Текст книги "The 9th Girl"

Автор книги: Tami Hoag

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

41

On the upside of kidnapping a news reporter was the fact that he didn’t have to wonder about the investigation. There were no long lapses in coverage of the case, particularly on the station she worked for.

Fitz kept the TV tuned in for all the breaking news—of which there was none, of course. They kept showing the parking lot of Dana Nolan’s apartment building, blocked off with fluttering ribbons of yellow crime scene tape and crawling with cops and crime scene investigators swarming around her car like ants on a scrap of food.

He recognized Kovac moving around the scene with his hands jammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched against the wind. There was no sign of his partner, Liska. That was a bit of a disappointment.

The NewsWatch people kept putting up photographs of their missing news girl and making pleas for information. The level of desperation was very high. He liked that. The adrenaline rush he got from hearing that was something new and intoxicating and probably addicting. He had always been happy with his way of doing things. The balance of risk to reward he maintained had always been just right for him. But this, he admitted, was heady stuff. He had to be careful not to get drunk on it and make a mistake. He had to keep his objective in mind.

He had a point to make.

He couldn’t get too excited that the homicide captain, Kasselmann, made a personal appearance not only at the official press conference but in the studio on the NewsWatch set, to say the police department was taking very seriously the idea that they were dealing with a very dangerous predator in Doc Holiday. Giving credit where credit was due.

That was all he really wanted at the heart of it, he thought with a smile as he turned to his latest victim, who was still alive and crying, waiting for him to kill her. He was an artist, and he wanted recognition for his work.

He chose a knife with a fine sharp point and leaned over the terrified girl. She was naked, tied down spread-eagle to the work table. He had removed the duct tape from her mouth and replaced it with a red ball gag. He could smell her fear. The scent was an aphrodisiac like no other. Her eyes widened with panic as he touched the tip of the blade to the center of her chest. Blood bloomed rose red against her pale white skin.

“And you, my love,” he said as the excitement stirred within him, “will be my masterpiece.”

42

“The address on his DL is one of those mailbox places,” Kovac said, pouring another cup of coffee. He figured he had to be on his second gallon of the day. Dinner was pizza someone had left over from lunch. Dessert would be a handful of whatever antacids he could find in his desk drawer. Tinks had gone home to feed her kids. He wished he was one of them.

“We’ve got a phone number, right?” Kasselmann said, taking a seat at the table, which was littered with paperwork and file folders, coffee cups and food wrappers. He cast a dubious glance at the lone remaining piece of pizza drying out like a piece of roadkill on the abandoned greasy cardboard box. He had spent most of his day dealing with the media. The knot in his tie was still square. His only concession to exhaustion was the removal of his suit jacket.

In contrast, Kovac knew he looked like he had crawled out of bed after sleeping off a three-day bender in his clothes. He needed a shave. He needed a shower. He needed a good night’s sleep and a long vacation on a beach someplace where no one had ever heard the words windchill factor. He had spent the day either freezing his ass off outdoors or sweating like a horse in this room.

“Elwood spoke to him yesterday. He said the guy was cordial and sympathetic and wished he could do something to help,” Kovac said. “I called the number this afternoon and left a message requesting a callback. I haven’t heard anything.”

“We need his phone records,” Kasselmann said. “Find out where that phone is pinging.”

“I’ve got no cause for a warrant.” He shrugged. “I talked my way into getting as much as the address. He’s got no wants or warrants. I’ve got nothing but some iffy surveillance video. Tinks isn’t convinced it’s him on the tape. I can’t swear to it, but I’ve got that feeling in my gut.”

“I wouldn’t bet against that,” Kasselmann said. “You’ve got good instincts, Sam.”

“Right now, that and a dollar will buy you jack shit,” he said. “’Cause other than my hunch we’ve got nothing to go on here. No witnesses. No fingerprints. No suspects. No leads.”

He walked to the wall where he had taped a copy of the missing persons flier with the photo of Penny Gray and the signature of a killer.

HAPPY HOLIDAY

Smug bastard.

“This guy is sitting out there somewhere laughing and giving us the finger,” he said.

