The Scarlett Bell FBI Series

by Dan Padavona

  “You mean he wanted the spotlight for solving the case on his own.”

  Gardy paused when the plane tilted, and for a frozen moment Bell felt sure he was about to snatch the bag from the seat compartment and yawn his breakfast. Thankfully the plane steadied.

  “No. I don’t think he understood the gravity of the situation. In his mind, it was the girl’s boyfriend or a former lover with a jealous streak.”

  “Tell me about the boyfriend.”

  “Braden Goodrich, age 17. No criminal record, exemplary grades, star attackman on the lacrosse team and headed to Syracuse University.”

  “Doesn’t sound like our target.”

  “Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, either.”

  Gardy waved at the female flight attendant, who winked and produced a can of ginger ale. He winked back as she handed him the can, and the girl disappeared to the back of the plane with a hint of rosiness on her cheeks.

  “Suave.”

  “I try.”

  Bell wondered if Gardy really tried. The special agent was in his middle-forties now, unmarried and without a steady girlfriend. Though Bell had only worked beside Gardy for a year, she understood the special agent was married to his job, an admirable trait that would leave him lost and alone when he eventually retired.

  “You should ask the girl for her number.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and grinned.

  “Ask for her number? That is so yesterday. I’m surprised you didn’t suggest I ask what sign she was.”

  “Sign?”

  “You know. Pisces, Capricorn. Her Horoscope sign, ya dig?”

  Bell shook her head.

  “I don’t dig. Must have been before my time, old man.”

  The plane dipped again, and this time Gardy snatched the bag and stuffed it into his jacket.

  “Better safe than sorry.” Gardy sipped the drink, then burped into his hand and sighed in relief. “Maybe I’ll keep it. These things make great sandwich bags.”

  She pulled the case file from his open briefcase and spread the photos across her lap. The pretty flight attendant strolled back to Gardy, saw the pictures and quickly retreated to her station.

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sorry about that. Don’t worry. You’ll see her when we disembark. Plenty of time to find out if she’s really a Capricorn.”

  His Muttley laugh told her the nausea was gone as she turned her attention to the pictures, more gory and disturbing than she’d feared. At the bottom of the stack was a year-old photograph of Kacy Deering. The perfect lighting and canned smile marked it as a yearbook photo, a hint of mischievousness in the teenager’s eyes. Bell wondered what Kacy’s parents must be going through.

  The Syracuse airport was tiny and vacant compared to Dulles, the building undergoing a remodel. The dusty air made Bell cough as they carried their bags through the terminal.

  Sheriff Lerner was waiting for them outside, his Dodge Ram running curbside. Summer heat glistened the sheriff’s brow. He had the stooped appearance of a man who’d been sedentary for too much of his life, belly drooping over belt, knees weary and failing.

  “Agents Gardy and Bell?”

  Gardy tilted his ID badge, plainly visible around his neck, as was Bell’s. He held out his hand and Lerner took it. The sheriff’s eyes passed disinterestedly over Bell, dismissing her as though she were Gardy’s child on take-your-kid-to-work day.

  “Thanks for meeting us.”

  “Figured it would be quicker if you followed me. The highway won’t get you to Coral Lake, but I know a few shortcuts that will. I trust the flight was okay?”

  “Not so much.”

  They followed the sheriff’s truck in a rented Accord. The air conditioning was frigid, and the scent of cigarette smoke was burned into the seats. Gardy saw Bell scrunch her nose and nodded.

  “Yeah, it’s against the rules to smoke in these things,” he said, one hand on the steering wheel, eyes shifting between the road and Bell. “It’s the maintenance workers. They’re always taking drags on their breaks, then they crawl inside the vehicle and bring the stench with them.”

  It took a half-hour to reach the village of Coral Lake. The water was the first thing to grab Bell’s attention. Deeper blue than a clear sky in January. She couldn’t take her eyes off all that blue. Foaming waves crested and broke in the wake of a speedboat. Several boats were out on the water, one man casting a fishing line, a couple floating in a canoe. Beside a long pier in the center of town, people lined up for a boat tour.

