Head to Head (22 page)

Brat didn’t kill again for almost two years. The brown metal strongbox was so full of cash that it would last Brat and the mother a lifetime; Brat had stopped counting after two hundred thousand dollars, all in neat bundles of hundred-dollar bills held together with rubber bands. Three days after Brat had killed the embalmer and burned the old house, he saw an old silver travel trailer sitting in the front yard of a farmhouse on a rural highway. It had a white sign on the hitch that said
FOR SALE
in red letters. Brat knew it would be a perfect place for his mother to live in peace and quiet. It had a living room for a TV and computer, a kitchen where they could eat together, and a little bathroom with a shower stall, a tiny sink, and a toilet. The big bedroom at the back would be perfect for Brat, and the small one would give the mother privacy to entertain her friends when Brat brought them home. The elderly farmer said, “Yes, sir, it would be a nice surprise for your mother and a bargain for just four hundred dollars,” and then helped Brat hitch it to the green Dodge station wagon free of charge.

After that, they drove and drove, mostly on county roads where nobody noticed them. Brat discovered KOA campgrounds and other camper parks, where nobody ever bothered them or came around, and they could hook up water and electricity and have a nice, peaceful life. They never stayed long, because Brat was searching, searching, constantly searching. Finally, after many months and many miles, Brat found the woman they’d been searching for. They followed her for over a week, to make sure she was the right one, until the mother said, “Yes, dear, she is the one. She’s the perfect one.” They smiled at each other, and Brat was very happy they were still together.

Brat thought about how to kill the woman for a long time. The cleaver and razor strop were in the mother’s bedroom, where she could keep an eye on them, hidden under the money in the locked brown strongbox. The perfect woman to kill lived in a small house that had two apartments, one upstairs and one downstairs. She lived upstairs and had to climb long wooden steps built on the side of the house to get to her front door. Every day for ten days, Brat watched her leave for work at a soup kitchen on the corner, then come back home and climb the steps. Every time she came into sight, hatred filled Brat, and the hot river boiled up over its banks and made Brat’s skin hot to the touch. When that happened, the mother refused to give good-night kisses. That’s how Brat knew it was time for the woman to die. The mother was getting impatient and angry and was refusing to talk anymore.

One night when Brat and the mother were watching from the station wagon, hidden in the shadows along the woman’s street, the woman came outside to smoke a cigarette on the long flight of steps. The mother said, “Go on, go on, Brat. Don’t be afraid; she’s the one,” and so Brat sneaked silently up behind the woman, and when she stood up to go back upstairs, Brat hit her as hard as he could with the tire iron the embalmer had kept in the station wagon next to the spare tire. Heart thundering, the hot liquid boiling higher and higher, hotter and hotter, Brat watched the woman. She lay still at the bottom of the steps, and nobody came; nobody heard Brat dragging her by her long blond hair across the grass, then along the side of the road to the station wagon. The mother was pleased and said now they’d have a new friend to talk to.

Except that, uh-oh, the woman wasn’t dead. She woke up and started groaning, and Brat had to tape her hands and legs and mouth shut with silver duct tape until they got home. Brat put her on the mother’s bed, and soon the mother said what had to be done, that their new friend wouldn’t like them, wouldn’t talk and be friendly until she was dead, so Brat got on the bed with her and put both hands around her throat and pressed down until something went crunch in her neck and her eyes closed and she quit struggling. Brat jumped off her, and the hot liquid fell to a simmering heat in Brat’s belly, until she moved again and her eyelids fluttered, and then the flames inside leapt out of control, and Brat dragged her to the tiny shower stall in the travel trailer and held her down on the floor. “The cleaver, use the cleaver,” the mother said from her place on her bed, and Brat did it, and then finally, finally, the woman lay still.

Shaking all over, Brat got into the station wagon and drove all night, while the woman’s blood ran down into the shower drain. When they came to a wide river, Brat turned down a road and severed the woman’s head and put it on the pillow beside the mother’s, then wrapped the woman’s body in the shower curtain and dragged her up rocks to a ledge over the rushing water. Weighting her down with big rocks, Brat pushed her off the ledge and listened for the big splash, and when he returned to the trailer, the mother and the woman were having a good time, gossiping like old friends.

