Bannerman's Law

by John R. Maxim

  “By all means,” Weinberg nodded.

  Carleton Dunville’s expression barely changed as he sorted through the pages. “Did you open the safe for them?” he asked Ruiz.

  ”I opened it.” Barbara Weinberg said, her attention still on the windows.

  Dunville found her biography at the bottom of the stack. Her credentials. “Ah, yes,” he said. He tilted his chin in the direction of the fax machine. “And the point of that vandalism, I assume, is to keep me from printing out the number you dialed.”

  “Until you've had time to ... regain your perspective. Yes.”

  Almost a smile. “About what was done to Henry, you mean?” A small shake of the head. “You over-estimate my attachment to him. This, however, is another matter entirely.”

  “Nothing will come of it,” Weinberg said, “if no harm comes to us.”

  Dunville returned to the first cover sheet. “And if it does, I gather, a person named CJP is to hunt down and kill Miss Ruiz and myself.”

  “It's not necessarily one person. And CJP only picks up the tab.”

  “Ah, yes.” Dunville read the message more carefully. “The recipient of these faxes will avenge you.”

  “That's the idea, yes.”

  Dunville counted the biographies that had been transmitted. There were more than fifty including those of the Streicher-Weinbergs. Fifty men, a few women. Who they were before, and who they are now. “May I ask,” another deep sigh, “how you knew to look for these?”

  ”I didn't,” Weinberg lied. ”I was looking for anything at all that might compromise you.”

  Doubt flicked across Dunville’s eyes. He put it aside. “This box number. Six One Seven. You didn't, by any chance, send these papers to one of those Mailbox USA franchises, did you? Where some clerk could read them?”

  Weinberg shook his head. “They probably haven't been read yet at all. The machine on the other end has a confidential mailbox. My friend has to punch in a code before the machine prints them out. He will do so on Monday morning, first thing.”

  Dunville considered this. Weinberg could see his mind working. Could he possibly, Dunville was wondering, get the phone company to give him that fax number, arrange elsewhere to have it traced, get reliable people there in time to intercept Weinberg's mystery friend, take the printout from him, kill him, all within approximately eighteen hours? A long shot. And even then, what is to keep whoever he'd send from making his own use of those papers? And, of course, if he failed . . .

  “Well,” he shrugged, eyebrows up. “Consider me compromised. What now, Mr. Streicher?”

  “It's Mr. Weinberg.”

  The eyebrows went higher. “Your hope, am I to assume, is to proceed as before?”

  “It's more than a hope. We have a contract. All this is to make sure you honor it.”

  “Although,” Dunville folded his arms, “at more favorable terms, I assume.”

  Weinberg shook his head. “We made a deal. I'll keep it if you will.”

  “All of it? To the letter?”

  “Pretty much.” Weinberg hefted the Ingram. “Except we'd hold on to these for a while. And we move into the Members' Wing where we won't be so isolated.”

  Dunville started to object. Barbara Weinberg interrupted him. “There's a car leaving,” she said to her husband. “It's that Fiero.”

  Weinberg moved to the window, glanced out. He saw the USC sticker as it passed.

  “Is that the girl's car?” he asked.

  “And the girl.”

  In the trunk, Weinberg presumed, wrapped in plastic. He forced the vision from his mind. His wife could not.

  “What will he do with her?” she asked, her jaw set.

  Dunville hesitated. ”I am . . . sorry about that. More than you know.”

  “Answer me. How will he dispose of her?” Her weapon swung toward his chest. But Weinberg said her name, gently, and she returned to her window.

  “She'll get a proper burial,” Dunville answered all the same. “She won't be dismembered or thrown in a hole if that's what you're asking. Please, for all our sakes, leave the matter in my hands.”

  “And Henry?” Weinberg asked, glad of another subject.

  “That as well,” Dunville said. “He will need . . . long-term care.” He glanced at Ruiz, meeting her eyes. Ruiz answered with a tiny nod.

