The Love Killings

by Robert Ellis

  Baylor bowed his head and lowered his voice, still amused. “Everybody needs a new identity from time to time. A new outlook on life.”

  “They found out that you traveled to the East Coast, and that you did it every year. They have receipts from your visits to Princeton and Greenwich and your hotel in New York. They think that’s where your history is. That you grew up somewhere on the East Coast.”

  “That was a long time ago, Matthew.” The doctor stood up with the gun in his hand. “It’s getting late. I want you to unbutton your shirt. I want a look at your wounds.”

  “Why?”

  “Open your shirt,” Baylor said. “Do it quickly. Do as I say.”

  Matt got to his feet and unbuttoned his shirt. Slowly. Reluctantly. Once he pulled it open, Baylor switched on his flashlight and began his examination of the four gunshot wounds. The one the doctor, a former plastic surgeon, had mended himself in Matt’s shoulder, and the three shots in the gut that had nearly killed him.

  “Sloppy work,” the doctor said. “I can fix those if you like. It would take time to heal, but after a year or two, the scars would go away.”

  Matt looked at Baylor’s eyes still fixed on the four wounds. “Why won’t you let me take you in, Doctor?”

  “Because you need me.”

  Matt shook his head. “But I don’t need you. Let’s drive into the city. Let’s end this before anyone else gets hurt. I know there’s something inside you that’s worth saving. You wouldn’t have saved my life if there wasn’t. You did it twice. You mended this wound, and you saved me from the fire.”

  The doctor met Matt’s eyes finally, his voice almost a whisper. “You still need me. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “You murdered these people. You murdered the Strattons. Even by your own standards, you’re out of control. If they find you, they won’t waste time fooling around. They’ll shoot you. It’s easier that way. It’s safer.”

  Matt watched as Baylor’s gaze turned inward. It looked like he was sifting through his past. It seemed like he had become lost in the darkness.

  “Jim Stratton, MD,” the doctor said with another faint smile. “Can you imagine a doctor using chemotherapy and radiation treatments on patients who were perfectly healthy?”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore. It’s the world we live in. Generation Me.”

  “The world we live in,” Baylor repeated pointedly. “And now Jim Stratton, MD, is finally dead, and again the world is a better place. I knew his daughter was home for the holidays, Matthew. I’d done my research, I’d made my plans, and I went to the house a couple of hours after midnight to scout the location and make my final preparations. When I got there, the front door was unlocked. I walked in and found them on the second-floor landing. They were already dead.”

  Matt paused a moment to think it over. “If they were already dead, then why did you touch the bodies, Doctor? Why didn’t you just leave?”

  “But I didn’t touch the bodies.”

  “Yes, you did. The FBI has your fingerprint.”

  “From where?”

  “The girl’s nipple. I read about it in the murder book this afternoon. They examined her entire body. You touched the girl’s nipple. And you painted her fingernails. You left a print there, too.”

  Baylor was inside himself again, that odd glint burning in his vibrant blue eyes.

  “So maybe I did,” he said finally in a softer voice. “Maybe I left those prints for you, Matthew. The truth is that I left a total of five.”

  Matt shook his head. “You left five fingerprints, and now you’re saying that you left them on purpose and want me to believe you. If you’re ever questioned, you’ll need to do better than that, Doctor. A lot better.”

  “I like to think of them as calling cards. I wanted you here. I wanted to make sure you got the call.”

  “Where are the other three?”

  “In the library you’ll find something hanging on the wall. It’s a page from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s society section. Jim Stratton, MD, poisoned his patients and got rich hurting them and killing them, but he liked to think of himself as a kind and generous human being. Don’t they all? He sponsored a charity event for one of the hospitals in Center City. A golf match at his country club for, of all things, kids with cancer. It made the society page. He had the story framed. I touched the glass with one finger, and the lower right corner of the frame with another when I straightened it on the wall.”

  “Where did you leave the third?”

  “The most obvious place of all. The kitchen sink. I washed my hands and touched the faucet.”

  Matt gave him a hard look. “Why are you doing this? What do you expect to gain by playing let’s pretend? You’re saying that you just happened to show up at the Strattons’ house on the night they were murdered? And now I find you here, and the bodies are still warm? Really? You just happen to be here tonight?”

  “It’s a coincidence.”

  Matt frowned. “A coincidence?”

  “A striking occurrence of two or more events all at once, and apparently by mere chance, Matthew. We call it a coincidence. Three thousand years ago, they called it magic. Two thousand years ago, it was called a miracle. Words change over time.”

  Matt laughed sarcastically. “Call it anything you like, Doctor. Call it anything you want, anytime you want. It doesn’t make any difference that Jim Stratton, MD, and David Holloway were whores or even monsters—it doesn’t matter what they did or who they were. You murdered these people. If I’d been here any sooner, I would have caught you in the act.”

  Baylor met his eyes. “You’re here because I sent you an invitation.”

  A beat went by. And then another.

  Matt remembered the text message he’d received. It seemed so long ago.

