Kiss of Death (26 page)

“No, sorry. Didn't think of that.”

When monitoring an NRM and assessing if it poses a threat to the outside world or to its members, any perceived cataclysmic events can be extremely dangerous. As the date approaches, tension rises within the cult, and if the leader has foretold of a momentous event and it doesn't happen—or he knows it's not going to happen—that's when an NRM is at the highest risk of mass suicide or of taking some sort of violent action against others.

“Anyway, then we got on to the reason we were really there…murder.”

Carey has his say for the first time. “He seemed surprised by that.”

Sloan continues, “Said he couldn't see Anton Ward as a murderer, although he did reiterate how much Ward liked to control people.”

I've already decided After Dark is a new religious movement myself, but it still doesn't mean Ward had anything to do with the murders.

Sloan continues. “Winters didn't know Sherry by name, but when we showed him the photo of her he recognized her. Not only did he see her at Bar Sinister on Saturday night, but he was talking to her for about twenty minutes or so, around eleven. Apparently she was using the name Georgia.”

I scribble down the pseudonym. “What were they talking about?”

“Sherry told him she was new to the scene and was asking lots of questions.”

Carey nods. “And about Winters' clan.”

“The new group.” I bite my bottom lip. “Damien Winters could be just as bad as Ward. Worse. By quitting After Dark and starting his own group, he's effectively created a splinter group, which, historically speaking, tends to be more radical than the original.” I think back to my research on cults. “Waco's a classic example. David
Koresh left the Seventh Day Adventists and joined the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the former. Koresh took over leadership of the group in the late 1980s and introduced polygamy, group upbringing of children and persuaded his members to reject and resist any external authorities. I know the FBI handled Waco poorly, but the gun battle is an example of an extremist cult turned violent.”

“I was surprised Winters didn't at least try to point the finger at Ward.” Carey leans on the table. “Say, yeah, of course he's capable of murder.”

“You caught him off guard today, but maybe his tune will change over the coming days. Especially if our investigation leads us to Winters and his clan. I'm sure then he won't hesitate to redirect us to Ward.” I pause. “How did Winters seem to you? What was his home like?”

Carey answers first. “He was passionate about his group, and vampirism.”

“Passionate or obsessed?”

Carey smiles and cocks his head to one side. “You're asking the wrong person. I think they're all delusional.”

I roll my shoulders back, straightening up—too long at a desk. “Their belief system is based entirely around vampirism and the vampire mythology. But within that they can create their own rules, their own beliefs. So it's possible that while some of them believe in willing donors, others believe in the vampire-as-predator mythology.”

“Killers.” Sloan plays with her glasses.

“Yes.” I pause. “Tell me about his apartment.”

Sloan looks like she's concentrating on recreating a picture of it. “It was Gothic and stylized, like Riley and Davidson's place, but it was much less haphazard, like more time and money had been spent. The paint job was bland and white, but it's probably a rental, so that wasn't something Winters could change. But the walls were covered in framed posters from old vampire flicks and
some of the newer ones.” She takes a breath. “Um…in one corner there was a life-size, signed cut-out of Bela Lugosi. And the furniture was modern…black leather sofa, glass coffee table, big-screen TV and all stainless-steel appliances in the kitchen.”

“So more modern than Ward's house.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sloan's voice is animated. “Ward is Victorian chic to Winters' modern L.A. The movie posters were like a homage to the Hollywood vampire.”

Sloan's description gives me an immediate sense of the man, but I'm still looking forward to meeting Damien Winters in person.

I bring us back to Sherry. “Did Winters say anything else about Sherry?”

“Uh-huh.” Carey leans back in his chair. “We asked if Sherry expressed an interest in being his donor.”

“And?” I edge forward.

“Apparently she did, but Winters claims he wasn't interested. That she was vamp bait.” Carey clears his throat. “He said Sherry was devastated that he wouldn't feed on her, but that could just be the guy's ego.”

“And who's to say he
didn't
feed on her?” Sloan raises an eyebrow.

We're all silent for a moment, thinking through the possibilities.

