Worth Any Price
Page 29
They were on the phone. And they were getting absolutely nowhere with this argument.
“I’ve told you I don’t give a rat’s ass if he comes to the hospital. I don’t care what he says or whom he says it to. I’m a damn good surgeon, one of the best in the country, and no one can say anything about my morality that could possibly hurt my career as long as there’s a waiting list for my specialty. Do you have any idea how long the waiting list is for neurosurgeons? Besides, even if he does show up, with one press of a button, security will have him in irons. And don’t worry about me running into him on the street. I’m a big boy, he’s the one who’s going to come out on the bottom of a wrestling match.”
“I just wish he’d find somebody else and give up on the idea that I might still love him.”
“Is he still badgering you about what you had to do?”
“Yes. And it’s only a matter of time before he hears about what happened on Topsail Island.”
“How would he find out about that?”
“I think one of the beach patrol cops who came to leer was one of his buddies. I thought he recognized me, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah, that glint in his eye couldn’t have been because of something else,” he teased. He couldn’t believe he was taking this so well. The thought that she was practically naked in front of other men drove him crazy, but she absolutely, positively, could never, ever know that.
“He was wearing sunglasses. It was the way his head tilted that concerned me.”
“Just angling for a better view.”
“Rand, cut it out will you?”
It sickened him, and he was unaccountably jealous of all the men on that beach who had seen her topless, jutting her perky breasts out for all to see, but he knew if he didn’t keep teasing her about it and acting like it didn’t matter that she’d fall apart. And heaven help them both if Thomas did find out that she’d been on a beach topless and in a thong bottom.
“I want to see you. I miss you. Come to my office today.”
When she didn’t answer, he said, “Lunch time. Be here.” Then he hung up.
Meggie put the phone in the cradle then flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. It was almost morning and the only light came from the lamp on the night stand. After Rand had brought her home he’d been called to the hospital. She hadn’t thought he would call. The ceiling fan took lazy turns and cast flickering shadows around the room. It was mesmerizing, and as she continued to stare at the rotating blades, she let her mind unwind and drift back. It was hard to believe that just a few days ago she had actually been topless and virtually bottomless on a public beach being leered at by both men and women. When she’d finally made it to a secluded area, the beach patrol officers with their binoculars had continued to torment her with their obnoxious leering.
And for the hundredth time, that horrible ransom note came back to her battered brain. As she recalled the condemning words the madman had written, expounding on how she was going to exchange sexual favors for her son’s life, the mortifying shame of what she had done came over her again. It was this way every night. Alone in her room, she relived the terrible things she’d had to do until she just wanted to crawl up into a ball and die.
Rand had taken care of everything. He’d been a gentleman taking great care with her while doing the least gentlemanly of things. Rand had gotten her through that awful night, settled Thomas down when he was deranged, taken her to the library when the police had found Toby, and then followed the ambulance to the hospital so he could be there for her if she needed him. Then he’d stayed at her apartment until everyone had left, and at two-thirty in the morning, he’d taken her into his arms on her sofa and held her until she’d fallen asleep, her exhausted son in her lap.
At five he’d fixed coffee in the kitchen. When she’d joined him there, he’d taken her back into his arms and tenderly kissed her. Then he had taken her by the hand and led her into the bathroom where he’d stripped her and himself before turning on the shower.
She had been so raw, her emotions so frayed, she would have done anything he wanted, led as the zombie that she was. And he’d known it. With the capable hands of a deft surgeon, he’d gently washed her from top to bottom, then he’d used the removable spray shower head to carefully cleanse and soothe her soreness. He’d painstakingly dried her and then he’d bundled her into a robe. He’d tucked her into her bed, brought a sleepy Toby to lay beside her, and kissed her thoroughly before leaving to go to work.
“Thank you,” she’d whispered.
He’d turned back from the doorway, “Don’t thank me now. I have some wicked plans for you when you’re recovered.” He’d tossed her a smile over his shoulder and gone to the front door to let himself out. Then he’d walked right into Thomas, and had ducked just in time to avoid getting hit in the jaw. Thomas, on the other hand, had hit the brick full force and broke a knuckle.
Now as Meggie continued to stare at the ceiling, and the fan that was perpetually circling, she laughed. Just two weeks ago one of the nurses had told her that she’d heard Dr. Cheswick was gay and that his lover was his tennis partner. Not hardly!
Chapter Thirty-eight
When Laura came out of the bathroom, Kel just stared at her.
Then he found his voice and asked, “How could you have possibly forgotten to tell me something like that?”
“I don’t know Kel, I’m sorry. I was wasted. We all were.” She chuckled. “I’m not sure we would have put it together at all if we hadn’t been drinking. It just came out of the blue.”
