Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20)

by Jenna Bennett

  I sighed. “Drive to Sweetwater. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  She nodded. “At least we know he’s keeping an eye out.”

  Yes. At least we knew that. And I guess it was better than nothing.

  Seven

  When we turned down Green Street, the Chevy with Rafe and Agent Yung continued straight ahead into Sweetwater. I left Charlotte and the hybrid in front of the Albertsons’ Victorian and transferred myself and Carrie back into the Volvo. When I swung by the sheriff’s office on my way out of town, I saw that Rafe’s Chevy was indeed parked there. And although I drove slowly and took a good look around, I didn’t spot anyone lying in wait with a camera on a tripod, waiting for him to come back out. I gave up and headed home. And realized, halfway there, that I still needed to go back to Columbia and unlock the door of the house on Fulton for the photographer, so we could get it back on the market sooner rather than later.

  So off I went, back to Columbia yet again. By the time I had let him in and explained what I wanted, and told him how to lock up and dispose of the key after he was done, and I had driven back to Sweetwater yet again, Carrie was ready for a nap, and so was I. I fed her and changed her and put her in her crib, and then I mixed up some tuna and capers and curled up on the loveseat in the parlor, to watch an hour of mindless TV to relax.

  Only to have to get back up ten minutes later, when I heard the crunch of tires outside.

  I figured it would be Rafe. That he had ditched Leslie Yung at the sheriff’s office, pawned her off on Bob Satterfield, and had decided to stop by for lunch on his way back to Columbia and the police station.

  It wasn’t. It was Grimaldi’s official vehicle that had come to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, and the detective—chief of police—herself climbing the couple of steps toward the porch floor.

  “De… um… Tamara.”

  Her eyes glinted with amusement. It had taken both of us quite some time to get over the Detective/Ms. Martin bits.

  Now that she wasn’t a detective anymore, and I wasn’t Ms. Martin, old habits still died hard.

  “What can I do for you?” I added. “Want some lunch?”

  “No, thank you. I grabbed a sandwich on the way.”

  She moved past me and into the foyer. I shut the door behind her. She greeted Pearl, and gave a compreshensive look around. “Baby asleep?”

  I nodded. “I put her down fifteen, twenty minutes ago. She’ll stay there for another hour, at least. Something you need to talk about? Something wrong?”

  She shook her head, and then shrugged.

  “Let me get you a drink, at least. It’s getting warmer out there.” I pushed past her and headed down the center hall toward the kitchen. “Come on.”

  I didn’t look back, but I heard the noise of her heels on the old plank floors as she followed: less the clicking of high heels than the clomp of low ones.

  In the kitchen, I gave Pearl a treat for being such a good guard dog, and filled two glasses with iced tea from the fridge—Grimaldi was on duty, so there was no point in bringing out the bottle of white wine I had cooling in the same place—and put them both on the island. “Chips and salsa? Cheese and crackers? Hummus and crudités?”

  Her lips twitched as she sat down on one of the bar stools. “No. Thank you.”

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “I went to finishing school. Making people comfortable is part of the job.”

  “I’m comfortable.” She reached for one of the glasses and took a sip. “See?”

  “Sure.” I took the other and did the same. “So what can I do for you?”

  “I came to talk,” Grimaldi said.

  My brows rose. “Really?”

  “I talk.”

  “I suppose.” I mean, yes. She did. “You just don’t usually talk to me.” Or not about anything important.

  She shrugged and took another swig of tea. And turned the glass over in her hands.

  After a few seconds I decided to make it easier on her, since she obviously didn’t know how to start. “Rafe took Agent Yung around to the crime scene and to see Bob.”

  Grimaldi’s lips curved. “Yes.”

  “Did you call her in, or did Bob? Or did she just show up on her own?”

  “She saw the video,” Grimaldi said, with an amused look at me.

  “The video of Rafe?”

  She nodded. “She’d heard about the new victim of the Classicist, of course.”

  The Classicist? “Is that what you’re calling him?”

  “It’s what she’s calling him,” Grimaldi said. “We reported the murder to VICAP, of course.”

  I must have looked blank, because she added, “The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It’s an FBI database that keeps records of violent crimes across state lines. Like this one.”

  “And Leslie Yung works for them?”

  “Leslie Yung works for the Memphis office of the FBI,” Grimaldi said. “She ran across your husband a few years ago, in his undercover persona.”

  I nodded. “I got that much from the scene this morning.”

  “Well, after she found out about the new victim, she did some internet searching. And in the process, stumbled across the video of Rafe doing his macho thing with Tucker and the kid.”

  “Curtis.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “She recognized him—your husband—and, believing him to be a dangerous criminal, came down here to warn me.”

  Huh. “I’m surprised the Memphis FBI office didn’t catch on before now,” I said. “I thought Rafe’s cover blew so spectacularly that everyone in law enforcement knew.”

  “I guess Memphis was too far away.”

  Maybe. Although— “He worked there a lot. For a long time. I’m surprised they didn’t keep up.”

  “I don’t know,” Grimaldi said. “The scene got pretty heated.”

  So I’d seen. “They seemed to be getting on OK when I saw them earlier.”

