by John Flynn
“A much simpler time,” Kate remarked.
“Anyway, within the span of a few hours, all six teenage girls were snatched right out in the open at Golden Gate Park by a Marin County man. Allegedly, he took them home to his basement dungeon, tied them up, raped them one at a time, then tortured and dismembered them . . .”
“. . . and Mary Clemons was the only one that survived,” Clark filled in the blank.
Kate went back to the photograph. “Of course. That’s where I heard it. Mary and Rose Clemons.”
“Rose Clemons? Her sister?” Clark asked.
“Yeah. Her twin sister,” Kate corrected him.
“Mary and her sister Rose Clemons were victims’ number four and five,” Lt. Roberts picked up the story. “They were abducted outside the arboretum, and were taken to this guy’s home where both girls suffered extreme physical and sexual abuse. Only one of them managed to get out of there alive. Mary.”
“Rose has only lived in the fantasies of Mary’s mind,” she surmised, imagining what Mary must have dealt with.
“Like Sybil,” said Ramirez, joining them.
“Doctors refer to it as ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder,’” said Clark, checking his notes. “That’s when somebody takes on the behaviors and personalities of two or more different people.”
“In her mind, Mary must have been fighting a pretty intense battle with Rose just to maintain her own separate identity,” Kate said. “My guess is that, if you do more checking, you’re going to find that Mary tried to kill herself. Probably more than once. She may have even been institutionalized for depression.”
“Since when have you become such an expert?” Ramirez asked.
“Doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out when someone is troubled,” she replied, with a distant look in her eyes. “In the end, the battle just became too much. Mary gave in, and became Rose, the vengeful sadist.”
Clark looked at the lieutenant. “Did they ever catch the guy?”
“No,” said Roberts, with a deep sigh. “The Sheriff’s Office in Marin County had him cornered when he tried to take a twelve-year-old from a school playground. But he got away. Never heard from him again.”
“Maybe he was one of Rose’s victims?” Kate speculated.
“Lieutenant?” said one of Roberts’ men. “We found a gun. A nine millimeter Beretta. In the bookcase, behind some books.”
“Have ballistics check it against the bullet and shell-casing from the Rutherford murder,” ordered Roberts. “I guess that lets you off the hook, Dawson, doesn’t it?”
“There’s something else,” Clark said, pointing.
“What?”
“You’d better take a look at this,” said a campus policeman, standing in front of an open closet.
Kate joined Roberts and his men as they walked over to the dorm room closet. The IA men and several uniformed officers all stood around, while one of the campus policemen poked through the items in the closet with a pencil. The interior was a veritable treasure-trove of sadomasochistic paraphernalia. Whips, riding crops, cat-of-nine-tails, shackles, leg irons, handcuffs, ropes, nipple-clips, butt plugs, cock rings and various other bits and pieces stocked the shelves.
After nearly everyone had taken their turn gawking and making fun of the S&M “toys” in Rosemary Murphy’s closet, Kate looked closer, and discovered what must have been the murder weapon. A long, thin blade with the handle of a whip laid right next to its lower half. The blade still had blood on it. Kate pulled on a pair of Latex gloves, and carefully removed the blade. She inserted the handle into the whip, returning the blade to its sheath. Perfect match.
“The murder weapon?” she asked, holding it out on display.
Lt. Roberts turned to Clark, and said, “Have Forensics run a complete blood analysis on the blade. If this is the murder weapon, they should find a match to one or more of our victims.”
“Right, Lieutenant.”
Kate was silent for a moment, the wheels in her head turning. “Wait a minute,” she said. “This can’t be the murder weapon. Rose would have taken that to Monroe’s apartment to use on him. Not leave it here.”
“Maybe she had a spare,” Ramirez said.
Kate was again silent, staring off into space.
“Have the photographers document everything. I want them to get shots of the toys in her closet, the books on her bookshelf. Everything,” said Roberts, barking out orders to Clark. “And then, once they’re done, I want you to go through and inventory each and every item. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hold on a second. There’s no red wig,” she said, at last, the lightbulb of awareness dawning. Kate plunged into the closet and started rummaging through the collection of items, frantically looking for something that should have been there.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Clark asked.
“Stop it! You’re disturbing evidence,” Ramirez yelled.
“It’s got to be here!”
“What?” Roberts demanded. “What the hell are you looking for?”
With the help of the men from Internal Affairs, Clark and Ramirez managed to pull Kate out of the closet. Once she had climbed to her feet, she was red-faced, and more than a little miffed.
“The red wig! Where is the red wig?” she asked.
Roberts fixed her with his gaze. “What red wig?”
Kate hesitated a moment to gain her composure. “At the Funderburk murder scene, Forensics discovered a couple of hair fibers that Ramirez told me were later traced to a red wig.”
“Yeah, I told you,” Ramirez replied, flatly, feeling betrayed. “A red wig that was made for some unfortunate college kid.”
