THE FOURTH BULLET: A Novel of Suspense Read online

Bleeker is caught with his weapon holstered and is able to do little more than turn his head.

  Foley realizes immediately that they’ve been suckered. He swings around, at the same time bringing the .44 up in a two-handed grip.

  But he’s too late.

  Dupree is smiling, flooded by a feeling of near perfect contentment. It is time to dance.

  The volley of firepower he unleashes hammers Foley against the wall where his bullet-riddled body will slide slowly to the floor. In an unbroken hail of bullets, Dupree swings the Uzi at Bleeker. For a second the detective resembles a chunky marionette, jerked at will by an invisible puppet master gone mad. Then he drops like a deflated balloon, dead before his body touches the grimy floor.

  The three witnesses to this spectacle try mightily to fade into the sofa’s upholstery. There is a flurry of begging from the two African-Americans as Dupree turns his attention to them. He raises the Uzi, sights down the barrel. The blond screams and, in a palsied imitation of a poor actress, faints.

  “Bang!“ Dupree says, his bearded and bespeckled face devoid of anxiety.

  He walks into the room calmly, stands over Bleeker’s dead body for a moment, then kneels down and inspects the detective’s Glock. He moves to Foley’s unconscious form and reaches down to scoop up the .44. He mutters something that sounds like a question, then points the weapon at Foley’s head. Without wavering, he fires one well-aimed shot into the detective’s brain.

  In the small confines of the apartment the blast has the resonance of a cannon.

  Dupree then addresses the two men cringing on the sofa. “I suppose now they’ll have to think up a new name for me,” he says sardonically.

  This elicits no response from his fear-paralyzed audience.

  Ah, well, c’est la vie. His work done, Dupree pockets the .44 belonging to Foley and, still gripping the Uzi, nonchalantly exit’s the apartment. He turns right, and heads for the stairway, walking quickly but not running. When he reaches the vestibule and opens the door leading to the street, the first sounds of police sirens reach his ears.

  He takes a route through an alleyway to a connecting street at the rear of the apartment building. He walks two blocks, then drops the Uzi together with his beard, wig, and glasses in a dumpster.

  With Foley's .44 tucked into his belt he disappears into the night.

  Less than ninety seconds after Dupree’s vanishing act, a squad car screeches to a stop in front of the apartment building. Two uniformed officers get out of the vehicle, enter the building, and make their way cautiously up the stairs. When they arrive at the third floor they find the hallway packed with people. Loud yammering commingles with hushed disbelief.

  A quick look inside 312 brings the two cops up short. Blood is splattered liberally over the walls and is pooled under both bodies on the floor. The air is redolent with the smell of burnt gunpowder and the coppery odor of all that blood.

  Before they can process this scene, a guy in the crowd hollers to them. “There’s another one in there,” he says, pointing to the open door of apartment 311.

  One of the cops enters 311 to find the naked, blood-smeared body of a woman hanging in the doorway leading to the bedroom. A long-bladed carving knife lies in a massive red puddle beneath her.

  Subsequent investigation will reveal the woman is Christine Valentine, age twenty-three, who, until an hour before, had been an uncommonly pretty, dark-haired young woman with smoldering eyes and a slender but still beautiful body. An addiction to crack cocaine since the age of fifteen has put her here, eking out a desperate living as a prostitute.

  There is not an inch of Miss Valentine’s body that has not been stabbed.

  The two bodies on the floor are quickly identified as LAPD detectives. Very soon after that, squad cars, ambulances, and detective units begin to crowd the street. Uniformed officers attend the entrance of the apartment building, each of the second and third floor landings, and the entrances to apartments 311 and 312.

  The medics who get to the scene five minutes after the first officers arrive are amazed to find one of the victims with a faint pulse. Three bullets to the chest and another to the head have somehow failed to kill Detective Sergeant Foley.

  In radio contact with the trauma unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the medics relay details of Foley’s vital signs. Compression bandages are applied, he is hooked to an intravenous drip, strapped into a stretcher, and rapidly removed from the scene. One of the medics stays with him in the back of the ambulance as it speeds off in the direction of Alden Avenue in West Hollywood.

