Fiona nodded. “The call to Christians to perform acts of charity and kindness to the needy,” she said. “To live as Christ would, treat our fellow man as He would.”
“Well said.” The priest then lifted the photos, in order, and dealt them out in front of the two investigators as if dealing from a deck of cards.
“Feed the hungry.” He peeled off the photo of Ross Walker. “Shelter the homeless.” Joseph Edward Maynard.
“Give drink to the thirsty.” Calvin Adams.
If a pin had dropped in the room, all three would have heard it land.
“Of course, being a priest, maybe I’m just reading into the photos what I see from my own perspective,” Kevin said. “Maybe it isn’t that at all.”
“No, that’s it.” Sam nodded slowly. “That’s it.”
“Except that Joseph Maynard was far from being homeless,” Fiona pointed out. “Calvin Adams was the homeless person.”
“But if the killer was selecting his victims at random, he wouldn’t have known that,” Sam told them. “And I’m just about one hundred percent certain that the victims were random.”
He explained that the killer could not have known that Ross Walker would have been the volunteer to take trash out to the Dumpster on the night he was attacked, but the killer had come totally prepared to commit murder.
“We may never know for certain if Maynard had been picked out ahead of time or if the killer had simply been in the parking lot, waiting for someone—anyone—to step outside.” He turned to Fiona. “You said that Calvin Adams was homeless and that he often slept in that park. In that case, he wouldn’t have had to look too far to find a victim. Especially if Adams was already asleep.”
“That’s true,” she said. “And since Adams was the only one of the three to have not fought back sufficiently to have gotten the killer’s skin under his nails, it does make sense that he could have been asleep when he was attacked.”
“So you have random victims but a specific … I don’t know what you’d call it.” Kevin frowned. “I’ve read a lot but don’t know if you’d call the acts of mercy thing his signature or his MO.”
“Signature,” Sam told him. “His MO is the way in which he goes about committing his crime. The strangulation, the stabbings. But the posing, the props—they’re part of whatever emotional investment he has in these crimes. That’s what links him to his victims, that’s his payoff, what makes these killings uniquely his. And that’s what will eventually lead us to him.”
“It’s going to be hard to figure out though, don’t you think?” Kevin was still frowning. “I mean, you have random victims in random places.”
“Maybe not so random.” Fiona stood and leaned against the table. “I’m still not so sure the locations are random, Sam.”
“What do you mean?” Kevin asked.
“Ross Walker was killed in Lincoln, Nebraska—home of the University of Nebraska,” Fiona said.
“Great football there,” Kevin noted. “I’ve been a Cornhuskers fan for years.”
“You go to school out there, Father?” Sam had never addressed a priest by his first name and had to correct himself again. “Kevin.”
“No, I went to St. Joe’s, in Philly. But Nebraska’s teams always get TV time in the fall. They’re always worth watching.”
“Sam went to Nebraska,” Fiona told him. “Right, Sam?”
“Right. I did. I’m Nebraska born and raised.”
“You play ball there?” the priest asked, seeming to be grateful to have the conversation move from murder for a moment.
“Actually, yes, I did.” Sam nodded. “I played center, backup my freshman year, started the next three.”
“You must have been good.”
“I had my moments.”
“Well, moving along here.” Fiona tapped on the photo of Calvin Adams. “Mr. Adams was killed in a park in Dutton, Nebraska.” She turned to Kevin. “Sam went to high school in Dutton.”
“Seriously?” The priest stared at the photo, then picked up the picture of Joseph Maynard. “Tell me you didn’t go to grade school in the town where this young man died.”
“No, I didn’t go to grade school there,” Sam said solemnly. “But my wife—my late wife—did. As a matter of fact, we were married there. Actually, she’s buried there.”
“Holy … smoke.” Kevin leaned against the back of the chair and exhaled loudly.
“That’s what we were discussing when you came in.” Sam reached for his water bottle, the sick feeling returning to his stomach. Hearing Fiona lay it out for the priest that way made coincidence seem less and less likely.
