“ ‘See the jungle when it’s wet with rain. . .’ ” Janet was singing.
That could be the lyric for this year’s victim, Susan thought. Somebody new. Somebody who has no idea she’s being staked out for death.
“ ‘Just remember ’til you’re home again . . .”’ Janet obviously liked to sing the song. She softened her voice, giving it a plaintive touch as she concluded, “ ‘. . . You belong to me.”’
Susan called Chris Ryan as soon as Janet left her office. “Chris, will you see if you can track something else down? I need to know if there are any reports of a woman—probably a tourist—who vanished in Egypt in mid-October, four years ago.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” Ryan assured her. “I was just about to call you anyhow. You remember those names you gave me this morning? Of those passengers on the two cruise ships?”
“What about them?” Susan asked.
“Those guys don’t exist. The passports they used were fakes.” I knew it! Susan thought. I knew it!
At ten of five that afternoon, Susan took an urgent phone call from Chris Ryan. Susan broke one of her own cardinal rules and left her patient alone while she took the call. “You’re pushing the right buttons, Susan,” Ryan said. “Four years ago a thirty-nine-year-old widow from Birmingham, Alabama, disappeared while in Egypt. She was on a cruise to the Middle East. She apparently had skipped the regular land tour and gone off by herself. Her body was never found, and it was assumed that, given Egypt’s ongoing political unrest, she had met with foul play from one of the various terrorist groups trying to overthrow the government.”
“I’m fairly certain that had nothing to do with why she died, Chris,” Susan said.
A few minutes later, as she was walking her patient to the door, a bulky package was delivered. The sender was Ocean Cruise Pictures Ltd. of London.
“I’ll open it, Doctor,” Janet volunteered.
“Not necessary,” Susan told her. “Just leave it. I’ll get to it later.”
Her day was filled with late appointments, and she wouldn’t be finished with her last patient until seven. Then she finally would be able to go through the photographs that might just reveal the face of the man who had killed Regina Clausen and so many others.
Her fingers itched to go through the photographs right away. The identity of this killer had to be discovered before someone else died.
Another reason to find him immediately was especially significant to Susan: She wanted to be able to tell the dying Jane Clausen that the man who had deprived her of her daughter would never again break another parent’s heart.
101
Donald Richards had arrived on schedule at West Palm Beach Airport at nine Monday morning. He was met there by an escort from his publisher, and was driven to Liberty’s, in Boca Raton, where he was scheduled to autograph his book at ten-thirty. When he arrived, he was pleasantly surprised to find people lined up and waiting for him.
“We’ve had forty phone orders as well,” the clerk assured him. “I hope you’re writing a sequel to Vanishing Women.”
More Vanishing Women? I don’t think so, Richards said to himself as he settled at the table set up for him, picked up his pen, and began to sign. He knew what lay ahead that day, and he knew as well what he had to do; a wild restlessness was making him desperate to bolt from the seat.
One hour and eighty signed books later, he was on his way to Miami, where he was scheduled for another autographing at two o’clock.
“I’m sorry, but signatures only, no personal messages,” he told the bookshop proprietor. “Something has come up, and I have to leave here promptly at three.”
A few minutes after three he was back in the car.
“Next stop, the Fontainebleau,” the driver said cheerfully.
“Wrong. Next stop, the airport,” Don told him. There was a plane leaving for New York at four. He intended to be on it.
102
Dee had arrived in Costa Rica on Monday morning and had gone directly from the airport to the harbor, where her cruise ship, the Valerie, had just docked.
Monday afternoon she halfheartedly joined the sightseeing tour she had signed up for. When she had impulsively decided to take this cruise, it had seemed a great idea. “The big escape,” her father had called it. Now she wasn’t so sure. Besides, now that she was here, she couldn’t decide what she had been escaping from.
She returned to the Valerie, bedraggled from a cloudburst in the rain forest and regretting that she hadn’t canceled the trip. Yes, her stateroom on the sun deck was beautiful and even had its own private verandah, and it was clear already that her fellow passengers were congenial enough. Still she felt restless, even anxious—she sensed that this just wasn’t the time to be away from New York.
