Split Second

by Catherine Coulter

Savich glanced at his Mickey Mouse watch, patted Sherlock’s hand. “It’s nine o’clock. I’m off to see Bruce Comafield. Coop, Lucy, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think it’s best I speak to him alone. You guys stay here—if I need you, I’ll call.”

  When Savich saw they would both argue, he raised his hand. “Look, we need information, and we need it now, with no messing around. I’m going to question him. Trust me, okay?” He didn’t tell them that he’d already asked Dr. Pendergrass to cut down Comafield’s morphine, told him exactly why. Savich wanted him awake and on the edge, if possible.

  Bruce Comafield was in a small glass-fronted room in the ICU on the third floor. An FBI agent was seated at his door, his legs crossed, a magazine unopened on his lap.

  “Hi, John,” Savich said to Agent Frish. “Anything interesting?”

  “Nope, if by that you mean Kirsten Bolger waltzing by, maybe to shoot him to keep him quiet.”

  Savich smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

  “Nope, not a whiff of her.”

  “Keep a sharp eye, okay?”

  “You’d better believe it. I wouldn’t want to get taken down by that crazy-ass woman.”

  Savich stood in the doorway for a moment, staring over at Bruce Comafield. There were lines running into his arms, a line running under the hospital blanket. He had an oxygen clip in his nose, and he was awake, moaning, his eyes closed, turning his head back and forth on the flat pillow.

  He wasn’t in happyland. Good.

  Savich didn’t say anything, simply walked to his bedside and looked down at him. Slowly, Comafield became aware of him, turned his head back, and opened his eyes to look up at him.

  Comafield whispered, “You were one of the agents at the Willard, to speak to Lansford.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m pleased you recognize me. If you forgot my name, it’s Special Agent Savich, FBI.”

  “You shot me.”

  “Yes. I’m pleased you’re still alive, Bruce.”

  “Not for long. They’re going to let me die of pain. If I turn my head I can see all the nurses out there at that big counter. I keep ringing for a nurse, but none of them come. Dear God, it’s horrible. Tell them I need some pain meds.”

  Savich leaned down close. “Tell me where Kirsten is, and I’ll make sure you get more morphine.”

  Comafield tried to spit at him, a stupid thing to do, since he didn’t have the strength to lift his head, and it hurt even to try, and the spit ran down his chin. He cursed the spit, cursed Savich, cursed fate. “Kirsten knows who you are, too, you bastard. She’s going to kill you; she’s going to execute you. It was a little promise we made to each other. Whoever brought one of us down is not going to live. So, you’re a dead man. She’s going to watch you die, count on it.”

  “Where is she, Bruce?”

  “Look over your shoulder if you want to find her. She’ll be looking for you.”

  “That’s not going to cut it, Bruce.”

  He closed his mouth and stared toward the pale green wall opposite his bed.

  Savich leaned close, watched Comafield’s eyes dance madly with pain. “You want more morphine, Bruce? The only way you’ll get it is for you to tell me where Kirsten is hiding.”

  Comafield’s dark eyes turned black, rage boiling up. He whispered, voice shaking, “You can’t do that. You think I’m stupid? You’re the law; you can’t torture me.”

  “You let Kirsten torture all those women she butchered. Did you help her jerk a wire around their necks, pull it tight while your victims were helpless from the drug she’d fed them?”

  “That’s different! How’d you even know about me?”

  “A very sharp guy in New York described you very well. You know, the guy Kirsten set up to take the fall at Enrico’s Bar?”

  Comafield knew; of course he knew.

  Savich leaned close again. “I liked you better with hair. I’ve got to say, though, you fooled me. I never saw you go in the bar, and believe me, I was looking.”

  “Yeah, I stuck myself right in the middle of a happy group, and hooked up with this little blonde. We waltzed right in. I’m always careful now—real careful after New York.”

  He managed to preen through the pain. Savich leaned close. “Now that you had your little rush, I can see the pain’s really getting to you. Tell me where Kirsten is, and I’ll get you a ticket on the morphine express.”

