Dead End

by Mariah Stewart

  1

  Lyndon , Pennsylvania

  August, 2005

  What could possibly be going through a man’s mind at the moment he decides to take the life of a child?

  Detective Evan Crosby stared down at the twisted body of Caitlin McGill and wondered.

  The young girl’s blank eyes stared endlessly at the sun, her mouth open in its final scream. Her thin arms stretched outward, bent at the elbows, to form perfect Ls. Her feet turned in, toes touching.

  “Pigeon-toed.”

  “What?” Evan turned his head slightly, though his eyes were still on the girl who lay at his feet.

  “We used to call people whose feet turned in like that pigeon-toed,” one of the crime-scene investigators noted. “How old was this one?”

  “Not even fourteen,” Evan replied.

  “Just like the last one.” The CSI shook his head. “Crazy. Just plain damned crazy. She was a real cute kid.”

  “They were all cute kids.”

  “This is what, the third? Fourth? In the past two months?”

  No one responded to the question, which was rhetorical. Everyone on the scene-from the Avon County, Pennsylvania, detectives to the CSIs to the local police to the medical examiner-knew exactly how many others there’d been since the first of May.

  Four.

  Jamie Kershaw.

  Heidi Fuhrmann.

  Andrea Masters.

  And now Caitlin McGill.

  All between the ages of twelve and fourteen. All pretty girls who attended one of the many private schools that flourished in the Philadelphia suburbs. All with dark red stains down the front of the white cotton shirts that were standard school-uniform attire.

  All of them barefoot.

  “What’s up with that, anyway?” Joe Sullivan, Evan’s onetime partner at the Lyndon Police Department, came up the hill from the playground and stopped three feet behind Evan. “Whaddaya suppose he’s doing with their shoes?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Poor kid.” Sullivan shook his head. “What’s your old lady say about it?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet. She’s been away.” Evan let the “old lady” comment ride. He’d had that conversation with Joe on more than one occasion. It had never done any good-Joe was Joe and wasn’t about to change.

  “Guess they keep those FBI profilers pretty busy, eh?”

  “Never a shortage of psychos, Joe, you know that.” Evan nodded to Dr. Agnes Jenkins, the Avon County medical examiner, as she hurried past.

  “Can’t remember anything like this, though. But at least he left them where they’d be found quickly.” Sullivan’s voice was flat, emotionless.

  The M.E. bent over the body and began her ministrations. Evan looked away. Over the past eight weeks, he’d had more than his fill of young girls who’d had their throats slashed. He took a few steps back, then turned and went back to his car. The crime scene would be turned over to him once the M.E. was finished, but for now, he’d use this time to check his phone messages, return those calls he could. Start the paperwork on this latest homicide. Get as much work done as he could while he could. It had all the makings of another very long night.

  It was well after three in the morning when Evan arrived at his townhouse in West Lyndon. Bone weary, he left his car parked out front, and bleary-eyed, let himself in through the front door. He ignored the pile of mail on the hall table-when had he put that there?-and pretended not to see the blinking red light on his telephone. Messages could wait. He was simply too tired to deal with anyone or anything.

  Too tired, too, to make it up the steps, so he let himself drift backward onto the living-room sofa, fully clothed. He’d just closed his eyes when he heard the soft footfall on the stairs. Dismissing it as little more than wishful thinking on his part, he continued to sail toward sleep.

  “Evan?” a voice called from the doorway.

  More wishful thinking, surely.

  “Evan.” The voice, gentle, filled with concern, drew closer.

  Soft hands caressed his arm. He sighed and smiled in his state of almost-sleep.

  “Evan, don’t sleep down here. Come up to bed.” The voice was in his ear now.

  He reached out and touched skin.

  “Annie.”

  He felt her weight as she sat on the edge of the sofa and leaned over him, her lips pressed against the side of his face.

  “When did you get here?”

