“You couldn’t have,” Devon said, the need to free Jordan from her guilt overwhelming. She lifted Jordan’s chin, demanding she look at her. “If it wasn’t for you, all three of those kids would have died. The guns, the explosives? I’m no detective but even I can see he’d been planning for them all to die in some asinine blaze of glory. You saved two children.”
Jordan stared into Devon’s depths, as if searching for some kernel of truth, some tiny scrap of salvation to cling to.
“You saved two children,” she said again.
“Not everyone sees it that way,” Jordan said.
“Well, anyone who thinks you’re anything other than a hero has their head up their ass,” Devon snapped. “And that includes you.”
Jordan barked out a small laugh, still looking for something in Devon’s face. Perhaps it was permission, Devon thought, to believe what she was saying. Perhaps Jordan was seeking leave to forgive herself. If it had been within Devon’s power to give, she would have done so without reservation.
Eventually, Jordan breathed deeply and nodded almost imperceptibly. It was not acceptance, but it was not rejection, either. Devon thought that whatever it was, it was enough for now.
Chapter Seventeen
Devon stood, giving Jordan space. She watched as Jordan rolled both shoulders, and then rotated her left arm experimentally.
“Hey, that’s really good,” Jordan said, standing. “Were you a massage therapist in a past life or something?”
Devon shrugged. “One of them.” She saw understanding reach Jordan’s face.
“You know, it would really help if you could tell us where you’ve been since leaving Illinois,” Jordan said cautiously. “Who you’ve been. Henry’s working on tracking Billy’s movements. If we know where you’ve been—”
“Then you might find where he’s been, too,” Devon finished Jordan’s thought. She nodded in confirmation.
Devon was once again caught between the urge to tell Jordan everything and the instinct to run. She wanted so desperately to tell her the truth, but she feared Jordan would reject her if she knew, would walk away from her and never look back. She feared it more now than she had even twenty-four hours ago, because now she knew the loss would be so much greater than any she had experienced before. Devon wasn’t sure she could survive Jordan turning away from her. She should walk away now, before it was too late.
She sank slowly into a chair, trapped within her indecision. A heartbeat later, Jordan sat down, too, scooting her chair in close. Their knees touched, and she reached for Devon’s hand.
“I think the reason you’ve run so many times is that you were afraid Billy had found you,” she said gently. “And I think you were right. I think, at least once or twice, Billy was only a few steps behind you.”
Devon nodded slowly, so Jordan pressed on.
“If we can track his movements over the years, discover where he’s been and perhaps even what he’s done, it might give us some insight into how to find him. At the very least, it will ensure that when we do catch him, we can put him away forever.”
“You think he’s killed others,” Devon said, more statement than question.
“Yes,” Jordan answered. “And I think you do, too.”
Jordan’s simple statement, made without judgment, opened a door inside Devon that she had kept closed for ten years. The question was not whether she had the courage to walk through it—she wasn’t ready for that yet—but whether she was brave enough to push it open a little farther. She felt the safety and strength of Jordan’s hand holding her own.
“Do you have something I can write with?” Devon asked. Jordan brought back a notepad and pen.
“When I left DeKalb, I had no idea where I was going,” Devon said as she began to write. “I took one bus and then another, begging strangers for money to buy my next bus ticket and a little food. I finally ended up in Colorado, and I became Emily Pressman.”
Devon kept writing as she spoke. The names of who she had been were burned into her memory, like old friends she had lost touch with along the way but never forgotten. She wrote them down, along with cities, dates, addresses, occupations, and even people with whom she had associated—people Billy might have targeted.
“I found a motel, one of those roadside places that doesn’t offer much beyond a bed and a roof over your head, but the rates were cheap and the sheets were clean. I kept waiting for Billy to show up, to come bursting through the door to finally kill me. But he never came. After about a week I had run out of money, but the owner, Mrs. Brindle—the woman who taught me to play cards—took pity on me and let me stay on. One afternoon a couple weeks later, she asked me if I had anywhere else to be. I didn’t know what to say. So she handed me a mop and a broom and said I must be bored sitting in my room all day, so I might as well make myself useful.”
Devon paused, thinking about Mrs. Brindle, the lady who had given her so much. She could still picture her as if she was standing right in front of her. The carefully coiffed gray hair pulled into a perfect bun each morning, the reading glasses permanently perched on her delicate nose, and those awful floral-print dresses. The more lace and ruffles, the better.
“Nearly two years went by—I’d become something of a permanent resident of the hotel—and I started thinking about trying to get an apartment, but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Mrs. Brindle alone. Then one day when I was at the market, I had this…feeling. Like someone watching me. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and I assumed my mind was playing tricks on me. A few days later, I felt it again out in front of the library.”
Devon kept writing but stopped speaking, summoning the courage to tell the next terrible part. The gentle touch of Jordan’s hand on her knee gave her the courage she needed.
“I told Mrs. Brindle I had to leave. She took me seriously. I had never told her about Illinois, but she had guessed I was hiding from something. She asked if the thing I was running from had found me, and I told her I thought it might have, and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. She told me I needed to deal with the past or I’d be running forever.”
