“I have blackout drapes,” he told her, thinking she was looking for a clock. “Don’t worry, it’s only six.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to figure out what to do. Finally she removed one of the pillowcases and wrapped it around her body. It didn’t cover her completely, so she had to decide which part she wanted him to see, her top or her bottom. Since her breasts were small, she moved the pillowcase up. A moment later, she decided she didn’t want him to see her bottom as he might think it was too large and moved the pillowcase down. He knew her breasts were small because he’d felt them. Men had an uncanny ability to determine a woman’s dimensions by touch, some even to the exact bra size.
“It’s okay,” he said, laughing, “I won’t look.”
He went to the bathroom and turned on the water in the Jacuzzi. “I’ll go scrounge up some breakfast for us while you soak.”
“Great,” she mumbled, turning sideways.
For someone who claimed to be shy, prancing around naked didn’t seem to bother him. Of course, Carolyn thought, his confidence level must have skyrocketed. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Guys looked the same when they went to bed as they did when they got up.
No reason to hide now, she told herself, leaning over to check the water temperature. Marcus gave her a pat on her buttocks, then bent down and planted a kiss in the small of her back. “You have the cutest ass I’ve ever seen.”
“Yours isn’t so bad, either,” Carolyn told him, smiling as she submerged herself in the swirling water. “Did I tell you you’re an amazing lover?”
“Not specifically,” he said, his eyes dancing with happiness. “I could tell, though. Enjoy your Jacuzzi.”
Carolyn lowered herself into the water, placing her chin on the edge of the tub so she could watch him walking down the hallway. A few days ago, her life had seemed dismal. She was selling her home. Holden had first tried to rape her, then held her hostage at gunpoint. John had been shot, a mother’s nightmare. Later, he’d confessed to regular use of marijuana. Rebecca had driven her crazy.
Everything had shifted, and the glass was half full instead of half empty. They would apprehend Holden and either execute him or lock him up forever. John would stop using drugs, and Rebecca was just an exceptional teenager, whose independent spirit mimicked her own. Both children had suffered from the absence of a father figure. At last, she’d found a suitable prospect. There was no doubt about it, Carolyn decided.
Marcus was the guy!
“Who the fuck is this?” Carl Holden said, speaking from his room at the Econolodge in the San Fernando Valley. “It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
“This is your wake-up call, asshole,” a man’s voice said. “I might have something you want. That is, if you can get your lazy ass up to come and get it.”
Holden blurted out, “The key?”
“Yeah…the key.”
“You must be a cop,” Holden said. “No one else knows about the safety deposit box key. Well, look what we got here…a dirty cop trying to cut a deal. I should have expected as much. How did you find me?”
Holden was playing right into his hands. He’d first seen him in the flesh the night he’d swung by Carolyn’s house to check things out. A man darted across the street, jumping into a black Hummer and burning rubber. Deciding to follow him and see what was going on, he’d been only a half a block away when the accident had occurred. Knowing the police would arrive shortly, he’d chased after the Hummer to see if an opportunity might present itself to take out Holden. Staying a safe distance away, he’d watched as Holden had ditched the Hummer in a hospital parking lot. Since medical personnel were coming and going, he laid back and watched as Holden broke in and hot-wired a ’95 white Cadillac Seville. After tailing him to the hotel, he saw the car parked in front of room 105. The man asked, “Want to make a trade for the key?”
Holden answered, “Depends on what you want.”
“Fifty percent of the loot.” He heard Holden exhale into the phone. “Half of something is better than half of nothing. What do you say?”
“There’s personal stuff in the safe, not money. You know, things that belonged to my mother. I’m going to hang up if you don’t tell me who you are.”
“We both know that’s not true, Holden. And it doesn’t matter who I am. What’s important is that you get the key back and stay out of prison. I could have a dozen cops on top of you in minutes. I’m waiting for an answer, and I’m not a patient man.” The line went silent. Holden had no choice.
