LUCY: The Complete Lucy Kendall Series with Bonus Content (The Lucy Kendall Series Book 5)

by Stacy Green

  “So what does he get his kicks from?” Todd asked.

  “Every confirmed victim was missing for a minimum of two weeks before she was found. They were starved and dehydrated, given just enough sustenance to survive. None were sexually assaulted. And all were strangled.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to suggest a personal killing?” I tried to remember the criminology classes from years ago.

  “It can, but stabbing is more so. The penetration can be seen as a sexual replacement. But these women…” Lennox paused and looked at the table, his neck muscles tight. “They all showed signs of being strangled multiple times.”

  “So he kept reviving them?” Todd’s voice dropped.

  “Either that or he knew the right moment to stop. It’s another way to control and terrify. And then there’s the signature: he always leaves a piece of silver, usually a coin, but not one that’s circulating. Those aren’t true silver. He leaves a collector’s type of coin. Sometimes a dime, sometimes a quarter or silver dollar. They’re all at least 90% silver.”

  Something clicked in my head: the silver spoons; the Lady Liberty silver dollar delivered to me and left with Shannon; the same silver dollar at Kelly’s. How long had the Silver Stalker been watching me?

  Todd spoke before I found my voice. “Why the silver?”

  “It’s got a lot of symbolism,” Lennox said. “In mythology, it’s viewed as cleansing. So I suppose it’s this jerk’s way of saying he’s cleansed the women of their sins. Who knows what the hell this guy is thinking.”

  “The Silver Stalker is doing this?” Just saying the words made me feel sick. How could Kelly survive against that kind of predator?

  “This winter in Maryland, Kelly’s computer and research skills impressed me. I needed someone local in Pennsylvania, and she agreed.” Lennox crossed his arms on top of the table and gave me a purposeful look.

  “Kelly was working for you?” I could no longer hide the betrayal, slumping down in my seat. How many things had Kelly kept from me?

  “She was doing online work regarding the Silver Stalker cases,” Lennox said. “Shortly before she was taken, I gave her a name to research. She called and said she had something but didn’t want to leave it in a message. She thought her apartment might be bugged. She didn’t say why. She sent me an encrypted email, and it took my team a couple of days to break it. Kelly was taken late Thursday night–the same day she’d sent the email.”

  “You put her in this danger.” I wanted to come across the table at Lennox. “You knew she lived alone and was trying to rebuild her life. Why would you do this?”

  “Because I needed her help.” He didn’t appear to be fazed by my anger. “And you still don’t know the entire story, so simmer down.”

  I felt feverish. The drink hadn’t helped.

  Kelly’s apartment had been bugged. It made sense. That’s how the Stalker knew so much about me, how he managed to track Kelly’s and my movements.

  I finally had information to add. “The super’s key was stolen by a drug addict who called himself Preacher.”

  Todd sat up straight. “A white guy?”

  “White and stocky. Obviously not Preacher. I’m thinking he got the key to the Stalker, who made a copy. The guy pretending to be Preacher returned it. Kelly’s super is an older guy. He didn’t want to admit his mistake.” I turned back to Lennox. “What was the encrypted message?

  “Hold on,” he said. “Beckett, why did you ask if the drug addict was a white guy?”

  Todd’s voice sounded even wearier than he looked. “Earlier in the week, a homeless man was discovered in a dumpster a few blocks away from Kelly’s apartment. It’s not Major Crime, but I keep an eye on her neighborhood. He didn’t have any identification, but he had a note in his pocket. Preacher’s name was scribbled on it.” Todd balled up the cocktail napkin and threw it against the wall. “It was weird, but I didn’t think anything about it. Not with the search for Shannon going on.”

  Lennox was nodding, his fingers tapping on the table. “Makes sense. We know he knew about Preacher. Obviously.” His eyes flashed to mine.

  “She gave you a name in the encrypted email,” I said. “Who is it?”

  “Rich Hasel.” Lennox’s neutral voice only spurred my feeling of unease.

