Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  “There’s that area again,” Wire remarked. Ithaca was forty miles south of Auburn, New York.

  “It gets better,” Gesch added, “Rebecca Randall is originally from Auburn, graduated high school with Rena Johnson, and from what we’ve been able to learn, the two of them were very good friends.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup.”

  “There has to be a connection then,” Wire added. “So what happened to Rebecca Randall?”

  “She was reported missing by her husband the next morning after she was last seen. Her car was found four days later, forty miles south of Ithaca, pulled off into the woods. The body was found a day later lying in a ditch, barely visible due to all the high grass and cattails. A searcher practically stepped on the body when they found her. I’m e-mailing you the file now.”

  Mac and Wire made their way up to the attic office and Mac’s laptop computer. McRyan opened the e-mail file and immediately started printing pages. At the time of her sad demise, Rebecca Randall was a recently married twenty-five-year-old manager at a local clothing store. Mac scanned the murder scene pictures of the shallow grave in the farm field and of her vehicle while Wire assembled the investigative file spewing out on the printer. The cause of death was stabbing. Her stomach brutally ripped open, although not in the shape of the Holy Cross, as with other victims, nor was she staged; she was simply dumped in the ditch. “She wasn’t killed in that ditch.”

  “Why?” Aubry asked knowingly.

  “Lack of blood, very little in the ditch or in the trunk of the car,” Mac answered. “She was dumped there but she was killed somewhere else.”

  “That’s what the Ithaca PD surmised as well,” Gesch answered. “You’ll find it in the notes.”

  “Did they ever figure out where she was killed?”

  “No,” Gesch answered. “That remains a mystery.”

  “Did they have any suspects?”

  “Only the most obvious one when a wife is murdered—the husband, Kevin Randall.”

  “I’ll bite,” Mac asked. “Other than the obvious, why the husband?”

  “His alibi was just a bit on the squishy side, but the investigators didn’t have any physical evidence or real motive so they never charged him. From what I can tell in reading the file …”

  “They didn’t think it was him but they had no other viable options,” Wire answered, thumbing the pages of the investigation. “He’d been out of town on a boys’ weekend. It should have taken him five to six hours to drive home and it took more like twelve.”

  “What was his explanation?” Mac asked.

  “He said he pulled off to a rest area and slept in his car for six hours since he was so exhausted from the weekend,” Dara answered, reading from a page. “Apparently the boys got after the booze pretty good. He said he was tired, weaving on the road and worried he still might blow over the legal limit. So he pulled aside to sleep and get himself right. The rest area he claimed he stopped at is unmanned and there were no cameras to verify him stopping there. It was a rest area, so some guy sleeping in a Toyota 4Runner isn’t exactly going to draw suspicion.”

  “Which means good luck identifying anyone who stopped there and might have seen him during the time he said he was there,” Gesch stated.

  Mac was flipping through the pages as well. “It doesn’t look like he was exactly beloved by his in-laws.” The file indicated Rebecca’s parents disapproved of the marriage. The two had been together since high school in Auburn, she being a cheerleader and he the football captain. She’d never really dated anyone else from what Mac could tell from the file, and Mom and Dad thought she ought to have played the field. Mom and Dad also thought Kevin might have played the field, while with their daughter. It appeared that her parents continued to suspect their son-in-law, even long after the police had moved beyond him as a suspect.

  “Yeah, I saw the in-laws’ less than loving endorsement,” Wire answered. “So that put a target on him as well.”

  “At least enough that the husband moved away from Ithaca, away from Auburn and away from everything he’d ever known,” Gesch replied. “A cloud of suspicion hovered over him and his reputation was totaled, so he left to start over. He wouldn’t be the first guy to do that. However, in the end, while the Ithaca PD didn’t rule him out completely, they moved in other directions. As of today, they’ve never found a killer, a motive or even where she was killed, just her car and where she was dumped.”

