Anchored by Death (A Jo Oliver Thriller Book 3)

by Catherine Finger

  Amelia and Nick exchanged glances. She stepped away from the whiteboard and sat down, pushing the remote over to Nick. He brought up the kill map on the screen.

  “So, if we apply the simple distance theory to what I’m referring to as the up side of the Y, how many towns fit that same mileage, that same radius?”

  He’d finally spoken the question we’d no doubt all been asking ourselves. Nick studied the map, alternating between punching in numbers on his phone and circling names of towns in red that matched the relative distance coordinates from the down side of the Y. After he’d circled about a dozen names, he stepped back from the map, arms folded.

  “So, this latest site, Reedsburg, it’s an exact match to your pattern, isn’t it?” I knew my hometown geography well enough. What I didn’t know was how precise the killer might be. But then again, in investigations, everything stayed on the table until proven or disproven.

  Nick nodded. “Why else would he choose Reedsburg? Why not North Freedom? Or Merrimac?” Nick tapped the remote pen on the table. “He had other choices. But he chose Reedsburg. That has to matter.”

  “Because that’s where his victim presented?” I offered.

  Dixon rose to her feet. “Fine. He chose Reedsburg. So, what’s his next choice? What’s the magic minute or mile spread?”

  “If it is a spread. Let’s assume it’s dead-on. What towns lie within thirty-one minutes and a twenty-mile radius of Reedsburg, focusing on the north?” Nick looked from the map to me.

  I stepped closer to the map, mulling over the possibilities. “My first guess is a little different than yours. I’d go with Wonewoc.”

  Nick shook his head.

  “But it’s circled.” I sounded like a child.

  “Yes, but it’s not exact. It’s only around twenty minutes, max.” He shrugged. “It’s possible. Just not my top choice.”

  My eyes followed the map a little farther north. “So, that leaves, what, Richland Center?”

  “Maybe, but it feels too far off the beaten path to me.” Nick squinted at the map.

  “Viroqua then?”

  “No, still too far to the west in my humble opinion.”

  I sighed. I hated guessing games. “Fine. What’s left? Have you landed on Hillsboro?”

  Hillsboro was a stop on the map between any number of small towns and of course the beautiful state park called Wildcat Mountain. It’d been one of my favorite places on earth when I was in high school. We’d “take a fade” from our classes for the day, jump in the car of whoever had the most gas money in their pocket and head for the hinterlands.

  Making up plausible stories in case we got caught was my responsibility. We never got caught. After the statute of limitations had passed on getting mad at your kids for youthful indiscretions, I’d started to share parts of stories with my mom. She was not amused.

  “Bull’s-eye.” Nick pressed a button on the remote, and a detailed map of Hillsboro popped up. Something budged in the far corner of my mind.

  The corner of the screen featured a photo of a horse and buggy clip-clopping down the middle of a tree-lined street in the fall. The colors were otherworldly. Serene.

  Hillsboro was right in the middle of Amish country. I’d attended summer festivals there when I was in high school. My girlfriends and I had taken it upon ourselves to befriend the local Amish teens, defending them against any kids looking to make fun of them for their counter-cultural upbringing. This earned us no end of points and latitude with the adults in our lives, thinking we were all about helping our neighbor at such a young age. We kept the real reason to our inner circle.

  Those Amish guys were seriously hot. Clean-faced, muscular boys dressed in black danced through my head while I pulled up data on my phone. “Population 1,435. Village proper takes up less than two square miles.” I looked up at Amelia and Nick, both still standing like big cats ready to pounce on not-yet-seen prey.

  “Let’s keep every single one of them alive, shall we?” Amelia’s icy tone told me she was mentally prepping to get her teams on the road. “Tell me more.”

  Nick and I exchanged glances. We’d both shared a few takedowns with Amelia over the years. Some special agents loosened up in the field. Amelia buttoned down. Fine by me. A crackerjack agent, she could have my back anytime. I winked at Nick.

  Nick squeezed my leg under the table as I tapped the remote on the surface.