  At Comafield’s silence, Savich turned away from him. He walked over to the single window and looked down into the parking lot. It was nearly full at a little after nine o’clock in the morning. It was a gray day, clouds swirling low, the wind blowing fiercely. He was glad he’d put up the Porsche’s top. He began whistling.

  He admitted to himself that he felt great relief when Comafield cursed him again, finally nodded, and whispered, “All right. Morphine, get me morphine.”

  He gave Comafield a long look before he got Nurse Harmony, a lovely name for a nurse, Savich thought, and she nodded, said she’d just as soon leave the killer to rot. Comafield watched her hook up an infusion device to his IV. Every fifteen minutes he could press the button, she told him. When she left, he was frantically pushing the button, his eyes closed.

  Savich walked back to the window, and waited.

  It was Comafield who spoke first. “Like I said, you’ll never find her; she’ll be the one to find you. So, it doesn’t matter that you know where we were staying—at the Handler’s Inn on Chestnut. Hey, the room is one-fifty-one. Go search our room to the rafters, you won’t find anything, and believe me, Kirsten won’t care, she’ll be long gone.”

  And he gave Savich a malicious smile, proof that the morphine was kicking in. “Why do you care, anyway? You’re going to be dead.”

  “The two of you didn’t discuss where you were going after Baltimore?”

  “Nope, she hadn’t decided.” Comafield actually gave Savich a small grin. “She told me her daddy was guiding her steps. Then she’d laugh and say, well, mainly it was her daddy.”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but sometimes she’d talk on her cell phone, never told me who she was talking to.”

  “Did you hold down the women while she strangled them with the wire?”

  “No, that was her deal. She said her daddy always worked alone, and so would she, at least at the denouement. That’s what she called it—the denouement. She liked to say she not only wrote the scripts, she was the lead actress, and she wasn’t about to share that with anyone, even me. The denouement was always just her and the pathetic female she’d chosen to dance with.

  “When I was working for Lansford, she’d call my cell, tell me where to meet her.” He shrugged, but it hurt and he grew very still.

  After several minutes, he spoke again. “I met her in New York on Sunday, checked out Enrico’s that night. We left Monday night, after Kirsten was done with Genny, to drive here. We only had two nights together, and now she’s gone from me.”

  Genny—Comafield had called Kirsten’s victim by her first name, like she was a friend.

  “I really tried to hate Lansford, because Kirsten did, but when he finally accepted his political future was wrecked, I kind of felt sorry for him. The old bastard. She told me how he was terrified of her, she could see it in his eyes, and she’d laugh.”

  “Is that how you met Kirsten? Through her stepfather?”

  “It was back three years ago.” He stilled a moment, then said, “I’d seen her before, at his office once or twice, but never met her. She didn’t live at home, but she crashed there occasionally, for the fun of it, she told me, to think about her mother going into her old room and wondering.

  “But one time I couldn’t sleep even though it was really late. I looked out the window, saw Kirsten unlock the back door and slip inside. I snuck down to her, saw she was covered in blood and she was smiling so wide I could see her molars. And you want to know what? All she had to do was say my name and we ran back t
o my room. I tore those bloody clothes off her, and we had at it until I heard people moving around the next morning.”

  “Do you know who she killed that night?”

  “I know her first name was Arnette. Kirsten kept saying it over and over, said it sounded tasty on her tongue. I think her last name had something with a rug—Carpenter, that was it. She was a model, like Kirsten, and a pretend artist, Kirsten said. Kirsten despised her because she was a fake and a snob, said she had put her lights out right and proper, and she deserved it.

  “We were together whenever possible from then on.”

  “Did you know when she killed other women? Did she come to you afterward?”

  “If she killed anybody else, she didn’t tell me. I never got to see her come in fresh from a kill again until—well, until she left San Francisco. I realized I missed it, missed the planning of it, watching her work the woman at the bar, watching her change her hair and her role whenever she stepped in to put her name on another lady’s dance card. I was her front man, always checked things out, kept an eye on what was going on while she was working. She never made a mistake until last night, with that redhead. I thought when she hooked up with that redheaded girl, she’d really hit the jackpot. I’ve never before seen her so involved; she was nearly thrumming with excitement—”

  “With the thought of killing her?”

