by Ruth Parker
“Here Madison,” he said. “You are Madison, right? I tried to tell the difference, but it’s hard.”
She took the bottle and opened it right away. It was so hot and stuffy in the car; a nice cold drink was perfect. She twisted off the cap, noticing that she broke the safety seal around the neck of the bottle. That was something they taught you in school during health class: don’t take drinks from people unless they’re in factory-sealed containers. She drank half the bottle in one gulp. It was good. The photographer reached back and gave Melissa one too.
Madison picked up her phone again. What was she going to do? Text Mom, that was it. But it was so hot in here. It felt like he had the heater on full-blast. It wasn’t even that cold outside and the sun was out, which was rare for February. They had learned about the greenhouse effect in school. The sun’s rays could enter through glass but got trapped inside and couldn’t exit. That was why your car got hot even if it wasn’t that hot outside.
Wait, what was she going to do on her phone? Was she going to look up the greenhouse effect? No, that was why the car was hot. She unscrewed the cap and drank the rest of her Gatorade. It was so nice and cold. It tasted a little weird, like a new flavor maybe, but companies were coming out with new flavors. Oh yeah, she was going to text her mom. The car was so hot, she was feeling weird.
On New Year’s Eve this year, they’d stayed the night at Grandma’s house and Grandma had given them each a small plastic cup with champagne so they could drink it at midnight. That was how she felt right now. Everything looked a little gray and fuzzy, and her arms and legs felt floaty. Mom had been really mad at Grandma, yelled at her for a long time.
Mom. She was going to text Mom. Except she was too drunk. Not drunk. Just Gatorade. She opened up a new text message and tried to type with her finger, but her finger felt fat and the letters seemed small.
Gong to get picerues tankne. Be homo a 4.
Wait a second. A sharp feeling of fear pierced through the fuzziness of her thoughts. Why did the photographer come to their house at noon on a Tuesday? He should have thought they were in school.
The only way he would have known they got out of school early on Tuesdays and walked home alone was if he had been watching them.
Stalking them.
“Melissa,” she said. It sounded weird. “Melissa,” she said again, trying hard to talk clearly.
“Huh?” Melissa said. “I’m tired.”
“We had early dismissal today,” she said. At least she thought she said it. Her words sounded bizarre, like they were spoken by someone else.
And it all made sense. The Gatorade had drugs in it. Even if the neckband of the bottle cap was intact, he had put drugs in the bottle somehow. He had been stalking them.
There was no modeling contest.
Oh damn, those other girls, from Bailey—they were twins too.
“Melissa,” she said again, but her tongue felt numb and swollen and she couldn’t make it work right. At least she’d sent the message to her mom. Madison tried to get her seat belt off, tried to push the red button that would release the buckle, but her fingers felt as numb and swollen as her tongue and even more uncooperative.
Her forehead rested against the window glass as she fell asleep.
Her phone slid from her lap and landed on the floor. The white screen showed her text message to her mother, gross misspellings and all.
But she had passed out before she could hit send.
Ten
Fletcher rolled over in bed, and the squeaking springs shifted; his body sunk in to the middle of the sagging mattress. It was either really late or really early, but he didn’t have the nerve to look at the clock. Sleep was hard to come by when he worked cases like this—and he was always working a case like this. He couldn’t shut off his brain; the gears were spinning too fast.
Even when you’re here, you’re not really here, was what his ex-wife had always said. She’d had enough and left him after only a few months of the marriage. He was glad for her. She’d wanted kids, a happy home. Fletcher wasn’t meant for those things. At first, he thought it was because of his job—the stress, the violence, the sorrow. But after leaving the Bureau (after being forced to leave, Underwood would have been quick to remind him) he still felt nothing but a blank void. He was destined to never have happiness or contentment.
He’d made his peace with that. There were more important things than happiness. Like catching killers.
The gears were spinning—the girls, the profile, the teapot. But his mind kept returning to Laurel. He remembered how she’d looked when she’d pulled her gun on him. There was nothing sexier than a hot chick with a gun. Her tight black spandex clothes had gotten his imagination going. What would it be like to peel off those leggings and run his hand up those strong legs of hers… all the way up, feeling what was between them. Jesus, he had to get out more or something. Working these complex cases siphoned so much of his energy, he hardly ever noticed women anymore. He was afraid he was just getting old. Being around Laurel was stirring something that he almost wished would stay dormant. He needed to focus on this case, not obsess over some sexy scientist.
Obsess? Had he just used the word obsess?
Not only was she a distraction, but she was directly involved in the case. A victim, no less, with obvious problems of her own. Better to shut out thoughts of what was underneath that tight black spandex—how her taut nipple would feel between his thumb and forefinger, how it would feel to find her hard little nub sticking out between her slit, throbbing and waiting for him to stroke it.
Distraction. That was what Laurel was. No point in thinking about a woman when he was just going to be gone next week, off to another small town, trying to get inside the mind of another violent murderer. There was no shortage of violent murderers in the world.
Yet another reason to keep his distance from Laurel. This was not a world where love triumphed. This was a world of scorched earth and tears.
