The Christine Murders (6 page)

CHAPTER TEN

SUNDAY - OCTOBER 9
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– EARLY MORNING

A heavy fog spread over the city again shortly before dawn on Sunday. Not at all an unusual occurrence for San Francisco, the fog would with luck burn off again toward noon, leaving another beautiful day in its wake.

At six a.m. however, the fog was colder and damper than Jackie Madden had expected when he drove to Golden Gate Park for his regular morning jog with his dog, Sally. The drive from his parents’ house had been treacherous. Once at the park, he considered the wisdom of running alone in the thick fog. But Sally was with him, and he thrived on his morning run, so he and the dog picked their way to their customary running path and began. If visibility became too bad, Jackie could always shorten the workout.

Jackie let Sally off her leash. The dog was accustomed to running next to him. About ten minutes into the jog, Jackie was surprised to see Sally run straight ahead and then off the path and to the right. Jackie broke pace and stopped, calling to Sally to come back. Through the swirling fog, he could see her start to run toward him. Then, about two feet from where Jackie stood, Sally stopped, barked twice, and turned again in the same direction she had just come from. Jackie called to her once more. He heard a distant bark in reply, but Sally did not return. Jackie, mystified at this odd behavior, started to walk across the grass to find out what she was doing. Again he called, and this time Sally bounded up to him, stopping as she had before to bark excitedly and then turn back to a clump of bushes and whatever had caught her interest.

Jackie continued across the wet grass. No longer running, he began to feel the cold. “What’s up, Sally?” he called out. “What are you doing in there?” Jackie reached the bushes. “Sally? Where are you? Come on, girl, it’s cold out here. Gotta keep moving.” In the distance, he could hear the low, mournful call of a foghorn.

Sally ran out from behind the foliage, barking at him, and although Jackie didn’t relish following her, it looked like he had no choice. “Okay, I’m coming. This had better be good.” He decided that, from now on, it might be best to keep the dog on her leash when they ran, so there would be no more of these silly escapades, even though she had never done anything like this to him before.

He pushed his way through the foliage into a small clearing about three feet wide, a clearing that would be hidden from the path outside even in good weather. It was terribly cold, and Jackie began to shiver.

On the opposite side of the clearing, Sally was sniffing and pawing at a dark bundle huddled on the ground next to the bushes. The dog whined softly, then turned back to bark again. Slowly, Jackie came closer.

At first, he thought it was only a pile of clothing. And then, sheer cold terror gripped him, causing him to shiver almost convulsively when he approached his dog and looked closely at the object she was so intently sniffing. It was a woman, lying crumpled and broken on the cold, wet ground, her face bruised and surrounded by tangles of matted blonde hair. Something was tied tightly, gruesomely around her neck.

“Oh shit!” Jackie grit his teeth together to keep from retching. “Shit, Sally! Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. Gotta get some help. Come on, come with me, now!”

He managed to control his violent shaking long enough to clip Sally’s leash onto her collar, and then he dragged the whining dog away from the clearing and back to the fog-shrouded path, where they raced breathlessly out of the park and back to Jackie’s car and sped recklessly home in the deep morning fog.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Kinsella eased himself carefully through the tangled clump of bushes and damp dirt to the grass, just as a small unmarked van maneuvered along the adjoining sidewalk. Two men got out and rolled a gurney across the grass, while a few joggers stood together on the sidewalk beyond the yellow crime scene tape, talking quietly to one another.

A second man squeezed his large body out through the bushes and joined Kinsella. “How’s the kid who found her? Feeling any better?” Kinsella asked him.

“A little bit, poor guy. Finally stopped crying. His father is with him over there.” Officer Phil Lawrence ran a hand through thick red hair before pulling his jacket around him against the morning cold. “He had a hell of a shock, of course.”

Lawrence looked around them. “The ground is only slightly damp around the area where she was left. We can’t distinguish any clear prints. For one thing, it’s mostly grassy. The kid and his dog both were running around there. There’s a service road that runs a few feet behind that clearing in back. Whoever left her probably drove in there and carried her across the grass on the other side. Doc says too that she’s only been dead about four hours at most.”

“It’s too much like Kelley Grant,” Kinsella said. “Strangled with a blue scarf again. They even look alike. You noticed that, right?”

Lawrence only nodded grimly in reply. Of course he had. Kinsella and he were both thinking the same thing, but not wanting to say it.

Kinsella just wanted to get out of here, away from this desolate cold place, away from those somber, frightened joggers watching him, away from the strangled body of that pretty young woman in the bushes. Ann Heald was her name. Doctor Ann Heald, M.D. There was a key card from the Hyatt Regency in her purse, and a schedule for a medical convention she’d attended here in the city during the past week. How in God’s name had she ended up here?

Most distressing was the resemblance between Ann Heald and Kelley Grant. Murdered four days apart, each killing was similar in method as well.

“I guess this definitely lets the Grant girl’s husband off the hook,” Lawrence said.

“He was never on it,” Kinsella said. “Grant didn’t murder his wife. I knew that right away. How could he have done it?” He looked at Lawrence, as if begging reassurance yet knowing his partner was thinking the same thing he was. “Maybe we’re wrong, Phil. This could be a coincidence.”

Lawrence frowned at him. “And you really believe that, John? All things considered thus far?”

No, of course he didn’t believe that. Every instinct told Kinsella these two murders were no coincidence. Ann Heald and Kelley Grant were linked. What he had to figure out was how, before they found another young woman with a dark blue silk scarf knotted around her neck, before he had to admit that a serial killer was at work in his city.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Christine was packing for her next flight when the telephone rang. She dropped clothing on the bed and went to the kitchen to pick up the call, hoping it wouldn’t be Ted again, although it was not likely he would use that number.

