Deadly Pursuit (2 page)

That isolation was perhaps part of the reason why the place had never been developed into a resort hotel complex or a tournament golf course. Route 1, the elevated highway that played connect-the-dots with most of the islands, had missed Pelican Key by three miles. Henry Flagler’s railroad, built years earlier and demolished in the hurricane of ’35, had come no closer. No bridge or causeway linked Upper Matecumbe to Pelican Key. The only access to it was by boat, helicopter, or seaplane.

Nobody had ever much desired to go there anyway. Compared with most other local islands, Pelican Key was small—only three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter-mile wide—and a good part of its hundred and twenty acres was taken up by mangrove swamp. Hardly a developer’s dream.

A lime plantation operated on Pelican Key during the early years of this century; the Depression shut it down. After that, the island remained unwanted until Donald Larson bought it in 1946. Larson was a young man who’d already made a great deal of money in aviation and was destined to make much more. His dream was to restore the plantation house, a victim of time and storms, and retire to it someday.

Someday didn’t come until 1980, when Larson, no longer young, finally began the renovations planned decades earlier. In the interim he’d fought a fierce, protracted battle with the state government, which had wanted to purchase Pelican Key and preserve it as a park.

Larson held on to the property and forestalled an eminent-domain ruling only by guaranteeing that no further development would be attempted there, either in his lifetime or afterward. The house and other features already present would be repaired, modernized, and maintained; otherwise, Pelican Key would remain as the coral polyps and red mangrove had made it.

He was true to his word. And from 1981 onward he lived in the big limestone house on the island’s south end, enjoying, no doubt, his blessed isolation.

When he died two years ago, in 1992, his heirs faced the dilemma of what to do with Pelican Key. A considerable tax write-off could be realized by donating it to the state of Florida. But some residue of the elder Larson’s stubborn pride and sentimental attachment to the island had prevented such a move.

Instead the estate continued to maintain the house and pay the property taxes, offsetting part of the costs by renting out Pelican Key to vacationers as a private retreat, on a monthly basis in season, with biweekly deals available during the hot, wet summer months.

Steve had found out about the vacation rentals in March. The need to return to the island had been driving him like a quiet frenzy ever since.

“I see it,” Kirstie said suddenly, leaning forward.

Steve craned his neck, following her gaze, and picked out a smear of tropical verdure against the blinding sun.

Close now. Unexpectedly close, appearing out of the dazzle like a vision in a dream.

Down in the cockpit, Anastasia barked, as if in confirmation of the sighting.

“There’s the house.” Pice pointed. “See the windows shining like coins?”

Steve nodded eagerly. “Yes. I see.” A broad tile roof was visible now, partly screened by branches. “Larson must have gone all out on the restoration. The place was a ruin when Jack and I used to come here.”

“Could you go inside?” Kirstie asked.

“Oh, sure. Found a dead coral snake in a bathtub once. Must have crawled in there for some reason and died.”

Her nose wrinkled prettily. “Remind me not to bathe for the next two weeks.”

“Don’t worry. It’s a big bathtub. Plenty of room for you
and
a snake.”

The rap of her knuckles on his arm was meant to be playful, but hurt anyway.

The Black Caesar motored closer. Pice glanced back at them with a grin. “What do you say we circle her once, just to say hello?”

He was already steering the boat northeast. The mangrove fringe on the island’s western side blurred past—dense clumps of twisted trees, foreboding and mysterious, the eldritch landscape of another world.

At the north end, there was a small cove, a semicircle of shallow water, mirror-lustrous, bordered by mangroves and stands of hardwood trees.

“That’s where we used to beach the dinghy,” Steve said, remembering. “There’s a Calusa Indian midden not far inland—you know, a shell mound. The salt ponds are nearby, too.”

Kirstie studied him. “How much time did you and Jack spend here, anyway?”

“Oh, about four days a summer, three summers in all. Maybe twelve days, total.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like much, does it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve had love affairs that were briefer.”

“None recently, I hope.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

They were cruising along the seaward side now, past a narrow beach composed of broken bits of coral, pebbly and coarse, over a solid coral foundation. Palms and the imported Australian pines called casuarinas fringed the beach, swaying gently as if to unheard music.

Near the southern tip of the key, the motorboat Pice had promised came into view, bobbing in the shallows. It was moored to a small dock at the end of a pathway twisting down from the house between landscaped beds of poinsettias and yellow jasmine.

