Cereal Killer

Murray’s house, and she was gone. Her neighbor was working in the yard, and he said he saw Charlotte run into the house for a few minutes, then leave with a couple of suitcases about five minutes before I got there.”
    “That stinks,” she said, “but I know how Connor did it, he—”
    “Connor lawyered up is what he did. I brought him in just now and got all of ten words out of him before he clammed up and called that Marvin Klein dude to represent him. Klein was here in a flash, and I had to let Connor go.”
    “Hmm, sorry to hear that; Klein’s tough, but—”
    “So I’m back at square one. I hate this friggin’ job. Did I ever tell you that?”
    “Yeah, you mention it at least twice a week.” She took a deep breath, determined to keep talking this time no matter what. “Cait called Kevin at the hospital and told him she had made herself sick from working out and starving herself. He recognized the symptoms of heatstroke and sneaked out of the hospital. By the time he got home, she was probably already in bad shape, weak, maybe disoriented and confused—those are symptoms of heatstroke. She might have even been unconscious.” She paused to catch another breath. “Go on,” he said. “I’m with you.”
    “So, all he had to do was drag her into the bathroom—that’s why her arms were up, also her hair, and her clothes bunched up on her body—and turn on the heat lamps. If I remember, there were two or three of them in die ceiling, over by the shower stall.”
    “Yeah, I think there were. And those things can really heat up a place fast.”
    “Tell me about it. You can’t breathe in my bathroom right now.”
    “What?”
    “Never mind. Anyway, all he had to do was leave her in there with the door closed. Maybe he waited a while outside the room, and when she didn’t come out, he knew he was home free.”
    She could practically hear Dirk’s mental wheels purring on the other end. “And when he got home,” Dirk said, thinking aloud, “he could have just turned off the lights, let the room cool down a little, and called 911.”
    “You got it.”
    “Then how about Kameeka? If he’s so smart, why did he just bash her in the head the old-fashioned way?”
    “Maybe he didn’t have time to think of anything better.”
    “And Tesla Montoya?”
    Tesla. Even the thought caused Savannah’s heart to ache. “We don’t know yet that she’s dead.”
    “She’s been missing for three days,” he said softly.
    “I know,” Savannah replied, a catch in her voice. “Believe me, I’ve been counting.”
     
    Savannah sat in her Mustang, half a block down from James Oates’s house, watching, waiting, hoping that Nurse Charlotte Murray would make her brother’s house one of her stops now that she was officially on the run.
    Detective McMurtry had been dispatched to Charlotte’s house, should she happen to return, and Dirk was serving a search warrant on Kevin Connor’s beach house. He had sent another detective from the station to serve the one on Murray’s hospital locker. Tammy was posted in front of Tesla’s place, just in case somebody suspicious decided to visit once more. It wouldn’t be the first time a killer returned to the scene of the crime.
    Maybe, between all of their efforts, they could come up with something that would lead them to Tesla. At least, that was the plan.
    As she sat there in her car, the windows rolled down, she breathed in the fresh, sun-warmed summer air and wondered if Tesla was still alive... if she could still breathe, and hear the birds sing, and feel the sun on her face.
    She also found herself wondering what Charlotte Murray would look like, beyond the description that Dirk had given her: about five-two, petite, dark brown hair, blue eyes, swarthy complexion.
    But other than the driver’s license stats, Savannah couldn’t help being confused by the idea of a nurse who took life as well as saved it. Savannah had always had a hard time getting her mind around the idea of a woman committing murder, let alone a professional health-care giver. For Savannah, who thought that the healing arts were the most important calling on earth, it was unthinkable.
    She truly hoped that Charlotte would make an appearance while she had the place under surveillance. More than anything, she really wanted to talk to the woman, to find out who, why, when, and, most importantly, where Tesla was.
    Sitting there, watching the house, she didn’t know what she would say if