Cold Truth (8 page)

“Problems?” Lucy speared a piece of chicken and studied it. “If you call finding out your husband has been playing footsies with your next-door neighbor for the past six months and everyone on your block knew but you
having problems,
then, why, yes, David and I are having problems.”

“Lucy, I’m so sorry.” Cass set her fork down on the side of her plate. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Not much to say.” Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. “The bastard.”

Lucy nibbled at her food, sniffing all the while. “I’m sorry, Cass.” She shook her head. “I know you probably don’t really want to know about it. I know you don’t do
emotional,
and right now, I’m awfully emotional. And am likely to be weepy on and off for the next few months. I’ll try to do most of my best crying when you’re at work.”

“Lucy . . .” Cass protested weakly.

“It’s okay, honey.” Lucy wiped at her eyes.

“Lucy, you can feel free to cry whenever you need to or want to. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I wish I could make it better for you.” Cass met her cousin’s eyes across the table. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“You could say, ‘David is a total creep and bastard and he was never good enough for you.’”

“David
is
a total creep and a bastard, and I never did think he was good enough for you, Lucy.”

Lucy nodded. “That was good, Cassie.”

“I never understood what you saw in him. He’s not worthy of your tears.”

“You’re getting better at this.”

“Actually, I thought you were crazy to marry him in the first place.”

“Nice, honey. Thank you.”

“To tell the truth, he always reminded me a bit of Mr. Janner.”

“Mr. Janner?”

“Sleazy guy who ran the movie theater when we were kids and who always seemed to have teenage boys hanging around him.”

“Okay, perhaps we can ease up a little now. I get the point, and I appreciate it. We’ll reserve the right to reopen the David-bashing at a future time. And I might need a shoulder to cry on now and then. Just a little.”

Cass reached across the table and patted Lucy’s hand. “You can cry on my shoulder anytime.”

“I might take you up on that, you know, so you might want to think twice.” Lucy began to tear up.

“What are you going to do?”

“You mean, am I going to divorce his sorry ass?”

Cass nodded.

“Yes.” Lucy took a deep breath. “One of the reasons I wanted to stay here a little longer was to have some time to get my game plan down, you know? What I want and how we’re going to tell the kids and all that. Oh, I know they’re not babies, but still, it’s going to be a big shock, and I need to find a way to tell them. I just need some space.”

“You can have all the space you want, Luce. If you want to talk, we’ll talk. If you want to be alone, that’s okay, too. And you can stay until you feel like going back. Whenever that might be.”

“You’re still like a sister to me.” Lucy’s eyes filled with tears. Again.

“Hey, you know what they say about blood being thicker, and all that.”

“I want you to know that I appreciate it. I’ll try to stay out of your hair.”

“Truthfully, with this sudden rash of murders, I’m almost never home. And when I am, for the most part I’m asleep.”

“You just go about your business. I’ll do my own little thing.”

“Oh, shit.” Cass frowned. “I meant to change the linens on your bed before you got here. And I was going to go food shopping.”

“I can do the grocery thing tomorrow, not to worry. And you can just tell me where the sheets are. Oh. Wait. Let me guess.” Lucy grinned. “Same place they’ve always been, right? Honestly, Cass, you walk into this house and it’s 1950 all over again. Nothing has changed since Gramma died.”

“I haven’t really had a lot of time to spend decorating, Lucy. For the past few years, I’ve been the only detective in town. We finally hired another one, and his wife decides she hates it here and she wants to go back to Wisconsin. So he, being a good husband, packs it in and leaves us in the middle of a couple of nasty homicides. Long story short, I’m back to being the only detective in town.” Cass blew out a long breath. “Which is a roundabout way of saying I just haven’t had the time.”

“I thought you looked tired. You have dark circles under your eyes. Hey, I have some really good eye cream that takes that dark puffiness away.” Lucy pushed back from the table. “Come on, if you’re finished eating, I’ll get it for you.”

“I’m finished eating—thank you very much for stopping to pick up dinner—but I’m exhausted, Lucy. I think I’ll turn in.”

“No, no, you need to try this cream first. Come on . . .”

Cass got up wearily and locked the back door. She swung her bag over her shoulder and followed Lucy out of the room.

“Leave the kitchen lights on, Cass,” Lucy was saying as she went up the steps. “I’ll come back down and clean up from dinner. I’ll be awake for a while yet.”

She reached the top of the steps and said, “I’ll just grab that eye cream for you . . .”

Cass stood in the doorway of Lucy’s room and watched her cousin open a satchel.

“What the hell do you have in there?” Cass laughed. “You clean off the department store cosmetic counters? What is all that stuff?”

