Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate)

by Dore, Deirdre

  When Agent Helmer came back in the room, she set aside the lingering irritation she felt at his attitude and she waved for him to come look at Sandeep’s laptop, where she’d pulled up the Facebook profile of a woman she knew, Caroline Coffee, who ran the local bakery—best cupcakes and cookies in town. Caroline was also single, having been widowed several years back when her husband died of cancer. She was in her late forties, slightly overweight, with bleached blond hair.

  When Ryan half bent to get a better view of her screen, the scent of clean male skin and his freshly dry-cleaned suit made her pause. She breathed in slowly, trying to control the flush that had risen to her cheeks.

  “I know her,” she told him without preamble, clicking back to show him where the killer, acting as Fennick, reached out to Caroline to add as a friend.

  “She lives in Fate?” he queried sharply, bending down and pushing up his glasses to look more closely.

  Christina swallowed. He didn’t like her, which in her twisted mind was likely part of his appeal, but she couldn’t help but find him attractive, especially when his mouth was set in that firm line.

  “Yes,” she managed. He was a big man; she felt tiny and delicate sitting next to him, though she was anything but. She carried on, pointing at the screen. “And it’s weird. Caroline would never date Dylan Fennick.” She paused, considering. “Well, I don’t think she would. It has been a while, I think.” She shook off that thought. “What’s interesting is that he did the same thing with some of the other victims.”

  “Interesting besides the fact that it’s someone in Fate, someone you know?”

  He sounded a little pissed, for some reason, like she was missing some important point. “Yes, besides that. Look.” She pointed to the screen. “Okay. Bear with me a second.” She put a hand on his forearm, as if to force him to pay attention. “Based on the patterns we’ve identified so far, it’s clear that the unsub scheduled a meeting with his intended victim, but never showed. Right?”

  “Yes, it seems to be that way.”

  “None of the victims were killed on the night of the scheduled meeting, men or women. Correct?”

  “We’d have to verify, but I believe you’re correct.”

  “So what if he just wanted to get a look at them?”

  “Why not go by the picture?”

  She snorted. “Because, hello? How easy is it to fake a photo? Super-easy, I can tell you, especially if you have Photoshop and a bit of patience.”

  “Come on, with this guy’s computer skills, surely he’d be able to get ahold of a real picture of the victim? Or even follow them around, for that matter. People post where they’re going and what they’re doing all the time. There’d be no need to set up a meeting.”

  Chris pursed her lips. “That’s a good point. Maybe there’s something else he wants to see about them. Maybe he wants to follow them around. I don’t know, but it’s clear that he schedules a hookup with a variety of people, doesn’t show up for the meeting, and then some he kills and some he doesn’t, for whatever reason.” She paused, considering. She had a hunch, based on what he’d written about strings on the Mysteries of Fate blog and the weird vision she’d had in the graveyard. Summer had mentioned a story that they’d read in school, about the red strings that connected to soul mates. What if this guy thinks he can see the connections between soul mates or something? “Maybe it’s something to do with that string crap he goes on about.”

  Helmer nodded, considering it. “We’ve already come to the conclusion that we’re dealing with someone who has some kind of psychosis.”

  Chris nodded. Psychotic. She was the object of the fascination of a serial killer. Psychotic serial murderers were actually not that common, but they did exist, and he was her number one fan. A shiver, unrelated to the temperature in the room, made her shudder slightly and rub her arms. Her light jacket wasn’t warm enough at the moment.

  Helmer noticed her movement and removed his suit jacket, handing it to her without asking if she wanted it. Chris took it, noting that it was warm from his body, and laid it in her lap like a blanket.

  “So what’s your point besides the fact that he likes to take a look?” Agent Helmer’s voice had taken on a slightly flattened drawl, more Texas than Georgia.

  “Well . . .” Christina spoke slowly, working it out in her head. “Most of these victims reached out to him. It’s like he regularly trolls, like a fisherman with one of those sonic detectors, and then sometimes he seems to find a target he really likes and goes hunting for it.”

  Chris waited for someone to call her on the mixed metaphor, but no one did, probably because they were men and they got it without caring whether or not it made sense. Chris liked men, such straightforward creatures.

  “So, let me see if I’ve got this.” Helmer turned to her, his gray eyes focused and intense. “You’re saying that he uses the identities you created to have conversations with potential victims, but he doesn’t actually decide to kill them until he’s seen them in person.”

  “Right,” she confirmed. “In most cases, he used an identity and waited until people contacted him. In some cases, he was in contact with over fifty people using a particular identity, but he’s never killed using that identity more than once.”

  “But the victims you highlighted are different because they weren’t on a dating site or actively socializing on the Internet. He sought them out, even though the identity he was using was obviously not a match for the person targeted.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, punching him on the shoulder.

  He gave her a quelling look. “So did they all respond to his messages? Have conversations with him?”

  She shook her head. “No, they did not. In two of the cases, they deleted the friend request or blocked the email, but they ended up dead anyway, along with all the others he contacted directly. There’s only one exception, a woman named Martha Cooper.”

