Stranded

by Alex Kava

  She wasn’t sure how it happened. But she knew she had done nothing to stop it. It started with a kiss, gentle and tentative, almost as a test. When he pulled her against him, Creed lost his balance and fell backward onto the bed. An accident? Intentional? At that point it didn’t matter. He fell and didn’t let go, bringing her down on top of him.

  She had one chance to call it all an accident. In an attempt to catch her balance, she ended up with one outstretched arm on each side of him, holding herself up, mere inches keeping their chests apart. But the rest of her body was already pressed against his. He could have pulled her down the rest of the way, but he left the decision to her. Left her on her own to fight the magnetic field. Eyes serious. No hint of humor. Locked on each other again. Creed arched his back and lifted his head, eyes still not leaving hers. His lips teased her chin, then her jaw, her neck, and moved down to her collarbone.

  The knock on the door sounded like a warning gunshot.

  “Hey, Creed, it’s Tully. I forgot, I gave you my key card.”

  In an instant, Maggie felt like a busted teenager getting caught. She scrambled awkwardly off Creed and off the bed. The map beneath them crackled in an explosion of noise and her feet hit the floor with a thump. She was embarrassed and flushed—even more flushed when she saw that Creed’s towel had come loose.

  “Creed, you there?”

  She tiptoed toward Tully’s voice.

  “Hold on. I just got out of the shower,” Creed called out to Tully.

  Maggie was across the room and almost out the adjoining room’s doorway when she stopped and glanced back at him. He met her eyes and gestured for her to continue. But there was no playful smile. No signal of regret or cocky swagger. Just an intensity. She could still feel it between them, so much so that when she stepped into her room, she closed the door that connected the two rooms and locked it.

  CHAPTER 48

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Gwen to host a meeting about a serial killer in her home. Agent Alonzo had managed to turn her warm and friendly dinner into a grotesque slide show. Her mind still reeled from her doctor’s phone call, making it difficult to concentrate. Several times when she looked across her huge mahogany dining room table she caught Julia Racine watching her. Thankfully the detective had the good sense to look away, even appearing a bit embarrassed at getting caught.

  Once again, despite the wireless electronic gadgetry that Agent Alonzo had brought, he now focused on the paper map of the United States attached to a poster board. He had set it up at the end of the room on a very thin and sleek easel. It had reminded Gwen of a magician’s wand when Agent Alonzo unfolded it from a small bundle of foot-long rods that he had pulled out of a cute satchel. When she first saw that satchel she had smiled, thinking it looked like the agent had brought a toiletry kit for an overnight stay. That’s the way her mind was working tonight, ever since the phone call. She could take the simplest of things and turn them into the absurd. Perhaps that’s what cancer did to one’s mind.

  When he took out pins and stuck them into the map, she wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier to keep track on a computer? And almost as soon as the thought came to her, she noticed a look exchanged between Assistant Director Kunze and Agent Alonzo, and she realized it was Kunze who insisted on the dinosaur equipment. And for a brief moment she found herself liking Kunze a little more.

  We dinosaurs need to stick together.

  Alonzo wore another purple button-down with khakis and Sperry Top-Siders. He had traded his wireless glasses for thick black-framed ones.

  When had glasses become a revolving fashion accessory?

  Her mind was all over the place. The others were discussing trace evidence and motives of murder while Gwen was evaluating the psychology of everyone’s fashion statements.

  She didn’t think she had ever seen Keith Ganza without a white lab coat. His long gray ponytail actually went better with the T-shirt and suede vest he was wearing now, making him look hip instead of lab-coat nerd. Even Kunze had relaxed a little and wore a long-sleeved polo shirt, light blue, tucked neatly into the waistband of charcoal-colored trousers and nicely finished off with tasseled leather loafers.

  Murder didn’t much interest Gwen at the moment. But shoes did and she knew shoes, men’s or women’s. It didn’t matter. Maggie teased her constantly about her shoe fetish. She’d never been able to get Tully to appreciate fine leather shoes, though she had bought him some sexy Italian leather loafers. And suddenly she missed them both terribly.

