‘Anyway, I didn’t like any of them,’ Delvalle said. ‘And as far as I could tell, the entire thing was an excuse to come out here and party. Oh, they toured the area and met some of Sherman’s people, but they were gone almost every night. I think they went to Sherman’s place. He has this huge compound out on Lake Lida.’
Fox nodded and drained her coffee cup. ‘Thank you, Lizy. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘I have?’
‘Really. Yes.’
‘That’s good. Uh, I have the rest of the afternoon free. I don’t suppose I could persuade you to, um…’
Fox smiled. ‘Sorry, I have work, flattering though the offer is.’
Delvalle returned the smile. ‘A girl has to ask.’
~~~
‘You seem weary,’ Naomi said. ‘Is that why you appear to be lying in a hot tub?’
Fox let out a short laugh. ‘It’s relaxing, even though it doesn’t do much for tired synthetic muscles. It’s been a long day.’
‘Case not going well?’
‘It’s… It’s taking some turns for the nasty. I think I have a good idea why these guys have been killed, but the who is a mystery which makes the why part vague… I was out interviewing people who met the dead guys when they were all here in May. That was my afternoon and well into the evening.’
‘And before that?’
Fox grinned. ‘Before that, I bought a vibrator and got propositioned by a socialite.’
Naomi laughed. ‘Was she pretty?’
‘Yeah, I’d say she was.’ Fox pulled up the ID image she had of Lizette Delvalle. ‘She was engaged to one of the victims, a vote broker out here. Didn’t like him much. I don’t think she was exactly mortified when he died.’
‘Hmm, yes, a natural beauty. Perhaps your time would have been better filled with accepting her offer.’
‘I had work,’ Fox said, but she had to consider that Naomi had a point. Trailing around shops, restaurants, a fire house, one church, and two brothels had increased her knowledge of the killer and her victims by a negligible percentage. She had come away with a vague impression of fear: everyone had seemed nervous about discussing the tour. The madam of one of the brothels had expressed an opinion that the people who had come to see her establishment had not been likeable men, but would give no particular details. Spending the afternoon with Delvalle might have got more details on Killian and the others. Maybe. ‘You might be right, but I had work.’
‘I’ll be working tomorrow night.’
‘Sheela Na Gig?’
Naomi shook her head. ‘I’ll be doing a stint in our brothel.’ A sly grin twisted the corners of her lips. ‘When you call tomorrow night, make sure you have your vibrator handy.’
‘O-okay.’
The grin on Naomi’s face broadened. ‘You do trust me, don’t you, Fox?’
‘Sure. Of course I do.’
‘Good. I’ll talk to you then. Sleep well.’
‘I don’t have much choice. Night, Naomi.’ Fox waited for the connection to close and then pulled herself up, stepping out of the bath and grabbing a towel.
‘Are you going to run a sleep cycle?’ Kit asked. ‘It’s still early.’
‘No, I’m going to test that vibrator. I don’t really know what that woman’s planning for tomorrow, but my imagination is coming up with all kinds of scenarios already.’
20th January.
Fox sat in her hotel room, watching the newsfeed from MCN. Motor City News was one of the big names in news multicasting, if you happened to live in Detroit; outside the area it was almost unknown, but it had the best coverage of the current event Fox was interested in.
The presenter was a handsome man who had had a lot of facial work done to get that way. He was managing to look suitably serious, however. ‘… exploded just before ten forty Eastern killing seven people working late in the Detroit Civil Complex. The identities of the victims have not been released at this time, but all are believed to be members of the administration.’
‘Just put a message through to Ryan, would you, Kit?’ Fox asked. ‘Make sure he’s noticed this and is doing something about it. I’m sure he has, but…’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ Kit agreed.
‘No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the bombing,’ the presenter went on as video of fire pouring out of office windows played behind him. ‘Wayden Executive Services personnel are investigating along with NIX and NAPA antiterrorism experts.’
‘I wonder when we’ll see the report on that,’ Fox mused. She muted the news channel as they fell into speculation from a collection of local ‘experts.’
