Cold Truth

19

Through the open conference room door, Cass could hear the approaching click click click of high heels on the tile floor as they moved briskly, efficiently, in her direction. She looked up at the precise moment that the wearer of those shoes stepped over the threshold.

“Ah, here’s Dr. McCall,” Rick announced, and rose to greet the attractive blond woman who carried herself and her handsome leather briefcase with confidence.

“Agent Cisco.” She smiled. “And you must be Chief Denver.”

She left her briefcase on the chair nearest her and walked to the head of the table to offer her hand, which Denver shook somewhat gently.

“Thanks for coming, Dr. McCall.”

She nodded and moved on to the next chair, where Cass sat.

Rick made the introductions. “Annie-Dr. McCall-this is Cass Burke. Detective Burke.”

“It’s good to meet you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Dr. McCall,” Cass said. “Agents Peyton and Cisco tell me you’re one of the best at what you do.”

“Well, I guess you’ll have formed your own opinion by the time we’re through here.” She looked at the empty chairs that stood around the table and asked, “Where is Agent Peyton? I understood he’d be sitting in on this meeting.”

“I spoke with him about an hour ago,” Rick told her. “He’s been tracking information about some older kills that he believes may be related to these. He said something about being in the middle of receiving some faxes and wanting to stay until everything had come through.”

“Then he’ll be along in his own time. Or not, knowing him. He did say he had information that would put a new light on what’s going on here.” She returned to her place at the table. To Rick, she said, “Let’s hope he makes it in the next twenty-four hours. We both know how he is once he gets a hold on something. He has a tendency to lose track of time.”

“Annie-um, Dr. McCall…” Rick started.

“Let’s keep this somewhat informal, Rick. I have no problem with first names, if everyone agrees?” She glanced around the table. Cass and Denver nodded.

“Go ahead, Rick, you were about to say…”

“I was going to ask if you’d had an opportunity to review the files we sent.”

“Not as thoroughly as I’d have liked, but I did get through most of it.” She opened her briefcase and took out a pad of yellow legal paper, skimmed several pages of notes, then folded the pages back until she came to a blank sheet. “It appears you have a serial killer-apparently the same one you had… let’s see, twenty-some years ago.”

Denver nodded. “That’s correct.”

“But no suspects, then or now.”

“Right again.”

“You were on the force at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Then I would think you’d be the obvious one to start with, Chief. Since I didn’t have time to completely read through everything, why not bring me up-to-date. From then till now.”

Annie sat back in her chair while the chief recited all the known facts about their killer. As she did so, Cass studied the profiler, who wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Dr. McCall-Annie-appeared to be in her mid-thirties, and was so petite, she made Cass feel uncomfortably like an Amazon in comparison.

A somewhat slovenly Amazon, at that. Cass looked down at the clothes she had pulled on in haste earlier in the day. Light gray sweatpants and a short-sleeved sweatshirt. At least they matched, she reminded herself.

In contrast, the profiler wore a linen suit that had yet to wilt, a pale pink tank under the unlined jacket. She wore large round gold earrings, and a gold bracelet next to a watch with a brown leather strap. The diamond on the ring finger of her left hand caught the afternoon sun from the adjacent window. Her makeup was perfect, not overly done, just enough to enhance, as Lucy would have said.

At the thought of Lucy, Cass rested her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. Poor Lucy. That she had been attacked was bad enough. How would she feel if she was forced to recover back in Hopewell, with that miserable excuse for a husband…

“Cass?” Rick touched her arm.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Annie was asking if there was anything else you picked up from the crime scene that you might want to add.”

Cass gave it some thought before shaking her head. “Nothing that isn’t in the reports. I tried to be as thorough as possible.”

“And the reports from the other towns…?” Annie looked back at her notes. “Dewey. Hasboro?”

“We haven’t received all the written reports yet,” Chief Denver told her, “but in speaking with the chiefs of police in each of those towns, I can tell you we have identical crime scenes.”

“With the victims posed in the same manner?” she asked.

Denver nodded.

“I wonder, Chief, if you could call those chiefs of police and request that they fax over the crime scene photos?”

“I’ve already asked, Dr. McCall. We only received the ones from Dewey.”

“I’ll take a look at those, if I could. Meanwhile, Rick, please put a call in to home base and request that someone call the Hasboro police chief and remind him Chief Denver is still waiting for copies of their files.” She smiled. “Remind him it isn’t nice to not share.”

