The May Day Murders (13 page)

“
I don’t want chicken,
Mother!” Amy protested, glaring at Ann defiantly. “Can’t I just
order a pizza instead?”

Ann wanted to put her foot down, but
refrained. She sighed and said, “I guess so—it’s better than potato
chips, anyway.”

Amy smiled triumphantly, having chocked
up another victory. “Thanks, Mom.”

She picked up the phone and ordered a
medium pepperoni pizza from the local pizzeria, to be delivered,
and gave them the address. After hanging up she turned to Ann and
said, “A bunch of us are staying over at Amanda’s after the game
tomorrow night. Is it okay?”

Ann wanted to say no—she didn’t
particularly want to spend another weekend night alone—but
reconsidered when she realized that she could avoid explaining her
dinner plans to Amy if she wasn’t going to be home anyway. “No
boys, I presume?”

Amy gave Ann one of her finer
performances. “Of course not, Mom! Amanda’s mom is very strict
about that sort of thing, as you well know.”

No, she didn’t know, Ann thought to
herself. She only knew what she’d been told by two teenage girls.
“I guess it’s okay, then,” she said. “What time has Mrs. Givens
told you to be home after the game?”

“
Ten-thirty,” Amy
answered.

“
Well, see that you mind
her, then.”

“
I will, Mom.”

With that, Amy left the kitchen and
headed for the stairs. Moments later, Ann could hear Guns ‘n’ Roses
blaring from her stereo and sighed as she took out her billfold and
found a ten dollar bill to cover the pizza. She strode into the
living room and laid the money on the table by the front door then
made her way into the family room. She sat down on the sofa, turned
on the T.V, and picked up the romance novel lying on the coffee
table.

Before she began reading, her eyes
stared out the window at the backyard, now brightly illuminated by
the floodlight that Mr. Ogilvy had fixed last Sunday. She breathed
a silent sigh of relief. There hadn’t been any more signs of
prowlers or any obscene phone calls since last weekend. She had
called the police as Karen had suggested, and the officer promised
her that a cruiser would do routine drive-bys past the house for a
while. There was little else they could do, he’d told her. As for
the obscene phone call, he suggested that she call the phone
company and inform them of the call, which Ann had done. The phone
company rep told her that if the calls persisted she might want to
consider getting an unpublished phone number. Ann had thanked the
woman, telling her she would think about it.

Sam had called later that same evening
to ask how she and Amy were doing. He’d told her that there still
weren’t any significant breaks in Marsha’s murder investigation,
but that the police had a lead they were checking on that could be
important. He didn’t elaborate. Ann almost told him about the
prowler and the obscene phone call but decided against it. She
figured it would only needlessly worry him. And besides that, Ann
had resolved, she was on her own now and had to start learning how
to deal with her problems herself instead of relying on
Sam.

Ann opened the paperback to the
bookmarked page and began reading. As she read, her upcoming dinner
date with Jerry Rankin was in the back of her mind. Since meeting
him, she’d whimsically substituted the tall dark stranger in the
novel with Jerry, and the heroine with herself. Their relationship
was really starting to bloom as the story progressed.

CHAPTER 8

Sam pulled off Route 52 and proceeded
to make his way down the winding, slippery road. Rain was coming
down in buckets and there was a thick dense fog setting in as he
navigated the Jeep effortlessly through the quarter-mile long
quagmire leading to his country home.

When he pulled up beside the house and
cut the engine, he could hear the roar of the swollen creek over
the din of the pelting rain. He grabbed his briefcase, opened the
door and bailed out, holding the briefcase awkwardly over his head.
He slammed the door shut with his foot and bolted toward the porch,
deftly side-stepping the puddles along the way. Once inside, he
made his way into the den, set the briefcase down on his desk and
emptied out its contents before plopping himself down in the swivel
chair.

Fridays were always hectic at the
paper, but the latest developments in the Bradley murder case had
made this a particularly grueling one. Roger had received another
call from Lieutenant Mancuso of the N.Y.P.D. earlier that morning.
The DNA samples taken from Marsha Bradley’s body had been compared
to those taken from Sara Hunt’s body. Lieutenant Mancuso had called
to report the results: a perfect match.

It was conclusive now: Marsha Bradley
and Sara Hunt had been raped and murdered by the same
man.

Roger told Sam that he was flying to
New York to compare notes with Mancuso and to go over another lead
that had just cropped up regarding Sara Hunt’s case. Evidently,
someone from her neighboring apartment building had called the
police and informed them that he’d seen a man lurking on the fire
escape outside Sara Hunt’s apartment on the night she’d been
murdered. The witness had been summoned into police headquarters
and his claim was substantiated. The police were just in the
process of working with the witness and a sketch artist to try and
put together a composite photo of the suspect when Mancuso had
called.

Roger had asked Sam to do a little
investigation of his own while he was in New York. He wanted him to
call Ann and ask her if she’d ever known Marsha Bradley to have
been in contact with Sara Hunt recently; and if so, when, and in
what respect. Roger had already interrogated Dave Bradley. He’d
told Roger that as far as he knew, Marsha hadn’t seen nor heard
from Sara Hunt since high school. Roger wondered if perhaps Ann
might know something that Dave Bradley didn’t.

After hanging up from talking to Roger,
Sam had promptly called Ann at the travel agency where she worked
in Columbus to fill her in on the latest details of the case. She
had been stunned to learn of Sara Hunt’s murder and Sam could sense
that his ex-wife was as troubled over this new twist in the
investigation as he was. It was all hitting just a little too close
to home for comfort and they both knew it. Sam asked Ann if Marsha
had ever mentioned Sara Hunt in any size, shape or form since high
school. She replied that she hadn’t, but went on to say that Marsha
had hung out with Sara Hunt for a brief period near the end of
their senior year at high school. Ann had always felt that Sara
didn’t particularly like her, and as a result, she and Marsha had
ended up having a temporary falling out in their friendship during
this period. The three of them simply couldn’t get along with each
other, Ann explained. At any rate, Marsha eventually quit chumming
around with Sara and started hanging out with Ann again. In all
that time since, Marsha had never so much as breathed Sara Hunt’s
name to Ann.