  Baylor cleared his throat. “You’re working with people who have their heads in the sand, Matthew. It’s the corporate way, you know. Special Agent Rogers and Assistant US Attorney Ken Doyle have blinders on and can’t see who and what they’re really dealing with here. They want it to be me. They need it to be me. They get more stuff if it’s me. Bigger headlines and better jobs. That’s why I left my fingerprints. That’s why I sent you that text message tonight.”

  Matt let it settle in as he buttoned his shirt. All of it. Everything Baylor had just said. The five corpses at his feet. The five animal heads mounted on the wall. The diamond in the dead macho man’s ear that was so big it looked cheap and crude. The twenty-foot-high Christmas tree with its bright lights and decorations, even the gifts already wrapped with bows and ribbons.

  The word nightmare didn’t cover it. He wished he could call it a hallucination, but that wouldn’t work either. It felt like he was trapped in something more potent, more terrifying, more everything.

  “You know what, Doctor?” he said finally.

  Baylor narrowed his brow but remained quiet.

  “I saw what you did to the four girls in Los Angeles and New Orleans. I know what you’re capable of. Your methods have changed. That was my first thought when I saw the crime-scene photographs from the Strattons’. And it was the first thought I had when I climbed those stairs tonight. You’re in a state of decay. You need to hand over your gun. You need to come with me so I can help you. You need medical help. Psychiatric help. The killing has to end.”

  “You’re disappointing me.”

  “You need help, Doctor. Before anyone else gets hurt.”

  “May I ask you a question?” Baylor said in a particularly quiet voice.

  “Why not.”

  The doctor turned and gazed at the victims. “The killer is obviously selecting his victims from the same pool I am. But when you see something like this, when you add everything up, when you concentrate on the whole, and not the meaning of any single part, what are you left with, Matthew? What need was the killer trying to fulfill?”

  Matt remained quiet as he took in the horror one more time. A father with his two daughters. A mot
her with her son. Then he felt Baylor poke him in the back with his pistol.

  “It’s getting late,” the doctor said. “And I have another stop to make tonight. We’re leaving. We’re off to the kitchen, and you’re leading the way.”

  Matt gave the doctor a look and noticed that odd glint blooming in the man’s eyes again. He appeared disappointed and irritated and, all of a sudden, was in a rush to leave. Matt glanced back at the landing as he started down the staircase. His mind was reeling, and he held on to the rail all the way down to the entryway.

  There was too much information here—and he couldn’t get a grip on any one piece to even begin sorting things out.

  They started walking toward the back of the house. Baylor remained quiet as they passed all those rooms with all those lousy paintings. At least now Matt had a sense of who Holloway had been before his death. The paintings worked like a mirror and revealed who Holloway had really been.

  Matt turned and watched the doctor following him into the kitchen. Baylor crossed the room, swung open the glass door, and pointed at the property line in the distance. He was still in a hurry. Still disappointed and abrupt.

  “You can’t see it from here,” he said. “But there’s a stone wall about four feet high behind those trees. That’s where you’ll find your things when I’m gone. If you make any attempt to follow me, I’ll shoot you. Good luck, Matthew. I think you’re going to need it. Whoever murdered these people is someone special. I wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about how you’ll pay your father back right now. The last time you became distracted, you took three shots in the gut, remember?”

  Matt could feel Baylor’s eyes on him, and then he was off—crossing the backyard at a brisk and steady pace. Matt stepped outside and listened to the doctor’s footsteps break through the frozen ground in the howling wind. Once Baylor disappeared behind the trees, Matt hit the lawn in a full sprint. It took longer than he expected, the actual size of the property lost in the gloom, but when he finally reached the stone wall, he found his pistol and cell phone waiting for him. There was a rear gate here, and a condominium on the other side of the wrought iron fence. A car had just pulled out of the lot onto Sugartown Road. Matt strained to focus his eyes through the darkness, but the car was too far away to make out any detail.

  He noticed his breath in the air, thick as smoke. He couldn’t catch it. He couldn’t think. The world seemed like all of a sudden it was floating through space upside down.

  CHAPTER 17

  It felt more like an interrogation than anything else. A violation of some kind. Matt was seated at a reading table in the Holloways’ library. A bright desk lamp had been pushed into his face. On the other side of the table, he could make out Doyle’s figure in the shadows, along with Special Agent Rogers and Dr. Stanley Westbrook. Agent Brown was listening from a chair by the window.

  “You’re sure it was Baylor?” Rogers asked in a loud voice. “You’re sure it was him?”

  Matt remained quiet, taking a deep breath and exhaling. He could see Doyle uncapping a bottle of water and taking a quick sip. After he set the bottle down, the federal prosecutor leaned over the table.

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “Let’s go through it one more time, Jones. You said that he left five fingerprints at the Strattons’ mansion. That he wanted us to find them because he thought it might bring you to Philadelphia. Where are they? Where are the fingerprints?”

  Matt winced. The bright light hurt his eyes.

  “Why is this light in my face?”

  “Where did Baylor leave the fingerprints?” Doyle repeated.

  Matt shrugged. “I didn’t believe him when he said it.”

  “Of course you didn’t, Jones. Where did he say he left them?”

