Daddy's Little Killer

by LS Sygnet

  "We're meeting someone else?"

  I nodded. "We can't afford to waste more time." I confirmed in greater detail what Maya explained over the phone. "I appreciate the fact that you didn't blurt anything out in front of Johnny. He's too close to this case, not only because he was a friend of Gwen Foster, but the entire Bennett family. I can't believe that wasn't an issue during the case fifteen years ago."

  "Do you think he's right, that Masconi has been hanging around Darkwater Bay all these years?"

  I opened a recently installed program on my laptop. "You must swear an oath of confidentiality."

  Charlie's expression grew quizzical, but without hesitation, he made an X over his heart.

  "I met a hacker about a year ago who gave me a site where I could download a backdoor hack he wrote that allowed him to peek into IRS records. Don't freak out. I'm not planning to use this for any other purposes than verifying something I've suspected almost from the beginning of this murder investigation. It's not like we'd try to use it in court."

  The simple program loaded, asking for information I recalled from reading the Bennett case file, namely, Salvatore Masconi's date of birth and social security number. I needed the state of the last known IRS filing. Easy enough.

  In a matter of seconds, the information grid popped up, detailing the dates the IRS received and processed his returns. Last one filed the year before Brighton Bennett was murdered.

  "He would've been incarcerated and awaiting trial when tax day rolled around," I said. "See? His accountant filed an extension, and then nothing."

  "You think Masconi is dead."

  I nodded. "Datello as much as admitted that he knows it for a fact. Given his close relationship with the Bennett family, I'm sure he was doing a favor to Frank, making sure Masconi never hurt another child again."

  "Only he was wrong."

  "Extremely wrong. Orion doesn't get it. He's so certain that he had the right guy that he can't fathom there's another perp out there committing crimes. He's probably frothing at the mouth to start looking for these additional girls he believes were slaughtered, but they're not dead. That's our advantage in this, and how we're gonna catch the right guy this time."

  "One of the witnesses knows more than she realizes."

  "I'm hoping."

  "So ... this second interview tonight. Are you hoping that Caroline Blevins can lead us to Candy? Taylor has been to the seediest parts of the city, Helen. Nobody is cooperating if they know her."

  "I do hope Caroline can help us with that, but no, that's not the second interview. I need you to call Harlan Hartley and tell him that we'll be at his farm later tonight. Don't accept rejection. I need to find out why our guy broke his pattern and went after a thirty-four year old woman. I have suspicions, but no answers yet."

  "All right."

  "We'll leave the bistro after talking to Caroline and go straight out there."

  "I don't think Orion's gonna like that. Aren't you concerned about pissing him off? What if he tries to jump into the middle of this out of his obvious concern for you?"

  "Where are Thieg and Adams?"

  "Taking a little down time. They'll be back on at seven tonight. Picking up where Taylor leaves off on the search for Candy Blevins."

  "Have them watch for Orion. If he leaves here looking for me, I need to know it immediately. And as generous as the iPhone was, there's no way I'm carrying around a device he could so easily track through the GPS. I'll leave it here before we meet the Blevins girl. Do you think you could get something from central for me?"

  "Sure. I can call Sarge and have him fish something out of the division's supply. But won't that allow anybody at central to track you too?"

  "Not if he signs it out for your use."

  "Good thinking. I doubt anybody interested in this mess thinks I've got a clue what I'm doing. Hell, they can't send anybody smarter than Flynn Myre to check up on me? Like I didn't see through that one."

  "Out of curiosity, who has custody of the keys you found?"

  "Forsythe has them at the crime lab."

  "That's good. And you're comfortable with the security of our evidence?"

  "Completely."

  "Then I'll see you at seven downstairs."

  When Orion returned hour later, he looked displeased. "The car is across the street."

  "Oh good. I'm glad someone thought to remove it from in front of Lowe's house."

  "Yeah, swift thinking."

