Cold Fear

by Toni Anderson

  “You heard from your lawyer yet?”

  Billy would have seen if Ferris had received any news, but the fact he asked the question was grounds for his new appeal. Billy’s IQ and shoe size were almost exactly the same. The guy might have big feet, but he was still dumb as a rock.

  “Nothing yet, Billy.” The warrant for his execution sat on his poor excuse for a desk. The warden had served it on Christmas Eve, which he’d thought was a nice touch for a closet sadist. Despite having had years to prepare, knowing he was scheduled to die on January 25 made his knees shake—not that he’d ever admit it. They’d transfer him to Columbia for the execution itself, but the last thing he wanted was to make that final hundred mile journey.

  “I’m sorry, man.” Billy slouched, leaning on the bars. His expression was pained. “I thought you’d-a heard something by now.”

  “Thanks, man.” Ferris twisted his lips. He had brought this day on himself. He’d confessed too much before his lawyer had turned up. Bragging like a child before he’d gotten a signed deal. The woman in the trunk wasn’t even cold when he’d been pulled over for a lousy broken taillight, which he could have talked his way out of if he hadn’t been high as a kite. No, the cops had caught him fair and square, and he’d sung like a fucking canary.

  But he wasn’t planning on dying yet.

  Living on Death Row was a miserable existence. Even those who deserved to die didn’t deserve to be tortured this way. He’d treated his victims better than the state treated inmates. Sure they begged and screamed for a few hours, but after that he’d put his victims out of their misery fast. He might have delivered cruel and unusual punishment, but it had been swift, unlike the justice system.

  Justice?

  This was justice?

  He looked around the unit. Vets suffering PTSD. Men who’d been little more than children when committing crimes. Goaded into it by bad influences and life circumstances. All of them victims in their own right. Men like Billy who barely knew right from wrong and didn’t stand a chance if you added drugs or alcohol into the mix.

  Death penalty laws were flawed in every which way—the cost, the fact it wasn’t a deterrent, the fact innocent men were still being exonerated from Death Rows across the country as old evidence was reexamined.

  No.

  It was a stupid system. And Ferris detested stupid.

  He’d never claimed he was innocent, and he had no chance of pleading a low IQ because last time he’d tested he’d measured one-forty. But he didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in this miserable hellhole. “Pray for me, Billy.”

  The younger man nodded furiously. “We had one miracle this year. I can pray for another.”

  Ferris grinned. He’d always been faintly amused by the camaraderie of the men inside this unit and yet he felt it too. Ferris felt like he was accepted for who he truly was, not for whom people expected him to be.

  That was a gift. He’d had it once before, and he was hoping the power of that relationship held true now.

  One of the guards entered the cellblock, probably to take someone out for their hour of fresh air and exercise. Ferris sneered. From one cage to another, and yet every one of them looked forward to getting out of their damned cells. He took a step back and heard a crunch, looked down at the black and green smear of dead cockroach on the concrete floor. Dammit.

  He bent over and used a tissue to wipe up the mess. Then he tipped the jar and pulled out another roach. The game was just starting.

  Chapter Three

  A LIGHTHOUSE PERCHED on the headland, sea oats whipping the air at its base. White sand met the gunmetal sea with a serrated edge of angry surf. A wooden fence ran parallel to the road, theoretically keeping people out but doing a piss-poor job of it. Frazer easily climbed over the obstacle. This area was cordoned off because National Parks Service, in conjunction with Department of Natural Resources, were trying to stabilize the area with mitigation strategies, but considering they were up against the Atlantic Ocean, they had their work cut out for them.

  A bit like trying to stem the tide of evil that crept through humanity with only a few dedicated law enforcement professionals.

  A cheery thought.

  Frazer took in the barren landscape of this remote barrier island as he climbed the dunes to the crime scene. He’d taken a commercial flight to Norfolk and managed to get a chopper to Elizabeth City and hired a car from there. It was getting late now. Less than a couple of hours left until sunset.