Kate turned away, her arms crossed across her chest, as if hugging herself for warmth. She thought the words “unfortunate,” “college” and “kid” could have referred to Rosemary Murphy, aka Mary Clemons. Clearly, she was the most unfortunate college student that Kate had ever seen. Her overall appearance and choice of clothes had left much to be desired. An extreme makeover, which included a red wig, may have meant a world of difference to Ms. Murphy. But that still did not explain the one nagging question that she had.
“How did the fibers from that wig get to the fourth crime scene?” Kate asked.
Lt. Roberts shrugged. “Who the fuck cares? We’ve got our killer. A redhead. We’ve got the murder weapon and a shit-load of evidence. And we even got a motive. Revenge. End of story. You got that?”
“We’re missing something here, Lieutenant,” she persisted.
“I’ve had just about enough of you for one day, Dawson,” Roberts exclaimed. He turned to Clark and Ramirez, and said, “Get her the fuck out of here before I turn homicidal and shoot her myself.”
“Lieutenant—” she said, one final time.
Ramirez walked towards her. “You heard the man.”
“C’mon, Kate, let’s go for a walk,” Clark said, turning around.
“That’s okay, boys,” Kate said, palms out in front of her, to stop them. “I can find my own way out.”
As she turned to leave, her head was whirling. She didn’t know who or what to believe anymore. She wasn’t even sure what she believed anymore. The story that Roberts was going to tell the press was factually flawed, but he didn’t seem to care, nor did anyone else. They were all satisfied that Rosemary Murphy, aka Mary Clemons, was the serial Crystal Rose.
Kate wanted to believe that, too. She wanted to be able to go to bed nights safe and secure in the knowledge that she had shot and killed someone in the line of duty as a law enforcement officer. The last thing she wanted to think about was the possibility that she may have killed the wrong woman. She sought to bury those thoughts as deep as possible, but the inconsistencies of the case played havoc with her conscience. The more she tried to expla
in them away, the more they bothered her. She reviewed them one at a time: If Rosemary Murphy was the murderer, why did she kill all of her victims with a blade, and then shoot Rutherford with a gun? If she had planned to kill Monroe, why didn’t she take her special blade with her to Monroe’s home? And how did the hair fibers get to the Funderburk crime scene?
Far too many unanswered questions, and not enough concrete answers to go around. It was as if all of the puzzle pieces were right there in front of her, and not a single one of them fit together.
A FEW DAYS later, Kate paid off the loan to her automobile company, and drove off the impound lot with her BMW 5.25i. She hadn’t been behind the wheel of her car in over a month, and was concerned that her vehicle had forgotten her very delicate touch. But the first time that she needed to accelerate in order to pass a slower car, her BMW performed extraordinarily. Actually, it felt good to drive along Interstate 280, with the moon roof open and the windows down. She felt the warmth of the sun on her back and the cool wind blowing through her hair. She had a full tank of gas, and could have driven all the way to San Jose and back without a care in the world. But today, her thoughts were all about her fallen partner.
When she reached Colma, Kate pulled off the Interstate, and turned on to El Camino Real. She stayed on that two-lane road for several miles, and then turned into the entrance for Woodlawn Memorial Park. She parked near the section that was dedicated to fallen policemen, and got out and walked along a narrow garden path that snaked its way through the cemetery.
She stopped at Miller’s gravesite, and reached down to brush away several autumn leaves that had fallen. The plain stone tablet read: “Frank Miller. Inspector. San Francisco Police Department. Killed in the Line of Duty. November 11, 1952–September 22, 2014.” She felt all of the emotions from the last few weeks welling up inside her, but managed to keep them all in check. Kate would have liked to have thought that she had grown as a result of all that had happened to her in the last month, but that was really not her place to decide. It was only people like Miller, who knew her best, that could make that assessment.
She placed a handful of white lilies on the grave, and stepped back away. “I miss you, Frank,” she said in a soft whisper.
After a few moments of silence, she turned, and walked away from his grave, without looking back.
Deliberately, Kate walked by the Police Memorial Wall. She stopped to read the words to herself: “We Will Not Forget. Honoring the Memory and Valor of the Men and Women Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice for Us.” The words moved her, but not to tears. She felt proud, emboldened.
She continued along the path, looking to the sky. Autumn brought change to the City by the Bay, with a slight nip in the air and a kaleidoscope of colors.
Chapter Thirteen
WITH A BORROWED key, Kate let herself into Apartment 401. She felt distant, lost in some far away land of introspection, as she searched the L-shaped layout of the apartment for Monroe.
Monroe was laying across the sofa in the living room, with his feet propped upon a couple of pillows, his back against one of the cushions. He was still bandaged across his back and chest from his stay in the hospital, but otherwise did not seem any worse for wear. He was writing on a long, yellow legal pad, several pages in, with a ballpoint pen in his left hand.
“Well, it looks like I’ve got a terrific ending for my book. That is, if my readers understand all that psychobabble,” he said, glancing up at her. “I guess I have you to thank for that.”
“Don’t mention it,” she replied, coming around the front of the sofa and sitting on the edge of the coffee table, tentatively. Kate took the pad of paper from his hands, and thumbed through the pages. It was all there: the gruesome murders, the crime scenes, the interrogations at police headquarters, Crystal Rose, that storm-tossed night when Frank died, everything. But much like the lieutenant’s version of the story, this one had troubling inconsistencies, too.
