Kiss Me, Kill Me

ELEVEN

Suzanne drove nearly two hours to meet Jill Reeves, the roommate of the first Cinderella Strangler victim.

Jill, who’d been a freshman, dropped out of college after the murder of her roommate and moved back home to Hamden, Connecticut, outside of New Haven. Suzanne had read Vic Panetta’s notes from his interview of her, and while Suzanne didn’t think that the senior detective had missed anything, it didn’t hurt to have another sit-down. Because of the long drive, she called Reeves’s mother first to confirm that her daughter would be home.

She called Panetta as she was waiting for a pool car at FBI headquarters. “I’m leaving in two minutes for Hamden. Sure you don’t want to come?”

“Knock yourself out, kid. I have another case I’m in the middle of. Should be able to wrap it up today. Plus, I have a stack of paperwork I want to finish before sundown. I’ll let you know if I learn anything from our lab.”

“Maybe we should work on a more effective deterrent to homicide: Save a tree, don’t murder anyone.”

She hung up and maneuvered her way through Manhattan traffic. She’d left at the tail end of the morning commute, and once she was off the island, highway traffic moved at a steady clip.

Jill Reeves and Alanna Andrews had been best friends growing up; they’d even gone to Columbia together. Two months after they got there, Alanna was murdered. Jill, heartbroken, dropped out at the end of the semester and went home. Suzanne, normally suspicious, had wondered if Panetta had followed up with the girl—until there was a second murder, there had been no reason to believe that a serial killer was responsible for Alanna’s death. In fact, he had—he’d even driven to Hamden for Alanna’s funeral and talked to her parents, trying to assess whether someone from her hometown had taken advantage of her relocation to kill her. But the facts stayed the same; Alanna had disappeared from a party that the two girls had attended. Jill had gotten drunk and went home with a guy, believing that Alanna was fine—or Jill had been too drunk to care. The next morning, her roommate didn’t show up and didn’t answer her cell phone. Jill called the police.

This fall would mark Suzanne’s ten-year anniversary with the FBI. She’d seen a lot of crap on the Violent Crimes Squad, and knew that there were always some cases that were never solved. She didn’t want this to be one of them.

Hamden was a sleepy and quaint town; small, but still bigger than the teeny Louisiana town Suzanne had grown up in before moving to Baton Rouge as a teenager. The Reeveses lived in a well-maintained and renovated older house near the downtown area. It was kind of cute, but after living in New York for nearly ten years, Suzanne would go crazy in a town this small.

Mrs. Reeves answered almost as soon as Suzanne knocked. “I saw you drive up. Jill is in the living room.”

“Lovely home,” Suzanne said.

“Thank you.” Mrs. Reeves beamed as she closed the door. “It’s been in my family for more than a hundred years. My husband and I are trying to bring it back to its original glory.”

“You’re doing a terrific job.”

Jill Reeves sat on an antique couch, her back rigid.

“Honey, this is the FBI agent who called. Suzanne Madden.”

“Madeaux,” Suzanne corrected.

Mrs. Reeves frowned, then said, “Madeaux. French?”

“Cajun.” She smiled at Jill. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”

Mrs. Reeves said, “We’re still in shock. Alanna was always such a good girl. I don’t know what possessed her to go to such a party.”

Suzanne looked at Jill. She didn’t say anything.

Suzanne said, “Most college students go to a party or two. It’s part of the experience.”

Mrs. Reeves sat down. “Not Jill. She knows the dangers.”

Right. Suzanne wasn’t going to get anything out of Jill with the mother in the room. “Mrs. Reeves, would you mind stepping out? I need to speak to Jill in private.”

She frowned. “But shouldn’t I be here to protect her rights? She already told me everything, anyway.”

Hardly. “Jill isn’t a suspect; she’s not in any trouble. I just want to ask her some follow-up questions.”

“Then why can’t I stay? I’m worried about her. She doesn’t want to go back to college.”

“Mom,” Jill said with an exasperated sigh, “just leave, okay?”

Mrs. Reeves pursed her lips, rose from the chair, and left. Suzanne crossed the room and closed the double doors.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” Jill said to Suzanne.

“You lied to your parents, even after your best friend was killed?” Suzanne wasn’t going to coddle the young woman. She sat in the chair across from Jill.

“You don’t understand,” Jill said.

“Try me.”

She shrugged. “It’s not important anymore. It’s just—my parents are older. They’re old enough to be your parents,” she said as if Suzanne were ancient. “They were forty when they adopted me. They don’t get anything. I could tell them I was going to a rave and they’d say, ‘Oh, that sounds like fun!’ ” She shook her head.

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight between us. Don’t lie to me. If I find out you’re lying to me about anything, I’ll send your parents a copy of the police report.”

“You can’t do that!”

