She had some papers to grade from her classes, so she packed a bag and drove over to Harrisburg. The community college had a decent library and Cassie could shut out the rest of the world as she got to work. On a Sunday morning, it was quiet and nearly empty. She only spotted two other people at tables around the room. When she got up to take a bathroom break an hour later, she left her belongings at the table. Harrisburg wasn’t like Chicago. She knew that her things would still be there when she returned.
One thing she hadn’t expected was for there to be something new on the table when she got back to it. Picking up the silver chain, she looked around the room again. The other two library guests were concentrating on the books in front of them. Cassie looked closer at the necklace and noticed a tiny teardrop diamond dangling from it. It was something that a boy might give his teenage girlfriend, a symbol of first love. Cassie was certain that it didn’t belong to her. Someone must have found it on the floor near her table and assumed that she had dropped it.
She stuck it in her bag and made a mental note to stop at the front desk on her way out to drop it in the lost and found. As Cassie turned back to her laptop, she felt a sudden urge to learn more about the dead woman that had been found in Chicago. It was a sick compulsion that she rarely granted herself.
The first time she researched the other women was a month after her release from the hospital. She was still dating Ben and when he would fall asleep at night, Cassie started browsing the internet for any information she could find. The last time was shortly before she moved to Dayton. After the move, she had refused to allow that darkness to follow her to her new home.
This time the urge was too strong. If her abductor had struck again, Cassie needed to know the details. Her own safety might be at risk. She was the only living witness, the only woman that saw His face and survived to tell the police. No matter how hard she tried to cover her trail, if He wanted to find her there was little she would be able to do to stop Him.
The Tribune led with the story above the fold. A serial killer loose in the city for the last couple of years wasn’t something that was going to go unnoticed. Under the picture of a pretty young woman was the name Kendra Higgens.
She had been found in a construction site about a mile from where Cassie had hidden behind the dumpster. Kendra had last been seen leaving her overnight shift at the hospital a month earlier where she was a nurse in the emergency room. Police had suspected her ex-boyfriend who had left town nearly at that exact time.
But now her body had been found and it looked just like the other women’s bodies. It looked just like Cassie’s body. Dozens of cuts, some superficial and some fatal. She had been sexually assaulted, tortured, and starved. Unlike the other women, she had been left at the site naked in the middle of the day. It was a bold move by the killer. He had been lucky that the workers had taken the day off due to a union strike.
Cassie couldn’t look at her computer any longer. She suddenly felt very exposed sitting out in the open in the nearly empty library. Being around people would help, so she packed up her things and left in a hurry. It wasn’t until later that night that Cassie remembered she had forgotten to turn in the necklace.
As each day passed, Cassie found herself missing Jack more and more. Talking to him on the phone at night wasn’t enough. She missed his physical presence – the way his eyes sparkled when he laughed and the soft caress of his hand on her skin. The days were easier. She could keep herself preoccupied with work and inventory at her library. Tasha invited her to lunches and shopping trips which made Cassie feel oddly normal. But then night would come. The nights were so much harder.
Alone in her bed, every creak of the house or rush of wind would set her on edge. In the rare instances when she could fall asleep, she almost immediately entered a nightmare. Only the nightmares were really just her dormant memories coming back to life. During her third night away from Jack, she found herself reaching for her phone in the middle of the night. When she had called him earlier, he didn’t answer. Then he had returned her call, but she had been in the shower. Cassie was aching to hear his voice. Before she could question whether it was right to call him, she pressed the button.
“Cassie? What’s wrong?” He answered the phone immediately and Cassie knew that he hadn’t been sleeping. She wondered if he was working, or if he had been lying awake thinking of her. It was most likely the former, but she liked to think it was the latter.
“Nothing’s wrong, Jack. I just needed to hear your voice.” She felt silly saying those words out loud. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever be sorry for needing me, Cassie.” Jack sighed deeply into the phone. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about you all night. I’m so glad you called.”
Cassie felt herself instantly begin to feel better. “Have you been getting any sleep?”
“Probably the same amount as you.” There was a hint of humor in his words. “How was your day, darling?”
“Better than yours I assume.” Cassie tried to think of something to tell him that might make him smile. “One of my students asked me out after class today.”
“Male or female?” he asked.
It was Cassie who laughed first. “Male, but thanks for your open-mindedness.”
“How’d you let him down? Did you mention your studly boyfriend?” Jack’s tone had relaxed considerably and Cassie knew that he was smiling.
“What makes you think I said no?” Cassie teased. “He has a motorcycle.”
“I carry a gun,” Jack countered.
It was nice to talk to him about something normal for a change. So much of their relationship had been tied up in drama and tragedy. As they moved easily from one light banter to the next, Cassie felt all her neuroses drifting away until she caught herself yawning.
“I should let you go,” Jack said, picking up on her newly tired state.
“I don’t want to hang up,” she confessed. The second she would put the phone down, Jack would be gone and she would be alone again. “I wish you were here.”
