Kirsten bit her lip to keep from crying out, and tried to swallow a cough. It came out weakly.
Please, don’t let him hear me.
“Don’t be such a dumb shit, of course it does!”
“Don’t call me names. I don’t like it when you say I’m stupid.”
“I didn’t! Geez, Dennis, I’m coming to you for help. I never said you were stupid. You’re my little brother, right?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s going to be okay. Really. It doesn’t mean anything. So what if I knew the victims? I know a lot of people. It’s just a coincidence. But you know how the police are. They’d love to take down a Barnett.”
“You didn’t hurt anyone?”
“No!”
“But you were there. You made me sit in the car for hours.”
“And you left me! The cab was taking fucking forever so I got a ride home from some skank. I was lucky she didn’t get us killed. That’s why I have you come along, to be my driver. But I wasn’t there, right?”
“Of course you were. I took you.”
“No! You didn’t. You didn’t take me to that party. Okay? Got that? I don’t know what’s going on, but someone has it in for me. It’s going to be fine, it is, as long as you don’t know anything.”
“You want me to lie?”
“I want you to act stupid. Just act more retarded or something.”
Kirsten wanted to run away, but she couldn’t run or walk or even stand. What was Dennis going to do? Lie for his brother? Her head spun, even though she was lying down.
Wade said, “Denny, I’m sorry-I didn’t mean it like that.” His voice was soft and sounded sincere. But he wanted Dennis to lie.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m just under a lot of stress right now.”
Dennis said, “I don’t like any of this.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone. I swear to you, I didn’t.”
Kirsten didn’t believe Wade. He’d been at the party! Was it his voice she’d heard? It had been so far away, she didn’t know or couldn’t remember. As far away as the voices sounded now. Down a long, dark tunnel.
Dennis said, “I believe you.”
No, Dennis! Kirsten wanted to scream.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was spiraling down, into blackness.
Her chest ached. Was she coughing?
“Oh, my God, Dennis, what have you done?”
The voice was so far away.
“Kirsten? What’s wrong?”
Someone touched her head. She couldn’t talk.
“What happened?” Wade demanded. “What did you do to her?”
He saved my life!
“I found her,” Dennis said.
“Oh no. No. I know her. We have to get her out of here! Damn, she’s blazing hot.”
If Kristen had the energy, she’d laugh. She was anything but hot. Her body was icy cold. So cold.
“She’s sick. I’m taking care of her.”
“Sick? She’s more than sick, Dennis. We have to get her to the hospital. Call 911-no. No. I can’t. You can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see? They’ll take our names. If they know about my website, they might know about her. I can’t risk that.”
“We can’t just leave her somewhere.”
“We have to. What if she brings the police here?”
“No!”
“Shit. Okay, I have an idea. Get her stuff. Everything. Now.”
Kirsten faded away. She didn’t hear what Wade’s plan was. For all she knew, he was going to kill her.
Somehow, dying didn’t scare her as much as she had thought it would.
SIXTEEN
Watching Sean pace the FBI interview room was exhausting. “If that woman doesn’t come back in five minutes,” he said, “I’m leaving. We’ve been in here for over an hour.” He looked at his watch and frowned. “One hour and twenty minutes.”
“You don’t like waiting much, do you?” Lucy asked.
“Without my phone, without my laptop, without even a piece of paper?”
She put her hand on her chest in mock insult. “What about me? I’m here.”
He stopped walking and sat across from her. He held her hands and kissed them both. “And you are amazing. You totally blew Agent Madeaux away with your time line.”
“So you’ve told me. Twice.” But Lucy was very pleased that she’d found something valuable to the Cinderella Strangler investigation. She only hoped it led them to Kirsten. “I hope it helps.”
“They hadn’t made the Party Girl connection, and didn’t know that Barnett knew the first victim.”
“I suspect Wade Barnett knew all of the victims before he killed them.”
“And you’re concluding all of this because he dated the first victim?”
