The Love Killings

by Robert Ellis

  Baylor was staring at him, and Matt guessed that he’d noticed his reaction.

  “Worse?” the doctor said carefully.

  “I just came from the funeral home. Someone’s messing with the corpses.”

  “Did the undertaker say that?”

  “He mentioned it, then wrote it off.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Matt shook his head. “Not when he tried to back away. Someone messed with the Strattons’ bodies. Whether or not it’s the killer is another story.”

  “Oh, it’s him, Matthew. Trust me on this. It’s him and it fits.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll let you figure that out.”

  The doctor glanced at Matt’s hands, then met his eyes again. When he spoke his voice was dark and frightening.

  “Are you better now?”

  He’d noticed. “You mind if I smoke?”

  “Would it matter?”

  Matt dug his cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, and crossed the room to the fireplace. The doctor was staring at him again, his eyes focused and glistening in the light.

  “You know he’ll never stop, don’t you, Matthew. He’ll keep going until he’s either captured or killed or blows up like a shooting star. And it’s not what I read in the newspapers. It’s not that he likes it. It’s that he can’t control himself anymore. He’s playing out his own life. He’s dreaming about his escape to a better life. And somewhere deep inside he knows with absolute certainty that he’ll never make it. He’ll never get there. He’ll never have the life he wants and needs. That’s where the anger’s coming from. The rage.”

  Matt couldn’t tell if Baylor was talking about the killer or himself. Either way, he wanted to get out of here. He tapped the ash from the head of the cigarette into the fireplace and took a quick hit. When he finally checked on Baylor, he caught the doctor eyeing him again and realized that the dread had returned, but was stronger now. It suddenly occurred to Matt that the reason he hadn’t been afraid of the doctor on the night the Holloways were murdered was probably due to the shock of the crime itself. The sight of a mass killing, an entire family. The blowback had dulled his consciousness, his senses. But not tonight. Not with the doctor glaring at him like a leopard eyeing prey. Yet Baylor was the only person in the world whom he could talk to. The only person who understood that someone else was out there. The only human being he knew who had an insider’s view of committing an actual murder.

  Matt took another hit on the Marlboro. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “I found out something about my family. My mother.”

  The doctor nodded slowly. “What did you find out?”

  “Her father was a big guy on Wall Street, just like my father. He was running a Ponzi scheme with his business partner and it fell apart. A lot of people lost everything they had. A lot of people got hurt.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Howard Stewart. He’s dead. His business partner shot him after an argument. He waited until my grandparents fell asleep, then broke into the house and murdered them in bed. I couldn’t find my past because my mother’s name had been changed to protect her and her brother and sisters from the scandal.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “A long time ago. My mother was just a girl.”

  Dr. Baylor moved back to the chair, sat down, and crossed his legs. “What’s your question, Matthew?”

  Matt turned and looked at him. The doctor’s face was in shadow, masking his eyes.

  “You know who my father is,” Matt said.

  “I knew the minute you walked into my office.”

  Matt took another drag on the Marlboro. “Why didn’t you go after him? Why didn’t you do to me what you did to those four girls?”

  The doctor shrugged. “That’s easy. Those girls were loved by their parents. They were the only real thing their parents ever had. Take them away, and what are their parents left with? The money they stole. Some faint memory of a time when they cared about something more than themselves.” Baylor leaned forward, the light from the lamp striking his face. “Your situation is entirely different, Matthew. Your father, M. Trevor Jones, the King of Wall Street, wouldn’t mourn your death. He’d celebrate your passing. That’s the only explanation for why you were shot by that man on top of Mount Hollywood. Your father is trying to keep a secret. You’re working a headline case, your name’s out there, your picture’s in the newspaper, on TV and the Internet, and he’s getting nervous. His best option, his only option, is to have you killed before anyone figures out what he did to you and your mother.”

