Cruel

by Jacob Stone

  “How fast can you get over to Divine’s?” Toni asked.

  Divine’s on Vine was a popular Hollywood bar. “I could be there in twenty minutes,” Samantha said.

  “That’s good, ’cause girl, we need to do some celebrating!”

  Chapter 62

  Las Vegas, the present

  Morris and Bogle found Joanne Krate dealing blackjack at a five-dollar-minimum-bet table. The table had four open seats, and they took two of them. While they played hands, Morris explained to Krate that they had driven up from Los Angeles to ask her about a former tenant, Travis Smalley. She seemed surprised to hear that and told Morris that she needed to concentrate on her dealing but would be happy to talk to him during her next break. Over the next twenty-five minutes, Morris lost sixty dollars while Bogle won three hundred twenty. After Krate’s replacement arrived, Morris and Bogle left the table and quickly caught up to her.

  “Dealers aren’t supposed to fraternize with the clientele,” she told them. She shot Bogle a dirty look and added, “Especially not clientele who win money at the dealer’s table. I need to clear this first with my floor manager.”

  Krate was a plump woman in her sixties who dyed her thinning hair a mousy brown. After fussing with her standard-issue purple and dark green uniform and making sure her bowtie was straight, she scanned the casino floor until she spotted a man in his late thirties with a heavy five o’clock shadow who was carefully watching one of the tables. Unlike the dealers, he wore a black tuxedo. Krate made a beeline for him while Morris and Bogle followed her. She told him about Morris’s request and how the two had done at her table. He shifted his gaze from the blackjack table he was studying to Morris and Bogle for all of two seconds before fixing his stare back onto the goings-on at the table he’d been observing.

  “Have you two ever met Joanne before?” he asked.

  “No,” Morris said.

  “Do you plan on ever sitting at her table again?”

  “As pleasant as I found Ms. Krate, I’m not much of a gambler and rarely go to Vegas,” Morris said. “I can promise I will not do anything to get Ms. Krate in trouble.”

  “Ditto,” Bogle said.

  “How serious is this business you want to talk to her about?”

  “Serious,” Morris said. “But nothing she was involved in.”

  “Okay, go have your talk. Just be discreet. Joanne, how about you take your dinner break now.”

  The floor manager seemed satisfied with the table he’d been watching and moved on so he could observe another one.

  Joanne Krate’s face brightened. “I know a place nearby that has the best open-faced roast beef sandwiches. They’re to die for. How about you two buy me dinner and we’ll talk there?”

  Morris said, “Sure thing.”

  Joanne Krate seemed especially happy over the prospect of being treated for dinner. Her smile weakened. Guilt.

  “I should warn you that you’re wasting your time,” she said. “Whatever you suspect Travis of having done, you’re wrong. He was a gentleman, through and through, and his death was just too tragic for words. But I’ll tell you whatever I can.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” Morris said.

  He let Krate lead them off the casino floor.

  * * * *

  Morris and Krate ordered the open-faced roast beef sandwiches while Bogle had the French toast and sausage patties. After one bite of the sandwich, Morris agreed it was very tasty, and Krate seemed tickled to hear that.

  “I tried calling your cell phone during the drive and didn’t get an answer,” Morris said. “I couldn’t tell from the automated voicemail greeting whether I had the right number.” He repeated to her the number Felger had given him.

  “That’s the right one.” She sighed and showed a pout before adding, “But we’re not allowed to have our cell phones on while we’re working. God forbid someone needed to call us about an emergency.”

  Morris didn’t want to send her off on a tangent about the casino’s employee policies; he just wanted to make sure he had the right number. He had learned during the car ride to the diner that Joanne Krate could talk up a storm if given the chance.

  He asked, “Mr. Smalley was renting your guesthouse at the time of his death?”

