Windy nodded. “It was the strawberry jam in the cupboard that tipped me off. It should have been in the refrigerator. The Waters family, like most people, keep all their jam in the refrigerator. Its being in the cupboard could show whoever put it there was distracted.” She stared at the loaf of bread. “But by keeping them alive, it ups the ante. He dominates even more by making his victim, making Mrs. Waters, serve him breakfast. Watch him eat it.”
Ash took a deep breath and let it out, thinking. “Does that mean he knew them? I mean, how else would he get Mrs. Waters to do that without calling for help?”
“Yes and no. He had insurance. The girls.” Ash looked puzzled so Windy explained, “I think he held Martine on his lap while he ate.”
“Those crumbs.” Ash spoke the word as if it were toxic. “Those crumbs on her back are from him holding her on his lap. That was how he controlled Mrs. Waters—’Do what I say or I’ll hurt your daughter.’ ”
“Or some variation on that theme,” Windy agreed, clearly hating it. “I bet he included that old favorite, ‘If you follow orders you’ll get out of this alive.’ ”
“Murder in the bedroom, breakfast in the kitchen. It’s as if he’s trying to create some kind of ideal domestic scene.”
“But is it one he lived, or one he aspired to?”
“We’ll have to ask him once we have him in custody.” Ash looked around the immaculate kitchen. “So he has breakfast again, and again tries to erase all the traces. Maybe keeping them alive was just his way of becoming more efficient. Not escalating so much as trying to stay tidy.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t seem like part of his script.”
“Script?”
“Script is probably the wrong word. More like a set of rules he has for himself, the things he needs to do to feel fulfilled at the crime. Things beyond or not necessary to the killing. Some profilers call it a signature. He makes no effort at all to hide the killings, where he did them, how. But his rituals, he tries to get rid of the evidence.”
“Rituals? Plural?”
“Breakfast and posing with the bodies. Yes,” she said to Ash’s surprised expression, “he did it here too. He moved the mirror from the Waterses’ bedroom, propped it on some chairs opposite the living room couch, so he could sit there with the girls and Mrs. Waters and look at himself. Then he tried to conceal he had done it.”
“Did he base the Waterses’ postures on a photograph the way he did at the Johnsons’?” Ash asked, not sure he wanted the answer.
Windy’s expression told him he didn’t. She said, “Not exactly,” and walked out of the kitchen to the twins’ room where she pulled an eleven-by-seventeen-inch piece of white paper off the wall and handed it to him.
Ash took the paper, immediately wanting to hand it back. It was a crayon drawing of the Waters family on vacation. You could tell it was vacation because the two girls occupied the left corner, standing next to each other, holding hands, with their free arms looped around the heads of Mickey Mouse and Goofy. The characters had been painstakingly traced and colored inside the lines. Dr. Waters, more free-form, sat in the center of the drawing at a picnic bench, wearing a hat with mouse ears on it, waving. His wife sat next to him, her arm extended around his shoulders, her legs crossed. In the background a big flag proclaimed WELCOME TO DiSNEYLAND, in carefully copied letters. The same hand but with more confidence had written BY MINETTE across the bottom. The poses were the same as those of the corpses, right down to the space left for dad.
“They were going to Disneyland over Christmas,” Windy told Ash conversationally in a voice that only wobbled slightly. “For the twins’ birthdays. They were going to be seven. He sat exactly where Dr. Waters sat.”
Ash matched her tone. “Do you think he took the head because it didn’t fit with his artistic vision? There isn’t really a place for it in the drawing.”
“Could be, or maybe he did something to it he didn’t want us to know about. Although with this killer, I would not be surprised if he took it simply because he felt like it.”
“That would have been hard to get out of here, though. Sort of a big risk for an impulse. It’s one thing to get invited in, another to walk down the street carrying a bleeding head.”
Windy remembered what Ned had told her about the kitchen, the one anomaly there. “Not necessarily. I think he took it out in an Elvis lunch pail. Just like Dr. Waters going off to work.”
