Cold Justice (Kali O'Brien series Book 5)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “What I think is that we need to consider every possibility. Were there other suspects you looked at before arresting Davis?”

  “Absolutely. We only latched onto Davis because of a lucky break.”

  The necklace they’d found in the car when they stopped him for suspicion of driving under the influence.

  “I remember we questioned a number of people, even explored the possibility that Davis hadn’t acted alone. But in the end, we were sure Davis was the right man. Still,” he continued, “it’s not a bad idea, looking at the other suspects. I remember one case we had years ago where one of our suspects in an earlier murder turned around three years later and killed a woman he did gardening for. It’s always bothered me that maybe we planted the seed in his mind by questioning him as a murder suspect.”

  That was a permutation Kali hadn’t considered. It presented an interesting possibility, especially in light of what Dunworthy had said about the killer having ties to the Strangler case. There was nothing like being a potential suspect to make the crimes seem personal.

  “Do you remember the names of other suspects you looked at in the Bayside Strangler case?”

  “This will be a test of the old gray cells.” Eastman laughed. “Let me think a minute. One was a sex offender, which is how we first picked him up. Robert O’Dell, I believe was the name. We looked at him quite seriously. There were also two brothers. Silva was the last name. First names went together, Larry and Barry, if my memory serves. There were others along the way, but those were the serious contenders. All that was before we stumbled onto Davis, of course. Once we had him, all bets were off.”

  Kali jotted down the names. “How about members of the public who showed particular interest in the investigation? Maybe a volunteer or a concerned citizen?”

  “The whole damned country showed interest. If people weren’t calling us with advice, they were calling with questions. It was probably the most chaotic investigation I ever worked on.”

  “I take it, then, that none stood out?”

  “Afraid not. Say, Owen Nelson’s really gone places, hasn’t he? Wouldn’t that be something if he were the next governor of California. You think he stands a chance?”

  “A good chance.” If the Bayside Strangler case didn’t come back to haunt him.

  “Got remarried, I hear. Not too long ago.”

  “Last September.”

  “Well, good for him. It was a terrible thing his wife dying while the trial was going on. I mean, terrible that she died at all, but I admire the dedication he showed in finishing the trial.”

  Owen hadn’t really had a choice about seeing the trial through to the end, though his focus and determination under such trying circumstances amazed Kali, too. But that was how some people, particularly men, handled pain. They ignored it. There were times Kali envied them that.

  CHAPTER 22

  Lou Fortune spread the sketch artist’s composites across his desk. Three drawings, and none of them looked like the same guy. Lou was willing to bet none of them looked much like the killer, either. He had suspected all along that, as a witness, Mrs. Greene would fall short when pushed for details. Her window was too far from Jane Parkhurst’s house to give her a good look at the man even if her eyesight and memory were to be trusted. Still, her sighting of a “suspicious male” was noteworthy in a case where they had damn little else to go on.

  He’d used their best sketch artist, a man who knew how to probe a witness’s memory for forgotten details. Lou had instructed him to take his time. The three separate sketches spoke to the care he’d taken. Unfortunately, they also spoke to the muddle of Mrs. Greene’s observational skills.

  He studied the drawings again. White male, that was something useful anyway. When Lou looked closely, he could see all three had similar faces—wide and full. And all of the sketches depicted a fringe of hair at the nape of the neck poking out from under the baseball cap. Their suspect, if that’s what he was, wore his hair on the long side. Beyond the obvious, however, the drawings differed widely. In one, the eyes were narrow and closely set; in another they were round with heavy lids. One had a pointy chin while the other two depicted a much squarer jaw. No way they were going to find the man on the basis of these drawings.

  Lou had checked with both the water district and Pacific Gas & Electric. Neither had reported any workmen in the neighborhood during the time Mrs. Greene had spotted the man she found suspicious. That still left everything from tree trimming to road work, however, or even a FedEx driver who happened to be wearing an orange vest. Plenty of opportunity for legitimate activity.

  But it could also have been someone up to no good, just as Mrs. Greene thought. It couldn’t hurt to show the sketches around the neighborhood, Lou decided.

  He turned to Keating. “Hey, Bryce. What d’ya think the odds are that Mrs. Greene actually got a look at our killer?”

  Keating was writing intently and didn’t bother to look up. “Doesn’t matter the odds. Even if she did, it’s not going to help us find the guy.”

  How could a man abduct and murder two women, and not be seen? It was like he was invisible or something. Which brought Lou back to the orange vest. People didn’t notice workmen, and didn’t think anything of them when they did notice. Not actually invisible, but pretty damned close.

  Lou gathered the sketches. “I think I’ll see if these ring a bell with any of the other neighbors. You want to come along?”

  “You go on. I want to talk to a couple of the early Bayside Strangler suspects.”

  Lou stood slowly, pressing a hand against his lower spine where the muscles were still tight, and ran Keating’s words through his mind a second time. “Didn’t know we were looking at them,” he said after a moment.

  Keating shrugged. “Kali’s got a theory that our murders have a lot in common with the last Strangler murder, which was different than the others. It’s also one Davis dodged.”