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding fervently. “The dear man had been with us for two years, and I couldn’t have asked for a better tenant. He was just so polite and helpful. And quiet! I never heard a peep from his apartment. And handsome! Like a young Rock Hudson.” She blushed a light pink. “Craig was so jealous of him. But he had no reason to be. Travis was just a perfect gentleman.”

  “Who’s Craig?”

  “He was my second husband.” Bitterness wrecked her mouth. She cut off a piece of the sandwich and chewed until the bitterness passed. “Craig Farrow. When I rented the guesthouse to Travis it was just me and Rosalyn. I met Craig later, and he was always harping on me to kick Travis out. He had no good reason; he just kept claiming he didn’t like Travis’s looks.” More bitterness whitened her face, and her lips pressed tightly, pruning the skin near her mouth. “It was Craig’s idea that I sell the house and we move to Las Vegas.”

  “How can I get ahold of him?”

  “You can’t. At least not in this lifetime. He died of a heart attack three years ago, but not after first gambling away all my money. This was supposed to be my retirement—”

  “Is Rosalyn your daughter?” Bogle asked to distract her and keep her from tumbling into full-blown resentment.

  She stared at Bogle as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Yes,” she said. “Rosalyn had such a crush on Travis, always mooning over him. The poor thing was devastated when he died. To be honest, I cried like a baby myself.”

  Morris asked, “Did he ever keep caged rats in his apartment?”

  She blinked several times at Morris and made a face as if she didn’t understand what he was asking her. “That’s such an odd question,” she said.

  “I agree,” he acknowledged. “But it’s an important one.”

  “Why in the world would Travis have kept rats?” she asked, frowning.

  “How about metal cage traps?”

  Her frown deepened. “I couldn’t tell you what he kept in his apartment,” she said. “I don’t believe I ever stepped foot in it while he was renting. Travis was a very private person, and I respected his privacy.”

  Bogle asked, “What about your daughter?”

  Confusion marred her soft, round face. “What about Rosalyn?”

  “Was she ever in Smalley’s apartment?”

  “Of course not. She was only thirteen when Travis moved in. He wouldn’t have had her alone in the guesthouse!”

  “Can you tell me about his friends?”

  Her face went blank. “I can’t remember Travis bringing friends around,” she said. “That didn’t mean he didn’t. The guesthouse has a private entrance. But I don’t remember ever seeing anyone.”

  “So no girlfriends?” Bogle asked.

  Joanne Krate looked astonished by the fact, as if she’d never thought of it before. “Of course, Travis knew I had a young, impressionable daughter, so that could be why he never brought anyone over.”

  Morris asked, “How about his hours?”

  “He had a very demanding job and would often come home late from work. There were times I’d hear his car at two in the morning, or even later. But it wasn’t as if he made a racket. He was very conscientious. I’m just a light sleeper.”

  She closed her mouth, and her head cocked to one side as if she were listening to whispers from far away. “I’d forgotten about this, but Rosalyn was in Travis’s apartment once,” she said. “This was after Travis died and we needed to clean out the guesthouse. Rosalyn volunteered to do it.” She sat quietly kneading her fingers. “I shouldn’t have let her,” she said. “My
daughter was only fifteen at the time, and I should’ve put my foot down, but Rosalyn was so insistent and Craig didn’t want me spending any money hiring someone, so I gave in. But I’m sure if Rosalyn had seen rats or cage traps or anything odd like that she would’ve told me.”

  Morris asked for Rosalyn’s contact information, and Joanne Krate’s eyes filled with tears. She used a napkin to wipe away some of the wetness and told Morris that she had had a falling-out with her daughter over Craig.

  “Rosalyn didn’t like him and threatened to have nothing to do with me if I married him. I should’ve listened to her. She knew.” She sniffed several times and bit her bottom lip as she struggled to keep from sobbing. She showed Morris a sad clown smile and told him she hadn’t talked with her daughter since she had sold the house. “I don’t know where she’s living,” she said. “If you find her, could you please give her my phone number and ask her to call me?”

  “I will,” Morris promised.

