The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5

by Nora Roberts

  “Yes, sure, that’s fine. Thanks for calling. Really. Okay. Bye.” She clicked off. “Agent Tawney. He was going to try to come out today, but they’ve got something else to do. I think they have a lead. He was careful not to say, but I think they have a lead. He sounded too calm.”

  “Too calm?”

  “Deliberately calm.” She rubbed the heel of her hand between her breasts as he knew she did when struggling for calm herself.

  “As if he didn’t want to show any sort of excitement or interest,” she explained. “Maybe I’m projecting, but that’s how it feels. And he didn’t tell me anything because he didn’t want me to react exactly the way I am.”

  She closed her eyes, took a breath. “It’s a good thing I have a full afternoon. I can’t obsess.”

  “Yes you can. It’s what you do.” Reaching behind her, he gave the tail of her braid a tug and tipped the topic to take her mind off her nerves. “Are you washing my clothes, Mom?”

  “I’m washing mine.” She spoke very primly. “There may be an item or two of yours in there, too, just to fill out the load.”

  He poked her in the shoulder. “Watch it.”

  She fisted her hands on her hips as he strode away. “I’ve already gone radical. I changed the sheets on the bed.”

  He shook his head, kept walking—and made her laugh.

  TAWNEY AND HIS PARTNER took Eckle’s last known residence first, a small three-level apartment building within walking distance of campus. Their knock on 202 went unanswered—except for the crack in the door across the hall.

  “She’s not home.”

  “She?”

  “Just moved in a couple weeks ago.” The crack widened. “Young thing, first apartment. What do you want?”

  Both agents took out their ID. And the door opened all the way. “FBI!” Her tone might’ve been the same on Santa Claus!

  Tawney gauged the woman as early seventies with bright bird eyes behind silver-framed glasses.

  “I love those FBI shows on TV. I watch them all. Cop shows, too. Is that little girl up to something? You couldn’t prove it by me. She’s friendly and polite. Clean, even if she dresses like most of them do.”

  “We were actually hoping to speak with Francis Eckle.”

  “Oh, he left right after Christmas. His mother took sick. At least that’s what he said. I bet he’s in some sort of witness protection. Or he’s a serial killer. He’s just the type.”

  Mantz raised her eyebrows. “Ms. . . . ?”

  “Hawbaker. Stella Hawbaker.”

  “Ms. Hawbaker, could we come in and speak with you?”

  “I knew he was funny.” She pointed a finger. “Come on in. You can have a seat,” she told them and walked over to shut off the TV. “I don’t drink coffee, but I’ve got some for when one of my kids comes by. That and soft drinks.”

  “We’re fine,” Tawney told her. “You said Mr. Eckle left after Christmas.”

  “That’s right. I saw him hauling out suitcases, middle of the day when hardly anyone’s around but me. So I said, ‘Going on a trip?’ And he smiled the way he does that doesn’t look you in the eye and said he needed to go help tend his mother, because she’d had a fall and broke her hip. Now, he’d never once mentioned his mother in all the years he lived across the hall. Course he hardly mentioned anything. Kept to himself,” she added with a knowing nod. “That’s what they say about people who go out and chop people up with an ax. How he was quiet and kept to himself.”

  “Did he mention where his mother lived?”

  “He said, because I asked him straight out, she lived in Columbus, Ohio. Now you tell me,” she demanded, pointing her finger again, “if he had a mother out east, how come he never went to see her before this, or how come she didn’t come out to see him?”

  She tapped the finger to the side of her nose. “Smells funny. And it smells funnier seeing as he never came back. Left his furniture—or most of it from what I could tell when the landlord finally got around to clearing the place out. Not much else, and I know he had cases of books in there—and they didn’t go with him. Must’ve sold them on eBay or something.”

  “You pay attention, Ms. Hawbaker.”

