No Man's Land

by Sara Driscoll

  “So you keep saying. Give us two minutes.”

  A few minutes later, Meg, Brian, and the dogs entered Craig’s office to find him seated across from a petite brunette in a navy business suit. She stood and offered her hand with a wide smile. “Hi. Agent Kate Moore.”

  “Agent Moore.” Meg shook hands. “I’m Meg Jennings. This”—she held out a hand to Brian, who entered the office behind her, pushing his desk chair—“is Brian Foster. And Hawk and Lacey.”

  Meg stood aside so the new agent and Brian could shake hands, and then Brian positioned his chair in the empty space by the door. Meg and Agent Moore took the two chairs opposite Craig’s desk.

  “My apologies for the small space,” Craig said. “Most of the time we’re meeting about cases out in the field, so this is the biggest room we have.”

  “This is just fine.” Agent Moore’s voice held a smoky, melodic quality with a gentle overlay of Tennessee. “Lots of room for us all.” She looked down at the dogs, sitting quietly at their handlers’ feet. “Can I say hi to the dogs?”

  “Absolutely.” Meg gave Hawk the hand signal to stand. “Hawk, go and say hi to Agent Moore.”

  Hawk politely sat in front of the agent and offered his right paw to her. She solemnly shook, then repeated the action with Lacey. “These guys put my dogs to shame.”

  “Dogs?” Meg accentuated the plural.

  “I have two King Charles spaniels at home. They’re well behaved, but not this well behaved.” She looked up at Craig. “Would you like me to start?” When he gave her a wave to go ahead, she turned to face Meg and Brian. “First of all, call me Kate. We’re going to be a team and working this case together, so we might as well start off on the right foot. I’ve been assigned the case concerning the kidnapping and murder of an as-yet-to-be-determined number of senior citizens.”

  Meg’s gaze flicked to Craig, and he nodded in response. He’d come through for them again, not only getting an agent assigned but ensuring that his people stayed involved.

  “I understand you were both involved in victim discovery?” Kate continued.

  “Yes. Hawk and I found Donna Parker entirely by chance. But after we began to suspect that there might be more killings, Craig stayed on top of reports of missing seniors. When Warren Roth went missing, Brian and Lacey assisted with the search effort and were instrumental in recovering Mr. Roth’s body.” She glanced at Craig. “Were you able to get the tox results for Donna Parker?”

  “I tried, but they’re not ready yet. They’ll send them as soon as they can.”

  “We can work around them until they come in.” Kate opened the folder on her lap and flipped through the pages. “Brian, you and Lacey discovered Mr. Roth?”

  “Yes.” Brian rubbed Lacey’s back. “Though Lacey did the heavy lifting.”

  “That was good work by y’all. SSA Beaumont brought this case forward with the information that one of Meg’s contacts suggested other victims. I wasn’t sure about the strength of the other information, but I used it as a springboard.”

  “My ‘contact’ is Clay McCord, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post,” Meg said. “I’d say that information is pretty strong.”

  Kate pulled a pen out of her breast pocket and jotted down McCord’s name on one of her notes. “I’ve heard of him, and I’d agree. We don’t usually encourage reporters to be involved in our cases, though.”

  “McCord won’t be a problem,” Craig interjected. “He’s worked with us on several cases in the past, he has solid contacts, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut until told otherwise. He can be . . . useful.”

  Meg chuckled. “I won’t tell him you said that.”

  Kate watched the exchange with a cocked eyebrow. “I’ll keep him in mind.” Her smile melted away. “But I’ve already done some groundwork of my own, and it’s not encouraging.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Brian said. “What do you mean?”

  Kate pulled a list from the folder. “I found a number of missing seniors who have never been found, and others where the body was recovered under circumstances similar to the two victims we know about.”

  “How big a number?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  Brian gave a low whistle and exchanged glances with Meg. “Surely that can’t all be the work of one guy. That would be one hell of a spree if it was.”

