Hamill’s eyes flickered fierce. “We know.”
“Robbie, we don’t even know what was in their bodies. They drowned.”
“Maybe Perry is such a hot lover that they have sex, walk out into the water, fall down and die.”
“Not funny. And implausible if Perry is in class.” She looked away from the table.
“Hey, it’s a liberal college.”
“Knock it off.”
“And guess what? Perry Brady’s Friday class is Social Psychology.”
Dana shot a look back at her partner. Social Psychology — a once-a-week class, on Friday. It was coming together. “Wayland Kimball again.”
Hamill held up his phone. “He keeps popping up. I say we have another look at the gay professor. A good one.”
“But Kimball’s an adjunct. He’s teaching his own upper-level class and performing studies on the side? Studies where the kids think they’re being tested for ESP but really he’s gauging performance anxiety. That’s ambitious.”
“Maybe we should find out if he resented the pretty girls in his study because they got better-looking guys than he did and decided to poison them and dump them in nearby bodies of water. You know? Or maybe he and Perry decide to team up, Perry sleeps with them and then Kimball kills them because he’s sexually frustrated. Then the two of them cover for each other. Easy-peasy.” Hamill wiped his mouth with a napkin and burped again.
“Maybe,” said Dana. “I want to check Perry Brady’s alibi against Kimball. If Kimball says he wasn’t in class, Trooper Maize can walk Brady right into a cell.”
* * *
Wayland Kimball lived in a townhouse about a fifteen minute drive from the campus. Hamill was driving now, and he flipped the wipers on to sluice the wet snow from the windshield.
Dana was holding a list of all four girls’ class schedules, plus Perry Brady’s, picked up from the student offices after their hasty brunch.
They found Wayland Kimball home alone watching the news on his shiny MacBook and sipping coffee. He let the detectives in with a wan smile and led them into the townhouse. The place was immaculate. A corner living room with matching gray loveseats and a glass table on a Persian rug. The kitchen was filled with chrome appliances. There were four stools around the counter. On the walls were framed nudes. But no half-human half-bull creatures.
Wayland invited the detectives to sit at the counter.
Dana looked beyond the room, at a hallway that disappeared into the back. There was a wrought-iron spiral staircase twisting up to another floor. He caught her casing the place as she lowered herself onto a stool.
“Bathroom and bedroom and den back there,” he said. Then he pointed up. “Another bedroom and bathroom upstairs.”
“Nice digs,” Hamill said.
“Can I get you guys some coffee?”
“Is that coffee or potpourri? I smell blueberry. You got anything that’ll kick me in the chest?” Hamill replied.
“No thanks,” Dana said, cutting a look at her partner.
Wayland smiled politely and went for the coffee. The second he had his back turned, Hamill pretended to stroke an imaginary beard, squinting with mock wisdom. Wayland faced them again as Hamill turned on an eats-his-veggies-loves-his-mom smile for their host.
The young professor slid the cup across the counter. “Try that,” he said. He was in bare feet, pajama bottoms, and a tank top. Well-muscled, thirty years old. He seemed to be sizing up the detectives, just as Dana was him.
“You guys get to wear suits, huh?” Wayland took a sip of coffee. The words The Matrix Is All Around You encircled the mug.
“We do,” Dana said.
“I wondered about that. I thought that was maybe just for TV. That in real life they made detectives wear uniforms. I mean, technically, you guys don’t outrank the cops in your department, right?”
“Some departments require uniforms. I think Flint makes the detectives wear them.”
“Flint, Michigan? Interesting.” He set down his mug. “So is that a real badge?”
“Excuse me?”
He pointed to Dana’s badge, hanging on a chain around her neck. “I read in the Times that a lot of NYPD officers are using dupe shields. There’s a big fine if they lose their badge or it gets stolen. So they wear fakes.”
“This is the real thing.” She could sense her partner beside her, enjoying the hell out of this. Dana thought Wayland was giving it back to Hamill, and Hamill was just too cocky to notice. She held her badge aloft, playing along. “A few ounces of nickel alloy. Insignia, shield number, it’s the real thing.”
