by Anne Frasier
He’d enjoyed his days in Savannah, and he’d particularly enjoyed outsmarting David Gould once again. And now David was back to work at the Savannah PD, which meant their paths might cross at some point in the future. Nightingale hoped so.
He might have been hooked on death, but he also got off on fooling people, on setting false traps for them and seeing them squirm—while he remained in complete control.
It had been fun, but now it was time to move on. He’d gotten a little carried away, and he’d killed too many people. Like the mayor’s daughter. Like the chief of police. The murder of Hoffman had been stupid and careless, but he’d thought it entertaining and thought it would have been amusing if Gould had been found guilty.
Using the salesman had been genius, and leaving important evidence behind—so easy. Writing on his own body—not so easy. Yes, he’d had to fuck the guy. Truth was, it hadn’t been unpleasant. But the planting of the newspaper in Gould’s car and the puzzle in Hoffman’s mouth—quite possibly his best play to date.
When the movie ended, he opened another window on his laptop, rechecking his latest puzzle a final time. He laughed out loud when he read the answers.
His good-bye to Gould.
Would the detectives get it? Probably not. They hadn’t picked up on anything yet, even though he’d left so many clues. There had been a few times when he’d thought they were getting close, only to have them move in another direction, away from him.
The puzzle pattern itself was genius—visually appealing, the answers creating a design that echoed the placement of the bodies.
He never sent the puzzles directly from his laptop. Instead, he used an online drop site that alerted the syndication service of an uploaded file. It wouldn’t be impossible to trace the source, but it would be difficult.
His finger hovered over the keyboard. He smiled to himself, then hit “Send.”
The next day he packed. After a late checkout, he tossed his suitcase in the backseat and drove away from the motel he’d called home since his arrival in Savannah. Not a great place, but quiet, and nobody bothered him or tried to strike up a conversation.
In his car, he noted that he was low on gas, and he decided to fill up on the way out of town. For now he headed toward the Historic District, intent on taking one last drive around the squares. Savannah was a beautiful city. Even though the sight of the live oaks with their Spanish moss did nothing for him, he understood why people went on about the place. If anything could evoke some kind of emotional response, it would be Savannah.
But for Nightingale, the only thing that awoke the emotional wasteland of his soul was killing. The only time he felt alive was when he was taking a life. How funny was that? He’d pondered it long and hard, but it was a puzzle he’d never solve.
That was okay.
He pulled up to the curb, got out, and stuck a few coins in the meter.
This wouldn’t take long.
He walked down the brick sidewalk. Beyond the wrought-iron fence was Colonial Park Cemetery. Beyond that, the Savannah Police Department.
The girl at the front desk smiled at him. He nodded and smiled back.
He took the stairs. Up three flights and down the hall to the closed door.
He rapped lightly against the milky glass, then reached for the knob and stepped inside. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Sitting at their desks, Detectives Gould and Sandburg swiveled to look at him.
“Hey, Jay Thomas,” Gould said.
CHAPTER 47
I came to say good-bye.”
“You’re taking off?” Elise asked.
“Yeah.” He patted his messenger bag. “I have enough for a good story. I’ll let you know if it ever runs.”
Elise got to her feet and approached him. She held out her hand, and he shook it.
There had been a few times when he’d come close to liking her. Maybe it was her background, the root-doctor legacy, and the cemetery; she’d been a little more interesting than a lot of the idiots he ran into. And then there was Gould, reinstated, who was at that moment leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up a couple of turns. A fine specimen.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Gould said.
Very few things made Nightingale laugh, really laugh, but that line cracked him up.
Don’t be a stranger.
He wasn’t surprised that he’d been able to trick two homicide detectives. When you were shut off, blank, it was easy to fool people, because you had no emotional response to trip you up. There was no chance that some unwelcome and fleeting reaction would flash across your face.
He’d fooled his own mother for years. The only reason she’d found out about him was because she caught him in the act of killing a neighbor child. A girl in his class. That was his first, and he’d just wanted to see what it felt like. Weird thing? His mother never told anybody, but she’d been afraid of him after that. She never yelled at him anymore, and she always fixed his favorite food. And she took his secret to her grave.
Nightingale fumbled in his bag and pulled out a folded newspaper. “I brought today’s puzzle. Have you done it yet?” he asked, handing it to Gould.
“Nope. Thanks.”
Elise’s cell phone rang. She checked the screen, then answered, frowning in concentration. “Okay, honey. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Disconnecting, she explained. “Audrey needs a ride home from school. Something about a science project and having too much to carry.”
Nightingale had met the kid a couple of times, once at the police station and once at Elise’s house. She was like any other teenager. Disrespectful, narcissistic, and gullible. But mothers loved their brats. “I can pick her up,” he said. “It’s not much out of my way, and I’d like to tell her good-bye too.”
“You sure?” Elise asked, while at the same time looking relieved. “Jackson Sweet can’t help because he’s at the hospital getting another round of chemo.”
