The Shoulders of Giants (25 page)

I had highlighted two words on a page I’d printed off the Internet after Scott and his partner told me about the Tylenol case. Two words from the list of possible sources for cyanide.

Film processing.

Okay, so it was circumstantial at best. At worst it was just a tiny coincidence, but it had caught my eye sufficiently to add it to my list of things to tell Scott. Shelley had her own darkroom, so it was conceivable that she had cyanide somewhere amongst her chemicals. If it was the same stuff that was used on Julie Campbell, then it was a direct link to not just one, but seven of the eight murders.

The gun found with Julie Campbell’s body, Calvin Walsh’s gun, had been used to shoot Melissa Adams. His shotgun dispatched Stacey Lloyd. His fingerprints were on Ray-Bans in Richard West’s car, Susan Patterson was found in Walsh’s VW, with his insulin in her system, and the hair found in the VW matched the semen on Linda Kramer’s leg. Grant Foster was the only one not directly linked by the evidence to the rest, and the only one with whom Shelley had a history.

For now, I had no more files to read, and no more people to talk to, so I decided I would spend the following day staking out Shelley’s studio. After all, I had to justify buying the camcorder somehow.

Chapter 38

I was in place by eight a.m., parked in a side street across from the studio on South Plymouth, doing my trick with the mirrors again. I considered charging Gregory Patterson extra for getting up this early in the morning. The camcorder was plugged into the cigarette lighter socket in my car, and was focused on Shelley’s front door. I sat it on the dash, facing through the back window, and left it recording. I had almost filled two tapes before anything happened at all. Then Shelley’s assistant showed up.

“The time is 10.13 a.m.” I said out loud, for the benefit of the tape. “The woman now entering the front door of Ryan Photographic is Miss Ryan’s assistant.” I felt like Jack Webb.

Shelley arrived about five minutes later, and I did my bit of commentary on her. She got out of a green BMW, which she parked right outside the studio. Once she was inside, I left the camcorder running and crossed the street. I wrote down the license number of the Beemer, and then went around the corner to pick up a sandwich.

When I got back to the car, I sat back in the passenger seat, rewound the last few minutes of tape, and played it back to see if I had missed anything. I hadn’t.

For the next hour I sat, watching the door. Occasionally my mind wandered, and I would start watching people going by, or turn the radio on. At one point a patrol car glided by, and I pretended to be asleep so that they wouldn’t stop and ask what I was doing. It seemed to work.

Scott still hadn’t called. I knew he was on shift but he wasn’t answering his phone, and I even left a message on his cell to call me back. Soon after twelve, while I was changing tapes, a couple arrived at the door. They looked like models. The tape engaged and I managed to record the backs of their heads for a good two seconds before they disappeared into the building.

The evidence I’d acquired on videotape so far was hardly damning. It occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d been expecting. Someone delivering her monthly copy of Murderers’ Digest, perhaps? I supposed that at the very least if a murder was committed that day, I’d know where she had been. Who knows, if I followed her after she left the studio, she might return to the scene of one of the crimes.

In the meantime, I took my cell phone from my pocket and called Lucy. I gave her Shelley’s name, work address and car registration, and asked for a full background check. While I was reading out the details, Shelley’s assistant came out of the front door of the building. She returned less than five minutes later with a couple of brown paper bags, presumably containing lunch.

I called Abby. She sounded cheerful when she recognized my voice.

“Hi Jake, how are you?”

“I’m good thanks, and you?”

“Oh, you know. Snowed under here. Did I mention I had a great time on Monday?’

“I think you may have said something about that.” I said, smiling.

“How goes the case?”

“Interesting, actually. I kind of have a suspect. I’m surveilling them now.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No. The cops aren’t quite convinced. Come to that, neither am I. Everything I’ve got so far is circumstantial.”

“Still useful in building a case.” Abby said.

“Yes, but I need something concrete before the cops will move on it. They’re being extra cautious. For political reasons.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll convince them. You seem very persuasive.”

