Bad Moon (Kat Campbell Mysteries)

by Ritter, Todd

  “Maggie Olmstead saw it,” he said.

  “Then why didn’t she tell someone?”

  Again, Nick didn’t know. Maybe she had been embarrassed. Or maybe no one believed her. Having been one of them, he knew how cops worked. Meek housewives who claimed to know something they didn’t rubbed them the wrong way. This was especially true forty years ago, when even the best cops had a chauvinistic streak.

  All Nick really knew was that his case, the one the Sarah Donnelly Foundation had been recruited to investigate, was about to be taken away from him. If it hadn’t been clear after he helped Kat move the wall of victims from the Olmstead dining room to the trunk of her patrol car, it became so with the words Kat spoke next.

  “You know this is now an official police matter.”

  “I know,” Nick said. “And just to let you know, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop my own investigation.”

  “I would be disappointed if you did.”

  They were sitting outside the elementary school in Kat’s Crown Vic, waiting for class to be let out. Every other car in line at the curb was a minivan or SUV. Most of them were gray. Nick wondered how James felt about getting picked up from school every day in a police car. The way kids acted nowadays, they’d think it was either badass or embarrassing. He hoped James was on the badass end of the spectrum.

  “I’ve been thinking about your theory that our bad guy lived in Fairmount and Centralia. It’s logical. It makes sense.”

  “It’s also wrong,” Kat said. “Isn’t that what you’re getting at?”

  That was exactly what Nick was trying to say, and he was pleased Kat had come up with it herself. Upon their first meeting, Nick had to give her a crash course on the thought process of your basic serial killer. Now she knew enough to understand her first theory might not have been the correct one.

  “It all comes down to the first victim,” Nick said. “In this case, Charlie Olmstead.”

  Nine times out of ten, victim number one wasn’t a random killing. Most serial perpetrators stayed in familiar haunts and acted out only when triggered by something—or someone. That’s why the first victim was so vital. Often, the perp had previous contact with them. Catching the bad guy was usually the result of winnowing down where and when that contact had occurred. In the case of Charlie Olmstead, that meant—

  “The killer spent time in Perry Hollow,” Kat said as she thrummed her fingers along the steering wheel.

  Nick nodded approvingly. “That would be my guess. Maybe he didn’t live here. Maybe he was just passing through for a spell. But he most definitely saw Charlie before that night. He knew where he lived. He knew where he rode his bike.”

  “What’s the likelihood that whoever did it lived on the Olmsteads’ street?” Kat asked.

  “I don’t know, but it would certainly narrow down our list of suspects.”

  “I’ll talk to the neighbors,” Kat said. “The Santangelos. Glenn Stewart. Find out whatever I can about Mort and Ruth Clark. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to dig something up.”

  “While you do that,” Nick added, “I’ll hit the road and see what I can find out from the families of the other victims.”

  Both of them were quiet as they contemplated the tough task ahead of them. Four decades had passed since these crimes. Even if Nick was able to track down family members of the victims, there was no guarantee they’d remember anything. Police records were most likely sparse and the crime scenes probably paved over by forty years of progress. But the prospect of getting even a hint about what happened excited the hell out of him.

  Kat, however, had to play party pooper. “This is bigger than you. Or me. We just might have a ticking time bomb on our hands.”

  She was talking about China and its three astronauts hurtling toward the moon at that very moment. They were scheduled to land in two days, which was good for China, potentially bad for the people of Pennsylvania.

  “You think it could happen again?” Nick asked. “After all these years?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Kat said. “Whoever did this could be dead. Or out of state.”

  “Or waiting until Friday.”

  “Exactly. So you know what needs to be done.”

  Nick knew. And he didn’t want to do it. Just thinking about it gave him a headache.

  “If you’d like,” Kat offered, “I can do it. I still have her contact information lying around somewhere.”

  But Nick had the phone number permanently lodged in his brain, a fact Kat was well aware of. It made him the most logical person to do the calling. That and the fact that it was his former boss they were talking about.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, for God’s sake. Tonight.”

  He shifted in his seat, his right knee flaring a bit as he moved. Goddamned weather. Looking through the windshield, he saw that dark clouds had replaced the late-summer sun. A second later, the first drops of rain splattered against the glass. The storm had arrived.

  By that point, the school’s front doors had opened and the first wave of students made their escape. They sprinted through the quickening rain to the curb, where the army of minivans and SUVs swallowed them up. James was part of the second wave. He trotted to the Crown Vic using his backpack as a makeshift umbrella. When he got in the car, Nick tried to give him his usual high-five greeting. James responded with a quickly muttered “Hi, Nick” and a halfhearted slap against his palm.

  Nick didn’t like kids very much. He found most to be spoiled, rambunctious, and, truth be told, bratty. James was the exception. He was polite, curious, open, and intelligent.

  None of those traits, however, were on display that afternoon.

  “How was your first day of school?” Nick asked, making another attempt to engage the boy.