  “Of course.”

  Savich held himself still as a statue, couldn’t trust himself not to rip the IV lines from Comafield’s body. To listen to him talk so calmly about murdering Sherlock. He said very quietly, “The redhead is my wife. They had to pump her stomach.”

  Comafield stared at him for a moment, then grinned. “Go figure that. That girl really is your wife? So she was in on the setup, too,” and he fell silent again.

  Savich smoothed himself out. He didn’t know why he’d even told Comafield; it had just come out. He said, “Since you worked for Lansford, you couldn’t see her all that often when she left San Francisco.”

  “Yeah, since I had to stick with him, it was difficult to get away to join her.” His voice trailed off, and Savich feared he’d fallen into a drugged stupor, but then he whispered, his eyes tightly closed, “I remember one night we were together in Cleveland. She told me she sometimes warmed her hands over the fires. ‘What fires?’ I asked. ‘In hell,’ she said, where she was sitting cross-legged next to her daddy while he told her what he did to have the most fun. And he’d ask her when she was going to get serious about her own work, when was she going to hit the road, like he did?

  “Then she’d talk about how sexy her daddy said dead people were, but only when you were the one who put out their lights. Then that made them yours, and it was a fine thing to come back to visit your works of art and enjoy them, over and over, until they fell apart, and then they weren’t art anymore, they were trash. I didn’t want to know exactly what she meant, but deep down, I knew.”

  Comafield’s words were slurring. Savich knew he didn’t have much more time before he was out of it. “Of course you knew, since I’m certain you’ve read everything written about Ted Bundy, including his taste for necrophilia.”

  “Yeah, lots of it. Maybe it scared me a little, and then she’d shrug and look at me like she was—” He closed his eyes again—from the pain or the image?

  “Like she was picturing you with catsup?”

  That snapped Comafield’s eyes right open. “No, you bastard!” He swallowed, and Savich knew the morphine was slurring his brain as well as his speech. “Well, maybe, but I knew she’d never hurt me. Do you know, after her kills, she’d come back to our hotel and she’d always be flying high? She’d want sex and booze, and she’d want to dance and hoot. You know what else she did? She always dressed up like the woman she’d just killed. She liked to play that role as well as play the lead, she’d say. She had all these wigs, and she’d put on the one most like her woman-of-the-hour, she called them. And she’d sometimes let me play the kill and she’d—” His voice faltered.

  “Yes?”

  “—pretend to strangle me with the wire. But she never really hurt me—” His voice was fading.

  “Bruce, were you her acolyte?”

  Comafield’s eyes focused on Savich’s face. “Her acolyte? That sounds like I wore a black robe and chanted. No, you’ve got it all wrong, damn you. I didn’t wear robes and chant Latin. I was her rock; I tethered her to the world so she wouldn’t fly off the planet. She needed me. She loved me.”

  “Did you love her?’

  Comafield whispered, “Oh, yes. She could do what I never could. She was a whirlwind, always racing to catch her daddy. She was doing a countdown. I asked her how many women she had to kill to catch up to her daddy, and she said one hundred. She never told me how she came up with that number.

  “Now it doesn’t matter. I won’t ever see her again.” His eyes were suddenly hard on Savich’s face. He whispered, “At least I know she’ll kill you. Wherever she was going, it’s off now, because she’s coming to kill you. Sweet Jesus, I’m going to die and I’ll never see her again.”

  “You’re not going to die, Bruce.”

  “Yes,” Comafield said very quietly, his voice nearly singsong with the morphine. “I know I am. I feel it. I wish I could see Kirsten just one more time, but I know I can’t.”

  And Bruce Comafield turned his head away.

  Savich went back to Sherlock’s room, ordered her to stop moving around and lie still, no arguing, and listen. Then he said to her, Coop, and Lucy, “Let me tell you about a very strange and sad couple.”

