The Christine Murders (13 page)

“All right, Mrs. Bauer,” Kinsella answered. He sounded tired. Antoinette could imagine what his days were like since the killings had started. “I’ll be here this morning. Just come to the reception area downstairs and somebody will bring you to my office. But are you sure you can’t tell me what it is you know over the phone, and save yourself a trip?”

“No, Lieutenant, I have to show you some things. I’ll be there as soon as I can; I don’t mind coming in to see you.”

“Very well, Mrs. Bauer. I’ll expect you.”

Antoinette ended the call and went into her bedroom to pick up her handbag and keys and the envelope she’d pulled out yesterday, the one she’d kept with the newspaper clipping about Alyson’s death. There was also a picture she’d once taken of Alyson. All these years the envelope had been stored in the back of a photo album in her closet.

She stuffed the envelope into her bag and left the house. Getting into her car, she decided that maybe this was the very least she could still do for Alyson, after all these years.

***

Kinsella hung up the phone. He did not take Antoinette Bauer’s call too seriously. Since releasing the composite, he had been deluged with callers offering information. They all had stacks of leads to follow up on now. Lawrence had been up most of the previous night checking out some of them, all leading nowhere. Everybody knew somebody who resembled their suspect. At least a dozen callers had claimed to be the killer himself; one of them wanted an exclusive story in
People Magazine
. Hundreds of calls had been logged by Tuesday morning. And now there was Mrs. Bauer of San Bruno to add to them, coming in to see him in person.

Kinsella’s staff had put the tips in order of priority. It was impossible to tell yet what might be good and what was only hearsay or a deliberate crank call. So far, nothing he himself had checked out had yielded anything useful. He had also spent a good part of the day with Phil and three other officers, combing hotels, bars, and lounges in the city, hoping that someone might recognize the face in his composite.

Nobody could offer any help. John Kinsella felt, as he had since this nightmare had begun, that he was only spinning his wheels, with each tip or clue going up in smoke and leaving him as far away from the killer as when he’d started.

And the fear that lodged so tightly in the back of his mind was that without warning, they would be confronted by yet another body, another innocent young woman found with a dark blue silk scarf knotted around her throat.

He got up from his desk and stretched his tall, well-muscled body. He felt stiff. He hadn’t had a proper workout in days and he was beginning to feel the effects. He ran his hands across his stomach, still flat and taut. Luckily, he was in excellent condition for his forty-six years.

He wondered if Mrs. Bauer would even show up. He looked out the window, his eyes scanning the overbuilt city skyline. Somewhere out there, probably looking as normal as anyone else, was a killer. Serial killers usually led outwardly normal lives, seemingly well-adjusted, active, often charming individuals. This killer, by all indications so far, fit a very upscale pattern, able easily to move about at ease in the most acceptable surroundings.

So where did he begin to look for him, on Nob Hill and in the mansions of Pacific Heights? Or did he hide out somewhere in the teaming squalor of the Tenderloin? Who was he, and which world did he really belong to?

And when and where would he strike next?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kinsella studied the pretty brown-haired woman who had entered his office. Antoinette Bauer was slender and petite, her hair attractively arranged into soft curls framing her face. She looked nervous, however, unsure of herself. Kinsella got up and pulled out a chair opposite his desk. At least she had come as promised.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Bauer,” he said.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Kinsella. I’m so glad you had time to see me.” She sat on the edge of the seat, clutching her handbag tightly with both hands.

Kinsella smiled at her. “Relax, please, Mrs. Bauer. You’ve nothing to be nervous about here. Just tell me what it is that brought you in this morning. But first, can I get you anything? Some coffee maybe?”

Antoinette shook her head. “No, thank you, I’m fine. I’ll be all right, now that I’m here. I was trying to make up my mind if I was doing the right thing, calling you. But here I am.”

“Tell me about it, won’t you?” Kinsella sat back comfortably in his chair. As if following his lead, Mrs. Bauer placed her bag on the floor and slid back into her seat. She gazed intently at him as she began.

