by Ben Miller
Reilly approached to stand beside her, purposefully at an angle where he could not see the computer screen. He didn’t want her to think that he came to pry—even though he really had. “So, strangely enough, I think you might be able to help me with this case.”
“What case? The Piper case?”
“Yeah. I think all three of the mothers who were attacked had come in here during their pregnancy, to talk about putting their babies up for adoption.” Reilly pulled the photos of the three women from his pocket.
“Really?” Dana said without taking her eyes from the computer screen.
“Do you remember Tina Langenbahn, or Sara Gardner, or Charlotte Hadden?” He pointed to the corresponding photo as he asked about each one. He hadn’t yet confirmed with Charlotte that she had come to Dana’s agency, but he took an educated leap and included her.
Dana released her focus from the computer to look at the pictures. She squinted a little as she analyzed them. “I mean, I kind of recognize these first two from the news stories, but…”
“Huh.” This wasn’t the response Reilly suspected. “How many people—you know, possible ‘adopt-ees,’ or whatever—women wanting to give their kids up for adoption—come through here in, say, a month?”
“I don’t know. It tends to come in waves, oddly enough. And I don’t keep records of everyone who comes through—only the ones who actually fill out the paperwork,” Dana offered.
“Oh.” Reilly hadn’t considered this. There might not be any trail of these women here if they hadn’t actually filed any documents.
“Maybe it’s a different agency? I know most of them around here. I can make some phone calls for you, if you want. Just not right now. I got some stuff I have to get to. I’m actually heading out for a while.” She clicked the mouse emphatically one last time, the way one might after having completed an important task. She swiveled in her chair to face Reilly with her palms on her knees.
Reilly shook his head. Pieces weren’t fitting like he had expected them to. “But, two of the three of them mentioned this place specifically. Independently. And you said the other night that you’re the only one who works here, right?”
“Right,” Dana responded. She didn’t seem to notice the disconnect between the accounts from the victims and her not recognizing them.
“So…” Reilly struggled to formulate a question without sounding accusatory.
“Well, except for my volunteers,” Dana interrupted.
“Volunteers?”
“Yeah. I’m the only one who works here, but I have about a half-dozen people who help me out on a volunteer basis. Mostly good friends, but a couple are more like like-minded acquaintances.”
Reilly straightened up. He retrieved his notebook from his pocket—he was going to write something down twice in one day. “I need their information. Names, numbers, addresses. Do you have records of when they worked?”
“Yeah, of course. I have all that.” She reached out and tapped his notebook, smiling. “You won’t need that. I have everything on file. I just keep it down in the basement—there’s no room for a rusty old filing cabinet in here.”
Reilly brightened up, sighing with relief. “Really? That’d be great. Thanks.”
“Sure. Give me five minutes.” She waved a hand at the seating area behind Reilly. “Make yourself at home.”
Reilly obliged as Dana ducked through the French doors into the rest of the house. He didn’t want to sit down. He felt too energized, too jazzed. He knew he stood on the brink of breaking this case.
He picked up one of the binders from the coffee table and opened it. He had unwittingly chosen one with hopeful adoptive parents. Each page had two or three photographs of the couple—usually one formal, seated next to each other holding hands, and one-to-two of them engaging in some sort of wholesome activity like ice skating, or hiking above a beautiful vista, or eating cake with their elbows intertwined—and a narrative written by the couple themselves. He started reading some of them. At first he felt pity for these people. They yearned for a child so deeply, yet genetics or bad luck or God-knows-what prevented them from conceiving on their own. He admired Dana for trying to help these loving, lonely souls.
He also felt a pang of pity for himself. Why hadn’t one of these couples come to find him when he was a boy? Why hadn’t one of his many social service caseworkers tried to link him up with one of these families instead of hustling him from one shitty situation to the next? He had deserved a home and a family. And there were surely families like this back then who would have deserved—and loved, and cherished—him.
