Last Words

by Mariah Stewart

  He flipped open his own file and read details randomly, “Multiple insect bites cover the entire body.”

  He turned the page. “Signs of repeated rape. Sodomy.”

  He turned the page again. “Wrists and ankles bruised and cut showing signs of having been restrained.”

  Another turn. “End of tongue severed…”

  “Jesus!” Morris Ralston groaned. “She bit off the end of her tongue!”

  One last turn. “Cause of death: suffocation.”

  Warren Daley closed the file with a pronounced slap and it was clear to everyone in the room that he was close to losing it. His eyes brimmed with tears. “I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like for that beautiful little girl for however long it was that animal had her.”

  He wiped away tears with the back of his hand.

  “But let me tell you something about Colleen Preston.” He stood. “She did not go easy.”

  He walked to the end of the table where he’d left his briefcase and brought it back to his seat.

  “She never gave up. Never stopped fighting. That may be the only consolation her family has at this point.”

  Curious eyes watched as he removed a tape recorder from his briefcase and set it on the table.

  “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does,” he told them. “Dr. Reilly found this tape inside the wrappings.”

  He hit play, then sat in his chair, his elbows on the table, his steepled fingers covering part of his face.

  “This is your chance, now, Colleen.” A distorted male voice filled the room. “If there’s anything you want to tell your parents, your brother, your sister, you’ll want to do it now.”

  There was some indistinguishable sound in the background.

  “That wasn’t nice,” the male voice said. “I’m giving you an opportunity to leave something behind that might comfort your family.”

  “Momma, Daddy, I’m sorry,” a raspy voice whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…I never thought he’d…” The voice broke into sobs.

  “Is that all? This is your last chance, Colleen. No words of wisdom for your sweet little sister?” The voice taunted.

  “Fry in hell, you disgusting degenerate psychopathic pig-” she snarled.

  The tape went silent.

  For a long time, no one could speak.

  Finally, when he found his voice, Beck said, “He’s not done, and he’s no amateur.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” Daley looked around the table, the circles around his haunted eyes deep and dark.

  Rich Meyer covered his face with his hands. “If he’s got Mindy Kenneher…if this is what he’s doing to her…”

  “The girl from Cameron who went missing a few weeks before Colleen Preston?” Gillespie asked.

  Meyer nodded.

  “If the same man took her, the odds are that he’s already killed her,” Beck said softly. “She’s already lost, Rich.”

  Meyer sat speechless, contemplating the possibility.

  “I asked you all here today because I frankly am at a loss,” Daley told them. “We’re all small forces, no reserves, no specialists to speak of. I’m thinking if he hit Cameron, and he hit us here in Ballard, where’s he going to hit next time? Is there anyone here who thinks he won’t strike again?”

  “Yeah.” Gillespie nodded. “I think to a man, we’re all thinking the same thing.”

  “We have no leads. Nothing. We might have some trace once the county lab reports come back, but that’s not going to be for a while. We couldn’t get any prints from the wrappings, so we’re assuming he was wearing gloves while he wrapped her up. She didn’t have so much as a smudge on her, so the ME thinks she was probably washed down real good to remove any trace before he wrapped her up. The CSIs tell me they got very little from her, but they’re processing what they did find. Gonna be a while before we know if we have anything that will help. Right now, we’re all blind,” Daley told them. “Anyone has any suggestions, I’d sure love to hear them now.”

  “How long had Mindy Kenneher been missing before Colleen disappeared?” Beck asked.

  “Mindy disappeared on June first,” Rich Meyer told them, then turned to Warren Daley. “The Preston girl?”

  “June twenty-six. She disappeared on Tuesday, June twenty-sixth.”

  “Three and a half weeks between the two.” Morris Ralston had taken a small notebook from inside his jacket pocket.

  “And today is Tuesday, the tenth of July. Just two weeks since Colleen Preston disappeared.” Beck drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Until we’re proven wrong, I think we need to operate on the assumption that we’re dealing with a repeat offender here.”

  “Three weeks between the first and second taking,” Gillespie thought aloud. “And he only held the Preston girl for two weeks.”

  “Which means he’s probably looking for another victim,” Meyer noted.

  “Or maybe he’s already found one,” Ralston said.

  “Anyone reported missing that you know of?” Daley asked. Everyone at the table shook their head.

  “Which could mean just about anything.” Beck held up one hand and began to count off the possibilities on his fingers. “One, he’s taken someone who hasn’t been reported missing or who’s far enough away that we haven’t heard of it as yet. Two, he could be sated for a while. Three, he could have moved on. Four, he could have stopped-”

  “What are the chances of that?” Ralston said.

  “Not much,” Beck agreed.

  “Five, he could have been run over by a bus and right now is on a slab in the morgue,” Gillespie said, “and six, he could have been picked up on some charge in another state and is now the guest of, oh, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware…”

  “Or just about anyplace else,” Meyer said with disgust.