“You two sure are chatterboxes,” Brat told them with a big smile. “How’m I gonna get any sleep tonight with all this yakkin’ and laughin’ goin’ on, huh?” But now his mother had somebody to talk to during their long drives, and when the mother was happy, Brat was happy.

Brat was fifteen years old.

Sylvie’s head turned up three days later. Attached to a new body. In Los Angeles. On the soundstage where Gil Serna was filming interiors for
Trojan
, no less. Even more interesting, Gil Serna had up and disappeared. I arrived at LAX late that same afternoon. I begged Bud to take the assignment, but he had his hands full handling the infestation of press people. Maybe this latest development would send them hightailing it back to L.A., where they belonged.

So I got hold of Jim Tate, a guy I went to the academy with, and he agreed to pick me up at the airport. I was glad to see him again, especially since I knew I could trust him. He hadn’t changed much, still short and square with enough muscles to lift a small Brahma bull over his head. He had a receding hairline shaped like a W over his eyebrows, but he had taken emphasis off it with a blond buzz cut that made him look like retired military. He was honest and smart, and lived for the weekends with his three sons, who raced pickup trucks on dirt tracks out in the desert somewhere. Married and divorced twice, he had made his work the center of his life.

Tate already had permission from his superior officer to admit me to the soundstage, which was a few blocks off Sunset Boulevard, near Paramount Studios, the way paved by Charlie Ramsay’s call to a friend of his, who also happened to be the L.A. Chief of Police. I requested Tate as my liaison and got him. The news of the grisly discovery had not hit the airwaves yet, but the clock was ticking.

“We need to get you in and out of here before the networks get hold of this and the media goes nuts.”

“My feelings exactly.” Jim knew better than most about what had happened to me and Harve. He had been on the scene that night. He glanced at me. “Except for those bruises, you’re looking pretty good. You doing all right, kid?”

“It was nice and quiet down on the lake. Until this happened.”

“Harve doin’ okay, I guess?”

“I see him almost every day. Then this case popped up, and all hell broke loose.”

He said, “Somebody in the media’s bound to recognize you sooner or later.”

“Yeah, I’ve been waiting for it.”

“It’s been three years. People forget. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“I’ve never been a lucky person.”

He didn’t try to convince me otherwise. Point made.

“What can you tell me about this one?” I said.

We took a ramp onto the 405 North fast enough to stand Tate’s tan Ford truck on two wheels. Racing trucks around a track did that to a fella. I held on but didn’t complain. Los Angeles was not the place for fainthearted drivers or scaredy-cat passengers. “Cast and crew all left the set on Friday around four o’clock. Security locked up the place for the weekend, but that doesn’t mean jack. Anybody can scale the walls: they’re low stucco with bougainvillea vines all over them for footholds. And a gap was found in a fence on the back lot.”

When we reached Santa Monica Boulevard, Tate swerved onto it like a bat out of hell and flew west. The car in the merge lane was forced into the middle and almost hit a new bright blue Chevy Malibu, but Tate didn’t miss a beat with his story. “When everybody showed up Monday around noon, they found the vic on a bed on one of the sets. They recognized Sylvie Border right off, freaked out, one and all, real mass hysteria, and put in a garbled call to 911. It sounds pretty much like the same MO your perp used.”

“Silver duct tape around the neck?”

“Yeah. Hands and ankles, too. Pretty grisly stuff, even for out here. Blood everywhere, like that goddamn
Interview with the Vampire
movie.”

“The victim nude?”

“Yes, and blood’s congealed all over her; it looks like she’s wearing a shiny red wet suit. Looks like he made an effort to smear it all over her face.”

“Pleasant. Anybody spotted on the set over the weekend?”

“One guard said that that psychiatrist, you know that guy, Nicholas Black, came by late Saturday night, asked him if Gil Serna was around.”

My stomach sank at the mention of Black’s name. “Nicholas Black was at the soundstage where they found her? You sure it was him?”

“Sounds familiar, right? The guard said he stopped Black at the gate and wouldn’t let him inside. Black told the night guy that he couldn’t find Serna anywhere and was worried about him.”

Great move, Black. Show up at the second murder scene asking questions. “Has Serna resurfaced yet?”

