The Love Killings (9 page)

“You know what, Doctor?” he said finally.

Baylor narrowed his brow but remained quiet.

“I saw what you did to the four girls in Los Angeles and New Orleans. I know what you’re capable of. Your methods have changed. That was my first thought when I saw the crime-scene photographs from the Strattons’. And it was the first thought I had when I climbed those stairs tonight. You’re in a state of decay. You need to hand over your gun. You need to come with me so I can help you. You need medical help. Psychiatric help. The killing has to end.”

“You’re disappointing me.”

“You need help, Doctor. Before anyone else gets hurt.”

“May I ask you a question?” Baylor said in a particularly quiet voice.

“Why not.”

The doctor turned and gazed at the victims. “The killer is obviously selecting his victims from the same pool I am. But when you see something like this, when you add everything up, when you concentrate on the whole, and not the meaning of any single part, what are you left with, Matthew? What need was the killer trying to fulfill?”

Matt remained quiet as he took in the horror one more time. A father with his two daughters. A mother with her son. Then he felt Baylor poke him in the back with his pistol.

“It’s getting late,” the doctor said. “And I have another stop to make tonight. We’re leaving. We’re off to the kitchen, and you’re leading the way.”

Matt gave the doctor a look and noticed that odd glint blooming in the man’s eyes again. He appeared disappointed and irritated and, all of a sudden, was in a rush to leave. Matt glanced back at the landing as he started down the staircase. His mind was reeling, and he held on to the rail all the way down to the entryway.

There was too much information here—and he couldn’t get a grip on any one piece to even begin sorting things out.

They started walking toward the back of the house. Baylor remained quiet as they passed all those rooms with all those lousy paintings. At least now Matt had a sense of who Holloway had been before his death. The paintings worked like a mirror and revealed who Holloway had really been.

Matt turned and watched the doctor following him into the kitchen. Baylor crossed the room, swung open the glass door, and pointed at the property line in the distance. He was still in a hurry. Still disappointed and abrupt.

“You can’t see it from here,” he said. “But there’s a stone wall about four feet high behind those trees. That’s where you’ll find your things when I’m gone. If you make any attempt to follow me, I’ll shoot you. Good luck, Matthew. I think you’re going to need it. Whoever murdered these people is someone special. I wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about how you’ll pay your father back right now. The last time you became distracted, you took three shots in the gut, remember?”

Matt could feel Baylor’s eyes on him, and then he was off—crossing the backyard at a brisk and steady pace. Matt stepped outside and listened to the doctor’s footsteps break through the frozen ground in the howling wind. Once Baylor disappeared behind the trees, Matt hit the lawn in a full sprint. It took longer than he expected, the actual size of the property lost in the gloom, but when he finally reached the stone wall, he found his pistol and cell phone waiting for him. There was a rear gate here, and a condominium on the other side of the wrought iron fence. A car had just pulled out of the lot onto Sugartown Road. Matt strained to focus his eyes through the darkness, but the car was too far away to make out any detail.

He noticed his breath in the air, thick as smoke. He couldn’t catch it. He couldn’t think. The world seemed like all of a sudden it was floating through space upside down.

CHAPTER 17

It felt more like an interrogation than anything else. A violation of some kind. Matt was seated at a reading table in the Holloways’ library. A bright desk lamp had been pushed into his face. On the other side of the table, he could make out Doyle’s figure in the shadows, along with Special Agent Rogers and Dr. Stanley Westbrook. Agent Brown was listening from a chair by the window.

“You’re sure it was Baylor?” Rogers asked in a loud voice. “You’re sure it was him?”

Matt remained quiet, taking a deep breath and exhaling. He could see Doyle uncapping a bottle of water and taking a quick sip. After he set the bottle down, the federal prosecutor leaned over the table.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “Let’s go through it one more time, Jones. You said that he left five fingerprints at the Strattons’ mansion. That he wanted us to find them because he thought it might bring you to Philadelphia. Where are they? Where are the fingerprints?”

Matt winced. The bright light hurt his eyes.

“Why is this light in my face?”

“Where did Baylor leave the fingerprints?” Doyle repeated.

