“I’m going to be honest,” the detective said, too anxious to sit. He paced around the room, picking up knickknacks and then setting them back down. “The DA has decided to file. Your brother’s prints are on the syringe. Charley Young has identified it as the murder weapon. We have probable cause to arrest him, Carolyn. Mary found out today that he also knew Suzanne Porter, which ties him to the other murder as well. She was one of his students in the art class he taught at Ventura College.”
When Carolyn reached up to turn on the lamp, her hands were shaking. “Neil grew up in Ventura. He knows half the people in this town. Not only that, Suzanne Porter was practically his neighbor. You may not realize it, but my brother is something of a celebrity, especially in the artistic community.”
Hank remained somber. “I had the dispatcher broadcast it a few minutes ago. When he contacts you, get him to turn himself in. Until I’m convinced otherwise, we’re classifying him as armed and dangerous.”
Carolyn fell silent, giving herself time to absorb the implications. The fact that Neil knew Suzanne Porter was no revelation. They couldn’t hang a case on something that flimsy. Hank was trying to tell her what she feared the most, that her brother could be shot and killed by a police officer. All it took was one wrong move. “Why armed and dangerous? Neil has never fired a gun in his life. Anyway, no weapon was used in either murder.”
Hank knew he had to talk straight to her. She was far more involved than she knew. “A weapon was used in the Hartfield homicides.”
“What in God’s name does that have to do with Neil?”
He explained the similarities in the house numbers and locations. “Raphael Moreno is the key. You’re the only one who’s managed to break through to him. We certainly can’t send Preston in there again. Before you get spooked, hear me out. We’ll arrange it so you interview him in a room with half a dozen of our top marksmen. The bastard so much as hiccups and he’s a dead man.”
“The address similarities are just coincidences,” Carolyn said, trying to keep the detective from seeing how upset she was. She couldn’t allow them to put her brother in jail. It was too similar to a mental hospital, where his past experience had been devastating. “It’s absurd to think Neil was involved with Moreno. You think this has something to do with drugs, don’t you? Neil may have smoked a little pot when he was in high school, but so did I. It’s hard to find anyone from our generation that didn’t, even some of our presidents.”
“We’re not talking about marijuana, Carolyn.”
“You’re giving the killer the upper hand,” she said. “He planned this so you’d see a pattern. He’s a damn serial killer. He doesn’t want to be portrayed as a garden-variety murderer. He’s trying to establish himself as another Dahmer, Gacy, or Bundy.”
Hank unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth. “I hope you’re wrong.” He paused to chew, then resumed. “Once I get approval from the chief, I’ll start arranging things for tomorrow.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
Hank’s back stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why should I put my life on the line?” Carolyn asked him. “Preston was seriously injured. Moreno’s got razor-sharp reflexes. He might strangle me this time.”
“Christ, woman, we’re trying to save lives here,” the detective argued. “You usually beg for the chance to pry information out of violent offenders. You’ll be covered by the SWAT team and Moreno will be shackled.”
“You mean like he was when he attacked Brad?” she countered, recalling her tense confrontation with Moreno. If she’d known he could get out of the restraints, she would have never stepped foot in that room. The department had issued her a new cell phone. She kept the one he had crushed with his bare hands as a reminder to be more careful. “He’s a contortionist, remember? He can get out of anything.”
Hank swallowed hard. “We’ll have him in a chair so we can see his hands and legs.”
“He’s five feet six inches tall and fast as lightning. Even handcuffed, this guy scares me.”
“So we’ll put him behind glass.”
“Have you tried sending someone else over there?” Carolyn asked. “He could have responded to me because I was a woman. Get Mary to talk to him. You guys are the cops. I’m just a probation officer.”
“Sure,” he said. “A probation officer with a remarkable ability to get people to talk. I bet the FBI or the CIA would hire you in a minute. Think of how valuable you could be interrogating terrorists. As for other people trying to crack Moreno, when we first arrested him, we sent five detectives, two of them female. Mary went over and spent a whole afternoon with him. Guy didn’t even blink. She said it was like trying to get a corpse to talk.”
