Jabril

Page 37

Mirabelle gave a girlish laugh. “Right. You too. Bye."
Cyn dropped her phone onto the console as she pulled onto Ryder's darkened street. Contrary to Liz's dismissive observations, this was actually a pricey neighborhood, although at first glance it might not look like it. The homes were small and crowded together, and there was a bit of a crime problem from vagrants who made the beach their home. But it was only a few blocks to the sand, and Ryder had to be doing pretty well to afford to buy this place. Of course, it was always possible he rented. Cyn hadn't run a background check on him yet. She'd wait and see if a little felonious breaking and entering turned up anything worthwhile first.
She parked her truck a couple of houses down and across from his and sat studying Ryder's place. It was an older house, narrow with a single story and detached garage. The houses to either side had been remodeled to add a second story—the lots were small and people had to build up for extra footage—and Ryder's house seemed to huddle in on itself between its neighbors, cringing beneath the disdainful gaze of the two updated homes. Liz told her Ryder kept a regular schedule, leaving for work and coming home at pretty much the same time every day, which meant he shouldn't be back for a good couple of hours yet. It would have been better to wait and go in right after he left for work on another day, but it was Friday and Liz didn't think he worked Friday or Saturday nights. Which meant Cyn would have had to wait until Sunday night to catch him going to work, and patience had never been her strong point. Besides, Mirabelle's audience with Raphael was Sunday.
There were no lights on in Ryder's house, not even a porch light. His neighbors had both installed low-level outdoor lights and one showed the faint gleam of what was probably a night light upstairs. She tapped her fingers nervously on the steering wheel and decided to take the chance. Flicking off the overhead light, she switched her phone to vibrate, slipped it into her jacket pocket and cracked her door open silently. She made her way down the dark street, passing by Ryder's house only to cross and come up on his property from the garage side. The narrow driveway was unfinished except for two parallel lines of concrete pavers which Cyn followed as she made her way quietly to the back of the house.
It was a matter of a few minutes work for her to get inside. Pulling on thin rubber gloves, she slipped the lock and went in through the back door. The front was too open to the street, and besides, like so many people, Ryder's back door had a much flimsier lock than the front. Why did people assume the bad guys would use the front door?
Once inside, she surveyed the small house in the glow of LEDs from various electronic devices—two bedrooms and a small living room, with wooden floors and not a single throw rug to soften the effect, not even a door mat. Cyn started across the front room, chuckling at the wreckage of the door Liz had left behind. She stopped laughing when she saw the mess inside the bedroom. Someone had torn it apart. Sheets and blankets had been ripped off the bed and thrown around the small room. The mattress, box spring and pillows had been savagely slashed with something sharp, and stuffing littered the floor. Tiny bits of it still floated through the air, backlit by a shaft of street light coming through a window now bare of the broken miniblind lying crookedly on the floor below. The lamp Liz had used to bludgeon the door was bent around the doorframe, its cheap metal split at the seam.
So Todd Ryder had a temper. Cyn scanned the trashed room quickly, but didn't expect to find anything here. Far more interesting was the main bedroom down the hall, which was perfectly neat and tidy. The bed was made, the pillows sitting one on top of the other, precisely aligned, the cases crisp and tucked in. No unsightly flapping linen for Todd. She did a quick open and look of each drawer, raising an eyebrow at the large, partially used box of condoms in the bedside drawer. Girlfriend or not, Todd apparently had plans. In the closet, shirts were grouped according to style, short-sleeved polo for summer, long-sleeved rugby for cooler weather. Several pairs of khakis were hanging, pressed and starched, still in the plastic bags from the laundry. Shoes were placed in neat pairs, side by side on the floor.
The tiny bathroom had even less to tell her. Todd Ryder was apparently the picture of good health. There wasn't even a bottle of aspirin to share space with his shaving cream and razor, and his aftershave was a scent too much like perfume for Cyn's taste.
Back in the living room, Cyn rubbed her hands together in glee at the sight of Ryder's desk and computer. A car door slammed outside and she froze, heart hammering, but the smooth purr of an engine moved away down the street. She went quickly over to the desk, reminded that her time was short. She sat and powered up the computer while going through the drawers one by one. There was a neat file for bills due and paid which she flipped through quickly, finding little of interest other than a bill for a storage unit in Culver City. She noted the location and locker number automatically, but kept searching. A separate blue folder was filled with paycheck stubs that told her Todd Ryder worked for a meat packing plant. Now that was interesting. A man who spent his nights butchering sides of beef wouldn't balk at a little, or even a lot, of blood. A final file contained flyers on the games Ryder ran for the street kids, a list of names and phone numbers—coaches, maybe?—a schedule of games, and some blank consent forms. Probably not much call for the latter, most of these kids didn't have anyone who cared enough to worry about consent.
