The Girls He Adored

2

The Bureau liked its agents to be young and fit, to wear conservative suits, and to carry regulation weapons in over-the-kidney holsters. At fifty-five, Special Agent E. L. Pender was two years from mandatory retirement, overweight and out of shape, and beneath a plaid sport coat his boss had once described as being loud enough to spook a blind horse, he carried a SIG Sauer P226 9mm semiautomatic in a soft calfskin shoulder holster.

“Enjoy your stay in San Jose, Agent Pender,” said the young flight attendant, giving him the obligatory doorway send-off. What with all the forms that had to be filled out in order to carry a weapon on a commercial flight, it was impossible for an armed FBI agent to travel incognito these days. “Thank you for flying United.”

“Thank you, dear.” Pender tipped his trademark hat, a narrowbrimmed green-and-black houndstooth check with a tiny feather stuck into the band. Beneath it, he was bald as a melon. “You know, the time was when I'd have asked a pretty gal such as yourself for her phone number.”

“I'll bet.” The stewardess smiled politely.

“Would I have gotten it?”

The smile never wavered. “My parents didn't let me date much when I was seven, Agent Pender.”

Pender's luck wasn't much better at the rent-a-car counter. The clerk knew nothing about the midsize sedan that was to have been reserved for him, so he was forced to squeeze his six-four, twohundredand-fifty-pound frame behind the wheel of a Toyota Corolla.

At least the car had AC and a respectable sound system. Pender set the temperature control to blue and the volume control to high, found an oldies station on the FM band, and sang along in a sweet, surprisingly soulful tenor as he drove. A full hour passed before they played a song to which he didn't know all the words.

Strictly speaking, from the standpoint of professional courtesy, Pender should have notified the local FBI resident agency before showing up in Salinas to interview a murder suspect currently being held in the county jail. But according to the grapevine, the RA's collective nose was still out of joint from the previous summer, when the bureau had brought down agents from the San Francisco field office to take over a high-profile kidnapping investigation-they wouldn't be likely to welcome an interloper like Pender with open arms.

Also strictly speaking, Pender should have checked in immediately with the Monterey County Sheriff's Department. But before he requested an interview with the prisoner, he first wanted to speak to the arresting officer, and local cops tended to be overly protective of their own.

According to Pender's information, obtained for him by one of Liaison Support's overworked clerks, Deputy Terry Jervis lived in a town called Prunedale. They'd had a few chuckles over that back in Washington. “Prunedale, home of regular folks,” and so on.

He found the place without any difficulty-one thing about working for the government, you could always get hold of a decent map. The house was a small, well-tended ranch with sprayedstucco walls and a few rounded arches thrown in so they could call it mission style, perched on a hillside in the sort of semirural neighborhood where half the houses were trailers, and half the trailers were probably meth labs. A spindly lemon tree was tied to a stake in the middle of a rocky but carefully trimmed front lawn; tidy flower beds lined the short walk from the driveway to the front door.

Pender rang the bell, then backed down from the low doorstep so his height wouldn't be intimidating. The woman who opened the door as far as the chain permitted was black, solid, broad in the beam, and low to the ground. It occurred to Pender that this might be Jervis-she had a cop's wide ass, and the arrest report hadn't been gender-specific.

“Yes?”

“Special Agent Pender, FBI. I'm here to see Deputy Jervis.”

“Terry's resting. Could I see your shield, please?”

If not the cop, then the cop's wife-only a cop's wife would say “shield” instead of “badge.” Pender tinned her, flipping his wallet open to show her his old Department of Justice badge with the eagle on the top and the blindfolded figure in the pageboy haircut holding the scales of justice in one hand and a sword in the other.

“You have a photo ID?”

“Here you go.”

She glanced from the picture on the laminated card to his face and back again, then closed the door. The chain rattled; the door opened wider. “Come on in.”

Pender took off his hat as he stepped through the doorway. “Thank you, Mrs. Jervis.”

The woman frowned. “I'm Aletha Winkle.”

Pender winced exaggeratedly. “Sorry. That's my job-stumbling to conclusions.”

She ignored the apology. “Hey, Terry,” she called over her shoulder. “There's an FBI man here to see you.”

The response was a muffled “Okay.” Pender followed Winkle down a short hallway, past a small living room furnished largely in wicker, and into a white-and-pink bedroom-everything from the bedclothes to the bureau, the rug to the ceiling fixture, was either white or pink.

Pender froze in the doorway-the pale woman sitting up in bed was pointing a semiautomatic pistol at his midsection. He threw up his hands. “FBI-take it easy there, Deputy.”

“Sorry,” Terry Jervis hissed through clenched teeth, lowering the gun. “They tell me the guy was making threats-we were worried he might send somebody to carry them out.”

Deputy Jervis had spiked blond hair and washed-out blue eyes. The lower half of her face was heavily bandaged, and her jaw was wired shut. Her pajamas were pin-striped, black on pink.

“I understand.” Pender lowered his hands. “Does it hurt to talk?”

“Some.”

“I apologize in advance-I wouldn't be here if it weren't important. I'd be grateful for anything you can tell me.”

“This is where I get off,” said Aletha Winkle. “Call me if you need me, honey.” She stooped, plumped the smaller woman's pillows, kissed her high on the forehead. On her way out of the room she waggled her forefinger in Pender's direction. “Don't you tire her out, now!”

“Scout's honor,” replied Pender.

Jervis smiled weakly. “Aletha's a little overprotective.”

“I noticed-and God bless her for it.” In Pender's experience, some lesbians, like most minorities, tended to regard even a pleasantly neutral tone as barely disguised disapproval. But Pender was a proponent of what was known as the affective interview, so he made sure to add an extra dollop of warmth to his voice as he returned the grin.

