by Meg Gardiner
Rainey was already there. The clerk had stepped into a back office. Caitlin said good morning and set her key on the counter.
Behind her, Emmerich’s voice echoed across the lobby. “Hang on to that.”
She and Rainey turned.
“Disappearance Saturday night. Dallas,” Emmerich said.
Rainey’s eyes widened. “That’s significantly beyond the UNSUB’s previous hunting zone.”
“The Dallas police think it’s linked to the murders here in Solace. They’re sending everything to the sheriff’s office.” His hair was damp from a shower, white shirt blinding in the morning light. “There’s video.”
A sharp buzz ran up Caitlin’s spine.
At the sheriff’s station, Detective Berg handed Emmerich an eight-by-ten blowup of a driver’s license photo. A young vanilla blond.
“Teri Drinkall. Twenty-five. Paralegal at a downtown Dallas law firm. She never came home from a Saturday shopping trip. Her boyfriend and roommate have alibis.”
Caitlin gathered with the others at Berg’s desk. The detective cued up the CCTV video from the garage. His face was morose.
“It’s not helpful. You’ll see.” He hit PLAY.
The video was silent black-and-white. The camera was mounted in the ceiling near a bank of elevators in a multistory parking garage. Three seconds of nothing rolled by. Then the missing woman crossed in front of the camera.
Teri Drinkall was petite and had an energetic stride. She carried two shopping bags in her left hand and had a third draped over her right forearm. Her purse was slung over her shoulder, keys in her right hand. She looked like she was heading directly toward her car. She passed beneath the camera and walked toward the far end of the garage, providing a view of her back.
She jumped, startled.
She turned her head sharply, her attention caught by something unexpected. Something offscreen.
Caitlin shifted, itching for more. Beside her, Emmerich stood with his arms crossed, fingers drumming.
On video, Teri turned to her right. Her back remained to the lens. She tilted her head and spoke.
Caitlin desperately wanted to know what she was saying, but they couldn’t see enough even to attempt to read her lips.
Teri nodded and walked out of frame. Her shadow trailed her and disappeared.
Berg stopped the playback. “That’s it.”
Emmerich said, “Play it again.”
They watched, focusing, two more times. Berg looked frustrated. Emmerich pulled out his laptop and set it on a conference table.
“Send it to me,” he said.
“You think you can get anything out of that?”
“Our technical analyst at Quantico might.”
Berg forwarded the video. “What could they find?”
Emmerich leaned over the computer, typing. “Shadows, artifacts, reflections—anything that might provide information about the person the victim spoke to.”
Caitlin touched Berg’s arm. “Can you play it one more time, please?”
He cued it up again. She watched.
It was clear to her that Teri had jumped because somebody had spoken to her. Otherwise she wouldn’t have turned and spoken in response. Teri’s head remained level as she spoke. That indicated she was talking to somebody of roughly similar height—an adult. Caitlin focused on the screen. This time as she watched, she tried to read the missing woman’s body language.
Teri went toward the unseen speaker willingly. Why did she nod and agree to the UNSUB’s request? What ruse did the killer use to lure her away?
By the time Teri walked out of frame, her posture indicated complete disarmament. When she’d first walked on-screen, it was different. She had her car keys out and raised—ready to hit the alarm if anything seemed sketchy. She was prepared to respond to sudden threats—like any self-aware big-city woman.
She still had the keys raised, and between her fingers, like claws, when she first turned. Then she lowered them. She showed . . . concern. And . . . emotional discomfort?
Caitlin watched again. Between the time Teri was first startled and the time she lowered the keys, her shoulders dropped. Her head tilted to one side, in an attitude people frequently adopted when speaking to small children or whimpering animals. It was more than mere concern. It was . . . pity?
“The ruse he used convinced her he was more than just harmless. It convinced her he was damaged,” Caitlin said. “In some way. She wanted to help him. He turned her completely around emotionally, in less than four seconds.”
Berg said, “He played injured?”
“Possibly. I’d add that to the profile.”
“It’s our guy?”
“Maybe.” Caitlin felt queasy.
Emmerich forwarded the video to Quantico. He didn’t look up. “If it is, releasing the Polaroids didn’t spook him into backing off.”
Berg looked at Caitlin. “It sent him up the interstate.”
• • •
At noon, the stockbrokers at Crandall McGill were busy under the bright Phoenix sun. Phones rang. Televisions were quietly tuned to financial and news channels, tickers crawling across the bottom of various screens.
At the reception desk in the lobby, Lia Fox transferred a call and signed for a stack of FedEx envelopes. The deliveryman gave her a nice, appraising look. She was thirty-six, sleek and petite, and knew she looked good in the pencil skirt and stilettos. Her dark hair was cropped short for the heat. It made her face look severe, but she’d decided she liked it that way. Fierceness was something she wanted to try.
She waved good-bye to the delivery guy, slurped the dregs from a cold brew, and scrolled through texts on her phone, swiveling back and forth on her desk chair. Tizzy’s sick *again*, her mom wrote, about her dog. Scored a try! her sis squealed, about sports, or a test, or sex. Lia replied to both with a thumbs-up. She gathered the FedEx envelopes and headed back into the office to deliver them.
