Music to his ears. As beautiful as a Brahms concerto.
Ned’s memories of being a mathematics professor at UCLA had waned to the point of being only quick, distant flashes now. What little he saw, though, was almost always the same. Equations. Equations everywhere. Those beautiful patterns of numbers filling up every inch of a blackboard, one line after another.
And always he’d be pacing before them—stalking them, really—with chalk in hand. He’d solve one equation and move on to the next, and the next, and the next.
Each one a victim of his genius.
A few minutes after nine, with no more daylight left in the sky, Ned stepped out of the car. Gently closing the door behind him, he glanced left and right to make sure he was alone, not being observed. The sidewalks were clear, there were no oncoming cars. A few porch lights glowed in the distance, but nothing more. Ned was all but invisible.
As though he wasn’t even there.
Slowly, he walked across O’Hara’s front lawn to the side of the house, where there was a small grass pathway between a wooden fence and some hydrangea plants.
He peeked in a bay window along the way, looking for anyone else who might be home, but he was pretty sure O’Hara was alone.
Ned had been parked in front of the house all day. He saw no one else coming or going, which was exactly what he wanted.
Everything was falling into place beautifully. Perfectly. Just as he’d imagined it all those days and nights at the hospital.
Approaching the backyard, Ned began to hear the faint sound of music. He recognized the song immediately. How could he not? His father used to listen to Sinatra all the time.
“The Best Is Yet to Come”? “Strangers in the Night”?
Ned smiled. No.
The song was “Call Me Irresponsible.”
Peeking around the back, Ned got a pleasant surprise. He wouldn’t have to bother getting into the house. O’Hara was sitting outside on his patio. He was drinking a beer.
Ned walked a few steps toward him, emerging from the darkness into the hazy glow of a nearby floodlight.
“Are you John O’Hara?” he asked.
He knew he was, but he wanted to make doubly sure. It was just like an equation. Always check your work. Then check it again. There can be no mistakes here.
O’Hara, startled, sat up quickly in his chair. He cupped a hand over his eyes for a better look at his uninvited guest. Ned Sinclair stared into those eyes.
“Yeah,” O’Hara said. “Who wants to know?”
Ned pulled a gun from inside his Windbreaker, the polished metal of the grip feeling like a big and wonderful piece of chalk in his hand.
“I’m Ned,” he said, taking aim at O’Hara’s head. “And you’re dead.”
Then he pulled the trigger and killed John O’Hara.
Book Two
What’s in a Name?
Chapter 26
THE WORDS PLAYED over and over in the head of a special agent named Sarah Brubaker. “There’s one more out there, and you’ll never find her,” the sick bastard had said. “That poor, poor little girl, she won’t last much longer. She’ll be dead and gone like all the others. She’s probably dead already.”
Agent Brubaker reached up beneath her sweat-soaked blouse. She sliced the straps of her bra with the blade of a Swiss army knife. Unhooking the front clasp, she then pulled the bra out from the bottom of her blouse. She stuffed it in her slacks along with the knife.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Doug Trout, chief of the Tallahassee police department.
“Please get me two rubber bands,” Sarah said, ignoring his question, not to mention his quick peek at the way her blouse hugged the shape of her breasts.
Yep. She knew exactly what she was doing.
Trout disappeared into a supply room a few feet away while Sarah gathered up her shoulder-length auburn hair. She could hear the seconds ticking away in her head.
Except for the two cops stationed at either end of the hallway, the operations department above the main terminal of the Tallahassee Regional Airport had been cleared out. It was strictly NPO. Necessary personnel only.
As for the only nonpersonnel individual on the premises, his feet and hands were cuffed to a chair and table on the other side of the closed door behind her. A small, windowless conference room. A temporary jail cell.
For the past seven months, a real bastard named Travis Kingslip had terrorized the Florida Panhandle, kidnapping, raping, and murdering five young girls within a hundred-mile radius of Tallahassee.
Assigned to the case after the fourth girl went missing, Sarah had spent every waking moment trying to figure out who he was—and hoping that somewhere along the line he’d slip up and make a mistake. He never did.
Instead, some buffoon of a thief did it for him. A druggie.
A neighbor had called the police after spotting a man climbing through the basement window of Kingslip’s two-bedroom ranch house in the small town of Lamont, about thirty miles from the airport.
When officers arrived at the house, they not only caught the thief but they also caught a major break in the murder case.
Papered all over Kingslip’s bedroom were close-up photos of the breasts of underage girls—homemade digital prints—taken from every conceivable angle and cropped in a way that never revealed a face. It was like trying to identify a mannequin.
At the very least, they had a child pornographer on their hands. But then Sarah arrived and noticed the kidney-bean-shaped mole in one of the pictures. It matched the description given to her by the parents of one of the missing girls.
Within an hour, Sarah and half the Tallahassee police force were storming the tarmac at the airport in 102-degree heat. Kingslip, a baggage handler, confessed on the spot. “All you had to do was ask,” he’d said.
Then, immediately after he was read his Miranda warnings, he started to laugh. It was the kind of twisted and demented laugh that Sarah had heard too many times in her career chasing serial killers.