“We were thinking it was probably a coincidence that Sam had a connection to the locations,” Fiona added.
“Well, I’m not an investigator, but it seems to me that if the victims are random but the location is not, then the key would be in the location, right?” When he realized what he said, Kevin looked at Sam apologetically. “But does it really make sense that someone would deliberately pick places that had ties to you? Would someone really do that? I mean, I know on TV you see story lines like that, but in real life, do people do that?”
“I guess if they’re trying to get someone’s attention, they might.” Fiona stated what, for her, was obvious.
“If someone’s trying to get my attention,” Sam said slowly, “they’ve got it now.”
“But why would someone do that?” Kevin asked. “Why Sam? And why bring the acts of mercy into it?”
“The first question—why me?” Sam shrugged. “It could be someone who wants revenge against me for something, maybe for arresting them in the past, or maybe arresting a family member or a loved one. We can look into that through the Bureau’s records. But why the posing, feed the hungry and the rest of it? That’s the real question. And if we can find the answer to that, we’ll have the answers to all those other questions.”
“This is all speculation, Sam,” Fiona reminded him. “Maybe we’re reading too much into this. Maybe it is, as we discussed before, a creepy coincidence.” She thought for a moment. “Let’s look at this another way. You said this is your first week on this new job, right?”
Sam nodded. “Right.”
“Ross Walker was killed on February 9, 2008. How would someone in February of 2008 have known that in September of 2009, you’d no longer be with the Bureau? That you’d not only be working here, but that you’d be assigned to this case?”
Sam felt a prickle at the back of his neck.
“No one could have predicted that,” Kevin said.
“Right.” Sam turned to the priest. “I didn’t even know that a year and a half ago. So you’re probably right. It’s probably just one of those creepy coincidences. I guess they really do happen.”
“Sure,” Fiona agreed all too readily. “I’m sure that’s it. Proving that even the great John Mancini isn’t invincible.”
Kevin looked at her blankly.
“Our boss, John. His theory is that there’s no such thing as coincidence in a homicide investigation,” Fiona explained.
Kevin smiled. “I guess you can tell him that he can lay that theory to rest. Somehow this killer just managed to pick three towns in the Midwest that had a connection to Sam, but it could have been any three towns. Could have been any other three towns that had a connection to someone else, right? So there’s got to be another explanation, right?”
“Right,” Sam and Fiona said at the same time.
“Well, I’m glad we got that straightened out.” Kevin patted Sam on the back. “Good to meet you, Sam. Welcome aboard. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Good luck with your case.”
“Thanks, Father.” She smiled as he left the room, then turned to Sam and said, “So we’re in agreement, then? We’re scratching the Sam connection here and we’re moving ahead?”
He hesitated just a bit too long.
“What?” Fiona frowned. “I thought we just agreed—”
“You have three
murders where the MO is identical. What generally happens once a recognizable pattern is identified, Fiona?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Once the details are entered into VICAP, sooner or later someone will pick up the similarities.”
“And if there are three or more …”
“Someone will stick the serial-killer tag on them. And sooner or later, the chances are very good that the case will fall into the lap of the Bureau, where odds are—at the very least—it will be reviewed by one of the profilers.”
“And since there were only two of us working for John’s unit—Anne Marie McCall and I—sooner or later, the connection would be made.” Sam looked at Fiona. “Annie knows I’m from Nebraska. She knows I graduated from UNL. She would have brought it to my attention.”
“So if we go back to the theory that the killer is trying to get your attention, he would most likely have gotten it.”
“Right. I think the only real coincidence here is that I came on board with the Mercy Street Foundation at the same time Lynne Walker applied to have her husband’s murder investigated. If I’d stayed with the Bureau, the connection would have been obvious.” Sam sighed. “And there’s one other thing I should bring to your attention.”
She tilted her head to one side, waiting.
“My birthday is February ninth.”
