Closer Than She Knows

by Kelly Irvin

  “Daddy, I got all my spelling words right.” The oldest one ran to Chase and threw her arms around him. The cat meowed her distaste, jumped from his lap, and trotted away. “You said we could have ice cream if I did.”

  Chase kissed her golden-brown hair. “Good job, Serenity. We’ll get pizza and have ice cream for dessert.”

  “I want ice cream now.”

  “Have a snack.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “They’re people from my work.”

  Serenity looked Teagan over. She must’ve passed inspection, because the girl approached and picked up a Barbie dressed in an elaborate ball gown. “Do you like Barbie’s dress?”

  “I do. It’s beautiful. Is she going to a dance?”

  “She is. Ken’s taking her.”

  Such sweetness. “I always liked G.I. Joe for Barbie. He’s not as pretty as Ken.”

  Serenity grinned. “I like soldiers, but G.I. Joe doesn’t have a tux.”

  “We need to fix that.”

  “Serenity, go to the kitchen.” His voice strained, Chase pointed toward the door. “Have your snack and start on your homework. I’ll be out in a little bit to check it.”

  “Are you staying for supper?” Serenity removed her pink-and-purple backpack. She unzipped it and placed Barbie and Ken at the top, arms out, so they could ride along without being lost in the backpack’s contents. “We’re having pizza and ice cream.”

  “Serenity, go!”

  “We can’t.” Teagan let her regret at not being able to spend more time with this enchanting little girl show on her face. “Congrats on the spelling test.”

  “Thank you.” She started for the kitchen. At the door she looked back. “You’re pretty. Like my mom.”

  She disappeared through the door, but the words echoed in Teagan’s head, making it hard to think. Little girls should have mommies who played dollhouse with them and washed their hair for them and taught them about boys. Serenity’s mother hadn’t died. She abandoned her child.

  Who did that? All little girls needed mommies. Playing Barbies and eating ice cream after a spelling test should be considered an honor and a privilege.

  The woman who’d shepherded the children into the house shifted until she stood next to Chase’s chair. She cleared her throat. Chase made the introductions. The woman was his housemate Joanna Dean, who had moved in when his mom moved out.

  “The house is paid for, but it’s tough raising my kids and paying all the bills on what I make. Mom was watching the kids for me when I worked, which saved me a bunch of money.”

  “Yeah and I have a deadbeat husband, so it helps to share costs. Two of those screaming meanies that raced through here were mine.” Joanna tossed her long braids of silky brown hair over her shoulders. She wore skinny jeans and a tank top that matched her charcoal eyes. “Chase watches my kids when he can. We met at a park play day and hit it off. So did our kids.”

  The woman had volunteered more information than needed. But then, talking to cops made most people nervous. They either babbled or they clammed up. Joanna was a talker.

  Teagan picked up another Barbie doll. This one had long black hair and dark eyes. She wore an evening gown with sparkly silver sequins and spiked silver shoes. “Your daughter is beautiful. And smart.”

  “She loves to play with dolls.” Chase’s faint smile came and went. “Cullen just likes to throw them around like missiles and hide them from her. Anything to be a thorn in her behind. I spend all my time picking this stuff up.”

  Parenthood was hard. Doing it alone was even harder. How did Chase manage under the crushing load of suspicion and uncertainty? He was blessed to have found Joanna. Or had she been the real reason his wife left? If she was more than a friend, she’d taken over the wife spot quickly. Like Jazz had for Dad. Shame whipped through Teagan. An exercise in what-ifs. Is that what this is, God? I get it.

  She grew up with a law-and-order man who loved his family and loved his job as a cop, mostly in that order. She’d resented his choice of profession, the time it took away from her after her mother died. Lying in bed at night, listening to the sirens, she pulled the blankets over her head. She prayed that it wasn’t her dad out there getting blown away by a meth-crazed punk or a felon wanted on a warrant who refused to give up without a fight.

