by Todd Ritter
“How did you find me?”
“You made an official request to speak to a prisoner of the state,” Gloria replied. “So finding you was easy. I should be asking you why you’re interviewing prisoners when you’re supposed to be on vacation.”
Nick was on vacation. At least officially. And what he did during his time off was his own business.
“Just tell me what’s going on,” he said irritably. “I know there’s a reason you’re here.”
Even more, he knew what that reason was. Gloria didn’t even need to tell him. Her presence alone spoke volumes.
“He struck again.”
“Where?”
“A town called Perry Hollow. It’s about forty-five minutes from here. The rest of your team is already there.”
“I assume you want me to join them,” Nick said.
Gloria, who was done with being cold, opened the car’s rear door and slipped inside. “That’s entirely up to you,” she said, sneaking a glance at the gray-walled prison rising behind Nick. “You are still on vacation.”
She closed the door, leaving Nick alone in the frigid wind with one question still unspoken. He was about to rap on the car’s window, but it lowered before he had the chance, revealing Gloria’s stern gaze.
“And no,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone about your extracurricular activities. But next time you say you’re taking a vacation, do it. You can’t keep pushing yourself like this, Donnelly. It’s not healthy. You really need to learn how to let go.”
Nick drove to Perry Hollow in the company of the Rolling Stones. Nothing was better for a road trip than Jagger’s spastic voice and the band’s relentless sound. Nick propelled himself along the highway to the strains of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “Brown Sugar.” By the time the band was showing some sympathy for the devil, he had reached Perry Hollow, where a devil of a different stripe had just claimed one of its residents.
He found the crime scene easily enough. On the outskirts of town, it was the place with the most people gathered there. The entire road was closed, forcing Nick to stop his car on the shoulder.
Sitting in his car, he surveyed the scene. On one side of the barricade was a crowd of curious onlookers. They craned their necks and talked among themselves, their faces all displaying the same shell-shocked look. On the other side of the police tape was a mix of sheriff’s officers and state troopers. They, too, stood around and chatted while looking as stunned as the bystanders.
The only people in the crowd unfazed by the situation were the only three faces Nick recognized. And that was because they worked for him.
Tony Vasquez was the first to spot Nick as he flashed his credentials and ducked under the police tape.
“You made it,” he said, lifting the brim of his campaign hat. A full-time state trooper and part-time bodybuilder, he was the only task force member who wore a uniform. It sure as hell made him look intimidating, which Nick knew Tony liked. But he also wore it with a certain amount of pride. Only 2 percent of the state’s troopers were Hispanic. And Tony was one of the best. With stats like that, he had every reason to be proud.
“We placed bets on if you’d show up or not,” he said. “I won.”
“How much?”
“Twenty bucks from Cassie and the chance to bench-press Rudy.”
“Well done, Vasquez.”
Rudy Taylor, the bench pressee, was nearby, kneeling before a patch of ice on the side of the road.
“Is this where he was found?” Nick asked.
Rudy nodded. “But he didn’t die here.”
“How can you tell?”
“No blood. No struggle. Just the box he was dumped in.”
Stump short and toothpick thin, Rudy Taylor was considered the odd duck of the team. His size didn’t help. Neither did the bowl haircut that made him look like a grade-school science club president. But he was the best crime scene technician they had. Rudy could survey a scene for five minutes and find ten things a whole team had missed after looking for an hour.
“What about tire marks or footprints?” Nick asked.
Rudy stood and stomped the frozen ground for effect. “There’s not too much of that on this ice. I did find something in the snow over there.”
He pointed to a footprint a few feet away. It was marked with a yellow evidence tag.
“You wax it?” Nick was referring to impression wax. Sprayed from a can, it let them make impressions in the snow without destroying the footprint itself.
“Yeah,” Rudy said. “It belongs to the first responder.”
“Where’s the body?”
“The medical examiner took it away fifteen minutes ago.”
The answer came from the last member of Nick’s team—Cassie Lieberfarb. She stood behind him, a state police baseball cap pressed onto her frizzy orange hair. On her feet were the bright green galoshes she always wore in the field. She called them her profiler boots.
“How was Florida?” she asked, her eyes zeroing in on Nick’s face.
“Hot and sunny.”
“Then where’s your tan?”
Nick shrugged. “I used sunblock. Now back to the murder—who’s the victim?”
“Caucasian male,” Tony said. “Mid-sixties.”
“Just what our guy likes,” Cassie added.
“When is the autopsy?”
“At four.”
Nick compiled a list of things that needed to be done that day. He and Cassie had to examine the corpse before the autopsy started. While they did that, Rudy would supervise the collection and examination of evidence. Tony would wrangle up the best sheriff’s officers he could find and start the legwork. When they met up again eight hours later, they’d hopefully have a time of death, a cause, and enough evidence to point to a suspect. Only Nick and the rest of them already had an idea who the killer was. As for why he killed, none of them could begin to guess.
“Has the victim been identified?” he asked.
“The first responder did an ID,” Tony said.