“Oh, different products for different things. Vitamin C day cream, it has an SPF of 25. Vitamin E night cream. Makeup. Shampoos. You know.”

Cass, who used one all-purpose face cream—when she thought of it, which wasn’t often—and who had used the same brand of shampoo since she was a teenager, shook her head and took the small jar Lucy held out for her.

“Here, come in the bathroom and I’ll put it on for you.”

“Lucy, I can handle putting creamy stuff under my eyes. I’m assuming that’s where it goes.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.” Lucy turned on the light in the small bathroom, which was barely big enough for both women. “Give me that jar.”

Cass rolled her eyes while Lucy dabbed the cool white cream onto her skin.

“See, you don’t want to rub it in, you just want to smooth it on a little.”

“Right. Thanks. I’m going to bed now.”

“Cassie, you ever think we were maybe switched at birth?” Lucy grabbed her cousin by the arm and pointed to the mirror that hung above the sink. “You look so much like my mother, and I look so much like yours. You have the light hair, I have the dark.”

“Well, our mothers were sisters, Luce. We do share lots of the same genes.” Cass stared into the mirror. She and Lucy did share a strong resemblance. “But I never realized how much you look like my mom. And how much like Aunt Kimmie I look, now that you mention it. Of course, since we are four months apart, it would have been hard to switch us in the hospital, you know?”

“Seems like the resemblance grows stronger as we get older,” Lucy noted. “Not such a bad thing, though, right? They were both knockouts.”

“They sure were. Last time I saw your mother, she still looked fabulous. I can only dream of looking that good when I’m her age.”

“She takes good care of herself, though I think she gets too much of that Arizona sun. You’ll look great, too, when you’re in your fifties if you take care of your skin. Oh—I have a wonderful little concealer you have to try. It will just wipe away those puffs and lines under your eyes. I’ll just leave it in the bathroom for you to use in the morning.”

“And they say rest is essential, right? Well, I’m all for getting some rest.”

“Okay, then, I’m going to make up my bed and you go right ahead and crawl into yours. I have a feeling you’re going to give that under-eye cream a severe test.”

“Are you sure I can’t give you a hand?”

“Go to bed, Cassie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Cass yawned. “Lucy, I’m glad you’re here. And I’m sorry you’re having problems.”

“I’m glad I’m here, too. And as for my problems, well, a little retail therapy might help. Would you be upset if I did something about that sofa in the living room?”

“Whatever.” Cass laughed and went to bed.

Downstairs, a small notebook in hand, Lucy began to plan the bungalow’s makeover. If she couldn’t be happy, she could at least be busy.

S
even

FBI Special Agent Mitchell Peyton only wanted one thing on this Friday afternoon: an uninterrupted ten-minute block of time in which to finish his lunch.

He scowled as the fifth phone call in a row was put through to him.
Okay, I’ll settle for five.
He counted to ten, put down the sandwich he’d been about to bite into, and tried to talk himself into not picking up the receiver.

He wished he could make himself not answer, just once.

“Peyton.”

“Mitch, it’s John Mancini. Got a minute?” As always, the boss wasted little time with small talk.

“Sure.”

“Come on down, then.”

Mitch hung up and rewrapped his sandwich—his favorite, roast beef and provolone with horseradish on a crusty whole-wheat roll—in the heavy white butcher’s paper Andre’s Deli used for some of its best work. He put Andre’s latest masterpiece back into the bag it had been delivered in, then opened the bottom drawer of his desk. Not that anyone in his office would walk off with someone else’s sandwich, of course.

Yeah, right.

“Bunch of sharks around here,” Mitch muttered, and dropped the sandwich into the open drawer, then took a long drink from the bottle of water that sat open on his desk before setting out for the elevator.

“He’s expecting you. Try not to let him go on for more than eight to ten minutes. He has a meeting with the director at noon,” Eileen Gibson, longtime secretary to John Mancini, said without looking up from her computer when Mitch entered her office. “The coffee’s fresh. I just made it.”

“Thanks, Eileen.” Biting back the urge to refer to her by the name the field agents called her behind her back—the Little General—Mitch paused long enough to pour a cup. He ignored what he knew coffee would do to his near-empty stomach.

He rapped his knuckles on the inner door, then let himself in.

“Be right with you. Have a seat.” With one hand, John motioned vaguely in the direction of the chairs that stood on the opposite side of the desk from where he sat, and with the other, he finished scribbling whatever note he’d been in the midst of making.

Mitch folded his long legs as he sat on the chair closest to the window and sipped at his coffee.

“Nice job you did, wrapping up the Kingsley case, Mitch.”

“Thanks. I had a lot of help on that one.”

