Sandman (7 page)

The next thing she knew the phone was ringing. The light was on, and her book lay open across her stomach. Groggily she glanced at the clock. Half past one. Who would be calling so late?

Her heart hammered in her chest as she snatched the phone on the third ring. “Hello?”

Dead air greeted her.

“Hello!”

She sensed someone on the other end, yet for the life of her couldn’t figure out why no one spoke.

“Katy, is that you, is everything all right?”

Nothing.

All at once another explanation dawned on Meagan. “Brad?” Suddenly a receiver was slammed in her ear. Of course it was Brad. She should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of him. She lay back down.
Dammit.
Now that she thought about it, she’d had a lot more hang-ups than usual over the last couple of weeks. Naturally she’d assumed they were wrong numbers. Now she wasn’t so sure.

She didn’t recall seeing Brad’s car around lately, but then again, she’d stopped looking. Maybe he was just being a little stealthier these days. She closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths and tried to relax. At least her heart rate had calmed to a more normal tempo, but she couldn’t stop wondering: what the hell was Brad’s game?

***

The little boy was having a nightmare. A faceless man was chasing him. He ran as fast as he could, but his feet went nowhere. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.

A loud crash startled the boy awake. He sat up quickly. His bedroom door was open. He stared at the large black figure looming in the doorway. He must have screamed after all. Why else would he be there? Tears stained his cheeks. He trembled as he tried to stop crying. He knew how much he hated it when he cried.

“Sniveling little bastard.” The malevolent bellow sent shivers up the boy’s spine. His hands flew to his ears. “Your momma ain’t coming no more. Ya hear me? She left you! She got sick of all your whining. Mom-mee, Mom-mee, Mom-mee,” the voice mimicked in sing-song fashion.

The figure approached. The boy tried to shrink into the wall behind his bed, but he couldn’t escape. His father was so close that the boy could feel his hot breath on his face. The foul stench of cigarettes and booze stung his nostrils.

The boy tried to stop crying, but the harder he tried, the worse it got until he ended up with a bad case of hiccups.

A large hand struck the boy across the face. “Don’t you ever say that word in this house again, you hear me, boy? Your mama was a whore, she done run off. You’d best be rememberin’ that. She’s just like all the rest of ’em. All women are dirty lying whores!”

He slapped him again. “Dammit! You stop that, you little sissy boy. Only little girls cry. Is that what you wanna be? A little sissy boy, a little faggot sissy boy? I’ll give you somethin’ to cry about, ya little homo.”

The man bolted straight up in the bed and searched the room. He was alone. His body drenched in sweat. He was breathing as if he’d just run a marathon. His heart pounded so hard, he thought it would escape his chest. The fear was real all right.

He found himself lying in a puddle. The smell of ammonia filled the room. “Fuck me!” he yelled, jumping off the bed. He looked down at the urine-soaked sheets, ran his hands down his face.

He stripped off his shorts, leaving them right where he’d stood and grabbed another pair off the top of the pile next to the bed. He stumbled downstairs to the kitchen and headed straight to the refrigerator in search of liquid comfort. No beer. He slammed the door and listened as bottles of condiments clanked together.

Steering toward the living room, he collapsed into the cracked and worn vinyl recliner. For a moment, he stared at the TV tray next to the chair, and started shaking the beer cans. He found an inch in the bottom of one and guzzled the warm, flat liquid.

His heart rate slowed while he sat staring at the blank screen on the TV. He tried to remember the nightmare, but it was already gone. He picked up a porno mag from the floor and started thumbing through it. That usually calmed him down.

He flipped through the well-worn pages until his eyes came to rest on one particular picture. The woman in the photo had long blonde hair, wore cut off’s and her breasts were bare as she leaned against a ’57 Chevy. The magazine was old, the pages torn, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away.

Something about her was familiar. The longer he gazed at her face, the angrier he got. There was only one way to stop the demons in his head.

It was time to start the hunt again.

TEN

Thomas was leaning back in his chair looking up at his makeshift murder board when Kim Johnson came in and tossed a giant folder on his desk.

