Killing Spree (18 page)

Dr. Pickett sat back down at the piano. “All right. Let’s return to Mr. Bach, taking it from the top.”

“Yes, sir,” Ethan said, assuming the position and tucking his violin under his chin.

“And you’d do much better, Ethan, if you just slow down and give some careful thought as to what you’re doing. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Dr. Pickett,” he said. But he wasn’t listening at all.

Parked behind three school buses, Gillian sat at the wheel of Ruth’s Toyota Camry. She was early—and maybe a bit overanxious. The high school wouldn’t be getting out for another ten minutes.

If this copycat was indeed in Seattle, she didn’t want to take any chances with Ethan’s safety. Gillian stared at the front doors of the high school. A few raindrops hit the windshield, and she remembered that old Monte Carlo with its rain-beaded windows in the college’s parking lot. She recalled Kelly Zinnemann slumped in the passenger seat, her blond hair drenched with blood on one side. It had stained the front of her Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

“The Schoolgirl Killer” had wasted no time finding another victim. Just days after Kelly Zinnemann’s corpse had been discovered, he struck again. Twenty-eight-year-old Christine Cardiff, like so many women attending night classes at Seattle City College, had started carrying pepper spray in her purse. She carpooled with a girlfriend. They’d been planning a trip to Paris with their husbands, and decided to take French lessons in a night course offered by the Experimental College. After her class on Monday night, Christine ducked into the women’s restroom while her girlfriend and some classmates waited outside for her.

They never saw her again—alive.

A janitor found Christine’s body in a storage room behind the school’s auditorium on Wednesday morning. She’d been shot in the head. Her body had been dumped on top of a stack of metal folding chairs. She was dressed in a dark blue blazer, a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, madras kilt, knee socks, and saddle shoes.

ANOTHER ‘SCHOOLGIRL’ KILLING ON COLLEGE CAMPUS
, read the headline in
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Gillian recalled Ruth remarking at the time, “If he wants publicity—and I think that’s just what he thrives on—this perp sure knows what he’s doing. They were already calling him the ‘Schoolgirl Killer’ after the very first murder. And now with victim number two, the son of a bitch has established his pattern and made himself a superstar.”

The police didn’t exactly have to wrack their brains searching for “similarities” to the first murder. Once again, investigators concluded the victim’s “uniform” had been compiled from purchases made at several second-hand stores some time before her disappearance. The clothing and shoe size were a perfect fit. This was extremely unsettling news for women attending classes at Seattle City College. Any one of them could have already been scrutinized and “outfitted” by the Schoolgirl Killer. He was just waiting for his chance to dress her up.

The police questioned the owners of used-clothing stores and thrift shops all up and down Western Washington. They conducted interviews at over a dozen Seattle-area private schools where uniforms were required. They reopened the files on hundreds of “schoolyard incidents,” every reported case of voyeurism, indecent exposure, lewd conduct, and molestation inflicted on a schoolgirl in uniform in the last five years.

Female attendance at Seattle City College had dropped by nearly thirty percent in both day and night classes. Two women in Gillian’s creative writing course hadn’t shown up for class on Thursday. Everyone in the class was probably wondering the same thing: Had both women been too afraid to come to class? Or maybe one of them had already been abducted by the Schoolgirl Killer?

In the absent women’s place, Gillian had two uninvited guests. One of them was a tall, hulking bald man in a crewneck sweater and suede jacket. Holding a cell phone to his ear, he stepped inside Gillian’s classroom about ten minutes into the session. “Madame Professor?” he said, interrupting Gillian, who was reading aloud Jennifer Gilderhoff’s latest cutesy “dating story.”

Following him into the room was a short, homely woman with glasses and corkscrew-curly, light brown hair. She carried a notebook and small tape recorder. They came up the side aisle together. “Madame Professor, I’m Detective Dunbar,” he said, still holding the phone to his ear.

“Um, I’m not a professor.” Gillian tried to smile. “I’m not a madame either. You can call me Gillian.”

