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  “If this is about Ned Lowe, I’m completely unbiased except for the fact that I hate the guy and hope he falls in a hole and dies.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “Saturday I drove to Burning Oaks and talked to a couple of people who knew Lenore. One was a former neighbor and one was her parish priest.”

  Disconcerted, she said, “You drove to Burning Oaks? What possessed you?”

  “Your fault,” I said. “Between you and Pete’s widow, I was shamed into taking up his cause. You remember the mailer?”

  “Sure. Pete hid it in the bottom of a banker’s box.”

  “Right,” I said. “The keepsakes were meant for April. I’m not sure why he didn’t deliver them himself. He went to Burning Oaks a year ago and the priest gave it to him, which is how the mailer ended up in his hands. I wanted to be clear what I was getting into before I delivered it.”

  I filled her in on my conversation with Clara Doyle and Father Xavier and then moved on to the research I’d done with regard to Ned, Lenore, and Shirley Ann Kastle. “I talked to a high school classmate who knew all three, and she told me a convoluted story I won’t go into here. Bottom line was that Ned Lowe was obsessed with Shirley Ann, who dated him for a while and then broke up with him when she and her former boyfriend got back together. Ned stalked her for weeks. Things got so bad, her mother sent her back east to finish high school. Fast-forward five years. Shirley Ann’s mother was terminally ill, and Shirley Ann came back to Burning Oaks to take care of her. Ned attached himself to her as though they’d never been separated. He was married to Lenore by then. Shirley Ann was also married and she told Ned a relationship between them was impossible because of it. I’m wondering if Ned helped Lenore along, thinking he could at least rid himself of that impediment.”

  “Oh, man. I don’t like the sound of that at all,” she said. “Go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt. You’ve got the mailer. You’re back in town and now you know your mission.”

  “Right. I didn’t think I should show up at April’s unannounced, so I called her on Monday. She completely misunderstood what I was getting at and jumped to the conclusion I was hustling her. She called her dad and he turned around and called the county sheriff. I ended up in a verbal standoff with Ned and a deputy. Nothing came of it, but it was obnoxious and I was pissed.”

  “Shit.”

  “Under the circumstances, I didn’t think it was smart to hand her the mailer just then. Then lo and behold, she showed up at my office yesterday and I passed it on to her.”

  “What was in it?”

  “Lenore’s Bible, her rosary, couple of keepsakes, and a photo of Ned, not quite four, sitting on his mother’s lap.”

  “Oooh. That’s bad. She abandoned him when he was four.”

  “Which is what I want to talk about. You think that’s where all his craziness comes from? Because that’s what I’m picking up on.”

  “You want the long answer or the short?”

  “Long. By all means.”

  “There’s a subclass of kids like him. I think of them as junior psychopaths. They’re disconnected and cold and lack any semblance of humanity. Symptoms typically manifest in adolescence, which is when you start seeing aggression and antisocial acting-out. It can also show up in kids as young as three, and that’s a tougher proposition. Sometimes these kids are ADHD and sometimes not—but they’re always unemotional. They might have tantrums, but what looks like fury is pure manipulation. They have no empathy and they have no desire to please. They don’t care about punishment. They don’t care about other people’s pain and suffering. It just doesn’t interest them.”

  “You think he’s one of them?”

  “No question. I started following the research, or what there was of it, when I first realized what a sick puppy he is. The studies I’ve seen suggest low levels of cortisol, which affects our ability to feel fear. Without fear, they have no concept of consequences.”

  “Does this run in families?”

  “The jury’s still out on that one, but I’ll tell you what he told me: Frankie was cold and rejecting and she punished him for every little thing he did. If he cried or wet his pants or if he spilled his milk or made noise. She burned him. She locked him out of the house. She tried to drown him in the bathtub when he was three. She’d whip him with a stick until the backs of his legs were bloody. He tried so hard to be good, but she left him anyway.”

  “I don’t want to feel sorry for him,” I said irritably.

  “I’m not saying it was cause and effect. It’s one small part of the whole. Growing up, he managed to acquire a thin candy shell of charm and that’s served him well. It doesn’t address the underlying pathology, but it allows him to ‘pass’ as one of us.”

  “Those are the kids who turn into criminals, right?”

  “Some do, but it’s almost a side effect. I’ll give you the perfect example. When I was still in school, I worked at one of the state hospitals for six months. This was the only time I actually encountered one of these ducks. I was doing a psychiatric workup on this kid, evaluating his suitability for placement in a group home. He’d come to us by way of juvenile court because he’d pushed his little sister out a second-story window. She was two and she survived, but that didn’t seem to interest him in the least. When I asked him about the incident, his attitude was clinical. She was pestering him and he was curious what would happen if he tossed her out. He had no guilt or shame about what he’d done, so it didn’t occur to him to be secretive. Ned’s smarter than that, but I suspect his mind-set’s much the same.”

  “What’s he do for a living? You told me once, but you’ll have to tell me again.”

