Split Second (8 page)

CHAPTER 17

Coop said, “I know, it’s nearly one a.m. I was prowling around, saw the light under your door. You can’t sleep either?”

Coop stood in Lucy’s hotel-room doorway wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and boots. For an instant she didn’t recognize him, since she was so used to seeing him in a suit, or a white shirt, the sleeves usually rolled up. Well, she wasn’t in a suit, either, so who cared? She cleared her throat. “Good look—like a cat burglar,” she said, and stepped back. “I did try to get some sleep, but it wasn’t happening. I’ve been staring out toward the bay. You want a beer? We can play a game of Who’s the Real Mother?”

Coop walked into a room the mirror image of his. “Sounds good.” He sprawled on the sofa, accepted the beer, and clicked his can to hers.

“Hey, I like your sleep shirt. Red’s a good color on you.”

“Ah, but that’s not the best part.” Lucy turned around. GIVE ME A REASON was written across the back, and beneath there was a squirrel on his hind legs, aiming a rifle outward.

He laughed, settled back. “I don’t think Delion has ever been shut down so fast as we were by Mrs. Lansford. She practically shoved us out the door,” he said, and sat forward again, staring down at the nondescript beige carpet beneath his booted feet. “So, let’s play your game. Who do you think is Kirsten’s mother, Sentra or her twin sister, Elizabeth?”

“My gut veers toward one, then the other. I thought Vincent was going to shoot both of them there for a while, what with that smug smile on Sentra’s face, and Mrs. Lansford—that lady was extraordinarily pissed off. At us? Or at her sister?”

Coop said, “All of us. I Googled Sentra Bolger, found no mention at all of a twin sister, only that Sentra’s an interior decorator, works out of her home on Russian Hill. There was a lot of stuff about her husband, Clifford Childs, and his family. You’d think there’d be more, but there wasn’t.

“Elizabeth Mary Lansford has hundreds of links, of info about her husband and her artwork, her gallery, and her charities—but not a word about a twin sister. I did find a mention of Kirsten, but only as a daughter.”

Lucy laughed as she set down her beer can. “I did the same thing. I bet Vincent is so hyped he’s still up working on this.”

Coop said, “He’s a little like Savich, happiest when he’s got a trail to follow. A big trail is that new Porsche Mr. Lansford gave her for her birthday, and, of course, the usual financial records and cell phone accounts. If she hasn’t ditched them all, they could lead us to her.”

Lucy said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Kirsten finds out we were here in San Francisco, that we know now who she is. If she does, she could disappear again.” She frowned for a moment, then walked to the window and stared out again at the small chunk of San Francisco Bay she could see between two buildings opposite her room. She looked down onto Bay Street, two floors below. There were few streetlights, and no people about. The entire wharf area seemed quiet as a tomb.

“I wonder who named this hotel Edelweiss?”

He grinned at her back. “Hey, Shirley gave it an eight on our short FBI-approved list of hotels, so what’s in a name?” It was late, and Coop was tired; he lost focus for a moment and found himself looking at her bare legs—nice, long legs, actually—and at the silver bracelet with a small dangling palm tree hanging from one of her ankles. He was smiling until she turned around and he saw misery in her eyes. She blanked it out in an instant and said, “When I look back on the interview, I can remember thinking some of the things she said were more than a bit odd. I wonder how much of it was true. Did you see her pull that piece of paper from the blue horse’s hoof—she stared at it for the longest time. What was that all about?”

Coop said, “But the real question is: why was she pretending to be her sister?”

“The word
nuts
springs to mind. Maybe it was a game they played when they were younger, but—”

“Yeah, but this was nothing to joke about. Maybe Sentra Bolger was going for exactly the shock and rage we were treated to from her sister.”

Lucy thought about that. “So, Coop, what do you think? Who is Kirsten’s mother, Sentra or Mrs. Lansford?”

Coop sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees. “I’m thinking if Sentra is Kirsten’s mom, the women had to switch identities at the very beginning, even before Kirsten’s birth, since there was never any question raised about maternity.”

