by P. D. Martin
“She was going into the hospital. To get her wisdom teeth out.”
My shoulders droop. “But wisdom teeth don’t take a few weeks.”
“She was getting her teeth done and then going to New York for a few auditions. She was trying to get a Broadway gig.” There’s pride in Laurie’s voice.
Another lie. Both Malcolm and Cindy said they were going to New York. Coincidence? And why wouldn’t she call? If she was in NewYork, or anywhere else for that matter, she still could have called her little sister for their weekly chats. Wherever she was, she knew she wouldn’t have access to a phone. That ties in with the desert, somewhere isolated.
“So when was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Um, let me see. She was going into the hospital on March twentieth and she called me the night before. So it must have been the nineteenth.”
I write it on my notepad. “Did she seem different the last time you spoke?”
“She was excited. About the audition. She said the job was real good money and that if she got it, she’d be able to put me through college, totally. Everything paid for.”
Bingo. We’ve got the money again. And a much more definite reference than Cindy gave her workmates.
“Must have been some job,” I say.
“Cindy was going places.” The pitch of her voice drops at the end of her sentence, reflecting her grief.
“What about Janice? Did you know her very well?”
“Janice is fabulous.”
I pause. Laurie just used present tense. Shit. “Laurie, your mum did tell you, didn’t she?”
“Tell me what?”
Oh God. I take in a deep breath. “Janice…Janice is dead.”
“What?”
I’m silent, letting her digest this additional tragedy.
“But…how?”
“She died of a drug overdose.”
“Drugs? Janice doesn’t do drugs.” Her denial is shocked but authoritative.
“She used to. Did you know that?”
A pause. “Cindy said Janice fell on hard times a few years back. But she never said what it was.”
“Heroin. She was a user for a couple of years.”
“But not now. Not since I’ve known her.”
“We’re actually investigating Janice’s and Cindy’s deaths together. As related.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how much your mum has told you. Maybe it’s not my place.”
“Cindy’s my sister. You’ve got to tell me. I’m not some kid.”
She’s right. Laurie’s eighteen, and she should know. I tell her about her sister’s death and the suspicious circumstances she was found in, without going into too much upsetting detail.
“I…I don’t understand. This doesn’t make sense. And Cindy wouldn’t lie to me.”
“People do strange things, Laurie.”
“No, not Cindy.”
“What if someone threatened Cindy? Told her that if she didn’t do something, they’d hurt you. And that if she told you, they’d kill you. Would she lie to you then?”
She pauses. “Yes.” She’s got the point. Sometimes it’s not as simple as lying or not lying. Other factors get in the way. Cindy obviously had a reason to lie. As did Malcolm. We’ve just got to work out what that reason was.
“So, are you sure she didn’t say anything unusual in the weeks before March twentieth?”
There’s a long pause. Laurie is probably replaying the conversations she had with Cindy. She would have already done this—it’s part of what we do when we find out a loved one is dead. We replay our last moments with them, over and over again. But now she’s looking for something different, something special.
“No,” she says finally.
“There was definitely no hint of fear in her voice?”
“No way. I would have known. I would have been able to tell. Like I said, it was the opposite. She was excited.”
I try to put myself in Laurie’s shoes. Would she lie to me? And if so, why? “Laurie, you know that if you’re in any trouble, any trouble at all, you can tell me. We’d be able to protect you.”
“I swear it’s nothing like that. I wish I did know where Cindy went. I really wish I did.”
Part of me wants Laurie to be the answer, wants her to know. But part of me is relieved, because if Laurie did know something, chances are she’d already be dead.
NeverCaught: Now that’s brutal. Even by my standards.
BlackWidow: Yeah, stop picking on my Jonathan.
AmericanPsycho: It’s for the greater good.
BlackWidow: Don’t know about that.
DialM: Ah, this is old world. Right up my alley. Nothing like a bit of good old-fashioned torture.
AmericanPsycho: It’s only an isolation chamber.
BlackWidow: And the rest.
AmericanPsycho: What are you worried about, BW? Thought you said Jonathan was smart, cool. Strong despite the geek exterior.
BlackWidow: He is. But I don’t want him ruined.
NeverCaught: I’m enjoying the brutality of it. I vote you keep going.
AmericanPsycho: We haven’t broken him yet.
DialM: Yes, he’s doing remarkably well. I’m impressed. And worried.
NeverCaught: You’re always worried, old man. Live a little.
DialM: I do live…and they die.
AmericanPsycho: Yes, they always die.
19
“Well?” Darren asks.
I shake my head. “She doesn’t know anything. And to be honest, if she did, I think she’d already be dead.”
Darren nods. “Maybe you’re right. Our perps haven’t made many mistakes so far. Our only real lead would have been Janice.”
“And look what happened to her.” I lean my elbows on the desk and put my face in my hands, rubbing my forehead.
“I take it you had no luck with the family?”
I look up and am greeted by Cross’s bulk.
“No. It’s a dead end. They don’t know anything.”
He nods.
“How’d you do with Cindy’s admirer at Hugo’s?” I ask.
