The Sex Club

by L. J. Sellers

  “He thinks she was suffocated with the plastic bag her clothes were in.”

  “Lab analysis will tell us if it’s the same material. But I’d say it’s a pretty good guess. This mark across her neck was made from pressure, and this bruise looks like it could have come from a thumb.”

  Jackson had not noticed a bruise yesterday, but now Nicole’s whole face had a reddish tint. “Is the color in her face consistent with suffocation?”

  “More likely strangulation. The blood vessels are slightly occluded from the pressure that was placed on her neck.”

  “Was she moved after she was killed?”

  “If so, not far. The lividity is all on the front side.”

  “Any tissue under her nails? Did she fight her attacker?”

  Ainsworth looked over her glasses at him again. “Patience. I’m not there yet.”

  But when she examined Nicole’s hands, no trace evidence was obvious. The ME took scrapings from under the painted nails anyway. She also took scrapings from the girl’s heels, which were dark with dirt. The internal exam revealed that Nicole had eaten chicken and broccoli about an hour before her death—which had most likely occurred before Fieldstone was arrested—that she had a small amount of scarring from anal sex, and that she had died from asphyxiation.

  Ainsworth declared the death a homicide, then emptied the bladder so the lab could test the urine for drugs, poisons, and other chemicals.

  “Please compare her DNA with the secretions on the orange panties.”

  “So is Mayor Fieldstone still your prime suspect?” The ME looked genuinely puzzled. “Do you think he’s psychotic or killing these girls to keep them from talking about the sexual activity?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Ainsworth also ran a comb over Nicole’s clothes while Jackson was there. From the girl’s dark purple T-shirt, she picked up an eight-inch blond hair that clearly had not come from Nicole’s brownish-black waist-length mane.

  Jackson’s first thought was Janice Fieldstone.

  “This shirt has some short hairs as well,” the ME mumbled. “Possibly feline.” Jackson did not remember seeing a cat at the Clarkes’ or the Fieldstones.’

  Ainsworth noted a barely visible smear in the crotch of the pink panties. “Looks like menstrual blood,” she commented. “We’ll analyze it for DNA.”

  “You’ll check for a pregnancy too?”

  “Of course. But I have a budget meeting this morning, so the trace work will have to wait until this afternoon or tomorrow, unless someone else can get to it first.”

  “Thanks for doing the autopsy right away.” Jackson made a mental note to send Ainsworth some flowers. “Call me as soon as you have anything to report.”

  “We always do.”

  He raced back to Eugene, pushing eighty most of the way without seeing a single state sheriff. A task force meeting was set up for 11 a.m., and Schakowski, McCray, Evans—and Fouts—were already in the conference room when Jackson rushed in ten minutes late. The detectives were relaxed, drinking coffee, and joking about an internal investigation into prostitutes’ complaints of sexual harassment by patrol cops. Jackson was not in the mood for sexual humor.

  “Sorry to be late. I just got back from Nicole’s autopsy.” He turned to Evans. “Is Slonecker coming?”

  “He said he’d try.”

  Jackson looked at the dry-erase board with Jessie’s information still up there. “This is a first for us,” he said to the group. “Two homicides, less than a week apart, with similar victims, possibly—or probably—committed by the same person.”

  Fouts spoke up. “Agent Morales will be joining this investigation today or tomorrow. I think we need the manpower.”

  Jackson noticed the assumption of authority and ignored it. He turned to McCray. “Will you update the board as I talk?”

  “Sure.” McCray moved toward the wall with a sluggishness that suggested he might be in pain.

  Jackson summed up the new case, using his hands to track his points. “This is what we know about Nicole’s disappearance: She was last seen at home around 6 p.m. She exited her house sometime after that without any sign of struggle.

  “This is what we know about her death: She was suffocated, most likely with a plastic bag placed over her head and held tightly around her neck. The murder most likely took place in the city park where she was found. She was not sexually assaulted. And there is no evidence of consensual sex immediately prior to her death. Most of this is consistent with the facts of Jessie’s death.”

