The Prettiest One: A Thriller (38 page)

“He drank himself a beer,” Terry said, “talking to himself the whole time, all angry and crazy-sounding, and Evangeline was scared to death. She was still pretty loopy, she says, still kind of drugged up, but he looked like he was going to hurt her, and then she thought he’d kill her.”

“And then what?” Bix asked.

“Then some girl came in and saved her.”

“How?”

Caitlin’s heart was beating fast. This was it.

“Walked right in and shot the guy. He fell down and died, and the girl stared at him for a minute. Now remember, Evangeline wasn’t exactly thinking clearly, but she thought the girl looked confused about what she’d done, like she’d suddenly forgotten that she’d walked in and shot the guy and was only just then realizing she’d done it. I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about . . . Shut up, Evangeline, would you? I’m telling it the way you told me, aren’t I? Besides, you were high at the time, remember?”

Caitlin heard a faint voice in the background but couldn’t make out what it said.

Terry continued. “The girl looks at Evangeline for the first time, then she looks around the room and sees the handcuff key, which she tosses to Evangeline. Then she just walks out of the house, still carrying the gun.”

Caitlin closed her eyes. She’d just heard a recounting of her murdering someone. The man may have been a vile rapist, but did that justify cold-blooded murder?

“Anyway, Bix, just thought you’d want to know,” Terry said. “I recognized the redhead right away, of course, as soon as I saw the paper this morning. Knew it was Katie. But it wasn’t until Evangeline saw the paper and told me that the girl in the drawing saved her life that I decided to call you. I thought it might help somehow . . . though I don’t know how, I guess. It’s not like Evangeline’s gonna come out and talk about what that guy did to her. But maybe you’d feel better knowing that your girlfriend might’ve saved someone’s life.”

“We were there tonight,” Bix said. “We saw the handcuffs. Didn’t know who’d been in them.”

“We? You mean she’s with you? Thought she’d have tried to disappear by now. What the hell are you—Wait, never mind. I don’t want to know. But you were there
tonight
? This shit all happened days ago.”

“Cops still hadn’t been there yet.”

“Shut up, Evangeline . . . What? . . . Say that again . . . You sure? . . . Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me about that before? . . . Bix, Evangeline wants to know if you found a video camera. Says your girl didn’t hang to look around after she popped the guy, just turned and walked out, and Evangeline was too drugged up and freaked out to do so herself before she got the hell out of there and thumbed a ride.”

“She knows about the camera?” Bix said.

“
You
know about it?”

“Yeah, we saw recordings on his laptop. You’re saying he had the camera running with Evangeline?”

“That’s what she says. He kept it in a closet in the living room.” According to Terry the pimp, between his numerous attacks on Evangeline, he would take the camera out of the closet to download the videos onto his laptop. “Must be a hole in the wall or something,” Terry added, “for the camera to shoot through. Evangeline says a couple of times that asshole even sat with her on the bed, the laptop between them, and made her watch a video of him forcing himself on another woman. Then he’d do the same shit to Evangeline.”

Bix asked, “And she thinks he turned it on that last time with her the other night? When the redhead came in?”

“Well, again, she was loopy as hell, but she thinks so.”

“Thanks, Terry.”

“You going back for the tape, Bix?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Evangeline would rather it not be seen by too many people, you understand?”

“Of course. We need the tape, but given what’s on it, I can’t imagine wanting to show it to anyone.”

Bix disconnected the call.

Josh said to Bix, “Why aren’t I surprised that you have a cousin who’s a pimp?”

“Hey, it’s not like I approve of what he does. Besides, according to him, he keeps them safe. Without him, the girls would be doing the same thing they’re doing, only without any protection. Well . . . without his kind of protection. Anyway, if it makes you feel better, he’s also a CPA, though I have to admit, he’s been doing less accounting and more pimping the last couple of years. To tell you the truth, I don’t like the guy, but I’m glad he called.”

Bix swung the car into a U-turn.

“Looks like we’re heading back to Mike’s house,” he said.

Wonderful,
Caitlin thought.
Let’s have another visit with the man I killed, then watch a video of me killing him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

HUNNSAKER LAID OUT THREE PHOTOGRAPHS on the counter in front of the desk clerk of the Bed-E-Bye Motel. The first was the doctored photograph of Caitlin Sommers, the one Padilla had found on the Internet and had Photoshopped to replace her blonde hair with shorter red hair so that it reflected the way she looked now, unless she had changed her appearance again. The second picture was of Caitlin Sommers’s husband, Josh Sommers, taken from the database of the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles. The third photo was of her boyfriend, Desmond Bixby, pulled from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. The motel clerk scanned the pictures with disinterested, sleepy eyes. He shrugged.

“Nope,” the clerk said. “Haven’t seen them.”

“You sure?” Hunnsaker said.

The clerk shrugged. “I think so.”

“Good, because I’m assuming you wouldn’t want to be sitting at this desk knowing there’s a suspected murderer on the premises.”

That wiped the sleep from the clerk’s eyes.

“You got a copier here?” she asked. “Preferably a color one.”

He nodded.

“You mind putting these next to one another and running me fifty copies? I’d appreciate it.”

“I’m not allowed to use the copier for personal stuff. It’s only for official use.”

