Stacey immediately rose to face him. “You and Winnie might want to sit down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do in my own house, young woman.”
Dean stiffened, already disliking the man intensely.
Ignoring him, Stacey turned to Lisa’s mother, putting a hand on her shoulder and taking her arm. She gently pulled her forward and helped her down into a chair, then sat directly in front of her. Bent at the waist, with her elbows on her knees, she took Mrs. Freed’s hands in her own. “It’s about Lisa.”
The other woman sniffed, staring at her own lap. Before Stacey said another word, a drop of moisture dripped out of the woman’s eye, slid down her cheek, and landed on the women’s joined hands.
“I’m very sorry to tell you this, Winnie, but we have evidence that Lisa is dead.”
The older woman’s shoulders shook, and the single teardrop was joined by another. And another. But her grief remained silent, pent-up.
“We believe she died a long time ago, probably the same night she disappeared.”
“Well, that’s a fine job you’ve done as sheriff, then, isn’t it?” Stan Freed muttered. He remained stiff and scowling, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the scene as if it didn’t affect him. As if he hadn’t just learned that his stepdaughter, his wife’s only child, was dead.
Dean felt heat rise from low in his body up into his head until his pulse throbbed in his temple. He struggled to keep a lid on it, to not let anger drive him, to avoid giving his temper free rein by saying what he really wanted to say to the man.
Stacey remained remarkably calm, ignoring the husband, focused only on the wife. “I wish this had turned out differently. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
A long shudder racked the woman’s body; her chin jerked; her thin shoulders banged into the back of her chair. She managed to bite out one strangled word: “How?”
Stacey glanced up for a brief moment, meeting Dean’s eye. He offered her what silent assistance he could, knowing she’d be careful in what she revealed.
“It appears she was murdered, Winnie.”
The woman moaned, then tilted her head back, looking at the ceiling. A low, keening wail began to fill the room.
“Knew that girl would get herself killed one day,” Stan muttered under his breath.
Stacey finally put her attention squarely back on the man, leveling him with a glare so heated it was a wonder he didn’t singe.
As if just realizing the hateful words had actually left his mouth, he flushed a little. Then the mean-spirited husband reacted in a somewhat normal way, finally stepping over and putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder and squeezing it. Hard.
Dean frowned. Freed’s hand went white as he squeezed. Temper. He doesn’t like to be challenged.
“Mr. Freed?” he said, no longer able to remain out of this strange situation, not when he suddenly realized just how cold and detached Lisa’s stepfather appeared about her murder. As if he wasn’t surprised. As if he didn’t give a damn. And that harsh hand on his wife’s shoulder seemed more threatening than comforting. “Why don’t you and I go talk in the other room?”
Mrs. Freed’s hand came up and she covered her husband’s, clawing at it frantically, not letting him go, even though his grip appeared punishing. “Please…”
“I’m not leavin’,” he said to both of them.
Dean nodded in concession, but also held the man’s eye, making sure he knew they would be having a conversation sooner or later. Because Dean was suddenly very curious about Lisa Zimmerman’s stepfather. How they got along. Whether the man had a history of violence. If he’d ever been arrested. Whether he was really going to work at night, as his wife had said he was.
And suddenly, remembering what Wyatt had told him earlier, he found himself wondering if Stan Freed really had been asleep downstairs in his office.
Or if he’d been online.
Mrs. Freed swiped her arm across her eyes. “Who did it?”
“We don’t know yet,” Stacey said. “But we’ll find him. I promise you. We’re working on it; the FBI is working on it; he won’t get away with it.”
The woman shook her head, hard, as if to wake herself from a dream. The low wailing continued, whimpers bubbling up in her throat and falling out of her mouth like helpless coughs. “When can I see her?”
Stacey glanced at Dean again, wariness visible in the tense lines of her face. She’d worried about this moment; she’d admitted that last night. Knowing from experience that some people simply would not accept a loved one’s death without seeing the visible proof, Dean understood completely. Though, in his mind, it was unfathomable to think of a parent witnessing the remains of a child who had been dead for a year and a half.