The woman at Dunbar’s side was a soft talker. Gillian just caught her first name, Teri. She was some kind of police reporter or something. Dunbar started talking over her to his friend on the cell phone. His eyes shifted toward Gillian. “We’re investigating the recent murders here on campus, and—Madame Professor?”

Gillian blinked at him. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you talking to me? I thought you—”

“We’re investigating the homicides here on campus,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ll be talking to your students in the hallway one at a time. I want to start with you. C’mon.”

Flustered, Gillian turned toward the class. “Um, I’ll be right back—hopefully.”

The detective and his friend followed her out to the hallway. He closed the door behind them. “Yeah, okay, okay,” he said into his phone. “Bye.” He snapped the little phone shut. He nodded at Gillian. “So who decorated your face?”

Though her bruises had faded and the cuts were healing over, Gillian still carried faint souvenirs from the beating she’d gotten the week before. She hesitated before answering. “That has nothing to do with your investigation,” she said.

“Did your husband do that?” he pressed.

“No, he didn’t. My husband has been missing for almost two weeks. The police know about it. That has nothing to do with your investigation either.”

“What makes you so sure?” Detective Dunbar asked with a half smile. “The guy goes missing, and a few days later so does Kelly Zinnemann. Then she shows up dead in a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform. Was your husband Catholic?”

“Episcopalian,” Gillian answered. “And I don’t like where you’re going with this. I’ll be happy to cooperate with your investigation of these homicides, Detective. But if you have any more questions about my husband, I suggest you contact Lieutenant Brad Reece with the Seventh Precinct. He’s already interviewed me at length about my missing husband.”

The homely woman with the corkscrew hair looked a bit amused as she eyed her cohort.

The detective sighed. “Okay,
Madame Professor,
” he said in a mocking tone. “Have you noticed anyone following you lately? Anyone hanging around outside the classroom or your home? Repeated hang-ups on your cell or home phone?”

“No,” she lied. All of those things had been happening recently. But she’d attributed the incidents to the hoods—and cops—who had her under surveillance because of Barry.

“Okay, tell me about the guys in your class,” he said, glancing through the window in the door. “You can skip the old geezer, the black dude, and the Asian guy.”

Gillian had done the research for her books, and statistics said most serial killers were white males between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. Old Glen Turlinger with his three-pronged cane was easy to disqualify. Age—along with race—eliminated Gary Connelly and Luke Huang as well. That left only two male students. “Todd Sorenson is the one seated by the windows,” Gillian said. “Chase Scott is in the second row. What do you want to know about them?”

Dunbar checked a printout of the class list. “Is there anything—
peculiar
about either one of them? Quirky?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I think you read me loud and clear. Now, c’mon, I’m tired. Tell me about these guys.”

“Well, exactly what do you want to know?” she replied. She didn’t like this guy, and didn’t feel like cooperating.

“Well, for starters, is either one of these guys a swish?”

“A what?” she shot back.

He rolled his eyes. “Can you tell me if either one of these guys in your class is a queer?”

“No,” Gillian said evenly. “But I can tell you the detective in the hallway is a jerk.”

He let out an abrupt laugh. “Oh, really? Anything else I should know, Madame Professor?”

Gillian nodded. “Yes, if you’re an example of the investigators on this case, you guys don’t stand a chance of finding this killer. You’re rude, and your methods are tactless. Is this how you’re treating all your potential witnesses? Why should people cooperate if you’re all acting like ill-mannered creeps?”

Snickering, the corkscrew-haired woman scribbled a few notes.

“Okay, you’re done with me,” he said, unfazed. “So—tell me about these two guys.”

“I’ve only been teaching them for about six weeks now,” she replied coolly. “I can’t tell you much.” That was untrue. She’d already formed opinions on Todd and Chase, but she wasn’t about to share them with this oaf. “I can tell you what they’re writing. Todd is working on a novel about a rock band, and Chase is writing a thriller set in the Bahamas.”

“Anything kinky in their stories?”

