Until Dark (5 page)

Chapter
Four

Adam stepped aside to admit Kendra into the sitting area of his hotel room. It was a little past two in the morning and they’d just returned from Walnut Crossing, where they’d spent the past nine hours speaking with the witnesses who had been the last to see Karen Meyer alive. As soon as they could, they would move on to Windsorville, to speak with possible witnesses relating to the disappearance of Amy Tilden. Keyed up after hours of interviews, neither of them could sleep.

Kendra took a seat on one end of the sofa, pulled a sheaf of notes out of her folder and asked, “What did you think of the police investigation in Walnut Crossing?”

Adam sat on the other end of the sofa, his long body angled to face her.

“I thought they did a good job, if not a great one. Which is what I told Mancini when I called in earlier this evening. By the way, he now has several more agents working with the state police to track the van and assist with the processing of the prints they found on some of the debris in the Dumpster where they found Kathleen Garvey’s body.”

“So sad. All Karen Meyer had done was go to a concert in the town square so that she could be there when her daughter played in the school band for the first time, then stayed to watch her son’s ball game. Those simple, selfless acts of a loving mother somehow put her in the path of a killer.”

“Founder’s Day.” Adam pulled the police report from the folder and skimmed over it, hoping to find something they might have missed. “The entire town was there.”

“The entire town, plus one,” she said pointedly. “One with a dark van parked at the farthest end of the lot, where the park begins. The park Karen Meyer would walk through to get home.”

“Doesn’t it ever strike you how crazy it all is? How one small thing—one tiny, random decision—can end up making the difference between life and death?” Adam said. “So many ‘if only’s.’ If only one of her children had gone with her. If only she’d accepted the ride home that her neighbors offered. If only she’d walked home on the main streets, or left earlier, instead of choosing to stay to see her son’s game.”

“No question it’s the same guy?”

“Not in my mind. We’ll know for sure once the DNA matches up, but in my mind it’s a given. Tossed by the side of the road where she’d be certain to be found.” Adam paused, then added, “Only thing different with Karen Meyer is that her clothes were damp, which has yet to be explained, since it hasn’t rained here in a week. But I’d bet everything I have that he’s been watching her, just waiting for the most opportune time.

“And watched her closely enough that he knew that whenever she walked home from town, she took a shortcut through the park. I think he was waiting for her. But if she hadn’t gone through the park that night, he’d have been waiting for her somewhere else at some other time. He wanted her. I think he just waited for her in the woods.”

“Like the Big Bad Wolf,” Kendra noted.”What do you think the autopsy will show?”

“Strangulation. He was a lot rougher with Karen than he’d been with the other two, but I think it was a strong emotion that he hadn’t planned on—anger, most likely—that drove him to want to hurt her.”

“Because she fought him?”

“I’m thinking that they’ll find traces of skin and blood under her nails, which the others did not have. Which leads to the question of why she would have been able to fight him, even unsuccessfully, when the other two showed no sign of a struggle.” Adam leaned forward and sorted through a stack of photographs that he’d taken from the folder marked
TILDEN
in wide black letters. “A question to which I believe I have the answer. . . .”

When he found the photo he was looking for, he pushed it to the center of the table, his jaw set squarely. Amy Tilden’s body lay on the shoulder of the road, surrounded by litter. From the folder marked
GARVEY
he removed another set of photos from which he pulled out several close-up shots. He placed them side by side on the table, facing Kendra.

“You’re looking at those little marks on their arms. Any idea what might have made them?”

“Stun gun.”

“A stun gun? You think he—”

“Stunned his victims? Yes, so they could be easily and quietly tucked into the van. They work by giving an electrical charge to the victim. If the charge is strong enough, it can knock a grown man to his knees, but not necessarily knock him out. So you can be rendered totally helpless but be conscious, or semiconscious, depending on how high the current is. The current runs between two prongs that hold the electrodes, and if the prongs come in contact with the skin, they can leave small marks that look like burns. Like these on the backs of our victims’ arms.” He shuffled through the stack of photographs. “Which explains why neither Kathleen Garvey nor Amy Tilden appeared to have struggled. Of course, we’ll have to wait until the Meyer autopsy is finished to see if there are similar marks on her.”

