Cold Truth

by Mariah Stewart

  “So you think the same person killed both women.” It wasn’t a question.

  “The evidence is still being analyzed.”

  “Can we get details on the investigations?”

  “I’ll have a report available to you by six.” Denver glanced up at the clock. That would give him almost two hours to decide what to release. “You can wait around for it, or you can leave your name and fax number, and we’ll fax the report to you.”

  “Why can’t you just tell us what you have?”

  “I don’t have a whole lot yet. I’m still waiting for the reports from the lab and the medical examiner’s office. I was just about to sit down with my detectives and go over this with them, when you all showed up. I thought I’d deal with you first, let you know we’re working on getting something together for you so that you can all meet your deadlines. I don’t want to give you incomplete information, so if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to return to that meeting.”

  Denver smiled perfunctorily and started back to his office.

  “Chief Denver, how many victims do you need to have to consider this the work of a serial killer?”

  The chief stopped in mid-stride and turned around slowly.

  “I think it’s a little early to start throwing around terms like that. I also think it’s irresponsible, frankly, since you’ll only serve to panic our residents, who are already upset enough.”

  “But how many, Chief?” The question was repeated softly this time. “I’ve heard two or three. Which is it?”

  Denver turned heel and returned to his office, closed the door, and buzzed for his detectives to come in and bring their notes.

  “We have a positive ID on this morning’s vic.”

  Cass didn’t wait until she was seated to begin her verbal report.

  “Lisa Montour. Age thirty-one. And as per Phyl, she was in fact the manicurist at the Red Rose Salon in town. I called the salon and found that she hadn’t come in yet today. Called her roommate, she said Lisa went out to meet up with some friends last night, but didn’t come home. The roommate didn’t realize that, however, until the salon called this morning.”

  “Can we get the names of the friends she was meeting?” Denver asked.

  Cass held up a stenographer’s notebook.

  “The roommate gave them to me, along with phone numbers. She was supposed to go with Lisa last night, by the way, but got home from work really late and was just too tired to go out. I’ve already spoken with two of the four she was supposed to meet, but they both said Lisa didn’t show up. They figured she got home from work and maybe just fell asleep.”

  “What time did she leave her apartment?” Denver sat back in his chair. “Walk me through what you’ve got.”

  “Her roommate—Carol Tufts, her name is—said Lisa left around nine-fifteen for Kelly’s down on Twelfth Street. Should have taken her ten minutes at the most to get there.”

  “She was driving?”

  “Walking. Her car had a flat, and she had no spare tire, so she decided to walk. Carol said she offered her the use of her car, but Lisa said she’d just as soon walk, since it was a nice night.”

  “When was the flat tire discovered, do we know?” Denver asked.

  “Yesterday morning. According to Carol, the tire was flat when Lisa went down to leave for work in the morning. Found the tire flat, realized she didn’t have a spare, so she had someone from the salon pick her up, and got a ride home yesterday afternoon.” Cass looked up from her notes. “I’ll bring the tire in for inspection.”

  Her cell phone vibrated against her hip, and she glanced at the number.

  “It’s the lab,” she told the chief. “I think I want to take this.”

  Denver nodded, then turned his attention to Jeff Spencer, who’d been silent since he’d entered the room.

  “So what do you have to add to Detective Burke’s report, Spencer?”

  Spencer shrugged. “Not much.”

  “Well, you were there at the scene this morning, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. But Burke had things pretty much in control when I arrived.”

  “What time did you get there?”

  Spencer rubbed the back of his neck and shifted in his seat.

  “I don’t recall what time I arrived.”

  Denver stared at him. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Especially he didn’t want to have it now.

  “You having a problem, Spencer?”

  “Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I am.” Spencer’s face was emotionless.

  “Solve it. Take care of it. And do it fast.” Denver stood, hoping to walk off his temper. “There’s a killer in my town. He’s just getting his game on. I don’t have time to baby anyone through their personal problems. If you’re not one hundred percent on this, Spencer, for God’s sake, tell me now.”

  “Well, Chief, I hadn’t planned on talking about this yet. What with these murders and all.” Spencer’s face flushed, the first reaction he’d shown since he sat down.

  The chief motioned at him to go on.

  “I’d really rather wait until …” Spencer’s voice dropped and he shot a glance in Cass’s direction. She was wrapping up her call.

  “No semen found on either body, though both women had been sexually assaulted. The position of the bruises on each woman’s neck is exactly the same, the thumbprints the same distance apart. Trace is still being examined, but Tasha found one interesting thing.”

  She leaned on the corner of Denver’s desk, oblivious to the exchange between the chief and Spencer.

  “Tasha found little bits of fibers in the hair of both victims. She’s going to analyze them to see if they match.” Cass looked up from her notes.

  “Have this morning’s vic’s clothes been found?” Denver asked.

  Cass nodded. “In the Dumpster. Neatly folded. Just like Linda Roman’s were.”