  “What do you think?” Weinberg asked.

  They had walked out onto the terrace. He stood facing the ocean, she with her back to it. Both held their weapons, thumbs on their safeties, within the folds of their robes.

  “They'll dump her someplace,” she said. “Make it look like something else.”

  He was silent for a long moment. ”I meant . . .”

  ”I know what you meant.” Still, she waited before answering. “Who is CJP?”

  “Nobody. I made it up.”

  She thought so. “Will anyone see those pages?”

  “No.”

  “If he suspects that, we're dead meat.”

  “You saw those names. He can't just suspect. He'd have to know.”

  “Then he'll try to track that machine.”

  “It's reached through a relay. He would have to find two. And the one in Santa Fe is wired with thermite.”

  She allowed herself a smile of appreciation. “Even so,” she said, “he's got to try to get them back.”

  “Perhaps not. Surely, he'll look for a way in which he can safely kill us. I can't think of one. In the end, he will probably accept that we have as much to lose as he does if we try to go our own way. It's a standoff.”

  “What about Nellie?”

  “What about her?”

  “We can't just leave her here. Dunville already wonders how you knew to look for those records. He knows we've been spending time with her. And he knows she saw that girl.”

  “I'll . . . make it part of the deal. He doesn't touch her.”

  She shook her head. “That would remove any doubt. He'd give Nellie the same stuff Henry gave the girl and he'd find out not only that she can talk but what she knows. Then,one day soon, we'd hear that she died in her sleep.”

  “Bonnie . . .”

  “Barbara. Stick with the program.”

  “She's a very old woman. We'll hear that soon no matter what.”

  ”I like her.”

  “Well”—he shrugged—“so do I, but . . .”

  Barbara Weinberg turned, staring at him. He tried not to look. She waited. He began to fidget. At last, she saw his chest rise and she heard the low growl she was waiting for.

  “The things I do for love,” he muttered.

  6

  The next afternoon. Westport, Connecticut.

  Paul Bannerman, one hand resting on the shoulder of Carla Benedict, walked with her, slowly, along the road that ran parallel to the town's public beach.

  They had it largely to themselves. At water's edge, a young woman dismantled a windsurfer, the late April breeze having faded to a whisper. One couple walked with a golden retriever. In a week, the beach would be closed to pets. Parks Department vehicles would begin combing the sand for their leavings and for the winter's flotsam.

  The sun seemed to hover in the western sky. Carla, Bannerman saw, could not keep her eyes off it. He could only imagine what she must have been seeing there.

  “Would you like me to go with you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  She was a small woman, no larger than her sister, of whom he had only seen snapshots. Same color hair, almost bronze, but worn in a pixie cut while Lisa wore her hair longer. Seen together, in flattering light, one would guess that Carla was no more than five or six years older. But he knew that Carla had turned forty barely a week before her sister was murdered.

  She was crying softly. Bannerman had never seen Carla cry. Not once in more than fifteen years. Not even when she took the call from California. But here, arriving at this beach, she had collapsed, utterly, in unimagined pain. He had held her, tightly, against his ches
t, enduring the fingernails that dug into his flesh, feeling the deep, wracking sobs that welled from so far within her that he thought her lungs must surely burst. But she was better now. Not yet in control. But better.

  He glanced at his watch. Her flight would leave in less than three hours. Molly Farrell had the tickets. They would meet her at Mario's, perhaps get Carla to try to eat something, then leave from there.

  ”I want you to stick with Molly,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “Except for private times, like seeing your father, I've asked her not to leave you alone.”

  “Seeing my father is when I'll need her,” she said, swallowing. She gestured toward the horizon with her chin. “He's sitting out there, right now, wondering why it couldn't have been me.”

  Bannerman chewed his lip. “Don't talk that way,” he said. “I'm sure it's not true.”

  She didn't argue. But she knew better.

  “Paul?”

  He waited.

  “Lisa liked me.”

