“I’m doing your job for you, Detective. I’m going to catch a murderer.”
“Why commit murder to catch a killer?” Stride asked him sharply. “These people, the ones you killed, were innocent. Why not just come in and tell us what you think you know about Amira’s death? Let us get justice for her.”
“Like you’ve done for forty years?” the man asked.
“You killed a little boy,” Stride snapped. “That’s worse than any thing that happened back then.”
There was a long silence in which he thought he’d succeeded in finding a vein and drawing blood. He heard the man’s breathing become more rapid and harsh.
“You don’t understand what happened back then,” the man said finally.
“Explain it to me,” Stride said. “And tell me what all of this has to do with you.” He wasn’t talking to an older man-at most, maybe someone his own age. There was no way he had been a participant in the events that happened at the Sheherezade.
“Are you there?” Stride added when the man didn’t reply. “Hello?”
The silence stretched out into dead air. He checked his phone and found the call was over. The caller had disconnected.
When he punched a button to redial the number, it rang and rang without being picked up.
“Shit,” he said. “There’s another body here.”
This one was alive.
Half an hour later, they found Cora Lansing, a seventy-five-year-old widow, tied to an oversized walnut chair in her dining room, in another house not far from Moose’s MiraBella estate. A strip of duct tape was pasted across her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fright, and she had soiled herself, throwing a stink into the lavender-scented home, but she hadn’t been harmed.
They called in a medical team, who gave the woman oxygen and carefully removed the tape from her mouth. It left behind a rash and a sticky residue that she picked at with irritated flicks of her finger nails. She was bird like and frail, but she was hopping mad, even after a shower and a change of clothes. Stride poured her a large glass of Rémy Martin from her liquor cabinet to calm her down.
They soon extracted her story. She had been shopping at Neiman’s and returned to find a stranger in her Lexus. The man forced her to drive back through the hills to the south shore entrance to Lake Las Vegas, and he hid in the backseat while she greeted the guard. He made it clear that if she tried to alert the guard, he would shoot them both, and his tone was such that Cora had no doubt he would do it.
She drove him to her home, where he tied her up, gagged her, and waited until night fell. Then he took her car and left.
“Did you see what he looked like?” Stride asked.
“I certainly did,” Cora replied immediately, surprising him. “I’ll never forget his face.”
Stride felt a rush of excitement, mixed with apprehension. He told Amanda, “Get a sketch artist down here.”
Stride looked at Cora and thought to himself what he would never say to the woman aloud. Why the hell are you still alive?
“Can you describe him for me?” he asked.
Cora swiftly painted a man similar in build to the man Elonda had seen at the bus stop before MJ was killed: not as tall as Stride, lean but very strong, with short dark hair and an angular face. Either he had shaved his beard or the one he had used on Saturday night was a fake. Cora provided enough detail that the police artist would be able to do a solid rendering. Stride glanced around at the tasteful, expensive art in Cora’s house. She had a good eye.
“Did he say anything to you?” Stride asked. “About who he was or why he was doing this?”
Cora shook her head. “Not a word. He hardly said anything. But he was very intense, very scary.”
Stride thanked her and tracked down a policewoman to sit with her while they waited for the artist to drive in from the city. He left Cora’s living room and made his way back outside. The killer’s phone call was vivid in his mind. He wished it had lasted longer, because he wasn’t sure the man would call again. He had said what he needed to say, enlisting Stride in the hunt-but the hunt for what?
Amanda joined him. “You don’t look happy,” she told him. “Isn’t this what we call a break? A lead? That’s a good thing, right?”
“We’ve only got it because he gave it to us,” Stride said. “He could have killed that woman, and we wouldn’t have a damn thing, but now he wants us to know what he looks like. Why?”
“Maybe he’s an arrogant bastard. He wouldn’t be the first serial killer to get tripped up by his own ego. Look at BTK. They never would have nailed him in Wichita if he hadn’t started sending letters to the papers again after thirty years.”
Stride shook his head. “He knows he’s taking a risk. He knows we might find him. His picture is going to be all over the papers. Someone could spot him.”
“He may think he’s covered his tracks so well that it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think so, Amanda. I’m sure he’s covered his tracks, but I don’t believe he’d give us something this big if it wasn’t part of his plan. Hell, he could have killed Tierney in the city any time he wanted. He didn’t need to figure out a way to get inside the security out here. And he sure didn’t need to give us his face.”
“He was showing off,” Amanda suggested.
Stride thought about it. He heard the killer’s voice in his head again. Cool, focused. Complaining about spoonfeeding them clues. As if the police were interfering with his schedule.
“Or sending a message,” Stride said.
TWENTY-THREE
Serena appeared in the doorway of his cubicle on Wednesday morning. He was leaning dangerously far back in his swivel chair, and he had his feet propped on the laminate desk.
“Hey, stranger,” he said. He had arrived home long after Serena went to bed, and he had been up and out at dawn, leaving her to sleep.
“Hey yourself,” she said.
“You really should try the perp power breakfast,” he added. Serena gave him a confused look, and he gestured at the desk. Her brow unfurled, and she laughed, seeing a sack of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a large plastic bottle of Sprite,
Serena came in and sat down, but Stride could see that her body language was uncomfortable.
“Something wrong?” Stride asked.
He was glad that she didn’t try to bullshit him with a fake smile and pretend that he was imagining things.
“Something happened last night,” she said.
“Oh? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She hesitated and added, “I’m not really ready to talk about it yet.”
Stride was good at poker. Nothing showed on his face.
“Should I be concerned?” he asked.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Clears that right up for you, huh? Sorry about that.”
He stared at her for a long while and tried to see behind her eyes and understand what she was hiding.
’I’m here when you’re ready,” he told her. “But don’t push me away.”
“You’re not that lucky,” Serena told him. She winked, trying to make everything fine again. It made him feel a little better.
Amanda came around the cubicle wall with a sheaf of white paper. “Here’s our perp,” she said. She handed each of them a copy of the sketch the police artist had produced from Cora Lansing’s description. Stride was immediately drawn to the man’s eyes, which were dark but remarkably expressive. He thought if he hung it on the wall, the eyes would follow him as he walked around the room.
“We’ve got uniforms reworking each of the neighborhoods where the murders took place, to see if anyone recognizes him,” Amanda said. “I faxed it to Jay Walling in Reno, too. Sawhill’s going to be releasing the sketch to the media at a press conference this morning.”