Gone, But Not Forgotten Read online

  “I will,” Lake assured her.

  Nancy started to open her purse but Lake stopped her.

  “Dinner’s on me,” he smiled.

  “I always pay my own way,” Nancy answered, laying the exact amount of her dinner on top of the check and putting a dollar tip under her coffee cup. She slipped out of the booth and started toward the door.

  Peter placed his money next to hers and followed her outside.

  “Can I give you a lift home?” he asked.

  “My car’s in the lot.”

  “Mine too. I’ll walk you back.”

  They walked in silence until they reached the police station. The lot was dimly lit. Patches were in shadow. Nancy’s car was toward the back of the station where the windows were dark.

  “It could have happened someplace like this,” Lake mused as they walked.

  “What?”

  “The women,” Lake said. “Walking alone at night in a deserted parking lot. It would be so easy to approach them. Didn’t Bundy do that? Wear a false cast to elicit sympathy. They would be in the killer’s trunk in a minute and it would all be over for them.”

  Nancy felt a chill. There was no one in the lot but the two of them. They entered an unlit area. She turned her head so she could see Lake. He was watching her, thoughtfully. Nancy stopped at her car.

  “That’s why I wanted to walk with you,” Lake continued. “No woman is safe until he’s caught.”

  “Think about what I said, Peter.”

  “Good night, Nancy. I think we work well together. Thanks again for your concern.”

  Nancy backed her Ford out of its space and drove off. She could see Lake watching her in the rearview mirror.

  Six

  Nancy stood in the dark and pumped iron, following the routine she and Ed had worked out. Now she was doing curls, with the maximum weight she could manage. Her forearm arced toward her shoulder, slowly, steadily, as she muscled up the right dumbbell, then the left. Sweat stained her tank top. The veins stood out on her neck.

  Something was definitely wrong. Lake had been coming on to her. When Ed died, she had lost all interest in sex for months. It had hurt just to see couples walking hand in hand. But when Lake held her hand, he had stroked it, the way you would caress a lover’s hand. When he said he thought they worked well together, it was definitely a proposition.

  Nancy finished her curls. She lowered the weights to the floor and took a few deep breaths. It was almost six. She had been up since four-thirty, because a nightmare woke her and she couldn’t get back to sleep.

  Frank had considered Lake a suspect and she had disagreed. Now she was beginning to wonder. She remembered what Dr. Klien said. Lake was bright and personable. It would have been easy for him to gain the confidence of the victims. They were the type of women he met every day at his clubs, and he was the type of man the victims encountered at theirs.

  The organized nonsocial was a psychopath who could not feel pity or care for others. The type of person who would have to fake emotions. Had Lake been caught off guard in the coffee shop between remembering his first meeting with Sandra Lake and making the appropriate reaction to that memory? There had been a brief moment when Lake’s features had been devoid of emotion.

  Klien also said that these killers were interested in police work. Lake, an experienced criminal defense attorney, would know all about police procedure. Nancy dropped to the floor and did fifty push-ups. What was normally an easy set was difficult. She couldn’t focus. Her head filled with a vision of Lake, alone in the shadows of the parking lot, waiting. How did he know about Bundy’s fake cast? Dr. Klien had not mentioned it.

  After the weights, she and Ed would run a six-mile loop through the neighborhood. Ed was stronger than Nancy, but she was the faster runner. On Sundays, they raced the loop. The loser cooked breakfast. The winner decided when and how they made love. Nancy could not touch the weights or run the loop for two months after the shooting.

  One hundred crunches. Up, down, up, down. Her stomach tight as a drumhead. Her thoughts in the dark, in the parking lot with Lake. Should she tell Frank and Wayne? Was she just imagining it? Would her suspicions sidetrack the investigation and let the real killer escape?