“So what spa was this?”
“The one on South College, Exclusively for Women. He couldn’t be a member there, maybe he saw all of us from the parking lot. Anyway, that’s a connection the three of us have. Maybe you should check and see if the other mothers were members.”
“I’ll do that on my way to work. No one’s up yet. How are you feeling? How’s your head?”
“I’m fine, a little woozy still and my tongue feels like a Brillo, but my head’s okay. After all the years of toasting with champagne, I’m not at all affected by the bubbles. I rarely get a hangover, but then again, I rarely drink as much as I did last night.”
“Yeah, what got into you girls?”
“Just had to get away from it all I guess. It felt good. I like both of them.”
“Well, if I were you, I’d check on them, but not until later this afternoon. Both of them got sick on their way to the cars.”
“You let them drive?”
“No! Cayce and Rand came to get them. Actually, I had to meet them at the station and bring them here.”
“Oh Kel, I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. It was a hoot seeing the three of you passed out on those loungers, without a care in the world. But you do need to be more concerned with security. The front door was unlocked and the patio door was open. Anybody could have walked right on in and taken whatever they wanted.”
“That’s odd. I know I locked the front door after Paige and Meggie came in. No one went out of it again, I’m sure of it.”
“Laura, the way you were last night, I doubt you could have been sure about anything.” He walked over to her and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’ll call you later. Give Kayla a hug for me.” Then he was gone.
Laura stood staring at her reflection in the double mirror over the dresser. I am sure that front door was locked.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Three of his women in one place, all passed out drunk. He needed a camera, he needed some rope, and he needed blue pills, lots of blue pills. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Laura, Paige, and even Meggie, sturdy, Meggie. But then he heard car doors slamming, several of them. He had just made it over the sea grass and to the sand beyond when he h
eard men coming around the corner of the house. The men all looked vaguely familiar. As he crouched in the sand looking between the fronds of the vegetation, he had to bite his tongue to keep from exclaiming out loud. Each man there had been involved in satisfying his ransom demands. What was this shit? Don’t tell me that they’re all involved! What were those men doing here? His stomach clenched and so did his fists. These were his women! What were these men doing here carrying them off? They had no right! He fell back in the sand, clasping his hands to his head, and trying not to scream from the frustration he was feeling. All he’d needed was more time. They were his!
That afternoon Laura went into Kayla’s room to hang up some laundry. Since Kayla had been at her parent’s house she hadn’t had occasion to go in there since yesterday morning. When she opened the closet door to hang up some dresses, Samantha, Kayla’s American Girl Doll fell off the top shelf right into her arms. When Laura looked down at the doll she gasped. A note was pinned to Samantha’s plaid jumper. On it was written:
Frank
Frankie
Francis
Frances
&
Laura
Laura
Laura
Laura
Laura dropped the doll and ran for the phone.
Chapter Forty
Kel was on his way to the Exclusively for Women Spa. It had been a crazy morning and it was only eight. He had the answers to a lot of his questions now, but damn it all, there were still a lot of unanswered ones. The most prevalent was, who and where was that fucking bastard! All of the mothers had been members of the spa at one time or another. None were still going regularly. None were on their periods at the time of the kidnappings. None of them had ever seen a man in the gym. One woman had even told Kel that when the air conditioning units had needed to be worked on, the repairs had by done by women. If workmen were needed they had to come late at night when the spa was closed.
But Kel was beginning to have an idea about how a man could infiltrate such an obviously gender-specific enterprise. And it was ridiculously simple.
Being around women in a locker room situation, it would be easy to track women’s cycles, easy to discover patterns and habits, and to find out about their children. And their lovers, or their lack of them. And it would be child’s play to find out where they lived, what they drove, when they’d be home, where they kept their keys. It was just too easy. The man must be laughing his fool head off at how easy everything was.
Then he thought of Laura and how this man had seen her there, in that gym, exercising, using the hot tub, dressing. Watching her shower. He felt himself begin to tremble with rage. His Laura, his beautiful Laura, being leered at and lusted over while she was unaware she was even being watched. At least by a man.
He parked in front of the spa, but before he could get out of his cruiser his phone rang. Noting the caller I.D. number of one of his team members, he flipped it open.
“Vain here.”
“Kel, you’re not going to believe this but guess what we found.”
“What?”
“That big touring golf bag you keep talking about.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“That’s the odd thing. A few of us met at IHOP this morning for breakfast. When we came out it was on the roof of one of the cruisers. The officer whose car it was on wanted to throw it away, but a couple of us were kind of suspicious. So we took it over to Wilmington National—where you told us the one you were looking for had originated—and the pro there verified that it was the one they’d had in the showroom for display a few months ago.”
