by Lisa Regan
Brianna’s ear-to-ear grin was only dimmed by the sound of her phone dinging. She fished it out of her purse and glanced at the screen. “I’m sorry. I really need to get to this study group, and I’ve been charged with picking up pastries. Can you drive me back to the house to get my car?”
Claire stood and cleared the table. “Sure.”
They had parked around the corner from Sammy’s, a couple of blocks away. Brianna trailed behind Claire, riffling through her purse and talking at the same time. “Oh my God. I’m so happy for you. This is huge. I mean, this changes things in a big way. I think it’s so awesome. I knew you two were meant to be.”
“Don’t start planning our wedding,” Claire warned, a wry smile twisting her lips.
“Too late!” Brianna joked. She had stopped walking, her head still down as she searched her purse, her movements more frantic now.
“What are you looking for?” Claire asked.
“My wallet. I can’t find it. I need it to get the pastries.” She groaned. “I must have left it at Sammy’s.”
“We didn’t pay at Sammy’s,” Claire reminded her.
“I know, but I took it out of my purse to put money into the tip jar. I must have dropped it or left it there. Let me run back, and I’ll meet you back at the car in a minute.”
Brianna turned back toward Sammy’s, and Claire continued in the direction of her Jeep.
“I’m going to be your maid of honor,” Brianna called over her shoulder, her tone teasing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Leah’s work computer revealed almost nothing personal. The most damning thing on it was the amount of Internet shopping she had done while at work, and even that had been almost exclusively for her children. Diapers, onesies, rain boots, Halloween costumes, and books. She had never even used her work email to send a personal message to anyone. It was a dead end.
The intern that Ashley Copestick had mentioned checked out. He worked days and had alibis for every one of the Soccer Mom Strangler murders, even Jade’s. He’d spent that night at his girlfriend’s house. Stryker put a couple of other detectives on the list of KZLM’s male employees even though none of them were under thirty-five and nearly all of them worked during the day. They interviewed the handful of coworkers Ashley had said Leah had the most contact with but turned up nothing new or helpful. Leah had chatted with them often about their own lives—evidently, she was a great listener—but had never talked about her life other than in very broad strokes.
It seemed that Ashley Copestick had the clearest picture of Leah’s life in the months before her death. Ashley had been privy to things Leah had chosen not to tell her husband or her best friend, and not just because Leah had had little choice over Ashley finding out. It made sense to Connor that she might choose to let down her guard with her assistant. Leah didn’t see Ashley socially, and they didn’t travel in the same circles outside of work. Ashley had little cause to come into contact even with Jim Holloway. Allowing Ashley a glimpse into whatever Leah had been dealing with posed little risk to Leah’s carefully constructed world. Ashley was obviously loyal and, as she had told them, discreet. She’d told them a lot, confirmed a lot of suspicions, but brought them no closer to finding the Soccer Mom Strangler.
“So,” Stryker said as they drove back to headquarters. “She catches this guy’s eye a few months ago. He stalks her, eventually rapes her, but doesn’t kill her.”
Connor pulled his notebook out and flipped back through the notes he had taken in the last several days both on the Holloway crash and the Strangler case. “But the Strangler’s not really a stalker. He’s an opportunist. It doesn’t fit. None of his other victims had stalking incidents in the months or weeks before their murders, right?”
Stryker frowned. “Right. That’s true. So, who’s the stalker?”
“I think the stalker was her lover.”
“The guy she had an affair with?”
“That makes the most sense, don’t you think? It started after Tyler was born. She just took a paternity test. Maybe this all had to do with the baby, and she thought she could get him to back off if she could prove that the baby was Jim’s.”
Stryker said, “But why did the stalker focus on her kids—the glass in the sandbox, the severed car seat straps? And you’re saying she was being stalked for months by someone who clearly had no problem harming her kids, even killing her dog, and then just by coincidence she gets raped by the Soccer Mom Strangler. Do people really have luck that bad?”
“Let’s run it down,” Connor said. “Roughly fourteen, fifteen months ago, she’s having an affair. According to the OB-GYN records, she asks to be tested for STDs. That’s when she finds out she’s pregnant with Tyler, the baby.”
Stryker was nodding as Connor spoke. He said, “She obviously had concerns about Tyler’s paternity. If she needed to be tested for STDs, it’s not a stretch that she would have had questions about the baby’s paternity back then. So now she’s pregnant and not sure whose baby it is, and she just stays with her husband?”
“Well, it was easier for her to do that. From everything we know about her now, it seems as though the appearance of a happy family life was very important to her. But I don’t think she ever confessed her affair to her husband. Jim Holloway was genuinely shocked by the affair and the paternity test.”
“I agree. I don’t think he had any idea. Okay, so she stays with her husband. We have no way of knowing whether she broke off the affair or not. Fast forward to after the baby is born. Someone begins stalking her. Kills her dog, slashes her kids’ car seat straps, puts glass in her kids’ sandbox.”
Connor said, “But she doesn’t tell a soul.”
“And the only reason that Ashley knows is because Leah couldn’t avoid telling her.”
“That’s the other thing. This woman was having an affair, and yet there is no evidence of it anywhere. Not on her computers at home or at work, not in her email.”
