The Clip Killer, page 20
I saw a hint of recollection on Jenna’s face.
“Do you remember going to the hair salon?” Mrs. Tomlinson asked.
Jenna nodded slowly and then moved her mouth as she tried to form a word.
Finally she said, “Kay … Kay … ” She took a deep breath and said, ”… la.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Mrs. Tomlinson said encouragingly. “Kayla did your hair.” Turning to the rest of us, she explained, “Kayla is the stylist that Jenna usually sees. And she did her hair that afternoon.”
DiPietro nodded, and I could sense his relief. It was only a small step, but a positive step nonetheless.
I knew he had other questions, but for now he seemed willing to let Mrs. Tomlinson continue.
“After getting your hair done, Jenna, you came home and changed your clothes, and then you left again,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “You were going to give one of your friends a ride to the restaurant. Do you remember who that was?”
Jenna stared at her mother as if letting the question sink in. Then she cocked her head slightly, almost like she suddenly understood and now needed some additional seconds to search through the muddle in her brain to find the answer. Once again her mouth began to move, and after a bit of trial and error she said, “Mar … ee.”
Again her mother beamed, and then she leaned down and gave Jenna’s hand another squeeze.
“Yes, it was Mary,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “You gave her a ride to the restaurant because her husband was working late at the office, and then he was going to pick her up later on. Do you remember his name?”
More seconds of thinking, followed by a few seconds of soundless mouth moving, and then, “Juh … ff.”
“Yes, her husband’s name is Jeff. That’s very good, Jenna,” her mother said. Then she said, “Nora and Brianne both worked downtown, so they met you at the restaurant. Do you remember the name of the restaurant?”
A good 30 seconds passed, during which there was more thinking and mouth moving. But this time Jenna never lost her quizzical expression, and at last she slowly shook her head.
“You don’t remember?” her mother asked softly.
Jenna shook her head again. She seemed very sad.
“You went to an Italian restaurant that night,” Mrs. Tomlinson said patiently. “Do you remember if it was Romano’s? Or Giuseppe’s? Or was it the Venetian Grill?”
Jenna’s head fell back against the pillow and she stared at the ceiling. She was clearly trying to recall, and from her expression I knew the answer was close. But it just wasn’t coming to her.
“Didn’t you tell me that you saw some other friends at the restaurant that night?” Mrs. Tomlinson persisted. “You called me on your cell phone after dinner and told me that you’d just seen Ben and Emily Holloway. Do you remember?”
That did the trick. Jenna’s head came off the pillow and she turned to her mother again.
“Ven … ee … shun … Guh … Guh” — she was having trouble making the G-r sound, and it finally came out — “… Gill.”
This time Mrs. Tomlinson reached down with both hands to clasp Jenna’s hand.
“That’s right, Jenna,” she said with emotion in her voice. “You had dinner at the Venetian Grill. With Mary, Nora and Brianne. And then you went to a club afterward to hear some music. Do you remember that?”
Her mother’s enthusiasm had made Jenna smile, but this next question took her back. The smile faded and the quizzical look returned.
“Do you remember the name of the club, Jenna?” Mrs. Tomlinson asked. “The other girls told me afterward that you were all drinking wine and listening to some jazz piano.”
Jenna’s face showed no evidence of recollection. After a few seconds her eyes began to well and I knew they were tears of frustration. Once again her head dropped back against the pillow and she stared at the ceiling.
Mrs. Tomlinson reached out and gently smoothed her daughter’s hair.
“Maybe that’s enough for today,” she said. She was looking at DiPietro, who hesitated — I could tell he was frustrated, too — and then nodded.
“If it’s all right,” he said, “I’d like to return tomorrow. This was a good start, but it’s possible she’ll remember even more by then.”
Mrs. Tomlinson looked at Jenna, who by now had rolled her head toward the window. After thinking for a few seconds, Mrs. Tomlinson turned to DiPietro and nodded. As difficult as it was, I knew she wanted to do everything possible to help find her daughter’s assailant.
