Cereal Killer

by G. A. McKevett

  “Eh, some women just don’t have any—”

  “Watch it, boy. Don’t aggravate me.”

  He opened the rear door on his side and together they examined the items that lay on the back seat and the floorboard.

  “What’s that?” he asked as she opened a large tote and looked inside.

  “It’s her model’s kit,” Savannah said. “She was carrying it at the shoot.”

  “You mean like a tool kit?”

  “Pretty much the same, except with mascara instead of a flathead screwdriver.” She rifled through the contents. “Her address book is in here,” she said, “and her cell phone.”

  “Here’s her pocketbook,” Dirk said, lifting a leather bag from the floorboard behind the driver’s seat. “If that ain’t a sign of kidnapping, nothing is.”

  “That’s for sure. Women won’t leave a burning plane without their purses.” Savannah looked over the seat into the front of the car. “No signs of violence, though,” she added.

  ‘Yeah, famous last words. Isn’t that what you said back at her apartment just before you found the blood on the sofa?”

  “And speaking of... what did Dr. Liu say about the blood? Is it hers?”

  “It’s A-negative. That’s as far as she got. We put a call in to that Dr. Pappas guy to see what her type is. If his office doesn’t get back to us by noon, I’m gonna go over there and rattle that nurse’s cage.”

  Savannah recalled the receptionist’s less-than-warm-and-fuzzy demeanor and grinned. The thought of anybody rattling her cage—or any other part of her for that matter—struck Savannah as an entertaining prospect.

  “If you have to do that, take me with you,” she told him. “I want to watch.”

  Dirk stepped back from the car and closed the door.

  “I’ll get the CSU over here to process this thing,” he said. “Maybe they can find something else.”

  “Although,” Savannah added, “if Tumblety’s telling the truth and the guy just grabbed her and yanked her into his van, there probably won’t be any perpetrator prints.”

  “That’s a big if, if you ask me. It’s probably got his mitt prints all over it and who knows what else.”

  Savannah closed her door and walked around the back of the car to stand beside him. “You really want it to be Tumblety, don’t you?”

  “Sure I do. I’ve never liked dicky-wavers; you know that. Besides, if it’s him, I’ve got him and he won’t be hurting anybody else. Not to mention that I can sew this case up. Don’t you hope it’s him?”

  “He’s pretty mangy, all right. Society would probably be better off without him....”

  Her words faded as she knelt beside the driver’s side of the car and squinted at something just behind the front tire. “Have you got your penlight with you?” she asked him.

  He handed her the miniature flashlight, and she shined the beam at the object that had caught her eye. She started to reach for it, then withdrew her hand. “What is it?” he asked.

  “A set of keys,” she replied. “We’d better leave them there. The CSU will want to mark the spot and take a picture.”

  “She probably dropped them when Tumblety grabbed her,” Dirk said as he took the flashlight from her and looked at the keys himself.

  “Or when the guy that Tumblety saw grabbed her.”

  As they left the car and walked back to Dirk’s Buick, he used his cell phone to call the Crime Scene Unit. Savannah tuned him out as he gave them the specifics, her mind returning to Tesla Montoya’s apartment.

  When he was finished with the call, he gave her a curious, searching look. “What is it?” he asked. “What’re you thinking?”

  “I’m just wondering... if Tesla was taken from this parking lot... why was her place such a mess and why was there blood on the couch?”

  Dirk shrugged. “I dunno. Unless they grabbed her here, then took her home.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking. He snatched her here, then took her back to her place. Why?”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Finally Dirk said, “When we figure that out, maybe we’ll know what happened to her.”

  Savannah thought of the beautiful model with her large, childlike eyes and sad, sweet smile. She thought of Cait Connor’s lifeless body on the bathroom floor, and Kameeka Wills lying on the side of the road. “I’m not sure I even want to know what’s happened to Tesla,” she said. Dirk gave a heavy sigh. “I hear you.”