Their eyes met, and Ash said what she had been thinking. “He is escalating.”
“Yes,” Windy agreed. In the silence between them the other half of that message hung unspoken: Unless we find him, the next time will be worse.
CHAPTER 19
It was past four in the afternoon when Windy and Ash stepped out of the autopsy room and back into the bright sunlight.
“At least that went pretty fast,” Ash said, sounding as weary as Windy felt.
“No surprises,” Windy agreed.
“Thanks to you. Otherwise I think we all would have been staring gape-mouthed when we realized that the victims had eaten toast and jam only minutes before they were killed.”
“I only knew he had breakfast when they were alive, not that he made them eat too. I think our killer is using food as a mechanism for control, an expression of power, the same way others use sexual violation. Someone with significant food issues.”
“A killer with a weight problem. That’ll narrow it down to most of America.”
“At least the estimated time of death, eleven P.M. to three A.M., helps explain how no one saw him come or go.”
“True,” Ash said. “The street is probably pretty quiet then.”
“Still, he’s got to be the most innocuous looking man in the world. A woman alone with just her kids at night is not likely to open the door to a strange man.”
“Unless he looks official.”
“You’re thinking someone with a badge? A cop?”
“I’m considering it. Or someone pretending to be one. It would be easy for a police or security officer to ask information about someone’s schedule too.”
“The truth is, for all we know at this point, it could be anyone.” Feeling frustrated, Windy looked around the plaza in front of the medical examiner’s building. This was her first time here, her first autopsy on the new job. She noticed that just down the street was a convenience store. A purple van painted with some kind of glitter paint so it gleamed in the sun was parked in front of the store, and she found herself smiling at the thought of how much Cate, whose favorite color was “sparkle” and who asked daily why they had to have such a boring red car, would have liked it.
Purple had been Minette Waters’s favorite color, Windy knew, while green was Martine’s. She had found these things noted carefully on a chart on the corkboard in their bedroom. She stopped smiling. Standing here on this beautiful evening, the kind of evening when those two little girls should have been out playing, it was impossible for her to forget that they ate their sandwiches on the same kind of bread Cate did, that they had the same kind of awkward writing, that they had been about a month older than Cate. That they could have been her friends. Her schoolmates. That it could have been her.
Except Cate didn’t have a dad any more.
During the autopsy, the medical examiner had said that the cut on Claudia’s throat was sloppier than the others, as though the killer had struck twice. She might have been alive for as much as twenty seconds, bleeding, before she lost consciousness. Twenty seconds knowing a madman was in your house with your children, that you could not protect them, that they might suffer too. The twenty longest seconds in the world.
“I bet those shoes could take you anywhere you want to go, but would you like a ride home?” Ash asked, cutting into her thoughts.
“I should go back to the office.”
“There isn’t anything for you to do there right now. The lab said they won’t have any results for hours. Unless you were looking forward to staring at the wallpaper. Your
s is nicer than mine.”
Windy hesitated. Then she pictured Cate, being able to hug Cate even once and said, “A ride home would be great.” Ash was right, she could go to the office later, if the lab found anything important. “Would you mind if I ran over to the convenience store first?”
“I’ll pick you up there.”
By the time Ash pulled up, Windy was standing by the curb waving her hands excitedly. She got into the car and said, “Surveillance cameras.”
“What?”
She pointed at the corners of the building they were in front of. “All convenience stores have surveillance cameras. There’s a store like this at the end of the Waterses’ block. I was thinking—”
“They only have cameras inside, not outside,” Ash interrupted. “We checked. But the pawn shop across the street has cameras that cover the front curb. I had Jonah pick up their tapes this afternoon.”
“Sorry.” Windy was blushing now. “I should let you do your job. I feel like an idiot.”
“Nothing to apologize for.” Not with the way she looked when she blushed, he thought, wondering in the next moment who had taken his brain and replaced it with that of a fourteen-year-old boy.
