Deal Breaker

Chapter 48

Myron parked his car on the dirt road. He was alone. The car’s clock read 8:30 P.M. He grabbed his flashlight and headed toward the meeting spot.

The brush was thick. Several branches whipped across his face. He listened for other sounds. Crickets hummed away. Nothing else. The flashlight sliced through the heavy darkness, carving a path for him to follow. Myron heard his feet crunch on twigs and leaves. His mouth felt bone-dry. It always felt that way at moments like this.

He was getting close now, no more than twenty or thirty yards away.

“Kathy?” he called out.

No answer.

“It’s Myron, Kathy. I’m alone.”

No reply. But then Myron heard a shuffling from in front of him. Something came into view. A head. A head of long blond hair.

“It’s okay,” Myron said gently. “I’m here alone.”

She stepped toward him tentatively. Her right hand shaded her eyes from the flashlight’s harsh glare. Myron pointed the beam away. “It’s all right,” he said.

She continued to move toward him, a dim silhouette. Her steps were slow, plodding, like a B-movie monster come to life.

“It’s okay,” Myron said again. “No one is going to hurt you.”

“I wish that were true.”

The voice had not come from her. It had come from behind him. Myron closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped. “Hello, Christian.”

“Don’t move, Mr. Bolitar. Put your hands up.”

“Why bother?”

“What?”

“You’re going to kill us. Just like you tried to kill Kathy. Just like you killed her father and Nancy.”

“I never meant to hurt anybody,” he said.

“But you did.”

Christian cocked the gun. “Hands up. Now.”

Myron raised his hands slowly. “Kathy opened up to you that night. She told you everything-every sordid detail of her past. She wanted to clean the slate.”

“She lied to me!” Christian shouted. “All the time we were together-it was all a lie.”

“So you tried to kill her.”

“Kathy wanted me to still love her, Mr. Bolitar. But don’t you see? I never loved her. I loved a lie. She wanted me to stand beside that lie while she told her story to the world. She wanted me to sell out my teammates, toss away a chance at a national championship and Heisman trophy-all for the sake of a lying whore.”

“A lying whore,” Myron said, “like your mother.”

He nodded. “Mr. Bolitar, tell her. Tell her what that game meant. In terms of money, fame, pride. You understand, Mr. Bolitar. It helped get me that contract.”

“So you hit her over the head.”

“I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I thought she was dead. I couldn’t find a pulse.”

“So you drove her out here and buried the body. You hoped she’d never be found, but if she were, it’d be blamed on a serial killer.”

Christian stepped closer. He raised the gun. “Enough talk,” he said. “I’m not going to let you stall around until someone shows up.”

“No need. Someone’s been here all the time.”

Win came out from behind a tree, no more than a yard away from Christian. He pressed the.44 against Christian’s ear and said, “Drop it, or your brain becomes squirrel lunch.”

Christian dropped the gun.

“It’s over,” Myron shouted.

From a farther distance two uniformed police arrived. They handcuffed Christian.

Jake Courter stumbled behind them, high-stepping through the long grass. “Too old for this shit,” he mumbled. When he reached the clearing he said, “Nice setup, Bolitar.”

“Lots of details. The secret to a good scam.”

“Gonna tell me what’s going on now?”

“Sure. Jess?”

Jessica took off the blond wig and stepped forward.

Christian’s mouth dropped open. “What the-”

“You killed Kathy,” Myron said, “but not from the blow to the head. She suffocated trying to claw her way out of the dirt.”

Jake looked confused. “Where’s the body?”

“In the morgue. Where it’s been since the police found it two months ago. Sally Li confirmed the identity last night.”

“So why hadn’t it been identified before?”

“Because the county medical examiner was Kathy’s father. He knew who it was right away, but he pretended otherwise.”

“Why?”

“Think about it a second, Jake. From Adam Culver’s perspective. Your case had gone nowhere in eighteen months. Adam knew that. He also knew the body provided no new clues. So he figured that the only way to catch Kathy’s killer was to draw him out. How? By making the killer think Kathy might still be alive. After all, she’d been alive when he dumped her in the woods. So Adam kept the corpse’s identity a secret from everyone-the police, his friends, even his own family. He also figured that the nude photographs were tied into all this. So he used them.”

“You mean he put that ad in the magazine?”

Myron nodded. “Adam Culver arranged everything. Even the mysterious phone calls saying ‘Come and get me. I survived.’ He did everything he could to make it look like Kathy was alive.”

Jake nodded. “So what you guys were just doing-”

“Was finishing up Adam Culver’s plan. Our performance at the church this morning sowed the final seeds of doubt.”

“You were forcing Christian to make a play for you.”

“Exactly.”

“Incredible. So everyone was in on on this?”

“Jessica was,” Myron said. “So were her mother and brother. It would have been too cruel to lie to them. But Paul Duncan didn’t know. Neither did anybody else, and Win made sure that all the suspects-Otto, the dean, even Gary Grady-knew about Kathy’s ‘survival.’”

