Kill Me Once Read online

  ‘You worked pretty quick. What did you do?’

  ‘Well, I mean I strangled Mrs Otero … she went out, passed out, and I thought she was dead. I strangled Josephine and she passed out. I thought she was dead. And then I went over and put a bag on Junior’s head, and then if I remember right, Mrs Otero came back … she came back and…’

  ‘Sir, let me ask you about Joseph Otero Sr. He tore a hole in the bag. What did you do with him then?’

  ‘I put another bag, either that… I recollect, I think I put either a cloth or a T-shirt or something over his head and then another bag and then tightened it up.’

  ‘Did he subsequently die?’

  ‘Well, yes, I mean I was … didn’t stay there and watch him. I was moving around the room.’

  ‘So you indicated that you strangled Mrs Otero after you had done this, is that correct?’

  ‘I went back and strangled her again. It finally killed her at that time.’

  ‘So this is in regards to Count 2. You first of all put the bag over Joseph Otero’s head and he tore a hole in the bag, then you went ahead … did you strangle Mrs Otero then?’

  ‘First of all, Mr Otero was strangled … a bag put over his head and strangled him. Then I thought he was going down. Then I went over and strangled Mrs Otero, and I thought she was down. Then I strangled Josephine and she was down, and then I went over to Junior and put the bag on his head. After that Mrs Otero woke back up and, you know, she was pretty upset with what’s going on, and at that point in time I strangled her … the death strangle at that time.’

  ‘With your hands?’

  ‘No, with a cord, with a rope. Then I think at that point in time I redid Mr Otero and put the bag over his head, and then Junior … oh, before that she asked me to save her son so I actually had taken the bag off. I was really upset at that point in time. So basically Mr Otero was down, Mrs Otero was down, then I went ahead and took Junior. I put another bag over his head and took him into the other bedroom.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘Put a bag over his head, put a cloth over his head, a T-shirt and bag so he couldn’t tear a hole in it. He subsequently died from that. I went back up, Josephine had woke back up.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I took her to the basement and hung her.’

  ‘You hung her in the basement?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you do anything else at that time?’

  ‘Yes, I had some sexual fantasies, but that was after she was hung.’

  ‘All right. What did you do then?’

  ‘I went through the house, kinda cleaned it up. It’s called the right-hand rule. You go from room to room to clean things up. I think I took Mr Otero’s watch. I guess I took a radio. I had forgot about that but apparently took a radio.’

  ‘Why did you take these things?’

  ‘I don’t know … I have no idea.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I got the keys to the car … in fact I had the keys, I think, earlier before that, a way of getting out of the house, and cleaned the house a little bit, made sure everything was packed up and left through the front door, then went over to their car and drove over to Dillons and left the car there. I eventually walked back to my car.’

  ‘All right, sir, from what you have just said I take it that the facts you told me apply to all of Counts 1, 2, 3 and 4 – is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Nathan smiled as the tape clicked off and the strains of Ashley Ball’s version of Lecuona’s ‘En Tres Por Cuatro’ came on over the car stereo. With very few exceptions, he’d soon be following the exact script he’d just heard to a T.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dana flipped the cellphone off and felt all the blood drain from her cheeks. Dizziness clouded her brain. She found it hard to breathe. Jeremy Brown stepped forward quickly as she swayed back and forth on her heels in the centre of the conference room.

  ‘Whoa,’ he said, taking her by the shoulders and leading her gently to a chair. ‘Easy, now. Let me get you some water.’

  Dana’s head swam as Brown went over to the water cooler in the corner and drew her a drink from the blue tap. A moment later he handed her a little conical paper cup. Dana threw her head back and drained the entire thing in one quick pull. The cold water numbed the back of her throat and cleared the fog in her brain.

  Brown’s face creased with concern. ‘Want some more?’

  Dana shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I’m better now. I was just feeling a little dizzy there for a minute, that’s all.’

  Brown took the empty cup from her hand and crumpled it up before tossing it into a garbage can. ‘Bad phone call, I take it. Is everything OK?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  For a moment Dana considered telling him all about the terrible night when she’d been four years old. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t shake the growing feeling that the man who’d murdered her parents more than three decades earlier was somehow connected to the current murders more intimately than just by calling her out. That he had come back to finish off what he’d started with her all those years ago. Still, she had no concrete evidence for these feelings and the case was already complicated enough without clouding it further with suspicions that she couldn’t prove. And she wasn’t sure she could trust her judgement any more. Besides, getting called out by a killer certainly wasn’t anything new in the history of law enforcement. Crawford could have told her that, and he was the only one in the FBI who knew about her past.

  John Muhammad, the Washington-area serial sniper they’d chased, had left the authorities a ‘Death’ tarot card near a school where he’d apparently lain in wait. On the card, he’d written, ‘Dear Police, I am God.’ The Zodiac Killer regularly signed off on his correspondence to newspapers with the symbol of the zodiac – a cross superimposed on a circle. Ted Kaczynski, the infamous ‘Unabomber’, had demanded that his rambling, 35,000-word manifesto should be published in the newspapers or he would kill again. The best profilers in the FBI, including Dana’s former partner Crawford Bell, believed it was the killers’ way of exerting power and control over society. They got off on the notoriety they received, even if they were the only ones who knew their true identities. So instead of telling Brown about her troubled past, Dana took a deep breath and filled him in on what Templeton had just told her.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Brown said when she’d finished. ‘Why would your name be spelled out, Dana? What do you think it means?’

