Face of a Killer

3

The night air was refreshing, washed clean. A few stars peeked through the breaks in the clouds, and the cars around them glistened with droplets beneath the parking lot lights, as Sydney and Dixon navigated the puddles to his car. They walked around the vehicle, giving it a good look, making sure nothing had happened since they’d chased off the would-be car burglar, and for a short time she actually thought that maybe Dixon hadn’t noticed her reaction to that drawing. The moment he unlocked the car, gave her that look, she knew otherwise.

“Something going on that I should know about?”

There was no way Sydney was going to tell him what the anniversary of her father’s murder was doing to her head, so she gave a slight shrug. “It’s nothing. Really.”

His gaze held hers for several seconds before he replied, “Whatever that nothing is, make it gone by the time you get back to work.”

One could only hope, Sydney thought, giving him a smile of reassurance. Conversation over. He drove her home in silence, and as they neared her street, in the midst of the neighborhood called Inner Sunset, wisps of fog started to thicken. When Sydney transferred to the San Francisco field office the only thing she remembered about the city was that the traffic sucked. Hence Sydney contacted a real estate agent, put her life in the woman’s hands, telling her she’d take anyplace as long as she didn’t have to deal with the commute. When the agent came up with a rental in a large house that had been divided into two apartments above the landlord’s home “just three miles from the Pacific Ocean,” and “very near Golden Gate Park,” never mind the clincher, a real garage, Sydney figured it was perfect. What she didn’t realize was that the neighborhood suffered from some of the worst weather in the entire Bay Area all year round. It could be sunny three blocks over, but not in the Inner Sunset. Some days Sydney never saw the sun. Some nights Sydney wasn’t sure the stars were in the sky. She happened to live right smack in the middle of the fog zone.

Damned good thing she liked the fog, she told herself as Dixon pulled onto her street. He stopped the car in front of her driveway, about to say something, no doubt about tonight’s incident in the hospital, her odd reaction to the drawing.

She didn’t give him a chance. “See you at work,” she said, before he decided to question her anew. With a quick wave, she exited the vehicle, then hurried up the stairs to her apartment. She let herself in, closed and locked the door behind her, glad the night was over. Her throat was parched, and she made a beeline for the kitchen, filled a glass of water, then took a long drink. Her answering machine flashed. Four messages, according to the prompt, the first from one of her girlfriends, Kate Gillespie, a San Francisco PD homicide inspector, who wanted to set her up with a friend, an ex-cop or ex-attorney turned bartender-Sydney couldn’t really remember which-not that she was in the market. “And do me a favor?” Kate finished. “Call me with your new cell phone number? It’d be nice to get in touch with the real you, not some machine.”

Two days ago, her FBI-issued cell phone had suddenly stopped working, and for whatever reason, the powers that be couldn’t issue her a new phone with the same number. Typical government bureaucracy, always making things more difficult than they were.

The next message was from her mother. “I need to know if you can watch Angela overnight next week. Jake’s taking me to a bed-and-breakfast up in Bodega. Let me know. If you can’t, maybe I can call your neighbor, Rainie. Angela seems to like her.”

Nothing about their argument two days ago. Not that she’d expected anything. It was the same each year, had been ever since Sydney brought up the idea of going to San Quentin and facing her father’s killer. A little over four years ago, when Sydney had joined the FBI, a psychologist who was teaching one of her academy classes on the psychology of murder had posed the question, asked her if she’d ever thought about facing her father’s killer, finding out why he’d done what he’d done, not just from a victim’s standpoint, but also from that of a special agent.

At first the thought horrified her, but then, the more she thought about it, the more she realized he might be right. Go to San Quentin, face him, find out his reasons for committing the murder, find out why he continued to deny his guilt when the evidence was overwhelming. Carefully she’d broached the subject with her mother. And while she hadn’t expected well-wishes for what she’d suggested, she had hoped for a modicum of understanding. Instead it turned into an emotionally disastrous argument, with her mother insisting that Sydney be examined by a psychiatrist, and even her stepfather, Jake, declaring that her entrance into law enforcement was a mistake.

