Willie leaned forward, dropping his voice: “Betweenyou an’ me, my last fare was a curbside, off the books, right ‘fore I left onmy vacation.” His tone rose back to normal conversation. “Picked up a dudecarryin’ a kid near Balboa same time they say Danny got taken. Somethin’strange ‘bout the man. The kid was a girl, maybe five, but I recollect her hairlooked kinda phony, like a wig maybe. I dropped them at Logan and Good, nearWintergreen. Somethin’ funny ‘bout it all. Somethin’ not right. That’s all I’msayin’, see.”
Willie examined his cap for a moment.
“Miss, how much longer you figure ‘fore someone talksto me?
Turgeon took notes as Willie Hampton told her andSydowski about his strange fare to Wintergreen. This was it, the real thing.Sydowski felt it in his gut as Willie recounted how he got lost on the dead-endstreet, turned around to find his way out, then saw his fare walking with thechild over his shoulder before entering the broken-down house. When Willie finishedhis story, Sydowski had one question.
“Can you take us to this house now, Mr. Hampton?”
“Well, yes, sir. I think I can.”
Half an hour later, Sydowski, Turgeon, and WillieHampton sat in an unmarked police car, a few doors down the street from EdwardKeller’s house.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Dispatches about the break in the case sizzled on police scanners. Reporters whocovered that morning’s new conference scurried to Wintergreen. Local TVinterrupted network shows with live reports from the curb. The house and entireyard were sealed. Identification experts from the FBI and SFPD, clad in whitehairnets, surgeon’s gloves, and coveralls — “moon-walking suits” — dissectedthe scene. The feds took the inside and the city team took the garage and yard.An FBI chopper equipped with Forward Looking Infrared able to trace body heat,even that of corpses, hovered overhead. The city guys covered every square footof Keller’s yard, using a probe and vapor detector, which picks up the presenceof body gases from decomposition. Military camouflage canopies were erectedover the area to hamper news helicopters from broadcasting the excavation ofbodies, should the task force find any.
The scene inside the house was chilling. Nothing couldhave prepared Sydowski for it as he suited up with Rust to go in.
“Never seen anything like this,” an FBI agent mumbledto them as they entered. Huge surveillance photos of the children wereplastered on the living room walls, which bled with quotations from theScriptures. A claw of colored wires sprouted from the kitchen wall where thephone had been. It was a violent testament to the menace, thought Sydowski,deducing how Keller must have smashed it when Zach called for help. Thesolitary rocking chair before the TV underscored Keller’s insanity. Rust wentto the worktable and thumbed through Keller’s journals, reading the criteria heused to select the children: angel names, ages matching his dead kids at thetime of their drownings. How he sought them through birth notices, traced theirfamilies through public records, studied, and stalked them. IDENT detectiveswere going through his computer.
Sydowski took the stairs to the basement room.
As he stepped off the last step to Keller’s basement,Sydowski was assaulted by the stench of excrement, urine, and garbage, andpulled up his surgical mask. The children were gone, yet he braced himself forwhatever awaited him in the room. Two FBI IDENT experts were working there,breathing through gas masks. They nodded to Sydowski as he entered, watchinghim take in the scene, the knee-deep garbage of half-eaten fast food andwrappers, the soiled mattresses, the rats, the barred, papered window, and thebloodstained baseball bat.
“It’s not human blood, Walt,” one of the IDENT guyssaid, his voice muffled from under his mask.
Sydowski nodded, blinking quickly. It was Golden GatePark all over again — the rain, Tanita Marie Donner in the garbage bag, thestink, the maggots, flies, the gaping slash across her doll’s neck, nearlydecapitating her. Her snow-white skin, her tiny body on the slab, her beautifuleyes imploring him, beseeching him, reaching into him. All these fucking yearson the job. All the fucking stiffs. It was supposed to get easier. Why wasn’tit getting easier? Were three more child corpses waiting for him somewhere? Wasthat the way it was going to play out? His stomach was seething, his heartburnerupting. Give us a break here. We’re so close to this guy. Sydowski grittedhis teeth. So close.
He returned upstairs to confer with Rust in the livingroom. A funeral atmosphere permeated the house. Everyone was working quietly,cataloging evidence, bagging and hauling it into a van which would deliver itto a plane waiting to fly it to the state forensic lab in Sacramento. Fewinvestigators spoke, those who did, used low, respectful tones. Rust was stillstudying Keller’s maps and binders, amidst the clutter. “”Are we too late,Walt?”
“I don’t know, today is the anniversary. Seems he’sgeared up to it. You going to look downstairs, where he kept them?”
“Right after we talk to Bill, here.”
Bill Wright, the FBI’s IDENT team leader, sighed,removing his gas mask, his reddened face damp with perspiration. “Well, we candefinitely put all three children in this house based on the stuff we’ve foundso far. Clothing. Hair. But the kids are gone. We’ve got nothing outside,nothing inside. We’ve gone through the attic, X-rayed the floorboards, walls.The last call made from this address was the one Zach Reed made to The SanFrancisco Star newsroom. The bills for the past three months show little.No receipts in his trash. We’re going to take the plumbing apart in case he flushedanything. But our guy’s fled, likely with the kids. I’d say last night, judgingfrom the oil and coolant stains in the driveway. We’ll keep the house for aslong as we need it to gather evidence for whatever comes up.”
“Thanks, Bill.”
Sydowski pulled Rust aside. “Keller lost his kids,late in the day, right?”
“Late afternoon, evening. The file put it between fourand nine.”
Sydowski checked his watch. “Gives us a couple ofhours, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
***
Outside, the air was electric with rumors that thepolice had found bodies. Reed was with the parents of Danny Becker andGabrielle Nunn, who also rushed to Wintergreen, jostled through the pressgauntlet, and converged on the police command center as TV news helicoptercircled overhead. Uniformed police had taken the parents aside to a secure areanear the bus to await some official word. Their perspective allowed them to seethe bagged evidence being removed from the house. Nancy Nunn sniffled,sharpening her focus on one clear bag. Gooseflesh rose on her trembling skin asshe recognized the flower print dress she had made for her daughter.
Paul Nunn caught his wife and struggled to quell herchoking sobs, his own voice cracking. “Is somebody going to tell us what thehell is going on here!”
Reed saw Ann arrive and hurried to her, plucking herfrom reporters, pulling her to the sanctuary for the parents as the chopperspounded above. Ann wept. The agent who brought her left, to get some answers.
“Tom, is he dead?”
Reed tried to get his wife to focus on him. “Ann! Wedon’t know anything. No one is telling us a word.” He hugged her.
“Something is happening,” Gabrielle’s father said,“because this morning we found Jackson — Gabrielle’s dog — scratching at ourback door, looking pretty frightened.”
“Why the hell is it taking so long to tell ussomething?” Nathan Becker demanded. “Officer, please get us someone! We deserveto know what is going on. What have they found?”
The uniformed cop nodded, turned away and spoke intohis radio.