Kill Me Once Read online

  ‘I know you did, and that’s the same time I heard you say it.’

  ‘Hard to argue with that logic,’ James chimed in helpfully.

  Sara shot him another look. ‘You stay out of this, James. Stay out of it or you can consider the dessert menu off-limits to you tonight, if you get my drift.’

  James turned back to his daughter with a grin and held up his large hands, shrugging his broad shoulders in good-natured defeat. ‘Hard to argue with that logic, too. Sorry, kiddo, but Mom’s definitely got the trump card on this one. Daddy’s not the smartest guy in the whole world but he sure as hell knows when he’s been beat. Only PBS on that television from now on.’

  By the time they’d finished eating, cleared the table and brought the leftovers inside to the kitchen, the sun had set fully and the moonless sky above had sufficiently darkened for the Whitestone family festivities to begin at last. Off in the distance they could hear the booming of the fireworks downtown as they streaked deep into the night to the accompaniment of the Cleveland Orchestra.

  With an air of ceremony that made both Sara and Dana giggle, James switched off the back porch light and lit a sparkler from a box of ten with a cheap plastic lighter before solemnly handing it over to his daughter. Taking his wife’s hand in his own, they watched Dana gleefully run through the yard waving it around in figure-eight patterns. Little sparks of fire jumped off the stick in all directions, illuminating both a small circle of the night and the unadulterated joy on their only child’s smiling face.

  ‘I’m a fairy princess!’ Dana squealed with delight. ‘I’m a fairy princess and this here’s my magic wand!’

  Sara smiled and slipped an arm around her husband’s waist, gently rubbing the small of his back. ‘You know what?’ she said softly. ‘This is as good as it gets. I really think it’s moments like this we’ve worked so hard for all these years.’

  A single tear formed silently in the corner of her right eye, wavered there a moment as though unsure what to do next, then slowly spilled out onto her smooth cheek.

  ‘You know what?’ James answered, pulling his wife closer and gently kissing the tear away. ‘I think you’re absolutely right.’

  Sara Whitestone’s slender shoulders started to shake as she began to cry harder, once again asking herself how she could continue keeping such a huge secret from this man who so obviously loved her more than he loved life itself.

  But James Whitestone just held his wife tighter and kissed her again.

  Even softer this time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Blanton Inn – Los Angeles – 7:12 a.m.

  On the morning following Mary Ellen Orton’s vicious murder, Nathan Stiedowe bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times in the motel lobby and brought it back up to his room before searching for the account of his previous night’s escapades.

  He scanned the front page quickly. The lead story was about Obama’s timetable for pulling US troops out of Afghanistan. The right-hand two columns were devoted to an article about H1N1 vaccinations, a story that jumped to A3. The centrepiece feature, complete with a four-column colour photograph above the fold, showcased an area depicting Brownie troops’ efforts to collect canned goods for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. A story about the rising cost of school lunches was stripped across the bottom of the page.

  Nothing about him. Fucking idiots wouldn’t know a good story if it bit their goddamn noses off.

  He didn’t make the front of the local section, either. Finally, he found the story buried on the bottom of page B5, cleverly positioned right next to an ad for a funeral home. Hardy-har-har. Copy editors and their hilarious fucking jokes.

  The short account was accompanied by a minuscule twenty-point headline. Light-faced, of course.

  WOMAN MURDERED OVERNIGHT IN SOUTH CENTRAL

  Nathan quickly read through the reporter’s woefully amateurish work. Probably a cub still wet behind the ears considering the overnight crime-beat shift he’d pulled. After a moment, he thought he understood the reason why. The idiot hadn’t even gotten the victim’s name right, calling her ‘Mary Ann Orton’ instead of ‘Mary Ellen’.

