A roll which Gianni Basso, the head forensics technician, called two hours later to say was a possible match to the tape used by the killer, but nothing concrete.
“It is statistically probable that the adhesive on this tape you found and the adhesive we got from the victims’ faces is the same. But this is also one of the three most common brands of packing tape in the country, the second most common here in Vegas.”
“Were there any prints on it?”
“Nothing we’ve been able to raise yet.”
“So this object, the only piece of evidence I’ve been able to come up with, might not have any connection to the crimes at all? Don’t you have any good news for me?”
“We’re still working on it.”
Windy hung up and sank back into the couch, the full weight of the letdown hitting her like a punch. She’d thought she had found something. It had felt right.
She sat forward and dialed Gianni again. She didn’t even let him answer, just said, “Try treating the tape with acetic acid and then fuming them with super glue.”
“Acetic acid? Why?”
“I think there might be prints with less oil secretion that will be harder to pull up.”
“What kind of prints are those?”
“Just do it.”
She paced Eve’s living room until her phone rang, Gianni’s voice saying, “Lady, I want to buy you a drink.”
“You found something? Prints from one of the twin girls?”
There was a pause and then he said, “You know, you could give a person a heart attack the way you read minds. Yes, Minette Waters’s prints are all over the roll. There are two especially good ones, an index finger on the outside and the pointer finger of the other hand on the adhesive part, right where it was cut.”
Windy moved her hands around an imaginary roll of tape. “As though the child had been holding the roll when the last piece was removed?”
“Exactly.” He coughed, then said, “Can I ask you something? How did you know to use acetic acid? And even that the girl’s prints would be on the tape?”
“Children younger than seven usually don’t secrete the sweat and oils that adults do so their prints are harder to detect and less stable, but the acid brings them up. As for knowing the prints would be there, that was just a lucky hunch.” It was the only thing she could think of that would have kept the girls quiet. She imagined the scene, Eve knowing how to talk to little girls because she had a goddaughter, saying: Want to play a fun game? Want to be my special helper? Just hold this while I tape your sister’s mouth shut, and then yours. Could imagine Cate’s reaction to such an offer, wondering what it would be like, if the tape would taste yummy, willing to try anything once.
It made her want to be ill.
Gianni was going on. “If that was a lucky hunch, it must be your lucky day. When we shined the black light, we found a tiny fiber stuck in the edge of the tape adhesive. Possibly from the lining of a purse or jacket pocket.”
“Is it white?”
“Not only is it white, Ms. Thomas, it matches the fiber found on Mrs. Johnson’s body. Your killer’s partial to a silk-polyester blend that is not all that common.”
Until now some part of her had not wanted to believe that she was standing in the home of a killer. The home of a woman she could feel for. But now there was no denying it.
Either Eve Sebastian was the Home Wrecker, or the Home Wrecker just happened to have come to Eve’s house after the Waters murders, happened to accidentally drop a roll of packing tape linked forensically to the Waters house under her couch, and then managed to take off, miraculously depositing no prints, no shoe marks, no other evidence, but not disturbing the signs that Eve lived there. Which was pretty much impossible.
“Sounds like a smoking gun to me,” Windy said to Gianni, then hung up and dialed Ash. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, excited. “Congratulations, Detective Laughton. I’d say we’ve found our killer.”
“I can go one better,” Ash said. “We’ve also found our motive. The Sebastian family lived in the Johnson house from December 1984 to August 1985 and the Waters apartment November 1985 to November 1987. You were right. She’s killing where she grew up.”
“Those dates you said. There’s a three-month gap. That means we’re looking for another residence.”
“At least one.”
CHAPTER 27
Three hours later Jonah walked into Ash’s office and said, “I feel like punching something. I’m getting nowhere with these leasing companies. How about you?”
“Oh yeah,” Ash said. “I learned in two years it will be easy to search deeds on houses bought and sold in the 1980s. If you want to see them today, though, you’ve got to go to Arizona where they’re being put into the database. Part of the mayor’s efficiency program.”
“At least now I know who I want to punch,” Jonah said, and walked heavily out the door.
Ash started dialing the next number on his list of utility companies, hung up halfway through, and dialed a different number from memory. She answered on the second ring.
“Windy? It’s Ash. How is it going?”
“That depends on which you think is worse, dismal or horrible.”
Ash found himself chuckling. “I’ll take dismal. Anything in particular?”
“No. Nothing. That’s just it. I wish we were finding more evidence here.”
“The tape is great. It’s a strong piece.”
“I’m not thinking about court. I guess I’m having trouble reconciling this woman who lives in a gated community, locked away, reading self-help books about how to get married, with a license plate that screams ‘bad girl’ and, even more, with those horrible murders. It’s like part of her, the part that is trying to learn how to meet Mr. Right and please him in bed, craves a traditional life and a family, while another part of her loathes those things enough to brutally murder. Home maker and home wrecker all in one.”
“Having conflicting views on commitment only makes Eve normal. If that were her only problem, I doubt she’d be killing. I wish we knew what had actually happened in her family growing up.”
