Cold Justice (Kali O'Brien series Book 5)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  “It’s possible. But there’s nothing about the crimes the killer couldn’t have gotten from news accounts or Jackson’s book. And neither woman had a dog collar around her neck, which is one bit of information that wasn’t in the book. So I’d say the odds favor a copycat.”

  “Besides,” Lou explained, “our guy is adding some twists of own. The lipstick, for example. And the photograph, in Jane Parkhurst’s case.”

  Burnell pressed his palms together, elbows resting on his desk. “Owen Nelson must be sweating bullets. He’s taken a stand in favor of the death penalty. He can’t be happy about talk that the wrong man was executed.”

  “The press is certainly having a field day with it,” Lou agreed.

  “So where are we? Any luck with that witness in Parkhurst’s neighborhood?”

  “The artist did three different composites,” Lou told him. “I showed them around to other neighbors. Didn’t ring a bell with any of them.”

  “How about simply seeing a stranger around her property? We know the killer was there at least once to snap that picture of her.”

  Lou nodded. “Seems she had lots of work people around the place—gardeners, a housecleaning service, a recent roof repair— so it wasn’t unusual to see strangers wandering about. The neighbors more or less stopped noticing.”

  “And the call that came in from the Salvation Army clerk— anything come of that?”

  Keating rubbed his chin. “We’re still waiting to hear back about the partial plate the witness got. Lou and I both talked to her. She didn’t recognize the man from the composite sketches, but she gave us a fairly detailed description.”

  “You want us to try for another composite from her?” Lou asked.

  “Let’s wait and see what comes up on the plate. Most likely what we’ve got is a man buying a gift for his girlfriend.”

  “Stealing a gift.” Lou had trouble imagining a woman who wouldn’t take offense at receiving used clothing as a gift, paid for or not.

  “You need more people on this?” Burnell was stingy as hell when it came to pulling people off other cases, and he’d already given them the go-ahead for patrol backup. Lou took the offer as a measure of the pressure the captain was under.

  Lou and Keating spoke at once. “We’re fine.”

  “You need anything, just ask.” Burnell’s tone signaled the end of the conversation.

  When Lou got back to his desk, there was a message that Diana Davis was waiting in the lobby. He buzzed Martha at the front desk. “Who’s Diana Davis?”

  “Former wife of Dwayne Davis.” Martha didn’t have to elaborate.

  Lou sighed. The day’s bad luck was continuing. He wished Keating hadn’t just stepped out. This wasn’t going to be an easy meeting. “Send her up.”

  Diana Davis stood hesitantly at the doorway, gripping her pocketbook against her chest. She was an attractive woman, on the plump side, with warm brown skin and a head full of those tiny braids that seemed to be so fashionable.

  Lou held out a hand and introduced himself. Her own grip was so weak, it was barely there.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” Lou asked, showing her to a chair.

  “Thank you, but no.” She sat primly on the edge. “I’m wondering about these two women who were murdered. . .” She paused to clear her throat. “There’s been quite a bit in the news.”

  “Yes, there has.” He’d expected outrage; her tentativeness caught him off guard. “What about them?” he asked, though he thought he knew where she was going.

  “I’m interested in . . . well, in whether or not you think it’s the same person who. . . who was responsible for the Bayside Strangler murders.”

  “And by inference, whether your husband was innocent.”

  She gave a very slight nod, as though she were afraid to acknowledge the thought with anything more. “There’s been so much speculation, people saying the Bayside Strangler has returned and all. There was even a cover story in one of those supermarket tabloids. Right there at the checkout counter.”

  Lou scoffed. “The only interest any of them have is selling papers.”

  “But there was all that controversy about the evidence against Dwayne, too. . . .”

  “Controversy trumped up by his attorney.”

  Lou didn’t think he’d sounded especially harsh, but he must have because Diana Davis cringed.

