I fell asleep, hoping for a happy ending in my own life.
Chapter 67
THE NEXT MORNING I went at it stronger than ever. I still believed we were close, maybe just hours from a name for Red Beard.
I checked in with Roth’s contact, Jim Heekin, on the Seattle police force. Heekin said they were sorting through the bride’s possessions as we spoke. If something came up he would let me know immediately.
We got a reply back from Infortech, where Kathy Voskuhl had worked in Seattle. In the three years she had held her job, there was no record of any reimbursements for business trips to San Francisco. Her job was to work with developing clients in Seattle. A junior account manager. If she repeatedly went down there, she was on her own.
Finally, I called McBride. The Koguts were still claiming that they knew nothing more. But yesterday he’d met with the father, who seemed ready to give in. It was wrenching that some desperate attempt to hold together their daughter’s virtue was clouding their judgment.
Since I was a woman, McBride suggested, maybe one more try from me would push them over the edge. I placed a call to Christine Kogut, the bride’s mother.
When she came on, her voice was different: remote but freer, as if she were in a less tormented state. Maybe, I just hoped, she was.
“Your daughter’s killer is running free,” I said. I could no longer hold back. “Two other couples’ families are suffering. I think you know who was hurting Kathy. Please, help me put him away.”
I heard her take in a long breath. When she spoke, grief and the release of shame trembled in her voice. “You raise a child, Inspector, you think she is always part of you. You love her so much and you think there is always that part that will never go away.”
“I know,” I said. I could feel she was teetering. She knew his name, didn’t she?
“She was this beautiful thing… she could make anyone love her. A free spirit. One day, we thought, another free spirit would shape her into the kind of person she was meant to be. We cultivated it with our children. My husband insists we always favored Kathy. Maybe we helped bring it all on.”
I didn’t say a word. I knew what it was like to finally give up what you were holding inside you. I wanted to let her reach that point on her own.
“Do you have children, Inspector?”
“Not yet,” I told her.
“It’s so hard to believe, your baby, the cause of so much pain. We begged her to break free. We even got her the new job. Moved her ourselves. We thought, If she could only get away from him.”
I was silent, letting her go at her own pace.
“She was sick, like an addict is sick, Inspector. She couldn’t stop herself. But what I don’t understand is why he would hurt her so badly. He took away all that was pure about her. Why did he need to hurt Kathy?”
Give me the name. Who is he? “She was mesmerized by who he was. It was as if she had no self-control when it came to this man. She shamed us right up until the end. But even now” — her voice lowered —“I still wonder how someone who loved my daughter could possibly kill her. I’m afraid that I don’t believe it. That’s partly why I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me now,” I said.
“I think she met him at the opening of one of his films. He told her he had a face like hers in mind when he dreamed up one of his characters. His heroine.”
It was then that Mrs. Kogut told me.
My body went numb.
I knew the name. Recognized it. He was famous, Red Beard.
Chapter 68
I SAT THERE, ratcheting the possible connections through my mind. Things were starting to piece together. He was one of the minority partners at Sparrow Ridge Vineyards, where the second couple had been dumped. He had known Kathy Kogut for years in San Francisco. Preyed on her. He was older. Married.
Famous.
By itself, the suspect’s name proved nothing. He had merely known the last bride. He had a circumstantial connection to the crime scene of the second killings.
But based on the descriptions of Merrill Shortley and Christine Kogut, he had the brutal temperament, and maybe the motive, to commit these vicious murders. The conviction built up inside me that this was Red Beard.
I grabbed Raleigh. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s the fire?”