  In the middle of her home, in the middle of this group of colleagues, she felt completely alone. The two people she loved and trusted and confided in were twelve hundred miles away. She felt like she was losing her mind, and it didn’t seem like a topic to cover sufficiently over the phone.

  That’s when she noticed everyone in the room had stopped talking. What was worse, they were staring at her. Waiting. Had she missed something?

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Are you okay, Dr. Patterson?” Agent Alonzo asked.

  “I’m fine. Just fine.”

  “Before we get to Otis P. Dodd,” Kunze interrupted and she realized he was giving her a pass, “let’s go over the victims, the chronology, and what we know.”

  “Sure,” Alonzo said, still eyeing Gwen with concern.

  He replaced the poster-board map with a three-by-five whiteboard. Definitely Kunze’s idea, Gwen thought again. Agent Alonzo probably had a PowerPoint presentation ready to go.

  Alonzo divided the board into six sections, then listed the name of each victim in order of their discovery at the top, left to right. He talked as he jotted down keywords, the data technician becoming professor.

  “First is Orange Socks number one. Selena Thurber on her way home to Jacksonville, Florida. Her vehicle was found at a rest area off I-95 south of Richmond, Virginia. Her body was found in a culvert under a remote gravel road about a mile away. But only after Otis told a reporter where to look. It was recovered intact, though in very late stages of decomp. She had been missing for over a year. Identification was made from dental records. Coroner’s estimation is that she was killed shortly after being taken from the rest area.

  “Victims number two and number three are Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester. Business colleagues from Concordia, Missouri. They were almost to their destination, a conference in Baltimore, when they were killed. Dobson was found in an alley beside a burning warehouse. Lester and their vehicle were recovered from a rest area off I-64 east of Covington, Virginia. Dobson’s face and teeth were bashed in, leaving her unrecognizable. She was ID’d by the serial number on her breast implants.”

  Gwen refused to look at Racine, who would be watching her again. Gwen already knew this about Dobson. She also knew she had been a wife and mother of three, a breast cancer survivor. None of these victims was ordinary or an easy target.

  Breast implants—good Lord, she hadn’t even thought about that.

  She had missed the rest of Agent Alonzo’s rundown on Lester. Didn’t matter. She knew the poor man had been decapitated and his body eviscerated. “Left for the crows,” was how Tully had worded it.

  Life was so fragile. In the end did it really matter whether it was cancer metastasizing through your body or a serial killer slicing out your guts or a bus plowing into you at an intersection? A quick glance and yes, Racine was watching her.

  “Victim number four has been identified as Wendi Conroy from Philadelphia,” Agent Alonzo was saying. “She was on her way to Greensboro, North Carolina, to visit her sister. Her vehicle was discovered last month at a rest area off I-95 just south of Dale City, Virginia. Her body was found two days ago in a garbage bag buried at an Iowa farmstead. That property borders a rest area off I-29 just outside of Sioux City, Iowa. Her body was decapitated. She, too, was found wearing orange socks, but we believe they were put there by the killer postmortem. He left the receipt for the socks in the same bag he stuffed
Ms. Conroy’s head into. He did us a favor and left her driver’s license with the body.

  “At that same farmstead, inside the barn, was victim number five, a male. We’re still waiting for more information on him as well as an ID. Agents O’Dell and Tully did examine a tattoo that leads us to suspect the man may have been a motorcycle enthusiast.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” Kunze interrupted again. “He was a biker with a Sturgis tattoo.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.” Agent Alonzo didn’t take offense and continued. “The local coroner hasn’t performed an autopsy or given any assessment for time of death.

  “Victim number six was discovered today. I heard from Agent Tully earlier. They believe the remains found in a ravine outside Manhattan, Kansas, are those of a missing teenager named Ethan Ames. He’s been missing for two days. His vehicle was left at a rest area off I-70. Also just outside of Manhattan. His body, according to Agent Tully’s early assessment, was partially dismembered. Oddly, however, the boy’s friend survived the attack but has provided no information on the attacker.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” Keith Ganza said. “How do we know this is the same killer?”

