“Is that really necessary? The woman just came in on a late flight; maybe we should give her a chance to rest.”
“She can rest tomorrow. Right now, she’s the only one who may know what our UnSub looks like. I want that sketch as soon as possible. I’ll have a car sent to pick her up, and sorry folks, but as soon as we eat, it’s back to work for us.”
After Agent Stiles had made the arrangements, they ate quickly and were soon on their way to meet the witness.
Jessica was seated to Stiles’ right in the back of McGraw’s car, and was staring at him.
“Is something on your mind, Dr. White?”
“Yes, this case, you seem to be taking a personal interest in it, why is that?”
Stiles took out his wallet and flipped it open. Inside was a photo of a lovely young woman wearing a cap and gown. The woman was black, and standing beside her in the photo was Stiles, with a proud smile on his face.
“That’s my daughter, Jaclyn, she lives in Denver with my ex-wife and she just earned her law degree, these murdered women, any one of them could be her. I can’t imagine the agony that their families are going through.”
“You’re a good man, Agent Stiles, Edwin,”
“I just hope I’m good enough to catch this bastard.”
Jessica’s husband leaned forward and looked past her and into Stiles’ eyes.
“We’ll stop him, one way or another.”
Stiles raised an eyebrow.
“Dead or alive?”
The doctor’s husband sat back in his seat.
“Dead would be better,”
“Works for me,” Stiles said, and then he kissed his daughter’s picture.
CHAPTER 7
THE PAST
Cambridge, Massachusetts
It was well after dark by the time the police had conducted their interviews and concluded their work at the crime scene.
Two separate officers had asked him about his whereabouts during the estimated time of the murder, and when he told them the truth, that he had been alone downstairs in the basement tool room fixing a broken hedge trimmer, both men had raised an eyebrow as if they doubted his word.
He had not spoken to Jessica since she went off to call the police, and as he stood outside her apartment door and knocked, he felt an alien emotion course through him.
It was nervousness. For the first time in his life, he was nervous. It was not the only instance in which Jessica White had birthed a new emotion within him, and he hoped that it would not be the last.
He watched as the peephole darkened, and a moment later, she opened the door.
“Hi,” he said, as he studied her face and realized that she’d been crying.
She sent him a weak smile as she leaned in the doorway.
“Hello,”
“I know it’s late, but do you still want to go out for Chinese food?”
“No, I seemed to have lost my appetite.”
“Oh, right, Jessica, what happened to that girl... that wasn’t me. I swear it.”
Jessica nodded in reply.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just that—” she turned her head and shouted into the apartment. “Juliet, I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” said a voice from somewhere in the apartment.
Jessica stepped out into the hall while closing the apartment door behind her; she then took him by the hand and led him to a bench seat that sat before the window at the end of the hallway. The window offered a view of the street below and, before sitting, they watched the traffic flow by on Binney Street.
Jessica let go of his hand as she began to talk.
“I realized something today.”
“What’s that?”
“I realized that I don’t really know anything about you.”
“You know more about me than anyone.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“You never talk about your past.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“But there must be. Who was your girlfriend before me?”
“No one, you’re the first girl I’ve dated.”
Jessica reached up and stroked his cheek.
“With this face? I find that hard to believe, why just tonight Juliet mentioned more than once how handsome she thinks you are; I think she might even have a crush on you.”
“Most girls, most people... they don’t like me. Even my own mother didn’t like me, she threw me out of the house, remember?”
“Who’s your father?”
“I’ve told you. I don’t know who he is.”
“But see, that doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, you know all these things: how to fix cars, appliances, pretty much anything, did your mother teach you how to do all that?”
“No, most of that I learned from Number Twenty-six.”
“Number Twenty-six?”
He grinned.
“I never had a father, but my mother had a lot of boyfriends over the years, so many that I began numbering them. Number Twenty-six owned a garage and a fix-it shop. I worked there one summer and learned a lot from him.
“How many boyfriends were there?”
“Counting Roger, the one she kicked me out of the house for? Thirty-nine, there were thirty-nine.”
“Did you learn something from each of them?”
He thought about it a moment before answering.
“Yes, they all taught me something.”
“What did Number One teach you?”
He leaned back against the wall and his eyes gazed downward and to the left as he recalled a memory.
“I was very young when my mother was dating him, so I don’t remember him well, but I do remember that I liked him a lot and after a while I began to think of him as my father, my dad, but then, one day he just wasn’t there anymore. I suppose my mother broke up with him for one reason or another, but it felt like he had abandoned me.”
“Oh, that’s sad, but what about Number Two?”
“He took me and my mother to a lot of baseball games. He used to play in the minor leagues and I guess I learned to like the sport because of him, but he taught me something else too.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, he replaced Number One, so I knew that people could be replaced, that just because someone was there one day, it didn’t mean that they would always be there.”
Jessica stared at him carefully.
