by Karen Rose
She tried to focus on the scraping. It was rhythmic, like the tick of a clock. Time was passing. How long had she been here? Who had Hope? Please, I don’t care if he kills me now, just let my baby be all right.
She closed her eyes and the scraping faded. Everything faded.
Volusia , Georgia , Tuesday, January 30, 9:30 a.m.
“Who found her?” Daniel asked Sheriff Thomas.
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “Brothers, fourteen and sixteen. The sixteen-year-old called it in on his cell phone. All the kids cut through here on their way to school.”
“Then he wanted her to be found again.” Daniel looked around the heavily treed area. “On the last scene we had a reporter hiding up a tree taking pictures. Can you have your deputies walk through the trees and check?”
“We’ve been here since the kid called it in. No reporters could have gotten through.”
“If he’s the same guy, he was here before the kids found her.”
Thomas’s eyes narrowed. “This sicko is feeding him?”
“We think so,” Daniel said, and Thomas’s mouth twisted in distaste.
“I’ll go with them, make sure they don’t disturb anything you guys might need later.”
Daniel watched Thomas motion a couple of his deputies to the tree-line, then turned to Felicity Berg as she climbed from the ditch.
“Same, Daniel,” she said, peeling off her gloves. “Time of death was between nine and eleven last night. She was put here some time before four this morning.”
“The dew,” Daniel said. “The blanket was wet. Sexual assault?”
“Yes. And her face was broken the same way as Janet Bowie’s. Same bruising around her mouth. I think I’ll find it’s postmortem when I get her into exam. Oh, and the key? It was tied on super-tight. If she’d been alive it would have cut off all circulation to her toe. He wanted you to find that key.”
“Did she have track marks on her arms, Felicity?”
“No. Nor a lamb tattoo on her ankle. Tell Miss Fallon this isn’t her stepsister, either.”
Daniel breathed out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Felicity drew herself straighter as the techs brought the body over the edge. “I’ll take her in now and see if we can’t find out who she is.”
As the ME vehicles drove away, Daniel heard a shout and turned in time to see Sheriff Thomas and one of his deputies pull Jim Woolf out of a tree, none too gently.
“Woolf,” Daniel called when Thomas had dragged him closer. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“My job,” Woolf snapped.
The deputy held up Woolf’s camera. “He was snappin’ away.”
Woolf glared. “I was outside the crime scene and on public land. You can’t take my camera or my pictures without a court order. I gave you the other pictures to be nice.”
“You gave me the other pictures because you’d already used them,” Daniel corrected. “Jim, think about it from my point of view. You get a phone call at six a.m. on Sunday and then again at six a.m. today from the same caller. Both days you show up at a homicide scene before we do. I might think you had something to do with this.”
“I didn’t,” Woolf gritted.
“Then prove your good intentions. Download that memory card onto one of our computers. You walk away with your pictures and I’m reasonably pacified.”
Woolf shook his head, angry. “Whatever. Let’s get this done so I can get to work.”
“Took the words right outta my mouth,” Daniel said mildly. “Let me get my laptop.”
Dutton, Tuesday, January 30, 10:00 a.m.
Meredith closed the front door behind her, shivering in her running clothes. “It’s got to be twenty degrees colder this morning than yesterday.”
Alex held up her hand, her eyes fixed to the TV. The sound was muted and she’d moved Hope’s chair so that the child couldn’t see the screen. “Sshh.”
“What’s happened?” Meredith asked urgently.
Alex worked very hard to keep the fear from her voice. “Breaking news.”
Meredith swallowed. “Another?”
“Yeah. No details yet, and no pictures.”
“Vartanian would have called you already,” Meredith said softly.
As if cued, Alex’s cell phone rang and her heart dropped to her gut as she checked the caller ID. “It’s him. Daniel?” she asked, unable to control the tremble in her voice.
“It’s not Bailey,” he said without preamble.
Relief shuddered through her. “Thank you.”
