To Die For (11 page)

And now, with the attack on Dorinda, she seemed to be increasing the frequency of her killing. Between Norma and June, it was two weeks. Dorinda came 10 days later. The lag time between incidents was getting shorter, Greco thought. She was like an animal that can't stop itself after its first taste of blood.

He had many questions, but no one with whom to discuss them. It saddened Greco that he and his co-workers were unable to function as a team. After Tuesday's blow-up, they split up the credit card work. Greco found it ironic that even though Lt. Gaskins had told him that he was in charge, Wyatt had assigned him to go to Mervyn's, West Dallas, Esthetiques hair salon, the jewelry store and Ferrari Bistro. Greco worked mostly by himself while Wyatt and James teamed up. He sometimes went with either Wyatt or James to interview clerks. But even though they were working with the same information on the same case, they didn't have meetings to share what they had. There was no brainstorming, no discussions about what all of this information meant and how the investigation should proceed.

Wyatt never volunteered information, but Greco played by the rules and always told Wyatt, his supervisor, what he came up with. Occasionally James let him know what was going on, but he was going to night school and usually hit the road for class at the end of the day. James had known Wyatt when they were both deputies for the sheriff's department in Orange County. James was friends with both of them and was playing it straight down the middle. Greco knew Wyatt wanted to solve the case over everything else. Greco naturally wanted to solve the case—he had gotten close to Jeri and felt bad about June's family. He didn't want to let any of them down.

Greco picked up the paper again and looked at the story about the attack. Why an antique store? He looked up the address and marked it by sticking another pin on the map behind his desk. He'd marked the murders in Canyon Lake, the shopping spree in Temecula and Lake Elsinore, and now the new attack in Lake Elsinore. He tried to set up a timeline to show the times and dates of the purchases. Greco saw that the suspect had stopped at a Sav-On in Lake Elsinore at 4:59 p.m. on Feb. 28, that she'd gone back to that same store early the next morning before going out to Mervyn's and then Murrieta Hot Springs. He'd bet the suspect lived near that Sav-On. He made the mistake of sharing that with Wyatt and James. They had poked fun at his pin map.

One of the best clues came from the hairstylists and technicians at Esthetiques, the salon in Temecula. Lisa Thompkins, the technician who did the moustache and eyebrow wax, said she remembered the woman's face so well that “If I could draw, I would draw it for you.” She said she could positively identify the woman if she saw her again.

She said the woman had come back a week later, on March 7, and wanted her hair dyed red, but Lisa wouldn't do it because her hair was, as she put it, “too frizzy.” When the woman insisted, Lisa bluntly told her that her hair would fall out, and the woman left.

Greco took the information down, wondering if their suspect was starting to feel pressured enough to alter her appearance. Changing hair color from blonde to red is enough to throw some witnesses off. There was no way to tell if she found another salon to color her hair or if she did it herself. They could be looking for a blonde or a redhead.

A hairdresser at the same salon who gave the boy a “step cut” also remembered the woman's face and said she could identify both her and the boy. She'd given her name as June Roberts and the boy's name as Jason Wilkins. The next day, Greco asked Julie Bennett, the community service officer, to help him scour the public schools. She found a Jason Wilkins enrolled in a local elementary school who fit the age and description. Excited about the lead, Greco staked out the apartment where the boy lived, waiting for several hours for a woman fitting the suspect's profile to show up, but when she got there, she didn't come close to matching the description. Her hair was blonde, but it was very long and she was quite a bit heavier than the clerks said she'd be. Greco talked to her anyway, but it was a dead end.

Greco thought about the name. Jason Wilkins could be a false name. But even if Wilkins was the boy's name, it probably wasn't the suspect's last name. She had told the hairstylist at Esthetiques as well as the clerk at the Western store that the boy was like her son and that she was his “other” mommy. That was another piece of the puzzle.