With much effort, Monroe reached over and gave her a hug and a kiss. But she remained distant, uninvolved. She returned the hug and kiss as a matter of course, not affection. He seemed to sense there was something wrong when she returned the yellow legal pad without expression.
“Kate, is everything all right?” he asked.
Kate gazed at him with wide eyes. Her mirror had told her she looked haggard. Her hair was a tangled mess, the half-moon circles under her eyes deep and hollow from lack of sleep. Her normally rosy cheeks were drawn and pale. She looked like she hadn’t slept in several nights, and her face was stained by absent tears.
She looked away from him and lied, “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Monroe was silent for a long time, then said, “I heard about it on the news. Sounds pretty ghoulish. All that S&M stuff hidden in her dorm room closet. I would have never guessed Rosemary Murphy was Crystal Rose.”
“She wasn’t,” replied Kate, flatly.
“But the news reports . . .”
“Yeah, I know. I heard them, too.” She raked her fingers through her windswept hair. She shook her head slowly. “But I was also there in her dorm room, and I got a good look in the closet. Lots of S&M paraphernalia. Hung up so perfectly, so orderly, like tools at a hardware store. In fact, they looked like they had been ordered out of a catalog, and stocked for some after-Christmas sale. Not one of them appeared to have been used, except perhaps the murder weapon.”
She turned back to Monroe, looking at him with a different gaze, apprehensive, guarded. Had Monroe coerced that unfortunate, troubled little girl into helping him stage the “Angel of Death” murders? Was Rosemary Murphy, aka Mary Clemons, nothing more than an unwitting accomplice to the master plan of a master manipulator? The only possible response to her questions turned her blood to ice water as she continued to gaze at Monroe.
“I guess that’s when I realized she didn’t do it,” Kate said, finally.
Monroe didn’t reply right away. “Kate, you’re not making any sense. Of course she did it.”
“Well, as far as the police are concerned, they’ve got their ‘Angel of Death’ killer. The case is officially closed. I got my badge back, and I’ll be working the Homicide beat again. I’m a fuckin’ hero,” she said, not feeling particularly heroic. “Even Oprah called and wants me to talk about the case on her show.”
“That’s really great news. Congratulations!”
Kate eyes narrowed. “But let’s be honest with each other. You and I both know differently.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said.
“Rosemary Murphy, or should I say Mary Clemons, was just an innocent victim,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You discovered that she was a deeply-troubled young woman with a history of mental illness, and somehow turned her into this avenging angel who would do anything for the great John Monroe. An inspired piece of casting, I’ll give you that, but an innocent victim nonetheless.”
“Casting? That’s an odd word to use. You’re beginning to sound like me. Like my movies.”
“But then, she didn’t commit any of the murders,” Kate continued. “She was merely a stand-in, a body double, for when you were otherwise occupied. You dressed her up in the same clothes that you wore, and then paraded her around to throw suspicion off the real murderer. She was the fantasy to your reality.”
Kate stood up and surveyed Monroe’s collection of movie memorabilia, looking all around the room. She saw the black bird from The Maltese Falcon, very clearly one of his prized possessions, sitting in a place of honor on the desk next to the typewriter that Dashiell Hammett had probably used to write his novels and beside what Monroe had told her was Hammett’s favorite book, Duke’s Celebrated Criminal Cases of America. She walked over and picked it up. The prop was heavy, weighty in her hands.
“I’m trying to remember exactly what Bogart said when he finally got his hands on the blac
k bird,” she mused. “Something about dreams?”
“This is the stuff dreams are made of,” Monroe replied, quoting from The Maltese Falcon.
“That’s right. Now I remember. You see, I do know movies, but maybe just not as good as you.”
Kate placed the black bird down, carefully. She continued to look through his collection. “The ‘stuff’ of dreams,” she repeated, waving her hand like a magician over items thoughtfully displayed. “That’s what all of this is . . . dreams made into reality. Props and movie posters and autographed pictures of people from the movies. A world of make-believe made real by you. In this apartment.”
“I warned you before about confusing my movie collection with my real life,” he said. “This is merely a hobby. A diversion to fill in those long, lonely hours.”
“Yeah, I remember, and for a long while there, you really had me believing that was true. But then things kept happening to me that appeared to be orchestrated rather than random events,” Kate said, expressionless. “It was like my reality was being manipulated all around me, and that no matter what I did to try to take charge of my life, I couldn’t break free.”
“You think that I had something to do with that?” asked Monroe, his eyes bright with mirth.
She studied his face for a long moment, then smiled. “Don’t look so surprised, John. You should have known that I’d figure it out,” she said. “You created this incredible role for me to play. The role of a lifetime: A female cop with a past who’s out to prove herself by catching a serial killer. You gave her a love interest. You killed off her partner, and framed her for murder. And then, in the final act, you gave her the chance for redemption.”
Monroe was listening to her, a bemused look on his face.