He waited for the significance of the dates to click in. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Walker was killed on the ninth in ’08, Adams on the ninth in ’09. Maynard, though, was killed on the fifteenth of the month, right?”
“That’s right.” He swallowed hard. “August fifteenth. The anniversary of my wife’s murder.”
“Holy shit.” Fiona stared at Sam. “Why didn’t you say something when Father Burch was here?”
“Because I think that bomb ought to be dropped on Mallory Russo and Robert Magellan first.”
“I guess I’d better call in to the office and have someone start running a list of all the cases you handled over the years, and see if anything jumps out. It would have to be someone you pissed off really badly, Sam.”
“Well, that should narrow the field down to a couple hundred people and their families and closest friends,” Sam said dryly. “You can lay an awful lot of track in sixteen years …”
TEN
Sam’s first inclination was to decline the waffles Trula had saved for him, even though he knew it would have been rude. He felt too distracted to eat. But he’d wanted to meet Emme Caldwell and he might as well do it now. So even though he wanted to close the front door behind him and keep on going when he helped Fiona carry her boxes back to her car, he went back into the house.
“So how was your meeting with the FBI agent?” Emme asked after the introductions were made. She’d just tucked Chloe’s shirt into her shorts and sent her outside to play with her kitten. “Did it seem weird, since you used to be the agent meeting with non-Bureau personnel?”
“A little odd, but Fiona and I worked with a lot of the same people and have some mutual friends, so it didn’t seem as strange as I suppose it could have,” he said as he dug into the pile of fluffy waffles, whipped cream, and cherries that Trula prepared for him. “Dear God, Trula, this is one of the best things I ever ate.”
“Well, you’ve been eating a lot of meals at the Conroy Diner,” she replied, “so anything decent is going to taste even better.”
“How do you know where I eat when I don’t eat here?”
She merely smiled, then turned back to what she was doing. Emme laughed out loud.
“Trula knows just about everyone in Conroy. She stops in at the diner once a week ‘for coffee.’” Emme made quotation marks with her fingers. “Which is just her way of keeping her ear to the ground.”
“You have to keep up with what’s happening in your community,” Trula sniffed.
“There’s a local paper for that,” Emme reminded her. “The Conroy Courier comes out once a week. You could get your news from it.”
“I get better info at the diner.”
“Were you able to learn anything helpful from the agent?” Emme turned back to Sam.
“Possibly. She’s going to have some reports copied and shipped here for me to take a look at. We’ll see where it goes.” Sam couldn’t wait to change the subject. “So when do you suppose Mr. Magellan will be back? I’m looking forward to meeting him and working with him.”
“You won’t be working with him for long if you call him Mister to his face. He prefers Robert,” Emme told him. “Even Chloe can’t call him Mr. Magellan.”
“Must be a family thing,” Sam observed. “His cousin, Father Burch, stopped in upstairs this afternoon. He apparently doesn’t like to be called Father.”
“He likes to be called Father,” Trula told him, “he just likes to be Kevin at home. And this is, for all practical purposes, his home. His family. Therefore, first names apply.”
“Does he get involved in all the cases?” Sam asked.
“Only if there’s an area where he can contribute,” Emme said. “Why do you ask? Did he get involved in yours?”
“Actually, he had some good insights to share.” Sam related the priest’s interpretation of the crime scenes.
“Wow.” Emme sat down across the table from Sam. “That’s bizarre. The acts of mercy?”
Trula turned around and leaned against the counter, a puzzled look on her face.
“You say you have three murders?” she asked.
Sam nodded.
“But … weren’t there seven acts of mercy?”
The fork that was headed toward Sam’s mouth stopped in midair and hung suspended there. His appetite suddenly gone, Sam cursed softly under his breath.
Seven acts of mercy. He should have remembered that from his long-ago catechism classes after school with Sister Ignatius.
Seven acts of mercy. Three deaths.
Were there four they had yet to discover, or were there four more victims on the killer’s list?