  “Probably not,” Meg agreed, “but some of them could be. Some of the others could be unfortunate events that haven’t been resolved yet.” She held out a hand to Kate. “May I see the list?”

  “Sure.” Kate handed the list to Meg. “I don’t even know if that’s all of them.”

  Meg scanned the list, a knot growing in her stomach over the number of names and locations. “Craig, have you still got that national map in your desk?”

  Craig opened a drawer, rummaged for a moment, and pulled out the folded map. He extended it across his desk. “What do you want it for?”

  “You’ll see. Can I borrow some arrow flags, too?”

  “Sure.” He found those and handed them over as well.

  “Tape?”

  He didn’t even comment, just pulled out a roll of Scotch tape.

  Brian looked over Meg’s shoulder at the list. Then he plucked the map out of her hands and stood.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I see what you’re doing. I’m helping get started.” Brian stepped over Lacey, picked a section of wall by the door, and unfolded the map, holding it in place while craning his neck to look back at Meg. “This good?”

  “Perfect.” While Brian taped the map to the wall, Meg handed the list to Kate. “Let’s start at the top. Can you read them to me one by one?” The thump of a desk drawer shutting drew her gaze toward Craig.

  He held a fine black marker across the desk to her. “Write the victim name and the date of disappearance on a flag for easy reference. Write the name and the date of discovery on a second color-matched flag. Those go on the locations where they disappeared and where they were found, if they were found. Hopefully you won’t have similar colored multiple pairs in the same state.”

  Meg smiled her appreciation and took the marker.

  They grouped around the map, Kate reading out each name and location and Meg writing down the name and dates on arrow flags, while Craig called up coordinates on his phone and Brian located them on the paper map. It took a full half hour, and when all the data were pinned on the map, they stood back.

  Brian crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the map. “I know these may not all be our victims, but if even only a fraction of them are, added to our existing victims, we have a real problem.”

  Hawk bumped against Meg’s legs, and she reached down to stroke her hand along his head. She knew his sensitive nature, and knew he was picking up on the sudden tension in the room. She dragged her chair around to face the map and sat down, letting Hawk settle between her knees while she studied the map.

  Flags pierced the map from New Hampshire in the northeast, through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, then westward through Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois over an extended period.

  Twenty-three possible victims. Ten states. Over four years.

  “I know these may not all be case related, but as Brian said, if even a fraction of them are, it’s a real problem. How did this stay under the radar for so long?”

  Kate tucked a hank of her shoulder-length bob behind her ear. “Cross-border disappearances. Older victims who don’t seem to generate the same outrage as younger ones. Some victims didn’t have family support and weren’t even noted as missing until after a body was found. And, as we’ve said, these may not all be victims related to this case.”

  “How many victims were recovered with actual physical remains?” Craig asked.

  Kate ran a finger down her notes. “Eighteen.”

  “How many had autopsies? Better yet, how many had tox screens run?”

  �
��I’m going to need to dig for that. I’ve just been assigned to the case, so what I have so far is really bare bones.”

  “Then you’re not going to know this, either, but I wonder how many were buried versus cremated, and if we could get a court order to exhume them and run a tox screen?”

  Kate made a note on the page in a flourishing hand. “I don’t know, but I’m fixin’ to find out.” She took in the map. “This is big, and could easily be bigger than what we’re looking at now.”

  Meg followed her gaze to the map. So many names, dates, and places.

  How many more would there be before they caught the person responsible?

  CHAPTER 12

  First Service: The time of the first passenger train departure in the morning. Access to abandoned underground rail sites becomes much more dangerous once scheduled service begins, since rail platforms are crowded with commuters and the third rail providing power to electric trains is energized.

  Monday, November 5, 8:47 AM

  Jennings residence

  Arlington, Virginia

  Meg’s cell phone rang as she was loading her breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. Cara scooped it up and slid it across the island to her.