The phone rang, loud and shrill. He didn’t flinch; he’d gotten used to loud noises and surprises a long time ago. He reached for the end table and grabbed the phone, noticing that it was three-thirty in the morning.
“Yeah, this is Fletcher,” he said.
“You sound like you were awake,” the man on the phone said. He couldn’t place the voice.
“What’s going on?” Fletcher asked. “Who is this?” He knew it was bad news. Good news always waited until the morning. Bad news came in the middle of the night.
“Two girls were taken,” he said. “Oh, sorry, I’m Detective Jennings. I’m working with Frank Underwood.”
“When?” Fletcher said. He rolled out of bed and flicked on the lamp. His clothes from yesterday were on the floor. He put on his pants but inspected his dress shirt and saw there were a few smudges of something black on the front. He put it on anyway.
“Mom came home from work, girls weren’t there,” Jennings said. “They walk home on Tuesdays because school gets out early. They’re supposed to text their mom to let her know when they get home. The mom didn’t hear from them by one and started to get worried. She called them but couldn’t get a hold of them. She left work immediately, but when she got home the girls weren’t there. No notes, no calls, no texts. Their backpacks and school stuff wasn’t at the house either, so they most likely never made it home.”
“Fuck,” Fletcher said. He was dressed, trying to get his socks on with one hand. “It’s him. He’s escalated.”
“Yeah no shit,” Jennings said. He gave a skeptical laugh. “We’re all here in the war room. Come down and give us some more of those shrewd insights.”
Cops in various states of dress and undress were standing around the conference room. It was four-thirty in the morning; some were in sweatpants, some were in yesterday’s clothes, some wore crisp new suits. Fletcher looked at their faces and saw many things—fatigue, disorientation, sorrow—but they all looked angry. Fletcher allowed himself to hope just a little. If he had a
roomful of pissed off cops, those two girls had a chance.
He squeezed his way through the crowd and got to the front of the room. Stella wasn’t there and Underwood was in the hallway, talking to a secretary and shaking a stack of papers as he talked. “Everyone, be quiet,” Fletcher yelled over the din. They had trained him in the FBI Academy how to shout so people would listen. The rabble died down and the room was quiet.
“The unsub took another pair of girls. Madison and Melissa Webb. Twins, twelve years old, the same dark curly hair. The killer is escalating and that’s not good for any of us, least of all Madison and Melissa. The fact that he took two more girls so soon shows that he’s control, losing patience. He held the Clark girls for five days, but I doubt we have that long with Melissa and Madison. Who was checking on the tea set?”
A woman raised her hand. She was about forty, wearing sweatpants and a Washington County Sheriff’s Department sweatshirt. Her hair was in an oily ponytail, but her eyes were focused and keen. “Me,” she said.
“What’s your name?” Fletcher asked.
“Detective Barbara Bowen.” Fletcher motioned for her to continue. “I was on the computer all day. I found a few of those tea sets. They were a promotional giveaway from Osco.”
“What’s Osco?” a younger uniformed cop asked. Bowen rolled her eyes.
“Christ, you know you’re getting old when the cops start looking young,” she said. “Osco was a pharmacy, then they got bought out by Sav-Ons.”
“What’s Sav-Ons?” he asked.
“It’s called CVS now,” another cop yelled from the back.
“Can we move on or do we need a longer case study in regional brand acquisitions and mergers?” Bowen said.
“When was the promo?” Fletcher asked the woman.
“1989,” she said. “There was one set that sold recently on eBay. I contacted the seller, and he checked his records and said he shipped it to Omaha. I got him to email me the invoice so I have the Omaha guy’s address and phone number, but…” she trailed off, indicating she thought it was a dead end. Fletcher thought so too. The unsub was local.
Underwood came into the room, holding a sheaf of papers over his head. His eyes gleamed with a triumphant mania that made Fletcher nervous. Fletcher had seen that look many times in an agent’s eyes—mostly in his own reflection.
It was a sign something was going to go wrong.
“Here we go, friends and neighbors,” Underwood said. He plopped the papers down on the conference table. “Take one and pass it down, just like in elementary school. It’s a list of perverts in a hundred-mile radius, which—for those of you who flunked Geometry—does include the Great State of Washington, so we’re going to have to kiss a little Washingtonian ass.”
Fletcher frowned. The Clark twins hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Laurel hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Not only that, but the sex-offender registries were diluted with streakers, statutory rapists, and other criminals who were unsavory to be sure, but who did not fit the profile of a delusional child murderer.
“I had the tech guys narrow down the search,” Underwood was explaining to the packed room of cops, “to include people who either have photography degrees, work at photography stores, have online photography portfolios, or post on online photography forums.”
“Does the list include people on the registry who have cameras on their phones?” one of the cops asked.
“Shut up,” Sheriff Stella yelled from the back of the room. “That’s ten minus points.”
Fletcher tried to squirm his way to the back to talk to the Sheriff. Fletcher didn’t think Underwood was on the right track with the sex offenders, but he didn’t want to call out the detective in front of everyone.