  “There’s a page from a newspaper that Stratton had framed. Baylor said it’s hanging in the library. He said he touched the glass and the frame itself. He left a third print on the kitchen faucet when he washed his hands.”

  Matt could see Rogers leafing through the sections in a three-ring binder and realized that they had pulled the murder book from the passenger seat of Matt’s car. It felt like another violation. He watched Rogers find the page he was looking for, his indignation rising. He watched the man skim through the copy and look up at Doyle.

  “All three were located,” he said finally. “They were smudged. There was no probative value. They could have been anyone’s fingerprints. They could have been there for weeks.”

  Rogers had become defensive the moment Matt told them that Baylor had found a way to send him a text message using the special agent’s name and phone number. Matt gave the man another hard look. The gunshot wounds had begun burning in his gut, and he could feel a headache coming on from the bright light in his eyes. It was time for this one-way conversation to end. He grabbed the desk lamp, got to his feet, and turned the bright light on his interrogators.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Rogers said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Matt glared back at him. “You want to talk about what happened, Rogers, then I’m more than happy to do that. But this is bullshit, and I don’t like you.”

  Matt smashed the lamp on the floor, then started around the desk toward the special agent. When Rogers took a step back, Doyle grabbed Matt by the shoulders.

  “It’s been a long night. Why don’t we all calm down? You, too, Rogers.”

  “I’m in charge here,” Rogers said under his breath. “He’s not qualified to be here. Nobody talks to me that way.”

  Doyle smiled. “Yes, he is, and he just did. Now find a seat and sit down. Both of you.”

  Matt glanced at Kate Brown as he took the chair beside her and turned back to Doyle. The federal prosecutor had started pacing up and down the long room and appeared to be thinking something over. After another quick sip of water, he finally spoke.

  “This is exactly what we thought would happen. Jones is here, and tonight Dr. Baylor made contact. It’s a step forward. A huge step forward. Tell us again, Jones. What did the doctor say?”

  Matt leaned forward in the chair. “He claims that he didn’t kill these people. And he didn’t murder the Strattons. He wanted to, he’d done his research, but someone got to them first. Someone who’s picking his victims from the same group.”

  Doyle glanced his way, then lowered his eyes back to the floor. “That’s what the guilty always say. He didn’t expect you to believe him, did he?”

  “I think he did. He was disappointed when I didn’t.”

  The truth was that Matt thought the doctor had been trying to play him the same way he played the detectives investigating the murder cases in LA. Baylor had done everything he could to make everyone involved think that another man, Jamie Taladyne, was responsible for the three women he murdered in Hollywood and the Valley. Taladyne died at the hands of the police before Matt was able to see through the doctor and single him out.

  Matt had reached this conclusion six hours ago after watching the doctor’s car vanish down Sugartown Road. He’d made two calls, first to 911, and then to Kate Brown. It had taken less than ten minutes for the township’s first response units to arrive. But it had taken almost an hour before anyone from the city made it to the Holloways’ mansion in the suburbs. An hour Matt had used to reexamine the crime scene on his own and process what he thought had happened here tonight.

  He looked up and caught Dr. Westbrook staring at him through those thick glasses of his. He could see suspicion showing on the man’s face, and wasn’t sure if he liked him any more than Rogers. The two men seemed to have a great deal in common.

  Matt turned back to Doyle, still pacing, still tossing something over in his mind.

  “After Baylor tried to persuade you that his connection to both murders was a coincidence, what happened next?”

  “I tried to convince the doctor to turn himself in.”

  “How?” Doyle asked. “What did you say?”

  “He wanted to see my gunshot wo
unds. He wanted to see how they were healing.”

  Westbrook broke in. “Any show of concern or kindness is an act,” he said. “Dr. Baylor is a psychopath. Showing concern is just another tool in the madman’s bag of tricks.”

  Matt didn’t think so, but kept his mouth shut.

  Doyle stopped and turned and shot the psychiatrist an odd look. “It seems to me that this is more than a trick, Westbrook. How do you explain the fact that Dr. Baylor saved Jones’s life in LA?”

  Dr. Westbrook shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “But I’ve never met a psychopath who wasn’t a manipulator. I’ve never met one who wasn’t a great role player. They know how to push buttons to get what they want, and they’re good at it.”

  Doyle nodded. “Point taken,” he said as he turned back to Matt and started pacing again. “Okay, Jones. Baylor examined your gunshot wounds. What did you say that you hoped might convince him to turn himself in?”

  “I told him that there had to be something left inside him because he did save me. He saved me twice.”

  “Anything else?”

  Matt stood up and leaned against the windowsill. “I told him that his story defied the imagination. No one would ever believe that he just happened to show up at the Strattons’ on the night they were murdered, and then again tonight at the Holloways’ with the bodies still warm. I told him that time was running out. That ever since his escape, the FBI has known that he’s not who he says he is. That everyone believes he murdered the real Dr. George Baylor fifteen years ago in Chicago. That the two of them may have met while attending medical school. That he was from somewhere on the East Coast and obviously running from something in his past that required a new identity.”