‘I am not entirely sure,’ Kit replied, ‘though I believe that NIX will follow the letter of the new regulations very carefully where there is a public incident involved. They will wish to appear to be doing everything right where someone might notice them doing something wrong.’
‘Good point. Drop a message to Candler and let him know I’m out of town in case he needs to contact me about this Detroit thing.’
‘Certainly. Speaking of reports, however, I’ve received notification from our legal department that Wayden Executive Services are attempting to deny us access to the files on the two women and Detective Guthrie.’
Fox frowned. ‘Why?’
‘What I have from legal is that they are saying there can be no connection between these local cases and anything in New York Metro. They–’
‘That isn’t their call. They need an operational or security justification for denying access. Give legal a push. Tell them the bodies were being investigated by Guthrie and Guthrie’s torture-death is an indication of a possible link to our homicides. I want those reports. In fact, the more they don’t want me to have them, the more I want them.’
‘Yes, Fox.’
‘But… The girl they identified, see if her parents will talk to me.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Kit replied. ‘That will be a fun interview.’
‘I doubt I’m going to have to turn down any propositions, no.’
~~~
The Tailors had a single-storey house in the northern part of the city, set among any number of similar wood-frame houses which formed the neighbourhood. It was painted blue, quite freshly as far as Fox could see. It was six p.m. and there was a hulking SUV parked outside. Fox got off her Q-bug and walked past the vehicle to the front door. There was just a pushbutton doorbell, so she pressed it and waited.
The man who answered the door reminded Fox of her father. Jeremiah Tailor was younger, forty-two according to Kit’s searches, but he had the same sort of solid body gained from manual labour; he worked on one of the local farms. He kept his brown hair cut short and his hazel eyes were probably the oldest feature about him. The Tailors were not that old and they could have another child, but they would always remember the one they had lost.
‘You’re Captain Meridian?’ Jeremiah asked.
‘Yes, sir. Tara Meridian. I’m with Palladium Security Solutions, based in New York Metro. We handle the policing there.’
He opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think better of it, and finally said, ‘You’d better come in.’
The front room was not huge, but it was well decorated and clean, and cosy. There was a fake fire pumping out heat and the orange glow of projected flames. The furniture had a flowery pattern printed on the cloth: a three-piece sofa set with Sandra Tailor occupying one of the seats near the fire. The sofa was set furthest from the fireplace, but set up to view the screen mounted above it which was currently black, unused.
Sandra got to her feet as Fox walked in and Jeremiah closed the door behind her. ‘Captain Meridian, please, come sit by the fire. You must be cold.’ She was a fairly small woman, not much over five-foot-four, but she had a good figure and a pretty face. Coppery-red hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders and, like her husband, her green eyes looked as though they had aged a decade in the last year.
‘No, ma’am. I don’t really get col
d. Thank you, both, for seeing me. I don’t have any jurisdiction here.’
‘Then why, if you don’t mind me asking, are you looking into Molly’s death?’ Jeremiah asked. There was a little hostility in his voice, but he waved Fox to take the sofa while he moved around to the other seat.
Fox sat down. ‘Okay, well, let me start by saying that I don’t know that your daughter’s case is connected to mine. At the moment, I’ve got a trail of circumstantial evidence. I’m hoping to get more details and verify the link, but it depends on getting data from your local police force.’
If anything, Jeremiah’s face darkened further. ‘Good luck with that.’
‘Jerry…’ Sandra said, her tone mollifying.
‘No point in denying it, Sandra. They did nothing about Molly’s death.’ Jeremiah turned to Fox again, his eyes hard. ‘The detective assigned to the case basically told us that Molly had it coming.’
‘This would be Detective Guthrie?’ Fox asked.
‘That’s the one.’
‘You know he’s dead?’
‘It was all over the news channel. They tried to find whoever did that to him. Molly… Molly and the others…’ He trailed off, turning his head away; the wounds were still quite fresh.
