“What’s next?” Amanda asked. They stood outside Moose’s house.
“I’m calling Walker Lane again in the morning,” Stride said. “I don’t care what the hell Sawhill says.”
“Walker won’t admit killing Amira.”
“No, but he may know who’s doing this and why. This isn’t some random vendetta. It’s personal.”
“If Walker did kill Amira, why didn’t Boni erase him?” Amanda asked. “Assuming Moose is right about Boni and Amira being lovers.”
Stride thought about the penthouse suite in the Charlcombe Towers and Boni Fisso looking down on his old casino—and his new Orient project. “It’s one thing to kill members of the family, but a CEO and a celebrity like Walker—that’s a lot harder to cover up. If Walker Lane was murdered or disappeared, people would ask questions.”
“Walker did disappear,” Amanda said. “He ran to Canada.”
Stride nodded. “Maybe he was running from Boni. Maybe he’s still running.”
He heard his cell phone ringing. He grabbed it, expecting a call from Serena, but he didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.
“Stride,” he answered.
He heard a man’s voice, flat and unemotional. A stranger. “Have you found her yet?”
Stride knew without having to ask. From the moment he had seen the killer leave the fingerprint for them at the Oasis, he had suspected that a time like this would come. The man would find a way to make contact. To make it personal.
He snapped his fingers sharply at Amanda to alert her. She read his face as he gestured at the phone. He punched the speakerphone button. “We’re at Moose’s house now,” he said.
“Not her,” the voice retorted impatiently. “Not the girl.”
“Who are you talking about?” Stride asked. He mouthed to Amanda, Another victim?
“You’re going to have to move faster, Detective. I don’t have time to spoon-feed you clues. I drove out in a silver Lexus. That should narrow it down.”
Stride listened for gloating in the man’s voice and didn’t hear it. He didn’t sound unbalanced, like a monster. “Why call me now?” Stride asked.
“I’m doing your job for you, Detective. I’m going to catch a murderer.”
“Why commit murder to catch a killer?” Stride asked him sharply. “These people, the ones you killed, were innocent. Why not just come in and tell us what you think you know about Amira’s death? Let us get justice for her.”
“Like you’ve done for forty years?” the man asked.
“You killed a little boy,” Stride snapped. “That’s worse than anything that happened back then.”
There was a long silence in which he thought he’d succeeded in finding a vein and drawing blood. He heard the man’s breathing become more rapid and harsh.
“You don’t understand what happened back then,” the man said finally.
“Explain it to me,” Stride said. “And tell me what all of this has to do with you.” He wasn’t talking to an older man—at most, maybe someone his own age. There was no way he had been a participant in the events that happened at the Sheherezade.
“Are you there?” Stride added when the man didn’t reply. “Hello?”
The silence stretched out into dead air. He checked his phone and found the call was over. The caller had disconnected.
When he punched a button to redial the number, it rang and rang without being picked up.
“Shit,” he said. “There’s another body here.”
This one was alive.
Half an hour later, they found Cora Lansing, a seventy-five-year-old widow, tied to an oversized walnut chair in her dining room, in another house not far from Moose’s MiraBella estate. A strip of duct tape was pasted across her mouth. Her eyes were wide with fright, and she had soiled herself, throwing a stink into the lavender-scented home, but she hadn’t been harmed.
They called in a medical team, who gave the woman oxygen and carefully removed the tape from her mouth. It left behind a rash and a sticky residue that she picked at with irritated flicks of her fingernails. She was birdlike and frail, but she was hopping mad, even after a shower and a change of clothes. Stride poured her a large glass of Rémy Martin from her liquor cabinet to calm her down.
They soon extracted her story. She had been shopping at Nieman’s and returned to find a stranger in her Lexus. The man forced her to drive back through the hills to the south shore entrance to Lake Las Vegas, and he hid in the backseat while she greeted the guard. He made it clear that if she tried to alert the guard, he would shoot them both, and his tone was such that Cora had no doubt he would do it.
She drove him to her home, where he tied her up, gagged her, and waited until night fell. Then he took her car and left.
“Did you see what he looked like?” Stride asked.
“I certainly did,” Cora replied immediately, surprising him. “I’ll never forget his face.”
Stride felt a rush of excitement, mixed with apprehension. He told Amanda, “Get a sketch artist down here.”
Stride looked at Cora and thought to himself what he would never say to the woman aloud. Why the hell are you still alive?
“Can you describe him for me?” he asked.
Cora swiftly painted a man similar in build to the man Elonda had seen at the bus stop before MJ was killed: not as tall as Stride, lean but very strong, with short dark hair and an angular face. Either he had shaved his beard or the one he had used on Saturday night was a fake. Cora provided enough detail that the police artist would be able to do a solid rendering. Stride glanced around at the tasteful, expensive art in Cora’s house. She had a good eye.
“Did he say anything to you?” Stride asked. “About who he was or why he was doing this?”
Cora shook her head. “Not a word. He hardly said anything. But he was very intense, very scary.”
Stride thanked her and tracked down a policewoman to sit with her while they waited for the artist to drive in from the city. He left Cora’s living room and made his way back outside. The killer’s phone call was vivid in his mind. He wished it had lasted longer, because he wasn’t sure the man would call again. He had said what he needed to say, enlisting Stride in the hunt—but the hunt for what?
Amanda joined him. “You don’t look happy,” she told him. “Isn’t this what we call a break? A lead? That’s a good thing, right?”
“We’ve only got it because he gave it to us,” Stride said. “He could have killed that woman, and we wouldn’t have a damn thing, but now he wants us to know what he looks like. Why?”
“Maybe he’s an arrogant bastard. He wouldn’t be the first serial killer to get tripped up by his own ego. Look at BTK. They never would have nailed him in Wichita if he hadn’t started sending letters to the papers again after thirty years.”
Stride shook his head. “He knows he’s taking a risk. He knows we might find him. His picture is going to be all over the papers. Someone could spot him.”
“He may think he’s covered his tracks so well that it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think so, Amanda. I’m sure he’s covered his tracks, but I don’t believe he’d give us something this big if it wasn’t part of his plan. Hell, he could have killed Tierney in the city any time he wanted. He didn’t need to figure out a way to get inside the security out here. And he sure didn’t need to give us his face.”
“He was showing off,” Amanda suggested.
Stride thought about it. He heard the killer’s voice in his head again. Cool, focused. Complaining about spoon-feeding them clues. As if the police were interfering with his schedule.
“Or sending a message,” Stride said.