GHOST_4_Kindle_V2

by Wayne Batson

  I tabbed to the Smiling Jack photos. I zoomed in on the bottom half of Jack’s face, all that was visible. I put it next to Elizabeth Borden. I increased the zoom on both. I shook my head. The chin had a dimple, maybe a cleft chin like Jack’s. Maybe. Nothing conclusive. The Smiling Jack photos had more detail, visible wrinkles, what appeared to be a very light 5 o’clock shadow. I began to wonder about Smiling Jack’s accomplice. Siblings?

  Melanie appeared and blessedly refreshed my mug of dark bliss. I hoped I managed to pop up a new window in time to cover up the Smiling Jack images. Melanie walked away with a normal posture and pace, so I figured all was well. I tilted the computer’s thin screen a little and went back to scrutinizing the photos.

  I was relatively certain that the FBI had some facial recognition software that could potentially check the features of Elizabeth Borden’s face with the lower half of Smiling Jack’s face, but to show what? That they are siblings? Rez was right: many parents wouldn’t entrust their young children to the care of a man. Too many male predators in the news. That left me with more questions about the daycare providers. Were they just innocent victims like the children who were taken from their centers? Victims like their parents?

  There was something else to check, I realized. Something I should have checked first. I minimized the window with Elizabeth Borden. Then I searched: Martina Palmer, Small Favor’s Daycare Center. I clicked the filter again for images. I clicked through several shots that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the daycare itself: a summer camp with the same name, a snow cone shop, a May Fair at a local elementary school. I refined my search by putting in the name of the city. Similar results. No portrait of the provider herself. Then I added the victim’s name and the word abduction.

  There was a photograph of interest.

  The reporter had snapped the shot from the other side of a waist-high picket fence. Two uniformed police officers stood on the front stoop and, between them, partially obscured by the policemen’s broad shoulders, was a woman. She was somewhat gangly, wearing a petite dress that exposed her arms to the shoulder. Her hair was cut in a short bob and, even in black and white, she seemed to be wearing heavy make up: dark lips, plenty of blush, and stark eyeliner. But it was those eyes that struck me.

  I zoomed in, but too far and it blurred out the detail I wanted to see. I pulled back and moved the window to the side. Then I brought back the window for Elizabeth Borden. I put them side-by-side.

  “Brimstone hammers,” I muttered. “It’s the same woman.”

  I didn’t need the FBI’s facial recognition apps to know for certain. If you’ve ever seen eyes like these, you don’t forget them; you don’t mistake them. They were cold eyes; brutally cold and intelligent. Killer’s eyes.

  I couldn’t say whether this woman was Smiling Jack’s assistant or if she was actually the killer in all the photographs, the killer we’d always assumed was a man. But I now knew the face of one of the killers. As I dialed Rez to give her the information, I glanced back at the face on my screen. I felt a peculiar tingle trickle along my spine. It wasn’t déjà vu, but it was something close. I’d seen her before…somewhere.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “This is brilliant work!” Deputy Director Barnes bellowed, smacking his palm on the conference room table. “LePoast, get in here!”

  “Sir?” he said. A line of sweat already trickled down his forehead. He saw Rez and averted his eyes.

  “Agent Rezvani made a breakthrough,” he said. “We can give the geeks we have a new angle for Smiling Jack.”

  “Geeks, sir?”

  “Aw, crap, LePoast, don’t get all PC on me now,” Barnes grumbled. “The techno weanies downstairs and their Big-Blue-wannabe computers!”

  “Right, Sir,” LePoast said. “What’s the new angle?”

  “Tell him,” Barnes said.

  Rez exhaled and said, “He’s snatching them from daycares.”

  “From daycares?” LePoast repeated. “The Smiling Jack killer preyed on daycare kids?”

  “Think about it,” Barnes said. “Easy surveillance. He can pose as a prospective parent, look around the place, figure out a plan. Then, when the kid’s not being watched, he’s got her.”

