The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2

by Maegan Beaumont

  Which means she knows all about you and me. All those nasty things we got up to in the dark.

  “And?” she said, barely able to choke the word out.

  If Church noticed her reaction to her admission, she didn’t let on. Probably didn’t care. “He’s not much younger than Bauer was—I’d say in his mid-to-late thirties—which puts him in Vegas age bracket.” She reached into the box to pull out the pile of letters. “Despite the closeness in age, Bauer was definitely a father figure to this guy. My guess is he never had one of his own—or if he did, he was a bad one.”

  Sabrina remembered what Father Francisco told her. That Nulo had been raised by his uncle. That he’d been abused so severely that he ran away constantly, seeking sanctuary in the church. While those factors certainly won’t turn you into a sadistic serial killer, they didn’t exactly help either. She remembered the way Vega reacted to her questions about his childhood. Had his uncle given him the family business in order to buy his silence about the abuse?

  “Another thing—the letters stop in 2001.” She flipped to the last page in the file. “No explanation. No see you later. The last one is dated April twenty-sixth. He talks about committing a murder but just waxes poetic about it. No real detail other than referring to the victim as a she.” Church said, laying the letters on the table.

  “She?” Father Francisco assumed that the murder Nulo committed had been his uncle’s. What if he’d been wrong? “Any mention of killing his uncle?”

  “No.” Church shook her head. “Not that I saw.”

  “So why the sudden stop?” Sabrina said.

  “Something happened.” Church shook her head again, a slight frown crinkling her brow. “Something big—big enough to knock him off course. Or at least point him in a different direction.”

  “So... by 2001, he’d already killed.” Sabrina said, picking up the thread. “And according to his letter to Wade, he liked it—”

  Like ain’t the word. Our boy loved it. He’s good. A born killer—just like you and me.

  “—he wouldn’t have been able to just stop.” She glanced at the journal Church set aside to dig through the box. “Which one is that?”

  Church held up a journal. Across the front of it was a name.

  Rachel

  53

  5/6/2000

  The plan had been to take both of them. He wanted Rachel. He was angry with her, hated her for the way she treated him and he wanted to teach her a lesson. He wanted her to be his first.

  I wanted Elena. I wanted her to know it was me who’d taken Melissa away from them. I wanted her to know who I was. What I’d done. Tell her the story of how I’d come so close to doing the same things to her sister all those years ago. She’d slipped through my fingers. Gotten away, by some miracle. But miracles have a price and little Elena was going to pay it.

  So we compromised.

  Val.

  Dizzy, Sabrina closed the journal for a moment, pressing her hand against the cover as if trying to keep it shut. How close had Wade come to taking her? To taking the one person in her life who’d known her. The real her.

  Close, Darlin’—real close. And if it hadn’t been for more pressing matters, I’d have done it, too.

  The memory came to her in a flash. The night Wade killed Andy Shepard for harassing her. “Almost as cute and twice as sweet,” Val said, laying on a lazy southern drawl. “If he tips more than fifteen percent, I might offer to have his baby.”

  He’d been there.

  As easy as fishin’ with dynamite. She was just like the rest of them—practically jumped right into my boat. A few smiles and she’d been ready and willing to follow me anywhere...

  We let them leave, deciding to follow them home because it was easier and it’d kill some time. We gave them a head start so by the time we made it to Rachel’s house they’d already there but when we got there, Ellie was gone. They’d had a fight and Ellie decided she wanted to go home. I was angry but decided not to ruin Nulo’s fun. It was his first time after all.

  Talking Rachel into the car was easy. She wasn’t the good girl she pretended to be. She got into the backseat and we drove around for a while, drinking beer, while we decided where to take her. Nulo wanted me to show him where I’d taken Melissa but I said no. It was a special place. Sacred. Hers and mine and I wasn’t going to share it, no matter how special the occasion was.

  We finally settled on taking her back to the irrigation shed. It was secluded. In the middle of nowhere. Not perfect but it would do. No one would hear her screaming while I showed Nulo how it was done.

