Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book)

by Roger Stelljes

  Those trips were always the way to cleanse any possible trail of him. He left the country on one passport and returned on another. It was those many identities that allowed him to easily do it, the one benefit of his previous profession, the access to identities and personal records. Those identities and a good contact in New York City who flew way under the radar, accepted only cash in small denominations and who could create any sort of needed fake identification from the original identity. She was expensive but well worth the price while also exceedingly discreet and caring not the least about what he needed the identities for.

  She allowed him to cover his tracks.

  That was the discipline of this.

  Discipline and keeping tightly to his timeline.

  To do that, he needed to keep his lunch date.

  That was his thought as he arrived at the office twenty minutes later. The small office was located in the basement level of a well-past-its-prime, dingy two-story office building filled with small obscure businesses. While not necessarily caring who was in the building, when he first toured it and saw the people hanging around it, he suspected that not all businesses located therein were fully law-abiding. That was good, he thought. This way people kept to themselves and weren’t nosy about what business their neighbor was engaged in. As a consequence, given the clientele and condition of the building, the owner was more than happy to agree to a six-month lease, especially for the extremely difficult-to-lease lower level space. With six months’ rent paid in cash, he took the keys and had seen the owner just once since. It was the perfect set-up, an office in a building where everybody minded their own business. Even better was the back entrance into the office located down a set of narrow steps from the alley. He could come and go unseen.

  The small office was split in two, a narrow rectangular reception area in the front and then a square office in the back. There was no receptionist to sit up front. No need, really; there wasn’t a phone line that he’d activated, nor was there any business that was being conducted. In the back office, there was a closet where he stored his various clothing selections. To the right of the closet door rested a tall, locked metal cabinet. He opened the cabinet doors and stored inside were the various wigs, beards, mustaches, glasses, contact lenses, wrist watches, bracelets and rings that he needed. There was also another box filled with burner phones ready for use and then to be discarded. Finally, on the top shelf was the bottle of Rohypnol pills.

  It was time to get ready for her.

  • • •

  Audrey kept checking her watch, waiting for lunchtime. When her computer clock turned over to 12:00, she bolted from her desk. She was pleased the morning rains had moved on and some warm spring air was sweeping into DC. The rain, followed by the sun, would accelerate the blooming of the cherry blossoms on the Mall.

  It had been six weeks and she hadn’t felt so alive in years, perhaps as many as ten years … the ten years since she’d escaped her ex-husband.

  It had been an awful and eventually abusive marriage.

  It started as mental abuse. There were the constant putdowns about how she looked, what she weighed and what interested her. She didn’t want to sit in front of the television and watch football all day on the weekend, nor did she want to be at his beck and call to fetch him beer and snacks. “Then what the hell are you good for?” he’d say.

  A few years into the marriage she was constantly asking herself what she was thinking when she married the lout. It was probably that there weren’t any other options presenting themselves at the time. She was approaching thirty years old, there had been few men to show interest, and while he was an over-the-road trucker, a bit crude and drank more than she liked, he showed up and seemed to offer the possibility of a future. That was despite the fact that he was the complete and total opposite of her. He didn’t like art, museums, books or culture. “But opposites attract, right?” she said to one of her skeptical friends.

  She took the plunge.

  Her friends were right to be skeptical.

  The marriage fizzled quickly. He was just mean and at the end, she could barely stand being around him. Finally, one morning, after he left for a four-day trip, she moved out.

  That was not the end of it.

  How dare she leave him and embarrass him? Who did she think she was? How could a woman who looked like she did think she could possibly walk away from him?

  She refused to come back.

  “Oh really?” he answered at the hotel room door before he stepped inside, slammed it closed and beat her. He practically dragged her and her suitcase out of the hotel, back to their house where he proceeded to continue the beating. And it continued for three weeks on end until she was calling in sick to work, no longer able to hide the bruises.

  She had no family of her own left, having been an only child and her parents were long deceased. Finally, she hid at a friend’s house for a few days, got herself together, found a family lawyer who helped her with the police and then through a difficult divorce. Her ex-husband did not go quietly. There was a restraining order in place, but she didn’t perceive him as restrained.

  When it was over, when the lawyer put the final decree in her hands, he had advice for her. “I’ve taken the measure of him. I’ve seen it before and I don’t think he’s going to stop.”

  “What should I do?”

  “The only thing I think you can do. Leave Tacoma and get as far away from here as you can.”

  A week later she moved to Washington DC and in the ten years since she’d rebuilt her life.

  For those long ten years, she’d essentially ignored men, in part because she was healing and in part because they didn’t often pay attention to her anyway. But now that had changed.

  “Hi, James,” she waved to the gray-bearded gentlemen in the black sport coat and gray slacks looking at the panels of the Vietnam Memorial.

  “Hello, Audrey,” he answered happily, taking her hands in his and leaning in to kiss her, which she happily accepted. “You look so lovely.”

