by Jacob Stone
Bogle said, “If this Smalley character turns out to be the second Nightmare Man, that would mean we had to go back thirty-four years to solve murders that took place seventeen years ago. And then had to go back seventeen years to solve murders happening today. When I think about it, it gives me a headache.”
They ate in silence after that, and when they finished lunch, Morris called his computer specialist, Adam Felger, to see if he had found the owner of the Woodland Hills home in 2001. Felger had a name: Joanne Krate. She had sold the house in 2007, and he was trying to find out where she lived now. Felger told Morris he hoped to have that information soon—that Gloria Finston had a call in with the FBI.
They had more time to kill. Morris asked Bogle if he wanted some pie, and Bogle shrugged why not. Morris waved over the waitress, a wrinkled grandmotherly type who walked as if she had pebbles in her corrective shoes.
“What’s your best pie?” he asked.
“That would be our peach, hon.”
Morris looked at Bogle, who signaled he wanted pie also. “Slices for both of us, please,” Morris said. “A scoop of vanilla ice cream on one.”
“Make it two,” Bogle said.
The waitress gave Bogle a confused look. “Hon, are you asking for one or two scoops?”
“One would be plenty.”
The waitress had a pot of coffee with her and refilled their cups before hobbling away, muttering under her breath that people needed to be clearer when asking for things, that she wasn’t a mind reader.
While they were finishing up their pie, Felger called back. The FBI had tracked Joanne Krate to Las Vegas from her last tax return. He gave Morris her home address and the name of the casino where she worked as a blackjack dealer. “I’m still trying to find a cell phone number,” Felger said. “I warned Greta, and she’s looking into travel options. Do you want me to transfer you?”
Morris told him he did, and Greta was soon on the line. The earliest flight she could get him on was a five ten that would be arriving at six twenty-five, and if everything went smoothly they’d have a rental car by seven. Las Vegas was a four-hour drive, and if he and Bogle left now, they’d get there by five, and possibly as early as four thirty depending on how heavy a foot they used on the gas. It made the decision easy.
Morris dropped enough cash on the table to leave the waitress a nice tip, and he and Bogle sucked in their bellies and squeezed their way out of the booth.
Chapter 60
The freak was pacing in his apartment. He knew he had acted stupidly the other day. Not just stupidly, but impulsively. Recklessly, to be completely honest about it. Yes, it was a thrill stalking Joplin Cole and following her to the fitness club, and it would’ve been okay if he’d just left it at that. It also would’ve been fine if he had limited himself to simply getting on the machine next to hers. But he shouldn’t have spoken to her, and he most definitely shouldn’t have followed her to the restaurant.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
But to be fair, what did he say to her at the fitness club that was so egregious? She should’ve just taken his comments as friendly small talk. For cripes’ sake, it wasn’t as if he had told her that the Nightmare Man would be having his way with her later that night! It had actually shocked him the way she reacted when he introduced himself as Dale. What would’ve been so difficult about being nice and simply shaking his hand instead of looking at him as if he were a giant turd and jumping off her machine as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough? Not that it would’ve mattered how she had acted. She had been chosen to be the Nightmare Man’s second victim for this cycle, and nothing would’ve changed the fact that she was going to die last night.
Still, though, what a bitch!
At least he wasn’t stupid enough to tell her his real name. But the incident at the restaurant was bad enough. The freak’s lips pressed into a harsh slash when he thought about what had happened. No matter how you look at it, it was really her friend’s fault. He had carefully kept his distance when he followed them from the office building to the restaurant and used field glasses to watch for a table to open up so he could spy on her. But her blond bimbo friend must’ve caught him looking and warned her. If the bistro had security cameras, the police might now have photos of him. Even if they didn’t, her friend had gotten a good enough look at him to help with a sketch, and it was too late for him to do anything about it. If he was going to kill Joplin Cole’s friend, he would’ve had to do it last night, and that just wasn’t possible—he had been too busy setting up an alibi.