“I’ll do it, but how do I know this isn’t a setup?” Holden said. “You could have a swarm of police ready to arrest me when we get to the bank. I’ll never make it to prison, not after what I did. The cops will shoot me on sight.”
“You’re probably right. You’re certainly not the most popular person at the police station right now. Shooting Sullivan’s son wasn’t a very good idea, was it? And you could have found someone other than a probation officer to try to stick your dick in.” Holden was accustomed to being the predator rather than the prey. The caller smiled, thinking how surprised Holden must have been when Carolyn had stumbled across his hiding place at his mother’s house. Instead of knocking her unconscious and fleeing, as anyone with a brain would have done, the moron had tried to rape her, then driven to her house and terrorized her family. Smashing this cockroach would be good for society. “I don’t have time to chit-chat about your problems, Holden,” he said. “We’ll meet somewhere that has a large open space. Where’s your bank?”
“I’m not going to tell you over the phone.”
“You’re going to do exactly what I say. You’re not calling the shots anymore, I am. Are we clear?” He pulled himself together, lowering his voice to a reasonable level. “Just tell me if the bank is in the Oxnard area.”
“Pretty close,” Holden said.
“Then get in that stolen white Caddy and drive yourself down to Olivas Park Golf Course in Oxnard. Take the 101 to the Victoria off-ramp, make a right on Olivas Park Road, and head toward the ocean. You’ll find it.”
“The bank doesn’t open until nine,” Holden told him. “Why do you want me to meet you now?”
“For your protection. First of all, you’re a wanted man. Even a fool like you would limit his outside activities, especially in daylight. Everyone knows they don’t schedule as many cops on the graveyard shift, and Oxnard isn’t as familiar with your case as Ventura. Once you see I’m legitimate, we’ll hook up later at the bank. How long will it take you to get to Oxnard?”
“About an hour,” Holden told him. “How will I know it’s you?”
“People don’t play golf at three in the morning, idiot,” the caller said, wondering how Holden had gotten away with so many crimes. “Don’t try anything stupid.” After disconnecting, he was satisfied that his plan was in motion. It was going to be a long night. He’d head out to Olivas after a quick stop for coffee at an all-night donut shop. He had to be there before Holden in order to get himself into position.
As he drove down the dark road, the fog floated listlessly around his car. He was anxious, yet exhilarated. His palms were sweating on the steering wheel, and a line of perspiration had popped out on his brow. After turning into the parking lot at the golf course, he parked his car behind an equipment shed. The stench of the nearby sewage plant permeated his nostrils. He’d picked this location because the parking lot wasn’t landscaped. It was hard to see through trees and bushes; he wanted unobstructed vision. Here was only blacktop, stripes, and limited lighting.
Through the dense air he saw a set of headlights moving down the road toward him. Holden stopped and turned off the engine, leaving his headlights on. He got out and stood within the safety of his car door.
A voice called out, “Carl Holden?”
Holden turned around in a circle. “Where are you?”
“Hello, Carl,” he said. “I’m over here. Can’t you see me?”
“No, I can’t.” Holden stepped a few feet away fr
om his car.
“Just a minute, Holden,” he said, pressing the button on the walkie-talkie. Before Holden had arrived, he’d placed another walkie-talkie on the ground near the entrance to the parking lot, leaving the microphone open. “I’m here,” he told him. “I’ll come to you, but I need you to step farther away from the car. Do you have any weapons?”
“No,” Holden said, squinting into the darkness.
Time to execute his plan. He listened to the quiet purring of his car engine. As if he were a warrior going into battle, he yelled at a deafening level into the walkie-talkie, then floored the accelerator. Holden was focused on the noise behind him. Opening his nylon parka, he pulled out his gun. By the time Holden’s eyes locked on the oncoming car, it was too late. His face became stricken with fear. Then a look of resignation appeared. He knew he was about to suffer the death sentence he should have received eight years before.
