Page 49 of The Drowned Woman
“Oh yeah. Don’t get me started.” But she sounded distracted. “Everyone lies,” she repeated. Then she snapped to attention. “Everybody lies. Especially Risa’s stalker. We’ve been looking at this backwards.”
Luka nodded for her to continue. Leah tore off a fresh sheet of paper and began making a list. “He says he only kills victims that he finds by random chance, but he killed James Santiago because he wanted to prove himself to Risa, duplicated his death to look like the Jimmy Santiago she wrote about in a story. James wasn’t merely chosen by the toss of a coin; his death was staged, manipulated.”
“It’s on the to-do list I left for Krichek and Harper—to follow up with the South Carolina authorities. But I see where you’re going. He’s claiming to work at random. But these so-called gifts of his…” He gestured to the names from the list of possible victims Risa had included in her database. “They were all people with similarities to people in stories or obituaries Risa worked on. They weren’t random. He targeted them because of Risa.”
Leah tapped the marker against her teeth, the neon purple cap bobbing in the air. “Except, I think he lied. I mean, look at them. They’re scattered all over the country and the only ones that the police were involved in was the drunk driver who died in the car crash and the old lady in the house fire. The rest died of natural causes.”
“But the stalker still claimed them as his, said he made their deaths appear as if they weren’t murders.” Luka turned to her. “You think he lied about that as well. That he didn’t actually murder them, and make their deaths appear accidental?”
“Not all of them. I mean, if it’s Cliff, he’s worked at the Falconer for over a decade. But somehow over the past year since he met Risa, he found time to travel all over the country, to find victims who correlated with Risa’s work, and committed not one or two but a dozen perfect murders?”
“You think the killer found random people who correlated with Risa’s work and used their deaths to what, pad his résumé?”
“If Cliff is Chaos, I don’t see any other way. I’ll bet if you check his work records, he’ll have alibis for all the deaths over the past year.”
“But if it is all lies and no one mentioned in Risa’s letters was actually killed, are we even sure that Risa’s not involved?” he asked. “Either Cliff Vogel is Chaos and is as brilliant at deception and misdirection as he said in his letters, or he’s actually who he appears to be: a guy obsessed with a woman he can never have, not in his wildest dreams. Guys like that, they’re easily manipulated. She could be building him up as a fictional Chaos to resurrect her career and then when she’s ready, he takes the fall.” One of the items on the to-do list he’d left Krichek was to verify that Risa had actually reported her stalker to the FBI’s cybercrimes unit. Although simply filing a report wasn’t enough to prove her stalker was real.
But Cherise’s ring… Now, that was proof. How could anyone not involved with Cherise’s death have gotten it?
“But if we’re not trusting what anyone has told us—certainly not what Chaos put in his letters—than where do we start?” Leah asked. They stood side-by-side, taking in the maelstrom of data Risa’s hunt for her stalker had created.
“First we eliminate the ‘doppelgänger’ victims, the ones whose names or details have been used by Chaos, but who we have no proof of having been murdered. Then we narrow in on the ones who he probably did kill.” Luka began crossing names off the list.
“Santiago, for sure he killed,” Leah said. “And landscape guy—he’s a definite.”
“We don’t have confirmation,” Luka reminded her, but still starred both names. “Indiana PD is going to search the manure and mulch hills tomorrow.”
“You keep letting facts get in the way of my theory.” She gave him a mock grimace and rolled her eyes, reminding Luka of Harper. Not that he’d ever tell Leah that. “Let’s focus on what we know for sure, then. We know he’s obsessed with Risa.”
“And we know whoever killed Trudy didn’t want anyone to see those photos from her phone.” Luka made a mental note to follow up with Sanchez, the cyber squad tech. Then he remembered—he was meant to be off the case, so he couldn’t ask directly. He’d have Harper get him the info; she and Sanchez were buddies. Though it was already bad enough he had Krichek and Harper feeding him information, risking censure from the brass. Damn, this was becoming a nuisance already.
“Which brings us to the one person we know he killed. He had her ring after all. You said there’s no way he could have gotten hold of it unless he killed her,” Leah said. “Cherise.”
Luka looked away. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for this, but he’d already come to the same conclusion. All roads led to Cherise.
“Why do you think he killed her?” Leah asked. “If it really was his first killing, she had to have meant something to him.”
“You think he knew her?”
“Were there any signs of her being stalked at the time? Maybe she was involved with someone before you came along?”
A kaleidoscope of ancient memories swirled through Luka’s vision—Cherise at the heart of each of them. Throwing one of her campus-famous “soirees” where they’d open their house to everyone; Cherise sitting at a table surrounded by their friends, beaming at each in turn. He remembered them cheering him on the first time he ever dared to get up and perform one of his poems in public. So many times and places, where she was not only the sun Luka’s world revolved around, but she burned so bright, the rest of the world couldn’t help stare and admire her brilliance.
He sank into one of the dining chairs, rested his head in his palms, elbows on the table. He was so tired. This case… Every time it spun in one direction, it ricocheted back to blindside him from another.
After a moment, he looked back up, the colorful notes in front of him swimming in his vision. “I can’t remember anyone in particular. Cherise went out with a lot of guys before me, but she’d said none of them were ever serious. She stayed friends with a few of them, but I never suspected they could have wanted her dead. I’ll forward the ones I know about to Krichek, just to cover all bases.”
“If it was Cliff, he’d have been older than you guys. By—”
“Eight years,” he supplied. “I definitely would have remembered someone that much older hanging around Cherise. But I’ll see if he was enrolled or working on campus or nearby.” He shook his head, irritated. “I mean, I’ll ask Krichek. Damn it.”
“The killer said he was just a kid when he killed Cherise—but if it was Cliff, then that’s another lie. Which makes sense, since he manipulated everyone into believing Cherise killed herself. That’s a fairly sophisticated level of thinking. Hard to imagine a kid doing that.” Leah took the seat beside him, her gaze on their handiwork. “Did the autopsy find any evidence that she wasn’t alone in the car that night?”
“No. The river took care of that, erased everything.” He didn’t bother to hide his bitterness. “Forensics came up empty.”
“Why were you so certain it wasn’t a suicide? You said she’d had problems, was off her meds?”
He considered that. He could’ve given her all the arguments he’d offered to the police back then: that Cherise was too proud to give up, not with her dreams in sight; that if she had, she’d never have been so mean, focusing the blame on him by leaving his book with the Langston Hughes poem; that she’d been acting fine, was excited, making wedding plans, plans for her future—for their future…
