by Diane Capri
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Miller had booked them rooms. They were checked in quickly. Jess dropped her things on the bed and sat in an armchair beside a picture window that looked out over an expanse of small industrial units. The light was fading. Street lamps were coming on.
Miller was right. The police would be best suited to investigate Meisner. They had the resources. Norah Fender’s murder and her own attempted murder weren’t things that could be trivialized and ignored.
She opened her email and skimmed the plethora of messages looking for Mandy’s name. She found three emails, two checking on her condition, and one with a spreadsheet of names from the NEL register.
The spreadsheet made it easy to find Crystal Mackie’s name. Her shoulders sagged as she searched the document. Crystal’s name appeared only once. She’d hoped for more to prove a stronger connection.
She sorted the spreadsheet to show Meisner’s name. Apparently, he wasn’t a workaholic. In fifteen years in office, he had only worked the weekends on eleven occasions. All of the dates were in the two years after Crystal Mackie’s visit.
She expanded the spreadsheet to show people who had signed in on the same day as Meisner. On four occasions a female name was listed at the same time as his signature. One of the four was Crystal, but the other names were unfamiliar.
She searched the internet for the first name: Louisa Smith. A long list of social media and dating sites came up. Several sites offered to do background checks. She flipped to the second and third pages of search results. On the fourth page, she found an article in The Alpharetta Chronicle reporting that the twenty-three-year-old Louisa Smith had gone missing.
Jess clicked on the link. The newspaper’s sympathetic article reported the parent’s torment. There was a picture. Louisa Smith was a tall blonde with bright blue eyes and a brilliant white smile. The article ended with her sister’s request for people to pray for her safe return.
Jess searched for the second name, Susan Parker, and found requests from the Phoenix Police Department for information on the girl’s whereabouts. The photo on the missing person’s page showed a bright-eyed blonde with a captivating smile. The police article was eleven years old, and the page still listed her as missing.
Jess leaned back in the armchair. Goosebumps prickled on her arms. Missing women. Just like Crystal. Young women who arrived at the Capitol building with Alistaire Meisner. Same date, same time.
Same outcome.
Missing. For years.
She gritted her teeth and searched for the last name: Georgia McCarthy. Newspaper articles and police reports appeared. She’d been twenty-five when she disappeared. Pretty. Blonde. Her car had been found three hundred miles away. The gas had run out. There was a book in the glove box. A Thousand Things to do in LA. The parents had set up a website for people to report tips. It had pictures. There was a simple box to fill in details. There was a checkbox for an anonymous submission. They offered a reward. Jess looked at the plain black text. The words begged for help.
Jess’s hand trembled. Four blondes. Spread across the country. One common thread. Not coincidence. Orchestrated, organized, planned. Alistaire Meisner had been killing off his girlfriends, and when Peter Whiting was born, he’d killed Crystal Mackie, too.
That didn’t seem quite right.
She put her hand to her forehead. It wasn’t Peter’s birth that had pushed Meisner over the edge with Crystal. Two months before Peter was born, Alistaire Meisner had married Margot Palmer-Breton.
She stood up.
Damn. Palmer-Breton ran a squeaky clean family business. Meisner’s father-in-law was the face of Palmer-Breton. His money had rescued Meisner from a messy bankruptcy. It was likely that Palmer-Breton’s financial benevolence carried conditions.
She clenched her fists. Meisner married for money. Stood to reason that he’d made damn sure the skeletons in his past would stay buried.
She paced the length of her room. He must have thought he was clever. Different women in different cities. All far from home. No chance any of them would intersect. No chance the glare of the public spotlight would uncover his infidelity.
She sank onto the bed. Four lives. For what? Killed to protect his marriage? Or more accurately, protect the money his marriage gave him?
She shivered at the memory of shaking his slimy hand. His obsequious voice came back to her. She rolled her shoulders. She wanted to deal with him before he could do more harm.
She called up the Georgia McCarthy police report on her phone. The last victim she had that was connected to him. The last piece of information that placed him and the missing women in the same location at the same time.
Except…Georgia McCarthy might not be the last.
Blackstake had attempted to abduct Jess. He sent messages to indicate she had moved on from Randolph. He didn’t shoot her because he wanted everyone to think she had left Randolph of her own free will. The same as Crystal and the other girls. Jess lowered her head.
Meisner was a serial killer who had used Blackstake to work his evil. She wrapped her arms around herself. He would use plausible deniability to get out of any link she could find. She had no choice.
If she was going to tie Meisner up tight, she needed to find a body.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Jess paced her room. Four girls? Just to hide his infidelity and save his miserable skin from bankruptcy? She furrowed her brow. If the girls had been killed to make sure his marriage into money wasn’t disturbed, what had happened when Peter came onto the scene?
She’d arrived in Randolph the same day Peter fell, and the following day the Whitings’ house had been burned down. Jess hadn’t known the link to Crystal when she arrived, nor had the police. So Meisner must have been spooked by Peter from the moment he fell from the tree.
Jess slapped her hand to her forehead. How dumb could she be? Peter Whiting had left them photographic evidence.
