by Whitley Gray
“I don’t have any of that.” Rhys sounded apologetic. “But there may be something.”
“What?” Beck frowned.
“There are extenuating circumstances. I have to talk to…someone.”
“If you need clearance to discuss it with me, I’m happy to speak with your boss.” Zach halted in front of Beck.
Rhys sniffed. “It’s not an issue with me or the DA’s office. I’ll call you back.”
“Ms. Nementhal—”
“I’ll call you back.” She clicked off.
“What the hell is going on?” Beck massaged the back of his neck. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”
“No idea. As near as I could tell, this girl was asocial and introverted. A complete homebody. She dies, and suddenly there’s all this secrecy.”
Wide-eyed, Beck said in mock seriousness, “You don’t think she was a spy, do you?”
“Now why didn’t I think of that?” Zach grinned and made another lap around the table. Could this mama’s girl have gone rogue and gotten herself into trouble?
Beck put his fingertips together. “Sometimes the quiet ones are the wildest.”
“And you know this how? Devious undercover behavior?”
“Devious under-the-covers behavior.” This time a wink accompanied the grin.
Zach hitched a hip on the table in front of him. “When I get you home…”
“Promises, promises. I—”
Bzzz…
Zach snatched the phone. Blocked number? It better not be a telemarketer. “Littman.”
“Hello, Dr. Littman.” Rhys sounded out of breath. “Can you tell me if your Jane Doe has a scar on her back?”
Does she? Zach couldn’t recall whether there had been one noted on JD 114’s autopsy protocol. “I have the file. Can you hang on a minute?”
“Sure.”
Zach found the report on the laptop. Under external exam, posterior. “Oblique scar on right flank.”
“Okay. You’ll need a warrant, but my boss has approved me telling you this: Vicki Hightower may have donated an organ to someone through a large health-care system in Denver.”
Zach shot a glance at Beck. “Are you telling me there’s tissue for DNA?”
“I’m telling you to get a warrant for records from the biggest health system in town. Detective Stryker will know the one. Understand?”
“Yes,” Beck said crisply. “Understood.”
“Very good. I wish you luck.” She disconnected.
“Denver Health,” Beck said. “They serve twenty-five percent of the metro area. Is…she talking about donating a kidney?”
“I believe so. Likely to one of her parents before her abduction.”
“Would they have tissue this long after the fact?” Beck didn’t sound convinced.
“They might.”
* * * *
It was almost too easy. Initially the federal judge was suspicious about the reason for DNA, but ultimately signed Zach’s affidavit for the tissue samples of one Vicki Hightower, a deceased crime victim who had no next of kin. Denver Health’s attorney met with Beck and Zach at the hospital lab, and Zach signed for the tissue cassettes. Anticlimactic, considering everything else he’d done to identify the girl.
Zach turned the material over to the FBI lab. Working with Jane Doe 114’s DNA profile from the National DNA Index the past October, the lab was able to confirm a match.
Jane Doe 114 was definitely Vicki Hightower.
* * * *
“What’s going on with the case?” Sands’s voice filled Zach’s ear with all the tenderness of a drill sergeant with a migraine.
Ah, checking in. Such a pleasure.
“Mostly dead ends.” Zach paced around the empty conference room. “This guy profiles as intelligent, organized, and cautious. No victim type.”
“Were you able to get the medical records on your Jane Doe?”
“I did, sir. With rapid DNA, we’ve confirmed she is Vicki Hightower.”
“Darling’s intended number six. I remember. Goddamn it. How did that happen?”
An excellent question. “The Follower managed to suss her out.”
“The Follower kills Hightower, thereby completing Darling’s series. He then leaves her at Perny’s dump site—the guy who happened to be a student attorney for Darling. Three connected serial killers. It’s bizarre.”
“Yes, sir. It’s…unique.”
“Help me understand, Littman. Darling is in Supermax. How in the hell could he direct anyone?”
