Suddenly I felt overwhelmed by how much I missed Little Alex, but also by John’s friendship. “Thanks for being here,” I said.
He put an arm around my shoulders and jostled me hard. “Where else am I gonna be?”
Chapter 42
I WOKE UP SUDDENLY to a slightly bemused flight attendant staring down at me. I remembered that it was the next morning and I was on a United jet back to L.A. Her curious expression indicated she had just asked a question.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Could you please put up your tray table? Put your seat forward. We’ll be landing in Los Angeles in just a few minutes.”
Before I had drifted off, I’d been thinking about James Truscott and how he’d suddenly appeared in my life. Coincidence? I tended not to believe in it. So I’d called a researcher and friend at Quantico, and asked her to get me some more information on Truscott. Monnie Donnelley had promised that soon I’d know more about Truscott than even I wanted to know.
I gathered up my papers. It wasn’t a good idea to leave them out like that, and not like me; it was also unlike me to sleep on flights. Everything was a little upside down these days. Just a little, right?
My Mary Smith file had grown considerably thicker in just a few days. The recent false alarm was a conundrum. I wasn’t even sure that Mary Smith was behind that one.
Looking at the murder reports, I had a picture of someone who was growing more confident in her work, and definitely more aggressive. She was moving in on her targets—literally. The first site, the Patrice Bennett murder, was a public space. The next time was outside of Antonia Schifman’s home. Now, all indications were that Mary Smith had spent part of the night inside Marti Lowenstein-Bell’s house before eventually killing her in the pool.
Anyway, here I was back in L.A. again, getting off a plane, renting a car—even though I probably could have asked Agent Page to pick me up.
Looks-wise, the L.A. Bureau field office put D.C. headquarters to shame. Instead of the claustrophobic maze I was used to back East, this was nine stories of open floor plan, polished glass, and lots of natural light. From the cubicle they had assigned me on the fifteenth floor, I had a great view of the Getty Museum and beyond. At most field offices, I’d be lucky to get a chair and a desk.
Agent Page started hovering about ten minutes after I got there. I knew that Page was a sharp enough guy, very ambitious, and with some seasoning, he was going to make a good agent. But I just didn’t need somebody looking over my shoulder right now. It was bad enough to have Director Burns on me, not to mention the writer, James Truscott. My Boswell, right? Or was he something else?
Page asked if there was anything at all that I needed. I held up my file.
“This thing is at least twenty-four-hours cold. I want to know everything Detective Galletta has over at LAPD. I want to know more than Galletta has. Do you think you could—”
“On it,” he said, and was gone.
It wasn’t a bogus assignment I’d given him, though. I really did need to get current, and if that meant Page would be out of my hair for a while, all the better.
I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and scribbled a few questions I’d been pondering on the ride in from LAX.
M. Lowenstein-Bell—how did someone get inside the house?
Does this killer have some kind of hit list? An established order? Are there other less-obvious connections between the victims? Don’t there have to be?
The most common formula in my profession is this: How plus why equals who. If I wanted to know Mary Smith, I had to consider the similarities and differences—the combination of the two—from site to site on every one of the murders. That meant a stop at the Lowenstein-Bell residence.
I wrote, E-mailer? / Perp?
I kept coming back to that point. How much intersection was there between the killer’s personality and the persona in the e-mails? How honest, for lack of a better word, was Mary Smith’s writing? And how much of it, if any, was misdirection?
Until I could figure that out, it was like chasing two suspects. If I was lucky, my next appointment would shed some light on the e-mails.
I wrote another note to myself. Tool sets?
Most pattern killers had two sets of tools, as did Mary Smith.
First were the tools of the actual murder. The gun was a sure thing here. We knew she used the same one each time. We weren’t as sure about the knife.
And a car had to be considered. Any other way of getting in and out seemed unfeasible.
Then there were the “tools” that helped her satisfy her psychoemotional needs.
The children’s stickers marked A or B, and the e-mails themselves. Usually, these were more important to the killer than the actual weapons. They were her way of saying “I was here” or “This is me.”
Or, possibly, and this was the troubling part, “This is who I want you to think I am.”
In any case, it was a kind of taunting—something that could be taken as “Come and get me. If you can.”
I scribbled that last thought down, too.
Come and get me? If you can?
Then I wrote down something that kept sticking in my craw—Truscott. Appeared six weeks ago. Who is James Truscott? What is his deal?
Suddenly I looked at my watch. It was time to leave the office if I didn’t want to be late for my first appointment. Requisitioning a Bureau vehicle would have meant one more person looking over my shoulder, and that’s exactly why I’d rented a car at the airport.
I left without telling anyone where I was headed. If I was going to be acting like a homicide detective again, I was going to do it right.
Chapter 43
THIS WAS REAL POLICE WORK at least, and I threw myself into it with renewed energy and enthusiasm. Actually, I was pumped up. Professor Deborah Papadakis had my full attention as she beckoned me into her book-lined office, number twenty-two, in the Rolfe Building at UCLA. She took a neatly piled stack of manuscripts from the only available chair and set them on the floor.
