To Die For (6 page)

The next stop was for an eyebrow and moustache wax and a perm for herself, and a fashionable step-cut haircut for the boy. Signing the $164.76 charge “June Roberts,” she cheerfully bragged to her stylist that she was going on a “shopping spree.” At West Dallas, an upscale leather goods store, she spent $511 on a black, fringed leather jacket and red, yellow and black cowboy boots. She wore the red boots out of the store. Thirteen minutes later, she was Temecula's Jewelry Mart, signing June Roberts' name on a credit card charge for $161 diamond-and-sapphire drop earrings. Swinging through Mervyn's, a popular chain department store, she moved quickly, gathering up a dozen pairs of Jockey women's underwear, and three pairs of children's shoes for the young boy, $167.96; five pairs of boys' jeans and Levi's, eight shirts and a handful of boys' socks and undies, $240.80; and a set of new sheets, $40.93—all charged to June.

On the way home, Dana stopped by Sav-On to pick up Tootsie Rolls and Skittles, orange-flavored Gatorade, rawhide dog treats, dog biscuits and dog shampoo, two cartons of Marlboro Lights and two 1.75 bottles of Smirnoff vodka. Wedged into the cart was a purple boogie board, a short, Styrofoam board used for body surfing. Headed for the check-out counter, she paused by the toy aisle and tossed a $5.99 toy police helicopter into her shopping basket. Dana signed June's name on the $74.62 charge slip.

As Dana and Jason shopped, June's canasta partners waited for a while, then played without her, wondering why she hadn't called. Edna had tried in vain to reach June to give her the name and phone number of her insurance agent.

After a busy afternoon of shopping, Dana got on the freeway and took the exit leading to an unincorporated area of Lake Elsinore. She steered the big Cadillac past a run-down liquor store, with bars on the window and graffiti on the concrete block walls, and an auto parts store, with cracks in the parking lot big enough for knee-high weeds to grow. In this neighborhood, there were no manicured lawns, no curbs, no sidewalks, no custom homes. Most of the homes were pre-fab or trailers. Off some of the side streets were unmarked and unlit dirt roads. On the opposite side of the street was a huge, dried lakebed with bike lanes. A few good rainstorms in the winter can raise the water level to within 50 feet of the street. Dana drove into the driveway of a brown-and-white mobile home with a brick foundation and parked in the carport. She unloaded the bulging bags from the trunk of the Cadillac but didn't have time to put everything away before her boyfriend, Jim, came home. As Dana, Jim and Jason were settling down for dinner, June's friends were knocking on June's front door, ready to take her out for her birthday. When she didn't answer the door, they used the house keys still dangling from her golf cart to get into her house.

Jim asked Dana about all of her purchases and Dana brushed him off, explaining that she got a credit card from Dennis, her estranged husband. Angry, Jim told her to cut up the card and return the merchandise. It started a fight.

After dinner, Dana fixed herself a vodka and took the drink and phone to the other room. She dialed the number for Murrieta Hot Springs, an upscale spa a couple of cities away.

“Hello. I'd like to make an appointment for a massage tomorrow morning.”

“Of course. Your name?” said the receptionist.

“June Roberts.”

*   *   *

“Hey, Rich, we've got another homicide up at Canyon Lake.”

Greco was on his cell phone, standing in front of the panoramic window in June's living room. He looked out over the grassy contours of the darkened golf course. It was 7:22 p.m. He'd already walked through the scene and had just called for the county lab techs and the DOJ criminalists to come out. Bentley was his second call.

“Well,” Bentley said, “there's supposed to be another DA on call. I'm kind of busy. Actually, I'm making dinner.”

Over the phone, Greco could hear food sizzling and kids in the background. His face grew hot with panic. His heart sank.

“You do good work,” Bentley said. “You can do this. Why don't you just brief me in the morning?”

Greco, ignoring his anxiety for the moment, gave Bentley the rundown: an elderly woman strangled with a phone cord. Lived alone. Some rummaging in the house but no ransacking. No sign of forced entry. Great violence to the victim. Greco walked a few steps and stood at the entrance to the kitchen; he could see into the den/office area where June's bare legs, splayed at an unnatural angle, stuck out from underneath a heavy wood and leather chair.

