Smoke Screen (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 7)

by Linsey Lanier

  Or beyond.

  She needed a break. Getting up she stretched, then strolled into the area where the barrel chairs were. This place was as fancy as the Parker mansion. The man had taste. She wondered if there was a gym. She longed to go for a nice long run to burn off the tension. But there was no time for that now.

  She ran her hands over her face. If only she had gone to Parker when she’d first gotten those anonymous texts on her phone. If only she had taken them seriously. Was it her fault the love of her life was going through such agony right now?

  And what if they didn’t find Gen in time? Like she hadn’t found Hannah Kaye in time. Would they find Parker’s daughter in the same state?

  If that happened, she’d never forgive herself.

  She was about to return to the table when her phone rang. She pulled it out and checked the display. It was Chambers.

  “Steele,” she answered.

  Chambers’ slow southern accent had an edge to it today. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  She listened to him for a moment then stopped him. “Wait. I’m working with some colleagues from the Parker Agency. I’m going to put you on speaker so you can repeat that.”

  She hurried back to the dining area. “This is Detective Chambers from ADP,” she told everyone as she pressed the button and set her cell on the table.

  Everyone turned to look at the phone as Chambers’ southern voice echoed into the open space of the penthouse.

  “What I said was the CSI guys found tire tracks yesterday behind the house going into the woods.”

  “The house where Hannah Kaye was found,” Miranda clarified.

  “Right. The killer must have escaped that way. We don’t have a timeframe on that, but we did run the tracks and have a lead on the vehicle.”

  Miranda sucked in a breath. “Let me guess. Rust-and-cream F-150 with a dent in its side.”

  Chambers let out a squawk. “Steele. How the hell did you know that?”

  For a moment she caught Parker’s eye and they shared a rueful smile. “We spotted it a little while ago on a surveillance recording from the mall. We’re tracking it now. The driver of the truck seems to be the same guy who kidnapped Gen Parker this morning.”

  “Hold on a sec. Wade Parker’s daughter has been kidnapped?”

  Parker picked up the phone. “Detective Chambers, this is Wade Parker. I spoke to Lieutenant Erskine about this matter earlier today.”

  Chambers stammered a moment. “He hasn’t said anything to me, but I’ll be sure to check in with him and coordinate. But…I have some bad news.”

  Miranda felt her stomach twist inside her. “What is it, Chambers?”

  “First—I hate to tell you this—but we found semen in the vic’s body. Quite a lot of it, I’m afraid. We’re running it through the databases.”

  So he’d raped her before he’d strung her up. Sounded like repeatedly.

  “And secondly, we’ve been looking into murders like the one we saw yesterday, casting a wider net. Nationwide, in fact.” He cleared his throat.

  “And?”

  “And it looks like our guy has been at this game a while.”

  He meant the grisly murder game of torturing and killing young women.

  “I found over thirty cases of similar killings all around the country over a span of fifteen years. Earliest was in Downers Grove.”

  A cold chill went through her. That was near Chicago. A few suburbs away from where she grew up. Where she’d lived with Leon.

  “All of the victims were blond,” Chambers continued. “Early to late twenties. Many were hookers or strippers, like the vic yesterday.”

  But Hannah Kaye had been more than that. The other victims had been, too. All of them had lives and backgrounds and families who now mourned for them.

  But her earlier instinct had been right. This was a crazed serial killer with a specific M.O.

  “Anything else, Detective?” Parker asked.

  “That’s it for now. I’ll keep you posted on any developments.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And Mr. Parker?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to know I’ll do my damndest to find your daughter.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Miranda took the phone out of Parker’s hand and hung it up. He looked worse than before. Worse than she felt and that was horrible. She couldn’t look at him anymore.

  She sank down into her chair and stared into space. If only she could do something. But all she wanted to do was put her head down on the table and weep.

  “Got it,” someone said.

  It was Becker. She scowled at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Holloway and I have been playing around with these photos. The ones of Pierson and Drew?”

  Miranda blinked at him. “Yeah?”

  “You enhanced them?” Wesson was already looking at the screen.

  “Sort of. We took out the things you could add if you wanted to disguise your appearance. For instance Drew could have altered the shape of his chin with a bit of cotton between his gum and cheek. And Pierson’s nose. Just looks like there’s some putty on this ridge. And so I took some of those features out with the software, and voila.”

  He turned the screen around. Except for what they were wearing, the two photos of Drew and Pierson were nearly identical. He’d even removed Drew’s mustache and changed the hair coloring.

  Wesson gasped. “It’s the same guy.”

  Miranda jabbed a finger at the screen. “Why’d you pick the blond hair?”

  Becker shrugged. “The guy in the mall tape is blond. Plus it’s easier to dye your hair a darker color if you’re blond than the other way around. And you can always grow or shave off a mustache.”

  Good point. “You think this is the man’s natural appearance?”

  Becker nodded. “That’s my best assessment.”

  So Pierson and Drew were one in the same. It was all clicking into place, but it made less sense than ever. Why pretend you’re two people?

  She felt Parker touch her arm.