“Who was that?”
“The police chief.”
“Let me talk to him.”
Cassie pointed to the crowd, picking out a woman in uniform who was dwarfed by the other cops around her.
“She is right there,” she said with sisterly pride. “Her name is Kat Campbell.”
Nick took a moment to size up the chief. She looked exhausted. Her kind eyes were dimmed by the dark circles sagging beneath them, and she moved in the weary, slump-shouldered way of someone carrying a heavy load on her back. Discovering a murder in your own backyard would do that.
“Are you Chief Campbell?” Nick asked as he approached.
The chief nodded. “Are you in charge of the task force?”
“I am,” he responded, shaking her hand. “Nick Donnelly. BCI, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations.”
She eyed his civilian clothes, hoping in vain to find something that indicated his rank and position. Since there wasn’t, Nick volunteered the information.
“I’m a lieutenant,” he said. “But in rank only. In reality, I’m just part of a team trying to catch bad guys.”
“We thank you for the help.”
“Just so we’re clear, the county sheriff has turned the case over to us. So the state police, specifically the BCI, is in charge of the investigation. I hope that sits well with you.”
Kat responded tersely. “Understood.”
“Good. I heard you were first on the scene.”
The chief briefly described everything she had seen and done that morning. It was all by the book, from finding the box to forming a perimeter around the crime scene. That made Nick happy. Sometimes local cops did more harm than good.
“I was told you knew the victim.”
“Only by sight. Perry Hollow’s a small town. After a while, you know everyone.”
Her voice caught on the last word, and for a second, Nick worried that the chief was going to start cryi
ng. But she swallowed hard and kept her emotions in check.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ve never had a murder before. So it’s been a bad day.”
Nick had no doubt. For Chief Campbell, it was probably the mother of all bad days. And she didn’t know the half of it yet. Once she did, her day was going to go from bad to downright miserable.
FOUR
Kat understood the situation perfectly.
She knew the limitations of Perry Hollow’s police force. Between her and Carl, they barely had enough manpower to write speeding tickets, let alone investigate a homicide. She knew the chain of command in such a situation. If the local cops couldn’t handle a case, jurisdiction moved to the county sheriff. And the sheriff, who was busy running for re-election in the fall, didn’t want to get his hands dirty in a homicide that—if unsolved—could sully his reputation. So he had called in the big guns—the state police. They had the manpower and equipment and a special investigative task force led by lieutenant-in-rank-only Nick Donnelly. Most of all, Kat knew that she needed them more than they needed her, which is why she vowed to do anything that was asked of her.
So, when Nick asked if there was a place his team could work out of, she offered her office. When he wondered if they could make full use of her police force, she introduced him to Carl Bauersox, his eager baby face poking out of his too-tight jacket. And when Nick sought a private place where they could talk, she led him to her patrol car.
And there they sat, the heater cranked on high while the slowly fogging windshield painted the action outside a gauzy gray.
“So why do we need to speak in private?” Kat asked.
Nick answered with a question of his own. “Have you ever heard of the Betsy Ross Killer?”
“No. Interesting nickname, though.”
“I hate it,” Nick said. “But you can thank The Philadelphia Inquirer for it.”
“Why do they call him that?”
“Because he’s good with a needle and thread. His victims had their wounds sewn shut postmortem. Then they were dumped in a public place.”
“How many victims are we talking about?”
“Three so far. The first was found in a park in Philadelphia last year. Another washed up on the shore of Lake Erie nine months ago. The third was found up north in November at World’s End State Park.”
“And you and your task force have been leading the investigation?”
“We have. Three murders. All across the state. And now it might be four.”
It was obvious what Nick was implying, and the thought of it made Kat’s spine stiffen.
“This Betsy Ross Killer—you think he’s the one who murdered George?”
“Perhaps.”
A strong, primal fear pinned Kat to her seat. A murder taking place in Perry Hollow was bad enough. But knowing it could be the work of a serial killer made it all the more horrible. What if he was still in her town? Or worse, what if he lived there, blending in with everyone else?
“Will you be able to confirm that?”
“I hope so,” Nick said. “I need to examine the body. See if there’s a similarity in the stitches and the wounds. Maybe my guys will be able to pick up something from the evidence. So far, Betsy Ross has been very stingy with the transfer.”
“And what can I do?”
“Just sit tight,” Nick told her. “If we find something, you’ll be the first to hear about it.”
Even as fear held her in place, Kat felt a new emotion tugging her body. It was the urge to protect, and it was stronger than fright.
“That’s not good enough,” she said. “I have to do more than sit tight.”
Perry Hollow was her town. It was where she grew up. It was the town her father swore to protect and serve decades before Kat swore to do the same thing. And while she appreciated all the help she could get, she wasn’t going to just stand by and hope others caught a killer for her.
“I understand your position,” Nick said in a voice that veered perilously close to patronizing. “But you need to let us do what we’re trained to do.”