  “About nine.” She snuggled next to him, and he felt himself relax for the first time in days.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I heard on the scanner that another body had been found. I didn’t want to disturb you. I figured you’d be home when you were finished with what you had to do.”

  “How long can you stay?”

  “I’ll be in town through Tuesday. Have you forgotten that my sister is getting married on Friday?”

  “Oh, shit. I did forget.” He stared up at the ceiling. How could he have forgotten that?

  “It’s okay. I’m here to remind you. Thursday night, rehearsal dinner. Friday night, wedding. Saturday, sleep until noon. Saturday night, just me and you. Sunday through Tuesday, I’ll be staying with my niece, until Mara and Aidan get back. Not much of a honeymoon for them, but at least they’ll have a few days to themselves.”

  “Rewind back to Saturday. Saturday sounded real good.” It had been weeks since they’d had a night together alone. There’d been something every weekend for the past month. Four weeks ago, it had been Mara’s wedding shower. The past three, either Annie or Evan had been working.

  Maybe on Saturday night they could have dinner at their favorite restaurant, he was thinking, then catch a movie. Or maybe they’d just stay at home, just the two of them. That sounded even better.

  She lay against him, her head on his chest. His fingers trailed lightly through her soft blond hair.

  “How old was she?” she asked softly.

  “Thirteen. Almost fourteen.”

  “Same as the others?”

  “Yes.”

  She fell silent, and he knew that she was working it through. As a psychologist and one of the FBI’s most skilled profilers, Annie-Dr. Anne Marie McCall-couldn’t help but sort through the pieces.

  “Shoes?”

  “Missing,” he told her through a fog of fatigue. “Just like the others.”

  “Odd trophy,” she murmured.

  “I wanted to ask you what you thought about that.”

  “Tomorrow.” She sat up. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Right now, you think you can make it up the stairs?”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Okay.”

  She stood, and cool air replaced her warmth. His hand searched for her in the dark, but she had already moved out of reach.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Moments later she returned. He felt the soft flow of a blanket drift over him, the comfort of a pillow under his head.

  Bliss.

  “Move over.” She slid under the blanket and wrapped her arms around him, her body molded to his in the dark.

  “Annie…”

  “Shh. Tomorrow. There’s nothing that can’t wait until the morning.”

  He wanted to say something, but his tired brain had stopped communicating with his mouth. Effortlessly, he sailed off into the darkness, where he dreamed of endless closets filled with small bloody shoes that frantic mothers tried to match into pairs.

  2

  Evan! How’s it going?”

  A hand slapped him on the back, and Evan turned to find Will Fletcher, a friend of Annie’s from the Bureau, leaning against the bar.

  “Some wedding, huh?” Will gestured around the tent with one hand, the other hand wrapped around a glass of champagne.

  “Yeah. Beautiful. Glad the weather held for Mara and Aidan. The reports this week weren’t too promising.” Evan declined the flute offered
by a tuxedoed young man and opted for a pilsner of beer.

  “That’s one beautiful bride.” Will nodded at Mara, who, with her tall, handsome groom, was making her way around the room.

  “No argument from me,” Evan agreed.

  “Great idea, don’t you think, to have Annie and Julianne give the bride away?”

  “Well, since Mara’s parents aren’t alive, having her sister and her daughter there for her was a really nice touch.”

  “The kid-Julianne-looks like she’s survived her ordeal pretty well.”

  For a moment, Evan had forgotten that Will had been there when Julianne had been returned after spending seven years living under an assumed name with her father, Jules Douglas. Unable to forgive Mara for having divorced him, Jules had done the one thing he knew would hurt Mara the most. He took their five-year-old daughter, and disappeared.

