Web of Secrets

by Susan Sleeman

  The table. The knife. Molly in shackles on the floor.

  She forced herself to make a complete circle and take in every inch of the room. “The table’s gone and he’s put down new flooring. The walls have been painted, too. Otherwise, it’s the same.”

  Connor stood at the doorway, surveying the space. “It’s clean. Too clean for a utility room.”

  “You think he killed the other girls here or at the fabrication plant?”

  “Hard to tell. He’s used bleach at both locations. He could just have a fascination with bleach. But I didn’t smell it upstairs, so I’m thinking he was trying to hide blood evidence down here, too. If there’s any blood still left, Dane will find it.”

  Blood. Her blood. Other girls’ blood. He needed to pay. “Dane’s good, but I’d like to call in our Evidence Recovery Team, too. Dane knows Henry Greco, and he’s our best, so I’ll ask for him.”

  “I’m good with that. But I need to check with my lieutenant first.”

  “No,” she said defiantly. “I don’t care what he says. I’ve toed the team line on everything so far. I’m not doing it here.” She set her shoulders in a straight line and eyed him, expecting him to be angry.

  He smiled. “I’m glad to see the old Becca Lange resurfacing. For a while there, I was afraid she was gone.”

  She’d been thinking the same thing. “Then you’re good with Henry?”

  “Call him, and I’ll arrange for Dane. But not until we find out if Zwicky is hiding out like a little sissy in a closet upstairs.”

  “Agreed,” she said and started for the stairway.

  On the main level, the team leader informed them no one was home.

  “We need to get uniforms and agents canvassing the neighbors and make sure we have someone watching for the return of Zwicky’s van,” Becca said.

  “I’ll get the uniforms on it.” Connor stepped away.

  Becca dug out her phone. She first arranged for Henry, then Taylor, who could not only help out on the neighborhood canvass, but learn a lot in the process. Or maybe Becca just wanted someone here from her own team for emotional support. It was support she’d like from Connor, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. At least he didn’t seem to be angry that she’d kept her true identity from him.

  That earned him additional brownie points, but she couldn’t even think about him as anything other than a detective until this was over. She also couldn’t keep her secret any longer. She’d tell Taylor the truth when she arrived. As soon as they finished processing this scene, Becca would also phone Kait and Nina and tell them, too.

  Connor walked in the door as she was stowing her phone. “We’re set. Dane’s on his way and so is my lieutenant.”

  “Ditto for Henry and Taylor,” Becca said. “I’d like to do a walkthrough of the rest of the house.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he offered.

  She nodded and glanced around the living room decorated in a muted beige. The house had a normal exterior and a normal interior, too. The creep fit into the neighborhood just fine, the way many sociopaths did. It made them hard to apprehend.

  She approached a long hallway with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The first room held a desk and four computers as well as a laptop, an Apple desktop, and two Windows machines, both generic cases indicating Zwicky had built them himself. She glanced at a bulletin board, suddenly realizing it held her picture. She didn’t say anything, but when Connor caught sight of it, he growled something that she couldn’t make out.

  Then Becca’s gaze lighted on the picture next to hers. “It’s Molly’s daughter, Haley. Oh, no . . . please no. He’s going after her.”

  “No, he’s not,” Connor snapped out and grabbed his phone. “I’ll have a team at her house in a few minutes.”

  He paced a few steps then demanded to have a patrol car go to Molly’s address and explained his reasons. “Call me back the minute we confirm Haley is okay.”

  Becca didn’t have Finn’s number or she would have called him herself. Though she was anxious, there was nothing to do but wait until she heard back from the officer who was on his way to their house.

  Becca turned her focus to the desk and studied schematics for an automobile computer system. “Looks like he’s a software engineer working in the auto industry.”

  “Odd that Jae didn’t find any employer in her search,” Connor said.

  “Computers make sense, though,” Becca replied as she moved on to the next room. “He met Molly online at a time when few people were into computers.”

  She stepped into a larger, tidier bedroom that was sparsely decorated. It smelled like arthritis cream mixed with garlic.

  Becca’s stomach wrenched. The odor had clung to Van Gogh’s clothing, and the memories she’d been battling came racing back. Panic followed. A small cry of distress escaped her lips. She clamped a hand over her mouth and took a step toward the door.

  Connor came to stand next to her. “What is it?’

  “The smell. It’s how he smelled. His clothes. His body. He reeked of it.” She forced her shoulders back and continued to the closet where she found women’s clothing.

  “His mother’s room,” Connor said.

  The bedroom creeped Becca out. “He’s holding on to her things.”

  “You said he talked to her a lot.”

  She nodded. “He always mentioned something about cleansing, saying he was trying to cleanse us. It never made any sense.” She frowned.

  “What?”

  “Molly kept pushing him on it. Asking question after question. It made him mad. I figured he would take her life first just to shut her up.”

  “But he came for you instead.”

  She nodded.

  “You never said how he managed to abduct both of you at the same time.”

  “He didn’t. Not really anyway.” She looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Molly told me she wasn’t chatting online with him anymore, but I knew she was and was planning to meet him. When she snuck out of the house, I followed her to make sure she was safe.”

