The Love Killings (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

The story of the Stratton family murders broke on national news just as the plane reached airspeed and made the slow, torturous climb over the Pacific. That’s when Matt’s TV switched on and CNN interrupted their schedule with a special report from Philadelphia.

There was no mention of Baylor. No connection to the serial killings in LA and New Orleans. In fact, Matt was struck by how little information had been released. He switched between the cable news channels, then flipped back again. The stories were thin to none on every network.

But like most attempts to keep something buried, every reporter and news anchor seemed to sense that something was wrong and, whatever it might be, was probably extraordinary.

Matt could hear it in their voices and see it on the screen. He could feel it.

It was in the video images of the Strattons’ mansion hidden behind the stone wall and obscured by a carriage house and long row of leafless trees. The patrol units parked along the property line, and the massive blue tarp blocking the narrow driveway. A press release stating that within the first hour of discovery, the case had been passed from local authorities to county detectives, and now, two days later and for reasons that hadn’t yet been explained, the FBI and Department of Justice were involved.

Nothing ever moved that quickly. Unless the crime defied the imagination and was extraordinarily vicious like this one.

As Matt looked at pictures of the victims provided by friends and family, a handful of snapshots from happier times released by the FBI’s field office in Philadelphia, he wondered how long it would take the media to figure it out. How long it would take them to guess, or when the first leak would occur. But even more, he wondered how much time Doyle and the FBI’s task force had before they would be forced to step before the cameras and answer more than a handful of difficult questions.

What exactly happened to Jim and Tammy Stratton and their three children? What is the FBI hiding, and why are they hiding it? Why are you going through so much effort to keep us out of the loop? How bad could the details really be? There’s a rumor, Mr. Doyle, that you are overseeing the prosecution of Dr. George Baylor, the serial killer who fled Los Angeles and New Orleans. Is this true, and if so, why are you here in Philadelphia?

Why are you here?

Matt’s mind surfaced. The plane was landing in darkness, and he reset his watch ahead three hours to 7:30 p.m. According to the e-mail he’d picked up while waiting to be deputized in Westwood, agent K. Brown would be meeting him once he passed through security. While the message didn’t offer a description, Matt guessed by the lack of a first name that he would be greeted by a woman. Curiously, K. Brown shared the same last name as Baylor’s first victim, Millie Brown, the daughter of former congressman Jack Brown.

The name was meaningless, but still, it set off a—

Matt let the thought go and got out of his seat to open the carry-on bin overhead. As he turned, he caught a man two rows back staring at him. The stranger appeared nervous and quickly dropped his gaze, but Matt was still recovering from those four gunshot wounds and couldn’t afford to look away. Instead, he did the same thing he’d been doing since he was released from the hospital. He committed the man’s face to memory. Something about his appearance seemed familiar, but Matt couldn’t place it and quickly sized the man up: late thirties or early forties, three maybe four inches shorter than six feet, a tough call because he was still sitting down. In spite of the belly, he seemed thin and soft and out of shape, with black wavy hair, dark-brown eyes, wire-rimmed glasses, and a complexion so pale and colorless it stood out.

Once Matt had the image locked in his mind—a practice his shrink had called a textbook case of paranoia—he grabbed his briefcase and leather jacket, made his way up the aisle, and exited the plane. The gate was more than halfway down the terminal, and Matt was grateful for the chance to stretch his legs. As he walked past the shops and restaurants, he never looked back for the man he had just seen on the plane. He let it go and breezed past security.

Agent K. Brown turned out to be easy enough to spot, and Matt’s guess proved right. She was a she in her late twenties, holding an eight-by-ten card with his last name written across the front and offering a warm, gracious smile as they shook hands.

“Kate Brown,” she said. “Good flight?”

“Not bad. The story broke.”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

She pointed toward the sign to baggage claim, and they started walking.

“We keep an apartment here in the city for long stay over’s, but something’s come up. I heard from Doyle that you didn’t get much sleep last night. I hope you don’t mind if we take a short drive.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m still on California time. What’s happened?”

“Dr. Stanley Westbrook, a profiler from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, wants to brief us first thing in the morning.”

Matt winced. They already knew who they were looking for, and he wondered what a profiler could contribute this far into the investigation. The murders didn’t begin with the Strattons. They began nineteen months ago with the horrific death of Millie Brown.

“Okay,” Matt said. “So where are we going tonight?”

“Doyle and my boss, Wes Rogers, you’ll meet him tomorrow, he’s the special agent in charge of the Philadelphia office. They want you to walk through the crime scene before the briefing tomorrow with Westbrook. They want you to get a feel for what happened.”