  After years of tracking, the FBI was finally led to the Valley of the Angels, a Wyoming ranch that was part of the network of one self-proclaimed evangelist who called himself Reverend Prescott, whose mission in life was to “rescue” young drug-addicted runaways from the streets, only to clean them up and sell them to the highest bidder on the Internet. Jules’s mathematical wizardry had come in handy when it came to cooking the reverend’s books. Jules was currently in prison awaiting trial for kidnapping and a host of other charges related to his work at the Valley of the Angels. Julianne had been present when her father was arrested, just a few days after she’d been reunited with her mother. All in all, it had been one hell of a year for everyone involved.

  “From all accounts, Julianne seems to be doing just fine. She seems to be accepting Aidan as a stepfather-Mara would have postponed the wedding if she hadn’t been able to handle it-and Annie has been keeping tabs on her. She thinks Julianne’s doing great.” Evan’s searching eyes found Annie, halfway across the tent. He willed her to look at him, and eventually, she did. She smiled and winked, and continued her conversation with one of the guests.

  Will said something else, and Evan nodded and excused himself. The band was starting to play an old ballad from the forties and he wanted to dance with Annie, wanted to feel her arms around him, wanted to feel her pressed against him. He smiled at the person she was chatting with-a man he vaguely recognized as someone from her office-and took her hand.

  “It’s time to dance with your guy,” he told her as he led her to the dance floor.

  “Gladly.” She moved into his arms and swayed with him.

  “What’s with this forties music?” he asked.

  “Mr. Shields asked them to play it.”

  “He asked them to play the last two sappy songs. Since when does the father of the groom get to submit his own playlist?”

  “Since no one has told him he couldn’t.”

  Out of the corner of one eye, Evan watched the Shields clan gather. They were all now, or had been at one time, in the FBI. Aidan, the groom. Connor, his older brother and best man. Thomas, their father, and Frank, their uncle and Thomas’s brother, both now retired. The cousins-Frank’s kids-Andrew, Brendan, Grady, and Mia, the lone female in the family. Two generations of FBI, eight in all.

  But of course, there had been nine. It was the ninth Shields-Thomas’s middle son, Dylan-who was on everyone’s mind right then.

  “Annie!” Grady shouted over the heads of the other dancers. “We need you!”

  Evan thought he’d felt her stiffen slightly, but she smiled and kept on dancing.

  “We’re about to drink a toast to Dylan, Annie”-Brendan made his way through the crowd and took Annie’s arm-“and we can’t do it right without you.”

  Annie appeared slightly uncomfortable, as if unsure what to do, but did not protest when Brendan tugged her along.

  “Evan, do you mind…?” she asked.

  “You go on,” he said. “It’s okay…”

  “If you’re sure…?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged, and watched her disappear into the crowd.

  A few minutes later, Thomas Shields asked the band to stop playing so that he could propose a toast to his son.

  Not Aidan, the groom. But Dylan, the one who’d been killed in an undercover drug deal gone bad more than two years earlier.

  Dylan, everyone’s favorite, the best of the Shields brothers. Best athlete. Best student. Best friend. Best agent. The golden boy whose memory would forever remain untarnished to those who had known and loved him.

  Dylan, who had been engaged to marry Annie.

  Evan signaled the bartender for a beer, then leaned back against the bar and took a long drink while listening to the tributes, one after another, being paid to the fallen hero.

  “If they keep this up much longer, they’ll turn the wedding reception into a wake,” he muttered.

  “What?” The man next to him leaned forward, thinking Evan had been addressing him.

  “I said, nice that they’re remembering Dylan,” he said dryly.

  “Oh, hell of a guy. Damn shame, what happened to him.” The man shook his gray head. “Just a damn shame. And him all set to marry that pretty little Annie McCall. Broke her heart, the day he died, I can tell you that. Just a tragedy.”

  The man appeared to wipe a tear from his face, and Evan fought an urge to roll his eyes.

  “Friend of his, were you?” the man asked.

  “Ah, no. We never met. I’m actually a friend of the bride.”

  “Then you must know Annie.”

  “Yes, of course. I know Annie.”