  Chase Slocum had a dad with a safe job. He traveled a great deal, but when he was home, he gave them his undivided, loving attention. “I’m sorry for your pain, for what you’ve lost. I truly am. I can’t even begin to imagine what this is like for you.”

  “No, you can’t.” His jaw worked. Then he took a long breath. “Thank you, but I don’t need your pity. He’ll appeal. He’ll be exonerated. Y’all really need to go. The kids will want their snacks, and they have homework to do.”

  And they didn’t need to know Grandpa might be a serial killer.

  Dad stood and held out a business card. “If you think of anything else—”

  “I know, give you a call. I’ve heard the spiel.” Chase took the card and stuck it in his jeans pocket. “You think my father is a killer. It’s up to you to prove it. Don’t expect me to do it for you.”

  “Those women were loved by mothers and fathers, boyfriends, brothers and sisters. They were sadistically tortured, killed, and dumped like trash in places where the killer thought they might never be found.” Teagan remained planted on the sofa. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Sure, it bothers me. I have a daughter.” Chase stuck his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the kitchen. “But I know that the man who taught me to tie my shoes, my division tables, how to improve my jump shot and perfect my bunt, didn’t kill those women. He’s kind and decent and a good grandpa to those kids. He wouldn’t do that to me. Or to them.”

  “He’s a good man.” Joanna edged closer to Chase’s chair. She put a hand on its back. “He raised Chase. He can’t be bad.”

  “Did you know him personally?”

  “No, no, but like I said, he’s a good father and provider. That’s more than I can say for my ex.”

  Chase scowled at her. “You don’t have to defend him or me to them. They don’t know us. They can’t know. They’ll believe what they want to believe. They decided Dad did it and they never looked for anyone else.”

  “The evidence was overwhelming and certainly not circumstantial.” Dad’s tone was gentle. “But I can understand why you feel as you do. Believe me, I never lose sight of the fact that there are always more victims than the one who died. But my duty as a police officer—before I retired—was to the one who ended up in the morgue. To that person’s family.”

  “Save the speech. I’ve told myself all that a thousand times.” Chase stood. “You need to go.”

  Joanna stepped forward. They stood side by side, a united front.

  Dad didn’t move. “Mr. Slocum, where’s your wife?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but she left after Dad was convicted. She didn’t walk, she ran for the hills.”

  “And left her kids?”

  “I figure she looked at me and wondered if the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at Teagan’s dad. “She probably is afraid her kids are demon seed. She talks to them on the phone and she writes to them, but she hasn’t been back since the jury delivered a guilty verdict.”

  “My daughter and I’ll get out of your way.” He drilled Teagan with the O’Rourke stare more commonly associated with his first wife. “Thank you for your time. I know it’s not an easy thing to contemplate, but for your sake and the sake of those kids, I hope you’ll be careful if he does decide to come here.”

  “Just get out.” Chase marched across the grubby beige carpet to the door, Joanna right behind him. “If you come around here again, I’ll sic my lawyer on you.”

  At the car Teagan paused to look back. A forlorn basketball hoop with no netting graced the top of the driveway. A shabby white Plymouth van
had joined the Jeep. Had Slocum played twenty-one with his kids on long summer nights?

  “What?”

  She turned. Her dad leaned both arms on the Charger’s roof. She shook her head. “Did you get a weird vibe between those two?”

  “I wondered if you’d picked up on it.” Dad’s forehead and nose wrinkled. He stared at the house behind him. “Very connected.”

  “Not like a housemate?”

  “Like comrades in arms. Joanna did act like she knew Leo, but it could just be from osmosis. I imagine Chase has hashed and rehashed the situation a million times since meeting Joanna. She came into his life and filled a hole. Such perfect timing.”

  “It’s something to chew on.” Truth be told, the intensity of the relationship didn’t bother Teagan as much as the other thoughts niggling at her. “What if Slocum is telling the truth? What if we’re focused on his father when the real killer is murdering women right beneath our noses?”

