“No. I mean, on a basic level, he had reasonable access to common accelerants, but he used an uncommon one. Why would be a key question. But I was referring to the fact that the accelerant used in your arson cases is the anesthetic used in my serial killer cases. Bizarre, don’t you think?”
“Not necessarily. Coincidence, if that. Now if you traced the chemical to a specific manufacturer and batch number in your case that matched the manufacturer and batch number used in my case, yeah, then I’d say it’s obviously related. But that’s not what we’ve got here.”
Vail shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Don’t take my word for it. Tell me what relevance you think it’s got—to either of our cases.”
“I’ll have to think on it. At first glance, nothing. The arsons started after Marcks was behind bars, right? So we know he didn’t do those. Just the last two fires are suspect, I guess, because Marcks was in the wild. If Marcks is responsible. And if the other fires are truly related to your more recent ones.” She thought a moment. “Unless Marcks knows the arsonist.”
“All the arsons are related,” Rooney said. “Same UNSUB for all of them. I’d stake my reputation on it. Which means none of them are Marcks’s handiwork.”
“I’ll buy that.” Vail shoved her hands into her pockets. “Hey, we all need to be humbled once in a while, right?”
“You admit that?”
“Of course not.” She gathered up her purse and the copy of Rooney’s case folder. “But it sounded good, didn’t it?”
VAIL SETTLED HERSELF into the ergonomic conference room chair in front of a secure laptop, the Skype interface opened. Curtis entered and sat down, a visitor badge clipped to his shirt pocket.
“You ready?”
Curtis took a seat. “So we’ve got the homeowner. Stuart Sheridan.”
“Right. His wife’s Nancy, the one with cancer. So we should go easy on him.”
“Unless Stu’s a child pornographer.”
“Then we go for the jugular.” Vail clicked “video call” and the familiar Skype ring filled the external speakers.
A suited agent answered the call. “Agent Vail, I’ve got Stuart Sheridan here with us, as requested.” He pivoted the laptop and revealed a man in his forties, graying at the temples.
“Good morning, Mr. Sheridan.”
“Agent Vail, is it? I’d like to know what this is about. I haven’t been told anything. But anytime the FBI shows up at your door it’s not good news.”
“No, Mr. Sheridan, it’s not. I mean, it’s not horrible, but it has serious implications. Let’s put it that way.”
“I don’t care how you put it. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“You own the home in Lake Ridge?” She read off the address.
“Yeah, about ten years now. Why?”
“Can you tell us what you’ve got in the basement, in the entertainment center?”
Sheridan cocked his head to the side. “How do you know about our basement? What the hell’s going on?”
“We had reason to enter your home. It has nothing to do with you, I assure you.”
“That’s not an—”
“Mr. Sheridan, this will go a lot faster if you just answer my questions, and then I’ll explain everything. Okay?”
Sheridan took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. “Fine.”
“The entertainment cabinet. You’ve got DVDs in there.”
“Yeah, movies my wife and I bought back before Netflix and HBO Go started streaming. And we’ve got some videotapes of our family trips, stuff like that. Why?”
“Can you describe some of the types of movies you’ve got there? Not the ones of your family.”
He shrugged. “Some romantic comedies—When Harry Met Sally. You’ve Got Mail. Thrillers and suspense, some dramas. Hunt for Red October. No Way Out. We’ve got a little bit of everything. Some foreign films. Chocolat. Edward Scissorhands. Oh, and a bunch of Disney films, the animated classics, the early Pixar ones—Toy Story, Monsters—really, can you tell me why that’s relevant?”
“Any adult films in your collection?”
“Adult? You mean like—X-rated? Porn?”
“Like that, yeah.”
“No.” He shook his head. “My kids play Xbox down there, they watch TV in the basement. It’s our playroom. Why would you even ask that question?”
“We found some movies of … of that nature. And I wanted to know if they’re yours.”
“Definitely not mine. Now—Agent Vail, I have to insist you tell me why you’ve been in my house without our knowledge. And—and how those X-rated movies got there.”
Vail squared her shoulders. Based on his reaction and body language, she was reasonably certain that Sheridan was telling the truth. “You had a squatter living there for the past several months.”
Sheridan’s mouth dropped open. “You’re not serious. We’ve been here with my wife, she’s in an aggressive cancer treatment program. With the kids and everything, I haven’t had a chance to fly home. My neighbor’s supposed to be checking on things, taking in any mail that’s not forwarded here.”
“He or she isn’t doing too good a job.”
“This squatter. What’s he been doing in my house?” Sheridan shivered, twisted his face with revulsion. “This is disgusting. I feel … violated.”
“We had reason to question him and we had an informant tell us where he could be found. Your house. There was—well, he had some automatic weapons and your front door is, um, it needs to be replaced. As soon as possible. It’s been snowing here. Our crime scene unit should be finishing up today.”
“Crime scene unit.” He covered his face with both hands. “Jesus Christ.”
“Mr. Sheridan, did you bring a laptop or tablet with you to Ohio?”
He looked up. “Both. Why?”
“Would you consent to having the FBI do a search of them?”