  "It's almost seven, so I should probably get downstairs to meet Charlie."

  I grabbed my bag, the oversized one that had room for my laptop. If he asked –

  "What the hell have you got in that thing? It looks like the straps are gonna snap."

  "Oh, the laptop. I thought that if anything came up in the interview that needed verification, I'd use the wi-fi to save a little time. This could be a one shot deal."

  "Hmm."

  I almost made it to the door.

  "Doc?"

  "Yes?" I drawled.

  "Aren't you forgetting something?"

  When I turned around, he waved that blasted cell phone at me.

  The rejection was on the tip of my tongue, but given his suspicious mood since coming back from the search for my rental car, I touched the tips of my fingers to my forehead instead. "I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached. Thanks, Johnny. See you in an hour."

  "I'll be waiting. Don't be late, or the deal's off."

  "Scout's honor," I saluted.

  "Uh, Doc, they don't actually let girls be boy scouts."

  I grinned. "You know what I meant."

  And I knew what I'd do with the phone. He'd show up at the bistro, all right. I was counting on his concern over my reaction to an intrusion buying a little more time before he realized that I left his little tracking device behind.

  Inside the elevator, a satisfied smirk warred with a sigh of relief. So far, so good. Now if only I could tamp down my irrational hope that the Blevins girls would provide the breakthrough we needed. I shook my head at the good fortune of meeting Charlie Haverston at the crime scene. If this didn't get him a detective shield, there was no justice to be found in Darkwater Bay.

  He was waiting for me in the lobby of LaPierre Tower.

  "Let me carry that for you. Geez, Helen. I'm not so sure about leaving you on your own when all of this is done."

  "I'll call Maya on my way out to the Bennett farm. I agree. I still feel a little too woozy to fly solo. At least for another night."

  Inside LaPierre Bistro, Caroline Blevins waited for us. I was stunned at the physical likeness to Brighton Bennett and Gwen Foster. Her petite stature left her just shy of five feet tall. Golden blonde hair cascaded past her shoulders. Her bones were small and fine, and the almond blue eyes were so large, they served as the focal point to her face.

  I thrust out a hand. "Ms. Blevins, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with Officer Haverston and me. I'm Dr. Helen Eriksson."

  "What kind of doctor?" Clouds flitted over her youthful face.

  "Dr. Eriksson is a psychologist, Ms. Blevins," Charlie said. He slid into the secluded booth beside me. "She's here in Darkwater Bay helping the police investigate some old cases. That's her speciality."

  "Like one of those profiler people?"

  "Exactly, Ms. Blevins," I said. "I understand if you're not comfortable answering the questions I suspect you know I have for you. But everything you tell me will be held in the strictest of confidence. Do you understand why it is important that I talk to you?"

  She nodded, opened her mouth and let out a gravely yes. She cleared her throat and folded her hands on top of the table. "Call me Carrie."

  "A little over six years ago, you were assaulted by a man."

  "Raped," she whispered, "and tortured, and left terrified for my life."

  "I'm so sorry that happened to you, Carrie. Are you all right? Would you like something to drink?" I asked.

  "No thank you. I'd rather just get this over with."


  Me too, for different reasons. "I'd like to go back to the day of the crime."

  "It lasted two," she said. Her voice trembled, and she clutched at her hands, as if willing the tremor to stay in her voice alone.

  "Tell me what happened the first day."

  Carrie looked like she was on the cusp of hyperventilation, even after all these years. "I'll never forget it. I was walking home from school. A police officer stopped me."

  "From Portico?"

  She shook her head. "It was a state police car. We've only got the sheriff's department in Portico. Our county is small. Portico is the biggest town, about thirty-three hundred people."

  "All right. Was it unusual to see the state police in Portico?"

  "Well, yes and no. See, I missed the bus that day, on account of Candy, so I had to walk home. My folks don't live in Portico. We're just outside of town, maybe three quarters of a mile."

  "Tell me about Candy."