  “Please,” she said. “I didn’t come here to argue. I only meant that I’ve never really been sure . . .” She took a breath, looked him in the eye for the first time. “I have a ten-year-old son, detective. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a boy to learn he’s the son of a murderer?”

  Lou hadn’t thought about that before, and he still wasn’t sure what she expected from him. A ray of hope? Closure and certainty? He couldn’t give her any of it, though it surprised him to discover he wanted to. The woman looked close to tears.

  “Your husband was convicted in a fair trial, Mrs. Davis, and that conviction was upheld on appeal. There is nothing about the current murders that makes me think the verdict was unjust.”

  “But on the news they said the victims got a yellow rose, and they were dressed. . . you know, like before. Mr. Gomez even says—”

  “Gomez?”

  “Dwayne’s attorney during the trial. He says it shows Dwayne didn’t murder those other women.”

  “What it shows is that Gomez is still playing advocate.” And playing on the hopes and fears of a vulnerable woman for the purpose of furthering his own agenda. The guy disgusted Lou. “Most likely what we’ve got here is a copycat.”

  “Most likely?”

  She had him, though she seemed to take no pleasure in it. “I’m not God, Mrs. Davis. Only God and fools are ever certain about anything.”

  Another minimal nod. “Not knowing makes it so hard.”

  Lou felt stirrings of sympathy, but it struck him that she was in a no-win situation. Either Davis had been innocent and unjustly executed, or he’d been guilty of multiple murders. Neither alternative seemed appealing. He wondered which of them offered Diana Davis the most peace.

  “How is your son doing?” he asked finally.

  “Good.” She paused. “I haven’t told him about Dwayne. He asks about his dad and I say he’s dead. I used to tell him that even before Dwayne was executed. But he’s getting to the age where he wants to know more . . . you know how kids are.”

  “Yeah.” His thoughts jumped reflexively to Nikki. She’d peppered him with questions from the time she was old enough to speak. And for every answer, she’d return with a new question. Now, she never asked his opinion about anything. “I wish I could help you, Mrs. Davis.”

  A wan smile. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Why don’t you leave a way for us to get in touch with you in case something comes up.”

  She took the pad of paper he gave her and wrote down a phone number. He recognized the area code as belonging to the Central Valley.

  Diana Davis had barely left his office when Maureen poked her head through the open doorway. “I’ve got some names for you on that plate you wanted run. Of light-colored Econoline vans in the greater Bay Area, there were sixteen matches. If the clerk was wrong about the make, then the number is much higher.”

  Sixteen. They could handle that easily. And the sales clerk had seemed fairly confident about the identification once she’d looked at photos of different vehicles.

  “I cross-checked the registration against the driver’s license information, as well.”

  Lou took the list Maureen handed him. “I appreciate the quick response.”

  “I want the killer off the streets yesterday. This guy gives me the creeps.”

  Lou’s first cut was to eliminate, at least initially, vans registered to women and old people. That brought it down to thirteen. And since the guy they were after was shopping in Oakland, Lou started with cars registered to drivers living in Alameda County. That narrowed the list to three. One of those, Kurt Lancaster, h
ad a record for burglary. He’d been out of prison for three years, but since the other two names came up clean, Lou decided to start with Lancaster.

  Keating came through the door.

  “Don’t take your coat off,” Lou told him. “We’re headed out.”

  “Where to?”

  Lou read off the address. “We got some names on the plate that Salvation Army clerk gave us. Three good fits, one of them an ex-con. Name’s Kurt Lancaster.”

  “Kurt, as in rhymes with Burt?” Keating shook his head. “The things parents do to their kids.”

  “Probably thought it was cute. How’d you make out, by the way?”

  “Zippo. Whoever our killer is, he isn’t bragging to his friends.”

  “Maybe he has a higher class of friends than your band of informants.”

  Keating laughed. “Wouldn’t be hard.”

  <><><>

  Lancaster lived in an apartment near the Emeryville border, just east of San Pablo Avenue. Rundown building, burglar bars, weeds, and chain-link fencing. It wasn’t the sort of neighborhood anyone aspired to live in.