“Then you weren’t sure it was Christian?”

“No, I was sure.”

“You were trying to play it fair.”

Myron nodded. “That’s why I didn’t tell you anything. I wanted you to see what happened without any preconceived notions.”

“Fair enough,” Jake said. “Go on.”

“Adam Culver understood that only the killer would know this spot. If he made the killer think Kathy could still be alive, he or she would have to come back here-just to make sure Kathy was dead. That was why Adam rented that cabin nearby. That was why he had all that electronic equipment. To tape him. To have proof.”

“Catching the killer returning to the scene of the crime,” Jake said.

“Right.”

“But I don’t get something. Adam was killed before the magazine was mailed out. How did Christian find out about it?”

“He didn’t. Remember, Adam was a pathologist. He wasn’t an investigator. He overlooked a very important clue. At first anyway.”

“What clue?”

“Kathy’s clothes.”

“What about them?”

“When Kathy’s body was found, she was wearing a yellow sweater and a pair of gray sweat pants. Yet the sorority sisters said she was wearing blue when she left the house. The rapists said she was wearing blue. Dean Gordon said she was wearing blue. Ricky Lane said she was wearing blue. The sorority sisters were also positive that Kathy never returned to the house. So the question was: Where did the yellow sweater and gray sweat pants come from?”

Jake shrugged.

“It took Adam a while to realize the significance of the clothes. But when he did, he went to the most obvious source. Kathy’s roommate.”

“Nancy Serat.”

“Right. But he didn’t want to let on that Kathy’s body had been found. So he asked Nancy where he could find her favorite yellow sweater, pretending to be a typical dad on some kind of nostalgic tour. But think about it. If Kathy didn’t go back to her sorority house, where did she change clothes?”

Jake saw it now. “At Christian’s,” he said with a snap of the fingers. “Kathy slept there all the time. She must have kept clothes there.”

“Right.”

“And Nancy and Christian were friends,” Jake said, picking up the thread. “She’d see nothing wrong with telling Christian all about Adam’s visit. Probably thought the whole thing was kinda cute.”

Myron turned toward Christian. “You got scared when you heard Adam had been asking about the yellow sweater. You knew he was getting close. So you followed him that night. You heard him fight with his wife. You saw him storm out of the house, and you figured this was the ideal opportunity to kill him. Another perfect misdirection.”

Christian said nothing.

Jake said, “What do you mean, ‘another perfect misdirection’?”

“When your investigation of Kathy’s disappearance began,” Myron said, “who did you focus in on?”

“Christian,” Jake said. “Like I said, we always check out the boyfriend.”

“So what did Christian do? With campus security combing the campus for clues, he planted the panties on the top of a garbage bin.”

“The panties,” Jake added, “with someone else’s semen.”

“Proof he didn’t do it.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“He also misdirected us with Nancy Serat. He strangled Nancy. Then he planted one of Kathy’s hairs at the scene.”

“But where did he get the hair?”

“Kathy slept in his room all the time, right? She would have kept other stuff there besides her clothes. Stuff like a hairbrush.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“It was almost perfect. Blame someone who was dead. And if Kathy wasn’t dead-if she had indeed survived-he’d make her look like a lunatic. Who’d believe the ravings of a girl who’d killed her old roommate? But Christian didn’t count on Jessica showing up at Nancy’s. He panicked. He hit her over the head and ran. Problem was, he’d left his fingerprints behind. But Christian was quick. He even used that to his advantage. When you dragged him in the next morning, he immediately admitted to being at Nancy’s house. And then he came up with that wonderful story about sisters reuniting.”

“Another perfect misdirection,” Jake said.

“Except he forgot about the glass.”

“What glass?”

“His fingerprints were found in several spots in the house, including a drinking glass Yet Christian told us Nancy barely let him in the door, that she practically pushed him away mumbling about the reuniting sisters. Under those circumstances, isn’t it odd she’d offer him a drink?”

Myron looked at Christian. He lowered his eyes.

“I-I didn’t mean to hurt any of them, Mr. Bolitar,” he said.

“You were manipulative and calculating,” Myron said. “You covered all the bases, even when you hired me. I was small-time. I could be controlled. You knew about my background, that I was an experienced investigator. You knew if any trouble arose, I’d keep things quiet. That I’d keep you informed. That I’d try to protect you. You played me for a sucker.”

Everyone remained silent until Jake said, “All right. Get him out of here.”

The uniformed officers led Christian away.

Myron looked back at Jessica. She still hadn’t said a word. Tears slid down her cheeks. None of this morning’s tears had been for her father. Maybe some of these were.

Win shook his head. “‘Squirrel lunch.’ I can’t believe I said ‘squirrel lunch.’”

Jessica stopped crying. She even smiled a little. Myron put his arm around her and pulled her in close. Together they made their way back to the car.