Deadly Messengers (22 page)

She smiled. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have someone to see who has better manners than you. And may I give
you
a piece of free advice?”

O’Grady raised an eyebrow. She really did have spunk. Even as he feigned disinterest, he actually found her quite amusing. In other circumstances, he might have called her
cute
.

“Work on a decent attitude, Detective O’Grady. Not everyone is out to do the wrong thing. You must live in a horrible world if you think
everybody
is so selfish. People might surprise you if you gave them half a chance.”

The lift doors opened wide. Kendall Jennings moved quickly inside, gave him one last shake of her head, then the doors closed and she was gone.

O’Grady shook his head, too, as he turned and walked toward the front door. He’d been on his way back to his desk, but if she were going up to see Trip, then he would make himself scarce. If Trip had an interest in her, then more fool him. She
was
feisty; more so than he ever imagined. Possibly another trick of her trade—concealing her true personality to get what she wanted.

Anyway, it gave him freedom to finish up the last few interviews in order to finalize the file on the Mommy Murders. Images of the crime scene flashed in his mind. Sudden emotions flamed in him. This Kendall Jennings was selling a story on these deaths. If she’d seen what he’d seen—the red splattered walls, the thick pools of blood and the shattered bodies—maybe she wouldn’t be so enthusiastically seeking details.

Out in the brisk air as he walked to his car, O’Grady felt himself begin to sweat. He loosened his tie. Why
was
he so annoyed at this woman? It was more than her being a nosy journalist. Maybe it was because Trip hadn’t told him he was meeting with her. Or that she had the audacity to turn up at a crime scene. How had she known about the event, anyway?

Of course
. Trip.

That did it. He decided he’d work through these interviews on his own. When he got back, he and his partner would have a serious talk. Trip was playing a dangerous game.

WENDY THOMPSON SAT ACROSS FROM O’Grady, bouncing a baby on her lap. She leaned down and kissed the child’s ruddy cheek before looking back at him. Her eyes were red and her face drawn.

“Kate and I’ve been friends for four years. Her daughter and my Ellen went to school together. It’s a tragedy. A real tragedy. Those kids … I’ve seen her with those kids at school, on play dates, in the supermarket. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen now. Do you think they’ll be alright?”

O’Grady nodded. “The extended family seems close-knit. There’s support there.”

He looked down at his pad, at the few questions he’d noted to ask. They’d already interviewed this woman, but he had a few more questions. In fact, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was after. It was just a common comment he’d noted made by witnesses from both the Kenworth Home’s facility and the Café Amaretto crimes that nagged at him. Really, he was fishing in murky waters.

“Mrs. Thompson, you mentioned you saw Kate the morning of the event?”

“Yes, I saw her. She was with me on Saturday, maybe an hour before she went and kil—”

Wendy stopped, dabbing a tissue at the corners of her eyes as she bent again to kiss the top of her baby’s head.

“I can’t understand it. How could this happen? Kate wouldn’t hurt a fly. She loved those kids. They seemed happy, Randall and her.”

More tears welled in her eyes. She reached up with the back of her hand to wipe them away. The baby gurgled happily on her lap.

It was the same story with every one of the mass murderers. Every witness who knew the killers—Benson, Tavell, and now Kate Wilker—had said the same thing: they were all decent human beings who didn’t have a violent bone in their body. Descriptions of cold-blooded killers usually didn’t include words like kind, thoughtful, happy, or wonderful. More likely the words would be moody, angry, loner, irrational. Not one person had attributed a single motive or warning sign.

The other thing they had in common bothering O’Grady was one anomaly in the reports. It could be nothing. Probably
was
nothing. He hadn’t even mentioned it to Trip, because, well, it was slim at best. It was odd. Each killer was out in public only an hour before beginning his or her spree. Benson was at a club. Tavell was eating at a diner. Kate Wilker was shopping with this friend, Wendy Thompson. Being out enjoying yourself just before you violently took lives seemed extraordinary behavior.

There were also witness reports from Benson and Tavell’s outings noting a stranger had approached both men. A club doorman remembered a man approaching Benson in the street outside. He’d noticed them because he’d thought Benson was about to be mugged. Instead, though, the man pulled out a piece of paper and held it out to Benson. The doorman had, momentarily, returned to dealing with the club’s parade of patrons. When he looked back, he noticed them farther down the street, walking together.

Less than an hour later, Benson would take seven lives. What was on the piece of paper, the identity of the stranger, and even if the meeting was relevant, remained a mystery.

In the case of Tavell, they had security footage taken by newly installed cameras outside the diner and along most of the surrounding street. He’d left the diner just after ten p.m. and walked half a block before a man wearing a dark jacket and a scarf wound about his neck approached him. The man walked with an uncertain gait initially. He seemed irritated. Then O’Grady decided he only thought that because of the way the man kept scratching at himself as he approached Tavell.

With Benson, they worked with just one fixed camera outside the club, so the footage wasn’t great. Blurry and over-dark, like a lot of this type of video.

O’Grady hadn’t pursued either of the encounters because there was little to go on. Separately, too, they just didn’t appear to be anything more than random events. Yet, if they
were
random, why both times did the unidentified man pull out a piece of paper and hold it out to Benson and Tavell? Was it the same man or a freak fluke?

Kate Wilker messed up the whole
connection
theory. As far as O’Grady could ascertain, she was out shopping prior to the killings. He’d checked the mall’s video footage, and found no stranger intercepting her. All O’Grady had was an itch at the back of his neck and a throb in his gut, but he’d learned to trust that itch and that throb.

Sitting across from Wendy Thompson, O’Grady hoped she would answer his question in the affirmative. Then he would know he was onto something, even if he didn’t know the
something
.

