The Devil's Menagerie (22 page)

But the added risk gave a brighter edge to the fantasy Beringer was playing out. As a participant in the great game of Life and Death, he was now calling the plays. Besides, he had established a campus link to Dave Lindstrom, and he had something else in mind for the professor …

The onside kick failed, as Beringer had known it would. He watched the Cowboys run out the clock. Aikman, cool and efficient, went down on his knee for the last two meaningless plays as the seconds ran down. Watching the quarterback, Beringer reviewed his own actions over the past ten days. Not always retaining his cool, nevertheless he had made no serious mistakes. He had gotten away with grabbing Natalie impetuously. No one had seen him.

What about the car? Was there any chance the Taurus had been noticed where he had it parked near the campus? Maybe he ought to stay with the Buick for the next week. When he had signed the sublease agreement for the apartment he had not used his real name. Not that he expected the car to be traced back, but even if it was, all he had to do was disappear. Mr. No Name. The mystery man.

B
ERINGER WAS STILL
sitting there in the La-Z-Boy recliner when the first edition of the nightly news came on. For the second night in a row the lead story was the shocking discovery of a second murdered San Carlos College coed. A reporter was shown standing in the paved service area, with the dumpster in the background, reporting live although there was little to be seen other than the familiar yellow police tape defining the crime scene. The camera cut to a shot from the previous morning. Beringer’s reaction quickened with interest when one of the investigating homicide detectives was shown arriving at the scene, warding off reporters’ questions. Braden was his name. Brushed past the media vultures like a tugboat plowing through a flock of squawking seagulls. Tough-looking son of a bitch, Beringer thought with a grin.

Maybe he ought to give the homicide guy a little push in the right direction?

No, Beringer decided after a moment’s thought. That wasn’t necessary. He’d get there on his own … right where Ralph wanted him to go.

E
DWARD
B
ATCHELOR
P
RENTISS
walked the length of the block past the civic center, studiously avoiding a glance at the police station, as if his errand were taking him to the public library in the next block, or to city hall to pay his water bill. He was a middle-aged man wearing well-tailored gray worsted slacks and a white cableknit sweater. His hair was full, longer than the current fashion, silvery gray and brushed back from his temples. Rather distinguished, a fact of which Prentiss was usually aware.

Today his thoughts were less vain, less fixed upon the figure he cut than upon his anxiety. And his dilemma. A full professor with tenure at San Carlos College, in line to become chairman of the history department, respected and even admired by his colleagues, he was suddenly facing the possibility of a career disintegrating in ruins.

At the corner he hesitated, then crossed the street and started back. In the little park directly across from city hall he paused, watching the birds flutter around an old man on a bench who doled out seed from a plastic bag.

A police car pulled out of the parking lot behind the police station and drove past him. Prentiss watched it go by, aware of cold cop scrutiny.

What would such men think of him? He shivered, touched by a nameless chill. He knew little of them, and they knew even less of a man like him. What would he say to them?

I knew Edith Foster. She was in one of my classes. She flaunted herself, made it clear she was available. You have to understand, I’m

a married man, a respectable man, a husband and father, but she was unbelievably sexy, beautiful, she made me a little crazy
.

I see. Were you with her that Friday night, Dr. Prentiss?

Well, yes, we met at The Pelican, but … we didn’t go anywhere. Before that, four or five times, we went to a motel in Santa Ana. It’s not that far, and no one would see us there. But it was over between us, you see. That’s what Edie wanted to tell me that night. I think she was … growing tired of me. After only a month
.

Did you become angry, Doctor? Is that why you attacked her?

Impossible! Prentiss told himself. He could never subject himself to that sort of inquisition.