  “Agent O’Dell’s phone number was left at the scene,” Alonzo said.

  “In a plastic bag with the kid’s severed finger,” Kunze added. “It’s him. And he’s playing some jackass game.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Racine spoke for the first time, “is why he was willing to give up such a primo dumping ground. That farmstead sounded perfect. Vacant for years with nobody around. He even had a house to stay in. He could come and go as he pleased.”

  “Actually, I checked on that,” Alonzo said. “When the owner passed away she left instructions in her will for her executor to donate the farmstead for a wildlife preserve within ten years of her death. The deadline was coming up. The executor’s in the process of handing over the land to the federal government.”

  “Which makes me wonder if this killer has another place like this,” Kunze said. “Otis told Dr. Patterson that Jack has other dumping grounds. Otis claims to know exactly where another one is. If it’s like the Iowa farm and he feels comfortable enough to come and go, we might be able to take him by surprise. Or at least find something that could incriminate him, reveal who he is.”

  “You’re actually thinking of taking Otis up on his offer?” Gwen asked.

  “They’re digging up remains of possibly five more people on that Iowa farm. We already know of six victims. Four of them were murdered in the last month. Maybe that’s a fluke or maybe that’s his monthly kill number. Heaven forbid. Both Tully and O’Dell seem to think he’s accelerating. Could be he wants more bodies just for this crazy game he’s playing with us. I don’t know. What I do know is that we may not get this close again. If he gets bored with us, he could slip away to one of his hiding places. He’s a smart guy. He goes quiet for a while. Doesn’t mean he stops killing.”

  Kunze looked around the table at each of them. No one disagreed.

  “Otis was on target about the first woman with the orange socks.” Kunze looked at the whiteboard then added her name. “Selena Thurber. The Iowa farm is all over the national news now, but two days ago it hadn’t made the local news and yet Otis knew exactly where this dumping ground was. And he knew about the tattooed biker in the barn. Not just that there was a body in the barn, but a tattooed biker.”

  Kunze looked to Gwen. “What do you think, Dr. Patterson? Should we take Otis P. Dodd up on his offer?”

  All eyes were on Gwen. The director had given her a pass earlier. She may have been brought onto this task force for political cover, maybe even as a scapegoat, but Kunze was now sincere in eliciting her advice. Advice, not just her opinion.

  “When I met Otis he was quick to point out that he was a ‘powermaniac,’ not a ‘pyromaniac.’ ” Gwen tried to focus. Her mind had been scattered all evening. “I’ve studied a good deal of his arsons. They were big fires. They were dangerous ones. But for all his talk about power, his fires have amazingly had no casualties. That would indicate that he enjoys and craves the excitement and the attention. He’s been in prison for about a year now. He knows he has valuable information and he wants something in return.”

  “Actually he’s added a caveat to his original request,” Kunze said.

  “I won’t go along,” Gwen said quickly. “I’m not trained.”

  “No, no, it’s not you he wants to tag along. All the recent media coverage of the Iowa farm got his attention. He wants that pretty FBI agent to come along.”

  “Maggie?” But Gwen wasn’t surprised. She remembered how charming Otis had been when she suggested she was too old for him. Like a teenage boy with a crush.

  “He knows the two of you are friends.”

  “The CNN profile?”

  A reporter had done a profile on Maggie last month during the arson investigations in the District. He had been very thorough.

  “They’ve played the piece a couple of times already. It doesn’t matter. This trip would be part of O’Dell and Tully’s scavenger hunt. Of course, I would want them along. But does it affect your decision about Otis?”

  Gwen glanced at Racine, Ganza, and Alonzo. If she said no, there could be another dozen bodies that would never be found. And they wouldn’t be any closer to finding Jack.

  “Let Otis have his trip.”

  CHAPTER 49

  When Tully suggested the three of them go out for a late dinner, Maggie welcomed the escape despite her exhaustion. Had they stayed in their adjoining rooms she knew the space would be too confining—two’s company, three’s a crowd, especially when two of the three were sending sparks off each other.

