by Maris Soule
“Vince will get you,” she said, for once wanting Vince Nanini to poke his nose in her business.
“Vince?” The man’s voice was calm, his hand once again making contact with her arm. “Oh, I don’t think so. And if he should show up, I’ll take care of him just like I did that kid you were with. Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
She almost said yes, then stopped herself.
“She’s already been,” he said, when she hesitated. “You were still asleep when I took her, and I didn’t want to wake you.”
By “she” he meant the other girl. The one he’d just raped. The one Misty couldn’t really see—not clearly—but could hear crying. “Is that how you do it?” Misty asked. “Take the girl to the bathroom first so she won’t pee on you when you rape her?”
“I told you, I’m not going to touch you.” Again, he chuckled. “I have one for the money, and one for the honey.”
“You’re a sicko,” Misty said, then wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Nothing like stating the obvious to a man who had her tied to a bed—a man who’d already killed one person that she knew of.
Instead of getting angry, he laughed. “Oh, no, I’m cured. That’s what the doctors said. So, do you need to go?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Katherine tried to keep the terror racing through her under control. Over and over, she told herself it couldn’t be him, not here in Alaska. It was a copycat, just a coincidence that some creep had kidnapped a girl in Skagway . . . had signed a ransom note with her nickname and a bee symbol.
Except, she didn’t believe in coincidences.
As far as she knew, the only people still alive in Skagway who knew about her past were her grandfather and the chief. She’d had to tell him when she interviewed for the job. Gordon didn’t know, nor did Alice, nor Phil, nor any of the other officers and staff. And up until this evening, her grandfather hadn’t mentioned the incident to anyone. At least, she didn’t think he had.
So who would know?
Katherine forced her mind back to the months after her release. The media had hounded her, which was why her grandparents had decided to make Skagway their permanent home rather than a summer residence. Once the trial ended, they’d officially changed her name and gone into seclusion. Even when she returned to Michigan, something she felt she had to do, no one called her Kit Kat. All through college, the police academy, and her three years as a public safety officer, she was known as Katherine Ward. Katherine, not Kathy, or Kate, or Kat, or Kit Kat.
So, who around here would know her connection to The Beekeeper?
She hoped the note would provide an answer to that question. Every nerve on edge, she waited with the others for Sam Sutherland to climb back up from the Blazer.
“It’s in here,” Sam said, and handed an evidence bag to Gordon. “It was pinned to the victim’s shirt, right over the guy’s heart. I used gloves to remove it, so any fingerprints you find should be the killer’s.”
Gordon also slipped on latex gloves before touching the note, and Katherine edged close to his side so she could look over his shoulder. Nanini, on the other hand, seemed more interested in questioning the rescue worker. “There are definitely no signs of a girl?”
“None that I could see, but there are other volunteers down there now, looking for her. I’m going for a cup of coffee.” Sam raised his voice so Gordon and Katherine would hear him. “If you need me, I’ll be over there.”
He motioned toward a blue pickup parked a ways from where the guardrail was broken. The pickup’s driver had let down the tailgate and set out a pump pot of coffee, along with Styrofoam cups, and a box of doughnuts. Several of the volunteers were already gathered around the area, and Sam soon joined them.
Gordon studied the note for what seemed an eternity, keeping it close to his body so she couldn’t get a clear view. Finally, he showed it to her.
The note was written on brown paper, approximately three inches wide and five inches long. It looked like a torn section of a grocery bag, the edges ragged. A pen had been used to write the short message, but the mark below the written words was obviously a bloody fingerprint, the center of the print clear, but the sides smeared, making it look like a bug . . . or a bee.
Katherine couldn’t stop the shudder of fear that coursed through her body, her stomach twisting into a knot that drove bile into her throat. She wanted to crumple the paper, get into her Tahoe and drive as far from the area as she could possibly go. She wanted to scream.
This had to be a bad dream—like so many she’d had over the years. It couldn’t be real; couldn’t be him. Yet, she knew the note was real, and that she couldn’t cut and run. She had a grandfather to take care of, a job to do.
“Is that the same kind of mark as that bee guy you told me about made, or do you think it’s a copy?” Nanini asked, his nearness surprising her. Caught up in the grip of fear, she’d forgotten he was around.
Years of police training kicked in, along with the hours she’d spent in therapy, learning how to control the fear, and Katherine answered with as little emotion as she could muster.
“I can’t tell for sure.”
“You said this Beekeeper guy was in a mental hospital.”
“He was.” She’d been there for the sentencing, had heard the judge. But she knew about criminals and life sentences. Fifteen years and they were back on the street, back committing crimes. Killing people. Raping young girls.
Katherine shuddered and squeezed her eyes tight. “Sarah.”
“What about Sarah?” Gordon asked.
“She’s missing, too.”
“She might be at that party over in Dyea.”
Katherine hoped so.
“How much did this Beekeeper guy ask for when he kidnapped the teenager?” Vince asked.
He asked for my body and soul, Katherine thought. “Nothing,” she answered. “At least no money.”
“It was a girl he kidnapped?”
