And there was another perk to the tiny blue pill. Suddenly, he had the energy he needed to focus on the task at hand. It was an amazing feeling. He smiled as he opened a new search page and entered “Franklin Cartwright” into the “property owner” field. After clicking SUBMIT, he watched as the department’s slower than molasses internet searched for results. A few seconds later, the results appeared on the blue screen before him. According to the Property Valuation Administrator, Franklin Cartwright owned exactly four residential properties and twelve commercial properties within the city limits. In an instant, his good mood turned sour.
He looked at the clock on the wall, which was protected, for reasons Kurt never understood, by a metal cage. It was nine fifteen. Frankie had found Collin’s hideout approximately twelve hours ago. If Kurt was going to stop Frankie from killing Collin in cold blood, he had to figure out a way to narrow down the list. There was no way he could search sixteen properties in time to stop his former best friend. Hell, it might already be too late.
Think, damn it. Think.
Where would Frankie go to hide from the police? But not just the police. He’d have to take Collin somewhere he could be alone and where there were no nosy neighbors who might report suspicious behavior. That ruled out all the residential properties, in Kurt’s mind. They included his house in The Pinnacle, Kitty’s house in Chevy Chase, Frankie’s ex-wife Susan’s house in Hartland, and a weekend condo he owned downtown on historic Mill Street. No, there was no way he was using any of these places to hide Collin. It had to be one of his commercial properties. Unless Lonnie was on the right track with the rural properties.
“Finding anything over there?” he called across the room to his partner.
“He’s got three properties out in the county, outside the city limits, but they’re all residential. Nothing that looks right to me. I’ll keep looking, though.”
Kurt nodded and turned his attention back to his screen. Twelve commercial properties. This included his most famous property, the Trifecta Lounge. But Kurt and Lonnie had already been there, and if Frankie had had Collin there, he’d moved him before they arrived. But where to?
He looked at the list of properties again. His eyes were becoming sore with the strain of staring at the bright screen two feet away. But surely soon something would stand out to him. He’d been police for over thirty years. His instincts would guide him, as they had in the past.
The phone at his desk rang, and Louise told him he had a visitor.
“Who is it this time?” Kurt asked. Last time he’d had an unexpected visitor, Frankie had shown up in his life, and this whole circus had begun.
“A lady named Katherine Cartwright.”
“Kitty?”
“I don’t know, sir. She just said her name is Katherine. She’s here with her daughter, Mollie. I thought maybe you’d want to—”
“I’ll be right there,” Kurt interrupted. He hung up the phone and snapped his fingers at Lonnie. “Mollie’s here.”
“Mollie? As in Mollie, Mollie?”
“Yes, dummy. Mollie Cartwright.”
“Why do you think she’s here?”
“Well, we did tell her we needed a formal statement.”
“Maybe she’s ready to talk,” Lonnie said.
“Let’s hope. Because if she can’t help us find Frankie, I’m afraid it’s too late.”
Chapter 24
Frankie
Frankie watched with rapt attention as Collin stood before the jury and told his story. With his slouching posture and quiet voice, he looked scared, demure, and painfully aware of the futility of his statement. If Frankie didn’t know Collin was a serial killer who had abducted his precious Mollie and chained her to a wall like an animal, he might even feel a bit sorry for him. Maybe.
Collin told the jury about growing up without a father. How, despite the natural good looks he had inherited from his beautiful, God-fearing mother, he’d been picked on at school for being a bastard. He told story after story of how the kids in school teased and tormented him because he had no father and because he was so quiet.
One time, when he was eight, some of the boys in his classroom caught Collin in the hallway, shoved him into the bathroom, forced his head into the toilet, and flushed it. Another time, he was walking in the cafeteria with his food tray when one of the bullies walked by and slapped the bottom of his tray, sending Collin’s lunch flying across the room and splashing all over his face and clothes. They stole his lunch money, shoved him in the dirt on the playground, and called him “Collin the Queer.” This went on from elementary school all the way through high school.
Then Collin had graduated. He studied martial arts. Judo, to be precise. It taught him inner peace and how to contain and focus his rage. He swore he would never be bullied by anyone again. He trained relentlessly, preparing for the day someone, anyone, tried to mess with him. Next time, he’d be ready.
Of course, he’d always wondered about his father. Why he had abandoned him before he was even born. But as a young boy, any time he’d asked his mother to tell him about his father, she’d just make the sign of the cross, kiss him on top of his head, and walk out of the room.
Collin fantasized from an early age about his father’s identity. Maybe he was a celebrity, and his mother didn’t want her son to know what she’d done in the folly of her youth. Or maybe he was a mercenary, fighting to save America off in some foreign land. Perhaps it was simpler than that. Perhaps his father had been a married man, and his saint of a mother, Martha McAllister, was ashamed of what she’d done. Whatever the case, Collin never imagined the horrible truth about what really happened to his father. It never once crossed his mind that he was dead.
