Cereal Killer

accident. They were having financial problems. They were about to lose that big house and the cars. Kevin cares a lot more about that stuff than Cait did. He said he didn’t think he could stand to lose it all and start over with nothing again.” She twisted the tissue between her fingers. “I also had a feeling that Cait might have found out about me. From a couple of little things he said, I think she might have been going to leave him. He wouldn’t have wanted a divorce either. Again, losing half of the stuff wouldn’t have suited him.”
    “Did he tell you how he killed her?”
    She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. “He said he went home because she said she was feeling bad. But when he got there she was already half dead from all the stuff she was doing to herself to lose weight. She was unconscious, so he just pulled her into the bathroom, turned those heat lamps on, and left her there.”
    “Did you let him use your security card to come and go that day from the hospital?”
    “He asked me if he could use it. I thought it was a little weird, but I didn’t ask why. He was always losing things. I figured he’d just misplaced his.”
    “And how about Kameeka?” she asked. “Why did he kill her?”
    Before replying, Charlotte took her coffee mug from the nearby end table and held it tightly to her chest. “That night... after he had killed Caitlin,” she began, “he was checking her e-mail on their home computer. He was making sure there wasn’t anything there that might incriminate him if the police got suspicious and checked the files. He found an e-mail that Caitlin had written a few days before. She had sent it to both Kameeka and Tesla. She said that she had mailed Tesla a tape that she had made. On the tape she said that she was worried that maybe her husband intended to hurt her. And she told them that if anything happened to her, they should take the tape to the authorities.”
    Savannah tried to hide her surprise. “Kevin told you all of this?”
    “Yes.” Charlotte laughed, but the sound was bitter. “Kevin talks a lot when he’s drunk. The night after Cait died, he got stinking drunk and came over to my house. He talked to me for hours, told me about how he’d killed her. I guess he felt like he was going to explode, too.”
    “I suppose so. Did he tell you how he killed Kameeka?”
    “He said he got into her house early that morning through a sliding door in the rear of the house that wasn’t locked. She was just getting out of bed. When she walked into the kitchen, he hit her....” Charlotte’s voice broke, and it was several moments before she could compose herself enough to continue, “He hit her with a baseball bat that he had taken with him.”
    “And then he dressed her body, put it in his car,” Savannah said, “took her out to Citrus Road, and dumped her?”
    “Yes. He wanted it to look like someone had hit her when she was jogging.” She paused to wipe her eyes. “After he killed her there at the house, he cleaned up the blood off the floor, and then he checked her computer so that he could erase Gait’s e-mail.”
    “How did he get her password?”
    “She’d stored it. You can do that so that you don’t have to sign in every time.”
    “Okay. I don’t know much about that sort of thing. Go ahead....”
    “And the sad thing is, she hadn’t even opened the e-mail yet. She hadn’t read it, so he wouldn’t have even had to kill her. He could have just sneaked into the house and erased the letter. She never would have known the difference.”
    Savannah sat there on the floor, patting the woman’s knee and wishing she had one of Ryan’s mini-recorders going in her purse. Confiding like this in familiar surroundings was one thing, but would Charlotte deny everything later? She had to get something unique, something substantial that could be used in court.
    She asked the question that she had been dreading. “Charlotte... is Tesla Montoya still alive?”
    Again, Charlotte covered her face with her hand and sobbed. “No.”
    Savannah felt something deep inside her crumple and die. And for just a moment she allowed herself to Wonder how many more pieces of herself she could afford to lose in one lifetime.
    She reached for the woman’s hand and clasped it tightly between her own. “Charlotte,” she said softly, “you have to take me to her.”
    She nodded. “I know.”
    Savannah stood and gently pulled Charlotte to her feet. “Let’s go,” she