  Nathan clenched his teeth. When he’d been a crime reporter this shit wouldn’t have flown. Not by a long shot. The managing editor would have kicked his ass up and down the newsroom while the other reporters busted a gut laughing at him with the Schadenfreude so inextricably linked with those engaged in the journalism profession. Nobody ever wanted to get called out on sloppy work, and if somebody else was in trouble it only meant their own jobs were safe enough for the time being in an industry that was rapidly dying with each passing day. But come on. With the Internet and today’s 24/7 news cycle on cable television, the least you could do in print was get the victim’s goddamn name right.

  He balled the paper up and hurled it across the room in disgust before taking a deep breath and forcing himself to calm down. Fuck it. The important part was that he’d meticulously recreated Richard Ramirez’s unforgettable crime, and now the time had come to take his bloody red pen to the second infamous serial killer on his hit list.

  He thought he remembered reading somewhere before that Dennis Rader – the infamous BTK who’d gotten his nickname by binding and torturing his victims before finally killing them in and around Wichita, Kansas – had always enjoyed steak and eggs for his morning repast. Sadly, Nathan was a vegetarian, so that simply wasn’t going to work. After all, there were certain principles even he refused to compromise.

  No matter. A little improvisation was always good for the artist’s soul, right?

  Goddamn right it was.

  Recreating Dennis Rader’s infamous quadruple slaying of the Otero family back in 1974 was certainly going to be fun, but first Nathan had to make sure all the details were absolutely perfect. That was crucial, after all – the main crux of his sacred mission – and to do it would require a quick trip to the library.

  He went into the bathroom and took a moment to really study his reflection in the grimy mirror. He was an exceptionally good-looking man, of this fact he was well aware. He was very tall, nearly six foot four. He had strong, straight white teeth, compelling brown eyes and a chiselled physique meticulously sculpted from countless hours spent lifting weights in a dark basement gym with nothing more than his loud grunts and the sound of heavy iron plates clanging together to keep him company. Coupled with the rigorous running routine he’d religiously performed since his days in the military, he was in the very best shape of his life now. And a good thing too. He’d need to be in absolute peak physical condition to pull this next job off without a hitch.

  Today just so happened to be his fifty-seventh birthday, but when people guessed his age they often thought he was much younger. Just a few nights ago, for example, hadn’t the attractive blonde co-ed he’d met at the bar and later taken back to the motel for a rough session in the sack said he looked at least fifteen years younger?

  He hadn’t felt the need to correct her at the time. No, what he’d really felt like doing as the musky scent of sex clung to their bodies like a second skin was killing her. Killing her dead. And not very softly, at that.

  The fresh sweat was still sparkling on her flat stomach like diamond-kissed ripples of sunshine on the ocean – her hard pink nipples still standing proudly erect on her surgically enhanced breasts – and all Nathan could think about was how much he hated the little whore.

  Like most women he’d come to know in such an intimate fashion – and make no mistake about it, boys, there were scores of them out there – this bleached-blonde slut with the fake tits only reminded him of the bitch who’d stolen his life. And simply because of that irritating detail, every last fibre of his being screamed out for him to wrap his remarkably strong hands around her pretty little throat and squeeze and squeeze with all his might until the light flickered out of her clear blue eyes for ever and she was quite dead.

  Surely that wasn’t asking too much, was it? It was, after all, his birthday.


  As difficult as it had been to resist the overwhelming urge, the next morning he was infinitely grateful that he’d summoned the inner strength to let the little slut go unharmed. There was much more important work out there left to accomplish, and it would have been a sign of great weakness and an unforgivable lack of self-control if he’d given in to his dark desires at that precise moment.

  To prepare for his upcoming study session, Nathan cranked up Irish concert-pianist Ashley Ball’s version of Ernesto Lecuona’s ‘Aragon’ on the bedside stereo and took a long, leisurely shower before dressing in a crisp white dress shirt, perfectly creased slacks and a stylishly understated silk necktie. He completed this rather dashing ensemble with a lightweight, flawlessly tailored Armani sport coat and a pair of seven-hundred-dollar Bruno Magli shoes, the same brand made infamous by OJ Simpson and chosen for precisely that reason. The Juice had nothing to do with his sacred mission, of course – a mission that would ultimately culminate in the death of the greedy little life-stealer he was after – but there was no law against having a little bit of fun along the way, now was there? Besides, he had expensive tastes and enough money to indulge them whenever he damn well pleased, which wasn’t to say the financial security hadn’t come at a terrible cost.