“We don’t know. It appears Darling may somehow have ordered the Follower to kill Hightower. Then later, the Follower killed Perny and labeled him ‘one.’”
“He killed Hightower for Darling, then moved on to his own, which he numbers.”
“Correct.”
“Suspects?”
“To date, each suspect has been cleared.”
“You should have a handle on him by now, Littman.” The irritation in the tone was all about Unacceptable Result.
Profiling didn’t guarantee suspects or arrests. It was an art, not a science—no matter how much Sands wanted a high clearance rate. “Working on it, sir.”
“Quantico has asked me to talk to you.” Sands’s tone did an about-face, now perfectly civilized.
Talk about taking a conversational turn. “Quantico, sir?”
“Ruskin is going to require extended leave. I imagine you’d anticipated that.”
“I thought it likely.” Here it comes. He’s going to try to rope me in. “Quantico is offering you an ASAC position here.”
Zach screeched to a halt. Assistant special agent in charge? A promotion? He dropped into a chair. “In Minneapolis?”
“Yes. It’s your leg up to take over my job someday.”
It would still require extensive travel. More money but essentially the same job. It was too damn bad there was no BSU in Colorado.
“It’s a wonderful offer—”
“Don’t answer now. Think about it. We can discuss it further when you return.”
But I’m quitting. Instead Zach heard himself say, “Okay, then.”
“Think it over, Littman. ASAC positions don’t come along every day.”
“I will. Absolutely. Thank you for the excellent opportunity.”
“And find that motherfucking Follower, Littman.”
“Will do, sir.”
* * * *
Weak-kneed, Beck leaned against the corridor wall. He hadn’t meant to listen. With the best of intentions, he’d started to back away from the conference room entrance, but the words hooked him. An offer? An opportunity? Minneapolis? Okay? Okay? Beck swallowed. Zach wasn’t staying. He had a better offer in Minneapolis. No wonder he hadn’t unpacked the boxes; he’d be shipping them back soon. Was this a bid to resume a long-distance relationship, or was this bidding good-bye?
Fuck. Beck was going to get his heart broken, and this time it was going to hurt like a mother. No lover to come home to, no cozy household, no permanency. No family, and no fucking white picket fence.
How could Zach do this to them? Didn’t this relationship mean more than an FBI opportunity?
Didn’t Beck mean more than what the FBI had on offer?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Let me see if I’ve got this right, Beck.” Hogan’s voice spilled out of the speakerphone, a little gruff and a lot skeptical. “My Jane Doe is definitely Vicki Hightower, who got away from notorious serial killer Xavier Darling a few years back. She then fell off the map. After all that, a new killer—the Follower—somehow manages to find her and take her out, apparently acting for Darling, completing his sixth kill. Therefore, Darling may know the Follower’s identity.”
“That’s the theory.” Beck was tired. It was after five; they’d been up since three thirty due to the attack on Van—had that really been just fourteen hours ago? It seemed like days.
Darling might know who the Follower was—not that the asshole would give them anything u
seful. Darling would enjoy watching the massacre unfold. The whole thing sounded like a movie plot: intrigue, a survivor who faded from sight, murder, ID via tissue from an old organ donation. Truth was stranger than fiction. Sometimes it was downright bizarre.
The task-force-room clock ticked off the seconds. Hogan’s silence reeked of cynicism. “You realize this sounds like a bunch of hogwash.”
Hogwash? Beck exchanged looks with Zach, who nodded. “I know it sounds far-fetched.”
“Sounds more fairy tale than far-fetched.” The tone had mellowed into resigned. “How could this guy find a woman who disappeared? After Unger ID’d her, you couldn’t find her. That’s what’s throwing me.”
“She must’ve kept her head down.” Beck made a fist under the table. “Short of witness security, she did a good job.”
“We have a name. That’s it. No friends, family, or potential witnesses.”
Well, hell. It made the effort put into solving the identity sound like a colossal waste of time. “We have a probable connection to Darling. That’s new, and that’s significant.”
