They were sitting in Jim Oates’s living room, a bachelor’s pad with an enormous television, an oversize stereo system, and assorted gym equipment. The diminutive Charlotte was half buried in a giant beanbag chair, while Savannah sat on a denim futon. And while their surroundings could hardly have been classified as cozy, Charlotte seemed surprisingly open and at ease once she began to confide in Savannah.
‘You were at the Connor house with Kevin the other morning when I came by,” Savannah said, not asking... just letting her know that she had placed her there.
When Charlotte didn’t deny it, Savannah continued, “Kevin didn’t tell me your name that day. He said that you were married and he was protecting your interests.”
“Kevin was protecting himself, not me. I’m not married,” Charlotte replied. “I was for a while. But Mr. Murray and I went our separate ways several years ago. It seems like I’ve been choosing the wrong guys all my life.”
“You aren’t the only woman to make some bad investments when it comes to romance. We’ve all been there.”
Charlotte’s face fell, and she began to cry, one hand over her mouth. “Not every woman has done what I’ve done for a man,” she said between sobs. “I used to think he was such a wonderful person. Now I know better, but it’s too late.”
Reaching into her purse, Savannah found some tissues. She left the futon, walked over to the beanbag chair, and handed the tissues to Charlotte.
Sitting on the floor at the woman’s feet, Savannah placed a comforting hand on her knee. She knew from the DMV that Charlotte Murray was only in her early thirties. But she looked so much older. She had the sunken-eyed appearance of a person who wasn’t sleeping, but suffering enormous grief and guilt.
“You need somebody to talk to about it, Charlotte,” she said. ‘You can’t hold something like that inside. It will eat you alive.”
Charlotte sniffed and nodded. “It is eating me alive. It’s like having this huge, black ugliness right in the center of my chest. I feel like I’m going to explode.” “Talk to me, Charlotte. Tell me what happened, and I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
Savannah felt time slow as she waited for Charlotte’s response. The only sounds were those of the nurse’s soft weeping and the occasional car passing on the street outside.
She didn’t push for an immediate response, realizing that this was probably the most important decision that Charlotte had ever made. Except maybe the decision to help her lover commit murder.
“I didn’t kill them,” she said finally. “Kevin did. But I knew about it, and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even tell him how wrong he was. At first it was because I loved him so much. But then I went along with him because I was afraid he’d hurt me if he had any idea that I wasn’t completely on his side.”
“I understand,” Savannah said. “Did you know he was going to kill them before he did it?”
“Not with Caitlin. He told me about that afterward. He said he did it so that we could be together. But he didn’t have to murder her. He could have just divorced her.”
“So, why did he kill her? Do you know?”
“A few months ago he took out a big life insurance policy on her. And he would get even more if she died from an accident. They were having financial problems. They were about to lose that big house and the cars. Kevin cares a lot more about that stuff than Cait did. He said he didn’t think he could stand to lose it all and start over with nothing again.” She twisted the tissue between her fingers. “I also had a feeling that Cait might have found out about me. From a couple of little things he said, I think she might have been going to leave him. He wouldn’t have wanted a divorce either. Again, losing half of the stuff wouldn’t have suited him.”
“Did he tell you how he killed her?”
She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. “He said he went home because she said she was feeling bad. But when he got there she was already half dead from all the stuff she was doing to herself to lose weight. She was unconscious, so he just pulled her into the bathroom, turned those heat lamps on, and left her there.”
“Did you let him use your security card to come and go that day from the hospital?”
“He asked me if he could use it. I thought it was a little weird, but I didn’t ask why. He was always losing things. I figured he’d just misplaced his.”
“And how about Kameeka?” she asked. “Why did he kill her?”
Before replying, Charlotte took her coffee mug from the nearby end table and held it tightly to her chest. “That night... after he had killed Caitlin,” she began, “he was checking her e-mail on their home computer. He was making sure there wasn’t anything there that might incriminate him if the police got suspicious and checked the files. He found an e-mail that Caitlin had written a few days before. She had sent it to both Kameeka and Tesla. She said that she had mailed Tesla a tape that she had made. On the tape she said that she was worried that maybe her husband intended to hurt her. And she told them that if anything happened to her, they should take the tape to the authorities.”
Savannah tried to hide her surprise. “Kevin told you all of this?”
“Yes.” Charlotte laughed, but the sound was bitter. “Kevin talks a lot when he’s drunk. The night after Cait died, he got stinking drunk and came over to my house. He talked to me for hours, told me about how he’d killed her. I guess he felt like he was going to explode, too.”
“I suppose so. Did he tell you how he killed Kameeka?”
“He said he got into her house early that morning through a sliding door in the rear of the house that wasn’t locked. She was just getting out of bed. When she walked into the kitchen, he hit her....” Charlotte’s voice broke, and it was several moments before she could compose herself enough to continue, “He hit her with a baseball bat that he had taken with him.”
“And then he dressed her body, put it in his car,” Savannah said, “took her out to Citrus Road, and dumped her?”
