Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

24

Dane Mertz sat on the hood of his car outside the hospital and smoked. It was his third smoke break in three hours, but he just couldn’t handle it anymore. He’d worked a double shift to cover for someone, and the fatigue of being up twenty-four hours straight weighed on him as if he were wearing sandbags, slowing his movements and sapping his energy. He rubbed his forehead with the back of his thumb, the cigarette dangling from his fingers. As a nurse, he made decent money when he was called out, but he wished the work was steadier. He roved from hospital to clinic to hospital and some weeks had no shifts. Still, it wasn’t a bad life. His father had busted his ass as a construction worker for twenty-two years before dying of a heart attack, and Dane was grateful that that wasn’t his lot.

The sunlight shone down on him and heated his face. When he opened his eyes, he saw something red and pink and white on the periphery of his vision. He turned to see a woman with blonde hair. She was stumbling toward the emergency room exit. She collapsed on the ground and then got up and collapsed again. She was nude.

Dane jumped off the hood of the car and ran to her, tossing the cigarette on the ground. As he got closer, he could see that the woman was covered in blood, which stood out vibrantly against her pale, white skin.

She mumbled as she saw him and collapsed again. She was covered in bruises and cuts, so many cuts that he couldn’t tell which ones were still bleeding and which weren’t. The woman opened her mouth, but just mumbling came out again.

“I need help!” he shouted, bending down as she started convulsing.

Dane went about his shift the next couple of hours, but kept his eye on room 111. That was the room Jane Doe was being held in. Several emergency room physicians and trauma nurses were in there right now, doing everything they could to save her life.

Finally, one of the nurses came out and picked up the phone at the nurse’s station.

“What happened to her?” Dane asked.

“She lost almost half her blood. There’s a hole in her leg the size of a quarter, like someone tapped the artery.”

Dane looked back to the room. “What would someone need her blood for?”

25

The canvas was like the universe, existence, the divine and the profane… empty and pure. White canvas with sunlight was about the most perfect thing Farkas had ever seen. The particular canvas he was using was ten feet by six feet and sat in his studio next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He couldn’t bring himself to put a brush to it and for a moment considered simply calling the white canvas the finished product and signing his name. He recalled vaguely that some New York artist had already done that, and Farkas discarded the idea. 

Next to the canvas were various tools and materials he used for his painting. One of his favorites to give the painting depth was sand—pure white sand imported from the white sand dunes of New Mexico. Another favorite was clay… and next to that was the blood.

Blood on canvas looked thin and lacked color. He had long ago found that mixed with a light acrylic paint, the paint and blood complimented each other in a way nothing else could. He took out his palate and mixed a bit of red acrylic with blood, creating a semi-crimson mixture, and then dipped his brush in it.

The first stroke always satisfied him the most. He swept down in an arch from the corner, seemingly slicing the canvas in half.
Art is war
, he thought.
Art is war
.

He was about to strip nude and go to work when the doorbell rang. The fury that rose in him could hardly be described. He purposely put a sign on the door that he was not to be disturbed when he painted.

“Damn it,” he said through gritted teeth.

He rested his brush in a plastic container filled with water and set the pallet down on a worktable before cleaning his hands with a wet rag. Whoever was at the door knocked this time, and Farkas shouted, “Coming.”

The studio was the back room of his home, and he opened the studio door and crossed the living room to the front door. Peering through the peephole, he saw two LAPD police officers standing in the hallway.

No shot of adrenaline went through him, no great panic or racing heart. The police were nothing to him. Their intelligence couldn’t compare. They were to him what a monkey was to them: an evolutionary step behind.

Once, Farkas had been at a bar known for the large numbers of police officers that went there to drink after their shifts. He befriended a table of detectives from the Robbery-Homicide Unit, the most prestigious in the LAPD he had read, and the more drinks they got in them, the more war stories they told.

