A Profiler's Case for Seduction

by Carla Cassidy

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Just stuff I’ve heard between the two of them, little snippets of conversations. They never said anything directly to me about it, but sometimes I overheard them talking. I heard Ben tell Melinda that she should be glad he only broke her arm, that if he’d broken her leg it would have been difficult for her to get around campus.”

  “You left the note on my car.”

  Amanda nodded. “I was starting to believe that Melinda and Ben had killed those men, and then I heard your name mentioned between them. I wanted to let you know that Troy Young was innocent and I needed to warn you that you might be in danger.”

  She raised a trembling hand to swipe away several tears that had escaped her eyes. “I wanted to believe I was wrong in my suspicions. I wanted to believe that Melinda was a brilliant, wonderful woman who would never be involved in any criminal activity. But truthfully, she scares me and she has Ben completely wrapped around her finger.”

  Mark’s cell phone rang and he held up a finger to Amanda as he answered. “Agent Flynn.”

  “We’ve checked both Ben’s apartment and Melinda’s place and nobody is home at either place,” Richard said. “The police department has stationed a man on each address to see if either of them turns up.”

  Mark fought against a new wave of fear as he thanked Richard and then disconnected the call. If Dora wasn’t at either of those places then where could she be? Was she already dead and buried in a shallow grave? His brain rebelled at the very thought.

  “Do you know if Melinda has another place besides the one where she lives? Does she own a getaway cabin or anything like that?”

  Amanda frowned. “Not that I know of.”

  “Neither Melinda nor Ben are home. Do you have any idea where they might be right now?”

  “I imagine they’re already out at the bonfire site.” Amanda jumped up from the sofa. “Maybe there’s some information about Melinda owning another house or something in the paperwork she left with me on the day after she was supposedly released from her kidnappers.”

  Mark stared at her, his heart thumping. “Papers?”

  Amanda walked over to the closet, opened it and then withdrew a tin lockbox from the top shelf. “Melinda brought this to me for safekeeping,” Amanda explained. “At the time she told me she was afraid of what might happen to her next and that this was all the paperwork anyone would need if something bad happened to her.” She held the tin box toward Mark, who grasped it eagerly.

  “Get me a sharp knife or a screwdriver,” he said as he carried the box to the small table. The box was locked, but it was cheap, and if Mark couldn’t pick the lock, his adrenaline would give him enough strength to tear it apart.

  He was vaguely surprised when Amanda pulled a pink case from under her sofa and opened it to display a small tool kit, complete with hammer, screwdrivers and pliers.

  Aware of time ticking by, time that could possibly be measured by Dora’s last gasps, he grabbed the Phillips-head screwdriver and attacked the lock.

  After several agonizing minutes, he threw the screwdriver aside with frustration and picked up the hammer. He attacked the box as if it were the person who had taken Dora, and by the time he’d struck the lock several times the lock sprang and the lid unlatched.

  Inside were three items and a digital camera. Mark stared at the three things: a gold-plated cigar lighter, a thick rope gold chain and a tie tack bearing the initials of JM.

  JM.

  “John Merris,” he muttered to himself. Souvenirs. This was a box of souvenirs from the murders. He was vaguely aware of Amanda moving to stand next to him.

  Sheriff Burris was a cigar smoker and David Reed’s ex-wife, Eliza, had mentioned that David always wore a chain around his neck, a chain that hadn’t been found on the body.

  Mark’s heart thumped in his chest as he picked up the camera and turned it on. The first photo displayed was a picture of Senator John Merris, obviously dead and resting in the shallow pit that had been prepared for his body.

  “Oh, my God,” Amanda exclaimed, and whirled away from the table.

  Mark hit the button to go to the next photo...and the next...and the next. Prove it or disprove it. The words rang in his head.

  With fingers that trembled, Mark pulled out his cell phone and called Richard. “You need to get over to Amanda Burns’s apartment. She has in her possession everything we need to nail Melinda Grayson and Ben Craig for the murders.”

  He disconnected the call and then turned to Amanda, who had huddled into a small ball in the corner of the sofa. “Stay here,” he commanded. “An FBI agent will be here to collect the box and its contents. Tell him everything you told me.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, her voice small and fearful.

  “To the bonfire. I’ve got to find Dora before those two monsters make her their next victim.” He left the apartment at a run, forgoing his car for the swiftness of his feet as he raced toward the campus.

  Night had fallen and a raucous noise drifted on the air from the bonfire site. Laughter and screams and cheers mingled together to form the sound of a rioting, drunken crowd.

  He checked his watch. It would soon be nine and the fire would be lit, kicking off the homecoming festivities. The air smelled of popcorn, apples and madness.

  Wild. The night was filled with wildness and it whipped through him as he ran, praying he wasn’t already too late.

  Chapter 17

  Dora regained consciousness in agonizing increments of sensation. Her head ached with a nauseating intensity that kept her eyes closed for several long moments.

  She became aware of an ache in her arms, an unnatural position of her legs and a general heaviness in her body. What had happened? What was wrong with her?

  She tried to open her mouth, to ask for help, and it was only when she realized she couldn’t open her mouth that full consciousness claimed her, along with a sense of panic that nearly stopped her heart.