  “Well, that tells us something about our man,” the chief noted. “Speaking of which …”

  Denver held up the envelope.

  “Communiqué number two,” he said dryly as he opened it and held it up.

  “Remember me …” Cass read aloud.

  “I think it’s clear he wants us to think he’s the Strangler. He wants us to believe that he’s back. The question is, of course, is it really him? Or is it someone who thinks it would be fun to make us think it’s him? And either way, what do we say to the press?” The chief returned to his chair and lowered himself into it. “I promised to have something for them by …”

  He turned his left wrist to look at his watch.

  “In about another hour and thirty-five minutes. What do I tell them?”

  Neither detective spoke. The room was suddenly very, very quiet.

  “If I tell them, they’ll have a field day with the story. And it will egg him on. The killer. He’ll like it, I think.”

  “And if you don’t tell them, will we be putting more women at risk?” Cass asked. “Isn’t it better if the public knows what’s going on, so they can protect themselves better?”

  “I think we can let them know that another woman has been killed by what appears to be the same person. That alone should let women know they need to take care; we can address the issues of safety with the public without adding to the hysteria by sensationalizing this more than it has to be.” Denver tapped his fingers quietly on the arms of his chair. “And of course, the summer season recently opened.”

  “You get a call from the mayor, or something, like how this is going to be bad for business?” Spencer asked.

  “This isn’t Amity, Spencer, and I think I can safely say our killer isn’t a great white shark.” Denver stared at him coldly. “I only bring it up because our population will triple by the end of the month. Which will give him a greater selection of victims to choose from.”

  “Which means we have to do everything we can to find him, and stop him,” Cass said, then shook her head. “Stupid statement. It’s obvious we have to find him before he
kills someone else.”

  “To that end, Burke, I want you to get with Tasha and go over everything she has. And I want you to get Lisa Montour’s car down to the garage and have it gone over with a fine-tooth comb, especially that tire.”

  Cass tapped Spencer on the shoulder. “You coming?”

  Before he could answer, Denver spoke up.

  “No, he’s not. And close the door on your way out, Burke.”

  Cass paused at the doorway and looked back over her shoulder. Spencer’s neck had turned beet red and Denver’s eyes were beginning to narrow as he focused on the detective who remained seated.

  “Was there something else, Burke?” the chief asked.

  “No, I just …”

  “Close the door on your way out.”

  Cass did as she was told.

  She returned to her office and dialed Tasha’s number, wondering what was going on between Spencer and the chief. Whatever it was, it hadn’t appeared that either one of them was happy about it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Spencer that quiet, or the chief so tense. Her instincts told her it had more to do with Spencer’s attitude than with the recent homicides.

  Well, if anyone could adjust someone’s attitude, it was Denver.

  Forty minutes later, Cass had left voice mail for Tasha, called Carol Tufts and asked if she had the key to Lisa Montour’s car, and arranged for Helms to meet her at Lisa Montour’s apartment.

  That done, Cass left the station, walking out the side door just as Jeff Spencer’s wife pulled into the parking lot and stopped by the front of the building.

  Within seconds, Jeff came down the sidewalk, a box in his arms. He balanced the box on one knee while he opened the rear door and slid the box across the seat before getting into the passenger side.

  Puzzled, Cass stood on the steps and watched as the car left the lot on two wheels.

  Well, shit, she thought. That doesn’t bode well.

  “You on your way to pick up that car, Detective?”

  She turned at the sound of the chief’s voice.

  “Yes, I’m meeting Helms there. I spoke with our vic’s roommate. She said the car keys are still on the hook inside the front door, where Lisa left them.”

  “Good. I’m on my way to the mayor’s office to go over what little we know before the press conference he decided to call. Want to trade places?”

  “No thanks.”

  Denver started to walk past her and she touched his arm.

  “Chief, Detective Spencer just …” She pointed to the street.

  “Ex-detective Spencer. He’s no longer with the department.”

  “What?” Her jaw dropped.

  “His choice. He’s going back to Minnesota or Michigan …”

  “Wisconsin.” She supplied the name of Spencer’s home state.

  “Whatever,” Denver grumbled. “His wife hates it here, she hates the beach, she misses her mother, she misses her sister, she hates that he’s at work all the time, she hates that she has no friends here, the baby’s always sick, he’s never around to help her …”

  He paused. “Did I miss anything?”

  “If you did, it probably doesn’t matter.”

  “I knew there was something going on there, his attitude has changed over the past month or two. So we had to have a chat. Told him that I need him to be on the case, one hundred percent, you know, we have a killer here, we need his full attention and if he can’t give it to us, he needs to rethink his career choice.” He paused again. “Apparently he had already done that. He’d applied for and was offered a job at a police department fifteen miles from his hometown.”

  “So he’s leaving? He’s just walking out?”

  “Easier for some than for others, I guess. So, yes, to answer your question, he took accrued vacation, sick days, and personal time and is probably, as we speak, packing to leave, if his wife hasn’t already done that. He starts his new job on the first of next month.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Hardly just like that, he’s had this planned for weeks. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he did say he’d planned on giving his notice early in the week, but we found the first body. Then the second.”