  The village was small and quaint and bursting with money. Interspersed among the eateries were antique shops and pricey clothing stores. The sheriff’s brakes flared and Gardy stopped behind him, allowing a parade of affluent-looking villagers to cross the intersection. Across the street, a woman wearing a Bluetooth earpiece exited a Lilly Pulitzer store carrying two shopping bags. Outside a brick homemade ice cream shop, an older man and a young boy accepted ice cream cones through the window, the younger boy tilting the cone and hurriedly licking the melt.

  It hardly seemed possible for an active serial killer to be stalking this otherwise idyllic slice of life.

  Soon the village center faded in the mirrors, and the sheriff turned onto Coral Hill. Upscale homes amid a dotting of mansions popped out of the trees as the serpentine road curled up a gentle incline. Bell’s questions about how the killer butchered Kacy Deering without attracting attention were answered by the designed seclusion of Coral Hill. Privacy fences girded the properties, and most of the homes were set deep into the trees. Another layer of isolation.

  Lerner’s truck turned up a stone driveway and parked outside a white, looming Dutch Colonial with blue shutters and quarter-moon windows cut into the second story.

  Bell leaned her arm out the window.

  “Can you see the neighbor’s house?”

  “No. You’d think this was the only house on the street.”

  Thumbs in his belt loops, Lerner stood on the porch. A fist-sized chunk of glass was missing on the left side of the Walsh’s door. A yellow rope of police tape blocked the entryway and swayed like a jump rope.

  Yanking down the tape, Lerner stood aside for the special agents.

  “As you can see, the perpetrator broke the glass to gain entry, though nobody heard. The closest neighbor is Clyde Sullivan,” Lerner said, gesturing at a dense stand of elms and birch. “If you look close you can see his garage through the trees.”

  Gardy slipped off his sunglasses.

  “Close enough to hear glass shatter.”

  “Sure, except Mr. Sullivan don’t hear too well these days. You could park a semi in his driveway and yank the air horn for an hour before he’d notice.”

  “Hmm.”

  Lerner shifted uneasily when the conversation stopped. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, which he switched between belt loops and pockets as the special agents glared at him. Then his eyes widened with understanding.

  “Oh, yes. You’ll be wanting to view the crime scene now. Let me show—”

  “That won’t be necessary, Sheriff,” Bell said, striding past Lerner.

  The sheriff glanced at Gardy, a desperate plea for the special agent to intervene.

  “She’s the boss,” Gardy said, smiling. “No worries, Sheriff. We’ll take it from here.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The interior of the house was chilly from air-conditioned air spilling down the walls. In the foyer, summer heat bled through the broken pane and forced the cooling system to work overtime. The downstairs lighting was a study in contrast, sunshine beaming through the windows while shadows crawled from the corners.

  The foyer opened to a sprawling living room, replete with a grandfather clock, gas fireplace, and ceilings which seemed to stretch to the sky. A 60-inch television hung on the wall. To the left was a kitchen accented by a long island. The stairway stood off the foyer.

  Bell sat on the couch and jotted down her observations onto a notepad. Taking notes o
n her phone was more convenient, but Bell strongly believed in the connection between hand and mind when it came to processing information. Behind her, Gardy’s footsteps echoed through the downstairs like water drops in a cavern. Though the preliminary investigation indicated no signs of forced entry besides the obvious pane break, the older agent checked each window and door as he scanned for anything the sheriff’s department missed. And based on their assessment of Lerner, Bell wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they missed plenty.

  It was quiet for a while, just the hollow footsteps and the old house slumbering. A hand touched her shoulder and she jumped. Hadn’t noticed Gardy coming up behind her.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” Peering over her shoulder, he glanced at her scribbles. “You need more time before we do the walk-through?”

  Bell clicked the pen several times in thought, then she shook her head.

  “No, I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s—”

  “I need to do this alone, Gardy. Just the first walk-through, then we’ll look together.”

  He opened his mouth to argue and thought better of it. A year together had taught him not to argue or question how she got inside the mind of a killer.