“This is official police business. Does that help?”

“Manager says toner’s expensive.”

Hunnsaker smiled. “Like I said, I’d appreciate it.” She handed her business card to the clerk. “And put my card next to them so it shows up on the copies, okay? Thanks.”

The clerk hesitated a moment, then scooped up the photos, took Hunnsaker’s business card, and disappeared into an office behind the desk. Hunnsaker heard the rhythmic whirring of a copier doing its job. A minute later, the clerk was back with a stack of copies, which he handed across the counter.

“So I’m hoping you’ll give me a call if you see any of these people,” Hunnsaker said, handing him back one of the copies. “And don’t do anything stupid. Don’t act suspicious. Just check them in, and once they’ve gone to their rooms, call 911 and tell them you have a person of interest in a murder investigation staying here, and tell them to call me. Then when you hang up, call me yourself using the number on that card. Got it?”

The clerk nodded.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jerry.”

“Thanks, Jerry.”

Outside, Hunnsaker slipped behind the wheel of her car. She dialed Padilla’s number.

When he answered, she asked, “Anything going on?”

“I sent the three photos in a blast text to patrol units, with instructions to check motels on their routes if they can, even if the place has a name that comes later in the alphabet. I figured the suspects might not stick to the phone book if they passed a motel that looked good to them.”

“Good thinking. Anything so far?”

“Two units called in already and said they’d checked motels, shown the photos, and left instructions to call 911 if the suspects showed up.”

Hunnsaker took the names of the two motels and crossed them off her list.

“Where are you, Javy?”

“Just left my first fleabag joint.”

The page that had been torn from Bixby’s phone book listed several dozen hotels that came alphabetically before the Lullaby Inn Motel. Hunnsaker and Padilla had divided the list in half, with Hunnsaker taking the first part. They would each drive to the motels on their list, starting with the closest, while also calling the other places on their list while driving. Fortunately, Hunnsaker was a good multitasker.

Between the two of them and the various officers on patrol, there were a lot of eyes looking for Caitlin Sommers and whoever might be with her. There were only so many motels in the area. It was just a matter of time.

It was getting late as they neared Bookerman’s house. They had passed only one other car on this quiet stretch of road, a sedan traveling in the opposite direction. Otherwise, nothing, which was just as well considering that they were heading back to the scene of a murder that one of them had committed. Bix couldn’t imagine what was going through Caitlin’s mind right now. He wished she would let him get them both new identities, then run off with him. But she insisted on doing what she thought was the right thing. He admired that a little, but only a little, because he also thought it was a really lousy idea.

He pulled up Bookerman’s curving driveway and saw the same car that had been there before, with the trunk still open, just as it had been when they were there not long ago. They hurried to the front door, which was closed but unlocked, just as they’d left it. They went inside, and from where they stood they could see that everything in the next room looked as it had when they were here two hours ago,
except for the addition of the dead guy on the floor with blond hair, one eye, and a huge slit in his belly. One-Eye was lying beside the corpse of Mike Bookerman, or Mike Maggert, or whatever the dead dirtbag would rather be called in whatever part of hell he was now roasting in.

“Shit,” Bix whispered as he reached into the back of his waistband and drew his gun. “You guys know the drill.”

Caitlin and Josh nodded and stood beside each other while Bix walked softly to the kitchen and peered around the door. He moved quietly down the hall, checking Bookerman’s bedroom first; then the bathroom; then finally, the second bedroom that Bookerman had used as the base for his Caitlin-stalking operation—the same search he had conducted just half an hour ago. They were alone in the house.

Bix returned and led them into the living room. With the overall tension level a little lower now that they knew One-Eye’s killer wasn’t still in the house—but still fairly high because sometime within the past thirty minutes or so someone had killed One-Eye pretty much right where they were standing—they opened the door to the only closet in the room. On the shelf, Bix found the camera.

“I looked in this closet last time,” he said as he took down the camera, “and I saw this in here, but I thought it was just sitting there in the corner. It didn’t occur to me that it could have been carefully positioned there in front of a peephole. That last video would still be on here, right? Not somehow already on the laptop?”

“That’s right,” Josh said. “He’d have to have transferred it.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t get the chance to do that.” Also on the shelf, Bix found the box the camera had come in. He closed the door and handed the camera and the box to Josh. He looked at the hole in the wall. It was big enough for the lens to see through clearly but still wasn’t easy to see in the shadow of a picture frame on the wall.

“One more thing to do,” he said as he stepped over to the blond man’s corpse and knelt down, being careful to stay away from the blood. He saw a rectangular bulge in the guy’s front pocket, slipped his fingers in, and withdrew the cell phone with Caitlin’s recorded confession. Then he stood. “Ready to go?”

He needn’t have asked. The looks on their faces said it all. He had to admit that he was looking forward to leaving this place for good, too. There was the smell, of course. But for Bix, it was more the fact that people kept dying here. It was time to put the Bookermans behind them. And with Daddy Darryl in prison for the next ten years and his son dead for eternity, Bix figured they should be able to do just that, at least until the cops started interrogating them.

Chops knew he would have to go back to Mikey’s house and clean things up before he flew back to LA, but at the moment he had other work to do. The woman could decide to run at any moment.