by Jacob Stone
Annie Walsh’s partner, Greg Malevich, had already met with Bushnell’s friend, and she confirmed that Bushnell had been at her apartment until one. If it weren’t for that, Morris might’ve thought Bushnell had been stalking Campbell, and if that had happened she could’ve seen the killer enter the house.
“How’d you get inside the house?” he asked. “Was the front door left unlocked?”
She gave a miserable attempt at smiling. “I handed George back his key when he broke up with me, but I had made a copy.”
Morris gave her a hard look as he considered whether she could’ve been involved in the murder. They already knew from the first victim’s fiancé, Alex Frey, that the killer was a man and even with a ski mask on nobody could’ve mistaken Lindsey Bushnell for a man, but there was still a chance she had paid for the killings—and it wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to hide a murder by orchestrating what looked like a serial killer at work. Nor would she be the first person who hired a killer who’d want to see up close and personal what she had paid for.
That scenario only made sense, though, if she found out about Campbell getting back together with his wife before Saturday, which was when Alex Frey and Jill Kincade were attacked. It was possible that Campbell told her the truth when he broke up with her. Or she could’ve stalked him. And if that was the case, she could’ve hired a killer to watch Campbell’s house for Meagan Campbell’s return. Morris didn’t think this scenario was likely. In fact, he thought it was far-fetched, but during his years as an LAPD homicide detective, he’d seen even more bizarre scenarios turn out to be what happened. And even though she seemed genuine enough, he had over the years interviewed other killers who had seemed genuine enough. They were going to have to dig into Lindsey Bushnell’s background and her banking and phone records before they’d be able to completely eliminate her as a suspect.
“I’ve been here for almost three hours and have been cooperating fully.” Bushnell smiled tragically, the events of the day leaving her face puffy. “And if it wasn’t for my stupid impulsiveness, George and his wife still might not have been found. I’d really like to go home, smoke some weed, take a long bath, and try to forget what I saw in that kitchen. How about it? Please?”
“Not quite yet. I have a few more questions.”
Chapter 34
The Grace Warren missing-person’s investigation was put on hold, and at three o’clock a large gathering filled up MBI’s lone conference room. Morris, Charlie Bogle, Philip Stonehedge, Dennis Polk, and Adam Felger were joined by Roger Smichen, Doug Gilman, FBI profiler Gloria Finston, Annie Walsh, Greg Malevich, and three other LAPD homicide detectives. And of course, Parker, who after he excitedly made the rounds and greeted many of the people in the room, lay like a lump under the table at Morris’s feet.
Annie Walsh gave a rundown of what the LAPD had so far. The first victims, Alex Frey and Jill Kincade, had an engagement party at a ritzy Bel-Air hotel that ran between 2:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. That night, at roughly 7:20, a deliveryman for Roma’s Pizza named Joaquin Alvarez was knocked unconscious when he was delivering a pizza to a Santa Monica apartment building. His attacker left behind Alvarez’s wallet and other valuables, including a cell phone, and only took one of the pizzas from his car. Twenty minutes later a man claiming to be from Roma’s Pizza rang the buzzer for Frey and Kincade’s apartment. He was buzzed into the building and soon knocked on their door. According to Frey, he looked out the security peephole and saw a man holding a Roma’s pizza box—
Bogle interrupted Walsh, asking whether they knew for a fact that it was the same pizza taken from Alvarez’s car.
“We do. The pizza box had an order number scribbled on it, and the box was left behind after the murder.”
Polk asked, “Was any of it eaten?”
Walsh shot him an annoyed look, as if he were wasting their time with that question.
“Why would that be important?” she asked.
Polk’s eyelids lowered a fraction of an inch as he gave her a deadpan look. “I heard they make a good pizza there,” he said.
Gloria Finston cut in. “It’s not a bad question. It would tell us something about the killer if he ate any of it at the apartment.”
“The pizza was untouched,” Walsh said. She continued with her report, describing what happened to Alex Frey and Jill Kincade after the killer forced his way into their apartment. Finston’s eyes lit up when she heard about the offer Frey was given, but she held off asking any questions.
