There was no doubt that both were the work of the same killer.
Both of the new bodies were nude, had been tortured, and had had their throats cut with the same ragged pattern. Both had similar cuts on their bodies, and both had the distinctive tear-patterned lacerations to the cheeks. The signature of the killer was unmistakable. The clincher was the profile—both were young, Caucasian brunettes of a similar build to Boden.
To Allen’s surprise, neither looked like they could be Sarah Dutton, beyond those physical similarities. Which meant they still had one missing person and one missing car. She hoped it was a coincidence, but grim experience suggested differently.
They’d assured Walter Dutton that they’d find his daughter, but from the brief time they’d spent with the man, she knew he’d be on the phone to her superiors before they’d pulled out of the driveway. They had people interviewing her friends, speaking to the staff at the bar, and trying to establish when she was last seen. One point of interest: they hadn’t been able to locate her boyfriend, Josh, as yet. But again, that could be a bad sign as easily as it could be a good one.
She watched as the two new body bags were loaded into the coroner’s van. They slammed the doors, and the van bumped slowly back along the track toward the main road, its destination the medical examiner’s office. She heard a rustle of activity and the soft clicking of digital camera shutters from above. The reporters and the paparazzi had gathered on a parallel dirt road overlooking the slope, and a helicopter liveried with the branding of the local Fox affiliate hovered overhead. A slightly overweight uniform in his early fifties shook his head as he watched the van disappear around the bend in the fire road.
“This guy’s been a busy little critter, huh?”
Allen was about to respond, but stopped as she heard Mazzucco’s voice calling out her name. She turned and saw him approach, replacing his phone in his jacket pocket.
“I got something.”
“A detailed confession from a viable suspect?” Allen asked.
Mazzucco flashed a humorless smile in response. “A possible on one of the new bodies. We have to get a positive ID, but . . .”
The cop standing beside Allen raised a hand to get Mazzucco’s attention, stopping him mid-flow. “Maz, how’s tricks?”
“Federmeyer,” Mazzucco said, acknowledging the man with neither warmth nor antagonism.
“I know this guy from way back,” the uniform said, turning to Allen. “He never writes; he never calls . . . How’s Homicide, slick?”
“Busy,” Mazzucco said, and stared at Federmeyer until he got the message and grudgingly stepped away from the pair.
Allen looked at Mazzucco with amusement and told him to continue.
“A missing persons report that looks very good. Carrie Burnett.”
“When did she go missing?”
“A week ago. Sunday night. You recognize the name?”
“Should I?”
Mazzucco smiled. “Me either. Apparently, she’s on a reality show about some pop singer. BFF of the star.”
When Mazzucco went on to relay the name of the star and the show, Allen realized she was dimly aware of this. She shrugged it off. It would be another angle for the media, a unique selling point for the story of the killings, but it made no difference to their job. A victim was a victim, and it changed nothing about what they had to do.
Only, that wasn’t quite true. Because it opened up another potential line of investigation.
“Could the killer have targeted her from the show?” she suggested. “Some kind of stalker angle?”
Mazzucco shrugged. “I don’t know. Stalkers are focused. Who are these other victims? Kelly Boden wasn’t on any TV show.” He shook his head. “Gut instinct, no. These women all look alike. Same victim profile. That’s the link.”
“Maybe Kelly knew Burnett. Rich kids and celebrities mingle.”
“Sarah Dutton’s the rich kid. Kelly wasn’t, going by her address.”
“Where the hell
is
Dutton?” she said, going back to square one.
Mazzucco nodded along with her frustration. Too many tangents, too little evidence. And the clock was ticking. “This one is a bitch. Sorry, Jess.”
For now, they had to assume the two girls had been abducted together. If Dutton wasn’t here, that meant she was possibly being held somewhere. Maybe at the murder scene itself. That made finding Dutton the immediate priority, but so far there was no sign of her or the Porsche.