One of the detectives, a young man with curly brown hair, told of a woman who had died in a bar parking lot. A hole had been found in her leg, and the detective thought whoever killed her injected her with something with a large-gauge needle. Farkas, with a smile on his face, said, “Or maybe they needed her blood?”

“For what?”

He shrugged. “To make art.”

The detective stared at him coldly and then burst out laughing, as did a few of the others. Farkas smiled and drank his beer. He had revealed everything they needed, and they laughed at it. They didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. He had taken raw materials, materials that lasted only a handful of decades before withering away and then dying, and made something that could last centuries. Farkas, from that moment forward, no longer feared the police.

“Officers,” he said with a warm smile as he opened the door, “what can I do for you?”

“Are you Oliver Farkas?” one of them said.

“I am indeed.”

“Mr. Farkas, we have a complaint lodged against you and were wondering if we could talk to you about it.”

“Of course. Come in.”

“Actually, the detective leading this investigation would like you to come down to the station. If you have a moment, of course.”

“I don’t, actually. I’m in the middle of working.”

“What d’ya do for work?”

“Artist. Or as my mother used to say, bum with a paintbrush.” He grinned, but the officers didn’t respond. “What is this about exactly, officers? You have me concerned.”

“Where were you last night, sir?”

“At a gallery of mine and then home.”

“Did you see a Natalie Gibb at this gallery of yours?”

He pretended to think a moment. “No, I don’t believe so. I don’t know. A lot of people were there. Let me guess: Ms. Gibb is suing me for stealing one of her ideas? That’s happened twice to me, and you should know that both times—”

“No, we don’t notify people of lawsuits.” He glanced at the other officer. “Mr. Farkas, the detectives would really like to speak with you. Are you willing to come down or not?”

“Am I under arrest for something?”

“At this point, no.”

“Then I must decline, officers. I am quite busy. If you wish to have the detectives discuss it here, stop by anytime.”

“Of course,” the officer said sarcastically. “We wouldn’t want this to get in the way of your art.”

Farkas smiled again and said, “Have a good one,” as he shut the door.

The police were buffoons, he thought. His mind was sharp and clear, all part of the natural process when a man expresses himself to his full capabilities. The creative mind is the most intelligent mind. The police would never catch him. He hadn’t cared about whether Natalie lived or died, but just to be sure, he would pay her a visit and make a few choice threats. He had no plans to kill her. In fact, the thought of her out there, terrified, unable to form relationships any longer, in therapy and perhaps even institutionalized, aroused him. He had no intention of losing that for himself.

Alone again, he stripped nude and stood before the canvas.

26

After spending some time sitting in front of Jay’s home, Stefan went back to his condo. He was too wired for sleep, so he sat on the couch after opening the sliding glass doors of his balcony to let the air in. The darkness calmed him. He thought about turning on the television, but the quiet was so peaceful he decided to sit and smoke a cigarette—something he hadn’t done in at least a year. He got one out of a drawer in the kitchen and checked the box, wondering if cigarettes had expiration dates, and then lit it with a match. The match crackled, and he watched it and listened to it burn for a while before running it under cold water and tossing it in the garbage. Then he went back to the couch.

The smoke made him cough. He didn’t mind. All he wanted right now was the joy of having something to do to keep his mind off sleep. He leaned his head back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. By this time in his life, he had pictured kids and a wife. Neither was anywhere near the horizon. In fact, the most in-depth conversation he’d had with a woman in the past couple years had been with Sarah. The thought of her brought a smile to his face. She seemed innocent somehow, as though he wanted to just throw his arms around her and make sure the world didn’t sully her.

Eventually, the morning pierced the night, and bits of orange light cast beams into his condo. He watched the sunrise from his balcony and then got into his car and drove back to Jay’s.

It took another hour of waiting before Jay came out. He drove a black Mercedes, and music blared from his speakers, loud electric guitar. Stefan couldn’t make out a melody. He ducked low in the seat as the Mercedes drove past and waited until he couldn’t hear the engine anymore before sitting up and checking the rearview.

