by Karen Rose
“Didn’t you say the nun at the shelter said Bailey had looked but hadn’t found him?” Meredith murmured.
“Sister Anne said she didn’t think Bailey had found him.” Alex frowned. “You know, Daniel never told me if he’d found Sister Anne. Or Desmond.”
“I know he called it in last night. I’ll check it while you two get ready,” Hatton said. He set Hope on her feet and tipped up her little chin. “Go with your aunt now,” he said, and Hope obediently put her hand in Alex’s.
“We have to keep him,” Meredith said, pointing to Hatton. “He’s got a way with her.”
“Or he needs to give us his magic wand,” Alex countered wryly, and Hope’s face shot up, suddenly panicked. Alex glanced at Meredith, then ignoring the protest of her knees, crouched to look Hope in the eye. “Sweetheart, what is the magic wand?”
But Hope said nothing, her face frozen, terrified. Alex wrapped her arms around her. “Baby,” she whispered into Hope’s golden curls, “what did you see?” But Hope said nothing and Alex’s heart sank. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get your bath.”
Bernard, Georgia, Wednesday, January 31, 6:25 a.m.
“Agile sonofabitch,” Agent Koenig murmured behind Daniel.
Daniel watched Jim Woolf pull his way up into a tree. “You wouldn’t think he had it in him.” His jaw tightened as he looked through the trees at the ditch by the side of the road. “He took lots of pictures before he picked his tree. I don’t want to know who it is.”
“I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“Me, too.” In his pocket his cell phone vibrated. It was Chase. “We just got here,” he said. “Koenig and I. I haven’t checked the scene yet. How far out are you?”
“Not far. I used my lights. Go ahead and check it out. I’ll wait.”
Daniel pushed through the trees, cell phone still pressed to his ear, imagining Woolf’s stunned expression even as the man snapped his picture. He got to the edge of the ditch and stopped. “There’s another one,” he told Chase. “Brown wool blanket.”
Chase made an angry sound in his throat. “Then pull that damn idiot out of his tree and sit tight. I’m exiting the interstate now and CSU and the ME’s rig are on the way.”
Dutton, Wednesday, January 31, 6:45 a.m.
He pulled into his own driveway, relieved, exhausted, stiff in all the wrong places. But Kate was safe and that’s what counted. He had an hour to shower, eat, and pull himself together before he was due at Congressman Bowie’s for an update meeting.
There was tragedy, he thought, and there was politics. Sometimes they were one and the same. He stopped on his front porch to pick up the morning paper, and even though he’d been expecting the news, his heart sank. “Rhett,” he murmured. “You dumbass. I warned you.”
His front door opened and his wife stood there, hurt in her eyes. “You used to try to hide your late-night romps from the neighbors. Not to mention the children.”
He nearly laughed. After all the times she’d ignored his rolling in late from another woman’s bed, she’d picked today to confront him. The one time he wasn’t guilty.
Yes, you are. You need to tell Vartanian about the seven other women. It’s not enough to keep Kate safe. If one of them dies . . . it’s on your head.
His wife’s eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “You look like you slept in your clothes.”
“I did.” The words were out before he could stop them.
“Why?”
He couldn’t tell her. He didn’t love her. He wasn’t sure he ever had. But she was his wife and the mother of his children and he found he still had enough self-respect to admit her opinion of him mattered. He couldn’t tell her about Kate, about any of it.
So instead, he held out the paper. “Rhett’s dead.”
His wife drew a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry.”
She was. Because she was a decent person. She’d never liked Rhett, never understood their “friendship.” Ha. As if. More like a mutual self-preservation society. Keep your enemies close to your heart; then you’ll know if they’re about to double-cross you. It was valuable advice he’d received from his father once a long time ago.
His father had meant his political enemies. Not his supposed friends. But the advice worked just the same. “He . . . um . . . he ran off the road.”
She opened the door a little wider. “Come on in, then.”
He stepped over the threshold and looked into her face. She’d been a good wife all these years. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just never seemed to be able to stop himself. None of his affairs really meant anything, except the last one.
