Kill Me Once (29 page)

Bollinger leaned his head back and blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘Whatever. What the fuck do you want?’

Dana ignored his arrogance. ‘I just want to talk to you, Trent. That’s all. I’m not asking you to confess anything. Scout’s honour.’

He picked up her badge and studied it for a moment.

When he looked up again and his stare locked onto hers for the first time, Dana’s stomach dropped.

‘You sure you’re FBI, sweetheart?’

His voice jolted her back. ‘What?’

He repeated himself slowly, enunciating each word as though he were talking to a four-year-old.

Dana shook her head to clear it, ashamed to feel the fear beating so hard in her chest. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her shaking hands. No use. For a moment there she’d thought she was looking into
those
eyes.

‘Yeah, I’m sure I’m FBI,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a big old gun here and everything. What makes you ask?’

Bollinger’s smile crinkled up the tiny crow’s feet in the corners of his glittering brown eyes, revealing a set of remarkably sharp white teeth. ‘Pretty little girl like you might get herself killed running around playing cops and robbers, that’s all.’

Dana pulled back a chair at the table and took a seat opposite Bollinger, hoping that her shaking hands weren’t too obvious to him. She opened his case file and quickly scanned the top page, trying to ignore the feeling of his eyes homing in on her breasts. ‘Let’s get down to business, Trent,’ she said. ‘Says here you work on a ranch out in Deer Trail, Wyoming. Ranching, huh? That sounds like a pretty dangerous job itself.’

Bollinger sat up straighter in his chair and squared his huge shoulders. ‘Shit, bitch, it
can
be dangerous, but not if you know what you’re doing and don’t go off being stupid about the whole thing. I’m real strong, but I’m not your average meathead. I’m real smart, too.’

He paused and laughed at her. ‘Smarter than you assholes, at least.’

Strong and smart enough to overpower and kill three innocent college girls because one of them committed the unforgivable sin of dumping you, asshole?
Dana wondered
. Or are you just a mindless puppet getting your strings pulled by someone else, someone like Crawford Bell?

But this was good. He was already starting to open up to her, and she wanted to keep him talking. If she continued playing to his pride and didn’t push him too hard right away, there was always a chance for a break in this case that was only getting more bizarre with each passing minute.

‘That right?’ Dana asked. ‘You a pretty smart guy, Trent?’

‘Fuckin’ A, sweetheart.’

Sensing her opening, Dana abruptly switched gears. ‘Why were you hiding in the dumpster, Trent? Sounds like a pretty clear-cut case of going off and being stupid about the whole thing to me. Not a very smart thing to do at all.’

Amazingly, Bollinger’s face actually
reddened
at the question. Odd for such a cocky guy.

‘It was a stupid-ass mistake,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see Liza,
had
to see Liza, really, but them goddamn rent-a-cops told me they’d make sure I’d go to jail if they ever caught me on campus again.’

He held up his handcuffs and jangled them in her direction. ‘Guess they wasn’t lying, was they?’

Dana acknowledged the irony with a nod of her head. ‘Guess not. Where you were before you got to Loyola, Trent? You haven’t made any side trips to California or Kansas lately, have you? Ever been to Cleveland?’

He leaned back in his chair and pulled on his nose in disgust. ‘California or Kansas?
Cleveland?
What in the fuck are you talking about, lady? Hardly fucking likely since I was driving two straight nights through from Wyoming.’

Dana slammed her hand down hard on the table. ‘Quit lying to me!’

Bollinger stared at her in shock. ‘Excuse me?’

Dana clenched her teeth and leaned forward across the table. ‘I told you to quit lying to me, Bollinger. I know you’re too stupid to pull off these murders yourself, but you’d better tell me who you’re working for or I’m going to take my gun out right here and split your skull wide open.’

Dana studied the rage in his eyes. Definitely the kind of guy who could kill someone if he got angry enough. And definitely stupid enough to fall for the solo ‘bad-cop’ routine she was pulling on him right now.

‘I’m done dicking around with you, Trent. Just tell me who you’re working for and I’ll make all the bad things go away for you. Deal?’

