Unknown Means (23 page)

Each woman had been attacked in her own home, but not all lived alone. Perhaps the victims didn’t know one another, but the

killer knew them. He knew when there would be no one else at home. He knew that the schoolteacher’s kids were elsewhere and that Frances Duarte’s neighbors were out of town. He knew that, if they managed to cry out, no one would hear them. He had planned the attacks, at least for days.

But he had moved on to murder, choosing two women of more wealth than his past victims, attacking one in a virtual fortress of an apartment. Why? What had spurred him on to murder in the first place? Why strap the dead women up, when the rape victims hadn’t been bound in any way? Why crayon on the clothing?

The rich women worked with the hospital charity. The first rape victim majored in biology. Perhaps she had done a rotation in a path lab, like Marissa? Evelyn would call David and ask him to find out.

The other victims had children.

Lunchtime had arrived. If she wanted to wander through Butterfly Babies & Children’s Hospital on her way to the food court at the medical school, what could be wrong with that?

The hospital was only one of Frances’s and Grace’s charities, and it might not have any significance in their deaths. But there were those damn crayon marks.

Only the primary colors on the walls and the cartoon-character draperies distinguished the children’s wing from the rest of the hospital. Most of the beds were adult-size, which only called attention to the tiny forms between the sheets. A toddler lay preternaturally still, watching a television program with glazed eyes. A girl of about ten had one leg in traction and a restraining order posted on her door. Another talked gaily on the phone, the bandanna slipping off her bald head as she demanded to know where the D.A.R.E. dance would be held.

Evelyn said a prayer of thanksgiving as she walked that Angel had been born healthy and remained healthy. Now if they could only get through the early driving years. The busy nurses watched her curiously, warily. An unknown doctor on the floor could not be a good thing, but they did not question her.

At the end of the second-floor hall sat an activities room, occupied by a white boy sleeping on the couch and a black girl of about ten. The girl sat at a round table in a chair slightly too small for her, coloring. Crayons littered the table, on and around several dog-eared coloring books. Evelyn approached her as cautiously as she would have a pile of broken glass. Other people’s children made her nervous. Hell, her own made her nervous.

She wedged her butt into an undersize chair and picked up a book. It featured Japanese cartoon characters she had never seen before, but she paged through it and picked up a red crayon, stopping at the picture of a dragon.

The little girl looked at her with a skeptical expression and a large scar down her left temple. An IV drip on a portable stand snaked down to her tiny forearm. “Who’re you?”

“I work next door. I’m just taking a break for a while.”

The girl couldn’t have had any idea which “next door” Evelyn meant, but she nodded as if she did.

“What’s your name?”

“Cadence.”

“That’s a cool name,” Evelyn said truthfully. “Where’d you get that?”

“From my parents.” At least she refrained from adding well, duh!

Evelyn colored the dragon’s eye, squirming with embarrassment.

Cadence relented after a moment, adding, “My father plays in a band when he’s not doing his Army job. He’s in Iraq right now.”

“I see.” Evelyn put down the red crayon, picked up a green. She had not seen the brand—Sander—before. “What are you doing here?”

“I have a brain tumor.”

“Oh.”

“They took part of it out. But part dug into my skull bone.”

“Oh.” What the hell else could she say to a ten-year-old who dealt with weightier problems in one day than Evelyn had in a lifetime? Her

divorce seemed like the Electric Slide compared with this girl’s daily dance. “Have you been here long?”

Cadence didn’t answer, instead leaning forward to view Evelyn’s work. “You’re supposed to stay inside the lines.”

“I know.”

“What are you writing next to the dragon?”

“The brand and color names of the crayons.”

The girl’s eyebrows moved toward each other, making it clear that, while she had doubted Evelyn’s intelligence before, now she had serious doubts about her mental stability.

“I’m interested in crayons,” Evelyn added weakly.

“Oh.”

