The Blind Page 8

  “Friday is one of my busiest nights,” Freddy said as he downed half a Corona. “You’re messing with my bread and butter.”

  “After we’re done,” Evie said, “I’ll bake you a cake.”

  Freddy laughed. “I like you, Lady Feeb. You got spark.”

  “Good, consider me lighting a fire under your ass. I have a job for you.”

  He downed the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle in a battered metal trash can covered with swirls of paint, more art than graffiti. “Lead and I shall follow.”

  “Holy shit,” Evie said when Freddy stepped out of the shadowy alley. “What happened to your lip?”

  Freddy slid a finger along a swollen hunk of flesh. “Skip Folsum’s fist.”

  “I take it Waltzing Matilda didn’t do too well at the races?”

  He let out a grunt. “Nor did Sizzling Sam or Rockabilly Sue.”

  “Your luck’s about to change. Tonight you’re going to be a winner.”

  Freddy leaned closer, his sickly sweet breath fanning her neck. “Got some insider info?”

  “I need some insider info,” Evie said. “I have a lead and need to see all your shots of the crime scene, including those after the boom.”

  “How bad do you want to see them?” The tabloid photographer’s already beady eyes narrowed.

  Evie turned her gaze heavenward, praying for patience to keep from splitting this guy’s other lip. “We’re trying to catch a killer.”

  Freddy stroked the camera slung around his neck. “Me too. In my wildest fantasies, I catch him, ’cause that catch is going to pay for a beachfront condo in Maui.”

  For the first time, Jack spoke. “What’s your price?”

  Freddy rubbed his palms, the friction igniting a spark in his eyes. “A man who speaks my language.”

  Evie had to give it to Jack. He and his mountains of money were nice to have on her side, and to his credit he was letting her do her job and take the lead, but damn if this wasn’t a great move at just the right time.

  Jack reached into the inner pocket of his jacket.

  Freddy waved off the checkbook. “No money. I want in.”

  A groan slipped from Evie’s mouth. First Jack. Now the tabloid photographer. The entire world wanted to play cop. “Freddy, this isn’t a day at the track,” she said. “The Angel Bomber has already killed seven people, and I don’t want you to be number eight.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen. I’m made of armor.” He grabbed a roll of fat at his waist and jiggled. “So here’s the deal. You can get another one of those subpoenas, but that’ll take time, and frankly, I know you want these photos now. As for me, I want a story. I want to be there when you nab this guy.”

  “Not gonna happen. My job is to preserve life, and I can’t have you underfoot on a takedown.”

  “Come on, Lady Feeb, hotshots like you make deals all the time. What can you do for me?”

  The criminal justice system was full of deals: payments to lowlife confidential informants with the lowdown on the lowest of the lows and plea bargains and deal downs in the pursuit of the greatest good. Jack wasn’t the only one who could work a deal. “You give me full access to your photos right now,” Evie said. “And when we collar this guy, I’ll give you a call from the scene, and you can shoot the take-in and lockup. Exclusive.”

  Freddy’s puffed lip lifted in an attempt at a grin. “It’s a deal.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Friday, October 30

  10:01 p.m.

  Should I be disturbed that you have photos of eight little girls on your refrigerator?” Evie stood in the kitchen of Freddy’s apartment, a one-room walk-up dive in the part of West Hollywood that was anything but glamorous, Jack at her side.

  “Those are my nieces.” Freddy fired up the computer on his kitchen table. “The one in pigtails is Lilliana. She’s twelve years old and already knows she wants to be a great photojournalist like her old uncle.”

  “Eight nieces? I have seven nephews with one on the way.”

  “Maybe someday we should introduce ’em.” Freddy called up an ungodly number of file folders. “Who knows, we might end up with a match or two. I can be the wedding photographer, and you can bake the wedding cake.”

  Evie rolled her eyes and parked herself at his right shoulder. “Let me see what you got.”

  Unlike his person, Freddy kept his work files in meticulous shape. He had thousands of photos of the bomb scenes, all sorted and labeled with descriptive titles. “Where do you want to start?”

