by Regina Fagan
“I guess this definitely lets the Grant girl’s husband off the hook,” Lawrence said.
“He was never on it,” Kinsella said. “Grant didn’t murder his wife. I knew that right away. How could he have done it?” He looked at Lawrence, as if begging reassurance yet knowing his partner was thinking the same thing he was. “Maybe we’re wrong, Phil. This could be a coincidence.”
Lawrence frowned at him. “And you really believe that, John? All things considered thus far?”
No, of course he didn’t believe that. Every instinct told Kinsella these two murders were no coincidence. Ann Heald and Kelley Grant were linked. What he had to figure out was how, before they found another young woman with a dark blue silk scarf knotted around her neck, before he had to admit that a serial killer was at work in his city.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
Christine was packing for her next flight when the telephone rang. She dropped clothing on the bed and went to the kitchen to pick up the call, hoping it wouldn’t be Ted again, although it was not likely he would use that number.
She had finally made the break with him, telling him that she did not want to see him again. He had not been happy. He had argued, begged for another chance, and promised her everything but the world itself, if she would reconsider. It had been maddening, and Christine had found herself wondering all the while what she had ever seen in this guy. Good looking, yes. Wealthy, yes. But a wimp when one came down to it. What had she ever been thinking?
When she had gotten home last evening, tired and worn out from arguing all afternoon, there had been flowers and candy waiting for her, followed by more calls last night that she had allowed her voicemail to pick up before she deleted them.
“Hello?” She answered this call hesitantly, thinking it very well might be Ted trying the other number, and too weary to argue further with him.
“Christine? Is that you?”
“Yes, this is Christine. Who is this?”
“It’s Luther, dear.”
Luther . . . who the hell was Luther? Calling her “dear”? “I’m sorry, but Luther who?”
“Luther Ross-Wilkerson. Have you forgotten me already? You phoned me back Friday. I tried to reach you yesterday, but you weren’t home. Somebody else answered your phone, said you were out.”
Ted, obviously, while she was shopping. Funny, he hadn’t said anything about a call he’d picked up. “Oh, Mr. Wilkerson! Of course, all right. Yes, now I remember. You left a message for me at the airport. I can’t place you, although your name is familiar. How do you know me?”
He laughed softly. “Have you forgotten Flight 1005 from London so quickly, Christine? The turbulence and the spilled coffee?”
Oh dear heavens, of course. The man with the weird blue eyes, the man who kept staring at her. But why in the world was he calling her? What did he want? Did he mean to make trouble for her now over the accident with the coffee pot and his stained clothing?
“Ah, okay, yes Mr. Wilkerson, of course I remember. I’ve just had a bit of a messed up weekend and I’m a little jumbled today.”
“I understand. My weekend has not been going very well either thus far. Anyway, please call me Luther.”
“If there is some problem over the clothing, I can’t help you, but the airline will reimburse you. I explained that to you. I logged the incident, and you can file a claim.”
“No, Christine, this is a personal call. Forget the clothing, no problem with that. I wanted to see you again. And I was hoping we might get together. Perhaps this week? Would that be convenient for you?”
Wonderful. Just what she wanted. Get rid of high maintenance Ted and then pick up another to take his place. “Actually, Luther, I’m packing right now and leaving tomorrow on another trip,” she told him.
“Where to this time?”
“Back to London again, and then Paris and Munich and on, an around-the-world trip we call it. I’ll be gone ten days. I work that fairly regularly. But thank you for thinking of me, and asking me.” Maybe he would hear the unspoken tone of her voice that was telling him she wasn’t interested in seeing him again. Or ever. This guy was definitely not anyone she wanted to get to know. There had been something about him . . .
“No need to thank me, Christine. I’ll just call you again, okay?, when you get back home.”
He certainly was a nervy one. “No, please don’t call me again. I really don’t think we should see each other. I’m not dating anyone right now and don’t want to. I really am not interested in seeing anybody right now.”
He was so silent then that Christine wondered if he’d hung up on her. But no. “Don’t do this to me again, please!”
Now what was he talking about? “What? Do what again? I don’t know what you are talking about, Mr. Wilkerson. And really, I am busy now and I am going to hang up, okay? It was nice of you to think of me, but I don’t want to see you again or go out with you. Please accept what I’m saying.”
She heard him taking a deep breath, letting it out again before he spoke once more. “All right, just think about it, okay? I’m sorry. Have a pleasant trip.” And he disconnected the call.
Christine went back to her packing, feeling very cranky and upset, first over Ted and now over Luther. She locked her flight bag, and set it on the floor near her bedroom door. Thank God she had a job that allowed her to escape, to get away from her problems here, even for a short time. Distance always helped her to look at things that were troubling her from a different perspective. And she had plenty to think about this time.
Who was this Luther and what in the world was he talking about? Had he confused her with someone else he knew? Or was he unbalanced? He was strange, scary. She definitely did not want anything to do with him.
