The Christine Murders (25 page)

Phil spoke to her first. “What is a coincidence, Mrs. Lao?”

When she answered her voice was little more than a whisper. “The composite, your killer – he looks so much like Mr. Ross-Wilkerson. So much. The description of his eyes, too. Mr. Ross-Wilkerson has such unusual eyes.” Horror filled her face now as she looked at the two men. “Oh, but you can’t really think it is Mr. Ross-Wilkerson? The idea is absurd. That is why I thought it might be good to bring you here, so we could all see that there is no connection. That there is nothing to hide here, and nothing to implicate him. So we could all feel at ease about him. I need to know that as much as you do.”

“We don’t know anything definite, Mrs. Lao, but we really would like to talk to him,” Kinsella said. “As you say, this may all be coincidental. Do you know where he is?”

“No, I don’t know where he is, honestly I don’t. He merely told me he was going away and that he would be inaccessible. And his cell doesn’t answer at all. I can’t reach him. I’ve sent e-mails, but he has not answered them either. It’s all very odd, because he didn’t have me make any travel arrangements, which I always do for him. But then he’s been acting very strangely the past few weeks.”

“In what ways strange?”

“Well, odd. Nervous, troubled, preoccupied. I thought maybe he was sick. One day I found him in here and thought he was having a heart attack, he was in such a terrible state. And he’s really been ignoring the business. Ever since that last trip he took to London, he’s not been himself. It’s as if he’s been carrying something heavy on his mind.”

She moved to a chair and sat down. “Of course, he is strange in many ways. He has few if any friends that I know of, and no family here either,” she continued. “But he’s always been a very good man to work for, extremely fair and generous with all of us. People stay here. We have practically no turnover in our business. I don’t see how Mr. Ross-Wilkerson could harm anyone.”

“What do you know about his personal life?” Kinsella asked her.

She shrugged. “Very little, other than that his family in England is quite prominent and wealthy. His father sent him here to establish an American outlet of the family business, and it became very successful and profitable. Mr. Ross-Wilkerson operates independently now. He still travels to London occasionally, but I know he is not close to his family. He is very proud of the fact that he can show his father up as far as his success here goes. He told me once his father just wanted to get rid of him and yet look what he was able to accomplish here on his own. He’s a very lonely man, I think, who just lives for his work. But I suppose that is the way he wants it to be. A man with his money and charm could change that very quickly, I should think, if he wanted to do so.”

“What about any women?”

She looked shocked. “Women? Oh no, never. I, well, all of us here assume that Mr. Ross-Wilkerson is gay. Not that we’ve ever seen him with any men, either, but . . . he just doesn’t behave like a straight man, if you know what I mean. And he doesn’t seem to approve of most women, their behavior, that is, immoral ones, I mean.” She seemed embarrassed, clearly not comfortable with the track the conversation had taken.

Kinsella watched her a minute. “What do you mean by immoral women, Mrs. Lao?”

She stared at them, her eyes moving from one to the other. “Well, he is wonderful with all the women who work here, with me, especially. But he has this thing about women he says act like . . . like sluts. He says that some of them can’t be trusted, that they cheat on men and destroy them. Believe me, it’s not a subject we discuss much but once he was very upset and I talked to him to explain that is not the norm. He is very adamant about the women he employs being ladylike all the time, good manners, somewhat deferential. And so we are.

“I’ll tell you I feel sorry for him sometimes. On holidays, I’ve often asked him to come to dinner with my family. And he’s always very grateful, but he never did join us. There are lavish presents sent for the children and a big bonus for me, however. Always.” Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I don’t see how he ever could be the man who murdered those women. How could he? Unless he has been leading some type of dreadful secret life. But that composite . . . I just don’t know anymore.”

Secret life indeed. A man who didn’t care that much for women and called most of them sluts who destroyed men. Like Alyson, perhaps, a woman he felt had destroyed him? A woman who did no such thing and only felt she had to make up a story to get away from a strange and abusive relationship, a story that probably cost her her life.