Before he'd started the stake-out on the apartment, he'd finally caught up with Jeri and had gone out to Canyon Lake to talk to her. She was cooperative and helpful, as always, but offered no explanation about not returning Greco's calls. Greco didn't ask, even though they'd gotten to know one another and he thought that she'd become comfortable talking with him. He hadn't spoken with her since before June Roberts died, so the first thing he wanted to do was to see if she knew June, who had lived about a block from her. To Greco's surprise, she said they'd known each other quite well.

“Her husband and my husband were best friends,” Jeri told him. “When her husband died, she just seemed to keep to herself more, although she did come over for dinner. June kind of shut everybody out except for other widows. I guess she didn't want to associate with other couples.”

She said that she and Russell had occasionally run into June on the golf course and at the clubhouse.

Greco sat in her living room, getting excited as he listened, trying to think. They
were
friends. That was a connection, but there had to be more in order to link it all with the woman who was using the credit cards. Greco decided to share with Jeri what they'd learned in the past few days.

“Within an hour of June's murder, there was a female using her credit cards in Temecula,” Greco told Jeri. “She was youngish, maybe in her 30s, with blonde, overpermed frizzy hair and had a young boy with her, about 5 years old. He's not her son, but he could be a step-son or something.

“The suspect was sort of bragging to one of the clerks that the little boy calls her ‘Mom' or ‘my other mom,' but it's not really her son,” he said. “Do you know of anyone who fits that description, anyone who takes care of a small boy?”

Jeri paused for a moment, thinking, but drew a blank. She said she couldn't think of anyone.

Greco remembered the tip from the salon technician and told Jeri that the suspect had asked to get her hair dyed, but the colorist refused because it would fall out. Did Jeri know anyone who had recently dyed her hair, or anyone who was thinking about it?

Again, Jeri thought for a moment and shook her head.

Greco shared a few tidbits about the credit cards—that the killer or someone associated with the killer had gone on a spending spree, buying drug store items, clothing, perfume. One of the café waiters saw her leaving in a dark car, maybe a van or a sport utility vehicle. He alternated between sharing information about the credit cards, allowing it to sink in, giving her a chance to react, and then asking a question or two before moving to another detail. He wasn't sure exactly where it would lead—he was trying to figure out the link between the cases and he had a feeling that Jeri knew something that connected these murders, but it was probably something she thought was unimportant or unrelated. He just had to keep trying to find out what it was.

The next day, after the attack on Dorinda, Greco phoned Jeri and asked if he could come out and speak with her again. She agreed and Greco drove over. When he arrived, he sat on the couch and told Jeri about the short blonde woman who used a rope to strangle the saleswoman in an antique store, leaving her for dead. Jeri said she didn't know Dorinda and didn't remember ever being in that store. Greco quietly explained there was a strong possibility that the woman who used the credit cards and attacked the antique store clerk had also killed June and Norma. Jeri nodded her head and looked down as if she was thinking.

Jeri said she'd already seen the small article in the newspaper. It was being talked about at the mail boxes, on the golf courses, at the club house, in the beauty salons and over the back fences of Canyon Lake. She didn't mention to Greco that she and Russell had started keeping loaded guns by their sides 24 hours a day.

*   *   *

The gardener.

A transient.

Ritual cult sacrifice.

People were frightened and nervous, and some bordered on hysteria. This was Canyon Lake. This type of thing just didn't happen here. They'd moved here to get away from murders and violent crime. Most people who lived here didn't bother to lock their doors. That was before the killings. Now, well-heeled residents didn't hesitate to pick up the phone to call police if they saw anyone who looked like they didn't belong there. Anyone they didn't recognize was a potential suspect. As the volume of phone calls increased, Julie dutifully filled out the oversized index cards on each tip. She told Greco or Wyatt about the most promising leads, but most seemed motivated by fear and nothing more. People would call in to report a suspicious vehicle or person, but the most they could provide was a description of a person or a partial description of a car. Very rarely could they supply a license plate. When someone called to report a suspicious character, Julie Bennett immediately notified the officers at Canyon Lake so they could check it out.