He stopped in front of the TV, picked up the remote control, and tried to work up the courage to turn it on. He couldn’t do it. He just wasn’t up to seeing whether they were showing a surveillance photo or sketch yet.
He took a deep breath and focused on calming his nerves. He was making too much of this. People had incidents all the time in LA, and besides, she was the one who had accosted him, not the other way around. And just because she was butchered later that night didn’t prove anything. Even if they were right now plastering a sketch or surveillance photo of him everywhere on TV and the internet, that didn’t necessarily mean the police would find him. There were probably thousands of guys here in LA who had his same blond, clean-cut good looks. And just because Joplin Cole recognized him as a freak didn’t mean her friend did also. Not everyone was as perceptive as Cole proved to be, and in the freak’s experience, most people never spotted him for what he was. Besides, even if Cole’s friend also saw him as a freak, that wouldn’t translate well to a police sketch.
Another long, deep breath. He needed to think this through. Let’s say the police tracked him down to Cole’s fitness club. How would that help them? He had bought a one-month pass using cash, and when he filled out the paperwork he used his Dale Cooper alias along with a fake address. He chuckled thinking of his chosen alias and its appropriateness. When the 1990s cult TV show Twin Peaks ended after its second season, Dale Cooper, the FBI agent, was left imprisoned within the mysterious black lodge while his evil doppelganger was free to create mischief and mayhem.
The freak’s mind wandered back to the problem at hand, and he started panicking again. Another long, deep breath. So what would happen if the police found him? If they searched his apartment, they wouldn’t uncover a single trace of the Nightmare Man. He also made sure to have rock-solid alibis for Tuesday night when Lori Fletcher was murdered and last night. So what would happen next? They’d have to look at the restaurant incident as just being one of those things. A coincidence, and nothing more. A hysterical woman making a scene and attacking an innocent guy sitting quietly minding his own business. They might look at him as a person of interest, but that would be it…unless they found out what he had whispered to Joplin Cole before he fled the restaurant.
The freak sat down heavily on the couch, his right leg bouncing like a jackhammer.
Oh shit.
If Cole had repeated to her blond friend what the freak had told her, the police must know it now. And that meant if they ever found him, they’d do whatever they had to do to crack his alibi.
Oh shit.
The freak had earlier considered going to the police and telling them he had learned about Cole’s murder from TV, recognized her from their bizarre and unfortunate misunderstanding, and wanted to clear the air. But he couldn’t do that, not if they knew what he had whispered to her.
She had gotten his goat by yelling at him in front of everyone in the restaurant. The last thing a freak wanted was to be made the center of attention, especially of an unpleasant incident. But still, it had been so stupid of him, saying what he did. He had put everything at risk.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
But there was a good chance the police wouldn’t find him. He also realized he had been wrong before—it still made sense to find and kill Cole’s friend, because even if they had a sketch of him, the sketch would be us
eless if she wasn’t around to identify him. There was the waitress also, but she hadn’t seemed to pay much attention to the freak when she took his order. Others in the bistro must have turned his way once that bitch yelled at him, calling him a creep, but he left quickly after that, and besides, the situation was too embarrassing and uncomfortable for them to pay close enough attention to later pick him out of a lineup. The freak had read articles about how witnesses weren’t reliable when identifying a person they’d only seen for a second or two.
No, Cole’s friend was the only one he had to worry about.
The freak would find her soon. He’d also stop stalking the other women chosen to be slaughtered this year, no matter how much he enjoyed doing it. Even moonfaced Rosalyn.
He felt better after sorting it out.
* * * *
Morris and Bogle were driving in the middle of the desert when Fred Lemmon called. Morris put the phone on speaker, amazed he could pick up a signal.
“We’ve got something interesting,” Lemmon said. “This Nightmare Man maniac might’ve been stalking Joplin Cole yesterday.”
