Remnants

by Carolyn Arnold

  “We were burning through fuel much faster than we should have been. I hired a PI to follow Wayne Reed’s movements. They found out that he was hijacking my plane.”

  “How many times?” I asked.

  “At least a dozen before I caught on.”

  Enough dancing around the matter. “We need to know exactly where he went and when,” I said.

  Cox’s gaze went back and forth between the two of us. “Let me make something perfectly clear. Whatever you suspect Wayne Reed of has nothing to do with me. Do you understand?”

  Jack stepped toward Cox. “Do you understand that Wayne Reed is dangerous and on the run?”

  Jack and Cox stared each other down. Jack won.

  Cox sighed. “After he was caught red-handed, I had my PI investigate further. He came back with a number of airports where my plane had touched down. The one I remember off the top of my head is in Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

  I realized that New Mexico wasn’t Mexico, but it seemed to strike close to this case. It was hard to accept that Joshua’s stepfather flying there was a coincidence.

  “I can tell by the way your eyes are lighting up that this means something. I assure you I’m not hiding a thing,” Cox said calmly.

  “As you’ve made clear,” Jack stated. “We’ll need a list of all the places he took your plane unauthorized.”

  Cox walked to his desk and pressed a button on the phone.

  “Mr. Cox?” It was the woman from the front desk.

  “Please print off the list of unauthorized flight plans that Wayne Reed piloted.”

  “Right away. Is that all?” she asked.

  Cox turned to us.

  “Have her send a copy to Nadia Webber.” Jack rhymed off Nadia’s e-mail address.

  “Mr. Cox?” The woman spoke to her boss for confirmation.

  “Do as he says.”

  Cox disconnected the call. “She’ll have that ready for you in mere seconds. Glad I could help.”

  I wasn’t sure whether he was being sincere or not.

  Jack led the way out of Cox’s office, and we collected the printout from the receptionist before leaving the building. There were three pages of flights over the course of Wayne Reed’s five-year employment.

  Once we were outside, Jack called Nadia. He explained everything we’d learned and that she’d be getting a full list.

  “For now,” Jack instructed, “start with New Mexico.”

  -

  Chapter 46

  AFTER JACK AND I HAD called Nadia, Paige had reached us with the news that Stanley Gilbert had been treated and that he’d walk away physically fine. His psychological health would be another issue. He was being carted to the precinct now, and that’s where we were heading, too.

  We’d have a bit longer of a wait for Patty Haven, who was having surgery to remove the bullet. But it had been a good shoot on Paige’s part.

  Jack and I met up with Paige and Zach in the observation room.

  Through the one-way glass, we saw Stanley secured by cuffs to a table in an interrogation room. That must have felt great on his already-tender wrists, but the combination of knowing what he had done and now being face-to-face with the man was enough to make me lose any earlier inclinations toward empathy. He’d led numerous men to their deaths.

  Jack had asked me to handle this interrogation, and Stanley barely lifted his head when I entered the room. His eyes held a blend of sadness and confusion.

  I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. “Why did you do it, Stanley?”

  “Why did I do what?”

  I settled back into the seat. “All right, you want to play stupid?” I pulled out a still from the security footage at Perimeter Mall showing him pushing the lidded garbage container toward the van and slid it across the table to him. “And don’t think of telling me that isn’t you. We know it is.”

  There was heat in Stanley’s gaze. “How would you know?”

  “The wife of a victim ID’d you.”

  Stanley paled but remained quiet.

  “Also, that van you were driving belongs to Wayne Reed. And you know who he is.”

  Stanley scratched at the table with his left index finger. “Yes.”

  I pointed to the bin he was pushing. “You know who is inside that?”

  His eyes drifted to the photo and back up to meet my eyes. “I do.”

  “Good, so you’re not denying your involvement in the murder of Eric Morgan.”

  Silence.

  “Now, let me ask you again… Why did you do it, Stanley?” There were so many questions we had for him, and this was merely a place to start. We needed to understand why and how his phone had ended up in the river and where he had been for the past six days since he’d seemingly disappeared from Savannah.

  “I had to.” His chin quivered now, and a single tear fell down his cheek.

  “That’s not who you are, is it? The type to abduct people and take them to be murdered?” While it was true that we didn’t know if Stanley was directly involved in the ritual, it was advantageous to proceed as if we thought him innocent in that regard.

  “No.” He glimpsed at the one-way glass.

  “So why did you do it?” Was my asking the third time the charm?

  He met my eyes. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “You helped to—”

  “That is a lie!” He raised his voice.

  I raised a hand. “I’ll rephrase. You abducted men for your son to kill.”

  Silence.

  “Come on, Stanley, you’re already caught.”

  He sliced me a glare. “I did it to protect my son.”

  “I can understand protection. What were you protecting him from?”

  “He is a killer, Agent. I knew it from the first time I met him. Well, pretty much right away.”

