Part 16 (1/2)
”The one near the docks? I heard about it, but I didn't go. I had an art show that weekend and needed to sleep.”
It had the ring of truth, but Suzanne made a note to follow up on it. ”What kind of art?”
”Charcoal drawings, mostly. Some watercolors.”
”Would you mind showing me something?”
She looked skeptical. ”Why?”
Suzanne shrugged. ”Just curious.”
Whitney opened the door and walked away but didn't let Suzanne in. Through the narrow opening she saw one large room with a wall of small-paned warehouse windows left over from the original building. The far wall had an intricate painting directly on the wall in black and greens that looked like a mosaic of the New York skyline. She couldn't see anything on the right except for a closed door. The place smelled like paint cleaner with a faint undercurrent of marijuana. Now Suzanne understood why Whitney didn't want her inside.
Whitney came back with a sketchbook and handed it to Suzanne, along with a postcard. ”This was from my show. It was in Central Park.”
”I remember,” said Suzanne, surprised. ”I was jogging through the park when they were setting up on Sat.u.r.day morning.”
She glanced through the sketchbook, not really interested, just wanting something tangible to confirm that Whitney wasn't making up the art show alibi. She couldn't help but notice that Whitney had talent. Most of the drawings were faces, a few buildings, and New York landmarks.
”You're really good.”
Whitney smiled sheepishly as she took the sketchbook back. ”Thanks. But it's hard to make money with these sketches. And the last thing I want to do is go into commercial art.”
”Sometimes you have to make a living doing what you don't particularly like so you have the time and money to do what you love to do.”
”Exactly!” Whitney said. ”Alanna and I weren't really close, but I liked her and I feel bad about what happened. You don't have any idea who killed her?”
Suzanne didn't answer the question, but asked, ”You're an artist and have a good eye for detail. Would you mind looking at three pictures and telling me if you remember seeing any of these women?”
”You're talking about the other victims.”
”Yes.”
Whitney nodded, but bit her lip.
”Did you see their photos in the paper?”
”Yeah-”
Suzanne took out the folder and showed her the pictures one by one. Whitney recognized them, Suzanne was certain of it, but she didn't say anything right away.
”I may have seen them before, but I don't know when or where. All three look kind of familiar, but I didn't know them, like their names or anything. I'm sorry.”
”I have a favor to ask,” said Suzanne.
Whitney eyed her suspiciously.
”The guy you saw Alanna with the night she died, would you be able to draw him?”
”You think he killed her?”
”I don't know, but I'd like to talk to him.”
Whitney closed her eyes. A moment later she opened them and said, ”Yeah, I think I can.”
”Call me when you're done and I'll pick it up. It's important-the sooner you can do it, the better.”
Suzanne left Whitney's apartment and called her office as she turned the car around. She verified that the autopsy report from Jessica Bell was on her desk, and that the blood and tissue samples had been sealed and sent via courier from the coroner to the FBI lab. If anything came from them, the chain of evidence had to be preserved or the court would throw all the material out. Everything was moving quickly on her end, but anytime they were dealing with lab work, speed wasn't really an option, regardless of what the movies and television touted.
She was talking to her squad's chief a.n.a.lyst when Vic Panetta called. ”I'll call you back,” she told Chris. She clicked over to Panetta. ”Got a lead on a witness. A guy the first vic's cousin saw with Andrews the night she was killed. We're working on a sketch.”
”Good, but we have another problem. The security company overseeing the old printing warehouse in Brooklyn just called me about a prowler. Caucasian, six foot one to six foot two, dark hair, wearing jeans and a black jacket.”
”I'm still in Brooklyn; I'll check it out.”
”The security guard, our ex-cop Rich Berenz, is on scene but he's sitting back and watching. He'll detain if the trespa.s.ser tries to leave.”
”Call him back and tell him my ETA is six minutes.”
She turned around again and headed straight for the warehouse.
Killers often returned to the scene of the crime to relive their sick thrills, and Suzanne hoped that was the case this time.
FOURTEEN.
Lucy methodically went to every apartment in Jessica Bell's building looking for information on Kirsten. More than half the apartments didn't have anyone home, but it soon became clear that among the college-age crowd, most knew Jessica and ”Ashleigh” from a wild party on the top floor New Year's Eve.
She couldn't help but think about Wade Barnett and his connection to both Josh Haynes and the underground parties. Coincidence? The police were looking into him, and Lucy trusted them to do their job. Later, she would turn over whatever information she found, but she believed exactly what she'd told Jessica's boyfriend: The police would catch the killer; Lucy needed to focus on finding Kirsten.
She walked two short blocks to a Starbucks on Broadway and booted up her laptop while sipping her mocha. She logged onto her fake profile on the Party Girl site and looked through Kirsten's friends to see if she recognized the other three victims.
There were so many beautiful young women endangering themselves, Lucy had to consciously close off her emotions to review each profile impartially. She saved a photo of each friend into a separate file, along with the person's online name, to review more closely later.
Almost immediately, she found the second victim, Erica Ripley. She was a pretty, short-haired redhead with big green eyes. She smiled seductively in the photo, pixie-like and coy.
Lucy saved her profile and information, and continued her search. Ten minutes later, she found Heather Garcia, a light-skinned Latina, who posted on her profile that she was studying to be a teacher.
Not anymore. They were both dead.
These two victims were friends with both ”Ashleigh” and ”Jenna.”
Lucy doubted the police had uncovered this thread. Otherwise why would they have kept the profiles up there? Unless they were using them to lure a killer, so he didn't know the police suspected how he trolled for his victims.
Still, she was disturbed to see three of the four Cinderella Strangler victims on the Party Girl site. She searched the site more broadly for the first victim, Alanna Andrews, but couldn't find her. Maybe her profile had been removed, or she'd never had one.
Three out of four of the Cinderella Strangler's victims-and Kirsten, who was in hiding-were part of an online s.e.x group. Their photographs and videos were there for anyone to see, and s.e.xual predators fed on explicit images. Even though the girls had used false ident.i.ties, they weren't protected. Lucy's sister, a detective in San Diego, had had a case years ago where a young man learned that a girl he had a crush on had an anonymous online s.e.x diary. He killed her and two others before he was stopped.