  “Then I guess I’ll walk the perimeter, check out the backyard.”

  He waited for affirmation but she was deep in thought, already putting herself in the killer’s shoes, seeing the house as he saw it. Gardy sighed and walked away. She never heard the door shut.

  Bell tucked the folder and notepad under her arm and climbed the staircase. A cherry wood banister ran the length of the stairs, and a flowering plant bloomed on the second landing.

  She took each step slowly, picturing the killer moving in her place. Silent. Stalking. Watching Kacy Deering from the shadows.

  That was the first piece of conflicting narrative. Why didn’t she hear him shatter the window?

  She might have been listening to music. God knows kids turn the volume up to dangerous levels these days, but the investigators didn’t find earphones on the landing. Just her phone. And all those body parts. Bell knew he took her clothes as trophies, a way to live out his fantasies. Keep the girl alive in his mind while her parents mourned. Where was he? Close. Not a drifter. A local. Someone everyone knew. Someone who knew Kacy.

  A chill touched her on the landing. It wasn’t the air conditioning.

  A macabre blood spray covered the walls on the second floor, the floorboards black and stained beneath the attack.

  Bell’s fingers trembled. She could barely hold the folder as she knelt down and spread the photographs across the hardwood. Her breaths flew in-and-out as she studied the pictures, the grisly scene made all too real now that she was at the murder scene.

  This was where it happened. Where the killer butchered Kacy.

  Chase’s bedroom door leaned open. A few toys lay scattered across the floor. Five-year-olds were notoriously heavy sleepers, yet she couldn’t believe the boy slept while Kacy screamed outside his doorway. It didn’t make sense.

  Unless Kacy didn’t scream.

  Which meant the killer approached from behind. Took her by surprise.

  Careful not to mar the evidence, she stood beside the blood splatter, facing Chase’s door as Kacy surely had. Perhaps the teenager heard something upstairs, thought it was the boy and came to check on him. Only it wasn’t the boy.

  Her neck hairs prickled as if someone was behind her.

  Bell spun around to an empty hallway. Twin beams of sunlight blazed through the quarter-moon windows. She let out a breath and removed her hand from the Glock’s hilt.

  The bathroom was to her right, the master bedroom one door down, with a spare room tucked into the corner behind the rail. All the doors hung open.

  Stooping down, she lifted Kacy’s yearbook photo and ran her eyes over the girl’s face. By now she’d memorized every angle and curve, the exact arc of the teen’s smile, the way one eyebrow arched as though she was in on a joke. When Bell finished, she imagined the teenager standing alone in the hallway moments before the murder. Pictured her outside Chase’s doorway, back turned to where Bell now stood.

  “Where did you watch her from?”

  Her voice trembled and cracked.

  A wall switch was affixed between the bathroom and bedroom doors. She flipped it up and evened out the harsh beams through the window.

  Bell stepped inside the bathroom and closed the door to a sliver opening. Squinting, she craned her neck but couldn’t see the murder scene. The door handle was closest to Chase’s room, making it impossible for the killer to observe Kacy without ducking his head out. Perhaps the killer hid in secluded darkness before he struck. She didn’t think so. No, he’d want to watch the girl, fantasize over the murder first, a twisted foreplay.

  The master bedroom offered a better viewing angle of the blood stain, but even with the door cracked open, chandelier lighting flooded inside, casting a spotlight on anyone spying into the hallway. This wasn’t the killer’s hiding spot.

  That left the spare room.

  She knew this was the room the minute she stepped inside. Felt his presence like transient heat after the fire burned out. From this vantage point she could hide in shadow and see Chase’s door, the chandelier light falling short of the threshold. Taking nothing for granted, she walked the room, hurriedly snapping photos on her phone. Her nerves were hot wires. For the first time since the investigation began, Bell felt she’d picked up his trail. The room appeared undisturbed. One bed stood in the far corner with the bedspread tight as concrete. Unless guests were in town, nobody slept here. A cherry wood dresser stood opposite the bed. She dutifully checked the insides and found nothing.

