Chapter Twenty-three
The detective who discovered Gail Hawes’s body knew Morris from when he was on the force, and he met Morris and Stonehedge outside of Hawes’s apartment.
“It’s already a madhouse in there,” he told Morris. “Forensics, crime scene, ME, and an FBI profiler are all present.”
“How’d you find her?”
“A friend of hers called the station. The victim had written something on Facebook about running into someone’s secret lover, and because of that she was going to be late for a lunch meeting, and then minutes later whatever she wrote was removed. According to her friend, it would be out of character for the victim, Gail Hawes, to remove anything she wrote on Facebook. When pigs sprout wings was how likely her friend put it. When she tried calling Ms. Hawes and got no answer, she called the station convinced something must’ve happened to her. Since we were on alert for possible female victims in their forties, I checked it out as soon as the call came in.”
“What time was this status update written?”
The detective frowned at the question. “Status update? Is that what they call it? I wouldn’t know. Facebook is Greek to me.” The detective consulted a notepad. “The call came in at twelve fifty-five. I’m not sure when she first saw the victim’s message.”
Morris’s mind buzzed as he thought about what this meant. This latest victim had seen SCK with someone she knew. Not only that, SCK was this mystery person’s secret lover. They now had a concrete connection to SCK. If they found this person, they would have SCK.
“I need to talk to the friend who called this in.”
“She was brought to the Hollywood station on Wilcox.”
Morris called the station and soon had Hawes’s friend on the phone. The woman sounded distraught as Morris questioned her about the exact time that she saw Hawes’s status update. “This is so awful,” she said. “Gail lived on Facebook. Everything she did, she posted. And it was such a strange message about running into a friend’s secret lover, kind of a teaser, you know.”
“She definitely said a friend’s secret lover?”
There was what sounded like a stifled sob, as if the woman was struggling to keep from crying. “Yes, I’m sure of that.”
“Any idea who this friend is?”
“No. Gail is—” A sob finally broke out as she remembered that Hawes was now in the past tense. It took several seconds before the woman was able to compose herself. Her voice sounded as if she were on the verge of tears as she said, “Gail was very sociable. She was always making friends.”
“Did she say where she ran into this person? Outside her building? Someplace else?”
“She didn’t say. Only that she was now running late because of it.”
“How’d you know she was late for a lunch meeting?”
“Because Gail had posted a message ten or so minutes earlier that she was leaving her apartment to meet some people at a restaurant about a party she was going to be throwing. I think the place was local, only a few blocks from where she lived.”
Morris thought about that, piecing together in his mind what must’ve happened. SCK had to have been waiting for her. Probably right outside her apartment building. Then when he “accidentally” bumped into her, he maneuvered her into inviting him to her apartment.
He told the friend, “Try to remember what time you saw Gail’s status update about the secret lover. It’s important.”
“I think twelve thirty.”
“When did you see that the message was gone?”
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to think clearly right now. Wait.” A half a minute later she was back on the phone. “I tried calling Gail right after I saw her status missing. According to my cellphone’s call log, I tried calling her at twelve forty-seven.”
Morris thanked the woman for her help, then got on the line with a sergeant at the Wilcox Avenue precinct, and told him that the woman was free to go, and that she should be escorted home. After he got off the phone, he told the detective they needed to be canvassing the area. “There’s a good chance that sometime around twelve thirty the victim was outside this building with the perp.”
The detective nodded. “I’ve got four patrolmen right now doing that.”
“Door to door also in this apartment building. And we need to know if there are any surveillance cameras in the area.”
The detective told Morris he’d get right on it.
“Do you realize what this means?” Stonehedge whispered to Morris as they entered the apartment. “A friend of this victim can point you to SCK.”
“If the friend is still alive.”
That thought appeared to stun the actor. “Oh, wow.” He absently stroked his fake beard as he considered that. “You’re right. SCK must know deleting the status update won’t be enough.”
Morris grunted in response to Stonehedge’s comment. It was a small apartment, and because of the crowd milling about the room, Morris could see Gail Hawes’s legs from the knees down and no other part of her. That was more than okay with him. He’d just as soon not see her broken apart skull if he could help it.
He spotted Smichen and Goodman standing among the crowd of forensic and crime-scene specialists. They noticed him also and made their way over to him. Smichen told him the murder looked mostly the same as Corey Freeman’s. “I found a similar shaped hematoma on the back of her head. I haven’t been able to find any traces of rust yet, but I’m fairly convinced the same object was used to incapacitate her. Residue found on her wrists, as with Freeman, indicating that after he knocked her dizzy, he taped her wrists together. Residue this time was found on her ankles, so he must’ve taped them together also. One difference, he gagged her. I found wool fibers in her mouth. Another difference, this time he clawed out eight lumps of brain matter. He must’ve remembered that was his preference. One final note, the victim had three cats who, among other things, nosed around the open skull, and contaminated the crime scene, but we should still be able to tell whether the same chisel and hammer were used.”