Until his thirtieth birthday. Martha had been diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time. She was lying in her bed at the old McAllister farmhouse on Delong Road, and Collin had brought her some soup to drink. He couldn’t recall what made him ask about his father, only that he knew his mother might not be long for this earth, and he must have known she might finally tell him the truth.
She’d beckoned him closer with her frail, bony hand, and Collin sat on the edge of the bed next to her. She spoke in a voice soft and low as thunder as she told her son that his father had been a sinful man. Collin listened in silence as his mother described how her husband had kidnapped and murdered many young women. She’d known for years. When she was six months pregnant with Collin, she’d stumbled upon a wooden box filled with locks of women’s hair, each tied together with a different colored ribbon. When Martha had confronted Julian about the box, he’d laughed and confirmed her worst nightmares were real. Her husband was a serial killer. He’d used the old bunker out on the perimeter of the family property to hide the girls, take advantage of them, and kill them. Martha had been devastated and grief-stricken, but, being the Godly woman she had been raised to be, she knew she couldn’t divorce him. She was stuck married to a monster.
When she wheezed and struggled for air as tears streamed down her face, Collin had leaned closer and asked her to tell him the rest of the story. What had happened to his father? Martha grabbed at her chest, and for a moment, Collin had feared she might be having a heart attack. But after a few moments of anguished silence, she opened her eyes again, looked at Collin, and told him plainly that someone had killed Julian. She was sure of it.
He’d gone to the gym he owned in town to close up and collect the day’s profits. But he never came home. The next morning, when Martha woke up in an empty bed, she knew he was gone. Her woman’s intuition told her something horrible had happened to him. He hadn’t just run away. No matter what he might have done, he’d been excited about being a father. No, she knew in her heart he had paid the ultimate price for his sins. Someone had exacted revenge for their loved one.
She told Collin how she’d gone to the police that day, and they’d immediately launched an investigation into his disappearance. The detectives worked hard at trying to find Julian for nea
rly two weeks. Until the day an anonymous letter had arrived at the police department, outlining Julian’s alleged crimes. Slowly, over time, the detectives seemed to lose all interest in his case. Collin showed up at the precinct every other day, trying to convince the investigators that someone had killed his father. But they had just promised to look into it and politely shooed him out the door.
When it became apparent the police didn’t care, Collin became obsessed with finding his father’s killer. No matter what horrible crimes he may have committed, they weren’t his fault. He was a sick man, struggling with the disease of temptation. No one but God had the right to punish him for his alleged sins. He spent his days practicing Judo and researching everything he could find about his father’s crimes, in hopes of figuring out which of his victims’ loved ones had taken his father away from him before he even had a chance to know him.
Within a year, Martha had rebounded and gone into remission. No longer having to care for a dying mother, Collin had more freedom to hone his craft and focus on avenging his father’s murder. He had been at the library one day, searching through periodicals about missing girls who’d never returned home, when he’d found an article about a girl named Addie Jamison. She was the last girl to go missing in Lexington before Julian had disappeared. The article was dated July 15, 2008, thirty years after her disappearance, and the reporter was interviewing her former boyfriend, one Franklin Cartwright of Lexington.
Mr. Cartwright was a local businessman who owned many companies in the city, including the famous Trifecta Lounge, a restaurant which catered to the city’s elite patrons. Collin was about to close the article when something caught his eye. It was near the end where the reporter had asked him if he had any theories about who killed his high school sweetheart. Intrigued, Collin read the man’s answer. “I think whoever killed Addie has probably already paid for their crime. Karma is a cosmic (expletive).” When the reporter asked him to clarify, Cartwright went on to say that people always got what they deserved in the end. In that moment, Collin knew it had been Franklin Cartwright who had killed his father.
“That doesn’t sound like good enough evidence to me.” Franklin looked over to see Giovani Ricci standing from his seat and pointing at Collin. “You just assumed it was him because of an article?”
Collin looked at Franklin with his mouth hanging open.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm and your loyalty, Giovani. I really do. But let’s let the young man finish his story. He’s entitled to a defense. Besides, I’m quite intrigued to hear what he has to say next.”
The Italian-American nodded to show his understanding and returned to his seat.
Franklin looked at Collin and with a flip of his wrist said, “Please. Proceed.”
Collin gulped and looked down at his feet. After an awkward few seconds of silence, he faced the jury again and continued.
He went on to explain how his thirst for revenge against Franklin Cartwright grew into a rabid obsession. He would lie awake at night thinking of ways to make him pay. For a while, he wanted to kill Franklin with his bare hands, but over time, he came to realize he should repay him an eye for an eye. Franklin had taken away Collin’s father, so the best way to get back at him and make him feel the pain he’d had to live with would be to kill someone close to Franklin. At first, he planned on killing his only daughter, Katherine, but finding her alone at the exact right moment was difficult. She was always accompanied by one large man or another, clearly bodyguards assigned to her protection by Franklin.
Then one day when he was watching Franklin and Kitty at the park, he saw they had a pretty, young, blonde-haired girl with them. When Collin saw the way the old man doted on the little girl, he knew he had to take her if he was ever going to get Franklin to confess.
