Insidious

by Catherine Coulter

  “Will the police officer be all right?”

  “He’s stable. They’re letting him sleep.”

  Venus said, “You know, Dillon, you ask anyone where they were in the middle of the night and who’s going to say they were anywhere but in bed, sleeping with the angels?”

  No one, Savich thought, no one at all.

  29

  * * *

  MISSY DEVEREAUX’S COTTAGE

  MALIBU

  TUESDAY NIGHT

  Cam showered in Missy’s second bathroom, pulled on boxers and a T-shirt and snuggled down on the soft mattress Missy had replaced when she moved in, along with the old green wall-to-wall carpet. “I love my shiny new oak floor,” she’d said to Cam as she’d showed her around. “A new kitchen when I snag a good role. The fifty-year-old fridge and the green kitchen cabinets will be the first to go.”

  It was a nice house, cozy, comfortable, and the mattress was heaven. Cam was tired and hyped up at the same time, but the beer and soaping up in a shower old enough to be on an I Love Lucy episode mellowed her enough to nod off.

  She came awake at 7:00 a.m. at the loud horse-racing bugle ringtone of her cell. For a second, she didn’t know where she was, then remembered. “Wittier here.”

  It was Supervisor David Elman, LAPD.

  “Our Serial struck again, call came in twenty minutes ago, in Santa Monica. Another actress, Deborah Connelly, aged twenty-six. Fits the profile exactly. She was killed in her bed last night, her laptop and cell phone missing, according to her boyfriend, who found her.”

  Cam closed her eyes, let it sink in. Another murder, and on her watch. It was a punch to the gut.

  “Thank you for calling me so fast. I’ll be there in thirty-five minutes. Don’t let them touch anything, okay? We need a pristine crime scene.”

  He was huffy about that, for good reason, but Cam didn’t care. She called Daniel, got an out-of-breath voice. “Yeah?”

  “Cam here. Another murder.” And she gave him the address in Santa Monica. “I’ll see you there. Fast as you can, Daniel.”

  * * *

  She parked her rented Toyota at the sidewalk at Deborah Connelly’s condo thirty-one minutes later, Daniel pulling in right behind her. There were two patrol cars and two Crown Vics crowded in the driveway and at the curb.

  When he joined her, Cam asked, “You were out of breath when I called. What were you doing?”

  “I’d just come in from my morning run.”

  He didn’t look like he was hungover from too much beer, and he’d gotten up early to run? He looked sharp in gray chinos, a blue blazer, and white shirt, boots on his big feet. She wanted to slug him.

  “Do you know any of the people in the Santa Monica station?”

  “Arturo Loomis, on the force for twelve years and counting, so lots of experience, and pretty smart. Your only problem with him is that he was married to a DEA agent who screwed him over big-time in their divorce. Maybe you’ll luck out and someone else took the call.”

  She didn’t luck out.

  30

  * * *

  21 CRANDLE AVENUE

  SANTA MONICA

  WEDNESDAY MORNING

  Cam spotted Loomis immediately, center stage, surrounded by three other officers, two men and a woman, listening to him talk. They fell instantly silent when they saw her.

  Detective Arturo Loomis was a big man, midthirties, fit, and in charge. She couldn’t see him ever taking crap from anybody. He wore aviator glasses over sharp, intelligent eyes and didn’t acknowledge her. He looked toward Daniel, nodded.

  Daniel said, “Arturo, let me introduce you to the case lead, FBI Special Agent Cam Wittier. Agent Wittier, this is Detective Arturo Loomis, Santa Monica.”

  She saw rage on his face. That was good, it meant he cared. Unless the rage was directed toward her.

  “Agent.” A clipped, hard voice.

  “Detective Loomis.” She stuck out her hand. Slowly, unwillingly, Loomis shook it.

  “How long have you been on-site?”

  “I was called in forty minutes ago. My lieutenant told me not to process the scene because it’s an FBI case. So we’ve all been standing around with our thumbs in our mouths waiting for the Feds to show up.”

  “The Fed is here now. I understand Ms. Connelly’s boyfriend found her?”

