“Right.” I nod. “Clever.”
“What’s smart is waiting seven years. You know how much changes in that amount of time in a major metropolitan police department? People are transferred, fired, retire, chiefs come and go, not to mention all the new crimes being committed. Picking out a crime from seven years ago, unless it’s something really memorable, is pretty unlikely.”
It’s true. The inexorability of it is terrifying. Seven years for a payoff?
“It explains some things about Heather,” I say. “The lack of over-the-top physical abuse. No overt signs of rape. Maybe this really is just a purely financial transaction for him.”
“Pick her up, lock her up, toss some food in every now and then?”
“Maybe.”
“What about the scars on her back?”
I consider this. “Perhaps they were just punishment. Again, there was nothing in them to suggest someone out of control. Eight years is a long time. Maybe there were times she rebelled, and he needed to show her who was boss.”
“Like a dog.” He curls his lip in disgust.
“It’s cold,” I muse. “There’s a pathology there, but no passion. I don’t know. It’s odd.”
It’s difficult for me to accept finance as the sole motive. Seven years is one hell of a personal investiture just for money.
My cell phone rings and I answer. “Barrett.”
“Another victim has turned up,” Callie says. “Male, unresponsive, just like Dana Hollister.”
My stomach churns. “Where?”
“He was left in the parking lot of a hospital in Simi Valley. He’d been placed in a body bag with a breathing tube. Some poor grandmother on her way in for a checkup on her hip replacement heard noises, went to investigate, and found him.”
“Any ID?”
“Not yet, but this happened two or three hours ago. What do you want me to do?”
I put a hand to my forehead, just briefly. There’s too much happening all at once. Dana Hollister in the bathtub, Heather Hollister in the hospital, Douglas Hollister in jail, Dylan struggling for life … I don’t include poor Avery, because all that’s left for him is the indignity of an autopsy and a burial. “What’s happened on the ViCAP search?”
“Completed. There have been three other similar crimes reported in the last seven to eight years. One near Las Vegas, another in Portland, and the oldest in Los Angeles. The same marks in the eye sockets were there on all three of them, with the same mental unresponsiveness.” She pauses. “As you suspected, all three had been given homemade lobotomies.”
We don’t have medical confirmation on Dana or the new John Doe, but I’m confident we’ll find the same thing. Our killer is good, but he isn’t flawless. Flawless would be remaining undetected. Leaving bodies behind is the same as a trail of bread crumbs for us. I hope.
“Honey-love?” Callie asks. “What do you want me to do?”
“I’m pretty sure I know who the new male victim is, Callie. Heather had a boyfriend.” I explain to her about Jeremy Abbott.
“That would make sense,” she agrees.
“The timing is pretty compelling. Find out if I’m right.”
“What do you want James to do?”
“Keep him on the database. This guy’s very smart. We’re going to need to be detail-oriented to catch what he’s missed.”
“Speaking of the little beast, he’s asking to talk to you.”
“Put him on.”
“I came across something interesting,” James says without preamble. “The night Heather Hollister was abducted, an oddity was noted by the investigating officers: a series of car accidents, four in all, of vehicles exiting the parking lot the gym was in.”
I frown, puzzled. “You mean a four-car pileup?”
“No. Four separate accidents, four vehicles, all unrelated.”
“Strange.”
“Too strange,” he says. “I don’t think it was an anomaly. I’m going to see if I can chase it down further.”
Then he’s gone, before I can reply, and Callie is back. “Ah, James, our James,” she says, sounding wistful. “Can’t live with him, can’t kill him slowly enough.”
“Do you know what he’s talking about? This thing with the cars?”
“That would require him to give me the time of day. I’m off to see the man you think might be Jeremy Abbott.” She pauses. “Is it bad?”
I consider Dana Hollister staring into the void. “It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alan says, not in his happy voice. I’ve just briefed him on my phone call with Callie. “What’s the game plan?” he asks.
I glance at my watch. It’s closing in on four o’clock. The day has gotten away from us. The sun is a runaway horse. “We could go to the hospital,” I say. “We can try to talk to Heather again.”
He shakes his head. “I advise against it. Give her another night, and then go over there with Burns. Just you and him.”
The Crime Scene Unit has arrived. Douglas Hollister has already been led away, cuffed and crying. Avery Hollister’s body continues to decompose in the bathroom upstairs, awaiting the coroner. Dylan Hollister is at the hospital having his stomach pumped. I think of refrigerator magnets and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with a desire to see Bonnie.
“I want to go home,” I say. “Is that weird? I just got back from vacation, and I guess we should go balls out on this, but I just don’t feel like it.”
“Nope. Not weird. That’s the voice you need to listen to when it pipes up.”
He’s mentioned this before, in years past. The voice. He says it is your internal fuse box speaking, letting you know what your limits are.
I yield to my own wimpiness.
“Let’s go home.”
“I’m going to stay here,” Burns says. “Obviously. CSU will feed me anything they find right away, and I’ll send it your way. I assume that will be a two-way street?”
“Scout’s honor,” I say, raising my three fingers in the time-honored salute.
“That’s the Boy Scout salute. You’re a girl.”
I smile, in spite of my exhaustion. “We won’t play any games when it comes to cooperation. You have my word.”
“Good.” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. “You want to hear something awful? I’m excited. All this, and I’m excited. Finally going to break this case open.”
I force another smile, but I don’t share his optimism. “Would you have a problem with letting our computer team go over his PC?”
“I don’t, but computer crimes might. They’re pretty open when it comes to cooperation, but they don’t like having it taken away kit and caboodle.”
“How about a compromise, then? I’ll send my tech over to the LAPD, and they can work together on it. No turf wars that way.”
“That’ll work.”
“Not to tell you how to do your job …” Alan says.
