by David Archer
I did. I’d been in the section where our hotline counselors work, and they all have their spaces decorated. Pictures, flowers, pen holders, whatever, they mark their territories selfishly, the way humans always do. Even I had pictures of my parents on my desk, and I had spent a ridiculous amount of money on a desk set that I didn’t even use. It was sitting on top of my file cabinet, still in its original box, but its presence helped to mark my little office as mine.
“You said the police checked him out and found nothing suspicious?”
She shrugged. “That’s what they said. I never asked any really detailed questions.”
“And I gather he doesn’t work here anymore? When did he leave?”
“About three months ago. I mean, even though he gave me the creeps, he seemed to do a lot of good with the women. Some of them really seemed to like him, not like in romance, but like he was some kind of hero. But then about three months ago, he said he was moving back east somewhere to help take care of his mother. He just came in and told me he was leaving, and then he was gone a couple of days later. I had to mail him his last paycheck.”
“Oh? Do you still have the address you mailed it to?”
“I’m sure I have it somewhere,” Juanita said, “but I remember it was in Massachusetts. That’s where he went.” She cocked her head and looked at me again. “Are you wondering if he might be the man you’re looking for?”
I shrugged. “I’m not really thinking anything about him,” I said, “I’ve just learned to ask a lot of questions because sometimes the answers you get add up to something you weren’t expecting.”
I decided to step things up a notch. “Juanita, I have a recording of the man we think is the killer, posing as a counselor for one of the hotlines in Tulsa. No one at that hotline knows the voice, but I’d like to play it for you and see if it sounds familiar.”
“Sure,” she said, leaning forward. “Maybe it’s Ron. We never found any recordings of the missing women that seemed to be connected, here, but I would know his voice if I heard it again.”
I smiled and set up my phone, then hit play. She listened intently for several seconds, then shook her head. “That isn’t him,” she said, “but that voice sounds familiar.” She closed her eyes and continued to listen until the recording ended. When it did, she shook her head again. “I would almost swear I’ve heard that voice before, but I can’t quite remember when or where, or who it was. It just sounds familiar.”
“Well, that could be coincidental,” I said. “It might just sound similar to someone you’ve known in the past or something. Did anything else about the recording strike you?”
“Well, yes,” she said. “If that man was working for me, I would have skinned him alive! We make it very clear, these women can never meet any of the counselors, and especially not like that. That man was using the work to try to prey on women, not to help them.” She scowled. “You said he was working for a hotline, but they don’t know who he was?”
“Well, they claim no one there ever heard this guy’s voice, so they deny he worked there. The problem is that we know he was taking calls on their line, so it seems pretty strange they wouldn’t know who he was.”
Juanita leaned her head to one side and looked at me, twisting her mouth into a grimace. “Not necessarily,” she said. “A while back, I was wondering how the guy was picking the women, and my brother—the one who got burned, he’s a computer geek—he said maybe he was hacking the lines.”
I narrowed my eye and stared at her. “Hacking the lines? How could he do that?”
“I asked my brother that, and he said nobody uses regular phones for call centers anymore, because it’s so much cheaper to do it through the Internet. Like us, we use an Internet service that lets calls come in on one number and send them to a bunch of different computers. We can have up to ten calls come in at once, and they go to all the different operators who just sit there with their headsets on. When a call comes in and goes to one of them, they just click the button to accept it.”
My eye got wider again. “So, if somebody could get into the system, they could maybe intercept a call?”
Juanita nodded. “Yes. José says he could even set it up so certain calls would only go to his computer, like calls from certain numbers. And all he’d have to do is go back in and clean out the recordings and clean his IP out of the database, so no one would ever know.”
I stared at her. “Did you share this with the police?”
“We tried to, but they just told us to stay out of it. José, he’s not real popular with the police around here. He’s been in a little trouble now and then, while he was a teenager. They don’t really like to listen to anything he has to say.”
“Their loss is my gain,” I said. “I’m not going to be bashful about taking his advice when it’s making more sense than anything else I’ve seen yet. As it happens, we already knew that someone was cleaning the recordings out. I just wasn’t aware that it was possible to hijack the line that way. That could make a major difference in my investigation.”
“I just hope you catch this guy,” Juanita said. “He has to be stopped, somehow. The things he is doing to these women, it’s just inhuman.”
Something in the way she said that last word caught my attention. “What he’s doing to them? Do you mean while he has them captive?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know? He is torturing them, doing terrible things to them.”
I shook my head. “There was nothing about torture in the news stories I saw about this case. Do you know something I don’t?”
