Kylie Brant - What the Dead Know (The Mindhunters Book 8)

by Unknown

  She turned her attention then to establishing a victimology report. Danny. Atwood. And now Yembley. Keira added the four missing persons Mary and Brody had zeroed in on as possibly having an outdoors link. Every detail she knew about each of the victims was listed below their name. People they knew. Places they’d been. Hobbies and occupations. They all shared two connections—a leisure activity that took them outside and a random meeting with a killer. There had to be more.

  She paused to make a call to Tobias Matthews, jotting down the additional details the man could provide about Atwood’s life. His family. His friends. And then when she hung up she added those facts to the list beneath the second victim’s name.

  Finally, she put down her pen, drawing lines to the few—very few—links she’d found. Keira needed more information. Now that she had a direction, she’d follow up with the families of the missing persons herself.

  Staring at the chart, she wondered about Yembley’s portion. If they relied solely on a victim profile that consisted of someone involved with the outdoors, Yembley fit. But she and Finn were convinced the man had been killed because he’d tried to shoot Keira, which would interfere with the plans the killer had for her.

  If the offender had kidnapped Tiffany, it had everything to do with her relationship to Keira. She had the thought, struggled to push it aside. She didn’t have proof that Tiff was involved. Not yet. Regardless of what the leaden feeling in the pit of her belly was telling her.

  They knew the offender was adaptable. She tapped the capped highlighter against her teeth, considering. He likely killed for both necessity and enjoyment. A hot ball of emotion lodged in her throat as she wondered which one her father’s death would qualify as.

  The buzzer on the door to the department offices sounded. Usually Cal handled visitors. Frowning, Keira got up and went out to check the door. Her step slowed when she drew close enough to recognize Hassert. Letting him in, she said, “Arnie. What brings you here on a Sunday?”

  “Oh, I was on my way home after taking Dorie to brunch.” He was looking as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen him. His gaze touched on everything in the vicinity but her. “I heard about the shooting the other night. Thought I’d check and see how things turned out.”

  She tried to hide her surprise. She’d fielded a few calls of concern yesterday, but she’d never thought to hear him voice a similar interest in her wellbeing. “I’m fine. We identified the shooter.” She didn’t tell him that the man was now dead.

  “Well.” He put a hand in his coat pocket, jingled some keys he had in it. “That’s great then. Great.” He was sporting a red plaid hunting hat today, with the earflaps snapped above his ears. “You and I might disagree on occasion, but I never wished you ill.”

  “I know.” It occurred to her then that he hadn’t known she was at the office at all. She rarely was on a Sunday. With her SUV in the shop, he couldn’t have realized that one of the cruisers in the parking lot belonged to her.

  He cleared his throat, his gaze landing on her before skating away again. “Dorie said she heard at church that there was some sort of commotion in the forest this morning.”

  At church. Of course. Some went to worship. Others to gossip. Keira wondered whom he’d hoped to find to pump for information when he stopped in here. Normally there would only have been a couple of jailers present. “We found a homicide victim. I can’t release the individual’s name yet, but we believe he’s linked to our case.”

  The man’s reaction was immediate. “Was he killed there?”

  Ordinarily Keira didn’t share those types of details outside of this office, but she was intrigued enough by his response to answer, “We think so, yes.”

  “I knew it.” He slapped his hand against the wall for emphasis. “I’ve been telling people for years that there are odd goings-on in the forest. I filled out several complaints with your father and the district forester’s office about the same thing.”

  “What were the details of the complaints?”

  “Screams. Cries for help.” A trickle of foreboding worked down her spine at his words. “I used to do some night hunting in season. Not anymore. Twice there was a person screaming in the distance. And now someone has come to a bad end.” He nodded decisively. “I wonder if anyone heard him scream.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  The man pursed his lips. “It’s been two years since I stopped night hunting. That would have been about the date of my last complaint to this office about it. But it happened the season before that, too.” Apparently what he saw in her expression wasn’t reassuring. “I suppose you think the same thing your father did. That I was imagining things. Or that I only heard the normal sounds of predator meeting prey. I was never convinced. Especially now.”

  She stared at him long enough to have the man fidgeting. “You know what, Arnie? I may check into that myself.”

  His face remained dour. “Well, Danny sure never gave it any credence. But if you want me to show you sometime whereabouts I heard the sounds, I could retrace my steps. I usually kept to a very precise location when I was out at night.”

  “I appreciate the offer. Thanks for stopping by.”

  He didn’t seem to know what to do with the pleasantry. In the end, he just turned and walked out as abruptly as he’d appeared.

  Keira went to the computer in her office and sat down, bringing up the archived record of incident reports. Criminal complaints filed were kept separate from more routine matters. She brought up the one he’d cited and read it. It had Arnie’s name, date, and her dad’s initials, which meant that he’d taken the complaint himself. There was a brief description of the encounter, along with the acronym NAT. No Action Taken. A routine note when a call was received that had no actionable response for the department. It took longer to look for the earlier report Arnie had mentioned. It was nearly identical to the one she’d just read.

