned back to look at the house; he was letting this Girl Scout inside.”
“He called you personally?”
“He thinks everyone else on the force wants him dead. From what I’ve seen, I can’t say I blame him.”
Jefferson mulled that over for a few seconds before he asked, “Did you get a good look at her?”
“To be honest, I spent more time watching her knife than I did her face. She was white with blond hair, but it could have been a wig. She was probably five foot five. You should find some of her DNA on the boot scraper I hit her with.”
“We’ll check that out.”
Then he turned to Johnson and said, “Get some clothes on. We’re going down to the station. I need some questions answered.”
“Will Officer Riley be coming along?”
“No, I won’t. I’ve helped you enough for one day.”
We parted ways. I spent the next couple hours answering annoying questions and filing a report on the attack down at the station. It would have saved me a lot of time and hassle if I’d just let the Girl Scout kill Johnson, but that would have haunted me. As they say, ‘No good deed remains unpunished.’
***
Detective Jefferson met me at the station house the next day. He was wearing a custom-made suit, a red silk tie, and a matching handkerchief. It was refreshing to see a man who paid as much attention to the clothes he wore as I did. He cleared his throat and said, “We did retrieve DNA from that boot scraper you hit the attacker with. You were right about the blond wig. The hair follicles in the skin were dark brown. There weren’t any prints on the knife. It sounds like you saved Johnson’s life. For the woman not to be in our database makes me think she’s not American. It could have been a vengeful relative of one of the women who were butchered, but if it was, she traveled quite a ways to get here.”
“I doubt that she’ll be wearing anything thigh-high for a while,” I said. “That gouge can’t be very pretty to look at, and she’s probably going to walk with a limp for a week or so.”
“If you think of anything else, just give me a call,” he said.
“I will.”
I figured the woman who’d tried to kill Johnson couldn’t care less about the seven victims who’d been butchered. If she was in a rage, she would have stabbed him right there in the doorway. Instead, she took her time, and she was probably going to open his veins and watch him bleed out in the bathtub. If any of her DNA was left behind on the victim, she could wash it down the drain with the rest of the bathwater.
I needed to talk to somebody who hadn’t already made their mind up about Johnson’s guilt. I didn’t even have a dog I could talk to. I guess I should have cloned myself years ago; it would have made conversations a lot simpler when the stress of the job was getting to me.
I went down into the morgue to visit Assistant Coroner Alice Green. We’d become friends since I’d joined the force. When I walked in, she was finishing up an autopsy on an accident victim who must not have been wearing his seatbelt. She was holding a lacerated liver in her gloved hands when she spotted me. “I’m almost done here, Riley. There’s some extra coffee in my thermos if you’d like some.”
I looked away. “Thanks.” I needed something to concentrate on besides the corpse she was working on. The thermos sat atop her desk, and I poured myself a cup and concentrated on stirring some sweetener into it. Alice liked her coffee strong. A few sips would keep a person with narcolepsy awake.
“I wanted to talk to you about the Johnson case. But don’t hurry on my account.”
I heard something that sounded like a wet rag flopping into a metal bowl. “Liver weighs five pounds two ounces,” she said. I concentrated on the taste of the coffee.
“I can sew him up later. What is it about the Johnson case you want to talk about?”
“You heard about the incident yesterday when I saved Johnson’s life?”
“Yeah, it’s all over the station. Word is that Big Mouth Phillips is claiming the two of you have a thing for each other.”
“We don’t,” I snapped. “But I think a professional tried to kill him. We’re both lucky we didn’t end up dead. If I made this claim to other cops in the station, it would make me sound like I really care about him, and they wouldn’t take me seriously.”
“Generally, professional killers don’t fail to kill their victims,” Alice said.
“And how many rage killers take their time to kill someone inside their own home? If she simply wanted him dead, she could have offed him when he opened the door.
“Also, Johnson has a proven record of being a horny bastard. If a pretty woman is dressed like a little girl at his doorstep, it doesn’t take an Einstein to know he’s going to invite her in.”
