Phillip Margolin - Wild Justice

It didn't work.

No, it didn' t, but something did happen. I received instructions to come to a rest area off the interstate. A diary excerpt was enclosed. It was an account of the torture of one of the victims. Only the killer would have that journal. So I went to the rest area early to lay a trap, but I outsmarted myself. The killer was there ahead of me, and I was hit with a tranquilizer dart.

Amanda held up her hand as though she were stopping traffic.

Please. If you're going to tell me that Bobby Vasquez is the killer, I'll walk out right now.

No, no. I didn't even know that he had followed me to the rest area until McCarthy questioned me after Justine's murder.

So who is it now? The butler?

Cardoni answered her sarcasm with a murderous glare. Then his anger faded and he looked defeated. Amanda folded her arms across her chest but stayed seated.

The first time I woke up after being tranquilized I was in total darkness and disoriented. I' m not even certain that this really happened. I thought I saw light and I think that someone gave me a shot, then I was out again.

The next time I came to I was in Justine's kitchen. I remember Fiori shooting me. The next thing I remember, I was in the hospital.

Amanda stood up. This has been a very interesting story, Dr. Cardoni. I suggest you try selling it to Hollywood. Perhaps you can start a writing career while you're on death row.

I have proof. Have them test my blood. The hospital draws blood before an operation. Have the hospital run a screen for tranquilizers. I was still heavily sedated when Fiori shot me.

You can have your attorney do that. My firm doesn't represent you anymore.

Amanda pressed a button next to the door.

I know who killed Justine, Cardoni shouted at her. It's your boyfriend, Tony Fiori.

Amanda burst out laughing. If I were you, I' d go with the butler. It's a hell of a lot more believable.

He tried to kill me at the hospital, Cardoni cried out desperately. Then he shot me at Justine's house. I was on the floor when he came through the door. I was barely conscious. Why would he shoot someone who was no threat to him? I think he needed me dead to stop the investigation. I think he was afraid that the police would figure out that I' m innocent if they kept looking into these murders.

Amanda turned to face Cardoni. The fear she' d felt was long gone, replaced by a cold hatred.

He shot you because you tried to kill him, Dr. Cardoni. I saw your gun.

I never fired a shot. I swear.

Amanda banged on the door and the guard opened it immediately. She turned back to face Cardoni.

I was with Tony when Justine called from her house and asked me to come over. She was alive then, but she was dead when Tony and I arrived. You were the only other person at the house. You tried to kill Tony and you murdered Justine.

Miss Jaffe, please, Cardoni pleaded. But Amanda was already out the door.

Chapter 61

Amanda was furious with herself for visiting Cardoni and furious with the surgeon for thinking so little of her that he would try to fool her with his ridiculous story. During the return trip to the Stockman Building, she thought about things Cardoni had said that would help nail him. He' d confessed to planting the mug, scalpel and surgical cap at the farmhouse. This tied him to the scene of four murders, but it didn't prove that he' d killed anybody. Amanda wanted something more. Justine's death demanded it.

It was while she was parking that Amanda remembered the Ghost Lake murders that Bobby Vasquez had included on his list. Back at her desk, she ran an Internet search. She found several stories about Betty Francis, a senior at Sunset High School, who had disappeared seventeen years before during a winter break ski trip, and Nancy Hamada, a sophomore at Oregon State, who had disappeared the next year, also while skiing at the Ghost Lake resort during winter break. Their bodies had been discovered fourteen years ago when a cross-country skier stumbled across them.

Amanda phoned the sheriff's department in Ghost Lake. No one in the department had been with the sheriff's office fourteen years earlier, but the secretary, who had grown up in Ghost Lake, remembered that Sally and Tom Findlay's boy, Jeff, had been a deputy when the bodies were discovered. Amanda called the Findlays and learned that their son was working in Portland.

Zimmer Scrap and Iron was an ugly stretch of chain-link fence, piles of twisted and rusting chunks of iron and herds of monster cranes that spread along the shores of the Willamette River. Just after four-thirty Amanda parked her car in front of the corporate headquarters, a three-story brick building surrounded by chaos and ruin. Amanda asked the receptionist if Jeff Findlay was in. Moments later a tall, square-jawed man with sandy hair walked into the waiting area. His pale blue eyes fixed on Amanda, and he flashed her a confused smile.

What did you want to see me about, Miss Jaffe?

Two murders you helped investigate at Ghost Lake fourteen years ago. You were a deputy with the county sheriff's office at the time.

Findlay stopped smiling. What's your interest in those cases?

They may be connected to a larger series of murders that were committed over the past four years.

Let's go inside.

Amanda followed Findlay to a small, unoccupied office.

I can see you remember the case. Amanda said.

That was the worst thing I've ever seen. Two months after the girls were dug up I quit law enforcement for good. I enrolled in an accounting program at a community college, then finished up at Portland State. I think I was trying to find a profession that would keep me as far away from dead bodies as I could get.

If Betty Francis and Nancy Hamada looked anything like the victims I've seen, I don't blame you.

Amanda told Findlay about the Cardoni and Castle cases.

We've always thought that the killings in Milton and Multnomah Counties weren't Cardoni's first, Amanda concluded. We were hoping to find an earlier murder that we could connect to him.

And you think this is it?

It might be.

Cardoni's name never came up in our investigation, Findlay said.

Where were the bodies found? Amanda asked.

In separate graves in the forest that borders the ski resort.

Who owned that land?

Ghost Lake Resort.

Cardoni's practice has been to buy property in a remote area and bury the bodies near the house where he tortures his victims. Was there private property near the burial site?

Findlay shook his head. No, there ... Oh, wait. There was a cabin a couple of miles away. Funny thing is, there was a double murder at the cabin a year before we found the bodies. We looked hard for a connection, but the only one we could find was that all four murders were during winter break.

Did the double murder at the cabin involve torture?

Not that we could tell. The cabin was torched and the bodies were badly burned. If I remember, the medical examiner concluded that the man had been bludgeoned.

Amanda frowned. There was something very familiar about this case.

Who were the victims? she asked.

One was a young woman. She' d gone up to the ski resort with her boyfriend and disappeared. Or at least that's what the boyfriend said. They were having problems. We interviewed several witnesses who heard loud arguments on the evening the woman disappeared.

The popular theory was that she' d been upset with her boyfriend, met the guy who owned the cabin and gone off with him. The boyfriend finds out, goes to the cabin, kills them and burns the place down. Trouble was, we never had any evidence to support the theory, so no one was ever arrested.

A thought flickered through Amanda's mind, but she could not hold on to it.

Do you remember the names of the victims?