The Devil's Menagerie (13 page)

She was aware of a strange sense of continuity in this bumpy flight across the continent. Eight years ago, returning to the States on another long flight, Karen had had a feeling of palpable relief at leaving the unsolved crime behind her. She was going home. Lisl Moeller’s killer was no longer her problem.

The feeling had been fundamental: she had been running for her life. Her escape carried with it a mixture of relief and shame. The shame—the sense of having let herself down as well as Lisl Moeller—had been an element in her eagerness to join the BSU and then to volunteer for the Criminal Personality Research Project that was Buddy Cochrane’s passion, a program founded on detailed, head-to-head interviews with notorious criminals from Sirhan Sirhan to Ted Bundy to Charles Manson, and the legion of brutal serial killers imprisoned during the eighties and nineties.

Karen had failed at that, too. She had thought she was tough, a Pennsylvania girl who had made it on her own with a hard shell and few illusions, but she had been wrong. When the physical ills and the nightmares became too much for her, with Buddy Cochrane’s reluctant support she had retreated to the shelter of a cubicle in the basement warren of the FBI facility that was now called the Investigative Support Unit.

Now she was airborne again. Cut loose. Hurtling through the dark skies as if on the reverse leg of that earlier flight. This time she was going back to the defining experience of her career, the moment when, staring down at Lisl Moeller’s battered face, she had peered into the heart and mind of a monster.

“We’ve cleared the worst of the turbulence,” a calm, reassuring male voice over the intercom intruded on Karen Younger’s thoughts. “Our flight attendants will be serving dinner shortly, and I hope you will enjoy the rest of your flight. The temperature in Los Angeles today is seventy-one degrees …”

Although thick clouds still obscured the earth far below, shutting off views of fertile plains and sinuous rivers and the snowy battlements of the Rockies, the storm was behind them.

But not for her. Nor for Edith Foster, a sophomore student at San Carlos College.

Long ago Karen Younger had convinced herself that Lisl Moeller’s death had been a crime of passion, an explosion of rage or jealousy. Such passion alone explained what had been done to her. But if the VICAP match was valid, a different conclusion seemed inescapable.

Karen herself had entered information from the German girl’s murder into the VICAP database, more as a sample exercise in the early stages of the program than with any expectation of a future linkage. But the system had done exactly what it was designed to do: match data from one violent crime to another. Where and when the two killings had occurred didn’t matter. There were enough similarities for the computer to link the two cases.

That match told Buddy Cochrane that one killer had indeed struck again, his crimes committed on two different continents, eight years apart.

And Karen Younger remained the FBI’s Special Agent of record on the case. Insofar as the FBI retained any jurisdiction over a crime on German soil, its case file had remained open—and it was hers.

Lisl Moeller’s murderer was now a repeat killer. If he had acted out of rage, something had held it in check all this time. If not, he was cold and calculating beyond her comprehension.

The Boeing 747 lurched and dipped sharply downward before righting itself. Wind sheer, Karen thought. Not a severe incident, but bad enough to bring gasps and little exclamations of alarm from the passengers in the cabin. Across the aisle from Karen a woman tried to wipe up spilled coffee with a napkin. Karen’s stomach seemed to have been left a little behind.

She ate little of her defrosted meal, poking at something that purported to be lasagna and managing to eat a small Caesar salad and a half-frozen dinner roll. Afterward she folded her tray into the seat back and reached for her briefcase.

The police report from San Carlos was included in the case file along with the VICAP questionnaire faxed to the FBI late Monday afternoon. By that time a preliminary autopsy had been completed.

Karen reviewed the few details of the crime. The victim had disappeared around midnight Friday. Her body had been found early the next morning under a creek bridge in a government wetlands area. The autopsy protocol confirmed that she had died around four in the morning. Her face and upper body had been savagely beaten and she had been repeatedly raped. The killer had also carved her initial across her belly. For the next thirty-six hours she had remained unidentified, until a San Carlos College coed was reported missing to the college security office early Sunday evening. The missing girl’s automobile, a Nissan 280Z with a personalized license plate, had been found Monday morning in a supermarket parking lot, where it had apparently been parked since Friday night.