  “They sure do love her, don’t they?” He nodded to the cluster that the Shields family made on the opposite side of the room. “But then again, what’s not to love about Annie, right? Damn shame she had the love of her life snatched away from her like that.”

  Evan’s stomach began to knot. He put the beer down on the bar and started to excuse himself, but his companion kept talking.

  “Makes it worse for everyone, not knowing, you know.”

  “Not knowing what?”

  “Not knowing who pulled the trigger. Never did find the shooter. I think that would have helped everyone, if they had closure, you know?”

  “I’m sure the Bureau investigated thoroughly.”

  “They did, but nothing came of it. Sometimes it happens like that. It’s not always like it is on those TV shows, you know.”

  Evan knew.

  The eulogies finally over, the band began to play again. Evan looked around for Annie, but found her still surrounded by the Shields family. When he saw Mara standing along the edge of the dance floor chatting with a girlfriend, he put his beer down and made his way to her.

  “May I have the honor of dancing with the bride?” He held out his arms.

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Mara smiled and joined him on the dance floor.

  “Beautiful wedding, Mara,” he said.

  “Oh, thank you. I’m so glad it didn’t get humid. You know how it gets here in Pennsylvania in the summer. It can really swelter.”

  “Well, you lucked out, all around.” He moved her around the dance floor in time to the music. “Everything is perfect.”

  She nodded somewhat absently, and he caught her looking over his shoulder.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We should be leaving soon, but I’m afraid it’s going to be hard to tear Aidan away from his family.”

  “On his wedding night? I doubt it.”

  “It’s been a difficult day for them-for Aidan and his dad and his brother and the rest of them. This is really the first big family event since Dylan died, and they’re all missing him so much.” Her eyes flickered, and she looked up at him. “Probably not so easy for you, either, but for a different reason, right?”

  He shrugged.

  “The Shieldses are a tough group, Evan,” Mara said, as if that were all the explanation necessary.

  “Honey,” he said softly, “it’s your wedding. They should let you have your day and not turn it into a memorial service for a man who’s
been dead for more than two years.”

  Her cheeks flushed, and he instantly regretted his words.

  “I’m sorry, Mara. I shouldn’t have…”

  “It’s okay. And you’re right. I know I should say something, but they are just a little intimidating when they’re all together. And I don’t think any of them ever got over him dying like that, the way he did. I know Aidan is still having a lot of issues because of the way he died.”

  “Look, how about if I go on over there and see if I can get Aidan’s attention.”

  “That would be great. Thanks, Evan. Maybe just let him know that he needs to watch the time, and that I’m ready to leave whenever he is.”

  He left Mara with the same friend she’d earlier been chatting with and somehow managed to breach the edge of the circle that was gathered around Thomas Shields and his two sons. Between Aidan and Connor sat Annie, looking very much a part of the clan. Evan managed to catch Aidan’s eye and mouthed that Mara needed to talk to him. A quick glance at his watch reminded Aidan why. He nodded and excused himself quietly. Evan stepped back to let him pass, pausing, trying to decide the best way to get Annie’s attention. But she was absorbed in a story Grady was telling about one time when they were younger and he’d had the bad judgment to challenge Dylan to a pitching contest, the prize being Grady’s new bike. Dylan, who’d been scouted by several pro baseball teams as a senior in college, had all but taken his cousin’s head off with his fastball and, at the end of the exercise, had driven off on Grady’s bike, whistling “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  Evan stepped back and away from the crowd. Still on the fringes, he watched Annie for a few more minutes, but she never glanced his way. He walked out of the tent toward the parking lot and disappeared into the night.

  He drove around for forty minutes trying to decide what to do. When his phone rang, he answered on the first ring.

  “ Crosby.”

  He listened for a moment, then turned his car around in the next parking lot.

  “I’m on my way.”

  He headed for Belle Mead, a small town four miles away, where another young girl lay dead, and tried to ignore the fact that his first reaction had been relief of sorts for having been provided with an excuse for having left the wedding.