“We’d better hope that’s all he’s doing,” Kasselmann said, getting to his feet.

Kovac said nothing, but he couldn’t help but recall what John Quinn had said that morning. Doc Holiday had taken Dana Nolan for the primary purpose of killing her. He had had her in his control now for seventeen hours.

And there wasn’t a damn thing Sam could do about it.

•   •   •

“HE THREW THE FIRST PUNCH, MOM.”

“I know,” Nikki said, glancing at her son.

He sat at the kitchen island with an ice pack wrapped around his right hand. He looked like less of a little boy to her tonight, more of a young man. Today she had seen him stand up to a bully and protect a young lady. He was growing up. She couldn’t decide if she was sad or proud or scared to death. All of the above, she supposed.

It had been so difficult to stay in the car as she had pulled up to the scene of the fight. But she had stayed put and let Elwood step in, knowing she would only have embarrassed Kyle and given his enemies future ammunition to use against him.

“Are you going to want more of this?” she asked, as she replaced the aluminum foil over the pan of lasagna. She had stopped at their favorite Italian restaurant on her way home and picked up dinner. It wasn’t homemade, but it was better than nothing.

She hated the thought that the best she could do these days for her sons was “better than nothing.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Probably.”

She slid the pan back into the oven and left the temperature on the lowest setting. “Don’t let me forget this and burn the house to the ground.”

“Okay.”

R.J. came into the kitchen to refill his glass with milk. “Can I have a brownie?”

“Yes.”

“Can I watch TV?”

“Is your homework done?”

He nodded, digging a brownie out of the pan Marysue had brought over. Better than nothing . . .

“Can we get a dog?”

“No. Thought you would just slip that one by me, did you?” Nikki said.

He made a goofy face. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

Nikki shook her head, glad for the comic relief. But as soon as her youngest had left the room, her mind went back to the matter at hand.

“What’s the story with the Fogelman kid?” she asked. “Has he always been a problem for you?”

“That guy’s such a jerk.”

“The world is full of them,” Nikki said. “Some are worse than others.”

Some grew up to be criminals. Some grew up to be serial killers. Aaron Fogelman had a temper. He didn’t hesitate to use his fists—even against a girl. Where did he draw the line? Nikki wanted to know everything about him. Did he have empathy for other people? Was he cruel to animals? Did he have a history of destroying property?

“Does he make a habit of hurting people?” she asked.

Kyle shrugged. “He’s mostly talk. He’s a bully. He does what bullies do.”

“You said he struck Gray that night at the Rock and Bowl. Had you ever seen him hit a girl before?”

“No, but he calls girls bitches and whores and stuff like that.”

It was terrible to imagine a kid Kyle’s age doing what had been done to Penny Gray, but Nikki knew it happened. She hoped to God it hadn’t happened this time. Because of the complication of her being Kyle’s mother, she had passed the responsibility of further investigating Aaron Fogelman to Elwood. He had requested a meeting with the boy’s father and had been referred to the Fogelmans’ attorney.

“So what’s the story with you and this girl Brittany?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

He shrugged and blushed and dodged her gaze. “She’s a friend.”

She was the friend whose photograph Nikki had found in the trash some months ago. Her baby’s first girlfriend. “She’s very pretty.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, squirming on his stool.

Nikki took the seat beside him. “She seems very sweet. She was friends with Gray?”

“Yeah. We were all in that writing workshop last summer. Gray and Britt and me. We used to hang out.”

“And then?”

“Then Brittany wanted to be with Christina’s crowd, and Christina and Gray don’t get along.”

“She seems to be rethinking that now.”

“She’s so much better than that,” he said with frustration. “I don’t get why girls want to be like Christina.”

“I vaguely remember being a teenage girl,” Nikki said. “It seemed so important to be accepted by the coolest kids.”

“Accepted,” he muttered with a small ironic twist to his mouth. “Accepted by kids who don’t accept anyone different from them.”

“People don’t always make sense.”