  “Except the sex part,” Schak commented. “Jessie had sex with two different men before she died. Was Nicole a virgin? Or just not active on the day of her death?”

  His tone rattled Jackson and made him feel defensive of the girls. “She was sexually active. And there’s an indication that she had been recently treated for genital warts, so she may have shared a sex partner with Jessie.”

  “The mayor?” Fouts asked.

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Slonecker quietly stepped into the room and sat down. “Please continue.” He looked energized and confident. But Jackson knew that the coming media frenzy and public pressure to bring justice to two slain teenage girls would soon change that.

  “If the mayor was sexually molesting both girls—and we won’t know that until the DNA testing is done—he may have killed them to keep them quiet about his pedophilia,” Jackson said. “Or we could be dealing with a sociopath who kills for pleasure. Or a religious nutcase with a need to punish,” Jackson paused. “Or a scorned wife seeking to eliminate her husband’s little mistresses.”

  “I never even thought about the wife,” Schakowski mumbled.

  “It hit me a little late too.” He met Schak’s eyes. “I’d like you to follow up with Janice Fieldstone. Arrange for her to come in for questioning. We’ll interview her together and try to pin down her whereabouts for each of the homicide time frames. Try to get a search warrant for her cell phone records. Get a photo of her car. We’ll show it to Nicole’s neighbors, to see if they remember seeing it the night she disappeared.”

  “I’ll lead the interrogation when she comes in,” Fouts said.

  Jackson refused to be baited into a turf war.

  “Be very discretionary in how you handle this,” Slonecker warned. “Mayor Fieldstone has already decided to sue us, and Janice Fieldstone is well known and respected by many in this community, myself included.”

  Jackson didn’t care about the politics, only the task at hand. “McCray and Evans, I want you to work the religious avenger theory. Run background checks and profile scans on everyone who attends the First Bible Baptist Church, then start on the local CCA group, which includes a wide network of churches.”

  Fouts spoke up again. “I’ve already run those checks, and I’ll get copies to you. And I’ve got the agency drawing up profiles for the bomber and the killer. We’ll see if there’s any overlap.”

  “Excellent.” Jackson turned to Evans. “Did you get back to Nicole’s neighbors this morning?”

  She brushed her short auburn hair out of her eyes, which still looked lively despite the grueling effort of the last week. “I tried,” she reported. “Neither of the parties I wanted to talk to were home.”

  “Keep on it. If someone picked Nicole up and drove away, I want to know.” He looked up at the board with Jessie and Nicole’s data listed side by side. “I’ll follow up on the serial killer angle and hit CODIS again.” He looked at Fouts. “I assume you’re still focused on the bombing?”

  “I still believe it’s connected to the murders,” Fouts responded. “Especially considering the lack of sexual assault or any kind of violence to the victims.”

  “The lack of sexual violence also fits the theory that Mrs. Fieldstone may have killed them,” Evans said.

  Fouts looked skeptical. “Maybe.”

  Schak said, “I think the mayor is our best suspect.”

  McCray spoke up for the first ti
me. “But if Fieldstone killed Nicole only to keep her quiet—and didn’t have sex with her first—why did he take her clothes off?”

  Jackson had wondered about that also. “Maybe to throw us off. To make it look like a serial killer or sexual predator.” He closed his notebook. “We have a lot of work to do. Keep me posted if anything interesting comes up, and we’ll meet again tomorrow, same time.”

  “Speaking of interesting,” Schak said as they headed down to the parking lot. “The number of the phone used to call in the tip on the body is registered to Steve Clarke.”

  “What?” Jackson stopped dead in his tracks.

  “That was my first reaction.” Schak gestured at the look on Jackson’s face. “But then I thought that it might be Nicole’s phone and was left by her body. Maybe the boys who found her picked it up and used it to call us.”

  “I’ll check that out.” Jackson made a mental note to find the boy Kera had mentioned. The name was in his casebook.

