The walls, the bed, “frenzied overkill,” one of the reports said.
It didn’t matter how many times he’d looked at the pictures in the past few weeks, Tanner still seethed at the fact that whoever did this in 2007 had gotten away with it.
The Bradford killing had now fallen to Tanner and the detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cold Case Unit. It was among the hundreds of other cases they oversaw. And in that time a few tips had surfaced: people heard talk on the street, in a bar or a jail cell, but ultimately all of them dead-ended.
Even as leads turned cold, the Bradford case, like the others, was always there, calling out to be solved. But no matter how frustrating it was for cold case investigators, it was brutal for the survivors who called or wrote, struggling to make sure the death of their loved one would never be forgotten, that one day, justice would be done.
Bonnie Bradford’s ex-husband, Ross Corbett, who’d long been cleared as a suspect, called Tanner on anniversary days, the day they were married, the day Bonnie was murdered or Bonnie’s birthday.
“We had our troubles, but I always loved her,” he’d say as Tanner listened with sincere compassion. “Are you any closer? Is there anything I can do to help?” Corbett always asked the same thing.
But it was Corbett’s last call, some three weeks ago, that hit a nerve. He’d told Tanner how the kids at his son’s school had said that the cops were never going to find the guy who killed Jimmy’s mom.
Tanner knew better than anyone that there were certain types of killers you couldn’t stop-like the one who took my wife-but the one who murdered Bonnie Bradford was not one of them.
This case was solvable and it was his duty to clear it.
The question was: How?
After Corbett’s call, Tanner and his partner, Harvey Zurn, set out once more to take another, “fresh” look at the case by first pulling out the thick accordion files. They also delved into the unit’s database for the computerized files of the Bradford case and reviewed all the witness statements given by those who knew or had any dealings with Bonnie in the weeks before her death. They went through files and reports going back in the last year of her life. They consulted file notes about her habits, hobbies, the patterns of her life, who she had contact with. They called up people and re-interviewed them, even challenged the validity of statements that seemed questionable.
Tanner followed the creed of a long-retired detective who’d told him that in most cases, the key you need is right in front of you.
And something surfaced.
Tanner had been examining the crime scene photos, doing his neo-Sherlockian best enlarging them on his computer screen. The victim’s hands and fingers were bloodstained owing to defensive wounds, the reports had noted.
Studying a file of photos the scene people had taken of the rest of the home, he’d come across a family bulletin board in the kitchen, plastered with a calendar, business cards, notes and works of kid art. In the Bradford collection he saw a colored pencil drawing of a cat, another one of sunflowers, a single page with a handprint in paint and then a small paint-by-numbers of dolphins.
The handprint.
Something about it struck Tanner as odd. Call it instinct, or a gut feeling but it just seemed out of place, even though it was neatly overlapped by the children’s work.
Where did that handprint come from? The inventory sheets indicated that while appointment notes from the calendar were followed up on, nothing from the bulletin board had been processed. Where was that handprint now?
Tanner called Ross Corbett.
“We need to see the artwork from the bulletin board that was in the kitchen. I hope you didn’t throw it out?” Tanner asked him.
“No, we had a moving company collect most things and move them into storage,” Corbett said. “We wouldn’t have even looked at what was on that board, we were too traumatized.”
No one at the time had noticed anything different about the bulletin board.
Corbett volunteered to let Tanner and Zurn accompany him as he retrieved the artwork from the bulletin board. The drawings were stored in a file folder and were in good condition.
Jimmy Bradford, who was now thirteen, shook his head when Tanner and Zurn had asked him if he had made the handprint.
“Nope, I didn’t make it. I would’ve remembered.”
Jimmy’s eleven-year-old sister, Jessie, hadn’t made it.
“I drew the cat and the flowers. Jimmy made the dolphin picture,” she said. “I never saw that hand thing before.”
Tanner and Zurn had sent the handprint to the crime lab for analysis days ago. Charlene Podden, a forensic technician, alerted Tanner that morning that she’d have a preliminary report to him by five today.
The waiting started gnawing at him because it underscored that this potential evidence should’ve been analyzed at the time of the murder but wasn’t. At 5:41 his landline rang at his desk.
“It’s Charlene at the lab. I’m sorry for the delay, Joe.”
“You find anything on that handprint?”
“This is just a preliminary, okay? We need to do more work.”
“More work? Charlene this case has been cold for six years. Tell me how come this stuff was not processed six years ago.”
“Maybe it was overlooked. Maybe somebody made an assumption, or lost a report. Look, I honestly don’t know. It was before my time.”
“Okay, forget it. Let’s get to work. What can you tell me?”
“The drawing was produced with blood, human blood.”
“The victim’s blood?”
“Some of it.”
“Some?”
“And there are latents,” Podden added, “but they have to be processed, Joe, so give us time to get to that.”
“Are they good?”
“Yes, and there’s more.”
Tanner pressed his phone harder to his ear.
“There’s something under the largest, darkest smudge, something the artist intentionally covered or concealed on purpose-a message in tiny letters, likely scratched using the tip of a pencil.”
“What does it say?”
“‘I’m just getting started.’”
3
Alhambra, California
He’d been patient.
Hiding so long in the house where he’d been watching her, studying her.
His heart thundered against the bones of his rib cage. He inched toward her without making a sound until he stood over her bed as she slept
Skin tingling with excitement he fought the urge to look at himself in her mirror.
He’d taken such loving care preparing for tonight.
His face was coated in thick white makeup so bright it glowed, like some evil Kabuki force. A swath of red smeared in a downward curve across his mouth. His cheeks were a maelstrom of theatrical cuts and scars, while large smudge pools of black accentuated his hollow eyes, his left one wept a trail of painted teardrops.
He was naked.
Now, here he was, standing over her.
Watching her.
He owned her.
Amber Pratt: She was a lonely secretary, an abused, heartbroken woman.
She was prey.
He knelt beside her, drawing his face near enough to drink in her breath, his aching to touch her as silent as the flicking of a snake’s tongue.
Do it now.
As he stood to take action, an inexplicable spear of doubt pierced him.
It felt so painful he wavered.
Suddenly Amber stirred, moaning and rolling over.
No, it was not right. Not yet.
He sank back into the darkness and disappeared into the night.