In this instance, it was almost a blessing that Lisa had not yet been found.
“Mrs. Freed,” he murmured, taking the situation out of Stacey’s hands, “while we are sure that Lisa was killed, we have not yet located her remains.”
The woman’s head jerked as if she’d been slapped. So did her husband’s. They both gawked at him. “Well, how do you know she’s dead?”
“Ma’am, we have irrefutable proof.”
“Maybe it’s not her; maybe she’s not-”
Stacey cut her off. “I saw the proof, Winnie. It’s her.”
“I want to see this proof.”
“No,” Stacey said. “I identified her myself; there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind, and I’ve known her since she was a baby.”
The woman stared, saying nothing.
Leaning close, still holding those tired, trembling hands, Stacey lowered her voice, sounding like a parent comforting a child. “Please do yourself a kindness. Remember your daughter by those photographs in the living room, and mourn the child you raised. I know you have lots of wonderful memories. She was a happy little girl and she loved you very much. Let that be enough. I’m begging you.”
Stan cleared his throat, obviously reading between the lines how graphic their proof must be. For the first moment since they’d arrived, Dean saw a hint of humanity in the man’s hard-eyed stare. His shoulders slumped, and he cleared his throat and mustered a concerned tone. “Sheriff’s right, Win. You shouldn’t be cuttin’ yourself up like that.”
Human tenderness? Or guilt?
Whimpering, Mrs. Freed gave it one more effort. “But what if they’re wrong?”
Dean met Stan’s eye, shook his head once, expressing every bit of confidence that they weren’t.
“They’re not wrong. And you’re not looking at that proof, Winifred, so get it outta your head.” Stan slid his hand across his wife’s shoulders, tugging her hard against his side to underscore his command. She flinched, then allowed it.
That flinch said more than a million words Winnie Freed might have uttered.
If this scumbag hadn’t beaten his wife at least once a week since he’d married her, Dean would give up his badge. Nearly choking on the disgust of it, he had to turn away and stare out the window, noting the decrepit, rusting swing set rising like an ancient ruin from the scraggly, knee-high grass.
Poor Lisa. No safe, happy playgrounds for her. Not for a very long time.
“I promise you, we’ll catch whoever did this,” Stacey added. “And God willing, we’ll find her remains soon so you can bury her.”
The victim’s mother must have heard the resolved certainty in Stacey’s tone. That word bury seemed to sink in like nothing else had. The finality of it. The harshness of it. Because she stopped moaning, stopped shaking, stopped hoping.
As he entered Brandon and Lily’s joint office Saturday afternoon, Wyatt felt the frustration thick in the air. It was evident in their frowns, the tension of their bodies, the angry jabs of their fingertips on two computer keyboards.
His two IT specialists had been working since just after dawn, trying to keep up with the sick inhabitants of Satan’s Playground. Especially one sick inhabitant. But the site kept throwing up barricades, stumbli
ng blocks that its “legitimate” users obviously knew how to get around. Unwelcome visitors, however, didn’t find it as easy. Even visitors as brilliant as Brandon Cole.
“Have you found anything else?” he asked. He hadn’t checked in since noon, not wanting to pressure the two, who’d put in hours just as long as his own since this Reaper case had started.
“He’s gone. He put up that sign, let the crowd worship him, then disappeared.” Brandon sprawled back in his chair and shook his head. The young man scowled at the monitor in disgust, watching the sick acts taking place all over it. “He crawled back into his hole and hasn’t come out again, though I can tell by the users list that he’s online, watching. Just not participating.”
Or maybe not sitting in front of his computer. But always there, hovering, like some damned malevolent presence.
“Keep trying,” he said.
