Kelly’s stomach formed into a hard knot. “Oh God.”
“Yeah. We gotta go.”
“Who found her?”
“Another woman called 911 from her cell phone at 10:15 this morning. The victim isn’t dead yet. They rushed her to Amherst but it’s not looking good.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kelly’s shoulder mashed against the door as Broward took the corner at speed. She kept the phone to her right ear, stuck a finger in her left and tried to hear the detective from Camillus. “The victim is confirmed as Jessica Carter-Spence,” the detective said.
“She was alone?”
“Alone. Has two kids but they’re at school and daycare.”
Broward said, “Tell them we’re about five minutes out.” He hit the gas as a streetlight turned to yellow and flew through the intersection. His police lights were flashing. “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” The road was busy. He made the next left toward Camillus, tires squealing with the tight turn.
Camillus Park was in a residential area, the playground bright with primary colors, but a child’s slide and swing set took on an ominous look surrounded by law enforcement vehicles and strobing lights. A Camillus patrol officer lifted the crime scene tape and Broward rolled through.
A female detective waved them over when they got out of the car. She handed Kelly a plastic evidence bag containing a single brass casing. Kelly saw 30-30 WIN stamped around the firing pin. She handed it back.
“The Spence family live just over on Shaker Heights Road, a cul-de-sac,” the Camillus detective told them. “The husband said she walks this route in the afternoon to pick up her youngest from daycare. Does it most days. Cuts up through Fox Drive and over to North Way, then back down, goes home, awaits the bus bringing the older one home. That’s her routine.”
“Where’s the husband now?”
“With the victim at Amherst Hospital. There was talk about airlifting her to Albany, but they didn’t. She was DOA.”
“Do the children know yet?”
“No. They don’t know anything yet.”
“And we have eyes on them?”
“There’s a patrol officer sitting outside of the school. We don’t have one deployed to the daycare yet — there’s only five officers on shift and we—”
“Where is it? Where’s the daycare?”
“It’s just around the corner, on North Way.”
Kelly was already running to Broward’s car. He chased after her.
“Gimme your keys,” she told him.
He tossed them to her without arguing. Kelly pulled the door shut and keyed the ignition and was rolling forward before Broward had his door closed all the way. She saw him stretch his seatbelt across his chest as she took the corner out of the parking lot and hit the gas, thinking about a killer bent on destroying families. Maybe Colton Archer had been collateral, maybe not.
She drove fast but carefully. “Which way?”
Broward swung the terminal in his car to face him, tapped at the keys. “Take a right up here. It’s a quarter mile.”
She pulsed the gas and drove as fast as she dared along the narrow residential street until Broward said, “There,” pointing to a small brown house where a Camillus patrol car was just arriving. Broward flipped on his deck lights and they flashed red and blue as Kelly stopped the vehicle in the street and got out, started running for the house.
The patrol officer saw her coming. “Hey! Hey!”
Broward moved for him with his badge out. Kelly took the concrete steps up from the street and onto the lawn. Sprinting up the walkway she reached the front door and found it unlocked, swung it open and could already hear children singing as she moved into the warm home. She had her ID out and held it up as a woman stood up in the back room, looking alarmed. Half a dozen preschool kids sat in a circle singing, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Kelly met with the woman in the kitchen between the back playroom and the short hallway. “I’m with the FBI.” She took a quick breath. “Is everybody okay here?”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s been an incident.”
“I heard sirens.” The middle-aged woman had dirty blonde hair in a French braid, large brown eyes. “Twenty minutes, a half hour ago.”
Kelly put away her ID, still getting her wind back. “All the children are present? Is there a child here named Spence?”
“Of course. He’s right here.” She made a gesture towards the children in the room behind her. They were losing the song and breaking apart into laughter and chattering. The woman pointed to a little boy with ginger hair, dressed in denim overalls. He rolled on the floor and kicked his legs in the air.
“Ma’am, I just need to have a look around the house. Okay?”
“What is it?”
“An officer from Camillus is on his way in. He’ll explain. I just need to make sure everything is safe, all right?”
Broward and the Camillus patrol officer came in through the front door. Kelly went to greet them and they agreed on a strategy to secure the premises. She’d circle the house, Broward would check the rooms while the Camillus officer kept his eyes on the children and spoke with the care provider.
She went outside. The way the house sat up on a rise, the park was visible in the distance as a cluster of leafless maples and still-green pines, the colorful jungle gym, the cop lights shuddering. She drew her gun and started around the house. Behind it was a small yard with a sandbox, a plastic playhouse. A cedar hedgerow marked the back of the yard, a two-stall garage attached to the house on the other side. She found an exterior door unlocked, held her breath and jerked it open, then put both hands on the weapon and cleared the space — just a purplish Honda CRV and scents of grease and oil, no one hiding anywhere.
By the time she got back to the front of the house, Broward was coming out the door. “Everything’s good inside.”
She could feel the pulse still working fearfully in her throat but she holstered her weapon and nodded.