Devon looked up at Jordan, needing her to understand. “She was so kind to me, and I trusted her. She asked me to wait a day, to let her bring the sheriff out. Mrs. Brindle said he would help me, that she would be right there beside me, holding my hand through it all. So I agreed.”
“Of course you did,” Jordan said, once again without judgment. “You had to trust someone.”
“Yes, well, on her way back from the sheriff’s office, Mrs. Brindle was killed.” The pain of it was still fresh, an open wound that refused to scab over. “If I’d left when I said I would, she’d still be alive.”
“What happened?” Jordan asked softly, instantly dousing some of Devon’s fire. She needed to get through this. She could finish beating herself up later.
“A deer jumped out and she ran off the road, supposedly. Mrs. Brindle wasn’t the best driver, but there were a lot of deer in that area, so she was always extra careful on the highway. Plus, it was the middle of the day, not the usual time for deer to wander out into the road.”
Devon half expected Jordan to say, “Accidents happen,” or something like it. Except she didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything. She just waited for Devon to continue, seeming to understand there was more to come.
“The sheriff came by to tell me Mrs. Brindle was dead. That she had no living relatives, but he’d make sure her funeral was paid for if I wanted to make the arrangements. He said Mrs. Brindle had been very insistent that he come by and speak with me. I was so upset about Mrs. Brindle, and I felt so guilty. I was scared, but I needed to honor her request and tell the sheriff everything. That’s when I saw it.”
“You found a wheat penny,” Jordan said without missing a beat.
“Right there on the counter. Mrs. Brindle was meticulous. Everything was always in its proper place. That penny was left where I would find it, and I knew what it meant.”
“He had found you.”
Devon nodded. “I don’t know how he did it, or why. Maybe he cut her brake lines or something. But I knew he was responsible, and that if I didn’t run, I would be next. So I made up some story for the sheriff about why I’d needed to talk to him, then asked him to give me a ride into town. I stopped by my room to get my purse and that was it. As soon as he dropped me off, I made my way to the bus terminal and caught the first one out of town.” Devon braced herself but saw nothing but compassion on Jordan’s face.
“You did nothing wrong,” Jordan said, echoing Devon’s own, earlier words. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I brought Billy there.” Devon couldn’t help the tears that began to form. “If I hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have been, either.”
Jordan slipped off her chair and pulled Devon into her arms. “You did nothing wrong,” Jordan said again, whispering into Devon’s ear. Devon clung to her, trying to absorb the comfort she offered, trying to let herself believe that Mrs. Brindle’s death was not her fault.
“You know, it seems to me we both need to forgive ourselves,” Jordan said, pulling back slightly. She cupped Devon’s cheek, as if willing her to accept the words.
“Easier said than done,” Devon responded, a mirthless laugh bubbling up from her chest.
“My father used to say that guilt is like being hunted by a wolf. The best way to escape it is to never have crossed its path. But sometimes, you don’t have that option. So when it comes for you, you have to kill it before it kills you,” Jordan said. “How about we both agree it’s time to kill our guilt, once and for all?”
Still wrapped in Jordan’s embrace, with Jordan’s hand pressed against her cheek, Devon wanted so much to agree. She wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, it was possible to escape her guilt. But she also knew there was much more left to tell, terrible things so much worse than this. Things Jordan could never forgive.
“Agreed,” Devon lied.
Chapter Eighteen
Jordan scanned the files Henry had sent, jotting notes in a small notepad on the table next to her laptop. Devon hummed a wordless tune as she made dinner. Jordan had to smile when she recognized The Sound of Music.
She angled her computer screen out of Devon’s eyeline. Jordan wasn’t trying to hide anything, but she also didn’t want to confront Devon with the horrors of the crime scene unnecessarily. Seeing it once was more than enough. Henry’s preliminary notes from the diner were unsurprisingly thorough, complete with his impressions of the crime scene and killer. Although she appreciated the insight, she tried to separate his perspective from the facts.
Who am I kidding? I’m a long way past biased.
The photos were especially helpful. She started with the ones from the kitchen. Chuck’s death had been messy but efficient. The pattern of the blood spatter on the floor was unobstructed, confirming that Chuck had been killed from behind. The volume of blood combined with the ME’s preliminary autopsy results suggested Chuck had died quickly. The depth and precision of the cut across his neck indicated the killer had known exactly what he was doing. There was no hesitation, no second-guessing. It certainly wasn’t the killer’s first time.
If she, Henry, and Lawson were going to catch Billy, they needed to understand him. They needed to understand who he was, how he was, and why he was the way he was. Knowing these things would help them predict what Billy would do next—and how to stop him. They needed to profile him. And Jordan was very good at profiling.
First step, the crime scene. Jordan called up the ME’s preliminary report on Sally. Unlike Chuck, Sally had been killed from the front, with a single stab wound to the heart. Jordan considered that. It took a lot of skill to stab someone in the heart—you needed excellent aim and a lot of strength to get through the chest muscles, tissue, and rib cage in one blow. Death had come mercifully quickly for Sally, as it had for Chuck. Her heart would have stopped beating almost immediately.