  Audrey blushed. She’d worn a light blue sleeveless spring dress under her navy blue blazer and wedge sandals that made her a little taller. “You’re so kind.”

  “So, how long do you have?”

  “I have to be back at 2:00 P.M.,” Audrey replied.

  • • •

  “Only two hours?” Rubens replied with concern. “Then, my dear, we best make good use of our time together. Please, start by showing me the panel for your uncle.” Audrey’s uncle was on panel nine of the memorial. From the panel, they made their way along the mall, talking and enjoying the sun.

  He’d identified Audrey nine months ago while walking the Smithsonian Museum of American Art over the lunch hour. She seemed like a possibility; with the wide hips and the large breasts, she had the look. The woman was the right type physically. But she had to be the right type mentally and that was always a little harder to determine.

  So what made a woman right?

  A woman had to be right physically. She had to fit the look of a Rubens woman.

  Then the woman had to be a loner.

  The target couldn’t have a big social circle because once you started becoming close, when things seemed to be getting serious, when a woman started to feel a man might be important in their life, then they had friends and family they wanted to introduce you to. Friends and family created witnesses, someone who could and would point a finger if a friend came up dead. No, if that happened, if he ended up meeting friends and family he simply walked away cold.

  That happened once in a while, including twice in DC.

  He couldn’t risk it, so no matter how perfect the woman might have been, if there was a potential witness he just walked away.

  If she was to be perfect, she had to have interests he was well-versed in. What he was doing he couldn’t fake, so their interests had to align.

  As he’d followed Audrey in the early days, she often walked the many Smithsonian museums, frequent
ed bookstores and enjoyed art galleries. She bought her groceries from a small store on the corner near her townhouse and cooked her meals nightly, often while sipping wine. When he observed her at night, she often sat at home reading books or watching movies. She was a woman with few friends or social acquaintances who liked the arts and lived alone and fit the physical profile.

  Audrey was right in his wheelhouse.

  Finally, the woman had to be interested in men—romantically interested. He didn’t want overly eager or experienced women. Rather he wanted shy, reserved women who were somewhat inexperienced with men and just a bit slow to trust, if not just slightly skeptical of his initial overture. It was their trust he needed and wanted to earn. He wanted them to invite him in, to start to take him into their lives and to let their guard down. That was what made the hunt all the more invigorating.

  That was also why he initially walked away from Audrey.

  In conducting his Internet research on Audrey, he found the police records of the domestic abuse and record of the divorce back in the state of Washington. He surmised she would be very leery of men and that she would be difficult to get close enough to.

  He figured it would take a lot of work.

  He decided to pass.

  So he did. He moved on to other potential women.

  Then one day two months later he was in a bookstore when Audrey walked in. Not only that, she came down the American History aisle, the aisle he was standing in. He was holding a book about FDR while discreetly scouting Lisa White twenty feet away. Audrey, as it turned out, was interested in a book about Eleanor Roosevelt.

  He took a shot.

  “She was an amazing lady,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, surprised.

  “Eleanor Roosevelt, she was quite a historical figure.”

  “Oh my… oh yes… yes, she was,” Audrey replied awkwardly.

  He pressed on. “I was at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and saw a photo of her in a plane flown by a black pilot in 1940. It gave me a greater appreciation of her. At that point in our history, for the First Lady to take a ride in a plane piloted by an African American, that sent a very powerful, powerful message. It’s why I was looking at this book on FDR. This book goes into quite a bit of detail about her relationship with the President.”

  “You’re so right,” she replied a little more warmly.

  The Smithsonian mention and a knowledgeable comment on Eleanor Roosevelt and suddenly he was in.

  That was six weeks ago.

  It took a while to get her to open up but kindness and a gentle, mild approach had slowly melted the wall she had up. There was dinner at her townhouse two weeks ago. She let him kiss her for the first time ten days ago and again when they met for a quiet dinner five days later.

  “I was so happy to see you today,” Audrey said as their lunch date came to an end. “And I am so excited that you can come over on Wednesday night.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “If that’s what you have to do, then by God, you do it.”

  Mac sat back in his chair, arms behind his head and took in the contents of the whiteboard… or in reality, whiteboards, plural.

  It had been a long day.

  There had been the introduction to Rubens in the morning, the digestion of the FBI summaries, the meetings with the FBI team lead by Galloway and Delmonico. Then in the afternoon were the lengthy video conferences with Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles that lasted into the early evening. By the time those were complete, Coolidge and his people were off in the streets with their updates.

  The day had been an onslaught of information.

  He’d felt overloaded as it was all coming at him.

  That was why he used the whiteboards.

  He was a visual person and learner. The greatest thing for him academically in college and law school was PowerPoint. When teachers put everything up for him to see he could just soak it in. As a good student, he undertook the tried and true steps for academic success. He went to every class, completed every reading assignment and took copious notes in class. Despite all of that, it was always best when he could just see it up on a chalkboard, whiteboard or screen and see everything laid out in front of him. He simply learned and retained information better that way.