Matt didn’t say anything. He was anxious to see the Strattons’ home, and glad that he wouldn’t have to wait until morning.

They reached baggage claim, found Matt’s flight on the information monitor, and walked down the line to the carousel on the end. As they waited, Matt gave Brown a quick glance. She was easy to look at—her shoulder-length hair a mix of blond and light brown that was either natural or very well done. Her eyes were a vibrant blue that sparkled even in the harsh fluorescent lights of an airport. Her body, too well drawn to be hidden by her open ski parka or the dark-gray slacks and matching jacket that no doubt was the uniform of the day. But what struck Matt most was Brown’s presence, her angular face that broadcasted her obvious strength and intelligence.

She came off true, and his first impression was that he liked her.

He looked away as he heard the first bag hit the conveyor belt with a heavy thud. He wondered what had happened in Brown’s life that lured her into law enforcement. Was she following a parent’s footsteps? Or was she wounded and looking to heal by spending the rest of her life chasing ghosts and righting wrongs?

After a short wait, Matt’s duffel bag slid down the ramp and onto the belt. But as he walked over to grab it, he looked up and caught that man staring at him again. The one he’d seen on the plane just a few minutes ago. Even worse, the man had his cell phone out and was pointing it at him. It seemed clear that he wasn’t using the phone. He was faking a conversation while either recording video of Matt or taking his picture.

Matt hoisted the bag over his shoulder and followed Brown toward the exit. He was thinking about the hit man his father had hired to kill him. The man Matt had shot to death on top of Mount Hollywood. Turning back to the baggage carousel, Matt gave the man with the cell phone another hard look. He was still pretending to talk to someone. Still pointing the device at him as if using the camera.

Matt turned away. The read he’d made on the plane felt righteous now. He could depend on it. He had a new shadow, and it had followed him to Philadelphia on a cold night in early December. A man with ultra-pale skin who looked like he spent most of his time in the dark. The shrink in LA could call it paranoia if he liked, but Matt would treat it the way his gut told him to. It was all about survival. All about being the first one to shoot. All about dominoes falling down one after the other.

He checked the .45 holstered beneath his down vest and leather jacket and followed Brown out the door. The air was raw, and the hard wind burned his face. Ready or not, his arrival in the City of Brotherly Love felt like a wake-up call.

CHAPTER 5

The drive to the murder house in Radnor would only take about twenty-five minutes. Brown gave Matt a manila envelope and spent most of the time briefing him on details unrelated to the case. The keys to the apartment he would be staying in were here, along with the password to the Internet, information about parking in the neighborhood, and the access card that would open the security gates and doors to the FBI’s field office at 600 Arch Street. When Matt asked about the password to the FBI’s website and the chronological record he had been given access to before he was shot, Brown told him that Doyle and Rogers would take care of everything tomorrow morning when they gave him a desk and the keys to a car.

Matt checked the road behind them and saw only darkness. He had been keeping an eye out for the odd-looking man with pale skin ever since they left the airport. No one was following them, and he turned back and gazed through the windshield. They were passing a train station and gliding down a hill. Once they came out of the curve, Brown made a left at the light onto County Line Road.

“It’s halfway up the next hill,” she said in a quiet voice that shook a little.

Matt could feel his stomach beginning to churn. When he spotted the long line of patrol units parked before the stone wall and all the video cameras and reporters crowded onto a small patch of lawn on the other side of the street, the anticipation was almost overwhelming. Brown pulled into the drive and stopped as three cops dressed in black uniforms stepped forward with flashlights and rifles. They wanted to see Brown’s ID, and they asked to see Matt’s as well. Matt handed over his new badge and ID and thought he saw something change when the cop read his name. It was in his eyes as he passed the badge back.

It was recognition. Knowledge. Baylor.

They lifted the tarp and waved them through. Brown pulled past the carriage house, continuing down the drive until they reached the Strattons’ mansion on the left. She popped open the trunk, and they climbed out of the car. While she unlatched a kit and fished out a pair of vinyl gloves and a flashlight, Matt stopped to take in the building.

“The cop that took your badge,” she said. “He knows you. He knows who you are.”

It was the flaw in Doyle’s plan to hold back Baylor’s name in the murder of an entire family. Once they saw Matt’s face, once word got out that he was here, everyone would know exactly who they were looking for.

Brown passed over the flashlight and gloves and seemed shaky.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Just cold.”

The exterior lights were lit up along the drive, yet all the windows in the death house were dark—the Strattons’ mansion more than just a bit eerie. Matt took in the property and remembered seeing two mailboxes on the street by the entrance. Guessing that the carriage house and the mansion were built sometime in the 1800s, both appeared to have been heavily remodeled in the last ten years. The carriage house would have been a horse stable and barn, while the mansion was divided into two sections with four entrances. The first door opened to a small wing and was probably meant for the live-in staff. The more grandiose entrance off the long porch would have been the main entrance just as it was today.