“Wait a minute,” Morris asked. He pulled over on I-15. He didn’t want to risk losing the signal. An eighteen-wheeler roared past, shaking the car. He looked in the rear-view. There didn’t appear to be any other vehicles behind him on this dusty stretch of highway. “Okay, go ahead,” he said.
“The victim had lunch yesterday at a downtown restaurant called the Petit Bistro with a work friend named Jamie Siegel. Halfway through lunch Siegel noticed a guy eyeballing Cole from behind. When she told her friend she had an admirer, Cole turned around, and when she saw who it was she left her chair, approached him, and made a scene, calling the guy a creep and yelling at him to leave her alone.”
“By any chance, does the Petit Bistro have surveillance cameras?”
“I already called them. They don’t. I’m heading over there now to see if there are any cameras between the office building where Cole and Siegel worked and the restaurant.”
“Because you think this guy followed them from work to this restaurant,” Bogle said.
“Is that you, Charlie?” Lemmon asked. “You’re still playing hooky from your babysitting job to slum as a real detective?”
“Nah, just wanted a ride to Vegas so I can catch the floor show at the Sahara and heard Morris was heading over there.”
Lemmon laughed at that. “To answer your question, I’m hoping that’s the case and we’ve got this guy on surveillance video. From the way Siegel described him, he’s kind of a bland Ken doll in his thirties. There are probably thousands of surfer dudes and preppies in LA who’d fit his description. Annie is taking Siegel to the Wilcox Avenue station for a statement and to see if we can get a police sketch out of her.”
“Did he have a man bun?” Bogle asked. “I hear they make Ken dolls like that now.”
“Nah. He sounded like one of the old-fashioned types. Blond, Dockers, polo shirt, tennis shoes. Nothing distinguishing. No tattoos or scars. I’ll be interviewing the staff at the bistro to see if anyone remembers anything else.”
Morris asked, “What happened after the confrontation?”
“Ken Doll whispered something to Cole, then got out of there fast. Siegel doesn’t know what was whispered.”
“It would be good to find that out,” Morris said.
“Yeah, I know. No one else in her office heard anything about it. Once we get her cell phone unlocked, Annie and I will be going through her call log to see who she might’ve spoken with afterward. But if she didn’t tell Siegel there’s a good chance she didn’t tell anyone.”
Morris sat rubbing his jaw, deep in thought. “She met him somewhere before the bistro,” he said.
“We’ll be trying to find that out, boss. One step at a time.”
Bogle said, “It’s possible he’s an old boyfriend, or even just a jerk who struck out with her at a bar. This might not be related to the Nightmare Man murders.”
Morris made a face. That wasn’t likely.
“Coincidences happen,” Bogle argued.
“Not as often as you’d think.”
Lemmon interrupted them, asking Morris what they should do with the police sketch. “Advertise it or keep it among ourselves?” he asked.
That was a tough question. If they advertised it, they might get a legitimate lead or send the suspect underground. In this case, there were other considerations. If the suspect was as generic looking as Lemmon described, publicizing the sketch could cause thousands of innocent men to be looked at potentially as the Nightmare Man, leading to lost jobs and relationships. But if they could stop this maniac before he killed again, they had to do it.
“We get the sketch out there, but we make it a soft sell. The police believe this individual seen yesterday at the Petit Bistro has important information in the Nightmare Man investigation, and we’re asking for him to come forward.”
Lemmon made a snorting noise at his end. “If he’s the Nightmare Man, he won’t be voluntarily walking into any police stations.”
“You never know,” Morris said. “He could come in thinking he could outsmart us. But it doesn’t matter. It gets his face out there. If people know him, they’ll call the hotline. And if he doesn’t come in on his own, we know he’s the one we want.”
“We already know he won’t be coming in,” Lemmon said. “I’d suggest we make it more of a hard sell. We could call him a person of interest. Let’s see if we can put maximum pressure on this bastard.”