“Are you sure you don't want to come out?” Greco said to Bentley. “It looks like there are a lot of similarities.”

“Yeah, I'm sure,” Bentley said. “Just go ahead and process the crime scene and brief me in the morning.”

Greco felt alone and overwhelmed. All the panic from the last two weeks returned and multiplied. He was already bogged down with work on the Norma Davis homicide and here was another one for him to try to solve. He'd been typing up reports on the Davis murder when Jim McElvain told him about this one. He'd caught the call from dispatch and walked it over to Greco. Greco couldn't believe it. He thought McElvain was kidding. You're b.s.-ing me, he'd told McElvain. Greco wanted Bentley's advice from a prosecutor's standpoint. If he ever caught the killer, Greco thought, he didn't want the case to suffer because of his inexperience or because he'd overlooked something important. He needed help.

I can only do so much, Greco thought to himself. I'm a brand-new detective and I have no experience with homicides. They know that. What else can I do?

Consumed with his thoughts, Greco slowly walked back outside into the crisp desert evening and tried to focus his thoughts. Here he had two murders within two weeks, literally within blocks of one another, both elderly women and both killed with extreme violence. The murders were too close together in time and location to be a coincidence. They had to be related. Greco's mind was spinning.

Serial killer.

Oh my God, Greco said to himself. I might have a serial killer on my hands and I can't even get the deputy DA out to the crime scene.

He dialed the local office of the FBI.

“I need assistance with a possible serial killer,” Greco said. The agent told Greco that the FBI can assist a detective with profiling, but it doesn't provide agents for primary homicide investigation.

Greco pocketed his cell phone with a worried look crossing his face. He felt tired. A feeling of hopelessness shuddered through his body, but he caught it before he let it overtake him. He knew he had to stay focused and do his job. He had another hour or two before the criminalists and ID techs would get there; maybe the on-call DA would show up soon. He pulled out his phone again and called his wife to tell her it was going to be a long night.

“Good luck,” she said. “And be safe.”

Darlene had enough on her hands dealing with their 9-month-old twin girls and three other small children. He didn't want to burden her with his work problems. He tried to sound cheerful and hung up the phone, then figured out his next move.

Less than an hour before, Greco, Sgt. Dennis Wenker, Greco's supervisor, and Sgt. Wyatt McElvain, as the supervising officer of Canyon Lake, did a preliminary walk-through of June's house. Officer Jean LeSpade, who responded to the initial call, stayed outside to maintain a time log of people who entered and exited the crime scene. The house was largely dark, silent and still, save for a single lamp in the den.

They had entered June's house through the side door by the carport, where June's car keys dangled from the ignition of the gleaming white golf cart. Parked behind it was her silvery blue Volvo adorned with the familiar Christian logo: the word “Jesus” encased in the outline of a fish. A one-inch, rounded, rectangular piece of broken, bloody glass sat on the cement floor of the carport, a couple of feet from the side door. A few feet from that was a paper store receipt. As soon as Greco and his supervisor came in through the side door, they had seen June's open brown purse and department store credit cards strewn beside it on top of the dryer. Greco wondered if the killer was looking for something specific—why not just take the whole wallet? At that point, he couldn't assume that any credit cards were taken. He hoped the killer had left some fingerprints.

The trio went through a short, dark hallway, turned left and stood at the edge of the den, which looked like it was being used as an office. To their right was a small dining area that adjoined the kitchen. On the far wall to their left were two tall bookcases. A dusty pink velour couch with end tables on either side sat against the wall to their immediate left. On one of the end tables was a tan phone with the curly receiver cord and the long, plain cord missing. The straight cord was coiled by the end table and the curly cord had been used to garrote June. Along the opposite wall was a sliding glass door and a desk with its drawers standing open. Near the dining room area was a large potted ficus tree with a placard reading: “In memory of Duane Roberts.” An eerily homey glow from the desk lamp illuminuted the disturbing scene.

Greco immediately saw that June had struggled mightily to fend off her attacker. Shattered glass littered the bloodstained carpet a few feet from the couch. In the middle of one large stain sat the stump of a wine decanter with a hinged wire top. Near the sliding glass door, a small table had been overturned. June was lying between the couch and the desk, her face horribly swollen, bloody and purplish. On top of her was a chair made of dark wood and black vinyl. Her neck had been tied to one arm of the chair with the phone, her hands still in a death grip on the cord. One piece of glass was resting on June's right hand. She was still wearing a large gold ring generously studded with diamonds on her left ring finger. Greco was perplexed by the fact that her hands and forearms bore no defensive wounds despite the lethal fight.