“I can see you’re busy, Professor. God, are you ever busy. Thank you for agreeing to meet,” I said.
“Happy to help if I can.” She motioned for me to sit. “I haven’t seen Los Angeles so preoccupied since, I don’t know, maybe since Rodney King. It’s kind of sad.”
Then she raised a hand and quickly added, “Although that’s not the same, is it? Anyway, this is a bit unusual for me. I’m more of a short-story and personal-essay kind of person. I don’t read true crime, or even mysteries for that matter. Well, I do read Walter Mosley, but he’s a closet sociologist.”
“Whatever you can do,” I said, and handed her copies of Mary Smith’s e-mails. “At the risk of repeating myself, we would appreciate your complete confidence on this.” That was for my own sake as well as the investigation’s. I hadn’t gotten official permission to share the e-mails with her or anyone else.
Professor Papadakis poured me a cup of coffee from an old percolator, and I waited while she read, then reread, the e-mails.
Her office seemed to be a bit of prime real estate at the university. It looked out to a courtyard and sculpture garden, where students wrote and soaked up the perfect Southern California weather. Most offices in the building faced out to the street. Ms. Papadakis, with her antique pine desk and O. Henry Award on the wall, gave the impression of someone who had long since paid her dues.
Except for the occasional “hm,” she was unresponsive while she read. Finally, she looked up and stared my way. A bit of the color was gone from her face.
“Well,” she said with a deep breath, “first impressions are important, so I’ll start there.”
She picked up a red pencil, and I stood up and came around to look over her shoulder.
“See here? And here? The openings are active. Things like ‘I am the one who killed you’ and ‘I watched you having dinner last night.’ They’re attention-grabbing, or at least they’re meant to be.”
“Do you
draw any specific conclusion from that?” I had some of my own, but I was here for her perspective.
She bobbed her head side to side. “It’s engaging, but also less spontaneous. More crafted. This person is choosing her words carefully. It’s certainly not stream of consciousness.”
“May I ask what else you see in the writing? This is very helpful, Professor Papadakis.”
“Well, there’s a sense of . . . detachment, let’s say, from the character’s own violence.”
She looked up at me, as if for approval. I couldn’t imagine she was usually this tentative. Her air was otherwise so earthy and grounded. “Except, maybe, when she talks about the children.”
“Please, go on,” I said. “I’m interested in the children. What do you see, Professor?”
“When she describes what she’s done, it’s very declarative. Lots of simple sentences, almost staccato sometimes. It could just be a style choice, but it might also be a kind of avoidance. I see it all the time when writers are afraid of their material. If this were a student, I would tell her to pull at those threads a bit more, let them unravel.” The professor shrugged. “Of course, I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“Everything but, from the sound of it,” I told her. “I’m really impressed. You’ve added some clarity.”
She dismissed the compliment with a wave of her hand.
“Anything else I can do? Anything at all? Actually, this is fascinating. Morbid curiosity, I suppose.”
I watched her face as she weighed her thoughts, then opted not to continue.
“What is it?” I asked. “Please, just brainstorm. Don’t worry about it. No wrong answers.”
She set down her red pencil. “Well, the question here is whether you’re reading a person or a character. In other words, is the detachment that I see coming from the writer’s subconscious, or is it just as crafted as the sentences themselves? It’s hard to know for sure. That’s the big puzzle here, isn’t it?”
It was exactly the question I had asked myself several times. The professor wasn’t answering it for me, but she was certainly confirming that it was worth asking in the first place.
Suddenly she laughed nervously. “I certainly hope you aren’t giving my assessment any critical role in your investigation. I would hate to misguide you. This is too important.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “This is just one of many factors we’re taking into account. It’s an incredible puzzle, though. Psychological, analytical, literary.”
“You must hate having to run all over the place for these tiny crumbs of information. I know I would.”
“Actually, this kind of interview is the easy part of the job,” I told her honestly.
It was my next appointment that was going to be bad.
Chapter 44
ARMED SECURITY STOPPED ME at the gate to the Lowenstein-Bell property in the Bel Air section of Beverly Hills. Two more private guards in the upper part of the driveway rechecked my ID. Finally, I was permitted to approach the house, which was on a winding road not far from the Bel Air Hotel, which I’d visited once, and found to be one of the most serene and beautiful spots I’d ever seen.
When I rang, Michael Bell himself answered. The house was more glass than anything, and I saw him coming well before he reached me. His slow shuffle spoke volumes.
It’s always a balancing act with family members left behind by a murder. The time you need the most information is the time they least want to talk about what has happened. I’ve never found a method that feels very good to me, or probably to the person I was there to interview.
Mr. Bell didn’t look particularly Beverly Hills with his bushy blond beard, jeans, sandals, and faded plaid shirt. I could almost see him as a lumberjack, or an ex-member of Nirvana or Pearl Jam, if not for the ultramodern setting. I knew from the file that he and his wife had built their house just a few years ago.