On the other side of the phone Ash heard a bang. “Are you okay?”
“Hold on.” Her voice was far away, and then she came back. “Sorry, I got so excited I fell off Eve’s couch.”
At that moment, Ash knew that what he felt for Windy Thomas was more than a crush. “Excited about what?”
“You know Ned Blight, on my staff? He took a call at the Sun-Crest seventeen years ago, when he was walking a beat. A domestic violence call against the father but when he got there, the mother and daughter were fighting with one another, the father sitting peacefully on the couch between them. That would be about the time Eve lived there, if she did.”
“You’re thinking it was Eve’s family. That would be quite a coincidence.”
“Not necessarily. We know she lived there and we know she must have experienced some kind of abuse or trauma within her family, her houses, to get her to act out the way she is now. First stalking the houses. Then killing the mothers and children, leaving the father alive. We have no idea what the family dynamic was that turned her into a killer, but what if Ned’s call really was to her family? The two women rivals for the man’s attention or affection? That sounds like someone looking for attention from a father figure. It could be her. And it might tell us something about what happened between those walls.”
“I’ll look into it. Although by the time we get case notes from a case in the eighties out of storage, she could have slaughtered everyone in Vegas. What we need to find is a friend of this woman’s. Someone who can tell us where she lived, what she is like. I sent officers to the restaurant, both plainclothes and in uniform and none of them can get anything. And no more information about the man she’s dating.”
“She has a goddaughter named Nicole, so she must have friends somewhere. Maybe in L.A.”
“I’ve got a call in to my counterpart
in the LAPD, but they have a huge cold case homicide going on and he hasn’t gotten back to me. I’m thinking of flying down there myself tomorrow.”
“Isn’t the Waterses’ memorial service tomorrow?”
“Yes, in the morning. I propose to go to L.A. in the afternoon. Hey, speaking of proposals, I hear you got a nice one today. What is his name? Ernie?”
“Very subtle. That news only took three hours to get all the way from here to you.”
“There are perks to being the boss. Seriously, thanks for taking the time to talk to the neighbors. That’s outside the scope of criminalistics.”
“But not of the task force. And I feel—I feel like I need to get to know Eve better.”
“Are you done at her house?”
“I think I’ll send my team home but stay a little longer. Do a final walk-through.”
“Keep an officer outside the door. Just in case Eve decides to come home.”
“Yes, sir,” Windy said.
Ash realized what an asshole he must sound like, trying to protect her. “It is standard procedure.”
“I know. I was planning to. What are you going to do?”
“Damned if I know. I’ve got about three dozen patrols out looking for Eve Sebastian or a green car with the license plate BAD GRL, and ten people looking through records to come up with some creative way to figure out where else she’s lived.”
“Whatever you do,” Windy said, “keep an officer outside your door.”
“Thanks. Give my best to Ernie.”
“That was low,” Windy said, but Ash had already hung up.
CHAPTER 28
Windy sent the rest of her team away and sat on the couch, taking in the space. She felt like she was in the eye of the storm. Outside there was a massive manhunt—woman hunt—going on. But in here, in Eve’s apartment, it was completely peaceful.
What Eve was doing seemed like more than just putting her past behind her, making a fresh start. The place felt to Windy like the home of a woman running away from something. Although Eve had been there five months, everything about the townhouse felt temporary—the milk in the refrigerator was a half pint, the plates were paper, even the moisturizer, shampoo, and conditioner were only travel size. As if Eve were afraid to make too long a commitment to anything. Afraid to let herself believe she was staying.
Eve was a contradiction, her books suggesting she was attracted to permanence even as she seemed to avoid it. But sometimes, Windy thought, What is missing says more than what is present. Sometimes what you avoid is as telling as what you go after.
The only thing that suggested any kind of commitment was the carton of Marlboro cigarettes on the floor of Eve’s closet. Apparently she had been comfortable with her long-term relationship with those. There was an open pack on the coffee table in front of Windy and she slid one out of the pack now and looked at it.
She had never been a smoker. She had only tried once, on a rainy day in Paris, during her junior year abroad, when a thunderstorm came out of nowhere and she found herself taking shelter in a doorway next to a sopping wet man who, when he turned his eyes on her, made her weak in the knees. Her bag bumped him and she said, “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur” and he said, “Non, mademoiselle, pardonnez-moi,” and offered her a cigarette and she accepted, because it seemed French, to stand in a doorway with a handsome stranger in a downpour, smoking.
Only she had started to choke, and then discovered the stranger was American, spending his junior year in Paris, just like her. And he had said, I don’t really smoke and she had said me either and then he said I don’t really mind the rain and again she’d said me either and he had suggested, since they were so compatible, that they have a picnic in the Palais Royale and she’d accepted and it was only when he opened the bottle of champagne he’d bought from a café under the arcade, both of them soaking wet now, that he introduced himself.
