By Blood Written Page 13

  “So do I,” Dunlap said sternly. “The squeeze’s on with this one, Hank. The old man’ll want to know how we’re going to nail this. We don’t need another strikeout.”

  “I know that, sir,” Hank said, understanding the reference to published reports that the FBI’s success rate was the worst of all the various federal law enforcement agencies. Even the BATFucks were outscoring them these days.

  There was a slight break in the connection, and Hank realized it was an incoming call, probably Jackie. There was no way he could put Dunlap on hold to check a call waiting cue.

  “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Show me something good on this one, Hank.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  Dunlap hung up without saying another word. Hank reached up and quickly clicked the telephone button.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Daddy?”

  “Hi, precious, how are you?”

  “I didn’t know if you were going to answer or not,” Jackie said. Her voice was soft and sweet to his ears. Another year or two and she would sound just like her mother.

  “I’m sorry, baby, I had another call. It was business and I couldn’t break away. You know how it is.”

  “Unfortunately, these days I do,” Jackie said, scolding him. “Don’t you ever take a complete day off?”

  “I’m off today,” Hank said. “It was just a phone call.”

  “Yeah, just a phone call. Are you going into the office today?”

  Hank hesitated. A nine o’clock meeting in Washington meant he’d have to spend most of the afternoon in Quantico getting ready. He didn’t want to admit what he was up against, yet couldn’t bring himself to lie to his daughter either.

  “For a little while,” he confessed after a few moments.

  “No big deal.”

  “Daddy, you’ve got to quit this,” Jackie said, real concern in her voice. “I’m worried about you.”

  “You’re worried about me?” Hank asked. “Who was it that last weekend spent Saturday night working on a term paper until three in the morning?”

  “It’s winter term up here, Dads,” she said. “We’re snowed in. There’s nothing else to do.”

  “You could sleep, you know,” Hank offered.

  “I do plenty of that. Look, Dads, I’ve been thinking about spring vacation. It’s only six weeks away.”

  “I know,” Hank said. He’d been thinking about spring vacation, too, and trying to figure a way to take some time off and travel with Jackie. A beach, maybe, or perhaps even a trip overseas. But with everything going on, it wasn’t looking good.

  “I think I know what I want to do, if it’s okay with you,”

  she said.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “I talked to Miss Appling yesterday. She wants me to go down to Florida with the soccer team for spring break. It might mean being a varsity starter next year if I do okay.”

  Jackie had just missed making the starting lineup for varsity soccer last fall and had been terribly disappointed.

  He knew she wanted to take another shot at it. Anne had been captain of the soccer team her senior year in boarding school.

  “Where will you go?” Hank asked, hiding his disappointment at not seeing his daughter over spring vacation.

  “Tallahassee,” she answered. “We’ll stay in dorms at FSU, eat in the cafeteria.”

  “Tallahassee,” Hank sighed. Tallahassee. Despite himself, Hank couldn’t help but think of Tallahassee, Florida, as the site of Ted Bundy’s last murderous rampage at the Florida State University Chi Omega house. He thought of the two girls in the Nashville killing, L and M in the Alphabet Man’s lexicon, who were only a few years older than his own daughter.

  “Yes, Tallahassee,” Jackie said. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No, sweetheart, no, it’s just that … Well, will there be lots of adult supervision, chaperones?”

  “Daddy, please,” Jackie said, exasperated.

  “I just worry about you,” he said.

  “That’s sweet, but I’m a big girl now,” Jackie said. “I go off to college in a couple of years.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Well, it’s true. And I can take care of myself.”

  Hank started to tell her that there were things in life no one could take care against, but held his tongue. There was no need to dump his own baggage off on his daughter. She wouldn’t understand anyway.

  “I just hope you’ll be careful,” he said. “I love you, precious. I can’t help but worry.”

  “Daddy, I’ll be okay,” Jackie said, trying to placate him.

  “Okay, you can go. On one condition …”

  “Yes?”

  “You won’t be embarrassed if I take off a couple of days and fly down to see you.”