Perhaps she could have gone, not told her mother, but that somehow seemed dishonest, and so she put it off each year, reminding herself that she wasn’t the only victim here. Her mother’s feelings should also be taken into account, though Sydney knew that part of those feelings were simply her mother’s attempt to protect her in the best way she knew how.

But this year had been different, perhaps because of the impending execution, now just ten days away. Her mother, worried that Sydney was going through with what she called her “insane idea,” had enlisted outside help. She’d called an old family friend, Donovan Gnoble, who just happened to be a U.S. senator, and told him what Sydney had planned. That resulted in a call to her office last Friday from his office in Washington, D.C., begging her not to go through with this idea. “For your mother’s sake,” he’d said. “She deserves some peace after all these years. If nothing else, think of her and how she feels. And if you just let it alone, in a couple weeks he’ll be gone.”

Exactly my point, she thought, jabbing the button to play the next two messages. Both were from Scotty telling her to call him, that it was urgent.

When they were living together, he was hardly ever home, and it seemed they never had the time to sit down, talk, but the moment she moved to the opposite side of the country, it was like he had her number on speed dial.

They’d met at the academy in Quantico, where he’d been assisting with the firearms training, though they hadn’t started dating until after she’d graduated. To say he was ambitious would be an understatement. Scotty had his entire life planned out, knew where he was going, what he wanted to do. And she’d liked that about him, because in many ways it reflected how she preferred to live her own life. Structured, planned, scheduled. Black and white. That was, in essence, how she’d survived since her father’s murder. There was no chaos with order.

But neither was there spontaneity, as Scotty had pointed out.

That she didn’t like to look at too closely. Their breakup was not entirely her fault. Hard to be spontaneous when the other half is always away from home, working some big political corruption case. So when Dixon was promoted and transferred out West, she took that as a sign, put in for a transfer herself.

Not that Scotty had any intentions of giving up that easily. He seemed to think all Sydney needed was a little time apart, and once she got it, they’d be back together. With a frustrated sigh, she glanced at the clock, figured with the three-hour time difference, he’d be up for work anyway, so she might as well get it over with now. He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Scotty.”

“Syd?” He cleared his voice, “What time is it?”

“Late. Got called out on a sketch. Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah. I’m actually not at home, just having my calls forwarded to my cell.”

“Where are you?”

“Hotel. I tried to call. You okay with the anniversary and everything?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? I heard you’re taking the day off today, but when I tried to call-”

“New cell phone,” Sydney said, then gave him the number. One of these days, she was going to have to have a talk with whoever was feeding Scotty his information about her and her life-and she had a fair idea just who was doing it. In the meantime, she decided to play the whole thing down, because the information highway in her office was a two-way street, and the last thing she needed was for anyone working with her to think that she couldn’t handle the stresses of her personal life. “And I’m taking the day off because… I want to paint,” she said, eyeing the blank canvas on the easel in her kitchen. “You know how much it relaxes me. In fact, I’m painting right now.” She plucked a wide brush from a coffee can filled with brushes sitting on the counter, then, holding the phone close so he could catch the sound effects, she dunked the brush in her water glass, swirling it around at warp speed. “Acrylics.”

“Sydney, we need to talk. I’d thought I’d come by.”

“What do you mean come by? Where are you?”

“In San Francisco.”

“This is not a good idea, Scotty.”

For once, however, he wasn’t demanding she reconsider her position about their relationship. Quite the opposite. “I know you said you needed space, but this isn’t about that. Besides, I was worried about the article.”

“What article?”

“The one that came out in yesterday’s Chronicle. The fact he’s getting new attorneys. You did read the paper yesterday?”

