“I noticed that, Wes,” Annie replied. “The time frame seems off to me. I can understand the long stretch between the first and the second killings. If killing was new to him, it may have taken him a while to sort out his feelings, the guilt, whatever. Now, the shorter period between the second and the third is more telling—it tells me he liked it enough to kill again. Which makes the longer stretch between the third and fourth victims a little puzzling.”
She drummed on the mug again.
“You mean, he wouldn’t have waited as long to kill again, if he liked it so much,” Regan said.
“Exactly. I’d have expected him to have looked for another victim sooner rather than later.”
Mitch leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “Of course, Stephen could have gotten spooked, and maybe didn’t jump right into another affair as quickly.”
“That’s possible. Of course, it’s also possible that the killer simply took the show out of town,” Wes told him. “I can guarantee, reports of similar murders would have gotten my attention.”
“Which means he went far enough away that they wouldn’t have hit your radar, or he hid the crimes well enough that by the time the victims were found, it was hard to tell exactly what had happened to them.”
“He was doing something during all that time,” Annie murmured. “By the time he’d killed his third victim, I think he was as much addicted to killing as Madden was to sex.”
“I’ll go into the Bureau computers and see what I can find,” Mitch told them. “I’m guessing once we start looking, we’re going to find a few bodies somewhere between here, Delaware, and Maryland.”
“What about the priest?” Annie asked Wes. “What was your impression of him?”
“He cared very much for Olivia, too. As a matter of fact, he admitted to having been in love with Olivia, but he more or less tossed it off as, every man who ever met Olivia was in love with her,” Wes said. “And he, too, was definitely not happy when I brought up Stephen’s name and the old cases.”
“So you didn’t really learn anything new,” Regan noted.
“Actually, I did learn something.” Wes turned to her. “I learned that he knows something he can’t tell us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nina frowned. “If Father Whelan knew something about the murders, why wouldn’t he tell you?”
“Because I think whatever he knows, he learned from Olivia. In confession.”
He paused to let the words sink in.
Almost everyone at the table groaned.
“So even if she had known who was behind the killings, and she told Father Whelan, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone,” Regan said flatly.
“Exactly,” Wes replied.
“Well, damn.” Mitch frowned.
“How would Olivia have known who the killer was?” Nina asked.
“Maybe he told her, bragged about it, even. ‘Look what I did for you. See how much I love you,’” Mitch said.
“Does anyone else think it’s creepy that Olivia could have known who the killer was, but didn’t tell anyone?” Regan frowned. “That she’d let her husband go to trial—face the death penalty or, at the least, life in prison—for crimes he did not commit?”
“If he’d been cheating on her for all those years, yes, she could have built up some big-time resentment,” Annie noted.
“She must have hated him a lot to have done that,” Nina murmured. “Funny, I never got a sense of that.”
“Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she loved someone else,” Wes observed.
“Did she love her son, or her lover, enough to have sacrificed her husband?” Mitch asked.
“Well, here’s something else. When I told him that we were taking a second look at the Madden case because there were similarities between this latest murder and the earlier ones, he looked stunned. And he said, ‘Why would . . .’—then stopped and pretty much ended the interview by saying he had a meeting across campus.”
“Now, that’s an odd thing to say,” Annie said. “You would have expected him to say, ‘How could that be, Stephen died years ago,’ or something along those lines.”
Annie toyed with the ring on her finger.
“But instead, he said, ‘Why would . . . ‘”
“As in, why would someone do something?” Mitch suggested.
“Yeah, that was sort of what I expected to hear,” Wes nodded. “But whatever he knows, there’s no way we’re going to get him to tell.”
“Okay, so what do we have?” Annie said. “We have a killer who was close to Olivia, someone close enough that she’d let her husband go to prison to protect him. Someone was punishing Stephen for having hurt her. We’ve already talked about the killer’s need to take what was Stephen’s, to have power over him. The question is, who would have most wanted to kill Stephen’s women, then watch him go to prison for it?”
“The son, the priest, or the rival for his wife’s affections?” Mitch said.
“Why would he have killed this latest girl?” Nina asked. “If the whole purpose of killing the others was to destroy my father, why start killing again now?”
“I spoke earlier of how our killer may have developed a taste for murder. He could have gone outside the area to find victims, or he may have managed to keep it in check and control that urge for a long time. Others have done it. I worked a case recently where a man had gone on a killing spree seven years ago, killed nine women in nine different states over the course of a year, then just stopped. He was never caught.”
“How did they finally know he was a killer?” Nina asked.
“After he died, his son was cleaning out his truck to sell it, and found the souvenirs his father had kept of all his victims. Photographs, driver’s licenses. Locks of hair.” Annie sighed. “If the son hadn’t had the guts to call the police, we never would have known who killed those women.”
“So maybe this killer did stop . . . “ Nina said. “But why would he have started again?”
“There would have had to have been a trigger, something that set him off again,” Annie told her. “My guess is that Olivia’s death was the trigger.”
