by Luke Murphy
The dean leaned back in his chair, letting out a deep breath. Then he started. “My job here is to oversee the undergraduate educational mission of the college. When something happens in the Psych Department, to an undergrad, I’m in charge of handling the problem, not the President. That document came across my desk two years ago. The student’s name was Margaret Conners. She was a freshman.” He hesitated, setting the mood, and then added, “She claimed Ken raped her.”
“What did you do?”
“I held a private meeting with Ken. He denied it. We had a school doctor examine the victim and evidence was found that she had indeed been raped.” He closed his eyes. “I wanted to believe my professor, but we had an eye-witness seeing Ken enter the dorm earlier that night. Margaret Connors was a first year student, straight ‘As’ with no reason to lie. We threatened to put Ken on administrative leave, which meant his professional conduct would be looked at.”
“Who was the eye witness?”
“Anonymous tip and we never followed up.”
“Why not?” She looked through the rest of the file. There was no police report, only a signed agreement. Without reading the form, she looked back at the dean. “There were no charges filed?”
The dean sighed again, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, and looked at Charlene. His sharp blue eyes had saddened. “No. That’s why we never followed up on the phone tip. The cops were called. By whom, I never found out. But they were sent away without a report. The student’s parents are members of the school alumni. They took it exceptionally hard. We talked them out of following through with a grievance. I had them agree, if Ken was removed, that no mention of the event would be brought up. We suggested Ken take a sabbatical, but he immediately transferred to UCLA and the situation was dead and buried.”
Now it was Charlene’s turn to sit back in her seat. She was disgusted. She could see why the dean had done what he had, to avoid a lawsuit and public scandal. That press would have killed the school. The case sounded a lot like the Sandra Philips’ rape, bringing new suspects with motive. “Do you remember the officers’ names?”
The dean shook his head. “I can’t remember. I’ve tried to put the incident behind me and move on. Now you come around, stirring up muddy water. But I do remember one cop continued to come around after, for a follow up. She was quite adamant but nothing transpired.”
“I need to talk to Margaret Connors.”
“Look, Detective, we’ve all worked hard to put it behind us and this will only bring up old wounds, scars that have taken a long time to heal—if they have at all. Don’t wake up sleeping ghosts.”
Charlene stood up, placing her hands on the desk and leaning forward, almost nose to nose with the dean. “Where’s Margaret Connors?”
Chapter 19
It was only a fifteen minute drive from USC to Boyle Heights, where Margaret Connors lived with her parents in a suburban community. Charlene called Larry from the car to fill him in on the interview with Dean Brown.
“Sounds like a solid lead, Kid. Good work,” Larry approved. “I’ll add it to the Investigating Officer’s Chronological Report which I’m filling out now. I’ll leave it on my desk if you want to take a look to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. I think I might have something on Beverly Minor’s alibi too. I’m just waiting on a phone call. You okay in Boyle Heights alone?”
“Sure,” Charlene answered.
“Good. We’ll meet here tomorrow morning and review everything new.”
Charlene hung up, her body vibrating with anticipation. Things were finally starting to happen.
She was surprised to hear that Connors lived in Boyle Heights, since ninety-five percent of the community was Hispanic and Latino, and it had also been the home to former gangster, Mickey Cohen.
She followed the dean’s directions through a working-class neighborhood before pulling up to an older bungalow with an attached garage, a white-stuccoed house starting to show signs of its age.
Charlene parked in the driveway behind a navy blue Nissan Pathfinder, got out of the vehicle and approached the front door, ringing the bell twice and waiting.
The door was opened by a smiling man who looked to be in his late forties. His sandy brown hair had traces of white and there were stress lines around his blue eyes. His body looked naturally muscular and lithe, and was hidden underneath a white golf shirt and khaki shorts.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Detective Taylor, LAPD.” Charlene showed her badge.
“What’s the problem, Detective?”
“I would like to speak to you about an incident at USC a couple of years ago.”
The man didn’t flinch. “Come in. I’m Margaret’s father, Eric.”
Eric Connors turned, and Charlene followed him inside. She removed her shoes and was shown into a comfortably furnished living room. The inside of the house looked dated, unchanged in years.
“Margaret’s in her bedroom, I’ll get her. Please, make yourself comfortable.”
He left the room, and Charlene studied the surroundings. There was a small fire burning in a fireplace with a dark red mahogany mantle, displaying framed photographs, ribbons and trophies won by a younger Margaret Connors. A thirty-two-inch TV was tuned to the local news, volume muted, and a John Grisham novel was on the coffee table, open and resting face up beside a half cup of coffee. A pair of slippers sat in front of the couch. There was a Bible and rosary on a night stand, along with a ceramic statue of Jesus Christ.
The man returned with a petite girl, who didn’t look to have hit her twenties, clinging tightly to her father’s side. She looked like someone whose faith in humanity had waned. Her brown hair was swept back in a French knot, and a large purple and gold sweatshirt, almost to her knees, hung off her body. In large bold writing the words ‘82nd Annual Pig Game Champs’ were displayed across the chest, and underneath those, in smaller letters, were the words ‘The oldest high school rivalry west of the Mississippi’. Margaret Connors had inherited her father’s blue eyes.
