Such a Perfect Wife

by Kate White

  “By the way,” I said, “I suggested to Mr. Nolan that he tell you about Shannon rejoining the church in case it was relevant.”

  Killian’s expression gave nothing away, so I had no idea whether the deacon had followed through.

  “And how do you think the caller managed to get his hands on your number?” Killian asked.

  “I’ve handed out my business cards to a lot of people this week, including many of the volunteers. One of them could even have left one lying around Dot’s. Other than that, there’s no easy way for a stranger to have access to it.”

  “Here,” he said, passing a pad to me. His skin, I noticed up close, was slightly weathered from sun and wind and maybe from trying to keep the peace as well. “Write down the names of everyone you remember handing a card to.”

  When I’d finished, he ran his gaze over the names and then dropped the pad back on the table with a thud.

  “I’ve just gotta ask,” he said, returning his gaze to me. “Is this the way you big-city reporters do business? Following up on leads that should go to the police? Because that’s not how we do business here, and it’s going to have to stop.”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” I said, doing my best to appear remorseful. “But I figured the call might not be anything more than a prank. Or maybe a local person wanting me to turn up some gossip about Shannon. The idea of finding her remains seemed very remote.”

  I scrutinized his face, watching for any hint that I’d guessed wrong about Shannon’s body being in that bag, but Killian continued to be all Robocop with his expression, revealing nada.

  “If the person contacts me again, I’ll share it with you immediately,” I added.

  Would there be another call? I wondered. The prospect was scary in one sense, but I couldn’t deny part of me was hoping for another lead. As long as I was the conduit, I was at the center of the action. And the more contact I had with the killer, the greater my chance of learning his identity myself. Wouldn’t Dodson go bananas for that?

  Killian didn’t appear mollified, but I sensed the lecture was over. I would have loved to have asked what was contained in the other bags, but it was pointless, since there was no way he’d disclose that information. I also briefly considered whether I should mention the encounter at my motel with Cody but decided not to. That conversation didn’t seem relevant to what was now in play.

  “Am I free to go now?” I asked.

  “Yes. But I don’t want to see a post from you before the press briefing later today. And I want a guarantee you’ll leave out specific details. No mention of the Catholic reference in the call. No mention of the bag—or I should say bags. And needless to say, no more interference in any police operations while covering the story.”

  I didn’t love the fact that I had to hold back in my post, but of course Killian needed to control the situation as much as he could. And at least he wasn’t holding me on suspicion of being a fancy pants.

  “You have my word.”

  As I rose to leave, the state policewoman lifted a palm off the table.

  “There’s something I’m not grasping,” she said. “What made you so interested in Shannon Blaine’s religion?”

  “I was simply trying to learn more about her, and after I heard she’d started going to church again recently, I wondered if something had been eating at her enough to make her take off—or whether someone in the congregation had targeted her.”

  “And did you learn anything?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing—except that she seems to have made the decision in July.”

  As soon as I was out of the building, I phoned Alice, and she promised to pick me up in twenty minutes. I was famished by this point and was close to eating my purse. But the extra wait turned out to be worth it. While I paced in front of the municipal center, a state trooper I didn’t recognize emerged from the front door, his cell phone to his ear.

  “There were three in total,” I heard him say gruffly. He clearly had no clue who I was. “All 187. We’ve got a major situation on our hands.”

  The number 187 was code for the crime of murder. So there were definitely three bodies.

  A horn beeped lightly, and I glanced over to see the red MINI pulling up to the curb. Alice, hatless now, waved.

  “You survive?” she asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

  “My ass is a little chewed up, but I’m alive. Needless to say, he never offered me a thank-you for my efforts.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t get one, either.”

  “Was he tough on you?”

  “Not especially, though he warned me to stop doing his job for him. He seemed mostly interested in whether I thought you knew more than you were letting on earlier.”

  “Are you serious? He thought I knew what we’d find there?”

  “Not sure what he was getting at, though I assured him you seemed completely taken aback by the discovery. I think he was mainly wondering why the guy picked you to blab to, and whether there was more to that story than you indicated.”

  “There isn’t. And hopefully Killian understands that now that we’ve talked more. . . . Did you learn anything during the interview? Like whether it was definitely Shannon in the first bag?”

  “They didn’t give anything away. Though I put in a call to a law enforcement source of mine, and I may hear something later.”

  “It has to be her. And it looks like the other bags had bodies in them, too.” I relayed what I’d overheard the trooper say. I felt I owed Alice one, not only for leading me to the retreat center but also for my having put her in the hot seat.

  “Three, wow. So we’re definitely talking serial killer, aren’t we? And one who obviously wanted the bodies found.”

  “It looks that way. . . . I can’t believe I’m suddenly feeling sorry for Cody Blaine.” And I was. Earlier in the week I’d considered how much the kids were suffering, but this would be wrenching for him, too.

  I also experienced a twinge of guilt. I’d never come out and suggested in my posts that he was behind his wife’s disappearance, but I’d hinted at the possibility with comments like, “A woman is statistically more likely to be killed by a male partner than anyone else.”