Matt shrugged. “I didn’t believe him when he said it.”

“Of course you didn’t, Jones. Where did he say he left them?”

“There’s a page from a newspaper that Stratton had framed. Baylor said it’s hanging in the library. He said he touched the glass and the frame itself. He left a third print on the kitchen faucet when he washed his hands.”

Matt could see Rogers leafing through the sections in a three-ring binder and realized that they had pulled the murder book from the passenger seat of Matt’s car. It felt like another violation. He watched Rogers find the page he was looking for, his indignation rising. He watched the man skim through the copy and look up at Doyle.

“All three were located,” he said finally. “They were smudged. There was no probative value. They could have been anyone’s fingerprints. They could have been there for weeks.”

Rogers had become defensive the moment Matt told them that Baylor had found a way to send him a text message using the special agent’s name and phone number. Matt gave the man another hard look. The gunshot wounds had begun burning in his gut, and he could feel a headache coming on from the bright light in his eyes. It was time for this one-way conversation to end. He grabbed the desk lamp, got to his feet, and turned the bright light on his interrogators.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Rogers said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Matt glared back at him. “You want to talk about what happened, Rogers, then I’m more than happy to do that. But this is bullshit, and I don’t like you.”

Matt smashed the lamp on the floor, then started around the desk toward the special agent. When Rogers took a step back, Doyle grabbed Matt by the shoulders.

“It’s been a long night. Why don’t we all calm down? You, too, Rogers.”

“I’m in charge here,” Rogers said under his breath. “He’s not qualified to be here. Nobody talks to me that way.”

Doyle smiled. “Yes, he is, and he just did. Now find a seat and sit down. Both of you.”

Matt glanced at Kate Brown as he took the chair beside her and turned back to Doyle. The federal prosecutor had started pacing up and down the long room and appeared to be thinking something over. After another quick sip of water, he finally spoke.

“This is exactly what we thought would happen. Jones is here, and tonight Dr. Baylor made contact. It’s a step forward. A huge step forward. Tell us again, Jones. What did the doctor say?”

Matt leaned forward in the chair. “He claims that he didn’t kill these people. And he didn’t murder the Strattons. He wanted to, he’d done his research, but someone got to them first. Someone who’s picking his victims from the same group.”

Doyle glanced his way, then lowered his eyes back to the floor. “That’s what the guilty always say. He didn’t expect you to believe him, did he?”

“I think he did. He was disappointed when I didn’t.”

The truth was that Matt thought the doctor had been trying to play him the same way he played the detectives investigating the murder cases in LA. Baylor had done everything he could to make everyone involved think that another man, Jamie Taladyne, was responsible for the three women he murdered in Hollywood and the Valley. Taladyne died at the hands of the police before Matt was able to see through the doctor and single him out.

Matt had reached this conclusion six hours ago after watching the doctor’s car vanish down Sugartown Road. He’d made two calls, first to 911, and then to Kate Brown. It had taken less than ten minutes for the township’s first response units to arrive. But it had taken almost an hour before anyone from the city made it to the Holloways’ mansion in the suburbs. An hour Matt had used to reexamine the crime scene on his own and process what he thought had happened here tonight.

He looked up and caught Dr. Westbrook staring at him through those thick glasses of his. He could see suspicion showing on the man’s face, and wasn’t sure if he liked him any more than Rogers. The two men seemed to have a great deal in common.

Matt turned back to Doyle, still pacing, still tossing something over in his mind.

“After Baylor tried to persuade you that his connection to both murders was a coincidence, what happened next?”

“I tried to convince the doctor to turn himself in.”

“How?” Doyle asked. “What did you say?”

“He wanted to see my gunshot wounds. He wanted to see how they were healing.”

Westbrook broke in. “Any show of concern or kindness is an act,” he said. “Dr. Baylor is a psychopath. Showing concern is just another tool in the madman’s bag of tricks.”

Matt didn’t think so, but kept his mouth shut.

Doyle stopped and turned and shot the psychiatrist an odd look. “It seems to me that this is more than a trick, Westbrook. How do you explain the fact that Dr. Baylor saved Jones’s life in LA?”

