Flores arrived on the scene.”
Chapter 53
Kline turned toward Gurney. “That ties in with what Ashton’s assistant told you. Didn’t she say that the two graduates she couldn’t get in touch with had gotten interested in Flores when he was working on the grounds at Mapleshade?”
“Yes.”
“This is the damnedest thing,” Kline went on excitedly. “Let’s assume for a minute that Flores is the key to everything-that once we figure out what brought him here, we’ll understand everything else. We’ll understand Jillian Perry’s murder, Kiki Muller’s murder, how and why he hid the machete where he did, why the camera didn’t pick him up, the disappearance of God only knows how many Mapleshade graduates…”
“That last thing could be a harem thing,” said Blatt.
“A what?” said Kline.
“Like Charlie Manson.”
“You’re saying he might have been looking for followers? For impressionable young women?”
“For female sex maniacs. That’s what Mapleshade’s all about, right?”
Gurney looked at Rodriguez to see how he might react to Blatt’s comment in light of the situation with his daughter, but if he felt anything, he was hiding it under a thoughtful scowl.
Kline’s mental computer seemed to be back in high gear, as he presumably weighed the media benefits of trying and convicting his very own Manson. He tried to build on Blatt’s idea. “So you’re imagining that Flores had a little commune tucked away somewhere, and he talked these women into leaving home, covering their tracks, and going there?”
He turned to the captain, seemed deterred by the scowl, and addressed Hardwick instead. “You have any thoughts on that?”
Hardwick responded with the ironic leer. “I was thinking Jim Jones myself. Charismatic leader with a congregation of nubile acolytes.”
“The hell is Jim Jones?” asked Blatt.
Kline answered. “Jonestown. The massacre-suicide thing. Cyanide in the Kool-Aid. Wiped out nine hundred people.”
“Oh, yeah, the Kool-Aid.” Blatt grinned. “Right, Jonestown. Totally fucked up.”
Hardwick raised a cautionary finger. “Beware of men who invite you to places in the jungle they’ve named after themselves.”
The captain’s scowl was reaching thunderstorm intensity.
“Dave?” said Kline. “You have any ideas about Flores’s grand plan?”
“The problem with the commune thing is that Flores lived on Ashton’s property. If he was gathering these women and stashing them somewhere, it would have to be nearby. I don’t think that’s what it was about.”
“What, then?”
“I think it’s about what he told us it’s about. ‘For all the reasons I have written.’ ”
“And those reasons add up to what?”
“Revenge.”
“For?”
“If we take the Edward Vallory prologue seriously, for some major sexual offense.”
It was clear that Kline loved conflict. So it didn’t surprise Gurney that the next opinion he solicited was from Anderson.
“Bill?”
The man shook his head. “Revenge usually takes the form of a physical attack, broken bones, murder. In all these so-called disappearances there isn’t even a hint of that.” He leaned back in his chair. “Not a single
Kline’s gaze settled on Sergeant Wigg, whose own gaze was, as always, on her computer screen. “Robin, anything you want to add?”
She answered immediately, without looking up. “Too many things don’t make sense. There’s bad data somewhere in the equation.”
“What kind of bad data?”
Before she could respond, the conference room’s door opened and a lean woman who could have inspired a Grant Wood painting stepped into the room. Her gray eyes settled on the captain.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir.” Her voice sounded like it was sharpened by the same cold winds as her face. “There’s been a significant development.”
“Come in,” commanded Rodriguez. “And close the door.”
She closed it, then stood as rigidly as an army private awaiting permission to speak.
Rodriguez seemed pleased by her formality. “All right, Gerson, what is it?”
“We’ve been informed that one of the young women on our call-and-locate list was the victim of a homicide three months ago.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have the specifics?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
Her expression was as stiff as the starched collar of her shirt. “Name, Melanie Strum. Age eighteen. Graduated May first of this year from Mapleshade Academy. Last seen by her mother and stepfather in Scarsdale, New York, on May sixth. Her body was recovered from the basement of a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, on June twelfth.”
Rodriguez grimaced. “Cause of death?”
Gerson’s lips tightened.
“Cause of death?” he repeated.
“Her head was cut off. Sir.”
Rodriguez stared at Gerson. “How did this information come to us?”
“Through our outgoing calling process. Melanie Strum’s name was on the list subset assigned to me. I made the call.”
“Who did you speak to?”
She hesitated. “May I get my notes, sir?”
“Quickly, if you don’t mind.”
During the minute she was gone, the only person who spoke was Kline. “This could be it,” he said with an excited smile. “This could be the breakthrough.”
Anderson made a face like a man with a sore on the inside of his lip. Hardwick looked intensely interested. Wigg was inscrutable. Gurney was less disturbed than he would have been comfortable admitting. He told himself that his lack of shock or sadness was due to the fact that he had from the beginning assumed that the missing girls were dead. (On occasion, when he was alone and exhausted, some inner defense system would be breached and he would see himself as a man so emotionally disconnected from the lives of others, so lopsidedly devoted to his puzzle-solving agenda, that he hardly qualified as a member of the human family at all. However, that troubling vision would pass with a good night’s sleep, after which he would rationalize his lack of feeling as the normal by- product of a law-enforcement career.)
Gerson stepped back into the room, carrying a flip-top notepad. Her brown hair was pulled back severely into a tight ponytail, giving her features a skull-like immobility.
