Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

“Or both,” Mac pushed himself up onto the kitchen counter. “So he spends the next nearly two years researching, investigating and planning to punish those responsible for his sister’s death.”

  “He plans it down to the last detail, Mac,” Dara replied, pacing, “including making it look like the work of a crazed serial killer, using biblical verses and cutting their abdomens’ open in the shape of the Holy Cross. All of which he uses as a cover so that he can pursue revenge against those responsible for his sister’s death.”

  “Okay,” Mac nods. “That all makes sense. But what did he find at Randall’s? What was it that triggered all this? That is what we have to find? He’s not done, remember. There is another victim or victims out there.”

  Mac walked back into the living room, “Kevin, do you still have all of the things from your house in Ithaca?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, we need to comb through it. We think Johnson found something at your house that set him off. We need to find what that is.”

  Randall nodded, “Most of Rebecca’s stuff is in a storage garage I have a few blocks away. When I moved away, I packed it all up in boxes, stuffed it in storage. I figured someday I’d get around to going through it all.”

  “Someday is right now,” Mac stated. “Let’s go.”

  • • • •

  “Yes, Director, we’ll keep working it,” Gesch replied. “I agree holding off until we have this locked down a little better is the way to go.” Gesch hung up after finishing his briefing of Director Mitchell on the discovery of Drake Johnson.

  “He wants to hold off going to the media?”

  “He wants us to be certain he’s our guy. I think he is, but after Harrisburg, Frederick and with the White House’s skin in the game, he wants to be absolutely one hundred percent certain.”

  “How much more certain can you be than DNA evidence?”

  “Not much,” Gesch answered. “Not my call. The director is being careful and wants to be one hundred percent before we go public, which he wants to do later today or even tonight. Let’s get the director the certainty he’s looking for.”

  Gesch, Delmonico and four other agents sifted through the reams of records now being unearthed on Drake Johnson and his family. The dental records used to identify Drake Johnson were provided by his half-brother Thomas Johnson, a near retirement dentist in Rochester, New York. The Rochester PD and bureau agents interviewed Thomas and he admitted his knowledge of his brother’s plan to disappear and changed his dental records to match those found at the scene. The brother claimed he did it for his brother because of the criminal and civil investigation. He understood that it was Drake’s intent to disappear and that it was unlikely Thomas would ever hear from him again. Thomas Johnson claimed he had not been in contact with him since he disappeared and had no idea where he was or how to contact him. “Do you believe him?” Gesch asked the agents on the scene.

  “I do,” the agent answered. “I think the Rochester PD’s take is correct. While we’re still going through his phone records, texts, e-mails and all the rest, we haven’t found anything yet suggesting he’s been in contact with his brother. Right now we’re going through his house and office to see if perhaps there is another phone he could be using to stay in touch, but my sense is that on the issue of contact since the disappearance, the half-brother is on the level.”

  “Has he lawyered up yet?”

  “He has, but he knows he’s in trouble and he wants no part of what Drake’s been up to. We’re pushing him to fully cooperate. I think he has and will continue to do so.”

  “Keep me informed,” Gesch answered and went back to the records on Drake Johnson on his desk. Drake Johnson was the son of Warren and Patricia Johnson. Warren was twelve years older than Patricia and the half-brother was from his first marriage. Warren was a successful CPA with a small Auburn accounting firm. Patricia was a longtime manager at a local bank. They provided their son and his sister Rebecca with a comfortable upper middle-class upbringing. The Johnson parents perished within six weeks of one another four years after Rena’s death, the mother of breast cancer and then six weeks later the father of a heart attack.

  The FBI was digging up records and information on the family by the minute. For five hours a team of agents sifted through record after record on their laptops and on paper, working through the lunch hour, three pizza boxes now stacked on top of the garbage can, coffee cups, ceramic and Styrofoam, strewn across the table, now matched by the empty Diet Coke cans, everyone pumping caffeine into their systems.

