Chapter 5
“I HAVE TO call Jack right now,” Justine said to Bobby. “I have to. Damn it. Damn it!”
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I already called him. Your ride will be here in twenty minutes. You’re going to be up most of the night, Justine. Have some pasta. Please, honey? You’re going to thank me for making you eat.”
A waiter put a clean cloth on the table and refilled Justine’s wineglass, but she was no longer aware of her surroundings. She picked up her fork and stabbed a tortellini to satisfy Bobby and so she wouldn’t have to speak while she mentally reviewed the case.
All eleven of the girls had been killed by different methods. That was highly unusual. The murder weapons had been removed from the crime scenes as had the victims’ handbags and backpacks. The killer had always taken trophies: a hank of hair, a contact lens, a pair of panties, a class ring. What law enforcement people called “murderabilia.”
Then, in a bizarre and audacious twist, the killer had claimed credit for one of the murders in an untraceable e-mail to the mayor.
He wrote that he had buried his trophies from the most recent murder in a planter outside an office building on the corner of Sunset and Doheny. He signed the note “Steemcleena,” a name that revealed nothing, then or now.
It took time for the e-mail to work its way through the system, and more time before it was taken seriously.
But three days after that encrypted e-mail was sent, the planter was dug up. A plastic bag was recovered. Inside were items taken from the latest victim. There was no DNA on the objects, no prints, no trace; the police were left with nothing but the humiliation of the killer’s last laugh.
Justine had volunteered to consult with the LAPD, and they invited her in. She remembered now how seeing the girl’s personal effects made her physically ill. The killer had handled them, buffed them up, and sent them back to the police with a meaningless signature and a dare.
Then Justine had come up with a plan. To make it work, she got Jack Morgan and Bobby Petino together.
And in a controversial arrangement that had outraged the homicide division of the LAPD, the district attorney’s office approved Private Investigations to work the case as a public service—pro bono.
And now another girl was dead.
Bobby was answering his cell phone, trying to get her attention. “Justine. Justine. Your ride is here.”