  She pointed to the photos before the bomb detonated, the ones of a living, breathing, terrified Maria Franco, the third bombing victim. “Let’s try these.” She didn’t see him, but she knew the minute Jack stepped up behind her. Tonight she felt an odd heat generating from his body.

  Freddy scrolled through the photos.

  “Stop there,” Jack ordered when Freddy brought up a wide-angle shot that showed the concrete path below the tree.

  Her heart beat triple time. “Can you zoom in on that bit of red?” The spot became a giant red blur. “Damn, it looks like a bunch of fuzzy squiggles.”

  “Not for long.” Freddy flexed his fingers. “Time to work a little Photoshop magic. First I’m going to isolate and enlarge.” He zoomed in on the blur. “Now I’ll decrease shadows and increase highlights.” His mouse scampered over the red. “I’m going to sharpen a few angles and clean up a few curves.” All the while the squiggle of red darkened, and shapes became more distinct.

  “Looks like he’s had some practice in Photoshop magic.” Evie jabbed Jack in the ribs.

  Jack didn’t seem to notice. He was fixated on the screen. A thin layer of sweat glistened on his forehead. Jack sweating? She did a double-take.

  “Now it’s pixel playtime,” Freddy said. One by one he moved blocks of red and gray. Sweat beaded his forehead.

  “Okay, my friends.” Freddy pushed back the mouse and held up both hands. “Looks like we got something. Carter Vandemere.”

  Evie stared at the signature, a bold splash of red, taunting her like the red cape of a matador. She grabbed Jack’s arm. “It’s him.”

  “Probably a pseudonym,” Jack said with a frown.

  “Probably, but at least it’s something.” She hijacked Freddy’s mouse and printed out a copy. Then she took the printout and smacked it against her lips.

  “What? No kisses for me?” Freddy puckered his lips.

  She thwacked him on the shoulder and turned to Jack. “I need to get this to Ricci. Vámonos!”

  * * *

  11:54 p.m.

  “County data sources records?” Evie asked.

  “Nothing,” Ricci said.

  “State?”

  “Nada.”

  “Federal?”

  “Zip.” Ricci slid his mouse across the desk so hard, it slammed into the wall. “Carter Vandemere does not exist.”

  Evie paced the length of his desk, her boots itching for a chase. “He does, just under a different name.”

  “I’m going to widen the search and start knocking on doors,” Ricci said. “We’ll look for variations on the name. I’m calling a press conference for tomorrow.”

  Evie had been waiting for this particular bomb for two days. “You know a press conference will play into his hand, right? He wants the world to know Carter Vandemere created those horrific scenes and killed those people. That kind of attention will just empower him.”

  “Tomorrow is the last day of October,” Ricci said. “Things could blow any day after that. It’s possible he already has his victims.”

  A woman and a child. Evie’s back teeth ground together.

  “Giving a man who has the gall to sign his name to a murder a turn in the spotlight may not be a bad thing,” Jack said. “He clearly has an ego.”

  “True,” Evie admitted. “With power comes confidence, and in some cases, cockiness. With cockiness comes carelessness, and with carelessness comes a better chance of a collar, but don’t forget w
e’re not dealing with a standard bomber here. Hayden says he’s an artist first, which means he’s an unknown entity, and unknowns are a bear to work with. You don’t know what’s going to set them off and how bad the fallout will be.”

  Would increased media attention feed Vandemere’s ego and escalate efforts? Would he strike faster or harder? Was the clock already ticking? Had he already abducted a woman and child?

  After Ricci and his men disbanded, Evie took off for her office.

  “You’re up to something,” Jack said as he caught up with her, his tie loose and leaves still in his hair from their trek through the waste hauler. He’d been a calm, steady presence all evening.

  “I’m not done with Carter Vandemere. I have one last Hail Mary.” Evie fired up her laptop and logged into her team’s video conference room. “Technically it’s a Hail Maddox. He’s my team’s cyber intelligence specialist. I called him a few hours ago and asked him to do some digging. If Vandemere has a trace of a fingerprint online, Maddox will find it.”