  “There’s a significant Amish presence. All through that part of Wisconsin, up to and pretty much on all sides of Wildcat Mountain.” I heard myself talking as if from a distance. It wasn’t looking good for Melvin White.

  Amelia tapped her lip. “Wait a minute, how far is Wildcat Mountain from Hillsboro?”

  Nick sat down across the table from her and pulled out his laptop. “Hillsboro and Wildcat Mountain are practically on top of each other. The state park’s a mile outside of town, tops.”

  “And White’s store, right?” Hector reminded us of his recent find as he spun his laptop around to face us. “But look at this—we’ve made the front page.” Staring at us was the homepage for Madison’s WMTV.

  The top of the website contained one bold headline: Bowtie Killer Keeping the FBI in Knots.

  “Bowtie Killer?” Nick said.

  “What the f … fridge?” Amelia said.

  “Who’s the leak?” I said.

  Hector scrolled down the page, showing the length of the unauthorized article. “Don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.” He added. “No one’s more surprised than me. We’ve been monitoring media sites for a while now, and I guarantee you this just came in.”

  “Awfully suspicious timing.” Nick’s growl wasn’t directed at Hector. “Who the heck would tip the press? And why?”

  “Did you say you sent pictures over? Get into the employee logs, and see who’s working right now.” Amelia directed her orders to Hector.

  Hector stopped playing his keyboard. “Whoa. This is … interesting.”

  “And?” Amelia trained her eyes on him.

  “Janice White is working right now. Hold on. I’m checking.” Hector typed furiously.

  “White? As in a relative of Melvin White?” It didn’t seem possible, but the coincidence of the same name seemed less likely still.

  “I thought you said he had no next of kin?” Nick was suspicious. I’d know that tone anywhere.

  “Does a niece count?” Hector was a puppy. Grinning while setting his toy at the feet of his master. “Janice White. Daughter of Terrance White, Melvin’s brother.”

  “The one that’s allegedly MIA?” Amelia was on her feet, pacing.

  “Must’ve been around long enough to sire a daughter.” Maybe not one of my most helpful observations ever, but still.

  Nick rolled his eyes at me. “So, who’d she call? And why?”

  “More importantly, is she still there? Hector?” Amelia kept her attention on Hector.

  At the sound of his name, Hector came alive at the keyboard once again. He jerked his head, stopped typing, and looked up. “No. She isn’t. She signed out two hours ago.”

  “She meet him somewhere?” This was getting weirder and weirder. “And if so, what does that even mean? Is she in on this?” I could see the threads hanging before me, but I couldn’t string them together.

  “Why go to the press?” Hector’s fingers were still flying. It was a good question.

  “Because he knows we’re on to him.” Nick’s voice grew deadly still. The kind of quiet where the bad guy pulls out a sword and looks the good guy in the eye from across a sandy camp.

  “Because I asked the evidence tech about the gloves?” Something interesting was happening behind Hector’s special-agent mask.

  And suddenly, I saw it too. “Yup. You tripped his tip-up.” I looked at Nick for confirmation.

  He gave me a slight nod. He
didn’t usually appreciate my use of ice-fishing imagery.

  “Holy crap,” I said. “This guy is a lot smarter than your average bear.”

  “And he doesn’t hunt alone,” Nick added.

  The suspects grinned from the screen. Alex Burdock, thirty-five-year-old, garden-variety single American male. Loner by night, bowtie-wearing do-gooder by day. What happened when the bowtie came off?

  Melvin White, corn-fed country boy with a temper and animal-abuse history, keeping the home fires burning in a couple of convenience stores. Ties to the Amish community, Hillsboro, and Wildcat Mountain. I saw a blue line leading from Madison to all three places in my mind’s GPS.

  “Where do they find their victims? Are they hunting them?” What I was really wondering was how many more Nick lookalikes could they find?

  Amelia’s look could wither steel. “We’ve got to find more real commonalities between these two, find solid evidence linking them to the murder vics.”

  “Right. But we don’t exactly have a plethora of information to chew through on that front.” I stared up at White and Burdock. “Of all the classes in the world, Burdock shows up in yours, sitting next to a guy who looks like you.”