  ‘No idea,’ Dana said, a little too quickly. She gazed down at the floor, composing herself and hoping he’d think she was still feeling a little dizzy.

  Brown narrowed his eyes. ‘You absolutely sure about that?’

  Dana looked up at him, surprised. Her cheeks flushed hot, and then all the blood suddenly drained away again. She wasn’t used to having her integrity called into question, even when she knew she was lying. ‘Excuse me?’

  Brown held his hands up in the air with his palms facing her in a placating manner. ‘Take it easy, Dana. I didn’t mean to offend you. It just feels like maybe you’re holding something back from me, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  Brown pursed his lips. ‘Fair enough. But if we’re going to work together we really need to trust each other, OK? It’s the only way we’re ever going to get anything done.’

  Dana could only nod.

  After an awkward pause, Brown looked down at his watch. ‘I’ll tell you what. Let’s take a ten-minute break to catch our breath and collect our thoughts, then we’ll head over to meet up with the witness. I’m gonna go grab a quick cup of coffee. You want anything?’

  Dana shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’

  When Brown left the room Dana leaned forward in her chair and rested her head in her hands, knowing that the LA agent was absolutely right. She was holding someth
ing back, and she would have reacted the exact same way had she been in his position. After all, if you didn’t have trust with your partner you didn’t have a goddamn thing.

  But the truth was that she couldn’t help thinking her suspicions were right. All her life she’d feared her parents’ killer would come back to find her, but she’d tried desperately not to let her imagination get the better of her, had tried to move on. And still he haunted her. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, deep down she knew what those letters meant, and now she also knew why each of the victims in Cleveland had been innocent little girls. The monster from her dreams was sending her a very clear message, reminding her of the fact that there was still unfinished business left between them. But why was he coming back for her now? What had happened to wake up his rage after all these years?

  Dana stood up on shaking legs. She really needed some fresh air. She also needed a new life. The one she was living right now wasn’t fit for a dog. A million questions raced through her mind at once, but she didn’t have answers for any of them. Still, she knew she’d better find at least some of those answers pretty damn quick. People’s lives depended on it.

  Including, apparently, her own.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nathan’s thumb found the wheel on the high-powered Nikon binoculars and he brought the image into sharp focus before he allowed himself a small smile.

  Excellent. Dana Whitestone was indeed on his trail out on the West Coast now – exactly where he wanted her to be. It meant she must’ve finally received the message he’d been sending her piecemeal over the past three months.

  About fucking time.

  She was older now, of course, but still looked great. Only the faintest traces of laugh lines had begun to form around the corners of her beautiful mouth and pale blue eyes, and even at thirty-eight she looked a hell of a lot better than most women ten years her junior.

  As she left the downtown LA FBI field office and raised her face to the sun with her eyes closed, Nathan wondered idly what made her think she was so goddamn special. If she thought she was the only one out here who knew how to play this deadly little game, she was sadly mistaken about that. And now he supposed it was up to him to make that fact painfully clear to her.

  He’d been following Dana’s career from a distance and with great interest from the very start. And sometimes from not even all that much of a distance at all. Hell, he’d been in the fucking auditorium the day she’d received her diploma from the FBI Training Academy following seventeen gruelling weeks of training. Nobody had been happier – or prouder – than Nathan when she’d marched across the stage that day and into her new life as a full-fledged agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  She’d stumbled a few times early on in her career, of course, like they all did, but her move to Cleveland had clearly done her a world of good. She’d finally left the safety of the nest in Quantico and spread her wings to fly on her own, which meant she was ready to take him on as an equal.

  Again, about fucking time. After all, if this wasn’t to be a fair fight, what the hell use was there in even having a fight at all? He could easily have snapped her neck or gutted her like a fish any time he’d wanted to over the years, of course – the ultimate goal when everything was said and done – but now he was extremely thankful he’d waited. It would only make the final coup de grâce all that much more delicious.

  Nathan lit up a menthol cigarette, his second of the day, and snapped the silver Zippo shut before carefully pulling the Porsche out into traffic with the sounds of Ashley Ball playing Lecuona’s ‘Yo Te Quiero Siempre’ filling the car. He took a long, satisfying drag on the cigarette and exhaled the wonderful smoke out through his nostrils in a smooth blue stream. Time to review the material he’d learned during his latest study session.

  First there were Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. What a delightfully heartless pair they had been!

  The Ken and Barbie of murder were an attractive blond Canadian couple possessed of a sexually driven bloodlust – he a rapist and insatiable sexual sadist, she his more-than-willing partner in crime. All told, Bernardo and Homolka were suspected of forty-three sex attacks and a long string of killings. Their tragic fall from grace could be traced directly to the day she’d cut a deal with their prosecutors as a result of which he’d received a life sentence.