They colored in silence for a while. The boy slumbered on the couch, deathly pale but wheezing just enough to keep Evelyn from hitting the nurse call button.

“They’re going to build a new wing here, you know.”

Cadence did not, apparently, find the topic fascinating. “Yeah.”

“Does anyone here ever talk about that?” Great detective work here, girlfriend. You’re pumping a ten-year-old in case she has time for philanthropic work between the chemo treatments.

“Yeah.” Cadence viewed Evelyn’s bizarre work again, permitting herself a small shake of the head. “I went to some fancy dinner last Christmas. I sat at a table on the stage, and some guy talked about me. The nurses said it was so people could see what they were donating money for. My mom said it was a dog and pony show, but there weren’t any animals.”

Evelyn suppressed a smile. “Do you remember any of the people who were there?”

“Nah. But we had ice cream for dessert. With cherries.”

“I love that.”

“So do I,” said a new voice. Clio Helms, from the Plain Dealer, stood in the doorway. “Hello, Cadence. Mrs. James.”

“Ms. Helms.” Did the nurses let just anyone wander around this

floor? Evelyn, at least, had the passport, a white lab coat. But then parents and family probably visited at all hours, and their personal contact had to be more important than security, and not too many kidnappers targeted gravely ill children.

The reporter asked, “What are you doing here?”

“She’s taking a break,” Cadence explained. “But she can’t color very good.”

“Really.”

Evelyn watched the woman saunter over and join them, taking sadistic pleasure in seeing Clio wedge her twenty-something butt into one of the Lilliputian chairs. Which she did with much less effort than Evelyn had. “And what are you doing here?”

The reporter picked up a crayon. “Same as you. Trying to find a connection between Grace Markham and Frances Duarte. So far, only this children’s hospital comes up. What about you?”

She doesn’t know about the five rapes, Evelyn reminded herself.

See that she doesn’t learn of them from you. “I work right next door.”

“And you hang out here?”

“I was on my way to lunch.”

“Excellent idea! I’ll buy. How about it, Cadence? We can pop over to Club Isabella’s and have some fettuccine.”

The girl giggled. “I can’t. I have to stay here.”

“We’ll get it to go. Prime rib okay?”

The girl giggled again. Evelyn used the moment to pull, quietly, the page with the dragon picture from the book. She could not do it quietly enough.

Cadence frowned. “You’re not supposed to tear the pages out.”

“I’m sorry.” Evelyn couldn’t have felt worse if she’d yanked out the girl’s IV. “I didn’t know that.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Clio said. “I think Evelyn really needs that picture.”

Cadence just shook her head.

“Come on, Evelyn.” Clio stood up, smoothed her skirt, and patted the little girl on the back. “Excuse us, Cadence. We need to talk.”

The girl waved a desultory hand, without looking up. “Whatever.”

Clio waited until they had entered the elevator before asking.

“So what’s on the coloring book page?”

“A dragon.”

“Can I see it?”

“My artistic abilities are not for public viewing.”

“I meant what I said about lunch. I’ll buy. I get an expense account for such things.”

Over her rumbling stomach, Evelyn declined. The elevator doors opened into the lobby.

“Can’t be seen consorting with the enemy, huh?”

Evelyn paused to face her, next to the potted trees. “You’re not the enemy. But people have died here, and I have to respect their memories and the grief of their families. I can’t chat about the intimate details of their last moments just to see my name in print.”

Golden brown eyes appraised her. “I can understand that. But we’ve got a psycho running around, and catching him before he kills another woman is more important than etiquette.”

“I’m not going to be catching him. I’m a scientist, I analyze things. Detectives catch people.”

“But you’ve got a friend in the mix, which gives you more incentive.” Clio crossed her arms, wrinkling the lapels of her tailored suit.

“My money’s on you.”

“Fine. Then tell me if you found out more about Grace and Frances.” Evelyn continued her march toward the exit doors.