  “I need to speak with you in private a moment, Miranda.”

  His face was so serious she couldn’t refuse. “Sure.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Parker led her across the floor toward the window and through a glass door to a patio.

  She stepped onto the terracotta surface where a glass-and-steel rail formed one edge of a large triangle overlooking the city. In one corner sat a glass outdoor table with chairs in a fancy swirling wrought iron design.

  Miranda rubbed her arms as a light breeze swept through her hair. It was almost chilly up here.

  In the distance, past the tall buildings, the sun was getting low. Soon it would be flooding the horizon with color. It had been twenty-four hours since she’d driven west and found Hannah Kaye’s body. It would take a lifetime to forget the image of it.

  “Miranda,” Parker began.

  “I need to say something first,” she blurted out. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t turn around to face him. Didn’t have the strength to.

  “Sorry?”

  “I should have listened to you when you told me those text messages on my phone were dangerous. I should have told you about the first one when I got it. I’d give anything if I could go back and change that now.”

  He didn’t speak.

  Now she did turn around and dare to look into his handsome face. There was such pain in it, such feeling, it broke her heart in two.

  “Whatever happened between us, I want you to know that.”

  He nodded and for a moment seemed as if he wanted to lift a hand to her face and touch her. Then he must have thought better of it.

  He turned away to lean over the banister. “I have a confession to make as well.”

  She couldn’t imagine what he meant. “Okay.”

  “It’s about when we were in Chicago.”

  “When we were working the Sutherland case?”<
br />
  “You were working the case. I was trying to find…”

  “Yes, I know.” He’d been trying to find the man who’d raped her fifteen years ago. The man who Mackenzie was looking for—her birth father.

  “I went to Florida.”

  “I remember.” She’d thought he’d run out on her. He’d lied to her and said he’d been interviewing prospective employees for the Agency. It seemed like ages ago.

  “The reason I went to Florida was because of something I found at Cook County Jail.”

  She put a hand to her head. “You went to the Cook County Jail?”

  He nodded. “I was looking in the archives for men who had been arrested fifteen years ago.”

  For rape, he meant.

  “What I found was that Adam Tannenburg had been brought in on February first of that year.”

  Folding her arms she thought back to the case.

  Lydia Sutherland, a pretty young blond art student had been strangled and set on fire in her own home. The police hadn’t been able to find her killer and the case went cold. Parker had picked up the case as an excuse to get to Chicago.

  Miranda had worked it hard. She’d discovered Lydia had had a lover. A boy of nineteen named Adam Foster Tannenburg. He went to art school with her. He played the clarinet. And according to one witness he was with her the night of the fire.

  A year later his own mother had also died in a house fire, the Tannenburg family estate. She and Parker had visited what was left of it now. Miranda had been there with the detective she’d worked with in Chicago, as well.

  But after the house fire Tannenburg had disappeared.

  Miranda had thought the boyfriend was Lydia’s killer but evidence proved it had been someone else—Miranda’s ex-husband, Leon Groth.

  She rubbed her forehead. The details had come back to her. “That date can’t be right. Lydia died the night of December eighteenth. Tannenburg was brought in the next day.”

  “And released,” Parker said. “But he was brought in again later.”

  She frowned. “We never found any record of that.” She’d worked with a police detective in the Larrabee station who’d had access to those records.

  Parker shook his head. “The record of it was expunged.”

  “What do you mean expunged?”

  “It was erased. All except a small note. One line indicating a single person who had visited Tannenburg in jail.”

  “Who?”

  “Leon Groth.”

  Her ex-husband? She let out a smirk. “Wait. You’re saying Leon visited Tannenburg? How did he even know him? He wasn’t involved with the Sutherland case—except as the killer. He worked for the Oak Park police department.”

  “That’s what I went to Florida to find out. I visited a corrections officer who’d been on guard during the night of Groth’s visit to Tannenburg.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That he spoke to Groth the night of the visit. Groth told him he had evidence on Tannenburg that could put him away for a long time.”

  “But it was Leon who killed Lydia Sutherland. Was he trying to frame Tannenburg for it?”

  “I don’t know, but the officer told me Tannenburg had been brought in for sexual assault.”

  Miranda shivered.

  “After we learned it was Groth who had killed Lydia Sutherland, and that he had left his sperm in her that night, I believed Groth had been blackmailing Tannenburg.”

  “You mean Leon thought he could make Tannenburg pay for his crime?”

  Parker nodded. “I thought Tannenburg had witnessed it. And so Groth made a deal with him. He’d get the charges dropped and the record of his arrest expunged if Tannenburg disappeared.”

  “And never tell anyone the truth.”

  “Yes.”

  Miranda let out a long slow breath. Was that why she’d never been able to find Tannenburg?

  Parker’s voice was low and soft. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry I kept that from you.”

  She nodded, taking in the sorrowful look in his handsome gray eyes. She loved him so much. She always would.

  “You never found a picture of Adam Tannenburg, did you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I can’t get it out of my head that this man we’re looking for matches his description.”