  Moments later, Maddox appeared on-screen.

  Evie clicked on the audio button. “Hola, amigo. Sorry to keep you up so late.”

  Maddox’s fingers flying across the keyboard, he looked up from his screen and grinned. “Never a problem.” His hair was more unkempt than hers.

  “I take it you found something?” Evie asked.

  “I did some tunnel work and poked my nose into a few private online art communities. I didn’t find anything anywhere by a Carter Vandemere. So I focused on what’s really important.”

  “The images,” Jack said, dragging his chair next to hers.

  Maddox’s forehead lined, but Evie made room. “This is Jack Elliott. He’s the owner of the collection.”

  The crevices along Maddox’s forehead deepened.

  “You can speak freely,” Evie assured her teammate.

  Maddox tapped his thumbs on the keyboard seventeen times before finally nodding. “I performed image searches for well-known works by some well-known artists and came up with thousands of hits,” Maddox said. “Then knowing you’re looking for a twisted mind, I more or less twisted the images, adding blood and mutilated elements. Eventually I found this artist who signed his work with a V.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. A single letter, but it had the same sharp tails on the top of the V as Vandemere’s signature at the bomb site. Could this be him?

  The screen split in two, and on the right-hand side appeared a series of paintings in thumbnail. Most were females, all young and beautiful. She squinted at the splashes of color. All grotesque. She touched the screen, calling up the first portrait of a young woman with soulful brown eyes, her head in her lap. The second portrait showed a woman with the skin removed from her chest and blood pooling in a heart shape on the floor.

  Evie forced herself not to recoil. Worse than the blood and gore were the faces. Mouths twisted in pain. Eyes glazed with terror. She closed her eyes and pictured the same pain and terror on the third bombing victim’s face in the photos by Freddy Ortiz. She breathed in the char of twisted rebar, hot smoke, and metallic tang of blood. This had to be the work of the same twisted mind. Work of a killer.

  “There’s more,” Maddox said. “The IP address this guy used in this forum was from a coffee shop in L.A.”

  Evie reached out and set her hand on Jack’s arm. “Jack, you know the L.A. art scene. Does any of this stuff look familiar?” When he didn’t answer, she turned to him. His face was as pale as bleached marble. “Jack?”

  “Enlarge the portrait of the woman in the blue dress,” Jack said. Maddox must have heard the urgency in Jack’s voice, because he moved swiftly. “Zoom in on her purse. There.”

  Maddox zoomed in on the purse clasp, a silver sun with intricate swirls forming a smiling face. Evie’s skin prickled. She’d seen something like that. Before she could say anything, Jack pointed to a portrait of a woman standing on a balcony with fancy ironwork. “Now get a close-up of the balcony.”

  Centered in the ironwork the artist had painted another sun, same smiling face. Maddox quickly scrolled through the gruesome images, and each one featured a smiling sun. “Appears to be a recurring and significant motif for him.”

  Evie pushed back from the computer and paced. “I’ve seen that somewhere before.”

  “The second bombing,” Jack said, his voice couched in a hush.

  “Yes! The woman wearing the bomb wore an earring that looked something like that, but it had been damaged in the blast.”

  Jack was now inches from the computer, watching as Maddox scrolled through and found the sun motif in each piece of art. “It’s the same design.”

  Warning bells, the ones that had been echoing strong and steady at the back of her head ever since Jack Elliott planted himself in the middle of her investigation, clanged faster. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’ve compared it to this.” His gaze still glued to the screen, Jack dug into his pocket and pulled out his key ring, the metal jangling. On his key ring was a small silver sun with intricate swirls forming a smiling face, the same sun that appeared in the gruesome online gallery by a man named V who used an IP address in L.A.

  I’m guilty, Jack had said. But there was more.

  She took the keys, the points of the silver sun digging into her palm. “Jack, where did you get this?”

  “At an art fair in Pennsylvania. I bought it for my—stop!” Jack’s voice was so loud, she jumped. “Click on the girl in the white dress.”