He still felt bad about the last one. Normally he just used women for sex. But he’d used Bailey Crighton to get information. She’d changed since her daughter was born. No longer was she the town slut they’d all had at one time or another.
She’d thought he cared, and on some level he had. Bailey had tried so hard to make a life for herself and Hope and now she was gone. He knew where she was and who had taken her. But he couldn’t say anything to help Bailey any more than he could help the other seven women targeted by a killer.
“I’ll fix you some eggs while you get showered and changed,” his wife said quietly.
“Thank you,” he said and her eyes widened. It occurred to him he hadn’t said that to her nearly often enough. But then, on the list of his many sins, being impolite didn’t seem to hold a candle to rape. Or the murder of the women he’d refused to help.
Atlanta, Wednesday, January 31, 8:45 a.m.
Daniel slumped in a chair at the team table. He dragged his hands down his face. He hadn’t even had time to shave. Thanks to Luke, he at least had a change of clothes.
Luke had given credit to Mama Papadopoulos, who’d called him every hour the evening before, fretting about “poor Daniel.” Luke had dropped off one of Daniel’s suits on his way to his own office. But Luke’s face had been drawn and weary and Daniel knew his friend had troubles of his own. He thought of the pictures Luke had to look at every day as he investigated the slime that peddled children on the Internet.
He thought about Alex. She’d been a child when Wade had assaulted her, whether she’d admit it or not. Primal rage flared within him and he was glad Wade Crighton was dead. Slime like Wade and the predators Luke chased did so much more than physically assault their victims. They stole their trust, their innocence.
Daniel thought of how Alex had looked the night before—vulnerable and fragile. He shuddered where he sat. The sex had been the most amazing of his life. Being with her had rocked him to his very foundation. The thought of losing her scared him to death.
He had to make this insanity stop. Now. So get to work, Vartanian.
Chase, Ed, and Hatton and Koenig joined him at the table, carrying cups of coffee and looking grim. “Here,” Chase said, giving him a cup. “It’s strong.”
Daniel took a sip and winced. “Victim three is Gemma Martin, twenty-one. We’re three for three. All three grew up in Dutton, all graduated from Bryson Academy, same year. Gemma lived with her grandmother, who got worried when she didn’t come down for breakfast. She found Gemma’s bed unslept in and called us.”
“We ID’d her with her prints,” Ed said. “Everything at the scene was identical to the others, down to the key and the hair wrapped around her toe.”
“I want to know where he grabbed her,” Chase said. “Where was she last night?”
“Gemma told her grandmother that she wasn’t feeling well and was going to bed early, but the grandmother told me that Gemma often lied. Her Corvette is missing from her garage. We’ll start with her usual haunts.”
“What about the tapes from where Janet rented her minivan?” Chase countered.
“I dropped them off at CSU when I brought Hope to see Mary last night. Ed?”
“I had one of the techs review the tapes overnight,” Ed said and slid a photo across the table. “We got very lucky. Look familiar?”
Daniel picked up the photo. “It�
�s the guy who bought the blankets.”
“He made no attempt to hide his face this time either. He had the key to Janet’s Z.”
“And we have no idea who he is?” Chase demanded.
“We’ve got his face taped to the visor of every squad car in the city, Chase,” Ed said. “The next step is to flash his picture on the TV news.”
Daniel looked at Chase. “If we do that, he could go under.”
“I think that’s a chance we have to take,” Chase said. “Do it. What’s next?”
“Yearbooks,” Daniel said. “We need to track down the women in the pictures.”
“Already started,” Chase said. “I’ve got Leigh calling every high school in a twenty-mile radius of Dutton to get their yearbooks from thirteen years ago.”
Ed sat back, puzzled. “Why high school yearbooks from thirteen years ago? Janet, Claudia, and Gemma would have been nine years old thirteen years ago.”
“I’m getting to that.” From his briefcase Daniel pulled Simon’s pictures and told the others the version of the story he and Chase had agreed upon the night before.