“You’ve got a point,” Alice said. “So you think the real killer is trying to take Johnson out, so the investigation will die with him.
“Then let’s give him a reason to think he’s not in the clear,” Alice continued.
***
Two days later we were sitting in Alice’s home watching the exclusive webcast interview of three prostitutes. They claimed to have sold their services to Everett Johnson on the nights when three other women were murdered. Their faces had been blurred and their voices altered. All of them said he was a regular paying customer who was well-known by Hollywood streetwalkers. Each stated they’d never been questioned by the police during the Johnson investigation. None of them believed Johnson was capable of committing these crimes.
When the news webcaster asked what they thought of the bloody evidence found in the back of Johnson’s car, they claimed the cops did it to convince the public they’d solved these murders.
Alice turned and said, “You think that will get a reaction from the killer?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said with a smile.
***
The next day wasn’t a good one for me at the station. A couple of the TV news programs rebroadcast the same interview. Most cops looked for somebody to lash out at when they were accused of incompetence. I saw more dirty looks than most coal miners see during an eight-hour shift.
When callers tried to reach District Attorney Rodriguez to ask why he’d done nothing to try to catch the real serial killer, he came down on Captain Washington, and the rest of us were collateral damage.
If the real killer had watched the news over the past twenty-four hours, he’d have to come up with a way to point the finger toward someone else or Johnson again. Otherwise, Johnson was off the hook, and the search would be on for the real killer again.
Malcolm and Jose were a little more civil toward me that day. Most guys have trouble admitting they were wrong. If they don’t have the strength to say the words, they show it through their actions.
I needed a way to monitor Everett Johnson’s location without spending twenty-four hours a day staking out his place. If someone was going to come after him, it would happen soon. He wasn’t allowed to have a gun. Maybe I should have given him a blow up doll wired for audio and video to keep tabs on him.
Malcolm was the gadget guru of the department. It took a little persuading, but he finally agreed to set up hidden surveillance equipment around Johnson’s place. If someone tried to break in or Johnson shouted, “Help,” an alarm would be triggered that could be heard for blocks.
Malcolm finished up at 3:00 A.M. He said at that time of the night “only cops, robbers, and sleepwalkers” were out and about. He swore Johnson to secrecy since he’d seen all the grief I had to put up with.
Wearing an earbud linked to the alarm made it hard to sleep, but at least I knew Johnson had survived the night.
The next day, the station got a tip from a worker at a storage shed business. He claimed the guy who was arrested for killing all those hookers had failed to pay his rent on a storage shed. He wondered if there was a reward if we found something inside that led to his conviction.
Within an hour, someone got a court order to check out the storage shed. In the bottom of a trunk were newspaper articles about each victim with X’s drawn through their faces. The topper was a pair of panties with DNA from the third victim.
When the nearest cops showed up to arrest Johnson, he set off the alarm when they banged on the door and shouted his name. That created a lot of commotion, and Johnson was lucky he didn’t get shot.
A couple cops came up to me and asked how I felt now that they’d caught Johnson with more evidence of the killings. Fortunately, they couldn’t read my thoughts. I answered, “Let’s see what happens this time.”
They laughed and walked off, convinced the last nail had been pounded into the dead man’s coffin.
As the investigators were going over the evidence, I said to Malcolm, “I’ll bet they don’t find any of Johnson’s prints inside that shed.”
“If Johnson’s being set up, the real killer’s smart enough to find a way to get his fingerprints inside that building,” Malcolm countered.
Jose walked in. “Hey, you guys hear the latest about Johnson?”
“Yeah, we know he’s been arrested because they found incriminating evidence in a storage shed he claims he stopped using,” I answered.
“Not that. I was talking to Ortiz, who went on a ride-along with the detectives. They found a water bottle behind a stack of empty boxes. They think it fell behind the boxes when Johnson was wiping away his prints, and he forgot about it. Some of the lab rats are fingerprinting it right now.”
Within an hour, the word was out. They’d found Johnson’s fingerprints on the water bottle in the storage shed. I had a feeling my doubts wouldn’t keep him from spending the rest of his life in prison after this.
