The Coldest Fear

by Debra Webb

  “Trust isn’t the issue between us, Bobbie.”

  “So you’re admitting that there is something between us?”

  He gestured to the case map. “You came to discuss the case.”

  Rather than start another argument, she decided to consider his statements as progress. Focusing on the case, she looked from photo to photo. “None of this really ties together. The Fosters are connected to the Bonners through tragedy but neither is really connected to the others—beyond the fact that the Fosters were wealthy and attended the same church as the Cortlands, Wilsons, Cottons and Durhams.”

  Nick moved up beside her. He tapped the photo of Christina Foster. “Her murder was the beginning of the tragedies that would befall this group. She was the first domino to fall.” He moved on to the photo of Treat Bonner. “He was falsely accused and then disappeared, the second domino.”

  “Days later the children disappeared,” Bobbie picked up from there. “Four of the five were taken from the fall festival. The Potter boy was the only exception. He was taken from his bed. He was the last domino to fall.”

  Nick gestured to the photos of the parents. “The real answer we need to find is what do these people have in common? All except Potter and the Bonners have money and power. Why was her child added to the mix? What did she possess that put her in the same category as the others? Or was it something she had done?”

  “Her statement about seeing Treat Bonner with Christina Foster triggered multiple reactions.”

  “Weller was called to evaluate him.” Nick pointed to Weller’s photo.

  “He found Bonner incapable of masterminding or executing that level of violence.” Bobbie studied the photos of Bonner and Foster. “Have you ever known Weller to choose victims related to a case where he was called in for an evaluation?”

  “No.”

  “You think the Sanderses were murdered only to reveal who took the children all those years ago?”

  “I do. It was both a revelation and a warning.”

  Bobbie surveyed the faces of the parents. “I think they were all—except maybe Potter and the Durhams—involved in what happened somehow. Something one or all did. Something Weller knew about or was somehow involved in.” Bobbie turned to him. “Did you and your family ever come to Savannah when you were growing up? Did Weller have friends or connections in the city?”

  “Not that I remember.” As he spoke he moved the photos of the children around on the wall. He placed Christina Foster’s photo first, and methodically surrounded it with the other children’s, then he tapped Christina’s. “As we’ve already established, she was the trigger.”

  Bobbie gathered the photos of the parents and repeated the process, placing Amelia Potter in the center with the parents of the other missing children in a circle around her. “Her child doesn’t fit with the others. He wasn’t taken from the same setting as the others.” She looked to Nick, her pulse rate kicking up. “He was chosen as payback for her statement to the police about the Bonner boy.”

  “That’s why he was taken from his home,” Nick agreed. “He wasn’t part of the original plan.”

  “That’s why his remains haven’t been found.” Bobbie put her hand to her mouth, disbelief stealing her breath. “What if he isn’t dead? What if he was a replacement for the son Lucille Bonner lost?”

  Nick stared at the photos for a bit before turning to Bobbie. “We may be looking at two different cases. Noah Potter was lumped in with the other children only because he went missing on the same night and in the same manner.”

  “If Lucille Bonner took him,” Bobbie began, “where is he now?”

  “I believe you and your lieutenant have a new lead to follow up on tomorrow morning.”

  There was something in his tone...jealousy? “I believe you’re right. This is a solid theory.”

  “Find a connection between Lucille Bonner and Bill Sanders.” Nick tapped the veterinarian’s photo. “The other children may have been nothing but a distraction to prevent anyone from figuring out what she’d done.”

  Bobbie considered that one of the children was a Cotton. “And maybe a little payback for what happened to her husband.”

  Nick nodded. “Adding the other three children, whose families had no direct ties to her, helped avoid drawing suspicion to herself. She wouldn’t have minded taking something so precious from them. They were rich, powerful, likely sided with the Fosters when her son was accused. They had everything and she was left with nothing.”

  Bobbie turned to him. “Would the circumstances of this case have drawn Weller somehow? Intrigued him?”

  Nick considered her question for a time. “As I said before, Potter would have intrigued him. I see nothing about the others that would draw his attention. His victims were typically those who, for whatever reason, couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of themselves much less contribute to society. None of the people involved in this case fit his preferred criteria, which indicates there’s a different motive. The nurse, his longtime attorney, the driver and the courier were executed for no other reason than they were in the way of an objective. He made no attempt to turn them into art by painting the scene of their deaths.”

  “We’ve never talked about why he kills.” When Nick’s gaze lit on hers once more, she went on, “I know he claims his victims inspired him, but what made him need to kill to capture that inspiration? What perverse hole in his soul did all those murders fill?”

  Every killer, even serial killers as heinous as Weller, had motives. They had histories and reasons they became what they became. Not that any reason was an excuse to commit murder, but it gave a glimpse into the killer’s soul.

  “You’re looking for his profile, is that it? You didn’t like the one the feds created?”