Dr. Westbrook shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “But I’ve never met a psychopath who wasn’t a manipulator. I’ve never met one who wasn’t a great role player. They know how to push buttons to get what they want, and they’re good at it.”

Doyle nodded. “Point taken,” he said as he turned back to Matt and started pacing again. “Okay, Jones. Baylor examined your gunshot wounds. What did you say that you hoped might convince him to turn himself in?”

“I told him that there had to be something left inside him because he
did
save me. He saved me twice.”

“Anything else?”

Matt stood up and leaned against the windowsill. “I told him that his story defied the imagination. No one would ever believe that he just happened to show up at the Strattons’ on the night they were murdered, and then again tonight at the Holloways’ with the bodies still warm. I told him that time was running out. That ever since his escape, the FBI has known that he’s not who he says he is. That everyone believes he murdered the real Dr. George Baylor fifteen years ago in Chicago. That the two of them may have met while attending medical school. That he was from somewhere on the East Coast and obviously running from something in his past that required a new identity.”

“Where did you learn all that?” Doyle asked.

“I was given access to the website before I was shot.”

“How did Baylor react?”

Matt paused a moment. He could still see the expression on the doctor’s face. He could still hear his voice.

“He said that I needed him.”

Doyle turned and gasped incredulously. “He what?”

Matt reached into his pocket and opened a fresh pack of nicotine gum. Everyone in the room was staring at him.

“He said that I still needed him. I just didn’t know it yet.”

CHAPTER 18

Matt wasn’t exactly sure, but he thought that he’d lost his footing. He thought that he’d missed something while talking to Dr. Baylor and that it was important.

He hadn’t been afraid. That was the trigger.

Once Baylor jabbed him in the back with the gun, once the shock wore off from being startled, only the horror of the actual crime remained.

Matt knew from his experience as a soldier in Afghanistan that fear was an instinctual response. Fear wasn’t something he could control. Fear couldn’t be switched on or switched off. Fear was an automatic response to danger and went side by side with his will to live.

Matt understood exactly who Baylor was and what he’d done to four innocent young women. Baylor had the Glock 17 and had taken charge of Matt’s weapon and cell phone. Matt had every reason to be frightened of the man.

So why didn’t his body perform the way it should have? What had overridden his natural response to being held by a madman?

Matt had always relied on his instincts and his imagination to survive, and he didn’t understand what was going on. Either he’d lost his touch or he’d missed a key component that he should have seen.

As Matt played it back in his mind, as he considered all the innocent people Baylor had terrorized, ruined, or killed, he realized that he hadn’t responded to the doctor as a threat.

And this worried him.

Matt zipped up his leather jacket and walked out of the Holloways’ mansion. For whatever reason, probably at Doyle’s urging, Rogers had returned the murder book to him. There were two trucks from the county crime lab still here, along with an almost endless line of patrol units parked on the grass along the drive. It was just after five in the morning. The murder victims had been removed by a team from the coroner’s office a few hours ago. Rogers and Brown had left around the same time, but Matt could see Doyle holding an impromptu press conference with the media on the other side of the street.

He could hear the federal prosecutor acknowledging the murders and making a preliminary statement for the morning news. He could hear a reporter shouting Baylor’s name and noted the anxiety in the man’s voice.

Why did Baylor pick Philadelphia? Why is he here?

Matt stopped listening. He was just grateful that the crowd of reporters and their camera people were far enough away that he hadn’t been noticed and could make a clean break for his car.

But then he stepped through the gate onto the street and was hit by the sudden shock of light from a video camera. It was Ryan Day, the celebrity gossip reporter, in Matt’s face with his microphone and backstepping his way beside his camera operator. When the reporter spoke, the drama in his voice sounded over-the-top.

“What’s it like inside, Detective Jones? Five more murders by the infamous Dr. Baylor. Another entire family dead. What are you feeling right now?”

Matt wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Flashing an affable smile that died off quickly, he ignored the question, kept his eyes away from the camera, and walked past both men. Then he got in his car and drove off. He could see them in the rearview mirror. They were still shooting until he reached the corner and made a left onto Sugartown Road. That’s when the camera light finally went dark.

