Two hours later, the telephone in Millikan’s living room rang. It was very late, but he had not been to bed. He picked up the receiver on the first ring. “Yes?” he said.
Prescott’s voice came on. “He did it.”
“How? When?”
“Not long ago. He just called me.”
“Do you believe him? There’s nothing stopping him from lying.”
Prescott’s voice was tired, but insistent. “I recorded it. Listen.”
Millikan could hear a hissing sound, then, “Prescott. In the morning they’re going to find the bodies of Marianne Fulco, badge number 4852, and Jonathan Alkins, badge number 3943. You should get a kick out of them.”
Millikan heard Prescott’s voice come on again. “Thanks for trying to warn them, Danny.”
Millikan said quietly, “I’d better let them know.”
Millikan got out of his car and walked slowly and cautiously toward the row of police cars and emergency vehicles parked along the side of the road. There were more than usual for a murder scene, but he had expected that. When a police officer was murdered, there was always anger and sadness at the death of a colleague, but there was also a public-safety concern.
People who did this were something special. They were attacking someone they knew would be heavily armed and well trained and who could get reinforcements almost instantly by pressing a radio button and asking for them. But most alarming, they were killing a person they almost certainly had never seen before. What they hated had to be the uniform. And that made several thousand other people potential victims.
Millikan moved toward one of the cars near the center of the line and a cop came around it, walking briskly toward him with his hand up, palm outward, as though to stop him. But now they were both illuminated by a set of headlights. “Millikan,” he said, and lowered his arm.
“Hi, Pete,” said Millikan, and stepped closer. “Did they tell you I was coming?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t recognize you at first.” He shook Millikan’s hand. “I thought you might be the first of the reporters.” They began to walk toward the park together. Carrera was much taller than Millikan, and he had always made the most of his height, carrying himself with his spine straight. Now he glanced down at Millikan, just moving his eyes and not his head. “It’s good to see you, Danny.”
“I’m sorry it has to be like this,” said Millikan. “How’s Denise?” He brought back a memory of children. “And the kids?”
“Not bad. We split up a few years ago, but I still see the kids. I’ll tell Denise you asked about her. And how’s your family?”
Millikan could tell that Carrera was as embarrassed as he was. They had seen each other every day for years, but after all this time, neither could remember the names of the other’s children. “We’re fine,” said Millikan.
Carrera said, “They say you knew this was going to happen: predicted it.”
“Not me,” said Millikan. “Roy Prescott. He got a threat from this guy. I decided I should be the one to call it in.”
Carrera nodded slightly, but the name Prescott seemed to puzzle him. “Makes sense. I’ll show you what we’ve got.”
As they approached, two other cops turned their heads and made moves as though to challenge them.
“It’s all right,” Carrera said softly. “It’s Lieutenant Carrera.”
Millikan said quietly, so only Carrera could hear, “Why is everybody so jumpy? Trying to keep something back from the reporters to sort out false confessions?”
“You’ll see.”
Millikan came down the hillside to the picnic area of the park. The police car was stopped among the wooden picnic tables. There were several people from the forensics team stepping gingerly around the car, shining lights on every inch of ground, and others taking pictures or brushing surfaces for fingerprints. Millikan came closer.
When Millikan started around the car, the nearest forensics officer, a woman named Dale Chernoff, spun her head toward him with an expression that was almost angry.
“Hello, Dale,” he murmured.
She nodded and gave him a small, sad smile as she returned to her work. He stepped past her, saw the picnic table, looked down at the ground beside it, and winced. It was all clear to him now. The two bodies had been posed.
The killer had placed the two of them on the ground beside the table. He had yanked the male officer’s pants down to his ankles. He had done the same to the female officer, but had removed her shoe from her left foot so he could get the trouser leg all the way off on that side and fit the male officer between her legs.
The cops were working in full force on the crime-scene preliminaries because they really wanted this killer. But they were working fast too, out of an almost instinctive compulsion to protect the bodies from the gaze of outsiders. The police wanted them in body bags before the reporters came.
“Dale, can I go in beside them yet?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “We’re done there.”
Carrera stepped closer, at his shoulder. Millikan glanced into the car and said, “They were killed somewhere else. The bodies were driven here and dumped. Where did it happen?”
“Outside Valley Pres. They had just dropped off a kid that had been hurt in a fight at a party.”
“Any prints?”
Carrera shook his head. “The best hope was Marianne’s shoe. That’s the female—Officer Marianne Fulco. She had them all spit-shined like a marine. And this character pulled off one of them to get her pants off. If there was going to be a print, the heel of that shoe was probably where it would have been. He was wearing gloves.”
“He brought gloves?”
Carrera shook his head. “They had just brought in this kid who was bleeding. They put on disposable rubber gloves, and the box was still on the car seat.”
“He’s good at using what he finds.” Millikan knelt beside the bodies. “Whose blood is that?”
“The male. Officer Jonathan Alkins. He had his throat slashed. Looks like the guy used Officer Fulco’s knife. It’s on the floor in the back seat.”
“I think I see this,” said Millikan. “He must have waited in the dark until the two of them were separated somehow. One of them must have been in the car or near it, probably listening for calls. That would be Fulco.”
Carrera raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t ask how Millikan knew.
Millikan said, “If he used her knife on Alkins, he had to get her first.” Millikan lowered his head nearly to the grass to look at the woman’s face. The eyes were open, the mouth gaping.
“See her neck?” asked Carrera.
“I’ll bet it’s broken,” said Millikan. “He did that in Louisville, too: a quick twist to the head from behind.” Millikan looked down toward the feet at the crumpled pants, and his eyes passed along her belt. “He took their sidearms?”
“Right. He tossed Alkins’s in the bushes by the hospital, but he kept hers, and a couple of ammo clips.”
“I wonder why he didn’t take both?”
“I wonder why he did any of this,” said Carrera. “He didn’t do this to get guns. You say he’s from out of town, so it can’t be retaliation. And leaving the two of them like this . . . it’s just sick, mean stuff.”
Millikan looked back at the bodies one last time. “He was trying to show that he could kill just about anybody, just for the hell of it, anytime he wants.”
“Who is he trying to scare—you?”
Millikan shook his head. “Not me. I was convinced by what I saw in Louisville. But Roy Prescott has been hired to look for him, and he was trying to rattle him.”