Lucinda handed her a card. “Will you call me if you see or hear from your husband again?”
“Sure, as soon as I get my money.”
Lucinda raised one eyebrow.
“I’ve got my rights,” Rita said.
Lucinda turned and led the group out into the hall. She posted one man in the hallway, another in the lobby and assigned two men to watch the exterior of the hotel. The rest of them headed back to the station.
“Do you think Kirk Prescott will come back for her?” Ted asked.
“Hey, you got an eyeful, Ted. You’d come for her, wouldn’t you?”
Ted’s face reddened. “What now?”
“Changing the subject, Ted? Smart move. What now? Now we find that bastard before he strikes again.”
Sixty
The phone on Lucinda’s desk blinked fast from its burden of accumulated messages. Some of them were stupid, some of them were administrative, some of them were both. A few were from reporters trying to sidestep the public information officer and weasel information out of her. Only one captured Lucinda’s interest. It was from Vivienne Carr asking her to please visit her daughter Julie in the county jail as soon as possible.
She made a few calls to watch commanders around the city emphasizing the urgency of the need to find Kirk Prescott before he killed again. She had no leads to follow so she headed off for the jail hoping something would turn up while she was there.
She checked her gun at the front desk and followed her escort down the dreary halls. Cackles, shrieks and pleas for help, erupted from the cells she passed. Insults about her looks, her clothes, her walk mixed in with the verbal cacophony. She stared straight ahead and kept walking until she reached Julie’s cell.
Julie, in her orange jumpsuit, was stretched out on top of the blanket on her cot staring at the ceiling. When she heard the key slip into the lock, she sat up and spun around. Her face, pulled tight by worry, broke into a smile when she spotted Lucinda. “Lieutenant, you came. I knew you would.”
Lucinda stepped into the cell and took a seat beside Julie on the bunk. What a depressing place. Hard bed. Stainless steel toilet with no seat and no lid. Not enough room to spit. I’d just die first, Lucinda thought. “How are you doing, Julie?”
“Not bad for a murderer.” Julie winced at the word. “Nothing makes you more popular in jail than killing an abusive husband,” she said with a bitter laugh.
“Why did you want to see me?”
“I need to make a decision. I think I know what I should do but I wanted to talk to someone I can trust first.”
“Me?” Lucinda asked.
“Yeah, kind of funny, isn’t it? You put me here and yet you’re the person I trust the most.”
Lucinda nodded and smiled.
“My mom is so emotional. My lawyer, well, she’s real nice and all, but I think she’s more concerned about getting her face on TV than on doing the right thing.”
“So, what’s your dilemma?”
“The DA made an offer. If I plead guilty to manslaughter, I get ten years, five suspended. The lawyer said if I behave myself that would mean I can get out in three years or maybe even less.”
“Not bad,” Lucinda said.
“That’s what I thought but my mom and my lawyer have me so confused.”
“What did your mother say?”
“Not much. Every time I suggest that I should take the deal she starts crying and says “my baby in prison” over and over again.”
“What about your attorney?”
“She doesn’t want me to take the deal.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No. She thinks she can prove self-defense. She says she’s certain if I go to trial, the worst I’d get is straight probation.”
“She could be right, Julie.”
“But it just doesn’t feel right, Lieutenant. Not to me.”
“What you mean, Julie?”
“I killed somebody. I took a life, Lieutenant. I should be punished for that. I know my mother said he deserved to die. But still . . .” Julie shook her head.
“Still what?” Lucinda asked.
“Still, I know I could’ve walked away. I know he was sound asleep. I could have – I should have – slipped into my car and driven away from it all. I had no right to take his life. I deserve more time in jail. Not less.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think the right thing would be to take the deal and serve some time. But what do you think?”
“I don’t think putting you behind bars is going to make society a safer place, Julie. But it sounds like you’d find it a bit easier to live with yourself if you served some time.”
“You’re right,” Julie said with a smile. “Thanks, Lieutenant, you’ve been a big help.”
“All I did was listen.”
“Yeah, but I needed somebody to listen. I needed someone to talk it out with, so thanks.”
Lucinda stood and walked toward the bars to call to her escort. She turned back around before she did. “Julie, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Anything, Lieutenant.”
“Did your ancestors come from Africa?”
Julie laughed. “You’ve been talking to my mother-in-law, haven’t you?”
Lucinda nodded and grinned.
“That woman is so screwed up. She thinks I’m black. She thinks I look black. At first, I thought it was funny. I almost told her the truth about Africa, but her attitude just pissed me off. So what if I had black relatives? I didn’t but so what if I did?”
“Would you mind telling me the truth about Africa?” Lucinda asked.