“He’s locked up in Supermax, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How could he control an underling from there?”
Beck had the same question. “We’re looking into it. Perny saw Darling on a couple of attorney’s visits. He could have smuggled material out of the prison.”
“You’re saying Perny sneaked instructions out and gave them to the Follower. Part of that included a directive to kill Perny himself and leave him at the Omaha dump site.”
With a sympathetic look, Zach jumped in. “It’s possible.”
“Perny delivered his own death warrant?” Doubt colored Hogan’s words. “Perny was a smart guy. Doesn’t make sense he’d trust Darling farther than he could throw him.”
Beck tended to agree. “The other options for getting instructions out of the prison are his official attorney or a guard. We’ve considered he could have had a courier of some sort sneak out materials while he was still housed at the Colorado State prison, but because of his issues that’s unlikely. Darling was ‘no contact’ except for those few people.”
“His issues?” Hogan asked.
Zach leaned toward the speakerphone. “For safety reasons, contact at CSP was kept to a minimum. I can’t see the guards befriending Darling. He’s a lot of things, but a trustworthy inmate isn’t one of them. The attorney of record is Edward Day. He’s a bigwig, and I don’t believe he’d risk disbarment to help Darling. The situation at Supermax is even more restrictive.”
Hogan remained quiet for so long Beck wondered if they’d lost the connection. “Where does that leave us, Beck?”
“Good question, Detective. Good question.”
* * * *
After Hogan signed off, Beck scrubbed his face with his hands. “He’s right. Knowing that ID doesn’t help.”
This was the way serial cases went: one stutter step straight ahead, one shuffle back. Zach went to a clean dry-erase board and made two vertical lines. “This is the tale of three serial killers.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.” At the top of the first column, Zach wrote Darling. “He killed five. The Follower killed one for him, and Xav is now at an even half dozen by proxy.” Under the name, he drew a 5, added a 1 in parentheses, and then an = 6.
The far right column he labeled Perny. “The Crossroads Killer killed seven. Six were in Omaha and a seventh in rural Nebraska.” Zach added a 7.
The middle column he entitled the Follower. Beneath the heading Zach wrote Hightower and drew a line to the (1) under the Darling heading. In the Follower column, beneath Hightower, Zach added Unger enclosed in parentheses.
“Why the parentheses?”
“I think you’re right that Annika doesn’t fit with the others. Someone—maybe the Follower—wants us to think she’s Perny’s, but she doesn’t fit.”
“What about the missing finger?”
“You don’t have to kill someone to take a digit.” At Beck’s expression of horror, Zach added, “I mean someone could have run across the corpse and harvested the pinkie.”
Beck gave him a skeptical look. “What are the chances of running across a body and doing that?”
“I don’t have stats, but I can tell you a significant number of bodies are discovered by passersby, hikers, and hunters.” Zach tossed the marker from one hand to the other. “Annika’s body was found that way, right?”
“More or less.”
“What do you mean, ‘more or less’?”
“A hiker brought in a humerus. Then later, a retiree out walking his dog said his mutt retrieved a second bone, which turned out to be a tibia. We combed the area and found nothing. I made a file but figured it was going nowhere.” Beck leaned his forearms on his thighs. “Then Van caught a case—an incomplete skeleton. The ME made the connection between my bones and Van’s skeleton, and SJ combined the cases. Then Van saw your flyer about Perny victims, and you know how it went from there.”
Zach sat down. “Two separate retrievals of individual bones. How far from the skeleton were the single bones?”
Beck narrowed his eyes. “The humerus was a mile away, maybe? On a hiking trail. It’s fairly wooded up there. The dog retrieval was near a dirt road. I’d estimate it was close to a mile from the remains.”
“Who turned in the bones?”
“I’d have to look at the file for their names. I interviewed each man when he brought in the find. Neither one said anything to suggest they were involved. I had each guy walk me around in the area where they found the bones. Pretty low-key, no obvious anxiety. It played like natural curiosity—not like trying to insinuate themselves into the investigation.”