“Are you talking about us?”
“I thought that you brought me over to this bench to break up with me.”
“No! Oh, baby no, it’s just that you never let me in.”
“I didn’t kill that girl.”
“I know that, I do, it’s just that seeing her tied up that way brought back memories of ...”
“...of what I did to you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll never be able to make that up to you, will I?”
“You don’t have to; I’ve already forgiven you.”
“I love you, Jessica.”
“I love you too, baby,” she said, as she turned atop the bench and lay back in his arms.
“The man who killed that girl, he won’t stop, he’ll do it again.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes,” he said, as inside the apartment, Juliet screamed.
CHAPTER 8
THE PRESENT
Detroit, Michigan
The witness was named Mira Smith and she was not happy about being called to a police station at night. Detective McGraw managed to smooth things over though, and soon convinced her to give a statement.
They might as well have waited until morning for all the good it did.
Mira Smith had been grabbed from behind as she was getting into her car in an underground parking garage. She never saw the man that attacked her. The only reason the attack was unsuccessful was because of the coupl
e sitting in the car near hers. As the attack began, the man shouted for the perpetrator to stop, and that intervention caused Ms. Smith’s attacker to run off.
“I never saw his face. All I remember is that arm tightening around my throat. If that man hadn’t yelled at him, I think he might have choked me to death, but even so, I thought it was just a mugging.”
“It still might have been just that,” Stiles said. “But tell me, do you know the name of the man that helped you?”
“No, but that blue Caddy of his is always parked in the same spot. He must have an office in the building somewhere.”
They thanked Mira Smith for her time and sat around the conference table to plan their next move.
“I’ll stop by that office building in the morning and track down the owner of that Caddy, McGraw said. “With any luck, he got a good look at the perp.”
Stiles nodded in agreement.
“Do that, and I also want to look into any connection between Mira Smith and the victims. I know that she said she didn’t know any of them, but there could still be a link somewhere.”
“Do you think her attacker is the man we’re looking for?” Jessica asked.
“I do, it’s just a hunch, but I do,” Stiles said.
“Detective McGraw, I’d like to go along with you as you look for the owner of the Cadillac, and afterwards, I’d like a look at all of the other known abduction sites.”
“No problem, Doctor, I’ll meet you and your husband back here at eight a.m. and then we’ll go find our possible witness.”
***
The “possible witness” turned out to be a dentist by the name of Emmitt Carlson. McGraw talked to him at his reception desk while Jessica and her husband stood by.
Dr. Carlson was a short man in his early fifties with a trim moustache and a chunky build. His cologne was so overpowering that McGraw wondered how anyone could bear to sit in a dental chair while the doctor huddled over them, peering into their mouth. Perhaps few did, as the waiting room was devoid of customers.
Dr. Carlson modestly waved off his part in stopping Mira Smith’s attacker, but when asked the name of the woman that was with him in the car that night, he grew evasive.
Detective McGraw let out a long breath.
“Doctor, I see you wear a wedding band. If the woman you were with wasn’t your wife, I don’t care and no one needs to know about that, but I do need the name of that woman, she might know something we could use.”
“All right then...Kathy! Kathy come up front will you?”
A sound came from one of the treatment rooms and soon a tall redhead walked down the hallway towards them. The woman was beautiful, twenty years younger than the doctor and wore a colorful smock. Her name was Kathy Nona and her I.Q. nearly matched her age, but when asked what she remembered about that night, she came up with the first real clue about the killer’s identity.
“A tattoo?” McGraw said.
“Yeah, and it was on his right wrist. I remember it so well because it looked like a swastika.”
McGraw stepped closer. “A swastika, are you sure?”
“Um hmm, why? Is that like big news or something?”
McGraw grinned. “I certainly hope so.”
***
McGraw called for a patrol car to pick-up Kathy Nona and take her and the doctor in to give a statement. She was not about to let Dr. Carlson’s cologne stink up her car.
She then spent the morning giving Jessica a tour of the abduction sites, and at the third one, Dr. White’s husband sensed a pattern.
“There are no cameras at any of the crime scenes, even though areas close to all of them are under surveillance.”
“Yeah, we noticed that, our perp is extremely careful or camera shy.”
“I’m thinking it might be more than that.”
“What do you me—” McGraw began, but then her phone rang. “It’s Edwin, Agent Stiles.”
She took the call, and as she talked, Jessica could tell that whatever Stiles told her had disturbed her. When she ended the call, they both looked at her expectantly.
“That dental hygienist I.D.’d the tattoo. It’s one used by a local gang of white supremacists. Their leader is named Rudolf Heinrich; his real name is Kenny Posnanski. I’ve had run-ins with Kenny since I was a rookie.”
“Do you think he could be killing these women?” Jessica asked.