“Brittany talked Gray into going to the Rock and Bowl that night,” he said. “Now she feels guilty. We both do. I told her maybe we should go see Gray’s mom. You know, give her condolences or whatever.”

Nikki’s heart swelled with pride. She was somehow managing to raise a responsible young man.

“That’s a really nice idea, Kyle. I’m sure Gray’s mom would be touched by that,” she said. “But I’m going to ask you to wait on that. Brittany should go if she wants to, but things are complicated with me investigating this case and you knowing Gray, and all of that. It’s best if you stay away from all of those people for now—Gray’s mom, Christina, Aaron Fogelman. Can you do that for me? Just lay low for a while until this gets sorted out.”

He frowned down at the ice pack on his hand, thinking for a moment. “Can I still text Britt?”

“I don’t have a problem with that.”

He didn’t like being taken out of his role, but in the end, he nodded. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Nikki said.

She leaned over and hugged him around his broadening shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Do you know how proud I am of who you’re growing up to be?”

He ducked his head and blushed and slipped away, embarrassed in a good way, Nikki thought. She loved him so much she thought her heart would burst.

The doorbell rang, saving him from further humiliation. Nikki excused him to go to his room as she went to the door to find Kovac standing on her porch.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“No,” he said, his face set in his trademark scowl. “The world is going to hell on a sled and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.”

“And this is news?”

“No, but I figured if I came over here and said it, you might feed me something that isn’t crawling with salmonella.”

“You didn’t eat that pizza, did you?”

“No!” he said. “Maybe. Just a slice.”

“Get in here,” she ordered, holding the door open.

He came in with an armload of files and toed off his shoes in the foyer. “Do you think I’ll get food poisoning?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. You have a stomach like a billy goat.”

“As it happens, I smell like one too.”

“You can’t scare me. I live with boys.”

They went into the kitchen and he set his stack of paperwork on the island counter beside the stack of paper she had brought home and took the seat at the island that Kyle had vacated. Nikki pulled the lasagna out of the oven and made him a plate.

“You didn’t make this,” he said after the first bite.

“Why do you say that with such conviction?”

With food in his stomach he found half a smile. “I’m glad you got to eat with your kids tonight. Who cares where the food came from?”

Nikki took her seat beside him and warmed her hands with her coffee mug. “Any news on our news girl?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a call in to my serial killer. Just waiting for him to call me back and confess.”

“Do you really think it’s Fitzgerald?” she asked. “If that turns out to be true, we’re going to look like a bunch of assholes. We could have had him a year ago. He’s killed how many girls since then? How could we have missed that, Sam?”

“He’s damn good at what he does. He’s got it down to a fine science. We already knew that,” he said. “I’m trying to find out what I can about Frank Fitzgerald, but I’ve got nothing to go on. All I know right now is he has no police record and he gets his mail at a storefront in a strip mall in Des Moines. That’s probably not even his real name.”

“He’s been so careful,” Nikki said. “We’ve gone over all of the Doc Holiday cases ten times. He hasn’t made a mistake. I just can’t buy that he screwed up so badly with Penny Gray. Quinn said these guys make their mistakes when they change their MO. If he snatched the Gray girl, she fit his pattern. Dana Nolan doesn’t fit his old pattern, but I believe that’s him.”

“And I’m waiting for the mistake,” Kovac said. “I hope to God he makes it soon. Anything new on your side?”

She filled him in on the situation with the Fogelman boy.

Kovac gave her a careful look, like he thought she might punch him and he had better keep his distance. “You’re sure you’re being objective about this kid, Tinks? You’re not just being a momma tiger?”

“No,” she said. “It’s two separate things. Do I want to kick his ass for giving Kyle a hard time? Yes. Do I put my detective cap on and look at him and see a narcissistic sociopath with violent and misogynistic tendencies? Yes. You interviewed him. What did you think?”

“That he’s a narcissistic sociopath with violent tendencies. And he’s a liar. And he needs his ass kicked.”

Nikki lifted her hands. “See? Nobody wants to believe kids could do what was done to Penny Gray, but you and I both know they can and do. And we can’t rule out Michael Warner yet either. The sex abuse angle is too strong. I’m hoping maybe we get some kind of tip out of the assembly at the school today. Tippen’s niece connected well with the kids. I’m hoping she’ll hear something through one of the social media outlets.