“True. Everyone on that team is to be commended. And will be commended, officially. I’ll be seeing to that in about forty minutes. But I do believe it was your investigative—and computer—skills that put the pieces together. Very impressive.”

“Thanks, John.”

“Actually, you did such a good job, and I’m so impressed, I’m going to ask you to look into something else for me.” John Mancini leaned back in his chair. With his shirtsleeves rolled up and his glasses hanging from his shirt pocket, no one would suspect him to be the head of a special investigative unit that operated within the FBI. “You know who Joshua Landry was?”

“Sure. He’s that true crime writer who was killed last year by one of the three murderers who had hooked up in Pennsylvania and switched hit lists. Sort of a
Strangers on a Train
meets Ted Bundy and friends, if I recall.”

John nodded. “Close enough. The three met by accident in a holding room in the courthouse and had a little too much unsupervised time alone. They seemed to have made some type of deal to kill for one another—each would knock off three people who had at some point in time pissed off one of the others. None of them ever admitted to it, but it was pretty apparent that an agreement had been reached among them. Anyway, Landry crossed paths with one of them some years ago and had apparently made one hell of an impression. Enough so that he was gunned down in his barn one morning last fall. Shame, really. He was not only a good writer, but a smart investigator. He’d have made a hell of an agent, I always thought.”

Mitch sat quietly, waiting to find out what all this had to do with him.

“One of the things that Landry did that set him apart from other writers in the genre was he’d look into open cases, usually older ones, cold ones. If he solved them, he’d write a book about it. More than once, he’d turned over information or evidence to us or to the local law enforcement agency, which helped lead to an arrest and conviction. He was a pretty sharp guy.”

“Sounds like.” Mitch was still wondering.

“I was there the day he was murdered. Spent some time with his daughter—did I mention he had a daughter?” John looked across the desk.

“No, but I know you’re working up to it.”

John laughed. “We’ve worked together too long, Mitch. I got a call from Regan Landry—that’s the daughter—this morning. She’s been going through her father’s files for the past few weeks, organizing things and what all, thinking about selling his house. I’m not surprised. It’s a beautiful spread he had, but Josh was killed there. Guess that spoiled any really good memories she might have had of the place. Anyway, she tells me she’s going through some boxes and found some notes Josh made about the Bayside Strangler. Remember him?”

“I don’t have to remember him. Every time I turn on the news, I hear about another murder that’s being attributed to a copycat Strangler up there in some Jersey resort town. At least, last time I heard, they were still suspecting it was a copycat.”

“Right. That’s the official word. Well, it seems Regan has some correspondence from the real Strangler that was written to her father years ago, as well as some notes that Josh made that Regan isn’t sure how to interpret. She thinks they may somehow relate to the old case. I’d like you to make a trip up there—Landry’s farm is right outside of Princeton—and look over what she’s got. If something Josh had in his files could help ID the original Strangler, who knows? Maybe it could lead to the killer who’s trying to follow in his footsteps.”

“If she has information about the Bayside Strangler, shouldn’t she be contacting the department investigating these recent killings?”

“She’s called the chief of police up there in Bowers Inlet several times, but he hasn’t called her back. So I’m thinking he’s in over his head, not calling back the writer because, hey, she’s just a writer and what he needs isn’t more publicity but a few leads.”

“That’s a big assumption, John.”

John nodded. “Could be unfair, sure. But I’ve seen the local chief on TV. Looks like he’s really trying to get a handle on things, but my impression is, he’s overwhelmed. He mentioned on the
Today Show
he has one detective. One detective, and all these bodies. Think about it.”

Mitch did. He didn’t envy the chief of police who had to try to track a serial killer with only a small department and one detective.

“So . . . ?”

“So I’m sending you to go through Josh Landry’s paperwork and see if you can find anything there that might shed some light on the case.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to send an agent to the scene and give them another set of hands and eyes?”

“That’s next on my agenda.” John handed Mitch a business card. “Here’s Regan Landry’s phone number and address. Give her a call and let her know you’ll be stopping by tomorrow. I already told her I’d send someone up, tell her you’re it.”

“Okay.” Mitch took the card and stood. “I should know after a day or so if there’s anything there.”

“Good. I’ll wait to hear from you,” John said. “Oh, and on your way out, tell Eileen to track down Rick Cisco and get him on the line.”

It was nearly ten
P.M.
by the time Mitch turned off the light in his office and gathered the file containing the information about Josh Landry he’d printed off the Internet. The hall stretched long and quiet before him as he started toward the elevator. Light spilled from the doorway of the office five doors down from his. He rapped his knuckles on the frame and peered inside.

“You almost done?” he asked.