“Could I persuade you to have dinner with me again?” I asked, seamlessly.

“How about tomorrow night?”

“Perfect,” I said.

“Why don’t we make it my place this time? I also cook, you know.”

“It doesn’t surprise me in the least. Your place it is then. Shall we say 7.30?”

“I’ll look forward to it. Goodbye Jake.”

I said goodbye, and sat in my car smiling for a while. I tried Scott again. No answer.

I watched the door for as long as I could stand it, and just as my head was about to explode from boredom, I made a bid for freedom. I took out my book on female serial killers and began to read.

It would seem I had a lot to learn. Aileen Wuornos was not America’s first female serial killer as I had thought. What she did appear to be, was the first female serial killer in America who worked alone, and didn’t know her victims prior to the murders. Not counting the ones working as part of a killing team, like Mickey and Mallory in
Natural Born Killers
, America has experienced thirty-six female serial killers in all.

Something moved in my peripheral vision, so I looked up. The models were leaving. I looked at my watch, and worked out that they had been in there for a little over two and a half hours. Nothing happened in the next five minutes, so I went back to my book.

Over a third of these women were ‘Black Widows.’ Women who systematically murder multiple husbands or people they have a personal relationship with. Of the rest, almost all killed relatives or people they were employed to care for. Most interesting were the methods favored by these psychopaths. Poison was overwhelmingly the most common, with others choosing to use suffocation, or shooting. But the only killers to have used methods which varied from victim to victim were those who killed with a male partner in crime. I thought about that. Lone female serial killers picked a method of death, and stuck to it. No exceptions.

I began to wonder if it was Shelley, who her partner could be. Maybe that’s what my surveillance would provide an answer to.

As if on cue, Shelley came out of the building. I grabbed the camera from the dash and held it up to my eye. She moved towards the BMW, and I struggled to keep the camera focused on her as I fumbled my key into the ignition. A plume of white smoke rose up from her exhaust as she started up. I turned my key. Nothing happened.

When I say nothing happened, I don’t mean it quite literally. Some things did happen. For example, Shelley drove away. What I mean is, nothing good happened. Nothing like my Saab chugging into action, me following Shelley, unnoticed, to her secret lovenest, where I would find her with a male psychopath and a stash of guns. Nothing like that happened at all.

The reason for this, I realized almost immediately, was the several hours I had spent draining the car battery to run the camcorder. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

While I waited for Triple A to arrive and rescue me, I got a call back from Lucy.

Chapter 39

Scott came to see me in my office after his shift. I had my notepad open where I had written what Lucy had discovered. I decided I would tell him all of it, and leave the one interesting part until last.

“Good day?” He asked.

“Not really. I had to call Triple A out.”

“Car trouble?”

“No, I said, without missing a beat, “sometimes I call them out when I’m a man short on a poker game. Most of the mechanics play. It’s part of their extended service. For an extra fifty bucks they’ll come round if you’re just lonely.”

“You could have just said ‘yeah’.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now tell me, what the hell is going on? I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday afternoon.”

“Yeah. Sorry man, I’ve been kind of busy. Pulled a double shift yesterday, crashed out for a couple of hours and started early today. I’ve literally just finished up.”

“So? What happened?”

“Looks like it was Leon Walker.”

“Start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Well, millions of years ago, the Earth…”

“Alright, you can leave some stuff out.”

“Okay,” he said. “So we knock on Walker’s door and there’s no answer, but there’s this smell. We all know what it is straight away, so Al kicks the door in and we storm the place, guns out.” He paused for effect.

“And?”

“There he is, lying against the wall, Calvin Walsh’s Ithaca in his mouth and the back of his head missing. Man, it’s a mess. Anyway, I turn around and see, on the wall, no, covering the wall, is newspaper clippings about the murders. All neatly cut out, pinned in place. This took him a long time. We found a note, too. Just said ‘Sorry’.”

“And you’re sure he did it?”