* * *
Broward didn’t say anything on the short drive back, just kept his hands on the wheel. She knew what he was thinking — why react so strongly when the killer had never attacked family members in more than one spot? She didn’t have an answer — it had been a gut thing.
He parked near where they had initially arrived, held the crime scene tape above their heads and Kelly passed through. Cops and techs in white coveralls moved through the trees behind the playground, some heads turned as people looked at her. More residences were visible on the far side of the park, through the sparse woods.
Kelly found the Camillus detective by the marked spot where the victim’s body had lain.
“I’m sorry,” the detective said. “I should have sent patrol immediately.” She was in her early fifties, short hair in a fashionable choppy cut, tinged silver. Bright, hazel eyes. She put out her hand. “Janet Capervay.”
“Kelly Roth. I think you did fine.”
“Everything okay up there?” Capervay tipped her head in the rough direction of the daycare.
“We think it’s secure.”
Capervay gave a nod and said, “The witness had her own kids with her and she was a basket case. I have her statement. She came in headed toward the jungle gym, thought she saw something back here — you can see the path where the victim cuts over to the other road on her walk.” She gave a mournful shake of her head. “The witness said the victim was still breathing. That’s what she told 911 when they asked her. She was shivering all over when I got here, looked like she was going to either need an ambulance or she was going to pass out so I had patrol take her home.”
“I understand.”
Capervay’s gaze drifted to the people combing through the back woods of the park. “The projectile went through the skull. They’re out there looking for it. And they’re going along Winding Way back there and checking if anyone has a bullet in their living room. We got our hands full.”
K
elly glanced at the civilians, still growing in number at the edge of the crime scene tape. “Anybody see anything? What are those people saying? Any cameras on the park?”
“No cameras on the park — in fact, the town just had a meeting two nights ago about getting them installed.” Capervay pulled out a notebook and flipped a page. “We’ve got one eyewitness says he saw a blue Ford Taurus, other says she saw a white Jeep Cherokee. Nothing on video. Two different people heard the shot, one thought it was a vehicle backfire. She got here about a minute after, found the body. This park here gets busy in the later afternoon, kids out of school. During the day, a few people here and there, like the witness with her two preschool kids. Fewer people though now that these park killings have been happening. According to the ER at Amherst, the victim succumbed en route and attempts to revive her were unsuccessful. Medical examiner is talking to the hospital now as they present it over the phone — I’m headed over there.”
“I’d like to go with you,” Kelly said.
Broward touched her arm. “Can we have a word?”
“What are you thinking?” Broward asked. “I mean, this is our guy.”
“I think so.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s different. It’s messy. Two kids? One at school and one at daycare and he leaves them out of it — why? Even if it’s a quiet time of day here, this isn’t Island Park at nine p.m., or Three Mile Bay where no one notices for three hours. Multiple witnesses, right in the middle of a neighborhood.”
“Two weeks since the Archers,” Broward said. “They’re getting closer together. He’s getting bolder, a more populated area.”
“He might be.” She was on edge. The victim had been breathing. She’d lain there bleeding out for fifteen minutes while one of her kids sung kiddie songs at the daycare less than a mile away.
“He’s changing things?” Broward asked.
“It’s like he rushed. Doesn’t it feel like that to you? He’s getting something done, checking it off a list. If he’s shooting from back over there, the parking lot near where the people are standing, that’s his farthest distance yet. And it almost doesn’t work — she nearly survives.”
“He’s got a time constraint, maybe. He only has just so long to get this one done . . .”
“What’s the husband’s name?”
“Brandon Spence.”
“I’m going to talk to him.”
* * *
She showed her ID for the front desk at Amherst. A local cop led her and Capervay down the hall towards the ER.
Brandon Spence sat in the waiting area, his head in his hands. There were family around him. Kelly hung back as Capervay waded into their heavy grief.
Capervay spoke to them for a few minutes.
“They’ve sent someone to pick up the children — Brandon’s sister,” Capervay told Kelly. “We need to give them a little space.”
“I have reason to believe these murders are connected to the same perpetrator, the same gun and execution-style killing, and that the perp has communicated with at least one of the victim’s husbands after the shooting, maybe more than one.”
Capervay stared at her. “Jesus.”
Brandon Spence looked utterly lost, shattered, stranded in a world that had become suddenly alien. But unlike the others, Spence still had children to care for. As if the killer was experimenting, trying different combinations, a malevolent angel toying with lives.
But this one could also be different for another reason. Rushed and incomplete because of a changing agenda. She’d seen it before with Billy Bath, dumping his victims in the creeks and rivers — in the beginning he’d make sure they disappeared under the water, by the end he was leaving them in just a few inches of water. Bath’s killings had also gotten closer together. The Park Killer was speeding up — someone else was next, possibly only days away.
“Tell you what,” Capervay said quietly. “We found the casing, we’re going door to door in the neighborhood. One witness saw the Jeep two or three minutes before another witness heard the shot, the Ford Taurus was seen a little closer to the shot. We’re running it all down. Let me see where we get. I’ll keep a close eye on him and if anyone calls him, you’ll be the first to know.”