The next stop on the cruise was scheduled for tomorrow, at Panama’s San Blas Islands. The ship would dock at noon. Maybe it would be possible to catch a plane there and fly back to New York, she decided. She could always say that she wasn’t feeling well.
By the time she had reached the sun deck, Dee had definitely decided to try to head back home tomorrow. There was a lot to be taken care of in New York.
As she left the elevator and headed for her stateroom, the room stewardess stopped her. “The most beautiful bouquet just arrived for you,” she said. “I put it on your dresser.”
Forgetting that she felt wet and clammy, Dee rushed to her room. There she found a vase holding two dozen pale gold roses. She quickly read the card. It was signed, “Guess Who.”
Dee cupped the card in her hand. She didn’t have to guess. She knew who had sent them.
At the dinner Saturday night, when she had changed places with Susan, Alex Wright had said to her, “I’m glad Susan suggested you sit next to me. I can’t abide seeing a beautiful woman be lonely. I guess I’m more like my father than I realized. My stepmother was beautiful like you, and also a lonely widow when my father met her on a cruise ship. He solved her loneliness by marrying her.”
Dee remembered that she had joked that it seemed a little radical to marry someone just to cure her loneliness, and Alex had taken her hand and said, “Perhaps, but not as radical as some solutions.”
It’s Jack all over again, she thought as she inhaled the scent of the roses. I didn’t want to hurt Susan then, and I certainly don’t want to hurt her now. But I don’t think she’s really that interested in Alex yet. She hardly knows him. I’m sure she’ll understand.
Dee showered, washed her hair, and dressed for dinner, imagining what fun it would be if instead of his going to Russia, Alex were a passenger on the ship with her.
103
“Thank you, Dr. Chandler. I’ll see you next week.”
At ten of seven, Susan escorted Anne Ketler, her last patient of the day, to the door. As she passed Janet’s desk, Susan saw that the package of photographs had been opened, and the photographs were stacked on the desk. Thou hast ears, but hear not, she thought.
She opened the office’s outer door for Mrs. Ketler, and from its easy click realized that it had been left unlocked. Janet’s a really nice person, she thought, and in many ways a good secretary, but she’s careless. And irritating. It’s a good thing she’s leaving next month; I would hate to have to fire her.
“It’s very dark out there,” Mrs. Ketler said as she stepped into the hallway.
Susan looked over the woman’s shoulder. Only a couple of lights illuminated the hallway, which was filled with shadows. “You’re absolutely right,” she told Mrs. Ketler. “Here, take my arm. I’ll walk with you to the elevator.” Though not frail, Mrs. Ketler, a woman in her seventies, was prone to skittishness. She had come to Susan a year ago, looking to overcome the depression that had settled over her after she sold her home and moved into an assisted-living facility.
Susan waited until the elevator came, and she pushed the lobby button for Anna Ketler before hurrying back down the corridor. She paused for a minute at Nedda’s office and tried the door.
It was locked.
Things are improving here, at least, she thought. She had decided against the idea of asking Nedda for the use of her conference room tonight. With only four hundred or so pictures to go through, she wouldn’t really need it.
It would be a different matter tomorrow evening, when she had the thousands of pictures from the Gabrielle to sort through. Nedda’s long, wide table would be the perfect place to spread them out and group them. I’ll have Chris Ryan help me, she decided. He has a good, quick eye.
Maybe this “Owen” person will be in the background of more than one picture, Susan thought. That would make the job much easier.
Entering the reception area, she picked up the stacks of photographs from Janet’s desk, not noticing the note that Janet had left under the phone for her. She crossed to her office, aware of both the silence in the building and the accelerated heartbeat she felt at the thought of finally seeing a picture of the man responsible for this series of murders. What am I so nervous about? she wondered as she passed the supply closet. The door was open a fraction, but with her arms full she didn’t pause to close it.
