Facing Evil

by Kylie Brant

  “Vance also shared details of his plans for Van Wheton’s death when he finished with her.” He’d enjoyed doing that, Sophia recalled. It had fed his god-like ego to strike terror in the hearts of his victims. Certainly he’d been successful with her. “When pressed she didn’t recall him specifically saying that he would kill her, though. Just that she’d die. Which is in keeping with my own experience with him. I think that underscores our conclusion that Sonny Baxter was charged with the actual murder of these victims, at least these latest ones.”

  “A claim I’m sure we’ll hear from Vance’s defense,” Cam inserted wryly.

  She nodded. “Before the doctor shooed us away, Van Wheton was able to identify photos of Mason Vance, Sonny Baxter and Vickie Baxter.” A murmur swept through the room and Sophia unconsciously reached for the bottle of water Cam had left on the table before her. Drank to soothe a throat suddenly parched. The hovering doctor had dismissed them at the first signs of Van Wheton’s upset. Sophia sincerely hoped that Jenna had not been able to discern how eager she’d been to leave the hospital.

  That could have been her. The thought hammered at her, sending haunting echoes careening through her system. If her own abduction had been planned with Vickie Baxter’s involvement, instead of an act of rage by Vance, she had no doubt she would have shared Van Wheton’s fate. Or worse. As it was, Mason Vance had been infuriated when her profile on him had been released to the public. His ego had demanded revenge, so he’d kidnapped Sophia. The decision eventually led to his capture.

  But she was constantly reminded of how easily it could have turned out differently.

  Steadier, she set the bottle down deliberately and began again. “What Van Wheton was able to share helped solidify some of what we know about Vickie Baxter. Her DHS case file revealed that she was removed from her father’s care because of long-time physical and sexual abuse. She was taken in by a paternal aunt after parental rights were terminated. That aunt lived two miles south of where Ellen Webster’s charred remains were found.”

  She saw Cam’s head swivel toward her. There hadn’t been time to share that particular detail with him this morning. He’d left for work shortly after she’d slipped back into their bed, falling into a fitful slumber. Somehow delving further into Baxter’s tawdry life had given her some much needed emotional distance after Van Wheton had brought memories of Sophia’s captivity hurtling back.

  “So she has an anchor in the area, too.”

  She sent a sidelong glance at Cam, affirming his understanding. “She was born in Oelwein, but there’s usually something that keeps a killer returning to a certain spot. For Vance the connection was the summers he’d spent at his grandfather’s farm north of Ankeny. For Baxter, it may turn out to be her time in foster care. She left at age eighteen but when Baxter was twenty, the aunt and uncle who took her in were killed in a house fire. The investigative case file notes that a man verified her location that night in Des Moines.”

  “Vickie is a puppet master when it comes to men,” Jenna noted. “It would have been no problem for her to find one willing to provide her with an alibi. In return for sexual favors, of course.”

  “It’s unlikely we’ll ever know if the man providing her an alibi was lying,” Sophia agreed. “But her DHS file indicates that while she was in foster care, on at least two occasions, men named her as an accomplice to a string of robberies and burglaries in downtown Des Moines. Since there was no evidence of her involvement, no charges were filed. But she had a pattern of acting out sexually with older men during her teens, no doubt due to her own sexual abuse and torture at the hands of her father.” Every intact deceased victim they’d found bore a number burned into the skin on their shoulder blades with the tip of a lit cigar. Vickie’s number was one.

  “The interviews done when she was a child disclosed a trauma experience almost textbook in the development of her pathology. Victims of incest may experience guilt, shame, distrust of others, self-hate, depression, low self-esteem or later revictimization.”

  “Since she turned into a murdering psychopath, I’d say none of the above,” offered Franks. Sophie glanced his way. The senior agent rarely said much, but she knew he didn’t hold forensic profiles in particularly high regard. He wasn’t alone in his attitude; in her role as a nationally recognized forensic profiler, she’d met similar attitudes from law enforcement. Some from cops much more verbal about their opinions.

  “Or maybe she’s all of the above.” She tempered her disagreement with a smile. “It doesn’t excuse her actions. It just helps us understand her better. The data kept by her caseworker offers a rare insight into Vickie’s evolution into a killer. Teenage rebellion, sexual acting out, bullying and assault complaints from school. The incidents taken in totality paint a young woman determined never to be a victim again. And somewhere along the way she began to experience pleasure in victimizing others. That sense of satisfaction, once experienced, likely consumed her.”

  “And how does knowing that lead to her capture?” Cam asked bluntly.

  Sophia smiled inwardly. There had been a time when the man had shared Franks’ attitude toward her assistance on cases. He’d thawed in his attitude, but remained a bottom-line cop. Profiles were useless if they couldn’t assist in directing the investigation.

