We parked at the curb and saw a blond woman in a pink Lilly Pulitzer dress exit the house and lock the front door. When she saw us, her face stretched into a heavily lipsticked smile.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Emily Harris, Pacific Homes Real Estate. I’m sorry; the open house is Sunday. I can’t show you the home now because I have an appointment in town. . . .”
My face must have shown disappointment, and I saw Ms. Harris size us up as likely prospects.
“Listen. Replace the key in the lockbox on your way out. Okay?”
We got out of the car, and I linked my arm through Joe’s. Looking every bit the married couple shopping for our new home, Joe and I climbed the front steps and unlocked the O’Malleys’ front door.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 75
THE INSIDE OF THE house had been sanitized, spiffed up, and repainted—whatever it took to get top dollar for a very challenging property. I lingered in the center hall, then followed Joe up the winding staircase.
When I got to the master bedroom, I found him staring at the closet door.
“There was a small hole here, at eye level—see, Linds? It was patched.” He dented the still-malleable Spackle with his fingernail.
“A peephole?”
“A peephole in a closet,” said Joe. “That’s odd, don’t you think? Unless the O’Malleys were making home movies.”
My mind whirled for a moment as I grappled with a possible connection between homemade porn and the Randy Long variety. Had the cops seen the camera setup?
And if they had, so what?
There was nothing illegal about consenting adults at play.
I stepped inside the newly painted closet, batted the wire coat hangers aside, then grabbed them to stop their jangling.
That’s when I saw another patch of Spackle visible under the fresh paint.
I prodded it with a finger and felt my heart start to hammer. There was another peephole at the back of the closet and it went right through the wall.
I took one of the hangers off the rod and straightened it into a long wire, which I inserted into the hole.
“Joe, could you go find where this comes out?”
The wire felt like a living thing as I waited for the tug that finally came from the other end. Joe returned seconds later. “It goes through to another bedroom. You should see this, Lindsay.”
The room next door was still partly furnished, with a ruffled four-poster, matching vanity, and an ornate full-length mirror affixed to the wall. Joe pointed out the hole disguised as a floral detail in the mirror’s carved wooden frame.
“Shit, Joe. This is their daughter’s room. Were those bastards spying on Caitlin? Were they filming her?”
I stared out the car window as Joe drove us back to Cat’s house. I couldn’t stop thinking about that second peephole. What kind of people had the O’Malleys been? Why would they have trained a camera on that child?
Had it been some kind of nanny-cam in the past?
Or was it something far more sinister?
My mind did pretzel loops around that peephole as I tried on every possibility. But it all came back to one question: Did any of this tie in with the murders?
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 76
IT WAS ONLY NOON when we got back to Cat’s house. Joe and I went into my nieces’ bedroom so that we could use their wall-size corkboard to plot out what we knew about the murders.
I found marking pens and construction paper, and pulled up two small red plastic stools to sit on.
“So what do we know?” Joe asked, tacking yellow paper across the board.
“Circumstantial evidence suggests three killers. The ME says it looks to him as though various knives and belts were used, backing up my theory that there were multiple perps, but there’s really nothing else. Not a hair, not a fiber, not a print, not a speck of DNA. It’s like working a case in the 1940s. CSU wouldn’t help crack this one.”
“What do you see as a pattern? Talk it out for me.”
“It’s not coming in clear,” I said, moving my hands over a make-believe crystal ball. “Stark told me that the victims were all married. Then he says, ‘That doesn’t mean anything. Eighty percent of the population here is married.’”
Joe printed the victims’ names on the sheets of paper.
“Keep going,” he said.
“All of the couples had children except the Whittakers. The Whittakers made kiddie porn, and Caitlin O’Malley may have been a victim. That’s pure speculation. The porn angle makes me think there may be some connection to the local porn guys, and through them to organized crime—speculation again. And lastly, my John Doe doesn’t seem to match the victim profile.”
“Maybe the first murder was an impulse,” said Joe, “and the later murders were premeditated.”
“Hmm,” I said, letting my gaze drift to the windowsill, where sweet potatoes grew in water glasses, sending out tendrils and fresh green leaves along the ledge.
“That makes sense. Maybe my John Doe was killed in a crime of passion. If so, the killer or killers didn’t feel the urge again for quite a long time. Same signature. But what’s the connection?”
“I don’t know yet. Try boiling it down for me.”
“We’ve got eight related murders within a ten-mile radius. All the victims had their throats slit, except for Lorelei O’Malley, who was gutted. All eight plus John Doe were whipped. Motive unknown. And there’s a prime suspect who’s an ex-porn stud and a Teflon-coated sleazeball.”
“I’ll make some calls,” Joe said.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 77
WHEN JOE GOT OFF the phone with the FBI, I picked up the marking pen and Joe summarized his notes.
“None of the victims raised any red flags: no felonies, no changed names, no connections with Dennis Agnew. As for the Playmate Pen guys,” Joe said, “Ricardo Montefiore, aka Rick Monte, has been convicted of pandering, lewd public behavior, and assault, and that’s it for him.
“Rocco Benuto, the bouncer at your porn shop, is a lightweight. One count of possession. One count of breaking and entering a convenience store in New Jersey when he was nineteen. Unarmed.”
“Hardly the typical profile of a serial killer.”
Joe nodded, then continued. “All three come up as ‘known associates’ of various low-to-midlevel mobsters. They attended a few wiseguy parties, provided girls. As for Dennis Agnew, you already know about the murder charge in 2000 that was dismissed.”
“Ralph Brancusi was the lawyer who got him off.”
Joe nodded again. “The victim was a porn starlet from Urbana, Illinois. She was in her twenties, a heroin addict, busted a few times for prostitution. And she was one of Agnew’s girlfriends before she disappeared for good.”
“Disappeared? As in, no body was found?”
“Sorry, Lindsay. No body.”
“So we don’t know if her throat was slit.”
“No.”
I put my chin in my hands. It was frustrating to be so close to the very heart of this horror show and yet have not one decent lead to run with.
But one pattern was clear. The murders were coming closer together. My John Doe had been killed ten years ago, the Whittakers eight years later, the Daltrys a month and a half ago. Now two double homicides in one week.
Joe sat down on the little stool next to mine. He took my hand, and we stared at the notes tacked to the corkboard. When I spoke, my voice seemed to echo in the girls’ small room.
“They’re ratcheting up their timetable, Joe. Right now, they’re planning to do it again.”