“Here’s the VICAP report.”

Thomas quickly sat up and swiveled his chair to face his desk. He pulled the file close. “Jesus, that’s thick. Anything interesting?” He opened it up and thumbed through a few pages.

“To summarize, I came up with ten bodies accompanied by sand over the last five years in California; four women, two men, three children, and a dog—”

Thomas looked up. “A dog?”

“Affirmative.”

“Was it buried alone?”

Johnson stood with her feet apart, her hands clamped behind her back. “Actually, no, it was buried alongside a seven-year-old girl.”

“Interesting. I wonder if that was a one-time thing?”

“Don’t know. You want me to look into it?”

“Nope, just thinking aloud. It’s peculiar, that’s all. ”

She rocked back and forth on her feet while she talked.

“Okay, continuing on. Of the women: one brunette killed by blunt force trauma to the head and buried in the Mojave Desert, no rape or torture. That leaves you with four blondes, each raped then murdered, and either found on the sand or under it near a large body of water.”

“Thanks, Johnson.” He dismissed her and turned his attention back to the file, eager to start reviewing it.

Thomas immediately scanned the contents of the file. Johnson had placed the blonde murder victims on the top of the stack. Organizing the cases by date, he leaned back in his chair, put his feet on his desk and began to read.

The first victim was, Cynthia Gross, twenty-four-years old, long blonde hair, blue eyes, five feet five inches. Her body was discovered almost five years before in San Francisco, on the shore under the Bay Bridge.

Her face had multiple contusions, and she had been raped and strangled, but her cause of death was repeated trauma to the back of the head. Seminal fluid found in the vagina was not conclusive for DNA. Perpetrator a non-secretor. Thomas dropped his feet from the desk, and sat up.

What were the odds?

No mention of sodomy or mutilation. Death occurred within hours of her noted disappearance. The body had lain in the elements for three days before it was discovered. Her car was found in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in downtown San Francisco. She had been a resident of Alameda.
This could very well be his first kill.

Thomas shuffled the pages and began to read about the next victim. Found approximately three years later was the body of Ruth Katzmerik: thirty-two, five-feet-two, long blonde hair, blue eyes. She was found in a shallow grave on a beach in Morro Bay, raped and sodomized, but unmutilated. Ligature marks on wrists and ankles. Strangled repeatedly over the course of several days, he noted because of the overlapping bruises in the photos. Some were fresh; others had started to heal. COD was a subjugated larynx.
Was that a mistake? Did he mean to crush her larynx, or had he just gotten carried away?
Again, the seminal fluid found was that of a non-secretor.

Shit, I’m on a roll.

Ruth had been an attorney in downtown Los Angeles and lived in Santa Monica, roughly two hundred and twenty-five miles south of Morro Bay where she was dumped. Her body had been discovered seven days from the date she was reported missing, dead five of those days.
So he kept her somewhere for two days before he killed her.

Found one year later was Barbara Cartwright: age twenty-nine, long blonde hair, blue eyes, five-foot-even. Body recovered in a shallow grave on a beach in Santa Barbara. Reported missing by her boyfriend when she failed to show up at his house for dinner a few short blocks away. She lived in the small town of Buttonwillow, along the I-5, roughly a hundred and thirty-five miles northeast of Santa Barbara. When her body was discovered, she had been missing twelve days, dead only two.
Shit, he had this one for ten days!

Her face and body were covered in bruises. ME noted the contusions had been made over the course of her confinement, evident by the different stages of discoloration as some bruises began to heal and others were made. Eyelids and lips sewn shut with thick black nylon thread. Side note: bonded black nylon thread size 346, commonly known for sewing leather.

Thomas’ excitement ratcheted up. He grabbed the folder on his first vic and ran a finger down the page. “Shit.” Bonded nylon thread, black, size 346. Could be found on several sites on the internet. “Bingo!”

He went back to the report and read. Neck contusions consistent with strangulation, overlapping thumb and finger marks along with discoloration of the skin indicate she was choked several times over the course of as many days.