  Matt flicked the butt into the fireplace. “Maybe,” he said. “But my father’s a bigger symbol of greed than anyone you hurt. He might even be the most self-centered person in the world. He’s a textbook narcissist. I spoke with an LAPD psychiatrist during my recovery. I never mentioned anything about my family, but we talked about narcissism because everyone you hurt was a narcissist. He said that it’s reached the point of becoming an epidemic. Everyone is out for themselves and couldn’t care less who they hurt or what it takes to get what they want. It’s something short of being a human being. It’s a mental illness that wipes out evolution in favor of the knuckle dragger. He said that most shrinks won’t even take them as patients because their disease can’t be cured. They like being animals. They enjoy it. That’s why I wonder why you spared my father. Why didn’t you do everybody a favor and just kill him?”

  A moment passed. When the doctor finally spoke, his voice had changed and become gentle and warm.

  “Because I thought that the honor belonged to you, Matthew. The only thing that will give your father’s death meaning is if it comes from you, and only you. But even more important to your personal recovery, he has to see you. He has to know that his death came from you. And you have to witness his revelation. You have to see your father’s face as he experiences fear and terror. You need to see him take his last breath. You need to watch him pass.”

  Matt let the thought linger. Those monsters were swimming in his head again. And then he heard a noise. The loud banging of footsteps. Someone with heavy feet was racing down the rear staircase. Matt traded looks with Baylor, then bolted through the foyer and out the front door.

  A figure was sprinting around the house and into the backyard. Matt gave chase but lost him in the darkness as he cleared the pool and spa. He stopped and listened, but the ice-cold air was as dead as a vacuum.

  He didn’t get a decent look, but guessed that it was a man. Because the intruder was so fast on his feet, he had to be young. Matt rushed back to the house and through the foyer into the library. His .45 had been left on the coffee table, and Dr. Baylor was gone.

  CHAPTER 36

  Andrew Penchant had hit the skids and become more than irritated.

  Jones had been sitting on that stupid wall by the pool for a good twenty minutes. Andrew was hiding beneath a pine tree just thirty yards away, and didn’t dare move. The moon wasn’t out, the sky black. Still, he knew that after five minutes, Jones’s eyes would have adjusted to the darkness. He also realized that the stories about Jones as a soldier had to be true.

  Jones was sitting there in the cold with his pistol, sitting still as a statue and gazing into the backyard. He was waiting for Andrew to screw up. He didn’t look like a detective wanting to make an arrest. As Andrew peered through the branches, he thought Jones came off more like a local yokel who couldn’t wait to fire his gun and make the kill.

  Jones had to know that he was out here. He had to know that he was hiding. If Andrew had continued to run across the lawn and down the hill, he would have been seen before he reached the pond. Jones must have realized that he had disappeared too quickly to have escaped.

  But even more, even worse, Andrew had heard Jones talking to the mad scientist inside the house. Jones wasn’t following the program. He wasn’t looking for Dr. Baylor like everybody else was. All those people
in the newspaper and on TV.

  Instead, Jones was looking for him.

  Andrew had heard everything. He’d been in the house when Jones entered the foyer and switched on the lights. He’d been in Tammy Stratton’s dressing room when he heard the front door open. He’d been cataloging the contents of her drawers, examining her bras and panties and comparing them with what he’d already collected from her hamper.

  When he realized that Jones wasn’t alone, he’d moved out onto the landing and listened from the top of the stairs. He heard the detective use the doctor’s name, and didn’t understand how they could have teamed up. According to the newspaper, Baylor was a psychopath who had brutally murdered four coeds. It didn’t make any sense that he and Jones could know each other, none of it did, and so Andrew sat down and followed the conversation and tried to think it through. They seemed to know everything about him, and he found this unnerving. They had a rough idea of his age. They knew his story. His background. And somehow they’d found out about his mother and the things they did when they were together. The things they did when his mother got stoned and drunk and wanted her son to be a friend.

  If Andrew hadn’t left his pistol underneath his bed, he would have shot Jones here and now. But after another five minutes, he reconsidered.