  “It helps us predict her actions.” Driven to move, Sophia began to pace. “Something is keeping her in the area when common sense would dictate she get far away. Is it a great love for Mason Vance? I doubt she’s capable of the emotion, at least not as we’d recognize it. This is a woman who physically abused her own young son. Who allowed men to sexually assault him, according to Sonny Baxter’s DHS file. She has a history of manipulating men, and I imagine she utilized Vance to implement the scheme to rob and rape wealthy women.” With a nod toward Cam, she added, “She had a willing partner in that, as his cellmate told us Vance had expressed a similar plan while in prison. Those two finding each other was incredibly bad luck for our victims.”

  “Why did she need Vance?” As usual the rookie agent Brody Robbins flushed when he dared to ask a question. But gamely, he barreled on. “She’s killed alone. We have recent proof of that. And she had Sonny to do it for her before she shot him.”

  “Sonny was also the one who stalked the women and eventually kidnapped them to bring them to his mother and Vance,” Jenna noted. “Not all the victims we found can be attributed to Vance, because the timeline doesn’t fit.”

  It was a valid point. There were also the three sets of unidentified skeletal remains that had been pulled from the Raccoon River at the State Medical Examiner’s Office awaiting aging. And this was exactly where the profile transported beyond the evidence and reached into expert conclusion territory.

  “I suspect that Sonny was a disappointment to his mother in that regard.” It felt strange to experience a pang of empathy for the dead killer. “His psychosis was too involved for him to be reliable. Vickie Baxter was likely motivated by a need to make other women experience what she herself had gone through as a child. Rape. Torture. Helplessness. Becoming predator rather than prey made her feel strong. Sonny was sick, but in a far different way than she is. When he couldn’t enact the crimes in the way that she found sexually satisfying, she looked for someone who could.”

  Sophia could feel the gaze Cam drilled at her. “You’re saying she’s the mastermind. She was the one calling the shots.”

  The room abruptly stilled. Nodding, Sophia returned to the table, reached for the water again before remembering that it wasn’t hers. She could feel heat rising in her cheeks, an involuntary reaction she’d never been able to master. “She would have attempted to use Vance to help fulfill her needs. She would have had her hands full with him. He was vicious in his own right. And his temper made him unpredictable.”

  A phantom pain throbbed in her jaw at the memory of the stinging blow Vance had delivered the first time she’d provoked him to anger. Aware of Cam’s gaze on her, Sophia struggled to mask
her expression.

  “Regardless, something is keeping Vickie here. Her motivations are simple. If the burned corpse turns out to be Ellen Webster, there’s not a doubt in my mind that Baxter killed her. And if she did, it’s not much of a stretch to believe that the man in the trunk was a revenge killing, too. Maybe someone who did her wrong years ago. Perhaps even someone who had assaulted Sonny when he was young.”

  “It takes a special kind of twisted thinking to blame the men she invited to rape her son,” Franks muttered.

  “Yes. And if revenge is her motivation, there’s no telling how wide she’ll aim.” Sophia paused a beat while she scanned the room. “She may even target members of this team.”

  “I volunteer to be bait,” Beckett Maxwell drawled. “Just dangle me out there and see what she does. If she gets to me before you all do, well,” he jerked a thumb at Jenna sitting next to him. “Red can deliver my eulogy. She always has the sweetest things to say.”

  The Boone County Sheriff’s words earned a laugh, lightening the mood.

  Jenna cocked her head to consider the man beside her. “We can coat your naked hide with jam and hope to draw her like an ant.”

  “There you go again, honey, coming up with ideas to get my clothes off. Don’t want to keep breaking your heart, but no means no.”

  From Jenna’s narrowed green gaze, it was clear that Maxwell was wandering into dangerous territory.

  “What’d you guys do all day yesterday, anyway?” Boggs wanted to know.

  Beckett doubled over, wincing while Jenna placed the heel of her pump squarely on his toe and ground it. “In a supreme act of self-restraint I managed not to strangle him. I can’t promise the same for today.”

  Sophia smiled, although noted that SAC Gonzalez and MCU Assistant Director Miller weren’t joining in the levity. “That’s one idea, anyway. But I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about drawing her out. It would be a mistake to underestimate Vickie Baxter. She’s twisted, but lacks her son’s psychosis. And she isn’t driven by ego, as Vance was. She’s moved around the area freely so far, at least she appears to be doing so now.”

  “So revenge is keeping her in the area?” Cam’s tone sounded unconvinced. “If that’s the case she could have taken it many times over. She’s lived around here for years. Why now?”

  Sophia reached into her file folder and brought out a photo. “Because of him.” All eyes turned toward the picture of Sonny Baxter. “His death triggered something inside her. Remorse, maybe. She could be seeking vengeance on his behalf. It doesn’t make sense to us. She was the one who shot him minutes before you tracked him to her house. But in her mind that makes you responsible, not her.”

  “So she’s not sticking around because of Vance?”

