The Devil's Menagerie (12 page)

The words shocked her. She stared at Cochrane as if realizing for the first time what he was implying. “You think he’s a true serial killer? But … eight years …”

“He’s kept it bottled up for all that time, if it’s the same man. Now it’s out of the bottle. Do you honestly think he can stop now?”

Special Agent Younger stared at him helplessly. She was paler than when she had cheerfully entered Cochrane’s office less than thirty minutes ago. Her face was drawn. No flawless skin ad now, Cochrane thought dispassionately.

“If it’s him … no,” she said. “He won’t stop.”

“I’m not asking you to catch him yourself—this isn’t a novel or a movie. Your job will be to assist the police in every way you can. You can assess the crime scene, make suggestions, offer immediate access to our laboratory facilities, even do a personality profile of the killer.”

“Who has the case—the San Carlos police?”

“The county sheriff’s department is involved—we have a VICAP liaison there—but the principal investigator in charge of the case is a San Carlos detective, formerly with the LAPD. I see it as a multijurisdictional, cooperative investigation.”

“What are you not telling me?” The question confirmed Buddy Cochrane’s estimate of Agent Younger’s acuity.

“I think you’ll understand when you read the background material I’ve had put together.”

Younger appeared puzzled. She stared at the thick manila envelope Cochrane added to the original case file she had read, but she didn’t press him.

“You can read the rest of the material on the plane. I’ve booked you to Los Angeles on an afternoon flight out of Dulles. You just about have time to pack.” The white-haired man rose, extending his hand. He wasn’t going to give her a chance to say no. “Good luck, Agent Younger.”

He did not add the words that immediately sprang to his mind:
You’re going to need it
.

E
DITH
F
OSTER’S MEMORIAL
service was held at noon on Tuesday in the campus chapel. She was not present. The body of the deceased, not yet released by the coroner, would be flown to her home in Minneapolis for a more formal funeral ceremony.

Detective Braden did not expect the girl’s murderer to show up for the service, although conventional wisdom said he might. Nevertheless, he had two detectives in an unmarked Chevrolet parked with a view of anyone attending the service, one of them armed with a video camera—today’s weapon of choice.

Most of those who came were college students, a preponderance of young women, along with a sprinkling of adults Braden assumed were teachers and other officials from the college community. He recognized the plump, motherly den mother he had met at Foster’s dormitory, and her roommate, Sheri Kuttner, who had identified the victim’s photograph Sunday night and confirmed the identification Monday morning at the county morgue. On both occasions she had been too disturbed to be questioned at length.

Braden sat through the service, moved by the emotional recollections of the dead girl’s friends, made more poignant by the dreadful circumstances of her death.

Braden caught up with Edith Foster’s roommate outside the chapel. She swung around sharply at his touch. As she recognized Braden she dabbed at swollen eyes with a tissue.

“Feel like talking now, Sheri?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“Would you like a Coke or a cup of coffee or something?”

She shook her head. Youthful grief allowed no room for such mundane pleasures. Braden had grown up in a family where Irish wakes were occasions for boisterous gatherings of family and friends in the home, with enough food and hard liquor to sink a battleship, as his mother used to say.

Perversely, the sun broke through the clouds as the mourners straggled away from the chapel and fanned out across the campus. Braden walked in silence beside Sheri Kuttner until they came to an empty bench beneath shade trees. “This good enough?” he asked.

“I’m sorry to be such a baby, Detective.”

“Don’t apologize. Crying isn’t childish. Sometimes it’s necessary.”

She glanced up at him, brown eyes curious under thick, damp lashes. For her friend’s memorial service Sheri Kuttner had worn a short pleated blue skirt, mauve knee stockings, a gray cotton turtleneck and a vest that appeared to be made of multicolored ribbons. The outfit was a celebration of color, not darkness, and he guessed that Sheri knew Edie Foster would have preferred it that way. It made Braden wonder about the cost of tuition at San Carlos College. Had Edie been in the habit of carrying around large amounts of money? Wearing conspicuous jewelry?