  Neither of the medics are optimistic about Foley’s chances. The one thing in his favor, they know, is that he is being delivered to one of the best trauma centers in the country. If anybody can save this guy’s life, the doctors awaiting his arrival at Cedars-Sinai are the ones to do it.

  2

  With more than 8,000 employees and 1,800 doctors in all medical specialties affiliated with it, Cedars-Sinai has an international reputation for providing a world class level of care. The trauma team working to save Jake Foley’s life consists of a neurosurgeon and a heart surgeon - both among the best in the world at what they do - and four highly trained emergency room nurses.

  Foley’s daughter, Tristan, and a host of friends, many of them department colleagues, clog the waiting room pending the outcome of what is turning out to be a marathon operation. Conspicuously absent is Foley’s wife, Anna, who died four years earlier after a hard-fought battle with cancer.

  Among those waiting there is an air of forced enthusiasm, mostly for Tristan’s sake. Everyone speaks of how tough Jake is, how he has overcome adversity before. But the cops in the crowd, especially, are seething inside. Tank Bleeker lies dead, Jake gravely wounded. And no suspect in custody. The fact that a serial killer, now turned cop killer, is out there somewhere, walking around free, gnaws at their insides like a rabid rat.

  It is six hours before an exhausted doctor comes out to the waiting room to speak to those still remaining to give support to Jake’s daughter. He is tall and thin, wearing pale green scrubs and black-rimmed glasses. His arms are covered in a thick pelt of dark hair. “Miss Foley?” he says, looking at Tristan.

  “Yes,“ Tristan acknowledges, fear clutching at her heart. “Is he …”

  “I’m Doctor Bolger. Your father is holding his own at the moment. Perhaps we should talk in my office.”

  “Y…yes,” Tristan stammers.

  The doctor then addresses the others. “Jake is putting up a good fight. Apart from continuing your prayers, there’s nothing more you can accomplish here. I would suggest you all go home.” Then, turning to Tristan, he gently takes her by the elbow and steers her down the hall.

  Seated in a chair facing Bolger’s desk, Tristan is a cluster of tattered nerves. She is an only child, her mother is dead, and her father now lies nearby fighting for his life. She cannot conceive of an existence bereft of her father. He has been the sole steadying influence in her life since her mother’s death.

  “First, the good news,” Bolger says. He has a quiet, sincere voice and intelligent eyes. “Your dad has come through an extremely difficult six hours. Two bullets were removed from his chest; one other passed through cleanly. There is some damage to vital organs - including his heart and one lung - but we think we have him stabilized for the time being. Not to overstate it, he was very fortunate. But for the sake of a couple of millimeters, he would have died at the scene. All else being equal and barring unforeseen complications - which are always a possibility, of course - I would say there is a reasonable expectation he should recover from these wounds in time.”

  “Thank God,” Tristan responds breathlessly.

  “However," Bolger adds, "your father also sustained another wound - this one to his head. It's this fourth bullet that presents a whole other set of problems.”

  Tristan remains quiet, too afraid of what is coming to press the doctor for information.

  “Once again, your father is v
ery fortunate to still be alive. If not for the steel plate in his skull, which took much of the bullet’s force, he would have died instantly.”

  “Steel plate?” Tristan says.

  “You didn’t know?” the doctor responds.

  “No, I had no idea.”

  “My guess is it’s been there for at least twenty years. I assumed you knew about it.”

  Tristan, wide-eyed, shakes her head.

  Bolger turns to a set of x-rays pinned to the wall behind his desk. “The bullet lodged in your father’s brain lies here,” he says, pointing to a dark shadow in one of the x-rays. “In the left hemisphere of the cerebrum, deep in the temporal lobe.”

  “It’s still there? You didn’t take it out?”

  Bolger purses his lips. “In my opinion the bullet’s location and positioning is such that it would be extremely dangerous to attempt to remove it.”

  Fresh tears well up in Tristan’s eyes. “But what will happen if you leave it there?” she asks.

  “Truthfully,” Bolger answers, “we can’t say for sure. This is an extraordinarily sensitive area of the brain. If the bullet should move, even microscopically, it could well prove fatal.”

