Holden fell silent, clearly stunned by her outburst.
“Tell me about your family,” Carolyn said, hammering at him. “Were there problems at home that caused you to do these things? Do you really want me to write in my report that you take pleasure in being a beast? Statements like that indicate you have no remorse, that you committed these horrific acts for no reason whatsoever outside of self-gratification. Does such a person deserve mercy?”
“She was like my mother,” he said, averting his eyes. “The side of her I wished I could forget.”
Finally, she thought, she had broken through the wall. “Who was like your mother? Tracy Anderson?”
“Yes, but at a different time.”
Carolyn listened to what he was saying. Every word had meaning. God, she thought, he’d killed more women than Anderson. Her mind replayed something he had said earlier that had failed to click. When I put my fingers around their necks…. He’d used the plural rather than singular form of the word neck. The only person that the police believed he had strangled was Anderson. His rape victims had injuries on their faces and torsos, but none had reported anything about Holden putting his fingers around their necks. She had to stay focused. He could be giving her valuable information, maybe even a clue as to where he’d buried his other victims.
“What about Tracy Anderson reminded you of your mother?”
“Her walk,” he said. “The heavy purse she had strapped around her shoulder. There were hard things in there, things that could break bones. She would have hurt him. I had to strike before she did.”
“Are you talking about Tracy Anderson’s four-year-old son?”
“Sammy,” he said, finding her eyes. “Is he okay?”
Carolyn decided to ignore his question. He had no right to ask about his victim’s child. He must have been stalking her, though, as the boy was at his aunt’s house at the time of the crime, yet Holden knew his name. “Is your mother still…alive?”
“I love my mother,” he said with vigor. “I would never hurt my mother. She’s my whole life.”
“But she abused you as a child?”
“True,” he mumbled. “It was for my own good. You know, to make me stronger. To stand up to the others.”
“The others?”
“The kids at school made fun of me. I talked slow, and my back was arched, causing me to slouch over. They called me Turtle-boy. Mom was trying to help me. She hit me in the back all the time, sometimes with heavy objects. It hurt, but it was my fault. I was a pathetic wimp.”
“You took your hatred out on these women because they reminded you of your mother?” Carolyn said, adjusting her position in the chair. “Is that a reason to rape and kill strangers? Don’t you think your alcoholism played a role?”
“In every genius there’s a madman.” Holden told her, ignoring her question. “I can’t explain what I did or what I’ll do in the future. Aristotle said, ‘All human actions have one or more of these seven causes…chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.’ Which two do you think motivated me?”
“Compulsion and chance?” Carolyn said.
“Wrong,” Holden said, his superior tone resurfacing. “Passion and habit.”
Carolyn swallowed hard. Had he developed a habit of raping and murdering women? She’d never heard anyone express such vile acts as a habit. She recalled seeing something in the crime-scene photos that the police had written off as insignificant, and decided to question him about it. “Tell me about the golf glove. Did you leave it as a calling card?”
He smiled. “I’m afraid you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”
Perverted bastard, Carolyn thought. “Did you rape or kill anyone other than Tracy Anderson?”
“That, too, you’ll have to figure out,” Holden told her. “Now run along now, little probation officer. Tell the court that I wanted to protect Sammy from his abusive mother, that my childhood was traumatic, that underneath I’m a person worth salvaging. That was our deal, wasn’t it?”
“Sure,” Carolyn lied, standing and pressing the button for the jailer. She would recommend they lock Holden up for as long as possible.
CHAPTER 5
Friday, September 15—4:40 P.M.
Carl Holden appeared at the probation department fifteen minutes early. Carolyn told the receptionist to deposit him in an interview room. She intentionally made him wait, then walked toward the right side of the floor where a row of small rooms was located.
In addition to interviewing probationers, the officers used the rooms to dictate their reports to the word-processing pool. The rooms also served as a quiet place to collect their thoughts when the large, open room where they worked became too noisy.
Holden looked good, Carolyn thought, too good for a man who’d been behind bars for eight years. He’d been out for two years, though, so most of the jailhouse dust had blown away. He would be fifty-four now, but there was no gray in his brown hair and only a smattering of lines around his eyes and mouth.
She sat down in a chair at a small, round oak-veneer table. Holden wore a neatly pressed shirt and a pair of khaki pants. His appearance was so disarming, she momentarily forgot the horrendous crimes he’d committed. Then her gaze met his eyes, and her skin became clammy.
“You’re all grown up, Carolyn,” Holden said, grinning. One of his upper teeth protruded and reflected light from the overhead fixture. “Do you remember me? I remember you. I’m the guy you wanted to lock up and throw away the key. I know what you’re all about. Such a pretty face, but underneath you’re a spiteful, mean woman. You put an innocent man in prison.”
