Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20)

by Jenna Bennett

  By then, Grimaldi and I were deep in a conversation about Frankie Matlock and his various deeds and misdeeds.

  “The first time he went to prison was the time when Laura Lee was killed,” Grimaldi said, as she zoomed up the highway in the direction of Columbia. “Eight months for check kiting. He was in prison while Laura Lee was killed, so we know he wasn’t responsible for that, but he got out in time to kill the second woman. Her name was Julie Green, and she was picked up and dropped in Kentucky.”

  “So outside of the jurisdiction of Maury County,” where Laura Lee’s murder had been investigated as a single crime, if it hadn’t gone cold already, “and also not the same jurisdiction as the third victim.”

  Who happened to be Grimaldi’s mother. I remembered it a second too late to bite my tongue.

  She shook her head. “Nobody had made that connection yet then. That didn’t happen until a year or two later.”

  Right.

  “Frankie Matlock was out of prison when my mother was killed,” Grimaldi added. “I don’t know if anyone’s tried to put him in Kentucky at the time of Julie Green’s murder, or in Indiana at the time of my mother’s, but we’re going to attempt to do that today.”

  “That’s a long time ago. Might be hard for anyone to remember dates and times so many years later.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “We’re going to give it a shot, though. He wasn’t in prison, so we know that much. And if we can put him somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t Kentucky or Indiana, we can eliminate him.”

  “You’re absolutely sure we’re talking about one killer and not several?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure of anything,” Grimaldi said, steering the SUV up the street. “We know, from the numerals, that all eighteen victims are part of the same series. Whoever killed them, whether one or more killers, had to be aware of the others. The numbers—numerals—are chronological. And the victims are all the same type. So my first guess is a single perpetrator. That’s what the FBI’s profile says, too. Someone who likes to work alone.”

  “So Laura Lee…”

  “Was either the first victim of the same killer, or killed by someone else.” Grimaldi turned the SUV in the direction of the signs for Damascus. It looked like we’d be approaching Sunnyside from the south instead of through Columbia. “It’s possible that the origin kill was made by one person, and it was a trigger for someone else, who went on to kill the other seventeen.”

  “Like Frankie. If some random trucker killed Laura Lee, and Frankie, when he got out of prison, killed the others.”

  “That’s one theory,” Grimaldi said.

  “What about DNA?” This was an uncomfortable subject when one of the victims was her mother. “You said they were raped and strangled. There must have been DNA on someone. After eighteen victims, surely he must have left a hair or a drop of sweat or semen or spit, on at least one of them.”

  “There’s too much DNA,” Grimaldi said flatly. “A lot of these women turned tricks. Several of them hadn’t showered between the last time they worked and when they were killed.”

  “No overlapping DNA? The same DNA found on more than one victim?”

  “There’s been a few instances of that.” She turned off the main road into one of the meandering lanes that cut through Sunnyside. The yards immediately became bigger with the houses sitting farther back from the street. “One set, on three different women, turned out to belong to a truck driver from Louisville who liked the company of prostitutes when he was away from home.”

  Her voice was even, without any hint of judgment. I wasn’t so sanguine.

  “He had sex with three different women who happened to get murdered within a few hours of him sleeping with them? And in addition to that he has a wife at home?”

  “Truckers can live very different lives on the road and at home,” Grimaldi said noncommittally. “This is the street. We’re looking for number 739.”

  I peered out the window on my side of the car while the conversation continued. “But this guy didn’t kill any of them?”

  “He had an alibi for several of the others,” Grimaldi said, peering out the other side. “So if we’re looking for a single perpetrator, it won’t be him.”

  She continued, without changing her tone, “The house is going to be on your side. These are all even numbers.”

  “I’m looking. What kind of alibi did he have? The guy from Louisville?”

  “He was driving south through Alabama at the time when another victim was killed in North Indiana,” Grimaldi said. “He couldn’t have been in two places at once.”

  “But if there are more than one of them? Some sort of conspiracy...”

