by Rita Herron
Lisa’s complexion turned a pasty white. “Oh, my God. He was here.” She shook her head slowly, searching Brad’s face. “But I don’t understand. Why didn’t he attack me instead of running out?”
“He’s obviously playing some kind of sick game,” Brad said. “Taunting you. Us.”
“He wants me to watch him kill these women, like before. To feel guilty,” Lisa whispered.
Brad shrugged. “Don’t let him win by thinking that, Lisa. This isn’t your fault.”
“Maybe I should make a plea on TV,” she suggested. “You could use me as bait to lure him—”
“No.” Brad gripped her arms, gently shaking her. “Don’t even think about doing a foolish thing like that, much less suggest it.”
“But this is my fault,” she insisted. “I let William kill four women before, and now this guy is punishing me by doing it again.”
Brad took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “He’s killing these women because he’s psychotic, Lisa, because he likes the power and enjoys the game. You’re only a small part of the game. If it wasn’t you, he would have chosen another woman.” He rubbed her arms, hating that he couldn’t make this nightmare go away. “We’ll catch the sicko, I promise.”
“Booker,” Ethan interjected. “The guy tailing Nettleton lost him for a while last night.”
“Shit.”
“And I just talked to Rosberg. A local officer in Atlanta thinks he may have a lead on Curtis Thigs.”
“Good. Any news on White’s brother?”
“Not yet.”
Brad’s pulse kicked up a notch. “You take Thigs. I’ll check out Hanks’s half sister. And put someone else on Nettleton.”
Ethan nodded and headed to the door.
“I’m going with you,” Lisa said.
Brad considered leaving her with Surges and Gunther, but decided against it. He didn’t trust anyone with her safety but himself. He just hoped that Hanks’s sister knew where Vernon was hiding out.
And they could find him before this Richards woman ended up like Joann Worthy and Mindy.
* * *
AN OVERWHELMING SENSE of helplessness engulfed Lisa as the scenery passed. Suburban subdivisions were scattered along the road, as well as restaurants, strip shopping centers and a new elementary school, a sign that Atlanta’s growth continued even farther north. The rural areas and farmland were being bought to house crops of cookie-cutter houses instead of corn and wheat fields.
Brad’s expression remained an iron mask of control, but the fine lines around his eyes indicated fatigue. He hadn’t slept at all the night before. Had protected her. Had been tracking down leads.
And back in his cabin, he had come running to her aid the minute she’d called.
On some level, she realized she was simply part of the case to him. On another…she couldn’t help but be moved by his chivalrous behavior. By the touch of concern she’d heard in his voice when he’d calmed her. By the sliver of excitement she felt when he touched her.
She wanted him to see her as something besides a victim.
Yet how could she do that when she was linked to this new serial killer? When he was taking lives, killing women using the same method as William?
“You look exhausted,” she said softly. “You have to rest sometime, Brad.”
“When this bastard is caught,” he said in a low voice.
“Why do you keep working these cases?” She rubbed her hands together. In spite of the ninety-degree heat outside, they still felt chilled.
“It’s my job,” he said, as if he’d never questioned the reason he’d decided to be an agent.
“But one after the other, the murders, deaths, the violence…doesn’t it wear on you?”
His gaze fell on her again, this time lingering, softening even. “Sometimes.”
A quiet recognition dawned in the tension-filled minute that existed between them. Did he mean her case had disturbed him, or that she had?
As if he feared he’d revealed too much, he turned back to the road.
“I…admire your courage,” she said softly. “You save lives. And you never think about yourself, your own safety.”
“Don’t make me out to be some hero, Lisa.” He rammed his hand through his hair. “I’m not. If I was, I’d have stopped this maniac before he snatched another victim.”
She shook her head. “That’s not true, Brad. You’ve done everything humanly possible to catch him.” Sensing the underlying guilt and anguish behind his comment, she realized he wasn’t unaffected by the cases or detached as he appeared. He simply masked those emotions to finish the job.