  He nodded. “The boyfriend, yes. He called 911, then the housekeeper showed up. Boyfriend’s in the kitchen. He’s a mess. So far we can’t get anything useful out of him. As of a few minutes ago, he was still Froot Loops. His name’s Mark Richards. The housekeeper, Pepita Gonzalez, is in the living room and she won’t shut up. Detective Turley”—he nodded toward a tall, no-nonsense woman in her thirties—“she speaks Spanish, almost as well as you do, Daniel. Ms. Gonzalez told her the boyfriend and the vic were moving into a new place together. Ms. Gonzalez usually comes every other week, but she came today to help pack boxes. She didn’t see any strangers, only the boyfriend’s car in the driveway.

  “As I said, nobody touched the scene or the vic, order of Supervisor Elman.”

  Cam knew she should let it go, but she couldn’t. “We can at least give her the dignity of using her name, Detective Loomis. She was Deborah Connelly.”

  Loomis stared at her, surprised, then dismissive. “Yeah, I thought you already knew that.”

  They walked together to the entrance hall, stacked high with neatly labeled boxes. Deborah Connelly had nearly finished moving out. Would she still be alive if she’d left a night earlier? No, not if the Serial was targeting her. He would have followed her.

  Cam said, “I’d appreciate your calling your forensics team in, Detective Loomis, if you haven’t already. I’ll look in on the crime scene, then I’d like to speak to Mr. Richards.”

  Detective Loomis shrugged. “Knock yourself out. Our forensics team is already here. I knew we’d be covering that, from my buddy in Van Nuys—”

  Cam turned back. “Detective Jagger?”

  He blinked, obviously surprised she knew his name, shook his head. “No, Detective Corinne Hill. Nice to know you trust us to investigate a crime.” He gave her a long look, added, “Corinne said even Frank was coming around after that bash your showbiz folks threw last night in the Colony. Too bad the vic—ah, excuse me, Deborah Connelly—didn’t buy it a day earlier, I could have rubbed elbows with the rich and famous, too.”

  “That’s enough, Arturo,” Daniel said. “Cut her a break.”

  If not for the fact that Daniel had told Cam Loomis’s wife had really burned him bad she’d have taken him apart. Her hand fisted, but she only nodded and left them, hoping Daniel would get him in line. She calmed as she walked down the oddly silent hallway, steeling herself for what she was about to see. She walked past the master bedroom and continued down the short hallway to the rear of the house, and into a room she saw immediately had become an office. On top of a desk were neat stacks of papers, piled high and ready to be stacked into boxes standing open nearby. Deborah Connelly had been neat, orderly. There was no laptop, no cell phone.

  She stood in the center of the empty room. She smelled jasmine. Deborah had spent a lot of time in here. Cam could see her getting halfway down the pile of papers stacked in the center of her desk, wishing she could get another box or two packed before going to bed but hanging it up for the night. Was she already showered, wearing her nightgown? Cam picked a sheet of paper off the top of one of the piles. It was a notice of an audition for a part in the last Mission: Impossible. Printed in neat black ink across the bottom: Yeah! Now I can pay the rent. Tom Cruise was very nice to me.

  It was dated nearly a year ago. Cam leafed through the rest of the pile. More auditions, some won, some lost, all with notations of what had succeeded, what had gone wrong. Records of a life, too short a life.

  The window was open, broken glass on the floor. She looked for footprints outside the window, but the Serial had been careful to walk on grass. He hadn’t used the back door. Had he changed the patter
n, or as with Molly Harbinger, had there been someone too close, possibly watching, and so he’d chosen the window?

  She traced his path to Deborah’s bedroom. Down the narrow hall, and into a lovely light-filled room. Two uniformed policemen were standing over a double bed, looking down at Deborah Connelly’s body, their faces set. It felt to Cam like the air itself was thick with anger. When they saw her, they looked at each other and stepped aside. Cam nodded to each of them and looked down at a young woman who’d been beautiful in life. But not now. Her face was gray and slack, her eyes closed. She was wearing a lime-green nightgown, a sheet pulled to her waist, both soaked with blood. There was blood spray on the wall beside the bed, on the ceiling. Her neck was cut so deeply her head hung to the side, her long black hair stiff with blood. So much blood. Her mouth was open, not in terror, but in surprise. She hadn’t had time to register what he was going to do before he’d slit her throat. That at least was a blessing.