Eventually Sloan continues. “Winters has three female donors that he feeds from regularly.”

“And has sex with?”

Sloan nods. “Yup. It's all linked for these guys.”

“Again, it's part of the mythology—vampires are often portrayed as highly sexual and their thirst for blood is linked to lust.”

Carey shrugs. “Well, from most guys' perspectives Anton Ward and Damien Winters are onto a good thing. They have multiple partners with no negative repercussions.”

“Is it possible that one of Winters' sexual partners saw him talking to Sherry and became jealous?” I ask.

Sloan smiles. “I asked him about that. He claims that his donors are carefully screened and that none of the women would be so unstable as to exhibit any signs of jealousy, much less murder for it.”

I roll my eyes. “Puh-lease, like he's the master of assessing someone's mental stability.”

Sloan arches an eyebrow. “I know. We got the names and certainly won't be taking his word on it.”

“It's exactly the same as Carrington.” I lean on the desk. “Both men are very sure of themselves and their ability to choose stable women…whatever that means.”

Silence for a beat, before I ask Sloan and Carey what else they got.

“Winters said he saw Sherry leave the club around eleven-thirty but that he stayed until just before it closed at three.”

“That ties in with Todd Fischer's statement.”

Sloan nods.

“And what did he have to say about why he left After Dark?”

“Said that Ward had become increasingly controlling and that it became so bad he felt he had to leave.”

“And what about the house he's formed. Has it got a name? How many members does he have?”

“Didn't mention a name, and said he'd just started the house a few weeks ago and so far it's his three donors and the twins.”

“You got their names?”

“Uh-huh. Jerry and Tim Benson.”

“And?”

“They were into some fairly heavy stuff back in Texas—both together and independently. They both served five years in jail for a robbery they committed in 1998 and they've got four assault charges between them,
but all four were dropped. In one case the victim dropped the charges. In another the Texan prosecutor dropped the case citing lack of evidence. And in the other two a judge dismissed the charges during pretrial.”

“Sounds like the Benson brothers are either extremely lucky or extremely clever.”

Sloan sighs. “Tell me about it.”

Now that I'm fully briefed on their afternoon, it's time to update them with the profile. I hand out the pages. “It needs some tweaking, but here's the basic profile.”

I give them time to read it over, and do so myself.

Sloan peers over her glasses. “This is great. Intriguing and thorough.”

“Thanks.” I place my copy on the table. “Of the people we've come across to date, Anton Ward definitely fits the bill and so does Damien Winters. I ran a few checks on Winters this afternoon, and it turns out his parents were killed in a house fire when he was ten.”

“That's bizarre,” Sloan says. “Both Anton Ward and Damien Winters lost their parents.”

“It's probably part of what initially formed their friendship but it's also part of the profile—absent parents. And losing both parents could definitely give rise to a sense of alienation. Ward was older, eighteen, so the effects would have been less on him, but his father was a successful businessman, so the chances are he wasn't around much during Ward's childhood. Both are also only children, which lends itself to narcissistic behavior—they were the center of their mom's universe beyond those first couple of years. And they both drive European cars.”

“So you think Winters is our man? Given Ward's response to the mention of violence and your instinct about him?”

“Winters is probably a better fit than Ward, yes. But I still don't have enough information on James Logan to see
if he fits the profile, too. I've got someone working on it, and should have a file on him by tomorrow morning.”

Sloan nods. “Great.” She pauses. “Oh…almost forgot. We got a fingerprint match on our latest victim.”

“Really?” I say.

“Lily Underwood of Glendale. No missing persons report, but I phoned her parents on the way over here. They haven't seen their daughter for two days, which is apparently not that unusual.”

I wince. “Did you tell them over the phone?”

“I had to.” Sloan turns her palms skyward and takes a breath. “I'm going by there on the way home tonight to talk to them in person. But I'll start investigating Lily Underwood in earnest tomorrow.”

“You got anything on her at this stage?”

“She had a prior for shoplifting, which is why her prints were in the system. And according to her folks she recently became captivated by the Goth scene. And she was into vampires.”

