by Layla Reyne
Smiling, Carter tilted his head back toward the house. “How do you explain that scene?”
Lincoln began counting off theories anew. “Staged. He’s toying with us. He’s throwing us off, so he doesn’t get thrown off track again.”
“And the note? Claustrophobia?”
“Fitting.” Barry or Trudy, one of them suffering from a fear of enclosed spaces, builds a house that was designed to be open, the living room the airiest of all, and with an expansive view of the lake just beyond the sliding glass doors. As he’d followed Carter and O’Shea around the rest of the crime scene—three place settings of half-eaten breakfast, cooking dishes in the sink, minor signs of a struggle—Lincoln couldn’t stop his gaze from drifting back to the note placement, nor could he stop his brain from circling the same two suspects. Barry or Larry, and how that note could factor in for each.
“It could apply to both,” Lincoln said, the ultimate conclusion he’d drawn. “If Barry or Trudy is the victim, one could interpret this house, and the need to wander, as a means of counteracting a sort of claustrophobia.”
“Being so tied to Apex,” Carter said, picking up the thread. “A relatively isolated mountain town. And if Larry is Dr. Fear, that must grate. Barry or Trudy wandering off the land he wanted and Barry away from the job he wanted.”
“Go more meta,” Lincoln said. “And back to that notion of being stuck here, in Apex. What if that diagnosis is Dr. Fear diagnosing himself? If it’s Barry, we laid that out. His need to wander. If it’s Larry, or anyone else for that matter, it likewise makes sense. Dr. Fear’s first victim of every cycle is someone he spots here in Apex. An out-of-towner he latches on to, who gives him an excuse to leave town, and he works out his claustrophobia, albeit violently, by working out other people’s fears, for a week in DC before returning home.”
Carter slowly rotated his head, eyes wide. “Holy shit, L. That’s the motive. That’s the missing piece of the profile.”
“I have been researching this killer for more than a decade. I just didn’t have all the pieces, until now.” Plus, the underlying theory also wasn’t unfamiliar to Lincoln. In fact, he probably deserved a face-palm for not making the connection sooner. But not in front of the FBI team. Carter maybe, but no self-flagellation in front of O’Shea and company. “Gabby talks about being stuck someplace the same way,” he explained to Carter. “Every assignment, thirty months in and she starts yammering about the walls closing in. It’s time for her to go. Clearly, Dr. Fear’s mileage varies as to how long he can go between cycles. Something must happen that triggers the walls closing in for him.”
Carter was nodding now. “All that makes sense.”
“Even more than you know for Larry.”
Lincoln and Carter almost knocked heads, as they straightened and whipped around to the source of the new, unfamiliar voice. Dressed in jeans, a sweater, a puffy vest, and combat boots, the woman at the near end of the deck was unremarkable in appearance—average height, brown eyes, black pixie-cut hair, freckles across the bridge of her nose. But she was remarkable in her bearing—authority and confidence rolled off her, as did unconcealed indignation at Lincoln and Carter. Cop, Lincoln discerned, the bulge at her side beneath the vest—a holster likely—propping up the notion.
Carter had come to the same conclusion. “Detective Lang?”
“Jo,” she said, sans hand.
Josephine Lang. The detective Carter had mentioned who’d turned a blind eye to all those missing persons cases, including Stacy Weathers’s. This woman? Lincoln didn’t see it. Everything about her screamed competent. Or maybe she was just competent at covering things up? Her next words confused Lincoln further.
“So you two are the reason my husband has been MIA for two days?”
“Two days?” Lincoln said. “And I thought Barry was married to Trudy?”
She pointed inside the house—at Agent Mark O’Shea, on the phone, standing by the kitchen table alone. As if sensing her attention, he glanced up and the adoring smile that brightened his face was unmistakable. He was definitely in love with this woman. His wife, apparently.
“You’re married to O’Shea?” Carter said. “I thought he worked out of Richmond?”
“He does, but his field office covers Apex, and he has some experience with ViCAP, so he’s regional point for serial cases. We have a house here and in Richmond. We make it work.”
