Kill Me Once Read online

  ‘Who’s Crawford Bell?’

  Dana shook her head and quickly filled CK in on her former partner’s background. She paused to cement the idea in her mind while her brain raced to come up with an alternative explanation. There weren’t any. Not a single one. But who?

  ‘There are five main subjects of Crawford’s introductory class for students at the FBI Training Academy,’ she said. ‘Richard Ramirez, Dennis Rader, Richard Speck, David Berkowitz and John Wayne Gacy. I honestly can’t believe I’m just remembering this now. It’s what’s been bugging the shit out of me all this time. Anyway, Ramirez, Rader and Speck have all been recreated now. The parking ticket hammered into Ahn Howser’s chest means David Berkowitz is probably next. I think we’re dealing with a former FBI agent here.’

  CK narrowed his dark brown eyes. ‘Or a current one,’ he said. ‘Hell, maybe it’s Crawford Bell himself,’ he joked.

  Dana’s ears rang at the sound of his words. She wanted to dismiss the idea outright. CK had been joking after all, but suddenly a nagging doubt started to work its way into her mind. Now that she thought about it, was it such a wild idea? Crawford had failed to come up with a profile. He’d been behaving oddly recently. Maybe, after a lifetime immersed in the bloodiest murders America had ever seen, his tumour had pushed him over the edge, into the dark. He was the only one who knew her parents’ case inside out, she’d told him details no one else could possibly know, details that weren’t even in the files. Details this killer seemed to know. He had taught, written articles, even a book about the notorious serial killers this killer seemed to be copying. Was it a coincidence? Or had the sickness in his brain – the sickness his bosses didn’t even know about – twisted his mind that crucial step too far? Even Crawford would admit he was obsessed by those killers; had he become so obsessed that he’d decided to recreate their crime scenes? To prove he was somehow better than the best? Or was it a grisly homage of some sort? Had studying them so closely for so long turned him into a monster too? Or had he always been a monster, just biding his time …?

  Dana shook herself. He was her friend, her mentor, he cared about her, and he was dying. He couldn’t be the killer, could he? She’d have to pull files on every student who’d ever attended his course – it had to be one of them.

  ‘It can’t be Crawford,’ she said, even as the terrifying doubt remained. He’d taught her everything she knew; he couldn’t be using that against her now, surely? ‘It can’t be him. At least, not physically. He can’t be at two places at the same time, and I’ve been in constant contact with him the entire time.’

  ‘I was only joking,’ CK said when he registered the look on her face. ‘You think he’s directing someone? You think he’s directing Trent Bollinger?’

  Dana closed her eyes. ‘I just don’t know.’ Surely she had finally gone mad. Nothing made sense any more.

  CK scrunched up his boxy face. ‘Well, let’s get out of here and go see what Bollinger’s got to say about all this. Let’s go see how much he knows about the history of serial killers and the details of their crimes.’

  Dana reached out a hand and lightly touched CK’s muscular forearm. At least CK didn’t think she’d lost her mind. Not yet, anyway. ‘Thanks, CK. I really needed that.’

  In the unnatural green light of the Toyota’s dashboard panel, she thought she saw the Chicago cop’s craggy face suffuse with colour.

  ‘Any time. Now let’s go nail Trent Bollinger to a cross already.’

  Dana smiled thinly at him. ‘Best offer I’ve had all week.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Trent Matthew Bollinger was seated on a metal folding chair with his back against the wall in the cramped space of Interview Room Three at downtown Chicago Police Headquarters.

  He had the massive muscular build of an experienced weightlifter, and since the bloody clothes he’d been wearing earlier that night were off being tested at the lab he was sitting there now in the bright orange jumpsuit that the city of Chicago had so generously loaned him. The jumpsuit strained hard against his chest and shoulders like an overstuffed sausage skin threatening to split at the seams in a microwave turned up full blast.