“Me too. You’ll just have to settle for a hot and sexy dream about me instead.” Now it was his turn to yawn.
“What do you think I’ve been doing during this call?” she said flirtatiously before succumbing to another yawn. “We should both get some sleep.”
Jack said, “Sweet dreams, my darling.”
“Of you,” she replied, adding easily, “I love you, Jack.”
“I love you more,” he said earnestly.
After hanging up, her eyes dropped closed almost immediately. When sleep came this time, there were no nightmares. Cassie slept with Jack’s words surrounding her like a protective shield. Even the very worst evil could be defeated by love.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jack
Jack had every intention of seeing Cassie again in just a few days, but he still felt a disturbing sense of finality as he drove away from her house. He headed directly to the station where Suza was waiting for him. He was sitting in Jack’s chair, his feet propped on the desk. Suza was nursing a coffee mug that was just as likely to be filled with scotch as it was with coffee.
“Nice of you to show up, Pretty Boy.”
Jack couldn’t remember the last time he had been called by his rookie nickname. It had to have been at least three years since anyone had used that name. “I told you I would be here.”
Suza’s jaw clenched and he weighed his next words carefully. “How is she?” he asked, tone unreadable.
Jack was prepared to plead ignorance, but a glare from Suza changed his mind. “How did you know?”
“I tracked you.” Suza sat his mug on the desk and crossed his arms over his chest.
“You tracked me?” Jack nearly yelled as his face flushed with anger. “What gave you the right?”
“Are you fuckin kidding me, Stone?” Now Suza was yelling. “I’m your boss and I will do whatever the hell I want when it comes to keeping you in check.”
Jack’s shoulders sagged and he let out a slow breath. “Now what, bossman? Suspension?”
“No, Stone. As much as you deserved it, we need you working this case.” Suza’s feet dropped to the floor. He smacked a hand on a manila file that rested where his feet had just been. “Everything you need to get started is in here. Get to work. We’ll reevaluate your situation once Carver is behind bars or six feet under.”
Suza heaved himself to his feet and circled the desk. He stopped in front of Jack, his eyes tired and weary. “You never answered my question, Stone. How is she?”
“She’s okay. As okay as can be expected.” Jack remembered how Suza had stayed late every night after Cassie was found. He would pace his office, stopping every few minutes to study his wall which was covered with pictures of Carver’s victims. Suza always stared longest at Cassie’s picture.
“Good.” Suza nodded stiffly. “She’s a tough woman. She deserves to get her life back.”
Jack kept his mouth shut. Anything he would say right then would only make things worse. Suza wouldn’t care about Jack’s reasons for pursing the relationship.
“Stone, you fell for the girl. It happens. But you need to make it unhappen. Now.” He slapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder and gave him a meaningful look. “And I’m sure you don’t need to be told this, but we never had this conversation.”
The Jennifer Mavis tale was eerily similar to Cassie’s story. She left for a run early one morning and never returned. Jack spent days flipping through phone records, bank statements, and emails. His partner had retired months earlier and a new partner had yet to be assigned. Suza kept threatening to stick him with a rookie, but so far he hadn’t followed through on his threat. That meant Jack was operating alone, which was just fine by him. He didn’t want to share Carver with anyone. It was too personal. Sharing the Carver file would also mean sharing Cassie.
When Jack wasn’t pouring over case files, he was interviewing every person Jenny had interacted with in the past month. Unlike Cassie, Jenny lived with her husband, Steve. He had seen her before she left for her run and was able to give a detailed timeline of her abduction. She had left her house at 7 in the morning. Steve turned on the news after she left, the same thing he did every morning. When they began repeating stories at the top of the hour, he was surprised that Jenny still hadn’t returned. She was never gone that long.
Steve worried that she may have injured herself, so he went out and walked her usual path. He found no sign of her along the way and she wasn’t at their apartment when he returned. Normally a young woman missing for only an hour would not have raised alarm bells in the police department, but the details were too similar to Carver’s other victims.
The detectives that had picked up the case over the weekend had done a decent job interviewing a dozen or so people in Jenny’s apartment complex and neighborhood, but Jack felt the need to check it out for himself. He didn’t trust that others would be as thorough as he would be. That was probably a large part of the reason that Suza hadn’t assigned a new partner to him yet.
Jenny and her husband lived on the first floor of an old courtyard building that was eerily similar to Cassie’s apartment. Jack felt a weird sense of déjà vu as he hit the buzzer by the door. After quickly identifying himself through the intercom, Steve came and met him at the door rather than letting him up.
“Have you found her?” he asked before Jack could speak.
“I’m sorry, no. We are still working hard to find Jenny.” Jack’s chest tightened when he saw a familiar pain in Steve’s eyes. “I’m leading the investigation and I wanted to speak with you in person, to look you in the eye and say that I’m going to do everything I can to find your wife.”