  “Or maybe that’s what he wants us to think.” Her dad patted the Charger as if it were his pet. “It’s just as realistic to think he has someone killing for him to muddy the waters. An accomplice who makes it appear as if Slocum was never the killer. That gets him off the hook.”

  “Do serial killers have accomplices?”

  “They do, or sometimes they kill in pairs as equals.” The cadence of his voice changed as he slipped into criminal justice professor mode. “For example, the Hillside Strangler was actually two people. Cousins Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi, who moved out to California, and over a four-month period, they killed ten women and dumped their bodies in the Hollywood Hills.

  “And we won’t even talk about the Charles Manson effect. Groupies. Lots of them. Male and female, who do anything to make this man, their new christ, their new father, happy. They were family and disciples all rolled into one.”

  “I’ll take double jeopardy for two thousand, Alex. The answer is an accomplice who went through my courtroom.”

  “And the question still remains, who’s trying to get to Dillon O’Rourke through his daughter?” Dad’s jaw worked as he smoothed an imaginary spot on the car. “I worked Slocum’s case here. Because of me, he’s going to prison. Maybe he’s living vicariously through his accomplice.”

  Would a serial killer turn his own son into an accomplice? A loving father and grandfather? Which was he?

  Dad hit the remote and turned off the alarm. “Get in.”

  She did as she was told. He plugged his phone into the charger lying on the console, pushed the button, started the car, then used Bluetooth to call Billy.

  “Hey, Dad, I just picked up the phone to call you.”

  “How deep a dive did the detectives do on Chase Slocum?”

  “Deep. I have news—”

  “We need to—”

  “Dad, listen. Slocum is back in custody.”

  Teagan slumped back in her seat. Good news. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You.

  “So he was never in San Antonio.”

  “Nope. He was headed this direction, but he didn’t make it. He’s not talking about the whys and wherefores.”

  “Why not head south to Mexico?”

  “Because he had unfinished business in San Antonio?”

  Slocum had not killed Officer Moreno, Evelyn, or Charity Waters. Someone close to him or someone who aspired to be like him had killed three people and tried to kill Max.

  Teagan closed her eyes and listened to the hum of the AC and vintage Hank Williams Jr. on the radio. Back to the theory that they had a copycat or accomplices determined to move suspicion away from Slocum. “What are the chances of someone outside law enforcement circles knowing about the letters?”

  “Small. It’s possible. A leak. But not probable.”

  “So we’re back to the accomplice.”

  Dad raced through the high points of their visit with Chase Slocum, while Billy contributed an occasional “uh-huh.”

  “Revisit the background on Chase Slocum. Take a closer look at this housemate.”

  “On it.”

  Dad hung up and peeled away from the curb.

  She waited a few seconds. Nothing but Hank Junior crooning about a country state of mind.

  “Well?”

  He growled.

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “One down, one or two to go.”

  She leaned against her seat and rested her eyes. “I like your perspective. Let’s get them and get on with our lives.”

  21

  The powwow took place in Dad’s war room. Teagan had just enough time to hit the bathroom before Detective Siebert and Justin arrived. Alisha had the task of serving as Max’s chauffeur. Teagan’s offer to accompany her had been nixed by Dad. Gracie and her partner had been involved in a high-speed chase of a suspected shooter in a drive-by that ended with the suspect’s car ramming into a house on the west side. She wouldn’t be joining them.

  Billy rolled in next and he wasn’t alone. A stocky Hispanic man in a deep-blue guayabera and neatly pressed gray slacks followed. He carried a bulging leather satchel in one hand and rolled-up maps in the other.

  “This is Detective Hector Solis from Brownsville.” Billy waved the man into the closest chair. “He’s here to compare notes on behalf of his colleagues in the Valley.”

  “Welcome.” Dad made the introductions and motioned toward the carafe of coffee he’d placed on the long table that sat perpendicular to his desk. “Help yourself.”