“But there won’t be, will there? That’s why he roughed her up so badly. He hadn’t been able to stun her.”

“My guess is that he might have taken her by surprise, and she could have reacted before he did.”

“You mean, kicked him or punched him . . .”

“. . . or possibly knocked the stun gun out of the way. He isn’t used to having to fight for what he wants. He’s been taking the easy way, and it’s been working quite nicely for him up until now.”

“I guess that could have made him angry enough to work her over the way he did.” Kendra sighed. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

“Why do it, then? Don’t you have a degree in art history and a minor in communications?”

“I’m lucky. I’ve always had a talent for drawing faces. I took some studio courses when I was in college, and even flirted with the idea of becoming a painter for a time.”

“Then surely there are other ways for you to make a living.”

“Yes, but nothing that would give me the same sense of satisfaction I get when a sketch I’ve made results in a good arrest. I remember very clearly how I felt when my brother’s murderer was brought to trial and was convicted. Sentencing Webster to life in prison would not bring back Ian and Zach. But at least their killer would pay a price for what he’d done to them. To what he’d done to the people who loved them. Every victim deserves justice,” she said quietly. “Everyone who has lost someone they loved deserves to have all the doors closed behind them, so that they can get on with the rest of their lives. Everyone deserves closure. This is the only way I know to help others to find it.”

Closure of a kind, Adam knew, that had eluded Kendra for years.

“My mother went to her grave not having found my brother’s body. We never knew what really happened to him. How he died, or where. A man had been tried and convicted of his murder, but he never admitted a thing, never gave us a thing.” She looked up at Adam from across the table. “One of the reasons why I’ve never believed she committed suicide. She wouldn’t have chosen to leave this life while his body was still out there.”

“What were the others?”

“The others?”

“The other reasons.”

“She wouldn’t have left me. My mother and I were very close. She was my best friend. We had gone through so much together. My father’s illness . . . his death . . . my brother’s murder, the trial . . .” Kendra swallowed hard. “She used to say that we were survivors, that our grief bound us as much as our love and our blood. There is no way in hell she would have chosen to leave me behind to deal with the pain of losing her. She and I had been to that well too many times together. She would never have made me go alone. She never would have taken her life and left me to wonder why.”

“What do you think happened, then?”

Kendra shrugged.

“I have no idea. I was hoping the police could tell me. That was their job, to study the evidence, then tell me what happened.”

“I’m sure they believed they did that, Kendra.”

“They were wrong,” she snapped. “She wouldn’t have left me, wouldn’t have left her husband. She and Philip were very happy together. He was the one who encouraged her to run for office—financed her campaigns and pulled in every old political favor he could think of to help her get elected. Not because she was his
wife
, but because he
believed
in her.” Kendra shook her head. “After so many years without my father, so many years of believing that the best was in the past, she’d finally met a man who made her believe in the future, to believe in herself and her ability to do great things. There was nothing that Philip wouldn’t have done for her—nor her for him. She wouldn’t have left him. Wouldn’t have left me. I tried to make the police understand that. . . .”

“But even the FBI came up cold, Kendra,” he reminded her gently. “And you know, better than I, that your stepfather’s connections ensured that the best the Bureau had had looked into her death.”

“They missed something. They all did,” she insisted. “There was no note, Adam. If my mother killed herself—put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger—she would have written a note first. To me. To her husband. But there was nothing.”

“Nothing found.”

She looked at him sharply.

“There was nothing
found
because there was nothing
to be
found. My mother was not a quitter. If you’d known her, you’d have known that taking her own life would never have been an option for her. She would have considered it cowardly. After all the terrible times she survived in her life, why, when things were so wonderful, would she have killed herself?”