  Joanne thanked him. She cut off another piece of roast beef, and after putting it in her mouth, her face crumbled.

  “It’s gotten cold,” she said.

  She started sobbing quietly. It had been too much disappointment for one night. Morris told her he’d order her another one, then bolted from the table to look for the waitress.

  If looks could kill, the one Bogle gave him right then for leaving him alone with the distraught woman would’ve put Morris six feet under. Later, when they were driving back to Los Angeles, Bogle admitted he was angrier at himself for not thinking of the trick first.

  “We know Smalley was a sadist, a loner without any friends, that he could nearly charm the pants off a middle-aged woman like Joanne Krate, and kept odd hours. Sounds to me like a prime candidate to be a serial killer.”

  They knew more than that. They could connect him to Ed Blount and two of the 2001 victims. Polk didn’t have any luck connecting him to the victim who had lived in Sherman Oaks, but the apartment building had had a rash of break-ins in 1996, and they had replaced all the locks then. The management company had hired a subcontractor for that work who was no longer in business, so Polk had hit a dead end. Smalley could’ve been involved.

  “If we can find the daughter, she might be able to enlighten us whether Smalley had any friends,” Morris said, one hand loosely on the wheel as he navigated through the slow-moving Las Vegas Strip traffic. “She should also be able to tell us if he kept caged rats in the apartment.”

  Bogle dozed off once they drove outside the Las Vegas city limits and were in the desert. They had planned to switch places after two hours, but Morris let his friend sleep.

  Before they had tracked down Joanne Krate, Fred texted him the police sketch of the man who had upset Joplin Cole at Petit Bistro, and Morris was disappointed with what he saw. Fred had been right earlier; the guy looked like thousands of other blond thirty-something guys floating around Los Angeles, or at least his sketch did. Fred also didn’t have any luck finding surveillance video. Maybe they’d get the guy from someone calling the hotline number or by tracing back Joplin Cole’s movements and discovering where she met him, or maybe Bogle had been right earlier, that if they kept pulling on this Travis Smalley thread it would somehow lead them to this guy. Morris was all but convinced Smalley had been the second Nightmare Man, which meant there had to be a connection between him and his replacement.

  Morris felt there was something he was missing, maybe a link between Lori Fletcher and Joplin Cole that he should be seeing but wasn’t. Whatever it was, he couldn’t figure it out. When he was an hour from LA, Felger called. He had Rosalyn Krate’s address but couldn’t find a phone number. Like Fletcher and Cole, she lived in West Hollywood.

  Bogle woke up as Morris pulled into MBI’s parking lot, his face craggy from sleep.

  “Same time tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Same time, same bat channel.” Morris pulled up next to Bogle’s car. Bogle gave him a wave before getting into his car and driving off. Morris parked and headed up to the office. Once inside the conference room, he located Rosalyn Krate’s address on the map he had taped to the wall. She lived two blocks away from Lori Fletcher and three blocks from Joplin Cole’s apartment building. A chill ran through him. He couldn’t explain the reason for it. Did he really think she was going to be targeted as one of the Nightmare Man victims? For what reason? Because she had a connection with Travis Smalley seventeen years ago?

  He checked the time. Eleven twenty-five. All the driving had made it seem like a much longer day. He left the office and got back in his car, but instead of heading home he drove to Rosalyn Krate’s apartment building. He frowned at the setup: There was no doorman, no buzzer, no security of any kind. Anyone could just walk in. Rosalyn lived on the fourth floor. No elevator either. He climbed the stairs, listened for a minute to dead quiet coming from inside her apartment, and resisted the urge to pound on the door to see that she was okay. It would’ve been crazy to wake her up based on a hunch he couldn’t explain. He’d talk to her tomorrow.

  He wrote a note on a business card asking her to call him and slipped it under the door.

  Chapter 63

  The killer used a key to enter Samantha Fine’s apartment. A large gym bag slung over one shoulder held an angry caged rat and all the materials and tools needed for the Nightmare Man killings.