  Jones and the doctor only possessed a rough idea of what Andrew might be. A rough sketch. But there was still no direct link between the idea and the man. They didn’t have a name and they had no clue what he looked like. They didn’t even have any physical evidence. No fingerprints or body fluids or DNA. Even better, from what Andrew could tell, no one that Jones worked with was on board. The two people Jones mentioned, Rogers and Doyle, the two big shots Andrew had heard Ryan Day mention on his gossip show, Get Buzzed, were still chasing the mad scientist. Andrew could walk right up to Jones exactly the way he did this morning and the detective would never get it.

  He was still safe. Still not compromised. Still an international man of mystery.

  He smiled. Jones was finally getting off his ass and walking toward the mansion. Andrew watched him vanish around the corner, but didn’t move. Instead, he watched and listened and made sure Jones wasn’t trying to trick him. When the lights switched on in the Strattons’ bedroom, he shouldered his knapsack filled with the silk and lacy spoils of a life in crime and walked out onto the lawn. From the shadows he could see Jones examining the room with great care. Andrew imagined that he was trying to piece together why someone had been in the house.

  He shook his head and gave Jones a last look. Then he hiked through the yard down to the gatehouse on Gulf Creek Road. Just up the hill in the woods, Andrew had found a place to park his car without worry. It was a large old house on a huge piece of property that had been converted into a night school for adults. He looked at the lighted windows, the grand porches, the lot filled with cars. Street lights led the way through a maze of paths carved through the forest of extraordinarily tall trees. He took in the dead gardens and ice-covered lawns and dreamed about what it must have been like to live in a house like this before it was ruined and became a school.

  He dreamed about what life must have been like before everything became crowded and people didn’t matter anymore.

  Schools of minnows, he thought. Who cared if they lived or died?

  He climbed in behind the wheel, idled down the winding drive, and made a right onto Gulf Creek Road. Switching off his headlights, he pulled past the gatehouse and gazed up the hill at the Strattons’ mansion. After five minutes or so, he saw the lighted windows on the first floor go dark, then pulled the car down to the stop sign and waited.

  He didn’t need to guess what Jones’s car might look like. He’d seen it this morning and knew the exact make and model. When Jones cruised by, heading up the hill on County Line Road, Andrew waited a beat, then switched on his headlights and began to follow.

  He needed to keep his eyes on the man. He wanted to know where Jones was going and why he seemed to be in a hurry. But even more, he needed to know why Jones wanted to kill his father.

  That was the bright spot in the detective’s conversation with the mad scientist; for reasons unknown, Jones wanted to see his father dead. Andrew found the idea more than intriguing, and realized that he and Jones shared the same goal. They had something in common. Something profound.

  Jones made a left at the light, heading for the expressway into the city. Andrew turned as well, but hung back like everything was cool.

  He wished he’d had enough time to roll another joint. The reefer he’d scored in the city this morning turned out to be awesome. He shivered in the cold air, wishing the heater worked better and dreaming of buying his first Mercedes. He’d look good in a Benz, he decided. He’d look like the man he was born to be. A living legend.

  CHAPTER 37

  Matt crossed the floor, saw Brown’s empty desk, and knew that she had left for the day. He took a moment and looked around. The lights in the conference room were shut down, and he didn’t see Doyle anywhere in the room. As it turned out, most of the desks paired and pushed together were empty tonight.

  Matt popped the lid on a cup of takeout coffee and stirred in a single packet of sugar. After a quick first sip, he sat down at his desk.

  He had spent a half hour sitting on that wall by the pool, studying the lawn and field that stretched down to the frozen pond and gatehouse. He had sensed that he was being watched and felt certain that the intruder was still out there hiding in the darkness. He was hoping that the man would make a mistake. A cough or sneeze, an errant footstep—any sound that might rise above the peaceful din of the stream running this side of Gulf Creek Road.