“Not at all. My great-great . . . jeez, I don’t how many greats . . . a bunch of generations ago, anyway, members of my family set out for Africa to make their fortune in gold. It didn’t work out exactly as they planned. The gold wasn’t all that easy to find. Life was a little too rough. They didn’t give it more than a couple years before they gave up, but I guess they were too proud to go back home to England. They set sail for America instead. My mom has some journals one of them wrote in about their disappointment in the Dark Continent, as they called it, the hardship of sailing across the Atlantic in steerage and stuff like that. Mom read some if it to me when I was younger. It seemed like a fairytale to me. Nothing about it seemed real until my mother-in-law learned a little piece of the story. Then it turned real . . . and real ugly.”
Lucinda said, “Thank you,” and shook Julie’s hand. “You’ll do fine. The time will pass before you know it.”
When Lucinda stepped outside of the jail, she inhaled deeply, sucking in the fresh air of freedom. She did not feel nearly as optimistic about the next few years of Julie’s life as her last words to her indicated. It’ll be hell on earth, she thought. A little bit of dying every single day.
Hatred is the root of so much violence. Hatred and rage. Racist hatred set the stage for the events that led to Julie taking her husband’s life. Hatred and rage has to be part of Kirk Prescott’s motivation, too. What prompted his ritual trophy exchange at every murder? What hatred urges him on? What rage drives him?
She could guess at some of the answers but she didn’t know anything for sure. Unless I know what motivates Kirk Prescott, will I ever find him?
Sixty-One
Lucinda returned to the station and found Ted hard at work in the conference room. “Ted, please tell me you’ve found Kirk Prescott.”
Ted grimaced. “I wish. No one’s reported the slightest trace of him. I finally got a social security number, though, and got a lot more detail for the timeline.” He handed a sheet of paper to Lucinda.
She scanned down through Kirk’s birth, list of schools, the murder of Bethany Hopkins and his conviction, his stay in juvenile hall, and his transfer to Prairie View Hospital for the Criminally Insane. “You have no details for the time spent in these institutions?”
“They’re both claiming confidentiality issues. They refused to release any informa
tion about disciplinary records, treatment, anything.”
“We’ll have to get a subpoena, I guess.”
“We can try but it might not be worth the effort, Lucinda. When I mentioned the possibility, they said they would fight the release of any information and gave me the name and number of their attorney. He told me that he could tie it up in the courts until the day I retired.”
“I imagine, then, it’s unlikely he killed or seriously hurt anyone at the hospital or they’d be a bit more cooperative.”
“Maybe. But maybe not. They assured me more than once that I must be mistaken in my suspicions about Kirk Prescott. They insisted they never release a patient until it’s been determined he is no longer a threat to himself or to anyone else.”
“Yeah, right,” Lucinda said with a roll of her eye. “Did they inform any of his family members about his release?”
“No. Legally, he had no family. He was a ward of the state.”
“At least you got his release date – almost two years ago just before Christmas.” She walked over to the murder timeline board. “A little more than three months before the Waverly murder where the victim wore someone else’s Sarah Coventry daisy pin.”
“After his release, all we have is a series of minor crimes leading from the Midwest to the East Coast. Drunk and disorderly, trespassing, loitering, shoplifting. Nothing that earned him more than an overnight stay in one county lock-up or another. One incident on the list is quite timely – a loitering charge in Waverly two days before the murder there.”
“How did he manage to track down Evan?”
“I don’t know but I do have a theory – sort of,” Ted said with a defensive shrug.
“What’s that?”
“You know, it makes a lot of sense in my head but once I say it out loud, it might suddenly seem very stupid.”
“Spit it out, Ted.”
“Look at the timeline of Kirk’s life. For two of his drunk and disorderly charges and three of the loitering charges, he was picked up at a public library.”
“And public libraries have computers and Internet access.”
“My thinking exactly. I asked at the hospital. They have computers at the hospital but no Internet access for patients. I had to squeeze to get that innocuous tidbit out of them. So I called the library involved in the most recent drunk and disorderly up in Pennsylvania. Although it was more than a year and a half ago, the librarian remembered that day. She said Kirk’d been at a computer terminal when suddenly he jumped to his feet, ranting, raving and knocking books off the shelves. That’s when she called the police.”
“Did they remember what he was looking at on the computer? All he needed to see was one picture of Evan and he’d know he was his brother.”
“They couldn’t remember a thing about what he was accessing. But I was thinking the picture would be a dead giveaway, too. I Googled Evan Spencer and came across a lot of press coverage about his work with Doctors Without Borders. There were more than a few photos. But Kirk wouldn’t know Evan’s last name. How could he find him on Google without it?”
“It wouldn’t be a stretch for him to work on the theory that his brother followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor, too. It would take more hours than I can imagine to track down every doctor with the first name of Evan but it sounds like Kirk spent a lot of time in libraries and he could have done just that.”
“So he comes to the area and starts killing people? Does that make sense?”
“To a sociopath, making sense is not a real priority. The other possibility, Ted, is that he didn’t commit the first murder in Waverly. We need to check out the locations along his path. Let’s call the towns where the petty crimes occurred and find out if they have any similar unsolved homicides of women. Maybe we’ll find out where he got hold of that daisy pin.”
