“With who, for gosh sake?” She fought to keep her tone in check. People were starting to stare.

“With you.” She smiled so sweetly Mary could barely stand it.

She bent low and whispered against her soft cheek. “Ashley, you cannot run off like that. Do you understand? If you can’t see me, then I can’t see you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good, now why don’t you go and try the jungle gym?”

Mary settled down on another bench away from the gathering storm of disapproving stares. A young mother reading the L.A. Times smiled over at her. “Hello.”

“You must not be from around here,” Mary said, giving her a quick once-over.

The woman’s voice was slightly defensive. “Why do you say that?”

“First of all, no one around here is that friendly,” Mary answered, then smiled. “Second of all, it takes an outsider to know one. I’m a Vermonter, myself.”

The other woman looked relieved. “Baltimore,” she said with a hand to her chest. “I heard everyone was friendly out here in California. They stop their cars and let you cross the street, right? You don’t see that in Baltimore.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“Of course, you don’t see this, either.” She held up the front page of the Times.

HOLLYWOOD MURDER INVESTIGATION CONTINUES

“Have you heard about this?” the woman asked. “I guess you must have.”

“It’s hard to miss these days.”

“It just makes me so sad. I know I should be afraid, too, but really, I’m just so sorry for those families.”

Mary nodded solemnly. “I know. So am I, so am I. Isn’t it awful? Those poor, poor children. It just makes you want to cry your eyes out.”

Chapter 48

Chapter 48

ACCORDING TO THE STATISTICS I was reading at my desk, something like 89 percent of known female serial killers used poison, suffocation, or lethal injection on their victims. Less than 10 percent of various killers employed a gun as their weapon of choice, and none I had found on record used a knife.

Is Mary Smith the exception that proves the rule?

I didn’t think so. But I seemed to be all alone on that.

I scanned the deskful of clippings, photos, and articles spread out in front of me like pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles.

Aileen Wuornos was a shooter. In 1989 and ’90, she killed at least seven men in Florida. When she was arrested, the media dubbed her America’s first female serial killer. She was probably the most famous, but nowhere near the first. Almost half of those on record were black widows—husband-killers—or else motivated by revenge. Most had some relationship with their victims.

Bobbie Sue Terrell, a nurse, injected twelve patients with lethal doses of insulin.

Dorothea Montalvo Puente poisoned nine boarders in her home so she could get their Social Security checks.

A secretary at the field office, Maureen, poked her head in.