  She rose to pace. Keira doubted that she’d have treated the matter any differently than her father had, and there was nothing in the reports that came close to proof. Or evidence. But they got her thinking, and she was still formulating her thoughts when Finn appeared in the doorway.

  For a moment, she forgot the urgency of the tests he’d been doing and pointed a finger at him. “Arnie Hassert was here…doesn’t matter.” She waved away further explanation of the man’s visit. “It just gave me an idea. Maybe we’re thinking too small when we just look at how the victims came to the killer’s attention. What if he not only uses the outdoors to select them, but also to kill them? He kept Atwood for a while, but we don’t know how he died.”

  She was rambling, and took a moment to haul in a breath and arrange her thoughts. “The outdoors, whether it’s forests, wilderness area, wherever…it’s his hunting grounds. His. He thinks about it as such, at least I believe he does. And the victims…they’re tests, maybe. Of his skill. Or his ingenuity.”

  “Your mind at work is fascinating.” He came further into the room as he spoke. “And yes, the scenario you describe makes sense. Does he hunt them? Is that part of his game? Track them down before killing them? I suppose that’s something only the dead would know. But as a theory, it’s sound.”

  The dead. There was a quick stabbing pain in her heart. That included Danny. She couldn’t prevent the thought that her father would have put the clues together faster. Arrived at conclusions more quickly. Whatever he’d known at the end had died with him.

  Her mind belatedly switched gears. “You have results?”

  “Yes.” He came further into the room as he spoke. “All evidence collected in the forest this morning has been logged, with duplicate copies given to Gomez and Stevens. I did an examination of the footwear tracks.” Her stomach did a nasty slow roll in anticipation of his next words. “We’ve matched them to Yembley and the intruder at your house.”

  There was a dampness to her palms. Keira resisted the urge to wipe them on the front of her uniform pants. “And the latents?”
<
br />   “I haven’t gotten verification.”

  She ignored the cautionary note in his voice while her system went straight to panic. “You found Tiffany’s prints on the paper.” Her eyes slid closed briefly when he inclined his head.

  “Rather, I found prints on the note that seem to be a close match to those on the hairbrush of hers you brought me. I’m unused to making these announcements without corroboration, but I think we should conclude that the killer has her.”

  She nodded because she’d known. A niggling fear had taken root inside her as soon as she’d noticed her friend hadn’t returned her text. And it had gotten stronger with every failed effort she’d made today to find her. “He took her because of me.”

  “We don’t know enough about him to predict…”

  “Yeah, we do.” Her voice reflected the bleakness she felt. “She figures in his end game. A pawn. That handwriting was hers, and I didn’t even recognize it. We’d never gone to school together…I’d never seen…”

  He came to her side and slipped an arm around her shoulders, and for just a moment she allowed herself to take strength from the feel of him beside her.

  “We also have a lead on the killer.” When she frowned, he said, “That thumbprint? The AFIT system is so much more precise than IAFIS. I’ll still want expert validation to be completely certain, but I got a hit from the military database. It belongs to Doug O’Shea. The so-called witness from this morning.”

  Chapter 12

  The longer he stayed away, the better Tiffany liked it. Despite the fact that it was too damn cold in the shed even with the heater. And she’d had to pee herself. Several times now. He hadn’t been back with food, although he’d given her a drink of water before he’d gone away last time. Taking the note she’d written and that bloody piece of skin and hair with him.

  Her stomach hollowed out all over again just thinking about what she’d seen in that box. He’d do the same to her. In a heartbeat. She’d thought he was going to when he’d chopped off her hair with the knife. He’d left shortly after that, and knowing he was going to use what she wrote to lure Keira into a trap was as bad as thinking about what he had planned for Tiffany.

  She’d been glad that he’d linked the cuffs around her wrists to the overhead pipe with the length of chain. It had meant she didn’t have to have her arms in the air for hours. But she’d spent most of the day with them in that exact position. Because the pipe wasn’t smooth. It was some scrap piece of metal that had once served a completely different purpose. It’d been painted several times, and the paint was cracked and peeling off.

  But more importantly, it had ridges at one end. In its first lifetime, this section of pipe had screwed into another. And she’d spent hours scraping the length of chain back and forth crosswise over those threads. She’d rest when her arms got tired and lower them for a few minutes, but not for too long. Because she didn’t know when the asshole would come back.

  And the chain was as ancient as the pipe. There was already wear on the link where she’d been working it across the threads.

  A slight sound at the door had her starting, the way she did each time the wind blew or a limb scraped the shed. She waited, muscles bunched, but the door didn’t slide open. If it did, she’d quickly move back to the center of the bar, looking scared and hopeless. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch. When he came to undo her cuffs again, maybe he wouldn’t notice the bright silver glint where she’d worn off the chain’s tarnish.

  The activity gave her something to concentrate on, and she wasn’t concerned when darkness crowded into the shed. Tiffany actually preferred it. She could no longer see the bench that looked like it might hold weapons she could use if she got free. But neither could she view the trophies the asshole had of things he’d killed. She shuddered and lowered her arms for a quick rest. She didn’t want to be able to look at the jars that lined the shelf, and she certainly didn’t want to see what from here looked like a pair of human feet.

