The 9th Girl

by Tami Hoag

  “I can’t have you question my students without parental consent.”

  Kovac stepped over to the credenza and gave the globe there a lazy spin. Rodgers put a hand on it to stop it.

  “Please don’t touch my things, Detective.”

  “Sorry.”

  Kovac went around the front of the desk and plucked up a family photograph in a silver frame. “Do you have kids, Mr. Rodgers?”

  Rodgers leaned across the desk and pulled the picture away from him. “I have a niece and a nephew,” he said, rubbing at Kovac’s fingerprints with a small cloth meant for cleaning eyeglasses.

  “I think you would feel differently if one of them were missing,” Kovac said.

  “That would be different,” Rodgers said. “That would be strictly a personal reaction. I can’t do that here. I have a job to do. I have an obligation to my students and to their parents.”

  “Penny Gray is your student too,” Liska said. “Do you have any concern for her, for her family?”

  Rodgers gave her a look like she was a turd on his rug. “Of course I do. I won’t have you question my dedication to these young people, Mrs. Liska.”

  “Really? Tell me about Penelope Gray, then,” she challenged. “Who are her friends? Who are her enemies? Does she have a boyfriend? What are her interests? Does she have a teacher or an upperclassman mentoring her? Was she having difficulties with anyone in the days before the holiday vacation started?”

  “I have over five hundred students here,” he said defensively. “You can’t expect me to know all the small details of their personal lives.”

  “No, but so far you don’t seem to know any details of her life,” Kovac said. “Do you even know what this girl looks like, Mr. Rodgers?”

  “She has dark hair and recently shaved part of it off,” he said. “She has multiple piercings—which are against our appearance code here at PSI.”

  “You know how she annoys you,” Liska said. “You know how she doesn’t fit your profile of the perfect PSI student.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “I would say so.”

  “It’s unfair to me,” Rodgers specified. “Miss Gray works at standing out in a negative way. If she was an outstanding student or an outstanding leader, those would be the things I would remember her for.”

  “If she was like Christina Warner, for instance,” Kovac suggested.

  “Christina is an exemplary student.”

  “We understand the two girls didn’t get along.”

  “Christina’s father brought that to my attention,” Rodgers said. “Penelope is jealous of Christina and resentful of Dr. Warner’s relationship with her mother. He wanted me to be aware of the situation and take it into account if Miss Gray began exhibiting disruptive behavior.”

  “Did she?” Kovac asked.

  “Nothing over and above the average for Miss Gray.”

  “I’ve been told that a particular clique of kids bullied Penny Gray,” Liska said. “That they made fun of her poetry and taunted her about the way she looked and about her sexuality.”

  “That seems like an exaggeration,” Rodgers said.

  “But you’re not out in the middle of it, are you?” Kovac said, picking up a fat black Mont Blanc pen from beside the spotless blotter. “Something you see from a distance as ‘kids will be kids,’ the kids might see something else entirely. We need to talk to them.”

  Rodgers stared at the pen as Kovac twirled it around his fingers, visibly fighting the urge to grab it away from him.

  “I can’t make promises, but I’ll try to arrange something for this afternoon. There’s a protocol to be observed here, Detective,” Rodgers said. “I have to contact the parents and consult them. I would recommend they be present at any kind of questioning. They may want to consult their attorneys—”

  “And while all this protocol is going on, Penny Gray is missing and possibly in the hands of a madman,” Liska said.

  She didn’t believe that. She believed the girl was dead in the morgue, but she wanted Rodgers to think otherwise. She wanted to make him feel guilty and responsible.

  “I think Julia Gray will take a very different view of your stalling tactics, Mr. Rodgers,” she said. “Her daughter is missing. You should probably think about her consulting her attorney. If this was my son missing, I would be on the air with every TV station in the metro area, calling you out. How would that look for PSI?”

  “My hands are tied, Mrs. Liska,” Rodgers said primly. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve contacted the parents.”

  Kovac set the pen back down on the desk, just far enough out of the principal’s reach that he had to lean across the desk to retrieve it and put it back just so beside the blotter.

  “Frankly,” Rodgers said, looking at Liska, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be one of the people questioning these children, considering the situation with your son.”

  “What situation is that?” Liska asked.

  “Your son is involved with Miss Gray.”

  “They know each other. I don’t consider that a situation.”

  “And there’s this latest outrage concerning the other students on your list.” He glanced at Kovac, pausing for drama.

  “What outrage?” Liska asked.

  Rodgers heaved a put-upon sigh. “I was going to call you this morning.”

  “Well, I’m here. So let’s do this now.”

  Rodgers glanced at Kovac again.

  “It’s okay,” Kovac said. “I’m her father. It’s all in the family.”

  Rodgers pursed his lips in disapproval. He picked up his smart phone from its charging stand. “This was brought to my attention first thing this morning by Aaron Fogelman’s father.”

  He punched some buttons and brought up a picture, then thrust the phone at Liska. “This was posted on Twitter last night. I don’t know who posted it, but there’s no doubt in my mind who did the artwork.”