Lucy said, “It would be nice to have a DNA sample from one of them to really nail down Kirsten as the Black Beret, though I don’t think these ladies are going to line up to give us one. But I wonder why Sentra would give her baby to her sister? It’s true she appears to be several slices short of a loaf, and that throws even more doubt on Kirsten’s mental health. Was she born crazy, a loaded gun?”

“No,” Coop said slowly, “not crazy. I think Bundy was pure evil.”

Was he evil? What did that make her grandmother, killing her own husband? She closed it off. “It’s a pity Mrs. Lansford refused to talk to us at all.”

Coop set his beer can down on the coffee table next to Lucy’s. “It was more than anger. When she realized what it was about, she had to have time to think it over and talk with her husband, decide what to tell us.”

Lucy nodded. “But if she’d had a gun, I do believe she’d have shot the lot of us, her sister first off. Her husband’s going to go ballistic about what this is going to do to his run for Congress.”

He nodded. “No way around it, he’s screwed. When I called Savich before to tell him what happened, he was surprised, a hard thing to manage at the best of times, but the twin story did it. He said, ‘Well, life never ceases to amaze, does it, Coop?’ Then I heard him tell Sean not to feed Astro his apple pie; it was the last piece, and his mama wanted it if he didn’t.”

She gave a smile, a small one, but it still counted. Coop rose, pulled out a small bottle from his jeans pocket. “I brought some melatonin with me—it helps turn my brain off for a while. Want some?”

They washed down the tablets with the rest of the beer.

“Give it twenty minutes.”

When she walked him to the door, he turned and looked at her. “Lucy, what are you up to at your grandmother’s house?”

The smile fell away. For an instant, he would swear she looked panicked before she shook her head and said in a rock-hard voice, “Nothing, Coop. Forget it, okay? Breakfast is coming soon, so let’s hope the melatonin does the trick.”

He wanted to see her smile again. “What do you think of our pre-honeymoon so far?”

“I understand sleep deprivation is a common side effect of a pre-honeymoon. If you don’t leave, we’re going to qualify for that.” She looked him up and down. “You might be an arrogant skirt-chaser, but again, you might not, so I’ll ask it. Tell me, Coop, would you marry me if I had a kid whose father was Ted Bundy?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Me, either.”

“Good night, Lucy. I really do like your palm tree,” he said as she closed the door. “See you in the coffee shop at eight a.m. sharp.”

CHAPTER 18

Richmond District, San Francisco
Saturday morning

“It’s the duplex on the right,” Delion said, pointing, and pulled his Crown Vic into the only free spot on Clinton Street, a good half block away. “We’re only a few blocks from the Golden Gate. If you guys like, I’ll drive you through the park when we’re done here. We can commune with the buffalo.”

Delion had called ahead, and so he wasn’t surprised when the door was opened immediately by a slight man with a receding hairline, stooped shoulders, and bright red sneakers on his feet.

“Mr. Carpenter? Roy Carpenter?”

The man nodded. “Inspector Delion?”

After introductions, Mr. Carpenter showed them into a long, narrow living room, the front window looking out over the cars on the other side of the street. Toys were scattered everywhere on small, colorful rugs. Lucy felt a lick of sadness. She hadn’t known he had a child.

Mr. Carpenter said, “Forgive the mess. My sister and my nephew Kyle are living with me at the moment. She, ah, left her abusive husband last week, finally. She’s staying with me until—well, I don’t know how long. Please sit down. Coffee?”

Since the three of them were floating in Starbucks coffee, they turned it down. When they were all seated side by side on a nubby gold sofa, Mr. Carpenter said, “You’re here about Arnette.” He tried to keep his voice flat, devoid of hope, to prevent disappointment, Coop knew. It was hard, so very hard, since he knew, all of them knew, that even after three-plus years, a victim’s family still held out hope that the missing loved one would once again, somehow, walk through the door and explain it all.

Delion pulled a small recorder from his jacket pocket. “Do you mind if we record this?”

“No, not at all.”

“We believe we know what happened to your wife, Mr. Carpenter.”

He jerked forward on his chair, and the naked hope in his voice was enough to break your heart. “You’ve found her? You know who took Arnette, what they did to her? Is she alive?”

