by M. Z. Kelly
“I’ll talk to you,” Shaw said in a subdued tone.
The plastic surgeon was in his mid-thirties. He had pale blue eyes and was handsome in a pretty-boy way. His spiky hair was dark brown and he had what was probably a three day-old growth of beard.
But it was the doctor’s skin that I admired most. It was flawless and golden brown. I thought about asking him what bronzing product he used, but decided it probably wasn’t something that you asked the devil’s disciple about, especially with half the department watching from behind a two-way mirror.
“Let’s begin by talking about your background, Dr. Shaw,” I said. “Tell us where you were born and went to school.”
“I grew up in Temple, Texas, but was raised in Austin after my parents died. That’s where I attended school before moving to California where I went to college and medical school.”
Shaw’s eyes didn’t meet mine. His voice was flat, unemotional. I had trouble thinking about him being the devil’s apprentice that controlled Myra, but I knew from dealing with hundreds of offenders that the truth is often hidden beneath a veil of the ordinary.
“How did your parents die? I asked.
“They were killed in a traffic accident when I was seven. I was raised in several foster homes after that.” His eyes came up to me and blinked. “That’s where I met Lenore.”
“Let’s talk about her. How old was Lenore when the two of you met?”
“She had just turned nine. We’d both been in several foster homes before that.” He sighed. “Lenore hated the home where we’d been placed.”
“Why is that?” Charlie asked, munching on some peanuts. He had coffee too. It was after two in the morning and I was exhausted. I would have killed for the white mocha frap I’d asked the stooges for.
“Lenore was abused by our foster father,” Shaw said brushing a tear away. “I didn’t know how bad things were for her until she later told me about the others.”
“You mean the other foster children?” Charlie asked.
He shook his head. “No, I mean the other men—the ones who tried to molest her.”
“Tell us about that,” I said.
“Our foster father, his name was Phillip Wallace…he was abusive to Lenore and eventually sold her to some men. They sexually attacked her…tried to kill her.”
“Where did this happen?
“All I know is that Lenore said she was taken to a house somewhere outside of Austin. After it happened, she was placed into another foster home. A few days after that, I learned that she disappeared.
“She ran away?” Pearl asked.
“I lost track of her for several years and didn’t realize everything that had happened to her until I found out she was committed to the psychiatric hospital.”
“You mean after she killed her mother?” Pearl asked.
“Yes. I felt sorry for Lenore because of her past. I started visiting her at the hospital. I wanted to help her get her life back.”
Nothing that Dr. Adam Shaw said followed what we thought we knew about his relationship with Myra, how he manipulated and controlled her. I decided to lean on him and try to move the questioning in a new direction. I’d learned over the years that the best way to end a lie is to slap the liar—even if I can sometimes only do it verbally.
“I’ve had enough with this little trip down memory lane,” I said. “We know all about you, Dr. Shaw. You didn’t try to help Lenore. You were the one who controlled her and used her in the game you were playing. You need to begin telling us the truth.”
Shaw’s gaze came over to me and his brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. You mean this isn’t about the prescriptions?”
I looked at Charlie and Pearl. I had no idea what he meant, but decided to see how it played out. “Tell us about that—the prescriptions.”
He took a deep breath, trying to control his surfacing anguish. “Karma had a lot of emotional problems. She almost never slept and insisted that I prescribe various drugs…Xanax…Ambien …some Vicodin…and OxyContin.” He sniffed, pulled a tissue from the dispenser. “I knew she was becoming addicted and would probably end up in rehab again. I should have done something about it.”
I sensed that he was holding something back. “What about the others you were supplying with drugs?”
His eyes reddened, his voice took on a pleading quality. “You have to understand, it was very difficult to say no to anyone around Karma. Vee and Barbara were very persistent. And then there was Trevon and his manager, Mr. Porter.”
“What kind of drugs did you prescribe them?” Charlie asked.
Tears slipped down Shaw’s cheeks. “I’ll admit it got out of hand. There was some OxyContin that Mr. Jackson used…and some Rohypnol for Mr. Porter that came from overseas.”
What he’d said probably explained the drugs found in Trevon Jackson’s body. I also had little doubt that Harley Porter used the date rape drug for his own perverted purposes. Myra, as Barbara Collins, might also have made use of the drugs to supply her family of killers. As for Karma and Vee, while they probably used their physician-drug pusher for a variety of drugs, none of that seemed relevant to the killing spree Shaw had instigated.
“Tell us how you used the drugs to manipulate Lenore,” I said.
Shaw shook his head, his voice now tighter with emotion. “I don’t know what you mean. All I wanted to do was help Lenore get her life back. That’s why I stayed in touch with her. After she was released from the hospital, Lenore went to work for Karma, using the name Barbara Collins. She eventually convinced Karma to let me become her personal physician. I knew that she was emotionally disturbed. I supplied drugs to her that I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to stay close to her. I had no idea how bad things were until…”
His eyes filled with tears and Shaw lost all control. We let him cry himself out for a moment. Finally, Pearl asked, “What made you realize that Lenore had gotten out of control?”