Fox filed the comment about others away for future reference. ‘Perhaps you could go over what happened for me. The reports my PA found in the media said Molly went missing on the twenty-eighth of May, a Saturday?’
‘You have to understand,’ Sandra said, picking up the story, ‘that Molly was a little wild.’ She looked around at Jeremiah as his head turned toward her. ‘You know it’s true, Jerry. There’s no sense in giving the captain half-truths. She liked to party, Captain Meridian. We tried to curb it, but she was at that stage. Rebelling was part of who she was. But she had Amy to keep her in line most of the time. Amy was a sensible girl.’
‘Amy?’
‘Amy, uh, Amelia Lomax. She was a year older than Molly, but more than that in outlook. Her parents died, you see? Both the Lomax sisters were mature, sensible girls. The night Molly… Molly vanished, she went out with Amy. There’s a youth club a few blocks away, and they went there. Detective Guthrie found witnesses saying they had gone there. There’s no drinking there. Dancing and others their age, that was what they got and they knew to be home by midnight.’
‘But Molly never came home,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Amy was living with her grandmother and she never made it there either. Guthrie told us they’d probably gone off with some boys. That was his answer. Gone off with boys, got into trouble, and–’ He bit off his own sentence before he choked on it.
Fox frowned. ‘And these boys drove them seventy-five kilometres away, almost a hundred by road, to dump them in a lake?’
‘That’s what I said! I said it made no sense, but Guthrie was set on it.’
‘You think the other body they found was Amelia Lomax?’
‘I– Well…’
‘That’s what we think,’ Sandra said, ‘but other girls went missing around then. I think they found Molly and Amy, but some of the others, the other parents, they think the second body might be their daughter. Whoever she was, she was never identified, so she could be anyone.’
‘Detective Guthrie knew about these other missing girls?’ Fox asked.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘He didn’t ask for DNA from the other families?’
Sandra blinked. ‘Well, no. No one’s ever mentioned it.’
‘I told you, Sandra,’ Jeremiah said. ‘The man didn’t care. When he was killed, Wayden never assigned the case to anyone else. They were too busy trying to find whoever killed Guthrie. The only cop who gave a crap about Molly and the others was Pat Lomax, and she had to quit.’
‘Patricia Lomax was with Wayden?’ Fox asked.
Jeremiah shook his head. ‘NAPA up in Detroit. Quit before Wayden took over up there. Quit to look for her sister.’
‘But she didn’t find anything?’
‘If she did, she said nothing. She came here in July last year. Weekends and holidays at first, then she cleared her contract and moved here for good, or so she said. She left town… What would it be, Sandra?’
‘October,’ Sandra replied. ‘She left about the time Detective Guthrie died. Maybe a week later. She said there was nothing else she could do here in Fargo.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Fox said. ‘She could have information and not realise it.’
‘Doubt it,’ Jeremiah said. ‘She was a detective up in Detroit. Pat never did anything by halves. If she’d found something, she’d have kept at it until she solved it.’
‘Okay. Could I get a list of the other women who went missing? I’ll put them in my data set and… Look, I can’t promise I’m going to do any better at this than Guthrie or Detective Lomax, but I’m a fresh pair of eyes and I think I may have an angle to pursue that they didn’t.’
Sandra looked at Fox for a second. ‘Will you be here tomorrow night?’
‘I’ve no plans to leave.’
‘There’s a support group. Sort of. We meet up every so often to help each other get through. This week it’s going to be here. Tomorrow night at seven o’clock. A lot of the families will be here and… And it might help some of them to know that a famous detective is looking.’
Fox gave her a smile. ‘Looked me up?’
‘I thought I knew the name when your PA said it. I’m not altogether sure what I thought you were going to be like, but the articles I read said you were a good detective.’
‘The articles I read said you didn’t take shit from anyone,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Uh, pardon my language.’
‘I’ve used far worse,’ Fox replied. ‘And no, Mister Tailor, I don’t. If I can figure out who killed your daughter, I’ll see them pay for it. No matter who they are.’
