Stella looked at him calmly.
‘I completely understand your feelings, Mr Foster. Now, have you decided what you’d like to eat? I want to order. I told you, I’m starving.’
He hadn’t expected her to fold quite so easily and he looked surprised, and relieved.
‘Um . . . well . . . me too, I guess. I’ll have the little-neck clams with linguine. You?’
‘The same. I’ll order for us both while you make your phone call.’
He stared at her. ‘What phone call?’
She fished into her handbag and brought out the scrap of paper she’d been given that morning.
‘To this number. I was told to ring it if there was any kind of serious problem, but I rather feel you’re the one with the problem, Mr Foster, not me. So you’d better be the one to call.’
He took the note and peered suspiciously at the digits scrawled across it. ‘I don’t recognise this, other than the Washington code. Whose number is it?’
Stella waved to a nearby waiter. ‘We’re ready to order now, thank you,’ she called. The man nodded and hurried over.
She placed their order, then smiled at the mystified agent opposite her.
‘You mentioned his name just then. I think you need to have a little chat with your boss. Have you actually spoken with him personally before? I’d have a care, if I were you. The Attorney General told me Mr Hoover can be awfully grumpy when people call his home at dinnertime.’
He was back five minutes later, flushed and angry.
‘Great. Thanks for the ambush.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘How so? I told you who you were calling. Anyway, why would I want to ambush you? As I said, I’m here to help you. Although I certainly didn’t ask to come down here. I was politely, if extremely firmly, sent.’
‘Sure, Hoover made it clear to me you’re here on the highest authority but he didn’t deign to give me the details. What the hell is going on? You made some crack about the Attorney General just now. Are you serious? You know Bobby Kennedy? Is he behind this? I don’t believe it.’ Foster was seething with a combination of curiosity and anger.
Stella closed her eyes and slowly pushed both hands through her hair. She’d come to America to study for her PhD. Right now she should be amongst her new friends in Massachusetts, preparing for her studies. Not wrangling with a resentful detective down here in the near-tropical late summer swelter of the Florida Keys. Maybe she should have transferred directly to the international departures lounge at Miami Airport after all, and bought a ticket for the next plane home. None of this was her problem.
Before she could answer, the waiter was back with their bowls of steaming clams and pasta. Stella felt slightly restored by the sight of food.
‘We’d like some wine too, please,’ she said. ‘Mr Foster . . . what would you recommend?’
‘What? Oh . . . well, a Californian Chardonnay usually hits the spot. Two glasses, please.’
‘Sure,’ the waiter answered. ‘By the way, I’d leave those clams to cool for a few minutes. The sauce is just a shade below boiling.’
When they were alone again, Stella leaned across the table towards him.
‘I’d be happy to explain all this to you, Mr Foster, but I’d appreciate it if you took that ridiculous frown off your face first. You’ve been glowering at me since I sat down.’
For the first time he looked slightly off-balance. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was frowning,’ he said stiffly.
‘Well you are. Ah . . . that’s a little better. Now, please listen to me. None of this is complicated. I’m here because I happened to bump into Ethel Kennedy last Sunday at a beach barbecue in Martha’s Vineyard. Her husband was there too. And JFK and Jackie, if you want to know.
‘Ethel asked me why I was in the States. I explained I’m here to take a PhD in Psychopathy at Smith. I know a lot about psychopaths, Mr Foster, especially the dangerous ones. When you’ve calmed down, I expect you and I will have some interesting exchanges about them. Anyway, Mrs Kennedy got very excited and went to find her husband.
‘The next thing I knew I was in a room alone with the Attorney General and the President, and after a conversation I won’t burden you with, followed by a rather unpleasant grilling from the Secret Service, I found myself on a plane to Florida.’
She leaned back and reached inside her bag for cigarettes and lighter. ‘Which is why you and I are sitting here having dinner together. I told you, it’s not complicated. You’re frowning again, by the way.’