  “I'm sure she did. And so do we.”

  “No,” Carla Benedict said firmly. “You accept me. You tolerate me. Lisa liked me.”

  Bannerman stopped walking. He turned her so that she had to look at him. “At least four of us, me included,” he reminded her, “would be long dead if not for you. We do love you, Carla, each in our own way. There's not a thing in the world we wouldn't do for you.”

  She leaned her face into his chest. A shudder rose from deep inside her. He felt new tears soaking through his shirt.

  “Will you . . .” She swallowed. “Will you help me find the son of a bitch?”

  She had asked him that before, within an hour of the phone call from a neighbor of her father. He answered only that he would do what he could. Make some phone calls. In the meantime, see to her needs.

  He wanted to help her. They all did. They would have liked nothing better than to find and slowly dismember the animal who had done this to her sister. Raped her. Strangled her. Left her body, nude, spread-eagled near an off-ramp of the Ventura Freeway in Los Angeles, a grotesque smile cut into her face, just as he'd done to six other young women, all college students, over the past two years.

  But this was a police matter. The police had a task force, organized after the third of these murders. The FBI had one of its own. Between them they had the experience and the tools. They had the psychological profiles of past serial killers, their behavior patterns, they had all the accumulated physical evidence, forensic data, the killer's DNA fingerprint from his semen, all on a computer. Bannerman's people had nothing. They would get in the way.

  “I'll see what I can learn,” he told her. “If we can help, we will.”

  “You could call Lesko,” she said into his chest. “He probably knows about things like this.”

  “We'll see. I'll ask him.”

  No harm in asking, though he did not think it would do much good. Lesko had been a good street cop, but he'd mostly worked narcotics. New York, as far as Bannerman could recall, had never had a serial killer. Not that one would necessarily be noticed there. They all seemed to come from the West Coat. And Lesko, in any case, was now living in Zurich.

  Still, Lesko had made a national reputation for himself. Bannerman had never met a policeman who hadn't heard a story or two about him. He might well have a connection Or two on the Los Angeles force. Someone, at the very least, who could help keep an eye on Carla. Lesko would probably want to know in any case.

  “Listen . . .” Carla fingered his lapels. “About Susan . . .”

  Susan Lesko. Lesko's daughter.

  “I'm sorry I gave you so much shit about her.”

  “Forget it.” He shook his head. “That's in the past.”

  “She's been great about this. Everybody's been great.”

  It was Susan who'd made the flight reservations. And suggested that he send Molly with her. And had gone to Carla's house to help her pack the things she'd need. All this in spite of the fact that Carla made no secret of resenting her presence in Westport, telling him how foolish he'd been to take up with Susan, an outsider, unproven, untested, no skills. But Susan, over the past year, had more than proven herself. Everyone had acknowledged that but Carla. Until now.

  “Maybe Susan's okay,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don't tell her I said so.”

  Bannerman made a face.

  “I'll tell her myself. When I get back.”

  “That would be nice,” he said. He steered her toward the parking lot where he'd left the car.

  “Paul?”

  ”Umm?”

  “Did you mean what you said?”

  “About what?”

  “That you love me. Except when I make you crazy, I mean.”

  “Even then.” He leaned and kissed the top of her head.

  “Don't take this wrong, but if Susan ever dumps you . . .”

  “I'll come crawling,” he said.

  7

  It was half past nine in the evening, California time, when the TWA 747 touched down at Los Angeles International Airport. Molly Farrell, a tall woman, lean, athletic, gentle eyes, a. face that was more often described as good rather than pretty, left Carla to wait for the bags and went directly to the Avis desk where she signed the rental agreement on a blue midsize sedan.

  Carla, left to that task, would have rented a Porsche or a Mercedes. There was no real reason not to, Molly supposed. No need to avoid attention. It was more force of habit. As Carla had argued, not without merit, that in this town a plain blue Chevrolet would stand out more than a Porsche. Most of the late-model Chevrolets, she said, were probably unmarked police cars.