Bollinger looked like a helpless rabbit caught in a hunter’s snare, the cockiness completely gone from his eyes now. ‘Seriously, lady,’ he said in a voice several octaves above the one he’d been using before. ‘I ain’t working for nobody and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Honestly. I ain’t been nowhere else because I been driving here for two straight days. Soon as I stepped on campus I seen all these cruisers and ambulances and shit all over the place. I have warrants back home – stupid, petty shit, mostly. The dumpster was the first place I seen where I could hide. That’s all there is to it. That’s the whole story, I promise.’

Dana flipped through his file again and felt her heart sink in her chest. The preliminary coroner’s report said the college girls had been killed sometime between eight-thirty and eleven p.m. Chicago PD received the call from a night janitor reporting the murders shortly past eleven, and they’d found Bollinger hiding in the trash receptacle fifteen minutes later. If he was telling the truth about arriving just in time to stumble upon the chaotic scene of the responding units – which was by no means a given, of course – he wouldn’t have even been on campus at the latest possible time of the murders.

He wouldn’t have had time to kill the girls. And it was unlikely he’d killed anyone else.

She tried to keep her voice even as she stared at him across the table. ‘I’m going to ask you a very important question now, Trent. Answer it truthfully and you’ll clear up a whole pile of shit for both of us.’

He looked at her with pleading eyes. ‘Go on.’

‘How many miles does your pickup truck get per gallon?’

‘You talkin’ city or highway?’

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Dana flipped off her cellphone and returned to the observation room where CK had been watching but not listening to the interview.

She tossed Bollinger’s file onto the table in disgust. ‘You might as well let him go,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do it.’

CK looked up at her. ‘Don’t you think it might be a good idea to at least wait for the clothes to come back from the lab before we let this guy go?’

Dana nodded and chewed on her lower lip. ‘Yeah, I suppose you’re going to have to, but the tests are going to come back negative.’ She paused and tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her right ear. ‘Well, they’ll come back positive for blood all right, but he was telling the truth, CK. It’s hogs’ blood on those clothes.’

The Chicago cop wasn’t buying it. Not for a dollar and not for any other price in the world, either. He held up one massive hand and quickly ticked off the evidence on his thick fingers.

‘How in the hell could you possibly know that? Let’s see here: we find the guy covered in blood and hiding in a dumpster on the night of the murders. One of the victims is his ex. He drove two thousand miles to see her and she just so happens to wind up dead on the very same night. I don’t know. Sounds like a pretty strong case to me, even if it’s only circumstantial so far.’

Dana didn’t disagree. It
did
sound like a pretty strong case. As a matter of fact, the DA was probably drooling over the chance to prosecute such a headline-grabber at this very moment. But she had information that they didn’t.

‘I made some calls to American Express headquarters and charmed them into opening their files up to me,’ she said. ‘I just got off the phone with a regional account manager.’

‘You’re worried about your credit-card balance at a time like this?’

Dana ignored the remark and flipped open her notebook. ‘According to American Express, Trent Matthew Bollinger was filling the tank of his pickup truck in Lorain, Illinois, at ten-thirty p.m. tonight. He filled up at a Marathon station and paid with his credit card. Lorain is an hour west of here, CK. If the coroner got it even
remotely
close in her preliminary report, Bollinger couldn’t have committed the murders. He didn’t have time.’

‘You need a subpoena or else that evidence is going to be tainted, you know.’

‘Yeah, I know. But I don’t have time to wait for the courts right now. Not when the killer’s still out there, planning his next move.’

The Chicago cop was silent long enough then for Dana to suddenly become aware of the large round clock loudly ticking on the far wall.

‘Motherfucker,’ he finally muttered, watching his carefully crafted circumstantial case drift away into the dark Chicago night. ‘Wouldn’t you know it.’

Dana reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, CK. Bollinger’s definitely a nasty piece of work, but he’s not a killer. At least, not the one we’re looking for, anyway.’

CK waved the apology away. ‘Hell, don’t apologise to me. You probably just saved me a shitload of work on the wrong guy. Still, I think I’m going to need three aspirin tonight to deal with this fucking headache. Probably four.’

He paused and looked up at her. ‘Looks like you’ve got one yourself.’

