Erica laughed as her phone made a sound that told her she had a text. Owens’ phone chimed similar tones a moment later. They had received a message from the agents researching the victims. A link had been found that connected two of them; Victim #1 Craig Rubio, and Victim #2 Michael Heskett. There was also a possible suspect, a man named Frank Vann.
“This sounds promising,” Owens said, as he made a left at the next corner to head toward the FDR Drive.
Chapter Ten
THE VILLAGE OF PORT CHESTER, WEDNESDAY, JULY 10th
Erica and Owens interviewed Frank Vann in his home with his wife present. Vann was fifty-one and looked ten years older, while his wife Gail was forty-nine and appeared several years younger. They had two children, a son, Frank Jr. and a daughter named Tiffany. Both children were grown and out of the house.
On the mantel over the fireplace were photos of the children at various stages. The photos of Tiffany matched the face of the girl posing nude in the pictures discovered inside Victim #2, Michael Heskett’s apartment. The girl looked younger than eighteen in her high school graduation photo. The fact that she appeared to be underaged in the illicit photos didn’t necessarily mean that she was at the time the pictures were taken. They were still a possible motive for Heskett’s murder.
Frank Vann had a gruff manner about him and wore a perpetual scowl. His mood didn’t improve when he realized he was being questioned concerning a homicide investigation.
“I remember Michael Heskett, of course I do, the man molested my daughter.”
“You accused him of child molestation ten years ago, but your daughter, Tiffany, was eighteen at the time.”
“No, she was eighteen when I made the complaint, but Heskett was molesting her when she was still seventeen, I could just never prove it.”
Gail Vann spoke up. “Frank, Tiffany swore that nothing happened between them until after she had turned eighteen, you know that.”
“She was lying!” Vann shouted. “And even if it was true, she was still in high school. What sort of man sleeps with a high school girl?”
“We’re not here to defend the late Mr. Heskett’s judgement,” Owens said. “We are investigating his death. There was also an incident in which you broke Mr. Heskett’s nose. He filed charges against you but later dropped them. Tell us about that?”
“Yeah, I hit him, you’re damn right I did. Do you have a daughter?”
Owens nodded.
“Imagine finding out that your married neighbor was boffing her. How would you react?”
A small smile appeared on Owens’ lips. “I see your point.”
“We’ll leave the subject of Mr. Heskett and move on,” Erica said. “Tell us, how did you get along with Craig Rubio?”
“Who?”
“Craig Rubio, sir, you took his art class when you were in high school in New Jersey.”
“Mr. Rubio? Wow, I haven’t thought about that guy in decades. Somebody killed him too?”
“There’s evidence suggesting that he was murdered by the same person who killed Michael Heskett.”
“And you think that’s me?”
“We’re not accusing you, but so far you’re the only one with a connection with both men.”
“This is about that killer who contacted Ted Marx, isn’t it?” Gail Vann asked. “The one they’re calling The Appointment Killer.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Owens said.
“And you think my husband is the murderer? Frank has a temper, but he’d never kill anyone.”
“We’re not accusing him of anything. At this point we’re just looking at every angle the case offers.”
“We need to know your whereabouts over the past few days, Mr. Vann,” Erica said.
“I was here. I teach history at Colby College in the Bronx, but I’m on sabbatical due to health reasons.”
“It’s his heart,” Gail Vann said. “And this conversation can’t be good for his stress levels.”
“How bad is your condition, Mr. Vann?” Erica asked.
“It’s not so bad that I need surgery, but the doctor suggested I take time off and relax.”
“Just to be clear,” Owens said. “You’re saying you haven’t left the house in more than a week?”
“I went to church on Sunday, but other than that, no. Other than the backyard, I’ve been here.”
“Do you know of anyone who might have had a grudge against Michael Heskett?”
“He had an ex-wife,” Gail said. “She divorced him when she found out about Tiffany.”
“She’ll be looked at, of course, but it’s doubtful that she would also have a connection with any of the other victims.”
“Unlike me, right?” Vann said.
“You have a connection to two of them, yes sir,” Erica said. “And would you know of anyone who had a grudge against Craig Rubio?”
Vann snapped his fingers as he recalled something. “I remember now, Rubio was charged with being a molester back in New Jersey, but I never heard if the charge was proven.”
“He served time for it,” Owens said.
“Maybe you should look at the girl’s father. He might know all three victims.”
“We’ve thought of that, and he was contacted by other agents,” Owens said. “The man has an alibi for Rubio’s murder that was confirmed; he also has no connection to the other victims.”
The anger left Vann and a pleading look entered his eyes as he next spoke. “I swear I didn’t do this. Maybe I hated Heskett for molesting Tiffany, but I wouldn’t kill the man. I wouldn’t kill anybody. I leave it up to God to decide who lives or dies.”
After several more questions the agents left Vann while saying that they would let him know of any developments. Once they were alone inside their car, Owens asked Erica a question.
“What are the butterflies telling you?”
Erica smiled. Owens was referring to the feeling Erica experienced whenever she came across a piece of evidence that was key in unraveling a case. When that happened, it felt to her as if a flock of butterflies were taking flight inside her stomach.