He could see one pant leg had ridden up to reveal a long, bloody gash down June's shin, possibly from scraping against the chair. A half-circle smear of blood ran along the side of the desk and ended at June's head on the carpeted floor, tracing her last movement where she was either pushed or fell. A plastic, tortoise-shell hairband was lying at her feet.

Greco and the two sergeants stared in silence for a few minutes while Greco wrote detailed notes, then they quietly discussed the potential scenarios. Without any visible sign of a break-in, there was a strong likelihood that June knew her attacker. No one could explain why the killer left a diamond ring on her finger.

Looking to the right, through the kitchen, they could see the living room and an open photo album with snapshots strewn on the carpeted floor.

They backed out the way they had come and stood in the hallways to observe the other rooms. In June's bedroom one large dresser drawer had been opened and two small drawers had been removed and placed on top of the dresser. On the unmade bed was a green velour sweatsuit and a bathrobe. A few droplets still clung to the shower in the master bathroom. The trio wondered whether the victim or the suspect had used the shower. Nothing was disturbed in the spare bedroom.

With at least an hour or two before the lab techs and DOJ criminalists were due to arrive, Greco circled June's house carefully, noting the positions of blinds and curtains, whether doors and windows were open or closed, and whether lights were on or off. The venetian blinds in the den and the living room were closed. Assuming the crime occurred in the middle of the day, Greco wondered if the killer had closed the blinds. He saw two screwdrivers on a ledge outside one of the living room windows and jotted it down. He shined a flashlight on the green rocks in the front yard to see whether the murderer had left behind any evidence while fleeing. He saw none. He noted the living room's front picture window and its proximity to the golf course and made a note to himself to come back when the blinds were up to see how much of June's living room someone could see from different parts of the golf course and whether the killer could have seen June working on the photo album.

Once he'd completed the outside examination to his liking, Greco went back inside June's house and stood in the hallway far from the evidence just to get a feel for June and try to make sense of how the homicide occurred. He started in the laundry area by the side door, staring at the credit cards lying on top of the dryer next to the open purse. A small red purse, possibly for cosmetics or coins, had also been removed from the handbag. With details of the other homicide running through his mind, Greco moved through the other rooms and finished up in the den as he tried piecing together the similarities. It was interesting to him that both women were killed in a den/office area. Assuming that June had been there for a few hours before her friends found her at 6:18 p.m., both women were killed in broad daylight. Both crime scenes bore signs that the killer had rummaged around, rather than ransacked, the house.

What was the killer looking for? Why ignore the rings on both victims? Greco wasn't ruling out the possibility that something of value was taken from Norma's house. It looked like the killer was brazen enough to take time sifting through June's assortment of credit cards.

Then there was the similarity with the chairs. Perhaps the killer somehow used chairs to control the victims. The killer had passed on June's lightweight dining room chairs in favor of the sturdier wood chair. The half-moon blood smear on the desk, as well as the obvious disarray in the area, showed signs of an intense struggle. It looked as if June, in her final moments, had collapsed while she struggled to escape from the chair, leaving the smear on the side of the desk. Norma had obviously been unable to fight or flee.

Another common thread was the phone. At Norma's house, the extra-long cord strung down the hall and into the den had been ripped out but not used, and the phone itself was found under Norma's body. He had been astonished during Norma's autopsy the week before to find that Norma had also been strangled manually, meaning that the killer's hands had physically compressed Norma's throat. Greco found it strange that the killer preferred to use his own hands rather than the convenient phone cord, which had already been yanked out. In addition, Norma suffered more than the gaping neck and chest wounds. She had eleven stab wounds in all, most of them to the heart. Norma had a dual cause of death: manual strangulation and multiple stab wounds. June, it seems, had also suffered dual modes of death: ligature strangulation and bludgeoning with the wine bottle. He would have to wait for an autopsy to find out if she was also manually strangled. If she had been, there would be very little doubt that this was the same killer.