“How do you know who we are?”
“Well, let’s see,” she said, approaching. “Last time I spoke to Mark he said he was called out on a serial case, and I watch the news, which is flooded with Dr. Fear coverage, and you two were out here discussing said serial killer, ergo...”
Competent and smart.
“He also mentioned working with some hot-as-fuck agent and his pet professor.”
“Hey!” Lincoln squawked.
“Okay, you got me.” Her frosty demeanor melted, a little. “I made that part up.”
Lincoln took a gamble, on her judgment of them and her trustworthiness, despite those missing persons reports. Something didn’t add up there; he wanted to know why. He extended a hand. “Agent and Professor Lincoln Monroe, Quantico.”
“Ha! I was right,” she said, returning the handshake. “The argyle is a dead giveaway.” She shifted her attention to Carter, and at the sultry look she gave him, Lincoln reconsidered his favorable opinion. “I wasn’t lying about the hot-as-fuck part either. Mark and I are in the market for a third.”
“Special Agent Carter Warren.” He smiled wide, and Lincoln wanted to kick him. “And while I appreciate the offer—” he twirled the ring on his finger “—I’m off the market.”
Did Lincoln say kick? He meant kiss. But wait...off the market? As the real versus cover war raged on, Lincoln spoke to ignore it. “Can we rewind? To the part where you thought our Dr. Fear hypothesis fit Larry Petticoat better than we knew?”
She strolled past them, waving at her husband as she crossed to the loungers on the other side of the deck. “I’m from Apex. Mom is a nurse at the hospital. Dad ran a construction business until he got hooked on crystal meth and OD’d when I was sixteen.”
“Shit, Jo, I’m sorry,” Lincoln said, even as he grew more confused. A history like that...
Carter’s brain had traveled the same direction. “I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta ask...” He pushed off the rail where he’d leaned and came to sit next to Lincoln on the lounger across from Jo. “With that sort of personal history, I can’t square APD’s mishandling of a large number of missing persons cases involving meth addicts.”
“You’re right to question,” she said. “That’s why Mark called me over here. Too many coincidences stacking up.”
“How about clearing them up for us?”
“I was supposed to go to law school. Still might. But I joined APD instead, with an eye and mind toward combatting the meth crisis. I had a mom who daily saw the damage, at work and at home. I watched my own father succumb to it.” Her voice had steadily risen, and she turned her face away, taking in a deep breath and looking inside the house. She caught Mark’s eye, he gave her another smile, and she slowly released her held breath. “When I joined APD, Barry was the chief, and I got to work some of those cases, based on rotation. That’s how I met Mark actually. He was our federal point person for meth cases involving federal lands around here. I felt like we were making a dent, and when Larry took over and promoted me to detective, I thought I could make an even bigger dent.”
“He said he promoted you to do just that,” Carter said. “To work the meth cases.”
She scoffed. “Into the file room. Document the case, do an initial workup, file it, move on. If I suggested a follow-up, he’d find a different case that I needed to work right away.”
“Why do you think that was?” Lincoln asked.
“I had half a dozen speculations, all connected with Larry b
eing the youngest of the Petticoats. Story around town goes he was picked on mercilessly growing up. Harry was brilliant and shy. Barry was a star athlete and outgoing. Larry was neither brilliant nor social nor athletic. He just followed the path he was supposed to and took his hits along the way. I thought maybe he was ignoring the meth problem because it had been one of Barry’s initiatives. Or because those were a lot of the same people who picked on him, my dad included. Or because he didn’t want anyone to know Ryan was one of them.”
Carter shot to the end of the chaise so fast the lounger wobbled. Lincoln grabbed him by the back of the jacket before they tipped over into Jo’s lap. Carter hardly noticed. “The chancellor of Apex U? He’s a meth addict?”
Jo nodded. “And Larry’s best friend since childhood. He was prone to disappearing, on binges, when he was younger. He got clean for a while, then backslid, right as he was being considered for the chancellor’s position. Larry pulled him out of a meth den and covered it up, and he’s been covering up the disappearances of anyone that could tie Ryan to it ever since, at the expense of all the work we’d put into combatting the epidemic and finding addicts when they went missing.”