Matt reached into his pocket, then stopped. Nicotine gum was useless. He needed a cigarette, and he needed one now.

On the drive to the Holloways’ mansion, he had seen a Wawa food market just off Sugartown this side of Route 30. Matt remembered reading a sign that said the store was open twenty-four hours. As he glided down the hill, he spotted the lights in the winter gloom and felt the pangs in his gut lessen some. The lot was empty. Matt nearly ripped the door off its hinges and climbed out of the car. Inside the market he could smell fresh-brewed coffee and counted ten glass pots filled to the brim. He poured a large cup and added two sugars. Walking over to the register, he noticed a basket of soft pretzels wrapped in plastic. He grabbed two and asked for a pack of Marlboros, a disposable lighter, and two packets of Advil.

He couldn’t move fast enough as he exited the market. He slammed the car door shut, got the engine started, and lit up. The cigarette tasted like shit and smelled even worse, and within a few seconds he remembered all five reasons why he’d quit. Still, he shook those reasons off one by one, then ripped open both packets of Advil and downed four caplets with his coffee. He took another drag on the cigarette, cracked the window open, and turned up the heat. He didn’t care how rank the cigarette smelled or tasted. His body was already beginning to relax, his mind sharpening. Within an hour, the pain from the wounds in his gut would fade away. If he followed up with two Tylenol caplets in a couple of hours and went back to a normal dosage of Advil two hours after that, he might make it through the day without having to open that bottle of Vicodin.

He pulled out of the lot, following the road into the valley and picking up the expressway into the city. Early morning traffic was still a long way off, and Matt made the drive with his foot on the floor in less than half an hour. By 6:30 a.m. he’d showered and shaved and was out the door, heading for Benny’s Café Blue.

He walked in with the murder book, ordered a cup of the house blend, and sat at the booth by the window. The sun still hadn’t risen, and he could see two young women and a middle-aged man working out on those StairMasters across the street.

He sat back and let his eyes wander down to the sidewalk. The trees were bending in the cold wind, the lights on the branches hypnotic after a night without sleep. He turned back, took a first sip of coffee, and gazed at the logs burning in the café’s fireplace.

He’d missed things. Important things. He knew it now.

It had been showing on Baylor’s face when they switched on the lights and returned to the second-floor landing. The expression on his face as the doctor moved closer and gazed at the Holloways. The curiosity in his eyes, that strange glint moving from one dead body to the next. Matt had noticed it at the time, but couldn’t fathom what it meant. Now he was ready to make a wild guess that didn’t feel so wild.

Baylor had been seeing the crime scene for the first time.

The first time.

Matt’s heart almost stopped. What if this really was different than LA? What if the doctor wasn’t looking for a scapegoat? What if he had told Matt the truth? What if someone else was out there? Someone off the grid. Someone the doctor had called
special
.

Matt let the idea settle in.

It would explain why he hadn’t seen Baylor as a threat. It would explain why he never felt like he was in danger and had no sensation of fear. His gut instincts had seen it from the beginning, even though it had taken until this very moment for his mind to catch up and cross the finish line.

Matt thought about the text message the doctor had sent him. Could Baylor have committed the murders and sent the message as a ploy in order to confuse the issue? Yes, but Matt imagined that human behavior, even in the case of a psychopath, wasn’t so complicated.

The more likely explanation was that the doctor had been telling him the truth. As Matt considered this concept, he could feel the main wheel in his gut click forward like the clock on the wall striking 7:00 a.m.

It felt so odd. So outrageous. So possibly righteous.

The doctor could be innocent.

He opened the Strattons’ murder book, checked who was sitting nearby, then began leafing through the crime-scene photos. He was thinking about something Baylor had said at the Holloways’. A question he’d posed just before leaving.

When you add everything up, what need was the killer trying to fulfill?