  “Okay, we agree, he could be anywhere right now. Any or none of those possibilities could be the right one.” Beck looked around the table at the others, each top man in their respective jurisdictions. At thirty-seven, Beck was the youngest man there. Two were already close to retirement age, another not far behind. “My gut is telling me that he’s still around. I think he’s going to want to watch, to see what Warren does. He’s going to want to watch the press, the papers, and the TV stations. Then I think he’s going to do it again.”

  “I hate to say it, but my gut’s telling me the same thing.” Chief Daley nodded.

  “So where do we go from here?” Gillespie asked. “You thinking about calling in the county sheriff?”

  “God, I don’t want to do that. I swear I do not.” Daley shook his head. “I had three homicide cases I had to work with Jake Madison, and after the last one, I swore I’d never do it again. The man is the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever had to deal with. His ego is as big as the Atlantic, and once you confer with him, he totally takes over. Wouldn’t be so bad if he knew what he was doing, but he’s just a bumblefuck from the word go. I do not want to bring in the county if it means I’ll have to deal with him. As important as this case is, turning it over to him will all but guarantee our killer gets away.”

  “There are some really good men over there, Warren,” Lew Gillespie pointed out. “Some fine detectives, and their lab people are top-notch.”

  “No argument there, and I’d be the first to say it,” Daley agreed. “But unfortunately, they all take orders from Jake.”

  “So what are you proposing to do?” Gillespie asked.

  “Well, I thought I’d start with a press conference tomorrow, tell everyone that we’ve had this meeting, and that all the local departments are on the same page. We’re all going to work together to find this killer.” Daley looked from one man to the next. “We all banded together two years ago and we caught that bank robber-”

  “ Warren, you know you have my total support, and that the St. Dennis force is behind you one hundred percent,” Beck told him. “But this isn’t the same kind of case.”

  �
�What would you do, if you were me?” Daley asked Beck.

  “I’d do what you’re doing, but I’d go one step further,” Beck said. “I’d call the FBI and ask for help. I’d ask for a profiler, first thing, and I’d ask for an agent or two who had experience with serial offenders-”

  “Hold up there, Beck,” Lew Gillespie protested. “It’s too early to start throwing around terms like that.”

  “I don’t think so, Lew. I think this guy’s killed before. His whole MO is too sophisticated, too well thought out, too well executed. He’s no amateur. I’d bet my life on it.”

  “I’ve already told Beck how I feel about this profiler nonsense.” Meyer sat back in his chair. “I think it’s all a waste of time.”

  “I think Beck’s got a point,” Morris Ralston told him. “This killer is accomplished, he knows what he’s doing. And even if Mindy Kenneher turned up tomorrow with some story about going to Disney World, even if the Preston woman was the only victim, I don’t think it would hurt us to have an idea of what type of person we’re looking for. Especially if he’s living among us.”

  “The FBI thing, I’m going to have to sleep on. But the press conference will be called for ten tomorrow morning,” Daley told them. “I’m inviting you all to attend, if you have a mind to.”

  “Might be a good idea.” Meyer nodded. “A show of force. Of solidarity.”

  “Make everyone aware there could be a problem, this guy could be out there. Urge everyone to be particularly careful until we catch this killer,” Gillespie added. “Let them know we’re all working together to find him.”

  “And if he’s watching, let him know that he’s got to deal with all of us now,” Daley noted. “That every police officer in this part of the bay is looking for him. Send him a message.”

  Beck glanced around the table at the concerned faces, and knew they were all thinking the same thing.

  Looking for this guy was one thing. Finding him was going to be something else.

  5

  The Wednesday morning press conference was winding down. Chief Warren Daley was still at the front of the small room, no podium being available in Ballard. The chiefs of police from the four neighboring departments were seated on folding chairs in the first row, presenting a united show of force against the threat that hung over their small communities.

  “Chief Daley.” Carl Patterson from the Bay Chronicle, standing in the midst of the small group of reporters, raised his hand. “You said the victim suffocated. Can you be more specific? Was she strangled?”

  “I’m not going to go into that much detail right now, Carl. The ME still has to issue her final report, so we’re just going from the preliminary. And we have to protect the privacy of the family. Until the ME has released her complete findings, I’d rather not put words in her mouth.”

  “Chief, the rumor that’s going around is that the victim was found on her own front porch, all wrapped up in some kind of plastic wrap.” Rosalie Ahern from the local morning news show stood against the wall on the left side of the room, which suddenly came alive.

  “Hold on, now.” Warren Daley’s face flushed dark pink and he grabbed on to the microphone. “Hold on-”

  “Is that true?” asked Jenna Smith from ChesapeakeWeekly. “The victim was wrapped in plastic?”

  “Look, I don’t know where that story came from-” Daley began but was cut off by the reporter.

  “It came from an unnamed source who was at the scene,” Ahern said as the camera lights came back on, after having been turned off a few minutes earlier when it appeared the press conference was going to be more of the same old thing.

  Daley was clearly flustered, unsure of what to say. He definitely had not planned on disclosing this information, and every reporter in the room, all six of them, sensed it.

  Which meant, of course, that it was true.

  The room exploded. Daley did his best to calm them all down.

  “Chief? Are you going to comment?” Jenna Smith asked.

