Mary, Mary (Alex Cross 11)

One entire wall was already covered with police reports, a map of the city, sketches of the two crime scenes, and dozens of photographs of the dead.

A wastebasket in the corner overflowed with empty cups and greasy restaurant takeout bags. Wendy’s seemed to be winning the battle of the burgers at this precinct.

Two detectives in shirtsleeves sat at a large wooden table, both of them bent over separate piles of paperwork. Familiar, depressing.

“We need this space,” Galletta said to the detectives. There was nothing overly aggressive about it. She had the kind of unassuming confidence that made bullying unnecessary. The two men cleared out without a word.

“Where do you want to start?” I asked her.

Galletta jumped right in. “What do you make of the sticker thing?” She pointed to an 81/2 x 11 black-and-white photo of the back of a movie seat. It had the same brand of kiddie stickers on it as the ones left on Antonia Schifman’s limo. Each sticker was marked either A or B.

One of the stickers showed a wide-eyed pony, and the other two a teddy bear on a swing. What was with the killer and children? And mothers?

“It feels awfully heavy-handed to me,” I told her. “Just like everything else so far. The overwrought e-mails. The shootings at close range. The knife work. Hell, the celebrities. Whoever’s doing this wants to go big. Very high-profile.”

“Yeah, definitely. But what about the kiddie stickers themselves? I mean, why stickers? Why that kind? What’s with the A’s and B’s? Must mean something.”

“She’s mentioned the victim’s kids both times. In the e-mails. Kids are a part of this puzzle, a piece. To be honest, I’ve never come across anything even remotely like it.”

Galletta bit her lip and looked at the floor. I waited to see what she would say next.

“We’ve got two threads here. It’s all film industry, Hollywood, at least so far. But there’s the mother thing. The kids. Never mentions the husbands in either e-mail.” She spoke slowly, mulling it over, the way I often did. “She’s either a mother herself or has a thing for mothers. Mommies.”

“You’re assuming Mary Smith is a woman?” I asked.

Chapter 19

DETECTIVE GALLETTA ROCKED back on the heels of her Nikes, and then she looked at me quizzically. “You don’t know about the hair? Who’s been briefing you, anyway?”

I felt a pang of frustration about my own time being wasted again. I sighed, then asked Galletta, “What hair?”

She went on to tell me LAPD had found a human hair under one of the stickers at the movie theater in Westwood. Testing indicated it was Caucasian female, and it was not Patrice Bennett’s. The fact that it was trapped on a smooth, vertical surface under the sticker gave it some pretty good weight as evidence, though certainly not ironclad.

I juggled this new information with what I already knew as I gave Galletta my own take on Mary Smith. It included my gut feeling that we shouldn’t rule out either sex just yet.

“But you should take everything I tell you with a grain of salt. I’m not an all-science kind of guy.”

She smirked, though the effect was pleasant enough. “I’ll take that into account, Agent Cross. Now, what else?”

“Do you have a media plan?”

I wanted to emphasize it as her plan, completely her show, which it was, of course. This was going to be my first and last day on the Mary Smith case. If I played it right, I wouldn’t even have to say that out loud. I would just walk away.

“Here’s my media plan.”

Jeanne Galletta reached up and flipped on a wall-mounted television. She punched through several channels, stopping wherever there was coverage of the two murders.

“The shocking double murder of actress Antonia Schifman and her driver . . .”

“We’re taking you live now to Beverly Hills . . .”

“Patrice Bennett’s former assistant on the line . . .”

Many of them were national broadcasts, everything from CNN to E! Entertainment Television.

Galletta pushed a button that muted the sound.

“This is the kind of crap that some reporters live for. I’ve got a twenty-four-hour detail on both crime scenes just to keep these assholes away, plus the damn paparazzi. It’s totally out of control, and it’s going to get much worse. You’ve been through it. You have any suggestions?”