  Ben. She now remembered Ben coming to her door and the cloth that had been pressed against her nose and mouth and the plunge into darkness.

  She needed to run. She had to escape, and yet she couldn’t move. Her eyes finally flickered open and she couldn’t make sense of anything.

  Her brain felt wrapped in cotton, unclear and foggy. It was an effort to keep her half-slitted eyes open. She remembered this horrible feeling from the days when she’d drunk herself into a stupor.

  Was that what she had done? No, it had been Ben. He’d done something to her. He’d drugged her and slapped duct tape over her mouth so she couldn’t scream for help.

  She hovered above a crowd of people, her brain trying to make sense of things. Was this was it was like to die? Was she having an out-of-body experience and watching the people left behind as her soul ascended to heaven?

  That didn’t make sense. She was certain that when a soul left the world, it didn’t go with duct tape across the mouth. Her head felt heavy and she suddenly realized there was something on it, a helmet.

  She lowered her gaze and saw that she wore a blue football jersey and long blue pants. Who had dressed her like this? And why? She fought against the drowsiness that threatened to pull her into darkness.

  As the layer of cotton that wrapped her brain parted a little bit, horror shot an arctic wind through her and she frantically tried to move. But Ben had done a good job. Her arms were outstretched to either side, tied in several places along the pole that made a cross, and whatever drug he’d given her made it difficult for her to even attempt to get free.

  She was lashed to a tall pole by her arms, around her chest and waist, at her knees and feet. Below her the crowd awaited the traditional lighting of the bonfire. The noise was so loud that even if she could scream for help nobody would be able to discern her cry
for help among the revelers.

  She was in the center of the bonfire pit.

  Oh, God, as all the pieces finally fell into place she screamed beneath the duct tape.

  They were going to light the fire to burn the effigy of the opposing team player.

  She was the effigy.

  * * *

  The crowd was huge. People jostled against Mark, drunken alumni and students falling into him, clapping him on the back in good-old-boy fashion as he tried to find Ben or Melinda in the throng of people.

  Too many people, he thought frantically. He weaved his way around a table where several kegs of beer were set up to be sold by the glassful along with hot dogs and marshmallows.

  The effigy was already in place above the crowd and it wouldn’t be long before the fire would be set. So, where were Ben and Melinda? They had to be here someplace. And where on earth was Dora?

  Mark wanted to weep in despair. He wanted to run to the bench where he’d first encountered Dora after class and sit there and wait for her to emerge from the building, safe and sound and so achingly beautiful to him.

  He needed to have her in his arms right now, her heart beating against the frantic beat of his own. Melinda might have deemed her sister a failure, but Mark knew the strength that flowed through Dora’s veins, the determination that would see her through the rest of her life. She wasn’t a failure and he had to find her now.

  In the distance he saw the flash of an FBI windbreaker and Joseph Garcia’s dark hair. He worked his way toward the fellow agent and when he reached him he saw that Joseph’s eyes were as dark as Mark felt his heart had become.

  “No sighting of either suspect yet,” Joseph said. “I’ve had a kid vomit on my feet, a hot dog shoved in my face and an inebriated woman flash her boobs at me, but I haven’t been able to find anyone who knows where Ben or Melinda might be.”

  Mark knew the only way to find Dora was to find the two murderers. Otherwise, he had no idea where to search, where she might be stashed...or already buried.

  “Some of the deputies checked out the area where the other three murder victims were found,” Joseph continued, “and there were no signs that anything had been disturbed or a new grave had been added.”

  Mark found little relief in the information. “There’s no way Ben and Melinda can know we’re on to them. There’s no way for them to know about the evidence found in the box at Amanda’s apartment. So, they should be in business-as-usual mode.”

  Joseph frowned. “This isn’t a night of business as usual for anyone.”

  The two men parted to continue the search. Despite the ever-growing throng of people and the increasing noise level, Mark could hear the stutter of his heartbeat inside his head.

  We have to find her.

  We have to find her.

  It was a mantra that ticked to the beat of his heart.

  Mark stepped beneath a tree to catch his breath, his gaze sweeping the people, seeking a sleek-haired, tall and beautiful woman. Melinda had to be here someplace. She would thrive on the chaos, the primal elements that whirled in the air.

  He leaned back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. The sound of the crowd faded as he went deep inside his head, as he attempted to access the minds of the killers.

  He dismissed Ben, for he knew the grad student was nothing more than Melinda’s inferior partner. Melinda would be the mastermind of everything. She was the Sociopath in Society.

  She’d probably seduced the three dead men at some point in time and it had been easy for her to call them to the place where they met their death. She would revel in the power of the kill. She would find pleasure in knowing that she was smarter than everyone else, that she not only had managed to provide herself an alibi, but also had enjoyed labeling the men as a species substandard to herself.

  Liar. Cheater. Thief. And failure.

  The first three murders had been shocking. He frowned, trying to crawl deeper inside her mind. There was no way she’d go off someplace quietly to kill Dora. She would want shocking drama, horrifying theater, and tonight she had a huge audience to play to.

