The Bastille - a Thriller Page 3

  Angela turned and flipped through the incident report, which listed a last known address. Her partner saw her glaring at the address.

  “Don’t tell me you’re that desperate,” Chan said. “Last known address? Really?”

  “He’s not gonna be there. I just wonder if there’s some clue about where he will be. There’s no parents or next of kin listed and the house was sold at auction but never occupied. He’s gotta have somewhere he considers safe. Maybe something in the house can lead us there. You coming?”

  “I’ve got the reports due on the Baxter case. You cool without me?”

  “No, David, I’m not going to this creepy fucker’s house without any backup.”

  David exhaled and rose. “You drive at least.”

  Zain Tamora had lived in a house under his own name in a quiet suburb of Las Vegas. Someone had paid for the home in cash, though Angela didn’t know who that someone was. The name wasn’t listed on any of the ownership transfer documents she’d been able to pull up.

  The three-story, baby blue home sat apart from the other houses on this block—the only one to do so. It was so rundown she was surprised the wind in this region hadn’t already knocked it down. She parked out front and stared at the darkened windows.

  “Did you get the warrant?” Chan asked.

  “It’s on the way. Let’s go.”

  She climbed out of the car and stared at the house a moment. The overgrown weeds came up to her hips. In the windows, she could see bottles and cleaning supplies—or at least what she hoped were cleaning supplies. A chain-link fence surrounded the yard and she opened the gate for Chan and said, “Age before beauty.”

  He ambled through and up to the front door with her right behind him. She put her ear to the door. Nothing. No sounds whatsoever. She stepped to the side, away from the door in case some crazy relative decided to answer with a shotgun blast, and Angela knocked. They waited a few moments and then Chan knocked.

  “Guess nobody’s home,” he said.

  She tried the doorknob, and it turned. The door opened with a creak. The two glanced at each other before stepping inside.

  The house was filthy. She smelled rotting… everything. Putrid garbage years old surrounded furniture discolored from so much dust, and something had left massive stains on the carpets and walls.

  “Glad I came,” Chan said, covering his nose with his tie.

  “You love being with me. It’s part of my charm,” she said, looking around the corner into the kitchen.

  “So this is how a mass murderer lives, huh?”

  “How he lived. Before he killed every fucking other person who lived here.”

  She crossed the living room, stepping gingerly over the piles of trash. In the kitchen were loads of dishes with rotting food that had long ago crusted to the plates and was flaking to dust. Flies were everywhere and a window over the sink was open a crack.

  “How has this place not been condemned?” Chan asked.

  “County’s got enough vacant properties to worry about.”

  “Do his relatives own this place?”

  She shook her head as she scanned the living room. “It was put up for auction over twenty years ago. Someone bought it and is just sitting on it.”

  “Who?”

  “Jane Doe.”

  Chan stopped in his tracks. “Wait a sec, is this where the murders happened?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re squeamish.”

  “Not at all. It’s just odd being here. I bet you could sell some of this stuff to weirdos on eBay if they haven’t already taken the good stuff.”

  “You wanna sell a mass murderer’s lamp and live with that bad juju, you go right ahead, Dave.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to do it. Just said we could.”

  Angela nudged aside piles of old magazines and clothing with her toe as she wandered around the living room. She was looking for bills, ledgers, notes, anything that could lead her to someplace Tamora might have gone to—a distant relative in a cabin in Montana, or a grandparent’s house or… something.

  She finished up in the living room as Chan bent over a bowl on a side table. As she was walking back to the kitchen, Chan said, “You better see this.”

  Angela stopped. “What?”

  He motioned with his chin to the bowl. “That doesn’t look like clay to me.”

  Angela examined the bowl. Circular, but an odd shape…

  “Holy shit,” she said. “That’s a skull.”

  “Just the top portion. We’re gonna have to have forensics come through here.”

  “How could they not have seen that before? This was a major crime scene.”

  “Maybe someone put it here after?”

  It was a disturbing thought. Someone had anonymously bought a mass murderer’s home and stuck trinkets made of human body parts inside. She reached down and touched the skull lightly. Maybe it wasn’t real. Plaster, or maybe plastic. But it felt like bone.

  She pulled out her sidearm and held it by her side. “I’m going to check out the bedrooms.”

  Angela had read in the original police report from 1989 that the master bedroom was where Tamora had attacked his wife with a knife. The first blow hadn’t killed her and she had tried to run, but he’d cornered her in the kitchen and continued stabbing her there.

  As Angela stepped inside the master bedroom, she scanned the walls and bed. Blood stains covering the floors had darkened over the years and now looked like black coffee stains. The bed was covered with dust and spiderwebs. She stepped inside the room and opened the door to the bathroom.

  The tub filled with putrid greenish-brown water was the source of the rotting smell. She didn’t even want to look at what was inside. Let forensics deal with it. She left the bathroom door open as she carefully stepped over to the closet and opened the sliding doors.

  The closet was filled with clothes, both women’s and men’s. Angela took out a pen flashlight and flicked it on. She scanned up and around the closet and then kicked aside some trash on the floor.