Just to be safe, he waited a few more minutes and then stepped out of the car.

The morning air sent a chill down his back, and he buttoned his suit coat. He realized how silly that must’ve looked, considering how wrinkled it was, unbuttoned it, and continued toward the house. He glanced around before heading to the backyard.

The alarm was an issue but not an insurmountable one. He went to a window near the back door and scanned the sill until he saw the sensor: a white box on the side of the window. The angle didn’t look good. If the connection between the sensor on the sill and the receiver on the window was broken, the alarm would go off.

Stefan pressed his face against the window to get a good look at the door. The sensor there was near the top, down about five inches. He hurried over to the door and took out a metal clip the size of a credit card, something he’d picked up on an outing to Mexico. The clip had small hooks on the end, and he looked around again before inserting the tip of the device into the door near the lock. He felt it pinch on the metal of the lock and pulled, the lock clicking open. Then he took out the package of gum he’d brought with him. He unwrapped one, stuck the gum in his mouth, and flattened the aluminum wrapper.

Slowly, he opened the door. He pressed the wrapper against the receiver and held the door in place a moment, holding his breath, before he pushed it open. The alarm didn’t go off. He took the gum out of his mouth and used it as putty to press the aluminum wrapper into place over the receiver.

The danger was that Jay had a motion detector. Normally they would be up in the corners of the rooms, but he didn’t see any. He moved carefully through the kitchen and back rooms before coming into the living room. He sat at the computer and pressed a button. It woke up: he hadn’t shut it off.

Stefan checked the browser history and went to Gmail. He went to the Sent file and found the email Jay had sent. His eyes went down to the body of the email:

Shit’s getting hot. Get rid of all of the videos. Burn the fuckers.

That was all it said. Stefan debated what to do next. He was in this man’s home illegally. He couldn’t very well get a subpoena over to an IP host and get the identification of the person who owned that email. Stefan tapped his finger against his lips as he thought. Then, he began typing.

Change of plans. Shit’s REALLY hit the fan. Can’t talk now. Meet me on the corner of Duster and Weston. NOW
!!!

He quickly searched Gmail for any other emails to that address and found a few but nothing really of interest to him. He closed the browser and rose. The temptation was simply too great. He had to see what secrets Jay was hiding here.

He ran up the steps, his eyes scanning the corners of the ceiling for motion detectors. When he reached the top step, he looked out over the entire house and didn’t see any motion detectors: Jay hadn’t sprung for them.

The bedroom up there was massive, bigger than Stefan’s entire condo. A bed the size of a small pool took up most of the space with a hot tub out on the balcony.

He began going through medicine cabinets and drawers. He found a small bottle marked “antibiotics” in the medicine cabinet, but it had a green, leafy substance inside. The scent told him it was marijuana. He pocketed the bottle.

A massive walk-in closet sat in the bedroom, but there was nothing of note, no hidden compartments holding incriminating evidence. Why he thought there would be something like that he had no idea. Jay was careful. But apparently not careful enough. Selling extreme child pornography to random customers didn’t seem like a good long-term plan for staying in business. Maybe it was mutually assured destruction: if the person buying the video decided to call the police, he would be charged with purchase and possession of child porn, a charge only a step down from making and distributing child porn. Maybe Jay knew what he was doing. Then again, Virgil had cracked and led them to him.

A few more rooms took up the rest of the floor, but he found nothing other than a massive sex toy collection, including a three-foot dildo that stuck to the floor with a suction cup. Other than that, it was just a plain old house.

When Stefan had left the house, he made sure no neighbors were out. He drove up the block and then headed for the interstate. The corner of Duster and Weston was in the industrial portion of the city, where plastics and chemical compounds were made—neither of which he knew anything about. But he did know it was out of the way with few people around.