“It’s public record. I can and will do it.” She took out her copy of the report to reiterate her point. “I’m assuming you were honest with Detective Panetta.”

She nodded. “I didn’t lie to my parents, either. They just assumed I didn’t go to the party—they didn’t even ask me—I just didn’t correct them. I’m not doing any of that stuff; that’s why I left college. It was getting out of hand, and I don’t want to be that person anymore. I was just accepted to a small college in Pennsylvania for the fall, but I haven’t told them yet.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “I just don’t know what I want anymore.”

“Hey, I understand that.” Until she’d been recruited by the FBI while at Boston College, Suzanne didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. She didn’t even declare her major until junior year because she kept changing her mind.

“I haven’t done any drugs or drinking since, I swear to God. If I hadn’t been so wasted when Alanna was killed, maybe I would have noticed she wasn’t around. Maybe I could have stopped her from going off with the wrong guy. I don’t know.” Tears filled her eyes and she looked down at her hands. “We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I still want to call her every night before bed, like I used to. I often pick up the phone and then remember she’s dead.”

Suzanne reached out and squeezed her hand. “If you can help me, maybe I can find Alanna’s killer and put him in prison. That’s justice. It’s why I’m a cop.”

Jill nodded. “I promise, the entire truth. But—” She hesitated.

“No buts, Jill. The truth.”

She nodded.

“Have you heard about the other murders?”

Jill nodded, wiping a stray tear from her face. “The news. The Cinderella Strangler. That’s him, right?”

“Yes. There are four victims now. He targets the types of parties where you and Alanna went on October thirtieth. We don’t know how he picks his victims. Three of the victims were college students—Alanna; Heather Garcia, who was a junior at NYU; and the most recent victim, Jessica Bell, a sophomore at Columbia. Did you know Jessica Bell?”

Jill shook her head. “The name isn’t familiar. But I left after a few months. It’s a big school.”

“That’s okay.” Suzanne looked at her notes and Panetta’s report. “You told Detective Panetta that this was the first party of this type that you’d gone to. Is that correct?”

Jill looked sheepish. “Well, no, but that’s not what he asked. He asked if Alanna or I had gone to any other underground parties since arriving at Columbia. I didn’t lie—it was the first we’d been to since we started college.”

“But you understood the question, obviously.”

“Yes. But … I didn’t want him to think that we were sluts or anything. Even though …” She hesitated.

“You need to tell me the truth or more girls are going to die. You understand that, right? Four murders—that’s well past the textbook criteria for a serial killer. I need to figure out how and why he’s targeting these victims, because that will lead us to him.” She knew that, as the first victim, Alanna had the highest chance of having a personal connection to the killer. Serial killers rarely begin by killing random strangers. The first victim was usually personal, or had a personal significance to the killer.

But Jill didn’t need to know that, not yet.

Suzanne said, “Something happened that night with Alanna that set him off. Something that maybe you saw or heard without recognizing its importance. First—how many of these types of parties have you been to in your lifetime?”

“That was my second, I swear. The first time we were seniors in high school. But Alanna had been to a bunch of them.”

“Here in Hamden?”

“No. We took the train to the city. It was harder for me to disappear for the weekend, but Alanna’s parents didn’t really care what she did as long as her grades were good. That first time, I convinced my parents that I was somewhere else, and had a million excuses ready if they checked up on me. Alanna had talked about how much fun they were, and begged me to go with her.”

“Was that party similar to the one you went to this past October?”

“I—” She looked down again, her face reddening. “I had broken up with my boyfriend when I went to that first party. I was so angry—I just wanted to find a guy and have sex, as if that would have punished Gary or something. I’d smoked pot a couple times before, but I’d never done real drugs—I was so wired. It was like my mind and my body were two different things. It just got out of hand. I didn’t want to do it again, but after a while I think I just pushed aside the bad parts and remembered the great music and the fun stuff, so when Alanna told me about the Haunted House, it sounded okay.”

“How did she hear about it?”

“Alanna knew about all of them. She wanted to get her grades on solid ground so her parents wouldn’t pull her from college, so she worked hard for the first two months. But after she aced her midterms, she said she needed to go wild.”

“What about the party when you were a senior?”

“Alanna went to stay with her cousin in New York for a month the summer before our senior year. She told me all about it—I was shocked. I guess I was a little more sheltered back then. Alanna was like a trendsetter, always the first to try new things.”

“Before you went, what did she tell you it was going to be like?”

“Just that there would be a live band and lots of dancing and drinking—” She hesitated.

“Tell me, Jill.”

“She said when she went to the party in New York, she’d had sex with three different guys. Didn’t even know their names. It stunned me—I mean, she’d lost her virginity before me, I don’t know why I was so surprised, except that, well, I was. She said it was empowering.”

Suzanne made a note. Maybe Alanna had other secrets she hadn’t shared with Jill. Her cousin in New York might know more, especially if that’s where Alanna’s partying lifestyle began.