“I’ve been reading about the killings, and watching the news, just like everyone else,” she said. “After the second woman was found, and after I had seen her picture, something started to bother me, but I couldn’t quite understand what it was. Then that last poor girl was found over the weekend and I saw her picture, too, and suddenly what was nagging at my brain made sense. The pictures, what these women looked like. I started to wonder if there might be a connection to a murder that happened years ago.

“Last night I saw you on the news with the picture of your suspect. There was something then about the way he was described. You mentioned classy and well-dressed. That made me even more suspicious.”

Kinsella nodded his head slowly, wondering where all this was going. “Okay, go on, Mrs. Bauer. Tell me about the murder years ago.”

“Before I married, right after I graduated from college, I came to live here in the city. I was an art major, and I wanted to live in San Francisco, so I got a job over here as a receptionist in an art gallery on Sutter Street.

“My parents weren’t too pleased. I come from a close-knit Italian family, and even ninety miles was a long way from home for a young daughter just out of college.” She stopped and laughed softly. “They came here with me, however, and helped me find a nice little apartment, checked out the art gallery and my new boss – a sweet man – and then gave me their blessing.” She smiled at him, her dimples making her pretty face even more attractive.

“There was another girl working in the gallery. A tall, very beautiful blonde girl named Alyson Merlott. She was a few years older than I was, and I saw her as just so gorgeous and sophisticated. She knew so much about art and everything connected with that world. She loved it, and it showed. She had gone to school part-time at the Academy of Fine Arts, but she couldn’t continue because she didn’t have much money. She did various jobs around the gallery, because she knew so much and was so well-informed about the artists we showed there.

“Some people felt Alyson was a bit snobby, but I didn’t. She became my friend right away. She took me under her wing, really, and we became good friends. Or I should say, as good a friend as Alyson would allow. She was beautiful and elegant, but not stuck up. She was just very lonely, really. She’d come out here from Illinois when she was around nineteen or maybe younger, after both her parents and her brother had died in a fire. It was very sad; she told me the whole story. She just wanted to get away. And she didn’t have any other family.

“We had so much fun together, at first. We’d go to the museum, and showings at other galleries, and jewelry shopping. Well, we couldn’t afford to buy any but we’d go look at these fantastic pieces, and dream.” She stopped, looking into the past, frowning slightly. “And then, one day Alyson met a man at the de Young Museum. She was always going there, many times by herself when I was working. She went over one day to check out a new exhibit that I wasn’t particularly interested in. And the next day, she told me that she had met the most wonderful, fascinating man.”

“Did you room with Alyson?” Kinsella asked her.

“No, I didn’t. I had my little place, and Alyson lived over in the Richmond district, in an apartment in a house there. She was extremely private about herself. I respected that. I don’t think she really had any other friends, except for me. At least I never saw or heard of any.”

She continued her story. “Well, Alyson told me about this man she’d met, and I assumed I’d meet him sooner or later. But that never happened. She preferred to keep him all to herself, for some reason. Sometimes he’d phone her at the gallery and she’d dash off to meet him for lunch. He also had a boat, which I think he kept in Sausalito, and they would go out together on that.”

Kinsella sat forward. “A boat? Do you know what kind exactly? A name, or anything about it?” If this was the man they were looking for, a boat could be a place he had taken his victims to kill them.

But Antoinette Bauer shook her head. “No, I wish I did. But she never told me. She was with this man so much, seeing all the best shows, going to opera and ballet. She loved ballet. She and I didn’t get to spend as much time together anymore, which hurt me. I looked up to her, you see. She was so sophisticated to a little Italian girl from Sacramento.” Antoinette laughed softly.