  “And no forensic evidence from what I’m seeing,” Mac answered. “They really had nothing on the guy. They had nothing on the killer.”

  “Which is why the investigation moved in different directions after its initial focus on Kevin Randall,” Gesch stated. “I suppose he’s technically still a person of interest, but in talking to Ithaca, the file is as stone cold as can be. So do you guys want to head up there and see if you can heat it back up?”

  “No,” Mac answered.

  “No?” Wire and Gesch asked in unison.

  “Why not Ithaca, Mac?” Gesch asked.

  “Because I don’t think the answer lies in Ithaca, at least not yet. It lies somewhere in Rebecca Randall’s past and who better to answer that than her high school sweetheart and widower husband?”

  “Well, in that case, you’re going to Philadelphia.”

  • • • •

  Gesch updated the director on the Reaper investigation. “We’re continuing to work Germantown. We have agents picking up every piece of surveillance footage in that town in the two days before he tried to kill Drew. We’ve found nothing yet, but we’re continuing with that.”

  “What about the Reaper himself?”

  “The task force is continuing to go around with the photo array on this man.”

  “And McRyan?”

  “He and Wire are working their angle that we don’t have the first victim right, that there’s a different victim number one. They are on their way up to Philadelphia to work that.” Gesch laid the theory out for the director.

  “You buy their theory?”

  “You brought them in to take a second look at this case and run a parallel investigation. This is an outside of the box way of looking at the case. I don’t know that I fully buy that there’s a different victim number one, but I don’t dare discount it either. They may be on to something, and by now, I’ve learned not to question them.”

  “You’ve come around on them,” the director noted.

  Gesch nodded. “They’re both arrogant, cocky and overly confident, but the fact is they’re also really good. Those two are working this thing when almost anyone else in their conditions, who went through what they did, would be sitting on the sidelines. All they care about is solving it. I’ll work with people like that any day.”

  There was a knock on Gesch’s door and Delmonico stuck her head in the door. “There is a call on line three from the police chief in Frederick. You need to take the call.”

  Gesch ran his hand through his hair, “Chief, what can I do for you?” Gesch listened and then his eyes went wide.

  “What?” Director Mitchell asked.

  Gesch put his hand over the receiver, “They found McRyan’s eleventh bullet in the wall of a tree house.”

  “And?”

  “There’s blood on it.”

  “It goes to the front of the line. I want to know who that blood belongs to fifteen minutes ago,” Director Mitchell ordered.

  • • • •

  “Ten minutes,” the pilot reported.

  The FBI helicopter cruised hard north following the Delaware River, a hundred feet in the air, making a speed run. The downtown Philadelphia skyline was growing in size, viewable to their left to the northwest in the early evening light.

  “You guys developed this lead,” Gesch stated a few hours ago, “you should follow it. Just keep your profile low, at least as long as you can.”

  Their destination was a parking lot along the river in the Northern Liberties neighborhood just n
orth of the downtown core of Philadelphia.

  “I’ve never been to Philly,” Mac said, as he saw Citizens Bank Ballpark, the home of the Phillies, taking shape. The stadium was fully alight, the Phillies game in the early innings. “I always wanted to visit, see the sites, check out the Liberty Bell, say hello to Ben Franklin and maybe catch a Flyers game. Visiting like this is not what I had in mind.”

  “I see Philly and I think of Hall and Oates,” Wire remarked with a smile. “Daryl Hall’s voice is just so distinct. I mean, you hear his voice, that tenor, and you just know that it’s Hall and Oates.”

  “I’m partial to their early stuff myself,” Mac added. “For my money, Rich Girl and She’s Gone are their best.”

  “You like Hall and Oates?” Wire asked, slightly surprised. “I thought you were strictly a Springsteen guy.”

  “Not strictly,” Mac answered, shaking his head. “The Boss is the best, I’ve seen him too many times to count, but I like all kinds of music. I have three older sisters who grew up in the eighties. The stereo was on all the time upstairs. They loved Hall and Oates, Journey, Def Leppard, they even loved Duran Duran …”

  “Rick Springfield?”

