Cold Touch

by Leslie Parrish

  Before he could say that, he heard his cell phone ring and pulled it out of his pocket. Seeing the Atlanta area code, he caught Olivia’s eye. “I think this might be your FBI agent friend.”

  She nodded. “Please tell him I said hello.”

  Julia pointed toward an open door, which looked like it led into a shadowy conference room. “You can go in there and talk.”

  “Thanks.” He headed for the door, not because he didn’t trust the two women to hear the conversation but because he wanted to be able to listen closely to what the man said without being interrupted by every new arrival.

  “This is Detective Cooper,” he said, answering on the third ring. He pushed the door shut behind him and flipped on a light, then sat in one of the chairs circling the large conference table.

  “Special Agent Steven Ames here, Detective,” the man said. He had a deep voice, gruff, and sounded older. Olivia had once mentioned he’d been fatherly toward her at the time of her kidnapping, which had been more than a decade ago, so he figured this guy was probably at least in his fifties by now.

  Gabe apologized for having missed the man’s calls yesterday, not telling him it was because he’d been busy watching Olivia go through her psychic nightmare.

  “No problem. It gave me a chance to check out the crime wires from Savannah. I suspect you’re calling about the remains found in that bar fire. Was it him? Was it Jack?”

  Impressive that the man remembered so much about the case. “Yeah, looks like it.”

  “How’s Livvie taking it?”

  “About like you’d expect.” He had already decided to lay it on the line with Ames, since the man had worked this case long before Gabe had ever heard of it—or, at least, aspects of this case. “The thing is, Agent Ames, the evidence we’ve come up with so far doesn’t really fit in with the story everyone has settled on from that night.”

  A beat. Then Ames murmured, “It wasn’t Collier.”

  “No, sir, I don’t believe it was. I think it’s likely he was sent on an errand to pick up the money, but the real kidnapper got away.”

  “I never thought that son of a bitch was smart enough to pull this off, at least not without some inside help.”

  “How smart did he have to be to grab a helpless girl and lock her in a barn?” he asked, hearing his own barely subdued anger. The ease with which that monster had intruded on Olivia’s life, completely upsetting it, changing her future, her family, everything, simply infuriated him.

  “You might be surprised. See, at the time, I was having a hard time figuring out a couple of things. Why he’d wait so many hours to try for the ransom money. Guess he was busy.”

  Walling up a child’s body perhaps.

  “How the bastard disabled the security system was another big question,” the agent added.

  “There was an alarm?” he asked, not having noticed that in the file.

  “Uh-huh. He broke in through a small window in the laundry room, one of the few that wasn’t wired—guess they thought it was too small.”

  “Did you think, later, after Olivia told you about Jack . . .”

  “That maybe he had the boy climb in, then open the closest door for him? Makes sense.”

  Yes. It did. Tragic sense.

  “However it went down, he got in and found the main control panel inside the pantry of this huge old house on a dark, moonless night, probably without turning any lights on. And he disabled the alarm so none of the motion detectors would go off as he went upstairs to the girls’ side of the house.”

  Picturing the scene, Gabe felt sick. Liv and Brooke had been so young, so vulnerable. If he ever had kids, which wasn’t something he pictured easily, not given his own childhood, he definitely wouldn’t have them sleeping farther than screaming distance from his own room. And his shotgun. He didn’t doubt Olivia’s parents loved their children, but the rich sometimes had strange ideas about how to spend their money. Living in humongous houses that separated you from your loved ones wasn’t his idea of smart.

  “Did Livvie tell you how he got her not to scream?” Ames asked.

  “I read it in the file.” Standard operating procedure for maniacs. “He threatened to kill her sister.”

  “Yep. So she didn’t make a sound, he knocked her out, then carried her right down the stairs and outside. All without anybody hearing a thing.”

  Gabe mulled it over, realizing right away why Ames had been disturbed by the whole scenario. It sure didn’t sound like the work of some punk whose previous crimes hadn’t included anything worse than petty theft, a few drug violations, and drunk and disorderly. Something like this would have taken planning and steel nerves, neither of which was usually associated with drunks or drug abusers.