  He headed for his desk, but before he had a chance to sit down, his phone rang with the short tone of an inside line. Jackson picked up. Sergeant Lammers said, “Detective Jackson. We have a press conference scheduled this afternoon. And by ‘we,’ I mean you and Officer Anderson. Two-thirty, right out in front of the department.”

  “It’s too early in this second case,” Jackson countered. “There’s nothing I can share with the press.”

  “We have to give them something. The TV reporters have made the religious connection between the murdered girls, and now they’re interviewing church members who claim the girls were targeted because they’re Christian. The speculation is running rampant. We need to look like we’re in charge here.”

  “What can I tell them?”

  “That’s your call.”

  “Thanks.” It came out a little more sarcasticly than he intended.

  He checked his watch: 1:15. He had an hour or so before the press conference and plenty to do. Jackson took a long drink of cold coffee, then logged on to CODIS, the national crime database, and entered the details of the new homicide. A search for a match spit out the same three crimes the system had produced when he plugged in Jessie’s death. None of them were anywhere near Oregon, and none looked promising.

  Jackson leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and let his mind go blank. Something had been nagging at him for days—a lead he had forgotten to follow up on. He had learned that trying to force his brain didn’t work. He had to let it rest, then the missing detail would pop up soon after. And in this case, the information could mean life or death for another young girl.

  But he couldn’t keep his mind clear. The press conference was looming, and he had to prepare for it. After scanning his notes and jotting down the few details he would give out, Jackson headed for the men’s room to comb his hair. There wasn’t much he could do about the dark circles under his eyes or his failure to shave this morning.

  The sight of the big cameras filled Jackson with dread. He didn’t know how Jim Anderson, the department’s spokesperson, met with the press week after week, year after year. Jackson would have developed bleeding ulcers after a month. It’ll be fine, he told himself. All he had to do was stay calm, say very little, refuse to commit to anything, and reassure everyone that both homicides would be resolved soon.

  No problem.

  Anderson started by making a short statement praising the dedication and long hours put in by the team working on the homicides. Then he turned the microphone over to Jackson, whose prepared statement was succinct:

  The long hours are paying off. We have filed charges in the death of Jessie Davenport and are pursuing several leads in Nicole Clarke’s homicide. We believe we’ll resolve both of these cases soon and bring justice to the victims. I have time for just a few questions.

  Jackson pointed to Trina Waterman because he recognized her, and she seemed reasonable.

  “Did you file a murder charge against Mayor Fieldstone?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So if Mayor Fieldstone has been charged with murdering Jessie Davenport, does that mean he probably killed Nicole Clarke too?

  “Not necessarily.” Jackson chose his words carefully. “The two deaths are similar in many ways, but the physical evidence does not yet support the idea that they were committed by the same person. So we’re waiting for more lab results before we jump to any conclusions.”

  A reporter named Scott Kippler from KTAV jumped in without waiting to be called on. “Wasn’t the mayor in jail when Nicole was killed?”

  Where did he get that information?

  “Nicole’s time of death has a two-hour zone. The mayor was in jail for only part of that time.”

  A woman TV reporter whose name he could not remember asked, “Is it possible the murders were committed by a serial killer targeting young Christian girls?”

  “We’re looking into the possibility that it could be a serial killer,” Jackson responded. “But the physical evidence doesn’t support that theory.”

  “Was Nicole pregnant too?” Trina Waterman again.

  The question rattled him. Where were they getting these details?

  “Not according to her autopsy.” He decided he was through. “That’s all the time I have.” Jackson handed the microphone back to Officer Anderson and started to walk away.

  Then the voice of Sophie Speranza called after him. “Officer Jackson. Is the bombing of the Planned Parenthood clinic and the ricin attack on one of its staff related to the deaths of Jessie and Nicole? Were they both patients at the clinic?”

  Jackson wanted to keep walking. This was the one question he hoped no one would ask. But he couldn’t leave the question hanging like that for the reporters to twist into assumed information. Kera would be disappointed if he did.