  Not far from the hotel and not far from the university’s campus was a section of the city called Aggieville that included shops, eateries, nightclubs, and bars and grills. They decided on New York style pizza, appropriate for a city nicknamed the Little Apple. Tully took the liberty of ordering them a large pizza called the 18th and 8th, one of the restaurant’s specialties that included pepperoni, ground beef, Italian sausage, pork sausage, and Canadian bacon. Maggie added a salad. Creed was pleased to see sweet tea on the menu. Tully ordered draft beer. Maggie asked for a Diet Pepsi, not trusting herself, not wanting to let her guard down.

  Tully filled them in on the recovery effort of Ethan’s body. The pizza arrived when Tully was pulling up the photo gallery on his smartphone. He slid the phone across the table to Maggie and Creed. It was a round bistro table that allowed the three of them their own space quite comfortably, but in order to see the smartphone’s screen Creed scooted his chair closer to Maggie. While Tully served up the pizza, Maggie slid her finger over the screen, going from one photo to the next, taking in each gruesome discovery, just as Tully and Detective Lopez’s crew had.

  The body was a mess and at some point Maggie realized Creed had moved his chair back away to his original place. She remembered him telling her and Tully, when Grace alerted in the barn, that he didn’t help with the digging. But certainly he must have seen plenty of dead bodies, many of them brutalized.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Not my favorite part of the job.”

  He chugged down the rest of his iced tea and started looking for the waiter to order another. Maggie wondered if he wished the tea were something stronger.

  “Oh, hold on,” Tully said and took the smartphone back. “I have a picture of the boots they found in the garbage from the rest area. I showed the boots to Creed earlier,” he told Maggie as he searched for the photo. His finger swiped across the screen several times. “Lopez agreed to let me overnight them to Alonzo. So that’s what I did after I dropped Creed at the hotel.”

  Finally, he found the one he wanted and handed the phone to Maggie.

  They looked like ordinary, lace-up hiking boots, but on the toes she could see rust-colored splatters.

  “Blood?”

  “Won’t know till the lab tests it bu
t it sure looks like it. Notice the white stain?”

  The bottom quarter of the leather was covered in a zigzag white powdery stain.

  “What is it?”

  “Creed said it looked like—well, you go ahead and tell her.”

  “My boots get that way after I’ve spent some time walking in brackish water.” He scooped up a slice of pizza in one hand and took a bite. Whatever squeamishness he’d had was thankfully gone.

  “Brackish?” she asked.

  “Mix of salt water and fresh water. Usually a bay where a river meets the ocean or the gulf.”

  “If the boots are Jack’s,” Tully said, “it could mean he lives someplace close to the ocean or the gulf.”

  “Are we sure they’re not Ethan’s?”

  “They’re not Ethan’s,” Tully assured her. “His feet are still in his sneakers. They’re just not attached to his legs.”

  “So Jack spends a good deal of his time in a coastal area. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

  “Creed showed me the map you two were looking over.”

  Maggie almost choked on a bite of pizza. Her eyes darted to Creed and she hated that a flush was already spreading to her face. Tully, however, didn’t notice any of this. He was busy searching his pockets for a piece of paper and finally settled on a napkin, his second favorite thing to write on. He pulled out a pen, and Maggie, searching to get her mind on anything other than Creed and what had happened back at the hotel, pointed at Tully’s pen. This thing was fancy. Nothing like the cheap throwaway pens Tully usually had in his pocket.

  “Whoa, where did you get that?”

  “Gwen gave it to me for our anniversary.”

  “You guys have anniversaries that you celebrate?”

  He ignored her jab, pointed the pen in her direction, and smiled as a blue light-beam shot her in the face.

  “That’s not all,” he said and twisted the pen until it came apart. He spilled out the contents hidden in the top section of the pen. Two X-Acto blades and a two-inch-long serrated blade. He turned the other section to show the now exposed stainless-steel screwdriver.