  Kali again. Lou noticed how Keating rolled his voice around the name. He’d only been partnered with the man six months, but that was long enough to recognize the signs. Keating was looking to put another mark on his scorecard. Lou sometimes suspected Keating’s womanizing was more show than substance. He wore his reputation like a badge of honor, and cultivated it at every opportunity. Maybe he actually liked the image, but Lou noticed it was also a way for Keating to keep himself emotionally distant.

  “You’re thinking the last victim might be the work of our killer?”

  “It’s a theory.”

  A fairly farfetched one, Lou thought. “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do.”

  Lou turned to leave. “And take it slow, will you? She’s a fucking DA, remember?”

  Keating tapped his pen against his palm, a glint of amusement in his eye. “You’ve got a dirty mind, Lou.”

  “Yeah? Well, I know where I got it.”

  The phone rang and Keating looked at Lou. “You in or out?”

  “Depends on who it is.” For a brief second, he thought it might even be Nikki, although he hadn’t the foggiest notion where he’d gotten that idea.

  Keating picked up and immediately made a face. “Listen, Jackson,” he said after a moment, “we’re running an investigation here, not writing a gossip column. When we’ve got an announcement to make, you’ll hear about it.”

  Lou slid out the door before Keating found some excuse to pass the call off on him.

  <><><>

  It was late afternoon, almost time for her scheduled coffee break, when Mitsu Yamamoto noticed a man picking through the rack of women’s lingerie. It wasn’t unheard of to see men buying women’s clothing. She saw more of that here at the Salvation Army store than she had when she worked at Penney’s in the mall. She probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it if a memo hadn’t gone around asking employees to keep an eye out for just this very thing.

  Mitsu was at the cash register, waiting on a toothless woman buying a bathrobe and slippers, but she kept her
eye on the man in lingerie. He didn’t look particularly sinister or dangerous, just a little odd with his thin, fox-like face and prominent Adam’s apple. Most likely he was buying a gift for his wife or girlfriend. Or even himself. Since moving to the Bay Area, Mitsu had run across her share of cross-dressers.

  She didn’t know why the police wanted to be notified about a man buying women’s clothing, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about getting involved. This was America, after all, where people had a right to privacy. Maybe it didn’t apply to shopping, but she didn’t see why not.

  On the other hand, the police wouldn’t be involved if it wasn’t important. A big shoplifting ring maybe. Or something to do with drugs. She’d read that a lot of crimes were drug related.

  Mitsu wasn’t supposed to leave her post at the register, especially with a line of customers waiting to be rung up, so what could she do, anyway? Still, something about the man kept drawing her eyes back.

  She could see that he had chosen a black slip and bra, and had now moved on to the rack of blouses and tops. He must have felt her watching because he turned suddenly and looked straight at her. His eyes were beady and dark, like an animal’s. Mitsu shivered. She looked around for one of the other clerks, but they were all occupied and oblivious to the sighting of a man the police might be looking for.

  Finally, she caught the eye of Thomas, who was carrying a customer’s bookshelf to the front of the store. When he’d set it by the door, he followed the woman to the register and handed Mitsu the sales tag.

  “Call the police,” she whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “The police. Didn’t you see the memo?”

  He looked around. “What memo?”

  It was useless. She was probably the only person in the store who’d taken the time to read the thing.

  The woman with the bookshelf drummed her fingers on the countertop with impatience. She looked like the type who expected royal service wherever she went. “Is something the matter?” she asked, none too kindly.

  Mitsu shook her head and rang up the purchase. Thomas scratched his chin. “Who’d you want me to call?”

  “Never mind.”

  The man from lingerie kept glancing her way every few minutes, which made Mitsu nervous.

  There was something strange about him, she decided. It was his manner as much as his appearance. Besides, the police wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if it wasn’t an important case. What if she let this guy get away and later found out he committed some horrible crime? She wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

  Mitsu looked back toward the spot where she’d last seen the man. He was gone. She felt a flutter in her stomach.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of him leaving the store. His jacket bulged on one side where he’d no doubt stuffed the articles of clothing he’d been carrying.

  “Stop! Thief!” She pointed toward the door. Mitsu thought she’d yelled loudly, but only a few people turned to look at her, and no one made a move to assist. Before she had time to think about it, she tossed the bookshelf woman’s purchase receipt across the counter and shouted at Joyce to cover the register. Then she raced out the door in pursuit.

  The man walked rapidly, and when he saw that she was following him, he picked up his pace to a trot. He crossed against the light, narrowly escaping collision with a fast-moving truck, and ducked around the corner. Mitsu reached the corner herself, just in time to see him pull away in a dirty white Econoline van with a dented fender. The car sped down the block before she could read the whole license plate but she caught the beginning and committed it to memory.

  <><><>

  Kali had never been partial to color-coded organizational schemes. She’d had friends in college who used variously hued index cards when they researched papers, and she knew lawyers who plotted their trial strategy with colored ink, but Kali generally found the fewer the distractions, the clearer her thoughts. She’d been staring at her notes all morning, however, looking for patterns and connections she’d missed, and growing increasingly desperate. Finally, she picked up a red pen and began scribbling.