Kingslip’s laugh may have been the worst of them all.
“There’s one more out there, and you’ll never find her,” he had said. “That poor, poor little girl, she won’t last much longer. She’ll be dead and gone like all the others. She’s probably dead already.”
Police chief Trout reappeared with two rubber bands and a puzzled look on his face. “Here,” he said.
Sarah took the rubber bands and quickly used them to tie her hair into two pigtails behind her ears. Trout watched her and nodded. He got it now.
“I’m not going in there with you, am I?” he asked.
Only he wasn’t really asking. It was a rhetorical question. He’d gotten to know Sarah a little bit since she’d arrived from Quantico—enough to be sure of one thing. Two things, actually.
Sarah Brubaker was as determined as anyone he’d ever met.
And Travis Kingslip was all hers.
Chapter 27
SARAH CLOSED THE door behind her and grabbed one of the conference room chairs. She wheeled it right up in front of Kingslip and sat down. Their knees were almost touching. She didn’t want to be this close to him, but it was necessary. Actually, it could be a matter of life and death.
He was wearing a blue jumpsuit two sizes too big and reeked of cigarettes, sweat, and jet fuel. His hair fell from beneath his trucker hat like strands of black string that had been dipped in grease. His teeth looked like rotted pieces of candy corn.
Immediately, his eyes went to her chest. It was no sneak peek; it was a full-on gawk. He didn’t have to say what he wanted to do to her at that very moment. His dark, cold, soulless stare left little doubt.
So far so good, thought Sarah.
There was no time for small talk or breaking the ice. No time to gain his trust. She needed him to like her, and this was the quickest way, down and dirty. Sorry, Ms. Steinem.
Kingslip rattled his hands and feet. “Why don’t you take these handcuffs off, honey? I promise I wo
n’t bite,” he said. “C’mon, take ’em off.”
“Maybe I will,” said Sarah. “But you have to do something for me first.”
Kingslip’s words on the tarmac were echoing in Sarah’s head, one line in particular. That poor, poor little girl, she won’t last much longer.
He was hiding her somewhere, he had to be. Was she already dying? Had he hurt her? Killed her?
Sarah could hear the clock ticking louder, but she knew she couldn’t race through this. She figured she had only one shot; she had to get it exactly right.
“Where is she, Travis?” she asked, her voice calm but firm. “Tell me. Just tell me the truth.”
“I’ll never te-ell,” he came back in a singsongy voice, creepy as hell.
“Is she near where you live?”
He kept staring at her breasts. “You’re pretty, do you know that?”
Sarah did know that. It had been both a blessing and a curse in her life, especially in her career. Right now, though, she needed it to be a blessing.
“Is she near where you live, Travis?” she repeated.
Every inch of his house in Lamont had already been searched. There were no secret rooms, no hidden attics or basement wells, nothing in the freezer. This wasn’t Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.
Kingslip didn’t answer. Not that Sarah needed him to. She was watching more than listening. A flinch, a twitch, a blink from him—something would tip her about what he was thinking.
She kept going. No choice. “Is she close by?” she asked. “Somewhere near the airport?”
Bingo.
It was his eyebrow. Right on the word airport, the left one curled. For a split second and by a fraction of an inch, but she saw the “tell” clear as day.
Sarah leaned in even closer to him, his stench so repugnant she wanted to vomit. “She’s near the airport, isn’t she, Travis? Is she within walking distance, or do I need to take a car?”
He chirped again. “I’ll never te-ell.”
He already had, though. It was the eyebrow again, this time on the word car.
But she’d already searched his car in the parking lot, and there was only one vehicle registration on file for him with the Jefferson County DMV.
Unless it wasn’t his car.
“Is she in a car, Travis? Do you have her in someone’s car? Whose car is she in?”
He suddenly looked like the pigeon at the poker table who couldn’t figure out why everyone was calling his bluffs. How does she know? How much does she know?
“You’ll never find her,” he said, turning angry on a dime. He suddenly didn’t like her so much, but that was okay. Sarah had another hunch to play.
“Why won’t I find her?” she asked.
“You just won’t, that’s why.”
“That’s not a good enough reason. What makes you so sure?”
“Nothing.”
“C’mon, Travis. You’re a lot smarter than that.”
“You’re right, I am,” he said with a defiant nod.
Sarah’s smile disappeared. It was her turn to play a mind game on him. “No, you’re not smart at all. You were dumb enough to get caught, weren’t you?”
“Fuck you.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Travis?” She glanced down at her chest. “Do you want to take my picture? Get real nice and close to these?”
Kingslip began to squirm in his seat, the handcuffs around his wrists and ankles rattling the chair and table like a one-man earthquake. His sudden anger toward Sarah was colliding with his sick and perverted attraction to her.
“Fuck you!” he said again, shouting it now.
“Why can’t I find her, Travis?”
“FUCK YOU!”
“Why? Tell me why!”
“BECAUSE THERE’S TOO MANY OF THEM, BITCH! THINK YOU’RE SMART! YOU AIN’T SO SMART!”
Sarah sprang up from her chair, bolting out of the room.
Her hunch was right.