Or maybe he cared too much. Maybe that’s what drove him.
She wondered again about his past, his childhood, and wanted to know more. To completely understand what made Brad tick. To soothe away the hurtful words of his foster parents and his own mother.
“He’s manipulating us both,” she commented instead. “He knows you’re a fighter, Brad, that you’re tough, and that you won’t give up until the end, just like you didn’t give up on me. And you did arrest William.” She traced a finger over his hands where they were clenched tightly around the steering wheel. “You won in the end, Brad. You will again.”
“But we can’t allow another woman to die,” he said in a gruff voice.
She squeezed the knotted muscle in his shoulder. He raised his hand and slid it over hers, then pulled it down beside him and held it in his lap. The warmth of his pants and body heated her, the tender way he enveloped her palm touching emotions deep inside her. She felt a connection with Brad that she’d never experienced with another man. Had felt it the day he’d rescued her from the grave. She’d missed that connection these last four years.
As they entered Norcross, she studied the small town, her hand still linked with Brad’s. The town was quaint, charming. Wooden and brick houses, several of them two-stories with big old-fashioned porches, boasted well-tended yards filled with impatiens, begonias, azaleas and magnolia trees. In spite of the drought, the lawns looked manicured, the houses freshly painted, the atmosphere reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting.
A sign for new homes pointed toward a street lined with antebellum reproductions that resembled a picture from Gone with the Wind. Railroad tracks lay at the heart of the town, with freight trains and Amtrak still using the system. A restaurant called The Station, complete with an outdoor covered patio, overlooked the tracks. The rest of the square consisted of two Italian restaurants, an art gallery, a pub and a hair salon. A mom-and-pop hardware store with Radio Flyer red wagons in the front window drew her eye, and she smiled. Across the tracks, a park complete with a playground for children held several young mothers with baby strollers and toddlers, and a couple of fathers with their children and dogs. They were enjoying the day, oblivious to the bitter violence that threatened their peace. With a pang of longing, Lisa remembered the kids she taught in Ellijay.
This was a beautiful little town to raise a family. Except for the apple trees, she might be in the mountain town she loved so much.
Brad spotted the side street and turned onto it, and Lisa noted the homes were closer together, less cared for, with weeds choking the grass, and wilted flowers. Finally, Brad parked at a blue frame house with red shutters. The paint was peeling as if the sun had blistered it, and a small row of marigolds bordering the front lawn needed watering. The grass had started to turn brown from the relentless heat as well, but a tricycle and plastic pool sat in the yard, as if the child who played with them offered hope for a better life.
“This is it,” Brad said as he cut the engine.
Lisa reached for the door handle. “I just hope Vernon’s sister can tell us where he is.”
* * *
“I TOLD YOU I don’t know where Vernon is.”
Brad fixed his intimidating stare on Jobeth Hanks Gunner, trying to read between the lines to determine if she was lying. She’d acted stunned when she’d opened the door and found him a
nd Lisa on her doorstep, but she’d recovered quickly and invited them in, had even offered them iced tea and lemonade. A three-year-old boy named Freddy lay sleeping on a lumpy looking sofa in front of a swirling fan that did little to alleviate the stifling humidity.
“Why do you want to see him now?” Jobeth knotted her hands around the skirt of a faded sundress that hung off her bony frame.
“You’ve heard about the Grave Digger copycat crimes?” Brad asked.
Her eyes widened, age lines scattering along her young face as if she was ten years older than her birth certificate said. “Oh, my gosh. You don’t think Vernon had something to do with the murders, do you?” She glanced feverishly at Lisa. “You’re the woman who was buried alive, aren’t you? The one who testified in that first trial?”
Lisa nodded, her lips pressing together in a thin line. “Please, Jobeth, if you know anything about Vernon, you have to tell us.”