“I appreciate that.” Steve’s chin trembled slightly. “Do you think she might still be alive?”
Jack answered confidently, “I do. The other victims had each been missing for over a month before they were found. We believe they were kept alive until right before they were discovered.”
“What about the surviving victim? Has she been able to help?” Steve had a faint glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“She’s given us as much as she can remember,” Jack said, skipping over the part about Cassie’s memory being sporadic. “I’ll let you get back to your day now. I’m just going to take a look around the property, if that’s alright.”
“Sure.” Steve started to close the door and then paused. “How did she do it?”
“I’m sorry?” Jack wondered if he had misheard.
Steve’s voice was pleading as he said, “How did that woman escape? How did she survive? What did she do differently than the others?”
“There’s no way to know the answer to that. Even if we knew every single detail about her time in captivity, we have nothing to compare it against. We don’t know the other women’s stories.” Jack had lain awake at night pondering that very question. “Excuse me.”
He hurried away from Steve’s unrelenting stare. How would their interaction have been different if he had known that Jack was seeing the survivor? Would that earn him more or less trust from a man with a missing wife?
Jack walked around the property first, looking for anything that might indicate a man had been lying in wait for his victim. He didn’t see any worn patches of grass or piles of cigarette butts pointing toward a stalking situation. He followed the sidewalk in the direction Steve had given in his relay of Jenny’s route. At the corner, Jack stopped to speak with a man selling newspapers.
“Sir, do you have a moment?” he asked.
The man laughed. “I’m unemployed and homeless. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Are you on this corner every day?” Jack said.
“Every day. This here is a nice neighborhood. The folks are kind.” He gestured up and down the street with one hand. “No one tries to run me off.”
Jack tapped the paper the man was holding. “Did you ever see this woman?”
“Jenny?” The man shook his head sadly. “She stops by every morning after her run and pays for a paper. Gives me too much but never asks for change. Shame what happened to her. She and her husband are very good people.”
“Did the police speak with you after she disappeared?” Jack couldn’t remember seeing the man’s statement.
“No one asked me anything. I would’ve told them the same thing I’m telling you.” He looked down at the picture of Jenny smiling up at them from the paper. “I saw her that morning just like always. She waved as she ran past. I kept waiting for her to come back at the end of her run, but she never showed up.”
“Did you see anyone else in the neighborhood that morning? Or any other time? Someone that looked like they didn’t belong?” If Jenny had been taken close to home, a homeless regular was maybe the best witness possible.
His head shook again. “Not in the last week or so. Everything has been normal since they finished tearing up the road about ten days ago.”
“They were doing construction?” Something deep in Jack’s brain began to tingle.
“Replacing some sewer pipes under the road right there.” The man pointed to an uneven patch of asphalt. “About eight men were up and down this street for two weeks.”
“Thanks for your time.” Jack pressed a twenty into the man’s hand and backed away slowly while his mind was racing.
The woman whose body had been found on the same day that Jenny went missing, Kendra Higgens, had disappeared a month earlier. At the time, the connection to Carver hadn’t been clear. Unlike the other women, she had been ten years older and far from athletic. She had disappeared on her way home from an overnight shift at the hospital.
Jack had spent some time with the case file while trying to proactively eliminate Carolyn from Carver’s victim list. At the time, there had been nothing connecting them. It wasn’t until her body was found and the torture and cause of death were compared that he was able to affirmatively add Kendra to the list. Now he needed to revis
it the file with a fresh perspective.
On the third page of her file, he found what he needed. Kendra’s apartment building had been under construction when she disappeared. The city had been laying new pipes.
Jack immediately put in a request with the city for details on the employees that had been assigned to each site. He would cross-reference them to see if any workers had been at both sites at any point. While he waited for the request to navigate the many layers of bureaucracy, he thumbed through the files of Carver’s other victims. None of them specifically mentioned construction work, but that wasn’t surprising. No one had known that would be an important piece of information at the time.
It was late and Jack was having trouble concentrating. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours each night since leaving Cassie. Even though he talked to her on the phone each night, he still worried about her. When he closed his eyes, he pictured Carver doing unspeakable things to Jenny, and then Jenny became Cassie. Sleep was impossible and logical thinking just as elusive. Jack knew that seeing Cassie was the only remedy, so he threw an overnight bag in his car and headed out of the city.
It would be a bad idea to surprise Cassie in the middle of the night, so he gave her a call when he was ten minutes away. She was waiting for him on the porch, wearing one of his old t-shirts that he must have left behind and a big smile. As he wrapped his arms around her, the weight of the world fell from his shoulders. Neither of them said anything.
Jack followed Cassie inside and she headed straight for her bedroom. They climbed onto the bed, both fully clothed. He put an arm around her and pulled her close. As she curled against his body, Cassie kissed him softly on the lips and said, “I missed you.”
“I’m here now,” he said, eyes falling closed.
“Get some sleep.” Her lips pressed against his forehead. “Sweet dreams, my love.”
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