She looked at the newspaper on her coffee table, tossed there when she’d left for her morning run, untouched when she’d gone into the office on her day off yesterday to catch up on paperwork, because she knew she was taking today off. “No,” she said, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. Phone to her ear, she walked into her living room, sat on the couch, removed the rubber band from yesterday morning’s paper, and flipped through it, finding the article about five pages in.

“You there, Syd?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her gaze was fixed on the photograph of Johnnie Wheeler, the man convicted of killing her father, and what stood out to her was the damned scar on his cheek.

“Syd?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“I’ll call you back.”

She hit the off button, then tossed the phone on the couch, trying not to look at the photo, feeling as shaky as she had when she’d finished that sketch in the hospital. She tried to take a calming breath, told herself it was just a photograph. It couldn’t hurt her. Finally she forced herself to look. It was the same picture she’d seen of him several years ago, when she’d worked up the courage to read the investigation report. Wheeler’s photo had been included in that report, and though she did not want to see the eyes of the man who’d killed her father, she’d found her gaze drawn to the photo anyway, was surprised by the scar she’d seen on his cheek. Even now, staring at the news photo, it was the same.

As then, she had no memories of this man, had thought surely, of all things, she’d remember a man’s face, his scar, but she’d been told that she’d blocked a number of things from her mind that fateful night. There was much she didn’t remember.

The sound of the gunshot.

The blood.

The killer’s face.

The human brain is an amazing thing, and hers had neatly compartmentalized just about everything. Or so her childhood psychiatrist had told not only her, but also the officers who had investigated the case at the time.

The sight of his face in the paper shook her more than she’d expected, and finally she grabbed a magazine, dropped it on top so she wouldn’t have to see it.

Nor did she want to read the article, and yet she told herself she should read it, see what it said about the man who had killed her father, find out why.

There were no answers, though. Not for her. Perhaps because only part of the article detailed Johnnie Wheeler, just ten days shy of being executed. Apparently he was professing his innocence, no surprise there, and there were plenty of people supporting him, assisting him in locating new attorneys.

And as much as that bothered her, that there might be a chance he could get out, what she found even more upsetting was the main thrust of the article, which wasn’t really about Wheeler at all. Senator Donovan Gnoble was personally involving himself in the case. Elections were a little more than a month away, and here he was using her father’s murder and Wheeler’s impending execution for his get-tough-on-crime stance. The timing of his involvement galled her, and she didn’t care how close of a family friend he was, or that he’d been her father’s friend from way back, or that he lived in the same damned town as her mother.

He didn’t need to use this case for his platform, use her father’s death for his political gain. Not with his pedigree. Though Donovan Gnoble was affectionately known as “The Colonel,” partly due to his kindly face, his white hair, mustache, and trademark goatee, making him look like a true Southern gentleman, he also had the real-life military background to go with the name. A retired lieutenant colonel, he was the frontrunner, the favorite. A Yale graduate who later became a decorated war hero with the scars to prove it, he was one of the few conservative Republicans who held sway with the Democrats when it came to his politics, and there were many who thought he stood a good chance of becoming president if he ever decided to throw his hat in the ring. He was the quintessential politician, who happened to be married to the quintessential politician’s wife, because a vote for Gnoble was a vote for Marla Gnoble, a woman who came from a long line of prominent politicians, and yet one who stayed out of the spotlight, all while running her philanthropic charities with the liberal eye for the poor and the gift for getting big corporations to open their checkbooks.

The phone rang. Scotty apparently couldn’t wait for her to call him back.

“You okay?” he asked again, as if her state could have changed in the last five minutes.

“How can he do this? Use my father’s murder for his campaign? If I’d had an inkling that this was what he’d been planning, I would never have agreed to go to that damned rally of his.”

“Maybe you should bow out, Syd. Or, if nothing else, you could take me, and I can be your buffer. I’ve always wanted to meet him.”

“I wonder if my mom saw this?” she said, ignoring his self-invitation.

“If she did, she’d be cheering, especially after that bombshell you dropped two days ago about going through with this harebrained idea to visit that idiot in prison today.”

