The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery (13 page)

Everyone behind the mayor went somber when His Honor began his opening remarks.

“We may have a serial killer,” he began.

Silence shrank the room.

“Many of our citizens saw the local news special last night,” the mayor continued. “Those who did not have in all likelihood heard about it.” He paused for effect. “Two women, Folami B. Stowe and Abigail Knight, are dead. Chief Layton tells me the crime scenes suggest both women may have been murdered by the same person. And, yes, the killer left the words, ‘I’ll Get You, My Pretty’ written in the victims’ blood on their bedroom walls.”

Mayor Jensen lowered his head in a symbolic moment of silence. When he looked up, Maddie noticed that his knuckles had paled out from his gripping the edge of the lectern.

“That’s the sensational part,” he said. “Other facts that have become public knowledge are that both women were attractive. Beyond that, the similarities are few. Ms. Stowe was a single black woman, Mrs. Knight, a married white woman. Chief Layton will tell you what he can about his department’s investigation.”

Chief Layton made an opening statement, largely redundant to what the mayor had said, then added, “I’ll take your questions now.” The chief pointed to a member of the media Maddie didn’t recognize, a rail-thin man with high cheekbones.

“Ben Chauncey,
L.A. Times
. Chief Layton, other than the bloody wall memo what makes these two killings similar enough to convince you you’re tracking a serial killer?”

“Out-of-town talent already,” the chief remarked. “First, let me correct the premise of your question. The mayor said, ‘We may have a serial killer.’ Those words were not intended to convey that I am convinced. However, we are concerned enough that we need to alert our citizens. Next question,” he boomed, pointing at an oily faced man in a tan suit.

“Stanley Whalen,
Tucson Citizen,
Chief,” the man said.

“Good to see you again, Mr. Whalen, your question?”

“These two women were killed in their homes. Are women safer when they are not at home?”

This jerk got a double scoop of stupidity.

“Two are not enough to convince us this perpetrator would only seek victims at their homes. In fact, we cannot say with certainty that this Beholder, as Ms. Carson dubbed him, did not seize one or both of his victims at other locations and force them to take him to their homes.”

“Follow up!” Whalen bellowed. “Do you have anything that suggests that’s how these two went down?”

Went down, Maddie repeated to herself. Such an ugly phrase said in ignorance by those who write about murder without ever having held it in their nostrils.

“No comment,” the chief replied and immediately KC was on her feet, face flushed, eyes bright, and on the prod. She did not bother introducing herself.

“Are only beautiful women at risk?” she asked.

“Ah, Ms. Carson. Welcome and thank you. We were discussing holding a press conference and your special report helped get the media attention we needed. As for your question, we don’t know. I agree most people would have considered these two women beautiful. Does this killer have other criteria? Again, we don’t know. As you implied through the name you gave him, beauty
is
in the eye of the beholder.”

A tall woman with rawboned features whom Maddie recognized, Cynthia Powers from a local news channel was next on her feet.

“How can women protect themselves?” Her tone implied she didn’t really expect a useful reply.

“All women, all our citizens need to go about their lives,” the chief stated. “Just be more conscious of people around you. Don’t walk to your car alone if you can avoid it. If you see a stranger following you, or loitering near your home, call the number you see on the banner behind us. My department will be staffing that number around the clock. And don’t—I repeat do not—open your door to anyone you don’t know well enough to trust with your life. In short, use common sense. Don’t panic. And remember, there is help at the other end of the Beholder hotline.”

Maddie knew KC was tripping every time the chief said,
The Beholder
hotline. Every serial killer case she could recall had been given a special name that cut to the heart of the public’s macabre fascination with these cases. The name KC coined had just become the official name by which this case would forever be known.

A cacophony of calls stopped the chief’s attempt to step back. “One more question,” the chief announced. He pointed to a woman in the front row, Candyce Duncan from the
Associated Press Wire Service
, a stern looking woman who always wore her hair pulled back tight into a bun behind a face devoid of makeup.

