Coop said, “I will tell you exactly what I know, Ms. Bolger, Mr. Childs, and then we will speak about your conversations with your niece. As a matter of fact, Kirsten’s injuries are responding well to treatment. She may be suffering psychologically, though. She hasn’t said a word for several days. Our psychologists have tried, and can’t get her to speak. Her being depressed would be understandable, what with getting shot and captured, her boyfriend, Bruce Comafield, dead. The last thing she said was to me in Florida when we captured her: ‘I wonder what Daddy would say.’”
Sentra shook her head, and her voice was filled with sorrow. “Poor child. She idolized the man and started thinking she could talk to him at times. Perhaps it was her reaction to Elizabeth—her mother. How she never said a word about Bundy to Kirsten, indeed, not even telling her who her father was until, well, Kirsten already knew and confronted her.”
Lucy sat forward in her chair. “You told her, didn’t you, Ms. Bolger? You’re the one who told her about Ted Bundy.”
Sentra nodded. “She was twenty-five. When she was a child, she asked Elizabeth who her father was, and Elizabeth made up some malarkey about his being a Navy SEAL who was killed in a training accident. In any case, yes, I told her the truth, she deserved to know. All the books talk about how handsome he was, how charming, but that doesn’t begin to capture what Ted really was—a shining star, and so fascinating he could charm the tattoo right off a cell mate.” She shook herself, smiled. “I told her how gaga her mother was over him, how much she wanted to marry him. Now, there’s a dollop of irony.” She paused for a moment, as if considering it, then, “I offered to date him, too, once they broke up, but Ted turned me down, said one woman with my sister’s face was more than enough. I remember telling him he was missing out, big-time, that I was much smarter and more beautiful than Elizabeth, and he laughed, said, ‘No, thanks,’ and then he turned that wicked smile of his on me and said maybe he’d look me up someday.
“Of course, neither Elizabeth nor I ever heard from him again. He didn’t know he left Elizabeth pregnant with Kirsten. I rather think it was a good thing he didn’t come back. He was killing by then, you know, in 1977, for three years at that point, probably longer, but who knew? If he had come back, would he have killed her? Me?
“Neither of us knew what he was, what he’d done, until he was caught. We couldn’t believe it, really—that Ted would kidnap young women, rape and torture them, then murder them. What he did to them after that, well, that’s best not visited, is it?”
Clifford Childs said, “I tell Sentra she and her sister were very lucky. What if Bundy had turned on them, tried to murder them, as he had so many women?” He actually shuddered, tightened his hand on Sentra’s shoulder. “I’ll never forget when we got the news he’d escaped, somewhere in Colorado. It took them forever to catch him, but they did, thank God. When he was finally executed in Florida, I bought up the most expensive champagne in my wine cellar—Krug, Clos du Mesnil, 1980. Sentra, my darling, I remember you didn’t wish to drink much of that precious ambrosia. It was hard for you, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “I realized the finality of it, Clifford, that he was truly gone forever. It’s difficult, still, to come to grips with the fact of what Ted actually did to those women, and to realize that the man we knew felt nothing for those women he brutalized, he never saw them as people who just wanted to live, to enjoy life as best they could, to see a future. He lost his conscience, his very soul, I guess you could say, if he ever had either of those commodities in the first place. I would say the evil chemicals twisting his brain finally made him more monster than human. Toward the end, I suspect his wife must have realized that as well, and grew afraid for herself and her daughter. I was relieved when I read she left Florida all those years ago.” She clasped, unclasped her hands, looked at them with finality. “There is nothing more to say. Poor Kirsten has his blood, the same insanity flows through her.”
Vincent Delion spoke for the first time: “Did you know Kirsten had already killed at least six women here in the San Francisco area years ago, Ms. Bolger?”
“No,” Sentra said without hesitation, and Coop wondered if she could be that good a liar. He let it go.
He said, “Kirsten knew all about Starke Prison, what happened to her father there. I think she was headed there when we captured her.”
“Do you believe she will speak again, Agent McKnight?”
“Yes, of course she will,” Coop said. “All of us are hoping she will tell us where she buried the other women she murdered before she left San Francisco and went on her rampage. Can you imagine being the parents of a fifteen-year-old girl who is simply gone one day, who never returns? Perhaps you could speak to Kirsten, encourage her to tell you where she buried these women.”