Catherine Coulter - Split Second

“And she said what?”

“She said she barely knew Elsa Cross, only said hi to her when their paths crossed, said she seemed nice enough. Nothing else. The case eventually went cold when no new information surfaced.

“I called the manager this afternoon, asked him what he remembered about Kirsten Bolger. He said she was a loner, always paid her rent on time, and always wore white, never a color for contrast, only white, head to foot. He said he never saw any visitors, guys or gals.”

Coop said, “Bundy was a charmer, a real favorite at a party, evidently nonthreatening, given the number of women he got to leave willingly with him, yet his daughter is quiet, a loner, acts and dresses weird. But she doesn’t wear white anymore; now it’s black.

“There’s another thing. From what the bartenders in Cleveland and Philadelphia tell us, she can be outgoing, charming, a mirror of her daddy.”

Delion signaled to Cindy Lou for their check. After he set down his credit card, he said, “I wondered about that. I guess our girl’s adaptable, has some talent.”

Lucy said, “Sounds to me like she got into it with Elsa Cross, that or something around that time was the trigger that made her change her ways, and eventually set her out on her road trip. I wonder why she killed that first girl; she was only sixteen, you said?”

Delion nodded.

Coop said, “Maybe, like Elsa Cross, the girl made the mistake of criticizing her about something, and she found out about it.”

Delion said, “Yeah, could be, but again, no one remembers any confrontation between the two of them. It was a long time ago, after all.

“Okay, now there’s another woman—Arnette Carpenter—I went through her book but couldn’t find she knew Kirsten Bolger at all. I’ve assigned a couple of guys to try to find a connection to Kirsten. They’re going to be interviewing everyone involved again, all except for the husband.” Delion gave them a placid smile. “I called Mr. Roy Carpenter. We’ll pay him a visit tomorrow morning ourselves.”

“You’re good,” Lucy said, and grabbed the last broken tortilla chip before Carlos could take the basket away.

Delion signed the credit slip, picked up his notebook. “Roy Carpenter was the prime suspect at the time of Arnette’s disappearance, but there was no body, no rumors of marital discord, no other woman lurking in the wings, so he got dropped and the case went cold. This was three years ago last May. He still lives in the same house in the Richmond District.

“Okay, kids, you ready for some modern art?”

Post Street, San Francisco

Fantasia Gallery

Since it was a Friday evening and warm, always an unexpected treat in San Francisco, both natives and tourists swarmed the streets. There weren’t as many panhandlers in Union Square anymore, Delion told them, as they made their way out of the underground garage. He missed Old Ducks, though, a Vietnam vet who used to play the harmonica over near Macy’s, always with three blankets around his shoulders, a watering can to collect change from the tourists passing by, and a nice word for everybody. They walked over to Post Street, home to a good dozen art galleries.

There were more locals than tourists in Fantasia tonight, because the showing was for a local artist. The gallery lights were bright, and the mood was light with laughter, maybe because the paintings in the spotlights were filled with such outrageous colors and shapes, they made you want to smile. Whether or not you’d want to look at a creature with two heads and two matching tails every day of your life on your living-room wall was another matter entirely, Lucy thought. The artist getting all the attention was Exeter Land, a stylishly tall and skinny man, wearing perfectly wrinkled loose linen pants and a matching linen jacket. He held a glass of champagne between his long, thin fingers, and stood chatting in the middle of a group of admirers, flushed and happy.

They walked around the gallery, looking mostly at the people there, and spotted about a dozen of Mrs. Lansford’s paintings, all hung on one wall and accented with the very best lighting. They were exuberant, Lucy thought, like Mr. Exeter Land’s—in fact, like all the artists she carried, as if they all cheered at the same fantasyland ballpark.

Delion walked toward a woman who stood at the far wall of the big open gallery floor, leaning against a small dark blue desk with white half-moons painted on it, a bottle of water in her hand. She was in her fifties, trim, with very long dark hair, not even a dash of gray, that she wore straight and pulled back with gold clips behind her ears. Coop could easily picture her younger—she had a bit of the look of Bundy’s onetime fiancée, as well as many of Bundy’s victims. But she was older now, and carried a look of confidence, he thought, in herself, and in the scene unfolding around her. She was watching the crowd carefully, her eyes roving over each of the people in her gallery. Assessing the possible buyers? Surely she had to be pleased at the turnout for her artist.

Delion nodded to Coop and Lucy. The three of them formed a loose half circle around Mrs. Lansford.

Delion pulled out his badge, introduced himself, then introduced Agent Lucy Carlyle and Agent Cooper McKnight of the FBI. “We’re here about the murder of five women in San Francisco, Chicago, and Cleveland, Mrs. Lansford.”

She looked at the three of them in turn, nothing changing on her face, not even a small tic or an eyebrow going up, nothing at all. Her very dark eyes remained calm, only politely interested. “You want to speak to me about some murders? Murders, did you say? How can I possibly help you, Inspector? Agents?”

Delion brought out the driver’s license photo of Kirsten Bolger, along with the police sketch and a photo of Ted Bundy. He spread them out on the desk behind her.

She took a quick look at the photos. Again, her expression did not change. “A moment, please. Let’s go to my office.” She said nothing to anyone, simply walked out of the main gallery, up a circular flight of steps, down a lovely rose carpeted hallway with more paintings for sale on the walls, and opened a door. She stepped back and waved them in.

Her office was a 3-D fantasy, Lucy thought, large and filled with color. The paintings, a sofa, four chairs, and a coffee table—everything was vivid, bold, and whimsical. There were large stuffed animals scattered about the room—a giraffe, a lion, a horse, and an anteater. The wall-to-wall carpeting was red, with big circles of white and yellow. You smiled, couldn’t help yourself.

“Sit down, won’t you?”

They didn’t sit. Delion once again spread the photos on the desktop, a shiny black affair with a black computer on top and a black phone.

“Would you please look at these photos again, Mrs. Lansford.”

She looked. “Yes?”

“You recognize your daughter, Kirsten?”

“Is that Kirsten? That looks like her driver’s license, and the sketch resembles her, to be sure. Why, yes, I do believe it is.”

“And you recognize your daughter’s father. Ted Bundy?”

Still, there was no expression at all on her face. She was silent a moment, studying each of the photos now, then she said quietly, “What in the world would make you think such a thing, Inspector?”

Delion said, “One of the intended victims, a young woman in Philadelphia, scored her fingernails down Kirsten’s face. We typed her DNA from the tissue and matched her to Ted Bundy.”

“Imagine that. Is there no privacy of any kind anymore? I would very much appreciate it if you did not tell George that his stepdaughter’s father was one of the most notorious serial killers of all time.”