  His eyes snapped open and he stared up and straight ahead to the effigy. Melinda would need more than what she’d gotten when she’d killed those men. Her thrill level would need to be raised. She would want... She would need to make a big statement with Dora’s death.

  Was it possible? From this distance the effigy looked like what it was supposed to be, a straw-stuffed football player from the opposing team. But he was too far away to be sure.

  With his heart renewing a beat of frantic fear, he started forward, needing to get closer to the fire pit, closer to the figure hanging on the cross like a witch ready to be burned at the stake.

  Surely it wasn’t possible. His brain attempted to deny the thought that tried to take hold. It would be the height of madness. It would be a horrific crime that would haunt the campus for decades to come. And Melinda would like that, a little voice whispered.

  Moving quicker now, he shoved people aside, unmindful of anything but getting closer. The crowd was thicker the closer he got to the pit, and frustration gnawed him as he struggled to make forward progress.

  He had to be wrong, he told himself as he advanced closer and closer. He finally reached the edge of the pit and peered up. It was virtually impossible to see what might be under the helmet from his vantage point.

  He scanned the body, seeking some clue that the effigy might be something other than what it was supposed to be. Straw hung out of the end of the long-sleeved blue jersey that covered the torso and in the midst of the straw Mark spied the pale white skin of a hand...a human hand.

  Dora! Her name screamed inside his head as he threw himself into the pit. At that moment Melinda and Ben appeared on the side, a lit torch held in Melinda’s hand.

  Everything happened simultaneously. Mark ran for the pole that held Dora, the crowd quieted and Ben lifted a megaphone to his mouth. “Let the fun begin,” he shouted at the same time that Melinda touched the torch to the dry tinder at the base of the pit, and flames instantly licked upward, eager to devour whatever might be in their path.

  The cheers turned to screams as people became aware of Mark in the center of the flames that were quickly building. Heat surrounded him along with the sting of smoke in his eyes.

  The smoke rose like a killing column up the sides of the pole that held Dora. Mark gasped. He finally reached her feet and frantically tugged at the ropes that bound her. Too tight. The ropes were thick and tied in knot after knot. It would take him hours to unravel them to get her free and he didn’t have hours. He had only minutes before the fire consumed them both.

  “Mark! Hey, Mark?”

  Mark tore his gaze from the rope to peer beyond the flames that inched steadily closer and higher. He saw Joseph standing at the very edge. Joseph held up an ax and as Mark watched he threw it into the pit near Mark’s feet. Mark didn’t stop to wonder who in the crowd might have provided the ax; he grabbed it and began to chop at the ropes that held Dora captive.

  The fire burned the bottoms of his feet through the soles of his shoes as he choked and gasped in the smoke. When he had freed her feet he reached up to chop at the next rope.

  He had no idea if she was dead or not. He only knew she did nothing to aid him. He was vaguely aware of people screaming, not in revelry but in horror.

  He was never going to get her down in time. The hungry flames now licked at the back of his legs, the intense heat searing through him. He paused long enough to reach down and slap his pants where flames had jumped to greedily consume the material.

  Realizing he didn’t have the time to chop at all the ropes that held her upright, knowing he couldn’t reach her upper body without a ladder, he began to push on the pole, needing it to fall and praying that somehow, if she was still al
ive, the fall wouldn’t kill her.

  He didn’t know if it was the smoke or the agony of his heart that shot tears streaming down his face; he only knew that he was the failure. He wasn’t going to be able to save her from the flames.

  And then Joseph was next to him, helping him push against the pole, and Lori stepped into the fray, manning a handheld fire extinguisher that cleared the area around the base of the pole.

  Mark cried out with effort as he and Joseph shoved on the pole and felt it teetering, ready to fall. The crowd of people behind the pole began chanting and Mark realized they intended to break the fall, to catch Dora.

  The tears that now raced down his face were a mixture of emotions. She wasn’t going to be burned alive...but was she already dead? She hadn’t given any indication of consciousness since he’d begun working to get her down.

  As the pole fell backward, several men caught it and eased it to the ground. Mark and Joseph jumped out of the fire. He had no thoughts other than those for Dora. As he pulled the helmet off her head, Joseph worked the last of the ropes that held her to the pole.

  “Please...please...” Mark repeated over and over again, pulling the silver tape from her mouth and checking the pulse in her neck. He nearly sagged into a puddle as he felt the beat against his fingers. “She’s alive,” he yelled to nobody and everyone.

  “An ambulance is on the way,” Lori said as she squatted down next to Mark and Dora. Mark nodded absently, his focus solely on the woman he now held in his arms.

  “You have to be okay,” he whispered to her, unmindful of the people gathering around. “Dora, hang on. Help is coming.” As if summoned by his words, the sound of a siren filled the air.

  It was only when Dora was loaded into the back of an ambulance and driven away that the rage took hold of Mark. He looked around at the crowd, his heart beating the thunder of anger. The flames from the fire pit burned bright, torching red and yellow colors on the faces of the spectators.

  What had happened to Ben and Melinda? He’d been so intent on making sure he got Dora down that he didn’t know what the rest of the team and the local law enforcement had been doing in the meantime.