“Dead end, too. All his movements check out. He hasn’t been out of Vegas.” He sighs. “So, what are you guys going to do? Head back?”
Darren and I look at each other. I shrug, he shrugs, he nods, then I nod.
“Guess so,” Darren says to Cross.
Cross shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Not much more you can do here. I’ll call you with the autopsy results and forensics as soon as I get them.”
“Thanks, Cross,” I say.
“Yeah, thanks for all your help.” Darren forces a smile.
“Never let it be said that the Vegas force isn’t cooperative.” Cross puts his hands on his hips.
“Hey, what about your days off?” I ask, worried about missing two days of investigative time while the results sit on Cross’s empty desk.
“The ME and lab know to call me on my cell. Don’t worry, you won’t be waiting for me to come back on shift.”
“You’d fit right in on the Tucson team,” Darren says.
“Any Homicide team,” I add.
It’s hard to completely clock off when you know lives are at stake. This case is no exception. In fact, if we’re right, we’ve got four days until the next kill. Maybe someone’s already holed up in the Mojave Desert, at the hands of our femme fatale and her new partner.
I zone out of the conversation as the men swap Homicide war stories, and lean back in my chair, ticking off a mental list of leads. One thing we haven’t checked are the victims’ financial records. I interrupt the male bonding. “Cross, have you looked at financials for Janice?”
“Not yet, and the detectives before me were investigating it as a straight OD so they didn’t either.”
“Back to the basics?” Darren says to me.
I give him a wink. “You know what they say, follow the money.”
Darren smi
les. “An oldie but a goodie.”
Cross walks over to his desk and picks up a file. “They found one Visa card and one ATM card in Janice’s wallet, plus a checkbook on the kitchen table. They filed all their bills and bank statements. I’ll get them sent over from evidence.” He picks up the phone and starts dialing.
“I’ll call Hamill,” Darren says. “See what we can get happening for Malcolm.”
I look up Cindy’s file. Her wallet was never recovered.
Cross finishes on the phone first. “They’ve got the last twelve months’ worth of statements for both girls. That should do us.”
Darren hangs up. “Hamill’s going to look into it and get back to us.”
“Was there anything else to indicate serious money? In the apartment?” I’m asking both Darren and Cross, while also trying to trigger my own memory.
“A neighbor…” Cross says. “One of the neighbors saw a limo a couple of weeks back.” He starts flipping through Janice’s file. “It was from that nosy neighbor opposite them. It didn’t seem like much at the time. Limos in Vegas are commonplace.”
“A couple weeks back,” Darren says. “Like around the twentieth?”
Cross starts flipping through his notebook. “Could be.” He flips another two pages. “Here it is.” He reads, then looks up. “She couldn’t remember the exact date or day, but it’s definitely the week Cindy left Vegas.”
I scribble on a new sheet of paper. Excited, money, limo, Mojave Desert, New York. These mean something.
Darren looks at my list but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he says, “We may as well still head back to Tucson.”
“Yeah. We can fly back this afternoon. We’ll have the bank records today and an autopsy update tomorrow. For now, let’s work on our time line.” I grab a sheet of paper from the nearest printer and turn it horizontally. I draw a line across the sheet of paper.
“So the twentieth is the day Malcolm said he was leaving.” I use a red pen and write Malcolm, March 20 on the very left-hand point of the line.
“And the twentieth for Cindy too.”
I nod and use a blue pen for Cindy to mark in her “disappearance” date. The next date is red, for Malcolm. “Malcolm was killed on or around the twenty-sixth.”
“Then Cindy a week later—around April second,” Darren says.
I go back to blue and mark in Cindy’s murder date. “Then we’ve got Janice. She was found on the first, but the ME said she’d been dead for about twenty-four hours.” I use a black pen to mark in Janice’s death. “So Janice was killed a couple of days before Cindy, around March thirty-first.” I flick the marker back and forth between my fingers. “The cat was out of the bag,” I say. “Janice knew where Cindy really was and our killers found out.”
Darren leans back in his chair, studying the fledgling time line. “So if Cindy mentioned that Janice knew where she was, then obviously Cindy didn’t feel threatened in any way at that point in time.”
“No. Not unless it was beaten out of her.” I pause. “But there was no indication of torture or physical trauma.”
Darren nods. “So she didn’t think she was in danger, and she certainly didn’t realize Janice was.”
AmericanPsycho: Congratulations, Never. Brigitte is all yours.
NeverCaught: Thank God for Wednesdays. I’m stoked…soon I’ll have her.
DialM: I’m jealous.
AmericanPsycho: What are you going to do with her?
NeverCaught: Take her to that special house. Tie her up. Play with her for a while, then introduce her to my knife.
AmericanPsycho: No knife! I told you the rules when you joined the club. She must be strangled.
NeverCaught: I know. But I can still show her the knife…and run it along her body.
20
Since we got back from Vegas three days ago everything’s been a dead end. Nothing suspicious in the financials, the second autopsy on Janice didn’t reveal anything new, and the Vegas crime lab came back with the big zilch from Cindy and Janice’s house. No suspect prints, no fibers, no hair, no nothing.