“Look, Carl,” Carolyn said, “I have no desire to play your games.” She didn’t give him time to reply. “Let’s get something straight. Your sentence was overturned because of a stupid man. You and I both know you’re not innocent, so cut the crap. The court placed you on twenty-four months’ summary probation for this offense, with the added term that you must pay six hundred and fifty in restitution to the owner of Pete’s Bar over the next six months. After today, you won’t see me again unless you commit another crime. If you do, I’ll make certain you’re on the bus back to prison. Do you understand?”
Hatred shot from his eyes.
“Now,” she continued, “where are you presently living?”
“I lost my job because I had to spend a day in the hospital after that guy shoved me through the window. Doc wanted to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. My landlady evicted me when she found out I was a registered sex offender. My attorney was supposed to clear that up, but I’m still on the list.”
Great, Carolyn thought. At least he was suffering some ramifications for his crimes. “Where are you sleeping? You don’t look like you’re living on the street.”
“I stayed at the shelter last night,” Holden said. “I knew I had to come see you, so I bought some new threads.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a stack of bills. “Count it,” he said. “That’s six hundred and fifty.”
Carolyn picked up the bills, fanning them out like a deck of cards. “Where did you get this?”
“I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Holden told her, tipping his chair back on its hind legs. “I saved it from my job. The people where I worked are Koreans. I can always get another job pressing clothes. I plan to go back into the construction business. Just waiting for the right situation.” He glanced at her left hand. “Where’s your wedding ring? You ran him off, didn’t you? No one likes to be married to a bitch, Carolyn. Didn’t your mother teach you that?”
Her back stiffened. When Frank had failed to get his first novel published, he’d started sleeping with other women to bolster his confidence. A year later he became addicted to cocaine. He stopped seeing his children and never paid a dime of child support. “My personal life is none of your business.”
“Oh, you’re wrong there,” Holden said, circling a finger around his mouth and licking it with his tongue.
When she stepped outside the interview room, no one was around. Of course, she told herself, it was Friday night. No one worked late on Friday night. Now she was alone with a killer. She grabbed a cash-receipt book out of a steel cabinet in the supply room, banged the door shut, rushing back to the interview room to give Holden his receipt so she could send him on his way. When she yanked open the door, her mouth fell open.
Holden had disappeared.
Carolyn went to the lobby to see if he’d gone to the bathroom. Satisfied he’d left the premises, she returned to her desk to get her purse and briefcase. Her ears pricked when she heard faint footsteps on the carpet outside her partition.
Ducking underneath her desk, she opened her purse and removed her nine-millimeter, then pulled the chair back in place to conceal herself. Her fingers trembled on the safety. Releasing it, she pointed the gun through the legs of the chair. She’d already taken one life, and she knew Holden had more than earned a bullet.
The Ventura County government center complex was similar to a small city. The courts, district attorney’s and public defender’s offices, as well as the records’ division, were all housed on the left side of a large, open space. A bubbling fountain stood in the center, surrounded by concrete benches. To the left were the probation department, the sheriff’s department, and the women’s and men’s jails. The general public assumed that the two structures weren’t connected, yet an underground tunnel was used to transport inmates back and forth.
The jail was actually a pretrial detention facility, and as a result of housing over one thousand inmates in a rated capacity of 412, the fairly new facility had the infrastructure of a thirty-year-old building. About eleven years ago the county had erected another detention center, the Todd Road Jail, in the city of Santa Paula. Todd Road was designed to hold over 750 sentenced male inmates.
Detective Hank Sawyer tapped a uniformed officer on the shoulder in the booking room at the main facility. A skinny black man, Alfonso Washington, was being photographed and fingerprinted. He’d robbed six liquor stores within a two-week period, and was a hard-core drug addict. A twenty-three-year-old officer, Danny Alden, had found him urinating in the bushes a few minutes after a new holdup was reported, an empty forty-five magnum in his pocket, along with the sixty-eight dollars the clerk had given him from the cash register. Since this was Alden’s first major bust, Hank had met him at the jail to commend him. “I’m going to take off,” Hank told the young officer. “Go back to the station and finish your report, then you can call it a night. Good work, ace.”
Hank stepped outside into the brisk night air. He’d called the station earlier, and there wasn’t much going on outside of the usual—domestic disturbances, traffic accidents, loud parties, drunk drivers—nothing of interest to a homicide detective. Of course, on Friday night, anything could happen. And there were many hours left before dawn.
Since his promotion to lieutenant over the crimes-against-persons division, Hank had shed thirty pounds. His once flabby stomach was now hard and flat. Not quite a sixpack, he thought, but pretty damn good for forty-seven. He lifted weights every morning and ran three times per week. Since none of his old clothes fit, he’d decided to splurge on a new wardrobe. When he’d been overweight, how he dressed didn’t seem important. Now he enjoyed getting up every morning and stepping into a nice pair of slacks, a crisp, tailored shirt, and a tasteful tie. He glanced down at his shoes—real Italian leather. He’d also purchased several new sports jackets, one that had cost a bundle. The problem was he didn’t have anywhere to wear his new clothes outside of work. He took a waitress named Betty out dancing now and then.