Wayland took another sip. Looked closely at the badge. “Cool,” he said. “So? How’s the coffee?”
Hamill shrugged. “You’re an adjunct professor? What’s that mean? No tenure, right?”
Wayland’s eyes glinted. He knew it was a barb. “Correct.”
“Doesn’t pay much either, from what I’ve heard. Yet you’ve got such a nice place.”
“I have a trust fund.”
“Oh,” Hamill said, fluttering his eyelids. He turned to Dana. “He’s got a trust fund.”
Dana pulled the papers from her file and set them on the counter. “These two girls,” she said, “both were in your class, and both were in your study.”
Wayland’s look lingered on Hamill for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “They were.”
“We found Holly Arbruster last night. After we spoke with you.”
He jerked his head back, as if something had tried to bite him. “You’re kidding.”
“Unfortunately, not.”
“We just met with her parents at the morgue,” Hamill chimed in.
“Also in your Friday social psych class are Maggie Lange and Perry Brady,” Dana went on.
“Yeah . . . ?” Wayland was backing away, bare feet swishing across the tile.
“Of the kids in your class, where you obviously recruited from for this study — this sociological, faux-psychic experiment — we’ve got both deceased girls, plus Lange, Stender, and Brady.”
Wayland nodded, like one of those giant balloons in a parade, head lolling. His toughness, holding his own against two pushy detectives, was ebbing. “Perry Brady,” she said. “Perry was the only boy who signed up. Him and the four girls . . .”
“Not exactly a random sample of the population,” Hamill commented.
Wayland’s eyes flicked over to the detective, and he bristled slightly. “Well, we’re not exactly a diverse region. We took volunteers from the class.”
“Extra credit offered?”
“No.”
“So what’s the incentive?”
“I guess to learn.”
Hamill looked unconvinced. “Anyway, I was talking about gender. Four girls, one guy.”
“Well, I can’t control who wants to do it.” Wayland resumed his blank stare. Dana detected fear. “Jesus,” Wayland said after a moment. “Holly is dead?”
“Yes,” Dana said. “Can you confirm that Perry Brady was in class on Friday, yesterday, and the Friday before?”
“I can check, but I’m pretty sure he was. Definitely yesterday.”
Then Brady’s story might stick, Dana thought. Unless Kimball was covering for him. “And you were teaching the class. How does that work?”
“Because Professor Sanders wants to see me get a full-time position here, tenure-track. I’ve handled the Friday class for two years now as an adjunct. It’s not easy. I have a higher teaching load, lower compensation, as your partner pointed out, and very little influence within the institution. No benefits, and only a fraction of the academic freedom.” It sounded like a recital.
“But you were green-lighted to do this study,” Hamill said. “Right?”
Wayland fell silent, and the detectives paused, giving him some breathing room. Then Dana said, carefully, “Wayland, we want to check you off our list. Want to clear your name and move on, and catch the person who did this. Okay? Right now, we’ve got two dead girls, both of whom attended you
r class, both of whom were in a study you put together. Aside from being twenty-year-olds, good students, Caucasian, which are pretty general similarities, you’re what’s tying them together.”
“That and they both died the time of day you have your class,” Hamill added.
“Which gives you an alibi,” Dana said, following Hamill’s tangent. Make Wayland think he was off the hook, and let him slip up. “But makes their relationship to your class and your study all the more interesting. You understand?”
Wayland nodded.
“So I want you to think, Mr Kimball, think about who might want to do this. Did anyone else assist you in your study? Where did you meet? What time? What were you doing, exactly?”
Wayland turned his head to the side and took a deep breath.
Dana gave Hamill a quick look and then faced Wayland again. “You said Professor Sanders. Did he work on the study? Where is he now? Can we talk to him?”
Wayland looked grim. He had trouble meeting Dana’s gaze.
“She. She’s traveling,” Wayland said. “She’s on sabbatical.”
“When did the sabbatical start?” Dana asked.