  It was six-fifteen. The weights were in a small room next to the bedroom. The sun was starting its ascent over the wealthy suburbs to the east. Nancy stripped off her panties and top and dropped them in the hamper. She had put on weight after Ed died. Except for a month when she was recovering from a hamstring pull in her sophomore year, it was the first time since junior high that she had not worked out regularly. The weight was off now and she could see the ridged muscles of her stomach and the cords that twisted along her legs. Hot water loosened her up. She shampooed her hair. All the time, she was thinking about Peter Lake.

  Why were there no bodies found before? Why were the Lake murders different from the others? Sandra Lake had apparently been killed quickly, suddenly. Why? And why would Peter have killed her? Had she discovered something that would link him to the other murders and confronted him with the evidence? And that still left the hardest question of all, was Lake such a monster that he would kill his own daughter to cover his crimes?

  As she dressed, Nancy tried to find one concrete fact that she could present to the other detectives. One piece of evidence that linked Peter to the crimes. She came up dry. For the moment, she’d have to keep her feelings to herself.

  Seven

  Frank Grimsbo ran a forearm across his forehead, staining the sleeve of his madras jacket with sweat. He was wearing a short-sleeve, white shirt and brown polyester pants, and had jerked his paisley print tie to half mast after unbuttoning his top button. The heat was killing him, and all he could think about was cold beer.

  Herbert Solomon answered the door on the third ring. Wearily, Grimsbo held up his shield and identified himself.

  “This is about the Lakes, right?” asked Solomon, a stocky man of medium height who sported a well-groomed beard and was dressed in loose green-and-red-checked Bermuda shorts and a yellow T-shirt.

  “That’s right, Mr. Solomon. My partner and I are canvassing the neighborhood.”

  “I already spoke to a policeman on the evening it happened.”

  “I know, sir. I’m a detective on the special task force that’s investigating all of the killings, and I wanted to go into a little more detail with you.”

  “Have there been other murders? I thought these women just disappeared.”

  “That’s right, but we’re assuming the worst.”

  “Come on in out of the heat. Can I get you a beer, or can’t you drink on duty?”

  Grimsbo grinned. “A beer would be great.”

  “Wait in there and I’ll grab one for you,” Solomon said, pointing to a small front room. Grimsbo pulled his shirt away from his body as he walked toward the den. Thank God they were canvassing in The Meadows, where everyone had air-conditioning.

  “I hope this is cold enough for you,” Solomon said, handing Grimsbo a chilled Budweiser. Grimsbo placed the cold bottle against his forehead and closed his eyes. Then he took a sip.

  “Boy, that hits the spot. I wish they could think up a way to air-condition the outside.”

  Solomon laughed.

  “You an accountant?”

  “A c.p.a.”

  “I figured,” Grimsbo said, pointing his beer at two large bookcases filled with books about tax and accounting. A desk stood in front of the only window in the room. A computer and printer sat in the center of the desk next to a phone. The window looked out at Sparrow Lane across a wide front lawn.

  “Well,” Grimsbo said, after taking another swig from the bottle, “let me ask you a few questions and get out of your hair. Were you around the night Mrs. Lake and her daughter were murdered?”

  Solomon stopped smiling and nodded. “Poor bastard.”

  “You know Peter Lake?”

  “Sure. Neighbors and all. We have a home-owners committee in The Meadow
s. Pete and I were on it. We played doubles together in the tennis tournament. Marge—that’s my wife—she and Sandy were good friends.”

  “Is your wife home?”

  “She’s at the club, playing golf. I didn’t feel like it in this heat.”

  Grimsbo put down the beer and took a pad and pen out of his inside jacket pocket.

  “About what time did you get home on the night it happened?”

  “It had to be about six.”

  “Did you see anything unusual that night?”

  “Not a thing. I was in the dining room until we finished dinner. The dining room looks out into the back yard. Then I was in the living room for a few minutes. It’s in the back of the house too. After that I was in here working on the computer with the blinds drawn.”

  “Okay,” Grimsbo said, reluctantly ready to wrap up the interview and trudge back out into the heat.

  “One thing I forgot about when the officer talked to me the night of the murder. There was so much excitement and Marge was hysterical. I did see Pete come home.”

  “Oh, yeah? When was that?”