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  Lennox and Todd glanced at each other. What were they building up to?

  “Rich Hasel owns the land north of Philadelphia where the first Silver Stalker victim was found nearly two years ago,” Todd said.

  “So? That’s hardly enough to make someone a murder suspect.”

  “You’re right,” Lennox agreed. “But the D.C. Park Police are checking all the rental cars in the Alexandria area for the week prior to Shannon’s murder. Process has been slow, but guess who’s name came up this morning?”

  “Rich Hasel.” I still couldn’t figure out why they were talking to me as if they were trying to cushion a blow.

  Lennox nodded.

  “But I don’t understand why the Silver Stalker would target me. Because that’s what Shannon’s death is about. If Kelly found something on him, then fine. But it’s all tied to me–you said so. Why would this Rich Hasel–if that’s even the stalker’s name–be after me?”

  “It’s an obsession,” Lennox said. “Something I believe started years ago. You encountered each other at a place that put you both on common ground. You may not have been aware of him, but something about you called to him. He never forgot it, and over the years, it built until he envisioned a special kinship between you. All while you never knew he existed.”

  An acerbic taste invaded my mouth. My stomach turned rancid. I waited for the hammer to come down.

  Lennox sensed this. He leaned forward until his barrel chest bumped the table. “Shannon was enrolled in the paramedic program at Penn State. This person had a connection to that program. And he knew Kelly is your lifeline.”

  “Rich Hasel is a Philadelphia paramedic?” I felt slow, like I’d been climbing uphill for days and still couldn’t reach the top. Whatever I was missing teased my subconscious, warning me of an impending disaster. “How do you know? Are you watching him? Do you think he took Kelly?”

  “Rich Hasel doesn’t exist,” Lennox said.

  I dropped back against the booth. “Please stop talking in riddles and tell me.”

  Todd finally put an end to my misery. “Rich Hasel is an anagram for Chris Hale.”

  28

  I felt as though I’d been thrown off a cliff and plummeted toward an angry ocean, its waves slashing against the rocks, eager to suck me into their depths. My lungs filled with imaginary water until I felt ready to burst.

  “Breathe,” Todd said. “You’re turning purple.”

  I inhaled, my throat stinging.

  “Say something.” Todd’s fingertips brushed against mine.

  Shaking my head ‘no’ took a monumental effort.

  Lennox’s flashy red tie suddenly seemed like the flag bullfighters waved. He played with the soft material, the red blurring until I saw nothing else. “It’s true. Kelly traced the credit card Rich Hasel used to rent the car.”

  “It was in Chris’s name? How could that be? Why would the rental company allow him to use someone else’s card?” My hysterical voice caught the attention of the bartender. I tried to calm down.

  “The account is in Rich’s name,” Lennox said. “But Kelly recognized the account number as one Chris had given her last year.”

  Oh my God. It couldn’t be. But I remembered that day clearly, when Chris had been determined to earn Kelly’s trust. He’d given her a paper with the account number to his trust fund.

  There’s almost a million dollars in there, and that’s all the information you need to get into my account.

  “But that was to Chris’s trust fund.” My lips stuck together; I wiped them with a cocktail napkin and took a drink of Todd’s water. “Kelly verified it.”

  Lennox d
idn’t seem to be concerned about why Chris had shared the account number in the first place. “She verified the account existed. But did she verify the name on the account? The bank certainly didn’t tell her that. She would have to go pretty deep into a bank’s records to do that, and it’s risky. Did she really think it needed to be taken that far?”

  I couldn’t remember Kelly actually tracing the account. My head had been too full of desperation for little Kailey Richardson. “She just said the account was good.”

  “Her email said that she recognized the account, and she could prove it was one and the same. She referenced the 1986 silver dollars you received, as well as the coin found with Shannon’s body. She also said the crime scene was staged to resemble your sister’s suicide. She was adamant Chris Hale was the Silver Stalker.”

  “Why did she tell you and not me?”