“Daniel had surrendered the pictures to the police up in Philly,” Chase said. “The detective on the case up there was good enough to have them scanned and e-mailed to us first thing this morning. The originals are being couriered down.”
Daniel felt bad about Vito Ciccotelli jumping through the hoop of scanning and e-mailing the photos, but he’d been completely honest with Vito last night when he’d called him. Vito had offered to scan the pictures himself. Daniel hadn’t needed to ask.
Vito had rejected any offer of thanks, saying Daniel had given him something more precious—he’d helped Vito save his girlfriend Sophie’s life. Daniel thought of Alex and understood how Vito viewed the saving of his Sophie as the all-trumping act.
Ed shook his head. “Okay. So Simon had these pictures, including one of Alicia Tremaine and another of the waitress who was killed last night, Sheila Cunningham.”
“Yes. Alex was able to identify four of the others. One is dead, suicide. The others we have to match to girls from the local schools. That’s why I want the yearbooks.”
Ed blew out a breath. “You know how to shake things up, Vartanian.”
“I sure don’t mean to,” Daniel murmured. “What else do we have?”
Hatton rubbed his beard absently. “That nun from the shelter. Sister Anne.”
Daniel’s stomach turned over. “Please don’t tell me she’s dead.”
“She’s not dead,” Hatton said. “But she’s close. The uniforms who went to check on her last night didn’t find her at the shelter and she didn’t answer her door at home. They didn’t get the message that this woman’s life might be in danger, only that you were looking for her. They didn’t go in her apartment last night.”
“And this morning?” Daniel asked grimly.
“When I called I impressed on them the importance of this matter.” Hatton’s voice was still calm, but his eyes were not. “They busted open the door and found her. She’d been beaten badly. Looks like somebody came through her window. She was taken to County about an hour ago. They told me she’s unconscious, but that’s all I know.”
“Does Alex know?” Daniel asked.
“Not yet. I thought you might want to tell her.”
Daniel nodded, dreading it. “I’ll tell her. What about the hairdresser, Desmond?”
“He’s fine. He’d had no visits, phone calls, no problems.”
“At least I don’t have to give her two pieces of bad news.”
“So . . .” Chase drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Our only witness to anything is one four-year-old girl who won’t talk.”
“Hope’s with McCrady and the forensic artist now,” Daniel said.
“She talked,” Hatton said. “One word anyway. She called me ‘Pa-paw.’ Apparently he has a beard like mine.”
Daniel frowned. “Then Bailey did find him.”
“Does McCrady know this?” Chase demanded.
“Yep.” Hatton looked at Daniel. “There’s also something about a magic wand.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Chase muttered.
“Chase,” Daniel said, exasperated. “What about a magic wand?” he asked Hatton.
“Miss Fallon said that the two times they’d said ‘magic wand’ Hope stopped what she was doing and looked afraid. Neither Miss Fallon knew what it meant. I think we should look for Bailey’s father. I can scour the streets if you want. I pulled Craig Crighton’s last driver’s license photo. It’s fifteen years old, but it’s all we’ve got.”
“He hasn’t got his license renewed in fifteen years?” Daniel asked.
“It expired two years after Alicia died,” Hatton told him. “You want me to track him?”
“Yeah. Thanks. What else?”
“What about our tree-climbing Woolf?” Koenig asked.
Daniel shook his head. “I’ve checked all the devices we have warrants for to see when he got the call about Gemma, but there have been no new calls. What I want to know is how he got the story on Rhett Porter.”
“The car salesman whose car ran off the road last night,” Chase said. “Connected?”
“This wreck happened down off of US-19, more than seventy miles from Dutton. Nobody saw Porter go off the road. It was reported by a motorist who passed by after the car was already incinerated and the fire was mostly burned out.”
“How did anybody know it was Porter?” Ed asked, looking at the picture on the front page of the Dutton Review. “I can’t imagine there would have been much body left.”