  “But, Sir,” Rez said. “It’s not just that the victims were both taken as children from daycares. The daycare providers of the two victims…I’m almost positive they’re the same person. We need to go all points on this woman. She’s—”

  “That’s crap, Agent Rezvani,” Barnes said bluntly. “But you got it right with the daycare angle. I can feel it. LePoast, tell the geeks to narrow their search to kidnappings that occurred at daycares in and around the dates they already have. Then get’em to do some of that digital aging nonsense to see if we can match up more of the Smiling Jack photographs with missing children.”

  “Yessir,” LePoast replied and was gone.

  “Sir, with all due respect,” Rez said. “We’re missing an opportunity. We’ve got a photo of Smiling Jack—”

  “So Smiling Jack is a woman?” Barnes barked. “You know the odds in serial murder. So there’s a woman out there kidnapping girls, raising them, and then cutting their throats? Oh, and wait, this same woman ran the daycare in Shreveport and in Anchorage? So, what’s she do, Rezvani, open a daycare for each victim she takes?”

  Rez opened her mouth but let it snap shut. No way he’ll buy into the Presidential election theory, she thought. She spun on her heels and darted out of the conference room.

  “Where you going?” Barnes voice demanded from behind her.

  “I have a call to make,” she growled back.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “Thank you for not holding an old man’s idiosyncrasies against him,” Doc Shepherd said. “I was out of line before, Agent Spector, and for that I apologize.”

  “No apologies necessary,” I said. “You’ve a sharp mind and a keen eye. I’m glad you’re on our side. Oh, and technically, I’m not an agent. I’m more of a utility officer.”

  “You must have a broad definition of utility,” Doc Shepherd quipped.

  “I’m more of a Swiss Army Knife,” I said. “I do things that need doing with whatever I have available. I’m hoping you have something for me today.”

  Doc Shepherd adjusted his bow tie, this time DayGlo green with navy blue squiggles running through. “I’m not certain this will be of use to you,” he said. “I suspect you know that I gave Agent Rezvani the list of Cain’s Dagger owners. And…I suspect at this point, you’ve already delved deeply into their histories and current owners.”

  “The FBI has,” I said. “Unfortunately, we haven’t discovered any evidence to implicate anyone in the crimes. Not yet, at least.”

  “Yes, well,” Doc said, giving his handlebar mustache a twirl, “I wondered if I might expand my search a bit. I paid my Uncle Timothy a visit, and he discovered something that could possibly be of use.”

  “Another Cain’s Dagger owner? One we didn’t know of before?”

  “No,” Doc replied. “A bit more than that. You recall our initial conversation about the Cain’s Dagger blade?” I nodded. He went on. “My Uncle Timothy did some digging in the company that created the original. Turns out, the company went under at the turn of the century.”

  “I thought they were still in operation today.”

  “That’s what I thought initially,” Doc said. “The original owners of the company had no choice but to sell out to a competitor. The competitor went on to use the original blade and the company name. When the economy in England improved, they…if you’ll pardon the expression…they made a killing.”

  “Not sure if I can pardon that one.”

  “Granted. It was poor.” Doc smiled ruefully. “In any case, Uncle Timothy, he may not be able to get up and around very well—arthritis stole his legs—but no one I know can scour the digital landscape like he can. He set to work tracking down the original owners of the company. It was family owned for more
than a hundred years.”

  “I don’t suppose there are any living descendant living here in the States? Descendants who might have access to a Cain’s Dagger?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is such a person. Three as a matter of fact. They are Winifred Lacy Drew, Captain Arnold Lacy USAF retired, and Dr. Garrison Albert Lacy, but you might want to take a particularly long look at Dr. Lacy.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Dr. Lacy is an abortion pioneer of some renown in the Floridian medical community,” Doc Shepherd said. “Strike that. Renown is far too kind a word. Notorious is more accurate. I met him once. Garrulous, arrogant man.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “I suspect you’ll find Dr. Lacy at the Pryiam Regency Convention Hall in Pensacola at about 7:30 this evening.” Doc Shepherd twirled his mustache and raised an eyebrow. “You’ll find me there as well, but for very different reasons. It’s the Medical Innovators Awards Ceremony. Regrettably, Dr. Lacy will likely be receiving the board’s highest honor: the Agnes Armistice Award.”

