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“Conklin. Alvarez. Get in your car and drive.”
CHAPTER 84
BRYAN CATTON’S LAST known address had been a “Painted Lady” in the Haight-Ashbury district. Online photos of the Victorian home showed that it was in serious disrepair. Paint peeled, columns tilted, and the yard was overgrown with California buckeye saplings. Vegetation pushed through the roof. The house appeared to be utterly abandoned, no signs of life whatsoever.
Still, was Blackout hiding out in this abandoned wreck with Cindy? I’d run a lot of scenarios through my mind about meeting Blackout. Right now, I was preparing for a shoot-out.
Brady called in a half dozen cars to form a perimeter around the block. When they arrived, Joe manned the rear door and Mike stayed inside what was now a command post. SWAT captain Reg Covington’s team exited the Bearcat and braced their weapons on the roof and door frames. Brady and I zipped up our Kevlar vests and approached the front door. There was a flash-bang in Covington’s hand and our guns were drawn.
The front porch was sagging with planks of rotted wood.Covington advanced to the front door on cat’s feet, twisted the doorknob, and shook the door in its frame. The door was locked but not secure. Covington kicked it in, tossed the stun grenade into the parlor and closed the door. We covered our ears and closed our eyes as the flash-bang went off. Its blinding light and high-decibel blast shut down sight, hearing, and thoughts of anyone inside that house long enough for us to find them.
When the sound died out, Covington opened the door and the tac team ran in, guns out, three commandos clearing the ground and second floors, two taking the basement. Only three minutes had gone by and the house was pronounced safe and uninhabited from top to bottom.
Brady and I checked out the ground floor. The floor and sills were thick with dust. Two-by-fours were stacked in front of the fireplace and a couple buckets of spackle stood in a corner, but no work had been done. We ran up the stairs and found a wide landing with a number of doors including one open to a front-facing room. When we entered, I was nearly knocked over by a blast of déjà vu.
There, against a dull, white-painted wall, was the beige three-seat sofa I’d seen in Blackout’s videos. The armchair where he’d been sitting, twirling his glasses, was on a diagonal to the sofa. And behind the chair were the bookshelves Alvarez had described as a screenshot of Blackout’s mind.
Brady and I took our time opening books, looking for margin notes, holding them open, upside down, shaking them, hoping that something telling would fall out.
Nothing did and the bookshelf wasn’t a door to a secret room. We searched all three floors and found no sign ofBlackout and no sign of Cindy. Not a hair band, a broken fingernail, not a flex cuff or a bloodstain. We returned to the second floor and Brady opened a door to a bedroom across the landing from the study.
This room had only one piece of furniture, a large metal desk standing between two unbroken windows.
Joe and Mike came into the room behind us.
“Cindy was stashed in there,” I said, pointing at the kneehole, a rectangular opening between the desk’s two pedestals. Joe trained his Maglite on the floor under the desk while I opened the drawers.
Damn. This was the motherlode.
My hands were shaking as I picked through layers of paper. Something here was going to lead us to Cindy. I found receipts for video glasses and black jersey gloves. The Fleet family’s address was written on a Post-it note. There were clippings from theChronicle,obituaries of his recent victims in an envelope, and theChronicle’s front page headlined with Henry Tyler’s offer of a reward for information leading to the return of Cindy Thomas. And there was a picture of Cindy taken at the Poisoned Pen bookstore. She was at the podium, talking to the crowd.
I was right there.
As if my joints were locked, I stared down at the open drawer, stunned. I loved Cindy. And I’d let her down.
Brady’s voice came through to me. “You okay, Boxer?”
No.
I gathered a handful of papers and spread them out on the desk. This, along with the videos Blackout had directed, shot, and produced amounted to almost too much evidence.But the only evidence that would pay off would be capturing Blackout himself.
I opened a file drawer in the lower right section of the desk. I found a yearbook from Berkeley and an envelope full of more receipts. Items paid for in cash. A stun gun. Ammo for a .22, junk food, gasoline.
Blackout had used this desk, but he didn’t live here. Not anymore.
Joe was lying on his back under the desk.
“Got it,” he said.
He slid out from under the desk and stood up, showing us his right thumb and forefinger pinched together.
He said, “This was caught in a sliver under the center drawer.”
Joe was holding a golden strand of hair curled like the letter “C.” Cindy’s hair. A picture came into my mind of Cindy balled up under the desk. I imagined Blackout pulling her out, tossing her over his shoulder and into his car.
Then dumping her body into the bay.
CHAPTER 85