  “Thanks.” Meg glanced at the caller ID on the screen—Kate Moore. “Morning, Kate.”

  “Morning. Where are you?”

  Meg’s gaze flicked to Cara at the abrupt end of pleasantries. “I’m at home still. What’s happened?”

  “We have a missing senior. A resident of Hampden Manor, on the outskirts of Baltimore. They specialize in Alzheimer’s patients. One of their residents, seventy-three-year-old Mrs. Bahni Devar, had breakfast with other residents at their first seating at seven this morning. She missed an eight-fifteen appointment with a social worker but wasn’t in her room, and they couldn’t locate her in common areas. They did a grounds search because their residents sometimes wander the property a bit. They’re not overly mobile, so they can’t get far, but some of them can get confused and turned around, so they wanted to find her quickly. One of the staff thought to check the security cameras to give them a direction if she’d just wandered off.”

  “She didn’t just wander off, did she?” Anticipating the direction of the conversation, Meg went to the mudroom and grabbed her hiking boots and her go bag, then carried them back into the kitchen. Wedging her phone between her ear and her shoulder, she opened the bag and sorted through it, double-checking the contents.

  “No. The camera recorded her being led out of a side door of the building by a workman in coveralls, wearing a baseball hat pulled down low so his face was hidden.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “They walked out of camera range.”

  Meg’s head snapped up so fast she had to juggle the phone to keep it from slipping. “On foot? You have a direction?”

  “Yes and yes. Can you go?”

  “Hawk and I can leave from here.” At the sound of his name, Hawk’s head rose from where he dozed on the dog bed in the corner of the kitchen. She gave him the hand signal to come. “Can you text me the address?”

  “Yes. And let me call Craig for you. I’ll clear it with him that you’re heading out.”

  “Thanks. Call me if you have any problems with him. Otherwise, if I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume he green-lit the search.” She glanced at the clock on the stove. “At this time of the morning, it’s going to take me a good hour and a half to get there.”

  “Do you need anyone else to help?”

  “It’s up to Craig to manage the deployment, and I’m not even sure who else is available. It may literally just be me. Do me one more thing?”

  “Name it.”

  “Call Hampden Manor and ask them to collect a few small pieces of dirty laundry from Mrs. Devar’s room. A shirt, a pair of socks, anything, but it needs to have been worn. Clean won’t help us. We’ll use it to give Hawk her scent. Tell them also to use gloves so they don’t get their own scent on it, and to seal it in a zippered plastic bag.”

  “Laundry. Gloves. Bag. Check.”

  Meg zipped her bag shut. “Thanks. Hawk and I are walking out the door now.”

  “Good hunting.” Kate hung up.

  Meg pulled out a chair and sat to lace up her hiking boots.

  “Someone else has disappeared?” Cara asked.

  “Just this morning. Was escorted out of the building by a worker, or someone posing as one.”

  “You think that’s the perp?”

  “I think there’s a good chance it is. We’ll start there, but if this situation is anything like the others, he’s already transporting her somewhere else. The question is, where?” Meg looked up as she jammed her foot into the second boot. “I’m going to call McCord to see if he can make any suggestions. I’d call Chuck, but he’s on shift this morning with Todd, and I know how that goes. They don’t sit around the firehouse much. If McCord can’t come up with anything, then I’ll call Chuck.”

  “Knowing Clay, he’ll hit some urbex boards and get you everything you need.”

  “I’m counting on it.” Meg stood and shouldered her pack.

  “Here.” Cara handed her a travel mug of coffee. “For an extra boost on the road.”

  Meg grinned at her. “Who needs a wife? A sister is much better.”

  Minutes later, she and Hawk were in the SUV, headed for I-395 to start their journey northeast. Using the hands-free controls in the SUV, Meg called McCord. He answered on the third ring, and she could hear the buzz of the Washington Post newsroom behind him. “It’s Meg. Have you got a minute? Or thirty?”

  “Nothing on the books for the morning. What do you need?”