  Terrified, Tristan mutters, “But … what will happen? Can he live with the bullet in his brain?”

  “Perhaps. Provided the proper measures are taken to keep him immobilized.”

  “You mean he wouldn’t be able to walk or … do anything?”

  “Not in the conventional sense, no. His head will need to be braced to keep it stationary. Extreme caution will need to be exercised during any form of movement.” Bolger brings his hand to his forehead and rubs it idly. “But, Tristan, I’m afraid we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. At this point it would be unrealistic to assume that he will come through this with anything close to proper brain functioning. It’s entirely possible, assuming he survives, that he will be in a vegetative state.”

  “Oh my God,” Tristan whispers, tears now flowing freely.

  Bolger waits while she composes herself. “With traumatic brain injuries there is much we simply don’t know. Under normal circumstances we can gauge a great deal based on how long the patient is unconscious from a brain injury. Unfortunately, in your dad’s case, his other wounds make it impossible to know specifically what effect this injury had on him.”

  “Is he in a coma?”

  “At the moment he’s in a medically induced coma. Whether he’ll respond to our efforts to bring him out of the coma when it’s time, we don’t know.”

  “How long will it be before we’ll know if … how he is?”

  Bolger shakes his head slightly. “With such extreme trauma it’s impossible to say. There is heavy subdural hematoma, of course, which we’re trying to rectify and control but … I’m sorry, Tristan, I don’t want to give you any false hope here. You need to know just how serious things are for your dad. We may or may not be able to save his life but, even if we do, it is very unlikely he will be the man you knew before this happened.”

  Tristan bites down hard on her lower lip. “Just don’t let him die,” she says, her voice trembling. “Please … don’t let him die.”

  * *

  Twenty-three hours after the events in East L.A., Marius Dupree sits alone at a booth at Wendy’s Hamburgers in Anaheim, contentedly munching on a deluxe burger and large order of fries. Despite being reared on a diet comprised largely of the finest French cuisine, Dupree has an unabashed love of American fast-food.

  The fat suit he is wearing has added sixty pounds to his one hundred sixty pound frame; a long pony-tailed blond wig and wispy Fu Manchu mustache with chin whiskers round out his disguise.

  Although not obvious at the moment, Dupree is blessed with dark good looks, a legacy from his Greek mother and French father. His mother was at one time an opera singer of some renown, his father an actor who is most notably remembered by movie enthusiasts for his uncanny ability to alter his appearance to suit the demands of whatever role he happened to be playing. As a boy growing up in Paris, Marius would often delight in making up his own face with his father’s cache of makeup supplies. Some of his greatest early memories are of entertaining his friends with his ability to mimic the looks of famous people.

  Marius was ten when his father died. Congenital heart defect, the doctors told his mother. Nothing could be done to save him. His mother, although universally regarded as a great beauty, was by then in the declining years of her profession and suffering from depression as a result. Her husband’s death was a devastating blow to her already fragile emotional state. Strictly a social drinker up to that point in her life, she now began to consume alcohol with a passion.

  One night, a year after his father’s death, Marius was woken from a sound sleep by his mother, who had joined him in his bed. She was drunk, whimpering that she missed her lover. She began to fondle Marius. At first Marius was too embarrassed to let on that he knew what was happening. He pretended to be asleep. But, to his disgust, he became aroused by his mother’s ministrations. It was all the encouragement she needed. After that, she came to his bed regularly. Marius was sickened by what was happening but could not bring himself to confront his mother - to end the abuse. It wasn’t long before he realized he was looking forward to her nocturnal visits. But despite the yearnings he was incapable of controlling, his hatred for his mother escalated with every encounter.