As she passed the traders’ desks, a wall-mounted television caught her eye. It ticked something in the back of her skull, but she continued walking. Around the corner, another TV was tuned to the same news channel. The chyron read, TEXAS POLICE, FBI SEEK KILLER.
She saw the Polaroids, and stopped.
A broker came out of her office. “Lia?”
Lia stared at the television.
“Lia. Is that for me?”
The broker had her hand out. Head pinging, Lia handed her an envelope.
“What’s wrong?” the woman said.
Lia shook her head, eyes pinned on the television screen. “Nothing.”
The broker looked up at the screen. “Good God. How horrible.”
Lia tried to breathe but her chest seemed locked. The broker was speaking to her but all she could hear was the pinging tone in her head.
The broker waved a hand in front of her face. “You look freaked-out. What’s wrong?”
Lia turned to her. “Nothing.”
She spun on her sharp heels and sped back along the carpeted hallway. Before she got to the front desk, she turned into the ladies’ room. She locked herself in a bathroom stall and leaned back against the wall, trembling.
She whispered, “It can’t be.”
When she returned to the front desk, she managed to ignore the plasma screen in the lobby waiting area. But eventually, like poison ivy, the itch became overwhelming. At the top of the hour she walked over, unmuted the TV, and flipped through news channels until she found breaking news.
“A sixth Texas woman has disappeared, this time in Dallas.”
Lia’s hands fell to her sides. Like the other women who’d disappeared, Teri Drinkall was blond, and young, and slim, and gone. Gone, gone, gone. Their photos flashed on the screen. One after the next, like Barbies on a shelf at the toy store.
And the Polaroid
s. So many blonds, so much terror. Baby doll nighties.
A tremor started in her leg. It crawled up her belly and settled in her chest.
“The Dallas police have no suspects in the disappearance,” the anchor said, “but are in contact with authorities in Gideon County, where five other women have disappeared. Two of those women were found murdered last week. The FBI is assisting with the investigation but has provided no further comment on the case.”
The anchor looked austere, and worried. A list of telephone numbers flashed on the screen—tip lines.
Lia paused the TV. For a whole minute, then two, she stared out the front doors into the stinging Arizona sunshine, until tears rose in her eyes.
With shaking fingers, she raised her phone. Reading off the television screen, she dialed.
When the call was answered, she closed her eyes. “I need to speak to the agents working on the Texas murder case. I know who the killer is.”
16
The phones in the Solace sheriff’s station were ringing nonstop. Every line was lit up with worried calls and wild tips.
The Saturday Night Killer is my neighbor.
It’s the guy at the gas station who looked at me funny.
It’s my mother-in-law.
The killer got into my trash. It’s a garbage man.
I’m the killer.
I smothered them with a dry-cleaning bag.
I ran over them with a lawn mower.
At the front counter, a blond teenager dressed in a barista’s black outfit spoke breakneck quick, describing a man she’d seen, holding her hand up to indicate his height. Chief Morales looked like his blood pressure had risen high enough to jet-wash a bus. Detective Berg’s tie seemed close to strangling him. Outside, the white sun fell on a near-empty Main Street. A subaural pulse of panic seemed to fill the air.
At the conference table in the detectives’ room, Caitlin leaned toward her laptop, earbuds in. She was videoconferencing with the unit’s technical analyst in Quantico, Nicholas Keyes.
“I know you’re data mining the Dallas parking garage CCTV footage,” Caitlin said. “But there’s another video, of the third victim. I’d bet hard money the UNSUB is on it.”
Veronica Lees’s disappearance at the multiplex cinema played in a window on her screen.
“What I need is motion analysis,” Caitlin said. “A way to pair the victim with the other people in the theater lobby, individually, then determine whether one of them watches, touches, or follows her.”
“I count a hundred twenty-five people in that lobby. Rough estimate,” Keyes said.
He was staring at his own screen rather than at Caitlin. The computer’s glow reflected from his horn-rims. At twenty-eight, he had a nimble mind and a depth of knowledge that seemed ancient.
“I know that’s a lot of work,” Caitlin said.
“Not if I apply the correct model.” Keyes’s fingers ran fluidly across his keyboard. A pencil was jammed behind his ear. “Couple ways I can attack this.”
Emmerich strode into the room and approached the conference table.
“Keyes, hang on.” Caitlin pulled out one earbud.
“Caller says she knows who the killer is.” Emmerich handed Caitlin a message slip. “Preliminary screening indicates her claim may have credibility. This woman will take a video call. Get a look at her face, listen to her, and determine whether credible is the right word.”
“Right away.”
With a crisp nod, Emmerich left.
Caitlin swiveled back to Keyes. “I gotta—”
“Heard. Go.” His eyes darted, scanning his screen. “I have an idea.”
“Involving?”
“Slant routes and interceptions.”
He clicked off before Caitlin could ask him more. She set the message slip on the table and put through a video call. It was answered almost instantly.
“Ms. Fox.”
Lia Fox was hunched toward the screen, licking her lips, nervous. She had close-cropped black hair and a hard jaw but looked as frightened as a fawn.