“Back to the party in October, the Haunted House. Alanna heard about the party, you went with her, and according to your statement, the last time you saw her was when she was dancing around one a.m.?”

Jill nodded. “I don’t know the exact time, but we didn’t even get there until after eleven. I didn’t want to do any drugs, but I made a mistake and drank something I shouldn’t have and felt all weirded out. When I found Alanna, I told her I was sick, but she said she was having fun and didn’t want to leave. She gave me a pill. I don’t know what it was, but it did make me feel a little better.

“The rest of the night was a bit foggy,” Jill continued. “I hooked up with this guy—I don’t even know his name.” Tears started again. “I can’t believe I did that, just anonymous sex, and I didn’t know him. We went back to his apartment and did things I barely remember. I felt sick for days, but Alanna was dead.”

“Was there anyone at these parties who you knew? By name?”

“Not really—I mean, I might have known names that night, but I don’t remember.”

“What about someone who Alanna talked about who you didn’t know?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Someone Alanna mentioned as inviting her to the parties?”

She shook her head.

“What about her cousin?”

“Whitney.”

“Whitney Andrews?”

“I don’t know, she has a different last name. I only met her a couple times.”

Suzanne made note and asked, “What about a boyfriend? You’d told the detective that Alanna wasn’t seeing anyone specific. Was that true?”

“She didn’t have a boyfriend.”

“What about someone who showed her more interest than she wanted?”

“Alanna liked it when guys flirted with her. I know it makes it sound like she was a slut, and maybe she was kind of, but you didn’t know her, and I don’t want people thinking bad things about her.”

“I don’t think anything bad about Alanna or any of the other victims. My job is to find out who killed her and put him in prison for the rest of his life. Who Alanna was or what she did is not important to me beyond relevance in this case. What about an ex-boyfriend?”

“She had one guy in high school, Zach Correli, who was a year older than us. He went to college in Maine. When they broke up, I don’t think she was heartbroken, and neither was he.”

But it was something Suzanne needed to look into. If Correli wasn’t in New York when Alanna was killed, it should be easy to prove.

“One more thing,” Suzanne said. “Did Alanna have a job? Someplace where she might have met someone you didn’t? Maybe volunteer work, or part-time. Detective Panetta didn’t have anything listed except that she was a full-time student.”

“She didn’t have a job while in college. I worked part-time on campus for my scholarship. Her parents had a college fund for her. She’s never really been broke.”

“Last thing. This might be a little hard, but I’d like to show you the pictures of the other three victims, to see if you know them.”

She showed the photos to Jill one by one. There was no recognition until she saw Jessica Bell. “She looks familiar. She’s dead?”

“Last weekend.”

“Oh, God.”

“Do you know who she is?”

Jill shook her head. “She just looks familiar. Maybe I had a class with her, or I saw her somewhere.”

“Maybe at the Halloween party?”

“Maybe.” Jill frowned. “I honestly don’t know.”

“That’s okay. You did great, and I really appreciate your honesty.” Suzanne put the photographs back in the folder, then took Jill’s hands and squeezed them. “Don’t live in the past. I know you harbor a lot of regret and guilt. But I can tell you that it’ll eat you up if you let it. I think you should go to that Pennsylvania college. Alanna wouldn’t want you stuck in limbo.”

Suzanne handed Jill her card. “If you remember anything else, or just want to talk, call me.”

She left, and because she was in Hamden she stopped by the Andrewses’ house two blocks from where Jill lived. At first she thought no one was home, then a woman in her seventies answered the door. “Yes?”

“Hello, I’m Special Agent Madeaux from New York. I’m sorry to bother you, but I was in town and had a question.”

The woman’s face clouded. “About Alanna?”

“Yes, ma’am. Actually about her cousin, Whitney.”

“Whitney.” The woman sighed. “Is she in trouble?”

“No, not that I know of. But I was told that she and Alanna were close and I haven’t spoken to her yet regarding Alanna’s murder. Do you have her current address and phone number?”

“Yes. Wait here, please.” She closed the door. Several moments later she returned with a piece of paper with shaky writing. Whitney Morrissey, Brooklyn, and a number. “I don’t have her address, but her mother told me she was living in Brooklyn now. She’s an artist, very good, too. Goes to art shows all the time. But it’s a hard way to make a living.”

“Thank you for this.”

“I know what they said about my granddaughter—but I’m not going to remember that. Alanna was a sweet girl. She never hurt anyone. Never. She played cards with me every Sunday night.” Tears welled in the lady’s eyes. “I have fourteen grandchildren, and Alanna is the only one who always remembered my birthday.” She looked sharply at Suzanne. “You don’t know who hurt my granddaughter, do you?”

“Not yet, ma’am, but finding out is my number one priority.”