  I trailed off, thinking about the ramifications of a band of murderous truckers, raping and killing women all over the country, and communicating on their CB radios, if truckers still used those…

  Except these women hadn’t been killed all over the country. They’d been killed in a pretty narrow corridor, especially considering the size of the rest of the country. So if there was a conspiracy of truckers, it only involved interstate 65...

  “The FBI isn’t taking that angle seriously,” Grimaldi said. “Their profile indicates someone who likes to work alone.”

  So no conspiracy of truckers. I wasn’t sure whether I was happy about that, or the opposite. It was probably a good thing. If there was just one killer, it would be easier to convict him. Probably.

  “There’s number 739,” I said, “coming up. The blue mailbox.”

  Grimaldi nodded and aimed for the driveway.

  “Was there any DNA found on Laura Lee?”

  “There was,” Grimaldi said, as she maneuvered the SUV up the curve of the driveway, “but not from that guy. We haven’t identified it yet. So far, it isn’t a match to anything else, in this case or any other.”

  I nodded as she pulled the car to a stop on the parking pad outside the double garage, and looked around.

  Laura Lee’s parents lived in a low-slung, mid-century cottage, built between the war years and the time when streamlined, atomic ranches became popular. It had the peaked entrance of a cottage, but in every other way it was a ranch: long and low, built of red brick with touches of orchard stone around the door and chimney.

  “Decent place,” I told Grimaldi, who nodded. “Who lives here?”

  “According to the census, Mr. and Mrs Drimmel and two grandchildren. The elder, a daughter, graduated from high school, so she might be in college.”

  And still have her official address here. I nodded. “Do they know we’re coming?”

  Grimaldi shook her head. “They’re both retired, though. I’m guessing at least one of them is home. Hear the music?”

  I did hear the music. Nineteen-forties Big Band; nothing I could imagine either of the kids listening to. If Laura Lee had been dead for sixteen or seventeen years, her youngest couldn’t be any less than that, and Grimaldi had just said the girl might be in college.

  “Let’s go.” She pushed her door open.

  “Carrie’s asleep,” I said. “Do you want me to stay in the car?”

  She gave me a look. “No. I want you to come with me, in case you notice something I don’t. Besides, it’s rarely a good idea to interview people on your own. Not until you know they aren’t suspects and won’t come at you with a carving knife.”

  “These are the first victim’s parents,” I pointed out. “Carving knives aren’t likely to come into play.”

  She just shrugged, and I added, “I have to bring Carrie. After last night, I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Your husband told me what happened. Just grab her and let’s go.”

  The music turned out to be coming from inside the garage, that was why we could hear it so clearly. As we passed the garage windows—that looked like regular windows from the front—the music became more pronounced, and I realized that what I had taken for some weird percussion beat, was actually the sound of metal on metal. S
omeone was inside the garage working on a car. The lights were bright, but all I could see were a pair of shoes and the bottoms of a pair of pants, or maybe overalls, sticking out from underneath an antique car, the kind with pronounced fins.

  “Come on,” Grimaldi waved. She was already up on the stoop. I abandoned the window and hoofed it up next to her. By then, she had pushed the doorbell and was waiting for sounds of life inside.

  “There’s somebody in the garage,” I informed her, “working on a car. But between the music and the noise, he might not be in a position to hear the bell.”

  “If nobody answers, we’ll go knock on the window.” But she didn’t sound concerned, just looked around. “First impressions?”

  “Of the house?”

  “That’s your business, isn’t it?”

  It was, now that she mentioned it. “Reasonably well-maintained,” I said, “but a little old-fashioned. We already know they’re older people, but I would have guessed that anyway, from the finishes.”

  I touched the iron fretwork holding up the porch with my free hand. It was wrought iron with little leaves, painted white. “Most young people would have taken this out, or built a box around it, or at least painted it black or something.” Here, it matched the shutters, which would also have been painted a different color if I’d been renovating this house.