“Nice vest,” he said.

“Thanks. Uh … I made it myself.”

“You did? How’d you learn to do that?”

“I took a class … no, not here at college. A sewing class.”

Braden smiled. “I would’ve thought you had enough classes without going outside school.”

“I like sewing.” Sheri looked away. “I was making one like this for Edie. She really liked this one.” The tears flowed again. The tissue was a crumpled wet ball. Braden fumbled in his pockets for a clean tissue and came up empty.

“You weren’t just roommates. You were close friends.”

Sheri nodded again. The words were lost somewhere inside.

“You know we want to find out who did that to her. Anything you can tell us that would help …”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Friday night, just before she went out. That was about eight o’clock.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?”

They exchanged glances, the shared knowledge of Edith Foster lying cold and naked under a bridge. Sheri described a white T-shirt with a cat’s face and a denim miniskirt Edie liked because it showed off her legs. “She had great legs,” Sheri said wistfully.

“Was she wearing any jewelry?”

“She didn’t wear much jewelry. I think her friend was giving her things, but she just put them away. I mean, she wasn’t wearing anything special that night.”

“Did she carry much money with her?”

Sheri laughed briefly. “Her folks sent her money but she always spent it, mostly on clothes she liked. You know, even if it was jeans, Edie wanted designer stuff.”

“You said you thought she had a date—that she was going to meet someone.”

“Well, you know, I think she would’ve asked me if she wasn’t meeting someone. She didn’t like to go anywhere alone.”

“Do you know who she was seeing?”

“No. She wouldn’t say.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Well … sometimes. She was popular, she liked going out a lot. Sometimes a bunch of us would go out together, or we’d go shopping, Edie and me. She was someone guys wanted to be with.”

Sheri Kuttner broke off as a group of students passed by along the walkway, glancing at them curiously. Braden wondered if any of them recognized the Corkscrew Cop. Sheri Kuttner hadn’t said anything to indicate she did.

“They’re wondering who you are,” Sheri said. “I don’t think any of them would know you were the one on TV.”

Braden looked at her quickly. “You recognized me?”

“Uh, no, that is, one of the security officers said that’s who you were. While I was waiting for you Sunday.”

“I see.”

They sat in silence, Braden wondering if his brief moment of fame was always going to get in the way of his doing the job. Oddly, Sheri Kuttner didn’t seem to be bothered.

“Edie liked older men,” Sheri said, as if the comment were a logical extension of the conversation. “She thought most of the guys in school were, you know, sort of immature.”

“I can imagine.”

“She was … sophisticated for her age … and smart, too. Sometimes older men turned her on.”

Braden gathered between the lines that Sheri Kuttner tried hard but didn’t think she was very smart or sophisticated or popular or beautiful, not the way Edith Foster was. Another thread in the girl’s voice had become sharper and more distinct as she talked. She hadn’t approved of some of Edie’s older friends.

“These older men … were some of them married? Like professors, maybe?”

Sheri pursed her lips.

“Was there a particular one she was seeing lately? Someone you know about?”

“I … I’m not sure. The younger guys, she would usually say where she was going and who with, but lately, I mean since this fall semester started, she was meeting someone she didn’t want to talk about.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Well, this is only our fourth week of classes, so it’s about a month. We register a week early.”

“And she never mentioned a name, or a particular class, or anything?”

“Uh-uh.” Sheri Kuttner seemed about to add something else but changed her mind. Her lips compressed again. She harbored resentment along with her genuine grief, Braden thought.

“Where would she have gone on her dates? Besides this coffee shop, The Pelican?”

“Movies, she loved movies. Some other coffeehouses, you know, where everyone hangs out. She liked to dance, but …”

“What?” Braden prompted.

“I don’t think she wanted to be seen too much with this guy in public. Or he didn’t want them to be seen together.”

“Wouldn’t they be seen together if they went to a coffeehouse?”

“Yes, but … you can get away with meeting someone there. Not like at a dance or a concert or anything like that. It could be, you know, like casual. Like you didn’t come together.”

