Hold Tight
Muse motioned at the paperwork with her jaw. “And is the husband as boring as the wife?”
“I’m still going through all his e-mails, phone records, and credit card stuff, but yeah, so far.”
“What else?”
“Well, assuming that the same killer or killers took Reba Cordova and Jane Doe, we have patrolmen checking the spots known for prostitution, seeing if another body gets dumped.”
Loren Muse didn’t think that was going to happen but it was worth looking into. One of the possible scenarios here was that some serial killer, with the willing or unwilling help of a female accomplice, grabbed suburban women, killed them, and wanted them to appear to be prostitutes. They were going through the computers now, seeing if any other victims in nearby cities fit that description. So far, goose egg.
Muse didn’t buy this particular theory anyway. Psychologists and profilers would have a quasi-orgasm at the idea of a serial killer working suburban moms and making them up to be prostitutes. They would pontificate on the obvious mom-whore linkage, but Muse didn’t really buy it. There was one question that didn’t fit with this scenario, a question that had been bugging her from the moment she’d realized that Jane Doe was not a street hooker: Why hadn’t anyone reported Jane Doe missing?
There were two possible reasons she could see. One, nobody knew that she was missing. Jane Doe was on vacation or supposed to be on a business trip or something like that. Or two, someone who knew her had killed her. And that someone didn’t want to report her missing.
“Where is the husband now?”
“Cordova? He’s still with the Livingston cops. They’re going to canvass the neighborhood and see if anyone saw a white van, you know, the usual.”
Muse picked up a pencil. She put the eraser end in her mouth and chewed.
There was a knock on her door. She looked up and saw the soon-to -be-retired Frank Tremont filling her doorway.
Third day in a row with the same brown suit, Muse thought. Impressive.
He looked at her and waited. She didn’t have time for this, but it was probably better to get it over with.
“Clarence, you mind leaving us alone?”
“Yeah, Chief, sure thing.”
Clarence gave Frank Tremont a little nod as he left. Tremont did not return it. When Clarence was out of sight, he shook his head and said, “Did he call you chief?”
“I’m kind of pressed for time, Frank.”
“You got my letter?”
His resignation letter. “I did.”
Silence.
“I have something for you,” Tremont said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not out until the end of next month,” he said. “So I still need to do work, right?”
“Right.”
“So I got something.”
She leaned back, hoping he would make it a quick.
“I start looking into that white van. The one at both scenes.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t think it was stolen, unless it was out of the area. There is really nothing reported that matches it. So I started searching rent-a-car companies, seeing if anyone rented a van like the one we described.”
“And?”
“There are some, but most I was able to trace down fast and find out they’re legit.”
“So it’s a dead end.”
Frank Tremont smiled. “Mind if I sit down a second?”
She waved at the chair.
“I tried one more thing,” he said. “See, this guy has been pretty clever. Like you said. Setting up the first to look like a hooker. Parking the second vic’s car in a hotel lot. Changing the license plates and all. He doesn’t do it in the typical way. So I started wondering. What would be better and less traceable than stealing or renting a car?”
“I’m listening.”
“Buying a used one online. Have you seen those sites?”
“Not really, no.”
“They sell a zillion cars. I bought one there last year, on autoused .com. You can find real bargains—and since it is person to person, the paperwork is iffy. I mean, we might check dealers, but who is going to track down a car via an online purchase?”
“So?”
“So I called the two major online companies. I asked them to back-date and find me any white Chevy vans sold in this area for the past month. I found six. I called all of them. Four were paid for with checks so we got addresses. Two paid in cash.”
Muse sat back. The pencil eraser was still in her mouth. “Pretty clever. You buy the used car. You pay with cash. You give a phony name if any name at all. You get the title, but you never register it or buy insurance. You steal a license plate from a similar make and you’re on your way.”
“Yep.” Tremont smiled. “Except for one thing.”
“What?”
“The guy who sold them the car—”
“Them?”
“Yep. Man and a woman. He says mid-thirties. I’m going for a full description, but we may have something better. The guy who sold it, Scott Parsons from Kasselton, works in Best Buy. They have a pretty good security system. All digital. So they save everything. He thinks they may have a time-delay film of them. He’s having a tech guy check now. I sent a car to go bring him in, let him look at some mug shots, get the best ID I can.”
“We have a sketch artist he can work with?”
Tremont nodded. “Taken care of.”
It was a legit lead—the best they’d gotten. Muse wasn’t sure what to say.
“What else we got going on?” Tremont asked.
She filled him in on the nothingness of the credit card records, the phone records, the e-mails. Tremont sat back and rested his hands on his paunch.
“When I came in,” Tremont said, “you were chewing hard on that pencil. What were you thinking about?”
“The assumption now is that this might be a serial killer.”
“You’re not buying that,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Neither am I,” Tremont said. “So let’s review what we got.”
Muse rose and started pacing. “Two victims. So far, that’s it—at least in this area. We have people checking but let’s assume that we don’t find any more. Let’s say this is it. Let’s say it is just Reba Cor- dova—who might be alive for all we know—and Jane Doe.”
Tremont said, “Okay.”
“And let’s take it one step further. Let’s say that there is a reason why these two women were the victims.”