The Poet

35

By the time I pulled up in front of the LAPD's Hollywood Division it was nearly eight-thirty. I didn't know what to expect as I looked at the brick fortress on Wilcox Street. I didn't know whether Thomas would still be there this late, but I hoped that because he was the lead detective working a fresh case-the motel maid killing-that he was still on the clock, preferably behind the bricks working the phones instead of out on the street looking for Gladden.

Inside the front door was a lobby of gray linoleum, two green vinyl couches and the front counter, behind which three uniformed officers sat. There was an entry to a hallway on the left and on the wall above it a sign that said DETECTIVE BUREAU above an arrow pointing down the hall. I glanced at the only desk officer not on a phone and nodded as if I was making my nightly visit. I got to about three feet from the hallway when he stopped me.

"Hold on there, partner. Can I help you?"

I turned back to him and pointed up to the sign.

"I need to go to the detective bureau."

"What for?"

I walked over to the counter so our conversation would not be heard by everyone in the station.

"I want to see Detective Thomas."

I took out my press identification.

" Denver," the cop said, in case I had forgotten where I was from. "Let me see if he's back there. He expecting you?"

"Not that I know of."

"What's Denver got to do with-yeah, Ed Thomas back there? Got one here from Denver to see him."

He listened for a few moments, creased his brow at whatever information he was being given and then hung up.

"Okay. Go on down the hall. Second door on the left."

I thanked him and headed down the hallway. Along both walls were dozens of framed black-and-white publicity shots of entertainers interspersed among photos of police softball teams and officers killed in the line of duty. The door I was told to go to was marked HOMICIDE. I knocked, waited a beat for a reply and then opened the door and stepped in when I didn't get one.

Rachel was sitting behind one of the six desks in the room. The others were empty.

"Hello, Jack."

I nodded. I wasn't that surprised to see her.

"What are you doing here?"

"That should be obvious, since you've obviously been waiting for me. Where's Thomas?"

"He's safe."

"Why all the lies?"

"What lies?"

"Thorson said Gladden was not a suspect. He said he was checked out and dropped. That's why I came out. I thought he was either wrong or lying. Why didn't you call me, Rachel? This whole thing-"

"Jack, I was busy with Thomas and I knew if I called anyway, I'd have to lie to you and I didn't want to."

"So, you just had Thorson do it. Great. Thanks. That makes it better."

"Stop being a baby. I had more to worry about than your feelings. I'm sorry. Look, I'm here, aren't I? Why do you think that is?"

I hiked my shoulders.

"I knew you'd come no matter what Gordon told you," she said. "I know you, Jack. All I had to do was call the airlines. Once I knew your ETA, all I had to do was wait. I only hope that Gladden wasn't out there watching the place. You were on TV with us. That means he probably thinks you are an agent. If he saw you come in here he'll know we're running a setup."

"But if he was out there and close enough to see me, then you'd have him now, right? Because you've got a twenty-four-hour watch for him on the outside of this place."

She smiled thinly. I had guessed right.

She picked a two-way radio up off the desk and called her command post. I recognized the voice that came back. It was Backus. She told him she was coming in with a visitor. She then ended the call and stood up.

"Let's go."

"Where?"

"The command post. Not too far."

Her voice was curt, clipped. It was cold toward me and I found it hard to believe that I had made love to this woman less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was as if I was a stranger to her now. I kept quiet as we walked through a back hallway of the station and to an employee parking lot in the rear where she had a car waiting.

"I've got a car out front," I said.

"Well, you'll have to leave it for now. Unless you want to stay on your own and keep doing the cowboy shit."

"Look, Rachel, if I hadn't been lied to this might not have happened. I might not even have come."

"Sure."

She got in and started the car and then unlocked my door. It always annoyed me when people did that to me but I didn't say anything when I got in. She headed out of the lot and up toward Sunset Boulevard with a heavy foot on the gas. She didn't speak until a red light forced her to stop the car.

"How did you know that name, Jack?" she asked.

"What name?" I replied, though I knew.

"Gladden, Jack. William Gladden."

"I did my homework. How did you people come up with it?"

"I can't tell you."

"Rachel… Look, this is me, okay? We made, uh…" I couldn't say it out loud for fear it would sound like a lie. "I thought there was something between us, Rachel. Now you're acting like I'm some kind of leper or something. I don't… Look, is it information you want? I'll tell you all I know. I figured it out from the newspapers. Big story on this guy Gladden in the L.A. Times on Saturday. Okay? The story said he knew Horace the Hypnotist in Raiford. I just put two and two together. It wasn't hard."

"Okay, Jack."

"Now you."

Silence.

"Rachel?"

"Are we off the record?"

"You know you don't have to ask me that."

She hesitated a moment and then seemed to relent. She began.

"We arrived at Gladden through two separate leads that just happened to click at the same time. That gives us a high sense of reliability that he's our man. First, the car. Automotive ID traced the stereo serial number to a car which, in turn, was traced to Hertz? You remember this?"

"Yes."

