Stop Me (13 page)

Leo looked at Bookwalter’s profile. He was biting his moustache and looking at the area of dirt in the
right-hand
corner of where they stood. ‘Who?’ He tried to imbue the word with weary scepticism but failed.

‘I don’t know.’ Bookwalter shuffled forward and looked at the patch of ground as if it might yield an answer. ‘She told me her name was Candy but that was probably false.’

More carefully rehearsed histrionics? Leo studied Bookwalter’s reflective expression and told himself that it couldn’t be anything else.

‘Picked her up in Tooley’s Bar and Grill. Think she was new to the streets. She was with some older junkie whore who couldn’t wait to palm her off on me.’

Leo suddenly imagined being at home with 
Bookwalter’s words rattling across his screen. He seemed to be telling the story in the same style he’d spun his account of kidnapping Laura from Chevalier’s.

‘I’d been thinking about killing for months before that but not that evening. Then she’d shown me her switchblade. One of her tricks had given it to her. In lieu of service I guess. She showed it to me with her black chipped nails.’ Bookwalter clenched both his hands a few times and then scratched his knee.

Leo found himself registering the four possible exits from where they stood but still felt incredulity ballooning in his throat. ‘Why is it so important you tell me this?’

‘I want to put myself in context.’

Leo snorted derision involuntarily. The sound reverberated and Bookwalter looked around as if he didn’t know where the noise came from before fixing Leo with a drunk and blankly ingenuous expression. It was Leo’s turn to look at the patch of earth.

‘She actually let me tie her up here. Thought I was kinky. We hadn’t even agreed on a price.’ He swallowed. ‘She had her whole life in front of her but she’d already thrown it away.’

‘So you killed her…there.’ Leo pointed and accelerated the story. Whether it was to hasten his exit from the cemetery and being in his narrator’s company or because it was starting to make him feel uneasy he didn’t know. 

‘No. I don’t think I killed her. I stuck the blade into her five or six times while she lay face down; actually felt the metal scrape against her spine when I pulled it out. Then she did something that genuinely unnerved me.’

And Leo knew exactly what it was.

‘I don’t know whether it was a reflex or if it was her being guileful, but she raised her tied hands as I knifed her and when I tried to push them down she curled her fingers around the tops of mine. She didn’t grab them, she seemed to caress the three fingers of my right hand…stroked them…and I remember how it had taken me out of the moment. It unnerved me and I remember slapping her hand away and stabbing her again.’

Leo didn’t look up from the dirt. Hearing Bookwalter replicate the specific details that he’d used describing his abduction of Laura made him remember how convincing they’d seemed when he read them over and over on his laptop. It always seemed that they had been cut and pasted from a real experience and it now appeared that Bookwalter had inadvertently revealed their origin. Or was that what he wanted Leo to believe?

‘Is this another ploy?’ He still didn’t look up from the dirt.

‘I came back here about a week later.’ He appeared not to have heard and it was like his reaction to the other occasions Leo had attempted to interrupt his 
online reminiscences. ‘There’d been nothing on the TV or in the papers. There was no body here. She’d either crawled away or somebody had found her and taken her…maybe to do something a lot worse than I did. I waited for weeks. After months I gave up on her.’ Bookwalter seemed genuinely crestfallen.

Leo resisted the urge to believe the story. It seemed such an unexceptional account in comparison to his more egotistic narration that it immediately appeared true, but that was what Bookwalter did best. That was why Leo was standing in a cemetery in New Orleans.

‘Then I hooked up with Coker. I met him through a chatroom and we seemed to have a lot of common interests. He and I formed our own discussion group – the Toolbox Forum. Coker was an IT wizard on the side, everything was password protected and open only to a handful of select members.’

Leo had forgotten his watch and listened. Whether it had been carefully rehearsed or not, Bookwalter definitely seemed to be heading towards something significant.

‘It was an ideas exchange. I think the other guys were just getting their rocks off but Coker was earnest. Cocksucker.’

It was the first time Leo had ever heard Bookwalter resort to obscenity and it shocked him to hear it.

‘One time I logged onto the forum and Coker was the only other online. He was always online. Took his 
laptop wherever he was staying. We started talking about the Interstate Strangler.’ Bookwalter squinted at Leo expecting recognition.

Leo pursed his lip and shook his head.

‘Edward Sloman. He’d been arrested a couple of days before. He’d murdered eight prostitutes between Waynesboro and Charlottesville after picking them up, giving them spiked alcohol and choking them to death in motels while they were still unconscious.’ Bookwalter reeled off the details like a mantra. ‘Sloman actually wanted to be caught but Coker and I got talking about his method and how it could be expanded on. Coker was a sensationalist, liked the idea of unsolved, high-profile homicide. He came up with the concept of murdering someone in every US state using a unique method, which could only be attributed to him. He travelled around a lot so I could see why the idea excited him. Then I trumped his ace and said wouldn’t it be more effective to murder internationally. That really popped his corn. Cocksucker.’