  She took Tawney’s comment with a sly smile. “That I do, and since most people don’t pay much to old ladies, I get away with it. In the past few months, I’ve seen him go out hauling shipping boxes or stacks of those mailing bags, and coming back empty. So I figure he sold those books, and whatever. Running money, I’ll bet. Never paid the rent from January on either. And, ’cause I talked to the landlord about it, I heard he quit his job and cleaned out his bank account. Every penny.”

  Those bright eyes went shrewd. “I expect you know that.”

  “Did he have friends, visitors?” Mantz asked. “Any girlfriends?”

  Ms. Hawbaker made a dismissive sound. “Never once saw him with a woman—or a man either if he went that way. Not natural. Polite, I’ll give him that. Well spoken, but he wouldn’t say boo unless you said it first. What’d he do?”

  “We’re just interested in talking to him.”

  Now she nodded sagely. “He’s what you all call ‘a person of interest,’ and mostly that means he’s a suspect in something bad. He drove one of those little compact cars with the hatchback. That’s what he loaded up and drove off in that day. I’ll tell you something else, ’cause I’m nosy and I poked in—and the landlord and I talked about it. There wasn’t a single photograph in that place, or a letter or a postcard. He never planned to come back, that’s what I say. And he didn’t go to take care of his mother with any broken hip. If he had a mother, he probably killed her in her sleep.”

  Outside, Mantz wrenched open the car door. “Now that’s an insightful woman.”

  “I don’t think Eckle killed his mother in her sleep, since the records show his mother OD’d when he was eight.”

  “She pegged him, Tawney. If that’s not our UNSUB, I’m a Vegas showgirl.”

  “You’ve got good legs, Erin, but I’m looking the same way. Let’s track down the landlord, see what we can find out at the college, then I guess we’re going back to prison.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  One day, Fiona thought, she hoped to feel something other than dread when she saw Davey’s cruiser come down her drive.

  “Uh-oh, we’re in trouble now,” one of her students joked, and she managed a stiff smile.

  “Don’t worry, I have connections. Jana, see the way Lotus is circling? What do you read?”

  “Ah, she’s in the scent pool?”

  “Maybe. Maybe she’s trying to get a new gauge, work it out. Maybe she’s got a cross-scent and she’s trying to home in. You need to work it out, too. Work with her. Help her focus. Watch her tail, her hackles, listen to her breathing. Every reaction means something, and hers might be different from, say, Mike’s dog. I’ll be right back.”

  She moved off, her heart banging against her ribs with every step as Davey walked to meet her.

  “Sorry to interrupt your class—and it’s not bad news. How much longer are you going to be?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes. What—”

  “It’s not bad news,” he repeated. “But I don’t want to talk to you with the audience. I can wait. It’s my timing that’s off.”

  “No, we would’ve been done, but this group asked for an add-on cadaver-search cross-training. There’re only four of them, and I had the time, so . . .” She shrugged.

  “I’ll let you get back to it. Okay if I watch?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fee?” Jana signaled, then lifted her hands in frustration. “She’s just not getting it, and she seems confused and, well, bored. We nail this at home. She loves this behavior, and we’ve got it down cold.”

  Focus, Fiona ordered herself. “You’re not at home. Remember, a new place, new environment, new problems.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve said that before, but if we make it, every time she goes out on a search it’s a new place
.”

  “Absolutely true. That’s why the more experiences she has, the better. She learns every single time. She’s bright and eager, but she’s not pulling it in today—and she feels your frustration, too. First thing, relax.”

  Do the same yourself, Fiona thought and glanced back to where Davey stood watching.

  “Go back to where she started to circle and lose interest. Refresh, reward, reestablish. If she just can’t get it today, take her to the source, let her find it, reward.”

  They were a good team, Fiona thought as she hung back. But the human partner tended to want quick results. Still, she put in the time and energy, had a strong relationship with her dog.

  She turned to watch Mike and his Australian shepherd mix celebrate the find. The dog happily accepted the food reward and praise before Mike pulled on his plastic gloves and retrieved the cylinder containing human bone fragments.