“It’s logical. And suffocation is intimate. He’d have to hold his victims close, restrain them in some way. I wish I could see the crime scene reports. The information in the newspaper was vague.”
Lucy backtracked a bit. “I should say that Barnett’s the most likely to have killed these women. We know he knew the first and fourth victim, as well as Kirsten.”
“But your gut tells you he’s guilty.”
“I need to see the evidence. But if I were running this investigation, I would bring him in for some intensive questioning.”
Sean grinned. “I’d like to see you in action.”
Lucy couldn’t hide her smile, though she reddened at his attention. She said, “It’s interesting that they didn’t report that the victims were sexually assaulted.”
The door opened and Suzanne Madeaux said, “We can’t prove sexual assault. The coroner believes that sex was consensual, but the evidence is inconclusive.”
An older cop with Italian features, NYPD badge clipped to his slacks, followed her. “Detective Vic Panetta,” Suzanne said by way of introduction, “Sean Rogan, Lucy Kincaid. Sorry to keep you two waiting. Vic and I are heading the task force on these murders and I needed to call him in and get him up to speed before I could get back here.”
Suzanne sat down with a file folder. Detective Panetta sat across from her and shook both Sean and Lucy’s hands.
“Agent Armstrong vouched for both of you,” Suzanne said. “But we have a problem.” She looked at Lucy. “The Party Girl website doesn’t exist.”
Lucy’s stomach dropped. “It must be down. I have printouts of the profile pages, as well as screen captures.”
“I’ll need to see those, but I’m telling you, the site has vanished. The URL is available for purchase.”
“That’s not possible,” Lucy said. “I was on the site this afternoon.”
Sean said, “It’s a pain in the ass, takes a day or two, but you can surrender your URL.”
Suzanne said, “I need to know everyone you spoke to since you became involved in this case. You must have said or done something that tipped someone off, and they pulled down our only evidence that connects the four victims.”
“Hold it,” Sean said. “You didn’t even know about the Party Girl website. It wasn’t your evidence until we handed it to you on a silver platter.”
“Three victims,” Lucy said. “The first victim wasn’t on the Party Girl site.”
“You may have missed her,” Suzanne said dismissively. “But now we have no way of knowing because the site has disappeared. Look, I’m not here to get into an argument; I need information. I have a killer out there targeting young women, and our only good lead is gone.”
“It’s not gone,” Sean said. “We have the intel you need. And nothing Lucy or I did caused it to disappear. I told you it takes at least twenty-four hours to cancel a URL. Ownership is traceable, but whoever owned Party Girl did it through a blind company. I have my staff in California working on it.”
Suzanne rubbed her eyes. “Mr. Rogan, I’ll have to ask you to refrain from any investigation into that website. It’s now our domai
n, and I’m sending everything to our cybercrimes lab at Quantico.”
Lucy glanced at Sean. He looked down at the table, biting back a smile. She didn’t think it was important for Suzanne to know-at this point-that Lucy’s sister-in-law Kate Donovan was one of the point people for cybercrime at Quantico.
“Ms. Kincaid,” Suzanne continued, “whom did you speak to today?”
“Where is my laptop?” Lucy asked.
“Why?”
“I’ve kept a log of everything I’ve done since Sean brought me in Wednesday morning, including a report of everyone I spoke to, what they said and my impressions. It would be easier to give you a copy than sit here for an hour.”
Suzanne wasn’t expecting that answer. Lucy didn’t take pleasure in her diligence; had she said or done something that had tipped off the killer? Sean would know how a URL could be surrendered, but they’d been working on the case for three days. Maybe it was the fake profile she’d created. Or the email she sent to Kirsten yesterday. What if she’d screwed up the entire investigation? If another young woman died because Lucy had been too bold or asked the wrong question or didn’t see a clue, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
Suzanne said, “I don’t like bringing civilians into the middle of an ongoing investigation. Normally, I wouldn’t allow you in the conference room except that Agent Armstrong was sure that you could be of help. And you didn’t tell me, Ms. Kincaid, that you’re an applicant for the Bureau.”