“Looks that way. African-American male, 36 years old. His hair is consistent with the one found in Walsh’s car, and his blood type matches the semen on Linda Kramer. It’ll be a few days before we get the DNA back, but I’m thinking it’s gonna match. His fingerprints were all over the FedEx box with the tape in it, and on the thumb tacks holding the clippings up. Handwriting analysis says he wrote the note. We know he called the first victim and threatened to kill him. We talked to the wife, Loretta, and she said she walked out when he threatened to kill her and Walsh. She’s been living in a motel for three weeks, hasn’t seen him since. He’s unemployed, and we can’t find anybody who can give him an alibi for any of the murders.”

“So he kills Walsh for banging his wife, then what? He snaps and kills seven strangers?”

“Seems so.”

“Then he sends proof of a threat to the cops, writes an ambiguous note and kills himself?”

“It’s not inconsistent. Spree killers often kill themselves. Andrew Cunanan shot himself in a boathouse the morning he killed Versace.”

Scott did not look happy to have solved the murders, or even relieved. I thought I knew why.

“You’re not 100% on this, are you?” I asked.

Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Something just doesn’t feel right. The evidence says I’m wrong. I’m pretty sure he did it. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“Well, the fingerprint on the shotgun shell, from DuPage. It doesn’t match Walker. That doesn’t mean anything. The gun could have already been loaded when he took it from Walsh’s place. I just can’t shake the feeling that the whole thing could have been staged. We’ve been thrown off track by this killer planting evidence before.” He paused again. This time it wasn’t for effect, but to try and convince himself they’d got their man. “I’m sure I’m wrong. The DNA will be back soon and it’ll tie Walker to two of the crime scenes, which I’m sure lead indirectly to more. Anyway, as far as the brass is concerned, it’s case closed.”

“I may have an alternative scenario,” I said, boldly. “I’ve been checking into Shelley Ryan.”

“This again?”

“You promised you’d listen,” I reminded him.

“Okay, what have you got?”

“First of all, she’s loaded. She has a dark green BMW with vanity plates, stocks and shares, she owns her studio outright, has for years. She has a plane. A light airplane. She has a private pilot’s license. Daddy taught her to fly, supposedly.”

“None of this surprises me. Do you have any idea how rich Daddy is?”

“Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. She has a life insurance policy. A cool million. Our friend the Senator is the beneficiary.”

“So?” asked Scott.

“Until ten years ago this month, the beneficiary was Grant Foster.”

“Interesting, I’ll admit. But it’s still circumstantial.”

“There’s more.” I said.

“There is?”

“Yes. A little more. Shelley’s a photographer.”

“My god, you’re right. Why didn’t we see that? She
is
a photographer. You truly are a great private detective.”

“And one of the chemicals photographers use in the developing process is potassium cyanide.”

Scott didn’t laugh. He sat and thought for a few seconds

“I know I mentioned this before, but... she’s female. Female people do not do this kind of murder.”

“Actually, I’ve been doing some reading...”

He interrupted “Even if your ‘theory’ about the motive was correct, what about the other seven?”

“Well, I’ve got two theories on that,” I said. “One is that she has a partner. Maybe even Leon Walker.”

“And the second theory?” asked Scott.

“You remember when you told me about the Tylenol case? That there were a few copycats?” He nodded. “Well, there was an insurance salesman in Seattle. He wanted to kill his wife, and make it look random, so he put cyanide in Excedrin tablets in local shops, and then fed some to his wife. She survived, two other people died, and he got caught.”

“So you’re saying Shelley Ryan, or her and Walker, killed seven innocent people to avoid suspicion?”

“Eight, if Walker is another victim. I’m saying it’s a possibility. Covering up a crime is a motive for murder.”

“That number of murders would seem excessive though.”

“It had to be enough that you guys are sure the motive isn’t personal. Any suspects with a motive to kill one of the victims but no connection to the others wouldn’t be looked at as hard as if there were only a couple of victims.”

“What about the assault? Presumably you’re saying Walker did that?”

“Maybe. Or Shelley herself. The semen could have been planted. I don’t need to draw you a diagram to show you how she could have made it look like rape.”