She grabbed her laptop and watched Peter Whiting’s drone video more intently this time. The camera soared its way across the field around the Meisner mansion. It hovered and drifted slowly along the rows of windows. She scanned back and forward, peering into the glass, unable to make out any details.
The drone pulled away from the house and raced for the woods. The sun reflected off the dew. Jess couldn’t see Peter, but she could see the ill-fated tree. The drone tilted, using its helicopter blades to slow its headlong rush. Slowly it entered the woods before it lurched upward and crashed into the tree.
Jess reversed the video. The video panned across the fence. A small patch caught her eye. She stabbed the pause button. The shutter speed and the rate of motion had combined to blur the image, but the shapes were there.
She scrubbed back and forward. A shape moved between the camera’s frames. Someone was working along the inside of the fence.
She couldn’t tell if the figure was male or female. The camera had captured only a few frames, but whoever it was, was a hundred feet away and had what looked like a wheelbarrow.
She reversed the video. The drone flew backward from the woods, up the incline to the house. She stopped the video halfway. The figure was small in the camera’s field of view.
A dark line ran across the dew glistening in the early morning sun. She zoomed in, tracing the line with her finger. It ran from the figure, close to the fence, all the way to the larger woods, far behind the mansion. She zoomed in, but the woods were a mottled blur.
She played the video in full. There were no more sightings of the figure along the fence, but the video told her two things.
The first was that she needed to get back to Meisner’s estate as soon as she could, and the second was that there had been someone close by when Peter had climbed the tree. He was so close to Peter he must have been there when he fell.
He must have heard his cries.
He must have investigated.
He must have looked at him on the ground.
He must have seen the
blood.
He left him to die.
He was a monster.
She balled her hands into fists.
Peter had survived his fall. She was going to make damn sure this monster’s fall was fatal.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Jess looked out the window and watched street lights click on. Things were coming together. She had an idea. It was almost a plan. She couldn’t do it on her own, but neither Miller nor Nelson would approve. She had only one option left.
She dialed Charlene Mackie. The call rolled over to voicemail. Charlene’s recorded voice mumbled and then was cut off. “Hello,” Charlene said.
“This is Jess.” She paused. “Look, I need some help. I need to get into the woods along the side of Meisner’s estate without being seen on his cameras. Can you help?”
“I’ve been in the woods plenty of times. Practically lived there. But I don’t know about the cameras.”
“Did you knock down the fence?”
“Trust me, I would bulldoze the entire fence flat if I thought I could get away with it.” Charlene’s voice delivered the mundane truth. “But I didn’t knock down his precious fence. And I don’t know how to avoid the cameras.”
Jess ran her fingers through her curls. “I need to get out there without being seen.”
Charlene thought for a moment. “There’s a homeless guy who lives out there. Max. I’ll bet he knows.”
“Yes. I met him. Do you think he’d show me?”
“We can ask him. He’s at Grace’s Church. North end of Randolph. He goes there sometimes to dry out. Meaning to both get off the booze and stay out of the rain.”
“Is he capable of making sense during all of that?”
“Well, he’s trying to postpone having a bath for as long as he can, but other than that he’s fine.” Charlene cleared her throat. “There’s one problem, though. He’s scared Meisner will have him evicted from his land.”
“I could pay him.”
“Not a good plan. He’d spend the money on booze.” Charlene sighed. “But I’ll talk to him. After you’ve told me why you want to get into those woods without being seen.”
“I have a hunch.” Jess pursed her lips. She didn’t want to say more to Charlene just yet. “I need a ride.”
Charlene took a deep breath. “Where are you?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Jess gave the hotel name to Charlene. Then she called Miller and told him she was turning in for the night. Twenty minutes later she took the stairs down fifteen floors to the lobby.
Charlene’s Crown Vic pulled into the parking lot. Jess waved. Charlene popped open the passenger door, and a few moments later they were heading back to the main road, headlights holding back the rapidly settling night.
Charlene accelerated. “So. What have you got?”
“Peter Whiting was flying a drone around Meisner’s estate.”
“Nelson told me.”
“I think he captured something on the video that Meisner didn’t want to be spread around.”
Charlene drove on. “You know Nelson won’t be happy if he finds out we’re going back there. Meisner’s been complaining about you. This won’t help.”
“That’s more of a problem for you than me.” Jess shrugged. “I don’t answer to Nelson. You do.”
“And I need my job.” Charlene nodded.
Jess didn’t reply because she didn’t know what to say. Not yet, anyway.
Charlene adjusted her grip on the wheel. Jess watched the speedometer needle climb past eighty.
Grace Church turned out to be the end unit of a strip mall. Colorful murals were painted on the windows depicting scenes of a baby in a manger and Jesus on the cross. Light slipped from an unpainted section at the top of the windows.
“Wait here,” Charlene said.
She knocked on the main entrance. The door opened. A red-haired man in jeans and a precisely trimmed beard opened the door. Charlene went inside. Several minutes later she emerged, a steadying hand on Max’s shoulder.