  “I really hadn’t wanted to get into this, out of respect for the family. While this is a sensational story for all of you, you need to remember that Colleen Preston was a very real young woman with a grieving family. I want to respect their period of mourning. But that cat being out of the bag now, I can’t very well shove it back in, unless I stand up here and lie. And any of you who know me, know that’s not my style. So I’ll tell you what I know, but I won’t speculate beyond that.”

  Warren Daley took a deep breath. “At ten forty-five on Sunday evening, Colleen Preston’s body was found on the front porch of her family home. She’d been totally encased in plastic and suffocation has been ruled the cause of death.” He swallowed hard. “As you know, Miss Preston had been missing since the twenty-sixth day of June.”

  “Did the killer have her all this time?” someone asked.

  “We believe that he did.” Daley nodded.

  “Do you know where she was kept for the past two weeks?” another voice asked.

  “No clue.” Daley shook his head from side to side.

  “Any suspects?”

  “We have no suspects, no.”

  “Chief, there was another woman recently, over in Cameron-”

  “Yes, Mindy Kenneher,” Daley supplied the name.

  “She’s been missing for longer than Colleen Preston was. Do the police think she was taken by the same person who killed Colleen Preston?”

  Daley turned to Chief Meyer. “You want to take this one, Rich?”

  Chief Meyer stood and turned to face the reporters. The camera was still on.

  “Right now, we have no information as to the whereabouts of Mindy Kenneher. We have no reason to assume she met the same fate as Miss Preston. That case is still under investigation and we’re not going to speculate. When we know something, you’ll know something.”

  He returned to his seat and gestured for Daley to resume control of the conference.

  “But isn’t this type of thing…wrapping up the victim…isn’t that the type of thing a serial killer does?” Jenna Smith’s pretty face crinkled into a frown. “I mean, your normal killer doesn’t wrap up his victim, right?”

  “Jenna, you watch too much TV,” Daley scolded. “Let’s not be irresponsible and start tossing around words like that. Right now, we have one victim. Why did the killer wrap her up like that? Maybe he thought it would make it easier-neater-to dispose of the body. Let’s not read anything more into this, all right? We have no reason to believe that whoever it was is going to do this again.”

  “Then why are they”-Jenna pointed to the other chiefs-“here? Why are the heads of five police departments here if you don’t think there’s a threat?”

  “I’ll take this one, Warren.” Beck stepped forward. “Yes, we all recognize the uniqueness of this killing. But we’re here because each of us has pledged to work together with Chief Daley until Colleen Preston’s killer has been apprehended.”

  “Are you thinking the killer is someone local, Chief Beck?”

  “That’s certainly a possibility. He did know where to take the victim’s body.” Someone started to ask another question, but Beck held up his hand to hold it off. “Then again, he could have seen her address on her driver’s license and gone straight to MapQuest. The point is we don’t know anything about the killer except that he’s a sadistic SOB. As Chief Daley said, this is an ongoing investigation, and it will continue until the killer is caught. The St. Dennis police department is ready to give whatever assistance Chief Daley wants or needs.”

  “So what you’re saying is, the small towns in this part of the bay have banded together to track down the killer.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You think you’ll find him before he strikes again?”

  “We’ll do our best. But since we have no reason to believe he’s going to strike again, I think you should be very careful in how you present this story.” Beck scanned the scene. The few reporters who’d shown up expecting
little from their assignment had been handed a plum. Everyone’s eyes seemed to glow with the prospect of covering a sensational murder-maybe more than one. He could feel their excitement and knew they couldn’t wait to get the story out there. If they caused an unnecessary panic, well, that would give the story legs. Good for them, hell for everyone else. “Be responsible, okay? Don’t be careless with your words.”

  “Chief Beck, I was at the Harbor Festival in St. Dennis over the weekend,” Rosalie Ahearn said as she fished around in her tote bag for something. She pulled out a brochure of some kind and opened it. “It looks as if you have a lot of activities planned to bring tourists in over the summer, lots of special weekend festivals and attractions to keep people coming back.”

  “The Chamber of Commerce has been very busy.” He nodded. “The town’s reputation has really started to spread over the past few years. There’s a lot there for people to see and do, lots of shopping, good places to eat. I hope you enjoyed yourself.”

  “I did. But Chief, are you afraid that this killer being out there might scare people away?”

  Beck frowned. “First of all, there’s no reason to think that Colleen Preston’s killer is ‘out there.’ For all we know, this was a random murder and the killer is long gone. Secondly, you’re assuming he’s going to kill again, and you’re assuming that he’s closing in on St. Dennis. None of that follows, Rosalie. I think you’re angling for a story where there is none. Let’s just keep the facts in mind. So far we’ve had one victim, in Ballard, which is several miles from St. Dennis. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  “I think she’s just saying, with St. Dennis bringing in so many people every week, and it being so close to Ballard-” Carl Patterson began.

  “I know what she’s saying.” Beck turned cold blue eyes on the reporter. “And I’m saying it’s a waste of time to speculate in that manner.”

  “What exactly are you doing to help identify the killer?” Carl persisted.

  Beck turned around to Warren Daley and said, “I’ll let you take it from here.”