Maybe with luck, after a few days, both he and Ted would put her out of mind. She didn’t want or need to hear from either one of them again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MONDAY MORNING – OCTOBER 10th
By Monday morning John Kinsella had one lead: a receipt in Ann Heald’s purse had given him the name of a cab company and driver who had picked her up at the Hyatt Regency on Saturday night. The man remembered Ann; she had chatted with him about Portland as he drove her to the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
Ann Heald’s blood alcohol level had been very high. She’d had a lot to drink somewhere that last night, and it didn’t take Kinsella and Lawrence long to trace her steps to the Top of the Mark. Once there, they were fortunate to find the waitress, Lenore, who had served Ann’s table.
She studied a picture Kinsella showed her. “Oh yes, I remember her. A very nice woman. She said she was from Portland. Oh God, she was murdered?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Was she alone, Lenore?”
“Well, yes, she came in alone and just nursed along a glass of wine. But she didn’t stay alone. There was this man who was also by himself. He had come in a little while before this lady. He was sitting near her, and I don’t quite know how it happened, but next thing I knew he was sitting with her. Maybe they knew each other.”
“Did it look like he had been waiting for her?”
“No, I don’t think so, because as I said he was already up here. I’d served him earlier. And she was alone long enough to order her wine and almost finish it before he joined her. And he was close enough to see her when she first got here if he had been waiting for her to come.”
Lenore continued. “I passed by her table a few times, to see if she needed anything else. She was a slow drinker, just taking her time with the wine and eating the crackers and nuts, and listening to the piano. The man was alone at his table. Then we got very busy, but I noticed suddenly on my rounds that he had moved to this lady’s table. He called me over and ordered more drinks for both of them.”
“Did you recognize the man?” Lawrence asked her. “Ever see him up here before?”
Lenore shook her head. “No, sorry, I didn’t. Maybe someone else up here would. I’ve only
worked here about three months. But I can tell you he was a classy type of guy. Very well dressed, nice looking, and polite.”
“About how old would you say he was, Lenore?” Kinsella asked.
She thought about that a minute or two. “Oh, maybe in his forties somewhere, or late thirties. Not old, not super young. Good looking though, tall and dark.”
“Did you notice how long these two people remained in the lounge?”
“Almost until closing time. I know I served several more drinks to their table. But they weren’t drunk or noisy or anything. They were both very nice, talking a lot, seemed to be enjoying themselves.”
“How was the bill paid?”
“With cash. He paid it. Left me a very big tip, too, I’ll say. Very generous.”
Kinsella’s spirits dropped slightly. He’d hoped there would be a credit card trail. That, however, was probably asking for too much, especially if this guy was his killer and had Ann as his target. He asked one more question. “Did you see them leave together?”
Lenore shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I did not. He paid the bill, and about that time I was very busy clearing up with other people. I just noticed that suddenly they were both gone, and so were so many other folks. I cleared off their table. But no, unfortunately I didn’t see either one of them leave here. “
“Would you be able to come to police headquarters and work with an artist to see if we can come up with a good likeness of him?” Phil Lawrence asked her. “We can send a car for you.”
“Yes, of course, whenever you want me there,” Lenore said. “Do you think he really killed this nice woman?”
“We don’t know that,” Kinsella told her. “We know very little right now and we’re trying to find out as much as we can about Doctor Heald’s activities last night. But what you’ve told us has been very helpful, and we’re grateful for that.”
They made arrangements for the girl to work with an artist, thanked her, and left.
“So, we have a man, and with luck we should soon have a face,” Kinsella said as they walked to their car. “If only we could have found someone who had seen them leaving together.”
“If anybody did,” Phil added. There had been few people in the lobby at the time Ann and perhaps her friend had left the hotel.
“It sounds like this guy deliberately hit on her,” Kinsella said. “Maybe he was stalking her. And I don’t think she called another cab back to the Hyatt. I’ve got somebody checking into that, but we know the driver who took her over here didn’t come back for her. Lenore said she was enjoying herself with this guy, so she just might have accepted a ride after they left.”
“Ann Heald was not a bar pick-up type,” Lawrence said. “She was behaving totally out of character, from what we know of her. The drinking and all. This was a highly respected professional woman. So whoever this guy is, he must really have impressed her.”
“Kelley Grant’s friends all say she’d never have picked anybody up either,” Kinsella added. “So we are looking for a charmer, a good-looking guy with a special something he uses on women. He comes across as fully trustworthy and respectable.”
Kinsella climbed back into their car, thinking about countless serial killers over the years. Way too many of them fit that description: charming, handsome, intelligent, and able to lure countless unsuspecting women to their deaths. Could history be repeating itself once again, this time here in San Francisco?
***
TUESDAY EVENING – OCTOBER 11th
In the studio apartment on Chestnut Street where he had lived since his divorce, John Kinsella studied the composite that had been made with the help of Lenore from the Mark Hopkins Hotel. It showed him a man with well-sculptured cheekbones and straight black hair combed back from a high forehead. His eyes, so Lenore had stressed to the artist, were a brilliant blue. It was an unusual face, Kinsella thought, handsome and striking certainly, yet somehow repellent.