At least now Kinsella had two women who had seen Luther Ross-Wilkerson in the composite. One saw him as a cold-blooded maniac and the other knew him as a kind and generous employer. And charming. If Ross-Wilkerson was indeed the man they were looking for, he no doubt used that charm lavishly to lure women like Kelley Grant and Doctor Heald, even poor Susan Sayles. Especially Susan. Only Christine so far had been impervious to it.

He wondered if he could possibly persuade someone to authorize a search warrant of Ross-Wilkerson’s penthouse. He didn’t have much yet, other than Christine’s scarf, but maybe just the little they did have would be enough to give him probable cause for a warrant. These were desperate times and it was worth trying.

And then Shirley Lao surprised him yet again. “I have authorization to enter Mr. Ross-Wilkerson’s apartment in the event of an emergency. I believe this is such, don’t you? For all we know, he may be there, needing our help. So I will take you both there, if only to prove all three of us wrong in our suppositions, and ease my mind especially. Will that be all right?” The poor woman, Kinsella realized, was trying very hard to convince herself of Ross-Wilkerson’s innocence yet knowing in her heart what the truth was.

***

And so on Sunday afternoon, Kinsella and Lawrence found themselves inside Luther Ross-Wilkerson’s penthouse, while Shirley Lao waited in the lobby of the building with an officer and her husband, whom she had asked to come to the city to stay with her. Kinsella could not believe his luck in getting access to the place.

The penthouse condominium offered a spectacular view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge on this clear, sunny day. Expensively yet starkly furnished, the place displayed no personal touches at all. It had the look and feel of a model home, staged, but not a place where someone actually lived.

“You wouldn’t exactly call this your typical bachelor’s apartment, would you?” Lawrence said, walking around and looking out at the view.

“Not if you want to compare it with mine, you wouldn’t,” Kinsella said, running his hand over an immaculately clean granite kitchen counter top. Damn few meals had ever been prepared in there.

“I wonder what he does with all this space? No family, no friends. The place looks like an expensive tomb, with a terrific view.” Lawrence shook his head and started down a hallway toward the bedrooms.

Kinsella walked over to a desk near the sliding glass doors in the living room. At first he came across several different styles of monogrammed stationery, an odd thing for a man with no friends. He also found a handsome leather bound address book, containing very little beside commercial and business numbers. He flipped to the “L” section of the book.

There, neatly written out, were Christine’s home address and telephone number, as well as a number for International World Airlines’ Flight Services Department. And on a separate piece of paper clipped into the book was a series of dates, destinations, and a column titled “
San Francisco return
” next to them. Listed were the last two weeks of October and the entire month of November.

Kinsella scanned the sheet carefully. This had to be Christine’s flight schedule. She had said that Ross-Wilkerson knew exactly when she was coming home from her last flight, and sure enough, here it was. But how in hell had he gotten hold of such information? The airline would never release this to a stranger, and it was not available on line either, or if it was, it would certainly be password protected. So how did he get it? Was he a hacker?

Kinsella folded the sheet back into the book. He was about to shut the desk drawer when his eye caught a large manila envelope shoved all the way to the back.

He pulled it out, dumping its contents on the desk top. Neatly clipped together were news photos of each of the three murdered women, with small handwritten notes of apology to them, signed by Luther. The photos had large black “X” marks written across their faces.

Under the photos was a larger parcel, wrapped in a piece of chamois.

Kinsella unwrapped it, finding inside a photograph of a beautiful young woman he recognized immediately. There was an inscription across the picture, but Kinsella didn’t have to read it to know it was Alyson Merlott. “
With all my love, yours forever, Alyson”

So Antoinette Bauer’s hunch had been correct too. Luther had been Alyson’s mysterious boyfriend, and no doubt her killer as well.