  “Tell me about that,” I said. “When did you meet him?”

  “Patty came into the bank one day. We hadn’t seen each other since high school.”

  “You were sweethearts?” I was doing my best to be his buddy now and pulling on all my acting skills to do so.

  Stanley nodded and gave a partial smile. “We were.”

  “But then you went away to college.”

  “I did.”

  “And her life went another direction. That must have been heartbreaking.”

  Empathize.

  “It was,” he said. “I loved her.”

  I picked up on the past tense. “Do you still?”

  Stanley started scratching at the table’s surface again. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He stopped all movement and looked me straight in the eye. “Because she is evil. Just like Joshua.”

  “Your son.”

  “I suppose he was.”

  Stanley would have known that Joshua was dead, but he didn’t show any indication that it bothered him at all. Ironic, as he had been willing to abduct people for him. “You said that you did it to protect Joshua, but please help me understand how abducting people for him to murder accomplished that.”

  A blank stare. “If I hadn’t done it, he would have, and he’d have been caught. He’s not…well. Sometimes he seems normal, but he’s far from it. He has a demon that lives inside him.”

  “Your son had been diagnosed with DID but was never medicated,” I pointed out.

  “I know.”

  “Why not help him and protect others by getting him medicine instead?”

  “Patty.”

  My brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “She doesn’t believe in medicine,” he said. “She believes in herbs.”

  “Homeopathic remedies?”

  “Yes.”

  Not that I was in any position to judge the medical treatment a
person chose, but I couldn’t imagine homeopathic treatments having any real benefits for a person with mental illness. “You could have fought her on that. Told her that Joshua needed help.”

  Stanley was shaking his head. “No, she wouldn’t listen. Joshua was perfect the way God made him.”

  I had to take pause and collect myself as I recovered from that statement. Perfection was a serial murderer? Now I’d heard it all.

  “I was going to turn myself in…to you, the FBI,” Stanley continued, looking past me to the one-way glass again. “But I went to see Patty and Joshua first. I wanted to convince them it was the best thing to do.”

  “Why now, after all this time?”

  “I don’t know, but it probably had to do with the fact that you’d find us. You were already on to me. It wouldn’t take you long to figure out I wasn’t working alone. It would look better to turn ourselves in.”

  “So if the remains never washed up in the river…?”

  “You’d have never known. Life would have carried on.”

  Or death…depending on how one looks at it.

  There was no remorse in Stanley’s gaze, and for all his claims that abducting men for murder wasn’t him, it had at least become part of who he was.

  “What was your first clue something was wrong with Joshua?” I asked.

  “He…uh…presented me with a gift.”

  “Presented? That sounds like an offering.”

  Stanley nodded. “He’d taken his cat, skinned it, and ripped out its heart.”

  I vomited a little in my mouth.

  “He said, ‘I am a Mayan priest, Father.’” Stanley licked his lips, then bit on his bottom one briefly. “He told me it was the Mayan heart-extraction ritual and asked me if I was pleased.”

  “Were you?”

  “No, of course not,” Stanley shot back.

  “What did you say, then?”

  “I was in shock and scared to death. Patty was there when he presented it, and she was smiling. I feared for my life.”

  “But you talked to Patty about it afterward?”

  “I did, but she laughed off my concerns.” Stanley fell somber. “She told me I’d been a horrible father and it was about time I made this up to Joshua. But I didn’t know about him, I swear. Not until after she came into the bank.”

  “Do you know why he thought that killing a cat would please you?” I asked.

  “I figured it out.” Stanley waited a few beats. “Patty had told him that I wasn’t in his life because I had to go away and study the Mayans.”

  The hairs rose on my neck. “He developed an interest in Mayan culture because his father had one?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then when he met you…”

  “It was the natural thing for him to do, I guess.”

  Natural to kill a furry family member?

  “You said you came back to turn yourself and them in, but had you never thought of doing that before?” I asked.

  “I was afraid before.”

  I thought back to finding Stanley naked and chained in that room. “For good reason.”

  “You—the FBI—were going to catch us. I knew it. I could just feel it. I took a stupid gamble and almost paid for it with my life. Thank God, you guys got there in time.”

  “Why keep bringing Joshua men to kill?”

  “It would calm him down. He was in control of himself more than his other personality.”

  “And that personality was Huitzilopochtli?”

  Stanley made eye contact with me. “I called it the Other.”

  Shivers laced down my spine. Sometimes I wondered how I ever cleaned the bad energy off me.

  “Tell us about Wayne Reed,” I said.

  “What about him? He was married to Patty.”

  “Did he know about Joshua’s illness?”

  Stanley wasn’t looking at me now.

  “Stanley,” I said more forcibly.

  Nothing.

  I snapped my fingers, and Stanley jumped. “Did he know about Joshua’s illness?” I repeated.

  “Oh, he more than knew. Before me, he used to get the men.”