"Well, Matuzak and Mize went down to the airport and traced the car. Some snowbirds from Chicago had already rerented it. They had to go up to Sedona to get it back. It's been processed. Nothing usable from it. The stereo and window had been replaced. But not by Hertz. Hertz never knew about the break-in. Whoever had the car when the break-in occurred replaced the window and the stereo on their own. Anyway, the rental records put the car in the hands of an N.H. Breedlove for five days this month, including the day Orsulak was killed. This Breedlove turned it in the day after. Matuzak put the name on the computer and got a hit on the ID net. Nathan H. Breedlove was an AKA turned up during the investigation of William Gladden in Florida seven years ago. It was a name used by a man who had placed ads in the papers in Tampa offering his services as a children's photographer. He molested the kids when left alone with them, took dirty pictures. He wore disguises. The Tampa police were looking for this Breedlove at the same time the Gladden case broke. The molestations at the child care center. The investigators always believed Gladden was Breedlove but they never made a case because of the disguises. Besides, they didn't press it because they thought he'd be going away to prison for a long time on the other case.

"Anyway, once we had Gladden's name from the ID net's alias data bank, from there we picked up the wanted that LAPD put out on NCIC last week. And here we are."

"It seems…"

"Too easy? Well, sometimes you make your own luck."

"You said that before."

"Because it's true."

"Why would he use an alias that he must've known was on file somewhere?"

"A lot of these people find comfort in tradition. Plus, he's a cocky son of a bitch. We know that from the fax."

"But he used a whole new alias when he was arrested by Santa Monica police last week. Why would he-"

"I'm only telling you what we know, Jack. If he's as smart as we think he is, then he probably has several ID packages. They wouldn't be hard to come by. We have the Phoenix field office working on a subpoena for Hertz. We want Breedlove's complete renting history going back three years. He's a Hertz Gold customer no less. Again it shows how smart he is. Most airports, you get off the plane, walk to the Gold lot and your name is on the board. You go to your car and the keys are in it. Most of the time you don't even have to talk to any clerks. You just get in your car, show your license at the gate and you are out of there."

"Okay, what about the other thing? You said there were two leads to Gladden."

"The Best Pals. Ted Vincent and Steve Raffa in Florida finally got hold of Beltran's records with the organization this morning. He'd been Best Pal to nine young boys over the years. The second one he sponsored, this is going back something like sixteen years, was Gladden."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. It's all starting to fall together."

I was silent for a few moments as I considered all of the information she had revealed. The investigation was advancing at exponentially increasing speed. It was seat-belt time.

"How come the field office out here didn't pick up on this guy? He's been in the paper."

"Good question. Bob's going to have a heart-to-heart with the SAC about that. Gordon's flag landed last night. Somebody should've seen it and put two and two together. But we did it ourselves first."

A typical bureaucratic snafu. I wondered how much sooner they'd have been on to Gladden if someone in the L.A. office had been a little more alert.

"You know Gladden, don't you?" I said.

"Yes. We had him during the rapist interviews. I told you about that. Seven years ago. He and Gomble, among others at that hellhole in Florida. I think our team-Gordon, Bob, me-spent a week down there, we had so many candidates for interviews."

I was tempted to bring up Thorson's call to the prison's computer but thought better of it. It was enough just to get her to talk to me again like a human. Telling her I had rifled through the hotel bills was no way to ensure that she would continue. This dilemma also created a problem in regard to nailing Thorson. For the time being I would have to sit on his hotel phone records as well.

"You think there is any connection between Gomble supposedly using hypnotism and what you are seeing on the Poet cases?" I said instead. "Think maybe Gomble taught him his secret?"

"Possibly."

She had regressed to the one-word reply.

"Possibly," I repeated, a thin line of sarcasm in it.

"Eventually, I'll go to Florida to talk to Gomble again. And I'm going to ask him that. Until I get an answer one way or the other, it's possibly. Okay, Jack?"

We pulled into an alley that ran behind a row of old motels and shops. She finally slowed down to the point where I let go of the armrest.

"But you can't go to Florida now, can you?" I asked.

"That's up to Bob. But we're close to Gladden here. For the time being I think Bob wants to put everything we have into L.A. Gladden's here. Or he's close. We can all feel it. We've got to get him. Once we have him, then I'll worry about the other things, the psychological motivation. We'll need to go to Florida then."

"Why then? To add data to the serial killer studies?"

"No. I mean, yes, there's that, but primarily we'll go for the prosecution. Guy like this, he's got to go the insanity route. It's his only choice. So that means we'll have to build a case on his psychology. One that shows he knew what he was doing and he knew right from wrong. The same old thing."

Prosecution of the Poet in a courtroom had never entered my mind. I realized that I had assumed that he would not be taken alive. And this assumption, I knew, was based on my own desire that he not be allowed to live after this.

"What's the matter, Jack, you don't want a trial? You want us to kill him where we find him?"

I looked at her. The lights from a passing window flicked across her face and for a moment I saw her eyes.

"I hadn't thought about it."