Lily, he noted, kept her head down, focused only on the long strings of numbers rolling across her computer screen. Her chair was turned, slightly, as if to absolutely ensure she didn’t get a random glance at anything happening on Brandon ’s monitor. Something had hit her hard this morning; he had the feeling it was witnessing the actions of one cartoonishly frightening predator in the Playground, who’d made a great show of taking young children into his gated mansion.
He knew enough about her to know that she wouldn’t let herself be distracted from the job. He also knew that if she had the chance, she’d do whatever she could to bring down the pedophile.
Now, though, her thoughts went in only one direction: toward the Reaper. But the frown of concentration and the curl of disappointment on her mouth said she wasn’t having any better luck with the financial tangle than Cole was with the site itself.
“I’ve been making calls, keeping an eye on all missing persons cases,” Wyatt said. “Nothing new has come in, not yet, anyway.”
“Meaning he hasn’t grabbed his victim?” Lily asked, appearing, for the moment, hopeful. “He usually gives himself seventy-two hours, right?”
True. But Wyatt wasn’t sure he agreed with her. They’d already lost a full day. And they knew their unsub was very careful. He’d allow himself plenty of time to commit his crime, record it, then go over every millisecond of that recording to ensure he didn’t leave anything that might hint at his identity.
He didn’t want to admit it, but Wyatt suspected there was a better than fifty percent chance they were already too late. Just because no young woman had been reported missing in any nearby state didn’t mean one hadn’t already been removed from her life with surgical precision. There could be any number of reasons for a delay in a report-a victim living alone, one who was known to travel. All kinds of possibilities.
“I mean, he’d have to find someone first, right?” Lily said, her usual optimism not allowing her to give up on the idea. “The conditions would have to be just right; he can’t simply snatch a woman the moment the auction is over.”
“Unless he’s had one under surveillance and knows exactly who he’s going to grab each time,” Brandon said. No optimism there. He was thinking along the same lines as Wyatt. “He might have a whole list of possibilities that he keeps tabs on, knowing how and when to make his move, given the location and time of day.”
Wyatt revealed something he’d just discovered when scouring through every word of the case files. “One of the victims told a friend she’d seen a strange-looking guy in a long black coat watching her a few weeks before she was snatched. The friend didn’t think too much of it, until after the victim’s body had been found.”
“Oh, God,” Lily murmured, a stricken look appearing on her face.
“He wouldn’t leave anything to chance,” Wyatt explained, gentling his tone. “In every previous case, he’s known exactly where and when to strike to minimize the possibility of witnesses. In one case, he shot out surveillance cameras. He doesn’t leave anything-like waiting to choose his prey-until the last minute. I don’t think the unsub would have scheduled the auction if he didn’t have his eye on his next victim.”
The two computer experts remained momentarily silent, acknowledging what he was saying. Then both, as if sharing the same mind, spun in their chairs and went back to work, more determined than ever to find something they could use to stop the nightmare.
Stacey and Dean spent much of the morning in the stifling little house on State Street. They told Lisa’s mother what they could, offering few details, but a lot of comfort and promises of justice.
And they asked questions.
These people knew Lisa the best. If there was a personal connection between her and her killer, here was the best place to start trying to find it. They needed to learn everything they could about the men she’d dated, those she’d fought with, anything that might have been a motive for murder.
So far, they’d learned nothing Stacey hadn’t already known about the young woman.
“I don’t know who her boyfriends were,” Winnie said, probably for the tenth time. “She was a popular girl; she was so pretty. Nobody would want to hurt her.”
Stacey didn’t quite accept prettiness as the reason for Lisa’s popularity. And she knew plenty of people who had reason to dislike the young woman. But she let it go.
Across the kitchen, Stan mumbled something, apparently in response to his wife’s statement. It wasn’t the first time he’d had an under-the-breath comment. So far, nearly all his answers had held a note of belligerence, and more than once he’d made a disparaging remark about his stepdaughter. Prick.