“Agent Hendrix?” Fox said. “You’re in Texas? You’re investigating these murders?”
“Yes. What information do you have for us?”
“You have to promise.” Fox steepled her hands in front of her lips and closed her eyes briefly before staring intensely at Caitlin. “My name stays out of this. I’m anonymous.”
“I’ll keep your name confidential,” Caitlin said. “You believe you can identify the killer?”
Lia’s eye twitched. “My ex-boyfriend. His name is Aaron Gage.”
She exhaled as though speaking those words had drained every ounce of her energy.
Caitlin wrote the name down. “Tell me about Gage. Why do you think he’s the man we’re looking for?”
“He stalked me. He . . .” Lia pressed a hand over her mouth.
“Take your time. Just tell me what happened.”
Lia took a few seconds, seeming to work up her courage. She clenched her jaw. It made her look worn-down.
“I was a freshman in college. Rampart College, outside Houston. I was eighteen and . . .” A shrug. “Aaron was hot. Rugged, a whole Clint-Eastwood-on-a-horse vibe.”
Caitlin nodded, encouraging her.
“But he liked to party,” Lia said. “He drank. Things got dark.”
“What makes you think he’s the suspect in these killings, Ms. Fox?”
“I was kind of a mess,” Lia said. “Skating on all my classes. Just wandering, you know? I stayed with him longer than I should have. He was my first boyfriend, and . . .”
Her cheeks were blazing. She looked like she’d been holding this in since freshman year.
Caitlin softened her voice. “It’s okay. I’m listening. Keep going.”
Lia nodded tightly. “One night at his apartment, he—we—got wasted. Got into a screaming match. I stormed into the bedroom and locked the door. Shoved a chair under the knob. Aaron pounded on it, called me names, yelled that I was worthless . . .”
Caitlin continued to nod. “And?”
“And I cried myself to sleep. Aaron kept drinking, and burned the apartment down.”
That woke Caitlin up. “He deliberately set the apartment on fire?”
Lia flinched. “I don’t know. Maybe he passed out. The fire department labeled the cause of the fire ‘undetermined.’”
Caitlin asked her for the address of the apartment and date of the fire.
“When I woke up, the bedroom was smoky and Aaron’s roommate was pounding on the door, begging me to get out.” Lia’s eyes were growing bright. “I opened the door and flames were burning on the living room ceiling. Front door was wide-open, neighbors in the hall, yelling for me to run.”
“It sounds terrifying.”
“It still makes me sick.” Lia’s voice quavered. “And I know you’re thinking, ‘So what?’”
Caitlin saw genuine fear on the woman’s face, but Lia was correct: She’d heard nothing so far to link Gage to their UNSUB.
“I’m listening.”
“I never spoke to Aaron again. I broke it off. Boom, over.” Lia leaned toward the screen. “And that’s when things got creepy.”
“Describe ‘creepy.’”
“I started getting cards in the mail. Never signed. ‘Stop ignoring me,’ ‘You’re making a mistake,’ ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Then gifts started showing up on the porch,” Lia said. “At first, sweet things. A charm bracelet. A music box. But when I didn’t respond, he started leaving Barbies. They were . . . damaged.”
A soft chill descended on Caitlin’s shoulders.
“Arms torn out of their sockets. Neck broken. Face burned with a cigarette lighter. Legs . . .” She looked away, then fiercely back at the screen. “Legs spread. One was placed on top of a dead rat, like
—the doll was screwing it. It scared the shit out of me.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Caitlin said.
“My roommates. I couldn’t tell my parents—they would have known I had . . . I’d had relations with a boy, and would have gone ballistic.”
“Anybody at the college? The police?”
Lia scoffed. “Campus public safety? They busted kids for violating curfew and playing hip-hop ‘too loud.’” She made air quotes. “Rampart’s a small Christian college. The administration didn’t want to know about students having—sex.”
Lia looked down and lowered her voice. “They would have hauled me up on disciplinary charges. Demanded repentance and maybe expelled me.”
Caitlin thought, Glad I didn’t go to Rampart. But she was sadly unsurprised to hear how the college would have responded to a student being stalked.
“What else?” Caitlin said.
Lia’s voice strengthened. Now that she was rolling, she was getting more emphatic with every word.
“Late at night he would stand across the street in the dark, watching my place.”
“You’re positive it was Aaron Gage?”
“He stayed out of the light, but same build, same height. My roommates saw him too, and were freaked-out.” Her eyes shimmered. “Then he killed my cat.”
The chill blew across Caitlin’s shoulders.
“Slit its throat and left it in the backyard, surrounded by photos of me,” Lia said. “The photos were taken at Aaron’s apartment, of me, asleep. In a fucking white nightie.”
Tears brimmed. Lia swiped them angrily away.
Caitlin was still. “Did you tell the authorities about the cat?”
Lia shook her head. “But I took a picture. I wanted it as evidence if things got bad.”
Caitlin held back: Fire setting and animal torture were already very damn bad. Even a puritanical college administration would take such evidence of stalking seriously. The police would have immediately considered Lia’s life to be under threat.
“I have to ask—at that point, what kept you from calling the cops?” Caitlin said.