  Jackie giggled. “I’d love it. Can you?”

  “I’ll start working on it tomorrow.”

  “Great,” she said, excited. “There’s some forms and stuff you’ll have to fill out, and it’s going to cost a little bit. Not too much, though.”

  “I think we can handle it,” Hank said. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “Oh, Daddy, stop it,” she said.

  But Hank knew, as they said good-bye and hung up, that he couldn’t stop, could never stop worrying about her, not in this world.

  Not ever.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sunday morning, Nashville

  Priscilla Janovich loved Sundays. After thirty-five years teaching high school English in the Metro Nashville public school system, she had never quite gotten used to retirement, even though she was now in her fourth year of it. She had too little to do during the week, and that often made her feel guilty or restless and sometimes both. But resting on Sunday, enjoying her newspapers and her mystery novel and a drink in the middle of the afternoon before a long nap, had been a lifelong habit for her. She savored Sundays like some people savor a fine steak or a glass of wine.

  Priscilla pulled back the yellowed sheer curtain over the window in her tiny kitchen and looked out over the parking lot in the back of her apartment building. That damn Mr. Berriman was supposed to have shoveled the snow and salted the walks yesterday afternoon, but of course he’d not taken care of it, and when Priscilla stepped outside last night for a breath of fresh air, she’d been nearly upended by the icy concrete. Now, she noticed, the walks were clean.

  An overfed tabby cat jumped from the breakfast table to the counter and rubbed his face along Priscilla’s forearm.

  “Well, Doodles,” she cooed, gently scratching the cat’s ears as she looked outside. “It looks like that awful man might actually have done his job for once.”

  She leaned down into the furry face, rubbing noses with him as the cat purred happily. “Yes, Doodles, we can go get our paper now.”

  Behind her, another cat at least twice the size it should be rubbed her shoulders against the doorframe. Her yellow hair was so long it draped on the linoleum and was equally thick and well-combed. Priscilla turned.

  “Hello, Prissy,” she said. Priscilla picked up her cup of herbal tea and downed the last inch of it, then set the cup in the sink. She pulled her overcoat off an enameled cup hook she’d screwed into the plaster at a skewed angle. At the door to her apartment, she leaned down and gingerly pulled on a pair of rubber boots over her thick wool socks. Then she hooked her purse over her shoulder and walked down the two flights of stairs and out into a freezing late February Sunday in Nashville.

  She walked to the corner of Cherokee and West End Avenues, then waited cautiously for the light to change so she could cross the five-lane street. Like many Nashvillians, Priscilla was terrified of driving in the snow, so much so that at the slightest hint of frozen precipitation, she bolted to the grocery store, stocked up on enough food to last a month, then fought her way back to her apartment and locked her car for the duration.

  The temperatures had risen into the high thirties, and with the Sund
ay church traffic jam, much of the ice on the road had turned to dirty yellow-gray slush. Her boots alternated a plopping sound with a sucking noise as she trudged across the street and up onto the sidewalk. It was another three blocks to her favorite bookstore, which occupied a building that had once been a grand, Art Deco movie palace that had fallen on hard times. If the Bookstar hadn’t moved in, the building would have faced demolition and, no doubt, been replaced by another twenty-four-hour Walgreens or Eckerd drugstore.

  It felt good to be out of the apartment. Priscilla hadn’t had a walk since the latest snow had started falling the previous Friday. She was in her third day of hibernation and starting to get a touch of cabin fever. At seventy, Priscilla still considered herself in good shape, and she liked to walk.

  Ten minutes later, she crossed the barely passable parking lot of the Bookstar and stepped into the lobby. The archi-tects who supervised the conversion from movie palace to bookstore had done a wonderful job of preserving the look and feel of the building. A grand staircase curved to the right up to what had once been the balcony, but was now the children’s books section. To her left, Priscilla stopped and glanced-as was her habit-at the framed pictures and autographs of the stars who had once visited the theater. Her favorite was Errol Flynn, although the photograph of Johnny Weissmuller in a business suit was also very appealing. And next to the framed pictures of movie stars was a white stone tablet mounted on the wall in a clear Plexiglas box covered with the autographs of famous authors who had visited the building since it became a bookstore. Priscilla’s favorites, as always, were the mystery writers, especially the women: Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Sharyn McCrumb, Deborah Crombie. She loved mysteries; they were her life. She read eight to ten a week.