He decided to cease this line of thinking. Long ago he had decreed that he would not allow himself to wallow in pity. Many others had much worse situations than he, and he now had created a wonderful, enviable life for himself. Instead he kept on reading stories about these families.
Religion emerged as a common theme in these vignettes, which he found paradoxical. If he wanted to start a family and couldn’t, God would be his first target to blame. But he had never been much of a spiritual person, despite Faye and Richard Dellahunt’s efforts those many years ago. Clearly these prospective parents within these pages had decided to direct their ire elsewhere, if they ever found themselves with any ire to bear.
A thought popped into his head, based on a notion proposed by Rita Ferroni yesterday. She had worried about an anti-abortionist targeting these victims. It didn’t make sense to Reilly, as all of these mothers had clearly decided against abortion. However, seeing all this religious devotion in the narratives in front of him brought it back to light. Could there be some religious zealot at the root of all this? They had briefly focused on Satanism at one point in this journey—perhaps they had scrutinized the wrong side of the coin. Whom, if anyone, had he come across during this investigation with strong religious ties?
Before he could cogitate on this any further, a voice from just over his shoulder startled him.
“Hey!”
It was a man’s voice, and it definitely had an odd, tinny quality to it.
71
“Where’s Reilly?”
Jackson Byrne scanned the incident room. Though he had arrived a few minutes earlier, he hadn’t noticed Heath Reilly’s absence until now.
“He went straight to Tina Langenbahn’s this morning,” Camilla Vanderbilt answered.
“What’s the latest with her?” Though Jack had been filled in periodically over the last few days since he went home to Virginia, he planned on spending the next little while getting caught up in the details of the investigation.
Camilla raised her eyebrows. “Remember our theory that maybe she never really wanted that baby in the first place? Charlotte Hadden’s mother intimated the same thing about her. Heath went to follow up with Tina about it.”
“Doesn’t sound like that will go anywhere,” Jack predicted. “And where’s Jeff?”
“He had to run to take care of something.”
“Business or personal?” Jack questioned. Though Jeff seemed the type of person to prioritize family, Jack didn’t think he would leave work in the middle of the morning on a personal matter.
Camilla waved a hand, feigning that she did not pay much attention to what Jeff had previously said. “He said he had to get to some emergency parole hearing for one of his convicts.”
Jack nodded in understanding. “Hey,” he said loudly, trying to grab the attention of the others in the room. “Did Reilly ever mention anything about the Piper’s voice?”
Rita Ferroni and Amanda Lundquist looked up from their respective work and shook their heads. “What about it?” Rita asked.
“It was just a hunch I’d had.” Jack neglected to tell them that this hunch had originated from Randall Franklin. In fact, Jack hadn’t told anyone else in CASMIRC about his scenario-sharing with Randall. Only his boss Dylan Harringer knew, and only because Harringer had to grant permission for Jack to do so. He didn’t think they would have found out on their own—Dy
lan was not one to divulge information unnecessarily—and he didn’t feel like unraveling that web right now. “Has anyone checked in with Reilly today? To find out how it’s going?”
After the others shook their heads again, Jack got out his phone and dialed up Reilly. After four rings, Reilly’s voicemail kicked in. Jack declined leaving a message and was about to put his phone away when it vibrated: an incoming call from Vicki. He hesitated to answer. He finally began to feel submerged in the Piper case again, and he didn’t feel like coming back to the surface just yet. But, ever since he neglected to answer a call from Vicki on the day Randall abducted her, he never failed to take a call from her. “Hi, Babe.”
“Have you heard?” Vicki jumped in without returning his pleasantry.
Jack couldn’t quite judge the emotion in her voice—it sounded like a muted amalgam of elation and dread. “Heard what?”
“Randall Franklin’s been shot. It’s all over the TV.”
“What?!” Jack spun the phone from his mouth to shout to Rita. “Where’s a TV?”