  “He’s in outside sales; at least he was when I dated him. Probably still doing it in one form or another. He can be warm and thoughtful and empathetic. I was completely taken in when we first met. I thought we were soul mates. It doesn’t last, but it’s irresistible when he’s rolling out the charm. His job is to get along with people—chin-wag and problem-solve and make nice—which might seem odd until you realize it’s all learned behavior. He’s human by imitation. Maybe that’s why he does such a good job of it; there’s no unruly emotion to get in the way of his goal, which is to dominate.”

  “What was the company?”

  “Van Schaick Chemicals. They manufacture polymers and engineering plastics; also agricultural products. We were a small branch and most of what we handled was related to crop protection. I was in the marketing department.”

  “How’d you end up doing that?”

  “Oh, who knows? It’s not like I grew up drooling over color brochures for cutworms and fungicides.”

  “What about Ned?”

  “He started as a crop production services advisor and ended up southwest regional manager. He was an ag major at Cal Poly with an emphasis on business, so he has solid management abilities. He’s great with clients; not so great when it comes to dealing with other employees, especially women. Underneath, he’s not like the rest of us.”

  “It’s probably stupid to say this, but this guy’s genuinely dangerous, isn’t he?”

  “More so if he starts unraveling. You can call him a psychopath or a sociopath, but what’s curious in his case is that he doesn’t display the irresponsibility or the chronic instability that are characteristic. To me, this makes him all the more dangerous—to use your word—because he comes so close to mimicking ‘normal.’ So far, his thinking’s been organized. What would make him truly dangerous is losing his ability to maintain a front.”

  “Back up a step. If he played a part in Lenore’s death, he must have felt some guilt or he wouldn’t have covered up.”

  “That was early in the game.”

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this. We’re talking about him like he’s a stone-cold killer. Based on wh
at?”

  “I’d say ‘intuition,’ but that’s not worth much. I’ll tell you one thing about guys like him. And I’m just going by what I’ve read. They hang on to trophies. Nothing big. Just little things.”

  “Totem objects?”

  “Something like that. He’d keep trinkets, even if he’s the only one who knows what they mean.”

  “Because he’s hoping to get caught?”

  She shook her head. “Because he wants to remind himself of all the good times he had.”

  “This is not filling me with confidence.”

  “Which is a good thing,” she said.

  “Uh, just morbidly curious here. Did he use that choking trick on you? His ex tells me he learned it in high school and used it during sex. I gather the effects are spectacular if you don’t mind being on the brink of death.”

  She laughed. “Maybe that’s what Shirley Ann objected to. Thankfully, I was spared.”

  “Well, somehow he managed to perfect his skills. You’d think it would take practice.”

  “Bet you can put an ad in the personals and find like-minded playmates,” she said. “What’s your current feeling about April? Will you tell her what you suspect about her dad?”

  “What would she do with the information? The guy may be certifiable, but I have no proof.”

  “It’s possible she knows he’s bent and she’s been averting her eyes.”

  “I would,” I said. “Who wants to admit a parent is the bogeyman? That’s what adults are supposed to protect us from. What happens if your father turns out to be the horror you thought was hiding under your bed?”

  “That’s what keeps me in business,” she said.

  • • •

  When I got to work the next morning, I turned once again to the issues Pete had dropped in my lap. Susan Telford was the only one whose story I hadn’t heard. I tried directory assistance in Henderson, Nevada, asking for phone numbers for the last name Telford, and was rewarded with the sorry news that there were thirty-three. I asked for the first ten. I was already tired of the job and I hadn’t even started yet. There had to be an easier way to go about this.

  I considered my alternatives. Wait a minute. Let’s be honest. This was me being cagey, pretending an idea had just occurred to me when it was pretty much on my mind 24/7. I never hear the word “Nevada” without thinking of Robert Dietz. This coming May, we’d celebrate our sixth anniversary of hardly ever seeing each other. Truly, in the time I’d known him, I’m not sure we’d ever been together more than two months at a stretch, and that was only once. Naturally we get along beautifully in between my being completely pissed off with him because he’s left me again.

  Before I could change my mind, I dialed his number in Carson City. Three rings and his machine picked up. I listened to his outgoing message, which was terse and to the point. I waited for the beep and said, “Hey, Dietz. This is Kinsey. I need a favor from you. I’m looking for a woman named Susan Telford in Henderson, Nevada, and I wondered if you’d see what you can find out. There are thirty-three Telfords listed, and it doesn’t make sense for me to tackle the job from here. Pete Wolinsky put her name on a list of six women who are all connected in one way or another to a man named Ned Lowe. Pete went to some lengths to do background on Lowe, who seems like an all-around bad egg. If you have questions, call me back, and if you don’t want to do the job at all, that’s fine. Just let me know.”

  Since my typewriter was still set up on the desk, I decided it was time to convert my investigation into report form. I’d accumulated any number of facts. Granted, none were earth-shattering, but who knew what they might add up to? Working for purely personal reasons didn’t absolve me of the need to be thorough. I was formulating a sense of the relationship between Ned Lowe and the six women whose names appeared on Pete’s list, but so far the link existed only in my head. To be useful, there had to be an overarching narrative account that would make the information comprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the circumstances. For my purposes, I found it helpful to maintain a running résumé of what I’d done, not only with an eye to discovering gaps, but in hopes of highlighting other avenues of inquiry. I had my doubts about whether my efforts would pay off, but documentation is never a bad idea.