  James answered with a glum sigh. “Okay.”

  “Did you learn anything cool?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s your lunch box?”

  This was from Kat, who was using the rearview mirror to squint at her son. James’s answer—an unconcerned “I lost it”—didn’t placate her.

  “On purpose?” she said. “Or by accident?”

  James didn’t answer, which Nick took to mean that he hadn’t lost the lunch box in question at all. He had outright gotten rid of it. Kat sensed it, too, and shook her head in annoyance as she edged away from the curb and into the street.

  The storm had hit full force by that point, a springlike downpour waging battle with an otherwise calm Indian summer. The rain came down in heavy sheets that instantly formed puddles on lawns and overflowed the gutters on the streets.

  “So you’ll call her when you get home, right?” Kat asked Nick as she jacked the windshield wipers up a notch.

  Apparently they were back on that topic again. “The minute I walk through the door.”

  “You’d better.” Kat wagged a finger at him in warning. “Because I’ll be calling her just to make sure.”

  Nick glanced over his shoulder at James, who nodded in unspoken sympathy. In that small gesture, he saw a flash of the old James he had grown to love. It was an acknowledgment on the boy’s part that, despite their ages and backgrounds, they were the two most important men in Kat Campbell’s life. And both of them knew from experience that they didn’t want to be on her bad side.

  *

  True to his word, Nick made the phone call as soon as he got back to Philadelphia. Sitting in the Chestnut Street apartment that doubled as headquarters for the Sarah Donnelly Foundation, he picked up the phone and dialed the number he knew by rote.

  It was answered on the fourth ring. Slow by her usual standards.

  “Hello?” The voice was crisp and formal, just as Nick remembered it.

  “Hey, Gloria,” he said.

  “Nick. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  Captain Gloria Ambrose had been his boss at the Pennsylvania State Police’s Bur
eau of Criminal Investigation for close to ten years. While never friends or even friendly, they had admired each other’s relentless pursuit of justice. Because of this, Nick had assumed Gloria would always have his back in times of trouble.

  His assumption had been wrong. Now he was no longer a cop. Nor could he ever become one again, at least not in Pennsylvania and especially not with the state police. It was a raw deal, and hearing Gloria’s voice, which contained neither accent nor emotion, brought back all the anger and bitterness that had accompanied his firing.

  Nick swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions at bay. “I was investigating something for the foundation—”

  Gloria stopped him. Interrupting was one of her specialties. “How’s that going, by the way?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m so pleased,” she replied without a hint of actual pleasure.

  “During my investigation, I came across some information you might like to know.”

  This time Gloria sounded interested. “About what?”

  Nick spoke uninterrupted for almost ten minutes. He explained what he and Kat had discovered during the course of the day. He gave all the details he could—names, dates, locations. He even went so far as to tell Gloria that the map and newspaper clippings Maggie Olmstead had compiled were now in Kat’s possession, should the state police need them. When he finished, Gloria asked him for something he never thought she’d ever request again—his opinion.

  “I think it’s a serial,” he said. “These incidents are too similar to be coincidence. Then there’s the fact that they coincide with lunar landings.”

  “Who knows about this?”

  “Just Chief Campbell, Eric Olmstead, and myself.”

  One of the names took Gloria off guard. “Eric Olmstead, the writer?”

  “Yes. He’s my client.”

  “I’m impressed.” Nick wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have been telling the truth. Her voice was pitched slightly higher than usual and tinged with what could only be described as respect. But that quality vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared, replaced by Gloria’s usual brusque tones.

  “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It was good of you to do so.”

  “Are you going to look into it?”

  Nick knew he shouldn’t have asked, but old habits die hard. It was none of his business now, which Gloria wasted no time in pointing out.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. Are we finished?”

  Nick wanted to tell her that he wasn’t finished by a long shot. He wanted to tell her that his foundation was going to solve all the crimes they had given up on long ago. And he wanted to call Gloria all the horrible names he had devised for her in the eleven months since being ass-kicked from the state police. But his dignity—what little was left of it—won out.

  “I guess we are.”

  “Then good-bye, Nick. Do take care.”

  And that was that. He had called Gloria Ambrose with a minimum amount of fuss and external stress. Kat would be proud. He assumed both women would take his actions to mean he was now done with the case.

  He wasn’t.

  Eric Olmstead had hired him to find out what happened to his brother. First Kat and now Gloria had gotten involved only because he had told them about it. As far as Nick was concerned, this was still his case and he planned to investigate it as such.

  Picking up the phone again, he dialed another number he knew from memory. It belonged to a man named Vincent Russo, a cop who worked Philly’s South Side. Vinnie’s wife had been killed by a hit-and-run driver fifteen years earlier. The man behind the wheel was never caught. Because of their shared pain—and because he liked what Nick was trying to do with the foundation—Vinnie was always willing to do him a favor. That night, Nick needed a big one.