He glared at her. ‘Oh boy, this is just great. You walk into this, this, this high-society soirée in the Vineyard and—’
‘It wasn’t a soirée,’ she calmly interrupted him. ‘It was lunchtime.’
‘Who the hell cares. You walk in looking like a million dollars, no doubt, with your cute English accent and batting your eyelashes every which-way, you do a great snow job on the President and his brother, and I’m the sucker who ends up landed with you the first day I get down here. I’m an FBI agent, Miss Arnold, of many years’ standing, not a babysitter. I’ve got a killer to catch, and an extremely active one too. We could wake up tomorrow morning and discover he’s murdered his fifth. Frankly, at the rate he’s going, we probably will.’
He pulled a breadstick from the packet between them and broke it in half, staring moodily out at the setting sun.
‘Sure,’ he continued a moment later, turning to her again. ‘You’ve read all about psychopaths in your textbooks and research papers and discussed them at conferences and you’ve written your double-A-star essays, and you think that makes you the jumping-jive expert, right? But have you ever tracked a psychopathic killer, Miss Arnold? Arrested one? Pulled a gun on him a split second before he pulled his on you? Jesus wept. I can’t believe this.’
The waiter arrived with their drinks, apologising profusely for forgetting them. Stella leaned down and quietly stubbed out her cigarette in the sand. ‘Now we can eat.’
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes before she spoke again.
‘You asked me three questions, and the answer to all of them is no, obviously. I’m not a policeman. I don’t arrest people, still less point guns at them. But I know how these men think, Agent Foster. I know how they feel. From the little I’ve been told about your killer down here, I’ve already managed to build up a rough profile of sorts.’
He forked a clam into his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of Chardonnay.
‘Oh you have, have you? Then please enlighten me, limey. Who exactly should I be looking for, in your elevated, academic opinion?’
She stared at him. ‘Please don’t call me limey. It’s just silly. Would you describe Charles Dickens as a limey? Or Cary Grant? Or Charlie Chaplin?’
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. ‘No, of course not. I’m sorry. Like I said, it’s been a helluva day and I’m just letting off some steam here. Look . . . why don’t we pick this up in the morning? It’s obvious we’re gonna have to work together, J. Edgar couldn’t have made that plainer to me just now. You can make your pitch to me over breakfast.’
Stella stood up and tossed her napkin on the table.
‘I have no intention of making any kind of pitch to you or anyone else for that matter,’ she said coldly. ‘But I will tell you what I know about repeat killers and how they behave, and how I believe one can seek them out. I was given some very basic case notes on this one to read on the flight down, and as I say, I’ve had one or two general ideas already. But if that’s not good enough for you, Agent Foster, then I’ll fly back to Boston. Frankly, I’d be glad to. It’s your choice. In fact, it’s your problem. It certainly isn’t mine.’
He looked at her in surprise.
‘Look, hold on. Where are you going? I just said I’d work with you, didn’t I? Anyway, don’t you think you should finish your meal and your wine, and watch the sunset? Look at that sky now. It’s all coming together. Jeez, it’s so fast down here.’
; She glanced out at the skyline. The fading blue had been replaced with daffodil-yellow streaked with red. It had happened almost as quickly as a theatre lighting change.
‘I have my own veranda for watching the sunset, thank you. As, presumably, do you.’
She slipped her sandals back on and put her bag over her shoulder before picking up her barely touched glass of wine in one hand and her dinner in the other, and began to head back carefully across the beach towards her cabin, but after a few steps she halted and looked back at him.
‘I really would like to help, you know. Oh, I don’t mean help you, personally,’ she added quickly. ‘I mean them – those poor girls out there. We have a very intelligent, very dangerous creature to catch. He’s your enemy. Not me.’
She hesitated. ‘And I agree with you. He may very well take another one tonight. Whoever he is, he makes Jack the Ripper look like a slouch. But I presume you’ve already spotted his Achilles heel?’