  He topped the ridge and scanned the area. It was the perfect location for those who needed privacy to feed a twisted appetite—especially at night during a storm. Screams would be swallowed by the wind; shouts for help snatched away and consumed by the landscape.

  It was the perfect place to kill. The perfect place to get rid of a body.

  This region was generally considered safe. Low crime rate. Low density of permanent residents over the winter months. Was it a local? He didn’t know yet. People imagined a killer would stick out, but they rarely did, unless they were psychotic. Then they were usually easy to track from the wild eyes and blood trails.

  He raised the collar of his FBI windbreaker but it did little to keep out the icy breeze. His navy-blue, fine wool three-piece suit might be sufficient for the office but it wasn’t designed for facing down a winter squall. When he’d awoken this morning the last thing he’d expected was a road trip to a windswept island.

  Life was full of surprises.

  The scene below was textbook how-not-to-preserve-a-crime scene, and he didn’t bother disguising a sigh. From what he understood, they didn’t even have photographs. At eight AM that morning an officer from the Department of Natural Resources had seen a car parked illegally on the side of the road and gone to investigate. The guy had found the naked body of his own seventeen-year-old daughter and that of a badly beaten young man. He’d tried unsuccessfully to revive his kid. When EMTs arrived they’d rushed both victims to the ER hoping they could be saved. Miraculously, the young man had been. The girl was DOA.

  Frazer pushed away his compassion for the man. What was done was done, and nothing he could say would ease his burden. Doing his job might, but that job included viewing the father as a potential suspect.

  The father, the EMTs, the cops, and not to mention the weather, had degraded the integrity of the scene, making his job infinitely more difficult. What remained was churned up sand, a pair of jeans turned inside out, underwear, a t-shirt, socks, a wallet lying open, a down jacket, and a spade. The items had likely been shifted from their original position, but they all needed to be catalogued and entered into the chain of evidence so they could at least be analyzed by forensics and used in court should it come to that.

  Frazer’s job was to make sure it came to that.

  A pewter sky stretched overhead, ominous clouds boiling with suppressed energy. Rain might destroy even more evidence, and they had precious little to start with. Crime scene techs were photographing the area inch by inch. The clothing and the autopsy would hopefully reveal who’d done this to the teens, but it was certainly not Ferris Denker. He sat rotting on Death Row in Ridgeville, South Carolina, four hundred miles away.

  Maybe, when Jesse Tyson woke up, he’d name the attacker or attackers, and fast-forward the investigation, getting the perpetrator off the streets before anyone else was hurt. Assuming the kid wasn’t in a coma or brain damaged.

  Even without seeing the bodies, Frazer could imagine the sort of harrowing experience the teenagers had probably endured. He eyed the girl’s clothes. He’d been told there were indications she’d been raped, but he’d know more later, after the autopsy. The kids had been treated like garbage, vessels for the unsub’s personal gratification and pleasure. The elements should have killed them, and the bastard had known it.

  People called these perpetrators monsters, but they were just humans, humans who did inhuman things. Psychopaths who knew better, and did it anyway.

 
What would having a live victim do to this unsub?

  Frazer narrowed his eyes. They’d need security on the boy until they figured out exactly how, but they could use that. He needed to talk to the teen as soon as he woke up. The attack would leave a mark. What kind of mark depended on the young man himself. At the age of fifteen, Frazer’s own world had shattered when his parents had been murdered during a home invasion. He’d never gone back to being the boy he’d been before the incident. If Jesse Tyson were anything like Frazer, the events of last night would shape the entire course of his life.

  Was that destiny?

  If so, destiny sucked. Frazer relished his job, but he’d swap it in a heartbeat to change the past. He thrust the thoughts away. He rarely thought about his parents’ murder. He honored their memory by remembering how they lived not how they died, by catching killers and making sure they couldn’t hurt anyone else again.

  The sight of the CSU tech picking up a young woman’s panties scratched at something small and scarred inside his mind. He pushed it away. Sentiment didn’t solve crimes. Logic and meticulous investigation did. The fact dangerous predators often operated in the same passionless state as he did, wasn’t lost on him. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the emotions; he just tucked them off to one side while he did his job—and did his best never to revisit them.

