She didn’t want him to spot her. She didn’t want him to see her without her makeup on. Nor was she in any mood to talk to him about Merilee.
When this hurricane was over, maybe she should go to the police with her suspicions.
CHAPTER 85
What great luck! There was Cassie Sheridan.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to his camerawoman.
With his bag slung over his shoulder, the WSBCTV reporter picked his way across the people-scattered gym floor. When he reached Cassie, he stood aside and waited while she finished the interview she was doing.
“Cassie? Hi.” He could tell she didn’t recognize him right away. “Tony Whitcomb. From Suncoast News?” he coaxed, crestfallen.
“Oh, yes, Tony. Of course.”
“I have the tape I was telling you about. I didn’t have a chance to mail it yet. But this is better. I can give it directly to you.”
Tony’s audition tape was the last thing on her mind right now, but Cassie accepted the cassette he held out to her.
“I put some of my best stuff on it. Sweeps pieces. The station spends some money then and I get to go out of town. I thought the network would like to see me in some different locations.”
“Fine, Tony. I’ll pass it on.” She tucked the tape in her bag. She wanted to finish her interviews so she could go check on Vincent.
CHAPTER 86
It was times like this that Harrison Lewis hated being a doctor and the notoriety it could provide. People were always recognizing him, coming up to him and chatting. As if he cared.
Even in the sea of people at the evacuation center, there was no anonymity. Some old coot that he had operated on had spotted him. He stood before Harry now, raving about the changes in his life since he’d had his cataracts removed. “I can’t thank you enough, Doc. The past year has been wonderful. Kitty and I can go out to dinner and go dancing at night. I don’t have to worry anymore about driving in the dark.”
“Glad to hear it.” He wanted to get away, but he was trapped.
CHAPTER 87
As Jerry waited in line for coffee and donuts, he saw the guy who’d rented Webb’s boat last week standing in the cafeteria doorway. He wanted to give the pig a piece of his mind. Leaving powder all over the head of the boat like that and raising Webb’s suspicions.
But Jerry was hungry, and he didn’t want to give up his place in the line. He’d get the slob later.
CHAPTER 88
“Charles, go with him,” Etta urged.
“I can go by myself,” Vincent insisted. She was treating him like a baby.
“Oh, Etta, stop worrying. He’ll be all right. Go ahead, son. But come right back,” said Charles, pointing the way to the men’s room.
Etta watched as the boy walked out of the media center. Maybe Charles was right. She knew she had a tendency to be overprotective. But things happened.
CHAPTER 89
He spotted the boy as he was entering the men’s room and followed him inside. There were too many others using the urinals and stalls, so he went back out into the hall to wait.
The heavy door opened again and again until the sun-brightened brown hair he was looking for emerged. He grabbed Vincent’s arm. “Don’t say a word. If you want to see your brother again, don’t say a word.”
Vincent looked up with surprise at the face. “I know you,” he exclaimed, disobeying the order.
He had been afraid that it might come to this. The kid could identify him. Well, he would just have to get rid of Vincent, too.
CHAPTER 90
Mark got up from the studio couch and turned off the television. It was making him scared. All those people talking about the hurricane that was hitting his town. The TV said everyone should be “vacuated” from Siesta Key.
He didn’t know what “vacuated” meant, but Mark did know that Siesta Key was where his house was. The house he lived in with Vincent and Mommy.
Why didn’t Mommy come and get him? Had something happened to her? Was that why she hadn’t come?
He tried hard not to start crying again. That would only make his coughing worse. But the powerful wind rattling the metal shades on the windows scared him more. The sobs began, and then the coughs.
He needed a treatment.
Maybe he could give it to himself. If he propped the pounder against the wall next to the couch, maybe he could lie against it.
Mark went to the closet where he had seen the man put the pounder. Jackets and shirts hung on the closet rod. He could see the edge of the pounder sticking out from the shelf on top. Mark stretched, but he couldn’t reach.
He saw the umbrella on the closet floor and picked it up. As he pointed it up at the shelf, his finger hit the button on the shaft, opening the umbrella. It popped from his grasp and nearly sent him flying backward.
As Mark went to pick the umbrella back up, he recognized the letters printed on the nylon. W-S-B-C.
Just like on TV.
CHAPTER 91
Row upon row of bookcases filled the media center. Cassie walked slowly along one side of the large room, looking down each aisle for Vincent. Eventually she found Etta, who introduced her to Charles Chambers.
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Charles, shaking her hand. “I’ve seen you on television. You do nice work.”
“Thank you,” acknowledged Cassie, glancing around the room. “Where’s Vincent?”
“He went to the bathroom,” said Etta. “He should be right back.”
“How’s his headache?”
“He hasn’t been complaining.”
“Good,” said Cassie.
Etta looked anxiously toward the door. “Maybe you should go check on him, Charles.”
Her husband looked at her with resigned exasperation but got up anyway. How nice it must be, thought Cassie, speculating that these two had spent a devoted lifetime together.