“Let’s try it the other way for now.”
“All right, if that’s how you want to play it. After I finish up downtown, I’ll be meeting up with Annie again, and we’ll work to trace back Cole’s movements and see if we can figure out where she met the Ken doll. I’ll text you the sketch when we’ve got it.”
Lemmon got off the call. Morris turned to Bogle and asked if they should turn back.
Bogle said, “We’re already more than halfway there.”
“By maybe a mile.”
“What are we going to do if we go back?” Bogle asked. “Fred and Annie have the Ken doll search covered. If you think you need more bodies on it, put Polk on it. Or one of the LAPD detectives. My gut’s telling me we’re going to find this psycho by following our Travis Smalley thread.”
“You just want to see Wayne Newton at the Sahara.”
A thin smile crept onto Bogle’s lips. “I don’t think he’s playing at the Sahara.”
Morris put the car back in drive, got back on the highway, and continued toward Las Vegas.
Chapter 61
Samantha Fine was sure she killed it. She stood breathless watching the faces of the showrunner and producers, the look in their eyes seemingly confirming that she killed it. None of them looked bored or uninterested, and the showrunner gave Samantha a hint of a smile and an encouraging nod. They were sitting behind a table, and they huddled together to confer among themselves, talking in hushed whispers. Samantha wished she could read lips. Their conference didn’t last long, and the head producer got up and headed toward Samantha, a broad smile breaking out over her lips.
“A beauty who can act,” she said.
Samantha could barely believe this was happening. She’d been working toward this moment since she was seventeen. She’d acted in commercials, several small parts on soap operas, and a fifteen-second, one-line appearance in a movie that was still searching for a distributor (and for all she knew, they’d already cut her out of it), but this would be a starring role on a new TV series. And the script was smart and funny. The show had a chance of being something big, especially with the pedigree behind it.
She asked whether she had gotten the part, the words tumbling out.
The producer grinned at her. “We can’t make it official until Monday,” she said. “We’ll want you to come back then, and we’ll
be having a press conference and announcing it then.” The producer looked taken aback. “Why so glum? I thought you’d be doing backflips.”
“No, it’s not that,” Samantha said. She forced a smile. “I really am thrilled. It’s just that hubby is in New York, and I was planning to take the red-eye tonight to see him. But that will have to wait. I’ll be here whatever time you want Monday.”
“Good.” The producer’s broad smile came back. “We’ll see you here at noon sharp on Monday.”
The two women hugged. The producer said softly to Samantha, “Sweetie, you’re shivering.”
“I’m just so happy.”
She had lied about why she had shivered. Of course she was happy about getting the part. Ecstatic, really. But now that she wouldn’t be flying out of Los Angeles as she had planned, she realized just how frightened she was of the Nightmare Man. The idea of it was ridiculous. Insane, really. She had let her mother’s earlier phone call inflame her fears. But there was something more than that. There were those whispers in the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite get a handle on, the ones she was sure were warning her about the killer. God, what was wrong with her? The biggest break of her life, and she was going to worry about some crazy lunatic on the loose?
The head producer brought Samantha to the showrunner and her two associates, and they chatted. The showrunner, Mitzi Helgund, was the creative force behind the wildly successful Purple Is the New Sad, and she told Samantha that the callback had been only a formality. “I knew the second I saw you that you were our Jane,” she said. “Sassy, tough, and vulnerable. And of course, cute as hell. You also have it.”
Samantha was flustered, embarrassed, and giddy at this point, and said, “I hope it, whatever it is, isn’t contagious!”
Mitzi laughed. “If it were, we’d be lucky to catch it.”
Later, as she was leaving the building, she started to call Jeff but remembered the time difference and knew he’d be preparing himself to go onstage in an hour. His play was a heavy drama, and his character was especially morose throughout it, so it would be better if she called him later, or he might accuse her of causing him to break out grinning during his performance. Instead she called her best friend Toni and told her the news.