“They had stopped hanging out, apparently, but they were both on this hospital expansion campaign. The hospital needs seventy-five million, and so far they’ve got about fifty. Actually, the books say they have fifty. The auditors say they have thirty-five.”

“How do you know all this?”

“A friend of mine is preparing a series on fraud in high-dollar

charities. She’s been chatting up every financial consultant in town and let me see her research.”

They emerged from the building into yet another Cleveland spring drizzle. “You’re saying fifteen million dollars are missing?”

“I’m saying there’s a rumor going around that the auditors found some major discrepancies last month. Nothing is official yet.”

“And what part did Grace and Frances play in this?”

“Frances pledged a cool million during a dinner that Grace organized, last Christmas.”

Evelyn thought about this during the short walk across the ME’s office parking lot, barely noticing when Clio hustled her past a man with a notepad and an ABC logo on his shirt and then accompanied her into the building. “Who supposedly has this money, then?”

“The campaign chair, a guy named Mark Sargeant.”

“Mmm.”

“You know him?”

“No.”

“You seem to—” The reporter’s roving eye suddenly fell on a man -

gled arm, half of its flesh stripped off, peeking from under a sheet.

“What happened to that guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“He looks mangled.” She patted her pockets and came up with a small notepad.

“Something probably mangled him, then. And you think, what, Mark had Grace killed because she found out about the embezzlement? Rumored embezzlement? Or was in it with him and he didn’t want to share the proceeds?”

Clio forgot the skinned arm in a heartbeat. “Is that your theory?”

“No. It wouldn’t explain Frances—she made one donation and had no other involvement, right?” She had to raise her voice as the overhead door began to inch its noisy way up, revealing the rear of an ambulance backing up to the dock. Rain pelted its roof with loud taps.

“But if you were Grace and your old friend had donated a boatload of money to your cause, which you then found out had been corrupted, wouldn’t you give her a call? Say, Gee, I’m really sorry, but I might have steered you and your funds wrong?”

And Frances spoke her mind, guarded her parents’ money as closely as she did their memory. She might have confronted Mark, demanded an explanation. “Possibly.”

“Shit! What did that person die of?” Clio pointed as two strong deskmen pulled a gurney from the ambulance. A pale face in full rigor grinned at them; a stiff arm crooked a roguish finger.

“I don’t know.”

“But—he—”

“Clio, I can’t tell just by looking at them. When will the auditors know for sure? Will they announce their findings?”

“They have to. It’s public record. I should reiterate that it’s just a rumor at the moment.”

“Well, it’s interesting. Good luck with your story. You can use that door there to get back into the parking lot.”

“What about the unsolved rape cases that the two homicide detectives have been asking about?”

Evelyn stared.

Clio nodded without relish. “Now are you going to tell me what’s up with the coloring book?”

C H A P T E R

21

DAVID AND RILEY SPENT THE MORNING TRACKING

down four of the five earlier victims. They could not find the college student, who had taken a job in another state after graduation. The Euclid and near West Side victims had not been happy to revisit the horror but were willing to answer any questions put to them if doing so would help the cops catch the guy. The welfare mother’s kids were now in high school; she had a job and one hell of a lock on her door. The schoolteacher lived in the same house and taught at the same school but had lost her family the year before, when her husband divorced her and took the children to Columbus.

The detectives did not ask why.

Not one woman knew Grace Markham or Frances Duarte, or the buildings in which they had died. None was active in charity work.

The intervening years had not helped them to recall any more details about their attacker than they had originally told the police.

Except, the schoolteacher added, she had become convinced that she knew the man, had met him at some previous point in her life. She could not explain this belief, whether she recognized a smell, a shape, the tread of his shoe. He had not spoken or given any overt indication of familiarity with either her or her house, but still her

brain insisted that he knew her. Perhaps, she added, she simply quested for an explanation of why she had been targeted, so she could know it wasn’t her fault.

But with such vague impressions, she could not be sure she would know him if she encountered him again.