Rick excused himself from the room.

“May I see the original photos from your crime scenes?” Annie asked. “Only the recent ones for now.”

Denver handed her several envelopes. The profiler removed the photos, one by one, studying each, occasionally glancing back at her notes.

“So we have someone who is highly organized. He’s studied his victims well enough to know where they go and when they’re most vulnerable. Obviously, the fact that these women are all of the same general physical appearance is key. He’s repeating something. Over the years, he’s perfected his technique. Brings everything he needs with him, leaves little behind.” Her voice was low, as if speaking more to herself than the others at the table. “And he’s fixated on leaving them in a particular manner. The posing, the hair fanned out…”

She tapped her fingers on the table absently, then looked at the chief.

“Are there photos of the earlier victims? The ones from 1979?”

“Not as many, and not as good. Back then, I remember we thought it was a little ghoulish to take as many pictures of the body as we do now, from all the different angles.” He passed several envelopes to the opposite end of the table. “I wish we’d taken more.”

Annie poured over the images of the old crime scenes.

“Are these in order?” She frowned. “I’d like to see them in order, to study the progression.”

Denver started out of his seat, but Cass had already slid down a few chairs.

“They should go like this,” she was saying. “Alicia Coors, she was the first one. Here in Bowers. Then Carol Jo Hughes-also in Bowers-then Cindy Shelkirk. She was the first victim in one of the other bay towns, she was killed in Tilden. Terry List, she was from Dewey. Mary Pat Engles… Tilden…”

And so on, through all thirteen victims. Annie sat quietly and watched Cass as she placed the victims in order of their deaths.

“Well, then, let’s take a look and see what these ladies have to tell us.” Annie’s eyes went from one to the next.

“He was much younger then, I’d say. Not yet an adult. He was unskilled in this business, these first times out. And he didn’t have his game on back then. He hadn’t evolved.”

“What do you mean?” Cass asked. “He hadn’t evolved into what?”

“Into the methodical killer he is now,” Annie responded without hesitation. “Here, in these early kills, these crime scenes have little in common with the recent ones. There’s no thought whatsoever to placement of the body… see how carefully the arms and legs have been positioned in these current scenes? Back then, it was all about the killing. There seems to have been an anger, a recklessness at work there that I don’t see in your latest victims. Notice the bruises on the side of this woman’s face? He smacked her around a bit before he got down to business. And this one, too. His technique was raw then, the killing had an almost desperate quality.” She paused to take a sip of water from a bottle she retrieved from her oversized handbag. “The current kills are almost passionless.”

She screwed the white plastic cap back on the bottle as Rick came into the room and gave her a thumbs-up, meaning the requested files would be on their way. She nodded an acknowledgment and continued.

“The victims themselves, though, there’s where he was making his statement back then. All around the same age, same body type, and of course, the hair. Whoever he was killing, over and over, he had been totally fixated on her hair…”

“Ah, Annie, I think there’s something you need to know that isn’t in that file we sent you,” Rick said.

“Oh?”

Rick turned to Cass as if asking a silent question, to which she responded with a slow nod.

“Cass’s mother was the victim of a murder here in Bowers Inlet twenty-six years ago. Her entire family was attacked. Cass was the only survivor.”

Denver bristled. “That was completely different, I told you. Why are you bringing it up?”

“Chief, I can’t help but see the similarities-”

“What similarities? Don’t you think if there’d been similarities, we’d have noticed?”

“-and with Lucy being attacked-Lucy, who looks so much like Cass’s mother…”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I don’t have a victim named Lucy.” Annie skimmed her notes. “Who’s Lucy?”

“Lucy is my cousin. She’s been staying with me for the past week,” Cass told her. “Sunday night, she was attacked.”

“By this killer?” Annie tapped on the photos.

“We believe so.”

Before she could say anything else, Rick touched Cass on the arm and said, “Tell her what Lucy told you.”

“He called her Jenny,” Cass said. “Repeatedly. He called her Jenny the entire time.”

“Wait, wait.” Annie held up both hands to stop them. “Start from the beginning. Who is Jenny?”

“Jenny was my mother’s name.”

“Your mother… who was murdered that summer.”

“Yes.”

“Before or after the other killings?”

“Before.”

“Cass…” Rick touched her arm. “I think you need to tell her the whole story.”