Maybe not directly, anyway. “Either one call back to see what was going on?”
“If they did, they didn’t talk to me. What are you saying here, Zach? That one of these guys is the Follower?”
“No, but I think we need to know if anyone directed your two bone finders toward those areas, anticipating they’d find the bones and then Annika.”
“Wouldn’t the Follower just send GPS coordinates?”
“Not if it’s someone else’s kill.”
* * * *
Reinterviewing Firth, the student who had located the humerus, turned out to be informative. He’d been hiking alone on his way up the trail when he’d encountered another hiker coming down. At the time, Firth hadn’t thought much about it, but now he realized the other hiker would have had to pass the bone on the descent. It was so obvious Firth had nearly tripped over it. The only description he could provide about the other hiker was “medium”: medium height, medium weight, medium-brown hair. Expensive hiking boots—medium brown.
So the Follower was…medium. Still, it was something. Beck was ready to call it a day and go home—to a houseful of boxes that he didn’t want to think about.
* * * *
Heavy clouds had arrived with the evening, stealing the light. Rain spattered the windshield. Zach watched downtown pass by, deepening gloom in the stormy dusk.
“The Follower planted the bone,” Zach said. “It’s what we need to link him with Annika.”
Beck scowled. “Getting home before the weather gets serious is what we need. Those clouds are black as hell.”
It wasn’t bad yet, but Denver had a severe-thunderstorm warning in effect: high winds and damaging hail expected.
Despite the wind rocking the car, Zach grinned. The interview with the hiker had left him energized, and he’d wanted to leave his car at the precinct so he and Beck could have extra time to talk potential investigative strategies during the commute.
Beck hadn’t exactly radiated enthusiasm for that plan; he’d seemed distracted as they headed for the parking garage. In the end, he agreed to discuss the case—but only while driving. Beck’s one condition was that the discourse stopped when the car hit their driveway at home.
Zach said, “I’d bet the fa
rm he planted the one the dog found too.”
Beck peered down the street. “Could be animal scatter. Random.”
“True.” Zach considered it to be anything but random. Silence fell between them. The sprinkle became fat drops falling fast. Ahead, the blacktop looked like an oil slick. Beck cranked the wiper speed and rolled to a halt at a traffic signal. The red light rippled in the rain, a beacon in the murk. Beck stared into the storm.
After a moment, Zach studied Beck’s finely chiseled profile, the mouth that could go from severe to sexy, the firm jawline with a brush of five o’clock shadow.
The light turned green. Beck asked, “You think he’s a Darling freak?”
“I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘freak.’”
“An outdoorsman? A survivalist? Who else buys expensive hiking boots?”
“Maybe he gets something from wearing the boots.” Zach hadn’t determined what that something might be.
Beck slowed for the on-ramp to I-25. “Could be he just likes hiking.”
“Did you go camping as a kid?”
“No.” Beck grimaced. “Not even a marshmallow roast. You?”
“My grandparents lived out in the country. We’d set up a tent in the yard and have a campfire and tell ghost stories with the other kids in the area. Scared ourselves silly.”
The rain slowed. The storm slackened, holding its breath.
This isn’t so bad—
With a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder, the heavens broke open. Hail dumped on the windshield, dwarfing the efforts of the wipers. The metallic pings sounded like ricocheting bullets.
“Here we go. A Rocky Mountain hurricane.” Beck glanced in the rearview mirror.
Hurricane? “No tornados in Denver proper, right?”
“It’s rare. Damn. Should’ve taken the surface roads.”
More time to talk. “Do you think there’s some sort of Denver hiking club?”
“Don’t know.”
“Might help with a suspect list.”
“Mmm.” Eyes on the traffic, Beck seemed miles away.
“I may have other questions for the hiker tomorrow. A phone interview ought to be adequate for that.”
Beck grunted, presumably in assent. The hail piled up in drifts like snow as the storm gathered strength. Highway traffic was at a standstill.
