The Girls He Adored (20 page)

“I won't—I promise.”

“Keep in mind, Irene, I don't have anything to lose. If they catch me, they're already going to execute me for Paula Ann. So what are they going to do, give me
two
lethal injections? One in each arm? I think not.”

Max sat back, leaned even closer to Barbara. “Just in case Irene does anything stupid, you might want to get some last words ready. And try to do better than ‘Oh.’ ”

He stroked her side with the flat of the blade. “You could try something funny—you know, like, ‘You can't say I don't have any guts.’ Or something nice and chilling. You know what my favorite last words are?”

Neither woman responded.

“They were from a girl who was dragged out of her tent by a grizzly in Yellowstone twenty years ago. It was in the paper—I was fascinated by that sort of thing when I was a kid. Her last words, as the grizzly's dragging her off into the bushes to eat her, she calls out, ‘I'm dead.’ Not ‘Help,’ or ‘Ouch,’ just, ‘I'm dead.’ Has quite a ring to it, don't you think?”

Again, no response. He jabbed Barbara with the tip of the knife, not quite hard enough to break the skin. “I
said:
quite a ring to it, don't you think, Babs?”

“Quite a ring,” Irene answered hurriedly for her friend, who appeared to have gone into shock.

The pit stop passed without incident. Maxwell lay across the backseat with his head in Barbara's lap and the knife between her legs. Irene used Terry's credit card at the pump. No bells or whistles went off, but Max knew a record of the purchase would show up on the Visa computer.

But he still needed one more dot for the cops to connect, one more clue that would point them south, away from Scorned Ridge. When Barbara started blubbering again as they pulled away from the gas station, he decided to kill two birds with one stone. Leave the superfluous brunette behind. Someplace where she would be found—but not right away.

Max tried to think back. Christopher, then Ish, had been driving, so Max had only a vague memory of the route. He closed his eyes and brought Mose up to co-consciousness. Together they studied the roadside as Mose recalled it from traveling north with Paula Ann Wisniewski a month ago.

The turn-off. What marked it?

Sign: a flame with a bar through it.

But we're approaching from the opposite direction. What's north of the turn-off?

Mose narrated the scene for Max.
Girl in the front seat crying. Ish driving. To the highway. Wait for a white van to pass, pull out behind it. Landslide cleared to the right—bulldozer tracks. Steep chalk cliff on the right. Caltrans porta-potty across the road on the left.

Good man, Mose. That'll do.
Max opened his eyes, leaned forward. “When you see a yellow porta-potty on the right, Irene, slow down and get ready to hang a left across the highway.”

“T
HIS IS
S
PECIAL
A
GENT
P
ENDER.
Let me speak to— Yes, I am well aware that everybody and his grandmother has been looking for me. Who's around from the Casey task force? . . . Okay, lemme speak to Special Agent Walters. . . . Walters, this is Pender. . . . Yeah, I know—I'll get it handled. Listen, you have a BOLO out for Casey, right? Okay, he's probably driving a green Volvo station wagon with California plates. I don't have the plate or VIN numbers, but if the DMV shows a Volvo registered to either Aletha Winkle, W I N K L E, or Terry Jervis, that's the vehicle he's in. Also, his hair color has changed—he's blond now. . . . Yeah, I'll wait while you put it out.”

If the system worked the way it was supposed to, within minutes every law enforcement official in California would have access to the BOLO; it would actually appear on the screens of the onboard computers in the CHP cruisers.

“Yeah, I'm still here. Here's the next thing: you still have the ERT down here?” Evidence Response Team. “Who's the criminalist? She any good?

“Because I'm on the scene of a double homicide, that's why. Jervis was Casey's arresting officer—looks like he took out both her and her roommate Winkle. . . . Yeah. . . . No, I'm alone at the crime scene. It's extra-virgin—I thought we might like to get our people here first for a change. . . . Don't
worry
about the jurisdiction. . . . Look, do you want it or not . . . ? Good choice. But for shit's sake keep this off the air or we'll have every Barney Fife in the county trampling over our nice fresh scene. . . . Yeah, I'll be here. Wild horses couldn't drag me.”

After giving Agent Walters the address, Pender hit the kill switch, then a programmed number—Steve McDougal's directdial extension at FBI headquarters—and reached McDougal's fierce and faithful secretary.

“Hi, Cynthia. This is Ed. Steve around? Yes,
extremely
urgent. . . . Hey, Steve, it's Ed. Can you get everybody off my back? I want to stick with this case. . . . Don't laugh, I'm dead serious. I've got two more corpses here—the arresting officer and her, uh, significant other. Sex torture. He's killing cops and their families now—we have to get this guy off the street. . . .

“Yeah, well, Pastor's an asshole. I know it's my responsibility— that's why I want to work this one. Besides, from what I've seen of this guy, he'd have gotten out of there sooner or later—he had a handcuff key—and the jail was a fucking sieve. They were supposed to close it down years ago. . . .

“Steve . . . Steve . . . Steve, I—Yes, but—Okay, are you done now? Excellent. Now listen to me: I
will
work this case. I give you my word it'll be my last one—I'll send you an undated letter of resignation, you can fill in the date yourself when it's over. But in the meantime, I'm calling in all my chips—and I do mean
all,
including the fact that we sat on this Casey investigation all those goddamn years without even trying to warn the public about—The hell I wouldn't. . . .