An even happier fourteen-year-old boy when she said, “This is a really cool car.” She fastened her seat belt and then held out two small envelopes to him. “Let me make it up to you.”
He glanced at them. “Pop Rocks?”
“The only way to get the taste of a crime scene out of your mouth.” Her voice was muffled. Ash saw why when she smiled and her teeth were purple. “I gave you the cherry ones. Those are best but they only had one pack. The other one is grape.”
“Thanks,” Ash said, not convincingly.
“I swear they will help. Try them.”
He poured some of the red crystals into his hand, and tasted them.
“They are better straight from the package. Just so you know. For next time.”
“Sure,” he said, still skeptical, but he dumped a few more into his mouth, straight.
“See?”
“Oh yeah. Much better.”
“Come on. They’re good.”
They were. They were odd and refreshing and vaguely addictive and they made him smile despite himself, despite a monstrous investigation and a harrowing day.
He looked over at Windy in the seat next to his, watching for his reaction with great interest.
Yeah, right, it was the candy.
“Need more evidence,” he said, ingesting the rest of the envelope into his mouth.
“Good thing I got you two packs.”
The drive to her house took less time than he expected. Even more unexpected was her saying, “Do you want to come in?” and him saying, “Yes.”
But Ash got his biggest surprise when the door of the house opened before they reached it and a blur shot toward Windy singing “Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmy!”
He should have guessed at the existence of a child, but he hadn’t, and as he watched Windy hug the blur he was struck by the intense intimacy, by the strength of their bond. He felt awkward, in the way. But he did not want to leave.
“Did you catch any bad guys today, Mommy?” the tan little girl with her mother’s gold hair and someone else’s big blue eyes asked.
“Not today, honey.”
“What about bad girls?”
“None of them either.” Windy looked at Ash and explained, “We believe in equal opportunity criminals.” She put the girl down and said, “Cate, this is Ash Laughton. He works with me. He is a detective.”
“My name is Cate Thomas Kirkland and it is a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Cate said with formality unexpected from someone with baggy overalls, a dinosaur T-shirt, and cat whiskers painted on her face.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” Ash told her, equally formal.
Cate looked up at her mom. “Did I do it right?” When Windy nodded, Cate said, “Is he your friend?”
Ash smiled. “I hope so.”
“Okay. That is good,” Cate told him. “Because Mom doesn’t have any friends besides me and Brandon and Bill. I have fifteen, but one of them is invisible. Bill says that means she doesn’t count but Brandon says it’s okay. She has a mouth on her, that’s what Brandon says, that’s why he calls her Princess Pert. Do you want to meet her? She’s outside playing soccer.”
“Soccer? Do you play?” Ash asked.
“I’m not very good,” Cate confessed. “I can’t kick right.”
“I bet I can help you. I played soccer in college and sometimes I help my friend coach his teams. One of them is called the Lady Luck’s. Have you heard of them?”
“The Lady Lucks,” Cate whispered in a tone of awe.
“Who is that?” Windy asked.
“Oh brother, Mommy. They’re only the best team in my league.” Cate turned from her hideously uncool mom back to Ash. “You coach them?”
Cate was looking at him now with the kind of admiration he thought was reserved for pop stars. “Well, only now and then.” When Cate’s admiration did not dim, Ash stopped feeling in the way. “I’ve learned a lot watching Carter. I’d be happy to help you with your kick if you want.”
“You don’t have—” Windy started to say to Ash, interrupted by her cell phone ringing. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, she realized, watching Cate take his hand and drag him through the house to the backyard.
“Windy? What a relief,” Bill’s voice said when she answered. “Where have you been all day? Why haven’t you returned my calls?”
“I’m so glad it’s you.” Windy followed Ash and Cate inside as she spoke, moving to the kitchen so she could see what they were doing and make sure Ash did not start to look too bored. She could spend endless hours fascinated by Cate, but she was partial. “I haven’t been able to get near a phone before now. It’s been crazy.” She tried to change the subject. “How was your day?” She picked up a sponge and began cleaning invisible dirt from the fronts of the cabinets Brandon had painted two weeks before.