  She looked at the picture and felt a flush of heat rush through her. It was Kyle’s drawing of the three Ultors, the one that had been ruined by the kids he didn’t get along with. The heads of the Ultors had been changed out for caricatures. One she recognized instantly as Aaron Fogelman, grinning like a fool as he fondled himself.

  “Are you going to deny your son did that?” Rodgers said.

  “You’re going to assume that he did,” she countered.

  There was no question that it was Kyle’s work. Still, she was going to defend him against this jerk. The Fighting Liska/Hatcher Family motto: Go down swinging.

  “That’s not Kyle’s Twitter account,” she said.

  “Mrs. Liska—”

  “Sergeant Liska.”

  “I find this drawing very disturbing,” Rodgers said. “I don’t know anything about Twitter, but I believe your son made this drawing. I’m suspending him for the remainder of the week, at least. I’ve already spoken to him. He’s in the conference room across the hall waiting for you.”

  Anger and frustration flooded through her. Anger and frustration with Rodgers. Anger and frustration with her son. The pressure of it roared in her ears until she couldn’t hear.

  Kovac stepped between her and the principal and gently moved her backward toward the door.

  “Take the car,” he murmured, pressing the keys at her. “Take Kyle and go home. Ground him or beat him or chain him in the basement. I don’t care which. I need you downtown.”

  She took the keys and left the room, feeling embarrassed and helpless and exhausted. To her horror, tears burned her eyes. She felt like a failure on multiple levels.

  As she walked into the conference room Kyle looked up at her from the far side of the table. She thought his expression was probably a mirror of her own. He was upset and angry and fighting tears.

  “Get your things,” she said. “We’re going home, where you will be grounded for the rest of your life.”

  25

  Kasselmann was the king of the press statement.
He had the perfect look: as solid as a bull, as serious as a heart attack, handsomely groomed. He had the perfect authoritative voice. He was articulate and concise.

  Kovac watched the live news feed on the television in the conference room. He had no desire to be questioned by the media. Reporters asked stupid questions, and they asked them over and over. He was more than happy to let Kasselmann take that spotlight.

  Julia Gray stood beside the captain, looking stunned. She was as pale as a ghost, and the bruise on her cheek stood out despite her efforts to hide it with a clever hairstyle. When it was her turn to make her appeal for the return of her daughter, it seemed for an uncomfortable moment that she wasn’t going to say anything. She looked down at the podium, locked inside her own mind.

  Kovac wondered if the good Dr. Warner had prescribed something for her nerves. Probably—and rightly so. Having dealt with more child abductions and disappearances than he cared to count, Kovac knew the terrible strain it put on the parents. They labored under a heavy burden of anxiety, fear, anger, uncertainty, and guilt. What could they have done to prevent this? Why couldn’t their child have been more careful, less headstrong? What was happening to their kid? Was she or he alive, dead, frightened, in pain?

  Beside him in front of the television, John Quinn stood with his arms crossed and his brow set in concentration as he watched Julia Gray finally rouse herself to make the standard appeal for the return of her daughter or the revelation of any information that might shed light on her disappearance.

  When they made the movie of Quinn’s life, George Clooney would be first in line to play him. He had that look about him—dark hair peppered with distinguished gray, dark eyes, strong jaw. He was the guy other guys wanted to be and the man every woman drooled over. He used those attributes to his advantage when he could but didn’t rely on them to carry him. He had a keen intellect, and he knew his subject as well as or better than anyone else in the business.

  “What happened to her face?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the screen.

  “She says she took a fall on the ice,” Elwood said. “Sprained her wrist too.”

  “What does she do for living?”

  “She’s a rep for a pharmaceutical company.”

  “Where’s the husband?”

  “They’ve been divorced for four years. He’s an odontologist. He remarried a younger woman who worked in his office.”

  “Mom’s in a relationship with a shrink,” Kovac said.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Like a shrink. Dr. Know It All and Let Me Explain It to You Like You’re a Moron. Wears his sweaters tied around his neck,” Kovac added with disdain.

  “I googled him,” Elwood said. “Turns out he’s fairly well-known in the metro area.”

  Kovac scowled. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Because you’re out of touch with the world around you,” Elwood pointed out. “He has a radio show on one of the local AM stations for parents dealing with teenagers. Two hours every Saturday morning. And he does a five-minute guest spot on the channel twelve morning show every Monday.”

  “Oh, great,” Kovac grumbled. “A celebrity in his own mind. I’m liking him more and more.”

  “What’s he like with the mother?” Quinn asked.

  “He tried to be supportive last night,” Elwood said. “He came with her this morning.”

  On-screen, Julia Gray had collapsed against Kasselmann, crying. Kasselmann held her upright and put an end to the press conference with another appeal for anyone with information to contact the department. The news feed cut back to the studio and perky Dana Nolan for a rehash of everything that had just gone on.

  “So, John, you’ve already looked at everything we have on the Doc Holiday cases,” Kovac said, going to the coffee machine and pouring himself a cup of something that looked like used motor oil. “Now you’ve had a chance to look at our Zombie case. What’s your impression?”

  Quinn jammed his hands on his hips and looked at the photos of the body that had been taped to the wall.