  Dana and CK watched from behind a two-way mirror as Bollinger took a drag on a Marlboro Menthol Light despite the handcuffs hampering the free movement of his wrists. He inhaled deeply on the cigarette and leaned his head back, releasing a long, smooth stream of greyish-blue smoke into the air. The smoke swirled around the room in roiling patterns for several moments before finally settling into a general haze three feet above his head.

  Bollinger’s eyes were badly bloodshot, but Dana wasn’t at all surprised to see this. After all, jail didn’t exactly offer the four-star ambience of the Radisson.

  It wasn’t even the Holiday Inn.

  Tired or not, though, Bollinger’s puffy eyes did little to hide his extreme good looks. He was at least twenty years older than Liza Alloway but you wouldn’t have known it just by looking at him.

  His longish brown hair had obviously been finger-combed recently but still managed to stick up in several directions in an oddly endearing manner, making him look a lot more like an oversized little boy than a deranged killer who’d brutally murdered three college girls just a few hours before, stopping just long enough to chop off all the fingers on his ex-girlfriend’s right hand before he left.

  ‘Doesn’t look like much of a killer to me,’ CK said after a moment. ‘More like George Clooney’s twin brother. Liza Alloway must’ve had one hell of a personality.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  The Chicago cop looked embarrassed. ‘Well …’

  ‘Hey, not every girl can look like Cindy Crawford,’ Dana said. ‘Besides, some serial killers don’t look the part. Just look at Ted Bundy. Who would’ve thought a handsome devil like that was such a monster underneath it all?’

  ‘Good point. So you ready for this or what?’

  Dana took a deep breath. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. Wish me luck.’

  ‘Go get him, tiger.’

  Dana stepped into the hall and motioned to the desk sergeant, who nodded in acknowledgement before pressing a button on the control panel hidden beneath his desk. A loud buzzing sound accompanied the electronic click of the disengaging lock as Dana stepped inside the interview room. She cleared her throat loudly when Bollinger didn’t acknowledge her presence immediately. The entire space stank of cigarettes.

  When Bollinger finally looked up, he did so only briefly before lowering his haggard brown eyes once again and releasing a disgusted sigh. Trails of smoke issued from his mouth and nostrils when he spoke.

  ‘Who the fuck are you? Some kind of psychologist or something like that?’ ‘

  ‘Something like that.’ Was he really a cold-blooded killer – on his own or controlled by a criminal mastermind? He didn’t look the part, but as she’d said to CK you couldn’t always judge a killer by his appearance. She’d learned that practically at Crawford’s knee. But she didn’t want to think about Crawford now.

  Bollinger looked up and gave her the once-over. ‘Look, lady, like I’ve already told these guys a million goddamn times, I’m not copping to no murder rap. I didn’t kill Liza or her stupid little friends, so if you think I’m just gonna sign my life away for the first nice piece of ass they send in here, you can just think again. Ain’t gonna happen.’

  Dana took a step forward and held her hands up with her palms facing him in a placating manner. ‘Whoa. Slow down there a minute. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here.’

  She removed the FBI badge from the back pocket of her blue jeans and slid it across the table to him. ‘My name is Special Agent Dana Whitestone. You can call me Dana if you want. I’m going to call you Trent, so it’s only fair I extend the same courtesy to you.’ Keep it nice and polite.

  Bollinger leaned his head back and blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘Whatever. What the fuck do you want?’

  Dana ignored his arrogance. ‘I just w
ant to talk to you, Trent. That’s all. I’m not asking you to confess anything. Scout’s honour.’

  He picked up her badge and studied it for a moment.

  When he looked up again and his stare locked onto hers for the first time, Dana’s stomach dropped.

  ‘You sure you’re FBI, sweetheart?’

  His voice jolted her back. ‘What?’

  He repeated himself slowly, enunciating each word as though he were talking to a four-year-old.

  Dana shook her head to clear it, ashamed to feel the fear beating so hard in her chest. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her shaking hands. No use. For a moment there she’d thought she was looking into those eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure I’m FBI,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a big old gun here and everything. What makes you ask?’