  She squinted at me across the island. “When did you see them earlier?”

  “I was following him around to see if I could get a bead on this person who’s been uploading the videos,” I said. “There’s another one now. Taken this morning.” I pulled my phone closer and cued up the video. “Here.”

  Grimaldi watched the clip, and watched it again. “Quite the movie kiss,” she said blandly when she handed the phone back.

  I flushed. “I know. If I’d known that someone was filming…”

  But honestly, if I’d known that someone was filming, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I was kissing my husband, as I had every right to do. I just considered myself lucky that Mother hadn’t noticed.

  And no sooner had the thought crossed my mind that somehow, like magic, her name flashed on the screen. I made a face and turned the ringer down.

  Grimaldi smirked, but didn’t comment. “So you were following him around…”

  “Charlotte and I. Thinking maybe we’d see whoever’s doing the filming. That’s why I was there this morning, too. At the police station.”

  She nodded.

  “We followed him and Agent Yung to the truck stop out by I-65, and then we followed them back to Sweetwater, to the sheriff’s office. Rafe noticed us right away, of course.”

  “Of course,” Grimaldi said, grinning. “Well, I’m glad he and Yung are getting along. He’s going to have to work with her, it looks like.”

  “I figured he’d be working with you,” I said, and watched her shake her head.

  “Conflict of interest. One of the victims was my mother. Besides, it isn’t my case. Bob called in the TBI, and now the FBI’s gotten involved, but it’s still not the Columbia PD’s case.”

  I guess it wasn’t. “So what do you want from me? Rafe will tell you everything directly if you ask him.” Or Bob would. Nobody would keep any secrets from her.

  “I want to run my own investigation,” Grimaldi said, and I opened my eyes wide to stare at her. “Unofficially.”

  “Do you think Bo
b and Rafe and Agent Yung won’t do a good job?”

  “I think they’ll do a fine job.” After a second she added, “I don’t know Yung. But both Bob and your husband will.”

  “So why get in their way?”

  “I don’t want to get in their way,” Grimaldi said. “But this is personal. I can’t just sit on the sidelines and let them do the work. Not when it was my mother who was killed.”

  “That’s why you’re supposed to sit on the sidelines, though. It’s personal to you. And that’s why you’re not supposed to investigate it.” And I had no idea why I was telling her this, when I knew she knew it.

  “I can’t,” Grimaldi said. “When your sister-in-law died, you knew I was investigating. You trusted me to do a good job, because you knew me.”

  I nodded. I’d known her, and liked her, and had believed she’d give the case everything she had to get justice for Sheila.

  “You still looked into things on your own.”

  Yes. I had. “It wasn’t because I didn’t trust you. But she was my brother’s wife, and…”

  “It was personal,” Grimaldi finished. “It’s not that I don’t trust them. I do. There’s nobody I’d rather have investigating this than your husband and Sheriff Satterfield. But she was my mother. I can’t sit here and do nothing now that another case has landed practically in my lap.”

  No, of course she couldn’t. When Rafe had disappeared—been taken—the night before our wedding, Grimaldi and Wendell Craig had both been looking into it, and looking hard. There are no two people I’d trust more to figure out what was going on than the two of them. But I’d still looked into it on my own, too. It was better than sitting at home doing nothing.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked. “This isn’t something I’m going to have to hide from Rafe, is it?”

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “Of course not. We’ll share anything we discover with them.”

  Good. I don’t like to keep things from my husband. Not only isn’t it fair—I don’t want him to keep things from me, so the least I can do is return the favor—but I’m the world’s worst liar, so he always knows when I’m being less than truthful.

  “What do you want help doing?”

  “Just looking around,” Grimaldi said. “Following up on anything they’re not following up on. Or anything we think is interesting that they don’t. Whatever we decide to do.”

  “I can do that.” I’m naturally nosy anyway. Poking into things is what I do. “When do you want to start?”

  “ASAP,” Grimaldi said.

  “It’ll have to wait an hour or two. Carrie’s asleep.”

  She grimaced. “Then we might as well sit here and talk things over. See where we are.”

  “Fine by me. Let’s go into the parlor. It’s more comfortable.”

  And my tuna and crackers were there.

  “Here’s what we know,” Grimaldi said, when we were situated in comfort in the parlor and I was nibbling on my interrupted lunch. “Over the past dozen and a half years, someone has killed eighteen women in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana, and dumped the bodies along Interstate 65 in one of those states. Sometimes the victim was picked up in the same state she was dumped, sometimes she wasn’t.”

  I nodded, chewing.

  “A lot of them—the majority—have been prostitutes, but not all.”

  “Like your mother.”

  She nodded. “She was working the night shift at a motel near the interstate. The police said she was picked up walking home from work one morning.”

  “And there’s no reason to doubt that.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “None at all. I’ve seen the police report. The hotel staff saw her leave. She didn’t make it home. And because of the number—numeral III—we know it was this same unsub.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask that,” I said, and lowered the cracker I had just lifted, since it suddenly seemed unpalatable.

  Grimaldi looked from my face to the cracker and back. “About the numbers?”

  “You said he carves them into the victims.”