Leo watched Bookwalter’s spittle spray onto the dirt and his body stagger slightly sideways before he righted himself.

‘I actually came up with the name Vacation Killer during that discussion. And it was me who thought of removing the jawbone, boiling it and posting it to the police wrapped in an item of the victim’s clothing. Coker thought I was just an amateur, a fantasist. Didn’t 
believe me when I told him what I did here.’

Leo visualised Bookwalter crouching in the dirt with the girl face down.

‘I knew he was a killer for real though. I knew that because he never talked about himself like the others. There was no boast in him. It was like he was gathering data, always pumping everybody, pushing them to open up.’

Either Bookwalter was telling the truth or it was his best performance yet, but Leo could think of no reason for him to denigrate himself like this. It was a far cry from the claims he’d adhered to during the months of their exchanges, and trying to desperately associate himself with some other online sociopath seemed to be the ultimate illustration that nothing he’d ever said until now was true.

‘I even swapped ideas with Coker about the random emails. He liked the idea of sending them to advertise his crimes to unconnected parties before the bodies were found but it was me that suggested spamming organisations with details of potential victims before they’d been murdered.’ Bookwalter’s mortification was apparent. ‘I also had the idea to arrange the internal organs of victims like a clock face and use the arms as minute and hour hands – he never took that up.’

‘So you know exactly who the Vacation Killer is but you’ve never told anybody.’ 

‘I’m the Vacation Killer.’ Bookwalter’s voice was suddenly level again as if he’d realised he’d said too much and was trying to rein himself in. ‘Coker may have sent the emails and murdered the girls but he was a charlatan with no imagination. I’ve told you, the trick is to refuse amateurs like him oxygen.’

If there had been any conflict left in Leo about whether Bookwalter’s insanity was selective, it had now evaporated. His admission to playing second fiddle to Coker, but having concealed this fact to spare his own warped ego, dispensed with the idea that he was nothing more than an astute businessman.

‘After that conversation I never heard from him again. I tried to re-establish contact when the first victim of the Vacation Killer hit the news and the emails started circulating but he refused to speak to me. I wondered if he’d get in touch when I set up the website but it looks like he’s happy to remain anonymous.’

Leo tried to process the implications of what he was saying and imagined fingernails other than Laura’s caressing the murdering hands that hung at Bookwalter’s sides. ‘So Coker goes unpunished, you get to earn a few bucks and Bonsignore takes the glory from both of you to the grave.’

Bookwalter’s frame seemed to tense at the mention of the name and the trapped spark of vitriol suddenly energised his lips. ‘Bonsignore is irrelevant. There were plenty of people who tried to claim responsibility 
for the Vacation Killings. The police decided to believe Bonsignore because they were desperate and he worked for the same feed company as Coker.’ His mouth snapped shut again as did his left eye; he had said too much again. He closed his other eye for a moment as if summoning a reserve of patience. ‘I’m telling you these things in confidence, Leo. I’m telling you these things because I want you to understand who I am.’ His tone was overly amicable and they both knew he’d revealed more than he wanted to.

‘I’m leaving.’ It seemed like the only course of action to Leo. He backed away a couple of paces and was just preparing to turn the corner of the tomb. The quicker he blocked Bookwalter from sight the better.

‘Wait. The photo of your wife. Don’t you want to know who gave it to me?’

Leo paused and glimpsed the desperation in Bookwalter’s squinted features. ‘Who?’

‘Sign the disclaimer and I’ll tell you.’

Leo shook his head. ‘Jesus.’ He turned and walked away from Bookwalter’s killing ground. For a while all he could hear was the sound of his own footsteps on the path then he heard movement behind him. He turned. Bookwalter was still out of sight but the sound of his flip-flops indicated he was coming closer. Leo turned and strode faster.

‘Your sister-in-law, Ashley Pritchett, she gave them to me!’ 

His voice was far enough behind him to resist the temptation to run. It appeared Bookwalter wanted the last word, to play a surprise hand. He had. But Leo kept walking and didn’t look back even after he’d got into the cab. 

?

It was all the response Leo needed to justify the cancellation of his flight back to the UK. He sat back in his uncomfortable plastic silver chair, his morning coffee suddenly tasting bitter on his tongue.

Apart from a Japanese couple seated at the computer to his right, the internet café was empty. Even though the aircon cooled his face from the grill above, his nostrils still couldn’t escape the smell of the remains of Mardi Gras rotting.

Was this just a ploy so he wouldn’t have to return to his non-existence in the UK…to Ashley? No, this was significant enough to legitimise delaying that particular confrontation. Forget the anonymity of cyberspace,
nobody, it appeared, was exactly who he’d thought they were – Matty, Ashley, even Laura had concealed things from him. Laura had done it for all the right reasons, and he was hoping that Ashley would have similar grounds, but Leo couldn’t help feeling that things had been deliberately kept from him, things he should have been part of.

He looked at the question mark and tried to imagine the finger that had typed it, and then the body it was connected to, and the blank face that resided between its shoulders. The email reply had been almost immediate as if it had responded to his internal dialogue.