  “That’s also possible,” Sophie answered Franks’ question. “Not because of the man personally. But if there was something else, something left undone…maybe one last score or plans left unresolved… If he’s keeping her here it’s because he’s a stepping stone to something she wants.” She swiveled her head to regard Cam. “But there’s no way she can get to him.”

  Cam caught the eye of SAC Gonzalez and shook his head. “We’ve got him in a solitary cell. His lawyer’s been filing motions, but soon I expect a trial date to be set. Polk County jail is on high alert while he’s there. His visitors are restricted to only his lawyer, and he’ll be well-guarded at all times. Baxter would have to be hallucinating to believe she could get him out on her own.”

  Just the mention of Vance escaping had dread snaking down Sophia’s spine.

  “She’s wily enough to have eluded capture this long. After killing Stewart she managed to collect the cash rent on the woman’s farm for two years by forging a power of attorney and posing as the woman’s niece.”

  “Netting nearly four hundred thousand bucks,” Franks inserted disgustedly.

  Nodding, Sophia added, “Regardless of whose idea that was, it was Baxter that played the role. And no one suspected a thing. Not the renters or the bank. Stewart’s death and body disposal is proof that Vickie can be every bit as brutal as Vance.”

  She began to slide pages back into the folder, suddenly spent. It would be tempting to credit her exhaustion to last night’s lack of sleep. It was the subject matter, however that was mostly to blame.

  Cam was alert to the slightest sign that she hadn’t recovered emotionally from her time as Vance’s captive. As a psychologist she wouldn’t dream of claiming otherwise. There was a difference, she’d insisted repeatedly in conversations with him, between still dealing with the effects and being an asset to this case. The two weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

  But visceral responses still lingered, and she was going to have to learn to cope with them. Because she could ill afford more nights like the last one every time mention was made of her kidnapper.

  “Beckett, the tip line has yielded a few calls from your county. You want to check them out?”

  The sheriff nodded. “We’ll take care of them.”

  She listened with half an ear as Cam handed out assignments to the agents gathered. Then waited another few minutes for him to finish a short conversation with Gonzalez. When the SAC moved away Sophia crossed to Cam. “Unless you have other plans for me, I’m heading to Boone County. I made an appointment to speak with a former neighbor of Baxter’s. She lived down the road from Vickie’s aunt and uncle, the Coates.”

  “The ones who took her in when she was a teenager. Still no cooperation from the cousins?”

  In addition to caring for a teenage Vickie Baxter, Mary and Allen Coates had had three children, the youngest of whom had died in the fire that had killed the parents. There had been a boy and girl closer to Vickie Baxter’s age at the time that had been away at college when the fire occurred. Sophia had reached the son, who had proven unwilling to discuss his murderous relative. She’d managed to extract a promise that he’d talk to his sister about submitting to phone interviews before he’d hung up. Given his attitude, she had doubts whether that conversation would ever take place.

  “Not yet.” She walked with him to the table where he’d left his materials and watched him shovel the case files back into a battered briefcase. She made a mental note that a new briefcase might be a functional, if not particularly impressive birthday gift for him in a couple months.

  Then caught her breath. Because despite everything that had occurred in the past few weeks, thoughts of a future for the two of them were tantalizingly persistent. In those heady few days during their initial affair everything she thought she’d known about herself had been upended. She’d felt too much, much too fast. Cam Prescott had shredded her usual cautious approach and he represented the exact opposite of the safe choices she prided herself on making.

  Safe. Her kidnapping had proven the folly of her prudent approach to life. Nothing and no one was ever really safe. Life was tenuous, and joy should be embraced. Including what she felt for Cam.

  While unsure of his feelings, she was all too aware that he didn’t trust her to know her own mind in that regard. As if her harrowing kidnap and escape from Vance had somehow turned her into an emotional cripple. His reaction would be infuriating if she didn’t realize it stemmed from concern for her.

  “Okay.” He took his phone out, checked some notes on it. “Give me a half hour to return some phone calls and I can take you.”

  “I have a vehicle, an address and GPS. I can handle it. Stay here.” They fell in step together as they headed toward the conference room door. “I know you have a million details to tend to.” With the possible connection to Webster’s murder, the hundreds of threads that comprised an investigation were about to become even more tangled. She wondered for a moment if he’d talked at all to Gonzalez about more manpower for the team.

  “I’m an expert at multi-tasking.” He didn’t smile, but the creases beside his mouth deepened for an instant. “Just this morning I made the coffee while checking the box scores.”

>   “Which accounts for me having to dump the pot and make a new one.” They were in the hallway now heading toward his office. “I’m serious. I’ll just go on my own and then I have to go to my office later to confer with Dr. Redlow.” In addition to her forensic consulting business, Sophia maintained a private practice. The man had been handling her clients during this case. She was working on transitioning back, at least part-time until the case was resolved. Or she would be, she thought with an inward sigh if Cam would drop his hovering.