  Bollinger’s smile crinkled up the tiny crow’s feet in the corners of his glittering brown eyes, revealing a set of remarkably sharp white teeth. ‘Pretty little girl like you might get herself killed running around playing cops and robbers, that’s all.’

  Dana pulled back a chair at the table and took a seat opposite Bollinger, hoping that her shaking hands weren’t too obvious to him. She opened his case file and quickly scanned the top page, trying to ignore the feeling of his eyes homing in on her breasts. ‘Let’s get down to business, Trent,’ she said. ‘Says here you work on a ranch out in Deer Trail, Wyoming. Ranching, huh? That sounds like a pretty dangerous job itself.’

  Bollinger sat up straighter in his chair and squared his huge shoulders. ‘Shit, bitch, it can be dangerous, but not if you know what you’re doing and don’t go off being stupid about the whole thing. I’m real strong, but I’m not your average meathead. I’m real smart, too.’

  He paused and laughed at her. ‘Smarter than you assholes, at least.’

  Strong and smart enough to overpower and kill three innocent college girls because one of them committed the unforgivable sin of dumping you, asshole? Dana wondered. Or are you just a mindless puppet getting your strings pulled by someone else, someone like Crawford Bell?

  But this was good. He was already starting to open up to her, and she wanted to keep him talking. If she continued playing to his pride and didn’t push him too hard right away, there was always a chance for a break in this case that was only getting more bizarre with each passing minute.

  ‘That right?’ Dana asked. ‘You a pretty smart guy, Trent?’

  ‘Fuckin’ A, sweetheart.’

  Sensing her opening, Dana abruptly switched gears. ‘Why were you hiding in the dumpster, Trent? Sounds like a pretty clear-cut case of going off and being stupid about the whole thing to me. Not a very smart thing to do at all.’

  Amazingly, Bollinger’s face actually reddened at the question. Odd for such a cocky guy.

  ‘It was a stupid-ass mistake,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see Liza, had to see Liza, really, but them goddamn rent-a-cops told me they’d make sure I’d go to jail if they ever caught me on campus again.’

  He held up his handcuffs and jangled them in her direction. ‘Guess they wasn’t lying, was they?’

  Dana acknowledged the irony with a nod of her head. ‘Guess not. Where you were before you got to Loyola, Trent? You haven’t made any side trips to California or Kansas lately, have you? Ever been to Cleveland?’

  He leaned back in his chair and pulled on his nose in disgust. ‘California or Kansas? Cleveland? What in the fuck are you talking about, lady? Hardly fucking likely since I was driving two straight nights through from Wyoming.’

  Dana slammed her hand down hard on the table. ‘Quit lying to me!’

  Bollinger stared at her in shock. ‘Excuse me?’

  Dana clenched her teeth and leaned forward across the table. ‘I told you to quit lying to me, Bollinger. I know you’re too stupid to pull off these murders yourself, but you’d better tell me who you’re working for or I’m going to take my gun out right here and split your skull wide open.’

  Dana studied the rage in his eyes. Definitely the kind of guy who could kill someone if he got angry enough. And definitely stupid enough to fall for the solo ‘bad-cop’ routine she was pulling on him right now.

  ‘I’m done dicking around with you, Trent. Just tell me who you’re working for and I’ll make all the bad things go away for you. Deal?’

  Bollinger looked like a helpless rabbit caught in a hunter’s snare, the cockiness completely gone from his eyes now. ‘Seriously, lady,’ he said in a voice several octaves above the one he’d been using before. ‘I ain’t working for nobody and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Honestly. I ain’t been nowhere else because I been driving here for two straight days. Soon as I stepped on campus I seen all these cruisers and ambulances and shit all over the place. I have warrants back home – stupid, petty shit, mostly. The dumpster was the first place I seen where I could hide. That’s all there is to it. That’s the whole story, I promise.’