“What for?”
“We just need to confirm what you told us. Bottom line, if we don’t find any child porn, we’ll leave you alone.”
“How long will that take? I’ve got a bid that needs to be completed by this afternoon. Do you have to take it with you?”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. An hour should be sufficient. Give or take. But if I need to follow up with something regarding your house, can I call you?”
He looked at Vail with weary eyes. “Of course.”
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I wish you and your wife luck with her treatment.” Vail finished up the call, then disconnected Skype and turned to Curtis. “I think he was being honest with us.”
“Yeah, he looked very surprised. And genuinely pissed off.”
“So Booker Gaines will now have a warrant out for his arrest for possession of child pornography.”
“I’ll see if CSU can get us a list of items found in the house sometime today or tomorrow.”
Vail pulled out her phone and looked at the display. Shit. Still nothing from Jasmine.
“Problem?”
“Jasmine’s not answering her phone and didn’t return my call. Left a voice mail, still haven’t heard back.”
“Try her again. Maybe she didn’t hear it ring and doesn’t realize she has a message.”
When she called last time, it was a number I didn’t recognize. Vail dialed it and waited, got a generic computerized greeting, then hung up.
“You want to go looking for her?” Curtis asked.
“Not really. Already got two people we’re looking for. I’ll put out a BOLO.”
Curtis rose from his chair. “I’ll let you handle that. You coming back to the command center?”
“If you can hang out a few minutes, we can take my car over, pick up yours later.”
38
As Vail pulled out of the
parking lot, she chuckled. “Did you see that old Buick?”
Curtis swiveled his head back to the right. “Missed it. Why?”
“Mid-sixties. I think it was a ’64 LeSabre. My friend’s mom had one of those. She drove carpool to ballet lessons every Wednesday night.”
“You?” Curtis laughed. “Ballet lessons?”
“What’s so funny?”
“Can’t see you wearing a tutu, that’s all.”
“Anyway,” she said, “those cars, they didn’t have seatbelts in the back. Guess it was before it was the law. But when my mom found out, she wouldn’t let me go with them unless I rode in the front, where there were seatbelts. Which was a problem because my mother had a class on Monday and Wednesday nights, and if I sat in the front, her friend’s daughter had to sit in the back without a seatbelt.”
“Lemme guess. That next week they had rear belts installed.”
“Yeah—and a couple weeks later, boom. Real bad rear end accident. Crushed the trunk, pushed us into the car in front of us and shot it across the intersection into a telephone pole. That seatbelt saved my life. I would’ve flown right through the windshield.”
“Fate, you know?”
“Don’t tell me you believe in that.”
“Hey, when it’s your time, it’s your time. Seatbelts, no seatbelts, vest, no vest … your number’s up, you’re done in this life.”
“So why do you have a seatbelt on right now?”
“Really, Karen? Because it’s the law. And I’m the law.”
THEY ARRIVED AT the command post, where all team members were present. They spent the next hour reviewing their status on the case: Marcks, Kubiak, Gaines, Stuckey, and their efforts to find Marcks’s last known associate: Scott MacFarlane.
“While I was in town,” Ramos said, “I sat down with the inmate Marcks got into the fight with at Potter. Patrick O’Shea. Wanted to be sure he wasn’t in on the escape. You know, like the fight was a ruse designed to get Marcks into the medical transport.”
“It was a ruse,” Hurdle said. “Only question was whether O’Shea was complicit or just used. Even though he got the better of the fight. By design.”
“And let me guess,” Vail said. “O’Shea wasn’t talking.”
“Actually, he did. He basically said he had nothing to do with it. Marcks insulted him and he beat him to a pulp.”
Vail nodded. “Guess male bravado trumps looking like a stoolie.”
“This guy’s huge,” Ramos said. “It’s like they put Marcks on a copier and hit ‘enlarge 10 percent.’”
They all laughed.
“Point is, no one’s gonna get in his face, stoolie or not. And that’s what made me think he was telling the truth. No way Marcks would pick a fight with this guy unless he had other motives.”
“I think I should mention that I haven’t heard from Jasmine.”
“Should we be concerned?” Morrison asked.
Vail shrugged. “I am. She’s never ignored my calls before.”
“Try her again,” Hurdle said. “Over what period of time?”
“A day, give or take.”
“We should put out a BOLO, see if we can get our army of eyes around town looking for her.”
“Already done.”
“Keep us posted.”
“Something else I wanted to mention,” Vail said. “Not sure if it’s relevant or not, but a weird forensic finding came up in another case I thought I should make you all aware of, just in case it becomes significant—or somehow suddenly becomes meaningful to our pursuit of Marcks.”
“And that is?”
“A series of arsons that have been going on for a while now, first one a year or two after Marcks started doing time in North Carolina. Last two were set after he escaped.”
“And why are we discussing this?” Tarkoff spread his hands. “What’s it got to do with Marcks?”
“Marcks used an anesthetic-soaked rag to subdue his victims. That same chemical was used as the accelerant in the arson cases.”
Tarkoff leaned forward, as if closer proximity would bring greater clarity. “The anesthetic is also an accelerant?”