She ushered Max into the back seat. Jess smiled at him. He grunted.
“Where exactly do you want to look?” Charlene said.
Jess brought up Peter’s video and selected a frame that showed the moving smudge that was a person, and the track across the dew. She held the phone in front of Max and pointed. “Here and here.”
He leaned forward staring at the screen. Jess held the phone steady, inhaled and held the air in her lungs to avoid his rancid breath.
He pointed. “Can’t walk there without being seen.” He shook his head almost violently as if he’d had bad experiences that proved his point. “Have to walk out of the woods.”
“We can do that.”
He leaned back. “Have yer eaten?”
Charlene looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Aren’t they feeding you at Grace’s?”
He shook his head. “Salad.”
Jess pointed at a fast food burger place across the road. “My treat.”
Max smiled.
Charlene pulled over. She left the air-conditioning running to freshen the air. They ate in silence. Despite Max’s unwashed and disheveled presence, he couldn’t have been starving. He didn’t wolf his food, but ate his fries one at a time. Jess ordered a refill for his sugary soda. She figured he needed every calorie he could get.
When he finished, he wiped his fingers on a napkin and stepped out of the car to deposit his waste in the trash.
Charlene pulled out of the parking lot.
“North,” Max said, pointing in that direction.
They looped around Randolph and drove from the north down the side of Meisner’s estate.
“Slow,” he said.
He leaned over Jess and pointed to the side of the road. “Stop.”
Charlene pulled off the road. Max got out and led the way. Jess and Charlene followed him into the forest.
Inside the thick woods, all light was eliminated. Zero visibility. Jess followed Max’s unwashed scent. He said, “Wait. Let your eyes adjust.”
They stood in a line and waited. After a full minute, Jess noticed that Max had his eyes closed. She closed hers. When she opened them again, her vision had adjusted to the blackness.
Jess glanced around. There was little to see and only creaking branches and rustling leaves to hear. Lush decay and damp aromas permeated the air. She breathed quietly and watched Max as he rotated his head.
“Listening,” he said, scowling, presumably picking up sound and its direction. His scowl faded, and he opened his eyes. “No one nearby.”
He walked on, ducking and holding back branches as Charlene and Jess passed, then stepping past them to regain the lead. He veered around thick clumps of undergrowth and changed direction seemingly at random. They followed.
The thick trees looked the same in every direction. She felt like she was walking in circles. Without Max, Jess would have been completely lost.
Max came to a stop and held up his hand. He crouched and gestured. Jess crouched, too. She saw the fence, silhouetted by the light spilling from Meisner’s mansion.
She angled her head. Meisner’s mansion didn’t provide enough ambient light to be able to make out the nature of the ground’s surface around the fence posts.
Max extended his right arm like a referee. He moved parallel to the fence, bent double and taking exaggerated steps, lifting his feet high.
Jess followed suit, lifting her feet, and wondering if they were trying to avoid tripwires. She glanced back at Charlene executing the same deliberate high-lift gait. Charlene shrugged.
Max crouched down and pointed. “There.”
Jess squinted. The fence posts were easy to make out, but the ground was a blanket of blackness. “Can I go out there?”
Max nodded, then pointed left and right. “Cameras. Pointing away from here.”
“What about cameras at the house?”
He frowned. “Those you be seen.”
She took a deep breath and a
ccepted the risk. She moved out of the trees, crossed twenty feet in the open, and knelt by the fence post. The post towered above her, but she stared at her feet. The ground had the uneven look of dug soil. The damp and rain had smoothed over mounds of earth giving them the sheen of age. She lowered her head to within a couple of inches off the ground. The mounds weren’t that large, but it was easy to believe they were shovel sized. She exhaled. Nothing short of excavating the area would yield further clues.
The muddy soil was an area three feet wide and seven feet long. It had a ragged edge, well-worn by work boots that had blurred the line between the soil and the field grass.
She moved around the edge on her side of the fence. She ran her hands through the grass and felt nothing but mud and stones.
She sighed, and sat on her haunches. Was there something buried here? Or was her imagination out of control?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Jess returned to the cover of the trees.
Charlene said, “What? What is it?”
“I want to see some more.”
“Oh come on! We’re sneaking about, with you doing who-knows-what, and we’re supposed to just follow along?”
“I—”
“We’re not out here to enjoy the night air.” Charlene’s eyes glistened in the light from the house.
Jess wondered if it was tears. She nodded. “This is crazy. I might…” She took a deep breath. “I found Meisner’s name in a register. An entry record into the Capitol building.” A gap appeared between Charlene’s lips. “Crystal’s name was in the same book. Same date. Same time.”
Jess paused to let her words sink in. “It was a Saturday morning. It seems a little hard to believe that he coincidently arrived at that particular entrance at the same time as Crystal.”
“He was having an affair with her.” Charlene breathed deep, her lungs laboring in the cold, damp air. “I always suspected. I never knew.”
She took Jess’s arm and moved her sideways. She nodded to the fence post. She tried to speak. Grunts and labored breathing were all she could call up.