DiPietro thanked her and seemed ready to say more, but in the next moment his cell phone rang.
He quickly took the phone from his jacket pocket, looked at the Caller ID number, and then told Mrs. Tomlinson, “I’ll take this in the hall, but then I’ll come back in so we can talk about tomorrow.”
He stepped out, though I could hear his voice through the open door.
“Yeah, Thumper,” he said, followed by several seconds of silence as he listened. Then, “OK, we need to make an arrest so we can get him in for questioning. I’ll meet you at The Harem. It’ll take me about 20 minutes to get there, or 30 minutes if the traffic’s bad. We’ll meet outside and go in together.”
Another pause before he said, “OK, I’ll see you there. Good work.”
He returned to the room, explained that he had to leave, and once again thanked Jenna and her mother. He said he would call the next day before stopping by.
It was Mrs. Tomlinson who said, “Don’t forget your folder, detective.”
She pointed at the floor, where DiPietro had set the folder that he’d brought into the room.
He bent to pick it up, straightened, paused a moment, and then said, “You know, before I go I’d like to ask a few more questions. Maybe Jenna can let me know if she recognizes any of these men.”
Not waiting for Mrs. Tomlinson’s approval, he sat again and took out the picture of the long-haired guy.
“Jenna, have you seen this man before?” he asked.
She turned her head from the window and looked at the picture, but showed no reaction.
DiPietro waited a few seconds before returning the photo to the folder and next showing the picture of the bald-headed man. “What about this man, Jenna?” he asked. “Have you ever seen him?”
She stared at the photo. She even squinted for a better look, but otherwise she did not react.
“OK, one more,” DiPietro said. “What about this man?”
He held up the picture of Jerome Carter.
Jenna’s eyes immediately widened and she recoiled in the bed. She was making little throaty sounds as she tried to scoot away, and she moved so close to the far edge of the bed that her IV line became taut and I thought she might pull over the pole. Her fear was so vivid, so intense, that I felt my own heart begin to race.
In a flash, Mrs. Tomlinson was at her daughter’s side, pulling her into a protective embrace. DiPietro, meanwhile, had sat up in his chair with his eyes still fixed on Jenna.
At last he held up the picture again and asked, “Is this the man who attacked you, Jenna?”
Once more she tried to draw away before burying her head on her mother’s shoulder. She was crying.
DiPietro immediately stood.
“Jenna, Mrs. Tomlinson, thank you for your time,” he said briskly. “We had this man at the station earlier today, and now I need to check to see if he’s still in custody. If he is, we’ll keep him there. And if he’s not, we’ll find him again.”
Still holding her daughter, Mrs. Tomlinson asked in a trembling voice, “Detective, what’re the chances that man will show up here?”
“I’ll speak to the officer in the hall before I leave and make sure he’s on the lookout,” DiPietro said. “And that officer or another officer will be on guard throughout the night, so Jenna will be well protected, I can promise you that. And you also have my cell number, so you can call me anytime.”
Mrs. Tomlinson gave a nod of understanding, though I could tell she was still distressed by what she’d just seen.
DiPietro said good-bye and turned to the door. As he passed, he gave me a look and a little motion with his head to indicate that I should follow him into the hall.
Once outside, he said, “Wait a second,” and he dialed a number on his cell phone. He was soon talking to the booking officer at the downtown precinct, and it took only a few seconds for DiPietro to find out that Carter was still at the station, undergoing questioning about the homicide the night before.
“Lock him up, Joe,” DiPietro said into the phone. “I’m headed out to north Seattle to meet Thumper for an arrest, and then we should be back at the station in about two hours. I want Carter in a holding cell when I arrive. Got it?”
He listened a moment, said “Thanks, Joe,” and closed his phone.
Looking at me, he said, “The plot thickens. Thumper just got done talking to Rhonda Kendall and she gave him a positive ID on Leo Jacklin’s SUV. So we know he’s been following her, and I assume he’s the same guy who was following Julie Bedard. But now we also have what appears to be a positive ID on Jerome Carter.”
