Dying Breath

by Heather Graham

  He halfway smiled at her. “Dylan is standing right here,” he said softly.

  “Right,” Dylan said.

  “But...you’re not surprised about another victim.”

  “No, I’m not. The newspaper found one of the clues they had apparently just tossed as some kind of silly letter,” he said. “And the killers wrote in again, making sure we knew we had missed one—and would definitely find her dead.”

  “Oh!” Vickie said. She sank down on the sofa, absently picking up a throw pillow and holding it to her as she stared at him. “Um—what were the clues?”

  “All right,” Griffin told her, perching at the end of the sofa and reading from his phone. “The first clue—the one that was missed—is this, ‘So I shall begin where building began. Where all were young once, born and bred. What was once young is oldest now, to find her, see, the boldest be.’”

  “Oldest,” Vickie repeated thoughtfully.

  “And what came next?”

  “Two letters, both arrived this morning. The first, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. You are fools. You missed the first—sad that there are those who never learn.’”

  “Why now?” Vickie asked. “I mean, this poor woman was the first. Then, two women died, but you were able to save Angelina Gianni, then Barbara Marshall, Chrissy Ballantine—and now Fiona West. The killers could have taunted you with that clue before.”

  “I wonder if they thought Fiona West wouldn’t have been found,” Griffin said. “The second letter received today—soon after the first one—read like this, ‘Are we having fun yet? Sorry, my friends, but this time, you will find the dead. Ha ha. Fresh dead. Ah, what’s with the world today? No one listens anymore. Undertaker does try to give you a chance. Alas! Get off your asses—and the TV screens—and find the dead!’”

  “What does the last reference?” Vickie asked.

  “A press conference we gave last night. You didn’t see it?”

  “I was actually trying not to watch the news,” Vickie said. “What did you say?”

  “We warned people that the so-called Undertaker was actually two people, a couple, a man and a woman,” Griffin told her.

  Vickie stared at him, startled. “A woman?”

  “Hey, not to be insulting, but yes, women do kill.”

  “Well, of course they do, but... I just didn’t think a woman would kill this way, I guess,” she said. She shook her head. “A couple, killing like this. It makes finding the truth so much harder. I mean, say you get an idea about someone, and that someone could have a perfectly good alibi because the other was the one who was busy kidnapping and killing or attempting murder at the time. And people don’t tend to be suspicious of couples.”

  “Do you think your ghost knows anything—saw anything?” Griffin asked.

  “She’ll come back,” Dylan said. “I know she’ll come back. Hey, Griff, you need some coffee? There’s coffee on. I’d get it for you, but...” He lifted his hands. “I’m not that good. You need coffee. Because the two of you have to find Darlene. She’s miserable. She’s lost, afraid and miserable.”

  “Of course, we’re going to find her,” Vickie murmured.

  “Of course,” Griffin agreed, heading to the kitchen. “We’re going to drink coffee, and figure out the clues.” He looked at Vickie and smiled. She nodded slowly in return.

  “Yes, what was young is old. And we know that it has to do with water—though the clue has nothing to do with water, Griffin. First built and oldest now...well, the Fairbanks house is the oldest wood frame house and the oldest house in Massachusetts—that’s in Dedham. Would they have travelled that far?”

  “Yes—Angelina Gianni was found in Lexington. Same distance just about, different direction,” Griffin said.

  “There’s a pond not far from the house—you can reach it through a parking lot for a mall and through the park. It’s kind of a little treasure there, very pretty. But Griffin, what if they meant Boston, and not all of Massachusetts?” Vickie asked.

  “They might mean Boston—and they might mean somewhere else. What do your instincts tell you?”

  Vickie was thoughtful. “Well, you already found one victim in Lexington. And the two women who died were found outside of Boston as well, right?”

  Griffin nodded, his expression tight. “Beverly Tatum was found in a Dumpster in Revere. Jennifer Hudgins was found in an abandoned school locker in Brookline, so, one might say bedroom communities. But at the least, not old Boston.”

  Dylan spoke up. “Come on, Vickie. Trust your instincts. What do you think?”

  “The oldest house. Young once, oldest now. It’s the oldest of its kind in the country, I believe. And I know that there’s a pond that isn’t far from the house.”

  “How did they...put her in the water, do you know?” Griffin asked.

  Vickie shook her head and looked at Dylan. Dylan responded by shaking his head. “I told you,” Dylan said. “She’s not very experienced. And, poor thing, she’s so lost and afraid and miserable. You have to find her. But of course...”

  “Of course...what?” Griffin asked.

  “It’s not as if an hour here or there will matter any in her case. I mean, we’re not fighting a clock in the same way,” Dylan said, answering for Vickie. He hesitated. “There’s no question. She is already dead.”

  “Excuse me,” Griffin told them, rising.

  Dylan looked at Vickie as Griffin walked toward the door, pacing as he pulled out his phone and made a call.

  “What’s he doing?” Dylan whispered to Vickie.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered back.