  “Can you think of anything either of them said during class discussion?” Amelia rested her chin on one hand, propping it up with the other and paced.

  Wrong turn. “Forget the trip down memory lane. Where did they meet the vics?” I raised my eyes to the ceiling, picturing sun-drenched ads luring people to Wisconsin, targeted at residents of neighboring states. “Festivals? Jamborees? Summer camping?”

  Nick tented his fingers and rested his head on the tips. “It is the land of milk and honey. Wouldn’t be the first friendship forged over a campfire between strangers.”

  Nick dropped his hands to the table. “Wait a minute. Fishing! What if they’re connected by fishing? Josie, didn’t you say something about tip-ups a few minutes ago?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “The first vic, staged to look like an ice-fishing accident, right?” Nick’s face was flushed, his fingers forming a map of Wisconsin on the wood table, pointing to Crandon by tapping his finger on the glossy wood surface. “What if they met their first vic fishing?”

  “Be a heckuva clue, killing him like that.” I bit my thumbnail. “Course, maybe it happened spontaneously. Maybe it wasn’t planned.”

  Nick drummed his fingers on the wood table. “Isn’t there some sort of ice fishing and snowmobiling extravaganza in Northern Wisconsin every winter? Maybe that’s where they met victim number one.”

  Amelia had been feverishly jotting down notes during our conversation. She stood still, pen and notebook in hand, gazing above our heads at the screen. “We’re getting close on both sides of the equation. Nick, Josie, do some digging on the ice-fishing angle.” Nick and I snapped open our computers and fired them up.

  Amelia raised an eyebrow and looked at Hector. “They’d have to stay somewhere, right? Comb through every hotel, motel, mom-and-pop stand and campground between Portage and Crandon.”

  Hector let out a big breath and turned to the agent next to him. “Start with the state tourism websites.”

  I popped my head up. “Google might be faster.”

  Hector rolled his eyes. “We know what we’re doing.”

  Amelia unfolded her arms, pinching the skin between her eyebrows. “Hector, text Agents Roscoe and Landry. See if they’ve got anything of interest from their search and rescue mission on the dating sites. And put another on the data surf for the Escape to Wisconsin snowmobiling, ice fishing, and camping connection. This has got to break wide open. Soon.”

  Hector stretched his neck, followed by his palms. He ended his stretch break by bending one finger at a time over the edge of the table. Renewed, his hands flew once again across the keyboard, stopping with a definitive punch on the Enter button when he’d finished. He looked up at Amelia Dixon, hands hovering over his keyboard. “What now, boss?”

  “Now we get ready to Escape to Wisconsin. Saddle up, boys.” I interrupted, mind filled with gruesome pictures of Kyle Wirth spread across the Welcome to Reedsburg sign. “We’re going.”

  Amelia stiffened, pushing away from the table. “Isn’t that my decision to make?” She leveled gray-green eyes at me.

  “Sure. That’s why I asked. We’re going?” I raised my palms up, giving what I hoped was an innocent tilt of my head.

  “Uh-huh.” Her deadpan tone told me she wasn’t buying it. “It’s the right place for us to lay in wait for the creep. We’re back on Nick’s original idea.” She nodded at him.

  Amelia held her hand up, her eyes glued to her computer screen. “Stop everything. Landry found it. Geoffrey Spencer, the first vic, from Crandon, registered for the 2016 New Year’s Day Fisheree and Polar Bear Swim, in Crandon, stayed two nights at a Holiday Inn on the outskirts of town. As did one M. White and an Alex Burdock. And they shared a room.” Amelia looked up at us. “I’d say our case just went all the way live.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Hector, get four agents on the road, two to canvass Spencer’s neighbors one more time. Have them ask about New Year’s weekend in particular. Did the vic talk about it? Bring home friends? See what pops.”

  “On it.” Hector stood to attention.

  “Get the other two on the road to that Holiday Inn. Have them push the same angles and anything else that moves.” Amelia nodded at Hector, and he was the out the door.