  “Nick Donnelly,” Vinnie said when he answered his phone. “How the hell are ya?”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “The caller ID never lies,” Vinnie replied. “I think I know why you’re calling, too.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “I need some information.”

  “Of course you do. Names? Addresses? What?”

  “A little of both. You got a pen and paper? There are five of them.”

  Vinnie let out a low whistle. “I guess you’ve got a real whopper on the line.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Okay,” Vinnie said. “Hit me with them.”

  Nick took a deep breath. “The first one is in Fairmount,” he said. “Last name is Kepner.”

  NINE

  Kat waited until James went to bed before smuggling Maggie Olmstead’s map and newspaper clippings into the house. There was no need for him to read the sad headlines that filled the board or see the faces of boys his own age who had gone missing long ago. Dragging it into the basement, the plywood bumping against her knees, she felt a bit like Maggie herself. Their goals were the same: hide the truth from their children for as long as possible.

  Once she had the board leaning against the cement block wall, Kat went back upstairs to retrieve her laptop and a glass of wine. She had a feeling she was going to need it. Sitting cross-legged on the chilly floor, she fired up the computer and dove into that swirling vortex known as the Internet.

  Her first order of business was to check databases of missing children to see if any of the boys Maggie had singled out were eventually found. None were. Kat then tried to find out if there were any additional abductions Maggie had missed. Just because six boys were taken during moon landings didn’t mean the culprit hadn’t abducted more over the years. That led to an hour scrolling through gut-wrenching lists of missing kids. Many had been found within hours in the company of estranged family members. Some were never found again. None of them, however, seemed to be related to the six boys tacked onto Maggie Olmstead’s board. Different ages, different areas, none of them looking like accidents and none of them taking place around any lunar activity.

  Taking a deep breath, Kat next accessed the listing of known pedophiles in Pennsylvania. She narrowed her search, winnowing the list down to those found guilty of sex crimes against young boys between 1969 and 1972. There were a lot of them—too many, in fact—but none of them were murderers.

  Her next goal was to look into potential reasons why the boys had been taken. No one decided to abduct boys during lunar landings just for the hell of it. There was something about those momentous NASA missions that compelled the culprit to seek out those kids.

  Early in her search, she realized that the abductions could simply have been a by-product of a crazy time in American history. The late sixties and early seventies saw astonishing upheaval. Weeks after Charlie Olmstead vanished, members of the Manson family went on a killing spree in California. A few days after that, Woodstock took place, its message of peace, love, and experimental drugs reverberating around the world.

  The sixties came to an end with a concert at Altamont, in which the dark side of the flower power generation was revealed during a set by the Rolling Stones. The shootings at Kent State happened the following May, and by the time Bucky Mason vanished in 1972, the Watergate breakin had occurred, setting Richard Nixon on the road to resignation. Through it all, humming loud in the background like static from a TV set, was the Vietnam war—a seemingly endless parade of bad news and dead soldiers being carried from the steaming jungles of a faraway land.

  Kat took a break to refill her wineglass before sinking deeper into the search. Sipping steadily, she read about the effect the moon landings had on the world. Americans cheered when Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility. Enthusiasm was still strong, although slightly more quiet, when Apollo 12 landed that November. When 1972 rolled around, the nation—having witnessed four more landings in less than two years—had become jaded. When the lunar missions came to an end with Apollo 17, no one seemed to care.

  Except, Kat suspected, the person who had been snatching boys all across Pennsylvania. To him, the ending of the mi
ssions meant no more crimes. Why that happened is what she wanted to find out.

  The Internet offered plenty of suggestions. She learned that a startlingly wide swath of the population believed the NASA moon landings were just an elaborate hoax. On the flip side were those who thought that astronauts did walk on the moon but brought something extraterrestrial back with them. Kat assumed both groups were insane, and she wondered if that craziness extended to one of their members targeting little boys.

  Then there were the doomsday cultists, who had worried that venturing into space would bring about the end of life on Earth. During her search, Kat stumbled upon an article about a group of religious fanatics in Texas who prepared for the first moon landing by building an underground bunker on their property. When Neil Armstrong took those historic first steps, the men stayed outside, armed with rifles, while the women and children huddled together in the bunker. Some of the children, it turned out, didn’t even belong to members of the group. They had been taken from nearby homes. “For their own safety,” one of the cult members told police. But those children were returned to their families unharmed within a few hours. The ones unfortunate enough to be a part of Maggie Olmstead’s collage were never seen again.

  Kat suspected there were hundreds of similar stories and scenarios. She knew from experience that there were horrible people out there doing horrible things. Sometimes, the reason was known only to them, and Kat realized that searching for one was probably fruitless until she got a better idea of what happened to those boys and who could have done it.

  She shut off the computer, downed the last drops of wine, and turned the board of victims to face the wall. Upstairs, she made sure all the doors and windows were locked. Then it was on to the second floor, where she would check to see if James was asleep before landing into bed herself.