When the news of Edith Foster’s death broke a week ago, Prentiss had been stunned, initially disbelieving. Then he became terrified. What if someone had seen him talking to Edie that night at the coffeehouse, or leaving with her? They had been circumspect whenever they met in public, but what if she had talked to one of her friends about him—named him? His life would be destroyed. His marriage … Martha would never tolerate the public scandal. He suspected that Martha knew of his occasional—quite infrequent, really—dalliances with twenty-year-old students, but nothing had ever been said. She had sensibly looked the other way. But this … she wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

Nor would the school administration. He would be disgraced. He would lose everything. And the point was, he had done nothing! He was innocent of the girl’s murder—knew nothing about it.

It must have happened after he left her at the Alpha Beta parking lot. Angry, yes, mortified that the little tart had tired of him before he grew weary of her … while he was still besotted over her, in fact. But she had been alive and well when he left her. He had driven straight home, poured himself a large glass of Glenlivet, closeted himself in his den until he was able to deal with his humiliation, anger and, yes, grief …

The killer must have picked her up there in the parking lot, or followed her when she left. Or—he wouldn’t put it past her—Edie had picked
him
up, whoever he was, and got more than she bargained for.

That last thought was uncharitable. Nettled with himself, Prentiss turned away from the bird man and his flock. He continued along the street past the police station. The point was—he adjusted his thoughts—he had absolutely nothing to do with the poor girl’s murder. He couldn’t help the police find her killer. What was he supposed to do—destroy his reputation, his position, his
life
in a quixotic gesture? All to no purpose?

After a week of torment Edward Prentiss had determined to remain silent. If anyone had known he was fucking Edith Foster, they obviously would have come forward or the police would have come knocking at his door. He was out of it. It had nothing to do with him.

Then came the second killing.

He didn’t know the girl, Natalie Rothleder. As far as he could recall, she had never been in any of his classes. But her death shook him badly, almost as much as Edie’s murder. Prentiss regarded himself as a respectable citizen. He was vociferously Republican, in favor of the death penalty and the three-strikes law, strongly opposed to the progressive criminalization of American society under the liberals. How could he then remain silent? If he had any knowledge whatever of Edie Foster that would help the police to find the murderer of two young women, surely it was incumbent upon him to come forward.

That realization had brought him downtown this morning. Now, at the end of the long block across the way from the civic center, Prentiss stood irresolute. One hand nervously combed his silver hair back from his temples.

If he didn’t come forward, he thought, and he was eventually linked with Edie, serious questions would be raised. But after more than a week that risk seemed diminished. And didn’t a second and similar murder, strongly indicating the hand of a serial killer, prove that what had happened to Edie had nothing to do with him?

He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make his legs carry him across the street to the police station. Couldn’t give himself up in the vague hope that something he said might help find the killer.

It wasn’t that he was cold or indifferent to the fate of those two innocent young women. God in heaven, he had cared for Edie! He couldn’t think of her, that firm, nubile body, the unblemished texture of her skin, those exquisite long legs, without breaking out in a sweat. But she was dead. Nothing he could do would bring her back.

She had chosen her own fate. All he could do was go on.

He glanced at his watch. He had a lecture to give in less than an hour. As he shot the sleeve of his jacket and looked up, a couple climbed out of a station wagon across the way in the public parking area in front of the police station. The man, tall and slender, looked familiar. He said something to the woman, whose body language was stiff, angry and determined. Prentiss watched her with a certain admiration as she stormed up the steps as if leading a charge, the man hurrying to keep up even with his longer strides.

Prentiss did so admire a handsome woman!

His car, a silver Lexus, was parked in a city lot another block away. He walked there briskly, not looking back, feeling almost lightheaded with the release of his burden of guilt. His distinctive good looks drew more than one approving glance.

D
ETECTIVE
L
INDA
P
EREZ
, promoted to Detective/Third less than four months ago, handled most domestic complaints investigations that came to the attention of the San Carlos PD. It often seemed to her that her role was more that of a marriage counselor than a policewoman. And at age twenty-nine, once divorced, survivor of three more or less disastrous love affairs interspersed between long stretches when she might as well have been living in a convent, she didn’t exactly consider herself overqualified to give advice on domestic relations.