“Yes,” she answered, trying to keep all emotion out of her voice. “He broke into her house during the night, abducted her, and kept her his prisoner for just under nine months . . . until someone recognized her and reported it to the police.”
“Are you talking about Elizabeth Smart?” Vince asked.
“No.” Though Katherine had studied the Smart case, looking, she supposed, for some connection between that girl’s abductor and Charles Bell. She hadn’t found many similarities. “Bell wasn’t as kind to his victims as Elizabeth Smart’s abductor,” Katherine said, knowing what she was about to tell him was all public record. “He wasn’t even as nice as Michael Devlin, who kidnapped those boys in St. Louis. Or Ariel Castro, who held those three girls for a decade. As the prosecutor pointed out during the trial, Charles Bell not only kidnapped the girl, he purposefully eliminated her family.”
“I remember that case,” Gordon said. “Didn’t he kill the parents and a younger brother?”
Katherine nodded, a lump in her throat stopping her from saying more. She stepped away from the two men, closer to the edge of the road, and stared down at the valley. She hoped they would think she was following what was happening below, and that neither man would see the tears forming in her eyes as she tried to push back the memories. You can’t change the past. That’s what her therapist had said, over and over during their sessions. You can’t change the past, so focus on the future.
“You used to live in Michigan,” Gordon said behind her. “Any idea what hospital this guy’s supposed to be in?”
She nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Then we need to call,” he said. “See if he’s still there. If he is, then we know we’re dealing with a copycat.”
“Use my phone,” Nanini insisted, already in the process of unclipping his from his belt. “It’s satellite. It should work up here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Vince expected the sergeant to make the call. Instead Katherine took the phone. She didn’t call information fo
r the hospital’s number; simply started punching numbers as she walked over to the side of the Tahoe. Curious, he waited until she turned her back to him, then followed her, stopping close enough to hear her say, “I need to talk to Dr. Bremner . . . Or Dr. Redmond. Whichever one’s on duty tonight.”
That she knew the names of the doctors told him this wasn’t the first time she’d called, and, as she waited for a response, she reminded Vince of a taut spring—motionless energy. Her voice had an edge that relayed an internal turmoil.
“I don’t care if it’s after hours,” she groused. “Tell him Katherine Ann McMann is on the phone.”
Vince frowned. She’d said “Katherine Ann McMann,” not Katherine Ward. Dammit all, he did remember the case. Not from when it happened but from what he heard later.
He’d been overseas when Katherine Ann McMann was kidnapped. Out of touch with the media. Fighting terrorists, not following home-grown abductions. By the time he was stateside, another kidnapping was making headlines.
Katherine Ann McMann.
Yes, the details were coming back.
While working for the FBI, he’d assisted on some kidnapping cases, especially if they involved the Internet. His job was to track the predators and relay the information to the agents. They sometimes mentioned other cases . . . other victims.
McMann.
The bits and pieces he recalled weren’t good.
There’d been questions about the girl’s complicity in the crime. She’d been cleared, classified as a victim, but some of the agents weren’t convinced. Was it rape or consensual sex? Word was she actually tried to protect her kidnapper when the police arrived.
The Beekeeper.
Had he missed that name this morning when checking Misty’s posts? Did she make arrangements to meet someone besides Brian Bane? Sixteen-year-olds could be so smart and so naïve.
Not that the adults in Misty’s life had helped the situation.
Her father was way too involved with his business. Her mother had died. Her stepmother was too self-centered to care about a teenager. More than once Vince had told Tom he should spend more time with Misty. Building a successful business wasn’t as important as a child. Vince knew that from personal experience. He’d been focused on his career when his little girl was diagnosed with cancer. He barely had a chance to know her.
Vince had tried to offer Misty some of the attention she was missing from Tom and Crystal, but Misty had rebelled. She didn’t want his advice, acted bored when he tried to show her self-defense moves, and told him she didn’t need a “birddog.”
Birddog? What she needed was a keeper.
He’d been angry when he discovered Misty’s plan to run away with the Bane kid. Running away no longer sounded all that bad.
Katherine glanced over her shoulder, looking directly at him, frowned, and opened her mouth as if to say something. Then immediately she switched her attention back to the phone. “Good,” she said. “Yes, get him.”
Soon we’ll know, Vince thought, and wondered if Misty had remembered any of the self-defense moves he’d taught her. If only she’d taken him seriously, taken the danger she might be in seriously. But, no. She’d flirted with him when he tried to teach her ways to defend herself. To please her father, she went through the motions, but she never truly made an effort to learn how to maim or escape.
“Come on,” Misty had said. “Get real. You want me to ram my fingers into a man’s eyes? That would be like . . . I don’t know . . . yucky sick.”
He was the one who felt “yucky sick” now. If only he’d gotten here earlier. If only he’d been there to stop her. She would have been angry and frustrated, but she would be physically all right . . . And that kid in the Blazer wouldn’t have a bullet in him.
“Dr. Redmond,” Vince heard Katherine say, and he stopped thinking of what might have been and concentrated on what Katherine was saying.
