Текст книги "Stranded"
Автор книги: Alex Kava
Соавторы: Alex Kava,Alex Kava
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
CHAPTER 48
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Gwen to host a meeting about a serial killer in her home. Agent Alonzo had managed to turn her warm and friendly dinner into a grotesque slide show. Her mind still reeled from her doctor’s phone call, making it difficult to concentrate. Several times when she looked across her huge mahogany dining room table she caught Julia Racine watching her. Thankfully the detective had the good sense to look away, even appearing a bit embarrassed at getting caught.
Once again, despite the wireless electronic gadgetry that Agent Alonzo had brought, he now focused on the paper map of the United States attached to a poster board. He had set it up at the end of the room on a very thin and sleek easel. It had reminded Gwen of a magician’s wand when Agent Alonzo unfolded it from a small bundle of foot-long rods that he had pulled out of a cute satchel. When she first saw that satchel she had smiled, thinking it looked like the agent had brought a toiletry kit for an overnight stay. That’s the way her mind was working tonight, ever since the phone call. She could take the simplest of things and turn them into the absurd. Perhaps that’s what cancer did to one’s mind.
When he took out pins and stuck them into the map, she wondered if it wouldn’t have been easier to keep track on a computer? And almost as soon as the thought came to her, she noticed a look exchanged between Assistant Director Kunze and Agent Alonzo, and she realized it was Kunze who insisted on the dinosaur equipment. And for a brief moment she found herself liking Kunze a little more.
We dinosaurs need to stick together.
Alonzo wore another purple button-down with khakis and Sperry Top-Siders. He had traded his wireless glasses for thick black-framed ones.
When had glasses become a revolving fashion accessory?
Her mind was all over the place. The others were discussing trace evidence and motives of murder while Gwen was evaluating the psychology of everyone’s fashion statements.
She didn’t think she had ever seen Keith Ganza without a white lab coat. His long gray ponytail actually went better with the T-shirt and suede vest he was wearing now, making him look hip instead of lab-coat nerd. Even Kunze had relaxed a little and wore a long-sleeved polo shirt, light blue, tucked neatly into the waistband of charcoal-colored trousers and nicely finished off with tasseled leather loafers.
Murder didn’t much interest Gwen at the moment. But shoes did and she knew shoes, men’s or women’s. It didn’t matter. Maggie teased her constantly about her shoe fetish. She’d never been able to get Tully to appreciate fine leather shoes, though she had bought him some sexy Italian leather loafers. And suddenly she missed them both terribly.
In the middle of her home, in the middle of this group of colleagues, she felt completely alone. The two people she loved and trusted and confided in were twelve hundred miles away. She felt like she was losing her mind, and it didn’t seem like a topic to cover sufficiently over the phone.
That’s when she noticed everyone in the room had stopped talking. What was worse, they were staring at her. Waiting. Had she missed something?
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Are you okay, Dr. Patterson?” Agent Alonzo asked.
“I’m fine. Just fine.”
“Before we get to Otis P. Dodd,” Kunze interrupted and she realized he was giving her a pass, “let’s go over the victims, the chronology, and what we know.”
“Sure,” Alonzo said, still eyeing Gwen with concern.
He replaced the poster-board map with a three-by-five whiteboard. Definitely Kunze’s idea, Gwen thought again. Agent Alonzo probably had a PowerPoint presentation ready to go.
Alonzo divided the board into six sections, then listed the name of each victim in order of their discovery at the top, left to right. He talked as he jotted down keywords, the data technician becoming professor.
“First is Orange Socks number one. Selena Thurber on her way home to Jacksonville, Florida. Her vehicle was found at a rest area off I-95 south of Richmond, Virginia. Her body was found in a culvert under a remote gravel road about a mile away. But only after Otis told a reporter where to look. It was recovered intact, though in very late stages of decomp. She had been missing for over a year. Identification was made from dental records. Coroner’s estimation is that she was killed shortly after being taken from the rest area.
“Victims number two and number three are Gloria Dobson and Zach Lester. Business colleagues from Concordia, Missouri. They were almost to their destination, a conference in Baltimore, when they were killed. Dobson was found in an alley beside a burning warehouse. Lester and their vehicle were recovered from a rest area off I-64 east of Covington, Virginia. Dobson’s face and teeth were bashed in, leaving her unrecognizable. She was ID’d by the serial number on her breast implants.”