  Her hands started to shake so she closed the around the journal in her lap, clamping down so hard on it her knuckles turned white. Everyone. Wade had planned on taking everyone away from her. Knowing that made her angrier than she’d ever thought possible.

  “I’ve got a question for you.”

  Sabrina looked up to find Santos standing in the conference room doorway, glaring down at her. He looked confused and angry as hell about it. She caught a glimpse of Alvarez, standing in the hallway, arms crossed over his chest, head tipped down. He looked uncomfortable. Like he didn’t want to be there. That made two of them.

  “Okay, hopefully I have an answer,” she said, setting the journal aside before motioning for him to take a seat. He refused, obviously preferring to stand over her and glare. His use of classic interrogation techniques would have been amusing if she wasn’t so pissed off.

  Who you so mad at, Darlin’? It ain’t him and it ain’t me... not really. Could be you’re mad at yourself for letting our boy jerk you around by your nose?

  “Yesterday, you and your partner show up and give us the standard we’re just here to help speech and not more than twenty-four hours later—” Santos swiped a rough hand over his face before letting it fall to his side. “you hijack our interrogation without so much as a here, hold my jacket.”

  Twenty years ago, he’d reminded her of a boxer and she saw it now, in his calculating gaze and tightly clenched jaw. “Well?” he barked at her when she didn’t offer an explanation or an apology.

  “Well what?” she said, rocking back in her chair. “I’m still waiting for the question.”

  His hands tightened into fists. “Okay—here’s my question: what the fuck is going on?”

  She didn’t answer him. Instead, she sighed, lifting the lid off the box before tipping it over, spilling out its contents. Journals. File folders. Discs housed in paper sleeves. 8x10 glossies. It all scattered and slid across the table and he watched it go with a look of confusion “What all that?”

  “It’s Wade Bauer’s murder box,” she said, her gaze drifting across the avalanche of filth that stretched in front of her. “He was active for nearly two decades and thought to be responsible for the death of twenty-three people. The evidence in this box raises that number considerably.”

  Santos crossed the room, Alvarez trailing behind him, arms finally unlocked and hanging loose. Santos pulled a pen out of his coat pocket to poke through the pile. “None of this is cataloged.” He turned to look at her. “Where did you get this?”

  “A reporter bought it off Bauer’s wife for two thousand dollars,” she said, skirting dangerously close to the truth. “After an uncharacteristic crisis of conscience, he turned it over to me... and before you ask, I’ve had it for less than twenty-four hours, so, no—I wasn’t hiding it from you.”

  “Has any of it been dusted for prints?” Alvarez said, leaning across the table to read the name off the front of one of the paper sleeved discs. “Run through forensics?”

  “What’s the point?” She shook her head. “We know who it belonged to. It was kept in a storage locker for the better part of two decades—a storage locker no one knew about but Bauer until his wife got notice that it was going to auction for non-payment.”

  “I appreciate the share, Agent Vance,” Santos said, lifting one of the journals with his pen to get a look at the one under it. “But I don’t understa
nd what any of this has to do with our case.”

  She stood, circling the table to lift a file folder off the table. It was thick, secured with a sturdy binder clip. She slapped it down on the table in front of him. “Love letters from our current wackjob to Bauer. Bauer wrote back. A lot.”

  The confusion deepened, mingling with an odd sort of understanding. “You think—”

  She shook her head. “I know. Wade Bauer was here,” she said, reaching over to lift the journal she’d been reading from where she’d dropped it. “And he taught our killer everything he knew.” She put the journal on top of the pile and watched Santos’s face drain of color when he read the name written across the front of it.

  Rachel

  “Is he in here,” he said, snatching it up to rifle through its pages. “Does Bauer mention Vega by name? If he does we can—”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Wade’s careful. He never uses his given name. He probably didn’t even know it. His partner called himself Nulo.”

  “Nulo?” Santos shook his head, before raising it to look her in the eye with not one ounce of recognition. “Sounds like a street name.”