Juanita bit her bottom lip and looked down at her desk for a moment, then turned her eyes back up to meet mine. “I know a cop,” she said. “Sometimes, he and I, we spend some time together. He told me some things he wasn’t supposed to, because he knew how much this case has bothered me. These women, they were hung up by their wrists, so their feet don’t touch the ground. Then, the man, he beat them with a stick. My friend, he said it was a stick that was maybe three feet long and an inch thick. A cane, he said. They were all beat on the backs of their legs and their bottoms and their backs. Some of them were beat so bad that it was bleeding, sometimes.”
Caning, I thought. A memory came back, one that I had buried a long time ago. It was something my fiancé, Mike, had said when we were living together. Caning was a form of punishment that men used to use on their wives. They were beaten with a cane, the kind you used to walk with. He had wanted to try it with me, but I had balked at the idea. I told him I was okay with spanking, but getting hit with a cane sounded like being beaten with a club.
“I guess they kept that out of their reports,” I said. “There was nothing about it in any of the news stories I read, I know that much.”
Juanita nodded. “Yes, it was not told to the news. He said they did not want to give too much information, so they would know if they found the right person.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of that before. I guess there are people who will confess to anything, so they keep certain things out of the news so that only the true guilty party would know them. It makes sense, considering how crazy people can be. Now I just wonder if there are other things they didn’t reveal.”
“I know of one more thing,” Juanita said. “They did not tell the news that there are at least two people involved. They say a witness saw one woman when she was taken, she was pulled into a van, but she almost got away while it was moving. Someone was driving it, and she got the door open, the back door, and somebody inside grabbed her and pulled her back in. So there are at least two people, not just one.”
My head was reeling. I had just learned enough to make me worry about what the victims back in Tulsa were going through, knowing that they were probably being beaten even as I sat there talking with Juanita. I thought of poor Wanda and the others, and I became even more determined to find the person—or persons—who were responsible for this.
“Juanita, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to see me. I think
I know what to do, now. I’m going to get this guy, one way or another, that much I promise you.”
She gave me a sad smile. “I think maybe you are going to do something dangerous,” she said. “I hope, Ms. McGraw, that you have great success, and that you come through this safely.”
“Thank you,” I said. I got to my feet and extended a hand, and she shook hands with me. As I went out her office door, she followed and walked with me all the way out to the car.
“I hope you will be careful,” she said. “The only thing I know for certain is that this is a very dangerous man. My friend with the police, he told me that this has happened in other cities, as well, and no one has yet survived. Please, Ms. McGraw, please be careful.”
I let Freda out for a moment, and she smiled. “It isn’t me that is going to need to be careful,” I said. I slid behind the wheel of the car and started it up, then gave her a finger wave as I drove away. I thought about visiting the local police, but I had my doubts they’d want to share anything with me that hadn’t already been given to the press, so I figured I should share what I’d learned with Niles and Alicia and let them handle that.
I had originally planned to visit each of the hotlines and shelters in Tucson, but a new plan was taking shape in the back of my mind. I needed to get back home as quickly as I could, so I headed straight to the airport.
American Airlines charged me a hundred and fifty dollars to change my flight from the following day to that very afternoon. I didn’t even care; I suspected it was going to be worth it.
TWELVE
Because of having to wait for a flight that evening, I didn’t get back to Tulsa until after midnight. I caught a nap on the plane, though, so I wasn’t completely worn out by the time I got my car out of long-term parking and started toward home. I wanted to speak with Dex, but I wasn’t going to call him that late at night. I figured the best thing I could do would be to go home and get some sleep, then plan on talking with him over lunch the next day.
The radio “weather-on-the-hour” said it was going to be even colder the next day, so when I got to my place, I put the Kia in my garage. It wasn’t heated, but it would keep the worst of the chill off me when I came out in the morning. I stumbled through the door into my kitchen, exhaustion starting to settle back in as I made my way to the bedroom. It had been an informative but stressful day, and I looked longingly at my bed for a moment, deciding I needed to get a shower. I knew it wouldn’t take me long, and though I don’t actually sweat on most of the left side of my body, the right side seems to work harder to compensate for it. I can get pretty whiff when my stress levels get high.
Besides, nothing truly relaxes me like a good shower. I stood under the water and let it flow over me, then worked up a lather in my hair and rinsed it out before loading it up with conditioner. While the conditioner did its work, I scrubbed the rest of my body with my favorite body wash and a very soft loofah.
Rinsing off took a couple of minutes, because the conditioner gets pretty thick sometimes. When I was done, I dried off quickly and walked naked out to my bed and fell into it. The big comforter felt so good that I didn’t even mind the mattress being a little on the hard side.
I woke to the sound of my phone ringing, and opened my eye to see that it was still dark. I snagged the phone off my nightstand and put it into my ear without even bothering to look at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Cassie? It’s Alicia.”
Just hearing her voice was enough to send a chill down my spine, because there was no reasonable explanation for her to call me this early except with bad news.
“Who was it?” I asked.