“Detective Taylor, this is my daughter, Margaret.”
“Nice to meet you, Margaret,” Charlene smiled, extending her hand slowly. The girl gave Charlene a doleful smile, but didn’t shake her hand, instead slinking away. Charlene remembered seeing that same fear behind Sandra Philips’ eyes.
“Is this your wife, Mr. Connors?” Charlene pointed to a pretty woman in a picture.
“Yes,” he said, his eyes dropping to the floor. “Beth passed away last winter from cancer.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. Please, sit down.” He went on. “Doctors said the cancer had been there for years, dormant, but really spread quickly. The stress didn’t help. We had a tough year,” he said, looking at his daughter and stroking her hair. He turned back to Charlene. “What would you like to know, Detective?”
“Ken Anderson was murdered two nights ago.”
“Yes, we heard,” Connors replied. Charlene saw no signs of remorse in his face.
“Dean Brown told me what happened to Margaret. I’d like to hear your version.” She directed her question at Margaret, but expected her father to respond.
Margaret Connors sat so close to her father it reminded Charlene of a six-year-old who still wasn’t comfortable around strangers.
Eric Connors sandwiched his daughter’s hands in his own, and looked her in the eyes. “Are you up for this, MagPie?”
The girl looked at Charlene, then back at her father. She nodded slightly.
“Okay,” he whispered.
Charlene listened to Margaret’s story, identical to Sandra Philips’.
A drunk Anderson had pushed his way inside the dorm room, thinking because of who he was he would get away with it. And he had.
Margaret insisted that she hadn’t led him on and had firmly said no, but Anderson was like a man possessed.
Charlene asked, “Why didn’t you press charges?”
Eric Connors held Charle
ne’s stare. She could tell he was torturing himself. He seemed to hesitate. “If I could go back, I’d do it differently. Beth and I are, were, USC graduates, alumni, and we didn’t want to drag the school’s name through the mud. It was Anderson who needed to be punished, not the school. I believed in Karma and felt that God would take vengeance. I’ve known Dean Brown for a long time and I respect his opinion. Looking back now, I should have gone to the police.”
Charlene put herself in his shoes, thought about how he must feel knowing his daughter had never recovered, and that just maybe, if he’d pressed charges, sent Anderson away, his daughter might have been able to turn a corner. And that might have relieved some stress from his wife, who was unknowingly dying of cancer. The man carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Connors,” Charlene said. “I just don’t buy the fact that you didn’t press charges because you and your wife were such devoted alumni.”
Connors’ jaw tightened. He closed his eyes and let out his breath. When he opened them, he said, “We signed a non-disclosure agreement with Carl Minor.” He got up off the couch, a look of disgust on his face. He turned his back and walked towards the window to look at the street outside.
“Hush money,” Charlene mumbled to herself. Now it was starting to make sense. “But your bank accounts and financial records would have raised red flags.”
Eric Connors turned back towards them, his eyes now wet. He shook his head. “He didn’t pay us directly.”
“What do you mean,” Charlene asked.
“Carl Minor covered Beth’s medical expenses. He paid each installment in full.”
Charlene was silent.
Margaret interrupted Charlene’s thoughts with a quiet voice. “I agreed.”
Charlene turned and looked at Margaret, who seemed so small to Charlene.
She continued. “We were in a bind, I knew that. We didn’t have any medical insurance and Mom was getting worse each day. Dad had to stay home to take care of her, and no work meant no money. So I pleaded with my dad to take the deal. It was best for the family.”
Charlene digested the information. “I understand the cops were called anyway?”
Again, the answers came from Eric Connors. He nodded dejectedly. “Yes, Margaret’s roommate called the police. But we sent them away. They didn’t take it well.”
Charlene got up and approached them. She placed her hand on Margaret’s. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through, both of you. But I do have one more question that I have to ask.” She looked Eric in the eye. “Where were you on the night Ken Anderson was murdered?”
Eric Connors stood up, swiping Charlene’s hand away. “We were here.”
“Is this true, Margaret?”
The girl nodded.
“Was there anyone else with you?”
“No one,” he answered. “Just the two of us, like it always is.”
Charlene nodded. “Thank you for your time. It was nice of you to let me in and it took a lot of courage to tell your story, Margaret.”
Connors walked her to the door. As Charlene was slipping into her shoes, a framed photograph on a hallway table quickened something in her memory. Goose bumps sprouted on her arms. She picked up the frame—two girls at a Halloween party. One girl was clearly Margaret Connors dressed in a Ketchup costume, and the other girl, although hidden in a Mustard bottle outfit, looked vaguely familiar.
“Margaret, who is this in the picture with you?”
“Who?” the girl asked, moving closer to Charlene and looking at the picture. “Oh, that’s Sarah, my roommate from school.”
“Sarah who?”
“Sarah Crawford.”
Charlene could have sworn the girl in the picture was someone else. The hair was a different color and shorter, but the facial features were similar.
“She’s the one who called the cops,” Eric Connors said.
“Do you mind if I borrow this for a couple of days? I promise to give it back,” Charlene asked.