  “I can get pretty close there. The Yankees played a day game and I caught the score on ‘Headline Sports.’ CNN runs the sports scores twenty after and ten to the hour. I went into the den right after the score, so figure seven twenty-two or so. I saw Pete’s Ferrari when I closed the blinds.”

  “He was heading home?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re certain about the time.”

  “Twenty after the hour, every hour. So it had to be about then, give or take a minute.”

  “Did you notice a florist’s truck at any time that night, near The Meadows or in it?”

  Solomon thought for a second. “There was a TV repairman at the Osgoods’. That’s the only unusual vehicle I saw.”

  Grimsbo levered himself out of his seat and extended his hand. “Thanks for the beer.”

  Wayne Turner was leaning against the car, looking so cool in his tan suit that it pissed Grimsbo off.

  “Any luck?” Turner asked, as he pushed off the car.

  “Nada. Oh, Solomon, the last guy I talked to, saw Lake driving home past his house about seven-twenty. Other than that, I don’t have a thing that wasn’t in the uniforms’ reports.”

  “I struck out too, but I’m not surprised. You get a development like The Meadows, you get houses with land. They’re not leaning over each other. Less chance anyone will see what’s going on at the neighbor’s. And with heat like this, everyone’s either inside with the air-conditioning on or out at their country club.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Head back in.”

  “You get a hit on a florist truck?” Grimsbo asked, when he had the car started.

  “There was a cable TV repairman at the Osgoods’, but no florist.”

  “Yeah, I got the TV guy too. What do you think of Waters?”

  “I don’t think anything, Frank. You seen him?”

  Grimsbo shook his head.

  “Our killer’s got to be high IQ, right? Waters is a zero. Skinny, pimple-faced kid. He’s got this little wisp of a beard. If he’s not retarded, he’s not far from it. Dropped out of school in the tenth grade. He was eighteen. Worked as a gas station attendant and a box boy at Safeway. He lost that job when he was arrested for jacking off outside the window of a sixteen-year-old neighbor girl. The girl’s father beat the crap out of him.”

  “He sounds pretty pathetic,” Grimsbo observed.

  “The guy’s got no life. He lives with his mother. She’s in her late sixties and in poor health. I followed him for a few days. He’s a robot. Every day it’s the same routine. He leaves work and walks to the One Way Inn, this bar that’s halfway to his house. Orders two beers, nurses ’em, doesn’t say a word to anyone but the bartender. Forty-five minutes after he goes in, he leaves, walks straight home and spends the evening watching TV with his mother. I talked to his boss and his neighbors. If he’s got any friends, no one knows who they are. He’s held this delivery boy job with Evergreen Florists longer than any of his other jobs.”

  “You writing him off?”

  “He’s a weeny-waver. A little twisted, sure, but I don’t make him for our killer. He’s not smart enough to be our boy. We don’t have anything with Waters.”

  “We don’t have anything, period.”

  Glen Michaels walked into the task force office just as Grimsbo and Turner were finishing the reports on their interviews in The Meadows.

  “Whatcha got?” Grimsbo asked. He had shucked his jacket and parked himself next to a small fan.

  “Nothing at all,” Michaels said. “It’s like the guy was never there. I just finished all the lab work. Every print matches up to the victims, Lake or one of the neighbors. There’s nothing to do a DNA test on. No unusual hairs, no fibers, no semen. This is one smart cookie, gentlemen.”

  “You think he knows police procedure?” Turner asked.

  “I have to believe it. I’ve never seen so many clean crime scenes.”

  “Anyway,” Michaels said, heading for the door, “I’m out of here. This heat is boiling my blood.”

  Turner turned to Grimsbo. “This perp is starting to piss me off. Nobody’s that good. He leaves no prints, no hairs, no one sees him. Christ, we’ve got a development full of people and no one reports an unusual occurrence. No strangers lurking around, not a single odd car. How does he get in and out?”

  Grimsbo didn’t answer. He was frowning. He levered himself out of his chair and walked over to the cabinet where they kept the master file on the case.

