Mary, Mary

of God on your face before I shot you—and then I got to cut that fear away, one piece at a time, until you weren’t afraid anymore.
    You weren’t anything anymore.
    You were nothing, Suzie Cartoulis.
    Just like me.

Chapter 61
    I WAS STILL ON THE ROAD when word came about Mary Smith’s latest—a
triple
homicide this time, the killer’s deadliest strike to date, at least as far as we knew for certain. I was still chasing down leads on the triple homicide in New York, but progress was slow, and suddenly I was off to another crime scene.
    Susan Cartoulis, a prizewinning newscaster, had been found dead, along with her lover, in a room at the Ramada Plaza Suites in West Hollywood.
    The dead man was Brian Conver, a sports producer at the same network where Ms. Cartoulis worked. A second woman, Mariah Alexander, a college student who attended Southern Cal, had also been killed. What was that all about?
    I asked Agent Page to read Mary Smith’s latest e-mail message over the phone while I drove. The text made clear that the newswoman had been the primary target. Mr. Conver was never mentioned by name, and there was no reference whatsoever to any Mariah Alexander.
    “What do we know about Susan Cartoulis?” I asked Page. “Does she fit the MO?”
    “Basically, yeah. She fits right into the puzzle. Married with one son, good-looking woman, high profile in the city. She was a ten-o’clock anchor for a local affiliate. Also the honorary chair of the Cedars-Sinai pediatric burn unit capital campaign. Nine-year-old son. Another perfect mom.”
    “With a boyfriend on the side.”
    “Well, I guess nobody’s perfect. Is that what Mary’s trying to tell us?”
    “Maybe,” I said.
    The press was going to eat up this one, as if they weren’t already overfed. It made me feel even sorrier for Susan Cartoulis’s husband and her young son. Her murder and infidelity would be trotted out for the public in great detail.
    “Do you think that has anything to do with it?” Page asked. “Perfect mothers who aren’t so perfect after all? Hypocrisy on the home front? Something as simple as that?”
    “If that’s Mary Smith’s point, she’s being pretty murky about it. Especially for someone who’s so deliberate in getting her message out there in her e-mails. Plus, as far as we know, most of the murdered women actually live up to their reputations.”
    “As far as we know,” said Page. “Stay tuned on that one, yeah?”
    “All right, why don’t you do a little digging around about the others. See if you can find any dirty little secrets we missed. Try Arnold Griner. I’ll bet he has an inside line or two. That’s his job, right?”
    “The forensics of gossip, huh?” Page said, and laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. See if I can get Griner to talk about anything besides himself.”
    “Who was the other victim? Mariah Alexander.”
    “Yeah, that really sucks. She was a maid at the hotel. College kid. We think Mary got in the room with her passkey.”
    “One other thing,” I said. “If anyone asks, you haven’t heard from me and you don’t know where I am.”
    Page paused on the line. “I’m not going to lie if someone asks me, but I won’t volunteer anything. Anyway, I’m on my way out of the office.”
    “Good enough. By the way, you’re doing a terrific job.”
    “For a surfer boy, huh?”
    “Exactly, dude.”

Chapter 62
    I FOLLOWED KARL PAGE’S DIRECTIONS toward the Ramada in West Hollywood and deliberately left my phone in the car when I got there. I didn’t want to be reached by anybody at the Bureau right now, not even Director Burns’s office.
    The stark Art Deco lobby was quiet and depressing. Dreary, dried-up palms loomed over rows of boxy chocolate-brown couches, all of them empty. Two elderly women at the front desk were the only customers in sight.
    Whoever was in charge here—Jeanne Galletta, I hoped—had gotten a good cap on the scene. The only indication that a major investigation was under way one story up was the two officers stationed at the elevator. I took the stairs to the murder scene, two at a time.
    The second-floor hallway was thick with LAPD personnel. Several of them wore gloves, white booties, and “Crime Scene Unit” polo shirts. The faces were all stressed and drawn.
    A uniformed officer gave me the once-over. “Who are you?” he asked. His tag said Sandhausen. I flashed him my creds without comment and kept moving past him. “Hey!” he called