  Maddox called up a portrait of a girl in a white sundress sitting on a yellow chair.

  Still, stoic Jack was shaking so hard she swore she could hear his bones rattling.

  “Jack, what’s going on?” Evie asked. “Who is the girl?”

  “Abby. My sister.”

  Abby, as in Abby Foundation. Jack had been so passionate about this case. The reward. The leads. The laser-beam focus. Her gut tightened.

  “Jack.” She grabbed his hands, two blocks of ice, but that could be because fire was running through her veins. He stood granite-still, his gaze transfixed on the girl in the white dress. His sister. Who was linked to the bomber. “Where’s Abby?”

  His hands tightened around hers, two frozen manacles. “She’s dead.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Saturday, October 31

  12:42 a.m.

  When it came to doing business, boardrooms were overrated. Jack slid back the front passenger seat of Evie’s red convertible Beetle, slipped his knotted hands behind his head, and stared at the sky.

  “Are you ready to talk?” Evie’s voice was unusually soft, almost whispery, like the breeze blowing off the Pacific. In a brilliant tactical move, she’d dragged him from LAPD and that computer screen with a portrait of his dead sister and images of all of those suns.

  He pulled in a long breath of briny air. “Yes.” He hadn’t planned on having this discussion with Evie because he thought Abby and his personal quest had no bearings on the case. He ran a hand down his face. “I have no idea where to start.”

  “The beginning.”

  He closed his eyes and pictured his hometown in Pennsylvania fifteen years ago. That was the winter of snow drifts that closed highways, ice that toppled trees, and a sun that refused to shine. That was his last winter at home, his last winter with Abby. “The story begins with ice cream.” Something hard and heavy settled on his chest. He opened his mouth, but pressure trapped the words.

  “I love this story already. What flavor?” Evie leaned toward him, so close he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek. “Is there cake?”

  A scrappy laugh crawled up from under the boulder on his chest. The sound must have dislodged the tangle of memories. “Vanilla.” He attempted a half smile in Evie’s direction. “No cake.”

  “I’ll survive.” She slid back, resting her cheek on the seat and giving him her full attention. Because Evie didn’t do anything half-assed. Which meant he’d have to give her the full stor
y.

  He stretched his neck, trying to loosen the muscles along his throat. “When I was seventeen and Abby was sixteen, we drove to town to get a pint of vanilla ice cream. Crazy thing to do on a sunless, below-freezing day in February in Pennsylvania, but my sister had this crazy idea. She wanted to make root beer floats and sit on the front porch pretending it was the Fourth of July and that the air was hot and steamy and filled with smoke from barbecues.

  “Abby hated the cold. She hated our small steel-mill town in southwestern Pennsylvania. But most of all, Abby hated the weeks we’d go without sun. Mom never had Abby diagnosed, but looking back I’m sure my sister suffered from some kind of seasonal depression because she craved the sun.” He slipped the silver sun from his pocket, the half moon setting it aglow.

  Evie ran her finger along the silver smile. “So you bought your little sister her very own sun.”

  He nodded. “She saw the jewelry set at a local craft fair that summer but couldn’t afford it. We didn’t have money growing up. Dad died in a car accident when we were young, and Mom worked in the office at our elementary school. I’d been working odd jobs since I was twelve, saving up money to get out of a dark and dying town, but I dipped into my savings and bought the jewelry set for Abby. She loved the necklace and earrings, swore she’d never take them off. She even used a version of this sun on her signature. She was an artist. Worked mostly in oils. Lots of landscapes, many of oceans and beaches. She was wearing the jewelry set the day she died.”

  When his throat tightened, Evie said softly, “Ice cream.”

  He breathed in the two sweet words. “On the way home from the grocery store with that pint of ice cream, the sun came out. Abby was giddy, literally bouncing in the seat. She begged me to drive down to the river where the sun set the ice on fire. I’m not an artist, but I knew what she meant. That part of the river was beautiful when the sun came out.” And deadly. His eyelids closed.