“Why?” The woman squared her shoulders. “So you can arrest my brother for something he didn’t do?” Anger hardened her weak voice. “I can tell you one thing—Vernon may have had his problems, but he ain’t no murderer. He couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Brad asked, ignoring her comment.
She folded her freckled hands together. “Well, reckon it’s been awhile. But he calls every now and then.”
“Where does he call from?” Brad asked.
“Mostly pay phones. He moved around a lot this last four years. Had some hard times.”
“What kind of hard times?” Brad asked, struggling to hold on to his patience.
“He…he had an accident about four years ago. Got scarred up pretty bad. Took off after that, hid out for a while.”
“His face was scarred?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah. But I never saw him after he was released from the hospital,” she said. “I felt bad for him, though. He was always self-conscious, you know. Shy. Thought he didn’t fit in.”
Brad nodded. He would have been even more so after an accident. “Did he have a job?”
“He picked up work here and there. I believe he applied for EMT school, but they turned him down.”
Hanks definitely fit the profile of the killer. “Did you know that he followed White around before White was incarcerated?”
She cut her gaze toward her son, and appeared deep in thought for a moment, as if exposing information about her brother posed an internal hurdle she wasn’t ready to cross.
“Please, Jobeth, two more women have been murdered,” Lisa exclaimed, “and this killer has kidnapped another one. You have to help us.”
An odd look flashed on Jobeth’s face, as if Lisa’s plea had pushed her over that hurdle. “Yeah, I knew,” she admitted. “Just like I knew he was obsessed with you.”
Lisa paled slightly, but recovered quickly and sipped her tea as if urging Jobeth to finish.
“When White first went to jail,” she continued, “Vernon used to visit him.”
Brad swallowed. White could have bragged to him about the crimes. “Did Vernon confide anything about their conversations? Maybe the place where he kept the women before he killed them?”
She shook her head. “Didn’t tell me that, and I didn’t ask. But he treated White like he was somebody to look up to.”
“Like a mentor?”
Jobeth shrugged.
“What else did he say?” Brad prompted.
“Well, he mentioned that White had a plan. That he talked about faking his death so he could escape the pen.”
Perspiration exploded on Brad’s neck. Was it possible that White had faked his death? Had he somehow managed to escape alive?
* * *
LISA TWIRLED HER FORK in her salad, trying to eat a few bites at the restaurant on the railroad tracks where they’d stopped after leaving Vernon’s sister’s house. But the children’s laughter that echoed from the park reminded her she had left her teaching job to return to the past—a past she thought she’d fled.
All because of William White.
But she hadn’t really fled the past, not even in Ellijay. She’d simply coasted through each day, living vicariously through the other families she saw, without any real hope of having one of her own.
She desperately wanted a family, wanted it all. Once this copycat killer was caught…
She glanced at Brad again, the familiar stirring of desire in her belly warming her. She had been attracted to him during the trial, but she’d been so needy, so vulnerable, so…ugly.
She wasn’t that woman anymore. She’d gained strength from her ordeal with William, and would fight for a real life this time.
The memory of Brad’s kiss burned through her brain, resurrecting a dream she hadn’t even realized she’d acknowledged—that Brad was the man she was meant to be with.
That she was falling in love with him for the second time in her life.
William White’s face flashed into her mind. The look of rage in his black eyes when he’d discovered she’d confessed to Brad her suspicions. He had the cold, calculating eyes of a killer.
What if this Grave Digger wasn’t a copycat?
Brad had been quiet and brooding since they’d left Jobeth’s house. “I know I asked you this once before, but, Brad…do you think it’s possible that William faked his death?”
His hesitation made her stomach quiver. He finished his burger, then wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin onto the table. “I saw White with my own eyes, Lisa. Hell, I read the autopsy report. He was dead.”
She nodded, struggling to accept his answer.
“But I’m going to request an exhumation of White’s body just to verify it.”
She reached for her water with a trembling hand. “So you do think it’s possible that he’s alive?”