“Yeah, but you only have her phone records going back twenty-four hours before the accident, right? There could be something there. What if the person on the burner phone is the person she was having the affair with? What if he’s been calling her for years? I can get her records going back three years. That should be long enough to turn something up if she was communicating with her lover by phone.” As they pulled up to a red light, Stryker whipped out his phone and fired off a text. “Done,” he said, like a true task force leader.
Connor laughed. He made his voice higher, imitating a woman’s voice, her tone bland and almost robotic. “You can expect those records in five to seven business days.”
“Nah. You’ve got the warrant out already, right? That lady you talked to last night sent you the last twenty-four hours of calls as a favor. I’ll have someone harass Globocell all day until we get the rest of them. It’s a weekday. They have no excuses. So, back to Leah. Last week, she goes out to meet someone for lunch—presumably her ex-lover who is now her stalker, because where else would she be going?—and just happens to get raped by the Soccer Mom Strangler? Where was the stalker during all this?”
Connor said, “They’re the same guy.”
“What?”
“It’s all the same guy. The ex-lover turned stalker and the Strangler. She was seeing this guy a couple of years ago, right? She gets pregnant, breaks off the relationship. Or maybe she keeps seeing him through the pregnancy. We have no way of knowing at this point. Once the baby comes, he starts stalking her.”
For the first time that day, Stryker’s face had color again. “Ashley said the stalking started after she came back to work.”
“True,” Connor said. “But Ashley also said she had no way of knowing whether there were any incidents before Leah came back from maternity leave.”
“But she didn’t know of any before that, so we can safely say the stalking started when baby Tyler was born,” Stryker said. “And he’s five months old, which means he was born in May.”
Connor sa
w where Stryker was going. He flipped through his notebook. “The first Strangler murder took place in April, just a few weeks before his birth. Maybe she was seeing him through the pregnancy and broke it off the closer she got to having the baby.”
“Holy shit,” Stryker said. “That could be the trigger.”
Silence filled the car as this realization sank in. Then Stryker asked, “Do you think he knew Tyler’s paternity was in doubt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think the baby mattered to him all that much. Remember, Agent Bishop said that the Strangler victims were surrogates for a mother figure. Maybe Holloway was a surrogate too. A mother figure.”
“And the new baby replaced him,” Stryker finished.
“Sent him over the edge,” Connor said.
“So Leah has the baby, and five months later she has questions about his paternity, so she decides to do a DNA test.”
“Maybe she agreed to meet with him on Wednesday so she could try to get a DNA sample from him,” Connor said. “But he rapes her. So instead, she has to get one from her husband—that’d still get her her answer—so she tricks him into signing the consent form.”
“Would’ve been the easier path for her from the start,” Stryker said. “But she’s not exactly thinking clearly, right? And then she carries on like nothing ever happened and sends in her DNA test?”
“Well, that is how she operated, isn’t it? As if nothing bad ever happened. Her dog gets poisoned, her kids’ car seat straps get slashed, and no one even knew about it. No one even knew she filed a police report about the dog. According to Ashley, she just went on with her life. She wasn’t sure if her baby was her husband’s or her lover’s, and she stayed in her marriage. Like I said, appearances were important to her.”
“Do you think she knew he was a serial killer?” Stryker asked.
“We have no way of knowing,” Connor repeated. “I don’t think it really matters at this point.”
“You’re right. Finding the Strangler should be our main focus. If her ex-lover and the Strangler are the same guy, that just narrows our search. So we need to know where she went on Wednesday, especially if that’s when she met with him.”
Connor said, “Maybe we can pull video, try to follow her.”
“What? From KZLM?”
“From their parking lot. If we know which way she pulled out, we can try to find her route. Go to the next business that has surveillance and see if they’ve got footage of her driving past. Tail her by surveillance.”
“That could take a really long time, not to mention we could hit a dead end at any time.”
“We used it successfully on that missing persons last month,” Connor pointed out. He flipped to another page in his notebook, searching for the information he had written down about Leah’s vehicle. “Wait—hell, the GPS from her SUV. Surely the lab ought to know by now if they can get anything from it. It’s been a couple of days.”
Connor’s phone rang as they pulled up to the division. “I have to take this,” he told Stryker. Swiping “Answer,” he pressed the phone to his ear. “Claire?”
Her voice was high-pitched. Panicked. “I need you,” she said. “It’s Brianna. She’s—she’s missing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Take me through it again,” Connor told her.
They stood outside of Sammy’s, Claire near tears. It was hard not to slide into Connor’s arms and dissolve into a quivering mess. She drew a deep breath. “We had breakfast here. We walked back toward my car. She was looking through her purse. She said she didn’t have her wallet, so she walked back to Sammy’s to see if she left it there. I waited ten minutes, then fifteen, and I came here to see what was taking so long, and she was gone. Nancy said she came right back in looking for her wallet, found it under one of the tables, and then left.
“Now she’s just gone. I tried calling and texting her—no answer. That’s not like her. Something happened. She had a study group this morning. You know, for the bar exam? We had to leave here so she could pick up pastries and get over to it. No way would she miss it, and she wouldn’t go to it without telling me. I was going to drive her back to the house so she could get her car. Something is wrong.”