Lucy’s face reddened and her stomach churned. She should tell Agent Madeaux that she’d been rejected. It felt deceptive to pretend to be something she wasn’t, and she was no longer an applicant.
Sean spoke before she could. “Lucy aced her written test. Highest in her group. I understand that your case is confidential. My job is to find Kirsten Benton. Yours is to catch a killer. We’ll share everything we have, and I hope you’ll be looking for Kirsten if your investigation takes you down that path.”
“Follow me,” Suzanne said as she stood.
Lucy glanced at Sean and frowned. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, and she looked away. She didn’t like Suzanne thinking she was on her way to the FBI Academy, because when the Fed found out the truth she’d lose all respect for her.
Her apprehension faded when she stepped into the small, windowless conference room that had become the repository of all things related to the Cinderella Strangler investigation.
The table could seat six, but the two end chairs had been removed to make more room to walk around the periphery. The wall to the right had an oversized magnetic whiteboard with photos of the victims and crime scenes, plus handwritten notes. Lucy saw that her time line had been printed out and someone had made notes along the margin.
Suzanne gestured toward a chair. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. She slid over Lucy’s laptop.
Feeling like she was onstage, Lucy booted up her computer and retrieved her report. Suzanne handed Lucy the end of a long cord. “This printer is ancient, no wireless.”
Lucy plugged it in and sent her document to print four copies. Suzanne retrieved and distributed them.
Detective Panetta and Suzanne read in silence. Lucy, antsy, walked over to the magnetic board.
Four victims, one missing teenager. If Wade Barnett was the killer and had had consensual sex with the victims, why kill them?
They were all killed near a large party. That told Lucy the killer was bold, arrogant, confident that he wouldn’t be caught. Yet the murders themselves were intimate. Unhurried. Almost patient.
“Ms. Kincaid,” the detective said, “those photos can be hard to take.”
“I worked at the morgue for a year,” she said. “I’ve seen worse.”
She reviewed an autopsy report. It concluded that the murder weapon had been a plastic bag.
“Was the plastic bag used to suffocate the victims recovered at any of the crime scenes?” Lucy asked almost without realizing that she’d spoken.
When no one said anything, Lucy looked at an irritated Suzanne. The Fed didn’t hide her emotions. “We’re trying to keep information from the press, and it hasn’t helped that someone leaked the information about the missing shoe.”
“I’m not going to talk to the press. I’m just curious. Why would the killer take the plastic bag? It would be more efficient to leave it with the body, or not even remove it from her face. The killer wasn’t concerned about getting caught. When you cut off someone’s air supply, it takes three to seven minutes to render them unconscious, and another minute or two before they’re brain-dead. Why not just tie the plastic bag around the victim’s head and leave her? Get away from the scene as soon as possible-there were hundreds of people in the area; someone could easily have spotted the attack. Yet the killer stayed with the victim long enough to ensure that she was dead, then removed the plastic bag and left with it.” She looked at the one bare foot on the last victim. “I wonder if he put the shoe in the plastic bag? Why?”
Suzanne cleared her throat. “We’ve sent a copy of the reports to Quantico for a profile of the killer.”
“You don’t have enough here to create a viable profile,” Lucy said.
“With all due respect, Ms. Kincaid, our Behavioral Science Unit knows what they’re doing.”
“Of course they do, but not knowing if the victims were sexually assaulted is a crucial piece of the puzzle.”
“Maybe the guy can’t perform,” Panetta said. “Blamed the girl.”
“That’s a crime of anger and passion,” Lucy said. “If he attempted sex and couldn’t finish, he’d most likely have hit her first, strangled her, beaten her, or stabbed her. Statistically, sex-related crimes have violent deaths. This isn’t violent. It’s premeditated-the killer brought the plastic bag and took it with him. Why? It’s almost like …” Something was eluding her and she wished she could spend more time with the files.