While I was standing there, my phone rang.
“Hello.
“Are you kidding me? You should have used your phone call to get a lawyer. I can’t do anything for you this time.
“You emptied the unit? That’s not what detectives or the storage guy said.
“It’s his word against yours. We both know who a jury’s going to believe.”
“If someone did plant the water bottle, where did they get it?
“I’ve gotta go. I can’t promise you anything.”
Later, when I talked to my partners, I told them, “You may think I’m insane, but I don’t think Johnson’s guilty of those murders.”
“You’re right,” Jose said. “I think you’ve gone loco.”
“Just hear me out. Twice we’ve found evidence that something was left over from different murders. If the killer’s collecting trophies of each killing, why haven’t we found evidence of each murder? They went over his home with a fine-toothed comb. Don’t you think there would have been something he missed if he was really the killer?”
“He’s probably got them stashed somewhere,” Jose answered.
“If that’s true, why weren’t there other items there with the underwear from the third killing?”
Jose was quiet for several seconds. “Alright. I’m not saying you’re right, but maybe someone set him up.”
Malcolm and I both knew “maybe” was the only way Jose could save face, rather than admitting he’d been wrong.
I thought back to my earlier phone conversation with Johnson. “Four nights ago he claimed some guy wearing a ski mask showed up at his door, but he spotted him through a peephole and hid in his closet. He also claimed he heard someone going through his trash in the alley behind his place.
Jose surprised me when he spoke up. “Let’s say the killer planned to ice Johnson in the doorway, and when that went bust, he snuck into the alley to fish something out of the trash with his fingerprints on it, so he could frame him.”
“That would mean the real killer had to plant the water bottle in that storage shed sometime within the past ninety-six hours,” I said. “They’ve got surveillance cameras there; let’s see what we can find.”
The guy working the front gate of the storage units was painting the front office. When we asked him if we could have his recordings from the past four days, he set down his paint can and brush and claimed he didn’t have a new memory chip to replace the old one.
“What happened to the old recordings?” Malcolm asked.
He hooked a thumb toward the shelf visible through the open door behind him and said, “We keep them over there.”
“Isn’t that a new memory chip sitting on the shelf?” I asked.
He glanced back. “Oh, I didn’t see that one. The guy on night shift must have picked it up.”
“It looks like he picked up six,” Jose said. “They look dusty to me. Should I run my finger across them?”
I looked at his name tag. “Have you ever been arrested, Julio?”
His face paled. “Let me get you that chip, officer.”
“If you happen to accidentally drop and damage it, I’ll haul you down to the station myself,” Malcolm said.
He held his hands up. “Hey, I just work here. I’m not looking for any trouble, sir.”
He removed the memory chip and handed it to Malcolm. “This covers the whole month.”
We had special software back at the station that slowed the recording down every time there was movement. The guy who worked nights was a smoker, and he must have smoked two packs of cigarettes just before the date-stamped tape jumped from 3:17 to 3:24 two mornings ago.
The night guy had spent a year in jail for selling drugs three years earlier. When we questioned him, he claimed there’d been a brief power failure.
“Did you call the power company, and did anyone else witness it?” I asked.
He shook a cigarette out of his pack and stabbed it into his mouth. It took him three tries to light the tip before he answered, “Just when I was about to call, the power clicked back on, and no one else was around during that time.”
“Did you get any phone calls that night?” I asked.
“I get lots of phone calls, but I didn’t get any after nine that night.” He took three quick drags on his cigarette. Smoke puffed out of his lips like an antique coal-fired locomotive.
“Before we go any further, amigo, don’t forget if you lie to the cops during a murder investigation to cover up evidence, you could be charged as an accessory to murder, or in this case, seven murders. They’d lock you up in a prison so dark, you’d only see sunlight in your dreams,” Jose said.
“I can’t go back! I’d rather die first!”
Malcolm stepped up and added, “You seem awful nervous, and your eyes are dilated. Kind of like an addict who needs his next fix. You have two choices: You can tell us the real story and keep your job here at the storage yard, or we can haul your ass down to the station and check on you in about twenty-three hours.”