“It’s okay. I take it you’d heard already.”
“The news didn’t give any real information. Just that there’s another.”
“That’s about all I know, too.”
“Just like…?”
“Just like,” he confirmed quietly. Alex could hear the slam of a car door and his engine starting. “I don’t want you going out alone. Please.”
A shiver shook her, unpleasant and unwelcome. “I have places to go today, things to do. People to talk to. I won’t get another chance until Meredith can come back.”
He made an impatient noise. “Fine. Just stay in public and don’t park your car anywhere secluded. Better yet, let a valet do your parking and don’t go to Bailey’s house by yourself. And… call me a few times so I know you’re okay. Okay?”
“Okay,” she murmured, then cleared her throat when Meredith gave her a knowing look. “Will Loomis search Bailey’s house now that she’s been declared missing?”
“I’m headed into Dutton to see Frank Loomis right now. I’ll check for you.”
“Thank you. And, Daniel, if you can’t make it tonight, I’ll understand.”
“I’ll do my best. Gotta make some more calls. Bye.”
And he was gone. Carefully Alex closed her phone. “Bye,” she murmured.
Meredith sat down next to Hope, then tilted her head, looking from Alex’s picture to Hope’s. “You all have similar technique. You both stay inside the lines.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Yes, I am a control freak.”
“Yes, but you color a pretty picture.” Meredith hugged the little girl’s shoulders. “Your aunt Alex needs to have fun. Make sure you guys play while I’m gone.”
Hope’s chin jerked up and her gray eyes widened in panic.
Meredith just smoothed her thumb over Hope’s cheek. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
Hope’s lower lip trembled, breaking Alex’s heart. “I won’t leave you alone, honey,” she murmured. “While Meredith is gone, I’m sticking to you like glue. I promise.”
Hope swallowed, then dropped her eyes back to her coloring.
Alex leaned back in her chair. “Well.”
Meredith laid her cheek on Hope’s curls. “You’re safe, Hope.” She met Alex’s eyes. “Keep telling her that. She needs to hear it. She needs to believe it.”
Me, too. But Alex nodded firmly. “I will. Now, I’ve got lots of stuff to do today. My first stop is the county courthouse. I’ve got to apply for a license to carry the… thing.”
“How long does that take to get?”
“The website said a few weeks.”
“And until then?” Meredith asked meaningfully.
Alex looked at Hope’s coloring book. All that red. “I can keep it in my trunk legally.”
Meredith sucked in her cheeks. “You know a half-truth’s the same as a lie.”
Alex lifted her chin. “You gonna call a cop?”
Meredith rolled her eyes. “You know I’m not. But you will, because you promised Vartanian you would. And you’ll call me right after you call him.”
“Every few hours.” She pushed back from the table and headed to the bedroom.
“I have to leave here at five to make my flight,” Meredith called behind her.
“I’ll be back by then.” She had only seven and a half hours to apply for a concealed-weapons permit and then to talk to anybody who knew Bailey’s habits, her friends. Her enem
ies. It would have to be enough.
Tuesday, January 30, 11:00 a.m.
“Hello.”
It was just a dream. Wasn’t it?
“Hello.”
Bailey lifted her head a fraction of an inch, reeling when the room twisted around her. It wasn’t a dream. It was a whisper and it came from the other side of the wall. She forced herself to her hands and knees, gagging when the nausea hit her like a brick. But nothing came up, because she’d been given nothing to eat. Or drink.
How long? How long had she been here?
“Hello.” The whisper came through the wall again.
It was real. Bailey crawled to the wall and collapsed on her face, watching as the floor moved, just a little. A teaspoonful. Gritting her teeth, she brushed at the dirt.
And touched something solid. A finger. She sucked in a breath as the finger wiggled and pulled back through the hole, taking some of the dirt from her side with it.
“Hello,” she whispered back. The finger reappeared and she touched it, a sob heaving up from her chest.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “He’ll hear you. Who are you?”