The murders were
the
topic of conversation at Canyon Lake. The latest theory circulating was that they were the work of a bizarre cult engaging in ritual sacrifice. Because of the level of violence, the assumption was that it had to be the sick handiwork of deranged cult-members. The weekend after June's murder, one of the golf course groundsmen found strange markings near one of the greens. Burned into the grass, possibly with chlorine bleach or pesticide, were markings resembling a partial pentagram and the word “posse.” The discovery intensified the fever pitch of speculation. Flocks of elderly residents made an exodus out of Canyon Lake to live with their adult children until the killer was caught. One group of card-playing women, terrified of living alone, but determined to stick it out, created what amounted to an unofficial Canyon Lake women's dormitory and bunked together in one home, figuring that a passel of widows was a better match against a serial killer than any one by herself.

Greco chalked up the golf course markings to kids on a drunk. He knew exactly what was inside the crime scene. If it had been a ritual killing, the murderer would have somehow marked the crime scene, rather than the golf course. He also knew there was a local gang calling themselves the Club Drive Posse. That wasn't hard to figure out.

The more amusing calls were false alarms. Wyatt had been cruising around Canyon Lake in plain clothes and an unmarked car, and residents, thinking he was an outsider, called the police department to report him as a suspicious person. Twice. Even in a town where everybody knows everything about everybody, no one was above suspicion.

FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 1994, 2 P.M.

“Yeah, I remember her. She had a little kid with her. A boy,” the waiter at Baily's Wine Country Café in Temecula told Wyatt and James. “The kid was running around the tables and she was getting pretty annoyed.”

The waiter's description of the woman and the boy was similar to that of the others who waited on them. He said the female was about five-feet, two-inches tall, stocky, with shoulder-length dark blonde hair. The boy was blonde, about 5 years old.

“She sat right at this table out here so she could smoke,” he said, pointing to the tables outside the shopping center. “She seemed to know what he wanted because she ordered without looking at the menu.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Wyatt asked.

“Well, just that she seemed pretty moody and anxious,” he said.

As Wyatt and James questioned the waiter, a five-foot two-inch woman with blonde hair was parking her brown Cadillac at another shopping center twenty minutes away. The meandering, one-stop complex sat across the street from the main entrance to Canyon Lake. Anchored on one end by Canyon Lake City Hall and dotted with restaurants, the remaining small businesses ranged from insurance and financial services to TV repair, and included a golf cart shop, medical offices, a pet clinic and pool services. Dana Sue Gray got out of the car and walked into A Cut Above, a small beauty salon sandwiched between a travel agent and a realty office.

“Hey there!” Dana called out. “How are you feeling?”

Laureen Johanson, a manicurist, was waiting for Dana at a work table behind rows of pink, red, tawny and purple nail polish.

“Much better, thanks,” Laureen said. She had finished up with her last customer and had been waiting for Dana, whom she hadn't seen in a month because she'd had a cold and had to cancel all of her appointments. Dana looked very different, she thought, like she'd put on ten pounds in the space of a few weeks, which was not like Dana at all. She was so active. She liked taking her dog for bike rides on the beach and worked out so often that she usually wore her gym clothes to the salon. Dana was proud of her muscles and sometimes rolled up her sleeve to show off a flexed bicep. “See how strong I am?” she'd say. Suddenly, it hit Laureen that maybe Dana had finally become pregnant like she'd yearned for all these years. Laureen decided not to say anything. Dana had lost one baby last year and had become depressed; she'd told Laureen then that she needed medication to help her sleep. The other thing Laureen noticed was that bad, frizzy perm, something she knew Dana would never tolerate. She was so meticulous about the way she wore her hair, and getting her hair color just right, that Laureen couldn't imagine Dana walking around looking like that.

“Well I'm glad to see you,” Dana said. “I had to go the whole month with shit-for-nails.”

“Sorry about that,” Laureen said. “But look at you! What did you do to your hair?”