  I rose to my feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  Ignoring Stanley’s question, I left him and went into the observation room where I found Jack by himself. I wondered where Paige and Zach had gone, but before I had a chance to ask, Jack spoke.

  “Nadia called while you were in there, and she had some luck with Missing Persons. Three twentysomething white men went missing from areas within reasonable driving distance of Albuquerque, New Mexico coinciding with flights Wayne Reed made there. And news has come back from the hospital that Patty Haven has been cleared, so Paige and Zach are going to talk to her now.”

  “Good,” was the only word I could get out.

  -

  Chapter 47

  PAIGE AND ZACH ENTERED PATTY Haven’s hospital room.

  She was lying on the bed at an angle, an IV line running into her hand. Her gaze was directed straight ahead of her, but she wasn’t looking at the TV, which was off. Rather, she was just staring into space, smiling.

  She didn’t look at them when they entered, but she said, “He’s free now.”

  “We’re agents with the FBI,” Paige said, ignoring her. “I’m Agent Dawson, and this is Agent Miles.”

  “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” She drew her gaze to look at them. “He honored their souls, sent them home. He was gifted.”

  Paige slid a sideways glance to Zach. It wasn’t completely unheard of for parents to support and cover up the horrid actions of their children, even when it involved murder, but this woman had taken things one step further. She not only hid her child’s actions from the world but she facilitated them.

  “How long has he been gifted?” Paige thought it best to proceed with the woman’s terminology and caught a glimpse of a silver cross on a chain on the bedside table.

  Patty smiled at her. “All his life.” Her gaze drifted to a spot in the back of the room. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Paige looked over her shoulder, then back to Patty.

  “That’s right,” the woman said. “He’s here now. He’s crossed over directly to heaven.”

  Paige didn’t know much about Mayan culture beyond what she’d learned during this investigation, but she found it hard to believe that a people who had such a respect for death would go straight to heaven if they’d committed suicide. And if that was the case, it led to another question…

  “If he knew he would go straight to heaven,” Paige began, “why didn’t he kill himself before now?”

  “Divine timing, dear.”

  Chills swept through Paige, leaving goose bumps in their wake.

  “And he had a gift to share,” Patty went on. “To help others cross over.”

  “He killed out of love,” Zach interjected.

  “Yes, that’s right.” She gave another smile that had Paige squirming from head to toe.

  “Why did you involve Stanley in this?” Paige asked.

  “What do you mean in this? Stanley was Joshua’s father.”

  “I mean, covering up the murders and abducting innocent men.”

  Patty laughed. “Innocent? We are all imperfect. We all sin. In the heavens, there is nothing but perfection and bliss.”

  “Why didn’t you abduct men for Joshua to sacrifice?” Paige inquired.

  “Oh, no, that was not my role.” Patty shook her head. “I didn’t get directly involved.”

  “You are directly involved,” Paige ground out. “You are an accomplice for murder many times over.”

  Patty was smiling at that space behind them again. And to think that her mental health was apparently sound. At least from a medical diagnosis standpoint, that was. />
  “We know that Wayne Reed helped you, too,” Paige added.

  “Yes. He is a good but weak man.”

  She didn’t even deny it…

  “He kept your family secret after the divorce,” Zach said.

  Patty looked at him. “Of course he did.”

  “Is he still involved?” Paige blurted out.

  Patty wouldn’t look at her but kept smiling at the empty corner of the room.

  Maybe if Paige approached it from another standpoint, picked on the one thing Patty loved more than anything. “Wayne said that Joshua should be locked up, that he has screws loose.”

  For the first time since they’d entered the room, Patty’s face fell into a scowl. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.” Paige gestured to Zach.

  “I heard it, too. He also said Joshua should have been on meds,” Zach added with a head bob.

  “That piece of shit. Fine, yes, he’s in on all this. He lets Stanley use his van, he gets the sedatives we need, and he makes up the blue paint.” The smile returned.

  Wayne Reed had said that Stanley got lime mortar from him. Probably to throw the investigation off himself.

  “We need to find him,” Paige said.

  “How nice for you.”

  “Can you help us?”

  “Why would I?” Patty asked. “He is still family to me.”

  “You just threw Wayne under the bus.”

  “Nah, you have to prove all that I said.” This woman was batty.

  “He’s the one who led us to you and your son.”

  “No!” Patty screamed and ripped out her IV.

  Machines started beeping.

  Patty was crying hysterically and slamming her fists into the mattress at her sides, the metal of the cuffs clanging against the bedframe. The chain with the cross fell to the floor.

  Paige picked up the necklace and was going to put it back on the table when her fingers dipped into an engraving on the back. She turned it over.

  Two nurses ran into the room and worked to sedate Patty.

  “You’re going to have to leave,” one of the nurses told Paige and Zach.

  Paige backed out of their way, not looking up, but kept her eyes on the inscription on the cross: To my sweet Esther.