“And you would know, because…?”

“Because I talked to Jake. He asked me if you were seriously considering going to San Quentin, and I told him that you had talked about it before, but in truth, I didn’t know.”

She glanced at the newspaper, pushed aside the magazine so that she could see Wheeler’s face. “Just looking at his picture gives me the creeps,” she said, not really directing it to anyone.

“Then don’t go.”

“What did Jake say about this article with Senator Gnoble?” she asked, closing the paper, shoving it aside.

“He actually called the senator, who told him he was genuinely upset at the article, the way it made him look. You know my feeling. He’s a politician. End of story.”

She didn’t know what to believe. She was tired, couldn’t think straight, and she got up, walked into the kitchen, staring at her blank canvas, not really wanting to face any of this right now. “Look, my paints are drying and it’s late.”

“You’re really painting something at this hour?”

“Something blue.”

“Maybe I should come over now,” he said, as if he knew this whole painting thing was some sort of subterfuge. “Besides, I really do need to talk to you.”

“I’m fine. The moment I’m not, I’ll call you.”

“I love-”

“Good-bye.” Sydney disconnected, figuring she’d averted a visit by the narrowest of margins, though how long she could avoid him when he was in town, she wasn’t sure. What she needed right then was a good stiff drink, but alcohol wasn’t the answer, and she glanced at her blank canvas, thought, what the hell, might as well make the lie real. She squeezed out a generous portion of blue acrylic onto her palette, eyed it, then realized it wasn’t dark enough. She changed it to black, added water to it, and brushed the wash on the canvas, covering it completely, eliminating every last bit of white. She had no idea what form the painting might take. That wasn’t the point. She painted for relaxation and rejuvenation. She painted because she loved the smell of acrylics and oils, the feel of a brush in her hand, lavishing the paint onto a canvas. The whole process enticed her in a way that no bottle of alcohol ever could, and she stood back to view her work-not that it was much to look at-nothing more than a black wash. So much for inspiration and interpretation. Perhaps it was a reflection of her mood, trying to decide who was worse? Gnoble for using someone else’s tragedy for his gain, or Wheeler for refusing to admit the truth, accept his punishment and give them all peace?

She could almost hear her mother telling her to accept the past. Move on. But that was not a possibility tonight, and she put away her paints and went to bed. Finally, in the dim glow of the night light, she stared at the framed photograph of her father on her bedside table. Of all the photos and pictures, this was her favorite, perhaps because it was the last taken of them together. She was sitting next to him on the back of a fishing boat, its name, Cisco’s Kid, visible beneath her dangling feet. Her father was holding a large bright orange fish, caught off the shore of Baja, and she was grinning, leaning as far away from the fish as she could get.

They’d made that trip the summer before he was killed, went to visit his friend, Bob the Boat Guy. Funny how the name popped up, because her father’s friend was the least memorable thing about that trip, one she was sure she’d never forget. There were times just looking at the photo when Sydney could almost hear the water lapping against the boat, smell the salt in the air, feel the heat of the sun on her back, and taste the radishes in the fish tacos she and her father ate for lunch that afternoon.

But not tonight. Though Sydney willed herself to remember the fragrant memory, nothing came, and she reached out, touched the picture, the glass cool beneath her fingertips.

She closed her eyes, but sleep would not come, and her thoughts drifted to the article, the date, the fact that Johnnie Wheeler’s case was being looked at by new attorneys. She realized then what bothered her most about the little she’d read in that article. Somewhere it should have read how twenty years today she would have lived without her father in her life. Not once did it mention the family left behind. Not once did it address what this day of days meant to her or her mother.

And suddenly one thought filled her mind: making sure that the man responsible for her father’s murder didn’t forget what day it was.

How, though?

The very idea of being in the same room as Johnnie Wheeler chilled her to the bone. She hadn’t even been able to look at a damned news photo of the guy. How the hell was she going to stand there and force herself to look into his eyes, look into his face, the face of a killer?