"Sure you have. Would you like to kill him, Jack? If you had a moment with him and there were no consequences, could you do it? Do you think that would make up for things?"

I didn't like discussing this subject with her. I sensed more than just a passing interest from her.

"I don't know," I finally answered. "Could you kill him? Have you ever killed anyone, Rachel?"

"Given the chance, I'd kill him in a heartbeat."

"Why?"

"Because I've known the others. I've looked in their eyes and know what's back there in the darkness. If I could kill them all I think I would."

I waited for her to continue but she didn't. She pulled the car to a stop next to two other matching Caprices behind one of the old motels.

"You didn't answer the second question."

"No, I've never killed anyone."

We went in through a back door into a hallway painted in two tones; dingy lime to about eye level, dingy white the rest of the way up. Rachel went to the first door on the left and knocked and we were let in. It was a motel room, one that would have passed as a kitchenette in the sixties, when it was last refurbished. Backus and Thorson were there waiting, sitting at an old Formica table against the wall. There were two phones on the table that looked as if they had just been added to the room. There was also a three-foot-high aluminum trunk standing on one end with its lid open to reveal a bank of three video monitors. Wires ran out the back of the trunk, along the floor and out the window, which was opened just enough to allow them through.

"Jack, I can't say I'm happy to see you," Backus said.

But he said it with a wry smile on his face and he stood up and shook my hand.

"Sorry," I said, not really knowing why. Then, looking at Thorson, I added, "I didn't mean to blunder into your setup but I was given some bad information."

The thought of the phone records went through my mind again but I dismissed it. It was not the right time.

"Well," Backus said, "I have to admit we were trying a little misdirection there. We just thought it would be best if we could work this out without any distractions."

"I'll try not to be a distraction."

"You already are," Thorson said.

I ignored him and kept my eyes on Backus.

"Have a seat," he said.

Rachel and I took the two remaining chairs at the table.

"I assume you know what is happening," Backus said.

"I assume you're watching Thomas."

I turned so I could see the video monitors and for the first time studied the view each one had. The top monitor showed a hallway not unlike the one outside the room we were in. Several doors going down both sides. All of them closed and with numbers on them. The next tube showed the exterior of a motel front. In the blue-gray haze of the video I could just make out the words on the sign above the door. HOTEL MARK TWAIN. The bottom monitor showed an alley-side view of what I assumed was the same hotel.

"Is this where we are?" I asked, pointing at the display.

"No," Backus said. "That is where Detective Thomas is. We're about a block away."

"Doesn't look very nice. What are they paying these days in this town?"

"It is not his home. But the detectives at Hollywood Station often use the hotel to stash witnesses or sleep over if they're working twenty-hour days on a case. Detective Thomas chose to stay there rather than at home. He has a wife and three children at home."

"Well, that answers my next question. I'm glad you told him he was being used as bait."

"You seem measurably more cynical than when we last met this morning, Jack."

"I guess that's because I am."

I looked away from him and checked out the video setup again. Backus spoke to my back.

"We have three-point camera surveillance beamed to a mobile dish on our roof here. We also have the field office's critical response unit and LAPD's top surveillance squad watching Thomas around the clock. No one can get near him. Even at the station. He's perfectly safe."

"Wait until it's over and then tell me that."

"I will. But in the meantime, you have to step aside, Jack."

I turned back to him, my best puzzled look on my face.

"You understand what I'm telling you," Backus said, not buying the face. "We are at the most critical stage. He is in our sights and, frankly, Jack, you have to get out of the way."

"I am out of the way and I'll stay out of the way. The same deal, nothing I see goes into the paper until you okay it. But I'm not going back to Denver to wait. I'm too close, too… This means too much. You've got to let me back inside."

"This could take weeks. Remember the fax. All it said was that he had his next man in sight. It didn't say when it would happen. There was no time frame. We have no idea when he'll try to hit Thomas."

I shook my head.

"I don't care. Whatever it takes, I want to be part of the investigation. I've kept up my end of the deal."

An uneasy silence settled over the room, during which Backus stood up and began pacing on the carpet behind my chair. I looked over at Rachel. She was looking down at the table in a contemplative way. I threw my last chip into the pile.

"I have to write a story tomorrow, Bob. My editor's expecting it. If you don't want it written, bring me in. That's the only way I can convince him to back off. That's the bottom line."

Thorson made a derisive sound and shook his head.

"This is trouble," he said. "Bob, you give in to this guy again and where does it end?"

"The only time there's been trouble," I said, "is when I've been lied to or kept out of the investigation, which, by the way, I started."

Backus looked over at Rachel.

"What do you think?"

"Don't ask her," Thorson interjected. "I can tell you right now what she's going to say."

"If you have something to say about me, say it," Rachel demanded.

"All right, enough," Backus said, holding his hands out like a referee. "You two don't quit, do you? Jack, you're in. For the time being. Same deal as before. That means no story tomorrow. Understood?"

I nodded. I looked over at Thorson, who had already stood up and was heading out the door, defeated.