“Bailey.”
“Bailey Crighton?”
Bailey stopped breathing. “You know me?”
“I’m Reverend Beardsley.”
Wade’s letter. The letter that had contained the key he’d demanded every time he took her from this cell. Every time he… “Why are you here?”
“Same reason you are, I’d guess.”
“But I never told. I never told him anything. I swear it.” Her voice shook.
“Sshh. Good for you, Bailey. You’re stronger than he thinks. So am I.”
“How did he know about you?”
“I don’t know. I visited your house… yesterday morning. Your cousin was there.”
“Alex?” The sob rose again and she pushed it back. “She came? She really came?”
“She’s looking for you, Bailey. She has Hope. She’s safe.”
“My baby?” The tears did come now, quiet but steady. “You didn’t tell her, did you?” She heard the blame in her own voice, but couldn’t stop it.
He was quiet for a long moment. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
She should say I understand. But she wouldn’t lie to a reverend. “Did you tell him?”
“No.” She heard the pain behind the single word.
She hesitated. “What has he done to you?”
She heard him draw a deep breath. “Nothing I can’t take. And you?”
She closed her eyes. “The same. But I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”
“Be strong, Bailey. For Hope.”
Hope needs me. The mantra would have to keep her going a little longer. “Can we get out of here?”
“If I think of a way, I’ll let you know.” Then his finger disappeared and she heard dirt trickling back into the hole as he covered it up from his side.
She did the same, then crawled back to where she’d lain before. Alex has Hope. My baby is safe. That’s all that really mattered. Everything else… Everything else I brought on my own head.
Chapter Eight
Dutton, Tuesday, January 30, 11:15 a.m.
Wanda Pettijohn looked at Daniel over her half-glasses. “Frank’s not here.”
“Is he out on call, or sick?”
Deputy Randy Mansfield came out of Frank’s office. “Just not here, Danny.” Mansfield ’s voice was even, but the message was clear-it’s none of your business, so don’t ask. Randy slid a thin folder across the counter. “He asked me to give you this.”
Daniel scanned the few papers inside. “This is the Alicia Tremaine file. I expected it to be thicker. Where are the crime scene photos, the interviews, victim photos?”
Randy lifted a shoulder. “That’s all Frank gave me.”
Daniel looked up, eyes narrowed. “There had to have been more than this.”
Randy’s smile dimmed. “If it’s not there, it didn’t exist.”
“No one took a Polaroid of the scene or made a sketch? Where was she found?”
Jaw cocked, Randy pulled the folder around and ran his finger down the page that was the initial police report. “On Five Mile Road.” He looked up. “In a ditch.”
Daniel bit his tongue. “Where on Five Mile Road? What was the nearest intersecting road? Who were the first responders? Where’s the copy of the ME’s report?”
“It was thirteen years ago,” Randy said. “Things were done differently then.”
Wanda came to the counter. “I was here then, Daniel. I can tell you what happened.”
Daniel felt a migraine coming on. “Okay. Fine. What happened, Wanda?”
“It was the first Saturday in April. The Tremaine girl wasn’t in her bed when her mother came to wake her up. She hadn’t been there all night. She was a fast girl, that Alicia. Her mother started calling all around to her friends, but nobody’d seen her.”
“Who discovered the body?”
“The Porter boys. Davy and John. They were out riding their dirt bikes.”
He jotted it in his notebook. “Davy and John were the middle kids of six, as I recall.”
Wanda gave a nod of respect. “You recall correctly. Davy was about eleven and John was thirteen. There are two brothers younger and two more older.”
Davy and John would be twenty-four and twenty-six now. “So what did they do?”
“After he threw up, John rode his bike up to the Monroe farm. Di Monroe called 911.”
“Who was the first policeman on the scene?”
“Nolan Quinn. He’s passed now,” Wanda added soberly.