As she set the photos on her desk, she accidentally hit the beautiful Waterford vase Alex Wright had given her, sending it crashing to the floor. What a shame, she thought, as she swept up the shards of glass and loaded them into the wastebasket.
It’s the effect of everything that’s been going on, she decided as she put Anna Ketler’s file in the bottom drawer of her desk. This past week has been a nightmare. She locked the drawer and put the key in the pocket of her jacket. I’ll put it on the key ring later, she decided: Right now I just want to get at those pictures.
What will he look like? she wondered, aware that there was very little likelihood she would recognize him. I just pray the photo is clear enough to give the police something to go on, she thought.
An hour later she was still going through the photographs, still searching for the one with Carolyn Wells. It has to be here, Susan thought. They said they were going to send every print they had of a woman posing with the captain.
She had the crumpled piece of a picture that Carolyn had thrown in her wastebasket, and she kept referring to it, searching for its match in the stacks of photographs she had spread out before her. But no matter how many times she went through them, she couldn’t find it. That photograph simply wasn’t there.
“Where in God’s name is it?” she asked out loud, exasperation and disappointment threatening to overwhelm her. “Why, of all of them, is that one missing?”
“Because I have it, Susan,” a familiar voice said in response.
Susan spun around in time to receive the blow of a paperweight smashing against the side of her head.
104
Just as he had planned, he would follow the same procedure with Susan Chandler that he had used for all the others. He would bind her arms and hands to her sides; bind her legs together; truss her so that as she woke up and realized what was happening, she would be able to squirm a little—just enough to give her hope, but not enough to save her.
While he twisted the rope around her limp body, he would explain to her why it was happening. He had explained it to the others, and while Susan’s death was not a part of his original plan, but more a matter of expedience, she nonetheless deserved to know that she too had become a part of the ritual he had undertaken to expiate the sins of his stepmother.
Had he wanted, he could have killed her with the paperweight, but he hadn’t hit her that hard. The blow had only stunned her, and already she was beginning to stir. Surely she was alert enough now to absorb what he had to tell her.
“You must understand, Susan,” he began, in a reasoning tone of voice, “I never would have harmed you if only you hadn’t butted in. In fact, I quite like you. I do sincerely. You’re an interesting woman, and very smart too. But then that’s been your undoing, hasn’t it? Perhaps you’re too smart for your own good.”
He began to wind the rope around her arms, lifting her body gently. She was lying on the floor beside her desk; he had found a pillow and placed it under her head. He had dimmed the overhead lights. He liked soft light, and whenever possible used candlelight. Of course, that would be impossible here.
“Why did you have to talk about Regina Clausen on your radio program, Susan? You should have left it alone. She’s been dead three years. Her body’s at the bottom of Kowloon Bay, you know. Have you ever seen Kowloon Bay? She liked it there. It’s very picturesque. All those hundreds of small houseboats filled with families, all living there, never knowing that a lonely lady lies beneath them.”
He crossed and crisscrossed the rope over her upper body. “Hong Kong is Regina’s final resting place, but it was in Bali that she fell in love with me. For such a smart woman, it was remarkably easy to convince her to leave the ship. But that’s what happens when you’re lonely. You want to fall in love, so you’re anxious to believe someone who pays attention to you.”
He began to tie Susan’s legs. Lovely legs, he thought. Even though she was wearing a trouser suit, he could feel their shapeliness as he lifted them and wrapped the cord around them. “My father was easily duped as well, Susan. Isn’t that funny? He and my mother were a grim, humorless pair, but he missed her when she died. My father was wealthy, but my mother had a lot of money of her own. In her will she left it all to him, but she thought he’d eventually pass it on to me. She wasn’t a warm, or tender, or generous person, but in her own way she did care about me. She told me that I was to be like my father—make a lot of money, be diligent, develop a good head for business.”