  "She was supposed to meet me after school. See, she skipped classes that day, but she was gonna hook up with me after I got out of volleyball and ride the bus home so Mom and Dad wouldn't know."

  "Where was she?"

  Carrie shrugged. "I didn't know at the time, but she was already ... already ..." A solitary tear streaked down her cheek.

  "She had already been abducted?"

  One bird-boned hand dashed at Carrie's cheek. "Yes. I didn't know about it until later. In fact, I was so angry with her after the bus left while I was trying to find her, that I made up my mind to tell Dad what she was doing as soon as I got home."

  "She skipped a lot of school I take it."

  "Candy was counting the days until our sixteenth birthday. We're twins, you see. Our birthday falls in the summer, and Candy had already made up her mind that she wasn't going back to school in the fall. She wasn't sticking around home or Portico either."

  "So you were walking home from school, out of town, and the state police stopped."

  She nodded, knocked loose a few more tears. "I have wished every day since then that I had let him drive me home like he wanted. But I could see the lane, I was that close. I never dreamed anything could happen."

  "The lane?"

  "Our driveway. My folks have a farm, and there's a big arch at the end of our lane that says Blevins Dairy."

  "You couldn't see the house?"

  "It sits a ways back, sort of in a grove."

  Isolation. My eyes fluttered shut. Was this guy stalking his victims? Could he have known that his best chance at nabbing Carrie was when she walked up the lane to the house after she got off the bus? My mind boggled a little bit at the premeditation of my suspect, whoever he was. This wasn't a case of a simple grabs off the street.

  "He was waiting for you somewhere along the lane, wasn't he, Carrie?"

  "Yes. I – I tried to scream, you know, at first I wasn't even sure what came charging out of the trees at me, but he knocked me down so fast, and something hurt. It hurt so bad, I couldn't move, could barely breathe."

  "What happened next?"

  "He carried me, I think, over his shoulder through the trees to the country road about a quarter of a mile away. He put me in the back of his car and gave me a shot of something."

  "Let's go back a second," I said. My fingers crept across the table and gently stilled the clench and release of her hands. "Do you remember any details about the car?"

  Doll eyes blinked at me slowly. I could see her searching her memory.

  "It was dark. Older. I remember that it was sort of square."

  "The car was dark?"

  Carrie nodded. "It was late, but it wasn't dark yet. The car was navy, maybe black."

  "And he put you in the back seat?"

  "Yes."

  "Through a door, or did he have to move the front seat to get you inside?"

  "There were four doors. I still couldn't move. He put some kind of funny plastic thing in my mouth before I felt the needle go into my arm."

  Her words triggered an awareness of the dull ache in my arm. My heart rate accelerated. I touched my deltoid muscle. "In your arm here?"

  "No," she pointed to the bend of her elbow.

  I glanced at Charlie. He peered, owl-like.

  "The doctor who treated me said that whatever he gave me went into the vein, not the muscle because it would act faster that way."

  "Did you fall asleep?"

  "No, but it got harder to breathe, and I remember that it felt like my muscles might never move again."

  My mind was racing. He put an artificial airway in her mouth and administered a paralytic. Why? Had the initial assault been a stun gun? Paralytics are highly controlled substances. They had an extremely short half life. He couldn't have removed her far from home for what he had in mind.

  "What happened next, Carrie?" I let her memory lead the sequence of events, even though questions fired like bullets from an Uzi in my brain.

  "He drove me deeper into the country."

  "To?"

  "It was one of those camper things."

  "The kind you pull behind a vehicle?"

  "Yeah, I think so. It was back in the trees, you know, like inside a field set behind trees. I remember that when he pulled me out of the car, I couldn't see the road anymore."

  "What about his clothes?"

  "They were black. And he had on a ski mask so I couldn't see his face. I remember his eyes."

  Thud. My heart slammed hard into my breastbone. "What about his eyes?"

