“His name is Arthur Zell,” she finally replies, “and he’s a very, verrrry bad man.”
“Tell us,” I say.
“In 1990 he was arrested for the murder of a woman in New Jersey after her badly decomposed body—and I’m talking bones and some skin—was found in the crawl space under his house. The body had been there at least a year. We know that because of a suspicious circumstance report filed by several neighbors in 1989. They complained of a foul smell coming from Zell’s property. Unfortunately, by the time they called the police, several of them had also complained directly to Mr. Zell.”
“Let me guess,” I say. “He covered the body in lime and the police didn’t smell a thing. Case closed.”
“Correct, and that brings us back to 1990 and the circumstances leading to Zell’s arrest. It seems his car was linked to the abduction of twenty-two-year-old Katie Stahl after a male was seen stuffing a bound woman into the trunk and then fleeing at a high rate of speed.
“Police immediately respond to Zell’s residence but find the driveway empty and the house dark. While they wait, someone runs an address check and finds the suspicious circumstance report from a year earlier. They put two and two together and start to wonder if they have a serial killer on their hands—”
“Which they do,” Jimmy interjects.
“Which they do,” Diane confirms. “Meanwhile, the officer at the front door claims he hears a scream from inside, the door gets booted, and everyone floods in.”
“I smell a but coming,” I say.
“But,” Diane emphasizes, “the house was empty. Katie Stahl was found bound and blindfolded alongside the road about an hour after she was taken—claimed she never saw the suspect’s face. After he grabbed her and stuffed her in the trunk, he apparently drove around for at least a half hour, then, just as quickly as he grabbed her, he dumped her alongside the road.”
“No rape?”
“None. The report suggests he got cold feet.”
“This guy doesn’t get cold feet,” I say quickly. “He’s calculating. Something else made him abort.”
Silence. Then I hear paper whispering and shuffling on the other end of the phone.
“There were several witnesses to the abduction,” Diane says. “Three, to be precise. One of them actually chased after the car, but he was on foot—he’s the one who got the license plate number. That could have been enough to give Zell pause,” she offers, “particularly if he had a police scanner in the car. Meanwhile, the officers back at Zell’s house started poking around—that foul smell from a year earlier still on their minds—and one of them decided to wiggle into the crawl space.”
“Where they found Ms. Skin and Bones,” I say.
Jimmy gives me a disgusted, reproachful glare.
“What?” I hiss.
“Where they found what little remained of Kathryn Wythe, a twenty-year-old part-time waitress and full-time student … and a brunette,” Diane adds. “Cause of death was strangulation, according to the medical examiner’s report.”
“Fractured hyoid bone?” I ask, referring to the U-shaped neck bone that is broken in about a third of all strangulation homicides.
“That would be putting it lightly,” Diane replies. “The ME said it looked like someone tried to squeeze her head right off her body. There was also evidence pointing to rape, but no DNA. Zell claimed that she died during consensual, albeit rough sex, and he just freaked out and put her in the crawl space until he figured out what to do.”
“Yeah, that’s a perfectly normal reaction,” Jimmy scoffs.
“That’s only the half of it,” Diane says. “He cried a long sob story about how he’d been sexually abused as a child by his brother-slash-uncle—”
“His brother-slash-uncle?” Jimmy blurts.
“Yeah, apparently his brother was also his uncle. Don’t ask me how that works, because I really don’t want to know.”
“His bruncle,” I say.
Jimmy gives me a queer look.
“Bruncle.” I give him a shrug. “Brother-slash-uncle.”
“The problem is you don’t know what a jury’s going to believe,” Diane continues. “Just look at the O. J. Simpson trial. In this case, because the search of the house was questionable, the prosecutor’s office got cold feet and offered a plea of twenty years with a minimum of fifteen behind bars and the balance on probation.”
“Which the defense jumped at,” I say disgustedly.
“Correct. And now he’s killing women in California.”
The phone is silent as that sinks in; the room is silent.
“So,” Jimmy says at last, “where is he?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
July 8, 8:23 A.M.
Wayward Road is a remote tar-and-gravel two-lane dead-end road west of Redding that’s maintained by Shasta County Public Works, but only just barely. Snaking its way north off Placer Road for the better part of a mile, the road branches off into seven secluded driveways, the last of which is 1407 Wayward Road, which has an eight-foot-high fence along the road made from a patchwork of worn metal siding and rippled metal roofing. A gate at the driveway is of similar material, though slightly shorter.
“It’s a regular compound,” Detective Troy Bovencamp says as he points to the overhead image and circles the ten-acre parcel with his finger. “Coming up the road there’s no way to conduct surveillance without being exposed, so we humped in through the trees to the west and then circled back and came in from the north.”