21st January.
It turned out that Naomi’s idea of ‘telephone sex,’ at least this time, involved her getting Fox to tease herself with the little vibrator for forty-five minutes. Fox was not entirely sure why she had gone along with it, but there was something about just doing exactly as Naomi said that made the whole thing more exciting. Even when Fox came out of her sleep cycle, she was feeling pretty good about it. Even the news she got in the morning was not enough to pull her mood down.
‘Are you going to be back in New York by Monday?’ Ryan Jarvis asked.
‘Probably,’ Fox replied. ‘I think I’m almost done here. I’ve got something to do tonight. I’d like to pester the locals about some case files, but I doubt there’s much I can do that legal can’t. Why?’
‘We’ve got a fundraiser, a luncheon thing, we’re having to provide security for. Jackson and Mariel are going to be there. So is Toliver Whitton. We’ve stepped things up a little after that bombing in Detroit and I’d like it if you were on-site.’
‘Is this a cocktail-dress-and-gun deal, Ryan?’
‘We’d want you mixing with the guests and keeping an eye on the VIPs, sure. Sorry, Fox, but you brush up nice and you fit in with that crowd. You’re just as famous as most of them are.’
Fox sighed. ‘When is it?’
‘Midday Monday.’
‘I’ll be back for it.’
~~~
Including the Tailors, there were a dozen couples at the support meeting, which made the house more than a little crowded. Then it turned out that one of those couples had met through mutual loss, a widower and a single mother who had both lost daughters, but had gained something out of it. In all, fourteen young women had vanished between the twenty-second of May, the day after the start of the fact-finding tour, and the second of June, the day before it ended. Fox noticed the coincidence, but none of the families seemed to have made the connection.
‘Claire went out shopping,’ one of the mothers said. ‘I sent her out for milk and bread, and she n-never came home.’
‘Kayla tutored a boy on the next block.’ This was a proud father reduced to a shadow by grief. His wife just sat there with tears in
her eyes. ‘Mathematics. His parents paid her a little to help, but she mostly did it because she loved the subject. Loved kids. When she didn’t come home, we rang and they said she’d left at the usual time. We called the police, but…’
A small majority of the missing had vanished in daylight; sunset happened around nine p.m. at the end of May and the women would have had to have been out late to be coming home in the dark. Still, there had apparently been no witnesses. Detective Guthrie had, according to the families, never found anyone who had seen their daughters being taken, but Fox was finding it a little interesting that Guthrie had been assigned to all the cases, right from the start.
‘Did anyone get asked to give a DNA sample?’ Fox asked. ‘They have an unidentified body, so–’
‘Oh, Detective Guthrie said that wasn’t needed,’ one of the mothers said. ‘He explained it’s not like in the vids and DNA evidence doesn’t solve every crime. And he said it could be difficult to extract under some circumstances. Like spending weeks in a lake.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Fox replied, raising an eyebrow.
‘That’s not true?’
‘Well, he wasn’t wrong. There’s been a popular conception, brought on by crime shows, that there’s always DNA and the evidence is foolproof. These days, technology has made it even easier for criminals to get around it, but I’m a little surprised no one made the attempt. I’ll know more when I get the case files.’
‘I believe it should have been possible to retrieve a DNA sample from both bodies,’ Kit said into Fox’s mind.
‘So do I, but telling them that right now is not going to help them.’ Aloud, Fox asked, ‘Did Detective Guthrie give any indication of why he was being assigned to all the cases?’
‘We didn’t actually know he was until we formed this group,’ Jeremiah Tailor replied. ‘It seemed pretty reasonable, considering so many were missing. One thing they did right.’
‘Mm, but there wasn’t much press coverage of this, if any. My PA didn’t discover there were so many women missing when she went looking. The two bodies were covered…’
‘Detective Guthrie said they didn’t want to cause a public panic,’ Sandra Tailor replied, but when she said it, she sounded less than convinced.
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