  He might have hidden in the large walk-in closet. This is almost as big as my bedroom, she thought. Empty shelves. A lonely close hanger.

  She got down on all fours, the thick pile carpet soft on her knees as she searched for anything that might belong to the killer. Although she found nothing, Bell made it a point to ensure the crime scene techs swept the closet.

  Convinced there was nothing else to find, she headed for the doorway. Something caught her eye. An imperfection on the door frame at eye level. A hole.

  Initially it looked like a bad patch job after the removal of a hook-and-eye latch. She bent close and turned a penlight on the frame. The splintered shavings told her he’d used a sharp object, almost certainly his knife, to cut into the wood. Bell pictured him alone in the dark. Glaring at the unknowing girl. Anxiously plunging the knife tip into the frame, spinning the weapon with a powerful grip until the blade whittled in.

  Her hands were sweaty. The killer knew she was on his trail. The sensation was so sudden and powerful that she sprinted across the room and pulled back the blinds. Lerner’s truck sat below, the heavyset sheriff leaning against the grille with his arms folded. Her footfalls echoed as she ran down the hallway to Chase’s bedroom. Stepping over the spilled toys, she drew back his blinds and peered into the backyard. Nobody in the yard. The trees swayed as though laughing.

  “What are you doing?”

  She screamed and spun around to Gardy in the doorway. Mottled light turned his face into a picket fence.

  “Easy now. You okay?”

  Bell willed her breathing to slow.

  “Yeah…yeah, I am. Grab Lerner. I know where he watched her.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The vents blow stale, warm air across his face. The van won’t cool anymore. The heat makes him nauseous, trickles salty wetness down his forehead.

  Inside, everything smells of copper piping and grease like the after-hours scent of a fast food restaurant. Nervous, he plays with the radio dial. It’s the news, someone talking about the stock market. Not talking about the murder.

  Everyone in the village talks about him, but they don’t know he’s the killer. Yesterday he replaced the Fenton’s water heater, and Mrs. Fenton couldn’t stop jabbering over Kacy Deering and the horrible monster who kil
led her. It was enough to make him laugh inside. Frightened him that she might see the smile creep into his eyes and crawl out of him like a black widow.

  He’s learned to be patient, and he must be. They are looking for him now. Everyone is. But they are, especially.

  His gaze falls on the blue Accord. There’s a small dent above the rear wheel well. It’s not their car, but a rental. These must be the agents, for who else would accompany the sheriff to the Walsh house? His neighbors gossip, and when they talk he learns things. It’s a small village, Coral Lake. Everyone knew the agents had arrived as soon as they drove into the main square, hugging close to Sheriff Lerner’s Dodge Ram like obedient mutts, passing so close to his front door that he could have personally greeted them from his front stoop.

  A trickle of panic runs down his back. Kacy is alone now. Unprotected.

  She won’t run away, but someone might try to steal her from him. The agents will certainly try.

  Last evening he heard a hiker move through the woods and pass close to his personal space. Kacy’s new home. He could hear the hiker stomp through brush, the firecracker pops of sticks snapping. The knife was in his hand, its blade sharp and still carrying the girl’s scent. He was ready to defend his home, to protect Kacy, before the footsteps receded down the hill and he released his breath.

  The sun is a molten glare on the windshield. He grips the steering wheel, squeezes with held breath, knuckles white. He strains until his face reddens, then releases.

  The warmth of relaxation caresses his body. It begins at his scalp and works through his arms and legs. A pins-and-needles sensation.

  He is brave to be here in full view. Anyone can see the van, but they don’t suspect his intentions.

  His tension released, he closes his eyes and imagines the shed. One light bulb affixed to the ceiling, powered by a solar panel. Pine scents from surrounding trees coloring the musty mattress smell. Their sanctuary. No one can hurt them there.

  He doesn’t like to remember the leather straps affixed to the cot and hopes he never has to use them. He doesn’t think he will. Kacy accepts him now and may one day learn to love him after she recognizes how he protects her. Yet the straps are a necessary reminder that, if she is disloyal, punishment will be necessary.