Night guy looked over each shoulder. Before he did something stupid, I pointed at the light across the street. “Did your boss even mention the technology HPD added three years ago? You see that silver object about the size of a nickel.”
He looked up, squinting and shading his eyes. “I’m not sure. Maybe.” While he was looking, I winked at my partners. Nobody’s going to spot something the size of a nickel in a glaring light, especially when it’s not there.
“Well, we have cameras running twenty-four seven in parts of Hollywood to keep an eye on neighborhoods. We haven’t reviewed any recordings outside this storage yard between… say three and four in the morning two nights ago. But if we happen to review that recording and someone else is inside this fence with you, maybe planting evidence in one of your storage units, we’d be forced to arrest you.”
“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer or something?”
“Why would you need a lawyer? Have you committed a crime?”
“Wait!” night guy said. “Give me a second to think.”
“You need a lawyer to advise you to tell the truth and go free? Or you need a lawyer to defend you in a trial as an accessory to seven murders?” Malcolm asked.
I took out my cuffs. “I guess you’re going to need that lawyer after all.”
“Alright! This guy gave me a bag of smack to turn off the power and let him sneak into Johnson’s storage unit. He told me Johnson owed him some money, and he wanted first crack at the contents before the guy who works days called the cops to let them know about the unit. I turned everything back on after he left.”
“How’d this guy know about Johnson’s storage unit?”
“He’s got a storage unit right across from him. I guess he met Johnson when he was moving some stuff into storage. Lately, he only checks it in the early hours of the morning.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Bill, I think. His contract’s inside.”
“Check it.”
We watched him frantically flip through the files in the front office for a minute or so. “Bill Allen,” he shouted, handing us the card.
“It says he’s renting storage unit 248. Is that right?”
“Well, actually he pays for 248, but I let him stash some of his extra stuff in 246 since he brings me a present every once in a while.”
“You mean smack?”
“You said you weren’t going to arrest me if I told the truth!”
“We’re not. Keep going.”
“He says he’s holding something for his brother until he gets out of prison, and his brother doesn’t want his ex to take his stuff.”
I downloaded DMV photos of nine local Bill or William Allens on my palmcom, unfolded the gel screen to enlarge it, and held it up to night guy. “Is one of these the guy?”
He leaned forward and squinted. “That’s him in the bottom left corner.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t tell him we talked, or the deal’s off.”
“I won’t.”
“Have a nice night,” I said.
***
We looked over our records for William Allen. 37, Caucasian, twice divorced, no children, 6’ 3”, 250 pounds, former Army Ranger and semi-pro linebacker who retired after injuring his right knee, current armored car driver/guard. No arrest record. No siblings. He lived five miles from the storage yard and in the area where most victims had worked the streets.
Jose shook his head, “Not the kind of guy you’d want to run into when he’s angry.”
All three of us went to a sympathetic judge and convinced her to give us a court order to search the storage shed that wasn’t being rented to anyone on paper.
We went back that night to check things out, taking a video of our search as we carefully went into the shed. A sheet of black plastic covered something about the size of a refrigerator. When I pulled off the plastic, Jose swore and fell backward when he saw red eyes staring back at him. We laughed when we realized the goat’s head with red eyes had been mounted on the far wall. Beneath it was a pentagram with a chest-high altar on top and five black candles on each of the points. On the altar was a brazier with a domed lid over the top and ashes inside. Several antique trunks lined the walls. We all searched through them. Most contained clothes that had never been used, still in the packages. Malcolm dug through one trunk that was full of old clothes. I held my flashlight while Jose worked the camera. “Does the bottom of that trunk look a little high?” I asked.
Jose stepped closer and let the powerful light mounted on his camera flood the inside. “Some of those old trunks have hidden compartments,” he said. “Push on the corners to see if something lifts up?”
As Malcolm pushed on each corner, nothing happened, until he reached the third. There was a click, and the corner lifted. As he pulled out the false bottom, Jose zoomed in on the contents neatly arranged there.