“Mr. Carpenter, I’m sorry, sir, but we believe your wife was murdered. We also believe the person who killed her was named Kirsten Bolger. Do you know anyone by that name?”

Mr. Carpenter looked blank but only for a moment. Then he looked shell-shocked. “Kirsten Bolger? You think she murdered my wife? But why?”

Here was the link. Delion said, “We hope you’ll be able to tell us that, Mr. Carpenter.”

“But I didn’t even meet Kirsten Bolger until maybe six months after Arnette went missing. She called me, said she modeled with my wife and did I want to get together to talk about her? I was wallowing in grief and questions, and so I said yes. I remember it clearly, because I wanted to hear someone talk about Arnette like she was somehow here, alive.

“I met her at McDuff’s—that’s a bar down in the financial district on Sansome Street. You really believe Kirsten Bolger murdered my wife?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But that makes no sense, Inspector Delion. Why would you believe that?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment, sir.” Delion sat forward on the sofa. “I know it’s been a long time, Mr. Carpenter, but do you remember any of your conversation with Kirsten Bolger?”

They heard a toddler scream out, “Mama, Cool Whip!”

“Oh, that’s Kyle. He likes Cool Whip on his Cheerios. He’s got a good set of lungs on him. Missy said she’d keep him out of our hair.” He cleared his throat. “I remember Kirsten was glowing in her praise of Arnette. She never said she had a problem with her or anything bad, just told me how wonderful Arnette was.”

Lucy said, “Can you describe Kirsten Bolger?”

“I remember she was something to behold. She was wearing black, nothing but black, all the way down to a small black pearl in her nose. She had really long straight black hair, parted in the middle, like Cher when she was young, and she looked like a model, so thin you knew she had to be starving, bony arms sticking out of a sleeveless black T-shirt. Arnette was never that thin, thank heaven; she always said she couldn’t live without her peanut butter.” His voice caught, and he looked down at his red sneakers. After a moment, he cleared his throat, met Delion’s eyes.

“Kirsten’s face, it was fascinating, not beautiful, all angles and hollows, and very white, unnaturally white, I remember thinking, but still fascinating, and I thought the camera had to love her.

“I guess what I remember most is right before she left the bar, she said something like boy, was she ever hot, and I’ll tell you, I blinked at that until she pulled off the black hair—a wig—and there was her own hair, blond fuzz, maybe two inches long, all over her head. I nearly fell off my chair, I was so surprised. And then I remember thinking that she shouldn’t be a blonde, her eyes were too dark, her eyebrows, too. I wondered if she’d dyed all that blond frizz. But why?”

Delion said, “You said she was glowing in her praise of your wife. Do you remember exactly what she said?”

“She said Arnette was beautiful and kind and everyone had loved her, that when she disappeared no one could understand it. If you’ve read the interviews, you know this is what nearly everyone else said.” Mr. Carpenter looked away from them for a moment, seemingly at a stuffed brown bear on the floor by a chair. He was struggling with himself, Lucy saw it plainly, but why? “Tell us, Mr. Carpenter, tell us what you’re remembering. It’s important. What did Kirsten say that upset you?”

He looked like he was struggling not to cry. He drew a breath, and his words spilled out in a rush. “She said she was really sorry Arnette had left me, since I seemed like such a nice man. I tell you, I didn’t know what to say. I stared at her. And I asked her why she believed Arnette had left me, since everyone was thinking it was a case of kidnapping. She leaned toward me, picked up one of my hands, and held it a moment between her own two dead-white hands. She said Arnette told her all about it, how she was sorry, but I just wasn’t quite enough.” He swallowed. “That’s what she said—
I just wasn’t quite enough.
When I asked her if she knew the man’s name, she said all she’d heard Arnette say was the name Teddy.”

Delion said, “No last name?”

“No, only Teddy. I called the police, told them about this, but nothing happened.”

Delion said, “There was nothing about this in your wife’s file, Mr. Carpenter. Did you also give the officer you spoke to Kirsten’s name so there could be a follow-up with her?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you remember the officer’s name?”