So where did he have you from Friday night until Saturday morning?
Karen asked the dead girl.
Why did he keep you alive for hours? What kind of horrors did he inflict on you?

And why you?

In the spare, clinical details of the crime reports Karen could not find Edith Foster, a young woman surely full of juice and dreams. She would have to visit the crime scene, talk to Edith’s friends, find out who she was. Had she died by pure chance, simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was that—confounding Karen’s original opinion—also true of Lisl Moeller? Had there been something in common about the two women that triggered the killer’s rage?

Edith’s faxed image was there among the pages of the file, but it was silent. Another shadowy image lurked there, faceless, anonymous, its darkness lit from within like one of those black storm clouds where lightning flickered balefully.

You bastard
, Karen whispered to herself.
Who are you and where have you been hiding? What hole did you crawl out of?

In that moment she was close to hating Buddy Cochrane. Her boss and mentor for more than six years believed in her more than she did herself. The knowledge was small consolation.

She started to close the file and slip it back into her briefcase when the name of the San Carlos detective in charge of the case leaped out at her. She paused, staring at the name, remembering what Cochrane had left unsaid.

Of course! That was just what she needed, a case involving a killer who brutalized his female victims in unspeakable ways, and a homicide investigator whose career with the LAPD had been derailed by a police brutality incident caught on some amateur photographer’s video film. For a week, until America’s frenzied media moved on to the next sensation, Detective Timothy Braden had been a celebrity.

Karen wondered who had filled out the VICAP forms so quickly and efficiently. Not Detective Braden, she was willing to bet.

She closed the file and locked it in her briefcase, settled back in her seat and closed her eyes. Shivered at a fingertip caress of cold.

Far below, a rift in the clouds showed the white ribbon of the Colorado River clawing through pink rock canyons, spearing the western half of the continent.

P
LEASED WITH HIMSELF
and the attention the Edith Foster murder was generating, Ralph Beringer returned to the San Carlos College campus Tuesday in time to watch from a safe distance as mourners left the small campus chapel after paying their respects to Edith Foster. Beringer would have relished joining them, but he knew better. Seeing the burly man talking to one of the coeds after the service confirmed his hunch. He didn’t have to be at arm’s length to spot a cop.

He turned away, a man at ease in his surroundings, evidently not in a hurry.

He had made himself familiar with the campus on Monday when he had hit Lindstrom’s car. He smiled at the memory. He had had no trouble locating the faded red Nissan Sentra in the faculty parking lot behind the Liberal Arts building. The yellow fireman’s coat was still in the back seat. There were a dozen cars in the lot. No one was about. Beringer had studied the back of the building long enough to assure himself that no windows overlooked the corner of the lot where the Nissan was parked.

Thirty seconds later, using a small pry bar, he had had the Nissan’s passenger side door open. He had stuffed Lindstrom’s yellow fireproof coat into a carryall, dropped the pry bar into the bag on top of the coat, closed the car door and walked away.

Now, as then, wearing the same long-sleeved blue cotton turtleneck and gray Dockers twill pants, he looked as if he belonged where he was. No one paid him any attention.

He noticed clusters of students in animated discussions and wondered if, without knowing it, they were talking about him. At the administration building he paused to eye some billboard announcements of autumn events and class changes, chatting amiably with a couple of students. At a campus bookstore he made a few small purchases, including a map identifying the campus buildings and showing the walkways and street access.

It was all too pleasant and serene, Beringer thought, heading back to his car, all these fresh-faced kids in their designer jeans and Reeboks and button-down oxford shirts, thinking they had the world by the tail. What did they know about anything? Even Edie, pretty and pliant as she was, in the end was no better than a rubber doll. What did she think was the price of all those tedious classes when she stared up in agony at her tormentor?

He left the campus, smiling and satisfied.

Everything was falling into place.