Fortunately for Agent Lee Foster, Stella had turned away again before he could think of a suitable reply.
25
There was no fifth killing that night. The Courier had splashed with the fourth murder two days earlier and this morning the paper had to be content with a lesser story about how the girls were being snared.
KEYS KILLER: PUNCTURES VICTIMS’ TIRES FIRST
It wasn’t a bad lead, Henry Stewart thought, as he left that morning’s news conference and returned to his own office. And it was a bona fide scoop, thanks to a taxi driver who’d been on the paper’s payroll for years.
Circulation had gone through the roof since the first killing just over three weeks ago, spiking on the mornings following the discovery of a new victim. Today’s sales figures would be good; people were avid for details of the case.
But nothing sold like fresh blood.
A handwritten note from his secretary was waiting for him on his desk. One of the governor’s press aides, a former Courier reporter, in fact, had telephoned during morning conference and would appreciate a call back. Says he might have something interesting for you, the note finished.
The news editor poured himself a black coffee from the pot that was kept permanently filled on his window ledge, before returning to his desk and dialling the number. The man at the other end picked up on the second ring.
‘Greg! It’s me, Henry. How are ya? You called.’
A few seconds later Henry Stewart stiffened, and screwed the receiver tighter into his ear. ‘Yes, I’m getting this, Greg. Go on.’
When the journalist spoke again, it was a one-word question. ‘Source?’
After a moment he chuckled. ‘Nah, neither would I. But you can’t blame a guy for trying. I’m happy to take your word on it, though, Greg. Just one more question – why are you being so good to me?’
Now he burst out laughing. ‘Always negotiate your price before you drop your tip, my friend. The old man won’t come through with that much gold but I’ll see what I can do. He’s in a pretty good mood at the moment, what with the upped circulation and syndication fees from that photo. I’ll get back to you. And Greg? Thanks.’
He disconnected the call before dialling a single digit. His secretary picked up in her office next door.
‘Sheila? Tell the old man I’m coming through with news; news to warm the cockles of his chilled and pickled heart.’
‘So how much does this guy want? What’s his source?’
Stewart grinned at the Courier’s editor-proprietor, who was sitting behind his vast teak desk like a wrinkled old terrapin. William Brinks’s appearance hadn’t altered a scrap in the ten years the news editor had worked for him.
‘As if he’d tell me, Bill. Or you, come to that. But from the way he was talking, I’d say it’s got to be someone in the White House. As for how much he asked for, if I told you, it’d probably put you in hospital with your third coronary. But I reckon he’ll be happy with a couple of hundred bucks and tickets to the top table at this year’s Miami Press Ball for him and his wife.’
‘He’s goddamn lucky I didn’t sue him for crooking his expenses when he was still with us,’ the old man replied. ‘But I suppose that’s OK. I’ve paid more for less.’ The editor pushed gold-rimmed glasses to the top of his bald, deeply tanned head. He always reminded Stewart of an elderly bank teller when he did that. An elderly bank teller with a loaded shotgun resting on his knees under the counter.
‘How you gonna run it, Henry?’
‘Front lead; big picture.’
‘Of the girl?’
The news editor nodded. ‘Of course. We’ll get one later today. Greg says she’s a real English rose, by all accounts. I have her name and where she’s staying. I doubt we’ll get a quote from her but I’ve already got a guy on the way over and whatever’s there to be got, he’ll get.’
‘Syndication rights? The UK papers will want it, too, remember.’
‘Jeez, Bill, I haven’t even written the damn story yet.’
‘And yet still the schmuck sits here in my office.’
Laughing, the news editor went back to his own desk and sat down in front of an old battered Corona, his companion ever since he graduated from journalism school twenty-five years earlier.
He took a sheet of blue carbon paper and sandwiched it between two blank pages of cheap A4, rolling them around the typewriter’s drum and snapping the spring-loaded restraining bar over the top two inches of paper.