“That could have set off any one of the three. Emotionally, I’m sure each of them was affected,” Regan commented.
“If that’s true, then we need to work fast,” Wes told them, “or we’re going to have another murder on our hands.”
“I’m on my way back to the office.” Mitch stood. “I’ll get on this right away, see what I can come up with on Kyle’s background, and I’ll look for any other similar murders over the past fifteen, sixteen years.”
“While you’re using those amazing computer skills, maybe you could check into something for me.” Regan looked up at him.
“Sure. What do you need?” He reached down to her and pulled her out of her seat. “Some suggestions for a romantic weekend away?”
“Well, actually, I was hoping for a little something more on Eddie Kroll.” She smiled.
“Damn that Eddie.” Mitch shook his head.
Regan laughed. “I was trying to pull up more on his family but I’m afraid I haven’t been successful. I know he had an older brother named Carl, and a brother named Harry, but I was wondering if he had other siblings.”
“That should be a snap.” Mitch then turned to Annie. “Are you ready for the ride back?”
“I am.” Annie pushed her chair back. As she stood, she asked Wes, “What’s your next step going to be?”
“I’d like to explore the relationship between Madden and Overbeck a bit more, but it’s been hard to find someone who knew them both. The priest who’d pegged Madden to take over the department died some years ago, and except for Overbeck, there are only a few other professors who knew both of the men well. I’ve already spoken with those who did, but I didn’t hear anything I didn’t already know.”
“Were they aware that Overbeck was having an affair with Madden’s wife?”
“They didn’t see
m to be aware of it.” Wes shook his head. “I haven’t been able to find anyone who claimed to have known Madden very well.”
“Did you speak with Mrs. Owens?” Nina asked.
“Who is Mrs. Owens?” Wes turned to her.
“She was the secretary Dad shared with Dr. Overbeck. Her office was between theirs. It was sort of a neutral area between the two.”
“I’ll see if she’s still at St. Ansel’s.”
“Father Whelan would know,” Nina offered.
“I’ll check with him,” Wes said. “It’ll give me an excuse to talk to him again.”
The entire group filed out the back door, and stood on the deck for a moment, saying their good-byes, before Mitch, Annie, and Regan walked toward his car, and Nina walked Wes to his.
“By the way, did you ever read the letter your father left for you?” he asked.
“Yes.” Nina nodded. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t really anything of any use to you on this case, other than the fact that he did say he was innocent.”
“Do you think he would have said otherwise?”
“I think if he’d been guilty, he’d not have said anything at all.”
“Maybe.”
When they reached the stairs, Wes went down the steps, while Nina remained on the end of the deck.
“Wes,” she called to him, and he turned back to her.
“I’ve been meaning to ask—what was the name of the book that was left at the scene of that last murder?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Check the evidence list in the Maureen Thomas file. It should be noted there.”
“I don’t remember seeing it, but I’ll take another look.”
“Let me know if you can’t find it. I’ll look it up for you.” He could have gotten in the car then, but didn’t open the door. Instead, he said, “I wasn’t kidding when I said I thought you should steer clear of your stepbrother. I know you’re having a hard time accepting it, but he could very well be the killer.”
“I am having a hard time with that,” she admitted. “I still don’t think he’s the man you’re after.”
“When I met you the first time, I said something to you about hoping that you weren’t looking into the case to prove your father’s innocence, and you said you never doubted that he was the killer.” Wes opened his car door. “Why would you readily accept that your father was a killer, but not your stepbrother?”
“I guess I had never questioned my father’s guilt because I was so angry with him, so humiliated by his arrest.” She smiled grimly. “Yes, I know how childish that sounds, but I was just nineteen when all that happened, still angry with him for what I’d felt was his abandonment of my mother and me. I was angrier still when he married Olivia. That had come without warning, and it took me years to forgive him for that. So while I may be questioning it now, I didn’t question it then. We’d had an odd relationship, with the divorce, then the remarriage, then the arrest. I never felt I knew him very well, and most of my emotions as far as he was concerned revolved around anger. There’s a lot that we were never able to resolve between us.”
“Well, if you manage to help prove his innocence now, would that help?”
“It won’t replace what we never were able to have, but it would bring him justice, and yes, that would go a long way in helping me to forgive both of us.”
“Well, let’s see what we can do about that.” He got into his car and rolled his window down. “Are you going to be here through the weekend?”
“Yes.” She leaned over the deck railing. “At least through Sunday, then we’ll see.”
“Don’t forget to call me if you can’t find that evidence list,” he said as he pulled away.
She nodded and watched him drive off. When he reached the end of the lane and turned onto the road, she called to Regan. “Where did we leave the Maureen Thomas file . . . ?”
Twenty
Less than two hours later, Wes’s cell phone rang. Nina had looked through all four boxes, but the evidence list wasn’t there.
“Could I drive over to the police station and pick up a copy?” she asked.
“Sure. I’ll be here for another hour or so.”
“I’ll be there in less than that.”