  That was what he was doing as the clock approached midnight, sitting with Wire and Coolidge, soaking it all in.

  It was really the first time with the case that he’d been able to do it.

  “Tell me about Lisa White again,” Mac asked Coolidge.

  “Lisa White was forty-one years old. She’s lived in DC for fifteen years,” Coolidge stated, sitting back in a chair of his own, sipping from a bottle of water. “She was originally a native of Greensboro, North Carolina.”

  “Does she have family?” Wire asked.

  Linc shook his head. “Not much. Her parents are long deceased. She has a sister who lives in Durango, Colorado with whom she wasn’t close. They hadn’t spoken in probably a year. They were ten years apart in age and never bonded, according to the sister.”

  “What about her social circle here?”

  “It doesn’t seem to have been terribly big. We went through her cell phone records and there weren’t many calls to speak of. There was one woman who turned up a few times but it turns out it was who White purchased her painting supplies from. They weren’t close. We’re still looking deeper into the phone records to see if anything pops. That includes calls to the work phone.”

  “How about work? What did they say there?” Wire asked.

  “I went with one of my guys and we interviewed everyone Lisa White worked with at Georgetown. She worked as an administrator in the admissions department.”

  “What did you learn?” Mac asked, having pushed himself out of his chair and now standing at the whiteboard, his back to Coolidge.

  “Lisa White was a model employee. Superbly reliable, almost never missed work and had seven weeks of unused vacation. Yet…”

  “Yet?” Mac asked, turning, looking back to Linc.

  “It’s as if they didn’t know her.”

  “How is that possible?” Wire asked.

  “According to the staff, White was quiet, kept to herself and wasn’t one to share much about her life. She showed up on time, worked diligently, did her job quietly and effectively and then when the day was over she went home. Everyone there liked her, said she was pleasant to be around and talk to, but nobody really knew her. Lisa White never went out for a drink with anyone there. Not one person there had ever been invited to her house nor had she ever accepted an invite to any of theirs. She was often a no-show at the office holiday party and if she did show, she didn’t stay long.”

  “In other words a total loner and introvert who loved to paint, tend to her plants and read books,” Wire suggested.

  “Pretty much. However, they did say she seemed a little different recently.”

  “Let me guess, someone new in her life?” Mac suggested.

  “They think there might have been because she seemed to have been happier as of late. She was dressing a little nicer with newer, more flattering clothes. There was a new, more updated hairstyle and light applications of makeup. She’d even mentioned something about dieting, which was something she’d never said before. There were more smiles and she was even engaging more with some of her co-workers.”

  “As if she was a little more confident?” Mac speculated.

  “She had the glow,” Wire added.

  “Yes,” Linc replied, gesturing to Wire. “Two women she worked with said exactly that. She had a glow and that suggested to them, at least, that she had someone in her life.”

  “Did anyone ask her?” Mac prompted.

  Coolidge shook his head. “Another woman, Lynette Waller, who works in admissions did ask her what had changed, that she seemed different in a really good way. She tried to get her to open up but Waller said ‘that just wasn’t Lisa
.’ She said White didn’t really say—she just said she decided to make some changes in her life. So while White never admitted it, this Lynette and a few other folks thought she had met someone.”

  “So there should be some evidence of that,” Wire mused.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Mac replied. “Our guy hasn’t been caught over his ten-year run. Why? He leaves no trace behind. No descriptions, no names and little to no forensic evidence—and the evidence we do find, like evidence of using a roofie, he doesn’t care about. Even more importantly he is a predator, an expert on preying on women,” Mac answered. “And not just any kind of woman, either.”

  “Meaning?” Wire asked.

  “I’ve been reading through the case files on these murders going all the way back to Boston. These women are pretty much all alike.”

  “Yeah, Rubenesque,” Coolidge and Wire responded in unison.

  “They’re more than just that,” Mac answered. “He requires the physical appearance to be right for sure but he goes deeper, much deeper than that. Wire and I talked about it this morning. It’s who they are. They’re all introverts—shy, reserved, whatever term you want to use, those are the kinds of women he targets. These are women who are not prone to trusting men, or even women for that matter. They don’t open up to anyone. Yet what is scary is that our guy—”

  “Gets them to open up somehow,” Wire answered. “Mac, that takes patience and time. It’s not a one-week kind of thing.”

  “No, it’s a week after week after week kind of thing,” Mac answered and then looked back to the whiteboard, taking in the information not only on White, but on all of the victims. He started nodding.

  “What?” Wire asked.

  “We have to go really deep on Lisa White,” Mac replied and then went for a phone, “Don, good, you’re still here. Can you step in here?”

  A minute later, a yawning Senior Agent Galloway stepped into the conference room.

  “Where are we at on Lisa White’s financial history?” Mac asked.

  Galloway handed a sheath of papers to Mac as he took a drink from his Diet Coke. “That’s all her financial information.”