“Fiona, it’s Sam.” He was disappointed to have to leave voice mail. “Sam DelVecchio. Please give me a call when you get this message.” He repeated his number. “It’s important.”
He disconnected the call and drove through the gates at the front of Robert’s property. He waved at the guard in his little protective house that sat just outside the gate and drove off. It was too early for dinner—Trula’s admonitions aside, the Conroy Diner actually served pretty good food—and Sam was in no mood to return to his hotel. He envied Emme’s residence on the Magellan property. Before he left, she’d given him a tour of the carriage house where she and Chloe would soon be living, and he admitted to experiencing pangs of jealousy. The quarters were spacious and light, with lots of windows and beautiful views of the gardens he’d noticed Trula tending even as she supervised a crew of gardeners.
“I know what you mean,” Emme had said. “We’ve been looking at houses for several weeks now, and this is so much nicer than any place we’ve seen. Easily as nice as our old house back in California, and even bigger. We’re very lucky.” She pointed out the living room window to where her daughter and Trula sat on a lounge near the pool. “The luckiest part is finding Trula. She’s the best thing that’s happened to Chloe and me, probably ever. She’s the grandmother Chloe hasn’t had. She’s the mother …”
She stopped there, and Sam realized she was afraid of revealing too much of herself to a stranger. Well, Sam didn’t fault her for that. He was pretty close-mouthed about most things himself. But he figured that he knew what Emme had been about to say, that Trula was the mother she’d never had, and he wondered about her story. Not that he’d ask—that would be intruding. If she ever wanted to talk about it, she would, if they became friends.
What he did want to talk about was Robert’s search for his son.
“Are they any closer to finding the little boy?” he asked.
Emme shook her head. “Yes and no. They have established that Ian had been in the c
abin in the woods we found out about yesterday. The FBI has been called in and in the meantime, the state police crime-scene techs have been all over it. Lots of fingerprints, lots of trace. The case is being treated like a kidnapping now. Maybe you saw that on the news?”
When Sam admitted that he hadn’t had the TV on all weekend, and that he’d forgotten to pick up a newspaper that morning, Emme continued.
“It’s being assumed that whoever took Ian from the car stayed with him in the cabin, and that he’s alive somewhere, that someone is passing him off as their own. The FBI is preparing a computer-generated age-progression photo to show what he probably looks like now. That will be as widely circulated as possible. TV, newspapers, magazines. Robert’s goal is to get that photo in front of the public at every opportunity. He figures that the publicity plus the reward he’s going to offer is going to get someone’s attention.”
“What’s he offering?” Sam was curious.
“One million dollars.”
Sam whistled. “There’s some incentive to keep your eyes open.”
“Here’s hoping. Susanna says now that Robert is pretty sure his son is alive, there will be no living with him until they find him. She said he’s been relentless these past few days. Not that I blame him, of course.” She paused. “Do you have any children, Sam?”
“No. My wife is deceased. We never got around to having kids before she died.” Sam could have added that he and Carly had just started investigating fertility treatments when she was killed, but after the day he’d had, he didn’t feel up to bringing that into the conversation.
“I’m sorry. How long has it been, Sam?”
“Three years.” He hoped she wouldn’t pursue it but knew that she would.
“May I ask, was she ill …?”
Sam took a breath and told the story.
“Sam, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks,” he’d told her. What else could he say?
He’d taken the long way back to his hotel, past the old factories and through the narrow streets where the workers of those boarded-up factories had once lived. Some of them probably still did, he reminded himself. He drove up the hill leading to the nicest part of Conroy, the gracious homes the factory owners had built for themselves and their families. This part of town seemed to be experiencing a rebirth, evident in the number of homes that sported fresh coats of paint and new roofs, porches with colorful potted plants on the newly repaired stairs. For some reason, it raised his spirits to know that here, at least, someone was looking to the future with some optimism. For the past several hours, Sam had felt an anxiety he’d never experienced before.
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