  They heard him speaking briefly with someone on the phone. A lot of his answers were “Fine” or “Good” or “Okay” and then “That will be great.”

  A minute later, he hung up.

  “How do you feel about an excursion to Dedham?” Griffin asked. “That was Jackson. Barnes has got cops watching our previous surviving victims. The FBI and the local police have people researching the bodies found in the Pine house. I’m hoping our press conference is enough to keep the killers at bay for a night at least, and...finding this young woman isn’t like seeking those who might still be alive, and yet...well, it’s incredibly important.”

  “Dedham?” Vickie said. “To look for her? Yes, of course, to look for her. But—”

  “We’ll have dive teams meet us there,” he told her. “Jackson is on the way here. Traffic is bad—it’ll take about forty-five minutes, with luck, to get there. That will still give us several hours today.”

  “Well, yes, of course.” She glanced over at Dylan. She had forgotten about telling him that his great-grandfather had lived in Boston—and his family before that. He was down on the intolerance of the Puritans. He wasn’t going to be pleased to learn the truth.

  But she did have to tell Griffin what she had learned. A long car drive would give her the chance to tell both Griffin and Jackson Crow.

  “Of course. And I have more to tell you. As we drive, I guess?”

  “About this young woman, Darlene?”

  “No, I’ve told you everything I know about her. I was doing a lot of research last night.”

  “Let’s head on out. Jackson can scoop us up on the street. We’ll talk on the way.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything yet,” Dylan said.

  “I’m guessing you’re coming with us?” Vickie asked him.

  To her surprise, he hesitated. Then he shook his head. “I’m going to my family’s house. My dad has been absent lately—I guess he’s really been thrown by everything. So, he’s distant with my mom. He’s gone a lot—a lot. I think my mom thinks he might be having an affair. Actually, I need to follow my dad one day. But for now... I’m going to hang with Noah. Try to do what I can to make
things good. We’ll talk later, right, Vickie? Or is it something important?”

  “No, no, we can talk later,” she assured him.

  “Good. Griffin...find her, please,” he said, looking at the agent. “I don’t know why it matters so much. I mean dead is—dead. But it does matter. We do have souls and her soul isn’t at peace...please, make them keep looking until they do find her.”

  “I promise,” Griffin told him.

  Dylan let himself out—moving through the wall. When he arrived, he was polite and knocked. When he left—he just left.

  Vickie grabbed her bag and threw it over her shoulders; she was already dressed appropriately for a crawl through a forest path to the pond, in jeans and long-sleeved V-neck T-shirt.

  “Ready when you are,” she told Griffin.

  He stepped out ahead of her and waited for her to come out and lock the door, and then they crossed the hall and went out the main door. He left her on the sidewalk, walking down the street to speak with the patrolman assigned to watch her. The man nodded, waved to her and pulled back out into the traffic. He was barely gone before Jackson arrived in a black SUV.

  Jackson Crow stepped out of the driver’s seat. “I’ll let you take it. You’re more familiar with the roads around here.”

  “Sounds good,” Griffin said. Jackson was already around the car; he opened the front passenger-side door for Vickie and shook his head when she said she didn’t mind being in back.

  “You two are the Bostonians,” he said. “I have some notes to look over.”

  A minute later, they were headed out.

  “So, Vickie, what else did you discover?” Griffin asked.

  “I don’t know if I discovered anything. But I did find out that Bertram Aldridge’s family lived in the Boston Neck area for years and years. They were right down the street from the Pine house at the time those murders were committed.”

  “Family legend, talk around Halloween—maybe even breaking in and finding a peephole in the wall. So, Bertram Aldridge could have known about the false wall and told his fans about it,” Griffin said.

  “They were definitely there, yes,” Jackson said.

  Vickie turned around to look at him and he smiled. “My wife is in charge of our unit’s offices back in Northern Virginia,” he told her. “And she—and some of our tech people—just wrote me with the same information.” He grimaced. “Angela is convinced, too, that Bertram Aldridge is somehow pulling the strings for what’s going on here, even if he is locked up. Maybe he’s enjoying the whole thing vicariously. Maybe there’s no maybe to it. I’ve studied his past. Aldridge is a sick bastard. Angela also found evidence that Aldridge’s family had been in that area a very long time.”

  “There’s another current player who had family there, too,” Vickie murmured.

  “Detective Barnes?” Griffin asked. “We were talking this morning. He grew up in the area. He said when they were kids, there was an old house in the neighborhood owned by a cranky old woman and the rumor went around her son had died in the military—and she kept his body in a coffin in the parlor. He said they were terrible as kids—they used to egg the old woman’s house. Well, in a way, she did keep her son. Not as a body in a coffin, but as ashes in an urn. There are all kinds of stories all the time about bones coming out of the ground when they’re working on the sewers or electric lines, that kind of thing. Hey, you and I both grew up nearby—you know how stories spread.”