Gwen refused to look at Racine, who would be watching her again. Gwen already knew this about Dobson. She also knew she had been a wife and mother of three, a breast cancer survivor. None of these victims was ordinary or an easy target.
Breast implants—good Lord, she hadn’t even thought about that.
She had missed the rest of Agent Alonzo’s rundown on Lester. Didn’t matter. She knew the poor man had been decapitated and his body eviscerated. “Left for the crows,” was how Tully had worded it.
Life was so fragile. In the end did it really matter whether it was cancer metastasizing through your body or a serial killer slicing out your guts or a bus plowing into you at an intersection? A quick glance and yes, Racine was watching her.
“Victim number four has been identified as Wendi Conroy from Philadelphia,” Agent Alonzo was saying. “She was on her way to Greensboro, North Carolina, to visit her sister. Her vehicle was discovered last month at a rest area off I-95 just south of Dale City, Virginia. Her body was found two days ago in a garbage bag buried at an Iowa farmstead. That property borders a rest area off I-29 just outside of Sioux City, Iowa. Her body was decapitated. She, too, was found wearing orange socks, but we believe they were put there by the killer postmortem. He left the receipt for the socks in the same bag he stuffed Ms. Conroy’s head into. He did us a favor and left her driver’s license with the body.
“At that same farmstead, inside the barn, was victim number five, a male. We’re still waiting for more information on him as well as an ID. Agents O’Dell and Tully did examine a tattoo that leads us to suspect the man may have been a motorcycle enthusiast.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Kunze interrupted again. “He was a biker with a Sturgis tattoo.”
“Yes, that’s correct.” Agent Alonzo didn’t take offense and continued. “The local coroner hasn’t performed an autopsy or given any assessment for time of death.
“Victim number six was discovered today. I heard from Agent Tully earlier. They believe the remains found in a ravine outside Manhattan, Kansas, are those of a missing teenager named Ethan Ames. He’s been missing for two days. His vehicle was left at a rest area off I-70. Also just outside of Manhattan. His body, according to Agent Tully’s early assessment, was partially dismembered. Oddly, however, the boy’s friend survived the attack but has provided no information on the attacker.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Keith Ganza said. “How do we know this is the same killer?”
“Agent O’Dell’s phone number was left at the scene,” Alonzo said.
“In a plastic bag with the kid’s severed finger,” Kunze added. “It’s him. And he’s playing some jackass game.”
“What I don’t understand,” Racine spoke for the first time, “is why he was willing to give up such a primo dumping ground. That farmstead sounded perfect. Vacant for years with nobody around. He even had a house to stay in. He could come and go as he pleased.”
“Actually, I checked on that,” Alonzo said. “When the owner passed away she left instructions in her will for her executor to donate the farmstead for a wildlife preserve within ten years of her death. The deadline was coming up. The executor’s in the process of handing over the land to the federal government.”
“Which makes me wonder if this killer has another place like this,” Kunze said. “Otis told Dr. Patterson that Jack has other dumping grounds. Otis claims to know exactly where another one is. If it’s like the Iowa farm and he feels comfortable enough to come and go, we might be able to take him by surprise. Or at least find something that could incriminate him, reveal who he is.”
“You’re actually thinking of taking Otis up on his offer?” Gwen asked.
“They’re digging up remains of possibly five more people on that Iowa farm. We already know of six victims. Four of them were murdered in the last month. Maybe that’s a fluke or maybe that’s his monthly kill number. Heaven forbid. Both Tully and O’Dell seem to think he’s accelerating. Could be he wants more bodies just for this crazy game he’s playing with us. I don’t know. What I do know is that we may not get this close again. If he gets bored with us, he could slip away to one of his hiding places. He’s a smart guy. He goes quiet for a while. Doesn’t mean he stops killing.”
Kunze looked around the table at each of them. No one disagreed.
“Otis was on target about the first woman with the orange socks.” Kunze looked at the whiteboard then added her name. “Selena Thurber. The Iowa farm is all over the national news now, but two days ago it hadn’t made the local news and yet Otis knew exactly where this dumping ground was. And he knew about the tattooed biker in the barn. Not just that there was a body in the barn, but a tattooed biker.”
