“You don’t know what my objective was. It worked, didn’t it?”
“Sure. Might want to practice that for the future, though. You favor your left. You’re doing it with your gun, too.” He started to stand.
She said, “Down.”
“Five minutes and she’s already got you backed into a corner. Must be some kind of record.”
The woman stepped sideways, got her back to the wall so she could look at the man who’d just come in and still keep her gun on him. Nicely executed, Benton thought.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Detective J. D. Eastly, Las Vegas Metro Police,” he said. “That’s Benton Arbor. And you must be Imogen Page.”
Imogen Page. Benton liked the name too. He said, “Nice to meet you, Ms. Page.”
“Special Agent Page,” J.D. told him. “She’s from the FBI.”
There went the love affair. “FBI? I thought you told me you had that angle covered.”
“I thought I did,” J.D. said. “I just found out this morning. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded amused.
God, Benton hated that guy.
Benton Arbor. Imogen repeated the name to herself. Where had she heard that name before? Then she thought, Oh no. Not that Benton Arbor.
Of course. Her first lead investigation and she had to come head-to-head with Benton Arbor, the playboy automotive mogul whose wry face smirked out over supermarket checkout lines across America from the covers of at least one tabloid a week. Usually he was wearing a tuxedo or climbing out of a helicopter or doing some 007-ish thing in front of one of his Arbor Motors race cars rather than sprawling on the floor of a hotel room in sweatpants and an inside-out T-shirt with his hair smashed to one side, but there was no question that it was the same man. And it explained Rosalind Carnow’s collection of lingerie, since she and Benton were linked as a couple—at least when he was not squiring topless European princesses around tropical resorts.
This was not what she had bargained for. Dead people, killers, okay. Rich socialites, no. Imogen found herself wondering where she would end up if she made a break for it and scaled the wall at the back of the terrace. Running jump, grab the top of the wall, she could be over in three seconds, and then—
The babble of voices and the mingled scent of three aggressively different perfumes cut into Imogen’s thoughts. She looked up to see that her crime scene had been invaded by a dozen people, half of them in police and security uniforms, the other half civilians. Both bad. Benton was on his feet, leaning over and speaking to a small group dominated by two women. One of them was petite and nervous-looking, wearing a fur coat and slippers and possessively clutching the arm of a man in lemon silk pajamas. The other, whose age could have been anywhere between forty and seventy, was tall and strikingly beautiful and, Imogen realized with surprise, fondling the behind of a muscular olive-skinned man half her age.
Imogen watched Benton talking to them, addressing them tenderly and a little condescendingly, and anger bubbled up inside her. Even rumpled, as though he had just gotten out of bed, he looked so thoroughly at ease in the surroundings. So in control. Their eyes met over the heads of the crowd and he smiled at her slightly. A smile that probably got his way with any woman he wanted. She wanted him, all of them, out of there. Now.
“They worship him,” a gravelly voice said behind Imogen, and she turned to see a tall, slim brunette lounging in the double doors. Her face resembled that of the woman with the younger man, but thinner and colder. “I’m Julia Arbor, Benton’s cousin. I play the unpredictable, rebellious, and yet devastatingly charming character in the family.” Imogen tasted almost no irony.
A small hairless dog wearing a red angora sweater shivered between Julia’s ankles, hissing at everyone in the room. Julia looked neither at the people she was talking about nor at Imogen, but beyond both to where J.D. was leaning against the wall of the suite. Imogen noticed that he kept his smoky glasses on, looking like Mr. Cool Guy.
Julia said, “The woman with her hand on that Greek god’s ass is Sadie, our grandmother. Sadie and Eros are newlyweds, that’s why she can’t keep her hands off him. Of course, the fact that his body looks like it was carved from marble doesn’t hurt. The other woman, the shrew in the winter coat, is Benton’s mother, Theresa, with her latest husband. I think this one is called Pierre.”