“Take a load off.” Deputy Jervis pointed to the small, pinkcushioned chair in front of the pink-and-white mirrored vanity, then set the pistol down carefully on the bedside table, next to a framed photo of herself and Winkle, posed in front of the house with their arms around each other's waists. It had probably been taken on the day they moved in-a yellow Drive-Yr-Self moving van was parked next to a green Volvo station wagon in the driveway.

“You really need that?” asked Pender, nodding toward the gun. He knew the model well-Glock. 40s were now standard issue for recruits at the FBI Academy.

Jervis nodded sheepishly. “I know it's dumb, I know he's behind bars, but he's still got me spooked. If you never saw the fucker, then you can't imagine how fast the fucker can move.”

“Probably not.” Pender picked up the delicate-looking chair, positioned it a few feet from the side of the bed at a forty-fivedegree angle-the recommended interviewing position-and sat down carefully with his hat in his lap.

“Have your people found out anything more about the son of a bitch?”

Pender shook his head. “Dead end. He wasn't carrying any ID- no wallet, just a roll of cash-and it was the victim's car. His prints are a mess, old grafts on the interior surfaces of both hands. No matches so far-the lab's working on a reconstruction.” Pender scraped his chair a little closer to the bed-a signal to the interviewee that it was time to get down to business. “Tell me about the bust-how'd you take him down?”

“Routine traffic stop. Eastbound maroon Chevy Celebrity with California plates rolls through a red on Highway Sixty-eight, near Laguna Seca. Male driver, female passenger. I hit the lights, he hits the gas. I call in the pursuit; he pulls over a few seconds later. As I'm approaching the vehicle, I see the driver leaning over toward the female passenger-I figure he's fastening her seat belt for her. Then he turns toward me, big smile, what's the problem officer? At this point I haven't even unsnapped my holster. Routine traffic violation, maybe a warning on the seat belt.

“But when I look in, I see this blond girl, couldn't have been more than eighteen, she's sitting straight up holding her stomach with both hands. She's wearing a white sweater that looks like it's dyed in overlapping bands of red at the bottom, and she has the strangest expression on her face. Just, you know, puzzled — I'll never forget that expression. I ask her if she's okay, she lifts up her sweater with both hands, and her guts spill out onto her lap.”

Jervis closed her eyes, as if to shut out the memory. Pender wouldn't let her. “What happened next?”

“He has the knife in his left hand-before I can react he brings it up so fast and hits me so hard I thought he shot me at first. It was like my mouth exploded-I'm falling backward, spitting out blood and teeth, trying to draw my weapon. He's on top of me before I hit the ground. I can't get my weapon out, but I'm hanging onto the holster for dear life.”

Jervis winced again; her hand went to her jaw. “That's all I remember-they tell me he was trying to yank my belt off when the backup unit pulled up, and I was holding onto the holster so hard they had to pry my hands away.”

“But you're down as the arresting officer.”

A rueful chuckle. “Charity collar. It was a twelve-inch bowie knife-a souvenir from the Alamo, I heard. Busted out all the lower molars on the right side, all the uppers on the left. He just barely missed my tongue or I wouldn't be talking to you now.”

Her pale complexion was turning chalky; her glance strayed toward the bottle of Vicodin on the white wicker bedside table.

“And here I promised Miss Winkle I wouldn't wear you out,” said Pender. He knew he didn't have much longer; he cut to the question he most needed to ask the only person who'd seen the victim alive. “One more thing, then I'll leave you in peace. It's about the girl. You say she was blond?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could you be a little more specific-was it platinum blond, ash blond, something like that?” Careful not to lead her where he hoped she'd take him.

And she did: “No, sir, it was more of a reddish blond.”

“Would that be the color people sometimes refer to as strawberry blond?”

“Yes, sir, that's it exactly.” It was obvious that every word was causing her pain.

Pender patted her pale freckled hand as it lay on the pink comforter. “That's okay. That's okay, dear. You've been a great helpyou don't have to say another word.”

Aletha Winkle gave Pender a dark look as she bustled into the room.

“I'll let myself out,” Pender said.

“And next time call first.”

“Yes, ma'am, I'll be sure to do that,” replied Pender meekly.

Pender's chagrin didn't last long. In fact, as he strode down the flower-lined front walk, he was tum-te-tumming “And the Band Played On,” a tune written by Charles B. Ward and John F. Palmer in 1899, but still familiar enough nearly a century later that at the 1997 inaugural meeting of the team charged with investigating the disappearances of nine females from nine widely separated locales over the past nine years, Steven P. McDougal, chief of the FBI's Liaison Support Unit, was able to recite the first few lines of the chorus by heart, confident that it would be recognized by every agent in the room:

Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond

And the band played on.

He'd glide 'cross the floor with the girl he adored

And the band played on.

Thus McDougal dubbed the phantom kidnapper Casey, after the only characteristic the missing females had in common: the color of their hair. But it was Ed Pender who sang the next two lines of the song in his sweet tenor:

His brain was so loaded it nearly exploded

The poor girl would shake with alarm.

The room went dead quiet; McDougal broke the silence.

“Ed has a bad feeling about this one, boys and girls,” he announced, leaning back in the leather chair at the head of the conference table, peering professorially over his half glasses. “Let's help him make it go away.”

Since that initial meeting, two more strawberry blonds had been reported missing under suspicious circumstances, but the FBI still hadn't gone public with the investigation, largely because not a single body had come to light. Then in June 1999, Monterey County sheriff's deputy Terry Jervis made what she thought would be a routine traffic stop, and everything changed.

Casey, you son of a bitch, thought Pender as he squeezed himself back into the blue Corolla. You son of a bitch, we've got you now.