  “Jessie’s Girl, heck yeah. So I love 80s’ music even though it’s really not my decade. But I know all the Hall and Oates songs. I have their greatest hits on my iPod.”

  “I was always partial to Kiss on My List and Private Eyes myself,” Wire suggested.

  “And they did a nice remake of You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling.” Mac smiled and started singing, “Baby, baby, I get down on my knees for you …” Mac riffed and Wire was amused and even the pilot smiled. “I love that song, although you can’t beat the original from the Righteous Brothers. My dad loved that song, sang it to my mom when she was mad at him.”

  “Really?”

  Mac nodded.

  “Did it work?”

  “Oh hell yeah, she always melted,” Mac replied with a big smile. “Ole Simon was a pretty smooth operator when he needed to be.”

  “Tom Cruise gave a nice rendition in Top Gun too,” Wire recalled.

  “Goose, she’s lost that lovin’ feelin’,” Mac mimicked.

  Wire cackled. “I hate it when she does that.”

  Mac and Wire were in Philadelphia less than two hours after the call with Gesch. As the chopper landed, they were met by a Philadelphia detective named Umland. After a minute of pleasantries, the three deposited themselves into Umland’s unmarked black Dodge Charger. “Kevin Randall lives five minutes away, over in the Northern Liberties neighborhood. He knows you’re coming.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Yin to her yang?”

  Kevin Randall, two plus years a widower, had restarted his life far from Ithaca, New York. He was living anonymously enough as a sales representative for a sports apparel company and quietly residing in a two-story brick townhouse just north of downtown Philadelphia.

  With the introductions made in the entryway of the townhouse, Randall led everyone to the right into a small family room. Taking the quick visual measure of the man and his home, Mac could tell he tried to leave his former life completely behind. There were no family pictures displayed around the house, no visible signs of his former life in Ithaca or Auburn, New York. Instead, his home, for all intents and purposes, was a bachelor pad, sparingly decorated and furnished, with his couch and armchairs arranged around the large flat screen resting on a stand to the right of the fireplace in the family room. Mac suspected Randall was doing all he could to keep under wraps the fact that his first wife was murdered and, for at least a time, he was considered the prime suspect. You couldn’t blame the man. If your opener with someone was my wife was murdered and I was the prime suspect, things went pretty downhill from there.

  There was no preamble. “Why are you here?” Randall asked warily, arms folded, on guard.

  “We are here about your wife’s death,” Mac answered, “but in a different way. We,” he pointed to Wire and himself, “think your wife’s death might have some tie to the Reaper killings.”

  “The Reaper killings? The guy who has been on the news nonstop? The killer who leaves bible messages and carves the sign of the cross into women’s stomachs, that guy?”

  Mac nodded.

  “How?” Randall asked in disbelief. “How could that possibly have any tie to Rebecca’s death? She wasn’t killed in that way.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Mac answered. “Does the name Rena Johnson mean anything to you?”

  “Rena? Sure, I knew her growing up in Auburn.”

  “How well?”

  “Acquaintances. She and Rebecca were good friends and that’s how I knew her. She was killed in a car accident years ago. It was a hit-and-run out in the country outside of Auburn. I don’t think they ever found the driver.”

  “You’re right, they never did, and it happened seven years ago to be exact,” Mac answered. “But that accident is why we’re here.”

  “And what would that have to do with Rebecca?”

  “It’s possible that Rebecca was there, part of the accident.”

  “She was involved in that accident?” Randall asked in disbelief.

  “Possibly. Did she ever say anything about that to you?”

  “I swear to you, she never said anything about it.”

  “You’re sure?” Wire asked.

  “I swear to you,” Randall answered, heart on his chest, a shocked look on his face. “Not a word.”