  Just the thought of that particular trophy had her raising her arms and rubbing the chain against the pipe again. She was going to make damn sure that neither she nor Keira ended up on that shelf.

  _______

  It took time for Keira to put the warrant together. Even longer, apparently to convince Judge Isaacson that Doug O’Shea—who as it turned out sang in the choir with him—was guilty of killing at least three people. Of kidnapping another. Finn thought she might be having the same difficulty considering the man as a possible suspect. That came, he supposed, from living in a place where you knew almost every damn body.

  “We play it low key.” If Keira’s deputies were surprised that the order came from him, they hid it well. Finn had argued his case in private with Keira and she’d reluctantly agreed. This was a major reason she’d brought him on board. There could be no appearance of a conflict of interest. Never was that more crucial than at the moment of arrest. “Everyone clear on their team’s responsibility?” He scanned the faces in front of him. All were dressed in riot gear and armored vests. “Then let’s go. We’ll roll up silent.”

  No lights. No sirens. No notice. They filed out of the office and separated for their cars, two by two. He climbed into the cruiser with Keira. Only then did Finn give voice to the doubts plaguing him. “If he’s our guy—and that thumbprint says he is—O’Shea is dangerous and unpredictable.”

  “And you would have preferred a surprise breach. I get it. But we didn’t get a no-knock warrant. This isn’t Chicago.”

  “Or DC,” he muttered, watching the snow-draped trees flash by as they headed out of town. “But that note was issued today. He’ll be on high alert.”

  Her face was still as stone in the shadows. He wasn’t sure how familiar she was with the man, but based on their friendliness at the scene this morning, he guessed they knew each other quite well. “If he’s taken by surprise he may come docilely. That message was just a taunt to let me know he has my friend. He can’t realize that we found the thumbprint, or traced it to him.”

  Finn remained silent. That might be true enough, but in his book, having Tiffany in the man’s custody put the woman in imminent danger, which should have been enough for a no-knock warrant. He pushed the thought aside. They’d work within the parameters that the judge had given them. And hope like hell there were no surprises.

  Keira had briefed them on the layout of O’Shea’s property. Single story home straight ahead of the drive with attached garage. Machine shed on the right, two hundred feet inside the property. Woods surrounding the space on three sides. He could already picture it in his head because it sounded like half the homes he’d seen in the county.

  The moon hung full and heavy in the sky and for the briefest of moments he entertained the memory of it last night, fingers of moonbeams slanting through the skylight. Then he wiped his mind clean as she flipped off her headlights and turned into a long snow covered drive. Showtime.

  Two minutes later Keira stood on one side of the front door and Finn on the other. They didn’t speak at all. With his fingers, he indicated the countdown. Three. Two. One. He reached out to hammer on the door while she drilled the bell with her forefinger. He kept an eye on the garage. Mary had circled the house to cover any back entrances.

  A light flicked on in the hallway and Doug O’Shea’s face showed through the crack he’d made between the curtains covering the door’s window. Finn threw her a cautionary look, which she couldn’t see and wouldn’t have needed anyway. She’d gone through more doorways than he had. She knew to be ready for a weapon.

  But O’Shea didn’t have anything in his hands when he pulled the door open. He blinked at Keira, sparing hardly a glance for Finn before fumbling with the lock on the storm door. “Keira. Did you have more questions about today?”

  She had the warrant in her free hand. Her weapon in the other. She held out the paper. “We have a warrant to search your property, Doug. You need to show us your hands. Step away from the door.”

  Th
e man was shy of sixty, but the confusion on his features, the utter lack of comprehension was like that of someone decades older.

  “Step back,” Keira repeated, and this time, O’Shea slowly raised his hands and moved aside. He seemed shocked when they came in and she shoved the warrant into his hand while Finn patted him down for weapons. Finding none, he radioed Mary to join them inside.

  “What…I don’t understand.” Finn left them standing in the hallway to conduct a search of the house. Minutes later, when he’d determined it was empty, he made his way back to the dining room where a shell-shocked Doug was seated in a chair.

  “There’s no one here.” The man raised his gaze to Finn’s. “I keep telling them that. What’s going on? Is this about that body today? Because I went to Critical Care afterward to get something for my nerves. The Valium they gave me knocked me out. I slept most of the day and woke up with you pounding on my door.”

  “We need to ask you more questions, Doug.”

  “And this is how you do it? Break into a man’s house? What the hell, Keira, your father would never…”

  Finn didn’t wait to hear more. He checked the garage. Found a pair of snow boots there sitting neatly next to the step. He reached under his vest and pulled out a large evidence bag that he’d brought along for just this reason. Set the boots inside. There was a gun cabinet in the house, and he needed to get the key. He didn’t know how long it would take for ballistics to be done on Yembley’s body. But O’Shea’s weapons would have to be compared…

  The radio on his belt crackled. “The woman isn’t here. But there’s other stuff. Keira and Finn, you’ll want to see this.”