Lincoln smoothed out the creases he’d made in Carter’s coat while turning all that over in his head. He’d need to go to Molly to confirm what he could, and he still wasn’t sold on Barry not being Dr. Fear, or at least involved, especially as he would have been the chief back in Ryan’s early drug days. So why was Jo convinced it was Larry?
“Back to my previous question,” he said. “You’re right. We’re here investigating Dr. Fear.” He went a step further in the trust department. “We suspect it’s an Apex founding family member, which is why we kept Larry and APD in the dark.”
“You were wise to do so,” Jo agreed. “Mark only called me in—”
“Because we asked him to look into the missing persons backlog,” Carter said.
“He knows how frustrated I’ve been lately, and when you flagged that as potentially connected to the Dr. Fear case, he thought maybe I could connect some dots for you.”
“So finish doing that,” Lincoln said. “Why does Lawrence Petticoat fit the Dr. Fear profile?”
“Have you ever personally known a meth addict? Or done work with them?”
“Not meth,” Carter said. “But I worked a heroin sting before.”
“One of the things addicts often love about the high is the escape from reality.”
By that token, Lincoln thought, then why wasn’t Ryan the more likely suspect? Except he didn’t have gray hair, and the precision of the kills, the methodical crime scenes, the pattern that required travel did not speak to a drug addict’s disposition. It spoke to a cop who knew how to do all those things, who had something to hide, and who wanted to escape.
“He’s stuck here,” Lincoln said. “Larry is stuck here, taking care of his friend, surrounded by the same people who bullied him as a kid, and while they get to escape, by either leaving town or getting high, he’s stuck. And he didn’t even get the family homestead out of it.”
“Claustrophobia,” Carter said.
“Brought on by his life,” Jo said. “And by Apex.”
“And when it all gets to be too much,” Lincoln said, drawing the final conclusion, “he latches on to one of the passers-through and gets out of Apex for a little while. He escapes, as Dr. Fear.”
Chapter Fifteen
When ERT finished their preliminary collection, Carter followed Lincoln inside, through the kitchen to the dining area where O’Shea stood next to the cleared-off table. Jo crossed to her husband’s side and rose on her toes, kissing his cheek. “I’m going to head back to town. Keep an eye on Larry.”
“Do we know where he is?” Carter asked. If Larry was in fact Dr. Fear, he would have to put on a hell of a show the next few days, pretending to carry out his law enforcement duties while torturing Barry and Trudy. He wouldn’t have had to do that before, always attacking outside of Apex. That said, after twenty-five years avoiding detection, Carter didn’t put it past Dr. Fear.
“Larry called this in,” O’Shea replied. “Once I got here, I told him to leave. He can’t be the lead investigator on his brother’s disappearance, even if he is the chief.”
“Especially if he’s the prime suspect,” Jo said. O’Shea’s brows furrowed into a deep V, and Jo tilted her head toward the table, to where Carter and Lincoln were taking their seats. “They’ll fill you in.”
O’Shea waited for Jo to leave, for Agent Drake to join them, then demanded an update. By the time Carter and Lincoln were done, O’Shea’s brows had raced the opposite direction, flirting with his hairline. For his part, Drake had propped his elbows on the table and hung his head in his hands.
“Is Larry our only suspect?” O’Shea asked.
“No,” Lincoln said. “Number two on our list is Barry.”
Lincoln laid out his alternative theory, same as he’d done for Carter, and O’Shea’s agitation escalated. He pushed out of his chair and paced the area in front of the patio doors. “Anyone else?” he asked.
“Jeremiah Kline,” Carter said.
Lincoln gasped. “He’s not old enough. And just no!”
“Why not? He’s from a founding family, has gray hair, and is always under our feet. He’s too young for the older kills but maybe he’s connected somehow.”
“Fine.” Lincoln leaned back in his chair, arms folded, crossing one leg over the other. “If that’s your outside-the-box pick, then mine’s Lydia.”