The fights she could handle. The reports of abuse she met head-on, always giving the woman the same advice: Get out while you can. Run. Don’t even look back. Few of the victims ever listened.

The couple seated across from Linda’s desk this morning had a different complaint. The husband was lean, quiet, soft-spoken—a gentle man more worried about his wife than about the problem that had brought them to the station house. If Linda knew anything at all about couples, this man was not an abuser … but apparently the wife’s first husband had been.

Linda glanced down at the Incident Report. Ralph Beringer, she had written on the form. Sandy hair. Six feet, two hundred pounds. Mid-thirties. Might be wearing an air force uniform. His ex-wife—now Glenda Lindstrom—had not seen him in eight years, so he might have changed some. Always wore glasses and favored tinted lenses. No known scars or distinguishing marks.

“What can you do?” the woman asked.

Linda read the tension in her posture and around her eyes. She was still in control but she was being pushed toward the edge.

“The truth is, Mrs. Lindstrom … until he actually does something, there is nothing we can do.”

“He’s threatened us! He’s made harassing phone calls. He’s stalked my children!”

“According to what you’ve told me, he hasn’t made any direct threats. And these phone calls … except for the first one, when he spoke to his son, the caller has not actually identified himself.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That you can’t say for certain who’s been making these calls,” Linda explained patiently.

“That’s ridiculous!” Glenda Lindstrom retorted. “I’m telling you, I know it’s him. He’s angry because I remarried. He’s hurt me before and he’ll do it again. He’s vindictive and he’s dangerous.”

“Take it easy, honey,” Dave Lindstrom said.

Linda Perez suppressed her irritation. The truth was, she was having a hard time taking the Lindstroms’ problem seriously. Rumors had floated around the squad room all morning that a task force was being formed to work on the Foster–Rothleder killings, the biggest case the San Carlos PD had ever handled. Captain Hummel had Detective Braden in the fishbowl, and the two of them kept glancing out at the squad room as if counting noses. Hummel’s glance had touched briefly on Linda and the couple at her desk before moving on.

Linda felt a sharp disappointment. Not only was the hunt for a serial killer the department’s biggest case in memory, but Tim Braden was heading up the investigation … and Linda, in her own phrase, had a thing for Braden. If she were working with him on a major case he would have to notice her. Fat chance, maybe, with that elegant Feeb in the wings, but a fat chance was better than none at all. Maybe Linda would have been the one to find something on the wacko they were hunting …

Linda had carefully avoided telling the department’s consultant shrink about Braden during her regular sessions, afraid that word would leak out and the other cops would have something on her. Not that she cared what the rest of those jerks thought, but it would inevitably get back to Braden and she couldn’t bear the thought of that.

“Perhaps you could talk to Beringer,” the man was saying.

Linda pulled her thoughts back to the problem before her. “Talk to him?”

“I think it might help if he were put on notice that the police are aware of him and his attempts to harass our family.”

“That might not be so easy,” Linda said, something of her impatience creeping into her voice, “since no one has actually seen him or knows where he is.”

“You haven’t been listening!” Glenda Lindstrom said hotly. “I saw him at least once, following us. One of our daughter’s teachers saw him outside her school. Our son Richie saw him following his school bus.”

“When you saw him”—Linda glanced at her notes—“he was in a gray Taurus. The man Richie said he saw was driving a dark blue Buick. Is that correct?”

“What difference does that make?”

Linda remained silent, giving the situation a moment to cool down. She was accustomed to dealing with couples, married and unmarried, young and old, whose emotions ran at white heat. A period of quiet was often as effective as a cold shower.

Glenda Lindstrom turned to her husband. “Let’s get out of here. They’re not going to do anything.”

“Just a minute, Mrs. Lindstrom, that’s not true. But you must understand there are limits to what the police can do in a case like this. We have to work within the law just as the average citizen must.”