“Nope. He seems to have disappeared into thin air after he left work on Friday, which doesn’t look particularly good for him. His coworkers are saying he hasn’t been the same person since he found out Sylvie was dead. Said he went kind of crazy with grief and couldn’t concentrate on his lines, couldn’t function much at all.”

“Who saw him last?”

“The night watchman said he left on Friday afternoon about four-thirty but then came back later, around seven in the evening. Said he forgot something. Guard said he didn’t see him leave, or anyone else come or go, but he went on rounds in the back lot several times, during which Serna could’ve left without him noticing.”

It took us about forty-five minutes to get to the Paramount soundstage where the second murder had taken place. The entire block was cordoned off, but media people were lined up like crows on a telephone line. Tate reached in the backseat and tossed an L.A. Lakers cap into my lap.

“Put on your shades and wear this, and they aren’t gonna recognize you.”

Gratefully, I shoved the cap down low over my face and climbed out of the truck. Years had passed, true enough, but Hollywood reporters remember scandals like Hollywood actors remember Oscars. Tate flashed his badge to the uniforms keeping the milling throng of reporters at bay, and we wound our way through a series of movie sets, stepping over cables and dodging lights and boom microphones and cameras, until we reached a scene lit up by three floodlights. Detectives were standing around in small groups, talking the case, and uniformed criminalists were still sweeping the scene. They were thorough, and they were very good. A couple of guys that I’d worked with before caught sight of me and smiled, and I nodded back without stopping. I knew what they were thinking. That was one reason I’d left L.A. to lick my wounds in the middle of the Ozark hinterland.

The set was a fake villa overlooking the sea. A la
Cleopatra
. Lots of white pillars and marble floors and billowing white linen panels draping a platform bed. A painted Aegean Sea backdrop offered a sunset on the horizon. The victim sat upright on the bed, completely nude, rail thin, legs crossed demurely, arms folded over her breasts in a show of modesty. Tate was right about the blood. The killer either got sloppy or was in too big a hurry and let her pump out all over the place. The air was heavy with the sick-sweet, coppery smell of congealing blood. Could be he’d done the same at the lake, but the water had washed it up all clean and neat for him.

There was no doubt the head was Sylvie Border’s. Her face was unmistakable, beautiful even in death, eyes open and staring, but Tate was right. It looked like the perp had intentionally smeared blood all over her face, except for a patch on the forehead that looked as white and waxy as the magnolia blossoms perfuming the front veranda of her parents’ New Orleans home. She had been posed to stare out the window at the fake ocean sunset. Cameras were in place around the set, with directors’ chairs just behind, and stage lights focused on her as if ready for the shoot to begin.

It had taken me over six hours to get here, and they were still processing the scene. That meant lots of evidence to collect. I moved to the bed, where a young woman wearing black pants and a white polo shirt with
LAPD
on the breast pocket was clicking still photographs of the body. I didn’t know the woman, but she glanced up from her work and gave me the professional nod reserved for law enforcement colleagues gathered at the scene.

Silver duct tape had been used again, all right, about three rolls of it. Definitely excessive. Wrapped round and round the throat. It was the same perp, all right, or somebody playing awfully good copycat. And very few people knew the details of the crime scene at the lake. Somehow he’d managed to transport Sylvie’s head fifteen hundred miles across country to Tinseltown without being seen. God only knew what unfortunate soul the body belonged to, but it had been a young woman, anorexic probably and not much taller than five-foot, very slight and small, like Sylvie had been. Who was he trying to kill over and over again? Why was he switching heads? If I could figure out why, I could figure out who.

The criminalists had been filled in on my case and were making damn sure they handled everything precisely by the book. Thank you O.J. Simpson and his Dream Team. Everybody in the LAPD had become better and more careful at their jobs, and they were damn good before. Nobody was going to make any stupid mistakes that’d come back to haunt them. I examined the body more carefully, then leaned close to the head, with its dead eyes staring at the camera, glad Black wasn’t here to see Sylvie’s last and final humiliation. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the body and head belonged to the same person. We definitely had a serial operating here, one with flair and flourish, and if my guess was correct, he’d done many, many other crimes before we ran headlong into him, so to speak.