“Not really. Some recreational drug use in both books and a couple of sex-on-the-beach scenes in Chase’s thriller. But there’s nothing to indicate a twisted mind at work—if that’s what you’re getting at. The books I write are far more twisted, and I haven’t killed anyone. I don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you.”

Detective Dunbar frowned at her. “Well, you’ve been a great big help, Madame Professor,” he muttered. Then he nodded toward the door. “Go back to your class.”

She opened the door, and stepped into the classroom. He came in after her with the printout in his hand. “Let’s start with Donahue, Debi,” he announced.

“She’s not here today,” Gillian said. “She—”

“Connelly, Vincent G.,” the detective called out, reading from the class list.

Gary Connelly slowly got to his feet. Taking off his glasses, he scowled at the detective. With his huge frame, Gary could look pretty intimidating when he wanted. But Detective Dunbar stared right back at him.

“Um, the detective here just needs our cooperation for a few minutes,” Gillian piped up. “I’m sure we all—”

“Hey, I don’t need you to explain my job to these people, Madame Professor,” Dunbar said, holding up his index finger as if to silence her. Then he pointed to Gary with the same finger and crooked it twice. “Mr. Connelly. Will you kindly step outside with me?”

Gary followed the man out the door. The woman with the corkscrew hair took a seat in the back of the class. As soon as the detective closed the door, Todd Sorenson muttered—just loud enough for everyone to hear: “What an asshole.”

It was the only time Todd ever got a laugh out of his classmates.

Gillian resumed reading Jennifer Gilderhoff’s story aloud, but no one seemed to be listening. They could all hear the muffled voices on the other side of the door. And they kept glancing over their shoulders at the strange woman in the back of the classroom. After a few minutes, just when Gillian thought she had recaptured the students’ attention, the door opened again. Gary lumbered back to his seat.

“Okay, Gilderhoff, Jennifer,” the detective announced.

Jennifer turned toward him. “Actually, could I go last? They’re reading my story, and I wanted to get the reaction—”

“
Now,
ma’am,” he said, impatiently motioning her to stand.

Once Jennifer stepped outside the room and shut the door, it was Chase Scott’s turn for a quip. “Vee musn’t keep de Gestapo vaiting,” he said with a bad German accent.

It seemed pointless to read Jennifer’s work when Jennifer wasn’t in the room. So Gillian sighed and put down the story. “We’ll restart class in earnest when this police detective has finished his interrogations,” she announced. “How does that sound? Talk among yourselves.”

“God, he’s so rude!” Shauna Hendricks said. “I can’t believe they’re going around yanking people out of class like this.”

“I guess desperate times call for desperate measures—and obviously they’re pretty desperate right now.” Gillian locked eyes with the woman in the back of the room. “Still, that’s no excuse for
loutish
behavior.”

The woman with the corkscrew hair smirked, and then shifted in her chair. She seemed to enjoy watching her detective buddy spread misery wherever he went.

“So tell us.” Chase Scott said, leaning forward in his desk and grinning at Gillian. He was in his late twenties, and slightly beefy with receding brown hair, a swarthy complexion, and a cocky, impish quality. “Would you ever write a character like him into one of your books?”

Gillian managed a smile. “You mean someone who might alienate witnesses and bungle a case? I don’t know. In detective novels, there’s always some loudmouth, boorish cop who gets on the policeman hero’s nerves—”

“Or the police
woman heroine’s
nerves!” Shauna piped up.

Gillian nodded. “Until finally, in Chapter Fifteen, the hero or heroine cop punches his lights out.”

Everyone laughed. But they fell silent when the door opened again, and Jennifer Gilderhoff walked back into the classroom. Red-eyed, she wiped the tears from her cheeks as she padded back to her seat.

“Hendricks, Shauna,” the detective called.

Standing up, Shauna started toward the door with visible trepidation. She looked like a child walking into the doctor’s office to get a shot. She kept glancing back at Jennifer. Everyone was probably wondering the same thing. What had the cop done to make Jennifer cry? What kind of questions was he asking?