“Blackmail's an ugly word, Steve. And you know I'd never intentionally do anything to cause embarrassment to you
or
the bureau. Unless of course my back was to the wall. . . . I'm sorry you see it that way. But that should give you some idea just how goddamn serious I am. Now, can you get Pastor off my back, and cover my ass with OPR this one last time? I should say,
will
you—I already know you can.

“Excellent. Steven P. McDougal, you're a prince among men. I'll keep you informed.”

Pender folded his flip phone and slipped it back into his pocket. Having spent an hour inside the house, he had some idea of what the women had gone through before they died. Casey had had himself quite a party. A costume party: intimate apparel, lingerie in both women's sizes, negligees, bras, panties, much of it stained with blood and/or semen, strewn all over the bedroom.

Judging by the various ligature marks on Terry's wrists and ankles, she'd been tied, cuffed, strapped, and bound a number of times, in a number of positions. Aletha hadn't been—from the lack
of ligature marks, the amount of blood in the kitchen, and the severity of the wound to the back of Aletha's skull, Pender doubted she'd even been conscious.

Not that that had spared her Casey's attentions—as best as Pender could tell without disturbing the bodies, he'd molested both women repeatedly, growing more and more frenzied, at times using their own sex toys, some of which were also scattered around the bedroom.

Nor had they been spared one final indignity, the tableau in which Casey left the bodies to be discovered. The two were propped up in bed naked, side by side, the sheet pulled up to their waists. They were posed leaning against each other, each with an arm draped companionably across the other's shoulder, their faces turned sideways to each other as if for one last, never-ending kiss.

It hadn't been enough for him to torment them while they lived, thought Pender angrily—he had to humiliate them after they were dead.

I'll get him for this, gals, Pender said to himself as he heard the first Bu-cars pulling up outside the house. I swear by everything that's holy I'll get him.

A
SOFT CARPET OF FALLEN
needles in the clearing under the redwoods. Overhead a lacy pattern of green boughs and blue sky. The cheerful, human-sounding babble of a nearby stream freshened by late spring rains. In the distance, the sound of waves crashing along the rocky coast.

Irene and Barbara lay next to each other on their backs. After draping a car blanket over them to hide the fact that Irene's left ankle was cuffed to Barbara's right, Maxwell had cleared the redwood needles from a patch of ground nearby and was sitting in the dirt, having Mose memorize the AAA maps of central and northern California he'd found in the glove compartment of the Volvo, then burning them.

“How are you doing?” whispered Irene. Maxwell had given them each an apple and a bottle of springwater to share, then allowed each woman to urinate in relative privacy in the low brush.

“ ‘I'm dead,’ ” Barbara whispered back, in what may have been a stab at black humor. Her panic attack had passed. As long as that knife was out of sight—and as long as she didn't think about Sam and the boys—she thought she could maintain for a little while longer.

“Not necessarily.” Irene was feeling better too—even hopeful. “Think about it—he didn't kill that girl until he was about to be captured. And why would he have gone to all that trouble to kidnap us, if he didn't want us alive?”

“You, not us. You're the one he came after. I'm extra baggage.”

“That can work in our favor. I'm sure I can make him understand that whatever he wants from me, he won't get it if he harms you.”

Barbara tried to roll onto her side, but the cuff was fastened too tightly around her ankle; she turned her head instead. “I have a feeling that whatever he wants, he takes,” she whispered into Irene's ear.

“I think this alter is intelligent and rational enough to understand that there are some things that can't be taken. If he wants to kill both of us, there's not much we can do about it, but if he wants my cooperation, he'll have to let you go first.”

“I won't go—I won't leave you alone with him.”

“Of course you will. And when you get back, you'll give Sam and the boys a big kiss for me. I'll be all right—he didn't go to all this trouble just to kill me.”

“But why
did
he go to all this trouble? What do you think he wants from you?”

Irene turned her head, looked into Barbara's eyes, so dark they were almost black in the dappled shade under the trees. “Help,” she said softly. “I think he wants help.”

“And if you're wrong?”

“Then you can say a kiddush for me.”

“That's kaddish,” said Barbara, smiling in spite of herself. “Kiddush is the blessing over wine.”

“So I'm a shiksa,” said Irene. “So sue me.”

It wasn't easy memorizing maps. Just glancing at them didn't work—Mose couldn't visualize later what wasn't captured visually now. He had to scan the big sheets slowly, left to right, then top to bottom. When he finished one map he'd test himself before burning it and moving on to the next—once the information was fixed in Mose's memory, it would always be available.

When the last map was in ashes, and the ashes ground into the dirt, and the redwood needles scuffed back over the ashes, Max took over and pondered his next problem, how to get rid of Barbara without alienating Irene.

He weighed the pros and cons of letting Barbara live. Pro: not only would Irene be grateful, she'd have more incentive for cooperating with him in the future. Con: Barbara would be able to tell the cops about the pink jogging suit, the blond hair, and the green Volvo.