“No. Hell, Lisa, faking a death isn’t easy. He’d need help. Someone to doctor his death certificate, switch his body.” He dropped his head forward, then looked back up at her. “I know what I saw, and what the doctors told me. Hell, I think White was even an organ donor.”
Lisa flinched. His logic made sense, but Jobeth’s comment disturbed her. And she’d smelled William in her cabin.
It also seemed odd that William would be an organ donor. Did the recipients know they’d received organs from a killer?
* * *
BRAD’S CELL PHONE RANG, slicing into the tension. “Booker.”
“Anything new?” Ethan asked.
Brad reiterated their conversation with Jobeth Hanks Gunner. “I’m requesting White’s body be exhumed. Hell, maybe he can tell us something from the grave.”
Ethan muttered a curse of agreement.
“And I’ll check out the hospitals for info on this accident Hanks supposedly had,” Brad continued. “See if he had plastic surgery of some kind. Maybe that’ll lead somewhere. At least give us a current picture of what he looks like.”
“Good. I’m tailing Chartrese to see if she hooks up with Curtis Thigs. But listen, Brad, I just talked to Rosberg. He has a lead on White’s brother.”
“You got a name and address?”
“Yeah, River Glen subdivision, Duluth. A woman named Haddie Clemens. Think she was married to him at one time.”
“I’ll run by there.” Brad jotted down the address. “Let me know if you find Thigs.”
He hung up, and Lisa twisted the napkin in her lap as she waited. “What’s this about William’s brother?”
Brad grunted, removed a credit card and paid their bill. “We may have a lead on him.”
“It’s odd that he never showed up at the trial.”
“He visited him a few times in jail.” Brad shrugged. “Maybe they renewed their brotherly bond.”
Lisa fought a shudder. “Do you think he’s anything like William?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”
In fact, if White’s brother knew everything about the first Grave Digger, he might be emulating his brother’s crimes for revenge, or to continue
the family legacy….
* * *
DARKNESS CLOAKED Wayne Nettleton’s cramped room, the fading sunlight a welcome relief to the relentless heat and badgering rays of the scalding sun. His skull throbbed as if the skin was too tight, and caused dark spots to explode behind his eyes. Pinpoints of tiny white lights burst through the darkness, swimming like fireflies scattering in the black night.
He blinked and swallowed his blood pressure medicine, then massaged his temple, forcing himself to shut out the pain as he studied the photos of Darcy Mae Richards. She was young, only twenty-four, with dirty-blond hair and a small pointed chin. Although there was nothing extraordinary about her appearance, no specific feature that was striking on its own, the package all fit together nicely.
Her photograph would be all over the Atlanta Daily the next morning, right above his byline.
Her parents were probably hysterical by now, the prayers and tears rolling. Police had been dispatched to canvass the bar and local establishments bordering it, but so far, no one had seen anything.
A sense of excitement skated through him. His career was definitely on the mend, just as his heart had been for the past few months. He swallowed another capsule for his headache and glanced at the clock. He had blacked out, lost time again last night.
The pounding in his head had been so intense he’d downed a triple dosage of painkillers and passed out. When he’d awakened, he’d had dirt on his hands.
Dirt and blood.
He’d been standing over Mindy Faulkner’s grave.
The pictures he’d taken hung on the matte board above his desk, along with the ones of Joann Worthy’s grave. He skimmed the other photos, organizing them, then tacked them on the wall, the arrangement a chronological story of the sequence of events that had led to each woman’s demise. He collected photos of the bars where they’d visited before being abducted, their homes, the jury room and courthouse where William White’s trial had taken place, their bruised and brutalized bodies in the grave and others that the cops would wonder how he’d gotten. A morbid sense of curiosity had always driven him in his job, but this obsession with gruesome murders, with White and his victims, had become more personal. The interviews he’d conducted during White’s stay in prison filled him with hopes for a book one day. Maybe he’d even land a big movie deal.