She had finally made the break with him, telling him that she did not want to see him again. He had not been happy. He had argued, begged for another chance, and promised her everything but the world itself, if she would reconsider. It had been maddening, and Christine had found herself wondering all the while what she had ever seen in this guy. Good looking, yes. Wealthy, yes. But a wimp when one came down to it. What had she ever been thinking?

When she had gotten home last evening, tired and worn out from arguing all afternoon, there had been flowers and candy waiting for her, followed by more calls last night that she had allowed her voicemail to pick up before she deleted them.

“Hello?” She answered this call hesitantly, thinking it very well might be Ted trying the other number, and too weary to argue further with him.

“Christine? Is that you?”

“Yes, this is Christine. Who is this?”

“It’s Luther, dear.”

Luther . . . who the hell was Luther? Calling her “dear”? “I’m sorry, but Luther who?”

“Luther Ross-Wilkerson. Have you forgotten me already? You phoned me back Friday. I tried to reach you yesterday, but you weren’t home. Somebody else answered your phone, said you were out.”

Ted, obviously, while she was shopping. Funny, he hadn’t said anything about a call he’d picked up. “Oh, Mr. Wilkerson! Of course, all right. Yes, now I remember. You left a message for me at the airport. I can’t place you, although your name is familiar. How do you know me?”

He laughed softly. “Have you forgotten Flight 1005 from London so quickly, Christine? The turbulence and the spilled coffee?”

Oh dear heavens, of course. The man with the weird blue eyes, the man who kept staring at her. But why in the world was he calling her? What did he want? Did he mean to make trouble for her now over the accident with the coffee pot and his stained clothing?

“Ah, okay, yes Mr. Wilkerson, of course I remember. I’ve just had a bit of a messed up weekend and I’m a little jumbled today.”

“I understand. My weekend has not been going very well either thus far. Anyway, please call me Luther.”

“If there is some problem over the clothing, I can’t help you, but the airline will reimburse you. I explained that to you. I logged the incident, and you can file a claim.”

“No, Christine, this is a personal call. Forget the clothing, no problem with that. I wanted to see you again. And I was hoping we might get together. Perhaps this week? Would that be convenient for you?”

Wonderful. Just what she wanted. Get rid of high maintenance Ted and then pick up another to take his place. “Actually, Luther, I’m packing right now and leaving tomorrow on another trip,” she told him.

“Where to this time?”

“Back to London again, and then Paris and Munich and on, an around-the-world trip we call it. I’ll be gone ten days. I work that fairly regularly. But thank you for thinking of me, and asking me.” Maybe he would hear the unspoken tone of her voice that was telling him she wasn’t interested in seeing him again. Or ever. This guy was definitely not anyone she wanted to get to know. There had been something about him . . .

“No need to thank me, Christine. I’ll just call you again, okay?, when you get back home.”

He certainly was a nervy one. “No, please don’t call me again. I really don’t think we should see each other. I’m not dating anyone right now and don’t want to. I really am not interested in seeing anybody right now.”

He was so silent then that Christine wondered if he’d hung up on her. But no. “Don’t do this to me again, please!”

Now what was he talking about? “What? Do what again? I don’t know what you are talking about, Mr. Wilkerson. And really, I am busy now and I am going to hang up, okay? It was nice of you to think of me, but I don’t want to see you again or go out with you. Please accept what I’m saying.”

She heard him taking a deep breath, letting it out again before he spoke once more. “All right, just think about it, okay? I’m sorry. Have a pleasant trip.” And he disconnected the call.

Christine went back to her packing, feeling very cranky and upset, first over Ted and now over Luther. She locked her flight bag, and set it on the floor near her bedroom door. Thank God she had a job that allowed her to escape, to get away from her problems here, even for a short time. Distance always helped her to look at things that were troubling her from a different perspective. And she had plenty to think about this time.

Who was this Luther and what in the world was he talking about? Had he confused her with someone else he knew? Or was he unbalanced? He was strange, scary. She definitely did not want anything to do with him.

Maybe with luck, after a few days, both he and Ted would put her out of mind. She didn’t want or need to hear from either one of them again.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MONDAY MORNING – OCTOBER 10
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By Monday morning John Kinsella had one lead: a receipt in Ann Heald’s purse had given him the name of a cab company and driver who had picked her up at the Hyatt Regency on Saturday night. The man remembered Ann; she had chatted with him about Portland as he drove her to the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

Ann Heald’s blood alcohol level had been very high. She’d had a lot to drink somewhere that last night, and it didn’t take Kinsella and Lawrence long to trace her steps to the Top of the Mark. Once there, they were fortunate to find the waitress, Lenore, who had served Ann’s table.

She studied a picture Kinsella showed her. “Oh yes, I remember her. A very nice woman. She said she was from Portland. Oh God, she was murdered?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Was she alone, Lenore?”

“Well, yes, she came in alone and just nursed along a glass of wine. But she didn’t stay alone. There was this man who was also by himself. He had come in a little while before this lady. He was sitting near her, and I don’t quite know how it happened, but next thing I knew he was sitting with her. Maybe they knew each other.”

“Did it look like he had been waiting for her?”

“No, I don’t think so, because as I said he was already up here. I’d served him earlier. And she was alone long enough to order her wine and almost finish it before he joined her. And he was close enough to see her when she first got here if he had been waiting for her to come.”

Lenore continued. “I passed by her table a few times, to see if she needed anything else. She was a slow drinker, just taking her time with the wine and eating the crackers and nuts, and listening to the piano. The man was alone at his table. Then we got very busy, but I noticed suddenly on my rounds that he had moved to this lady’s table. He called me over and ordered more drinks for both of them.”