Mary, Mary

Chapter 42

I WOKE UP SUDDENLY to a slightly bemused flight attendant staring down at me. I remembered that it was the next morning and I was on a United jet back to L.A. Her curious expression indicated she had just asked a question.

“I'm sorry?” I said.

“Could you please put up your tray table? Put your seat forward. We'll be landing in Los Angeles in just a few minutes.”

Before I had drifted off, I'd been thinking about James Truscott and how he'd suddenly appeared in my life. Coincidence? I tended not to believe in it. So I'd called a researcher and friend at Quantico, and asked her to get me some more information on Truscott.

Monnie Donnelley had promised that soon I'd know more about Truscott than even I wanted to know. I gathered up my papers. It wasn't a good idea to leave them out like that, and not like me; it was also unlike me to sleep on flights. Everything was a little upside down these days. Just a little, right?

My Mary Smith file had grown considerably thicker in just a few days. The recent false alarm was a conundrum. I wasn't even sure that Mary Smith was behind that one.

Looking at the murder reports, I had a picture of someone who was growing more confident in her work, and definitely more aggressive. She was moving in on her targets - literally The first site, the Patrice Bennett murder, was a public space. The next time was outside of Antonia Schifman's home. Now, all indications were that Mary Smith had spent part of the night inside Marti Lowenstein-Bell's house before eventually killing her in the pool.

Anyway, here I was back in LA. again, getting off a plane, renting a car - even though I probably could have asked Agent Page to pick me up.

Looks-wise, the L.A. Bureau field office put D.C. headquarters to shame. Instead of the claustrophobic maze I was used to back East, this was nine stories of open floor plan, polished glass, and lots of natural light. From the cubicle they had assigned me on the fifteenth floor, I had a great view of the Getty Museum and beyond. At most field offices, I'd be lucky to get a chair and a desk.

Agent Page started hovering about ten minutes after I got there. I knew that Page was a sharp enough guy very ambitious, and with some seasoning, he was going to make a good agent. But I just didn't need somebody looking over my shoulder right now. It was bad enough to have Director Burns on me, not to mention the writer, JamesTruscott. My Boswell, right? Or was he something else?

Page asked if there was anything at all that I needed. I held up my file.

“This thing is at least twenty-four-hours cold. I want to know everything Detective Galletta has over at LAPD. I want to know more than Galletta has. Do you think you could -”

“On it,” he said, and was gone.

It wasn't a bogus assignment I'd given him, though. I really did need to get current, and if that meant Page would be out of my hair for a while, all the better.

I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and scribbled a few questions I'd been pondering on the ride in from LAX.

M. Lowenstein-Bell - how did someone get inside the house?

Does this killer have some kind of hit list? An established order? Are there other less- obvious connections between the victims? Don't there have to be?

The most common formula in my profession is this: How plus why equals who. If I wanted to know Mary Smith, I had to consider the similarities and differences - the combination of the two - from site to site on every one of the murders. That meant a stop at the Lowenstein-Bell residence.

I wrote, E-mailer? I Perp?

I kept coming back to that point. How much intersection was there between the killer's personality and the persona in the c-mails? How honest, for lack of a better word, was Mary Smith's writing? And how much of it, if any was misdirection?

Until I could figure that out, it was like chasing two suspects. If I was lucky, my next appointment would shed some light on the c-mails. I wrote another note to myself. Tool sets?

Most pattern killers had two sets of tools, as did Mary Smith.

First were the tools of the actual murder. The gun was a sure thing here. We knew she used the same one each time. We weren't as sure about the knife.

And a car had to be considered. Any other way of getting in and out seemed unfeasible.

Then there were the “tools” that helped her satisfy her psychoemotional needs.

The children's stickers marked A or B, and the e-mails themselves. Usually, these were more important to the killer than the actual weapons. They were her way of saying “I was here“ or ”This is me.”

Or, possibly, and this was the troubling part, “This is who I want you to think I am.”

In any case, it was a kind of taunting - something that could be taken as “Come and get me. If you can.”

I scribbled that last thought down, too.

Come and get me? If you can?

Then I wrote down something that kept sticking in my craw - Truscott. Appeared six weeks ago. Who is James Tinscott? V/hat is his deal?

Suddenly I looked at my watch. It was time to leave the office if I didn't want to be late for my first appointment. Requisitioning a Bureau vehicle would have meant one more person looking over my shoulder, and that's exactly why I'd rented a car at the airport.

I left without telling anyone where I was headed. If I was going to be acting like a homicide detective again, I was going to do it right.