“Is this necessary?” The chief stared at Rick.

“I think it is. Annie?” Rick sought her input.

“I agree. If Cass is in agreement…?”

Cass nodded.

“Let’s start by you telling me everything you remember about the day your family was attacked.” Annie paused, then asked, “Cass, may I record this interview? I’d rather be concentrating on what you’re saying instead of having to take notes.”

“Absolutely, do.”

Annie took a small recorder from her bag and placed it on the table between her and Cass. After the initial introduction and the asking and granting of permission to record, Annie repeated the question.

“Cass, can you tell us what you remember about the day of the attack on your family? What is the first thing you remember?”

“I woke up early-the sun wasn’t up yet. I went into the bathroom and it was still dark, but I heard my father downstairs. He was taking a charter out that day, so he’d be gone long before dawn. I stood on the top step and was going to go down to the kitchen to ask him not to take the last brownies with him-we made them the day before, Mom and Trish and me. Well, Trish didn’t do a lot, she was only four…”

“How old were you, Cass?” Annie asked.

“I was six. I’d turn seven later that summer.”

“Okay, go on.”

“I was going to go downstairs, but then I heard the back door close, and I knew I’d never catch up with him. My dad was very tall and he walked really fast. By the time I’d have reached the kitchen, he’d have been in the car and backed down the drive, so I just went back to bed. My sister and I had started summer camp that week, and I was excited about going, so I couldn’t fall asleep. I was still awake when my mother came in to get me up.”

“What were you excited about?”

“Oh, just the whole camp thing. It was different from my everyday. One of my friends was having a birthday party that afternoon. It was going to be a picnic on the beach. And I was still all revved up from the day before. The bird sanctuary had been officially opened, and we’d spent the entire day there.” Cass paused momentarily, remembering. “My mother drove us in the morning-we stopped to pick up Lucy. She was my age and my best friend. When camp was over for the day, Lucy’s mother-my Aunt Kimmie, my mother’s sister-picked us up and drove us home.”

“What time was it, do you remember?”

“After lunch. Sometime around two.”

“When you arrived home, did you go directly into the house?”

“Yes. Well, that is, Trish went in first. The minute we pulled up in front of the house, she jumped out and ran for the door, crying because Aunt Kimmie was going to take Lucy and me to the party, and Trish hadn’t been invited. She ran into the house before I was even out of the car.”

Cass swallowed hard and Rick left the room momentarily. Through the open door, they heard the thump of a can of soda being ejected from the machine outside the conference room. He returned in an instant and handed the can of Diet Pepsi to Cass, the tab already popped.

“Thank you.” She took a long drink. “Thanks.”

“What happened next?” Annie asked.

“Lucy and I got out of the backseat. I went up to the house. It was so quiet…”

“Wait a minute. Lucy got out of the car with you?” Rick asked.

“Yes.”

Rick frowned. “I don’t remember seeing her name in any of the reports I read. Did she go into the house?”

“No.”

“Where did she go, if she didn’t go with you? Did she just stand there by the car, waiting?”

“I think…” Cass tried to recall. “I think she might have gone into the backyard. I think she said she was going to wait on the swings. You saw them, they’re still there, in the yard. To the far right of the house.”

He nodded.

“Anyway, I went inside. I heard something on the second floor, so I started up the steps. It all happened so fast after that. I saw… I saw Trish. He threw her.” Cass’s hands began to shake. “He just picked her up and threw her, like a doll.”

“This is all in the file. Does she have to go through this?” Chief Denver protested.

“I’m afraid so, Chief.” Annie took over again. “Cass, you saw him?”

“No, no. I didn’t see him. I wasn’t looking at him, I was looking at my sister. She had flown through the air… and I was wondering how she was doing that. I ran up the steps and he grabbed me.”

“From which direction?”

“I don’t know. I only remember being surprised. I don’t know where he came from. He started stabbing at me then… with the knife.” Cass fought to control herself, and Rick moved his chair closer to hers but did not touch her.

“Then you saw his face.”

“No. No, I didn’t. I’m sure of that,” she protested. “I think I blacked out after the first time he cut me.”

“Now, all this time, your cousin, Lucy, was outside, playing on the swings?”

“I guess she would have been, yes.”

“Did anyone talk to her about what she might have seen?” Annie directed the question to the chief.

“No. No reason to. We found the killer in the garage.” Denver ’s jaw tightened. “The girl was in the backyard when we got there.”