“They talked to him through the glass, right? No one else had the guts to go in there alone.”
“It’s you or nothing, Carolyn.”
As terrifying as Moreno was, Carolyn felt herself stirring with excitement. She still didn’t know what had caused him to commit the crimes, or if he might have had an accomplice. This would give her another chance. It was like staying up all night reading a book, then finding out it had no ending. “Surround him with cops, Hank, and the same thing will happen. He’ll never talk that way. I’ll have to do it exactly like I did before—one-on-one. Even then there are no guarantees.”
Hank compressed in his seat. “What do you want from me?”
“Retract what you broadcast about my brother,” she told him, fully awake and energized. “Say that he’s only wanted for questioning and that the dispatcher made a mistake by classifying him as armed and dangerous. Give me twenty-four hours to bring him in. You don’t have a signed warrant yet. What proof do you have that Neil’s carrying a firearm?”
“I can’t let you do this,” Hank said. “One of our officers could get killed.”
“Fine!” Carolyn shouted. “Find someone else to do your dirty work. I don’t have to do this based on your speculations. I’m a single mother with two children. It’s unconscionable that you’d even ask me to do such a thing.”
Rebecca appeared in the doorway, dressed in a cropped top and a pair of tights, a ragged pink baby blanket crushed to her chest. “What’s wrong, Mom?” she asked. “Why are you yelling? It’s about Uncle Neil, isn’t it? John said he might be in trouble because of that lady who was murdered.” She looked over at the detective. “Hi, Hank,” she said. “Why are you and Mom fighting? I thought you were buddies.”
“You’re growing up,” he said, managing a smile. “Don’t let those boys get their hands on you. You’re going to have to keep an eye on her, Carolyn.”
Rebecca put her arms around her chest to cover her breasts. “You guys woke me up,” she said, not at all happy. “How am I gonna go back to sleep? Mom, can’t you give me a pill or something?”
“Absolutely not,” Carolyn told her. “We’ll have a chat as soon as Hank leaves, if you’re still awake.” She had told John about the situation with Neil, but she had as yet to break the news to his sister. Rebecca worshipped her uncle. She seemed to have inherited his artistic abilities. Her art teacher had raved about her drawings. She would explain everything tonight. There wasn’t really that much to say, just that the police were doing their jobs, and that meant eliminating Neil as a suspect. When she saw Rebecca still standing there, glaring at her, Carolyn added, “You don’t have to get up and go to school in the morning. You can sleep until noon if you want.”
“Whatever,” Rebecca said, waving good-bye to the detective.
Hank let out a long sigh. “You’ve got a deal,” he said, once he heard a door close. “I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you what time this is going down.”
“No SWAT team,” Carolyn said, standing to walk him out. “The only thing I’ll consider is a room with two-way mirrors.”
“We’d have to transport him to the station,” Hank said at the door. “The jail doesn’t have those facilities. He’s an escape risk. The chief wo
n’t approve it under those terms. We can throw up a room inside the jail, make it look like the room where you first interviewed him. But the SWAT team has to be present. No deal unless you do it my way. Are we clear?”
“Perfectly,” Carolyn said, hating to concede but knowing that she had run out of bargaining power. If she didn’t let Hank handle the Moreno interview the way he wanted, every cop in five counties would be searching for Neil, a man Hank had depicted to be armed and dangerous. She would rather risk her own life than risk the life of her brother. In what was left of her original family, Carolyn was the designated driver.
Chapter 24
Monday, December 27—6:34 P.M.
Melody opened the door, surprised that the Chinese food had arrived so quickly. The aroma of the Ma Po Tofu permeated the lower level of her home. Tonight would be like many other nights—she would be alone. She hadn’t seen Neil since two days before Christmas. She missed his touch and his company.
She set the food down on the table, glancing into the living room. She should have turned the lights on earlier. December brought darkness at five o’clock. She’d become afraid of the shadowy corners of her large house. When she went to the viewing room, it evoked memories of the third floor of her childhood home in Tuxedo Park.