The dock was new to Steve. It hadn’t been there when he and Jack explored the key. Neither had the path, for that matter, nor the flower beds. A lot had changed. But the important things had remained untouched, unsullied—a small but precious part of his life that had never been tainted.

The boat glided toward the dock. Anastasia was barking again. Pelican Key waited, silent and calm.

Abruptly, Kirstie turned to him, her face almost solemn. “Steve. I ... I hope this works out for you. For both of us.”

“What does?”

“The trip. The time we spend here. I hope you find ... whatever it is you’re looking for.”

The words touched him in a tender place. He reached out, stroked her hair, soft and golden, and she did not pull away.

“I don’t need anything more than what I have right now,” he whispered.

It was the right thing to say. But he no longer knew if it was true—or if it could be true for him, ever again.

3

At eight-fifteen on Saturday morning, a tenant of Saguaro Terraces was unlocking his Jeep Cherokee in the carport when he noticed the ceiling light in a Toyota Paseo glowing dimly, the passenger-side door slightly ajar.

He found a young woman lying in the driver’s seat, which had been levered back to a nearly horizontal position. Her dress had been lifted above her hips, her panties shredded.

“Miss?”

He rapped on the windshield and, when that failed to rouse her, reached through the open window and shook her gently.

She listed sideways in her seat, her pretty face turning toward him as her head rolled. Through a net of blond hair, her eyes stared at him and through him, their blue gaze fixed on death.

After that, things happened very fast.

* * *

Phoenix P.D. was on the scene by 8:27. A senior homicide investigator, Detective Robert Ashe, arrived soon afterward. Examining the body with gloved hands, he found the needle mark at the side of the throat.

Ashe was a twenty-year veteran, eligible for a full pension and thinking seriously about taking it, but he was still conscientious enough to read the bulletins that crossed his desk. He recognized the pattern.

“Better call the feds,” he told the watch commander.

It was nine-fifteen by then, and already Phoenix was getting hot.

* * *

Two special agents from the Denver field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were on the ground at Sky Harbor Airport three hours later. A Phoenix agent met them at the flight gate and introduced himself as Ramon Pena.

“I’m Peter Lovejoy.” The tall, pale Denver agent shook Pena’s hand and sneezed. “Don’t worry. Nothing catching. Only allergies.”

Tension and fatigue were recorded on Lovejoy’s thin face. His high forehead was prematurely lined, his eyes tired and angry. It was obvious that the long investigation had worn him down.

“You’ll like Phoenix,” Pena said, trying for a light note. “Whole environment is hypoallergenic.”

Lovejoy’s partner smiled. “Don’t count on it. Peter’s nose has the extraordinary ability to sniff out individual pollen grains five hundred miles away.”

She said it with affection, but Lovejoy looked nettled anyway. “Possibly a slight exaggeration,” he muttered, then blew wetly into a crumpled Kleenex.

Pena wasn’t looking at him. The woman held his attention now. She was slender and poised, her skin the color of dark rum, her brown hair close-cropped in a skull-tight Afro. The sculptured planes of her face captured a regal quality that made him think of carved likenesses on ancient monuments.

He supposed she must be worn out, too, and as frustrated as her partner, but she didn’t show it. Though she wore the Bureau’s trademark navy blue jacket, white shirt, and beige slacks, she conveyed the austere glamour of a model on a fashion runway.

“I’m Tamara Moore,” she said as they started hiking down the concourse.

“Tamara, huh? Nice name.”

“I’ve been told it means ‘date palm.’”

“A date palm in the desert. You’ll fit right in.”

Moore smiled, and Lovejoy sneezed again.

* * *

Guiding the government sedan onto 1-17 with the air conditioner on high, Pena asked how long they’d been after Mister Twister.

“Eight months,” Lovejoy answered. “Since he did a girl in Denver.”

“How’d the Denver office get involved in a homicide?”

“The victim’s body was dumped on Trail Ridge road in the Rocky Mountain National Forest. Federal jurisdiction.”

“And you tied it to some earlier murders?”

“Yes.” Lovejoy honked into a tissue. “In our judgment, there were two relevant unsolved homicides, one in San Antonio, the other in Albuquerque. Each case was handled locally, and nobody’d made the connection.”

“What
is
the connection? What pattern do you look for?”

“Within certain parameters, he follows the same M.O. each time. Bar pickup, lethal injection in the neck. Always on a weekend—Friday or Saturday night. And always the same victim profile: attractive woman, mid-twenties to mid-thirties, blue eyes, blond hair, fair complexion, slender build.”

Pena caught a strong whiff of the bureaucrat’s cover-your-ass mentality in Lovejoy’s answers. In our judgment ... within certain parameters ...