  “We have a missing senior. I’m en route to the facility she disappeared from—an Alzheimer’s residence. But I need some remote research help while I’m on the road.”

  “I’m your man. What do you know so far?”

  Meg updated him on the little she knew. “I’m betting there’s essentially zero chance we’re going to find Mrs. Devar on-site. If she’s going to be poisoned with the same rat poison as Warren Roth, then there’s a window, but it’s a small one. I need a list of places in the area where the suspect might leave her.”

  “I can do that. Search radius?”

  Meg pictured the map that still hung in Craig’s office with its color-matched flags and the distance between them. “Twenty miles is probably more than enough, but let’s say twenty-five, just in case. Unfortunately, that’s going to include all of Baltimore.” She could hear the click of McCord’s keyboard as he made notes.

  “That’s definitely going to make the list longer. How much time do I have?”

  Meg glanced at the dash. “I’m an hour out, maybe more if I hit traffic. Hawk and I will start the search as soon as we get there, and that could take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour.”

  “I’ll have a list ready for you in ninety minutes, with a prioritized search order like last time. Is anyone else with you?”

  “So far it’s just me. Let’s assume it stays that way until you hear otherwise.”

  “Got it. Call me when you can.” Then he was gone.

  Meg merged onto I-395 and promptly had to slow down with the increased traffic. Pushing away the urge to hammer her horn—she needed to move, damn it—she settled for darting through traffic, desperately trying for the fastest route. But every few minutes she found herself sneaking glances at the dashboard clock, the knot in her stomach growing tighter as the minutes ticked past.

  CHAPTER 13

  Step Irons: Metal rungs built into a masonry wall to act as a ladder.

  Monday, November 5, 10:06 AM

  Hampden Manor

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Hawk picked up the scent on the walkway immediately, leaving Meg to jog behind, still clutching the plastic bag containing several pieces of dirty laundry in one hand and his leash in the other. She let the lead play out, giving Hawk full freedom to weave back and forth across the scent cone, trying to
locate the outer edges. The closer they got to the source, the narrower the cone would become, funneling them directly to their goal.

  From the side door, Hawk skirted a patio filled with tables and padded lounge chairs, heading for the tree line that bordered the property to the west. Meg glanced at her watch, noting how much faster they’d arrived than originally anticipated. When she’d been pulled over for doing seventy-five miles per hour in a fifty-five zone on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, she thought she’d made a grave error that would cost entirely too much time. But a fast explanation, a flash of her FBI badge, and a quick glance at Hawk’s FBI vest was all that was needed to earn her a Maryland State Police escort to the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, complete with lights and siren. Losing four minutes had gained her twenty.

  Hawk darted into the forest, down a path so narrow that Meg would have missed it had she been doing a visual search. But his nose led them where her eyes could not, and soon Meg was pushing through branches, many of which were snapped off three or four feet above the ground. Fall’s brilliant colors sparkled all around them, and the air was rich with the earthy scents of fallen leaves and autumn rain. Dry leaves crunched under her boots, and small animals scurried in the bushes as they prepared for the coming winter.

  Meg paused briefly to examine the branch of a sapling, dangling drunkenly from where it was broken nearly in two, observing the green wood beneath the torn bark. Someone’s been through here recently. Or, more likely, two someones.

  Hawk paused momentarily in a small area where the undergrowth gave way to ground cover, now mostly carpeted in bright leaves. But when he was about to continue, Meg stopped him with a single command. She pulled out her phone and took a quick photo of the area, taking ten seconds to observe the disturbed leaves, pushed aside to reveal the moist earth and protruding roots below. More tellingly, she noted the single handprint pressed into the mud.

  You struggled away from him here and fell. You fought him before he got you under control again. Meg felt a flush of pride for the spirit of the older woman, likely confused and scared out of her mind but still showing a spark of gutsy spunk. Hang on, Mrs. Devar. We’re coming for you.