“Uh-huh,” said Michelle.
King sat forward. “Okay, maybe Junior didn’t mastermind the thing, but what if someone else did? That person knew Junior had access to the Battles’ mansion and enlists him to do it. The physical evidence is pretty damning, Harry.”
Harry was not deterred. “There is evidence against him… Too much, in fact!”
King didn’t look convinced. “Okay, what do you want us to do?”
“Talk to Junior. Get his story. Visit the Battles.”
“All right, suppose we check it all out and nothing pops?”
“Then I’ll talk to Junior. If he still maintains his innocence, I really have no choice but to move forward. However, if the commonwealth offers a reasonable plea deal, well, I’ll have to address it with Junior. He’s been in jail before; he has no desire to return.”
He handed King a file with all the particulars. They shook on it, and Harry turned to Michelle and took her hand. “And I have to say that finally meeting this charming young woman was well worth any price you might charge.”
“You’re going to make me blush, Harry.”
“I’ll take that as quite a compliment.”
As they left Harry and walked outside, Michelle said, “I love that man.”
“Good, because meeting him may be the only positive thing that comes out of this.” His cell phone rang. A minute later he clicked off. “That was Todd. Let’s go,” he said.
“Where to?” asked Michelle.
“A real fun place called the morgue.”
Chapter 8
The pale blue 1969 VW puttered down one of the feeder roads leading to downtown Wrightsburg. The man driving was dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt with loafers on his feet. He also wore a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, and heavily tinted sunglasses covered his eyes. It was probably overkill, he knew. Most people were so self-absorbed they couldn’t describe anything about anyone they’d seen in passing ten seconds before.
Coming in the opposite direction was a Lexus convertible. As Sean King and Michelle Maxwell passed by on their way to the morgue, the man didn’t even glance at them. He continued on his way in the VW that had over two hundred thousand miles on its odometer. The Bug had come off the assembly line a canary yellow. It had been painted many colors since it had first been stolen years ago and had gone through at least ten sets of license plates. Along the way its VIN had been expertly altered. Like a cleansed gun, it was now virtually untraceable. He loved it.
Serial murderer Theodore “Ted” Bundy had also favored VW Bugs in killing sprees that took him from coast to coast before he was executed. He often referred to the amount of “cargo” he could carry in the Bug with the backseat removed, cargo that had once been living, female and human. Bundy also applauded the Volkswagen’s incredible gas mileage. He could slaughter and flee easily on one tank of fuel.
The man made a right-hand turn and pulled into the parking lot of the upscale shopping mall frequented by many of the people who lived in tiny yet very affluent Wrightsburg. It was said that Bundy and other serial killers of his ilk spent twenty-four hours a day plotting their next murders. It must have seemed easy to men like that. Bundy reportedly had an IQ of over 120. Well, the man behind the wheel of the VW possessed one north of 160. He was a member of Mensa, he did the New York Times crossword puzzle every Sunday with ease; he could have made a small fortune on Jeopardy! answering the questions before host Alex even finished asking them.
However, the truth was, you didn’t need to be a genius to hunt up suitable victims; they were everywhere. And these days it was far easier than in Bundy’s time for reasons that might not seem so obvious to most people but which were abundantly clear to him.
He watched the old couple totter out of the supermarket and ease into their Mercedes station wagon. He wrote down the license plate number. He would run it later on the Internet and get their home address. They were doing their own shopping, so they probably had no live-in help or grown children nearby. The make of the car was relatively new, so they weren’t surviving solely on Social Security. The man wore a cap with the logo of the local country club. That was another potential gold mine of information he might later tap.
He sat back and waited patiently. More prospects were sure to come in this busy shopping center. He could consume all he wanted without ever once taking out his wallet.
A few minutes later an attractive woman in her thirties came out of a pharmacy carrying a large bag. His gaze swung to her, his homicidal antennae twitching with interest. The woman stopped at the ATM next to the pharmacy, withdrew some cash and then committed what should have been classified as a mortal sin for the new century: she tossed the receipt into the trash before climbing into a bright red Chrysler Sebring convertible. Her vanity plate read “DEH JD.”
He quickly translated that to be her initials and the fact that she was a lawyer, the “JD” standing for Juris Doctor. Her clothes told him she was fastidious about her appearance. The tan on her arms, face and legs was deep. If she was a practicing lawyer, she probably had just come back from vacation or else had visited the tanning booth over the winter. She was very fit-looking, her calves particularly well developed. She probably worked out regularly, perhaps even ran the trails in the woods hereabouts, he further deduced. His gaze had fixed on the gold anklet she wore on her left leg as she climbed in her car. That was intriguing, he thought.
She had a current-year American Bar Association bumper sticker, so the odds were she was still practicing law. And she was also single—there was no wedding ring on her finger. And right next to the ABA bumper sticker was a parking permit for a very expensive gated residential development about two miles from here. He nodded appreciatively. These stickers were very informative.
He parked, got out of the Bug, walked over to the trash can, made a show of throwing something away and in the same motion plucked out the ATM receipt. The woman really should have known better. She might as well have tossed her personal tax return in the trash. She was now naked, completely open to any probing he wanted to do.