Alicia was quiet for a couple of seconds, then she said softly, “Carolyn Stern. Her body was found in some bushes at Hunter Park about an hour ago. Someone spotted a foot sticking out from under the bushes and thought it was a homeless person sleeping there.”
Is it terrible that I actually felt a split-second of relief that it wasn’t Wanda? I had been so worried that Wanda might be the first victim we found, that poor Lizzie and her siblings would lose their mother forever, that I literally forgot for a moment that Carolyn was also a human being.
“Oh, God,” I said. “I just got back from Tucson, and I got a lot of information I need to share with you and Niles. Let me get dressed, and let’s meet somewhere.”
“Tucson? I didn’t even know you had gone.”
“Yeah, well, it was kind of sudden. I just figured since they were the most recent case, I might pick up some information that could help, and I was right. What time is it, anyway?”
“Just after six. How about Denny’s on Sheridan? It’s not that far away, and I can have Niles meet us there.”
“Okay. Give me half an hour, and I’ll be there.”
I slowly climbed out of bed and had to flip on the light because it was still dark in my bedroom. I climbed into some clean undies and one of my specially-made bras—necessary, since I’d lost a lot of tissue on the left breast, but I liked to at least look normal—then grabbed a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt out of my closet. Tulsa is fairly mild, climate-wise, but I remembered the radio saying it was going to drop below zero that day. Even in a mild year, the middle of December can get pretty chilly.
Thus dressed, I found my coat where I had dropped it on a kitchen chair, grabbed my purse, and opened the door to the garage. The flannel shirt, I knew instantly, had been a good idea, because it was extremely cold even without the wind blowing on me. I got into the car quickly, before I had a chance to change my mind.
Thankfully, it started right up and the heated seats took the chill off. I backed out of my garage and pointed the car toward Sheridan, just a few blocks away. Of course, I was still about half a mile north of the Denny’s, which gave my little car just enough time to get warm before I had to climb out of it into the cold, cold air once again.
Alicia was waiting for me inside, and waved her hand to get my attention as I came through the front door. I hurried over and slid into the booth across from her. Niles would undoubtedly slide in on her side when he got there, and it let me huddle into my coat for a few seconds longer.
“It’s cold out there,” I said. “I’m not usually out and about this time of the morning.” No sooner than I said it, I suddenly remembered Carolyn and felt like a jerk. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. What else can you tell me about Carolyn’s death?”
“Well, right now it looks like she was strangled. There are ligature marks around her neck and wrists, and petechiae in her eyes and face seem to indicate it. That’s the little burst capillaries, they commonly show up in strangulation cases.”
I gave her a snotty grin. “I know what they are, thank you,” I said. “I’ve seen them on some of the women who have come in for interviews. Strangulation is extremely common in domestic abuse. What else?”
She shrugged. “What else do you want to know?”
I focused my eye on her face. “Any signs she was beaten? In particular, was she caned?”
Alicia’s eyebrows came down in the center. “Caned? No, why?”
“Because the victims in Tucson were,” I said. “They kept that information out of the news, too, but it’s amazing what you can learn when you talk to a cop’s girlfriend.”
She nodded. “No, there weren’t any marks like that. She had marks that indicate strangulation, and her wrists and ankles had ligature marks like she’d been tied up. She was naked, wrapped up in a blanket. An old one, from the look of it.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t make sense. All of the bodies they found in Tucson showed caning marks, and I heard a recording of the calls made to Amber Miller, the caseworker who committed suicide over all of it. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s same person, so why did he change his pattern?”
That got her attention. “The police out there didn’t mention a recording like that,” she said. “I don’t suppose you got a copy?”
I smiled as I pulled t
he disc out of my purse and slid it across the table. “Would I let you down? Amber’s old boss had several copies he had made for the police, but they only took one. He still had the rest of them in a file cabinet, so he gave me one. I already heard it, I don’t need to hear it again, trust me.”
The bell on the door jangled and Niles came stomping across the room. As I expected, he slid in beside Alicia. He pointed at the CD she was holding. “What’s that?”
“Cassie went to Tucson and came back with a present for us,” she said. “This is a recording of the calls made to the caseworker out there, like the calls Cassie has been getting.”
Niles looked at her for a second, then turned and focused on my good eye. “Why did you go out there?”
“Because I want to stop this son of a bitch,” I said. “And you might let me tell you everything I learned before you start getting all pissed off.”
I think Alicia kicked him under the table, because he jerked suddenly and glanced her way before looking back at me. “Of course,” he said. “And I do appreciate this, so forgive me if I seem gruff. It just ruins my morning when I have to look at a dead woman before I even have my coffee.”
I nodded. “I can imagine, and I do sympathize. Okay, here’s what I found out. First, the Tucson police had evidence that there is more than one person involved in the abductions. You probably already knew that, but it was something they hadn’t shared with anyone else, so I thought I would mention it.”