  Lou found a parking space half a block away.

  “Hey, will you look at that?” Keating said as they walked toward the apartment building.

  A white Econoline van—dented. Lou couldn’t believe their luck. “We must be living right,” he said. “It’s not often we score right out the gate.”

  They knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again. Finally Lou heard movement inside. The man who opened the door had a prominent Adam’s apple, just like the salesclerk had described, and a nervous tic in his shoulders. It was looking more and more like they’d found the right guy.

  Lou took the lead. “Mr. Lancaster?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oakland Police. Mind if we come in?”

  Lancaster closed the door an inch or two. “What is it you want?”

  “We want to talk to you.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Might be better if we had this conversation inside,” Keating said. He moved forward, pushing Lancaster aside. Lou wasn’t comfortable with that sort of in-your-face approach, but Keating was tough enough to pull it off.

  “I been reporting to my parole officer regular. I’m in the clear. You go check the record if you don’t believe me.”

  “That’s not why we’re here,” Lou said. He followed Keating inside. The apartment was small and dimly lit. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Lou almost wished they’d stayed on the doorstep. “Where do you work these days?” he asked.

  “B and B Janitorial. I work nights is how come I’m home now. Office buildings mostly.”

  “How long have you worked for them?” Lou looked around the apartment. The furniture had seen better days, but the place was as neat as a pin. The kind of neat that made Lou uncomfortable because it didn’t seem natural.

  “Three years,” Lancaster said. “Ever since I got out of prison. I’m crew supervisor now.”

  “Nice to see a man turn his life around.” Keating’s tone was only slightly sarcastic.

  “What I did before was stupid. I didn’t have my head screwed on straight. But I did my time, and now I want to forget it.”

  Lou studied the man. He fit the salesclerk’s description to a T, but except for the longish hair, he looked nothing like anything Mrs. Greene had given them. That didn’t mean shit, though. “Mr. Lancaster, were you shopping at the Salvation Army store in Oakland yesterday?”

  His expression was suddenly alert. “What of it?”

  “Were you?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Clerk there thinks you took something without paying.”

  “Uh-uh. You can’t prove that.”

  “Shopping for yourself, were you?” Keating asked.

  Lancaster was growing agitated. “What difference does it make?”

  “You wear ladies’ undies, Lancaster?” Keating wandered across the room and into what appeared to be a bedroom. He stopped short and whistled under his breath. “Hey, Lou. Come look at this.”

  Lancaster was at Keating’s side in an instant. “You can’t go in there,” he said indignantly. “That’s my studio. You have no right.”

  Lou peered between the two of them into a room full of life-sized dolls. Mannequins, cloth forms, plastic dummies. All female. “Jesus.”

  One of the cloth dolls appeared to be under construction; the rest were posed around the room in chairs, on the bed, seated on the floor as though at a dormitory slumber party. Some were elaborately dressed, down to shoes and a pocketbook, while others were clad in nighties or underwear. It was an odd and unsettling sight.

  “Stay out of there,” Lancaster sputtered. His right eye twitched uncontrollably.

  Keating ignored Lancaster’s protests and moved into the room.

  “Don’t touch them. They’re mine.” Lancaster’s voice was high and thin, and held a glint of rage.

  Lou readied himself to reach for his gun. Keating had a way of pushing a situation to the point where it sometimes turned ugly. Keating found the light switch and flipped it on. “What is this stuff?”

  “It’s a hobby of mine,” Lancaster explained with the air of righteous indignation.

  “Playing with dolls?”

  “It’s not playing.”

  “What is it then?” Keating snickered. “You don’t have sex with them, do you?” He poked at the doll under construction, lifted the skirt of another, no doubt looking for anatomical details.

  Lancaster went berserk. He grabbed the doll and hugged her to his chest. “Don’t touch her. Get your hands away.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “You’re disgusting. You’ve got no right to be here. Either one of you. I’ve done nothing wrong.” He looked close to tears and more than a little crazed.