  “It’s not. His uncle gave it to him.” Sabrina cleared her throat before continuing. “As far as I can find, there’s no record of who this kid really is. The closest I got was the P.O. Box used to send and receive the letters between him and Bauer was leased and paid for by Graciella Lopez.”

  “That’s why you went so hard at Vega.” Understanding bloomed across Santo’s face. “You think she took out the box for him.”

  She nodded. “And now she’s gone,” she said, thinking about who Ben had wrangled in to help her. Probably Lark. The thought soured her stomach a bit. “I’ve got agents working on it.”

  “Then these letters should be tested,” Alvarez said. “If he wrote them then they could hold trace amounts of his DNA. The envelopes, even self-closing ones can collect trace evidence.”

  She let Santos recover from the evidence bomb she’d just dropped, opening the folder to fan the letters across the table. “They’re copies. The letters and the envelopes.” She shook her head before gathering them back into a stack. “My guess is Bauer destroyed the originals in order to protect our guy’s identity.”

  “Why would he do that?” Santos said, clearing his throat before jamming his pen back into his pocket. “Everything I heard about Wade Bauer suggested that he was a sadistic psychopath. Caring for someone else isn’t something he was capable of.”

  “He cares about this guy,” she said. “In his own, sick deluded way, he cares a lot.” Santos’s eyebrow shot upward. “Cares?” he said, narrowing his gaze on her face. “You’re talking like he’s still alive.”

  It’s like you want to get caught, Darlin’...

  Before she had a chance to scrabble for a lie, Church saved her, popping her head through the doorway. “I’ve been going through missing persons—I think I found something.”

  54

  Yuma, Arizona

  “Her name was Maggie Travers,” Church said, holding up the missing person’s report she’d dug out from the backlog. “Twenty-three-year-old vet tech from El Centro, California.”

  Thirsty for new information, Sabrina lunged for the file, pulling it from her partner’s hand. “El Centro?” she said, thumbing it open. On top was must’ve been a recent photo of Travers. She was pretty—what her grandmother would have called handsome. Dishwater blonde hair, dark hazel eyes. A smile that somehow managed to be both confident and unassuming. Church was right. The young woman in the picture was the same woman found in the ravine.

  “Yeah.” Church reached into the file and pulled out the typed report. “Her mom reported her missing yesterday when she didn’t come home from a dinner date on the 19th.”

  “That was five days ago,” Alvarez said, raising his head from a journal he’d been combing through. He closed it and traded it for a nearby manila folder, this one with the holding what looked like lab reports. The insignia on the front of it wasn’t one she recognized. “Why’d her mother wait so long to report her missing?”

  “She didn’t,” Church said, her mouth flattening into grim line. “She called El Centro PD the morning of the 20th when she woke up and found her daughter’s bed not slept in.”

  Sound familiar, don’t it, darlin?

  “That’s the same thing that happened with Rachel Meeks back in 2000,” she said, staring at the picture in her hand. “He lures them in. Makes them think they’ve met their Prince Charming. A Good Samaritan. Whatever it is they’re looking for. He becomes what they need most. A savior.”

  You should see our boy operate, darlin—he’s a natural. Taught him everything I know.

  “Yeah—but if Vega is our killer,” Santos said, shaking his head. “There was no way he charmed Rachel Meeks. She already knew what kind of monster he was.”

  He was right. Vega stood accused of raping and torturing Meeks for days before she’d been found in 2000. There was no way she’d put herself in the position to have that repeated.

  “What I don’t get is why,” Church said. “I mean, was his targeting her a simple case of unfinished business or did she threaten to finally expose him?”

  “Maybe both,” she said, placing the photograph of Maggie Travers back in the file. “Guys like him don’t like loose ends. Rachel’s survival would have been an affront to his ego. It’s a miracle he waited so long to finish what he started.”

  “I need some coffee if I’m gonna keep looking through this shit,” Alvarez closed the folder before tossing it on to the table. “Anyone else need anything?” he said as he stood.