By the time she was finished with the drawers, the computer had completed its startup. A quick check had her shaking her head. Tidy Todd didn't practice safe computing. Good for her, not so good for Todd. He knew enough not to store his e-mail password, which was disappointing, but not enough to install even a rudimentary sweep program. Cyn almost cackled as she began prying into a history of Todd's computer use. He visited a lot of message boards dedicated to the discussion of vampires. Many of the sites were the kind Ian Hartzler would have frequented, boards populated by groupies who wanted to be vamps, and others who claimed to already have been brought over. Other sites were darker, conspiracy-oriented and filled with dire warnings of a vampire takeover, claiming everyone from the president down to the local tax collector was either in thrall to the vampires or a vampire himself. Cyn made note of the web addresses, using her cell phone to leave a voice mail for herself with the information and adding the storage company info for good measure.
Even more interesting, she discovered Todd had done several searches in the last few days, looking for stories on the dead girls, and specifically for deaths involving vampires. There had been little publicity about the murders and none at all about Santillo's pet theory. Raphael's arrest hadn't even made the news. It was partly because they'd taken him to the para facility which hardly anyone knew about, but also because the murders simply weren't news. Besides, Raphael lived well below the radar; it wasn't like his arrest would have made headlines anyway. Of course, working with street kids, Ryder might have heard about the murders, but why the vampire angle? Again, interesting, but not convincing.
Cyn continued her search of the computer, but learned nothing new. There was some accounting software and a few games, but it seemed Ryder used his computer primarily for Internet access. If he was keeping the diary of a serial killer somewhere, it wasn't on this computer. She shut the system down and pushed away from the desk, careful to tuck the chair under the way she'd found it.
The kitchen was next, more wood flooring with pretty blue and white tiled countertops and pine cabinets. The cupboards held an unremarkable assortment of food; underneath the sink were the usual cleaning supplies. The refrigerator was virtually empty, with a six pack of beer missing one bottle, and a quart of half and half. Pots and pans appeared virtually unused. Even the coffeemaker had been cleaned, the glass pot sitting upside down on a wooden rack to one side of the gleaming sink. Ryder would have made someone a great housewife. Or maybe that was the reason he was still single in his forties. He'd never met a woman who could match him in the housewife department. Unfortunately, being a neat freak was hardly a crime. The ambient light shifted as she stood in the doorway doing a final sweep. The street lights had switched off outside; time to go.
Safely in her truck and perversely disappointed that she'd found nothing really suspicious, Cyn watched as an older BMW sedan drove by and pulled into the driveway. Todd Ryder was younger than she expected from Liz's description. Probably closer to thirty-five than forty, five-foot-ten or so, with light brown hair and the slightly pudgy body of a former athlete gone soft. Probably played high school or even college sports. His chin, never strong, was made weaker by the softening effect of that extra weight. He was wearing one of his many pairs of neatly pressed khaki slacks, along with a blue and red rugby shirt. The shirt was about a size too large, which was probably an attempt to cover the extra fifteen pounds around his middle. He climbed out of the car and paused to buff a thumb over the door's trim, shaking his head in disgust before going on down the driveway and into the house. BMW's were good, solid cars, Cyn thought, remembering the kid in the alley who'd heard the killer's car. Definitely not full of rattles and shit.
She waited a few more minutes before driving home, cruising north along Pacific Coast Highway at freeway speeds and feeling sorry for the people stuck in the morning's southbound rush hour. She thought about what she knew. The only victim the cops had any information on was Patti Hammel, who happened to be Todd Ryder's old girlfriend and who, despite being the first victim, didn't fit the profile. Convenient that she didn't have any family or friends. No one to claim the body, no one to file a report except her old boyfriend Todd who hadn't so much as whispered a concern. Todd who was maybe wound a little too tight, and whose temper was violent when it blew. And then there was the witness who had fingered Raphael as the killer and who maybe hated vampires enough to make the whole thing up. She flipped her phone open and called Eckhoff's cell phone.
"Dammit, Leighton, do you know what time it is?"
"The city never sleeps, old man. Be nice to me; I'm about to do you a favor."