Once, it happened when she was first introduced to the perpetrator of the crimes they were investigating. It later turned out that the man was wearing shoes that had a victim’s blood on them. Her subconscious mind had registered the tiny splotches of DNA before her rational brain even realized they existed. Erica had learned to trust the butterflies, and they had never let her down.
“I felt nothing in there. If I had to guess, I’d say that Mr. Vann isn’t the perp we’re looking for.”
“I tend to agree, but what about the wife?”
“What about her?”
“She didn’t go to the same high school as her husband, but she was from that area; it’s possible that she knew Craig Rubio.”
“That’s true, but until we link one of them to the third vic, I say we place them on the back burner.”
Owens started the car. “Let’s head to the FBI office in New York, get settled in, and look the case over from every angle. Maybe we’ll find something we missed.”
“We’ll stop on the way and get something to eat. The butterflies aren’t taking flight down there, but I am hungry.”
As they drove away, back at the house, Gail Vann watched them with a worried expression darkening her face.
Chapter Eleven
NEW YORK CITY, THURSDAY, JULY 11th
Erica and Owens were in Midtown after having visited Ted Marx’s apartment building to speak with the doorman. The man verified that Miranda had met with Marx in the lobby days earlier. When asked if he’d noticed anyone out of place or keeping an eye on the building, he said that he hadn’t.
They had talked with Jason Warwick again by phone and learned that he had no verifiable alibi for the time that Miranda Marx was attacked. Jason said he had been in the basement of his building doing laundry prior to their meeting in the coffee shop.
If true, he would have been captured by a security camera that had been
installed to cut down on vandalism to the machines. Unfortunately, some vandal had destroyed the camera only a day earlier. It was timing which Owens found suspicious.
When asked if he’d ever met Miranda, Jason said that he had, more or less. Marx had once directed him to drive to Miranda’s brownstone. The townhouse was set on a quiet side street in the village. Marx had been drunk at the time and angry that Miranda had attempted to get a judge to raise her alimony payments, due to inflation. Jason said that Miranda came outside, and the ex-spouses had an argument that attracted the attention of the neighbors.
“When someone threatened to call the police, Mr. Marx got back in the car and told me to drive him home.”
Miranda Marx had made the evening news and was giving interviews to anyone who would talk to her.
One reporter stated that Miranda had looked the killer in the eye and fought him off. Miranda wasn’t shy about revealing the bruises on her arms and she displayed the red dress that her attacker had cut with his knife.
“It could have just as easily been my throat he cut,” Miranda told one interviewer. She was scheduled to appear on a popular late-night talk show that taped its program in New York.
HOWESBURG, PENNSYLVANIA
With one victim being a convicted child molester and a second having been accused of statutory rape, Erica and Owens delved into the third victim’s background. Luis Cantrell had never been arrested for any crime, much less one involving child molestation.
Interviews with his few friends and his coworkers painted a picture of a kind man who was a loner. No child porn had been discovered on his computer by the FBI techs, and none of his neighbors had a bad word to say about him.
Cantrell’s only living family member was a brother named Greg. The man lived in Albany, New York, but he was flying into Pennsylvania to take care of his brother’s burial. A phone conversation had found Greg Cantrell to be close-mouthed about his brother. The man had mentioned the fact that he hadn’t seen or spoken to his only sibling in several years.
Owens wanted to find out what, if anything, had caused a rift between the brothers. Erica agreed, so they went back to Howesburg.
Greg Cantrell looked like his deceased brother, only he was shorter and heavier than Luis Cantrell had been. The younger of the two, and the more successful, Greg Cantrell was a real estate attorney. His manner was stiff, as was his fashion sense. Cantrell was wearing a three-piece suit, clunky-looking black shoes, and carried a hat.
The agents had caught up with him as Cantrell was leaving the funeral home that was handling his brother’s body. He suggested they talk over coffee at a café that was down the block.
After asking general questions about his brother and their upbringing, Owens got to the point.
“Mr. Cantrell, please don’t take offense at my next question, but we need to know if your brother ever showed any inappropriate attention to a minor.”
Greg Cantrell stared at them both before releasing a resigned sigh as he leaned back in the booth.
“How did you find out? Did Anna Lee’s father contact you?”
Erica and Owens were seated together on one side of the booth. Beneath the table, Owens tapped his knee against Erica’s. She returned the gesture, telling him she understood. There was a secret hidden in Luis Cantrell’s past, one involving someone named Anna Lee. If they didn’t tread carefully, Greg Cantrell might shut down and refuse to expose that secret.
“We’ll be interviewing Miss Lee’s father soon,” Erica said. “We learned about her through another source.”
Cantrell’s demeanor brightened. “You haven’t talked to Lee yet? That’s good. It means he hasn’t warped your view of what really happened back then.”
“What’s your version?” Owens said, as he hoped to get Greg Cantrell to expand on the subject and enlighten them.
“I don’t have a version, Agent Owens. What I’m about to tell you is the truth.”