Darren stands up and stretches, having just gone over the bank statements again. “So why did Malcolm and Cindy talk about getting money? Wherever it was coming from, they hadn’t got a down payment.”
It’s not the first time we’ve asked ourselves this question, but the answer is still elusive. I shrug, but then a thought pops into my head. “Could they have known they were going to die?”
Darren gives me a strange look, but I continue. “Maybe the serial killers promised them money. Cindy was planning to give it to her sister and Janice. And Malcolm’s parents sure need money.”
Darren’s brow furrows. “I don’t know…”
“Stranger things have happened. Remember that case in Germany? The cannibal who advertised for a victim. He had no problems finding willing subjects.” I shudder at the thought. “It turns my stomach just thinking about it. How could you eat another human being?”
Darren’s face crumples in disgust and he moves uneasily from foot to foot. “That case creeped me out.”
“And everybody else,” I say.
“But Malcolm was saving for college, not for his folks. And I don’t see someone as confident as Malcolm giving up on life.”
Darren’s got a point.
“You’re right. And Cindy had been through hell and come out on top. Why would she give up now, of all times?”
It leads us back to nowhere—again. Time’s running out. For the next victim it’s probably already run out.
“If the killers stick to their pattern,” I say, “the next victim is either already dead or will be in the next twelve hours or so.”
“Don’t remind me.” Darren runs a hand through his hair.
“Case going that well?” Stone asks as she enters the project room. She’s been around Darren long enough to recognize when he’s frustrated.
“Pretty much,” Darren replies.
A beat of silence.
“If it’s a weekly pattern it’s going down soon,” I say. “It’s been six days since the last victim was found.” I stand up too and stretch my neck and shoulders gently.
Darren’s staring at the whiteboard, which has still got the info about the femme fatale on it. “We may be too late for this one.” His voice is steely.
NeverCaught has entered the room.
DialM: Never. What’s happening?
NeverCaught: Hi all. One more person knows our little secret.
DialM: How did Brigitte take it?
NeverCaught: How do you think, M?
AmericanPsycho: So she’s still alive?
NeverCaught: For the moment. I stopped playing with her to chat with you guys.
DialM: Photos?
NeverCaught: Yeah, I’ve got photos.
AmericanPsycho: Well, let’s see them.
NeverCaught: Check it out.
AmericanPsycho: Oh, yeah. Gotta love that fear.
DialM: Look at her body. That skin.
NeverCaught: Yes. Dough well spent.
DialM: Have you…
NeverCaught: Oh, yeah. She gave it up like there was no tomorrow. I took her gag off for that. She’s skanky.
DialM: I do wish she was mine.
NeverCaught: I almost feel sorry for you, M. It’s truly **ing fantastic. This club is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
21
The U of A is crawling with undercover cops, and two SWAT teams lie low, hopefully out of our perps’ view. With no real leads to follow, we’ve taken the only option open to us—staking out the university in case the killers repeat the one-week gap between victims and try to dump the body somewhere on campus tonight.
Posing as a student, I carry several books and walk my designated route. It’s probably still too early for the killers to make an appearance, but we couldn’t risk missing them so we came in waves as soon as dusk hit.
We are too late to save this victim, but if we catch the perps in
action tonight at least we’ll put an end to the killings. I walk through the main mall and take a right at the library, just opposite where Malcolm’s body was found. From there I cut through the grounds to Fourth Street and west along it. It’s a coordinated effort and we’ve all got certain routes we have to follow so that the whole campus is covered.
By midnight my legs are aching and I’m tired. I had an afternoon nap, ready for an all-night stakeout, but it wasn’t enough and my eyelids are heavy. At least the walking is keeping me warm. I make my way to my meeting point. Now that midnight’s hit and the campus would normally be getting quieter, we’ll take it in shifts to monitor certain sections on foot, while the rest of the teams take higher ground. My first position is on the northwest corner of the main library’s roof.
The next four hours pass slowly, with the highlight being my scheduled 2:00 a.m. move from the library to the architecture building on Speedway Boulevard. But I see nothing suspicious on the way over, and nothing from my vantage point on the southwest corner of its roof. At 4:00 a.m. Sergeant Harris’s voice comes over the comms link, calling us back to the university services building that we’d set up as our on-site base.
On my way I call Darren. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I was just about to call you.” Darren sounds disheartened. “They’ve found a body.”
“What? Where?”
“Himmel Park. Less than a mile east of the campus.”
“Damn!” I hang up and run the rest of the way to join the cops and the SWAT teams in the services building.
“What’s going on?” I ask when I reach Darren, Stone and Harris.
“A 9-1-1 call came in about fifteen minutes ago,” Harris says. “I dispatched two officers to the park to investigate, and sure enough, we’ve got our third body. You three get your asses over there while I debrief this lot.” He motions with his head to the cops and SWAT teams.
“The ME’s office been notified?” Stone asks.
Harris nods. “On their way. And the crime-lab guys too.”
“Is the vic male or female?” I ask. If the killers are taking turns, it should be a man.