Michael Bell’s manner and voice had the dulled quality of someone in the early stages of grief, but he politely welcomed me inside. “Can I offer you anything?” he asked. “I know we have iced tea. Some sun tea, Agent Cross?”
“Nothing, thanks,” I said.
A middle-aged housekeeper / nanny stood nearby, waiting to help if she could. I imagined this was Lupe San Remo, who had found the body in the swimming pool.
“Nada, Lupe, gracias,” Mr. Bell told her. “Quisiéramos cenar a las siete, por favor.”
I followed him past an open gallery where three blond pixies were clustered onto one oversized armchair. Cassie, Anna, and Zoey, ages five, seven, and eight, according to the file. An image from Finding Nemo was frozen in pause on the huge plasma television.
I had interrupted, and I felt bad about that, too. I wondered if “Mary Smith” really had feelings for the victims’ children. And if she did—why? What could possibly be this crazy person’s motive? Why kill the mother of these small children?
“Girls, I’ll be in the living room for a few minutes. You can go ahead without me.” He pushed a button on a remote control and turned up the volume as the movie started again. I recognized Ellen DeGeneres’s voice on the sound track, probably because I’d seen Nemo a dozen times with Jannie. She loved Dorry to death.
“We can talk in here,” Mr. Bell said as we entered a vaulted living room. Three stories of glass wall looked out to a stunning coastal view and, closer in, the swimming pool where his wife, Marti, had been found. Michael Bell sat with his back to the pool on a cream-colored velvet couch.
“I used to love that view,” he said in a quiet voice. “Marti did, too.”
“Would you prefer to meet somewhere else?” I asked him straightaway.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s all right. I’m trying to move around as normally as possible. For the girls. For my own sanity. It’s fine. You have some questions?”
“I know you’re being questioned by the LAPD. I know they’ve cleared you, so I’ll try to keep this as short as I possibly can.”
“I appreciate it. Whatever it takes,” he said. “Please. Go ahead. I want to help find the person who did this. I need to feel like I’m helping, doing something.”
I sat on a matching couch. A huge block of polished marble was the table between us. “I’m sorry, but I have to start with the obvious. Did your wife have any enemies that you’re aware of? Anyone who’s crossed your mind since this happened?”
He ran his hands over his beard, then back and forth across his eyes. “Believe me, I’ve thought about that. It’s part of what’s so ironic. Marti’s one of the most popular people in town. Everyone loved her, which is so rare out here. You can check.”
He stopped, and his face contorted. He was very close to losing it, and I believed that I could see his thought. Everyone loved her. Past tense.
His shoulders drooped. He wiped his eyes with a closed fist. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking that what’s happened has sunk in, but it really hasn’t.”
“Take your time,” I told him.
I wanted to say more; I wanted to tell him that I knew what this felt like. Not just to lose a wife, but to lose her in this way. A while back, I’d been pretty much where he was right now. If his experience was anything like mine with Maria, there was no comfort to be had anywhere, much less from a stranger, a policeman. Anything personal I could tell him at this point would only be for my own sake, though, so I didn’t talk about Maria and how she was murdered.
“Dad?”
Zoey, the oldest daughter, stood in the high arch between the living room and hallway. She looked frightened, tiny, and very alone in the doorway.
“It’s okay, hon,” he said. “I’m okay. Come here for a sec.” He opened his arms, and she went to him, taking the long way around the couch to avoid walking next to me.
She fell into his hug, and then both of them began to cry. I wondered if she had seen her father cry before. “It’s okay,” he said again, smoothing her hair. “It’s okay, Zoey. I love you so much. You’re such a good girl.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Zoey whispered.
“We’ll do this later,” I said softly. “Another time. I’ve got your statement on file. I don’t need much more anyway.”
He looked at me appreciatively, the side of his face pressed against Zoey’s head. She had softened her posture now and curled to meet the shape of his hug. I could tell that they were close, and I thought of Jannie.
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said. “I do want to help.”
“If I could just take a quick walk through the house, it would be useful for me,” I said.
“Of course.”
I turned to go, but then stopped and spoke again, only because I couldn’t help myself. “You’re doing exactly the right thing,” I told him. “Your children will get you through this. Keep them close.”
“I will. They’re all I have now. Thank you. You’re very considerate.”
I left it at that, and if I had to guess, I’d say he knew it wasn’t just a cop’s advice I was offering. It was a father’s, and a husband’s. Suddenly I didn’t want to be at this house any longer than I had to be.
Chapter 45
AS A DETECTIVE, I would have liked to have spent hours in the Lowenstein-Bell house, to soak up all the details. Under the circumstances, I gave myself fifteen to twenty minutes.
I started by the pretty pool and stood at the deep end, staring down at the royal-blue racing lines painted on the bottom. Estimates were that Mary Smith had shot Marti Lowenstein-Bell from this position, a single bullet to the top of the head. Then she’d pulled the body over to her with a long-handled pool net.
The killer calmly stood right here and did the knife work without ever taking the body out of the water. The cuts on the victim’s face had been sloppy and quick, dozens of overlapping slashes. As though she were erasing her.
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