I carefully watched the cars that passed.
Had Milton Jones come back to survey what was going on? I mean, I had to think about it. He wasn’t affiliated with those crime scenes. We’d wondered that initially. But then he’d shown up at the house and acted like the homeowner. But that was more to send a message. The actual crimes at the house had nothing to do with Jones.
“Do you see anything?” Riley asked.
I shook my head. “No, not really.”
Cars drove past on the street. There were no white sedans. A few people slowed, but who wouldn’t hit the brakes when there were five police cars parked outside?
I sat up straighter as I saw another car cruise by. “Go back some.”
Riley hit a button and backed up the video. I pointed to the screen. “You see that car?”
“What about it?”
I didn’t want to say it, but I had to. “It’s your friend Dale’s.”
“Are you sure?” Riley asked.
“Look at it. His coat is still hanging in the backseat even.”
Riley fell back so hard against the couch that I nearly yelled, “Timber!”
“Why would Dale have driven past the scene? I mean, it would have been one thing if he’d stopped to talk to the detectives. But I didn’t even think he was in town then. I thought he came later.” I let Riley process that in silence for a moment.
He rubbed his chin. “What should we do with this information?”
“Tell Adams and Parker. Maybe they can figure it out.” I saw how pensive Riley looked and squeezed his hand. “Maybe he has a good reason for this.”
“I don’t know who to trust anymore. That’s the truth.” He shook his head. “Let me talk to Dale first.”
“And if he’s helping Jones? Do you really think he’s going to admit it to you?”
“I just want to gauge his reaction.” Riley held up his cell phone. “I’ll call now.”
I watched as Riley dialed his number and then put the phone to his ear. A moment later, he pulled it back down. “No answer.”
“Isn’t it a little suspicious for a detective not to answer? Especially a detective on a hot case like this?”
“I’ll try him again in another hour. If he still doesn’t answer, I’ll call the police. Maybe he’s just grabbing a moment of rest. You saw how tired he looked.”
I leaned forward. “What do you know about Dale?”
“He seems to be a stand up guy. Everyone respected him. Been a cop forever. Joined the force out of high school.”
“Personal life?”
Riley sighed. “Last I heard, he was divorced. Had a few kids. It was a pretty ugly divorce, from what I recall. His wife accused him of some things. Being unfaithful. She was going to file charges that he’d abused her—he would have lost his job. He compromised instead and gave her full custody of the kids if she wouldn’t pursue that.”
I approached the next subject very carefully. “You don’t think he felt some kind of kinship to Jones, do you? I mean, Jones’ wife accused him of some heinous things also. She turned her back on him for all the world to see.”
“Nothing would surprise me anymore, Gabby. Nothing at all.”
I hated the fact that a conversation I’d initiated had caused so much strain to Riley. But the search for answers wasn’t always pretty.
CHAPTER 34
Somehow, against all the odds, I must have drifted to sleep on Riley’s couch. My physical exhaustion, along with the effects of the Taser, had caught up with me. When I opened my eyes, I had to blink several times.
Certainly I wasn’t reading the clock right. It was 3:30 . . . in the afternoon. The paramedics had given me some Tylenol when they’d checked me out earlier. At least, that’s what I’d thought they’d given me. I never slept that soundly though, especially not with so much going on.
I spotted Riley at his computer. He appeared to be staring at a blank screen, probably too tired to think clearly himself. Had he been able to get any shuteye? He looked clean, so apparently he’d taken a shower, at least.
“Any updates?” I muttered, running a hand through my hair.
He turned around and shook his head. “Nothing yet.”
“You heard from Tim?”
“He’s with your dad. They’re hanging in, waiting for the police to be in touch.”
“I hope Teddi is . . .” I couldn’t finish. Not only did I hope she was okay, but I hoped she was alive. To voice the thought aloud seemed morbid.
“I know. What a night, huh? How are you feeling?”
“I really passed out, didn’t I?”
“You haven’t had a good night’s sleep in forever. I was going to wake you, but I figured you needed your rest.”
If I needed my rest, why did my head feel like it weighed a hundred pounds right now?
Someone knocked on the door. Riley crossed the room and peered out the peephole.
“It’s Bill,” he muttered.
He flipped the locks. A moment later, Bill plopped at Riley’s dining room table, a bag of sandwiches in hand. He grabbed a ham and cheese for himself before finally shoving the bag our way.
“I figured you guys could use something to eat. Any word on Rose?”
I shook my head, grabbing a turkey and provolone and nibbling on it. My appetite wasn’t great, but I knew I needed food in order to keep my energy up.
Bill frowned. I could tell he’d really liked her, and I felt bad for the big guy. Just when things had been looking up for him . . .
“I hope the police find this guy. This is crazy.” He looked at me, and I thought I saw respect in his gaze. “What do you think? Are they going to catch him?”
“I hope so.” I leaned against the wall and gripped my sandwich, trying to weigh my words carefully. “Time is running out.”
His eyebrows scrunched together. “What do you mean?”
“Jones always kept his victims six days,” Riley explained.