He yanked the cord more tightly than he had intended as he recalled the endless lectures. “This is what my mother would tell me, Susan. She would say, ‘Alex, someday you will be a man with a great fortune. You must learn to preserve it. You will have children someday. Teach them properly. You must not spoil them.’ ”
He was on his knees beside Susan now, leaning over her. Despite the anger apparent in his words, his voice remained calm and steady, his tone conversational. “I had less spending money than anyone else at school, and because of it I never could go out with the crowd. As a result, I became a loner; I learned to amuse myself. The theater was part of it. I took any role I could get in school productions. There was even a fully equipped miniature theater on the third floor of our house, the one big present I ever received, although it wasn’t from my parents but from a friend of the family who had made a fortune because my father gave him a stock tip. He told me I could have anything I wanted, and that’s what I chose. I used to act out whole plays all by myself. I’d play all the parts. I became very good at it, maybe even good enough to be a professional. I learned how to become anyone I wanted to, and I taught myself to look and sound like the characters I made up.”
Susan was aware of a familiar voice just above her, but her head was splitting with pain, and she didn’t dare open her eyes. What is happening to me? she wondered. Alex Wright was here, but who hit me? She had gotten just a glimpse of him before she blacked out. He had untidy, longish hair and was wearing a cap and a shabby sweat suit.
Wait, she thought, making herself focus. The voice is Alex’s; that means he’s still here. So why wasn’t Alex helping her instead of just talking to her, she wondered, as some of the disorienting effect of the blow to her head began to abate.
Then what she had been hearing sank in, and she opened her eyes. His face was only inches away from hers. His eyes were glittering, shining with the kind of madness she had seen in the eyes of patients in locked wards. He’s mad! she thought. She could see now—it was Alex in that straggly wig! Alex in those shabby clothes! Alex, whose eyes were like sharp chips of turquoise slicing deeply into her.
“I have your shroud, Susan,” he whispered. “Even though you were not one of the lonely ladies, I wanted you to have it. It’s exactly the same as the ones the others wore.”
He stood, and she could see that he was holding up a long plastic bag, much lik
e the kind used to protect expensive gowns. Oh God! she thought. He’s going to suffocate me!
“I do this slowly, Susan,” he said. “It’s my favorite part. I want to watch your face. I want you to anticipate that moment when the air is cut off and the final struggle begins. So I’ll do it slowly, and I won’t wrap it too tightly. That way it will take longer for you to die, a few minutes, at least.”
He knelt in front of her and lifted her feet, sliding the plastic bag underneath her so that her feet and legs were inside. She tried to kick it away, but he leaned across her, staring into her eyes as he pulled it over her hips and then her waist. Her struggles had no effect, not even slowing him as he continued to slide the plastic bag up her body. Finally, when he reached her neck, he paused.
“You see, soon after my mother died, my father took a cruise,” he explained. “On it, he met Virginia Marie Owen, a lonely widow, or so she claimed. She was very girlish, not at all like my mother. She called herself ‘Gerie.’ She was thirty-five years my father’s junior and attractive. He told me she liked to sing in his ear while they danced. Her favorite song was ‘You Belong to Me.’ You know how they spent their honeymoon? They followed the lyrics of that song, starting out in Egypt.”
Susan watched Alex’s face. He was clearly engrossed in his story now. But all the while his hands kept playing with the plastic, and Susan knew that at any moment he was going to pull it over her head. She thought of screaming, but who would hear? Her chance of escape was nil, and she was alone with him in what seemed an otherwise empty building. Even Nedda had gone home uncharacteristically early this evening.
“My father was smart enough to have Gerie sign a prenuptial agreement, but she hated me so much that she dedicated herself to persuading him to establish the foundation rather than leave his money to me. It would then be my role in life to administer it. She pointed out to my father that I would have a generous salary while I gave away his money. My money. She told him that in that way their names would be immortalized. He resisted for a while but eventually gave in. The final piece of persuasion had come as the result of my own carelessness—Gerie found and gave to my father a rather infantile list I had made of ‘things’ that I wanted to buy as soon as I had control over the money. I hated her for that and swore to myself I would get even. But then she died, right after my father, and I never had the chance. Can you imagine how frustrating that was? To hate her with such a passion, and then for her to deprive me of the satisfaction of killing her?”