  CHAPTER 47

  They spoke to Mr. Ricky Levine, skinny and tall, standing at attention behind the small reception counter of Handler’s Inn. Savich thought he could still be in high school, with the acne on his chin, his belt pulled tight to keep his tan uniform pants up. He was so nervous his hands shook when they introduced themselves. He kept chewing on his lower lip, and had a hard time meeting their eyes. No, he told them, no, really, he didn’t know a Mr. Bruce Comafield. He’d remember a dude saddled with a name like that. He offered to let them see that he wasn’t registered in the computer.

  Lucy sidled up to him, all friendly face and sweet smile, so he wouldn’t drop over in a dead faint with Savich and Coop standing over him, that or start babbling nonsense.

  “Mr. Levine, who did you give room one-fifty-one to late Monday night?”

  Mr. Levine’s nervous fingers worked the computer keyboard. “Here it is—Mr. Cane. He checked in, said his wife was joining him later. Cane—Comafield. I see, that’s pretty close. Well, he seemed like a nice guy—young, you know? Yuppie-looking, had a gold credit card, I saw it in his wallet, even though he used cash to pay for the first night. I remember I asked him how long he was going to stay, and he said two, maybe three, days.”

  “How late was it Monday night when he got here?”

  “Wow, it was nearly one o’clock in the morning.”

  Lucy nodded. So he and Kirsten had driven directly here from New York City. And she started partying the very next night.

  Coop kept his mental fingers crossed. “Does the Handler have a policy of getting the license plate number?”

  “Yes, we do, but I always go check myself, since guests never know. Mr. Cane drove a light blue Chevy Cobalt. Look here, the number’s by his registration. It’s a Maryland plate, that’s white, with black lettering, CTH six-two-five. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “That’s fantastic, Mr. Levine,” Lucy said and beamed at him.

  Coop asked him, “Did you ever see his wife, Mr. Levine?”

  Mr. Levine nodded. “They ate breakfast together the past two mornings here in our dining room. I eat when I come on duty, that’s one of my perks, and so I saw them. That’s how I know. She ate a bowl of prunes and a load of muffins. I remember that because she was so skinny and those muffins are loaded with fat. Go figure. As for Mr. Cane, he ate cereal, I believe, and a banana. More healthy. He looked really fit, a sharp
dresser. I heard several of the waitresses talking about how cute he was, with his thick hair, and especially in his aviator glasses.”

  “How did she look? How was she dressed, Mr. Levine, do you remember?”

  “She had long blond hair, real thick, sort of curly, hanging down her back. She was wearing blue jeans and one of those skinny knit tops. That’s how I could tell she was so skinny. I thought it was kind of chilly out for that getup. She looked, well, arty, I guess you could say. She was wearing bloodred lipstick, I remember thinking exactly that, and her face was real white. I think it was makeup.”

  Lucy said, “Do you remember anything else about them, Mr. Levine? Anything they did that was out of the ordinary?”

  Ricky thought about that, then slowly nodded. “It was the oddest thing. I was doing a double shift last night. I happened to be looking outside and saw him walking to his car. Like I told you, most times I saw him, he was dressed really sharp. But last night he was dressed more like my brother the nerd, you know, down to the black thick-framed glasses, pants too short, showing his white socks, and this crappy tweed jacket? And he had this dorky hat pulled down low over his head. Then she came out; her blond hair was gone, so I knew it was a wig. Now her hair was all short and black, and she was wearing a red blazer. I wondered if they were going to a costume party—” Mr. Levine swallowed, looked like he was going to throw up.

  “And what, sir?”

  Ricky leaned forward on the counter. “Well, before they left, they came in here to buy some gum, and she looked me right in the face. I’ll tell you, that look of hers was real hinky, and then she licked her lips, like she wanted to stick a fork in me. It scared the bejesus out of me.”

  Ricky Levine wasn’t stupid, Coop thought. “Did she say anything to you?”

  “No, but when they left to go to their car, she looked back at me, and then she started laughing.”

  Lucy said, “Have you been watching the news on TV, Mr. Levine?”

  He nodded slowly. “Some, you know, when I get a chance, the way you do when people are always interrupting, with kind of half an ear. Why?”