  But after half an hour, Matt had started to worry about time. He walked through the entire mansion, searched every room, and found nothing out of the ordinary. No clue or reason that would explain why someone had broken into the house. And it wasn’t exactly a break-in. He hadn’t found a single open window or unlocked door.

  How had the intruder managed to get in? How had Baylor gotten in?

  Matt took another sip of coffee, wondering if the intruder had been listening to his conversation with the doctor. He wondered if the man understood the magnitude of their meeting.

  He wondered if the intruder was the actual killer making a return trip to the crime scene once the men with rifles went away. It made sense that it would be him. It made a lot of sense. It had been Matt’s first thought as he ran past the pool and lost sight of the man in the darkness.

  He let the thought go, dug his cell phone out of his pocket, and called Brown. The phone rang four times before bumping him over to her voice mail. After leaving a short message, he grabbed his briefcase and coffee and walked out of the Crisis Room. It was almost seven, and every office he passed was dark. Matt couldn’t help thinking about the way the Feds ran their business. It felt so slow. So hands off.

  And then he passed Special Agent Wes Rogers’s office.

  “Where you been?” Rogers said in a loud voice.

  Matt stopped and looked through the doorway. Rogers was seated at his desk with his sleeves rolled up and his collar loosened. He had a pair of reading glasses on, a pen in his hand, and appeared to be signing papers.

  “I was out at the Strattons’ place,” Matt said.

  “I already know that. Brown said you wanted another look. What’s going on?”

  Matt stepped into the office. “We need to exhume the bodies.”

  Rogers smiled like it hurt. “We need to what?” he said quietly.

  “Exhume the Strattons’ bodies.”

  Rogers sat back in his chair, shaking his head. Matt assumed that the special agent wouldn’t listen, but pressed forward nonetheless. It was part of doing the right thing. Doing a good job. He gave the special agent a quick but detailed briefing on his conversation with the undertaker, Lester Snow, and his encounter with the intruder he’d chased at the Strattons’ mansion. He gave him everything without mentioning that he’d spent more tha
n a half hour with Dr. Baylor, the man Rogers and Doyle and the FBI’s special task force were looking for. At a certain point, Rogers raised his right hand like he’d heard enough.

  “Let me see if I get it, Jones. The undertaker says that he thought the bodies might have been disturbed in some way, but in the end, it turned out to be nothing. You say he’s lying. Someone is messing with the corpses. Do you really think that you can convince a judge to sign off on disturbing a gravesite because it’s your belief that Lester Snow is a liar? Is this how they do business in Hollywood? Give me a break, Jones. It doesn’t matter what you think. You can’t dig up five graves on a hunch. My God, can you imagine what the media would do with that? Can you imagine what we would look like?”

  Matt didn’t say anything. He didn’t care what the media would think or what the FBI might look like. If they had a chance to examine the bodies after they’d passed through Lester Snow’s funeral home, they’d have a definitive answer.

  Rogers glanced at the paperwork on his desk, then back at Matt. “You know you’d be doing everybody a real big favor if you’d just get on a plane and fly back to La-La Land. A real big favor, Jones. I’d even drive you to the airport. It would be a pleasure seeing you off.”

  Matt looked at Rogers’s hands. They were soft and smooth and didn’t show the wear or tear Matt would have expected for a man his age. Even a woman for that matter. He looked back at Rogers’s face. His attitude. His apparent ignorance. It seemed obvious that the special agent couldn’t think outside the box. He wondered how he made it this far up the food chain.

  But then he shook if off. Wes Rogers was exactly the kind of person who made it up the food chain. Matt guessed that the special agent had spent his entire life in neutral. Not forward or in reverse, but neutral. If Rogers never took a stand, he’d never be seen as wrong, and those bonus checks would keep coming in the mail.

  “What about the intruder, Rogers? What about the man I chased?”

  “You know what happens at crime scenes when the cops go away. Everybody in the neighborhood gets curious. You said he was young.”