  “It depends on where Doc is at in his career,” he said. “Based on the known cases we attribute to him, he’s dumped more bodies in the Twin Cities area than anywhere else—as far as we know. If we count this girl, he’s dumped four bodies here in a year’s time. To me, that says he’s comfortable here, he knows the area. Could be he lives here and he’s getting lazy. Dumping victims in his backyard, so to speak, allows him to easily revisit the spots and relive the fun. But it’s also risky.

  “The other victims dumped here came from outside the state. If Zombie Doe and Penelope Gray are the same girl, then he both grabbed her here and dumped her here. That says he’s getting careless and he’s possibly escalating.”

  He turned and faced them, looking grim.

  “Some of these guys implode at the end of their careers,” he explained. “They start doing things they don’t normally do, varying from the pattern they’ve perfected.

  “The classic example of this was Bundy. After years of following the same pattern, being careful enough to elude capture, to hide his victims’ remains, he went to Florida and went on a spree. In one night he attacked multiple victims in a sorority house, left them to be found instead of getting rid of their bodies, left potential witnesses behind, then went into another house and attacked another woman. A couple of days later he snatched a girl much younger than his usual victim. He was like a shark on a feeding frenzy.”

  “Why do you think that happened?” Elwood asked.

  “We don’t really know why some of these guys self-destruct like that,” Quinn said. “One theory is they build up a sense of invincibility that grows and grows until it crosses a line into mania. Another theory is they start feeling less and less control over their aberrant desires, that this scares them and they want someone to stop them.”

  “Doc seems to enjoy the game too much for a conscience to stop him,” Kovac said.

  “I would agree,” Quinn said. “But you never know. We can never truly get inside the heads of these guys. There were people in my field who believed Bundy took his act to Florida at the end because he knew he stood the greatest chance of being executed if he was caught there. Yet once he was convicted, he did everything in his power to stall and appeal and prevent the state from putting him in the electric chair. He played mind games with law enforcement right up to the end and enjoyed every minute of it.”

  “Doc Holiday could be one of those guys, spiraling out of control,” Elwood said.

  Quinn nodded. “He could be. There are definitely deviations from his usual pattern if this girl is one of his. The acid is something new. The nature of the stab wounds is different. The knife was different, less efficient.”

  “Tippen suggested he could have been playing with the victim, creating more terror over a prolonged time period by using a smaller knife,” Kovac said.

  Quinn considered the idea, raising his brows and tipping his head. “That’s possible. Or it’s not Doc at all, and we’re looking at an inexperienced killer who grabbed a weapon of opportunity, not realizing it wasn’t enough to get the job done easily.

  “It’s just as easy to look at this and say it’s a mess created by an amateur. The knife didn’t get the job done, so your unsub tried to bludgeon her; thought she was dead and poured the acid on her face to obscure her identity, but she was still alive.”

  “Great,” Kovac said. “So it could be Doc, or it could be anybody. Thanks for narrowing that down for us, John.”

  Quinn shrugged. “It’s an inexact science.”

  “Let’s say it is Doc Holiday,” Elwood said. “What would you suggest? Do we press that angle and try to draw him out?”

  “The fact that he leaves his victims to be found says he clearly wants credit for his work,” Quinn said. “I would expect him to keep a scrapbook with a collection of articles about his murders. But he hasn’t tried to contact the authorities or the media up until now, right?”

  “
Nothing,” Kovac said.

  “You’d probably get a rise out of him if you didn’t talk about him, if nobody mentioned him on the news or in the paper, but it’s too late for that.”

  “I had to play that card to get manpower,” Kovac said.

  “Everything’s a trade-off,” Quinn conceded. “You could push the idea that he’s getting sloppy, that you’re closing in on him, that it’s only a matter of time—”

  “But I can’t back it up.”

  “And you might push him into making a grand gesture,” Quinn warned. “You piss this guy off and he could make you pay—by making an innocent victim pay.”

  Kovac picked up the remote and turned Dana Nolan the perky news girl off midsentence.

  “That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

  He grabbed a VHS tape cassette off the stand beside the TV and put it in the VCR.

  “This is the last known sighting of Penelope Gray,” he said, hitting the Play button. “She left the Rock and Bowl at nine twenty-seven P.M. after having words with Christina Warner—the shrink’s daughter—and this is her at the convenience store that’s down the block from the Rock and Bowl a few minutes later. She comes into the store, buys a six-pack of beer with what we can assume is a fake ID.”

  The girl walked toward the door, toward the camera, then stopped and spoke to someone who had to be standing outside the door—and outside the camera range. There was no audio. There was no way of knowing what she was saying or what her tone of voice might have been. There was no way of knowing what the other person was saying to her.

  The girl took a couple of steps backward into the store, turning her head and looking in the direction of the counter, where several people waited in line to pay for purchases. One of the other customers glanced in her direction, disinterested, and turned back. Then Penelope Gray walked out of the store into the night.

  Kovac froze the frame.

  “Is there a camera outside the store?” Quinn asked.

  “On the gas pumps, not pointed at the building.”

  He rewound the tape and played the last bit again, feeling haunted by the image of Penny Gray walking out of sight. Walking toward a friend? A stranger? A killer?