“Sure,” Margaret replied, shrugging her shoulders.
Charlene removed the picture from the frame, thanked them again, and left. There was something oddly familiar about the woman in the picture.
~ * ~
She hung her coat in the front closet, and choosing beer over Jack Daniels, checked her messages. Three missed calls—her mother, sister, and a private caller.
There was only one message. Jane had arrived safely in Denver and she was just checking in.
Charlene hung up and checked the clock. She dialed her mother’s number, but was greeted by voicemail. She left a quick message to tell her mother she was in for the night if she wanted to call back.
She twisted off the beer cap and took a drink. The Dodgers game was over—another loss. They were on a lengthy losing streak so Charlene wasn’t sorry she was missing the games. She quickly finished the beer and tossed the empty into the recycling bin and grabbed another.
Drained, Charlene lay on top of the futon, fluffed up her pillows, and channel surfed before settling on a rerun of Gunsmoke. The TV played, but she couldn’t concentrate.
The case consumed her. She removed the picture from her pocket and looked at it again.
Who was the girl with Margaret Connors?
Charlene rose from the bed. She poured a shot of Jack Daniels and chased it with the cold beer. She returned to the hall and opened the walk-in closet, flicking on the light.
She booted up the computer and stared at her father’s files in the cabinet. She still had two folders to get through that she hadn’t yet had a chance to look at.
Charlene logged onto the internet and googled ‘Ashley Stanley’. Over twenty million hits came up—Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, Twitter accounts and Myspace sites. Charlene skimmed the first fifty hits, but none were for the Ashley Stanley she was interested in. She clicked on ‘google images’ but couldn’t find any pictures matching her suspect.
Then Charlene googled ‘Sarah Crawford’. This time over forty-five million hits, an even more common name. Charlene went through the same routine, and still couldn’t find the woman she was looking for.
She blew air out of her cheeks in frustration.
With this case, Charlene hadn’t the time or energy to focus on her father. She knew she should be sleeping, resting up for what would be a long day tomorrow on the Anderson case.
She took another slug of beer and plugged wires into her father’s laptop, which was so old it didn’t have wireless. Once it was running, Charlene opened the internet and went to her father’s ‘favorites’. She spent the next hour following her father’s internet trail, to see if she could retrace his steps. But none of the websites he had visited seemed to be connected with the Slayer case, or at least she couldn’t make the connections yet.
Charlene shook her head. She changed direction.
Instead of focusing on her father’s murder, and trying to match it to the Slayer murders, she searched the known Slayer victims, and tried to tie those to her father’s investigation.
She opened the filing cabinet, removed her father’s notes and scanned the personal crime lab she’d established for her father’s case. The walls were jumbled with reports, photocopied documents, newspaper clippings, and crime scene pictures from not only her father’s notes, but also everything the LAPD had on the Celebrity Slayer. Scrawled notes rested on the desk beside her laptop, and folders were filed neatly on the closet shelf, everything labeled and columned.
The pictures from the five murder scenes had been formed into a collage for Charlene to contrast and compare.
Look at it like you’re looking at it for the first time. What’s missing?
Nothing stood out.
She stood in front of an enlarged map of LA tacked to the wall. Colored pins displayed the location where each victim had been found. She chewed the inside of her mouth. Choosing a crime site had geographical logic, but through the geographical profile there was no sign of
an area pattern. The body dumpsites were splattered in random locations. Now the killer had moved from Hollywood to West LA. Why?
Location and timing were important in all serial cases, but Charlene couldn’t find the significance here.
She sat down at the desk and opened the file, reviewing the autopsy protocols and post-mortem reports. The common thread for all of the victims was the brutality of the way they were killed. Multiple knife wounds applied over the entire body and face. No sexual assault.
Okay, Charlene. Don’t look at what he’s doing. Look at why he’s doing it.
Every murder should make sense, even if the killer was a psychopath. She removed the copies of the photos from the package that had been left in her car and spread them out across the desk, matching them with the photos taken by the police.
Is he trying to tell me something?
Using a magnify glass, Charlene compared the photos taken from the Slayer, to those taken by the LAPD, looking for a common denominator, anything that separated the photos.
There were no physical traits that connected the victims. Both men and women were killed—different hair color, eye color, height, weight, length of hair, skin color.
Charlene knew that serial killers rarely crossed racial lines, but this guy had no prejudices. Serial killers dehumanize their victims. These were all beautiful people, and the heavy knife slashes to their face told Charlene that their looks were definitely a trigger. The only thing that connected the victims before death was their line of work.
Each victim had almost identical wounds, in identical areas. Defensive wounds and the MEs said that death was prolonged, almost wanting the pain to last. Definite overkill.
She turned to the back of each case file and found the investigative chronology, following the steps each detective took in investigating the murder. They had been thorough.
She threw her head back in frustration. All she could do at this point was look for patterns and eliminate theories.
She pounded her fist on the desk, and papers from the final folder she hadn’t yet gotten to scattered to the ground. When she bent to pick them up, Charlene noticed that her father’s notepad was open to the middle. One word her father had scribbled was underlined and gave Charlene pause. She shivered, picking up the notepad.