  “Hello, Miss Janovich,” the young, pretty girl behind the cash register said as Priscilla passed the counter.

  Priscilla turned, smiled. “Hello, Karen,” she said.

  “The new Grafton just came out in paperback,” the clerk offered. “I pulled a copy for you, just in case.”

  “Bless you, my dear,” Priscilla said. “And did you save me a copy of the Sunday Times?”

  “Didn’t have to.” The girl walked around from behind the checkout counter and stepped over to the pile of newspapers in a rack by the wall. “With the weather like this, we haven’t had much of a run this morning.”

  “You know, I have to have my Sunday Times,” Priscilla warned. “If that stack ever gets low, you pull one out for me.”

  “I will,” the clerk said, picking up a copy of the newspaper with both hands so as not to spill any of the inside sections.

  As she handed the newspaper to Priscilla, she suppressed a giggle. Her boss had told her how Priscilla Janovich had made a single three-day trip to New York City once in her entire life, back in 1965, and ever since had considered herself both an authority on and a native of the city.

  “Thank you, dear,” Priscilla said, handing the exact change for the newspaper across the counter.

  “See you Wednesday, Miss Janovich,” the girl said.

  “You be careful in this weather, dear,” Priscilla warned as she walked away.

  Twenty minutes later, Priscilla Janovich carefully measured a pony of vodka into her steaming cup of chamomile tea. The vodka cooled it off just enough to swallow and en-hanced the already relaxing effect of the herb.

  The fat yellow longhair padded into the living room just as Priscilla sat down on the couch and put her cup on the end table to her right.

  “Hello, Prissy,” she said. “Where’s Doodles? Where’s Doodles, baby? We’re all going to sit together and read now.”

  In a gesture of Pavlovian feline behavior, the obese cat managed to hop up onto the couch with only a minimum of panting. Priscilla leaned over and rubbed her hand across the top of the cat’s head. The cat purred like a tiny motor-boat.

  Priscilla unfolded the first section of the Times and settled in for a long afternoon. She sipped the tea, the first wash of vodka over her tongue burning ever so slightly, and began reading. She read the lead story-an article on the upcoming New York City senatorial campaign-carefully, along with two sidebars that interviewed the opposing candidates.

  She read thoroughly, thinking over each issue, each statement, and painstakingly formed an opinion in an election in which she would never be allowed to vote.

  She finished the jumps to that article, then turned back to the front page. There was an in-depth story on the latest unfolding Israeli peace initiative, followed by an interview with a senator who had unleashed yet another scathing attack on the president.

  “Don’t they ever get tired of it?” Priscilla asked Prissy out loud. “You’d think they’d leave the poor man alone.”

  Prissy raised her head and purred loudly.

  “Yes, Prissums, that’s right,” Priscilla agreed. She finished the front-page lead story, then turned to page two of the first section. Most of that page was covered with a long feature story headlined:

  SERIAL KILLER, DUBBED “ALPHABET MAN” BY FEDS, ELUDES CAPTURE FOR SEVEN YEARS

  Priscilla smiled. She was particularly fond of serial killer stories. Was it Mary Higgins Clark who’d written that wonderful novel about the serial killer, or was it that Patricia Cornwell?

  “No matter,” she whispered. After a while, they all began to run together.

  Priscilla read on:

  CINCINNATI, OHIO: On a blustery June Monday in 1995, nineteen-year-old Susan McCrory left her home in a suburban Cincinnati neighborhood and climbed into her Ford Escort station wagon en route to her summer job at a nearby McDonald’s. She never made it.