“Today’s the sixth day for the first victim, I guess.” Bill averted his gaze and stared into the distance.
I nodded. “Yeah, and we’re no closer to finding this guy. We just keep getting stuck on these wild goose chases.”
“What are you trying to do exactly?” he asked.
“We either need to find out who Jones is working with or where he’s taking the women,” Riley said. “We have no good leads at this point.”
Except Dale, who still wasn’t answering his phone. Riley had stuck to his end of the bargain and called Adams to tell him about the car in the video sometime before I’d drifted to sleep.
Bill shifted, finishing up his lunch. “Look, I know I was an insensitive jerk earlier, and I was thinking only about my ratings and not about your safety. I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. What can I do to help?”
“Seen anyone suspicious hanging around?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Rose’s the only one I’ve been looking for.”
“Any good guesses as to who might be working with Jones?”
He shrugged again. “Rose would probably have some pretty good guesses. She was like an armchair detective. She loved researching all of that stuff.”
Is that what she’d told him? Not that she’d been obsessed with a killer? I kept my mouth shut. For my final absurd question, I threw out, “Know of any remote cabins in the area?”
“Rose’s family has an old cabin back by the Great Dismal Swamp.”
Rose, of course.
I paused and straightened. Wait. By the Great Dismal Swamp? She had mentioned that, hadn’t she? Even at the cookout she’d had for us, she’d talked about going to that cabin as a child. She’d said it was by Lake Drummond, which was in the middle of what was now a protected swampland.
I glanced up at Riley. His thoughts seemed to mirror mine. “Could this actually be a lead?” I asked.
“We’ve got to chase down every possibility right now,” said Riley. “I could totally see Milton Jones finding some twisted amusement in
using the cabin of one of his victims as the place he kept his victims as well.”
I turned back to Bill. “Is there anything else you can remember? The address of the cabin?”
“No, we didn’t get quite that far on our first date.”
“What did she tell you?”
He rubbed his chin. “She didn’t really share a lot of details about her past. She asked about my radio show. My ex-wife. The apartment building.”
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. How could we find that cabin?
I remembered being in Rose’s house. I remembered seeing her mail on her kitchen counter. There’d been a middle name listed on her address. I remembered because it reminded me of Snuffleupagus.
But why?
Snuffleupagus. Snuffy. Scuffle.
Sesame Street. Big Bird.
Wooly mammoth.
Wooly.
Woolard! Except it was spelled differently.
Woollard. That was it!
***
An Internet search, along with calling in a favor for someone who worked for the neighboring city, brought us the results we needed. There was a “Woollard” who owned a cabin back in the area of Chesapeake near the Great Dismal Swamp. By 5:30, Riley and I had hopped in the car and taken off.
I picked up my phone. “I’m calling the police, even if it puts my reputation on the line.”
Adams picked up and I told him what was going on. “I’ll send some men out. You stay away.”
“I can’t stay away. This is my dad’s girlfriend!”
“Gabby, let the authorities handle it.”
I bit my lip. I’d let them handle it. But I wanted to be there when they did.
Lives were on the line. I couldn’t hold back.
I stared out the car window as the landscape blurred past. There were trees, trees and more trees. The farther we got from the city, the swampier the landscape became.
I used to have nightmares about swamps when I was a kid. They just looked so spooky with all of the moss hanging from skeletal cypress trees and puddles of black water standing in every available crevice. Swamps made me think of snakes and other creepy crawlies I’d rather not encounter.
As we waited for a drawbridge, I studied the map on my phone. If I was reading it correctly, we had to turn down several desolate roads before we’d find the cabin.
That would fit Milton Jones’ profile.
With the bridge back down, we continued down the road.
The deeper we drove into the area around the swamp, the darker it got. The sense of dread in the pit of my stomach grew with every rotation of the tires. I felt like a soldier marching into a battle, unsure of the outcome or what he’d be getting himself into. I knew I had a choice here. I could turn around. I could go back and avoid this war if I wanted.
But then I thought of the women Jones had snatched, and I knew I couldn’t sit by idly. If this were my sister, my best friend, my mom, I’d want someone to fight with everything within them to save their lives. Someone had to take up for those who were powerless to do so themselves. Teddi, Nichole, Clarice, and Rose qualified for that right now.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .
The verse both resonated in my mind and clutched my heart.
I will fear no evil.
Jones was about as evil as I’d ever encounter.
The Lord is with You. His rod and his staff will comfort you.
I prayed for God’s wisdom and protection and comfort. Going to the cabin was risky. It was dangerous. But some things in life were worth the risk.
Riley reached over and squeezed my hand. “You okay?”
“I think God is grieving over this,” I mumbled. Riley and I had talked about it to an extent already, but the thought wouldn’t leave my mind. The thought of God weeping over His people. The mental picture of Him mourning.
“Grieving over death and murder? Definitely.”
I shook my head. “Yes, over death and murder. But some people in society have glorified the people behind the act of death and murder. Freddy Mansfield sells serial killer mementos. Rose bought those macabre souvenirs. Someone admires Jones enough to help him with his murderous crusades. Killers have made magazine covers.” I closed my eyes for a moment, grieving myself. “We’ve glamorized something that should be atrocious.”