  Late in the afternoon, Gesch looked up from his computer, yawned and rubbed his eyes. He pushed himself out of his chair and walked down to the restroom and splashed water on his face, hoping the cold water would revive him. As he walked back into his office, he looked to Delmonico, who was nibbling on sea salt and vinegar chips and reading intently. Gesch took the measure of her intensity and realized something on the page was registering with her. He could see it in the intensity in her eyes, the wrinkling of her forehead. “Gracie, what’re you reading?”

  She held up a sheet of paper, “A property record for a Richard Tanner. It’s for a cabin in southern Pennsylvania.”

  “And who is Richard Tanner?”

  “Patricia Johnson’s deceased father. Did you know she was an only child?”

  Gesch shook his head, sitting back down and swiping the mouse to wake up his computer.

  “In any event, while you were looking through Drake Johnson’s records, I decided to go through the parents’ records. As I was going through the family financials, I saw a record for payment of septic services.”

  “Septic services?”

  “Yeah, it would seem rather odd that the family would have a septic system living in Auburn proper, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose I would.”

  “So anyway, I looked further into that payment, and it’s for a septic system at a property in south Pennsylvania outside of the town of Wrightsdale in Lancaster County. Turns out it’s a cabin along the Octoraro Creek. The cabin is in the name of Richard Tanner.”

  “Even though Richard Tanner’s been dead for five years?” Gesch asked, suddenly interested.

  “Yes. I mean, had I not stumbled across this septic system bill, I’m not sure I’d have discovered the cabin, at least maybe not this quickly.”

  “And there’s no record of any sale of the property?”

  “No,” Delmonico replied, shaking her head. “I’m wondering if it’s still somehow in the family.”

  “And there’s no family other than Drake?”

  “There’s only the half-brother, but he was the son of the father, not the mother.”

  Gesch went to his desk and grabbed his phone, “Find me the name of the Lancaster Pennsylvania County sheriff and then get him on the phone for me.” Then to Delmonico he said, “Let’s see if anyone’s been hanging around that cabin.”

  • • • •

  In the afternoon, Mac, Wire, Umland and Kevin Randall commandeered two conference rooms at the Philadelphia Police Department and worked through the belongings from Randall’s storage closet. There were photos, notebooks, scrapbooks, datebooks and various other documents, all of which were largely unorganized. “After the break-in, everything was messed up and we never really got around to reorganizing it after the break-in and before …” Kevin Randall caught himself. “Before Becca was killed.”

  Wire, along with Umland and Randall, sifted through the personal effects while Mac worked with a crime scene tech to get their old desktop computer operating. It took some time. Like anyone the ages of the Randalls, much of their life was on their computer.

  Over the next several hours, Mac and the crime scene tech worked through the files on the computer. First, they went through the old e-mail account of Rebecca Randall, searching key terms that included all of the victims’ names. Only Janelle Wyland’s came up in sporadic e-mails between the two women. There was nothing in any of the e-mail corresp
ondence that seemed even remotely related to the death of Rena Johnson.

  After having scanned through the e-mails, Mac clicked onto the files with photos on the computer. “Holy cow,” Mac muttered.

  “Must be thousands of photos on her computer,” the tech speculated.

  Randall overheard them, “Rebecca was a picture hound. She had three cameras and took tons of pictures, not to mention those she uploaded from her cell phone.

  For two hours Mac scrolled through photo after photo while Wire and Umland did the same with the personal effects. Wire and Umland took a break around 5:00 P.M. “Mac, you want anything?”

  “Diet Coke,” Mac answered. “And anything that might pass as edible.”

  “There’s a Jimmy John’s across the street,” Umland suggested.

  “I want a number nine with peppers,” Mac answered without hesitation, “and a bag of jalapeno pepper chips. I’m buying.” Mac took fifty dollars out of his wallet and handed it to Wire. “Make it so, Number One.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  Mac’s phone rang and as he reached for the display noted it said Auburn Police Department. “Detective Flynn, I presume.”