Allen sighed and came back to the reality show star. “Okay, tell me what we know about Carrie Burnett. Last Sunday would fit with what the coroner investigator said. Where was she last seen?”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Mazzucco said. “She was last seen outside a club in West Hollywood, getting into her car with the intention of driving home. She was alone, it was nighttime, and she lives in Studio City. No sign of her since then. Or her car.”
Allen felt an adrenaline jolt. The similar circumstances suggested a link that could well be borne out once they were able to trace Kelly Boden’s last minutes. It did more than that: it suggested an MO. She started to work through the scenarios, conscious that Mazzucco had a couple of minutes’ head start on her.
“What do you think? A hitchhiker?” As soon as the words were out, she knew it wasn’t that. No female driver would stop for a random hitcher at night. Not in this century.
Mazzucco was shaking his head. “I don’t think so. There’s one other thing: the last person to hear from her wasn’t a friend or family member. It was a dispatcher at Triple A.”
“She had a breakdown?”
Her partner nodded. “Somewhere on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. No sign of her or her vehicle by the time the tow truck appeared.”
“He’s picking them up. Somehow he’s finding female drivers in trouble and he’s showing up like some kind of . . .”
“Good Samaritan?”
Allen raised her eyebrows. “More like a bad one. Can we get an ID on the Triple A driver?”
“I’m on it.” Mazzucco took his phone out again and scanned an email. “Kelly Boden’s father lives down in Reseda; somebody’s with him. You want to go there now?”
Allen nodded at the suggestion, registering that Mazzucco was making a point of deferring to her as the primary, even though he’d made all of the breakthroughs so far. “Yeah, let’s go talk to them. I’ll drive.”
They got into the Ford, Allen in the driver’s seat this time, and pulled out onto the road. Seeing the two new bodies had crystallized one thing in her mind: she’d seen this killer’s work before.
1996
It was a Wednesday, the last day of July. The midsummer morning sun was already high in the blue sky over Los Angeles, burning determinedly through the haze of smog. Though it was barely seven o’clock in the morning, the roof of the black Buick Century was already getting hot to the touch. He rested both palms on it, enjoying the sensation. He looked north, toward the Santa Monica Mountains, and thought about the day to come.
He heard Kimberley coming up behind him from the direction of the front door, trying to sneak up. He played along, pretended to be startled when she grabbed his shoulders and yelled, “Wakey-wakey.”
He turned to look at her. She was wearing cutoff jeans shorts and a black Nirvana T-shirt. Her long black hair was tied back, the ponytail fed through the strap at the back of the Dodgers baseball cap she wore. The brim shaded her brown eyes but could not mask her excitement at the adventure ahead.
A plaintive voice trickled out from the driver’s seat. “I’m gonna need gas money, you guys.”
He ducked his head to look inside the car, at the source of the whine. Robbie was a scrawny, red-haired kid. He wore baggy mesh basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt with the slogan The Truth Is Out There. He’d met Robbie for the first time a couple of days previously. Robbie didn’t go to their school; he was one of the other kids who lived with Kimberley, here at Blackstones. He wasn’t sure why she’d asked Robbie along on the trip, although he had a suspicion that it was because she wasn’t comfortable being alone with him just yet. He didn’t hold that against her. He was aware there were probably good reasons for people to feel that way about him.
“We heard you the first hundred times, kid.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m older than you. And Jason will be pissed if I return his car empty. Do you know what Jason will do to us if he’s pissed?”
He opened his mouth to respond to that but felt Kimberley’s hand on his shoulder again. Her face was tilted upward, the look in her eyes easy to read:
Be nice
.
“You’re the boss, Robbie,” he said, picking up his backpack by its strap and dumping it in the backseat.
Kimberley ran around the front of the car and got in the passenger side. “Are you ready? This is going to be great, I promise.”
He got into the backseat and closed the door behind him. He thought she was wrong. He thought it was going to be
better
than great.
He drifted into consciousness to the sound of distant screams.