“I haven’t seen him in years, but... no, maybe one of his men, but not Kenny. For all his Nazi bullshit, he’s not a true believer. He even tried to get me to go out with him back in the old days. I’m going over to their hangout to talk to him; Captain Haggerty is sending a patrol car to back me up.”
“I’d like us both to be there when you talk to him.”
“Why?”
“I’d like to get a feel for him and anyone who might be around him, if the killer is in this group, perhaps fear of capture will cause him to slip up.”
“Fine, but let’s go, I want to get there before my back-up arrives.”
***
Forty-five minutes later, they were parked across the street from a row of dilapidated storefronts. The buildings all appeared abandoned, but in the fifth one from the left hung a banner proclaiming it to be the headquarters of the White Is Right Coalition, it and the rib joint on the corner were the only signs of life in the entire neighborhood.
McGraw tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. They’d been there for a half hour and still her back-up had yet to arrive.
She gave the station a call and discovered that all hell had broken out at a bank on Woodward Avenue. A group of bank robbers had killed a customer and wounded a cop, now the trio of desperate men were inside the bank with twenty hostages.
McGraw put her phone away.
“Back-up will be awhile, in the meantime, why don’t we—”
McGraw stopped talking as a green van came careening around the corner and raced down the alley at the side of the White Is Right building.
McGraw opened her door.
“I’m going to check out that van. You two wait here. If my back-up shows, send them to the rear of the building,”
As McGraw disappeared down the alley, Jessica spoke to her husband.
“Do you think she’ll be all right alone?”
Before he could answer her, the sound of gunshots rang out. An instant later and he was out of the car and headed for the alley.
“Be careful!” Jessica called, but he was already gone.
***
When McGraw rounded the rear corner of the alley, she spotted three white men taking a bound and gagged black woman from the rear of the van. The woman appeared unconscious, or possibly dead.
McGraw announced that she was a police officer as she went for her weapon, and the three men dropped their burden to the ground without ceremony, before pulling their guns from their belts and firing. McGraw dropped the one on the right with a shot to the chest, and then dived behind an old, abandoned car.
The remaining two men advanced on her with a barrage of gunfire and McGraw knew that her best chance was to run and fight another day, there was just one problem—there was nowhere to run.
The car she was hiding behind sat in front of a rusted chain link fence that was eight feet high. If she attempted to climb it, she would be shot.
As the glass from the car’s windows rained down upon her, McGraw crawled beneath the vehicle, hoping to pop out of the other side and take the men by surprise. However, when she was halfway through, one of the men’s shots hit a tire, deflating it, and thereby lowering the car considerably.
McGraw struggled in the tight space, while her jeans kept catching on the undercarriage. She knew that it was taking too long and as she crawled out the other side, she found the men grinning down at her.
The man on the left aimed his gun at her face.
“Goodbye bitch.”
And that’s when the doctor’s husband appeared.
The man calmly scooped up the gun of the man
she had shot and gave a whistle to his two companions. As the two turned in surprise to look at him, he shot the one on his right twice in the chest and then swiveled the gun left and blasted the other one. The two men fell to the ground, dead, and McGraw made it to her feet.
“Thank you, you saved my life.”
He bent down, removed the gag, and felt for a pulse on the kidnapped woman, who appeared young enough to be in her teens.
“She’s alive, but we’ve got to get her out of here.”
McGraw grabbed the girl’s wrists.
“We’ll carry her.”
He shook his head.
“That’s no good, if there are others inside, they could snipe at us from the front windows. Our best bet is to take the fight to them.”
McGraw squinted at him.
“What are you, ex-military?”
“I’m a man protecting his wife. She’s defenseless outside in front of this building, if we fail, they’ll go for her next.”
McGraw reloaded her weapon. “Let’s go.”
A moment later and they were creeping up a set of darkened stairs.
***
When the sound of the shooting ceased, Jessica got out of the car and walked across the street. As she stared up at the front of the building, she could hear shouting from inside, and then the third story window to her left exploded outward, as two men tumbled out of it and onto the ground.
Both men were heavily tattooed and both were injured from the fall, but while one of the men was out cold with two obviously broken legs, the second man, a six-foot-nine behemoth, stood up growling, while yanking a shard of glass from his cheek.
When he spotted Jessica, he lunged at her.
***
As they went up the stairs, they approached the third floor landing which had a window that looked out onto the street. When they were nearly at the top, two men with guns burst out of a doorway shouting expletives.
McGraw watched in wonder as the doctor’s husband leaped the final six steps and tackled the men. The impact of his charge was so great that it sent the men backwards through the window. When they hit the ground, McGraw scrunched up her face at the sickening sound of flesh hitting concrete.
She hurried up the remaining steps and gazed down at the street, to watch in amazement as one of the men rose from the ground and took a step towards Jessica, who matched his step with one of her own and followed it with a devastating kick to the man’s testicles.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 5-8 (Taken! Box Set Book 2) Page 3