  She strode out of the bedroom and saw David looking at a grandfather clock.

  “What?” she said.

  “The hands. They’re someone’s metacarpals.”

  “Shit. Call it in, would you?”

  “Yup.”

  “And grab some latex gloves out of my car.”

  As David took out his cell phone and called the Bureau field office in Las Vegas, Angela carefully stepped into the kitchen. The fridge was still plugged in but there didn’t appear to be any power to the house. She waited until David was back with the gloves and snapped them on before opening the fridge.

  It was empty.

  She closed it and scanned the rest of the kitchen. A door led to the backyard. The sunlight warmed her face as she stepped outside. The grass was dead and all that was left was bare dirt. A skeleton of what had once been a tree remained in the corner of the yard. As she turned to go back inside, she saw the double doors of a cellar. She glanced back at David, who was still on the phone, and then walked to the doors. Holding her sidearm in front of her, she opened them.

  A set of stairs led down. The flashlight and daylight were enough to show a few steps, but that just made the blackness beyond seem even darker. She went down gun first, with her other hand crossed beneath, supporting her gun hand and holding the flashlight.

  The stairs creaked all the way down. The floor was bare cement and the cellar was filled with all the items she expected would be stored away somewhere after a family was killed. Old bicycles, mattresses, dresses, toys, tools… something from every member of the family.

  The cellar was predominantly shelves and she started at the first one and began going through them. The first shelf was tools and nails, hardware supplies, old hoses—it reminded her of her father’s garage and the long hours he put in every weekend, building them a chair or a table. Angela would sit in front of him with her own toy toolset and he would give her advice on how to use them proper
ly.

  The memory brought a grin to her face and it might have lasted if the next shelf hadn’t been filled with children’s toys and packages of diapers. The youngest member of Tamora’s family, a daughter, had been less than a year old when he’d killed her.

  Angela scanned the rest of the shelves. The place gave her an unsettling feeling even though she’d been to the scenes of horrific crimes before. It seemed as though everything that had been personal to the family was stuffed down here. She noticed a portrait on the wall and as her flashlight crossed it, she only dimly saw the two speckles of light, reflections off something.

  By the time she realized they were eyes, it was too late.

  The dark figure rushed out at her with a grunt like an animal. The figure was massive, towering over her. She didn’t even have time to let out a scream as something sharp plunged into her belly with burning pain.

  The agony was so intense her knees buckled and the force of it flung her against the wall. The figure stood over her and she could see the general shape. Arms and legs, head and shoulders… but it was just a shadow. She couldn’t make out a face or clothing.

  “Ange, you down there?”

  David.

  She tried to shout, to tell him not to come down. But whatever was in her belly had forced all the air out of her. She opened her mouth but only a gasp came out.

  The black figure disappeared into the shadows by the staircase as Angela heard Chan’s footsteps coming down.

  6

  The screams echoed through the auditorium. Mickey leaned against the podium and watched the faces of the students as they listened. A recording on his Mac played through the auditorium’s speakers. It was a man torturing his wife to death—a case he’d had nearly fifteen years ago. The man had been arrested for domestic violence almost a dozen times, but each case was dismissed because his wife claimed spousal privilege and refused to testify against him.

  That night he’d been high on methamphetamine and was under the paranoid delusion that his wife, who had been the only person in his life to stick by him and support him, was an informant for the government.

  He’d tied her up in their basement, stripped her nude, and threw darts at her. When he’d had enough, he hacked her to pieces with a hatchet. He’d captured the entire thing as a video on his cell phone, but Mickey thought the audio was enough for the agents in training right now. Part of his job was to prepare them emotionally for the things they would see in the field, and at some point, he would play them videos like this one. But it had to be a gradual progression.

  Even the audio had several of the students staring down at their desks, or cringing, their eyes wide as they tried to think about anything but what they were hearing.

  Mickey stopped the recording after two minutes. He stood silent a moment and listened to a few people whispering. The term he heard the most was “holy shit.”

  “That’s what we’re up against, folks,” he said. “You’re going to see and hear things in this job that no one else in your life will be able to understand. And you won’t be able to explain it to them. I shared some of the things I saw with my wife once, which we’re warned not to do in training, and she locked herself in the bathroom and cried. I never shared with her again. That’s why you will rely so heavily on each other. You will be the only ones who understand what you are going through. Use that—use each other for support. Don’t be scared to reach out, because if you bottle all of that up, it’ll blow up when you least expect it.” He glanced to the clock on the wall. “We’re just about out of time. Any questions before we wrap things up?”

  One young man raised his hand and said, “What happened to the husband?”

  “He was sentenced to death, and I’m guessing that the state of Texas has executed him since. I haven’t followed up on the case. Anyone else?”

  A woman in the front row wearing a gray FBI hoodie said, “I don’t understand the psychology of those victims. She had a million chances to get away from him and she kept going back.”