  “I thought he seemed a bit off,” Cass said, recalling the way Spencer had held back and let her take the lead, not just that morning, but at the crime scene earlier in the week. “But I figured maybe he was just tired. You know, so much going on around here all of a sudden, and they have that new baby.”

  “Well, he’s taking that new baby and leaving us holding the bag.”

  “Did you ask him to stay for a few more days?”

  “What would be the point? Mentally, he’s already out of here. Might as well let him go. He wouldn’t be much use to us anyway, not in the state of mind he’s in right now.”

  Cass thought back to that morning, when Jeff had been late getting to the crime scene, and had been pretty much ineffective even after he arrived.

  “So, I guess it’s you, me, and a couple of uniforms against our boy, Cass.”

  Denver walked down the steps and didn’t turn back until he reached his car.

  “Finish up with the car and with Tasha, then go on home and get some sleep. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

  Five

  Her newly found enthusiasm for healthy living having been inspired a few weeks earlier by a visit from an old friend of her father’s who happened to be a holistic physician, Regan Landry added a banana to the skim milk, yogurt, and assorted powders in the blender and hit the Pulverize button. The little appliance whirred noisily while she found a glass and searched for a straw. She hit Stop and a blessed silence followed. She poured her breakfast into the glass and sat down at the small round kitchen table and opened the newspaper. Bored after a few minutes of skimming the headlines, she searched under the paper for the remote control and turned on the television that sat on the counter across the room.

  She changed the channel, searching for her favorite morning show, This Morning, USA. Once she found it, she turned up the volume and resumed her cursory scanning of the New York Times. An article about an upcoming auction of American antiques at Sotheby’s caught her eye, and she’d just gotten to the sampling of early Pennsylvania furniture when something on the screen caught her attention. She reached for the remote and increased the volume.

  “… certainly of interest to anyone having plans to visit the New Jersey shore this summer,” Heather Cannon was saying.

  The screen split, half now occupied by a man in a police uniform who looked uncomfortable in front of the camera.

  “I feel your pain,” Regan muttered.

  “Chief Denver, with the finding of a third body there in Bowers Inlet, the reports coming from the South Jersey area are telling us that the signs all point to the likelihood that this is the work of a serial killer. Can you confirm that?”

  “You know, Heather, I hate that term, it stirs up so much …” The chief shifted in his chair.

  “Will you confirm that there has in fact been a third victim?”

  “Yes, there has been a third victim.”

  “And that all three victims have been young women in their early thirties …” Heather addressed the camera directly so that the man she was interviewing by remote would feel she was speaking directly to him.

  “Yes, all three victims have been young women, all local women. The first two lived in Bowers Inlet. The young woman whose body we found last night lived in nearby Tilden, but she was left on one of our beaches.”

  “Now, the information that we have indicates that all the women were dark-haired and similarly built …” Heather paused and looked up from her notes. “Is there a significance to this similarity, do you think?”

  “Right now we have no way of knowing. Yes, so far, there has been a resemblance between the victims, but whether or not we should read something into this, we just don’t know.”

  “The most disturbing bit of information we’
ve received is that you have correspondence from the killer …”

  “Well, let’s just hold up here.” The chief was clearly agitated. “What we have are letters that were received after the bodies were found. I want to make that clear. They could have been sent by someone other than the killer, someone thinking to have a bit of fun with us. Right now, I don’t know for a fact who is sending the letters.”

  “But they could be from the killer …”

  “Of course they could be,” he snapped.

  “And the letters are sort of a taunt, aren’t they?” Heather glanced down at her notes. “’Hey, Denver, did you find her yet?’ I understand was the first note. And the second was, ’Hey, Denver! Remember me?’ Both notes were comprised of letters or words cut from newspapers or magazines?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And was a note found after this latest victim?”

  “There was.”

  “May we ask what it said?”

  “It said, ’Hey, Denver, have you figured it out yet?’”

  “Any ideas on what you’re supposed to be figuring out?”

  “A few.”

  “Any you’re willing to share?”

  “It would be premature.” The chief of police of Bowers Inlet stared stonily into the camera.

  “So what would you tell people who are planning to spend a week or more in your community this summer? I understand Bowers Inlet has many rental properties and enjoys a population boom in the summer.”

  “I’m telling the vacationers the same thing I’m telling our year-round residents. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t go off alone. If you’re going out at night, go in a group. But you know, those are things you should probably be doing anyway, no matter where you are. You need to watch out for yourself. Have a cell phone with you or a can of pepper spray. If you think someone is following you, report it.”

  “So, in other words, stick to the basic safety precautions …”

  Regan tapped a finger on the tabletop, then rose and left the room as the interview concluded. She went down the hall to her father’s office and turned on the overhead light. Something that had just been said had caused a little bell to go off in her head.