  “What’s up?” Turner asked.

  “Just something … Yeah, here it is.”

  Grimsbo pulled a report out of the file and showed it to Turner. It was the one-page report of the dispatcher who had taken the 911 call from Peter Lake.

  “You see it?” Grimsbo asked.

  Turner read the report a few times and shook his head.

  “The time,” Grimsbo said. “Lake called in the 911 at eight-fifteen.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Solomon said he saw Lake driving by at seven-twenty. He was certain he’d just heard the sports scores. CNN gives them at twenty after.”

  “And the bodies were in the hall,” Turner said, suddenly catching on.

  “How long does it take to park the car, open the door? Let’s give Lake the benefit of the doubt and assume Solomon is a little off. He’s still gonna be inside by seven-thirty.”

  “Shit,” Turner said softly.

  “Am I right, Wayne?” Grimsbo asked.

  “I don’t know, Frank. If it was your wife and kid … I mean, you’d be in shock.”

  “Sure, the guy’s knocked out. He said he sat down on the stairs for a while. You know, gathering himself. But for forty-five minutes? Uh-uh. Something doesn’t wash. I think he spent the time cleaning up the crime scene.”

  “What’s the motive? Jesus, Frank, you saw her face. Why would he do that to his own wife?”

  “You know why. She knew something, she found something, and she made the mistake of telling Lake. Think about it, Wayne. If Lake killed them it would explain the absence of clues at the crime scene. There wouldn’t be any strange cars in the neighborhood or prints that didn’t match the Lakes or the neighbors.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “Yes you do. He killed that little girl. His own little girl.”

  “Christ, Frank, Lake’s a successful lawyer. His wife was beautiful.”

  “You heard Klien. The guy we’re looking for is a monster, but no one’s gonna see that. He’s smooth, handsome, the type of guy these women would let in their house without a second thought. It could be a successful lawyer with a beautiful wife. It could be anyone who isn’t wired right and is working in some psycho world of his own where this all makes sense.”

  Turner paced around the room while Grimsbo waited quietly. Finally Turner sat down and picked up a picture of Melody Lake.


  “We aren’t going to do anything stupid, Frank. If Lake is our killer, he is one devious motherfucker. One hint that we’re on to him and he’ll figure a way to cover this up.”

  “So, what’s the next step? We can’t bring him in and sweat him and we know there’s nothing connecting Lake to the other crime scenes.”

  “These women weren’t picked at random. If he’s the killer, they’ve all got to be connected to Lake somehow. We have to reinterview the husbands, go back over the reports and recheck our lists with Lake in mind. If we’re right, there’s going to be something there.”

  The two men sat silently for a moment, figuring the angles.

  “None of this goes in a report,” Turner said. “Lake could stumble across it when he’s here.”

  “Right,” Grimsbo answered. “I’d better take Solomon’s interview with me.”

  “When do we tell Nancy and the chief?”

  “When we have something solid. Lake’s very smart and he’s got political connections. If he’s the one, I don’t want him beating this, I want him nailed.”

  Eight

  Nancy Gordon was deep in a dreamless sleep when the phone rang. She jerked up in bed, flailing for a moment, before she realized what was happening. The phone rang again before she found it in the dark.

  “Detective Gordon?” the man on the phone asked.

  “Speaking,” Nancy said, as she tried to orient herself.

  “This is Jeff Spears. I’m a patrolman. Fifteen minutes ago we received a complaint about a man sitting in a car on the corner of Bethesda and Champagne. Seems he’s been parked there for three successive nights. One of the neighbors got worried.

  “Anyway, Officer DeMuniz and I talked to the guy. He identified himself as Peter Lake. He claims he’s working on the task force that’s looking into the murders of those women. He gave me your name.”

  “What time is it?” Nancy asked. The last thing she wanted to do was turn on the light and scorch her eyeballs.

  “One-thirty. Sorry about waking you,” Spears said apologetically.

  “No, that’s okay,” she answered as she located the digital clock and confirmed the time. “Is Lake there?”