“I can’t argue with that. And you’re right. God is grieving over the states of people’s hearts. Out of our hearts come our actions and words, right? Life is precious. We have to cling to whatever is good and pure. Otherwise the darkness will swallow us whole.”
I lifted up another prayer. It wasn’t just for Milton Jones’ victims, either. It was for everyone whose heart had been blinded by false perceptions of evil. For those who called evil good. For those who didn’t even realize the state of their soul.
When I opened my eyes again, a new peace washed over me. Now, I needed to focus on the task at hand—the task of saving innocent lives.
“Slow down.” I stared at my phone screen, trying to decipher the markings on the map. “It says we need to turn here, but there’s no road.”
Riley gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “This area is so remote. Maybe the maps aren’t accurate.”
I scrutinized the street markings on the tiny display and then glanced back at the road. “It’s weird.”
“Let’s try the next road.”
A stretch of swampland rolled past as we drove farther into the early evening. The next road sign didn’t appear for another mile.
“This can’t be right. We’re missing something,” I insisted.
With each second we wasted, my anxiety grew. We were so close, yet so far away.
“Let’s turn around.” Riley maneuvered the car on the narrow road, and we headed back the way we came. We slowed at the area where the road should have been. All we saw was black water and cypress stumps and thick brush.
No road.
No sign that any road had ever been here.
We continued down the road but didn’t see any other turn offs.
I pointed to a farmhouse in the distance. “Pull into the driveway. There’s a man outside now.”
Riley stopped by the farmer, who eyed us suspiciously. The man’s dog barked at us from the edge of the driveway.
“Can I help you?” the farmer asked, wariness in his tired gaze.
I smiled brightly, trying not to seem too creepy. “Hi, there. Sorry to bother you, but I’m a little lost.”
“I don’t know what’s happening out here tonight, but my dog won’t stop barking. All I want is to go to bed.” He sent his German shepherd a dirty look.
“I’m looking for 3251 Cypress Way. It says there’s a turn off, but we can’t find it.”
He pulled up his top lip in thought, showing his stained teeth and lots of gum. “Cypress Way, you say? You’re close. Hurricane Isabel sent too many trees over that street for it to be useable. Used to be an old logging road.”
“There used to be a street there? Because I didn’t see anything.”
“The swamp’s a living thing. It’s always changing, Sweetheart. Mother Nature came in and filled up that road with peat moss and blueberry thickets and Devil’s Walkingstick. The marsh and the swamp . . . part of its mystery is its ability to transform itself, to shift, to grow, to devour.”
His words sent a chill down my spine. I pointed to the map on my phone, my throat suddenly dry. “So is there any way to get to Cypress Way now?”
He nodded. “Of course. Take the next road. Turn left. Then take the next right. You’ll hit Cypress Way. It’s not much of a street and there’s two huge ditches running on either side of it. Hope you don’t mind getting your car dirty.”
We thanked him and hurried back down the road.
“That was strange,” I mumbled. “Unsettling.”
“He was right. The swamp is alive. The man just appreciates the land, like any good farmer would,” Riley said.
&n
bsp; That still didn’t comfort me as we drove deeper into the quickly descending night. Our headlights were the only things illuminating the road. I hoped we didn’t hit a dead end because the road had become even narrower.
Riley pulled to the side of the street. “We should go the rest of the way on foot. We don’t want to alert anyone that we’re here.”
“Makes sense.” What had I just said? Walk? Through the swamp? Had I lost my mind?
As soon as I stepped out, the smell of dank earth rose up to greet us. Humidity surrounded me. Bugs kissed any exposed skin.
The swamp had a welcome all its own.
In the distance, something snapped. A tree branch? An animal? A killer?
Riley reached for my hand, and we started down the dark road. Before I’d gotten out of the car, I’d shoved my cell phone in my pocket and my gun in my waistband.
Honestly, the weapon was starting to feel more like a ball and chain than a means of protection.
But a girl had to be smart. Especially a girl facing a serial killer.
The moonlight reflected on something in the distance. Something shiny. And it wasn’t one of those murky puddles of water.
“What is that?” I pointed to the shimmer across the road.
We walked closer and saw a car.
A hybrid. A black hybrid.
With a suit jacket hanging in the back.
“Dale . . .” Riley muttered.
“Why’s his car here?” I asked. Had the Scum River Killer grabbed him as well? Or even worse . . . was he the accomplice?
I stepped back and shook my head. The car had been covered up with branches, like someone was trying to hide it.
Jones or Dale?
I remembered Riley telling me at the start of this manhunt that only people who were officially connected with the case had known about the threats Jones made to Riley. Dale would have known. He was in town earlier than anyone thought. He’d wanted to use me as a decoy. He could be in on this whole nightmare.
“I don’t like this,” Riley mumbled.
“Me neither.” From where I stood by the car, a building in the distance came into view. “Look. The cabin.”
The Scum of All Fears: Squeaky Clean Mysteries, Book 5 Page 19