  “Then there was the fact that he took her at all. The Wainwrights are rich, no doubt about it, but they’re not the richest people in Savannah by a long shot. The house is out in the boonies, and any criminal slimeball would know they had gates and alarms, plus servants. So why go to all that trouble when you could just as easily stalk and snatch some superrich debutante trying to piss off Daddy by hanging out at a sleazy club on Abercorn?”

  A very good question. What had drawn the monster’s eye to the Wainwrights? To Olivia? Kidnapping for profit wasn’t really that common a crime, not in this area, at any rate. So what had put the big bull’s-eye on her?

  “Did you ever suspect anybody else?”

  “Well, I sure was thinking inside job, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Gabe whistled. It hadn’t been. But now that Ames mentioned it . . . “And?”

  “Between the night she was taken and the night Collier was killed picking up the ransom, we practically shone flashlights up the assholes of every handyman, maid, repairman, deliveryman, florist, gardener, caterer or friend who was in that house during the previous six months. We’d barely made a dent when the word came in that she’d been found.”

  Suspecting he already knew the answer, Gabe asked, “You wouldn’t happen to still have the names of those folks, would you?”

  The other man laughed. “Does a wicked old man sin on Saturday nights and pray on Sundays? Hell, yes, I do.”

  Liking the agent more and more, Gabe gave him his e-mail address and asked him to send the list as soon as possible.

  “Will do. And, Detective, if you’re right, I sure hope you get this bastard. It never sat right with me, us not finding that boy.” He cleared his throat. “I’m damn sorry to hear he was killed.”

  “You and me both, Agent Ames. Thanks for the help.”

  Though Johnny Traynor wasn’t fool enough to ever spend the ransom money and didn’t make a whole lot at his day job, he did have a fair amount of cash at his disposal. That was because of his special jobs, the contract work he did on behalf of other people who didn’t have the brains, the balls, or the entrepreneurial spirit to do them themselves.

  He really shouldn’t do that type of work anymore—he knew that. Interacting with other people in any of his illegal activities could be dangerous. Accomplices meant witnesses.

  It could also, however, be lucky. Just look at what had happened when he’d paid a loser fifty bucks to go pick up the ransom money for that Wainwright bitch all those years ago. If Johnny hadn’t hired him, he, himself, might have been the one killed by the cops.

  “Sneaky little whore,” he mumbled under his breath, feeling sick thinking of her. What a mess she’d made of things, running away like that, forcing him to pull up stakes and move before he was ready, just a couple of steps ahead of the law. Lucky for him, most cops were so stupid they couldn’t find their own heads if they weren’t wearing a hat. After they shot down that Collier fella, it’d taken ’em hours to get out to the old barn. He’d been long gone.

  Still, they weren’t the ones he truly hated. She was.

  Because she’d tried to take Jack away from him.

  She hadn’t succeeded, o’course. His boy was just fine, out here enjoying the sunshine with h
is daddy, the way every boy should on a beautiful Sunday mornin’.

  That didn’t mean him and the little whore were square. He always knew that bill would come due someday, and she’d have to pay it. That was why he’d kept tabs on her over the years.

  He’d thought about going back and taking care of her and had desperately wanted to. But he was a man of his word. He’d promised his accomplice he’d stay away from the girl, agreeing that killing her might bring too much unwanted attention. The police thought her kidnapper was dead; why get anybody sniffing around, wondering if her murder today had anything to do with what happened back then? He’d been biding his time, waiting till nobody would even remember she’d ever been snatched. Then he could strike. Promise or no promise.

  He could reach out and get to her anytime he wanted to. Hell, this very week she’d been practically under his nose.

  He’d been cutting her next-door neighbor’s lawn for the past couple of years, hadn’t he?