“And what does your stepfather think?”

“He agrees with me completely, of course. Neither of us has ever accepted the official version. Neither of us ever will.”

“And assuming that you’re right, what are your chances of ever finding out what really happened that night?”

“Less than a snowball’s chance in hell. Philip and I both know that.” She picked at a cuticle so that she had someplace to look other than at Adam. She didn’t want to see what was in his eyes. She suspected that he believed that she—and Philip, too, most likely—was in total denial where her mother was concerned. It was a conversation she did not want to have with him.

“Why these women, Adam?” she asked, changing the subject. “Why did he choose them?”

“Well, let’s look at what we learned about them today. Mancini always says you have to study the victim to find the killer. We know that Amy Tilden had arrived late to school for Home and School night because her son had a soccer game and her youngest daughter had Brownies that afternoon. She’d watched the game, picked up her daughter, then headed home for dinner. According to the statement of the next-door neighbor, with whom she shared a driveway, Amy and the kids arrived at the house right around six-fifteen and Amy’s ex-husband, Stan, arrived shortly thereafter.”

“Ex-husband?”

“He came over to watch the kids while Amy went back to school. He said he had dinner with them and she left at seven. He was the one who called the police when she didn’t return home.”

“How’d she do that? Get everyone fed and be back out the door in less than an hour?” Kendra frowned. “He bring a pizza home with him?”

“Nope. The extremely efficient Amy Tilden apparently had put something in her slow cooker before she left for work in the morning. By the time she left her home after dinner to go back to school, she had the dishes in the dishwasher and all three kids lined up doing their homework.”

“The Amy Tildens of the world humble me with their ability to organize, to keep everyone’s life in order. Why would someone want to harm a woman like that? And not just harm her, but humiliate her by tossing her onto the road like a piece of litter? What was he trying to prove?”

“When we figure that out, we’ll be close to finding him. Though I suspect it’s tied into the manner in which he rapes. Except for Karen Meyer, he has exhibited surprisingly little violence for so violent an act. Almost as if the rapes, too, were meant to prove a point. To humiliate and shame these women, to show his power over them.”

“Wouldn’t it take a great deal of control to commit a rape in such a way?”

“Absolutely, and there’s no question that he’s a very controlled individual. He wants a minimum of resistence, hence the stun gun. Wants to exercise his power and make certain that his victims know that he holds the power.” Adam hesitated, then added, “Except, again, for Karen Meyer, where things apparently did not go according to plan. Now, do you have a copy of the statement from the guy who was parked next to the Tilden van in the lot behind the school the night Amy disappeared?”

“Yes. Jack Wilson. Forty-three years old, turkey farmer.” Kendra shuffled through her notes. “He was late arriving at school to meet with his son’s teacher, couldn’t find a spot in the visitors’ lot so he parked in the employee lot.”

“And just happened to be returning to his car after his appointment in time to see a man coming from around the back of the dark van that was parked on the other side of Amy’s car.”

“And just happened to get a glimpse of him in his headlights before he hopped into the driver’s side.” Kendra read her notes aloud. “Longish dark hair, curly in the front . . . a nose he described as a ‘ski jump’ . . .” She glanced up at Adam. “Which isn’t a terribly unusual feature, by the way. All the Smith men had one.”

She studied the sketch she’d made as she slipped off her shoes and pulled her legs up onto the sofa.

“Mr. Wilson actually got a better look at our suspect than anyone so far, but he was out of town when the investigation started and only spoke to the police on Thursday afternoon, when he returned. I think that’s one reason why the original sketch is so far off the mark,” Kendra murmured. “They didn’t know they had a good witness.”

“And then we had those kids come forward—the boys who played on the opposing soccer team that afternoon—to report that a dark van had been parked near their bus at the field.”

“It’s too bad the boys didn’t get a better look at the driver.”

“Well, their general description matched Max Spinelli’s. About six feet tall, dark hair.”

“Which probably describes about half the men in Windsorville.”