Ligature marks found around the wrists and ankles implied that she’d been restrained. White fibers found in the grooves proved to come from a cotton cord commonly found in any hardware store across the country. Breasts removed; sliced with a serrated instrument, probably a hunting knife. Not found in vicinity of body. Cause of death, exsanguination.

Thomas wrote a note about the white fibers. His vic had no such evidence on her. She had been thoroughly scrubbed clean with bleach.

The last woman was found five months later. Thomas stopped reading and checked the date on his first vic, then at his calendar. “Fuck me.” He waited three months before he killed Jennifer, and only two months before Jane Doe.
He’s escalating
.

Thomas scrubbed a hand down his face and went back to the report. Mary Anne Wilson: age thirty, long blonde hair, blue eyes, five-foot-five. Missing two weeks before her mutilated body was found floating along the shore of Clam Beach, up in Eureka.

Mary Anne lived with her mother in Stockton, roughly three hundred and thirty-five miles southeast from Clam Beach. Her car was found with a flat tire along the southbound Interstate 5. The ME could not place time or manner of death due to the condition of the body. Her flesh had been eaten away in many places by the marine life.

Between that and the bloating of the remaining flesh, it was nearly impossible to ID the body; they had to resort to DNA and dental records. The ME noted that most trace evidence had likely been washed away. But it was determined that she had been repeatedly raped and sodomized by the scarring of the tissue in the vaginal and rectal regions. Only one eyelid remained sewn shut, the other eye socket was void.
Meaning the fish had gotten to it.

Her breasts were missing, but it could not be determined what instrument was used at that point. Slight ligature marks were found on the wrists and ankles after careful examination, but no threads or fibers were found imbedded in the skin.

No water in the lungs.
So she didn’t drown.
Thomas compared the last photo of Mary Anne, post-autopsy, with the smiling picture of her alive. Floaters were never pretty, but he could see why even her closest relative could not identify her. She barely looked human.

ELEVEN

Meagan was having a great day. Lilah gave her a cupcake with a candle on it and sang “Happy Birthday.” Many of her clients gave her cards and gifts. And Stan dropped by, sans appointment, to bring her a sunflower.

She’d scheduled her last client at three that afternoon so she would have enough time to get ready for her date with the girls. They wouldn’t tell her where they were going, only that she needed to dress up.

After she’d freshened her makeup, she slipped on a maxi length halter dress with an Indian print. She piled on some silver bangle bracelets, a couple of rings, and finished with a pair of gypsy style earrings.

She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror pulling up the sides of her hair when she heard Theresa, the rowdiest of her friends, yelling through her screen door, “Hey, Birthday Girl! Hurry up, we’ve got reservations.”

“Come on in, I’m almost ready.” Meagan put the second comb in her hair. Tiny red curls framed her face, and the rest of her hair hung down her back.

She heard the screen door slam while she applied her red lipstick, then Theresa was at her side.

“You look great. Now get your butt in gear. The engine’s running.” Theresa latched onto her hand.

“I’m ready. Just let me grab my keys and purse.” Meagan yelled goodbye to Godzilla and locked up the house before she followed Theresa out the door. Katy was riding shotgun, and Sarah sat behind the wheel of her SUV. Theresa and Meagan jumped in the back.

“So where are you girls taking me tonight?”

Sarah turned around and said, “Not yet. You’ll have to wait until we get there.”

“I’ve gotta say, this is the first time Theresa’s ever kept a secret.” Meagan eyed Theresa, who had a sheepish grin.

“We threatened her with bodily harm,” Katy laughed.

“Hey, I’m sitting right here!” Theresa defended herself. “I’m not that bad, I just get excited.”

Meagan patted her knee. “I know, it’s cute, that’s one reason I love you.” Theresa smiled back at her.

When they exited in San Juan Capistrano, Meagan thought they were going to Cedar Creek, one of her favorite restaurants. Instead they turned into the Coach House, a small venue for musical acts.

Katy turned around from her seat. “We know how much you like Chris Isaak and it just so happened he was playing today.”