  “Okay, I’m merely spitballing here,” Alice said, “but couldn’t he be a serial killer, one who decided to make his wife his latest victim?”

  “Of course, anything’s possible, but serial killers generally don’t target women they’re close to. They may even have wives or girlfriends who have no clue what they’re actually capable of.”

  “I love a girl who’s got her serial killer facts down pat,” she said. “So I guess the next question is who’s in the other two bags?”

  “Exactly. Any more thoughts on that subject?”

  Alice touched a finger to her lips, deliberating.

  “Well, as we already discussed, they can’t be local,” she said. “Or we would have heard about them being missing. So they’re from at least fifty miles away. And if we’re really talking serial killer, I would guess the other victims are women, too.”

  “I wonder if they were also Catholics, like Shannon. I keep coming back to where they were found. And what the caller said. . . . By the way, Killian mentioned there would be a briefing today but didn’t say when.”

  “It’s at five o’clock. At Dot’s.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for everything else, Alice. I ended up roping you into a gruesome discovery and creating a big headache for you.”

  “Yeah, but I got to share in the scoop, so I owe you a thank-you, too.”

  We finally reached McAllister Road in Sunset Bay, and Alice pulled up behind my Jeep. There was a cluster of TV vans and a small throng of rubberneckers bunched nearby, but two state police vehicles and several officers were preventing anyone from moving closer.

  “See you at the press conference,” I said.

  “I’ll be there with bells on. And, Bailey, as you said earlier, this guy who called you may be
watching.”

  “I know, but I’m not super worried. He had a specific use for me, and I fulfilled it.”

  Helicopters were buzzing overhead as I slid out of the car, probably attached to TV news teams. Word had gotten out that something big was happening in Sunset Bay. Before departing the hamlet, I parked again and hurried into the nearly empty diner, where I ordered a tuna sandwich and two coffees to go.

  “Any idea what’s going on down the road?” the sixty-something counter guy asked me. “Awful lot of commotion.”

  “It seems to have something to do with the old retreat center,” I said, leaving it at that.

  “The Catholic place? But that’s all shut down.”

  “I’m not sure what’s up. . . . Any idea why they stopped running retreats there?”

  “What I heard was that the diocese ran low on funds—it’s gotta be over ten years ago. They maintained the property for a while, though, hoping to start up again, but since then they’ve let things go.”

  “Why not sell the place?”

  He shrugged a bony shoulder. “Apparently the woman who willed it to the church had a stipulation about it not changing hands.”

  I thanked him for his time and paid for my food. I also made one additional stop on my way back south—the Lake Shore Motel, where the desk clerk from the other night was holding down the fort. I asked if a woman with long blond hair had ever shown up and registered, but he insisted no guest fit the description. Please, I thought, don’t let her be in one of those bags.

  Back at the Breezy Point, I wolfed down my food while racing to write up my next post. I’d have to wait until after the press conference to send it to Dodson, though at least that would allow me to incorporate any disclosures from Killian. I thought back to my initial post in the first person, which had turned out to be a fortuitous choice. I’d become part of the story today, and I wouldn’t have to suddenly and awkwardly insert myself into the copy now.

  Next, I placed a call to Bonnie Peets, a forensic expert in New York I often turned to for insight, and left her a voice mail asking for her assistance as soon as possible.

  I popped open the second cardboard cup of coffee and hopped online, hoping to confirm what I’d learned about the retreat center. According to property records, it was definitely still owned by the diocese.

  As I nursed my lukewarm coffee, my phone lit up with Bonnie’s number on the screen. After describing Shannon’s disappearance and my discovery this morning, I asked her what the smell might reveal about time of death, among other things.

  “First, I need to hear about the whole setup,” Bonnie said. “Where exactly is the building located? What’s the temperature inside and out, and also inside the closet? And could the temperature in the basement have been altered for any reason? By someone leaving the windows open, for instance?”

  Right, good questions.

  “The building’s on the shore of a lake and hasn’t been used in years. It’s ranged between the low sixties and low seventies here this week, and so I’d guess the temperature in the basement—and the closet, too—has been in the fifties or sixties. There’s an old furnace in the basement, to the right of the closet.”

  “What’s on the other side of the closet?”

  “The base of a fireplace that’s on the main floor.”

  “And you say this woman disappeared four days ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did the body seem when it fell on you? Was there any stiffness?”

  “I only had a second to feel it against my legs but no, it wasn’t stiff.”

  “Based on those details, it seems likely she’s been dead those four days. She’s passed through rigor mortis, the period of about twenty-four hours when the muscles stiffen, and now they’ve relaxed again. The bacteria start breaking down the tissues almost immediately—that’s what’s causing the lovely putrefaction you noticed.”

  So most likely Shannon had been killed on Monday, the day she went missing. At least she hadn’t been held hostage for days, terrified out of her mind.

  “I assume you get used to the smell in your line of work, right?”