  “She’s alive?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he reached out to her over two months ago, but she’s not on your board.”

  Helmer looked over at an agent who’d entered the room while they were having their discussion. “Curtis, go tell Jenkins to look into Martha Cooper. Have one of the county deputies or the local PD see if they can get in touch with her.”

  The agent ran off to do as he was told. Helmer turned back to Chris. “Okay. So, if I understand your point, he always waits to see the person before deciding to kill them, and he deliberately targeted these people, so it stands to reason that they were targeted because he’d already met or at least seen them, somewhere, at least once.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, thrilled that he understood. “So if you take these victims and look at where they lived, odds are that he lived there as well, or maybe worked nearby.”

  “So if your Ms. Coffee is one of the people he’s reached out to target, then he’s in Fate, right now, and he’s met her before.”

  Chris felt the blood drain from her face. Yeah, that did seem to be what she was saying. But she hadn’t thought about what that meant for her until just now.

  Sandeep chose this moment to offer his input, very gently. “This is all just speculation; it’s possible he noticed our intervention last night or our activity today and wants to frighten Ms. Pascal. When did he reach out to her?”

  “Yesterday,” Chris muttered, “before you guys knocked on my door.”

  “Even better,” Helmer muttered. “I better go discuss this with the guys from BAU. In the meantime, Pascal, you hungry?”

  Chris blinked and looked up. Hungry? She was starving, actually. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, as soon as I get back we’ll get something to eat.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, a little suspicious. What had she done to have the straitlaced agent suddenly being friendly to her?<
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  18

  TO CHRIS’S SURPRISE, Helmer didn’t sneak her out a back entrance to a government car in order to avoid the press. Instead, he changed out of his suit into jeans and a polo, switched his FBI hat for a maroon one with TEXAS A&M embroidered on it, and led her out the front door. There were nongovernment offices in the same building, so she supposed that between the hats and her bright UGGs, the two of them could pass for college students, just like most of the town of Rome.

  Together, they walked over to Broad Street and then several blocks down to the Harvest Moon Café. There weren’t many people inside, a few students and a family, but it was a little after the main lunch hour. Helmer ordered a cheeseburger and a side salad, while Chris ordered a French dip with french fries. She ate salads all the time. A French dip was for a special occasion, like an uncomfortable meal with a rancorous FBI agent, though he seemed to be lightening up . . . maybe. He was currently studying her with a faint frown gathered between his eyes, though his glasses hid it for the most part.

  “So, how long have you been an FBI agent?” Chris ventured, for lack of a better conversational gambit.

  “Since I graduated from college,” he answered, and took a huge bite of his burger. Chris suffered a brief pang of food envy, something she experienced often when eating salads, but then she took a bite of her French dip and regretted nothing. Hello, foodgasm.

  “A&M?” she managed, though she already knew he’d gone there.

  He gave her an affirmative grunt.

  After that she left him alone and spent a few quality minutes with her roast beef sandwich.

  “So tell me about the witches,” he said once he’d finished half of his cheeseburger.

  Chris choked, taken aback, and took a long sip of iced tea to wash it down.

  “What do you want to know about them?” she croaked after a minute.

  “Just tell me about them.”

  Chris thought about it. She’d been familiar with the witches all her life; trying to explain them to an outsider left her at a bit of a loss.

  “They’re mostly one family. They’ve been here since, like, the 1700s, probably before then.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’re some documents in the Fate library about the Trail of Tears. Apparently one of the officers tried to get them moved with the Cherokee and other Indian tribes, but for whatever reason wasn’t successful, probably because the witches turn out some beautiful people.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Gorgeous. Supermodel-gorgeous,” Chris muttered with a sour expression. The only exception to that seemed to be the Triplets, who were the only members of the family who were less than perfect.

  He gave a thoughtful grunt, his face impassive.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “The call we received, telling us about your connection to the killer.”

  “I see.” Chris set down the second half of her roast beef sandwich, her appetite gone.

  “How would they know that the killer was using your identities?”

  Chris shrugged. She didn’t know how they’d known, but she knew why they’d want to sic the FBI on her ass.

  “Ms. Pascal?”

  “Call me Christina, or Chris, God.”

  “Okay, Chris, so what aren’t you telling me?”

  Sighing, Chris put her elbows on the table and set her chin on her interlaced fingers. “They hold me responsible for something from a long time ago. Sometimes I feel like they’ve cursed me or something.”

  “Cursed you.” He raised an eyebrow and took a long pull of his own iced tea. She couldn’t help but feel a slight twinge in her stomach—there was definitely something sexy about this guy, annoying as he was.

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t believe in curses?”

  It didn’t really sound like a question, but Chris answered as if it were. “No.” She shrugged. “But I believe in grudges and in the power of grief.”

  “Grief?”

  “Yeah, the price of love.” She opened her hands and sat back. “They loved someone and lost her. They think it’s my fault.”