That's something our two victims have in common—they're new to the L.A. Goth scene. It'll be interesting to see if there are other commonalities.

We're about to wrap up the meeting when my cell rings. It's computer technician Harry Burke. He's found Sherry on the video footage.

Tuesday, 5:45 p.m.

C
arey, Sloan and I hover around Burke's computer in his tiny office corral.

Burke brings up full-screen video footage on the largest of his three monitors. “This is from
two
Saturdays ago, Bar Sinister.”

Sloan leans in closer. “So according to Desiree, this is the first time the girls went inside one of the clubs.”

“This is your gal?” Burke points to a small image of a woman dressed in a black bodice and tight black pants. She has black hair, pale foundation and bright red lips. Plus a large tattoo on her arm. It looks nothing like Sherry, but Winters told us how different she looked in her Gothic persona and I know from my own transformation what's possible.

“Um…can you zoom in?” I ask.

“It was actually a rhetorical question.” Harry smiles, his fingers gliding over the keyboard effortlessly. “This is your girl…facial recognition confirms it.” Before he's finished the sentence, the girl's face is enlarged on the main screen and the right-hand screen holds an image of Sherry's face in normal makeup. Facial recognition
software maps both faces and shows a ninety-six percent match. This is verified visually—now that I can see both faces side by side and larger, it's clear that the Bar Sinister footage does, indeed, show Sherry Taylor entering the club.

Within a few keystrokes the main screen holds the video footage once more. “She arrived at the club at 10:04 according to the video's time stamp, which I've verified. And she's with this chick.”

Next to Sherry stands Desiree. She looks decidedly uncomfortable, despite looking the part in a leather figure-hugging jumpsuit with a large silver cross around her neck. Her hair is out and wild looking, making the most of her tight Afro curls. Her arms are crossed tightly across her body and she's nervously eyeing the other patrons.

“Definite fish out of water,” I say.

Carey nods. “Uh-huh.”

Sherry, on the other hand, looks at home. Is she simply a better actor than Desiree, or did she have a deeper interest in their research trip?

The video continues, showing the pair talking briefly to the doorman and entering the club.

“Then we pick them up here.” The video changes, reflecting a different camera. While the first video was taken from the door of the nightclub, looking down at the line, the second is inside the club, but still in the entranceway. The girls pay and move out of frame again.

“And then here.” Harry switches camera views again, and this one shows a mass of dancing club-goers. Most are dressed in black, with hints of dark red and purple, and a few of the men have white shirts with a medieval flare to them. There are also crowds with piercings and heavily tattooed physiques, but the more stylized Goths seem to outnumber the punk Goths.

Amongst the hundred or so people on-screen I search
for Sherry and Desiree. Knowing what they're wearing helps, but it's still difficult because the clothes and color schemes are similar for nearly everyone in the tightly packed mass.

Harry points them out as they move from the left-hand side of the video into the center of the crowd at the bar. “This is within a minute of their arrival, so they must have hung out in the corridor for thirty seconds or so after paying before moving inside.”

I think about Desiree's hesitance waiting in the line. “Could be Sherry was convincing Desiree to go inside.” I look at Harry. “This is definitely the first lot of video we requested?”

“Yes, Agent.”

According to Desiree that was their first visit to a Goth nightclub…. “I'll need you to go through all the Bar Sinister footage from the past six weeks, too.”

“Sure. Looking for?”

“Desiree or Sherry…and anything else suspicious.”

Sloan nods. “Desiree isn't a reliable source.”

“Uh-huh.” I look back to the video feed, which is now paused on Harry's screen.

Sloan looks at it, too. “What's next?”

Harry clicks Play again, and talks us through it. “The girls have a couple of beers and spend an hour and twelve minutes doing not much. Then they leave.”

“Ties in with the research claim. They were there to people-watch.”

“Did they talk to anyone during that time?” Carey asks.

“One guy approached them.” Harry fast-forwards the time stamp to 11:14, not long before they left. “This guy.”