This guy will go far, he thought with a mixture of amusement and bitterness. “So there’ve been three victims since?”

This time Moore answered. “Not counting the latest one. Las Vegas, Dallas, San Diego. Add Phoenix to the list, and you’ve got seven in all.”

“He keeps busy, doesn’t he?”

“Too damn busy. Murder is a compulsion for him. He won’t stop till he’s caught or killed.”

No equivocations or qualifications for her. She was a straight-shooter.

“Guess you’ve got a lot of people working this thing,” Pena said.

“Over sixty law enforcement agents full-time. It’s a multijurisdictional task force, and somehow we wound up in charge. Well, actually Peter did.”

Lovejoy shrugged. “I had seniority, so the Denver SAC made me task force leader. But from my perspective, Tamara and I are functioning as equals. We share the work and the responsibility.”

And the blame if anything goes wrong, Pena thought. Aloud, he said, “I’m surprised the Denver SAC didn’t take over the task force himself.” A special-agent-in-charge normally grabbed the high-profile assignments for himself.

“He might have wanted to.” With effort Lovejoy stifled a sneeze. “Initially they unloaded the case on a couple of street agents—that is to say, us—because they thought it was just another random homicide that would never be solved. Once we detected what appeared to be a pattern, we were in too deep to be pulled off.”

“Lucky you.” Pena had one more question. “Where did his name come from? Mister Twister?”

“Not our idea,” Moore said. “Officially he’s the Trail Ridge Killer. But that’s not sexy enough for the media. There’s a line in a song—something about a Mister Twister. How loving him is like embracing a whirlwind; he destroys everything he touches. Must have struck someone as an appropriate image, and it just caught on.”

“Well,” Pena said as he found the Central Avenue off-ramp, “this guy’s sure as hell been cutting a swath of destruction across the great Southwest. And we usually don’t get twisters around here.”

* * *

On Veronica Tyler’s neck, near the puncture wound, the M.E. found a few droplets of clear fluid that must have spurted from the syringe. Serological analysis identified it as a 9.25% solution of hydrogen chloride in water, with traces of n-alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride and n-alkyl dimethyl ethyl-benzyl ammonium chloride.

“The same stuff used in the other six killings,” Moore said, putting down a faxed copy of the serology report. She had just looked at the crime-scene photos of Veronica Tyler, and for some reason she found it difficult to hold her voice steady. “The details of the injection were never made public in any of the cases. This is the real thing—no copycat.”

Nobody had expected a copycat anyway. The murder was right on schedule for Mister Twister. Seven victims in fourteen months. A new corpse every eight or nine weeks. Always on a weekend. Reliable as clockwork.

Detective Ashe studied the report, smoothing out the flimsy fax paper with one hand. “Hydrogen chloride. Is that like hydrochloric acid?”

“In a more diluted form.”

“Something he mixes up himself?”

Moore shook her head. “It’s toilet-bowl cleaner. A commercially available brand. Highly corrosive. He shoots it into the carotid artery, straight to the brain.”

“I guess that’s one way to think clean thoughts,” cracked a homicide cop, and the other detectives in the squad room, men in rumpled brown suits and loosened neckties, laughed nervously.

The Phoenix SAC, a silver-haired man named Gifford, shifted in his seat. “Is this stuff distributed nationally?”

Lovejoy nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. There’s no hope of tracking the purchase. The manufacturer reports moving thirty thousand units a day.”

“What about the syringe? You can’t just walk into a store and buy one, can you?”

“Under normal circumstances, no. Syringes are prescription items. There was some preliminary speculation that our man could be a doctor, but the M.E.’s who’ve done the postmortems don’t think so. He shows no unusual skill or knowledge in the placement of the needle. Possibly he’s an orderly or he works at a medical-supply firm.”

“Of course,” Moore added, “anybody can obtain needles on the street.” She’d seen enough of that in her childhood years.

Gifford frowned. “Dead end.” He seemed about to say something more when Ashe’s phone shrilled.

The desk sergeant transferring the call said there was a guy on the line who seemed to know something about the Tyler case. Ashe put him on speaker.

“Detective? Name’s Wallace Stargill. Call me Wally.” His voice, coming over the cheap speaker, had a hollow sound. “I tend bar over at the Lazy Eight on Second Street. Think I saw that girl in here last night.”

By this time Veronica Tyler’s family had been notified of her death, and her most recent photo had been released to the local media.

“Okay, Wally,” Ashe said, nicely composed. “You pretty sure it was her?”