  I had my mouth open to comment on the vinyl siding on the underside of the porch ceiling when Grimaldi raised her hand. After a second I heard it, too: footsteps from inside the house. A moment later the door opened a crack. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  The face was as round and friendly as Millie Ruth Durbin’s, and of around the same vintage. Seventy, give or take a year or two. She had white hair, cut short into soft little curls, and she was dressed in a pair of pink velour pants and a matching T-shirt. They brought out the roses in her cheeks.

  The eyes were blue, and they went big when Grimaldi flashed her badge. “Oh, Lord. My kids. Something’s happened to my grandkids—!”

  “No.” Grimaldi held up a hand, and stopped Mrs. Drimmel in mid-shout. “No, ma’am. Nothing’s happened to anyone. Not recently. It’s about your daughter.”

  “You found him,” Mrs. Drimmel said.

  “No. I’m afraid not. But there’s been another murder…”

  She sighed. “You’d better come in.”

  She stepped back. Grimaldi crossed the threshold into a foyer paved with yellowed marble. I took a better grip on Carrie’s seat, and followed.

  Mrs. Drimmel looked askance at us. Grimaldi looked official, in her dark suit and with her badge. I didn’t, in my blouse and flowery skirt and with a baby in my hand.

  “The babysitter canceled,” I said. It wasn’t true, of course, but I didn’t want Grimaldi to seem unprofessional for showing up with a woman with a baby. And there was absolutely no way I’d leave Carrie alone in the car. Not even a police car with the doors locked.

  Mrs. Drimmel nodded, as if my statement had actually made sense. “Have a seat. Through there.”

  She gestured to the room to the left of the foyer. It turned out to be a formal living room, with wall to wall carpet covering the floors—another thing I’d change if I were renovating this place—and a fireplace flanked by bookcases, with a mantel full of what looked like family photographs.

  Grimaldi waited for Mrs. Drimmel to take a seat on one of the chintz chairs before she lowered herself to sit on the sofa. I took a seat next to her and put Carrie and her carrier on the floor.

  “Pretty baby,” Mrs. Drimmel said, peering at her.

  “Thank you.” I stared at her, for some sign of prejudice over the fact that I was sitting here with a brown baby, but there was none visible. “She takes after her daddy.”

  Mrs. Drimmel nodded. “I can see that she don’t favor you much.”

  The niceties over with, Grimaldi cleared her throat. “I’m Tamara Grimaldi. I took over as chief of the Columbia PD in January.”

  “We heard what happened to Carter,” Mrs. Drimmel nodded.

  “You probably also heard that there was another woman found at the truck stop down by the interstate a couple of days ago.”

  “My husband mentioned it. But that’s the sheriff’s job, isn’t it?”

  “We’re working together,” Grimaldi said blandly. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your daughter, Mrs. Drimmel. Or more specifically, about your son-in-law.”

  “Frankie?” She sounded surprised. “I haven’t seen him in donkey’s years.”

  “But they were still married when your daughter died.”

  “Sure.” She nodded. “Frankie was in prison then, though. No better than he ought to be, Frankie. I told her over and over, she oughta leave him, that one day he was gonna come to a sticky end, but instead of Frankie, it was Laura who died…”

  She trailed off.

  “I’ve looked at his prison record,” Grimaldi said, yanking the conversation back on track. “There was no question at all that he wasn’t the one who killed her.”

  She hadn’t presented it as a question, but Mrs. Drimmel shook her head. “No. He wasn’t violent, Frankie. Never raised a hand to her, or to the kids. Just lazy and weak minded. Couldn’t be bothered to work for a living when taking other people’s stuff was easier. But he wasn’t violent.”

  “Would you happen to know where I could find him these days?” Grimaldi asked. She obviously wasn’t convinced by Mrs. Drimmel’s description of Frankie. “He finished his parole from the last time he was in prison—he was living in Birmingham at the time—but that was two years ago, and there’s no record of him anywhere at the moment. I’ve looked, but I can’t find him.”