Dana sighed. ‘I’m fine. It’s just that I haven’t been getting very much sleep lately and I think it’s finally starting to catch up with me.’

CK nodded and rose to his feet, tucking Bollinger’s file under his left arm. ‘Well, do you have a place where you can crash? We’ve got an extra bedroom over at our place if you want. Believe me, Becky would be thrilled with the company. Seriously, Dana, we’d love to have you.’

Dana smiled, genuinely touched by the offer. ‘No, thanks. I appreciate it, but I’ve got a room over at the Hilton and that bed is calling out my name.’

‘Want a lift over there, then? It’ll save you the cab fare, at least.’

Dana nodded. ‘That would be great. If I see one more taxicab or airplane today, I’m afraid I’ll probably end up killing somebody myself.’

CK laughed and twirled his car keys around one thick finger. ‘In that case we’d better get you the hell out of here before your face winds up all over the eleven o’clock news.’

On the tail end of his shift anyway, CK filed his report with the desk sergeant, updating the man on Bollinger’s credit-card purchase in Lorain and instructing the sergeant to call him at home as soon as word on the bloody clothes came back from the lab.

They walked in silence through the long, winding halls in the sprawling metropolitan police station and to the parking lot where his personal vehicle was parked. Getting inside a white Ford minivan positively
littered
with toys, CK reached over and removed a stuffed Pikachu from the passenger seat before tossing it into the back where it made a high-pitched squeak on impact. He turned in his seat and smiled dolefully at her.

‘Pokemon this, Pokemon that. Soon as something new comes out, guess who’s got to buy it for them? Thank God for overtime, that’s all I’ve got to say.’

When CK had dropped her off at the Hilton twenty minutes later, Dana checked in at the front desk and struggled to keep her eyes open while she rode the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. It was a losing battle the entire way. She should probably contact Brown and Templeton; fill them in. And Crawford – although what she’d say to him God alone knew. She was too tired to think straight.

Finally letting herself into her room, she immediately collapsed onto the queen-sized bed nearest the door. Before she could gather the strength to change into her nightclothes, brush her teeth and wash her face, her body suddenly shut down hard, crashing her mind into a violent, dream-filled sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

There truly was no place like home.

Nathan pulled the bright floral curtains across a window that looked out nowhere, finally putting the finishing touches on his ultimate masterpiece.

It was here that the ending of the story would be written, and not a moment too soon, either. He was itching to begin the most thrilling journey any human being could ever hope to experience, and he needed Dana Whitestone to send him on his way.

He sat down in a comfortable leather chair over in the corner and used a solid gold cutter to snip the tip off a fresh Cuban cigar he’d been saving for the occasion. He waved the flame of his silver Zippo over the tobacco and squinted his eyes against the fragrant smoke that curled up into his face.

Nathan leaned his head back and took a long, hard pull on the cigar before blowing five perfect smoke rings.

Everything was almost perfect now. Just a few more details to attend to – just a few more loose ends to tie up – and all the pieces would finally be in place.

The twenty acres of remote woodland in Cuyahoga County was the first major purchase he’d made with the money he’d received from the wrongful-death settlement. He could have purchased anything in the world he’d pleased at that point, of course, but he’d chosen this. It was the only thing that would do, really.

Over the years, he’d carved the bunker out of the earth with his bare hands, a shovel and pickaxe his only tools. It was backbreaking work and extremely slow going for the most part – especially in the wintertime when the ground was frozen solid – but Nathan had kept at it like a madman, diligently working away until this day had finally arrived.

Nathan looked around the room he’d put together from memory. A frilly single bed was covered with a Big Bird comforter and flanked by two small night tables. Tiny dresses hung in an earthen closet carved into the north wall. A small generator under a large wooden wardrobe powered a Wonder Woman night light plugged into a socket next to a comfortable blue beanbag. On a tripod-mounted magnetic easel three feet away, his name had been spelled out in colourful plastic letters.

Sitting there on that comfortable leather chair underneath the frozen ground twenty miles west of Cleveland, Nathan Stiedowe took another hard pull on his cigar and let himself drift slowly back in time.