Kiss Me, Kill Me

to go to such a party.”

Suzanne looked at Jill. She didn’t say anything.

Suzanne said, “Most college students go to a party or two. It’s part of the experience.”

Mrs. Reeves sat down. “Not Jill. She knows the dangers.”

Right. Suzanne wasn’t going to get anything out of Jill with the mother in the room. “Mrs. Reeves, would you mind stepping out? I need to speak to Jill in private.”

She frowned. “But shouldn’t I be here to protect her rights? She already told me everything, anyway.”

Hardly. “Jill isn’t a suspect; she’s not in any trouble. I just want to ask her some follow-up questions.”

“Then why can’t I stay? I’m worried about her. She doesn’t want to go back to college.”

“Mom,” Jill said with an exasperated sigh, “just leave, okay?”

Mrs. Reeves pursed her lips, rose from the chair, and left. Suzanne crossed the room and closed the double doors.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” Jill said to Suzanne.

“You lied to your parents, even after your best friend was killed?” Suzanne wasn’t going to coddle the young woman. She sat in the chair across from Jill.

“You don’t understand,” Jill said.

“Try me.”

She shrugged. “It’s not important anymore. It’s just-my parents are older. They’re old enough to be your parents,” she said as if Suzanne were ancient. “They were forty when they adopted me. They don’t get anything. I could tell them I was going to a rave and they’d say, ‘Oh, that sounds like fun!’ ” She shook her head.

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight between us. Don’t lie to me. If I find out you’re lying to me about anything, I’ll send your parents a copy of the police report.”

“You can’t do that!”

“It’s public record. I can and will do it.” She took out her copy of the report to reiterate her point. “I’m assuming you were honest with Detective Panetta.”

She nodded. “I didn’t lie to my parents, either. They just assumed I didn’t go to the party-they didn’t even ask me-I just didn’t correct them. I’m not doing any of that stuff; that’s why I left college. It was getting out of hand, and I don’t want to be that person anymore. I was just accepted to a small college in Pennsylvania for the fall, but I haven’t told them yet.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “I just don’t know what I want anymore.”

“Hey, I understand that.” Until she’d been recruited by the FBI while at Boston College, Suzanne didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. She didn’t even declare her major until junior year because she kept changing her mind.

“I haven’t done any drugs or drinking since, I swear to God. If I hadn’t been so wasted when Alanna was killed, maybe I would have noticed she wasn’t around. Maybe I could have stopped her from going off with the wrong guy. I don’t know.” Tears filled her eyes and she looked down at her hands. “We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I still want to call her every night before bed, like I used to. I often pick up the phone and then remember she’s dead.”

Suzanne reached out and squeezed her hand. “If you can help me, maybe I can find Alanna’s killer and put him in prison. That’s justice. It’s why I’m a cop.”

Jill nodded. “I promise, the entire truth. But-” She hesitated.

“No buts, Jill. The truth.”

She nodded.

“Have you heard about the other murders?”

Jill nodded, wiping a stray tear from her face. “The news. The Cinderella Strangler. That’s him, right?”

“Yes. There are four victims now. He targets the types of parties where you and Alanna went on October thirtieth. We don’t know how he picks his victims. Three of the victims were college students-Alanna; Heather Garcia, who was a junior at NYU; and the most recent victim, Jessica Bell, a sophomore at Columbia. Did you know Jessica Bell?”

Jill shook her head. “The name isn’t familiar. But I left after a few months. It’s a big school.”

“That’s okay.” Suzanne looked at her notes and Panetta’s report. “You told Detective Panetta that this was the first party of this type that you’d gone to. Is that correct?”

Jill looked sheepish. “Well, no, but that’s not what he asked. He asked if Alanna or I had gone to any other underground parties since arriving at Columbia. I didn’t lie-it was the first we’d been to since we started college.”

“But you understood the question, obviously.”

“Yes. But … I didn’t want him to think that we were sluts or anything. Even though …” She hesitated.

“You need to tell me the truth or more girls are going to die. You understand that, right? Four murders-that’s well past the textbook criteria for a serial killer. I need to figure out how and why he’s targeting these victims, because that will lead us to him.” She knew that, as the first victim, Alanna had the highest chance of having a personal connection to the killer. Serial killers rarely begin by killing random strangers. The first victim was usually personal, or had a personal significance to the killer.

But Jill didn’t need to know that, not yet.

Suzanne said, “Something happened that night with Alanna that set him off. Something that maybe you saw or heard without recognizing its importance. First-how many of these types of parties have you been to in your lifetime?”

“That was my second, I swear. The first time we were seniors in high school. But Alanna had been to a bunch of them.”

“Here in Hamden?”

“No. We took the train to the city. It was harder for me to disappear for the weekend, but Alanna’s parents didn’t really care what she did as long as her grades were good. That first time, I convinced my parents that I was somewhere else, and had a million excuses ready if they checked up on me. Alanna had talked about how much fun they were, and begged me to go with her.”

“Was that party similar to the one you went to this past October?”

“I-” She looked down again, her face reddening. “I had broken up with my boyfriend when I went to that first party. I was so angry-I just wanted to find a guy and have sex, as if that would have punished Gary or something. I’d smoked pot a couple times before, but I’d never done real drugs-I was so wired. It was like my mind and my body were two different things. It just got out of hand. I didn’t want to do it again, but after a while I think I just pushed aside the bad parts and remembered the great music and the fun stuff, so when Alanna told me about the Haunted House, it sounded okay.”

“How did she hear about it?”

“Alanna knew about all of them. She wanted to get her grades on solid ground so her parents wouldn’t pull her from college, so she worked hard for the first two months. But after she aced her midterms, she said she needed to go wild.”

“What about the party when you were a senior?”

“Alanna went to stay with her cousin in New York for a month the summer before our senior year. She told me all about it-I was shocked. I guess I was a little more sheltered back then. Alanna was like a trendsetter, always the first to try new things.”

“Before you went, what did she tell you it was going to be like?”

“Just that there would be a live band and lots of dancing and drinking-” She hesitated.

“Tell me, Jill.”

“She said when she went to the party in New York, she’d had sex with three different guys. Didn’t even know their names. It stunned me-I mean, she’d lost her virginity before me, I don’t know why I was so surprised, except that, well, I was. She said it was empowering.”

Suzanne made a note. Maybe Alanna had other secrets she hadn’t shared with Jill. Her cousin in New York might know more, especially if that’s where Alanna’s partying lifestyle began.