Antoinette – Christine – Shirley Lao. It looked like all of these women were right. With a sharp pang, he thought of Christine. He hadn’t been sure what to think about her accusations. He wanted to believe her, especially about the man with the jeans outside her apartment yesterday, but he just wasn’t sure. Yet the scarf she’d received had unnerved him terribly.

He looked at the picture of Alyson. Christine’s resemblance to her was frightening. So was that the answer? Had Luther seen Christine and felt he’d rediscovered Alyson? Was that why he was after her? If so, the other three women were most likely just substitutes for the woman he really wanted. Insane, of course, but they were dealing with insanity here.

Finally he did have something that made sense, something that directly tied Luther Ross-Wilkerson to the killings. But where the hell was he hiding?

Phil returned. “Find anything, John? Because I’ve got a set of car keys here and his passport. So he couldn’t have gone too far. Plus another blue silk scarf, just like the others.” He came toward the desk and looked at the items Kinsella had found. “Keeping his own gallery to remember them by, and with apologies too?” He nodded toward the picture of Alyson. “And who is that? The Merlott girl, isn’t it? The one Mrs. Bauer told you about?”

Kinsella nodded. “It is indeed.”

“So she was right. And I’d say your stewardess friend is right also.”

Kinsella looked at the keys Phil dropped on the desk. They belonged to Luther’s BMW.

“Now take a look at this,” Kinsella told him, giving him the address book and flight schedule sheet. “This is Christine’s flight schedule. I have no idea where he got this information.

“Phil, call and get a crew out here. I want this place sealed. Then let’s see if we can find the car downstairs. And I need to reach Christine and also get somebody over to her place to watch her. She’s flying tonight but she’ll be coming back there before she leaves. Mr. & Mrs. Lao can go home also, for now.” There was no longer any doubt that Christine was in serious danger. The airline would have to be notified as well. He had no idea what else Ross-Wilkerson was planning to do with the flight schedules he’d copied.

Kinsella was filled with a horrible sick sense of remorse over the way he’d rushed from Christine’s apartment this morning. Had he really reassured her, had he made too light of her fears?

He cursed himself for not putting protection on her earlier. Please God it wasn’t too late to do so now.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

As Kinsella and Lawrence were arriving at his apartment across town, Luther – clean shaven and neatly dressed in tan slacks and a dark blue jacket – was leaving his hideout in the Tenderloin and heading for Sutter Court, where he easily let himself into the building complex with his stolen keys and took an elevator undisturbed to Christine’s floor. There wasn’t a soul about.

He had really thrown caution to the winds today marching into Sutter Court as freely as he had. But it wasn’t until he was outside the door of apartment 608 that he hesitated. Why hadn’t he phoned first to see if anyone was here? Suppose Christine was home, and worse yet, what if somebody was with her? Belatedly, Luther agonized over what he was doing. If he caught her alone, all could go as he planned. But if she was with someone else, then what?

He struggled with waning courage. Look how far he’d come. Was he going to abandon everything now out of fear? Certainly his luck would hold out now at the most crucial part of the game.

He knocked sharply on the door. If anyone answered, he could still dash back to the elevator or stairs in plenty of time to get away. He knocked a second time. There was no answer. Reassured that the apartment was empty, he unlocked the door and stepped inside.

The living room was bright with sunlight, and the ginger cat sat in the window seat. When Luther walked into the room, the cat darted off the seat and ran along the hallway toward the bedroom. That was good. He didn’t care to have the cat staring at him while he waited. The creature made him nervous. He went to the windows and closed all the drapes, darkening the room.

He looked at his watch. It was nearly two-thirty. Suddenly, he wondered if Christine had already left for her evening flight. He went into the bedroom and opened her closet. A neat, fresh uniform hung waiting, with a small flight bag on the floor underneath it. Good again. She would have to return home soon to get ready. He couldn’t wait to see the expression on her face when she discovered him waiting for her.