“Where do these two doors in the middle go?” he asked.

“The first opens to a hallway, the kitchen, and a second set of stairs.”

“And this one?”

“The house manager’s office.”

Matt glanced at the carriage house, then turned back to the mansion and took a guess. Two families living in two separate homes, but within close proximity of each other. At least five gunshots had been fired, maybe more. As Doyle said when he first described the crime, it would have been a night of total chaos. A night when Dr. Baylor came to punish another physician and blew his mind.

Matt turned to Brown. “I’m assuming people live in the carriage house, and that they were home, right?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“It’s only sixty feet away, Kate. It’s hard to believe that they didn’t hear anything. The gunshots. The kids screaming and shouting for help. Things got crazy in there. It had to be a loud night.”

“No one heard anything,” she said.

“How old are they?”

“Early fifties. A middle-aged couple. Empty nesters. The time of death was 11:35 p.m. They were watching TV and didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.”

“Eleven thirty-five,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“Stratton wore a pacemaker. At 11:35 p.m., the box shut down and he was flat lining. According to the medical examiner, everyone was killed within an hour of Stratton’s death.”

Matt could almost see the expression on Baylor’s face as he shot five innocent people with his gun. The joy and satisfaction. The doctor’s sick mind leaking out of every pore.

He let the image pass and switched on the flashlight as he sensed movement in the darkness. There was a large pool and spa on the right side of the house. When he panned the flashlight into the yard beyond, he noticed three more cops in black uniforms, carrying rifles and guarding the perimeter. Deeper into the yard he could see a pond partially iced over and another home he suspected had been part of the original estate. A small gatehouse built of stone and set along a quiet tree-lined road. As Matt spotted the stream and bridge and wrought iron gate, he couldn’t help imagining how peaceful the carriage ride would have been as the horses led the way around the pond and up the slope to this beautiful colonial mansion built on top of a plateau halfway up the hill.

“How did Baylor get in?” Matt said.

“There’s no sign of forced entry. Either the front door was open—and according to the house manager, it often was—or he waited for someone to come home and followed them in.”

“There’s no live-in staff?”

Brown shook her head. “Three day workers clean the house and take care of the grounds. The housekeeper doubles as the family chef. Once she makes dinner and cleans up, she’s out. Most nights that’s around eight thirty or nine.”

“Then where does the first door on the end lead to?”

“A one-bedroom guest suite. Same thing on the second and third floors.”

“Let’s go inside.”

Matt started walking toward the main entrance. Brown followed him onto the porch, then stopped as they reached the large glass door.

“What is it?” Matt asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I read about you,” she said quietly. “The things that happened to you, and the things you did. You received the Medal of Valor.”

Matt didn’t say anything.

She cleared her throat lightly and seemed nervous. Those blue eyes of hers were all over his face.

“Doyle specifically asked me to wait outside,” she said. “County detectives processed this crime scene. Their techs shot enough pictures to fill two murder books, and they recorded everything they saw and everything they did on video. You’ll see it all tomorrow. It wasn’t until they found Baylor’s fingerprints that we became involved. Tonight Doyle wants you to take a walk-through on your own. No one seems to know why Baylor murdered these people where he did. Doyle wants your opinion.”

“Where were the bodies found?”

“I’ve been ordered not to say anything. He’s looking for a first impression.”

She pointed to the lockbox attached to the door. “The key’s in there. One-eight-seven, that’s the combination to every lockbox so nobody forgets. I’ll be waiting in the car. Take as much time as you need.”

He wondered if she realized that one-eight-seven was the penal code for homicide in California, but didn’t ask. Instead, he watched her cross the lot as he slipped on the vinyl gloves. A light snow had begun to fall that reminded him of the ash drifting down on his home in LA. He wondered if the house was still standing, and if the coyotes that slept beneath his deck were still alive. Four pups had been born last spring and had survived the grueling heat of summer.

Matt blocked the thought out and took a deep breath, then punched in the combination to the lockbox. Removing the key, he unlocked the door and returned the key to the lockbox. He paused for a moment, trying to quiet his mind and his imagination. Then he turned the handle and pushed open the door. As he stepped over the threshold, he was greeted by the pungent smell of rotting blood. The foul odor seemed to permeate the entire foyer, and he almost choked before covering his nose with his hand. He panned the flashlight across the massive staircase and along the wall. When he spotted the switch panel, he turned on the lights.