“We did the study just prior to the beginning of the semester. The students who’d enrolled in my class got an email invite. It was sort of a jumping-off point; we would interpret the results in class, once I’d revealed the truth. Until then, no one knew what the study was really about; to them it was just a test for possible ESP.” At last he turned and looked at Dana. “Professor Sanders is gone for the semester.”
“The whole semester?”
Wayland nodded.
“And did she assist in the study?”
“No.”
Dana looked at Hamill, who took a loud slurp of coffee.
Wayland watched Hamill with either fear or resentment. “Professor Sanders was nowhere around during the times of the girls’ deaths. She was probably in India. Namibia now.”
“And you’re fairly certain Perry Brady was in the last two classes. Would you swear to that?” Hamill narrowed his eyes.
“I’ll tell you yes, right now. Anything more than that, I think I’d prefer to let my lawyer handle. That is, if you’re going to arrest me and read me my rights. Otherwise, you can go now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN / Some Things Aren’t Myth
The press conference was at noon. Lieutenant Mandrake stood at the podium. Flanking him were Captain Bouchard and District Attorney Beth Locke. Dana stood towards the back, looking over the eager journalists. Hamill was somewhere nearby, as were the FBI agent, Yarrow, and the U.S. Attorney.
The cameras rolled and the microphones absorbed as the lieutenant offered the usual platitudes. Dana listened to Doing All That We Can, Following Good Leads, and Urging You to Report Any Suspicious Activity; law enforcement’s greatest hits. Mandrake shared the fact that both girls were Plattsburgh students, found within a few hours of each other, yet time of death a week apart. Dana waited for the inevitable question.
“Lieutenant, are you looking for a serial killer?”
He paused, and the room was quiet. Mandrake glanced at FBI Agent Yarrow, who had probably prepped him for the question.
“We’re not, at this time, making that judgment.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“Again, as this is an ongoing investigation, I’ll decline to answer that.”
The journalists erupted, battering Mandrake with fresh questions. Mandrake held up his hands and started to speak, but Yarrow tapped him on the shoulder. The two bent their heads together. Mandrake nodded and stepped back, allowing Yarrow to take the podium.
“Good afternoon. I am Jodi Yarrow, with the FBI. Speaking on behalf of Lieutenant Mandrake, Captain Bouchard, and the state police on the matter of a potential serial killing, I’d like to say a couple things.” The press was hushed. “First, the general threshold for serial killing is that three or more people have been murdered. At this time, there are only two victims.”
A woman in a pantsuit thrust her microphone forward. “What about a spree killer?” Dana thought the media was just dying for something to call this, a way to spin it. You needed to fit it into a headline, to reduce it to 140 characters for Twitter. “Doesn’t this meet that criterion?” the reporter urged. “They were only a week apart, and that doesn’t seem to constitute much of a ‘cooling-down’ period. What happens if you find another body?”
Yarrow nodded his head, his voice smooth and Southern-gentleman calm. “A spree killing is possible. As is what we could consider a more hybrid category of a spree-serial killer.” It was as if he’d thrown them a piece of meat; Dana saw notes being frantically scribbled and could hear the camera motors whirring. “But I just want to take a moment to address some myths about serial killers. Whether or not this case is officially categorized as such, there are some fallacies about the nature of violent crimes like this: that serial killers are dysfunctional loners. That serial killers are all white males, sexually motivated, evil geniuses who cannot stop and want to be caught. Or itinerants cruising the interstate in dented white vans. This is Hollywood fantasy. It is not reality. Nor, for that matter, is the reality of the ace FBI agent who uses his own genius to nab the bad guy in the end.”
A few reporters chuckled. Yarrow really had the hook set. This was smart, Dana thought with a twinge of envy. He was giving them good copy.