Abruptly, Julia’s gaze left J.D. and turned to Imogen. Imogen was surprised by its directness, and by the chill she felt as it swept over her from head to foot. Julia frowned, as if something dissatisfied her, and said, “Are you really from the FBI?”
“Yes. I’m Special Agent Imogen Page.”
“That was rude of me,” Julia said, not apologizing. “To look at you like that. I’m not at my best in the morning.” She offered a hand and a smile. “I thought an FBI agent would be more drab, less, I don’t know, sparkly eyes and kiss-me lips. Can we be friends? In addition to being Benton’s cousin I am also Rosalind’s best friend, and I want to help in any way I can.”
Sparkly eyes and kiss-me lips. Imogen looked longingly at the back wall again. Then she said, “Actually, what I would really appreciate right now is if you could—”
A man impeccably dressed in a pressed shirt and perfectly creased trousers came up then and touched Julia’s arm. His hair was wet and combed back, as if he had just gotten out of a shower. “Love, I’ve been looking all over for you. I just saw Wrightly come in and I thought you should be the one—”
Julia nodded and the man was about to go but she pulled him back. “Cal, I want you to meet Imogen Page. She is from the FBI. Isn’t that incredible? Imogen, this is my husband, Cal Harwood. He’s the engineering genius behind Arbor Motors. And not bad in bed either.”
Cal was in the process of stammering as another man joined them. He was unshaven and rumpled and the only person in the room besides Imogen not to look morning-fresh and perfectly at home. Unlike everyone else, he seemed absolutely agitated, and Imogen liked him for it.
“Julia, what the hell is going on?” he demanded. Despite the bags under his eyes he looked like an overgrown boy.
“Wrightly!” Julia said, kissing him on both cheeks. “When did you get here?”
“I took an earlier flight from Detroit and I saw the reporters downstairs. They said something had—where is—?”
“This is Wrightly Waring, managing editor of Car and Driver,” Julia told Imogen. She gave an apologetic smile, said, “Would you excuse us?” took his arm, and steered him into the main room of the suite. Cal tagged behind them and Imogen decided to take advantage of this half exodus to get rid of everyone else.
Benton broke off speaking as she approached. He looked up and gave her another of those smiles. “Let me introduce you to everyone. Sadie, Eros, Mother, Pierre, this is Imogen Page of the FBI.”
Imogen shook hands. “I am glad to meet all of you,” she said. Her voice in her ears sounded like a seven-year-old’s practicing grown-up manners. She hated how insecure these people made her feel. Clearing her throat, she said, “I’ll have a member of my staff interview each of you sometime in the course of the day. We don’t want to inconvenience anyone, but it is very important we talk to all of you who knew Rosalind best. Right now, though, I am going to have to ask that everyone leave this room.”
No one moved. Not the people standing with Benton. Not the police officers or the Bellagio security guards. No one.
It was like the horrible nightmare Imogen used to have where halfway through a sold-out performance of Cymbeline she discovered she was onstage in a training bra stuffed with old socks.
Then she realized that no one was looking at her. Every gaze had gone instinctively to Benton. He nodded, just barely, and without another sound everyone filed out of the room.
That did it. Imogen put her hands on her hips and looked up at him and said, “That includes you, Mr. Arbor. And you, Detective Eastly. I’ll need the room empty before I can have my team get to work.” She had no team, and n
othing for them to do, but she wanted to be alone.
Benton stared down at her. “You are kicking us out.” Statement, not question.
“Yes.”
Benton’s face went sincere. “Look, Ms. Page. I appreciate that you have come here all the way from—”
“Minneapolis,” Imogen interjected. “On an airplane, with a goldfish, next to the Samoan Elvis.”
Benton frowned. “Samoan Elvis?”
“WEWF—World Elvis Wrestling Federation—is in town,” J.D. explained, not leaving his place against the wall.
Benton said, “I appreciate that you came here on an airplane with a fish and Elvis wrestlers, but I think there’s been a mistake. This isn’t a job for the Bureau. I have everything under control. I am specially trained in hostage search and—”
“This is not a hostage situation or a kidnapping.”