Rick Cisco looked up from his desk, where a ream of paper spilled out from a fat file.

“Just about. You heading out?”

“Yeah. Thought I’d stop at Henry’s for a beer on my way home. Want to join me?”

“I need about ten more minutes.”

“Sure.” Mitch dropped his briefcase on the floor and slid into the lone visitor’s chair.

“I have a few more things I want to print out . . .” The agent’s focus was on his computer screen. “I’m leaving for New Jersey first thing in the morning and I want to get a handle on this case.”

“Let me guess. You pulled Bayside Strangler duty.”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Mancini intimated earlier he’d be sending someone to work with the police, right before he asked Eileen to track you down.”

“Should be an interesting case.” Rick stood and leaned over his desk to replenish the paper supply in the printer. “I spoke with the chief of police up there today. They really have a mess on their hands. Bodies piling up, no witnesses, no suspects. Very little trace evidence. This guy has been very, very careful, all the way around. He’s left very little behind. No semen, no saliva, no blood.”

“Fingerprints?”

“They’re trying to lift them off the victims’ skin—all the vics were manually strangled—but it’s been tough going. They’re sending the prints on to our lab, see if we can get something usable.” Rick sat down and hit the
Print
command and watched the first few sheets of paper feed through before turning to Mitch. “Of course, if there are no prints on file that match, it won’t much help us at this point.”

“Well, I’m heading to New Jersey, too, and coincidentally, my assignment is related to yours, though I’m sure it won’t be as interesting. I’m going to be going through the papers of a writer who may have received some correspondence from the Bayside Strangler. The original one. The real one. Whatever we want to call him.”

Mitch filled Rick in on the information he’d gotten from Regan Landry when he’d called her that afternoon.

“So what’s she got in the files that the FBI needs to look at?” Rick asked.

“She says she has a lot of notes that her father had made and some letters from someone claiming to be the Strangler.”

“Why would he have contacted a writer?”

Mitch shrugged. “Who knows? I guess that’s one of the things I’ll find out. Not as exciting as directly working a serial killer case, though.”

“I don’t know about that.” Rick grinned. “Have you seen this Regan Landry?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. She was on one of those morning news shows not too long ago.”

“And . . . ?”

“Short and sweet, good-looking. Interesting face. Lots of long curly blond hair and nicely put together, if I recall. And smart. She came off as being really, really smart.” Rick stood and packed the printed material into the file, which he tucked under his arm.

“Well, we’ll see how smart she is when we start going over her father’s notes.” Mitch followed Rick to the door and snapped off the light. “I’m still thinking you got the best deal, though. I haven’t had a good serial case in a long time.”

“You had that guy in California last year,” Rick reminded him as they headed for the elevator.

“Yeah, but that was an easy one. Something tells me this is going to be a lot more involved.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’ve got two possibilities here. One, he’s the real Strangler. Two, he’s a copycat. If this is the guy who has been around for—what is it, twenty-some years?—he’s good, Rick. He’s really, really good. Where’s he been all this time? You know he’s been up to something—they don’t kill, then stop, then start up again unless something has intervened.”

“Like maybe a prison term.” Rick hit the
Down
button.

“Maybe. Could be you’ll get a match off those prints there.”

“I’ve already requested that any prints we find be run through NCIC on a priority basis.”

“And if he hasn’t been in prison, where’s he been?” Mitch asked. “And then we have to consider the possibility that this guy is not the real deal.”

“The chief up there in Jersey—Denver’s his name—seems to be weighing in heavily on the copycat scenario.”

“Either way, you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Mitch said as the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside the car. He hit the button for the lobby. “The original Strangler or someone following in his footsteps, he’s going to be hard to bring down. He’s killed how many now—three? four?—in a short period of time, and no one has a clue as to who he is or what he looks like.”

“And it isn’t going to get easier the more time that passes. According to Denver, every day more people come into town for the summer season.”

“If you’re the killer,” Mitch noted, “that’s good news. The more potential suspects the law has to weed through, the less heat on you.”

“If you’re the killer, it’s great news. The higher the population, the more potential victims get added to the pool. There’s no telling how high the body count could go before we find him.”

The two men stepped off the elevator and signed out at the main desk in the lobby.

“I’ll meet you at Henry’s,” Mitch said as they walked out through the back door to the parking lot. His car was just ten spots off to the left, Rick’s a little farther out in the lot.

Mitch unlocked his driver’s-side door, thinking about the files that awaited him at the Landry farm and the possibility there’d be something that might aid in the search for a killer.

At the same time, Rick was electronically opening his own car, wondering just how high the count would go before the killer was stopped, and how long it would take before he was tracked down.