  By the time Savannah finally returned home, it was past three in the morning. She had long passed the state of just being tired and was—as Granny Reid would say—“running on raw nerves.”

  She crept into the hallway and, being careful not to wake her sister upstairs, quietly put away her purse and gun. But when she glanced toward the living room, she saw a sickly green light glowing—the computer screen again.

  Not foolish enough to make the same mistake twice in twenty-four hours, she decided to ignore the call of sisterly duty and sneak upstairs without asking Marietta the fatal question: “How are you?”

  But she had only taken two steps up the stairs when she heard a plaintive, “Is that you, Savannah?”

  The question was followed by a loud sniff that could only mean one thing—Marietta was still suffering from romantic woes.

  Oh, goody, she thought as she walked back down the stairs and into the living room.

  “So, you’re at it again,” she said, trying to keep her tone light but concerned, cheerful but compassionate, involved but objective. What a drag.

  Sitting at the computer, no lights on in the room other than that emitted by the screen, Marietta was a sorry sight. Her eyes were swollen into tight, puffy slits, her nose bright red, and she was shivering slightly in her black lace nightgown.

  “You wouldn’t believe what he’s saying about me in the chat room,” she said, pointing to the screen. “He’s turning all my roomies against me, telling lies about what happened between us last night.”

  Savannah walked over to the sofa and picked up a soft chenille afghan that Gran had knitted for her last winter. Draping it around her sister’s shoulders, she gave her a few pats on the back.

  “Go to bed, Mari,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night, and you’ve had a full last couple of days.” “Today’s been the worst day of my life.”

  Without even trying, Savannah could remember dozens of Marietta’s previous “worst days.” But she decided it wasn’t the time to mention that Marietta had at least one of the worst days of her life every six months or so.

  “You’ll feel better tomorrow, when you’re rested. I’ll make you a big breakfast in the morning with grits and biscuits.”

  “Real biscuits? Not those canned things?”

  “Real ones with butter and peach preserves.”

  A smile replaced the forlorn look on Marietta’s face, and Savannah wondered, as she had many times, at the power of good food to lift the sagging spirits of the Reid family females.

  “You go upstairs, crawl into that soft feather bed of mine, and get a good, long night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning, with a mug of my strong, chicory-flavored coffee in your hand, you’ll be a new woman.”

  Marietta nodded woodenly, typed a few more words into the computer, then closed it down.

  As she rose from the chair and made her way toward the foot of the stairs, she said, ‘You know, Savannah... I’ve learned something from this horrible experience, this degradation and humiliation.”

  Savannah didn’t really want to know, but the laws of Southern gentility demanded that she ask. “What have you learned, Mari?”

  “Men suck. Romance sucks.”

  Savannah could see it now: a greeting card embellished with roses, lilacs, and lace... with those golden words embossed across the front.

  “Don’t you think so, too, Savannah?” Marietta said, her foot on the first step, her eyes haunted.

  “Well, I can see why you’d say that, but...”

  “No, really. You k
now I’m right. There’s no such thing as finding your One True Love. Don’t you agree?” Savannah shrugged. “Some men suck, Marietta. But not all—not by a long shot. A lot of them are really good people at heart. But it’s true that romance hurts when it ends... or never really gets going in the first place.”

  “And there’s no such thing as a soul mate.”

  Passing her arm around Marietta’s waist, she coaxed her up the stairs. “I’m not sure about that soul mate stuff. I think if a person works hard to be a good mate— and their partner does the same—sometimes they can touch on a really deep, spiritual level. Probably not every hour of every day, but...”

  “I want it every minute of every hour of every day. I want to be everything to my man.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I want to be his whole world.”