Rita pointed in the room adjacent to theirs, while Camilla asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Randall Franklin’s been shot,” Jack told her as he rushed to the next room. He asked into the phone, “What happened?”
Vicki answered excitedly. “He was just walking out of the courthouse to be transported back to prison, and someone shot him from long range. They got Victor Upshall, too.”
“Is he dead?” Jack grabbed the remote on the table in the room and clicked the power button as he pointed it to the TV mounted in the corner.
“They don’t know yet,” Vicki said. “He’s been rushed to VCU. So has Upshall.”
Jack held his thumb on the “channel up” button until he landed on a station broadcasting the breaking news. A desk anchor conversed with an on-site reported via a split screen. He could see several specks of blood on the left arm of the reporter; she must have been standing rather close to Randall when the bullet struck. He turned up the volume enough so he could hear both the TV and Vicki on the other end of the line. “Holy shit,” he whispered in awe at the pandemonium on the screen.
“I know,” Vicki responded. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I dreamed about this, but I can’t believe it actually happened.”
Jack needed to get off the phone with her. He needed to touch base with someone on the ground in Richmond to find out more. Hearing about this second-hand from Vicki or the twit on the TV would not suffice. “I know. Hey, listen, Babe—”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Vicki interrupted nonchalantly.
“Well—what?” She caught him completely off guard.
“I dreamed about this. I thought about it. I wanted it. But I didn’t do anything about it, Jack,” she pleaded.
“Of course you didn’t. I know that, Vic.”
“OK. I just wanted to make sure you knew.”
Jack made a note to explore this a little more—or at least mention something to Dr. Inkler—but right now he was glad to move on. “Well at least we don’t have to worry about testifying anymore.”
“Oh, Jack, you have no idea how relieved that would make me.”
“I know. I’m going to get off to call some folks in Richmond, OK? I’ll call you soon.”
She agreed and they hung up. Jack racked his brain, trying to think of whom to call first. It occurred to him that he knew a former homicide detective from Roanoke who took a job as one of the top security officers with Virginia Commonwealth University. Perhaps he would know something about the hospital too. He couldn’t think of the guy’s name off the top of his head, but he was sure he could find it online quickly. Maybe calling through FBI dispatch to get a local agent—surely the FBI would already be involved—would prove more productive. He dialed FBI dispatch at CASMIRC. They could help him locate someone in the know.
An operator named Sandy answered quickly and introduced herself, followed by Jack identifying himself. “Hello, Special Agent Byrne,” she said with a surprise in her voice on the other end. “I was just about to call you!”
“Huh? Why?” Jack sat down in a nearby chair. The bombshells wouldn’t seem to stop.
“Well, I’ve been trying to reach Special Agent Reilly for the last several minutes, but it keeps going to voicemail.” The bubbliness in her voice annoyed Jack right now. He envisioned her playing with a curly strand of hair and chomping on a piece of gum while she talked. “I thought maybe I’d try you, and, then, wump! You called me!”
“What is it?” Jack urged her to get to the point.
“I took a call from a woman named Tina Langenbahn. She said she had some information for Special Agent Reilly.”
“Can you please connect me to her?”
Within a few seconds Tina answered her phone, and Jack re-introduced himself. Tina instantly remembered him. He explained why he returned the call for Reilly, even though he couldn’t fully explain why Reilly wouldn’t answer his phone.
“Our operator said you had some information for us?”
“So, Heath asked me this morning about the guy’s voice—the guy who attacked me, you know. He said I should call if I remembered anything.”
“OK.” Why did everyone seem to require so much prodding today? Jack wondered. It seemed as though he had hit a rash of this lately, and it really started to piss him off.
“Well, crazy thing. I just went over to hang out at my neighbor’s, and he’s got the TV on.”
“OK,” Jack repeated impatiently. He wanted to leap through the phone and wring the story out of her.