  Miranda tensed. He had a point. The shaggy dirty blond hair, the muscular shoulders. It wasn’t much to go on. A lot of men looked like that. But one of them was the guy in the photo Becker had doctored.

  Before Miranda could say anything else, there was a knock on the glass door to the penthouse.

  It opened a crack and Becker stuck his head out. His eyes were wide and looked a little wild. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Parker.”

  “It’s all right, Dave. What is it?”

  Excitedly he pointed back to the dining area with his thumb. “We got a hit on the tracker. We’ve located the kidnapper’s truck.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  This time he’d gone southeast.

  Nearly fifty miles southeast, the bastard. It would take them an hour to get there.

  They packed up the laptops, piled into Parker’s Mazda, and took off. Parker flew down surface streets to 285, then spun onto I-20. He whizzed around the traffic, driving like a madman.

  Miranda couldn’t blame him, but she wished she had offered to drive.

  Too late for that now. She knew he wasn’t stopping.

  On and on they went. Mile after mile. They passed Snapfinger and Redan and Lithonia and Conyers, strange sounding names of surrounding southern towns. As they neared Covington they took an exit and raced down the two-ways, Parker not caring if the small town police came after him for speeding. They headed towards Mansfield, Newborn, deep into the country.

  Miranda watched the fields and trees whizz by her window, nerves dancing in her stomach.

  This was a replay of yesterday. Follow him deep into the woods, find him, see what he’d done. No, he’d only had Gen since this morning. He hadn’t had time to do what he’d done to Hannah Kaye.

  But he’d had time to start.

  Holding her breath she felt that strange sensation along the back of her neck. Insects crawling up and down her vertebrae. And she felt as if she were being manipulated. Pierson or Drew or Tannenburg or whoever this creep was, was luring them into his trap just when he wanted them to get there.

  That thought only made the sick knot in her stomach tighter.

  Twenty minutes later Parker pulled onto a dirt lane in a grassy wooded area.

  Just like yesterday, Miranda thought. Though this time instead of storm clouds, the sun was setting at their backs, flickering through the oak leaves and pine needles.

  “We’re in Jaspar County,” Parker murmured. “My father took me here as a boy. To Monticello to see the old mansions.”

  Might as well be on the other side of the world.

  In the back seat, Wesson was glued to her phone. “I’ve contacted Lieutenant Erskine and Detective Chambers, sir,” she said. “They’re on their way. They’ll contact the local police when we’re ready.”

  Keeping his gaze fixed on the dirt road, Parker nodded. “Thank you, Detective.”

  They bumped down the path, kicking up a cloud of red dust as they went. As the trail curved this way and that Parker steered the car right and left. Miranda thought she was going to be sick.

  And then she saw it.

  A lone house with a rust-and-cream pickup truck parked beside it.

  There he was. Same as yesterday. Nothing around. No neighbors. Nowhere to go for help.

  But yesterday he’d been gone. Deep in her bones Miranda knew he’d planned that. Just as he’d planned to be here today.

  After all it wasn’t that hard to block a GPS signal. He hadn’t done that. Hadn’t even made an attempt. He’d made sure they had a way to find him. He’d made sure she’d found Hannah Kaye’s car yesterday. After he was do
ne with her. He’d wanted her to find her hanging there.

  To rattle her? He’d done a good job of that.

  She had no idea what kind of greeting he had in mind for her this time, but her only focus now was to find Gen and get her out of here.

  Parker pressed the brake and came to a stop. He stared at the place. “We need a plan.”

  “We can surround the house,” Holloway suggested.

  That would be a start.

  “Inside surveillance would be nice,” said Wesson.

  Becker agreed. “Maybe one of us can slip through a window and plant a hidden camera. I have one in my briefcase.”

  “I can go in,” Holloway offered.

  Becker shook his head. “I’m the smallest.”

  “No,” Miranda said sharply.

  She didn’t want Becker in there. Not after what he and Fanuzzi had been through in Paris.

  “Going inside is too risky,” Parker said, command in his voice.

  “He’s right,” Wesson said. “Maybe we can get something through the roof or the duct system. Let’s check out the place first.”

  The others nodded.

  Each of them got out of the car and quietly closed the doors. They scurried to the far side of the truck and crouched there, using it for cover.

  From that spot they surveyed the place. The sun was waning, but they could still make out the basic features in the dusky light.

  The house was painted an ugly yellow. It might have been pretty twenty years ago but that would have been before at least two decades of neglect. It had a basement. Miranda could tell by the openings in the cinderblock along the foundation. It could have been just a crawlspace, but that wouldn’t fit the bill for this killer.

  The grass around the house was overgrown and looked snake-infested. A screened-in porch hung from the side looking as if it was about to fall off. A window that looked like it had been painted white before the Civil War was half open. Had to be stifling in there.

  No curtains. No faces peeking out.

  Becker waggled a finger. “See that window? I could climb through it, sir.”

  “No,” Miranda hissed at him. Then she caught Parker looking at her with something like gratitude.

  “Holloway,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Steele?”

  “Let’s you and me go around the back and check it out. Everybody else stay put.”