Seeing the way the cowed woman’s eyes constantly shifted toward her husband before she answered anything, Stacey finally had enough. “Winnie, why don’t you and I go into Lisa’s room to talk, while Special Agent Taggert gets a few details from Stan.”
Her husband immediately began to object. Winnie, though, leaped from her chair. “Yes, yes. Her room. It’s exactly the way she left it.”
“Win…” Stan said, his voice holding a note of warning.
“Mr. Freed, if you wouldn’t mind,” Dean said, smoothly distracting the man by stepping between him and his wife. “I really would like to talk to you.”
The older man frowned. “I need to go shower and get ready for work.”
Work. Hours after being informed of his stepdaughter’s murder. That really ought to go on his husband-of-the-year application.
“I’m sure they’ll understand if you’re late, given the circumstances,” Dean said, somehow managing to disguise the disgust she suspected he felt. His quick, unguarded glance in her direction confirmed it.
“I’d appreciate more information about how your stepdaughter got the keys to your car. You said she borrowed it without permission?”
Mr. Freed was well and truly distracted. “More like stole it,” he spat. “And that’s a company car; I don’t own it, and if she had gone out and wrecked it, I could have been fired. After all I did for her, she didn’t even care that we could end up on the streets.”
To Stacey’s knowledge, the house belonged to Winnie. She’d certainly lived here before her first husband had died, and had come into some kind of insurance settlement after that drunk driver had killed him. Where that money might have gone was anyone’s guess.
“All right, then,” Dean said, “let’s go discuss it.”
“Fine. Do you want to go outside and look at the car?”
“That’s an excellent idea.”
Stacey blessed the distraction. Stan had seemed reluctant to get out of earshot from his wife, almost as if he feared what she might say. Now, he seemed focused only on sharing his grievances about his stupid car.
She suddenly wondered if Stan’s employer provided other vehicles for their tech guys. Like pickup trucks… It was worth checking out.
“Come on,” Winnie said, only a small furrow of her brow revealing what she thought of her husband’s actions. Stacey suspected she’d gotten quite adept at hiding her feelings. And her pain.
Following Winni
e down the back hallway, Stacey steeled herself for whatever they might find in Lisa’s bedroom. She had no doubt Lisa had been doing drugs and hated the idea of finding paraphernalia in front of her heartsick mother. But when Winnie pushed the door open with a creak, and she stepped inside the immaculately clean room, she sucked in a shocked breath.
Because it wasn’t just in the same condition it had been in on the day Lisa had disappeared. It was the same as it had been when she was a child.
The twin-size bed was made with a frilly pink cover and a profusion of lacy pillows. Wide-eyed, pink-lipped dolls sat on a white wicker rocking chair in the corner. A bookshelf laden with childhood titles stood beside a small dresser sized for a young child’s hands to open. Framed prints of butterflies and puppies hung on every wall.
Stacey’s breath caught in her throat; she could neither inhale nor exhale. She could only stare as the awfulness of it washed over her.
It was as if Lisa had stopped growing-stopped aging-at around the age of twelve.
The only concessions that an adult woman had lived here were the closet, which contained jeans and sheer blouses, spike-heeled boots, and carelessly tossed lingerie. And the faint, lingering scent of cloying perfume emanating from the bottles on the dresser.
“Neat as a pin, my Lisa was,” Winnie mumbled. She stood in the middle of the room, unwrapping her arms from around her body only long enough to gently smooth the soft, fluffy bedspread. A half laugh, half sob burst from her throat. “Except for her closet. Never could get her to keep that closet clean. I think she liked it cluttered and dark because she’d go in there and play cave explorer. I’d find her in there all the time when I’d get home from work, even when she was a teenager.”
Hiding in the closet. God in heaven, was it really possible this woman had had no idea what was happening in her own house, to her own daughter?
Stacey found it hard to speak, but somehow managed to ask, “Did Lisa say anything to you, before she died, about anyone who might have threatened her? Or frightened her?”
And would you have heard her if she did?
Fade To Black Page 14