“He’s watching ESPN—my neighbor is. That show SportsCenter. And the guy, like the voice guy on the show? The guy who does the introductions and ads between commercials? That’s the guy! I had my neighbor rewind it like ten times. That’s the voice! That’s the guy who attacked me and took my baby!”
72
Darkness enveloped the room, save a sliver of light from beneath the door to Heath Reilly’s left. He wondered if he would die today, and he couldn’t muster the optimism to convince himself that he wouldn’t. His only reassurance came from the idea that if his attacker wanted him dead, he already would be.
He thought again about that voice. He knew he had heard it before, but he couldn’t place it. He struggled to put a face to it, but no connection came. He conjectured if a face had ever come with that voice before—perhaps it had just come from radio? Or TV?
He had begun to whirl around the instant he had heard the Piper’s voice, but he never achieved more than a quarter turn. A Taser had been jammed into his left side and Reilly had crashed to the floor. A black hood had been slipped over his head, his hands fettered behind his back with a zip tie, and his feet bound by another. The Piper removed Reilly’s gun from its holster and his phone from his front pants pocket; Reilly could hear him place them on the coffee table nearby. Several silent seconds had passed, and, just when Reilly’s muscle spasms had begun to subside, the bastard hit him again with the Taser, painfully stiffening everything again. In this rigorous state, Reilly had been dragged along the floor, down the hall, and into the bathroom on the first floor. His attacker had slipped two arms under Reilly and rolled him up and into the ceramic bathtub. Soon after, Reilly had heard the solid wooden door close.
After he slowly had regained muscle function, he had elbowed himself over onto his back, a far more comfortable position inside a bathtub. It was then that Reilly realized he had pissed his pants at some point in the process. While embarrassing, this represented the least of his concerns.
As much as he could rely on his ears, he knew that having his sight would prove key to his survival. He had sat up, extended his neck as far as he could, and rested his head against the tub surface. He slowly had flexed his neck, inching the pillowcase up his face and over his head. After another sequence, he had gotten the bottom of the cloth to his mouth and stabilized it between his teeth. He had then sat all the way up, tilted his head back, and reached his hands up as high as
he could behind his back. His fingertips had snagged the corner of the pillowcase and he had yanked it all the way off.
Now, as in the last ten minutes, he drew in measured breaths through his nose, making as little sound as possible so he could focus on the few ambient noises outside these tiled walls. And he tried not to think about his own mortality.
Despite his rapid response to the sound behind him, Reilly had not seen any part of the Piper. The voice had come almost level to his left ear, so he assumed that the Piper stood a few inches taller than he. He had not heard so much as a grunt when the Piper dragged him down the hall or lifted him into the tub, so he assumed the perp must possess above-average strength.
What had happened to Dana? he wondered. Had the Piper attacked her as well? And how had he gotten here? Had he somehow followed me? A pang of guilt struck him when the concept occurred to him that he had endangered Dana.
He tried to simultaneously plan his escape while he listened for clues around him. He briefly considered calling out, hoping to catch the attention of a neighbor or some passer-by. He remembered the first floor bathroom was situated in the middle of the back of the house—an old structure with thick, sturdy walls—and that every little sound he had made inside the tub reverberated off the tile walls around him. Considering these facts, he doubted that a scream would carry any significant distance, even at the highest possible decibel, and even in the off chance that anyone stood within earshot. And surely the Piper would return quickly to zap him with the Taser again. Reilly decided to avoid that at all cost. He still ached and felt weak all over.
He wriggled his wrists. The zip tie offered no give. He rotated his ankles to discover an equally disheartening lack of slack in that one as well. He considered moving into a crouch, either here in the tub or trying to get out and put himself into an attacking position on the bathroom floor.
Would the Piper even return?
Reilly thought he would. He surmised that he could be left in this tub indefinitely and the Piper could be long gone, especially since he hadn’t heard any sounds outside the bathroom in quite some time. But something in his gut made Reilly think the Piper wasn’t done with him yet.