“I keep coming back to Julia Gray,” she went on. “What does she know that she’s not telling us, or that she’s not admitting to herself? Does she just not want to see it?”

“She’s lost her daughter,” Kovac said. “Maybe she just wants to hang on to what she has left.”

“Even if what she has left is a man who, at best, had sex with her child, or, at worst, killed her? That’s insane.”

He raised his eyebrows and pointed to the tiny caterpillar line of stitches above her left eyebrow where Julia Gray had struck her.

“Yeah,” she conceded, reaching across the island to grab a file folder off the stack. “She’s walking a mental tightrope, praying her fiancé isn’t a pedophile and hoping her daughter was taken by a serial killer.”

Kovac slid his dinner plate aside. “Yeah. I nominate that one for Mother of the Year.”

“If we could get our hands on the girl’s phone or her computer, I know we’d get some answers,” Nikki said. “Kyle says Gray made a lot of videos on her phone. She posted some of herself reciting her poetry to her YouTube account, but it’s safe to assume there are a lot more. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a video diary.”

“Her mother told us she kept her laptop with her at all times,” Kovac said. “It could still be in her car, wherever that is. More likely it’s with her killer. If that was someone in her circle, they would have to know it might contain evidence. They would have to get rid of it. If Doc Holiday killed her, he would probably keep it for a souvenir.”

“We know someone still has her phone,” Nikki said.

“And they were nearby when they sent texts to Julia Gray.”

“Michael Warner and Aaron Fogelman both live within a mile or so of the Gray house as the crow flies. And we have no way of knowing where Doc is. He could live nearby or he could be watching Julia Gray’s house for all we know.”

“There’s a grim notion,” Kovac said.

Liska arched a brow. “Do we get to have any other kind?”

43

can’t blieve u btrayed me like that Britt. So hurt!

Brittany stared at the text and sighed. There were a dozen like that, at least. She had answered none of them.

It made her angry to read them. Christina made out like she was the wounded party. She hadn’t asked for Brittany’s side of the story. She hadn’t asked why Brittany had left the assembly the way she had, or how she had come to be walking down the street with Kyle Hatcher. Christina was only about Christina. The universe revolved around her, and everything that happened, happened to her or because of her.

She was so selfish. Even when it appeared she was being generous, she was being selfish. Brittany looked now on the reasons she had liked Christina in the first place and saw them in a completely different light. What she had seen as strength, she now saw as arrogance. What she had seen as generosity, she now saw as manipulation. She saw that Christina did nothing without expecting something in return. She was like a fairy-tale queen who pretended to love her subjects but only wanted what they could give her or do for her. And when they didn’t meet her expectations, they were punished.

Brittany knew she was being punished even as she sat alone in her bedroom. She had gone on Facebook and Twitter to see what was being said about her and about Kyle by Christina and her minions. Lies, accusations, name-calling.

The flip side of friendship with Christina Warner.

Her phone pinged again.

I wish I understood. Can we meet and talk?

Brittany didn’t answer. Christina didn’t want to understand. She wanted to ambush her—just like she had Gray that night at the Rock & Bowl.

Gray might have been strange and out there and difficult, but she had always been honest. She called a spade a spade, as Brittany’s father liked to say—which was why she had so few friends.

That was the catch, Brittany realized. Now that Gray was gone, she was finally seeing the truth: that Gray would have been a better friend to her than Christina ever could have been.

It was the same with Kyle. Kyle had no time for the bullshit games of Christina’s crowd. He said what he meant and meant what he said. And for a while, Brittany hadn’t wanted to hear it. His truth had made her angry and resentful. But he only wanted her to see what was real and be the best person she could be, and wasn’t that a better friend than the kind of friend Christina was?

She walked around her happy yellow bedroom with her arms wrapped around herself as if she were freezing, wishing life didn’t have to be so hard, wondering what she should do next. Something strong, she thought. Something positive.