I lean in. “Can you enlarge?”

Sloan also moves forward. “Hey, that's Ward.”

Another pang of doubt strikes me. “So much for never seeing Sherry Taylor before.” I shake my head.

“We showed Ward's photo to Desiree, too, and she claimed she'd never met him.” Sloan's brow furrows.

The video keeps rolling and after about five minutes the girls leave.

“Desiree was actually hanging back for most of that,” I say. “She wasn't involved in the conversation so I guess it's possible she didn't really look at Ward's face, didn't recognize him.”

“Maybe.”

“But Ward and Sherry…we need a printout of them. Can you go back?” I direct Harry to a point a couple of minutes earlier with the best shot of the three of them and get him to print it for us. The image clearly shows Anton Ward speaking to Sherry Taylor. “You and Carey better pay Ward another visit.” Even though that was a week before Sherry disappeared, it's still contact.

“I'll say.” Sloan raises an eyebrow. “What about the night Sherry went missing. Find anything then?”

“Hold on.” Harry types speedily and a few seconds later a new video stream is on his screen. “This is her entering Bar Sinister at 10:12 p.m. on Saturday.”

“She's by herself.” I flick the ring on my little finger. “So where's the mystery date?”

“Maybe there wasn't one,” Carey says. “Maybe Sherry wanted to go back to the club, pick up and be a donor.”

Sloan considers it thoughtfully. “Desiree said Sherry was into the scene and Damien Winters claimed Sherry propositioned him that night.” Sloan points to the screen. “Let's see if the camera can confirm it.” She turns to Harry. “Did you see anything in the footage?”

“She worked the room a lot more this time, speaking to three different guys and one girl, then went off camera. After that she did seem to leave in a hurry.” Harry fast-
forwards the tape. “This is the first guy.” He zooms in on the guy's profile, but he doesn't look familiar.

“Can you print that out?”

“Sure. This is the best shot coming up.” A few seconds later the man turns his head ever so slightly, and while it's still not a full frontal shot, at least it's a little better than the profile shot.

Harry forwards the tape. “Then this guy buys her a drink.” The man at the bar turns around, two drinks in hand, and passes one to Sherry.

“That's Damien Winters,” Sloan says.

I look at the time stamp. “Pretty close to the time he gave you…11:09.”

“So they talk for about twenty minutes,” Harry continues. “Then it looks like she excuses herself and heads to the ladies', but on her way back to the bar she's stopped by this guy.”

I lean in closer. “Look who it is.” It's one of the Benson twins, which means all our players are on the field except for James Logan and his three followers.

Again, Harry fast-forwards the footage to the appropriate time. “They dance for a couple of songs and then he leads her to the bar.” Harry keeps taking us through the footage, which shows Benson buying Sherry a drink and the pair talking for about five minutes before another guy joins them.

When the second man turns to face the camera, I realize they look almost exactly the same. “And there's twin number two.” So we've got Winters and the Benson twins all talking to Sherry the night she disappeared.

Harry looks at us expectantly, waiting to roll the video again. I give him a nod and he takes us to the point where Sherry's talking to a woman.

Sloan and I both recognize her instantly.

“And that's Paula Torres,” Sloan says, “from After Dark.”

The exchange seems friendly enough at first, but then within a few minutes Sherry leaves. Harry's right: it is rather abrupt. The women don't seem to say goodbye—Sherry just puts a half-empty beer bottle on the counter and leaves.

“And this is her exiting the club.” Harry brings up video of the entrance, as our vic walks across the camera and out of its field of vision.

I look at the time stamp: 11:35 p.m. The timing fits with Todd's story. “What about the woman in the club? What did she do next?”

Harry punches a few keys, bringing the video feed of the main bar up again and hitting Play from the moment Sherry leaves Paula.

“Hey, that was a smile.”

“Can you go back?” Sloan asks.

Harry obliges, pulling the footage back a few seconds.

“It is, too.” Sloan leans on the desk. “So she was happy about something…something she said to Sherry or the fact that it made Sherry leave.”