Kunze looked to Gwen. “What do you think, Dr. Patterson? Should we take Otis P. Dodd up on his offer?”
All eyes were on Gwen. The director had given her a pass earlier. She may have been brought onto this task force for political cover, maybe even as a scapegoat, but Kunze was now sincere in eliciting her advice. Advice, not just her opinion.
“When I met Otis he was quick to point out that he was a ‘powermaniac,’ not a ‘pyromaniac.’ ” Gwen tried to focus. Her mind had been scattered all evening. “I’ve studied a good deal of his arsons. They were big fires. They were dangerous ones. But for all his talk about power, his fires have amazingly had no casualties. That would indicate that he enjoys and craves the excitement and the attention. He’s been in prison for about a year now. He knows he has valuable information and he wants something in return.”
“Actually he’s added a caveat to his original request,” Kunze said.
“I won’t go along,” Gwen said quickly. “I’m not trained.”
“No, no, it’s not you he wants to tag along. All the recent media coverage of the Iowa farm got his attention. He wants that pretty FBI agent to come along.”
“Maggie?” But Gwen wasn’t surprised. She remembered how charming Otis had been when she suggested she was too old for him. Like a teenage boy with a crush.
“He knows the two of you are friends.”
“The CNN profile?”
A reporter had done a profile on Maggie last month during the arson investigations in the District. He had been very thorough.
“They’ve played the piece a couple of times already. It doesn’t matter. This trip would be part of O’Dell and Tully’s scavenger hunt. Of course, I would want them along. But does it affect your decision about Otis?”
Gwen glanced at Racine, Ganza, and Alonzo. If she said no, there could be another dozen bodies that would never be found. And they wouldn’t be any closer to finding Jack.
“Let Otis have his trip.”
CHAPTER 49
When Tully suggested the three of them go out for a late dinner, Maggie welcomed the escape despite her exhaustion. Had they stayed in their adjoining rooms she knew the space would be too confining—two’s company, three’s a crowd, especially when two of the three were sending sparks off each other.
Not far from the hotel and not far from the university’s campus was a section of the city called Aggieville that included shops, eateries, nightclubs, and bars and grills. They decided on New York style pizza, appropriate for a city nicknamed the Little Apple. Tully took the liberty of ordering them a large pizza called the 18th and 8th, one of the restaurant’s specialties that included pepperoni, ground beef, Italian sausage, pork sausage, and Canadian bacon. Maggie added a salad. Creed was pleased to see sweet tea on the menu. Tully ordered draft beer. Maggie asked for a Diet Pepsi, not trusting herself, not wanting to let her guard down.
Tully filled them in on the recovery effort of Ethan’s body. The pizza arrived when Tully was pulling up the photo gallery on his smartphone. He slid the phone across the table to Maggie and Creed. It was a round bistro table that allowed the three of them their own space quite comfortably, but in order to see the smartphone’s screen Creed scooted his chair closer to Maggie. While Tully served up the pizza, Maggie slid her finger over the screen, going from one photo to the next, taking in each gruesome discovery, just as Tully and Detective Lopez’s crew had.
The body was a mess and at some point Maggie realized Creed had moved his chair back away to his original place. She remembered him telling her and Tully, when Grace alerted in the barn, that he didn’t help with the digging. But certainly he must have seen plenty of dead bodies, many of them brutalized.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Not my favorite part of the job.”
He chugged down the rest of his iced tea and started looking for the waiter to order another. Maggie wondered if he wished the tea were something stronger.
“Oh, hold on,” Tully said and took the smartphone back. “I have a picture of the boots they found in the garbage from the rest area. I showed the boots to Creed earlier,” he told Maggie as he searched for the photo. His finger swiped across the screen several times. “Lopez agreed to let me overnight them to Alonzo. So that’s what I did after I dropped Creed at the hotel.”
Finally, he found the one he wanted and handed the phone to Maggie.
They looked like ordinary, lace-up hiking boots, but on the toes she could see rust-colored splatters.
“Blood?”
“Won’t know till the lab tests it but it sure looks like it. Notice the white stain?”
The bottom quarter of the leather was covered in a zigzag white powdery stain.
“What is it?”
“Creed said it looked like—well, you go ahead and tell her.”