  Knowing full well that his expensive wardrobe made him look dangerously out of place at the cheap motel, Nathan’s next order of business was finally to check out, stopping just long enough to favour the plump middle-aged desk clerk with one of his perfectly dazzling smiles before he left.

  Down in the parking lot of the motel three minutes later, he slipped behind the wheel of the latest exquisite rental car that had been dropped off earlier in the day – a mint-condition cherry-red Porsche Boxster this time – and began the short drive over to the nearest satellite branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

  Fifteen minutes later he was inside the building and making a beeline toward the extensive True Crime section in back. With a clear sense of purpose, he carefully selected a thick volume from the somewhat dusty shelf and found a quiet corner table overlooking the bright sunlit courtyard before opening the book, sighing contentedly. He began to read.

  Thankfully the material was not a disappointment – it drew him into the magical world of murder at once. The morbid tales possessed Nathan’s imagination with much the same feeling as that of a new and unfamiliar lover beneath his strong body as he quickly devoured one deliciously depraved page after another.

  As was usual when he studied, the time raced by. When he finally raised his striking brown eyes to the large round clock on the far wall, he was surprised to find that he’d been in his seat for nearly five hours. It was now almost six o’clock in the evening.

  It was time to move on. Nathan was a man on the hunt and a man being hunted, and that was a lot for anybody to deal with.

  Back in the leather-appointed Porsche five minutes later, he pulled out his alligator-skin Kenneth Cole wallet and checked his driver’s licence again. Nathan had many aliases – each one impeccable and backed up by clean Motor Vehicle Bureau records in five different states – but to remain under one identity for too long would simply be foolish, would only make him an easier target for the greedy little bitch who’d stolen his life, and he planned on winning this dangerous game that they were now playing.

  Still, he wasn’t overly concerned about his identity at this exact moment. Even if nobody else out there knew it yet, Nathan Stiedowe knew exactly who he was. Knew exactly who he was and exactly what he was capable of doing.

  Besides, there were always more identities to turn to whenever he needed them – always plenty of harmless, bleating sheep ready to be culled from the flock.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Los Angeles International Airport – 9:30 a.m.

  Dana’s head was still spinning from information overload by the time her and Brown’s flight finally touched down at LAX thirteen hours later.

  Her research last night in her hotel room into the details of Richard Ramirez’s horrific crimes – and the similarities between Mary Ellen Orton’s murder and the Night Stalker’s first kill – had been astounding. She’d wanted to discuss it with Brown during the trip out to LA but he’d fallen asleep on the plane so she’d have to bring him up to speed later. He was obviously as exhausted and overworked as she was – Dana just wished she could fall asleep so easily. Her mind was too full to switch off.

  She’d taken quick mental breaks on the plane to steal furtive glances at Brown as he slept. No wedding ring – and he wasn’t all that hard to look at, either. A smooth, unlined face and tousled brown hair. A nice build and a beautiful smile. He was the first man in a while who’d attracted her interest and she took note. If she ever got around to actually having a social life outside the train wreck that was Match.com, she didn’t think she’d have any trouble pencilling him in on her dance card. But butterfly kisses and little candy hearts would just have to wait. Right now she had a killer to catch and so far she’d been doing a piss-poor job of it – at least, by her own standards.

  She’d be damned if she was going to let death win this time. Not again. Not this time. Not on her watch. She wasn’t a helpless child any more, a kid who just sat back and let bad things happen to herself and the people around her. She needed to be one hundred per cent focused on catching this sick bastard.

