Jack asked, “You really think she’ll get back into skirts?”
Lucy said, “Why not? She’s a killer, and that’s what she does, so how is she going to do it without being caught and executed like Daddy was? I’m thinking maybe she’ll go female but keep the arty look.”
Coop was tapping his pen on the conference table. “It seems to me if she’s following in her daddy’s bloody ways, she must have killed before age thirty-three.”
Savich said, “I know the profilers think she may have started late because her mother didn’t tell her the identity of her father until she was older. Let’s hope so, but we don’t know that.”
Ollie said, “She could have killed and buried the bodies deep. But then, why is she coming out into the open now? Was there a specific trigger, like it appears there was with Bundy? Was she leading a fairly normal life until a few months ago?”
Everyone chewed this over.
Jack said, “I wonder if she visits her victims’ graves, like Bundy did?”
“That’s not all Bundy did to his dead victims,” Lucy said, and shuddered.
Savich said, “Good points. Now, MAX is working on photos. We’ll meet back here in a couple of hours.”
Ten minutes later, Savich’s cell blasted out George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.”
“Ben Raven here, Savich. Remember your hairy shoot-out at Shop ’n Go last week? I’ve got some news for you.”
“You put nail screws to the guy in the hospital, Ben, made him talk?”
“Nope, not yet. When you shot him in the shoulder, the bullet did more damage than expected. He’s still in pretty bad shape. His name is Thomas Wenkel, and the Chevy Impala is registered to him, not to the woman, an Elsa Heinz.
“I called you because last night someone shot your Mr. Patil at the Shop ’n Go during what looks like another robbery. No witnesses, not a soul around, no one even heard the shot. Evidently he’d just turned off the lights and was locking the back door when someone simply walked up to him and shot him in the back. His wallet was missing, and the bank-deposit money bag was gone. A beat cop in Georgetown had been doing drive-bys past Shop ’n Go after the robbery attempt last week. The officer saw the store was closed, but he saw Mr. Patil’s car was still there, and investigated.
“Mr. Patil is seventy-five years old, Savich, weighs maybe one hundred thirty pounds on a fat day. It’s hard to believe, but he survived three hours of surgery. It’s still no sure thing he’ll survive, and the doctors don’t want to commit. His condition’s listed as critical.”
Savich said, “And you’re wondering why a robber would shoot an old man in the back when all he’d have to do is maybe tap his jaw with his fist and take the bank-deposit bag.”
“Makes me wonder.”
“I’m trying to remember Thomas Wenkel’s exact behavior when he had the gun aimed at Mr. Patil that Tuesday night. Was he there to kill him, and just faked robbing the store? Hard to say. Of course, there was the woman—Elsa Heinz—waiting in the car. She sure came in fast, ready to kill everyone in sight. What do you have on her, Ben?”
“Elsa isn’t what you’d call a nice person. She’d been in and out of jail all of her adult life—robbery, hijacking, all sorts of scams. I haven’t found out how she and Wenkel got together.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it, Ben. Do you mind if I speak to Mr. Patil when he’s cogent? Speak to his kids and his wife?”
“He might not make it, Savich, but if he does, have at it. I can use all the help I can get on this.”
“I have this feeling Mr. Patil will pull through. I’ll keep in touch, Ben.”
“We can compare notes later.”
“You’ve got a guard on Mr. Patil?”
“Yes, I got it approved for a couple of days, at least. Officer Horne’s a young guy but smart, I’ve been told. He’ll keep the old man safe.”
Savich hoped very much that Mr. Patil, a nice man with photos of all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren stuffing his wallet, would be ringing up beer sales again sometime soon.
What were the chances of another random robbery in that neighborhood if the first shooting really was a robbery? And only one week later? Savich thought about coincidence. And he thought about death, always hovering close, and whoever knew when it would tap you on the shoulder?
It wasn’t a second robbery; he knew it.
CHAPTER 12
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Thursday evening
Lucy fit her grandmother’s beautifully carved key into the front door. It was a dark, cold night, winter making an early call, nearly midnight. She was tired and sad, and every couple of seconds she thought of her father and wanted to weep. At least she’d managed to get back to all her friends during the day, telling them she needed more time to herself, and moving herself into her grandmother’s house was good for her. Did they believe her? She hoped so.
She, Coop, Jack, Dane, and Ruth had visited The Swarm, a bar not too far from the Hoover Building that catered to federal cops, and they’d talked about Bundy and speculated endlessly about his daughter—who she was, who her mother was, what it was about her terrifying father that could help with the case. So far, she hadn’t tortured any of her victims, and there were other huge departures from Bundy Senior. The most important question was: Had she killed when she was younger? Dane had called Inspector Vincent Delion of the San Francisco PD, a homicide detective he knew personally, to see if they had any unsolveds, going back, say, fifteen years, that could possibly be her work.
Savich had told Lucy not to come in again until Friday afternoon. He said he wanted her to finish her moving, but what he really wanted was to give her more time on her own. All right, then, she could sleep in, and that meant she didn’t need to go to bed yet. She wanted to keep going through every scrap of paper in her grandmother’s study. Twenty-two years before, she wondered, had it been her grandfather’s study? She couldn’t remember.
At times she was tempted to convince herself that she’d misinterpreted what her father had said when he was dying, that it was a hallucination or a nightmare of some kind, and not a son witnessing his own father’s murder, by his own mother, but she’d known instantly it was the truth. Had he kept it a secret until the last moments of his life, when that long-ago horror had blasted into his mind? Would he ever have told her? She didn’t think so, despite the fact she was a cop, and maybe that was why—she was a cop. If he had told her, she would have had to decide whether to act on it, come what may. No, if he’d had final control of his mind, he’d have gone to his grave protecting his mother. And maybe himself? Had he agreed to keep quiet because he believed his mother was somehow justified in killing his father? Had her grandfather done something despicable? And did anyone else know? Her Uncle Alan, perhaps.
Lucy brewed herself some strong tea, swallowed two aspirin, a good way to prevent a hangover for her, and walked to the study, a large, high-ceilinged room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering three walls. The fourth wall was a huge sliding door that opened onto a small enclosed garden where her grandmother had placed a small round table with a bright red umbrella, and a single cushioned chair. Lucy remembered she’d spent a good deal of time sitting beneath that red umbrella on nice days, simply sitting there alone, reading there sometimes, enjoying the beautiful flowers. It seemed very strange, somehow not right, that all of this was to be hers now, as her father’s only heir.
She looked at the large desk. Three unexplored drawers to go, then she’d check again for any secret drawers or hidden spaces. The next drawers were filled with papers in neatly tabbed folders, just like the other drawers, but these tab names were very different from the banks, utilities, charities, and the like that had filled the others. No, these folder tabs read H. G. Wells, Tetra Time—whatever that was—and names of people she’d never heard of who turned out to be psychics, mystics, and science-fiction writers.