Annie’s attention returned to Cass. “What happened next?”

“I don’t know. Chief, you would know more than I.”

“Mrs. Donovan-Cass’s aunt-started to wonder where her niece was. She got out of her car and went into the house to find out what was taking so long. She stepped inside and heard some sound-she described it as a soft moaning sound-from the kitchen. She went in, and found Wayne Fulmer-he had a room in one of those old motels out along Route Nine, hung around town most days- Wayne was crying, sitting on the floor next to Bob Burke’s body. His hands and clothes were covered in blood. According to Mrs. Donovan’s testimony, she started screaming, ‘My God, what have you done?’ And Wayne, he started screaming back at her, ‘No, no, not me. Not Wayne.’ Then he ran out the back door, and she went upstairs, screaming for her sister. She found you where you’d fallen,” he nodded to Cass, “on the steps.”

“Who called the police?” Annie asked.

“Someone driving past saw Wayne running down the road, covered with blood. By the time we got there, he had run back into the Burkes’ garage to hide, that’s where we found him.”

“Was the knife recovered?” Rick asked.

“We found it on the floor at the bottom of the steps.”

“Prints?”

“The handle and blade were so slick with blood, we couldn’t get a print.”

The chief slanted a glance in Cass’s direction to see her reaction, but there was none.

“When you questioned him about why he was there, what did he tell you?” Rick asked.

“Said he’d run into Bob down at the marina an hour earlier and that Bob told him he’d had a big catch, that if he stopped by the house, Bob would give him some fish.”

He began to fiddle with his glasses.

“You have to try to understand how this hit the community. Everyone in town knew and liked the Burkes. Bob’s family lived here before there was a town. Nothing like this had ever happened in Bowers before. As far as I knew, nothing like this had happened anywhere around here. It left everyone speechless. Everyone was up in arms when the news leaked out about us finding Wayne hiding in the garage. That we had had that murderous scum living right here in Bowers Inlet, walking our streets… well, people were pretty outraged. But relieved, you know, that he’d been locked up.”

“Frankenstein’s monster,” Annie murmured.

“What?” Denver frowned.

“The scene from the old Frankenstein movie just popped into my head. The one where the angry mob is chasing the creature.”

“We were angry, Dr. McCall. Good people-a wonderful family-had been massacred in their own home. Everyone felt that if it happened to them, it could happen to anyone.”

Denver sighed heavily. “I knew Bob and Jenny, had known them all my life. My brother had gone to school with them, and back in high school, he had the biggest crush on Jenny.”

The chief felt everyone’s eyes on him then, and shook his head. “Don’t even think it could have been him. We lost him in Vietnam. He was long gone, come the summer of ’79.”

He cleared his throat.

“Anyway, we were talking about the day… that day. We-me and Jack Cameron, he’s dead now about six or seven years-we went into the house, and it was like walking into a horror movie. Cassie was there on the floor upstairs, covered with blood. We thought she was… well, we thought there were no survivors. Then we noticed that she seemed to move, and we called an ambulance. Gave her mouth-to-mouth to try to keep her going.” He wiped a tear from his face without seeming to notice he had done so. “I’d never seen anything like it. The carnage. That little girl, her neck snapped like it was a twig. And Jenny there on the bedroom floor… Bob on the floor in the kitchen. And Wayne Fulmer cowering in the garage, whimpering and shaking and covered in Bob’s blood.” He looked at Rick. “Who would you have thought did it, Agent Cisco, if you’d walked into that scene?”

“Well, I admit it looks pretty bad for Wayne.”

“We had no DNA back then, just fingerprinting. And that wasn’t always accurate, depending on who was reading the prints. None of this electronic matching. No profilers to come in and tell us what kind of personality we were supposed to be looking for.” He stared at Annie with dull resentment.

“Chief, I’m sorry. We’re not accusing you, we’re not judging you-” Annie began, but he cut her off.

“Yes you were, Dr. McCall. You were judging, and you were criticizing and you were accusing us of shoddy police work. Don’t judge our actions or our decisions twenty-six years ago by the way we do things today. We didn’t have the tools back then.” Denver got up and left the room before anyone could stop him.

“Shit,” Rick said softly.

Cass rose to go after her boss.

“Let me, Cassie. This was my fault. I’ll talk to him.” Rick followed Denver from the room.