  She’d seen him hundreds of times—had come within two feet of him a few weeks ago when that damn cat of hers got out—yet she’d never recognized him. Never spared him much of a glance at all. Most rich sluts like her didn’t, looking down their nose at quiet, hardworking old Lenny, who’d been cutting lawns in Savannah for more than a decade. He was invisible to them yet had a respectable, normal life that allowed him to blend in, even if he did have to live it under an assumed name. Everybody knew him as Lenny; very few people had any idea he’d been born Johnny Traynor or that him and his cousin was raised in the same foster home after their mamas got killed in a car wreck.

  His foster parents had been the first two people Johnny had killed.

  With good reason.

  In one way, Johnny hated the Wainwright bitch for not recognizing him. In another, he was glad, not to mention proud of what a fine job he’d done holding that girl if she’d never gotten one decent look at him.

  That might not matter. If she gets in our business, we’re gonna have to kill her right away. And she’s tryin’ that. Why else would she be talkin’ to the po-lice?

  Vicious, lying whore. She hadn’t fallen far off the tree, that was for sure. Her parents were equally as rotten. Buncha untrustworthy, double-dealing scumbags as far as he was concerned. He shoulda known that hers wouldn’t be an easy ransom job, that the family would get the police and the FBI involved. He’d been told that they wouldn’t, promised that they wouldn’t, but they had. You couldn’t trust nobody nowadays.

  “Except people who are just as guilty as you are,” he mumbled, chuckling.

  The only reason he trusted the people who hired him for his special projects was because they, too, were up to their necks in whatever crimes they paid him to carry out. He’d kept more than one of them in line over the years by reminding them of that fact, though most times they’d parted ways amicably, pleased with the results of their dealings. Which was why he was still in the murderfor-hire or occasionally kidnap-for-hire business.

  Business was good.

  So good, he had about fifty thousand dollars cash tucked away in a safety deposit box, left there in case of emergency or if he needed a quick getaway. Now, for the first time in a while, he was thinking about raiding that cash for something else: a birthday present for Jack.

  Nothin’ too fancy—a good boy didn’t need much more than a fishing pole to entertain himself, not that there was any water near the camper. But someday he might take Jackie out to hook a catfish or two. So a rod and reel would be good. And maybe a baseball bat, a nice, heavy wooden one, the kind that still cracked when it connected with the sweet spot, not those pussy aluminum ones that didn’t do much more than tink.

  He’d like that, a fishing pole and a baseball bat. What boy wouldn’t want those things for his tenth birthday?

  Twelfth. He’s gonna be twelve.

  No, that wasn’t right. A man oughta know how old his own son was, oughtn’t he?

  Confused, he put down his knife, which he’d been using to scrape the dirt and damp grass out of the soles of his work boots, and called, “Jackie-boy? You excited about your birthday this week?”

  The boy, who’d been washing some clothes with jugs of water in a big washtub outside the camper, lifted his head and pushed his floppy hair off his face with a sudsy hand. “It is?”

  “Course it is!” he snapped. “You stupid or somethin’?”

  The boy swallowed, hard. “Uh, I don’t know what month it is; we ain’t got no calendar.”

  Johnny got mad at himself. The boy hadn’t been saying he forgot his own birthday; he just didn’t know the date. Hell, in Georgia, all summer months were so damn hot, who could be expected to know June from August? “Today’s August fourteenth. And your birthday’s the sixteenth. That’s only two days away.”

  The boy remained silent, watching, wide-eyed.

  “How old you gonna be again?” Johnny asked, reaching up to scratch behind his ear with the handle of the knife.

  “Well, I guess if my birthday’s this week, I’m gonna be twelve, sir. Last year, on my birthday, you gave me eleven whole dollars ’cause I was eleven.”

  That was right. How had he forgotten that? Or, had he not forgotten? Maybe Jack was trickin’ him.

  It’s true. I told you. Twelve. The bad year. The dirty, lying, cheating year.

  Johnny stared hard at his son. “You sure?”