  He mirrored her motion, shifting back in his chair, tapping his finger on the table. “Your friend? Summer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are they right?”

  “Is it my fault that she disappeared?”

  “Yeah.”

  Chris sighed, because it was so much more complicated than that. It wasn’t, but it felt like it was. But she didn’t have the emotional fortitude tonight to explain that to him. “Of course.”

  He studied her, his face cool, but he seemed to sense the distress under her flippant attitude and didn’t press her further on that topic.

  “I’d really like to know how they knew about your connection to the killer.”

  “Me, too,” Chris muttered, “but good luck getting them to tell you anything. They’re a pretty closemouthed bunch with nonfamily.”

  “Where do they live?”

  Chris had a bad feeling about this. “They have a kind of compound. It’s in the hills, next to my friend Tavey’s property.”

  “Take me to see them.”

  Chris didn’t respond to that right away. “Was it Circe who called?”

  “Circe?”

  “Her real name is Jane Arrowdale.”

  “Ahh. Yes, that’s who gave us the tip.”

  Chris sighed. “I’m surprised she used her real name; she usually doesn’t even acknowledge it. At any rate, I’m the last person who should take you to see them. Jane hates my guts.”

  “Why?”

  “Summer was her younger sister.”

  WHEN THEY RETURNED from the restaurant, bringing sandwiches and drinks for the rest of the team, Helmer spent thirty minutes checking in with the analysts for any new developments, while Chris sat with Sandeep and looked at the remote image of her computer. So far today nothing unusual had happened and no one had posted anything to the Mysteries of Fate blog.

  She reread it again anyway, frowning at the mention of strings and the girl in the woods. She didn’t realize that Helmer had come up behind her and was looking over her shoulder at the screen.

  “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Agent Helmer asked her, studying her face.

  Chris didn’t want to talk about Summer, especially since she didn’t know what possible connection there could be between Summer’s stories of string-makers and the unsub’s mention of the girl; she just had a weird hunch.

  “Sorry.” She shrugged, but got the feeling he didn’t believe her. His gaze, which had mellowed some while they’d been working, narrowed suspiciously.

  A few of the analysts were looking into the idea that the unsub may have lived near the victims he targeted, but without his real name they were having trouble finding any connections. Someone had added the locations of the four new people Chris had added to the list to a giant map, though, marked with pushpins and the images of the victims.

  Chris swallowed, looked at the scattered red dots. He’d been moving steadily south, toward Fate, a fact that didn’t escape or surprise her. Sometimes she felt like her small town acted like a magnet for the crazies, drawing them in the way a Venus flytrap does.

  “Helmer.” Midaugh stuck his head in the door to the conference room. “You’re clear to go check on the call we received about Ms. Pascal. Take her with you. See what shakes loose.”

  Helmer, who’d never changed back into his suit, still managed to pick up a press tail as he left the office.

  There was no help for it, Chris realized with a sigh as she walked to her own car. She was going to have reporters camped out on her damn doorstep. She just hoped they gave the town a little business while they were at it.

  With the press following in big white vans, she drove north out of Ro
me, Helmer following in a black SUV, and took Highway 140 east until they reached the exit for Fate. It wasn’t much of an exit; there was only a gas station and a McDonald’s indicating any kind of civilization. About half a mile past the gas station, the two-lane road curved past a two-story house that was being consumed by kudzu vines, slowly folding in on itself under the weight of the plants. For some reason, it always made Chris sad.

  A few miles down the road, past several farms, and over a couple of small bridges covering streams that meandered through the hilly country, a wooden sign proclaimed WELCOME TO FATE, GA. POPULATION, 2,432. The sign was old; Chris didn’t know what the latest population figures were, but then again, people around here weren’t the type to open the door for census workers.

  The highway turned into Main Street, meeting up with and running parallel to the railroad tracks into town. They drove past a couple small neighborhoods, the high school, and then made a right turn over the tracks to the circle. She avoided using the circle, however, cutting around so that she could enter the alley behind the buildings, pulling into her usual space.

  Helmer pulled up next to her and she’d hopped in his car quickly so he could pull out before the reporters blocked the exit.

  He managed it, barely, turning left out of the alley between two buildings and navigating back to Main.

  They drove in silence for a few miles down Main, until Christina directed him to turn left down River Road. The news van, which had managed to catch them again on Main, suddenly turned and headed off back the way it had come.

  Chris frowned, watching them speed away. “That doesn’t bode well.”

  Frowning, Helmer shrugged. “If they suddenly got new information related to the case, Midaugh would have called.”

  “Hmm . . .” Chris had an alternate theory, one that involved the witches. They had a way of making sure that no one unwelcome made it onto their property. She didn’t know how they did it—surveillance, magic, a network of talking squirrels—but they always seemed to know when someone was headed in their direction.

  The witches’ property, which they called the Havens, was two miles east of Tavey’s land, spanning about one hundred acres of countryside. They farmed the land nearest the road, separating it with neat hedgerows into one-acre chunks.