  “I haven’t been privy to the profile the FBI created for Weller.” She studied his face, looking for any hint of what he was thinking. “I’m certain you created his profile long ago.” Nick was as good as any profiler at the FBI’s illustrious BAU. He didn’t like to talk about Weller so they had never delved into the subject of how he became a notorious serial killer. She’d done some research on him, but she wanted to know what Nick thought...what he felt.

  “He was born in Chicago to parents who were hand-to-mouth factory workers. They had nothing. They lived in a small apartment over a butcher shop.”

  “Were they loving parents?”

  He stared at her as if the question hadn’t occurred to him, but she knew that wasn’t true even before he answered. “According to my source they were, yes. They spent money they didn’t have to spare feeding beggars, even going so far as to allow hungry strangers to spend the night in their apartment rather than freeze on the street.”

  Bobbie shuddered as her mind conjured images of slabs of meat in display cases. She’d been in a couple of butcher shops. There was a smell she suspected couldn’t be washed away even with bleach. The smell of freshly cut, chilled meat and cold blood had no doubt been a part of Weller’s everyday life.

  “Was there ever any trouble with the beggars they took in?”

  “Only once. Mr. Thompson, the owner of the butcher shop, warned Weller’s father that he could no longer bring in strangers off the street, even for a meal.”

  “Sounds like the Thompsons were looking out for him.” Bobbie felt no sympathy for whatever Weller had suffered.

  “Most days when Weller came home from school, his parents were still at work,” Nick went on, “so he hung out in the butcher shop. The man and his wife had no children of their own so they enjoyed having him around. The butcher, Mr. Thompson, took Weller with him when he made his weekly trips to the packinghouses where Weller routinely played on the killing floors. Sometimes he was even allowed to use the large meat cleavers to help cut the hogs.”

  “Jesus.” What kind of person allowed a chil
d to play where animals were being slaughtered much less allowed them to participate?

  “It wasn’t as strange as you think,” he countered. “At the time grade school children were taken on tours of the stockyards and packinghouses. Watching the hog slaughter was a major event in Chicago during the better part of the twentieth century.”

  Bobbie attempted to see beyond the matter-of-fact tone and expression he maintained. “How do you know all this? Did he tell you stories about his childhood?” They had talked about Nick’s childhood but he hadn’t mentioned stories about Weller’s childhood.

  “No, he never spoke of his early life. I interviewed Mrs. Thompson ten years ago, when she was ninety-seven. She still remembered him. She’d never made the connection between the child she enjoyed as if he were her own and the serial killer in the news.”

  Before Bobbie could ask, he said, “I didn’t tell her. I saw no reason.” He shrugged. “She died three years later on her one hundredth birthday.”

  “What about your grandparents? Were they still alive when you were a child?”

  “My mother was a foster child. She never knew her real parents and she despised her foster parents, so I never knew them. Weller’s parents died in a suspicious fire at the factory where they worked when he was twelve.”

  “Who took him in after that?”

  “The Thompsons. He lived with them until he went off to college. According to Mrs. Thompson, he never showed the slightest emotion about their deaths. He came home from school, Mr. Thompson informed him what had occurred and he asked what was for supper. He sat stoically at the funeral. Never shedding a single tear.”

  “She never noticed anything odd about him?”

  Nick considered her question a moment as if he had grown weary of the subject. “When Weller was sixteen, her husband found him in the bathroom at the packinghouse masturbating after helping on the killing floor. She said things were never the same between them after that. She cried when she confessed that from that point until he left for college her husband beat him often.”

  Was that childhood enough to turn Weller into the monster he became? Bobbie couldn’t say, but she did see one conspicuous fact. “So neither of his parents was a killer?”

  “Not as far as anyone knew.”

  Bobbie folded her arms across her chest. “So you looked into it?”

  “I did.”

  “So much for DNA making monsters.” Rather than give him the opportunity to debate the statement, she surveyed the case map and announced, “We make a good team.”

  He tensed at her words, but she wasn’t taking them back. It was true. When she refused to look away from him, he reluctantly met her gaze. “Talking about Weller’s childhood doesn’t change anything. This is only temporary, Bobbie. When this is over, I’ll be gone.”

  She shook her head. “You just can’t admit that you feel something for me.”

  “You’ve mistaken basic human compassion for something it’s not. I lost the capacity to feel anything more profound long ago.”

  He started to look away but she stopped him with a hand on the center of his chest. He flinched at her touch. “As long as your heart is still beating—” the strong pounding beneath her palm confirmed her belief “—there is no limit on what you can feel.”

  He pulled her hand free of his chest but didn’t immediately let go. “Not the way you think.”

  When she would have argued, he released her. “I should walk you back.”

  Bobbie let it go for now, but the debate was far from over.

  Twenty-Seven

  Anderson Street

  11:00 p.m.

  Over the years Randolph Weller often thought of Savannah. Quite a lovely place if one had a taste for the dankness of the river and the constant influx of rude tourists. Speakeasies, historic architecture and hauntings had never been on his bucket list. No, he’d never anticipated visiting Savannah again.