“Kincade’s mother was worried about not being able to reach her daughter and she drove to the apartment the next morning and found Jill dead and Frey duct-taped to the chair and suffering a severe concussion,” Walsh continued. “There’s no video surveillance at the apartment building; we haven’t found any witnesses yet who saw anyone entering or leaving the victims’ apartment, same with no one seeing anyone masquerading as a pizza deliveryman in or outside the building. None of the neighbors heard anything unusual. A complete dead end so far. The description we got of the killer from Frey is suspect, since he claims his concussion left him unable to focus, but he told us the perp wore a Dodgers baseball cap pulled almost to his eyes when he forced his way into the apartment, and later after he woke up the killer was wearing a black ski mask to hide his face. Frey insists the killer had blue eyes and a tattoo of some sort on his right wrist—”
Morris’s pulse picked up a beat. He asked, “A wolf baring its fangs?”
Walsh gave him a puzzled look. “How’d you come up with that?”
“A long shot. I’m working a missing-person’s case where a suspect was identified by that type of tattoo on his wrist.”
“I couldn’t tell you what type the perp had. Frey claimed his vision was too blurry to make it out. He did, though, insist that the perp was in his twenties, even though he never got a good look at him without the ski mask. Also that the perp was somewhere between five ten and six feet in height, and with a lean body type.”
“Which describes half of the hopeful actors who work as waiters and Uber drivers in this town,” Bogle commented.
“Exactly.” Walsh turned the floor over to Roger Smichen so he could go into more detail about what was done to Jill Kincade. While LA’s chief medical examiner gave his findings, Morris glanced over at Gilman. His future son-in-law had tightly clenched his jaw, but otherwise appeared to be holding it together as he listened to the grisly details. After Smichen finished, Walsh went over the second attack. As with the first, there was no surveillance video and they didn’t find any neighbors or other witnesses who saw the killer forcing his way into the victims’ home. The assumption was that the killer either followed them from the Beverly Hills restaurant or waited for them outside their home, and viciously attacked George Campbell when he opened the door for him. Charlie Bogle looked incredulous when Walsh further explained how the victims were found that morning by Campbell’s jilted lover.
“Damn suspicious, if you ask me,” he said.
“It sounds bad,” Morris agreed. “But I think it’s only an unfortunate coincidence. Whether Lindsey Bushnell was wearing a ski mask, a Dodgers cap pulled down low, loose clothing, or any other disguise, I can’t imagine Alex Frey or anyone else mistaking her for a man. I tracked down their coworker, Bob Doltrice, and he was convinced that Bushnell didn’t know about Campbell trying to reconcile with his wife until Doltrice let it slip Monday afternoon. If this was some sort of convoluted revenge idea involving a hit man, it wouldn’t fit with the first couple being attacked Saturday night. But maybe Gloria might have other ideas?”
Gloria Finston had worked with MBI on three previous serial killer investigations and had Morris’s utmost respect, also the rest of the team’s. The FBI profiler was a slight, dark-haired woman in her forties, and when she smiled her thin lips made a sharp V-shape. With her narrow face and longish, thin nose, she often reminded Morris of a s
parrow. At that moment her small, pale blue eyes were deep in thought as she considered Morris’s question. She turned to Roger Smichen and asked whether Meagan Campbell’s torture and subsequent murder was similar to Jill Kincade’s.
“Pretty much. Campbell suffered more cuts and stab wounds and her torture lasted longer, but that was only because her heart lasted longer.”
“Were any of the wounds done postmortem?”
“Not that I can tell.”
Finston next asked Walsh whether Campbell was offered the same unholy proposition as Alex Frey.
“We won’t know for certain until Campbell is able to speak to us, but given the forensic evidence, there’s a good chance that happened. Most likely in his case, he accepted the deal and tried to fight his attacker after he was cut free.”
“That was when he was knocked unconscious?”