Her voice was rising to a squeal. Hysteria poked at the edges of her panic. Connor pulled her into his arms. “Hey,” he said. “Stay calm. We’ll find her, okay? Let me make a few calls, see if I can pull anyone from the Soccer Mom Strangler case to help us. First, I’ll send someone over to make sure her car is still at your house. Do you know where her study group was taking place?”
“I think the UC Davis library.”
“Do you know anyone in her group?”
“I know her friend, George. But I texted him, and he said she didn’t show up.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We’ll have to canvass, then. Let me see if I can get someone over here to help us.”
She nodded her head against his chest. He kept her close to him with one arm and used the other to fish his phone out of his pocket. He made a few calls. She was soothed by the authoritative tone of his voice. This was what he did. This was what he was good at. Finding people. Solving puzzles. Solving crimes.
He pulled away. “Does Sammy have any surveillance cameras?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Let’s ask Nancy.”
Nancy was able to pull up footage of the entire morning, from the time they arrived until the time Brianna returned without Claire to ask about her missing wallet. They watched Brianna talk to Nancy and look beneath both tables they had sat at. Beneath the second table, she could be seen scooping up a small, square object and depositing it into her purse before walking out the door. Sammy’s didn’t have footage of the exterior, but they assumed she had turned in the direction of Claire’s car.
“So that means somewhere along those two blocks, she just vanished?” Claire said.
“No,” Connor said. He didn’t say the words, and for that Claire was grateful. She couldn’t bear to hear them out loud: Someone took her.
Claire couldn’t breathe. Is this how her family had felt when she was abducted?
Connor’s hands were on her shoulders, easing her into a chair. He kissed the top of her head. “I’m going to take a look around. I want you to stay put. Don’t leave this building, okay?”
She looked into his eyes. “I want to help.”
He smiled. “I know,” he said. “But I want you to stay here in case she comes back.”
In case she comes back.
She wondered if that was code for We don’t want you finding her dead body. A lump formed in her throat. Sobs threatened to make their way up and out of her body. She nodded because she was afraid if she spoke, the hysteria would come out, and she wouldn’t be able to rein it back in. The breakfast rush was over, but a few stragglers lingered, plus the staff.
Connor was halfway out the front door when a blood-curdling scream cut through the air. He turned back to Claire. Their eyes locked and then they both sprinted toward the back of the building. Claire got there faster. Behind her, Connor said, “Claire, wait.” She was only vaguely aware of the strain in his voice. He didn’t want her to see it. The back door hung open. A small alley ran behind the store. Across the asphalt, Nancy stood, leaning against the dumpster, her face pale as snow, eyes wide and filling with tears.
“No,” Claire said.
“Claire, wait,” Connor said, louder this time.
They reached the dumpster at the same time. Claire had to lift onto her tiptoes to see inside. “Brianna!” she cried.
Connor leapt into the dumpster in a single motion. Brianna lay face up, sprawled among the trash bags and loose debris. The smell was sickening. Her eyes were closed, lips slightly parted. Claire couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. Connor nearly fell on top of her as he struggled to keep his balance. “Claire,” he said, his voice sharp and urgent, cutting through the morass of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.
She looked at him.
His fingers were pressed against the side of Brianna’s neck. His eyes looked so blue in that moment. They steadied her, as always. “Call 911,” he said. “Tell them we need an ambulance. She has a pulse.”
CHAPTER FORTY
“What the hell happened?” Stryker said. He paced in front of the security desk at Sutter General’s ER, where Connor and Claire stood. They’d taken Brianna back on a stretcher, still unconscious. Connor had driven Claire behind the ambulance. Now she stood beside him, clasping his hand tightly, more grateful for his presence at that moment than at any other moment since her return. Tears leaked from her eyes, and she wiped them away with her other hand.
“We don’t know,” Connor said. “There’s no surveillance out back. We found her unconscious in the dumpster. No signs of sexual assault. No visible injuries but the paramedics said she had quite a bump on the back of her head. She still had her purse and phone with her.”
“The hat was missing,” Claire said.
The two men looked at her. Connor squeezed her hand lightly. She sucked in a breath and met Connor’s eyes. “You saw the footage. That guy who gave us his table, he gave her his hat—to keep—he said he had ten more at home. He kept asking about why Brianna didn’t try to get Leah Holloway out of the SUV, then he left. It was awkward, but Brianna thought he was …” She trailed off, face heating at the thought of their conversation. Talk of boys—of men, actually—sex, and relationships. Like the teenage sisters they might have been if Claire had never been taken. “She thought he was hot.”
“So had he approached her outside, she would have felt comfortable speaking to him,” Stryker said.
“Yes.”
Connor was staring at Stryker. “So he hits her over the head and takes his hat back?”
Stryker scratched at the stubble on his head. “Makes no sense, but some people are just crazy. Who knows what this guy was thinking? Maybe he had other plans, but it was too risky in broad daylight. We just don’t know. We’ll find him, though. He asked about the Holloway crash? How old was this guy?”