“Very soon she started showing up with all sorts of expensive gifts. She told us this boyfriend was wealthy and could buy her anything she wanted. Somebody at the gallery suggested there wasn’t really any boyfriend at all, since nobody ever saw him. They thought she was buying all these things herself just to show off. But I can tell you there was no way she could have afforded the things she had. Furs, jewelry, all of it expensive. Alyson didn’t have money for those things; she didn’t have much of her own at all.”

“Nobody ever met him? That was odd, don’t you think so?” Kinsella asked.

“Nobody. And yes, that was very odd. She wouldn’t tell anybody his name either. He didn’t want her too, she explained. Of course I thought he was married, and if he was that wealthy - which was obvious – he probably was known in the city, and wouldn’t want his affair to get around. So he had to keep everything a secret with Alyson.”

Kinsella nodded. “Yes, that’s a possibility. Swore her to secrecy, so nobody would know what he was up to. But strange. Please go on. What happened next?”

“Alyson started to change. All of a sudden she was depressed. Then she started showing up with bruises. I asked her what was wrong and she told me he had started acting really crazy. Talking to himself, doing odd things, and hurting her badly when they had sex, even raping her sometimes. Well, I was horrified at that. Being the good Catholic girl I was then.” She blushed and shook her head. “He would tell her voices were talking to him.

“I told Alyson to get rid of him, that it was terrible to allow any man to hurt her that way. She told me she didn’t know what she could do, because he’d become very possessive. He told her she belonged to him. She didn’t love him anymore and now was afraid of him. So I suggested she tell him that she’d met someone new and had fallen in love with this new man. We both thought it might scare him away, if he thought Alyson had another boyfriend, somebody who might come after him.”

She stopped, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She reached down and pulled a tissue from her bag and dabbed at them. Kinsella watched her intently, waiting for her to go on. “I really think that was the worst thing we could have done, and it had been my idea, my fault, and I think it was what got her killed.

“You see, not long after she said she told him she had another man in her life, she just disappeared. She never showed up for work, and she didn’t answer her phone. I went to her apartment during lunch to look for her. Her landlady was worried too. She hadn’t seen Alyson in a few days, and her rent was due. I talked the landlady into letting me inside. We both checked out the apartment and it was very neat and clean and tasteful, just what you would imagine for Alyson. Everything seemed in place, but the bedspread was gone from the bed and the sheet below. It looked like somebody had pulled the bed apart very quickly. I was so worried. This was not like her, and the landlady said she would call the police. It was not like Alyson to be irresponsible.

“But it was the very next day that we heard a body had washed up several miles down the coast.” Antoinette reached into her bag again and pulled out the large envelope. She took out a news clipping and put it on the desk in front of Kinsella. “The body was badly battered, as you can imagine, but identifiable, although only barely.” She stopped, clearly very upset now. “I haven’t looked at these things in so many years, Lieutenant Kinsella. All these terrible memories are so hard now.”

“Take your time, Mrs. Bauer.”

She nodded, trying to compose herself. “Well, because we’d reported Alyson missing, and with the description we’d given, the police called us at the gallery. Mr. Hudson, the owner, my boss, and I both feared this might be Alyson, when we heard someone had found a young blonde woman. He and I had to go and see if we could identify her.” She closed her eyes and put a hand to her face, seeing the past she was describing playing out once more in her mind.

“And you did, and it was Alyson?” Kinsella asked her gently.

She nodded. “Oh yes, it was Alyson. She was . . . her body was, well, we could identify her, her beautiful face. Yes, it was our Alyson.” She fumbled for more clippings and placed them all on the desk next to the first one. Kinsella glanced down at the assorted news stories while he waited for Antoinette Bauer to finish. She took out one more item before she continued with her story.

“Alyson was dead when she was put in the water. They knew that. She didn’t drown. She’d been strangled, and they said a blue scarf was knotted around her neck. She used to wear a blue silk scarf her guy had given her. Blue was her favorite color. And look at this, please.” She handed him the photo she held. “This is Alyson Merlott. Look at her. I took this picture myself one day when we were out together. She looks like these new victims, doesn’t she?”