  She nodded.

  “Before or after death?”

  “After,” Grimaldi said. “He doesn’t seem to be into torture. Whoever he is, he picks them up, rapes them, strangles them, and dumps them, in pretty short order. Like in this case. We didn’t know Ramona Mitchell was missing when we found her. It had only been a few hours between the time we think she left Nashville and the time she was found here.”

  “A lot longer than it would take to drive here from Nashville, though.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “But not long enough for anyone to notice she was gone. If he were the type to enjoy dragging things out, to play with his victims, he could have held on to her a lot longer. Days. Maybe weeks.”

  “Unless he couldn’t,” I said. “Truckers try to make good time, don’t they? They don’t get paid until the load is delivered, or something?”

  Grimaldi shrugged, and I added, “Or maybe he was close to home, and he couldn’t bring her there, or there’s nowhere at home he can keep her. Maybe he lives with someone, or has an apartment or something like that. Somewhere where other people would have heard her, or would know she was there.”

  “He could have kept her in the truck,” Grimaldi said.

  Maybe. “I guess we don’t actually know for sure that he’s a trucker, but if he is… do they own their trucks, or are they just drivers, and the company owns the trucks?”

  “It depends,” Grimaldi said. “Some long-distance drivers own their own rigs, some drive for a company.”

  “So maybe he doesn’t have his own, and had to deliver the truck when he got to the end of the line. So he couldn’t keep her in it, and he couldn’t take her home…”

  “That’s something to consider,” Grimaldi said. “It would probably mean that the end of the line—where he works or lives—is close to here.”

  Close being relative, I assumed. “I suppose it might. Although there’s that old adage about fouling ones own yard. He probably wouldn’t have left her on his own doorstep, so to speak. He could have gotten back on the interstate and driven another couple hours after dumping her.”

  Grimaldi shrugged.

  We sat in silence a minute before I dragged the conversation back to where it had been before we’d gone off on this tangent about locations. “So he numbers them after they’re dead. Not because he likes to inflict pain, but because they’re… numbers?”

  “A series,” Grimaldi said. “There could be others, that he hasn’t numbered.”

  “Why would he number some and not others?”

  “Don’t know,” Grimaldi said. “For some serial killers, not every victim measures up to the ideal, for one reason or another. Or there could be something special about this group.”

  “Like what?” I risked another cracker. It turned to sawdust in my mouth, so I gave up and pushed the plate away. Over on the pillow in the corner, Pearl looked hopeful, and I heaped the rest of the tuna onto one of the last crackers and handed it to her. She took it daintily from my hand and then wolfed it down.

  “That’s all,” I told her, and curled back up on the loveseat next to Grimaldi. “What do they have in common other than that they all died somewhere close to I-65, presumably by being strangled by the same guy?”

  She shook her head. “They’re all around the same age. Late twenties to mid-thirties. They’re almost all white, but not exclusively. There’s been a couple of Latinas, and a couple of black women.”

  I nodded.

  “The black women were both light skinned, so his type seems to be female, thirty to thirty-five—give or take a year or two in either direction. Dark hair. Medium skin.”

  “Like you,” I said. Grimaldi’s Italian, with black hair and olive skin, so her mother had probably looked similar.

  She nodded. “Most of them have had dark eyes, but not all. It seems like the overall look is more important than the specifics.�
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  “And since he’s probably had access to blondes, and has chosen to forego them, he must have a preference for brunettes.”

  “So it seems,” Grimaldi agreed. “Unless he’s killed blondes, but they aren’t part of this series.”

  Maybe so. Maybe that’s what ‘didn’t measure up’ meant to this guy. Brunettes were preferable, but he’d kill a blonde if he couldn’t find a suitable brunette. He wouldn’t make her part of the same series, though.

  “Do you think he has another series? One for blondes?”

  “If he has, we haven’t connected them,” Grimaldi said. And continued with her profile of the killer, “The assumption is he’s white, since most of the victims have been white. Age range…” She hesitated. “Forty to seventy, on the outside.”

  I counted on my fingers. “That would make him around twenty-five when the first victim was killed. Surely that’s too young?”

  “Some serial killers have developed that early,” Grimaldi said. “Some have developed earlier.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. If all the victims have been between thirty and thirty-five, isn’t it more likely that he was that age when he started? Putting him in the—” I counted quickly, “fifty to sixty range now?”

  “More likely,” Grimaldi agreed. “But not impossible.”

  Fine. “So a white man, maybe as young as forty, but more likely older. And… isn’t seventy too old? Would a seventy-year-old have the muscle to subdue a much younger woman, and then carry her dead body to where he left her?”

  Grimaldi didn’t answer, so I went on. “A white man, maybe as young as forty and maybe as old as seventy, but more likely in the middle of the range, who has been driving a truck—most likely a truck—up and down Interstate 65 for almost twenty years.”

  Grimaldi nodded.

  “How do we go about finding a guy like that?” Especially since we had four states to search? “Rafe and I talked about investigating trucking companies along the I-65 corridor…”

  “That’s something the FBI can do much better than you and me,” Grimaldi said. “Where I want to start, is Victim One.”

  “His first?”