  Well done, she thought. And her third student held both his nose and his tail in the air, which told her he should find his source soon.

  One day, she thought, one or all of them might go out on a call, search woods, hills, fields, city streets, and find human remains. And finding them would help give closure to family, help police find answers.

  Bodies, she thought, like that of Annette Kellworth. Cruelly posed under a couple feet of dirt, left like a broken toy while the one responsible hunted something new.

  Would there be another? Closer yet? Would her own unit be called in to search? She wondered if she could do it, if she could take one of her precious dogs and search for a body that could have been her own.

  That would be hers if a man she didn’t even know had his way.

  “She got it!” Jana called out as she bent to hug her Lotus. “She did it!”

  “Terrific.”

  Not bad news, she reminded herself as she stored her training tools. She got a Coke out of the refrigerator for both of them.

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s have it.”

  “The feds have a lead. They think it’s a strong one.”

  “A lead.” Now her knees could tremble. She braced a hand on a counter stool to stay on her feet. “What kind of lead?”

  “They’re looking for a specific individual, one who had contact with Perry inside the prison. An outside instructor. An English teacher from College Place.”

  “Looking for?”

  “Yeah. He quit his job, packed up some of his things and took off between Christmas and New Year’s. Cleaned out his bank account, left his furniture, defaulted on his rent. He fits the profile—they say. The thing is, he hasn’t had contact—that they can verify—with Perry in nearly a year. That’s a long time.”

  “He’s patient. Perry. He’s patient.”

  “The feds are putting pressure on Perry right now. Trying to find out how much he knows. And they’re digging into this guy’s background. What we got from them is he’s a loner. No relationships, no family. His mother was a junkie, so he was in the system even before she OD’d, when he was eight.”

  “Mother issues,” she murmured as hope and fear bubbled up in a messy stew. “Like Perry.”

  “They’ve got that in common.” Davey took a fax out of his pocket, unfolded it. “Does he look familiar?”

  She studied the facsimile photo, the ordinary face, the trim, professorial beard, the ever-so-slightly-shaggy hair. “No. No, I don’t know him. I don’t know him. Is this really him?”

  “He’s who they’re looking for. They’re not calling him a suspect. They’re careful not to. But I’m going to tell you, Fee, they believe this is the guy, and they’re all over it.” He gave her shoulder a quick rub. “I want you to know they’re all over it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Francis Eckle. Francis Xavier Eckle. His age, height, weight, coloring are all listed on the fax. I want you to keep this picture, Fee. He may have changed his appearance. Cut the beard, dyed his hair. So I want you to keep this, and if you see anybody who looks anything like this guy, you don’t hesitate. You call.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” Even now his face was burned into her mind. “You said he was a teacher.”

  “Yeah. His record’s clear. He had a rough childhood, but he didn’t make any waves—not on record, anyway. They’ll be talking to his foster families, his caseworkers. They’ve already started that, and interviewing his coworkers, supervisors, neighbors. So far, there’s nothing in his background that you’d look twice at, but—”

  “People can be trained. Just like dogs. They can learn, good behavior or bad. It just depends on the motivation and methods.”

  “They’re going to get him, Fee.” Davey put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a squeeze when their eyes met. “You believe that.”

  Because she needed to believe it, she rushed over to Simon’s shop.

  He stood at the lathe, music blaring, tool humming as he hollowed and smoothed the pale wood in his hands.

  A bowl, she realized, one of those lovely ones he made with a sheen and texture like silk and a thickness that seemed hardly more than tissue.

  She watched how he turned and angled, tried to figure out the method to help keep herself still.

  He switched off the machine. “I know you’re over there, breathing my air.”

  “Sorry. Why don’t you have any of those? You need one about twice that size for your kitchen counter, for seasonal fruit.”

  He’d pulled off his ear protectors and goggles and simply stood. “Is that what you came in here to tell me?” And looked down as Jaws dropped a scrap of wood at his feet. “See what you started?”