Lucy asked, “Who goes to these parties?”
Panetta said, “Mostly the under-thirty crowd, a lot of college students blowing off steam on the weekends. Teenagers. Some are headbangers; most are into the alternative music scene; some parties are exclusive to the Yuppie types-work on Wall Street during the day, and party at night. Instead of pot and mesc and beer they snort coke and drink gin.”
“Wade Barnett has a history of playing in the party scene,” Lucy said. “If Wade Barnett is the killer-”
Suzanne cut her off and leaned forward. “Whoa, stop right there. Now you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“He knew the first and fourth victims. He’s the most viable suspect.”
“If Barnett is a suspect, he’s my suspect. Last I checked, I still have a badge and you don’t. Understand?”
Lucy nodded and turned back to the crime board. Suzanne was right. She’d overstepped.
Lucy tapped an index card on the board with Wade Barnett’s name on it. “You already had him on your suspect list, didn’t you?”
“We interviewed him. His name came up in the investigation. We’re following up on things he said, and we’ll follow up on what you uncovered.”
Suzanne stood up and stretched. “It’s late. I appreciate your insight. I’ll be in touch if I hear anything about your missing teenager.”
Sean leaned back in his chair, making no sign of leaving. “You should listen to Lucy. She has a master’s in criminal psychology.”
Lucy blushed. She didn’t want Sean pushing this. “Agent Madeaux is right,” Lucy said.
Suzanne sighed. “Let me sleep on it, okay? It’s been a long couple days. If you think of anything else that might be helpful for me to know, give me a ring.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said. “You might want to ask Dr. Vigo to look at this case. I’m sure he’ll take it, though he doesn’t run the department anymore. I, um, think there’s a complexity here that is uncommon.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Just, I don’t know, I can’t really explain it without knowing more about each cr
ime scene and victim. If you have any questions about my report, call me. I’m happy to help.”
Sean said, “I need my pistol back.”
Suzanne said, “You understand that you’re not allowed to bring a firearm into the City of New York. Will you be leaving tomorrow?”
“We’ll be leaving when we find Kirsten.”
The silence made Lucy uncomfortable. Sean didn’t always play nice with law enforcement.
Suzanne picked up the phone and pressed three buttons. “This is Agent Madeaux. Would you please retrieve Mr. Rogan’s weapon and escort him and Ms. Kincaid to their vehicle? Thank you.”
Once Rogan and Kincaid were gone, Suzanne stared at the whiteboard trying to see what Lucy Kincaid had seen.
“What are we missing?” she asked Panetta.
“Are we missing something?” he countered. “Lucy Kincaid writes a terrific report, and someday the kid will make a great cop, but she’s still a twenty-five-year-old FBI recruit. She has no practical experience in criminal investigations.”
“I don’t know if that’s true. Noah Armstrong-the agent down in Washington-said something that had me thinking he’s worked with her in the past. I’ll pull her file tomorrow and see what’s up.”
You don’t have enough here to create a viable profile.
That was what Quantico had told Suzanne at the beginning. Except they had more now than two weeks ago. And there was more here than they’d had in other cases where the profile had been right on the money.
Cops had been solving crimes for years, long before psychological criminal profiling became an official FBI squad, back in the seventies. Good cops didn’t need a shrink to tell them that someone was a sociopath or had a drunk for a father or that rape was a crime of anger. Most crimes were solved with lots of legwork, logic, and common sense.
Suzanne had watched Lucy closely while she looked at the board. She wondered why she had been so interested in the autopsy report. Suzanne had read Jessica Bell’s report, the one posted on the board, and nothing had stood out. It read just like the other three-except the coroner stated that intercourse in the immediate time prior to death was inconclusive. He speculated-not on the report-that the victim didn’t have sex, consensual or otherwise, the night she died.
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