  Dana flipped through his file again and felt her heart sink in her chest. The preliminary coroner’s report said the college girls had been killed sometime between eight-thirty and eleven p.m. Chicago PD received the call from a night janitor reporting the murders shortly past eleven, and they’d found Bollinger hiding in the trash receptacle fifteen minutes later. If he was telling the truth about arriving just in time to stumble upon the chaotic scene of the responding units – which was by no means a given, of course – he wouldn’t have even been on campus at the latest possible time of the murders.

  He wouldn’t have had time to kill the girls. And it was unlikely he’d killed anyone else.

  She tried to keep her voice even as she stared at him across the table. ‘I’m going to ask you a very important question now, Trent. Answer it truthfully and you’ll clear up a whole pile of shit for both of us.’

  He looked at her with pleading eyes. ‘Go on.’

  ‘How many miles does your pickup truck get per gallon?’

  ‘You talkin’ city or highway?’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Dana flipped off her cellphone and returned to the observation room where CK had been watching but not listening to the interview.

  She tossed Bollinger’s file onto the table in disgust. ‘You might as well let him go,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do it.’

  CK looked up at her. ‘Don’t you think it might be a good idea to at least wait for the clothes to come back from the lab before we let this guy go?’

  Dana nodded and chewed on her lower lip. ‘Yeah, I suppose you’re going to have to, but the tests are going to come back negative.’ She paused and tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her right ear. ‘Well, they’ll come back positive for blood all right, but he was telling the truth, CK. It’s hogs’ blood on those clothes.’

  The Chicago cop wasn’t buying it. Not for a dollar and not for any other price in the world, either. He held up one massive hand and quickly ticked off the evidence on his thick fingers.

  ‘How in the hell could you possibly know that? Let’s see here: we find the guy covered in blood and hiding in a dumpster on the night of the murders. One of the victims is his ex. He drove two thousand miles to see her and she just so happens to wind up dead on the very same night. I don’t know. Sounds like a pretty strong case to me, even if it’s only circumstantial so far.’

  Dana didn’t disagree. It did sound like a pretty strong case. As a matter of fact, the DA was probably drooling over the chance to prosecute such a headline-grabber at this very moment. But she had information that they didn’t.

  ‘I made some calls to American Express headquarters and charmed them into opening their files up to me,’ she said. ‘I just got off the phone with a regional account manager.’

  ‘You’re worried about your credit-card balance at a time like this?’

  Dana ignored the remark and flipped open her notebook. ‘According to American Express, Trent Matthew Bollinger was filling the tank of his pickup truck in Lorain, Illinois, at ten-thirty p.m. t
onight. He filled up at a Marathon station and paid with his credit card. Lorain is an hour west of here, CK. If the coroner got it even remotely close in her preliminary report, Bollinger couldn’t have committed the murders. He didn’t have time.’

  ‘You need a subpoena or else that evidence is going to be tainted, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I don’t have time to wait for the courts right now. Not when the killer’s still out there, planning his next move.’

  The Chicago cop was silent long enough then for Dana to suddenly become aware of the large round clock loudly ticking on the far wall.

  ‘Motherfucker,’ he finally muttered, watching his carefully crafted circumstantial case drift away into the dark Chicago night. ‘Wouldn’t you know it.’

  Dana reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, CK. Bollinger’s definitely a nasty piece of work, but he’s not a killer. At least, not the one we’re looking for, anyway.’

  CK waved the apology away. ‘Hell, don’t apologise to me. You probably just saved me a shitload of work on the wrong guy. Still, I think I’m going to need three aspirin tonight to deal with this fucking headache. Probably four.’

  He paused and looked up at her. ‘Looks like you’ve got one yourself.’

  Dana sighed. ‘I’m fine. It’s just that I haven’t been getting very much sleep lately and I think it’s finally starting to catch up with me.’

  CK nodded and rose to his feet, tucking Bollinger’s file under his left arm. ‘Well, do you have a place where you can crash? We’ve got an extra bedroom over at our place if you want. Believe me, Becky would be thrilled with the company. Seriously, Dana, we’d love to have you.’