***
At the beginning of his next shift, the night guy made a phone call. “Mr. Allen, this is Mick at the storage yard. My boss is going to let his niece use that extra storage unit tomorrow. If you want, I can move your stuff into another storage unit later tonight.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t have known about it at all if Julio hadn’t given me a heads-up. He’s letting her use that number because it’s the month, day, and year she was born, and she needs a place to store her stuff while she goes off to college.”
“Tonight? You want me to leave a cart for you or anything?” He held the phone in his hand, staring blankly. “He hung up.”
***
At three in the morning, we were already in position. Night guy zoomed up to us in his rechargeable cart, just about giving me a heart attack. “He called and asked me to turn off the electricity at 3:17,” he shouted.
We were positioned around the storage shed, hiding in the dark when the night guy opened the front gate. We’d rearranged everything as it had been, but we were surprised when Allen brought an armored truck into the storage area. He backed up to the building and exited through the back doors with the engine running. We could see a flashlight beam shining inside.
“I don’t like this,” Malcolm whispered. “You get the left side; I’ll get the right. Watch for weapons.”
We got there just as Allen was picking up the chest with his trophies in it. His flashlight was balanced on top. We’d planted a bug in the shed to record everything.
We clicked on our flashlights. “Freeze. Police,” we shouted.
He stopped moving and the flashlight fell off the chest and went out.
He carried the chest closer. “Put down the chest, or I’ll shoot,” Malcolm barked.
All we could see were his legs on the bottom.
“Stop!” I shouted.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just let me set this down.”
He lowered the trunk, and then it flew through the air toward Malcolm. In the confusion, Allen dove into the armored truck and slammed the back door shut before I could stop him.
We heard gunfire behind us and hit the asphalt before we realized it was Jose firing.
“Don’t waste your bullets, Jose,” Malcolm shouted.
“The tires aren’t armored,” Jose shouted back.
The truck lurched forward and took out the corner of a storage shed in front of it. Malcolm was firing at the tires too. The truck wasn’t moving too fast. I gripped my flashlight and dashed between the sheds toward the unlit front office. As I got there, I found the half-empty bucket of paint day guy had left on the side. I heard the armored truck rounding the corner onto the driveway that ran by the office. As the engine revved, I managed to pry off the lid. Just as he turned for the closed gate, I stepped out from the building and tossed the wet paint onto his windshield. Driving blind, the truck crashed through the gate and slammed into a power pole. The heavy vehicle flipped on its side. A wire trailing sparks came down next to it. I could smell gasoline, a moment before it ignited and flames licked up the side.
As the back doors clanged open, Allen charged down the road. I heard Malcolm and Jose shouting behind me as I sprinted after him. I drove my shoulder into the back of his right knee. He went down hard onto the pavement, and I had his hands cuffed behind his back before he knew what hit him.
I could hear my partners breathing heavily.
“Damn, Riley,” Jose shouted, “remind me not to piss you off.”
“You just took down a former linebacker!” Malcolm said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
I just smiled as a chain of flashing red lights converged on the scene.
***
During the night while Allen was being charged with seven murders, Interpol identified the DNA from the Girl Scout hitwoman I’d put some hurt on with the boot scraper. Airport security caught her trying to board a plane at LAX an hour later as she was limping across the terminal. She was anxious to make a deal.
I was there in the morning when Everett was about to be released. “Thank you for believing in me.” He reached out to hug me.
“Whoa!! If you really want to thank me, I don’t ever want to see you out on the streets soliciting prostitutes again.”
“You won’t have to worry about that. I’ve got a fiancée now. Charlotte says she likes bad boys.”
“Even if you’re not,” I whispered.
He looked past me toward the front desk. I turned and saw a dark-haired woman in a tight skirt beaming like the rising sun.
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said.
I watched them wrap themselves around each other in a very passionate embrace. “Hey,” I shouted, “take it out of the station.”
They both smiled and vanished from my life. To tell the truth, I was smiling too.
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