If he replies then Laura is alive
.

He’d logged onto the Gristex website without really expecting it to lead him anywhere or knowing what to do to begin his search. But when he’d clicked through to the contact page he’d noticed that the list of names for the myriad agricultural departments consisted of email addresses that simply used surname and number before the company name: [email protected] etc. If it
was
his real name, how many Cokers were likely to be working for them? He opened his mail and composed an email to: [email protected].

He then sent the same email to Cokers 1, 2, 3 and 4 and stopped at 5 when all but the first Coker email was returned unsent. So, only one Coker working for Gristex. 

Leo had just been about to close down his email when the reply had appeared in his inbox.

One Mr Coker working for Gristex.

Gristex Cattle Feed Products had headquarters in most states but its main production, sales and distribution nucleus operated out of Montana. That was where Coker was. It seemed preposterous that a man who had very probably committed the sadistic crimes that Bonsignore had confessed to, continued his daily,
nine-to
-five
existence purely because of Bookwalter’s vanity.

Leo’s first reflex was to inform the police – let them take Bookwalter into custody and tell them about his internet dialogues with Coker. When they knew that Coker worked for Gristex – probably knew Bonsignore if he shared a similar work itinerary – they would surely have to reopen the investigation. But when Leo considered Bonsignore’s stance for the months he’d been in prison, he knew that it was likely that Coker 
could remain just as silent about the whereabouts of his victims. Locked away, what good was he to Leo? It could be the start of the same waiting process, even if he was the real Vacation Killer.

Leo made up his mind about travelling to Petroleum County before he’d even come to this conclusion, however. He’d never suspected that accepting Bookwalter’s invitation could have led to anything more than a final confirmation of his fraudulence but, as he was already in the States, finding Coker could now be his only course of action.

He didn’t send another email to Coker and figured the one he’d sent would have made him sufficiently uneasy. After closing his email account, he took a cab directly to the airport and booked a flight to Billings Logan International Airport. Gristex’s hometown of Winnett was approximately eighty miles drive from there and he used his waiting time to hire a car and book a room at the only hotel in town.

Winnett was certainly a different scene to New Orleans. Surrounded by flat farm country, most of which was privately owned by ranchers, the town consisted of about three hundred white people living in half the amount of houses. It had seen its gas and oil boom days in the fifties and sixties, but now the previous population of two thousand had depleted, and many of the buildings were just empty shells. 

The town itself nestled in a valley, the
white-painted
houses in stark contrast to the towering, square-topped mountains that surrounded them. A wonky white ‘W’ was painted along the bluff but it didn’t feel like the sort of place that really wanted to advertise itself. And after passing several hand-made anti-meth campaign placards Leo began to get an idea of what living in this sort of remoteness could do to a person.

He pulled up at the Kozy Korner Café and Bar, realised how hungry he wasn’t and gunned the engine of the unwieldy, black Chevy Suburban he’d picked up at the airport. He’d felt invincible sitting within it, protected from the green but dusty terrain, but there really had been very few chances for him to collide with any other vehicles.

It didn’t take him long to find the only hotel in Winnett. The Montana Rest Stop Hotel looked more like a large garage, and he looked up and sighed at its weathered white frontage before opening the car door and climbing down from the driver’s seat. It was mid-morning but the sun already felt blistering on his scalp.

He was pleasantly surprised by the smart tiled lobby with a piano in the corner – it felt homely. A shy girl with pink hair in braids, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, signed him in. She told him it was a communal bathroom and that he’d have no TV, but her 
enthusiasm made them sound like amenities to be proud of. She appeared to have no local accent, something he’d noticed of everyone he’d been in contact with since he’d touched down. Coming from New Orleans the absence was conspicuous.

He dumped his bag on the bed and wondered if there was any reason to delay his visit to Gristex. Its headquarters were about five miles out of town near the Musselshell River and he guessed not many people who worked there resided in Winnett. It was such a remote location that Leo wondered what the company had to hide. According to the website it was entirely self-sufficient with a high percentage of its staff living on site. Leo felt alone and utterly disconnected from the UK and saw how people who wanted to hide could deliberately lose themselves in such an otherworldly environment.

His stomach bayed and his legs wobbled from lack of food, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to swallow anything until he’d found Coker. He made his way down the landing to the communal bathroom and after wetting his lips carried on down the stairs and back out into the car park, exchanging a nervous smile with the pink-haired girl on the way out.

Gristex’s headquarters weren’t exactly what Leo expected. Anticipating a shard of polished glass staked into the countryside, he was surprised to find it an unshowy brownstone building, crouched low and flat in 
the dust, its considerable, two-storey width flattened out along the horizon. He took one of the named parking spaces nearest the front of the building but away from the main entrance. The expansive car park was nearly full to capacity but there was nobody to be seen and a warm breeze blew across the silent, eerie spectacle. As Leo got out of the car and looked back at the rows of cars behind him, he wondered if the approach he’d decided on was still feasible.