She didn’t want to eat alone. Feeling despondent, she stretched out on the sofa. Her mind spun back in time. She was nine years old. She could see her tall, skinny body and her mass of curly red hair. Tears fell as she mourned for the child she’d once been, wishing she could change the events that had created who she was today. Her eyelids became heavy; then she connected with a frightening childhood memory.
“Mommy,” she called out, having returned from her girlfriend’s house. She hated Melody, but she liked Melody’s mother. Even though they had tons of money, Mrs. Asher wasn’t drunk all the time. Instead of smelling like alcohol, she smelled like flowers. Her mother tried to cover the smell of booze with perfume, but it only made her stink more.
“Your mother went to the city,” Mrs. Mott told her, busy at the kitchen sink. “Go upstairs and do your homework.”
“It’s Friday,” she said, grabbing a handful of cookies off a plate on the table. “I don’t have any homework.”
“Then catch up on your reading.”
Since Mrs. Mott was occupied, she decided to rummage around the house. There was a locked bedroom on the third floor and she wanted to see what was inside. It was scary and dark up there, especially for a nine-year-old. Her fear was not as strong as her curiosity. She’d searched for months for the key and hadn’t been able to find it.
As she walked through the foyer, the marble floor echoed her footsteps. Then she saw the solution right in front of her. Why hadn’t she thought about it before? The key was on her father’s key ring on the table at the foot of the stairs. He was probably in the library working at his desk, like he did every night before supper.
She set the cookies down as her fingers grasped the keys. Then she rushed up the two flights of stairs. She halted, looking down the dark hallway with its nine doors and patterned red carpeting. She flipped on the light. It flickered and went off, plunging her again into darkness. Even the servants hardly ever came upstairs. Glancing at the keys in her hand, she heard a noise coming from one of the rooms at the end of the hall. It sounded like the voice of a woman. She tiptoed toward the door, her stomach fluttering. Jeremy made fun of her. She’d show him she wasn’t a chicken. She could now see the moving illumination of a candle through the cracked door. She peeped through the opening.
She drew a quick breath. What she saw was terrifying. There was a dark-skinned woman with a large head of frizzy hair. Her hair looked as if it were on fire as it bounced with the gyrations of her naked body. She was in pain, moaning as she tossed her head back and forth. Someone was hurting her. The lamp and nightstand obscured Jessica’s view. She saw a man holding onto the woman’s hands. She was trying to escape, but he wouldn’t let her go.
Jessica’s fear for the woman grew. She had to be crying because her face was contorted in agony. In order to get a better vantage point, Jessica moved to her left. When she realized the person who was hurting the woman was her father, her fingers involuntarily opened and the keys fell out of her hand. Her father tossed the woman off, causing her to tumble onto the floor. He retrieved his burgundy silk robe, then charged toward his daughter.
“What are you doing up here?” he said, yanking open the door and grabbing her arm.
“I-I was…”
“Shut up,” her father yelled, picking her up and pressing her against the wall. “If you ever say anything about this to Jeremy or your mother, I’ll send you away.” He shook her. “Do you understand? You’ll never see this house again.”
Tears ran down Jessica’s face. “Yes…Daddy…please, you’re hurting me.”
He set her down on the floor, then patted her on the top of her head as if nothing had happened. “Now give me those keys and get downstairs where you belong.”
She’d never seen her father that mad before. Why was he hurting that poor woman?
Jessica never went onto the third floor again. Even today, darkness left her with a feeling of helplessness.
Pushing the past aside, Melody turned all the lights on and went to eat her food. She took a few bites of the spicy sauce, then tilted the half-empty bottle of red wine to her mouth. She didn’t know why she’d ordered so much food. She didn’t have an appetite lately. Her thoughts moved to Neil and the night of Laurel’s death. As she walked up the stairs to her viewing room, she decided to watch the video again.