“We’re listening,” Erica said.
Cantrell went to take a sip of his coffee then realized his cup was empty. A gesture to the waiter was acknowledged and the man came over and topped off all three of their cups. Erica, as she often was in such situations, was tempted to order a piece of cake to go with the coffee. When she thought about the extra hour on the treadmill that would earn her, she was able to resist.
Cantrell began speaking, as he was preparing his fresh cup with cream and sugar.
“My brother was not a child molester. I want to make that clear.”
Erica and Owens nodded, and Cantrell continued.
“Luis had always been a loner. He liked to read and spent much of his spare time doing it. He’d date, and even went out with a girl for years once, but they broke up when she met some other guy. Anyway, when Luis was thirty-six, new neighbors moved into his apartment building. This was in New York State, in Kingston, but I guess you already know that. Jung Lee, Anna’s father, he’s some sort of computer tech and he was raising Anna alone because his wife had died the year before. Anna was sixteen.”
Cantrell paused as he shook his head slightly, in a gesture that expressed the disbelief he was still feeling.
“Luis fell in love with that girl, and I mean he fell hard after getting one look at her. He fought against it; hell, he even visited a shrink to talk about it, but in the end, he could not get that girl out of his mind.”
“You say it was love. I’m willing to bet Mr. Lee will define it differently,” Owens said.
“It had to be love,” Cantrell said in a pleading voice. “Luis had never done anything like that before.”
“The girl was only sixteen,” Erica said. “That doesn’t excuse what happened.” She had no idea what had happened, but knew they needed to keep Cantrell talking so that the truth would come out.
“She was sixteen, yes, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t partly to blame. No, Anna loved the attention Luis was giving her, and with her father working long hours and leaving her alone so much…” Cantrell stopped talking and hung his head. “Look at me trying to defend him, and does it even matter anymore? Luis is dead.”
“When did Anna’s father find out about them?” Owens asked.
Cantrell looked up, surprise lighting his features. “It was when she became pregnant, of course, and that’s when our father became involved too.”
Erica remembered reading in the file that Luis Cantrell’s late father had been a lawyer. She took a guess and spoke it out loud.
“It was your father that arranged to have everything swept under the rug.”
Cantrell nodded. “Dad talked her into having the abortion, paid off Lee, and funded a college education for Anna. He also shipped Luis off here to Pennsylvania where he’d gone to college.”
“And what was Anna’s reaction to all this? Was she also coerced by her father to get the abortion?” Erica asked.
“Jung Lee sent Anna to a doctor, a psychiatrist. By the time that woman was through with her, Anna was saying that she’d been used and that she never had any feelings for Luis. And it was true, wasn’t it? Despite what Luis thought, and the fact that Anna was willing, the girl was still only sixteen. Nothing, not even love can change that fact.”
“What was the doctor’s name, do you remember?” Owens asked.
“Her name was McNamara, but I don’t recall her first name. She tried her best to get Jung Lee to press charges against Luis; if Dad hadn’t paid the man off, Luis would have gone to prison and been branded a sexual predator. Luis was no predator; he just fell in love with a girl who was too young for him. I truly believe that if they’d met when Anna was eighteen or nineteen, all would have been well. It wasn’t the fact that she was young that attracted Luis to her, he just loved her, period, end of story.”
When contacted, Jung Lee refused to say anything about the situation and told the agents to talk to his lawyer. He was able to confirm that he was elsewhere when all three murders occurred. Anna Lee was twenty-six, in the navy, and stationed on a ship somew
here in the South Pacific. That placed both father and daughter off the suspects list.
Someone was killing child molesters, and their next victim was out there somewhere, edging ever-closer to death.
Chapter Twelve
NEW YORK CITY, THURSDAY, JULY 11th
Miranda Marx’s fresh fame turned into infamy. Her deceitful plan to gain notoriety was exposed only hours before she was to appear on a national nighttime talk show that had three million viewers.
Miranda was asked to come into the precinct house near the theater to see if she could identify a suspect. Once there, she was charged with filing a false police report and making false statements. In addition, Miranda was informed that she would be required to remunerate the city for the expense of the police response to her claim that she’d been assaulted.
Actress that she was, Miranda appeared shocked and proclaimed her innocence vociferously, that is, until she was shown a signed statement by her accomplice, Drew Corbin.
It was Corbin who had been wearing the ski mask. He decided to turn himself in after he viewed a video that was filmed by a private investigator. The P.I. had been hired by Heidi Dyer to follow the couple. The man had done so, along with an assistant who used a shotgun microphone that had a range of a thousand feet.
They recorded Miranda and Drew rehearsing the “attack” through the open curtains of a second-story window.
Heidi had her investigator confront Drew with the evidence. She had been certain that he would choose to come back to her rather than face the consequences of the video’s release. Heidi had been wrong. Drew went to a bar and thought things over as he downed a beer. Afterward, he went to the police. Not only did he make a deal that would see Miranda take the brunt of the fallout from the hoax, but he also sicced the cops on Heidi for attempting to blackmail him.
The Appointment Killer Page 6