Smichen answered that. “For the second time that night, yes.”
“What exactly was done to him then?”
“He was struck once in the jaw with a club of some sort. The blow knocked him off his feet and he struck his head when he fell. He’s now in a coma, his condition critical.”
Morris had earlier placed photographs of the murdered women on the conference room table. Meagan Campbell’s photo was taken on her honeymoon and showed her in shorts and a T-shirt, smiling brightly. Jill Kincade’s was taken a month before she was murdered, and in it she was smiling wickedly, as if she were dying to give the punch line to a joke. Both women were petite, around five feet one, although Kincade was curvier. While Kincade was a blonde and Campbell had reddish-brown–colored hair, they both had very pretty faces that were shaped similarly. Finston shifted her gaze to study the photos and as she did this, she rubbed her slight jaw, her eyes once again showing she was in deep thought. Polk interrupted the silence that had crept into the room.
“Gloria, you know I think you’re tops in this profiling racket, but you’re making this more complicated than it is,” he said, his thick lips set in a shit-eating grin. “I’m no expert, but this looks textbook, if you ask me. Our killer’s got mommy issues. Clear as day.”
Polk was able to get away with that only because Fred Lemmon was out on assignment. While Lemmon was a former homicide detective now working as an investigator at MBI, he also took on the added responsibility of putting Polk in his place whenever he acted too obnoxiously. If he were in the room, he would’ve no doubt told Polk that nobody was asking for his opinion.
Finston, for her part, showed Polk one of her V smiles. “Dennis, I believe we must’ve read different textbooks. That’s not what this is. The killer’s targets were the men.”
“Huh? That’s why he stabbed two women to death?”
“Sadly, yes. Each cut and stab wound and disfigurement were meant to inflict psychological pain to the men who were forced to watch as they sat only feet away, bound and helpless. And the cruel deal that he offered them—”
“Assuming that he made that same offer to Campbell,” Bogle pointed out.
“Until we learn otherwise, we should continue under that assumption, and that the killer’s purpose of offering such a hopeless deal was so these men would suffer for years to come no matter which choice they made. Yes, Morris?”
Morris had scrunched his face into a pained expression, like he had a toothache. “If the men were who he really wanted to hurt, why didn’t he follow through with his threat and break all of George Campbell’s bones?”
“An excellent question, and I’m afraid I don’t have a good answer. There’s a piece to this puzzle that I’m missing,” Finston said. “The offer he made to Alex Frey was just so sadistically cruel—either choke to death the woman he loved or watch her die an even worse death. This type of personality should’ve reacted with rage and violence over being defied, and he should’ve badly hurt Campbell afterwards, even if the man was unconscious, but there’s something motivating him beyond wanting to make these men suffer.”
“So we need to figure out what’s motivating him.”
“Correct. And to do that, we need a dialogue. We need to induce this killer to reach out to us. Or if not to us, to the media.”
Morris saw several ways that could be done. Under his direction, Gilman’s noon press conference provided little information other than two women were murdered, their addresses, and a hotline phone number.
“Let’s see if we can frustrate this guy and give him as little media attention as possible,” he said.
Gilman looked skeptical. “What if this psycho doesn’t care about making headlines?” he asked.
“Then we’ll try something else.”
Chapter 35
Fred Lemmon followed his target, Wayne Hardacher, to a Van Nuys motel that advertised 59-dollar rooms and from the outside looked like the type of place where you’d need a tetanus shot immediately after entering any of the rooms. Hardacher’s wife, Wendy, suspected that her husband was cheating on her, and she had hired MBI to find out. After four days of tailing Hardacher, it looked like Lemmon was about to hit pay dirt and it was about time! Morris had told him earlier about the serial killer investigation, and Lemmon was itching to get off this cheating-spouse case and onto something where he could do some good. Maybe he’d even get to spend some time with Annie Walsh…
He shook his head, angry at himself. How pathetic was it to daydream about something like that? But he couldn’t help it. He had a hopeless crush on Annie—hopeless, because he wasn’t yet prepared to walk away from his marriage, even though he and Corrine barely talked to each other anymore. Not that it would make much difference if he did end his marriage. He had over twelve years on Annie, which was just too much, especially given that she was such a knockout. Besides, Corrine was his high school sweetheart and the only woman he had ever dated. If he were single, he wouldn’t know how to begin with Annie and would probably only humiliate himself. He gritted his teeth hard enough to make his jaw ache and resolved to quit thinking about anything as far-fetched as he and Annie ever becoming romantically involved. Besides, he had a target to keep an eye on.