  "They were cold, like he was dead, sort of milky, but happy. Not a good kind of happy. Evil, and I don't know if I can explain it, Dr. Eriksson. I've never seen anything like it. Does that make sense?"

  "Yes. What about your breathing, Carrie? When he got you to his camper, did you still feel like it was hard to breathe?"

  She frowned. "I hadn't thought about that, afterward, you know. But it wasn't hard to breathe anymore."

  I was certain. He'd used a paralytic. Somehow, this guy had access to a drug like succinylcholine. Were we looking for a perverse medical practitioner? It certainly fit with Maya's assessment of the dismemberment.

  "What happened next?"

  "He took me into the camper and locked the door."

  "What do you remember about the lock?"

  Carrie's head tilted to the side. Nobody had asked her these specific questions, I was certain. No wonder our perp had gone about his business for so many years.

  "There were two of them, the kind that lock with a key."

  "Like deadbolt locks?"

  "Yeah. Yeah. Is that important?"

  "It was, Carrie."

  "Can I ask why?"

  Charlie, who had remained utterly silent since the introduction phase of the conversation, piped up. "It means that there was no way you could've escaped, Carrie. It tells us that this guy modified that trailer so that you wouldn't be able to leave. They don't come with key-only deadbolt locks."

  "Then ..."

  "Yes?" I coaxed her to continue, feeling that she was remembering more and more as the interview progressed.

  "That was why he thought it was so funny when I tried to get out. He didn't tie me up, because he wanted me to try to run away from him. That's ... even more horrible than I thought!"

  "Take a deep breath and try to relax," I said. "You're safe, now, Carrie, and even though this was one of the worst things that can ever happen to someone, it's in the past."

  "But it's not the worst thing. That would've been what he promised to do if I fought him." Tears splashed onto the table, tiny ringlets on the checkered cloth. "Oh my God. He meant what he said! He would cut off my hands if I fought him. And that's exactly what he hoped I would do."

  Chapter 29

  Now I was the one on the verge of hyperventilation. Carrie was right. So was I. This girl's bravery, agreeing to meet with us, to relive the most horrific assault a woman could imagine, had my utmost respect. It was a new experience for me. Empathy has never been in my arsenal of psych
ological tricks. It's not a weapon, after all.

  "Helen?"

  I glanced at him.

  Whispered, "You're crying."

  Stunned, I dabbed one finger under my eyes. "Excuse me."

  Carrie stared at me with appreciation. "Thank you, Dr. Eriksson. It means a lot to me, knowing that you care about finding the man who did this to me. You do believe me, don't you?"

  "Of course I do." Who wouldn't? Beside the fact that there was a heap of physical evidence, it was impossible to gaze into this innocent face, disregard the limpid blue eyes and find a flicker of dishonesty.

  "Because you know, no one ever believed Candy."

  Now we were getting into another necessary realm. I was relieved that Carrie brought it up spontaneously.

  "Oh?"

  She shook her head. "Not even my parents, really. It's hard. I'm stuck in the middle, you know? She's my sister. I love her. Sometimes, it's like we're one person."

  "Carrie, are you identical twins?"

  "Close. We're what is called mirror-image twins."

  I considered the possibility that this might extend to their personalities as well, not just physical characteristics. The phenomenon is exactly as it sounds, one twin left handed, the other right handed, hair that curls in the opposite direction, opposite symmetrically identical features, even in some documented cases of mirror-image twins the internal organs were reversed. To stand them side by side, it was as though one twin were the literal mirror reflection of the other.

  "I've never heard of such a thing," Charlie said. "Does that mean you don't look alike?"

  "I'll explain it to you later, Charlie. Carrie, I'd like to go back to what you were saying about nobody believing Candy."

  "That's it. I mean, she's had some stuff, before the rape. What's that old children's story?"

  I knew which one she meant – the little boy who cried wolf. "So because she had done things in the past, people weren't inclined to believe her when a real tragedy took place."