  Lennox continued to mess with his stupid tie, smoothing it this time. “I told her to keep any communication about the Silver Stalker between us. That included you.”

  So what? Kelly broke law enforcement rules all the time. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t believe her. Or she didn’t have enough time before she was attacked.

  She did it to protect you from Chris.

  I pinched my lips together. Sobbing in front of Lennox wouldn’t help the situation.

  “She said it comes back to Camp Hopeful,” Lennox said. “Chris admitted to you he remembered you from the camp–after you found the pictures in his apartment.”

  I grabbed my hair, digging my fingernails into my scalp. I didn’t want to remember, but it was too late. I saw the classroom at Camp Hopeful, the chairs arranged in a circle, occupied by faceless people. And me, boiling over the way my mother had treated Lily.

  Lily’s hair. I told them about Lily’s curls.

  “I told the group about how Lily’s hair was done to mock my mother. Chris was there.” It hurt to say the words out loud. All these years later, the spouting off of a broken, angry teenager had sealed my fate.

  “Last winter, during the search for him,” Lennox said, “his uncle told me about Chris–habits, hobbies, that sort of thing. He mentioned he collected coins and that his favorite was the 1986 silver dollar with the Statue of Liberty. Do you know why?”

  Chris’s closet, where I found the pictures. He had a drawer full of coins. Did he have silver dollars? I couldn’t remember. I had to take another drink of Todd’s water before I answered. The liquid did nothing to ease the gritty dryness. “Chris was born in 1986.”

  “Mary Weston collected coins too.” Lennox’s tone never changed–he never sweetened the news, but he also didn’t showboat. He just laid out the facts. “She had a 1986 silver dollar with her when she was booked. There’s no way to tell if Chris gave it to her or if she had it on her, but I’ve had a couple of conversations with her since then. She collected coins.”

  “So he picked up the habit from her.” The rum was going to come back up. Lennox hadn’t put Kelly in danger. I had when I allowed Chris into our lives.

  And he warned you from the very beginning.

  My hands shook. I clenched my fists.

  “Do you remember when Mary was going to shoot you?” Lennox asked.

  I was going to let her. “Yes.”

  “Her right hand is permanently damaged, so she had to use her left. Which meant her shot would have been unnatural and possibly not a very good one. You told me later she held it awkwardly, and you didn’t think she’d kill you.”

  “So?” The shaking in my hands had spread to the rest of my body and turned me into a quivering mess of rage.

  “Her cousin was shot by a right-handed person, at a distance of at least fifteen feet, by a single gunshot to the head,” Lennox said. “No way could Mary have done that. Both she and Alan were left-handed. Chris is a righty.”

  The memories assaulted me like jabs from a knife: Chris’s lie about why he originally sought me out; his ease with handling Preacher’s body; the coins; the family history; the damned poster at the hospital.

  “Lucy.” Todd’s tone teetered on the brink of anger. He’d never trusted Chris, and he’d warned me. “I know it’s hard to believe, but you’ve got to step back and consider this from an outside perspective. His family history, the things he witnessed as a child. The lies he told you. And Kelly is the one who put it all together. You know she wouldn’t have accused him if she wasn’t sure.”

  I had no answer. No argument, and I couldn’t say the words out loud. Not yet.

  “You said yourself that staging Shannon’s body to look like your sister’s was personal. How much more personal does it get than Chris?” Lennox’s dark eyes were so intense I had to look away.

  A scream built in my throat as the betrayal began to set in. I’d talked to Chris about Lily. He knew the pain and the guilt. He’d even said her death was my real problem. Nothing but a carefully orchestrated act. He’d manipulated me from the beginning, just like my mother.

  “But I called Chris early this morning.” I clung to the last shred of hope. Surely Lennox had dreamed this all up–his involvement in Mary Weston’s case clouded his judgment. Just because Chris came from two generations of madness didn’t mean that he had to be evil too. “He came to help me look for Kelly after I got shot at Tesla’s. Why would he do that if he was testing me?”