  Amelia turned her laser gaze to us. “Should I be comfortable with your best guess for his next step?”

  “Given that Reedsburg and Portage are equidistant from Baraboo, Hillsboro really does make perfect sense. On paper.” I rubbed my chin. “It seems like such a neat package. Could these guys really be imitating Nick’s classroom example so precisely? And if so, why be so obvious? What’re they trying to tell us?” My temples started to throb.

  Nick and Amelia exchanged a look that went uncomfortably long. Uh-oh.

  “What? What’s going on? What are you two afraid of?” I looked from one to the other.

  Neither spoke for several seconds. Nick stretched his neck and blinked. “It all points to the same thing. An ending of sorts. A finale. A last hurrah.”

  Amelia nodded.

  “You don’t get this intentional and start handing out these loud clues without a reason.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting that. But what’s the reason? Telling us we’re stupid? Or they’re tired of working for a living and wants their three squares on Uncle Sam’s dime? Or that they’re tired of working and of living?” Suicide by cop was not uncommon with violent criminals. But, this all seemed awfully elaborate for such a tired ending.

  “Burdock’s definitely triggered by Nick, wants to draw him in, show him up. He might’ve got impatient. Pointing the thunderbird’s wingtip to Josie’s lot was a smart way to seal the Nick deal.” Amelia addressed the wall over our heads, trancelike, arms folded again. “But why? Did the suspects meet in class, or did they wind up in his class because they learned about the switch to Nick after Max died?”

  I’d wondered the same thing, just not out loud. Mostly because I didn’t like any of the conceivable answers. No matter which thread might start being unraveled by any of the possible answers, they all ultimately led to a showdown in Hillsboro. And if we were about to go off in the wrong direction altogether—then our troubles were just beginning.

  “So, we head to Hillsboro. What’s our cover? What’ve they got up there besides Amish farmers and cheddar cheese?” Nick seemed anxious.

  Winter, spring, summer, or fall. There wasn’t a bad season for Wildcat Mountain as far as I was concerned. I could drive it in my sleep. And more often than not, back in the day, we’d stop in Hillsboro coming or going. Sometimes for pop, BBQ Corn Nuts, and M&M’s, and sometimes just for a potty break. Once, we’d broken our pattern
and stopped on a weekday, early evening. And got quite a treat. “They still doing those auctions?”

  Nick and Amelia stared at me, and then at each other.

  Hector looked up at that in time to answer my question with one of his own. He directed it to Amelia. “You got my text? About the auctions?”

  Amelia nodded. “Agents recovered visits to the Hillsboro Amish Auction House website from Burdock’s online search history. We’ve got him.”

  “Booyah!” Hector threw a fist in the air.

  “What do you know about that auction house, Jo? Why is he going there?”

  “Auctions are chaotic. Could make an ideal spot for a grab. I know they used to have live horse auctions. Probably still do, nothing much changes fast in small towns.”

  The fledgling thought had sprouted wings and flown into my past. And an unplanned stop that had segued into an adventure for me. “I met a cowboy at a gas station when I was in high school. I helped him prep horses for the sale ring. Best first date ever. Antiques, odds and ends, and lots of other stuff hit the block from noon to four p.m. I remember we had a few hours to get the horses ready before the auction started right back up at six p.m. sharp.”

  I could see myself as a teenage girl, clad in tight blue jeans, my best pair of boots, cinching up the horses, giving them one last rub down before throwing a leg up, riding them into the tiny sales ring, loudspeaker blaring.

  Amelia looked at her phone. “So, that gives us a little over six hours before the auction starts. Means Burdock’s probably in the area or headed there from wherever he hides out.” Amelia leaned forward, lips pursed. “I’m sending in advance teams now to cover the auction house. Two inside—”

  “No offense, Amelia, but your guys will stick out like donkeys at a horse show. You’d be better off sending me up there. Time’s a wasting, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s horses. And my way around an auction barn.”

  Nick gave me an appreciative glance. “All the distractions of prepping for an evening auction should make it that much easier for us to blend in, wait him out.”