  “I got your message, Agent McRyan,” Flynn replied. “You said it was urgent.”

  “You can’t go public with this yet, but the Reaper is Drake Johnson.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. “But McRyan, he’s dead. He died in that car accident. They recovered the body, matched the dental records, the whole shebang.”

  Mac explained the eleventh bullet and the blood. “He set it up. He set it up to do this because two weeks after he died, I think he killed Rebecca Randall.”

  Detective Flynn sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He hounded us pretty good in the years after her death to see if we were making progress. He … I don’t know … I don’t think he was ever all that impressed with us. We didn’t have any suspects and a few times he was angry, desk pounding angry. I think he was pretty close to his sister.” Flynn snorted, “It figures.”

  “What figures?”

  “You say something callous off the cuff and it always comes back to bite somehow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After he died, I made the flip comment one day to Chief Dye that while Drake Johnson’s death was tragic, at least I wouldn’t have him hounding me anymore.”

  “So he was an angry guy?”

  “Yes. Edgy, and he just had a menacing look to him, like he was on a hair trigger. I suppose I should have said something about all of this when you guys were here, but I didn’t think it mattered because he was …”

  “Dead.”

  “Right.”

  Mac spoke with Flynn another minute and then hung up. The conversation explained where some of Johnson’s motive and anger came from.

  While waiting for Wire, Randall and Umland to return with the sandwiches, Mac and the crime scene tech kept scrolling through the photos. He was in a full yawn when he saw it. “Stop,” he exclaimed as he grabbed control of the mouse and moved back to the last photo. “Holy shit.”

  In the photo, standing in front of a silver minivan, all smiles, were left to right, Melissa Goynes and Sandy Faye with arms interlocked, Kelly Drew and Hannah Donahue hugging one another, Janelle Wyland, Rena Johnson and Rebecca Randall had their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. There was one other woman, leaning back against the van, her hands in her shorts pockets, smiling. Mac had never seen her before. The date in the lower right-hand corner was August 17, seven years ago.

  Just then Wire, Umland and Randall walked back into the conference room. “Dara, look.”

  Wire took in the screen and her eyes went wide, “Is this what Johnson found? This photo?”

  “Could be,” Mac answered and then turned to Kevin Randall. “Have you ever seen this photo before?”

  “No, not that I ever recall.”

  “Do you recognize these women?”

  Randall scanned the photo, “Only Becca, Janelle and Rena.”

  “How about the blond on the far right that’s leaning against the van? Do you recognize her?”

  Randall stared at the photo and shook his head, “I don’t. She’s not familiar. I think I knew all of Becca’s friends, and she is not familiar.”

  “Well, she must have a tie to someone in the picture,” Mac speculated. “We need to figure out who she is. Everyone else in this picture is dead.”

  • • • •

  The Lancaster County sheriff came through a couple of hours later. The cabin was worth a look, a very serious look. “Gear up. The sheriff says a plainclothes deputy went out to the area and showed the photos of Johnson around to a couple of distant neighbors and they recognized our man and they said he’s been around.”

  “Is he around now?” Delmonico asked, grabbing her gun from her desk drawer, along with her FBI windbreaker and vest.

  “Deputy says lights are on and there’s a white pick-up truck parked in the driveway. So someone looks to be there.”

  Gesch took out his cell phone, “Director, we may have a location on our man. We can be there in a half hour.” He gave the director the quick rundown. “Sir, I would recommend holding off on the press conference you have scheduled in a half hour identifying Drake Johnson as the Reaper until we run this down. I don’t want to spook him if he’s watching. Right. Wait? You’re sure? Yes sir.”

  “What?” Delmonico asked.

  “The director is coming along.”

  • • • •

  Mac picked up his cell phone to dial Gesch when the man’s picture appeared on his screen. “Talk about a smartphone.” He answered the call, “Aubry, good timing. I was just going to call you. I think we found something.”