His dreams had been fragmented and confused, as they always were. A little of the past, a little of the present, a little of what he thought was to come. He kept his eyes closed and savored the thick aftertaste of sleep. Memories of a long, hot summer two decades before, and of one day in particular. In the dream, images and sensations from that summer’s day had blurred and blended with more recent input. Last night. Darkness and rain and blood. Sunshine and a cool breeze and the creaking sound of an old sign hanging in front of an empty building. The kindred ways sunlight and moonlight glance off a blade
Dark hair and brown eyes. He knew he’d be seeing her again soon.
He opened his own eyes gradually, allowing them to adjust to the afternoon sunlight penetrating the narrow gaps between the blinds. Dust motes circled and whirled lazily in the light. As he allowed the world back in, he realized the far-off screams were not born of pain and terror, but of delight. Children playing in some backyard, or perhaps even out on the street.
He slid his legs off the bed and stood up. As was his routine, his hand reached for the photograph he kept beside him when he slept. He gazed at it for a few moments, the curve of a smile on his lips, and then replaced it on the table beside the bed.
He opened the door and walked naked across the narrow hallway to the opposite room. This had originally been the second bedroom, when the house had been a home, but now it was simply a place to work. It looked out on the backyard, which was enclosed on all sides by high bushes, providing quiet and privacy. There was a bed that had not been slept in in months or years, a squat two-drawer chest supporting an old-fashioned boxy television, and a desk set up in front of the window. On the desk were various tools and instruments and parts, grouped according to their uses. Some were of the digital and electronic variety and were new things, things that had been undreamed of in their compactness and intricacy even ten years before. Others were much more traditional and had not evolved or developed in a thousand years.
He had another kit to prepare, because he did not think it would be long until the next time. He sat down at the desk and started to lay out the tools and the parts he would need.
Before he got to work, he got up, walked back across the room, and switched on the television. He liked to have background noise while he worked. Music was his first preference, particularly oldies, but anything would do. Usually, he would switch the television or the stereo on, turn the sound down a little, and go back to the desk to work.
But today he didn’t move. Today he just watched the screen.
A helicopter view of the place in the mountains. His place. Cops in uniform and cops in suits and cops in overalls, digging up the earth in his place. Taking something that belonged to him.
He stood there for a long time, the task he’d begun forgotten for now.
Allen and Mazzucco left the home of Kelly Boden’s father with two things: confirmation of their hypothesis and an increased desire to catch the bastard who’d killed the three women buried in the hills.
Boden’s father had identified Kelly from a photograph taken at the gravesite without hesitation. Allen had been reluctant to show him, given the visible wounds, but he’d insisted. He was an ex-cop, which made it a little more personal. He’d taken the news without hysterics but had quietly asked the detectives to do all they could to find the person responsible.
Just as they were leaving, he stopped them at the door to ask if they’d found Sarah Dutton yet. Mazzucco shook his head. “Not yet.”
Boden’s voice was muted, almost as though he were speaking to them from much farther away. His eyes were pools of blackness. “I hope you find her. Safe.”
Allen did, too.
They got into the car, and Allen started the engine. She glanced across at Mazzucco, who was staring back at Richard Boden’s closed front door, his jaw set. She knew he had the same desire as she did to catch this guy, of course. But he was also a parent.
In the time she’d been working with him, she’d come to take for granted that Mazzucco wasn’t the kind of guy to go on and on about his family. He’d shown her the pictures right after his wife had given birth, of course. He’d given Allen and the others the obligatory details of time of birth and weight and that mom and baby girl were doing fine, but beyond that, you would barely know anything had changed, other than he looked a little more tired and spent a little more time checking his personal cell. Allen didn’t blame him for not wanting the two halves of his life to bleed into each other, for his work to contaminate his home. But still, something like this had to hit Mazzucco in a way she couldn’t fully understand.
“You ever think about what you would do, Jon?” she asked before she could stop herself. “If your kid was that age, if—”
Mazzucco cut her off mid-sentence, still looking at the door as he spoke. “I don’t think about it. Ever.”