Wes was in the storage room looking through the files he’d just sent back a week or so ago when his cell phone rang again.
“It’s Mayfield. The chief is looking all over the station for you. Where the hell are you?” his partner all but yelled through the phone.
“I’m in the storage room,” he told her.
“Only place in the entire building we didn’t look.”
“So what’s the big deal?” He found the box he was looking for and knelt down to open it.
“Chief Raymond needs a briefing on the Mulroney case. The DA’s office wanted to know if there were any leads.”
“Sort of.”
“You tell him. I’m not even going to try to guess what a sort of lead is.” She hung up without saying good-bye.
Wes finished going through the box, and having found the file he was looking for, returned the box to the stack on which he’d found it, turned off the light, and closed the door behind him.
He rapped on the chief’s door with his knuckles, then pushed the door open. Chief Milt Raymond sat behind his desk, the phone in his right hand, a cigar in his left. He finished his call and hung up.
“Better not let anyone from the town council see that cigar,” Wes told him. “They voted us a no-smoking zone just two weeks ago.”
“I will wrestle to the ground anyone who tries to take my cigars away from me.” The portly man rested against the back of the chair. “What do you have for me on the Mulroney girl?”
“Practically nothing.” Wes leaned on the back of the chair that stood to the left of the chief’s desk. “No suspects. No witnesses. Nothing back from the lab yet.”
“What the hell have you been doing all week? Chasing your tail?”
“Interviewing people at the college, but no one saw anything, or heard anything.”
Wes was about to bring up the connection to the Madden case when the chief asked, “What’s in the file?”
“It’s the evidence list from the Maureen Thomas file.” As soon as the words were out of Wes’s mouth, he regretted them.
“Maureen Thomas?” Raymond frowned. “Maureen Thomas? From, what was that, 1989?” Without waiting for a reply, he asked, “What the hell are you doing with that?”
Wes began to explain the current interest in the old case, but midway through, the chief held up both hands and ordered, “Stop. I’ve heard enough.”
Chief Raymond stood, his eyes narrowed to slits, and Wes remembered why he shouldn’t have mentioned Madden’s name.
“Powell, you listen, and you listen good. I do not want one more second spent on this, you hear me? I personally led the investigation in the Madden case, and I know that sonofabitch was guilty as sin.”
“Chief, I felt the same way, but . . .”
“There are no buts here, Detective. That is a closed case, and it’s going to stay closed.”
“Sir, we have reason to believe that—”
“Who is we? What we? Who else is involved in this? Mayfield?”
“No, sir, actually, I haven’t even had time to discuss it with her. As I started to tell you, Regan Landry was the one who wanted us to take a second look. I remembered how you were such a big fan of her dad’s, so of course I pulled the files out for her.”
“Shit. Josh’s daughter?”
Wes nodded.
“She thinks there’s something worth looking into, so I figured I’d give her the files, and she’d see there was nothing there. No smoke, no fire.” Wes knew he was walking the line, but there was no turning back. “After looking into it, though, it appears there may be something there. She has a friend in the FBI who’s looking into it as well, so I knew we were going to have to stay involved.
I’d hate to be reading about this in the Washington Post.”
The chief stared at him, and for a long moment, Wes thought the man was going to explode.
Finally, he said, “Christ. Now I’m not only looking for a killer, I’m playing nice with the feds and with Landry’s daughter.” He ran thick fingers through his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. “You keep an eye on them. Do what you have to do, but honest to God, Powell, I do not want one word of this to leak to the press, you hear me? I do not care what you have to do, but so help me God, if I get one phone call, or see one word written anywhere, or if I so much as hear Madden’s name, you’re out of here. You can get Landry’s daughter’s FBI friend to hire you, ’cause you won’t be working here.”
“Got it.” Wes nodded. “No leaks. No press. No mention of Madden’s name.”
“And I want this other case solved, hear? You play nice with Landry, but I don’t want any time taken from the Mulroney case.”
“Yes, sir.” Wes all but backed out of the room.
“Powell.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Why did you pull the Thomas file?”
“Someone asked for the name of the book that Stephen Madden had left in Maureen Thomas’s apartment.”
“Why?” The chief stood up and appeared to be getting ready to leave. “Who?”
“Madden’s daughter, sir. She just wanted to know what the title was.”
“Why?” he repeated with a heavy sigh.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, forget it. That’s just the kind of stupid stuff I don’t want going on. Takes you away from what you’re supposed to be doing. Tell her you can’t find it.”
“Too late. I already told her I had it.”
“Then put it in the mail to her and get back to work on the Mulroney case, would you?”
“She’s on her way to pick it up.”
“Fine. Make a copy of it and leave it at the front desk. I want a report on every interview you’ve conducted on Mulroney on my desk by eight tomorrow morning.” The chief opened the center drawer of his desk, grabbed his car keys, and followed Wes into the hall. He closed his office door behind him. “Eight A.M., Powell.”
Dark Truth Page 17
