“Have your people found out anything more about the son of a bitch?”
Pender shook his head. “Dead end. He wasn't carrying any ID- no wallet, just a roll of cash-and it was the victim's car. His prints are a mess, old grafts on the interior surfaces of both hands. No matches so far-the lab's working on a reconstruction.” Pender scraped his chair a little closer to the bed-a signal to the interviewee that it was time to get down to business. “Tell me about the bust-how'd you take him down?”
“Routine traffic stop. Eastbound maroon Chevy Celebrity with California plates rolls through a red on Highway Sixty-eight, near Laguna Seca. Male driver, female passenger. I hit the lights, he hits the gas. I call in the pursuit; he pulls over a few seconds later. As I'm approaching the vehicle, I see the driver leaning over toward the female passenger-I figure he's fastening her seat belt for her. Then he turns toward me, big smile, what's the problem officer? At this point I haven't even unsnapped my holster. Routine traffic violation, maybe a warning on the seat belt.
“But when I look in, I see this blond girl, couldn't have been more than eighteen, she's sitting straight up holding her stomach with both hands. She's wearing a white sweater that looks like it's dyed in overlapping bands of red at the bottom, and she has the strangest expression on her face. Just, you know, puzzled — I'll never forget that expression. I ask her if she's okay, she lifts up her sweater with both hands, and her guts spill out onto her lap.”
Jervis closed her eyes, as if to shut out the memory. Pender wouldn't let her. “What happened next?”
“He has the knife in his left hand-before I can react he brings it up so fast and hits me so hard I thought he shot me at first. It was like my mouth exploded-I'm falling backward, spitting out blood and teeth, trying to draw my weapon. He's on top of me before I hit the ground. I can't get my weapon out, but I'm hanging onto the holster for dear life.”
Jervis winced again; her hand went to her jaw. “That's all I remember-they tell me he was trying to yank my belt off when the backup unit pulled up, and I was holding onto the holster so hard they had to pry my hands away.”
“But you're down as the arresting officer.”
A rueful chuckle. “Charity collar. It was a twelve-inch bowie knife-a souvenir from the Alamo, I heard. Busted out all the lower molars on the right side, all the uppers on the left. He just barely missed my tongue or I wouldn't be talking to you now.”
Her pale complexion was turning chalky; her glance strayed toward the bottle of Vicodin on the white wicker bedside table.
“And here I promised Miss Winkle I wouldn't wear you out,” said Pender. He knew he didn't have much longer; he cut to the question he most needed to ask the only person who'd seen the victim alive. “One more thing, then I'll leave you in peace. It's about the girl. You say she was blond?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could you be a little more specific-was it platinum blond, ash blond, something like that?” Careful not to lead her where he hoped she'd take him.
And she did: “No, sir, it was more of a reddish blond.”
“Would that be the color people sometimes refer to as strawberry blond?”
“Yes, sir, that's it exactly.” It was obvious that every word was causing her pain.
Pender patted her pale freckled hand as it lay on the pink comforter. “That's okay. That's okay, dear. You've been a great helpyou don't have to say another word.”
Aletha Winkle gave Pender a dark look as she bustled into the room.
“I'll let myself out,” Pender said.
“And next time call first.”
“Yes, ma'am, I'll be sure to do that,” replied Pender meekly.
Pender's chagrin didn't last long. In fact, as he strode down the flower-lined front walk, he was tum-te- tumming “And the Band Played On,” a tune written by Charles B. Ward and John F. Palmer in 1899, but still familiar enough nearly a century later that at the 1997 inaugural meeting of the team charged with investigating the disappearances of nine females from nine widely separated locales over the past nine years, Steven P. McDougal, chief of the FBI's Liaison Support Unit, was able to recite the first few lines of the chorus by heart, confident that it would be recognized by every agent in the room:
Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond
And the band played on.
He'd glide 'cross the floor with the girl he adored
And the band played on.
Thus McDougal dubbed the phantom kidnapper Casey, after the only characteristic the missing females had in common: the color of their hair. But it was Ed Pender who sang the next two lines of the song in his sweet tenor:
His brain was so loaded it nearly exploded
The poor girl would shake with alarm.
The room went dead quiet; McDougal broke the silence.
“Ed has a bad feeling about this one, boys and girls,” he announced, leaning back in the leather chair at the head of the conference table, peering professorially over his half glasses. “Let's help him make it go away.”
Since that initial meeting, two more strawberry blonds had been reported missing under suspicious circumstances, but the FBI still hadn't gone public with the investigation, largely because not a single body had come to light. Then in June 1999, Monterey County sheriff's deputy Terry Jervis made what she thought would be a routine traffic stop, and everything changed.
Casey, you son of a bitch, thought Pender as he squeezed himself back into the blue Corolla. You son of a bitch, we've got you now.
3
On a Ridgetop High in the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon, a strawberry blond in her early fifties, wearing a highnecked green silk gown and matching surgical mask, stands in the middle of a chicken yard, scattering feed to a flock of goldenplumed Buff Orpingtons.
Her movements are awkward-she bends and turns stiffly from the waist-and the hands emerging from the long sleeves of the gown are freakishly skeletal, smooth shiny skin stretched tightly over fleshless bone. She spills nearly as much feed as she sows. As the birds crowd around her ankles and dart under her gown to peck at the fallen seed, she scolds them mildly.
“Now, children, there's plenty for everyone.” Her voice is muffled behind the green silk mask and has a peculiar timbre, thin and unresonant-the converse of nasal. “Vivian, mind your manners- no shoving. And you, Freddie-try to show a little self-control. Remember your position.”
Freddie Mercury is the lone rooster in the hen yard, a strutting dandy with flowing plumage of antique gold and a proudly erect crimson comb. When the woman ducks into the dark coop, he follows her, clucking soothingly to the brooding hen inside to reassure her that her egg will be safe.
And indeed, the woman's bony fingers pluck only the unattended eggs, all brown, some still warm, from the dirty straw of the roosts, and deposit them gently, carefully, into the shallow basket hanging from her forearm. When she has finished, the rooster accompanies her to the gate and stands guard, facing his flock, to prevent any of his plump golden wives or buff chicks from escaping with her.
From the hen yard it is a hike of a few hundred yards through a shady wood of old-growth Douglas fir to the kennels next to the embowered, double-gated sally port, where half a dozen ambereyed, black-and-brindle Rottweilers with barrel-like bodies, powerful, wide-skulled, flattened heads, and massive jaws capable of crushing a sheep's skull or a bicycle with equal ease greet her noiselessly, wagging their stubby tails and wiggling their broad behinds.
Eerily silent, eerily patient, the dogs stand at quivering attention while the woman opens a wooden bin containing a fifty-pound bag of dog chow, scoops the dry kibble into six individual bowls, each labeled with its owner's name-Jack, Lizzie, Bundy, Piper, Kiss, and Dr. Cream-and breaks a fresh egg into each bowl. Not until she