The specific corner he had picked had a chain-link fence on one side and a massive warehouse on the other, with nothing but empty fields everywhere else. In effect, someone on that corner could run either into the warehouse or into the surrounding fields, neither of which were good options for someone running from the cops.

Stefan took up a spot across the street. He entered the building, a plant that manufactured sports supplements, and stared out the windows onto the corner. A receptionist, a young brunette with straight hair that came down to her shoulders, said, “Um, excuse me, can I help you?”

“No thanks,” he said. “Hey, actually, you guys got any bottled water? I’m freakin’ parched over here.”

She shook her head, not taking her eyes off him. He shrugged and turned back to the window.

The sun lit everything brightly, reflecting off the smooth metal surfaces of the warehouse in pinpoints of white light that left after-images in his vision. He wished he’d thought to grab his sunglasses out of the car.

After about half an hour, a blue Altima pulled up and parked in front of the warehouse and a lone male occupant looked around. Then he picked up his phone. Stefan ran out. He ran across the street and knocked on the window, and smiled widely. The driver rolled the window down.

He looked like a relic of the late ’80s: curly long hair, aviator glasses, and a leopard skin vest over a white T-shirt.

“Hey, there,” Stefan said. “Sorry to bug you. My car broke down and my cell phone’s dead. Ain’t that the shit? Just when you need it most, huh? Anywho, I was hoping I could use your phone.”

“Fuck off, mate,” he said in a thick British accent.

“Look, I just want to use the phone, man. Half a minute. I’ll pay you for the call.”

“Go use a phone in one of them shops. Now I said fuck off.”

Stefan saw the man’s eyes go down and widen. Stefan looked down to see that his suit coat was open, revealing his gun holster. The man looked up, and Stefan reached for the weapon.

The man gunned it. “Hey!” Stefan shouted. The car peeled out, screeching away from the warehouse and up the road. Stefan took aim, debated firing, and then put his gun away as he sprinted to his car and jumped in. He left a trail of smoke behind as he peeled out, twisting the car around in a U-turn. Then he pressed the accelerator to the floor and shot forward.

The Altima had at least a block on him, but it was going in a straight line. Stefan swerved over into the middle of the road to have more room. As he passed an intersection, he glanced down both sides. A car barreled toward him from the left. He kept his foot on the gas. The car blared its horn and swerved to miss him, nailing a stop sign on the corner and flinging it into the street.

Stefan let his car drift to the right, keeping it in line right behind the Altima, when the Altima slammed on its brakes. It swung to the right down a different road. Stefan swung out and cranked around the corner after him at top speed, the tires screaming underneath him as he went wide and clipped the curb.

The Altima wasn’t that far ahead, now. The man was indecisive, scared. He hadn’t made up his mind whether running was a good idea or not; he’d just done it and wasn’t sure he’d made the right call.

Stefan honked his horn and gestured for him to pull over and the okay sign, hoping to calm him, if the man could even see the gestures in his rearview mirror. But the Altima didn’t stop. He feigned another right turn and then rocketed to the left. Stefan stayed on him.

In a burst of power, the Altima shot forward and blew through a red light. Several cars had to swerve, their horns blaring as they crashed, the sound of twisting metal filling the street. Stefan slammed on his brakes and swerved to the right and then the left, barely missing a white truck that had been struck in the intersection.

The Altima wasn’t slowing. Just as Stefan was considering whether to call it in to the local cops and get some support, the other driver made a mistake.

The Altima attempted to blow through another red light. This time, it didn’t make it.

It was struck on the right side so hard it nearly flipped over. Stefan had to swing the steering wheel over to avoid colliding. He slammed on his brakes and screeched to a stop.

He jumped out of the car, his gun drawn. A woman in the car that had hit the Altima screamed, blood pouring down her face. Stefan ran past her to the Altima. The man was slumped over the steering wheel. Stefan took out his phone and dialed 911.