“It can’t be both of them, can it?” I asked.
“Probably not,” he said. “But there’s a great chance it’s one of them. And until we get it sorted out, I want them both locked up.”
Checking his watch, he said, “I need to get going.”
“Sure thing, Al,” I said. “And if it’s OK, I’ll check in with you in a few hours to find out where it stands.”
He nodded his agreement before stepping over to have a few words with the uniformed officer and to show him the picture of Jerome Carter. DiPietro then headed down the hallway toward the elevators, his stride strong and steady.
He looked like a man ready to close the deal.
CHAPTER 18
Sunday passed with no additional news from Al DiPietro. I figured to hear something on Monday, but as it happened I got to the office late, having spent the better part of the morning with Stacy at the Baldwin Photography Studio in north Seattle.
Randall Baldwin was a longtime friend of the Langwell family, and she’d made it clear from the start that he’d be our wedding photographer, just as he’d been at the earlier weddings of Stacy’s older brother and sister, along with an aunt and a few cousins. The other part of the deal was that he’d also be taking our engagement picture, so at 9 o’clock that morning Stacy and I drove to his studio, both of us dressed in appropriate finery.
Mr. Baldwin greeted us at the door with a kiss on the cheek for Stacy and a handshake for me. He looked to be in late 60s with thinning, graying hair, and as he led us into the studio he moved with a distinct limp. Stacy had mentioned that he was a former Marine who’d served two tours in Vietnam, and his limp was the result of a serious leg wound suffered when a Viet Cong mortar shell landed just a few feet away during the 1968 Tet offensive. He also took shrapnel in the chest and neck, and was near death when he arrived via helicopter at a field hospital, where the extraordinary work of a U.S. Army surgeon saved not only his life, but his leg, too.
After the war and his subsequent discharge, he and his wife moved to the Puget Sound area and ended up at the same north Seattle church as Stacy’s parents, which was how the two families became acquainted. And now, all these years later, he was taking the engagement photograph of a woman he called “my dear friend Stacy, who never takes a bad picture.”
I noticed he never said that about me. In fact, our session ran long because he kept taking pictures, frowning at the digital images on his monitor, exhorting me to relax and smile, snapping more pictures, and then frowning again. He was obviously getting frustrated and so was I, but just when it seemed like things might go from bad to worse Stacy leaned over and whispered something deliciously naughty in my ear. My face immediately broke into a big smile, at which point Mr. Baldwin fired off several shots and was able to get the pictures he wanted.
Stacy left her email address so he could send along a photo that would go in the paper with our engagement announcement the next week, and with that we were off. I drove back to downtown Seattle, dropped Stacy at her apartment so she could change clothes before a lunch interview with some dancers from a visiting Russian ballet company, and headed for the office.
On my way through the newsroom, I stopped to chat with Harvey Connell about the investigation. We discussed a few of my recent stories and others that were in still the works, and he seemed particularly upbeat about the whole thing. He had a big smile and even gave me a pat on the back as I walked away. Confirming, I realized, one of the strange ironies of the news business. That is, bad news sells papers and makes the bosses happy.
At my desk, I took a few minutes to peruse my story in the Sunday paper. It wasn’t exactly a blockbuster, and that’s because Al DiPietro wanted much of what we knew about Jerome Carter and Leo Jacklin to remain off the record, at least for the time being. We agreed that I wouldn’t name the two men, which was in keeping with Press-Tribune policy because charges hadn’t been filed. But DiPietro didn’t even want me calling them suspects. He insisted that I refer to them as persons of interest, which didn’t make sense to me, and we’d spent a few minutes haggling about that. I finally gave in, but only after I got him to concede that I could report that one man was an employee at The Harem and the other a regular customer.