  “We haven’t seen him in longer than that,” Mrs. Drimmel said, frowning. “Jacob—that’s my husband—warned him not to come around here no more, asking for handouts. That musta been five or more years ago.”

  “And you haven’t seen him since?”

  Mrs. Drimmel shook her head. “That’s when he went to Birmingham. I gave him a hundred dollars from my rainy day fund and told him he’d better not come back, or Jacob’d whop him.”

  I guess Jacob didn’t share Frankie’s laziness and weakness, if he could whop his son-in-law when necessary.

  “So Frankie went to Birmingham five years ago,” Grimaldi picked up the story.

  Mrs. Drimmel nodded. “That’s the last we’ve seen of him. He don’t write and he don’t call.”

  “No contact with his children?”

  “Not less’n he wants something from them,” Mrs. Drimmel said. And added, “He never even tried to get’em back after Laura passed. Told us we could keep’em, and with his good wishes.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t hold with a man who won’t step up and take care of what needs doing.”

  “You were taking care of them when Laura Lee died,” Grimaldi nudged.

  I got to my feet with a murmur and drifted toward the fireplace. Mrs. Drimmel gave me a distracted nod. “That I was. Frankie had finally gone too far and gotten himself caught and thrown in prison, and Laura had the hardest time making ends meet. We offered to help her, but after all the things we’d said about Frankie—”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but it wasn’t necessary. I could read between the lines, and I’m sure Grimaldi could, too. Mr. and Mrs. Drimmel had given Laura Lee a hard time about getting involved with Frankie, and when they turned out to be right, pride had made her refuse their help.

  “So she took a second job at the truck stop at night,” Grimaldi said, to get Mrs. Drimmel going again.

  The older woman nodded. “She was waiting tables, and maybe she did some other things, too, to pick up a little extra money…”

  The bookshelves were full of what looked like old, leather-bound reference volumes, and issues of Car & Driver magazine for at least the past couple of decades. I ran my eyes over the photographs ranged on the fireplace mantel.

  A black and white wedding picture of a young man and woma
n in what I guessed were the late nineteen-sixties garb must be Mr. and Mrs. Drimmel. Jacob was big and broad-shouldered in a suit and tie, while his petite wife tried to make up for the difference with a bouffant hairdo that probably owed some of its height to a pair of socks or the heel of a loaf of bread balanced on her head underneath the hair. Her shoes were slingbacks with skinny, two-inch heels and toes so pointy they could have served as deadly weapons. They both looked solemn and a little scared, like the future was a scary place. And seeing as how they probably got married during the worst of the Vietnam War, who could blame them?

  A later photo of a brown-eyed girl with the big hair of the nineteen-eighties had to be Laura Lee; probably a high school graduation photo. She was more striking than pretty, with a slightly oversized nose she might have grown into before she died, but that rather dominated her face at the tender age of eighteen or so.

  “Who told you about the other things?” Grimaldi wanted to know. “The police?”

  “Jacob,” Mrs. Drimmel said. “I guess he heard about it from the police.”

  “But Laura Lee hadn’t talked to you about it herself?”

  I glanced over my shoulder as Mrs. Drimmel blushed. “Maybe she had. Just in passing, you know? That once, this guy—this trucker—had gotten the wrong idea and made a pass—”

  This was a polite euphemism for soliciting sex, I assumed.

  “—and Laura told him she’d go with him for fifty dollars, and that it was the easiest fifty bucks she ever made.”

  I turned back to the mantel and the pictures. There was no wedding photo for Laura Lee and Frankie, so either they must have eloped, or the Drimmels had taken it down after Laura Lee died. They had no reason to remember Frankie fondly, I guess.

  There was a snapshot of an older Laura Lee holding a bundle containing a baby, though, with a slightly older child standing next to them. I leaned closer and squinted.

  “…nothing I could do!” Mrs. Drimmel said. “She was an adult, and I didn’t have any money to give her. I knew Frankie would be angry, of course, but he was in prison, and anyway, it was his own fault for getting himself arrested and leaving her with nothing…!”