Nightingale smiled the kind of warm smile he’d practiced so many times in front of the mirror, a smile that was meant to look genuine and heartfelt and reassuring and innocent. All of those things. “No problem.”
Elise sent a text to Audrey, letting her know Jay Thomas Paul would pick her up. Then Elise told Nightingale the address, even though he already knew it. At one point he’d considered killing Audrey, but the times he’d swung past the high school to try to pick her up, Jackson Sweet had been there. And Jackson Sweet was somebody Nightingale didn’t want to mess with.
But now the old man was out of the picture. It was really something how things worked out.
With care, Nightingale chose the last words he planned to speak to Elise Sandburg: “What a relief to know Audrey is safe.”
And now he would deliver what the detective feared the most.
CHAPTER 48
Twenty minutes after Jay Thomas Paul left, Elise leaned a hip against her desk and set her coffee cup aside. “I should feel relieved,” she said. The killer that had held the city in a grip of terror was in jail. And today was a day for taking it easy, for catching their breath, even as they dove back into cases they’d put aside during the murder investigations.
“It’s hard to shut down after the adrenaline rush of the past weeks.” His feet crossed on his desk, David pulled a pen from behind his ear and filled in a line of squares in the crossword puzzle resting on his thigh.
“That’s probably it.” Elise settled into her chair and slid a stack of case files toward her. Back to the grind.
“I’m glad you didn’t move into Hoffman’s office,” David said without looking up from the paper.
“I don’t want the position, and the mayor is interviewing new people right now.” She opened the top file: a cold case, one of many. As she shuffled through the papers, something changed. The air in the room suddenly felt hollow, like a storm was coming, still and silent.
The sun hadn’t stopped shining. No stars fell f
rom the sky. But suddenly the unease she’d felt all day morphed into a fear of unknown origin. And she knew, in her heart of hearts, that something was wrong. Yet the warning bell didn’t come from a place within her, and it didn’t come from a place beyond the brick walls of the police station. It came from nearby.
From David.
With a jerky movement, she looked up from the paper-clipped photo of a smiling girl. Her gaze tracked slowly to David, where he sat frozen, unmoving, staring at the crossword on his leg. Not an unusual thing, and not so different from a minute ago, yet at the same time everything had changed.
Everything.
It was odd to feel such a powerful emotion, an emotion that was completely true and valid, and yet to have no knowledge of its cause. But in that moment Elise felt her world tilt.
“David?” Her voice trembled while the peculiar and unnamed fear continued to blossom.
Without taking his eyes from the paper, he lifted a finger in the air, telling her to wait. And odder, he continued with the puzzle, rapidly filling in squares, reading some of the clues aloud for her input. They were easy; they must have been easy, because she figured them out even as her heart pounded and the back of her neck felt as if a cool breeze were blowing across it, though no windows were open and no fans stirred the air.
Clues like:
Michelangelo’s what? David.
M*A*S*H actor. Gould.
Opposite of always. Never.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Please stop the clock. Please turn it back five minutes. Better yet, rationalize this moment. Scoff at this moment. Look at me and smile. David and his obsession with the crossword puzzle, trying to say it was aimed at him. Silly, silly stuff.
His feet dropped to the floor. He leaned forward, placed the paper on his desk, and began drawing circles around words. Elise told herself to get up, to step close to see what he was doing, but she couldn’t move. She was afraid to find out.
David tossed down his pen and turned the folded paper around. His name was outlined in black ink. And there were other words outlined as well. Put them together and they said: You’ll never catch me, David Gould.
Elise’s phone rang. She picked it up automatically. “Detective Sandburg.”
“This is Stella Edwards from the New York Times personnel office. You contacted me several days ago asking about one of our employees.”
“I appreciate the call, but Jay Thomas Paul left town today, so my request is no longer a priority.”
“That’s odd, because after doing some digging, I discovered Jay Thomas Paul died several years ago.”
The darkness gripping Elise intensified. “I thought you said he was on leave.”
“The records were incorrect. It’s very possible someone tampered with them since it appears we don’t even have an accurate photo on file. An expert is looking into it right now.”
“Thank you,” Elise said woodenly.
She finally and truly understood the fear that had dogged her for so long. Fear of losing Audrey.
She didn’t remember hanging up, but she must have, because there was the phone back in the cradle.
It was David’s turn to question and wonder what was going on.
“You were right,” Elise said. From the very beginning, back when Lamont came up with his profile and David shot it down.
David swung her around so she was facing him, his hands on the arms of her chair. “What are you talking about?”
He didn’t know. He knew they had the wrong guy, but he didn’t know the rest. “Jay Thomas Paul is the killer,” she said.
Seconds passed. “I don’t get it. Tyrell King supplied us with a positive ID,” David said. “The rope and the knife used on Jay Thomas matched the Savannah Killer murders.” Still trying to figure it all out.
“For some reason King lied,” Elise said. “But he wasn’t the only liar.” He wasn’t the biggest liar.
She watched as the full meaning of her words sank in. She could track David’s thought process, from the bafflement and disbelief at learning the true identity of the person who’d committed such horrendous crimes—a person who’d worked beside them—to the real story here.