Benton opened his mouth to speak but J.D. put up a hand to stop him. He pushed off the wall, saying, “Imogen Page. I’ve spent the past fifteen minutes trying to remember where I heard that name before. You’re the one who broke the Connoisseur case.”
“I was part of the team,” Imogen answered.
“I read that you resigned from the Bureau.”
Imogen was surprised that anyone had bothered to write about her resignation, much less read about it. “They asked me to come back for this.”
Benton frowned. “For what? The Connoisseur was a serial killer, right? Is that your specialty?”
“Yes,” Imogen replied. Her specialty. Tonight serial killer over easy in a light bearnaise—
“Then what—”
“If I am not mistaken,” J.D. interrupted, “Special Agent Page is here because for some reason the feds think that Rosalind’s disappearance has something to do with a different serial killer. The Hide-and-Seek Killer.”
Benton went very still. “What do you mean?” He asked the question of Imogen, and for the first time she felt she had his undivided attention.
“I think Rosalind Carnow is the Hide-and-Seek Killer’s next victim.”
“No,” Benton said, shaking his head. “She has been kidnapped.”
“Has there been any ransom demand? Any concrete evidence to substantiate that this is a kidnapping?”
“No,” Benton shot back. “Has there been anything to substantiate serial murder?”
Placing her carry-on bag carefully on the bed, Imogen extracted her copy of the collage Lex had left for her. She held it out to him and said, “I’m afraid there has.”
CHAPTER 10
Standing as far from each other as they could and still see, Benton and J.D. looked hard at the collage.
It appeared to show the interior of a young boy’s fantasy room from the early 1980s. Along the right side was a bed in the shape of a race car with race-car sheets. At the foot of the bed was a TV set with an Intellivision console hooked to it and the game Night Crawlers inserted. Next to that stood a set of shelves with a stereo, a plant, a geode, a Great Houdini brand magic set that promised in bold letters to Amaze Your Friends, and an Original Ouija game. Against the far wall was a desk above which hung a poster for the TV show Emergency! that showed a sign pointing the way to an intensive-care unit with a fire truck—California license plate N390W1 registered through April, 1980—parked in front of it. Fuzzy dice hung improbably from the fire truck’s rearview mirror. On the desk was a hardcover book, text illegible, open between pages eleven and twelve, with the slightly blurry words Ford County Library rubber-stamped in the upper margins. There was also a bottle of Liquid Paper, a scratch pad with the phrase Audrie Lumber—Knot Your Normal Lumber Store printed across the top but otherwise blank, a half-visible greeting card, and a Mead notebook.
Like the other collages before it, this one was made up of dozens of different pieces, carefully glued together from magazines and catalogs. The flavor of the clues seemed to Imogen to be about the same. But there were two crucial differences. One of them she had discovered only that morning while sitting opposite Burt in the Bellagio security office and she was still not sure if she believed it. The other was unmistakable.
The previous collages all had a chalk outline that traced the way the corpse would be found. The outlines were disquieting, particularly coupled with the knowledge that the victims were subjected to the tortures that left them in their contorted positions before they died, but what this collage had was worse. Because there was no outline—there were outlines. Six of them. One, a head in profile, standing on the desk; two others, both with toes attached, on the bed; and three on the floor. Six outlines showing how they would find the six different pieces of Rosalind’s dismembered body. That was what Lex had meant when he said the killer was escalating.
After a minute, Benton glanced up from the collage. “I don’t see how this could possibly have anything to do with Rosalind.”
“She is the only missing person whose name corresponds with the clues he’s given us,” Imogen said. “The car theme, for Carnow, is very strong with the bed and the sheets. And then there is this.” She pointed to the greeting card on the desk. “It is a valentine. If you look closely you can make out the first words.”
“ ‘Roses are red,’ ” J.D. read aloud. “That is where you get Rosalind.”
“Why can’t it be Violet?” Benton asked. “Violets are implied in the next line of the poem.”