  Why choose the anniversary of Wendy Gilchrist’s murder? First possibility was that Wendy’s killer was responsible for the two recent murders, as well. And the eight-year moratorium? The most likely explanation was prison. Perhaps he’d been picked up on an unrelated charge and only just released. Kali was anxious to hear what Keating had learned about the names she’d gotten from Eastman.

  The second possibility was that there was something about the Gilchrist murder that was meaningful to their killer.

  If only she had some clue what that was.

  Kali pressed her palms to her temples and sighed. There were so many possibilities—a likeness in Wendy to someone their killer knew, a television account that touched a raw nerve with him. Or maybe his mother’s name was Wendy. Hadn’t Dunworthy said that serial killers were often acting out the unresolved conflicts of their childhood? Unless she was inside the head of the killer, she had no way of knowing why Wendy’s murder was significant to him.

  She glanced at the clock and was gratified to see that it was time to meet Keating. As she grabbed her coat and purse, the vase of tulips caught her eye. She made a mental note to get rid of them when she returned. Nathan would never know.

  When she got outside, Bryce Keating was parked at the curb, waiting for her. Kali climbed into the black Ford sedan, noting that it smelled faintly of sweat and aftershave. It wasn’t the unappealing combination she would have imagined.

  “We got lucky,” Keating said, pulling into traffic. “Two of them are still local.”

  “Were you able to get a look at the old files?”

  “Like I said, they’re in storage.”

  “But surely—”

  “The cases are closed, remember?” He paused. “We got a conviction, in fact.”

  And an execution. He didn’t remind her of that.

  “If it seems important, we can always pursue it later,” Keating said.

  A polite way of letting her know he’d agreed to follow up on O’Dell and the Silva brothers only to humor her?

  “I did run the names through the system,” he added. “Nothing came up.”

  “Meaning they’ve been straight?”

  “Or lucky.”

  Kali braced herself with a hand on the dashboard as Keating took the corner without slowing down.

  “Are you afraid he’s about to leave the country or something?”

  Keating’s face registered confusion. “Who?”

  “Whichever one of them we’re headed out to visit first.”

  “O’Dell’s first up,” he said.

  “You drive like we’re in a hurry,” she explained, since he seemed intent on not understanding.

  She’d been pleased that he’d followed up on her idea of looking at suspects from the Bayside Strangler case, and likewise pleased that he’d thought to ask her along. Now that she was in the car with him, however, holding tight, as though she was riding a runaway roller coaster, she was less enamored of the idea.

  Keating grinned. “You and Lou could form a chorus.”

  “This is your standard driving mode?”

  “Sometimes I’m not so slow and careful.”

  Great, Kali thought. Keating fancied himself a comedian as well as a race-car driver. Why had she ever thought him cute? “I’d like to get there in one piece, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’d like to get you there that way too.” He gave her a sideways glance, and what she thought was a wink.

  Okay, so he was cute. He wouldn’t be the first cute asshole she’d run across. Kali gripped the door handle and said a silent prayer for safe delivery.

  For the remainder of the trip, they talked about shopping at secondhand stores (something Kali had actually done, which seemed to amuse Keating no end), and the odds of Anne Bailey being murdered on the same date as Wendy Gilchrist. Keating didn’t find it as strang
e as Kali did, though he did concede that in light of everything, it might be important.

  O’Dell’s house was a weathered pink stucco bungalow in the flatlands of East Oakland. The door was answered by a bird-like woman in a housecoat, who seemed not at all surprised to find the police on her doorstep.

  “We’re looking for Robert O’Dell,” Keating explained.

  “You’ll have to speak up, I can’t hear so well.”

  “Robert O’Dell,” he repeated.

  “Senior or junior?”

  Keating shot Kali a look. “Junior,” she said. Senior was no doubt the woman’s husband, and too old to be the man they wanted.

  “I figured as much.” Her tone was weary. Kali could tell she was a woman who’d been down this path many times before.

  “Are you his mother?” Kali asked.

  “I raised him. He’s my late husband’s boy.”

  “That would be O’Dell senior?”

  The woman nodded. “He passed away almost a year ago, but there’s still bill collectors show up looking for him.”

  “You know where we might find your stepson?” Keating asked.

  “What’s that you said?” She cupped a hand around her ear.

  “O’Dell junior,” Keating repeated. “Where can we find him?”

  She pulled back, her face pinched with suspicion. “Is this some kind of trick?

  “A trick, ma’am?”

  “He hasn’t escaped, has he?”

  Kali frowned. “He’s in prison?” So much for Keating’s running the names through the system. She wondered if he’d even tried.

  “Sent away last August. Got caught with a twelve-year-old girl.” Her voice registered disgust. “Wasn’t the way he was raised, I promise you that.”

  “August,” Keating mumbled, sounding confused. “Where was he arrested?”

  “Outside of Tucson. He was visiting my brother’s family.” She looked them in the eye. “So what’s this about?”

  “Sorry to bother you,” Keating said. “Our information isn’t as up-to-date as it should be.”