“He was never the same after finding Alicia,” Randy said quietly, and Daniel made himself remember that this wasn’t just a file for them. It was perhaps the worst crime Dutton had seen up until this weekend. “I joined the force out of school the next year and Nolan was never the same.”
“I can’t imagine anyone could discover something like that and be unaffected,” Daniel murmured, thinking of the Porter boys. “Who did the autopsy, Wanda?”
“Doc Fabares.”
“Who’s also since passed,” Randy said and shrugged. “That whole generation is mostly gone. Or sittin’ on the barbershop bench.”
“But Doc Fabares would have kept records,” Daniel said.
“Somewhere,” Randy said, as if somewhere wasn’t anywhere they’d be likely to find.
“What was found on the body?” Daniel asked.
Wanda frowned. “What do mean? She was naked, wrapped in a blanket.”
“No rings or jewelry?” Or keys? But the keys Daniel would keep to himself.
“None,” Wanda said. “The drifter had robbed her.”
Daniel found the arrest report. “Gary Fulmore.” A mug shot was stapled to the report. Fulmore’s eyes were wild and his face was haggard. “He looks stoned.”
“He was stoned,” Randy said. “That much I remember. He was high on PCP when they found him. Took three men to hold him down so Frank could get the cuffs on him.”
“So Frank arrested him?”
Randy nodded. “Fulmore had wrecked Jacko’s autobody shop, breaking glass and waving a tire iron. They arrested him, then found Alicia’s ring in his pocket.”
“That’s all? No semen or other physical evidence?”
“No, I don’t remember them actually finding any semen in her. That would be in Fabares’s records, most likely. But the way her face was beaten in… only a person hopped up on PCP could’ve done that kind of damage. And he had the tire iron.”
“He was found in an autobody shop. Of course he had a tire iron.”
“I’m just telling you what I remember,” Randy said, annoyed. “You want it or not?”
“I’m sorry. Please go on.”
“The tire iron had Alicia’s blood on it and they found her blood splattered on the cuffs of his pants.”
“Pretty solid evidence,” Daniel said.
Randy’s
mouth twisted in a fuck-you smile. “Glad you approve, Agent Vartanian.”
Daniel closed the folder. There was nothing more in it. “Who took his statement?”
“Frank did,” Wanda said. “Fulmore denied everything, of course. But he also claimed to be some rock singer, as I recall.”
“He said he was Jimi Hendrix.” Randy shook his head. “He said a lot of things.”
“Randy’s daddy prosecuted him,” Wanda said proudly, then her mouth drooped. “But he’s passed, too. Heart failure, twelve years ago now. He was only forty-five.”
Daniel had read that Mansfield ’s father had prosecuted in one of the articles Luke had downloaded, but he didn’t know the man had died. Not being able to interview any of the original players was damned inconvenient. “I’m sorry to hear about your father, Randy,” he said, because it was expected.
“I’m sorry to hear about yours,” Randy replied in a tone that said he really wasn’t.
Daniel let it go. “Judge Borenson tried Fulmore’s case. Is he still alive?”
“Yes,” Wanda said. “He retired and has a place up in the mountains.”
“He’s an old hermit,” Randy said. “I don’t even think he has a phone.”
“He has one,” Wanda said. “He just never answers it.”
“Do you have his number?” Daniel asked and Wanda flipped through her Rolodex.
She wrote it down and gave it to him. “Good luck. He’s a hard man to track down.”
“What happened to the blanket Alicia was found in?”
Wanda grimaced. “We got flooded during Dennis and lost everything below the four-foot waterline. That file was stored higher up, or it would’ve been gone, too.”
Daniel sighed. Hurricane Dennis had caused massive flooding in Atlanta and the surrounding counties a few years before. “Damn,” he murmured, then winced when Wanda glared. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Her glare became a worried frown. “The man who killed Janet. He’s killed another.”
“Last night. He seems to be copying the details from this old murder pretty closely.”