“My boots get that way after I’ve spent some time walking in brackish water.” He scooped up a slice of pizza in one hand and took a bite. Whatever squeamishness he’d had was thankfully gone.
“Brackish?” she asked.
“Mix of salt water and fresh water. Usually a bay where a river meets the ocean or the gulf.”
“If the boots are Jack’s,” Tully said, “it could mean he lives someplace close to the ocean or the gulf.”
“Are we sure they’re not Ethan’s?”
“They’re not Ethan’s,” Tully assured her. “His feet are still in his sneakers. They’re just not attached to his legs.”
“So Jack spends a good deal of his time in a coastal area. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“Creed showed me the map you two were looking over.”
Maggie almost choked on a bite of pizza. Her eyes darted to Creed and she hated that a flush was already spreading to her face. Tully, however, didn’t notice any of this. He was busy searching his pockets for a piece of paper and finally settled on a napkin, his second favorite thing to write on. He pulled out a pen, and Maggie, searching to get her mind on anything other than Creed and what had happened back at the hotel, pointed at Tully’s pen. This thing was fancy. Nothing like the cheap throwaway pens Tully usually had in his pocket.
“Whoa, where did you get that?”
“Gwen gave it to me for our anniversary.”
“You guys have anniversaries that you celebrate?”
He ignored her jab, pointed the pen in her direction, and smiled as a blue light-beam shot her in the face.
“That’s not all,” he said and twisted the pen until it came apart. He spilled out the contents hidden in the top section of the pen. Two X-Acto blades and a two-inch-long serrated blade. He turned the other section to show the now exposed stainless-steel screwdriver.
“Wow! Just like James Bond,” Creed said.
“So Gwen thinks you’re James Bond?”
“As Emma would say, Bond is so yesterday. More like Jason Bourne.”
“Oh right.” Maggie laughed. “That’s exactly who I see when I think of you.”
“Wait, there’s more,” he told them as he put the pen back together again. He screwed off the very top of the pen and showed them the display.
“A compass?”
“Not a compass,” Creed said. “Is that a GPS?”
“Yup.” Tully snapped the top back in place and started making marks on the napkin. “And it writes, too. Does my woman love me or what?”
And that’s the moment that Creed found Maggie’s eyes. Something passed between them, strong enough that Creed looked away. Not just looked away but took a deep breath.
“How about another drink?” he asked them, and he was already waving over the waiter.
Maggie’s cell phone started ringing. She glanced at it. No caller ID but she recognized the number. It was the same one that had called earlier and didn’t leave a voice message.
“This is Maggie O’Dell.”
“That bastard tried to kill me.”
“Excuse me. Who is this?”
“It’s Lily. Your new best friend from Iowa. You already forgot who the hell I am?”
“Slow down. No, of course I haven’t forgotten.”
“The damned bastard bashed me in the head.”
“Lily, what are you talking about? Who tried to kill you?”
“The son of a bitch who’s been burying all those bodies. That bastard in the stupid Booty Hunter cap … he tried to kill me.”
CHAPTER 50
It was almost midnight when Maggie called Sheriff Uniss in Sioux City, Iowa. She was ready to apologize but the sheriff beat her to it.
“I don’t know how it happened.” He was immediately defensive. “Nobody got your name from me.”
“What exactly are you talking about?”
“The media. They swarmed the place like locusts almost as soon as you two left. We’ve got them all out there: CNN, ABC, FOX, even frickin’ Entertainment Tonight. I didn’t give them your name.”
She hadn’t turned on a television or listened to a radio since her and Tully’s drive down. While she listened to Sheriff Uniss, she walked across her hotel room and turned on the TV, found CNN, and within seconds saw why the sheriff was frazzled by her call. Her photo was set in the upper right corner of the screen while a reporter spoke from the scene. She recognized the long driveway of the Iowa farm in the background. She left the Mute button on. Sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through her hair.
This is not a big deal, she told herself.
“That’s not why I’m calling, Sheriff,” she said.
“One of the men said they’ve been running some kind of profile piece on you. I swear to you, they didn’t get a single thing from me or my men.”
Maggie switched the channel to FOX and saw that her photo was a part of their “breaking news” alert, too. Must be a slow news cycle and again, she brushed it off.