  Nor would Molly, given the choice, have reserved a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Too much people-watching there. Too many eyes wondering who you are and whether you're famous. But Susan had made the reservations. Paul didn't correct her. He probably decided that there's no harm in that either. It's centrally located between Lisa's apartment and her father's house. And it's pleasant enough that it might take some of the edge off of Carla's gloom.

  Molly drove, heading north along the San Diego Freeway. Ten minutes later, approaching Santa Monica Boulevard, she signaled a right turn. She could see Century City, on the edge of Beverly Hills, still glowing red in reflection of the western horizon.

  “No,” Carla pointed. “Go straight.”

  Molly hesitated. “Sherman Oaks?” Where her father lived.

  “And Woodland Hills,” she said.

  Where her sister was found. “Wouldn't you rather get some rest first? It's after midnight, our time.”

  Carla shook her head. “Let's get it over with.”

  Approaching the exit ramp for Sherman Oaks, Molly signaled again. And once more, Carla waved her forward. “Take the Ventura Freeway westbound,” she said.

  “It will only hurt you,” Molly said gently. “And there won't be anything left to see.”

  Carla realized that. And that it would hurt. But she wanted, however irrationally, to feel the presence of her sister. Perhaps she was still alive when the killer brought her there. Perhaps there was still something of her in the air. “It's the third exit,” she said.

  Carla saw the place at once. A highway patrolman had been stationed there, with his car, hazard lights blinking. Farther down the slope she saw an area marked off with yellow tape. Amber utility lights blinked at either end. Molly pulled off the shoulder of the exit ramp, stopping behind the patrol car. She had barely placed the car in park when the young patrolman in his early twenties, stepped from his car and began to wave them on. Carla was out her door almost as quickly, her wallet in hand. Molly watched as the patrolman shined his light on her Connecticut driver's license and on a cropped snapshot hat identified her as the sister of the Campus Killer's seventh victim.

  The young patrolman did not know quite what to do. He seemed, to Molly, to be trying to reason with her, perhaps repeating what she herself had said, that it could only hurt. But in the
end he turned with her, shining his light toward the crime scene, walking slowly. Molly watched.

  The beam washed over a system of squares, marked off with string, where forensic specialists had done a grid search. It settled on a particular spot. There was nothing there now. No outline of a body. But Molly could see where an oblong ring had been flattened by the shoes of policemen, an ambulance crew, a photographer, a coroner. She could see the tire tracks of several vehicles.

  They were coming back now, the patrolman's light marking Carla's path. Suddenly she stopped, looking down. She bent over, her fingers brushing something in the grass. She stayed, for a long moment, then stood erect and touched the young man's arm in thanks. He took her hand, gripping it as if to comfort her. He watched her go.

  Seven victims, thought Molly. She wondered what the young man would have thought if he knew that the woman he was treating so gently had killed at least three times that number over the years. So had most of them, for that matter. Except that, as a rule, they never killed for pleasure. Satisfaction, now and then, but not pleasure. But in this case, any one of them, even Paul, she suspected, would make an exception.

  Molly started the engine. “You okay?” she asked.

  “I'm fine,” Carla answered distantly.

  “What did you find in the grass?”

  “What?” Carla blinked. She was someplace else. “Oh. Those were footprints. They took casts of them.”

  Molly exited the ramp, then swung back onto the Freeway, going east.

  “He wore rubbers,” Carla told her. “Totes.”

  “You could see that? At night?”

  “That kid told me. The cop.”

  ”0h.”

  ”I could feel him, though. I could almost see him.”

  “Ah . . .” Steady, Carla. “What else did he say?”

  It took a moment for the question to register. Carla shook her head as if to clear it. “They recovered her car today.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far from here. In a parking lot at Pierce Junior College.”

  Another campus. Molly frowned. “Which means that's where the killer . . . found her?”

  ”I guess/’