The story of Elise and Audrey.
And when he got it, she saw the recoil, saw the reminder of his own loss, along with the anger. And the sympathy. That might have been the hardest to process, because the depth of his sympathy meant he was already thinking the worst.
Too many times she’d told a mother her child was dead. Too many times she’d watched the recipient of that news dissolve before her eyes. They usually collapsed. And then came the loud sobs of denial as arms were lifted to the sky.
Inside, Elise did all of those things. Inside, she was a mother crumbling into a million terrified pieces.
David pushed himself upright and took a few faltering steps away from her.
“You’ve already written her obituary,” Elise said.
He spun back around, his face registering sudden awareness of his own behavior, followed by the correcting, the masking. “I’m sorry.”
“You can’t fall apart right now. I need you. Audrey needs you.”
He passed a trembling hand across his forehead. “Okay, first thing. Call Audrey. Then call the school.”
Shaking, Elise pulled out her phone and made the call. It went straight to voice mail. Not unusual. If Audrey was still in the school building, her phone would have been silenced or put in airplane mode. She left a voice mail, warning Audrey about Jay Thomas and telling her not to get in the car with him.
Next to her, David placed a call to Avery, quickly filling him in and instructing him to organize a team to move once David gave the order. “And somebody bring in Tyrell King for questioning. Find out why that son of a bitch lied about Charles Almena.”
Elise opened their supply locker and pulled out two bulletproof vests and two boxes of shells, one for her Glock and one for David’s Smith & Wesson. In less than a minute they were heading for the emergency stairs.
CHAPTER 49
Audrey waited at her school’s south entrance where Jay Thomas Paul was supposed to pick her up. Beside her on the ground was a large piece of folded cardboard, and in her arms were the two boxes of supplies for the terrarium she had to put together over the weekend.
She’d met Jay Thomas a couple of times, once at the police department and once when he’d stopped by their house for a photo shoot for the article he was writing about her mom and David. He’d made her feel shy and awkward. She’d thought he was cute, which was really creepy since he was probably as old as her dad.
She didn’t know what his car looked like, so she was glad to see him striding up the wide sidewalk toward her, a friendly smile on his face. Jeans, his vest with all the pockets, and a light blue T-shirt.
Maybe it was his curly hair. She really liked guys with curly hair.
“Hey, Audrey! How’s it going?”
“Thanks for picking me up.”
“No big deal. This yours?” He indicated the giant piece of cardboard she’d cut from a refrigerator box.
She made a face. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad I got a chance to see you before I head out.” He took the boxes from Audrey. “I’ll get these; you get the cardboard.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Yep. I’ll sure miss Savannah.”
“Think you’ll ever visit again?” she asked as they fell into step and moved toward a big gray car.
“Hard to say.”
“Mom liked having you around.” Kind of a lie, but not a complete lie. What she’d actually said was something about getting used to him always lurking behind her.
Jay Thomas hit the “Trunk Release” button on the key fob and paused to look at her. “That’s really nice of you to say.”
She shrugged, feeling a fresh rush of bashfulness now that he was standing so close.
He dropped the boxes inside the trunk. The
cardboard wouldn’t fit, so Audrey shoved things around, trying to make room and accidentally knocking over a paper bag. The contents spilled.
Silver duct tape, rope, and a knife.
She stared.
“Just call me a Boy Scout,” Jay Thomas said with a “ho-ho-ho, silly me” tone. “Duct tape fixes everything, right? Have you seen those billfolds made of duct tape? They’re pretty cool.”
Audrey’s shoulders relaxed. “I tried to make one myself, but it was a disaster. It stuck to everything.”
Jay Thomas laughed and shut the trunk. “Hop in.”
Moving in unison, they circled opposite sides of the car, opened the doors, and got in, Jay Thomas behind the wheel and Audrey in the passenger seat, her floral print skirt fanning out over her legs.
There was so much room.
“Hook your seat belt,” he said as he turned the key and started the car.
She hooked her seat belt.
He put the car in gear, and they chugged away from the curb.
Audrey kept thinking about the duct tape.
That was crazy. Jay Thomas was a nice guy. And her mother had sent him to pick her up. Her mother knew all about bad guys.
“What’s your project?” Jay Thomas asked.
“Terrariums and sealed ecosystems.”
“I love that kind of thing.”
“It was either that or steam engines.”
“I think you made the right choice.”
He took a wrong turn, followed by another wrong turn.
“Do you know how to get to my house from here?” Audrey asked.
“I thought I’d take a more scenic route since I’m leaving town soon.”
Except he really wasn’t taking a scenic route. “I should get right home.”
“It’ll only take a little bit longer.”
Her mother had lectured her on the importance of listening to your gut.
Even when everything seems okay on the surface, Elise told her, pay attention if deep down you feel that something isn’t right. And if something isn’t right, exit. Remove yourself from the situation. If you’re wrong, no big deal. Being embarrassed is better than being dead.