“The realities are quite different. Most serial killers are confined to a geographic area, a ‘comfort zone’ where they do their killing. They’re typically of average intelligence, average looking. Maybe a bit marginalized, but who isn’t. And they get caught because they get careless. And not all of them want to get caught, and not all of them do. Some of them get old and tired and take their secrets to their graves. But, we don’t want that. We don’t, and that’s why I decided to just get this all out in the open. You’re a community here, and you can help. You can report suspicious activity to your local law enforcement. You can call the hotline number that the state police are going to provide in a moment. You can talk to your kids, talk to your daughters; find out who is in their lives and what is going on with them.” He paused for effect, and Dana could almost hear the sound of the agent’s words sinking in. “Thank you.”
As he stepped away, Dana watched the stunned reactions. She wondered if the press knew they’d just been given a whitewashed bunch of nothing.
* * *
Dana caught up with Yarrow in the hallway.
“How long you been doing this?”
Yarrow turned and gave Dana a calculating look.
“I was at the National Committee on Violent Crimes’ Serial Murder Symposium in Santa Fe ten years ago, if you’re asking for qualifications or time served. My father was in the Bureau for twenty-nine years, if you want pedigree.”
Dana shook her head and stuck out her hand. “Not questioning your credentials. Just intrigued. Dana Gates.”
“I know who you are, Detective.” Yarrow shook Dana’s hand. He looked older up-close, with gray temples and wrinkles around his eyes. He smelled of coffee and a hint of cologne.
“Right,” Dana said. “Of course. I just figured we hadn’t properly been introduced . . .”
“That’s not what I meant.”
People were filing out of the conference room, parting around the two of them like a river around rocks. Outside, the day was sunny and cold, the light reflecting off the snow made Dana squint.
“‘Dana and David,’” Yarrow said. “I had just finished my MA. I remember; it was everywhere for a while. He was your fraternal twin.”
Dana felt like she had been punched. Since becoming a cop over a decade ago, no one had ever directly referenced Dana’s past. Hamill would sometimes allude to it, but that was as far as he went. Dana thought people shouldn’t always tiptoe around sensitive issues, that sometimes just seemed to make them worse, but she was used to it. Starting from when she was fourteen.
“That’s right,” she said to Yarrow, feeling th
e blood rise in her cheeks. “We made the news.”
“And you found him in the water. Just like these two young women. Is it affecting you?”
Dana didn’t know how to react. Hamill had already referenced this, but with Hamill, it was different. Hamill actually cared. Yarrow was colder than that; he was blindsiding Dana with an evaluation of her fitness to conduct the case.
“Of course it’s brought back some memories, some feelings,” she conceded. She hadn’t said as much to Hamill, but Yarrow seemed to pull it out of her.
“Do you relate the two in any way?”
The agent was really pouncing. Apparently, he was a man who wasted no time. Dana saw Hamill further down the hallway. He was drinking a soda and made no attempt to hide that he was staring at the two of them, and didn’t seem to like what he was seeing. Yarrow was zeroed in on Dana, talking in his low, lilting voice that seemed to crawl inside her head.
“Same region, same type of death circumstances. They never officially ruled your brother’s death a suicide.”
“It’s a cold case,” Dana said quietly.
“Now you must be wondering,” said Yarrow, and raised a thin gray eyebrow. “With so many similar features. Of course, the gender is different. And you don’t think these are suicides, do you? Not in your bones. Still, you probably can’t help but connect them, can you? It’s hard not to make this about you, a little bit. About him.”
She could feel her muscles tightening. She remembered the day David was pulled from the pond, the day the police had swarmed over her family’s home. No one had ever thought that David’s death was an accident, not really. But no one had solid evidence of a murder, either. Dana remembered how she’d felt, like she’d lost all her softness then. “I don’t like the way you’re talking to me,” she heard herself say to Yarrow.
Yarrow dipped his head back. “Oh? I’m sorry, Detective. How am I supposed to talk to you?”
Dana didn’t know whether to walk away or to lay into this guy. She hadn’t expected this. If anything, she’d been impressed, if somewhat surprised, by the unorthodox way Yarrow had treated the press conference. He obviously had Lieutenant Mandrake’s ear, and the captain’s, too.
DARK KILLS a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 9