So now he had a face. But whose face? The killer’s, or just some guy who’d spent a few hours talking to and drinking with a pretty woman on a Saturday night? How much of this was coincidence? How much was fact? Maybe this guy just went home or back to his hotel room alone when the evening ended. Maybe Ann was accosted on the street when she came out alone in the dark.
Was her death connected to Kelley’s Grant’s death? The medical examiner certainly seemed to think so, if only on the basis of the preliminary lab reports they had thus far. And both women had been strangled with identical dark blue silk scarves, a very popular brand made in France and sold once in Neiman Marcus but not in stock right now.
Kinsella was still up against a brick wall. He had his composite and little else. No one who had been on duty at the Mark Hopkins late Saturday night and early Sunday could recall seeing either Ann Heald or her companion leaving the hotel. Nor had there been any taxi pickups from the Mark Hopkins later in the night. With a reduced staff on duty after midnight, Kinsella knew it was possible that the lobby had been deserted when Ann and their suspect left the hotel. And nobody resembling the man with the strange blue eyes was registered as a guest there either, ruling out the possibility that Ann had gone with him to a room in the hotel.
That really didn’t hold water in any event, since Ann, like Kelley, had not been killed where she was found. Both bodies had been moved. They had both been killed elsewhere, yet it was just as improbable to consider that Ann had been killed in a hotel room and carried out as it was that Kelley Grant’s husband had murdered her in their apartment and taken her body miles away to dump.
Frustrated, Kinsella pulled a cold beer and a block of cheese from the refrigerator, and hunted through the kitchen until he found a package of crackers to complete his meal. He winced when he thought about what this would do to his stomach.
Briefly, he thought of Katherine, the last woman he’d been involved with. That hadn’t worked out either, but she sure had been a good cook. One of these days he would have to hire a housekeeper, someone who would stock up on some decent food for him and perhaps leave some nicely cooked meals. He’d rather have a wife, however. And not just for cooking. He was lonely and wanted a decent home life again. He was sick and tired of living the way he did.
He took his food to a small table near the window. The studio was sparsely furnished with remnants of his married days, the few spare pieces his ex-wife had decided she could live without.
Except for a clutter of books – history, science, psychology, fiction – and some movies and music CDs, and his computer, the place was surprisingly neat for a single man. But Kinsella had always been an orderly person. He could not tolerate a mess, considering it to be symptomatic of a lack of discipline. Unfortunately, however, his personal life had become a mess, and he didn’t like what that told him about himself.
Since his divorce, he’d become a playboy. Tales of his exploits and constant stream of attractive girlfriends provided plenty of gossip and good-natured joking among the men and women he worked with. Kinsella the Stud, tall, dark, handsome - and insatiable. He went along with the jokes, never telling anyone the truth. He may have dated many different women, but he’d remained basically celibate since his divorce, only getting involved in a sexual relationship with Katherine. He had hoped and believed that might last, and he’d been devastated when she had left him, unable to live with his work and the hours he was forced to keep.
He thought about his parents, good solid Irish Catholics who hadn’t approved of his marriage to begin with; yet they had assumed he would stay married. They had been horrified when he’d divorced. Now they didn’t know what to think of him, living alone here and dating a variety of women. At work, he was sick of the constant remarks about his superb love life. If only they knew. His life was a lonely hell and he saw no way to change it. Women he met either wanted open sexual relationships with no ties or the exact opposite: marriage and kids and a husband who worked nine to five and came home to dinner every single night. That wo
uld be so nice, but not possible now with his job.
He sipped his beer and forced his mind back to the killings, trying to decide what to do next. Should he release the composite to the media, or wait for more concrete evidence that he had some reason to look for this particular man? Issuing the composite would bring in an avalanche of identifications. Suddenly, everyone in San Francisco would know someone who exactly resembled the picture. Every one of them would have to be checked out. And yet there was no solid proof at all that this guy was the one he was looking for. Maybe it would be better to wait. But for what? Another murder?
He drained the last of his beer and stood up and stretched. He ran one hand through his thick black hair. He was tired, but he couldn’t relax. All he could think about were Kelley Grant and Ann Heald and the similarities in their murders, their looks, and the lack of any hard leads. And one other thing: If a serial killer was responsible, the only certainty was that there would be more murders ahead, and no way to predict who and where and why.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Luther phoned Christine once more, leaving what he hoped was a cheerful message on her answering machine. He berated himself for not asking for her cell phone number, but she probably would have refused to give it to him, so this method would have to do for now. At least he had a number.
She would be back either tonight or possibly tomorrow evening, if what she’d told him was correct.
In his lap was a copy of a Google street map he’d printed out, a red check mark showing the apartment complex where Christine lived. It had been easy enough to find an address using her listed phone number. He had considered driving past her building tonight to see if there was any sign of her, but he didn’t even know where in the complex Christine’s apartment was.
Luther pulled heavy drapes across sliding glass doors, effectively blocking out the darkening view of the city below him. He wanted no distractions now. It was vitally important that he sit in the dark and remain quiet and calm and, above all, that he keep himself under control. He had already made enough terrible mistakes.