  “We did too, Mac,” Gesch answered and Mac could hear the noise in the background as Gesch spoke. The sound was the whirring of a chopper. “Mac, we may have a line on Drake Johnson.” Gesch explained the connection to the cabin. “We’re going to be there in thirty minutes.”

  Mac put the call on speaker for Wire to hear as Gesch explained they were on the way to a cabin in Wrightsdale, Pennsylvania, a cabin that was owned by Johnson’s late grandfather. “The sheriff says the lights are on and it looks like someone is there. Neighbors have seen someone fitting the description of Johnson in recent days, picked him right out of a photo array that has the DMV photo and the photos we’ve developed. We’re going to be on the ground within twenty minutes and we should be to the cabin within ten minutes of that. The director is holding off on his press conference until we hit the cabin and see if he’s there. So what do you have, Mac?”

  “A photo I found on Randall’s computer that has all of our victims in it plus one other woman, standing in front of what looks like a silver minivan.”

  “You think that’s what triggered Johnson?”

  “I think it’s possible. The pieces fit, Aubry. He finds the picture as part of the investigation of the break-in. He fakes his death. He then abducts Rebecca Randall and with her bound to a chair, a knife at her throat, she tells him the whole story of the accident that kills Rena Johnson. Drake gets what he can out of Rebecca, kills her and dumps her and spends the next two years preparing not only his retribution but also …”

  “His way out,” Gesch finished.

  “Right, so look, we have one more woman to find,” Mac started.

  “We do, but if we nail this bastard in the next half hour, we don’t need to find her.”

  “Aubry, we do need to find her. She was possibly involved in a vehicular homicide.”

  “True, Mac, but that can wait.”

  Mac exhaled, Gesch was probably right. He started thinking about how quickly he could get on a chopper. “What’s Wrightdale from here?”

  “It’s a couple of hours, Mac. If the chopper was still up there I’d have you jump on that and join us. There’s no time.”

  Mac slu
mped back in his chair. He’d have to miss it. “Okay, go get him.”

  “Okay, Mac. You’ll be my first call,” Gesch signed off excitedly.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Mac grumbled, tossing his cell phone disgustedly on the table.

  • • • •

  “Dani, how are you holding up?” the woman asked.

  “Fine, I guess. I’m scared and tired of watching my back, I can tell you that. I’m not like you. I don’t have high-priced security watching me 24/7. I’m totally exposed here and we’re the only two left. I think I need to leave town.”

  “Well, I have good news for you, Dani. The FBI found out who he is.”

  “Who?”

  “Drake Johnson, that girl Rena’s brother. He was a cop, staged his own death two years ago and he’s been coming after us all. But now the FBI has figured out who he is. There is going to be a press conference tonight identifying him and he’s as good as caught. In fact, the FBI knows where he is and it’s a long way from here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It won’t be long, I promise. I think you’re safe and I’m safe and the best news is nobody is the wiser. This thing is as good as over.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Yes or no?”

  “Why didn’t she leave the party with you?”

  “We lost track of her. She wandered off and someone said the police were coming so we had to leave, we were underage, there were drugs, we had to go and go fast.”

  The Reaper had watched the interrogation of Rebecca Randall numerous times over the past two years. He always watched before he struck. It was a reminder of why he was doing what he was doing and why in his mind he thought it was just. Whenever he questioned what he was doing, if it was right, if he continued to have the will to finish what he’d started, he watched the videotapes, of Randall, of Goynes, Wyland and Donahue. He watched them all, but when he truly needed motivation, the one video he always came back to was Rebecca Randall.

  Rebecca Randall was his sister’s friend, the one who took her to the rave party when she knew Rena was inexperienced in such things. The friend who didn’t look out for Rena, didn’t go see if she was alive in the ditch when the van hit her, the friend who buried the truth about the accident for five years until he found it by accident when investigating the break-in at Randall’s home. Just happening to flip by the picture on the computer, seeing the August 17 date in the lower right-hand corner, seeing all of the women in the picture, the silver minivan in the background and knowing the picture was taken the night his sister was murdered.