Cold Truth (6 page)

“So he’s leaving? He’s just walking out?”

“Easier for some than for others, I guess. So, yes, to answer your question, he took accrued vacation, sick days, and personal time and is probably, as we speak, packing to leave, if his wife hasn’t already done that. He starts his new job on the first of next month.”

“Just like that?”

“Hardly just like that, he’s had this planned for weeks. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he did say he’d planned on giving his notice early in the week, but we found the first body. Then the second.”

“I thought he seemed a bit off,” Cass said, recalling the way Spencer had held back and let her take the lead, not just that morning, but at the crime scene earlier in the week. “But I figured maybe he was just tired. You know, so much going on around here all of a sudden, and they have that new baby.”

“Well, he’s taking that new baby and leaving us holding the bag.”

“Did you ask him to stay for a few more days?”

“What would be the point? Mentally, he’s already out of here. Might as well let him go. He wouldn’t be much use to us anyway, not in the state of mind he’s in right now.”

Cass thought back to that morning, when Jeff had been late getting to the crime scene, and had been pretty much ineffective even after he arrived.

“So, I guess it’s you, me, and a couple of uniforms against our boy, Cass.”

Denver walked down the steps and didn’t turn back until he reached his car.

“Finish up with the car and with Tasha, then go on home and get some sleep. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”

F
ive

Her newly found enthusiasm for healthy living having been inspired a few weeks earlier by a visit from an old friend of her father’s who happened to be a holistic physician, Regan Landry added a banana to the skim milk, yogurt, and assorted powders in the blender and hit the
Pulverize
button. The little appliance whirred noisily while she found a glass and searched for a straw. She hit
Stop
and a blessed silence followed. She poured her breakfast into the glass and sat down at the small round kitchen table and opened the newspaper. Bored after a few minutes of skimming the headlines, she searched under the paper for the remote control and turned on the television that sat on the counter across the room.

She changed the channel, searching for her favorite morning show,
This Morning, USA.
Once she found it, she turned up the volume and resumed her cursory scanning of the
New York Times.
An article about an upcoming auction of American antiques at Sotheby’s caught her eye, and she’d just gotten to the sampling of early Pennsylvania furniture when something on the screen caught her attention. She reached for the remote and increased the volume.

“. . . certainly of interest to anyone having plans to visit the New Jersey shore this summer,” Heather Cannon was saying.

The screen split, half now occupied by a man in a police uniform who looked uncomfortable in front of the camera.

“I feel your pain,” Regan muttered.

“Chief Denver, with the finding of a third body there in Bowers Inlet, the reports coming from the South Jersey area are telling us that the signs all point to the likelihood that this is the work of a serial killer. Can you confirm that?”

“You know, Heather, I hate that term, it stirs up so much . . .” The chief shifted in his chair.

“Will you confirm that there has in fact been a third victim?”

“Yes, there has been a third victim.”

“And that all three victims have been young women in their early thirties . . .” Heather addressed the camera directly so that the man she was interviewing by remote would feel she was speaking directly to him.

“Yes, all three victims have been young women, all local women. The first two lived in Bowers Inlet. The young woman whose body we found last night lived in nearby Tilden, but she was left on one of our beaches.”

“Now, the information that we have indicates that all the women were dark-haired and similarly built . . .” Heather paused and looked up from her notes. “Is there a significance to this similarity, do you think?”

“Right now we have no way of knowing. Yes, so far, there has been a resemblance between the victims, but whether or not we should read something into this, we just don’t know.”

“The most disturbing bit of information we’ve received is that you have correspondence from the killer . . .”

“Well, let’s just hold up here.” The chief was clearly agitated. “What we have are letters that were received after the bodies were found. I want to make that clear. They could have been sent by someone other than the killer, someone thinking to have a bit of fun with us. Right now, I don’t know for a fact who is sending the letters.”

“But they could be from the killer . . .”

“Of course they could be,” he snapped.

“And the letters are sort of a taunt, aren’t they?” Heather glanced down at her notes. “
’Hey, Denver, did you find her yet?’
I understand was the first note. And the second was,
’Hey, Denver! Remember me?’
Both notes were comprised of letters or words cut from newspapers or magazines?”

“That’s right.”

“And was a note found after this latest victim?”

“There was.”

“May we ask what it said?”

“It said,
’Hey, Denver, have you figured it out yet?’
”

“Any ideas on what you’re supposed to be figuring out?”

“A few.”

“Any you’re willing to share?”

“It would be premature.” The chief of police of Bowers Inlet stared stonily into the camera.

“So what would you tell people who are planning to spend a week or more in your community this summer? I understand Bowers Inlet has many rental properties and enjoys a population boom in the summer.”

“I’m telling the vacationers the same thing I’m telling our year-round residents. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t go off alone. If you’re going out at night, go in a group. But you know, those are things you should probably be doing anyway, no matter where you are. You need to watch out for yourself. Have a cell phone with you or a can of pepper spray. If you think someone is following you, report it.”

“So, in other words, stick to the basic safety precautions . . .”

Regan tapped a finger on the tabletop, then rose and left the room as the interview concluded. She went down the hall to her father’s office and turned on the overhead light. Something that had just been said had caused a little bell to go off in her head.

Hey, Denver, did you find her yet?

Hey, Denver, remember me?

Where had she seen it . . . ?

She pulled several files from a drawer and leafed through them.
Not this one . . . not this one.

Then maybe here . . . Nope.

She returned the files to their places and opened the next drawer.

Here. Here it is.

Hey, Landry, remember me?