“I’m calling about Charles Bell.” Her voice sounded strained. “How is he doing?”
Vince moved closer. He could read the tension in her body, saw her take in a deep breath as she listened to the doctor’s response. She seemed to pale, and he doubted she was even aware that she was shaking her head. Her body language told him she was distressed; nevertheless, he was surprised when she started shouting, her voice going shrill.
“God damn you. How could you? You were to call me. Tell me if this ever happened.”
The outburst over, she turned quiet and listened. Vince watched her chew on her lower lip, close her eyes, and take in a deep breath. By the time she hung up, she had her cop face on. Posture rigid, she turned toward him and said, “He’s out.”
“So he’s here?”
“Seems so.”
She handed back his phone and started toward her sergeant. Vince grabbed her wrist, pulling her back. “Before you talk to him, I want the full story.”
A twist of her arm, and she was loose, facing him. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. McMann. I remember that name. You were the girl.”
She looked away. “I need to tell Gordon what’s up.”
“And I need to know what your involvement is in this.”
“My involvement?” She looked back at him, glaring. “I am not involved.”
“What about that note?”
“I didn’t know they’d released him.”
“Where would he take Misty?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up the highway, then back at him. “We checked if a blonde teenager crossed the border, but Charles could have put a wig on her, could have done something to disguise her looks. I need to go to the Canadian customs station at Fraser, talk to them.”
She pointed toward Gordon. “Tell him I’ll be right back.”
Vince had no intention of staying where he was. Before she had a chance to drive off, he slid in on the passenger side of the Tahoe. “Get out,” Katherine ordered. “This is police business.”
“This is my best friend’s daughter,” he said. “And we’re wasting time. Let’s go.”
She hesitated, then shifted into drive. “Put on your seatbelt.”
As they headed up the highway, toward the Canadian border, Vince pushed for answers. “Tell me what this man, this Beekeeper, is like.”
She glanced his way, her solemn expression masking all emotion, then returned her attention to the curving road. “What’s there to tell? He’s a monster, and they’ve let him loose.”
“Why did he take Misty?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why. Maybe when she got off the ship, she smiled at him. Said hello. With people like Charles, that’s sometimes all it takes.”
“What caused him to take you?”
Katherine glanced his way. “Oh, that’s an easy one to answer.”
“So, what’s the answer?”
“He took me, he said, because I looked like his daughter.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Katherine refused to say anything more. For nearly seventeen years she’d kept her past a secret. She wasn’t about to tell all, especially not to a civilian. Besides, Vince wouldn’t understand. There were times when even she didn’t understand what had happened or why.
At the Canadian customs station, Katherine pulled a yellowed, folded, newspaper clipping out of her wallet and showed it to the two constables on duty. “That was taken sixteen years ago,” she said. “He’s aged since then. When I saw him five years ago, at an evaluation hearing, he’d gained weight, had some gray in his hair, and wrinkles near his mouth and eyes.”
Charles Bell had been in his early thirties and oh so good looking the first time she saw him standing by his mailbox. Her mother had warned her about talking to strangers, but this was a neighbor, not a stranger, and the reason they’d moved to this neighborhood—according to her parents—was it was safer than the one they’d left.
Safer. Now that was a joke. And she’d been so foolish. Foolish and angry.
Maybe her parent
s were happy with the new house, but she wasn’t. She’d had to leave her friends, was in a new school, and her mother refused to let her paint her bedroom purple. When Charles asked how she liked her new home, she’d been more than willing to tell him. And, unlike her busy parents, he took the time and listened.
In some ways the media was right. She did have a crush on him. But it was one thing to be fourteen and have a crush on a good-looking neighbor and quite another to go through what she went through.
They called him The Beekeeper, but he was more like a spider, slowly drawing her into his web. He wasn’t outside every day when she came home from school, but, looking back, she realized he was out there more than any other neighbor. Always smiling. Always asking her questions.
Was school getting any better? Did both of her parents work? Did she have a boyfriend?
When she saw him unloading insulation from his van, she asked him what he was building, never imagining it was for the cell he created in his basement—her home for eight months and twenty days. She thought it was wonderful when he told her he was a contractor. She thought it would please her mother that she’d found someone who could do the renovations her parents had been talking about.
Naïvely she brought him into their house, showed him where her parents slept, where her brother slept, and where she slept. Their house’s floor plan was just like his, he said. Even the security system was the same.
He told her he could do the work; but her mother hired someone else. For almost nine months that poor man was the prime suspect in the slaying of her family and her abduction. His fingerprints were all through the house. Charles Bell wore gloves.
Charles wasn’t dumb. Not then, not now. He could have changed his appearance since she last saw him. Grown a beard. Dyed his hair.
She gave that information to the Canadian constables. They couldn’t be positive, but they didn’t think they’d seen anyone who matched Bell’s description.
Howie had gone off-duty, but the pictures of Misty that both Vince and Alice had faxed to the station were posted on the wall. Vince asked them to imagine her with different colored hair. No luck there, either.