When he got back to his car, he looked at the name on the account: D. Hinson. He’d look her up in the phone book later. And she’d also be in the business listings, so he’d know which law firm in town she worked at. That would give him two potential targets. Banks had started leaving off some of the numbers of the account because they knew their customers stupidly disposed of their receipts where they were easy pickings for people like him. Still, he didn’t want her money; it was something far more personal that interested him.
He kept trolling under the warming sun. What a nice day it was shaping up to be. He reclined slightly in his seat only to perk up when off to his right a soccer mom started loading groceries in her van. He wasn’t guessing there: she wore a T-shirt that announced this status. An infant rode in the car seat in the rear. A green bumper sticker announced that the woman was the mom of an honor roll student at Wrightsburg Middle School for the current school year.
Good to know, he thought: seventh or eighth grader and an infant. He pulled into the space next to the van and waited. The woman took the cart back to the front of the store, leaving the baby completely unguarded.
He got out of the Bug, leaned into the van’s open driver’s side window and smiled at the baby, who grinned back, chortling. The interior of the van was messy. Probably so was the woman’s house. If they had an alarm system, they probably never turned it on. Probably forgot to lock all the doors and windows too. It was a wonder to him that the crime rate in the country wasn’t far higher what with millions of idiots like her staggering blindly through life.
An algebra book was in the backseat; the middle school child’s, no doubt. Next to it was a children’s picture book, so there was at least a third child. This deduction was confirmed by the presence of a pair of grass-stained tennis shoes in the rear floorboard; they looked to be those of a five- or six-year-old boy.
He glanced in the p
assenger seat. There it was: a People magazine. He looked up. The woman had just slammed the cart back into the rack and had now paused to talk to someone coming out of the store. He reached in and drew the magazine toward him. Name and home address were on the mailing label. He already had her home phone number. She’d helpfully put it on the For Sale sign on the window of her van.
Another bingo. Her keys were in the ignition. He placed a piece of soft putty over the ones that looked like house keys, taking quick impressions. It made the breaking and entering part a lot easier when you didn’t have to “break” when you “entered.”
A final home run. Her cell phone was in its holder. He looked up. She was still gabbing away. Had he been so inclined, he could have killed the kid, stolen all her groceries and torched the car, and the woman would never even know it until someone started screaming at the flames shooting into the sky. He glanced around. People were far too busy with their lives to notice him.
He snatched the phone, hit the main screen button and got her cell phone number. Then he accessed her phone book, took a digital camera the size of his middle finger from his pocket and snapped pictures of screen after screen until he had all the names and phone numbers on her directory. He returned the phone, waved bye-bye to baby and slipped back into his car.
He went over his list. He had her name, home address and the fact that she had at least three kids and was married. The mailing block had been addressed to both Jean and Harold Robinson. He also had her home phone number, cell phone number and the names and numbers of a host of others important to her as well as impressions of her house keys.
She and her lovely family belong to me now.
The woman came back to her van, climbed in and drove off. He watched as she sped out of the parking lot, completely unaware that he’d become one of her intimates in the span of a few short minutes. He flicked a good-bye wave to the clueless soccer mom… Maybe I’ll be seeing you if you’re extremely unlucky.
He checked his watch: three potentials in less than twenty minutes. He breathed in the fresh air of the prosperous town of Wrightsburg, a town that had suffered a trio of brutal killings in quick succession.
Well, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
Chapter 9
The Wrightsburg morgue was located on a quiet treelined street about two miles from the main downtown area. It was housed in part of a small one-story building constructed of brick and glass and had builder-grade landscaping that had flourished with the recent wet weather. It could have housed any type of business. People passing by would never guess it was where dead bodies were brought to be cut open and worked on, to determine what and/or who had killed them. In the space right next to the morgue was a sign proclaiming that Dr. Sylvia Diaz, M.D., also had her medical office there.
King’s Lexus pulled into the parking lot, and he and Michelle got out. A moment later a police cruiser drove in next to them, and Todd Williams hauled out his large body. He looked very unhappy as he tucked in his shirttail and righted his pistol.
“Let’s get this over with,” he grunted before storming ahead.
“What’s with him?” whispered Michelle.
“I’ll just take a flier and guess he doesn’t like looking at dead bodies.”
They asked for Sylvia Diaz at the front desk. The receptionist made a phone call, and a slender bespectacled man appeared. In his late twenties or early thirties the man sported a goatee and was dressed in scrubs. He introduced himself as Kyle Montgomery, Sylvia’s assistant.
“She’s just finishing up,” he said in a monotone voice, although his eyes widened at the sight of the statuesque Michelle. “She said to bring you back to her office.”
“How long have you worked here?” asked King.
Kyle squinted at him suspiciously. “Why does that matter?”
“I was just asking,” he replied.
“I’m a private guy,” retorted Kyle.
“I bet you went to UVA, didn’t you?” asked Michelle. “What a great school,” she added, smiling at him and drawing closer.