  “I know you do, Marietta. But men have lives, too, you know. They have other things they like to do besides gaze into your eyes and tell you how wonderful you are. Sometimes they might want to do a guy thing that doesn’t involve you—like watch sports on TV, or putter in the garage, or take a nap. You might have to settle for a deep, soulful connection once a week, say on a Friday night... after dinner and before sex... for five or ten minutes. From what I hear, that’s about as good as it gets.”

  Half an hour later, Savannah lay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to her sister snoring in the next room. Thankfully, even drama queens had to take a break once in a while and rest up for the next day’s calamities.

  On the other hand, self-employed private detectives didn’t always have that luxury.

  No doubt about it, she would be as grouchy as Dirk tomorrow as a result of this sleep deprivation. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw a white van pulling next to a black Mitsubishi, an arm reaching out, and Tesla Montoya being yanked inside.

  And then...

  It was the “and then” part that was keeping Savannah awake.

  What did he... or maybe even she... do to Tesla then? Where did he take her and why?

  Would they find her body somewhere, like the other two? Or could she still be alive?

  Savannah would have felt far more hopeful if it hadn’t been for that large blood spot on the sofa. Blood at a crime scene never boded well for a missing person.

  But if the blood was Tesla’s, and she had been attacked in her apartment, why did the assault happen there, rather than inside the van or at another location?

  Why would her kidnapper take her home?

  If his intention was to hurt or kill her, why did that have to happen at the apartment, rather than someplace less dangerous for the kidnapper?

  Why not just take her up into the hills, where any evidence—like blood on a sofa—would be less obvious to investigators?

  She lay there, studying the pattern on the ceiling cast by the street lamp shining through her lace curtains, her mind racing on an endless loop.

  It wasn’t until a quarter to five that she figured it out.

  She reached for the phone on her nightstand and pushed the “memory” button to dial Dirk.

  When he answered, he sounded as wide awake as she was. “Yeah?”

  One of the nice things about Dirk was that you didn’t have to waste time with niceties like “hello” or “how are you?”

  “After he grabbed her,” she said, “he took her back to the apartment.”

  “Do you think? Duh.”

  “Eh, bite me.” She sat up in bed and turned on her reading lamp. “And the reason he took her there was...?”

  “I’m workin’ on that.”

  “To get something. She had something at the apartment that he wanted badly enough to risk being seen by somebody when he took her there.”

  “Something, like what?”

  “Maybe something that would incriminate him in killing Caitlin and Kameeka?”

  Dirk thought that one over. “Maybe. Or maybe this theory of yours is just plain stupid. You know how you get when you’re thinking about a case in the middle of the night like this.”

  She had to admit that he had a point there. The results of these late-night mental exercises of hers ranged from truly brilliant to dumber-than-dirt dumb. And she never really knew which they were until she could re-examine them in the morning light.

  “Go to sleep, Van,” he said, his deep voice tinged with a sweetness that might have fulfilled even Marietta’s requirements for intimacy. “Let it go for tonight. We’ll work on it again tomorrow.”

  “It’s already tomorrow.”

  “Then we’ll tackle it after noon. Sleep tight, honey.”

  “You, too.”

  Click.

  So... Dirk wasn’t one for flowery hellos or goodbyes. But once in a while, they had a soulful connection.

  A once-in-a-while soul mate... whose boxers you didn’t have to launder....

  As Savannah drifted off to sleep, she realized that, for her, it was enough.

  Chapter

  15

  “Boy, I thought you were never going to get up!”was the greeting Savannah received when she trudged downstairs a few minutes before noon.

  Marietta was sitting on the sofa, a cup of coffee in her hand, the telephone in the other. She didn’t appear to actually be talking on it, so Savannah figured she must be waiting for a call. Still.

  “Where’s that great breakfast that you promised me last night?” Marietta continued. “My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.”

  “Don’t start with me, Marietta,” she growled as she walked past her and into the kitchen. “Not before I’ve had at least one cup of coffee.”

  “No, really!” Marietta hopped up from the sofa and followed her. “I’m starving here, and it’s almost lunchtime!”