  That night came back in great clarity. The darkness. Van Gogh’s creepy face peering at her through the fog. The terror in Molly’s eyes.

  Her mouth and throat dry, she swallowed hard before she could continue. “They met in the parking lot of an old abandoned theater. By the time I caught up to her, he had her wrists in handcuffs and a knife to her throat. I lunged anyway. He threatened to kill Molly if I didn’t come with them.”

  Connor watched her for a moment, evaluating and weighing her story, she supposed. “So he hadn’t planned to take you, then?”

  “No.”

  “Which is probably why he wanted to get rid of you first.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So how did you get away?”

  Becca shivered and crossed her arms. “He had me on the table. Here, in the basement. The very table we found Molly resting on. He’d somehow failed to close my cuff tightly and left the key on a nearby shelf. He started to cut my ear, and Molly called out to him. She told him she’d sleep with him if he let me go. She—”

  “But he didn’t try to assault either of you sexually before that,” Connor interrupted.

  Becca shook her head. “He never even mentioned sex. But when Molly brought it up, he came to life for the first time. He went to her, and that’s when I discovered my cuff was loose. I wiggled it until I freed my hand and could grab the key. I started for him, planning to attack him, but Molly shook her head and motioned for me to go. I figured she was worried that if I tried to attack him, he might overpower me again. So I went for help.”

  The memories assaulted Becca. She had to stop again and take a deep breath. In and out. In and out.

  Connor rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go through t
hat, honey.”

  The warmth of his hand and his soft voice, touched her to her soul, and she wanted to give in to her emotions, but that would get them nowhere.

  She pressed her hand over his. “The rest you know and I’m tired of rehashing the past. I need to do something.”

  She squeezed his hand then stepped to the door. Connor padded behind her. She entered the next bedroom. Van Gogh’s room. Organized and utilitarian like his mother’s. The same smell lingered, but it wasn’t as heavy.

  Connor’s phone rang and he answered.

  “Okay, I want someone sitting on the house twenty-four-seven until we locate the suspect.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Haley’s at home and she’s fine. So is her brother Todd, in case you wanted to know, though it would be odd for Van Gogh to go after the kid.”

  “Thank you for arranging a protective detail for them.”

  “When we get done here, I’ll talk to Vance and make sure we have the best officers assigned to their watch.”

  Becca nodded her thanks and scanned the space before going to the closet. The hangers, filled with threadbare shirts and jeans, were spaced evenly apart as if he’d taken a ruler to them. So far, Van Gogh was presenting as obsessive and orderly, just like his profile had predicted. Except for the large gap that appeared in the middle of the hangers. Odd.

  She felt Connor come to stand behind her.

  “Something’s off about these.” He reached over her shoulder and separated the clothes even more.

  The overhead light shone on the back wall, revealing a secret door.

  “A safe room.” Becca jerked out her gun.

  “Stand back, and we’ll see.” Connor drew his weapon.

  She wasn’t going to give him first crack at arresting Van Gogh. She pressed the door. The spring lock gave way, and it opened into a small space. No light. No movement.

  “Cover me.” She dug out her phone to shine a light in the space, running the beam over the walls. No Van Gogh, but guns. Walls filled with them. Organized by category. Handguns. Rifles. Automatics. Semis. There was one whole wall devoted to knives.

  She stepped into the small space and saw an old photograph of a man framed and hung on the wall. He looked like Van Gogh, minus the scars. His father?

  Connor joined her and stared at the walls, a deep scowl on his face. “Check out the empty slots.”

  She saw three bare spots. A handgun, assault rifle, and knife were missing.

  “He’s loaded for bear,” Connor said.

  Loaded for bear. And with her picture on his bulletin board, it was looking more and more like she was his intended prey.

  DINNERTIME HAD LONG passed, and Connor’s growling stomach made him cranky. Processing the scene and canvassing neighbors had taken hours. It wasn’t unusual and Connor normally didn’t mind it. Of course, normally he didn’t have Becca’s secret to stew over while she was busy working right under his nose. Like now, when she stepped past him as if he were invisible as she went to talk to the tech who was removing Zwicky’s computers. Her failure to make eye contact made Connor even crankier.

  The FBI forensic tech, Henry Greco, came barreling into the bedroom and rushed up to Becca. “You won’t believe what we found in the basement. You’ve got to see it.”

  She started across the room and glanced at Connor. “You coming?”

  Fine. So she did know he was there, after all. He fell into step behind her, and they made their way downstairs.

  Maybe this was their break. Dane and Henry had worked hard, but so far, they hadn’t found a stinkin’ thing. No blood. No clothing. No jars, ears, or spare nightgowns. Sure, they’d found pictures of Becca in the bedroom, and Becca had recognized the basement, but what they needed was concrete evidence that this was Van Gogh’s house.

  They stepped into the utility room. The lights were out, and Dane stood near a long wall with a spray bottle in one hand and his blue light in the other.

  “Close the door,” he said.

  Connor complied, already knowing from Dane’s tools and the darkness of the room that they were about to see blood residue.