  The killer set the bag down next to the dining room table and proceeded to empty it, placing each item on the table and being careful not to make a sound. The rat had become exceedingly agitated and began scratching furiously against its metal mesh enclosure, but this made less noise than the refrigerator in the adjoining kitchen. It certainly wouldn’t wake Samantha, especially since the bedroom door was closed.

  It was a little after three a.m., and there was enough ambient light from outside streetlamps that the killer didn’t need to use a penlight. This was the fifth time the killer had been in Samantha’s apartment. During the earlier visits the killer had crept quietly into the bedroom and whispered to Samantha while she slept, just like with Lori Fletcher and Joplin Cole. Samantha never woke during these times, although her husband had once, but he had fallen quickly back to sleep without realizing they had an intruder. While Samantha might have slept through these whispers, they still affected her, causing her to frown and her brow to become deeply furrowed. A few times she even whimpered.

  The killer last visited a week ago. At that time the killer not only whispered terrible things to Samantha Fine but had also gone through papers that were left stacked on the kitchen counter and discovered that the husband planned to fly to New York on Monday, which meant his gorgeous wife would be all alone tonight. Of course, calling Samantha gorgeous was an understatement. Lori Fletcher and Joplin Cole were both very pretty, but Samantha was something else entirely. Vivacious. Stunning. Jaw-droppingly beautiful. A star in the making. That was why she was chosen. When people saw her picture and learned what had been done to her, it would cause outrage and immense sadness that would dwarf that of any of the other victims. Their deaths would be considered tragic, of course, and people would mourn them, but with Samantha the focus would be on the potential that had been stolen from the world. More than the other victims, she would be inextricably linked to the Nightmare Man, and that would only heighten the mystique.

  The killer took off leather gloves and replaced them with a pair of protective rubber gloves. The killer then brought a rag and a bottle of chloroform to the kitchen sink and proceeded to saturate the rag. Later, the sink would be cleaned, but for now Samantha needed to be anesthetized. Once she was helpless, the killer would cut off her pajamas (such a disappointment to discover during previous visits that she wore pajamas to bed instead of sleeping nude), gag her, and bind her wrists and ankles. After that the killer would use needle-nose pliers to pull off one of her thumbnails. If that didn’t wake her, smelling salts would be used.

  The killer was careful not t
o drip chloroform on the floor, not that it mattered. The medical examiner must know by now that chloroform was used, just as in 1984 and 2001. Still, why leave any traces that didn’t need to be left?

  A slight click could be heard when the bedroom door was opened. The shades were down, making the room darker than the rest of the apartment. The carpeting deadened any sound the killer’s rubber-soled shoes might’ve made, but the killer still moved cautiously to where Samantha slept so as not to bump the bed.

  The killer reached down to where Samantha’s head should’ve been resting on the pillow, except there was nothing. Well, that wasn’t right. A penlight showed the bed was empty. The killer found the light switch. Not only was the room empty, but the bed was made. The killer had already checked the apartment’s lone bathroom. Samantha wasn’t home.

  There was nothing else to do but bring the chloroform-soaked rag back to the kitchen so that it could be cleaned in the sink. The killer spent minutes soaking the rag with water and rinsing it out, all the while thinking things through. Once the sweet chemical smell from the chloroform had dissipated, the rubber gloves were stripped off.

  Samantha Fine was supposed to die tonight at the hands of the Nightmare Man, but that no longer seemed possible, which was more than upsetting. Plans had been so carefully drawn out, and not just for Samantha but for the other victims as well. After all, Samantha Fine was only going to be victim three, and five lives were going to be taken before the Nightmare Man disappeared for another seventeen years. But sometimes you had to roll with the punches. Accept life’s disappointments and move on. There was always tomorrow night for Samantha to die.

  The killer packed up and left quietly, making sure no trace of this nocturnal visit was left behind.