  Priscilla Janovich read the news account as if it were a novel, creating visual images in her mind as the story unfolded of a young woman home from college on summer vacation who worked the morning shift at a local fast-food restaurant. The young woman disappeared, and for several days there was no trace of her. Then two teenage boys who’d rented a storage unit to store their fledgling garage band’s instruments opened the door and found the young woman’s body on the cold concrete floor. She’d been horribly murdered, tortured slowly and for a long time before death mercifully released her. On the cinder-block wall behind the drum set, a letter had been painted on the wall in blood: the letter A.

  Priscilla shuddered. What a horrible story, she thought, and continued reading. Nine months later, the Times reporter wrote, a second body was found in Macon, Georgia, in a rest stop just off the junction of I-75 and I-17. The twenty-year-old blond was a clerk at the rest stop’s welcome desk, a job she’d taken to make extra money to help pay for her own wedding. The only clue in that murder: the letter B painted in blood on the back wall of the men’s room stall where the poor girl had been found.

  The next murder took place out West, this time in Scottsdale, Arizona. A young girl who worked as a gas station attendant had been strangled, raped, tortured just like the first two, and stuffed into a metal locker used for storing tools. On the inside lid of the locker, again neatly painted in blood, was the letter C.

  Priscilla read on, as the reporter described several more of the murders in great detail, others in less. When she got to the part about the two girls at Exotica Tans in Nashville, she let out a sharp gasp that was loud enough to startle Prissy, who leaped off the couch and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Horrified, Priscilla read the end of the story, which summarized how little the police had on this killer, and how the FBI had proven itself especially inept at moving the investigation forward. The Times reporter noted that considerable pressure was on at the J. Edgar Hoover Building and that heads were expected to roll if something didn’t break soon.

  “My, my,” Priscilla muttered, polishing off the last of her vodka-laced tea. “What a world.”

  She turned the page and went on with the newspaper, her senses lulled by the drink and the quiet of the day. She hadn’t slept well last night; hadn’t slept well in years, to be truth-ful, and she was finding that the older sh
e got, the more she needed the occasional cat nap. She smiled at the thought, cat nap, and wondered where Doodles had gone.

  She drifted off after a few more minutes, dozing in a sitting position on the old sofa she’d inherited from her mother. She was almost completely asleep when her meandering, lazy thoughts returned to the Times article she’d just read. This serial killer thing, she mused, was becoming so common they were beginning to imitate each other. Yes, she remembered, she’d heard that story before, the story of a wandering serial killer who tortured his victims and left only one clue: a letter painted in blood. In fact, there was-

  Priscilla Janovich’s eyes snapped open and she was suddenly wide awake.

  A letter … In blood …

  “No,” she mumbled. “You’re going crazy in your old age.”

  She looked around the room. Where was that damn Doodles?

  Priscilla stretched and rubbed the back of her neck to loosen it up. She pulled herself up off the couch and carried her cup into the kitchen to boil more water. She turned on the tap, didn’t like the sound of water coming out of the pipe, so decided to skip the tea and just have the two fingers of vodka. She poured the clear liquid into the cup and stood staring out the window at the wintry landscape outside.

  “No,” she muttered. “It can’t be.”

  Still, she thought, it was an intriguing notion. She carried her cup back into the living room and reread the article a second time, then a third. Always the methodical teacher, she fished a yellow highlighter out of the kitchen drawer and highlighted the key points of each murder. Then she sat at the kitchen table, poured another two fingers of vodka just to ward off the cold, and began thinking.

  I’m sure I’ve heard it before. But where?

  She sipped the vodka.

  Where?

  She went back into the living room. Priscilla Janovich couldn’t bear to throw away books, even the tattered old paperbacks her mother had given her before she died. The walls of both her living room and bedroom were lined with cheap lumber and cinder-block bookshelves she’d made to accommodate them. Most of the shelves were layered two deep with books, and still there were stacks of books gathering dust in the corners of each room. Priscilla knew the place was a fire hazard, but figured without her books, she wouldn’t want to live anyway.