  He’d expected the dead to stay buried along with the secrets this oldest city in Georgia harbored just for him. A smile eased across his lips when he considered that his friends at the F...B...I...were no doubt scratching their heads and wondering why he would risk coming here. There was an entire task force dedicated to the theory that perhaps the events in Savannah were nothing more than a ploy to distract them while he slipped out of the country and far, far away.

  Actually, leaving had been the plan, but this city had not been a part of it. Regrettably, he’d had to take a detour. He drew in a deep breath, savored the stench of death. The man in the other room was very near that much-feared threshold. No need to bother with him. The woman, however, was quite another matter. She had disrupted Randolph’s carefully laid plans. Apparently she had forgotten that he’d already given her an enormous gift. He shook his head. Where was the gratitude? No one appreciated the sacrifices of others these days. What a disgrace.

  Until recently Randolph had chosen not to take the life of anyone who really mattered. He had prided himself on selecting those who were a waste of DNA and those who lived their lives for nothing more than to drain society. Really, his efforts to make the world a more beautiful and peaceful place had never been appreciated.

  Be that as it may, he wasn’t here to wax poetic about the atrocities the common man did every day of his tragic existence. He was here to attend to a mistake he himself had made so many, many years ago.

  He glanced at the grandfather clock that stood next to the front door. It was late. He’d waited long enough. With a quick flick of his hand, he overturned the ceramic lamp on the marble topped table next to his chair. The crash shattered the silence. The rustling of covers sounded and then the pad of bare feet on the cold hardwood floor.

  The overhead light switched on and she stood in the doorway, squinting at its brightness. The yellow flannel gown she wore covered her from neck to toes. Her hair was a mousy brown cloud of tangles. When her eyes had focused behind the glasses, her breath caught.

  “Good evening, Lucille.” He gestured to the sofa. “Please, join me. We have some catching up to do.”

  She hesitated as if weighing her options. Should she run screaming back into her room and attempt to call for help? Since there were no exterior doors on that end of the house and he’d severed the old-fashioned landline that supplied phone service to her home, there was no help there. To reach the front door or the kitchen door, she would need to move past him. Her options were sorely limited.

  “Please,” he repeated. “Let’s not make this more unpleasant than it needs to be.”

  She took a step in his direction and then another and another until she reached the sofa. Finally she settled onto the worn cushions.

  “Now. Was that so difficult?”

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “Why are you here?” Her voice was rusty with sleep and fear.

  Randolph laughed. “Why, Lucille, aren’t you the one who called my attorney and told him it was imperative you speak with me about the children?”

  She blinked like an owl. “I didn’t know what to do. Cortland told his wife what he’d done. She came to me and asked if I took her child.”

  “And what did you say, Lucille?”

  “I... I told her to leave, that I had nothing to say to her.”

  Randolph nodded knowingly. “But that wasn’t the end of it, was it, Lucille?”

  She fiddled with the fabric of her nightgown. “She wouldn’t believe me. She just kept on and on until I told her everything.”

  “A very foolish mistake.”

  She flung her arms in exasperation. “What choice did I have? She just wouldn’t shut up. The next day she walked into that lake and never came back out. I thought everything would be okay after that.”

  “Ah, but it wasn’t.”

  She shook her head. “It only got worse.”

>   “Tsk. Tsk. I’m afraid you’ve brought this fate upon yourself, Lucille. I gave you an opportunity all those years ago and you took advantage of my benevolence.”

  “I... I wanted to show them.” She trembled with the fear mounting in her aged body. “They had everything and they took what was mine—the only thing in this world that mattered to me. I just wanted them to feel what they’d made me feel. You told me that was a natural reaction to what I suffered.”

  “Indeed,” he allowed. “When they took your son, you had every right to want revenge. To want to make them suffer that same loss. Your mistake was in having second thoughts. You let me down, Lucille. You should have drowned those children yourself and left their little bodies floating in the Savannah River for all the world to see.”

  She dropped her head again. “I was afraid. They were so young and innocent. Practically babies. As much as I wanted to hurt their parents, I couldn’t kill those babies.”

  “So you went to your lover.”

  Her head shot up. “Bill made me happy. We made each other happy. We were both so miserable.”

  How truly wretched. “Misery does love company.”

  “He wanted to help me.”

  “But his wife intervened while the two of you were in her home—in her bed—fucking.”

  Lucille looked away. “She took them into the woods to the stream that runs behind their property and drowned them, one by one.”

  He sighed. “I’m certain you understand that now I must do something to finish this before it gets further out of control.”

  “We had a deal,” she accused, drawing up a little courage. “I gave you what you wanted.” Her lips quivered with the fear no doubt coursing through her veins. “Don’t forget that part.”

  His patience was at an end. “Where is he?”

  She shook her head. “I won’t tell you. He’s suffered enough. He isn’t the sweet boy I lost, but he’s mine.”

  “Very well. I’m certain you know I will find him.” Randolph should have been far from here already, but this business had cropped up and he’d had no choice but to attend to it personally.