They stood in the hallway with the waiting room in view.
“It can’t wait.” Kelly crossed to the waiting room before Capervay could stop her. “Mr. Spence? I’m Kelly Roth and I’m a behavioral analyst with the FBI.”
He was staring into space, knee bouncing with nervous energy. After a moment he looked around at her. “Okay.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
An eagerness, a hunger, crossed his features. “They won’t let me see her yet. Can you let me see her?”
The family and friends watched her. Spence wanted to see his dead wife but local PD or hospital staff was keeping him out.
“I’ll walk you in myself,” Kelly said. “But I have some quick questions for you first. Is that all right?”
He got to his feet with some effort. “I need to see her. Please.”
Kelly looked around, saw a nurse watching, and called over. “Where is Jessica Carter-Spence?”
“Ma’am . . .” Her eyes flicked to Brandon Spence and back to Kelly. “We have yet to present the official death notice. The medical examiner is still—”
“Where?”
The nurse looked at Kelly, swallowed. “In the treatment room she arrived to. Right there, number 8.”
Kelly walked him down the hall, Capervay on their heels. The door was closed and Kelly stopped in front of it, then turned to Spence, put a hand on his back. “She’s going to have the IV in her, tubes, anything they did in treatment will probably be as it was, but they’ll have covered her in a sheet. You can’t touch her, okay?”
The veins stood out on his neck as he swallowed hard. “Okay.”
She opened the door before she could talk herself out of it. “Agent Roth, FBI,” she announced, and the emergency nurse stepped aside. Brandon Spence reached for his wife.
Jessica Carter-Spence was covered in a white sheet. Her husband looked her over, trembling. He took the top edge of the sheet and started to draw it down and Kelly moved closer and put a gentle hand on him, stopping him just before his skin contacted hers. They’d bandaged her head and her eyes were closed, her skin already graying, lips blue.
“Oh God, oh baby . . .” Spence dropped to his knees beside the bed with his hands over the sheet on her chest and cried.
“Your wife was taking her walk,” Kelly said quietly, “before she picked up your son from daycare. Was there ever a time she was with the kids alone? Did she take them to the playground after school some days?”
He stared at his wife’s face. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“Was she alone with them a lot?”
“Alone with them?”
“Just your wife, just Jessica and the kids. Was there a time each day she was alone with them, in the park, or somewhere that was isolated, quiet?”
“No. Not really. Just the playground.”
“Mr. Spence? Have you received any texts or calls from someone claiming to have done this?”
He looked up at her. “What?”
“Has anyone contacted you saying they shot your wife?”
Spence just stared at Kelly. Then, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere inside his mind he stood up and glanced at his wife again and strode out of the room. Kelly ignored Capervay’s glare as she walked past her and followed Spence back into the waiting area.
“Sherry? You got my phone?” he said.
Sherry snapped out of her own little trance and looked around, then dug through her purse. “Um, I think you left it on the . . . here it is.” She held it up and Spence grabbed it from her hand and studied the screen, thumbed through his call log.
“No — no one called me.” His transformation was stunning. Grief-stricken and lost one moment, full of purpose and direction the next. He gave he
r a direct look. “What’s going on? Is someone . . . ?”
“We’ll look at your phone, just to be sure,” Kelly said. “I have another question. Have you ever been to the Destiny mall?”
He blinked a few times, like he was having trouble seeing, then swam back into the present. “Sure. Destiny. Yeah. Uh . . .”
“Can you remember the last time you were there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please think. I know this is hard.”
“I think it was about a month ago. Yeah. It was in October. There were Halloween decorations.”
“Do you remember which stores you went to?”
He squinted as if he had a headache, like the sudden promise of finding out who’d killed his wife was already ebbing away. “We went to, ah . . . we took the kids . . .”
Capervay approached them. “Okay,” Capervay said softly. She touched Kelly’s shoulder. “Let’s—”
“We went to a few places. Old Navy, CVS.” He looked at the floor and nodded. “And then we ate in the food court. We talked about seeing a movie.”
“Did you see a movie?”
“No. We got a mask for Charlie in CVS . . . you know a Halloween mask, Casper the Friendly Ghost. We just ended up coming home. The four of us snuggled up in the bed . . .” He suddenly lurched forward and grabbed her. His breath was sour, his eyes bloodshot. “What happened to her? What happened to my wife?”
* * *
Kelly slipped into the stairwell for privacy, called Genarro and described the situation. “We need to kick this up to a whole other gear, make it officially a multi-agency task force — and I need people, more than Blanchett — I need field agents ready to move.”
“Kelly . . .”
“What?”
“You’re a good researcher . . .”
She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. She took a breath and settled. “This isn’t about emotion. I just need support. There’re too many people, too much to do — I’m just inching forward. And I’ve got solid reason to believe the unsub is using a mall as his hunting ground. We need to—”
The Husbands Page 14