Now O’Shea gasped, while Drake just looked confused. “Who’s Lydia?” the younger agent asked.
“Lydia Osler,” Lincoln said. “Psychologist at the hospital and adjunct psychology professor at Apex U. She’d have access to the victims at the hospital, she’s also prematurely gray, and she’s tight with the town gossips.”
“That all makes sense, given the diagnoses.”
“Yes,” Carter said, “except, according to Clyde Weathers, the copycat said he was operating on his clock. And it would put her in her teens when she started killing.”
“That didn’t stop you from accusing Jeremiah,” Lincoln sniped. Apparently, he’d developed a fondness for the grad student. A tiny part of Carter turned green, but the bigger part of him hoped Lincoln was right. He liked Jeremiah too.
O’Shea braced his forearms on a chair back. “Suspects aside, next steps?”
“If Dr. Fear sticks to their pattern,” Lincoln said, reverting back to their, accounting for his Lydia theory, “which we can’t be sure of after the Weathers murder, and if Barry and Trudy are currently held by them, we’ve got seventy-two hours from when they were taken.”
Carter checked the time on his phone. “I say we estimate twelve hours have elapsed. They didn’t show at FP this morning.”
Lincoln nodded. “Agreed.”
“Do we bring Larry in?” Drake asked. “Or any of the other suspects?”
“Not yet,” Carter replied. “Jo has an eye on Larry, and the others won’t go far. We’ve seen each of them this morning already. If one of them is Dr. Fear, they must be keeping Barry and Trudy close.”
“We’re also working against the clock on Clyde Weathers,” O’Shea informed them. “His arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday. If he pleads duress, it’ll officially connect Stacy’s murder to the police station fire and to the Dr. Fear case.”
“At which point the press descend like locusts,” Lincoln said, fingers plowing through his gold-and-silver strands.
“They haven’t picked up on it yet,” O’Shea said. “I convinced Larry to list Stacy’s cause of death as an OD—” he pushed off the chair back, forcefully “—which if he’s Dr. Fear makes sense that he agreed. Fuck.”
Another point in the Larry column. “I don’t want to risk another escalation,” Carter said. “Especially with Barry’s and Trudy’s lives at
stake. That’s a hit this community shouldn’t have to take. We need to move fast.”
“I want to go back to the library,” Lincoln said. “Talk to Molly. Get back into the archives.” He rose from his chair and shrugged into his jacket. “Now that I know who I’m looking for, I can make faster work of the photos. Get us the evidence we need to connect him to each of Dr. Fear’s cycle.”
“We’ll coordinate with Jo,” O’Shea said. “Keep working the meth angle.”
“There’s something there,” Carter said, as he rushed to catch up with Lincoln, who was already halfway to the door, in his own world. “Babe, wait!” Lincoln teetered to a stop over the threshold, Carter catching him by the back of the coat. “I need to go to the hospital with O’Shea and Drake. I want to talk to Weathers and see if he can connect any of our suspects to Stacy. I also need to check in with Beverley and tell him about Barry and Trudy and see how they’re coming along with Baxter. It’s all there. We just have to make the pieces fit.”
Lincoln nodded absently, making mental to-do lists in his head, judging by the fountain of questions that followed. “And can you, or someone on the team there, check our suspects against hospital logs? Or get the logs to me, and I’ll check them? Again, now that we know who we’re looking for, it should be faster work.”
“I can do that,” Drake said.
“And we’ll give you a lift to the hospital,” O’Shea told Carter.
“Thanks,” Carter said. Without thinking, he leaned forward to kiss Lincoln goodbye, like Jo had O’Shea.
Lincoln turned his cheek up to meet it, just like a married couple, or so Carter thought, only to suffer the crushing hammer of disappointment as Lincoln moved his cheek out of kissing range, his attention directed over Carter’s shoulder. “Give us a minute?” he said to the agents behind them.
“Sure.” O’Shea grinned, as he and Drake stepped around them. “We’ll be outside.”
Carter bit back his own grin, hoping Lincoln’s request for privacy was cause for a rewind. “What’s going on?” Carter asked, once the door swung shut.