Crime Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

rough fabric scratching the pustules and acne that had broken out on his cheeks. Black flecks stuck to his sleeve. His hair had started falling out four days ago. He tried to clear his mind, but it was impossible. Last night he saw hallucinations of people he and his old gang had robbed in the past. They'd come to him in his bunk back at the barracks, taunting him, admonishing him for his petty sins. Now he felt so torn and confused he didn't know what was happening to him. Over the past few days he had been beset, on the one hand, by surges of raging aggression and, on the other, by sloughs of guilt-ridden depression. He had tried to disguise his mood swings, but now he didn't even want to go to war. He could even understand why these dogs had deserted.
    Standing there in the gloomy underground chamber staring at the soiled walls, leveling his pistol at the men, he was unable to pull the trigger. As the snout of the captain's revolver ground into Khatib's temple, he felt such mental torment that he found himself closing his eyes and pushing his head against the officer's revolver, willing him to fire. He was terrified of dying, but at that moment it seemed like an escape.
    Slumping his shoulders, Salah Khatib dropped his gun onto the stone floor.
    He didn't hear the captain's order to the other soldiers or see them step forward, heard only their shots reverberate deafeningly around the confined space. Opening his eyes, he saw the deserters jerk to the ground, a pool of red spreading from their bodies, adding to the marks that already soiled the stone floor.
    It was with a sense of relieved detachment that Khatib heard the shot fired from the captain's pistol before the bullet plowed into his brain.
    San Quentin Penitentiary, The Same Day, 3:19 P.M.
    Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge from the courthouse, Luke Decker turned off the car radio. He was sick of hearing about the Iraq crisis and next week's presidential election. Pamela Weiss already had his vote; a woman couldn't make more of a mess of things than her male predecessors. He adjusted his Ray-Bans and glanced out across the bay. The sky was a clear pale blue, and the darker sea below was bejeweled with reflections from the afternoon sun and the small armada of yachts and boats. The scene reminded Decker of his childhood, when his mother and grandfather used to take him up Coit Tower to look out across the Pacific. As a child he would stare out into the blue and imagine the heroic father he never knew waving from the bridge of a mighty warship, returning home from some secret and glorious mission.
    Decker had been brought up in the Bay Area and had roots here. He may have neglected them, particularly his grandfather and the few old friends he still had from his college days at Berkeley before he left for Harvard and the all-consuming FBI, but they still existed. He was convinced that he was doing the right thing leaving the gray oppressive bureau and returning here to teach at Berkeley. Perhaps he would follow up his surprise meeting with Kathy Kerr. Yeah, right. All he needed now was Kathy Kerr back in his life just when he was getting himself together. Round-the-clock arguments and his world turned upside down.
    Leaving the bridge and passing through Marin County, he glanced at the open files on the passenger seat of the Ford rental. A man's face stared out at him from a color photograph on the top of a pile of documents. The face was handsome with high cheekbones, green eyes, and lightly tanned skin. His thick silver hair was cut short and neatly styled. He looked like a powerful politician, an eminent doctor, or a charismatic captain of industry.
    But Karl Axelman was none of these things. He was a killer who made Wayne Tice look like a choirboy.
    Dubbed the Collector by the media, Axelman was still the only serial killer in American legal history to have been convicted and condemned to death without any trace of the bodies being found. A successful construction