Braden was silent a moment, long enough for the girl to become conscious of the weight of that silence. “You think she was seeing a married man, don’t you, Sheri?”

“You can’t make me say that! I didn’t say that!”

“I know, but it’s what you think. It’s what we both think. That’s why she was being secretive. Do you think it was one of her teachers?”

“I … I don’t know.”

She wasn’t really very good at lying, Braden thought.

“I wonder if you could do something for me,” he said. “I’d like a list of Edie’s teachers and friends, anyone you can think of that she knew. Don’t make a big thing about it. I don’t want to point fingers at innocent people, and if the man we’re looking for actually is on such a list, I wouldn’t want him to know we were looking at him, you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Can you do that for me?”

Sheri Kuttner nodded unhappily.

“And any clubs or special groups or activities she was involved in, on or off campus. Like a health club, anything like that.”

“Do you really think it was … someone from here?” In spite of her own obvious suspicions, the young coed seemed aghast.

“I don’t think anything yet. I just have to cover all the possibilities. You’ll get me that list? And if you think of anything else, call me.” Braden had replenished his supply of business cards, and he gave her a fresh one bearing the San Carlos PD shield logo along with his name and telephone number.

Sheri Kuttner stared at the card. When she looked up her eyes were troubled. “It could’ve been someone from town, someone really gross that would make her parents go ballistic if they knew. Not someone from the college. You know a lot of parents send their daughters here so they’ll meet some nice guy from a good family with prospects. That’s the word my mother uses—prospects.”

The sun, which had warmed the bench where they sat, went behind a cloud and the afternoon turned suddenly chilly. Sheri Kuttner shivered. She hugged her thin chest with both arms.

“Well, Edie met someone,” Braden said, “not so nice.”

T
HE
U
NITED
A
IRLINES
flight from Washington to Los Angeles was unusually turbulent. Seasonal storms scoured the central plains. The pilot tried to take the Boeing 747 above the weather but the ride remained bumpy. Flight attendants cautioned passengers to remain in their seats and fasten their seat belts. Although the in-flight meal was delayed, the attendants did a brisk business in liquor sales.

From her window seat Karen Younger’s view above the storm clouds was of a dark, whirling chaos illuminated from within by flashes of lightning. The scene seemed an appropriate background for her thoughts.

She couldn’t believe what was happening.

The murder of Lisl Moeller and her American soldier boyfriend eight years ago had changed forever Karen’s view of human nature and its potential for evil. In her private life that experience had made her more hesitant, distrustful, warping relationships. She would always remember Ron’s stunned reaction to her panic when, in the midst of a furious argument for which she was equally to blame, he had pressed her against the living room wall of his apartment, pinning her arms above her head and shouting, “Dammit, listen to me!”

He had seen the stark terror in her eyes. He had stepped back quickly, more unnerved than she was. “Jesus Christ,” he had muttered, “what were you thinking? What did you think I was going to do?”

Downhill from there, Karen thought. The closest she had come to happily-ever-after, and she had blown it. Her lifestyle with the Bureau didn’t exactly offer that many possibilities to find Mr. Right, and Ron had been the closest thing to it. He was an agent himself, someone who knew where she was coming from. That night it had been too late to tell him that she was reacting to remembered trauma, that she didn’t really believe he was going to hit her. The unspoken pact of faith and trust had been broken.

Ron was the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the New York office now. She had seen him during the past summer when he had attended an ASAC meeting at the FBI National Academy. He had used the trip to Quantico to pass his annual physical exam and qualification on the shooting range. They had had dinner one night, just friends. The evening had been painfully awkward.

Something destructive had started to grow inside Karen that gray morning in Germany when she was called out to the scene of a murder involving an American—Lisl’s boyfriend was stationed at the nearby U.S. air base. It had been nourished during her later years with the Behavioral Science Unit as an analyst and profiler of violent criminals, particularly serial killers—the most cruel, savage and bloodthirsty of psychopaths. Vampires, especially in the romanticized view currently in vogue, were pussycats by comparison to some of Karen Younger’s subjects.