  “Chamomile tea, if you have it,” Church said, glancing up for the journal in her lap. Alvarez flashed her the OK sign on his way out the door.

  “So now what?” Santos said, his eyes tired and shoulders slumped.

  Sabrina could feel him looking at her. Waiting for her to tell him what to do. To find who they were looking for. She was the supposed hot-shot profiler. She was supposed to know what she was doing.

  Think he knows what a fraud you are, Darlin’?

  “So,” she said standing up. “We know he was busy in 2000. Murdered a prostitute in April. Raped and kidnapped Rachel Meeks in June. That’s our starting point.” She looked at Church. “You and Alvarez are going to go over back-logged cases. Look for any that fit our guy’s MO. Since we now know that he’s not afraid to stray outside his immediate kill zone, I want you to stretch your search parameters from San Diego to El Paso. The more potential victims, the more potential witnesses. Check to see if any of it links up to Vega’s travel patterns.”

  “And me?” Santos said. Instead of sounding upset about being told what to do, he sounded relieved that they finally had a plan. “What do I do?”

  “I want you to go over the victim files again,” she said, lifting her coat off the back of her chair to shrug it on. “No matter how it looks, Rachel Meeks proves that he isn’t choosing his victims randomly. There’s a reason he’s choosing these women and I want to know what it is.”

  She got halfway to the door before Church stopped her. “Where are you going?”

  Sabrina smiled, knowing her partner couldn’t stop her while Santos was within earshot. “Confession,” she said, on her way out the door.

  55

  As soon as he got Lark set up with his latest assignment, Ben moved to the back of the plane. In the rows ahead he could see Gail nodding off in her seat, that blasted planner opened, about ready to slide off her lap.

  Ben unzipped the large pocket in the lining of his jacket and pulled out the file he’d liberated from his father’s desk.

  Using his knife, he slit the seal. Inside were copies of Reese’s flight plans. Surveillance photos of Sabrina’s family. Her friends. There was one of her brother Jason, out with a group of friends. Her sister, Riley, on the way to class. Valerie and her daughter, Lucy playing in the park. Sabrina’s old partner, Strickland standing outside a crime sc
ene. Mandy Black in the parking lot of the Marin county morgue. They were recent, taken within the last few days. Attached to each were detailed reports. They’re schedules. They’re habits. Everything someone tasked with killing them would need to get the job done... something peeked out at him from the back of the file. Something that dropped his gut to the tops of this hand-stitched Italian leather shoes.

  Topographical maps of Oregon. Washington. Idaho... and Montana. Each of them were marked with fat red circles. A few of the circles had been Xed out. His father didn’t just believe that Michael was alive—he was actively searching for him. And if the maps were any indication, he had a pretty good idea of where to find him.

  Ben looked up from the file in his lap, toward the front of the plane. He could see his latest acquisition, the top of his dark golden head peeking up over the back of his seat. He was still, like he’d been when he’d found him, like he was sleeping. But Ben knew he wasn’t sleeping.

  He was waiting.

  Closing the file, he slipped it back into the hidden pocket his jacket and stood, making his way forward.

  “Hey, Naked Guy—” he said, sliding into the seat across from Dunn. “Mind if I call you Noah?”

  A slow smile spread across Dunn’s face and he shrugged. “Truthfully, naked guy was sort of growing on me,” he said in a voice full of gravel, making Ben wonder how long it’d been since he’d actually spoken out loud.

  Ben let out a short bark of laughter. Across the aisle, Gail stirred, her planner slipping down her lap. He stood, bent over and caught it before it hit the floor. On its open pages he could see his life, captured in thin-lined squares. Every minute of it planned out, used up before he’d even had a chance to live it.

  Closing it, Ben slipped it under Gail’s seat before settling back into his own. When he did, He caught Dunn openly studying him, a slight smile on his face. “You’re different than I thought you’d be. Not how Mason described you at all.”