The tidily arranged covers were soaked with blood, particularly around Ms. Cartoulis. Both victims had sustained gunshot wounds to the head, but Cartoulis’s face had also been brutalized with a blade—in Mary Smith’s usual manner, and as promised in the e-mail. I could just about make out Conver’s last, strained expression of terror, but Cartoulis’s face had so many cuts it looked like a single open wound.
It reminded me of the murders at Antonia Schifman’s house—neat and sloppy at the same time.
One killer, two completely different impulses.
What the hell had she been thinking? What did she want out of this?
The most disturbing new wrinkle came a few minutes later. A yellow leather Coach wallet with Susan Cartoulis’s driver’s license and credit cards lay open on a chair near the bed.
As I looked through the wallet, I saw that it was neatly filled with one thing and another, but that there were several empty plastic sleeves. The empty spaces sent tension up and down my spine. “Goddammit,” I said out loud. “Photographs.”
One of the Crime Scene Unit staff turned to me. “What’s up? You find something?”
“Do we know where Susan Cartoulis’s husband is?” I asked.
“He’s supposed to be on a plane, coming home from Florida. Why?”
“I need to know if this woman carried family photos in her wallet.”
My question was a formality; I was almost certain I knew the answer. This would be the second time in as many incidents that Mary Smith had been interested in family photos. She’d gone from leaving the children entirely alone to either destroying or stealing their photographs. Meanwhile, her methodology was increasingly erratic, and her e-mails seemed more confident than ever.
How slippery a slope was this going to be from here on? And where was it taking me?
I didn’t think I could live with myself if Mary Smith started turning on kids before we caught up to her. But that’s what I was afraid might happen next.
Chapter 64
“CAN I SEE YOU for a minute, Dr. Cross? We need to talk.”
I looked up to see Detective Jeanne Galletta standing in the door. Her expression was strained; I thought that she looked older than the last time we met, and thinner, as if she’d lost ten pounds she hadn’t needed to shed.
We went out into the hall. “What’s going on? Don’t tell me something else has happened.”
“I don’t want to go wide with this yet,” she said in a low, tired voice, “but there’s a woman who saw a blue Suburban leaving the hotel parking lot in a big hurry. Happened around two o’clock. She didn’t notice much else. I wonder if you could interview her, and then we could compare notes. Before I do anything with this.”
It was a good move on her part. I’m pretty sure she was thinking the same thing I was: The D.C. sniper case in 2002 had included a massive public search for what turned out to be the wrong vehicle, a white van with black lettering. It was an investigative and public-relations nightmare, exactly the kind of mistake LAPD wouldn’t want to make now.
“And could you do it right now? That would be helpful. I’d appreciate it,” she added. “If I’m going to run with this, I don’t want to wait.”
I hated to leave the crime scene. There was a lot of work to be done. If Jeanne weren’t wearing her stress so plainly, maybe I would have said no.
“Give me five minutes to finish up here,” I told her. “I’ll be right down.”
Meanwhile, I asked Jeanne to do me a favor and follow up with Giovanni Cartoulis about the missing photos in his wife’s wallet. There was frustratingly little we could do with the information from him, but it was important to know if Mary Smith had stolen family pictures. Also, Giovanni Cartoulis needed to be eliminated as a suspect, as all the previous husbands had been. Jeanne and her people had been handling this, but I was satisfied with the reports. The LAPD was doing a good job.
“What?” Jeanne asked, standing very still in the hallway and staring at me. “What are you thinking? Tell me. I can handle it. I think.”
“Take a deep breath. Don’t give in to this crap. You’re running the case as well as anyone possibly could, but you look like hell right now.”
She knitted her eyebrows. “Um . . . thanks?”
“You look good, just not as good as usual. You’re pale, Jeanne. It’s the stress. Nobody understands that until they get hit with it.”
Jeanne finally smiled. “I look like a fucking raccoon. Big dark smears around my eyes.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got to run.”