“I didn’t know she was…” There were more tears until he regained enough composure to go on. “I knew that Lenore was angry, wanted revenge over the life her sister lived, but I didn’t want to believe that she was actually behind the killings. I thought she was better after her time in the hospital…I didn’t even know that she called herself Myra until I saw her picture on television.”
I was angry and made no attempt to hide it. “You knew that Lenore was behind the killings because you were the one pulling the strings, supplying her with drugs, and ordering her to kill.”
“That’s not true,” Shaw said through another flood of tears. “You don’t understand.” He paused, struggling with his emotions and not looking at me. “Lenore was my…she was my first love. After she was abused by our foster father…we…we found each other.” Shaw’s gaze came up to me, his eyes brimming with tears again. “We developed a special bond. She was like family to me, the only one I ever cared about.” His gaze drifted away again. “Maybe she’s the only person I’ve ever really loved.”
I’d had enough of the lies, the emotional outbursts, the story he’d fabricated about their love.
I leaned forward my eyes locking onto his. “Tell me how you controlled her, Azazel. Tell us how you made Lenore believe you were Satan’s disciple, how you manipulated her into murder.”
“You’ve got it all wrong.” His voice was now flat with defeat. “It wasn’t me, I swear it.”
I was frustrated. Either Dr. Adam Shaw was a very good liar or there was more to the story that we didn’t know. I pushed back from the table, trying to regain my focus.
“Let’s go back and talk about Lenore for a moment,” Pearl said, apparently seeing my frustration. “You said that you lost contact with her after she was attacked by the men her foster father sold her to, but that you later found out what happened to her.”
Shaw wiped his eyes, nodded. “Yes, she finally told me the whole story several years later when I realized she’d been hospitalized.” He sipped some water and brushed his tears along the sl
eeve of his shirt. “She told me that she was attacked and nearly strangled to death. When that happened, she had a near-death experience.”
“She believed this experience was real?” Pearl asked.
“Yes. She saw a bright light that she said completely filled up the world.” Shaw’s watery eyes looked over to me. “It was during that experience that she said she met the man who saved her and chose her to take revenge on those who had harmed her.”
“Revenge on her foster father?” I asked, remembering how Chloe had told us much of what Shaw had told us.
“Yes, but there were others. She killed her biological father also. When she confessed her crimes to her mother and realized she was going to tell the authorities, she also murdered her.”
What Shaw said confirmed what Elaine Deerfield had said that Myra had told her. I began to realize that, despite the emotional outbursts, there was a resonance to Shaw’s story that was beginning to register with me. The way he told the story made me think that he did genuinely care about Myra. It also made me start to wonder if Dr. Adam Shaw was really Azazel.
Shaw went on without prompting, “Lenore was so changed by her near-death experience that after she was released from the hospital she began to transform herself. I tried to dismiss it, but I could see that her personality was changing.
“She eventually convinced me to perform plastic surgery on her and completely changed her appearance. She once told me that she believed it was her mission in life to do the bidding of the man she met during her near-death experience, to take revenge. I thought it was just talk. I was wrong.” Shaw paused, sipped some water again. “I think she somehow transferred her feelings about what happened during her near death-experience to the man who saved her.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said. “Who saved her?”
“The one she calls Azazel. He killed the men who attacked her when she was a girl.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked, feeling a prickling sensation on the back of my neck.
“He was a cop. Lenore said that night when she was attacked in the woods someone heard her screaming. The police were called and the responding officer shot them all, killed her attackers.” Shaw controlled his emotions, his voice firming. “He’s the one who raised her after she left the foster home. He is Azazel.”
“Do you know his name?” I said, the words nearly catching in my throat.
Shaw shook his head. “I’m not sure, but Lenore told me that he’s some kind of cult expert. He works with the FBI.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
After a couple more hours in the interrogation room fleshing out Dr. Adam Shaw’s story, we did some additional checking on the NYPD’s cult expert, Fred Lundy, on loan to the FBI. As it turned out Lundy had also visited Myra when she was in the psychiatric hospital, just not as often as Adam Shaw had.
We also pulled the background file done on Lundy when he went to work with the feds and learned that he’d moved to New Orleans for a few years after being a cop in Austin. He’d raised his niece, Lenore Redford, there, before moving on to New York and working with the police department. Lenore’s past history had never been disclosed to the authorities after her arrest in Texas under the last name of Hastings.
Unfortunately, a record check on Lundy’s family members hadn’t been completed by either the NYPD or the FBI, or they would have probably picked up on Lenore’s arrest and commitment to the psychiatric facility. Had they done some additional checking, they might have also eventually realized that Lenore was not Lundy’s niece, but rather his kidnap victim.
The early morning held the promise of a beautiful sunrise as the taskforce assembled in a parking lot a mile from Fred Lundy’s home in the Malibu hills. A couple dozen officers, including the feds and the LAPD SWAT Team, were preparing for the raid.
“Why do you think Lundy killed Myra when she was so devoted to him?” Charlie asked, putting down a donut and slipping into a Kevlar vest for the assault on Lundy’s compound.