  Jack nodded quickly, then ducked back to finish the wash, which, for some reason, irritated him badly. Why did the boy have to be so squirrelly? So timid? Johnny rarely hit him; it wasn’t like he had it so tough.

  His anger grew. Here he’d been thinking about doin’ something nice for the boy for his birthday, and this was how he was repaid?

  “Little whiny bastard,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Huh?”

  “Shut up. I wasn’t talkin’ to you,” he snapped. Then, for good measure, he flung the knife from his hand. It spun through the air—Johnny had always been good at knife throwing—and plunged into the dirt a few feet from the boy, blade down.

  Jack shrieked with fear, and he jerked so hard, he fell back into the wash water with a loud ker-splash. It was quite a comical sight. The boy looked like a drowned pup, dirty, gray soap bubbles dripping down his chin and his clothes all sopping wet.

  Johnny couldn’t help it. He slapped his hand on his knee and proceeded to laugh until he was fit to bust. Jack, who’d been terrified a minute ago and who now looked on the verge of tears, finally smiled weakly. Then a little more, until at last he laughed, too.

  A man and his boy laughin’ together in the sunshine, was there anything better? In Johnny Traynor’s opinion, it was moments like these that made bein’ a father just about the most beautiful thing in the world.

  “Now, son,” he said, once the hilarity was done, “what should we do for your birthday?”

  Chapter 10

  So far, the joint task force of two Savannah detectives, plus the owner and three agents from eXtreme Investigations, seemed to be going pretty well. Sitting around the large conference room table, Olivia had to take a moment to be thankful for the presence of every other person in the room. They were here for her. She knew that.

  Oh, sure, Gabe and his partner were doing their job. But they were here, in this office, working with her and Julia, and Mick and Derek, because they had faith in her and believed what she’d had to say. Or at least believed it enough to do some further investigating.

  She wasn’t stupid. She knew it had been a big stretch for Gabe to accept what she’d told him about what had happened down in the parking garage. It had been an even bigger shock for his partner. Yet both of them had set aside their own skepticism and attacked the case as if the information she’d provided had come from a live witness rather than a dead one.

  Probably the most shocking thing about this meeting, for Olivia, anyway, was when Gabe had finally shared everything he knew with her and with everyone else.

  For a second, when he’d told t
hem about the visit from that grieving mother, Sue-Ann Bowles, Olivia had felt a flare of anger rise within her. Gabe had kept this from her, not saying one damn thing about the possibility of there being another boy at risk right now.

  But her anger hadn’t lasted for long. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to understand that trust didn’t come easy for him. He was opening up, little by little, but he was a long way from the kind of man who would put forth conjecture and theory in place of cold, hard facts.

  She respected him for that.

  That didn’t mean she wasn’t still reeling from his revelation. Olivia still couldn’t quite believe it. That psychopath hadn’t killed only Jack; he might have gone on to kill two other boys? With another one out there, perhaps with only weeks or days to live?

  The idea revolted her, and she was sure of only one thing: No matter what happened, no matter what this ragtag group managed to uncover together, Olivia would not give up until that monster was caught and every little boy was safe from his brutal hands.

  “So, that’s it, then? We’ve gone over all the details and everyone has the game plan?” asked Julia, leaning back in her chair. She was sitting on the opposite side of the table, having offered the head position to Gabe, subtly reminding everyone in the room who was in charge. Julia might be a bulldozer, but she did have some tact.

  “I think so,” said Gabe. He glanced at his partner. “Ty’s going to take Mick over to the evidence graveyard and try to dig out whatever’s left from Olivia’s kidnapping case.”

  “After that,” Ty said, “I’m going back to the station to weed out these missing kids cases a little more. Looking for a boy with the first name Zachary.”

  “Plus a deceased mother,” Olivia said.

  Ty, who she was really starting to like, if only for the great smile and the cute way he kept trying to slip Southern expressions into his decidedly non-Southern vocabulary, nodded. “I tell you, I think we might be able to get somewhere now.”