So that was the extent of my story, and in my mind it was disappointing because it was far from complete. As a reporter, I don’t like leaving so many things unsaid. But Harvey didn’t seem to care. He was satisfied because it was breaking news that nobody else had, “so it keeps us out front,” as he told me in our chat. And he liked it well enough that it ended up with a big headline atop Page 1.
But as I read it through a second time, I realized there was something else bothering me. In my mind, Carter and Jacklin weren’t the kind of guys who’d spend much time reading a newspaper, so the idea that one of them would’ve had the imagination and guile to leave clippings behind at various murder scenes struck me as, frankly, a stretch. The way I saw it, they were both run-of-the-mill thugs, whereas the Clip Killer seemed more of a clever madman. Someone with smarts and maybe a little wit, a la Hannibal Lecter from “The Silence of the Lambs.” Someone who’d get a kick out of taunting the police with his little clues, and an even bigger kick out of knowing the cops still had no idea who he was. Sure, there was a lot we didn’t know about the Clip Killer, but the clippings at least gave us the beginning of a profile. And for my money, neither Carter nor Jacklin fit that profile.
That said, I couldn’t argue with the evidence pointing to both men. And assuming that one or the other was indeed the Clip Killer, I liked the idea that he was at last behind bars, no longer clipping and killing.
So that’s what I was thinking as I set the story aside and reached for the rest of the paper. I skimmed the Local News section, penciled in the Word Jumble — one of my morning rituals — and was just starting to make my way through the sports section, which I always save for last, when my friend Danny Cobb came walking up.
Danny’s a sports writer and the Press-Tribune’s resident Lothario. His preferred topics of conversation are football and females, though not always in that order.
Sure enough, he greeted me by saying, “J.C., did I tell you about the new woman I’m dating?”
Danny seems to date a new woman almost every week, so I’ve heard that same opening line many times before. I shook my head and waited for him to fill me in. I also waited for his grin, which is what usually happens when he describes — and sometimes embellishes — the physical attributes of his female companions.
Except this time his face stayed solemn.
“She lives in Lynnwood,” he said, referring to a suburb about 10 miles north of Seattle, “and she works in the administrative office of the Lynnwood police department. I called a few minutes ago to set up a dinner date for tonight, and she said there’d been a homicide in the city. She said it happened last night, the victim was a young woman, and the cops found a newspaper clipping beside the body.”
For a few seconds I stared at Danny, too stunned to reply. Other than Stacy and Harvey, Danny was the only person I’d told about the clippings. It happened over drinks a few nights before and then I made him promise not to say anything, though I was still uneasy because Danny isn’t all that good about keeping secrets.
But right then none of that mattered. The Clip Killer had apparently struck again and the upshot went well beyond the finding of another victim, tragic though that was. Because if the killing had occurred in the last 24 hours, it meant that neither Carter nor Jacklin was responsible. They were both in custody, which meant the bad guy was someone else altogether. And it meant the police investigation — not to mention my own — had just been kicked back to Square One.
I was still staring at Danny as he handed me a piece of paper.
“Here’s the address,” he said. “And the victim’s name, Holly Tannehill.”
Just like that, I was on my feet. I grabbed a notepad, pen and my recorder, and started for the door to the employee parking lot. I slowed just long enough to call thanks to Danny over my shoulder before hustling out the door to my car.
Five minutes later I was on the I-5 freeway, headed north to Lynnwood. Using the address Danny had given me, I exited at the city’s main off-ramp, turned onto a busy arterial, continued for a few more miles, and finally approached the neighborhood of the recently deceased Ms. Tannehill.
As I swung into a cul-de-sac of modest homes, the gathering of police cars told me I was in the right place.
I parked down the street and walked to the house, where a young Lynnwood PD officer stopped me at the driveway with an upraised hand.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said sternly. Pointing to the yellow tape around the home, he said, “This is a crime scene.”
I resisted the urge to tell him that I knew what the yellow tape meant, and that I’d been going to crime scenes since he was in short pants. Instead I gave him my name and showed my press card, thinking he might be impressed.