  “Well, did it occur to you to maybe make something for yourself?”

  “I don’t cook.”

  “I know. But even a bowl of cereal would have taken the edge off that hunger. You do pour milk, don’t you?”

  Marietta’s lower lip protruded. “Corn flakes are a bit of a letdown when you’ve got your taste buds set for biscuits and peach preserves.”

  “Mari, go back into the living room and give me a chance to work up a pulse and some brain-wave activity. Okay?” She glanced down at the phone in her hand. “Why don’t you call your boys and see how they’re doing? They probably miss their mom.”

  Marietta gave her a blank look, as though she were speaking in a foreign tongue. “What? They’re teenagers. They miss their mamma like they’d miss a big ol’ briar on the seat of their breeches. Lord knows what kind of trouble they’ve gotten themselves into.”

  “All the more reason to check on them, don’t you reckon?”

  Marietta shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. You do have call waiting, don’t you? I mean, if he was to call, it would beep or something and...”

  “It’ll beep. And you can look on the Caller ID and see if it’s him.”

  “Good.”

  As Savannah set about making a full lumberjack breakfast for her sister, she tried not to think about her nephews, Steve and Paulie, whom Marietta had left to fend for themselves back in Georgia. With Granny Reid half a mile away, not to mention all the aunts and uncles in town, they were sure to be well cared for. But this wasn’t the first time that Marietta had demonstrated her lack of concern about them. When it came to a tug-of-war between Marietta’s boys and the men in her life, the boys always ended up on their faces in the middle, having lost again.

  As she rolled and cut the biscuits, she could hear Marietta’s two-minute call to Georgia, and the probing questions she asked. “How’s the weather? You aren’t making a mess outta the house, are you?” And the advice: “Put a Band-Aid on it, for Pete’s sake. I don’t know. Ask Gran when you drop off your laundry. Well, take it over there! I don’t want to come home to a heap of dirty clothes!”

  A few minutes of silence in the living room told Savannah that the call was over, and she expected Marietta to come in and complain
that the food wasn’t on the table yet.

  But then she heard a new conversation begin: “Hello.

  I need to speak to a Mr. Bill Donaldson. He works there in your accounting department, right? My name? Marietta Jane Reid. Of course it’s important. It’s extremely important. Yes, I can hold... for a little while.”

  Savannah paused, the box of grits in her hand. Maybe she could slip just a little arsenic in there. Surely she had some arsenic somewhere in her spice cabinet.

  “What do you mean, he’s away from his desk? Is he really, or did he just tell you to tell me that?”

  How much do you suppose it would take?Savannah asked herself. A teaspoon, a heaping tablespoon?

  “Well, I don’t believe you, not for one minute. I think he’s sitting right there with his teeth in his mouth, probably listening to this call on some extension line. I know how these things work.”

  Hmmm, not a smidgen of arsenic in the cupboard when you need it. I’ve got lots of oregano, I wonder... is oregano toxic in large doses? How much oregano would it take to kill a stupid sister and would she notice it in the grits?

  “Well, let me tell you a thing or two about that man you work with. You might think you know him, but the truth is, he ain’t fit to spit and what’s more...”

  As Savannah was walking into the Plaza Del Oro Tower on her way up to Leah Freed’s suite of offices, Dirk called her on her cell phone.

  “I’m just leaving Montoya’s apartment,” he told her. “Anything?”

  “Nothing new. And if the kidnapper was looking for something—like in your latest middle-of-the-night theory—he must have found it, ’cause I couldn’t find anything worth kidnapping or killing anybody over.”

  “I could have been wrong.”

  “You? Never.”

  She chuckled. “But say it like you mean it.”

  “Never. What are you up to?”

  “The tenth floor in a minute or two,” she said. “I’m over here in the Plaza Del Oro seeing Leah Freed. She called while I was eating breakfast and demanded to know what I had for her.”