At first Sam was relieved when he heard
this. It meant there was still the slim possibility that there
wasn’t any concrete connection between Sara Hunt’s murder and
Marsha Bradley’s—except for the fact that they had both been
murdered by the same person. Maybe it was just pure coincidence
they had both once lived in Smithtown. Hell of a slim one, he had
to admit, but nevertheless a possibility.

Then he thought: who am I trying to
kid? Every indication so far suggested that the murderer had
personally known both Marsha Bradley and Sara Hunt. And the only
connection between the two women appeared to be that they had
attended the same high school over twenty years ago. This implied
that the murderer had most likely lived in Smithtown around the
same time as well.

And that wasn’t good at all…

He mustn’t upset Ann needlessly, Sam
had resolved. There still wasn’t anything in the case to indicate
that she was in any kind of danger, but he cautioned her to be on
her guard nonetheless. Afterwards, just as he started to hang up
the phone, Ann had suddenly stopped him. She started to say
something, then cut herself off. She told him never mind, that it
wasn’t anything important. Ann had frequently done this sort of
thing as long as he’d known her and it never failed to pique him.
He had pressed her to tell him what she’d started to say but she
wouldn’t relent, so he’d ended up getting pissed off and hanging up
on her.

Sam took out a cigarette and lit it up.
It wasn’t until after he had called Ann that everything really
started sinking in. There was a murderer on the loose who had
killed two Smithtown women in cold blood; and one of them just so
happened to be his wife’s best friend. And, his wife’s best friend
had at one time befriended the other victim. These were documented
facts now—not idle speculation. And the implications were almost as
scary as the facts themselves. Whom ever it was that had raped and
murdered Marsha Bradley and Sara Hunt had known them both
personally—he was certain of that now. And odds were, unless
something came up to prove otherwise, the murderer knew Ann,
too.

Sam leafed through the contents of his
briefcase until he found the copies of the marked pages in Sara
Hunt’s 1970 Smithtown High School yearbook and studied them. He
looked over the nine graduating seniors’ headshots, wondering if
one of them might be a cold-hearted murderer. Although Roger hadn’t
brought it up earlier, Sam was certain that he too now realized the
sudden significance of Lieutenant Mancuso’s half-hearted hunch. For
not only had this evidence resulted in tying in two related
murders, it may very well end up pointing to the murderer
himself.

The five men still living in Smithtown
had been checked out and interrogated by the police, and every one
of them had clean records and solid alibis for the night Marsha
Bradley had been murdered. This narrowed the potential suspects
down to four, and the police were having a tough time discovering
their exact whereabouts. All they knew for certain at this point
was that none of the four men had local criminal
records.

Sam still remembered two of the men,
and neither seemed likely to be the type capable of rape and murder
from his recollection of them in high school. Stanley Jenkins had
been a nerdy, straight-A student; the type who wore thick
horn-rimmed glasses, had zero personality, and made everyone sick
because the teachers loved him—he always did his homework and
excelled in academics. Buford Jackson, the other one, was a black
guy who was as big as an ox, dumber than a coal bucket but one of
the funniest, most likable guys in the entire class. Buford was
probably either working somewhere as a laborer with a wife and ten
kids, or doing stand-up comedy on the Holiday Inn
circuit.

The remaining two men both looked like
they were capable of almost anything sinister—even murdering their
own mothers. They were what all the kids back then referred to as
“hoods.” Both wore scowls instead of smiles in their class photos.
Both had “automotive class” listed as their only academic credits.
And both had probably packed switchblades whenever they decided to
show up at school. Ernie Jones and Clyde Kastings: two guys you
definitely didn’t want to bump into after school had let out for
the day …

And both prime suspects, in Sam’s
book.

As he scrutinized their faces, he
wondered what possible motive one of these men could have to rape
and strangle Sara Hunt in New York City, then two weeks later
travel the five hundred miles to Smithtown to do the same to Marsha
Bradley. It seemed incomprehensible the more he thought about it.
Yet, it had happened. And there had to be reason.

What was the link between
Sara Hunt and Marsha Bradley?

He set the yearbook copies aside then
began reading over the articles written in the New York papers
regarding Sara Hunt’s murder. Just as Lieutenant Mancuso had
mentioned, the press coverage had been uncharacteristically
lacking—in fact, damn near pathetic. The only articles covering the
murder had been written the following day; there had been no
follow-up. Details were scarce in all three of the articles,
particularly the one in the
New York Times
, which had been
little more than a cursory obituary:

ASPIRING ACTRESS FOUND
MURDERED

New York City detectives
reported that the body of Sara Marie Hunt, 39, was discovered in
her Soho apartment by her roommate at approximately 2:30 A.M.
Tuesday morning. Miss Hunt was reportedly beaten, sexually
assaulted, and strangled to death by an unknown assailant who
remains at large. Police say the incident is under
investigation.

Miss Hunt, formerly of
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had lived in New York for the past ten
years and appeared in a few off-Broadway productions as well as
some local television commercials. She was employed part-time as a
waitress at a Greenwich Village restaurant at the time of her
death. She is survived by her parents, William and Clare Hunt, of
Harrisburg.

Sam skimmed over the articles in the
Post
and the
Daily News
next. With the exception of
the bolder headlines and wordy journalism, neither of the tabloids
offered much more information concerning the murder, other than the
fact that the police were refusing to release any specific details
pertaining to the case at this time.