Vincent’s headache might be gone, but hers was beginning to throb. She hadn’t eaten since lunch. She opened her bag to search for her bottle of Tylenol. At the top of the mess inside was Tony Whitcomb’s audition tape. On the typewritten label the words MARDI GRAS caught her eye. For Cassie, Mardi Gras would be forever connected with Maggie Lynch.
She took out the cassette and studied the listing on it.
• South Florida’s only Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miami
• Mardi Gras, New Orleans
• The Kentucky Derby, Louisville
Sweeps stories, Tony had bragged. Cassie’s mind raced. The predominant sweeps periods were November, February, and May.
Sweeps months. The months when television pulled out all the stops to get ratings. The months that decided advertising rates. The same months when the clown rapist had struck, attacking his victims in each of the cities featured on Tony Whitcomb’s audition tape.
Cassie’s synapses continued firing. Whitcomb was the reporter who had interviewed Vincent on the beach the morning the boy found Merilee’s hand. He had also been at Ringling the night Leslie Sebastien was murdered.
The ruby glistened from the ring on Cassie’s finger, a ring most likely crafted by Leslie Sebastien. The ring Gideon had been killed for. The ring the kidnapper was demanding as ransom for Mark Bayler.
All coincidence? Maybe. Still, Cassie didn’t like the feeling she had.
“Etta, I’m sorry. I have to go,” Cassie said, as she hurried to gather up her things. “Tell Vincent I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER 92
He took the boy to a place where it felt somehow safe. In his search, he had come upon the regular, not-so-little theater with a stage and drapes and rows of seats where students and parents could watch school productions. Plays meant makeup.
He’d gone backstage and poked around. Sets and props and costumes hung on racks. And makeup. Cases of makeup.
He’d found a small room at the back of the stage, a room where Vincent sat with him now. An empty, isolated room, a room with an exit to the parking lot. It w
as tailor-made.
“The ring. Give it to me.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Don’t be cute with me. Your brother’s life depends on it, Vincent. Hand the ring over.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t have it.”
“Well, where is it?”
The tone of the man’s voice shook Vincent, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to tell that he had given the ring to Cassie, but he had to get Mark back.
“I’m at the end of my patience, Vincent. And your little brother is all by himself in this storm. If I get the ring, he goes free. It’s in your hands. Now, damn it, where’s that ring?”
CHAPTER 93
“I can’t find him.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find him?”
“Just what I said, Etta. Vincent’s not in the bath-room.”
Etta started for the media center door, but Charles held her back. “I’ll go look for him,” he instructed. “You wait here in case he comes back.”
Charles struggled through the hallway, calling the boy’s name, paying no attention to the startled expressions of the people camped out there.
“Vincent. . . . Vincent.”
“What does he look like, mister?”
“Eleven years old, brown hair, brown eyes, wearing a navy T-shirt.”
“I saw a boy like that,” someone volunteered, gesturing down the hallway. “He was walking with a man in that direction.”
CHAPTER 94
Cassie was out of breath, her heart pounding. Leroy and Felix weren’t in the gym or any of the half dozen classrooms she’d checked. Her search could go on forever, while Tony Whitcomb was right here in this building.
Don’t panic. Think. Think.
“Attention, please. Will any doctors or nurses in the house please report to the main office? Doctors and nurses, to the main office, please.”
The public address system. She could page Leroy.
CHAPTER 95
He stuffed a sock in Vincent’s mouth and tied him to the chair with the belts he’d stripped from the hanging costumes, pulling the bonds nice and tight. “There, that should hold you,” he muttered. “Now don’t go getting any ideas about trying to get loose. Not if you want to see your brother again.”
He left the boy in the room and walked out to the stage. At the side he parted the curtain, ever so slightly, peeking out at the auditorium. The people who sat there just dozed or talked among themselves, not noticing him.
How was he going to get Cassie Sheridan to come to him?
CHAPTER 96
Cassie waited outside the office door for Leroy and Felix to respond to the page. Minutes passed. After what seemed like an eternity, she saw them approaching. “Thank God, you’re here,” she declared, launching into her explanation of what she suspected.
“Tony Whitcomb?” asked Felix with skepticism. “The local news reporter?”
Leroy’s face contorted. “The guy who wants to come work at the network? He didn’t look like a rapist or murderer to me.”
“And exactly what does a murderer look like, Leroy?” Cassie couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice. “I’m telling you, Tony Whitcomb could be guilty of the rape of Maggie Lynch and those other young women—and maybe a kidnapping and a couple of murders as well.”
CHAPTER 97
He came down from the stage and walked to the back of the auditorium, where a phone hung from the wall. He picked up the receiver and listened.
“Yes? May I help you?”
“Who is this?”
“This is the office. May I help you?”
“I’m trying to reach someone. Is it possible to page her?”
“You can leave a message, and I will call the person to come and get it.”
