Monster by Monster

Author:Monster [Monster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-06T01:38:24+00:00

Sherlock with a single photograph that suggested another type of competition. But

nothing suggested that the slaughter of the Ardullos had resulted from anything

other than one madman's blood feast.

I thought of the suddenness of the attack. Asian cultures had a word for that kind

of unprovoked savagery: "amok."

Something about Peake's amok had caught Claire Argent's interest, and now she was

dead. Along with three other men ... and Peake had predicted the murders of two of

them.

Prophet of doom in a locked cell. There had to be a common thread.

I abandoned the periodicals indexes and searched computer databases for Wanda

Hatzler and Derrick Crimmins. Find-A-Person coughed up a single approximation: Derek

Albert Crimmins on West 154th Street in New York City. I used a library pay phone,

called, and participated in a confused ninety-second conversation with a man who

sounded very old, very gentle, and, from his patois, probably black.

W. Hatzler was listed in Santa Monica, no address. The woman's voice on the tape

machine was also elderly, but hearty. I gave her machine the same spiel I'd offered

Jacob Haas, told her I'd stop by later today.

Before I left Bakersfield, I phoned Milo. He was away from his desk and not

answering his cell phone. Route 5 clogged up just past Newhall. An accident had

closed the northbound lanes and caused rubberneck spillover in the opposite

direction. A dozen flashing red lights, cop cars from several jurisdictions and

ambulances parked diagonally across the freeway, news copters whirring overhead. An

overturned truck blocked the mouth of the nearest on-ramp. Inches from its front

wheels was a snarled mass of red and chrome.

A highway patrolman waved us on, but inertia slowed us to a snail slide. I turned on

KFWB. The accident was a big story: some sort of altercation between two motorists,

a chase off the ramp, then an abrupt U-turn that took the pursuing vehicle the wrong

way. Road rage, they were calling it. As if labeling changed anything.

It took over two hours to get back to L. A., and by the time I reached the Westside

the skies had darkened to charcoal splotches underlaid with vermilion. Too late to

drop in on an old woman. I bought gas at Sunset and La Brea and called Wanda Hatzler

again.

This time, she answered. "Come on over, I'm expecting you."

"You're sure it's not too late?"

"Don't tell me you're one of those morning people."

"As a matter of fact, I'm not."

"Good," she said. "Morning people should be forced to milk cows."

I called home to say I'd be late. Robin's message said she'd be in Studio City till

eight, doing some on-site repairs at a recording session. Synchrony of the

hyperactive. I drove to Santa Monica.

Wanda Hatzler's address was on Yale Street, south of Wilshire, a stucco bungalow

behind a lawn of lavender, wild onions, thyme, and several species of cactus. An

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alarm company sign protruded from the herbs, but no fence surrounded the property.

She was at the curb by the time I finished parking, a big woman—nearly six feet,

with healthy shoulders and heavy limbs. Her hair was cut short. The color was hard

to make out in the darkness.

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