  “My eyeballs are sloshing in coffee.” Solis had that soft lilt that said English had been the second language learned in his childhood home. “Four hours in the car by myself, I was afraid I would drift off.”

  “The suspect broke out of jail and went south. So much for your theory, Dad.”

  “Which brings us back to square one.” Siebert sipped from the ubiquitous Starbucks cup that was never far from his person. “We have a psychopath who’s watching Teagan, he’s writing her letters, and he’s killing people around her and threatening to do more than that.”

  “Thanks for the recap.” Dad didn’t bother to muzzle his sarcasm. “It’s not Slocum, true, but it’s someone who knows more about the case being built against him than the average person. That narrows the parameters considerably. It has to be someone who knows him, spent time with Slocum, admires him, and wants to be like him. Or someone he’s influencing to make it look like law enforcement is going after the wrong guy. So let’s start with the cases Hector and our colleagues in the Valley have amassed and work from there.”

  “We made it. Finally.” Max pushed through the door ahead of Alisha. “What did we miss?”

  “We’re just getting started.” Teagan wrangled her feelings into their box. All those years of calling herself a pacifist, and all she wanted to do was pummel the person responsible for Max’s battered face. The psychopath behind this mental torture knew exactly which buttons to push. How was that possible? “We have autopsy reports for Officer Moreno and Evelyn. Hector is going to give us an overview of the cases in the Valley that they plan to charge Slocum with.”

  “This guy needs to be hunted down and put in jail regardless of the reason he’s doing it.” Max squeezed a chair in between Billy and Teagan and sat. “He will kill again. It’s only a matter of time. I’d like to get my hands on him for what he did to Charity Waters. And it’s a small, small thing, but I loved that truck.”

  “Easy, big guy. Nobody’s going off the reservation.” Dad slid a bottle of water covered with condensation across the table to Max. “Cool off. Believe me, I understand the desire. This is my daughter in his crosshairs, but good police work will catch him, I promise you.”

  Hector stood and handed out thick documents. “The Behavioral Analysis Unit profile matched Slocum in a number of ways. White male, thirty to forty-five—Slocum’s older, of course—married, holds down a job, may have killed in the past but has no criminal record. Until Slocum was arrested for the murder here in SA, he had no record. He’
s fifty-eight. Old for a serial killer.

  “Like our murders in the Valley, Slocum is organized. He is methodical and above average in intelligence. He’s socially competent. This is not a spur-of-the-moment killer. Our crime scenes were deliberate, cold, and the victim was a targeted stranger. In every case restraints were used. The body was hidden. No weapon was found and very little evidence.”

  With Billy’s help Hector stuck a map of South Texas on the bulletin board catty-corner to the dry erase board. The detective had used blue and yellow highlighters to delineate a route through a half dozen cities from San Antonio to the Valley and back. “The blue stars are cities on Slocum’s sales route. The green stars are locations where the unsolved murders of women have occurred over the years. The stickies are the dates. It’s been almost impossible to pin them to one killer because he’s so smart. He varies the ages and races of his victims, but they’re all adult women. He varies his MO, rotating between shooting, stabbing, and strangling.”

  Parallel lives. Slocum routinely traveled the 143 miles from San Antonio to Corpus Christi via I-37. From there he took US-77 to Harlingen, another 136 miles. His route then took him a quick half-hour drive to Brownsville deep in the Valley on the Texas–Mexico border. Then his route headed back north to Edinberg and from Edinburg to Falfurrias on US-281 North. His final stop before returning to San Antonio was Alice. Lots of small towns along the way.

  “What a perfect job for a serial killer.” A chill curled around Teagan’s neck. She sipped her coffee, but it did little to warm her. “Going from city to city, anonymous, in and out of hotels, restaurants, and bars. No family member who’ll notice you didn’t come home until midnight or that you have a bloody knife, gun, and garrote in the trunk of your car.”