  Moral of the story? Never work with a partner.

  That wouldn’t be a problem for Nathan. He wasn’t married any more – much to his infinite dismay – and his black heart was quite unavailable for the stealing by any other woman than the one who’d been so cruelly ripped from his life all those years ago.

  The second case he’d studied had concerned Anatoly Onoprienko, a Ukrainian serial killer who’d stalked the countryside murdering at random. Nathan had committed the entire Eastern Economist newspaper article to memory, an exquisite gift that he’d sharpened to a razor’s edge since childhood. In his mind’s eye, he could actually see the words printed on the page:

  ONOPRIENKO SENTENCED FOR MURDER SPREE ZHYTOMYR – The Zhytomyr Regional Court on 1 April passed sentence on Anatoly Onoprienko, who murdered 52 people, handing down the expected death sentence. Mr Onoprienko, a 39-year-old former sailor, will remain in solitary confinement at a Zhytomyr prison while President Leonid Kuchma considers his appeal. It is unlikely Mr Onoprienko will face execution in the foreseeable future due to Ukraine’s current moratorium on capital punishment.

  Moral of the story? Always live alone – as had been proven when Onoprienko had been turned in by the cousin he’d been living with at the time.

  Not a problem for Nathan, either. The settlement from the wrongful-death lawsuit had left him with money to burn, so it wasn’t as though he needed to scrape up the rent money each month. Besides, he’d lived alone since that awful night so many years ago and he was fairly accustomed to it by now.

  Was accustomed to it, mind you, but certainly not happy about it.

  He wiped a tear away from his eye and fought off the sudden feeling of melancholy that he felt settling over him. He stubbed out the cigarette in the Porsche’s ashtray, shifted the sports car into fourth gear and pressed down hard on the accelerator. The Porsche’s engine purred like a satisfied tiger underneath the hood.

  Nathan shook his head. What the hell was there to be sad about, anyway? He was already better than these other killers and he knew it. He was already better than them, and he was only getting better with each passing day. Cold comfort as it was, at least it was something.

  And maybe a quick little trip to Wichita, Kansas, would help take care of the rest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dana wheeled an FBI loaner car onto Edison Street in the Pico-Union section of Los Angeles twenty minutes later and pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road. She switched off the ignition and turned in her seat to face Brown.

  ‘Sit tight for a minute, OK?’ she said. ‘I think I should probably handle this one on my own.’

  Brown glanced out the window at the decrepit neighbourhood. ‘Not a good idea, Dana. You got called out by name, you know you’re not supposed to do any investigating outside the office by yourself.’

  Dana detected a note of genuine concern for her in his voice and found she appreciated it. It felt good to have someone looking out for her. She liked him – in fact, if she let herself go there she’d have to admit she liked him a lot – and she got the feeling it was mutual.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but she might open up to me more if I go alone.’

  Brown looked as if he wasn’t going to let it go, then shrugged. ‘How about a compromise? I’ll go with you but I promise I’ll keep in the background – a bodyguard sort of thing.’ Then, to lighten the mood, he added, ‘And you’re right. You might be able to strike up a womanly bond with her. Genetically speaking, that’s something I’ve never been especially good at.’

  Dana laughed. She knew his easygoing manner belied a steely resolve when he needed it. She enj
oyed working with him. ‘Good point,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They climbed out of the car and Dana took a look around. Pico-Union was a dull, grey place – the part of town they never glamorised in the movies and one that felt even more forlorn and forgotten when you saw the massive piles of uncollected garbage rotting away on every street corner.

  Not only was the woman they’d come to see today one whom the copycat killer had approached outside Mary Ellen Orton’s apartment on the night of her vicious murder, Luz Moreno also happened to be a member of Mara Salvatrucha – MS-13 – one of the deadliest street gangs in the world.

  It had been started in Los Angeles by Salvadorean immigrants tired of being pushed around by the more entrenched Mexican gangs. Mara literally meant ‘gang’ in Spanish. As for Salvatrucha, there was some debate about that. Some said it meant ‘Salvadorean army ants’ while others maintained it referred to the group of Salvadorean peasant guerrillas who’d made up most of the gang’s initial membership in the early 1980s. The ‘13’ was generally considered a tip of the cap to another ruthless LA street gang, El Emes, or ‘the Ms’ – the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. Whatever translation you chose to use, however, it usually meant only one thing to those who dared to cross them.

  Muerte. Death.

  Dana glanced at Brown, who nodded, and then she walked toward the street corner where Luz Moreno had told Brown she’d be when they’d talked over the phone an hour earlier. Four or five of Moreno’s heavily tattooed fellow gang members stood on alert sentry duty just out of earshot thirty feet away.

  Moreno was shorter even than Dana, maybe five-three. Maybe nineteen. Definitely gorgeous. A distinctly Latina face was framed by full, thick hair piled up high on top of her head above a pair of enormous silver hoop earrings. Chocolate-brown eyes gleamed over a broad, flat nose pierced with a tiny diamond. She was wearing a pair of tight black jeans, unlaced Timberlands and an Enyce coat five times too big for her petite frame.