  Emotional objectivity was something he tried to drum into the other agents who worked in his unit, especially his friend, fellow agent Jed Brennan who’d helped him catch his first serial killer amongst the chaos of war in Afghanistan. Bottom line was if they got emotionally involved in all their cases, they’d have to swap their suit jackets for something in white with much longer sleeves.

  The faces of victims already kept him awake at night. It was a short trip to burnout and he didn’t intend to take that road. He could live with nightmares, he just couldn’t deal with heartache.

  The cry of a gull jerked him back to the present. Isolated beach. Outer Banks. Day One of a murder investigation. Check.

  Another agent approached and Frazer went down to meet him.

  FBI Agent Lucas Randall was based out of the Charlotte Field Office and Frazer had met him during the Meacher case. He was ex-military, eyes both sharp and weary. If he was surprised to see the head of BAU-4 standing here he hid it well.

  “ASAC Frazer.” Randall held out his hand. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Agent Randall.” Frazer nodded as they shook. “Is the bracelet genuine?” The bracelet was the game changer. The reason he was here.

  “Looks it.” Randall pulled the bag from his pocket and handed it over.

  Frazer examined the chain through the clear plastic. Thick stainless steel links and a solid looking tag with a phone number stamped on it. A list of alerts. Sand was encrusted in some of the overlapping links, the hint of rust and decay discoloring the metal. It looked as if it had been in the sand for a long time, but the girl had been killed less than twelve hours ago.

  Convicted serial killer Ferris Denker had confessed to murdering Beverley Sandal seventeen years ago. So how the hell had her bracelet ended up on a fresh corpse?

  “It was the only thing the victim, Helena Cromwell, had on when they found her. Her father knew it wasn’t hers, and the local Chief of Police bagged it. But his son is the kid in intensive care, so he had uniforms secure the scene and CSU work it, then he called me. Girl’s body is in the morgue of the local hospital awaiting transportation to the nearest Medical Examiner’s Office.”

  “You know the chief personally?”

  Randall squinted against the slicing wind. “We served together in the Army years ago and stayed in touch.” Randall had a reputation for being good at his job and being easy to work with. Whatever people said about Frazer, it wouldn’t be that he was easy to work with.

  But with Randall’s involvement and his connection to Rooney, they’d caught a break in keeping a lid on this situation. Frazer intended to use it.

  “I want the ME to come here to conduct the preliminary exam.” He frowned. “Actually, tell them I want Simon Pearl to do this personally. Call them. Persuade them. He can call me if he wants to. Also I want blood and tissue taken from the vic, ASAP. Toxicology can look for date rape drugs and alcohol levels.”

  Randall’s brows rose in surprise.

  If it weren’t for the bracelet, he’d be thinking Helena had probably been killed by someone she knew, or during some sort of drunken gang rape gone horribly wrong—not that gang rape ever went right. He pinched the bridge of his nose trying to relieve the tension headache building. Gang rape would make his life easier compared to the alternative, and that realization made him shut down his feelings and concentrate on the facts. It was twisted. Deal with it. “Any evidence suggesting Ferris Denker ever made it out this way?”

  Randall shook his head. “Not as far as I can tell.”

  At Frazer’s questioning look he added. “I asked a friend who works in Columbia to send me a copy of Denker’s files. I told him I had a personal interest in the case. The agents working it always assumed Denker never left the mainland.”

  Assumptions were dangerous. “I’ll need a copy of that file.” He could go through official channels, hell, he could probably ask Hanrahan for his personal notes on the case, but he wasn’t ready to take that step yet. Denker had a date with a hypodermic, and Frazer was going to do everything in his power to get him there on time. “Did you mention Sandal or Denker to the police chief?”

  Randall shook his head. “As soon as I ran the numbers on the bracelet I recognized the name and significance. I called Rooney because I knew the BAU would want to be involved.”

