Nighttime Is My Time

63

As Eddie Zarro had warned, District Attorney Rich Stevens was upset and angry. "These broken-down performers come into this county doing publicity stunts and waste our time when we have a maniac on our hands/' he barked. "I'm going to issue a statement to the press to the effect that both Robby Brent and Laura Wilcox may face criminal charges for creating a hoax. Laura Wilcox has admitted that she's been sending those faxes threatening Dr. Sheridan's daughter. I don't care whether Dr. Sheridan is in a forgiving mood or not. I'm not. It's a crime to send threatening letters, and Laura Wilcox is going to answer for it."

Alarmed, Sam hastened to calm Stevens. "Wait, Rich," he said. "The press does not know about Dr. Sheridan's daughter or the threats to her. We can't let that out now."

"I'm aware of that, Sam," Rich Stevens snapped. "We're only going to refer to the publicity stunt that Wilcox confessed to in that last fax." He handed Sam the file on his desk. "Photos of the crime scene," he explained. "Take a look at them. Joy was the first one of our people to get there after the call came in. I know the rest of you have heard this already, but, Joy, fill Sam in on the victim and what the neighbor told you."

There were four other investigators in addition to Sam and Eddie

Zarro in the district attorney's office. Joy Lacko, the only woman in the group, had been an investigator for less than a year, but Sam had enormous respect for her intelligence and ability to extract information from shocked or grief-stricken witnesses.

"The victim, Yvonne Tepper, was sixty-three years old, divorced, with two grown sons, both of whom are married and live in California." Joy had her notebook in her hand but did not consult it as she looked directly at Sam. "She owned her own hairdressing salon, was very well liked, and apparently had no enemies. Her former husband has remarried and lives in Illinois." She paused. "Sam, all of this is probably irrelevant, given the pewter owl we found in Tepper's pocket."

"No fingerprints on it, I assume?" Sam queried.

"No fingerprints. We know it has to be the same guy who grabbed Helen Whelan Friday night."

"What neighbor did you talk to?"

"Actually, everyone on the block, but the one who knows anything is the one Tepper had been visiting and had probably just left when she was waylaid. Her name is Rita Hall. Tepper and she were close friends. Tepper had brought some cosmetics from her salon for Mrs. Hall and ran over with them when she got home last night, sometime after ten o'clock. The two women visited for a while and watched the eleven o'clock news together. Hall's husband, Matthew, had already gone to bed. Incidentally, this morning he was the first person to reach Bessie Koch, the woman who found the body and was blowing the horn of her car to get help. He was smart enough to tell the other neighbors to keep away from the body and to call 911."

"Did Yvonne Tepper leave Mrs. Hall's house directly after the news was over?" Sam asked.

"Yes. Mrs. Hall walked her to the door and stepped out onto the porch with her. She remembered that she wanted to tell Tepper something she'd heard about a former neighbor. She said they didn't stand there longer than a minute and that the overhead light was on, so they could have been seen. She said she noticed a car slow down and pull over to the curb, but she didn't think anything of it. Apparently the people across the street have teenagers who are always coming and going."

"Does Mrs. Hall remember anything about the car?" Sam asked.

"Only that it was a medium-sized sedan, either dark blue or black. Mrs. Hall went back into her house and closed the door, and Mrs. Tepper cut across the lawn to the sidewalk."

"My guess is that she was dead less than a minute later," Rich Stevens said. "The motive wasn't robbery. Her handbag was on the sidewalk. She had two hundred bucks in her wallet and was wearing a diamond ring and diamond earrings. The only thing that guy wanted to do was kill her. He grabbed her, pulled her onto her own lawn, strangled her, left her body behind a bush, and drove away."

"He stayed long enough to drop the owl in her pocket," Sam observed.

Rich Stevens looked from one to the other of his investigators. "I've been turning over in my head whether or not to release the information about the owl to the papers. Maybe someone would know something about a guy who's obsessed with owls or possibly keeps them as a hobby."

"You can imagine what a field day the media would have if they knew about the owl being left in the victims' pockets," Sam said quickly. "If this nut is on an ego trip, and I think he is, we'll be feeding him what he wants, to say nothing about the possibility of setting a copycat killer loose."

"And it's not as though we'd be warning women by releasing that bit of information," Joy Lacko pointed out. "He leaves the owl after he kills his victim, not before."

At the end of the meeting it was agreed that the best course of action was to warn women against being alone on the street after dark and to acknowledge that evidence pointed to the fact that both Helen Whelan and Yvonne Tepper had been murdered by the same unknown person or persons.

As they got up to go, Joy Lacko said quietly, "What scares me is that right now some perfectly innocent woman is going about her business, not realizing that in the next few days, just because she happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when that guy comes cruising by, her life will be over."

"I am not conceding that yet," Rich Stevens said sharply.

I am, Sam thought. I am.