“Yes. He wanted it to look like someone had hit her when she was jogging.” She paused to wipe her eyes. “After he killed her there at the house, he cleaned up the blood off the floor, and then he checked her computer so that he could erase Gait’s e-mail.”
“How did he get her password?”
“She’d stored it. You can do that so that you don’t have to sign in every time.”
“Okay. I don’t know much about that sort of thing. Go ahead....”
“And the sad thing is, she hadn’t even opened the e-mail yet. She hadn’t read it, so he wouldn’t have even had to kill her. He could have just sneaked into the house and erased the letter. She never would have known the difference.”
Savannah sat there on the floor, patting the woman’s knee and wishing she had one of Ryan’s mini-recorders going in her purse. Confiding like this in familiar surroundings was one thing, but would Charlotte deny everything later? She had to get something unique, something substantial that could be used in court.
She asked the question that she had been dreading. “Charlotte... is Tesla Montoya still alive?”
Again, Charlotte covered her face with her hand and sobbed. “No.”
Savannah felt something deep inside her crumple and die. And for just a moment she allowed herself to Wonder how many more pieces of herself she could afford to lose in one lifetime.
She reached for the woman’s hand and clasped it tightly between her own. “Charlotte,” she said softly, “you have to take me to her.”
She nodded. “I know.”
Savannah stood and gently pulled Charlotte to her feet. “Let’s go,” she said.
As she led the weeping nurse to the door, Savannah felt a sadly familiar rush of bittersweet victory. It was too late to save the beautiful lady with the dark, soft eyes.
But at least she could bring Tesla home. And that would have to be enough.
The road to the little town of Oak Grove was picturesque with its woods of gnarled oaks, the creek that meandered alo
ngside, and the occasional scenic mountain view. But it was one of the deadliest stretches of pavement in the country.
White crosses, bouquets of artificial flowers, and ribbons decorated the spots where drunken teenagers had missed sharp curves and struck the ancient, unyielding oaks, ending their young lives far too soon. More than one driver had nodded off for only a second or lost their concentration while changing a CD, and plunged over one of the road’s many cliffs—not to be found for weeks or months.
And, according to Charlotte Murray, Tesla had met her end at the bottom of one of those cliffs.
Savannah navigated her Mustang around the winding road as they climbed higher and higher into the mountains. Sitting beside her in the passenger’s seat, Charlotte had gone from crying to a stoic silence that troubled Savannah.
She was afraid that at any moment, the woman might realize how candid she had been and regret it.
More than anything, Savannah wanted to give Dirk a call and tell him what was happening. But she didn’t
dare do anything that might break the connection between herself and Charlotte—a bond that seemed to be growing tenuous at best.
“Are we getting close?” she asked as the road became even steeper, and she shifted into a lower gear.
“We’re almost there,” Charlotte replied, her voice so low it was barely audible.
Savannah looked around at the wild hillsides. One looked like the other, adorned only with rocks, scrub brush, and the occasional patch of prickly pear cactus.
“How are you going to know when we get there?” she asked. “Is there some sort of landmark?”
Charlotte nodded woodenly. “A bridge.”
“Okay.”
“She’s in the van.”
Surprised by this new, volunteered tidbit, Savannah decided to press for more. “Your brother’s white van?” ‘Yes. It broke down just as we got to the bridge.”
‘You and Kevin were driving in the van with Tesla?”
“Kevin was driving. I was following in my car.” Savannah tried to swallow the knot in her throat, but couldn’t. “And Tesla was already dead?”
“Just about. Kevin had hit her in the head, like he did Kameeka.”
“At her house?”
She nodded. “He was trying to get her to tell him where the tape was. She wouldn’t; she kept saying she didn’t have it. And we couldn’t find it.”
Savannah made a mental note of the “we,” but decided to let it pass for the moment, because Charlotte Was still talking: “Tesla gave him her e-mail password, though, and he was able to erase Gait’s letter.”
“She had read it then?”
‘Yes.”
“So why hadn’t she gone to the police?”
‘Kevin said he thought it was because she was here in the U.S. illegally. If she went to the authorities, she might get investigated herself. Caitlin had told him that she was an illegal, and at first he felt safe, that she wouldn’t turn him in because of that. But then he got to thinking about it, and he didn’t want to take the chance. So he asked me to help him pick her up that day at the coffee shop.”
‘You were driving the van when he grabbed her in the parking lot?”
She nodded. “Yes, and I’ll never forgive myself. He said he was just going to take her back to her house and make her give him the tape. Then he was going to threaten her, scare her into staying quiet. I had no idea what he was really going to do.”
Savannah found it hard to believe that, since he had already killed two women, it would never occur to Charlotte that he might kill a third one. But this wasn’t the time to speak her mind.
“At Tesla’s house,” Savannah said, “after he struck her and erased the e-mail, he put her in the van and you guys drove up here?”
‘Yes. He wanted to take her way up into the hills, where nobody ever goes. Then he was going to take the plates off the van, remove anything inside that might lead back to Jim, and then drive it over a cliff with her inside.”