Reentering the building through another door, Hank climbed the stairs to the probation department on the second floor. Part of his fitness program was to park as far away as possible in a parking lot and always take the stairs instead of the elevator. Carolyn Sullivan was a workaholic, and there was a good chance she might still be in the office.
Hank remembered the first day he’d laid eyes on her. How long had it been? Eleven, maybe twelve years. He remembered seeing this fresh-faced girl walking across the courtyard, staring at her outside the window of the DA’s office one day. Carolyn was a little thing, barely five four, and back then she’d worn spiked heels to appear taller. Her skin was pale and delicate. She didn’t roast in the sun like most California women. The contrast against her chestnut hair was striking. But it was her big, soulful eyes that got him—that, and her smile, with those two adorable dimples. Getting them to appear, though, wasn’t always easy.
The main door leading into the lobby was open. Generally the last person out locked it. Someone was still working. He stepped in and began making his way to Carolyn’s partitioned cubicle. If she was here, she must be the only one. The place looked deserted. He saw her nameplate, but, glancing over the top of the partition, he didn’t see her at her desk. As he started to leave, a voice shouted, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Seeing the barrel of a gun poking out through the legs of a chair, Hank reached across his chest to remove his gun from his shoulder holster—and then he caught a glimpse of Carolyn’s frightened eyes peering out at him. “Jesus, is that you?” he yelled. “It’s Hank, for God’s sake. What in the hell are you doing?”
Carolyn shoved the chair away and crawled out. Hank extended his hand to help her to her feet. “Is this the way you spend your Friday nights these days, cowering under your desk?”
She stood and smoothed out her cream-colored dress. She bent down again and retrieved her purse, dropping her gun inside. “What are you doing here? I could have shot you,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” Hank said, laughing. “I think it would have been the other way around. Who’s the better shot, huh? How long has it been since you’ve fired that thing?” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. A little over a year ago, Carolyn had been in the car with him when he’d unknowingly driven into an ambush. A hardened criminal had taken aim on her while Hank was busy returning fire from other shooters. She’d had no choice but to defend herself. At point-blank range, the man had been killed instantly. This was the type of thing a person carried to their grave.
They both fell silent, Carolyn staring down at her desk. Hank spoke up. “Are you gonna tell me what went on just now, or do I have to beat it out of you?”
“Holden,” she said, stuffing several files inside her briefcase. “Carl Holden’s conviction was overturned because of the Abernathy fiasco, in case you haven’t heard. He got busted on a minor offense, and Brad insisted I write the report.”
“I remember Holden,” Hank said, as he gazed at her inquisitively. He knew something was different about Carolyn, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. At first he thought she had her hair tied up, and then he realized it was gone. “What happened to all your hair?”
“Don’t ask,” Carolyn said, scowling. She filled him in on how Holden had skipped out on the interview.
“At least you don’t have to supervise him.”
Carolyn looked at him distraughtly. “He belongs in prison, Hank.”
The detective was no stranger to what she was experiencing. “So do thousands of others just like him, Carolyn. You can’t let the job get to you this way. If you do, you’ll go insane.” He smiled and rubbed his hands together, hoping to lighten things up. “So, are you seeing anyone new?”
“No,” she said, sighing. “I haven’t had a date in nine months. It’s okay, though. I’ve been able to spend more time with the kids.”
“Tell you what,” Hank said. “Why don’t we grab some supper.”
“Oh, Hank,” she said
, leaning forward and pecking him on the cheek. “You’re such a great friend. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Just give me a minute to call and get the kids squared away.” She dialed her home number and left a message. Turning back to him she said, “Rebecca was supposed to go her friend’s house after school, but she should be home by now. John’s probably in his room with the door closed.” She tried her daughter’s cell phone but hung up when the recording came on. “What’s the use of buying them a cell phone?” she exclaimed. “They never answer it when you call them. I’ll check in later. If they haven’t scrounged up something to eat, I’ll stop and get them something on the way home.”
She collected her briefcase, and they headed to the elevator. Now it was her turn to ask Hank, “How about your love life? Got a new lady to go with that new body?”
“Not really.” Hank’s heart was pounding against his chest. Once they were inside the elevator, Carolyn leaned against the back wall. As soon as he pushed the button for the ground floor, he positioned himself beside her. A delightful odor drifted past his nostrils. Was it perfume, or simply the scent of her skin? He stared at the graceful line of her neck, the way her dress hugged her shapely body. “I’m surprised you’re not involved with anyone,” he said, fishing for information. “You seem to always have a man on a string and another in the wings.”
“You know that isn’t true, Hank,” she told him. “Most of the men in my age bracket are chasing girls in their twenties. Besides, I’ve got two kids, an awful job, and a mountain of debt. Who would want to step into that picture?”
Sullivan’s Evidence Page 4