Hurdle shook his head. “I don’t see the connection.”
“Hang on a second,” Morrison said. “What chemical was it?”
“Something unusual as far as accelerants go. I mean, it’s a fairly common chemical, a form of ether. Begins with an n, I think. I’m blanking on it. Or an h. Hydrogen or halogen something.” She rose from her chair. “Let me just get the file.”
“Where you going?” Hurdle asked, checking his watch.
“It’s in my car.”
“I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes.”
“We can do it later,” Vail said. “It’s not urgent.”
Hurdle chewed on his lip. “Nah, let’s do it now while we’ve got everyone here. Double time it.”
“Be back in thirty seconds.”
VAIL STEPPED OUTSIDE and jogged over to her car, which was two rows away in the Mason District Station parking lot, pulling out the key fob as she approached.
She opened the back door, retrieved the file, and chirped the remote. As she turned back toward the command post, her eye caught sight of the ’64 Buick parked just ahead of her, about twenty yards away.
That’s the second time I’ve seen that car.
She tucked the folder beneath her arm and advanced on the sedan, which had been backed into a row of spots that fronted a stand of trees.
Has the driver been following me? An undercover? For what reason?
As she wondered if it was in any way related to the covert work she had done for the Pentagon—something she would not dismiss out of hand—she got a better view of the vehicle and could see that it was vacant.
Vail noted the plate and pulled out her phone to ask for a registration check.
She peeked in through the window, cupping her face against the glass to cut the glare, when something sharp and hard struck her in the back of the head, slamming her cheek into the doorframe.
Vail tried to turn toward her attacker but he kept her face and body pinned tightly against the car. She tried to grab her Glock but could not get her hand up to the holster. She writhed and twisted, trying to dislodge the man’s grip on her.
C’mon, Karen! Fight!
The car keys and file folder hit the ground and her handcuffs slipped off her belt as she again tried to wriggle out of his grasp—
Until he grabbed her hair and slammed her face one last time into the car window.
39
She’s not answering.” Hurdle lowered the phone from his ear and checked his watch. “This is the longest thirty seconds I’ve ever lived through. Curtis, do me a favor and go see what’s keeping her. Otherwise we’ll just do it tonight. Or tomorrow.”
“On it.” Curtis pushed open the command center door and walked down the two steps to the asphalt pavement, then glanced around. Vail was not in sight. He went over to where they parked, circled her car, looked in the backseat and did not see the folder.
“So she already got it.” He swung his gaze left and right. “Then where the hell did she go?”
He pulled out his cell and called her. It rang three times and—he stopped and looked to his right. Listened. Thought he heard something, but it stopped. The call went to voice mail.
He tried her number again, moving in the direction of what he thought sounded like a ringing phone. Straight ahead and a bit to the left. It was very faint, which made sense: Vail kept her volume turned down most of the time.
Again, voice mail clicked on.
He hit “redial” and started walking faster. About ten yards away he saw Vail’s Samsung lying on the ground alongside a set of handcuffs, a manila folder, and a stack of stapled papers riffling in the breeze.
He knelt down and looked it over, then swiveled on his heels and checked for blood or other signs of a struggle. But there was nothing.
Curtis dialed Hurdle and swung his head in all directions while he waited for the call to connect.
Hurdle answered on the third ring. “Look, I’ve gotta get going. Just forg—”
“You’re not going anywhere. Get everyone outside. We got a big fucking problem.”
40
The team huddled in the area where Curtis found Vail’s phone. Curtis’s cell was pressed to his ear as he requested that Crime Scene be immediately dispatched to their location. The only good news was that the forensic technicians were not far off. While there was a local unit in the Police Department’s Mason District station, they did not handle complex violent crime–related cases. However, they would only need twenty minutes to make the drive from the Massey Building headquarters—adjacent to the records room where Vail and Curtis retrieved the PD-42 regarding the Marcks’s teen shooting.
“This is exactly how I found it,” Curtis said as he snapped some pictures with his iPhone. “That folder there is the one she came out for.”
Hurdle put both hands on his hips. “So she got it from her car, which is what, about twenty, twenty-five yards away?”
Tarkoff, who was walking along the stand of trees, stopped suddenly. “If she had the folder, why wouldn’t she just come right back to the RV? She knew you didn’t have a lot of time.”
“She saw something that intrigued her,” Hurdle said. “Or someone called her over and she thought it was important enough to stop. Maybe somebody in distress?”
“Or pretending to be in distress.” Curtis turned in place and looked at the large brown, sand, and turquoise single-story building behind him. “The police department has cameras. Wait here for Crime Scene, I’m gonna go grab a look.”
“I’m with you,” Hurdle said.
They jogged into the station’s lobby and up to the large bulletproof glass-enclosed half-moon front desk where two PCAs, or Police Citizens Assistants, were seated.
“Richie’s here,” Curtis said to Hurdle as they approached. “He’s a cop, on light duty after blowing out his ankle.” Curtis stepped up to the speaker by the pass-through slot. “Yo, Richie!”
The Darkness of Evil Page 23