And yet, the killer had stabbed Sally eleven more times. They had barely bled—they had occurred postmortem and had therefore been wholly unnecessary, but they weren’t done in a fit of rage. Jordan studied the photos of Sally’s body and the surrounding area. There was no ripping or tearing to indicate frenzy, and the wounds were fairly shallow—all of which meant the killer hadn’t lost control, despite the overkill. He had been restrained and careful. That never boded well.
Something else about the stab wounds nagged at Jordan. She flipped back to the background information Henry had confirmed the day before, skimming through the dates and facts until she found the one that had been nipping at the base of her brain.
November 2000. The month and year of the fire, when Billy killed Devon’s mother and supposedly died.
Twelve years ago this month. Twelve years since Devon escaped, to match Sally’s twelve stab wounds.
Twelve years, twelve wounds.
Jordan didn’t believe in coincidence.
She moved on to the cash register. The drawer had been mostly cleaned out. The killer had left three one-dollar bills and a five sitting neatly in their slots, and two rolls of coins, one pennies and one dimes. Jordan had seen enough stores knocked over to know that thieves often didn’t get everything. But the money left in the register seemed too calculated. Not enough value to raise suspicion, but enough to seem like the usual left-behinds.
There had been no signs of forced entry, and the front door was locked when the bodies were discovered. The back door was an emergency exit, the kind with a push bar on the inside which locked automatically when it closed. The killer either had keys or was let in. Henry suspected the latter, and Jordan agreed. The front door had a bell above it, which would have meant the killer couldn’t have slipped in unnoticed, and it was clear to Jordan that Chuck had to have been killed first. It seemed unlikely Sally’s murder had been a quiet one, which meant Chuck would have come running—unless Chuck was already dead. So if Chuck was killed first, then the killer had to have come in the back, where Chuck was working. And that most likely meant Billy talked his way into the restaurant and was charming or manipulative enough—or both—to get Chuck to drop his guard.
They had turned up no significant prints, and no physical or trace evidence to tie back to the killer. No fingerprints, no blood other than the victims’, no shoeprints or smudges or unidentified fibers. There were only three things that seemed at all out of place, and two of them might not be out of place at all: the wheat penny on the counter, and the fork and plate left in the drying rack.
Henry’d had the plate and fork tested; both had been washed spotless, no trace of DNA left behind. The autopsy reports confirmed Henry’s assessment that neither Chuck nor Sally had eaten a piece of pie that morning, which—given that the pie was so fresh it had still been warm when Henry had arrived—could only mean one thing. The killer had helped himself to pie, either before or after the murders. Either the victims—or at least Chuck—had known the killer, and the man had eaten the pie before murdering them, or the killer had killed them and then eaten his pie. Jordan had to acknowledge the former possibility, but the profile she was building told her what the real truth was.
Jordan leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. She glanced over at Devon, who seemed happily focused on preparing their feast of…whatever it was she was cooking. Jordan might have worried, but Devon seemed so darn happy cooking for her. Jordan closed her eyes. The idea that this charming, sweet, resilient woman could share DNA with the man who so coldly butchered two people and then callously enjoyed a piece of pie seemed impossible to Jordan.
The murders of Chuck and Sally were cold, calculated, and efficient. There was no physical evidence left behind, the scene was meticulous and controlled. This killer was experienced, well past his first murder. He was calm and rational and skilled. He wasn’t worried about the police or being caught. He was self-assured enough that after he finished his work, he had time and appetite enough to enjoy some pie. He was an or
ganized killer to the extreme, and that made him exceptionally dangerous.
*
Henry rubbed at his eyes and checked his watch. It was after eight o’clock. He had sent Lawson home more than an hour earlier, threatening the rookie with a monthlong punishment of picking up coffee for the whole squad if he refused. Lawson, knowing full well how persnickety the other detectives could be about their coffee orders, smartly agreed.
He turned back to his computer, scanning Jordan’s e-mail once more. Seattle. Boston. Dallas. San Diego. Santa Fe. Memphis. West Palm Beach. Charlotte. St. Paul. Boise. And finally Pittsburgh. Devon had lived in eleven cities in eight years. The longest she had stayed anywhere was eighteen months. Her shortest stay had been in Memphis, where after only five weeks she had run again. Each time she ran, she had to start over. Had to learn a new name. Become someone else.
It had been a surprisingly detailed list. Henry had no idea how she’d been able to keep track of it all, this many years later, let alone lived it without going stark raving mad. He and Lawson had spent much of the afternoon confirming what they could, and they’d needed to create a timeline on a whiteboard to keep it all straight.
Devon had largely been a ghost, which gave Henry an even greater respect for this young woman who had survived so much almost entirely alone. It also saddened him to think of her out there for so many years, constantly looking over her shoulder, knowing that at any moment, Billy might find her.
They hadn’t been able to find much about Mrs. Brindle other than some news clippings. There had been no investigation since the sheriff had considered it an accident, so no evidence had been collected, and Henry was sure that car had long ago been sold for scrap. Not that he doubted Devon’s story. But short of a confession from Billy, there would never be justice for Mrs. Eleanor Brindle.
Season of the Wolf Page 14
