Free Split Second by Catherine Coulter Page A

looked away from the television. He only shrugged, but Savich would swear he saw Wenkel’s mouth tighten.
    “Who hired the two of you to kill Mr. Patil?”
    “You ain’t my lawyer—go away.”
    The D.A. had offered Wenkel a deal to roll, but he’d said he didn’t rat nobody out, ever.
    Savich left. This was interesting indeed. Someone like Wenkel, he should have rolled. Something was wrong with that picture.

CHAPTER 14
    Hoover Building
Late Friday morning
     
    Coop said, “I gotta tell you, Savich, Inspector Delion was so excited this morning when I called San Francisco and told him the serial killer is Ted Bundy’s daughter, he nearly hyperventilated. I gave him her probable age, sent him the most recent sketch, told him we were betting she lived and attended school in the San Francisco Bay Area since that’s where the murders started. I told him we’d have a name for him soon. He’d already done some work on the first two murders committed in San Francisco, and he said a lot of people in the SFPD would be hyped with this news.
    “He called me a couple of minutes ago, said they’d already looked through their unsolved murders but there weren’t any good matches, but he found six unsolved missing persons—all women—who might fit the ticket. None of the six missing women have ever showed up, anywhere, and the young ones they didn’t consider runaways.”
    Savich waved Coop to a seat. “Over what period of time?”
    “He said the first one was a missing teenager, seventeen years ago, then another missing female every couple of years to the present, when the two women were murdered in their homes in San Francisco and, naturally, found pretty quickly. If Bundy’s daughter is responsible for the missing women, she didn’t want them found.”
    Savich punched a couple of keys on MAX, then frowned. “It seems to me if she killed those missing women, what she was doing was working all the kinks out, fine-tuning her craft. But why did she change everything when she took her show on the road?”
    MAX beeped.
    “Ah, here we go.” Savich typed a couple more keys. “Come here, Coop, take a look at this.”
    Both men stared down at a series of high-school yearbook photos of three young women, sixteen or seventeen years old, at three different high schools in San Francisco, eighteen years ago. “Looks like that one, doesn’t it?” Coop said, and pointed to a girl’s photo in the Mount Elysium High School yearbook. “Look at that dead white face. The hair’s blond and the clothes are red, but hair and clothing are easy to change. She’s pretty, but there’s a sort of indifference about her, maybe a remoteness, you know what I mean?”
    Savich said, “As if she’s not really plugged into this world, and she doesn’t give a crap about any of its inhabitants.” A couple more key taps and the screen filled with the face of the girl called Kirsten Bolger. Another couple of keys, and her hair became black. “Look at those eyes, Savich, dark as a pit. Black hair looks natural—bet she dyed her hair blond for the yearbook picture.”
    Savich made her clothes black, too, set a black beret on her head. “Okay, let’s line her up with the sketch.”
    They studied them. “They’re very close,” Coop said.
    “Now let’s try her next to Ted Bundy.” Two photos appeared side by side.
    Coop whistled. “Would you look at that. Kirsten looks a lot like her daddy.”
    “Close enough. Okay, ask Delion to find Kirsten Bolger’s mother.” Savich paused for a moment, tapped his fingertips on his desk. “I want you and Lucy to go out to San Francisco, speak to her mother yourselves. I know it’s the weekend, but ask Delion if he’ll give you and Lucy some time this evening, maybe set something up so the three of you can meet the mother.”
    “You think the mom is in San Francisco, don’t you?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “You know Delion will take the bait. Bundy’s daughter—who could turn that down? The entire