Sixty-Two
Lucinda stared at the crime-scene photos and timelines looking for a hidden answer, for the slightest thing she may have overlooked. She didn’t move her eye away as she answered her ringing cell. “Pierce.”
“Where?” she said sinking into a chair. “Omigod, no.” She felt the blood rush from her face and numbness crawl along her lips. “We’ll be right there,” she said disconnecting the call. But she didn’t move. She sat slumped in the seat, shaking her head.
“We’ll be right where, Lucinda?” Ted asked.
“Poplar Street, Ted.”
“Poplar Street.”
“Yeah. Afraid so. I’m not certain but it sounds like the same house we checked out.” She shook her head and jumped to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Dark thoughts swirled through her mind as they headed in silence to the crime scene. Had her insistence to follow the rules lead to someone’s death? If she’d let Ted break in, could they have saved a life? Oh, please, God, don’t let it be the same house.
But it was. She pulled up to the curb and headed up to the house with dread. She stepped through the open door and saw a familiar face. “Dr Sam!”
He grunted in response.
“When did it happen?” she asked, praying it was an hour ago, a week ago – any time far before or after the minutes she’d spent walking around that house.
“’Bout three days ago, looks like,” Dr Sam said.
“Between five thirty and six in the evening?”
“Humpf. I can’t be that precise. You know that. What’s the matter with you?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. Is it our guy?”
“Looks like it, maybe. But if it was, he was interrupted.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Come look,” he said as he shambled down the hall. “See that pot next to her face. He smashed her with that but not as many times as usual, like someone interrupted him before he could finish the job.”
The thud she’d heard, when she first stepped on the stoop three days ago, echoed in her head.
“We interrupted him, Lucinda,” Ted said. “He stopped when we rang the doorbell.”
“Rang the doorbell!” Dr Sam squawked. “You were here when this happened?”
Lucinda sighed. “Looks like it. Doc.”
“And you let him get away?”
She winced. “Yes. I guess we did.”
Ted reached out a hand and touched his partner’s arm. “Lucinda, she was dead before we got here. He’d already strangled her before we rang the bell. We couldn’t have saved her.’
“Yeah. But like Dr Sam said, we let him get away.” She hadn’t felt this bad since the day she read the note pinned to the lifeless body of an innocent little boy – the note that pinned the blame on her. And she felt it now, pushing down on her shoulders, making her feel small.
Sixty-Three
He parked the BMW several blocks away from the Spencer home. The intensity of his bubbling excitement tensed every muscle in his body. He worked hard at appearing relaxed and casual as he walked up the street to his brother’s house.
He slipped over the backyard fence in the shadow of a large oak tree and crouched over as he scampered for the detached garage. He peered in the side window and saw Kathleen’s Honda. The space for Evan’s car was empty. Good.
He dashed for the back of the house and stopped by the large angled metal doors that led to the cellar. He pulled a small key out of his pocket, stuck it in the padlock and turned. When he heard it click open, he was relieved.
He’d worried that someone would notice he’d sawed through the lock he’d found there a couple of months ago and had replaced it with the one he purchased and installed the day before Kathleen’s murder.
He slipped the lock out of the hasp and eased up one of the doors, wincing when it squeaked. He looked around for observers but saw no eyes on him. He went down a couple of steps, swinging an arm to brush away the cobwebs.
He set the padlock on the top step hoping no one would notice it was missing outside. He pulled on the open door and, holding it with both hands ov
er his head, he slowly lowered it as he backed down the steps.
With his feet on the dirt floor, he stood motionless, breathing deeply of the musty air while he waited for his eyes to adjust to the near absence of light. Slowly, the monster-shape in the corner revealed itself to be an old coal furnace never dismantled after the oil furnace beside it was put into commission.
He made his way across the packed earth floor to the door to the laundry room. He opened it a crack and listened. Indistinguishable voices drifted down the stairs – the squeaks of the little girls, the deeper voice of the babysitter. He listened to small footsteps moving about above his head.
He knew it was risky to turn on the light, but the spot where he’d left Kathleen called to him, tempted him to emerge from the back room. He stepped into the laundry room, walked to the bottom of the stairway and flipped the switch. He stood transfixed staring at the spot where Kathleen’s body had rested. He mentally revisited the exquisite moments of her struggle against the rope around her neck. He savored the feel of her weight in his hands as he held the rope and her body hung limp in its embrace. He remembered marking the passage of time on the gold watch she wore on her wrist.
He shivered as he recalled easing her body to the floor. His knees weakened and shook as he relived every blow to her face with the concrete block. He leaned back against the wall for support.
He closed his eyes and visualized his hands fastening the clasp of the turquoise cross around her neck. “Perfection,” he whispered. What a fitting farewell to my brother’s Jewish Princess. Not one of the other deaths was as gratifying as hers was to him. Now he had a plan to recapture the magic of that murder. He would kill one of Kathleen’s daughters. A mini-Kathleen, he thought, it will be like killing her all over again.
The Trophy Exchange (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Page 25