CHAPTER 28
Monday, September 25—10:01 A.M.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Daniel Thorn, general counsel for the county of Ventura. “Why would I ask you to send me records on Carl Holden? He’s one of the defendants that were released due to the incompetence of Robert Abernathy. Abernathy is dead, and the rest’s history. What’s this other man’s name again, the one who’s supposed to be filing a lawsuit against the county?”
“Troy Anderson,” Mary Stevens told him, thinking the attorney was either indifferent or brain-dead. “Holden murdered Anderson’s wife eight years ago. Recently, he sexually assaulted and shot the son of a senior probation officer named Carolyn Sullivan. Don’t you watch the news?”
“I’m not a criminal attorney, Ms. Stevens.”
“Detective Stevens,” she said.
“Fine, detective,” he continued. “My wife mentioned something about that. When I’m not working, I try to concentrate on my family.”
Mary rested her chin on her fist. “Are you saying you don’t remember calling me on Saturday, September sixteenth and asking me to fax you our records on Carl Holden?”
“Precisely,” Thorn said. “Now, I’m sorry, but I have another call.”
“Let them wait,” Mary snapped, tired of his unconcerned attitude. “Whether you realize it or not, Thorn, this is a serious situation. A person using your name and credentials obtained confidential police information on a violent criminal. The least you could do is to help me get to the bottom of this. Check around your office and see if someone else may have made that call. You might also want to see if the reports arrived in your office.”
Thorn sighed. “What number did you fax to?”
Mary pulled out the paperwork and read him the digits.
“That’s not even one of our lines. Since you’re the detective, I suggest you verify the next person’s identity before you give out information.”
After he hung up on her, Mary grumbled, “Prick.” She immediately dialed the fax number and got a recording that said the line was no longer in service. Next she called the country operator to see if she could find out whose number it had been.
“The prefix sounds like a cell phone,” a woman named Doreen told her. “Things aren’t as easy as they were when I started on this job fifteen years ago. You probably faxed it to a computer or some kind of handheld device. All you need is a functional number these days and you can do just about anything.”
“Call me as soon as you find out anything, Doreen.”
“No problem.”
Sure, Mary thought, disconnecting. No problem, not a chance. Her career was on the line, and problems were coming at her like bullets. She opened her calendar again and stared at the dates. Lisa Sheppard’s body was found on Sunday. The call from the man posing as Thorn had come through on Saturday. Whoever had wanted the records on Holden had to have a reason, and since they’d impersonated a county attorney, she doubted it was legit.
She spread her hands across her face, thinking. What was this person looking for? The circumstances of Carl Holden’s earlier crimes had been detailed in the press. What was in the file that wasn’t public record? Names and addresses of the surviving rape victims, of course, but two of them had moved out of state. Angela Cummings still resided in Ventura, but she had remarried, and her new name and address weren’t in the original documents.
Since Carolyn and her family had been attacked, the media’s interest had intensified, so there was an outside chance the call had been made by a reporter. Newshounds would do anything to get a story. Today they had to have an unending stream of new information to keep people’s attention.
Then there was Tracy Anderson’s husband, Troy, the man Carolyn had encountered at lunch Saturday afternoon. Whoever had called Mary asking for Holden’s records knew about Troy, as he’d used his name. The call had come in around four, and she assumed Carolyn’s lunch at the Olive Garden had taken place somewhere closer to noon. The only thing that made sense was that Troy Anderson had made the call himself. The question was why?
The glove!
They had never revealed that they’d found a golf glove on top of Tracy Anderson’s body, not even to her husband, as it had seemed inconsequential at the time. The discovery of the second glove, and the fact that Sheppard was buried in the same location as Anderson had made Holden an instant suspect. After reading about it in the file, could Troy Anderson have planted the glove to frame Holden? If so, he would have had to know that there was a body buried in the Alessandro Lagoon, and would have had to place the glove there before the body was discovered. In all likelihood the only one who would have known about the body was the killer.