  Cam felt a noxious mix of anger, sadness, and regret, saw her hands were trembling. She forced herself to focus on what was in front of her. She said quietly, “He broke the window in the other room, her office, and climbed in. He was wearing soft-soled sneakers that made no noise, probably the same ones he’s worn five times before. He came into this bedroom, stood over the bed, looked down at her. What was the monster thinking? What was he feeling? Anticipation, elation? Did he know her?”

  She felt the cops staring at her, but she kept her focus on Deborah Connelly’s face. She moved a few inches to her right, closer, and leaned down. “This was exactly where he stood.” She felt a punch of cold, then a light scent of jasmine. We would have liked each other, Deborah. Or were you Deb? I’m so sorry. I promise you, we’ll catch the monster who did this to you.

  31

  * * *

  Cam looked up to see a young officer standing in the doorway. “Agent, ma’am? The boyfriend, Mark Richards, he’s waiting in the kitchen. Detective Loomis told me to get you.” She wondered what else Loomis had suggested the officer tell her. Whatever it was, he’d been smart enough to keep it to himself.

  Cam walked back down the skinny hallway with its pale blue–painted walls to the kitchen, past techs moving purposefully through the house, skirting boxes. The medical examiner walked past her, toward the bedroom, all brisk and impatient, not even giving her a nod. He would add no dignity to her death, her body now a job to him, a mystery to solve. She paused outside the kitchen door, closed her eyes a moment, and said a prayer for Deborah Connelly. Again, she smelled jasmine. It calmed her, helped her focus. Daniel was probably interviewing Pepita Gonzalez. She hadn’t known he spoke Spanish. She hoped he’d got something useful from her.

  She walked into a small ancient kitchen to see a man sitting alone, still as a stone at a small table, his face in his hands. Loomis had said he was hysterical, but he was utterly silent. No, not quite. He was whispering something over and over, “I’m going to find you, you son of a bitch,” the same words, nothing else, sounding singsong. She knew it was his way of keeping hold of himself, of keeping him from flying to pieces.

  She lightly laid her hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Richards.”

  He slowly raised his face and Cam saw he was a tanned and buffed man in his early thirties with long dishwater-blond hair to his shoulders whipped back in a braid, lovely thick hair. He was wearing a white T-shirt and cutoff jeans, sandals on his big tanned feet. She saw a small diamond stud winking in his left earlobe. He looked up at her out of dazed eyes. She saw a pair of glasses on the table near his hand. “Who are you?” His voice was hoarse, blurred with tears.

  “I’m Agent Wittier, FBI. You’re Mark Richards?”

  “Yes. People call me Doc.” He sounded exhausted.

  He looked like a surfer dude to her. “Doc?”

  “Yes, I’m a neurosurgery fellow at Children’s Hospital in Santa Monica, only a half mile away, as if that matters. That’s why I wasn’t here. It’s all my fault, I as good as killed her.”

  “Why do you say that, Doc?”

  He looked up at her with blind eyes. “She shouldn’t even have been here. Deb and I were moving in together. You saw all the boxes and crap in the hallway and living room? It was all her stuff. We were all set to move her into our new place yesterday, but—” He swallowed. “I was treating a four-year-old with an ependymoma—a kind of brain tumor—and his parents were a mess and he wasn’t doing well, so we moved up the surgery to yesterday.

  “I let Deb down, I wasn’t here. If I hadn’t put off moving her out of here, she’d still be alive. The house would have been empty, I’d have been sleeping next to her in our new apartment across the street from the hospital. That bastard wouldn’t have found her here, alone.

  “I know I shouldn’t have touched her, but I couldn’t help it. I closed her eyes. She had the prettiest blue eyes. She was staring up at me, but she wasn’t seeing me any longer. I wondered if she was thinking about me when she died, how I should have been here with her.” He hunched his shoulders, put his face in his hands again, and sobbed.