“So why would he do that?” Kel said more to himself than to the other detective.
“Beats me. You gotta figure it could have a lot of forensic evidence in it.”
“He wanted us to find it,” Kel hissed. “But why?”
“I don’t know. But it’s on its way to the lab right now.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in the office in an hour or so.” He flipped the phone closed.
What in the world? He sat there thinking for a minute, then flipped open the phone again. He punched in the number for Ben Atkinson, the profiler who was helping him on the case.
“Atkinson.”
“Ben, what do you make of our serial killer leaving the carrying case he’s been using to transport the kids in out in the open for us to find?”
“Oh, that’s not good Kel. Not good at all.”
“Well that’s what he’s done.” He told him about the touring bag and where it was found.
“Kel, you and I both know that when a serial killer breaks pattern that it’s just about the worst thing that can happen. He definitely wanted you to find it and my guess is that it’s his way of telling you that the rules have changed. He’s probably not going for the kids anymore. He’s upping the stakes if you ask me. You must be getting close. Or something has changed in his personal life and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.”
“Any recommendations?”
“Yeah, work around the clock. Something’s coming down.”
“Shit!”
“He’s got a new game Kel.”
“And we have no idea what that is, right?”
“This is just a wild hunch Kel, and I wouldn’t put any stock in it except that he’s really been playing a sexual game. But I think he may be looking for a woman. We could be watching a serial kidnapper/killer morphing into a serial rapist/killer.”
“Fucking wonderful,” Kel breathed.
“Round the clock bud, you must have something. Work it.”
Kel closed the phone. He stared up at the big spa sign and turned on his radio. Within minutes the spa was surrounded by police officers. There were at least ten cruisers and twice that many uniforms.
An hour later the department’s female officers had processed all the clients. All were truly women. Truly mad women. The indignant owners were spouting threats of lawsuits and he was at a dead end—until one of the officers returned from the janitor’s closet with a bucket filled with women’s clothing and a wig. At the bottom of the bucket were twenty wax disks containing impressions of keys. A name was carved into the back of each disk. Kel put on a glove and turned each one over. Alice, Deborah, Connie, Melanie, Susie, Wendy, Anna, Emma, Heather . . . but there were no disks for the women whose children had been taken.
“Jesus!” he whispered. Then, “Collins, get the magistrate. We need a warrant for the client records and we need it now!”
Collins turned on his heel and ran for the door.
“Bill, line up the customers who are here and see if any of these disks have their names on them. If they do, see if any of their house keys match up. And make sure anyone who handles these uses gloves. They gotta have his prints all over them. Get a kit, let’s print them first.”
He walked over to the owners, the mother-and-daughter team who had been so righteous just a few minutes ago. Now they sat silently while officers rushed in and out of doors and began to cordon off the area with yellow tape.
“Ladies, do you know anything about this bucket?”
“All I can tell you is that I bought it about two years ago. Haven’t seen it since.”
“How about the clothing or the wig?”
“It’s Frankie’s. But I never knew it was wig,” the mother answered. “She always wore some kind of scarf over her hair.”
Kel picked up the dress and shook it. A multicolored scarf fell to the floor. “This one?”
“Yeah.”
“So, Frankie’s a woman?”
“Yeah. What else would she be? Men ain’t allowed. Especially back there.”
She pointed to the dressing rooms, the locker rooms, and the bathrooms. Kel put his
hand in his pocket and rubbed his thumb over the plastic palm tree fronds. This was killing him. The man had stalked Laura, seen her naked, fantasized about her. How many times, over how long a period?
“So Frankie is your cleaning lady?”
“Yeah. She mops the floors, cleans the bathrooms, picks up the towels, you know all that janitorial kind of stuff. Women are messier’n you’d think. It’s a full-time job picking up in there.”
“Do you provide locks for the lockers?”
“Sometimes. The women can bring their own if they want as long as they don’t leave ‘em on the lockers.”
“Do most bring their own?”
“No. Most don’t even use a lock. Some get them from us, but not many.”
“Does Frankie have access to the combinations, or were they keyed?”
“Combination. Not that I know of. We keep them in the office.”
“Does she clean the office?”
“Yup. She does. She cleans the whole place.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“ ’Bout a week ago. Came in for her check and said she had to take a few days off. Her momma’s sick.”
“Well ladies, you’d better call your attorney, because unless I miss my guess, Frankie is a man.”
“Can’t be! We hired her away from that cleaning company. We have her records on file.”
“I’m sure the records you have are bogus, but we’re going to need to see them anyway.”
A man called to Kel from a back room.
“This lady says her name is Emma and her house key is an exact match for the impression.”