But before he could formulate a plan to snatch the little girl, his mother got sick again. This time, she declined in a matter of weeks, and by September of 2013, she was once again on her deathbed. But the doctors made it clear to Collin that this time, there would be no recovery, no remission.
On that last day of his mother’s life, Collin had sat at his mother’s bedside and held her hand. She was wheezing and struggling for every breath. It made him feel horrible and helpless. Not only seeing his mother this way, but knowing that she was dying with a broken heart. No matter what Julian McAllister had done, Martha had loved him. She’d loved him, and she’d lost him, and it was all Franklin Cartwright’s fault.
Collin told his mother of his plan to seek vengeance for his father’s murder. Her eyes opened wide and tears streamed down her face. With ragged breaths and trembling hands, she reached for his hand and squeezed it the best she could. She used her final words to tell him it was never too late to change—to end the cycle of violence.
He knew what his mother wanted, but his desire to see Franklin pay outweighed even his mother’s dying wish. She passed away that night without saying another word, and Collin immediately put together his plan.
He followed Franklin’s daughter Katherine and her daughter everywhere they went, waiting for the perfect opportunity. But he realized quickly that he needed to practice his plan before he tried to snatch the young girl. He had to get it just right, so he set out to find similar girls with whom he could hone his skills. Over the course of two years, he’d successfully taken six girls, held them in The Vault, and killed them the same way he planned on killing Mollie.
Of course, Frankie knew the grim details of what he’d done to the girls while they were in his possession, but he didn’t want to interrupt Collin’s defense, so he kept quiet and let him finish pleading his case. Besides, he wasn’t doing himself any favors, and Frankie was more than happy to let him continue to seal his own fate.
When he finally got to the part of the story where he had kidnapped Mollie from the mall parking lot, he made no excuses for his actions. He was righteously indignant. Collin truly believed he was doing God’s work. That he had every right to take Franklin’s granddaughter, hold her captive in his family’s bunker, and use her as leverage to get Franklin to confess his sins publicly and turn himself over to the police.
Collin stopped talking suddenly and hung his head. He remained silent, and it was so quiet in the warehouse, Frankie could hear the drip-drop of water falling from the rafters. But just when Frankie was about to shove Collin back down in his seat and dismiss the jury to begin deliberations, Collin cleared his throat and spoke again.
“I am not the villain here. I’m merely a son seeking justice for his murdered father. A son who never got to know his father because this man,” he pointed directly at Frankie, “murdered him in cold blood. This man. Your so-called benevolent boss. Your magnanimous leader. You all know what he’s really capable of. All I wanted was to make him acknowledge his crimes. Admit he took a father away from his son. Pay for his sins.” He hung his head again, and Frankie thought, for a moment, he saw tears in Collin’s eyes. Collin wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I regret the methods I had to employ to accomplish this. I wish I didn’t have to kill those girls.” He looked up and pointed at Frankie again. “But it’s your fault. None of them would have died if it wasn’t for you. Their blood is on your hands.” He turned to the jury. “If you’re going to kill me no matter what I say, then all of this…everything I’ve said…is pointless. But at least now you know the truth about your boss. At least now he can no longer hide behind his so-called good deeds. His secret is no longer a secret. Everyone now knows Franklin Cartwright is a monster.”
Without saying another word, Collin sat back down in his chair and stared straight ahead.
“Well,” Frankie said as he stood, tugged on the hem of his suit jacket, and addressed the jury. “I guess the defense rests.”
Chapter 25
Mollie
She was nervous being in the interview room of a police station. Mollie wasn’t sure why, exactly. It just gave her an uneasy feeling to be sitting at a cold, metal table in a room where the hea
t had apparently been turned back a few notches. She vaguely remembered seeing an episode of Law & Order: SVU where Lieutenant Benson instructed the other detectives to make the interview room colder in order to make the suspect uncomfortable. But she wasn’t a suspect. She was the victim. So why did she feel so anxious?
Mollie’s hands were wrapped around a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. She didn’t regularly drink coffee, but considering the early hour and the fact that she and Laurel had stayed up talking until three in the morning, she sipped at it anyway. Kitty sat next to her in the matching metal chair, checking her emails from her phone.
Just when Mollie thought she was going to lose her mind from boredom, Detective Jamison opened the door, stepped inside, and sat across from her.
“Thank you for coming in, Mollie,” he said with a curt nod.
“Well, you said you needed her formal statement,” Kitty answered for her. “I talked to the attorney I work for. He doesn’t do criminal law, but he said as long as Mollie isn’t a suspect and she’s free to leave any time she chooses, it would be fine to come down here.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the detective responded with his elbows on the table and his fingers steepled before him. “She is free to leave at any time she wants. And no, she’s not a suspect in any crime. At least, not yet.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Kitty asked with a raised, perfectly plucked eyebrow.
Detective Jamison leaned forward. “It means, Ms. Cartwright, that I’m not an idiot. Mollie may not know where your father is holding Collin McAllister, but she knows more than she told me at your house.” He turned to face Mollie. “Isn’t that right, Mollie?”
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