Lord Jesus, Mary thought, her mind spinning. If Troy Anderson had killed Lisa Sheppard, it was a horrifying scenario. The results of the mtDNA tests on the minute hair fragment found at the grave, which hopefully belonged to the killer instead of the victim, hadn’t come back yet. If they hadn’t stumbled across the box in the attic in San Diego containing Lisa Sheppard’s medical records, they wouldn’t have been able to make a positive identification. They would have been forced to exhume Eleanor Beckworth so they could attempt to match her DNA with her granddaughter’s. This was no longer necessary.
Carolyn had told her Troy Anderson wasn’t aware Holden had been released when she spoke to him at the restaurant. But that could have been an act, concocted to throw them off-track. Lisa Sheppard being dead for approximately a year didn’t completely rule out Troy Anderson, as Holden had been a free man for two years. How sick did a person have to be to murder an innocent woman in order to frame the man who’d killed his wife?
Another possibility flashed in her mind. Could Troy Anderson have killed his wife instead of Holden? Tracy Anderson hadn’t been sexually assaulted like Holden’s other victims. The DNA evidence that ultimately caused Holden’s conviction to be overturned might have been mishandled and contaminated by Robert Abernathy, but it could also have belonged to another man. If the husband was guilty, though, he’d already gotten away with murder. Why kill someone else?
Holden being exonerated could have posed a threat, Mary decided, as someone might eventually expose the truth that he was innocent. Although Holden couldn’t be prosecuted again for Tracy Anderson’s death, her husband could. The PD hadn’t reopened the case as they would normally have done under the circumstances because they were certain Holden had committed the crime. With this new information, the department might be forced to reinvestigate the murder of Tracy Anderson.
On the other hand, it wasn’t all that far-fetched that Holden could have posed as a cowboy and created a new life in San Diego after he was released from prison. He wasn’t on parole, so he didn’t have to worry about someone snooping around. From what she knew of Holden, however, he didn’t seem like the marrying type. Still, it wasn’t entirely implausible that he’d cleaned up his act for a few months, then returned to his violent ways. What they now had to consider was whether Holden had been guilty of the rapes but innocent of the murder of Tracy Anderson. That would me
an they had two murders to solve. If Eleanor Beckworth had also been murdered, the body count was three.
Mary picked up the phone and dialed the St. Louis PD, asking to speak to Detective Sheldon Parker. After identifying herself, she asked what new information they’d found regarding the Eleanor Beckworth case.
“Sure, there’s a possibility it was a homicide,” Parker told her. “But there were no signs of forced entry. That’s one of the reasons Beckworth’s death was ruled a suicide. The autopsy showed an injury to the victim’s hip that appeared to be untreated, but nothing else that would indicate she was murdered. The wounds on her neck were caused by the cord to her telephone. The house was in fairly good order, except for some clothes and things on the floor. When people are about to kill themselves, they generally aren’t that concerned with things being neat and tidy.”
Mary didn’t agree. She’d heard of numerous suicides where the person dressed in their best clothes and made certain their house and affairs were in perfect order. One woman had even worn diapers, knowing that at the time of death, the body expelled its waste. “Your partner said there was a handyman who had access to the house.”
“Yeah,” Parker said. “He was at home babysitting his children at the time of the death. His wife worked at an all-night diner.”
“Couldn’t he have left the children alone,” Mary suggested, “murdered Beckworth, and then returned before his wife got off work?”
“Anything’s possible, but we didn’t find any evidence that would support such a premise.”
Mary shook her head in frustration. “He could have scrubbed down the house, don’t you see? His fingerprints or DNA not being there is suspicious in its own right. He must have been in the house on numerous occasions if he had a key and did repair work for Beckworth. That sounds like a suspect.”
“Everything pointed to suicide,” Parker continued. “The victim’s age, the lack of relatives living nearby, even the injury to her hip. The handyman advised that Beckworth was living close to the bone. Her heater only worked part of the time, but she told him she didn’t have the money to repair it. This isn’t California, you know. It’s cold as a bitch here in the winter, so the poor thing must have been freezing. Some of these old folks would rather die than lose their independence. Sad, but it happens all the time.”
Sullivan’s Evidence Page 27