He leaned forward.

“Mrs. Thompson, there’s one thing I neglected to ask last time we spoke.”

“Yes?” Her sad eyes studied him as she held her baby so tight O’Grady feared she might squeeze the life out of her.

“When you were out shopping, did anyone approach you? A man, perhaps?”

His question caught her off guard. She’d probably expected him to ask her more about Kate’s demeanor or her history. Had she been angry with her husband or mentioned she wanted out of her marriage? All questions she’d already answered in the negative.

Her gaze flicked down and to the side as she pulled one hand away from her baby, ran her fingers through her long hair, and pushed it behind her ears. She was revisiting her memories of that morning.

“Hmm. That’s an interesting question.”

She puzzled for a few more seconds, before looking back at him, her brow furrowed.

“Do you think Kate actually planned this with someone? I can’t imagine that. I’ve thought about this … it’s all I’ve thought about since that day. That I was the last person she was with, before … I can’t sleep anymore, you know. Just a few hours. Then I wake up crying. I feel guilty and sad and I can’t stop thinking about those kids. I’m trying not to think back to that day. I know Kate did a terrible thing, but I feel so sorry for her, too. Then I feel guilty for feeling sorry.”

She kissed the baby’s head, yet again, leaving her chin resting on the child’s crown. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

O’Grady vehemently shook his head. He should have phrased the question better. “No, no, we don’t think she acted with anyone. It’s something else we’re following up. I’m sorry to upset you, but can you remember anything? Or anyone?”

Wendy sighed as she wiped the fresh tears from her cheek.

“No, nobody spoke to us. We had a coffee. Kate needed to buy a birthday gift for her niece. The poor little thing, orphaned. Her parents—”

Wendy lowered her head for a moment, gathering herself. When she looked up again, she seemed more together. She’d stopped crying.

“We went into a gift shop and bought her niece a card. She was turning twelve. Kate found one with gold numbers on the front. You know, ‘Happy Birthday 12-year-old!’ Then Kate still couldn’t decide on a present for her and it was getting late. I suggested a Pandora charm or a bracelet if she didn’t have a bracelet. Kate got excited then, because her niece
did
have a Pandora. She loved the idea that a charm would remind her of her aunt, and—”

Wendy fixed O’Grady with a steely, adamant stare.

“Do you see how crazy this is? She bought the girl a
damn
charm. You tell me how she then takes a gun and kills the same girl’s parents and the others. Tell me!” Her eyes burned with frustration, confusion, as though her friend had been wrongfully accused of murder and she a witness pleading her innocence in a trial. “You tell me, Detective O’Grady, how that works?”

What
could
he tell her? He didn’t know himself.

“I don’t know. Look, sometimes there’s no answer. People just snap.”

“Well, I don’t know how she snapped. Kate wasn’t like that. Something terrible must have happened to make her do what she did. Maybe she was afraid for her life or something. I guess in your job you always look for the worst in people.”

“Actually, no, I’m
always
looking for the truth. Good or bad.”

Now they were off track—if he’d ever been on track with his hunch. He wished he could explain the practicalities of his job: that sometimes he never did find the truth. Sometimes it wasn’t there to be found. People just did crazy things. Human beings needed reasons, but misfiring brains don’t always leave explanations. He’d learned to live with that in his job, otherwise he couldn’t keep doing it.

O’Grady looked down and read from his notes. “So in the original interview you mentioned you accompanied Mrs. Wilker to an ATM. A few minutes after she’d taken some cash, you parted. Right?”

O’Grady looked back up as she flipped the baby around to face her and held the chubby bundle up to stare into her face. The little girl gurgled happily, then rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. Wendy rubbed and patted the baby’s back as though to burp her.

“Yes, that’s about it.” She suddenly stopped patting her daughter’s back. “Don’t these shopping malls have security cameras? Can’t you check those?”

“Yes, they do.”

Of course he’d looked over all the mall footage, but it simply confirmed what Wendy had already told him. The two women wandered the mall for close to ninety minutes, stopped for coffee, visited the ATM, and then parted. Nobody approached Kate Wilker inside the mall. Even though he’d found nothing, he couldn’t quash a niggling worm of doubt he’d missed something.

“The footage showed nothing.”

“I’m telling you, we walked to the parking lot together. Nobody came near us there, either.” O’Grady already knew that, too, because he’d checked the parking lot footage yesterday when the connection theory had occurred to him.

“I went to my car. She went to hers. We drove out together. In fact, I was behind her, right up until the lights at the end of the street exiting the mall. I waved to her as I drove by. That was it.”

O’Grady settled back into the sofa, suddenly realizing he’d moved so far forward he was now perched on the edge of the chair. He’d hoped, more than he wanted to admit, there’d be some shadowy stranger approaching Kate Wilker, complete with the mysterious piece of paper. Then all the crimes would fit perfectly into a scenario for which he
still
had no answer.

His mind drifted around the idea of synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, and then alighted on Kendall Jennings. He wondered what she and Trip might be discussing at this very moment. It irked him she’d even entered his head. She’d become a distraction his mind kept homing in on, and he couldn’t understand why.

He hadn’t even realized he’d lost focus, when Wendy Thompson’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Detective O’Grady, when I waved goodbye to Kate at those lights, she was just Kate. What did I miss?”

“Nothing. Sometimes, people just snap.”

As he spoke, O’Grady made a note on his pad:
Check traffic cam footage outside mall.
Folding his notepad back into his pocket, he began to stand.

People just snap
wasn’t entirely true. He had no better answer, because that’s exactly what seemed to have happened. He still had nothing. This had been a waste of time.