“Chief Layton, the Beholder is being referred to as a man. Can you tell us why?”

“Sergeant Madeline Richards who is heading our Beholder case squad will answer that and take a few more questions.” The chief stepped back next to the mayor.

Shit, Maddie said under her breath. Thanks for the heads up.

Maddie cleared her throat and stepped to the lectern. She felt the heat from the lights on her face. “We don’t know the Beholder is a man,” she began. “We do know that virtually all known serial killers have been white males. That’s fact-based profiling, and neither gender nor racial profiling. My squad has made
male
a working assumption while we remain alert for suggestions to the contrary.”

“What else do you know or are you assuming, Sergeant Richards?” Ms. Duncan called out, bouncing up and down on her toes.

“I have no comments other than those offered by Mayor Jensen and Chief Layton. Look, I know that we—we women that is—are inclined at a time like this to suspect every man who smiles at us. Don’t panic, but remain vigilant. Make an extra effort not to be alone. Carry pepper spray, or mace and a whistle. And put the number on that banner in your speed dial. Should you know anything about this Beholder, please call. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. When we have something solid to report, you’ll know.”

Maddie shook the mayor’s and the chief’s hands while engulfed in the sea of brightness brought by dozens of clicking cameras, then she moved behind the curtain at the back of the podium to wait to see the chief alone. She needed his approval for the tentative deal she had made with KC.

***

Maddie was squinting from a splitting headache when the wheels on her car bumped over the slight rise just inside her garage door to keep out the occasional desert flash rain. Inside the house, she went to her medicine chest and took out an aspirin bottle; empty. Muttering words that would have gotten Bradley’s mouth washed out with soap, she dropped the empty bottle in the waste basket, and went to check her mother’s room. She had no aspirin either.

She would have to endure the headache, at least for now. Her mother and Bradley were already sitting at the kitchen table, centered by a small beef roast. Maddie started the carving by driving an oversized, two-pronged fork deep into the crown. The juices trailed down the side in a pattern not unlike the blood that had streaked down the walls of the victims’ bedrooms. Then the house phone rang.

“Maddie, I saw you on TV, blah, blah, blah.” Another call immediately followed the first. After a third, she turned off the ringer. She would check messages later; official calls would come on her cell.

Dinner ended. Her headache had gotten worse. She pushed the pain out of her mind and helped Bradley clean up the kitchen. That was the standing deal: her mother prepared the meals and Maddie and Bradley cleaned up. At least that was how it worked when the pace of the city’s murders allowed Maddie to be home for dinner. After dinner, the three of them played a game of Candyland. Bradley won.

Maddie took a shower, hoping it would relax her and then went in and sat on the side of her son’s bed for their next reading from the Hardy Boys. After tucking Bradley in for the night, she found her mother on the back patio sipping a cup of tea. It was her nightly ritual and the tea was always chamomile. Maddie poured herself a cup and joined her mother. The chamomile helped, but the headache had strong hands.

An hour later, Maddie went into her room with the intent to go to bed, but first she made one more desperate search for aspirin. A hunt through her bathroom drawers turned up nothing unexpected except for one of her ex-husband’s old toothbrushes. She snapped it in two, walked out to the dented trash can Bradley had put next to the curb after dinner, and threw the broken brush in with enough force to impale it into the wall of the metal can. The night had cooled somewhat, so she decided to walk around the block.

She wondered if it was true, as some believed that all our lives are set down in a big book in heaven to be acted out day by day. If so, that book said in part: Today, Maddie Richards would run out of aspirin and find her ex-husband’s old toothbrush. She thought not. If that were the case then why would God have given us the ability to reason and make choices? And, she refused to believe that her God would ever make any man into the savage she hunted.

The world lacked an antidote for a strict Catholic upbringing, but over the years Maddie had revised much of what she had learned until she had it all boiled down to this: God left the daily stuff to us and judged us by how we dealt with it. She didn’t know if she had it right, but she was okay with it.