  I kept the language neutral and, in the process, forced myself to separate my opinions from the specifics of what I’d learned. My beliefs about Ned Lowe had to be deleted even if it grieved me to do so. What I was defining, in narrative form, were the dots that I hoped to connect when all the bits and pieces were in place.

  The phone rang and I picked up the handset, tucking it between my shoulder and my ear while I rolled the paper out of the carriage and placed it on my desk. “Millhone Investigations.”

  A gentleman with a powdery voice said, “Miss Millhone, this is Stanley Munce, formerly with the Burning Oaks Police Department. An acquaintance by the name of Clara Doyle told me you’d spoken to her about a case here some years ago. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely. Thank you so much for calling. I was asking about Lenore Redfern Lowe.”

  “That was my understanding. I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer on the subject, but I will tell you what I can. I was the coroner’s investigator at the time of that young girl’s death. In order to complete a death certificate, the coroner has to determine the cause, mechanism, and manner of death. If you’re familiar with the distinctions, I won’t go into it . . .”

  “No, please do,” I said. “I can always use a refresher course.”

  “Simply put, cause of death is the reason the individual died, as would be the case with a heart attack or a gunshot wound. The mechanism of death would be the actual changes that affect the victim’s physiology, resulting in death. Death from a fatal stabbing, for instance, might be extreme blood loss.

  “The manner of death is how the death came about. Five of the six possibilities there are natural, accidental, suicide, homicide, and undetermined. The sixth classification would be ‘pending’ if the matter’s still under investigation, which is obviously not the case here. There was no question about her ingestion of Valium and alcohol. The generic, diazepam, is a central nervous system depressant, the effects of which can be intensified by alcohol. The problem arose because when the toxicology report came in, it appeared there wasn’t a sufficient quantity of either to say with any certainty death resulted from the combination of the two.

  “What seemed questionable, at least in my mind, was the presence of petechiae, which are tiny broken blood vessels, like pinpricks visible in the area of her eyes. Hard coughing or crying are common causes; sometimes even the strain of childbirth or lifting weights. Petechiae can also be a sign of a death by asphyxiation.”

  “You mean she might have been suffocated?”

  “Smothered, yes. There were no fractures of the larynx, hyoid bone, thyroid or cricoid cartilages, and no areas of bruising, which ruled out manual strangulation. Mrs. Lowe had been under doctor’s care. With her history of mental problems, absent any other compelling evidence, Dr. Wilkinson felt a finding of suicide was appropriate. I put up what objections I could, but I have no formal medical training, and his experience and expertise prevailed. For my part, I was never fully persuaded.”

  “So there was never an investigation into the circumstances of her death?”

  “A cursory assessment, I’d say. Dr. Wilkinson was of the old school: high-handed and a bit of an autocrat. He was in charge, he made the judgment call, and he brooked no argument. I was putting my job at risk even to raise the few questions I did.”

  “It sounds like your options were limited.”

  “One could say that.” After a moment’s hesitation, he went on. “Are you familiar with the term ‘burking’?”

  “Burking? I don’t think so.”

  “Nor was I until I ran across a series of murders that occurred in Ed
inburgh, Scotland, back in the 1800s. I’m a history buff, especially where medical matters are concerned. I was in the midst of combing through old newspapers when I chanced on the case of William Burke and William Hare, who killed some sixteen unlucky souls in order to supply cadavers to an anatomist named Dr. Robert Knox. Burke’s method was what caught my attention. He and Hare would focus on intoxicated individuals and then suffocate them by covering their mouths and pinching their noses closed. The technique left little to no evidence of foul play.”

  “Mr. Munce, I can’t believe you’re telling me this. I just had a phone conversation with Ned Lowe’s second wife, and she talked about a choking maneuver he used during sex.”

  “Ah. That would be known as ‘asphyxiophilia’ when it’s incorporated into sex with a partner. He must have been proficient at it.”

  I could feel myself blink as I struggled to assimilate the information. “Why haven’t I ever heard of burking?”

  “You’ll find references once you start looking for them. I didn’t become aware of the case until many years after Lenore’s death or I’d have raised the issue myself.”

  “What happened to the pair?”

  “Hare was granted immunity from prosecution and testified against Burke, who was convicted and hanged on January 28, 1829. A short time later, Hare disappeared. To my knowledge he was never heard of again. There were the usual rumors, of course, but no sign of the man himself.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  “But true nonetheless. I wish I could offer you more. It’s bothered me for years, but yours is the first question ever raised about that girl.”

  Which was not quite the case. There had been another question raised in the matter, and that was Pete’s.

  I thanked him for the information, and he graciously suggested that if I had additional questions, I should feel free to call. He gave me his number in Burning Oaks.