  But there were a lot of big names and plenty of lofty expectations for Dana to live up to; that was for sure. It was her case, the biggest since she’d gone solo, and she couldn’t afford to get distracted by anything. She only hoped she was doing the right thing by moving the investigation out to Los Angeles now and not simply flying three thousand miles away while the Cleveland Slasher blissfully went unimpeded about his work of murdering another innocent little girl back in Ohio.

  Dana thought again about how insistent Crawford had been that she should fly down to Quantico. She was so used to doing his bidding that she hadn’t really questioned it after her initial misgivings. And several times he’d seemed on the brink of telling her something but had then become preoccupied. No matter. If he had something to say he knew where to find her, and it had proved useful, hadn’t it?

  An hour after their flight landed, she and Brown were in the crime lab of the LA FBI field office downtown. The sickly-sweet smell of formaldehyde was heavy in the air as Dana pulled on a pair of thin rubber gloves and unzipped the oversized evidence bag containing the bloody black clothes that the killer had slipped out of while fleeing the angry mob. Forensic pathologist Dr Melissa Guthrie was in the room with them.

  ‘Have these already been typed for blood?’ Dana asked. Although Brown was effectively in charge of this particular murder, it was Dana’s case overall; she would take the lead.

  ‘Sure have,’ Guthrie answered. She was a very pretty woman in her early forties, but she had way too much brainpower to give her appearance much attention. Her glasses were thick and oversized for her delicate face and her stringy blonde hair snaked crazily down the front of her white lab coat before tangling itself in a hopeless mess in the silver stethoscope hanging around her neck. ‘Only blood on those clothes belongs to Mary Ellen Orton. He didn’t leave us a trace of his own DNA.’

  No surprise there. It looked like it was their guy.

  Dana turned the pants inside out. After a moment of careful examination she wasn’t very surprised to find the irregular stitching inside. ‘Got a scalpel?’ she asked Guthrie, handing the pants over. ‘Let’s cut these stitches open and see what we’ve got here.’

  The forensic pathologist took the pants and produced the sharp instrument from a sterile metal tray before carefully slicing the stitches away. Dana’s breath caught in her throat when a small sheet of paper fluttered to the floor.

  Guthrie leaned down to pick it up with a pair of tweezers before unfolding the note and reading the handwritten message inside out loud:

  ‘“Big deal. Death always went with the territory. I’ll see you at Disneyland.”’<
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  Guthrie shook her head in confusion. ‘“I’ll see you at Disneyland”? What’s that all about?’

  Dana blew out a quick breath that fluttered her bangs. She knew exactly what it meant. She could practically write an essay on it. ‘It’s what Richard Ramirez said while he was being led out of court on 20 September 1989. He got nineteen separate death sentences for his trouble. From what we can tell, this guy here was pretending to be the Night Stalker. I think this was probably a copycat of a murder involving a victim named Jennie Vincow. He was just play-acting.’

  But even as she ran through her theory of the killer’s motivation to Melissa Guthrie, something was still bothering the hell out of Dana, a nagging little impression at the back of her mind that wouldn’t quite leave her alone. But what was it?

  She shook her head to clear the feeling away and turned to Brown. ‘What kind of set-up do you guys have around here? Sketch artists, handwriting analysts, blood-spatter experts – that kind of stuff.’

  ‘We’ve got a pretty good group of guys who cover all those areas,’ Brown said. ‘Some of them are among the best in the country. Jim McGreevy’s working on the composite drawing and Jeff Simmons is doing the blood work. I’ll get Fred Spangler to analyse the note.’

  ‘Thanks. And what about the witness in the crowd chasing the suspect on the night of the murder? The young Latina. Could we set up an appointment with her too? I’m sure your guys did a thorough job – I’d just like to talk to her myself, in case …’

  ‘No problem,’ Brown replied, already keying into his cell.

  Dana thanked him again and turned back to Guthrie. ‘If you could please get this note analysed for prints, fibres and DNA as quickly as possible before the handwriting guy takes a look, I’d really appreciate it. There probably isn’t anything, but it’s worth a shot.’