  Mac’s read was that he was telling the truth. “I wouldn’t doubt that,” Mac replied, explaining some background on the case and the other victims. “None of the family members we talked to ever heard of any such accident. It was as if all of these women never discussed it with anyone. It also appears that the women, for the most part, remained in limited contact with one another. We actually think that all of the victims of the Reaper were at the accident or played some role in it of some kind and this killer is seeking retribution for Rena Johnson’s death. So I assume you remember Janelle Wyland?”

  “Sure, I knew Janelle, I knew her well,” Randall slumped back into a chair, letting his arms fall free and shook his head as a wave a sadness fell over his face. “I try not to think of Becca every day, but it’s hard. Janelle’s death was a punch to the gut, made me think of Becca a lot, but I never tied the two together, you know?”

  “How did they know one another?” Wire asked quietly.

  “Janelle and Rebecca were college friends at Syracuse, where we all went to college, Becca, Janelle and I. Janelle lived in Maryland, but we’d see her from time to time. She came out to help when we were searching for Rebecca’s body.”

  “When Janelle came out to help with the search, do you recall anything about her at the time?”

  “Like what?”

  “Her demeanor? Anything she said, anything like that at all?”

  Randall shook his head, “Not that I can recall. Agent McRyan, please understand I was in a daze at the time. My wife had gone missing and even when the search started, I knew that it wasn’t going to end well, that if we found her, we’d find her dead. I wasn’t really paying attention to anyone else. If anything I was trying to avoid eye contact with people because I could already tell people suspected me and wondered if I could have done this thing to her. Someone said at the time that the husband is always a prime suspect.”

  “Having investigated these kinds of cases, I can tell you that’s true,” Mac answered. “Why would people have had any reason to suspect you at the time? Were there problems in the marriage?”

  Randall shrugged, “Kind of. I think at the time we were both a little restless. We were twenty-five, young, married, living in a relatively small town and both wondering if there might have been more to life. Wondering if we’d taken the right path, that we settled down too soon without seeing the world or what else there might have been to offer.”

  “Bored?”

  “I suppose,” Randall answered. “We loved each ot
her but, I know for myself at least, that,” he hesitated and then answered: “I was a little restless.”

  “Did you stray?” Wire asked.

  Randall shrugged and looked away. He had.

  “And she knew, didn’t she?”

  He nodded in resignation.

  Mac changed direction, “Did your wife ever go to any rave type parties?”

  Randall snapped back to attention, “Rave parties. Sure, back in the day. I went to a few with her. Now that you mention it, they were a big thing a number of years ago, in the summers. I don’t know how people did it, but they’d find these abandoned places, bring a generator and have a party with music, beer, booze.”

  “And drugs?” Wire asked.

  “For sure,” Randall answered.

  “Do you remember Rebecca ever going to these parties without you?”

  “Sure, we weren’t attached at the hip.”

  “Do you ever remember one up near Auburn that she went to without you seven years ago? Maybe in mid-August?”

  Randall sat back and thought and then shook his head, “Not that I remember. Not to say that she didn’t, it’s just that I don’t remember it very well. You said seven years ago in August?”

  Mac nodded.

  Randall shook his head again, “I might not have been around; matter of fact, I’m pretty certain I wasn’t. I went on a fishing trip with my dad and uncles for like a month up in Canada and Alaska in August that summer. I remember getting home the day before classes started back up at college, so if she went to a party during that time, I wouldn’t have known one way or another. I don’t remember her ever mentioning it.”

  “Do you remember Rebecca being any different when you got back from the trip?”

  “Different?”

  “Yeah,” Mac replied. “Emotionally different? Depressed, sad, a change in her view of life?”

  Randall looked away, as if trying to think back and finally lightly shook his head, “I don’t. At least not something that ever registered with me. Why do you ask?”

  “A couple of the Reaper’s victims seemed to change after that summer. One became more serious about life. Another kind of fell off the rails from the path she looked to be on.”