L
ATER
,
CRUISING THE
Lindstroms’ neighborhood in the Buick LeSabre—having a second car at his disposal was like having a second mask to wear at a ball—he came unexpectedly upon Glenda Lindstrom in her green Dodge station wagon. Even from a half block away he recognized the car immediately, having seen it parked in the driveway over the past weekend. When the wagon turned into the drive, Beringer had a glimpse of Glenda’s blond hair, cut shorter than he remembered it. His heart thudding, he drove on by without slowing or turning his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Glenda climbing the steps to the wide front porch. Still in shape, he noted, hadn’t let herself go. Good. The little girl who had hopped out of the car and scrambled up the steps after her mother couldn’t be more than five or six years old.
Their
kid. But where was Richie?

Thinking of the way Glenda moved as she went up those steps, Beringer parked well down the street but within sight of the front of the house. He felt a familiar rage, as comforting to his psyche as the touch of an old dog’s head to his owner’s hand. This wasn’t the time. He wanted to play out the game with the Lindstroms as he had with Edie, only better. Let the trickle of fear become a river, then a flood. Give Lennie a chance to see what was coming if she was sharp enough, let it slowly dawn on her that there was nothing she could do to stop him, that neither the professor nor the police could save her.

A yellow school bus pulled up at the corner just down the street from the Lindstrom house. Two boys hopped out. One was a chunky kid with light brown hair and sturdy legs, the boy who had been at the beach on Sunday with his substitute father. He waved at the other kid and ran to the Lindstrom house, pounded up the steps without slowing and barged in the front door.

You ought to keep that door locked, Lennie, even when you’re expecting the kid. You’ll learn
.

So Richie bussed to school. Glenda drove the little girl, Ellen, to school in the morning—must be in kindergarten or first grade—but Richie took a bus. After a moment spent in factoring this information, Beringer decided it was a bonus. There would be no problem getting Richie away from his home and his parents when the time came.

Follow the bus tomorrow, Beringer decided. See where it goes.

He started the Buick and drove away. On the north end of town he stopped at a public phone in the San Carlos Mall, where he dialed the Lindstrom home number he had memorized. The phone rang four times before an answering machine came on. Dave Lindstrom’s voice. “Hello, you’ve reached the Lindstrom house. We’re sorry no one—”

The message cut off as someone picked up the phone. Glenda, breathless as if she had been running, said, “Hello?”

Beringer listened to her breathing.

“Who is this?” she demanded. “Say something!”

Smiling to himself, Beringer hung up and walked back to his car. He was feeling fine, edgy fine, and when he passed a pair of teenage girls on the sidewalk he felt a sudden heat in his loins. Seeing Glenda, then hearing that catch in her throat, had excited him. It made him want to—

He ground his teeth. Images flashed through his mind. Edie Foster on the bed under him, the muffled cries becoming fainter, resistance seeping away, the firmness going out of her breasts as if the liquid of life was draining away. The need that seeing Glenda had aroused in him was powerful, but if he allowed himself to be diverted from the plan he would jeopardize everything. He had waited this long, he could wait a little longer. Take it a step at a time.

To ease the pressure, tonight he could dig out some of his hardcore videos, the ones he had picked up in Amsterdam. Or there was a porno film shop outside of San Carlos—he had noticed it driving in—he could stop there and pick up something new. Go back to the condo like the other commuters, he thought, kick back, have a beer, enjoy the show.

Think about the next one.

G
LENDA DROPPED THE
phone in its cradle as if it burned her fingers.

It was
him
. There was no doubt in her mind. How had he known exactly when to call? She hadn’t been home more than a half hour. Was he watching—?

She ran upstairs and, standing to the side of the front windows of her bedroom, peered through the curtains down at the street. A man in a tan coverall with a Southern California Edison Company logo on his chest was coming down the side path from the Schneider house across the way. She watched him take a shortcut across the neighboring lawn and turn into the next yard. Was the meter reader an imposter? He was well built, Ralph’s height …