  “We found blood. Quite by accident and quite a lot of it.” Henry nodded at Dane. “We’ll spray luminol over a large area of the wall behind Dane. Keep your eyes open. The image will fade fast.” Henry picked up a spray bottle and his own light.

  “Ready?” he asked Dane.

  Dane grinned. “Oh yeah.”

  Together they quickly sprayed the entire wall, then clicked on their lights.

  Connor’s mouth dropped open, and Becca gasped.

  She took a step closer to the wall. “This is it! The proof we need to nail this guy.”

  “Amazing, right,” Henry said.

  “‘Amazing’ isn’t a word I’d use.” Connor let his gaze run over the wall where someone had written five names and dates in blood, then had painted over them.

  Connor shook his head. “I didn’t know you could detect blood so strongly through paint.”

  “I’m guessing Van Gogh thought the same thing, but we’ve got him,” Dane said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Henry slapped a high five with Dane.

  “Now all we need to do is find him,” Connor said. “Can you spray the wall again so I can write down the names and dates?”

  “I can do you one better.” Dane grabbed his camera and displayed the digital screen for Connor. “I’ve got it on film.”

  Connor got out his notebook and pen and jotted down the names. He wasn’t surprised to see Molly and Lauren in the number four and five slots without a date next to their names.

  He turned to Becca. “He may have written each girl’s name in her own blood. If he did, we can use it to match evidence Orman collected from the body in the nineties.”

  “And we can run DNA on the others to see if there’s a match in CODIS,” Henry said.

  “Get a good sample of each name and date,” Becca instructed.

  “Great job, by the way,” Connor added.

  Dane preened. “Just doing our jobs.”

  “Now that we’ve got absolute proof that we’re in the right place, I want a new grid search of this place from top to bottom,” Connor told Dane. “We can’t miss a thing.”

  Dane nodded and flipped on the light switch.

  Connor followed Becca up the stairs where Taylor waited for them.

  “You look beat,” she said to Becca.

  “It’s been a trying day.” Becca rubbed her forehead and filled Taylor in on what they’d found in the basement. Then she told her about being Lauren.

  To Taylor’s credit, she didn’t gape at Becca or even gasp. She simply gave a crisp nod. “Maybe we should take off and grab something to eat.”

  Becca shook her head. “I’ll hang here to see if Van Gogh shows up.”

  “He’s not gonna show up with all the commotion going on out front,” Connor said. “We might as well leave this to Dane and Henry.”

  Becca’s gaze darted around the room. “Maybe I’ll talk to the neighbors again.”

  “It’s too late to be knocking on doors,” Connor said. But in reality, it was just a waste of time—they’d already questioned everyone at length.

  “Come over to my place,” Taylor suggested. “We could grab a pizza on the way and then check to see if there’s any link between the girls’ names on the wall and the current victims. It might lead us to an alternate location where we can find Zwicky.”

  Becca pondered it for a moment then nodded. “Sounds perfect.”

  Connor didn’t like the plan. Letting Becca out of his sight bothered him big time, but he couldn’t stop her. “You’ll be careful?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We’re both capable agents, Connor.”

  “Okay, fine. I guess I’ll
see you later then.”

  “You’ll call me if you hear anything from Dane?”

  Connor nodded.

  “If I don’t talk to you tonight, I’ll give you a call in the morning.” Becca reached for her backpack sitting in the corner.

  “Wait, what? You’re spending the night with Taylor?”

  “She is.” Taylor stepped up next to Becca and dared him to argue.

  “What about clothes?”

  “We’re about the same size,” Taylor said.

  “Goodnight, Connor.” Becca headed for the door.

  Connor watched her go. He couldn’t help thinking it was a mistake to let her leave without him. A big mistake.

  SO THEY’D FOUND HIS home. How, he didn’t know. He thought he’d been so careful.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” Reginald whispered from his hiding spot down the street as he watched the police officers surrounding his house.

  Mother didn’t reply.

  “I know you’re angry, Mother, but I have a perfect plan to take Lauren. Nothing they can do will stop it.”

  “It had better not,” Mother’s harsh voice came from above. “We’ve lost our home because of her.”

  “The hacking has paid off handsomely, and I can buy us another house. A grand one. And we can continue to live in style.”

  “We?” Mother asked.

  “Yes, we,” he cried out. “Please say you’ll always be with me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Reginald’s gut cramped at her words. He’d simply wanted to be loved. To have someone who would be there for him through thick and thin. Mother had done so, but with reservation and conditions. Always conditions.

  Maybe he was better off without her. Maybe Lauren could be his forever love. The person who stuck by him no matter what, who wouldn’t abandon him when the going got tough.

  “Will you do that for me, Lauren?” he asked as he hurried toward his rental car. “Will you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  BECCA WAS WEARY. Bone weary. But not even exhaustion could make her forget seeing her name written on the wall in Zwicky’s basement. It felt odd calling him Zwicky, but in all honesty, the name was so less intimidating than Van Gogh. If she thought of him as Zwicky, she could believe they would actually catch him. Van Gogh, not as much.