  Lou caught his partner’s eye. “Come on, Bryce. We got what we came for.”

  “Not quite.” He grabbed a flimsy black something from a pile of clothing on the dresser. “This look to you like what the clerk said was missing?”

  Hell, it was a negligee, or maybe a slip. Lou couldn’t tell. And the clerk wasn’t certain what the man had taken, if, indeed, he’d taken anything. “Yeah,” Lou agreed. “Looks like it to me.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Lancaster protested. “It was a gift.”

  Keating smirked. “Sure it was. Don’t go anywhere, Lancaster. We’ll be in touch.”

  Outside, Keating asked, “What do you think, Lou?”

  “The guy’s a fruitcake. With extra nuts. Those dolls of his gave me the willies.”

  “They were strange, all right.” Keating started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

  “He’s a perverted son of a bitch, you ask me.” Lou had never worked Vice the way Keating had. Maybe you got used to the kinky stuff, but thank God he’d never had to find out.

  “Could be it’s art.”

  Lou glanced sideways to see if Keating was serious.

  “They weren’t sex toys, Lou.”

  “Well, they weren’t art either. And those stacks of women’s clothing . . . I say we arrest him right now.”

  “For what? Playing with dolls?”

  “Think about it, Bryce. He gets off on dressing those dolls, just like the killer does with his victims.” That was what made the dolls so creepy. Well, they were creepy no matter how you looked at it, but the overlap with the murders was what really did it for Lou.

  “Some guys dress themselves in women’s clothing. None of it’s illegal.”

  “It ought to be.” Lou had taken Nikki to the city once when she was younger, arriving on BART in the middle of the Gay Pride parade. Whole brigades of men dressed as brides, nuns and hookers. Bare-chested women on motorcycles. He’d just about had a heart attack.

  “If anything,” Keating said after a moment’s reflection, “this gives Lancaster a legitimate reason to be buying women’s clothing.”

  “Legitimate. Hah.�
��

  “Try his parole officer, why don’t you?”

  Lou pulled out his cell phone and called. He wound his way through the system for a couple of minutes before finally managing to reach Lancaster’s PO, a man named Gaines.

  “Sure, I know Kurt Lancaster,” Gaines said. He had a soft voice, a faint Texas drawl. “Name like that, how could I forget. He in trouble?”

  “We’re looking at him in connection with a crime we’re working.”

  “Burglary?”

  “Homicide.”

  Gaines drew in a breath. “Homicide? You sure you’ve got the right guy?”

  “No, we’re not sure, that’s why I’m calling.” Seemed obvious to Lou.

  “I gotta tell you, this is a surprise. The parole business, it’s mostly a revolving door. But Lancaster isn’t like that. Jail time was a wake-up call for him. He’s been straight as an arrow since the day he got out.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” As far as Lou was concerned, the guy was anything but straight.

  “Meaning he’s kept his nose clean. Reports in when he’s supposed to, holds down a steady job. Never any hint of trouble. His employer gives him high marks.”

  “What about his personal life? You know anything about that?”

  “I know he had a girlfriend for a while. Seemed like it might be serious, but it never worked out. It didn’t send him back over the line, though. Not as far as I heard anyway.”

  A romance gone south. Did that explain Lancaster’s interest in dressing up dolls? It certainly dovetailed with anger against women. “The girlfriend, you know anything more about that?”

  “Just that Lancaster took it hard. I think he’d kind of pinned his hopes for a new life on her, and when it fell apart, he felt he’d failed.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of years ago. I’d have to check my records if you want anything closer than that.”

  “I’ll let you know if I do. Thanks for the help.” He ended the call and turned to Keating. “Bleeding-heart liberal,” Lou muttered. “He’s like every PO I ever met. Thinks ex-cons walk the road of salvation.”

  “What did he say?” Keating asked.

  “Lancaster seems to be passing parole with highest honors.”