The deputies were all talking loudly to each other, flipping through the pages of sex offenders. Underwood turned on the projector and opened up his laptop. A driver’s license photo appeared on the screen. A man about forty, with a recessive chin and protruding Adam’s apple. “Here’s the top of the pervert hit parade,” Underwood yelled over the excited voices. “Greg Pratt is thirty-nine, which puts him on the younger side if he’s the same guy who abducted Laurel and Leigh Gates fifteen years ago, but he is within the age range. He has a bachelor’s degree in photography from Portland State and owns a small photography studio in Beaverton.”
“That’s where the Webb girls are from,” Detective Bowen said.
“If I didn’t know better,” Underwood said, “I’d say that you sound just like a detective.”
“What’s he registered under?” Detective Bowen asked.
“Three fifty-eight,” Underwood said, referring to state penal code three fifty-eight, vaginal penetration with minor under the age of fourteen. “He was having a sexual relationship with a twelve-year-old. A real class-act.”
Fletcher sidled up next to Stella. “I don’t think this is the guy,” he said without preamble.
“Why not?” Stella asked. “Fucked a twelve-year-old. That fits. Laurel said he was into photography. You said yourself the guy was escalating. That delusional killers usually have sex at the root of it all.”
“It’s not him,” Fletcher said. “This guy’s educated. A business owner. He’s married with two kids.”
“So what? Didn’t that Green River Killer have a wife and kids?”
“That’s a different profile,” he said. “Our guy can’t hold down a job. Our guy had problems with school. He’s delusional. The Green River Killer wasn’t delusional. The Green River Killer wasn’t acting out a fantasy; he was addicted to the power and the thrill, like any other addict. That’s why he was able to compartmentalize. Our guy, his delusions take over his whole being. In the common parlance, he’s nuts.”
Stella took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Check a couple of these guys out,” the sheriff said. “Should be easy enough to eliminate them.”
“Alright,” Fletcher said. He knew it was a waste of time, but had been an outsider in enough police stations to know when he could persuade someone and when to shut up and do what they wanted. He turned to the front of the room where Underwood was explaining the preliminary toxicology results to the rest of the cops.
“What’s the word on the dresses?” Underwood asked. A cop raised his hand and turned in his chair to address the rest of the room. He wore a wrinkled windbreaker and equally wrinkled sweat pants.
“Working on it,” he said. He was the youngest of the detectives, probably late twenties, but with an unfortunately receding blond hairline.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Stella asked from the back. “We’re all working on it.”
“Sorry, sir,” the younger detective said. “What I meant was I went to the store, and I got a lot of ‘I don’t knows’ from the cashier, then when I finally tracked down the manager I got even more ‘I don’t knows.’ They didn’t give me access to any of their records. Inventory, receipts, sales reports—all I got was a bunch of vague promises if I checked back later.”
“Sounds suspicious,” one of the other cops said.
“To the IRS, maybe,” the young detective said. “It’s one of those rinky-dink discount clothes stores. I got the feeling they’re fudging their books.”
“Oh, well then,” Stella said. “If they’re breaking the law and don’t want to talk to you, by all means cut them some slack.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the young detective said again. “But I can’t get very far if they don’t have inventory records or purchase orders. They don’t have cameras, they’re cash only. They don’t remember anyone buying two of the same navy blue dress.”
“Get your ass back over there and lean on them. Hard. Find out who’s the owner and threaten him with RICO for embezzlement and money laundering.”
“Yes, sir,” the young detective said, but he didn’t sound convinced. Neither was Fletcher. If some sketchy discount store didn’t remember who bought the two dresses, combing through their purchase orders and delivery logs all th
e live-long day wouldn’t turn anything up. Leaning on them would be more likely to have the opposite effect—an employee might be tempted to lie and say they remembered someone just to get the heat off of their crooked account books.
“Can we get a car to watch the clothing store?” Fletcher asked. “These blue dresses are important to his ritual. He has two new girls; he needs two new dresses.”
“Maybe he bought four dresses last time,” Underwood said.
“No,” Fletcher said. “He’s a fantasy-fulfillment killer. When he took the Clark twins, he thought that would be it—the girls would be all he needed. It’s only now that the Clark girls didn’t satisfy him that he needs to try again.”
“Would he be stupid enough to hit up the same store twice? I thought you said this was a smart guy,” Underwood asked.
“Maybe. He is smart and organized. But he could consider it a calculated risk as long as he pays cash and wears a baseball cap and sunglasses. It’s worth it to stake a car at the clothing store.”
Stella turned to the young detective. “That’s you, kid. When you’re there putting the fear of God into those crooked shopkeepers, give them your duty phone number and tell them to text immediately if anyone comes in and buys that dress, even if it’s just the little old lady from Pasadena.”
“Good idea, sir,” the young detective said.
“That’s minus five points for kissing ass,” Stella said.
The meeting wrapped up after a few more minutes, with most officers having orders to follow up on the sex-offenders with photography connections. Fletcher noticed as the woman detective, Bowen, shuffled out with the herd of officers. He approached her, pulling on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“Keep looking at the tea sets,” he told her. “That’s how we get him: at the heart of his delusions.”