  I thought for a moment, glanced at the clock, and then thought a bit more. “I don’t suppose you could acquire two tickets to the awards event for me, could you?”

  Doc Shepherd looked as if he’d been waiting all day for me to ask. His frosty-clear blue eyes twinkled as he slid an envelope across the desk to me. “I thought you might ask,” he said.

  “Again, I’m glad you’re on our side,” I said.

  “Thinking of bringing a date?” he asked mischievously. “It should be a marvelous party.”

  Laughing softly, I said, “I have someone in mind.”

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “You what?” Agent Rezvani’s blurted response practically burst from the cell phone.

  “Is it so hard for you to imagine?” I asked, keeping my voice flat. “I’m asking you to a dance.”

  “Look, Spector,” she said, “I am five minutes from my hotel room where I fully intend to pass out. What are you playing at?”

  I told her what I’d learned from Doc Shepherd. I told her about the MIAC event and the guest of honor.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  “It’s formal,” I said.

  “Meet me at the mall in Pensacola.”

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  “Some date you are,” Agent Rezvani said. “Making me pay for your tuxedo isn’t very chivalrous, you know.”

  “I trust you’re billing this to the Bureau?”

  “Yes,” she replied, frowning. “My gown as well, but that’s beside the point.”

  “If I had the means,” I said, “I would pay for it all.”

  “Holy smokes,” she said. “I just realized: you don’t have your silver suitcase.”

  I tried to hide the grimace I felt coming on. “It doesn’t go well with a tuxedo,” I said.

  “What happened to it…really?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, closing the subject. “And we have work to do.”

  Chapter 33

  We sat in the parking lot of the Pryiam Regency, Pensacola’s posh hotel and convention center, and disagreed.

  “We don’t engage,” Rez said flatly. “We don’t antagonize. We have a theory; that’s all. Dr. Lacy could be as innocent as a lamb.”

  “Hardly,” I bristled. “He’s performed thousand of abortions.”

  “Leave your politics out of this,” Rez said.

  “I don’t have politics.”

  “Whatever. I’ll do the talking. We’ll measure him, figure out what we can, and then…then, we’ll go from there.”

  “We’ll need to push him,” I argued. “How else are we going to get anywhere?”

  “We stir something up in there,” Rez said, “and we’ll have Pryiam security escorting us outside in a heartbeat.”

  “And what if everything falls into place? What if we can make a positive ID?”

  Rez looked at me as if I’d just said something in Swahili. “If we…?” she spluttered. “If Dr. Lacy is Smiling Jack…we call it in. We take him down in the parking lot after the ceremony.”

  I sat still and silent for several halting heartbeats. I needed to swallow back the rage, needed to keep any trace of it from my words. “Agent Rezvani,” I said, “when we began this case, I told you, I don’t subscribe to the usual channels. I don’t follow the usual protocols. If we’ve got the right guy, and we mess this up, other young women will die. I will not risk losing the opportunity.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like I was watching the chill ripple up Rez’s limber arms. I watched her eyes in the glow of the dash. They seemed to harden as if frozen in the pale blue light. She blinked once. Her eyes darted a moment, and then she looked up at me again. I thought maybe she’d reached some kind of decision, and I wondered if she’d tell me what it was.

  “We don’t attempt the takedown inside,” Rez said firmly. “No matter what. Even if we’re certain that we’ve got Smiling Jack, we don’t spook him. He might start shooting or take a hostage. We don’t risk that. If we play it cool, we’ll have a chance to get him here in the lot, after the ceremony.”

  I nodded approval, but I didn’t think we were anywhere close to the same page.