She thought about the poem Sonya Porter had read at the assembly that morning—Gray’s poem about acceptance. And she thought about what Sonya had said after, that they should all be angry someone had taken Gray and her talent and everything she had been and could have become away from them.

I am angry, Brittany thought.

She was angry with Christina; she was angry with the killer; she was angry with herself. The question was: What was she going to do about it? Wallow and cry and pout and wish the world was a different place? Or stand up and make the world a different place by being who she needed to be?

She picked up her iPad from her bed and paged through her pictures from the writer’s workshop that summer—herself and Kyle and Gray—and realized that Gray was touching and changing her life even now. More now than when she had been alive. She owed her friend something for that.

She and Kyle had made a plan to go to see Gray’s mom, to give her their condolences. They didn’t want to wait until there was a funeral or a memorial, when it would be easy to just be one of a bunch of people saying what they were supposed to say. They wanted to do it together, on their own, when it took an effort, and they couldn’t just blend in with the crowd. They had decided they owed it to Gray to go tell her mom that they had considered her daughter their friend and that they were sorry she was gone.

They wanted to do it tonight—before they could talk themselves out of it. They had agreed to go after supper. Brittany wanted to go and come back before her mother returned from her pottery class. Kyle would come here and they would walk together the few blocks to Gray’s house.

Her phone announced another text message with a bright ping! Brittany glanced at it, braced to see Christina’s name on the screen, but it was Kyle.

how r u? r u ok?

That was how he always started his texts to her—with concern for her. As many times as she’d been a bitch to him, as many times as she’d told him to leave her alone, his first concern had always been her well-being.

Wish u were here, she typed, then hesitated, thinking she wasn’t brave enough to send it. She looked at the picture of Gray on her iPad and drew on the memory of her friend’s strength. Gray would have sent the text. Gray would have told her to send the text. Gray would have said, Fuck yeah! Send it!

She hit the Send button, and butterflies took wing in her stomach as the message went out into space.

The answer came back right away. Me 2

She felt giddy and guilty at the same time. She’d been so mean to him, and he was so nice.

Can’t go with u to c Gray’s mom cuz of my mom/investigation. Really sorry

Her disappointment was instant. She wanted to see him, to spend time with him without all the tension and BS of school and the people in it. More than that, she realized, she wanted to hide behind his strength when they met with Gray’s mom.

Her first excuse was that she was shy by nature. She had met Gray’s mom only a couple of times, and her perception of Julia Gray had been colored by the things her daughter had said about her—that she was cold, that she was selfish, that she was a bitch. But that had been Gray’s reality with her mother and didn’t have anything to do with the here and now, or with what Brittany needed to do to fulfill her obligation to her friend.

The truth was that she didn’t want to be strong on her own. She wanted to let Kyle be strong for her.

No.

No worries, she typed. will txt u when I get back.

UL go alone? U shouldn’t.

It’s just a few blocks.

Still wish u wouldn’t.

I’ll b fine.

B careful.

I will. Thnx.

She sent the message and tucked her phone into the front pocket of her baby-pink cashmere hoodie, feeling like she had him close to her that way. Grabbing the handle of Gray’s duffel bag, she went downstairs to pull on her coat and the new Ugg boots she had gotten for Christmas. It would take ten minutes to walk to Gray’s house near the lake.

It seemed strange to be carrying the belongings of someone who would never use them again, she thought as she started down the street. Makeup, underwear, sweaters, and socks. A toothbrush, a hairbrush, her laptop computer.

The weirdest thought was that Gray lived on inside her computer. She kept everything on it. Her journal, her poetry. iPhoto contained hundreds of pictures of herself and her friends, and all the places she had been and people she had found interesting. She had always been snapping photos with her phone, making videos on her phone. She recorded everything and everyone—friends, strangers, homeless people, dogs. She was always recording her thoughts and ideas.

In her recordings and in her poetry, Gray would always be alive, telling her story.

Brittany wondered if Gray’s mom would let her copy some of what was on the computer. She could keep it like a digital scrapbook. She would end up spending more time with Gray after she was dead than when she had been alive.