Lemmon had parked half-a-block away on the other side of the street from the motel. He had a clear view of Hardacher’s door, and with the high-performance telephoto lens attached to his Nikon camera, he’d have no problem taking a clear shot of Hardacher’s girlfriend when she showed up. He knew it wouldn’t be long. There wasn’t much chance the girlfriend (or prostitute or whoever it was that Hardacher was planning to meet at the motel) would notice Lemmon in his car, but he still wanted to appear as inconspicuous as possible. He picked up the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, unfolded it, and all but disappeared inside of it. Now he was just some guy killing time instead of a private dick watching a motel room and waiting to take a photo.
He was right about it not taking long. He was camped out less than ten minutes when an older-model Oldsmobile drove into the motel parking lot and pulled into a spot near Hardacher’s room. Lemmon had his camera ready and he snapped a couple of shots when the person left the car. It wasn’t a woman, but a guy in his thirties with dirty blond hair wearing biker boots, faded jeans, a long-sleeved knit shirt, and a scuffed-up leather jacket. Lemmon watched as the man knocked on the door. It quickly opened and the man slipped into the room.
The shots Lemmon took were side views. He’d get some front shots when the guy left the room, but the photos he took were good enough for him to see that Hardacher’s visitor had a definite hardness about him. The way the guy swaggered as he approached the motel-room door confirmed this. A tough bastard. Lemmon was sure the guy wasn’t there for sex, but to do business. A bookie? Drugs, maybe?
Lemmon wanted a photo of the license plate, but the Oldsmobile was angled so that he couldn’t get a clear view from where he was sitting. He left his car and jogged to a spot where the license plate was fully visible through the telephoto lens. After he snapped a shot, he hea
ded back to his car before Hardacher or his visitor could notice him.
It was eleven minutes after entering the motel room that the tough-looking dude with the dirty blond hair left. Lemmon took three photos from the front as the man emerged from the room, and captured him smirking as he shoved a large envelope under his leather jacket.
Lemmon had a decision to make. Stay on Hardacher or follow this badass-looking mystery man. If he had come to the room to sell Hardacher drugs, there was a good chance Hardacher’s girlfriend (or whoever he was seeing) would be arriving soon, and Lemmon hated the idea of throwing away four days of surveillance. He was torn. He knew that some sort of business had been conducted in the motel room, and if this guy had showed up to sell drugs, he wouldn’t have needed to be in the room for eleven minutes unless he and Hardacher sat around shooting the bull for ten of them. Likewise with placing a bet. Lemmon also had an uneasy feeling about that envelope. There was probably cash in it, but also photos and other papers. Was it possible that Hardacher had hired a hit man, or was Lemmon jumping to conclusions?
Indecision froze him. He watched as the Oldsmobile left the parking lot and then drove off in the opposite direction from where he was sitting.
Well, he had several photos of this dangerous-looking dude. He also had the license plate. If necessary, he’d be able to track him down. For now, he needed to stay put and see whether Hardacher was meeting anyone else at the motel.
He called Morris to tell him about this latest development. “I know you’re hot on the heels of a serial killer—”
“Not that hot,” Morris said. “Barely any fumes yet. Right now we’re just trying to pick up whatever lead we can.”
Lemmon told Morris about Hardacher’s visitor. “I don’t want to sidetrack you, but my gut’s screaming at me that Hardacher has bad intentions for whatever he paid this guy to do.”
“You’re thinking he hired the man to kill his wife?”