Dropping her clothes at the doorway, she slipped on her robe and burped. The Chinese food tasted different the second time. Opening the small refrigerator she kept upstairs, she took out a cold bottle of water and washed down the bitter taste. A few minutes later, she was positioned at one of her monitors, waiting until the video player loaded the file. She clicked through it to find where she wanted to start watching.
The night of the murder, Melody had stayed up until five o’clock watching the footage she had recorded that day, frame by frame.
The leather-clad figure with a motorcycle helmet stood at the side of the house. The figure moved to the backyard. That’s when she saw Laurel coming out of the French doors. She had a portable phone in her right hand, then placed it to her ear. She must have been trying to call the police.
Helpless bitch, Melody thought. She should have learned to protect herself. A struggle ensued, and Laurel and the assailant moved into the house. Pausing the video, Melody moved to another monitor, which showed a different feed, and clicked play. They were in the bedroom.
Laurel was so weak, she didn’t stand a chance. She was forced to strip down to her cheap cotton underwear. Melody was surprised the red circular Target logo wasn’t imprinted on her ass. She watched the helmeted figure inject Laurel; then they both disappeared into the bathroom.
Melody panned to the other monitor and clicked forward to the point where Laurel was being dragged facedown across the pavement. That couldn’t have felt very good, she said to herself, even with whatever the guy shot her up with.
Laurel was propped up at the side of the pool, her head bleeding. Then Melody’s eyes locked on the screen. She saw the splash. Bubbles rose from beneath the water as the last bit of oxygen left in Laurel Goodwin’s lungs floated to the surface, never to be recaptured again.
Melody was sad for Laurel, but it had been wrong of her to try to take Neil away. The woman had to know Neil was dating her. Everyone knew. The local paper had even run a picture of them together. Melody was the innocent party again. When would it end?
She had a philosophy. Each person was allowed a certain number of mistakes. It was similar to tokens. Whenever you did something bad, you’d lose a token. Once they were all used up, an agonizing death was imminent. She’d seen it happen to Rees.
At the end, Melody had discovered the truth. Her husband was a homosexual by choice and h
eterosexual whenever it benefited him. He’d risen to the top in the fashion world by sleeping with high-profile women, then married a seventeen-year-old girl to mask his sexual preference. Rees had never made love to Melody, which showed he possessed a modicum of decency. She had found out he had AIDS. Rees had used up his tokens. She had threatened to expose him. So what if he killed himself? Even though she didn’t need it, Melody took his money as payback for all the poor women he’d deceived. He might not have known he had AIDS at the time he slept with them, but his lifestyle made him a high risk. His current male lover received nothing in his will.
Like Rees, Laurel had not been a good person. She deceived people with her tacky clothes and schoolteacher image. Her uncle had also been a teacher, and Elton had forced Melody to have sex with him. She remembered the nights he thrashed on top of her small body in the damp, scary basement while his wife and sons slept only a floor above. Even when the nurse at school saw her bruises and reported them to the police, her uncle’s stupid wife, Sally, insisted Melody had lied, disturbed over the tragic deaths of her family. Sally was probably still cooking his meals and washing his clothes while he molested other children, giving them cuddly teddy bears and expensive toys, then telling them if they told, their parents would punish them for lying.
Pedophiles were similar to people suffering from a terminal illness, Melody had later learned. There was no such thing as a cure. Until they died, pedophiles would be attracted to children. Years ago, the state hospital for the criminally insane had attached electrodes to their penises and shocked them every time they got an erection while looking at pictures of underage children. Nevertheless, when they were released, they did it again.
Laurel must have given drugs to Neil, intending to trap him into marriage and destroy his relationship with her. Where else would Neil get the drugs? She’d filmed him snorting the damn stuff.
She didn’t let him know how much she admired his work, for fear he would become overly confident and leave her. It was a shame to destroy such talent. Neil thought his recent paintings weren’t selling because of the slump in the economy. They didn’t sell because they were shit. Dope made you think everything you did was wonderful. She would never pollute her body or mind the way Neil had.
Sullivan’s Justice Page 24