“Because we don’t see the next line,” Imogen explained. “And because no one with the name Violet has been reported missing.”
“How do you know the victim is not someone who hasn’t been reported yet?”
“We don’t know that much about our killer, and his methods alter slightly every time he hits, but the one thing that has remained constant is that he has always chosen someone whose absence was noticed quickly. It is one of his conditions. He seems to choose as victims only people others care about or rely on.”
Benton stared at the collage. “How do you know it is not”—he put his finger on the desk pad—“Audrie Lumber? Or someone named Audrie?”
“No one named Audrie or any word relating to lumber—tree, wood, twig, plant—is missing. Nor anyone with a name referring to geodes, stones, Houdini, magic, illusion, or night crawlers. The writing on the library book says ‘Ford County Library,’ and there are no Fords missing. Understood as another automotive reference, it also points back to Dr. Carnow.”
Benton shook his head and indicated the stereo. “What about this? It is tuned to 87 and it says ‘Dolby.’ Reading the numbers as letters of the alphabet that could be Dolby, H. G. H. G. Dolby. Did you check that?”
Imogen sighed. “I checked it, but that is not what it says. 87 upside down is L8. Get it? Late? Dolby late. Don’t be late. It’s a pun. He loves things like that.”
“How can you be so sure?” Benton said.
“Because I’ve been working on this killer for almost two years.”
“And you haven’t caught him. That hardly inspires confidence.”
“I do not need your confidence, Mr. Arbor.”
“No, you’ve got plenty of your own,” Benton said. “Even if I accept that Rosalind is the only missing person in Nevada whose name corresponds to a pattern on some boy’s sheets, how do you know his next victim will come from Vegas?”
Imogen pointed at the Mead notebook. It was one of the traditional kind, covered in blue fabric that invited scribbling on. Aside from the Mead logo it was blank, except in the middle, where there was a hangman’s gallows. Next to it were eight spaces for letters, five of which had been filled in so it read:
_O_ERBOY
Below those letters was written the letter C, and hanging off the gallows was the round form of a head, indicating one wrong guess.
This had been the clue that got Imogen on the phone with Elgin at three A.M. “What does this spell to you?” she asked Benton now.
“I don’t know.”
“Loverboy,” J.D. said, sounding it out.
“Right. These letters all co
rrespond to the places where his other victims were found. Oakford, Illinois; Ellsworth, Oregon; Boston, Massachusetts; Ocala, Florida; and Yorba, California. O-E-B-O-Y. We don’t know what the R is, but I would wager it was his first killing in this spree, before he thought of the collages. The C below the line and the head on the gallows show the Bureau’s one wrong guess, on the last one, when they went to Chicago rather than going to Boston. I don’t know how much you have been following this killer’s cases, but one of the strange circumstances is that we can find no pattern for how he chooses where to strike. There is no parity between the victims, they are different ages and types, different sexes, from all over the country. Some were killed in small towns, others in cities, some in the North, others in the South. Usually when this happens there is some sort of seasonal pattern, either with the temperature or trade fairs, but we checked up on everything and got nowhere. Until now. Now we see that he has been spelling his name. The cheeky bastard is telling us who he is. Or who he thinks he is.”
“And the missing letters are L and V. Las Vegas,” Benton filled in. “But why couldn’t they be two different places, two different killings? Lawndale and Venice, for example?”
“He would not be giving up his name if this were not his last killing. This is his signature, the final piece in his work of art, his last killing as Loverboy. After this he will change into something else. Probably”—her eye caught on the six chalk circles—“probably something worse.” She looked at Benton. “This is our last chance to catch him before he mutates. It is also our best chance to find Dr. Carnow.”
Benton studied the collage for a moment longer. He held it out to her. “That is very interesting,” he said. “But I’ll need to hear something far more concrete before I hand over any part of this investigation to the FBI.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The smallest news leak can be deadly in a kidnapping case, and I want to limit the number of people who have access to the details of our operation.”
Bad Girl and Loverboy Page 45