Her nerves were vibrating as she walked. The night was pitch-dark. There seemed to be no stars in the sky. She could see people in their homes looking warm and snug on the other side of their picture windows. They didn’t notice her. She was alone out in the cold.

She hurried from one pool of white streetlight to the next, suddenly too aware of being the only person on the street. The police thought a serial killer might have gotten Gray. She thought of someone like that haunting dark alleys in bad parts of the city or on isolated roads in industrial parks or out in the country—like they showed in the movies—not in her nice upper-middle-class neighborhood. That was what she thought when she was in the safety of her own home. Now she was on the street, alone, walking to the home of a girl who had been murdered.

Inside her hoodie pocket her phone pinged with another message. Brittany stuck her hand inside her coat and fished it out. Another message from Christina.

I can pick u up. We should talk.

What was there to talk about? The fact that Christina thought she was too stupid to look on Twitter to see the things her friends were saying?

Annoyed, she turned the sound to Vibrate and tucked the phone back in the pocket of her sweater. A bolt of panic went through her as she thought Christina might already be in the neighborhood, expecting Brittany to cave in and agree to meet her somewhere or let Christina pick her up. What if Christina was at Mrs. Gray’s house, along with her father?

Dr. Warner was engaged to Gray’s mom now, something Gray had been strongly against. She disliked Michael Warner. He had been her therapist for a while. She had probably told him all kinds of things she wouldn’t have told her mother. Having him dating her mother was like some kind of breach of patient/doctor trust. Gray and her mother had fought about it, and her mom had kicked her out of the house because of that fight. Maybe Gray had said the same vile thing about Dr. Warner to her mother that she had said to Christina that night at the Rock & Bowl.

Brittany had met Dr. Warner on several occasions, and she had to admit she didn’t like him either. There was something vaguely creepy and phony about him. She didn’t like the way he was always touching Christina when they were together—putting his hand on her shoulder, on her back, touching her hair. Christina wasn’t bothered by it, but it made Brittany uncomfortable. She decided if there were cars in the Gray driveway, she was going to turn around and go home.

She turned onto the block where Gray had lived and squinted against the glare of headlights coming her way. Her heart picked up a beat. The dark car seemed to crawl toward her like a panther stalking, sliding closer and closer to the curb. She thought of Christina and Aaron. Aaron’s dark car. She thought of the look on his face that morning as he ordered her to get in his car. She thought of him rushing at Kyle, fists swinging, and the way he had struck Gray that night at the Rock & Bowl . . .

She thought about serial killers . . . and girls turned into zombies . . .

She was all alone.

The car came alongside her, and the passenger’s window slid down.

Brittany’s heart was in her throat. She should have listened to Kyle and stayed home.

“Excuse me, miss,” a middle-aged woman said. “Can you tell us how to get to the freeway?”

Brittany was so relieved her knees went weak. She didn’t even think about the fact that these people were strangers and could have been dangerous too. The lady was her mother’s age. In the movies and on TV serial killers were all creepy-looking guys with scary eyes, not soccer moms.

She gave the people directions and took a deep breath as they drove away. She was alone again.

The day before, this neighborhood had been all over the news. Brittany had seen some of the coverage on television. News vans had lined the street. Cameramen and photographers and reporters had been camped outside the Gray home. Gray had been a missing person then. Now she was dead, and the news vans were gone. What happened after a person was gone was of no interest to anyone outside that person’s life.

The neighborhood was empty now and dark there at the end of the block backing onto the darker, emptier park. A creepy feeling scratched at the back of Brittany’s neck as she walked up the driveway to Gray’s house. A part of her hoped Julia Gray wasn’t home. She wanted to turn around and just go back. She could wait and do this another time, when Kyle could go with her. But then she told herself to stop being a chicken. Lights glowed in the downstairs windows.

Her phone vibrated inside the pocket of her hoodie. She opened her coat and dug it out and checked the screen. Kyle.

RU there yet?

Brittany slipped her gloves off and typed: Just got here. Will txt you l8r. She tucked the phone away, rang the doorbell, and waited.