  So he turned back and said, “As yet, we have no reason to believe that the bombing incident is related to the murders. And Planned Parenthood does not release the names of its clients. Good day.”

  Sophie kept asking questions, but Jackson moved away.

  He felt violated. Someone was leaking information to the press. He could not believe that a member of his task force would do that. But who else? Slonecker? Fouts?

  Also hard to believe.

  How could he proceed if he couldn’t trust his team?

  Chapter 34

  Wednesday, October 27, 1:35 a.m.

  Ruth lay in bed watching the clock’s red digital display. She had drunk two cups of regular coffee late in the afternoon so that she would still be awake at this hour. Sam had been asleep for an hour or so, most of it spent snoring. But he had recently rolled over on his other side, and the ruckus had come to an end. Ruth figured he was now in a deep sleep that would hold him until daylight, when he got up to relieve his bladder.

  It was time to go.

  She eased out of bed and tiptoed over to her dresser. She slipped on matching dark blue fleece sweat pants and sweat shirt over her pajamas and moved into the hall. She heard a muffled thump from Rachel’s room. Ruth froze. Was Rachel still awake? Ruth waited silently for a few minutes but didn’t hear any other sounds. Her daughter had probably just rolled over and bumped her nightstand.

  Ruth grabbed her tennis shoes, then went to the laundry room for a miniature flashlight, a roll of duct tape, and the explosive device. The device and the tape went into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt, and the flashlight she kept in hand. A wool cap from the front closet concealed her hair. Ruth slipped her house key into her left shoe, then quietly closed and locked the door behind her. She wanted her family to be safe while she was gone.

  She moved at a fast clip up 27th Street. The sky was black with clouds, and the thin sliver of a moon gave off little light. Ruth prayed as she walked, first thanking God for covering the city with darkness while she carried out her mission, then asking that He continue to guide and protect her until she was back home. Ruth drew comfort from a passage in Leviticus and recited it as she walked: Wherefore ye shall do
my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.

  Eight minutes later, she cut down Friendly Street to 28th, then continued west. Ruth had yet to see a single car on the street, and only one dog had barked from a dumpy home on the corner of Olive. Another five blocks and she veered left on McLean and began the climb. Ruth was surprised by how quickly her heart rate escalated. Even though she rarely exercised, she treated her body like it was the Lord’s temple, and she had thought she was pretty healthy.

  Soon her lungs begged her to stop and rest, but Ruth pushed on. By the time Kollmorgan’s home came into view, her face was sweating, and she could feel her feet swelling in her shoes. She slowed down to calm her heart and promised God that she’d take better care of herself in the future.

  The road was quiet and the homes were dark, but the yard lights kept her from feeling secure and anonymous. Ruth pulled the stocking cap down, leaving just enough room to see out from under it. Her strategy was to keep moving, to act like she belonged, and to never hesitate or look around. At the edge of Kollmorgan’s property, Ruth veered right and cut across the narrow grass to the white Saturn. She dropped to her knees, rolled over flat on her back, and shimmied under the car.

  The smell of gas and oil made her a little nauseous, but Ruth stayed on task. She turned on the flashlight and located a flat spot on the chassis under the driver’s side of the vehicle, then quickly shut the light back off. Without it, her visibility was limited, but a light under a car in the middle of the night would raise a red flag if anyone saw it.

  With clammy hands, Ruth pulled the pipe bomb and the duct tape from her pocket. She laid the bomb on her chest while she ripped two eight-inch pieces of tape from the roll. Her heart pounded frantically under the weight of the device. Keep me safe, Lord, she prayed. Ruth set the tape down on the cement beside her while she dried her sweaty hands on the sides of her pants.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself, then felt with her hands for the flat spot. Still working in near darkness, she positioned the bomb in place with her left hand and used her right hand to tape each end of the cylinder. She tried to be careful not to cover the timing device. Was that enough tape? Would it hold until this evening? Ruth tore off another strip and ripped it lengthwise down the middle, using half of it to secure the center of the cylinder.