King watched with an amused expression as his partner proceeded to use her “feminine wiles” to coax information out of Kyle. She very rarely did this, but King knew it could be very effective. Kyle probably had nothing important to divulge, but it was helpful to have information on all the persons involved in the investigation.
Kyle quickly turned all his attention toward her. “Graduated pretty high up in my class,” he said pompously. “I wanted to stay in the area, so I worked at UVA Hospital for a few years and then got my P.A. certification. But I got laid off from an oncology practice, and the bills started mounting up. Then this job came open. Presto, I’m a morgue tech. Thank you, God,” he added sarcastically.
Michelle said, “It takes a very special person to do that sort of work.”
“Yeah, it does,” Kyle said cockily. “But I’m also Dr. Diaz’s physician’s assistant in her medical practice next door. She’s there now treating a couple of patients. She actually hired me for both positions. It’s a little bit of a juggling act, going back and forth, but at least the two offices are hooked together. And we don’t have many deaths here that require autopsies. Hey, but that might be changing, right? Lots of action all of a sudden. Wrightsburg is really growing up. Yeah, baby.” Kyle actually smiled at this.
Michelle, Williams and King exchanged disgusted glances as they followed him back.
Sylvia’s office was everything Michelle imagined it would be. Very neat and orderly, tastefully decorated, at least by morgue standards, with warm feminine touches here and there to help dispel the cold, antiseptic atmosphere that dominated elsewhere in the building. On a coat rack near the door hung a woman’s jacket, oversize bag and hat. On the floor next to the rack was a pair of dress shoes.
“She’s very particular.”
Michelle glanced over to see Kyle smiling at her. “The medical office is the same way. And Doc doesn’t like to track stuff into the autopsy room, even though it’s not like the most sterile place—pretty dirty, in fact. We have a locker room where we put on scrubs and shields, but sometimes I think she’d rather change out here for fear of contaminating some piece of evidence. I say get a life.”
“Actually, it’s nice to hear there are still dedicated people,” said King stiffly.
While Kyle hung by the doorway waiting for his boss, Michelle ran her gaze around the rest of the room. On the shelf behind Sylvia’s desk were several photos of a man either alone or with Sylvia. She picked one up and showed it to King with a questioning look.
“That’s George Diaz, her late husband,” he explained.
“She still has his pictures displayed at work?”
“I guess she really loved the guy.”
“So how come you’re not still seeing each other? Were there issues?” she asked in a playful tone.
“You’re my business partner, not my shrink,” he shot back.
A moment after Michelle put the photo back, Sylvia appeared in the doorway.
“Thank you, Kyle,” she said curtly.
“Right,” he said, and he and his superior smile marched off.
“Does your assistant have a slight attitude, or is it just us?” asked King.
Sylvia slipped off her lab coat and hung it on a hook on the door. Michelle took a moment to look the other woman over. A little under medium height, she was dressed in black slacks and a white linen shirt. She wore no jewelry, presumably because of her work. An earring or ring ending up in a corpse’s slit-open stomach would probably not be a good thing. Her skin was smooth and lightly freckled around the jawline. Her red hair was tied back in a bun, revealing perfectly formed ears and a long, slender neck. Her brow was furrowed, and her look was one of distraction as she sat behind her desk.
“Kyle just turned thirty and doesn’t really want to be here.”
“I guess it’s hard to pick up women in bars with the line ‘Want to check out some great corpses?’” said Michelle.
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“I think Kyle’s dream is to be in a world-famous rock band,” said Sylvia.
“Right, along with twenty million other guys,” said King. “He needs to get over it. I did when I was seventeen.”
Sylvia glanced at some papers on her desk, signed them, closed the file, stretched out her arms and yawned. “I’m sorry. I haven’t done three autopsies so close together for quite some time, and there’s been an outbreak of spring flu. That’s what I was doing next door.” She shook her head wearily. “It’s a little schizophrenic. One minute I’m looking at the throat of a fifty-year-old woman, the next moment I’m cutting up someone to see how they were murdered. Usually, there are months when I don’t even step foot inside the morgue. But not lately.”
“It takes a very special person to do what you do, Sylvia,” said King.
“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, just simply stating a fact, but thanks.”
She turned to Williams, who was looking paler by the minute. When she spoke, her tone was not exactly one of warmth and honey. “I trust you’ve recovered from the first autopsy.”
“I think my head has, not sure about my gut.”
“I was really hoping to see you at the Canney and Pembroke posts. Having the lead investigator in attendance is usually quite helpful,” she added in an admonishing tone that made her point quite clear.
Williams looked miserably at her. “I was planning to but then got called away.”
“Of course.” Sylvia glanced at King and Michelle with a suddenly hardened expression. “Do you both have strong stomachs?”
Michelle and King looked at each other. King answered for them. “Strong enough.”
Sylvia turned to Williams. “Todd, do you have any objection to their seeing the bodies? Of course I also want you or at least one of your men to attend as well. It might appear strange to a jury that somebody from the police force hadn’t viewed the bodies at least post-autopsy.”
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