  “I’ll take them out for a game before my next class. Simon.” She held up the fax.

  His body language changed. Alerted, she thought. “Do they have him?”

  She shook her head. “But they’re looking, and they—Davey said—they think . . . I have to sit down.”

  “Go outside, in the air.”

  “I can’t feel my legs.” With a half laugh, she stumbled out, dropped down onto the shop porch.

  Seconds later he came out with a bottle of water. “Let me have that.” He shoved the water at her, snatched the fax. “Who is this mother-fucker?”

  “Nobody. Mr. Average Joe, except not really. Where’s the rope! Go get the rope!” All four dogs stopped poking with noses and bodies and shot off. “That’ll take a few minutes. Davey came to tell me what the FBI told them. His name’s Francis Xavier Eckle,” she began.

  He continued to study the photo as he listened. When the dogs came back—the crafty Newman the winner—Simon took the rope. “Go play,” he ordered and heaved it hard and long.

  “Don’t they check people out before they let them work at a prison?”

  “Yes, of course. I guess,” she added after a moment. “The point is, there wasn’t anything there. Not that they’ve found so far. But he had contact with Perry, and now he’s changed his behavior. Drastically. They probably know more now. More than they told the sheriff’s office, or more than Davey could tell me. I’m looking at this because Tawney cleared it. Because he wants me to look at it.”

  “Teaching at a small college,” Simon speculated. “Looking at long-legged coeds all day who probably don’t look back. It’s still a big leap from ordinary to Perry copycat.”

  “Not so big if the predilection was there all along, if the drive was in place but he never knew how to engage it. Or didn’t have the nerve.”

  She’d trained dogs like that, hadn’t she? Recognizing or finding hidden potentials, exploiting suppressed drives, or channeling overt ones, systematically altering learned behavior.

  “You talked about the importance of motivation before,” she pointed out. “And you were right. It’s possible Perry found the right motivation, the right . . . game, the right reward.”

  “Trained his replacement.”

  “He taught there four times,” she added, “and Perry signed up for all the classes. He’s a chameleon. Perry. He acclimates. He’s acclim
ating in prison, doing his time, keeping his head down. Cooperating. So he becomes, in a way, ordinary again.”

  “And they don’t pay as much attention?” Simon shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “He’s a student of observation. It’s how he picked his victims, and how he blended so well for so long. He probably stalked and discarded dozens of women before the ones he abducted. Watching them, judging their behavior, their personality type.”

  “Moving on if they didn’t fit his needs well enough.”

  “That, and calculating the risk factors. Maybe this one’s too passive, and not enough of a challenge, or this one’s too chaotic and difficult to pin down.”

  She rubbed her hand between her breasts, on her thigh—couldn’t keep it still. “He knows what to look for in people. It’s how he killed so many, how he traveled and engaged others so easily. I understand that. I can usually tell if a dog will respond to advanced training, if the dog and the handler will forge a team. Or if they’re better off strictly as the family pet. You can see the potential if you know where and how to look—and you can begin molding that potential. Perry knows where and how to look.”

  Maybe she just needed to believe it, Simon thought, but she was damn convincing. “So you think Perry saw, we’ll say, potential, in this guy?”

  “It could be it. It could be this Eckle approached Perry. Nobody’s really above flattery when it comes to their work. And killing was Perry’s work. But if either of those happened, if these two made that connection, Perry would know how to begin the mold. And, Simon, I think—if this is how it went—that the payment for that training, that molding, is me.”

  She looked back at the photo. “He’d kill me to repay Perry for recognizing and grooming his potential.”

  Perry’s dog, Simon concluded, who’d want to please his handler. “Perry’s never going to collect on that IOU.”

  “He should’ve come for me first. They both made a mistake there. I was relaxed. I felt safe, and would’ve been an easier target at that point. Instead, they wanted me to live with the fear. That was stupid.”

  He saw it happen, saw the nerves funnel into a steady anger and steely confidence.