Chapter 28
“FOLLOW ME! LET’S go, let’s go!”
Sarah yelled it to every cop she raced past, from the hallway of the operations department down the stairs to the baggage claim area and out the double doors into the stifling heat. Not even police chief Trout knew where she was going.
But he was following just the same, weaving his way through the crowd, composed mostly of tourists, as fast as his former-Florida-State-linebacker frame would allow.
Nine, maybe ten cops had fallen in behind Sarah as they crossed the taxi and limo pickup lane outside the terminal.
Cars skidded to a halt, the drivers pounding on their horns. People nearby were either staring or scattering to get out of the way.
“Holy shit,” mouthed the guy working on the Avis lot, who barely looked old enough to drive. His booth was being invaded. Leading the way was a pretty woman who, well, looked like she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“The trunks!” said Sarah, flashing her badge. “Open every car trunk on the lot!”
“What?” the guy said. He was more stunned than anything else. “I can’t do that.”
Sarah pushed right past him and grabbed a large bulletin board off the wall, which held all the rental car keys. With a flip and a few shakes, they all went spilling onto the floor in front of the counter.
Trout was right in step now.
“You two, stay here!” he barked, pointing at two of his officers. “Check every trunk. The rest of you, come with me!”
Sarah had already moved on to the Hertz lot. She grabbed some keys herself and started popping trunks all around her.
“What are we looking for?” one of the attendants asked.
She didn’t stick around to answer. It was the classic “You’ll know it when you see it.” A girl trapped in the trunk, probably bound and gagged.
God, will she still be alive? Sarah wondered. Please let her be alive.
Immediately, she tried to erase the image of the girl from her mind. Never get attached to the victim, she’d been taught. Messes with your focus.
It was a hard lesson to learn, and even after seven years on the job she wasn’t fully there.
Pop! Pop-pop-pop!
Right down the line, from Thrifty to Enterprise, Budget to National, the trunks began to open. Economy, midsize, premium, even the SUVs.
The cops were spread out, the staff from every rental company was racing around with key fobs in hand, their thumbs pressing furiously.
Pop! Pop-pop!
Sarah ran from car to car, looking and looking and looking. Up one row and down another. Empty…empty…empty…
“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
Everyone was in on the act now, all the cops and attendants, even the renters themselves. A businessman, sweating all the way through the jacket of his tan suit, was dashing from trunk to trunk.
It was chaos, but the good kind. All the pieces working together.
“Every car! We check every car!” yelled Sarah, moving on to the next lot, which belonged to one of the local companies, Sunshine Rentals.
That’s when she saw something out of the corner of her eye.
There was one piece of this puzzle that didn’t fit.
Chapter 29
HE WAS THE undertow in the tide of people working with a single purpose.
One guy, a mechanic, who was walking—make that slinking—away from all the action, glancing over his shoulder while seemingly doing his best to appear invisible. But in his bright yellow Sunshine Rentals jumpsuit, that was a tall order.
Sarah caught herself. She was about to yell out to him.
Instead, she fell in line behind him, camouflaged by the commotion around her. If this guy had more in common with Travis Kingslip than just a jumpsuit, what mattered most was where he might lead her.
“Hey!” she suddenly heard.
She turned to see police chief Trout maybe twenty yards away, looking at her with a “What’s up?” expression.
Sarah raised her index finger across
her lips—Shh!—and then pointed at the mechanic, who was heading toward the back corner of the Sunshine lot, where they repaired and washed the cars.
Trout nodded, taking an angle on the guy to Sarah’s left. They were coming at him in a wide V shape.
Behind them there were still a host of cars with unopened trunks, even a couple more lots from other local rental agencies. But as Sarah took a few more steps, all her focus fell upon a white Chrysler Sebring near a short cinder-block wall. The convertible was on an angle, up in the air. A jack was under the left front tire—or, rather, under the space where the tire should’ve been.
The mechanic was heading straight toward it.
Sarah and Trout traded glances. This guy could’ve simply been trying to help make sure no car was left unchecked, but there was something about his walk—and the way he’d been looking over his shoulder. If he was trying to help anyone, thought Sarah, it might only be himself.
Careful, now. Stay close but not too close. Like a late afternoon shadow…
The mechanic, of average height and scrawny, walked up to the white Sebring. But not to the trunk. He opened the driver’s side door, reaching down while keeping his back toward Sarah. She was shielded.
Trout wasn’t.
“Gun!” he suddenly yelled.
Sarah reached for hers as the mechanic spun around, the barrel of a pistol aimed directly at her chest. It was a coin toss who would fire first. Instead…
Wham!
Diving through the air, Trout threw every inch and pound of his former linebacker’s body against the mechanic. He’d sprinted across the asphalt, tackling the guy with a powerful hit before he could pull the trigger.
The two fell to the pavement with a horrific, bone-crushing thud—the mechanic taking the worst of it by far. He was flattened out, his head bleeding, at least one front tooth gone.
But he never let go of his gun.
Trout’s momentum flung him past the mechanic, and he somersaulted onto his back. Immediately, he rolled to his stomach, ready to fire his SIG Sauer P229 pistol.
Second Honeymoon Page 6