  Mickey nodded and took a sip of water out of a paper cup. “It’s based on dependence. They feel they’re dependent on their abusers and cannot survive without them—which is of course an idea the perpetrator has cultivated. They want the victim to have no self-esteem and be reliant on them. The perpetrator, too, is based on dependence. Without a victim, they feel hollow and worthless. The abuse, the power, is what they believe gives them their self-worth. But opinions vary. And there’s just as many experts and theories on domestic violence as in any other psychological phenomena. Nothing’s completely settled. Any other questions?”

  When no one raised a hand, Mickey said, “See you Thursday.”

  As the class filed out, someone was waiting by the doors with their arms folded. Kyle Vidal watched Mickey with what appeared to be detached curiosity, as though he couldn’t quite figure out his motivations.

  Kyle strolled up to the podium as Mickey packed away his things.

  “Interesting lecture,” Kyle said. “I remember when I heard it almost a decade ago and enjoyed it just as much.”

  “You were smart,” Mickey said. “I thought you’d be in the field forever.”

  Kyle shrugged. “Someone’s gotta run the place, Mickey. We can’t all be guns.”

  Guns. Mickey hadn’t heard that term in years. It was what agents called those who were out in the field making collars and risking their lives as opposed to those who pushed papers behind a desk, like forensic accountants and administrators.

  “I got your request for aid to the Las Vegas office.”

  “It sounds like they need the help. Angela’s too young to remember, but Zain Tamora was big news when he hit.”

  “Oh, I remember. I think the Director of Behavioral Science was on every news channel for like a week after that. Everyone was trying to explain how he snapped and how it could happen to anybody.” He paused. “Actually, Mickey, that’s why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you about Angela.”

  Mickey stopped what he was doing and looked up. “What about her?”

  “Something’s happened. She’s been injured. She apparently—”

  Mickey lifted his bag with the Mac and started out of the auditorium.

  “Where you going?” Kyle asked.

  Mickey stopped and turned back. “I’m heading out there.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “She called me for help, Kyle. And I turned her down.”

  “I told you last time your field days are done, brother.”

  “I trained her.”

  Kyle took a step toward Mickey, his hands in his pockets. “I know. But what are you even going to do? She’s in the ICU right now, but they’re saying she’s going to live.”

  Mickey set his bag down. “What happened?”

  “Don’t have all the details yet. Another agent was injured, too. They were chasing down a lead in the Tamora case and were wounded at some house.”

  “I’ll need to go out there, Kyle.”

  He shook his head. “You’re one year from retirement and you’ve got serious health issues. This isn’t your game anymore. Sorry, but you’re a desk jockey. That’s what you do now.”

  Mickey nodded and walked out of the auditorium. He couldn’t quite figure out what Kyle was doing. He understood that the Bureau had liability concerns for an agent that was HIV positive being in the field. But one of their own had been hurt and he might be able to help figure out why. He felt like, after training her, he couldn’t just sit out here and go about his life like nothing had happened.

  But then again, he remembered when he’d come home from Vietnam. He’d been eating in a café in Los Angeles near his family’s home and hadn’t yet changed out of his uniform. A group of young kids called him a baby killer and threw a soda at him before running off. They didn’t spit on him, but they may as well have. He’d spent two years in hell for a reason he didn’t fully understand, and his own people derided him in his hometown.

  The drive
home from Quantico seemed longer, even though the freeway wasn’t as packed as it usually was. He listened to jazz and rolled the window down. The air was warm and pleasant and had the scent of pine as he turned off at his exit and headed to the condo.

  Once home, he sat back on his couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. Every day after work, he needed about half an hour to decompress. It was just long enough that he’d regain some of his strength and short enough that he wouldn’t waste the evening.

  He watched a show on television about vampires in high school for about five minutes before turning to the news. But he could only stomach so much of that. He changed it back to the vampire show and let his thoughts drift to Angela.

  He could picture what had happened. She’d chased down a lead in the Tamora case and probably ended up somewhere she shouldn’t have been without any backup. Angela was impulsive to the point of recklessness. Mickey could see her rushing into a biker bar or a gang house and getting into a fight.

  After his thirty minutes, he rose and sat outside on the patio as the sun set. Some neighbors waved to him and he waved back as he watched the orange globe descend through the sky and disappear behind the mountains.

  Kyle was right: he was an old man now, close to seeing everything ending in his life. His daughter would soon have kids and he would not be her primary concern any more. His career would end and be nothing but a few pins and photos hanging on the walls next to the medals he’d received after coming home from Vietnam. He sure as hell hadn’t felt like a hero then and he didn’t feel like one now after twenty years at the Bureau.

  All that time, all that effort, and Mickey wasn’t sure exactly what he had to show for it. Maybe some closure to the families of victims that had been killed. Obviously, he had also stopped the monsters from killing again, but those victims would never know how close they’d come to dying. They had no faces or stories; they were like ghosts.

  When a man reached Mickey’s age, he thought about his legacy, about what he would be leaving behind in the world. And Mickey couldn’t be sure exactly what that was for him.