  “And some of them true, probably,” Vickie said. “Gravestones are moved over time. Roads are paved over ground where the dead were buried. That’s life with bigger and bigger populations. I don’t think there were that many murderers who walled up their victims. Well, I guess Poe was fond of walling people up in his stories, and certainly a sick mind could take hold of that. But anyway, I was referring to George Ballantine. His antecedent—another George!—left the Boston area to head to New York in the nineteenth century. I’m kind of loath to tell Dylan what I found out. He’s so glad to have been a New Yorker—without the Puritan influence in his blood.”

  “Depression can run in families, that’s true. But so far, nothing in my experience—or in that of the profilers I know—indicates being a whacked-out murderer runs in any family lines,” Griffin said.

  “But,” Jackson said, “some people can be susceptible to suggestion.”

  “And there’s nothing to suggest that a family can’t create a few brutal murderers a few generations apart,” Griffin said.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Vickie said. “Bertram Aldridge did hear stories about the bodies walled up in the Pine house. Maybe he even peeked into a hole in the thin veneer of paneling we ripped out. At any rate, he knew about the bodies. He did communicate with our current murderers—at least one of them. It’s not as if all the victims had to be left in a wall with corpses or in the ground—they just had to be left where they might or might not have been found in time. Maybe he even knew about the bodies because one of his ancestors committed the murders. And while the urge to kill may not have been inherited, having the mental disease that could cause a man to be so heinous, the stories might have been something he decided to cling to as he grew up.”

  “Some kids want to grow up to be cops or soldiers or whatever honorable types like their moms or dads—and Aldridge wanted to grow up to be a killer, like his great-great-granddad, or whatever?” Griffin asked.

  “Maybe,” Vickie said. “And maybe he knew George Ballantine’s family had once been there, too, and that was why he went to the Ballantine house when he’d escaped—and why he wanted Chrissy Ballantine targeted. Or...”

  “You know there is the possibility someone wasn’t so noble in the Ballantine family,” Jackson said.

  “And some kind of twisted revenge might have been the motive where the Ballantine family was involved,” Griffin said.

  “We see Aldridge tomorrow. We can bring up all these suggestions—see what kind of a reaction we get.”

  “There was more—I found a researcher who had dug up a cop’s notes from back then. I’ll see that you all get everything I found,” Vickie said. “He talks about the victims. A little late, but the article might help when it comes to seeing the victims from the wall get...well, they will get burials, won’t they?”

  “The city will be in charge of the bodies, but yes, they’ll get burials,” Jackson said with assurance. “I’m sure a good philanthropist out there will also see to it that they receive rites and a plaque and memorial as well.”

  Griffin glanced at her and smiled. “If no one else, I’m sure Adam Harrison will see to it.”

  She smiled and nodded. “I hope I get to meet this man,” she said.

  “I’m sure you will. I’m going to put through a call to Angela, have you speak with her. Maybe you can tell her more about what you found and she can add that into what they’re finding,” Jackson told her.

  “Um, sure.”

  He put through the call. Vickie was phone-introduced to Angela, Jackson’s wife, Special Agent Hain in charge of cases. Angela was both gracious and down-to-earth, and Vickie discovered that the woman seemed to love research and history as much as she did.

  By the time she finished with the call, they were coming into Dedham.

  “How are the divers meeting us?” Vickie asked.

  Griffin laughed. “They’re actually getting to the pond the same way we are. Trekking it!”

  Vickie found she was actually glad Griffin was a little lost when it came to exactly where he should park near the woods, and where the trail that led to the pond was—in many areas, the trees and the brush were just too thick to get through. She felt...useful, being able to direct him. And appreciated.

  There were two other SUVs parked where they headed. The divers had apparently beat them to the site, Griffin said. Law enforcement logos showed that
they belonged to the state police.

  It was odd as they started down the trail; all kinds of day-to-day and very ordinary businesses surrounded the area—restaurants and chain stores. Of course, Dedham was still an old New England town, filled with lovely colonial and Victorian homes. And once they were into the trees, it was easy to imagine the raw wilderness that had been discovered by the first settlers. Massachusetts might face some brutal winters with heavy snow and ice, but the summers could be beautiful and rich and lush with foliage.

  The pond, however, was loved by many for its still somewhat pristine beauty. They were readily able to traverse the one trail, and when they reached the water, the divers were already suited up.

  There were four of them, and they were courteous and serious and also ready to crack a few jokes.

  It was summer, but it was Massachusetts, and the pond was cold.

  “Toughen up, McClaren!” the female member of the group teased the young man mentioning that the water was “Wicked cold.”

  “Hey, just because you’ve got ice in your veins, Strickland!” he taunted in return.

  A man named Beck, the head of their unit, just shook his head and talked to Jackson, Griffin and Vickie, asking them just what were they looking for.

  “Our victim—first name we believe to be Darlene—was most probably boxed up in some way. She was the first, as far as our intelligence goes,” Griffin told him, “and she might have been tossed in something like an old waterproofed cardboard box or something like that. Maybe even a box in plastic.”

  “Should have floated to the surface by now,” a man named Harding said. “You sure she’s in there?”

  “Not absolutely,” Jackson admitted.