Split Second - Catherine Coulter [19]
Ruth thought of her new husband and laughed. “I can’t wait to tell Dix. He probably knows more than you do, Jack, since he was into Bundy’s case big-time. He’s going to freak. I bet he’s going to call you, Dillon, beg to be in on the case.”
Savich knew Dix Noble, sheriff of Maestro, Virginia, very well. “Dix is a smart man, Ruth. Maybe it’d be good to have his brain at work on this. I’ll give him a call.”
Sherlock said, “As I said, we don’t know who her mom was or is. We don’t know anything else about her.”
“We do know she started killing in San Francisco eight months ago, and so I put MAX to work using Liz Rogers’s description of him to the police artist. I got a call this morning from Police Chief Edmund Kreymer. He’s plastering the sketch all over Philadelphia. He also sent the sketch to San Francisco and Chicago, and every other large-city cop shop in the country. This sketch is in your packet, along with the sketch the police artist in Cleveland put together.
“You’ll see a lot of similarities, but Liz Rogers’s description is the best, since she was up close and personal with Bundy’s daughter for a good long while. I think she really nailed him, well, her. If you compare the Philadelphia police sketch with photos of Ted Bundy, you’ll see there’s more than a slight resemblance.
“Now, we could get lucky and identify her from the sketch. MAX is scanning all the photos we can access from records in San Francisco. If she was raised in the Bay Area, maybe he’ll find her in a high-school yearbook or a juvie record.
“Shirley put together some of the info we have about Bundy in your folders with links to a good deal more, as well as the profilers’ rundown on Bundy’s daughter. Get back to me with anything you think would be helpful.
“There’s no way Bundy’s daughter can remain in Philadelphia unless she does a thorough makeover. And she’s got a scratch on her face to hide. Liz Rogers thought she scratched her good, but she was nearly unconscious at the time.”
Jack asked, “You really think she’ll get back into skirts?”
Lucy said, “Why not? She’s a killer, and that’s what she does, so how is she going to do it without being caught and executed like Daddy was? I’m thinking maybe she’ll go female but keep the arty look.”
Coop was tapping his pen on the conference table. “It seems to me if she’s following in her daddy’s bloody ways, she must have killed before age thirty-three.”
Savich said, “I know the profilers think she may have started late because her mother didn’t tell her the identity of her father until she was older. Let’s hope so, but we don’t know that.”
Ollie said, “She could have killed and buried the bodies deep. But then, why is she coming out into the open now? Was there a specific trigger, like it appears there was with Bundy? Was she leading a fairly normal life until a few months ago?”
Everyone chewed this over.
Jack said, “I wonder if she visits her victims’ graves, like Bundy did?”
“That’s not all Bundy did to his dead victims,” Lucy said, and shuddered.
Savich said, “Good points. Now, MAX is working on photos. We’ll meet back here in a couple of hours.”
Ten minutes later, Savich’s cell blasted out George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.”
“Ben Raven here, Savich. Remember your hairy shoot-out at Shop ’n Go last week? I’ve got some news for you.”
“You put nail screws to the guy in the hospital, Ben, made him talk?”
“Nope, not yet. When you shot him in the shoulder, the bullet did more damage than expected. He’s still in pretty bad shape. His name is Thomas Wenkel, and the Chevy Impala is registered to him, not to the woman, an Elsa Heinz.
“I called you because last night someone shot your Mr. Patil at the Shop ’n Go during what looks like another robbery. No witnesses, not a soul around, no one even heard the shot. Evidently he’d just turned off the lights and was locking the back door when