“Yeah, damn sure.”

“Was she with anyone?”

“This guy. I mean, she was by herself at first, and then he sat down next to her. Seemed to be coming on pretty strong.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Not too good. It was crowded in there. The girl I noticed; she was a looker. As for the guy—I don’t know. He was dressed nice, I remember that.”

“Where are you now?”

“At the bar. I’m just opening up. Saw the report on TV while I was getting the kitchen ready for Julio.”

“Who’s Julio?”

“Substitute dishwasher. Our regular guy, Pedro, came down with the flu last night and had to go home early. Got a mess of dirty glasses here.”

Moore was out of her seat. “Tell him not to wash anything. We’ll be right over.”

* * *

The bar had a friendless, disconsolate quality in daytime. Upended chairs rested on rows of tables. Sunlight struggled through high, frosted windows. The smell of stale booze hung over the place like the odor of disinfectant in a morgue.

There was a kitchen at the rear where the overworked waitresses had deposited trays of used glasses. “Slow nights, I wash ’em myself,” Wally Stargill said to the small mob of agents and cops crowding in for a look. He was a tall, laconic man, his fleshy forearms crossed awkwardly over a spreading gut. “But Fridays and Saturdays are crazy here.”

“Crazy,” Gifford echoed, perhaps thinking of Veronica Tyler with an ampule of toilet cleaner in her neck.

Moore asked if the victim and the man who’d picked her up had left before or after Pedro went home.

“After.”

“So the glasses they used weren’t washed?”

“Probably not, unless I cleaned them in the sink under the bar. Like I said, I do that when we’re not too busy. Last night I doubt I got a chance.”

Moore pointed at the rows of glasses. Only Lovejoy knew her well enough to see that she was worked up. “He handled one of those.”

Ashe frowned. “What are you going to do? Print them all?”

“Right.”

“You serious?”

“Sure am.”

“There must be three hundred glasses here.”

“Then we’ll print three hundred glasses.”

Lovejoy cleared his throat, a tentative sound. “Conceivably we can narrow it down.” He turned to the bartender. “You happen to recall what the man was drinking?”

Stargill thought for a moment. “Beefeater on the rocks.”

“You’re certain?”

“Oh, yeah.” A sheepish smile. “I never forget a drink.”

“So it was a lowball glass,” Gifford said.

“That’s how we serve ’em.”

Lovejoy coughed again. “There would appear to be no more than thirty or forty of those.”

“All of a sudden this sounds a lot more practical,” Ashe said. “Got to warn you, though, our lab is pretty backed up. Staff cutbacks. You know the story.”

“Possibly we can requisition some help, expedite the process.” Lovejoy sneezed. “Damn. I hate this climate.”

“You hate all climates,” Moore said briskly. “Come on, let’s talk to I.D. Wally, may we use your phone?”

* * *

Identification Division flew in the Latent Fingerprints section chief, Paul Collins, to assist the Phoenix P.D. crime lab in the tedious procedure.

Collins, an East Coast native who thought of Arizona as cow country and the local constabulary as rubes, was pleasantly astonished to find an argon laser at his disposal, along with cyanoacrylate fuming cabinets, iodine fume guns, and gentian violet baths. By the end of the assignment, he was humming “My Darling Clementine” and considering retirement in the Grand Canyon State.

One hundred forty-six latents were recovered. It took three days to run cold searches on them all, using a modem link between the Phoenix P.D. computer and the FBI’s FINDER system, a database of eighty-three million prints. FINDER did the gross preliminary work, but the final, subtle matching had to be done by visual comparison, a time-consuming process.

Lovejoy and Moore stayed busy while the print searches progressed. Lovejoy flew home to brief the Denver SAC and wound up in a conference call with a deputy director and the Behavioral Science section chief. He appeased the media with a thirty-minute briefing in which he conveyed the impression of speaking substantively while actually saying nothing at all. He made no mention of the massive fingerprinting procedure already well underway.

Moore read a transcript of the news conference and felt a familiar blend of irritation and bemusement. She knew that Peter was good at what he did, a competent agent and a decent man, but he was too willing to play the game on others’ terms, to stifle his own personality in a numbing quest for blandness. Fundamentally he was weak, crippled by insecurity; and a hard life had taught her to despise softness of any kind.

In Phoenix she kept the other members of the task force updated by phone, fax, and e-mail. She was dealing with police departments in three cities, sheriff’s offices in three counties, and the FBI field office in each of the states where a killing had occurred. The logistics were maddening.