“Okay, thanks.” Then to Goodman, “Any doubts we’re dealing with SCK?”
Goodman looked glum. “I’m thinking more that we could be dealing with a copycat. Her age is right, but let me show you a picture of the victim I found on her cellphone.”
He handed Morris the iPhone, and it showed a selfie that the victim must’ve recently taken. She didn’t have a thin, longish face like the other women in their forties that SCK had killed. Instead her face was more of a square shape. Whether it was SCK or a copycat at that moment seemed immaterial to Morris. Whoever he was, he was killing in a similar pattern, and Morris had more pressing concerns. He told Goodman about the deleted Facebook post.
“She invited him up here, and while he was off making a phone call or using the bathroom or whatever excuse he used to get her alone up here, she posted that status update, and he didn’t know about it until after he had killed her. What are the odds that Hawes’s friend who had SCK as her ‘secret lover’ is in cahoots with SCK?”
“Slim. Probably close to zero.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Morris used the iPhone to bring up Gail Hawes’s phone contacts and started calling in order all of the women who had phone numbers in the Los Angeles area. After each one answered, he identified himself, briefly explained why he was calling, and asked when was the last time that they’d seen Hawes. If any of them at first thought this was a prank, the severity of Morris’s tone and the fact that he was calling them from Gail Hawes’s phone quickly convinced them otherwise, and all of them ended up expressing a mix of concern and shock. Morris asked the ones who had seen her within the last week whether Hawes had recently caught them with a “secret lover,” explaining that it was critically important for their safety and the public at large that they answer truthfully. He knew there was a chance that out of embarrassment or some other reason that one of them might lie to him, but he trusted his instincts to be able to tell if that happened. After twenty-six calls, he had worked his way to Susan Twilitter. When she didn’t answer, he knew in his gut that she was the one. He brought up the Facebook app on Hawes’s iPhone and found Twilitter’s profile page. Unfortunately, there were no pictures of her, but he did discover the name of the boutique where she worked. He called the boutique and asked the owner about Twilitter.
“She’s not here,” the owner said, sounding worried. “Susie earlier asked if she could have an hour off, and I told her okay. That was two and a half hours ago. This isn’t like her. She’s always here when she says she’s going to be. I’ve tried calling her, but she’s not picking up.”
Thanks to Twilitter having had a stolen recovery system installed in her car, it didn’t take long for them to track her Honda Accord to the parking garage across the street from where Twilitter had worked. Before the patrolman on the scene pointed it out, Morris had spotted the blood on the pavement near the driver’s side door. There wasn’t a lot of it, only a few drops, but it was enough so it wasn’t a surprise when they opened up the trunk and found Twilitter’s body.
“SCK realized he had a loose end, and he cleaned it up,” Stonehedge said.
Morris gritted his teeth but otherwise didn’t respond to the actor’s comment. Twilitter’s body had been folded in half and crammed into the space so that her face was hidden inside of the trunk. Morris wanted to see what her face looked like, but he didn’t want to disturb her body until the crime-scene team had a chance to go over it. Her pocketbook was still hanging on her shoulder, and Morris dug through it and found her driver’s license.
“She’s got the same type of face as those other women SCK killed,” Stonehedge noted as he looked over Morris’s shoulder. “Long and narrow. And she’s skinny like those other women.”
Morris had no doubt that Susan Twilitter was originally going to be SCK’s victim, not Gail Hawes, but Hawes spotted them together so SCK decided to target Hawes. Then because of that Facebook message, he had to do an impromptu killing of Twilitter. Which meant he could’ve gotten sloppy. Someone else could’ve seen the two of them together, or possibly seen SCK while he was hiding in the parking garage waiting for Twilitter to return to her car.
“That realtor could still be SCK,” Stonehedge said.
Morris gave him a puzzled look, his mind spinning too much about what he needed to do next to pay attention to what the actor had said.
“That realtor, Glen Blakeman. What if having over a hundred grand stolen from him triggered him into killing again?”
Morris was going to dismiss the idea out of hand, but as he thought about Stonehedge’s theory it didn’t seem impossible. He called Tracy Lacey and asked how long Blakeman had worked at her company, and she told him it had been four years.
“Where’d he work before then?”
“He was a stock broker on Wall Street. The poor man went bust in the 2008 crash, and was unemployed for a few years before moving out here to start over. Have you been able to talk to him yet and clear this up?”
Morris told her not yet, and then called the FBI profiler, Goodman, to tell him about the recent developments. “What are the chances Blakeman’s SCK?” he asked.
“It’s not impossible,” Goodman said.