“No, sorry, I don’t. I do remember he had to put me on hold a minute because there was a lot going on, a big drug bust, and I guess that meant lots of confusion. I could hear shouting and cursing in the background.”

Both Coop and Lucy knew exactly what Delion was thinking:
I’m going to find and kill the idiot who took this call. Just a brief note or a couple of words to the lead—Inspector Driscol, now retired—and they might have caught Kirsten Bolger before she killed more women.

Lucy said, “So, basically, she invited you for a drink to tell you Arnette had left you for another man, this Teddy?”

“Yeah, now that I think back on it, all the rest of it was window dressing; telling me about the other man, that was the bottom line.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I believed her for maybe two seconds. I knew my wife, knew her as well as I knew myself. We’d been married for three years, not all that long, but we’d known each other since we were sixteen. I would have known if she’d met someone else. She would have told me. Whatever was in her head was out of her mouth in the next second.

“I wasn’t enough? Arnette wouldn’t say that, I know it to my soul.” He paused, then tears swam in his eyes and he lowered his head. “We were trying to have a child, and I’ll never know if she was pregnant when this Kirsten killed her.” His head snapped back up, and now there was rage. “Why? Why did this woman kill her? And then she calls me and tells me Arnette left me for this Teddy? It makes no sense.”

Coop said, “Your wife never mentioned Kirsten’s name? Ever?”

“No. As I said, Arnette always said whatever was on her mind; sometimes that wasn’t a good thing, but it was simply the way she was. If she’d had any kind of problem with Kirsten Bolger, she’d have told me. And who is Kirsten Bolger? All she ever told me was that she modeled, and that’s how she knew Arnette.”

Delion said, “Have you heard of the killer some of the media is now dubbing the Black Beret?”

“Of course. The guy who murdered two women here in the city—met them in bars, drugged them, took them home, and strangled them, right? No rape, which is why it’s even stranger. Why are you asking?”

Delion said, “The Black Beret isn’t a guy. She’s a woman—Kirsten Bolger, to be exact.”

Talk about a conversation stopper. Even the air stilled. Roy Carpenter looked like someone had shot him. His breathing hitched, and he began shaking his head back and forth. “But these two women murdered right here in San Francisco, they were found right away. Not like Arnette; she’s been gone three and a half years.” He turned perfectly white. “Do you mean she didn’t want Arnette found, and so she took Arnette someplace and buried her?”

“We believe so,” Coop said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carpenter.”

“But why did she want to torment me? I didn’t even know her.”

She called you because she’s an unbelievably cruel bitch.
Lucy said aloud, “That’s an excellent question.” She sat forward. “Tell me, sir, was your wife by any chance an artist?”

“Why, yes, she was, but—” Roy Carpenter blinked. “She called it her hobby; she always laughed when I told her her paintings were good enough to sell. There, over the fireplace, that’s one of Arnette’s landscapes. Next to it is a portrait she did of her mother. They’re acrylic; that was her favorite medium. I’ve got several dozen of her paintings. I change them out every couple of months. She was very good, don’t you think?”

They rose to look at the paintings. Coop said, “Yes, she’s very good, Mr. Carpenter, very good indeed.” Coop supposed he’d call them neo-Impressionist, with their soft muted colors, the shapes slightly blurred, the trees a bit out of focus, but the colors were beautiful and deep. Her mother was a lovely woman, he thought, her face both haunting and beautiful. He saw hints of pain around her mouth and her eyes, a pain that seemed familiar and to have been with her for a very long time. It took talent to capture that.

Mr. Carpenter was staring at Lucy. “Why did you ask me if Arnette was an artist?”

“I think it might be our tie-in, Mr. Carpenter. Did Kirsten Bolger mention Arnette’s art? Did she say she painted as well?”

“No, not that I remember. Wait, when she said good-bye to me, she said she was off to Post Street to visit the art galleries. I remember I was standing there on the sidewalk, not knowing what to say, and she patted my face and kissed my cheek. I was so surprised I didn’t move. Then she gave me a little wave, pulled her black wig over her head, and sauntered off, whistling. I remember thinking she was crazy. I guess she is.”

“Close enough,” Lucy said.