Matt’s eyes drifted from body to body until they came to rest on Tammy Stratton holding her thirteen-year-old son, Jim Jr. She was cradling the boy exactly the way Mimi Holloway had been holding her son, Nicholas. It suddenly occurred to Matt that these murders might not have anything to do with either Jim Stratton, MD, or David Holloway. Nothing to do with Stratton’s crime of giving his healthy patients chemotherapy or Holloway’s habitual acts of cowardice in killing big game. Matt had no doubt that both men were complete shitheads, but there was a chance, an emerging possibility, that these murders had nothing to do with them.

He looked back at the photo of Tammy Stratton. The death embrace. He thought about the order of things. Jim Jr. would’ve been the first to die. His mother holding him in her arms would have gone next.

These murders weren’t about greed. Matt was certain of it now. This was about a killer with a different issue. A killer with an entirely different motive.

Matt noticed that his fingers were trembling slightly as he made the revelation. This wasn’t about money or greed or even power. This was about
Mommy
.

A thought surfaced. Matt rushed through the set of photographs until he found a copy of the one Doyle had shown him in McKensie’s office at the Hollywood station. The image may have been dark, but it was shot from a distance and took in the entire crime scene. He focused on the mother holding her son, noting once again that their genitals were touching.

This was about
Mommy
.

But something else was going on here. That stray thought he’d had when he first examined the Strattons’ second-floor landing on his own. He had thought about the way the bodies were posed, the blood spattered all over the walls—he’d known it all along. His first impression of the crime scene had been the right one.

If Baylor had been trying to make a statement like he did in LA and New Orleans, this one seemed forced. It felt like he was straining
.

The reason it felt different was the most obvious reason of them all. It confirmed everything in Matt’s mind.

There really was someone else out there. Someone
special
.

Matt saw a man approaching him out of the corner of his eye and slammed the murder book shut. When he looked up, Ryan Day was taking a seat on the other side of the booth and sipping a cup of coffee. His eyes through his wire-rimmed glasses were big and wild, and Matt guessed that the gossip reporter had caught a glimpse of the photograph.

Day set his coffee cup on the table. “We could help each other, you know.”

“We could what?”

“Help each other,” the reporter said. “I have information.”

Matt tried to reel in his exasperation. “About what?”

“About everything.”

Matt pushed his coffee aside, then checked the café and glanced out the window. When he didn’t see Day’s camera operator, he turned back. “Give me a sample,” he said. “Tell me something that will help me.”

Day leaned on the table, his brown eyes sparkling. “Okay,” he said. “Your father has hired two bodyguards. Both are former Navy SEALs and licensed to carry firearms. Apparently, your father thinks someone is out to get him. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

Matt didn’t say anything for a long time. He sat back and stared at Day and let his mind roll out line. He already knew about the bodyguards. He’d seen them walking his father through the crowd of reporters on TV. When Matt finally spoke, his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.

“I thought you hadn’t confirmed who my father was. That’s what you said yesterday.”

“He has to be your father, Jones.”

Matt shook his head slowly. “That’s all you’ve got?”

The reporter paused a moment, then leaned forward. “Do you know how many corporate-created, bitchy, no-talent celebrities I’ve had to push on my show to keep the ratings up and pay the bills? How many times I’ve wanted to lose my lunch after interviewing one of these low-rent reality stars? You have no idea how great it is to be working on a real story.”

“That’s the part I don’t get, Day. What’s the story?”

“Who your father is. Who shot you on Mount Hollywood. Who you really are, and why did Dr. Baylor save your life. That’s the story, and it’s a great story. I can’t believe you wouldn’t want to help me tell it.”

Day’s voice shook with emotion and more drama. The gossip reporter came off so sleazy that Matt thought about driving back to the apartment and taking another shower.

“I don’t think you can help me,” Matt said.

He picked up the murder book and got to his feet. Day grabbed his forearm.

“Please, I can help you,” he said. “Here’s something to get you started.”

“I’m not interested.”

Day narrowed his eyes. “Your mother’s maiden name,” he said quickly. “It’s not Clemens. It’s Stewart. Julie Stewart. That was your mother’s real name. It was changed in her early teens. Same with your aunt Abby.”

Matt clenched his teeth and gave the man with black hair and ultra-pale skin a long, hard look. Then he ripped his arm free, and walked out.