Normally he let the chief sub-editor compose the headlines, but not this one. It had come to him even before he’d put the phone down on his contact not ten minutes earlier. He flexed his fingers the way he always did before writing a story. Then, with the crude typing style of journalists the world over, he began stabbing the keys with both forefingers.
A moment later, he was looking appreciatively at tomorrow morning’s headline.
‘AN ENGLISH ROSE FOR A KEYS KILLER.’
26
Stella didn’t know it, but Henry Stewart was putting the finishing touches to his story about her as she finished her breakfast of sliced melon, pineapple and French toast in the lodge’s air-conditioned dining room. She pushed her plate away and picked up Lee Foster’s note to read it again. He must have slid it under her door while she slept.
Dear Stella (if I may belatedly now call you that),
I owe you an apology, and a much better one than my half-assed attempt yesterday evening.
In mitigation for my rudeness, let me explain that I have just worked twenty-three days straight in LA on my last case and I got no sleep at all the night before I flew down here (it’s a long story but it was the only way to close the case).
So I was pretty frazzled when I got to the Keys, but I had no business at all taking it out on you.
This morning, after my first good night’s sleep in a month I woke up to a wire from the FBI in Washington. You weren’t kidding when you told me you knew a few things about psychopaths. Your former university tutor has vouched for you, and how. I was wrong to doubt your qualifications, in fact I can see now they could come in very useful. So, once again, I apologise.
I’ve gone to the local police headquarters for a full update on this Keys case, but I should be back mid-morning when I can fill you in too, and then we can get started. I’m sure we’ll work very well together.
Until later,
Lee
PS Grab yourself a copy of this morning’s Courier (they have them in reception) – there’s a not half-bad account of how he catches them before killing them, and profiles of all the victims so far. Still four – we were wrong about waking up to another. Maybe he struck out for once. He’s certainly had more luck so far than any killer has a right to.
Stella folded the note back into its envelope and put it in her bag. It was, she decided as she reached across the table for the Courier a waiter had brought her, a gracious apology as far as these things went and of course she would accept it. Anyway, it would be nice to be on better terms with the young FBI agent.
He was obviously intelligent and, now her anger with him had subsided, she had to admit to herself that he was . . . well, rather attractive. But as she shook her paper open, she firmly doused the faint excitement that she could feel stirring inside her. For all she knew, Agent Foster could be married.
But she didn’t think so.
A few minutes later Stella put her newspaper down and stared with unseeing eyes through the restaurant’s plate-glass windows towards the beach that lay beyond, all thoughts of Lee Foster gone.
The man she had come all this way to help track down was certainly methodical. The article she had just read reported that the nails he used to puncture his victims’ car tyres were of a uniformly heavy gauge and exactly three and a half inches long. He placed four of them, in pairs, leaning backwards into the treads of the tyre on the front passenger side of his chosen vehicle. As soon as it moved off, the tyre was pierced, running flat within a mile or two. Police speculated that the killer chose to sabotage a front tyre because the driver would ‘feel’ the puncture through the steering column as their car veered increasingly to one side, and be more likely to promptly pull over. It was possible to drive on a rear flat for some distance before realising there was a problem.
There was no sign of a struggle at any of the abandoned cars. The doors had usually been carefully locked, and the girls’ handbags and personal valuables had, in every case, been removed. It was impossible to say for certain, but it seemed the victims may have gone willingly with their killer.
Stella picked up the newspaper again and turned to the profiles of the dead women. They had been allocated a quarter of a page apiece, each mini-biography accompanied by a black-and-white high school photograph of the victim. Slightly eerily, all the girls were portrayed wearing the mortar board and gown of their graduation day and all but one clutched a furled diploma in its shiny embossed cardboard tube. The photos were relatively recent. The oldest victim, Stella noted, was twenty-four, the youngest nineteen.
The Way You Look Tonight Page 10