“Sheriff, listen to me for a minute, please. The construction crew that was helping, are they still there?”
“Construction crew?”
“Yes, the foreman, Buzz, and his crew.” She shook her head in frustration. Why hadn’t they gotten more than the men’s first names?
“No, those guys have moved on. We’ve got this place marked off as a crime scene indefinitely. Those guys won’t be back any time soon.”
“They’ve already loaded up their equipment?”
“Early yesterday.”
Damn it!
She heard a knock at the adjoining doorway, which was open, and Creed peeked around the doorjamb. He held up two cans of Diet Pepsi. She waved him into the room.
“We need to bring in Buzz for questioning. Is that something that your department can handle?”
“Of course we can handle that, but you’ll need to tell me what the hell we’re questioning him about.”
Creed was watching the television screen and she wished she’d shut the damned thing off.
“I got a call from Lily.”
“Lily?”
“The woman we found in the house.”
“That lot lizard?”
“Yes. She said Buzz tried to kill her.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. And you believed her? She’s probably strung out again on high-speed chicken feed.”
“High-speed chicken feed?”
“Meth. That’s what the truckers call it.”
“Look, Sheriff, you need to find Buzz and, if possible, Lily.”
“She called you but she didn’t tell you where she was? I hate to say this, Agent O’Dell, but sometimes people on meth hallucinate the wildest things.”
Maggie knew that. She remembered Lily trying to pick imaginary bugs off herself. But the woman had sounded genuinely in distress. And Buzz fit their general profile. A man who traveled from worksite to worksite across the country. Mid to late thirties, lean, and in good shape. Used to hard, physical labor but smart and able to manage people. He could overpower a victim easily, and yet he was friendly enough to win over those same victims. She remembered him giving her the cap and making her feel like a part of his team.
“If you don’t have the manpower to find Lily and Buzz, just tell me now,” Maggie told him.
There was silence and she waited it out. He was probably thinking of the media fallout if he said no. Or worse, if it leaked that he hadn’t acted on an FBI agent’s request.
“Are you going to want to question him when we bring him in?” he finally asked.
“Yes. As soon as you find out his name, text it to me.”
“Sure enough.”
“And, Sheriff, please let me know the minute you find Lily. You might check the house at the farm.”
“There’re people crawling all over the place. I doubt that she’s there at the house.”
“Check the house.”
He didn’t bother to muffle his heavy sigh. Then he added a second “Sure enough.”
Creed sat on the corner of the other bed and when she looked over at him he held out a can of Diet Pepsi.
“Turns out they have your brand in the vending machine.”
“Thanks.” She tried not to be impressed that he remembered her favorite soda.
He’d already popped the tab on both cans. She took a sip. Felt his eyes watching her. She turned around and shut off the TV. She could hear Tully’s voice in the next room. She knew he had the more difficult phone call—their boss.
This was the first time she and Creed were alone together since they had kissed and … whatever that incident was on the bed. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. Maybe that sort of thing was a common occurrence for him. It certainly was not for her.
“About before,” she said and immediately his eyes told her he knew exactly what “before” she was referring to and that she didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s no big deal?” she asked too quickly, surprised at the slight sting. Isn’t that what she wanted? That it not be a big deal.
But his face was serious. There was no trademark hitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth when he said, “Only if you want it to be.”
And there it was. She could feel it all over again. Electricity. Too strong for comfort.
He stood up but his eyes stayed on hers even as he took two steps back, away from the bed, away from her. His attempt to break the circuit?
“You should try to get some sleep,” he said.
She nodded. Smiled. “I haven’t been sleeping much lately.”
“Insomnia?”
“Guess it comes with the territory.”
“I’ve found that Scotch or bourbon usually works.”
“You, too, huh?”
“There’s a legend that says when you can’t sleep it’s because you’re awake in someone else’s dream.”
She thought about that. Took a few more sips of the soda, then said, “Someone else’s dream? Or someone else’s nightmare?”
That’s when Tully came into the room. His hair stood up where he’d raked his fingers through it too many times. Maggie noticed a fresh stain on his shirt—pizza sauce. He looked exhausted. He leaned a shoulder against the wall as if he needed it to prop him up.
His eyes found and held Maggie’s. “Sounds like you and me are going to Florida.”