  “What?” Todd twisted to glare at me. “You didn’t say anything about being shot. Did you get it treated?”

  I raised my shirt sleeve. “It’s a flesh wound. Chris treated it.” The irony made me sound ridiculous. I left the part about Mac out. No one else needed to know how he’d helped me. “And the picture of Kelly.” I took out Kelly’s phone so they both could see it, even though I’d already emailed it to Lennox. “This was taken with Jared Cook last night sometime before I found the phone. We found Jared Cook and his cousin dead earlier today. Chris said he was on shift last night, and he would have had to have killed them before he came to help me because we were together until I called you.” I leaned forward eagerly, like a child trying to convince her father she hadn’t been caught stealing the cookies.

  “He wasn’t on shift,” Lennox said. “I checked.”

  “You were the anonymous call on the Cook murders,” Todd said.

  “Chris was.” And he’d been so adamant the police were called. That Jared’s cousin be treated with the respect he deserved. Chris had said those words right to my face, his tone dripping with compassion. Could he really have played me that well?

  “All part of his game,” Lennox said. “He’s been leading you on from the moment he met you. He’s got some grand scheme in mind.”

  “What?” The answer came to me before either man could speak. Chris had given it to me months ago at Chetters.

  “I think he wanted you to kill with him.” Todd spoke the words I didn’t have the courage to. “He fixated on you at Camp Hopeful. Years later he becomes a killer. He sees you on the news when Justin was going to be released and decides to track you down. You tell him your thoughts on pedophiles, and he sees the opportunity to groom you.” His gaze slid past me to the wall. “Maybe he even hears a few very bad things about you. Somehow he sees you as an equal.”

  He watched me.

  And he knew me. He knew how to pull my strings until I did exactly what he wanted.

  “But then you changed the game,” Lennox said. “You took a job on the good side. You decided you were going to stop your…” he searched for a word. “We’ll stick with private investigating, and leave your old life behind. That wasn’t what he wanted, and you messed things up.”

  “And who was the catalyst for all of that?’ Todd asked. “Who made you believe you could really start over?”

  “Kelly.” I felt as though I were still stuck in the raging ocean waves, my head trapped under water, Lennox and Todd’s words not quite making sense. This couldn’t be. I would have sensed it at some point.

  But you did.

  You just explained it all away.
<
br />   Even after he told you.

  This is all your fault.

  You could have stopped Shannon’s death and Kelly’s kidnapping if you’d only listened and tried harder. Just like Lily. You could have saved her too.

  I dragged my fingernails across my scalp, coming away with strands of my dark red hair.

  “I know it’s hard to accept,” Lennox said. “And everything we’ve given you is circumstantial. It could all be coincidence.”

  Everything in my vision appeared distorted. Lennox’s head swelled to the size of a balloon, his mouth moving without making a sound. Todd’s drooping cheeks seemed to sag all the way down to the floor.

  The final gauntlet was about to drop.

  “But,” Lennox continued, “we do have physical evidence.”

  I tried to remember what he actually looked like, focusing on his dark eyes. Lennox never revealed anything until he was sure he’d get the most bang for his buck.

  I swayed on the seat. “What is it?”

  “Hair was recovered from two of the Silver Stalker victims. Testing revealed both were foreign hairs from a male’s head. Dark blond.”

  A woman’s hysterical laughter doubled my irritation. I realized it was my own and clamped my mouth shut.

  “It wasn’t much,” Lennox admitted. “But we kept them in evidence storage. Last month, I finally got a court order to test Mary Weston’s DNA against the hairs found on the Silver Stalker victims.”

  As though I wandered onto the fringe of my memory, I saw Chris and me sitting in The Coffee Bar the day of Kailey Richardson’s disappearance. I’d conned my way into her mother’s apartment and had my first verbal scuffle with Todd. While I licked my wounds and planned how to find Kailey and finally nail Justin Beckett, Chris appeared out of nowhere, just as he’d done at Chetters. I remembered his words that night as clearly as if he were sitting beside me once again.