  Cam wondered if that guilt would gnaw at him for as long as he lived. She laid her hand on his shoulder, lightly shook him. “Listen to me. You know as a doctor you can only do the best you can. This was not in your control. You are not responsible.” She said nothing more, to give him a moment to process what she’d said, to get himself together. Slowly, he quieted. Cam said, “Doc, tell me about Deborah.”

  His eyes glazed and his mouth worked, but nothing came out. He shuddered. Cam pulled him against her and held him. She said against soft hair that smelled like lemons the same thing she’d promised Deborah. “I swear to you we’ll catch this monster. Do you understand? And you can help us, all right?” She paused a moment, listening to his breath stutter and catch. “How did the child’s surgery go? On the brain tumor?”

  That snapped him back. He raised his face. “His name is Phoenix Taylor and we clipped that sucker right out. I think we got it all. He’ll need some radiation treatment, but he has a chance at a life now. Deborah even came by after the surgery and took a photo of Phoenix and his parents—you can see the relief on their faces, big smiles. I guess it was still on her cell phone. One of the policemen told me it was stolen. Sorry, of course you know that.

  “Phoenix had a bit of a setback with his intracranial pressure that I had to manage, and that’s why I wasn’t here last night. I couldn’t, I needed to be close, just in case.

  “This morning, Phoenix was fine, even gave me a little smile through his missing front tooth. So I was able to leave the hospital early this morning—this would have been our moving day.” He lowered his head to his hands but didn’t make a sound.

  Cam waited. He raised his head, looked at her blindly. “She was only twenty-six. Last Sunday was her birthday. We spent the day anchored off the coast, kicking back and drinking beer, eating chips and salsa, talking about how we were going to furnish our new place.” He ran out of words and sat there, motionless and silent. He reached for his glasses with small circular lenses and put them on. “Thank you, for caring about her. Of course I’ll help, any way I can.”

  Twenty minutes later, Cam met Detective Loomis in the hallway. “The M.E. estimates the Serial killed her about midnight, but that’s not definite yet. He’ll let us know if anything we don’t expect turns up at autopsy. Did you learn anything from the boyfriend?”

  Cam said, “Her boyfriend is a doctor, but he seems to know a lot about her career, maybe because she spent so much time recording it all. We may have caught a break with that, actually. Deborah was a record keeper. There are piles of documents in her office that she was going through before packing for the move. They’ve got to be filled with the names of people she worked with—actors, agents, producers—probably anyone with any clout at all that she’d met. He told me practically Deborah’s whole life is on her laptop that’s missing—it’s a Toshiba Satellite—every part and audition, every personality. Maybe with all those paper recor
ds and Dr. Richards’s help, we can reconstruct a lot of it. It’s more than we had in the other cases.

  “I asked him to reconstruct as much of her activities this past week. I believe too this will help him, keep him focused on something other than his grief and guilt for not spending the night with her.”

  Loomis sighed. “It’s something. The Serial’s killed twice now, in under a week. He’s escalating, and that scares me spitless.”

  She nodded. “The profilers don’t like it, either. It’s something they didn’t expect.”

  “So even Olympus isn’t always in control of the facts?”

  “Alas, no. Where’d you get the name Arturo?”

  Again, the look of surprise, then he eased. “Arturo’s my second name actually, after a big flamenco dancer in the thirties in Barcelona. My wife—a DEA Fed—didn’t like it, called me Lou. Lousy name.”

  “I think Arturo is cool.” Cam gave him her card, explained the FBI website to him. “I’m going to visit the lady across the street Doc told me about, Mrs. Buffet. Doc said she knew everyone in the neighborhood, said it sometimes drove him crazy, since she always seemed to know what Deborah was doing before he did. He said Deborah treated her like her grandmother, was always over there, checking on her, drinking her lemonade, just hanging out whenever she had a chance.”

  Loomis nodded. “The housekeeper and Daniel still have their heads together. I hope she has something helpful to tell him.”

  “If she knows anything, I bet Daniel will get it out of her. Tell your people get all chatty with the neighbors, use their shock and surprise to their advantage—”

  “Thanks for the hint, they were wondering what to do.”

  “Yeah, that was heavy-handed, sorry.”

  Loomis’s mouth fell open.