“Probably to keep her quiet about everything,” I said, remembering that Lundy was the taskforce member who’d killed Myra at Karma’s estate after she’d shot at me. “He’d used her to play his game and couldn’t risk having her talk after being arrested.”
“And the game?” Charlie asked after Pearl and I had finished pulling on vests and fitting our helmets for the assault. “Why do you suppose Lundy let us in? If he’d just kept quiet about everything, we probably never would have known about the game.”
“We know from checking Lundy’s school records that he was a computer genius,” I said, putting out a bowl of water for Bernie. At my request, Robin had picked up Bernie at Mack’s house and brought him to the station before we left. I wanted my big dog with me for the raid on Lundy’s compound. “The game that Lundy created became his world, where he could control and manipulate everyone who played. I think that letting us in on part of the game was his way of trying to show us his superiority, how he could outsmart anyone who played, including his own agency and the police.”
Charlie tried on a helmet and said, “The guy must have had total control over Myra to make her do the things she did.”
“Lundy’s a cult expert,” Pearl said. “He saved Myra and then went on to raise her, enrolling her in school, and listing her as his niece on the school records. Over the years, he probably used the same techniques that cults use to control Myra.”
I agreed. “Myra became Lundy’s proxy killer. Allowing the Predators in on the game provided both money and an audience. But he also craved excitement and notoriety. Allowing the feds and the cops into the game along with the press coverage raised the stakes to a whole other level.”
“We’re going in first,” Chief Reed said after walking over to us. He motioned to Byron Ellington and his team at the far end of the parking lot. “The feds screwed this up big time. I’m not letting them take credit for the collar.” He adjusted a helmet that looked too big for him. “It’s been a few years since I’ve done this sort of thing, so I’ll let you all take the point behind SWAT.”
Skully came over as we were checking our weapons and said to me, “The mutt stays back until the residence is cleared.”
I shook my head. “He’s not a mutt. He’s an essential member of this department. And, he’s going in behind SWAT with me.”
“I won’t have a dog and a…” The captain almost stepped in something Bernie leaves behind in the grass. He took a breath and continued. “I’m still your superior and I won’t be contradicted on this.” His gaze came over to Chief Reed, looking for agreement.
“We’re using a flash bang entry with SWAT,” Reed said. “After the initial access, the dog goes in with Sexton.” Skully started to whine in protest, but Reed cut him off. “I’m in charge of this taskforce. If something goes wrong, I’m the one who takes the heat for it, not you.”
The entry into Lundy’s compound, made at sunrise, was quick and loud—LAPD’s version of shock and awe. The residence was secured and determined to be empty less than ten minutes after we entered. After Bernie and I finished checking a couple of bedrooms, we met up with Charlie and Pearl.
“Maybe the devil’s buddy is on vacation,” Charlie suggested.
“Or out torturing souls somewhere,” Pearl said.
I thought about what they’d said and something occurred to me. “Computers.”
Charlie removed his helmet, ran a hand through his dyed hair. “Say again.”
“Did either of you see any computers during the search of the residence?”
Pearl thought about it and then said, “Just one in the library. A laptop.”
“It doesn’t add up. If Lundy’s a computer geek who creates interactive games, he must have other computers.”
“Maybe he’s got an office, somewhere,” Charlie suggested.
“Maybe,” I said. But it still seemed strange to me that Lundy would have only one computer at his estate.
An hour later, after an exhausti
ve search of the house and grounds, Chief Reed and Byron Ellington called us all together on the backyard patio. There were at least two dozen officers and FBI agents present as the sun of a new day blazed on the horizon.
“We’re going to leave a few officers here and stand down,” Reed announced. “We’ve got a BOLO out for Lundy. We’ll just have to hope we catch a break and he surfaces.”
We had changed back into our civilian clothes and were packing up our belongings when I told Charlie and Pearl that I planned to stay behind.
“What gives?” Charlie asked. “You must be dead tired, Kate. I thought we could stop for breakfast and then everyone could head for home and catch a few hours of shuteye.”
It was obvious that Charlie was starving. “I just want to hang around a couple of hours and see if anything develops. You guys go on without me. I’ll call you later.”
Bernie and I spent the next hour wandering around the grounds of Lundy’s estate. I’d given up on finding anything and was daydreaming about that Frappuccino when Bernie trotted through a gate and down a hill to the adjacent undeveloped property. He stopped and began to whine. It wasn’t his usual early warning whine of distress, but it was there, soft and steady.
“What is it boy?” I asked.
He looked at me and then trotted off further down the hill. I thought maybe there was a female dog somewhere in a neighbor’s yard as I followed, calling after him.
A few yards down the hill, I realized that Bernie had stopped and was looking at a large utility box that probably controlled an irrigation system.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m in no mood for games.”
The low whine continued as I attached his leash and tried pulling him up. He wouldn’t budge.
“Come on, boy. Let’s go home, have some breakfast, and take a nap.” He still wouldn’t move. I again tugged on his leash and tried pulling him to his feet, without success. I huffed out a breath in frustration and happened to glance down, noticing that the cover to the utility box was loose from its frame. Then I noticed the hinges. The box had a series of hinges on one side.