“This isn’t a turf fight,” Kat said. “Or some jurisdiction bullshit in which I can’t get along with outside cops. Men care about that stuff. Women don’t. We just want to get the job done.”
She watched as Nick considered her policemen are from Mars, policewomen are from Venus argument. Eventually, he asked, “What did you have in mind?”
“George Winnick’s wife, Alma, reported him missing this morning, at about the same time I found his body. Now, I know that when a married person is murdered, the spouse is automatically the main suspect. But Alma didn’t do this. She’s just not physically capable. But she might have heard something or seen something. And I’m the best person to talk to her. She’s old-school. She won’t trust you or someone from your team.”
The man sitting next to Kat clasped his hands together, extended his index fingers, and placed them against his lips. Then he nodded.
“I like the way you think, Chief,” he said.
Kat nodded back. She was still frightened. And still exhausted. But she was also pleased with herself. Because for the first time since meeting him, she had finally impressed Nick Donnelly.
When Kat entered the police station a half hour later, Louella van Sickle was waiting for her. Lou, who had been the department’s dispatcher since before Kat’s father was chief, was a grandmother of twelve and looked after Kat like she was one of her own.
“I got you lunch,” she said, holding up a burger and fries from the Perry Hollow Diner. “You need to eat something.”
Kat should have been starving. Other than her lone sip of coffee, she had consumed nothing all day. But eyeing the burger and fries, she knew she wouldn’t be able to eat a thing. Seeing George Winnick’s corpse hours earlier and then hearing about the Betsy Ross Killer’s crimes left her stomach feeling nothing but queasy.
“I’m not hungry.”
Lou gave her a disapproving look. “The crime scene diet never works.”
“This is the overwhelmed single mother diet,” Kat said. “I heard it works really well.”
“Speaking of that,” Lou said, biting into one of the rejected fries, “do you need me to pick James up from school?”
Kat, who had been steadily working her way to her office, froze in the hallway.
“What time is it?”
“Two thirty.”
School let out at three, and no matter how hectic her day was, she made it a priority to be waiting at the curb when class was dismissed. It was her sole routine. If she didn’t show up, it would throw her son’s whole day out of whack.
“I’ll get him,” she said. “But it would be a huge help if you could call Mrs. Lefferts and see if Amber is able to watch James after school.”
Lou cocked an eyebrow. “Amber Lefferts is still your babysitter?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Kat said. “Trust me, I’ve thought it myself.”
“At least you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Kat reversed direction and headed back the way she came. As she neared the front door, she asked, “Is there anything else before I go?”
Lou’s expression—a combination of knowledge and regret—told her there was.
“Someone from the Gazette is here,” she announced. “I put him in the break room. He’s been waiting for almost two hours. Says he needs to talk to you about George Winnick.”
Kat sighed. “If it’s Martin Swan, tell him I don’t have time to make a statement. I’ll give him something as soon as I get a chance.”
“It’s not Martin, Chief. It’s Henry Goll. The obituary writer.”
The name sounded familiar to Kat, although she couldn’t come up with a face to match it, which bothered her. Perry Hollow was a small town, and although she didn’t personally know all of its residents, she at least had an idea of what most of them looked like.
“He said it was important,” Lou added.
Kat switched directions again and marched into the break room. Seeing her, Henry Goll stood rigidly, arms folded across his sizable chest.
“Henry? I’m Chief Campbell.”
The reason Kat couldn’t match Henry Goll’s name with a face was because she had never laid eyes on him before. She would have remembered it if she had. He was tall—over six feet—and powerfully built. When he stepped toward her, his muscles moved smoothly beneath his khaki pants and black polo shirt.
His facial features were strong, too—square chin, Mediterranean nose, a thick head of black hair. He could have been a real looker, Kat thought, it if wasn’t for the massive scar that sliced diagonally across the lower half of his face. The upper part was also marred, dominated by a large burn mark covering his left temple and most of his forehead. His skin was pale—startlingly so—making the defects stand out all the more.
Kat extended a hand. When Henry shook it, she willed herself to look him directly in the eye and act as if everything about him was normal. Because of James, she understood the importance of treating someone different just like everyone else.
She smiled when she spoke. “I hear you have something that might interest me.”
Henry didn’t smile back. “Is there someplace private we can talk?”
Kat glanced at her watch and saw that she had five minutes. She needed to keep the conversation short, but Henry Goll appeared to be in no rush.
“I apologize,” she said, “but I need to run out for a little bit. Family matter. Could this wait until later?”
Henry pulled a creased sheet of paper from his pocket and thrust it into her hand. Kat scanned the page, seeing George Winnick’s name and little else.
“Is this his obituary? It’s pretty skimpy.”
“It’s a death notice,” Henry said. “Not an obituary.”
“What’s the difference?”
“An obituary contains details—the person’s family, his career, his hobbies. A death notice is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a notification to the world that someone just died.”
Kat glanced from the paper to Henry and back again. “So this is George’s death notice. I’m still not sure what the issue is here.”
“The issue,” Henry said with maddening calmness, “is that it’s a fake.”