So he thought he'd remove the plates, huh?Savannah mused. Obviously he didn’t know about vehicle identification numbers, permanently placed inside all automobiles by the manufacturer.
“And you two would drive back in your car?” Savannah said.
“That was the plan. But that damned van... it was always breaking down on my brother. It died, just up there—” She pointed to a small bridge ahead that crossed over a narrow arroyo about forty feet deep. The creek ran through the valley below, its bed a maze of rocks, worn smooth by the constant flow of water.
Savannah pulled over to the side of the road and switched off the Mustang’s engine, giving it a rest from the climb.
She turned to Charlotte, who still looked stoic, but was trembling. “Let’s do it,” she told her.
“We’re not going to be able to go down there,” Charlotte said. “The cliffs too steep.”
“We’ll try anyway,” Savannah replied as she got out of the car and tucked the keys deep inside her slacks pocket...just in case Nurse Charlotte decided to take a drive back to San Carmelita and leave her out here with the coyotes and prickly pears.
And Tesla Montoya.
They walked toward the bridge and just before they reached it, Savannah could see for herself the place where the van had left the road. Crushed sage bushes and a fresh slide in the dirt and rocks at the precipice edge marked the spot with sickening clarity.
Savannah approached the drop with caution, watching her step while keeping an eye on the woman beside her. She still hadn’t decided how much she truly trusted Nurse Murray, and she had no intention of taking any unplanned trips over the edge herself.
“There it is,” Charlotte said, pointing to a patch of white amid the brush and stones below them. “It landed down there on the rocks next to the creek.”
Savannah could see the van; she could also see that without some sort of rock-climbing gear, there was no way anybody was getting to it.
“See,” Charlotte said. “It’s nearly straight down.”
“Uh-huh.” Savannah left her and walked across the bridge to the other side. Charlotte followed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Savannah replied, “but don’t ever say that around Diamante or Cleopatra.”
“What?”
Savannah didn’t answer. She had found what she was looking for: a way down that was less steep, a challenging path, but doable.
“Come on,” she told Charlotte as she began her descent, hanging on to thorny bushes for balance.
“I’m not going down there,” Charlotte called after her. “I... I just can’t.”
I wouldn't want to either if I were you,Savannah thought Reality checks can be pretty painful.
“Yes, you can,” she yelled back. ‘Just take it slow and easy like I am. You’ll be okay.”
“I mean... I can’t see her.”
Savannah stopped and looked up at Charlotte, who was leaning over the edge watching her. “I know exactly what you mean, Charlotte. Come along now.”
Charlotte shook her head. “I’ll wait here for you.” She glanced around her at the wilderness on either side. “Where am I going to go? You’ve got the keys in your pocket.”
“Yes, I do. And we didn’t have anybody following us this time to give us a ride back, did we?”
Charlotte winced, then withdrew from the edge. “I’m going to sit right here,” she said. “Be careful, because I’m not going to come down there to rescue you if you fall.”
“I wouldn’t expect you would,” Savannah mumbled as she continued on down to the crashed vehicle below.
She made it down the cliff in less than two minutes, reminding herself that the trip back up would be tough without the aid of gravity.
When she reached the bottom, she still had to navigate her way across the creek to the other side. Halfway over, she decided that she would add the price of her loafers to Leah Freed’s bill. After slipping and slidin
g among the wet stones and wading in the foot-deep creek, they were bound to be a write-off.
Her feet were nearly numb from the cold water by the time she reached the other side and the van.
She had seen worse wrecks in her life. At least the van still looked like a van. But it was badly twisted, the front crushed so badly that she was dreading the sight she would find inside.
Metal and glass could do such horrible things to the human body. She wished that people realized that fact when they went hurtling down the freeway at breakneck speed without wearing their seat belts.
She found the side door ajar. Being careful not to cut herself on the broken glass and jagged metal edges, she climbed inside.
The smell of gasoline was so strong it nearly gagged her, and the interior was so dark that she couldn’t see anything at all until her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
One of the van’s front seats had been shoved into the rear of the vehicle. The headliner had torn loose and was hanging down, a dirty, ragged curtain. Shattered glass sparkled everywhere, like a shower of rough-cut aquamarines.
But there was no body.
No Tesla.
Savannah jumped out of the van, her heart racing. She began to run up and down the creek’s edge, stumbling over the rocks, searching, and trying desperately not to hope.
“What is it?” As though from far away, she could hear Charlotte shouting down to her. “What are you doing?”
But Savannah ignored her as she looked behind every bush, every boulder.
And it was behind one of those large rocks that she found her.
Tesla was lying, face down on the stony ground, only a few inches from the creek’s edge. She was still wearing the jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers that she had been wearing when she left the photo shoot that day... so many years ago, it seemed.
Savannah ran to her, knelt beside the motionless form, and reached to turn it over. She was expecting to find a cold, lifeless body, as empty and soulless as all the other corpses she had seen in her career.
But the flesh of Tesla’s arms when she touched her was warm. Not as warm as it should be, but living.
And once the body was turned over, Savannah could see an ever-so-slight rise and fall of the chest.
Cereal Killer Page 24