  “Well, I never have.” Bonnie chuckled. “Cops sometimes burn coffee grounds to mask it but trying that once made me never want to drink coffee again.”

  Bonnie was a tall, elegant brunette in her mid-sixties, who looked like she could be a partner in a white-shoe law firm. It was sometimes hard for me to picture her during her preconsultant days, investigating gruesome homicides for the ME’s office.

  “Okay, here’s where it gets even more interesting,” I said. “There were two other trash bags in the back of the closet. From what I’ve managed to overhear, the police found bodies in those as well, though the bags looked thinner, not as full. Could the killer have chosen to dismember two previous victims but not the most recent one?”

  “I’m not a profiler, so I can’t speak to his MO, but sure, they could have been cut up . . . or maybe the bodies mummified. When that happens, the corpse gradually shrivels into a leathery, parchment-like mass. Then you’re dealing with something thinner and lighter. You’ve seen pictures, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shudder. “What would make a body mummify rather than simply rot away?”

  “Dry heat, for one. If the bodies were placed in the closet when the furnace and fireplace were still operational, you would have probably had the right conditions. It wouldn’t have taken long to mummify, maybe just a couple of months.”

  Was that what was really in those bags? Mummies? But there was one detail that didn’t fit.

  “But the furnace probably hasn’t been used in ages. The building was closed down a decade or so ago.”

  “It’s possible the other two bodies were stashed in the closet when the furnace was working. Have you considered that?”

  My mouth dropped open in surprise. No, I hadn’t.

  “How stupid of me.”

  “If you are talking about mummies, the ME will at least be able to spot certain injuries, which wouldn’t be obvious if the bodies were decomposed. . . . Look, sorry, but I have to split. I can call you back later if you want.”

  “No, that’s all I need for now. Much appreciated.”

  As I ended the call, I finally exhaled. Alice and I had pondered the fact that no other women in the area were currently missing, but it now seemed we needed to consider ones who had gone missing a decade or so ago, when the center first shut down.

  A thought skirted around the edges of my brain, elusive at first, but within a few seconds I’d managed to grab hold. It was an article I’d read the night I’d been handed the assignment.

  Ten years ago this past summer, two twenty-year-old women had disappeared from a Lake George campground and were never seen again. Maybe they hadn’t taken off, as the police had concluded then, but had been abducted, slain, and stuffed in the basement of the retreat center.

  A breath caught in my throat. If the bags held the remains of the two campers, it meant there really was a serial killer at large.

  But if that was the case, where had he been all these years?

  Chapter 8

  I SHOVED THE CHAIR AWAY FROM THE WOODEN DESK, LEAPED up, and paced the room, struggling to pull my thoughts together. From what I knew, there were several reasons a serial killer could go dormant.

  He might have been convicted of another crime and been cooling his heels in prison. Or he could have vacated an area after murdering several victims, engaged in a homicidal spree elsewhere, and returned to the original site years later.

  And sometimes, despite all those horror movies suggesting that serial killer behavior always escalated, some of them lost the urge to kill, or at least took a break, because of circumstances in their personal lives. The notorious Green River Killer murdered prostitutes during his difficult first two marriages, but his killings dwindled during his third marriage, a happy one.

  Grabbing my laptop, I brought up the stories that had been written
about the two campers years ago in the Post Star. Their names were Page Cramer and Amy Hunt. Both twenty at the time of their disappearance, they were pretty, feisty-looking young women. And though Amy had chestnut-colored hair, Page’s was long and blond, similar to Shannon’s.

  They’d reportedly befriended each other in hairstyling school in Manhattan. Amy was originally from Glens Falls and returned there after completing the program, snagging a job as a stylist at Lillian’s Beauty Salon. When another stylist job opened up, she had recommended her friend, and Page had moved to the town.

  On the last Sunday of July, ten years ago this past summer, the two had picked up a rented tent and sleeping bags and driven Amy’s car to a campground in Pilot Knob, on the eastern shore of Lake George. A few campers later reported spotting them when they arrived and again near lunchtime. At around seven that evening, they were observed by a witness going into a bar called Muller’s in Fort Ann, a small town about twenty miles east of the campground. The bartender confirmed they were there but claimed they’d only drunk one beer each and hadn’t spoken to anyone else.

  That had been the last sighting of the young women. When they didn’t show up for work on Tuesday, Amy’s mother, who was already concerned because she hadn’t heard from her daughter, contacted 911. The police found the tent still at the campground, but there was no sign the girls had ever slept in it. Amy’s car was gone.

  From the articles in the Post Star, all of them by a reporter named Luke Orsini, it sounded as if initially there’d been a serious effort to determine Page and Amy’s whereabouts, but that ebbed after suggestions surfaced that the girls had talked about taking off, maybe for Canada. It was even insinuated that they’d gotten involved with drugs. The articles seemed to stop fairly abruptly, though there was a follow-up story in the paper five years later, also by Orsini, entitled “Still No Clues as to Whereabouts of Missing Girls.”