As for judging things, except for the short time with Bradley and her mother, today had made Maddie’s top ten list of all-time lousy days. She had fallen in shit, confronted her lifelong best friend, been unprepared for speaking at a press conference, made no progress on finding the fiend she hunted, and brought home a headache.

And how was your day?

Chapter 19

In the hush of the early hours, Maddie’s half-asleep thoughts were drawn back to her poison. She had cared for her ex-husband, but had to take Bradley by the hand and hop off the man’s roller coaster ride to self-destruction.

She imagined Curtis’s hand caressing her hip and down her thigh. Curtis had always stroked her gently when he came back to bed after getting up during the night, and it had always stirred her. Sometimes only for an instant, and other times they made love. She reached over to touch his face, and awakened abruptly when her hand settled on the cool pillow.

The faint sun was already sneaking around the window coverings. She would not get back to sleep and she knew it. She got up with a morning headache she knew was related to the one that had clung to her the night before.

An hour later, on the way to the station, Maddie pulled into the local convenience market and picked up some aspirins and a bottle of water. She shook out four aspirins and swigged enough water to wash them down. She wedged the oversized water bottle into the cup holder built into the dash, and dropped the aspirin bottle into her purse.

She was overdue at organizing the murder books for the Stowe and Knight killings, enough material having already accumulated to make them obese. The existing jacket on the Beholder case would remain the boss file with tentacles reaching into the murder books for each of the victims.

Maddie detested the tedious keeping of the records of an investigation and its accumulating evidence. Just thinking about it made her want to swallow more aspirins. Instead, she pulled into a second convenience market and bought a big Snickers and a Coke.

That ought to cover a couple of food groups, she thought. I’ll jog it off tonight. Okay. I probably won’t. Get off my back.

She had put Amun Grant in charge of making sure there was adequate manpower to handle the surges of calls coming in on the Beholder Hotline, and permanently assigned the worthless Archibald Nigh to first on the phones whenever he was on shift. Doyle Brackett, whose primary assignment was shaking Dr. Knight’s story about not leaving the downtown Marriott, and Sue Martin, when she wasn’t chasing after the outfits worn by the victims, helped with the hotline calls. A few other detectives drew some overtime to assure the hotline was staffed twenty-four-seven. Four lines were dedicated and Maddie was sensing a direct correlation between the number of calls and the increasing tensions felt by the women of Phoenix. To date the calls had been roughly split between frightened women looking for reassurance and groundless leads that went nowhere fast.

The calls were all followed up on which meant a massive expenditure of department resources. They had to be. If they weren’t and a real lead had been ignored, the politics of providing a hotline would reverse against them, against the mayor. And when you trimmed off the fat, politics had been one of the primary reasons for setting up the hotline.

Maddie was talking with Jed, Brackett, and Amun Grant when Sue turned sideways and edged her considerable behind between the two long tables. The tables had been used to section off a portion of the squad room for the Beholder team.

“I’ve identified the outfit Folami Stowe wore that afternoon,” Sue said. “Got it from an old man named Elders who was on Popcorn’s list of Folami’s regulars; Elders is over ninety years old. He paid for two hours with Folami every Thursday afternoon.”

“Go get it, Pops.” Brackett chortled.

“Clean up your mind, Sergeant Brackett,” Sue said sharply. “It wasn’t what you think.”

She went on to explain the old man’s granddaughter had been killed four years before in a drive-by shooting. Elders had met Folami every Thursday afternoon in his attempt to recreate those magical afternoons when he and his granddaughter had met for ice cream and checkers.

Brackett scoffed and dabbed at imaginary tears.

“Well, you can laugh if you want to,” Sue huffed. “But I think he’s sweet. Now here’s the odd part: The old man told me that Folami didn’t charge him last Thursday. She told him she was moving to California so she wanted her last visit to be a going away present, and she promised to write to him. You know what? Folami Stowe might have been a hooker, but that girl had style. Did we know she was going to California?”

“Yes,” Maddie said. “She’d enrolled in a cooking school. Apparently she wanted to become a chef. I agree that girl had style.”