“Have you watched the footage after this?” I ask Harry.

“Nope.”

We hover over the screen, watching Paula's every move. After the smile she orders another two drinks and moves through the crowd.

“She's on her way to someone.” I point to the screen.

She holds the drinks in the air as she jostles her way through the dancers, until she gets to a booth. She sits down in the booth, facing the camera, but whoever sits across from her is invisible, hidden within the booth.

I peer closely at the footage but can't see anyone else. “Have you got another camera angle?”

As Harry types, the left monitor fills with five differ
ent video feeds. He shakes his head. “None of the other cameras cover this area.”

“Fast-forward. At some point these guys leave the booth.”

We watch impatiently as Paula drinks her beer in fast motion, talking between sips. Twenty minutes later she gets up for another bar run, and we watch the whole thing again—drinking and talking in fast motion—before she finally makes a move. She's been sharing a booth with not one, but two other people…Anton Ward and Teresa Somers.

Sloan lets out a whistle. “After Dark is back on the table.”

It doesn't mean Ward himself is involved, but it's certainly incriminating. I realize I
want
Ward to be innocent. Have I succumbed to his charm? To the magnetic personality of a “guru”?

Back to the evidence. “Harry, can you keep watching and see if Sherry Taylor comes back? You better watch the whole footage, but if her ex-boyfriend is telling us the truth, it could be sometime between 1:15 a.m. and closing.”

“Will do.”

“And what about Walter Riley and Larry Davidson? Did you find them?”

“Yes. They arrived at the club around midnight and didn't leave until about ten minutes before closing.”

So their alibi checks out, although there's still a small window of time within Frost's estimated time of death for Sherry.

“We've got another face for you, too. Our second victim, Lily Underwood, was killed last night. There're no Goth nightclubs that cater to the community on a Monday night, but maybe she met her attackers on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.”

Burke nods. “You want me to check last week's footage for all three clubs?”

“Yeah. That'd be great. She's in the system.”

Burke types her name and brings up her police mug shot from her shoplifting charge two years ago. “This your vic?”

“That's her.”

 

An hour later, instead of sitting opposite Darren over dinner, I'm in an observation room with Sloan, while we wait for Carey and Ward. With Ward and Sherry in the same video footage Sloan decided it was time to get an official statement from him. I could have declined the invitation to observe, but I have to see Ward's response for myself. While I was waiting I searched LAPD's missing persons database for the girl with shoulder-length black hair from my vision—but I didn't have any luck. She either hasn't gone missing yet, or hasn't been reported missing.

I know I have to sit out the interview again, but it bothers me more than before. I was buying Ward, buying his no violence bullshit. And now we find out he knew the victim and was lying to police all this time. He spoke to Sherry the week before she disappeared! I shake my head, as much disgusted with myself as with him. I'm a trained behavioral analyst and usually pride myself in my ability to get inside someone's head and to know if they're lying or not. Not to mention my gift—nothing indicated violence from Ward.

Sloan stops pacing and stares at me. “What's up?”

“Ward.” I shake my head again. “I really believed he was in the clear.”

Sloan shrugs. “He still might be.” She leans against the observation-room glass. “We still don't know what happened in Temescal Park that night. Your instincts might be spot-on.”

I take a deep breath, unsure what I want more—to find out Ward's the killer now and close the case, or to find out my instincts aren't shot to hell.

The door of the interview room opens and we watch from the one-sided mirror as Carey and Ward enter. Ward somehow manages to look like he's gliding into the room, which makes Carey appear oafish. Ward's designer jeans and tight black skivvy show the hard curves of his muscular frame. Again, he looks like he's stepped off the catwalk, but this time from a designer's casual range. Not much Goth or vamp showing today.

He sits down in the seat and bows his head to Carey and then to the mirror. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company today?”

“Like I said, we've got a few more questions.” Carey gives him a smile. “Can I get you something? Coffee or a soda perhaps?”

“What's your coffee like?”

Carey laughs. “Crap.”

“Then let's make it a Diet Coke.”