“Cass, could we finish up here? I only have a few more questions for you.” Annie reached over and laid a hand on Cass’s arm.

“I think I should go in and see if he’s okay.” She gestured in the direction of the chief’s office.

“Rick made the mess, Cass. He’ll clean it up.”

“All right. I’ll give him five minutes to come back in. If he hasn’t cooled off and come back by then, I’m going to go and talk to him. It usually doesn’t take him much more than that to calm down, no matter what he’s angry about.”

Just then, Cass’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at the number displayed on the small screen.

“I need to take this,” she told Annie.

“Khaliyah. How are you?” She rose and walked to the window.

“I’m okay, Cassie. I was wondering how you are. I saw on the news, about your cousin. I wanted to make sure that you…” The girl paused, her voice shaky. “I just wanted to make sure that you were okay, that’s all.”

“That’s really sweet of you. I appreciate the call. But I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m fine.”

“I went by your house and saw the cops there and stuff and the yellow tape all around the place and I got scared,” Khaliyah admitted.

“No reason to be scared.”

“I wanted you to know you can come and stay here, with me, if you need a place to stay.”

“That is the nicest offer. Thank you, Khaliyah. But I have a place.”

“Someplace safe?”

“Absolutely safe, yes.” Cass’s throat caught, so touched was she by her young friend’s concern.

“But if anything changes, if you need to…”

“You will be the first person I call. Promise.”

“I guess our one-on-one is off for a while.”

“Nah. I’ll be there.”

“You will?”

“You betcha.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Cass hesitated for a moment, then added, “But let’s try to get there a little earlier this week. That way we can wrap up while it’s still light.”

“Okay. Six?”

“Six is good. Unless you hear otherwise from me.”

“Great. I’ll see you then.”

“Khaliyah…”

“What?”

“Ask Jameer if he can drive you this week, okay? Until this is over? I don’t think you want to be walking around town.”

“Okay. I’ll ask him.”

“If he can’t, you’ll call me, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll see you then. And thanks, Khaliyah.” Cass closed her phone and dropped it into her pocket.

“Sorry,” she said to Annie. “Where were we?”

“We were-” The door opened behind Annie and she turned in time to see Rick and the chief coming back into the room.

“Sorry for the interruption.” Chief Denver nodded at both women.

He took his seat at the head of the table, and Rick sat down next to Cass again as if nothing had happened.

“What else did you want to ask me?” Cass asked Annie.

“Do you remember anything else about that day? Do you have any other images in your mind?”

“Going down the steps for breakfast, behind my mother. Thinking she looked so pretty. That I’d never be as pretty as she was.”

“What was she wearing?”

“A white shirt. Pink-and-white Capri pants,” she answered without hesitation. “She had her hair tied back in a ponytail, like she always did, and it was swinging…”

She demonstrated with one hand.

“I used to untie it whenever I could. It was sort of a silly game between us. That morning as we were going down the steps, I reached out and grabbed hold of the ribbon and pulled it, thinking her hair would fall free, but she had used a rubber band, too, so the ponytail stayed. She laughed, like she’d outsmarted me that day, and she tied the ribbon back into her hair.”

“Maybe we should give Cass a break,” Rick said abruptly, looking directly at Annie. “I think we could all use a little break.”

Cass frowned. “We just had a little break.”

“Oh. Excellent idea.” Annie had noticed his expression, which said, Just trust me. “You know, I sat for several hours in the car on my way over here, and I would dearly love a chance to stretch my legs.”

She turned to Cass and asked, “Is there any place close by where I could get ice cream? I’m dying for an ice-cream cone.”

“There’s a place a few blocks from here.”

“Would you mind showing me? Are you up for a little walk?”

“Sure. Why not? Let me get my purse. I put it in my office.”

After Cass left the room, Annie turned to Rick and asked softly, “How much time do you want?”

“As much time as you can give me.”

Annie nodded, and walked into the hall, closing the door behind her.

Rick turned to the chief and said, “We really need to look at the Burke homicide file, Chief. I’m sorry. I meant what I said back in your office. I’m not trying to step on your toes and I’ll apologize in advance if you think otherwise. But right now, I need to see that file if it’s still around.”

“Of course it’s still around. There are a couple of boxes of stuff that we found at the scene. We’re not total rubes, you know,” Denver snapped. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“Whatever the evidence can tell us. Whatever there is that can tell us something we don’t already know.”