  “You talk to your own boss, yet?”

  Randall shook his head, eyes narrowing. “Nope, but I’ll have to tell her something soon.”

  SSA Petra Danbridge was easy on the eyes and hard on everything else. “You opened a case file?”

  Randall shook his head. BAU only consulted on cases. They didn’t run the show, which put Frazer in a difficult position.

  “Hold off as long as you can. Afterward you can tell Danbridge I pulled rank.”

  Randall’s lips twisted. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  “Yes.” He stared hard at the other man to see if he had an issue with that.

  “Okay, then.” Randall nodded and looked relieved. Maybe he had a better idea what was going on than Frazer gave him credit for. Controlling the flow of information and, therefore, controlling the press was vital in this investigation. Randall continued, “Chief Tyson’s only been on the Outer Banks for a few years so he wouldn’t know if Denker was ever rumored to be here or not. Former chief retired to Roanoke.”

  “We need to talk to that retired police chief. We need to know if anyone ever reported sightings of Ferris Denker in the Outer Banks.”

  “What are you thinking?” Randall asked.

  Frazer swept his gaze over the area. Remote. Quiet. Undisturbed. The perfect dumping ground. “Denker confessed to killing Beverley Sandal, but her body was never found.”

  “You think he buried her around here?”

  Frazer shrugged. “It might account for her bracelet being found on a fresh victim.”

  “So where’s Beverley’s body?” Randall’s eyes scanned the dunes, as did Frazer’s. Frazer knew where he’d hide a body he didn’t want found.

  Randall shoved his hands deeper into his jacket pockets and swore. “Someone might have discovered Denker’s souvenirs and decided to mess with law enforcement. Denker could be orchestrating this from the inside. Maybe hoping to get the execution stayed while casting doubt on his conviction?”

  Frazer nodded. He had no doubt the sadistic psychopath was involved. “But the fact remains, Denker is in prison and a young woman is dead, so regardless of motive, we have a new killer to catch.” And not an inexperienced one. Taking two victims at once? Both young and fit? That was not the work of a novice just finding his feet.

  The myriad of indentations
in the sand, the snaking trails of footprints trampled in every direction meant the chances of finding anything useful out here was unlikely. Except for maybe the shovel. Yellow insulation tape was wrapped around part of the handle in a distinctive pattern. Someone might recognize it, or it might yield DNA or trace.

  Frazer started working the case out loud. “Whoever put the bracelet on the girl committed the same sort of murder Denker was convicted of, blitz assault, probably rape, followed by strangulation. But he—or she—left the bodies for us to find, whereas Denker always tried to conceal his victims.” It wasn’t all Denker had done to the victims.

  “Maybe he was interrupted?”

  “Maybe,” Frazer agreed reluctantly. “Regardless, this unsub wanted to send a message and that message involves Beverley Sandal and Ferris Denker. The timing is too precise to be a coincidence. The crimes are too similar.” Frazer handed the evidence back to Randall. “Send this and that shovel to Quantico to be analyzed ASAP. Put my name on the request and tell them it’s urgent.”

  Frazer took photographs of the spade with his cell phone.

  “You don’t think Denker is innocent, do you?” asked Randall.

  “That guy is guiltier than sin.”

  “You think he had a partner?” Randall’s gaze sharpened.

  “Or a disciple. We’ll know more after the autopsy.” Seventeen years ago, Ferris Denker had been convicted of murdering seven young prostitutes and three other young women who hadn’t been in high-risk professions. Frazer had no doubt the man had concealed the full extent of his crimes and, having exhausted every appeal, was now orchestrating a game of show-and-tell to eke out more time on this planet. Frazer did not intend to let the man weasel out of his punishment.

  His old mentor, SSA Hanrahan, had written the profile that had nailed Denker to the wall, getting details right from his being the eldest child, down to the small size of his boots. Frazer had no doubt the conviction was solid but, after what happened in the West Virginia woods at the beginning of December, the last thing he needed was anyone looking too deeply at Hanrahan’s cases.