Tate came over and bent down to examine the victim’s neck. “You’re telling me that when they remove this tape, they’re going to find out that this body is not Sylvie Border’s?” Tate stood up and looked down at the bed, with his fists on his hips. “Why the hell does he do that?”

“One reason is that he wants us to know these two murders are connected. Wants to show his handiwork to the world. I think he was disappointed when the media didn’t get hold of the gory details at the lake, so he came out here, where everyone is media mad and likes to leak to the press. He wants the papers to run with this, and he knows they’ll have no scruples out here. Good thing about it is it’s riskier for him. He’s getting reckless. This is a messy crime scene, lots of hair and tissue. Maybe he got careless and left a part of him behind this time, and that’s all we’ll need to nail him.”

Tate said, “Nicholas Black is our primary at the moment. He was seen here and had the opportunity. Ditto on your victim.”

“Black’s not stupid enough to come out here and commit murder when the last one went down at his resort. Much less allow himself to be seen lurking around.”

“Maybe that’s what he wants you to think. I hear he’s a publicity hound who likes the spotlight. That fits with the killer’s profile, too.”

I studied Tate’s face a moment and realized he could very well be right. Every time I thought I could eliminate Black, he bounced back like some kind of frickin’ fickle finger of fate. “Yeah, maybe. I’ve spent some time interviewing him, and my gut tells me he’s not the killer.”

“Your gut was right about 99 percent of the time, if I remember correctly,” he said, grinning. “Trust your instincts; that’s what Harve always told us, remember?” I nodded, and he asked, “What about Gil Serna? True about him sleeping with Sylvie Border?”

“I interviewed him at the funeral. He’s pretty torn up.”

“We’ll get another shot at him as soon as he shows up.”

We discussed the scene with the criminalists for a while, asked lots of technical questions, but they were already turning up more clues than we’d gotten at the lake. Several hairs in evidence, and a bloody footprint was being cast. At least we’d have something to work with this time.

Outside, the press was swarming the sidewalks like maggots in three-day-old garbage, but these were exceptionally good-looking, well-coifed, sunny California maggots. Unfortunately, we had to leave the perimeter tape guarded by LAPD officers to get to Tate’s truck. Once we ducked under it, somebody must’ve yelled fair game. In seconds we were surrounded and hounded down the sidewalk. Twenty feet from Tate’s truck, we were brought to a standstill by at least thirty camera crews. When I saw Peter Hastings barging his way to the front, screaming my name, I knew the battle was lost. I had to take a stand, give them something, or I’d never get out of the fray.

“Okay, take it easy. Get back, and I’ll answer a couple of questions.”

Oh, the delight they showed then, but they did back off. This was the part I hated, the part that sent me fleeing Los Angeles and everybody in it. But they didn’t recognize me, and chances were they wouldn’t.

“Can we have your name, please? And spell it, if you would.”

“And take off the sunglasses, please.” That from a photographer.

“Detective Claire Morgan. Canton County Sheriff’s Department.” I spelled my name. I ignored the bit about the sunglasses.

“A source tells us that the body found inside belongs to Sylvie Border. If that’s the case, who was found at Nicholas Black’s spa in Missouri?”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,” I said tersely, trying to keep my head down enough to shield my face. “I’m out here to view the crime scene. You’ll have to present your questions to the LAPD officer in charge of the case.”

“What about your case, Detective? Do you know who the murderer is?”

“We are making progress in our investigation. That’s all I’m willing to say at this time.”

“Is Nick Black still a suspect? We understand he’s here in town. That places him at the scene of both murders, doesn’t it? Is he the killer, Detective?”

“As I said, you’ll have to direct your questions about this case to the LAPD. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.”

For one magic moment, I thought I’d gotten through unscathed, that they’d back off and let me go home, but then Peter Hastings came forward, with a knowing smirk on his face. I braced myself for his insistent man-whine, but instead he hit me with a bombshell that nearly blew me off my feet.

“Isn’t it true, Detective, that your real name is Annie Blue, and that three years ago, you were an officer with the LAPD?”

Everything around me stopped, all motion and sound fading into one shrill shock wave.
Oh, God
, I thought,
don’t let this happen, not again
. Then a fiery crackle of energy swept through the throng, so palpable I could almost feel it coming at me, like heat off summer asphalt.