“Thank you. Would you please ask Cassie Sheridan to meet Vincent in the auditorium?”
“Oh, Ms. Sheridan was just here. Let me see if I can catch her. Otherwise, I’ll page her and see that she gets your message.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
As he hung up the phone, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Tony Whitcomb.
“Hey, what are you doing here? I thought you were sick,” accused the reporter.
“I am sick, but I don’t want to die,” Brian answered, trying to appear nonchalant. “I wasn’t going to sit in my condo and wait this thing out.” He changed the subject. “Who are you shooting with?’
“That new girl, Carla.”
“How is she?”
“Not bad.” Tony turned around and looked for his camerawoman. “I gotta go, Brian. Some of us have to work.”
Brian watched with relief as Tony walked away.
CHAPTER 98
By the glum expression on her husband’s face, Etta could tell that he hadn’t found Vincent. “Oh, Charles, what are we going to do? I promised to take care of that child.”
He thought he may have just wasted precious time searching the halls and neighboring classrooms, but Charles hadn’t wanted to return to his wife without their charge safely in tow. “Etta, I’m afraid the boy didn’t just wander off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody said they saw a boy fitting Vincent’s description walking away with a man.”
CHAPTER 99
Cassie stayed in the front lobby, anxiously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Leroy and Felix had posted themselves at other school entrances, all of them waiting for a police car to show up.
“Cassie Sheridan. Please come to the office. Cassie Sheridan, to the office, please.”
She wasn’t going to answer now, not when, finally, she could see a sheriff’s department vehicle had pulled up outside. A woman with a baby in her arms alighted from the backseat. Cassie held the lobby door open for them, yelling out to the officer.
“I’ve got another call to respond to, ma’am.”
Cassie ran into the rain, leaning into the open window. “This is an emergency. I’m Cassie Sheridan with KEY News. Please, I promise you, this is an emergency.”
“Get in.”
Cassie handed Tony Whitcomb’s tape to the deputy. He listened to her story and radioed for backup. Then he left his car at the curb and followed her inside.
CHAPTER 100
He had enough material to do several pieces. Now he had to hope that the microwave truck parked in front of the school would be able to transmit back to the station. Tony was making his way to the entrance, composing his script in his mind as he went, when he heard the excited voice.
“There he is. There’s Tony Whitcomb.”
At first he smiled, thinking someone in the lobby had recognized him as a celebrity. Then his expression turned to one of puzzlement as he saw that it was Cassie Sheridan who was pointing at him. Finally he frowned as the sheriff’s deputy took his arm.
CHAPTER 101
Finally, there might be some closure for Maggie Lynch’s family and for the other rape victims, Cassie thought as she watched Tony walking off with his police escort. Closure for them and justice for Merilee Quinoñes.
And Cassie couldn’t help but hope that if Tony Whitcomb did indeed turn out to be the clown rapist, she had solved the FBI’s case and, perhaps, Pamela Lynch would drop the lawsuit that had wrecked Cassie’s life. But most important was justice for the women who had been brutalized by this monster.
“Cassie Sheridan. Please come to the office.” The noise from the loudspeaker intruded. The page. She had to answer that page.
Charles Chambers, his mouth set in a grim line, was standing at the office desk.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to have to say this, but Vincent’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“He didn’t come back from the bathroom, and we can’t find him.”
The woman behind the desk listened, wanting to be of some help. “Excuse me, Ms. Sheridan?” she interrupted. “You have a message from a Vincent here.” She handed a slip of p
aper to Cassie.
Cassie read the note with relief. “Don’t worry, Mr. Chambers. Vincent is all right. He wants me to meet him in the auditorium.”
“Down to the end of the hall and to the right.” The woman pointed as Cassie sped out the door, leaving Charles without a chance to mention the man who had been seen with the boy.
CHAPTER 102
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Or was it idle minds? What was it that his mother used to say in her endless rants? No matter. In this case, hands worked well enough for him.
While he waited for Cassie, he kept his hands busy. Drawing, painting, powdering. The makeup kits were missing some of the supplies he preferred, but Brian made do, his tension easing as he watched his face transform in the case mirror.
He wished he had worn the blue contact lenses this time, but he hadn’t known he was going to be meeting up with her. He had a feeling that Cassie might have a hankering for blue-eyed men, and he wanted to make things as pleasurable as possible for her.
At first.
After he’d had his way with her, though, Cassie wasn’t going to experience any more pleasure.
The boy’s eyes were trained on him, wide and brown.
“Don’t worry, Vincent. Cassie’s coming.”
CHAPTER 103
Where was Vincent and why did he come here? Cassie walked down the gentle slope of the auditorium floor, searching for the familiar face. Was he playing some sort of game?
This isn’t the time to be fooling around, Vincent, she thought. When she found him, she was going to tell him so in no uncertain terms. Right after she let him know that the police had the man who had kidnapped Mark.
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