“They haven’t actually identified the body yet,” Daniel answered. “They’re hoping to use dental records. But Porter was a car salesman and he drove test models using his magnetic dealer plates. His plate flew off the car as it was rolling down the embankment and that’s how he was identified.”
“So how did Woolf know?” Chase asked, and Daniel shook his head in disgust.
“Don’t know yet. According to what Woolf told me this morning when I yanked his sorry ass out of that tree, Porter’s wife said he’d been upset the last week. And everybody knew the Lincoln that rolled was the model Porter drove. But as for how Woolf arrived on the scene just in time to snap this picture . . . Woolf refused to reveal his source and unless he communicated in a way we’re tracking, we got nothin’.”
“So other than the fact that Rhett Porter lived in Dutton, was upset, and the Woolf connection, what else is there to connect him to these three murders?” Chase asked.
“He went to school with Wade Crighton and Simon. Alex remembers him being Wade’s friend. And he was the oldest brother of the two boys that found Alicia’s body.”
Chase groaned. “Daniel.”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m just sayin’ the facts. Plus, don’t discount the fact that Jim Woolf was there at the crash site. I asked the field office down in Pike County to keep tabs on the investigation. I want every inch of that car examined. I’d also like a full-time tail on Jim Woolf. He hasn’t done anything I can arrest him for yet, but I know he will.”
Daniel drew a breath, not liking what he had to say next. “And once Leigh gets the yearbooks, we need to figure out who else went to school with Wade, Simon, and Porter. The rapists in Simon’s pictures could all be guys from Dutton.”
“Somebody’s nervous,” Hatton said in his quiet way. “They got sloppy when they tried to run Miss Fallon down. It looks like they may have done a better job with Porter.”
“Looks like.” Daniel turned to Ed. “Bailey’s house and the pizza parlor. Anything?”
“We didn’t find any more at Bailey’s, certainly nothing to point to where Hope was when she saw Bailey taken. We have matched Bailey’s blood type to the blood we found soaked into the ground. We took some hair we found in a brush in the bathroom. We’ll do a PCR, but I’m pretty sure it’s Bailey’s blood.”
“And the pizza parlor?”
“We took prints off th
e gunman and we’re running them through AFIS today. We’ll also want to get the officer who chased that car that tried to hit Alex yesterday,” Ed added. “See if he can make a positive ID on either the car or the shooter.”
“I can take that,” Koenig said.
Daniel noted all their next steps in his notebook. “Thanks. I’m going to interview the rape victims from thirteen years ago. I’ll want a female agent to go with me.”
“Take Talia Scott,” Chase said. “She’s good at that kind of interview.”
Daniel nodded. “Will do. Once Leigh gets the yearbooks from Bryson Academy, have her get me the list of every woman who went to school with Janet, Claudia, and Gemma. We need to figure out why the killer picked them to re-enact Alicia’s murder. Maybe one of the classmates can help us tie them to Alicia or the other victims.”
“We should warn them, too,” Ed said, “if they haven’t already taken precautions.”
“I’ll take care of warning them,” Chase said. “We’ll have to clear the communication through channels. We don’t want to start a panic and we don’t have the manpower to give all the potential victims police protection.”
Daniel stood up. “Then let’s go. We meet back here at six.”
Atlanta, Wednesday, January 31, 9:35 a.m.
“Alex, will you sit down?”
Alex stopped pacing to stare at Meredith’s reflection in the one-way glass. Meredith sat behind her calmly working on her laptop, while Alex was a bundle of nerves. On the other side of the glass Hope sat with child psychologist Mary McCrady and a forensic artist who seemed to have the patience of Job.
“How can you be so calm? They’re not getting anything.”
“I was a wreck yesterday. It was that music.” She shuddered. “Today, no music and I’ve had my run. I’m good.” She looked at Hope, who was refusing to meet either the psychologist’s eyes or the artist’s. “They just started, Alex. Give Hope some time.”
“We don’t have time.” Alex gripped her fingers, wringing them. “Bailey’s been gone seven days. Four women are dead. We don’t have time to wait.”