The note, on plain white paper, spelled out the message in letters of different sizes and colors—letters cut from magazines—giving a jumbled, schizophrenic appearance to the sheet of paper.

At the top of the page was a small circle with the number seven inside. Regan’s father had written that, she was positive. That was the way he numbered pages when he was setting up the earliest drafts of his work. He might take notes from several files and integrate them for a single chapter or project. The fact that this note was numbered—and the message indicated that there had been previous contact—made Regan think there were more notes from the same author. She pulled several files from the next drawer, and in the fourth one she went through, she found a manila file holding one more message, along with several pages of notes written in her father’s hand.

Hey, Landry, did you miss me?
was numbered eleven.

Regan sat at her father’s desk and began to read through the pages he had written. She paused to flip the file over to read the notation he’d made across the top.

The Bayside Strangler.

She read the rest of the file, then picked up the phone and called information for the listing of the Bowers Inlet Police Department.

“I’d like to speak with Chief Denver,” Regan told the person who answered the phone.

“He’s not in. I can take a message.”

“My name is Regan Landry. I’m a writer—I write true crime . . . I have some information he might be interested in, in connection with the current homicides there.”

“You have information about the homicides?”

“I have information about some old cases . . . some notes that were written to my father . . .”

“I’m not following you.”

“Look, please leave my name and number for Chief Denver and ask him to give me a call. It could be important.” Regan hung up after reciting both the number at the farmhouse and her mobile number.

She went into the kitchen and made herself a pot of coffee, poured a cup, and took it back to the office. She sat and stared at the file she’d left open on her desk.

What did she really have here?

A couple of notes that someone had sent to her father some years ago. A few pages of preliminary investigation Josh had started. Was there more?

She sighed. Damn his lousy record keeping. If, in fact, he’d started numbering the notes as he received them, where were the others? Perhaps he’d handed them over to the police. To the FBI.

Maybe there was another file—or two, or eight, or a dozen. Knowing her father, there could be many more, or none. He could have passed them on. Or not. He could have lost them, thrown them out, or put them in a box and simply forgotten about them as another more interesting project presented itself.

She looked across the room to the long row of wooden file cabinets that she knew were stuffed with files and boxes of notes. In the basement, there were boxes of files she’d helped him move several years ago when he’d run out of room up here for his current works and asked her to empty several drawers and pack them up for storage.

Regan ran a hand through her hair and told herself to slow down. Just because the notes received by her father and the Bowers Inlet chief of police were similar—okay, they were exactly the same—but what did that mean?

Hey, Denver, remember me?

Hey, Landry, remember me?

Not exactly original thoughts. Someone from anyone’s past might say the same thing. And anyone being coy or cautious might structure the notes in the same manner, cutting out letters and gluing them to the paper. What did that prove, anyway?

She opened the file and took out the two sheets of yellow legal paper. At the top of the first sheet, Josh had written,
Victims attributed to the Bayside Strangler, June 1979–August 1979.
There followed a list of thirteen names. After each name was a date, and the name of a town:

The second sheet had no header and consisted of two columns, one of dates, the other locations, but no names. The dates spanned several years, and the locations varied, state to state. The names of the Bayside Strangler’s victims would be easy enough to trace. Perhaps Chief Denver could verify the names of the Bowers Inlet victims when he called back.
If
he called back.

Regan sat and stared at the yellow pages for a long time. She compared the two lists her father had printed up. Except for the inclusion of the names on the first list, they were identical in form.

If the first was in fact a list of the Bayside Strangler’s victims—names, dates, and places—what was the significance of the second list?

She studied it, line to line. No matter how long she stared at it, the list made no sense:

Since it was in the folder along with the Bayside Strangler notes, could she assume it had something to do with those killings? And if so, what?

She stole a look at the clock. It had been more than an hour since she’d called Chief Denver. She’d have to be patient, give him a little more time.

Regan slid the lists back into the folder, added the two notes that had been addressed to her father, and placed the file on one corner of the desk. She took one more look through the big file and, convinced there was nothing more to be learned from it, replaced it in the cabinet. She lifted out the file behind it and returned to the desk. Settling into the big chair her father had used for more than twenty years, she began to page through the contents, front to back. Once satisfied she’d uncovered nothing that could add to the information in the thin file that sat on the corner of the desk, she put that folder back and took out another. And another.

She’d gone through five file folders by noon, another three by mid-afternoon, when she placed a second call to the Bowers Inlet Police Department. Denver was not available. She left another message.

Stopping only to eat a makeshift meal around seven that evening, she plowed through file drawer after file drawer. At eight-thirty, she stopped to make another pot of coffee, and it occurred to her however many files remained in the office, there were three times as many in the basement, and God only knew what Josh might have stashed in the attic.

So far she’d found nothing that referred to the list her father had handprinted with dates and places, nor had she found any other letters that may have been sent by the Bayside Strangler. Perhaps Josh had turned them over to someone in law enforcement after all.

But he would have kept copies, she reminded herself, if he’d planned on writing a book on the subject. He would have kept copies of all the correspondence, regardless. He’d done that before, she knew. Throughout the day she’d come across several such files. But where were the files that would relate back to the list? They had to be there. It was a matter of finding the right drawers. Or the right boxes.

As Regan studied the mysterious list for perhaps the tenth time, the thought occurred to her that she could have already bypassed something that might be a clue to the lists’ meaning.

How will I find it if I don’t know what
IT
is?

Somewhat disheartened by the thought, but nonetheless determined, Regan read on through the night. Her father had always relied upon his instincts in times like this, she reminded herself. Perhaps it was time to put her own instincts to the test.