  The Edge felt strange in the baggy tuxedo pants. It slid in the pocket over my thigh as I climbed out of Rez’s SUV. Rez told me she had her Glock on her, but I couldn’t tell where. She wore a sleek, dark crimson gown that tied decoratively at her right hip. The material had a kind of shimmer to it, like running water under starlight, and it undulated as she walked. Glided is a better word. Even in formal heels, she moved effortlessly. The little purse in her palm—that had to be it. Had to be where she’d hidden the Glock.

  “Take my arm,” she said. “You are my date, after all.”

  I did as I was told. I noticed two things: the muscle in her arm was very taut, and her skin was quite cold.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  The Pryiam Regency was the size of a Roman cathedral. We entered its cavernous atrium and blended into a sea of formal evening wear. It was a distinguished-looking crowd. Lots of 140+ IQs and lots of money. I noticed more than a few of the gentlemen guests allowing their eyes to drift from their dates to Agent Rezvani. One of them, an older man who looked a little like Colonel Sanders, took a sharp flick to the ear from the woman on his arm.

  At the ballroom entrance, a monstrous gilded sign declared we’d arrived at the 33rd Annual Medical Innovators Awards Ceremony. White crystal chandeliers blazed from the high vaulted ceiling inside. Silken drapes framed rows of floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall. And a lively buzz mingled with jazzy notes from the nattily garbed swing band off to the side of the stage. Given the decor and the atmosphere, it felt more like an international event than a celebration of Florida’s best and brightest.

  I handed the tickets to one of the two burly ballroom attendants standing at the door. “Guests of Doctor Shepherd,” he said, giving me a brief once-over. He handed back the tickets. “Welcome to the Pryiam Regency. Your table is nineteen A.” He gave Rez a once-over as well, but not what I would call brief.

  We made our way to the table and found Doc Shepherd and a handful of his guests actively engaged in conversation over a variety of hors d'oeuvres and beverages. His eyes twinkled up from the rim of his champagne glass. “Ah, Dr. Spector,” he said. “And this must be your lovely wife.”

  Rez shot me a sharp look. I decided to be a perfect gentleman. “Yes, yes,” I said, making a sweeping gesture with one hand. “Allow me to introduce Dr. Deanna Spector. We met in medical school, you see. Our eyes met over a cadaver, and we knew it was love.”

  We sat down amidst jovial rolling laughter. I didn’t look at Rez and, maybe I imagined it, but it felt as if scorching beams of flame were torching my neck and shoulder on Rez’s side.

  Doc Shepherd made introductions. “This is my lovely wife Aurora,” he said, putting his arm around the shoulder of a slender pixy of a woman. She wo
re her silver hair down with a single French braid curling around back like a velvet rope at a theater. She might have been older than her husband, but the wrinkles she bore seemed to be from frequent smiles and laughter, giving her a girlish look. Her dark eyes glistened with enthusiasm. Her relaxed posture and easy smile spoke of rich contentment. She and Doc were quite a pair.

  He went on with his introductions. “This is Doctor Kane and his wife Doctor Kane,” he said. “The preeminent cosmetic surgeons of Florida, two time winners of the Triple A, and known the world over as tops in their field.”

  “Triple A?” I echoed.

  “The Agnes Armistice Award,” Doc replied. “Reason we are all here. Who will win tonight, I wonder.” He gave me a subtle wink. After introducing us to the rest of the table, successful surgeons all, he leaned in close and whispered, “I believe the doctor you’re looking for is seated at the table near the front, closest to the bar.”

  I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention by darting up from our seats so soon, so I decided to sample the platter of cheese and crackers that served as the hub of our table. I recognized Muenster, pepper jack, smoked cheddar, and Havarti, but there were several cheeses that I’d never tasted before. One of them, a mustard yellow cheese with a golden brown rind, tasted of creamy butter, garlic, and onion. I found it remarkable.

  “Darling,” Agent Rezvani said, sounding as if she’d spoken through her teeth, “you might want to save some cheese for everyone else.”

  I realized I’d stacked my small plate like an Aztec pyramid. It had attracted some attention from the other guests at our table.

  “You eat all that,” the male Dr. Kane said, “you might need to come see us.”