Evan Kirkland. Evan Monroe Kirkland III, he corrected, telling her about his dad and his grandfather, Evan Monroe numbers one and two, and how his relatives all thought he was crazy but that was okay with him. Staring at her, disbelieving, when she swore, scout’s honor, that her middle name really was “America.”
She could still see him as he was on that day, a handsome, carefree boy, gray-green thunder clouds behind him, sitting on a bench in the Palais Royale gardens eating chocolate truffles out of a brown box with FAUCHON stamped in gold on the top, and toasting her with a bottle of pink champagne.
Him asking, “What do you want to do most in your life?”
And her, caught off guard, saying, “What do I want to do most? I don’t know. Be happy, I guess. What about you?”
The answer for him was easy. “Everything.”
There were no cloudbursts like that in Las Vegas. No chance meetings. No one to catch you by surprise. No Fauchon truffles. All good reasons to move there.
Sometimes what you avoid is as telling as what you go after.
Windy looked for an ashtray, couldn’t find one, and crushed the unlit cigarette vehemently in her hand.
Yes, Eve Sebastian was running from something. But tonight she was too tired to figure out what.
Carrying the crumpled cigarette into the kitchen, she put it down the garbage disposal. She reached to flip the disposal on by force of habit, but stopped herself. Never use a sink, flush a toilet, wash a drain at a crime scene without emptying it first. She couldn’t remember checking the In-Sink-Erator so she did it now, sticking her fingers in, making a face, coming out with a handful of moist cigarette. And two slightly beat-up bands of metal. Two rings, one of them platinum, the other one showing spots of dull metal through the yellow gold. Gold plated. And quite small.
Just Mrs. Waters’s size.
Windy’s heart began to pound. She knew what she had but she made herself check the engraving in each ring just to be sure, seeing the Johnsons’ initials in the platinum band, the words “For My Beloved Claudia” in the gold-plated one.
Had Eve put the rings down the disposal simply to hide them? Or was she making a statement about marriage and relationships?
And, more important, were there any others in there?
Windy reached in again, her stomach flip-flopping as she felt in all the corners, finally bringing her hand out wet but empty. There were only the two rings. The Home Wrecker had only killed twice.
She could have done without the voice in her head that said: So far.
CHAPTER 29
Eve spent the day doing everything she could to erase the words “Home Wrecker” from her mind but, like a torturer, it kept circling back. Making her relive that day, seventeen years earlier, when she had heard them for the first time.
After her mother had walked in on her and Victor in her prissy bedroom, they had started meeting at a dive on the Strip, the Yucca Motel. And he started introducing her to his friends. That was okay with her, they all had money. She’d do anything that could make her daddy smile at her.
She told her parents she had a regular baby-sitting job, five days a week after school, so they never asked where she was. Never suspected she had a regular room at the Yucca, knew all the guys who worked the front desk by name. The place seemed cozy to her, a home away from home. She was just getting used to it when one of Victor’s “friends” turned out to be an undercover cop. It had never occurred to Eve, not really, that what she was doing was illegal. It was just easy money.
When the two policemen brought her into the station, the first person she saw was Victor Early. He was standing with a stout woman, his wife. Crying. Begging for her forgiveness. As Eve was led past them, a police officer on either side of her, the woman’s eyes held hers, boring into her. She said, “You filthy home wrecker, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” It was the first time anyone ever called her that. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire.
They led her to a holding cell and she had begged the police not to call her parents. Yes, she was only seventeen but please, she would find a way to make
bail. She would do anything. Please. The same cop who had trapped her just smiled and shook his head. Sorry, little lady. Got to call your parents. It’s the law.
Had the law been on his mind when he had fucked her before arresting her? He’d still had his shirt off when he snapped the cuffs on her wrists.
Her mother was the one who came to the station to get her. It was the only time in Eve’s life she’d ever been glad to see her and the car ride home was the longest the two of them had spent alone together in years. Neither of them spoke until they were at the front door of their apartment at the Sun-Crest. Then Eve said, “Please don’t tell Daddy.”
And her mother said, “Go to your goddamned room.”
An hour later her father came in. He looked older than she remembered from that morning. His face was carved with disgust.
His shoulders slumped, his hands hung at his sides. He said, “How could you?”
“I just wanted you to be happy.”
Now his hands came up. “By whoring yourself? You thought that would make me happy?”
“No, but the money—”
He reached into his pocket, opened his wallet, and threw all the money inside at her. “I didn’t need money like this. This money is filthy. Disgusting. Take your filthy money and leave.”
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t mind doing it,” she said, to reassure him.
Horror covered the disgust on his face. “You liked it? You liked being a whore? What happened to my good little girl? My precious Eve?”
“She’s still right here, Daddy.” She reached for him and he recoiled.
“Don’t ever call me that again. I am not your father. You are nothing to me. You have no family now.”
Ten minutes later her mother entered without knocking. “There is a bus to Los Angeles leaving in an hour. I will drive you to the station. Your aunt will pick you up. Pack up anything you want because you are never coming back.”
Bad Girl and Loverboy Page 16