“Oh, it was great. I called my fiancée at her office and was told that she was at a crime scene. Then I called her cell phone and got no answer. For six hours.”
Windy dropped the sponge. “I’m sorry. The killer I was working on this weekend? He struck again. He killed two little girls Cate’s age. Two six-year-old twins. I had to go to the crime scene. I had to work on it.” She realized she was babbling and stopped. “I’m really really sorry.”
There was a long silence.
“Bill? Are you there?”
“I’m here.” He sounded resigned. “So you were in the field. Did it go well?”
“I don’t know. We won’t have the lab results for a while.”
Brandon came in, waved to her, frowned when he saw her face, and headed out to join Ash and Cate, who were laughing in the backyard. She couldn’t blame him. She would have picked them over herself, too.
She turned away from the window as Bill said, “Do you know how worried I have been about you all day? When they told me you were in the field and then I couldn’t get ahold of you? Do you know what I did? I called the damn hospitals.”
“Oh, no.” She put her hand over her eyes and leaned against the sink.
“What am I supposed to think? After the last time—”
“That was eight months ago, in a whole other state, and it was a fluke. I just went back to the crime scene for a minute, the man came out of nowhere. And in the end I was fine.”
“You weren’t fine when they found you. Remember? Your chest was sliced open and you’d lost so much blood that—”
“Oh brother,” she said, not able to hold back her frustration now. Wanting to be outside. Wanting to be anywhere but here, talking about anything but this. Not wanting to remember. “Why do you have to keep bringing that up? I’m fine now. Completely recovered. I learned from it. I won’t work a crime scene alone again. Ever. And nothing happened today. The place was swarming with cops. I was completely safe. Why can�
�t you trust me to know what is safe and what isn’t?”
“Why are you yelling at me for caring about you?”
It was an excellent question, and it stopped her cold. She searched the ceiling for the right words and said, finally, “Because I’m upset at myself for letting you down. Because I feel so bad for having made you worry. Because I’m furious at myself for breaking my promise to you. Because saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t seem adequate and I don’t know what else to say. Take your pick.”
She heard a low rumble, Bill laughing, and relaxed. He said, “I’ll take one of each. And I accept your apology. I just want to take care of you and protect you, and when you disappear like that . . .” His voice got softer. “I just want to know where you are.”
For an instant Windy wanted to ask him why he didn’t strap a surveillance camera on her, but managed to stop herself before the words were out. He was doing this because he loved her, and her reaction was to recoil. At times like these she was amazed at her own incompetence to handle things other people thought were easy, like relationships. No matter how hard she tried, she seemed to do the wrong thing. Except with dead people. Probably because they did not expect anything of her.
But Bill did and he had every right to. She said, “I’m here and I’m safe and I’ve already told you far too much about my day. Now tell me about yours.”
As she listened to Bill describing a meeting he’d had filling in the man who would be replacing him when he took his new position in Vegas, how well it had gone, she stared out the window at the backyard, where Ash was giving Cate some earnest-faced coaching while Brandon stood on the sidelines. She watched Cate kick and miss the goal, kick and miss again. Each time Windy felt her daughter’s frustration and was proud of her undauntability.
Ash’s encouragement didn’t hurt, she knew. He demonstrated the kick and missed the goal. On purpose, Windy thought, and was sure when she saw Cate march over to him, hands on her hips. Cate saying, “You said to do it this way and you did it the other way,” explaining to him what he did wrong. Ash nodding, taking her criticism seriously, saying, “Show me.” Windy watched as Cate positioned the ball, headed toward it, kicked—and made a perfect goal. She did it twice more. Brandon and Ash high-fived each other front and back, and Windy couldn’t stop herself from laughing.
Bad Girl and Loverboy Page 11