  His life of crime began at the age of fourteen when he decided to play a trick on a girl from school. He had a serious crush on her but she had never returned his feelings or given him the slightest bit of encouragement. For some reason he never understood she felt herself superior to him and, he knew, often belittled him to her friends. To get even with her he disguised himself with a wig, false mustache and beard, glasses, and the clothes of an old man - his aim simply to make her look foolish for not realizing who he was. He knocked on the girl’s door, presenting himself as a door-to-door salesman. He affected a foreign accent and was delighted to realize she had absolutely no idea who he was. She revealed that her parents were not at home, that she was alone and, therefore, unable to discuss the purchase of his wares. About to belittle her by revealing his true identity, it suddenly occurred to Marius that he was in a position to do much more than cause this girl a little embarrassment. On a sudden impulse he pushed the girl into the hallway and slammed the door closed behind him. When she tried to run from him he chased her down and threw her to the floor. Then he raped her.

  It was without exception the most exhilarating thing he had ever done. The feeling of power and … what was it? … revenge? He wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it was thrilling and it made him feel, at least temporarily, like he was the most incredibly potent force in the world. That the girl bore a rather strong resemblance to his mother did not occur to Marius. At least, not then.

  As it turned out, the rape of Celeste Bealieu was never reported. But of greater concern to Marius, even if it had been he would not have been suspected of the crime. When Celeste showed up at school a few days later she was clearly traumatized but she gave no indication that she harbored any ill will toward him at all. Just the usual indifference he had come to expect.

  The success he experienced with Celeste led to three other, similar episodes - each with girls with the same dark good looks as his mother. But by the time he had graduated from public school, the excitement of these ventures had begun to wane. He was no longer content simply to demean his victims. Now he needed to hurt them.

  * *

  If Police Captain James Townsend thinks he was under pressure before Bleeker and Foley were gunned down in East L.A., it is nothing compared to the weight coming down from City Hall now. Townsend has been on the phone for ten minutes listening to Mayor Sean Phillips expound on the necessity of finding this ‘crazy son-of-a-bitch’ before he kills again. Townsend clamps his jaw tightly shut to keep from telling Phillips just what he can do with his ranting bullshit. As if Townsend doesn’t understand how important cat
ching a serial murderer/cop killer is. Like he needs the mayor to explain it to him. Bloody hell, Townsend moans to himself. “Yes sir,” he says, when Phillips finally pauses to take a breath. “I’ve got every available officer on the force working the case. All leaves have been cancelled. Everything that can possibly be put on hold, has been. We’ll get this guy, sir.”

  “Make goddamn sure you do,” Phillips says threateningly, “and fast. You hear me, Captain? Fast.”

  Before Townsend can respond to this latest verbal diarrhea, Phillips hangs up. “Yeah, I hear you, you fat prick,” Townsend says to the dial tone. He drops his phone in it’s cradle, then brings his hands to his face, rubs his bloodshot eyes, and runs his fingers through his graying hair. He mentally calculates how long he has to go till retirement.

  Too bloody long, he decides.

  3

  With Gus Bleeker dead and Jake Foley close to it, Detectives Bobby Schultz and Keith Abrams are appointed lead detectives in what is still referred to by the press as the Goddess Slayer case - notwithstanding the fact that the handle is now clearly a misnomer. Schultz, at forty-four, is an eighteen year veteran of the force, eleven of them as a detective; Abrams, who has just turned twenty-seven, has been a detective for two years, having joined the LAPD straight from Berkley with a masters degree in criminology. Schultz has a face like a bulldog and a body gone mostly to flab - the result of living on cheeseburgers and Budweisers for the ten years since his marriage breakup; Abrams is boyishly handsome with the body of a well-toned athlete. He is a driven officer; his ambition to get ahead on the force borders on the fanatical. On the surface the two men have little in common, but the team has proven to be an undeniably effective combination. Their case clearance rate is near the top of the department since they were partnered up two years ago.

  Lieutenant Francis Travetti has both detectives standing before him in his office. Travetti, who is almost completely bald except for a fringe that surrounds his head like a furry horseshoe, glowers at the detectives menacingly. His eyebrows are so thick it looks like a couple of giant caterpillars are perching over his eyes and when he’s mad and frowning, like now, they come together in a frightening transmutation. “The mayor has read the riot act to Captain Townsend,” he says, “and the captain has just finished blessing me with the same speech he got. Now I’m gonna give you the shortened version because we don’t have time for the full meal deal. Find this son-of-a-bitch. Fast. Any questions? No? Good. Get out there and do your jobs.”